faderift | But the Stars are not gods, they say

"I might need to change to do that, dresses and climbing I can do but only when I have to." Generally if she can avoid it, she wouldn't, not in a dress she likes this much and it would cause a scene too. The plain clothes in her office, slinking past guards same old, same old; easily done to figure it out unless magic is involved but she's getting ahead of herself, glancing out the corner of her eye to get a better lay of the room.

(As much as Araceli might love simply having a home of her own, a home that isn't unlike her little flat back in Castileos by the harbour, this makes her miss the palace. Having the room she'd grown accustomed to. Somewhere with more solid walls. Where she didn't hear the neighbours.) She sits comfortably, wonders if the furs are similar to those back in her home--

"Sometimes I wish I didn't because I could argue until I'm blue in the face - something I'm not keen to test so soon - and they would blink at me, or say I cannot possibly understand. As if a person can't consider things from more than one angle when it's clear they only do when it suits them to do it. When it benefits them. And when they haven't bothered to actually look ahead as far as they think they have." Unkind of her to say, but thieves and pirates and queensguard function on having plans, having back-ups, having back-ups of those, alternates, laying a thing flat to pick it over, to consider all the ways it could fall apart before them. "It'd be simpler if there were gagging orders. Or people were held to some actual account for their actions."

(At least one of the furs has the face of a bear. That bear has seen things.)

“So much changes, so much doesn't.” Gwenaëlle toes her shoes off, regarding the fireplace moodily for a moment—she's so far from Orlais and she's still hiding around corners, listening for people she doesn't trust, frustrated by inertia. By long silences broken by voices she grows tired of hearing. “Gagging orders, that'd be something. At least,”

with a very deep sigh, unwinding her hair from its pinned braids down one shoulder, grimacing,

“at least the crystals aren't public. Can you imagine.”

She rather expects Araceli can.

"It might do some of them some good to gain some perspective. The Inqusition isn't the entire world, and neither is whatever some of them have come from. Of course then we'd have to endure the weeping and wailing about how terribly hard they have it, how no one could possibly understand what they've been through in their lives when we have about as much of that as I can stand." There's a reason Araceli has her public crystal persona which is a far more flighty girl to be taken as any person finds her until she sets the connection to private where it's very much as she wishes to be heard. It's the principle of it. "We've been in Kirkwall near a year and still people behave as if their actions don't have weight. We aren't in Skyhold where the news has to travel down a mountain. People are right there to see it, we're the ones chasing after it like tits so we don't embarrass ourselves, and we all know how Nevarra went."

And the fucking forest that they're still going round in circles about too.

Araceli slackens the lacing of her gown so she can take a deeper breath, shoulders inching down as she lets that angry knot out.

"Just...if they could keep their heads down, not cause scenes, let the work get done. It's not so much to ask, is it?"

Is it Gwenaëlle?

Edited 2018-03-19 21:28 (UTC)

“Of reasonable people, no,” Gwenaëlle says, with unbecoming cynicism—there's a reason these two have become such fast friends, bonded in their mutual disappointment in being constantly surrounded by such idiocy. “Though occasionally they need a thump, as well, Herian is going to fall on her own sword one day just because she wasn't looking to see it was there—”

a bit more despairing. She is fond of Herian, in spite of the antipathy between her and Thranduil, thinks highly of her; wishes she'd get out of her own way.

"You know, on her birthday a discussion came up about work. On her birthday. For people who'll just thumb their nose at her every chance they get because she cares about compromise and sparing pain when that's already out the window. We all make hard choices, or we should. Compromises. It shouldn't have to take shaking people 'til their teeth rattle to get the message across."

Herian too, because everyone is struggling together if they're Inquisition and no one is making life any easier by creating more work for others or discounting the intentions or contributions parties are making, Anders.

Her smile appears suddenly along with a short laugh that startles Araceli herself. "All the shit you can't say to people because it'd offend or wouldn't be just the right way at the right time."

“And if you do say it,” picking up the thread easily, toes aimed towards the fireplace and a little grimace on her face, “you have to say it nicely and apologetically, I'm so very sorry to have to point out, only I think you might have not noticed, and it's only that I do so wish for you to do your very best—”

The gesture that Gwenaëlle punctuates this with is not one she learned in Orlesian salons.

“Even Herian isn't immune to that. I think they all bring it out in each other. These people do remember they work for a military organisation, don't they? Why are we hand-holding fuckwits all the live-long day?”

"The number of screams I've swallowed here. Some of them are so ignorant it beggars belief they're still breathing. Get out of the damned way let me do my job to make this better for more than just you. When someone is cold or hungry they don't give a damn about your particular petty politics unless it put them there."

Honestly this is after a shift. The queensguard piled in one room with a list of complaints in one hand, whetstones or boot polish in the other.

"No one wants to remember what it takes to get the work done. That you have to swallow your pride, stow your blessings, grit your teeth and just do what needs to be done without stopping to see if everyone is comfortable. Ask it later. Of yourself. But nothing will get done if we're stopping to see if the children need to piss before they wet themselves."

You know some of them would just to be problems, everyone has a list.

With her hair slowly unwinding in her fingers, she lifts one of them enough to point—

“Nothing is getting done. Or that's what it feels like,” a little bit despairing, pulling a face. Probably, she allows, some things are getting done. She spends enough time around the division head offices to know the comings and goings and of the runners, the piles of paperwork, the long hours. It seems unlikely that this is all the work that happens in the Gallows, however uncharitable she wishes to be; people are trying.

And outside the walls (and inside them), people are dying. And there is inertia born of no perfect solution meaning no solution at all, and it's terrifying to think on.

“We're all going to fucking die,” she sighs.

"Would you like a hand?" A gesture to her hair, one to her own since she knows how to deal with getting out braids, getting rid of the ache after wearing them or pins or updos too tight or too long or any combination. It's been a while since she's been able to relax with someone else, hopefully the offer doesn't sound too forward or too familiar.

Her sigh is quiet but no less pained. "Trying to put together some sort of navy with the funds that we have is-- it's not a tall order, it's pissing into the wind. And after picking up the arrivals on that island with the damage we sustained even if it granted us some allies and information, it still doesn't account for the fact that ships are expensive. That we have four divisions, nine projects. Everything has to be divided. Things overlap. Things still fall through the cracks. We don't have allies, not really."

What happened to her so recently? Realised a fear and truth that Thranduil had spoken to her of that she didn't want to that now she's trying to make plans for as she wonders what really happened to those who came here. Why she remembers them. If they just disappeared instead which they must have. Too many questions.

"What did I get in Llomerryn? A pirate captain who'll tell us about Qunari and Venatori movements, and you know what? I felt grateful for it. I felt like I'd earned something that night. It's still going to take time for news to get here if that news comes, Qunari ships would move faster, I don't know about Tevinter ships but that's how it is. Skyhold we had a mountain but here when we see them coming, we see them and that's it."

The view from the harbour will be fantastic when they're all crammed into whatever boats they can get as it burns down around them.

The offer briefly requires some math—Gwenaëlle's tendency to tactile friendships, Thranduil's particular ... quirks ... about hair—but she says, “Yes, please, actually,” and sits forward so she isn't inconveniently leaned against the nearest settee.

Managing something like an intimate friendship with a girl in shouting distance of her own age is not to be sniffed at, she thinks, it's different to carelessness. The value of a connection between two people who can sit around in their stockingfeet agitating against the powers that be while braiding one another's hair, well: how could she possibly not have always wanted that? Intelligent conversation and an ease that feels earned.

It's not that she takes her other friendships for granted—indeed, she takes none for granted, precious things made moreso for their rarity before the Inquisition, by the unusual honesty in most of them—but they're different than this, and having all of them is sometimes, she thinks, worth every time she reads something and says are you fucking kidding me to the ceiling. If that rift hadn't derailed her life, where would she be?

Safer, maybe, but probably not. Angry at different things, but not less angry. Less happy.

She tries not to be glad about the war. What a chilling indictment of a life, to even for a moment not wish for peace—

“I think that Antivan with the boats will stay,” she muses, offering Araceli her comb. “I think she'll complain about it as loudly as I do, and less discreetly than you, but I don't know that she'd be able to stand not having a hand in matters.”

Gwenaëlle is inclined to approve of that, being an interfering so-and-so herself.

As casual with her touch as Araceli tends to be; a hand resting on a shoulder, a friendly nudge, arms linked with someone she knows well enough when they walk, this is-- Outside of Korrin or when she was too hurt to move one hand to do it herself, it's a thing rarely offered or done.

Going from so many people that she could share this with and her fingers almost itch with it, settling more comfortably to find the end of a braid, working carefully. A thief's fingers. A gambler's fingers. A sailor's fingers. Calluses no amount of careful tending will do away with but no less gentle for it.

It's a very fine comb. (And speaking of Herian, what a tale to tell one day: Gwenaëlle did you know I first met Herian naked in the bath where I combed and oiled her hair because she was so honourable and it was a snarled tangle? Somehow she doesn't imagine Gwenaëlle would be surprised.)

"Lady Vivas? You know she mistook me for a native, that's out the fucking window now." Thanks to what happened since there wasn't any chance for it to be discreet, because it affected all of them and people just open their mouths anyway to let things fall out. But it was nice for a little while to have that complete control. "That she has strong opinions she's inclined to share, as well as news we might do something with. She's part of Naval Presence so even if something takes the ships away, I can still bend her ear when she has to report to me.

"She agrees about the rifter collective identity...movement?" Her hands still a moment to think better on how she'd like to phrase that, if it's quite a movement or just a spectacularly poor lapse in judgement shared by too many minds. "About the idiocy of it, there were other words but let's be blunt about what it is. She's a mage with a title for all that mages don't get to have their titles mean anything outside of Tevinter. And she does listen. Even to things she might not like, she doesn't go spoiling for the fight, it makes a change. Or I've spoken to too many men."

“You've been speaking with too many men,” Gwenaëlle says, critically, tilting her head back with the pull of the comb and looking up to nothing in particular on the ceiling, its elaborate molding. Free of braids, her hair is heavy curls to her waist and soft, well-tended. Clean, spoiled thing fond of her baths that she is. Black ribbon unravels from it, a simple adornment. “I never understood the idea of rifters banding together. Remind everyone how different you are and stand in a group where its easier to aim. And just imagine someone like Thranduil with some of the other rifters, for that matter—”

She met Church, the once, that's probably who she's thinking of.

“It's even less smart, now. After what happened.”

How easily they could all have been forgotten. It's a lesson she's taken quite to heart.

"A hazard of the job." How much better life is now that both her superiors are women but it's the way men seem so entitled to the last word that she can't stand. How many of them there are about. Maybe she's so used to being surrounded by women, she thinks, where she'd spend so much time being able to have just this sort of conversation while they were getting ready for the day, or for bed, or going somewhere else.

"There was a time very early on when things in Skyhold were," what's the best word for it that she can grasp, "reactionary to say the least that the idea of at least having some common ground was there. I was younger. Things changed. I saw where I needed to be and what was being asked, that this Inquisition has to succeed and that it's selfish for me to stand separate from it, to not give my all."

Her hands slow. It's-- there's not an exact word for how she feels about what happened to her, to any of them, she hasn't talked about it to Korrin and doesn't imagine that she ever will unless it erupts one day from wherever she's hidden it. The agreeable noise doesn't quite come however, even as she resumes combing through one section.

"I forgot. Before. I already forgot things, not the same way, not enough that others forgot me but I forgot everything about this place once."

But the Stars are not gods, they say

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