the daughters of kings run feral through the forest ( closed )

[elegiaque]

WHO: Thranduil & Gwenaëlle.
WHAT: Everything's fine, probably, nothing really happened while he was gone.
WHEN: Shortly after Thranduil returns from various missions.
WHERE: The Gallows.
NOTES: Just that gif of walking into fire with pizza.

Thranduil's quarters are not entirely as he left them.

For one thing, they don't appear to be just his any longer: in addition to herself and her effects, Gwenaëlle has brought with her from Hightown the sofa that Hardie sleeps on, set against the wall; there's a full length mirror where there wasn't before, and a few pieces of storage furniture that weren't either, entirely recognisable in origin. Fastidiously neat as she is, there's not a thing out of place, just...more things, though she's spared him the birds.

(They live in Casimir's office, now, where it's quiet enough they won't bother anyone excessively.)

More things, and: Gwenaëlle, occupying his side of the bed, sat up with her reading glasses perched on her nose and a writing tray in her lap, lamp burning beside her and Leviathan optimistically circling the end of the bed like she might change her mind about who's sleeping where this evening. (She will not, and sooner or later, Hardie will be wearing a nug hat.) She's frowning when the door opens, Yva having been dismissed earlier and not expecting anyone else to be opening that door, and,

“I can explain.”

And who says marriage kills the romance.

Comments

[elegiaque]

The Dalish; of course. A most thoroughly elven word, 'arlathvhen', context ought to have provided sufficient clues. Certainly, she doesn't need to ask why he might prefer to wait until it's done—why it might be more politic not to show up to something like that openly wed to a woman until quite recently a member of Orlais' elite, still benefiting off the back of elves even as she teeters more precariously in place.

No. If he has any goals to be served there, tying his name to hers won't help them. She can wait.

"Kirkwall doesn't please me. Getting another house isn't more pleasing than going back to the one I have," she observes, instead of airing the opinions he's already quite aware she holds on the poor wisdom of being married to her at all if he wants to hold onto any sort of elven credibility in the long run. "I'm not going to find more sympathetic neighbours anywhere else, either, I'm sure everyone would just love it if I left my walls and they could just look in my windows and see what an embarrassment I've become."

It's not an ideal situation, but there are no ideal situations. The thought of not having those walls at all makes her skin crawl, for all that she's not sure they've done much good.

"And it's a great deal of upheaval if it's only to last til the summer. If it's temporary, at least I might stay long enough to find out who broke in during the quarantine." That's sort of a bright side. "Assuming I can, anyway, if the Duke won't relinquish it then it's all moot."

[rowancrowned]

He plays with the hair next to her ear, idly twining his fingers through it. There are things he will never be able to understand about her family simply by virtue of not having been there, of not knowing certain characters in her story. Thedas has not sunk into his bones the way Arda did. He still makes mistakes.

“You will need to elaborate on the breaking in,” he says pleasantly. “And I think the Duke may surprise you; he struck me as a sensible man. Especially if you were to mention the breaking-in.”

An insult against him, too, and the Orlesians were predictably incised by these things, though he suspects Romain the sort to handle it with the calm regard that Thranduil remembers him by. Very sensible, for a Man. He wonders what sort her blood grandfather was.

[elegiaque]

A number of her relatives in truth and otherwise, she doesn't quite know what to do with; supposes she'll let them be and hope that if they don't care for developments they'll do the same. Her grandfather, much as she is fond of him, is on that list of those she wouldn't be displeased to hear from, but—if he prefers to conduct the remains of this connection through intermediaries, she won't be the one who writes.

Marcellin is a problem she worries over more pressingly, one she can't entrust to the care of household accounts. Or, Maker forbid, her father.

"My belongings were interfered with while I was gone, I'm sure of it," she says, tilting her head to his shoulder to let him free reign of her hair. "Nothing of value that an opportunist might want to sell—my writings, my desk, where I kept my research and my journals. Where I might keep things related to the Inquisition, looked at by someone who knew I'd shut up the house."

Abruptly, "Do you remember that overdressed twat that called me Gigi at the Winter Palace?"

[rowancrowned]

"Which journals?" he asks. She is often clever enough to get away with most things, he thinks he smart enough not to have committed to paper anything about them, in particular (it will be interesting to explain to whomever asks first why all her things are in his rooms; he will complain about it to someone in his division and it will travel like wildfire, enough to bed the rumors) but there are other things in her home that may well have interested someone up to mischief.

"Personal ones, account books? What manner of research?"

Her book, the shards? One will be more difficult to explain if there is to be a report filed about this.

"I do," he says. "Faintly. Only my delight that someone dared it."

[elegiaque]

"He's my brother."

She might say more, on that; she will, eventually, but there's a great deal else.

Leaning back against him and bracing to shift, adjust, resettle—she waves the rest off, explaining, "It'd have been all of that, but I'm not a fool. None of it was there to be found, I didn't leave anything sensitive in the house without me. But where it would be, that's what seems to've been tampered with."

If nothing else, the thought of the frustration that might have engendered is satisfying. Sod them, she thinks, for thinking me so simple a mark.

"But if someone wants it. That's a concern."

One she'd decided he didn't need to be fretting over in absentia, but she's had frustratingly little progress regardless. She fidgets with his hand, palm to palm and stretching her fingers as if she could match the span of his.

(She cannot.)

"No. I had it all with me, and I've since stored my shard notes with Solas, so it isn't all together any more."

[rowancrowned]

“Do you have any other family of which I ought to be made aware?”

Not chiding, not really, but they’ve banded themselves together and something like that is important. Granted, she’s all out of father’s brothers and mother’s siblings to come out of the woodwork. All that is left are Emeric Vauquelin and his wild oats, as they are—what a difficult man, but how easy it is to draw lines between him and his daughter’s actions.

“Have you informed your grandfather?” The Duke is a far cleverer player of the Game. Thranduil suspects it will be a good diversion (even as Romain is wholly aware of it) for him to hunt something down that is hurting his granddaughter and is not her Imperial Majesty.

He watches her set her hand against his own and resists the urge to curl his fingers into the spaces between hers. How invigorated he is by even the simplest touches of hers—what a wonder. This is not the path he would have ever seen his life taking.

[elegiaque]

“It remains to be seen if the Duke,” a term of address that almost seems more a reminder to herself than to him—that she must not presume on a relationship based upon a lie now revealed, that he is a clever player of the Game and that she should expect him to play it, “is interested in hearing anything at all from me beyond when I intend to move my belongings out of his property,” a little drolly.

“The Inquisition never seemed to particularly interest him in itself. I don't think he'd be that interested in their security problems, if he isn't interested in mine. I'm not going to try to predict what he'll think of any of this.”

(Though her lack of optimism is, in itself, a sort of prediction.)

She threads her fingers through his and curls them tight over the back of his hand, less restrained, and exhales. “And I don't know what my idiot fucking brother will make of any of it, either,” and that's the admission that matters. She distances herself from worries about her grandfather, but the prospect of losing Marcellin—a relationship that she's held close in her hands and not spoken of, something that when she finally drags it out is so clearly precious to her—is one that comes as a blow. “He's a selfish little bastard and there's no one to speak for me to him.”

Gwenaëlle grimaces, turning her face against his shoulder; stays there only a moment before (inevitably, like the tide) pushing blankets and tangles of robe out of her way enough to settle at home in his lap, still holding his hand. Every time he's away is too long. She is so much more acutely aware now of the possibility that something more tangible than disgrace might take him from her. “I'm tired of myself. Tell me about Morrigan's dreadful elves and all you've been doing.”

[rowancrowned]

"So we wait," Thranduil murmurs, and suddenly finds himself with a lapful of her. He adjusts; reaches out to put out the last candle and then wraps his arms about her, winding them under the covers and actually in bed, now.

It is a we. They are bound together. Whither thou goest--

"Wild, and free, when free means none can catch you for long enough to hold you accountable, but their way of life is not sustainable. They worship different gods," he is absolutely simplifying this for her, "-- and do not diversify their bloodlines. It will lead to naught but trouble for them, and I suspect other clans have been punished for their actions."

But it had been informative anyway.

"I returned from that in time to be directed to go south and join with the rest of the forces at the latest rift, but was recalled before reaching them. They were successful and had no need of me. And now I am here, with you."

[elegiaque]

"Best place for you," she says, staunchly, finding the side table in the dark and leaving her reading glasses there, settling beneath the coverlet, her back pressed to his chest and her loose curling hair a nightly hazard to navigate.

Better with her than arsing about a forest, watching inbred elves slowly wiping themselves out. Some twinge like conscience reminds her, punished for their actions, she thinks of that unpublished draft that still sits in the bottom of her desk; all her rage given courteous and brutal outlet. She had held off.

Others did not. It had only ever been an option because others would not.

"Leviathan missed you," she offers, "but only for a moment. Hardie's very charming." Then, "You aren't dashing off again immediately, are you?"