psalm_onethirtyone: (Open the Legend)
Soujin ([personal profile] psalm_onethirtyone) wrote2009-01-01 11:13 pm

"There is a Road No One May Follow..."

Things I Bet You Have Never Done:

--been punched in the jugular by a sixteen pound tom turkey. ow. Those boys are stronger than they look. He also smashed my earring to pieces and left a big old red welt on my wrist.

Fic! for [livejournal.com profile] mhari; random Mordred-does-not-cope-with-stuff vignette. Soon to be supplemented by more, if all goes well.

Gwenhwyfach loves the boys. At first he finds it baffling--when they're babies, he's almost himself afraid of them--then charming, and then, as his father chooses a blind eye as the means of dealing with every trouble that comes overwhelms him, angering. He never wanted them, he thinks. She's throwing them in her sister's face, that's the only reason they were born--to avenge some petty grudge against Guenever. They frighten him. Melehan is brilliant at strategy, a silent capable boy who does exactly what he's told. His eyes follow Mordred around everywhere and he hardly speaks. Melou is like Gaheris, which Mordred finds doubly frightening--clumsy, eager to please, unable to do anything really right.

He doesn't want them. He never wanted them. He trains them, he does his best to turn them into soldiers, with Gawain's help because it's only with Gawain standing by that he can stomach them. When he strikes them in the mock battles he hits too hard. Melou cowers, but Melehan never flinches.

They both call him Sir and My Lord. There was a time when he'd have told them to do otherwise, but now he doesn't care. It distances him from them.

(sometimes he thinks unbidden of when they were young, unthreatening as his nephews. He remembers Melou curled between his legs asleep, a smooth dark head on his knee, after a night telling them stories by the fire. Melehan, as sober and serious as ever, sitting quietly by. They both sought his approval in their separate ways, and sought their mother's pleasure. He used to love them. Now they're as foreign and threatening as--he doesn't know what. Nothing in his life has ever scared him so much.)

The day Gwenhwyfach says she's leaving, that she's done, she can bear no more, and she'll take them with her to Lyonesse, he's almost glad. He tells her fine, get out, it's no matter to him. Take them back to her father, get the three of them gone. He doesn't care.

When they've left, he sits alone in the courtyard where he trained them. His children are gone.

For the first time when he thinks of them he feels nothing at all. No fear, no love: nothing is there now. His heart is empty of of it, just as his house is empty of them.

[identity profile] rainbowjehan.livejournal.com 2009-01-03 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
!!! I do, yes. But nowhere near as good as [livejournal.com profile] mhari. if you've never read her stuff, I suggest you hie thee to [livejournal.com profile] arthurian_fic and check it out!