illithidnapped

I thought laying it all out might tell me the answer.

( —but it hasn't, really. )

Things like this rarely sort out willingly even if you have all the pieces in place.

[No one knows trouble like Astarion knows trouble, after all.]

So. Let’s talk hypotheticals.

Say someone else came waltzing into your life: handsome, clever, wealthy, charismatic— not me— kind, even. Whatever traits ideally suit your fancy. Sheer perfection.

Would you let them?

Edited 2021-10-28 11:47 (UTC)

That person sounds fucking insufferable, which would certainly simplify matters, but if we pretend for the sake of argument you haven't described an easy no,

I have no idea. What about someone who doesn't keep secrets from me, and actually shares his plans and goals and life with me, and doesn't mock me for an idiot if I consider the idea someone else might have thought more of me than that. I might give that person a try.

...you’re saying he mocks you?

[Spoken with all the surprise of a pair of raised eyebrows; Thranduil is— at times— a nuisance in his own right, and perhaps more than a little unreadable, but opting to deride someone he cares for?

How unexpected.]

I'm saying our last conversation didn't go very well. Probably he was on the defensive as it was, considering you.

But it's nice to know the only possible reason anyone might think me competent enough to be an equal in my own life is because they'd have to lie to fuck me. Per my husband. To be honest, I didn't expect the answer to "it feels as if you think less of me than Alexander did", which is dreadful considering how that ended, to be simply that he was either wrong or lying.

Edited 2021-10-29 19:17 (UTC)

[There’s a soft sigh on the other end of the line, a noise of attempted comprehension— though between Thranduil’s vague, noble rambling and Gwenaëlle’s own storied past— he always feels like he’s missing more than a handful of context clues at any given moment.]

Who in the Hells is Alexander?

It doesn't actually matter. Someone who might have married me and didn't.

It just,

How fucking hard would it have been to say, I didn't mean for you to feel that way? If he didn't. I'm meant to crawl back and apologise to someone who misled me and thinks anyone else who ever cared about me must have been lying?

( a laugh, incredulous, edged. )

Between him and you, Maker, maybe he's right. I do keep falling for bullshit.

Oh, stop it. Much as I know the world does conspire at present, you’re not a damned idiot and you’re not gullible.

I hate this sort of thing, you know. It’s much too...open. Thoughtful, whatever. But I’ve also lived long enough that I can at least offer a lens for perhaps a little clarified viewing of the situation. Something to help you find your own footing.

[This, he does for her. One open-handed gesture of good faith, and one he won't circle back to later.]

Because you feel undervalued and undesired. And in the midst of that, you’ve been forced to wrestle with the agonizing idea that everything you’d been put through was either unnecessary trite— or simply untrue.

But my darling, you’re in possession of a wealth of appeal: the world could very easily lend itself to your very lovely grasp if you chose to sink your claws into it. Of course I know that’s not actually what you crave in any capacity, which leads me to my hypothetical, and why you’ve been no doubt struggling to lap your wounds on your own to no avail.

You still want your husband. And you not only want him to want you— which he has done, and which isn’t nearly enough— but to understand your pain, and to help you make peace with it as a start. Maybe you don’t want him back. Maybe you don’t even want what you had anymore, just...

Well.

Sometimes the heart takes to beating of its own accord.

[Wretched thing that it is.]

Anyway I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got to offer, darling. My forcibly assigned lot was always to rip relationships apart at the seams, not to mend them; I can’t tell you where to go from here, but with luck, you might be able to divine something worthwhile from all this mess.

( she makes a sound when he says you're not gullible that sounds a lot like my track record disagrees, but she swallows the impulse to put it into words, out loud. listens, and doesn't expect what she hears—

if she were feeling a bit less sore about being a bit more credulous than she cares for, it might sound awfully like someone who does care to do her this kindness; who might have agreed to listen for reasons beyond the very real risk, in the mood she had begun, that she'd have barreled over him anyway if he hadn't. )

I only wanted to put it all out of my head.

( to say it all, directly and unself-consciously, and see what it looked like once she had; writing had not got her anywhere and there's real appeal in unloading to someone who she's already fled friendship. the idea that if she couldn't look at him afterwards, that'd be fine, actually.

jury's out on how that's gone. )

I'm so tired of feeling stupid. ( and small, and to blame. )

Can’t say I blame you.

[Really. He means that. After all:]

You already know the lengths that I go to to avoid being made into anybody’s fool.

INBOX

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject