* [semi-closed post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan is still struggling, but she's established a little routine, specific to Dark: every morning, she goes to her favorite room - the one with all the rugs - and retrieves several bottles of alcohol. These, she ferries down to the cafe and arranges them on a corner table, where she sits for the next hour or so, passing bottles to anyone who needs a full one, and measures from the bottles to anyone who would prefer just a drink or two. By now, she's got a sense of the regulars, their preferences (though she cannot always accommodate these - it really is the queerest assortment of libations), and how much they require, but she always brings an extra bottle or two just in case.

Today, she's tireder than normal, and moving slowly. Her tea was running low, and so she's rationing it. She's even on the verge of capitulating and getting a cup of coffee to tide herself over.


[Primarily intended for Dionysus and Lan Wangji, but if anyone wants to play out the awkwardness of the daily alcohol retrieval I'm all in!]

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan startles. Right, Laertes came here with a purpose, not to chat about Lancelot. Another question has occurred to her, but she supposes she needn't ask it if it's going to be off topic now. And anyway, she shouldn't want to hold him up if he's got things to do. "You have a better sense about what Sagramore likes," she says, suddenly more subdued, and peruses the offerings, pulling aside several bottles: a small one of rum, the half-bottle of brandy, two types of wine, and several strange liqueurs. "Any one of these ought to get him to the levels he typically takes."

[timebethine]

At times, Laertes thinks that Sagramore likes nothing at all; he likes palinka not for its taste, but because it's Hungarian. There are tastes that are worse, but none that are better. "This will do," he says, and lays his hand upon the rum. But at her startlement, he hastens to add, "Needst not stop. I only feared I would forget, if I did not speak it the moment I remembered."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I would've reminded you," Susan says, and means it as an assurance. She hesitates for another moment, and then asks, "How are you?"

[timebethine]

"... I've been better," Laertes admits.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Concern for Sagramore?" Susan asks, with a glance at the bottles. "Or something else?"

[timebethine]

A long hesitation. If he lets himself think of it, he fears that the grief and rage and terror will all come out of him in an endless scream--but perhaps he has to let it out in careful drips, like a bloodletting. "Thou knowest the play from which I hail," he says at last. "... I knew that it was a tragedy. I knew not how much loss was in it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Oh. Yes, that would do it. "Would you like to sit?" she asks, with a nod at the other chair at the table. "...would you like some tea?" This seems like an occasion for tea. And then, because she doesn't want to jump to conclusions and reveal something he doesn't know about - since Hamlet isn't kind to anyone in his family - she asks, "What did you hear about it?"

[timebethine]

Laertes sits heavily, his shoulders rounded, his gaze fixed on the table. He doesn't quite process the question about the tea. It feels as though he's standing on a precipice, buffeted by winds; he feels the inevitability of the fall. "My sister," he says. He licks his lips. "Does she--before or after my own end?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do you really want to know?" Susan will tell him if he does.

[timebethine]

"It must have been before," says Laertes, mostly to himself. "If none here who knew of it dared tell me--they must have seen me in the throes of grief. I must have borne it ill."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

That's not a yes. "Laertes," she says, softly.

[timebethine]

"Forgive me." Laertes shakes himself, and forces himself to stand again. "That was--this is grim, and thou needst no more grimness in this wretched month."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Sit," she says, more sternly than she intended. She tries to soften her tone. "There's nothing to forgive. I burdened you with my own sister's death. I can handle this, if you would speak about it. If - if you want to speak about it with someone who understands."

[timebethine]

"It just ... guts me, that everyone knew, and no one told me," says Laertes. He doesn't sit. His voice is tight, controlled.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Would you like to know why I didn't?"

[timebethine]

A minute nod.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan looks at her hands. "I barely remember our first conversation," she says. "I was... maudlin, and mad with grief, and barely getting through from one day to the next. I do remember recognizing you and realizing that you came from earlier in the story and thinking, no one else should ever have to feel as I do now." She glances up again, tilts her head. "Claudius was never married to Gertrude in your experience, correct?"

[timebethine]

He shakes his head. "He vanished upon the eve of his brother's death. The court thought it near to a confession of murder." This, he can discuss with candor; it's better than asking her how she would have felt, to have learned that her sister had been dead for months while she was whiling away her time baking pastries and reading romances.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"As I thought. This became my second reason." Susan looks up at him steadily now. "When I first remembered Narnia, Thomas said something to me about Narnia being a series of children's books. He meant to reassure me by telling me my siblings went back after they died." She pauses. "I chased that down, of course. The play Hamlet begins two months after the king's death, if I remember correctly. I come from the very end of the books about Narnia." She pauses. "Rather, I'm not in the last book at all. My family dies, and goes to Aslan's land, and I am excluded. There's nothing left to the story that's been put forth. Your entire story is left, and it's been fundamentally changed before any part of it that was put to paper. I spoke to Gertrude when she was here and already things were different. So who's to say it proceeds according to the original script? Yes. Your sister dies in that version. But it's no longer the same story, is it? Who's to say she isn't fine?"

[timebethine]

"That is my hope," says Laertes. He can't hold her gaze. He looks again at the table, as though he means to burn the grain of the wood into his memory. "Or--Lucien came here upon his death. As did Grantaire. Perhaps, even if her story remains the same, she may yet join us here."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"There's no pain greater than losing a little sister," Susan says. "But I believe words on a page are no guarantee of fact. I can't speak for the others here, but this was my reasoning."

[timebethine]

When Laertes meets her eyes again, his own are sharp with fear and pain. "How canst thou bear it?" he asks. "How canst thou go on?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan is a tactile woman; she reaches out and takes his hand again, squeezing it. "It's like part of you died with her?"

[timebethine]

He closes her hand in both of his. It anchors him. It feels solid, real--the warmth of her hand and the precise shapes of her fingers, the creases in all the places her palm has bent. "It's like a wound," he says under his breath. "I can almost bear it, and then--I turn my head, or hear a word that I can remember in her voice, and all at once the wound weeps blood--"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes," Susan breathes. With her other hand in a closed fist, she touches her chest. "I was like that for two months. I got through those months because I wanted to live for them. Then it was like there was a great tangled - oh, vine, I suppose - at the heart of me that held all my emotions, and it iced over so solidly I could feel nothing but cold and the sharp cut of the ice for three months more. Then I started to thaw, and now I suppose I'm angry all the time. Each day is a little better, a little easier to bear, but it's such a small change that I only notice it when I look all the way back and know how much worse it was. And sometimes when I'm happy it's followed by such guilt..." she trails off. "There's no easy way to bear it. I only know what made it worse."