faderift | i try my best to become poetry. i take a bath and stain the water with black ink.

(He's probably dead, Emeric had said, angrily, sweeping aside a handful of letters that were not from his brother - Gwenaëlle had lowered herself so slowly and carefully to pick them up, taken them away, read them. Penned thoughtful responses. Said nothing, waiting for him to sign his name to them, unsure what to do with his grief or the quieter echo of it in her own heart.)

"No," she says, stirring herself from the memory with a short, sharp shake of her head.

Then, more measured, caught out, "We haven't heard anything."

He could be alive, she thinks. She'd wanted to say so, Papa, he could be alive, but she doesn't know and he doesn't know and she never met her uncle, anyway. She never knew him, really, outside of the occasional letter and her father's stories about fishing a curious boy out of all sorts of trouble, which she hadn't believed. Her fingers twist in the edge of her shawl and she comes, uninvited, to sit by Adelaide.

He traveled, she doesn't say, because Adelaide probably knows more about the workings of her uncle's life than she does. She has probably had all of those thoughts, about what might or might not have happened to him, and doesn't need to rake back through them when Gwenaëlle can't offer anything new except the slight awkwardness with which she handles these sorts of things. He might be alive.

Maybe she'll meet him. One day.

(He is probably dead.)

He could be fine. As inoffensive and resourceful a man as he'd been- he could be alive. Laying low throughout the war, continuing his research, quiet and out of sight, out of mind of those that knew him.

Or he might have died that first night on a Templar's blade, froze to death before he ever made it to Androal's Reach. Too many possibilities, not enough of them positive. As she has for every other friend, mentor, or peer- Adelaide sets the memory and emotion aside. Dwelling does them no good. She'd never given her word on anything to him other than to do well, to continue her research-

To be the best possible mage she might have been.

But beholden to his memory if not the man himself, beholden to her brother's affection...she will mind this girl as best as she's able. Adelaide takes a slow breath and smooths out her expression, offering a hand. That is what is done. One offers a hand, offers kind words, assists with uncertainty. "A friend of my brother's is a reasonably fond associate of mine."

She knows nothing of the girl, to promise anything more? Would be foolish. "What might I do for you?"

"I suppose I don't know."

Her laugh is brief and brittle - wondering, a little. At how she ended up here, at all of this - the silences at home, the anger, the fear. All of these little people pinning all their hopes on this Inquisition, and now she's here, and she didn't. She didn't want to come here. Their supposed Herald is dead, what are they going to do now? The hand she puts in Adelaide's aches with the anchor-shard embedded in it and she withdraws it only a moment later, tucking it back in the folds of her skirts for warmth. Or - something.

She doesn't know what happens next. Probably if she were willing to actually join this stupid Inquisition, they'd just give her a job, and then she wouldn't have to think about it for herself - well, she isn't going to do that.

This seems like the worst place to be, if what her father intended was to keep her safe.

She looks down at her hands in her lap, her odd, humourless smile lingering. "I don't know." How absurd. "I suppose Gregoire didn't know, either."

She'd have preferred his company, if she had to have any, since it'd apparently be as useful.

The ache is a dull twinge that pricks at Compassion's awareness and in turn, Adelaide's. By now it is familiar enough to warrant a furrowing of her brow- but why else would a young noblewoman be sent to the Inquisition? Not without having something to offer or having a problem that might need their minding.

For a moment she's silent- few are comfortable with an acute awareness of physical discomforts and no matter how often she writes her brother- it isn't enough to assume he's sent along more than 'older sister' and 'mage'.

She leaves it be fore the moment.

"At the very least, I am a healer. If you are injured or unable to sleep, I can mend your wounds or brew a something to help you find rest. If you find yourself troubled by other members of the inquisition in a way you are unable to handle on your own I can intercede on your behalf or glare pointedly in their direction until they assume some manner of curse will be thrown their way. I am never certain what people assume of mages in their fear." She shrugs. "Having someone here can make adjusting simpler. Perhaps that was his intent."

Even with the anchor-shard, she'd not come empty-handed; Emeric sensibly thinking ahead and covering all of his bases to ensure the Inquisition did not immediately turn the little strumpet away. None of her problems are their concern, besides this, and she would quite like to continue being a person whose problems do not merit the notice of the Inquisition, such as it is - but now that she's here, it's probably only a matter of time.

She's obviously arrived at a fantastic time, judging by the air. Comments she might've made to someone else about assumptions about mages are kept to herself, because - Adelaide is a mage, she doesn't know her, and she's the only person so far who might be anything like 'on Gwenaëlle's side'. She twists her hands in the fabric of her skirts and wishes she were better at this.

"It - I appreciate it."

She does. Sort of. She wishes she didn't have to. She wants to go home so badly - she hates it here and it's been less than forty-eight hours. She doesn't want to have to call on Adelaide; she doesn't want to adjust.

--but she's here. And better here with someone to run to than here all alone.

"Gregoire spoke highly of you." She reserves judgment on his judgment, but she supposes she might like to know it, if her brother were going about talking as if he admired her. (Admittedly, so that she could pin him down and find out what he wanted.)

"Considering we have never met, I am surprised by that." But they've written and that must count for something. It probably counts for more, him being an author. There's this moment of visceral disconnect- all she has in common with this woman is a man she's never met but is bound to by blood and name, someone she has never truly known or spoken to- likewise Gwen did not know much of her uncle whereas Adelaide studied with him, under him, learned and grew to care for. Whether this is fate's way of balancing the injustices of association or not-

A terribly abstract and poetic thought. She truly must be tired.

"Your Uncle spoke of you with great fondness." It feels appropriate in turn, to offer that. As if it'd ever been in question. "...Is he well? Gregoire."

Not for the first time, she wonders what passed between her father and his brother in all of their letters; if Gervais had ever chafed in the Circle, what Emeric had told him of his own life. She is certain that he had never committed to paper what he had done, that Gervais had never known her as anything other than what the rest of Orlais does. She wonders what he would have made of it. If he might have preferred Marcellin -

Nonsense. No one prefers Marcellin except his mother. He's her brother and she prefers Gregoire, who is Adelaide's, and who she should think of because it's him they speak of.

"Well as any of us." A bit better than she is, she doesn't say, what with not having a shard embedded in any part of his anatomy and having not been shipped off to the back end of Ferelden like some unwanted cargo. Of course, he is all set to be married to that girl whose name she occasionally remembers and she is not unappreciative of the reprieve from all of that nonsense that this nonsense has granted her - she wouldn't trade places with him at the altar if she were promised the crown of the Orlesian empire for doing it.

A poor example from a girl who'd never take it under any other circumstances, either, but the point remains.

"He seems happy enough with his lot," after a moment. "Solange, that is."

"He has written of her and seems well pleased." She does not know her brother so well as this girl and whatever part of her might hold any resentment for that fact died ages ago when she settled into life at the Circle, content with her lot in life. Her lot has changed- Gregoire's? Has not. Perhaps Solange suits him well. Perhaps it is an ill fated match that he does not know the right of just yet. He did so like to romanticize things in his letters.

"And were I to ask you for your honest opinion of her?" A beat. "Your true, honest opinion. Not a diplomatic one."

"I would be forced to admit that I've not paid her enough mind to give one," Gwenaëlle says, at length, having considered and discarded her usual (and true enough) responses on the topic of Gregoire's intended bride as likely to disappoint Adelaide in their neutrality. It isn't as though she owes her any honesty, she thinks, it's only that if she's been asked for as much and she gives it, she isn't going to have it be thought a lie. Especially when, under the circumstances of not owing a damn thing, it would be unlikely to be discussed and more likely to be an assumption that forms Adelaide's opinion of her.

And if she's going to be thought rude, it's going to be for something she did on purpose and it's not going to be because she finds Solange as compelling as watching paint dry.

Hm. Maybe that's an opinion. She tests the theory a moment later, and it sounds like she's testing it out as she says,

"I don't find her terribly compelling," and it is still on the polite side of the various ways that sentence could have come out of her mouth. "She seems pleasant enough. She'll fulfill her purpose, certainly."

A diplomatic but otherwise noncommittal response that speaks more to personal apathy than any real political intent. Adelaide takes the sentiment in for a moment, eyes flicking for signs of a lie (as though she were schooled well enough to spot them) and none the less finds that this is not only sincere, it is something more akin to a friend that does not quite disapprove, but certainly does not approve on the whole.

Personal instead of political.

An actual friend her brother has, rather than yet another player of The Game. Whatever knot in Adelaide's chest that lingered from that first note? Eases somewhat. This she can and does find agreeable. "I suppose there are worse endorsements."

A wry lilt to her own voice; a half curved smile as though she knows enough of her own blood to judge whether someone is suitable or not.

"I count myself very lucky she's so unobjectionable," is the very arch response a moment or so later, Gwenaëlle's lips quirking into a smile that favours not only her father (the incorrigible flirt) but her uncle as well (more charming than he ever notices himself being). "Imagine the gossip if I took her in too particular dislike. Imagine Gregoire inevitably dramatizing the rumours and casting himself as the most irresistible thing in Orlais."

As dearly as she loves her friend, she absolutely does not trust him to have the restraint not to seize on the dramatic potential in a love triangle of that nature, and she would be morally obligated to hold him down and choke him with his own manuscript.

"He's too tall to push into the mud now, I'd have to do something drastic."

Like forcefeed him his own manuscript.

"He would." She knows this even from the letters- Gregoire's flair for the dramatic, his romanticizing every little thing either for fun or for literary fodder. She'd thought perhaps it was reading too deeply into those notes- but if Gwen's expression is anything to go by, the twist to her voice? It is more than a little true, more than a little exasperating.

Ignoring the faint twist in her chest at an echo of something familiar (hadn't she loathed comparisons to her sisters, her family?), Adelaide snorts a laugh at the image of this girl, younger, and her brother pushing one another thusly. Mother would have had a fit.

She must disapprove terribly.

All the better. "I shudder to think what that might be."

"I'd simply have to make him eat his words," she says, serenely.

(It sounds figurative, when she says it like that. Gregoire, probably, would know better than to think she didn't mean to kneel on his chest and force his mouth open with her pristinely manicured fingers.)

And then a shrug, elegant, smiling-- "If he harbors doubts he hasn't shared them with me, and I can't think where else he'd confide first. I suppose she might be pleased I'm gone." But what Gregoire's intended bride prefers, as a rule, interests her very little so long as Solange doesn't intervene in their friendship. If she fancies that a wife might do so more effectively than a fiancee, well, she'll burn that bridge when they come to it.

"Marianne had mentioned some surprise that you and he were not paired off some time ago." She hadn't known who Gwen was beyond 'a close confidant of your younger brother' as her sister so delicately put it. But LeBlancs knew better to mistake friendship for compatibility and eligibility- but it spoke to how close the two were if even her older sister assumed they'd be matched.

Perhaps her father hadn't approved.

Perhaps mother wanted someone a little less artistic.

Or the answer might be as simple as the expression Gwenaëlle's face twists into when Adelaide mentions it, nose wrinkling in the midst of a grimace that has her quite literally recoiling from the mere suggestion of marriage to Gregoire and all that might conceivably (as it were) entail. It isn't the first time someone's suggested as much to her, and like as not Gregoire himself has heard it as often - she feels no compunction to protect his feelings by disguising her apparently quite visceral response. If he wanted a friend who'd protect his feelings in such things, he wouldn't have picked one who keeps an itemized list of his shortcomings to go over when he's irritating or she's bored.

"I can't imagine why," she says, "as she must expect him to have an heir of his own. Gregoire values his hands attached to his body too much to ever put them on me. He'd soon find himself dictating those appalling novels he writes if he ever tried it."

i try my best to become poetry. i take a bath and stain the water with black ink.

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