Mordred #8

Destiny is a strange thing, don’t you agree? Suffice it to say, this is not how I intended things to go. You know, I spent so many years imagining how it would feel to have my father’s life’s blood reddening my sword that I hadn’t really considered what I would do after. Ruling Caemlot was the general thought, but even that lost a certain…something. What could be done, really? Make it less corrupt, make it a bastion of purity and goodness? It can never be done, and even if it could be, I would have little interest in such an undertaking. The only one who could have made a try at it died years. 

Dead, dead, dead. That is the word of the day. My brothers, Agravaine, Gareth, Gaheris-Even Gawain, all dead. My foster-brother Sagramore, dead. My nephews, dead. 

My father-I should have enjoyed killing him, I think. After all, it was the great, promised end to the tale, was it not? The great king killed by his own bastard after a lifetime spent at the extremes of either weakness or brutality. Instead, I felt…empty as I watched him waste away along with me. Perhaps it was then that I realized that, for all those years, all I had ever really wanted was for him to look at me for more than a second. I tried it first as a knight, bounding after him like a stray pup, and then I strove to be his enemy. It was only then, in those last moments that I believe he looked on me as a father, and, in those few moments, I could have almost been the youth of fourteen bounding through the halls of Camelot for the first time again. 

Perhaps it’s for the best that I never walked away from Camlann. After all, it is hardly as if fate intended anything else for me. My part in this affair is over and, whatever else is done, we are both...free now, I suppose. 

Finally.