[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

20| Falling {Part One}

═ 𝙁𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 ═

[TW// mild panic/anxiety, referenced near drowning]

Ari tries to prove that she has healed, and a moment of calm brings Lancelot closer to her in a way he had never thought possible.

Ari was awake and fully alert when Lancelot had arrived back in the morning with his catch and some winter berries that he had found amongst the bushes. She seemed to not remember how she had fallen asleep last night, or if she did she didn't care enough to mention it to him.

In truth Ari had remembered, and she was embarrassed. She remembered waking up with her head resting across his thighs, her hand tucked beneath her cheek as the other clutched onto his cloak thrown around her side. Lancelot was the last person she had ever thought would allow her to sleep on them like that. She knew that he likely hadn't ever been in that situation before, so maybe she just had second hand embarrassment for him. Ari didn't want things to be awkward between them so she said nothing of it. He'd already saved her life and she already didn't know how to act around him because of it, this just made things worse.

Whilst Lancelot had gone hunting for their breakfast, Ari talked with Squirrel, knowing that the information would be a little easier to get out of the boy than Lancelot.

"You two were okay whilst I was-" she didn't know which word to use, dying, unconscious... dying?

"...Asleep?" She settled for.

"Yeah, you scared me," the boy poked at the fire briefly with a stick and put it back down into the snow, "But I think you scared Lancelot more." Squirrel looked up to her with his tired little eyes.

Ari wasn't entirely surprised to hear him say that. Lancelot had been growing a little protective over her and she had noticed it. He had taken her hand and begged her not to go, but the way he had been acting since she had woken up was even more protective than before. He was insistent but still careful with her. A part of her was annoyed with all of the sugar-coating and light treading that he was doing, yet at the same time she wasn't. She felt like she was back at the abbey, remembering how in that morning after she saw him in a new light and it shifted something within her. The thought of him caring about her made her eyes sting for a reason she couldn't comprehend and prompted that same something within her to shift again further, you've been alone for long enough. It had just been an attraction before, but now it was turning into something else, something that ran deeper than just lust and she didn't know what to do with it. Perhaps it was just her emotions running on high after narrowly cheating death by a hair's width.

Not without you, he had said, Ari saw how he was breaking before her when he did. She had been more worried about his life than her own, she was more terrified that Lancelot might have drowned like Benni had done when he had rescued her than of the thought of herself dying. It was selfish but she could not face losing another like that, not even Lancelot. She would rather he had left her instead of putting himself in danger.