we all keep our sadness cupped safe in our hands ( semi - open )

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin + YOU?
WHAT: Settling into Hightown.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The new Vauquelin residence, Hightown.
NOTES: Open to anyone who'd have a reason to visit her at her home. Deliveries, pick ups, important conversations as need having.

Actually moving into her new townhouse is not as involved a process as it might be; Gwenaëlle's brought her bedroom with her, not the entirety of the Vauquelin household, so most of the interiors are what had belonged to the current owner the property is now being rented from, purchased on her behalf by the Duke before he left so that she can do as she pleases with them, replace or keep the pieces she likes at her leisure. She'd not been expecting it to be her own home in quite so literal a way, and in overseeing the airing out of the place and some rearrangements made, she finds she's not entirely -

She didn't want to rely on her grandfather, but she misses him. Maybe living together here would have been pleasant.

No sense in dwelling on it, though, when there's still a hundred things to be done - messages sent to her friends and acquaintances by runner to inform them of her new abode and ensure everyone who ought to have her address has it and will have no trouble locating her now that she's (finally) out of the Gallows. She leaves Yva to unpack her belongings, pens a request for Alistair to come at his convenience because she requires his assistance, spends a solid several hours sorting through her new library inventory to see if any of it is useful or if it's all just What This Merchant Thought Would Look Impressive On His Shelves - a selection of tomes are set aside to be donated to the Inquisition, she supposes someone from the research division might come and collect them or she'll have to have someone take them down. Her own books go up, and she has the remainder of what she certainly isn't keeping out boxed up to be delivered to her landlord's current address.

It is a very nice house, and she's more pleased with it than she isn't. Visitors will be shown to the walled courtyard, where she's spread a blanket on the grass and is settled there with her writing, reading glasses balanced on her nose, hair swept back in curls.

Comments

[inagutterson]

His lady has a home and so security is required to give a full and thorough inspection of the place. Yngvi knows these homes. Knows all the ways in and out of them, has seen the plans from bribing the folk that made them or keep them because how else do you get in and out (how else do you make sure some people pay protection even up here) so of course he says he'll go do it. He's got an in and the family nod approvingly.

They don't know that this is-- that this is closer to family than them, that if there's a vein to be opened then this is his lady as he smiles, straightens his coat to the servants and bows because his manners cost him nothing to the staff.

"M'lady," he greets after another little bow to her staff with names he'll need to get, clattering down and along with a nug peeping out of a pocket at this luxury. "Look at you, splendiferous." This is clearly the biggest word he knows, people are lying if they say he knows bigger. (He does, she would know that he does.) "Look at these fancy digs of yours, well nice, gave myself a bath before coming up here."

So, y'know, feel special.

[elegiaque]

"A bath! I'm honoured--" which might not even be entirely a joke, just dressed up as one; she hadn't warned the servants yet about Thranduil, but Yngvi they expected, and are obligated to let in even if he hadn't bathed, because Gwenaëlle simply will not hear of him not being given the run of her home. Even if he is a wretched little traitor who likes the wrong Templars.

Family is the people you still love even when they're being excessively stupid and thoroughly wrong in their opinions and judgment. (Wren is right about one thing: so long as Gwenaëlle Vauquelin has a home and a line of credit, Yngvi will always have somewhere to go for a roof and a meal in a bind.)

"You like it?" Of the house. "I feel as if I'm nesting, I want to change so much. But it's beautiful. Grandfather was called back to Orlais, so it's only myself, for now, though he's taking care of my expenses."

[inagutterson]

"Calm down, it was just a bucket and an old shirt." Few are the people he'll make an attempt to look presentable for so he can even get his fingers all the way through his hair today for the first time in about three months, give or take. Dislodged a few fingerbones, can't even say they all came from the clean-up work at the Gallows either, he's not entirely sure what he was doing or up to in the past. Wouldn't want to go leaving those in the parlour when she's got enough under her house as is. Maybe in the walls. It's Kirkwall, likely that she already knows about the sort of history of building work that goes on everywhere in the city.

At least there's an easier address for Aura to write to now since everything is probably going to come care of Yngvi to send off; Asher dies and Yngvi realises how big it all is, how colossal and overwhelming the face of people who would care if he disappeared similarly for good happens to be.

"'m expecting an egg? Better not be a goose, them things have teeth." Better not be expecting period or he will summon the Boneflayers and Emeric won't need to lift a finger: if something untoward has happened and it's name is Thranduil without Thranduil saying a token word to Yngvi as is only right, Kirkwall won't be thirsty long. "Shit, your grandfather was meant to pay me for a job y'know, but swimming in work, drowning, as it so happens. Gonna get lost in this house without a thorough inspection. Has Har-- has Mr. Growing-into-his-Paws got his own room too?"

You heard nothing. You heard everything.

[elegiaque]

Mr Growing Into His Paws heard the aborted beginning of his name; he lumbers up from where he's been sprawled in the grass not far from his mistress, ambling towards them with the placidity of an animal who has previously vetted the strange, small thing that sometimes appears making wild noises and found him tolerable, even a compatriot in minding their lady's door.

Gwenaëlle softens a little around the edges, the way sad things do, but she smiles.

"He sleeps with me, the same as ever. I have the master bedroom, and Morrigan's son will have a room beside me, and then Thranduil will have one as well. I thought I should have someone with a sword in the house, you understand."

(She isn't expecting this to be a contentious issue.)

[inagutterson]

A dwarf remembers the less awful days (and the very awful days he won't put names to) of teaching a dog how to do in the absence of the dog and man who should've taught a dog to do. The nug peering out stares, used to many dogs around and less afraid with Yngvi being right there as he fishes out some sort of treat. Gotta keep these things that could eat him buttered up so they know they've got it good after all, doesn't want to come ambling in and be drowned in slobber the way he's put money on one Mal Reynolds going. (It's worth the money, Jayne is fat.)

"Witchy woman's boy, tripped over him trying not to trip over her," Yngvi avoids witchy people on principle as one probably should when they have the ability to offend so stunningly as he does. But his face does a grand sort of twitch like he's having a seizure or a stroke, snapping round hard enough that a few joints go popping because guess what, Yngvi doesn't sleep hugely well at the moment so he suffers for it and that's too much fast movement this early on in his day before he's gotten his body going. She was right, he thinks first followed swiftly by, oh no she's right about the Gigi thing too isn't she, it's not slander to bamboozle a drunk dwarf waylaid by dream talk.

"Why," he asks as casually as he can by drawing the word out as long as possible which for Yngvi with his talent for circular breathing is a bloody long time even if it climbs quite high by the end, "is that tall elf staying in this house. With you. And a boy. And some servants. And a dog."

Dog we need to get into some serious lessons about the things you have to bite on the tall elf and all the things of his you have to pee on immediately, look into his eyes and take that memo right now.

[elegiaque]

All of the rest disappears in the face of Yngvi's very apparent antipathy toward the idea of big-elf-in-residence, and another day, Gwenaëlle might respond differently, but this day while he has slid back into her good books in the inevitable way of small things rolling down a soft slope: she hasn't forgotten 'Wren this' and 'Wren that' and there is a moment that her eyebrow rises slowly and she leans back and she is every inch the Orlesian lady by whom he has been, in the past, rather awestruck.

If he were someone else, she might ask him what the fuck business it is of his and who the fuck exactly he is to question her - a response she will doubtless have opportunity to use on others dubious about Thranduil's presence - but he's still her Yngvi, so that coolly leveled look is the worst of it.

"Because I have asked him to," she says, in a tone that brooks none of the opposition she's suddenly anticipating he will provide regardless.

[inagutterson]

Look. So Yngvi isn't very good at this whole knowing how ladies do the courting thing unless he's been playing a part in making sure it goes very wrong so he's not an expert and when has he ever done more than tumble into bed with a willing person? But-- but Asher died and she really cared about Asher and Asher really really cared about her. (Loved, but that's a scary sort of word for how easy to say and spell it is.) And then there was Lex who was from her and things looked all good then he just vanished off somewhere in a way Yngvi didn't think he would because he was a man who followed through, yes, all madcap schemes and things but still. And he thinks she was sad. Yngvi was busy being sad because Asher was dead then Bronson died and Yngvi was alone and it was a lot.

Thranduil doesn't even come from here so what happens if he just goes away? What if Yngvi isn't big enough to be helpful like he tries to be and said he would be? Or if people get pissed off because she's not just got an elf around but he's a weird elf from a weird place and people in Kirkwall are people in Kirkwall and the world is mad--

Oh. Oh he's wheezing. Time to cough like he swallowed some small screws or parts in his sleep, some people don't need to see all of that nonsense. Then when he's not just so red in the face he rolls himself over so he's lying with his face on his folded arms to look about as charming as a clean-as-he'll-ever-get urchin can look.

"M'lady," he tries with his 'I have fucked up and I am unsure in what way exactly I have fucked up but this isn't really unusual for me except that it's you I don't think I've fucked up with you before', "y'know I love you. I just. Know Kirkwall. A lot. S'not a nice place even up here. I know up here." And if something happened to you and everyone in here I would probably die.

[elegiaque]

Asher, Alexander - Sabine - Annegret, Guenievre. Always people leaving, being lost; the worst is that in time, she's learned to reserve the worst bitterness for herself. For not learning. For thinking anything else will happen -

She isn't being brave. She isn't sure, somehow, that Thranduil will stay where others have not; she doesn't believe, even, that he wishes to when this world is not his own and inhospitable to him at best. She willfully ignores that she reaches out; she has a hundred rational explanations for her decisions that are clever and reasonable and do not sound a bit like my hands are so empty without hands to hold.

Yngvi says you know I love you and she can't be cold to him in the face of that--

"I don't," she says, frankly. "I don't know Kirkwall. I know that I don't wish to be alone in any part of it. I know that I don't wish to hire my safety out to mercenaries I don't know, and I know that there are few in the Inquisition on whom I can reasonably prevail to relocate themselves."

And Thranduil is one.

[inagutterson]

The less said about that time outside her door the better, who would've thought that writing a letter to Aura Hardie could ever cause him to feel as if he were committing a great betrayal even when coming from a good place. Yngvi at least isn't stupid enough to have ever confused good and right.

Yngvi could say a hundred things and a hundred more if here were horrible but to her he's not even if it might be the right thing to say just now. About just how bad it was and is and might be, that Orlais has real rules out on the table and on faces, all pomp and circumstance, but Kirkwall is too feral for any of that, just as likely to kiss your hand and bite you for the exact same thing. He could tell her about growing up in the dark, growing up so hungry that sometimes he thought there was something inside him screaming, trying to claw its way out, why is there a hunger demon in the first place when hunger is just a demon without the Fade getting involved?

Instead he says, flops onto his back, folds his arms under his head and furrows his brow. "We'd all come if you needed, that's not even a question so don't worry abot that if it ever comes to it. This place is...it's just like I remember it but not? I don't know. It's like when you hold two pages up to the light on top of one another," he's talking about forgery here because of course he is, what else would Yngvi be talking about, "but they don't overlap right now. They should, not that much changed that actually mattered only the surface bits, window dressing. Orlais is still Orlais even when they've got a passion for feathers and quills instead of silks yeah?"

Do you get him? That it's just not sitting right? He's not helping, he's very aware that he's not helping, there's the distinct feeling of being plunged into cold water right now, wanting to struggle to the surface-- He's supposed to help her and make sure she's safe, that's all he wants to do and right now Yngvi's making a proper arse of it.