faderift | i tried to write your name in the rain

Being in need seems to be the resting state for most everyone here, doesn't it? Whether it's supplies or care or simply a bit of space... and time, as much of it as they try to make, there's still never quite enough and it leaves the air feeling full with all the needing.

For Avery... well honestly, she's not entirely sure what it is she needs from this place. The sights and smells of the healing tents tend to bring up memories she doesn't care to dwell on, and it isn't even a part of her normal duties to come here. But every so often, she volunteers to bring the meals for patients too ill and healers too stubborn to seek them out on their own. Someone has to, so why not her? Other than her less than stellar bedside manner, that is.

Today, she's been here a short while already, distributing her cooking, and though she's noticed the distracted young woman also present of course, she doesn't approach until she's at least seen to those here she recognizes and knows need it most. And even then, there's a moment of hesitation, wondering if it's really such a good idea to disrupt her reverie.

"There's food," Avery does inform her eventually though, voice softer than usual given the circumstances but still as simple and straightforward as ever. "If you want it."

Gwenaëlle looks up when she's addressed - not before that, paying little attention to the comings and goings of those she doesn't recognise as related to Asher's situation and those she presumes to be servants and therefore effectively background noise - and it appears to take her a moment to register ... that she has been, and why.

"Thank you," she says, eventually, polite enough. "I'm not hungry."

--not because she has eaten, that would be sensible. But Asher lies dying a few feet away and she has been here every day, she sits up with him, she finds busywork, she does her sewing. She sits and waits and she doesn't let herself not acknowledge what it is she's waiting for, and it's a cold, quiet ache that moves her away from small things like wanting to eat a sandwich and seeking out company on purpose.

Avery nods at the response, though she looks less than convinced. Reading the mood is far from one of her best skills, but in this case, even she isn't completely clueless.

Her first instinct is to turn and move on (perhaps after silently shoving some food into her hands anyway??), and she wonders if that might be the kinder choice in this case. But something keeps her in place and urges her to continue, "You've been here a while."

It's almost a question?

"I will be here for a while."

--more. Of a while. Probably not as long as she's already been, but they're not quite at the point of thinking in terms of hours and she doesn't want to start counting days; she's going to be here just as long as she needs to be. Her hands slow to a stop over the bandages, thinking on it, but she seems to notice and bends her head back to the task, lips pressed together.

A few months ago, she probably would've bristled at the casual address; that she doesn't now is as much because she's becoming accustomed to the disconcertingly egalitarian Inquisition as it is her distraction or, frankly, the alignment of the planets that means she isn't in the mood to test her claws on something that probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Also, behaving rudely to someone with food is a quick way of having them do something to your food.

"I could - have something in a bit." Because Guenievre is looking, and she won't - say anything, but she'll keep looking.

"I'll make sure there's enough left," Avery says simply, and then returns to her work, making sure that everyone else who needs it is served as well. Including Guenievre, who even earns herself a brief conversation, unlike most of the others.

So it's actually some time later that Avery returns to Gwenaëlle's side, this time with food actually in hand, and goes so far as to take a seat nearby before offering it up. Apparently she has no plans to walk off again anytime soon. "Here."

A hint of suspicion in the glance that follows Avery to sitting, but not enough to stop her from accepting the plate that she's offered; she still isn't hungry, really, but apparently people need food to live. Or something. Dwelling on whether or not there is anyone who'd be concerned if she just didn't bother is a morbid thought that she decides not to have - and the easiest way to avoid finding out that there isn't is just to. Eat the food.

She picks at it a bit, lackluster, but -

"Thank you," because she was ... well. She wasn't raised correctly, but she certainly had etiquette lessons.

"Sure." Um... yeah, sorry, this one wasn't raised correctly or given etiquette lessons.

Other than that though, Avery doesn't seem to... do much? She sits and watches the activity around the tents, occasionally glancing at Gwenaëlle herself. At one point she makes a quiet tsking sound when she notices a new sauce-stain on her old trousers and briefly rubs at it in vain?

She doesn't know how to deal with sad people other than feeding them! This pony has shown off its one trick, and now she's completely unsure of how to proceed!

"So," she tries eventually, "this is right mess, isn't it?"

At the best of times, Gwenaëlle is no better at being comforted than Avery is at offering it; prickly and difficult by temperament, reluctant to have her exposed nerves closely examined by anyone. By strangers, even less -

A long, incredulous silence follows Avery's well-intentioned attempt. Vague suspicion coalesces into something much chillier, and she answers, crisply neutral, "Yes, I might describe a man's decline into death as a 'mess'."

'If I were an asshole' doesn't really need to be said when she's wearing that expression.

Unfortunately... or... maybe fortunately? This one must be either immune or completely oblivious to the unstated animosity, because Avery simply leans her weight forward and crosses her arms over her knees, not looking directly at Gwenaëlle.

"Doubt that," she says with a shrug. Not someone who dresses and talks like she does. "Still is one."

Death always is. Messy, that is. Especially when it's slow. It causes a big mess around it, and it turns people and things into messes, and then it's gone and all that's left is... well, you know.

Gwenaëlle counts backwards in her head, and then - more sharply, and without bothering to acknowledge anything Avery actually said to her in response,

"Do you want something?"

Both the food and the bandages have temporarily lost her interest, and she's sat back, frowning. There's very little about her to suggest that she might be inclined to entertain whatever it is Avery wants, but at least it would explain what's happening, probably.

This time, Avery actually looks over properly at the sharp tone and returns Gwenaëlle's frown. "Not really... I just decided to take a bit of a break, and you were sat by yourself."

That's what people do in these kinds of situations, right? Exchange some words? Try to be, like... nice to each other or whatever?

"Yes, I was."

And then a strange woman sat down and started talking to her about how Asher's death is a right mess and it would be difficult, at this point, for Gwenaëlle to look less welcoming or more unfriendly.

"As you don't require anything and I certainly have not asked anything of you, I can't quite understand why you are still here."

"Neither can I," Avery grumbles and rubs at her eyes. Ugh, this is why she doesn't like to do things like this! She only ever makes things worse. And yet sometimes she can't stop herself. "Just... being in this chair is shite. Especially when you're sat by yourself."

So maybe... having someone else sitting nearby could make it a little better? Even if it is the literal worst at this.

Edited 2016-08-14 06:40 (UTC)

Life is hard when the majority of servants milling about at any given time do not, in fact, answer to her; in general it means being more independent than she's entirely accustomed to, saving requests 'til they're something she needs instead of something she just wants, delegating to Guenievre what she doesn't know how to navigate herself with a staff under little real obligation to her. In this present moment, it means having the presence of mind to curb herself before she says more than the flat words she finally settles on;

"If you must sit here," she says, leaving the plate to cool slowly beside her, most of it untouched, as she picks up her task again, "then be silent. I'm not taking a break," flattening a bandage with short, sharp gestures, "nor am I here to entertain you."

At not having to talk anymore, Avery actually sighs with relief. "Thank the Maker. I'm not sure how much more I had left in me."

She sits back and shakes her head, ready to embrace some blessed silence.

"Feel free to give great consideration to leaving as an alternative," Gwenaëlle says, flatly, before resolving to give no further attention to the stranger.

Avery scoffs but says nothing. She's thick-skinned, sure, but boy does this cat have claws. Painted and pretty as they may be to hide their sharpness.

She sits still, for a while at least, watching the hustle and bustle of the healing tents, but eventually she starts to grow a bit restless. Working is basically all she's done since she got to Skyhold. Since long before that, really. So doing nothing doesn't sit with her well, and after a while she reaches for some of the bandages Gwenaëlle hasn't gotten to yet, to help with the rolling.

Without appearing to think about it, an impulse reaction that happens too quickly for Gwenaëlle to think better of, she smacks Avery's hand away as she reaches - more sudden than especially forceful. (A much smaller thing than she ever seems to notice she is without outside reminder, it's unlikely that she could put a particularly impressive amount of force behind anything, really.)

"If you need something to do," she says, evenly, "you can go and ask the healers what they need. It would be a waste of resources for a second person to perform one task when they might do another."

Also, she's still irritated about this is a right mess, isn't it.

The messiness is still true!

As for the smack, Avery pulls her hand back, looking surprised and a little incredulous. "Really?" she asks with only a mild amount of irritation. The claws thing was a metaphor, you know.

Edited 2016-08-14 08:20 (UTC)

"I don't think there was anything unclear about what I said."

She moves what she's currently working on the small distance required to put it out of Avery's easy reach and doesn't look at her as she says, "Of course, if your rudeness is simple ignorance, that can't be held against you. The healers are there," with exaggerated patience, "if you require instructions."

Gwenaëlle only ever mastered the 'backhand' part of the Orlesian backhanded compliment.

Yeah, compliments must work a little different in Denerim, because none of that is sounding like even part of one to Avery. And actually moving the bandages? Does it get more petty than that?

"Oh, I got it," she answers after a moment, slow and almost challenging. "But maybe I like this seat. Just want to stick around, really enjoy it for a while."

A long pause follows as Gwenaëlle orders her thoughts. Contemplates what she might say - that she is so tired, that she is terrified something will happen while she isn't there, that she couldn't stand to be away if she wasn't doing something useful with the time, that she just wanted to breathe air that didn't smell like death for a little while, that she doesn't understand what Avery wants or why she won't let her alone. What awful amusement she must be taking in picking at someone else's pain.

In the end -

she says none of it, which doesn't help any of the misunderstanding between them.

"Then have it," she says, rising, brushing her skirts off and picking up the bandages that she's already rolled and walking away, leaving the unrolled bandages for Avery to finish and the uneaten meal for her to clean up.

There are other tasks that can be done. She'll find one.

Avery practically jumps to her feet, panicked, though she doesn't move any closer to Gwenaëlle's retreating back.

"Wait! Please. I'll go. You don't have to."

She even takes a couple of steps away for emphasis, cringing horribly at herself. "I don't know why I said that, before." A sigh, and then she grinds out between her teeth, "Probably because I'm a fucking idiot... I just wanted to help, but clearly I didn't."

Edited 2016-08-14 18:53 (UTC)

Gwenaëlle only pauses a moment; does not turn around.

"I prefer to," she says, matter of fact. "Excuse me."

"...I'm sorry."

i tried to write your name in the rain

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