[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.]}

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[lanselos_du_lac]

A note of despondency creeps in, though the anger does not abate, "If it is not punishment, it is needless suffering, which makes even less sense."

[timebethine]

"Far less! Its purpose seems only to cudgel us into awe. If Hell is my fate for saying it, then Hell, too, is part of God's design, and He could at any moment choose to spare me from it. There is no suffering that God hath not ordained. Fuck God," says Laertes. "And may I be damned for it."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I just--" He finally stills. "I know most of this has not happened, for me, but enough has. And I don't understand why."

[timebethine]

"Look not to God for the purpose of thy suffering, or Galahad's. Fashion a purpose of thine own, in whatsoever shape thou wishest."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Quietly, with the slightest break in his voice, he says, "I did not look to God in the first place. And it happened anyway."

[timebethine]

He reaches out to cup Lancelot's face in his palm. "God is silent here," he says. "This place is beyond His design. Thou art free of Him now, if thou canst be free of him anywhere."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot leans into him, to cling to him, burying his face against Laertes' neck.

[timebethine]

"Sweet-heart," Laertes says against his hair, soft but steady. "The only purpose that signifies here is thine."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Muffled, he says, "I am here. I am away from where I can do harm. Why should it still happen? To me or to them?"

[timebethine]

Suddenly, with all the force of an avalanche, the part of Lancelot's tale that Laertes had ignored becomes inescapable. Arthur is dead, Camelot fallen, Britain engaged in wars--that is my work. "My heart," he says. "That has not yet come to pass. Because thou camest here, it may never come to pass."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It did not save thy Sagramore from me."

[timebethine]

"It may yet save my sister from herself."

[lanselos_du_lac]

At this he draws back, one hand cupping Laertes' neck. His eyes are damp. "Aye, love."

He's a bit of a mess, he knows. But what Laertes has said has cut through his anger and grief.

[timebethine]

"Have hope for Arthur. He is not yet lost. Britain is not yet lost. The tale that has been set down of thy history has not yet come to pass, and may never come to pass." He tilts his head against Lancelot's forehead. "I must imagine fate like a pomegranate, rich with many seeds; although all spring from the same fruit, some flourish, and others wither, and where there was one, there may yet be many. Thou art sprung from the same fruit as Sagramore's Lancelot, but not yet the same seed. Thou wilt grow into something wondrous and strange, and flourish where his seed has faltered."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"My sweet love," he says softly. Then he kisses him, deeply -- because he can, and because he wants to, and because he can choose to do so.

[timebethine]

Laertes pulls him in, gathering him up and holding him--not as though he's something on the verge of breaking, but as though he's strong enough to bear it.

[lanselos_du_lac]

After a long moment, Lancelot pulls back just enough to properly look at him. He brushes Laertes' cheek. Softly, he says, "I thank thee."

[timebethine]

"Come back with me. Stay a while--we have a bed for a guest, or thou canst sleep between us, an thou wouldst. Let thy humors settle."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He nods. "Since Susan is not here, that would be welcome," quietly. "Let me help thee carry those."

[timebethine]

"Ay, here." Laertes shuffles off the bags hooked over his left arm, then redistributes the ones on his right so that he's balanced again. "Need'st thou aught, besides direction?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes up the bags, then takes Laertes' hand again. "I need nothing else. Lead on."

[timebethine]

After a long moment of walking in silence, Laertes says, low, "Wilt thou tell me of Arthur? The man thou lovest?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye," still quiet, "what wouldst thou know?"

[timebethine]

"What thou lovest. Tell me a story not of the king, but of the man." He swings open the door of the cabin and sets down his bags on the kitchen table. There, he starts taking out fruits and arranging them in bowls, and setting an occasional errant jar of beans on the spacious pantry shelf.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot is silent for a few moments as he unloads things from the bags he has carried and arrays them on the table for Laertes to put away. Eventually, he says, "There was a time, when I had not been at Camelot for very long, that Guinever was away for a brief while to visit her family. She and I had not yet... well. Let us say I had not touched her. Things were easier, I think, with Arthur then, before we had erred. I suggested to him that we two should go hunting, just us. He so rarely got time away from court to enjoy himself, and things were quiet."

Once he has the bag emptied, he comes to lean against the counter to watch Laertes work. "At first, he said he could not do it. Neither Merlin nor Kay -- especially Kay, I think -- wanted him away from court, even for just a day or two. They always insisted it was dangerous. Arthur was ever inclined to defer to them. I kept at him, though, and made preparations, and eventually he felt a bit bad that I did so much work and he at last told them that we would be going."