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[lord-alexander.livejournal.com]

Title: The Wanderer - Part XIII/XIII
Author: Serpentis lord_alexander
Pairing: Impossibly AU and historical Arthurian!Monaboyd with a few other pairings thrown in for some good measure, aye?
Rating: NC17 *gasp!*
Summary: Dominic hates Saxons, but then who doesn't? Driven out of his home by the invaders, he is a lowly and rather bored young knight at the court of Arthur. William is of the Kingdom of Dal Riada, and comes to the court of Arthur to fulfil his personal destiny. But then what does this matter when death is just a swordblade away?
Disclaimer: Not mine. Even in AU.
Feedback: Almost as precious as my history.
Author's Notes: It's the last chapter. Gods, it's over. It's been a long ride, and one that I've found difficult at some times (actually quite a lot of the time) as it's the most involved fic I've ever written. And the longest, as well. It's like a juggernaut of a monster that snowballed into a huge ravening Godzilla of a fic. Nothing I've ever written has been so huge. But I want to take this last opportunity to thank you for your kind words and feedback, and that so many of youve overwhelmed me with your enthusiasm. Without you, I'd have given up on this as far too hard about seven chapters ago. So thank you, all of you. Sal x

Previous parts - [I][II][III][IV][V][VI][VII][VIII][IX][X][XI][XII]



Dominic gave a small curving smile in his coming wakefulness, turning to find the warm body that had been pressed against his the whole night, and he awoke with a thudding heart and a hand clutching at cool blankets.

William had gone.

Not even the depression of a small neat body was to be found in the straw. Nothing even suggested that Dominic had shared his bed with another, and he stifled a small cry. There had to be some rational explanation, but through the fog of his sleep-addled brain he couldn't even consider. Maybe the Scotti was an early riser? He seemed the type. Maybe he had slipped out just before dawn to greet the pink and purple herald of newness that rose in the east, far beyond to cool, black-green hills? Maybe he was there, those fey-creature eyes turned up to the slow revealing sun, as it gilded his pale skin a rich gold.

Maybe he'd left in disgust.

It jolted something in his throat, and he pressed his lips together and tried to block the sickness that acid-crept into his mouth.

William was religious, after all - it was what made him himself. He was the most God-fearing of souls, coming from that pious Hibernian stock of the Ui Neill. A prince, and a monk, and a warrior, in that woad-streaked package. In later centuries such a man would have been held above all others as the perfect, the most perfect, of crusading knights, but it was over four centuries to the Papal bull of Urban II and the taking of Jerusalem by the Franks and the English. This was still, in essence, a pagan world that was conforming to the ideals of a faith that had its roots where that most ancient of cities lay. And even among those who followed the path in the court of Arthur, such religious fixation was considered either an affectation or a madness.

Most, the huge majority of those who looked at William, considered it his madness.

In that purity, of being untouched and virgin clean for the Lord, William was at one with his Lord. Unsullied by desires of the flesh, or wanton lusts, or the desperation of others to have that cool, self-possessed man, he was alone and unshakeable in his following of the teachings of his true Leader. The Book spoke of not laying with man as with woman, and William, who could read the Bible in the uncial scripted Latin of the monks of his country, believed that implicitly. It was obvious, even to Dominic. The man had rejected the advances of Mordred, who was Saturnine in his dark attraction, and had a mind as fleet as flames across oil. He had succumbed to that night, but there was nothing more, nothing there, that blip in his mind must have been shaken with the coming of dawn.

Didn't it mean anything?

He rubbed a hand across his face and chased the sleep from his eyes, staring up at the great rafters of the roof.

The ridiculousness of this was that Dominic, cynical Dominic who never was emotionally battered by those he dallied with, was torn open. Never used to pursuing, he had never experienced such an attachment to some fellow human. He was the one who left in the morning, leaving their beds cool and lonely. And now, with this having happened to him, he was shocked twofold.

It hurt, to be used.

William had burned into his soul.

A soft moan from Viggo, who turned in his sleep and rubbed his cheek catlike against Sean, and Dominic was tugging on his clothing. He needed to see William. Now. He had to. Whether it was to abuse the lack of manners the man had, or to ask what ailed him, he didn't know, but Dominic was convinced of one thing and that was that he was going to discover why he had been deserted.

*****

The soft, low throaty whistle with that slight foreign wild air was something that those who knew William were aware of. It was his call, that fluting of lips and tongue in a paganistic tune which had turned out, when Andy had asked, to be the tune of a monkish chant. He'd sung it, the Celtic strange and almost understandable, but William's voice had been such that not one of them had paid attention to the words he pronounced.

It was as if birdsong was liquid, and he had drunk of the potion, and all that came from his mouth was the sweetness.

He was grooming his spare, scarred nag, the same which had been half-dead when he rode into Camelot. The creature, rangy and ribbed, was half-asleep as it basked in the low sunlight of the early morning. William had tied his mount outside in the stable yard, and was whisking over quarters that would never gleam in rude health.

Stripped to the waist, the faintest of blue lines tracing his torso, William gave the flank a final brush, and stood back, dropping the straw-plaited whisp to the floor.

It was then he began to saddle his beast, the heavy leather pads placed on the narrow back, leather trappings over the rump to carry belongings, the breast girth placed to give some assistance to the creature. Each piece was fairly crude in design if not in make. The bit that was placed in the horse's teeth was silvered, the leather tanned to the highest quality, the reins supple with oil and care.

Leaving the animal tied up, William left for his own chamber, to gather his belongings.

He couldn't stay. He had to leave.

*****

"Why are you packing?"

The sudden ache that stabbed through the stomach wall was almost hidden by Dominic feigning a casual curiosity.

Armour was lashed together into a neat bundle, the thick woollen travelling cloak that was universal for all in the islands laid on the bed, ready to be worn. Saddle bags were stuffed full, there was nothing in this chamber, it was bare and soulless, like there had never been anyone inhabiting the room. And William? He was dressed for a journey. All in black, like always, he wore his sturdy knee boots rather than the thongings that wrapped about his calves, and a thin pair of flexible black leather gloves that looked so sinister upon his small, clever fingers that Dominic could hardly look at them.

"I have to leave for my country, Dominic of Northumberland. I must away north. I wish that you did not have to witness this departure."

He was going home, he was running away home, and suddenly Dominic was burning with rage. He was being left. He was being left by someone he could quite easily come to like more than like, for the first time in his life. Someone had given him the opportunity to have some semblance of closeness with another human, one that was beyond friendship. And now? Now it was being snatched away by the selfishness of a man who could not face up to his own deeds.

"Why's that? Wanted to fucking sneak away, is it, so you didn't have to say sorry, I fucked up, I shouldn't have let you screw me, Dom? Is that it? Are you too coward to even say that to me, Billy, or were you thinking that if you just disappeared it might be a little less embarrassing for you? Nothing like meeting the bloke who fucked you up the arse the morning after, is it? Get a bit hot and heavy? Oh, you poor fucking religious cunt! Just because the fucking Bible says you can't fucking well screw another lad you're just fucking off. My heart fucking bleeds for you!"

The last was screamed, Dominic's eyes huge and staring and filled with rage-burning anger, before he slumped onto the pallet, head in his hands.

He was playing with his own mind here. One night in bed didn't construe something that had to be kept sacred and followed up on. If that was the crux of the matter, he'd have a thousand permanent lovers. It...hurt. That was the scalding agony of it. It hurt because he'd thought that William was different. He was so impossibly good, so religious, his pious nature creating a calm, kindly man. Under that, however, were those passions of centuries of pagan blood, and he'd felt that before. The first fight, when William had cowed others with the woad on his skin and his almost Pictish desire for blood and victory. In battle, defending Andrew to the other man's death. Under DOminic, sweating and moaning and whispering for more in that sweet, mead-rich accent. That self-assurance of the righteous, combined with the layers of his real nature, all under that pale flesh, all shown in the green eyes and the curl of that impossibly pretty lower lip.

"Dominic..."

A hand touched his shoulder, and he shrugged it away, but it gripped more firmly and remained on the tenseness of muscle.

"I really thought that it would be special, you know? Maybe not like Andy and Lij, or Sean and Viggo. No great love affair that people would write about in thousands of years, but something more than a quick fuck. Jesus, Billy. Something more than that. I thought we were too good friends for it to be so bloody cold. You know, you're the one bloke that's done this to me. The rest of them are a pile of shite compared to that. I like you, and I really like you. I like you even enough to have to fucking beg you not to go, because can't you just give it a chance? I know you're religious, really religious if it comes to it, and it can be a bastard, but can't you just..."

"Shh. Let me speak, please, Dominic?"

He quietened, aware that William had lowered himself to the mattress, and was perched next to him. They were so close that their thighs were pressed together.

"I must leave. Not because of what we did, and not because of you. The choice was not mine."

A blink, and Dominic stared, open-mouthed. William wasn't going because they had sinned. Relief slammed into him, flooding his chest with ice water, and he grinned, before the rest of the speech slowly sank into his ears. William didn't want to go, but he had to. Someone was making him leave.

"I refused Mordred, and that, Dominic, that has proved a mistake but one that I am proud of. He is a clever and cunning individual, and he has power beyond anything my letters of introduction from my family allow me. Mordred did not take my rejection easy. He has driven those away from me who I consider acquaintances, though my friends still remain - though they are just you and the Dane. He has poisoned against me those who would be kind, and the rest of the men here are pleased to see my fall. A favourite who is out of favour does not survive long. And now...in the afternoon of yesterday...I was told to leave this court by the King himself, to never return, to disassociate myself with those who are within the palisades and to return to Dal Riada. I was to say nothing, give no warning of my departure, just to leave."

"Is that why you and I...?"

"Partially," admitted the man, his honesty worn across his pale brow like a diadem. "A last night, a farewell to a man who had given me a desire, the first desire, to sin. To touch, to hold, to accept kisses and other things that would be bestowed in the heat of passion. And I wished to give into that, though the fear of aftermath prevented me. But then, when there was nothing left for me, I challenged, and fought, and came to your chamber. It was also that I wished to experience something with you, for if there is no other ever to take me, I am glad that you have done so. You have been my friend, a true friend, and...I wished for it to be a little more, for that last ever time we would see each other."

"And you are still going?"

"I must, or forfeit myself and be in the custody of Mordred himself."

The threat of what would occur was implicit. The wrath of the scorned man, who was never content in destroying a man and his honour, hinted at something darker and more violent if William were to remain in the demesne of Arthur.

"If he touches you, I'll kill him."

But then Dominic did assist his friend in taking the belongings out to his bony nag, and lashing them down.

*****

"Then this is goodbye?"

William sat, straight and tall on his sorry horse, the most noble of knights within the walls of Camelot. And the most reviled. He was being watched. Those loyal to Mordred surrounded the courtyard, pretending innocence in grooming, or oiling weapons, but they were talking and snickering softly.

"Yeah."

Dominic stroked the dullness of the horse's coat, his expression strained, cheeks ashen. What more could he do than leave William to go, to ride from this quagmire, under the maddening sunlight, and never to see that fey smile and hear that exotic, burring voice again? There was nothing. Nothing. And it was driving him more and more towards the insanity of grief that he couldn't do anything. William had to leave, it was simple and yet it was fire piercing heart and turning it to dark, bitter ashes.

"Be careful, won't you? Send me a letter when you get back to your people?"

"I shall try, Dominic of Northumbria."

Something pricked at his eyelids, and the younger man swallowed, feeling a saltiness in his nostrils, and when he looked back up his usually sunny blue eyes were sparkling with almost tears. Dominic would never cry before others; it was something he'd never done. The thought embarrassed him, and even when Andrew's body had been sent to the afterlife, he had remained stoutly composed. He was a warrior, not a woman, but he was feeling wretched, as if half of his gut had been cleaved out.

"Have strength. Have courage. Have my heart. It is yours."

The words had barely slipped from William's mouth before he was kicking his mount into an ungainly canter, across the slick mud and cobbles of the courtyard, out of the gateway and onto the earthwork track that led to the river levels.

He was gone.

William wasn't coming back.

He'd lost that chance of something more meaningful than sexual intercourse, or deeper than even friendship. That chance, green-eyed and disgraced, was fording the lazy dreaming river to the north, picking over the Roman bridge, then following the old roads north towards Carlisle, and then ever onwards to the lands of the Scotti. In the modern measurements it is four hundred miles.

It might have just been four thousand for Dominic, for such a distance could not be forded.

He was aware of a quiet descending upon the yard, and the pad of footsteps that halted next to him. And when Dominic turned his head, he was looking into the dark, satisfied eyes of Mordred. The man was smiling, and across the narrow, sensual mouth, there was the merest hind of sadistic cruelty. For Mordred knew who the man was, lost in the expanse of the courtyard. He knew that Dominic and William had grown closer since the death of Andrew, even more so since Elijah's devotion to holy orders. That closeness, the reports of his men telling of physical attraction, of endless conversations, of the animation of those attracted not just physically but in all aspects of the human psyche. According to his spies Dominic had never been so enamoured, had never looked so warm towards another, had never acted so stricken before a potential lover. It had inked Mordred's tongue with vile poison, and with jealous rage.

The climax of this violent passionate hatred, through being rejected through religious grounds and those morals being hencewith shattered by another, was watching with his own eyes William and Dominic taking to the latter's chamber.

Lashing out, he'd demanded the exile of the Scotti, to cause maximum pain to both men.

Of course, being the man he was and in total command of everyone in the fortress apart from his father, Mordred could not quite resist in coming to see the touching parting moment when he was told that the two men had met, quite against orders.

Dominic, deathly-while and bloodless in the lips, turned on his heel and stalked off, the jeers and laughter from those who were allied to the princeling ringing in his ears.

He found himself in his chamber, where Viggo was waiting for him.

The Dane had been awake when Dominic had discovered William missing.

*****

Viggo touched Sean's shoulder.

"William has been banished to his own people."

"Dominic?"

"Attempting to plan murder upon Mordred."

Sean nodded, the dark gold hair sliding over his shoulders.

"Get him. We need to get him away from here until he fucking well calms down."

"Where are we going to take him?" asked Viggo.

The other man stared, as if the question was the babble of a fool.

"Dal Riada, my little Mordvinian. Dal Riada."