WHISPERINGS

Sometimes, if she just listened hard enough, she could hear him.

Sometimes, it was just in her head.

But was it not better to have his voice in her head, when faced with the alternative of not hearing him at all? Not seeing him was torture enough. Not seeing him was enough to rend her heart into a minutiae of fragmented pieces, collected and scattered by the wind.

Yea, not seeing him was punishment enough. And yet, it had been her fault. This forced separation, this vivisection of her immortal soul. She was so perfectly, so beautifully broken: but not for him to fix. He was through fixing her. He had every reason to be. She was no longer his queen, no longer the fair, bonny maiden of sixteen that he had wedded and bedded all those years ago.

She was no longer his.

She was no longer anyone's. Not even the traitor's, not even the betrayer of her heart's. She belonged to no man, now. She was no longer a commodity, no longer a possession, no longer a winged falcon in the keep of a wealthy nobleman who visited her twice a day to take her out and show her to the world and then discard her. She was no longer any of these things, she thought, with a slight twinge in her gut. But she wanted to be. She longed for those days; those simple, easy days where everything fell into place without a second thought. Where she would simply be taken out for a few hours every afternoon, discarded, yes, but with that refreshing, swelling hope that upon the morrow she would be taken out again.

Now there was no hope. He had not even left her that.

She did not deserve it, did she? After what she had done? After what she still would be doing now, if he had not sent her to this godforsaken pit of humanity? Would she have not betrayed him yet? Remorse in retrospect pleases not. It comes much too late and is much too little to do any good. Her actions, now, and her punishment, now, was her due. And though she longed for him, and though she felt irrevocable pangs of wanton desire to be back at her court, she accepted her fate. How could she not?

For it was of her own doing. And it could not be unwound, now.

Arthur, Guinevere whispered. Arthur, come back to me. Arthur, I love thee. Arthur, Arthur. I knew not my own heart, but I know it now, and it hungers for thee, and it awaits thy touch, and it mourns for thy loss, and it will never betray thee again.

Sometimes, she could hear him whisper back.

Other times, she knew that even if she couldn't, he could hear her, and he would listen.