[ closed ] go ahead and cry little girl, nobody does it like you do

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin, Lex Luthor, Alistair, Bellamy Blake, Thranduil, Herian Amsel.
WHAT: Comte Vauquelin has information and records for the Inquisition. A small group including his daughter go to collect it. Everything is fine.
WHEN: End of Kingsway.
WHERE: Orlais, the Vauquelin estate.
NOTES: Violence, character death, assholes.

Comments

[rowancrowned]

She doesn't want him prying. If she wants quiet, she is entitled to it, and so he tightens his hands on the reins and focuses on the horse instead. It is a very smooth path they walk, well-worn and likely more prosperous a few years past.

"I apologize for taking up so much of your time, my lady." He intends to free her from this conversation in the neatest way he can- for surely being with him is not where she wants to be. He watches Gwenaëlle, up at the front, and the color of her cloak as the light plays across it.

[elegiaque]

The sleek fur wrapped around Gwenaëlle is unusually pale for something in her wardrobe; like as not a gift, worn to please the parent she's here mainly to ensure doesn't get cold feet and say an untimely 'no'. Guenievre follows his gaze to her and hers softens, almost imperceptibly.

"You've done me a service, ser, and I am grateful," she says, not only speaking of her elder daughters. "I will not forget it."

After a moment, "I was present when Solas," whose name comes remarkably familiarly to her lips, "discussed with her the new dangers you face. I wonder if it would be too much to ask that - you will learn them more deftly, I think. I would like to know someone watches my lady after I return to my previous post."

Solas, for various reasons, could not be asked this favour. Thranduil, though. He has a fondness. He will not, she thinks, question hers.

[rowancrowned]

"It was a favor done in kindness," he demures, gaze lowered in a humility he would never show to most anyone other than elves. "You owe me nothing, lady."

Gwenaëlle looks tense, in the set of her shoulders and how she handles her mount. He has seen Orlais, he has known her for as long as he has been in Thedas-- he is glad she has not been at court. But his thoughts are broken, and he looks at her a bit differently as she mentions Solas.

She follows her mistress. It is not odd that she has been allowed to stay whilst Gwenaëlle went to him. He is-- oddly pleased that she has followed through, had taken his advice. He can't help but smile, despite the sober nature of their conversation.

"I will keep her safe, Guenievre. I am ... very fond of her." But she knows, has seen the conversations they've had by note and by crystal. "She bears a heavy burden. I aim to help her shoulder it, if she allows it. Though I wish I knew her better, to offer her advice in a way she might take."

[elegiaque]

"If it comes as any comfort," the barest hint of something that might be a little wry, "I think those that know her well despair just the same."

Gwenaëlle is nothing if not prone to digging her heels in for the sake of it.

"My lady listens when it suits her to."

[rowancrowned]

"Well," he says, shifting in his seat, careful not to startle the horse as he makes himself more comfortable. "then how am I to know if I have her affection?"

That she still talks to him is a good indication, that he is here.

He thinks to the man he's going to meet shortly, her father, the house she will have been born in, will have lived in all her life.

[elegiaque]

"You will know if you lack it, monsieur."

Gwenaëlle is many things; capable of feigning affection (--or tolerance, for that mtter) she doesn't feel is not, for better or worse, one of them. All of her father's mercurial temperament and little to none of his aptitude to using it to his advantage; while Emeric plays upon expectations and navigates the game with remarkable deftness for a man who relies upon his manservant to stop up the gaps in his sometimes unreliable memory, Guenievre has occasionally feared losing her youngest child to an ill-timed moment of impulsivity.

It's easier to speak of her than of Alix and Magalie, the careful distance that must be maintained by now an ingrained habit, and not some new thing created by grief. Not a new grief, true, but a wound that hasn't healed, that she can't quite stop herself from prodding at. People shouldn't outlive their children. It isn't natural.

[rowancrowned]

There's a retort on his lips about Gwenaëlle, a question about her childhood, how she might have behaved. But he bites it back. Her daughters must have been about Gwenaëlle's age, within five years, ten, and how much time did she spend away from them to tend to the human child instead? What did she miss, to keep food on the table, and her girls in clothes and shoes?

He realises wholly that he knows nothing about her other than her relationships with other people, and that asking about her will bring only silence.

Which makes Gwenaëlle the only safe topic, if he wants to keep her talking, and he does. (He wonders if his wife would have liked her.)

"Varda's stars, I may only hope that she does not seek revenge using her newsletter." But he's smiling, a hint of it in his otherwise neutral face, the slight hint of raised brows.

[elegiaque]

Most of what Guenievre knows of Gwenaëlle has been observed from a distance; others had tended her needs, heard her complaints, lifted her when she fell and answered to Emeric for her well-being. Guenievre had - watched. Had struggled to explain to the twins why they would not keep their small sister and could not call her so; had wished it might be otherwise and then set it aside.

But she and Gwenaëlle do not fit naturally in one another's company and perhaps it shows in her willingness to stay back from it, given this opportunity.

"A young lady of the imperial court dignifying the dispute of an elf in print? You will be spared that, I think."

(but that is a guess.)

[rowancrowned]

"She did not spare my cousin." He's an adult by every meaning of the word, but that had wounded his pride even as he had known her choice of Galadriel to be purposeful. "Though perhaps it is best that all of Thedas does not know my face- it is strange to go from being known by reputation to being unknown. I should appreciate it as a gift."

He wonders again what place Guenievre fits into in the hierarchy of the household. Gwenaëlle's attitude suggests some manner of attachment to her father, some boundary crossed. Mistress, he supposes, even as he loathes the idea of an elf in that position. If only the late Comtesse was available. That might paint a clearer picture.

"How much is she truly 'of the court'? She has debuted, yes? Been presented in some way that indicates it is appropriate for her to be courted and court."

[elegiaque]

"Some eight years ago," Guenievre confirms.

The household had gone into a small state of uproar over it - Annegret still lived, then, and though perhaps they didn't necessarily have to wait so long as Gwenaëlle's sixteenth, she'd been barely satisfied she was ready.

"Suitors have come and gone." Her gaze settles on Luthor a moment; "Come at the lord and lady's behest and gone at hers, previously."

[rowancrowned]

Luthor- this one, the one that had tumbled in when That Dwarf had. The look he gives Guenievre is one of raised brow and curious speculation- Luthor has suddenly made himself so much more interesting.

(A moment of quiet despair that Gwenaëlle hadn't caught Legolas' eye.)

"Do they realize they are courting one another?"

i meant six years i can do maths

[elegiaque]

A brief nod. He doesn't ride to her father's home for his health, if she's any judge of the matter -

"She speaks of it with," a barely perceptible pause, "the witch, Morrigan." That woman. Her dislike is unfair, she knows, and she keeps a tight leash on it -

But it isn't fair, either, that it's Morrigan to whom Gwenaëlle will turn with her every damned thought. When she wishes comfort, when she's uncertain, when she wants another's pride in her.

maths suck

[rowancrowned]

Gwenaëlle is- well, he's taken an interest in her, and he cares. Which means he's now interested in the tarty smith. Which means he cannot be actually tarty, for Gwenaëlle deserves better- his standards of better usually best applying to elves, which Lex was not.

"She gossips with a woman her age about-" what's the word, not marriage, because when have Men ever held to fidelity. "-- about romance. She is a sensible sort. Pragmatic. And her advice is easy to ignore if Gwenaëlle finds it distasteful, being that it is only a friend's. Would you rather she come to you?"

But she wouldn't, because she couldn't bear this woman's company as the same time that she was drawn to it.

[elegiaque]

"I imagine if she were inclined to confide in retainers, it would be those who'd raised her," Guenievere says, dismissing that without pause or noteworthy reaction. "Perhaps the handmaid she liked so well."

(If there were any real way to identify Sabine from that description, Gwenaëlle would be suddenly irritated and not know why.)

"It isn't my place." Matter of fact, as if she doesn't understand why he made the suggestion.