Work Text:
The dull weight of the pen in his hands was like- well. He couldn't say.
Cain was usually lucky; Oz was a person of actions over words, a teacher of show over tell, and lessons were usually practical and in-the-moment. But inevitably there was the need for reviewing fundamentals, for memorization, for writing and showing thought processes (or so the other teachers had agreed on, likely spurred on by Lords Snow and White as a way to torment the other three Northern---. They were capricious. That's all.), so occasionally Cain was forced to take a pen in hand and get writing.
The pen's weight was foreign, nowadays. Indescribably. Almost intangibly. Casually flicking his eyes over his work and catching his eye on the nib, watching it glide across the page as he wrote; Fist clenching far too hard, letting it go.
She'd been growing increasingly discomforted with holding anything at all, though he wasn't sure when exactly it started. Beer mugs preluded drunkenness, giving him a lightness that made any and all thoughts float away. His sword symbolized a duty, one that he was proud to wield, for his country, for his lady, for his comrades, slicing and scrambling and unconsciously tearing at hair and skin and eyes-
Or... not that. Her hands came up and tangled in her hair in frustration, barely noticing the pen was dropped onto the table until her brain stopped spinning enough to notice. She was an honorable knight, even if not anymore, exactly. With a title or without, she was dedicated to his lady, Princess Arthur, kneeling before her and looking up into her eyes with warm blood dripping down as his face grew cold in shame and he fought the urge to scratch and claw the disgusting thing out of his socket in front of h-
But knights didn't do that. The bruises around his eye went unnoticed the next day because she wasn't a knight.
Arthur shouldn't see things like that. The briefest moment of weakness became just another thing he'd hidden from her, because knights can't expend their honor on craven actions, though they can freely use it to fail to protect their comrades, their lady, and their position. It would disgrace the knighthood if her sword was used for things like fixing Cain's personal faults.
He hadn't stopped staring at the pen, and his head was aching with dizziness and the thoughts that wouldn't stop. Can't swing a sword blindly, can't smash a beer mug against a table, can't touch a hand without hitting too hard, but she was told to use the pen, in a sense. He could touch it, he could see it, she could use it to gouge the proof of failure out of his head, which was even now causing throbbing shards of headache and pounding with some kind of activity. He was in her head, she knew he was, former Head Knight debasing himself in the middle of a test because he couldn’t control herself, couldn’t stop thinking of how she'd failed, he wanted it out he wanted to slice nerves she wanted to rip out her own she wanted to expose every single fithy thought and mistake surrounding her entire life and tear herself to piec-
"Cain."
The authoritative tone in Arthur's voice cut through Cain’s thoughts and her field of vision became recognizable, sharp pen nib dangerously close to her left eye, just an eyelash length away, the knot in her neck bobbing as she vigorously swallowed down any sound that may have wanted to emerge in response to such a-
The pen was back on the table, she was staring Arthur in the eyes, and they were back at the castle as princess and knight, not in training uniforms in one of the manor classrooms doing some inane test she couldn't even-
Truth or not, he didn't have an explanation. And Arthur wasn't someone she wanted to lie to. Not again.
"This isn't the first time I've seen you doing something so worrying."
"My lady, I..."
Arthur’s lips purse, belying the royal countenance of a moment ago. The familiar childish action actually brings him back into the moment, and she realizes Oz and Riquet are no longer in the room. Arthur must have requested a moment of privacy for the both of them. How pathetic, her lady always being the one helping her. How grateful he was, that nobody else could see him right now.
"What do you want me to do?"
It's not an answer Arthur expected, but she's been refined (and is naturally stubborn) enough to not let that sway her resolve. It's one of the things Cain most admires her for.
"Whatever you believe is right."
It is an answer Cain expected, though definitely not one she wanted to hear at that moment, and it tears at his insides like Cerberus itself. But she knows the answer, and she knows Arthur's trust in her, to a point. He knows what a knight should do, and beyond his mistakes in the knighthood, even if she's hidden the most important parts of herself from the people he cares about for so long, she still knows what she wants to be.
"Would you help me with the make-up exam?" She tries, and the smile Arthur gives in response does not soften the resolve in her look.
“I will, though I'm sure Master Oz has already seen how well you know the material with his own eyes."
His brain jolts again, but his response back is nothing but a grin.