the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

"He was loose and there wasn't an active hunt for him for years and people lived with that, but - yeah, it's different if we had him and let him out."

[neverbeatme]

"And it was different when he had never done anything during our reign. Now he's done something, and it was big and splashy and scared a lot of creatures, and the situation is no longer 'Eternal Winter was a figure of terror during the reign of the White Witch, which is now over', it's 'Eternal Winter is a figure of terror who is locked safely away in the dungeons of Cair Paravel from which he can never escape so nobody has to worry'."

James sighs.

"I wish he'd just asked nicely. I mean - I think I understand what he means when he says there's no way he would ever have thought to do that. But I still wish he'd just asked nicely."

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. Then it could have been 'Eternal Winter wishes only to pay for his crimes with his life, which is logistically difficult but please don't be alarmed' - and now that would just freak out poor bunnies and dryads and so on who never did anything to deserve it."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah."

[deepest_magic]

"Well, maybe you can - psychologize him enough to figure out how to make the best of the situation."

[neverbeatme]

"I'll try. Later."

Now is hug time.

[deepest_magic]

It is definitely hug time.

[neverbeatme]

Hug is definitely the time that it is.

[deepest_magic]

But after a while of hug time it is notebooking time.

[neverbeatme]

James goes and takes care of completely unrelated paperwork for a little while, until she is sure she can treat Winter as a problem to be solved on his own terms and not as the person who just kidnapped her wife.

Then she goes down to the dungeon.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter is still huddled miserably on the floor of his cell, but no longer actively weeping.

[neverbeatme]

"Winter," she says.

[jackfrostbite]

He doesn't move, and it's a while before he speaks.



"You're not going to kill me, are you."

[neverbeatme]

"It... presents some serious logistical difficulties," she says.

[jackfrostbite]

"Then I don't see what there is for us to discuss."

[neverbeatme]

"No?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Does it please you to know you have condemned me to a slightly worse eternal torment than I was already suffering?"

[neverbeatme]

"I can't say that it does, no."

[jackfrostbite]

"Then forget me here and set yourself to some more pleasant task."

[neverbeatme]

She takes a moment to unravel this.

"...You want me to go away and leave you alone so I don't get upset thinking about your eternal torment?"

[jackfrostbite]

"If all that's left to me is the choice not to drag anyone else down with me, then that is the choice I will make."

[neverbeatme]

"I can respect that logic, I think," says James. "But we've already established the part about eternal torment, and I still want to understand the rest."

[jackfrostbite]

"Ask, then."

[neverbeatme]

"Why did you kidnap Queen Isabella?"

[jackfrostbite]

"You have hatred in you, I think. What I could have done... you would have wanted to destroy me more than anything else, even knowing I wanted the same."