[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

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods, the minutiae of swordplay helping her blink away Harrow's pointed, sweating little face. "Where'd you get your sword? Is it like, passed down or something?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Yes. It belonged to my father. When I was sent to live with my foster mother, it was given to me."

[ninth_cavalier]

Right--they'd talked about this before. Absolutely wack parenting. It's nice he has some connection to his dad, though. "Yeah, I get wanting to keep using it, then."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Yes," a little quieter, though not really sadly, "By then he was gone, as were our lands, so it was good to have something useful that was his."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon doesn't often spare a thought for her dad. Her mom is a mystery with a capital M; there's meat there. Juice. Something to hang a theory on, even if she'll never actually be able to test it at all. Her dad, if she has one, could be literally anyone in the fuckin' galaxy.

She's quiet for a bit, and then says, "I tell you there's a ghost in my sword?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Yes, you mentioned this." He does seem curious, though, as to why she might mention it now.

[ninth_cavalier]

"When I first found out, I thought it would be weird," says Gideon. "Like—that it isn't really my sword. Or that it's mine but there's also someone else, like, in there. I thought for a second it might've been helping me fight, that I was cheating, somehow, some kind of magic swordsman guiding my blows or whatever." She laughs. "God, imagine if it was Nonius. Ortus would reconstitute himself just to get wetly mad at me or whatever."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He chuckles, "He might angrily recite whatever relevant portion of his opus at you, as punishment."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the Emperor's corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told them—Fuck you, Gideon Nav, you ancestor-stealing, attention-seeking, upstart orphan cunt." Gideon shakes her head. "It's not him, though. It's an offworlder. I talked to it, a little, with Lan Wangji."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Oh? Through his..." He waves a hand, because he can't quite recall (thanks to the bourbon) the term, except he has a vague notion that magic is wrong.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, his wizard bullshit."

[lanselos_du_lac]

A laugh, "Yes, that is exactly what I was meaning to say."

[ninth_cavalier]

"I want to talk to it more. I think. I got kind of freaked out last time when it started talking about wanting to kill God, but, uh." She gives him an amused look. "I'm a little more willing to hear it out than I used to be, maybe."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot smiles at her, fond and even a little grateful. "Maybe?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Well, it wants to kill my God, and I'm not really clear on whether that's the same guy as your God, so I don't know how long His list of crimes is."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I am sure I cannot give thee a full accounting. He has had thousands of years, and I know only what I've been told."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Nah, the ones I know about are enough. I meant, like. Do I blame my asshole God for your asshole God's bullshit, or just His own, like, post-Resurrection?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Theology is not my strong suit," wryly. "Would thy God know of the God of my world and time?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Aziraphale thinks they're the same God," says Gideon. "He thinks I'm from the same world as you, just way in the future and on Pluto rather than Earth."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot frowns faintly -- he doesn't know Aziraphale well, but he does suppose Aziraphale is most likely to have some kind of actual knowledge about this. "In that case," thoughtfully, "I am confused."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon laughs. "Yeah?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Well, I know of no way to kill God. Or even to see Him, should He not appear to one of His own will. Thou dost seem to think it possible."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah. My God lives on a spaceship—uh, like a boat? In the space between stars? Which probably sounds about as abstract as whatever yours has going on, but it's real thing. I took one myself. And He sent us a note. So there's ways of, like, getting to Him."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I know of no one who has seen God. I do know some who have heard Him. If a space ship is Heaven, then perhaps they are the same? Or-- it is unknowable." He frowns a little, puzzling it out, then asks, "What is a space ship like? Like unto a regular boat?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon laughs. "I dunno. I've never been on a boat."