[Semi-Closed Post] Sadmas Aftermath

[lanselos_du_lac]

Rather suddenly, after this latest mansion event or incursion of unexpected visitors, Lancelot will not be seen around and about as has come to be usual for him. He is not drilling in the field in the mornings. He is not in the café seeking pastries or companionship. He is not around the kitchens or libraries or, seemingly, anywhere.

Lancelot keeps to his room. If he bathes or shaves or uses the bathroom, he does so carefully and avoiding anyone he might meet. If Laertes leaves food outside his door, folk will find it still there later in the day. If anyone knocks, he will not call them in. He lets the mansion provision him with bread, cheese, water-- sometimes wine or whiskey -- but he doesn't much want any of it.

He cannot bring himself to speak to anyone. He cannot bring himself to do much of anything at all. The best concession he will make, with the understanding that there are those who will worry, is that he does not lock or bolt the door.

[Typist note: Anyone who might be really worried about Lancelot's sudden disappearance or withdrawal is welcome! Post is "semi-closed" really only because a character would have to deliberately decide to enter, and no one will stumble across Lancelot by accident.]

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Good!" Susan tangles her hand in the fabric of his cloak, relief suffusing her as she watches his expression shift. "I'm very wise, you know."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Queen Susan the Wise, aye, I've heard tell of thee."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"At least they're no longer calling me Susan the Gentle," Susan laughs, though privately she wonders if things may have turned out differently, if any of the four of them had been Wise. "I have little use for gentleness any more."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Thou'rt gentle with me, for which I am grateful." Then, because he doesn't mean this to sound like he's arguing with her, he says, "Thou hast my thanks, for hearing me. I think-- I think things may be difficult for me, for some while, but when it comes to thee I have no regrets."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan lets the compliment drift away on the scant air between them - she doesn't feel as if she's been particularly gentle with Lancelot; more a slap-dash accumulation of bitter memories and earnest efforts to once more be a person that she, herself, enjoys spending time with. He helps with that. He's quite good at drawing her outside of herself for just enough that she can get another fingerhold on her old self. Perhaps that's what he means - she feels, maybe, that they might be kindred in this way, and perhaps that feels to him like a gentleness.

"I would hear more, if you wanted to say more."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He lets her go, though he keeps her hand, tucking it into his arm as they start to walk again.

"Well," considering, "is there aught thou wouldst know? Wouldst ask?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh," she hesitates. "Nothing in particular." She's not even sure what to ask, or how to ask it. "Only I wanted to be sure to know that if there's more on your mind, you can say it."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Ah," he lets his hand settle over hers on his arm. "I thank thee. Tell me, though, of thyself these last few days."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I found a bow," she says then, hushed at the thought of it. "Three, actually. And a quiver full of many sorts of arrows. I've gotten jolly rusty in the past nine years."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Oh! Is that so? So I shall see the archer."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"If you like," with a squeeze of his arm.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I very much would. I appreciate skill," he shoots her a little smile. "I am glad to hear you found them."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You will have to wait some time if it's skill you want to see," says Susan, but it's clear she isn't upset. "I am but a shadow of my former self in this respect."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"In truth, it is still appealing." His tone is faintly teasing, but the sentiment is sincere. He is surprised, somehow, to find that he feels so much better. "And there is much to be said for watching someone hone a skill. It takes dedication."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It is more satisfying to be good at things when you have labored for it," Susan agrees. She hesitates. "It has been a... strange few days. My shoulders are well sore, for one."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye, the bow takes strength," agreeably.

Suddenly he recalls Lucy and stiffens a little. He says, carefully, "Thy sister-- art thou well? I was so caught in myself that I--"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"To tell you the truth," Susan says, and falls silent for a long moment. "Many emotions are - frankly, they feel foreign to me, after so many months without really feeling them at all. And my thoughts on Lucy are so tangled it's hard to unpick a single thread. But I think... perhaps, that I am angry?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot presses her hand, saying softly, and in a way that is meant to encourage her to go on, "Aye. I can understand that."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I am glad to know my family felt no pain when they died," she says. "But Lucy spoke of their existence now as if they are all of them blissfully frozen in amber, and as if this is good and desirable - to be unchanging and, and stuck! She was so happy to tell me that nothing matters!"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot only squeezes her hand, draws her a little closer. This reaction makes sense to him.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I don't believe I'm angry at her," Susan muses. Frustrated, yes, but angry? "Just..."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He presses her hand again -- he doesn't entirely understand what she's describing, but that's not the important piece.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

What Susan can't say - can't even quite bring herself to admit to herself - is, of course, that she's angry at Aslan, at God, at any untamed creature she once put her faith into. Is this how Lucy's devotion is to be rewarded? To be crystallized, forever seventeen, before she ever even got a chance to become anything but a former Queen of Narnia? Is Edmund's prize for fighting to improve himself a removal of any ability to engage in that fight? Peter, so magnificent, stripped of every struggle to become magnificent? Even slimey little Eustace was killed and whisked away to that awful nonexistence. Susan has spent months fighting to be glad to remember that she's alive, fighting to accept that her family is not. In a way, now, the first is monumentally easier but the second proportionally more difficult.

She's silent, though, both to herself and to Lancelot. She is trying to understand this in pieces.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot walks with her in companionable silence for a little while before he says, "I was glad to meet her. I am glad she came to thee."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan shakes herself out of her reverie and looks up at Lancelot. "I told her to tell our brother that you're very handsome," she says, aiming for playfulness but maybe falling a little short. "My younger brother - the one I used to read stories about you."