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psalm_onethirtyone) wrote2007-04-10 01:10 am
psalm_onethirtyone) wrote2007-04-10 01:10 am
"I Wake up Scared..."
The long-awaited chapter of Agravain. Now with Gareth/Clar!
Mordred has the key out before they're halfway up the stairs, playing with it without seeming to notice. He stops abruptly at the top, looking towards their door. Gaheris starts to ask him, but stops too as soon as he sees what Mordred's looking at. Bedwyr laughs at them.
"What, surprise you?"
Mordred doesn't say anything, so Gaheris says, "How'd you find us?"
"Pfff. This is Wales. And you're Orkneys."
"Welsh logic." Mordred, low and sarcastic.
"Orkney cynic." His voice is mild, not a touch of unsteadiness or a slur; he slouches against the door, but his face is clear. This and a couple of drinks would be Bedwyr as Gaheris remembers him, not quite sober, not quite drunk, playing games of secrets and maybe wiser than you, but not ready to show it, rather make a crude joke instead and laugh companionably whether or not he offends you. "You should be nicer. I've been waiting a while."
"That's your problem, isn't it?"
Gaheris drops back.
"I can make it yours. Honestly, I do wonder--if you stop going around like a lowering cloud for a minute, do you get out of practise?"
"It's inherent. Kind of the way you'll never stop being a flash bastard."
"Unfortunately for your snappy comeback quota, I don't think that's an insult." He stretches and looks over at Gaheris. "What about you? You have anything to say?"
"No." Soft.
"That's you. Always the skittish one."
"What do you want?" Mordred interrupts.
"Eh, just thought if you were looking for Kay, I know where he is."
"No, thanks."
"You sure?" as he takes from his pocket a piece of paper that Gaheris recognises, after a moment, as a business card. "I have your ticket to being insulted right here."
"Standing here listening to you is bad enough. I'll pass."
"You?"
Gaheris hesitates. They're both looking at him. Quickly he reaches out, takes the card, slips it into his own jeans pocket. Mordred scowls.
"Are you going to go now, or do you want us to invite you in?"
"Us? You're speaking for him now?" Bedwyr laughs again. "Sorry, thanks, but it's time to get back to Laura."
"I'm surprised she let you come."
"My sweet harpy is in town right now."
"Christ. If you got this pathetic in your old age, I'm glad I wasn't alive to see it."
Nobody notices Gaheris flinch.
~~~
Ten minutes after Bedwyr goes, leaving Mordred swearing loudly at the walls, there's a rap at the door and Gaheris opens it to a pinched face and tangled red hair. He glances back into the room, sees that Mordred hasn't noticed, and slips out.
"Hi," he says awkwardly.
"He thinks I gone to town." Laura frowns. "Took me half the day finding you. --Y're not coming back."
"No."
"Good. And not y're damn brother, either."
"We're going home. We're going to England and then home."
"Good."
"I'm sorry."
"I hate y'coming around."
"I'm sorry," he says.
"I'm just telling you."
The door opens. "What the hell are you doing out--" Mordred pauses, looking at her. "Christ, they've decided to invade."
Laura stares at him defiantly. "I'm telling him, I'm telling you t'go."
"Like I haven't heard it half a million times already. Thanks for stopping by."
Gaheris looks from one to the other, very quietly, and tries to hide his happiness. Mordred doesn't want her any more. He's angry, he's frustrated, he's lost his good humour and he's shuttered, the way Gaheris hates, but he doesn't want this woman who loves Bedwyr, and Gaheris could laugh. Instead he looks quietly, and waits for one or both of them to slam a door.
She makes a snarling face, but doesn't say anything. She's got the bad position in this argument, she wants more out of it, but this is the place where she should storm away; but that would make her lose, and she doesn't want to lose. Almost he's sympathetic.
"So are you going?" Mordred raises an eyebrow.
Her struggle is visible. Finally she nods curtly and turns on her heel. Mordred almost smirks.
Gaheris sighs; "Let me in," and Mordred opens the door for him.
~~~
They do go to England, to find the castles there. Some of them are the same, though Camelot is gone; some of them are the same, and in some places they're so grown over it's hard to recognise them. Caerleon is filled with people, in that old space where an old man tells Gaheris the Round Table used to be. He seems wholeheartedly to believe it.
When Gaheris tells Mordred, he thinks there's bittersweet in his brother's smile.
It isn't a journey that can last very long. They only have a week. In the end they go back, passing the white chalk horses, as they always were going to have done. Some part of Gaheris rebels, cries out for England and Scotland and Wales and Orkney, for his home, his home, for the land he lived in and never belonged in, for his anxious childhood, his awkward youth; but he grits his teeth to it and gets on the aeroplane, promising himself he won't look back.
Once one of the flight attendants, a plain, washed-out woman with blonde hair, smiles at him and seems to catch her breath. He doesn't understand; he doesn't understand anything. He sleeps after that.
~~~
Mordred wakes him when the plane comes down. As always, he hasn't slept at all. Gaheris is growing used to it, that he is the one who sleeps and Mordred the one who stays watchful. They gather their brief luggage together, and go back to their second home.
As soon as he walks in the door it's evident that something's wrong. Mordred, behind him, pokes him in the back.
"Giddyup."
"Wait, there's--"
Mordred pushes him through. "Clar!"
She skirts in like a shadow, her long dark hair unbound and down around her waist. She's wearing a heavy jean skirt with quilt patches sewn in, and has ashes on her face. "Back already? What did you bring me?"
"What in God's name are you doing, woman?"
"Fixing Gareth. What did you bring?"
Mordred unshoulders his messenger bag automatically and hands it to her; Clar puts it on the table and paws through it. Her hands are swift to-day, not ginger and delicate as the time before. She bats swiftly, rolling things out: dandelions from Caerleon, a piece of stone from the castle, ivy from Bedwyr's village, a twist of tobacco from a shop in Scotland. She gathers them into her skirt--Gaheris suddenly notices that part of it is an apron, but the whole thing is so mismatched that he couldn't tell before.
"What's wrong with Gareth?" Mordred asks, very clear.
"Sick."
"Why?"
"Drinking." She gestures. "He's gone out of it. Makes him sick."
"Withdrawal," says Gaheris. Mordred shoots him a look.
"Oh, Jesus."
"Stop Jesusing at me. Stupid boys. I'm fixing him." Frown. "Don't bring me anything I need. Stupids." Her fingers tug on the tobacco, and she slips to the door, still shadow-like. There she looks at them intently. "You're changed. I'll fix later. Busy now." Then she's gone.
"Great."
"He's got Clar. He'll be fine." Gaheris frowns slightly, unaware of how like her it makes him look. "He'll be fine."
"I know, I know. But she always holes up in that damn room and never lets anyone know what's going on."
"He'll be fine," he repeats. Mordred just sits and looks down the hall at the quilts Clar has hung over the doorway to the living room. Gaheris watches him for a minute, and then goes up to his room to draw.
~~~
The next morning he wakes up at the desk, his head in his arms. Gareth. Without waiting for anything else he goes downstairs, taking the steps in little leaps, not because he's afraid, but because he-- he doesn't know. Clar's quilted door is still shutting them out, but he pushes it aside and goes in anyway.
She looks up from where she sits by a mattress on the floor, her eyes sparking with annoyance. "Who said you could come in?"
"Me, I did," he says, going to the mattress. "Is Mordred up?"
"Work."
He falls heavily to the floor beside her, half-sitting, looking at Gareth's pale face. He's so small. He's sleeping, but there's sweat on his forehead, and a smell of vomit in the room, stronger even than the cigarette smoke. Clar wipes his face with a wet cloth and makes a tchhing noise with her tongue.
"Will he be okay?"
"Yes. He's got me. My twin."
"Sorry."
"Tchah."
She leans down and kisses Gareth, with a tenderness Gaheris has never seen before, never remembered and never imagined.
"I--" He stops, shyly. "I'm glad you're looking after him."
Clar levels an ironical smile at him, but he thinks she understands; she wipes Gareth's forehead with the cloth and hums a little. "It's not bad. It's just clean sickness. It passes, he'll get better. I'll keep him." She reaches across the mattress to a bundle of rosemary hung on the wall.
"The castle--"
"Hm?"
"When we went home. I found our rooms. Mordred found yours. It was like time never touched it."
A little low laugh, almost of pleasure. "Good."
"Did you make it that way?"
"Maybe."
"And the castle, nobody knew it was there. Mordred talked to a girl who didn't know it was there. Did you do that, too?"
Clar shrugs and shakes her head. "Maybe Mother."
"It wasn't Mother. I always know her."
"Dunno."
"Okay. I just wanted--to ask."
Below them, Gareth stirs and murmurs. Immediately Clar's attention is on him, her dark eyes fixed on his face. "Hello."
Gareth smiles weakly. "Hi."
Clar laughs again. This time there's a strange, Clar-ish joy to it, something only she could manage--to be joyful and secret at the same time, to be happy and to make it sound like startling magic. Gareth's face changes to full gladness, and Gaheris, seeing, draws back. They have a wonderful thing between them, something he doesn't understand because he doesn't share it, but he knows not to intrude on it. He goes into the kitchen for breakfast.
~~~
When afternoon comes he waits for Amy; she greets him almost as though she were happy to see him, and he realises he has a sharing with her that's different from Clar and Gareth's but as deeply important, and he wonders, suddenly, who Mordred shares with.
Maybe Gawain. It was Gawain before, at least. He wonders whether Mordred is waiting for Gawain and waiting to have someone, and it pains him as it certainly shouldn't. He has Amy. There's no reason to be jealous of Gawain, especially when--he thinks half-angrily, berating himself--they haven't even found him yet, they don't know where he is or whether he'll ever come.
He pauses, realising that Amy is looking over at him and waiting for the answer to a question, and shakes himself.
"Sorry, say that again."
~~~
That night Gareth is up and eats dinner with them, while Mordred tells work stories, and even Clar laughs--with her arms folded and her head down, but Gaheris can tell she means it. Gareth says he's going to try this week to get a job so he can help out, he thinks he'll look in at the McDonald's (still hiring, after all this time), and Mordred shoots Gaheris a half-amused look, and Clar says she'll have to make him wash every day after he gets home to get the fry smell out of him and his clothes.
"Eugh," she says.
Gareth beams. "I like it! I think you just don't eat enough French fries."
"Never eat them."
"Well, see, that's why you don't like the smell. You don't know how good it is."
"Stupid." She leans over and tugs his ear.
"Hey!"
And Mordred laughs, and a year passes.
Wales seems a lifetime ago; it all does. It shocks him that it's May again, that it's May but a different year, that Gareth has gained weight and his face is brighter and there's less bitterness behind his eyes, that he works a long shift at McDonald's and helps pay the grocery bills; that Mordred seems to have tired in some way, and avoids them all, and that it doesn't seem to trouble anyone but Gaheris.
He doesn't know what to do about it. Once or twice he tries talking, but Mordred doesn't want to talk; he slips out of it somehow, and goes to his room or to work or to something, but always away from Gaheris.
"Why?" Gaheris wants to shout. Why, why, why? But Mordred doesn't answer.
And then one day he comes back from walking Amy home (she has a game over the weekend, and he's promised to come and annoy the other team and shout bad advice at the coach), and there's a strange car parked in front of their house, a maroon Volvo with a vanity plate, and Gaheris stops and frowns. Nobody ever visits them. It's almost an unspoken rule. They're so secret and close-knit, even when they aren't speaking to each other; they don't let other people into the workings.
He'd never ask Amy home with him, and it's equal parts that he doesn't want the others to know about her, that he wants to keep her separate from his place of memories and to be able to come to her for an anchor when there's too much in his head--and that he knows they wouldn't want anyone without the memories to come to the house. It's why no one's ever asked when he's going to bring her home. They don't even know her age or her name now, and he knows it's right that way.
Then who's come, why's someone come? He approaches warily, and pushes the door open, looking all around him for signs.
He doesn't have far to look.
The man sitting at their kitchen table twists around to look at him. He's a short, stocky man, dressed in a tailored grey suit that seems incongruous with his muscular body, has a briefcase beside him and a cup of tea in his hands, and he holds the saucer under it to catch the drips. When he sees Gaheris, he says--
"Well met, little brother," he says; and then Agravain laughs.
Mordred has the key out before they're halfway up the stairs, playing with it without seeming to notice. He stops abruptly at the top, looking towards their door. Gaheris starts to ask him, but stops too as soon as he sees what Mordred's looking at. Bedwyr laughs at them.
"What, surprise you?"
Mordred doesn't say anything, so Gaheris says, "How'd you find us?"
"Pfff. This is Wales. And you're Orkneys."
"Welsh logic." Mordred, low and sarcastic.
"Orkney cynic." His voice is mild, not a touch of unsteadiness or a slur; he slouches against the door, but his face is clear. This and a couple of drinks would be Bedwyr as Gaheris remembers him, not quite sober, not quite drunk, playing games of secrets and maybe wiser than you, but not ready to show it, rather make a crude joke instead and laugh companionably whether or not he offends you. "You should be nicer. I've been waiting a while."
"That's your problem, isn't it?"
Gaheris drops back.
"I can make it yours. Honestly, I do wonder--if you stop going around like a lowering cloud for a minute, do you get out of practise?"
"It's inherent. Kind of the way you'll never stop being a flash bastard."
"Unfortunately for your snappy comeback quota, I don't think that's an insult." He stretches and looks over at Gaheris. "What about you? You have anything to say?"
"No." Soft.
"That's you. Always the skittish one."
"What do you want?" Mordred interrupts.
"Eh, just thought if you were looking for Kay, I know where he is."
"No, thanks."
"You sure?" as he takes from his pocket a piece of paper that Gaheris recognises, after a moment, as a business card. "I have your ticket to being insulted right here."
"Standing here listening to you is bad enough. I'll pass."
"You?"
Gaheris hesitates. They're both looking at him. Quickly he reaches out, takes the card, slips it into his own jeans pocket. Mordred scowls.
"Are you going to go now, or do you want us to invite you in?"
"Us? You're speaking for him now?" Bedwyr laughs again. "Sorry, thanks, but it's time to get back to Laura."
"I'm surprised she let you come."
"My sweet harpy is in town right now."
"Christ. If you got this pathetic in your old age, I'm glad I wasn't alive to see it."
Nobody notices Gaheris flinch.
Ten minutes after Bedwyr goes, leaving Mordred swearing loudly at the walls, there's a rap at the door and Gaheris opens it to a pinched face and tangled red hair. He glances back into the room, sees that Mordred hasn't noticed, and slips out.
"Hi," he says awkwardly.
"He thinks I gone to town." Laura frowns. "Took me half the day finding you. --Y're not coming back."
"No."
"Good. And not y're damn brother, either."
"We're going home. We're going to England and then home."
"Good."
"I'm sorry."
"I hate y'coming around."
"I'm sorry," he says.
"I'm just telling you."
The door opens. "What the hell are you doing out--" Mordred pauses, looking at her. "Christ, they've decided to invade."
Laura stares at him defiantly. "I'm telling him, I'm telling you t'go."
"Like I haven't heard it half a million times already. Thanks for stopping by."
Gaheris looks from one to the other, very quietly, and tries to hide his happiness. Mordred doesn't want her any more. He's angry, he's frustrated, he's lost his good humour and he's shuttered, the way Gaheris hates, but he doesn't want this woman who loves Bedwyr, and Gaheris could laugh. Instead he looks quietly, and waits for one or both of them to slam a door.
She makes a snarling face, but doesn't say anything. She's got the bad position in this argument, she wants more out of it, but this is the place where she should storm away; but that would make her lose, and she doesn't want to lose. Almost he's sympathetic.
"So are you going?" Mordred raises an eyebrow.
Her struggle is visible. Finally she nods curtly and turns on her heel. Mordred almost smirks.
Gaheris sighs; "Let me in," and Mordred opens the door for him.
They do go to England, to find the castles there. Some of them are the same, though Camelot is gone; some of them are the same, and in some places they're so grown over it's hard to recognise them. Caerleon is filled with people, in that old space where an old man tells Gaheris the Round Table used to be. He seems wholeheartedly to believe it.
When Gaheris tells Mordred, he thinks there's bittersweet in his brother's smile.
It isn't a journey that can last very long. They only have a week. In the end they go back, passing the white chalk horses, as they always were going to have done. Some part of Gaheris rebels, cries out for England and Scotland and Wales and Orkney, for his home, his home, for the land he lived in and never belonged in, for his anxious childhood, his awkward youth; but he grits his teeth to it and gets on the aeroplane, promising himself he won't look back.
Once one of the flight attendants, a plain, washed-out woman with blonde hair, smiles at him and seems to catch her breath. He doesn't understand; he doesn't understand anything. He sleeps after that.
Mordred wakes him when the plane comes down. As always, he hasn't slept at all. Gaheris is growing used to it, that he is the one who sleeps and Mordred the one who stays watchful. They gather their brief luggage together, and go back to their second home.
As soon as he walks in the door it's evident that something's wrong. Mordred, behind him, pokes him in the back.
"Giddyup."
"Wait, there's--"
Mordred pushes him through. "Clar!"
She skirts in like a shadow, her long dark hair unbound and down around her waist. She's wearing a heavy jean skirt with quilt patches sewn in, and has ashes on her face. "Back already? What did you bring me?"
"What in God's name are you doing, woman?"
"Fixing Gareth. What did you bring?"
Mordred unshoulders his messenger bag automatically and hands it to her; Clar puts it on the table and paws through it. Her hands are swift to-day, not ginger and delicate as the time before. She bats swiftly, rolling things out: dandelions from Caerleon, a piece of stone from the castle, ivy from Bedwyr's village, a twist of tobacco from a shop in Scotland. She gathers them into her skirt--Gaheris suddenly notices that part of it is an apron, but the whole thing is so mismatched that he couldn't tell before.
"What's wrong with Gareth?" Mordred asks, very clear.
"Sick."
"Why?"
"Drinking." She gestures. "He's gone out of it. Makes him sick."
"Withdrawal," says Gaheris. Mordred shoots him a look.
"Oh, Jesus."
"Stop Jesusing at me. Stupid boys. I'm fixing him." Frown. "Don't bring me anything I need. Stupids." Her fingers tug on the tobacco, and she slips to the door, still shadow-like. There she looks at them intently. "You're changed. I'll fix later. Busy now." Then she's gone.
"Great."
"He's got Clar. He'll be fine." Gaheris frowns slightly, unaware of how like her it makes him look. "He'll be fine."
"I know, I know. But she always holes up in that damn room and never lets anyone know what's going on."
"He'll be fine," he repeats. Mordred just sits and looks down the hall at the quilts Clar has hung over the doorway to the living room. Gaheris watches him for a minute, and then goes up to his room to draw.
The next morning he wakes up at the desk, his head in his arms. Gareth. Without waiting for anything else he goes downstairs, taking the steps in little leaps, not because he's afraid, but because he-- he doesn't know. Clar's quilted door is still shutting them out, but he pushes it aside and goes in anyway.
She looks up from where she sits by a mattress on the floor, her eyes sparking with annoyance. "Who said you could come in?"
"Me, I did," he says, going to the mattress. "Is Mordred up?"
"Work."
He falls heavily to the floor beside her, half-sitting, looking at Gareth's pale face. He's so small. He's sleeping, but there's sweat on his forehead, and a smell of vomit in the room, stronger even than the cigarette smoke. Clar wipes his face with a wet cloth and makes a tchhing noise with her tongue.
"Will he be okay?"
"Yes. He's got me. My twin."
"Sorry."
"Tchah."
She leans down and kisses Gareth, with a tenderness Gaheris has never seen before, never remembered and never imagined.
"I--" He stops, shyly. "I'm glad you're looking after him."
Clar levels an ironical smile at him, but he thinks she understands; she wipes Gareth's forehead with the cloth and hums a little. "It's not bad. It's just clean sickness. It passes, he'll get better. I'll keep him." She reaches across the mattress to a bundle of rosemary hung on the wall.
"The castle--"
"Hm?"
"When we went home. I found our rooms. Mordred found yours. It was like time never touched it."
A little low laugh, almost of pleasure. "Good."
"Did you make it that way?"
"Maybe."
"And the castle, nobody knew it was there. Mordred talked to a girl who didn't know it was there. Did you do that, too?"
Clar shrugs and shakes her head. "Maybe Mother."
"It wasn't Mother. I always know her."
"Dunno."
"Okay. I just wanted--to ask."
Below them, Gareth stirs and murmurs. Immediately Clar's attention is on him, her dark eyes fixed on his face. "Hello."
Gareth smiles weakly. "Hi."
Clar laughs again. This time there's a strange, Clar-ish joy to it, something only she could manage--to be joyful and secret at the same time, to be happy and to make it sound like startling magic. Gareth's face changes to full gladness, and Gaheris, seeing, draws back. They have a wonderful thing between them, something he doesn't understand because he doesn't share it, but he knows not to intrude on it. He goes into the kitchen for breakfast.
When afternoon comes he waits for Amy; she greets him almost as though she were happy to see him, and he realises he has a sharing with her that's different from Clar and Gareth's but as deeply important, and he wonders, suddenly, who Mordred shares with.
Maybe Gawain. It was Gawain before, at least. He wonders whether Mordred is waiting for Gawain and waiting to have someone, and it pains him as it certainly shouldn't. He has Amy. There's no reason to be jealous of Gawain, especially when--he thinks half-angrily, berating himself--they haven't even found him yet, they don't know where he is or whether he'll ever come.
He pauses, realising that Amy is looking over at him and waiting for the answer to a question, and shakes himself.
"Sorry, say that again."
That night Gareth is up and eats dinner with them, while Mordred tells work stories, and even Clar laughs--with her arms folded and her head down, but Gaheris can tell she means it. Gareth says he's going to try this week to get a job so he can help out, he thinks he'll look in at the McDonald's (still hiring, after all this time), and Mordred shoots Gaheris a half-amused look, and Clar says she'll have to make him wash every day after he gets home to get the fry smell out of him and his clothes.
"Eugh," she says.
Gareth beams. "I like it! I think you just don't eat enough French fries."
"Never eat them."
"Well, see, that's why you don't like the smell. You don't know how good it is."
"Stupid." She leans over and tugs his ear.
"Hey!"
And Mordred laughs, and a year passes.
Wales seems a lifetime ago; it all does. It shocks him that it's May again, that it's May but a different year, that Gareth has gained weight and his face is brighter and there's less bitterness behind his eyes, that he works a long shift at McDonald's and helps pay the grocery bills; that Mordred seems to have tired in some way, and avoids them all, and that it doesn't seem to trouble anyone but Gaheris.
He doesn't know what to do about it. Once or twice he tries talking, but Mordred doesn't want to talk; he slips out of it somehow, and goes to his room or to work or to something, but always away from Gaheris.
"Why?" Gaheris wants to shout. Why, why, why? But Mordred doesn't answer.
And then one day he comes back from walking Amy home (she has a game over the weekend, and he's promised to come and annoy the other team and shout bad advice at the coach), and there's a strange car parked in front of their house, a maroon Volvo with a vanity plate, and Gaheris stops and frowns. Nobody ever visits them. It's almost an unspoken rule. They're so secret and close-knit, even when they aren't speaking to each other; they don't let other people into the workings.
He'd never ask Amy home with him, and it's equal parts that he doesn't want the others to know about her, that he wants to keep her separate from his place of memories and to be able to come to her for an anchor when there's too much in his head--and that he knows they wouldn't want anyone without the memories to come to the house. It's why no one's ever asked when he's going to bring her home. They don't even know her age or her name now, and he knows it's right that way.
Then who's come, why's someone come? He approaches warily, and pushes the door open, looking all around him for signs.
He doesn't have far to look.
The man sitting at their kitchen table twists around to look at him. He's a short, stocky man, dressed in a tailored grey suit that seems incongruous with his muscular body, has a briefcase beside him and a cup of tea in his hands, and he holds the saucer under it to catch the drips. When he sees Gaheris, he says--
"Well met, little brother," he says; and then Agravain laughs.
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♥! Beautiful sentence.
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...wait, are you following this?
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Also, I love how jealously Gaheris guards whatever he shares with Mordred in this between-time.no subject
He is very troubled by the idea of anyone else being closer to Mordred than he is, despite that fact that he doesn't think he's very close to Mordred.no subject
Exactly. And it's adorable.Also, oughtn't you to be in bed ...?
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^__^...well, technically.
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ii. Agravain drives a maroon Volvo with a vanity plate. I love you even more than I already did.
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ii. ^________^ AND HE'S AN INVESTMENT BANKERRRRR.
be on to-night?
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