AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
Disclaimer: None of this is mine, except the general theme. Everything else belongs to Touchstone, Disney, Bruckheimer, Fuqua, and history.
SUMMARY: Lancelot learns there is a time and place for everything. Implied Lance/Gwen.
RATING: PG
PAIRING: Lance/Gwen
NOTES:
This was written for the "Firsts" challenge at the LJ Community Knights500. The challenge was to write a story in 500 words or less about a first in any of the characters' lives. Here is my response. Please enjoy!
PS: I'm terrible at writing short stories, so be forewarned. LOL!
There is a time and place for all things. The time to fall in love is a spring day. The place is a meadow, surrounded by wildflowers and stroked by gentle breezes. There ought to be billowing clouds above you, and the grass should be lush and verdant and soft.
The first time Lancelot fell in love it was winter. A grim snow was falling from a leaden sky, and drums were beating a death march beyond a distant rise. The horses were huffing swaths of steam in the chilly air, and Arthur was being a hero again. He was always a hero at the worst possible times, but that was what made him a hero, and Lancelot merely a knight.
Lancelot had been with many girls in his life, but he had never loved them. He had told them they were fair; he had told them they were sweet. He had eaten off their bellies and licked wine from their lips; but he had never loved them. Love was something for the Arthurs of the world: righteous and sacrificing. Lancelot was neither. He fought for the promise of freedom. Love was merely a cage.
The first woman Lancelot ever loved had raven hair and cracked lips. Her eyes were hollow and red-rimmed, and her fingers were out of joint. She was dressed in filthy rags, with serpentine tattoos around her ankles. She was nearly dead, and she was a woad, and he loved her.
Her eyes had done him in. Those eyes knew suffering. She had screamed out her anger and her horror at Roman hands, and she had endured. In this, she was Lancelot's superior: he had toiled under Roman chains for so long, he'd forgotten how to scream.
The woman knew freedom. The woman UNDERSTOOD. And he saw in her eyes that she knew he knew.
The last woman Lancelot ever loved had raven hair and a battle cry; but it was not enough to save her. He saw her struggle, begin to fall, and knew his fate was upon him. It was the worst possible time, the worst possible conditions…
There is a time and place for everything. The time to die is winter. The place is a battlefield, sodden with blood, the taste of copper coating your lips. These are the times that seal men in history. So perhaps the things he considered worst could never have been better.
Lancelot watched the battle rage around him as his life soaked into the soil. He was not quite dead when Guinevere came to him. He saw the tears in her shadowed eyes. Had he life enough to speak, he would have told her not to cry. Love, he now knew, was not a cage, but a doorway. It opened paths to greatness. For the first time in his life, he was a hero. The arrow buried in his chest was naught but an exclamation.
THE END