[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

29| Before The Storm

═ 𝘽𝙚𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙢 ═

{AN// this chapter is only 6.3k (only, lol) so I'm just going to post it all as one}

Lancelot is haunted by his past and Ari struggles to see eye to eye with a valuable asset as plans for their future are tested.

❖
Take my past and take my sins,
Like an empty sail takes the wind.
❖

There was blood. So much blood it was everywhere. Under his nails, staining his skin. It dripped down his sword and reddened the dirt of the earth beneath it. The forest was ablaze, fires everywhere stretching high up into the sky. The heat was sweltering him beneath his grey tunic and cloak as everyone seemed to move around him. Ashes and smoke rose and the air clouded so thickly it was more than just difficult to breathe. He reached his hand out to the flames but they did not burn. They swallowed him whole and suddenly he was trapped. There was no way out and no way home. He lifted his bloodied sword and it was weightless yet burdened with more than he could bare. He did this, this was all his fault. The Weeping Monk, the murderer.

Lancelot bolted upright from where he lay on his side and his hands dug with an impossible grip onto the cot beneath him. He couldn't see anything in the pitch darkness, the wind battering against the tent in front of his face. It was like there was a knife pressed to his throat as he lost control of the air in his lungs. A light huff came from behind him and he twisted faster than his racing heartbeat should allow to the boy across the tent, the child sleeping so peacefully and not plagued by the burdens that were in his own mind.

He darted his eyes over to Squirrel in the dwindled lantern light, fighting with himself to get his heavy chest under control. The tent around him felt like it caved in closer with each uneven breath that he took. He needed to get out, he needed space, he needed air. He needed to get away from the boy.

Lancelot pushed his blanket and cloak off from where they were suffocating his body and stumbled his way out of the tent into the forest surrounding them. His legs felt heavier than they had done for a long time and they rooted him to barely even stand upright in the trail outside. This feeling that he detested came back to bite and it sank its claws into his back, ripping and opening up the wounds of his past life, the one that haunted him in his mind.