rowancrowned | fade rift ✧ inbox

( continued from here. )

Well, it's worth considering—

[ softly: ] Speak with me. Stay, here, where I can hear you though I cannot hold you.

...I've no where pressing to be.

( She dislikes this separation. And all the others. )

Tell me a story, [ he begs. ]

There was a little girl,

( after a long pause, )

who was terribly afraid of storms. Lightning lit up the rooms of her familiar home into something alien and strange, and the crack of thunder seemed to reverberate through her small body and leave her trembling; even the hint of a storm, a servant's speculative seems like storm-weather, might set her to shaking like a little leaf. Every time, she would resolve to herself that she would be very brave, and every time, she would be sent scurrying through the halls to her father—she would hide herself beneath his blankets, make him a mountain to shield her from it. Oftentimes, the mountain kept sleeping; it seemed he could sleep through anything, and she would think to herself that if Papa can sleep, then surely, the storm is not so bad?

But then the thunder would roll through the house, and she was never convinced.

One night, when the rain pounded so hard against the windows she thought that they might break, and the roar of the thunder seemed to chase her through the halls, she found him awake, lit by a candle, and for a moment the lightning cut through and he seemed alien and out of place, too, but then it was only warm firelight, and all was well.

He asked, are you afraid? And she nodded, and he drew her up into the circle of his arms, and she was a little less. He said, but you have nothing to be afraid of. Do you know what's in the sky? And she shook her head, and he touched her cheeks very fondly. My love, he said, in the sky there is a girl just like you. Do you know how it is, when you are very sad and afraid? And she nodded, again, and he said: when your heart is too full of sadness, when it is all anger and confusion, you too know a storm. She means you no harm, sweet girl, she doesn't see how frightening her pain; she doesn't know yet that the storm will break.

And then he said: but you know it, don't you? Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, the sun will come out from behind the clouds, and all is well.

And she thought about what he said, and they went to sleep.

The next time a storm came, she wasn't afraid. She didn't run. She pressed her hands to the window, and then her face, and she told the girl in the sky: you don't need to be afraid, all will be well. I have heard you, she said, and I promise it's so. And then she went to bed, and in the morning, the sun came out from behind a cloud, and all was well.

I am afraid, [ he admits. ] And I do not want to be alone. I am not nearly as brave as she was.

[ he is cycling through to the mania. he recalls, however faintly, speaking to myrobalan and babbling, hissing through explanation and some dark secrets--

-- though not the most important.

he had summoned lucidity to strongarm anders, but it is failing him now. ]

The moral of the story,

( in the voice of someone who doesn't want to say my father told me )

is that in the midst of the storm it's all you can see, and it's all right if you aren't brave. Someone will be brave for you, and eventually, the sun comes out.

Do you think it contagious?

It doesn't seem likely.

Come to me. Please.

( Gwenaëlle doesn't need telling twice, nor does she bother answering—she finds her fur shawl, rolls her stockings up her knees and finds her shoes, briefly entertains disturbing Hardie and Leviathan and ultimately leaves them nestled nearby the heat of the brazier, quickening her pace as she approaches his rooms.

No one stops her; she'd been ready with an excuse about visiting Coupe, whose key she still has, just in case.

Only slightly cautiously, given that she has seen Coupe recently and has some idea of what she might expect, she tries the door, and then: )

Here I am.

[ a hand closes around her wrist and pulls her inside his office before the door is closed and locked, silently. the hallway is deserted anyway. he wraps her in an embrace immediately, her head tucked against his shoulder, against the damask and fur of his sleeping robe.

this is what confinement to his rooms has wrought—scattered (but undamaged) books, papers with scrawled tengwar, a small fire behind a grate. and him, unglamoured, no explanation offered for the ruin of his flesh, for the hair bound back and away from his face in a severe braid and bun.

in truth, he had hardly considered her reaction to it, so great had been his need to see her again. ]

Gwenaëlle. [ it is all he need say. ]

( The split-second glimpse of it is still jarring, but less than it might have been when for days she's worried over he hadn't looked under his skin, hadn't changed his skin—she had wondered, and now she thinks she sees the answer. How easy it had been for him to appear so differently; it must have been like breathing.

Because he has always done it. She's seen this, she thinks, but then, Coupe has such a particular fucking gift for being at exactly the wrong place at the wrong bloody time. She'd been annoyed they hadn't all been rounded up by healers days ago, but perhaps it was for the best, after all— )

There, ( she says, quietly, into his shoulder. ) Here I am, now.

[ as he has always done, he finds a way to lift her into his arms, carried over the threshold from his office to his private room like the bride she will always be to him, then set down on his bed. he slides on after her, and there is nothing insistent at her thigh other than the lump of the sending crystal tangled under the sheets like a bothersome pea. he holds her, only, there and substantial and real. ]

You mustn’t let them take me—this is a private thing, Gwenaëlle, and I think them less likely to trust me if it comes to light. [ he babbles—if someone like him can ever babble, a flow of words into her hair. he speaks, though, like there will still be an after (casimir, with the letter) and that is something. he has stared re-embodiment in the face in arda, heard mandos’ offer, but this is different. he cannot leave her behind. ]

You understand, [ he says. ] They cannot know.

( she draws back far enough to meet his eyes—which is no easy thing when he's trying to bury his face in her hair, but by the time she does it she's already braced herself again and she doesn't flinch, looks at him no differently than she ever has. with mild exasperation, because he is the most impossible man in the world, whatever his face is doing at any given time, )

No, ( she promises, ) you'll stay here.

( how it would make him untrustworthy, she isn't sure—but this really doesn't seem like the time to drown him in details or argue the point, especially when the position 'obviously you must expose your vulnerabilities to other people' is not one she's of a mind to take on any day. it doesn't matter right now. soothing him matters right now, even if there's something

she can't quite put her finger on the unease, which at least reassures her it isn't his face. an odd feeling she loses her grip on; it can wait. )

It's no one's business.

( oh, except fucking coupe's—now is also not the time for that. )

Galadriel? [ he asks, and he fusses, never quite perfectly still with how he strokes her hair, shifts in the bed. he was atrocious to her when they were still attempting to sleep together, it is no wonder she was so wretchedly tired. at least she has been sleeping now. he pulls back to look at her, to cup her face in his hands and look at her, steady and unblinking. ]

And Cassandra least of all, [ he continues. ] If she was here perhaps this would be in better hands, there is none besides Beleth to hold us together. Poor child, but admirable.

[ he leans forward to kiss her forehead, and is pleased to note it cool to the touch. she must be well. she must remain healthy. they will have so little time together. ]

And you?

She's doing her best, ( gwenaëlle says, distracted and damning beleth with faint praise—her dissatisfaction with the manner in which this has all been handled is not hard to guess, but she isn't of a mind to linger on it when she's with him, when the thing in which she's no faith is their ability to keep him alive. he's older than orlais, how on earth is she supposed to be prepared to outlive him? she isn't. they absolutely have to get their shit together, because she pragmatically prepares for the alternative with everyone else but she cannot comprehend—

she trusts him no less looking upon the truth of him, but it lays starkly bare how far from untouchable he is, after all. )

So am I, ( a little more wryly, quiet. her best doesn't feel like anything near enough. ) Not that there's much I can do about anything, wrangle our new Tevene friends a little—

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