Darkest Timeline AU Flashback Meme

[faderifting]

DARKEST TIMELINE AU FLASHBACK MEME
Did you work out something for your character's darkest timeline AU that you love so much it would be an absolute crime not to be able to write it out for real? WHAT LUCK! This meme is here for all your flashback-from-the-future needs. It's also the place to display sad single-character vignettes, letters that were never sent to dead friends, and anything else your dastardly little heart desires. Go forth and suffer.

The contents of this meme do not count for AC. For AC, you must participate in the real logs for the event, which will take place in Cloudreach 9:48, or else continue your normal non-event RP in the present (Guardian 9:43). However, you can count log threads in this meme toward your rewards points for the month.

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gwenaëlle vauquelin

[elegiaque]

( stashing starters beneath this header. )

open crystal thread.

[elegiaque]

( it's late at night in orzammar when gwenaëlle rolls over to answer her crystal, muffled by blankets and fabric and indistinct enough that she's not sure who she's answering when she yawns, )

What?

( less than perfectly gracefully. )

[rowancrowned]

[ clearly: ] Happy new year, my lady.

[ he's not sleeping, or he just always sounds perfectly composed. ]

[elegiaque]

( a longer pause - the rustle of fabric and movement, the not-unfamiliar sounds of gwenaëlle sitting, waking, rousing herself. a little quicker, every time; so much faster now than it ever was before.

she sleeps about as much as she ever did, just differently. )

Is it?

( drolly. )

[rowancrowned]

[ there are crickets, maybe, in the background. he has found some small slice of nature where the insects aren't silent. ]

It will be.

[ that isn't ominous. ]

How are things, down below?

[elegiaque]

( everything else is ominous. )

As above.

( "fucked". )

You'd know if you came.

( an old argument that she doesn't expect to resolve now - or at any other time, generally, habit now, a reflex. she will say this and he will say that and they will still be in different places, at the end of it; there is less heat to it than there once was.

at least, tonight. some nights follow days that were harder; sometimes she is less forgiving. )

[rowancrowned]

A cave has far too few exits. I will not place myself in a deathtrap filled with dwarves.

[ old habits and all of that. they've had nigh on five years to perfect these patterns, but: he tries. ]

Tell me about your day.

[ let's play house. ]

[elegiaque]

( as days go it can't have been the worst of them because she only makes a sound in the back of her throat and doesn't press him. she will mimic him unflatteringly later to merrill, probably, instead of saying i wish he would come.

she's just about perfected his walk. )

I picked up a new set of daggers, ( off the body of their owner, left her own buried there to the hilt, ) and I've been learning their balance - they're a little lighter, I don't know if I like the weight, but I do move faster.

( it's always hard for her to speak to anything of what she feels, but the melody of it is there underneath the more pragmatic beats. the oppressive weight of more than just weapons; the distraction, the anxiety. )

[rowancrowned]

[ she needs to get his hair flip to really nail it--

or the way his brows furrow when she's being obstinate, the curve of his smile when he persuades another night at the tree house camp out of her.

merrill will appreciate it. his mannerisms are so overwrought as to easily translate to satire. ]

Who are you practicing with?

[elegiaque]

( some smiles she is content not to share. some small things, jealously hoarded in the face of so much other loss. emeric dead, morrigan gone, shadows in the eyes of the people left behind; she can toss her hair but she'll keep a smile for her own.

(she is obstinate always.) )

Anyone who has the time. Guilfoyle less. He says familiarity breeds complacency, ( a brief drop into orlesian, a casual echo of guilfoyle's more stoic diction. ) That I know him too well.

( the complaining note in her voice is familiar, but in a lighter way; ) I practise with Sabine and she hits me in the face.

[rowancrowned]

[ he makes a soft noise of consideration. there's a rustle of some sort, some shift of movement. wherever he is, he's relaxing. ]

You needn't spar with him. But he is skilled enough. He will not offer criticism?

[ they're all living on top of one another, and underground too-- it would drive thranduil mad, and besides that, he will not risk those he cares about, full aware he could be a target.

his change in tone matches hers, amused: ]

Ah. Does she bite?

[elegiaque]

At length.

( not a complaint. guilfoyle is the reason she's alive today; gwenaëlle is neither stupid nor ungrateful. that she didn't die shortly after her father, between his actions and the anchor-shard in her hand, is nothing short of a small miracle.

but she hasn't wasted it. the sabine comment gets a sharp laugh - )

You'd have to ask Alistair these days. She used to.

[rowancrowned]

Listen to him, beloved, he is still alive because he knows how to think, how to fight.

[ add to the list of things unsaid: losing you would hurt me.

but it is a long list, and at alistair's name he stops working through it. the familiar pang for those he's lost hits him, and he thinks of beleth, and the quiet little hope of love and romance she'd held in her heart, and how that is gone along with so much else.

he does not forgive all the ill she's caused, but it's another thing that went poorly for her, and it did not help. ]

[elegiaque]

I'm still alive, aren't I?

( his opinion is invaluable when she's relied on him so much these past five years; when guilfoyle speaks, she listens. )

I do intend to stay that way.

( and maybe they won't always be this far apart. )

[rowancrowned]

Good, [ he says, as if that will be the end of it. she has a piece of him, now, and she must guard that if nothing else.

thranduil exhales. ]

You only need wait a little while longer.

[elegiaque]

Is that what I'm doing?

( 'waiting'. she never quite knows what to say to that, exhaling when he says it; what it is that he means by it. )

[rowancrowned]

Yes. And you are the best of women for doing it with so few complaints.

[ softer, now. he does not underestimate her strength. ]

[elegiaque]

I'm not sitting idle. I'm not waiting for anything. Best of women my--

( she bites that off. the answer in its place is not substantially tempered. )

In case you'd failed to notice, some of us are actually still working.

shortly after alistair is taken captive.

[elegiaque]

"You know what," Gwenaëlle says, and -

they never find out what. She takes Sabine by the elbow with every bit of aristocratic presumption she can still muster - it's a lot, and why wouldn't it be? now she can enforce with knives what before she could only hope other people would consider her as entitled to as she did - and steers her away from the same circular conversations that have been incessantly circling the subject of Alistair's capture and possible, probable death.

He is gone. He may or may not ever be coming back. They are still alive.

"No one is this instant trying to kill us," she tells the side of Sabine's head, barely glancing. "And no one is this instant doing anything fucking useful, either, so - let's be less sober."