Entire countries saw the footage in slow-motion as it played, rewound, played again. The gun fired and the effect was instantaneous, the people in the front rows barrelled forward to see the dead man for themselves, no longer lions but buzzards circling a carcass. Security, having been forewarned, blocked them only from crawling onto the stage, but never from watching. In plain view their nation's blood seeped through the cracks between the wood planks of the stage, his body unmoving, his eyes closed tightly.
On a sudden gust of wind, dark clouds blew in, blocking a barrage of sunlight on the macabre scene. Down swooped a tiny flutter of wings and feathers, a small robin female - landed on his uniform. Looking down at the still body and the growing puddle of blood it seemed to contemplate it, as if it really could. Around the world reporters in a dozen languages struggled to explain the bird and all the reasons it could possibly be there. None of them found a conclusion to make.
Inside Arthur's head he saw nothing. But that was the great thing about headwounds: as long as they were powerful, they didn't hurt, and you saw nothing, you heard nothing, real consciousness eluded him. In the agony and delirium of bleeding to death, the hallucinations were the real torture. He saw his mother when he lay dying at Hastings, again and again - as he lay next to his dead king with the arrow in his eye he sobbed quietly for a woman who'd been dead for six centuries. But now, it was almost like sleeping.
Somewhere in the distant expanse of his mind there was a bright light, shining, calling his name. He saw a face not covered with powder or lipstick but with woad and mud smiling at him, reaching for him. This part would always be the same, he thought to himself later. As he reached for her in turn, his hand went through her and grasped nothing instead. His bond to the world of the living held him fast to where he really was, dead on a stage in London, with the whole world watching, and the sweet early morning garden sound of a robin calling to him, calling again when he does not respond.
The healing comes in the reverse direction of damage, and so hearing is the first to come to him. The tweeting draws nearer, like shrill laughter, teasing and playful. He feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and the laughter ceases. The bird, seeming satisfied, welcomes him to the world and takes off, catching some far off invisible wind to nowhere. Arthur grounds himself, digging his fingernails deep into the wood on one side of him, then the other - and as he sits up the whole world sees and hears him. Most of them stare. Others shout in anger, still believing themselves to be the victims of deceit. In the palace the queen watches with a soft smile and a firm nod.
"They keep saying I 'rose from the dead like the messiah'," Arthur said with a sigh, shaking his newspaper as if it were the fool that had first printed that text. "Always the same. Always American newspapers. What makes your people want to compare everyone to Christ?"
"Don't get mad at me, I didn't wrote it," Alfred snapped back, gulping his coffee violently - though it really just tasted like raw sewage with milk. Good coffee was impossible to find outside his home, with France and Italy coming close behind that. "You're not any kind of messiah anyway. You see, he helped people."
A small girl shuffled up to their table, looking up at them both with wide eyes and a doubtful smile - she clutched a small paper and a pen to her chest.
"Which of us do you want to sign it sweetheart?" Alfred asked gently, trying not to sigh.
To his surprise (and disappointment), she handed the paper to Arthur, murmuring, "Would you sign it with your birthname, please?"
"I don't really have a birth name at all, but alright," He laughed and did so, doodling a small St. Edward's cross beside his name (thank heavens it was a red pen) and as he finished she squeaked a thank you and took off.
"Hey, what's my birth name?" Alfred asked, biting his doughnut with a bit of disgust. English doughnuts were no good either.
"You don't have a birth mother, so you don't have a birth name."
"But what was I called originally?" Arthur gave him a look. "So I can sign autographs that way, of course," He finished with a laugh.
"I think you were probably called 'dirt' if my assumptions are correct. Either that or fairy dust." Alfred could not respond to that in time, because Arthur sipped the last of his tea and stood to slip into his jacket. "I'd love to chat more Mister Dirt, but I'm afraid I've got a date." Alfred couldn't think of an appropriate insult to throw at that either before he was out the door and on his way.
"Good morning everyone," Arthur murmured under his breath as he stepped inside grand wooden doors. Westminster Abbey never seemed to change, he thought to himself. Though the cars outside used to be carriages, inside were the same echoing sounds and the same stained glass that always was. Darwin, Newton, his beautiful Elizabeth, so many others before and after her, all of them rested here. Monuments to countless others stared down at him, blessing him with holy light as he shuffled past the tourists and stepped past the boundary marker. His current queen gave him a silent wave as she saw him arrive, nodding once to let the architect speaking with her know she was done listening. He disappeared at once, leaving only the two of them.
"Do you ever get tired of seeing it?" She asked, looking up.
"No," He answered, breathlessly. King Edward's chair loomed in the light cast by the windows, elegant and refined, having had so many kings and queens sit in it he was sure it must have fancied itself a royal as well. "Was it grand? Being coronated?"
"You were there," She said quietly. "It was as grand as any, I suppose."
"I was there," He agreed, putting his hand atop the back of the chair and feeling the wear on the wood. "But I've never been here." Arthur ran the pads of his fingers over the grain, feeling it creak and ache - it was over 700 years old, older than some of his children. He felt a beautiful kinship with it. "What was it like?"
"What is it like to live forever?" She asked with a shrug. "It's more or less the same sort of question. And the same sort of answer, no doubt."
"Two thousand years is hardly forever," He said with a huff. She gave him a look and he corrected himself politely "It's lonely," Arthur said softly. "Very lonely. There's hardly anyone else who understands it."
She smiled an understanding smile and nodded. There was a long silence, of distant speech and the sun shining in and all the people he'd known and helped to make (and some he'd helped to tear down) all gathering around them. "Do you want to sit in the big chair then?"
He watched her closely, carefully from that moment, checking for any signs of insincerity. There were none. "I've sat in it plenty."
"That wasn't what I meant," She glanced down at it, back up at him. Another smile, coaxing.
"... Oh for God's sake, your majesty."