Britannia, NY

The holidays have treated Gary fairly well. The therapist visits still go on weekly, and they still make him nervous and uncomfortable, but he's managing, and the medicine the psychiatrist prescribed keeps his nightmares away. For the most part he's been well enough to leave the house and do errands, with only one or two days where he had to stay in bed watching the light patterns on the wall, his heart to heavy for the rest of his body to move.

He's still waiting, like Patience on a monument, for Mike to wake up and remember; he doesn't say anything about it, he hasn't said a word about his dreams or his memories or the two halves of a self that are in him, which has kept things quiet.

The revolver is still in their room untouched, buried at the bottom of his sock drawer.

He doesn't really expect either of his models to come during the Twelfth Night stretch, so he's not very busy, his studio a little put by for the moment. There are some half-finished paintings, a multitude of sketches, and a table set up with a large wodge of clay on it; he's been experimenting with sculpture lately.

At the moment, though, he's at the kitchen table, doing sketches of himself and Mike in his workbook in soft, elegant charcoal lines.

The therapy sessions have been going well, or at least as well as can be expected. Gary is still twitchy about the whole thing, but managing better than at first--he tends to proceed in little inchings-forward, suspiciously.

But things are well enough for sure that he can go back to doing his usual chores, the grocery shopping, getting his art supplies from the little crafting store. On this particular day he's splurging, and on his way back from the store he stops in at the second-hand films-and-games store and rifles through their collection of pretentious indie films curiously.

Then he heads back home.

Arthur is tired. Adia not sleeping well means he's not been sleeping very well either, for one. For another, he still doesn't know what he's back here to achieve, and he somehow feels like there's a duty he's shirking. Something obvious that's missing.

He decides to pick up some pie on the way home. He and Adia could both use some comfort food, and he hasn't seen Lexi in awhile. These small steps, at least, he can take. For now.

( Older chests reveal themselves/Like a crack in a wall/Starting small, and grow in time/And we all seem to need the help/Of someone else/To mend that shelf/of too many books/Read me your favourite line )

( when heroes go down they go down fast / so don't expect any time to equivocate the past )

Gary has really been rocking back and forth a lot over the last few weeks--autumn does not do him any favours from a psychological angle--but he's finally roused himself enough to get out of the house and try to focus, so he's buying more art supplies (you would swear he is trying to keep that store in business single-handedly).

He looks unexpectedly fragile this afternoon, having lost weight again, wrapped in his jacket with his long-fingered artist's hands cold as snow.

He is wondering again whether he will ever be well.

It's Friday afternoon, and Mike is cautiously optimistic. The kids haven't been giving much trouble lately; Gary's been to the doctor and back again, and begun to loosen up a little on the subject; and any week in which Nathan minds his own business, he feels, can be counted as a net gain. So he's reasonably cheerful as he heads back to the apartment building, ankle deep in dead leaves. It's good walking weather.

( I'd like to help you doctor/yes I really really would )

( Inner transformation/Subconscious flight/In the glance fields of fires/In the distance meadows of might/Where minds being enshrouded in a complete night/The fading of love, life and light/Wandering an endless journey/Dead within a trace/Entering a lost dominion soulless and free/Visiting a foreign place but yet so known/Another dimension opens for me to see/Heaven sure ain't made for me to be )

When Mike gets home from work he's going to find it's been another bad day (at least bad days aren't filled with screaming any more, don't leave Gary wandering in his own house with no idea of who he is, at least there's that).

The studio door is shut on the fact that he's been working in there again, painting over the sketches pinned to the walls. The bathroom is a mess, full of steam and water and blood on the towels and the towels on the floor (but at least he knows who he is, at least he's not caught in some between place of being where he can't remember what he's been dreaming and what he remembers).

Gary is lying on the couch with the quilt pulled over him. There's a half-glass of bourbon and a bottle of aspirin on the coffee table, and he's evidently trying to pretend he doesn't exist. He doesn't move when the door opens.

Alessio hadn’t seen Arthur or Enfys since the day he learned that he (likely) wasn’t completely insane, that his memories really were memories, that something really was going to happen (maybe), and had begun to half wonder if it even happened at all. He’s more than used to extremely vivid dreams, after all. And since that day, a moment he always imagined as being one which would completely upturn his entire life, things have been completely mundane. He had written the piece on that carpenter who’d been shot which was reprinted in several local papers (only based on hospital and police records—his editor had already learned that sending Alessio out for interviews never ended in anything useful), he had finished unpacking, he had learned his way around most of the town. At first it was an effort: don’t think about it, about him, because you can’t spend your time waiting around for something to happen. Fill the time. Occupy your mind. Unpack, learn the way to the coffee shop.

Today’s perfectly thrilling goal is grocery shopping. It’s easy to forget it now. The shiny floors, the air conditioning turned on too high, the list written out in his own overly-careful hand, every workaday detail seems to remove him one more step from the things Enfys and Arthur said. The world seems too average, in the midst of the cereal aisle, for things like that to be true.

Mike got home at seven in the morning, which was about enough time to shower and wave apologetically at Gary before leaving again. It's three-fifteen when he lets himself in for the second time that day, dumps his belongings unceremoniously, and collapses onto the couch. "Oh, my God."

Which about sums it up.

Elaine is exhausted, from all the emotions she's been through in the last couple weeks, but she's finally accepted who she was. She isn't totally ready to accept that's who she is, but she's trying to work out a truce between her present and former selves.

And to that end, she's looking for the man who triggered it all - partially to apologize for flipping out at him, and partially to see if he still wants to draw her. But as she doesn't know how to ask after him, or where he lives, so she's kind of wandering around downtown Britannia, hoping fate will be on her side.

For once.

Gary is out somewhere, and Mike has a whole new set of worries now (they've identified him, they've arrested him, they've scared him into starting a firefight and he's lying in a parking lot somewhere--) which he's resolutely ignoring. He sits quietly at the kitchen table, pen in hand, not getting anything done.

Sometimes he thinks Gary is the sane one after all. Self-medication is looking better all the time.

Florence is outdoors again, sitting on her front doorstep in the afternoon sunshine. She has a library book with her, open, but at the moment she's not paying a great deal of attention to it; she's looking out toward the street, thoughtfully. She's been thoughtful a lot of the time, since that peculiar confrontation in the restaurant, and most of her thoughts are concerned with whether it's any of her business.

Currently she's leaning toward 'yes', but not strongly enough to do anything about it. At least not just yet.

Cecilia had called in to work -- taking a personal day, she said. She didn't want to say she was sick, because then she'd feel strange about being seen out around town. But she needed to walk. She needed to listen. She needed to know where the rest of her sons were.

For the first time in months, Cecilia had found herself sleepless. But it wasn't the dreaming, keeping her awake. It was Morgause's unsettling, cold anger. When Cecilia had met Enfys a second time, with full knowledge of who Enfys was, Morgause had stirred within her. But when Nathan had interrupted them, Morgause had surged forward. Cecilia was used to that give and take, by now; usually, she felt that who she was in this life tempered the ambition, desire, the anger that Morgause had carried. She wanted to believe that this time was different, people changed, this was a fresh start. Cecilia wanted that desperately; even Morgause knew that she wasn't who everyone thought she was. (She loved people. She longed for things. She'd been hobbled by who she was, then. Not now. Not here.)

So today she's on her own time, walking. Listening, in Morgause's way, for a hint that will point her to the people she needs to know. She knows Gary. She felt something about Clara. But Mordred? The others? Still mysteries to her. So she walks; she looks, most likely, determined, almost angry.

"I am going to destroy you," Nathan had said, "You and your bastard son."

Not if Cecilia had anything to say about it.

Monday is almost a relief, aside from the headache he woke up with. He's been at this job long enough that the routine is familiar, not so long that he's lost all his enthusiasm for it, and by afternoon he's tired but almost content. Nonetheless, he's avoiding Jim as much as possible. Yesterday is still raw, a wound that Tiernay only salved, and if he thinks about it too much his mind fills again with cold white rage, a feeling far worse than the hurt and the frustration. So he's resolutely not thinking about it, as he gets ready to leave.

Something hit Gary, maybe one of these nights when he was lying awake trying to calm the rocking worsening misery of what Nathan made him know (oh God you're her)--that Jim still has his gun. The realisation came from the same part of him that won't let him even look at Mike that way (do what she did, destroy what loves you, lose what you love) without a good deal more alcohol than is conscionable; and somehow getting up and doing something about one straightforward thing feels like the only way to do something right.

So he slips out of the house around noon. He's still hard to notice, hard to get a bead on, more than ordinary, insignificant. He knows the way he's going, and he still has Jim's spare key, and Jim, this time on a weekday, is bound to be at the school, just as Mike is now.

He unlocks the door with the quiet dexterity he used to use to steal sandwiches and paint in the city, palming things into his pockets. The trouble is where in God's name Jim put it, and his first thought is--guest room? But he already knows that room like the back of his paint-stained hand, and it's empty. And then it occurs to him that probably the most likely place is Jim's bedroom itself.

Sure enough, the revolver is in the back of Jim's closet in a shoebox. Gary tucks it into his jacket with a sigh of relief.

In the car, Mike is quiet. He hadn't quite let himself believe this wasn't going to happen anymore; even so, the sick feeling is back. He concentrates on the road, waiting for Gary to say -- whatever Gary needs to say, and bracing himself for it to make no sense at all.

( A knight of the Table Round should be invincible,/Suceed where a less fantastic man would fail./Climb a wall no one else can climb,/Cleave a dragon in record time,/Swim a moat in a coat of heavy iron mail./No matter the pain, he ought to be unwinceable,/Impossible deeds should be his daily fare./But where in the world/Is there in the world/A man so extraordinaire?/C'est moi! C'est moi, I'm forced to admit./'Tis I, I humbly reply./That mortal who/These marvels can do,/C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I. )

((OOC Note about setting: Nathan has become Donald Trump leased an empty restaurant area next door to Of the Lake because he had a dream, which seems to be his primary motivation for most things these days. Of course, it's him, so instead of just leaving it alone, he built some tables and refaced the cabinets, in some vague idea that someone was going to need it some day. So now Lexi has a bakery right next to Nathan and will be opening as soon as she figures out how to turn on the ovens. Soon everyone in Britannia will have a source for their chocolate fix needs, which, I know, is what you all were concerned about.

Right now, though, they're chillin in the diner, should anyone want to greet them. :D))