━━ ⦗the swan princess! ⦘
❝ you're beautiful!
thank you, but what else?
... what else is there? ... ❞
███████████ 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝
the courageous odette teaches the
once and future king a less...
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chapter twelve! 012. act of kindness
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ARTHUR DIDN'Twant to die.
He refused▬he was too stubborn to die here, in this darkness with no company except for the sound of scuttling spiders in the distance, slowly making their way towards his dangling figure with revenge on their fangs. But there was a terrifying moment where he believed that this would be it. That he wouldn't make it back to Merlin▬that he'd perish here, and leave his kingdom without anything; alone and ... and scared in this endless darkness.
Fear didn't make someone a coward if they acted against it, he knew that. Arthur didn't feel like a coward, he felt like a failure. A failure to himself, to his father and his kingdom, but most importantly, a failure to the boy lying on his death bead across the slopes and back in Camelot.
He struggled to stay holding on, his arms trembling and his breath just as quivering▬he strained his arms to keep himself from falling, his gloved fingers grasping so harshly on the stone it started to cut through the leather and make his skin sting. Arthur grunted, his legs kicking for some other support, but they fell short.
He couldn't let go. He wouldn't let go.
But he was getting tired. He couldn't hang there forever, no matter how his stubbornness deemed he will.
Arthur had little hope. His fingers were aching, as were his limbs▬his chest pained from hitting the rock when he jumped, and he knew those beastly things with eight legs were getting closer and closer. There was no hope, right now. He couldn't see where he might climb▬nor could he see where this damned flower was. There was no hope. Arthur didn't want to die, but his death was the only rational thing here right now.
Strange and unwelcome, a voice▬unusual in his mind▬decided to remind him then and there: there is always hope.
Arthur damned her, too. He wanted to banish her nativity and dreams from his mind right now. But as soon as he heard her voice, he heard it again▬just as stubborn as he. She was waiting back home, too, begging that he'd come back with the cure for Merlin▬hoping with her dangerous faith for the impossible. He imagined her there, right now, tending to Merlin's fever just as she had been when Arthur first set him down; her blonde hair falling out of the twist she kept it up in, her eyes narrowed as if she was telling Fate itself to change its mind. Just as annoying, determined and frustrating as she always had been. There is always hope, he heard her again.
God's graces, if Arthur somehow survived this, he was never going to admit that it was Odette that he thought of moments before he might just die.
(She'd never let him live it down, in her quiet, subtle and mocking ways).
And like that▬with that thought on his mind▬Arthur breathed a strained smile, ridiculous that of all things he could be thinking of, it was of her and her smug pride; and his chuckles echoed softly out into the dark, miraculous and light. He was going to die, and yet somehow, that strange, annoying girl he once knew as a kid made him laugh.
