AN: Spoilers for 1x07; since this isn't explicitly contradicted, I went with the interpretation that Aulfric and Sophia's banishment isn't recent.
Disclaimer: I don't own the source material, I make no money with this, please don't sue me, and all that.
Just Passing Through
Of Avalon she has no memory, but images of this earthly paradise are clear and ever-present in her mind all the same, for there has never been a time when her father did not tell her stories of its beauty. When she is only three years old he sits by her bed in the evening and speaks to her of its sunny meadows and its clear springs and its magical night-lights more abundant and beautiful than the stars in the sky, and ends his tale always with a fierce: "but you will see for yourself, my daughter. You will."
She falls asleep night after night with his voice ringing on in her mind and dreams of a place of everlasting happiness.
When she's five years old and they live together in a small village on the outskirts of Camelot, that translates for her to her three best friends never having to help at home, being allowed to push further into the forest than they are now, catching frogs, and finding a perfect tree-branch to pass for a sword. Everything she's used to is natural and self-evident to her then, and she never stops to wonder why she always has time and they don't: when they're free, they run around through the village, try to escape from the adults' watchful eyes, play at sword fighting and get dirt all over their clothes. Sometimes they quarrel and fight or fall and she comes back with scratched knees.
It's on one of the bad days that she comes home crying: Alex was mean, called her a girl like it's an insult, and her hand hurts –
Her father drapes his arms around her and ushers her inside while she sniffles on; then he takes her hand and stops dead.
"You're bleeding."
His voice is terrible, full of fury and despair; she stares up at him and starts crying again, violently, afraid.
"Bleeding," he repeats, in horror, and stares at the dirty red smudge in the palm of her hand.
That night, instead of stories he teaches her secret words that will make the flow of blood stop and grow skin back within instants, to use from now on for every minute scratch.
They move for the first time shortly thereafter: at first she cries for her friends and her familiar spots: then she forgets; finds new friends, in another village, until rumours start about these newly arrived strangers with too much luck and too much wealth, and they move once again.
"Don't cry," he tells her once they are on the road again, when she's said farewell, older now and more aware of what the word means. "Don't cry – they are only mortals: you would have lost them soon in any case." His voice is grim; she looks up at him with wet and curious eyes. "They come and go like butterflies, almost as fast." And in a murmur, he adds: "How could any of them matter at all, in the greater scheme of things?"
"But we do?" she asks, sounding fearful and confused.
He stops then, and lays his hands on her shoulders, and she feels them tremble, and his eyes, level with hers, stare at her with endless sorrow and guilt.
"Yes. You – you will live forever."
It's prayer and vow at once, intense and desperate.
She's more careful, heads her father's warnings, doesn't swim out too far in the lake like the other youths do: she knows now what she has to lose – knows of the immortality that is her due –, and how fragile she is in this ever-changing shell of hers. What can they lose but a few years of so reduced perception? It is sad, but so is seeing a lamb slaughtered for a feast, and you dry your tears and eat. But one mistake and eternity will be torn from her hands.
They move from village to village and lone huts in the forest, and the ties she forms are weaker and rarer every time: she knows them to be ephemeral, both on the short and the long run, and her previous friends might as well be dead, she will never see them again. If any of it hardens her, it is unseen on the outside: she grows up to be so beautiful and sweet, soft pink lips, deep and pretty eyes, long brown hair, soft skin, elegant gestures, a human girl who can pass for a noble lady.
Her father sees her age and shivers inside, and she feels his worry and his haste like they run through her own being (do they have this? how could they love if they do not?).
He teaches her spells and enchantments, and she learns that she can turn mortals into puppets to dance at her leisure, turn them off and on, alter their desires and their emotions, and they're like empty shells after a while, interchangeable since so many of their movements are. And oh! she doesn't want to stay trapped in this world of lifeless shadows...
They move on, back into Camelot with its dangerous laws on magic that leave it vulnerable, its unguarded gates to their world of origin, and its prophesies that give their mortal prince a value high enough to buy eternity.
Sophia walks beside her father, arms crossed around a body that weights her down, a decaying prison that she now longs to leave behind, and forces herself not to scratch her flawless skin. Soon, she thinks to herself, and tries a smile. Soon.
x
AN: ...I have inappropriate levels of sympathy for characters who try to escape death.
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