this is how they start.

they're seventeen and the world stretches out before them.

arthur, their blue-eyed golden boy with sun-darkened skin and hair like wheat. morgan, his half-sister, the other half of his soul, morgan who looks nothing like him but thinks his words before he speaks them, who twines pale fingers through her long dark hair and watches everyone like she knows something they don't. lance, dark-eyed and slender and quick, a shadow at morgan's shoulder until he breathes a kiss at her throat and she surrenders. and then there's gwen. gwen the perfect, gwen the fair, gwen the most precious, gwen who they're all half in love with whether they want to admit it or not. arthur may be the only one with the luxury of touching her, of cupping her tiny waist in his big hands and feeling the touch of her mouth against his, but that doesn't mean the other two don't keep themselves as close to her as possible. it's accepted amongst the four of them that like should pair with like. arthur and gwen, both flawless and fair, and lance and morgan, dark and cool. they're like fire and water, but the chances that any of them could survive without the other three are slim.

this is how they end.

the fair queen and the dark knight succumb, and fall into each other with whispered screams of their future fates. betrayed, the golden boy and the moon-pale witch drink until they can't see, you've always understood me the best, I would never hurt you like she did, love you, love you, love you, and when he wakes in the morning, he must cope with the shame and horror alone, because she's fled across the sea to bear his blue-eyed child somewhere where the names arthur and lancelot and guinevere mean absolutely nothing to anyone but her. and long after gwen walks out, when lance and arthur finally come back together, all lean hungry looks and mismatched eyes, they raise their glasses to each other and drink while their women wander far from home.