A Great Lion
Author's note: Yeah, it's a little cheesy. But, whatever. More Geoffrey is always needed. (No, I don't have a weakness for teal-haired FE men with lances. What makes you think that?) One-word challenge from Improvisation, word being "sometimes".
Sometimes, when the winter chill creeps into the crisp Crimean air and brings out the old aches in Geoffrey's young bones, he wonders if he's really ready for the position he's found himself in. He still can't equal the mastery of his predecessor – the speed of his lance, the accuracy of his arrows – and he doubts he ever will. Duke Renning was inimitable, in a class of his own, and yet, even he hadn't managed to stop Ashnard's mad campaign. Even he, in the end, had failed his king and queen. Geoffrey can hardly expect to best a man like that.
He imagines, in these times, when his scars seem whiter against the rest of his skin and his fingers seem almost too stiff to even nock an arrow, let alone let it loose, if perhaps there is some other who could better serve his queen in his place. Lucia, of course, is loyal. Her blade will never falter, and her heart will never stray. Bastian, beneath his pompous front, is the same: though he'll deal in the shadows and spread rumors in the night, it is always for the sake of Crimea's new queen.
Loyalty alone, of course, is not enough. Crimea needs someone with strength and courage – a great lion, as the bards say in the old song-poems Geoffrey half-knows, to defend the honor of the throne. Geoffrey is truly no lion at all. There must be someone else.
Marcia, at least, can follow the queen up into the sky, keep her spear at her side and hold enemies at bay. Kieran may not be bright, but he's faithful, at least, with a curious vigor Geoffrey can't even hope to match. He thinks of the others – Makalov, Calill, Astrid – and though each might be a better fit for the duty than he feels is, not one of them could possibly stand alone.
The aches in his back, his arms, his legs seem worse now than they ever did before. He can't hope to protect his queen, and truly, who can? One well-aimed arrow, one well-placed slash of a sword, one small cup of tea laced with sweet poison, and there, in a moment, would the future of Crimea go. It happened so easily to her parents, after all, and why not again? Who is Geoffrey to stand against it?
But all at once, he recalls his queen's smile, the effortless way she holds her blade in her hands, the serenity and grace she captures in the sky. He remembers the ferocity in her eyes as she withstood the nobility's mocking, the quiet challenge in the tilt of her chin as she made her will known. She's stronger than any knight, he thinks, perhaps not in body, but at the very least in spirit. She has no need of a perfect protector, though surely her retinue can stand strong behind her.
Crimea, Geoffrey knows, has its great lion already. He'll be content to only watch her roar.