( 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

[wearyallalone]

"Did you?" It's a genuine question, an invitation to elaborate. It's not something he's come to expect, especially in this part of the world.

[elegiaque]

It is, in retrospect, sort of funny that the Templar she had an affair with was named Anders. Of all things. She hasn't thought of him more than in passing for years, but it isn't Coupe that comes to mind when she thinks of her early ideas of what Templars were, what they meant; Coupe, the reality. Anders—or Lecuyer, that was her name, wasn't it? The tall woman, like if Herian had been a Templar.

The fantasy. The fairy-tale of it, the story told to people who'd never hear differently from a mage, who had rather think that their uncle or brother was where he ought to be, and better off for it.

“Oh, like chevaliers if they weren't all cowards and murderers. More fool I.”

[wearyallalone]

"If it's any comfort," probably not, "I had much the same misconception." He might have left it there; it would have been easy to do, under the circumstances. But instead, he says, "I think it is worse, in some ways. How sincerely I believed we were doing good. But I can't change the past, so I try to think more about the present." The future was also treacherous. The present was complicated, but safer than either of the other options.

[elegiaque]

Worse, yes, to be so grievously wrong—

For just a moment, Gwenaëlle glances at Vanya with real annoyance. The purpose of this exercise was not to develop empathy for the man. She considers, only briefly, swinging sideways and knocking him out of his saddle for the unexpected thrill of it or just to cut him off at the knees before she starts doing something truly unhinged, like thinking of him as a person.

“How's that going for you.”

[wearyallalone]

Perhaps unexpectedly dry: "I'm still getting out of bed every morning."

It's a small flash of a side of him no one at Riftwatch has seen. But she's prodded a sore place, and instead of lashing out, he lets slip the quietly inoffensive stance he's been holding as if it's his job.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle breathes out through her nose so hard that in another life, that might have been recognizable as a laugh. What a prick.

She wonders if anyone misses him, somewhere. If there's someone who thinks about Templars as they age, and worries about him. Or if he's just what he seems: this self-contained stranger, quietly going about his business, trying to do the difficult thing without thinking too much about where it'll lead.

“You seem like you just would.” Keep going.

[wearyallalone]

"Ah, then it's working." The hint of a smile is mainly around his eyes. "I only tend to think, at present, there's a compelling reason to keep fighting. I felt like Riftwatch might ask fewer questions about how I go about it, than the Inquisition used to, and that might suit everyone better."

[elegiaque]

“You don't care to be questioned or they don't care to have you give answers?” —seems a natural inquiry, off that.

[wearyallalone]

"I suspected the Inquisition would not find my answers especially satisfying." So the second.

[elegiaque]

Well, I don't, either.

The point of asking isn't, really, to get answers. To solve anything, to gain information. It had been, when she started asking him questions, for the sake of diverting him from the unwise pursuit of whether or not she was alright; a punitive measure, not an inquisitive one. And now she's unsettled, and he's irritatingly steady,

and there's miles of road left to go.

“Any misconceptions about Riftwatch you've since cleared up, too?”

[wearyallalone]

He considers a real answer and a glib one, and lands somewhere in between with: "I expected a bit more organization, but on the other hand, given the resources available, we could be doing much worse."

Which is much franker than he's generally been, but it is what he actually thinks, for whatever that's worth. And for all it's frank, his tone is still even and relaxed. It gives the (possibly incorrect) impression he'd tell anyone who asked the same, it's only that she's the first to ask.