[ 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

[goodforsaken]

Lex reflects somewhere distantly that this is probably one of those times other people feel sorry; he understands, in the abstract, how much this must hurt (in the abstract, which doesn't say how many different ways there are to experience what Gwen is now, and Lex was too young when his mother died to remember), but in the bloodless pragmatism of his mind it probably hurts less than getting sliced in half with swords.

So - he might have spared Bellamy a nod back, presumably, what with their momentary common goal and all - he doesn't say, I'm sorry, he says, "We can't stay here," and he's only going to haul her as much as he has to, but. However much it takes.

[elegiaque]

It's more than none - she struggles until her hands leave (the body, Guenievre is gone), doubles forward momentarily in an effort not to be drawn too far and it's not a decision to stop so much as she loses her balance and the decision is taken entirely out of her hands.

The sound she makes isn't despairing, isn't the sort of ladylike and pretty distress that even she's capable of turning to great effect; it comes from the bottom of her stomach and it's wounded -

"I promised," she says, savagely angry, clutching Lex's arm with bloody hands. "We were nearly there--"

[goodforsaken]

That, at least, he can respond to--just not until they're out of the way of fireballs and ice blasts and swords and whatever else is going on over there; he keeps tugging, which is a pretty apt metaphor for Lex as a person, not particularly forceful, just relentless.

Once they're as safe as they're getting in the middle of this mess, hidden behind--let's say whatever vehicle is moving supplies, shall we, Lex stays within touching distance, but doesn't actually, for the moment. "I know," he says, finally. There's blood all over his shirt, none of it his; he looks suddenly, sharply at her.

Something smashes, outside their periphery, a cry of pain or exertion follows, a wet, guttural sound. Lex is practiced at ignoring like, signs of life anyway, but right now he would be too focused to absorb much else otherwise. "Are you hurt?"

Physically speaking. He's probably not the audience she might want for the other thing. Or maybe, as future events would seem to support, he is exactly that.

[elegiaque]

The blood is all Guenievre's, though in the chaos and confusion - Gwenaëlle has to stop to register the question, to think about it, to make sure she knows the answer is true. It isn't as if she doesn't know how easy it is to miss something you oughtn't; how many times her father has sat down declaring himself perfectly well. Well; there was alcohol, then, but she doesn't feel as if she's thinking so much more clearly than he is.

When she shakes her head, mute, she's sure. Of that, anyway, because not another fucking thing that's happened in the last not-nearly-so-long-as-it-feels makes any damned sense -

She does feel a bit as if she might be sick at that unidentified sound.

"I promised," she repeats less harshly, distracted, shocky.

[goodforsaken]

Lex is pretty sure they're all right, but just in case--well, shit. Actually his little emergency knife is currently embedded in an archer over yonder, so ...they're out of luck there. On the other hand he knows where his tools are, and a lot of those work as weapons. "What did you promise?"

He's definitely using that and the distraction to coax her along with him, away from the worst part of the fray without drawing attention to the fact that that's happening.

[elegiaque]

"To take her home. She isn't--"

She wasn't.

Past tense. The pause, remembering that, reliving what had happened only moments before, blanching - it is not without its uses when she's too distracted by the inside of her head to much protest what happens outside of it, following automatically the way that she's led.

"She wasn't," she repeats, "supposed to be here at all." Not here, not in Skyhold - she should have been in Orlais the whole time, buried in the countryside, in the estate where they might go unnoticed or at least have high walls and dedicated guardsmen. It's hard to argue that it's so much safer when it's on the way there that Guenievre has died -

That doesn't help.

[goodforsaken]

Even if Lex were the sort of person with any proficiency in assuaging grief, he wouldn't know how to do it when survival is so much more paramount. What does he tell her, she did her best? She can't control the highway? The last would make him, personally, spit nails--there's nothing he can't control if he finds the right reach.

This is something he suspects she understands. So instead of any of that: "It hurts," he more ...remarks than inquires, although there is something of curiosity about it too. He doesn't remember whether it was the same for him; his mother died when he was far too young to remember, and his father--well. The less said about Alexander the elder the better.

[elegiaque]

It does.

That -

doesn't work for her. She doesn't know how to wear that, how to linger in it; she processes the truth of it when he says it out loud, feels it like something hooked in under her sternum, and pivots away to something that makes more sense to her, a song she knows the words to:

"I want them all to die," very clearly.