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[ 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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