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

( Everything is displeasing.

Guilfoyle had been far from pleasant to wake up to; the fire, even less. (Her birds are all right—the entirety of their small menagerie, in fact—but there had been a stretch of time, locked in the storeroom, where she'd entertained terrible and painful ends for all of them.) Being locked in a storeroom without most of her clothes; emerging from it to discover that Thranduil had made for Orlais without so much as a by-your-sodding-leave—

Go to the Gallows for the winter! Save a bit of coin on heating that great big house! Enjoy a bit of time closer to your loved ones! Enjoy it, has she? Has she, fuck.

Hardie lumbers to his feet when it looks like Gwenaëlle might, but instead she bites off the end of her thread and stabs the needle with slightly more force than is necessarily required to mend a shirt. It isn't her shirt. It is safe to conclude Galadriel knows perfectly well whose shirt it is, since he was recently on the crystals, refusing to murder his father-in-law. )

I think, actually, that it's time to do away with men entirely.

( The note that arrives for Araceli is, of course, nothing so gauche as a summons. )

Mistress Bonaventura,

I can only describe myself as immensely glad to have discovered you are yet with us, and I will dare to hope my own return to the Inquisition fold might be greeted as warmly. It has been some time since we last spoke in Skyhold; dare I further hope we might have more to say to one another after such time? Allow me the small imposition on your time and join me in my workspace this afternoon - I have brought a number of Nevarran teas you may enjoy.

Lady T.

( but nevertheless, she is expected at the set time. Benevenuta is attended, as ever, by the companionship of Husband and Max—the former beneath her desk chair, and the latter near the doorway, to better inspect visitors. There is water boiled, and tea steeping, and the room smells of spice and magic and Benevenuta's musky perfume. )

A bold decision, but one I can find little objection to.

[Galadriel, for her part, had been quietly winding fiber into thread. It was and remained an activity she found very calming and, forced to remain in one place with her newest cousin, she required some measure of calm. Unlike Gwenaëlle, however, she is not over concerned for Thranduil or, for that matter, Gwenaëlle's father.

She, of course, would have slaughtered the man wholesale...but she is a less forgiving sort than Thranduil.

Ah, but that is a strange thought, isn't it, and she looks up from the thread she winds to the mortal woman across from her. Her smile is wan, but holds a thread of genuine amusement.]

We could run away together, you and I. It would certainly startle him upon his return.

( In an ideal world, they'd never have seen one another again.

Of course, even before the war and the rise of Corypheus, it had been perfectly obvious that Thedas is not an ideal world. Still. She'd have preferred that her little kingdom, at least, contain fewer Averesches. None would suit her. It is, perhaps, the cost of venturing out into the world to which they'd been exiled; one runs rather more risk of coming across them, 'anywhere but the place they aren't supposed to be'. She'd come back to the Inquisition armed with intelligence ferreted out from the halls of the Nevarran court—

and who better to sift through it all with her than someone in such a unique position to testify to her adroit maneuvering of the information that passes through her hands. Much of it will need translation, and that they could do separately, of course, but Benevenuta has past experience with several ciphers key to doing those translations, and two heads, apparently, are better than one.

She thinks longingly of banging his head into something, which does put a mildly threatening cast on her faint, distracted smile. )

( It startles a laugh out of her that softens some of the harsher edges, the stiff and sudden way she's been moving—it suits her better, so there's that. )

That would serve them all right, ( she opines, as Hardie slowly lays back down, his legs sprawled out towards the fireside keeping them warm; probably nothing is about to go terribly wrong again. Leviathan the nug nestles down again too, currently trying to live a little nug life on the top of Hardie's back, and at least Galadriel doesn't also have to endure the incessant repetition of the birds.

They, mercifully, have been relegated to the room Gwenaëlle officially occupies, where Yva and most of her luggage reside. ) If we just left.

( Someone put her in a glorified cupboard. )

It takes a week for him to make his way back to her. He is slower in the returning than the leaving—no desire to wear out his horse, which until two days ago was someone else’s. He is no horse thief, but instead had been changing them on the road as he went for fresh ones, determined to make it to Emeric Vauquelin with all possible haste.

And now—now, he is thinking different thoughts than when he left. Adapting. He will need to pay the price for being absent when his room caught fire—for the room catching at all, for whatever additional lies Coupe had to tell to protect him. Perhaps he will go to the Nightingale or Cassandra if pressed too hard. Not with the motivation, but the act. ‘I am an elf’ will be what they assume, what he will encourage. And it was true.

He makes it back to the Gallows with no incident, through the frozen harbor, across the iced-over courtyard. In the saddlebags, he has a few treats to assuage the pain caused by the blockade, a benefit of being in an Orlesian market. Trinkets, only.

He need to see her. Needs to hold her, verify that she’s well. He trusts Coupe very much and Galadriel absolutely, but he must see.

The knock at her door is light, and done in the evening. The hallway is deserted, for now, quiet. They will need to take more precautions, going forward, and he will not hesitate to use his Craft more, but she must, must be safe.

It takes too damned long is how long it takes—oh, it could have been longer, but it could have been a single day and she'd still have greeted him the same way, opening the door with a frown and then continuing to frown up at him for longer than he would probably like for her to do when they're being 'discreet' and 'sensible' and 'waiting for a closed door between them and the rest of the Gallows'. The hall is deserted now, who knows who might be around a corner—

He isn't who she's angry at, he's just who's in front of her right now. Gwenaëlle opens the door wider (Hardie is sleeping on the end of the bed behind her, and Leviathan sleeping on top of him as is becoming their usual wont) and exhales very deeply.

“Tell me what happened.”

He does not obey immediately. Thranduil looks at her instead, takes in the whole of her— safe, uninjured— and holds it, uses it to wipe away the last of his fears.

He owes Coupe a debt.

No talking, just an arm about her waist as he steps forward, glad the door was open so wide and stepping beyond the frame and into the room proper, his hand over hers on the knob and tugging it closed.

“I returned Guilfoyle to your father, unharmed,” achey, perhaps, but it was not Thranduil’s fault if he was old, “—and your father and I had a conversation. An accord was reached.”

The spirit of which he will hold to, absolutely, if not the terms. He will be sending a letter to Romain, soon.

“I am very sorry, Gwenaëlle, for leaving you.” And now, the apology, holding her hand in both of his, not risking an embrace until he is assured of her temperament, as much as he wants to feel the solidity of her in his arms. She will not be truly safe until he makes everything right, but that may well take years, time he finds himself loathing.

Gwenaëlle had known what had happened the moment she'd looked up to the familiar crags of Guilfoyle's face, even if processing it in the moment had been difficult, whatever sedative he'd mixed with the magebane dragging sluggishly through her system—he does nothing without the say-so of her father. If he were there, knives out and flames licking the walls, it had been at Emeric's behest. She thinks she should feel something more at Thranduil's confirmation, but it has weighed on her mind since that moment and it's hard to muster more, now.

She frowns at nothing, and pushes his hands out of her way to lean against him, dissatisfied with this account of things but not sure, precisely, what answer would have been better.

(She never had any real expectation of his actually killing her father.)

“What accord was this,” she says, question in the words if not her still-flat tone, hands settling flat against his back and her eyes closing. She should acknowledge his apology, but might suppose her position does it for her.

There had been rumour that the Inquisition had returned with a plus one not from the rifts, and that it had very much been a return so the letter has Araceli smiling, definitely clearing out her day so she can be there on time.

A more polished girl to turn up at Benevunta's workspace, all smiles, a murmur to a dog large enough to give her pause when she arrives.

"Lady Thevenet, I'm so glad to see you again!" Sincere in a way she usually is but wouldn't need to be with all people who might return to the fold, Araceli can push down some embarrassment at what she must know if Lady Vivas knows it too. "How have you been? Oh there's so much to tell you now even since we landed in Kirkwall." How much has she missed someone who knows all this better than her?

A great deal, apparently.

“That if you wish to leave me, I will let you go without fuss.” Which he would do anyway— he is no monster, to keep her captive, to blackmail her into staying. “Without blame, without any stain of having been attached to an elf.”

He thinks the rifter charge the lesser of the two. Given her permission to hold her, he does, holds her tight, arms around her middle and shoulder, murmuring against the top of her head.

“I saw an old man, Gwenaëlle. Old and tired.” I saw shades of Thingol in him and I did not know what to do with those feelings. “He has a better grasp of the dangers you would face should a slip be made. I cannot yet protect you. If Celene cannot protect Briala...”

(How long has the ‘oldest’ rifter been here?)

He lifts his head. His hair still has the stink of smoke to it. He has not had time to bathe.

“He was not what I thought he would be,” Thranduil admits.

Julius doesn't know most of the details of the fire, beyond "there was one" and "it didn't substantially damage his office." He's not entirely sure if that's because no one knows the details or because he hasn't yet befriended the right person to get that kind of gossip from; either way, he's not concerned for her particularly because of the fire.

That said, it is indirectly the fire that makes him seek her out. Since it happened, he's been working on an idea for a system of fire-retardant glyphs that might protect her Hightown property from a similar misfortune whenever they move back. (He still has details to sort out -- perhaps, he thinks, he'll ask Myr -- but the theory seems sound enough to him.)

(If it's the fact that he was used to dining with her and Kieran practically every evening and he hasn't seen her in awhile that's moving him in her direction, well, that's not something he's strictly conscious of.)

Still, it's early evening when he goes looking; too early for her to be preparing for bed, but late enough he's not going to be interfering in the day's business (probably).

It all would have been nothing if he'd been human, she's sure; the Leblancs had adopted a damn rifter, even if he didn't last long enough for it to rightly matter. She touches the edge of Thranduil's jaw, recalls how vaguely unsettling she'd found his glamour in Nevarra, and tries not to think so much of the sad old man in Halamshiral.

"I'm never going to leave you," she says, the calmness of it deceptive over turbulent waters, "so that's fine."

That he tried to have him killed, less.

"Just my luck to have got away with so much under his nose only for him to start paying attention when I leave his house, that's all. It isn't any more his business than any other part of my life. I don't care what he is. What he is shouldn't be 'in my affairs'."

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.

With more than enough on her mind to occupy any one person for some time, Gwenaëlle hasn't given much thought beyond the passing to Julius since their (temporary, Maker be merciful) relocation to the Gallows; presumably he'll go about his business much as he did before, with less travel time. It's a bit strange to spend so much time without Kieran, to eat privately with Thranduil more frequently than she's grown accustomed to, but not—fire and subsequent fallout notwithstanding—unpleasant.

He's far from unwelcome, though, just a surprise—

“Hello,” she says, not quite all the way to puzzled. There are people Gwenaëlle would be genuinely bewildered to find in front of her door, and she'll grant that someone she normally shares a home with is not one of them. “I wasn't expecting any company.”

It's a prompt, rather than a dismissal. Presumably, there's a reason he tracked her down—probably Yva would have directed him on, occupying the room that any official record will say is Gwenaëlle's.

And if this isn't something to lighten her heart, then what is? Benevenuta rises—a fur-lined shawl the concession to the weather that her neckline is not, skirts thick and sweeping when she moves—and clasps her hands in warm greeting, ushering Araceli into the space and past the sentinel mabari.

(He is getting fat and spoiled in her care, but he is an old man like his master was, and in her opinion at least one of them ought to be fat and happy in his twilight years.)

“My dear, I'm all the better for such a welcome! Come; sit. Tell me everything.”

No, really.

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.)

"Hello," he says, with a smile that's not quite sheepish, but a little self-conscious. "I hope I'm not intruding. I had some ideas, after the fire, about some potential upgrades to your home's security when you're ready to return. I suppose I could have made an appointment by crystal, but I thought it might save some time to simply stop by."

He feels, inexplicably, a bit relieved to see her looking relatively well. If he lingered over the feeling, he'd probably suppose that taking on the responsibility for someone's safety is a bit easier than putting the responsibility down again. But he chooses not to linger over it, dismissing it as a not terribly relevant feeling to dwell upon.

So many left - people like herself who hopefully returned home (though now it's less certain, what becomes of them, she's not so sure these days) or those who went elsewhere in Thedas to continue their work for the Inquisition or themselves - but so rarely do they come back. The squeeze in return is gentle before making herself comfortable, wondering where best to begin but of course, it comes to her.

"You can't have missed the garden Kirkwall boasts now where a Chantry once stood." It could sound light but for her mouth twisting; Sina is dead, no loyalty is owed here when they'd argued over it without making any peace on that account. There aren't so many people Araceli would let her feelings known plainly before but Benevenuta has earned that candour. "It's not entirely the beginning of all that went on but if looking for a place to start, that might be the easiest when I know most of it, a little less involved with certain matters together though it starts the same: people who don't think about the ripples when a stone is cast in the water, all those it touches, who do a thing because they believe they have the right."

“… 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.

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

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araceli.

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