Being backhanded across the face would have felt familiar, would have given her a perverse sense of satisfaction knowing she'd got under Lenore's skin. Drearburh may have been mouldering into slow ruin, but it had been built on a backbone of cold, hard steel. Having her captor bend delicately at the waist and peer into her upturned face takes her entirely by surprise, and she feels her traitorous cheeks flush hot, momentarily loses her capacity for speech. She's been called a lot of things in her life, cur, and chattel, and repugnant waste of space to name but a few of the least offensive. Cute and impressive, though? Never.
She swiftly lifts the wine to her lips and takes a bigger draught than necessary, a ploy to cover her faltering bravado. Gideon knows how to remain uncowed by violence and even the vilest debasement, but a few minor compliments? Here she finds herself cut adrift. Hard not to be, when she'd considered 'you're not completely worthless' as the dizzying height of praise before her capture.
This turn of events leaves her silent as Lenore lists her potential uses and evident short-comings, and Gideon has to grudgingly admit that she seems to have her number. Her wildest flights of girlhood fancy had involved running off to be a mercenary or some kind of heroic wandering knight, saving buxom beauties from vicious attacks, or perhaps from accidents where they'd lost all their clothing. That she'd swiftly be dismissed for insubordinate behaviour in a regular army was a given, and she'd be the first to admit - under different circumstances - that she does all her best thinking with her biceps. Even during the invasion it wasn’t as though she’d had a plan for defensive action; her body had simply known what to do in that moment. Loathe as she is to say it aloud, the picture the woman before her is currently painting doesn't sound entirely terrible.
"I mean, I guess I can see why you'd need a bodyguard," is how she attempts to recover herself, "when you go around chucking freezing cold water at people and giving them uninspired nicknames."
Her words are imbued with some of her earlier bite, but their edge may have been blunted by the appealing notion of being 'shown off' as a hot chick's greatest warrior.
no subject
She swiftly lifts the wine to her lips and takes a bigger draught than necessary, a ploy to cover her faltering bravado. Gideon knows how to remain uncowed by violence and even the vilest debasement, but a few minor compliments? Here she finds herself cut adrift. Hard not to be, when she'd considered 'you're not completely worthless' as the dizzying height of praise before her capture.
This turn of events leaves her silent as Lenore lists her potential uses and evident short-comings, and Gideon has to grudgingly admit that she seems to have her number. Her wildest flights of girlhood fancy had involved running off to be a mercenary or some kind of heroic wandering knight, saving buxom beauties from vicious attacks, or perhaps from accidents where they'd lost all their clothing. That she'd swiftly be dismissed for insubordinate behaviour in a regular army was a given, and she'd be the first to admit - under different circumstances - that she does all her best thinking with her biceps. Even during the invasion it wasn’t as though she’d had a plan for defensive action; her body had simply known what to do in that moment. Loathe as she is to say it aloud, the picture the woman before her is currently painting doesn't sound entirely terrible.
"I mean, I guess I can see why you'd need a bodyguard," is how she attempts to recover herself, "when you go around chucking freezing cold water at people and giving them uninspired nicknames."
Her words are imbued with some of her earlier bite, but their edge may have been blunted by the appealing notion of being 'shown off' as a hot chick's greatest warrior.