faderift | closed | why you gotta be so rude

Entry tags:

closed | why you gotta be so rude

WHO: Lexie, Gwenaëlle, Byerly, Merrill, Wysteria, Leander, you maybe
WHAT: A collection of prompts!
WHEN: Right now!
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Hit me up on discord (shae#7274) or

shaestorms if you want to do a thing. :)

Gwen

[ their friendship a well worn glove at this point, Alexandrie has little compunction about sweeping unannounced save for her footfall into the chamber that Gwenaëlle and Thranduil share. The latter is keeping office hours, and she cares little about the state of readiness of the former, only that she is in residence.

So, sweep she does, and continues her curving trajectory until she is near enough the bed to fall gracefully upon it and stare upwards. ]

Ah, Gigi, [ she intones dramatically, ] I am a fallen woman.

Byerly

[ Time passes, and true to her word each Thursday finds Alexandrie at the same table, at the same cafe, at the same time, the same chair sitting empty across from her. One week she reads. One she embroiders. Another she spends watching the bright birds of spring return to the still barren trees. Always, she looks like a seawife standing on an outlook who watches for sails out of habit rather than hope.

This week, it is finally warm and clear enough that they have set tables outside and they have quickly filled. Alexandrie sits at one, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders to stave off the still persistent chill of the breeze, a bit of finework in her lap. She is partway through a stitch when the sound of the chair pulling out comes, and she begins to speak before looking. ]

I am afraid I still require that, I am waiting for--

[ Stitch pulled taut, her gaze finally swings upwards, and her smile is like the dawn; small, and furtive, and spreading with the promise of brightness. Softly: ]

I did not think you would come.

Merrill and Wysteria

It came by courier, in both cases an enterprising looking urchin who stood a little straighter for the fun of being on a posh errand. A little rectangle of very nice paper with a little watercolored rose in the corner for the purpose of informing the recipients (one Mademoiselle Merrill and one Miss Wysteria Poppell) in very lovely handwriting that their presence was requested for tea the next Saturday at one o'clock at the residence of their mutual friend (one Lady Alexandrie de la Fontaine). They should feel free to wear whatever they liked best (with a note appended to Merrill's that if what she liked best was to poke about in the hostess's closet she was welcome to come early), and to let her know directly if they should be available to attend. (A true répondez, s'il vous plait.)

And lo and behold, all is made ready at the appointed time: a complete tea service, down to the matching porcelain cups and saucers, cloth napkins folded carefully to the swans of the de la Fontaine crest, and a little wheeled cart topped with shining engraved tiered silver platters of little finger sandwiches of varying types, another smaller tower with a selection of several tiny pastries and cakes, and several exquisitely carved boxes of tea from which to choose. One butler, for the purposes of greeting, one butler's son for the purposes of coats, one maid for the purposes of serving, and one hostess, who looks particularly pleased with everything in its entirety including an extra bit of pleased to see you.

"Ah, but it has been so very long since I have had a proper afternoon tea," Alexandrie sighs happily, sweeping into one of the three chairs placed equidistant around the circular table set in the middle of the room which, naturally, is precisely the correct size for a genteel afternoon with your girlfriends.

Colin

She's been going out on Thursdays. Always leaving at the same time, always returning at the same time, always gently insisting on going alone without even Marie to attend her, and always with the air of someone going out to look again for something lost long after the search has been called off. She returns the same: empty handed, expecting to remain so. But it is a gentle thing. There are no tears, no sobs muffled in her pillow on the rare occasion that she spends the night at the apartments.

One day, though, a small smile. And for Colin, as she passes the door to his room, seemingly apropos of nothing,

"You may meet here again, if you like."

Lea

At 5 o'clock on the dot, there are pastries. They can be smelled from the entryway, as if the apartments themselves were an Orlesian patisserie. Let no-one ever say that Alexandrie de la Fontaine doesn't keep her word.

Upon his arrival, there is a cheerful call from the sitting room.

"Has he both arms and legs, Marceau? Do not let him in unless he can properly account for all four, I shall have no oathbreakers in my home."

(Let no-one ever say that Alexandrie de la Fontaine doesn't insist on parity.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Are you?

( gwenaëlle tilts a glance down the end of her nose, her reading glasses perched there quite charmingly, sat atop the covers and working with her lap-desk. she sets it aside, although she doesn't take the glasses off— )

Honestly, I thought that part would take longer. You're catching up to me very quick.

I have ever been a swift student.

[ Alexandrie throws an arm over her eyes and heaves an immense and heartwrenching sigh, pauses for effect, then rolls over onto her stomach, kicks her feet up behind her girlishly—an amusing look, given that it causes her petticoats to settle in a thick poof of fine fabric over her back—and laces her hands to perch her chin on them.

While she looks terribly nonchalant, and she's smiling prettily, there's somewhat in her eyes that betrays an honest hurt. ]

I have received word from Papa that the Game sweeps forward without me. Those who had most to gain from my losses have kept firm tabs on me and waited, and the company I have chosen to keep [ an elfblooded false heiress her closest confidante? A famously murderous Tevene mage her devoted lover? A common mage living as a peer in her home? ] has proven more than adequate fuel to significantly damage my influence.

Tch. [ She examines her nails. ] I am quite sure the vast swath of the court Loki fucked his way through have all decided to pretend they were above such a thing. [ A wryly amused smile. ] Which they may well have been.

( ah, her company—yes, gwenaëlle can more than draw her own conclusions. that, she supposes, is the difference in swiftness: the company that she kept, in that first year, had flirted with influence that she might yet have learned to wield. that she did, on occasion, albeit more as bludgeon than scalpel. she had cosied up to power, initially.

as has alexandrie. in a different way. )

You know Orlais.

( sex is not the same as association. these orlesian girls with their dreadful ideas—that they learned somewhere, from someone. that did not happen spontaneously in their empty, curly little heads. she pokes lexie with her toes— )

It's not "without you" if you don't lie down and die, it's just you're standing in a different place. With different leverage. That's the trick no one wants you to notice.

[ Alexandrie sighs as if she had been filled with air, and the poke of Gwen's toes released it. ]

I still have a hand I might play, yes. It is simply that I mislike having my keep taken. I built it rather carefully, after all, and still had use for it.

[ Especially now, when the Sunburst Throne waits for its eminent new occupant, and the court overflows with information and gossip like honey from the comb. ]

I find it very hard to believe you didn't know what you were doing in giving it up.

( the life alexandrie's living and the life she left behind were never going to peacefully coexist; it has seemed clear, from this near distance, which she'd decided to prioritise.

she supposes it doesn't mean not grieving the loss, but it seems a little too cute by half to suggest it was taken from her. )

Edited 2019-03-17 23:14 (UTC)

Oui, oui, on ne peut pas avoir le drap et l'argent, [ it's a recitative singsong that ends in a terribly arch look. ] But I hardly believe you could say you have never tried to.

[ Of course she can't have everything. The stiff social structure of home hardly allowed for the actual utilization of the Inquisition's flexibility. Alexandrie had gambled on growth and by-and-large had found it. That it was perhaps more personal and martial than social would have irked her when she moved to Kirkwall, but she is happy now, and for the first time since her childhood, she feels whole.

Even so... ]

I do not like losing things, Gigi.

[ She doesn't like losing anything. ]

( it would, equally, be entirely too cute by half to suggest that gwenaëlle hadn't been vexed and grieved when the decision that she'd made was taken out of her hands entirely, reframed—she had never intended to go back to orlais, to take up the position she had been bred for, but to be told she could not...

she had already decided. and yet. she knows. )

Well, and look how that turned out for me.

( treading the path first, and all that. object lesson front and center—

but here she is, in comfort, in a marriage of her own choosing, with elbow-room to grow that halamshiral would never have offered her. yes: just look how that turned out. )

You didn't lose. You're playing a different game. Which, I grant you, doesn't make it feel any better that my brother ( sorry, her what, ) no longer replies to my letters, but—

[ Alexandrie's legs stop bobbing back and forth as she processes this new piece of information. ]

Due to your mother, or your husband?

I can't guess.

( then, )

It's well-known that my lord was rather more at ease with the Viscomtesse Roux than the Viscomte.

( and it had never been of any real interest that the rouxs' only son and heir shared so many traits with gwenaëlle, as after all, he was so much the son of his mother—who, it must be said, was not unlike annegret charnier vauquelin, or indeed, guenievre baudin. the familial connections were unremarkable; comte vauquelin had been close in his youth to lady roux's brothers, remained friendly with the family, raised his children alongside theirs.

emeric always had a type.

gwenaëlle shrugs. )

[ So it goes. ]

Were you close?

[ It's hard to contemplate the sudden cessation of correspondence with family, especially considering how faithful hers has been. She can't imagine Gwenaëlle is less given to writing letters than she is; such a silence would be deafening. ]

( she laughs— )

I thought that we were.

( but when indeed has family ever been so simple as one thing or the other? she takes her spectacles off, waving it away with them, sitting back against the pile of pillows she's pushed behind herself. (on thranduil's side of the bed, obviously—she always prefers to take up his space, when he isn't in it.)

a nudge, )

He's a shit, anyway, if I must make a trade. ( wow, gwenaëlle.

she misses him terribly, but how does that serve her? )

And so is Orlais. You never know; play the long game. You might well see them come crawling to you, one day.

Ah, yes, when I come over the hills in the vanguard of a Black Exalted March.

[ Just kidding, probably. She certainly wouldn't be in the vanguard. ]

Do not blame Orlais. It is hardly the fault of the lavender that we insist on being so fucking dreadful to each other.

[ This is why Alexandrie only paints landscapes.

She wriggles her way up to take Gwenaëlle's side of the bed, propping herself against the side of the pillow pile. ]

Tell me something good that has come of it all.

Tell me how you met your husband.

It's a short story, ( with a startled laugh, albeit one that comes quieter and less unkindly than the previous. it isn't a difficult one to remember; some of what they said to one another that day stayed with her, stays with her still. lingers, in the edges of how they handle one another.

made to kneel. kitty, distraught. yes: it echoes. )

It was at Skyhold. Early days; sending rifters out of Skyhold's supervision to live still unthinkable. I had arrived only recently, I think—I don't remember whether I met Thranduil or Morrigan first.

( both of them around the same time, and both of them proving significant to her in ways she'd never have predicted. )

He was on the battlements. I didn't go there to see him, I just went there and he was also, and I decided not to leave. I disliked—he was very handsome, obviously. We spoke before we introduced ourselves, and I remember I didn't give him my hand, so he waited like some kind of awful opportunist until I had it out of my muff to tuck my hair and swiped it, kissed my knuckles. His hair touched my hand and that was the only time I touched his hair until Kirkwall.

We weren't kind to each other.

( it's a verbal shrug. )

He speculated if perhaps elves here are so much slighter than he is from centuries of having been made to kneel, and I thought of my mother. He interested me, and I didn't care for it.

[ "He interested me, and I didn't care for it." She laughs, agrees. ]

Truly an irritation, to find oneself obliged to think on someone.

To kindness, well. Would you have come to love anything without edges?

We weren't meant to love each other, ( ruminatively, reflective. ) It isn't as if we met and then everything was starry and we were pining for one another, I was still sleeping with Asher when we first knew each other. And I nearly married a Marcher lord, although Thranduil and I differ on exactly how close to 'nearly' that was, he likes to talk about my 'previous engagement' and there was never a formal betrothal contract.

( which is nitpicky semantics on her part; she expected to marry alexander, was all but planning the wedding. thranduil has the right of it, but gwenaëlle prefers her revisionist history where she was less of a fool. )

[ 'never a formal betrothal contract' had been the other half of the letter, and Alexandrie tenses slightly and then releases with a soft sigh and leans a bit more fully against the pillows.

lightly, then, although there's a perceptible edge of ruefulness to it: ]

Circumstances place me on the side of your lord husband in that, I think.

If it was less starry skies and sweeping longing and more the slow growth of vines, what was the moment you became first aware?

( gwenaëlle makes a small sound of indeterminate sentiment, but she can guess the source of that edge and opts not to pursue the same argument to a new and more sensitive audience. thranduil has her wedded and bedded and can view her past liaisons with tolerance; alexandrie's current affair remains fraught. )

I don't know that it was a moment, ( tapping her spectacles against her thigh. )

We stopped-

I stopped. I stopped speaking to him after my mother died. Everyone on that journey heard me cry out for her, except him. He had fallen, he was unconscious, and...I was so angry with him for things not his fault. For being an elf. For being a foreign elf who was so embraced by them while I couldn't mourn the woman who bore me. For not hearing, so I had to decide not to speak. For being kind to me.

He persisted, as he's wont to. I avoided him. I was unkind and rude and Coupe,

( who is a sore point now still from the way her knuckles tighten, )

frightened me one day. And I didn't think, I went to him. I was afraid and I went where I felt safe.

He didn't touch me for months. I didn't admit I wanted him to. But that, I suppose. I needed him and he didn't send me away, in spite of everything.

And then starry skies and sweeping longing? Or have the two of you always been wedded for fifty years.

[ Alexandrie herself enjoys the prolonged state of the former she has been floating in (with one interruptive month of barren skies and sweeping grief) since her furious and accusatory admission of her feelings in Minrathous, but she can recognize the value of the quiet solidity Gwenaëlle and Thranduil seem to share.

Especially, she thinks, for Gwenaëlle. ]

( gwenaëlle pulls a face— )

I don't long for things sweepingly.

( come now; she's a poet. she feels everything sweepingly, and yet. it just doesn't fit any part of their history, even at its most intense—

and they are that. eventually, )

Elves of his sort, from where he comes from—they love once. It's one of the ways we realised that rifters are...that they aren't exactly as they were before. The Thranduil who never left his wood loved only his wife; Thranduil brought to Thedas had room for me. They marry privately. ( a beat. ) It's sex. The wedding is sex.

He had to figure out what it meant that he could even—if it meant something untoward about him. Because by everything that he knew, he shouldn't have even been able to want me. Nevermind act on it. But it wasn't as if—

I just didn't think about it. And then when it was on the table, he was living in my house to protect me and it was easy. We waited, we married in Nevarra, but I think there was always less question that it was going to happen than we pretended. It's not as if I wasn't sitting in his lap or—my lady's maid at the time caught us in the library with his head under my skirt, which unfortunately rather killed the fucking mood. I don't know. I didn't have time to moon about, I really thought he'd come to his senses. I had to enjoy it while I had it because I didn't think he'd marry me at all. And then he did.

( a little shrug. )

[ That first statement is met with a slow sly look over Alexandrie's shoulder that says 'bullshit' better than the word itself could, but the rest?

The rest. They love once, like swans. Or once, at least, in a world. It's living poetry; its own kind of sweeping, stretched out like a long wave to match the immortal lives that it's said elves in Thedas once had. That perhaps elves wherever Thranduil comes from still have. ]

Immediacy whilst too-conscious of an ever imminent end is beautiful too.

[ Poets, painters, they know.

laughing: ] Did you dismiss her on the spot? I certainly should have.

[ She certainly wouldn't have. ]

Yva? Maker, no. I told her I didn't wish to be bothered unless someone was fucking dying.

( and even then, it might well depend upon who. )

No. I arranged for one of my cousins to take her on, eventually. She only got the position in the first place for lack of options, she was never going to get another like it after—everything, without intervention.

( after gwenaëlle's extremely public disgrace, yva inexperienced as a lady's maid and her only reference a scandal. )

[ A thinning of her lips. ]

I have thought of writing to ask Papa to request the Renauds return home, should things become more fraught.

[ Although Marceau and his family have served hers for generations, there's no need for them to be associated with the De La Fontaine's blackening sheep of a daughter.

This is hardly distraction, though. ]

Did his head under your skirts count as an engagement, then?

( a quick laugh— )

He didn't get nearly high enough for that before we were interrupted.

( she toys a little with her spectacles, sighing. )

I've had poor luck with lady's maids, truthfully. When my lord died at Ghislain, I inherited his man, and Thranduil knows his way around a corset; I doubt I'll ever replace Yva. Maker only knows what our life will look like after Kirkwall, besides.

I am not much more successful.

[ She shrugs lightly. ]

Marie is serviceable, as is Fifi when I prevail upon Thor to let me borrow her for preparations for larger occasions, but I have not truly attempted to replace Emile.

[ Emile had been confidante, tutor, co-conspirator, and a lady's maid of surpassing quality. With their separation and her time spent mulling over the past brought on by Byerly's unforeseen return to her life, Alexandrie had slowly come to the realization that the woman had truly been more Bardmistress than friend, and had far deeper motivation in entering her service than kindness and the hope to have in Lexie the daughter she had lost, but even so she occupied a place in Lexie's life that could be taken by no other, no matter how well they dressed her hair. ]

Have you given it much thought? Your life after Kirkwall?

Edited 2019-04-08 18:37 (UTC)

Well, I expect it won't involve a lady's maid, ( a little wry, ) but I haven't relied on one enough to call it a position that needs filling in years.

( and that, casually said, was true before the inquisition; it is not among the new lessons she learned, just a facet of her previous isolation. the only lady's maid she shared intimacies with was the one she was sleeping with, and to say that had ended badly—

it always would have. she shrugs, )

It's going to depend on a great deal that happens before.

closed | why you gotta be so rude

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