A/N: Nothing that you recognise belongs to me.
Galahad one-shot. Prompts: angst and mead. Mostly set after the film. No relation to anything else I've written.
Not a little boy now. No longer the pretty pup as Tristan once called him, not Gawain's surrogate baby brother. His parents would no longer recognise the child torn from their arms, and in his darker moments Galahad acknowledges and welcomes that fact; indeed he barely recognises himself these days. He swallows the Mead that Vanora brings gratefully and greedily each night, welcomes the numbness that it brings . Sweet, so sweet, it slips down his throat. It is only later that it lies heavy in his stomach, it is only later that the bitter aftertaste burns his throat as he retches helplessly and rests his hot forehead against the cold stone of his chamber wall. Oblivion always comes at a price, and by the morning he has already forgotten that lesson.
When the light is pale and almost enough to rouse him from him slumber, she comes to him. He half awakes, but does not protest when she wipes the sweat from his cheeks, lets him drink his fill from the pitcher of cold water that still bears the bitter tang of the iron bucket from which it has been poured. Galahad knows her touch, knows her voice, and knows what she will say before she utters the words.
"There are faster ways to kill yourself," Megan chides quietly before departing the room as silently as she had entered it.
She is right; after all she should know. He had helped bring her husband's body back to the fort a couple (or was it a hundred?) years ago. Dagonet died swiftly, he died nobly - he died for Arthur, and at the time that was the best any of them could have hoped for. He also died free, although the pretty pointless piece of paper that declared that fact was buried with him - unsealed, unread and useless to the man whose name it bore. It seems a long time ago. In those days he had snapped and snarled against his Roman masters, fought as a means to survive, each day unbuckled and tossed aside his bloodied hauberk, and marked it as one day closer to freedom. A day closer to starting the long journey home, a notch against the small piece of wood that he had carried with him since he was taken.
That little branch is whittled away to nothing now, and Galahad often wonders why he still feels the need to still mark it. Arthur is king of… whatever this country may turn out to be. Most of his fellow knights are dead, but he is unwilling to leave those that are left, and more than a little afraid to go back home.
Tristan killed for pleasure, Dagonet for duty, and Lancelot with a wilful ruthlessness that seemed to mock his Roman captors. Galahad knows this, understands, and mourns his family along with his brothers, for the creature that he has become has no bridle but loyalty and knows no rest aside from exhaustion or unconsciousness. He and his brothers were caught as wild things, beaten into submission, and have bent their will to their captors even as they fought it. They were offered freedom, they stayed with their master. Arthur is kind, he treats his knights as equals, and he cannot ever understand the resentment that flickers behind their eyes.
Vanora brings Galahad mead in the evenings. She tries her best to give comfort and advice, but it is Megan who make sure that he is settled in his bed, it is Megan who strokes his hair when he wakes from his nightmares. She is not his lover, nor his mother, and he is neither the husband she yearns for or the child she lost before it had a chance of life. It is not the stuff of fairytales; they are neither what each other long for, but it is enough. For a few brief moments it is enough. He lets her pull him to him, she lets him call her by a name unfamiliar to her tongue. In the dark drowsiness borne of alcohol and memories, when the castle is still and the shadows long, both of them take what little comfort they can find.
A/N: In response to Chocolatejet's request - angst and Mead! on my fic-challenge KA forum ( oh dear, that sounds like forum whoring - if that is a word) Thanks Chocolatejet for the ideas !
Lots of liberties taken here - feel free to flame. I always wondered how Galahad would cope with "peace" time.