xregicide-deactivated20140812:
Mordred stopped, placing his vambrace down on the bench, his heart sinking. For a moment he concentrates completely on his armour, how could he answer such a question? Telling her would mean her life and the lives of those whom called Camelot home. An impossible predicament.
The young knight turns to face her, his fingers brushing lightly against the metal of his armour. “I’m not hiding anything” he tells her simply.
They had meant to rape her. She remembers that, now. She’s eaten so little in the past few days there’s nothing in her stomach to come up. Mordred had been stopping them, sword drawn. He’s not garbed in knightly splendour now, but in dark layers that somehow suit him better than the shining silver and red of Camelot. Burying her hands in her hair to hold it away from her face, she gags again, and looks up at Mordred. The rush of blood makes her dizzy and cold. “Why are you here? You left … I left. I’ve been lost.” Her eyes fall on the pile of ashes again. There should be blood on her hands. “Just … leave me here to die.”
He wanted to reach forward but then he remembered the warning. Would it even matter now that he was away from Camelot? “I went back to the way I was,” he tells her simply. “I couldn’t stay and abandoned my post and broke my vow,” Mordred says, glancing away, self hatred welling up in him. “I refuse to leave you to die. Not now, not ever.”
“I’m a murderer.”
Summer should care that he fled Camelot; should be grateful he found her — or she found him; should reach to ease his self-loathing. It’s what she is.
Except what she is is lost under pain and self-hatred of her own. “This,” she gestures limply around the bandit camp, “is what I deserve. Leave me here. Go back.”
