faderift | open | busy busy busy

Entry tags:

open | busy busy busy

WHO: Alexandrie, Benedict, Byerly, Gwenaëlle, yooou?
WHAT: lady about town
WHEN: wibbly wobbly mod plot
WHERE: Gallows, mostly
NOTES: will style match prose/brackets, lmk if you want a specific starter and one day it might appear

Alexandrie has not been this mobile— nor this tired— in a long time. In between stints sitting in the Diplomacy office taking minor meetings that don't require the Ambassador's attention and composing and compiling vast numbers of notes, missives, letters, she is delivering them by hand any time she can’t find someone else and make it their problem so she can take a moment to sit somewhere outside. Over the last days, since Byerly had taken over Yseult’s work as well, the white bell-shape with the red hair has become a fairly ubiquitous presence circulating around on the Gallows island, and one might run into her just about anywhere… and almost anywhen, as candles burn late into the night.

( Specific starters slowly appearing below~! )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With a cigarette hanging precariously from his pursed lips, Benedict sits with his back to Alexandrie, his desk piled high with all the things one might expect a diplomat's assistant to field, and then some.

Wordlessly, he flips through a few of them, produces one, and hands it backwards to Alexandrie without missing a beat.

She takes it with the same rhythm, an easy reach that speaks to how their days have settled in, and sets it between the two pages she'd mentioned to see if everything lines up now.

"Bordel de merde. There is another one." At least. "Do you have it?" Unspoken: Or am I going to have to get up and go looking.

This time he actually pauses, searching through his awareness of every piece of correspondence on the desk. He checks in one pile, then another, then angles his head back to sigh, "try the cabinets."

Getting up will require the movement of her chair, which will require the movement of the meticulously stacked piles of papers and reference books beside her chair; truly this is a cursed endeavour.

Her nostrils flare in a put-upon sigh and even with her eyes fluttering closed Benedict will be able to tell she has cast them to the sky in a perfunctory useless plea for divine intercession in the matter of the Teyrn. One last check of her own desk, and then she gives up and moves the stacks that block her so that she can lever herself up and move to the set of cabinets.

While searching: "Do you think anyone would notice if I forged the missing page? I cannot remember there being anything of the slightest use to us on it save the single sentence where he mentioned being willing to speak to a representative if we were to send one." Which, of course, is the only part of the entire letter she needs.

"I'd bet money on it," comes the tired reply, but there's a modicum of sympathy in the glance Benedict sends her. Nobody has time for this shit, and yet,

"what goes up must come down, and all that." He flips the page he's on. "People have a way of discovering precisely the thing you don't want them to."

Alexandrie's low disgruntled hum is one of both agreement and irritation. For a while the only sounds are the shifting of pages, the increasingly emphatic opening and shutting of drawers, and a lengthy monologue soft enough (and Orlesian enough) that the words are inaudible. (And also unnecessary, the shifts in tonality are every bit as evocative as words by themselves.)

Then, suddenly, silence. A slower movement of paper. One might be forgiven for thinking she'd found what she was looking for, save that the next thing out of her mouth is

"What is so objectionable about fine hats?"

Too absorbed in what he's doing to pay attention to whether or not Lexie has found the document, so all he does is grunt around his cigarette in response to a question that otherwise doesn't make sense.

"Mm?"

"Why are you not to talk about hats," she repeats, perfunctorily, as she continues to scan down the page. Notes a significant trend. Adds: "With Byerly."

It takes him a moment. Then, with a sudden jolt as though poked by a pin, Benedict whirls around to try and snatch the list from her.

"It's--," he snaps, immediately realizing he doesn't have an answer that isn't insane, "--for the best."

By the time that moment is complete and the paper is whipped out of her hands she's gotten to most of it— or at least her eyes had found their way to the part most relevant to her.

"I am on there three times?" She sounds oddly pleased about it.

The walls are crumbling and Benedict is inside the house to catch them. He sinks down in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Look," he says with a wince, "you probably know better than anyone how he can be. Especially if he thinks he's right."

She supposes she has her own list, in a way. Not of things they cannot speak of, but things she feels she must be careful in discussing.

"He is how he was shaped by life, as are we all." Until we trust ourselves enough to take up the paintbrush.

She does not think Byerly trusts himself. This seems like a sitting conversation, and so she pulls her chair over beside Benedict's and sits.

"And you have been shaped such that you should rather make a map that allows you to avoid difficult conversations than risk what might come from having them?" It's not asked unkindly; quite the opposite.

He doesn't want to look at her, now that she's closing in, even if part of him recognizes the gentleness of the motion. He folds his arms, tipping one hand up to rub at his temple; Maker, how long have they been at it? Twelve, thirteen hours?

"I don't like feeling stupid," he mutters wearily, ironically for lack of any more delicate way of putting it, both in explanation and rebuke; Alexandrie has made him feel stupid, may even be doing so now, and Byerly does it all the time by virtue of being Byerly. Why wouldn't a self-uncertain soul go out of his way to avoid it?

"Mm."

A hum of simple acknowledgement. It's fair enough; Byerly is often quick and cutting when engaged upon sensitive subjects. Silence for a while. Then—

"Three times?"

She's not letting this one go.

"Three times," Benedict grumbles in affirmation. If she wants to hear it that badly, fine.

"I can't keep track of when you're together or not. I've stopped trying."

"We are..." Alexandrie pauses, sighs, and looks at her hands. "Complicated. I am sorry you find yourself caught up in it." Although really, no-one who is obliged to be close to either of them can escape the collateral damage.

"Perhaps it is insensitive to your distress to be somewhat reassured, but—" another pause, and softer when she begins to speak again. "I have often thought it was only I who became monstrous during the intervals when Byerly and I are fighting."

"Well." He rolls his eyes, looking back to his work, "rest easy." It is insensitive, and though he's glad she acknowledges that, it doesn't make it less of a factor.

She watches him turn back to the desk and thins her lips. Looks at her own desk, the last inch of her current candle sending flickering light over the papers there, and can't bear to do the same. And so—

"He is unused to people who truly care for his opinion of them, I think."

"He shouldn't be," Benedict grouses, but then he stops himself, heaving a little sigh and looking back at Lexie. There's no reason to be rude to her, not while they're working together in close quarters, and she's clearly trying.

"It's just. A lot." He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, trying not to sound as self-conscious as he feels. "It's not enough to chase me away. But I don't think I can withstand both of you at once."

Alexandrie doesn't, on the whole, consider what it might be like to have to interact with her whilst she and Byerly are fighting in the moments right before they begin fighting. At the moment she's undecided on whether or not she should be obliged to, but at the very least she can see that taking steps to separate the mood it puts her into from her other interactions as much as possible would be something of value.

"I shall... attempt to keep my personal difficulties from becoming yours, then."

A pause, and then Benedict looks over at her again, his gaze quiet and searching. He's had little reason to trust her, in the past, but then he hasn't given much reason for her to trust him in kind.

"...appreciate it," he says softly. It's something like a peace offering, and he's not going to kick it away.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

open | busy busy busy

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject