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psalm_onethirtyoneIn which a long-awaited event occurs, and Clar loses it. And Soujin reuses stuff. Shush.
They get out of Philadelphia National Airport all right, and Mordred finds the Accord in the parking lot without Gareth's offer of help. It's late and all the tall lamps are on, and if it were any month but December they'd probably all be clouded with moths and flies. Mordred piles luggage in the trunk, snaps at Gareth for not putting on his seatbelt, and starts back towards their house on the outskirts of the city.
Halfway there Gareth leans forward and pokes him.
"Hey."
"What?"
"Can we stop?"
"Why?" Mordred says, giving him a nasty look and stifling a yawn.
"Because I need to go to the bathroom. There's a convenience store right there, can we stop?"
"Little bastard."
Gareth doesn't say anything to that, mostly because Mordred is pulling up in one of the empty parking spots in front of the store. The shiny neon sign that says it's open twenty-four hours is missing a few letters, and the windows are plastered with flyers and advertisements. Mordred looks over his shoulder to Gaheris, backseat as usual.
"You going in?"
Gaheris shrugs and gets out of the car, so Mordred does too.
"You have to buy something at these damn places," he says, prodding Gareth in the back with his car keys. "It's the rules: get a Coke or we tell you the toilet's out of order. It probably is anyway."
"You don't actually have to. It's pretty easy to sneak in," Gareth says cheerfully, as he opens the door. "I used to, I hated pissing in the alley."
Mordred gets a funny look that Gaheris understands, because it's a look that mirrors the feeling in his stomach. They don't want to hear this from their little brother, their youngest, their innocent one with his curls and his relentless sweetness, their brother who should never have grown up the way he did. Gaheris still tries to find out how it was his fault. It would be easier to have someone to blame who could be punished; there's nothing he can do to Gareth's family or Gareth's psychiatrists or Gareth himself, for talking too much and running away instead of putting his head down and learning to quiet his self the way the rest of them did.
Because nobody ever had to try a shrink to find out what was wrong with Gaheris, no one questioned him about violent flights of fancy and brothers he was certain he had, brothers who didn't exist. He at least had the sense to hide himself. But of course not Gareth. Of course not little Gareth, he wouldn't do that, he'd just go on protesting, secure in the certainty that someone would figure out eventually what he was talking about and help him find the people he was missing; and instead of that they'd psychoanalysed him until he went half-crazy.
It shouldn't have been that way. It shouldn't.
He follows Mordred as Mordred surveys the selection of candy bars and chewing gum, and asks,--
"Should we get Clar cigarettes?"
"She can buy her own damn cigarettes. I'm not wasting my money to make my house smell worse."
Another customer is talking to the lone clerk, someone who came in after them and whom Gaheris can't see, someone who's only a voice he hears a few aisles over, hidden by a rack of magazines and a display of some new movie tie-in type of M&Ms. He pauses to listen, and frowns.
"...Want the money. Now. I have a gun."
He touches Mordred's sleeve with his fingertips.
"Jesus Christ almighty," Mordred says, not at all quietly. "This is the last damn thing I need to-night." And before Gaheris can stop him or pull him down or do anything to avert the impending crises, he steps out from behind the display. "Look, pal, I have had a miserable day. I hate planes, my brothers are both complete idiots, and I'm going to have to handle my psycho of a sister when I get home. I do not want to deal with some loser wearing pantyhose on his head whose idea of kicks is beating the shit out of an old guy in a Seven-Eleven, so fuck off, okay?"
The man just stares at him, and then swings his .22 around from the clerk to Mordred, just as Mordred thrusts the pocket of his leather jacket forward in the shape of a gun's barrel against the man's stomach.
"Great. Shootout at the O.K. Corral. Now we can both get horribly maimed, and I can bleed to death in the hospital while you bleed to death in the one-way street. You want to just beat it?"
"You fucker."
"I don't want to hear it. Move. The clerk just called the cops, so if we stay here in our Catch-22 you're eventually going to get arrested anyway. Who in hell picks cashless, arrested and/or shot over cashless but alive?"
Gaheris spends several seconds trying to swallow properly as the man takes off, fumbles with the push/pull of the door and then sprints into the dark with a firm hold on his gun. Mordred makes a face.
"That was exciting."
"What was that?"
"Mordred, champion of justice. Is Gareth done yet?"
"I'm here," a small voice behind the M&Ms display. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"That was scary."
"It's fine." He turns to the clerk. "I'm not buying a damn Coke to-night." Back to Gareth, "Get over here. We're going home. I've had too much excitement for one day."
"Since when do you carry a gun?" Gaheris asks, trying to keep his voice even and his face mostly expressionless and not to let Mordred know, above all, how terrified he still is, and that he nearly threw up when the man pointed the .22 at Mordred's head.
"Since never." Mordred fishes in his jacket pocket and puts a slim, white something that looks a little like a thermometer into Gaheris' hand. "It's Gawain's pH tester. Remind me to write him a thank-you note."
"God," says Gaheris, soft as wind in grass.
~~~
Some time later they pull up in front of the house. The lights are all off inside, and while Gareth and Gaheris are shifting their suitcases, Mordred puts his key in the lock, turns, and tugs on the doorknob. Once, twice, three times. He turns the key again. Then he turns to them.
"It won't open," he says grimly.
"Maybe she's out," Gareth says.
"She never goes out. Clar! Open the damn door!"
"I can try a window!"
"Shut up. Clar!"
Gaheris leans back against the car and watches them; Gareth as he trots off around the side of the house after one of the windows, ignoring Mordred; Mordred who is swearing creatively at the door as loudly as he can. Gaheris is tired. His suitcase handle rests against his stomach and he folds his hands over it, half-closing his eyes against the moonlight. In a few moments Gareth comes back with a look like a kicked puppy.
"The windows don't open. Um. I think they're sort of magicked shut."
"I," Mordred says, "am too goddamn tired for this."
And just then the knob turns under his hand and the door opens.
"Quit yelling. It's loud," Clar says.
~~~
The house is so thick with cigarette smoke that it's hard to breathe, harder even than in the living room or her room. She stands there, holding the cigarette between her fingers, her long black hair swinging loose to her waist, in a thin, simple dress the colour of ashes. She has something red down the front of her dress that looks like blood, and a stain on her left shoulder that covers a snowflake of a blister and smells sulphurous. She listens to Gaheris cough.
"Long time," she says. Beneath her eyes are half-moon circles of bruised skin that make it look like somebody hit her hard.
"A week," Mordred says, looking back at her.
"Too many people outside. Talking. Too much noise. Lots of noise. You took him away."
"To see Gawain, woman."
"He was gone." Her voice is imperious, disdainful--I know what I'm saying is right, and you're wrong, is in her voice.
Gareth slips over to her and puts his hand in hers. "Well, I came back all right. I brought you a present. Ragnelle sort of gave it, but I thought of what it should be."
Clar looks down at him and threads her fingers through. "I know."
Smile. "Can I give it to you?"
"Did the people go away?"
"There's nobody out there."
"Excuse me," Mordred says. "Before you two retire to the devil's cavern, do you mind opening the windows? I want to sleep in this house to-night without asphyxiating."
"You don't die. I fixed it. When there was blood."
The whole room is filled with silence lying on the smoke, two things so thick they choke. Clar looks satisfied; Gareth looks unsure. Mordred grits his teeth. Gaheris wonders whether closing his eyes will make them all go away. Even Mordred. All of them. Put him back in his apartment in New York, the one he hasn't thought about for nearly four years. Because there's too much to breathe in and too much to hear, and he doesn't want to know another strange truth or try to understand Clar's half-words, or see Mordred go cold and closed-up again. He wants to sleep, he wants to stop everything in sleep, and let the ache ease out of his neck.
Finally Mordred says, evenly enough, "Fixed what?"
"I don't remember."
She screams it.
"I forget everything!"
Immediately Gareth throws his arms around her--they're the same height now, the way they never used to be--and holds her, her body shaking, her voice cracking high as Mordred stares at her.
"Will you guys go away? Okay?" Gareth says over her back. He pulls off his jacket and puts it around her, though Gaheris can't see any reason for that--he thinks, without understanding why he should think of that, that isn't what matters at all. Clar lets out a wounded, wildish cry against Gareth. It's muffled because her mouth is at the highest part of his shoulder, and she pushes her hair forward so it touches him, leaves red marks all over his shirt from whatever is on her dress, and mutters something that nobody can make out. He looks around at them hopelessly. "Okay? Now? We're okay, we really are."
"Good Christ."
Gaheris tugs Mordred towards the stairs.
As they go up, Gareth and Clar sink to the floor, and just before he's too high to see, Gaheris looks down to them, at Clar rocking, rocking so hard she rocks Gareth with her, and hears her muttering.
Mordred sits heavily on Gaheris' bed and glares at him, setting his mouth.
"Could have gone better," Gaheris says, trying for light and feeling himself fail.
"You're an idiot."
Below them there's silence in the house, somehow stranger and more threatening than Clar's voice. Nothing moves or breathes, but they know their sister is shaking, lost, and breaking in a way Gaheris has never imagined possible, and he doesn't know what to do, what to think, until suddenly Mordred says,--
"She does this."
"What?"
"Every now and then."
Gaheris frowns at him. "More than once?"
"What'd I say? --She gets stuck, you know she always has, and sometimes she goes psycho. She loses things."
"I don't understand. You said she got everything back. In Chemistry--"
"Yeah, and sometimes it goes away again." Mordred presses his fingers over his eyelids. "She says stuff just goes in and out of her head, and she gave me some business about locks and boxes and lakes, and the sea, and we didn't get anywhere with that, but the point is she forgets what she's done. She has this idea she did something to me after Camlann, messed with my head or my body or something, but we can't figure out what. Sometimes it comes to the surface and I try asking her about it, but she can't get it out. It's in her head and she can't use it or fish it out where she can get a good look at it. It freaks her out. So every few years or so we get the screaming and the rocking and all that shit, and it's fun and games until she can snap out of it. Usually I just drive to Jersey beach and get her smooth rocks until it's over."
"But she has Gareth now."
"Right," with a small, twisting grimace. "Apparently he can handle it."
Then they're silent.
After a moment, Gaheris says, "She had blood on her--"
"I have no idea, and I don't want to know."
He lets out his breath. "I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"I don't know," he says, shaking his head, because he does. It's everything. It's the sick feeling turning over in his stomach where he hasn't quite settled from earlier, from Mordred and the gun; and it's the losses in Clar's mind; and it's the relief of being away from Gawain and having Mordred to himself again, and knowing that Mordred isn't happier that way, and it's the idea of Ragnelle's child, when there haven't been children to any of them in so long, now that the years have passed. There have been no children since Lancelot killed all Gawain's, and Mordred's were lost on the battlefield, holding swords and dying like the men they were, because they had grown up too fast and were too old when they were still wearing young bodies--and his child, his little girl, his daughter, his daughter gone. She whose name he can't even remember, she who is only in his memory as a brief flash sometimes when he least expects it--
The day they took her out on the sea cliffs.
They'd gotten up early in the morning--Lynet woke him, woke the child, and they dressed in darkness and gathered their things together, and then they left the castle. They were visiting Gawain. It was so strange, then, as it always has been, to hear him called Uncle Gawain and see tiny arms reaching up to him for embraces.
The child didn't look like an Orkney. She had her mother's brown hair, her mother's sharp eyes and face, but then of course she had his nose, Gaheris', a little too big for her face-- And he'd thought, God, you never think about these things before you have a child. You don't go around looking at them and thinking, that one has her grandmother's hands. He thought, The child has her grandmother's hands, but no one ever tells her that, and we forget it. They looked at her eyes instead, and her wicked smile that was her mother's, and they wouldn't notice what the Orkney blood passed to her.
Gawain gathered her up in his arms, but she wouldn't ride on his shoulders the way she did Gaheris'. She laughed at him and teased, in her own way--she was only eight--and Gawain said there was never child more like its mother. Gawain was happy, still. His eldest boy was six, his Florence, and his lady Ragnelle was still with him.
And that morning they went out to the sea cliffs with the child and showed her the places her father had grown up. They took her to the stream, the little one that ran through by the woods, and through the fields where Agravain used to hunt rabbits; she loved it, or she seemed to, she ran wild in it and got seeds and burrs all over her gown. She brought flowers from God knew where.
She smiled and she laughed and he forgot, he forgot Morgause and Mordred, and everything but Lynet and their daughter and how Orkney could be beautiful, could be gentle, could be kind to her sons if she chose.
Or perhaps she chose to be kind to her daughters. The child was that, a daughter of Orkney. She looked like her mother, laughed like her mother, but to pretend she belonged to England, where she had been born and was growing up, or had any other blood running in her than his would have been a lie. Clar sometimes looked at her sideways and said she might teach her something. He always begged no, but it was there, that spark of magic all the women had.
But there was one thing about her perfect, if Orkney blood could lend her such a thing as perfect, because that day when they took her to the sea cliffs--
She didn't love them.
She didn't love them.
"Gaheris?"
He suddenly realises Mordred has stood and has him by the shoulder, and his stomach is turning again and Mordred's been saying something to him--maybe--but he hasn't been listening, and he closes his eyes. He's so tired.
"Gaheris," again, more insistent. He doesn't know what to answer. He decides not to speak at all. "God, not you, too," Mordred says, and then clasps him tight. "I can't live here with everyone breaking all around me, you do realise that?" he says, softly, against Gaheris' ear, so close his lips brush skin and hair. "I need somebody to stay sane for me, for God's sake, and it's sure as hell not going to be Clar, and I'm not hoping for much anchorage out of Gareth. I realise I'm probably a fool for banking on you, but Gawain's the nation away--"
He gets no answer.
"Damn it." He sits back on the bed again, tugging Gaheris gently with him, and gets them both in so they're lying against each other, warm and solid, in the same clothes they've been wearing since they got up in California half a world ago, and then folds his arms over the pillow and leans his face in them. "I can't do this. I need you, brother."
Gaheris hears him but doesn't understand him, and sleeps, finally sleeps.
They get out of Philadelphia National Airport all right, and Mordred finds the Accord in the parking lot without Gareth's offer of help. It's late and all the tall lamps are on, and if it were any month but December they'd probably all be clouded with moths and flies. Mordred piles luggage in the trunk, snaps at Gareth for not putting on his seatbelt, and starts back towards their house on the outskirts of the city.
Halfway there Gareth leans forward and pokes him.
"Hey."
"What?"
"Can we stop?"
"Why?" Mordred says, giving him a nasty look and stifling a yawn.
"Because I need to go to the bathroom. There's a convenience store right there, can we stop?"
"Little bastard."
Gareth doesn't say anything to that, mostly because Mordred is pulling up in one of the empty parking spots in front of the store. The shiny neon sign that says it's open twenty-four hours is missing a few letters, and the windows are plastered with flyers and advertisements. Mordred looks over his shoulder to Gaheris, backseat as usual.
"You going in?"
Gaheris shrugs and gets out of the car, so Mordred does too.
"You have to buy something at these damn places," he says, prodding Gareth in the back with his car keys. "It's the rules: get a Coke or we tell you the toilet's out of order. It probably is anyway."
"You don't actually have to. It's pretty easy to sneak in," Gareth says cheerfully, as he opens the door. "I used to, I hated pissing in the alley."
Mordred gets a funny look that Gaheris understands, because it's a look that mirrors the feeling in his stomach. They don't want to hear this from their little brother, their youngest, their innocent one with his curls and his relentless sweetness, their brother who should never have grown up the way he did. Gaheris still tries to find out how it was his fault. It would be easier to have someone to blame who could be punished; there's nothing he can do to Gareth's family or Gareth's psychiatrists or Gareth himself, for talking too much and running away instead of putting his head down and learning to quiet his self the way the rest of them did.
Because nobody ever had to try a shrink to find out what was wrong with Gaheris, no one questioned him about violent flights of fancy and brothers he was certain he had, brothers who didn't exist. He at least had the sense to hide himself. But of course not Gareth. Of course not little Gareth, he wouldn't do that, he'd just go on protesting, secure in the certainty that someone would figure out eventually what he was talking about and help him find the people he was missing; and instead of that they'd psychoanalysed him until he went half-crazy.
It shouldn't have been that way. It shouldn't.
He follows Mordred as Mordred surveys the selection of candy bars and chewing gum, and asks,--
"Should we get Clar cigarettes?"
"She can buy her own damn cigarettes. I'm not wasting my money to make my house smell worse."
Another customer is talking to the lone clerk, someone who came in after them and whom Gaheris can't see, someone who's only a voice he hears a few aisles over, hidden by a rack of magazines and a display of some new movie tie-in type of M&Ms. He pauses to listen, and frowns.
"...Want the money. Now. I have a gun."
He touches Mordred's sleeve with his fingertips.
"Jesus Christ almighty," Mordred says, not at all quietly. "This is the last damn thing I need to-night." And before Gaheris can stop him or pull him down or do anything to avert the impending crises, he steps out from behind the display. "Look, pal, I have had a miserable day. I hate planes, my brothers are both complete idiots, and I'm going to have to handle my psycho of a sister when I get home. I do not want to deal with some loser wearing pantyhose on his head whose idea of kicks is beating the shit out of an old guy in a Seven-Eleven, so fuck off, okay?"
The man just stares at him, and then swings his .22 around from the clerk to Mordred, just as Mordred thrusts the pocket of his leather jacket forward in the shape of a gun's barrel against the man's stomach.
"Great. Shootout at the O.K. Corral. Now we can both get horribly maimed, and I can bleed to death in the hospital while you bleed to death in the one-way street. You want to just beat it?"
"You fucker."
"I don't want to hear it. Move. The clerk just called the cops, so if we stay here in our Catch-22 you're eventually going to get arrested anyway. Who in hell picks cashless, arrested and/or shot over cashless but alive?"
Gaheris spends several seconds trying to swallow properly as the man takes off, fumbles with the push/pull of the door and then sprints into the dark with a firm hold on his gun. Mordred makes a face.
"That was exciting."
"What was that?"
"Mordred, champion of justice. Is Gareth done yet?"
"I'm here," a small voice behind the M&Ms display. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"That was scary."
"It's fine." He turns to the clerk. "I'm not buying a damn Coke to-night." Back to Gareth, "Get over here. We're going home. I've had too much excitement for one day."
"Since when do you carry a gun?" Gaheris asks, trying to keep his voice even and his face mostly expressionless and not to let Mordred know, above all, how terrified he still is, and that he nearly threw up when the man pointed the .22 at Mordred's head.
"Since never." Mordred fishes in his jacket pocket and puts a slim, white something that looks a little like a thermometer into Gaheris' hand. "It's Gawain's pH tester. Remind me to write him a thank-you note."
"God," says Gaheris, soft as wind in grass.
Some time later they pull up in front of the house. The lights are all off inside, and while Gareth and Gaheris are shifting their suitcases, Mordred puts his key in the lock, turns, and tugs on the doorknob. Once, twice, three times. He turns the key again. Then he turns to them.
"It won't open," he says grimly.
"Maybe she's out," Gareth says.
"She never goes out. Clar! Open the damn door!"
"I can try a window!"
"Shut up. Clar!"
Gaheris leans back against the car and watches them; Gareth as he trots off around the side of the house after one of the windows, ignoring Mordred; Mordred who is swearing creatively at the door as loudly as he can. Gaheris is tired. His suitcase handle rests against his stomach and he folds his hands over it, half-closing his eyes against the moonlight. In a few moments Gareth comes back with a look like a kicked puppy.
"The windows don't open. Um. I think they're sort of magicked shut."
"I," Mordred says, "am too goddamn tired for this."
And just then the knob turns under his hand and the door opens.
"Quit yelling. It's loud," Clar says.
The house is so thick with cigarette smoke that it's hard to breathe, harder even than in the living room or her room. She stands there, holding the cigarette between her fingers, her long black hair swinging loose to her waist, in a thin, simple dress the colour of ashes. She has something red down the front of her dress that looks like blood, and a stain on her left shoulder that covers a snowflake of a blister and smells sulphurous. She listens to Gaheris cough.
"Long time," she says. Beneath her eyes are half-moon circles of bruised skin that make it look like somebody hit her hard.
"A week," Mordred says, looking back at her.
"Too many people outside. Talking. Too much noise. Lots of noise. You took him away."
"To see Gawain, woman."
"He was gone." Her voice is imperious, disdainful--I know what I'm saying is right, and you're wrong, is in her voice.
Gareth slips over to her and puts his hand in hers. "Well, I came back all right. I brought you a present. Ragnelle sort of gave it, but I thought of what it should be."
Clar looks down at him and threads her fingers through. "I know."
Smile. "Can I give it to you?"
"Did the people go away?"
"There's nobody out there."
"Excuse me," Mordred says. "Before you two retire to the devil's cavern, do you mind opening the windows? I want to sleep in this house to-night without asphyxiating."
"You don't die. I fixed it. When there was blood."
The whole room is filled with silence lying on the smoke, two things so thick they choke. Clar looks satisfied; Gareth looks unsure. Mordred grits his teeth. Gaheris wonders whether closing his eyes will make them all go away. Even Mordred. All of them. Put him back in his apartment in New York, the one he hasn't thought about for nearly four years. Because there's too much to breathe in and too much to hear, and he doesn't want to know another strange truth or try to understand Clar's half-words, or see Mordred go cold and closed-up again. He wants to sleep, he wants to stop everything in sleep, and let the ache ease out of his neck.
Finally Mordred says, evenly enough, "Fixed what?"
"I don't remember."
She screams it.
"I forget everything!"
Immediately Gareth throws his arms around her--they're the same height now, the way they never used to be--and holds her, her body shaking, her voice cracking high as Mordred stares at her.
"Will you guys go away? Okay?" Gareth says over her back. He pulls off his jacket and puts it around her, though Gaheris can't see any reason for that--he thinks, without understanding why he should think of that, that isn't what matters at all. Clar lets out a wounded, wildish cry against Gareth. It's muffled because her mouth is at the highest part of his shoulder, and she pushes her hair forward so it touches him, leaves red marks all over his shirt from whatever is on her dress, and mutters something that nobody can make out. He looks around at them hopelessly. "Okay? Now? We're okay, we really are."
"Good Christ."
Gaheris tugs Mordred towards the stairs.
As they go up, Gareth and Clar sink to the floor, and just before he's too high to see, Gaheris looks down to them, at Clar rocking, rocking so hard she rocks Gareth with her, and hears her muttering.
Mordred sits heavily on Gaheris' bed and glares at him, setting his mouth.
"Could have gone better," Gaheris says, trying for light and feeling himself fail.
"You're an idiot."
Below them there's silence in the house, somehow stranger and more threatening than Clar's voice. Nothing moves or breathes, but they know their sister is shaking, lost, and breaking in a way Gaheris has never imagined possible, and he doesn't know what to do, what to think, until suddenly Mordred says,--
"She does this."
"What?"
"Every now and then."
Gaheris frowns at him. "More than once?"
"What'd I say? --She gets stuck, you know she always has, and sometimes she goes psycho. She loses things."
"I don't understand. You said she got everything back. In Chemistry--"
"Yeah, and sometimes it goes away again." Mordred presses his fingers over his eyelids. "She says stuff just goes in and out of her head, and she gave me some business about locks and boxes and lakes, and the sea, and we didn't get anywhere with that, but the point is she forgets what she's done. She has this idea she did something to me after Camlann, messed with my head or my body or something, but we can't figure out what. Sometimes it comes to the surface and I try asking her about it, but she can't get it out. It's in her head and she can't use it or fish it out where she can get a good look at it. It freaks her out. So every few years or so we get the screaming and the rocking and all that shit, and it's fun and games until she can snap out of it. Usually I just drive to Jersey beach and get her smooth rocks until it's over."
"But she has Gareth now."
"Right," with a small, twisting grimace. "Apparently he can handle it."
Then they're silent.
After a moment, Gaheris says, "She had blood on her--"
"I have no idea, and I don't want to know."
He lets out his breath. "I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"I don't know," he says, shaking his head, because he does. It's everything. It's the sick feeling turning over in his stomach where he hasn't quite settled from earlier, from Mordred and the gun; and it's the losses in Clar's mind; and it's the relief of being away from Gawain and having Mordred to himself again, and knowing that Mordred isn't happier that way, and it's the idea of Ragnelle's child, when there haven't been children to any of them in so long, now that the years have passed. There have been no children since Lancelot killed all Gawain's, and Mordred's were lost on the battlefield, holding swords and dying like the men they were, because they had grown up too fast and were too old when they were still wearing young bodies--and his child, his little girl, his daughter, his daughter gone. She whose name he can't even remember, she who is only in his memory as a brief flash sometimes when he least expects it--
The day they took her out on the sea cliffs.
They'd gotten up early in the morning--Lynet woke him, woke the child, and they dressed in darkness and gathered their things together, and then they left the castle. They were visiting Gawain. It was so strange, then, as it always has been, to hear him called Uncle Gawain and see tiny arms reaching up to him for embraces.
The child didn't look like an Orkney. She had her mother's brown hair, her mother's sharp eyes and face, but then of course she had his nose, Gaheris', a little too big for her face-- And he'd thought, God, you never think about these things before you have a child. You don't go around looking at them and thinking, that one has her grandmother's hands. He thought, The child has her grandmother's hands, but no one ever tells her that, and we forget it. They looked at her eyes instead, and her wicked smile that was her mother's, and they wouldn't notice what the Orkney blood passed to her.
Gawain gathered her up in his arms, but she wouldn't ride on his shoulders the way she did Gaheris'. She laughed at him and teased, in her own way--she was only eight--and Gawain said there was never child more like its mother. Gawain was happy, still. His eldest boy was six, his Florence, and his lady Ragnelle was still with him.
And that morning they went out to the sea cliffs with the child and showed her the places her father had grown up. They took her to the stream, the little one that ran through by the woods, and through the fields where Agravain used to hunt rabbits; she loved it, or she seemed to, she ran wild in it and got seeds and burrs all over her gown. She brought flowers from God knew where.
She smiled and she laughed and he forgot, he forgot Morgause and Mordred, and everything but Lynet and their daughter and how Orkney could be beautiful, could be gentle, could be kind to her sons if she chose.
Or perhaps she chose to be kind to her daughters. The child was that, a daughter of Orkney. She looked like her mother, laughed like her mother, but to pretend she belonged to England, where she had been born and was growing up, or had any other blood running in her than his would have been a lie. Clar sometimes looked at her sideways and said she might teach her something. He always begged no, but it was there, that spark of magic all the women had.
But there was one thing about her perfect, if Orkney blood could lend her such a thing as perfect, because that day when they took her to the sea cliffs--
She didn't love them.
She didn't love them.
"Gaheris?"
He suddenly realises Mordred has stood and has him by the shoulder, and his stomach is turning again and Mordred's been saying something to him--maybe--but he hasn't been listening, and he closes his eyes. He's so tired.
"Gaheris," again, more insistent. He doesn't know what to answer. He decides not to speak at all. "God, not you, too," Mordred says, and then clasps him tight. "I can't live here with everyone breaking all around me, you do realise that?" he says, softly, against Gaheris' ear, so close his lips brush skin and hair. "I need somebody to stay sane for me, for God's sake, and it's sure as hell not going to be Clar, and I'm not hoping for much anchorage out of Gareth. I realise I'm probably a fool for banking on you, but Gawain's the nation away--"
He gets no answer.
"Damn it." He sits back on the bed again, tugging Gaheris gently with him, and gets them both in so they're lying against each other, warm and solid, in the same clothes they've been wearing since they got up in California half a world ago, and then folds his arms over the pillow and leans his face in them. "I can't do this. I need you, brother."
Gaheris hears him but doesn't understand him, and sleeps, finally sleeps.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 05:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 05:12 am (UTC)By the way. Did I ever make you read my Laertes/Hamlet fic? I only ask 'cause you play him.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 11:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 12:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 01:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 01:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 05:54 am (UTC)(And I assumed the not-a-gun was just his finger, so I think the revelation didn't work right on me. ^^;; all these breaking people. A.'s quite scornful of their mental issues, but that's just cause he's too stupid to have anything to falll apart. >.>)
(oh, and my favorite is of course the daughtery bit. But that was predictable.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 06:01 am (UTC)(It was more that it was the pH tester than that it was not a gun, so. It works. --I know, what, they're just collapsing! like dominoes! Oh, A., I know you never break. ♥)
(<33333! Speaking of which, since this was kind of a play for Lynet: Gaheris stuff (http://littlebetter.livejournal.com/12507.html). Ignore my failing at links.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 11:41 am (UTC)--wait.)
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Date: 2007-07-09 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-08 09:01 pm (UTC)(Also, I like the recycled bit, so I was not at all sorry to read it again.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 01:46 am (UTC)(Yayyyy. I'm glad!)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 01:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 02:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 02:33 am (UTC)"You don't actually have to. It's pretty easy to sneak in," Gareth says cheerfully, as he opens the door. "I used to, I hated pissing in the alley."
I just want to cry and hug him.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-09 02:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 10:23 pm (UTC)Poor Gaheris. He needs someone. Anyone, really, but he's focused on Mordred (Mordred is the most put together? he has done things as awful as Gaheris has done?), and because of that, the reader doesn't really notice how much Mordred needs a little bit of help too. Poor Mordred. Perhaps they all just ought to move to California- into the romantic, happy, floer=and-ring-filled compromise between two lives.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 10:32 pm (UTC)He does. He has Amy, which is a very good thing, and she grounds him, but not--wholly, I guess? Not enough. She is to him what the noticing of details is to Mordred, something that helps him stay sane and in the present, but doesn't fix things, unfortunately.
They totally should move to California. Gawain wouldn't mind! But Mordred would.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 10:51 pm (UTC)Amy doesn't remember her past life, right? Since she doesn't, I think that muct be why... ooh, that would make a really good climax bit. Amy remembering. I love that Amy is Gaheris's noticing of details bit, his way of staying grounded. That's really so Gaheris and his focusing on other people because he's so afraid of himself. <3
Mordred would? Aw... but he'd be with Gawain! And have gadgets!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-27 11:03 pm (UTC)Right! She doesn't. But Clar has said that she'll never remember. The climax--the planned climax--actually involves Gaheris and Morgause. But yes, it is. Gaheris is terrified of himself. He kills people!
He would! But he'd feel like he'd failed to do things as well as Gawain, and he really, desperately wants to show Gawain how he's managing everything just right. He wants Gawain to be proud of him, even though Gawain really doesn't need a reason.