1a - 'cause i know that time has numbered my days
Should've Known I Was Weaker From the Start
~*~
part 1: 'cause i know that time has numbered my days
~*~
Arthur gripped at the arm of his teddy bear and quietly opened the door to his parents' bedroom. He climbed onto their bed and crawled in between them. They didn't wake up. As he laid his head on the pillow, his mother came closer and hugged him. He fell asleep.
~*~
The letter arrives in the mail. They hardly ever get mail anymore, almost everything they need is sent to them through e-mail, so when George tells him a letter has arrived and hands him a proper envelope, Arthur is stunned for a moment. It takes him too long to recognize the crest printed in red under the hand-written address.
~*~
It was a sunny, warm day and the grass was green. The checkered picnic blanket was soft under Arthur's hands. His mother's voice was quiet and steady as she read him a story about kings and knights and fair ladies. She looked up from the book and smiled. He looked over his shoulder and saw his father approaching. He was carrying ice-cream cones and grinning at them.
~*~
He doesn't mention the invitation to Gwen. He doesn't want to tell her about it until he's made his decision because he knows she will try to influence him and nudge him in the right direction, but he also knows he's not sure he wants to do the right thing here. In fact, he quickly writes a polite declination after a mere day's thought. He's just about to click on the send button, when he looks at the dean's name in the first line of his e-mail and remembers when the man used to teach him. He saves the mail as a draft instead.
~*~
Arthur grabbed one of the gifts wrapped in red and started tearing the shiny paper. His mother was sitting on the couch behind him, nursing a cup of something warm. Next to her sat his father, one of his arms around Ygraine's shoulders. The phone rang and Arthur ran to answer it. His grandmother wished him a merry Christmas and asked him if he liked his presents. When Arthur came back to the living room, his mother and father were sitting apart. They joined him on the floor without a word, each taking a gift and unwrapping it. Arthur was excited to find a set of cartoon-themed puzzles in one of the boxes marked with a large letter A.
~*~
He has until the end of August to send in his reply. It's mid-August and Gwen's birthday is coming up when he decides to ask for her advice. She is, understandably and expectedly, not happy that he hid it from her; she purses her lips tightly and crosses her arms over her chest, gives him that look that Arthur hates so much, that makes him feel even shorter than half the man he is. She tells him to go. It's a great opportunity, she says, to reach out to a new generation of scientists and maybe inspire them. And maybe he'll like it, she says, maybe he'll like teaching and maybe he'll want to stay and maybe they'll let him, because who wouldn't want to have a world-renowned leader in their chosen field teaching at their university. Or maybe, she says, he'll suck at it and maybe he'll hate it and he'll give an awkward hour long speech; he'll leave and the students will eventually forget him. ‘What does he have to lose?’ she says.
And Arthur already knows these things. But he still doesn't reply just yet.
~*~
By the time Arthur had finished his homework, the dinner was already served. The table had been set for three, but Michelle was removing one of the plates.
“Just you and me this time,” his mother informed him, smiling. There was something in the way she was sitting, her back straight and her arms placed on the table, palms seemingly glued to the tablecloth, that didn't quite seem natural.
“Where's Father?” Arthur asked, sitting down. His mother looked away from him, focused on Michelle as the girl removed the third glass from the table with an almost imperceptible curtsey.
“A bottle of red wine, Michelle, thank you,” his mother said before looking back at him. “Something came up at work. He won't make it to dinner tonight.”
Arthur just nodded and grabbed his fork. He was really hungry. His mother seemed unhappy about something, but Arthur didn't bother asking - she was never happy when Father had to work late, which was happening more and more often. He put a piece of the steak in his mouth. It was delicious.
~*~
It's well after midnight when Arthur finally drags himself to bed. He tries not to disturb Gwen, but it's difficult when the bed dips sharply under his hands as he pulls himself out of the chair. She left the covers folded over his side of the bed so he can get in more easily, she always does. Arthur thinks that maybe he hasn't woken her up. But then she turns around, snuggles closer to him and puts a hand on his chest. Her eyes are open.
“Have you decided?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says. He swallows, the sound loud and clear in the silent room. “I'm going. I asked them to schedule the lectures sometime in October.”
“Good,” she says.
She goes back to sleep after that. He lies awake. He doesn't know why it's so difficult to think about going back to Camelot. He tells himself he's only going there as a guest lecturer, a few hours of lectures over a few days, nothing much, nothing special. But still, the thought of being there again, seeing the same hallways and the same imperfect ramps for the disabled and maybe standing on the other side of one of his old classrooms or potentially even sleeping in his old room, it makes him fidget, it makes his palms sweat and he starts to wonder if it's too late to cancel.
He’s always said his university years were the best time of his life since the accident. He has fond memories of the big old buildings he couldn't navigate most of the time. Most of his friends, he met there. Gwen, he met there. Merlin, he met there.
He's still awake when Gwen's alarm goes off. He hits the digital clock with his palm and gets up to make coffee.
~*~
Arthur kicked lightly at Lancelot's hip, forcing him stumbling off the bed. “Oi!” Lancelot squeaked from the floor, one of his arms shooting out in Arthur's general direction but missing. Arthur swatted at Lancelot's wrist, laughing and crawling to the other side of the bed. He was almost off the bed when he felt a hand close at one of his ankles and pull him back, the crisp white sheets going with his body and bunching up under him uncomfortably. He tried kicking, but Lancelot had a good grip on both of his legs now so he opted instead for pushing at Lancelot's shoulders. Lancelot was too strong for him, though, and soon he was on top of Arthur and laughing at Arthur as he was futilely trying to wrestle his way away.
With one last playful pinch to Arthur's side, Lancelot flopped down to lie on the other side of the bed. Even with his arms spread out he was barely touching Arthur. He stretched out over the bed and ran his hands over the sheets, looking at Arthur with obvious envy. “Your bed,” he announced seriously, “is bigger than my room.”
“I'll trade you,” Arthur replied, only half-joking. He liked his bed well enough, but he liked Lancelot's room better - with blue walls, rockets and stars and planets painted on them, with shelves full of old and mostly broken toys, and a light carpet, worn with age it felt more welcoming to Arthur than his own room. His walls were a pristine white, his shelves always neatly covered with the newest, but unused, remote helicopters and talking robots, his carpet, clean and fluffy, rarely ever felt anyone's feet other than Arthur's own. He asked his parents to redecorate, but all his father allowed was repainting with an even brighter white. Arthur always felt awkward when his friends came over - he could see the envy in their faces and he didn't know how to tell them that all he wanted was for his life to be a little more like theirs.
The front door creaked as it opened, then again as it slammed shut. “I've had it with your questions!” his father's voice rumbled through the halls.
“Enough, we'll talk about this later. Arthur's friend is here.” His mother was calm as always, pragmatic and to the point.
His father replied too quietly for Arthur to hear.
Lancelot gave Arthur a look, confused and apologetic, but still questioning. Arthur couldn't think of anything to say so he just brushed the incident off with a smile and punched Lancelot's shoulder in challenge.
~*~
Arthur closes the new tab he'd just opened. It's been two weeks since he last contacted his old university. They're supposed to send him an affirmation, let him know about his schedule; probably check with him over any conditions he might have. He will need to reply to them. It's just basic communication.
And yet, Arthur hasn't checked his e-mail account in 15 days. He's now kind of wishing he'd used one of his back-ups instead of his main address.
He knows that he is being completely irrational. He's not really gaining anything by simply not looking at a webpage. As a matter of fact, he's doing himself the opposite of a favor; he's constantly nervous, always thinking about what might be waiting in his inbox, and not to mention that he's being utterly unprofessional. But every time he decides to check his e-mail, every time he opens a new tab and starts typing in the address bar, he panics. It's silly and childish, the same logic as covering your eyes and thinking the monsters under the bed will go away.
But for the moment, ignorance is bliss.
Arthur closes the laptop and puts it on the desk. Gwen will be home soon, Mordred's soccer practice having ended almost half an hour ago. Arthur told them he'd have lunch ready for them by the time they got back. He doesn't have much time, so he decides to make spaghetti. Mordred loves spaghetti.
Arthur opens the cabinet under the sink and takes out two pots. The spaghetti is on the second shelf from the floor in the cupboard, along with everything he needs for a decent sauce. It's only a small adjustment his family makes to help him, but every time he consciously notices it, he's equal parts guilty, ashamed, and grateful. He quickly takes everything he needs, puts it in his lap and closes the cupboard.
~*~
Arthur let the Game Over flash on his computer screen as he listened to his parents arguing. Normally, he wouldn't; normally, he would do anything to tune out their voices. For years their family had been falling apart now, and the way Arthur coped with it was to ignore it. Of course, the less he knew, the easier it was to pretend everything was normal. So whenever he heard noise from downstairs, he concentrated extra hard on his homework and whenever his mother self-medicated with alcohol and started bitterly telling him about his father, he excused himself to his room.
Today, however, something caught his attention. He wasn't sure if it was his mother's tone, colored not only with her anger and wounded pride but real hurt, or the way his father was no longer trying to defend himself, but sounded more placating and apologetic, something Arthur hadn't known him to be until then. Either way, once he'd started listening, he couldn't stop.
“For six years I let you play at this stupid charade because all the while I thought Arthur would always come first!” his mother was hissing. Arthur cringed at the sound of his own name spoken in that tone.
“He does,” his father replied, his voice barely carrying over to Arthur's ears. “He's my son, Ygraine, my only son. I would do anything for him, you know that.”
Arthur started a new game of Pacman. His fingers moved over the arrow keys with practiced speed.
“Then end it. I don't want you seeing them ever again.”
Arthur could imagine the way his mother probably crossed her arms over her chest, straightened her back to seem taller. She could be quite intimidating when she tried.
“Me and Katrina are done,” Uther said. Arthur couldn't decide if he sounded startled or defiant. “That's all that matters.”
“You will not see them again. Or you will not see us again,” Ygraine replied.
Arthur's hand froze. He didn't bother avoiding a ghost and the words Game Over started flashing in front of him again. He stomach had dropped out at the pronoun his mother had used.
“Morgana is my daughter. I can't just forget about that,” his father replied. Arthur turned up the volume on his speakers and started another mindless round of avoiding colorful ghosts.
He could no longer hear the argument, but he didn't need to. His mother, for all the horrible things she could say to and about his father, always eventually compromised when it came to an argument. Arthur can't even count the number of times he heard her say, We'll make it work, we have to. For Arthur. Sometimes, when he came home from school and found his mother immersed in some mindless TV show with a glass of whiskey in her hand, her legs curled up under her, her face gaunt and tired, he felt guilty. Other times, when Father took a day off and spent it with them, and they sat together at the huge dining table, enjoying a family meal, joking and laughing and talking, he felt proud, like he was somehow responsible for preserving something special.
~*~
Morgana takes a sip of tea from her travel mug. “You're doing what now?” she asks. Her eyebrows do this weird thing where it looks like they can't decide if they want to go up or down. She holds the mug to her face, covering her lips, but Arthur is pretty sure she's smirking.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get it out of your system,” Arthur says. He watches two pigeons fight over a crumb of his croissant. “I'm teaching. Temporarily. Very temporarily.”
“The one thing you always said you'd never do,” Morgana replies. She's definitely smirking now.
Arthur shrugs, throwing another crumb to the pigeons. “I'll suck at it anyway,” he says. “It's good the whole thing is only gonna be, like, a few lectures.”
“Like a few lectures?” Morgana makes a face at him. “Didn't you, like, negotiate some conditions with the university?”
Arthur rolls his shoulders and rubs his neck, uncomfortable. He takes his foam cup of coffee from the bench. It's still warm, thankfully.
“Oh my god,” Morgana almost shouts. She punches his shoulder a little harder than Arthur hopes she was planning. “You're avoiding them!”
“I'm not avoiding anything.” Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose. He knew going to Morgana with this would be, well, less than pleasant. Another thing he knows is that eventually, she will end up telling him something useful, because that's what Morgana does.
Morgana rolls her eyes at him. “Oh, please, Arthur, you're freaking out and ignoring the problem. It's what you do.” Arthur rubs his temples. He knows Morgana is right, which is precisely why it stings so much. “Please tell me you at least agreed to go.”
“Why do you even care so much?”
Morgana's shoulders relax. She drinks some more tea. “You're rattled, Arthur. Something is up, and you might not want to tell me what, but something is definitely getting to you. Which is precisely why you have to do this, because if you're avoiding it, it's probably important.”
One of the pigeons is getting dangerously close to them. Morgana hates pigeons. Arthur throws a crumb as far away as he can.
Sometimes Arthur feels like Morgana knows him too well for his own good. She knows him better than he knows himself, and it's scary. It's disconcerting because Arthur can lie to her all he wants, but no matter how good a lie he comes up with or how convincingly he tells it, he's never quite sure if she believes it.
He's always been awfully suspicious concerning how much she knew about how his relationship with Merlin ended. She never asks him about it and never brings it up, but subtle hints over the years and the looks she gives him (the disappointment that he's so tired of getting from everyone, tired of feeling every day) when she thinks he's not looking are more than enough for him to realize that she knows more than she's willing to admit. He only wonders if she's letting him get away with it because she wants to spare him the conversation or because she wants to spare herself the letdown.
~*~
Arthur's favorite part were the bridges. They extended like arms over the wide river, connecting parts of the city that would otherwise be forever separated. They were tall and elegant and very decorative, but at the same time incredibly strong and sturdy. Sometimes Arthur would look out of their hotel room window and watch thousands of cars cross the Erzsebet bridge and it never even trembled. He imagined how one day he could create a bridge like that, strong and beautiful and inspiring.
It was his father who booked their hotel room and bought their plane tickets and planned their trip. When he suggested a family vacation in Budapest, Arthur was excited, but his mother was... She was more than just excited - she looked at his father like Arthur had never seen her look at him before and she looked like she might cry. His father made an off-handed remark how she'd once said she'd always wanted to see Budapest, making it sound like it was nothing important, but Arthur could see how much it meant to his mother that he'd remembered.
A strange atmosphere had then filled the room and they seemed to have brought it with them as even now the air he was breathing tasted strange. It was the first time in a long time they were taking a vacation together as a family, a proper vacation, not someone's business trip turned opportunity to go sightseeing, but 10 days in a foreign country with all their days free to walk the unfamiliar streets and listen to conversations spoken in a strange new language, 10 days for Arthur to experience something completely different, 10 days for his mother to admire the architecture she'd long wanted to see, 10 days for his father to try to make amends.
It was odd for Arthur to spend so much time with both of his parents together - usually it was just him and his mother, her work hours more flexible, her approach to him more caring, his time with her more pleasant. In Arthur's experience, his father was a distant authority, something his father's business associates who sometimes came to dinner always said made him a perfect businessman, exactly the kind of person who could build a rich empire out of a simple idea. His mother on the other hand was, to him at least, the epitome of a musician - she was always humming to herself, her fingers often forming patterns like they were holding the neck of an invisible cello, the way she moved was elegant and graceful, fluid like the music she played.
And yet, as he walked down the Vaci street, a few steps behind his parents, he wondered if everything he knew about his parent was actually true. His mother was dragging his father around, taking turns down seemingly random alleys, pointing to various buildings, rattling off facts about them like it was nothing; she sounded knowledgeable, certain, like a teacher lecturing a student on a topic she enjoyed. His father followed around dutifully, indulging her with a smile, looking more carefree than Arthur ever remembered seeing him.
On several occasions, Arthur noticed tension between them, when one of them said something that, by some unspoken agreement, they were not supposed to. For the most part of their entire trip, it seemed like they were, all three of them, once again a close and happy family, not just pretending at it for the sake of appearances. It was a change, but certainly not an unwelcome one.
~*~
“Exactly how scared of these students are you?” Gwen asks, chuckling in his ear. She scratches gently at his chest, her hands under his shirt.
“It's not the students,” Arthur replies, turning his head to brush his lips over Gwen's cheek. “It's the whole going back to university thing.”
“You enjoyed university!” Gwen counters, standing up. Her hands find their place on his shoulders and squeeze gently. “Mostly,” she adds teasingly. “You were a bit of a nerd.”
“I seem to recall that you liked me just fine even then,” Arthur prods back. He likes having some playful banter with Gwen, it relaxes him.
“I was doing you the favor of offering my company to brighten up your lonely days,” she says. She spins his chair around to face the bed as she slowly backs away from him. She opens her robe slowly, looking him straight in the eye.
Arthur licks his lips. “Well, I appreciate that.” She's wearing simple black panties and a purple bra with white lace. She hooks a finger under one of the bra straps and pulls on it so it slaps against her skin. She bites her lip. Arthur unbuttons the top button on his shirt. Gwen leans over and kisses his neck. He can see her hands on his knees, but he doesn't feel them. He sinks a hand in her hair.
“You'll be fine on your own this time,” she says, “don't worry about it so much.”
Arthur slides a bra strap down her shoulder. “I just keep thinking...” He kisses her shoulder. “Helena is the Dean now, did you know?” He bites her at the same time as she pops another button on his shirt. “And I'm taking Gaius' classes and... I know these people. It feels like I'm going back to school.” He doesn't admit what really bothers him, which memories he's afraid of revisiting. She doesn't suspect anything. She has no reason to.
She puts a hand on his cheek gently and looks at him with a smile. “It's been more than 10 years, Arthur. I'm pretty sure things have changed.”
~*~
In the long history of awkward family dinners, this one was promising to take the crown as the worst one ever.
Arthur picked at his food, doing his best not to look up, stupidly hoping that if he didn't make a sound, they'd forget he was even there. His mother was sitting next to him, and her knee was pressed against his, an unmoving, solid and certain comfort that both helped him and reminded him that no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't just evaporate from his seat.
A pair of knives and forks clicked as his parents ate, but Arthur couldn't bring himself to taste the vegetables in his plate. Across from him, Morgana appeared to be of like mind.
It had been a pleasant evening several days ago when the phone call came. Owain and Lance had both come to spend the night at Arthur's and they were playing on Arthur's new computer when the phone rang. Arthur had thought nothing of it until his mother knocked on his door some time later, when Leon had already long fallen asleep and Lance had just gone to shower, leaving Arthur alone for the first time all day. And that was when Arthur knew something had happened.
His mother took him downstairs where his father was bent over the coffee table in the leaving room, going through some documents. Arthur assumed he was working so he was confused about what he was doing there. His mother cleared her throat and put a hand on his shoulder. When he looked up at her, he noticed she was pale, that her lips were barely more than a thin line and her eyes red.
“Arthur,” his father said, his voice oddly strained. His mother's fingers tightened on his shoulder. “Please, sit.”
And Arthur did. He sat through his father's entire story that at times sounded like he was justifying himself, and at times like he was accusing someone, the story of a woman and a girl whose names Arthur had only heard once in his life, but never forgot. He pretended that he had no idea who they were, pretended that the sentence Katrina... she's unwell, she won't be able to take care of Morgana anymore didn't scare him half to death because he knew, he knew that his father wouldn't be telling him this if he didn't absolutely have to know. He pretended he was surprised that Morgana would be living with them from then on, but really, by that part in his father's speech, he was expecting that, seeing it in his mother's stiff posture, in how she left the room with balled up fists.
And that was how Morgana had ended up in his house, at his table, eating with his family. His father had gone to the funeral alone, in a neatly pressed black suit, and come back with a tall, pale girl, not much younger than Arthur himself, in tow.
Arthur wasn't sure what he had expected, but somehow their arrival had caught him completely off guard. Unsurprisingly, the three days leading up to it that he had spent playing games didn't quite prepare him for meeting Morgana. For some reason, Arthur had thought it would be easier. But then his father was walking through the door with this complete stranger who was suddenly supposed to be his sister and Arthur was shaking with anger. Morgana didn't look like she'd been crying, she didn't look much like anything at all, her expression was so bland and indecipherable, her voice even when she spoke, was the same. Arthur hated her instantly.
And now she was sitting across from him, disinterestedly running her fork over her food and for a moment, Arthur almost sympathized with her. But then he looked at her face and saw in it the resemblance to his father, and he remembered all the arguments he'd overheard over the years, all the times he'd seen his mother cry and any connection he might have felt forming between them disappeared to be replaced by red-hot rage and burning hatred.
~*~