asgardeventide | o13 ♔ video / semi-open action

[ Because this picture is pretty and I wanted to share it with you. Shush. ]

[ Arthur hasn't been gone long. Many of you likely wouldn't have even noticed his absence at all. But he is returned now, just over a year older and with a new crown that ~~he may or may not have stolen from Burger King~~ is far more ornate than a Prince's coronet hanging in his hands. He may not be much older but he certainly looks aged. ]

It would seem this realm has not tired of its want for Kings and Queens.

[ A tight lipped smile. King Arthur of Camelot has just come from the middle of his coronation, and he is hardly amused. ]

I would ask a question of you, Travellers, if you care to answer. How many of you believed you would return home following the battle of Ragnarok, as was promised? How many of you were prepared for it? Wished for it?

[ A pause. ]

Are there any among you that held dread for the prospect, and are glad now to remain in this city for however long you might?

[ He did, once. Now, he is not so sure. He rolls the crown in his hands once, shifts. ]

Or - an easier inquiry, if you are not inclined to answer the other. How many have returned to their native realms, despite the unresolved conflict? Those of you that have made my acquaintance or would call yourselves my friends, I ask that you make known your presence.

[ Another beat, another tense smile. ]

I suppose Asgard is not yet finished with me after all.

[ The feed ends there. Arthur can be found walking from the Heimdall district in the direction of Thor, golden crown once more upon his head and his rich red cloak trailing in the dirt behind him. He might seem a bit dazed, as he is trying to fit the memories of Asgard into his memory of Camelot or perhaps the other way around, but he will stop to speak with people if approached.

He hesitates only a moment on the sidewalk before the New Camelot residence. Arthur's not sure if he's still meant to call it 'home.' But after taking the time to look his fill, to try and remember what he already knows, he will finally cross the yard to knock on the door. He no longer has the key, after all. ]

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[ Jo, you're hoping for the man that didn't even know what a text message was a few months ago to pick up on something most people in your age miss anyhow. In fact, he's just about to text back (jokingly) that she missed the "e" in "sire" when he receives the second and ah.

Gods be damned.

She isn't the first of Arthur's acquaintances to come from the Otherworld, far from. In fact, there've been a few he sent there himself wandering the streets, living just down the hall from him, wondering when next he'd have to kill her. Arthur doesn't know whether it's a mercy or a cruelty, to bring the dead to life in a realm caught up in war and strife. This, though, is a question he cannot ask until he takes that journey himself.

Instead, he sends her a text that is perhaps ill-advised, but it's the only thing he really knows, the one thing he is best at. ]

When did you last venture to the firing range?

[ Yes, put a weapon into the hands of the one that may very well have taken insult in your words. Perhaps it is unwise, but Arthur is hardly in the mood for propriety and logic. He has just been crowned King the day after his birthday, been thrust back into a world that defies everything he knows (knew, because everyone he loves and trusts has lied to him), and is in dire need of distraction. The discussion - again, an act of impropriety for sake of reprieve - might suit some, but Arthur has always been more physical than emotional anyhow.

Fortunately, he is quite spectacular at ducking. ]

[She hadn't necessarily meant anything by it - being dead was something she has spent her entire time as Asgard coming to terms with. As far as she's concerned, she's passed that point. She's beyond caring about it, she goes to Heaven, so says Sam, so what more is there to worry about? Wasn't that the point of it all, live life, die, and go to be big place in the sky? She's there, everyone's there, so it's fine. That's what she tells herself, at least, when she's so busy shrugging it off or ignoring it all because there's no real point. But even then, there's a strange sense of emptiness that comes over her whenever anyone talks about going home, back to their worlds. Her home was destroyed with Ash inside it, her mom just barely making it out alive. And then the Apocalypse happened, and then.

Well. She's here now, isn't she?

But that's not true for everyone else. Take Arthur, future king of all myths and legends. The King Arthur, who she had to argue over the merits of firearms and shooting people. Who never liked guns, looked down at her for using them, and now asking about going to go shoot? She doesn't want pity, but something tells her that what Arthur is doing, whatever this is, it's not pity. And it's that thought alone that has her typing out a response.]

Before. [it's obvious that she means before the war. She doesn't have to say it.] But I was planning on going soon. [She wasn't.] If you wanted to come.

Might just do, if you've an arm to spare.

[ Because it isn't pity, or some misguided sense of making reparations. Arthur knows death intimately, as a childhood friend that he will never be rid of. He knows the cost of a life to the grain, knows what it takes to keep a heart beating every bit as well as he knows what it is to feel it stop beneath his hands.

There is no pity, because Arthur knows the hardest part of death is living. For one whose life has been restored after reaching the final rest, what could he possibly have to offer?

No, this is not an attempt to apologise, but rather an exercise in futility, in trying to put one step before the other and keep moving, keep breathing, just breathe, when you know with absolute certainty that one day it will cease. An impossible task, so he besets them another, an easier one, mindless and insignificant, the sort you can easily lose yourself in to forget for perhaps a short while longer.

Time is not on their side. It never has been. ]

I've got plenty. Might even let you pick.

[There's an odd sense of melancholy she feels when she looks at her bracelet, as if there were some bigger picture she was missing. Or just not starting to understand. You have her, a hunter. Nothing more, nothing less, stuck in a world of war and violence as a kind of limbo - as if she knows for certain there's something on the other side. And then there's Arthur, King Arthur, and he's trying so hard just to be. As if he has something to prove.

She runs her thumb over the jewel, over the ridges it makes jutting out from the silver of the band. Part of her wonders if there's something else she should say, if she should try and ask him why, figure out what's wrong or if there's anything wrong in the first place, but she doesn't. Or rather, she can't. Won't. Not the place, not the time, not her place, whatever the reason she doesn't push it. Instead, she slips the device back on her wrist and goes to pack her things. Even if Arthur wants to meet her later, or another day, or some other time, she feels the need to go.]

Terribly generous of you.

[ He smiles faintly, muted, for no one other than himself. And not for anything particularly happy - they are speaking of weaponry, some of the most dangerous he's known in Asgard alongside Rikku's grenades and the gods' magic - but because there is something tenuous and broken here, he thinks, that carries a heavy importance on the fickle strands that hold it together. She, the dead arisen once more, and he, the living cloaked in death, taking the smallest of steps in life. It's that stubborn strength of Men that Arthur believes in so intrinsically, at the heart of everything he does and everything he is.

They are simply too stubborn to stop. She'd said as much herself during the height of the war, and there is something wonderful in that.

And yet, he knows he has to, at least for a time. As much as Arthur wants to charge through and leave everything else behind, as much as he must do so if he wishes to keep moving forward, he knows he has to stop and breathe and find the others. He would like to go now, to return to his youth and revel in the discovery of a new weapon, but he has to face the present first, and that means breathing just a little while longer. ]

Tomorrow morn perhaps, if you're available.

o13 ♔ video / semi-open action

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