Still not enough.
-GUIN-
Galahad paused at the door.
“Percival is here to relieve me for the next hour,” he said, but he didn’t bother looking at me when he said it. He was already checking the latch, already somewhere else in his mind.
“Where are you going?”
“To the chapel for my prayers,” he answered but still didn’t bother turning around. “Don’t mistake Percival’s kindness for weakness.”
Then he was gone, and the door closed with a sound that felt somehow like an ending. I sat on the edge of my cot as Percival came in quietly, the way he did everything. There was never any announcement, never any performance to anything he did. Instead, he took his post beside the door and the room rearranged itself around him. Where Galahad’s presence had weight and cold authority, Percival’s had something harder to name. He was simply there, but in being there, he was blank even if he was entirely present. But he was present the way a witness is present.
He didn’t look at me,wouldn’tlook at me.
I watched him settle into his stance: his shoulders loose, hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes on the door. Surprisingly, my chest did something I hadn’t given it permission to do.
I suddenly remembered a moment I hadn’t thought about in a long while. This was back when I’d been Lioran, and the two of us had passed a whole evening together, Percival teaching me the names of the stars. Not because I’d asked him to, exactly. More because I’d mentioned, offhand, that I’d grown up in the hills and never had anyone to teach me the names of the stars. Percival had pulled me out to the eastern wall walk after the evening meal, and he’d pointed at the sky for an hour as he’d regaled me with stories of the gods and the stars they were named for. I remembered how he’d had this way of describing them like they were old friends he was introducing.
That cluster there: that’s the Goddess Trinad’s belt. And that one, the three in a line: that’s called the Shepherd’s Crook, though Kay calls it the Drunkard’s Staff, which I think is unkind to both shepherds and drunkards.
“Percival.” I only said his name. But I said it the way I used to say it, and I wondered if he noticed that.
“My lady.” Two words in response, but his eyes remained on the door.
I let the silence sit for a moment. Then I tried again because I was me, and I couldn’t help it.
“Do you remember what Kay called the Shepherd’s Crook?”
A pause.
“Yes.” One word, and his eyes never left the door.
The room was very quiet. Outside, somewhere down the corridor, two guards were talking about a horse, and I heard every word of it. And I wished just a few of those words would come from Percival instead.
In the obvious silence between us, I started going through the list of the people I’d betrayed in Camelot the way you pick at a wound. Of course, first and foremost was Arthur. But that one didn’t upset me. I still felt towards Arthur the way I’d always felt towards him. A hatredmixed with desire that was completely unhelpful. The harm against him was real, but the math was complicated, and complicated things are easier to carry.
Then I thought of Lance and the history between us that was less black and white. I felt guilt over that one, even as I also realized what had happened between us was inevitable. What was more, I could look at Lance and argue, at least to myself, that whatever I’d taken from him was something he’d overcome because he was precisely who he was. A warrior. A mountain. He was a man who didn’t sway from things like emotion, I was convinced. It was just as he’d said it was: that I was dead to him. And that was the end of that.
But Percival. Percival was a different subject altogether. Percival was a guilt, and it was one that hurt. And it hurt precisely because of the fact that he’d introduced me to the stars. He’d told me about his gift once, quietly, on a bench in the rose garden because I’d asked what it cost him, and he’d answered honestly instead of deflecting like everyone else did. Percival had seen through Lioran from the start: not the lie of the name or face, but the loneliness underneath all of it. He’d seen me for me, but he’d decided to be my friend anyway.
And I’d let him.
That was the thing I couldn’t argue my way around. I’d known what I was doing, but I’d still accepted his friendship. I’d known about the fact that eventually, I’d backstab him, even when I laughed at his jokes, when I told him something small and true to make him feel trusted, when I let himmeansomething to me because it made the mission easier to bear. I allowed him to become my friend because I wasn’t strong enough to keep him at arm’s length. And also because he was genuinely the kindest person I’d ever met.
He wasn’t wrong to be done with me. That was the part that sat the heaviest in my chest.
“I didn’t expect to miss it,” I said.
My voice came out even. I hadn’t planned it to, but there it was. Of course, he didn’t say anything, but I hadn’t expected him to.
“Your friendship,” I continued. “I just... want you to know that... I... I didn’t expect it to hurt as much as it does.”
It wasn’t an apology. I wasn’t sure I’d earned the right to one yet, but it was just a statement that in my own mind had to be said. So, I put it in the room and left it there.
And it was met with silence. He adjusted his stance, and his weight shifted from one foot to the other. Then he squared his shoulders, and the conversation was over. Not dismissed, just absorbed, filed somewhere I would never have access to.
And then, just once, he looked at me.
