*feels his strings pulling tighter around the winch with every soft, damning sentence, and his eyes are glued to the pages with such fierce refusal to look up that it hurts*
*clenches his jaw and swallows, his throat utterly parched, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth* *with an inward snarl (pull yourself to-fucking-gether, Councilor), draws himself up in the chair and inhales shakily*
*so very quietly, hardly realizing he's lapsed into Quenya until the words drop free—and it is a language of tones and nuance, and so you cannot but know his despair:* [My lord. I cannot.]