The Quest for the Holy Grail 5/8

[lovely_ambition]

Title: The Quest for the Holy Grail 5/8
Pairing: Dagonet/Bors/Vanora, Gawain/Galahad
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine.
Summary: Years have passed, but circumstances have changed and it's time to bring everyone back for one more heist.
Notes: This is, indeed, a sequel to Modern Day Legends. Thanks to bwc_baby for the lookover and to melloniel for the constant support.



16.

The children played very quietly, refusing to make any noise above a peep for fear of what Vanora might say to them in a lashed warning. With their sibling sick, the entire air of the home was much quieter, despite Vanora, Bors’ and Dagonet’s constant promises to the children that all would be well.

While Dagonet kept his own place, he spent all of his time with Vanora and Bors, unwilling to leave their side during such a time. If truth be told, he’d rarely left their side before either. They worked best when there were three and Vanora had always promised that, whether whispered in Bors’ ear or breathed against Dagonet’s neck in the darkness of the bedroom. Her lips – as red as her hair in the moonlight – whispered promises of home to them both and asking Dagonet to never leave.

Now, Dagonet sat by Vanora as she knit the most useless of shapes in an effort to keep her hands busy and little else. She’d never learned how to make socks or hats over the years, only knew the simple technique it took to knit yarn into something with shape and this was what she did while Bors was out there in the midst of a life they had thought long past.

Dagonet sat beside her with an unmoving hand upon her shoulder.

“This isn’t out of control?” Vanora asked, staring down at her lap. “The boys haven’t gone and done anything stupid to ruin it?”

“They’re good boys,” Dagonet said simply and quietly.

“You know I don’t like this business a bit,” Vanora hissed lightly, keeping her voice down so that the children wouldn’t hear. “You know I’d rather have him do anything else in the world, anything than this.” Despite Vanora’s harsh words on Dagonet’s continued line of work, he didn’t say a word. He understood that sometimes, words needed to be released into the world. “But it’s the only thing he’s ever known how to do. The bar hardly makes the necessary money and…”

Dagonet’s hand squeezed the lightest amount of pressure and Vanora finally took her gaze off of the knitting to look over at him.

“Everything is going according to plan,” Dagonet promised in his rough, yet soothing tone. His fingers brushed over the fabric of Vanora’s shirt and she swallowed thickly, turning her attention back to the knitting.

It was good that she didn’t look at Dagonet’s face. While he had perfected the art of not letting his true emotions show (which made Dagonet the obvious choice when it came to attendance at any poker match on behalf of the Knights; Tristan was another choice, but when the hands got bad, his patience seemed to flicker), he had been feeling ill at ease for days now.

“How’re my brats?” Bors’ voice announced his entrance as he unlocked the door and managed to get it bolted, locked, and heavily protected before he even graced the den with his presence. The children took their time to tackle him in greeting and Dagonet and Vanora both watched Bors take the proper time to lavish attention on them.

Eventually, he tugged Dagonet aside with Vanora’s blessing, to sit in the kitchen under the sallow yellow light of a cheap lamp. Neither man had to raise the topic to know what they were discussing, as it’d been on both their minds for far too long to simply dismiss as a coincidence or overreaction.

“He’s losing his mind,” Bors opined, muttering the words into his hands. “Ever since he found out about that bloody myth.” He shook his head again. “He’s losing his mind.”

“I know.” Dagonet’s agreement didn’t even need words so much more than a simple nod, but he gave the Bors the comfort of two simple spoken words to tide him through his disbelief and his rage.

“Do you think that’s it? If he loses what’s left of that psychotic brain of his, we’re done for,” Bors snapped, vitriolic as ever, sounding like a man on his last thread himself. “Christ, Dag, to get this far and to have to worry about one murderous man who’s gotten all sappy over a lover, it’s the last thing that should be on our minds.”

“We can handle him,” Dagonet assured, calm as ever.

Bors looked up at him and Dagonet held his gaze, stared back. Seconds passed and turned into minutes and Bors yielded, drawing his gaze away to leave the kitchen and join Vanora with a kiss pressed to her hair.

It was a good thing, too.

Dagonet might have been calm and collected, but he was never sure how long he could maintain a lie. While he was assured in the skills of himself and the other Knights, Tristan had always been unpredictable and slightly wild. If it came down to the six of them versus one, he couldn’t predict the outcome.

That terrified Dagonet, under a vow of honesty. It also made him relieved that Bors believed him when he told him such pretty lies.

17.

The unraveling of a complex plan came at the expense of a historian’s life, one who knew too much about the Holy Grail and its regenerative properties, as believed in by many a cult, myth, and healer. No sane person would believe in it, but Tristan had long passed a point of sanity long ago, when his nightmares weren’t plagued by the face he loved and when the sight of a graveyard didn’t make him so viscerally sick.

He was there again within the private section of the graveyard, kneeling over Dinidan’s grave with one hand thrust into the dirt.

Soft words came mumbling past Tristan’s lips in many languages, in those of the old and some of the new. He made promises and with the blood that stained his hands, he marked Dinidan’s grave. He would never truly believe that all hope was lost and some glimmer of a supernatural phenomenon promised itself to Tristan to heal the man whose death had sent his life off-course and astray into a slump of destruction and malice.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Tristan didn’t look up, but his hand did slide towards his gun, though it was clearly Lancelot by the timbre and the tone. They could both hear the click of the gun’s safety in the calm night and neither of them were too stupid to think anything but that Tristan had slid the safety off.

“Were you looking?” Tristan asked, eyes on the grave.

“We heard a murder called in.”

“And you presumed it to be me.”

“We knew it to be you, Tristan.”

Tristan slowly rose to his feet and spun to look at Lancelot. In the haunting light of the moon, Tristan’s face looked ghastly and gaunt, too pale for a man with a still-beating heart in his chest. Lancelot crept ever closer with cocksure steps, the sort that he had possessed since he had first learned to walk.

Tristan was wholly unsurprised to discover that Lancelot had his weapon at the ready.

“There’s a priest to speak with,” he informed Lancelot. “He knows the process and has the stone I need for it to work.”

“It’s a myth,” Lancelot managed to get out, sounding ragged and furious at once as he closed the distance between them and Tristan smoothly drew the gun out and pressed it to Lancelot’s heart the moment that Lancelot got his gun up against Tristan’s temple. The second of Lancelot’s guns was pushed against Tristan’s chest, dead in the middle.

If any trigger was pulled, they would both be dead within seconds.

“He’s never coming back,” Lancelot spat out angrily, eyes burning in the moonlight between them. Tristan didn’t react, not an emotion flickered over his face. Tristan only raised a brow and slowly let his gun drift up Lancelot’s neck, bristling past the stubble on his face to rest under his chin, poised at a new angle to steal life away. When Lancelot spoke, when he swallowed, he felt it. And Tristan knew that. “He is a dead man and we are searching an item to save the life of Bors’ child through things like money to pay for bills! Bills and hospital requisitions and tests!”

“You never believed,” Tristan murmured, as if disappointed.

“Tristan, you’ve gone mad,” Lancelot scoffed, and for his words he received a brutal pistol-whip across his cheek from Tristan’s gun.

He stumbled backwards and his fingers went to press against the flushed stretch of skin that was no doubt going to bruise by the morning. He shoved the safety back on his guns and holstered them under his jacket before advancing on Tristan, fists clenched and at the ready. He managed to land a single punch before Tristan smoothly stepped back and took out his knife.

“Tristan…” Lancelot warned in a low growl.

“You never believed,” Tristan reiterated quietly, sliding the knife away as if he’d thought of something else, something better. He slowly approached Lancelot and used the butt of his gun to knock Lancelot to the damp ground, unconscious amongst the graves and the monuments to people long lost.

He was in his car and long lost to the night as the thunder crashed above Lancelot and the pouring rain drew him back to consciousness.

“Shit,” he swore under his breath, nearly launching himself at his mobile. “Pick up, Arthur, pick up,” he spoke desperately as he staggered to his feet and fought his way through the onslaught of the elements to get back to his car.

They had just lost control.

18.

It was storming. Lancelot had called Arthur on his mobile, a panicky, cut-off message with static drowning out his words, shouting, “Tristan! Arthur, get Tristan, he’s gone…” there was too much static, thunder rolling in the background as Arthur peered up at the church. “…the church, the…” Arthur stared up to the cross, the stained glass, the rain pouring down on his face. “Arthur, get Tristan!”

Tristan had gone too many days without sleep. He had been told too many secrets, given too much false hope. In the distance, Arthur heard sirens. No doubt on their way here.

He pushed into the church, standing in the back in shadows, the lights turned off, save for the candles by the altar. Arthur stood and watched as Tristan held the priest with a knife to his throat, whispering hoarsely for answers, whispering and then shouting, demanding, “Tell me!” in a voice that echoed and bounced off the walls of the church. In the pews sat three worshippers, come to pray quietly, but now they whimpered and sat in fear.

“Tristan!” Arthur called out clearly. “Put him down,” he ordered.

Tristan simply laughed. “The great Arthur comes to fetch me?” he asked, not turning around.

Arthur smoothly withdrew his gun from its holster and clicked the safety off, a sound that resonated in his ears and no doubt something that Tristan would hear. He brushed aside the flaps of his long coat and held the gun firmly in his hand, leading with it as he began to storm down the aisle, side-stepping the baptismal font in the middle of the carpet as he continued to make his way forward, briskly charging Tristan with gun pulled.

He reached the stairs when he heard a familiar click and Tristan turned smoothly, the priest still in his other hand. He had his gun drawn on Arthur.

Arthur froze in his steps, pointing the gun at Tristan’s heart, where he could shoot for the kill. Tristan had it aimed at Arthur’s forehead, dead in the middle and Arthur had no doubt that if he took the shot, he would be dead in an instant. Tristan had the best aim of all of them, the best range.

“Tell him, Arthur, he’s a man of your faith, tell him to give me the stone!” Tristan shouted loudly. “We need it, Arthur,” he turned, eyes dark and possessed by a darker plan. “We need it. The stone, the stone and the grail, together we can heal him,” he insisted. “We’ll bring him back!”

Dinidan.

Arthur closed his eyes and faltered slightly, his gun lowering and he heard a sound behind him, the echoing sound of a gunshot. The woman in the second pew screamed loudly and went running as Tristan slumped to the ground. Arthur stared. The shot hadn’t gone anywhere lethal and he hadn’t fired. He turned around to find Lancelot standing in the doorway with Galahad beside him, lowering a gun. Arthur gave an exhalation, relief coursing through his body as he put the safety back on his gun and turned around, pressing a kiss to his rosary before joining the two.

“About time you got here,” Arthur said sternly. “Where’d you shoot him?”

“Thigh,” Galahad responded, showing Arthur his ammunition. Tranquilizers. “He’ll be out for a day, maybe long enough to get some damn sanity back into that idiot’s head.” He glanced over Arthur’s shoulder to the priest standing at the altar, staring numbly down at Tristan’s body. “Arthur?” Galahad spoke quietly. “I think you might need to explain.”

“We’ll get Tristan out of here,” Lancelot promised. “We need him better for the heist.” He cursed under his breath. “Three fucking days. All right, we have to move, Guinevere is on her way, Dag heard it over the dispatches. Arthur? Don’t look incriminating.” They worked efficiently as Arthur gave Lancelot all the weapons he possessed. The various other witnesses had fled, prompted by Galahad’s quiet concern, giving them all numbers to telephone, citing himself as a ‘detective on this case’.

They carried Tristan off through the side entrance and the door slammed shut to accompany the sound of thunder crashing in the sky. It wasn’t much longer before the police arrived and though the priest did his best to protest, they immediately snatched Arthur and yanked him to his feet.

“Put him in a cell for the night,” one of the officers muttered. “I’m sure the Boss will want to talk to him.”

19.

They sat in a hasty circle in the headquarters, with Gawain and Galahad in folded chairs, Bors and Dagonet on the couch, and Lancelot standing before them all, rubbing at his face. In the other room, in the makeshift prison, not a sound was made. They had locked Tristan in the training room after removing all the weapons he had from his person. The tranquilizer had probably worn off by now.

The silence was beginning to become unnerving and Galahad kept throwing wary looks towards the heavy door that separated them from a half-mad maniac.

“Lancelot,” Dagonet entreated lowly.

“Not yet,” Lancelot snapped tersely. “Not yet. Give me a second to think.”

They waited like that for fifteen minutes more in silence. Galahad’s hand drifted to Gawain’s knee to idly rub up and down and for once, the others saw that it wasn’t out of anything but a need to move, to do something but think of what lay waiting for them in the other room; the face of a friend and the soul of a killer hell bent on one thing and they stood in the way. Bors sat on the edge of his seat, fingers twitching, but he never got up. They all looked to Lancelot and simply waited.

“We can’t go forward without him,” Lancelot finally admitted heavily. “We need him.”

“He’s gone mad,” Galahad spat out. “More than he usually is, obviously, but the point remains that the man we know as a brutal killer with dead-accurate aim has gone around the bend. Do you really think he’s going to stop when it comes to us?”

“He won’t kill us,” Dagonet said.

“How do you know?” Galahad demanded. “How can you possibly know!”

“Galahad,” Gawain muttered quietly, which seemed to at least pull Galahad from his battle-ready stance and back into a regular sit.

“I’m only saying,” he muttered to the room, just as petulant as before, but now sounding defeated rather than hyperactive. The silence seeped in once more and finally, it seemed that it grew to be enough.

Lancelot finally moved, hands by his side as he wandered his way over to the door, pointing vehemently to it. “He stays in there until one of us gets through to him. Arthur is out of commission until we can get bail to clear and she’ll keep him for as long as she can, so I’ll call the lawyers as well,” he said, sounding as if he was speaking mostly to himself in an effort to calm himself down. “Any suggestions on what we do with Tristan?”

“Talk to him,” Dagonet said, three words bearing all the knowledge of many a man. “Each of us, alone. Keep him chained, but we need to bring him back to the world of the living and away from fantasies of raising the dead.”

Each of the Knights shifted uncomfortably where they sat and stood. Along with being an expert marksman when it came to a gun, Tristan had always had a razor-sharp insight that went along with the fact that he seemed to see everything. Most of the time, he kept it to himself, but the idea of him actually using the information to lash out was far from a pleasant one and even Dagonet was looking displeased at his own suggestion.

“What else can we do?” Gawain admitted with a heavy sigh. “I’ll go first.”

“Be careful,” it was Galahad who had spoken up, voice rough from what sounded like worry.

Gawain gave Lancelot a simple clap on the shoulder as he brushed past him and opened the door to the training room, locking and bolting it behind him. He had been expecting what he saw as he hadn’t had any romantic notions about what they’d done to Tristan, so to find him locked in about three sets of chains and sitting in a chair was almost kinder than the image in Gawain’s mind.

The picture Gawain had painted involved Tristan being far more bruised up than he actually was. He had to wonder if Galahad hadn’t tranquilized him if he would be black and blue all over from the fight.

“Gawain,” Tristan greeted evenly.

“Tristan,” Gawain mumbled in return, taking the seat opposite of Tristan and leaving four feet of room between them, just in case. They sat like that for minutes of silence as Gawain leaned forward, back arching under invisible pressure. “I’m not armed.”

“That was stupid of you.”

“Insults already,” Gawain commented. “Right. Here I thought we’d at least go ten minutes without one.”

“You thinking we’d last ten minutes is optimistic,” Tristan countered. He hadn’t once taken his eyes off of Gawain, a cold and icy stare that made Gawain determined not to let him win. Even if there was nothing to ‘win’ exactly, Gawain knew he wanted to be stronger than Tristan was in that moment.

“Five?”

“Two,” Tristan negotiated calmly in return, easing back smoothly to the sound of his chains and shackles shaking loudly. “Whatever you’ve come to say, it won’t matter,” he promised.

“Do you remember Daniel?” Gawain asked, rubbing at his eyes. “I know it seems like forever and an age ago. That little poet bastard who beat me and Percival up before going to Arthur and asking for a job, saying that’d been his interview?” It seemed an eternity ago and Gawain swallowed the bitterness of knowing that Daniel had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like all of them, and now lay in a deep grave. “You took him under your wing. You taught him how to deal with things no one ever meant to expect.”

“Gawain, he’s dead.”

“So’s Dinidan,” Gawain pointed out harshly.

Silence, then.

“Tristan, I’m sorry.”

There came no response.

Gawain sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair, staring at the other man, who had yet to stop staring at him with such pure hatred and disinterest, all in the same expression.

“And now you’re not going to talk, right?” Gawain scoffed, because he should have seen that coming a while away. In fact, he was surprised Tristan had even spoken to him to begin with, and now here they were at the expected end. Gawain sighed and pushed himself to his feet, glancing over his shoulder to look at Tristan, who had yet to move his gaze from Gawain’s chair.

Great. He’s gone mad and Arthur is locked away, being the one person who could possibly talk him out of it, Gawain thought to himself before pounding on the door to signal the others to let him out and switch.

When he saw that Galahad was next, Gawain grasped him by the upper arm, his hold possessive and firm and the look they shared between them wasn’t tinged with stubbornness and anger, for once. ‘Be careful,’ was all Gawain mouthed and he didn’t need to say more for Galahad to understand the depth of those words, what they really meant.

Galahad waltzed into the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world of being there, pacing back and forth and spinning an arrow as he did, eyes on Tristan, who was watching the arrow. When Galahad saw that he had his full attention, he smirked to himself.

Galahad was armed in other ways, but this was the best way; Tristan wanted a weapon, wanted to use something to hurt someone and Galahad had the power in the room. Around and around the arrow spun, this outdated piece of weaponry that Galahad thought was quaint in the way that all useless weapons were.

“Planning to share, pup?”

“You know how I feel about sharing,” Galahad pointed out.

“One need only look at Gawain, yes.” Tristan hadn’t blinked, eyes now shifting from the weapon to Galahad himself. “How are you two? Are you still terrified that he’s going to leave you any moment?”

The arrow clattered to the ground when Galahad’s grasp failed.

“I’m not the only one who sees it,” Tristan remarked casually, now giving his nails a cursory study. “Dagonet’s too kind to mention and of course, dear Vanora just keeps a girl or two on the phone in case it ever does happen. Paradise never lasts. Either he leaves or he dies, but either way, you are going to lose him.”

Galahad’s impassive look had slowly transformed into a heated glare, one that could melt materials of all alloys and he leaned in until he was close enough that he could spit in Tristan’s face, but the other man couldn’t touch him.

“I’m not going to lose him,” he replied, words low and dangerous. “And if I do somehow lose Gawain to death, then I’ll let him stay dead.”

He snatched up the arrow from the floor, yanking the heavy door open with a slam.

“Bors, I’m done with him,” Galahad muttered.

The switching of the guard this time was efficient and Tristan exchanged one dark look with Bors before he smiled that calculating and precise smirk he got when something was in his mind.

“You’re not worth it,” Bors announced with disgust, spitting at the floor by Tristan’s chair and out he went before he even came in.

There was silence in the room and for a brief flicker of a moment, Tristan began to rock on the chair once more, as if to test the strength and begin to pry himself loose, but it was as he was working on the back legs that the door shut firmly and the sound of it echoed through the training room.

Dagonet was standing there, broad and immovable, arms crossed and a dour look on his face that gave away not one emotion.

“Dagonet.”

“Tristan.”

He didn’t move from the door, but his eyes never left the man.

“You won’t move me,” Dagonet warned evenly, voice low. “You won’t chase me off with half-truths. Dinidan would have hated this. I won’t even go so far as to tell Isolde what you’re doing because I don’t care to break her heart.” With each additional sentence, he took steps inside until he could forcibly grab hold of Tristan’s shirt, lifting him up. “You shame the dead,” he got out evenly. “If you loved him, you would let this be for now. Just for now. We’ll right this later, Tristan, but this is selfish. This is wrong. Dinidan wouldn’t have wanted this.”

He looked Tristan up and down and released his strong grip of the man.

“If I walk out and tell them that you’re worthless, Bors’ child is going to suffer,” Dagonet said. There were no dramatics in his voice, only the harsh reality of the situation. “And deep down, I know that you don’t want that. So be a man. Fight for us now. Fight for him later.”

Dagonet drifted back and regarded Tristan a long moment.

“Well?”

“Come back for me this evening,” Tristan said quietly. “And then I’ll help.”

Dagonet returned to the others and relayed the information in a quiet hush. Together they waited and planned, speaking of maps and codes while all eyes were kept on the sun in the sky. Only when it dipped beyond the horizon did Lancelot make his way to the heavy door, opened it, and untied Tristan from his confines.

“One wrong move,” Lancelot warned quietly. “And something will be done.”

Tristan nodded his understanding, but no emotion flickered over his face and Lancelot knew as well as anyone else that trying to glean emotion from Tristan had gone down in history as impossibility.

“Come on,” Lancelot muttered, begrudgingly. “We have a briefing.”

Tristan followed without a single word.

It gave Lancelot a very bad feeling.

tbc