faderift | open | run and hide, your head's on fire

Impassive: "War does not care."

And neither do lone assassins — probably —

"It did not in Halamshiral. It shall not here." All the dead of the Palace that she’d named, "The world does not need warriors. It needs survivors."

Someone left, to hold the hands. To see the story told. To remember.

"I don't care what it needs," she says, folding her arms and sitting back in her seat in a way that's a younger in mannerism than twenty-three really ought to be, equal parts pampered and stifled, too many lessons learned too well on how to survive the life she already had. "It's taken plenty already."

People give up on her constantly; all she has to do is find the thing to say to make Coupe do it as well.

"And if you allow it, it will take your life."

This is like speaking to a child, but that’s not entirely a surprise. There’s a reason that they call it the Game; even as the stakes grow, the players so seldom seem to. Not to an outsider's view.

"As it has taken your blood."

She doesn’t know about Guinevere. No possible way to know.

It's been - better. After weeks of seclusion, withdrawal, Gwenaëlle's been edging back to a more familiar schedule, easier to find, easier to talk to, less likely to find an excuse to leave when caught walking. She's clawed her way back to normalcy, buried the ache, told herself that she'll learn to live with it. Has been learning.

The wound is still new, though, and the reaction - violent in a way that couldn't have been expected, rising suddenly, not aggressive but unable to be still, hands clutching her elbows, pacing like a trapped animal. Her blood. That Wren has brushed - slammed into - a nerve she didn't know was there is clear, it's hard to miss the way she hadn't really reacted to it will take your life, like that would be so terrible, of course, like her life would be such a loss--

But she can still feel Guenievre's heartbeat slowing under her hands, sometimes. She still wakes cold and stares blankly at the ceiling as she remembers why there isn't anyone sleeping next to her.

"I hope it takes more," she says, unexpectedly savage where she looked for a moment like she might weep. Two mothers down and the only parent she has left is at fault, it's his fault--

Shit. Tapping at an egg, only to find the whole damn shell broken away beneath her hands.

What the fuck has happened? The Vauquelins are tied as incestuously to Orlais' nobility as any other, but the immediate family is pointedly small. Who does she even have, beside Emeric? Some cousin, perhaps — something on her mother's side?

"Gwenaëlle," A blunt impropriety. Titles, definitions, they are... impersonal things. Unpresent. "Where are you?"

Her breath shudders and her fingers flex against her arms, brittle; adult grief felt with a child's breathtaking intensity, filled to bursting with no where to go. Her eyes close for a moment and she hates it, hates the exposure, hates that she can't manage it better than this -

She nearly says Orlais, shapes the word, makes herself stop and choke it back.

(Mama, I tried--)

"Skyhold," she says, staring at the wall as if it might have the answer for how to make all of this stop. "It doesn't matter." Reflex; like something she's told herself over and over and over again.

"Skyhold," Wren affirms, rises at last. "Breathe in."

She keeps a distance between them, careful not to draw too close. The smooth motion of a hand to the side, a prompting: One-two-three —

"Now out. Steady. This matters."

"It doesn't," on the exhale, unhappiness compounding on how inescapably witnessed it is. She doesn't get to pretend it didn't happen - she wants to. This entire conversation, she wants to forget it, forget ever talking to this woman, close the door and her eyes and press her hands to her ears and just.

Nothing. Do nothing.

"I don't want to," almost plaintively.

"I know." Softly. "But you don't want this, either."

This unravelling, this ugly display of hurt, this loss of control. To show one’s throat so easily — it will kill her, if she is not cautious. It will kill her, and perhaps she won’t give a damn, save that,

"This will happen again, and again, until you face it."

Gwenaëlle shoves her hand out away from them both and the shield that bursts from her anchor-shard comes with a suddenness that shakes the furnishings nearest, surrounding them in its peculiar glow--

"It didn't help," she says, vanishing it when her fist closes.

"It didn't do any fucking good--"

Maker.

She’s only seen it once before. In the heat of that last charge, one of their escort had unleashed such a thing: brought the raw might of the Fade to bear. There'd been no time then for concern, for fear — not with a thousand other threats beating their way to prominence.

There’s no space for it now.

"No." Her pulse pounds in her throat, but the words smooth into steadiness. Without knowing her, it's difficult to notice the new tension of her jaw. "On its own, it cannot."

"No more than any other tool." No matter what Gwen does, people will leave her, people will die. "But with it, you might."

"I am a writer," she says, enunciating it very deliberately. "I am not giving anybody another excuse to leave me alone--"

Her brain catches up with her mouth at what she feels is really the wrong moment, due to it being the moment after she's already said that - those words, out loud, unavoidably. There's a moment where she might buckle and decides not to, brittle and brazening it out, like that's a normal thing to think or say, like she can't imagine why she should be embarrassed.

(She can. She is.)

"I don't want to do that," she says, in the too-calm way of someone holding onto that steadiness with their fingernails. "I don't want to."

They're past the point of wanting. This no longer concerns only her personal — obligations — the girl's a hazard to others, so long as this goes untrained.

"I am for Kirkwall." She’s reviewed the lists; no one with a shard is getting out of the move. "When you arrive, we will begin in discretion."

Her chin tips down in consideration, mouth thins to lie: "I am not in the habit of leaving."

To abandon this project would doubtless seem a boon, where the absence of others is... one upon a lengthy list of hurts. But Gwen’s not getting out of this, either. To swerve aside, having heard what she has? It would only dig the point in, and sharper for it.

"I shall check with you mid-month, upon the crystals."

A whole half-month for her to try and work out how to get out of this without just running crying to her grandfather--

(There isn't a way, not when she can almost guarantee no one else will take her part. They will say it is for the best, that it's for her own best, they will be pleased to have someone press it, they don't understand.)

Gwenaëlle folds her hands in her lap, again, and doesn't react when Hardie nudges his head against her knee. "Very well."

What if she just bolted. That's an option.

(That's not an option.)

Wren nods, and takes it for a temporary victory.

If Gwenaëlle reaches out to the Duke, this venture is over — any of the leadership might exert similar pressure. Wren knows too little of His Grace to make a ready judgment, but the latter would be inclined to side with her concerns; this only a happy opportunity to pass the blame.

Not the Inquisition that have upset the Comte's daughter, but a spat between two unsigned allies.

"Until then," The exit's deliberate, but she doesn't drag it out. Just ducks her head stiffly, shuts the door behind her. Quiet words if she catches the maid in the hall, Perhaps best to give my lady a few minutes.

open | run and hide, your head's on fire

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject