[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]

Now that very long pause, after he had asked King Galahad whether he was happy, makes sense. Lancelot finds himself stifling the urge to throw his glass against the wall.

He looks down, sitting very still for a long moment, then takes another drink.

"I see," he says eventually. His voice is flat, deliberately even. "No-- he took the Grail to a kingdom known as Sarras. There, the folk had fallen to paganism. They converted when they saw the Cup of Christ. His reward was to rule over this peaceful kingdom. He has been at it, I think, for a long while."

[onthewillowsthere]

God mislead him.

Galahad looks down at the beetle in the jar, its shining iridescence. His anger at God, the licking flame of it, sometimes burns so low that he forgets it's still present until some breath of air revives it and the fire surges up again. He asked God for one thing in exchange for his faithful service -- he asked for death, and God promised to grant it.

He tries to imagine the person he would have become if he had attained the Grail and lived; the kind of person Lancelot met. He can't imagine it. He can barely remember what it was like to have felt so empty and hopeless.

He's ferociously glad to have come here. He's glad Claudius asked to kiss him. He's glad he asked Crowley to take his memories. He's glad he met Magnus and Shen Yuan, glad he learned to bake with Tress and Laertes, glad to have begun training with Lan Wangji. He's glad of the tattoo that burns like a holy sigil against his lower back. He's glad for the sex; he's glad that last night Claudius kissed open his thighs and took him in his mouth.

He's glad that the Grail no longer matters. He wants to live. He wouldn't ask God for any gifts now, least of all death. But it still makes him angry that God lied.

"I don't feel that way now."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot presses his fingers against his eyes for the space of a breath or two. (It is a strange relief that floods through him, hearing that Galahad does not wish to die -- that he would no longer ask God for death. He can't puzzle that out, not alongside everything else.)

He sits up again, takes up his glass. "That, I am glad to hear. I asked him if he was happy and he could not answer me. He said, though, that in his time, we all of us have-- lived out our purpose, I suppose." At this last, his tone turns bitter.

[onthewillowsthere]

His attention flicks sharply back to Lancelot. He can't tell what the change in tone was, exactly, but he can tell that it happened (he half-wishes Claudius were there too, to understand, and to translate that understanding with his own expressive eyes and mouth).

"What do you mean?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"He told me of Elaine's death, and assured me she had filled God's purpose for her. He said this as if it should be a comfort to me." He takes a drink. "He spoke, too, of the fall of Camelot. Which is my doing."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad is quiet, absorbing this. Before he came here, he didn't overmuch consider the effect of his mother's deception on Lancelot -- because Lancelot hardly seemed like a real person. Distant and angry and impossible to please, the approval Galahad hoped to win from him back then unreachable; Galahad couldn't have considered his feelings because his feelings were so opaque as to be unimaginable.

Now, even without Claudius there to understand, Lancelot has become a person at least familiar enough for Galahad to see the ways in which he was used by God, the ways in which his life was manipulated, violated, to further Galahad's existence. And this older Galahad, rather than acknowledge the cruelty of it, tried to console Lancelot by reminding him that he was used, that they all were used.

"The fall of Camelot?" he says finally.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye," staring into his glass. "The Queen and I were discovered, it seems, and the King was pressed to try us for treason. I broke with him and took her with me, away, and made war on him. From there... it seems we all descended into civil war, and ultimately Arthur was slain. In King Galahad's time, Camelot is no more."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad is silent again. In truth he doesn't care very much about Camelot; it holds no meaning for him as a place where he was anything but lonely. All his happy memories there are inextricably linked to Percival -- they're Percival's memories, not Camelot's.

But Camelot means something to Lancelot, something important.

He reaches over and, carefully, puts his hand on Lancelot's.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot looks up at him, surprised. After just a second or two he says, "Thank you."

[onthewillowsthere]

Another long silence as he gathers his thoughts. Claudius is used to these pauses; he always waits indulgently while Galahad decides what he wants to say. He says he can see Galahad thinking, and tell what kind of thought it is, and Galahad likes to imagine that after so long struggling to be understood there's someone who doesn't even need him to speak to know what he means.

Finally he tells Lancelot, "One person can't destroy a kingdom. Not unless something was already wrong. It can't be just you."

[lanselos_du_lac]

His breath catches, and he looks away, forcing himself to take a deep breath. After a pause that's only fractionally shorter than Galahad's, he says, "No. But-- There may be several causes, but if I had chosen differently--"

[onthewillowsthere]

"How do you know?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He sits up, which draws his hand away, though that's not entirely deliberate. He takes a very long drink, almost draining his glass.

"I keep thinking," he says, after a moment to let the burn of the whiskey subside, "had I chosen differently, things between Arthur and I would have been different. Whatever flaws there were in Camelot's foundation would not have been absent, but I would not have worsened them. It would not have gone on for years. It would not have created a situation where anyone who already had a grievance also had real cause to act. A king can't let a traitor live for decades in his own house, without a word. I can understand how... I can understand why it ended as it did."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Arthur also did this." He rubs his watchband.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot is surprised at himself when he automatically shakes his head no. "I shouldn't have put him in that position."

[onthewillowsthere]

"He had choices too. He was allowed to choose."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He glances back at Galahad, "Aye. I suppose he did."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's your fault too. Just not all yours."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot's mouth crooks in the faintest suggestion of a smile. "You are right, I suppose."

[onthewillowsthere]

He is right. He waits.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He sighs, "I suppose it's just that I have always felt that I was the problem-- from the moment I stopped doing only precisely what I was meant to do."

[onthewillowsthere]

Inside the jar, the leaf beetle sits still, gleaming, rainbow iridescence shining from it. Galahad thinks about how it felt when he began to do things God wouldn't have liked, bit by bit, knowing he was moving further and further away from Him and any chance of reconciliation.

[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."

[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.