After the siege, Chel needed a long, long a** nap. She wasn't one for a lot of action (exercise sure, giant battles with otherworldly Sidhe queens from a portal mirror? No thanks) and that battle had worn her out. Her body ached and moaned with the effort it took to heave herself up the stairs. Bruises and cuts littered her body in an ugly way and she knew she was going to feel every bit of it for the next few days or so.

She supposed to had to count herself lucky. There were a lot of maimed bodies, mashed heads and skeletal pieces lying around Camelot in multiple piles. It was ghostly really. Nobody wanted to have to shovel the dead bodies out of the way (more accurately: everyone was too tired to move them. Too worn out emotionally and physically, bodies aching from the pain of loss and war). So the bodies remained in the streets, haunting her every movement like a spectral puppeteer.

Of course she didn't seek a nap at first. First she'd been promoted (and boy that was an experience worthy of it's own telling ...), then she'd tried to find Chris, who she now knew as her cousin. Then she'd sought out the little knight known as Abbi, because that little gem was a beautiful cupcake that made her smile like no other. After the siege Chel could have used a smile. Even then she went looking for Jack; he was unfamiliar and she didn't like him much, but he was at least company.

When she found none, she put her head down and rested for a time.

---

In her dream she sees long rolling clouds, pink against the orange sky. It's sunset. Maybe sunrise, but probably sunset. The reason it's probably sunset is because Chel is heaving over a pile of discarded bodies. They sag under her weight, bones crunch against her boots.

She's not without her own shade of pink, long cuts that gouge into her skin and bleed. Is this what it meant to be a great knight? To fight a mighty number of battles? To vanquish enemies as Morgan sought to? It seemed that thusfar all that had been held mighty, all that had been held as immaculate was the cunning of battle, the skill of defeating one's enemies. Despite Gawain and Lancelot's insistence, Chel can't help but feel that their warnings of teamwork and friendship were in vane. She's built herself a spiky wall of indifference, and victory is the only true lifeblood.

Even Chris lies in the pile of those slain.

No, she thought. Being a great knight was the pink ichor that came out of her veins. Even cut she had, every sacrifice she made; that was what composed a knight's valor. It seemed so very clear and concise when she thought of it that way. It was not in defeat that there was victory, but in her own ability and shining fortitude. It was not others upon who her valiant status was dependent upon, but her own.

---

She wakes up in the same place she'd fallen asleep. It was in one of the towers, hunched into a ridge of a spire. Chel always falls asleep in unusual places like that; beds are too soft, too easy. As predicted her whole body screams with the pain of the battle from the day before. She tries to work through it. There are too many things to do, too many questions.

She looks out the window and sees the courtyard, a tower. It's all quaint and somehow people are finding the courage to mill about as though nothing has happened. She wonders how they live their idyllic lives from one battle to the next without worrying about the consequences.

Then again, maybe she is reading them as being more shallow than they are. Everyone probably has their own words and she's being too self centered to realize them. She doesn't mind either way.

She murmurs the words greak knight to herself as though there's something she's forgotten (there is; by the time she wakes up, the dream is gone from her memory).

She gets up, because she has to find Chris.