I Lived, Grinch! [open post]

[summerdude]

The first thing Magnus does -- with Alex's help -- after fully healing is board up the hole in the side of the greenhouse where the cheetah ran through. The second thing, once he learns the full scope of Dark (it's different at camp; he'd already taken out a ton of camp-appropriate food for when Galahad and Laertes couldn't make it out there, and so he and Alex have been fine on the eating front) is go to the greenhouse again to figure out what plants in there yield edible produce. (Also, he tries to scrub his blood off the table. It... partially works?)

Partly it's that he's still feeling weird after the whole affair. The season doesn't help, but he does feel closer to his own mortality than pretty much any point since he died for real the first time. Being around growing plants helps that. Mostly, though, it's because he doesn't want anyone to get, like, scurvy living on bushels of rice alone.

He doesn't want to overtax any of the plants, but some can be cajoled into fruiting. Right now, he's got his hand on a kumquat tree, and he's trying to convince it that it can speed up the growth process by a few weeks. Drosera is with him, 'helping:' she's found a dead leaf, and she's chasing it down the pathway between some plants. If anyone shows up -- either because they've heard of his near-death experience and want to check in on him, or just to hang out, or even because they're drawn by the way it looks like sunlight is coming from the greenhouse itself -- he'll be glad for the company.

Comments

[summerdude]

"Yeah, of course. I made Lancelot take him the sword."

[sagramore]

"Good, good, I just wanted to be certain." A pause. "How are you feeling?"

[summerdude]

"Me? Oh, I'm fine."

[sagramore]

"Well, physically, obviously. Nearly dying is troubling, in my experience."

[summerdude]

"I guess." Magnus scuffs his toe on the ground. "It wasn't, like, ideal."

[sagramore]

"I remember for me the first time wasn't so bad. I don't think I quite realized how close I'd come, and I was very excited about having been rescued. It wasn't until the fourth or fifth time that I really began to be aware, because that was when it started catching up with me -- I was fairly badly wounded, and the recovery took longer. I realized I'd been very confident before, and I began to feel a great deal less so."

[summerdude]

Magnus stares at Sagramore, lightly horrified. "You've nearly died before?"

[sagramore]

Sagramore blinks at him. "Yes, of course. I was a knight."

[summerdude]

Somehow, Magnus has never put 'knight' and 'genuine danger' together in his mind. Which is dumb. He's fought with Sagramore, he knows how good he is. But it's all been kind of abstract. You think of a knight, you think of, like, jousting for fun or whatever, not genuine fighting.

He doesn't like the thought of Sagramore almost dying!!! It's not a fun little thought! This is probably very evident from the set of his face as he says, "Oh."

[sagramore]

"My point being, if you were rattled by it -- and of course I'm not saying you were -- I'd find that understandable, and I'd be happy to listen if you wanted to talk about it with someone who, ah, might not be quite as upset about the idea as Lan Wangji."

[summerdude]

Magnus sighs. "What I don't get," he says, kneeling down so he can urge Drosera off his shoulders -- she immediately prances off to play with her pot again, this time dragging it out from beneath her little plant-cave and batting it around the greenhouse floor -- and taking a few steps closer to Sagramore, so he can stand right next to him, just in case Sagramore decides he wants a hug, or whatever (but Magnus is fine, so he won't ask for one). "Is I've already been dead for, like, nine years or something like that, most of which involved dying in Battle Practice nearly every day in pretty much every way you can think of. So it's not like this is a new experience or anything. And, like, I can heal." Never mind that he's always slower with himself than others, and that he was worried he'd bleed out before he could heal himself enough to stop the bleeding. "But everyone keeps freaking out about it."

Like Hanguang-jun and Galahad, but even Alex, who knows better. Even people he barely talks to, like Lancelot and Susan. It doesn't make sense that he would struggle. This is nothing new. He's been killed by tons of swords. He's never avoided the courtyard of Valhalla like the plague. He's never even avoided the bridge where he died the first time. So why does he skirt around the hallway where it happened every time he goes inside?

"Which, like, I guess my reflexes should be better and I can work on that, but..."

[sagramore]

"I might be misunderstanding, but it seems as though even you thought this was more serious."

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "I mean, I probably wouldn't get better if I died here."

[sagramore]

"I think that's why everyone is freaking out," gently.

[summerdude]

He sighs, and leans a little closer to Sagramore, still not quite touching. "They think it was, like. Targeted," he says, mouth twisting unpleasantly at the thought.

[sagramore]

Sagramore slips an arm around his shoulders, tugging him into a sideways hug. "I assume there's a good reason to think that?"

[summerdude]

"You'd have to ask them," Magnus says, now leaning properly against Sagramore. "It was like, I was inside, just walking down the hall but then the hall kept repeating itself and there was the same table with the same art over and over again. And then suddenly it was like I was in a museum, but not one I've been to, and there was a sword in the display case, but not one I recognized. And I ducked the ceiling fan that started falling, but couldn't get out of the way of the sword or the breaking glass. Lancelot had to get it out because the point was stuck into the ground. But by the time he got there it was just the mansion hallway again and I was just covered in the broken glass and the sword and nothing I'd seen was there anymore. But it wasn't a vision."

[sagramore]

He frowns. "No, it sounds like magic, doesn't it? Like a magic trap." It sounds like something Morgan le Fay would do.

[summerdude]

"Yeah, I guess." Magnus wrinkles his nose. "But I don't think anyone here has it out for me? Like, I don't think Ran's bounty on my head extends past the Nine Worlds. So I can't imagine why it would be, like, specific to me."

[sagramore]

"There's no one you've been troubling?"

[summerdude]

"Not that I can think of? Me and Dionysus are fine after that whole closet thing, and me and Lancelot are, like, good or whatever now too."

[sagramore]

"Well, that's not the point anyway, that's not what I meant to ask thee. Thou hast enough people around thee strategizing on how best to protect thee and what manner of threat thou facest. I wanted to speak to thee of how it feels to come near death, that's all."

[summerdude]

Very, very quietly: "I thought I was used to it. I've had so much worse. But it felt different."

[sagramore]

"Hmm," he says, a listening sound that invites Magnus to go on.

[summerdude]

"I guess I'm out of practice."