we all keep our sadness cupped safe in our hands ( semi - open )

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin + YOU?
WHAT: Settling into Hightown.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The new Vauquelin residence, Hightown.
NOTES: Open to anyone who'd have a reason to visit her at her home. Deliveries, pick ups, important conversations as need having.

Actually moving into her new townhouse is not as involved a process as it might be; Gwenaëlle's brought her bedroom with her, not the entirety of the Vauquelin household, so most of the interiors are what had belonged to the current owner the property is now being rented from, purchased on her behalf by the Duke before he left so that she can do as she pleases with them, replace or keep the pieces she likes at her leisure. She'd not been expecting it to be her own home in quite so literal a way, and in overseeing the airing out of the place and some rearrangements made, she finds she's not entirely -

She didn't want to rely on her grandfather, but she misses him. Maybe living together here would have been pleasant.

No sense in dwelling on it, though, when there's still a hundred things to be done - messages sent to her friends and acquaintances by runner to inform them of her new abode and ensure everyone who ought to have her address has it and will have no trouble locating her now that she's (finally) out of the Gallows. She leaves Yva to unpack her belongings, pens a request for Alistair to come at his convenience because she requires his assistance, spends a solid several hours sorting through her new library inventory to see if any of it is useful or if it's all just What This Merchant Thought Would Look Impressive On His Shelves - a selection of tomes are set aside to be donated to the Inquisition, she supposes someone from the research division might come and collect them or she'll have to have someone take them down. Her own books go up, and she has the remainder of what she certainly isn't keeping out boxed up to be delivered to her landlord's current address.

It is a very nice house, and she's more pleased with it than she isn't. Visitors will be shown to the walled courtyard, where she's spread a blanket on the grass and is settled there with her writing, reading glasses balanced on her nose, hair swept back in curls.

Comments

[byblow]

Alistair's class resentment (which he is entitled to, thanks, no matter who his absent father might possibly, according to rumor, have been) is selective. On the way up from Lowtown, he huffs to himself about the entire concept of the wealthy nobility living where they can look down on everyone else. He gives a very small amount of lip—inclusive lip, elbow-in-the-ribs am I right? lip—to the city guards at the top of the stairs who want to know where he's headed. He spends the rest of the walk playing which of these people hit their servants—

and then he stops outside of Gwenaëlle's enormous house, cants his head, and smiles, because it's pretty, and she's different. She doesn't hit her servants. Surely Sabine wouldn't have kissed her if she did.

For his part, Alistair demonstrates that he knows how someone with no title ought to behave when visiting nobility, gracious and quiet and cheerfully compliant, so if he ever pretends otherwise with anyone else it's just to be an ass. Fortunately the only witnesses to this secret are Gwenaëlle's staff, until he's guided to the courtyard.

"Lady Vaquelin," he says, with a shallow bow and a smile like he's including her in a joke. The punchline is both of their personalities. "Do you know how many steps there are between here and the docks?"

He didn't actually count, and he isn't actually inconvenienced. If he hadn't wanted an excuse to get away he wouldn't have come. His real point:

"If you don't feed me before I leave I don't think I'll survive the journey back. I'll waste away to nothing and crumble into dust, and both of my other friends will be horribly upset with you."

[elegiaque]

"What other friends?" is her charitable answer to that, pushing herself up to demonstrate a bit more ladylike posture, sifting through the papers spread around her until she finds what she's looking for in amongst her many to do lists and the various invoices for recent purchases.

"You can have something to eat, I'll send for it in a minute. Do you think a dragon rug for a boy's bedroom is stupid? I already bought it. If Kieran wouldn't like it, you can take it back to the Inquisition with you and someone else can have it, but I want you to help me with his room--"

See, it was worth coming all this way.

[byblow]

Alistair presses—no, he doesn't even press his hand to his heart, really. He touches his hand to his chest in a light, glancing way that matches how much that dig actually hurt his feelings, which is not at all, and then lifts it the rest of the way to unnecessarily smooth his hair back. When he drops it, he also drops the extra puffiness to his chest and stops trying to act like a man who bows and says things like horribly upset. Instead he is a man who looks sort of stupid for a moment.

"Kieran's room?"

Only a moment. He recovers.

"Uhh." Sort of recovers. "What do you mean, a dragon rug? Not a dragon skin." Surely there's such a thing as too great an expense. But he's hooked, yes, good job. He drops down, knees on the edge of her blanket, to see what it is she's looking at.

[elegiaque]

"No, the dragon design is woven into the carpet," as if it should have been obvious. She sits back slightly to give him room, turning the list of things she has thought of for Kieran so he can see it; she seems to have been very preoccupied with the idea of how nice it would be for him to have things that were only his own, new things just for him.

"It's breathing fire," she adds, glancing up. "Do you think that's a bit much?"

(Gwenaëlle thought it looked terribly impressive when she was looking at it to buy.)

"He'll stay here a bit," after a moment, by way of clarification.

[byblow]

After a second's delay, Alistair smiles. It's a good thing—not something he'd ever presume to have any say in, and not something he resents not having a say in either, but if Morrigan had asked his opinion he'd have thought it was a good idea. His willingness to tell everyone else to buck up and get over their qualms with the Gallows or the docks doesn't extend to Kieran.

"No, I think that's brilliant," he says. "He likes dragons. And they ought to breathe fire. The ones that breathe ice or lighting, they're cheating. And the ones that don't breathe anything—what's even the point? Anyway, I think he'll love it." He reads the list with all the attentiveness it deserves. "You're going to spoil him."

That's not a complaint.

[rowancrowned]

Technically, there is no invitation for him. But Gwenaëlle cannot expect to move into such a grand house and be the talk of the Gallows—jealously—without him sticking his nose into the matter. He is sure Romain had a hand in this, and were he in residence, Thranduil would have directed his enquiry to the master of the house, not the mistress, but—if the master were in residence, he would not have the excuse he does.

He has learned something of Theodsian manners over his time here. He braids his hair, dresses simply, takes all the rings off his fingers but the black one given to him by the Outsider, and knocks on the servant’s door. When it is opened, he asks for Lady Vauquelin to be informed of his presence, please, and assumes the message will be carried to her despite the door being shut—not slammed!—in his face. He taps the corner of the letter in his hand against his thigh, and bets on the merits of the shard flickering in his hand to get the message passed along, if not his general big elfy-ness.

[elegiaque]

On this occasion, he is not obliged to wait long for an answer; a footman returns shortly with what's not quite an apology for closing him out of doors ('my lady had not anticipated you so soon') and shows him swiftly out to the courtyard where she appears, promisingly, pleased to see him. One day she'll be obliged to come to account for their previous estrangement, but not yet - for now she simply sets it aside, picking up with him as if she'd never left off.

(A habit that gets her into trouble, she knows.)

"Thranduil," she says, warm, as the door into the house closes quietly behind him and they are left alone. "This is very timely. I wanted to speak with you."

[rowancrowned]

He cannot complain, being mercurial himself, though the pleasure of seeing her so delighted can excuse so many ills and at least put him in a fine enough mood to push the matter of her stormier to her side for the time being.

“How fortuitous,” he says, and focuses on her rather than the delightful greenery in the midst of Kirkwall, a breath of fresh air in all senses of the phrase. With a few feet of space between them, they are nearer to eyelevel than if they were closer, and he needn’t look down and she needn’t crane her neck. “What is it, my lady?”

He hasn't the faintest idea.

[elegiaque]

More than just the fact of his presence, the method of his arrival bolsters her confidence in making this request; she doesn't wish to insult him (today), and as willfully as she ignores what doesn't suit her to acknowledge, she knows full well that what she proposes has an edge to it. That probably only six months ago he might have handled very differently.

But he understands, he adapts, and maybe it will be all right.

"I have an - an offer to make," she settles on. "I'm very pleased to be out of the Gallows," plainly, looking more relaxed to be in a space of her own than she has for months, "but there is the matter of...well, I will be alone here. Securing guardsmen from Kirkwall itself, I'm a little bit, mm."

Not convinced that's the wisest idea.

"And I understand you would be needed at the Gallows more frequently than I am," she hasn't actually said what she wants yet, "but I thought - I would feel safer," deliberately, "if there were someone here. And if you'd be willing, then I will make the arrangements."

[limier]

Set beside patchwork tents and frosted ground, the Gallows have felt rather decadent.

It doesn't feel that way any longer.

Out in the street, Wren stills her face into courtesy, and tries not to think about what this must be costing the people of Coucy. It's beautiful, there's really no other word for it — and if it isn't so ostentatious as some of what she's passed by, that must only lift the price attached. Truly garish displays are for those with something to prove (the Grand Cathedral springs to mind). The recession from the street, the gate, they underscore that the comforts within aren't for the benefit of public eyes.

That they reduce the chances of a brick through the window, well. That's handy too.

She's nothing but polite as she's escorted in, mouth full of the Lady Vauquelins that have lately come to such disuse. She keeps checking her breath, certain they've somehow come out sarcastic — they won't, far too careful — and Maker, is that a fucking fountain?

"My lady," If her eyebrows lift now, it's because the staff are retreating behind her and there's a fucking fountain, "I trust you are settling in?"

Haven't gotten lost trying to find the door from the kitchens?

[elegiaque]

The merchant whose home this was - whose home this will be again, when Gwenaëlle is quite done with it - is a man of tastes beyond his station and indeed, with the state of the world these days, beyond his current means. It is an exceptional property and one that suits her very well; she'll leave her mark on it, replace this and that, rearrange rooms to suit her, but overall she's satisfied with what's been presented to her. It is as comfortable as she can expect from Kirkwall, and there will be fewer unanticipated intrusions on her time.

Luwenna Coupe is an intrusion, but at least Gwenaëlle is afforded the ability to prepare --

she rises, as the door closes, taking her glasses from her nose and attaching them again to the chain that always hangs from her waist.

"Ser Coupe," she returns, level, from in front of the fucking fountain. It's positively idyllic, pretty girl in a gown in a garden, the sort of scene painted by hack artists for uninspiring patrons; her perfume hangs in the air. She's not awkward and uneasy in the Inquisition stronghold - this is home ground advantage. Her own territory. "I've been overseeing the changes I'd like to have made."

[limier]

Curious, isn't it? Stick two roosters in a cage and there's only one way it'll come out; watch a dog lift its lip and you know it means stay back. Common gestures, shared between breed and station.

People are different. The assertion that Gwen's making here, she doesn't make it the same way that a soldier might, a merchant, an elf. It can't be answered in the same manner. The invitation was Wren's to accept, but it's Gwenaëlle's now to revoke. Will be, every day after.

The changes I'd like made, subtle as a fountain.

Perhaps that will help, will bring home some of the control she feels absent of their little venture. That, or it'll just be a massive pain in the ass. Neither's any true threat — if the girl didn't choose to bring her influence to bear before, she's not about to now. They're in this for the long haul.

Wren draws near, hands folded behind her back. The same tell as ever,

"So lengthy a task?" A short gesture to the arrayed papers. Her chin tips down, out; not so far as it would were she speaking with Ashlock, with Reed. Softer motions now, a more delicate context. "It hardly seems run-down."

[elegiaque]

A shrug, elegant, the sort of gesture that looks easy enough to recreate until one comes to try it for the first time in tightly laced corsetry. "No, not especially."

She likes lists; she likes the sense of accomplishment that comes with getting to the end of one, she likes the organisation of setting down all of her thoughts even if some of them are things like dragon rug??? stupid???? or b i g g e r copper tub (underlined, several times). Coordinating all, and then being able to discard what she no longer needs. Being able to lay out things in front of her and assess them.

(Gwenaëlle can make the simplest thing complicated.)

"I have my preferences. I'll show you the rooms." Someone else might let one of the servants that shadow her steps handle that; she is disinclined to let any part of this out of what grip she can wrest.

[inagutterson]

His lady has a home and so security is required to give a full and thorough inspection of the place. Yngvi knows these homes. Knows all the ways in and out of them, has seen the plans from bribing the folk that made them or keep them because how else do you get in and out (how else do you make sure some people pay protection even up here) so of course he says he'll go do it. He's got an in and the family nod approvingly.

They don't know that this is-- that this is closer to family than them, that if there's a vein to be opened then this is his lady as he smiles, straightens his coat to the servants and bows because his manners cost him nothing to the staff.

"M'lady," he greets after another little bow to her staff with names he'll need to get, clattering down and along with a nug peeping out of a pocket at this luxury. "Look at you, splendiferous." This is clearly the biggest word he knows, people are lying if they say he knows bigger. (He does, she would know that he does.) "Look at these fancy digs of yours, well nice, gave myself a bath before coming up here."

So, y'know, feel special.

[elegiaque]

"A bath! I'm honoured--" which might not even be entirely a joke, just dressed up as one; she hadn't warned the servants yet about Thranduil, but Yngvi they expected, and are obligated to let in even if he hadn't bathed, because Gwenaëlle simply will not hear of him not being given the run of her home. Even if he is a wretched little traitor who likes the wrong Templars.

Family is the people you still love even when they're being excessively stupid and thoroughly wrong in their opinions and judgment. (Wren is right about one thing: so long as Gwenaëlle Vauquelin has a home and a line of credit, Yngvi will always have somewhere to go for a roof and a meal in a bind.)

"You like it?" Of the house. "I feel as if I'm nesting, I want to change so much. But it's beautiful. Grandfather was called back to Orlais, so it's only myself, for now, though he's taking care of my expenses."

[inagutterson]

"Calm down, it was just a bucket and an old shirt." Few are the people he'll make an attempt to look presentable for so he can even get his fingers all the way through his hair today for the first time in about three months, give or take. Dislodged a few fingerbones, can't even say they all came from the clean-up work at the Gallows either, he's not entirely sure what he was doing or up to in the past. Wouldn't want to go leaving those in the parlour when she's got enough under her house as is. Maybe in the walls. It's Kirkwall, likely that she already knows about the sort of history of building work that goes on everywhere in the city.

At least there's an easier address for Aura to write to now since everything is probably going to come care of Yngvi to send off; Asher dies and Yngvi realises how big it all is, how colossal and overwhelming the face of people who would care if he disappeared similarly for good happens to be.

"'m expecting an egg? Better not be a goose, them things have teeth." Better not be expecting period or he will summon the Boneflayers and Emeric won't need to lift a finger: if something untoward has happened and it's name is Thranduil without Thranduil saying a token word to Yngvi as is only right, Kirkwall won't be thirsty long. "Shit, your grandfather was meant to pay me for a job y'know, but swimming in work, drowning, as it so happens. Gonna get lost in this house without a thorough inspection. Has Har-- has Mr. Growing-into-his-Paws got his own room too?"

You heard nothing. You heard everything.

[elegiaque]

Mr Growing Into His Paws heard the aborted beginning of his name; he lumbers up from where he's been sprawled in the grass not far from his mistress, ambling towards them with the placidity of an animal who has previously vetted the strange, small thing that sometimes appears making wild noises and found him tolerable, even a compatriot in minding their lady's door.

Gwenaëlle softens a little around the edges, the way sad things do, but she smiles.

"He sleeps with me, the same as ever. I have the master bedroom, and Morrigan's son will have a room beside me, and then Thranduil will have one as well. I thought I should have someone with a sword in the house, you understand."

(She isn't expecting this to be a contentious issue.)

[arcaneadvisor]

Of course Morrigan comes. Unfamiliar with the homes of nobility for the most except a very few and then only fleeting visits, most only seen in passing on her travels, she's curious to see what will become of this place. She flies there for most of it since Kieran is occupied at one of his lessons again, happy enough with his friends in the Gallows that she can leave him long enough to visit with Gwenaëlle alone.

Someone swears when the raven bursts into a woman. Yes, there were rumours about that one but she's here. In the flesh. Right here. Now.

Morrigan smirks and saunters past and inside, some faces familiar from so much time spent in this young lady's company already. Perhaps they aren't happy with how her fingers linger over things as they attempt to escort her to where Gwenaëlle can be found but most know better than to tell her off like another guest might be. Where there were only rooms before, now there is an entire estate to be shaped however her terrible favourite wishes.

She cannot wait, and her smile, wolfish, fond, for such a chosen few awaits as she joins her. "Accomodations far more suited to you than a drab prison. How fare you in the midst of all this?" To Morrigan's eye, she looks well, but looks can be deceiving after all and no girl survives the Game without learning tricks but she wants her to be well.

[elegiaque]

"The better for some independence," she says, warmly, setting aside her papers when Morrigan joins her but not, as she would habitually with nearly anyone else, immediately removing her spectacles. "I miss Skyhold much less now I'm not missing it from the Gallows."

In fact, she misses it almost not at all, but - there is a place in her heart for it. Skyhold was the first place she's ever spent significant time outside of Orlais; where she began making her first steps toward the word independence meaning something to her. Also, it's up a fucking mountain where it would be difficult to send an assassin to her door, and she's rather fond of not getting murdered in her bed.

Kirkwall gives her no such assurances, but there is an illusion of safety in a place of her own, and she hopes to bolster it with more of a reality in time. At least for now she can still be relatively assured that if she appears on anyone's list of people to be dealt with, it's probably not in the top ten.

"My only concern is being sure of security, but I have some notions."

[arcaneadvisor]

"Skyhold was a place of power though not one of such convenience, we sacrifice one to attain the other." Sacrifice is what allows the wheel of the world to turn, as it ever has. The first men to walk the world learned that quickly and no one forgot it, how potent it turned out to be.

Nowhere in Thedas is without a history but Morrigan lugged an eluvian up the mountain to Skyhold for a purpose in the end and when the sky itself had been torn near in two, when it split itself again and again in more places than the Inquisition might ever know of - can they truly know? Years from now might there still be the odd rift in a corner no one visits until someone does with demons waiting for the unwary to travel and for the Veil to be sealed by far less quick and convenient methods than pointing a hand? - the place where the sky was held back--

The name says much. Kirkwall says Tevinter and blood magic, Tevinter building upon itself and anguished statues, blood again and again as if somehow new blood shall wash away the stain of the old and they might hope that theirs is not next.

"Are you hiring outside sources? Or are there those closer to the Inquisition that you seek?"

[elegiaque]

"Thranduil," she says, thinking that at least here she doesn't expect to be challenged quite so much on that front. "I've offered him a place to live here, and he's accepted - an imperfect solution," in a tone of acknowledgment, "but serviceable for now."

It isn't anything so gauche as offering him employ; he's an agent of the Inquisition, he has work to do there, she understands these things and beyond them she understands that even accepting a place in her household that will sometimes mean feigning a subservience wholly alien to him is something that his ego must carefully navigate. A year ago, it would have been unimaginable to expect him to bend that far, she thinks.

So he will not be at her beck and call, and not dedicated to only the protection of herself and Kieran - but it soothes her to think they won't be alone here, that there will be someone capable of acting in a crisis.

"And--" this part she likes far less, "--the Templar, Ser Coupe, has taken in hand my education in the martial realm. For reasons," a bit dryly, "known only to herself."

[lionheartedman]

Great big fancy house, and she's sitting on the ground outside. Figures. It makes the corners of his mouth tick up. "Don't you have an office now? Somewhere in this place? A grand writing desk and one of those ornate spindly chairs?" He has a gift in his hand. Or, well, he has a wrapped package in his hand. Cullen is not great at giving gifts. He almost always manages to miss the mark, and he has nothing approaching Gwen's level of wealth, but he does try.

He also feels out of place, even just in the courtyard. He's beginning to regret leaving Puppy behind. Enthusiastic and constantly happy, he at least would have broken the ice. And probably several of the carefully manicured tiny flowering shrubs dotted around the place, but still.

[elegiaque]

"I have two," she informs him airily, leaning back on her elbows in the grass, Hardie rolling over to sit up when she does, alert but not barking - not at Cullen, a familiar and friendly face. "I've a study, and I've a desk in my chamber, and I was considering that I might put one in the sun room to best appreciate--"

She is laughing at herself, a little, as she sits up as well, waving him down to join her.

"I feel as if you might end up standing to attention if I entertained you in my study. Sit and let me send for something - wine, or tea? What are they feeding you at the docks, anyway? You always look poorly." Friendship tells you that you look like a man in a constant state of cold sweats, but like, affectionately.

[lionheartedman]

"Not much of an appetite," he admits, crossing the space between them and folding himself to sit near her. Maybe folding isn't the right word. It's sort of a slow motion collapse, but he's still in control of his own body, more or less. He's just tired. He's tired all the time now. "I think the problem is more about sleep than food. The cooks do an admirable job of feeding so many mouths." Which isn't to say he eats it, but still.

Hardie is still watching him intently, and Cullen removes a glove and holds out a hand, curled in a loose fist to let the dog smell his knuckles. Once that formality has passed, he holds his hand, palm out, and then drops it parallel to the ground, smiling to see the dog drop from his seated position, stomach on the ground, though he still looks alert. "Smart boy," he says quietly. Then, to Gwen, "I'm glad you've made it out of there, though, and... I'm sorry about your grandfather." He doesn't know why she didn't come to him about it, perhaps because he managed to put his foot in his mouth on the subject of her learning to fight, but he's here now.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle observes him - perhaps better than he'd like. Listens, too, and hears the absence of words, such as: whether or not one of those mouths is his own. She recollects the untouched plates, last they saw one another, for all that she'd had other pressing matters on her mind. And if she says nothing of it now, well; she marks it, all of it, and sooner or later she will see something different or she will speak up.

"Orlais or Orlais," she says, instead, of her grandfather. "It does one thing only, and that is take. He was never going to remain indefinitely."

And his absence is...complicated. His presence was complicated. She'll miss him, but in some ways missing him will be easier than she'd found it to navigate not needing to - especially after everything with Guenievre. A representation of everything she isn't, really, a reminder. She loves her grandfather, she's glad that he loves her, but even before touching upon her willfulness and her reluctance to be seen as no more than his granddaughter, his love pricks at her guiltily, a deceitful, deceived thing. His favourite, and not his blood.