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

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.”

I don't want to, she thinks, not the thought of a woman grown but the clutching hands of a child to her mother's skirts; the heat in the room from the brazier feels suddenly oppressive, a sense-memory that creeps up her back to tighten her shoulders, heavy drapes pulled over curtains and Anne's hand under hers somehow still cold.

Even now, it feels like betrayal to bend where she had not.

“I've no questions,” she says, looking up at nothing over his head.

“It is rare to have someone who will do anything for you,” he says, and turns onto his knees before planning his hands on either side of her knees, and rising, his torso guiding them apart. Bring her back, he thinks. “You know I am at your command.”

To some degree. He is no Guilfoyle, but Guilfoyle has the look about him that suggest he has a courtier’s way of redirection, of guidance, that he is sure he puts to use with Emeric.

“My wife,” he says, and hopes ‘not too much’. “My love. I missed you very much. Do you have a looking glass? I want to see my hair.”

It takes her a moment to reorient, to draw herself out of memory and a grief that had still felt new when it had yet to be layered over with more recent aches—when she softens again it's a purposeful yielding, breathing out and meeting his eyes, her skirts tangled around her knees and him as well.

“Of course,” she says, touching her thumb to his mouth, so lightly. They're apart more than they aren't, it feels like, and she dislikes it—bury themselves in the wood somewhere and never be apart again, live quietly...

She could do it, she thinks. She could learn that. Maybe.

“Let me get it.”

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

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