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

37| To Break Is To Heal {Part Three}

[TW// retrospective childhood trauma, fire, religious fanaticism/abuse, moderate angst, character death, blood and injury, moderate anxiety and panic. Referenced past self-harm]

Lancelot relives his past in the world of the Between.

Lancelot let her go and he watched as Ari found some dead roots and vines on the cavern floor which had broken away from the ceiling above. It wasn't much, but with her fire it would be enough. As she moved around he missed the feeling of how unburdened he felt when she was holding him. Of how he could just be him when he was with her and whatever guard or facade of strength and bitterness that he had to keep around most others could just fall to the ground with ease. She dropped the kindling in a pile close to the rocks and he thought that she might sit but she didn't.

Ari went to where the stone of the Ash folk was sitting in the shallow stream of silent water through the crack in the cavern floor, the place where it had settled after Lancelot had dropped it. She crouched to pick it up in her unbound hands and stood back onto her feet again but perhaps it was a mistake. She could feel his tension from where she was across from him, the hardness of his eyes as they fixated on the stone in her grasp.

Ari saw the hesitance in his face. "It will not happen again Lance, it requires sorcery for the power to have any effect," she told him as plainly as she could to reassure him that he would not have to go through that ordeal again.

Lancelot's jaw was clenched so tightly that the action tilted just into being painful. He had heard what Ari said, but he was not going to be so quick to trust the magic in her hands after what had just happened. He stiffly nodded his understanding, letting his face relax as best as he could though he was still wary.

She brought him over to the rock from the first time they were here in this cavern and they sat down on the ground instead, pressing their backs to it as their legs stretched out towards the shallow pool of water at their feet. Ari leant forwards and lit the kindling with a flame from her palm, then pulled on her woven socks and her boots, lacing them loosely before she made herself comfortable beside him when she was done. They sat close but their bodies did not touch. She did not know what exactly the boundary was in that moment, how much or how little he would want her to give. He had not said anything the entire time since they broke apart, and now he was staring down at his hands in his lap, at their thin lines and light, pale scars like they might hold some answers to the many questions he would have.

Lancelot fixated without thought on the most prominent scar forming across his skin, the newest, pink and irritated and slightly broken by the way he had just reeled. There was a weight in his chest which sunk in the quietness, the trickle of water down the rocks and into the shallow pool not even enough to distract his mind this time. But Ari was beside him, the anchor to his drifting thoughts. She slid her unbound palm into his with a delicate measure, a feeling of rest spreading to replace that weight in his chest. His eyes drifted shut as he felt her fingers run alongside his own, beginning to curve so he curled his too and they were connected together once more, settling over his thigh. The single heavy breath that came from his chest was like he was letting go of his burdens. Setting them free though he knew that day would never truly come.