10: Trust?
Alexandrie listened to Lucas speak as they walked. She’d been listening and watching him think for some time, her dark eyes peripherally locked on his face as he asked questions no one had ever asked, questions she hadn’t felt comfortable answering before now. Chevalier, urn in hand, walked slightly behind them. She didn’t know if he was listening but, for the first time where she was concerned, she didn’t really care. So intent was her focus that Ellinora Edgewater could have been standing behind her and she wouldn’t have noticed.
The last time Lucas had approached her to ask about La Chanson had been the bow of the ship on the journey here. She had been surprised then, and hesitant to say anything about an experience so sacred. She’d been afraid he would mock her experience, tell her she was foolish, or dismiss her words as the words of a mad woman. She had said as little as possible and even that felt like too much, especially to tell an Edgewater. This time… he deserved fuller answers. She didn’t control La Chanson, but it worked through her, and had shown her something of the brothers. It had shown how Lucas had lost his leg, and it had shown Spider panicked…lost…with none of the certain cocksureness he showed her. This time, when Lucas asked questions, she answered.
She had only verbalised the pull and direction of La Chanson to Chevalier. Grandmère had known - had been the one to warn her, in fact - that when the pull became too strong she would have to leave. She rarely verbalised her complete trust in La Chanson - a trust that existed despite the fact that it did not tell her everything. She believed - entirely - that La Chanson would keep her safe. She believed every instinct that told her to step here instead of there, every nudge toward or away from people was guided by the music.
Though as she thought of it, she hadn’t consistently shown that. For good or ill, as she watched Lucas grapple with a sound that had melded with the core of her being consciously over a year, she had to acknowledge she had not been paying close enough attention. Her hatred of Ellinora had blinded her to the trust that La Chanson was placing in Lucas. And that opened up a mine of conflict in the teen. Ellinora Edgewater had called Grandmère a crazy old woman. A cheat. A charlatan, and someone unworthy of the title with which she had been bestowed. Somehow, somewhere, despite the family’s privacy, there were rumours that Grandmère Alaina heard or influenced people through sound.
If there was anything neither she nor Grandmère would ever do, it was use La Chanson to control the minds or thoughts of others. Just the mention of it - the suggestion of using pure musical energy to do this - was so heinous, so vile, so wrong, that she had lashed out. And if Vee hadn’t stopped her, she’d have shown Ellinora that no Donadieu needed magic to influence others when a hand would do. That had been her - not La Chanson, and there were things that did not require magic to achieve.
Which was why she didn’t understand Lucas’ concern. If La Chanson was the engineer of this…vision, experience, reminder…honestly she still didn’t know why it had happened - it wasn’t to influence him. If it wanted something done, she would do it. That was not a question. She would do what it asked and she would do it gladly. It was to offer him something. Alexa was coming to understand that she had been born to this - she might not always have ended up in this exact spot, but she would always have heard La Chanson. Tendrils of music were reaching out to Lucas. Almost as if he were being given a choice. La Chanson didn’t do things carelessly. It had deemed him capable, or worthy by whatever metric it made decisions on, but it wanted him to choose.
She had likely made a choice too - had likely chosen when she was very young. She fiddled with the locket around her neck. Grandmère had given it to her. As a child she had (to her mother’s chagrin) hung from Vee like a monkey, or crawled into his lap when he sat, reaching up with a small hand to touch the sigil on his forehead until she fell asleep. Her locket was engraved with that same sigil. Though there had been a few times in her early teens where she’d removed it - as a young adolescent she’d at times had a turbulent relationship with the automaton (and everyone else) and thrown it at him - she had always ended up putting it back on. It was a testament to Chevalier’s catching abilities that he’d not once been hit with the thing, and a testament to his understanding of her that when she did (finally) apologise, he would hand it back, undented and shining.
Though he didn’t hear La Chanson, Chevalier was as close as she could get to the physical embodiment of the music she believed had protected her for her whole life. Her trust in Chevalier, like her trust in La Chanson, was absolute. So why, she queried, her eyes sliding from Lucas’ face to look at the hills of the dead, had she not placed trust in the young man beside her?
La Chanson trusted him. That much was clear. Chevalier trusted him. That much was clear.
Perhaps it was time to trust. If not him, then those she placed her faith in.
So she told him, hesitantly, as she hadn’t told anyone, that she wasn’t entirely certain whether she always heard La Chanson or if she imagined she could hear it.
And felt something she hadn’t expected to feel:
Relief.
She hadn’t spoken of this feeling to Chevalier - though he certainly must know - and she hadn’t wanted to discuss the feeling with Grandmère, who no longer heard it, and excruciating silence was not something she wanted to remind Grandmère of, regardless of the calm acceptance the woman exuded in all things. So when she told Lucas, when she uttered those words, they’d been the first time she’s said them to someone who might one day understand. Someone who might one day feel the same. And the only person outside her family she could confess those thoughts to, knowing they might be believed at face value.
Was this trust?
