[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]

"Aye," gesturing at her with his glass, "Yes-- or as if he thought his news would soothe me, because it was all God's plan, and I had carried my part out well."

[ninth_cavalier]

Oh, Gideon doesn't like the sound of that at all. "Your part?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He gives Gideon a considering look. He doesn't much want to discuss the details, and there's a part of him that hesitates to upset her. Eventually he settles for, "I lay with his mother. That was my part."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon takes a short, sharp breath. They'd talked about this before, at Wanderer's Gather, Lancelot's voice carefully steady like it is now. I did not lie with her willingly. "Fuck, dude, that blows. I was pissed enough at him for not caring that God was making him miserable, taking Percival and everything, but for him to also not care that He made you miserable, to act like you should be happy about it—"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot nods and shrugs, both. "If not happy, then at least content -- glad in some way that I carried out God's plan, even though that cost me everything, in the end."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon's familiar with that kind of contentment, mainly worn by the grinning faces of Harrow's reconstituted parents as they presided over mass in Drearburh. There, it was ironic, pasted onto them by their necromancer daughter who had done the one thing God most strenuously forbade. She's not sure it's ever more than that. A false skin over something terrible, waiting to burst out. She makes a face, and sips her whiskey.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Quietly, Lancelot says, "I am aware that I was not good to Galahad, but that does not mean that I would not want better for him. And perhaps, if I had not been tried the way I was, I may have been the sort of father he needed."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. "It's like being told you've been a puppet this whole time, but don't worry, because your puppeteer's pleased with his own performance. Like—who gives a shit? And what are you supposed to do about it now your string's cut?" She squints into her whiskey. "I guess I should be glad my God's less—personally involved."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot sets down his glass; in truth, he's shaken. She has just described, perfectly, what he is thinking. "Gideon," he says, turning to her, "Yes. Thou dost understand."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," says Gideon. "I mean—like I said. My God, like, pays less attention. I think I'm more like a chess piece than a puppet, and I'm not even the chess piece he really meant to use, I kinda, like, snuck onto the board—but. Anyway. I do get it, and it fucking blows." She looks at him sideways. "Do you want a hug?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Quietly, he says, "Yes-- that would be nice."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon puts down her whiskey, hops off the barstool, and opens her arms.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot stands and goes to her; at first, he hugs her carefully. (It is not that he thinks her fragile -- he knows she is not that -- but he means to be respectful, even if his urge is to cling, a little, to people he trusts.)

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon immediately tightens the hug, because the main person she's hugged, kind of ever, has been Sagramore, who hugs like he's trying to squeeze the care he has for you through your skin and right into your bones. She won't hang on long if Lancelot doesn't, but she wants to be clear it's up to him to decide when they're done.

[lanselos_du_lac]

So Lancelot takes this as permission to tighten his own -- it's not Sagramore levels of squeeze, but his strength is in it. "My thanks to thee," he says quietly before he releases her and sits back.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon hops back up onto her barstool. "Yeah," she says. "Any, uh, any time."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Now that he's looking at her properly, though, something seems off. He squints a little, "Has someone struck thee?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh," says Gideon, and reaches up to touch her cheek, where the swelling is clear when through the paint. "Uh. Yeah. Did you run into any of the other alternate versions of people?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He gives her something of a wry look and says, "Aye. Susan."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, that must've been weird," says Gideon. "Was she also, like, seven feet tall? Because that would be hot."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I did not much like it," his brows drawing together. "She was a bit taller -- that was one of the first things I noticed -- but not seven feet tall. Why?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon waves a hand. "Other Tally was seven feet tall," she says. Gestures at her eye again. "She's the one who, uh."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"What?" He seems genuinely alarmed, sitting up straighter, "Why?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Pissed her off," says Gideon shortly. "On purpose. After she'd already low-key fucked me up trying to take my sword away." She sips her whiskey, makes a little self-deprecating face. "Not my smartest move, I'll admit."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He frowns, "Why would she try to take thy sword from thee?"