I Could Get Used to This

A King Arthur fan-fiction by sadie-leona

All original characters belong to their respective creators. While this is one of those time-travel fan fictions, it is really different, so please give it a chance!

I hate the snow, really, I do. It always finds those holes in your clothes you've always been meaning to mend but haven't had the time and chilled you to the bone, no matter how many layers you wore. We had just had one of the biggest snowstorms of the century, and I was an unfortunate soul that had to venture outside.

"The Army doesn't care," I explained to my mother, "they need someone to shovel their sidewalks, don't they?" She gave me a dark look and walked out of the room. "I'm going!" I yelled after her. She yelled something about not getting stuck, but my brother and his friends' screams made her statement garbled.

The snowfall had turned the trees lining our driveway into a tunnel, the winds had forced them to bend inward, the snow coating them like spray-paint until they were solid through and through. It was pretty cool, although whenever you went inside, it was like you could hear your blood pumping through your ears – that was creepy. I had described this feeling to my mother, but she hadn't felt it and just shrugged the phenomenon off, blaming it on my basic training. She's blaming everything on my choice to join the army, nowadays, even though it was nearly four years ago.

Bryte, my brother, and his friends imitated the sounds of a machine gun and one yelled "INTRUDER ALERT," initiating the beginning of a snowball attack. I laughed at the poor attempts by the group of seven-year-old boys who had terrible aim. I watched as one fell just in front of my feet, the other past my shoulder, and countless others that were close, but never hit their target. I bent down and packed snow together, tossing it at their make-shift fort, knocking down a wall and exposing the little troupe.

I turned to start my trudge to the end of the driveway – since the roads were closed by six-foot-tall drifts and today was a mandatory day for all workers on the army base, no matter how the weather, trucks were sent out to collect those who chose not to live on the base – one sanity wish of my mothers – and there were only a few, most had spouses and children who couldn't handle living on the base. I entered the tunnel, the insults from Bryte and his friends over my successful part-deconstruction of their fort dying away – the sound waves stopping at the colossal snow walls. I shivered, pulling the collar of my Columbia jacket around my neck and tugging the OD hat around my ears. I hadn't layered clothing because as soon as I got to the base, I'd have to replace it with my uniform, anyway.

My glove-less fingertips grazed along the iced walls, becoming red-raw. The eerie feeling crept over me again, first in my stomach, like cramps, and then the tingly feeling in my fingertips and toes and the ringing in my ears. I started to walk faster; I could hear the roaring of an armored vehicle as it plowed down the road. I was halfway through when I stopped, the feelings that had just been generated rapidly accelerating, enough that I was doubled over. I didn't have enough arms to sooth the places that hurt – my head, my stomach, my back, my legs, my feet – I've only felt this once before and it was my first week of basic training, a hell I would never want to endure again. "Br-Bryte," I gasped, although I could barely hear it myself. What was going on? Had my appendix ruptured – no, I had that removed when I was ten. It felt like everything inside of me had burst. The wind had picked up – it thrashed my long locks violently against my face to the point where they felt like whips. I opened my mouth to attempt to gain my brother's attention, but in one, lovely moment, the pain had disappeared and I felt like I was on top of a mountain, my spirit light a free, my hardships and worries gone.

I opened my eyes, amazed at the occurrence – I was on a mountain . . . or something like it and my hardships and worries weren't gone. I wasn't in the tunnel, I couldn't hear any vehicles nor any yells from young, adventurous boys. I did hear, however, drums. Drums? Yes, drums. Everything was white, the sky just threatening to turn blue, light and crispy snowflakes fell from the sky. It certainly felt like I was home, but it didn't look it. What had happened? Was I dreaming? Had I blacked out and my real body was lying on the tunnel floor? For lack of anything better to do, I pinched myself. No, this felt very real. I took a few steps forward, my tennis shoes crunching the fresh snow beneath.

Was I alone? Where were the drums coming from? I followed the sound, trekking a short distance around a large jutting rock. I was met with the view of eight beings standing in a line facing a mass of people slowly coming towards them – the source of the drums. What in the hell? I walked forward slowly, watching the scene unfold before me, a feeling of déjà vu creep over me; although I know I've never been in this situation before. The mass stopped, and a moment later something hit the ice, but I was too far away to see what it was. Someone said something from the row, yet again I was too far away – I crept closer. Two men stepped forward, bows in hand, and shot at the mass, instantly killing – or at least brining down – multiple people. A second later screams erupted and the air was showered with arrows, a few sliding across the ice in front of me. I swore and stepped backwards. The déjà vu grew more, like the feeling in the tunnel had. And then it hit me – I had seen this before, but it sure as hell wasn't in real life – on the television.

I couldn't remember the name or what exactly was about – it was on the television once and I had it on while I was cleaning my room, and this was one of the only scenes I remember. The mass were Saxons? I think that was it. And the eight lined up were fighting against them, I think on the good side, if I was correct. And I knew who was going to die next.

"WAIT!" I shrieked, sprinting to the eight and directly to the man who was about to die, although I don't remember his name. He was the tallest of them, bald, and menacing looking. "Don't go!" I yelled to him, he was bending to pick up his ax. "You'll die!"

"The ice isn't going to break!" he yelled to the others, looking at me like I was a madwoman, the rest had stopped fighting and watched.

"If you wouldn't mind telling your lover to leave, Dagonet?" growled a man next to him who had dark shaggy hair that fell around his face, his eyes steady on the targets before him as he shot off three arrows at a time, not even glancing at yours truly.

"She's not my lover," Dagonet retorted, looking at me suspiciously.

"You'll die," I said seriously.

"I don't know who you are."

"Please," I pleaded quickly, playing the movie moments in my mind, "you were about to go out and hack a hole in the ice, weren't you?"

"And?" he asked as if it were an every day ritual.

"You're not going to survive!" I exclaimed like it was common knowledge. "The people around you are not going to get all of the men with crossbows over there," I waved my hands around exuberantly, "you're going to get hit in the chest with one, and then you," I pointed to another man with olive skin and a red cape, "are going to go fish him out of the hole he chipped, and then you," I pointed to another man who was beefy and looked like he was about to bite my head off, "are going to go out and save them."

They all stared at me as if I was a raving lunatic, except for the man who had thought I was Dagonet's lover, who continued to shoot off arrows as if he were a machine. He looked at the others, "someone who strayed away from the caravans?"

"Please believe me," I whispered, looking into his eyes, but his brow furrowed and he gripped his ask. With a battle yell, he ran to death.

I hung my head, unable to watch the man's demise. I had seen many, being a field nurse among other things in the few deployments to Iraq I had partaken on. I knew the feeling well, when a black shroud seemed to cover you, but only for an instant and then you were vaulted into reality where your abilities and not your feelings mattered. Like someone who has just witnessed a catastrophe, I silently fell to my knees and then on my bottom, my mind unable to comprehend what was happening. I didn't even know what was going on or when I'd get back to where I came from.

"Who are you?" a man asked gingerly, not talking to me as if I were a flea on their backs. I looked up to see the red-caped man.

"Sardis Bennett."

"You're from Sardis?" his face brightened.

"No," I sighed, "Sardis is my name." I was rarely bugged about my name, most from Roman history teachers or when classes dabbled in the Roman times – was the man before me a Roman-history buff, perhaps? …Or something else?

"Have you ever been to Sardis?" he asked, making small talk. My stomach dropped, he was the something else. They were the something else. I was in the something else.