faderift | open | run and hide, your head's on fire

She’s already passed the request (a meeting, a personal matter only, if she might find the time?) over the crystals.

"Lady Vauquelin,"

There’s no uniform now, just politely folded hands, a head tipped in question. She trusts they both know her previous proposition to be moot; there’s no need to discuss it. Had there ever been interest, any actionability ended with Gwen's last editorial.

They’ll dredge some university scholar for the task, and that will be half a scandal in itself — a more tolerable kind. More easily sold.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me."

Edited 2017-03-26 01:58 (UTC)

It hadn't occurred to her, at the time - it had been rather far from her mind when that piece had gone to publication. Nevertheless, the oversight is not an inability to grasp: Wren's voice had reminded her, and then, oh. Well, that's that, then. Perhaps it's for the best, she thinks, that she not entangle herself in Chantry politics. At least not so directly; aren't they all on tenterhooks seeing which way the wind ends up blowing, now?

Set it aside. Now, instead, she folds her hands in her lap as Yva (her third maidservant, now - a human girl, this time) steps out of the chamber and closes the door softly behind herself, wonders what personal matter of Ser Coupe's could possibly require her attention.

"Of course," she says, head tilted. "I'm at your disposal, Ser, what is it I can do for you?"

Gwenaëlle looks so much softer here, without that harrowed, topiary fierceness. Call it a trick of the light, lest she forget: that briars needn't be shaped to bite.

A maid this time, and human. Not so unusual, but perhaps something to ask after later. Eyebrows lifted in question (may I?), Wren moves to sit.

"I wished to ask your impressions of Skyhold's security. I have had... little occasion to entertain the perspective of your position."

Wren has lived too long with the expectation of violence to know what it is to not know it. To find it surprising, aberrant. A hypothetical, or a fear, or even a fantasy — and most, far removed from the meat of it.

"But as the Inquisition’s dealings grow, my ignorance seems an oversight."

Her ignorance, sure. That's what all this is about. It's flimsy cover, but there's truth within. Wren is not noble, she is no civilian, and she will be asked to stand before those that are both.

Edited 2017-03-26 09:09 (UTC)

A tilt of her head is all the permission Wren needs; Gwenaëlle's quarters are close in comparison to what she must enjoy in her own home, but they have many of those home comforts. The seating by her fireside is plush, and the room itself an oasis of Orlais in miniature, arranged about her. A sewing basket by her armchair, a writing desk in the far corner, a low table cleared of the afternoon's debris and holding only a few papers.

(The scent of wine hangs in the air, though, from which Wren can draw her own conclusions.)

There are a few out-of-place notes; a Chasind figure of a cat on her mantel, a framed sketch of a mabari (of Cullen Rutherford's mabari, specifically, though she mightn't be familiar enough to know it), a bearskin (head and all) draped over the chaise Wren sits upon. Hints of what might be called a certain flexibility of philosophy by some observers; Gwenaëlle is every inch gently-bred, from the top of her hair (swept back with a moonstone-encrusted comb in a curious geometric pattern) to the tips of her toes (bare and tucked slightly under her skirts to hide), but even now and even without the sharpened edges of a world that won't be, she is more complicated than she entirely likes to appear.

"My impressions of its security," she repeats, contemplating for a moment the hound quietly alert at her feet. (Young, still; full grown or near enough to, now, but lacking something of the stateliness he'd attained in Ortan Thaig.) She isn't quite wary, yet, but there's a reserve-- "In what respect?"

It would be desperately inappropriate to pat the bear's head, to maybe scratch its ears just a little. Alas.

"We have armed ourselves against broader threats," If the Inquisition's unprepared to face Corypheus, it's still the guiding purpose of their work. The Venatori could fly another damn dragon up the mountain, and it would be a surprise — but not a shock. "Thick walls, training drills, measures purposed to war."

"I worry that we risk a singular vision, and by doing, overlook the smaller dangers. Several emissaries keep private guards in tow."

A glance to Hardie, from the corner of her eye.

Get her out of here; Bellamy's voice. Alexander's arms around her as he dragged her away, her hands slick with blood as she doubled over to fight his grip--

"I have every faith in the Inquisition's forces," she says, neutrally, her hand only half-hidden by her skirts when it fists to betray the awful taste of the lie that lingers in the words. There were no thick walls on that Orlesian road. Every time she gets in a fucking carriage, someone dies -

Hardie whines, and she knows he hears the edge in her voice. She makes herself easier.

"He was a gift," she says, in an attempt at something more upbeat. "From someone who felt I might do with one of those." Private guards.

Fingers curl, her words hedge. Not so distant — not so practiced at it either. Gwen reaches for her skirts and not her hound, even as she minds him; a reflex that must be older than the beast. Poorly-hidden for it.

"I do not." Calmly. Wren regards her, expression still. She does not have faith. Nor, I think, does your someone.

"He is a fine creature." And he will not be enough. Dogs die, too. Perhaps not a thought to voice aloud. "Why did they believe you'd need of him?"

"We live in very uncertain times," she says, wanting it to be enough, suspicious in a sinking way that it won't be, and that this is going somewhere she won't like. It's already somewhere she doesn't like, uneasy with the topic and with what she can possibly be expected to contribute on it. "I've been - very lucky, of course."

(The second arrow jutting horrifically from the wreckage of Guenievre's throat, her eyes sightless to the sky, her grip falling away from where she'd taken Gwenaëlle's arm and hauled her unceremoniously toward the treeline, her last words unremarkable, unremembered. Further back, the smell of her own flesh burning, the agony of jostled wounds on that first trip up the Frostbacks--

and Gwenaëlle is lucky.)

"But I'm ill-suited to this sort of thing. Obviously."

"Are you?"

Lucky. Ill-suited. It’s as plain that Gwen doesn’t want to speak of this as it is increasingly apparent that they must.

Her possessions speak to scattered interests, too mismatched to be the likely product of personal acquisitiveness. Others, pressing forth the things they love in a transitive affection. She surrounds herself in them. So many little guards.

The girl owns protectors. It’s a fortune that only extends so far.

"Why is that?"

Edited (i can punctuation) 2017-03-26 10:49 (UTC)

Gwenaëlle looks down at Hardie, rising slowly to sit on his haunches, thudding his tail encouragingly against the thick rug. It's hard not to remember the short, sharp way she'd lashed out at Thranduil that day he'd first spoken of him; how he'd told her she must learn to protect herself. How he'd coaxed her back from the ledge, pressed Hardie into her hands. To reassure him of her safety, giving her this little thing that loves her, now--

Bigger, now.

But Hardie is not going to protect her from a demon and she knows it.

"I don't have my father's aptitude for violence," she says, quietly. She used to like to watch-- even in the past year, when she first came here, she used to watch the warriors at training.

She hasn't, not for weeks. Months. She doesn't examine why not. She doesn't care to.

An aptitude. That’s one way to describe a well-publicized habit of brawling. She doubts it is all the comment intends.

Wren knows little of the wound, cannot guess its shape, its depth — but she has seen the curled edges of the scar. Enough to know its presence. A hand needn’t be turned against you to harm.

My father failed me every day of his life,

"That is not violence," Her voice lowers, head tips. "It is destruction."

Another sort of aptitude, and given far greater means.

"Your dog is not," Gently: "He is anything but."

Five years hence, Gwenaëlle had wanted Emeric's bravery remembered. Today -

He has a scar on his shoulder, misshapen from both the wound that caused it and his daughter's inexpert tending, muttering viciously under her breath as she'd stitched him up with needle and thread out of the same sewing basket that sits so innocuously beside her now. His muffled complaints, her furious exasperation, a further bottle of brandy between them to dull it all. No such anesthesia when she'd watched you did this lodge between his ribs, drain the colour from his face; no satisfaction in it, either.

Instead, an emptiness she hasn't known how to fill, the loneliness of a grief she is too accustomed to bearing alone to know how it is she could reach out to those who might ease the burden. He grieves, too. It doesn't matter.

"His name is Hardie," she says, and is there anything left here that doesn't ache.

"A good name." They never named the farm dogs, never let them linger inside past the winter months. She understood it even then, but she had envied, too. "A strong one."

The slightest gesture to Hardie. It might do the girl good to lay fingers into fur, if she'll have it.

"He needs you now."

If she won't, well,

"His namesake died before you came here," she says, letting the animal lay his head in her lap, sliding her fingers behind his ears, resting against his neck. It isn't a dispute of the strength of the name - she misses Asher suddenly and fiercely, and not only because he wouldn't have suffered anyone to speak to her any way she didn't like.

"Asher Hardie. The Boneflayers were his, before, if you've met Yngvi."

(Gwenaëlle is very good at finding ways to not be talking about herself any more.)

"It was a wound that never healed correctly," with a slightly dreamy quality, just enough to be slightly uncomfortable. "He lived with it a while, I think, and then he couldn't any more. I think it must be particularly difficult for warriors to die that way. In a bed, slowly."

Ah.

She thinks of Yngvi’s pause — of how he’d started again, in earnest. Yngvi is not Gwenaëlle, though they’ve more of each other’s ways than first glances might sketch. This unhappy bit of redirection, for one.

"I am told that he threw a goat." So. Yes. She’s met.

Were Gwen anyone else, were the purpose for this meeting any less pressing, Wren knows that she’d let herself drift with it. No death is easy. But to feel the strength wax from you, slip from your grasp. To lose control, then reason, then finally pain,

A small tension in her shoulders, a silent little betrayal. But this isn’t Wren's hurt to mull over, and she doesn’t intend to be sidetracked of it. If Gwen’s given it as any kind of blade, it is a double-edged one.

No. This is a loss. Loss needs to be heard, she will not shrink from it merely because the discomfort has grown mutual.

"You were with him," An assumption, and a question. Gwen speaks with a detachment peculiar enough to be either imagination, or memory. "At the end."

Guenievre at Asher's bedside, wielding a straight razor with steadier hands than Gwenaëlle imagines she's ever had herself; how grateful he'd been for such a simple thing as tidying his beard before he went. How soft around the eyes her mother had been, how she'd known when to withdraw, when to press that Gwenaëlle must sleep--

She doesn't remember, never saw, those same lines tighten when Morrigan caught her and her griefs in her arms; how she'd buried her face in the witch's shoulder and let herself be held, Guenievre's hands still in the healing tents busywork that she'd found to occupy them.

A hundred little losses, accumulating.

"I was," straightening slightly, her fingers flexing - she makes her hand relax, scratches Hardie under the chin. "I, yes. I know how to do that." It isn't a pleasant thing to know, but she'd borne up as well as anyone could be expected to. She'd been someone at Asher's side he hadn't needed to comfort; someone who knew the indignity of the quiet death, who wasn't shocked and betrayed by it the way his battlefield friends struggled with it. It had been important to be that - it had felt important, but: he had wanted her there, so she was, smaller and softer hand underneath his as his strength inevitably failed him.

Asher, Guenievre, Annegret; all she ever seems to do for the people she loves is watch them die.

Memory, then. I know how to do that.

Memory, and not the first time. Wren nods, considers her hands a moment (the slight space she can grant) before glancing up once more.

"It is knowing what to do after," Slowly, "That should be easier."

How rarely is that so: The world shifted around you at a strange and personal axis (going), right as you'd adjusted to its new tilt (gone).

"It isn't, is it?"

Edited 2017-03-27 02:30 (UTC)

"No one," very quietly, very carefully, and very deliberately -

an echo not of the Spire but of Gervais lamplit in Ortan Thaig, the banked fire of old hurts making for him some of the decisions on how hard he meant to plant his feet -

"No one cares what I think of Inquisition security. In Skyhold."

Gwenaëlle does not believe that Wren Coupe suddenly does. That she's who she'd ask, if that's what she wanted. It sounds to her as if she's already made her mind up to have a particular opinion on the subject, regardless--

Without inflection, "What do you want." Actually. Because if it's talk about feelings, she can fuck off--

Here we go.

A smothered bit of reflex: the urge to rise into it, to meet challenge headlong. Wren's walls are not so very thin here, and she's less biddable for it. What advantage Gwenaëlle owns of her uncle's context, she lacks in age, in familiarity, in the comparatively uncomplicated fact of her survival.

Instead, with a tedious calm,

"Your safety. Your security." She says it as though it isn’t an unreasonable suggestion. Perhaps it isn’t — might not be, to another. From another, and not the near-stranger she is. "And your hand in it."

Perhaps probing for a half hour into one’s more painful life experiences isn’t, you know, a great way to sell that scheme anyway.

Her hands curl -

Not together. One hand curls around the other; her unblemished hand protective over the fist that bears the anchor-shard and its spectacularly useless shield. It's been months since the last time she practised with it, with Alistair; they'd returned after her trip to her home and she simply hadn't done it any more, and no one had pushed her. Solas gone, Alistair with a thousand other things to do, Thranduil unable to convince her to listen to him at all and most others unaware that she'd ever been doing it in the first place, there had been no one to do the pushing.

It is a quiet fury, but it is a fury.

"I have every faith," she repeats, ignoring the part of her that knows it isn't true, "in the Inquisition's ability to protect those under its protection."

"Faith is not enough." Quiet still, but firm. "As the Lady Trevelyan has shown us."

As your Boneflayer did. Her own fingers untwine to spread flat, palms settled open upon her knees. The mark,

One reason not to reach for a beloved pet. Not with a weapon in hand.

"Faith is nothing without action."

"I'm not a warrior." Flatly said, finding the edges - the space where she digs her heels in, where she's brittle over something ugly and desperate and afraid. She hasn't had five years of necessity, she's had in its place a lifetime of cosseting followed by a brutal and unasked for education in how little her title might mean in the space of a breath, noble blood spilling as readily as anyone else's--

It's illogical, maybe, to be afraid that if she can protect herself then she'll have to. She might have to, regardless, and wouldn't it be better if she could?

Yes, sense says.

No, her gut screams, clenching, sickening with it.

"I've never pretended to be."

And she doesn't have any faith, either, not in anything, really, so who gives a fuck what it is or isn't?

Impassive: "War does not care."

And neither do lone assassins — probably —

"It did not in Halamshiral. It shall not here." All the dead of the Palace that she’d named, "The world does not need warriors. It needs survivors."

Someone left, to hold the hands. To see the story told. To remember.

"I don't care what it needs," she says, folding her arms and sitting back in her seat in a way that's a younger in mannerism than twenty-three really ought to be, equal parts pampered and stifled, too many lessons learned too well on how to survive the life she already had. "It's taken plenty already."

People give up on her constantly; all she has to do is find the thing to say to make Coupe do it as well.

"And if you allow it, it will take your life."

This is like speaking to a child, but that’s not entirely a surprise. There’s a reason that they call it the Game; even as the stakes grow, the players so seldom seem to. Not to an outsider's view.

"As it has taken your blood."

She doesn’t know about Guinevere. No possible way to know.

open | run and hide, your head's on fire

GWEN

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