(no subject)

[honest_johns]

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.

It's growing chillier. Susan has a thermos of hot chocolate, and another of coffee; Eddie and Cuthbert each carry an extra blanket folded over arm or shoulder.

They've heard Susannah's tale, the hard truths lived and then hidden and hoarded until now. They've heard the story's ending.

Now it's time for another kind of ending. It's Alain and Cuthbert's turn.

Comments

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Susannah pulls on wooly gloves, tucking the thermos against her hip to do it.

November.

[sai_delgado]

Susan is watching as the other woman makes herself warmer against the chill.

(Empathica)

Softly, and yet very clearly, she asks, "Susannah? Would'ee like a fire?"

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Susannah smiles at her. "It's all right, sugar. Ain't really winter yet."

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

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."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"Not bad at all," Eddie agrees.

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.

[sai_delgado]

She's never asked for details.

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.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

"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."

There's a brief glance at Eddie and Susannah for the nineteen--even then, apparantly, it was at work--and a further pause as he remembers.

Alain circling Cort with a knife in one hand, all appearance of slowness gone from him. Lawrence fallen in the dust, bruised and bleeding, the shame he would bear for the rest of his life--however it turned out--only beginning. Jamie, the last of them to try, weilding his bow against a Cort who was older and more scarred but still formidable.

When he speaks again, his expression and tone are increasingly grim.

"While all of that was going on, things were getting worse outside of the city. Riots, famines, Farson's men attacking one outlying town after another. Closer to Gilead all the time, in spite of all our fathers were trying to do."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Fucking nineteen.

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.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Lud, yes. Oh lord, yes.

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.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

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 who'd worn them for years by then." His expression darkens a bit as he goes on. "Cort wasn't there. He--he was poisoned just a short while after Jamie won his guns, and he died nine weeks after the ceremony. We never found out who poisoned him."

After a long pause, he continues. "Our friend Desmond got married when we were twenty. That's one of the last really good things I remember."

There's a smile, but it's brief and fleeting, and his next words make it clear why. "My father died a few months later, trying to help hold a town against a division of Farson's army."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

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.)

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.


Surely some revelation is at hand;

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

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.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

"They burned the city."

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. We used to follow him around and beg him for stories.

Apart from those who died for sure, there were many who simply...disappeared, and we never knew what their fate was. Sheemie was one of those--though we found out what became of him eventually. Our teacher, Vannay, was another."

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

A pause, and he curls in on himself a little bit more. "The women still in the city...I guess I don't have to tell you what Farson's men overrunning the city meant for them. Mostly, those who died fell into two categories--the ones who tooke their own lives before they could be found, and the ones who fought back."

Eyes squeezed shut, now, and he's painfully conscious of Susan beside him.

"My mother was in the first group. The girl I was engaged to--her name was Deborah--was in the second."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Susannah tastes bile.

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."

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

He was there.

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.

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

It's a long time before Alain speaks again.

When he does, his voice is low and hoarse. One hand is still gripping Cuthbert's painfully tight; the other works at a loose thread in the blanket, and he watches it rather than look up.

"Some made it out, of course. Snuck out. Or bought their way." One way or another. He swallows. "Mostly, we never learned who. A few. Some -- Bridget Gamble, Richard Slotkin -- Dick, Ambrose Vane -- servants in our father's houses, that stayed for a time with us. Annie May Tunns, she the lady of the northern bounds, and William Roberts."

"We -- held while we could, then fought a retreat. Regrouped."

Rougher, "Buried our dead. Outside the walls. As best we could."

"We had nineteen gunslingers, then." He's too caught in memory to quite notice the number. "Forty-nine enlisted men. Some sundry folk who found safer homes soon, along the road."

A short paus, and his hand tightens on the blanket's loose thread. He's still mostly talking to the ground.

"It was a day later that the Beam broke. Connecting Hare and Bat."

"We -- saw the dust rising. Great clouds of it, as the walls came tumbling down. We were too far away by then to be certain of the damage, beyond -- I hope it killed most of the bastards." A brief, savage twist to his voice -- and bitter, because each corpse would have come from another piece of his city broken. "We never turned back."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

She's thinking of Lud again; Lud and Fedic and Castle Town of Le Casse Roi Russe.

She was right when she thought Roland had his own lethal glammer. How many dead cities did he walk away from? It was never his fault, only his grisly ka--to survive.

To survive them all, every city, every friend. Every person around this fire.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

"The next three or four years, we never stayed in one place very long. Wasn't any place we found worth staying in."
Among the red guns, in the hearts of soldiers
Cuthbert is calmer now, composed--though it seems as though mayhap it wouldn't take much to break his composure.
Running free blood in the long, long campaign
"The Tower was never far from our minds, those of us who knew of the truth of it, but--we didn't know where to go. What direction to strike out in." No man in black to follow, in those days. "And there were the survivors--the men who still naturally looked to us to lead them--and folk who were still trying to live as best they could in the wake of the Affiliation's destruction, with Farson's men still preying on them."
Dreams, dreams go on.
"If our remaining force was smaller, we were at least united--Farson's army was in chaos by then. We heard a rumor that he was killed not long after he took Gilead--poisoned by an ambitious general. Whether that's true or not, I can't say, but alive or dead, he was gone from the scene, and there was conflict among his generals as to who his successor should be. Of course, internal conflict or not, they still outnumbered us greatly."
Out of the dead on their backs,
There's not a lot to tell of now, besides death. One after another. To speak of them all would take more time and more composure than Cuthbert has. He tells of some of them, though. Thomas, who fell defending a pass in the hills and piled up a wall of enemies before they took him down. Gareth, who threw himself in front of a bullet meant for Roland.
Broken and no use any more
One gunslinger--one brother--lost after another, in those last desperate years of blood and dust.
Dreams of the way and the end go on.
But there are deaths to be told of among their enemies, too.

"I found the man who killed Deborah two years after we left Gilead." Bert's eyes take on a hard, cold gleam as he speaks of it. "Bastard took her ring--which would've been stupid enough, but he wore it on a chain, along with some other trinkets he'd taken. Worst mistake he'd ever made, aside from touching her in the first place. He regretted both, before he died."

Again, he's very conscious of Susan's presence. If she weren't here, he might say more about the death of Deborah's killer. Even now, not wanting to speak of it, it can't be said that he regrets what he did.

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

It strikes him as sick, maybe but the tale of vengeance is a welcome point of light in a miserable story, at least for Eddie.

(this is what you get)

He nods to Cuthbert, a savage light in his own eyes.

(when you fuck with the Dean brothers)

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"Twenty-five of us left, eventually." Alain picks up the thread of the tale. His face is carved in grim lines, and his eyes glitter. "Six gunslingers."

"There was another column of Gilead men, most of a day's journey away. Hostile territory between us, but everywhere was by then. It was passable for a careful messenger. We'd been in contact -- we planned to meet at a place called Jericho Hill. Make our stand there."

"It was a long ridge, with caves riddling the base of it, and the ocean to our backs. High ground, and some cover."

"We were in the hills nearby, a few days off, when Giles came to us. To Roland." One hand rests lightly on a gun butt, remembering. His face is hard, and his voice harder. The words fall like chips of flint. "He said he'd betrayed us. A gunslinger. Given maps, fortress plans -- they'd know where DeMullet would fall back to. They'd know the likeliest targets. Said he repented of it all, would be straight and honest with us, and such shit." Alain's voice is flat with loathing.

"We hung him."

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

Cuthbert's eyes are flat and cold.

He doesn't regret this either.

At the same time, though, there's a jolt of sick fear in him as Alain mentions Jericho Hill.

He knows what they're getting close to.

[honest-johns.livejournal.com]

"Giles wasn't two hours dead when we were attacked. We rose up, and killed them all." Grim satisfaction.

More subdued, "But Des fell -- Desmond Blackburn, he the last other of our ka-tel. He took an arrow to the throat. We made for the nearest shelter -- it was coming on nightfall. Camped on a ridge. It was there we buried him. By then, we'd no time for proper graves, and the ground was a stone-heap anyro'. A cairn was all we could spare him, and that more than some got."

He breathes in, and out, and glances around the circle. Quietly, "We shared khef that night."

They know what that means, Susannah and Eddie and Susan. O Discordia, they know it well. Ka-shume. The imminent breaking of the tet.

"We sang. We were brothers."

There's a hotness behind his eyes.

He swallows. "We knew DeMullet had to be warned. It was more than a day before we could get out, though. We were pinned down."

He's looking at the blanket again. Leaning one shoulder against Cuthbert's.

"Jamie was killed." Low. "A sniper. Instant."

He's remembering Jamie DeCurry. Remembering him alive -- laughing, solemn, brown-haired and freckled, and always just a little hesitant around his three friends who were so shaped by a summer he hadn't been part of. Remembering his death.

Remembering that sick, awful lurch as something that was whole for nearly twenty years suddenly shattered into fragments.

And he knows where this story is going next, he knows, and he doesn't want to have to say it, not in front of Cuthbert. He can't put that on Bert.

But this tale is started and promised and it's surgery every bit as brutal as Susannah's, and they can't halt it now. He'll... deal with that part when he comes to it.

Somehow.

And so, in a little while, he picks up the thread of it again.

Cuthbert isn't leaning against him any more. He's pulled away, hunched in on himself, silent and pale, and he's not meeting anyone's eyes. Certainly not Alain's.

"I rode for DeMullet. To warn them, and for reinforcements. The others made for Jericho Hill itself."

"I found a slaughter. We were too late." His voice is slowing, and increasingly he's talking to the ground and the empty air again, rather than quite look at anyone. "Grissom's hordes ambushed them at Rimrocks. Not a one left alive."

"So I rode back."

And here the words stop in his throat, and he hesitates.

He's told this to Susan. He could tell it to Eddie, or to Susannah, but... how the hell can he tell it in front of Cuthbert? How did he even get this far towards it?

Gloss it over, he thinks, and it's unfair and not in the spirit of this palaver, and a cheat after what Susannah bared to them, but in this moment he doesn't care.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

Cuthbert is trembling faintly.

He doesn't want to be here. Doesn't want to hear this, doesn't want anyone else to hear it.

And he doesn't want--doesn't--

--Doesn't want Alain to have to tell the tale of his own death.

"We shot him."

Barely more than a whisper, but the sound carries in the silence that falls over the small group.

"Roland and I. Heard the rider coming and--and it was dark and we didn't know how close the enemy was and we should have called out, should have held off 'til we could see, should've--something--but--but we just drew without thinking, and--and we shot him."

He doesn't realize he's going to say any of it until it's out. For a moment, he's absolutely still--and then his face twists, just before he brings his hands up to cover it.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

It's a long time before Cuthbert's able to go on with the tale.

Eventually, he straightens, though he doesn't pull away from Alain and Susan this time. He takes a deep breath--and then goes on.

"We were still with Alain when they caught up to us. We--we knew we likely didn't have time to bury him, but we didn't want to just--leave him there. And then the enemy was on us, and we didn't have a choice."

He's not looking at any of them, still. Not avoiding, really, it's just--he told the last part, to spare Alain having to. But no one can tell this part for him.

"Roland ran to rally the enlisted men we had left. I ran to where our gunna was. Got the horn. And then we fell back, up the slope to Jericho Hill itself."

"I got hit in a couple of places--" his hand hovers vaguely around his arm, his ribs, "--and we lost some men. Made it to the top with ten left. Ro' and I made a dozen."
Through these feilds of destruction
"The army coming up the slope after us must've had somewhere around two thousand."
Baptisms of fire
They never had a chance. They fought on anyway.
I've witnessed your suffering
"I--things get kind of hard to remember, towards the end, but--I remember suggesting we charge." Amazingly, a brief hawk's grin flickers across his face. "I mean--we were outnumbered with our backs to the sea, it was more or less charge, or surrender and hope for mercy. So."
As the battle raged higher
Unconsciously, he draws himself up a bit.
And though they did hurt me so bad
"I remember standing there with Roland, knowing that we were the last, and this was the end of Gilead. I remember him telling me to blow the horn--" (one last wonder cry) "--and I remember charging."
In the fear and alarm
Two gunslingers and ten enlisted men, the last living remnant of Gilead and the Affiliation, hurling themselves screaming and shooting down a slope toward a human wall of howling, blue-faced death.
You did not desert me
No prisoners.
My brothers in arms
"And then...I remember her."

Sudden sharp pain--and then equally sudden clarity, and her smile, and the sound of her wings.

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"And then we met again," Eddie says quietly. "Full circle."