The Silver Lining

Agravaine felt like he was ill, the sweat on his forehead didn't go unnoticed by Tristan, he knew that but he was trying to ignore the pain coursing through his side. He'd had injuries before, even the one he'd suffered on his face where nothing like this. It felt like it was becoming infected with each passing hour. His armor felt tight. A cold rage was running through him and he struggled to keep from giving away to Tristan that he was barely conscious.

When Sophia had kissed him earlier on, Agravaine had barely been able to form a coherent sentence and felt like a fool more so for it. He was a hardened warrior and he had been rendered unable to speak because a woman kissed him. Albeit a very pretty woman.

"Focus," Tristan grunted out. Agravaine looked down and noticed Sophia and Lancelot arguing with each other and raised an eyebrow at them wondering what had happened now to set the pair off on one another.

"Can I hit him?" Agravaine mumbled.

Tristan chuckled, shaking his head. "Relax Agravaine, you almost sound jealous." The older of the two smirked seeing the look on his friend's face. Agravaine liked Sophia. Lancelot lusted after her as he did with anything that walked and Sophia seemed to be uninterested in them both.

"I'm not jealous," he snapped.

Shaking his head, Tristan pointed to Sophia. "She is not from our time. Better to let it go before you feel anything Agravaine. Lancelot will probably-"

Agravaine looked at his lap, interrupting Tristan. "I kissed her."

The scout actually was somewhat taken back. "You kissed her? When?" he inquired, almost sounding like he was happy to hear the news despite what he'd just been saying.

"In the tent back at the raiders camp- she just felt so nice to hold and I couldn't think straight," he murmured, not mentioning that Sophia had kissed him when they'd been away from the group.

Tristan didn't say anything but he did have a ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth which Agravaine did not fail to notice.
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Lancelot and Sophia were not speaking to one another after she hit him, which was fine by her until he started cursing her under his breath. "Oh do shut up!" she snapped suddenly.

"Excuse me?" he asked.

"I can hear what you're cursing about and believe me, that knee was nothing that you, as a sorry excuse for a man, did not deserve," Sophia told him bluntly.

"Sorry excuse for a man?"

She just lifted a shoulder up in reply and nodded. "What else can I say about you when all you ever do is stare at my breasts or legs or wherever else you find appealing on a woman and treat me like I'm some tavern whore who is lusting after you," she accused. The man was insufferable enough but the fact that he liked to leer at her openly unnerved Sophia who did not enjoy such attention from him.

"Now that you mention it; Agravaine seems to enjoy looking at your rear," Lancelot remarked, folding his arms across his chest, with a large smirk. Sophia blushed furiously. Agravaine did that? If he did, she had not noticed him doing so.

"Unlike you, Agravaine does not exactly stare at me openly and so I do not notice that he is doing such things," she defended the scarred knight and saw Lancelot quirk an eyebrow at her.

"Oh really?" he inquired, having found his advantage over the young woman. "I wonder what he was looking at when you were changing into the dress and Arthur sent him after you."

"He had his back turned, like I asked him to do," she shot back.

Lancelot chuckled, finding the clearly embarrassed and shy side of the normally composed and very clever woman highly amusing. "If I was Agravaine-"

"Which you aren't," she interrupted and saw Lancelot give her a strange look before he turned his back on her. Sophia lowered her eyes to the ground. "You're nothing like him."

Lancelot grinned and glanced over his shoulder at her. "You're right. I'm nothing like him and that is what attracts you to us both," he stated.

Sophia's eyes widened and she pushed the biting remark she originally had in her mind down, choosing her words carefully. "I am not attracted to either of you, Lancelot. I am not from this time and anything I do might upset things that should not be trifled with."

"Whatever you say Sophia, but it is there and no amount of denying it is going to make it go away," he told her.

Sophia looked down at the ground. "I don't need to push away something that is not there in the first place," she murmured back.

"As much as I enjoy our arguments do you mind if we do what we've been told to do and continue this later?" he inquired of her.

"We won't need to continue because this argument is over and we are not going to bring it back up," she answered making him chuckle. Sophia didn't like Lancelot. He was everything in a man, and more, that she thoroughly disliked and yet he was brazen enough to try and tell her that she did like him. "You are an insufferable twit."

Lancelot looked at her as though she had just grown a second head and she just pushed by him, stepping out onto the road and making sure that she had her hands crossed in front of her. She needed air and Lancelot was not helping her.

He grinned and followed her quickly. "Insufferable twit am I? What does that make you then?"

"A very patient person," she said, grinning widely as he frowned at her answer.

Before he could reply, Lancelot saw the raiders coming down the road and inwardly wished he could smack himself for getting distracted by her. Lancelot drew one sword and looked at Sophia, giving her a warning to not try anything.

She just smirked at him and Lancelot was a little taken back at how truly striking she was standing there with her arms folded over her chest, one of those well rounded hips out to one side as she leaned her weight on one leg more than the other and a look that could have sent him chasing after her like a puppy. Realizing his train of thought, Lancelot shook his head a little and saw her step in behind him.

The group of raiders stopped about ten feet or so from Lancelot and Sophia. He was grinning slightly while she looked at the motley bunch and found herself disgusted with their appearances even more in the daylight and felt repulsed that she had actually let one of them touch her.

"Not exactly a trail, a couple should be taking on their own," the leader grunted out in a language that Sophia didn't understand. "Especially with a lover who looks as alluring as yours does." The man sneered as Sophia glanced at him from beneath her lashes and she ducked her head, stepping in close to Lancelot's side. He slid an arm around her waist tightly holding her against him, protectively. She was a little surprised at how nice his hand felt against her stomach. It wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as she had expected.

"We're traveling to my home, I am not so skilled with directions. Would you mind pointing me in the direction of Badon Fort?" Lancelot inquired of the man.

The man smirked and chuckled. "We're heading that way ourselves, we'll take you with us. Sarmatian scum took some property of mine and I'm gonna reclaim it."

Lancelot's hand tightened around his sword before he let go of Sophia and drew his other sword. "Gentlemen, you have the option of dropping you weapons and heading back the way you came, or you can die right here and now," he stated with an air that clearly said he wasn't joking.

Sophia stepped back behind him as the men all laughed. "When my men finish with you, boy, we'll have fun with your woman."

She took about six steps back from Lancelot and saw Arthur to her left in the shadows. Almost as soon as the man had finished speaking, the raiders charged forward to attack Lancelot and Arthur came out of his hiding place to help him while Galahad and Gawain came out from behind them, effectively splitting them all off in separate directions.

While she stood away from the fight she didn't need to move into it, because two of them were coming straight for her. Ducking the sword that was swung toward her throat, she decided to use a different style of fighting on the man. Zach had taught it to her; Carl had always called it more bullying and rough-housing than actual teaching but it served her well.

She elbowed the man in the face who owned the sword she'd ducked and grabbed his wrist. Pulling him in closer to her, she punched him in the face and kicked the inside of his knee, dropping him to the ground. Sophia nearly screamed when the arrow flew past her lodged itself into the man's throat, doing what she could not.

Reminding herself to thank Agravaine, or Tristan, later she turned round only to have a strong fist wrapped around the hilt of a sword connect with her jaw and cheek. It rendered her nearly unconscious from the force of the blow.
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Tristan and Agravaine had deadly aim even when not fully focused on their targets, however the younger of the two found his attention slipping more to the woman and where she was than on covering his brothers. When he had managed to kill the one she'd been fighting, Agravaine felt a sharp pain momentarily blinding him from doing anything at all and he groaned sharply, almost dropping his weapon to the ground.

"Agravaine, get down and move," Tristan ordered as he slipped from his perch with all the gracefulness of a cat. Agravaine followed, staggering slightly and needing to use the tree to right himself as Tristan killed one raider who was at Gawain's back.

So much for being outnumbered, the raiders were no match for the knights however Agravaine took a beating. He was cut across his left bicep and his lip was bleeding from where he'd been punched. As the others looked over the dead, he glanced around, trying to locate Sophia but she wasn't anywhere in sight.

Crouching down in the spot where she had been standing earlier, he noticed the drag marks ending into the forest. Without telling Arthur, who luckily glanced up and noticed his knight rushing away from the others. "Agravaine!"

Someone was trying to forcibly pull another along and she was putting up a fight. He smiled a little as he jumped and dodged the wildlife around him, a surge in strength making him move faster than he thought possible. If Sophia didn't want to be moved, she would be a handful and hard to control, he knew it wasn't in Sophia's nature to give up easily, no matter what she said at times.
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Sophia growled, struggling against the man holding her as he dragged her through the forest. She had managed to get away from him, only he had caught hold of her again. His hand covered her mouth and as much as she tried, he managed to keep hold of her this time.

The raider holding her shouted out in pain suddenly and before she knew it they had tumbled to the ground. Sophia groaned as she rolled away, finally getting out of his grip.

"You dog!" the man roared as Agravaine grinned wickedly at the other man, taking a fighting stance. His sword had a thin trail of blood on it. The man's boot was split and it was beginning to turn a dark brown from where he was bleeding.

Agravaine looked ill, Sophia noticed but as she watched him, her eyes followed the way his body move smoothly into a different stance almost as though it were a dance. He was a warrior. She was nothing.

She crawled to her knees and had nearly gotten to her feet, when a hand entangled into her hair, yanking back her head violently, causing her to yelp.

A nasty jagged dagger came to her throat and Sophia looked up at the man, the dagger pressed in a way that made her unable to see when Agravaine was. "Go back to your master!"

"Not without her," Agravaine replied coolly, taking a step closer to them. The dagger came closer. She could feel its cool edge on her skin. If he pressed any closer, Sophia knew he'd draw blood and possibly kill her.

The man smirked and yanked on Sophia's hair violently, earning a noise of pain from Sophia, who was trying hard to keep her neck from bending too far back as it was extremely uncomfortable.

Agravaine took a step forward at that only to stop when the man told him he would kill her if he came any closer. "You won't," Agravaine said.

Sophia looked at the man holding onto her hair, believing Agravaine to be crazy in that moment. "Go run back to your master, puppy! I don't have time for you!"

"As I said; not without her."