Is No An Emotion (closed to Gwenaëlle)

[toujoursdroit]

WHO: Romain de Cocucy and Gwenaëlle Vauquelin
WHAT: Family time
WHEN: late Cloudreach (after the very last boat)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: None to start

Romain has, very deliberately, given his granddaughter some space. He did not chastise her after her very alarming (and very public) incident on the ramparts; he has not insisted that they travel to Kirkwall together. She might even have gone so far as to wonder if he would follow her there at all, as his ties to the Inquisition thus far have been mainly "giving them money so no one makes him leave."

And yet, here he is, eyeing the Gallows in the way he has (outwardly unjudgmental but with a definite judgmental undertone). It will not do for long, but he feels it important to demonstrate cooperation for now. He's not going to be done with the Inquisition as long as a shard remains in his grandchild's hand, and as long as he's there, he doesn't not find it useful to needlessly alienate people by acting aggressively superior and refusing to do what he can.

That said. It's time he checked in on Gwenaëlle, whose reaction to the new accommodations he's fairly certain he can guess in advance.

Comments

[elegiaque]

The most obvious detail, first, when Gwenaëlle's maid shows him into the spacious room she now shares with her mistress, is that nothing has been unpacked. Given that in all other ways Yva appears to have attended her duties and certainly none of what was sent with Gwenaëlle is missing - it is like as not that this is the decision of the young lady herself, and not some manner of oversight. None of the furniture that she's brought with her, besides her bed, has been arranged; her own and one of the existing beds have been neatly made, Gwenaëlle giving enough to allow that her bear skin has been produced to drape over the end of hers.

The rest is awkwardly shoved into one side of the room, still strapped up and covered with sheets. She sits on the end of her bed, sifting through some of her writing things -

Her lips press together when she sees her grandfather, but she couldn't avoid him forever. Try as she might've done. (She much prefers it when they see each other more rarely - she suspects she's much more likable in small doses. His daughter certainly seemed to prefer her that way.)

"...hello."

[toujoursdroit]

"Good day. I suppose I needn't ask how you're settling in." It's transparently self-evident: She isn't.

Romain comes in a little farther, but doesn't move to sit uninvited. "How was the journey, then?" He'll start with pleasantries, since she's imposed such distance. He could force a franker conversation right away, but he wouldn't prefer it. Despite the impression he sometimes gives, he does in fact care what some people think of him. (Family.)

[elegiaque]

Yva glances between Gwenaëlle and Romain and murmurs her withdrawal; Gwenaëlle permits it with barely a following look, her attention rather more on her grandfather than her maidservant. It isn't that she isn't glad of him, exactly, just - that it's complicated, and he makes her feel like a child again, and she's done so much and seen so much in the past year that she isn't entirely sure she can adequately explain it.

A part of her resents the expectation that she will, hanging over her as it does even as he hasn't asked. Another is too acutely aware that she grieves a mother now that was not his daughter--

He would love her less, she thinks. It was easier to ignore that when she saw him less.

"I didn't care for it," she says, when the door closes behind Yva. "I hate to travel by sea."

[toujoursdroit]

Romain softens very slightly, as he usually does when they're alone. He loves his grandsons, but Gwenaëlle has always been transparently his favorite, even as she's grown up and away from him.

"It does have its shortcomings," he allows of sea travel. "As does Kirkwall. Though I'm going to take proper accommodations as soon as it's politically wise, you needn't fear you will be here in particular over-long."

It's meant as reassurance; of course she will have a place with him. Another man might have asked if she wanted one.

[elegiaque]

It doesn't escape her, either; there's a restlessness under her skin that doesn't let her forget that if she wrote to her father and asked him to find her a place she could have for her own, he would do it all the more gladly for knowing it would take her out from beneath his father-in-law's roof. She isn't sure which she prefers; damned if she does, if she doesn't.

She has missed him. On the other hand--

There's a lot.

"I don't understand why it is I have to be here at all," she complains, and falsely; she understands perfectly well. She doesn't want to understand, because she wants an exception made, and it won't be.

[toujoursdroit]

He considers that, a moment, and correctly parses that it isn't that no one has explained; it's that it's unfair she has to be here in the first place. She isn't wrong, but then again, Romain has long discarded the illusion that life is generally fair. Spoiling her is in spite of this truth, not because he has forgotten.

Instead of saying any of that, however, he comes to sit on the other made bed, giving her space physically but signaling he does not intend to be sent away immediately.

"I heard about the incident with the Grey Warden," he says, after a moment, so mild. It's not the non-sequitur it might be.

[elegiaque]

Her gaze drops.

"Yes."

Everyone heard about that, she thinks. It was not her most glorious moment, and she doesn't care for the reminder - nor the reminder of what else goes with it. How much she can no longer feasibly avoid. How much is no longer her decision.

As if any of this has been.

"He's well."

[toujoursdroit]

"I expect I would have heard were he otherwise." Which sounds nicer than Fine, but I don't really care. "I expect you must have given yourself quite a turn."

Considering.

[elegiaque]

"I certainly wasn't expecting it." She hadn't been happy about trying the shield again- to have developed another power had come as a nasty shock even before she'd realised how badly awry it had gone with Alistair. And his big meat head.

A moment later, "The Templar. Ser Coupe. She's to train me to manage it. To defend myself."

If he thinks she sounds unenthused, he's not wrong.

[toujoursdroit]

While he is not overly enthused with Templars, they are at least usually competent at martial subjects. "I don't know that we've met. Isn't she the one they wrote that song about?" He is not actually expecting an answer to that one. To the second question, however: "How is she, as a teacher?"

[elegiaque]

"I don't know." That could be the song or the teaching-- "We haven't exactly started."

She fidgets with her spectacles - gold-rimmed, hanging from a chain at her waist whenever she isn't immediately in need of them, a familiar thing to turn over in her hands when there's more she might say, and won't. If she'd asked him weeks ago, he might have been able to prevent it; now, it might be more than even her grandfather's influence could command, now that to leave her untrained risks more than only herself.

It's unfair.

Everything's fucking unfair.

[toujoursdroit]

"Gwenaëlle." For all Romain is never truly gentle, it's quieter. "Perhaps I should have come sooner, at that." Before the Winter Palace, he had perhaps not taken the Inquisition as seriously as he might, but what truly worries him is the distance she has strictly maintained since his arrival. Because of her father, they had never been truly close, but she'd always been affectionate, blooming under his propensity to spoil her.

He had not truly expected to find her so changed, beyond the inconvenience of the anchor shard. He wonders, now, if he's given her more space than he should.

[elegiaque]

It's been hard - harder than she knows how to tell, even when this once much of it is likely not outside of his understanding. If it feels selfish to cling to him when she isn't, truly, what he thinks, that isn't the most of what has kept her shut up like a fan. She's thrived, she's grown, she's come through so much, and it had felt like risking a backwards step; to be only a little thing who runs to her grandfather when something doesn't go her way.

Her lips press together, but she tries a smile; it wobbles, a little.

"I'm twenty-three, now, bon-papa," she says, quietly. "I'm to solve my own problems."

[toujoursdroit]

"I do realize you have reached adulthood." Debatable. "But that does not mean you are suddenly forbidden from reaching for the resources available to you, familial support among the rest."

Romain tilts his head, as if a modified angle could help him see through her walls.

"A great deal has been asked of you, you needn't shoulder the entire burden yourself." to make a point he doesn't add, but it's clear that he suspects that might be at least part of the cause. It's not as if he lacks experience with young women wishing to do things in their own way.

[elegiaque]

Familial makes her lips twist, but it could so easily be the whole of the phrase, the whole of her stubbornness; a little thing determined to be wholly her own. Quiet and sullen and with set jaw, she is less Allegra than she is Anne, never wishing to be told, never wishing to let anyone else's hands touch what she could do herself -

It might not please any of them to hear.

"I have it well enough in hand. I need to pull together something for publication, again, I suppose after we go to Kirkwall. See if the Marches are any more inclined to listen to me than Orlais."

Yes. Speaking of.

[toujoursdroit]

He doesn't observe aloud that she is, in the moment, very much Anne's daughter. He may not need to. Either way, it certainly does not escape him.

Instead, of her last comment: "Did you imagine there was no effect at all, in the latter audience, or simply not the one you'd hoped for?" Perhaps for once, he's not arch. Even if her methods are not the ones he'd have suggested ... he does not believe (all) her points are so far wrong.

And he does not believe everyone in Orlais was so caught up in the civil war as to ignore the rest of the world completely, for all that it would be easy to miss at a remove.

[elegiaque]

"I haven't been assassinated yet, so I got what I hoped for."

It's droll, but - not insincere, really, when Gwenaëlle had written that piece in a towering rage, expecting little but the backlash. There was not a group in Orlais that she anticipated receiving her words well or warmly, and that she's not faced worse consequences for what she wrote. For all the high-minded words she capped it off with, she had wanted nothing more than that night to end with Celene's death, and it hadn't, and what the fuck was any of it worth if it didn't?

Her shrug is brittle.

"I don't know that I have anything else to say. We shall see."

[toujoursdroit]

"I suppose we shall." Finally, he thinks they've arrived at a point where bluntness might serve best. "So. Have, you been avoiding me because you do not wish my company, or because you feared I would sweep in and meddle with the problems you would prefer to manage yourself?"

[elegiaque]

'Both' is the answer that comes most swiftly to mind - he is a born meddler, too, whatever pious things he thinks of himself - but it isn't the whole answer. And the whole answer is...nothing she can give, so she sits back, a moment, tries to order her thoughts into something palatable. Something she can share. Use.

"It's been some time," she says, eventually. "And I've been accustomed to being..."

On her own? No, not quite.

"You're so much Orlais, bon-papa," she says, finally, a little bit wry, a little bit bitter. She's grown used to how far away it is, and he's brought it so much nearer. She didn't ask for that.

[toujoursdroit]

"Guilty as charged, I suppose. I didn't think it would be so very unwelcome." His look is evaluating, not hurt -- never that -- but still, she does really seem to have given him pause.

"Would you have me go then? Truly." They both know he is very unlikely to take his fingers out of the Inquisition pie entirely; she really isn't the only reason he's there, after all. But there is much he can do in the field, or even back home. He doesn't wish her abandoned, but she is his favorite, and as such she is one of the few people who can sway his mind by simply asking.

[elegiaque]

"Not you," she sighs, a bit grudgingly. "I just didn't - expect you, I wasn't prepared."

Gwenaëlle being unprepared is not exactly unfamiliar. Particularly in the context of there being altogether too much Orlais to deal with.

She hesitates for a moment, and then, remarkably frankly, "I don't care for Kirkwall and I don't like being chained to the Inquisition, but I don't miss Orlais, either."

[toujoursdroit]

"Even I cannot say it has been at its best, of late." Which, coming from the duke, is something to hear. "It is clear that you will not be free of the nonsense associated with your shard as soon as any of us would like, so I suppose at least 'homesickness' is one less thing to worry about."

Under the circumstances.

"I am rather too Orlais for much of the Inquisition, I suspect, so at least you are not alone in your assessment."