[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

[wickedwit]

"Personally, I think it was a political maneuver. Awe and spectacle. Susan would understand." He sighs. "Susan's also in agreement me with that a man who tells jokes no one else can laugh at is a terrible bore at parties. You chose very well with her. I think she'd be furious on your behalf. I admit," he says, and this is a large admission, "I'm furious on your behalf, too." It's a large admission because he doesn't get this kind of furious unless he cares for someone. Perhaps, by some transitional property, he's come to care for Lancelot because of how very like Galahad he is.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot looks up, a little surprised at that. He says, a bit stupidly, "Thank you."

[wickedwit]

Claudius looks surprised. As though it just registered with him oh, that is a thing to be thanked for. With a polite blink, he supplies, "You're quite welcome." Because that's what follows next, naturally. "I can always be furious with God. Free of charge."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He gives Claudius a little smile and raises his glass. "I had not given it much thought, until today."

[wickedwit]

Claudius laughs, and clinks their glasses together. "I think too much," he says, with a swig of whiskey. "My brother used to say that a man who thinks too much is dangerous¹, and he was right, in my case. But I'm a danger to myself, as well."

¹ That's Julius Caesar, actually, but same vibe.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Oh, I can think overmuch about some things, but I rarely spent time considering God, what His plans might be, and so on. I went to Mass, of course, but my focus was elsewhere."

He could admit, too, that there have been times when he has acted without thinking at all, and at those times he has done harm to himself or someone else... but today is not the day for that sort of admission to Claudius.

[wickedwit]

"My focus always came back to it. The nature of concupiscence and man's tendency towards sin, that was a particular obsession of mine. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man. I spent a long time despising myself and God and trying to balance the calculus of defiling myself for the salvation of someone better." He didn't expect to being confiding this much in Lancelot, so he asks in turn, "What thoughts kept you up at night?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Within that list are enough sins that Lancelot knows all too well, sins that he knows he himself as committed, and regularly. Adultery, certainly. Deceit, yes. Pride and foolishness -- without question. But most of all the others, as well, give him a little pang. He feels a jumble of things and very nearly says all of them. To stop himself, he takes a drink.

After a moment, he gives Claudius a measuring look and says, "Would you like to know-- if not the whole of it, then much of it?"

[wickedwit]

Claudius nods slowly. He gives it enough time to show he's serious -- of course he wants to know. He wants to know everything. But not all secrets are easily told, and he has to recognize that difficulty. "Yes," he says. "As much you're willing to share."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes a breath, another drink. "You already know I am an adulterer. You may conclude, from there, that I have also deceived someone I care about. But I never thought to serve God -- this is part of why I was never meant for the Grail. My dearest desire, before I came to Camelot, was to be of service, of use, to the High King. What kept me from sleep, what pained me, was that even as I served him, I betrayed him for my own... well. I would have said my own joy."

[wickedwit]

"You would have said that." Claudius picks up on his wording. "Not any longer?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I loved her," quietly, "and when we were happy, we were very happy indeed. But-- I also spent a good deal of time afraid to upset her. And after Corbenic... she was hurt. Furious. She was unkind, and she punished me. I have come to see, here, that all was not well. That joy does not necessarily require suffering."

[wickedwit]

“You know Gertrude,” Claudius says, after a moment’s reflection and swirling his whiskey. “Remarkable woman. The only true monarch I’d swear myself to, the way you swore yourself to your king. She’d rule with wisdom and grace, and know the meaning of mercy. Her king, however, was rather lacking when it came to mercies. I believed she loved him, for a time. She was capable of those feats of empathy — of looking past his moods and flares of temper to see a lonely man who’d never been truly loved. And for a time, he was grateful to her, kinder than I believed my brother capable of being. But he still had his flares of temper. He still jealously guarded her, still hurled accusations at her, and hurt her in ways that wore away at her love for him. Love and fear, you see, make very poor bedfellows. They can exist together, but never peacefully.” He should be clearer, he realizes, about the parallel he’s making — not to his brother and his choler, for all he once feared Lancelot would lash out like Hamlet. “You and Gertrude both deserve lovers you shouldn’t have to fear.”

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot listens to all of this with an expression that goes from carefully controlled to frowning, then to flushed. At the last, he looks back into his glass.

He has the urge to argue, and perhaps the only thing that prevents it is that he has already heard something similar, from so many people he loves, that he can at last begin to believe that good things are something he might deserve. He takes another drink.

After a long pause to master his voice he says, "I have such loves, here, and I am grateful. Your Gertrude -- she was kind to me without any reason to be, in a way that I know means she is kind to her core, sincerely. She taught me to dance, that I might please Susan, and I will ever be grateful to her for that."

[wickedwit]

Claudius cherishes the story, holding it in his heart as the unexpected gift it is. By letting Gertrude go, by resolving to stay here, he'd accepted never hearing anything new about her -- and though he doesn't miss the vicious gossips of Elsinore, he misses when someone would speak of her kindness and he would fall more in love with her, feeling a fierce private gladness that others recognized her virtues, too. He almost keeps it private, almost buries it under flippancy, the way he would have to in a court where any rumor he loved the queen could be dangerous to them both. But the whiskey is warming, the company surprisingly reassuring.

"Kind to her core," he repeats, and raises his glass. "You have it exactly. And my brother would not have liked her dancing with you -- a foolish, jealous man to the last. He could never see her kindness for what it was. You do."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It was easy to see. It shone from her," he smiles a little at Claudius. "Jealousy, I think, does no one any service. I fear I have not painted a pleasing picture of Guinever, though I love her. But her anger, her jealousy and fear, it sometimes ruled her. I didn't realize until I was here that it was that which made her cruel, sometimes."

[wickedwit]

"Sometimes an honest picture is more valuable than a pleasing one," Claudius assures him. "But I understand your loyalty to your queen. Believe it or not -- and you may not -- I understand a great deal. You could be forgiven for thinking I only gave you such a difficult time because I didn't know your situation." It's an irritation he's still turning over, in various forms. But Lancelot doesn't irritate him right now. More softly, he says, "It's a difficult thing, to be a queen, to have so much power and yet so little. And that little power she has -- to take a lover, to command his loyalty, to exile him if he breaks his troth -- it's enough to take advantage of. There's a visceral relief, in knowing you aren't entirely helpless, because you can still cause pain when you've seen yourself wronged. I don't blame her. But I see the damage that exercise of power does."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot's face goes momentarily blank; he blinks a little, sets his glass down, then takes it up again.

"I think--" He pauses, a quite lengthy pause, and then manages, "I am ashamed to say it, but I had not thought of... her situation in that way. It seems, at court, that everyone loves her. I know Arthur loves her. She often times, when it was not just the two of us, seemed happy. But... thou speak'st aright, I think. She did not marry the King of her own will; she did not become Queen, with all its expectations, of her own ambition. She must have, often, felt trapped. But-- I did not see it."

As he speaks, his voice changes a bit, goes softer. Some of the sorrow creeps back in -- it would be easier if he could feel angry on her behalf, but he's not quite there yet. He feels bad, guilty, that he didn't understand this person he held so dear. He thought it was enough to love her, be ruled by her, give his life for her. He ought to have known her better.

[wickedwit]

"It's easier to see when you've made a study of people and power, which I don't recommend everyone does." He sighs, tilting his whiskey glass to watch the golden light through it. "I judged you a little for it. For not noticing when and why I gave you the cut direct, for example. But you must know I'm making judgments all the time, and revising them all the time, too. People are mysteries, something always left to uncover in them, even the people we love best."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot watches him -- he is a careful, attentive listener, most of the time, and he is finding that Claudius is interesting. He likes him. Perhaps that's the rye talking.

He takes Claudius' point, and he does find it somewhat soothing, the notion that we are always learning more about even those we think we know best. It allows room for everyone to change and grow; he knows he did not give enough thought to the potential joy of changing, growing, before he was here. Even so, his expression clouds a little and he says, "I do not know what you mean by cut direct."

The rye certainly has a hand in this; he's not accustomed to questioning Claudius as he might question Magnus or Grantaire or ... nearly anyone else.

[wickedwit]

"I'm so glad you asked," Claudius says, whether or not that technically counts as a question. It's very close to a question, for Lancelot. "Listen. Let me tell you a secret. Eye contact is not a natural skill for me. I'm excellent at it, of course." He looks Lancelot directly in the eye, charming and approachable, if perhaps too approachable. "But that's all practice. The cut direct is rather advanced in that it requires denying eye contact when it would otherwise be expected. You go to greet the host of a dance you're attending -- for example -- and instead of meeting your eyes and acknowledging you, he looks away. It's not that he didn't hear you. It's that you're beneath acknowledgement. He may consider the sky instead, which is the cut sublime, or the ground beneath, which is the cut infernal." With some annoyance, he says, "Now, a host should never cut a guest, if he controls the guest list. But if you weren't at that dance ... I suppose Gertrude's dancing lessons would've gone to waste. And Laertes adores thee. Sagramore adores thee, but in an arch, confrontational sort of way, which I frankly envy."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Well," he says, in a tone that is carefully considering. He is flushed, now, with the drink, and still not entirely sure he understands. "I am sorry for not noticing what, perhaps, I should have. Though I admit that when I'm not sure of someone, or I know I am disliked, it is much easier to simply... not engage that person. Perhaps I should not default to that."

He goes to take another sip -- his glass is getting close to empty, now -- and then pauses as Claudius' other observation catches up to him. He sets the glass down again. "I would not have let Gertrude's time and care go to waste, of course. And I do know how Laertes feels for me... but Sagramore? We are friends, yes. I think I would call him brother even if that weren't already set by our service together. But again, I don't think I don't know thy meaning-- what is there to envy?"

[wickedwit]

It makes sense -- Claudius could understand only half of Lancelot's prideful reputation by Laertes's insistence that he was aloof from shyness. The other half was avoiding those who already disliked them, which Claudius himself found infuriating. As if there were no need to concern himself with the likes of Claudius, as if his opinion held no weight, as if Claudius had no reason to be invested. He can imagine the people of Camelot seeing a man who never seems to stoop to their level, and calling him arrogant.

So perhaps there are things Claudius can't learn simply asking other people what they make of Lancelot. "Sagramore has a natural charm," Claudius says, in answer to his question. "He works at it, of course. People seldom understand how much work it takes to be liked, particularly if they never try at it. But he's still a natural at some things I'm not. There are cues he can read without trying, which means he can a bit more daring, if only a bit. That friendship you have, very boyish and bullying, is something I never had myself as a youth." Claudius does bully his friends now, to be fair. But they're friends who help him navigate the missteps of a missed cue, when his teasing goes too far or he becomes too focused and prodding. They don't collectively decide to shun him until he understands what he's done wrong. "I follow exacting rules at times. Spend a great deal time thinking about the done thing. In your case, perhaps I could have spoken plainly and resolved matters, before it came to giving you the cut direct. But that's not the done thing, you know. Not in Elsinore, where resolving a single spat takes campaigns of intricate subterfuge, people hiding behind arrases. It's rather foolish. And I'm also sorry, as it happens. Cutting asides aren't really honest confrontation."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot nods, swirling his glass. What Claudius says about his relationship with Sagramore makes sense; what has developed between the two of them had felt so natural he hadn't even considered the ways in which it is different from both his other friendships, here, and what he expected from Sagramore to begin with. (It's strange, almost, that this is the case. Ease, friendship, almost never came naturally to him before.)

But-- there is an apology in there. This, too, is surprising. He smiles a little, and as he considers how best to say what he is thinking, he pours a little more rye for himself and then gestures for Claudius to bring his glass closer that he might do so for him, as well.

"If it makes you feel any better," he says, with that careful air he often has, even if it has been softened a bit by alcohol, "I was not hurt by it. I did not notice the lack of eye contact or know that to be deliberate, but I understood why you might not... be glad to see me. It isn't that I didn't care, exactly. But it seemed to me that the best thing to do, for both of us, would be not to bother you unless I could help it. We have people -- friends, lovers -- in common. But even before that was the case, I did not wish to trouble you. I have, from the moment I really understood what Galahad was telling me, wished only for him to have comfort and peace here. It pains me that I have hurt him and can do nothing about it, cannot stop it from happening. The least I could do would be not to antagonize someone he loves so well."

[wickedwit]

"We do have to work on that," Claudius says, half-dazed, yet surprisingly touched. "No, no, the intention is appreciated. It's only that all men aren't alike. I hate to be ignored. Some men would rather be ignored than antagonized but somehow, despite all the lessons my childhood, I'm not one of them."