#morcival

“If it hadn’t been for you, perhaps things wouldn’t have turned out like this.”

While everything has been dipped in the blackness of night, Percival can still make out the tarnished blade of Mordred’s sword gleaming silver beneath the dim moonlight. He can feel the wounds at his sides beginning to sting—hardly enough to get him killed, but they still sting. His breathing is the one sound that manages to break through the poisoned silence, an antidote that has not been administered fast enough.

“And what about you?” Percival asks him. He stabs his sword into the ground and inhales the sweet, rich scent of earth. “What about you? Your own father, Mordred? You’d really forsake your father’s happiness if it meant getting the revenge you wished for—Mordred, or Sir Mordred because you’ll at least be a knight even if you’ll never be a king—this is the man who took you in because no one else would.”

“How can you say that? Your father died long ago. You don’t tread the world I walk.”

(They are chained by that damned Grail, Percival realizes. They are ensnared in the briar of thorns together.)

“Keep trying. For me. For yourself.”

“Why should I have things stay the same for your sake? Aren’t you the one who managed to arrive too late?”

Mordred is all too willing to leave Percival to bleed out to the thorns if it means escape, no matter how many scars he leaves behind. He is willing to wake up from the nightmare even if it means—or perhaps because—leaving Percival behind.

“Like I said,” Percival forces out, “You can do this for yourself.”

Mordred throws his sword down upon the earth, grabbing hold of Percival by the collar.