Disclaimer:
They belong to legend, myth and Jerry Bruckheimer (this incarnation of
them, anyway). I just couldn't resist their adorableness! :D
A Dream of Home
If they had thought about it, perhaps they would have known that all the talk of going home was only ever talk, fanciful dreams of beautiful Sarmatian wives and broods of children free from their fathers' obligation to Rome. Yet they were dreams that had sustained them all through their fifteen years of servitude.
But the bonds they shared were no empty dreams. Brothers in arms, a band of seven men who lived, rode and above all fought together, they belonged together, had forgotten how to function apart. Each of them had six men to watch his back, to trust with his very life if need be. How could any life afterwards measure up to that?
So when it became ever clearer that they would not be going home so soon after all, was it not relief that each of them felt, in the darkest part of his heart? Was it not reluctance and regret that they felt as they rode away southwards, leaving their commander behind on the hill, silhouetted against the sky?
And when they fought that last great battle, fought and died at the hands of the Saxons, did it not somehow feel right to be spilling their blood upon the soil that had become their home over the last fifteen years?
They had grown up here, become men here; they had fought for this land and two of them died for it. So even with the loss of those two as a gaping hole in their midst, did it not feel right to stay, to see their commander become King, married to the princess of the land, to stand together and shout their great war cry in the service of a new and better cause?
Gawaine looked at Galahad and smiled. Perhaps it did, after all.