[open post -- winged and once-winged insects]

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad has collected every insect guide he could find in the mansion's library, and now he is camped out in a laboratory it seems to have created particularly for him and Susan -- the room has its own microscope, so that he can stop borrowing Claudius', and every single shelf is filled with glass habitats or mesh tents for keeping insects.

With his single-minded determination, he has filled many of them -- the tents house carefully potted foot-high milkweeds with tiny butterfly eggs affixed to their leaves, or potato plants he hopes will soon harbor potato beetles, or butterflies resting on the mesh. In the glass habitats there are millipedes, gleaming tenebrionid beetles, huge and bumbling scarabs, the dogbane leaf beetle Lancelot helped him capture, shiny blister beetles, leafhoppers in every shade of green, a pair of picasso bugs, an mantis he found in the greenhouse pretending to be an orchid flower.

Many of these insects stay only long enough to be identified and documented. Galahad and Susan between them take careful notes, make drawings, take pictures. When possible, they identify to species; more often, they identify genera or family, country of origin if they're lucky. Then they let their subjects go again. Neither of them has the time nor the inclination to feed and care for the immense diversity of insects living on the mansion's grounds. Potato beetles are one thing, but catching other tiny insects for the tiger beetles every morning is unsustainable. Galahad doesn't mind. Once he has a picture and the notes, the insect is saved, even if they don't see it again.

In the morning he trains with Lan Wangji, so it's an afternoon now when he's perched on a stool in front of the microscope, inspecting a chlaenius beetle to see whether it's possible to confirm a species. Unfortunately, these beetles are too fast and squirmy to put on a slide alive, so he's ethered it first. Now he's working diligently on his sketch, his pale head bowed as he studies the tiny body.

[Open especially to anyone who needs to be reassured that Galahad is back after the mod event and he's just fine now]

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It's a hypothesis of the structure of our inner selves," she says. "Freud says we've got defense mechanisms - tools of the ego, to help protect against knowledge that would hurt us in some way, and so we confine the knowledge to our unconscious. But we also must understand our unconscious in order to heal. With a traumatic neurosis, the protections around your ego have been breached, and so it must struggle to catch up. Some get trapped in a painful memory while the ego is overwhelmed. I imagine for those with a stronger ego, it might remove you from your self, so that you haven't got the risk of your unconscious overrunning things."

[onthewillowsthere]

His first thought is of Claudius, the way he sometimes seems to take out his own thoughts and feelings with the precision of a surgeon and put them in specimen jars, to be ignored or studied with scientific detachment. It's easier, Galahad thinks, for Claudius to blame himself for being hurt when he examines these bottled experiences, critiquing them as he would the choices of a character from a book.

But Susan doesn't love Claudius. She isn't thinking about him. Galahad's gaze, which has been on Susan's eyes all along, sharpens.

"Does Lancelot have traumatic neuroses?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan had been theorizing about Galahad's experience following Shen Yuan's death, and now she pauses. Borderline apologetic, but still mostly with her usual businesslike tone, she says, "I shan't be discussing that." Lancelot may elect to do so, if he so desires, but Susan shan't be making the choice on his behalf.

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods, businesslike in return. "I understand."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Galahad is eminently reasonable, and Susan rather appreciates him. "What I will say," she adds, "Is that my closest friend in London was studying to be a psychoanalyst and I find the subject fascinating and tremendously useful. Although," thoughtfully, "not as fascinating as ethology or insects."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Which do you like best?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Still ethology, I believe."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I would like you to teach me, if you will."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Of course. Once we've completed our current study."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods, and then says, "I like learning things from you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

The sentiment warms Susan, and the edge of a smile plays at the corner of her mouth. "I rather think we often learn from each other," she says, thoughtfully..

[onthewillowsthere]

"What have you learned from me?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"In addition to the music you've introduced me to and the insects you've categorized first?" Susan asks. "And the fact that good science is an act of shared discovery and learning? You've got a unique perspective and I often find myself coming to new realizations after we've talked." She pauses for a moment, watching as Regina stretches sleepily and then curls up again, then decides to share, "I hadn't the faintest idea Lancelot might love me, or I him, until your experiment with the boxes."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad looks up at her, and although there's very little change to his expression he radiates pleasure. "Thank you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

He does look rather like Regina at the moment. "Of course," she says, in that tellingly businesslike way. "It's only the truth."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I know," he says, because he hasn't found Susan to be a person who lies or says things she doesn't mean. He likes it about her; it makes her easy to understand. And then, thinking of what Claudius' other self had said to him, he adds, "I'm glad we're partners."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan still isn't given to the sort of expressiveness she had as a child, or even as an adolescent or the adult she was before she lost her family. Sometimes she wonders if it shall ever feel natural again, rather than a calculation that only sometimes comes easily.

So she's surprised by the reflexive smile that crosses her face at that. It's the small ugly one that typically only comes out around Janet and Lancelot - with greater frequency now, perhaps, than when she first arrived, but still only ever occasionally. The gaze she turns Galahad's way is, therefore, equally warm and startled. "Oh, likewise."