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Susan prevaricates for several days about whether to approach Sagramore. She's a little lost with respect to her feelings about him, particularly after the one-two punch of being charmed by his teenaged self and then having her own eight-year-old self being so thoroughly taken by him. (And isn't that queer, to remember it after the fact? She'd been so convinced he wouldn't remember their encounter in the kitchen, but... what if, like her, he has?)

Sagramore is a good man, which she's known for a while now. He doesn't like her, which is fine, because while she hasn't disliked him for months, she hasn't exactly given him reason to change his mind about her outside of a few awkward conversations. She thinks, perhaps, that there might be a world in which they get along. It isn't this one, clearly, but - the possibility is there, in some alternate dimension; perhaps one day the mansion's nonsense will bring it to bear for a few short hours and in its aftermath they will be none the wiser.

Regardless, she finds that she likes that they've got a truce, and not just because they've got people in common. He's an asset to the community, and Susan likes to keep close inventory of assets.

It's a hot day, and the queerness of the month is in full effect. Perhaps that's why Susan decides, in the midst of a fit of research, that Sagramore - who is ever so well-connected - might make a good co-conspirator for her newest project. (It is also - though Susan doesn't realize it - exactly one Earth-year since their ill-advised assignation. In truth, she's placed that encounter almost fully out of her mind, and while she does make a close study of her days here, she's merely noticed that she's known Lancelot for a year now, and refrained from considering the rest.)

And so she prepares her ~~bribes~~ offerings. She makes coffee the way Sagramore's teenage self taught her: with the grounds and the spices and the sugar and the water, boiled three times and decanted into a thermos. (She's also made tea for herself. She knows better than to pretend she's going to try the coffee again.) The thermos itself is a gift; it's a kitschy little affair that reads If found, return to Dad, and part of a number of queerly-labeled items that she's found populating her parlor (which is now attached to her room by a door next to her closet) since Rainbows began. While savory bakes aren't her forte in the same way sweet ones are, she also prepares hagymás tekercs, with the hopes that they're to his taste. Once she's got everything - coffee, tea, and rolls - packaged up, she places them carefully away in a satchel along with her notebook, a pen, and several samples of the focus of her true agenda. This time she hasn't got a list of conversational topics. She rather thinks she shan't need one.

To her relief, as she makes her way to his cottage, she sees that Sunny is off playing in Crowley's automobile, and Laertes is walking along the forest's edge with Magnus, seemingly deep in conversation. While it wouldn't matter if either were home, their absence shall make this discussion easier.

As before, she squares her shoulders. Then she knocks firmly on the door.

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Sagramore is washing up the lunch dishes in an apron patterned with little brown rabbits when he hears the knock.

He does, in fact, remember everything that happened between his younger self and Susan, and to an extent he finds it embarrassing. He was so wide-eyed and earnest, and so full of bravado at the same time, and his awestruck reaction to Susan feels a good deal less charming in hindsight than her imperious ways and her love of telling everyone what to do, which are obviously marvelous traits in a little girl.

But he's resolved not to bring it up unless she does. He doesn't want to make things more awkward between them, not when the relationship they have feels so fragile. He likes her -- he can see how important she is to Lancelot, and how Laertes enjoys spending time with her, and he can see how lucky the mansion in general is to have her, too (he'd meant what he said to her younger self; he does think she'd make a good seneschal). He doesn't want to make things worse between them.

He answers the door with a smudge of glitter glue in his beard (they'd spent the morning making family portraits of each other, him and Laertes and Sunny and Magnus) and his hands still damp.

"Susan! Hello!"

"Good afternoon, Sagramore." She's got less uncertainty than she did several months ago, but this does feel already more awkward than any interaction under mansion trickery. "I imagine you've got some idea of why I'm here... might I come in?"

Does he? He's not sure he does! He steps back from the door. "Please. I could make you some tea, if you can stomach it in this weather."

Susan has got her thermos in her satchel, but perhaps she ought to allow his hospitality. "If it shan't be too much trouble, it's always weather for tea," she says, in tones of faintest self-deprecation. "And I've got - here." She withdraws the container of coffee and the packet of rolls and offers them to him.

"Of course. --Is that coffee?" He dries his hands on his apron and ushers her into the kitchen, taking the thermos and rolls as he does. "That's very kind of you."

"It is. I do hope I got it right, I've-" a fleetingly wry expression- "only just learned how."

"Oh! From when I was--?"

So either he does also remember, or someone has told him. "Yes, from your teenaged self."

Damn. He remembers putting a great deal of sugar in that coffee. "I do think you'd have made a better seneschal than Kay," he says, lightly.

"I should hope so! Kay sounded dreadful."

Sagramore shrugs and puts the thermos down on the counter. "I was probably fairly dreadful too. He did get me out of a quarrel once."

"I assume that would have happened a little later, then?"

"About twenty years later, yes."

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