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

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

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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"We've a plan," Claudius says, assured by it. The more pathetic Laertes appears, the less he'll look like a threat to be taken care of. It's a difficult balance to strike. Too unassuming, too nonconfrontational, and they won't learn anything. Too direct, too close to the target, and he'll put himself in danger. Claudius can share what little information he has, at least. "At Enjolras's meeting of minds, I did sound out her approach to conflict. She's the type to assess weaknesses and exploit them efficiently. Someone like her is likely to hold her cards close to the chest, then play them all when she sees a winning hand. If she shifts from conversation to open conflict, it will seem to happen quickly. So take care. And," he says, reinforcing the plan, "show her the weakness you want her to focus on. She'll be looking for it, anyway."

"I fear that," Laertes says softly, "for my greatest weaknesses are those I love, and I fear she will hurt them, as she may have hurt Galahad."

For a moment, Claudius was considering asking Laertes whether he truly wanted to do this, when facts are so thin on the ground. (Thinner than they should be, honestly, even relying on Sagramore's discretion and Lan Wangji's prudence.) That moment ends abruptly. Slow and and even, he asks, "What has she done to Galahad?"

A frown--they'd spoken of the possibility that she might hurt Galahad before, when Laertes had found the fallen page without Aornis's name on it, but they hadn't spoken of it again afterward, and then time had bled like ink into water, and Laertes had managed to forget that that conversation hadn't been about Galahad's dreams. "I know not that she has," says Laertes hastily. "Only that Sagramore had it from Lan Wangji that someone was sending Galahad nightmares, and and that after some scrupulous investigation, they'd had no better suspects."

Ah. Two thoughts connect. “Lan Wangji was concerned about starting a witch hunt,” he says. “Against Luo Binghe, in fact. Galahad tried to fight Luo Binghe on my behalf … and his anger was clarifying for me. To everyone else, I'm sure I seemed reeling and unreasonable for unearthing a settled grudge. But I’d never expected anyone to take my part the way Galahad had. I’d never been told, in the way Galahad told me, that my pain mattered. I was alert for consequences. Galahad's nightmares were it, I thought -- petty cruelties to salve Luo Binghe's wounded pride. But I confided in Lan Wangji, and it's for my peace of mind that he's been investigating. He and I both interviewed Shen Yuan, and we both came to the same conclusion. Luo Binghe wouldn't harm one of Shen Yuan's friends. To Shen Yuan, I'm sure I seemed as unreasonable for suspecting it as I am for still dwelling on any harm Luo Binghe's done to me."

Another reason, Claudius thinks, not to push the feelings he's tried to suppress on Sagramore. It's safer for him to be Shen Yuan's friend, and safer to be Luo Binghe's friend, too. This is the peace you wanted, he reminds himself. Sighing, he says, “It’s true Lan Wangji hasn’t found other suspects. But she wasn’t on the list to be considered. She was on the list of victims. She spoke of bad dreams ... and I confess I encouraged her to think of them as Luo Binghe’s doing. She mentioned them to Lan Wangji before me -- and Luo Binghe was also his first thought, for all the effort we’ve gone to clear his name.” And so? How did it all circle back here? Was it just the inevitable tangle of information, rumormongering gone awry, conflating victim and suspect in the end? If Luo Binghe seemed so obvious, and yet was cleared of suspicion by the two who suspected him first, why suspect Aornis without even a flicker of a motive? What motive could there be? Claudius forces himself to think.

“Was it ... provocation, perhaps?” he muses aloud. “Or if not provocation, pulling strings, to see how they connect. Speak of dreams, and see whose name is mentioned. Send dreams, and see who’s blamed for them.”

"If she's looked for connections, she'll surely see that Sagramore and I lie at the center of a web of them--we've hosted the last two major events, and participated in the one before them." It's not a boast; the fact that this might reflect well on Laertes seems not even to occur to him. "If she means to rattle the entire web, she may do worse than starting with me."

Claudius thinks again of the list, where both their names were circled. As a private notation, it might’ve marked them as centers of the web … but as provocation, it would make those names stand out, make someone more likely to stoop over and look closer, as they recognized the name of a friend.

There’s still too many ifs. Claudius corrals his speculation, and says, “During our tête-à-tête, she came up with quite a cunning plan to theoretically oust the mansion spirits by exploiting their attachment to us. It’s not beyond her. But if that’s the case, the poison is also the antidote, in its way. Our loved ones are our weakness, but the more care and attention we pay each other, the more likely we are to notice when something’s awry. Even an ordinarily private pain, like a nightmare.”

"Pay heed to me," says Laertes quietly. "I may lack the perspective to see my pains as they are."

“I promise thee I will.” He curls his fingers against Laertes’s cheek. “How dost thou fare? How is thy head, and how is thy heart?”

"My head is well, though my heart is ill at ease," he answers, and turns to kiss Claudius's knuckles. "And thine?"

"Miserable," Claudius admits, even as he smiles through it. "But even so thou art like a shelter to me. I want to stay in thy arms until the storm passes."

"Here, then." And he draws Claudius's head down against his chest, gathering him in as though he's no more than a shivering kitten.

He curls there like a cat would, stealing heat and holding it in, drawing comfort from the solid body under him. It's too many thoughts, as always, and a bright streak of self-awareness that's too blinding in the dark to chart a clear path by. To thine own self be true is the maxim, but Claudius never found it useful. He doesn't know what the truth of himself is, whether he's come closer to it or farther away. But he closes his eyes, and comes to a conclusion. "Whenever thou dost need to speak on something," he says, "know that thou canst speak to me. I will try always to understand thee, even when thou know'st not thyself what thou art feeling. And thou canst chide me for condescension, as thou need'st."

"I will," says Laertes. "Thou knowest as well as I that I was not raised to confide my hurts in others--they were matters to be locked within the safe sphere of the family, and managed by that family's head. It was worse for thee; even the sphere of the family was not a safe place for thy hurts, so they had no compass but within thine unquiet breast. But perhaps we can learn another way together."

"I often wonder what a family is for," he says, making a soft confidence. "It's so essential to understanding people. Not only the way it's used in Elsinore, where knowing someone's family lets you know their status and connections ... it's the way people think about their families, about the roles family members play. By the time I was born into the royal family, everyone's role as a mother or father or son had become so eclipsed by roles that were impersonal and political. When I heard other mothers speak of the way a mother cares for her children, or other older brothers speak of a protective instinct, I perceived the differences. But at times I look to Lan Wangji, and imagine he could easily be such a brother to me. I also look to him as a confidante."

"Couldst make a family here," says Laertes. "A brother, a husband--it's a start."

"Ay, well, Tress is my niece." He says it lightly, with the light flicker of a smile, hidden against Laertes's chest. "Magnus and I are bamboo shoots growing from the same rhizome. And thou? Canst thou be family to me?"

"What wouldst thou have me be?"

"Of all the things to ask," Claudius laughs, though it's the most natural question in the world. It's only Claudius's first thought that's unnatural -- he's beginning to understand why it felt like a fantasy he had to shield from judgement. It was on the verge of admitting something painful and personal. "All my family's roles were eclipsed by political ones, but it's not as though we fulfilled those roles any better. A king is more a symbol than a man, but symbols can be inspirations or corruptions. Sometimes, in my private moments, I imagine thou wouldst be a king to inspire. In truth, it's not because thou art the ideal leader, but because thou art the ideal citizen of some society where people inspire and aid another freely without being organized by status. Unusual, I know. But thou dost it every day thou suppliest a dinner, or works't to make something someone else might use or like ... or even when thou hast planned through many conversations to address a threat uncertain to us. Thou dost it in working with others. In imagination, I can keep dreaming of my just and handsome king, but in reality thou art still my compatriot. Perhaps thou art a better version of home to me."

"It's a kind of game," Laertes ventures. "Just a thou wouldst not have Lan Wangji as thy brother in blood--thou wouldst not have him the son of the same mother, the brother of thy brother. Neither wouldst thou have me pass laws, or sit in judgement over petitioners, or make treaties and wars with foreign lands. But thou wouldst imagine me as king, because thou wouldst imagine a king who has not hurt thee, as thou wouldst imagine a brother who has not hurt thee. That thou mayest permit thyself to believe in kings, and brothers."

“As thou say’st. E’en now, thou didst speak of the charge to make a cruel world kind. Sometimes the refuge from a cruel world is fantasy. Sometimes fantasies shelter tender truths, like the unborn chick beneath the shelter of an egg. The game lets me escape to a kinder world, for a time, and envision what kindness is possible.” Wryly, he says, “But do not mistake me. It is also for my own gratification. Dost thou have thine own fantasies that gratify thee?”

"Ay, but never to be king," Laertes laughs. "To be master of one unruly dog is nearly too much for me. I ..." He reaches up to touch Claudius's hair, to find all those soft silver roots that he loves so well. "I dream of knowing what's expected, as clearly as though it were written in black ink, and then being able to do it. No conditions or exceptions; just a task and its completion. And perhaps praise, if I do well."

It is not hard to hear how, just as Claudius has never known good kings or good brothers, Laertes has never known what it was to have expectations made plain.

And it's as easy to trace back to a household that blurred the personal and political. There was little separation, Claudius knew, before Polonius the father and Polonius the spymaster, for whom clarity was a liability, and whose methods of control were indirect. His tests were unexpected, his evaluations mixed. It's too much for a child who only wants to hear he's good.

"That's a fantasy I'm too happy to fulfill for thee," Claudius says fondly. "I love to tell thee exactly what to do."

"And it would do me no harm, to have thee sit at my feet while I negotiate a treaty with the Prince of Hungary," says Laertes, just as fondly. "I would not be a king in truth, but neither would I be the strict master that Sagramore craves--I spoil my daughter too much."

Claudius shudders at the thought, something Laertes can feel wherever they touch. "Wouldst thou keep me at thy feet as an ornament to thee? Or wouldst thou have me serve thee, and please thee with my mouth?"

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