faderift | open | well i've lost it all

Entry tags:

open | well i've lost it all

WHO: Lexie and the brave people who feel like maybe getting things thrown at them/being yelled at/cried on/some other flavor of ridiculousness.
WHAT: Breakup Drama ♫
WHEN: nowish (end of Haring)
WHERE: De La Fontaine apartments in Hightown
NOTES: if you're a melodramatic noblewoman with a sudden case of regency constitution clap your hands
[ if you want a certain flavor of ridiculousness, put it in your title or hmu on plurk (@shaestorms) or discord (shae#7274) ♥ ]

It has been three days since she returned to the apartments the Comte keeps for her and her sister in the middle of the night, and Alexandrie de la Fontaine has not emerged from her room. In fact, Alexandrie de la Fontaine has not emerged from her bed. The only mark of her continued residence is the persistent heartbroken sobbing from behind the door. It is largely quiet, muffled, a background sound to be filtered out like the ocean waves. It does on occasion become more energetic as some thought—new or revisited for the hundredth time—sets her off, or disappear entirely when the expenditure of it all sends her to sleep.

Meal after meal is brought, left, and found again untouched; the tea over-steeped, the coffee stale, and both quickly rendered cold, for she will not stand for a fire being lit in the hearth. (The first maid to find it silly and begin to kindle one in any case for her lady's own good received a thin bruise the shape of the side of an expertly aimed hairbrush and a tongue-lashing for her trouble. There have since been no other attempts.) Instead, she has wrapped herself in the covers of her bed, her attire unchanged since her return save to become rumpled, her hair slowly coming free over time as the pins vex her and are yanked out and thrown to disappear in the rug.

She is missing entirely. Silent on the network when she would usually be flip, absent from both duties and regularly kept company. Crystal messages go unanswered, and callers are turned away with the vague explanation that Lady Alexandrie has taken ill and is not receiving visitors; that they may leave a card, or a message, and she shall respond once recovered.

Some callers are, of course, slightly more insistent.

[ Here you still are! If you're not Evie and you're coming in the normal person way, Marceau is chasing after you right now in that sort of eminently austere way fourth generation lifelong butlers have. If you're a scalawag or something, she has a window. There's probably a trellis. We'll figure something out. Prose or brackets are fine! ]

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Who else has that much disregard, truly? ( Kitty, the answer is Kitty. )

But she looks her over, up and down, one firm assessment with it before she turns back to the poor man that has towed after her in one long string of shocked and appalled noises. "Mister Marceau, I want a pot of tea. Sweet, made with honey in the hot water. Two trays of biscuits to be delivered to us immediately. Good ones, and a pot of cream to go with it." She slides her glance back over Lexie, a little pinch in her mouth then back. "And the Mademoiselle's favourite meal made for this afternoon. It will be delivered here, do not bother preparing the dining room for it." She wasn't about to toss the poor woman out of the bed just yet. Let it never be said she wasn't merciful.

Once she's done, she at least gives the space for Lexie to contradict the orders when she turns to go over to the chair and gently place the heavy fabrics over them, draping them carefully. Eye-catching and beautiful, as ever. Hopefully enough to coax a magpie out from her nest of blankets.

It would be, had she anyone to wear them for. As it is, Alexandrie’s glance at the shimmering colors is a flat and listless one.

“It is unnecessary for you to send someone to market in the winter to search for oranges, Marceau,” she replies in the space left for such things. Skip the meal. At least she does not contradict the tea or biscuits, despite having no taste for them still. Once he has departed, there will be silence. Then, “I cannot model for you this day, Bai Saheba. I am unwell.”

"I would not dream of forcing you out of bed, my lady. This sickness of yours looks serious."

It's firm, shaking her head against any such notion. It is, it always is. Gangadhar, you soft-hearted fool. Rather she comes back, not to force her out of bed, but to sit on the edge of it. "Come, sit up a little, and we shall fix these blankets so you might be more comfortable."

It is enough, having someone—having anyone—treat her as if she deserved her tears. Enough to both make her pliant and to have them start again. And so, even as she bites her lip to keep it from trembling entirely and looks silently towards the windows to watch the clouds outside through the watery fuzz of them, she does slowly sit up. Does re-position herself as Lakshmi had suggested, and all with a kind of docility that had been entirely absent for as long as there had been any hint of pushback from anyone.

Once she moves, Lakshmi goes about fussing like it was her God-given right. Once she's up, Lakshmi takes all the blankets in both her hands from one side and gives it an almighty flick. To settle them, air out the dust of them a little and let them float back down onto her perfectly.

"There. Nothing so terrible as being uncomfortable when you feel poorly."

Because the second she does catch that little tremble she stops what she is doing, - patting down the blankets - to stop, hush her softly and wipe the tear under her cheeks. "We'll have tea, and you can tell me all about this wretchedness."

She can't, of course, tell the other woman all about this wretchedness. Can't say why Loki was distant, only that he had been. Can't say why they'd fought, why they'd parted, only that they had. Can't ask for advice, can't ask why, can't say anything.

Can't take the chance that someone might be clever enough to find the smallest thread of truth, to work it free, to pull until they knew what she knew now. There are plenty of people in the world with no love for the man or his country who would do something besides weep.

So when the honeyed tea comes Alexandrie blows on it gently, sips at it to appease Lakshmi in partial, and quietly shifts the conversation.

"Have you lost someone, Rani? That you loved?"

She doesn't answer that question immediately. Fishing to pour her tea, stir it together with the sugar. Black, no milk, predictably, but at least sweet. The faint tinkle of the spoon against the fine chin- porcelain. They wouldn't call it China, would they?

"I have. Many times. But I may not... be the one you wish to ask about such things."

Is the soft murmur, holding the teacup to her mouth, eyes cast to the tan water, watching it ripple about.

"No?" she inquires listlessly of her own tea, "who then? Some other pretty butterfly who has left a hundred lovers and will reassure me I shall soon find another? My family, who will no doubt be pleased? A still-faithful widow to tell me it was the work of half a year, young and untested and not worth the mourning?"

She balances the cup between her fingers a moment. Then she comes to sit on the edge of the bed next to her, smoothing her palm against her leg. She should remind her of the differences in some harsh way, perhaps even agree with others who counselled her to 'grow up'.

But what did that come to? More of these same tears.

"It is difficult to speak of, and I know my situation was... particular." She takes another sip. Filling the break between words. "I was married at thirteen. Before I knew anything of love. In the same moment, I became a Queen. I never had anything else but my duty to others."

Alexandrie nods slowly, her hands folding around the tea, cherishing the warmth of it despite herself. It's simple enough to understand. There had been children crowned before. Children married. The higher ones rank is, the more power ones family has, the less say one has in ones own fate.

"Was he kind?" she asks, a young girl inquiring after a story.

"He was. As much as a ruler could be." There was a difference to her countenance as she talks of him - talks of home. How her hand lifts up, her eyes gaze staring - looking not at Lexie, but how clearly the fade had cut a shape so recently conjured by the fade. A handsome, older man. That way one half of his moustache would not sit quite high as the other and that he would, when thinking, twirl that side in thought. A middle point in this grand room that beautiful as it was.

It was nothing to the rooms that had once been her palace. That she sees just as well. "I would make his dinner for grand occasions. He was a man of refined tastes, so I spent hours... hours crafting his every meal to make even your Empress envious. Every bite, for him. So long, I spent perfecting this, that when the time came he would insist he would only eat from my fingertips. He would say that - 'Rani," A thickness to her voice as she affects the tone of her husband's voice. Not in mockery, but in the rhythm of the words rising and falling, where that very proper, very clipped tone slips away. Becomes warm, deeper, a different tone. "you are Lakshmi to our people, but it is me who is graced by a Goddess when I share a meal with you."

If it hurts, after so many years, her eyes shift, turns, blinking quickly. "He was a great lover of theatre, he always spoke... well."

A handkerchief will be offered into the shifted frame of Lakshmi's vision, crumpled but dry and unused, as if it had been used simply as something to grip tightly rather than for its intended purpose.

A grand sacrifice, considering that the bearer's eyes have already begun to shine wetly again. This time, it is with a forlorn sort of envy. After all, even if it hadn't been Lakshmi's choice in the slightest, she had had, for a time, precisely what Alexandrie's carefully tucked away girlish heart had wanted badly enough to fall so quickly for the ruse designed to catch it: a lofty position from which to design and arrange the world like a garden for some beloved to walk. To be loved so, for the doing.

"You lost much, when you came here. He sounds a fine man."

She flicks her fingers, dismissing the shape of ghosts with it, instead opting for what matters. Here, now, anything else was gone and could not come back now.

"I lost him some time ago, long before this place. I would not have been so much older than you, then." She chuckles, brief. "I will tell you a secret, Madam, I am glad no one here knows much of me so feel no pity on my account there. Things like my birthday, for that was the day he died in my lap, I was holding him in my arms, trickling sweet water to his lips, but he found no sweetness in the world. His heart broke when we lost our first and only son and never recovered. He promised me, though, even then, that he would wait for me in our next life."

The dismissive flick of Lakshmi's fingers is taken as a sign that she does not desire the handkerchief, and so Alexandrie withdraws it for her own continued use, setting down her teacup to press at the corners of her eyes. She wonders whether or not souls so separated by whatever it is brought the Rifters here could find one another again, or if the both of them would now be parted forever.

How tragically unfair to love and be loved and be wrenched apart so.

"Were you given time to mourn him?" She inquires artlessly through the fine cotton she holds against her face.

"No." Is the flat response, as she rises, away from Lexie. That - that truly hurts. It stings still. She has not done what a high-caste widow ought. To turn away all wealth, music, art, to live a restricted life, to shave off all her hair and devote herself in prayer.

"But those were not affairs of love, but of war. So perhaps not the sort of thing to hear now. There is a war about, and battles aplenty enough already." Instead, she busy's herself with making another cup of tea, pouring it into the cup. Tea, tea, tea. What wretched stuff. How they had stripped the soil for it. Turn once farmlands into walls f this same green and built an Empire out of it.

( But despite it, despite the words, the firmness she affects in her tone, there is a rattle of the teacup, as she places it onto its saucer, a ring softly before she takes a deeper breath, steadying it away by the strength of conviction if nothing else. )

"Is there so much separation between the two?" Alexandrie quietly asks of the hands she folds in her lap, of the handkerchief twisted between them. How we each gather the armies of our convictions, how they clash and turn to bloodshed, retreat to mourn the losses.

(If she heard the rattle of the teacup, or thought to guess at the meaning and make advances toward it, there is no sign.)

"I heard it once said, that tears are the difference between grief and happiness." She comes back, balancing the cup in her hands. "And that love is that tear, a tear from the eye of God."

She takes her seat with the same smoothing gesture, making herself settled comfortably. One leg crossing over the other. "But what love is love when it causes pain?"

"I could not tell you, Bai Saheba," Alexandrie replies, setting aside her handkerchief and taking up her tea again so that she can slowly trace her fingertip along the gently scalloped edge of the delicate cup. "I have never known another kind."

She makes a full circle, stopping where the handle curves from it, and then looks up at Lakshmi with a small sad smile. "But if it gives even the Maker to weep, what chance have we?"

Ah - it has taken the time, but she finds it, murmuring softly with the little comfort she can offer. Her hand reaches over, smoothes gently across her features. "Have you never wept from happiness? Of being so full of love it cannot be kept inside your body?"

Gently, she tucks a stray curl back behind Lexie's ear, "I would urge you, to never settle for less than that. Any love that does not make you weep in happiness for being with that person is not love."

"Did you not love your husband? If you wept at his loss, was it then from happiness?" Sharp, suddenly. Brittle, like the sound of cracked glass grinding against itself. Perhaps unkind of her, a poor return for Lakshmi's gentleness, but she cannot bear hearing even the slightest intimation that she had been wrong. That she had not known. That she had not truly loved. "Or was it of being so full of love it could not be kept inside your body, and of a sudden having no-one to give it to, nowhere to place it but weeping."

Her hand lifts away, and points one stern finger, not so much into Lexie's face, but to hold as one line between them. "Do not twist my words, Madam, I know you've a kind heart, but don't let pain twist it into striking out to others."

But since they're here - "Did you leave him, or did he leave you?"

This, she had dreaded.

The question itself, the which she hardly knew the answer to as it was, and everything that came after. He had left her, in that he had absented himself as much as he had been able while still hovering on the side of the thin line between together and apart that had kept her, lonely as she had become, in his bed. Had shoved her away when the source of such had been revealed. But she had left him too, after her scathing deliverance.

And he had been right about Byerly.

Which she can use, now, to keep the truth—the more true truth—safe. To keep him safe. It is a strange thing to turn over in her hands, as she takes a moment to look away from both Lakshmi and the point of her finger, playing at being abashed for the scolding. To have in her grasp all she could ever need to both avenge herself in full and not only restore her place in society but launch it higher than she could have ever hoped to without such circumstance and have no desire at all to use it. She could easily paint herself the true innocent victim of a villainous qunari blood mage masquerading as human, and it would be readily believed. The anticipation bordering on eagerness with which everyone sat in wait to sit in judgement of the second son of Asgard was nearly palpable.

But the bare thinking of it makes her ill enough to drain some of the color from her face. Never. She would never. And so finally, quietly, returning to the beginning of the wheel of her thoughts, Alexandrie says "I hardly know."

She doesn't think much of that answer, but it is expected. Brows raising, hands settling back to her side so she could smooth the material of her saree, flat and neat again to her thighs.

"If you don't know, then it was surely him. Unless you are the sort of female that strings men a long, I suppose." I don't think much of them, is not the thing that really needs to be said, undoubtedly.

"In which case, no, he is not worthy of you, unless he comes to terms with whatever it is that is making him act this an acceptable way to treat a woman."

Alexandrie is, in fact, absolutely the sort of female that strings men along. It is an easy and effective card she has in her hand to play, and one hardly gets far without playing the cards one has.

But she'd not tossed it on the table this time. She'd not have spent any time in bed at all if she had.

"And if I have matched him in unworthy behavior?"

She doesn't need to feign the reticence with which she asks that. It's not something she wants to examine, but better the examination turn to her than to what it is that is making him act as he had.

Here is the great rub of knowing Lakshmi, apparently. For her - there is only wanting and not wanting, having and not having. To do and to not do. If she behaves poorly, it has only ever for a reason, and seldom just the sake of her own pettiness.

( Shouting at Knights, except of course. )

So it comes down to a certain point for her, "then do you really want him?"

Because she'd never lower herself, for a man especially, to any kind of personal pettiness or indecisiveness. Why would anyone else?

open | well i've lost it all

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cw: underage historical marriages etc

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still here, if you wanna (ღ˘⌣˘ღ)

always

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blows dust off this and polishes it lovingly

holds it up like a prize

did... did we finish it?

I think we did.... ???