Comment_fic Master Post: Arthurian Lit
Figured I'd make a comprehensive sort of post. Unlike most of my comment-fics, these are in order (with a break for a full fic that I'll link to, because, yeah. It's kind of an important piece of the story).
First: Lancelot/Gawain, that which might appear unnatainable
Lancelot wandered the castle, his feet bare. His hands were wrapped in bandages. When he stretched his arms upward to the vaulted ceilings he could feel scar tissue stretching with him, tight and hot.
Moonlight streamed in through the windows, and he paused to turn his face to it, silent. Clouds moved too fast across the moon's face and he wondered for a moment that he couldn't feel the wind of their passing even through the keep's stone walls.
There was a screech of metal on metal from behind him, and he turned slower than he would have liked to find a figure facing him, bare steel in his hand, clothed only in shadow. His slimness was achingly familiar, his face dim and strange. Lancelot took a step back - not from cowardice but from curiosity, trying to draw the nameless opponent into the light.
His foe stepped forward after him, the moonlight silvering his hair and his highlighting luminous blue eyes. Lancelot barely had time to feel his heart stop at the expression on Gawain's face before his friend was lunging at him, slim blade pressed to Lancelot's breast.
And he realized he, too, had no clothes but shadow, his scarred chest fluttering with his heartbeat against the painful-bright tip of Gawain's sword. They circled one another, dancing between moonbeams. He wanted to talk - ask what it was that he'd done, to inspire the anger in Gawain's face, ask what he'd done for the sword in his breast - yes, in, because Gawain was sliding forward and forward and it was an aching, tearing pain and his lips would not move, his voice caught on the blade and pressed out his back in rivers of red.
He wakes up shaking and silent, his fists twisted in his sheets.
The next day, Merlin tells him what he has seen. He speaks with no passion, with sympathy and with no judgement, but it is a statement of face. You will. Lancelot falls back abed with his mind on fire.
This time Gawain's mouth was wide open and mocking, spilling out words of love that Lancelot has not yet said, yet they are in his own voice - things in his heart that he would lay open for Gawain's ears if such a thing could even be dreamed of. And yet he was dreaming of them - but twisted and wrong, his words bitter in his lover's mouth, more painful than the long, bright sword.
He wakes dark-faced and withdrawn, and nothing that his friend says now makes what his friend will say any softer.
In the third dream, he was in the throne room, the windows dark. Two new scars, puckered and angry, marred his chest where two nights before this he had died. He stared at the throne, emptied, at the two, at where the Lady Guenivere (his Queen, how...she was as unattainable as Gawain! And perhaps that...) and King Arthur should be, should always be for the rest of time, where they would be but for him.
And he turned, almost resigned, to meet eyes like blue fire. And Gawain pushed it in, in, in, pulled him up, up, up along the blade and pressed his soft lips close to Lancelot's ear. His voice is full of all the sorrow that's hidden by the mask of rage on his face, and he murmurs dark and low, "They were my brothers."
Then comes Le Chevalier Mal Fet (~4,000 words, Lancelot/Gawain), in which Lancelot leaves and Gawain goes on a quest.
Next is Of Masks and Moonlight, Lancelot/Gawain, Masquerade Ball
Gawain slid his mask onto his face, curling the hooks around his ears and studying himself in the mirror. He was dressed all in green - waistcoat of deep forest velvet, soft leather boots to match. His tunic was paler, the green of new spring, and he wore one yellow-green glove upon his right hand.
They were not his colors, not the russet and brown of his shield and sigil, but today he was remembering a lesson well taught. He slid his ungloved hand across the back of his neck, running the pads of his fingers across his long, thin scar.
As he bent his head, his dark curls fell across one eye of his mask, and he smiled at his reflection. The mask was a simple one, covering the top part of his face and leaving his lips and chin free. It was pale ivory, edged with gold leaf that ventured tendrils inwards, a bit like ivy and a bit like script. On one side the gold lines stretched from the edge of the mask to the eye of it, curled eyelashes like the rays of the sun.
Gawain fixed his cuffs and turned, looking for Lancelot.
He found him on the balcony, clutching the railing hard enough for his knuckles to go pale. He was dressed in blues and whites, his own colors, and on the railing in front of him sat his mask.
It was a whole-face affair, ivory like Gawain's, but much less ornate. There was no golden edging, no sun imagery, just pale cheekbones, lips painted blood-red, fine arched brows inked on with feather-like strokes. Gawain looked at it, and then up at Lancelot's face, lined and seamed as it was with his self-inflicted scars, and was tempted to knock the thing off the balcony, let it shatter against the ground.
"I cannot wear it." Lancelot said, not looking at him.
"It is likely meant to give you respite," Gawain said, inwardly cursing whoever had made such a mockery. "They know that for months you hid your face behind your helm, and they do not know that it is the face you hid and not the scars. They think only to give you a night's peace."
Lancelot turned to him, the moonlight catching his hair, silvering it. His eyes were blue, so blue and so sad. "What peace do I deserve, Gawain?" He asked, a little wild, and then stopped, because they would not have this argument, not again. "And what peace could this - thing give me? My old face, staring back at me in the mirror, but not flesh, no, but cold. Emotionless. Fake. Even if it were the scars that I hated - no."
Gawain picks up the mask, turning it over and over in his hands. It was a stirring likeness - pale, stylized, yes, but sculpted after the same lines as Lancelot's young, unblemished face. The lips were curled just slightly in a wondering smile, the brows tilted just so. His hands tightened at it's edges, and he had a strange, mad urge to take his knife to it, mark it up like Lancelot did his real face, make it fit the tortured soul it was meant to hide.
"You must, you know." He said, holding it out to his lover. "To not attend would spark more rumors that you plan to disappear again, as well as be a grave offense against Arthur...and your Queen."
Lancelot finally met his eyes. "Our Queen, Gawain." He said firmly, almost wearily. "I have no more claim on her than any subject, unless it be of mild friendship."
Gawain closed his lips, silent for a moment. "You could wear my mask," he offered, unhooking it from his ears. "I would wear your face rather than have you suffer it."
Lancelot caught his hands, and Gawain looked up at him, at the way the moonlight lit his eyes from within. He swallowed, his heart aching at the beauty and the worry there. "Do you hate her?" Lancelot asked softly.
Gawain averted his eyes. "I love her, as per my duty to her."
Lancelot took the mask from his hands and put it on the railing, one hand coming up to cup Gawain's cheek. "But do you hate her, Gawain? Does it twist up inside you like a snake, sometimes, like a cable too tight to hold, like something inside you will snap, bite, lunge? Because sometimes I do." His lips twisted. "Sometimes even as I feel myself falling into her eyes I hate her, for she and I will cause you so much pain."
Gawain could say nothing, only lean up and kiss him, on the lips, on the chin, feeling the press of his scars on his lips. It wasn't until they had joined the crowds, until he saw Lancelot sweep in and take Guenivere to dance that he knew the answer. Their faces were close together, as if they were speaking, Guenivere's mask that of a gorgeous, iridescent peacock, but Lancelot's lips didn't move. His mask hid his lips, hid his smile, hid the expressive dips at the corners of his mouth. It stared down at her with a sort of frozen wonderment, and she leaned into it, laughing softly.
No, he did not hate her. She could have the mask - his heart held on fast to what lay beneath.
Next is this (short, but) Lancelot/Gawain, Merlin's magic
He has often wondered how Merlin's magic works. He has often wondered what would happen if he pressed his blade close to Merlin's pale, blue-veined throat, his skin so thin with age, and told him, "No." Told him, "Take it back." Told him, "Take these scars from my flesh, take this guilt from my heart, for I shall not betray my King and my Love."
But he can see Merlin's eyes, blue flecked with gold, and he knows that it is not his fault. He sees, he does not force. Gawain says that Merlin described it to him like memory - he remembers what has not yet come to pass, as well as what has.
At the time, untroubled, Lancelot just shook his head and wondered at the size of Merlin's mind, that it could hold so much.
Now, he uses it to remind himself: this is not Merlin's doing. He knows that it's not Merlin's doing, the smile that blooms across his Queen's face when she sees him. He knows it's not Merlin's doing, the hot tightening of his own scars as he smiles back. He knows that the tears glittering like jewels in Gawain's dark eyes are not Merlin's doing. He knows, because Merlin's own eyes glitter in a mirror-image, from his place at Arthur's side.
Sometimes he wonders, how can he not tell his King?
But mostly he marvels, because while it may not be magic it is also somehow not as real as the life Lancelot struggles to keep living, the one where choice sneaks up on him and the kisses are unexpected. The one where there's nothing but Gawain's long fingers, curled into the scars at his side (he likes that Lancelot has his name there, likes to trace it with touch and tongue) and their limbs, tangled in bed. He lies there, breath sawing in through labored lungs, and marvels at the things that prophecy does not foretell.
He flops over onto his side, looking Gawain in the eyes, tracing a long, scarred hand over his face. Gawain closes his eyes, feels the sadness in his touch, almost everpresent these days. Lancelot grins suddenly, a flash of perfect teeth in a marred face. "You will always be more real," he says, and Gawain smiles into his palm.
And finally this, which I wrote today (again, very short): Lancelot/Gawain, the golden season
Autumn is the golden season. The sun sets earlier and earlier, casting long, two-toned shadows of yellowing leaves and naked branches against almost overripe wheat.
Autumn is the golden season, when we all stream into court, saddlebags filled with tribute and tax, jingling purses and creaking chests lashed into carts and wagons.
Autumn is the golden season, when the sunlight catches in the hollow of his collarbone, makes him glow tanned and perfect. When his scars are nothing but words and his words are scarred, broken things, cut off by gasp and shudder and cry.
His glances are caught in amber, sidelong through evening candlelight, eyes blown wide and lips curled wider. She flushes, rose-petal cheeks and coiffed russet hair, and holds out a hand to him, leading him through the patterns of a dance, forward, back, back, though he knows and I know where they will both end up.
Poor girl in queen's clothing, led down a path she cannot help by the golden knight's kiss.
Autumn is the golden season, fading into dark.
And I see a "Lancelot/Gawain, sidestepping the prophecy" prompt which I simply must snatch up, but not until I'm finished this bit of Dreaming Through the Noise. Besides, something tells me that's another full fic (which makes sense - one about them discovering/submitting to the prophecy, the other about them sidestepping (or perhaps fulfilling?) it.)
First: Lancelot/Gawain, that which might appear unnatainable
Lancelot wandered the castle, his feet bare. His hands were wrapped in bandages. When he stretched his arms upward to the vaulted ceilings he could feel scar tissue stretching with him, tight and hot.
Moonlight streamed in through the windows, and he paused to turn his face to it, silent. Clouds moved too fast across the moon's face and he wondered for a moment that he couldn't feel the wind of their passing even through the keep's stone walls.
There was a screech of metal on metal from behind him, and he turned slower than he would have liked to find a figure facing him, bare steel in his hand, clothed only in shadow. His slimness was achingly familiar, his face dim and strange. Lancelot took a step back - not from cowardice but from curiosity, trying to draw the nameless opponent into the light.
His foe stepped forward after him, the moonlight silvering his hair and his highlighting luminous blue eyes. Lancelot barely had time to feel his heart stop at the expression on Gawain's face before his friend was lunging at him, slim blade pressed to Lancelot's breast.
And he realized he, too, had no clothes but shadow, his scarred chest fluttering with his heartbeat against the painful-bright tip of Gawain's sword. They circled one another, dancing between moonbeams. He wanted to talk - ask what it was that he'd done, to inspire the anger in Gawain's face, ask what he'd done for the sword in his breast - yes, in, because Gawain was sliding forward and forward and it was an aching, tearing pain and his lips would not move, his voice caught on the blade and pressed out his back in rivers of red.
He wakes up shaking and silent, his fists twisted in his sheets.
The next day, Merlin tells him what he has seen. He speaks with no passion, with sympathy and with no judgement, but it is a statement of face. You will. Lancelot falls back abed with his mind on fire.
This time Gawain's mouth was wide open and mocking, spilling out words of love that Lancelot has not yet said, yet they are in his own voice - things in his heart that he would lay open for Gawain's ears if such a thing could even be dreamed of. And yet he was dreaming of them - but twisted and wrong, his words bitter in his lover's mouth, more painful than the long, bright sword.
He wakes dark-faced and withdrawn, and nothing that his friend says now makes what his friend will say any softer.
In the third dream, he was in the throne room, the windows dark. Two new scars, puckered and angry, marred his chest where two nights before this he had died. He stared at the throne, emptied, at the two, at where the Lady Guenivere (his Queen, how...she was as unattainable as Gawain! And perhaps that...) and King Arthur should be, should always be for the rest of time, where they would be but for him.
And he turned, almost resigned, to meet eyes like blue fire. And Gawain pushed it in, in, in, pulled him up, up, up along the blade and pressed his soft lips close to Lancelot's ear. His voice is full of all the sorrow that's hidden by the mask of rage on his face, and he murmurs dark and low, "They were my brothers."
Then comes Le Chevalier Mal Fet (~4,000 words, Lancelot/Gawain), in which Lancelot leaves and Gawain goes on a quest.
Next is Of Masks and Moonlight, Lancelot/Gawain, Masquerade Ball
Gawain slid his mask onto his face, curling the hooks around his ears and studying himself in the mirror. He was dressed all in green - waistcoat of deep forest velvet, soft leather boots to match. His tunic was paler, the green of new spring, and he wore one yellow-green glove upon his right hand.
They were not his colors, not the russet and brown of his shield and sigil, but today he was remembering a lesson well taught. He slid his ungloved hand across the back of his neck, running the pads of his fingers across his long, thin scar.
As he bent his head, his dark curls fell across one eye of his mask, and he smiled at his reflection. The mask was a simple one, covering the top part of his face and leaving his lips and chin free. It was pale ivory, edged with gold leaf that ventured tendrils inwards, a bit like ivy and a bit like script. On one side the gold lines stretched from the edge of the mask to the eye of it, curled eyelashes like the rays of the sun.
Gawain fixed his cuffs and turned, looking for Lancelot.
He found him on the balcony, clutching the railing hard enough for his knuckles to go pale. He was dressed in blues and whites, his own colors, and on the railing in front of him sat his mask.
It was a whole-face affair, ivory like Gawain's, but much less ornate. There was no golden edging, no sun imagery, just pale cheekbones, lips painted blood-red, fine arched brows inked on with feather-like strokes. Gawain looked at it, and then up at Lancelot's face, lined and seamed as it was with his self-inflicted scars, and was tempted to knock the thing off the balcony, let it shatter against the ground.
"I cannot wear it." Lancelot said, not looking at him.
"It is likely meant to give you respite," Gawain said, inwardly cursing whoever had made such a mockery. "They know that for months you hid your face behind your helm, and they do not know that it is the face you hid and not the scars. They think only to give you a night's peace."
Lancelot turned to him, the moonlight catching his hair, silvering it. His eyes were blue, so blue and so sad. "What peace do I deserve, Gawain?" He asked, a little wild, and then stopped, because they would not have this argument, not again. "And what peace could this - thing give me? My old face, staring back at me in the mirror, but not flesh, no, but cold. Emotionless. Fake. Even if it were the scars that I hated - no."
Gawain picks up the mask, turning it over and over in his hands. It was a stirring likeness - pale, stylized, yes, but sculpted after the same lines as Lancelot's young, unblemished face. The lips were curled just slightly in a wondering smile, the brows tilted just so. His hands tightened at it's edges, and he had a strange, mad urge to take his knife to it, mark it up like Lancelot did his real face, make it fit the tortured soul it was meant to hide.
"You must, you know." He said, holding it out to his lover. "To not attend would spark more rumors that you plan to disappear again, as well as be a grave offense against Arthur...and your Queen."
Lancelot finally met his eyes. "Our Queen, Gawain." He said firmly, almost wearily. "I have no more claim on her than any subject, unless it be of mild friendship."
Gawain closed his lips, silent for a moment. "You could wear my mask," he offered, unhooking it from his ears. "I would wear your face rather than have you suffer it."
Lancelot caught his hands, and Gawain looked up at him, at the way the moonlight lit his eyes from within. He swallowed, his heart aching at the beauty and the worry there. "Do you hate her?" Lancelot asked softly.
Gawain averted his eyes. "I love her, as per my duty to her."
Lancelot took the mask from his hands and put it on the railing, one hand coming up to cup Gawain's cheek. "But do you hate her, Gawain? Does it twist up inside you like a snake, sometimes, like a cable too tight to hold, like something inside you will snap, bite, lunge? Because sometimes I do." His lips twisted. "Sometimes even as I feel myself falling into her eyes I hate her, for she and I will cause you so much pain."
Gawain could say nothing, only lean up and kiss him, on the lips, on the chin, feeling the press of his scars on his lips. It wasn't until they had joined the crowds, until he saw Lancelot sweep in and take Guenivere to dance that he knew the answer. Their faces were close together, as if they were speaking, Guenivere's mask that of a gorgeous, iridescent peacock, but Lancelot's lips didn't move. His mask hid his lips, hid his smile, hid the expressive dips at the corners of his mouth. It stared down at her with a sort of frozen wonderment, and she leaned into it, laughing softly.
No, he did not hate her. She could have the mask - his heart held on fast to what lay beneath.
Next is this (short, but) Lancelot/Gawain, Merlin's magic
He has often wondered how Merlin's magic works. He has often wondered what would happen if he pressed his blade close to Merlin's pale, blue-veined throat, his skin so thin with age, and told him, "No." Told him, "Take it back." Told him, "Take these scars from my flesh, take this guilt from my heart, for I shall not betray my King and my Love."
But he can see Merlin's eyes, blue flecked with gold, and he knows that it is not his fault. He sees, he does not force. Gawain says that Merlin described it to him like memory - he remembers what has not yet come to pass, as well as what has.
At the time, untroubled, Lancelot just shook his head and wondered at the size of Merlin's mind, that it could hold so much.
Now, he uses it to remind himself: this is not Merlin's doing. He knows that it's not Merlin's doing, the smile that blooms across his Queen's face when she sees him. He knows it's not Merlin's doing, the hot tightening of his own scars as he smiles back. He knows that the tears glittering like jewels in Gawain's dark eyes are not Merlin's doing. He knows, because Merlin's own eyes glitter in a mirror-image, from his place at Arthur's side.
Sometimes he wonders, how can he not tell his King?
But mostly he marvels, because while it may not be magic it is also somehow not as real as the life Lancelot struggles to keep living, the one where choice sneaks up on him and the kisses are unexpected. The one where there's nothing but Gawain's long fingers, curled into the scars at his side (he likes that Lancelot has his name there, likes to trace it with touch and tongue) and their limbs, tangled in bed. He lies there, breath sawing in through labored lungs, and marvels at the things that prophecy does not foretell.
He flops over onto his side, looking Gawain in the eyes, tracing a long, scarred hand over his face. Gawain closes his eyes, feels the sadness in his touch, almost everpresent these days. Lancelot grins suddenly, a flash of perfect teeth in a marred face. "You will always be more real," he says, and Gawain smiles into his palm.
And finally this, which I wrote today (again, very short): Lancelot/Gawain, the golden season
Autumn is the golden season. The sun sets earlier and earlier, casting long, two-toned shadows of yellowing leaves and naked branches against almost overripe wheat.
Autumn is the golden season, when we all stream into court, saddlebags filled with tribute and tax, jingling purses and creaking chests lashed into carts and wagons.
Autumn is the golden season, when the sunlight catches in the hollow of his collarbone, makes him glow tanned and perfect. When his scars are nothing but words and his words are scarred, broken things, cut off by gasp and shudder and cry.
His glances are caught in amber, sidelong through evening candlelight, eyes blown wide and lips curled wider. She flushes, rose-petal cheeks and coiffed russet hair, and holds out a hand to him, leading him through the patterns of a dance, forward, back, back, though he knows and I know where they will both end up.
Poor girl in queen's clothing, led down a path she cannot help by the golden knight's kiss.
Autumn is the golden season, fading into dark.
And I see a "Lancelot/Gawain, sidestepping the prophecy" prompt which I simply must snatch up, but not until I'm finished this bit of Dreaming Through the Noise. Besides, something tells me that's another full fic (which makes sense - one about them discovering/submitting to the prophecy, the other about them sidestepping (or perhaps fulfilling?) it.)