The second trial was basically as his father had told him it would be, in the last letter. Oh, there was far too much dramatic posturing, but the important part was that, in the end, he was exonerated of his crimes against the crown, as well as his slight against his former commanderās house. It tasted a little bitter to know that this had much more to do with the fact that the house in question had fallen out of favor recently, and lacked for the allies it had once had in plenty, and quite a bit less to do with the justice of it, but even Lucien knew there was a time and place to take issue with these things and a time and place to accept what he was given and try to make it worth something. Nothing changed if he insisted on punishment for the latter while still maintaining his innocence on the former.
Even so, the verdict once read produced in him no sigh or show of relief, and if anything, it only felt that another weight had been placed upon his shoulders and his back. Heād almost forgotten what that felt likeāthe weight of the ghost of a crown, a specter of a throne. Not actual, perhaps never actual, but very, very possible. With nothing speaking against him now, at least in the legal sense, he was once more the heir, and he knew then that it was not going to be an easy weight to carry. It changed everything.
But there were also some senses in which it changed nothing at all.
His first act as an exonerated man was to bend his knee before the Empress and request an Imperial pardon for the bard that had once tried to kill him. He did not speak lies in Rilienās defense, only truths. He believed the Tranquil no danger to the realm, and sought the pardon for all the elf had done for him, special emphasis placed on the preservation of his life during the initial months of his exile. It would likely have been somewhat bad form to decline a request given in such a manner and at such a time, and Lucien knew that as well as any man did. Just because he disliked politics did not mean he failed to understand them. The request was granted.
What followed was almost more arduous than the trial. To be precise, there was a small party held in his honor. Most of those present at the dinner were friends, including most of his old comrades from his days as a Chevalier, but there was also a detachment of the Empressās most trusted dignitaries as well, people who would be insulted if not invited, and dangerous if insulted. So it went. Fortunately, dinner itself was followed with much less-formal socialization, and it was during this time that Lucien decided it was now or possibly never. And he really didnāt want it to be never.
āNot to drag you away from your very first Orlesian party, Sophia, butā¦ well, actually, no, that was exactly what I was planning on, if you werenāt too riveted.ā There was a wry half-smile on his face, and his tone was dry as a desert. His eyes were softer, though, giving him away as they tended to. āWould you perhaps like some fresh air?ā He held an elbow out slightly in invitation.
Sophia had been in conversation with Lucien's chevalier friend Liliane when he approached, though it was not an interruption, as the two had merely been catching up. Liliane, of course, had been respectfully avoiding delving too deeply into events that had occurred to Sophia in the recent past, as had most of the other guests. Apart from accepting the occasional condolences, Sophia had not really had to deal with it, something she appreciated very much.
"I would like that very much," she said, slipping an arm through Lucien's offered one, settling her other hand on his forearm. She offered Liliane a smile in parting. "If you'll excuse me. It was wonderful seeing you again."
Departing the rest of the party at Lucien's side, Sophia had to resist rolling her eyes at him, though she did playfully nudge him in the ribs with her elbow. "This isn't that bad, you know. I've been enjoying myself, at any rate." There were a number of threats to that enjoyment, but so far Sophia had been able to avoid letting any of them get in her way. Some of the guests were not present for Lucien exactly, and Sophia had enough political intuition to identify them. She simply spent her time with the rest. The trial had been a fairly heavy ordeal, but it had not turned out poorly.
They emerged out onto a balcony, and the fresh air was indeed refreshing, as well as the relative quiet as compared to the din of voices inside. Sophia had worn a dark blue dress tonight, not nearly as ravishing as what she'd attempted the night of her birthday, but enough for her to fit in well enough with the formalities of a party. She was glad, at least, that she had not been forced to any events where masks where the standard. The Orlesian nobility's sort of revelry in deception was not something she could identify with.
"I know I have already, but I wanted to thank you," she said as they reached the railing, looking out over part of Val Royeaux. Though she had seen a good portion of it by now, it still had a way of taking her breath away, and now, bathed in the cooler evening air and dim glow of dusk, it was no different. "This has been just what I needed, I think. To begin healing."
Not literally, of course. By now Sophia had recovered from the near fatal wound inflicted by the Arishok, and could probably return to as strenuous of activity as she liked upon her return to Kirkwall. But the distance, particularly, was helping her at least find some kind of peace, a more centered state of mind that she could return with, and confront the ordeals that previously had overwhelmed her. Where she would go was something that she still could not settle on, but the fact that she could go on was now a certainty in her mind.
Lucien smiled slightly, and inclined his head. āIām glad to hear it has helped.ā It could perhaps have hurt as much as anything, considering the similarities to situations she had encountered as the Viscountās daughter. But he trusted her to know what was going to harm more than assist her recovery, and he was happy this had done the latter.
Leaning forward and bracing his free hand against the balcony rail, Lucien looked out over the familiar vista with both eyes, focusing so the damaged one wasnāt so blurry. There was no denying the beauty of Val Royeaux, nor of the vistas he preferred on his own familyās lands. For all its shortcomings, his homeland was dear to his heart, and for as long as he was anywhere else, he would always feel the pull to be here once more. Yetā¦ for the moment, at least, he was not obligated to remain, and because of thatā¦
āSophia. Thereāsā¦ something Iāve been meaning to say. For several months now, actually.ā It went unsaid that the reasons heād held off had everything to do with the momentous events of those weeks. Taking a deep breath, he slowly lowered his arm and stepped a slightly larger distance away from her, so as to turn and speak to her properly. The spare light of dusk glinted off his silvered chainmail in places, but in moments like this, no amount of armor had ever made him feel secure in what he was doing. Actually, Lucien was not sure there had ever been moments like this before. Or rather, not for him.
His father had the right of itāactually attempting to say what he was thinking wasnāt far from making him into a craven. It was a bit too much to just spit it out as directly as he would have preferred, so he took the next best route available to him. āBeforeā¦ everything, I went to see your father,ā he confessed. āI wasnāt precisely sure how things were done, in Kirkwall, but I thought it was perhaps better to err on the side of tradition when it came to such an important matter, Iā¦ā He sighed through his nose, swallowing past the sudden, but not entirely unexpected, lump in his throat. Heād known it was going to be more difficult, now, when actual feelings were involved, but nothing anyone had ever said had prepared him for how much.
āI canātā¦ I canāt promise you anything, Sophia, as much as I want to be able to. I cannot say what will be required of me in a year, or five, or ten. One day, I will have to return here, and it is a call I cannot refuse. Butā¦ it is just as possible, I realized, that I could die tomorrow, and perhapsā¦ perhaps thatās given me some perspective.ā There was little point in dwelling on the uncertainty of a year or decade when the uncertainty of the next day was enough. And if thatā¦ if that was something he was willing to look past, then perhaps he could learn to look past the rest as well.
āSo, I suppose that, having said thatā¦ I still want to ask you. May Iāmay I court you, Sophia Dumar? Because Iām afraid that Iām rather desperately in love with you, and quite exhausted with telling myself why I should pretend Iām not.ā
Sophia had an idea of what Lucien had wanted to speak to her about, and try as she might to keep her cool on the way out, she found herself clutching the balcony railing much tighter than was necessary. She'd had as many nightmares about this moment as pleasant dreams, because the moment they finally forced themselves to confront this would inevitably tip the scales one way or the other, and there would be no turning back from there. In fact, she had planned to make a push herself before returning if Lucien did not, but it seemed she would not have to.
When the words I can't escaped his lips, she thought she might turn and run, cover her ears so that she might not hear other words that would follow. Words like never, duties, obligated, complicated, anything that implied the pulls that their births and their stations had over them, pulls that had always somehow gotten between them, when it seemed just as likely that they could have been pulled together. She used to be a noblewoman poised for a throne, while he was an exile out of favor. Now he had returned to good standing, but her floor had crumbled beneath her, and the idea of being drawn into that responsibility for life now terrified her.
But he did not speak those other words, and when she could truly see where he was headed, she clutched the railing all the harder, for fear that she might simply lift off and rise into the sky. Everything he said was of course already known by the both of them, but somehow hearing it out loud made it so real. She was at a loss for words herself, for once, and the one thing she could think about in that moment was how there was space between them, air separating them, and she despised that.
Sophia quickly stepped to Lucien, eliminating that space, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing him. She found herself on the verge of tears, but judging from the fact that she couldn't stop smiling, they were not the kind of tears she had been formerly shedding.
Breathless, she realized she needed to say something. Or maybe she didn't, but she wanted to, so she at last pulled away from him, though she didn't dare let her hands leave him. "I've wanted to do that for so long," was the first thing that came to mind, and she laughed, reddening slightly.
"Whatever happens in the future, to you or to me... I know that you love me, and you know that I love you." She broke into a teary eyed smile just from saying the words. "And we know that we were brave enough to try and make this work." There would always be the possibility of things crumbling to the ground, their feelings not enough to overcome the pulls of the world against them, but who would they be if they never tried? That would be the worst pain, something that Sophia could not bear. This was the way things were supposed to be.
Lucien didnāt blush, but from the smile on his face, equal parts sheepish and elated, he understood perfectly well where her feelings on the matter were coming from. He supposed that her point was on the mark exactly, and though some part of him would not be able to stop dreading what might happen, he believed it was fully possible not to let the dread be the prevailing instinct. Exhaling a deep, contented breath, he twined his arms around her back, almost as if to reassure himself that this was no dream, no conjuration of a sleeping mind, to be here and with her, but that what he saw was truth and she was solid and flesh and present. Yes, dread was conquerable.
Some part of him felt that anything was conquerable, just now.
āThat wasā¦ not exactly how I was expecting this to turn out,ā he admitted, relief and laughter and contentment warring for control of his tone. It came out breathier than heād intended it, but he was hardly concerned with his dignity at the moment, and found that he did not care. Still holding her to him, he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, savoring the contact for what it was. Heād denied himself this privilege for a very long time, restricted by politeness and decorum to only the most incidental or clinical of contacts. There was just something wrong with the world when you held your belovedās innards inside her abdomen before you were able to embrace her or even say the words themselves.
āBut youāll not hear me complaining.ā
Even so, the verdict once read produced in him no sigh or show of relief, and if anything, it only felt that another weight had been placed upon his shoulders and his back. Heād almost forgotten what that felt likeāthe weight of the ghost of a crown, a specter of a throne. Not actual, perhaps never actual, but very, very possible. With nothing speaking against him now, at least in the legal sense, he was once more the heir, and he knew then that it was not going to be an easy weight to carry. It changed everything.
But there were also some senses in which it changed nothing at all.
His first act as an exonerated man was to bend his knee before the Empress and request an Imperial pardon for the bard that had once tried to kill him. He did not speak lies in Rilienās defense, only truths. He believed the Tranquil no danger to the realm, and sought the pardon for all the elf had done for him, special emphasis placed on the preservation of his life during the initial months of his exile. It would likely have been somewhat bad form to decline a request given in such a manner and at such a time, and Lucien knew that as well as any man did. Just because he disliked politics did not mean he failed to understand them. The request was granted.
What followed was almost more arduous than the trial. To be precise, there was a small party held in his honor. Most of those present at the dinner were friends, including most of his old comrades from his days as a Chevalier, but there was also a detachment of the Empressās most trusted dignitaries as well, people who would be insulted if not invited, and dangerous if insulted. So it went. Fortunately, dinner itself was followed with much less-formal socialization, and it was during this time that Lucien decided it was now or possibly never. And he really didnāt want it to be never.
āNot to drag you away from your very first Orlesian party, Sophia, butā¦ well, actually, no, that was exactly what I was planning on, if you werenāt too riveted.ā There was a wry half-smile on his face, and his tone was dry as a desert. His eyes were softer, though, giving him away as they tended to. āWould you perhaps like some fresh air?ā He held an elbow out slightly in invitation.
Sophia had been in conversation with Lucien's chevalier friend Liliane when he approached, though it was not an interruption, as the two had merely been catching up. Liliane, of course, had been respectfully avoiding delving too deeply into events that had occurred to Sophia in the recent past, as had most of the other guests. Apart from accepting the occasional condolences, Sophia had not really had to deal with it, something she appreciated very much.
"I would like that very much," she said, slipping an arm through Lucien's offered one, settling her other hand on his forearm. She offered Liliane a smile in parting. "If you'll excuse me. It was wonderful seeing you again."
Departing the rest of the party at Lucien's side, Sophia had to resist rolling her eyes at him, though she did playfully nudge him in the ribs with her elbow. "This isn't that bad, you know. I've been enjoying myself, at any rate." There were a number of threats to that enjoyment, but so far Sophia had been able to avoid letting any of them get in her way. Some of the guests were not present for Lucien exactly, and Sophia had enough political intuition to identify them. She simply spent her time with the rest. The trial had been a fairly heavy ordeal, but it had not turned out poorly.
They emerged out onto a balcony, and the fresh air was indeed refreshing, as well as the relative quiet as compared to the din of voices inside. Sophia had worn a dark blue dress tonight, not nearly as ravishing as what she'd attempted the night of her birthday, but enough for her to fit in well enough with the formalities of a party. She was glad, at least, that she had not been forced to any events where masks where the standard. The Orlesian nobility's sort of revelry in deception was not something she could identify with.
"I know I have already, but I wanted to thank you," she said as they reached the railing, looking out over part of Val Royeaux. Though she had seen a good portion of it by now, it still had a way of taking her breath away, and now, bathed in the cooler evening air and dim glow of dusk, it was no different. "This has been just what I needed, I think. To begin healing."
Not literally, of course. By now Sophia had recovered from the near fatal wound inflicted by the Arishok, and could probably return to as strenuous of activity as she liked upon her return to Kirkwall. But the distance, particularly, was helping her at least find some kind of peace, a more centered state of mind that she could return with, and confront the ordeals that previously had overwhelmed her. Where she would go was something that she still could not settle on, but the fact that she could go on was now a certainty in her mind.
Lucien smiled slightly, and inclined his head. āIām glad to hear it has helped.ā It could perhaps have hurt as much as anything, considering the similarities to situations she had encountered as the Viscountās daughter. But he trusted her to know what was going to harm more than assist her recovery, and he was happy this had done the latter.
Leaning forward and bracing his free hand against the balcony rail, Lucien looked out over the familiar vista with both eyes, focusing so the damaged one wasnāt so blurry. There was no denying the beauty of Val Royeaux, nor of the vistas he preferred on his own familyās lands. For all its shortcomings, his homeland was dear to his heart, and for as long as he was anywhere else, he would always feel the pull to be here once more. Yetā¦ for the moment, at least, he was not obligated to remain, and because of thatā¦
āSophia. Thereāsā¦ something Iāve been meaning to say. For several months now, actually.ā It went unsaid that the reasons heād held off had everything to do with the momentous events of those weeks. Taking a deep breath, he slowly lowered his arm and stepped a slightly larger distance away from her, so as to turn and speak to her properly. The spare light of dusk glinted off his silvered chainmail in places, but in moments like this, no amount of armor had ever made him feel secure in what he was doing. Actually, Lucien was not sure there had ever been moments like this before. Or rather, not for him.
His father had the right of itāactually attempting to say what he was thinking wasnāt far from making him into a craven. It was a bit too much to just spit it out as directly as he would have preferred, so he took the next best route available to him. āBeforeā¦ everything, I went to see your father,ā he confessed. āI wasnāt precisely sure how things were done, in Kirkwall, but I thought it was perhaps better to err on the side of tradition when it came to such an important matter, Iā¦ā He sighed through his nose, swallowing past the sudden, but not entirely unexpected, lump in his throat. Heād known it was going to be more difficult, now, when actual feelings were involved, but nothing anyone had ever said had prepared him for how much.
āI canātā¦ I canāt promise you anything, Sophia, as much as I want to be able to. I cannot say what will be required of me in a year, or five, or ten. One day, I will have to return here, and it is a call I cannot refuse. Butā¦ it is just as possible, I realized, that I could die tomorrow, and perhapsā¦ perhaps thatās given me some perspective.ā There was little point in dwelling on the uncertainty of a year or decade when the uncertainty of the next day was enough. And if thatā¦ if that was something he was willing to look past, then perhaps he could learn to look past the rest as well.
āSo, I suppose that, having said thatā¦ I still want to ask you. May Iāmay I court you, Sophia Dumar? Because Iām afraid that Iām rather desperately in love with you, and quite exhausted with telling myself why I should pretend Iām not.ā
Sophia had an idea of what Lucien had wanted to speak to her about, and try as she might to keep her cool on the way out, she found herself clutching the balcony railing much tighter than was necessary. She'd had as many nightmares about this moment as pleasant dreams, because the moment they finally forced themselves to confront this would inevitably tip the scales one way or the other, and there would be no turning back from there. In fact, she had planned to make a push herself before returning if Lucien did not, but it seemed she would not have to.
When the words I can't escaped his lips, she thought she might turn and run, cover her ears so that she might not hear other words that would follow. Words like never, duties, obligated, complicated, anything that implied the pulls that their births and their stations had over them, pulls that had always somehow gotten between them, when it seemed just as likely that they could have been pulled together. She used to be a noblewoman poised for a throne, while he was an exile out of favor. Now he had returned to good standing, but her floor had crumbled beneath her, and the idea of being drawn into that responsibility for life now terrified her.
But he did not speak those other words, and when she could truly see where he was headed, she clutched the railing all the harder, for fear that she might simply lift off and rise into the sky. Everything he said was of course already known by the both of them, but somehow hearing it out loud made it so real. She was at a loss for words herself, for once, and the one thing she could think about in that moment was how there was space between them, air separating them, and she despised that.
Sophia quickly stepped to Lucien, eliminating that space, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing him. She found herself on the verge of tears, but judging from the fact that she couldn't stop smiling, they were not the kind of tears she had been formerly shedding.
Breathless, she realized she needed to say something. Or maybe she didn't, but she wanted to, so she at last pulled away from him, though she didn't dare let her hands leave him. "I've wanted to do that for so long," was the first thing that came to mind, and she laughed, reddening slightly.
"Whatever happens in the future, to you or to me... I know that you love me, and you know that I love you." She broke into a teary eyed smile just from saying the words. "And we know that we were brave enough to try and make this work." There would always be the possibility of things crumbling to the ground, their feelings not enough to overcome the pulls of the world against them, but who would they be if they never tried? That would be the worst pain, something that Sophia could not bear. This was the way things were supposed to be.
Lucien didnāt blush, but from the smile on his face, equal parts sheepish and elated, he understood perfectly well where her feelings on the matter were coming from. He supposed that her point was on the mark exactly, and though some part of him would not be able to stop dreading what might happen, he believed it was fully possible not to let the dread be the prevailing instinct. Exhaling a deep, contented breath, he twined his arms around her back, almost as if to reassure himself that this was no dream, no conjuration of a sleeping mind, to be here and with her, but that what he saw was truth and she was solid and flesh and present. Yes, dread was conquerable.
Some part of him felt that anything was conquerable, just now.
āThat wasā¦ not exactly how I was expecting this to turn out,ā he admitted, relief and laughter and contentment warring for control of his tone. It came out breathier than heād intended it, but he was hardly concerned with his dignity at the moment, and found that he did not care. Still holding her to him, he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, savoring the contact for what it was. Heād denied himself this privilege for a very long time, restricted by politeness and decorum to only the most incidental or clinical of contacts. There was just something wrong with the world when you held your belovedās innards inside her abdomen before you were able to embrace her or even say the words themselves.
āBut youāll not hear me complaining.ā