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03, extraterrestrial

Arion smirked, but there was a flicker behind it, the briefest hesitation. "Yeah," he said lightly. "Just don't ask me to be one of the nobles. I'd probably flee before the first toast."

Jennie laughed it off, but the comment lingered, like a dropped pin in a map they hadn't yet unfolded. "And second of all, I'd adjust. I'd become a medieval legend in like a week."

"Oh yeah? Doing what? Teaching knights how to sort their emotions with sticky notes?"

"Honestly? That's not even the worst idea you've had."

They were quiet for a moment. The flickering TV cast soft shadows over the couch. Heath Ledger was mid speech on screen, declaring something valiant about honour and destiny. Then Arion, in a voice softer than the banter that came before, turned to her and said, "Tell you what. If you ever do get thrown back in time," he pointed his fork at the screen, "I'll come find you."

Jennie raised a brow. "What, like some knight in shining armour?"

He smiled. "Knight's honour."

𝑵𝑶 𝑷𝑹𝑨𝒀𝑬𝑹 𝑨𝑵𝑺𝑾𝑬𝑹𝑬𝑫 her that night. Her midnight screams faded into hoarse whispers, swallowed by the dark. Not that she truly slept, merely laying still, listening to the dull thud of her heartbeat against her rotting bones, the gentle snores of the two men nearby, and the wind outside groaning like an old door, urging her to settle in, to surrender. She hadn't thought about her first night with Arion in months. And now, in a world without popcorn or Post-it notes, his promise echoed louder than ever, like a fragile flutter of hope, delicate as wings. Maybe if she opened her eyes now, it would be the soft white plaster of her bedroom ceiling greeting her, not this unfamiliar timber and stone.

Jennie didn't cry that first morning. She thought about it, of course. But the sun rising over Camelot, buttery gold stretching across the stone floor, gave her a strange flicker of belief. The kind of belief you get after a bad day when you tell yourself that tomorrow, something will be different. She lay still beneath the coarse blanket, holding her breath as if willing the ceiling to shift, to become familiar.

But it didn't. Just wood. Just Camelot. Just more of this.

Still, she got up.

Sort of.

She pulled on the same dress from the night before, politely declined the stale bread Merlin offered, and insisted she wasn't hungry. She didn't go out to meet Gwen, though the thought hovered in her mind like a reminder scribbled at the corner of her planner. She told herself she probably didn't need to meet her anyway. It's not like this was permanent. Not like she was staying. She'd just hang back, lie low in Gaius's chambers, and wait for Emmett.

He'd come. Of course he'd come.

So she stayed.

She lay in her bed, half wrapped in the scratchy blanket Gaius had offered, her fingers aimlessly tracing the edges of the nearby knick knacks on the table beside her. A dried herb bundle. A chipped bowl. An old vial that smelt vaguely like mint and mould. For a while, she let her mind wander, inventing dramatic backstories for each object, until even that game became dull. The hours stretched out, heavy and uneventful, broken only by the distant clanging of metal or the occasional muttered spell from Merlin across the room to clean up the chambers. She counted the lines in the ceiling beams. She counted the number of times the same bird called outside the window. Time passed, not with any urgency, but like a lazy fog, and by midday, she couldn't tell if it was still the same day or the next.

And yet, no one came.

The evening sky greeted her with a smile and bid her farewell, her stomach was a knot of sharp hunger and dull nausea, but she pushed the bowl of stew of plain vegetables and goo away after a few reluctant bites. What was the point? This wasn't her life - not really. It felt like standing in the wings of someone else's play, waiting for her cue to return to the world that made sense. Maybe she'd even laugh about it one day by calling this all a psychosis stress dream, a weird subconscious reaction to a bridal meltdown.