amari_z | King Arthur Draft fic: "The Dream of Home"

Title: The Dream of Home
Author: amari
Warnings: None
Notes: Draft. I'm setting this one free for now. I'm not sure any longer if I'm torturing it or it's torturing me, stupid little thing. It doesn't seem quite right, but I'm tired of it. Any scoffs, aid or reassurances welcome. : )

When Lancelot was younger and the colors of home were still vivid in his memory, he sometimes dreamed that by some chance or wonder he had escaped this place. In his dream, he would cross the gold grasses under the radiant, infinite sky and his horse would run as if it could fly. Then, like a smile from the earth itself, he would see the brilliant-hued tents of the home camp. And at last he would see them, his family, their smiling faces growing clearer and clearer. The joy would rise in him until it seemed his heart would burst, and he would be home where arms would be outstretched to catch him as he flung himself from the saddle. But before he touched—

He would awake to the dank British air. The mornings after these dreams would find him foul tempered and razor tongued, as though he had to resign himself to this place all over again. Even so, each night he longed to dream.

But as the colorless years trudged on, his family’s faces grew dimmer and dimmer, and eventually the dream itself changed. By the time Lancelot had survived Britain for half his allotted span, he would dream that the faces of those waiting before the home camp were strange and their expressions hostile and closed. “But I’m Lancelot!” he would protest, desperately searching their eyes for recognition. A man, somehow both unknown and familiar, would refuse him. “You are not Lancelot.” His voice was like thunder and his eyes would gaze through the dreamer as though reading beneath his flesh. “You are naught but a killer.” The gathered people would look at Lancelot in disgust and fear before turning away.

Lancelot would wake from these dreams with a scream of denial clenched behind his teeth. On those nights he would slide carefully out of bed so as not to wake Arthur, for he wanted none of Arthur’s words, and he would get drunk in some dark corner of the fort. It was on those nights that Lancelot wondered if it would be better to die in this dull land than to see what it was he was becoming—had already become—reflected back in his family’s eyes.