Huzzah! Fine lords and ladies, surely now your attention is whetted most keen, and ye seek answers to ye's burning questions. I'll waste no time, and jump straight into it.
Once upon a time there was an attorney who tried not to hate himself. He had been struggling to not hate himself for some time, and only recently had he seemed to turn any kind of corner and make real progress. Part of that progress was accepting that he adored a certain princess of his acquaintance, and that her opinion of him meant more than anyone's. Another part of that progress was facing the truth that merely adoring a princess didn't make the attorney a suitable match for her. And a third part of that progress was recognizing that the attorney needed to understand that by refusing to allow the princess to determine her own mind, he was in fact infantilizing her…
I can see I'm losing you. You know what? I'm going to start over.
Once upon a time there was a princess, and an attorney who had problems (mostly self-inflicted). For reasons he refused to articulate, even to himself, the attorney was overwhelmed with jealousy whenever another man showed undue attention to the princess and especially when she seemed intrigued by other men. This jealousy drove him to strange places, a kind of madness that caused many of the attorney's aforementioned self-inflicted problems.
No, that's still too long. Once upon a time there was a princess and an attorney who loved her but was also kind of a jerk.
One day the attorney and the princess met an old friend of the princess's, now a mighty knight. The knight flattered the princess, and the attorney seethed, until he could stand it no more. Rather than speak honestly to the princess about his feelings, the attorney challenged the knight to combat on the field of battle, despite the obvious problems with this plan.
"There are some really obvious problems with your plan." Annie glared at him.
Jeff fiddled with the fencing helmet Chuck had given him, trying to figure out how to adjust it to fit. "Name one," he said without looking up.
"One. You don't know how to fence. You could get hurt."
He scoffed. "There's plastic tips and masks and stuff, I'll be fine."
"Two. You don't know how to fence, part two: assuming you're even able to stand the right way to have an actual bout, Chuck will effortlessly defeat you."
"I know!" Jeff glanced up, then quickly went back to his mask. "It's not about winning, it's about sportsmanship. I said I wanted to try it." Also, he thought, I am going to cheat and… I don't know, break his nose or something.
"Three. You're doing this because you're jealous of the attention I've been giving Chuck."
"Not true!" Jeff barked, studiously examining his mask. He was doing this because Chuck had badmouthed Annie. He was defending Annie's honor, was what he was going. Jeff was, he decided, practically a knight of olden times himself, rising to the defense of his beloved's honor…
…Not that he was Annie's beloved. Or rather, not that Annie was his beloved, he corrected himself.
"Okay, fine, four, you're also doing it because you need Chuck and the fencing jocks to like you, and how they feel about you is more important to you than me, I guess, because all that's happening right now is that you're making me mad."
Jeff blinked a few times. Annie's words had stung, but he did his best to conceal that. "You are mistaken," he said breezily, still focused on the mask's straps. "And I will tell you why as soon as…" as soon as I come up with a good-sounding lie "…as soon as I finish tightening these."
"Five," said Annie. She spun on her heel and marched directly away from the fencing arena.
Jeff looked up when Annie didn't name a fifth thing. He rose, and bit his lip, trying to think of what to say if he chased her. When he chased her, to be honest.
"Wingman!" cried Chuck, approaching from behind Jeff. In his hands he held a second sword that appeared to have been made from duct tape and some kind of dowel. "I found a practice rapier you can use. Now, you want to… Wingman?"
Jeff turned to the younger man.
"Heh, yeah." Chuck proffered the rapier to Jeff, who gingerly took it. "See, the way you want to hold this, is… uh, guy?"
Jeff had turned back towards the spot Annie had been standing. He sighed heavily.
"Everybody's over by the pavilion," Chuck told him. "C'mon, everybody wants to show you how it's done." He glanced around. "Where'd Annie Adderall go?"
Jeff ignored Chuck. "Damn it," he muttered. He dropped the mask.
"Jeff?" asked Chuck.
Jeff sighed. "Chuck? First, you don't call her Annie Adderall."
"What, guy?" Chuck asked with a chuckle.
"Second," Jeff said, and then he bent the rapier in his hand over his knee until it had a ninety-degree bend in it.
"I was hoping that would snap," Jeff said, examining it. "What is this, fibreglass?"
"What the hell, dude?!" Chuck was livid.
Jeff tossed the worthless item to the ground. "I was going to punch you in the face, but violence never solved anything," he said.
"What?!" Chuck bellowed. "Guy! That cost almost a hundred…"
"Shut up," Jeff suggested. Swearing under his breath, he ducked under the rope fence and jogged after Annie.
"Okay," said Troy. "King Arthur and Robin Hood have defeated the vampires."
Abed nodded. "Check."
"England is saved," Troy continued.
"Check."
"We've totally done all of the stuff we said we were going to do."
"Check."
"I'm not going to not do stuff I said I was going to do with you."
"Sure." The difference in Abed's tone was slight, but to Troy it stood out clearly.
"Buddy! I know I've been kind of preoccupied with Britta lately, but, you know, it's not the first time one of us has been distracted by a girl." Troy sat down on a bench and gestured for Abed to join him.
He did so. "I know. Britta's different, though. She's made an attempt to watch Inspector Spacetime with us."
"So?"
"So you let her," said Abed. "So she intruded on what had been off-limits. So she established a precedent that previously unbreachable barriers can be crossed. When you and she break up and you move on, there'll be a presumption that the next girl is welcome to join us at movie night, too."
"I'm really not comfortable with the way you keep predicting we're going to break up." Troy sighed.
"You and Britta, or you and me?"
"Both!" cried Troy. "I tell you man, I am always going to be your friend. Maybe I'll get married. Maybe I'll move to France. Maybe I'll move to Mars once they open it up for homesteaders. But I'm always going to be your friend. Always. We're not going to just, like, peter out."
"I don't think it will peter out," Abed said. "Most people get frustrated with me and push me away."
"Well, I won't," Troy insisted. "I don't do that to people."
"You did it to Pierce," Abed pointed out. "We both did."
Britta was discovering, the hard way, that the crafts area of the Faire was a maze of tents selling crap. Colored rocks, ceramic frogs, homemade soap, homemade honey, homemade felt hats, homemade candles, homemade candies, homemade cookies, homemade fudge, hand-blown glass, hand-woven tapestries, hand-woven baskets, and then colored rocks again because she'd circled all the way around without finding the way out.
She considered just pushing through one of the tents, regardless of how many hand-stamped bronze placards it sent crashing to the stony ground. But before she could psych herself up to cause substantial property damage, Shirley found her.
"Britta," Shirley said stiffly, her voice high and almost cracking, "I apologize for being a busybody. I understand that it's not my place to comment on your life choices, regardless of how destructive I personally feel them to be."
Britta scowled. She wanted to snap at Shirley for trying to take the mortal high ground, but mostly she just wanted to get out of the crafts area and find a stand selling mead or beer or wine. "That, that's fine, Shirley. I'm sorry I snapped at you. Can we just put this behind us?"
"Of course, Britta, if that's what you'd like." Shirley's voice slipped up another half an octave. She glanced around. "These are some very pretty bronze Pottery-Barn-esque pieces of… stuff, that you've found."
"Yeah." Britta sighed. "I could really imagine decorating my bathroom with this junk."
"Oh, not your bathroom," said Shirley, in something like a normal tone of voice, "people have to use that and you want them to be comfortable."
Britta snickered, as the woman whose tent it was glowered at them. "Do you know how to get out of here and find a wine stand? They have wine at Renfaires, right?"
Shirley nodded. "How else could people stand them?"
A few minutes later Shirley and Britta were sipping glasses of red wine and sitting under a tree, watching people in costumes worse than theirs wander by.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you," Britta said. "You were just trying to help."
"That's true."
"You've been married for years. It's been rocky but you've made it work," she continued.
"That's true," Shirley repeated.
"And I've never been in a relationship that lasted past the spend-a-weekend-chained-to-his-bed phase, and the breakups are always terrible, and I end up losing all of our mutual friends." Britta sipped her wine glumly.
Shirley nodded.
"In two weeks if we're still together Troy will be my longest relationship."
Shirley began to nod, but did a double take. "What?"
"Usually I…"
"You and Troy got together right before classes started, am I right? You weren't secretly hooking up all summer or anything?"
"Yeah…"
"So your record for a relationship is five weeks?"
"No!" Britta said defensively. "It's my record for a relationship without any interruptions. Like, three weeks on, two months off, four weeks on, until the next time the carnival comes through off…"
"Who was this five-week Lothario who kept you on the hook for longer than any other man?" Shirley asked.
"He was…" Britta glanced around, suddenly self-conscious. "He had a boat."
"And what about Jeff? Weren't you and he secretly dating for months?" Shirley scowled. She'd always thought Jeff and Britta were cute together.
Britta scoffed. "Okay, that totally doesn't count for like eighteen different reasons. I mean, I actually like Troy. We hang out, and… I don't know! It's different!"
Shirley closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. "It's not my place to try to help you not ruin your life and Troy's life, girl, what the Christ do you think —"
"Okay, okay, okay!" Britta held up her hands in a cool-it gesture. "I hear what you're saying. I just…" She sighed.
"Right, right." Shirley emptied her plastic wineglass. "It's your life, you live it how you want, I love you and I want you to be happy and I'm not judging or trying to offer you advice."
"You could offer me some advice," Britta said, in a weary tone. "I mean, you obviously know something, you've been with Andre for so long."
"I pretended to like country music." Shirley looked into the middle distance, remembering. "Andre was going through this country phase when we met? God awful. Eventually I came clean, and he said he'd gotten sick of it months earlier but he'd pretended he still liked it because I still liked it, and I said I never liked it in the first place…"
"Troy is really into Inspector Spacetime," Britta offered.
"We're not talking about Troy right now, Britta, because that is a conversation we clearly have to work up to. In fact, I shouldn't even be talking about Andre yet. We need to start with an example of a relationship that hit that big six-week milestone, and work our way up." Shirley leaned back against the tree trunk. "In high school I knew this boy named Malcolm…"
"Annie!" Jeff called out. He was sure she heard him but she didn't turn or acknowledge him until he had caught up to her.
"You're missing the fencing," she said without breaking stride as he fell in next to her.
"You win," he said simply, which was enough to stop her in her tracks.
She turned to him in surprise. "I win?"
"Yeah, I… You're right."
Annie narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "How was I right?"
Jeff glanced around as though fearful someone might be listening. "I shouldn't have tried to ingratiate myself with the, what'd you call them, the Scadians." He coughed. "Also, Chuck is not a guy I think you should be dating."
"Hmm." Annie looked thoughtful. "Who should I be dating?"
"Uh…" Jeff's eyes widened in shock for a split second, then he recovered. "Ahem, I mean, I don't know, I mean, whoever you want? Chuck's a dick, though."
She gestured for him to continue. "And?"
Jeff stroked his chin and wondered what else she could possibly be fishing for. "And? And, uh, you were right when you said I was jealous."
"You were jealous." Annie nodded slowly. "I see." She stared at the ground in front of her.
When she didn't say anything else, Jeff cleared his throat. He considered saying something like of course I was jealous! You're my favorite person and you were flirting with another guy but he was dangerously uncertain he could manage to get it out without sounding like of course I wasn't jealous because I want to be the guy you're interested in dating. Because she was his friend. She was important to him. He didn't just want to sleep with her. Strike that, he told himself: he didn't want to sleep with her, full stop.
Keep repeating that until you believe it.
"So, uh, forgive me?"
"Mmm?" She snapped back to attention. "You're sorry?" she asked with a smirk.
"I'm sorry and I understand that what I did was wrong," he said. Sensing Annie needed him to say more, he continued "and I want to make it up to you. If you're still willing to hang out…?"
"Oh, sure. Absolutely." Annie started strolling through the Faire at a more relaxed pace, a smirk on her face. "So this is refreshing," she said after a moment.
"Yeah?" Jeff, next to her, asked wearily.
"I'm just saying. Usually when one of us goes flying off the handle it's me, and then you give me a heartfelt talk about how great I am in a little speech that contains an implicit apology, and then I come right out and apologize," she said, still smirking.
He narrowed his eyes. "I don't think that's completely accurate…"
"It's okay, Jeff, I forgive you." Annie reached out and grasped his shoulder, then gave it a squeeze.
"I also broke one of their swords. Well, I bent it. It was just fiberglass."
She nodded. "That sounds about right."
Jeff sighed. "We can just put this whole incident behind us, right? Pretend it never happened?"
"Well, I don't know that I can let you off the hook that easily. You do owe me lunch," Annie replied.
"Captain's log, supplemental," Pierce narrated to himself as he sulked through the Faire. "The natives of this era are hostile and unwelcoming. Some of the women are showing really impressive cleavage, but I'm Captain Kirk so I see that all the time. None of the native girls have thrown themselves at me, but I suppose that was too much to expect."
A woman near Pierce, overhearing him, turned away and adjusted her jacket. A disgusted look was on her face.
"No disrespect intended!" he called to her retreating back, then returned to his narration. "Lacking a reason to remain in the area, I'll be returning to my shuttlecraft shortly. I was hoping to find Shirley and make sure she has a way home, but I guess I'll just wait in the car. Message ends."
His shoulders were hunched as he ambled back to the Faire's main gate. Pierce paused there, and turned to scan the Faire one more time. He froze as he heard a flat, mechanical voice address him.
"Halt, human."
"Aybed?" Pierce looked around, trying to find the source of the voice.
"We are the Borg! You will be assimilated! Resistance is futile!" Troy's voice, this time.
"Troy?" Pierce turned a complete circle in place, ignoring the irritated looks the other Faire-goers shot him. "Where are you guys?"
"Designation 'you guys' inappropriate. We are the Borg. Your weapons are ineffective in the face of our superior technology." Abed suddenly stepped from behind the fence blocking the men's privies. He had traded in his ersatz Robin Hood costume for cardboard cyborg armor over a black sweatsuit.
"We will absorb your old white man-ness and add it to our own, like we did with Picard!" cried Troy as he stepped out next to Abed. His King Arthur garb, too, had been replaced with cardboard robot gear.
Pierce's face lit up. "Aw, you guys!" He stood there a moment, grinning, then pulled his plastic phaser from his belt and pretended to shoot at them.
Abed folded his arms. "Our shields are impenetrable to your crude Federation technology."
"Yeah!" Troy nodded. "Your weapons are useless against us! Ptchoo! Ptchoo!"
"Ptchoo ptchoo!"
Troy and Abed pointed their fingers at Pierce and pantomimed firing on him.
"Ha! Missed me!" Pierce ducked behind an ATM kiosk placed prominently at the Faire's entrance. "Also, they could put the ATM in a tent or something, at least get it out of the line of sight, wouldn't you think? People are trying to have a medieval experience, here!"
And on that note, we close this particular chapter in the lives of the attorney, the two princesses, the two princes, the Flemish crossdresser, and the starship captain. Their disputes are resolved. Or, to be more accurate, their disputes are papered over. The Flemish crossdresser and the prince are still the subject of the princess's attention, the starship captain is still struggle to ingratiate himself with the two princes, and the two princes may or may not be on the verge of drifting apart. On the plus side, the attorney has promised to take the princess to lunch sometime, so that might be a step in a positive direction. And so we say with misplaced confidence that they all lived happily ever after.
Huzzah for the Renaissance Faire! Thank thee! Thank thee! Your tips are gladly accepted! We shall be performing every weekend from now until Halloween!
Huzzah!
Author's note: This is a slightly revised version of this portion of the story I originally uploaded, as I managed to in the process of revising an earlier draft totally bungle a crucial paragraph (the one that starts when she didn't say anything else) and not realize it. And now I've gone and edited it again, to add this explanatory note.
