He wasn't there.
He wasn't there… that's all there was to say.
There was no sign of a hoodie here, no faint rattling over there. There were no jokes being made from the side of the bench, no questions for ordering a bottle of ketchup. There was simply… nothing. It was as if he'd died. There was a whistle coming through from the right, and Lancer whipped his head around so it made a faint popping noise, but the breeze was just the wind blowing through to one of the bottles.
The chairs in the hotel kitchen were empty, the one brochure for the orchestra dangling off of the largest table sending Lancer into a confused sort of anger. Anger that drove him to shove open the hotel's kitchen door, to shove down the first three pancakes. His stomach was settled in a twisted loop, and eating another pancake would only accentuate a layer of tenderness he didn't want to add.
Anger.
He had to stop. He had to control himself. Control his trembling legs, control his palms leaking on the stove. Dripping, two waterfalls crushed in his palms. Susie couldn't see him like this, and what if Sans were to turn up on the road? He must be there. He couldn't expect Sans to stay in the hotel for untold weeks, could he? And could he have gone to… gone to the concert…
The thoughts muddled, tripped and fell with just as graceful movement as Lancer made through the kitchen, walking with his chicken limp, legs still trembling, trembling, rummaging through one pack after the other. One flew onto the floor, but he noticed it, its blue and green royal pattern, its ADMIT ONE spattered across the bottom. They were the spare tickets. Of course. In the Chaos King's almighty wisdom, la sagesse divine, he'd made sure that there was always one spare ticket in case the first one went missing. He wouldn't want anyone missing this concert, right? Why, if they'd missed, they might have wandered about, made their way to the bedrooms upstairs…
He made his way to the corner where Sans was, and when nothing could be found there, he made is way in an almost drunken haze, as drunken as his father could ever hope to be, wandering through the hotel halls for something… anything… There was one room with flowers decorated all about it, pink and sickening enough to make the pancakes' worth diminish somewhat. Another one with a hoodie- Lancer peeked in. The hoodie was too big for the wearer, a four- year- old smiling, sitting with her siblings around a phone. He was too late. He didn't want anyone seeing him like this, with his legs spread and the gingerly area of his pants already growing weightier. He tiptoed as far back as he could, his hand reaching back, skittering on one of the walls as if he were a spider, latching on…
BAM!
Lancer found himself on the ground, stunned, legs twitching, chest flitting up and down to and fro from the hotel ceiling, the air leaving him in straws.
The phone was nothing but background noise now. The girl in the hoodie stirred.
"Oh mon Dieu! Guys, look! C'est le prince! C'est le prince!"
Too late. Too late. Too late. Someone running in the hallway had already hit him, running, carrying a hefty weight of towels. A hotel worker. Thank God it wasn't someone else.
"Excuse me"- his legs seized, and he bit his lower lip so he wouldn't yell. The shame covered him even more than the towels covered the hotel worker's hands. The shame; he didn't know how to wash it off of him. Maybe if he took showers enough, maybe if his father- no, he couldn't think about him anymore. He couldn't afford to. If he did, his father may even take away his thoughts. Why not? He'd already taken away everything else.
He didn't know how long he'd sat there, gritting his teeth, his legs still trembling, until one of the hotel workers came from the side, apologizing even more than Lancer wanted to apologize for… for what he'd done that night.
Lancer tried to say, "Yes, erm…" The worker's head poked out of the side, reddening as soon as he had heard the first "C'est le prince!". The worker cleared his throat, nearly dropping the towels.
"Um, Your Highness, can you please, um, oh jeez, speak up? Oh, I'm sorry if I'm being rude, please-"
His throat gurgled, scraped, groaned the quietest groan. "Yes, erm, do you know where Sahns is? He checked in awhile ago…" His throat screamed, and it was all Lancer could do not to clutch it. Water… why in the world couldn't a hotel have a water fountain here?
"Your Highness, Monsieur, he's in room 248, I'm so, so, so sorry if I was infringing on your politeness, er, no, that's not the word, oh, I'm so sorry, Monsieur..."
Lancer'd had enough.
He picked himself up, his legs and stomach screaming, moved aside the hotel worker, and walked to the elevator.
There were no more cries of "C'est le prince!".
...
248 came and went, Sans' belongings scattered about. Three minutes of rummaging before Lancer realized there was no ticket here, and there would be no ticket anywhere. His legs… if only he could draw them in just a little…
Susie. Susie would help him now. Perhaps Susie was with Sans. Sans and Susie did have a rushed meeting before.
He limped out of the room, looking back. Oh, how he wanted to stay. The curtains, swaying back and forth, the bed with no one in it, the clothes that were replaced each year… he wanted to stay, wanted to stay in this golden tangle of thorns. He wanted to feel the cool breeze without anyone looking at him and shouting applause. He wanted to live, to live how the family below him lived.
But even as a prince, he knew this one universal truth. Noble. Religious:
You can't always get what you want.
….
The elevator swung, the buttons laying heavy in his vision. When the door finally came up to him, he peered through and wondered, for a split second, if the family was there. He stepped in the elevator, chasing away any frail thoughts that they would come running out of the corner. In the bottom floor they would stay.
Susie. Susie was all that Lancer needed now.
He walked through the last floor of the hotel, eyes raised beyond the kitchen, beyond any children that would come straying in to the left. Susie, that was all. And then there was Steed. He would fly on it, fly on its fiery feet towards the dawn, fly far, far away from the Card Castle, far away from attendants and whips and flying objects, crashing, another bruise to the face, a little concealer will fix that. He was sick of that. He needed to run away, run far away… perhaps with Susie, back to the Upper World. The Upper World! What lay there? Was the Upper World a place where mothers and fathers knew how to take care of their children? Was the Upper World a place where belts were never made? Was the Upper World the place where Jimmy Page and all of the members of Led Zeppelin lived? He could sing forever, with Susie and Steed and Sans and all substances that started with s…
The Upper World. Steed could take him there.
Steed's engine roared in delight, the handlebar shifting forward easier than he expected. The breeze seemed warmer than normal although Advent was appearing, the cold twisting into the Dark World, into Lancer's bones. But not as hard as usual. The crickets were quieting, and the shadows were shrinking so that it didn't become all- encompassing. Steed's exhaust, as familiar, wafted through the blackened air, and Lancer smiled, smiled through the impossibility of at all, smiled at the posssibility of being with Susie by noon.
Steed complained, but what did that matter? What at all? Why, Lancer could just pull into one of the streets, tinker with this gear and that assortment. He did, running, sprinting as fast as he could, past a general store and past a family's house, whipping out his wrench from his pocket. It was a gamble, but a gamble Lancer was willing to take as he adjusted the gear a little this way…. a little more… a little…
A hand with a black glove on it, sick with bedheat, caught Lancer by the throat.
The world darkened ever more, the wrench plummeted from his hands, and the last echo rung through Lancer's ears before the world vanished.