His expression is more imploring than anything else, even as his eyes fill with their own tears, as those tears spill unbidden. His hand leaves her face to clasp gently at her neck. Something intended to reassure in the press of his fingers, where he cannot feel even the fine flutter of her breath, much less her pulse.
"Gwenaëlle," he says. "Gigi."
The unfocused glass of her eye. No reassurances forthcoming.
A tremor in the ground, distant. Swallowing around a sound, Florent holds her closer, a huddled embrace where he can hide his face beneath her shoulder, and watch the world go by through the barest slitted opening of his eyes. Another thunder of galloping, near enough that he can feel the gust of the motion.
And on. After a while, he can tell that her wounds are no longer bleeding. He breathes shallowly. He will tell her later, or remind her, about how his very first role was Cowering Elf who had to stay dead on stage until the end of the second act, and that it was very funny how on the third night he had collapsed incorrectly and it was an extremely undignified position to maintain, and then—
It is later.
The smoke is clearing. Florent has pushed Gwenaëlle's corpse aside from him, and he sits there, staring at her, his hair plastered to his face where her blood had gotten and his expression expressing very little. After a while, he pushes her onto her back so that the ugly wounding is hidden. Fixes her braid, the tilt of her eyepatch.
Sits still once more. Waits for something else awful to happen, or better.
no subject
His expression is more imploring than anything else, even as his eyes fill with their own tears, as those tears spill unbidden. His hand leaves her face to clasp gently at her neck. Something intended to reassure in the press of his fingers, where he cannot feel even the fine flutter of her breath, much less her pulse.
"Gwenaëlle," he says. "Gigi."
The unfocused glass of her eye. No reassurances forthcoming.
A tremor in the ground, distant. Swallowing around a sound, Florent holds her closer, a huddled embrace where he can hide his face beneath her shoulder, and watch the world go by through the barest slitted opening of his eyes. Another thunder of galloping, near enough that he can feel the gust of the motion.
And on. After a while, he can tell that her wounds are no longer bleeding. He breathes shallowly. He will tell her later, or remind her, about how his very first role was Cowering Elf who had to stay dead on stage until the end of the second act, and that it was very funny how on the third night he had collapsed incorrectly and it was an extremely undignified position to maintain, and then—
It is later.
The smoke is clearing. Florent has pushed Gwenaëlle's corpse aside from him, and he sits there, staring at her, his hair plastered to his face where her blood had gotten and his expression expressing very little. After a while, he pushes her onto her back so that the ugly wounding is hidden. Fixes her braid, the tilt of her eyepatch.
Sits still once more. Waits for something else awful to happen, or better.