Author's Note: This is a very old story (although it's not exactly a sroty, per se...) that I wrote whilst studying Tennyson at school. It was also at a time when I was playing Zelda again (Ocarina of Time, I think, going off the "smoking ruins" line). Anyway, I found it recently and thought, "Hmm", so here it is.

Let me know what you think of my young self's work!

Also! The poem that this was named for and after is 'Ulysses' by Alfred Lord Tennyson, who is a DON, in case you didn't know. If you aren't familiar with it, you can read it here: .

Okay, enjoy! CP x

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-'Ulysses' Alfred Lord Tennyson-

~Ulysses~

He saved her once, pulled her from the fire and stood with her in the smoking ruins of a fallen kingdom; he already the Hero of legends, she a Princess in name only. And in the lifting darkness he made a promise to her to rebuild what had been and protect what was to come.

He is bonded to his Queen by more than their shared history, is to her worth tenfold his titular value. He knows her well; every pale hair, every bright freckle, knows the meaning behind every small gesture and every stillness; knows her better than she knows herself. He is always beside her, a second shadow cast by her own light. He moves as she moves, matches his stoicism to hers, his grace to hers. It is by her alone that he measures himself.

The years march by and the battles of their youth become their moniker. There are other wars to be fought and upheavals to withstand and perhaps, he thinks, better men than he to protect her and her people; yet he is always the Great Hero, the one to whom she and they pin their hopes and expectations. He bears the responsibility for their lives like armour; awkwardly and with difficulty at first, but gradually, with time and wear, more comfortably, more naturally.

And he is not as young as he once was; there is a little more silver to his hair, a few more lines woven into the corners of his eyes, where writ are the joys and sorrows and hardships that are his to bear. Still quick, but no longer so nimble and agile as the monkey-boy he remembers himself to be. When he falls, it seems further to get back up again. He no longer simply bruises but seems to crack like stone, like the bones of the earth itself, leaving behind a residual cloying ache, wounds that take longer to heal, an intolerable stiffness and tightness of muscle that seems never to leave him.

But still, he is her saviour, her White Knight. When she calls upon him, he is ready; come what may, he will fight for her, on the green fields of his home or the unsteady ground of foreign soil. He will fight for her until he is too weak to bear his sword, too weak to stay the course of his own ailing limbs.

He is bonded to his Queen by more than their shared history, by more than flesh and fibre; he is bonded to her by their souls, forever tied to her by the waxing and waning of eons, through the stories and legends of the land, by the magic that runs through the veins of the kingdom itself.

And if he should fall and not be able to rise again, if he should not return to her in this life she will not abandon herself to sorrow, because he will come to her again, the image of the boy he once was.

In another time, beyond the slow grinding cycle of generations, he will come to her.

And she will be his Princess once more.