ITP: An old joke

[no_longer_a_king]

[Text; Anonymous]

What is love?

How do you know if you love someone? Is it really as powerful as they say?

(ooc: In before someone makes this joke. Feel free to threadjack and such in response to this.

Comments

[not anon]

[chevalier_mal_fet]

Love is the Dream of completion. To find the things one lacks in another soul, and to bring that soul the things it lacks in turn. To form a new and perfect whole, to be untied is to love.

Love's Power is so great that it survives all that humankind can do to dishonor it or put it to death. It survives even Lovers themselves.
But Love is Rare, and while it might outlast cruelty or pain or death itself, it cannot stop those things from being.

[ANON. FOREVER. FOR. EV. ER.] Also text.

[no_longer_a_king]

[Well if Arturia ever wanted to know what it was like to be hit in the face with a semi truck she definitely knows now. Of course. First Gawain and now Lancelot is here and she isn't sure how to feel about this at all.

There is a very long pause before he gets a reply. The only reason he gets one at all is because Arturia is convinced it'd be suspicious if he didn't get one while everyone else did.]

Do you know what to do if you hurt the person you love and cannot ever have a chance to make it up to them?

[It strikes her as strangely comical how she doesn't know if she's talking about Shirou or Guinevere here.]

[HAHA, INDEED]

[chevalier_mal_fet]

If you cannot confess or correct your wrong, if you cannot beg forgiveness unselfishly-- if the one you love is beyond your reach in Life or in Death...

then you must search yourself truthfully and do as they would wish you to do, to live as they might have you live, without thought of Reward or Forgiveness. In this you may fail, as grief is a great and terrible thing. To live too long with unanswered grief is a sure path to Madness.

There's something comical about her getting love advice from the guy who took her wife. XD

[no_longer_a_king]

And how would you avoid such Madness?

Oh, I'll say! ;3

[chevalier_mal_fet]

Do not Fail. Do not Forget yourself and Stray.

Or, cease to Love. If you can do so.

...I also have no idea where this TL;DR came from.

[no_longer_a_king]

[There's something about the way he says it that reaches her unlike others in this Tower have. Or perhaps because it's Lancelot who had been so dear to her saying it. Once upon a time he had been her most trusted friend beyond every other knight save perhaps her foster father, may he rest in peace. If it had been any other knight than him who had stolen Guinevere's heart, she would have at the very least been concerned for Gwen's sake. Yet Lancelot had been the one her Queen had fallen for and Arturia could only give them her forgiveness when she found out.

He's right. Both Guinevere and Shirou would not want her to continue to live in regret, would not want her to keep wallowing over a betrayal. To continue to live as such, especially after she has firmly dedicated herself to saving the worlds from destruction. The past is something impossible to change now.

It will be hard, but for the sake of her Queen and her Love, she has to try.]

I shall take the advice to heart. Thank you, my friend.

[She doesn't care if he figures out who this might be. If he truly hates her as she had believed in the Fourth Grail War and wishes to find her, she will be waiting for him. Hopefully now she'll be able to stand as the King she once was should they cross paths instead of the girl who had been stumbling to find some sort of purpose in this Tower.]

It comes to us all, from time to time-- and it's all good by me!

[chevalier_mal_fet]

I know not what help I have given you that you might call me "friend".
It is true that I have no ill-intent, but lack of ill-purpose hardly suits that title.
Unless you have claim to the name.

[He has called no man or woman friend in Lifetimes.
Lancelot smiles, and it is a small and wry and edged thing.]

What advice will you take to Heart then-- will you strive to cease to Love?

That is the most difficult path to take of all.

[A heart cannot be stolen, for it cannot be owned. But once in another's hands, it is a near impossible thing to restore it to its previous place, whole and unharmed. There had never been anyone else, no pleasure he could bear, no comfort he would accept-- not after Guinevere.]

[no_longer_a_king]

Nay. It is that I will not forget myself for the one I love would not want me to, if he had truly loved me as he said he did.

[Shirou had practically smothered her with his offers of affection until they had fought what feels like so long ago upon the bridge because it became clear to her he did not understand her at all and wished her to be the thing he wanted her to be, instead of the person she had been. Arturia does not know if she could love again--she doubts she could--but she does know that she could try to return to being herself.]

[chevalier_mal_fet]

[Nay...]

I have said that Love may outlast death and pain-- but the Heart that holds it may be broken and imperfect. It is easier to desire forgetfulness, to desire any kind of peace, than one might expect. Only be in earnest, and do not promise out of pride deeds which you cannot guarantee to perform.

Do not say that you will not forget. Only live as if you desire to remember.

[no_longer_a_king]

I shall. Thank you.

[chevalier_mal_fet]

For my part, I wish you well in your quest.