Closed RP: Susan is Not Happy (and when Susan ain't happy, NOBODY is happy)

[usethepoker]

((Backdated to February 10, just after Stephen's popcorn-letter))

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[c_macaulay]

Camilla couldn't believe what she was hearing. The world had flipped completely upside-down. It was as though the poles had inverted, or switched polarity, or whatever on earth that entailed (Camilla had a very vague and provisional memory of something like this in National Geographic). Charles had sent her away and Henry had cooperated with Charles in this. Charles had cooperated with Henry.

Something was going wrong with Susan, who, after all, was Camilla's closest female friend, and whom Camilla did care about, and Charles was mixed up in it, and Susan was furious and possibly dangerous to a great many people as Henry said, and Charles wouldn't have sent Camilla away if Susan weren't a danger to her, and ...

Camilla's eyes went almost impossibly wide.

"Oh God," she said. "Susan found out, didn't she?" There was nothing to find out, really! But if Susan really were in love with Charles, and Charles was pretending to be in love with her (he couldn't possibly have genuine feelings for her), and Susan had found out about the twins' past (there wasn't anything going on in the present! Maybe Susan had intercepted a glance over the tea table? What if Charles kept a diary?) ...

"Oh God," she said again, and covered her face with her hands.

[h_m_winter]

...THAT had never occurred him. How on Earth Susan could have found out about...that...Henry didn't know, nor did he like to speculate. That was something he did his best not to think about.

"If that were the case, I don't think he would have stayed," he said, with infinite dryness. He sighed. "You got that owl, didn't you? The one from Maturin, saying he'd popcorned?" While he didn't know just what Susan was doing, he was damn sure why. "You know she's had Issues where he's concerned."

[c_macaulay]

"Yes, he would. He would have stayed to protect me," Camilla insisted. She was sure it was true. (In fact she wasn't far wrong. Given such a scenario, Charles would have stayed to protect her, if there were absolutely no chance he could induce her to flee with him.) "And yes, I got that owl. What about it? Shouldn't she be happy Stephen's gone?"

For such was Camilla's mindset. She would have been happy, in Susan's place. She would have been grimly satisfied, and might have dropped by the popcorn room just to give the kernel a once-over.

Camilla could imagine only too well any number of ways in which Susan might have found out about the twins. Saying the wrong name at a Highly Inopportune Moment, for example.

"If it's about Stephen, goodness, Charles didn't even know him. They ought to have owled me. I knew him." Good job, Camilla. Remind Henry about that too. "I could have done something, I'm sure." Exactly what, she didn't know. She could have improvised something! "I could do something."

She couldn't stand the idea that there was nothing she could do. Keyed up beyond all capacity for sensible assessment or reply, she sat on the bed again - forceful, almost a flop - and stared at the wall. She was still wearing her coat and her snow boots.

[h_m_winter]

"Yes, well, it's Susan he stayed with," Henry pointed out. All right, yes, him wanting to drive a wedge between Charles and Camilla was personal, but it was also practical. "Camilla, you have to let your brother go. You're not joined at the hip, and he's got every right to have Susan." After all, she had Henry; she didn't need to be holding onto the idea that Charles needed to pine away and die. For one thing, it suggested a mindest Henry didn't like at all--as though she wanted Charles to be in reserve, just in case. Better for everyone if Charles should happen to be serious about Susan.

[c_macaulay]

Camilla's jaw didn't drop open quite. Her lips did part a little, though. She gazed at Henry in utter astonishment.

"What are you saying?"

[h_m_winter]

This was the perfect opportunity to get Certain Things off his chest, things he'd had no chance to voice until now. Even if it did mean talking about some issues he really didn't want to speak aloud.

"I'm saying that you can't expect your brother to sit there and pine after you for the rest of his life," Henry said, bluntly. "It's hypocrisy. You want him to let you go, in that sense, yet from what you're saying, it doesn't sound like you want to do the same. I have no idea just what is really between Charles and Susan, and I don't particularly care, but you need to accept the fact that he has as much right to theoretically love someone as you do."

[c_macaulay]

Camilla simply stared at Henry for long moments more. Was he really saying these things? Was he really saying these things to her?

"Are you saying you think I'm still in love with my brother?"

[h_m_winter]

"No." Yes. Sort of. "I'm saying that I think you want to make sure he is still in love with you, and his seeing Susan doesn't work with that want. Camilla, I know you well enough to know when you're jealous, and you have been for quite some time now. You need to let it go, because it's only making you miserable." And making him angry, for several reasons.

[c_macaulay]

"Surely you're not saying I encourage him. I don't. I haven't so much as touched him since -"

Since she kissed him, the day she went to tell him she was accepting Henry's proposal.

"A long time ago. If we're talking about anything that matters. I don't think he ought to be seeing Susan because she doesn't make him happy."

Or because she couldn't stand the idea of anyone else making Charles happy, the same way Charles couldn't stand the idea of anyone else making Camilla happy.

Charles had always gotten to have his cake and eat it too. Why shouldn't Camilla? His standards had always been grossly, manifestly unfair.

"I can't just not care whether he's happy. I'm happy. I want him to be happy too."

[h_m_winter]

"No, you don't encourage him," Henry said, and that at least he meant entirely. "However--why do you say Susan doesn't make him happy? Admittedly I haven't paid much attention, but they seemed content enough to me."

[c_macaulay]

"You don't spend any time with them," Camilla said. "You would see it if you did."

Of course Henry didn't spend any time with them. Charles and Henry wouldn't exactly prioritize quality time with one another. What was more, Susan didn't seem all too keen on Henry's company lately, either. Camilla had noticed it. She hadn't wanted to say anything; she hadn't cared enough about it, really, to say anything.

"He's unhappy." This was true. "Therefore she must not be making him happy." This was fallacious reasoning. "Anyway it has nothing to do with me or how he feels about me or how I feel about anything." She crossed her arms. Her chin quivered a little. She looked miserable. "I don't know why you think I'm jealous. Or why you say I have been for a long time."

[h_m_winter]

No, he didn't spend time with them--even with Charles tied up with someone else, Henry still didn't want to be around him. He didn't share Camilla's bizarre extrapolation of why Charles would be unhappy, though; involvement with Susan notwithstanding, Charles wasn't ever going to be happy so long as his sister was with someone else. Henry had thought before now that his relationship with Susan, whatever it might actually be, was probably calculated in part by a wish to make Camilla jealous. Why else would he settle on Camilla's best female friend? Henry had no way of knowing that Charles intentionally sought out women who looked and acted nothing like Camilla, but even if he had known, there were plenty of other women at Hogwarts who were absolutely nothing like Camilla.

"She's not making him unhappy, either," he said. "Come to that, Susan herself isn't what you'd call happy, either, but she's a great deal more content than I've seen her since last spring." Part of him really hated to have to push her like this, but he knew this was the only chance he'd ever have to address the issue. "And you are jealous," he said. "You wouldn't be so unhappy about the idea yourself, if you weren't. I've seen it in you since they started spending time together without you. Perhaps--" and he didn't like to even think about this possibility "--perhaps it's just made you lonely." Which was Henry-speak for 'maybe I'm not enough for you.'

[c_macaulay]

Camilla shrugged the suggestion away, an angry little movement that for once involved both her shoulders. Still in coat and boots, she might have leapt up and run out at any moment, ready for action or pursuit or evasion. "I never minded," she claimed. "I never minded when he was with anyone else. Why should I mind now? Of course I don't mind."

These were things they never, ever talked about, she and Henry.

Even through her consternation and upset, she remained attuned to his signals; she understood he felt uneasy about something, even if she didn't understand what or why; she understood he'd been watching her for signs of something, some malady, some malaise, and that he hadn't liked what he'd seen. "I can't just forget," she said, in a very small voice. That remark covered a multitude of meanings. She couldn't forget what Charles had meant to her once. She couldn't forget the things he'd done since. She could never, ever go back to him.

She didn't want to go back to him. She just didn't want anyone else to have him either, not in any way that mattered.

[h_m_winter]

"I know you can't," Henry said, with some difficulty--he didn't like the fact that she couldn't, but he accepted it was there. Unlike the Macaulay twins, Henry did not have the luxury of selective blindness. "But you have to accept the fact that Charles is allowed to move on, too. He's let go of you--" nominally, at least "--and you've got to let him go in return. Be honest with yourself--you wouldn't want to see him with anyone else, no matter who that 'anyone else' was. Not in any kind of real relationship." And that, perhaps, was part of what was bothering her; that even if Charles wasn't necessarily knee-deep in love, it was always possible Susan was (though Henry did not think this at all likely). In any case, Charles was spending much more time with Susan than Camilla, and contrary to Camilla's opinions, he seemed at least content, if not really happy.

[c_macaulay]

Charles is allowed to move on. What was that supposed to mean?

"He already did. 'Move on.' He left a few months after you died. I didn't see him for years until Hogwarts brought him back. You know that." Camilla had known Charles had set up something of a household for himself with a woman he'd met in rehab. She'd known it thanks to the private investigator the woman's family had hired; Charles's paramour had left behind a husband and a small child, and they'd wanted her back. Camilla had been at once jealous and thoroughly disgusted. Her disgust, in that case, had far outweighed her jealousy. Here, it could not. Susan wasn't a bad choice. A weird one, maybe, but hardly beneath Charles's notice or interest. She was even a duchess where she came from.

"And he did let go. He's been very, very good. He gave me away at our wedding. He volunteered to do that! And I said yes. We both let go." Everything was true except for that last brief sentence. We both let go. Obviously, they hadn't.

"Why do you keep saying these things?" She was frustrated, close to tears.