You find it unmarked, uncluttered, unpopulated, unknown.

You don't mean to discover it; you aren't looking for it. It is just there. You come across it, ears filled with the silence, and at first you don't even realize what it is, where you are. The familiarity lulls your senses. It is the strangeness that alerts you.

You look down first, at your feet. You are standing on stones, fitted together in a man-made pattern. Pausing for a moment to try and place them, you tilt your head inquisitively. You put your hand down on the stones, brushing away the rotted leaves and accumulated dirt, taking in the feel of the paving beneath your fingertips. You know those stones.

Crouched, you mull it over, thinking it may not be true, as your eyes travel across the deserted courtyard and onto the castle.

The castle is like you remember it, but different, also. The steps still open into the courtyard where you are, inviting you – tiny though you are against this architecture – to go inside and visit. But the steps are treacherous now; stone has crumbled into dry dust, and plants grow unchoked from the cracks, like they are bleeding out of wounded rock. One of the handrails on the side has been knocked away.

Beyond the steps, the castle looms like an old friend you barely recognize. Its eyes have been punched; no glass remains in the windows. Its limbs have been broken; the walls are decaying, falling. Whole sections look unsafe. Its bleeding has not been staunched; ivy grows everywhere, eating the walls and pulling at the castle's sturdiness.

You navigate the stairs carefully and touch the castle reverently, your hand brushing against the vines. The ivy. That is the culprit behind the collapsing stones sprinkled about. Ivy and time.

It is Camelot.

Camelot is dead, abandoned. Unprotected, you realize. The walls surrounding the city are gone, allowing you to stumble upon the ruins.

Ruins. Yes. It is ruined.

You touch your throat and turn in a tight circle, taking in the white stones with the green and gray. Pulverized. Beaten. Dead.

There—in the courtyard. They would have walked there, side by side, arms swinging, smiling.

"Look on the bright side. You've still got me."

"You really are a complete idiot…"

There they would have cried for dead fathers, carried wounded sons, crept in the moonlight as they left the safety of the castle.

You wish you could hear it now. But all you hear is the wind rustling through an empty, bare palace.

They do not walk here anymore. They have not for a long while.

Your voice is strangled when you whisper, "What happened here?"

A/N: Title is from the Kansas song "Dust in the Wind". Idea of oneshot is from something I saw on tumblr about finding an old, ivy-covered police box sitting in the wilderness.

I guess this would be set long before modern day, perhaps witnessed by a bard or old friend of Camelot.

I hope it was okay; I really tried not to over- or under- do it.