milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Steph's in the Bar again, sprawled across a couch, reading.

It's a book on Arthurian History, and her eyes are a little glazed, but she's determined to get through it.

Don't ask why.

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"Good foxy."

Steph props her chin on her knee and stares at it.

"Weird foxy, but good. Why did you want to burn that?"

"Because Malory's a wanker who can't even get my parentage right?" Mordred suggests from where he is now sitting, cross-legged, watching her with the same golden eyes as the fox.

It's possibly a measure of how long Steph's lived at Milliways that this only gets a couple of surprised blinks and a snorted, half-laughing 'should've known.'

"I've only got a few pages in," she says, curiously. "What'd he get wrong?"

"Arthur fucked Morgan, not Anna-Morguese. He got the sisters mixed up." He says flatly, eyeing the book with distaste.

"Also, you know, the whole making me a sneaking, backstabbing coward wasn't very nice either."

"What, you mean you aren't?"

She's teasing.

"Who is this Malory dude, anyway? Like, did he know you guys, or what?"

Mordred snorts, pulling his lighter out and lighting a cigarette.

"Hardly. He's an Englishman, writing in the...1400s? Something like that, lose track of time. He nicked his ideas from the French. Writing a bit less then a thousand years after everything went south."

"So ... if someone took this book as a source on history, he'd pretty much be screwed." Steph looks slightly gleeful. "And totally wrong."

"Pretty much. But, you know, that's what you get with the Arthurian legends. No facts."

"Excluding the fact that we died, of course."

Steph tilts her head. "How come? Did you guys just not leave notes or something?"

"Most of us can - couldn't - read and write. I can, just, and that's rare. Also, there have been...three successful invasions since then, and soldiers like to loot and burn. So, they get dear old Dad's name right, mine, and some of the other key players and the rest if legend."

"Oh, right, I getcha."

Curious eyeing.

"Dear old Dad?"

""And whan sir Mordred felte that he had hys dethys wounde he threste himselff with the myght that he had upp to the burre of kyng Arthurs speare, and ryght so he smote hys fadir, kynge Arthure..." Mordred quotes, lazily.

"I'm Arthur's bastard, by his half sister, Morgan le Fey."

"Oooh. That makes sense now."

Also sounds like a slightly less-than-pleasant death. Just a little.

"So when I get up to that bit in the book I'll know it's wrong."

Yeah, drowning to death in your own blood because your father had shoved a spear through your chest is slightly less-than-pleasant.

Slightly.

"The whole thing's a piece of crap. And, why are you reading it?"

Didn't the narration say not to ask that? Man, nobody listens to the narration any more. Poor emo narration.

"Just am," Steph says, a little shiftily. "Wanted to learn about history."

"So, you haven't run into my not'sons at all?"

"Your not'sons?" She tilts her head. "Melou and his twin are yours? Or, uh, not'yours?"

Confusing terminology whut.

"Could have been mine, if I married their mother and didn't get myself killed at nineteen."

"So we're talking parallel universes here, right?"

That's something she understands.

"Yeah. Their Mordred died about...five years ago for them."

"So that's why he's such a prick about destiny," Steph muses. "Makes more sense now."

A bitter smile. A father's bitterness, though he only really saw them for a month.

Didn't matter. The time, it doesn't matter. The fact that the toddling princes had called him 'tada' does, and always will.

"It'll kill 'em, too."

"And they won't lift a finger to fight it," Steph says, with a touch of grumpiness. "Melou was all 'you can't fight destiny!' which is, like, totally stupid."

"Well, you can't. Fighting will get you closer to it, which'll happen with them. They'll fight and fight and get hacked up for their troubles."

"I think you can fight destiny," Steph says. "I mean, if I'd never fought, I'd've ended up a druggie like my mom or a jerk like Dad. You don't have to do stuff just 'cos your parents did. But I couldn't get that into Melou's head."