Work Text:
I’ve walked this path so many times that I could journey it even if I were blind. Though I don’t come by as often as I used to, it doesn’t mean I think of you less. I just believe that you would be angry to know that I did nothing with my life after your death but sit here and wait. Part of me wanted to do it anyway, just to irate you beyond the grave because I never listened to you. Or, at least, I never gave you the satisfaction of knowing how closely I paid attention while it seemed the opposite. Sometimes I think I listened too much, because I can still hear your voice as clearly as if you were standing beside me, reminding me of how no man is worth the tears I shed.
They say that the firsts are the hardest to get through. The first second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year—it’s no exaggeration. At first it felt unreal, as if I had dreamt watching you slip away before my eyes. When I watched your body drift to Avalon, I had hoped with every part of myself that I would wake up back in Camelot, making my way down the halls with breakfast in hand. I would open your door and pull apart the curtains to allow the sun to shine its rays upon your sleeping face. You never had the most graceful of expressions in the morning, but I always recalled the crinkle in the corners of your eyes whenever the light hit them. You always had your bottom lip jutting out just a little (and oh how I always wanted to just lean in to kiss them), before your face became a grimace. You always fought a war with morning, your pillow a shield and your arm that sword that you struck against the sun’s rays that never quite connected. It was a battle always lost, but would be repeated the next day.
It was no dream though. I stood there for what seemed like forever with a diminishing hope that you’d come from the forests behind and call my name. You’d ask me what was wrong and why I was being such a girl who was crying over another dead person. I expected it—hell, I yearned for it! Because it would have be your voice and it would reassure me that you were alive and this was all just some intricate farce intent on making me suffer. But the silence carried on, and it carried my heart along with it. I lost count of how many times I cried that day, even when I could no longer form any tears. It took Percival—when he and Leon came to Avalon with the hopes of seeing their king alive—to practically drag me away from there. I hadn’t even known about Gwaine, which was another crack in my already broken perspective of this reality. My focus had been entirely on you. But I wasn’t sure what I was focusing on anymore.
The journey to and from Avalon was never easy, wrought with dangers. Gaius always told me not to go, because there was nothing I could do now that you were gone. I know I made him age much faster with every time I walked out that door with him fearing this would be the last time he’d see me. He had the right to feel this way, but what he didn’t understand (but I was sure he noticed) was that he was losing me anyway. I was becoming but a shell of who I used to be. My laughter and smiles were hollow without the support of a heart. I had stopped eating, stopped going out, stopped well—living. The only time I felt most alive (even if it was a fraction) was when I went back to you to sit and wait.
And wait.
Was Albion at her greatest need yet? I always asked myself when I knelt before Avalon’s waters and glided the tips of my fingers over the surface. The water rippled beneath my touch, but you were nowhere in sight. Not just yet, but it still felt as if it had been far too long.
When your son was born, Gwen had given me permission to take him to Avalon. It was far from the intimate experience I had hoped for, with many a soldier ensuring our safety there. Though who would blame a new mother who had recently lost her husband and king? I didn’t argue, didn’t assert the fact that I was this great sorcerer (I really wasn’t; I couldn’t even save you), I just held this little boy who looked so much like you close to me and felt as if you were there. For the first time since your passing, I had felt something that wasn’t grief or sadness. Holding your son in my arms renewed a sense of purpose within me. It wasn’t the same feeling as being with you, but it was close enough and the heart that I thought had long died beat a little with something I thought I’d never experience again.
It soon became a tradition, watching this baby grow into a fine young man. I always brought him here because he had a right to know about how great a warrior his father was. And you had a right to see your son grow up (were you able to see? I hope you did). As a baby we both stepped into the waters, and I cascaded a palm of water over his head as he cried in his discomfort. Though his tears were brief, as if you had come there to touch his little head and reassure him that he was safe with me. With every passing year it went from me holding him to him stepping in on his own volition. There came a time when he was around five, when he had gotten his trousers dirty from sitting on the damp earth right by the shore, and he was staring straight ahead across the lake. When I had asked him what he was staring at, he told me he saw you. “He looks just as you told me of him.” He spoke with his young voice full of happiness. “I want to be like him when I become king someday.” Such words made me happy, but saddened me at the same time. I wondered how he saw you (if he really did), but didn’t ask. Didn’t want to press into his mind of something he found special.
“You will,” I told him as I sat beside him. “You will become a fine king when you grow up.”
And he did.
But like you, like Lancelot, Freya, Gwaine, Gaius and even Gwen, he was only human and when time came to pass, I watched as he floated down these very waters when his life finally left him. Avalon had taken so much from me, and in return offered me comfort when all I wished for was to be floating down its waters as well. Kilgharrah had long died as well, but in his passing, Aithusa had remained by my side as a companion and a comfort. She never learned to speak, nor did she properly recover from the horrors she had been subjected to in her short life. But she was strong, and worked through her troubles to become a fine dragon. I think that you would have been impressed; she became a symbol of Albion in which through one’s struggles, she stood ground against adversity.
I doubt many if anyone ever experienced their first century, or millennium after losing someone dear to them. In this current day and time, there are so many books with advice on how to wade the waters of death and absence. From days to years to decades—I’ve survived them and then some, sitting in a café not far from Avalon. I always order two cups of tea, and the waitress often asks me after an hour or two what ever happened to that someone I was expecting. I often tell her that I’m just waiting for them (for you, God I wish it were you) until it’s well past sundown and the last employee needs to lock up. The tea has long since gone cold but I never have it taken away. For it to be taken away symbolizes accepting that you are never coming back.
And I will never accept that.
You are coming back. You are, Arthur.
And I will be here, even if Avalon’s waters were to dry up. Even if the stars in the sky that I wish upon every day come crashing onto this world. Even if—even when—even anything because nothing will stop me from embracing your return and when you do I swear I will never let you go.
And will I have stories to tell you.
Come back soon.