[Open Post] ..hell yes i mind..

[lanselos_du_lac]

It's been a long while since Lancelot felt this way: angry and adrift, too overwhelmed and in his own head to determine how best to manage it. (If Susan were here, it would be simple -- but the fact that his Susan is gone is part of the problem.) His anger is a hot stone at his center, a roiling mess, a weapon without a target. He still feels that he would like to smash something, start a fight, find some way to externalize everything all the things he could not bring himself to say to the Galahad who is far older than he ought to be, the quiet king of a quiet kingdom.

A fulfilled purpose. A completed quest. A long chain of manipulation and events that dragged Lancelot along in its wake, and that (in this other time, he has to acknowledge, not his time and not now) led only to the ruin of everything Lancelot had cared for. And for what? It makes him furious to think that the price of the Grail was Galahad's joy, Galahad's self, and that that price was somehow being paid long before Galahad was even born.

That's just the start of it; there is more, much more, and it feels like it will keep spooling out without ceasing.

His impulse, as ever, is to stalk off to his room and stay there until he feels he can manage himself. (He thinks, not for the first time, of himself ten years older and outwardly angry, angry enough that everyone sees it, fears him or dreads his company. A man who lashes out. He does not want that future, but this possibility has always been somewhere just under the surface; he's always known it. Sometimes it has worked for him, with him, but he knows that it is dangerous and there is no one in this place that he would want to bear witness to it.) If this were Camelot, that is what he would do.

Since he can't figure what to do, he settles for a middle ground. It's been a long while since he felt like getting very deliberately drunk, but that appeals just now, and so he heads for one of the smaller bars, just off the main corridor.

^{[Note: All are welcome! Those who care for Lancelot and/or those who also wish to fistfight God are particularly welcome.]}

Comments

[timebethine]

"A great task? Or a little one?" He molds his hands to Lancelot's chest, then, and lets them wander down. "Or one to rouse thy blood?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Not in this one." There is an angry undercurrent to this; his jaw clenches briefly.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Sweetheart?" She reaches with her free hand, covering their joined hands with it and stroking her thumb over the ridges of his knuckles. "What is it?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He sits for a moment, letting himself feel her comfort, her presence. He takes a breath.

He still can't quite shake the anger, even for Susan. He says, "God tricked him. God promised him one reward and gave him another; one he had never desired. God used all of us to achieve this end."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"All of us?" Susan says, and then it slots together. "Elaine."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I can see," he goes on, with a little more heat, "how it would be fitting for God to punish me. But if none of it means anything, in the end, then it seems unfair. And if I had no choice but to be as I am, no choice in what happens to me, then it is cruel."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I think," slowly, "that sometimes God is cruel."

[ninth_cavalier]

"I wanted to shake him until he stopped talking like that," says Gideon "It creeped me out, and I don't creep out easy. Like everything he said was forgiveness I didn't fuckin' ask for."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Why should He be? If we all are meant to spend our lives in His service, for His glory?"

Not that this is how Lancelot has ever lived his life -- his service was for Arthur, as was whatever glory he sought -- but he knows well enough what he was supposed to be working toward.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Claudius says He is like a father."

[wickedwit]

"Just so," Claudius says, with a fierce appreciation, glaring down in his whiskey and wishing for one burning instance that he could do more than complain. It's enough that his Galahad is free, enough for Claudius to keep him and never fall again for those wistful what ifs that tell him Galahad might be happier without him in God's welcoming grace. But he still hates God on behalf of every Galahad that's suffered, and wishes there was a poison to infect divinity. "You know, my first friend here -- or my second, they came so close together -- he told me that God is a jokester, whose wit is beyond our understanding. We're all sure to die before ever approaching the punchline. But what punchline would be worth it? What divine plan could make any of us laugh, and excuse all the suffering it took to complete it? The Grail was at Corbenic all along?"

[vineleaves]

"Do you want to start at the beginning?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

For a moment, he wants to say, Which beginning? Instead he says, thoughtfully, "What do you know of me?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Briefly, he lets his hands cover Laertes', squeezing gently. But in truth he is still a little too unsettled; that feeling of adriftness has eased, but not left him. He would rather not be both adrift and amorous. Not today.

At last he says, "Can... can I help thee prepare a meal? For the both of thee?"

[timebethine]

"For the three of us, since thou wilt be staying--certainly." Then, kissing Lancelot's temple, Laertes goes to examine his supplies. "We could make a stew," he says, "and bread to go with it. They can bake together in the oven."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot has a little pang at the realization that he had excluded himself from dinner, but he says gamely, "That would be well. I am good at chopping things as instructed."

[timebethine]

"Excellent. Let's see what there is to be had--ham and split pea, perhaps? We have some cured ham that would do well in a soup." Laertes starts taking out down ingredients from their shelves and hanging baskets: onions and celery and garlic, a big jar of split peas, what's left of the cured ham (still on the bone). "Wilt thou cut up the onions and celery very fine?" says Laertes, passing Lancelot one of the cutting boards. Unlike the furniture, the cutting boards have very clearly been liberated from one of the mansion's kitchens, along with two good kitchen knives. Laertes passes the bigger of the two over to Lancelot.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye," softly. He does not particularly want to feel... any of this. "She fulfilled her purpose. I suppose I fulfilled mine, or what part of it was intended to further God's prophecy."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"To hell with God," Susan says fiercely, eyes flashing.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot looks up at her, grateful and adoring and with a kind of fellow-feeling, as if they're in this together. "An thou hadst told me that this would further some great good, I think I would not feel quite as I do."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What good," Susan says. "The end of a world?" (She's incensed on his behalf and her own, and does not realize that this shows her hand with respect to just how much she knows of the story of Camelot.) "Must God treat the world like - like baby Sunny knocking over a pile of her toys?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot's mouth tucks into a partial frown as he thinks this over. Eventually he says, "My father could be firm, and he certainly had specific expectations of me, but he was never cruel. If he wanted something of me, it was usually something I could understand, and I also understood why he expected it. He was never cruel to me."

[onthewillowsthere]

"You weren't like that. With me."

[lanselos_du_lac]

His expression shifts to something sadder, softer. "Will you tell me? What that was like?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad hesitates. It's been a long time since his Lancelot's coldness hurt him, a long time since he craved his approval. The matter between them is, to his mind resolved, and when he thinks of the things Claudius said Laertes told him about Lancelot (shy, not aloof, not permitted to share the world; a smile like a secret; he bows under the weight of what is expected of him) Galahad wonders whether he's the one now who could withhold longed-for approval. He still feels a grain of responsibility for Lancelot's happiness, after being the cause of his rough beginning in this place, even though Lancelot has friends now, even lovers.

He shakes his head.