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[oom: after the curtain falls]

The door opens and a man walks into the bar.

This place isn't what he was expecting--a slight widening of his eyes betrays this fact--but if you asked, he probably couldn't tell you what he'd envisioned as an alternative.

The shock wears off quickly and his posture straightens. Keen eyes sweep across the bar, as though looking for someone he knows.

They did say his wife was here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Macbeth.

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[ooc: Kickass!]

[ooc: *grin* say thankya]

It had been rising steadily since she first felt it (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/12120491.html). It kept her from sleep, from conversation, from distraction, from any semblance of peace she'd come to know here. Her heart raced, her eyes ached, her teeth ground against each other; her hands would not keep still, as though she were some anxious girl riddled with some trifling horror.

She sits deep in an armchair, watching the rest of the Bar chat and pass before her, blithe and bonny. She grips the arms until her knuckles are white, eyes darting. No one speaks to her. And just as well -- because with no warning, the sensation that had previously been an insistent buzzing making a hive of her body explodes.

Lady Macbeth goes perfectly still. The world whites out before her eyes for a moment, and all she can hear is her own utterance:

"The hour is come."

She rises, blind to her own will but guided by something deeper. The knife finds its way to her hand on its own. She begins prowling the Bar, ready.

After lingering by the door for some time, Macbeth begins wandering throughout the room. He gives a nod to those who glance at him, but gives no verbal reply.

For now, he is content to see what he might glean through observation.

Visions flicker before her as she walks: a candle, a knife. "No, no, I will not allow it!" she hisses under her breath. Her eyes dart: there is no trouble to be seen, though she could little expect anyone else to know what tormented her. Nor does she recognize anyone in sight, not Sharpe, not Mary Anne, nor Hel nor Puck nor even new-wed Catherine.

The wood floor gleam red for a moment. She stops where she stands, breathing hard through clenched teeth. "I care not," she murmurs, staring straight ahead. "It is all one to me. I was not punished. I will not let this pass."

The weapon is to its breaking point. Almost. Softly, softly.

People and things and things that may be people--this place seems like a child of the witches' fiendish brain. It is wonderous and strange and none of it familiar.

Except...

There is a woman who stalks about the room whose movements he recognizes as he does his own. Enthusiasm, perhaps, outweighs sense as he approaches her from behind.

"Gruoch?"

"Ah!"

It's like approaching a mad dog from behind. Lady Macbeth likewise bares her teeth, cries out and spins, dancer-graceful, on her feet. The knife flashes.

The tip rests on the throat of her husband.

Her husband. Her lord. Macbeth, king over the Scots.

She stares, her brow knitted, panting.

"You."

She does not lower the blade.

It is both a better and a worse reception than he anticipated from her.

He very nearly smiles.

"And you."

He would bow to her, were it not for the knife at his throat.

"I hope this place has treated you well."

"Exceeding well, until these several days past," she replies, voice dangerously even. "I have been here six months, hale and happy and without trouble. Yet there has been trouble in my heart of late. I felt something coming." She advances, suddenly. "This is because of you I have felt my wits rattled so. You bring my madness back to me from the world!"

The knife; the long edge of the blade presses to his skin; they are very close now -- her eyes are blazing as of old.

He spreads his hands wide.

"I bring nothing, Lady, save that you see before you."

He notices the look in her eyes and that makes him smile; dangerous though it may be, he has ever been a moth where her fire is concerned.

"If you would curse any, curse the witches who once you praised for their oracular speeches. Twas they who showed me the door to this place."

"Do not weave your words for me," she growls, flipping the knife on its side and giving him the edge of her blade. "What gift is it those thrice-damned crones have sent? A man trapped in a tower like a bear lamed and tied to a stake! Oh yes," she laughs, watching the set his mouth and eyes, "I knew that much before I took my feet to the air. I suppose you have lost your battle at last, king."

"My battle and my head besides, though the weird sisters or some other power saw fit to restore one of two."

There is a thin sliver of blood at his throat now. It pains him little; his attention remains on her face.

"If you seek to take the one again, you do take your time about it, sweet Gruoch. Surely someone here could furnish you with a better weapon?"

She smirks. "Do not insult what you are in no power to defeat. It is a fine piece of steel, and you were ever the worst of liars. Tell me, what need have I to bleed and finish a man I have no use for? It would be like disposing of a half-eaten worm. Unless you give me new cause to bother."

"It is," he muses, "very fine."

Just as the lady is a fine dancer. But Macbeth is a soldier first and always.

It is the work of a moment to take the lady by her wrist and turn--like a dance, very like, at one of their own feasts when they were king and queen in the castle at Forres--only now her arm is behind her back and there it stays.

His other hand rests gentle but firm on her hip. He does not put pressure enough to make her drop the knife, not yet.

"Will you bleed me now?" he murmurs in her ear, chin almost resting on her shoulder.

"Have I given you cause?"

Lady Macbeth closes her eyes.

She has not let any but a very favored few touch her this half-year she's been dead. She knows how to hunt, and she knows how to talk, and she knows how to keep still, and take what she wants.

But she has not found his equal, not in the crossworlds of all the worlds imaginable.

She is not a weak woman; on the contrary, she is strong, stronger than any. (Bring forth men-children only; for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males.) And how she missed him; and how she hated him.

Lady Macbeth makes no move yet.

He has loved her and hated her and feared her by turns. So it is very carefully that he lets go her wrist.

He leaves her the knife; having no token for her, he will let her keep the one she has. Save this--he turns his head just so to leave the barest of kisses on her cheek.

His other hand grazes her hip as he takes a step back (as though easing her into another turn, and then we turn, and then a partner change).

It is (it was) ever her move.

It is as it ever was, before the witches, before the dreams, before their particular war.

The Lady -- Gruoch, without a pause, steps forward to meet him. She gives neither of them time to think: it is a simple matter, to reach forward and kiss a man.

If she were a she-wolf, she'd devour her husband with that kiss. As a woman, this is the closest she can come to giving way to the hunger in her.

They part only far enough for her to speak. "I have missed you, my lord. Something has been wanting of late."

Their war, her madness, his folly--

Gone, all of them gone and replaced by the simple fact that his lady is here and things are (almost) as they should be.

He does not forget she still has the knife.

"And I you, Lady."

His eyes flicker around at the near-by patrons, but return quickly to her face. "It seems perhaps I was the only one wanting in this place. I would greatly like to hear the nature of it, but for now I chiefly desire your company."

"They have given me a bower," she says simply. "I trust we might be open with each other there."

"Have they indeed?"

His tone is faintly amused.

He raises her hand--the one not holding the knife--and kisses the back of it with the grace of a king.

"Then lead on, fair lady."

She says nothing, only smiling at him as she was wont to do before. Sheathing the knife, she glides with him out of the Bar. There is time enough for words tomorrow, but right now, they are again man and wife, and she, Lady Macbeth, has her rights.

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