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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Zath Tyrrell invites Avrenne to his Redridge estate in order to give her a gift, and to reveal a hint of his real feelings. Avrenne refuses to take the gift, but not for the reasons he thinks. The offer of her marriage is off the table, but that doesn't mean something else can't be offered instead. 5252 words exactly, because they might finally, sorta kinda, be on the same page. Romance/Conflict RP. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Arc: Ringside Seats
Drakewatch takes a bit of time to get to from the more civilized areas of Redridge, as there is a long and winding path up into the mountains. It's not an interesting ride, either, as the path chosen for the road has its views blocked by ruddy stone in almost every direction the entire way.
At the end of the journey, however, the road turns into a charming little bowl that has been carved out of the mountains at high elevation by some unknown natural or catastrophic force. Trees grow thickly in the southern reaches of the area, and through them can be barely glimpsed the shimmer of what is either an extremely small lake or an extremely large pond (Avrenne would have to take measurements to be certain). Nestled among the trees and with a fine view of the water is a strangely ominous manor house, built in a Lordaeronian style but from local red bricks.
Avrenne is dressed for the ride appropriately — that is to say, it's a true riding habit dress, one that allows her to sit comfortably on a horse, but when she dismounts, the split skirt appears as a full dress, of a deep, dark blue trimmed with a warm gray suggestive of silver. The blue brings out a bit more of the contrast of the warmth of her skin. Her hair has been fastened back in its customary way, pinned away from her face into a neat twist of a bun. If she's wearing cosmetics, they're once again subtle — a darkening of her lashes, maybe a slight reddening of her lips.
Her eyes take in the information — perhaps she would measure the water, another time — and her face has that cool, collected appearance that seems to be her habitual expression.
She approaches the house with that walk of hers, head held high, leaving her horse to the grooms tending, to knock on it five minutes before she is expected.
An extremely stereotypical butler answers the door; he is balding and grayhaired, and dressed impeccably.
"Good afternoon, Your Grace," he says. "On behalf of Captain Tyrrell, I welcome you to Drakewatch. Please make yourself comfortable in the sitting room, and my lord will be with you shortly. May I fetch you water or tea after your long ride?"
Avrenne pauses in consideration, and there's a small weight to her words as she says, "Thank you, but no, nothing please." She flicks her eyes around the entryway, moving to the sitting room.
"Very well, Your Grace. The Captain should be down in a– "
The Captain is there, dressed all in black as usual. He appears around the corner so swiftly that the butler gives a slight start before recovering his butlerly composure.
There's a brief, but clear startle at the sight of the captain from the duchess, as swiftly covered as she can, although her right hand goes to her waist and remains there a long beat.
"Very good, sir" says the butler with a bow, and then seems to cast Fade as he removes himself from the area. He is not, it seems, intimately familiar or comfortable with the Captain.
Zath hangs back for a moment, trying to read Avrenne with his glacier-blue eyes, before speaking.
Avrenne's expression returns to its usual appearance — that cold, unfeeling duchess with her emotions locked away, and she very slowly lowers her right hand from her waist. "Captain, thank you for your invitation to your lovely home."
A corner of his mouth tips up in a sardonic smile. "Oh, yes, it's lovely, in the sense that a child's drawing is lovely. An effort was made to please; I will grant it that. But thank you for your courtesy," he adds with a shallow bow. “I do have something lovely to show you, however, if you will walk the grounds with me. Consider it a congratulatory gift, as I have been informed of your engagement. I shan't keep you long, but you will soon see why there was no other way to arrange this particular transaction."
Avrenne's brows go up, even as she dips into the automatic return curtsy. There's a flicker of something like surprise that he's heard of the engagement, but she nods. "I see." There's a hesitation, a pause of a beat too long, before Avrenne brings her hand up in that elegant arc to await an escort to appear under her fingers — fingers which feel cooler than ever before should they land on anything. "Do lead on then, Captain."
Zath holds out his arm in a gentlemanly fashion to accept her hand, and then begins to lead her deeper into the house, presumably toward a back door.
The house has a freshly-built quality; it does not feel lived in. It is sufficiently decorated, but in a hollow, presentational way that has the feeling of an open house meant to attract buyers, rather than a place where people live.
He leads her to a back door, where the butler is already waiting to open the door for the both of them. Zath does not acknowledge the butler as they step outside; here there is a beautiful view of the pond/lake, and on its far side a few horses can be seen grazing. There is a little plot of land with edible items growing, but only for the household, it would seem by the size; this is not a place suited for growing crops for sale.
He appears to be leading her toward the stables, or perhaps he is just using that route to get around the water's edge to something beyond it.
Avrenne walks alongside him, her eyes flicking around at her surroundings, and perhaps keeping an eye on where they are to be observed by an outside source. There's a calm to her, however, a settled aspect that is new to Zath's sight, having never seen it since that first moment in Northrend. She seems like she could stroll along all day in a peaceful silence.
Zath also seems disinclined to speak. The silence is indeed peaceful, and the air crisp, as mountain air tends to be. He doesn't look at Avrenne as they walk, either. There is a strange quality to his silence, something penitent and almost sad. But he too seems relaxed, or perhaps the better word would be resigned.
As they approach the stable it becomes clear that there are a lot of horses on the property, to judge by the number of stalls. More than half of the stalls are currently empty, but there are two young men at work cleaning them with the hurried pace of those with More Work to Do, suggesting that the empties do have assigned occupants who will be returning to them before day's end.
As Zath and Avrenne approach, the two young men stop what they're doing and stand at strict military attention, saluting.
"At ease," Zath says to them. "Grant, will you bring her out?"
"Yes, sir," says the fairer of the two young men, running away around a corner and out of sight. The other returns to his work.
A nearby chestnut warhorse stares inquisitively at Avrenne.
Avrenne seems quite familiar with stables, and there's a sense to her that here, she's in a place that she belongs. Avrenne makes a faint little, "Oh," at the sight of the chestnut warhorse, and then gives it a careful, closed mouth smile and avoids direct eye contact even as she takes note of the interest. "Hello there," she says to the horse, only audible to Zath by such close proximity, a warm sound to her voice.
Zath stands patiently, arm still there for Avrenne's hand to rest upon, but otherwise seeming strangely indifferent to or even unaware of her presence. He watches after the direction that young Grant went, and in a moment the young man returns, leading a familiar dapple gray pony with a luxurious long mane.
"Greygale," says Zath coolly, "may I present Her Grace, the Duchess Avrenne Esprit, your new mistress?" He turns to Avrenne. "Greygale, I'm certain, needs no introduction to you. Congratulations on your engagement, and may this gift stand as an expression of my good wishes for your and the Commodore's future happiness."
Avrenne has kept her hand lightly on Zath's arm, as though unsure when or if she would be escorted somewhere further, and so it is palpable when her hand tightens on his arm, in addition to the surprise written on her face, not at the sight of the pony — no, the shock of it all comes at the declaration of who she belongs to. Avrenne tears her gaze from the pony to look up at Zath, dark eyes wide and searching, a heavy question in them looking for his gaze. Her attention on him is intense enough to almost give the sense that the rest of the stables, the staff, the horses, all of it, has been banished. Or perhaps it is just the two of them have been banished, moved somewhere else for that space of time, held in a little bubble.
Zath glances at her, and his ice-blue gaze hangs up on hers for a moment before he tears it away.
"Grant, Brightman, take a walk," he says.
"Yes, sir!" they say in unison. Grant hands the halter lead over to Tyrrell, and Brightman drops his pitchfork like it burned him. They both scurry out.
Zath, in turn, offers the lead rope to Avrenne. "She's rested and ready for the trip to Fallon House, whenever you like. You are welcome to stay here for as long as you need to refresh yourself for the return trip."
Avrenne hasn't looked away from him yet — who knows if those stable hands even still exist in her mind — and she's looking at Zath like she's trying to solve a particularly difficult equation in her mind and refusing to use a calculator to help. In the end though, at the mention of the Fallon House, there's a flicker around her eyes. "Why?" It doesn't seem to be a question in response to what he's said as much as the question in her mind that's been held there, unsolvable, in her mind.
Zath continues to patiently hold out the lead rope toward her. "Don't you want her?" he says, with the air of a man who was fairly certain his calculations were correct, but is willing to hear otherwise if true.
"I don't understand you," Avrenne says, in an echo of another night, as she reaches out a hand, not for the rope, but for his hand holding onto it, and there's something pleading in the tone, as if underneath the statement is an ask to help her to understand.
"It is a very good thing, isn't it, that you no longer need to." He gets all the way through the sentence with the same calm, resigned tone before just a lightning-flash of something raw and grieving passes over his face.
Avrenne's hand tightens on his rather than letting go, as she takes that same step forward to him that she's done over and over again, looking at his face with a soft expression in her eyes. "No, I no longer need to," she agrees. "That does not change that I want to, even now." There's a small catch in her voice, a moment of something vulnerable there under that composure still wrapping around her like a security blanket.
Greygale regards them both with a patient expression, just a good little pony waiting to find out what her Job is as Zath continues to hold the lead rope toward Avrenne.
"You wanted her," he says, as though this should explain everything. But then, his confidence perhaps undermined by her confusion, he adds, "Didn't you?"
"Yes. I wanted her. I have always wanted something just like her before, since I was very young. But I could not have her, because I…" Avrenne swallows slightly, a small flash of her throat with it. "I could not keep her. I had to think of my wards, and one of them has a fear of horses that goes far beyond simple nervousness, and we are too small a household to not have necessitated the interaction regularly. Even had I been willing to spend the money on that ever climbing bid, I could never have kept her. I accepted it, when I saw her, that she wouldn't be mine, and I'd be content with what I have. But I wanted her. I still want her. I had let her go. I didn't expect to see her again." There's small tears forming in those dark eyes, lending a slight sheen of brightness to them, and it's obvious from the intensity of her gaze on Zath's that she's not speaking in a single straightforward line about this pony.
Zath firmly takes Avrenne's hand from his, and then more gently presses the lead rope into it as he did the healthstone, closing her fingers around it. This time, however, instead of kissing her hand, he releases it.
"Your days of wanting what you cannot have are over," he says softly, lacing both his hands behind his back as though to keep them out of reach. "The Commodore will see to that. You will want for nothing, from this day forward. You will both be very happy, I think."
Avrenne's expression shutters as he takes her hand off his, and it's that same sense again that she's drawn the drapes and closed the door to her thoughts, as she stands there with the lead rope in her hand. At least it isn't on fire. Yet.
"I expect I will be, yes. I am very pleased with the match, and more certain of my future than I have been in a very long time. We have had a meeting of minds from the first, and we both want the same things; it was a very easy decision, once it was an option that was offered. The Commodore seems equally pleased with the exchange, to have acquired what he wanted at a price he was more than willing to pay."
"I knew you would be well suited," he says. "I am glad you had no further objections. It will please me to see you both happy. Or… to hear of your happiness, rather. I won't trouble you further," he says in the tone of one who is certain he is providing her with reassurance, rather than taking his ball and going home. "Once I lose the House seat I shall return to my strange little family in Northrend and carry on as I always have, and you can I hope, in time, forget all the strife that this strange interim has caused you."
Avrenne draws herself up in that way that she does, like she's trying to ensure that she seems as tall as possible, that little head tilt on display. "I see." She holds onto the lead rope with both hands, clasping onto it in front of her. "I hope that it is some consolation that I must admit that you were right, Captain. You have been trying to tell me that you did not want what I was offering. And that — although I did not know it — someone else would, who I had long dismissed as impossible because I believed the bid already placed by another, and I do not outbid my friends. But, there was no bid, in fact. He was always an option, though I did not know it.
"So, you were right from the first. Had you not sent me back out there to dance as if I were entertaining the option seriously, I would not have met the Commodore so, and we would not have had reason to know how well suited we are. You were even right about how long it takes to fall in love with someone. So quick, it seems, it can be. I have known the Commodore less than a week, but I love him, even so. He does not feel the same, and that is exactly as I wish. I know he made the choice with his head, not his heart."
Again that slight lightning-flash of grief passes through the cold sky of his gaze, but then his expression settles back into calm resignation. "He is an easy man to love — I imagine." This last was added maybe just a teeeeny bit too late. "You can see, now, I hope, that while my actions may have appeared inexplicable or capricious, I have had your best interests at heart for some time now — if not necessarily from the very first. But I have sufficiently explained, I hope, why my initial response to you was so hostile. I assure you that I now wish for nothing other than your happiness. And his."
"Do you." Avrenne's expression flickers, a shake to her breathing. "Do you really wish for nothing but my happiness?" The words come out almost with a hiss of something like anger to them. There's a good way to tell if that's anger or not. The rope doesn't look like it's on fire, at least, but it's hard to say how hot they feel from those several feet between them.
"Of course," he says immediately, almost fervently. But then something wary appears in his eyes. "And yet it seems that somehow… once again, I have offended." He lets out a sharp, brittle laugh. "I should have just had someone ride the pony to Fallon House. But then that likely would have made you angry as well, with its rudeness."
He throws up his hands, and turns to pace a few steps away before suddenly turning back to her.
"What do you want?" he says in a tone of such pleading desperation that the pony's ears twitch backward, and it shuffles its feet nervously. "Just tell me. I am so desperately tired of playing the villain in your tale. What more do you want me to do to prove— to prove my good will?"
"I want you to not leave me the moment that there is no longer the prize of my marriage to be won as if it's the only reason you were ever interested in me!" Avrenne shouts it with the force of a dam breaking, from years and years of something built up — and it's clear in the purging of it from her that it is not only his own addition that gives it such intensity.
She pulls it back as fast as she can, trembling slightly with it, her face moving in flickers and flickers of pain, tears forming up that she refuses to let fall, a hand going out to steady the pony from potentially startling at the sudden loud sounds from the humans making face noises.
"No," he half-whispers in apparent shock. "I never wanted the prize of your marriage to begin with, I only wanted —"
Oops. He visibly backtracks. He doesn't want things, gosh, that would be rude.
"I enjoyed — I — it doesn't matter. I'm irrelevant to you now. Should never have been relevant at all. It isn't about what I want. Nothing I want ever makes any sense. I'm not leaving you, I'm not leaving anything! I was never even here!"
What he's saying seems to make perfect sense, to him at least.
"You are still here. You don't get to…" Avrenne puts a hand on her waist, like she's trying to hold something there, lips trembling slightly, and she presses them together hard. It takes her only a second or two before she does the same thing of the trick of forcing herself to look as composed as she wishes she really was.
"You said you did not the want the marriage that I did. I heard what you said about me, and who you think I am. But that was not what I was offering you, and we both knew it. I offered a marriage of a very specific sort, and you rejected it. The Commodore does want that marriage, and I want it with him. It's what I have always hoped I would find. I am very happy with it, in every way. I expect that we will make an exceptional House together." Her eyes go to Zath's, and her voice grows quieter, harder to hear, but not yet a whisper. "But that does not mean that I have everything I want. Not if you leave."
He moves toward her, hands reaching out, but stops just short, letting his hands fall to his sides. He searches her face.
"Tell me," he says, in his softest, warm-towel-after-a-bath voice. "Tell me what it is that you want from me. You– " Here his voice breaks on a strange little laugh. "You threw me out of your house, last I saw you. What am I to think?" His eyes continue to search hers, soft and uncertain.
"I rescinded my offer of a marriage to a duchess for the benefit of both of our houses," Avrenne says softly, and she is having trouble holding his gaze, but she gamely tries. "I am offering something else now. I am offering if you would be interested in the woman, aware that it will never end in marriage, or children, where you will need to wait until after a wedding, but that you could have just her, if not anything else she can do for you." A pause, two small sharp inhales. "Just Avrenne." There's something horribly vulnerable about her, standing there in the stables. She looks like she might shatter if she's touched in just the wrong way.
Zath drifts nearer, his expression confused and tormented, his hands hovering at either side of her as though he wants to close them around her upper arms but is afraid she might shatter if she's touched in just the wrong way.
"That's all I — that's everything —" His voice is rough, and closes in on itself. He laces his hands behind his back again, but stays close. "I don't want to — interfere in what you have now with Siamus." He seems to have no trouble using the intimacy of the given name. "But please, know at least that I would — I would welcome it, if it could do no harm. That I — have thought of you — you must know this by now. But I cannot — I don't want to do harm, to either of you."
His eyes on her are pleading with her to, just this once, understand him.
Avrenne keeps her own hands on the pony's lead, and neck, watching him like she's afraid he'll teleport away, although he's not the one of the two of them who can do so. "The Commodore and I have an accord on the subjects of any lovers taken. He will be allowed his as they are, and I…" Avrenne swallows again, that movement of her throat as she keeps her eyes on Zath's. "Will be allowed mine, after the wedding, with the sole prohibiting clause that there will be no children. I agree with it in full. I would not want to hurt him in any way. I will speak to him about it, to be certain that there would be nothing that could alter your friendship with him."
Friendship is a word for it. It's not the wrong word per se, but it's definitely not the only word for it. It's fine. Someone will tell her eventually.
Zath gives another strange laugh. "Yes, please, tell him that you wish to be my lover." He visibly relaxes, stands slightly taller, as though someone has removed a heavy pack from his shoulders. "Whatever he says to either of us in response, I shall abide by it faithfully, I promise you that."
Avrenne's eyes narrow at the laugh, although she doesn't seem to come to any conclusion as to the nature of why. "Then, pending the Commodore's final vote, you agree to the conditions of this arrangement?" Avrenne asks it in that voice of someone who finds comfort in formality, but there's that sense that she's holding onto the lead rope a little too tightly, as if afraid that she's going to hear him say no. "That it is what you want from me."
"It is," he says, his gaze intent. There is a pause, as some wheels seem to turn in his mind. "But be certain that you tell him that I would not steal so much as a half-second's kiss from a lady of his without his express consent, and that I required you ask it of him. And tell him that he is free to say anything he likes in response. That last part is very important; I would like you to deliver that word for word. Can you do that?"
Avrenne gives him a quelling sort of look, as though she doesn't regularly have to remember much more difficult things. But she nods. "Yes, of course." She holds up the lead for the pony. "In the meantime, will you keep her in trust for me? In promise that regardless of the answer, that I will come back to give you it. I am not prepared for the journey of riding her anywhere I could keep her, and if you would see to returning the one I took here, I have a quicker way back to Stormwind."
Zath frowns slightly. "You're welcome to stay here and rest; there are literally dozens of empty rooms of which you might avail yourself before your return journey. I can even leave the premises so there is no appearance of impropriety."
"I would rather return home sooner. I have been away quite a lot recently, and my presence there…stabilizes things as necessary." Avrenne holds the lead with a mild expression. "Also it is a symbol. It says something that I am trying to say to you." A flicker of something of a smile.
"That you will not take anything I attempt to give you?" His answering smile is wry.
"That I'm leaving this here because if you try to leave, or deny that you are here, I will have a reason to chase after you," Avrenne's smile grows a little.
"I won't make you chase me," he says solemnly. "You've been through enough. I was only planning to leave because I thought it was for your benefit, and his. But if you promise to return for her, I will leave her here."
He gently takes the lead rope from Avrenne. Greygale looks at him with about as close to a look of confusion as a pony is capable of. What is even happening right now.
"But I can ease your return journey, if you wish. I could summon you. But it will require me to … ah… slightly… touch your soul. Not take anything from it, but simply… make a sort of… imprint. Then, given your consent, I can summon you at any time. Are you familiar with how a warlock summons works?"
"Yes, though I have never been summoned personally; I have seen it done. I have had a warlock touch my soul before," Avrenne says, and there's a cross of a playful tease in her voice, but a look in those eyes that could melt even a glacier. "But not in a ritual."
Zath narrows his eyes. "You absolute succubus," he says in a scolding tone with just enough of a breathless edge to indicate that the glacier has been sufficiently melted. "If you are going to suddenly develop a penchant for saying terribly romantic things, I may need to draw a circle to contain you, for my own safety."
He takes a little breath and looks to the pony, as though the pony is somehow to blame for all this. Which she sort of is. The pony shifts her weight and snorts softly. Zath returns his gaze to Avrenne.
"With your permission," he says, "I shall imprint your soul in a more literal sense — no actual ritual needed, it's quite simple to do — and then from that point forward I may attempt to summon you at any time. I will generally prearrange it by letter, as I would any other visit. You will feel it, a sort of… hm. I have heard it described as a 'knock on the mind.' You will know it is from me. You may accept or refuse. If you accept, you will feel briefly disoriented, as though falling slowly, and then you will find yourself standing before me and whoever assisted me in stabilizing the gateway."
Avrenne takes a step forward, a wicked look in those dark eyes and a smile still tugging at her lips enough that it's clear she's trying to repress it, but not quite managing it. "Very well. I grant you permission to touch and leave an imprint on my soul for the purpose of a summoning."
His eyes travel up and down her form briefly, as though he is strongly tempted to touch and leave an imprint somewhere else. But he does not. He simply closes his eyes and lifts a hand toward her, his other hand still casually holding the pony's lead rope.
For a hair's breadth of a moment she feels them connect, but it is (perhaps sadly), not terribly intimate - it feels more like a calibration, a sort of click as the two of them subtly align in some metaphysical way. You Are An Ally Now, is the general vibe. Not quite as romantic as the other soul-touching he has apparently already done.
He lowers his hand and opens his eyes. "There. Now I shall resist the urge to summon you every hour on the hour. Do hurry up with that wedding, won't you?"
Avrenne is startled into one of those laughs of hers — a rush of a warm gust of summer air just when one expected a chill, a laugh that reaches out in its own much more intimate way. "What do you think I have been trying to do all this time?" Is the little tease in her voice, as she pulls out a teleport stone from a pocket. She holds it between both her hands, with no fanfare, no flash. She looks focused like she's looking for something in the middle distance, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. And then a soft whispered, "There."
She turns her attention to Zath and gives him a smile. "I am trusting that you will not run, Captain. And I need you to know, no matter what is decided for what may happen after the wedding, that I love the Commodore." Her eyes go unfocused for a moment as though she's checking that she has her destination in place, and then focuses them back on him. "But I love you, too. Stormwind." The words are close enough together to be a little odd, but it's clear why a moment after — at the word for her destination there's a blurring of her, and then a pop, and she's gone.
Tyrrell stares after her for a moment. Takes in a strange, quick little breath. Stares some more.
Turns and stares at the pony.
The pony stares back.
Tyrrell steps toward Greygale and lays a hand on her neck, sliding his hand gently beneath her ridiculously long mane. Impulsively, he presses a kiss to the beautifully groomed forelock. The pony is unimpressed by this.
"There, there now," he says tenderly. "I'm sure she loves you, as well."