[Mortals] - Some kind of way

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

Santa Christ? This is a new low, or a new high; depending on how you look at it. It’s about as far from the skull of Oliver Cromwell as you can get in terms of Kingslaying, but…

A part of me really wants to say that it’s crazy, but it might just work. It’s certainly a curve ball, and in all honesty, Eva and Catherine can spill all the details they like to their respective kings, I still honestly don’t think they’ll know what’s coming.

For a moment my mind tunes in to the song playing on the radio in the break room.

And while the King was looking down,
The Jester stole his thorny crown,
The courtroom was adjourned,
No verdict was returned.

I admit I took a while to warm to Emma and her particular brand of insane genius, probably because Jayne kept going out to see her and coming back in tears. For all that, she’s the one I know I can depend on now. I hope she knows that I really wasn’t joking; the fear that I was going to have to stand on my own or take Irma Peel, PA to Jim Spiderman, on spec was as real as any fear I’ve ever felt.

Mike is a righteous man, but like all righteous men he strives to see the good in the world and everyone in it. That’s how Cadbury got to him. I trust him with my life, with my daughter’s life, but he doesn’t seem to see.

Alexander’s ambition is too great for trust to exist and Catherine seems to have accepted her place as his card. Anna… I try not to think about, and as she goes, so goes Eva.

Louis is perceptive, but disinterested. He seems more interested in seeing what happens that in playing a role. I may be wrong; he’s the one I understand the least.

Mathew is… Well, he’s an idiot. A very intelligent, highly educated idiot.

And Jayne, while I trust her implicitly, can’t be involved lest her financial allegiance to Williamson call to her. I have no fear that she would betray me, but I think if he called on her then she would genuinely kill him, and I don’t want that for any of us.

So, yes; that leaves the two of us. Emma and me. On a team. Never saw that coming.

I’ll be honest; I don’t like our chances, but I’d like mine even less without her. She has a clarity I envy and a lateral turn of mind that is truly dizzying.

Santa Christ, I hope, will muddy the waters of this conflict, but it will take more than that to lock this game in stalemate. But I believe that we will find a way; I believe that we can do this.

Another song on the radio; another message, if I chose to hear it that way.

There must be some kind of way out of here,
Said the Joker to the Thief.

Is that us? And if so, which is which.

Emma seems like a wild card to me, so I guess that makes me the Thief. I suppose I ought to steal something.