[ 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

[byblow]

"Maybe not everyone," Alistair says. "I haven't taken a poll, but I cou--"

Could. Do a poll. Or he could not finish that sentence. That sounds like a good idea. He shuts his mouth -- but only for a moment, unfortunately, before he's trying again, complete with a large, uncertain hand on her shoulder.

"I don't know everyone else very well," which isn't comforting, probably, but at least he's not making overstated promises, "but you don't have anything to worry about from me. My mother is an elf."

It feels a little funny in his mouth, still, as much because of the present tense as the elf part. He hasn't told many people--not because it bothers him, but because it's the sort of thing that causes a fuss, and despite talking all the damn time he rarely actually tells anyone anything. Not anything personal. Not anything that matters.

"If you think you have something to worry about from anyone else, just tell me who."

[elegiaque]

"I don't - know."

It would be nice to be confident of saying 'no, I don't think any of them will trouble me', but: she isn't that trusting. She's been trying not to think about it, not sure what to do otherwise, not sure how to handle it, decidedly not in favour of finding out how her father would problem-solve this if she handed it off to him. (It might involve Guilfoyle, whose solutions tend to be final.) She doesn't know how to answer my mother, too, either, though she looked around sharply when he said it - the way he says it, which sounds much easier to her ears than it must have felt in his mouth. My mother is an elf.

She doesn't think she's ever said that, not in so many words.

"Thranduil didn't hear, he was. You know." A gesture. Alistair knows, he did it. Good job. "And he wouldn't - I don't want him to know, he wouldn't understand." What, specifically? Probably the all of it. Certainly the part where it isn't something that can be discussed, that could bring all of the things she doesn't know anything other than tumbling down.

That it doesn't change anything.

(It does, just.)

[byblow]

"No, probably not."

To be fair, Alistair doesn't quite understand, either. Learning one's a half-breed while safely encased in a Warden uniform, beyond anyone's reach, is thoroughly different from carrying it with you for who know show long and knowing it could ruin everything. But he understands more than Thranduil, probably.

He squeezes her shoulder and drops his hand.

"What about the Templar?"

[elegiaque]

The absence of an instinct to protest immediately isn't personal; she's known Gregoire much longer than she's known Bellamy, and when the time comes to address her father's decision to quietly suggest that her time has been difficult and she might need his support, she's going to lie. She doesn't want to think that anyone she loves would love her less, but -

she does. Takes it for granted, operates as if it's a foregone conclusion to be managed. Her shoulders pull in a little when he drops his hand, as if taking up less space in the world will solve this problem, somehow. Just make herself so small that she's not even there any more, and it'll all go away.

"I don't know," she repeats, frustration colouring what's really helplessness. "No one was supposed to know at all."

[byblow]

There's a pause, indicative of the fact that Alistair doesn't know what to say—and he does want to know what to say, and to say the right thing, or at least not the wrong thing. He isn't reckless with people's feelings (unless he feels like it). Only clumsy and prone to thinking that his favorite coping mechanisms are everyone else's, too.

So there's a pause, but not a silence, and he says, "You could always join the Wardens. We don't have to care what anyone thinks," with a strained, gentle sort of levity that isn't made appropriate by his tone but does at least sound like something well-meant.

[elegiaque]

Her sudden exhalation of breath could really go either way, unsteady as it is, and for a moment perhaps he might be gripped by the possibility of having to deal with a crying girl. (Twenty-two, but younger in ways that matter very much than some of the Inquisition agents she has chronological years on. Older, in others.) However, when she says, "Alistair," it is in a tone of such genuine if jagged-edged exasperation that it's actually possible he's found the right thing to say.

Only, admittedly, because Gwenaëlle is about as shit at feelings as he is. In this, they are an unlikely pair of bookends.

"I don't even know why we're friends, you've all the deftness in conversation of me after a bottle and a half of wine."

He could just say we aren't and have you already had that wine because this is embarrassing, and then she will say, well, that's why, then, also because you smell like dogs and I hate you, but also: maybe he won't say they aren't, which is the same as agreeing that they are, and then this is all right, probably, that he's here and that he's not very good at this and that she asked him for help when Asher couldn't provide it. And his mother -

There are lots of reasons people stop caring about each other, but he wouldn't have that one. And maybe he's only being kind because he has that sort of dumb face that has to be, and he would only not say that they aren't because telling a sad girl you're not her friend is an unkind thing to do, but also if she isn't good at lying to anyone else she is at least an expert at lying to herself, and if they just don't have any of this as an actual conversation then it doesn't really matter, does it? Only imagining you're cared about is probably the same as being really cared about it when it doesn't seem as if one or other makes any difference to what actually happens.

[byblow]

His dumb face twitches like it wants to grin but knows better. He's never so comfortable or so endeared as when people are mean to him while obviously liking him anyway—it's more trustworthy, as far as he can tell, than when anyone claims to like him immediately and without reservation. But Gwen's secret mother is still dead, and more than he feels liked he feels needed, which isn't something that happens very often, with her sort of people. With any sort of people.

"Yes, well," he says. "I can't be good at everything." He is barely good at anything. And at the moment he's wobbling on the line between nonsense and sincerity, like he always does. Usually stories about imaginary flying dog parents win. Usually the target isn't a grieving young woman with possibly fewer friends than he has.

He puts his hand back on her shoulder, then immediately decides that overdoing it and takes it back, again.

"If you want to drink and cry, I'm easy to find," he says. "Or only to drink. Or only to cry. I'd probably cry with you. Maybe more than you. The first week I knew Morrigan, I spent about half of it in tears. She was very impressed."