Love, Distrust, and Fairy Dust

A Wife Against All Odds

Queen Rose sat in the luxury armchair that rested behind her husband's desk as she dreamt of better days. The familiar trickle of the tumblers in the study door roused her from her memories, the heavy wooden door opened enough to allow the entrance of one weary individual. Her husband.

King Hadrians took one look at his wife, a mix of love and fear haunted his eyes before he stumbled to the floor.

Queen Rose shot across the room her fabulous wings igniting the room with a wash of color. She landed and kneeled next to her husband who was trying to right himself and failing. When she reached her hand out to help him he slapped it away and fell back to the floor.

"Curse this nonsense! King against the kingdom even his wife is a silly a tradition!" The Queen spat.

"I must observe all the-" the king broke into a fit of coughs as he tried to catch his breath.

"To the dung pit with that notion, we are in this together. This is our daughter and our kingdom, we broke tradition with our marriage, we'll break tradition again with our love." She pulled him to his feet and practically dragged him to his chair.

The king laughed between coughs. "You were never very traditional were you?"

"And neither were you, why are we starting now." She set him in his chair and started examining him for visible wounds before she started looking under his shirt afraid of what she might find. "Ok baby, breathe, you're safe here, just breathe." She mothered.

Queen Rose's stubbornness always amazed Mordred, and her touch always melted him, even after all these years of marriage he felt like a teenage school boy in love with his long time crush. It was part of the reason he was hoping to keep her at a distance, he couldn't be the same compassionate king he had been up to this point. He needed to steel himself for the purge of the Inquisitor King.

Queen Rose unbuttoned his shirt and found no damage, not even the pinkish tint of a healing. "Are you hurt my love I can find nothing amiss?" She peeled the shirt from his sweaty torso and felt for broken bones.

Mordred cursed her hands they were tender and soft and any villainy he had tried to embody left him. He reached to grab her roaming hand and held the precious token over his heart. "They didn't lay a single finger on me. You know that there is only one who has ever been able to strike me."

The Queen grasped the Kings gentle touch and basked in having her Husband back.

"Well, I guess there is two now." Mordred lifted his free hand to touch the bruise over his eye.

The Queen registered that information in a new light. The only person who'd every landed a solid strike on her Husband during the war was the Kingslayer, now known as King Arthur the Benevolent. The only other person was the human that he had championed for their daughter.

"That reminds me," Mordred pulled a small square box out of his pocket and started tapping on it with his thumb incessantly.

The Queen watched as Mordred communicated with the strange human technology, it wasn't often that he used it as a fairy but when he did it was always important. It was a marvel that it shrunk with him and still retained its full functionality while he was a fairy. She wondered what could be so important, then considered the circumstances and wondered what he'd do that wouldn't be important.

Then the box began to quiver. The Queen watched as the dim light sparked in her husband's eyes. He answered and the Queen watched the curious reaction of her Husband, it was a mix of mischievousness and humor.

"Hello?" he answered.

The voice mumbled and the Queen couldn't hear exactly what the voice on the other side call was saying, but she caught the subtle rumble of a young man's voice.

"She's awake, and giving you grief I take it?"

The Queen couldn't even gasp she was too surprised, Mordred was talking to the Champion protector of her daughter, the same man that struck him. One of the two beings that could strike the powerful King Hadrians, she remembered meeting him and pictured his face but had trouble imaging the boy capable of such a feat.

The voice spoke again but Rose didn't catch it.

"Let's see, today is Thursday. I have your shifts covered until next Tuesday." The kings smile clashed with the bruise over his eye and her feelings toward the brute. Who was this man? She wondered. She tuned her ears so that she could catch the rest of the conversation.

"One last thing," the Champion said.

"Yes?" Her husband responded.

"I really hate you." The Champion said before ending the call.

The Queens brow furrowed, who dared talk to the King like that, and yet her Husband looked fondly at the box before looking at her with a spark in his eye she knew all too well.

"That poor boy is in for a lot worse than me, I'm afraid." Her husband smiled mischievously.

"You put a lot of faith in that 'Boy.' Too much, some could say if they knew."

"I remember not even a generation again our entire kingdom put their faith in a boy." The Kings smile weakened from the exhaustion.

"But that was different."

"Was it really so different? A boy, barely the age of a man, goes through life shattering hardships with the weight of the world depending on him. Loved by those around him, wielding the power to combat a king, a strong will, a desire to protect those closest to him, and taunted by a girl that could never be his. I'd say their stories are pretty interchangeable if you ask me."

"Baby that's not-"

"Forever in love with a world that could never be his because of the crushing weight of someone else's. Alone in a world that will never understand him."

"..."

"Tested by his enemies, betrayed by those who should have been closest to him. Living a life as half a man, one broken half, and one lost to world he lives in. Fighting every day for meaning and the strength to go on because the world might do worse than stop without him."

"Baby..."

"Dead but still breathing as half a man in darkness, until..." Mordred choked back some tears as he caressed his wife's face. He spoke slow and softly so his voice would touch only her ears. "Someone could see him, not as he was or as others wanted him to be. But as someone who only needed to be coerced out of the darkness with a gentle hand. To be shown that he could," tears rolled from his eyes, "he could give himself a place in the world. Take his role and make it his own."

Rose's tears rolled forth at Mordred's slow careful description. Mordred used his thumb to wipe at her tears as each one beaded and rolled down her cheek.

"He's strong, tenacious, honorable, and kind. He will protect our daughter as well as I ever could. Please believe in me." Mordred's resolve broke and wept in his wife's arms.

She held him while he sobbed, she'd only seen her husband cry like this a handful of times, and a whole new meaning of understanding opened regarding her husband's relationship with their daughter champion and both their responsibilities. She also knew that his request to believe meant so much more than her husband asking for his wife's faith. He was asking for his own.

Rose resolved to trust her husband, and the champion. To believe in both of them.