[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]

She gives him a searching look. "Was it dreadful for you?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He draws her hand up to kiss her knuckles, "It was not pleasant. I worried for thee, that thou hadst somehow gone. I was sad for her, because she was so clearly unhappy."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

There's something he isn't saying. "I don't believe I went anywhere," she says, carefully, moving her hand to cup his cheek after he lifts his lips. She runs her thumb along his jaw. "I feel rather like I just woke up. Sweetheart..."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"She awoke in our room," he says, as if barrelling onward. "I was fair certain thou wouldst return, but it was unsettling enough that I offered to move some of my things out."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan slide her hand down Lancelot's arm, gently, until she can lace their fingers tightly together. "I'm jolly glad you didn't." He didn't, right?

[lanselos_du_lac]

He shakes his head, "She insisted it was not needed, and then--"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And then?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes a little breath, "And then I met King Galahad."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"King Galahad?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye-- older. King of Sarras. The Grail Knight."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan blinks, shocked even though she can't imagine she married the Tisroc in the stories told about Narnia. "In all the stories, he ascends."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Not in this one." There is an angry undercurrent to this; his jaw clenches briefly.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Sweetheart?" She reaches with her free hand, covering their joined hands with it and stroking her thumb over the ridges of his knuckles. "What is it?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He sits for a moment, letting himself feel her comfort, her presence. He takes a breath.

He still can't quite shake the anger, even for Susan. He says, "God tricked him. God promised him one reward and gave him another; one he had never desired. God used all of us to achieve this end."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"All of us?" Susan says, and then it slots together. "Elaine."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye," softly. He does not particularly want to feel... any of this. "She fulfilled her purpose. I suppose I fulfilled mine, or what part of it was intended to further God's prophecy."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"To hell with God," Susan says fiercely, eyes flashing.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot looks up at her, grateful and adoring and with a kind of fellow-feeling, as if they're in this together. "An thou hadst told me that this would further some great good, I think I would not feel quite as I do."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What good," Susan says. "The end of a world?" (She's incensed on his behalf and her own, and does not realize that this shows her hand with respect to just how much she knows of the story of Camelot.) "Must God treat the world like - like baby Sunny knocking over a pile of her toys?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He gives her a curious look, but holds off on the question that's suddenly arisen. Instead he says, "Sunny is innocent. God is not."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Thus making His actions all the more galling." She scoots her seat closer to his.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"King Galahad told me the whole tale," as he lets his knee bump gently against her own.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What did he say?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes a breath, "Well-- he spoke of finding the Grail with Percival. They then took the Grail to Sarras, as instructed, where the sight of it converted the heathen Sarrans to Christ and Galahad was made king. This was his reward for his holy service, but it is not what he desired; even so, he continues to do his duty. I have never seen someone who seemed so lonely."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"How perfectly dreadful."