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( after—

well, a few conversations. eventually, she decides: stop being a coward. she compromises with herself: a crystal message, and then he can decide how they have the conversation, and then she still agonises a while over how to start. audibly, in fact: )

Mss— your m— ( nope, stupid, didn't call him that the first time, don't even know if it's what people called him in mirkwood, don't make this weird, and so with more assurance and a breath first: ) Thranduil.

This is — ( the degree of formality he had set: ) Captain Baudin. I'd like to speak privately with you. This way, or — I have an office in the central tower.

( not exactly neutral territory. more neutral than the houseboat. )

Or somewhere you prefer.

[ warmly, clearly amused: ] Captain Baudin, am I in trouble?

[ he sobers up, slides back to a more polite tone. ] In person, if you would like us to speak. I will come to you. Give me some grace, I may need time to find it.

[ he's there in perhaps a quarter of an hour. not the speed someone could make it at a run, if they knew where it was, but someone at a leisurely walk, who guessed correctly. he has a linen shirt, tucked into suede trousers, and some very nice rings on his fingers. he has boots that fit, thank you anonymous benefactor. he knocks, because he is polite, and then he steps inside, at ease- visibly projecting being at ease. ]

I am reporting for my scolding.

( gwenaëlle rises when he arrives— her office has the freshness of a new appointment, and the woman in it, not an immediately obvious fit for her title. petite, long-haired, a sleekness to the cut of a summer-weight burgundy dress that still seems unlikely to be what she wears to guard duty. she regards him with one amber eye and one, though without scarring, blank gold, false and blind, and thinks,

they had seen each other after they separated. unavoidably. this isn't the first time she's seen him since they'd fought, and it isn't— it's something, to see him in person, without the weight of the history she's about to saddle him with. a pang of nostalgia, maybe. it feels, for a moment, like they're friends again.

conscious that she's about to puncture that, probably, she steps out from behind her desk and offers him to one of the seats between hers and the vice admiral's (the office clearly meant to be shared; equally obvious, it is not). )

You aren't in trouble, ( she says, mustering a smile that makes it look more, not less, like she's trying to be very brave about something. ) I would be, if I — neglected this. For too long.

( ordering her thoughts, then, her hands in her lap. )

The history that you have in Thedas is ... very known. You were something of a public figure, for Riftwatch. So there are people in Kirkwall, within our walls and without, who— I don't want you to feel, later, that you were left ignorant to be made a fool of. By people who expect you to know things you don't.

( maker, just fucking do it, you idiot— )

I think you deserve a clean beginning. But you should know that we were married.

[ thranduil takes a seat, and looks up at her.

he listens, legs crossed, calm, confident- projecting all of the steady and sure that comes with a throne and these cheekbones. he watches her chew through everything, the voice in the back of his mind wondering what possibly could justify this agonizing, making her wilt so. legolas? something with legolas-- a public figure, but then any and all woolgathering shuts down when she says it.

amusement, first, expecting a joke, he starts to smile, to quip back, but it falls away into a blankness, as he wonders what expression his face needs to make. maybe she can see his eyes working through the information she's given him, the fact that she speaks sindarin, fluently.

he stands. or rather, he is sitting, and then he is standing, elven-quick, but the reach for her is hesitant, and he cuts it off, and his hands are at his side. he starts to speak, stops, looks at the floor. then he sits back down on the chair again, rather decidedly. closes his eyes, for a moment. prioritizes. ]

Are there children?

( oh, she feels that like a body blow. doesn't sit, but grasps the edge of her desk and leans against it, exhaling— )

No, ( she says, quietly. a part of her had been relieved, realising how unready she still feels to untangle how complicated that is, that they had never reconciled so she could never disappoint him with what has slowly become her unwillingness to do that.

it doesn't not hurt. she doesn't not feel that twinge of guilt and fear, that she isn't off the hook and she will disappoint him. but it must be a relief, she supposes, that this is not that kind of complicated, now. ) No. The war, and. I thought they'd be elfblooded but human, like me, and you thought they would be like your half-elven, and we never found out who was right.

( they would have been pretty, she thinks. they would have had pretty children. morgaine, for her favourite. she wrenches herself on course: )

Our, um. I wasn't good at being a wife. And we were separated, before you were gone from Thedas. But I don't want to—

( relitigate. batter him with the worst of it. hold on, bitter— )

You and I were friends, ( at length, ) before we were lovers. And I don't want you to be embarrassed or taken off-guard by someone knowing you for Thranduil Baudin. You're a strategic man, elf, I thought it'd—

I didn't want for you to be wrongfooted. I thought, better to hear it from me.

[ he sees her grab and sits further back, playing at domesticated, wanting, desperately, to set her at ease. but there’s relief when she says no, and his eyes close, and he slumps a little. he doesn’t have a timeline for everything yet, just vague figures, but even a half-elven child (and he needs to find out what ‘elfblooded’ means, immediately) would grow a great deal in even a year. their protection, their care—it would have been a knife to his heart to know he had failed to provide that. ]

It is [ he said ] for the best.

[ he needs a second to gather himself, to try and sort his thoughts out. he brushes his hair back from his face, does his best not to comb his fingers through and slide towards more of a yank—should have braided it, but he wasn’t expecting to be having this conversation. ]

Did I—did I say that to you? [ horrified now, or at least a little broken-hearted. ] Did I say you were not a good wife?

[ shame, then, ashamed of himself, the possibility of it—he cannot imagine a version of himself who would say such a thing to someone he had bound himself to. he nods as she continues, elbows on his knees, hands together and pressed against his mouth. ]

No, I—you have my thanks. I am—was there a body for you to bury? [ are these a dead man’s clothes. ]

Edited 2024-07-19 03:58 (UTC)

( she thinks, here is the moment where she lets it go: the anger, the betrayal, the crushing weight of how sure she had been, ranting furiously to astarion about her humiliation, that every good memory could no longer be trusted. but she looks at him, his hand in his hair, the horror writ on his face, and some fist that had clenched itself around her heart releases,

she had been so sure he wouldn't feign this to hurt her. the first thing she had been sure of was that he wouldn't do that. )

We both said cruel things, ( she says, at length, ) because we hurt each other. I struggled very clumsily with things you couldn't understand, and you—

( the time when she had wanted him to hurt because she was hurting feels so far away. now it would be so easy to twist the knife in his unprepared underbelly, and she palms it, instead, says: )

Sometimes the Fade just takes rifters back. You didn't die, you were just gone one day, no rift, nothing. You were one of the rifters who'd remained the longest; I'd almost forgotten you could.

( a hesitation. then: )

You were the first person to treat it as a good, my elfblood. You learned my language and you made me laugh and a lot of the time, you had more patience than I had really earned. So I don't— that chapter ended, a way. Please don't feel, I don't know— beholden to sorrows.

I am sorry, [ he says, helpless, absent his memory and through it, any way to atone. he and calenmiril had fought, but rather crucially, he had not then immediately effectively died. he has enough awareness to keep listening to her, even as his head drifts further into his hands. he nods along. he has to take a few minutes to collect himself, to lift his head back up and put himself into a now more rigidly-held seat in the chair. his legs are uncrossed. ]

No matter what I might have said, or done, even in anger, I would not have purposefully left you a widow. [ she probably knows about calenmiril, he realizes. she probably knows all of his secrets, his quiet thoughts, his hopes, his wounds. and he knows nothing of hers, but wears the face of someone who did. ]

Please excuse me, Captain Baudin, [ he realizes he doesn’t know her first name, but the formality is a nice little shield, and he stands, ready to leave. ] I think I would like to go be alone for a little while.

Gwenaëlle, ( she says, an offer (it's not stopped being strange to hear him call her that), but not one that she presses on him; she nearly offers her hand, to shake or to steady, and then curls her fingers underneath the edge of her desk and allows the impulse to pass without acting on it.

absorbs the apology, the spirit it's meant in, and how fucking disorienting this must be for him—

a stranger who has seen beneath his glamour. she would feel vulnerable, in his place. it isn't hers, any more, to bolster him out of it. )

I won't keep you. Thank you for hearing me out, and—

( an exhalation. )

If anyone gives you trouble about it, I'll deal with it.

( she doesn't really think thranduil is going to let her fight his battles for him, now any more than then, but she feels a bit at sea not to at least— it feels like her responsibility. she has to at least say.

maybe they'll have things to say to each other, in time, that are easier. )

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