FIC: Fallen

[mharific]

Title: Fallen
Author: Mhari
Fandom: Arthurian
Characters: Agravain, Guinevere
Rating: G
Words: 100
Disclaimer: The words are mine, the characters are everyone's.
Summary: Agravain is fond of his aunt.
Notes/Warnings: Birthday drabble for julietveiled!


She'd always been gentle to them; even to Mordred, which must have cost her something. At first he hadn't believed it. "Do you bear us company, Sir Agravaine," she'd said with her soft smile, and offered him a flower, and he'd taken it distrustfully, waiting for the lightning-flash of cruelty.

But the wonderful thing was that it never came. Mother would speak you soft, puff you with praise and then, having put you off guard, turn on you with sarcasm to lay the bone bare. But Guinevere's kindness was utterly pure. She was incapable of deception.

Or so he'd believed.

Comments

[julietveiled.livejournal.com]

ajf; aejteajt;j a;et GUINEVERE makes me want to sing Camelot all of a sudden, um.

(rite, rite, sirius bizness)

All right. Again, along with the CURSE YOUR SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE BETRAYAL-style shadow that hangs over everything, no matter how silly or light it may try to be, written in this world, I love that every individual is like this perfect model of a particular kind of human. I don't mean archetypes, because that implies that they're stock and 2-dimensional and flat and cardboard, which they aren't, but that they're all so very specifically, peculiarly, recognizably, almost predictably (but more inevitably) human, flawed and mortal and broken and trying. Which gives them such wonderful, dynamic relationships and contrasts between this and that, and her and him, and all of this kind of thing. The line between one queen and another, or the spark between a pair of brothers, or whatever, and all coloured by the code of chivalry, and idealism and heroism and all this sort of grand, inhuman stuff that they're all about to BREAK underneath.

And most of them are incapable of realizing it, or at least, Agravain certainly is, which is why the deaths of him, and Gaheris and Gareth, are somehow more tragic than those of Mordred or Gawain, because you get the feeling Mordred and Gawain at least knew what was happening to them, whether or not it was a good thing, whether or not they could do anything about it (I'm a big fan of the fate motif, can you tell? this is why I keep writing papers on Romeo and Juliet and SCREW YOU, OTHELLO), but the other three -- all of them, everyone, really, but especially these three -- they got completely swept under in the tsunami of everything that happened.

Which...I suppose Guinevere and Lancelot, did, too, but I have less sympathy for them. (Well, some for Guinevere, cause she gets such a bad rap, but no pity for Lancelot. You made your bed, mister, now lie in it. With the queen. Just such a bad idea all around, really.)

... all of this is my way of saying, guh. Thank you. ♥

[moth2fic.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday - and thank you for having a birthday that made mharific write such a lovely drabble!