Genuinely, the week’s endless reveals had brought a certain spring to the King’s step. It felt as if luck itself had wrapped her arms around him with a stern determination, granting him his dearest wishes in seeing those that he loved most another time, where perhaps they all could find what they sought more than anything in their lives before this Diaidem and her frozen world let them rise from their ashes.
Bedivere was the first to blanket him in a sense of security by presence alone, then Tristan, what felt like a breath after. Faces he adored, coming so close together, brightening Arthur from the inside out until that light he fought tooth and nail to embody was all he could show. Truly, he felt overjoyed, as if each reunion only worked towards the literal completion of himself, puzzle pieces being fit back to make a proper man once again.
So perhaps, he should have expected who would come next. He thinks upon his new reality as he walks alongside another new villager, always so eager to help those around him. The one with a strong history, with a deep emotion bound so tightly to his very existence that the mere thought of him could unleash an avalanche upon this place of peace from how passionately it all ran.
And yet, he does not expect it. He does not expect to see that all too familiar mess of unruly, purple hair, knelt down to situate his bunk to his liking—that much shows in how the bag in his arms nigh slips from his grasp out of utter surprise, Arthur ungraceful in how he dips to catch it before it hits the ground.
Lancelot rises and turns, then time itself stills.
“...Ah.” He meets him with wide eyes, barely parted lips and a tighter grip on the duffel that had almost escaped him a moment earlier from the very sight of a man he knew, loved well and as deeply as his people, as his fellow knights, as all that is good and right in these worlds. A man that carried his sorrow with the same iron will as Bedivere did, in which Arthur wished to reassure them both, time and time again... and he’s gawking now, isn’t he?
“Lancelot. Good morning. I hope I have not disturbed your adjusting, here.” But oh, how glad I am to see you again.
@launncelot
