“Hardie, come away,” is an only mildly exasperated afterthought, and he doesn't, entirely— gives Flint enough personal space so that if he glances down Hardie is perfectly in his eyeline, laying down with his head on his paws, gazing soulfully up at the withholder of treats. Look how good he's being. He isn't even jostling the razor a little bit.
He's not even close to a bollock.
Gwenaëlle doesn't know where to start. Finally,
“Objectively speaking, I have absolutely no business getting involved in any kind of effort of that kind because my project was a counterproductive waste of time that was a total failure in every one of its aims and succeeded exclusively in making me a story and pissing people off.”
As if it might serve to keep Hardie put, a pointed look lingers there on the perfectly well behaved definitely not going to cause trouble from where he's lying just here, inches away! dog while Flint adjusts the razor on the shaving stand and listens with—
not one ear, exactly. He can do three things at once, thank you. Hence the bristle brush's eventual return to the slab of soap before Gwenaëlle has quite reached a stopping point. The brush is tapped at the wash basin's edge, an unintended or at least unconscious, punctuation mark before Flint sets to lathering his other cheek.
"Is your concern that you might not achieve the desired effect, or further damage your reputation?"
The indelicate snort is its own answer, but she says, “If I gave a fuck about my reputation, I'd still be writing the pissing thing, 'my reputation' was the only thing it ever benefited. If it had damaged me, I'd be a Comtesse right now because no one would have given a damn about the way I was inadvertently making a name for myself.”
She hadn't understood, at the beginning; she'd thought everyone would read it the way she intended, that they'd see what it was meant for. All it had been was an amusing novelty, sold on the strength of her pretty face, the opinions of a young lady in Skyhold.
“I meant to show we didn't need symbols or idols and all I did was nearly make myself into one. Which is bad enough, without having fucking Coupe assume I was doing it on purpose, and I don't think she meant to stop me.” To control it, maybe, but Gwenaëlle had stopped, appalled, and whatever Coupe had been driving at, they never discussed.
None of that is the point, and she aggressively wrenches herself on topic: “As I say. I was, objectively, the only person it ever benefited. I'm not concerned it wouldn't work, I don't understand why you think it would.”
Genuinely, which is why she's here, prodding him about it,
though she overlooks, of course, that he can't be the only person who thought it would work. She was only dangerous because she was threatening to become influential.
The brush is set aside, lathery bristles pointing up.
"I'm always circling propaganda, you said. If that's true, then why only address it now? What's put it back in your head?" isn't an answer. But surely by now she's used to the way he sometimes angles around questions, approaching them in the same way a militia might assault a hilltop: calculated.
Gwenaëlle stares back at him for a long moment, disconcerted and visibly uncomfortable in a way that isn't a reaction to his question — can't be, staring at him that way as he asks it, struggling to catch up.
It's stupid to be hurt. It's stupid for it to matter. So what if that's what he thinks of her and he's never going to be proud of her. No one else is proud of her. She's nearly thirty years old and it doesn't fucking matter if no one's proud of her. There are so many people in this place whose opinions mean less than dirt to her and that's why it's still persistent, even now, even after all these years— "good" people, "nice" people, they're allowed to care about things, and they're always shocked when cunts like her do, too. Too much of a cunt even to be allowed to value caring, no, a bunch of idiots being aggressively wrong about her must be her doing, must be important to her—
Her teeth press together so hard her jaw hurts.
“I know people,” she says, quietly. The back of her neck feels hot and tight. “The Grand Enchanter is a— good story.” She says it flatly, so that it won't sound bitter. “I know a lord in Markham and I still have contacts in Orlais and Skyhold. I thought about writing letters, so it'd spread faster the way that people want it to. I know people who talk to people.”
It was a stupid thought. That's what he's going to tell her. A waste of time, like before.
He isn't blind. He can recognize when he's caught someone off-footed and driven them off balance; he may not have the arm of a swordsman anymore, but he still has the eye of one.
"She is a good story," is agreement, there in that room as the rain hammers at the warped pane glass in the slit windows. His hand has yet to move after the razor balanced on the basin's lip. "And you and I both know where your interests lie, and that you could persuade a Markham lord and your contacts in Orlais and elsewhere to start talking at a volume fit for traveling. But I'm curious as to how you mean to keep them talking once they've said all they mean to say about Grand Enchanter Fiona if you don't intend to make yourself part of that story."
“Either it's enough of a story or it isn't,” she says, still unsettled, “and I don't have anything else, if it needs more than that. I'm not part of that story.”
In a more specific way, now, than the way it had bothered her to be perceived as somehow the face of the Inquisition. A more personal discomfort with the idea of being made the face of something her interest in is, at best, a tolerated curiosity.
“If that's not useful, then it's not useful. I only wanted to know if it might be, so I didn't— do anything stupid or unhelpful.” Step on someone's toes thoughtlessly, as she's done before on more than one occasion. Step on the toes of an entire cause, inadvertently, through careless trampling or poor messaging. “If that's the story that it's important to spread, what else would they need to say afterwards?”
Here, at last, Flint takes up the razor from the edge of the basin and slips the soft leather cover free from its blade.
"You're the writer," is prompting, not an end point as his attention shifts to the mirror. Looking at her by way of the reflection as the razor is rinsed under the water's surface— "You tell me."
(What point is there in writing a thing down if it doesn't extend past its own margins?)
"Well, I'm a poet," she says, a bit blankly. "I wrote propaganda by accident, not on purpose, this isn't...I'm not a mage, I don't know what conversation they want to have," a little bewildered.
No, a great deal bewildered, and doing her best to keep up - well, nothing, then? is her instinct, but that feels immediately like the wrong answer. Not because it feels wrong, to her, but because that is so clearly not the conversation they're having,
and she doesn't, really, understand the conversation they're having. Dog-paddling vastly out of her depth, Flint doesn't need to tell her that her idea was foolish; that is becoming incredibly clear to her. Maybe it would be a good idea, if someone else had it, but that someone would probably have a better answer to everything else he's said, too.
"When I wrote out of the Inquisition, I was trying to write about things I could see and understand, so that other people could see and understand them," she says, finally. "I understand, I think, what Fiona did. I know how to talk about that. I thought there was value in that."
At the time. Less and less, the longer this conversation goes on.
"When I was doing it I did, anyway. I don't know, I thought maybe I was wrong about having been wrong, because you seemed so interested in it."
Now, if anything, it feels clearer that she was right to stop; that she was toying with something she has no business in.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He's not even close to a bollock.
Gwenaëlle doesn't know where to start. Finally,
“Objectively speaking, I have absolutely no business getting involved in any kind of effort of that kind because my project was a counterproductive waste of time that was a total failure in every one of its aims and succeeded exclusively in making me a story and pissing people off.”
no subject
not one ear, exactly. He can do three things at once, thank you. Hence the bristle brush's eventual return to the slab of soap before Gwenaëlle has quite reached a stopping point. The brush is tapped at the wash basin's edge, an unintended or at least unconscious, punctuation mark before Flint sets to lathering his other cheek.
"Is your concern that you might not achieve the desired effect, or further damage your reputation?"
Tap. Again. A habitual rhythm.
no subject
She hadn't understood, at the beginning; she'd thought everyone would read it the way she intended, that they'd see what it was meant for. All it had been was an amusing novelty, sold on the strength of her pretty face, the opinions of a young lady in Skyhold.
“I meant to show we didn't need symbols or idols and all I did was nearly make myself into one. Which is bad enough, without having fucking Coupe assume I was doing it on purpose, and I don't think she meant to stop me.” To control it, maybe, but Gwenaëlle had stopped, appalled, and whatever Coupe had been driving at, they never discussed.
None of that is the point, and she aggressively wrenches herself on topic: “As I say. I was, objectively, the only person it ever benefited. I'm not concerned it wouldn't work, I don't understand why you think it would.”
Genuinely, which is why she's here, prodding him about it,
though she overlooks, of course, that he can't be the only person who thought it would work. She was only dangerous because she was threatening to become influential.
no subject
"I meant," he says. Tap. "Your alleged reputation for ambivalence."
Though she's been busy taking great chunks out of that story already without so much as putting pen to paper as of late, hasn't she?
no subject
confused? Offended? Some bewildered combination of the two?
“What are you talking about? Why the fuck would I have done any of this if I didn't care?”
no subject
"I'm always circling propaganda, you said. If that's true, then why only address it now? What's put it back in your head?" isn't an answer. But surely by now she's used to the way he sometimes angles around questions, approaching them in the same way a militia might assault a hilltop: calculated.
no subject
It's stupid to be hurt. It's stupid for it to matter. So what if that's what he thinks of her and he's never going to be proud of her. No one else is proud of her. She's nearly thirty years old and it doesn't fucking matter if no one's proud of her. There are so many people in this place whose opinions mean less than dirt to her and that's why it's still persistent, even now, even after all these years— "good" people, "nice" people, they're allowed to care about things, and they're always shocked when cunts like her do, too. Too much of a cunt even to be allowed to value caring, no, a bunch of idiots being aggressively wrong about her must be her doing, must be important to her—
Her teeth press together so hard her jaw hurts.
“I know people,” she says, quietly. The back of her neck feels hot and tight. “The Grand Enchanter is a— good story.” She says it flatly, so that it won't sound bitter. “I know a lord in Markham and I still have contacts in Orlais and Skyhold. I thought about writing letters, so it'd spread faster the way that people want it to. I know people who talk to people.”
It was a stupid thought. That's what he's going to tell her. A waste of time, like before.
no subject
"She is a good story," is agreement, there in that room as the rain hammers at the warped pane glass in the slit windows. His hand has yet to move after the razor balanced on the basin's lip. "And you and I both know where your interests lie, and that you could persuade a Markham lord and your contacts in Orlais and elsewhere to start talking at a volume fit for traveling. But I'm curious as to how you mean to keep them talking once they've said all they mean to say about Grand Enchanter Fiona if you don't intend to make yourself part of that story."
no subject
In a more specific way, now, than the way it had bothered her to be perceived as somehow the face of the Inquisition. A more personal discomfort with the idea of being made the face of something her interest in is, at best, a tolerated curiosity.
“If that's not useful, then it's not useful. I only wanted to know if it might be, so I didn't— do anything stupid or unhelpful.” Step on someone's toes thoughtlessly, as she's done before on more than one occasion. Step on the toes of an entire cause, inadvertently, through careless trampling or poor messaging. “If that's the story that it's important to spread, what else would they need to say afterwards?”
no subject
"You're the writer," is prompting, not an end point as his attention shifts to the mirror. Looking at her by way of the reflection as the razor is rinsed under the water's surface— "You tell me."
(What point is there in writing a thing down if it doesn't extend past its own margins?)
no subject
No, a great deal bewildered, and doing her best to keep up - well, nothing, then? is her instinct, but that feels immediately like the wrong answer. Not because it feels wrong, to her, but because that is so clearly not the conversation they're having,
and she doesn't, really, understand the conversation they're having. Dog-paddling vastly out of her depth, Flint doesn't need to tell her that her idea was foolish; that is becoming incredibly clear to her. Maybe it would be a good idea, if someone else had it, but that someone would probably have a better answer to everything else he's said, too.
"When I wrote out of the Inquisition, I was trying to write about things I could see and understand, so that other people could see and understand them," she says, finally. "I understand, I think, what Fiona did. I know how to talk about that. I thought there was value in that."
At the time. Less and less, the longer this conversation goes on.
"When I was doing it I did, anyway. I don't know, I thought maybe I was wrong about having been wrong, because you seemed so interested in it."
Now, if anything, it feels clearer that she was right to stop; that she was toying with something she has no business in.