faderift | feeling her boldest, she came around

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feeling her boldest, she came around

WHO: Adalia (

thunderproof), Gwenaëlle (

elegiaque, Alacruun (

coiledscales), you?
WHAT: Adalia gets into a barfight. Consequences will never be the same.
WHEN: Evening, Drakonis 26
WHERE: Returning to the Gallows from Straddle
NOTES: N/A, will add if any come up.

i. open

"I didn't want to drink in your shitty bar anyway!"

The clarion call of all barflys who did, in fact, want to drink in your shitty bar, but have way too much pride to admit it when they've been tossed out. For Adalia, at least, it's partially true — she'd wanted to drink there, past tense, found it an infinitely more palatable place to get drunk than The Hanged Man, but after that human asshole said shit about that uppity elfblooded cunt in Hightown, got what she deserves — if someone like that is welcome there, and she's thrown out for taking exception, well. That's no place she wants to spend her time anyway.

Nevermind that she took exception with her fists. ...and also, mostly, her face. Adalia is not one for getting in brawls, alright, but goddamnit, when you have principles, you stand up for them, no matter how beat to shit you get for it in the end.

She picks herself up from where she was tossed into the streets of Lowtown, wiping blood from her nose and wincing at the tenderness of it — there's a cut above her eye, bruising around her socket, it's entirely possible her nose is broken... But there's blood on her knuckles, too, and the vicious satisfaction of justice meted out in her stomach. She was, indisputably, the loser of that particular fight, but she gave almost as good as she got, and that's all that really counts. Brushing the dust off her dress, Adalia takes a deep breath, straightens her back, and begins to make her way toward the docks and the ferry to the Gallows.

ii. closed to gwenaëlle

The ferry ride is uneventful, and Adalia disembarks at the Gallows slightly less worse for wear — she hasn't healed any of her injuries, but the cut on her forehead has stopped bleeding quite so dramatically and her jaw hurts a little less than it had when she'd started the journey back. Charis is about somewhere, having made himself a nest in one of the towers, but Adalia's reluctant to call him to her when she's so beat up, so she heads for her room first, meaning to clean up her face before she whistles for her dragon to join her for the night.

There's a statue in the Gallows courtyard, polished well-enough that one can see their reflection in it when the light is right. Adalia pauses in front of said statue, pushing her tongue against the cut on her lip to test it, brushing dried blood off her temple where she can. It's in this state that Gwenaëlle finds her, muttering to herself as she assesses the damage done to her face.

"Fucking racist asshole... How dare a half-elf have opinions or be unpleasant. Well this half-elf split your fucking lip, so have fun with that, you dick."

iii. closed to alacruun

When Adalia finally makes it back to her room, looking better but still like she got hit multiple times in the face, it's with Charis in tow and chattering angrily over her shoulder. For her part, Adalia doesn't look at all chastised, and in fact has the mulish expression of one unwilling to reconsider her stance.

"Hey, that's just what you do when people are racist in front of you, okay? You punch them."

A moment, and then —

"Or, maybe you don't. You assaulting people for being racist would get... more problematic."

Charis snorts, angry, and crawls over to his little ice nest in the corner of the room. Adalia sets about starting a fire, dumping a few more logs into the brazier and holding her hand over it to let a few sparks catch the wood. It's the only way the room can be in any way a livable temperature — the large block of ice in the corner chills the air considerably, and what is comfortable for Charis is frigid for Adalia. That done, she crosses the room to her desk, picking up her mirror to check on her face again.

The door to the room is ajar, but only just — she'd meant to close it, but it didn't latch all the way.

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Oh, just who she wanted to see. ...well, that's not actually inaccurate, even if Adalia is sort of annoyed it had to be now. It's — weird. To look at Gwenaëlle now. The benefit of hindsight makes their first conversation make a bit more sense, and maybe she could have been less shitty about cultural differences, but Adalia didn't have to get quite so nasty either, and making light of something that serious is not really a great look... Anyway.

It's weird.

Adalia turns to face Gwenaëlle, doing nothing to hide her split lip or the bruising around her eye or the swelling of her nose or the cut on her temple —

Basically, she looks like she got in a fight and lost. Badly.

"Some asshole human slumming it in Straddle said shit about the elfblooded cunt in Hightown, so I punched him in the face."

Matter-of-fact, blunt, no sheepishness or eagerness for approval. Adalia saw an asshole being an asshole, and she decked him. That simple.

The pause lengthens, awkwardly.

Gwenaëlle says nothing, regarding Adalia with an expression that's difficult to read—unusual in a young woman who ordinarily can't hide her feelings when wearing a mask. Eventually, abruptly, she says: “I see that ended spectacularly for you. Come on, then.”

Idiot is heavily implied; so is the expectation that Adalia will still follow her.

There are probably healers around, somewhere, but one of them might be Anders and Gwenaëlle is in no hurry to hear what he has to say about her misfortunes or some rifter elf involving herself in them. She has medicine supplies stored away, steadier hands than those trying to deal with one's own face, and nothing better to do.

And that's all. Or enough. Or not all, but still: enough.

Adalia, however, doesn't follow — not at first, anyway. She stays where she is, leaning toward Gwenaëlle without reaching for her.

"Hey, first — I'm sorry."

It sounds... not quite like she's pained to say it, but definitely uncomfortable — apologies and sincerity are not really things Adalia is given to by nature. She's irreverent, likes to imagine that she's kind more often than not, and more than anything else she's proud. Apologizing isn't something she's practiced in because she doesn't do it often, and when she's sincere she usually ends up uncomfortably emotional, so she avoids it.

But Gwenaëlle deserves the apology, and Adalia isn't so proud she'll refuse to take her lumps when she's due them.

"I didn't know what I was talking about, when we first talked. I said some bullshit. I apologize."

Whatever Gwenaëlle might have expected—

that, even less than all that came before it. Pride is easier than apologizing, something as a general rule she'd rather eat glass than do—admittedly, because she's usually not actually sorry for whatever's come out of her mouth—and in that regard it's seemed obvious enough they're similar. She imagines herself entitled to more apologies than she's probably due, hears fewer than she is for reasons that she is perfectly aware of; expects little, and behaves in such a way as to ensure she is rarely surprised.

She's surprised. And, fairly or not, it means more to her come so steeled and unnatural; not carelessly given but particularly and singularly and a decision that Adalia must have come to.

“All the rifter elves are ignorant about the elfblooded,” she says, after a moment. “It's not unique. And we're not having a touching moment of understanding where any idiot leaning out a window can see, so either you're coming along so I can fix your face or you aren't.”

(It's not that she never softens, it's just sort of that even her soft parts have edges.)

Probably what Adalia should have expected, all things considered. There's a moment of pause before she sighs and falls in step behind Gwenaëlle, walking with her wherever she wants to go. She's uncharacteristically quiet as they go, rebuilding her pride and trying to keep her stomach from roiling quite so much. Apologies are the absolute most uncomfortable thing in the world, and she's been fucking skewered by a javelin.

It takes a few minutes for Adalia to realize they aren't going in the direction of the docks, and thus not heading to Hightown — this drags her from her thoughts and makes her look to Gwenaëlle, confused.

"Where are we going? Did you move in here?"

The stairs they ascend, in fact, lead up to the quarters and offices of the division heads—

“I'm temporarily borrowing the provost's quarters while he's absent Kirkwall,” she says, as if this is a perfectly reasonable thing for her to have done, despite how unclear it is whether or not the provost knows or gave his permission. So thank fuck you've not got the dragon with you, she doesn't say aloud, sparing them both whatever such a remark might have inspired. His fondness for elves is unlikely to extend to their dragons, and she'd rather not have him discover she let one into any part of his space. “We're going to his office.”

Hardie anticipates their direction, leading them upstairs—when she opens the door, there is a fire burning low, and a nug sleeping in front of it. Although she's left her mark on his private room, his office is entirely his own, reflected in the mask of Fen'Harel that hangs behind his desk, the tapestry (commissioned for him by Gwenaëlle) that intricately weaves the Inquisition's heraldry from branches and vines of deep greens, set upon a subtle backdrop of a repeating pattern that mimics the designs of his own clothes.

(The same design that flares in panels of one of her gowns.)

Gwenaëlle passes by the bookcases and lights a lamp, nudging Leviathan absently with her foot when she stops by the fireplace. Still alive. Great. Hardie settles around the much smaller creature, and she points at a chair beside:

“Sit. Stay. I need to get something from the other room.” To Hardie, she says, sternly: “Bite her if she touches anything.”

He lays his head in his paws. She sighs.

“Oh, some guard dog you are. Be that way.”

He nudges his head under Adalia's hand, optimistically, as Gwenaëlle excuses herself.

It's good that Gwenaëlle explains only shortly before they enter the room, else Adalia would have been full of questions about how she's taken over, and why the provost, and what he'll think about this when he returns. As it is, she's still full of questions, but now they're questions about the office. Before she can ask any of them, Gwen directs her to sit, and the dog shoves his head under her hand, and then Gwen is gone.

Immediately, just to be contrary, Adalia puts her hand on the provost's desk, and then she moves to more closely inspect the mask —

or at least she would, if Hardie weren't moving in her way every time she tries to take a step, nudging her toward the chair. No matter what Adalia tries, and somewhat perplexingly, she can't get around this gods-damned dog. For a moment, she just stands with her hands on her hips, staring down at Hardie with pursed lips.

"You are very inconvenient," she says, and instead of sitting in the chair she drops down to sit on the floor next to Hardie, sctitching under his chin.

From the door she'd disappeared through, Gwenaëlle says, “He is a very good boy,” serenely, returning with a bowl of water, a cloth and a leather-lined velvet satchel. “The provost gave him to me as a puppy, he's an Anderfels shepherd, he's trained to purpose.”

He thumps his tail on the ground, pleased with the familiar tone of his mistress's praise and the cooperation (and pettings) of the new, pleasingly obedient stranger. Gwenaëlle runs her hand over the back of his head, briefly, as she joins them on the floor—sits cross-legged, arranging her skirts not to tangle her, and takes Adalia's chin in her hand to critically study what's wrong with her.

Well, what's wrong with her face. There's no helping 'being nineteen' but time.

Clean it, first. She adds a powder to the water, then dips the cloth— “This will sting,” is all the warning she offers, and it barely counts for it when she says it as the cloth touches skin.

“My elven mother's name was Guenievre Baudin,” she says, conversationally, occupied with her task. “She'd been my lady mother's maid, before my lord made her his mistress, and then the housekeeper. She oversaw the estate for as long as I can recall. The year before last, when we were traveling there, a Dalish clan attacked our party. One of their archers shot her in the throat. Lord Luthor, who was with the Inquisition at the time, put a throwing knife in the murderer's forehead.”

It all sounds so clean, retold that way. Without the terror, the screams, the smell of blood. Without how Alexander had had to drag her from the body, how she'd struggled in his grip and clawed at his arm like an iron band around her waist.

“She'd been serving as my lady's maid in Skyhold.”

"You seem to be quite close with the provost."

There's no hint of suspicion or accusation in her tone — not that there would be if she knew, more like a certain amount of eyebrow waggling delight — but just a touch of questioning. Who is the provost to Gwenaëlle, other than someone who gives her puppies and whose quarters she's comfortable stealing? A close friend, one must assume, though Adalia wouldn't have guessed at Gwenaëlle's being overfond of rifters, elves, or rifter elves in particular.

There is, though, a wince as Gwenaëlle's wet cloth touches the abrasions on her face. Adalia inhales with a hiss but grits her teeth, straihtening her book and holding her chin up high — she won't look the whimpering child being patched up after a nasty tumble on the stone floors.

As Gwenaëlle speaks Adalia's posture softens, and there's a lot going on on her face as it's cleaned — pity, anger, confusion, conflicted shame and vindication — but she says nothing, letting Gwenaëlle explain what she will without interruption. In the end, she's silent for a moment before inclining her head just slightly.

"Thank you for telling me."

Anything else — apologies, sympathies, explanations — would be inadequate. Even as she runs through the other possibilities, Adalia can find nothing sufficient. Better to say nothing.

Gwenaëlle isn't—quite—done. In the same tone, she continues, “My mother had two true daughters. Alix and Magalie.”

Elven daughters, she means.

“A few years ago, the Empress ordered a slaughter in Halamshiral. Probably they were in one of the mass graves that was burned, afterwards; my lord used to pay for their upkeep. Assumptions were made when the money stopped being collected. Before Mistress Baudin was killed, there was an Inquisition visit to the city—she asked Provost Thranduil to look into the matter for her. Magalie was burned to death in the apartment that they shared, and Alix,”

her gaze is fixed on her fingers and not Adalia's eyes,

“was killed from behind by chevaliers, as she was trying to break down the door to get her out. To the best of my knowledge, they had no other family. I'm the last living thing, of my mother.”

The salve she begins applying smells bitter, but only feels cool, perhaps a touch numbing.

“Nothing elven of her will ever live again.” She does meet Adalia's eyes, then, to be sure her point has been taken— “That's what 'elfblooded' means, to elves. It's just a more inventive form of murder.”

This is all far beyond Adalia. Dead mothers, dead sisters, connection upon connection upon connection, each more fraught and complicated than the last. There are words that rankle — true daughter, as if because of the circumstances of her birth Gwenaëlle can't count, like it would have made her any less loved or real — but what does she really know about any of this?

Nothing. Less than nothing. All she has is her gut and her wishes and what she wants to believe of the world, and none of those things are helpful to Gwenaëlle. What does it matter what half-elves should be, when all there is is the elfblooded?

Silence doesn't suit Adalia. She's uncomfortable in it, and doesn't like to feel as though she's been caught out with no response. She shifts uncomfortably, trying to keep the most unhelpful of her reactions from spilling out where Gwenaëlle will have to deal with them, trying to figure out what to say, or what to say first —

in the end, she can't stop herself from being entirely unhelpful. It's clumsily done, she knows it, but she can't not.

"Maybe nothing elven." She thinks of Herian, and her trips to the vhenadahl, her attempts to help the elves in the alienage. "But not nothing."

Grand help it does the elves, but for this one moment — the abstract elves matter less than the young woman sitting in front of her.

Between them, there's only five years. Adalia's nineteen to Gwenaëlle's twenty-four. As young as they both are, as wretched the world, the gap feels like a chasm and on the one hand—at least the words don't wound. Sometimes it seems like all she's made of is knife-edges and raw flesh, quicksand where those around her expect solid ground.

The words don't move her to ache because they don't move her at all.

“That's a nice thing for you to say,” she observes, as if it's more interesting that anything nice can come out of that mouth than particularly what has.

It's meaningless bullshit, but it's sweet of her to think.

"I'm a very nice person. Ask the man I punched in the face."

Making jokes is easier than being vulnerable. Or... dealing with other people being vulnerable, or whatever is happening here right now. Adalia's shoulders don't... droop, exactly, because she knew it wasn't anything Gwenaëlle would care to hear even as she was saying it, but she sighs and looks down, heedless of Gwenaëlle's work.

"I'm an orphan. I was raised in a library-cum-temple by monks, some of whom were elven and some of whom were human and none of whom cared a whit about the lives they'd led before, or passing anything of their cultures on to me. The only thing I know about myself is that I'm a half-elf, and I got my magic from some kind of connection to the plane of air."

It's perhaps not entirely relevant to the conversation at hand, but — context. Explanation, if not excuse.

"I don't even know if Adalia is my real name. But I'm not an elf. I'm not human, either. I'm a half-elf, no matter what I look like here. The specificity matters."

An exhale. And then: “I know,” which might be the kindest thing she's said to Adalia, a thought she knows as soon as she has it doesn't actually say anything good about this moment, or herself.

“That it matters,” she says, after a pause, because she didn't know all of the rest, and doesn't know if it's because Adalia doesn't talk about that sort of thing or just because she hasn't been paying attention; the way the Dalish all seem much more informed about matters of Thranduil's lands than she had been, studiously disinterested for so long. “But there's not one single human in Thedas who'll ever think of you being as human as you are elven.”

Adalia knows that, probably. It's not as kind a thing to say. After a moment, she says, “I detested that about our erstwhile host, you know,” with a vague gesture to Thranduil's office. “I was born here. I'm my mother's child. But I'll never be my mother's child, and this great oversized fucking stranger who doesn't belong, he gets to waltz in with his stupid hair and stupid shoulders and everyone wants to be his fucking cousin. If it makes you feel better,” patting her hand, “I personally will never think of you as a real elf, either,” very dry.

And bitter, but that's a knife palmed inwards, always.

Adalia is not, even when distracted, stupid. She looks up at Gwenaëlle and smiles, even laughs a little at her promise, but — Gwenaëlle did not so much sidestep the comment about the provost as ignore it entirely. Her comments now speak to a changed opinion, and familiarity Adalia would not have expected.

It's not something to ask about now, of course. Their truce is still too new to run it aground on the shores of a conversation they don't need to have. But her curiosity is now piqued, and the details of Gwenaëlle's relationship with the elven Rifter provost are something she is very interested in.

"I'm not really a real anything, so I appreciate that."

Which is... rather more dour and bitter and depressing than she meant it to be. Adalia flushes, looks down at her hands and huffs out a breath.

"Is it better, do you think, to have no family at all, or to have family you can never truly claim?"

Which of them hurts less? Which of them is the more full person? Which of them actually matters?

"Imagine I ask you," after the slightest, incredulous pause, "whether you'd rather have your arm cut off or your leg. And you start reasoning, well, I could use a crutch, or if it's my lesser arm then I could still write, and I say no, no. You won't ever heal. You'll just bleed and bleed and bleed. Which would you rather hurt?"

She tidies the cloths she's been using away, into the water bowl to be dealt with, busywork while she talks,

"What difference would it fucking make, then? It's just pain. No one's pain is better. Getting to do my crying into a silk pillow, maybe, I'd take that over a hovel somewhere. But, of course, any crying you do in private rooms with guards isn't really crying at all, is it."

Everything is bullshit, essentially.

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feeling her boldest, she came around

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