faderift | by arrangement; what no one ever talks about is how dangerous hope can be

When one is busy and another preoccupied it makes for little opportunity for meeting, speaking. Normally it is Adelaide that works and Benevenuta that also works, but not quite at the same hours or with the same strict vigilance in the same way. It made making time before simpler but now?

Now they are both quite busy and preoccupied at the same time and it's made even their occasional meetings of wine and discussion difficult if not impossible to make.

Letters seemed impersonal, Sending crystals- likewise, impersonal, and thus Adelaide came to Benevenuta during a brief moment of free time, bottle of wine and two glasses in hand. If Benny had turned her down she'd have simply gone up to Dorian. He always made time for wine. "I am glad to hear it. You've been working long hours- and from me? That is saying something."

"There is much to do," she says, smiling, stepping aside that Adelaide might join her - Husband sprawled before the fireside, her work on her desk and her bed still neatly made at even this late hour. Her hair is down, at least, but that seems to have been her only concession; probable that had there not come an interruption, she'd have continued burning down her candles.

A little sigh. "We must capitalise on our successes, I think. We do well enough."

But it could be better.

"That is an understatement." More mages and apprentices slip in day by day and arrangements must be made. Space prepared, lessons organized, mentors found. Adelaide uncorks the bottle of wine to pour Benuta a glass before pouring one for herself.

"We are gaining ground, I think. More come to the council with their concerns and we are addressing them little by little."

"For that, we can do nothing better than just as we've said we will," she says, shrewdly, taking the glass with a tilt of her head in thanks as she sits back. "What we must have now is consistency. Our actions must match our words, and we needn't be shouting them."

They're better not to, she thinks. Trumpeting their great works will breed resentment where simply doing the job -

"Let ourselves be taken for granted, a little," after a moment. "It is less counter-intuitive than it sounds."

"To be taken for granted is to be trusted to do what we have sworn to be done. It means we have made ourselves reliable." Counter-intuitive as it might sound- it does make some manner of sense.

"I'd like to prove we can do that."

She doesn't always believe it - the council is a bag of cats on a good day, pulling in different directions for all that ostensibly, at the end of the day, they work toward the same things. Only ostensibly, if they're all honest. They should want the same things, but they don't; grapple with one another trying to drag out compromises that come close. It's tiring. She's tired.

A lot of things are tiring, currently, and she pulls a face - she's in no mood to analyse it all right now.

"But not tonight."

Edited 2016-05-15 08:58 (UTC)

"No, not tonight. Tonight? Drinking and talking about things other than work...like the knife you took back some time ago and how terribly tense you were for about a month." Overly formal, stilted, preoccupied. The depth of it and details were beyond her but- it does not take much to guess that something had been bothering her.

The question? Is what.

Whatever it is it has resolved itself, obviously. But something had been odd.

"I've since replaced it," she says, with a brief gesture towards the set of shelves; beside the unsettlingly magic skull there is an excellently made blade that is almost the twin to the one she'd originally loaned to Adelaide and then been obliged to very hurriedly reclaim. "If you wished to borrow another."

Benevenuta is not that oblivious to what she's truly being asked. What she is is not interested in discussing it, that much is plain; that she brushes it aside so easily seems almost habitual. There is no part of herself she can't sequester if need be.

"Which begs the question as to what happened to the original you needed so suddenly." Adelaide sits back in her chair, eyes faintly narrowed but smile plain. It is not often she has much cause to dig with Benevenuta- oh there is much they likely do not discuss but...it works better that way. That they do not pry, that they work alongside one another.

But she had been concerned. "Benoit. What happened?"

"The knife was not mine." Her voice is mild as a lamb, her small mirroring smile a polite and pretty thing that gives little hint of the woman behind it or her motives. "I returned it. Beyond that, I can think of nothing that happened you are not doubtless aware of."

There's no suggestion of a lie because there isn't one. In its precise details, it is perfectly true. Senior Warden Hansen's capture and subsequent return were not secrets, and Adelaide has been growing into her role in the council; she thinks too well of her to think she'd have missed something that potentially significant, especially when until recently a Warden had sat alongside them.

Adelaide has the pieces of this particular puzzle. More than she probably realises. Benevenuta is not going help her position them.

"And whomever it belonged to asked for its swift return." Or something along those lines. It is terribly little that Benevenuta offers, and as much as Adelaide has come to admire the subtle nudging or evasions when employed on other people- that is when they are just that. Employed on other people.

Not when she has to sit and peer and wonder and think back at all the details that might have been relevant at the time. A variable had presented itself that had been unanticipated- Benevenuta had been the closest to fluster that Adelaide had ever seen her when the knife she'd borrowed had been requested back. That clipped, civil tension born of...stress? Worry? Something she has not seen sense when either another variable arrived- or something was lost.

It takes a few moments of silent observation, a few sips of wine before the idea comes about and the picture, while strange, becomes clear. If she is correct. "...there isn't any truth to the rumor of your association with Senior Warden Hansen, is there?"

"He did not ask for his knife back," she says, serenely. "I felt it was appropriate to return it, when I discovered we anticipated his arrival."

When she caught sight of him coming and decided to preempt him making a scene that she'd regret.

"Benevenuta." Disappointed Enchanter in G major. "He is almost twenty years older than you."

More, it seems like on some days.

Her laugh is sudden and - not unguarded, but something like it, a girlish sound. Light-hearted like a gasp she hadn't intended, a release valve, and she points at Adelaide with her wine glass, her mirth not unkind but not particularly abashed, either.

"What a creature you are, my darling." As if his age is the greatest concern. "Who I fuck is my affair, Adelaide, let it not trouble you. Especially as there is no one in my bed to be troubled by."

Not Hercules, currently. Any more. She doesn't anticipate his swift return, all things considered.

Edited 2016-05-15 09:58 (UTC)

"One does not become a stiff, sensible shell of themselves over someone they merely fuck, Petite." A friend, perhaps? Were it merely that that the deflection might not be quit so on the edge of mocking.

Or perhaps it would be.

As much time as she spends about Dorian she has yet to quite winnow out the sincerity from the bullshit nuance. But no, there'd been a tension borne of sincere concern in that odd month when Senior Warden Hansen had been missing.

The smile remains. It is a work smile, an impersonal smile; not so tense, edged or dangerous as the expressions she had arranged herself into during that painful time spent on the precipice of a death she knows will come to him all too soon even now, but...a distance erected. A line in the sand as to where Adelaide is and is not invited into her life. Not this.

"I don't recall," she says, blandly. "As I say, I warm my own bed. I wouldn't concern yourself with who else has done so in the past, lest you find you have no time for anything else."

Benevenuta is no innocent, after all. Nor is she going to engage with anything that suggests she might have a feeling for Hercules Hansen more significant than a solid appreciation for what surviving so long as a Warden carves out of a man's body.

Perhaps it might have been wiser to let it go after the knife. Adelaide takes a moment to take in the smile, the situation, her concerns that are overtly personal if not possibly bordering upon patronizing if she truly gave them much mind beyond the fact that she holds them (she doesn't) and weighs her options over a sip of wine.

"Is this where I am to be appropriately scandalized at your promiscuity? If I gave half a damn about that I would require several new necklaces of pearls to clutch." She mimes the usual despairing gesture, a grasp at one's throat, aghast and agaw at the sheer sinfulness of this godless northerner-

And drops it instantly. "If it is but a rumor, it shall be a rumor, and I'll not pay it mind. Though I am obligated judge you somewhat for your choice in partner, however temporary with the traditional Orlesian saying about lying with dogs, catching fleas, and so on."

Another laugh, and an easing; Adelaide drops it and Benevenuta allows that to be enough, relaxing back into the more familiar patterns of their interaction as if slipping into a more comfortable gown.

"If you were the sort of woman to be scandalized by my promiscuity," she says, her lips quirking in that crooked way she has, "I can't think we would be such good friends. I merely remind you that you aren't."

And in doing so firmly place whatever she'd been doing with Hercules in that realm, and set it aside.

"But if you've suggestions as to more appropriate companions, my Orlesian friend, by all means...!"

"If I were the sort to be so easily scandalized I'd have thrown a modesty blanket on you when we first met. As it is I merely look pointedly and sigh." At this point it, too, is something of an obligatory gesture- the looking pointedly at Benevenuta's exposed collarbones and sighing.

Which could be misinterpreted by the casual observer but that honestly has yet to occur to Adelaide. The day she is informed she will be so red.

"Anyone not Fereldan. If you are truly missing Stannis might I recommend James Norrington to you? He's quite...well he is not Fereldan." Which is not much at all.

"Why, Adelaide," Benevenuta says, lifting her hands as if to clutch at some invisible pearls of her own, "I could not have imagined you would say such unkind things about poor Knight-Commander Norrington. For shame!"

And then, with a sigh, "But to speak of things you can't imagine, what I'd have done with that man..."

...are in the top ten reasons Dorian is glad to have seen the back of Stannis Baratheon.

"What is a shame is his taste in wine and company. Apparently he is keeping time with that strange Antivan Elf." Not that one, that one. She mimes lines on her face, lips twisted in a distasteful grimace. "Most unfortunate."

A beat.

"Could you spare me the mental image? It is like picturing you with pale, boiled jerky. All white and wrinkled and full of salt." Wrong in so many ways.

Edited 2016-05-15 13:09 (UTC)

"Have you never looked upon a mountain and wished to conquer its peak?"

This probably isn't helping. She grins over her cup, settling back. "I have."

After a slight pause--

"Wait, James Norrington?"

"Yes, but not with my genitals. Some men you climb like a tree. Some mountains do not need to be mounted. Even if it would've taken the stick from his ass." Which was in dire need of excavation.

She sips her wine, nodding. "Mhmm. What anyone finds charming in that man I'll never know. He seems so oily- even for an Antivan."

"Would it have, do you think? We may never know."

Wherever he'd gone - he doesn't seem in a great rush to return. A pity, Benevenuta thinks, though she knows her opinion to be the minority.

"But as for the Knight-Commander, I suppose he must find his comfort somewhere. I was disappointed to hear he wasn't courting Pel Ashara any longer, you know. It reflected well."

"If it works for Senior Warden Hansen, it likely would have worked for Stannis. I take back my protests- Hansen is better suited to your company than the Knight Commander." Either of them.

They were, in their own way, a massive complication.

"It was a strange match- but they seem to have parted amicably. I worried for a moment that I might have to have words with him."

by arrangement; what no one ever talks about is how dangerous hope can be

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