[His eyes follow her. Both legs ready to-- don't be stupid, she's got a bit more than a foot on you, you wouldn't be outrunning her if you went for it, idiot boy that turns to Einar's low growl in his ear, the smoke-laced edge of amused disappointment as ever, as always. The sting of it.
Thranduil is taller and a rifter but he's never made Yngvi feel little. Always strangely fond he reckons, Thranduil who asks after his hurts. Who has his place here and wouldn't do it this way. And Coupe is tall, is broad, is that sort of towering strength you'd say was a force but she's been his friend so long he gets to forget that. Get pissed in a cellar then spill your hurts and she just is. Not rifters or Templars or titles. There's a lesson in that somewhere.
This isn't-- None of him likes this, the nug is tucked back in his pocket, his coat is folded about himself as his shoulders move restlessly, trying to decide if he should be larger or smaller, which one gets him what, what works better in a strange room with a closed door with a strange woman. His heart is too fast, mouth dry, throat sticking to itself as if he didn't just finish a cup of tea. Breathe. Just breathe. What's the very worst thing that'll happen to you in here?
(He can imagine a lot of very bad things.)
Before he knew much of anything, there was an obedience instilled in him. The jerky snap of his head, jaw clenched tight so his mouth doesn't do anything he doesn't want it to.]
But you're not a goddess! You're just a woman, the same as everyone else that comes here and has to live here and it doesn't matter what you were there. D'you know what you sound like just-- just reeling off all of that? You sound mad. You sound like the mad terrible people in the tales that did terrible things and crushed all the small people right under them because they thought they were right! [His voice, perhaps regrettably, creeps up a whole octave, bottom lip starting to go alone with the whole chin; if he tried to clench his jaw any harder he'd have broken it. Sometimes the body does all it can to protect itself, and it gives in, says that no this is the time to be soft, stop doing this, stop making yourself terrible and hard even when you think it's what you want.
His eyes are very bright but he can't look away, wonders if this is how nugs feel before of wolves as his breath comes out of him in horrid staccato shudders.]
You can't make yourself that, you can't say you'll be that and expect people'll just go along with it - what happens if they turn around and say no your holiness? You gonna hold their feet to the fire? You're human. You don't know what-- you don't-- you--
[There's a horrible moment when he thinks that he's going to be sick. Or cry. The crying would be worse, his mouth is hot and salty for all that his face is dry.]
You should care about the Carta. You don't know shit and might have a dozen names when I got one and a second what got given to me by the man who took me and my brother out the gutter but the Carta is everywhere. They take people in Orzammar who've got nothing and they're in Darktown and Lowtown, and they're probably hobnobbin' with the nobles because they'll get you what you need. But you'll eat your own brothers and sisters, and if you have the choice of Deep Roads or Carta, or starving and Carta, you'd take it. You don't know because you're not from here. You won't ever know what it's like. To be part of that. To always know you're there. That you're in it.
[All of this is entirely the wrong approach with someone like Yngvi. And fear sharpens up all the parts of Yngvi that have only ever known what surviving is on a knife's edge in the dark. He wants her to shout, to be angry, to be told to leave because he has to go, he can't even breathe in this room, there's no air left--]
Open the door. [Is that him? It sounds very far-off, his own voice.] I want to leave.
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Thranduil is taller and a rifter but he's never made Yngvi feel little. Always strangely fond he reckons, Thranduil who asks after his hurts. Who has his place here and wouldn't do it this way. And Coupe is tall, is broad, is that sort of towering strength you'd say was a force but she's been his friend so long he gets to forget that. Get pissed in a cellar then spill your hurts and she just is. Not rifters or Templars or titles. There's a lesson in that somewhere.
This isn't-- None of him likes this, the nug is tucked back in his pocket, his coat is folded about himself as his shoulders move restlessly, trying to decide if he should be larger or smaller, which one gets him what, what works better in a strange room with a closed door with a strange woman. His heart is too fast, mouth dry, throat sticking to itself as if he didn't just finish a cup of tea. Breathe. Just breathe. What's the very worst thing that'll happen to you in here?
(He can imagine a lot of very bad things.)
Before he knew much of anything, there was an obedience instilled in him. The jerky snap of his head, jaw clenched tight so his mouth doesn't do anything he doesn't want it to.]
But you're not a goddess! You're just a woman, the same as everyone else that comes here and has to live here and it doesn't matter what you were there. D'you know what you sound like just-- just reeling off all of that? You sound mad. You sound like the mad terrible people in the tales that did terrible things and crushed all the small people right under them because they thought they were right! [His voice, perhaps regrettably, creeps up a whole octave, bottom lip starting to go alone with the whole chin; if he tried to clench his jaw any harder he'd have broken it. Sometimes the body does all it can to protect itself, and it gives in, says that no this is the time to be soft, stop doing this, stop making yourself terrible and hard even when you think it's what you want.
His eyes are very bright but he can't look away, wonders if this is how nugs feel before of wolves as his breath comes out of him in horrid staccato shudders.]
You can't make yourself that, you can't say you'll be that and expect people'll just go along with it - what happens if they turn around and say no your holiness? You gonna hold their feet to the fire? You're human. You don't know what-- you don't-- you--
[There's a horrible moment when he thinks that he's going to be sick. Or cry. The crying would be worse, his mouth is hot and salty for all that his face is dry.]
You should care about the Carta. You don't know shit and might have a dozen names when I got one and a second what got given to me by the man who took me and my brother out the gutter but the Carta is everywhere. They take people in Orzammar who've got nothing and they're in Darktown and Lowtown, and they're probably hobnobbin' with the nobles because they'll get you what you need. But you'll eat your own brothers and sisters, and if you have the choice of Deep Roads or Carta, or starving and Carta, you'd take it. You don't know because you're not from here. You won't ever know what it's like. To be part of that. To always know you're there. That you're in it.
[All of this is entirely the wrong approach with someone like Yngvi. And fear sharpens up all the parts of Yngvi that have only ever known what surviving is on a knife's edge in the dark. He wants her to shout, to be angry, to be told to leave because he has to go, he can't even breathe in this room, there's no air left--]
Open the door. [Is that him? It sounds very far-off, his own voice.] I want to leave.