[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

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Susan seemed, to me, eager or determined to return. I did not sense she was in any danger."

[vineleaves]

"She -- well, for starters she thought I was the Bacchus from Narnia, and I never corrected her, which I guess I probably should have." He shrugs. "But when she first saw me, and thought I was in her, uh, wherever-she-lives, she pulled me to the side and said something about how I 'shouldn't be here, it's not safe' and that it probably wasn't safe for her with me there either. Doesn't sound like the best of living conditions, the poor dear."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Very simply he says, "She gave few such details to me, because she did not know me."

[vineleaves]

“I’m so sorry, dear,” he says. “We’ve got to trust that tomorrow everything will be back to normal. They’ve — they’ve got to come back. I was supposed to start teaching Mercutio how to make wine.” This last bit is very, very quiet.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"This is what I am telling myself," he agrees, raising his glass briefly.

[vineleaves]

"Galahad was -- he was so sad," Dionysus says after a pause, staring at his glass.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot is staring at his own glass; he takes a drink and then says, "He ought to have been angry."

[vineleaves]

“I don’t know… a lot, about everything you all have been through,” he says. Sagramore has explained some of the gaps in his Arthurian Legend Knowledge, of course, but there’s still obviously a lot he is unsure of. “But it’s not exactly a secret that I don’t particularly care for that god.”

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It is well that he is apparently absent, here."

[vineleaves]

"You ain't kiddin'." He takes a sip of his wine. "Though I would have some questions for him, if the asshole ever showed up. He's done nothing but upset people I care about, for centuries. Absolute shit god."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Dost know," he says, almost thoughtful, though he is certainly a bit drunk, "I assumed prophecies were for other people. Arthur, Galahad. Not me. But it seems I've been dragged along anyhow."

[vineleaves]

"Prophecies aren't fun," he says simply. "What happened with yours?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It wasn't mine. It was Galahad's." He pushes his half-empty glass around on the bar. "He said-- well. We all fulfilled our purpose. As God intended. And his reward for all our actions, our contributions, is that he is one of the most unhappy people I have met."

[vineleaves]

"Unhappy to the point that he didn't think he was even capable of ever being happy, even," Dionysus adds, angrily. "I just don't understand why a god would want that for someone. Anyone."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It was a trick," quietly.

[vineleaves]

"I don't... I don't really know what happened. Do you want to talk about it?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot gives an uncharacteristic dry chuckle, and takes a sizable swit of his drink. "Where should I begin? When God denied King Galahad what he had asked for? When the Grail was simply sitting around doing nothing in a place I had already been to? When God used all of us to enact a prophecy that resulted in nothing joyful?"

[vineleaves]

Dionysus reaches over and wraps Lancelot in a tight hug.

[lanselos_du_lac]

The hug surprises him, for some reason; he goes a bit stiff, at first, but then relaxes into it. "My thanks," he says quietly.

[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?"

[vineleaves]

"Not a whole lot," he admits. "There's a couple of plays I know that are... loosely based on the stories of King Arthur's knights, but they're not exactly reliable." He really does not want a repeat of the time Sagramore talked him into describing Camelot, especially considering Lancelot is already in a bad mood.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I see," he thinks for a moment. "Back at court, I was the Queen's Champion and the King's closest companion, one of Arthur's finest knights. In the months before I arrived here, things were... very difficult. I had fallen out with the Queen. I was struggling, a great deal, and very unhappy."

[vineleaves]

“I’m sorry to hear it, dear. You’ve been happier here though, yes? Aside from, you know, today?”

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye, for the most part. It was hard going, at first. There have been times when things were-- not very good. But all in all, I am quite happy. Grateful for the people I have here."