[Semi-Closed Post: Aornis Is a Real Headache]

[timebethine]

Somewhere around midnight, a migraine descended on Laertes like a thunderhead, and he still hasn't come out from beneath its anvil. He's spent most of the day hiding in bed with the curtains drawn, feeling as though he's about to be sick--and that feeling's only grown worse as the sun has drifted sluggishly to a low apex in the sky.

It isn't until mid-afternoon that he feels well enough to make progress on all his plans. He needs to speak to SecUnit about its drones, to Dionysus about whether Avernus (that is her name, isn't it?) is a goddess, and to Nightingale about whether he can offer magical support in case their confrontation goes sour. He needs to talk with Claudius about what to say when he does speak to her.

So it is that he starts making his rounds through the mansion and its grounds, seeking out friends old and new, clinging grimly to the thermos of coffee that smells sickeningly strong but also helps drive back the pain. His face is wan, his eyes shadowed. He would rather be doing anything but this.

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[timebethine]

"Ay, say on," says Laertes. There's a deep, brewing dread in him--Claudius is at his most brisk when something upsets him--but he can't quite wrap words around that understanding.

[wickedwit]

Claudius kneels by the bedside, rather than hover above him. He wants to be humble. "I believe Sagramore is doing harm to himself. I say this not to stir discontent in thee, or drive thee toward an end of my choosing. I speak to thee as a man who loves him, whose sentiments have mirrored mine. And if there is no counsel in that, at least there may be fellowship. Wilt thou hear me?"

[timebethine]

Laertes uncurls. His eyes focus on Claudius's. (Everything feels too bright.) "Ay. Is it drink again? Or some new harm?"

[wickedwit]

"The drink is how he bears with it, and that in turn does harm to him." It feels like a betrayal, unclasping Sagramore's secrets, when Sagramore lay in this bed not long ago and trusted Claudius to touch his hair and care for him. "He told me he was doing penance. Hearing confession of another man's crimes, a man whom he still loves. His penance is for that love. I said to him without some end, reconciliation with God or reconciliation among men, penance is only torture. That was my aim, the night I confessed to thee my sin -- to do harm myself, to ruin all my relationships, because that was my desert. I had no hope of reconciling, but thought to drive thee from me. But if thou cam'st to me again and again, to hear more and more of my sins, hating all that thou didst hear, hating thyself when thou couldst not kill thy regard for me ... it would be torture to us both, in time. And so it is with Sagramore. He believes, too, this is his desert, for the love he bears this man."

[timebethine]

Laertes frowns. The pressure of sickness in his throat threatens to overwhelm him--it feels as though the floor has collapsed beneath him, and he's falling. "He told me that these meetings were remembrances," he says. "That ... that they were speaking of the lives and works of those musicians. Ensuring that their voices lived on. I offered to learn their songs, as well, and he was quick enough to bring me music--"

And then he had told Laertes of how Gaheris had butchered his mother while she lay abed with Lamorak, and spoken of all the men he'd killed and forgotten.

"--he asks Asmodean to tell him of what he did to them," Laertes realizes.

[wickedwit]

Ah. Claudius weaves that information in with what he knows, what he's been told and what he's surmised -- about Asmodean under all his names, his ambitions for immortality, his ambitions for his art. And with what he knows of Sagramore, too. "They likely began as remembrances. His intention was compassion, for these musicians and their memories, for the man he loves. But to me he only spoke of crimes.” There’s a flickering ember of the fury he felt, but it’s cooled. He can touch it now, examine it, but he still mislikes it. He can’t possibly know, he tells himself. He never told Sagramore the whole sordid story. It isn’t that his pain means less than that of people in the past. Because that was the pain of innocents.

[timebethine]

"What can be done?" asks Laertes, looking away. His fingertips trace the stitches on the blankets. He feels very far away from himself, as though the self observing is many years older or many countries distant. "He hates for me to aid him, or even to worry for him, when he hurts himself. It isn't pride--nor even fully shame, although shame hath its part. He does not think himself deserving of aid. He does not think help is possible. I know not what to do, except to stay at his side."

[wickedwit]

"All his life, help has been impossible for him,” Claudius says. He puts the ember down before it can begin to burn again. “He had an illness none could cure. The ones who claimed that they could cure him only caused him further misery. They treated him less like a child than a broken clock, still a-repairing, ever out of frame, its only value how it was meant to work, and never how it does. When he's offered aid, he must feel like someone's come again to fix him, and will put him aside in frustration when they see he can't be fixed. I understand it. But I do not like it." He sighs. "Hast thou had this argument with him before?"

[timebethine]

"I have," says Laertes. "And come close to having it again many a time."

[wickedwit]

"Wert thou not ill, I would offer thee a toast in commiseration." Claudius gives his knees a rest, shifts and leans back with his head against the hanging coverlet. "I love him no less, thou know'st. But to not care for my lover's hurts, I would have to be a different man. And I would not call it loving, without care."

[timebethine]

"What wouldst thou have of me?" says Laertes. "If thou hast a better answer for his pains, then I will try it."

[wickedwit]

"I told thee I spoke not to drive thee to an end. If I spoke to Asmodean, I would have an end. I would tell him to break with Sagramore, then pretend I knew nothing of it, and comfort him through his heartache." It's a rather miserable thing to admit. "If I told thee how to deal with him, it would be no better -- only using thee as a proxy for me, a piece upon the board. I suspect the answer lies closer to thy way than mine. To be direct, rather than make deals in secret."

[timebethine]

"I'll speak to him of it," says Laertes, suddenly firm. (It does very much send a little bolt of pain through the left side of his head.) "He need not break with Asmodean--but he must find another way. He cannot love him, and punish himself for loving him; that can have no other end than poisoning that love."

[wickedwit]

Claudius cannot help but smile at that spark of conviction. Laertes would not, he think, be himself without it. And perhaps Claudius would not be himself if, despite all his protestations that will not steer Laertes, he did not offer his opinion. "Be gentle," he say, touching curled fingers to Laertes's forehead, "when thou speak'st to him, or he will think thou art censuring him. He will think it regardless ... but thou shouldst not cease to offer aid, or he will never learn to take it. Old men such as we, who have only ever relied on ourselves, have stubborn hearts." He laughs, soft. "Thou shouldst hear how Galahad scolds me."

[timebethine]

"And if I drive him away by it?"

[wickedwit]

"Dost believe he can be driven from thee?"

[timebethine]

"At times--I fear he hates himself more than he loves me."

[wickedwit]

"Oh, my heart." Claudius can no longer crouch apart from Laertes; he climbs up on the bed to be with him. It's a heavy fear to hold, and hold alone.

[timebethine]

Laertes immediately gathers Claudius into his arms, tucking his face against Claudius's hair. "I do not fear he would be driven from me by rage," he says. "I fear he would tell himself that he has disappointed me, and that I no longer want him, and nothing I say will convince him that he cannot lose my love."

[wickedwit]

Claudius cannot promise it will never happen. He could, could say it soothingly, with honey-sweet words to hide bitter medicine. There are times when one must tell a kind lie to deliver a truth. No perfect advice will protect him, so better to say trust to thy love than thou canst do naught but trust, and trust is no guarantee. Love is no guarantee. Love and self-hatred are unhappy bedfellows — Claudius believed himself poison to all that he loved, believed he could no longer keep serving his dear ones poison. Perhaps this bout of self-harm, the one that left Sagramore seizing in the sheets when he had too much to drink, will wake something, the way Claudius woke from the exquisite self-sabotage of loosening his tongue with laudanum. Or perhaps they’re both too set in their ways — perhaps even Claudius’s reprieve won’t last, and when it comes to the point he won’t go through with the folly of binding Galahad to him with dicer’s oaths.

“He may,” he says instead. He folds his hand over Laertes’s heart. “An he does, come to me. Do not bear it by thyself, or destroy thyself in turn. I will help thee decide thy next course.”

[timebethine]

"Is there aught else I should do?" Laertes asks. "Aught else I should say, when I speak to him?"

[wickedwit]

"What else hast thou feared? Has he heard thy fears from thee?"

[timebethine]

Laertes shakes his head. "He already fears that I'll be disappointed at every turn--how much greater would be his fear, if I gave this dread voice? When I know in my heart that he would always choose me?"

[wickedwit]

"Thou art a saint, if thou canst have perfect faith without evidence or reassurance, and he is not thy husband, but thy idol." He sighs, steadying himself by the rise and fall of Laertes's chest. "Forgive me my grim oracle, but this is what I foresee. He will fear so much to disappoint thee, he will look for any sign of wavering in thee, whether thou voicest it or nay. Thou wilt cloak thy doubts to spare him agony, and he will take thy silence to mean my husband will not tell me when I have offended him most. He will invent offenses on his own, and they will take the shape of his self-hatred, what he already knows and regrets in himself. What he cannot change, he will hide from thee. The more he hides, the more thou wilt see him pull from thee, the greater thy doubts will grow. If I am wrong, then tell me. Perhaps thou art that very saint, to bear all his doubts while resisting thine own, and like Job thou wilt be rewarded sevenfold. But even Job had questions."

[timebethine]

"--no," Laertes admits. "Thou art right. With anyone else, I would advise them to speak plainly, for just the same reasons thou hast laid out so clearly. And he has asked me to set boundaries for him, and punish him when he fails--he's asked for discipline. To have it proven that if he does me disservice, I will not permit it."