Out of Time
AvalonReeseFanfics
A/N: HAPPY SIXTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY! That is right, it has now been six years since I posted that first chapter of this story. Granted that first chapter was horrible and I decided to rewrite it but in the end I think it was worth it. But this special bonus chapter isn't just for me. I decided to post this for you guys! My readers are so awesome that I thought you guys deserved this. So this is my thank you. Thank you for six years of reading, for six years of reviews, and favourites and follows. I hope to be done before we hit our 12 year anniversary and I hope you guys continue to follow, favourite, review and most of all that you continue to enjoy this fanfiction.
So thank you to everyone who has ever been involved in this. And I hope you enjoy this next little installment where you guys get to see what exactly happened the days following Addison's appearance in Camelot.
Out of Order: Flashback #1
Arthur, with this new girl in tow, snuck into the city. It felt weird to have to sneak into Camelot, but he did so with a surprising ease. As soon as he could he wrapped Addison up in a cloak to cover her weird clothes. Once in the city Arthur took Addison to the only place he knew where he could get Addison new clothes without anyone questioning him.
He burst into Morgana's and shoved Addison into the space before shutting the door quickly. Arthur turned and found Addison, Morgana and Gwen staring at one another, he had no idea what was going on with Addison under her hood but Morgana and Gwen looked very surprised.
"I know this is a bit unorthodox but I was wondering if I could borrow a dress?" he asked her.
Morgana stared at Arthur in surprise as Addison lowered her hood. She said nothing as Addison took the cloak off and only then did both women turn their surprised eyes to Arthur.
"Why is she dressed like that?" Morgana asked and Arthur paused as he looked for the right words.
"She… she's not from around here," he settled on.
Morgana nodded and Arthur noted that Addison had put on a brilliant smile. He took this time to look over the strange woman again. She definitely was attractive, her smile could be seen as knee weakening but there wasn't much special about her. Other than the fact that she claimed to be from the future and Arthur for some reason just believed her.
"Gwen could you please go and find a suitable dress for uh…."
Addison stuck out her hand as if she were to shake Morgana's hand and filled in the blank for her. "My name's Addison," she said in a polite tone.
Morgana took the offered hand with some hesitation before replying with: "It's nice to meet you, I'm the Lady Morgana and this is Guinevere."
"Huh," Addison said quickly turning to watch as Gwen went to search through Morgana's closets "Guinevere huh? Aren't you supposed to be a princess?"
Gwen shot Arthur a confused look while Arthur pinned Addison with a warning glare. "No, my lady," Gwen replied. "Just a lowly servant. Morgana is the princess."
"Makes sense, she is Arthur's sister after all," Addison said with a wave of her hand.
Morgana was now staring at Arthur. "Not sister, just Uther's ward, more of a friend of the family," she explained.
Addison laughed. "Wow, things really are different here. I wonder how the stories got so confused?"
Morgana looked to Arthur for clarification but Arthur had nothing to say that could smooth that over. Instead Arthur turned to Gwen who had frozen completely and turned to stare at Addison as if she were a complete monster or worse a complete idiot and said: "What about that dress?"
Gwen nodded and Morgana went to assist her to find something suitable for Addison to wear. Arthur reached out and grabbed Addison pulling her closely to him and squeezing her arm so she knew that he meant business. "You need to stop talking about the future, we need you to blend in."
Addison nodded tersely and said: "Right-o. Got it chief."
Arthur rolled his eyes and caught a smirk on Morgana's face. Oh good god this was not going to go well.
The plan was, introduce Addison to Uther as a traveller, a woman who had her caravan looted and her family murdered. He wanted Addison to be a victim that needed to be cared for by the royal family. That was the plan, and it went well to begin with.
Addison cleaned up nicely. So looked quite becoming in the sky blue dress that was seemed to be fitted just for her and with her hair pulled back in a more modest arrangement. She looked like a high borne lady of their realm and time after all. Arthur went over the basics with her, and what he didn't know Morgana taught her, or at least the gist of it. They only have a few hours to make a lady out of her after all and Addison just laughed at it all as it were a game. Arthur didn't have the heart to tell her that if his father saw through their ruse she'd be executed. Why worry the girl right? Arthur's plan was fool-proof.
Uther even seemed to like the raven-haired girl. She seemed warm and kind and perfect and Uther was enjoying telling her about all of the grandites of Camelot when Addison opened her stupid mouth.
"You hate magic? But wasn't magic used to make Arthur?"
Uther had flown into an immediately rage, Arthur was practically carted out of the dining hall while Uther interrogated Addison. Addison must have broken quickly because it took all of five minutes before she was dragged out to the dungeons and Arthur was dragged back in. He made Arthur tell him the whole story, not the one where Arthur came out the hero saving Addison from the bandits that murdered her fictional family but the one with magic and Addison saving him.
"She's from the future?!" Uther thundered and Arthur frowned she must have told him that.
"I couldn't just leave her in the forest could I? She saved my life!" Arthur argued, not even bothering to deny it.
"She used magic!" Uther snarled.
"No! Magic was used on her! She's a victim, father!" Arthur was suddenly desperate to make his father see how wrong this was, to see that Addison was inherently good though he knew nothing about her. Something in him was gripping tightly to his chest making it hard for him to breathe. Addison's life or death situation seemed to be weighing quite heavily on him.
"Get out! I'm not having this ridiculous argument with you!" Uther nearly screamed and then Arthur was roughly shoved out of the room. Arthur stood there a minute, his heart hammering in his chest. He had never been this worried about someone before… and it baffled him.
Addison sat in her cell, cowering in the corner in her borrowed sky blue dress. She was drying the last of her tears that came and went in her worry and fear. Addison jumped at most sounds and was afraid to sit down on the straw for it smelled and felt damp and she was certain she had unseen cellmates that kept rustling the straw but staying out of sight. The guards had leered at her the other cellmates had shouted cat-calls so she felt less than safe even though she was behind bars.
The guard appeared at her door and Addison bolted to her feet, she forced herself to take a step away from the wall because it would never do to fight with her back against the wall, she'd never be able to fully get away from him if the guard decided to make some unwanted advances. He opened her door but didn't come in he stepped to the side and Uther came into view.
Addison's eyes immediately narrowed with distrust and she glared at him as firmly as he glared at her. The guard locked the cell behind Uther and the glaring king offered up a plate and a goblet to her. When Addison didn't take them he put them on the floor.
They stared at one another. "Aren't you hungry? Your meal was interrupted."
"How do I know you didn't poison it?" she snapped and Uther found himself laughing which only made the girl's eyes narrow further. She was smart and she had a quick wit, she was much like his wife.
"I want to know how you knew," he said softly once it became clear that the girl meant to not speak to him but instead to glare daggers into his skin.
She seemed to think that over before asking: "And what do I get in return?"
"A stay in your sentence if you answer correctly," he whispered with much malice in his voice. He had every intention of lying to her and executing her despite what he was saying but something in him was softening, maybe it was because she reminded him so much of the wife he loved so dearly.
"Alright, we have legends in my time. The story was: you wanted this guy's wife, so you went to war with him and while you were fighting you killed him. You had your sorcerer make you look like him so you went and slept with his wife got her pregnant with Arthur and then you took her and the two girls she had from the previous marriage with you back to Camelot. Arthur then grew to be a wise king that led Camelot into a time of peace with the help of magic and other cool things and people still write songs and movies and books about to this day."
It was a long speech filled with many inaccuracies. Not fully correct but some of it partially true. Uther took all this in, it sounded a lot like she was telling the truth, that that was all she knew. It was certainly a strange predicament he found himself in and now he wasn't certain what he'd do.
"Can I come out now?" she asked him, for the first time since he had appeared he saw a little crack in that brave front she was put up. Tears had sprung to her eyes and her lips was trembling slightly.
"No," he snapped and then left her there.
"You fucking WANKER!" trailed after him and a slew of other words he didn't recognize that must have been curse words but Uther didn't return.
After a while Addison sat herself down on the hard cobblestones and wept. She should have kept her mouth shut, but she never had been good at that. A head poked out of the straw, a small little mouse with big ears and a pair of large eyes. She reached over and pulled a bit of her bread off and offered it to it. The mouse took it, obviously not afraid of her and then scampered away. Addison was too nauseous to eat, at least the food would go to someone.
In the dead of night, with Uther tossing and turning in the midst of a terrible nightmare, Arthur snuck out of his room with his armour donned and his bags packed. He had made a stop at the armoury for his sword, another in the treasure room for a bag of gold and lastly at the kitchens for the food he'd need for the road. Once ready he made his way to the dungeons. Using the gold to pay off the guard to pretend that he had no idea that Arthur had been there.
He found Addison curled up in a ball, shivering but fast asleep.
Opening the door to Addison's cell did not wake her. Dropping his bags to the floor did not wake her. Shaking her roughly woke her and she rewarded him by screaming and kicking the legs out from under him. Arthur went down with a crash that echoed and cry that he tried to stifle but couldn't. Addison stared at him with accusingly bleary eyes.
"What the hell were you thinking you twat?" she snapped at him. "Waking up a girl like that when she's in a strange place…"
"I've come… to get you… out…" Arthur wheezed, his armour having knocked the wind out of him in the fall. Addison was now kneeling beside him, she helped him sit up so he could breathe better but Arthur found that the sight of her bathed in moonlight to be a breathtaking sight and he lost his breath once again.
There were crystalline tears in her stunningly blue eyes, shining like the stars in the sky if Arthur could see them through her small barred window, which he could not. She was close enough to kiss if he wanted to but why would he go about kissing the girl from the future. Arthur forced himself to his feet and then pulled her up as well.
"Come now," he whispered. "I'm going to get you out of here."
She let him tug her up. She let him drag her out of the dungeons and through the hallways. She made no noise, offered no words, said nothing and argued not a single disagreement as they made their way to the stables. Nothing at all. Instinctively Arthur must have known that this was strange for the girl even though he didn't know her that well. But he allowed it if it got her on the horse. Which of course it did. He had been certain to have the horses ready to go, paid for by one gold coin to a stable boy earlier that night, the simple order was to have his two best horses ready for him that night without question. With that done, he and Addison both on their horses, the two of them left the city under the cover of night.
They got three feet from the gate, only ten more feet away from the tree line that would make them safely on the road to Addison's safety, when she stopped her horse. Arthur stopped his and turned back to face her.
"What are you doing?" he hissed. "If we don't leave now they'll catch us and that's your head on the chopping block come dawn!"
Those damn tears were in her eyes again and Arthur found himself groaning in frustration. "We shouldn't do this. You can't leave Camelot! You're Prince Arthur for godsake! How will there ever be a round table or your Knights of Legend if you leave?"
"What in heaven's name are you prattling on about?" Arthur snapped. "Look! I promised I'd keep you safe until I got you home didn't I? So that is what I'm going to do!"
"I've been thinking about that too," she said quickly. Already Arthur was manoeuvring his horse closer to her so he could grab the reins and lead her out, but Addison was keeping her horse away from him. If Arthur had to guess she had either ridden before or had suddenly and miraculously became a master rider in a few minutes, quite surprising seeing as back in the stables she hadn't known how to mount.
"The last thing I remember before coming here was a car coming at me! I think I might have died in the future. So maybe I'm in a coma or something and this is all a dream and if I die here I wake up back in my own time," she said.
Arthur's eyes narrowed. What a load of codswollop that was. "Or you'll be dead and I for one am not taking that chance with your life."
There came a sudden and awful clanging and in moments he and Addison were surrounded. The horses crowded together and Arthur drew his sword. He saw his father just outside the ring of the soldiers that had gathered around him with pikes and other such weapons.
"I won't let you kill her!" he called out to him. "I'll die fighting to do what's right!"
"Oh for god's sake boy, stop being so melodramatic," Uther sighed and then Arthur was pulled down from his horse with such force that it practically knocked him unconscious. And by practically I mean it did.
Addison stood in front of Uther's throne as the man, who was probably dressed as if he came straight from his bed paced in front of her.
"I'd like to say that you bewitched Arthur into acting out against my wishes but I for some reason doubt you did," Uther said. "I'd hate to admit it but if you didn't stop the horse to argue with him the two of you would have gotten away and my men wouldn't have been able to catch up or find you."
Addison bowed her head. Yes that had been stupid of her. "There is no Camelot without Arthur. He needed to stay," she whispered to him. "It's only right."
"Yes, because of your legends," Uther agreed. "An odd thing for you to care about."
"My country boasts greatness that descends from your very line. Britain was great because of it's wonderful King Arthur paving the way. Those tales give hope to millions, it sparks an imagination in the whole world. I wouldn't want to return to a world where those stories and legends were taken away from us," she replied. "I would hate to be the reason those stories were gone, even if it did spare me."
Uther stopped pacing. "I have it on good word that you a remarkably unremarkable child," he said suddenly. Addison found herself blinking, not certain what the hell he was talking about. "Do you swear that you hold no magic."
Addison found herself laughing. "If I have magic then my letter from Hogwarts got lost in the post!" she cried. Uther stared at her, not in a quizzical manner but in the manner of bland disinterest. "It's a school for witchcraft... completely fictional. A kid's story, had 7 books and eight films. Only because the producing companies wanted to gouge more money out of us so everything's put out in installments, part one and two... oh you don't care do you."
"What on earth are you talking about?" Uther snapped.
Addison waved her hands at him. "My world stuff. Sorry. No. I don't have magic. Not going to lie I have always wished I had magic. The ability to snap my fingers and have my homework done was a frequent prayer in primary school. Or the ability to fly. Or hold my breath for very long periods of time... I did really want to be a mermaid when I was younger..."
"Stop it," Uther ordered and Addison faltered.
"Yes, right. Sorry. I do have a habit of running my mouth. I'm sorry. I'd like to say that I won't have an attitude and I'll be a proper lady but the truth is I'm a right little madam most of the times. Can't seem to stop myself. The off button in my brain doesn't quite work... like right now. Your eyes are clearly telling me to shut up but I can't seem to find it in me to do it," Addison carried on.
Uther put a hand up and Addison fell silent as she eyed him as if he were about to strike her. "You may stay, but you will be staying in the dungeons until I see fit that you be moved out. If you give me any cause to believe you carry any magical ability I will not hesitate to have you killed, do you understand."
Addison nodded and Uther nodded back. "Good, you may go."
The guards moved to grab Addison and take her out but she had other ideas. "Just one question... who exactly vouched for me?"
Uther turned her. "What?" he snapped. He was honestly too tired for this and this girl just would not shut up.
"It's just that you said that you have it on good word that I'm nothing special. But who exactly told you that? I don't know anyone here other then Arthur and it doesn't look like you were too keen on believing him before," Addison asked.
Uther waved his hand and the guards took her out even though she protested that she had a right to know so she could thank the person. But Uther could hardly say that his dead wife came to him in a dream and told him if he didn't let that poor girl go she'd haunt his dreams till the end of time, now could he?
Arthur had been given a warning. Step out of line and he was disinherited, but he knew his father would never. Which was why, against his father's orders he was making his way down to the dungeons with the largest warmest blanket he could find. Addison was now his. Arthur's ward. He liked that, the idea that this girl was now his. Even though the thought of being responsible for her, when she was very strong willed and argumentative, made him a bit nervous.
He had almost done it though. Ran off with her. He hadn't really thought what he would do other then move them both far out of the reach of his father. Maybe situate himself in the court of another earl, pretend to be someone else, a lowly knight maybe. Maybe he would have made himself a lord of a little village, it couldn't have been that hard. In his head it had sounded absolutely lovely, a good way to live his life until his father died and he came back to Camelot reclaim the throne. Maybe by then he'd have a wife, a beautiful raven-haired, sapphire eyed wife that came from the future and would argue with his every decision and tempt him in more ways than he could imagine and maybe a few blonde haired or raven haired children to keep his line going.
It was preposterous how quickly that had spiralled out of control. It wouldn't have worked between he and her, the prince and the girl from the future, too ill matched. It was strange that in that moment he would decide to just leave with her, not necessarily to elope, but just to save her. He had never had a desire so strong to abandon his duties before and it shocked him but also please him.
Since his father's staying of her execution a warmth had spread through Arthur's chest, it tingled in his heart when his title went on her name. Arthur's ward. His now. For some reason that just made everything so much better, made him happier then he was before.
This left him with a strangely wide smile on his face as he made it to her cell. He was oddly cheerful to see her standing there in her cell awaiting him. Still in that sky blue dress that Morgana had leant her, he would really have to see about getting her something else to wear. Still she looked lovely standing there in front of him with a smile on her face.
The guard unlocked her door and moved away leaving Arthur with her. He took one step in and handed her the blanket which she took graciously. Arthur could already see that a cot had been placed against the far wall for her. He wasn't certain who brought that in for her but he would no doubt find out.
"It's all sorted then," she said as she went to drape the furry blanket over her new bed. "You're still in Camelot and I've been saved from the chopping block. All's well after all."
Arthur clasped his hands behind his back to stop the sudden twitch in his fingers that wanted him to reach out and stroke her hair, or to hold her briefly to soothe whatever fears she had left. He fought back the urge to tell her that they could have been safe in some remote village where no one knew either of them so she wouldn't be behind bars at this moment. But he didn't want to bring that up now of all times.
"That doesn't matter now," he said to her. "Tell me now, what exactly is a car?"
As Addison hunkered down to tell him all about combustion engines and road ways and other such armoured contraptions Arthur found himself not really listening but just watching the way she talked. In an animated way that involved her hands moving back and forth with a large smile on her face. Arthur realized quite quickly that things were going to be interesting from then on in.