Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

"Congratulations," Cherry says with all signs of completely meaning it. "Love is a precious thing in this world, youngblood. My many wishes for your happiness." The group eating with her all raise their glasses (mostly soda, though a wizened old man with pointed, hairy ears and glass ground into his flesh is instead drinking gin) to Dimitri with eager smiles.

His companion just raises her eyebrows at him in a clear sign of Details Later, Youngblood.

Cherry's attention slips to Molly. "This about Excalibur?"

"What else?" 'Molly' flashes a feral grin. "But I promise we didn't bring any construction equipment across the pond with us.

Hey Dimitri, if you direct your attention to your peripheral, Kiki has caught up with Arthur, and he's glancing your way.

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri raises his own glass to the toast, though there's nothing in it -- then freezes like a rabbit under the eye of what his mind so helpfully points out is the head of the feast.

"It appears our host is aware of our presence," he says, a sheet of ice over his stopped heart. "Should we introduce ourselves?"

[crushed_pearls]

"Nah, let 'im deal with the vultures first. Watch..." Cherry gestures discreetly, and...

Arthur is subtly getting the attention of a few Freeholders, people who carry themselves with less wariness than some of the ones around Dimitri. At his signal they intercept a great deal of different groups of people who all have cameras and someone to stand in front of them with a microphone, intercepting them before they can reach the Once and Future King. With his plan deployed, he walks at his own pace towards the table, where he takes what was Kiki's seat, right next to Dimitri, with a broad and genuine smile.

The famous blade rides at his hip; even Dimitri's famously bad magical training can sense power radiating from it, as if the sword itself can choose a king. Arthur rather eagerly begins stacking what appears to be his first plate. Dude is more than six feet tall and made of stone; he eats like it.

Actually balancing the literal tower of food forming on his plate, on the other hand...

"Your majesty," 'Molly' greets, offering a seated bow. "Little Molly, outta Ravenswatch, here on a friendly with my apprentice here. Technically we're supposed to be making sure you're not gonna go back on your word about the sword, but, eh, I don't give a shit."

Arthur laughs. "I think I may have lost the intricacies of your point, Little Molly."

"Well, you can probably find 'em with the youngblood here. He's got an interest in the kinging business and I dragged him along so he can talk to one who's been on the world stage."

Arthur's attention goes to Dimitri. He does not actually stop eating and some of the nearby Lost are clearly impressed by the way he can eat without looking at his food and not spill a fucking drop.

[prince_of_beasts]

That is impressively professional. Dimitri's taking notes.

-- until Arthur turns to him, and several conflicting protocols collide. Dimitri knows how to address a king, but no one else is, and instinct can't tell if he needs to mimic them or if this is apocalyptic -- he glances at Erin, who's relaxed enough, "but if I want you dead you can hardly trust her, can you?" Click-click familiarity takes priority: Dimitri extracts himself from the picnic table to sink to one knee, head bowed.

"It's an honor, your Majesty," he says without stumbling. "I've heard great things, and I see all of them are true and more."

[crushed_pearls]

Arthur laughs heartily. "I can't believe being polite about my Excalibur has eyes on me from across the sea."

"You say, like you haven't been the poster child for Summer in the States," 'Molly' drawls.

That gets another laugh. Arthur grabs a drink from the table (it's Pepsi) and offers it to the kneeling Dimitri. "Rise, my friend, rise. I'll not have someone going hungry at my Feast of Strength, and I'll admit that I'm intrigued that someone might actually ask how to go about being a king. I missed the boat on that question by a few months myself, ended up with a crown and no instruction manual."

[prince_of_beasts]

Even in Dimitri's least catastrophic, most lucid visions of the scenario, he'd expected to be laughed at. He knows that to people of Erin's time, his manners are beyond archaic. There is laughter, but it's warm, not cruel. Not even inadvertently condescending.

Dimitri is a good judge of people. He's had to be, in order to survive. And if this world were his own, Arthur would have won his loyalty for life.

He takes the drink and returns to his seat, flushing a sheepish pink. "I don't think it's something one can prepare for. I ... " His expression turns distant, and he flicks a faint panicked glance at Erin. "I simply have an interest in -- the question of authority, and how it can be wielded justly. If it can. In matters so weighty, where no matter how much or how wise the counsel you receive, you're left to make the final decision alone ... " His momentum fades, and he wilts. " ... it's no longer exactly relevant to me, but ... it preoccupies me all the same."

He takes a sip of his drink to distract himself. The bubbles go directly up his nose; he chokes, goes briefly cross-eyed, and somehow manages to swallow and set it down without coughing.

"Um. What is that."

[crushed_pearls]

Arthur picks up a can of his own. "My young and old friend, this is Pepsi. I would say that it's provided here out of genuine love for a very popular drink but the truth of the matter is they paid us quite a bit to serve their products here, and neither bullets nor medicine are free."

Molly actually does choke on her burger and will be a minute with that.

He cracks the can open and takes a slow sip, looking very thoughtful. "...Before I was ever a warrior, or an Ogre, or a king, I was a civic engineer. Roads, bridges, and the systems that manage them were my job and my passion, and through those eyes I see my new duty...differently. Yes, as monarchs go I'm blessed; I rule less than three hundred subjects, and any of them might be contacted directly at the push of a button. Every decision could be down to me, but the thing about all systems is they're only perfect until people use them. In the moment, every decision has to be down to the people actually there, and so I've chosen to invest in helping mine be their best selves. My job is not to arrange them as pieces on a board, but to be their support, their example, their advisor in times of trouble. Sure, I command the field of battle, but I can't be there to make their choices for them if they see a child playing in the street, a monster slipping into an alley, if they witness injustice and pain. If you see?"

[prince_of_beasts]

"Yes. No matter the position - even a king has only as much power as their people believe they do. That's often forgotten."

He's supposed to be eating something. Um. There aren't many vegetable, non-meat-substitute options around, but there is bread. Hard to go wrong with bread. Glancing at the surrounding tables the butter is in individual foil-wrapped pats, which seems wasteful, but alright.

"To know every one of your subjects personally -- even if not closely -- that is enviable. Though ... does it not weigh on you even more? In decisions like this, for example."

Dimitri gestures at the festival at large, the crowd, the stadium (the sheer scale of this place is boggling). "You said there were objections to making the feast public. Sure enough, there are those outside eager to hurt you and yours. But there are good reasons to open the feast, as well, and in the end the decision had to be made -- I suppose what I mean is that some decisions about the, the structure of the system in play, must still come down to your Majesty, mustn't they? If your role is to set an example, you must decide what sort of example you wish to set. And when everyone watching you is a familiar face ... you're better able to know what they might think, what they might need, but at the same time, it seems like a terrible personal pressure."

He pauses. His flush deepens. "I -- I apologize, your Majesty, that was all terribly presumptuous of me."

[crushed_pearls]

Dimitri please if you're avoiding meat just say something they have so much stuff available. The noodle varieties alone, sir, the NOODLES -

Arthur forgives Dimitri with a wave of his hand. "These are the sorts of questions more aspiring leaders among the Lost should be asking. They're reasonable questions, and they get at the heart of power that many ignore, or fail to recognize; not only do my people have needs, but I have needs as well - both as a person and as a figurehead. No king reigns alone, and if I simply run roughshod over the subjects who help me exercise my power...well, no decisions will be up to me then." The stony Ogre chuckles at his own not-joke. "To say nothing of the rotating nature of the Crown. In less than thirty days, Zoe Morris -" here he gently directs Dimitri's attention to a table that has a frosty, Autumnal air, and specifically to a woman busy feeding the bird on her shoulder cuts of raw meat.



"- will be queen, and after her will be Misery Monroe, and then Ramona Rabbit. The push and pull of incentives in our little system would be fascinating to write about if I didn't live in it." Arthur sets his currently empty plate down (it will not stay empty) so he can rest his cheek against his fist; the same gesture Erin makes so often, down to the angle of his head. "But, given the chance to choose...I think I'd like to know my vassals by name. Yes, the pressure is immense; certainly, the risk of personal attachment and choices motivated by it is real. But...we had a bright and distant sun king here, not all that long ago. I've had to pick up the pieces of that king's fall. I wouldn't wish that bitter work on anyone else."

[prince_of_beasts]

"T-thank you, your Majesty, that -- that means a great deal." Dimitri perks up under the praise. Bit by bit, he's beginning to relax, lured out by the special interest like a stray cat smelling fish. Arthur's last point has him swallowing a sudden lump in his throat, but it's dismay, not fear.

"The loss of a monarch brings chaos even under the best of circumstances. To heal the shock of a sudden fall ... " Dimitri lets out a long, slow breath. "That's bitter work, indeed. I'm sorry. May -- "

He catches himself, with another glance at Erin. Should he know this? Will he give something away if he admits he doesn't? He's already begun, so he may as well finish --

"May I ask what happened?"

[crushed_pearls]

"It's no big secret or tale of high betrayal." Arthur sighs. "...I don't want to speak ill of King Leo. I really do not; he ruled Summer with genuine fervor, doing real good for the Freehold's defense. If I have criticisms of his reign it's because I have to clean up after it, but he died as a Summer king ought to; he stayed behind to hold the line against the Wild Hunt, and was torn apart by its briarwolves. When we went to recover the body..." Arthur smiles and shakes his head. "The Huntsman keeps twelve coursers. There were fourteen dead briarwolves. Wild ones had jumped in, smelling fear, and he wrung the life from their necks. Amazing warrior, bit of a fucking asshole."

'Molly' had just gotten done choking on her burger and is now busy choking on her Mountain Dew. Arthur shares a look of sly mischief with Dimitri.

"Leo managed everything personally, you understand. He did not have subjects, he had tools and weapons; increasingly, mainly weapons. I can't fault him for putting the military defense of the Freehold above everything else, that's...that's the job, that's being King in Summer. I just wish he'd taken the stick from his rear during any of the other nine months of the year."

[prince_of_beasts]

"An honorable death." Spoken with the tone of someone who's not sure those words ever belong together. "He sounds like one of the kings of legend. I've always wondered how they'd rule off the battlefield."

Dimitri picks at his bread, assembling his next words carefully.

" ... I was raised by soldiers, your Majesty. My father was a c-commander, and it was expected I'd take up his post when the time came. I was taught that honor is made and proven in battle, and justice is delivered in death. But that did nothing for those who were cold and starving -- those who lost homes and families -- those whose pain and desperation drove them to, to terrible deeds -- and when 'justice' was misdirected or wholly corrupt t-there could be no true justice for those slaughtered in its name. I loved my father, but ... I think he and your King Leo would have gotten along. And I was raised in his image."

Dimitri looks up sharply, a bright, earnest gleam in his eyes. "Which is why I'd hoped to speak with you, your Majesty. Roads? Sewers? Aqueducts? These things help people to live. They may not be the stuff of legend, not as, as immediately impressive as glory on the battlefield, but ... it seems to me that to build something lasting is a far greater achievement for a king than proving an effective killer." His shoulders sink; the feverish gleam in his eye softens. "It's the kind of person I'd like to be."

[crushed_pearls]

"A worthy future," Arthur agrees. "These days I help political campaigns for that sort of thing; I can't exactly just build a bridge, even if I had time." A wistful look crosses his granite face. "You certainly have the right idea. So much of my current rule is just...trying to get people to treat each other better. In little ways and -"

There's a commotion at the wooden structure. Erin - the Erin of the past that is - and a knightly lass made all of stained glass are ascending it.

"- big ones," Arthur finishes with a sigh. "I hate to cut this short but those gay idiots are going to draw blood on national TV and I've got damage control to run on that. Spring Court, always with the drama. Love it, but...the drama."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri can't blanch in his current state, but his expression freezes. At any other time he'd have at least a little admiration to spare for Colors's whole aesthetic, but right now he can hear all of his blood and his immediate all-consuming priority is to get away. "O-of course, your Majesty. Thank you for your counsel, I'm immeasurably grateful." Nervous reflex drives him to stand and bow as Arthur gets up, which is just as well because it means he's already standing when he casts a desperate look at 'Molly'. "E -- M-molly, can we -- my deepest apologies," to the rest of the table, "but it would be best if we stepped away for a moment."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin leads Dimitri off without an explanation, and no one asks for one. The worst he gets are understanding looks; everyone here has moments like this. Once they're out of earshot she murmurs, "Way I figure it we've got two options. Those plastic things are portable bathrooms; not as nice as the ship, better than an outhouse, but they won't block sound. Or we could duck into the rift."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri recoils from the chemical reek of the portable toilets, shaking his head. "I don't want to leave just yet -- but -- " The thought of returning to the ship is claustrophobic, stifling. He swallows bile, his mouth dry. "Is there someplace we could sit away from the audience?"

[crushed_pearls]

"I don't - yes!"

Behold Dimitri, an invention as old as medicine and slightly younger than war: the medical tent. Currently it has no patients and for that matter no doctors - they're out at the duel - but there's an extremely short teenager with a faint aura of lilies and a clockwork arm reading a hard copy of Battle Angel Alita in here. When he scrambles to stand up the word STAFF printed on his shirt becomes visible.

"Just need some quiet away from the duels until people get it out of their system," Molly explains.

The kid looks at them, looks again at Dimitri, and without a word he gets out an iPod with earbuds and offers it to Dimitri.