* [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]

"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."

[timebethine]

"Thou deservest happiness," says Laertes. He can believe it for her, even if he can't quite believe it for himself yet--that her happiness is not a betrayal of their memory. That, even if they would have wanted something different for her, it does not dishonor them for her to live on without them. "That vine at the heart of thee lives. I must believe that, one day, it will flower and fruit again."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan had mentioned the vine because they're long and can snarl, not because of any living quality. She's been working to unpick the knots, not to let any metaphorical plant grow. This is why she oughtn't try to sound poetic. But she supposes she can try to relax, a little, and not jump to ensure that her precise meaning is understood accurately. She remembers those first weeks after learning of her family's deaths. That sort of level of granular focus shan't help Laertes, and it will likely escape him.

"I only mean to say that it's a long process," she says instead. "And that the only way to bear it is to bear it."

[timebethine]

Quietly, "My thanks. Thou art a good woman, Susan."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She does try. With another soft squeeze of his hand, she adds, "In my personal experience, trying to block myself from feeling the full extent of my grief has rarely worked out."

[timebethine]

He squeezes back, and lets her go. "I fear what I might do, if I feel it in full. I want occupation--I want to be useful to someone, if I cannot be to her. Left idle, my mind turns ruinous."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What would you do for her - or with her - specifically? If she was here right now, and you didn't have this knowledge."

[timebethine]

"The gardens," says Laertes at once. "She knew every herb and flower--the palace gardens were her great joy, but she took delight in the weeds along the roadsides, too. She knew every use of them; she knew what ailments they could heal, and what they meant when gathered into a nosegay. Winters went hard with her," he remembers, voice dropping. "Some days, she could scarce bestir herself from bed for meals. On others, she was sharp with everyone. She had not the art of idle talk; she spoke to the purpose, or not at all. On those hard days, I'd write to her instead of speaking. In writing, all that sharpness softened. Her wits roused; she was playful, and wise, and very funny."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Lucy liked the weeds too." Susan folds her hands back in her lap. "I read for them. Before I got here, there was more I could do - I took a few political science classes, because Edmund wanted to study it in university. I went to Lucy's favorite park and waited for the first daffodils. Peter--" she still doesn't know what to do with her memories of Peter, and shakes her head. "Here I read for them. Lucy liked stories about brave girls who saved the world, so I read what I can find. She wanted to be a nurse, or maybe even a doctor, so I learn first aid and human anatomy. For Edmund it's political theory, diplomacy, and histories of times I've not yet seen. I try to understand Peter and how he came to be the adult he was. And then--"

Lancelot knows this, because Susan feels safe being vulnerable with Lancelot. He's the only one who knows it. But it might help Laertes, so Susan squares her shoulders and steels herself and says, "I write them letters. About my memories and what I've read and what I wish I could say to them. It sounds like you've already got some experience with that."