Endgame: This Broken Jaw of Our Lost Kingdoms; Part Two

[animusmods]

Characters: open
Setting: travelling through dead worlds
Format: any
Summary: The power has gone out, but a portal opens. Maybe all is not lost if you can gather up those who are missing...
Warnings: general animus endgame warnings

Comments

[chevalier_mal_fet]

[It's a habit, a compulsion more than anything else. Arthur's gladness surprises him, and he makes a bow.]

I would say that I had not expected to find you here-- but I know not what I expected to find, in Truth.
I had Hoped to see my Master. But, as we know so well, Hope is not Expectation.

How fare you-- Arthur?

[no_longer_a_king]

As well as can be expected. [She raises her arms to show she is in fact transparent, but does not touch him. No, going through things sends such a chill through her she does not want to find out what going through something alive would be like.]

And indeed, Hope is not expectation, but I've found it a useful thing in my last few months.

[chevalier_mal_fet]

[Yes, Arthur had been their Hope. It would be easy, Now to see her as his King once more. To take her Words and build Hope upon them.

Lancelot finds he cannot quite manage that-- but neither is he moved to take the opposite position from Her, and bend to Despair.]

I have that Hollowness within me, of that lull before the final Push, the receding of the tide before a Storm at sea. You know of what I speak, and it is not Hope, but it is a readiness to Rise.
[He seems to consider for a long moment. When he finally speaks, it is frankly.]

When last we were Gathered in this place, I sought your Life. For all its Evils, this Imprisonment has given me two Gifts, that of my Master's heart, and that of a Peace between us Two, for a Time. Should we Survive what cataclysm may come, perhaps we shall come to blows once more. But no action taken then can render meaningless what has passed.

If such sentiments can be said to be Hopeful, then I suppose that I yet have Hope.

[no_longer_a_king]

[She would not mind if he cannot manage hope. It has been so very long since Arturia felt any hope she clings to what little she has, amplifying it. For the first time in what could have been a decade or centuries or millenia, she has the possibility of freedom, a chance to reconnect with one of the ones most wounded in the past by her mistakes.

He speaks of coming to blows once more. Arturia knows if she ever had to face him as she did in the Fourth Grail War once more, she would not be able to survive it, no matter what the circumstances may be.]

If I had a say in the matter, we would not come to blows at all, Lancelot.

Please believe me when I tell you: I never hated or faulted you or Gwen for your love. If I had not been so blind to anything but the good of the Kingdom, if I had been willing to look into the hearts of others and seen them for the people they were instead of the ideal I wanted them to be, perhaps I would have even aided you. I was a poor friend and did a disservice to you and Guinevere, Lancelot, and for that...

[And then she bowed to him, a hand resting over her heart.]

I am truly sorry.