Chapter Text
It was 9:27 at night, and Masha was experiencing havoc. Several minutes before, she and Yvain had been disrupted from their awkward silence by the sound of a very large number of people all charging through the halls of the hotel talking to each other loudly and, in the manner of people seeing a large crowd, had decided to join it. Now they were sitting at a flimsy plastic table in the corner of the cramped dining room, watching the crowd form a circle around a group in the center which seemed mainly to consist of Yvain’s bizarre relatives. Giovanni, Masha noticed with much confusion, was holding three belts. She wondered if this was a particular quirk of Scottish culture— you had to hold onto your belts in the halls. People could take them, possibly, like a nation-wide game of capture-the-flag. She was very tired.
It took ten minutes for silence to be achieved, and when it was, it was brought about by the women in the red nightgown, Laura. She looked very upbeat. No one else did. In the flickering fluorescent lights, a deathly pallor hung over the crowd, not erased by the volume of their conversation.
(The solitary attendant at the front desk had, some minutes earlier, entered the room to ask what was going on, and having been paid twenty quid to not worry about it, had promptly left and politely closed the doors after himself.)
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Laura finally announced, and then paused. “Gender neutral on both counts. I apologize on behalf of the culprits for the disturbance in the hallways tonight.”
Someone across the room yelled, “What’s happening?”
“We don’t fucking know,” Laura yelled back cheerfully, “so shut your mouth and stop interrupting.”
Titters spread throughout the room, but a bit more quietly, in case anyone else got sworn at. Beside her, his eyes shadowed and exhausted, Yvain shot Masha a hopeless glance.
“This is bullshit,” said Lynette shortly. She was standing in the group at the center of the room, her arms crossed and a mutinous expression on her face. “We were just—”
“Breaking into my room?” Giovanni said, crossing several feet to squint up at her face. “Having my washed-up bully of a brother impersonate me? In a bad French accent?”
Yvain winced. “That— ouch,” he whispered to Masha. “Poor Aggs. He’s not— he’s not that bad.”
“Who’s Aggs?”
With one finger, Yvain gestured at the man standing next to Lynette. Masha hadn’t noticed him before, huddled as he was into his own frame, his head lowered. In a flash, she remembered the man she had seen sitting against the wall at the funeral, watching her. The one Giovanni had been staring at.
Laura crossed her arms. “So what were the three of you doing in front of their room?”
“We weren’t doing anything—” Another man began, one Masha didn’t know, tall and sort of good-looking in the way a bicycle repair shop man might be.
He was interrupted by Laura who, having apparently decided that nonaggressive conversation was the method of a fool, waved one hand. “Lancelot, Gawain, search him.”
Masha blinked. For a second she thought she had misheard the words, but before she could think to parse them, L had sprung into action. The bicycle-looking man attempted to swing a punch, sending hushed gasps scattering around the room, but L stepped neatly under his fist and brought both hands over his shoulders, pulling his arms back and immobilizing him with an impressive lack of fanfare. As the man struggled, his face flushing and his arms straining uselessly against L’s grip, Giovanni sauntered forward and made a cursory check of his jacket before grabbing something from one pocket. From across the room, Masha couldn’t see what it was until he opened his hand and one wooden handle fell out of his grip. It bounced for a moment in the air, suspended on string, and the room went dead silent.
“That’s a garotte!” said a man Masha recognized as Dinadan. “Who the fuck brings a garotte to a funeral?”
The man shot him a shocked look, opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I— self-defense?”
“Yeah?” said Dinadan mildly. “Worried about World War Z?”
“You were trying to kill us!” Giovanni said, interrupting any further petty debate. His face was strangely calm, and it was that, more than the startling realisation that she was witnessing a crime, that sent a shiver down Masha’s spine. Then Giovanni’s head snapped around like a snake’s, his eyes fixing on his brother. “And you? Was that your plan too? Making another go of barging in on L with his lover, swords a-blazing? I would have thought you’d learned your fucking lesson after the first time left you dead!”
“Oh,” said Yvain sadly, into the stunned, ringing silence that fell over the room, “oh, Masha, I’m so sorry.”
She blinked. The words didn’t seem to be computing. Perhaps she had misheard. English had a lot of words that sounded like other words, and it was possible some words sounded like swords and dead.
“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Aggsground out. “That was the fucking point of the fucking text.”
“Oh, great,” said Lynette faintly, “way to go, Aggs. Thanks for nothing.”
L, still effortlessly holding the bicycle man in his grip, frowned. “Wait. So— Lamorak— you tried to get me out of the room. You were— oh.”
“Lamorak was trying to kill Gawain,” Laura said, as though she was giving a Prezi for the room at large, “and Agravaine and Lynette were trying to kill Lancelot. Is that it?”
None of them answered. Their sullen, fear-tinged expressions, though, spoke for them.
“You three,” said Giovanni, peering at them with bemused wonder, “are the most unlucky attempted murderers I have ever met. You tried to— you tried to kill each of us at the same time? Christ, Lamorak, if only you’d managed to stay out of it, Agravaine and Lynette might have succeeded.”
“You should be thanking me, then,” grumbled the man whose name appeared to be Lamorak. It was hard to focus on the conversation while Masha’s hands were shaking. Faintly, she felt Yvain place a comforting hand on her knee, but he didn’t say anything.
“So what was it?” Laura asked, crossing over to the breakfast buffet table and settling back against it, her hands clasped under her chin. “Petty revenge, is that it?
They stood in rebellious silence for a moment. Then Lynette said, very quietly, “Sir Lancelot killed Gareth, Laura Nichols. Have you fucking forgotten that?”
“And me!” Aggs added. “He also killed me.”
“Yeah, and you.”
Someone a few tables away called out, “He did kill me as well.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Masha gaped at the rising chorus of murder accusations. She felt tears budding behind her eyes— she hated this horrible, awful feeling of knowing something awful was happening but not understanding what it was, of being lied to, of—
“Yvain,” she said, as the voices continued around the room, “Yvain, what’s going on?”
His face was pale as death. “You won’t believe me.”
“So you— you lied to me?”
“I— I couldn’t explain—”
“Alright!” yelled Lynette, in the middle of the room. The crowd quieted. For the first time, Laura looked somewhat ill at ease. “Here’s a fun little game. Stand up if you’re a man and you weren’t killed by Lancelot or Gawain.”
With a very long, very sad sigh, Yvain stood. A few other people around the room did as well. Not many. Masha’s hands shook harder.
“That was one thousand five hundred fucking years ago,” growled Giovanni. He had stepped forward to stand between L and the rest of the room. “Get over it. I did.”
This was, even Masha could tell, a bad thing to say. A flurry of voices started up, some spitting obscenities. In the hubbub, she saw Dinadan stand surreptitiously and make his way towards the door. He looked exhausted and annoyed, which were both understandable emotions in the current context, but something about the way his hands kept straying to his pockets caught her attention. What had he said to her that afternoon, when they had stood staring out at the waves? All that violence. She had thought he had misspoken, said more than he intended. Now— well, he had stayed sitting when Lynette had asked her little question. Yvain was Giovanni’s cousin. And he had talked about blood feuds.
Before Yvain could stop her, she stood, pushing through throngs of people and arriving at the door just as Dinadan was about to close it. She stuck one boot in, grabbed the corner of his sleeve, and hissed into his shocked face, “What are you trying to do?”
“What?” he said. “What the fuck?”
“You— you wanted me to know that something was wrong.” Before he could answer, she felt her face crumble. “What is wrong? What’s going on?”
“Oh, Maria,” he said, his voice sad and mocking, “we’re all back from the dead, you see. It’s a lot to take in, I’m sure.”
Masha had never believed in God, per se. Neither was she an atheist. She believed in ghosts, and things that stalked the woods at night, and also astrology, which she was embarrassed about. She had never considered the possibility that her boyfriend was a reincarnated medieval person engaged in a literal blood feud. Her heart pounding, she opened her mouth to ask more, just as someone called out behind her, “Dinadan— Dinadan, where are you going?”
They both turned. It was Aggs who had spoken. Dinadan said, “Huh?”
“I said,” ground out Aggs, his arms crossed and his face bright red. “I killed you, not Gawain. You didn’t stand up.”
Around him, the chaotic yelling continued. Masha caught sight of Gareth standing several feet away from Lynette, his face drawn and pale and betrayed, and she winced.
“What the fuck?” said Dinadan. “Why do you give a fuck?”
Aggs swept a hand through his hair, worked his mouth back and forth, stepped forward. His eyes were wide. “I— I just— where are you going?”
“Out,” said Dinadan shortly, making a vague attempt to tug his sleeve out of Masha’s grip. She held fast. “Can you blame me for not wanting to sit in on this clusterfuck? I’m done with you all.”
Very quietly, Aggs said, “I just remembered that— Lynette said she had talked to you. Months ago. And earlier today I saw you with Lamorak. And you think Gawain killed you.”
Dinadan didn’t say anything. His face had gone pale and he looked about to bolt, so Masha grabbed his wrist with her other hand and yanked him back into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. “You wanted me to find out about all this,” she accused. Now, finally, her tears had emerged. “You wanted me to leave Yvain.”
Apparently she said it louder than she had intended, because people around her turned to peer over at the three of them. Laura Nichols’ sharp eyes met hers and narrowed. “Dinadan?” she said. “Got something to share with the class?”
“He planned this,” Aggs said, bringing a shaking finger up. “He wanted— he wanted us to take the fall for all of this. Me and Lynette.”
Now the room had gone fully quiet. Lamorak, still in a headlock, coughed angrily. “You— you set me up?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Dinadan said. Up close, Masha could see his eyes had widened ever so slightly. “Talking to people isn’t a crime. I talk to people all the time, you may remember. It’s my job.”
Laura scoffed. “Oh, shut up, you two-bit Machiavelli. Lamorak, what’s this about a setup?”
“He— a year ago— I remember— he said something to me about how much I must want revenge. I remember. And—”
“What, you’re going to listen to Lamorak? Lamorak de Gallis? Please.”
“I’m not stupid,” growled Lamorak, batting inconsequentially at L’s arm. “I— oh, come on, Lancelot, can you let me go? I’m not going anywhere.” L acquiesced. “Thank you. Dinadan, I’m not fucking stupid.”
“Yeah? That’s amazing, considering you seem to have pulled this one out of your ass.”
“Dinadan,” Lamorak said, his eyes flat, “you bought me my plane ticket to come here.”
Dinadan froze. “Ah!” he said weakly. “I— you’re a very good friend?”
“You idiot!” shrieked Lynette, not without a certain measure of glee. “You did the same thing to me! You thought we wouldn’t notice when this whole thing went down? You thought you would get away with it.”
“Ah— I didn’t—”
“Give it up, Dinadan,” said Aggs, his voice very tired. “You were never a master liar in the first place.”
For a second Masha wondered if he would protest more, but his expression of offended innocence sloughed slowly off his face like melting ice cream. “Oh. Well.” He spread out his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Surprise! Pop goes the weasel!”
“What the fuck do you have against us?” said Giovanni into the echoing silence. He looked mystified. “Neither of us killed you.”
“Oh, you expect me to believe that?”
“I killed you, Dinadan,” said Aggs, with what Masha thought to be an incredible amount of patience. “It was me.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Dinadan took a step forward, pushing past Masha, his finger raised. “You think I don’t know you were the one who stabbed me? I’m not stupid, Agravaine. Not like you. I don’t blame you, you know. I feel bad for you, honestly. The pathetic coward who does whatever his beloved brother orders out of— some sense of inadequacy, I suppose. I can’t hold a grudge against you. It would be like holding a grudge against a sword and forgetting the one who held it.”
“What the fuck?” said Agravaine. To his credit, he looked less hurt than confused. “No, I definitely killed you on purpose.”
“And Lancelot!” Dinadan wheeled around, ignoring Agravaine’s protestations in favour of stalking over to the center of the room as though it were a blackbox theatre and he was giving a very vitriolic audition monologue. “Sweet, lovable Lancelot. Friends with all the cool kids, right?”
“We aren’t… in high school…” mumbled L, looking like he was suffering from secondhand embarrassment. “Why are you talking like this?”
“Just join a community theatre group, you menace,” added Giovanni mildly.
Dinadan opted to ignore them both. “We were friends,” he hissed, leaning so close to L’s face that L had to lean back to avoid bumping noses with him. “We were friends and your horrible fucking boyfriend fucking killed me! And you didn’t care!”
“Uhm,” squeaked L. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, well, that’s all alright then. I’ll just carry on with my life,” said Dinadan, swivelling back around and spreading his hands once more. “That’s fucking fine and dandy. You two killed me. You killed Lamorak, and poor pathetic Agravaine, and the love of Lynette’s life. And also hundreds of other people. But you’re sorry. I suppose we should all forgive you and carry on with our lives, then?”
Someone in the back of the room started to laugh. It sounded hysterical, the kind of laughter that occurred when you could laugh or cry, but it caught like wildfire. “Oh, shut up,” Dinadan jeered at the audience. “Like you all don’t want revenge. You’re just too scared of them to get it.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter what they want,” said Laura primly, holding up her phone. “Because I’ve had my voice recorder on the entire time.”
“Oh,” said Dinadan. “Shit.”
It took another twenty minutes for them to come to the agreement that, in fact, forgiving each other and carrying on with their lives was the best option, namely because it resulted in no parties getting arrested. During that time, Masha sat huddled in the corner, processing it all. She loved Yvain so much. Had loved him. Wanted to love him still. But this was a world she had never expected.
“Hey, there,” he said, when he finally got up the courage to wander over beside her. He sagged against the wall, his arms crossed. “I’m— I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah,” she said, “me neither.”
“I should have— I should have told you.”
She shrugged. “I understand why you didn’t.”
“But…?”
“But I can’t live in this world,” she said, her voice very tight. If she didn’t focus on the horribly-patterned rug, she would start crying again. “I can’t— be the odd one out and watch your family try to kill each other. I don’t want to deal with this. I can’t.”
“Yeah,” said Yvain miserably. “That makes sense.”
Masha took a deep breath. Three years. That was how long they’d been seeing each other. “So— I think we need to break up.”
“Right. I understand.”
“I love you— so much.”
Finally he turned to face her, his eyes wide. “I know, but thank you for saying it. I love you too. I hope you have— the best life you could possibly have. You deserve every bit of it.”
“You too,” she said, mustering up a smile. “I’m going to— to get my suitcase. I might stay in Scotland for a bit. Try to forget everything I just found out.”
He hugged her then, very tightly, tighter than he had ever hugged her before. She hugged him back, and then she left the room.
Several hours later, when the hotel had been placated and no one had died and L and Gawain were back upstairs in their room, a knock came on their door. L sighed. “Come in. It’s open.”
After a long moment the door opened a crack. Guinevere was standing on the other side, looking awkward. “Hello, boys.”
“Hi,” said Gawain blandly. He was sitting on the floor, his legs across L’s lap.
L shot him a look. “Thank you for— for saving our lives.”
“Oh, I didn’t save anything,” she said airly, still not quite entering the room. “Worst that could have happened was you had to do some self defense murders. Dreadful.”
“I mean,” said Gawain, with a measure of humour, “I’m very glad L didn’t self defense murder my brother. Again.”
“Right, well, you’re welcome.” Her mouth twisted uncomfortably.
“Please come in,” said L, taking pity on her. “It’s— oh, Guinevere. It’s nice to see you again. Thank you for figuring this all out.”
She sniffed, making her way over and sitting down on the edge of the bed. “You’re welcome. I’m— I must say, I’m very glad you weren’t arrested for murder. Not that you wouldn’t deserve it.”
“Thank you.” L gave her a little smile. “How are you— how are you doing?”
“I don’t— I don’t want to infringe on your hospitality, I’ll be leaving—”
“Stay?” said Gawain, his voice hoarse and his eyes wide. “Please? I’ve missed you.”
Through the fabric of his pants, L could feel Gawain’s legs shaking, ever so slightly, and when he looked over at his hands, they were shaking too. He did not cry. He had never cried, not since the first time he had been nineteen years old, or at least not since L had met him in this life. This was not crying, but somewhere deep inside, it was tears.
“You have?” said Guinevere softly, her shoulders slumping.
Gawain nodded. “Very much.”
“Oh, me— me too,” L cut in. “Uhm. Sorry, I sound silly. But I’ve missed you too.”
“Aw, thank you.” Slowly, inelegantly, she slid down the front of the bed so she was slumped on the floor, her eyes shadowed. “What did it?”
“I— it occurs to me,” Gawain said, his voice higher-pitched than normal, “that no matter how much I want to make it up to people, the only ones whose love I deserve are the ones I didn’t hurt.”
“That’s very deep,” she said, “you pretentious smug bastard. You’re not mad at me? I do feel bad. I mean, I feel bad for being mean to you, not for having you kill a lot of people in the middle ages.”
All three of them broke into laughter like a flood bursting over a dam, hysterical and raspy-edged and far too long. It wasn’t funny, except that it was, and they had done things no people should do and in that, at least, was companionship. “Oh, fuck, we really wasted ten years or so, huh?” said Gawain, when the laughter had finally left him. “Good thing that shithead died.”
“Aha… right.”
“Guinevere?” Gawain sat up suddenly from where he had flopped on the floor, his elbow jabbing into L’s chest. “Guinevere, you didn’t— you didn’t kill Calogrenant, right? Right?”
"I’m not— Gawain, you’re being ridiculous. Of course I didn’t kill Calogrenant just to hang out with you two and resuscitate our long-dead friendship.”
“Uhuh?” said L, who could sense a but.
“...I just organized and funded his, uhm, his whole funeral. That’s all.”
“Oh my God,” said L. “Bourgeois.”
“Murderer.”
“And I’m bisexual,” Gawain pronounced. “Well done, everyone. Hey— it all worked out alright in the end.”
Masha had finished packing up her suitcase when Yvain came to find her. She had presumed, tearfully, that he would have enough respect not to trouble her, and so when he pushed the door open hesitantly she was surprised. “What?” she said, hastily wiping at her face. “What do you want?”
The door clicked shut. “I talked with Laudine and Isabel.”
“Yeah?”
“I— oh, God. Masha.”
“That’s my name,” she said weakly. “What do you want, Yvain?”
“I want to come with you.”
“You— what?”
He crossed the room very quickly. Dropped to the floor. “I don’t want to be in touch with my family either. I don’t— I don’t want to live in the shadow of my first life. I just want to be normal.”
“Oh, God.” Her throat clenched and for a second she wondered if she was having a panic attack. “No, no, Yvain, I would never— I don’t want you to leave your family for me. That would be horrible. I’m not— that kind of person.”
“Masha,” said Yvain, very seriously, “in my first life, my cousin Gawain ruined my marriage with Laudine by convincing me to leave her to spend time with him. I think it’s time for— pardon my French— I think it’s time for some fucking comeuppance.”
“Oh. Oh, that’s really shitty of him.”
“Yeah! I’m done with this. I’m done with the— the murders and the history and the feuding and the hatred.” Seeing her face, he reached forward and took her hand in his. His skin was warm and comforting. “The worst has already happened. You know everything. If— if it’s just my history you’re scared of, and not me— then I want to leave it behind. I wanted to anyway, I just— you know, they’re family.”
“Trust me,” she said, she who had left everyone she had ever known one March day when she was twenty-two, moved thousands of miles away, gotten a new name and a new life and never talked to her parents again, despite how desperately she loved them. “I know.”
“Then—?”
“Yes,” said Masha, and pulled him towards her, kissed him, her thumb caressing his cheek. “You think— I never intended this. You think this is a good choice?”
“Don’t know,” he said, “but it’s a choice. I guess I’ll find out what kind it is later.”
One week later, Priamus and Lucia sat on their balcony, looking over the hazy dusk skyline of Beirut. Street lights blinked on beneath them. Priamus took a long sip of his wineglass and then passed it to Lucia. “You know,” he said happily, “I think it was pretty funny that we went that whole weekend without anyone realising you knew they were all reincarnated 6th century knights.”
She tossed the remainder of the wine back and winked at him. “What can I say? Main characters, the lot of them. Only ever think about themselves.”