He cannot help it; there is something to the way her posture changes, something in her gaze that turns that swell of warmth into a warning.
(He thinks, briefly, of the way it sometimes seemed the temperature in the room would change when Guinever was feeling fragile. It was worst, of course, when he came to her after Corbenic, prefacing everything with phrases meant to ease her at his own expense, that yet did nothing of the sort. Guinever and Susan are, in nearly every way, not alike. And yet.)
Lancelot sits back a little -- bracing himself, perhaps. But he does keep her hand in his.
"It was," he begins, "the sort of thing I always expected. The sort of thing that was assumed. I had no lands, any longer, to pass to a son, but that can be changed. Once I came to court, and came to love the Queen, I put all such thoughts aside. None of that was for me. Those were not things I could ever hope for, and that was well enough because I loved her so. Now--"
He stops, makes an effort to make himself not sit rigid, to not anticipate a blow.
"Here I spend time with Sunny, and it is so joyous. I-- the day that some were changed to children, I was with Galahad and it hurt to think I never had him by me as he should have been, that his mother gave him over to be raised the way he was. I would have..." Lancelot stops, takes a breath. It doesn't help. Around the tightness in his chest, he says, "I do not know that I want that. Or that I might. I only know, now, that I kept myself from it and that no good came from it. We all of us were hurt, and then badly wounded, or worse. And now I do not know what I wanted, except that I wanted -- or I would have wanted -- to love them and care for them and ease them, and that I did none of them any good."
no subject
(He thinks, briefly, of the way it sometimes seemed the temperature in the room would change when Guinever was feeling fragile. It was worst, of course, when he came to her after Corbenic, prefacing everything with phrases meant to ease her at his own expense, that yet did nothing of the sort. Guinever and Susan are, in nearly every way, not alike. And yet.)
Lancelot sits back a little -- bracing himself, perhaps. But he does keep her hand in his.
"It was," he begins, "the sort of thing I always expected. The sort of thing that was assumed. I had no lands, any longer, to pass to a son, but that can be changed. Once I came to court, and came to love the Queen, I put all such thoughts aside. None of that was for me. Those were not things I could ever hope for, and that was well enough because I loved her so. Now--"
He stops, makes an effort to make himself not sit rigid, to not anticipate a blow.
"Here I spend time with Sunny, and it is so joyous. I-- the day that some were changed to children, I was with Galahad and it hurt to think I never had him by me as he should have been, that his mother gave him over to be raised the way he was. I would have..." Lancelot stops, takes a breath. It doesn't help. Around the tightness in his chest, he says, "I do not know that I want that. Or that I might. I only know, now, that I kept myself from it and that no good came from it. We all of us were hurt, and then badly wounded, or worse. And now I do not know what I wanted, except that I wanted -- or I would have wanted -- to love them and care for them and ease them, and that I did none of them any good."