faderift | closed | put your good face on, you're not fooling no one

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closed | put your good face on, you're not fooling no one

WHO: Thranduil, Gwenaëlle Vauquelin
WHAT: After this, a more in-depth conversation.
WHEN: Firstfall 4th
WHERE: Vauquelin residence in Hightown
NOTES: Discussion of family planning, etc.

Her sleep schedule was such that he could run errands in the morning, and even stop by the Gallows to gather his mail with enough time to return to the estate in Hightown before she woke. There was a package alongside the correspondence from the ravens and the internal reports, and he’d secreted it away in his sleeve alongside the rapidly growing baby nug he’d taken charge of before heading back to Hightown.

He had fought her, at first, about using the main entrance to the estate, but on the quiet near-afternoons of the weekends, it was less work to sneak in the side way, going through the kitchen and up to her bedroom. She was still asleep, and he sat gently on the corner of her bed. He stole a few minutes of simply watching her—the rise and fall of her chest, how her hair spread out over her pillow, how soft and peaceful she looked.

The wet nose pushing at his wrist broke his reverie, and he gently coaxed the small nug out, setting him on the bedspread. No boots today, just a soft ribbon around his neck. He made for Gwenaelle nearly immediately across the bed, determined to smell everything. He sniffed at her hand first, nudging it intently, little hands pawing at her own.

(Thranduil hoped that the nug will be blamed rather than he for the awakening.)

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A fair amount of ground to cover for little nug feet; Gwenaëlle tangled in bedding in the center of a bed far too large for her by half, the braid she'd wound her hair into the night before coming undone, expression twisting into a frown as she stirs, curling her fingers under her palm and pulling her hand out from underneath Leviathan. She rolls to her side and sweeps her hair from her face, the swoop of bangs growing out still not quite long enough to have been wound back in the first place-

“Good morning,” a bit dryly, in a voice still somewhat rough as she grudgingly becomes awake. “If that thing runs in front of Hardie, I won't be held responsible.”

(The hound in question lies sprawled on his bed - a sofa for his particular use - across the room. Thranduil's quiet comings and goings no longer merit more than a brief, inquisitive stirring- all is well and back to sleep.)

“He is a sensible hound,” Thranduil said, sitting on the bed and then leaning over as far as can be allowed without his boots touching the covers. “A nug poses no threat to his lady.”

Leviathan stands sentinel at the edge of the bed, staring at the floor, then his hands, then the floor—before tumbling off and scurrying under the bed, the closest thing the room has in imitation of the Deep Roads. There’s muffled squeaking, then silence.

He cups her face in his hands and kisses her forehead, brushing her cheek in this elegant lean he had worked himself into. “Are you well-rested, or would you have me return later?”

“Stay,” she bids, pushing herself up first onto her elbows and then wiggling her feet up the bed to sit properly against her pillows, swinging what's left of her braid over her shoulder to let her undo it properly. Yva, who learned better even before the risk of encountering anyone else in this room, will not interrupt until sent for and so in the meantime she can wake leisurely, take her time.

(Hardie opens his eyes long enough to watch the nug disappear into the shadows under the bed, and then closes them again.)

“Unless this is a conversation I've got to get dressed to have-”

But that would have been particularly optimistic of him, probably.

He moved to sit against the headboard as well, still angled to keep his boots away from her sheets. "No," he said. "Not at all."

One day, perhaps, he will come calling in the morning with much better news, but for now he reached into his sleeve and pulled out two waxed-paper envelopes, setting them on the bed between them.

"When we spoke of marriage, we spoke too of elflings. Perhaps I am too optimistic in assuming that I will have my surety before we defeat Corypheus, but-"

A small gesture. He planned, he was cautious. This was a topic on which he would have rather he knew nothing, able to assume she was alike to elven women. But she was not, and blindness was akin to stupidity.

“You know they probably wouldn't be,” she says, after a pause, picking up the envelopes - tapping them absently against her palm, looking up at him. Elflings, she means; it's possible. Who knows what the foreign physiology of a rifter might mean? On the other hand, they know already of rifters altered...he has been altered, in ways immediately noticeable and ways that have taken longer to become evident.

More likely, she must think, that children of theirs would be like her; elven heritage withering on the vine, leaving them indistinguishable from humans born of humans. The ways she favours her mother are easy enough missed, when none of them are in her species.

It isn't an accident that the only elf in her bed before this had been a woman, had left the question of elfblooded children entirely outside of the conversation. (Though that relationship is perhaps better described as an enthusiastic argument.)

"The Peredhil choose," he said. He was not concerned, his tone mild. He caught the hand holding the envelope and kissed it, his lips on the back of her hand. "But if they refuse the Gift of Men, they will be like their father."

She will die someday. It is inevitable. But their children-- after he loses her, he will not be alone. Being a widower will wound him, but not cripple him. His heart is already steeled to it.

"This one," he said, and meant the envelope with the looping symbol on it. "will not suit human women with irregular bleeding. The other has, as I understand it, an ingredient that could be an irritant. Either need be taken only once a month."

She sets aside the first - she doesn't need to know what the side-effects would be to know that she doesn't want to find out, and she's definitely one of those women - but after a moment puts down the second in her lap and shifts, turning and curling her fingers tighter around his hand.

“Thranduil,” more firmly. “All of this is even under discussion because the things you're used to aren't reliable here. If we had children, here, it's very likely that they'll be like me. They won't get any more of a choice than I had. You can't dismiss me, you have to think about that.”

It isn't a risk they're going to be taking any time soon, not unless Corypheus manages to fall much faster than any of them currently imagine - on the other hand, his avoidance of the possibility of truly human children leaves her reluctant to ever revisit it later.

He cannot convince her. No number of stories would, or promises, and he will have no arguments between them as much as they can be avoided. So, instead, and watching her face rather than their hands, he spoke.

"They will be loved. They will be ours."

He entertained, briefly, the possibility, but dismissed it as easily as he dismissed the Maker upon arrival. He claimed kinship with the Elvhen, not sameness. Their limitations would not be his. And human children, to watch them wither and die, that- that would be a specific sort of torture.

He took the rejected envelope, and tucked it back within his sleeve, to be returned to the Rifter apothecary.

Too pat an answer to be particularly reassuring - unconvincing as an attempt to show her he takes it seriously - her searching gaze drops from his with a dissatisfied twist of her mouth. The matter of having children is a fraught one, and in truth there's little to find comforting in either of them being right. An elfblooded child to shame her, or an elven one she isn't sure she could love without bitterness-

He doesn't want to hear any of that.

“If we have children at all,” is all she says, finally, slipping her fingers out of his hand and turning over the envelope she still has, instead. Then, “Everyone's always taken such care with my health, but it's only because of my lady mother. I've never been particularly delicate that way.”

'Delicate that way'. He sits up, leaving her to bend over the side of the bed and unbutton his boots. He leaves them at the side of the bed and now meets her where she sits, hands free but not reaching for her. He knows, by now, when not to press.

"I am glad of your good health." They have matching shards, both rather dull at the moment, and he spares a thought for Sina.

"Did you have questions that I may carry back to the apothecary? He does not know who you are. I was careful."

“Not for now. I doubt I'll be allergic,” sturdy as she asserts she is - her periodic ill-health has never been cut from the same cloth as waylaid Annegret in what ought to have been her prime, “so it should serve. I used to take Orlesian teas,” reflectively, “but it isn't as if I was doing so particularly religiously the last while. It's only luck we're not having this conversation over a bouncing baby Luthor.”

As if what they need is any more complications to contend with.

“I was going to ask Morrigan if the Chasind have anything better than what I used to use, but this seems like as good a place as any to begin. Who does he think you wanted contraceptives for?”

He raises a brow, amused, and gently closes the door on the ease with which she accepts that alternate future compared to the rough footing they find themselves on. Thranduil gestures to her wrist. "He suggested you test it upon your skin. If there is no rash, it will do."

Morrigan, he supposes, would have been equally suited. No peddler of fake remedies, she, and likely enough to have tested them herself.

(The beak now sat on his mantle place.)

Thranduils smiled, turning his head to face her. "Beleth Ashara or Madame de Cedoux matched the descriptions I gave him. A lady in delicate standing who could not come herself, lest she reveal she kept a lover, of roughly your size."

And both were beautiful, so the comparison could not wound Gwenaelle's pride.

As easy as it is to be flippant about something she hasn't got to deal with - it might have been simpler, but at this point, what wouldn't be? - equally easy to be momentarily diverted by the names. The Dalish that runs Scouting, and the rifter leading Diplomacy...and Gwenaëlle unable to bring to mind a face for either of them. Her considering expression looks more serious than it really is as she tests a little of the concoction on the back of her wrist, combing through her memory - the rifter, she is sure, she hasn't met. They tend to stick in one's memory, though she's little against them when they bother to pull their weight, so there's that in de Cedoux's favour.

The elf, well, she might have done? The Asharas have been underfoot in the Inquisition for longer than herself, and she's never been particularly able to tell them apart beyond 'the mouthy one with the baby' and 'not that one'.

“Well, maybe they'll find the gossip flattering,” she says, dryly.

"If there is gossip," he says lightly. "I am ever careful with your reputation, my love."

Beleth, he thinks, would take the blame if he ever needed her to. He watches her dab the mixture onto her skin. She deserves a better lot than the one she is currently stuck with. Some joy, some happiness. With all the Dalish that find their way to the Inquisition, perhaps she will soon be blessed.

(Ashara has been hemorrhaging members, he cannot feel comfortable.)

"You will warn me, if there is even a hint of a rumor."

“I doubt I'll get the opportunity,” with a hint of not unwarranted cynicism. “Yva knows full well how tempting it would be to dismiss her on principle wherever it came from- it'd be someone else, and it's not as if anyone in Kirkwall speaks to me. If there's a rumor, you'll probably hear it before I do.”

Quite possibly from some Inquisition agent. Isn't that a thought.

“I don't think anyone's that interested in what's going on in my house, at least.”

"Are you lonely?" He risks a touch to her hair, tucking strands behind her ear. "I know you have Lady Morrigan, and I imagine Kieran requests much of your time, and Ser Coupe, and your writing."

'Can I help?' can sit between them, the promise of more comfort and a way to spend more night at her side, sneak her into the Gallows, perhaps. She is not a young lady who would seek to fill up her calendar. Detests it, even, but her loneliness, if she has any, is his to try and soothe away.

He is interested in what goes on in her house.

“Coupe is as much a cure for loneliness as removing one's head is a cure for a headache,” is the first, sour remark - sure, you don't have a headache any more, but you've just replaced one problem with a worse one. A moment later, turning her cheek against his palm; “No, I'm fine.”

The fact she might say as much with an open wound notwithstanding.

“I grew accustomed to you being here, that's all.” Now she would grow accustomed to his absences- complaining of them too loudly seemed out of turn, after everything. (Her numerous exhortations to make himself bloody useful, for a start; not for the first time she thinks of feigning ignorance when he prodded her on her writing's lack of elves, pointedly suggesting in turn that he make himself a member of the Inquisition and not merely an ally. Only look, now, at where they stand.)

He did, perhaps, take her suggestion to the extreme, once he had decided upon following it. He does not let go of things easily, once he has sunk his claws into them.

"As I grew accustomed to waking to you next to me," he says, growing bolder, fingers brushing the shell of her ear. One hand, one touch, above her collarbone. He is strength and patience and ages eternal, but his fëa cries out to be bound and his hroa is weak to it, weakened by the Veil and the imminence of the truth.

She tempts him, calls him to her, it is not something poets have not written about before.

"I hung your gift in my office."

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closed | put your good face on, you're not fooling no one

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