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WHO: Thranduil, Lady Vauquelin
WHAT: A long overdue conversation.
WHEN: Late Justinian
WHERE: chez Vauquelin
NOTES: none

The staff know how he likes his food. He thought at first that they would perhaps waver, given his foreignness, the shard in his hand, but they spare him no regard. Which he may well prefer—let him be as a ghost to them, a statue, maneuvered around and addressed only when necessary. They are all well suited to living around one another like planets in orbit, forever circling, never touching.

He hesitates to make requests of the elven staff, does not wish to lord over them. And yet, with the Men—he is not inclined either to cause trouble in Romain’s house. This is not where he will fight his battles.

So, lunch— brought out for him was a plate of greens and cheeses, a small cold sampling of what could be rabbit or nug, some dark bread. Nothing he needed utensils for, all suited for tearing up into small pieces and eating. He uses his left, frees his write to flip through the pages of a tome on Sundermount’s history. Thranduil looks up at the sound of footsteps, all the staff being trained out of the habit—and Kieran far too small to sound like this.

The food, she’ll note, is far away from the book, far away from all the books in her library.

”Gwenaëlle,” he greets, uncrossing his legs. His hand stays poised on his place in the text, one fingertip on his next word.

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"We love once, and only once." Finwë aside- firmly aside, Thranduil glad he will not need to think of him, does not have his granddaughter here in Galadriel to judge him for his actions or understand them with the full grasp of the Quendi- they are devout. "That I am able to indicates some-- oddities. I am not from here, and the Veil..."

Long had he blamed it for his current state, as if it was a sieve that held the most solid pieces of himself in the Fade, his fëa diminished, his natural state cleaved. If these feelings are an abomination of the ruin of his spirit, he--

It does not feel like that, he reminds himself. It feels right, and whatever those reasons are, he must find them, and put his own mind to rest.

"I will not leave you," he promises, settling his hands about her waist, his fingers nearly-not-quite touching, but he's not trying. "I may need to visit Sundermount, to go to the Gallows as I always do. Inquisition business may well call me to Orlais again. I will tell you. Unless it is dire, I will never make off like a thief in the night. I owe you that."

And he will firmly avoid-- he will not allow what happened to Legolas to happen to him.

Gwenaëlle does not think of the rifters who came and went, who melted away in the night and for whom there were no explanations - she does not wish to, so she doesn't. (She thinks once of Martel Leblanc, a footnote in her last publication, the rifter who died at the Winter Palace - Thranduil has much more practise at not dying than anyone, though, so surely-)

Reassured on the subject of being left (not being left, most importantly, and it troubles her a little that she trusts but he has yet to disappoint her and so), she worries instead at the oddities he raises, lingering on what is implied in the observations he makes, and does not make. That he is able to love. He doesn't say it, in so many words, so she hasn't got to answer it in so many words, and all the same: it lingers.

"Spirits and demons," she says, after a long pause, "are different either side of the Veil, aren't they. One thing in the Fade, and one thing here. What if it's...that? You loved once, there, and you're - different, here, so you have - new opportunities. To do things once. On the other side."

Occasionally, it's apparent that Gwenaëlle is both brighter and more observant than her frequent, loud tendency to kick off at the slightest provocation tend to suggest about her. In this instance, she even demonstrates the restraint many would be forgiven for not realising she's capable of and does not make any crack as her first thought inspires about how he's probably definitely a demon, then, after all.

This is probably not the time.

(She saves it up, though. He'll find it funny once he's found himself some proof to the contrary, she thinks.)

"Calenmiriel," he says, and for once it doesn't feel like ripping stitches. "She was my wife. She was Legolas' mother."

And she was-- everything. He has never been good at small gestures. He never commits himself to anything halfheartedly. He remembers her face, her laughter, the smell of her hair, every moment they spent together. Thranduil is grateful that he is not a moral who would lose those precious memories.

"If I go back," if, if, Valinor is not an if but a when, the same as Mirkwood, for all the events Legolas told him have already come to pass, and-

(How is he here, if Eru himself did not interfere?)

"I will not shame her or you, Gwenaëlle." Emphatic. "I will not-- these feelings are unnatural, unless they are not, in which case I need answers even moreso than I did before."

He shakes his head. The things she's said, he almost-- hopes? for them, in some odd way, because isn't that neater? But he is flesh and blood, though it is different here. He is not a man, but not Elvhen, but yet not still Quendi.

It's hard not to take the word unnatural as a blow, her gaze dropping to her hands, his hands - presses her lips together and presses against the instinct that tells her to pull away from him at once, if it's so fucking unnatural -

The weight of what he's talking about is...

She can't begrudge it, not in earnest. She wants answers, too, wants the certainty that they aren't making a terrible mistake, that it won't unravel because of what he is; he wants answers because he wants her, that means something, more than how his choice of words prick at her pride. Look at this way, she tells herself, you've seduced someone past their own nature, that's probably sort of impressive, actually. Well done, you, Gwenaëlle.

(She doesn't want to think about him going back.)

"But in the meantime," after another long pause, gathering her composure and her ability to answer him without being snippy about it, "if we're - sort of - engaged..."

Is kissing over now, or.

He sighs, and leans forward, pulling her just that bit closer. He has many faults; he can be roused to jealousy fairly easily, he tends, tended, to split his life with a line into state and personal business, and starve the personal side, and he his fiercely proud.

(Thranduil has not forgotten the stag in the Fade.)

He presses his lips to her forehead; breathes in the smell of her like he is so weak as to forget it. As if he ever forgot it, or stopped knowing it for a moment. He cannot allow himself to dwell on this, it does not deserve to consume him. He will find his answers, and return to his work.

"It is not as though I can un-kiss you, my lady." He brushes her hair over her shoulder, quietly fond. "I- would ask that we stop for the day. Please."

He draws her into his arms and she leans there, turning her face and exhaling a sigh against his shoulder.

"What about tomorrow," slightly muffled.

"Ask me tomorrow," he replies. He knows what his answer will be. The prospect of refusing her if they touch too often, if she combs his hair again, if she strokes his cheek or kisses his neck or does any of the hundred other things he's (infuriatingly) sure she'll find, well.

Winter is coming, and that means heavier robes. She doesn't need any encouragement to be a temptation.

A little more insouciant--

"I will."

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