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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( on occasion, it's enlightening, the things gwenaëlle will say about the people she cares for and admires when prompted—but there's as much chance of her waving her hands vaguely in the air and refusing to be drawn on the matter, so it's hard to say whether kitty misses anything that would have served her.

gwenaëlle purses her lips, briefly, and then slaps a hand down on the bed and stands. )

Probably.

( it would be polite to knock, especially under the circumstances, but what actually happens is the door opens and gwenaëlle says, )

You've seen my tits, so don't even begin to start with me about your privacy.

( and then, making a small noise in the back of her throat, )

—give me the comb.

[ Bizarrely, of the two of the intruders, it is Kitty who has last seen Alexandrie unclothed and in the bath. Even so, the woman is hardly demure. She has for many years worn her nakedness as unselfconsciously as anyone might wear anything, and often as a sort of weapon.

But she has indeed seen Gwenaëlle's tits. Recently. Rendered very nicely in oils. On the wall of the bedchamber she had so recently quit. Which also means Loki has seen them more recently than hers and she hadn't really fucking needed to think about that, so while the comb is indeed handed over it's with a sharp toss over her shoulder, a defiant angry sniff, and the fervent vicious wish that somehow she could pull the comb with her hair rather than the opposite.

At least it stems the tears, even as she curls farther around herself and sinks her nails into her calves. ]

[ As Kitty watches Alexandrie, she swears a silent - but fervent - oath to herself: If I ever let myself become this distraught over a man, I will personally draw a bath and drown myself in it. ]

I can go and fetch some sweets or something. [ That's to Gwen. Kitty is still too raw and hurt to speak to Lexie directly. Probably will be the rest of her life, frankly. Can a friendship continue if you never look the other person in the eye again? ] If you think you can cram them down her throat.

I think I might manage, ( she says, lightly, taking the comb from alexandrie and waiting until kitty's retreating footsteps are out of earshot to say, working it up through the tangle of red from the bottom, )

Now you're going to say thank you to me for cleaning up the mess you've just made with one of the only decent people either of us know, and when she gets back you're going to apologise to Kitty for how badly you've hurt her today.

( the tone brooks no argument, but that doesn't mean gwenaëlle doesn't expect any. )

Mess I have made? How badly I have hurt her?

[ Now that Kitty is out of the room, and it's just the two of them, Alexandrie is speaking in Orlesian again... and not least because she hates how Trade sounds coming out of her mouth when she can hardly breathe through her nose.

It's defensive enough that it's fairly obvious she knows she'd behaved poorly. ]

I did not ask anyone to come. I did not ask anyone to stay. In fact I asked everyone to l-l- [ Damn this. Force it out. ] to leave because I know I am a beast and when I am hurt I hurt back, and worse, so they w-will stop and shall not dare do it again, but she would not stop and would not leave and w-would not— and so I—

[ And it hadn't been just Kitty. She sticks the side of her hand in her mouth and sobs around it. ]

I was cruel to him, Gigi. Every bit as much as he— [ But she's not to talk about that. She can't. Not to anyone. Not even to Gwenaëlle. She searches for something, anything else she could say; Kitty again, perhaps. The younger woman is the subject of Gwen's current caring, after all. And her betrayal still stung very badly coming on top of everything else. ]

—and how is it that I have hurt her, she made it perfectly obvious she cares nothing for me, only for what power and influence I might wield in support of her all-important personal crusade on behalf of a 'common man' she has carried over with her from the Fade! She could not care any less for how she steps outside the lines in my life, but should I chance a single toe outside the bounds of what she deems correct behaviour then the Maker help me! But yes, yes, I have hurt her.

You are beastly when you're hurt, ( she agrees, unmoved by that and still patiently, painstakingly working her way through the mess that alexandrie has made, in addition to the rest, of her hair. there is no particular pause. ) It's easy. You're hurt and frightened and you go back to what's familiar because you know how to do it. It feels like control.

( it's inexorable. )

She didn't roll over and show you where you hurt her, so you kept slashing. She's going to fucking leave, Alexandrie, and it actually will be your fault. You are very good at this, and you hurt her. What she's very good at, as near as I can tell, is surviving. And an idiot would stay with you while you use her for a claw-sharpening post, and I may have talked her into being that idiot out of the love we have for you, so I want to be very clear that we are going to prove you're better than you just showed her that you are. Now. I love you. I don't care what you say to me, I know what you're doing and I don't care. Kitty is a girl. You were unconscionably cruel. You will apologise.

( she holds alexandrie's shoulders when she leans forward, presses a kiss to her temple. )

And we're going to stay. With you. Because you need us and you would do it if our places were reversed, ( very gently, ) you ungrateful strumpet.

[ By the end, Alexandrie is very still, and very quiet (save for the intermittent sniffing), her head lowered much like a broken horse under Gwenaëlle's unyielding and far too incisive words.

How. How could she still be so easy to destroy. So simply reduced to some wounded elemental creature without a single spark of humanity to her not rendered nearly unrecognizable by rage or grief. So easily induced to pass the same destruction on to any who dared come near her. And Kitty... as deeply insistent as Kitty always is that she is not to be treated like a child, Gwen is right. Despite all she has been through in her life, she is a girl. One no older than Lexie had been when she had been...

taught the agonizing lesson about the place in the world she was to occupy by her betters.

When she speaks again it is hushed. With a sort of quiet horror, as if finally looking at her hands and finding them bloody. ]

She... she will never forgive me and she will be right not to.

Not if you don't apologise to her.

( the comb is a slow, steady motion. she works the tangles out methodically, patiently, and makes no effort to make alexandrie look at her—it's easier, she knows, if she doesn't have to. )

There's only no way back if you burn it down. We make choices, Alexandrie. I am giving you an opportunity. All right? You're not any better to her breaking your own back over how dreadful you are. We pick ourselves up and do better.

I found some sort of - fondant fancies, maybe?

[ Kitty comes in, wrinkling her nose at the little tray of petits fours she's recovered from the kitchen. Taken without permission - but, well, they were doubtless intended for Lexie anyway, so it's not like fetching them early is something terrible. And they're probably to Lexie's tastes. ]

[ The feeling in the room is palpably different, in the same way one might feel upon opening a window once a storm has passed.

Alexandrie starts slightly, as if surprised to indeed hear Kitty’s voice again. Which she is, as she struggles to take to heart Gwenaëlle’s point that she won’t be any better to Kitty thinking she’s a monster. Easy enough to say, harder to hear, hardest to apply; she’d already entirely convinced herself that it was too late and Kitty had left and didn’t she, beast that she is, deserve to be left so?

But here she is, and talking casually about fondant of all things—she’d actually gone to get them? Fragile as Lexie is, it near sets her to weeping again.

You’re meant to look at people when you say things, aren’t you? But she can’t. Instead she looks at her knees, and feels the gentle tugging on her hair and the way the water drags against her as she’s pulled back and released by the movement and feels ill at the thought of eating anything at all but she’d try anyway if it meant not still being contrary. ]

I...

[ It’s small, and cracks in her throat. She doesn’t apologize, historically, and she’s terrible at it, but hasn’t she been doing it more than she ever has, these last months? Try again. ]

I should not have said those things to you.

[ Almost. ]

[ Kitty's gaze swings around towards Gwen. No mystery who's responsible for this change in outlook, though God only knows how she accomplished it. More than almost anything, Kitty wishes that she might ask after that, ask how Gwen did it - or, in some perverse way, she wishes that she might go back in time to when she and Lexie were still biting at each other. There's more familiarity in cruelty and savagery than there is in making amends.

So she fidgets for a moment, poking at one of the petits fours, as she lets loose a little uncertain noise - holding the floor until she can think of what to say. She manages: ]

I oughtn't have thrown water on you. So. I started it.

[ And then she looks to Gwen, trying to seek out some guidance as to how to proceed here. ]

( gwenaëlle meets that look placidly, to begin, and then—pleased, at the smooth-as-they-could-expect exchange of lowered hostilities.

guidance is not—particularly forthcoming, but then, she tends to be making it up as she goes along and hoping she's hitting the right notes. it's a piece of luck when it works, and the same when it doesn't. )

See. Things are only broken if you leave them on the floor after you throw them there.

( but you can pick them up. fix them. that is a thing that they can do, that she's had to learn the hard way and now it's their turn—

it is, often, tempting to leave them where they lie. she will be tempted, again. still. )

Let's get you dressed before we have company.

[ But she doesn't get up, not yet, only turns in the water with a quiet splash to look at Kitty seriously. ]

Your friendship is hardly a thing, Kitty. To be treated so. I am not accustomed to... friends. Not true ones. Not those who can truly hurt each other. [ Nor lovers who could do the same. ]

It was beast-like, to strike back at you so. To want to see you hurt as much as I did. [Her lips press together. ] To avenge myself similarly on Marie, to whom I shall also apologize. But you... did not let me see how well I had done, and I wanted to see blood so badly that I kept on, and I shall never forgive myself for being so terribly cruel to you.

[ She looks down at the water again, at her fingers in it. ]

I should not be surprised if you shall never either, but I will ask it all the same.

I - it's - it's no big deal.

[ Kitty finds her cheeks going pink. She fiddles with the hem of her shirt with anxious, uncomfortable fingers. ]

I threw water on you. It's - It's whatever. You know? Believe me, it's not the worst thing that's ever been said to me. Like, believe me, you've got nothing on my mum and dad. [ Who she will, to be fair, never forgive. Bad example. ] Or even some of my friends back home - we'd really get into it, you know. [ And now they're all dead.

She's going to just stop trying to explain it all away before she works herself up again. ]

Anyway, it's all forgotten. Oh - Except for the thing with Marie. [ Here, Kitty brings her chin down, looking at Lexie with a teenager's best imitation of severity. ] You can be dreadful to your friends, but you can never be dreadful to people you've got power over. [ Then - ] Here, how's this. If you swear to, from here on out, only hurt those who can hurt you right back, then I'll forgive you unconditionally.

[ She looks briefly as if she'd like to argue. But what if they did hurt me, and so I was hurting them right back? By some small miracle, however, Alexandrie, for once in her life, holds her tongue.

Temperance is a rare look on her.

But unconditional forgiveness is a concept rarer still. She's not entirely sure it exists. Would there not be something left? Some scar tissue that pulls and makes for easier anger? Some pieces kept in a pocket to be flung at her when it could do the most damage? A favor asked, at a later date, in exchange for a friendship kept hostage?

But Kitty, frank rough stalwart honest Kitty... surely she wouldn't offer the same hand, knife hidden up the sleeve, that Alexandrie always had. That she had always expected.

And so she nods. It's the hesitant nod of someone who expects what they've been offered to be pulled away at the last moment, but a nod all the same. ]

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