faderift | OTA | And She Was

WHO: Alexandrie, et al
WHAT: Slice of life and catch-up catch-all!
WHEN: Mostly now~
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Adding as I go! ♥

The Lady Alexandrie's return to Kirkwall society is not so much a splash as a gentle slip into the water; for a long while, she was gone. Then, of a sudden, she isn't. She resumes her patterns with little fuss: goes to the theatre, frequents the Hightown market, can be found again in good weather wherever there is a good vantage point to paint the sea, the gloves she wears to shield her fingers from the cold doing little to hinder her practiced brushstrokes.

She does not come yet to the Gallows, but does go often to the docks, and anyone wearing Riftwatch colours may well find themselves the object of the lady's benign scrutiny. Perhaps she's vaguely recognizable from someone's reminiscence. Perhaps she's just another member of the Orlesian gentry being a bit nosy. Either way, she is here.

[ Here and happy to wildcard too; send ideas~ ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Protest flickers to life in Alexandrie's eyes because she doesn't, she doesn't know what it's like here. It feels irrevocably shifted, and she cannot tell exactly how. All she knows that she feels like a visitor, a stranger, even as the articulation of why continues to elude. But there is rarely space for the depths of her frustrations between them, unless it is something that they both hold, aimed at a target they both have chosen. Aimless, it makes him close, or turn, or harden.

She knows she is little better with his own; if she cannot see what his displeasure is bent upon, she assumes it is on her. And so Alexandrie closes her eyes for a moment, and tries to be even too. ]

Val Fontaine is... It is the same, and it is changed. So is Kirkwall. So are you. So am I.

I cannot tell how I have changed, since I have been myself each day. You may well be a better judge than I, but—

[ Her brow furrows slightly, as she searches for words to offer. ]

I have been humbled somewhat, perhaps, by the work. By the work of my people. And I became... lonely.

[ The last is softer; gently bruised, like the petals of an over-handled flower. ]

As part of Riftwatch, I had peers. True ones, not simply others of the same rank. At Val Fontaine...

[ She spreads her hands slowly, palms turning up to show the emptiness they hold: nothing. The curve of her lips is gentle, muted, a vague sorrow mixed with acceptance. ]

Only letters. So much happened to you, and so little to me, that I began to feel as if Kirkwall lived a week for each of my days. That the true distance between myself and all that I loved here was not something I could take a ship across, and that it was widening all the time, and yet every day I woke and chose blood and land and duty over the fervent desires of my own heart.

[ Wryly: ] There is a seeming change, non?

I would think that choosing land and duty would be choosing the desires of your heart. Isn’t it?

[ Byerly might be half-Orlesian, but in his way, he is still all Fereldan. There’s no irony or even self-awareness in that question. Even though he himself has lived through the exact same struggle - even though he has recently chosen the desires of his heart over duty. Even though he has resigned from his position to live in this happy, cluttered little townhouse in Lowtown.

But regardless - ]

And I can’t imagine that it was a simple life. The administration of an estate is a complicated thing.

[ But that’s not what she’s talking about, is it? Her speech is not about whether or not the work was easy. It’s about the strife and turmoil. The work might have been complicated, but it’s true that it’s not work that sparks great change in a person. Not the way that dying, and then returning to life, does. Not the way that war does.

And so he runs his fingertips through his hair and says: ]

That is the life you’ll live, in time, isn’t it? After the war?

[ Whereas he, Byerly, will live a life rather closer to this. Adventure and chaos. This reconnection, her returned to the war, may be a brief interruption in which they are re-aligned with one another, rather than a return to normalcy.

That thought brings him a bit of strange grief. And so he says, lightly, trying to reclaim some bit of humor - ]

Assuming we don’t all die, of course.

[ There is tension around her eyes, in the thinning of her lips, as he says it. After the war. It is a grief for her too. ]

I did not think— I never thought—

[ Of anything. Nothing past art and music and love and marriage. And then after Rolant, she had not thought of anything but vengeance. Then everything was love again. And after she had broken it, the bitter stretch of thinking only of clawing for enough power that she could never be hurt by anyone ever again. And then the sky broke and they were at war. But none of that litany comes out, only a soft ]

I am the fifth daughter. Val Fontaine should never be mine.

[ Her hands twist in her lap as her mind follows the thread of what "should" be, then. If it wasn't Val Fontaine, it would have been her husband's estate, and she might have wanted it together with him, but now she is a widow, and the thought of what had been the last year— her, alone— stretching off into the distance of the future makes her shudder. It had not been bad, but it she not been... her. Not the her she had come to know whilst serving with Riftwatch. ]

I do not want it. Not as things are. I want... the war will end, and Matthias will come home, and I will...

[ Will what? Alexandrie looks pale, at a loss. ]

I cannot tell. I only know that the parts of me that have come to life here will slowly fall away there, and I am not ready to let them go.

OTA | And She Was

no subject

no subject

no subject