[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

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan hadn't remembered that, from the stories she'd read to Edmund in their childhood. "While you were being... violated?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Simply, "Yes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Her hands clench, brief and tight, knuckles white against her pen before she can force herself to relax. It takes her another moment to compose herself enough to say, "Right," in that usual businesslike tone of hers. "So the Grail, which was conceivably within reach, was attained much later by another."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I do not begrudge it falling to Galahad," he takes up the bottle and refills his glass, topping off Susan's a little as well. His tone darkens as he goes on, "But to think of it there-- where God had apparently ordained his conception. It feels like a jibe."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan takes a small sip from her cup, then sets it aside and rests that hand on Lancelot's knee. "It's a cruelty."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Perhaps it was not for me to know-- but if Arthur was driven to seek it, how would I not know, eventually?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"How could you not?" she echoes, squeezing his knee. "I believe God is capricious and thoughtless. He sets up his chessboard and lets others play the game, but changes the pieces out at will. A rook for a bishop, a queen for a pawn."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye-- and to what end? Not for us to know, I suppose," in an unusually dry tone.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I do believe it's better not to be one of His preferred few."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It does not feel like I was 'preferred' -- only a means, a tool to be used."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, I mean - like Lucy, or like Galahad. The thoughtless way he uses his less-favored tools," like, Susan thinks, the two of them, "is cruel, but at least it's quicker and more impersonal."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Perhaps," thoughtfully. He's forgotten, actually, that they've a list, so he sits sipping his drink for a moment, mulling this over.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan, of course, hasn't forgotten, but she doesn't look to it or propose a subject change - she just sits with Lancelot, watching him, stroking his knee while he thinks.

[lanselos_du_lac]

After a long moment, he gives himself a little shake and says, "Yes. Well."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Sweetheart," she says, soft.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He looks over at her, and gives her a small smile; he lets his hand fall to cover hers.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She smiles at him, shifting so that she can run her thumb along the side of his fingers. "What else of the Grail?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aside from the fact that it has done nothing for Arthur, and that it apparently sits now quietly in Sarras, where perhaps it converts or heals-- Corbenic is the worst of it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"So none of it is pleasant, and some of it is downright dreadful," Susan murmurs. What a useless device! Her hand tightens, a reflexive, angry sort of move, and she forces herself to relax it, stroking again with her thumb. The list of topics she shifts to the side, closer to Lancelot, so that he might pick from it when he's ready.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Before he considers it, he leans over to kiss her cheek. The bourbon is starting to soften things, which makes a little of the anger something easier to bear.

He sits up again and looks at the list. "Ah, yes," he says, "Elaine-- I have usually done my best not to think of her at all. To keep her somehow beneath notice."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Eminently reasonable, I think."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Now I'm furious for her. I know she must have... well. For a woman unmarried to have a child, and that child to go unacknowledged. She must have hoped I would have her to wife."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Startled, Susan twists to look at him more directly. "Through trickery?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

A little shrug, "She lay with me through trickery. Perhaps that. Or, perhaps she believed that if I knew she was with child I would wed her. If, in the future, she comes to Camelot-- perhaps that is why."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Privately, Susan thinks very little of that sort of approach. "Perhaps," she says, trying to set her feelings aside so that Lancelot might share his.