faderift | when they tell you you are made of stars, tell them you know.

He lets her shoulders go so that he can touch her fingers where they brush his face. “No,” said steadily, with absolute confidence. “You are not. I would not have bound myself to you with such unbreakable ties if I thought you flighty. It was an easy promise.”

He considers Guinevere’s portrait, the vulnerability of it, and tries to push it from his mind. He is no Beren, Gwenaëlle hardly Luthien, but it nags at him. He closes his eyes, focuses just on her, her hand, her body against his.

“I forgive him his foolishness. Less so the chance that you could have been injured.” But Emeric was hurting himself for that mistake. And then there was the odd gossip he had picked up—

“May I beg a boon of you, Gwenaëlle?”

The sound she makes on the subject of her father's foolishness doesn't sound much like she shares her husband's forgiving nature—

which she had not previously imagined him to have, if she's honest

—but proof if proof were needed of that assured devotion in what she says instead of commenting on it: “Of course you can,” without what anyone else should expect, wherein she immediately demands terms and conditions before writing any blank cheques of agreement. She more or less trusts that this isn't going to be anything she doesn't want to grant, and probably marriage is about compromise, and probably if it is something she doesn't like, he can be persuaded to compromise.

Or she might. A bit.

It comes, it goes, it blares alarmingly and suddenly like Myrobalan’s locator gylphs every few centuries or so, and then Thranduil is back to not giving a damn, frankly, as assuaged of his guilt as any good Andrastean post-confession until the timer goes ding again.

(That she agrees to listen, at least, is a comfort to him, a warmth in his heart, a coal lit with ‘she trusts you’ and ‘she loves you’.)

“A letter, to your father, letting him know that we spoke, and that you understand the value of discretion.” He tucks her hair behind her ear, thumb running over the curve of her ear. “I will not have our love paint a target on your back, though I doubt anyone other than your father and those friends who you have told know.”

Whom he really ought to be informed of, and keep it in mind. He has been awfully stingy, on his own end, in telling—perhaps it is time to relight the rumors about himself and Cassandra.

The immediate downward pull of her mouth can come as no surprise. It isn't as if the antipathy she has toward him is a secret; Thranduil, perhaps, would have been less surprised by the man he found in Orlais if it had been. Less immediate is a spoken objection, because it's hard to find a rational reason for why she absolutely shouldn't do that that isn't because he's a twat and why should she—

“It'll be a short letter,” is what she says, finally, darkly.

Not the sort Emeric will enjoy receiving.

“Later,” he says, and tucks away his thoughts about Romain for the moment, somewhat aware of how much luck he can push, and releasing her so they can speak face-to-face. “I am in need of a bath, and a change of clothes, but once I am presentable, I would have my reunion.”

He picks at his cuffs, glances to the (barred) window, at the snow on the ground. “Where is Yva?”

Here are the things he will need to start taking into account.

“Where she's been,” is the shrugged answer—the room Gwenaëlle is officially listed as residing in, within the former Templar tower. Not this particular room, her explanation offered— “Galadriel doesn't keep a consistent room, and I don't care for the neighbours where Yva is. But I left the birds with her.”

There's a reason they have their own room in the house, and it's mainly that anywhere people might be talking, well. After a time, they do start to do her sodding head in.

She rises up on her toes to kiss the corner of his mouth, briefly, wishing for a moment that they were in the house or his bedroom weren't in presumably something of a state, and his bath could be their bath and reunion both.

(Yva's absence presumably accounts for why Gwenaëlle's hair is loose and her waist feels soft, absent of whalebone and tight-lacing. The velvet dress that had been a little much in Nevarra is quite ideal, now.)

“… where is Yva?” being the rational follow-up to that particularly leading bit of information.

He’s glad she’s with Galadriel—no one he trusts more to keep her safe and back that keeping up with the ability to do so, fury and ten millennia of experience. His hand lingers on her hip with that kiss, a little shift in the way he’s standing. He orbits her, here in private, a devotion unmistakable as anything other than love. The only thing that would make him leave her side in this early blush of marriage would be a threat to her life—which there had been, and he was still smarting about it, but he was back now.

“Are you fond of her?” he asks, instead. “Galadriel,” he clarifies, curling a strand of her hair about his fingers.

With a dismissive little wave on the subject of Yva—they can circle back to that, probably, but it doesn't seem that urgent. A shared room in the former Templar tower, or what is listed as one, anyway, while Gwenaëlle fails to share it with her beyond as somewhere to keep her belongings. She comes and goes from it often enough not to seem particularly remarkable, if only to collect her things.

So, his more interesting question, then, and it's with some muted surprise at the direct acknowledgment of her own answer: “I am, actually,” a little thoughtful. “We didn't speak much, before. I didn't really make much of her, I don't know—I didn't have a particular opinion.”

She hadn't exactly been sympathetic on the subject of her incarceration, having been in fact one of the most strident voices in support of Cassandra Pentaghast's right to do whatever the fuck she wants because she's perfect—it seems impolitic to bring that up right now, in so many words. She and Galadriel have never spoken about it. She'd be honest, she supposes, if they did.

“I didn't imagine getting along with her so well.” A very pleasant surprise.

(This will come back to haunt him, maybe.)

“She is a remarkable elleth,” he says, to her, and never to Galadriel herself. “You are kin to her now, through the son of my father’s brother, which makes you—special.”

He lets her go, look around the room, sees nothing of his own in it. He will go fetch what he needs from the (partial) ruin of his rooms, and clean himself, and make noise (if anyone asks) about sleeping in Galadriel’s rooms until his own can be sorted. Which he will start, tomorrow.

“I want a bath,” he says. “And a change of clothes, and then we will speak more, yes?”

“Have one,” she agrees, because he still smells of smoke quite distinctly and she will be glad to have him back with less of the stink of road and horse and the fire's chaos, “and I'll be here when you come back.”

She lets her hand slide down his arm, fingertips brush, and sits down finally—standing in the middle of the room like lovesick idiots who've forgotten what chairs are. (She missed him terribly, which is stupid because he's been gone longer, before, but with everything...)

Then— “This is my family, you know. You, and Galadriel, and...here. Whatever we make of it.”

Nevermind Halamshiral; what's most precious to her is within her grasp. Morrigan and Kieran as well—the strange life she's assembled out of parts.

“We will build something good,” he promises. “Something that will last.”

He has his people, the group he has built to help him feel purposeful, without his hive of elves to protect and lead and live with. And his purpose, his drive, his wants for the future. Soon, he thinks, he will give her the full picture of it, lay it out plainly, balance being complicit with being informed.

He takes his leave, then, goes to explore his room and see what was lost (not lost: his chest, his wardrobe, his notes. lost: a rug, the curtains, his table and chairs, Coupe’s patience) and wash the filth and lingering thoughts. It works as well as a bath can solve anything, and when he returns to her (through the halls like a shadow) his mood is much improved.

No knocking, this time, only slipping inside, the door hinges well oiled, the door closing softly.

When he returns, she has a comb and every expectation of using it—small animals nudged off the bed and down onto a fur that Hardie's own has shed all over, Gwenaëlle settled there, the brazier tended to keep warmth in the room. She has a shawl, but it seems less necessary with the prospect of large, warm husband to keep her company. His company, particularly, improves the prospects for the evening.

“Come and talk to me,” she invites, quiet, gesturing him down with the comb.

Sometimes, she surprises him. When Gwenaëlle yields, he has the context for it now, mostly because he is familiar with the unyielding. So this is a gift—and better still, always best, when she remembers. She is very observant, but she does not always choose to recall.

He agrees by coming over to her, sitting next to Hardie and the nug, his shoulder and head at the right height for her to touch if she sits on the bed and he keeps his back to it, which he does. He also picks up his nug, holding Leviathan on his knees, crooning softly at him until he settles back into sleep, and then stroking his nose and ears. Hardie earns himself an approving look. He was a good choice for a protector.

“What did you and Galadriel speak of?” He is clean, now, and softer for it, hair damp and scented, clothes changed and the bandage around his palm white linen, rather than off-white and sweaty. The Quendi spare little thought for blood poisoning beyond the most dire cases, but being in Thedas has given him an appreciation for that gift.

Once he's settled, she settles too; cross-legged behind him, the slight press of her knees against his shoulders, her hands there for a moment before she lifts his hair free of them both and draws the comb through it. Placidly, she says, “We've decided to run away together, just the two of us.”

A perfectly reasonable thing for the two of them to have decided to do, under the circumstances.

“Keep you on your toes,” she adds, “not that you need the further height.”

Nevermind that he knows perfectly well, now, she objects to his having any less of it.

He exhales, face relaxing into utter bliss, leaning his head back against her crossed legs (it’s not an unfamiliar expression) and deciding that this is paradise.

“I wish you the joy of her,” he murmurs, really, she could tell him anything right now and he might hum happily and agree. “What else? Have you been eating? Has she? I would worry that she might forget. It is harder for her, to remember to do all the little mortal things we are condemned too here.”

Perhaps they might take care of one another—or perhaps they both might enable the other’s forgetting.

If she'd ever owned a cat, she might be inclined to think that this is very like; as it is, she bends down to press a kiss to his temple and then neatly and without feeling particularly as if she needs to give him any warning (or say in the matter) adjusts the way he's leaning to give her freer reign over his hair, sectioning it in her lap and combing minor, damp-related tangles out of it from the bottom up.

“I've married an anxious geriatric,” she sighs to no one in particular, unfairly maligning his character and blithely ignoring all the precedent she's set to make his persistence on this topic, in fact, completely reasonable. “I promise we're both in perfect health and we slept, as well, so I can forestall your next question.”

(Much as with Wren, though, she'd miss it if he stopped asking.)

Her fingers are deft, weaving his hair into neat braids behind him; “What about you? You rode all the way to Halamshiral apropos of,” fire, “well, unexpectedly.” A beat. “Was Guilfoyle all right?”

He's very old. She worries, a little.

He is moved, and does not complain—she is touching him, so she may do what she likes, sighing prettily and luxuriating. No one has done this for him in a very long time. She is starting to get a grasp of it, to do it as an elf might, and it is like her dress—she brings his home back to him.

“You have,” he agrees. “But it is part of my duty, now, and yours to fuss over me. Good, good,” he says, soothed before he can fret. And really—it would be hard to fret, while he is being combed and brushed.

“I have ridden longer and further on less rest. I would have preferred aras-nin but to bring him would have meant glamouring us both. Guilfoyle is fine. A warm bath and a week of rest will soothe his ills.” Or so he assumes. He didn’t inquire. “I attempted to make him—comfortable. He would not speak, but neither did he attempt anything as we rode, so I did my best.”

Felix Guilfoyle is not, she reflects, much of a conversational man at the best of times. By no estimation was this anything bearing slight resemblance to the best of times, so she can't be particularly surprised; she takes that answer and lets it be enough, conscious of what it is to be fussing over the man who had been in their bedchamber lighting fires. Who'd left Thranduil wounded, too, if only a little—

He is here, and safe. All the most important things are. It's enough.

“He'll work for us, one day, if he outlives my lord.”

It's a strange thought, under the circumstances, but who's to say if he will or won't—Guilfoyle older, Emeric reckless. She exhales, soothed a little by the repetitive motion of binding his hair into neat braids. “If a hundred other things.” There's a good deal they might not inherit, but she suspects his loyalty would trump much if she were the last one standing.

With no offense to Guilfoyle, he’s faced worse. The wound is nearly healed, he will consult with the Medicine Seller to make sure it is clean, and it will fade to pure, unblemished skin within a month. Such is the way of things—he can afford to be generous when there was no cost beyond mortal goods.

“’Work’ is a relative term, and it will be for you,” Thranduil says, and does not open his eyes. “He is old, and ought to be given something dignified but not taxing. From the view of this geriatric.” He feels her fingers braiding, and imagines the patterns. Perhaps she would like to know the language of them, the way the Silvans and sometimes the Sindar used them to say things. He would like a marriage braid in her hair—

“Your father shields you,” he says. “More than you realize. More than I knew. I would rather he be alive, and you a lady only, and not a—Comtesse? Is that the word?”

Us, she repeats silently to herself, obstinate, but the rest of it is not to be disputed; it aggravates her to see him expected to keep up a pace he set many years before. The work he does managing their estates is valuable and more than enough—if someone needs killing, surely he knows of readier hands than his own he might trust the job in.

Also, she hopes not to need to have anyone killed. (Hopes, but does not expect.)

“Comtesse,” she confirms. Then, a little reluctantly— “I know he does.”

If she's honest, she knows enough to credit him as the reason she's lasted so long in a court like the empire's; he is an able player of the game, all the better for having Guilfoyle at his elbow to steady him at the right moments, to fill in the gaps where his old wounds fail him. He has worked hard and steadily and for her and it is infuriating for that reason, because she would have it be simple and it isn't. Because she would have him let her be, and he won't, and her life might not be the better if he did.

“What am I supposed to do, Thranduil? Meekly follow him about until he's dead and I don't know what to do with the space he made for me to live in?”

She has a husband for doing those murders—

“Would I be Comte?” he asks, testing the waters here, trying to bring her feelings to the surface so that he might get the measure of them. They will be all mixed up in her feelings about her father, so hardly a pure measure, but now is convenient. Even though she has his hair in her hands and might pull.

“He is—did I tell you the story of Luthien and Beren? I spoke it over the crystals, but we were not speaking, so you may not have listened.” He ought to be airing his thoughts to Galadriel, she will understand, but Gwenaëlle is his other half.

“… do you know how you speak of the Seeker, and that little Warden wife of his?” Gently, gently.

Edited 2018-01-15 04:08 (UTC)

It's a great deal to respond to all at once; Gwenaëlle orders her thoughts, more deliberate, fingers not pulling but falling still at the nape of his neck. After a moment, she works to fasten the braids she's worked into his hair—

“If you were to be my Comte we'd have to marry a second time before the eyes of Orlais and the Maker,” she says, making her voice steady the way her fingers are, a white-knuckle thing. “Our law doesn't legally recognise burying yourself between my legs,” dry, sharp, over something less sure of the ground underneath her. “The throne recognises the title given to Briala but she's a special case and I don't know that the laws have been broadly altered. Getting permission to marry, finding a chantry that would perform the service, being recognised by the court...”

It's not as simple as yes or no. In the eyes of the law she remains unmarried, a potential chess piece to be moved for benefit.

“As it stands right now, no. And if you want to hear what I have to say about the Dartons, it's that the Seeker is a shocking ingrate who owes his family a debt for supporting an expensive marriage that benefits them not at all.”

(Hers will certainly not be given the same indulgence.)

His hair does not get pulled, and he is happy enough to continue. “Thingol was my lord, when I was young. He had a daughter, who married a mortal, Elros is of this line—but that does not matter. What does matter was that losing Luthien, his only child, broke something in him. I saw that, in your father’s face, and I—he is a fool. He hurt you, he failed you. I had ambitions to ask after that time you mentioned, the explanation taken from you, but I pitied him too much to ask.”

His hand curls around her ankle, thumb rubbing at the malleolus. “Darton takes advantage of his family’s cushioning, fashions himself a pretty little home of it, and complains still. I am not suggesting you go the same, but he is prepared to make things easier for you, at great expense, and this easiness will not last forever. When the time comes, we will-- we-- figure out how we mean to handle it, but for now you needn’t think of it. He may be a wretched father in other ways, but he is very good at this one thing, and for as long as it lasts we may as well make use of it—without making too much use of it. I would never have killed him—you would have been Comtesse, and amidst the Game.

And I do not want to be an Orlesian comte. I would rather be an Elven king.”

He speaks a great deal of sense, even if it isn't all sense that she wants to hear—he is right and she knows it, even if anger and defiance whisper alternatives. They would cut off her own nose to spite her face and she knows it better than she wishes she did, exhaling a sigh and dropping the foot he doesn't hold from the bed to the floor beside him, her knee against his shoulder and her calf against his arm, framing him in.

“I don't particularly want to be an Orlesian comtesse.”

Jehan had had words for her on this subject, and that had been hers; much of what she gives up in doing this, she is prepared to live without. She doesn't imagine it will be as easy as it feels in this moment, assassination attempts aside—because he's right, infuriatingly, consistently right. Emeric has shielded her with his name, with his money, with his deft hands and when that's gone...

More will change for her than has yet.

“He loves me, you know,” she says, after a moment. It feels hollow, tastes cold in her mouth. “I should be disowned for my behaviour. I know that.”

“Then be my lady,” he says. “Have our children and let me find a forest to hide us all away in once things are settled. Braid flowers into my hair and I will hunt deer and learn to till the soil. But no one need know that is what we want until we have it.”

He does not want to push things, but someone needs to say things to her.

“I know he loves you. I read your poems,” he says. “Ilde’s poems. He failed you. He loves you and he failed you, and I would tear his heart from his chest and offer it to you, if it would fix anything, if it would make you happy, if it would make the younger you happy. He has not disowned you. You can love him for the right he did and still hold him accountable for what he failed in. You are an adult, now.”

He opens his eyes, turns his head to look at her, even if his hair falls from his grasp. “There must be someone you trust to transport private letters. The distance may help—and he aches for his daughter. I do not know him well enough to guess, but if there were a better time to ask him for answers to questions you have had for a long time, secrets that you were forbidden—now would be the best moment to strike.”

when they tell you you are made of stars, tell them you know.

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