Disclaimer: Characters belong to their respectful owners
Fandom: Fate/Grand Order (FGO)
Rating: Teen and up
Pairing(s): Bedivere x Tristan
Genres: Fanfiction, slash
Characters: Bedivere, Tristan
Warnings: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, character death
Summary:
Bedivere visited Tristan on his death bed.
*Title came from the song In All My Dreams I Drown (Jessica Lowndes & Terrance Zdunich, The Devil’s Carnival)
His first sensation when he regained consciousness was the warmth from sunlight pouring through the large oval window, laminating his face.
It was a sporadic sunny day in a long, unending series of overcast skies and heavily pregnant clouds heralding a thunderstorm any given moment. Such a shame the man on the bed, a thick wool blanket covering his emaciated body up to his throat, was in no state to enjoy the rare, invaluable sun generously spilling on his ashen skin. Death, reeking of herbal scents that couldn’t do more than easing a fraction of his pains, was rapping on his door and his stillness, complexion and barely-there heartbeats were all eager to tear it down.
Standing at the head of the bed, Tristan looked down at the comatose man with utter indifference. The first time had been a whirlwind of shock, apprehension and a disgust so profound he had doubled over and retched. Nothing had come out, naturally, but the stale, bitter bile had lingered at the back of his throat like a greasy meal he couldn’t wash down with ale. However, after a hundredth time, Tristan’s eyes had become devoid of any emotions and the dying man stirred his heart as much as a stray pebble on the side of the road.
A thought flashed across his mind, igniting a spark of curiosity in him. He had never thought of trying it in the hundred times before and only now did he wonder why. Such morbid yet tempting notion it was, sweet even, and so unlike the prolonged dread of knowing death was just outside his door, impatiently waiting for the moment the last thread of his life gave out and snapped. It felt like a miniature epiphany, which allowed him a glimpse into a person’s psyche in the split second they hanged in the air before free-falling into unfathomable depth. His fingers, almost translucent in the light, slowly closed around that twig of a neck. Should he snap it for a quick, merciful death, or should he go down the route of good, old-fashioned choking and relish the exact moment life departed from this mortal vessel, not that there was much left anyway?
Lost in his indecision, Tristan almost missed the soft click when the door was unlatched. Almost, for it felt like a mental click that kickstarted the familiar syphoning force pulling him into the flesh he had long abandoned. Pain suffocated him, blinded him for a brief eternity and then subsided, receding to its reserved corner in his mind, where it had dug out with ragged nails and chipped teeth.
Tristan opened his eyes to the cracked ceiling which had seared into his memory as the last thing he had seen in his final moment. It was a one constant in his existence, whatever the hell it might be now; yet instead of stability, it only flooded him with deep, corrosive ennui, murdering him again and again, even when he was already dead. It wasn’t the first time, likely not the last, he had pondered if this was his damnation for all his sins and in a way, it was more brutal than dismemberment or fraying.
His personal, tailor-made hell.
The door groaned like a miserable crone as it was pushed open. With his blurred vision Tristan saw the outline of a character shadowed by the horrendously poor lighting in the hallway. Must be his sweet, demure torturer whom he had severely wronged in life now came back to rule his nightmare.
His beautiful, devoted wife, who had remained a virgin from bride to widow: Isolde of the White Hands.
Tristan sighed inwardly, wishing in vain that he was able to close his eyes like he had done prior to being sucked into his dying body. Nevertheless, his head turned toward the door, a stringed marionette pulled by invisible hand, and he subconsciously counted the seconds until she stepped into the light to reveal her haunting visage.
Tristan’s feeble heart gave a mighty jolt then sank to the bottom of his rib-prominent chest. The visitor he had assumed out of experience to be Isolde bore the face and figure of the man Tristan had been convinced he would never see again, not when he was still locked in this nightmarish loop.
So, a variation. Should he be allowed to let his hopes up for a chance of salvation, of a definite end he had continuously been denied?
Tears pooled at the rims of his eyes. It stung all the way they traveled down his haggard face before dampening his pillow. Tristan wanted to reach out to him but his bones, muscles and even the stagnant blood in his arm had been replaced by lead. Thus he drowned and drowned in the tantalizing despair of yearning for what was just out of his reach.
It was cold and hard when the man cradled his hand, laying limply on the bed, and never had Tristan been more grateful for such a simple, chaste touch. He wanted to reciprocate and laced his bony fingers with metal ones but with the poison having corroded his system, his limbs were no longer his own. Even his tongue felt like molasses in his chalk-dry mouth.
The body was truly a prison to the soul. Tristan sorely missed the short-lived freedom he’d had when standing above his lifeless form, trying to kill it once and for all.
“Sir… Bedivere…” he rasped, his voice like sandpaper rubbing against his eardrums.
He used to be able to sing with the voice of a canary, Bedivere had once complimented when they sat under the star-studded sky of Camelot, passing a bottle of fine wine between themselves.
“My eyes… are not deceiving me?”
Bedivere held his hand in both of his hands and squeezed lightly. “It’s really me,” he breathed, relief soaking every syllable. “I’ve finally made it in time.”
The sun was caught in his eyes, giving them the illusion of jewels when he turned his face toward the window, seeking something in the distant horizon. “It’s the white sail, Sir Tristan. Please hang on.”
Ah, the sails. Tristan knew that it was the white sail, that his beloved Isolde had indeed crossed the ocean to come to his beckon, and perhaps it had greatly mattered in the first dozen times; after that, however…
“How do you know,” Tristan asked calmly, “that I have been waiting for the white sail?”
Pain flitted across Bedivere’s features, causing Tristan to wonder if he had touched a subject he shouldn’t. Of all the people he had agonized in his relatively short life, it was with Bedivere that he had the most regret, if Tristan was honest with himself, and he rarely was. That Bedivere had traveled miles and miles to be in this stuffy room at the moment, holding his hand until he took his last breath was the divine grace he mostly not deserved.
“It was Isolde of the White Hands who had confessed to me when I had arrived one step too late, with her eyes full of tears and her lips stained with blood, for her heart had been torn to pieces in her bosoms,” Bedivere replied, sounding choked. “I had looked at her grief-stricken visage and perhaps the memory had been so haunting that later my mind had sought to recreate it. I was late every time and you were already gone, and I woke up howling, drenched in sweats.”
A dream, huh? Now that he got it. Perhaps to him it was a dream also, the only difference being that it was simultaneously the only reality his damned soul got.
“Somehow this time was miraculously different and I was able to see you alive.”
A fresh drop of tear swelled in Tristan’s eye and was wiped away by Bedivere’s thumb before it had a chance to wet his hollow cheek. He had used his left hand, as though afraid to tear the dying man’s fragile skin with hard, merciless steel, and his palm, pressed against Tristan’s cheek in the most careful manner, was so warm it burned. A sheen of moisture misted over his clear eyes, which produced a different kind of throb in Tristan’s poisoned chest.
“Not for long,” Tristan wheezed.
“Just long enough.”
To bid farewell. That, he implied rather than said.
“How many times?”
“I’d lost count after a while, powerless as I was to put an end to this recurring nightmare.”
Tristan looked into his eyes as he said, “To me it has always been the black sail no matter what. The white sail is not what I as a sinner deserve. This, however, is.”
He tried to gesture at his body but his hand wouldn’t budge. The blanket felt like a boulder on him.
“Don’t deprecate yourself, Sir Tristan. You were an honorable knight and a good-hearted man. One of the gentlest souls I’ve been fortunate to know in my life.”
“A good man wouldn’t hurt others and I have, repeatedly. I did hurt you.”
He was going to do it again. Tristan was certain.
Speaking pained him, sapping his last ounce of strength, nudging him closer to his inevitable demise; yet he continued, even if his lungs were being incinerated with each breath he took. “But you forgave me, you always did, and you are here, giving me solace when my life reaches its conclusion. Perhaps there is hope for salvation after all.”
A tear landed on Tristan’s skin, stinging like a drop of melted wax, as Bedivere leaned down and softly kissed his cheek, lingering for a while. Tristan lamented his inability to feel the velvet of his lips, something he had fantasized about more than once, a mortifying secret he’d buried deep within his heart. Death was creeping up his body, starting with his toes, a feeling he had grown accustomed to after going through it time and time again. There was no escape from its clammy paws as they claimed him inch by inch. Bedivere’s grip became crushing and he barely had enough lucidity to hear his bones complain. With a morbid desire Tristan wanted him to pour more strength in so that his bones would shatter and he would inscribe the pain in his mind and carry it with him to whatever waiting him beyond death.
“To be able to see you, my dearest friend, one last time is the final blessing I’ve never dared to dream of. I’m glad, I truly am.”
“So am I, Tristan,” Bedivere mumbled, pressing Tristan’s hand to his cheek as if trying to transfer his life and heat into the cold, deceased flesh. A pointless act. “I will thank the gods every day of the rest of my life for granting me this miracle.”
Tristan’s eyelids were weighed down by lead and he had never fought so hard to keep them open. He would see Bedivere’s face till the very end.
“If there was a second chance in life, I wish to once again fight by your side.”
“I wish the same.”
Death had reached his jaws so the smile Tristan forced on his face should look ugly, bizarre. Nevertheless, Bedivere smiled back, his skin flushed, his eyes bloodshot. Tristan’s greatest regret was that he had never found the courage to fight his cowardice and tell his friend that his smiles had been the brightest sparks in his bleak life full of mistakes and broken promises. He made an oath to tell him when they met again. If they would ever meet again.
At last, Tristan succumbed to the spell of sleep descending on his eyelids.
…
His first sensation when he regained consciousness was a gentle tug. Surrounding him was a viscous black that intended to drown him yet somehow took pity on his soul and didn’t. Amidst darkness was a single string of golden light which he could trace back to his ring finger (he was surprised that he had fingers, let alone light, flexible ones). It wound snuggly around his digit, pulsing like a beating heart and tugging. Naturally Tristan followed it to see where it ended because what else could he do, alone and lost in boundless darkness?
There was a distant echo growing clearer and clearer the more he followed the string. His heart contracted in his chest, free of ache by the vicious vines of the poison and filled to the brim with sweet, indescribable anticipation as he recognized the voice — the one constant in a myriad of dreams in which he had drowned again and again in his memories.
Blinding white light engulfed Tristan’s being at the end of the string and he had but a second to prepare himself before the familiar force dragged him into a waiting vessel. This time Tristan let it take him with nary a fight.
The man standing before him hadn’t aged a day from his bittersweet memory. Same smooth flaxen hair styled into neat twin braids, same clear, brilliant eyes the color of polished emerald, same steady gait despite the hungry bites of gales. However, there was unmistakable fatigue in those same eyes, one that resided not in broken flesh and fractured bones, in torn sinews and ripped tendons, but in the soul, persistent and incurable. It gorged out Tristan’s heart and trampled it to witness the spiritual mark of time on his dearest friend.
The circle made up of ancient runes and alchemical signs around him started to dim, signaling the completion of the ritual. Tristan went down on one knee and bowed his head. He began to speak, the words he had never learned much fluent on his tongue, his physical voice clear and foreign to his ears.
“Servant Archer, Tristan of the Round Table, is here to answer your call, my Master.”
The end
This story can be read as either independent work or a sorta prequel to What the Night Brought
Joel 7th's Toy Box 