A/N: Oh, my God. This chapter is so incredibly short. I'm so sorry…. : (

And it's been such a ridiculously long delay…. I've been so disappointing, to you and to myself….. I hate this. I'm sorry. Please, forgive me. I have no excuse. There can be no excuse for all of this. I guess this is the update, but it still makes me sad. I'm sorry…. (sigh) Merry Christmas….. : (


WARNING: The following is rated R for violence, language, and mature content. If you are underage or have a problem with adult content, please do not read the following text. You have been warned. Reader Discretion Advised.


Chapter 7: Inferno

Arthur's eyes turned into moons, threatening to explode. They twitched dangerously, though whether with tears or the reflective light was indecipherable. His mouth had come apart more than Lancelot's, and he didn't breathe because his knight did not. For a long moment, all thought failed to survive in his mind, and all feeling died in his skin. To anyone else, Lancelot would appear to have fallen into sleep or unconsciousness, but Arthur knew better. He flung his bound hands to Lancelot, blossoming above the ropes to cup the knight's chin, fingers curling into the ashen face. He searched that face desperately, the terror claiming his every vein and clamping on until he felt like it would never leave again.

"Lancelot!" he breathed, eyes moving back and forth too quickly. He gripped the knight's face harder, shaking lightly. "Lancelot!" He went unheard. Retracting his hands and arms, he leaned over and lay his ear over Lancelot's heart, and when he was met with silence that lasted for second after second, the terror threatened to shut down his system entirely. Rising up violently, he screamed his knight's name, disbelief driving him to frenzied madness. Failing to realize it, he snapped his fetters with unnatural strength, and his arms spread to seize Lancelot by the shoulders. Shaking him, he called out the Sarmatian's name over and over, the broken rope left in his lap. Lancelot did not answer or wake or move. Without thinking, Arthur flew to Lancelot's lips and breathed as much air as he could without collapsing his own lungs, earning outcries from the Saxons again. Once risen, he shook the knight again and called his name but received no reply. Again, he breathed into his best friend and again he waited in vain. Time after time, he tried. He called and called but no one answered. The knights had not the heart to rise and tell him to stop. The Saxons enjoyed watching his defeat.

Lancelot wandered in endless fields, unable to remember any face, any love, any hour of joy or sorrow. He knew only his name, and with child-like isolation in his eyes, he searched the empty wheat around him for any company but failed to find any. These fields stretched for miles around him, and the silence, broken only by wind, left him too uneasy. He realized he was without weapon, and the trinket he kept around his neck was gone. Why could he not remember anyone? Did no one love him? He wanted someone… He needed someone. How could he be all alone?

"Hello?" he called out. "Hello? Is anyone here?" Only the wind rustling the wheat came in reply. He turned in circles futilely, becoming more and more afraid as the solitude seeped into his love-starved limbs and made him cold. The sun was golden in the fields, but he began to shiver. And then he remembered with a new stream of light bleeding in his heart. "Arthur?" He turned again, head going before the rest of his body. "Arthur?"

"Lancelot!" Arthur wailed, face red with wild sorrow as he shook and shook to no avail. "Lancelot!" He shook the knight by the shoulders with less fervor. "Lancelot." With a whimper, he sat back on his heels at last, fingers loosening in the Sarmatian's tunic. The Roman's head hung as his shoulders gently quaked, and his knights looked away from his weeping. He could say nothing. He could not yell at Lancelot for leaving him, nor beg him to come back. He could not say the name anymore. He had not the heart for words. Arthur could not pick himself up this time. He didn't know what to do with himself when it felt like his core had split apart, stitch by stitch. Lancelot lay sleeping at his knees, sleeping for the first time since they had been taken captive. Gawain wondered, as he watched Arthur's heaving back with lost eyes, what the Sarmatian was dreaming of.

Lancelot dreamed of a waning moon in the spring, when the only blanket he needed to sleep in the hills was Arthur's cloak still flowing from the Roman's shoulders. He dreamed of a night where he could still see the stars and know what they were. He dreamed of Arthur stretched around him and smiling shrewdly to himself, unlike any other time. He dreamed of the Roman breathing like the sway of the long grass when the breeze touches down on the earth, head tilted to fit into the curve that was made when Lancelot's neck met his shoulder. He dreamed of rest, rest that would only come in freedom, even if that freedom was only a meadow beside Hadrian's Wall with Arthur holding him close. He dreamed and he dreamed and he couldn't wake up. He couldn't find his way home. He couldn't remember home. Perhaps he didn't have one.

"Well, now that that's over with, we can get on with our entertainment," suggested a Saxon who had never before spoken. His dirty face broke into a grin as he folded his arms, and Arthur didn't stop heaving with sobs that never came. He couldn't breathe, and he didn't care. He had failed to hear the Saxon, didn't look up at the beast's face. He had never felt this way before – abandoned by God, without hope. He didn't want hope anymore. He wanted Lancelot. That was the only thing he could think of now – his dead brother, the body that lay under his tears.

"My deepest condolences," began Cedric, stepping aimlessly from his place with eyes on Arthur. "It must be a hard thing to lose your whore." The Saxons laughed. Arthur heard nothing. "But look at this way, Roman. Now, he won't have to suffer anymore. He's the lucky one." The voice was rough and almost hoarse, emotion absent. Perhaps, under any other circumstances, Artorious Castus, infamous war lord of the Roman Empire, would have turned his head and stared into the Saxon's eyes of stone. But Cedric was met with no gaze this time. His words failed to spark any anger in Arthur, though the other knights made up for their captain in that. No – nothing Cedric could do or say would mean anything to Arthur now. They could inflict no more pain upon him. With eyes fixed on empty space, the Roman grew numb.

"Ye miserable brood of foreign swine!" said Bors, rising to his feet with pale tracks in his soiled face. "You think you can get away with this?" His eyes wandered over the Saxons, most of them hidden in shadow. "By whatever gods live in heaven, I swear ye'll all pay with your lives – if I have to see to it myself." One of the Saxons approached the knight laughing aloud.

"Oh, really? Tell me, knight, what could you possibly do to us? Look at you. You're nothing. You are nothing but a toy to be played with at our disposal." The words were spat and bitter, fang-like teeth glimmering faintly when he spoke. Bors clenched his teeth wordlessly, face reddening with impending rage. "Look around," the Saxon said, almost whispering. "We have raped, beaten, and killed you. You are defeated." He had leaned in, almost as if he only wanted Bors to hear him. "Defeated. Look at your famous Roman captain. What more proof do you need?"And Bors said nothing, only looked deep into the Saxon's eyes with a fire in his gaze that should not be underestimated.

"Why don't we cut off his leg and feed it to the dogs?" growled the Saxon, to which his comrades roared approvingly. A group of them dashed forth to seize the burly knight from before the eyes of their comrade. They dragged Bors away from Dagonet, and the Saxon who had made the suggestion followed, eyes locked with the knight's and fingers fondling his knife. Bors did not protest, and Dagonet only watched his friend with a painful gleam in his eyes. Arthur's defeat had left the knights in silent resignation to their fate. The Roman had not moved from his place, from Lancelot's body. He did not look up or cease his panting for air that refused to come.

The Saxons shoved Bors against a mangled stump that was conveniently tilted and began to tie him to it. The one with the blade watched is comrades work, eyes locked with Bors'. When his knife pricked the tip of his finger, he did not flinch or indicate that he had noticed. The bead of blood remained. As the other Saxons dispersed, he began to approach Bors, stone gaze never breaking from the knight's. The blade gleamed for an instant when it caught a moonbeam that died in the next second. The clouds were moving, filling the sky to drop a blanket of darkness of the earth. Soon, the flames would go out and leave them in black.

"Bloody hell!" Bors cried, half-groaning. The Saxon had thrown a stiletto into his leg without warning. He stepped closer, before leaning down to pull it out. Bors grimaced and rocked as best he could against the wood and rope, heel of his boot digging into the earth. Pain coursed through his leg now, and Dagonet frowned sympathetically.

"How does it feel, knight?" the Saxon asked. He tossed the little knife aside and slowly lifted the long blade, watching it shine in Bors' eyes for a moment. He didn't smile like the knight might have expected. He just let it shine in his victim's eyes, watching without any trace of humanity in his face. The blade cut through the cloth first, and Bors only winced as it continued to his flesh. No hiss of pain or outcry. Yet when the blade dipped deeper, Bors could not hold back a loud curse, though only Dagonet had the heart and lack of distraction to watch. Arthur's eyes barely glimmered at his knight's outburst. Instead, he gave himself to the haunting.

"Lancelot," he had whispered. Fingers stroking black curls – quiet love. "Lancelot." Fevered murmur and hot skin. Gray eyes gleaming, worried and tender. "I brought you tea." Careful hand guiding spoon to swollen lips. Empty cup and body slipping into bed. Arms around aching bones and muscles, curls against heart. Sigh. Candle blown out.

"Enough," said Cedric. The Saxon stopped without hesitating, still staring fixedly at Bors. After a moment of waiting to listen and watch the knight heave and rock with pain, the brute straightened, knife lifting away from Bors. One step at a time, he backed away, leaving the knight tied down. "That boy needs to be punished for his insolence," said Cedric, eyeing Galahad indifferently. One eye gleamed for a second, and some of his men moved forward from behind him to take Galahad away from Gawain again. Gawain pleaded with them, as a mother would beg for her child, no longer with anger or ferocity, only with weak desperation. None of them cared. They took his beloved Galahad from those weary and shielding arms, as Gawain chanted, "No," with an unstable voice. He watched again as the young knight was dragged through the dust, again as his head thudded down into the earth when the Saxons let go of his body, again as the circle of enemies formed around his best friend and one of them made to begin the assault.

"Damn it all, where's the fun for me?" bellowed another Saxon jovially, baring a toothy grin as he stepped out of the crowd and into the light. "Gotta get meself a runt too!" His comrades laughed, as he approached the grounded band of knights. Unfortunately, he picked out a frightened boy, shaking and face drained of color. This knight's name was Samhain, and he was no older than twenty winters, transferred to the Round Table after most of his original unit was killed and his commander grew sick of the survivors. For someone who had killed, the boy had always been unusually mild-tempered and quiet, almost innocent, if one studied him carefully. He had a pale face that was now deathly white and wide eyes that watched when he did not speak. The other knights had welcomed him into their world with paternal instincts that deepened more and more as they learned his quiet nature. Lancelot had once remarked how when the boy killed someone, it was with an unfamiliar gentleness, almost apologetic and always regretful. Tristan had replied that Samhain was thus a danger to them, for if the boy could not be inhuman in battle, he would always have the potential to fail to do his job, thereby leaving the other knights in peril and himself besides.

"He's a pretty little boy, isn't he?" croaked one of the Saxons, taking Samhain's face in one hand and squeezing as if the knight were but a child. Samhain, with tears welling up in his eyes, whimpered as the Saxon let go and others tied him down. Without warning, one of his captors straddled his hips, brandished a hunting knife, and plunged it into his belly. The boy threw back his head with a scream, provoking a handful of knights to rise to their feet in revolt, though more Saxons threw them back down. Samhain's attacker only grinned at his pain-distorted face, before moving the blade, cutting anew. None of the knights watched, as the boy was disemboweled, and at last, none of them were left tearless. Samhain screamed for his mother first, but when the agony became too much, he could remember no words and only cries tore through the air above him. Blood was everywhere, all over the Saxon who mutilated him, all over the wood, dripping down through the spaces to the dirt. Samhain's mouth poured out more, even as he screamed, and his skin was a color that none of the knights had ever seen, a new shade of white.

"You bastards!" Gawain roared, face red with fury once again. He didn't know whether to scream at the Saxon killing Samhain or at Galahad's rapists. Bors bellowed like a beast, still bound to the log, consumed with outrage that made him seem inhuman. The rest of the knights and their Roman captain made no sound; they knelt without comfort, weeping silently and clenching their teeth and their fists in helplessness and defeat. "You bastard sons of whores!" Gawain said, but no one listened. Samhain had grown quiet at last, his spirit released. And just as Arthur lifted his head and the last of the boy's screams faded, Saxons seized Lancelot's body and began to carry it toward one of the dark trees. Only the Roman watched as they lifted his best friend up and bound him tightly with rope to the trunk. The Sarmatian's head was bowed to his chest, eyes unmoving and curls crowning his brow. A sullen tear trailed down Arthur's cheek, as the Saxons gathered more wood and piled it under Lancelot's feet. The Roman did not pray this time. This time, he resigned to his suffering alone.

Just as one of the Saxons approached the bale of wood with a lit torch, it occurred to Arthur what they were going to do to his dead best friend. Again, his eyes widened and lips parted in disbelief, but no words came out. The Saxon bent over, the flame met the wood, and it began to consume the bale all too quickly. It was the first fire they had seen in days, the first blaze of warmth and light. It mocked them now, while it inched up toward Lancelot's body. Somewhere in the back of Arthur's mind, he was glad they were doing it this way. He had a feeling it was what Lancelot would have wanted. And yet Arthur could not ignore the pain that it stirred in him anew. He wanted to cleanse Lancelot's body according to ritual, dress it in oils and perfumes and wrap it in a shroud. He wanted to touch those black curls one, last time and bid farewell and give a proper eulogy to the man who he had loved most of all. As he watched, they bereaved him of all of that, and the smoke began to curl up into the foliage. It would fill his lungs soon, if God was still listening, and he might embrace sweet death and Lancelot's shadow. With tear-glittering eyes, Arthur hoped for this as he watched the fire crackle the wood.

"Arthur, come get me!"

That laugh echoed in his mind like pearls bouncing on tile. Arthur shut his eyes.

"Come on, you can run faster than that!"

Laughter, laughter, laughter.

"Run, Lancelot," he whispered. The knight disappeared around a corner, lavender veils trailing in the air behind him. That laughter did not fade, and for some reason, Lancelot was a little boy, running into his arms. "Run," he whispered, lip quivering and tear falling unrealized. He almost looked like he was praying, eyes closed and head bowed. And it was for that reason that he did not see hope turning into hell.

Lancelot opened his eyes.