hold me closer, tiny fanfic!
Prompt: Uther, cathedral (from shizuka_blooms)
Word Count: 333
Author's Note: Seriously, who knows what is going on with this dude? Oh, ominous backstory filled with woe!!!! I tried?
He does not doubt, does not allow himself to doubt, but certainty comes easiest within these walls. The air is heavy with cold and must and God. What is right drives itself through skin, through flesh, deep into bone, and he knows that cruel as he may seem, unrelenting as he must be, still it is right. In moments like these he can remember Morgana’s father, and his promise to the dead man becomes the less important thing. He thinks of the girl and ignores the softening of his heart at the thought of her beauty, her intelligence. ‘Til now, he had been proud at the grace with which she’d grown, thinking maybe a bit of it could be attributed to him. That he could almost be called a father again, although God had only seen fit to grant him one child. Now he is glad that she is not his - the better to quell the disappointment, to do the necessary thing if it comes to that. Curse her willfulness. He’d thought it an admirable quality, just another of her myriad charms - proof of her as a worthy match for Arthur, who needed to be challenged in the light, unimportant ways a woman could challenge a man.
Igraine was always so sweetly yielding. This, he thinks, is why he had chosen for Arthur a girl lit by sparks, a girl whose blood burns with the instinct to fight. There are few things he cannot endure. One is the thought of his son knowing loss so deep. But now-
No matter. He will do what needs doing when the time comes. Magic can try its best to creep around the kingdom’s corners, to sneak and writhe and ruin. Rightness will extinguish it. He will be the instrument of that rightness.
In the cathedral, he breathes deep, as though this very air is the thing that sustains him. Prayer does not come easily to him, but memory does. It serves the purpose just as well.
Word Count: 333
Author's Note: Seriously, who knows what is going on with this dude? Oh, ominous backstory filled with woe!!!! I tried?
He does not doubt, does not allow himself to doubt, but certainty comes easiest within these walls. The air is heavy with cold and must and God. What is right drives itself through skin, through flesh, deep into bone, and he knows that cruel as he may seem, unrelenting as he must be, still it is right. In moments like these he can remember Morgana’s father, and his promise to the dead man becomes the less important thing. He thinks of the girl and ignores the softening of his heart at the thought of her beauty, her intelligence. ‘Til now, he had been proud at the grace with which she’d grown, thinking maybe a bit of it could be attributed to him. That he could almost be called a father again, although God had only seen fit to grant him one child. Now he is glad that she is not his - the better to quell the disappointment, to do the necessary thing if it comes to that. Curse her willfulness. He’d thought it an admirable quality, just another of her myriad charms - proof of her as a worthy match for Arthur, who needed to be challenged in the light, unimportant ways a woman could challenge a man.
Igraine was always so sweetly yielding. This, he thinks, is why he had chosen for Arthur a girl lit by sparks, a girl whose blood burns with the instinct to fight. There are few things he cannot endure. One is the thought of his son knowing loss so deep. But now-
No matter. He will do what needs doing when the time comes. Magic can try its best to creep around the kingdom’s corners, to sneak and writhe and ruin. Rightness will extinguish it. He will be the instrument of that rightness.
In the cathedral, he breathes deep, as though this very air is the thing that sustains him. Prayer does not come easily to him, but memory does. It serves the purpose just as well.