Title: Screaming
Rating: PG
Author: FlowerGirlEM
Beta: Selina and Eve: anything you don't like is mine, despite their best efforts.
Summary: Sometimes silence is not so golden: Lancelot tries to talk to Arthur (not slash).
Disclaimer: They're not mine and never will be. Such is life.
I think, sometimes, that my fellow knights must be deaf and blind. How can they be otherwise, when they do not see what is surely so obvious? How can they not see that he's screaming? How can they not hear him?
And yet… he's screaming to someone, and he can't hear, so why should the others?
I know it isn't true to say that things have always been this way, and yet when it happened it was hardly unexpected or unanticipated. There had always been something there, something that could become more, did become more.
I couldn't say exactly when it started to build, only when it finally exploded, a year ago. The day Gawain announced it was one year to the day until our freedom would be granted. Drinks were poured, toasts were made, and Lancelot… Lancelot never took his eyes from Arthur, and that was the moment it became clear. The moment that Lancelot realised the freedom the rest of us had craved for so long wasn't an abstract concept, far away in the distant future, but a real possibility.
The moment Lancelot realised that he couldn't have both freedom and Arthur.
That he'd give up one for the other, and that he couldn't give up Arthur.
We all started making plans after that… or maybe just started talking about them, now that there was suddenly a genuine chance we might live to put them into practice. It wasn't that noticeable, that Lancelot didn't say anything that meant anything, hiding his silence between jokes about this woman or that, but it was in his eyes, for those of us who knew him well enough to watch.
His eyes said everything he didn't say out loud, everything he'd realised, that he couldn't make plans for home because it didn't exist for him any longer.
It was like looking at a waterfall inside his head, catching his eye sometimes in the evening, seeing all the thoughts tumbling, trying to find a solution, a way to keep Arthur near him.
Sometimes, when we're riding, or talking, I hear Arthur trying to persuade Lancelot that he ought to visit Rome. I remember the first time he said that, around some campfire in some wood, on some rain-swept night, and the way Lancelot's whole body jerked, as if he'd been shot. The hope and despair and pain that had flickered across his face almost too fast to be seen, before he had made some joke about arrogant Romans, and the women. Quick enough to fool Arthur, and I know he saw that as well.
I often wonder if that made it worse, knowing he could hide this from his best friend.
I think he hid it too well, in the end. Although, if I could hear him screaming when he didn't say anything, I don't know why the others couldn't. Too focussed on their own friends, I suppose, and of course Arthur has an army to lead… or what's left of one… and less space in his head for Lancelot than the others have for their friends.
Lancelot, of course, has more space in his head and his heart for Arthur, because he loves him as both a commander and a friend.
It's got worse, as time has gone on, and Lancelot has become more and more… withdrawn, maybe? Tense, certainly, from too much hiding, and too much waiting for Arthur to notice something he'll never be able to put into words, never be able to admit. Waiting for Arthur to hear him screaming.
In a way, I think I'm waiting as well, for someone to notice. I can hardly just go up to Arthur and tell him, even if I wanted to. But I wish I could make someone see what Lancelot doesn't hide nearly as well as he could. I don't think he wants to anymore.
He's sitting away from us, his back turned, looking out into the darkness of the wood. It always strikes me that no-one goes over to him, that they don't even seem to notice they're leaving him alone. He's started to drift away more and more often as the time has trickled away, from months to weeks to days, hours. To meet the Bishop's coach, then accompany him back to the Wall, and then…
He twitches, the movement filled with something that seems almost like panic. He's counting time.
He's still sitting there when we are drawing into our cloaks, preparing to spend another night sleeping under stars and trees. Arthur, taking first watch, steps away from the fire, to the edge of our clearing. Eyes half closed, I watch Lancelot follow him, and strain to hear what they say, even though I know I shouldn't.
If the explosion is going to come, it must surely be now. In the silence of this wood, on this night, surely Arthur cannot continue to be deaf to Lancelot's desperation.
'Arthur,' Lancelot starts, and stops. I suppose it's not so easy to undo a year of hiding through his words alone.
Arthur turns back at his name though, waiting without saying anything.
'Arthur… What will you do, when this is over?'
It's a question that's been asked a thousand times lately, but the first time it's been asked between these two. Strange how, even when he speaks of Lancelot visiting Rome, Arthur never asks this.
'Return to Rome. Live out my days in peace.' He's said the words so many times, we've all heard them so many times, but he's never said them to Lancelot.
'And I?' The words come out softly, as though they're being forced past everything telling him not to say them, not to ask because maybe the answer won't be the one he wants.
'You will return to Sarmatia, and carry on as you do here, with the ladies of that fine country,' Arthur says lightly, half-joking.
I can see Lancelot's face darken, even in the dark and the distance. Too late now to take it back, better instead to go on. 'What of the Knights? The Round Table?'
Arthur seems genuinely confused, frowning at Lancelot and his question. 'What of them? They will take their papers, and their safe passage and go with you.'
'Without our Commander?' His voice is still soft enough that I can barely hear him, ragged at the edges with despair, desperation, but it draws Arthur a little closer in order to hear.
'You will need no Commander, you will be free men,' Arthur comments. He is applying the same logic to this conversation that he applies to a battlefield, no matter what confusion it causes him.
'Free,' Lancelot repeats softly. His eyes drop for a moment, almost as if… as if he might break at this moment, cry out in pain that Arthur cannot fail to hear, and let there be some small kind of comfort.
Instead, he raises his eyes again, smiling. 'Freedom. Yes. No more battle, no more knights… a life-time of peace and quiet.'
Lancelot is screaming, and no-one will hear.
Please RR