ablaze
title: ablaze
fandom: merlin
pairing: shade!lancelot/morgana
rating: hard R for implicit sexual content
wordcount: ~750
disclaimer: aside from the crazy, nothing’s mine.
summary: someday your soul will be required of you, but why give your own when there is a much nobler one at your disposal? unbeta'd.
spoilers: merlin 4x09, lancelot du lac.
She sits by the fire with her hands folded in her lap and moves the sparks of the fire into the shape of a name. The letters glisten in the cold, damp air but she doesn’t look at them, doesn’t even cast a glance their way. Instead she turns and watches the man sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed. Sound asleep, like the shadow of the dead.
LANCELOT
There are faint noises of knocking out the door - Agravaine has arrived. She waves the sparks away and the name dissembles without a trace.
//
It isn't about jealousy, of course.
It never was.
She is simply trying to take what is justly hers, to right all these years that she’s been wronged, all the lies she’s been told and all the people that left her behind. It is certainly a greater scheme than torturing a petty maidservant, or so she has told Agravaine.
To Lancelot, she tells nothing at all.
The man listens quietly as she constructs his life for him with grand empty words that no longer mean a thing. It all falls into place, precisely and perfectly, like the way Lancelot looks up at her with dark eyes.
“Do you understand what you need to do?” She asks, stroking his jawline with the tips of her fingers.
He nods and takes her hand with the greatest care, as if handling the most delicate bird. His lips are warm, pressed against her cold marble skin. A warmth that reminds her of Morgause’s embrace from a life time ago.
She shivers. Chills run down her spine; she knows not one spell that would calm them.
//
The night before Lancelot leaves for Camelot, she lets him into her bed.
He doesn’t question, doesn’t object. He lifts up the hems of her skirt exactly the way she wants him to, kneels between her thighs and spreads her open with his calloused hands. The sensation of his stubbles on her soft, heated flesh makes her toes curl and her head ring, but she is mum.
His tongue traces small, careful patterns around the centre of her arousal. Still so skillful and exquisite, even when he is not nearly half the man he used to be.
(How hateful.)
At the brink of climax, she finally breaks the silence with a soft moan. He takes it as a sign of encouragement, lifts his chin just the slightest and looks up at her.
For the first time ever, she can see a spark of light in those dead eyes. It burns as brightly as the desire in her loins.
She allows herself to get lost in that fire for just a second, before letting out a shaky exhale and fists a hand in the soft, dark locks of his hair. Then she pushes his head down and inches closer to his mouth.
“Don’t look,” she hisses in disgust.
So he closes his eyes and leans his face into her. She comes with her back arched, because the flutter of his eyelashes against the wet lips of her sex is nonetheless unbearable.
//
She stands by the window and watches him ride out, before returning to her seat by the fire. She removes the blade concealed in her sleeve, the sharp metal already warmed.
It was meant for Lancelot’s blood, but she wasn’t going to lose herself because of him a second time.
//
Maybe there is another way, some part of her keeps muttering as she writes her final command for Lancelot.
But there isn’t. When she was still the King’s beloved ward, he was a lying peasant exiled for breaking The First Code. When she was the defeated tyrant expelled from her throne, he was the noblest knight Camelot had ever seen. When she is still living, he is way past dead.
If their existences are meant to be found on the same plane, wouldn’t fate have given her some kindling of the same fire that he had?
Has.
//
My lady?
My lady?
My lady?
She jerks, shifting her weight in the chair.
Agravaine tries to retrieve the letter from her hand, but in a split second, the quick friction between finger and paper slices her skin open.
A single drip of blood drops into the fire beside her desk. She stares into the radiating heat.
My lady?
My lady?
My lady?
Agravaine’s panicked apologies are swallowed by the fire before she even begins to listen.