albinomilksnake | OPEN RP PART II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

Save your strength.

[He doesn't look smug or even angry. His expression is nearly neutral, but anyone who has spent enough time around Alastair knows his melancholy when they see it. Grayson's state of affairs is not the least bit satisfying. Not that he had ever expected it would be.

He approaches the bars, lets his eyelids draw slightly. He's a stray dog who's been given up for dead by his former handlers -- a casualty of the nonsensical war that's been going on for centuries. If only he hadn't been so--]

Anger will not serve you now.

[Oh, but he's wrong about that: anger-- not focused enough to be hatred, not at any one man-- is the only reason he still has any fight left in him after all this time and all those wounds. But he does, in earnest, let the strain in his shoulders settle down to rest, back slumping against hewn stone. Breath a wheezing rattle in his throat on the exhale, too tired to brook an argument.

And more than that, he needs Lucan comfortable enough to unlock those bars-- needs him daring to come close. Counts out the beats of his own heart like a timer; waits for the right moment, just as he always had. Just as Malory had taught him.]

Do you know why I am here instead of the usual guard, Grayson?

[A pointed question. He isn't going to let his guard down, no matter how weak he appeared. There is only one reason he's made the choice to replace the night watch, after all. If he didn't try one more time to convince him, then Sir Lucan would ever be able to let it go.

But now, he's reconsidering every long drawn out second he spends near his former brother in arms. If Grayson could not be swayed, he would die and that would be that. Better to spend his energy on keeping the rest of the Order out of this nonsense.]

Edited 2015-11-24 19:46 (UTC)

[There's tension there, in the gritted inhale that he manages in response to Alastair's question, eyeline lifting despite his low-set jaw.]

If guilt is truly wringing your heart, brother... [Gray starts, pausing only to let his throat adjust to something that isn't drowning-- that isn't gasping for air-- words chosen for a dig between ribs that he can't physically match, locked away behind rotted bars.] then hurry up and end it.

[He won't tolerate a slow, biting death. Not with Alastair within reach, playing the part of a mournful martyr, suffering the plight of the world they live in, wholly blameless for the betrayal he'd pressed on Grayson's broken spine. The thought makes him ill beyond weakness and starvation.]

[Alastair immediately starts to grumble the second Grayson starts to dig his heels in, and he frowns between the bars.]

See reason, Grayson. This is not the way you want this to end.

[Sir Lucan steps forward and grasps a bar between them, determined still to try and force him into a different line of thinking. He has to try--but if that doesn't work.

Well.]

This is not the way it has to be.

No, it is not. [The truth, if nothing else. Determination must be easy for Lucan to find, with such horrid truths ever present, swimming beneath his skin, like those gold eyes he'd flashed in a brief, primal rage. The memory haunts him; a singular point just there before the dam broke, before a flood of accusations came bearing down on everything he's ever known. A lifeline to cling to when everything else has gone, dust and broken bones and bitterness in the back of his throat like bile.]

It is the way you wanted this to end.

[He knew, he'd known all along, leading him into the jaws of the bloody beast with Lakshmi in tow.]

[A growl comes from somewhere deep in his chest, and he has to swallow it to keep it from echoing into something too feral, lest he alert someone still in the building as to what its housing.

His eyes turn pale for a moment, the way his lips split make his teeth look just a touch too pointed. But Alastair is in control. He will not let Grayson get the better of his temper again.]

I wanted this to end without our Order crumbling from within. If I wanted you dead, I've had many many prior opportunities.

[Temper -- temper. He's supposed to be reasoning with the man, not threatening him.]

[And there it is, the beast within the man. Defensive as the monsters they'd cornered beneath city streets littered with innocent blood, feral enough to lash out at the first breathing creature to walk past. Had he not been thrown to the wolves, had his own brother not spit on Grayson's honor to every last person they both held dear, perhaps there would be hope for a truce between them. But that wasn't the case.

No, what happened instead was the pure, filtered-out result of chosen allegiances. Priorities benefitting Lord Hastings and his disgusting criminal ilk, rather than the woman he dared to call his own beloved sister.] I marvel at the wellspring of restraint you've managed to show.

[Bitter, biting-- he's never known how to mask his emotions well enough to play diplomat. Less so now.]

That is because I do not want you dead, Gray. I never did.

[The informality might have been a slip any other day -- even taciturn Alastair who dared not show favor even to his beloved sister in the matters of his speech could swallow his pride and dour spirits long enough to try and turn things around. Somehow.]

You forced my hand.

[Because in a world like their's, it was all about survival of the fittest. That's all it was ever about.]

[A name he hasn't heard from Alastair in what feels like ages, it seems. Brings back achingly crisp memories of the pair in their youth, waging war with hunger in their hearts, steel in hand - Alastair had always been controlled to a certain extent (now, Grayson realizes, as a means to restrain the monster beneath his skin) but there was a shadow cast by Augustus D'Argyll that seemed too long to be human, too encompassing to be ignored, and Gray had passed it off as nothing but the need to live up to his father's expectations. He'd pitied the man, then, but now...

Now, it's all grievous wounds and bitter lies, a circle wound around both their tired hearts] You could have stopped it and you know it. [Not his discovery of the truth-- that, no matter how Lucan selfishly protests, is necessary-- but the consequences of it, the pain he's endured, forsaken without comfort from his own bloody kin.]

As I recall, you too had once attempted to talk the Lord Chancellor out of a decision he's already made. You yourself might recall that I attempted to speak on your behalf and was overruled.

[He's not offended that he doesn't remember, of course. There had been a lot happening -- but he had pointedly requested to offer the option of seeing the error of his ways, only to be shouted down by his "father".]

How many years have you been killing lycans, Grayson?

[Its not a question he asks with anger or even contempt. Its asked as one might ask a casual trivia question. He continues to hang on the bars of his cell, out of reach but in no way out of sight or any other sense.]

Animals. That is what all lycans have been reduced to. The burden of choice lies with those in power to change it.

[Lord Hastings was never meant to stay in power -- he was just as bad as the rest of them. Lucan himself was little more than a dog on a long leash, and such would remain until he found an alternative.]

[He inhales once, the sound sharp in his chest - his best attempt at not falling prey to words that hold potential to sway. The face of a brother, the face of a man he would have died for, once.

Worlds apart now, it seems.] If all that you say is true, there is nothing that can be done for me now.

[His father the Lord Chancellor would permit no pardon, no forgiveness, and he'll not poison himself with hope for anything else. It renders the sentiment meaningless, this conversation beyond pointless; his eyes shut, breathing shallow as water over stone.]

[Lucan is a predator if nothing else, and so he watches Galahad's reaction carefully for any hints of insincerity. Hundreds of years of prejudice did not change with a single question, after all.

But...he wants to believe almost as badly as he wants to be free.]

I can make it swift for you, brother.

[His hand slips down the bar just a bit. He watches again for a reaction -- Grayson's determination made it so he couldn't trust him to aid Lucan's cause in secret. And if he took Isabeau with him by some miracle...]

I owe you much, Grayson. I simply...cannot damn an entire people for one life.

[Snarling it in a growl to wound Lucan's pride is easier than coming face to face with the sincere offer of a clean kill. Times he would have done the same-- times that he has for those beyond the Order's ability to mend-- living dead incapable of going on. Mercy.

For a moment he's too silent there, laid out in bloodied, broken angles. Mulling over nothing but the brutality that will come the moment Alastair decides to leave, how slim his odds for escape no matter how he's told himself to bide his time: wounds weakening what passing days fail to, so that if the moment shows itself he might lack the strength to tear free.

But were roles swapped out, were Perceval the one to survive and find himself here, no amount of relief would sway him to latch onto an easy escape. No, if he dies in here, he dies fighting.]

No.

I thought you might say that.

[Alastair sighs it out of his nose. At the end of the day, Grayson was finished. It was either the swift death or the slow one.]

Allow me to council you to reconsider, Galahad. I wouldn't wish Blackwater withdrawal upon my worst enemy, let alone you.

[The snarl does nothing to his pride. He simply continues to blink in a slow manner, watching and waiting for some other answer to come to him that never arrives. Maybe he wouldn't give him the option, if he was too short-sighted to see how much pain he would put himself in.

Even if Isi and Perceval would never admit it in his company, his pain would hurt them just as well. Possibly more, even in spite of his betrayal to their Order.]

How ironic that I am one and the same. [Worn and transparent, there's no real humor in it. Nothing but simple truth: Grayson represents everything in this world that Lucan fears - truth dragged to light with risk and contempt, love between brothers poisoned by knowledge and some stubborn insistence on principal above all else. The risk that it might be the same should anyone else discover the truth, his own father included.

His head tilts back, falling tiredly against stone, eyes shut.] You can do nothing from out there, regardless.

[He's right in that regard, and he can't help the insult that prickles at his collar when Galahad opts to spit on his good will.

Lucan doesn't opt to answer him. A fight had the potential to coax the beast under his skin out from its tightly lidded container, and if that was the case, it couldn't happen where people had the potential to stumble on him.]

Your bite is blunt, Grayson. Your attempts to insult me are useless.

[He turns, seemingly to leave, but stops near the entrance to pick something off the guard's post. His back stays turned toward him as he examines it in the shadow he's chosen.]

If I insult you, it is not with enmity, but the truth. [Alastair is too close, too vivid to ignore, no matter how his mind works to weed out temptation-- the thought of peace rather than pain. Fleeting weakness, sunk down into the marrow of his bones. He must be steel, he must be iron, braced against mortality and the jeers of his miserable jailors.

But it hurts him no less to watch his former brother walk away. Catches his breath somewhere in his throat when he stops, red eyes only half-lidded as they wait, focused only on instinct alone; too broken to glance away in the moment.]

OPEN RP PART II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

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