Just something that's been going around in my head for the past few weeks. Lancelot's last thoughts - I've always been intrigued by him. Please review!
Breathing was impossibly painful. Every movement of my lungs plucked at the crossbow bolt, sending waves of pain around my body. The scent of blood and earth was thick in my nose and I could feel grass against my cheek.
I don't know how long I had been lying there; time suddenly seemed irrelevant and of no consequence. It might have been a moment; it might have been a lifetime.
My mind drifted strangely as I waited, touching on memories and thoughts here and there. My best memories were of the years I had spent back home, and all the times with the other men when we had had fun and joked, talking and laughing, forgetting for a while where we were and why.
Home. The place that had been my only real hope; when I was in one of my black rages, when I swore and lashed out, when I wondered why I continued on living, I always thought of home and of her.
Mother.
I thought back to that day, fifteen years ago, when I had left my home. It had been bleak and cold, fitting weather for such an occasion. Mother, tears streaking her face as she clung to my father. Words I had spoken to allay her fears, to try and make my leaving less painful to her. Words since then forgotten. Strange that they should come back now.
I will return.
So I had said, and I had meant it. Yet things had been so less simple earlier in the day when I had made my choice. Now I would never go back. Mother would wait for me in vain.
She would never know, really. I sighed out my last breath. She would never know that I, her eldest son, lay dying at Badon Hill. Remembering my promise to her and regretting it.
