Title: Dawn

Rating: PG-13

Author: FlowerGirlEM

Beta: Anna, who was incredibly nice about this.

Summary: Sometimes it takes a little darkness for you to really see the light. Arthur and Lancelot communicate a lot while saying very little. A/L slash (mention of G/G).

Disclaimer: They're not mine. Nor is the field they're looking at.

It will be easier for them to be together. Not easy, this never could be, but easier. And besides, this isn't wholly unacceptable. The strange ways of the Knights are accepted, unspoken of, either in condemnation or approval. It is simply the way things are, and the people of the Wall grew used to us long ago, to the comments about women and the looks between men. It will not, I feel, be so very different when we are gone from here, back to our homes.

No, Galahad and Gawain will continue to be, much as they are now, speaking for each other, protecting each other, holding one to the other with something enduring for all that it defies definition.

It will be easier for them than it would be for us. So much holds us apart, and I suspect most days that we could never have whatever it is that holds them together.

Too much difference, for all that we've been through in fifteen years. I list the differences to myself, at night in the dark when I can't sleep, a monotonous retelling, like counting sheep.

He is Roman, I am Sarmatian.

He is a Commander, I am an indentured Knight.

He is a Christian, I am … a pagan, according to his bishops.

He has his whole life planned out, lying before him like a straight road. Mine is as clear as the tangled path through a thousand year old forest.

He is Artorius Castus, beloved Roman commander of his Knights, and the inhabitants of the Wall. I am no-one, to anyone, just Lancelot who strides about the Wall and makes jokes about women he has never slept with and never will.

Well, not no-one to everyone.

Not no-one to him.

Which is why I'm standing here, high on the Wall in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, hoping he'll come, certain he will. We have not been best friends for fifteen years without coming to know each other's minds as well as we know our own. Have not watched knights die in battle while we fought to protect each other without coming to understand a little about each other's ways.

And he proves me right, striding up the stone steps and along the battlements, never silent enough for me not to hear him, even in the soft boots he wears around the Wall.

'Lancelot.' He stops near me and leans his hands on the battlements, close to mine. I glance at him, but he's looking out over the dark fields, not at me.

I don't know what I want to say to him. Don't need to really, it's enough that he's here, beside me in the dark for another night, one more in the ever-quickening rush towards the end.

I can't imagine life away from him, can't imagine a life in which I don't get up every morning and fight next to my best friend, living for the times he looks at me the way he does sometimes, as though there's something else he's trying to convey.

Living through the hours of wondering and hoping and waiting and wanting. Watching the others with their friends, their partners, trying not to see the looks they give me, something close to pity even as they acknowledge my own fault in this because I threw my lot in with Artorius Castus long ago and now I might as well be alone.

He leans a little closer, nudging me with his shoulder. 'You should be sleeping.'

I nod my head, not really agreeing. 'So should you.'

'And yet, here we both are.' He's still looking out over the fields, although what he's looking for, or at, I could not say.

'Indeed we are.'

It feels almost like the dance with women, the feelings unspoken between the words. Feels almost like it, but this is Arthur, and I learnt long ago not to hope.

'Why are you here?' I ask abruptly, then hastily add, 'up here, tonight,' before he can turn my question into a debate on his God and the nature of existence. I do not want to fight with him tonight.

'I woke up,' he says, as if this is an answer. I suppose in a way it is – he woke up and he felt a need to come up here. I have never stood here, in fifteen years, without him eventually joining me. It is one of the many constants Arthur has provided in my life.

I try again not to imagine life adrift without that, without him.

He is Roman, I am Sarmatian.

He is a Commander, I am a Knight.

He is a Christian, I am a pagan.

'You seem pensive. What are you thinking of?' he asks.

The truth hardly seems a good idea, but a lie does not come to mind either.

'Of life afterwards, when we are free.' I settle on a half truth, hoping it will sound more optimistic than I feel. Freedom is what we are all supposed to have longed for, how would I explain that I no longer crave freedom from these walls, but freedom to do as I wish, to be with him?

He sighs. 'I will miss you.'

My heart jumps at his words – it seems I will never truly learn not to hope.

'All of you,' he adds, as I should have known he would.

I say nothing, unsure what I should answer. That Arthur's mere presence can render me dumb never ceases to amaze – and depress – me.

He turns to look at me and I know I do not imagine what I see in his eyes. More than friendship, more than respect and brotherhood… something like love.

'Especially you,' he finishes. The look is still there when he turns back to the fields and the lightening sky, and I think I am beginning to understand.

He will never do anything about this, and out of respect for him, neither will I… but his warm presence at my side, his words and looks, are as close as either of us will come to saying what we feel, what we want.

And maybe, in the end, that might be enough.