heorte: (Default)
ellis ginsberg. ([personal profile] heorte) wrote2019-09-10 03:02 pm
heirring: (can we not)

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 02:14 am (UTC)(link)
[It is the unfortunate truth of the universe that being asked not to cry rarely commands the desired result. But she does her best, hanging her head to avoid seeing him and being looked at while she is being so absurd as her hands turning to fists in his. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.]

I don't need to be anyone's favorite person. I just want to not be the joke everyone tells because they think I'm too stupid to notice.
heirring: ([049])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
[Her knuckles are white. It's fine.]

I asked Miss Davies - one of the new Rifters, from a place like Mr. Stark and Mr. Fitz - to translate something for me. You know how he can be. How Mr. Stark sometimes speaks. And the thing that he has called me - not always, just sometimes; only once or twice - is apparently just the name of some woman who writes terrible books about intolerable women whom everyone dislikes. And even Mr. Fitz seems to see some obvious similarity. And I do not want to be silly, [she cries insistently] I just want to be taken seriously by someone somewhere before I disappear from here too and everyone forgets I was here at all.
heirring: (can we not)

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
[She doesn't want to cry on Ellis. She doesn't want to cry in the corridor outside of the library where Maker only knows who will come sweeping through here and see her all covered in snot and absurd and miserable. Someone will see her. Someone will remember this. And no one should ever be allowed to see another person wounded. It's humiliating.

All of which translates to Wysteria covering her face with both hands before she lets herself be drawn into him so she can sob into the buffer of her palms instead of directly into his shoulder.]
heirring: (why this)

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 04:07 am (UTC)(link)
[It should be the right thing to say. It should surely do something to slacken her tears. Because it is a very kind thing to say; it is, theoretically, exactly what she wants to hear.

Instead, for a span of a few seconds, Wysteria seems to cry even harder. And then she raises her face from her hands, red eyes and tear stained. She is very close to him, and the absolute picture of misery as she announces very loudly to him and the corridor,]


But I don't want to marry you. I'll understand if that makes a difference. If you change your mind. But you should know that.

[And with a wail, she presses her face back into her hands and presumably continues to get her snot all over him.]
heirring: ([052])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 04:28 am (UTC)(link)
[She jerks back. It is not far - she is still within the circle of his arms -, but it is a distinct and suddenly very stiff distance. Tears? What tears. Ellis has apparently finally gotten his wish, as Wysteria has abruptly stopped crying.]

Pardon? [Excuse him.] Do I seem like a dishonorable woman?
heirring: ([009])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
[?????????????????

says her face and how far she is leaning back, relying almost entirely on Ellis's grip on her to stay upright.]


What?
heirring: ([027])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 05:27 am (UTC)(link)
But.

[But what? She feels as if she's moving through molasses; her head hurts, and her eyes and swollen, and—]

But your— But you— [opened mouth becomes closed mouth, then opens again:] Do you mean to say that you have not been pining for my undivided attentions since before Satinalia?
heirring: ([040])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
You gave me jewelry and a ribbon, Mr. Ellis.

[And a shield, but that had seemed rather less romantic at the time. And oh gods, he had meant it platonically.]

Oh no.
heirring: (srsly???)

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)
What do you mean what do I mean, oh no!

[It's not really a question. Rather, it is like an invocation - maybe if she says it at the exact right strangled pitch, the ground will open up beneath her and she will slip neatly from his arms into the pit provided for her, never to be seen or heard from again. Imagine! A moment ago she'd almost been frightened of disappearing from Thedas forever, and now it suddenly seems like the most lovely thing a person could do.

She is saving the necklace. To melt down the chain for its metal, but that's beside the point. The point is:]


Then why on earth have you been spending so much time with us if it wasn't an expression of your steadfast and quiet devotion? You don't even like the science; I have seen the green look you get whenever one of us gets too close to a demon, or when I set that fire in the house's cellar. Which I maintain was barely a fire and more of a flash. Mr. Ellis, [he doesn't have lapels, but if he did she might be holding him by them now] you have carried all my things without complaint for six months.

[A labored look here and there, sure, but that barely counts.]
heirring: (glamor shot)

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-05 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[Once as a very little girl she'd played a game with her grandfather as the pair of them sat on the stone estate wall. The game went like this: he would point out different animals - the geese on the lake, the deer grazing in the meadow, the game master's old terrier marching like a regimented foot soldier in his master's shadow -, and she would name them all the wrong things until he laughed. That's a fish, and those are horses, and there is the stable yard cat. What do you mean you can't see them?

This feels something like that, where the words are all in order but have been applied to a thing they don't belong to. She hasn't been crying quite hard enough not to miss all his desperate unhappiness.

(Or maybe the trick is that she's just miserable enough herself to actually recognize it.)]


I don't understand.

[Which feels so objectively helpless, exposed there in the corridor, that she can feel her eyes starting to go hot with tears again.]
heirring: ([009])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-06 12:52 am (UTC)(link)
[Does that make sense? It isn't really so difficult a concept. So, all right. He cares for Mr. Stark and for her, and he doesn't have to want to court anyone to worry, to care, to want to be in their company. After all, she'd rather slowly transform into an old gray haired spinster than marry him but it isn't as if she doesn't care. She might have said something earlier if she didn't.

So then why make it so complicated? Why pretend it isn't just that straightforward?

Wysteria searches his face, her hands tight in his. Finally:]


It's really not so serious, Mr. Ellis. You don't have to be angry at Mr. Stark just because I am.
heirring: (rumpled and still superior)

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-06 02:20 am (UTC)(link)
[She sharpens, that ribbon of fury flashing in the set of her brow. Not angry at Ellis, just angry.]

I'm sure if he knew, he would think I was being perfectly unreasonable. And if he was at all sorry, it would only be because he'd been caught.

[Her hands abruptly part from his. She wipes her eyes. She scrubs her cheeks with her sleeve.]

I won't have it. In fact, I would prefer we never discuss it again. The best way of getting even [she says, and it sounds like she is quoting the spirit of something if not the letter] is simply to do well.
heirring: ([037])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-03-06 02:29 am (UTC)(link)
[Very, very earnestly:]

It is a matter of professional integrity, Mr. Ellis.

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