open | it's hot up here

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lexie, Colin, Leander, you
WHAT: Catch-all for Lexie including paint, rage, and a generally terrible day at the office made worse.
WHEN: Presently
WHERE: Hightown and the Gallows
NOTES: She may try to get into a fight with every single person here

I. Colin

There is an odd noise, from the studio. A dull repetitive thudding. It's broken every so often by silence, but it always resumes again.

Searching it out yields Alexandrie, kneeling on a raw unstretched canvas that would fit her body should she lie on it and stretch, pounding her paint-covered fist over and over onto it, her breathing labored as she fills the space fist by fist with something vast and dark. The pause comes when she reaches to cover her hand again with pigment.

There is a second pause, to reach for the bottle beside her.


II. Leander

There are rooftops now, of a sort, and buildings beneath them, rendering the vast darkness on her canvas a yet starless sky. She flinches sometimes, when some thought darkens her brow and her hand comes down a little harder, but she makes no attempt to lessen her own force. There is paint on her face, where she's scrubbed at the sweat born from exertion and relentless heat, and the curls that have loosened themselves at the sides of her face swing with her movement. Stick. Are dislodged again. Swing.

Alexandrie had instructed Marceau to not allow visitors, but Leander isn't a visitor. Leander is both her second in command and she'd long ago given him the run of the studio, and thus he was given no challenge at the door.


III. Jeshavis Office (Open)

There is, just before your entrance, a gasp and then a sharp oath. An odd one; the country of origin of the phrase is Antiva, but the words start in Tevene. It doesn't translate well.

Inside, the Lady Alexandrie persists in her dogged determination to look at least moderately finished. The result is a woman even paler than usual and quite obviously due to what one might argue is the over-application of cosmetics rather than the infinite care she takes to stay shielded from the sun. The amount of powder required to stop herself from melting is frankly absurd. Despite the care she's taken, and the unceasing movement of the fan wielded with as much ferocity as any weapon, the sweat is slowly beginning its march again on the sides of her face.

The source of the oath: the condensation from the glass on her desk, unchecked, has made it into the base of her stack of papers and has begun to lift the ink.

"Qu'Est-ce que c'est," she says, sharp and irritable. A pause. And then, without looking up from where she's trying to blot the water from the page, "What."


IV. Wildcard!

Comments

[keenly]

The bottle is quickly snatched up by Colin before Lexie can take it, and he sniffs to determine what it is. His nose wrinkles and, heedless of the mess, he kneels beside her and takes her other hand.

“Hello, Lexie. How much of this have you had to drink already?”

[coquettish_trees]

The hand, being her paintbrush at the moment, is snatched back jealously with perhaps more force than she'd intended to use, nearly overbalancing herself.

"What business of it is yours what I drink from my own cellars?"

All available evidence says 'plenty.'

[keenly]

“My business,” Colin says gently, setting the bottle out of reach, “is to make you feel better. And this clearly isn’t doing that.”

His gaze switches to the painting they’re kneeling on.

“Do you want to talk about him, or do you want me to paint with you?”

[coquettish_trees]

"Non." It leaps from her, sharp and hard. One answer for both. But she keeps talking.

"It is mine. This is mine. This is what is mine."

It's not anything yet, just a broad swath of curl after curl of dark blue-black beaten into canvas.

"What is it to me that he lied. I lied. We are people who lie."

Colin hadn't rubbed all the paint from her hand when he'd taken it. She spreads her right hand on the canvas as a brace. Leaves another mark.

"And I am happy."

[keenly]

Smeared with paint as he is, he decides these will be his painting-clothes and settles down where he is, leaning to touch his head to hers.

“But?”

The news is, of course, astonishing. Colin’s still only eighty percent sure it’s actually happening, Byerly Rutyer suddenly marrying a younger woman. But his surprise isn’t for now. It’s Lexie’s emotions that need processing.

iii.

[justashotaway]

It takes more than that to put Laura off. She's a small, dark shape in the doorway, watching the woman rearranging the papers on her desk; if being snapped at has any effect on her, it doesn't show in her face or stance.

"Je viens de la part de nos associés mutuels," she answers. Her Orlesian's solid, though there's still some Nevarra in the way she forms the vowels.

[coquettish_trees]

She's still for a moment, and then slaps the unused glass that had been set out with the wine she'd asked for, sending the crystal skittering and spinning across the floor as she surges unsteadily to her feet to give vent to her anger.

"How dare he do this to me. How dare he force me to find out with everyone else. Like everyone else."

She hadn't told Byerly, when she and Loki had made such promises. But she had thought him unaffected, then. She had not yet gone to confess herself, nor left again, nor made attempt at reconciliation. They had not been, hesitantly, uneasily, something approaching... friends.

He had said, then, that his other love affair commanded all his loyalty. Had meant, she'd thought, that the crown of Ferelden did not—could not—share. She had thought she could make herself happy with that. And then this.

"I had thought..." She's quiet now, mostly breath, settling again to her knees. "But I was wrong. And a fool."

[keenly]

Colin reaches again for her hand with a sympathetic look. He doesn’t like seeing her like this, but now isn’t the time to talk her down. She needs to get everything out first. She’s possessive, he knows that, and Byerly is a complicated issue for her. He can’t go into this guessing how she feels.

“You had thought what?”

[coquettish_trees]

"That somehow I..."

It's unforgivable. Plaintive, childish, forced through a throat too tight to allow for it.

"Meant something. Despite everything. Even if it was not... I thought at least I held a place set apart. As he—" her hand rises, trembling, to cover the faltering sound, eyes full of the wound of suddenly, unexpectedly finding oneself alone. "As he does in me."

[keenly]

Colin wraps his arm around her—the one with the hand not covered in paint.

“He’ll always love you,” he says more out of comfort than from any certainty about Byerly. “And you’ll always love him. But these conversations aren’t held easily. I don’t think it happened out of any lack of meaning, just...a desire to not have an awkward conversation. It’s still wrong, but it may be a more forgivable sin than the other. He didn’t go to you, not because you weren’t special to him, but because you were.”

And, if Colin is right, the man didn’t want to discuss his shotgun wedding with anyone who might beat on him for getting a younger woman pregnant.

[coquettish_trees]

But rather than being comforted, Alexandrie pulls away as if burned.

"Do not make such conjecture," she warns. "There is nothing kind in that reassurance, and it will little serve me to lie about in rose petals and believe it so."

[keenly]

“Lexie,” Colin sighs. She’ll always take more comfort in the worst-case scenario simply because she can believe in it more. “I’m not trying to coddle you, I’m offering what I genuinely think is the most logical explanation. And it’s not exactly rose petals. It still leaves you miserable for the next few days. It still leaves him owing you a massive explanation. And I never said I was certain.”

[sarcophage]

Not a visitor, not a resident—familiar all the same, and happy to remain unclassified. Rather than becoming more unruly over time, as others might have done knowing they'd be allowed to get away with it, Leander has taken to treating the staff with greater respect, especially since the respite. On this day, in this stormy occasion, he thanks patient Marceau with a passing nod—

—and soon slips into the studio, in his quiet way, and closes the door, cushioning its rest with both hands.

There he stands for a time, not in hesitance, but mindfulness. Bearing witness to her expression. Breathing the energy of the room. Only when the ripple of his arrival has settled does he leave his place by the door, and come nearer to her, softly.

jeshavis

[wythersake]

"Congratulations," He repeats, fishing out handkerchief in offer. "I heard there were assassins."

He'd thought about attending the wedding. It would have been a better show of gratitude, perhaps. Feels vindicated now to have let it pass.

iii.

[cozen]

"I thought we should talk," Bastien answers in Orlesian.

The reasons have nothing to do with impending nuptials. More to do with the previous ones, the surge of assassins, the things they may have noticed about one another in the meantime. He had thought it not quite so important that it couldn't wait a while. Now, hovering in the doorway, he thinks perhaps it could wait longer.

Which is what he says, more or less, in his slightly-more-fluent Trade: "It is not important."

[coquettish_trees]

But she's been drinking, been embodying the tight terrible feeling of beating her fists against unyielding memory, and she clutches her hurt to her chest as if it is priceless to her, ready to hiss and snap and bristle at anyone who tries to take it.

But it is Colin, and so she settles.

"Let me be, cher. I do not wish explanations. I wish to be angry with him." She looks down at the canvas. At her hands, the dark mess of them. "Save this, and one time other," The steps, the bottle. She'd thrown her first punch then. "I have only ever sorrowed. I have only ever been angry with myself for what it is I wrought.

"Now he has hurt me and my anger, for a time, may burn clean."

[keenly]

Colin’s eyes widen briefly at her frankness, very nearly Fereldan in its honesty. So often he is left to guess what she needs, but now, she is telling him. And he thinks about it for a minute. She’s not a violent woman, but she might get a little more satisfaction out of this little art project if her fists had more to connect with than the floor.

“Just a minute,” he says, carefully getting to his feet and wiping them before leaving the room. When he comes back, it’s with a large flour sack the staff uses to store a lot of smaller sacks in. There being a relatively low rate of reuse for sacks in this house, it’s quite full. Colin holds it up.

“Maybe having something to punch? We could pin the canvas on. You could even pretend it’s him.”

iii.

[hornswoggle]

In the doorway, John holds up a hand.

"Sorry," is the first thing out of his mouth, though he isn't entirely sure he's interrupting something. "I came to ask a favor."

Which he's thinking better of now that he's considered her tone. The heat is making life unbearable for a lot of people. It's forcibly reminding John of the doldrums, the long, agonizing spell the Walrus had spent becalmed, and dwelling on that for too long is unsettling. (It becomes more and more relevant to the present situation, mired in a completely different landscape without a means of forward movement.) He takes a single step forward, positioning himself decidedly inside the office but no farther.

Poised to beat a hasty retreat if this goes poorly, as it were.

[coquettish_trees]

The combination of having her own language returned to her, the audible possibility that it had been learned as a second language, perhaps a third, the words themselves—especially in light of her recent unexpected wedding guests—makes Alexandrie looks up sharply from her task. Her head tilts slightly: the graceful dip of a lady’s curious acknowledgement accompanied by more than a sliver of hawk.

“To whom do I owe the pleasure of our meeting?” This, in careful Nevarran.

[coquettish_trees]

If she notices, she gives no sign of it. Alexandrie works on the rooftops, adding fists of lighter hue where the light of the curled slam of the moon would frost them. Everything is separate and crude this close, the lights and darks unblended by anything but the eye. It requires distance to be anything like lovely. Here next to the canvas it is anger. Sorrow. Futility.

It is perhaps most evident because that is what the artist herself looks like, beating her hand against the covered unyielding floor with a set jaw and a storm in the sky of her eyes.

[justashotaway]

"Byerly Rutyer," she says, turning over the way the woman asks the question. Orlesian vowels, Orlesian Rs, but the grammar is not wrong. This is a thing the woman's studied.

Laura doesn't volunteer anything else for the moment, standing there at the threshold of the small room with her arms at her sides, one hand curled up in the cheap black fabric of her tunic. She feels like one more shadow in the candlelight, nothing like the sweet-smelling woman trying to pretend she doesn't sweat.

[coquettish_trees]

The offer is readily taken.

“The two of us together engaged in an entirely unsympathetic activity did indeed inspire a few men and women to reach into their purses for purposes other than supplementing my dowry,” Alexandrie replies dryly, continuing to dab at the papers. “Our fond hope is that other intrepid hopefuls shall also hear there were assassins.” Emphasis on were. “And that, combined with the passing of the most dramatic opportunity to lodge mortal complaint, shall prove preventative of further such attentions.” She sounds unconvinced. (When she looks up, she looks unconvinced.)

“Have we business? Or is this a social call, fulfilled by my pleased acceptance of your sincere well-wishing and your fortuitous acquisition of an original work by a now rather controversial artist.”

Alexandrie holds the now damp and “artistically inked” handkerchief up daintily to return it.

[wythersake]

"Do you know what they call uncontroversial artists?" He folds it carefully, two hands; it doesn't return to the same pocket. "Painters."

Of houses, barns, souvenir plates — the implication.

"I'll not keep you long." The way he folds into another chair would suggest otherwise. "How is your family?"

That's a little too pointed to be a social call.

[coquettish_trees]

Byerly Rutyer. Of course Byerly Rutyer. Of course he sends someone to come and say his name to her now, a droll little tap on the hilt of the knife buried in her. Alexandrie’s eyes darken, nostrils flaring ever so slightly as she breathes in.

But this girl, her dark seriousness, the slight nervous energy betrayed by the hand curled in her tunic... she reminds Alexandrie enough of Kitty to lower her hackles. A young woman whom circumstance has already made wary. Touched by the necessities of survival, likely by violence. The war. So Alexandrie is more gentle—for Kitty’s sake—when she asks “And what is it that Byerly Rutyer recommends me to you for?”

[coquettish_trees]

“It is,” she replies, summoning a small smile for an old friend. “You demure because I am cross.” A pause, and then continues with the sort of wry self-awareness she would never have allowed herself in those days. “Which has ever been clever.”

Alexandrie gestures to the chair across from her desk, folding into the gesture the flicker of fingers, the bend of wrist that Emile had taught her to make when she needed clarification or further information before making any more moves.

?

And she watches.