[ 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

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle's lips press together and for a moment she's just quiet, just still. Another little shake of her head -

"I'm not afraid," she says, and it's careful. It's polite, the clean and neat tone she takes when she doesn't wish to say anything else. Of course, she is - and she will be again when they leave these walls and her father's guardsmen behind - but for the time being, not any more than she ever is. Fear isn't the problem (or, at least not the largest one, and not the sort that he can fix when it's his reactions she doesn't trust), so -

It's easier to deflect when he gives her something to do it with. She can easily dismiss what it isn't.

"We just haven't got anything to discuss at the moment. I don't need anything from you, I just want to be done with this place and leave."

[rowancrowned]

He holds for a moment more, watch her, waiting, hoping-- before exhaling, laying back on the pillows and returning the covers up to around his chest. She wishes to leave, he will not make her stay any longer due to his own frailties, which means he needs to heal as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Which, he supposes, means he needs to stay in bed and focus wholly on healing himself.

"Thank you for coming. I am glad to see you hale and whole." He smiled, or at least attempted to affect it, warmly as he could manage despite the edge of concern from her precise manner and silence. Thranduil was aware it felt flat. "It is considerate of you."

He worried, after all.

[elegiaque]

The tight smile she forces herself to muster up in response is a bleak thing devoid of any real warmth; equally telling is the relief in the way her shoulders loosen when she can stand, leave.

The door is closed, no one has their ear pressed to the wall. It's only him that she's hiding from; him that she doesn't want to see something. Maybe it's the way she flinches when he calls her hale and whole, the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when she makes herself nod and agree, like she can't still feel Guenievre's blood coating her hands, see her eyes go sightless whenever she closes her own. As if it doesn't feel like she's herself a wound on the landscape -

All that's left of Guenievre is her, and it's wretched.

She says, "Yes," very tersely, and doesn't trust herself to say anything else before she turns on her heel and flees.