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[rowancrowned]

 

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[elegiaque]

I keep saying so, and you keep parenting other people regardless, ( is a little bit dry, squeezing adalia's hand briefly before she lets it go. maker, there isn't enough wine in the world for this level of emotional honesty, but for someone she loves she'll white-knuckle her way through it.

she makes a better big sister than mother, which makes this all sort of curiously incestuous, but given that almost every division head is somehow connected by either family or fucking, that's not really new. she considers adalia, for a short time. )

Thranduil, ( with a vaguely affectionate sideways glance, ) is a secretive bastard with more ego than all of Tevinter combined. That doesn't change if you let him love you, you just get to occasionally tell him when he's wrong and that he's a prick.

( was that actually part of the deal. gwenaëlle is making it part of the deal, she thinks he needs to be told, occasionally. )

You're so quick to decide every single decision someone makes without you is a personal insult. That won't work. I don't think that even works with people who are more tolerable than we are. We all have to navigate.

[thunderproof]

❰ they aren't laughing. she'd expected derision, had her shoulders hiked up nearly around her ears ready to curl in on herself to avoid it, but... they don't sound like they think it's all that ridiculous. more difficult than she's expecting, and something she'd have to work at earning, maybe, but that's fine. it's better than nothing. the possibility is better than the nothing she's had for twenty years, and this time if she ruins anything she knows they want her to keep trying. she's a pain in the ass, but neither of them would be here, trying so damn hard if they didn't really truly want to be.

it takes a moment for adalia to speak again, this time fidgeting and tensing with the effort it takes to hold in all of her emotions. there are too many for her to even name them, but she thinks the most prominent might be relief. ❱

I'd probably be a bad child. I don't know how to do it right, I've never been very good at deferring to authority figures. I'm used to being alone and making decisions without trusting other people. And it's always a surprise when I remember I'm not the center of the Wheel.

❰ of the cases she could make for (informal) adoption, this is probably the worst. honesty, though. vulnerability. all those terrifying things that make adalia want to curl in on herself and never deal with people again. she looks up, finally, glancing between gwenaëlle and thranduil's shoulders — eye contact is still a struggle, but she's getting closer. ❱

But I'd try really hard. I want to be good.

❰ there was supposed to be more to that sentence, but adalia's throat closes up and her chest constricts and she has to take a deep breath and look back down at her plate again. gods, how could anything be worth this? it's humiliating, it's nauseating, she's supposed to be self-sufficient. she's an adult, by all measures of the word. making her neediness thranduil's problem in the middle of a war, in front of his wife, who very rightly doesn't want children and even if she did is only four years older than adalia —

the self-recriminations have to stop. this isn't helpful. adalia hitches in another breath, and then another, deeper one, tense as a bowstring. ❱

I want to be someone's. I'd do my best to earn it.

[rowancrowned]

We will manage, [ he says, careless. ] There is a place between your reluctance and my familiarity with the absolute, and Gwenaëlle will scold us when we misstep, and we will come to not depend on her for that, I think.

They ought to. [ gwenaëlle has better uses of her time than playing mediator between the two of them, as good as she is at translating thranduil to adalia and vice-versa. it’s why they fell into this, into a pattern and then companionship and then love—she knows what he means, even if he does not say it in a wholly familiar way. she knows the shape of how he conducts himself, and she adjusts; fits herself in the absences he has. ]

You are good. [ ‘the natural state of elves’ and so on, but beyond that. he doesn’t hesitate to continue. ] You are effort itself.

[ some people might call that stubborn, but. ]

It is not earned. You are not asking for a thing that might be discarded easily. You needn't fear a fit of ambivalence.

[elegiaque]

I already tell you both when you're being idiots, so no great change on my part—

( yes, it was probably the right call to start watering down her wine. she reins it in, a little; thranduil and adalia, given time, can speak each other's language in ways that gwenaëlle cannot master, for the latter. that she can't is half the problem, but the solution now seems obvious.

should, probably, have been as obvious as adalia always thought. what's done is done. )

The trouble with Thranduil isn't earning his affection, it's ridding yourself of it, ( dry. ) Believe me, I tried.

[thunderproof]

❰ adalia's chair makes a loud, discordant scraping sound as she stands up, abrupt. distantly, all the dramatics disgust her, but —

he made it sound so simple. like good isn't something she has to work at, exhaustively, forever, examining all of her actions and her thoughts to make sure she doesn't slip. like trying so hard all the time is a good thing, rather than the pathetically obvious desperation it's always felt like.

like his care could be something she gets to assume, rather than something she could lose at any moment because she's fifty different kinds of stupid problems all at once.

instinct says to hide herself and her stupid, annoying emotions away until she can get them under control. there's a war on, and demanding attention under these circumstances is a level of bullshit even she should be ashamed of. adalia even twitches toward the door, ready to fling herself past guilfoyle and out into the gallows to escape this whole situation — held in place purely by the obligation of thranduil and gwenaëlle's effort. they've tried so hard, and said all the right things, and if she leaves now and can't even tell them why it really will be her fault when she's alone. maybe it's been her fault all along. they want to be allowed to care, and adalia's so afraid of letting them that she's ready to flee the room and ruin everything, after they've given her exactly what she asked for, and for what? what about this is so terrible that she couldn't stay in her seat? ❱

I would like, ❰ quietly, around sniffles, ❱ a hug. Please.

❰ she's allowed to ask for a hug. no one's going to tell her she doesn't deserve one, or that she isn't cared for enough to get one, or laugh at her for needing it. the tension which had climbed up adalia's shoulders as she tried to stave off her emotions slowly begins to melt away, deliberately, like armor being shed. where gwenaëlle's moment of hesitation had been invisible, adalia's is blatantly obvious, her hand twitching abortively in gwenaëlle's direction twice before she can bring herself to lay it on the table, palm up, request as clear as she can make it with her verbal courage taken up already. gwenaëlle'd reached for her first, right, this is okay. this is another thing she's allowed to do. her shoulders tremble and she reaches up to push a tear away from her cheek with the heel of her palm, and with equal deliberation she takes a deep breath, forcing herself to finally meet thranduil's eyes. ❱

[rowancrowned]

[ that is all? legolas had been an easy child, perhaps sensing the depression and pain that had rolled off thranduil in waves at the death of his wife, but this is hardly 'ada may I have a knife please please please' of legolas' worst (sweetest) moments.

he sets his silverware neatly to the side, pushes his chair back to the table, and comes to adalia. she's smaller than he is (nearly all of them are) and so it's easy for him to embrace her- properly, she's an elf, the forehead-to-forehead touch, and then his hands on her shoulders, drawing up to his full height to pull her in and keep her there.

she isn't legolas. he doesn't expect squirming from her after being made to stand still for more than a count of seconds. nor is she gwen, to push for more, but those two are the extend of his experience of physical affection in the last months.

she's herself and her own. she can decide when she's had enough. ]

[thunderproof]

❰ it's not the kind of hug adalia is expecting, and at first she holds her breath, the tension she'd worked so hard to shed creeping back up her shoulders. it's an effort to force herself to relax again, to remind herself to breathe, and for a long moment adalia just stands there, stiff and unmoving, head barely even tilted up to reciprocate the affection. it takes deliberate, careful thought for her to reach up and put her hands on thranduil's shoulders, for her to raise her chin and press their foreheads together a little more firmly. their breaths mingle, and thranduil's skin is warm against adalia's own, and tears are leaking from behind her tightly shut eyelids but she can't care.

it only takes a second after that for her shoulders to start shaking and her breaths to heave through her. ❱

Please don't take this away from me. ❰ she hadn't meant to say anything, but the burning lump in her throat forces the words out. it feels like something she has to say, or she'll go crazy. ❱ I'll do anything, I'll be whatever you want, just please — please don't leave me alone again. Please.

❰ it's hard to keep herself upright. her grip on thranduil's shoulders is like a vice, her teeth grit against the sounds bubbling up inside her. she'll hate herself for this tomorrow, maybe, this manipulation, this greed — a world on fire and she concerns herself with trivialties like loneliness — but for now she can't help it. ❱

O'su. ❰ the word feels strange in her mouth, syllables she's learned but never had cause to use. ❱

not late

[rowancrowned]

Hush now, [ he soothes, careless, his hands as gentle stroking her back as hers are tight. he could not pull in a full breath without his ribs straining, but he does not need to. he looks at gwenaëlle, to confirm that he is doing it right, holding it even as he continues to stroke down adalia’s spine as he would with a fussing elfling, designed to ground and remind that all is well. ] I am least of all things flighty, Adalia. I will be here as long as you have need of me.

[ and she will hold him to it, for she has the age denied the people, and will have more. she is too young and too adrift, and he has nothing but stubbornness borne of age holding his bones weighty and fast. at least in that, they will mesh easily. ]

Adar, [ he corrects, and looks away from his wife, ] ‘father’ is adar in Sindarin, but you will need to teach me your mother-tongue as well, I think.