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
It could not be called comfortable, the way they lie together once they have fallen back into the sheets. Although they have fit their bodies together a myriad of times and ways—and both are well versed in the particulars of such things—this kind of wild, hard, clutch is new, and awkward in its newness.
Her arm is trapped beneath him, her head at his shoulder in a way that will soon cramp her neck, but at the moment Alexandrie is unwilling to release her grip a hair, even to resettle in some other more graceful way.
In fact, she tightens it.
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He suffers his panic, his irrational terrifying escalation, and eventually shifts his face to bury it in Alexandrie's hair. Her arm digs into his side, her head is not aligned to his chin, everything is out of place and uncomfortable.
"This is not right," he complains breathlessly against her head. "Nothing is right. I can't correct it and I can't tolerate it much longer."
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She breathes, as evenly as she can. Begins the work of shifting herself so that at least this small discomfort can be alleviated, moving and replacing herself in such a way that none of her movement will feel like a withdrawal.
In the end, she will have inched herself up— with an apologetic touch for his cheek to have disturbed how he had come to stillness, even if it too had been not right— so that he can rest in the hollow of her shoulder. To let a hand idle in pulling her fingers gently and repetitively through his hair, dip her head to rest her lips against the top of his head as he had hers.
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He should not tolerate this, shouldn't allow it to pass--Thor has already accused him of weakness, of failure, and Alexandrie is fond of him at his best. He is a poor facsimile of that now, curled into her with his arms wrapped around her like a child with a stuffed toy. She has no penchant for magic, nor knowledge of magical skill, but even she knows that he failed. Utterly and completely. In all ways.
His heart will not slow down and it is all he can do to crush his eyes closed and keep the painful tightness behind them in place. He broke down once, wept before Gwenaelle and swore her to secrecy, but she has already left him and moved along. Alexandrie has not, but he expects she shall. He is not graceful in his sorrow.
"I can't--" He chokes and, despite his efforts, the first of his ears begin and slide, hot, down the sides of his face.
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It is so painfully raw that it cannot be in any part artifice. A thing she had not believed in anymore. Had used to dream of, before Rolant de Ezoire. Of being trellis to some vaguely imagined beloved the same intense way Evie had wanted to stand unyielding in support of Orlais. She had not wanted it like this, had been too young to even comprehend the kind of deep sucking wound that Loki curls around now as tightly as he curls around her, but she had wanted.
Alexandrie shifts herself further, enough of a turn towards him to wrap a leg over him and pull with strength that surpasses that of her arms. Distantly, she realizes that this is perhaps the first time she has done so with the motive of simple covering, an extra limb with which to hold, but the odd wonder in that is so far from important that it is quickly forgotten.
Emile would smile that quiet knowing smile about it, when Alexandrie sorted herself out with her at the mirror. Emile who was as much a mother as Victoire. Who had been her constant companion in all things, so close as to be part of her. Emile who was somewhere in an occupied Minrathous. Who she had never thanked, the way one would never thank ones own hand; no need to pay such solicitous attention to something that would be by your side forever.
Until it is not, and may never be again.
She will join him in this, although her tears will roll to soak into the pillow beneath her.
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It is some time before he has no more tears left. When he finally calms it is with a hollowness--it seeps into his limbs and his muscles, leaving him pliant in an uncomfortable way. He does not pick his head up from her neck, not even as he finally lets his leaden limbs soften their hold on her.
His mother is dead.
The very thought tries to drag him back to weeping but, after so long, he simply cannot indulge in it any longer. It is a bare fact, now, with no tears to obscure it. The thought that chases after it is stranger still, and his brow furrows as it occurs to him--he has no reason to return to Tevinter. Certainly Odin is there, but his father does not care for him, and Tevene politics are not appealing in and of themselves. All that is left in his homeland is distraction and games and, just this moment, the idea of playing them makes him a bit ill.
He says nothing as they lie there but he does free an arm so that he can draw the blankets about them again. It is, as always, too cold in Kirkwall.
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She has not. Not since then. But at that time she had for so long and the body remembers. She had had Emile to grasp at but never in such a way as this. Not with someone clinging desperately to her in return. It does hurt, Loki's grip on her, but in a clean way; a way complimentary to the crush of grief in her chest. An aid in its release.
A small quiet thought that falls like a single drop of water in her, even as the corded tension bleeds from his body and he finally settles heavily against her.
They hadn't yet delved into such things, she has no idea of his preferences or desires, and with the numbness that had covered them much like he pulls the blankets to do now, neither of them had been able to touch the other since that day. Perhaps it would be out of place to make such an offer, but, on the other hand, perhaps it wouldn't. Perhaps imposing such structure would be relief, any pain a channel, any tension prolonged past endurance and finally released a step towards resolving the omnipresent ache in the air.
And so, evenly and quietly, she murmurs the thought into his hair.
“If regaining some small measure of control over some part of this world would be any balm, I would cede myself to you without hesitation. Or, should you instead wish to relinquish what shreds of it you still hold to a mistress kinder than than life has been, I will take them.”
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To take control would so often be his preference; he was so fond of holding dominion over things, even in small matters...but his failure is too recent a wound. No, he cannot bear the weight of responsibility just yet, however mild.
"Take it from me," he urges her, his voice rougher and drier than he likes. He bends to press his forehead against hers, his eyes closed, and draws a long breath. "Please, mistress."
was anyone surprised tho