[2] WEEPING MONK║you're not what I was looking for

72| Arianne and Lancelot - III

Happy New Year!

[TW/ Blood. Major wounds. More blood. Major character death]

The hysterical call of his name snapped Lancelot from his own panic as he couldn't find his feet. He was more than just wet, but sopping with water sluicing off of him as he tried to catch a single breath, surrounded by froth and swirls of blue luminescence in the water. He'd never woken up from what felt like sleep submerged under— where was he?

The war.

Did they win? Was it over? All of that didn't matter as much as his need to know if Ari was alright.

"Lance!"

His eyes blew wide as he saw her running through the shallow water towards him, the salt of his own tears of confusion rolling down his face with the remnants of the lake water. She'd made it. This day hadn't taken her.

His relief couldn't be put in to words. All that he knew was that he needed to get to her.

The leather of his tunic was too heavy to swim in and he shucked it off, surprised to find it already halfway unbuckled, followed by his coat. What his nose confirmed to be blood covered the grey shirt that he'd been given by Sir Henry, around a threadbare rip.

The arrow. He'd taken the fall, he knew that much. He shouldn't be alive.

He swam as hard as he could and waded forward, meeting Ari chest to chest as they collided. She sobbed in his arms and Lancelot groaned from the bruised feeling of his ribs, but held her tighter.

Gods, he was never going to take her embrace for granted again. Every day, from now on, he wouldn't let anything stop him from holding her.

"I thought you were dead! I— I didn't know what to do—"

Lancelot cupped each side of Ari's blood splattered face as firmly as he could without hurting her and looked her in those watery, red, golden eyes. "You saved my life."

His body felt more alive than it ever had done since he was a boy— as if years and years of hurting and pain were nothing more than a memory.

"I don't know how," Ari said through a watery laugh. Her death grip upon his shirt tightened and dragged him into her embrace again so tightly that their bodies might fuse together.

Her hand came up onto his hair, holding his head to her as he buried his face within her neck and breathed in that salty, sweaty, hard earned scent of her. Fingers pushed up higher through the wet knots and Ari pulled back sharply, gasping.

Lancelot looked at her in horror as she gaped at him. Was she hurt? What had he done? He drew his hand away reluctantly from her waist and brought it up to the back of his head where she'd touched, pulling it away again like it had been burned.