𝒊𝒏𝒃𝒐𝒙.

[thunderproof]

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[thunderproof]

The everything else has been... a lot.

❰ so, so very much. adalia flops back onto her bed with a huff. ❱

Your roommate had a go at me and then told me to take care of Rifters who were spreading misinformation. He's lucky I'm not as impulsive and petty as you'd think.

❰ look, adalia is not unaware of how she comes off. in the moment it's hard to care, is all, but when it's time for business she can think beyond herself. that she was willing to do the bidding of someone who'd just threatened her for asking questions should be evidence enough of that. ❱

[elegiaque]

( roomm—

oh. )

I think, ( after that pause, ) that I heard some of that.

( through the wall. wow, he was fucking loud. )

I know he's infuriating, but he wouldn't ask you to do something that important if he didn't think you reliable.

[thunderproof]

Ah, so my dressing down was slightly public. Wonderful.

❰ look if there is one thing that makes adalia the perfect combination between utterly furious and completely disheartened it's public disdain. ❱

I don't give a shit if he thinks I'm reliable. ❰ she does, a bit. ❱ He treated me like dirt and then turned around and used me with not so much as a "it's been a difficult day, please excuse the misdirected vitriol". I'm nineteen, I'm not an infant —

❰ says every childish nineteen-year-old ever, which is why adalia abruptly cuts herself off, takes a deep breath, and changes the subject. ❱

In any case, you didn't crystal me to listen to me whine. What did you do to this Pietro fellow that's so bad?

[elegiaque]

( there's a lot that she might say to a lot of that (of mixed usefulness, probably), but adalia stops and gwenaëlle

picks her way through what to say about pietro, because that's a fucking mess, too. )

I humiliated him, when he trusted me.

[thunderproof]

Ah.

❰ yes, that makes sense. and is something to keep in mind when talking to gwenaëlle, considering how easy it would be for her to humiliate adalia. ❱

Why?

❰ there is no judgment in the question, if that would matter to gwenaëlle, and if she refused to answer adalia wouldn't be put out. ❱

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle mulls it over. not because she doesn't know, but because—

well. she doesn't come out of this covered in glory. she chooses her words carefully. )

I was afraid. Hurting him was—simpler.

[thunderproof]

It usually is. Do you regret having done it?

❰ they're rather probing questions, to be sure, but adalia's more interested in what the answers say about who gwen is now than what she did then. if she needs to hold gwenaëlle at a further distance than she already has, and what to expect from her if adalia ever gives her cause to be afraid. what's past is past. whether or not gwenaëlle has changed since then is far more material than what specifically was said to whom. ❱

[elegiaque]

If I didn't, do you think I'd be telling you about it?

( or giving a damn if pietro gets smacked in the mouth for talking out of turn about her?

she could just say 'yes', but it feels uncomfortably exposing to do so. )

[thunderproof]

I think you probably think I'm easy to manipulate and if you saw use in keeping me around, you'd say what you had to to do so.

❰ which is — maybe projecting a bit, as far as gwen's concerned. adalia's not really sure. who to trust, who to believe the best of and who to be wary of — knowing these things does not come easy to her, any skill at insight she has coming from intense analysis and careful thought. but she was never taught how to play the grand game, and she's never been particularly good at making friends. easiest, in the end, to assume that she's a tool or a project for others more than she is an actual friend. ❱

[elegiaque]

That's what you think of me.

( gwenaëlle shouldn't, perhaps, be as stung as she is. who's fault is it adalia knows her so little? it's the natural assumption one might make of an orlesian heiress—former heiress—and if it stings as much in reminder that precisely her inability to do that sort of thing had almost certainly played a role in her failure to hold that position, well. )

Maybe I spoke hastily when I said you should call me your friend. Well, I am glad I know.

[thunderproof]

Not you in specific, particularly, ❰ adalia allows, slowly. perhaps that amount of candow was a misstep? ❱

It's... There are people I wouldn't expect that of, probably. Myrobalan, maybe. But you, I can't read at all. So it's safer to assume, than to invest and turn out to be wrong.

❰ because she's experienced that, she's had a crush on someone who considered her a project and the realization that he thought she needed fixing somehow was devastating. ❱

I'm... afraid.

❰ and apparently she hurt gwenaëlle because of it. what was it she was just saying... ❱

[elegiaque]

( up until those very last words, gwenaëlle is still prepared to put her crystal down and write this whole thing off for a lost cause—

and the small noise of frustration she makes suggests that would be so much fucking easier. but she says, not entirely mollified, )

You'd have an easier time if you stopped trying to invent a mystery and just listened to what I say. There's nothing to parse. If I was at all difficult to read, I'd still be in fucking Orlais, but I'm not. The only person I find easy to manipulate is my husband, and only because I can get him hard.

[thunderproof]

❰ and here adalia was all ready to continue attempting to smooth ruffled feathers, and then gwenaëlle drops that in her lap and ignoring it is almost physically painful. but she apparently did gwenaëlle a disservice, and she's not going to be distracted from her apology by new information. ❱

At the risk of sounding like a melodramatic infant, ❰ there is no risk, she is painfully aware, ❱ I'm not quite used to people who mean what they say. I'm... You may have noticed, I'm sort of difficult. I'm too brash, or I'm too loud, or I'm too irreverent. But I have useful skills, and I want to be cared for. People take advantage.

❰ which all sounds grossly stupid and insignificant when said out loud, but — if not forgiveness, then understanding, please, just that — ❱

I'm sorry to have hurt you. I've never met someone like you before, and I'm applying all the wrong rules.

[elegiaque]

You have,

( after a moment, a little tight still but more wry, some of those feathers willing to be unruffled— )

Maker. Yourself.

( too much, too direct, too irreverent, too desperate for approval—yes, that's all rather familiar. )

I don't keep anyone around me for any reason other than I want them around me. I haven't the patience or the fortitude for bullshit to pretend I like someone I don't—you will always know exactly where you stand with me. Because I will tell you. Whether you like it or not.

[thunderproof]

❰ certainly you are confused, friend, adalia couldn't possibly be anything like gwenaëlle — for one thing gwenaëlle apparently has her shit together enough to have a husband, where adalia has to scramble and fight her own crushing inadequacies in order to keep one single friend.

for another gwen dresses so much nicer. ❱

I think if I treated you like I want to be treated you might hate that even more than this, probably, ❰ is easier to say than anything that would be remotely close to how adalia is actually feeling, which is strangely close to tears??? this has been a difficult time. straightforward people are strange. ❱

But I'll remember that.

[elegiaque]

Good.

( a that's that, then heavily implied, and she breezes right by it all (ugh, feelings, even her own; especially her own)— )

I treated Pietro badly and I shouldn't have and he's every right to feel and say what he likes on the matter. That's all.

[thunderproof]

I'll remember that too.

❰ but it's by far the least important thing that's happened in this conversation. ❱

I'd ask who your husband could possibly be, buuuuut...

[elegiaque]

( ugh fuck she's getting sloppy )

I married Thor of Asgard and we're keeping it a secret because Loki would lose his mind.

( utterly deadpan )

[thunderproof]

I'll have to let his mgisterialness know that you spend so much of your time in the Provost's office, then, I'm sure he'd have opinions.

❰ adalia sounds a bit too delighted by this, sorry. ❱

[elegiaque]

The Provost and I have been friends for more than two years, it's not remarkable.

( what's remarkable is how no one has fucking remarked on it, honestly. )

[thunderproof]

I mean the friendship probably was, at one point.

❰ if gwen's initial snippiness about elven things was anything to go by, anyway. ❱

I'm sorry I was shittalking your husband, earlier. In my defense I didn't know he was your husband at the time.

[elegiaque]

I've said worse about him to his—

[elegiaque]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[thunderproof]

❰ gwen ur cute ❱

I'd ask if I have to pretend to be married to him as well, same as I pretend I need the witherstalk tea, but —

[elegiaque]

Thank you for reminding me that you can keep a secret.