"Does it fit right?" asked Sakura, welcoming Lancelot home. Despite supposedly having trained with Taiga at their dojo for a few hours, the knight didn't even look like he'd broken a sweat. The man quietly slipped off his shoes and leaned the wooden practice sword on the wall to his right. He'd heard from the young, adopted Matou that Master Taiga was extremely talented at kendo and archery, and that her skills hadn't dulled despite her juggling being a mother, an English teacher and dojo owner.
"Like a glove. Perhaps another day of training with Master Taiga and I'll be confident enough in the art to teach," he reported, thanking Sakura for the two uniforms she provided him with.
Upon learning of his king's new job, he had been searching for some form of work to sustain himself and at least contribute to the expenses that the Matou household incurred on his behalf. Taiga would pay well, especially since having a second Master at the dojo meant she could spend a little more time with her little boy, Alexei.
"I got the paints you requested. They're in your room, next to your easel," the woman said, and made for the kitchen to prepare dinner. She was looking forward to making a feast today, since Iskandar was coming over. If she was lucky, he'd have a couple of Hassans in tow. They were always lovely.
Like the Matou had said, he found a small paper bag with the tubes of acrylic he wanted. He lay them out before him on his mattress, an entire spectrum of green from deep forest to mint plus a few blues. Perhaps to any other artist, these twenty or so shades would seem wasteful, but even with all these he felt his supplies to be lacking.
He looked down on the old leather-strapped watch the mansion owner gifted him and concluded he had enough time to work on the canvas before the woman would call him down for dinner. His battle-hardened fingers snatched up his palette and prepared a dozen swatches of his new paint. As he sat down in front of his unfinished piece, he hoped to the heavens he had all the shades he needed.
It was terribly difficult to paint her eyes, when looking into them was like staring into whole universes, galaxies upon galaxies stretching out into infinity, simultaneously bursting forth into existence. When she met his eyes, he was ever breathless, a proud knight rendered completely without defense, vulnerable before her .
Lancelot wondered if there ever was a time he didn't feel this way, a time when he was free from her captivating spell. If there was, he couldn't remember- no.
The brush stopped, barely a millimeter between it and the canvas. The man jerked as he cast the brush and palette to the side. He held his head in his hands, willing the voices in his head to shut themselves away. If only his heart would obey his mind and cease all thoughts of yellow hair and emerald eyes. Then, perhaps the pain would cease. Perhaps his soul could rest.
But no. Every night, his heart insisted on dreams of kisses under the moonlight, of a thousand 'what-ifs' of that time in the Matou courtyard. What if he pulled her close by the waist? What if he caressed her face? What if he dipped down the way he yearned to do and captured her soft lips? What if he asked her to stay?
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
Lancelot turned around to see Medusa, leaning on the doorway in a simple purple yukata. She held a braille paperback in her hands, her index finger bookmarking where she must have left off. He wondered how she seemed to be looking directly at him when her eyes were still sealed behind that thick, enchanted blindfold.
"Act 1, Scene 1. A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare," she clarified, sensing the moment of confusion in the Round Table Knight's silence. She heard him let out a frustrated huff.
"I cannot be sure of your intentions in telling me that, woman," Lancelot replied, his eyes going right back to his unfinished painting.
Medusa smiled serenely. She knew she had made the knight uncomfortable by saying such, but she couldn't help but think it was appropriate. Iskandar and his love for Shakespeare's plays had her binge-reading since he'd brought his copies over.
"I took the chance to look when you weren't here. That's a lovely portrait of the King of Knights, Sir Lancelot," the woman said. "You've captured her likeness perfectly."
It wasn't even flattery. He'd gotten everything right, from the hay color of her hair to the fair shade of her skin and the subtle pink of her lip. In his painting, Arturia was standing waist-deep in a lake, clad in a flowy white dress that hung off her shoulders. She had her back to the viewer, but had turned her head to the side so one could see her profile, and those large, beautiful eyes staring right into the soul.
"Is it commonplace for you Greek to intrude? Just yesterday it was your lover standing where you are," he spat, crossing the room to close the door in the woman's face.
"You can lecture Iskandar yourself. Dinner's ready," she stated, leaving for the dining room as his footsteps drew near. She'd had her fun, and the knight's reaction was sure to amuse the King of Conquerors when she relayed it to him later that night. Well...if he allowed her a word before pushing her onto the covers that is.
Lancelot sighed, turned, and pulled on some new clothes for dinner. He'd best not keep the others waiting. Before he left, he gave the unfinished painting one last glance, wondering if he'd ever be able to fill in the white space where Arturia's irises were supposed to be.
It had been an accident, when Lancelot stumbled upon them, tangled up with each other on the sand. The man was on top of her, pinning her to the beach as he claimed victory, and she, flushed from chest to neck, tilted her head in surrender.
Lancelot had been kicked out of the dojo as soon as Taiga had seen him. She told him off for looking too serious and ordered him to take a relaxing walk along the beach till he'd calmed himself. It was dawn, and Fuyuki had just begun to wake. Streets were still empty, with only the occasional elder going out for an early morning stroll. His feet eventually took him to a cliff by the shore, right on the edge where the residential area met the seaside.
A metallic clang brought his attention down to the sandy seaboard, where a familiar blonde had just disarmed her foe for a second time.
Arturia .
He felt his throat go dry as his eyes took in the black criss-cross sports bra and the form-fitting leggings she was wearing. They hid nothing. Even from this distance, he could see the soft curve of her hips, the subtle highs and lows of her modest bust over a toned stomach. Beads of sweat collected on her brow, and as she swept them away with the back of her hand, Lancelot felt himself gulp. Perhaps he shouldn't be watching at all.
Just as Lancelot began to turn away, he heard a metallic chink as Excalibur sank into the beach, flung away by Arturia's raven-haired opponent. In the blink of an eye, the man was upon her, tackling her to the ground with inhuman speed, but she was not so easily beat. Delivering a kick to the man's abdomen, she flipped him off of her till it was he with his back to the sand and her sitting on his chest.
Smug laughter rang in the air as the man shoved Arturia and caged her to the sand, ensuring his win by pinning each of her limbs with his own. She struggled and pushed, but the king was decisively trapped, for the man was so much heavier than she.
"It's my victory, Arturia," the man said between breaths, smirking proudly as the little king squirmed beneath him, her hair spread out like a halo beneath her.
She was similarly panting, red in the face as she finally surrendered. There was no freeing her wrists from the grip of a spearman, especially not a dual-wielder.
"Alright, alright," she repeated, when the man tightened his hold on her as she moved. "You win, Diarmuid."
Diarmuid tilted forward, then hung his head as he relaxed, accidentally knocking his forehead onto hers. That resulted in another fit of laughter, this time joined in by a red-eyed man with blue-black hair who had been observing from the shade.
Before Arturia could untangle herself from the Irishman, he scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, racing forth toward the water with the other man close behind. All the protests in the world couldn't stop Diarmuid from throwing her into the waves or stop Cú from splashing her in the face. Before long, she'd successfully wrestled the latter into the sea, forever losing the hair tie that had been keeping his rat's tail at bay.
Up on the cliff, Lancelot turned away from the sight, gritting his teeth as he stalked back towards the Matou mansion. He couldn't possibly be calm enough to return to the dojo anymore, not after what he'd just seen.
After all that troublesome bastard who dared call himself a knight had gone through with his Master, he had the gall to stand on the same ground as her. Oh, he knew who Diarmuid O'Dyna was. That man was a traitor, a perpetrator of treason in the exact same situation he had been in with Guinevere. He'd heard too many unwitting remarks from clueless passers-by between mugs of ale when he fled with the queen. Lancelot and Guinevere, Diarmuid and Grainne, the same bloody story over and over and over again.
Even after he'd left Guinevere at the convent, even after they promised to live their lives trying to repent, he'd hear it.
Well, at least Lancelot got away with his life.
Ha! He should have been left to die like that Diarmuid fellow. Poor King Arthur.
His grip tightened, his jaw clenched. That tempter had no place beside his king. It was disgusting to think he was touching her so, so bloody carelessly. The gall of that man, to place his sinful hands upon her pure figure, the impudence he had to hug her body to his. Did Arturia even know she danced with the devil, masked in the image of that droopy-eyed scoundrel? She deserved better company.
Meanwhile, Diarmuid looked up to the cliffs from the water, wondering if he'd just imagined the tall shadow that had been spying on them.
"Is something wrong, Diarmuid?" Arturia asked. She was a vision as she wrung her blonde hair in her hands, water droplets flowing from her flushed face to her slender neck, down to wet black fabric that clung to her curves even more closely than before.
The feeling was quickly forgotten, replaced by a blush and the sudden feeling of water in his face as Cú kicked him into the sea for being too damn obvious.
The door nearly fell off its hinges as Lancelot slammed it shut behind him, the memory of his king lying beneath that Irish cur vividly fresh in his mind. Arturia must have thought it an accident when Diarmuid's forehead bumped into hers, but he could see it clear as day, the way the miscreant's eyes fluttered to her lips, the slight tilt of his head.
He should have jumped in, should have pulled the bastard away, but by luck or the fact they had a witness, the man retreated at the last second. If Diarmuid had pushed through, Lancelot might have lost it, especially considering the Irishman's tainted history-
"Hello, Sir Lancelot."
The swordsman whipped around, Arondight in hand, only for his strike to be met with a familiar blade held by a single hand. His grip instantly loosened when he recognized its owner, his arm falling to his side. For a moment he stood completely at a loss for words, mouth hanging open at the sight of one who was once a friend.
"Bedivere?"
The blonde nodded, and no longer sensing killing intent, let his sword dissipate into the air. Lancelot did the same, still trying to reconcile the fact that Arturia's most loyal knight was here, alive, and in his room of all places. Was he a Servant as well? From everything that Kiritsugu said, Lance was under the impression the participants of the latest Grail War were supposed to be the only ones reincarnated.
"It's me, Lance," Bedivere confirmed as he sat down on an old chair. "I'm here to talk."
Silently, the Frenchman sank into the seat across his old comrade, his expression telling the one-armed one that he was still being cautious.
"I knew her burial crown was from you. I also know you shot the flaming arrow meant to send her off," Bedivere enunciated, drawing circles on the wooden table that stood between them. He promised himself he'd forgive Lancelot like Arturia did, but after it all, it seemed he still couldn't look the adulterer in the eye.
He could see a slight nod in his peripheral vision, which settled the issue.
"So why did you do it?"
Bedivere had asked himself that question over and over, day after day, til he finally kicked the bucket and died. The whodunit was easy, in fact, perhaps he always knew that it was Lancelot. The whydunit however, was something he hadn't yet understood. Why did Lancelot bother risking his life to sneak into Camelot to bid her goodbye, when god knows he would never be welcome? Surely seeing off a dead king mattered much less than the happily ever after he stole by taking away Arthur's wife.
It didn't make any sense. The betrayal, and his actions afterward...it didn't line up. Lancelot got away with almost everything right. He left with his life and Queen Guinevere's. He was a skilled knight that could have served the court of any other king. They were sure to take him up with no hesitation. There was nothing stopping the man from starting anew elsewhere.
"Is it that hard to believe I wanted to see her off? I was once her first knight," Lancelot reasoned, his head turning away in shame. He knew what happened with Guinevere was wrong, he'd lived knowing his sin till the day he died. He'd gone mad once he'd crossed the border to France, no longer able to withstand the destruction his affair caused, and unable to bear with Arturia's death.
Bedivere wasn't satisfied with his answer. He sighed, and got up to leave, thinking perhaps the visit was a mistake when something caught his eye at the corner of the bedroom. He gasped when he came near the painting to investigate.
It was Arturia, undoubtedly. She was ethereal, painted basking beneath the light of a full moon. Water rippled around her waist, the liquid disturbed by the simple folds of a silk white dress. Her golden hair cascaded down between her delicate shoulder blades. Though her eyes had yet to be painted in, the lines of her face were scarily accurate. Lancelot had even gotten every single tiny freckle right, even the one above her pink lips.
The realization forced Bedivere into a screeching halt, and he stumbled backward, grasping the air for some stability, but there was none. At last, things were finally falling into place in the worst possible way that they could have. Lancelot's actions around their king finally made sense, all the longing looks, stolen glances, the slight way he bit his lip when the monarchs were around. God, how could he have missed it?
This was why Lancelot was there, why he fought through a country that hated him just for one last look, one last farewell. This was why he came back, why he didn't just stay away. This was why he so desperately tried to fight through Gawain to aid her at the Battle of Camlann after everything he did.
"You loved her, didn't you?"
His voice cracked with every syllable as he struggled under the weight of this fact. Bedivere felt like his stomach upended itself, and he was forced to his knees as the room began to spin. He was barely aware of the chair clattering to the floor when Lancelot stood up, but he didn't care. He couldn't care about anything else.
"You...You took Guinevere away because...you knew Arturia didn't really want to kill her, didn't you?!" he screamed, whipping around and getting up on his feet.
The accused stood still, shame-faced with obvious anguish in his dark orbs. He refused to meet Bedivere's eyes, and turned away to curl in on himself. But that was all that Bedivere needed.
" Bloody hell, Lance! "
Bedivere held his head in his hand and dragged his palm down his face. This couldn't be happening. Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell. This...this was too much. He honestly wanted to laugh, wanted to cry, wanted to throw himself into oblivion after finding out. To think so much of what he had known and accepted as fact was in fact the furthest thing from the truth was maddening. Love. It just had to be love. Why couldn't he just have been an adulterer? Perhaps then they could put all this behind them
Every inch of him wanted to question Lancelot further. Had he known their king was a woman? How long had he known? When did he start loving her?
Does he still love her?
"Does she know?" he asked, his sanity slowly anchoring him back to Earth.
Lancelot shook his head. "Bedivere, she must not know of this. I ask this of you for the sake of the friendship we once had," he begged, on his knees before Arturia's one most loyal knight. Bedivere, who had never once wavered. Bedivere, who'd taken Excalibur back to the lake. Bedivere, who had been by her side, who'd watched over her til the barge that carried her sank to the depths of the sea.
"Please, Bedivere."