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
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.