( open* ) for all i know, maybe everyone is screaming as they go through life,

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Baudin + &c
WHAT: A catch-all for pre-planned threads. * open for BUSINESS by ARRANGEMENT.
WHEN: September.
WHERE: Various.
NOTES: Content warnings TBA if necessary! Feel free to hit me up if you want to do something here; I am notoriously terrible at creating open posts but I'm always happy to brainstorm something bespoke.

starters in the comments.

Comments

[elegiaque]

Byerly is not the top of her list of people she anticipated taking haphazard advantage of the way she has more or less made Hofer's dressing room her own for the next week and change; neither is he bottom of it, and she isn't displeased to see him so she doesn't even object when one of the attendants provides him, further, with a glass of wine.

(That might be because of the ribbons, and not just because he was mistaken for her guest. Astarion didn't get complimentary wine when she didn't give the nod.)

She regards him in the mirror, standing on a small dais in the muslin toile of what looks like it's going to be a characteristically sleek piece, holding a swatch of velvet against herself. Apparently deciding that her frown is not doing enough work in the mirror, she turns:

“Why not?”

[bouchonne]

"There's going to be a shortage of Antivan damask in the next months," he replies, and nods to the attendant in thanks for the wine. (The attendant seems unsurprised by this news; he's clearly already passed this piece of intelligence along.) "It'll be hard to source the material for any alterations or repairs you might subsequently want to do to the gown."

The corner of his mouth turns up. "Unless you're keen on spiting someone by hurling the dress they paid for into the trash after a few uses. No judgment if you'd find some enjoyment in that."

[elegiaque]

“I'd judge someone for finding enjoyment in that,” she says, wrinkling her nose—not that it hadn't been tempting to take every dress she'd had made since she married Thranduil (the first time, in Nevarra) and burn it in a pyre in her Hightown home's courtyard. “What an appalling fucking waste.”

—had been why she didn't, although many of them now are set to be unpicked and repurposed. Both of her wedding dresses had joined that pile after Astarion's little bombshell, though neither yet have been cut into.

She raises up the two swatches, and then hands them off— “The velvet, then.”

At this rate, it's going to be a great deal of her wardrobe, but that's rather a return to form; already, much of what she's commissioning from Hofer looks more like the sleek, dark wardrobe she wore in Orlais and less like the softer things she's floated around the Gallows in.

[bouchonne]

"Not necessarily a waste," he says wryly. "I'd likely have starved a few times back in Val Royeaux if I hadn't had a few mercurial ladies who would only be seen in a gown a single time." In perfect, courtly, feminine Orlesian, he echoes those ladies: "Dispose of this, Rutyer, these pearls are so gauche."

Then, smiling like the desperation of those days was an amusing anecdote rather than something horrifying, he says, "The velvet will suit you well. It's a lovely color."

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle, not unexpectedly, doesn't smile back; can't, her honest response to it as ever the only thing that comes to the surface. It's an awful thing he's just said, an awful thing to have happened to someone she cares for—and certainly, if she didn't care for him, she could simply hold those women in casual contempt and move on with her life, but it holds somewhere behind her ribs, the image, the grotesquerie.

“That you benefited doesn't make them less disgusting,” she says, as if he hadn't said anything about the velvet, because of course it's going to suit her, she's stunning, it hardly needs addressing. “Maker,” turning back to the mirror, “no wonder you had such low standards my lord seemed like anything but what he was, if that was the quality of company you were forced to keep.”

Not my father. Almost never that.

“But Orlais's been at war for years now, so maybe some of them are dead.” This is intended as a comfort.

[bouchonne]

What a reaction. Byerly blinks, surprised by it and the vehemence. Is she truly so passionate about parsimony, that she would see those women as vile for their profligacy? It's an odd trait for someone like Gwenaelle - firmly opposed to carrying the qualities of a good wife and all that.

"I would be surprised and devastated to learn of it," he says. "They have country estates, for the most part, and wealth enough to hire mercenaries. And there was no malice in their hearts. I was pleased to keep their company."

No malice in their hearts, as there was no malice in her father's - But he knows better than to begin that argument again. Because that's almost certainly the root of it, isn't it? A distaste for nobility without restraint. Such behavior would certainly remind her of her father's.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle catches the surprise in the mirror, presses her lips together; a lack of surprise, on her part, just...a lingering disappointment. Byerly Rutyer seems to be excellent at seeing everyone except her—he always seems startled by things that seem so obviously bedrock to her, their friendship on such strange, fragile ground. He cares for her, she thinks, but it's hard to swallow the bitter feeling that it is because of her father.

It can't be because of her. He doesn't know her. She can almost feel the shape of the woman he thinks she is when they speak, and she doesn't recognize her, a stranger she's never met.

Maybe it's just who he'd prefer she be. Maybe it shouldn't matter if that's why—if he imagines a Gwenaëlle he likes better than the reality, and cares for her because he cared for her father, because at least he's here. If he doesn't care to know her better, he still has never spurned her. There are worse things than not being seen, and maybe if he saw her (the girl who has always cared for her things, who wished fiercely to be a good wife and has wallowed in the humiliation of her own failure, whose loyalty is absolute and whose lack of empathy for those she isn't loyal to brutally the same)—maybe then he would leave.

Maker knows he'd hardly be the first. She doesn't understand why he doesn't, not really—but she's never imagined that she really understands him.

“No one in Orlais has no malice in their hearts,” she says, instead, “except the young and the profoundly stupid, and the latter could do with clearing out, frankly.”

[bouchonne]

"I don't know," he says, stretching luxuriously. "I think there's something to be said for an entire nation of kindly idiots. Have you considered sweeping the old and clever, and leaving only the sweet ones behind? I'd like to live in a place like that."

He takes a sip of wine - and then makes a delighted little noise when the attendant brings out a little tray of chocolate bonbons. "Oh, have you had these? They have a little bit of crisp biscuit inside. Perfectly divine."

[elegiaque]

“That would rule out my grandfather,” she says, letting an attendant help her out of the toile. “And I don't have so much family left these days I'm parting with any of it easily.”

Especially not family that's made such a point of staying loyal to her. Her unanswered letters to Marcellin still prick her heart—

in any case, among the many things she is, what she is not is either modest or particularly fussy about nudity. It has never felt vulnerable to her to be undressed; she doesn't give him any warning, but it's clearly not intended to titillate, either. They're in a dressing room, she's trying things on, if he didn't want to see her naked he could leave.

The scars that are hinted at in her décolletage when she's dressed are far more severe, bare; the rage demon's claws dragged down her chest, winding around her hip and down the back of her thigh as she'd rolled out of its grasp. The deep bite of wyvern's teeth dragging her violently out of a tree ravaged the inside and back of her thigh, the leaving part of it to have healed misshapen, missing a chunk. Other, less savagely dramatic remnants of past battles and the leanness brought about by combat training have altered all that smooth unblemished softness on display in so many Bellerose nudes—the portrait of her hanging above Lexie's bed, a gift from a much-younger Gwenaëlle to Loki of Asgard, seems almost a different person entirely.

That painting's nearly ten years old, of course.

“Have them,” is a careless addition, taking over and knotting her own robe closed, “he's paying.”

[bouchonne]

"I couldn't possibly," he slurs around a mouthful of chocolate. More an attempt to make her laugh than any real greed - food is not his vice of choice. (Though they are good.)

He doesn't blush or protest at her nudity. He's not fussy either, nor modest. And, bless her, Gwenaelle is not a woman to stir his blood; even if it did not carry the faint edge of taboo, she herself is just so - raw, so unfiltered, that the very thought of any relationship beyond this careful one is nearly terrifying. And a body is a body; it's hard to feel any passion for one unattached to a bewitching mind.

"You've turned into quite the warrior queen," he says, swallowing down the bonbons. Then - "But very well; your cantankerous old grandfather can stay. The rest of them gone."