Her fingers twist in the thick burgundy fabric that she pulls tighter and she is so, so still; it looks like calm, except that her knuckles are white and the breath she releases comes out slow. Hard to say if what she's feeling is relief or not; done, good, but done, beyond the ready undoing. What’s she going to do, get a second opinion?
From who? Done. She looks down at her hands.
“I can bind them under clothing,” she says, “it doesn't hurt. They hurt at first, but it’s ... lessened.”
(Growing pains.)
She looks at the floorboards where a rainbow had been, a moment ago, too polished to call dull but ordinary, again. “Can you fix my face.”
It is entirely possible that the maintenance of this calm depends heavily upon his answer.
"Yes," If this asks a touch more precision than he's put into mending soldiers' split faces, "I'm very good at this."
Arrogant and true, and fishing for reaction: For a glance up from that ponderous floor, and the harbor somewhere below. (He is very good at this, and he hasn't a notion how it's undone.)
"Kept me five years out of the Circle," They toss corpses at sea. He would like her to look up. "When your man's back with the references —"
It is finally that last thing that makes her look up at him, difficult to read in part because of the mess Sarrux made of her face and in part the way she is when she’s troubled, when the answer to what’s going through her head isn’t altogether more obvious to her, either. She is thinking: he is good at this. He has had practise at this, or similar enough. He’s a skilled healer; that’s why it had been him she’d asked for in the first place. She is thinking about how few people he has attended are likely to have had portraiture references to show him where their fucking bones go. She is thinking about the years that they’ve known each other, and what that’s looked like.
She is thinking, that is more than he has to do. She is thinking, suddenly, humiliatingly, that she can’t burst into tears because she might make his job harder,
tears are streaking slowly, silently down her face when she finally looks up.
Guilfoyle chooses that moment to return, purposefully heavy footfall announcing him moments before the door opens, two portraits and a sheaf of paper tucked under his arm.
He's reaching for a handkerchief when boots fall, chair scrapes, and palm closes upon page. A relief to turn his own gaze aside. She's aged since these were sketched: The scrape of years between twenty and thirty are terribly shallow until one need study them. The lift of baby fat, the sink of flesh and socket. All the time they've known each other. How has it looked?
"I'll need to reach into your mouth, by the gums," He hooks a thumb under his own lip, pulls a crude reference. Easy now to spy a missing tooth. "My other hand will sit over your browbone."
Frame the pieces. Mend the break. Don't fuck it up –
"Lean back, and brace your head on the chair. This will hurt," Better if she were asleep. But they were both in Qarinus, and he doesn't care to see her so terribly still. "Not so badly as the break. Whenever you're ready."
Guilfoyle props the portraits along a wall in Isaac’s own eyeline— one familiar, Guenievre greeting every visitor to the boat since her daughter had decided one of her own nudes might be too confronting, the other ... confronting. Almost not helpful: it is a view from the back, the most recent image of her rendered in oil still predating Skyhold by a matter of months. The scars from the rage demon had been added, but not the wyvern's teeth or the matter of her eye,
but it is at least the correct side of her face that is rendered in mostly-profile, turned just enough toward the viewer as she gazes back over her shoulder with an eye that the woman depicted no longer possesses. For a time it had hung in the library at the de Coucy manor, but it had come down to the boat with her and hadn’t been difficult for Guilfoyle to put hands upon when it seemed needful. He remains, taking up a habitual sentry position, and Gwenaëlle does as she’s bid.
She isn’t half bad at that, but there’s usually more commentary. Her gaze catches on his hand, his mouth; she swallows, sets her resolve, and:
“I’m ready,” when she’s as much that way as she’s going to get.
"If you take off my finger, I'll tell everyone it was a dragon."
He won't tell anyone. Must presume Strange knows, must hope she will impress the importance of not committing tonight to record. If Isaac keeps his own,
Frame the pieces, mend the break.
Strange could walk her through this. Heat blazes against gum. Tiny vessels burst, pool, clot; calling bodies. Osteocytes, and t-cells, and neutrophils, and so many other unseen spirits. Deep, drawn from pulsing marrow, they hear it. They come.
Strange could tell her that story. Explain the abstractions that guide his hand, the metaphor of his understanding. All magic requires one –
Isaac's threads another shape, a familiar wheel. Wind death about and you'll unspool life. Around, and around, into growing callus; cartilage beginning to string for the days' journey. This would heal, without him. Not quickly enough. Not nicely enough. His thumb braces, shoves. It's quick. It isn't nice.
Pressure intensifies, magic probing past the reach of than stubby nails. He is trying to focus. He is trying not to think of the wide things folded at her back, blood pumping along eager new vein. Her body wants its own shape. By excruciating degree, it finds one.
Scar knits. Bone bridges bone. Teeming cables draw taut, and at once, the spell smears away. Isaac sinks back, and wipes the saliva from his hand. A moment to find his breath, heart too hard and fast in his chest.
(Energy need travel somewhere. Couldn't chance it sending it out through her skin.)
She looks herself. She will look herself, given rest and time. Only Gwenaelle might ever notice a difference, and she'd be hard-pressed to put a finger upon it, save to put her fingers upon it: A bump of tissue, worn away over the slow-coming year. Pull upon life and you'll find death, too; the body eats its own bones, a steady erosion of osteocytes.
Putting her fingers upon it is almost the first thing she does—
which hurts enough to make her sorry for doing it. Of course: magic isn’t a limitless resource. The work he’s being asked to do is already delicate, difficult, complex. The same way no one’s chugging an entire healing potion for a bruise— the break is what matters, what needs fixing. The bruising, the tenderness, time will heal those things the way it would’ve without his intervention. Or: not exactly as it would have. Specifically.
That she can touch it and only hiss, though. That it feels like it’s healing, not...
She feels sort of ill, but that probably has more to do with how little she’s been managing to eat. How much she’s immediately going to be able to keep down is another story entirely. And with her head pounding and her stomach roiling and the disconcerting awareness of what Isaac’s fingers taste like,
“I think we can safely say,” more clearly than before, “that I fucking owe you, Isaac.”
A secret never comes free. But the years stretch, and he's kept worse than this. Hand curls into handkerchief. Gareth, Ilias, John. Charlotte. Leander, Derrica, even that list he handed Holden —
Secrets. He keeps them more often than not, a grisly little collection. People keep killing him insects, as though Isaac should want them skewered, arranged in neat rows. Under the belly of this boat, termites squirm unseen. Squalid and free.
"You don't," It's natural she shouldn't trust that. "Just don't get us both killed."
Gwen brings a hand to bruise. Isaac sets the cloth aside, and stands again, unsteady. It'll pass.
"Water, rest. More water than you think," The wings to support. "I'd advise bland food, but we are in Kirkwall."
"If you need call on me again, ask a delivery for Strange." Less like than an escort to draw attention. He thinks of offering some comfort, considers the hollow taste of it. Bland food. "I'll take myself back."
It’s not that she doesn’t listen to everything else he says — she does. Nods along, more water, bland food. (It will be some time before she keeps anything down anything like reliably, but no one is going to be surprised by that, least of all Gwenaëlle.) It’s just that he gets to the end of it, standing, and she reaches out,
her hand curling around his wrist, clammy with sweat, a firm grip. She says,
“I do,” quietly, like it means something that she is placing in his hand. And: “I’ll be alright. He and I can manage.”
Stephen, not Guilfoyle, who had stirred at her sudden motion, and moves no further.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
From who? Done. She looks down at her hands.
“I can bind them under clothing,” she says, “it doesn't hurt. They hurt at first, but it’s ... lessened.”
(Growing pains.)
She looks at the floorboards where a rainbow had been, a moment ago, too polished to call dull but ordinary, again. “Can you fix my face.”
It is entirely possible that the maintenance of this calm depends heavily upon his answer.
no subject
Arrogant and true, and fishing for reaction: For a glance up from that ponderous floor, and the harbor somewhere below. (He is very good at this, and he hasn't a notion how it's undone.)
"Kept me five years out of the Circle," They toss corpses at sea. He would like her to look up. "When your man's back with the references —"
Which must be any minute now.
no subject
She is thinking, that is more than he has to do. She is thinking, suddenly, humiliatingly, that she can’t burst into tears because she might make his job harder,
tears are streaking slowly, silently down her face when she finally looks up.
Guilfoyle chooses that moment to return, purposefully heavy footfall announcing him moments before the door opens, two portraits and a sheaf of paper tucked under his arm.
no subject
He's reaching for a handkerchief when boots fall, chair scrapes, and palm closes upon page. A relief to turn his own gaze aside. She's aged since these were sketched: The scrape of years between twenty and thirty are terribly shallow until one need study them. The lift of baby fat, the sink of flesh and socket. All the time they've known each other. How has it looked?
"I'll need to reach into your mouth, by the gums," He hooks a thumb under his own lip, pulls a crude reference. Easy now to spy a missing tooth. "My other hand will sit over your browbone."
Frame the pieces. Mend the break. Don't fuck it up –
"Lean back, and brace your head on the chair. This will hurt," Better if she were asleep. But they were both in Qarinus, and he doesn't care to see her so terribly still. "Not so badly as the break. Whenever you're ready."
no subject
but it is at least the correct side of her face that is rendered in mostly-profile, turned just enough toward the viewer as she gazes back over her shoulder with an eye that the woman depicted no longer possesses. For a time it had hung in the library at the de Coucy manor, but it had come down to the boat with her and hadn’t been difficult for Guilfoyle to put hands upon when it seemed needful. He remains, taking up a habitual sentry position, and Gwenaëlle does as she’s bid.
She isn’t half bad at that, but there’s usually more commentary. Her gaze catches on his hand, his mouth; she swallows, sets her resolve, and:
“I’m ready,” when she’s as much that way as she’s going to get.
no subject
He won't tell anyone. Must presume Strange knows, must hope she will impress the importance of not committing tonight to record. If Isaac keeps his own,
Frame the pieces, mend the break.
Strange could walk her through this. Heat blazes against gum. Tiny vessels burst, pool, clot; calling bodies. Osteocytes, and t-cells, and neutrophils, and so many other unseen spirits. Deep, drawn from pulsing marrow, they hear it. They come.
Strange could tell her that story. Explain the abstractions that guide his hand, the metaphor of his understanding. All magic requires one –
Isaac's threads another shape, a familiar wheel. Wind death about and you'll unspool life. Around, and around, into growing callus; cartilage beginning to string for the days' journey. This would heal, without him. Not quickly enough. Not nicely enough. His thumb braces, shoves. It's quick. It isn't nice.
Pressure intensifies, magic probing past the reach of than stubby nails. He is trying to focus. He is trying not to think of the wide things folded at her back, blood pumping along eager new vein. Her body wants its own shape. By excruciating degree, it finds one.
Scar knits. Bone bridges bone. Teeming cables draw taut, and at once, the spell smears away. Isaac sinks back, and wipes the saliva from his hand. A moment to find his breath, heart too hard and fast in his chest.
(Energy need travel somewhere. Couldn't chance it sending it out through her skin.)
She looks herself. She will look herself, given rest and time. Only Gwenaelle might ever notice a difference, and she'd be hard-pressed to put a finger upon it, save to put her fingers upon it: A bump of tissue, worn away over the slow-coming year. Pull upon life and you'll find death, too; the body eats its own bones, a steady erosion of osteocytes.
Of the wheel, turning.
no subject
which hurts enough to make her sorry for doing it. Of course: magic isn’t a limitless resource. The work he’s being asked to do is already delicate, difficult, complex. The same way no one’s chugging an entire healing potion for a bruise— the break is what matters, what needs fixing. The bruising, the tenderness, time will heal those things the way it would’ve without his intervention. Or: not exactly as it would have. Specifically.
That she can touch it and only hiss, though. That it feels like it’s healing, not...
She feels sort of ill, but that probably has more to do with how little she’s been managing to eat. How much she’s immediately going to be able to keep down is another story entirely. And with her head pounding and her stomach roiling and the disconcerting awareness of what Isaac’s fingers taste like,
“I think we can safely say,” more clearly than before, “that I fucking owe you, Isaac.”
no subject
A secret never comes free. But the years stretch, and he's kept worse than this. Hand curls into handkerchief. Gareth, Ilias, John. Charlotte. Leander, Derrica, even that list he handed Holden —
Secrets. He keeps them more often than not, a grisly little collection. People keep killing him insects, as though Isaac should want them skewered, arranged in neat rows. Under the belly of this boat, termites squirm unseen. Squalid and free.
"You don't," It's natural she shouldn't trust that. "Just don't get us both killed."
Gwen brings a hand to bruise. Isaac sets the cloth aside, and stands again, unsteady. It'll pass.
"Water, rest. More water than you think," The wings to support. "I'd advise bland food, but we are in Kirkwall."
"If you need call on me again, ask a delivery for Strange." Less like than an escort to draw attention. He thinks of offering some comfort, considers the hollow taste of it. Bland food. "I'll take myself back."
no subject
her hand curling around his wrist, clammy with sweat, a firm grip. She says,
“I do,” quietly, like it means something that she is placing in his hand. And: “I’ll be alright. He and I can manage.”
Stephen, not Guilfoyle, who had stirred at her sudden motion, and moves no further.
“Thank you.”
She remembers to let go.