* [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

[onthewillowsthere]

"May I see it?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"That oughtn't be a problem. Lan Wangji has it. I intend to look at it myself this afternoon, in case I might be of any help at the very least finding a useful book in the library."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you." A moment’s silence. "Thank you for telling me."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Of course." Susan looks sideways at Galahad. "Is he doing all right? The - Magnus." Lancelot hasn't said as much about it lately, but he's clearly been fretting.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He's whole. But it was bad." He thins his lips. "And Dark is bad for him. Summer is distant."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan thinks back over their conversation to try to sort out this assertion. "Does he struggle with the winter blues too?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"He is a demigod of summer."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

This draws Susan up short. Somehow she hadn't any idea, even with her observations of the people here. "Well then!" she says.

[onthewillowsthere]

"The winter here is too long."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Much," she agrees, emphatically.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It will be good when it's over."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I hope we have a long spring and longer summer," Susan says. She pulls her coat more tightly around herself. "When I first arrived in Narnia - that's the world I mentioned; the one where the dagger came from - a witch had it under a spell to make it always winter and never Christmas. It's beginning to feel a little like that here." Partly because no-one has, to her knowledge, celebrated Christmas, but mostly because the winter does wear on so.

[onthewillowsthere]

"No one noticed Christmas." He puts his hands in his pockets. "I kept the fast, but--"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"When was it?" she asks, curious. "When I left London it was early April, and autumn here. I believe I'm off-count."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's April first today. Christmas was during Antimachus. The 6th. It was still autumn." He pauses. "You were here. You came October 31st. Claudius told me."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"So I missed my birthday, too," she says, thoughtfully. And the anniversary of her family's deaths, which is rather close to her birthday. She's doing the math in her mind - is it possible that Lucy's visit was at that time? Oh, she aches to think it might've been meaningful in a way she never realized. "And... Easter?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yesterday."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"My goodness." And it's still so nasty out. She glances at him again. "Have you got a calendar to track these things?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. When we were apart, Claudius gave me his calendar so I could keep the feasts."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan, about to ask if she might make a copy of it, pauses. "When you were apart?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He's quiet, for so long that she might think he's not going to answer -- they make some progress towards the tower -- before he says, "There are a lot of parts. It's long."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Once again, Susan is struck by a memory: Edmund, coming to her flat for dinner and staying the night because a storm kicked up during pudding. This was in his last year, when he was the only one of the others really making an effort to keep things normal, but before the queer few weeks between him walking in on her and Miriam and his death. They'd have their fights about Narnia, too, but they'd also have days, even weeks of regular interactions between those fights. Unlike Lucy, who wanted to argue Susan back into faith, and Peter, who didn't want to talk to her at all when she was being unreasonable.

Susan's flatmate had gone on to bed, but the two of them curled up on the sofa far later than Susan ought to have been up with work in the morning, talking. He'd been telling her some convoluted story about a book he'd been reading with a dear friend of his. She was tired, and it was hard to follow, especially since he'd been pausing to gather his own thoughts so frequently, and ultimately she'd begged off and kissed his forehead and gone to bed, too. There was always next time, after all. Now, with distance, she wonders if he hadn't been working up to telling her something else about that friend. He'd been at the funeral, that young man, eyes and face red.

Now she looks at Galahad and remembers the look on Edmund's face that night, and the way they'd never finished that conversation.

"We've got time," she says. The tower is still some ways off, and it's large inside.

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. After a few more moments he says, "When I came, he met me. He spoke to me-- I was used to not being like Camelot. He spoke as if he understood. No one had ever done that."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"That must have been rather a relief."

[onthewillowsthere]

"And then later, he asked me whether he could kiss me." His fingers touch his lips, almost unconsciously. "I was afraid, because I wanted him to. I thought it was a temptation, so I asked Crowley to end it for me."