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[rowancrowned]

 

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[rowancrowned]

[ 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. ]

[elegiaque]

( 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.

[rowancrowned]

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.

🎀

[elegiaque]

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. )