Arthur LeGuin | Athyr Liung (thedragonking) wrote in camallate, @ 2011-08-12 17:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | athyr, lanselos |
Fic: The Last Sleep in Avalon
Title: The Last Sleep in Avalon
When: refried_scenes AU
Who: Athyr, Lanselos
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Character death.
Athyr has never imagined doing what he's doing now.
Lanse has been getting slower for weeks, his black hair completely gone to silver, his face more lined all the time, as if it were trying to contrast with Athyr's smooth, youthful skin. But he talked just like he always has, smirking and cocky as the day Athyr met him. The night before he straddled Athyr's hips in their small bed, and let Athyr jerk him off. It took longer than usual, but it's been taking longer and longer as they get older, neither of them mind. Athyr likes having the extra time to concentrate, even though he's so used to Lanse that he hardly has to think about what to do.
They always leave the light on so Athyr can see what he's doing. But afterwards Lanse put it out and eased down on the worn mattress next to Athyr, and said that to-morrow he was going to have to go down to the dockside market and see about coffee, since they were out. And Athyr said he'd lend him the cred, since Athyr's got a job now -- he could barely stand to take it, to leave Lanse alone during the day, but Lanse is too old to work and somebody in their damn household has to earn the money.
And Lanse grinned against Athyr's skin in the dark -- Athyr could tell he was doing it, even if he couldn't feel it -- and said again that Athyr was lucky he didn't mind being a kept man.
And Athyr knew he was lucky.
In the morning he woke up with his arm around Lanse's waist and knew something was wrong, but couldn't work out what it was at first. Nothing felt any different; but nothing ever feels any different to him. Then he opened his eyes and nudged Lanse's shoulder.
"Hey, you bastard."
And like that he knew what was wrong.
He lay real still with his teeth gritted, looking at the grimy ceiling, Lanse's body resting against his. He can't feel hot and cold, he couldn't feel any difference in temperature, so there was no death cold to fright him, but all the air felt like it had gone out of the room. At first he figured he was going to cry, but he didn't. He just lay there, trying to imagine what the world would be like without Lanse.
Because he'd known for ages that Lanse was getting older. They both knew. They didn't talk about it much, because it didn't do anybody any good. But they knew that they were both taking note of every silver hair and every bone ache and every time Lanse forgot something he shouldn't've forgot. And Athyr stayed exactly the same, same as he was, dark-haired and limber, looking maybe forty at the most.
And for all that Athyr had never let himself think past Lanse dying. He'd said the words before, when they were fighting -- "You're going to die. What am I gonna do when you die?" -- but saying wasn't the same as thinking about it.
Now he was thinking about it plenty. He was thinking about how he'd be getting up in the morning and there'd be nobody to have coffee with. Or to buy coffee for, since it wasn't as though he could ruttin' taste it. All the small decadences in their life were set up so Lanse would enjoy them and Athyr would enjoy Lanse enjoying them; without Lanse, what would be the damn point?
No point in sex, even if he could buy it easy at the docks. The only pleasure in that was watching Lanse's face and knowing Lanse loved him and loved the way he touched him. And then it hit Athyr that the only person who loved him was dead, and he really did cry, wrapping both arms around Lanse and sobbing into his shoulder, stroking his hair fitfully like he really thought his senses would come back enough for him to know how Lanse felt, one last time.
They didn't.
It took him a while to get cried out, but once he had he got up and got dressed and got a bowl of water and a cloth, and washed Lanse like the custom was. Then he got him dressed in his favourite shirt and jeans, and belted on his guns. Then he sat at the kitchen table for a few hours with his head in his hands, not feeling brave enough to go into the business district after a funeral man.
Finally he went out and bought the plot of land and the holo grave-marker, and got cheated on the price and didn't give a shit. He could've hired a grave-digger, but instead he rented a cart and a shovel, and tucked Lanse in careful along with some of his stuff, like the shotglass he always used and his knife, and the fancy boots Athyr bought him for some birthday. The other thing Athyr rented was the white tunic and pants, just so he could be respectful in the cemetery.
And now he's doing what he never, never imagined doing. He's digging Lanse's grave.
He's young and strong and can't feel pain; he doesn't slow up. He just digs, glancing up sometimes at Whitefall's dirty sun. When he finishes, he lifts Lanse's body out of the cart wrapped up in a sheet, and eases him down into the dirt. Then he puts the extra stuff down in with him and starts to shovel the dirt back in.
Then he hooks up the marker, and sets the little reel of tape playing, so that just above the etched out Lanselos Auelon a five by seven inch holo screen -- not the fancy kind, just a cheap two-dimensional one -- runs the same seven pictures of Lanse on repeat. Lanse had been on the run so much that Athyr could hardly find any pictures to use on the holo, but there were a couple from the last few years, and a real nice one off an old Alliance wanted poster that shows him at twenty, grinning smugly above his capture serial.
Once that's all done Athyr sits down by the side of the grave in his white mourning suit, the shovel leaning against his knees, his back to the cart, and just stays there, silent and hardly moving, for two days.
But finally he goes back to their apartment and changes into one of Lanse's shirts and his own jeans, and curls up in bed instead, breathing the smell of Lanse off his clothes and their sheets. Every now and then he gets the energy to wonder what the fuck he's going to do.
Because Lanse was his lover and his brother and his best friend and the only person alive who knew who he is and what's wrong with him, the only person who knew he used to be a king, the only person who knew what he did and how he's got no home because of it.
For the next few days he doesn't leave the apartment. He wears Lanse's clothes and eats a little sometimes and sits on the bed looking off into space, holding his breath through the worst parts when he swears he can feel that there's no one next to him, when the empty space in the rooms fills up his nose and mouth and makes him feel like choking.
After a while he starts packing their things. He and Lanse were pretty much the same size, though Lanse liked his clothes a little fancier than Athyr does. He packs clothes and his father's filigreed pistol with the monogram and the coffee he found hidden in the back of one of the cabinets with his name scrawled on the accompanying tag -- some present that Lanse never got around to giving him.
The hardest part is making himself leave.
But the apartment feels like a sinkhole now, like a ship caught in dead space. Without Lanse, Athyr can't live here.
So he buys himself a bunk on a boat headed to the Outer Rim, one that'll stop off at New Britain for refuel and resupply. When she takes off he stays pressed to her rear viewscreen, staring at Whitefall's bare plains, picturing Lanse's little grave and the holo-marker, which is guaranteed for ten years and then will probably short out and die. He's leaving Lanse. He's leaving him.
Athyr nearly tells the captain to drop him at Rosalinde so he can go back, but he makes himself stay.
They won't know him on New Britain now. They'll have a new king by now, or maybe not even a king. They'll have -- they'll have something new. It'll be better. And he can help to rebuild it. It's only been fifty years, there's sure no way everything can be rebuilt. Or if it is, then he'll help to keep it going. He'll come back as nobody and he'll work for New Britain the way he always should have -- should never have let Merdhin talk him into being king, should've just been Ector's younger son and Cai's kid brother and maybe even Anna's husband -- Jesus knows. But he can do it over now. Maybe that's why he's still alive. Maybe to do it over.
And maybe that will settle his heart over Lanse. If he does some good -- maybe he won't want just to lie in his blanket that smells of Lanse and feel like his chest is splitting, worse than when Medraut shot him, worse than when the Alliance doctors operated; and that the only pain he's felt in fifty years.
Athyr sits on the side of the bed and draws in a long breath.
"Don't mean to leave you, xiongdi," he says, and shuts his eyes. "Figured maybe if I went home you'd come with me."
That night for the first time he's able to imagine Lanse with him, lying beside him on the bed; and since it's his imagination, he can feel it when Lanse slips an arm around his waist and whispers, "Course I'm comin', idiot. No one to keep you out of trouble otherwise."
"Keep me out of trouble my ass," Athyr tells him. "You're the one gets me into it."
"Yeah, but you don't mind."
"Sure don't," he says.
"And who's gonna carry you home if you get drunk?"
"You are," he says.
"So stop talkin' to yourself. People are gonna think you're crazy." Lanse kisses his hair and settles down.
Athyr doesn't even realise he's dreaming until he wakes up from the sound of his own tears.