It's an hour since they last spoke. The sun is sinking into a pink sky, now, latticed by leafless trees and spreading a blood-red trail across the lake
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When they finally get settled around the small fire, Cuthbert and Alain exchange silent glances. Then, at a go-ahead gesture from Alain, Cuthbert turns back to the others and begins to speak.
"You all know what happened soon after our return from Mejis. With--with the glass."
That's as close as he comes to mentioning Gabrielle's death. He'd not speak of that unless he has to, and they all know that part of the story.
"After that...things went on. You'll forgive me if I skip over the rest of that winter--not much happened that's really worth mentioning, except for when Sheemie showed up at Year's End." There's a faint, crooked smile at the memory. "Followed us all the way from Mejis, he did."
"Alain and I both challenged Cort in the next year." His chin lifts a bit, and the faint smile slides into a bit of a smirk. "Roland was the youngest gunslinger ever, at fourteen. But before that, his father had been the youngest at sixteen. We were both fifteen. Not too shabby, I'd say."
She's never heard most of this tale, even though they all knew hers.
Oh, some few things -- this and that, a glimpse of Gilead through Alain's eyes, stories shared by 'Bert on a sunny afternoon by the lake-- but not the whole.
She'd never pressed. She'd thought there'd be time.
In spite of all; in spite of remembering that winter, the hardest of his life. With Roland a shell of himself, closed off by grief and guilt into a husk; with a strange new distance and wariness between themselves and their parents; with the bitter determination to prove themselves and the daily frustration of Cort treating them like the children they had been a few months ago and now could barely remember being.
In spite of all, because Cuthbert is smirking, and Alain is remembering that small light of triumph, too. The crack of a slingshot
(Hai, Cuthbert! First blood!)
and the slash of a knife.
There's the faintest edge of a teenager's cocky pride to his own smile.
"The others of our ka-tel--our class of 'prentices--started catching up to us soon enough. Maybe the three of us succeeding so young encouraged them, or maybe--maybe, in some way, we all knew we'd have less time to accomplish things than our fathers did. In any case, we emerged as perhaps the youngest generation of gunslingers ever--all of us who were going to win our guns did so by the time we were nineteen
( ... )
"Divisions inside the city, too," Alain adds quietly. "Not openly, not then, and treason was punished where our fathers could find it. But Farson's lies spread far. There were plenty who started to listen, over time
( ... )
Cuthbert would turn grim and silent at the mention of Walter if he weren't grim and silent already. But as Alain falls silent, he takes up the tale again.
"Things went on as well as they could, in the face of it all. Alain and I both had cousins born a few years after Mejis, and they and their mothers came to live in the city, thinking it'd be safer there. It was, for a while. Things were coming apart, and I think everryone knew it, at least a little--you could feel it when you walked through the city." Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold "But it was either go on with life, or lay down and give up--and in fact, some chose the latter. But for the most part, people went on marrying and having children and working their trades, for as long as they could."
As long as they could. Which wasn't more than five years, in the end. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"We had the Presentation Ceremony when we were nineteen, after the last of us passed--all of us loaded our guns, formally and together for the first time, even those of us
( ... )
Eddie fiddles with the knap of a blanket. It's not hard to imagine the city, or the presentation ceremony, or the marriage. It's all coming easy, easier, he thinks, than Susannah's story had come through.
(Ka is a wheel. You've been turning on it under different names for a long time.)
It's the last that strikes home to Susannah. Her father died, shortly after she lost her legs. Shortly after the Civil Rights Movement began to pick up steam.
The long, false peace between dark and light was broken, and the bad old days came back, and took her father.
She kens it.
You never really get past losing your daddy. You just learn to go on with it.
Cuthbert's mentioned one of his cousins, as it happens -- a young woman who came to stay with them in Gilead for a while when she had her baby, when he himself were barely older than she is now.
She remembers the sweetness of his smile as he cradled Derry, telling her of it, and her own unconscious, answering smile is heartbreakingly sweet, despite everything.
It fades when he mentions Cort's death--
(does he change?)
--and vanishes utterly when he tells of his father's.
(oh da' how I do miss thee)
Susan makes a low sound, almost like a soft cry, and reaches out to place a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Cuthbert doesn't have his arm around Susan now. He's turned in on himself, one knee drawn up, and his hands are fists and he's not looking at any of them.
"After taking what plunder they could, of course." There's a bit of a smile, but oh, it's bitter and hateful. "Did you know Farson started out robbing coaches and buckas on roads along the Outer Rim? Built himself into the Good Man, but he started as a theif and murderer, and he ended as one. So much for freeing the oppressed masses from the rule of the gun."
His head is lowered. It hurts to talk about this, and he's barely begun.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
"Three of our generation of gunslingers died defending Gilead. Julian Cabot, George Harken, and Tristan Holt. There were some enlisted men we knew, as well--Jesse Woodward was our age, and about as good a friend as any of us had, outside the ka-tel. And there was a general named Warwick, who was in his seventies and had been in the service of the Barony since he was a teenager.
( ... )
Bitterness and gall are always the harbingers of her other (darker) half, and she feels the shift backwards as Detta comes forward.
Her reaction is surprising. Susannah knows the complex pain this revelation--to the group, if not to Susan--must pose for the girl, but Detta bypasses that with brutal sensibility. Every one's hurting, and this is fucking triage.
The roadhouse champeen lifts a dark hand to stroke Cuthbert's hair. "Ain't no hell black enuff for 'em, sugar. Say sorry, chile."
His eyes are closed and his head is bowed and his body is tight and hunched, and one hand has found Cuthbert's, working his friend's fist open enough to clutch at his hand instead. Both their knuckles are white.
He can see it again, hear the screaming and battle-cries again, smell ash and burned blood and rot in the air.
All she'd ever known of Gilead, all she'd seen, had been through Roland, before, and these two here. Alain had shown her, and she'd shared the story of that memory with 'Bert, bright and shining as it had been.
(O City, City)
Her world had ended in fire; so, too, had theirs-- and worse. Far, far worse.
(she ran after me and pulled my hair)
Alain is hunched low, his hand and Cuthbert's tight-held together, and Cuthbert is drawn in on himself. Together in pain and grief and mounrful memory, there's naught she can do or say to make it any better, naught that will help.
So she does what she can, and all that she can. Susannah is before them-- Susan moves behind them, putting one arm around Alain's shoulder and the other around 'Bert's, with a soft wordless murmur as she bows her head to grieve with them silently for a place she's never been, and people she never knew.
Comments 72
November.
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(Empathica)
Softly, and yet very clearly, she asks, "Susannah? Would'ee like a fire?"
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Uh. Duelling issues. Fuck.
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"You all know what happened soon after our return from Mejis. With--with the glass."
That's as close as he comes to mentioning Gabrielle's death. He'd not speak of that unless he has to, and they all know that part of the story.
"After that...things went on. You'll forgive me if I skip over the rest of that winter--not much happened that's really worth mentioning, except for when Sheemie showed up at Year's End." There's a faint, crooked smile at the memory. "Followed us all the way from Mejis, he did."
"Alain and I both challenged Cort in the next year." His chin lifts a bit, and the faint smile slides into a bit of a smirk. "Roland was the youngest gunslinger ever, at fourteen. But before that, his father had been the youngest at sixteen. We were both fifteen. Not too shabby, I'd say."
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Sometimes he wonders what it would've been like if he'd been raised like a true gunslinger.
Leaving out the whole, fall of civilization, early death, side.
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She's never heard most of this tale, even though they all knew hers.
Oh, some few things -- this and that, a glimpse of Gilead through Alain's eyes, stories shared by 'Bert on a sunny afternoon by the lake-- but not the whole.
She'd never pressed. She'd thought there'd be time.
Susan is very quiet, listening intenly.
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In spite of all; in spite of remembering that winter, the hardest of his life. With Roland a shell of himself, closed off by grief and guilt into a husk; with a strange new distance and wariness between themselves and their parents; with the bitter determination to prove themselves and the daily frustration of Cort treating them like the children they had been a few months ago and now could barely remember being.
In spite of all, because Cuthbert is smirking, and Alain is remembering that small light of triumph, too. The crack of a slingshot
(Hai, Cuthbert! First blood!)
and the slash of a knife.
There's the faintest edge of a teenager's cocky pride to his own smile.
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The sense of an encroaching menace is one they're all familiar with, but for the Americans it never had this kind of association with home.
Eddie tries to think of riots and unrest spreading through his city, spreading into Brooklyn. It's not hard. All he has to do is think of Lud.
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There's a Barry McGuire song running through her head. The pounding of the drums, the pride and disgrace.
The bodies hanging like strange fruit.
And you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend, that you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
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"Things went on as well as they could, in the face of it all. Alain and I both had cousins born a few years after Mejis, and they and their mothers came to live in the city, thinking it'd be safer there. It was, for a while. Things were coming apart, and I think everryone knew it, at least a little--you could feel it when you walked through the city."
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
"But it was either go on with life, or lay down and give up--and in fact, some chose the latter. But for the most part, people went on marrying and having children and working their trades, for as long as they could."
As long as they could. Which wasn't more than five years, in the end.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"We had the Presentation Ceremony when we were nineteen, after the last of us passed--all of us loaded our guns, formally and together for the first time, even those of us ( ... )
Reply
(Ka is a wheel. You've been turning on it under different names for a long time.)
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
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The long, false peace between dark and light was broken, and the bad old days came back, and took her father.
She kens it.
You never really get past losing your daddy. You just learn to go on with it.
Reply
She remembers the sweetness of his smile as he cradled Derry, telling her of it, and her own unconscious, answering smile is heartbreakingly sweet, despite everything.
It fades when he mentions Cort's death--
(does he change?)
--and vanishes utterly when he tells of his father's.
(oh da' how I do miss thee)
Susan makes a low sound, almost like a soft cry, and reaches out to place a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Reply
Cuthbert doesn't have his arm around Susan now. He's turned in on himself, one knee drawn up, and his hands are fists and he's not looking at any of them.
"After taking what plunder they could, of course." There's a bit of a smile, but oh, it's bitter and hateful. "Did you know Farson started out robbing coaches and buckas on roads along the Outer Rim? Built himself into the Good Man, but he started as a theif and murderer, and he ended as one. So much for freeing the oppressed masses from the rule of the gun."
His head is lowered. It hurts to talk about this, and he's barely begun.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
"Three of our generation of gunslingers died defending Gilead. Julian Cabot, George Harken, and Tristan Holt. There were some enlisted men we knew, as well--Jesse Woodward was our age, and about as good a friend as any of us had, outside the ka-tel. And there was a general named Warwick, who was in his seventies and had been in the service of the Barony since he was a teenager. ( ... )
Reply
Bitterness and gall are always the harbingers of her other (darker) half, and she feels the shift backwards as Detta comes forward.
Her reaction is surprising. Susannah knows the complex pain this revelation--to the group, if not to Susan--must pose for the girl, but Detta bypasses that with brutal sensibility. Every one's hurting, and this is fucking triage.
The roadhouse champeen lifts a dark hand to stroke Cuthbert's hair. "Ain't no hell black enuff for 'em, sugar. Say sorry, chile."
Reply
He remembers.
His eyes are closed and his head is bowed and his body is tight and hunched, and one hand has found Cuthbert's, working his friend's fist open enough to clutch at his hand instead. Both their knuckles are white.
He can see it again, hear the screaming and battle-cries again, smell ash and burned blood and rot in the air.
Reply
(O City, City)
Her world had ended in fire; so, too, had theirs-- and worse. Far, far worse.
(she ran after me and pulled my hair)
Alain is hunched low, his hand and Cuthbert's tight-held together, and Cuthbert is drawn in on himself. Together in pain and grief and mounrful memory, there's naught she can do or say to make it any better, naught that will help.
So she does what she can, and all that she can. Susannah is before them-- Susan moves behind them, putting one arm around Alain's shoulder and the other around 'Bert's, with a soft wordless murmur as she bows her head to grieve with them silently for a place she's never been, and people she never knew.
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