pale october twilight

sgetober day twenty two: tedros

Dear Sophie,

I'm sorry I haven't wrote you in a while. As you know, me and Tedros were traveling Camelot and the other kingdoms after the attacks on the quests. We were giving aid. Thank you for coming to meet us at Four Point to give us aid, I can't thank you enough.

I got to Camelot a while ago, per Tedros' request, and have been catching up on everything while he's still in Foxwood-

I'm just realizing how fake I sound. It's just, you said I seemed off in my last letter, and I'm embarrassed to explain why.

The truth is, I can't help to think he sent me away on purpose. There's not as much to be done as he's said, Beatrix and Reena have been great help. It just makes me feel useless when all I have to do is sit in the cold room surrounded by all these advisors and sign aimlessly away on bills for maintenance and fields. I'm trying to trust him like you said, but he's pulling away. I don't blame him, of course not. His father was the rug he stood on, and it's been pulled out from under him. Is it possible it's too late for me to trust him?

No, maybe not, but maybe too late for him to know. We haven't been more then allies in letters. Recovery has no business, being this hard.

A while ago, there was only been two people Tedros had been real with, which was me and his mother. I'm the only one besides Guinevere who sees all the heartbreak and loss and anger and resentment he's got stored up inside. And he's still distant with her after everything. He shows her, but she doesn't know it and see it like I do. He lets me see it, all of it. Every fucked up feeling, angry, broken, human bit of him that he can't let anyone in the world see? I get it.

Neither of us feel like we belong here, in Camelot, in the story, anywhere. So we try to earn it. It's not just a quest, it's what our own worthiness rests on.

We're both idiots, honestly, with all this self doubt and inadequacy, and fuck, Tedros' trusted me to be there with him through it. As his queen. As his rock.

I broke that.

Because I don't know if I can say I love him like I used to.

I don't think I have that right anymore.

When Lance died, when his father's sons were revealed, when he couldn't even trust his mother anymore, when he couldn't even talk to Chaddick anymore, I couldn't just step back and let him come to me.

I was all that was left. And then, I wasn't there. It doesn't matter why, if it was for some noble cause or something like I've heard it said, it just matters that I wasn't there. He doesn't trust me to be anymore.

I haven't heard from him in weeks. No one has.

He's not the same anymore. We're not the same. Hell, are any of us?

Agatha