faderift | [Open] The Boys Are Back In Town

One thing he absolutely must do is unravel the depths of the deception. Some questions can only be answered by his father, someone Thor isn't quite ready to contact, but some are easier.

Sort of.

He approaches Lexie at meal time, another meal that Loki is skipping, and takes his seat with a calm he doesn't feel.

"You are recovered from the party?"

Considering what they had all just come home from, that was a strange enough question to cause Alexandrie to pause her seemingly ceaseless reorganization of the food on her plate that has otherwise been hardly touched and look up at Thor with guarded curiosity.

"It was frightful, certainly, but I find myself with little worry that lingers from it."

Little worry. That tells him nothing, and he wishes he had Loki's gift for dancing about the truth and getting at lies. Or even telling lies and making them seem entirely believable. Maybe it's the qunari in Loki that's let him do that, Thor thinks uncharitably.

"So it is the war that has you not eating?" At least he can dodge around a little. "That is what lingers?"

It would be so easy to say yes. Claim fragility, nightmares, fears for the future. She has the latter two, it would be a truth, but it is not the reason she finds herself with little appetite. It is that she feels alone, for the first time, in this decadent sprawl of a house, and that similarly she cares, for the first time, about why. In the past Alexandrie would simply make herself as scarce in answer, but in the past she had never loved them. And in the past she had never tried to match honesty with someone like Thor. She idly spears a bit of greenery on her fork and twirls it.

“No.” A pause, and then a look of rather vulnerable entreaty. “Is... do you know what troubles him?”

On his every encounter with her, he prepared himself for an Orlesian noble playing at a greater Game, scheming for influence and power while having fallen for the snare that is his brother. She has always fulfilled his expectations. Until now. Now she opens up, seems lost, and Thor is at his own loss as he glances in the direction of Loki's rooms.

"Yes," he finally says. House Asgard's new secret and shame, hidden away, and wouldn't it be for the best if she got so frustrated she broke up with Loki? If there was a lower chance of it coming out? But what she does or doesn't do is nothing he can either wager on or try to steer. "It is not something I wish to discuss, even if I was free to."

Thor gives her a level look. "Let it be. I am certain your family has secrets. Either he will deal with it and move on or he will not."

Alexandrie drops the utensil to hit the china with a metallic ring, irritated by Thor's answer. "None that have caused me to—" she begins sharply, before cutting off with some immediacy. Not her family, perhaps, but she had. She had learned something she wished to keep to herself and disappeared abruptly to nurse the wound before.

And of course Thor would keep Loki's confidence. Geneviève had kept hers. How terribly foolish of her to have begun to believe herself elevated to any such level. Unforgivable, really. She smooths the linen that covers her lap, folds it exactingly, and drops it atop the still filled plate as if she were similarly folding and depositing the entirety of the situation.

"I expect he will," she replies, again an unreadable porcelain doll.

To? Either she's very angry at something Loki's done, or she's seeing her words as lie. Thor does not know what the cause for the cutoff there is, but there's no opening to ask as she goes still. Orlesians. Masks are their lives. And while he's thinking on that topic...

"As you wait, I would appreciate it if you removed some of the very Orlesian touches you have added to the place. I do not mind the decor, but I do mind what it says about House Asgard, particularly when we are in the South. It must be clear that this estate is an estate of Tevinter. Any houses struggling to decide whether or not to support Corypheus need to know that we are with them if they stand against him, and that we are not being swayed by other countries."

Alexandrie pales, flushes, pales again, and then stands quickly enough to make the chair she had been sitting in complain of it as it drags across the floor. Perhaps if she had not already been feeling shut out, on edge about it, this would go differently. As it is her hands clench tightly as she faces Thor, the flush in her cheeks returning a second time.

“As I wait?” She asks, bitter and venomous, “As I wait to find whether or not your brother will allow me to return to his confidences, you would appreciate it if I removed what traces of myself there are in this house? Such welcome, in return for my efforts on your behalf! I am not sure why I allowed myself to expect else!”

There is anger there in her eyes, her frame, snapping from her tongue, but it would be plain enough for near anyone to see that the larger part of it is simple fear—a preemptive expectation of grief.

“Very well! I shall. I shall, and you may replace them with decor that you will surely find it a matter of greatest ease to gain in trade with your occupied country. I imagine you shall enjoy far better luck at finding such tradesmen of luxuries than I enjoyed. More fool I, believing my efforts appreciable. More fool I—“ she cuts off again, her gaze dropping to the ground.

More fool her, believing herself to belong with them. Recklessly trading her place in Kirkwall society for a clever smile.

She looks up again, her words clipped. “You need not my leave to change your own house. I am but a visitor. Tell your servants to do it.”

He takes a slow breath. She's so young-seeming, sometimes. Her family cannot have taught her politics. When he speaks, his tone is even, gaze steady on her.

"I have not asked that you remove all traces. I asked that you remove some, and did not rescind your invitation to this place, Lady." Gods, sometimes he wishes people were more simple and straightforward. But no. He's surrounded by dramatics, and even the woman he'd found interesting has vanished. "You are stressed by the wait. I understand. But that is no reason to be short with me. I cannot change what is going on, and my hands are tied in this matter."

Another breath. "I do not like being powerless in this either. I am used to having far more resources and options present to me, and in the matter of Loki I have none. So I must wait as well, to see if my house will be irreparably damaged or if there is yet something for it. But this wait does give you something to do about the house, and it does mean that you can choose what you move."

She's shown that she can calm down when treated evenly before. Whether she'll choose to show that again, Thor can't say. He knows her a little, but right now she's half-broken. Like their house. A few months back they were four. Now they're two, and he doesn't even know what part his father played in this matter, or how to broach the subject there. Will it shatter House Asgard? Will Loki manipulate this to his benefit and Thor's loss somehow? How long has Loki known he was qunari, how had he hid it... there are far too many questions. Thor has a headache, and it shows in the way his eyes are a little pinched. There is no move he can make yet.

"I doubt the servants would be discriminating in what they move if I give the order. But as you are a guest here, and welcome here, I am giving you the options. Make of it what you will."

She grits her teeth, suddenly furious that Thor won't fight her. Won't push back so that she can push again, turn her uncertainty and powerlessness alchemy-like to bright burning rage. Without the force of it propelling her, she will fall like hay to the scythe of it all, and she will not, will not, will not do so. Not again. Again. How could she have been so foolish as to have opened herself to this?

But there is no part of her that wishes to close. There is only what wishes Loki to return. How pitiful she is. How vulnerable she has made herself.

Find something. Emile says, in her mind. Take back your footing. Listen to what Thor has unwittingly volunteered. Yes. Surely if she can figure it out and name it they will have no choice but to include her. What is it that Loki has done that would both damage the House and distance him? Something with Aurelius? That is when it had begun, had it not? And so she loosens herself, making it look reluctant with a touch of shame at her outburst.

"I... Forgive me. I am worried, and forget myself in it. If it will put the both of you at greater ease about the strength and unity of your House, I will do so gladly. I know you had not had cause to host the Inquisition in your home since I perhaps too blithely began to think of it as mine as well, and surely it did not go unnoticed by the others even amidst the shock of the betrayal Aurelius brought."

And she watches.

[Open] The Boys Are Back In Town

for Lexie

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