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

33| Where The Heart Is {Part One}

═ 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙄𝙨 ═

{AN// we're out of the woods so you can relax now, and I love this moodboard very much}

Ari opens up to Lancelot about something that has been troubling her and they both make a decision regarding their futures in the camp.

❖
We all need someone to stay
❖

It was late in the morning. Not much had happened in the days before and Lancelot was thankful for the rest since his first few days here were so hectic and demanding. He'd never had this before. He'd never not been waging a war and such a calm stillness that was now in his life was unnerving. But some odd tick of something in his chest was making him start to feel like he was contempt with being here this way.

It had been five days since his binding and Lancelot had almost remastered his control of his senses, since he didn't have much else to fill his time with as he remained evermore on this stump. It was almost impossible at the start. He had been trained to latch onto their scent, the smell of the Fey kind, and it was surrounding him so strongly in this place that he couldn't shut it out. But he was learning, training himself almost like a switch to turn it on and off.

Lancelot was sat at the edge of the clearing sharpening arrowheads and mending those which were broken, he had even built a few new ones. The Fey elders had requested that he not be allowed to hunt or to really do much of anything that required the particular skills that he was best at, and with an apologetic glance in his direction, Ari had agreed. So he resigned to try and make himself useful in some other way. Gawain offered him this alternative. It was tedious and boring but he did it anyway, thankful of having something however menial to keep his mind occupied.

The Fey still watched him closely as they ought to throughout the days and evenings until he disappeared back to his tent with the boy. He found himself surprised that he had been given more freedom in the first few day's at Ari's camp than he had been given here. With the time to think, he calculated in his head just how long it had been since they had left the Paladin camp. He was puzzled over how so much could have happened in so little time, how he could have gone from what he was then to what he is now in such a short space. It confused him that his emotions could ball up and change so quickly since he'd never been allowed to show them before. He'd always kept them locked far down beneath the surface but now he was starting to loosen his hold on their chains. He was still stoic in his presence around those he did not know, that would never change, but he allowed himself now to feel things on the inside that he once forbid. Two moons ago he had never met Ari, never had feelings for another and now he craved to have her by his side, to hold her. He shook his head to try to get the heated moment where they fell into one another out of his mind but it would not leave him. He didn't want it to leave. This distance between them as she led their people and he was left here was only making him want to be closer.