[ 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 believes in ruin, though, believes sometimes the only way to fix things is to reset the broken bones. This is ...also what Corypheus thinks, so it's a good thing Lex has all those stakes in the world as it is, huh. Sometimes, it's worth leaving everything you know, scorching the earth behind you, just to be able to remake yourself in no one's image but your own.

So. He thinks she'd make it, Emeric or no Emeric.

Which is all very loftily philosophical, and therefore not at all what Lex is thinking about currently, since he doesn't have the like, rabid sexual attraction to long hair that some people do, but it's still such a fantastic breach in propriety he enjoys it. To wit: "That's very Orlesian of you."

Dryly. Not the uh, hair seduction, the mask wearing. "In a you sort of way."

Which as they have previously established is not all that Orlesian.

[elegiaque]

Things Gwenaëlle would like to leave behind, possibly scorched, include Emeric and this house and - a lot of things, actually. A lot of Orlais, probably, because while she'll make some pretense of supporting Gaspard (if she thinks she can get away with it), her ostentatious disappointed neutrality on the subject as published is closer to the truth of things than what she'd 'admit' off the record.

Lex knows, now, what she disguises behind that. And - this is still happening. So.

"I'm not very good at it," she observes, carefully loosening her hair until she can pull the comb free, a pin falling to her shoulder, curls coming down to rest and tangle there, "but I haven't got anything else to be. Are you very...what do you call yourself, from Markham?"

Or in general. What he is to her is suddenly more pressing than she thought it was, and she wonders what he is to himself.

writes this a SECOND TIME disgusted noise

[goodforsaken]

"I call myself Thedosian," Lex declares, aware with faint self-directed humor that's not quite the done thing, but--then again one of the reasons he's here is believing the Inquisition has the potential to blur the borders of the fierce, often misplaced nationalism that currently splits their world into slivers. "I've lived too many places otherwise."

Since, blasphemously he doesn't really see himself as a Markhamer, and: "If I tried to say I was from Orzammar some topsider would slit my throat as I slept."

Not that he would actually say that. It's pretty safe to say that while Lex appreciated what they had to teach, dwarven traditionalists are more than a little too backward in their thinking for emulation.

"What do you want to be?" he inquires, as if he's not aware what a complicated question that is--he is, especially since what he is was so hardwon, but-- Gwen's (elven) mother just died, that seems like the kind of event that throws an identity already in flux into temporary chaos. Meanwhile this is totally a discussion they can have unless uh, he hasn't previously mentioned he spent time in Orzammar, in which case that. Might take precedence.

fistshakes

[elegiaque]

Yngvi had mentioned - Gwenaëlle remembers sitting shoulder to shoulder at the fireside on the way to Asher's family's hold, asking questions about Lex - but it's the sort of thing that doesn't get less interesting and that she's not had much detail on from the horse's mouth, as it were. A welcome diversion, in other words, when she disentangles the comb from her hair enough to give him that, too, and steal back the wine bottle.

"I want to be left alone," she says, which is both uncomfortably truthful so far as it goes, probably not something that would actually satisfy her if she got her way, and a swift means of brushing the question aside so she can pursue hers, instead. "What was Orzammar like? Was it very difficult to persuade them to teach you?"

Did they make a lot of jewelry. Probably not. Probably not many dragons, either. Maybe one day she'll ask him for something that's actually in his wheelhouse.

[goodforsaken]

True, but if he only ever makes things in his wheelhouse, he's never going to get outside of it. Making the dragon had taught him some things about the tensile strength of certain metals, for instance, and the ability to do fine work, not to put things delicately, makes his pieces more marketable. Which he's always looking to do.

Meanwhile, in the present time: Lex slides his gaze peripherally like he's going to dodge the segue and come back to "I want to be left alone," because it's--on a personal level, a familiar sentiment. He enjoys attention, courts it, but rarely as the person he actually is. In the end he goes with it, makes one of those huffy little laughs that basically express and how. "More erosion than persuasive. The smith who took me on just wanted me to stop knocking on doors, at first. But do enough drudge work and eventually someone figures if nothing else, you're serious about being there."

[elegiaque]

"You're like water," she says, pleased, and doesn't elaborate on that, either; probably wouldn't have said it in so many words (or at least not in those words) if she hadn't started without him, with the wine. It's how her father's solved every problem, why not try it for herself?

He's like water, she thinks, still. Wearing things away. Making grooves to run in. Drowning, probably, the unwary. She -

She is a very strong swimmer.

[goodforsaken]

"Now that's a comparison I haven't heard before," Lex notes, canting his head in that avian way he has. Something small and bright eyed and predatory. "Does the lady care to elaborate?"

He manages to leave tacit that he could make it worth her while. Which is pretty impressive considering the things he leaves tacit are usually threats.

[elegiaque]

That she's going to isn't - this once - really a question. She takes her time about it only to order her thoughts, line up something that feels less foolish when said aloud; mirrors him unintentionally with the way she shifts, leads with her dimpled chin. The lady is both small and bright eyed, but she's birdlike in the way of an anxious songbird kept in a cage near a window -

at least, most of the time. She never settles, but sometimes she stills and all of her sharp edges elongate in the same direction. Not, however, now.

"Wearing things down," she says, finally, "into a shape that suits you better. And you're not, I think, something to turn one's back on unwarily."

These would not necessarily be compliments, delivered by someone else.