The rain was falling as a gentle sheet over Camelot as footfalls echoed around the deserted market; wares left unattended against the sheath of white that shrouded the city. The snow fall had broken early in the morning, instead being replaced by an uncomfortable coating of rain that matted one’s hair and left their skin coated with a crystalline slick. Shrugging her slipping dress farther over her arms Beth ambled down the relative side streets that contorted in an endless passage of materials and foods that stretched into the ominous distance.

She hadn’t intended to venture into the relative abyss yet the tension that stifled the air at the Arrow was suffocating; near all the girls had heard of John’s predicament and their uncertain futures at the Inn itself. In the wake of everlasting glares and comments she had fled through the city; merely clad in the dress that left her lithe shoulders bare against the elements that heaved and jerked the very air around her as she stumbled through the streets. The red welts that had graced her cheek and wrist yesterday had become a myriad of purple and blue shrouding her face and arm. Her lips were still tainted with the crimson cut and the laceration on the tender flesh of her elbow had swelled and spread sending an ugly web of tendrils along the ivory skin of her forearm.

She looked a mess as her feet unsteadily carried her through the maze of stalls, hair strewn across her face as sporadic breaths racked her chest as she gasped against the cold. She had not an idea where to go, whom to talk too and besides that she simply hadn’t the energy to keep any tangible conversation. Her mind was flooded with such cruel images; Simon, yet his face was fading after so many days left without his company. Taran’s face; courageous and beautiful ripped through her mind followed by the angled lines of Carter’s and a shudder wracked her body. Mary and Alec had been precariously looming on her consciousness and she felt a groan worm through her lips.

Hand wildly groping for any support as her breath shortened she heaved herself onto an abandoned stool next to an equally desolate cart and stand. She had little idea of how far she had run nor where she had settled yet the beautifully intricate carvings etched into the stones before her indicated that she must have been farther into the wealthy sector than she usually ventured. Sighing she raised a battered hand to clip the bridge of her nose; quelling the tremors of a starting headache before they could erupt before her eyes. Absently, her free hand routed around in the leather satchel that was still slung over her shoulder and a smile tugged at the corners of her ruined lips as her fingers grazed the waterskin containing the majority of mead she could readily take.

Taking a cautious glance around the deserted streets, revelling in the eerie quiet that enveloped her, as her breathing steadied to shuddering, measured breaths; she raised the now uncapped flask to her lips, smiling in contentment as the drink flooded her chest with warmth. Allowing her eyes to flutter shut, her pale head fell away against the stone wall behind herself. She was exhausted; illness gradually ebbing from her body as it was marred with burning cuts and bruises that screamed in inflammation as pools of rain sheathed her barely clad body. She barely noticed her shoulders jerking with cold as goosebumps erupted over her flesh; she looked an utter mess. Blonde locks lay strewn over her forehead, lips and shoulders trembling as sheets of iced water fell around herself and her breath shallowed; almost stilling against the cold.

She needed to sleep, away from everything and everyone for a considerable eternity.

It was a perfectly wretched day in Camelot; the castle, the grounds and the cottages crouched right next to the city gates all wrapped up snug in a blanket of rain, drops ricocheting from rooftops of various kind, creating a rather miserable symphony when bouncing off brick and wood alike and sliding down the drainpipes in tiny little rivers.
The downright, wholehearted wretchedness of that day did not however stop Arthur Pendragon from his daily drills and Percy appreciated this, really he did. He understood it perfectly well too, for when one was faced with matters such as war one could not allow himself to fuss over such trivial matters as meteorology, even when the aforementioned weather had quite clearly gone berserk.

Percy would even call it fun half of the time, if you were in that sort of thing, rain made Arthur merciful and they resolved to having an intense training session with minimal amount of armour, a splendid decision seeing as they would probably drown in their armour under this downpour, Perce could probably count himself lucky twice over since he was positively drowning in his armour regardless to whether it rained or not. Soon the training, as it usually happened with events involving hitting one another with pointy-head sticks, turned into roughhousing (or well, spontaneous tackling) in the mud. High on endorphins and adrenaline neither of the young men seemed to mind the thick sheet of rain. It wasn’t until the drill was over and the initial elation subsided that they had time to take in the truly tragic state of themselves and feel it, once the crazed pulse slowed down.

Drenched to every fibre of his body and wrecked with shivers, Percy made his way through abandoned pavements of Camelot (since apparently everyone else was sane enough to stay indoors), humming to himself at the very thought of warmed spiced wine and maybe if he was lucky a pot of a half-decent stew, drying off and shielded from the unrelenting rain.

He hadn’t even ventured into the lower regions of the city (that might to have had the highest standards but were considerably more fun) when he was forced to stop dead in his tracks and utter something so foul in all this surprise that it would make his mother wash out his mouth with soap, possibly a herbal one too.
Beside one sodden-looking cart and an abandoned market stall sat one battered bruise of a person. If such sight normally would edge him to ask questions of what the hell? kind, it became even more surreal as he stepped closer and squinted against the raindrops bouncing merrily off his wet lashes and blurring his vision, making out a far too familiar face. He groaned. And then swore some more because apparently Bethaine Greene could just make him vocabulary-deficient at any time of the day. Irritation and frustration reeling into one Percy run up to her, cringing when he saw the water skin that, if Beth’s lulled state was anything to go by contained anything but water.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled or would have yelled if his voice could take a quality other than a throaty croak, a result of screaming himself hoarse on the training session in the freezing cold. The winced seeing her upclose, welts on unknown origin (though Perceval suspected where they could come from) inflamed and swollen. Rage cursed through him in a brilliant flash and his fists shaking by his sides, now not only due to the cold. He needed to get her somewhere warm and safe first. The rest could wait.

(sorry it took so long!)
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She mused quietly to herself that if it had not been for the rain she would have heard the approaching footfalls, the gentle slosh of heavy clad boots against the cobbles and if she had been in any position other than the one she was in now, she would have opened her eyes to greet her intruder. Instead, as the voice - so clear, familiar and well, irritated furled across the pounding rang she let her ruined lip curl into a malicious sneer, water skin firmly clasped in her ivory fingers. "Drinking. You?" Her voice was fractured, hoarse from the weather and the faint burn of the mead as she sipped another languid drink. Perceval Le Gallois was always, it seemed in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was always the butt of the other Knights testosterone fuelled jokes and seemed to let his tongue loose one too many times to be possible. Still as she carefully ripped an eye open, blinded by the rain and the sense of anguish she found comfort in his lithe, boyish form - something that through their layers of jesting and subtle mocking, she doubted would ever be revealed.

Sniggering lightly she tipped her water skin in his vague direction - alcohol blurring his from lightly. "Want some? You look like you need it." Usually in a stupor like this she would endeavour to be alone but with Percy, you could never be rid of his presence it seemed. He was like an inane fly that you couldn't swat that somehow seemed to latch onto you and make you grow inordinately attached to its ridiculous presence. He was a good listener, she had learnt that in the first few weeks of their haphazard friendship - if one could call the jests and mockery friendship. Still, his presence was somewhat comforting even if her mind and body was slowly numbing themselves. The rain fell over her bare shoulders, pinpricks furling over her flesh in sheets as she gently let her teeth play with her battered lip, crimson blood pooling in her mouth with an embittered copper taste that sent fresh shivers up her spine. She must have looked a picture but the warm infusion of alcohol and pain was intoxicating and she slumped farther back against the wall, more blonde tresses falling and uncomfortably sticking to her forehead.

Coughing lightly she turned her face up to Percy's, wrapping long fingers over her barely clad body. Why she had to accidently thrown on Isabel's brazen dress today, she had no idea - it marked her out as a harlot from a mile off. Gently raising the water skin to her lips she coughed as the ruddy liquid seared her throat and she felt heat flood her chest, another set of shivers traversing her skin as she eyed him cautiously. "What do you want Perceval?" Her tone was more than a little irritated as she snapped up at him, her voice returning to a low grumble as she dropped his youth filled gaze and stared downward. He was a sweet boy if not a little dim, amusing company and a good companion but Beth needed to gather her thoughts without him looming over her shoulder. "Why don't you run along home? Children don't belong here." She sneered, lip furling up unpleasantly before she capped her water skin back into her lap, not bothering to reach his gaze. She wasn’t in the mood for any more ruddy Knight’s and their stupid, inane ego’s.

No worries! Sorry it's so short and Beth being a cow :P

There wasn’t many things that could make Betheine Greene look unattractive, which was quite unfair really come to think of it, especially as Percy was one of those people that avoided green and blue feathers (attached to the dress robes his father bestowed upon him) in order to retain the use of both his eyes, but with her long eyelashes heavy and drooping with rain, her head weary she looked like a cross between a drunken kitten and a drowned harlot. Erm…or maybe a drunken harlot and a drowned kitten? Perceval made a mental note to give this some more thought another time; he had never been very good with adjectives, to be honest.

“Drinking. You?”

“Rescuing drunk harlots from catching their deaths in the rain, it would seem” he said with the nonchalance of someone who could afford to say so without being slapped (and good God Beth could slap, he saw enough of her doing it to know how it felt) and outstretched both his hands to help Beth up. “Doing my bit for the society, I guess” Percy swept her with a critical look, his eyes stopping on the dress and whereas he didn’t really know first two things about fashion, even he knew this, whatever that was, was a questionable fashion choice indeed.
“And seriously, what were you thinking? Wearing this?” he couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, half disapproving, and half curious, because really, as if she needed any advertisement, the woman of a reputation ( I’m a tavern girl godamn he could almost hear Beth’s voice ringing in his head. Disturbing) . “I’ve seen Saxon wenches dressed better.”

Truthfully, he had never given this bizarre, ludicrous excuse of a friendship much thought. Was it friendship? Was he allowed to call it that? Either way, it was this effortless, easy camaraderie that he was yet to reach with any of his fellow knights, his brothers-in-arms as they were. Quite frankly, he’d rather go to war shoulder to shoulder with Betheine Greene than any of them (asides maybe for Arthur), the woman definitely did a better job with patching people up than Dinadan ever did, thought he inwardly shivered at the though of what she would probably be able to do with a battle hatchet.

Beth was an incurable git at the best of times, to the point where Percy questioned his own (possibly impaired) sanity over and over for letting her hang around (though he’d bet his best breastplate that she had her own theory about that).Perceval supposed it was the nonconformity of it all that made it, in some inexplicable, illogical way, appealing. Not only having a woman of murky morals as his well, best mate (he was forced to admit) but also befriending a girl in the first place. Not that Percy didn’t befriend girls from a testosterone-befuddled Knight philosophy or some such nonsense. He simply knew very few women and even fewer worth knowing, having bucketfuls of brothers and being moulded into knighthood from very early on, as it were. The only girl, asides from this very disrespectable person before him, that was his very good friend was Lady Elisabeth Knight of Maldon, though even that had been somewhat ‘intended’. A word both of their fathers used repeatedly when introducing them to one another at the age of five, the full meaning of which Percy did not learn until he was nine years old and was struck with such brain-shrivelling, gut-wrenching horror that he would have much rather thrown himself on his wooden sword than ‘vie for Elisabeth’s hand’ as his nurse brutally put it, because she was without any heart or soul.

The knightly omission of the fairer sex, Perceval concluded, was a straightforward resolution to the problem that they simply did not know what to bloody well do with them when they weren’t courting them (even if one were to use ‘courting’ as an ill-chosen euphemism) and saving them from towers or some other godforsaken places, though there was no need for the latter in those disgustingly modern times Percy came to live. Too bad, since it somewhat limited the choice.

”Want some? You look like you need it.”

Percy took the offered skin gratefully, allowing himself a hearty gulp. Good God, it was vile, but tingled deliciously down his throat nevertheless. Might as well drown themselves on the inside since it looked as if they were going to drown on the outside anyway. Unless, that is, Beth decided to scrape her backside off the pavement any time soon.

Beth was shivering so badly it would have been quite comical had Perceval not felt the same body-numbing chill run through him.

”What do you want Perceval?

“Oh, I don’t know, Betheine. You tell me” he said, thoroughly exasperated by this point; with the rain, with his sodden tunic and with his bloody fringe that stuck to his forehead with the same one-minded intent Beth’s mead stuck to his throat. “Because for now, I want you to get your annoying, stubborn behind off of the cobblestones and under a roof”

”Why don’t you run along home? Children don’t belong here”

“Neither do drunken tarts” Percy replied, his tone strongly implying that he wasn’t rolling his eyes anywhere Beth could see, but just wait till her back was turned. “Now, get up before I lose my patience”


(hahahah, no no! Beth has to be a cow, Percy doesn’t know what to do when ppl are nice to him! ALSO, how freakin’ epic is this getting? I am thinking; very!)

Beth tried to keep the flinch from her shoulders but in vain, although she supposed it wouldn't have been seen through the rain against her flesh, enough to make convulse in taut spasms - still, she carefully rose eyes vaguely hazed but still cold eyes to his - face tightening lightly as a sneer furled onto her lips, unpleasant and harsh against the sodden skin of her face. It took all of her carefully crafted patience (she was trying so very hard) not too simply slap the unimpressed glare from his face. Instead, shooting a lingering glance at his outstretched hand she rose the water skin to her lips, poignantly turning her cheek to the impetuous knight, if one could call him a knight at all, as a derisive snort echoed from the bow of her lips. If there was any person left in Albion that could afford to be rude to her, even a might displeased with her general being - it was Perceval and it irked her - just how much the child seemed to be able to get away with before her blinding temper broke as it invariably did. His words rang in her ears, sordid and pained and she winced a fraction, eyes still coldly detached to the world drowning beside them. "It was Isabel’s, is Isabel’s - I didn't realise till I left the tavern and by then? What was the point in trying to capture my modesty..."

A small smirk battled its way onto her features as her conscience tried to quell it. She didn't particularly care what she looked like; it wasn't on the forefront of her mind at this particular moment in time. Bruises and cuts had befallen the tender flesh of her face, lips and forearm as sodden hair stuck impishly to her forehead , she was a mess but then again - with his saturated tunic and dishevelled hair, the gallant Perceval hardly looked much better. Her relationship with Perceval (Perceval, never Percy) had been tainted with animosity from the outset but he was kind enough and a rare show of good humour within the ranks of the hedonistic knights. He was not a few years younger than Beth herself but what he had in years he barely had in features. Beth was worn and weary, travelled and tired with an air of frailty, as if the young wench would snap in a breeze whereas Percy - with his full, rounded cheeks and bright youth laden eyes looked every inch the hero, not that such appreciative words would ever, ever be uttered from her mouth - hell would sooner freeze than she'd compliment him. Still, a light groan wormed through her lips, she needed to get hideously, appallingly drunk and the bloody Perceval Le Gallois wasn’t going to ruin it for her.

Beth felt the absence of the water skin as she dutifully tipped her head to the centre, eyes narrowed and dangerous as they roamed his face. How on earth the gangly youth had been enveloped within the Knights, it was utterly beyond her. Well, if the endless reams of bruises and lacerations were something to go by - perhaps he wasn't completely accepted, but still - he had been knighted when so many had not been - and to look upon him now; face dulled by the alcohol flushing her blood and that seeping into his as well as usually insipid demeanour - it was a shock that he was even afforded the position of squire. Finger splayed and outstretched, welt across her wrist and elbow proudly visible as she raised an infuriated eyebrow. He ruly was an irratating little git. ”D’you want to give me my mead back, I didn’t steal it for an ingrate man child to drink it all.” Another shudder ripped across her skin, sheathing her flesh in a myriad of shivers and she slammed her mouth shut, teeth grinding a perfectly angled line of her jaw as she cast a disapproving glare at him, feeble and somewhat childlike in intensity. She just wanted to be left alone. She could almost imagine herself whining that with a stamped foot into her mother’s crimson flushed face in her childhood.

Her full name earned him a weary chuckle as deft fingers tugged feebly at the neck of the dress in a vain attempt to cover up her modesty, she vaguely heard his insult and clenched her already tightened jaw, fury flushing her face as she tore dangerously cold eyes up to his drenched features, tone biting. "Why don't you just bugger off then? I'm not shifting. Why don't you prove what a strong and gallant knight you are and carry this damsel back to her whore house? Isn't that what you do?" The words were spat, and well partially rambled from her mead addled lips as she sneered. She doubted Perceval could get within another foot before she really decided to show him just how vehemently she wanted to be left alone. Perceval, however, was an irritating little bastard, constantly in one’s thoughts – whilst you either fretted over his feebleness or were in a constant state of irritation as his nagging, nagging that should be spewed from an irate middle aged housewife instead of the youth, bounded around one’s head. Her voice, when she piped up was cold and held none of the fury that her rambled rant had done – just boredom and loss. ”Bugger off Perceval.”