[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]

"The blind faith in God's plan."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Ah-- whether that plan brings rest or happiness to those involved, or not. Yes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Though I suppose she was pleased with the outcome," tightly. "Was Galahad?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Pleased? I do not think so," he sighs a little, sips his drink. "There was a kind of stubborn, resigned insistence that things were good, but that was because they were as God has wanted them to be. With everything else he told me.... I don't know. Can one be unhappy and pleased at once?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I believe so," thoughtfully. "If there's enough self-delusion at play."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye... I cannot imagine keeping my faith, when I had been deceived. When I had seen what surely must have been punishment for others who had the same goal in mind."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan takes his hand in hers and draws it up, pressing a kiss to the tender skin of his inner wrist.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I don't know-- I dislike being angry. I don't know, though, which part of this makes me angriest."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Would you like to try and sort it out?" Susan asks, pressing another kiss, this time to the palm of his hand.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He strokes her cheek, giving her a long look -- his expression is a curious mixture, but plainly visible, as ever, is his adoration. "Wouldst thou mind?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Of course I don't mind," Susan says. She kisses his fingertips, too, before releasing his hand and reaching in her pocket for her notebook. "Let's see. Shall we list the pieces out one by one and address each, or start with the big picture and break it down?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He smiles a little at her -- he loves her so. It is different, he supposes, than what he felt for Guinever or Arthur, but no less intense. His chest is full to bursting with it at the moment; her determined care, her thoughtfulness, the notebook ever in her pocket. Her willingness to hear him out.

Lancelot takes a little sip of his whiskey to try to get his mind in order, and then says, "Perhaps piece by piece."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Very well." Susan opens the notebook to a blank page and uncaps her pen. "Which piece to begin with?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes a breath, considering for a moment before he starts to list things off, not pausing to sort anything but rather trying to straighten out the jumble of everything. "The Grail. Elaine. King Galahad. Camelot and Arthur. Gwen. Myself."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan notes each thing down as Lancelot talks. "Which of those feels most pressing?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I don't know-- perhaps The Grail is easiest."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The Grail, then," Susan says, looking up at him. "What of the Grail?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He takes a deep breath, and is quiet for a moment before saying, "I never thought I could attain it -- I knew I had already sinned too much. Still, I would have liked to make Arthur happy. I did seek it, once or twice." He pauses, draining his glass. "King Galahad told me it was at Corbenic. Had been... all along."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan hadn't remembered that, from the stories she'd read to Edmund in their childhood. "While you were being... violated?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Simply, "Yes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Her hands clench, brief and tight, knuckles white against her pen before she can force herself to relax. It takes her another moment to compose herself enough to say, "Right," in that usual businesslike tone of hers. "So the Grail, which was conceivably within reach, was attained much later by another."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I do not begrudge it falling to Galahad," he takes up the bottle and refills his glass, topping off Susan's a little as well. His tone darkens as he goes on, "But to think of it there-- where God had apparently ordained his conception. It feels like a jibe."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan takes a small sip from her cup, then sets it aside and rests that hand on Lancelot's knee. "It's a cruelty."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Perhaps it was not for me to know-- but if Arthur was driven to seek it, how would I not know, eventually?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"How could you not?" she echoes, squeezing his knee. "I believe God is capricious and thoughtless. He sets up his chessboard and lets others play the game, but changes the pieces out at will. A rook for a bishop, a queen for a pawn."