[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]

"I think so, too," quietly. He eyes his glass, takes another long drink. It's nearly empty again. "I think, perhaps, that is part of why I am so angry. I would have wished to protect him, but one cannot protect against God's will. Here, at least, we are free of that. Should the need arise, I would protect Galahad with everything I have, including my life."

Lancelot pauses, then says, "I would do the same for thee. For anyone in this community. Things are not as they were when I first arrived. I am not as I was."

[wickedwit]

“Thou wouldst be a true knight,” Claudius says, voice even, in a way that betrays him deep emotion. “I didn’t think they still existed. And yet, even when thou wert the most celebrated knight in Camelot, I don’t think thou wert ready to embody the ideal. Thou hadst to come here.”

[lanselos_du_lac]

"No," which is, strangely, an agreement. He catches something in Cladius' tone, though he isn't sure just what that might be. He gives Claudius a long look, as if trying to discern it.

[wickedwit]

With a short laugh and a longer smile, Claudius asks, "Does Galahad get it from thee, then? That searching stare."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot raises his eyebrows, "Do I have that in common with him? It may well be so -- I cannot answer for his mother. He pays close attention to things, does he not?"

[wickedwit]

“Ay. No one sees as deeply as he … and that he could look on me so long, and still choose me, is one of the great wonders of my life.”

[lanselos_du_lac]

He smiles at this. "I understand that feeling. I am glad the two of thee have each other, and that sort of happiness."