DrabbleWriMo 20: Obscure
20 November 2021 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlode
It was eighty miles to La Vergne. Eighty miles to ride, day and night, and he was a sick man.
Mud-spattered from head to foot, he half-fell into the hall; gasped out his warning to its recipient, who surveyed him pitilessly.
"Treachery, de Brencourt? Your speciality, no doubt!"
The words struck like a blow. He found a chair; clung on.
"Your safe-conduct is wastepaper, I tell you. You are going to your death. In God's name, why else would I have come?"
"I cannot pretend to guess." Ice-cold. "Your motives may be obscure, monsieur, but your deceit has failed — again."
The Duc de Trélan is not being quite as obtuse here as it might appear; in canon he concludes, after the retort "I cannot pretend to fathom the motives of a man so utterly false as you", "I am not to be frightened by talk of treachery into breaking my pledged word... You have failed this time also, Monsieur de Brencourt". If he refuses to turn up to the surrender, then the countryside will be ravaged in reprisal and it is his followers who will pay the price -- and it is this outcome which he suspects de Brencourt of trying to bring about by sowing deliberate falsehood. Of which they are both aware the Comte has a track record.
But the latter is really not in any physical or emotional state at this point to analyse the reasoning involved :-(
no subject
Date: 2021-11-22 11:19 am (UTC)The truer one is the the source, the more obstacles. But I would never be untrue to the source - that is the top priority.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-23 10:02 am (UTC)An unfashionable view in fan-fiction, I feel :-(
(The endorsed approach seems to be pick-and-mix canon to fit the desired plot, and portray the characters how you feel they *ought* to have been, and anything else is 'gatekeeping'...)
In this case, the source could support pretty much any of those readings, depending on how you look at it; a name is a name (nom d'un nom!) and Gaston has more of them than anyone.
I think I will go for "to its recipient" (original reading, for my reference: "Mud-spattered from head to foot, he half-fell into the hall; gasped out his warning to the man who surveyed him pitilessly") and hope it doesn't reek too much of Burly Detective Syndrome.
There was a similar attribution problem with the last line of dialogue in the following drabble, where de Brencourt's response is preceded by an 'action beat' that references both of them but most obviously Valentine. It's just relying on the assumption that the speakers alternate, along with the content of what is said :-(