open | neither snow nor rain

[nadasharillen]

WHO: Nari, Lexie, you~
WHAT: Guardian catch-all for some ladies. (Well, one Lady and one elf.)
WHEN: The Present!
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: prompts I have promised people will be appearing below as I get to them!

Nari

I.

With the sleet keeping everything near-constantly coated with ice, Guardian is hardly the right month to be jaunting about between the Gallows towers and the towers that hold the massive machinery designed to raise and lower Kirkwall's immense chain net. The massive machinery that hasn't been used in two decades, ever since Viscount Threnhold had used it to strangle Orlesian trade and the Divine had ordered the city's Templars to 'convince' him to lower it. Threnhold's successors had been loathe to use it with such a tangle in the recent past, and so its mechanism is full of two decades of largely untended metal shifting, weathering, rusting in places.

The winter seas are rough enough that an assault by sea isn't likely, but the thin dark Dalish woman had shrugged and said that the Archon's Palace raising into the sky above Minrathous hadn't been all that likely either, and so here she is, on her way to the Chain tower, a pack of tools slung over her back. A pack that has been repaired several times, and by the look of it is about to need one more: something heavy looking is inching its way out of the back of it with every step she takes. Won't be long before that's lost. Hope it's not important.


II.

What Guardian is the right month for is being here near the hearth in the Hanged Man's taproom with a hot mug of mulled wine and a mallet, tapping chairs back together and listening with quiet amusement to a harper on one side and two tipsy men one-upping each other outrageously in order to try to take the same woman home on the other.

The important thing, really, is that the weather is outside, but the entertainment isn't unwelcome.

“Are you listening to this?” she asks, looking up briefly with a crooked grin spreading across her face, “The taller one has gone from fisherman to ship's captain in the space of five minutes.”


[ or something else! ]


Alexandrie

Winter here has not brought the lovely romantic fluffy pristine snow she'd dreamed of. It's desperately horrible in Kirkwall, and what work she can do from home she does from home with great relief. Unfortunately there are still meetings to be had, new correspondence to discuss, and every so often new books, scraps, and sheafs of paper arrive for the Inquisition that are in need of translation. All these things are in the Gallows, and so, begrudgingly, is Alexandrie.

She can be found now, looking far less disgruntled than she actually is, sitting at a table in the library with a letter in one hand—at which she is frowning with extreme delicacy—and a painted porcelain cup of tea in the other, her maid doing a spot of embroidery close enough at hand to refresh it when that becomes necessary.

“Ah!” she exclaims quietly, her glance warm and pleased over her painstakingly painted smile, “C'est parfait. Have you a moment to spare?”


[ ...or something else! ]

Comments

[keenly]

"No, carina." He squeezes her again. "Not in the least. It's not you, or him, that's failing. It's just that the past happened, and it still has power. That's the thing that has thorns round you both."

[coquettish_trees]

She thinks of Frigga; how the nightmares of the sudden violence of her death had faded once she had replaced it with the work of her portrait. Of Loki, and how every morning she awoke with him still sleeping next to her tended the land left barren by Rolant's betrayal. Of Kitty and Gwenaëlle, standing defiantly against the furnace of her anger to stay with her when she'd seared away so many others and in doing so had damped its flame. Of Colin himself, and the way they had slowly and with love and care written over his intimate fears.

"A broken glass cannot be a glass again, I know," she says, "but if we let go of wishing to bring back the glass, it can become something new, can it not? A chime to catch the wind. A pot for a plant, perhaps, in which drainage is desired. A... a..." Thinking about these things, the proof of change, that different did not have to mean gone, has apparently restored a small twitch of humor, even though she has not sat up, and her voice is thick and muffled in his shoulder. "A worrying chandelier."

It is how Helena had said. That it is right to cut some things, so that what can still live will better grow.

"Because the branch has died, it does not mean the tree has. It will not grow the same branch again, but if there is still life in it, it will grow another."

[keenly]

"In time." Another squeeze. "But you can't force these things. You just have to be patient and let time do what it needs to do."

[coquettish_trees]

"I do not think you understand the way in which I... he said something, but I heard only what I feared to. I thought he had thrown away the glass entire, and so I did the same, but I am no longer sure, and he will still think I have done so. That I have felled the tree." Now Alexandrie draws back. She looks a mess, and suffused with worry besides. "And if I say nothing of it I fear I will have."

[keenly]

There's a decently long pause, with a knowing gleam in Colin's eye.

"Well. You don't want him in the flat. You go after him for trying to corrupt me. And then you sever all ties with him, and I come home to find you've burned some drawings of him. And you've spent the last ten minutes crying as if someone died. So, he and I both have the impression that yes, it's all over. If it's not, why all the rest of it?"

[coquettish_trees]

A genuine shock and surprise flashes across her face for a brief moment before her eyes narrow to slits and she pulls back, her voice clipped.

"I did not want him here because I left my fear behind for a moment to go reach for him and he returned nothing. I went after him for fear I should lose you the way I lost myself. I bid him farewell after saying to him what I have most feared to say and believing I heard what I most feared to hear, and only now have I been able to consider that it might not have been so.

"I cannot be scared? I cannot make mistakes? I cannot guard myself from phantoms I myself have crafted? Have I ever spoken to you so?"

She stands, steps unsteadily backwards, her tone lowering. "Or is this because you already speak for 'he and I', now."

[keenly]

"Lexie?" He remains seated, still open to her. "I'm only letting you know how it's looked, up to now. Everyone's entitled to mistakes. But if it is a mistake, and not your intent, you have time to correct it."

Really. Nobles are absolute wrecks. Byerly is constantly insisting he's the worst, so of course she thinks he wants nothing to do with her. It's like it would kill these people to say what they actually feel.

[coquettish_trees]

She looks wild, like this. As a beast might be, when cornered. Always, she is like this, as if where she strips away the perfect porcelain of the exterior she'd forged for herself so long ago in Orlais she strips away her skin as well, leaving only a rawness that screams at the slightest abrasion.

For Colin, she had removed it all, and this unexpected relative roughness from him hard on the heels of reaching into the new and aching hollow of her sorrow to pull it out for him to see is too much. Especially with the way he'd looked at her just then before delivering his sanction, as if he'd thought he'd known everything already without asking--had heard it, perhaps, from Byerly and taken it as read--and had thought to catch her with it. And the thing in her with talons wants to sink them into him in equal measure. More, harder, so he will not think to do it again.

But she had just been thinking of Kitty. Of what Gwenaelle had said after she'd ripped her to shreds. And Colin has pulled back from it, now, rather than push the advantage he may have sought, or continued to hold the ground as challenge, and so he will be able to watch her fight herself down, piece by piece. The slow of her breath, the release of her muscles like a slow smooth wave from the top of her head to her feet: the minute places in her face, her neck, her shoulders, the lengthening of her back, the release of her fists at her sides. And Alexandrie covers her face with her freed hands and simply stands.

[keenly]

He stands up now and moves to embrace her again. She might have hurt him. He knows that. This isn't some blind belief that she will never fail him. It's faith that most of the time, she will do anything for him, as he would for her.

"Remember the story you told me," he whispers against her curling hair. "You're so much better than you think you are. I promise to keep seeing it when you don't."

[coquettish_trees]

Despite the gentle words Alexandrie shakes her head, not ready. Speaks into her hands.

"I need--" she starts, but doesn't know for a long moment what it is she needs. To be alone, perhaps, but more. She steps backward and looks about as if the room is strange to her, as if she is seeing it for the first time, and then moves to carefully gather a plush blanket laid neatly over the arm of one of the couches and slowly unfold it to pull around herself. Then, like a sleepwalker, she goes to the door of the balcony.

"I will be a while," she says quietly when she passes Colin. "Do not wait for me. We may talk another time."

There's the click of the door opening, the chill, the close, much as there had been when Colin had snuck across the room earlier on as she'd played, and Alexandrie goes out to sit and watch the moon peek through clouds at the sea.



But it's not too long after the smell of bread wafts through the apartments that she appears at the door to the kitchen, the wrapped blanket trailing behind her like a train.

"Will... you come and sit with me?" Although she directs the question to the patterned marble of the floor, it is meant for the man at the oven.

[keenly]

Colin is in the middle of taking the bread out of the oven, but he doesn't hesitate.

"Of course, carina. Just a second." The bread goes on a plate. He grabs a knife and a dish of butter and precariously balances them on his hands. He doesn't suppose she has eaten much today, so it would be nice to get something into her besides wine.

"Ready."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie looks at him, a sort of gentle guileless wonder spreading across her face. Childlike, with the blanket gathered and held around her shoulders with one hand.

"...As simple as that?" she asks quietly. She'd been expecting else, of course. To have to make apology, to win her way back to his graces. To find him as distant as she had made herself. To, still, be alone.

[keenly]

Colin shrugs, smiling back.

"I've had a bit of time to think. Let's sit and have bread while it's hot."

[coquettish_trees]

It's true, that she'd wanted to return outside. But in the warm kitchen now, still full of good smells and the bread fresh from the oven, she instead wants to do what she and Geneviève had done often when they were young; make a small place for themselves in the corner to watch the bustle of preparation for the household, to "sneak" pastries and fresh rolls from platters that had been placed conveniently close enough to them to enable them to do so as the staff wondered loudly what petites souris had gotten into the pantry and smiled behind their hands as the girls made little squeaks and smothered their giggles.

There is no bustle, or platters; no staff, no squeaking, no Geneviève. But there is fresh bread, and a dear friend, and soon a small blanket nest in the corner far enough away from the oven that the heat will be comfort rather than oppressive that she settles into, making room for Colin as well.

[keenly]

A grin spreads across Colin's face and he sits by her, folding his legs and letting her spread the blanket over him before setting the dishes down. He settles tightly against her and cuts into the bread. She gets the first slice, steaming enticingly, spread with butter that melts into the pores of it. He recalls this kind of huddle with Camilla. She was his sister, younger than Marina and Catherine but older than him and Daria. She was closer to him than any of the others, a rather loud, rather giggly girl who slacked on chores but was always aware of who was important. She could read Colin's moods with a glance. She wasn't dissimilar to Alexandrie, in fact.

He bites into his slice of bread, the crust crunching and flaking beautifully in his mouth.

[coquettish_trees]

There's nothing really like the goodness and simplicity of fresh baked bread so adorned. No herbs folded into the dough or butter, no cheese, only itself. She chews for a while, catching most of the crumbs with the hand she raises beneath her mouth to do so, and finally relaxes into Colin's side.

"What thoughts have you had?"

tw: abuse, suicidal ideation

[keenly]

Colin chews thoughtfully, swallows, and speaks.

"When Ser Lutair was...doing what he did to me. The strange thing is, for most of those months, I don't really remember feeling much of anything. Some days I thought, this isn't so bad. It's survivable. I just floated through my day and tried not to think. But at one point, I realized I wanted to die. I didn't want anything else; hadn't for some time. A sort of curious observation about myself. I didn't feel good or bad about it. Colin was dead. Why should I care what happens to him? I don't know if that makes sense.

"Then I realized, maybe one day, Colin will come back to life. I had to make it till then. So I stole Godwin's lyrium business and made the templars protect me from Lutair. And a little while later, I started feeling things again. I'd crawl into bed and cry for no reason. I broke things. It was like all those months of pain were catching up to me. I hadn't escaped them at all. They were determined to make me feel absolutely everything, now that it was safe to feel again."

He peers at her, looking to see if he can read on her face whether she identifies with this at all.

[coquettish_trees]

Oh, she does. Does identify. Does crawl into bed and weep over the smallest things, does break things, does find herself screaming into her hands to muffle it, into a pillow below to muffle her hands.

She nods slowly.

"I no longer wished to die a few months after Emile came," she pauses, considering the bread in her hands, "although I did again, for a time, after what I did to him." Byerly, of course. Alexandrie lifts her shoulders in a little shrug. "After that, I did not think that I should one day become anything other than the stone I made of myself. That I could." Loki had taken her by surprise as well and truly as he took his marks.

"When I did, I thought I should die of it."

[keenly]

"That whole life was your Lutair," Colin says softly. "It hurt you every day. And now, you're feeling all of it. But I want you to know it is safe for you to feel. It's horrible, and there's nothing that will make it easier when you're under the covers and can't stop crying, except that you're not alone. And that does make all the difference. If you push people away, you just make it worse."

Another thing he knows from personal experience.

[coquettish_trees]

"Ah, cher, it is not safe everywhere." She seeks out Colin's hand to wind her fingers through his. "Such safety is rarer than any jewel, especially for a woman as I am. This is why I reacted so violently to believing I had heard that the safest place I had," she squeezes his hand slightly, you, "might be taken from me. And that I should indeed be rendered alone."

[keenly]

"This isn't Orlais, carina. There are more safe people than you ever dreamed, in places you didn't imagine."

He smiles at her for a moment, then glances away.

"That's why I think you should talk to him. I think I was wrong, about letting him go. I think it's painful for you both because you want the same thing and have no idea how to go about it."

[coquettish_trees]

"I fear the neverending game of politics played by the highborn does not cease at the border of my homeland," Alexandrie replies with a touch of wry humor, "although I think it is not wrong to deem it least forgiving there. As long as I am who and what I am, there will be those who will think to gain height by stepping upon my weakness or misfortune. And they will do so. Even having fallen in estimation as I have through by choosing to place myself alongside a man not only mage but Tevene, I still hold influence. There is power I yet have that can be taken, and people who wish to, so it is not safe."

Finished with her slice, she picks the flaky crumbs of crust from her hand and eats them, and then, birdlike, hunts out a few in the blanket to eat as well. It gives her a moment to think before she says, quietly, "I do not think he will talk to me."