Lady Alexandrie d'Asgard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coquettish_trees) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2018-08-09 04:45 pm
coquettish_trees) wrote in faderift2018-08-09 04:45 pm
OPEN | Looking Down on Empty Streets
WHO: Lexie, Evie, Loki, Thor, Fifi, Gwen, anyone else who wants to deal with this actual mess of a woman (special shout out to anyone who has a four letter (nick)name apparently)
WHAT: Late nights, early mornings, a bunch of processing the horrible things that happened!
WHEN: Post return from Tevinter (so... mid-month?)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: cw: a nice violent nightmare, general mental trauma. hmu if you want something special, will do brackets or prose as desired.
WHAT: Late nights, early mornings, a bunch of processing the horrible things that happened!
WHEN: Post return from Tevinter (so... mid-month?)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: cw: a nice violent nightmare, general mental trauma. hmu if you want something special, will do brackets or prose as desired.
I. The Apartments (Day)
When Alexandrie is home, much of her time is spent laying on the chaise out on the balcony staring into nothing and hardly seeming to care about the oppressive heat that so irked her the month before. Her hair, if it is styled at all, is woven into a simple braid and pinned up, a far cry from the way she used to wear it. Sometimes she is a fury of diplomatic paperwork, sometimes she is repetitively and grimly throwing a knife into a target that is a new fixture in the area. Sometimes she will, all of a sudden, snap into the light and cheerful woman she was, although her laughter is harder to come by. Whichever it is, she is still welcoming of callers.
II. Hightown (Night)
She haunts the streets like a ghost; all loose hair and pale wan skin and simple white dress, dressing gown layered over it against the slight chill that still manages to cover Kirkwall by second or third bell despite the heat of the day. Often, she is in the memorial garden, sitting and watching the fountain or pacing the paths repetitively. Sometimes she makes her way to wherever the sea can be best seen. Like a spectre, too, she is gone by the time the sky begins to lighten.
Anyone else out and about in the dark hours?
III. Loki/Evie:
Smell. Noise. There's so much of it. The screams of panic, the mortal ones unlike any other, some far too high to have issued from fully grown throats. The ozone of magic ripping the air mixing with the choking char of burning stalls, the metallic smell of blood. Blood. Far too much of it. How can there be so much. The visceral nigh-unbelievable revulsion at how thickly it drips. It clings to her hands, sliding, sticking. The wink of sunlight on silver. The noise he makes around it is so desperately wrong: liquid, bubbling. The same thing, then, on a far slenderer throat. Sudden. Silver again, but streaked with red. Silver where it doesn't belong. Cannot belong. Disbelief. Overwhelming horror that grips so hard she is frozen and the sound, the sound that comes from them.
She never quite screams. While there is noise that accompanies Alexandrie's gasping terrified surges to consciousness, the shriek in her throat never truly makes it past the hands that fly reflexively to cover her mouth to fiercely stifle it as her knees shoot to her chest, her heart pounding like something is trying to fight its way outside of her. Sometimes they are clapped flat against her face; sometimes it's the side of her hand between her teeth, her jaw clenching hard enough to bruise, even to draw blood, although that is more rare. Always it is a desperate bid to prevent her horrified shuddering panic from waking her bedmate.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not.
IV. Thor/Fifi:
There is a small disturbance in the kitchens. The pour of water, the clink of metal, of china, rummaging through dry goods. Investigating will reveal Alexandrie, wrapped in a white silk dressing gown, her hair finger-combed and tied around itself in a simple knot, quietly looking through the selection of tea as the glyphs on the kettle do their work of setting the water to boil.
She looks tired and subdued—she often looks so, recently—but she manages a small smile all the same.
“Pardonnez-moi. Did I wake you?”
V. Gwenaëlle:
[ she has come looking for Gwenaëlle for a reason she can't really fathom. Perhaps it is because there is precious little in Kirkwall that is familiar and they had walked the same streets and halls, seen much of the same art, known many of the same faces, have the same mother tongue. Perhaps it is because Gwen too had been abruptly thrown from that world into one that so immediately included brutal violence and death that stood close enough to feel the hot splatter of it. Perhaps it is both things.
Whatever the reason, Alexandrie is knocking now on the door to the Provost's rooms in hopes of finding the small, concentrated, dark-haired woman, wearing a simple summer dress with her hair pinned up just as simply, the neck of a bottle containing something substantially stronger than the wine she'd offered at the Tourney in her fist. ]
no subject
"Genevieve, yes? Come over." There are a few people scattered around, a table full of students, a volunteer rolling bandages, another handing out potions to a harried-looking woman, so his voice carries well enough from the table he's making a few other potions at. "What brings you here?"
She doesn't look seriously injured, which has him very curious about why she chose the Clinic in Darktown and not the Infirmary in the Gallows.
no subject
It’s an odd circumstance. Usually Alexandrie is pleased as punch to let people confuse the two of them all day long, but she finds she hasn’t the energy or desire to play that game just now.
“I find myself in need of your expertise. It may be a strange question I ask, but it is... important.“ She realizes, as she speaks, that it may very well not be strange. Surely a healer with as much experience as Anders has seen countless friends, mothers, brothers, sons, berating themselves for not doing more. For letting whoever it is they loved die, as if somehow they had been the one who caused it. As if they had been the one holding the sword.
“If I tell you the manner in which someone was killed,” her voice is even, even as her shoulders tense and her fingers tremble with the knowledge that she would soon be purposefully dredging up memory that wakes her each night in breathless horror, “could you tell me what, if any, degree of skill at magical healing would have been required to save them?”
no subject
"Possibly, yes." Anders' voice is as gentle as the feathers on his shoulders. "Before you describe it, though, I do want you to know that there's no... There's no real comfort to be found in wondering if you could have found a healer in time, or wondering what you could have done differently. And please pull up a chair?" This won't be an easy conversation. Which has him looking over his shoulder and finding the volunteer.
"Maeva, I think Paedric was making some tea. Could you bring us some if there's any left?" The woman nods and heads to the backroom of the Clinic.
cw: violence, description of character death
There might be, she thinks. There might be if Anders says that nothing could be done—that perhaps he himself, even with the aid of his spirit, would not have been able to save the Lady of House Asgard. That it was not, as Thor had said in the immense anger of his grief, his brother’s fault for neglecting to focus his studies on healing.
Alexandrie reaches for a chair, pulls it across from Anders, and sits. Swallows thickly. She will be glad when the tea comes.
“It...” she begins, falters. Sets her hands in her lap and finds she has no skirts to grip in her fists. Leans a slight forward to hold her knees instead. “A sword thrust. The blade—“ she can see it, so clearly, shining in the blood that had followed. How dare it shine. She shakes her head slightly. That’s not what she wanted. Searches for it again, swallows, plays it back. “—an inch and a half wide. Two, maybe.”
There’s the tea. She doesn’t entirely trust herself to hold the cup.
“Horizontal. Through the center of the neck, from behind.” Clipped sentences are all she can manage, her face pale and drawn already. She plays it again. Metal sprouts from skin. The noise. “It... there... there was a crack. He turned it. Another.” It had been wet. Meaty. Like something from a feast day. That sound was for pheasants. Deer. Not mothers. And so loud. How could it have been so loud?
...Was she talking? Alexandrie looks at Anders, disoriented, as if he might be able to tell her whether or not she’d said anything else. She’ll just say it again. Her hands clench, but she doesn’t notice them.
“He pulled it back, and—” The worst part. Worse than all the blood than had come after. Frigga’s eyes wide and then “—it was... without the sword there... her head fell forward so far, it was—“
Oh. Oh no. There’s the bitterness rising in the back of her throat, the rush in her ears. She claps a hand over her mouth and stares forward. Far away, the thought: Evie will be so cross if I have stolen her shirt to vomit on it. She giggles, high and helpless, muffled behind her hand, then, strained: “Maker. I cannot. I cannot. Forgive me.”
no subject
"There is nothing that could have been done," Anders says quietly. The description is clear. "A skilled healer can deal with the airway cut, or the artery there, or the vein, or the spinal column, one of those, but when all four are severed in one blow there is nothing that can be done by anyone." Save possession, but he's not going to say that. It's not a viable alternative. He would know.
"She was gone. And quickly, too. Once the..." He should probably not go too detailed. "She would not have been in pain long at all, a brief moment." The comfort is small, barely anything at all. Nearly negligible. But it's not non-existent.
"I'm sorry for your loss, lack of suffering notwithstanding."
no subject
Alexandrie accepts the basin with some alacrity, holds it in her lap gripped fiercely by the hand that is not pressed to her face, and continues her shallow erratic breathing and struggle for control while Anders speaks.
And his words? Tears prickle at the corners of her eyes and her shoulders shake slightly. With her hand still over her mouth, it could easily be taken for sorrow.
“Merci.” The first expression of gratitude is quiet and hoarse. She breathes deeper, more regularly, clears her throat—the danger of her being sick having blessedly passed—and the second has actual tone to it, is accompanied by the reveal of a shaky but inarguably present smile of immense relief. “Grand merci.”
no subject
"You're welcome." It's nice when he's genuinely able to help. The tears look like a mix of sadness and relief, but he's fairly certain he's responsible for the relief alone this time by the look she's giving him.
"Take your time and rest in the chair, please. You didn't look well for a time there and Darktown can be violent enough toward those that look healthy." He cares about Darktown, but there is no denying its inherent risk and dangers. Best to take precautions. Especially with nobles, as they don't tend to really understand the underbelly of a city.
no subject
It's a few moments before she can make herself reach for the mug, and a few more before she can do more than hold it cupped between her hands and breathe, but eventually she takes an experimental sip of what turns out to be a sort of herbal blend she can't identify but is nevertheless soothing even in the oppressive damp heat of Darktown.
"Forgive me," she says, quiet and wry, "I was not intending to become a patient."
no subject
Anders picks up his own mug and leans back against the desk, sipping slowly. "On top of that this means I'm taking a short break from working and hearing that will make my husband happy. Old habits of overworking are hard to break."
Old habits of being possessed by a spirit intent on working every second possible, more like, but he really doesn't need to be reminding people that happened. Instead he can embrace the downtime and give her time to recover, so long as no rush from a new fight down here comes in.
"I have to admit I'm curious to know why you came to Darktown to ask your question rather than seek me out in the Gallows infirmary."
no subject
“When I thought of asking, this is where I was told you would be.” It is matter-of-fact. “With the possibility of alleviating any anguish hanging in the air, sitting and waiting for your return to the Gallows seemed akin to cruelty.”
She will be on her way back to Hightown as soon as she can trust her legs again. As soon as she does not give off the scent of a wounded creature easily picked from the herd.
no subject
"And there's no telling when I'd come up, as there could have been an emergency, of course."
He looks around. There aren't any patients left, the classes have wrapped, and what isn't done he can done during lunch tomorrow if he brings food down. Anders shrugs and washes his hands in the basin.
"Would you like company on the way back up, when you're ready?"
no subject
She is so very unused to being alone.
The basin, no longer in danger of being used, is set aside, and her focus redirected to retaking control of her body with the subtle—but certainly noticeable to a healer—series of exercises she had been taught long ago. Breathing, heartbeat, tense and release of musculature, shift of posture to something uncurled and straight again. She will take up the tea again after, with a long exhale, and sip at it further.
“I shall be ready in a moment, I think.”