The tight knot in her throat didn't ease, as she'd hoped it would. If anything, it choked her further, leaving Lexi pale. Her fingers were tightening on Arthur's (to protect, to cleave to, different than Keiran but no less unyielding, a different kind of fidelity and one she could never quite sort out in her own head) slightly, her lips thinning as she struggled to take a breath.
He'd been here, alone, all this time. All these years she'd been baking, been useless and half awake, been running, and Arthur had been not-quite-dead. The not-quite-dead meant just-barely-alive and that was all Lancelot - Lexi, she was Lexi, only Lexi, no ghosts of dead knights here - needed. Arthur had been here, remembering, while she had been in Utah and Ohio. While she had been restlessly searching, he had been alone. Lexi didn't for a moment feel she deserved to be in his presence again, but Arthur, at least, deserved so much more than alone.
"That sucks," was what she said, instead of the courtly apologies, instead of endless vows of loyalty and begging for his just retribution. But all of that was in her eyes, was in the way she was holding his hand, still, as if nothing in the world would make her let go. As if, indeed, his hand was as good as her hand, as if she had no place else in the world other than by his side. "Next time fate decides to give you a kick in the junk like that, tell it to at least give you a traveling companion. Preferably one who doesn't hog the radio."
Whistling in the dark, perhaps, refusing to acknowledge even half of what was bubbling up inside of her, but Lexi couldn't quite let herself. If she did...
No. She'd done that before (gone mad with grief, gone mad from betrayal and guilt and confusion, come back to find her favorite half, the man she turned to when all else failed - not her king, not her sweet morning star, no, but her friend in ways that Arthur never could be - to find him dead and buried in a foreign land) and it wouldn't end well. Lexi had to keep herself a little separate, a little sane, even while the glimmer of strength about her jaw, the way she sat forward, Arthur's hand held between both of hers, protected with her very body, were becoming less like a baker and more of what she had once been.
But Arthur's voice was too familiar, the weight of his fingers between hers was too real, and all at once she knew she could not go on. It was cowardly (but didn't everyone know, now, did not everyone see, that the bravery of Sir Lancelot was nothing more than a charade?) but Lexi couldn't lose her mind, she couldn't let herself.
"Stop," she blurted out, voice dry between cracked lips. Lexi closed her eyes, fingers curling around his hand and shook her head. "Stop, God, please, I pray you. I know the rest. Though it might be just, I cannot bear to hear it from your lips." The manner of speech was not her own, but was, was exactly what she needed to say when Lexi-the-baker was still scrambling for words.
"And then did Lancelot betray his king, and then did his foolishness and arrogance strike down a kingdom. And then did his own damn idiocy," that was a bit of Lexi, there, a flare of temper in between the scared, guilty, bitter taint of self-recrimination, "ruin the one man he'd loved more than any other, the two men he'd held dearer to his heart than any else." Her eyes went to Keiran there, guilt for him just as much as Arthur drawing at Lexi's lips, hunching her inward.
"I know the story," she said, quieter, horrified at herself and trying, still trying, to keep her mind from fully realizing. "And I know fully how little I deserve to be in anywhere but the hell I wrought. Do not stay your hands, either of you. I would be slain by you both than live with this, as selfish as it may be to wish speed in my judgment." Oh, God, she was crying, though her face was still stoic her eyes were red strewn with heartbreak, with a thousand other things she could not manage to express. "I know the story and I wish it over. Running has done me no good; death was my just reward and I should have no other."