( unmoved and without missing a beat, ) And that's why you told Guilfoyle I sent him because I don't care about you and can't be bothered, because you understood the purpose and meaning behind that gesture and were very grateful to me for having done it.
( or, wait, not that. )
There is obviously a particular thing that you need, way that you need it to be done. Equally obviously, no one is stumbling across it by fumbling around in the dark, probably because that never works for anyone and never has. We are going to do it this way.
[ thranduil, who has been using this time to actually eat his dinner and drink the wine his almost-wife poured (for he very much suspects that once they get to talking, that will be the end of any chance for eating) and waits for the most appropriate time for him to step in, which appears to be now. ]
Gwenaëlle is right, [ because that's what he does want, even more so after the incident near skyhold. ] Tell me how, and I will do my best.
[ he is now curious about whatever happened with guilfoyle, and conveys as much with a glance to gwenaëlle, raised eyebrows. but they'll have plenty to dissect later.
maybe he oughtn't have done that? maybe it gives the appearance of conspiracy? adalia doesn't need to feel as if the two of them are set against her. he sets down his knife and fork, hesitates, and then: ]
You are hurting, which is understandable. Even before the Venatori captured you.
❰ adalia opens her mouth to argue with gwen, and then thranduil speaks and she opens her mouth to argue with him, and her cheeks are already flaming and her stomach sits like a leaden stone in her gut, the food on her plate pushed around but otherwise untouched. ❱
I'm —
❰ fine would be a lie, but adalia has lied before, it's just that this time the word catches in her throat and she looks between the two of them, helpless. what are they asking? for her to lay out what she needs from them, plainly, and trust that they will provide? how to do that without feeling like she only got it because she pitched enough of a fit? how to know what she needs in the first place, when all she can say on that subject is to belong, which is so general as to be useless? ❱
I'm sorry, ❰ she says in the end, voice tight. ❱ I'll be better.
❰ they're not asking her to be better, they're asking her to communicate. adalia can already hear gwenaëlle's annoyance. ❱
( it's all right, gwenaëlle won't leave her to imagine it for long— )
Brilliant, I'm thrilled to hear it. We'll move directly onto frankly and honestly figuring out how appallingly at cross-purposes we've been for months, and resolving that.
( she's direct like a brick through your window, and immovably stubborn as a mule. she can do this—
not forever. if adalia won't, then adalia won't, and they can't force her. but she's not writing off the possibility immediately. )
What I did, ( after a moment, ) meant a great deal to me. I understand that it wasn't something you understood, and that it seemed different. That that hurt you. But that's the point. I tried to help, and I did it so badly wrong for you that instead of thanks, I got an insult for my trouble. And I didn't know what else to do instead. We don't work the same. I can't guess what you need, I have to ask. Thranduil can't guess what you need. He's tried to be available to you, and it hasn't worked—if you can't see what we're doing then we need to do something else, but we can't keep just guessing in the dark. None of us.
If you would rather slope off and gnaw on your own liver about how no one cares about you, I'm sorry for interrupting your self-pity and it will never happen again. If you wanted to see that people do, and that we'll help, we are quite literally sitting across the fucking table.
( she isn't good at this. this is her best effort, and she knows—knows from previous experience, even—that it isn't great, and that with adalia in particular it's never really helped.
Please, [ he says, and there's a genuine note of actual pleading in there, in the tip of his chin and how he leans in to say it, hands stilled holding his cutlery, sincere in all its unguarded honesty. ] Tell us- tell me- what you need. I want very much for you to feel safe, Adalia, and wanted. You do not need to be lonely.
[ gwenaëlle had done it better, with her duckling-into-swan bit, but thranduil supposes he doesn't need all the pomp of it, only himself, laid as plain as he comes. he might have reached out, taken her hand, offered some physical comfort, but adalia is all of spun-sugar strong in this moment, and anger so easily a shield. ]
❰ it's hard to feel cared about when the supposed care comes in the way gwenaëlle offers it — not even offers, really, just drops in her lap and waits for adalia to decide what to do with it. she can't fathom how sending someone else to comfort someone you purport to care about could have meaning at all, but she's not going to do gwenaëlle the disservice of believing she'd lie. they've been through this before, if gwenaëlle had no desire to help she wouldn't be here, she wouldn't be saying she cares because she didn't and that'd be that.
but try as she might to see how this translates to caring adalia just can't do it — or, rather, she can see it, because she knows gwenaëlle enough by now, but she can't feel it. it feels just the same as everything always does, adalia at fault and not good enough.
she curls further into herself with every sentence out of gwen's mouth, expression miserable and loathing... until thranduil speaks up, and she looks sharply up at him. ❱
You yelled at me.
❰ it's all she can think to say for a second, so infuriated by the dissonance between what he says and what she remembers that it blocks out everything else. she'd only been trying to learn. she wanted guidance, she wanted to be useful, she wanted to know how to respond, and he'd made her feel three inches tall. ❱
I asked perfectly reasonable questions and you yelled at me and used me and then you lied to my face. I wanted to help you, and you lied.
❰ pray tell, what safety was she supposed to find in all that? what company? ❱
( it has been apparent to gwenaëlle for some time that this is a way in which they simply do not share a language. it's likely, she knows, that that will always be true; that she will never have whatever it is adalia needs. she doesn't, and hasn't, and that in part had been her reasoning in instead sending what had always been her most steadfast comfort in her place—the self-awareness to know that what she had to say wasn't going to help. that continuing to push it when adalia needed something else more simply so she could say that she had done wasn't going to help.
like it's not helping now.
thranduil, though: this is sort of his area. if they can just manage to understand one another, surely he can do what she can't; can offer things she simply doesn't have. but first they have to untangle all the reasons why it's not worked already, and though she doesn't interrupt, that's the real purpose of her presence. only to make sure that they actually do, and don't get lost in the attempt.
the wine will probably help. she drinks more of it. )
[ when gwenaëlle's glass reaches half-full, he takes the water pitcher at the table to top it up, smooth and playing into the flow of conversation so as to not disrupt their dinner table. he keeps his eyes on adalia. ]
I did, [ he readily agrees. ] You happened to be in the worst place at the worst time, when I had an already thinned temper. I am sorry.
[ which he's said before, but he'll say again, easily, and mean it. his wrath is a terrible thing, and worse for so rarely coming to the forefront. ]
As for lying, well. I told several that night [ and every night hence, it's kinda his thing. ] but I was attempting to juggle the lives of nearly threescore Rifters against the wrath of the Chantry and the Inquisition. I was near committing sedition, and considering treason, but neither of them proved necessary, so plots were smothered before they had much life to begin with. Which was, [ and he risks another brief bite here, ] very much for the best. Nothing was withheld from you because there was nothing to withhold, and tempers were managed, and you were at the negotiations when they came to pass.
( at the end of the very long, very cool look thranduil receives for watering his wife's wine down, gwenaëlle says, almost off-hand, )
He isn't lying about that now, ( aware that she lacks all in subtlety that thranduil has, and accordingly can be more easily read one way or the other; there's no hint of deceit about her, which means she isn't lying, whereas with thranduil it sometimes just means he's lying very well. ) I was annoyed with him at the time for not committing more sedition.
❰ except clearly that isn't the case, because adalia is still angry. just because his plans didn't end up needing to be enacted doesn't mean there weren't any. iorveth told her to go to thranduil, which he wouldn't have done if he hadn't thought there might be a reason to. there were plans, and she was shut out. it doesn't matter that nothing had come of them in the end. ❱
You want me to feel safe, you don't want me to feel lonely, but only so long as you get to continue to hold yourself apart and so superior, because you're a million and the rest of us might as well be five. All I ever wanted you to do was let me fit and I don't know why that's such a terrible thing to want!
❰ which is, maybe, something she should be saying to solas more than to thranduil, but it's not entirely unfair. thranduil has always been distant from her when she's wanted to be let in, to find the puzzle her weird little piece fits in, so eventually she stopped trying with him.
the angrier adalia gets, the more her anxiety rises. anger gets people hurt, anger doesn't help, but sometimes she can't help herself. adalia's grip on her chair is so tight her knuckles are beginning to bleed white, the tension just enough to keep her from shaking. ❱
( now, that is for thranduil—but she can already hear the stupid words that are about to come out of his stupid mouth, so gwenaëlle holds a hand up to stop him without looking, reaching out her other (with no visible hesitation, no, that came the moment before she made the gesture at all) to very gently lay over adalia's white knuckles.
gentler than she usually is: )
Adalia, you've never said that before.
( she thinks she might not know. that she might not know they didn't know; that she thought she was bleeding behind glass, and not brick walls. that everyone simply didn't look. )
It isn't a terrible thing to want, but you've never said it. The appallingly old get less intuitive, not more. If I can't see that that's what you're looking for, when I'm about five minutes— ( give or take five years ) —older than you are, someone who last tried to learn belonging from his elders before my culture was born doesn't have the perspective.
[ obedient, he keeps his mouth shut while his wife untangles adalia for him, saves them both from stumbling back down paths they've already trod. he's halfway done with his meal, and she hasn't even touched hers. when she's finished: ]
I cannot be both your teacher and your peer, Adalia. I would ask that you choose one.
[ and gwenaëlle's right. his perspective, honed as it is, allows him to miss things that others catch easily. but he cannot discard the wisdom or his time without ceasing to be. it is who he is. nearing three years in thedas had shifted his approach without wearing away too many of his edges. spun the looking glass, not reground it. ]
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no subject
( or, wait, not that. )
There is obviously a particular thing that you need, way that you need it to be done. Equally obviously, no one is stumbling across it by fumbling around in the dark, probably because that never works for anyone and never has. We are going to do it this way.
no subject
Gwenaëlle is right, [ because that's what he does want, even more so after the incident near skyhold. ] Tell me how, and I will do my best.
[ he is now curious about whatever happened with guilfoyle, and conveys as much with a glance to gwenaëlle, raised eyebrows. but they'll have plenty to dissect later.
maybe he oughtn't have done that? maybe it gives the appearance of conspiracy? adalia doesn't need to feel as if the two of them are set against her. he sets down his knife and fork, hesitates, and then: ]
You are hurting, which is understandable. Even before the Venatori captured you.
no subject
I'm —
❰ fine would be a lie, but adalia has lied before, it's just that this time the word catches in her throat and she looks between the two of them, helpless. what are they asking? for her to lay out what she needs from them, plainly, and trust that they will provide? how to do that without feeling like she only got it because she pitched enough of a fit? how to know what she needs in the first place, when all she can say on that subject is to belong, which is so general as to be useless? ❱
I'm sorry, ❰ she says in the end, voice tight. ❱ I'll be better.
❰ they're not asking her to be better, they're asking her to communicate. adalia can already hear gwenaëlle's annoyance. ❱
no subject
Brilliant, I'm thrilled to hear it. We'll move directly onto frankly and honestly figuring out how appallingly at cross-purposes we've been for months, and resolving that.
( she's direct like a brick through your window, and immovably stubborn as a mule. she can do this—
not forever. if adalia won't, then adalia won't, and they can't force her. but she's not writing off the possibility immediately. )
What I did, ( after a moment, ) meant a great deal to me. I understand that it wasn't something you understood, and that it seemed different. That that hurt you. But that's the point. I tried to help, and I did it so badly wrong for you that instead of thanks, I got an insult for my trouble. And I didn't know what else to do instead. We don't work the same. I can't guess what you need, I have to ask. Thranduil can't guess what you need. He's tried to be available to you, and it hasn't worked—if you can't see what we're doing then we need to do something else, but we can't keep just guessing in the dark. None of us.
If you would rather slope off and gnaw on your own liver about how no one cares about you, I'm sorry for interrupting your self-pity and it will never happen again. If you wanted to see that people do, and that we'll help, we are quite literally sitting across the fucking table.
( she isn't good at this. this is her best effort, and she knows—knows from previous experience, even—that it isn't great, and that with adalia in particular it's never really helped.
it's what she has. she has to at least try. )
no subject
[ gwenaëlle had done it better, with her duckling-into-swan bit, but thranduil supposes he doesn't need all the pomp of it, only himself, laid as plain as he comes. he might have reached out, taken her hand, offered some physical comfort, but adalia is all of spun-sugar strong in this moment, and anger so easily a shield. ]
no subject
but try as she might to see how this translates to caring adalia just can't do it — or, rather, she can see it, because she knows gwenaëlle enough by now, but she can't feel it. it feels just the same as everything always does, adalia at fault and not good enough.
she curls further into herself with every sentence out of gwen's mouth, expression miserable and loathing... until thranduil speaks up, and she looks sharply up at him. ❱
You yelled at me.
❰ it's all she can think to say for a second, so infuriated by the dissonance between what he says and what she remembers that it blocks out everything else. she'd only been trying to learn. she wanted guidance, she wanted to be useful, she wanted to know how to respond, and he'd made her feel three inches tall. ❱
I asked perfectly reasonable questions and you yelled at me and used me and then you lied to my face. I wanted to help you, and you lied.
❰ pray tell, what safety was she supposed to find in all that? what company? ❱
no subject
like it's not helping now.
thranduil, though: this is sort of his area. if they can just manage to understand one another, surely he can do what she can't; can offer things she simply doesn't have. but first they have to untangle all the reasons why it's not worked already, and though she doesn't interrupt, that's the real purpose of her presence. only to make sure that they actually do, and don't get lost in the attempt.
the wine will probably help. she drinks more of it. )
no subject
I did, [ he readily agrees. ] You happened to be in the worst place at the worst time, when I had an already thinned temper. I am sorry.
[ which he's said before, but he'll say again, easily, and mean it. his wrath is a terrible thing, and worse for so rarely coming to the forefront. ]
As for lying, well. I told several that night [ and every night hence, it's kinda his thing. ] but I was attempting to juggle the lives of nearly threescore Rifters against the wrath of the Chantry and the Inquisition. I was near committing sedition, and considering treason, but neither of them proved necessary, so plots were smothered before they had much life to begin with. Which was, [ and he risks another brief bite here, ] very much for the best. Nothing was withheld from you because there was nothing to withhold, and tempers were managed, and you were at the negotiations when they came to pass.
no subject
He isn't lying about that now, ( aware that she lacks all in subtlety that thranduil has, and accordingly can be more easily read one way or the other; there's no hint of deceit about her, which means she isn't lying, whereas with thranduil it sometimes just means he's lying very well. ) I was annoyed with him at the time for not committing more sedition.
no subject
❰ except clearly that isn't the case, because adalia is still angry. just because his plans didn't end up needing to be enacted doesn't mean there weren't any. iorveth told her to go to thranduil, which he wouldn't have done if he hadn't thought there might be a reason to. there were plans, and she was shut out. it doesn't matter that nothing had come of them in the end. ❱
You want me to feel safe, you don't want me to feel lonely, but only so long as you get to continue to hold yourself apart and so superior, because you're a million and the rest of us might as well be five. All I ever wanted you to do was let me fit and I don't know why that's such a terrible thing to want!
❰ which is, maybe, something she should be saying to solas more than to thranduil, but it's not entirely unfair. thranduil has always been distant from her when she's wanted to be let in, to find the puzzle her weird little piece fits in, so eventually she stopped trying with him.
the angrier adalia gets, the more her anxiety rises. anger gets people hurt, anger doesn't help, but sometimes she can't help herself. adalia's grip on her chair is so tight her knuckles are beginning to bleed white, the tension just enough to keep her from shaking. ❱
no subject
gentler than she usually is: )
Adalia, you've never said that before.
( she thinks she might not know. that she might not know they didn't know; that she thought she was bleeding behind glass, and not brick walls. that everyone simply didn't look. )
It isn't a terrible thing to want, but you've never said it. The appallingly old get less intuitive, not more. If I can't see that that's what you're looking for, when I'm about five minutes— ( give or take five years ) —older than you are, someone who last tried to learn belonging from his elders before my culture was born doesn't have the perspective.
no subject
I cannot be both your teacher and your peer, Adalia. I would ask that you choose one.
[ and gwenaëlle's right. his perspective, honed as it is, allows him to miss things that others catch easily. but he cannot discard the wisdom or his time without ceasing to be. it is who he is. nearing three years in thedas had shifted his approach without wearing away too many of his edges. spun the looking glass, not reground it. ]