contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

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[bouchonne]

[ A muscle in his jaw jumps as she sobs. He shrugs stiffly. And he says, even more stiffly: ]

It is not the grandest thing in the world, to admit a tender dream and to be told that you probably would have fucked it up anyway.

[coquettish_trees]

[ There is naked shock in her face when she looks up.

He thinks it was aimed at him. The bitter blow she'd aimed at herself, he thinks it was meant for him. ]

Not you. Me. I would have fucked it up anyway.

You did nothing wrong. [ She reaches again for his hand. Tries to reach again. ] You loved me, but I was too afraid to be loved. You were safe, but I was too afraid to be safe. The moment that I knew I loved you he was inside of me laughing and I could hear nothing else.

He left a killing trap in me, waiting for someone I could love to make it spring.

[bouchonne]

[ He allows her to take it now. Uneasily, shyly, but he allows it. Still doesn't look up. ]

A deft enough hand could have disarmed it. [ A swallow. ] A worthy enough hand.

[coquettish_trees]

You had a worthy hand.

[ Which she raises now, slowly, to kiss. ]

It was not only his trap against you, then.

[bouchonne]

[ He lifts his head uncertainly. ]

What do you mean?

[coquettish_trees]

[ Soberly: ]

Emile.

[ A Bard. Retired, perhaps— if Bards ever are— but with more years of work than either of them had years living.

Emile is... complicated, still. She had loved Alexandrie, but she had loved her like a favourite blade. She had protected Alexandrie, but she had protected her from everything that might have touched her heart. She had given Alexandrie wings, but not to fly free. Emile had given her wings to stoop, and kill. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Oh. Well.

He shakes his head very slightly. ]

You could have dismissed her, if you'd wanted to.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Her laughter is soft, breathy. It is not a happy sound. ]

No. I was broken when she came to me, Byerly. Truly broken. When she built me again, she...

I loved her. I trusted her. She knew always what was best for me. She knew more of me than my parents. More than Geneviève.

[bouchonne]

[ Well. ]

Maybe so.

[ But. ]

But you have made the choice to break from her tutelage since then.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Alexandrie shakes her head slowly. ]

She disappeared during the coup in Minrathous. I thought her dead, did not hear from her until she began to send me messages nearly a year later. Did not see her again until the day of my wedding.

I had taken myself back, by then.

[bouchonne]

So - what, she kept you in some sort of thrall?

[ It's an appealing sort of thing to think. Or - no. Not appealing. But neat. It would be so neat. ]

[coquettish_trees]

Not... I...

[ She has to sit down.

Alexandrie misses the chair with her first unseeing grab for it. Finds it the second time, pulls at it until she can sit without letting him go.

She doesn't like to talk about Emile. She doesn't like to think about Emile. Emile had loved her and saved her and cared for her. Thinking about her means touching the part that understands that Emile had also kept her broken. ]

She...

[ Numbly: ]

She made herself all I had.

[bouchonne]

[ He gentles at that. His grip on hers softens. His manner softens too. And he says - ]

It's not uncommon amongst the upper servants. Lady's maids, butlers, footmen. Dependency protects them.

[coquettish_trees]

I ran to her when I was frightened and—

[ One, two. Breathe, little bird.

Her voice. Still there. Part of Alexandrie is still there. Terrified, in tears, throwing herself into the arms of the only thing in the world that made sense. ]

She was so calm.

[ Her eyes are dazed. Wild and begging for him to understand what it had meant in that moment to have someone she trusted without question tell her what was right to do. ]

[bouchonne]

[ (He doesn't understand, of course. How could he? He's never had guidance from anyone - with the exception, perhaps, of a lover or two who used him for some misadventure or another. To manipulate a person, you have to care about them at least a little, and when he was a boy there was no one who cared for him even that tiny amount.)

He does understand that this emotion goes far beyond the hurt of realizing that someone had infantilized you and taken your power away. Beyond a rich fellow realizing that his footman would hide his shoelaces to make sure he needed help to get dressed. He's not sure, however, how to deal with that emotion. He's not even sure how to identify it. ]

Are you - angry?

[coquettish_trees]

[ Is she?

There is so much fighting to be true in her at once, songs playing over each other until she cannot sort them into anything but noise.

No-one had known what to do with her. Without Emile she knows would have wasted slowly, month on month, until one day she simply did not wake. She had been cared for, loved, of that she had no doubt— beyond dressing her, beyond attending to her every need, Emile had been at her side for over a decade of patient tutelage, quiet holding, drying of her tears when she had healed enough to cry, reassuring her that if she learned and practiced what she was taught she could be something that could not ever ever be hurt again. Emile had been everything; a mother, a sister, a teacher, a friend.

But how much of that had been by her design? Alexandrie had felt abandoned, withdrawn from by everyone but Emile, even Geneviève. How much of that distance had the kindly woman made? She was a Bard, a good one. How simple it would have been to slowly pull a young and shattered woman away from everyone who might have seen the cold and vicious blade she was being shaped into and tried to stop the forging and make it seem as if they were the ones who pulled away?

And how could love, real love, have watched the joy in life bloom back into her with the way Byerly had doted on her— had been gentle, wanted to be by her side, and wished only for her happiness, to be the one who could make her happy again— and calmly, kindly, tell her that in order to be safe she had to cut that flower down. ]

Yes.

[ It is spoken in near whisper, slow in the way of word and realization coming at once, and if it is anger it looks nothing like any anger of hers that he has ever seen. Not cold and sharp, not hot and wild; it is numb and diffuse, a thing that has not found a way to coalesce yet. She speaks it again, is trying to make it real. ]

Yes.

[bouchonne]

[ Right. He wonders what to do with that. This is all - complex. Alexandrie is a maelstrom of emotions under the easiest of circumstances; more often than not, a careless word or thoughtless gesture just stirs the chaos up further.

And so he asks, tentatively: ]

Do you wish to be?

[ Does she want soft words to help her find forgiveness? Cutting insults towards the woman who's not here? ]

[coquettish_trees]

Yes.

[ Clearer this time, more solid. Even. ]

But I do not want your anger. Not on my behalf. What she did to me is mine, and— [ a shaky breath— ] there is so much in me still that would leap out to defend her.

[ Alexandrie shakes her head, and then looks down at their hands. Older hands, by a decade, somehow holding again.

She looks back up at him, at the lines of his face that time and hardship made. Remembers him younger, hanging her a swing. ]

If you are to be angry, let it be for what she did to us. To you.

[bouchonne]

I -

[ A more difficult request. His gaze turns down. He tries to regain some dignity by making it something like a joke. ]

I do not know that I would have the right to do so. I think any who cared for you likely would have preferred me dead in a ditch to courting you. And rightly so. If she desired my destruction, perhaps she was justified.

[coquettish_trees]

No.

[ He pours dangerous waters, with only her fingertips curling over the edge of the little lifeboat of a world where being guided farther into fear is something that could have been wrongdoing. Something that wasn't for her, wasn't to make her safe, that perhaps Emile had not had her best interests at heart. ]

Why.

[ A demand. ]

Why. How can it be right. How can it be right to see me incoherent with fear and make the choice to tell me it is best for me to destroy someone I love who loves me.

[ Maybe Emile had believed it best. Maybe Emile did think she was not safe. It was for safety. It was to stop Byerly from being important to her, from getting in the way, to make her stay afraid and turn that fear to cruelty that could be wielded in the Game. Emile had loved her. Emile had used her.

Alexandrie cannot hold both thoughts yet, it is too new. Broad strokes of paint without the subtleties that come with time and thought and looking again and again at the tree. It makes her head ache, her chest. Makes her pull her hand from his so she can cover her face to stop even the dim light from touching her eyes. ]

[bouchonne]

[ He doesn't know what the right thing is to say. Doesn't know the right way to go. And for all her claim that she wants to be angry, why would he ever want to stifle the love she had for someone? ]

I - because I was not marriageable. Because I had no prospects. [ Truly: ] Most took me for a fortune-hunter at best. More likely an idle lothario.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She cannot understand anything now— or, at least, nothing of society's 'why's— there is only hurt and betrayal and the memory of turning to someone she trusted for help and receiving it in the form of what was right for the Game and ruin for both her and Byerly.

No, it had been success for her.

No.

Alexandrie shakes her head behind her hands with a violence she is unaware of. ]

Do not, [ she says, reverting to Orlesian. ] Do not say it was right. Do not tell me a pretty dream and then tell me I should not crush it and then tell me she was right to.

[ Another shake of her head, smaller this time, and she lets her hands fall so she can look at him; her eyes begging for some unclear thing. ]

What do you want, Byerly. What do you want now, not in some time that is gone. I cannot do anything about the past, and it hurts to remember. I cannot make anything make sense.

[bouchonne]

I want -

[ He answers in unsteady Orlesian - unsteady only because of his emotions, for Orlesian is his mother tongue, and he speaks it perhaps more fluently even than he speaks Trade. ]

To make you happy.

[coquettish_trees]

Hold me, then.

[ With no physical anchor, time is blending for her; too much she’d pushed down or left unrecognized years ago suddenly clamours for her attention now that its resting place has been disturbed, and all of it belongs to another self, another time, another place. All of them feel real at once and none of them feel safe. ]

I want to be here, now, with you, and I cannot keep from sliding away on my own.

[bouchonne]

Sliding away?

[ His brows knit, uncertain of her meaning. Even so, though, even with his lack of understanding, he reaches out to her, wrapping his arms around her, answering her desire. This, at least, he's good at. ]