“It’s difficult to make a case without knowing what your reservations are.”
He can guess.
He is guessing, the off-axis tuck of his chin already offended by some slight he’s imagined -- a matter of personality, or ability, or trust, as so often seems the case of late. It’s almost certainly his martial ability -- he thinks to the meaty clop of a Shriek’s blade into his thigh. Even in his dreams he’s pathetic.
It doesn’t really matter. The cold knot in his gut is the same.
The brief, quizzical expression on Ellis' face is likely not very surprising. Can it possibly be unexpected that Ellis hadn't factored in any kind of personal risk when he'd considered the idea?
But it resolves into neutrality, a spreading of one hand across the table while the other keeps Thot pinned against one thigh.
"I'm one of them."
A statement meant for Richard to draw assumptions from.
If he were making this case to Vance and Adrasteia, the greater context would be so clear. Ellis was very much one of them. He had the track record for it, after Adamant, after what he'd done in the Western Approach. The odds of finding someone who recognized him in Weisshaupt was very high, and that would be a shield.
And even if it wasn't, what could be done to him?
"It only matters if they've reason to suspect something of me, and they won't. I've never had that kind of reputation."
He doesn’t have to look to sense the confusion in that break, buttoned down as he is in a vice of personal dismay, frustration, and so on. There isn’t much buttery lamplight can do to soften the lines drawn in hard around his mouth, along his nose, between his brows.
But packing it all away still comes naturally -- a kind of psychological reflex upon recognition of how far off the cliff edge he’s strayed. All it takes is a pause for perspective to check against the dazzling flash of an impulse that’d see the table turned over and the lamp spilled and the wine bottle broken, very wasteful. And embarrassing besides.
So he’s quiet until it’s neutral on neutral.
“I could send Thot with you.”
She’s cleaning between her toes, which are splayed like Ellis’ hand over her belly. The faint fork to her tongue rasps once or twice at his wrist along the way.
Ellis had taught himself some similar skill, how to weather something destructive until it's been winnowed down to nothing. (Ellis' temper isn't absent, only deadened and dulled to almost-lifeless embers through year of strict practice.) The quiet stretches, unbroken, with Thot's casual movements under his hand noted distantly at the edges of his attention, some minor fraction spared from his study of Richard's face.
"You'd miss her."
His eyes don't drop to his lap to the cat in question.
"You could come with me to Skyhold," is a halving, an assessment of risks. Skyhold, but not Ansburg, not Weisshupt. It's not so dissimilar to what he had considered with Holden on the road. It is an offering, an outstretched hand.
It does not feel to Ellis that Skyhold is Richard's preferred destination. But it's at the very least the beginning point.
If Wysteria hadn’t stepped in to assist him he might never have managed to fish her out of the Fade in the first place.
He sighs at the thought as he looks to her.
The shape she’s coiled herself into in Ellis’ lap is an unlikely one, feet kicked up and out, her head twisted under and around to get at them. Not quite an ouroboros, but certainly closer than any cat with a mammalian spine should be.
“I could,” he cannot quite help but needle back, claws pricked and retracted before he hoists himself back up into eye contact. Earnest. “I’d like to.”
Is this sufficient conciliation? Will it soften the parting when Ellis returns Richard to Kirkwall before continuing on to Asburg? If he finds his way further north to Weisshaupt?
Ellis' hand lifts only to find Thot's sleek little head and thumb back and forth over her forehead.
It would be magnificent if not for the scorched fur, the edges of stitched hide crisped black by demon fire, the faint stink of blood that clings coppery to the interior.
His arms are still folded, the carve of his frown preoccupied — with the logistics, perhaps. Thot pauses in her grooming to tilt her chin up after the attention her brow is getting.
“Would it surprise you terribly to hear that my name is not actually Richard Dickerson?”
“Silas,” he supplies, after a sufficient enough silence to convince him that Ellis doesn’t intend to ask him. He’d helpfully suggested that the question of do you like stories is typically followed by the offer of a story if answered in the affirmative with much the same tint of put-upon patience.
Skyhold is something.
He contemplates standing and slips a slender folding knife from his vest instead. Once it’s flicked open, he can reach to take the bottle on his table by the neck.
“You’re free to leave,” he says while working steel through cork, as if he hopes it should have gone without saying. “I closed the door to argue in private, not to detain you here.”
Some minor shade of amusement works across Ellis' face. It's almost a dismissal, but Ellis knows what it's like when Richard means for his words to cut, and he knows that this isn't that.
He keeps his seat. For the moment. And he watches as Richard works the bottle open, letting the quiet spin out before he asks—
The cork is fiddly work and he is well-tuned into the twist of it, lest he slip and spill blood across his trousers. When the catch of it finally releases with a grimace and a muffled thwonk, he’s careful to fold the blade away again before he adds:
“But I will answer to either.” Or ‘Mister Dickerson,’ as the case may be.
He does not seem put off by his decision to stay. Even if it does mean that he’s forced to stand and plant the open bottle on the table so that he can retrieve a cup from the trunk at the foot of his bed. Thot has rolled and stretched a paw up in pursuit of Ellis’ chin.
A kind of cornering question, asked quite steadily in spite of questing paw. Thot is allowed her attempts to scrabble at the bristle of his beard while Ellis watches her counterpart plunk said cup down onto the table.
Ellis called him to assist in the construction of a chicken coop and hadn’t squeezed his head off his shoulders when he’d informed him of his betrayal of Masters Stark and Poppell-de Foncé. His confidence in the shape and nature of his classification in whatever rolodex of non-Wardens is absolute.
Because he can be merciful, particularly after having held Ellis’ feet to a very small but also very persistent fire, he adds (as he pours) a more concrete: “Yes.”
Ellis' hand draws down the knobby arch of Thot's spine as her toes flex against his chin.
"Alright."
In some ways, this was already a foregone conclusion. Ellis considered Richard a friend. If he hadn't, Ellis might have granted his request already. It's still a hard thing to consign someone to, but Ellis knows it comes easier with near strangers.
You never answered my question goes unspoken. Maybe Richard stalling at consider rather than yes, of course I would cut your throat is it's own kind of answer. Or drawing that conclusion is a presumption.
"Thank you."
In recognition of having been given this piece of information apropos of nothing. A measure of unearned trust.
Silas certainly seems to believe the issue resolved, past the catch of friction to a pause before he lifts the cup to drink from it -- as if he’s sensed he’s missed something, but isn’t sure what. It hasn’t occurred to him that there might be another reason for him to punch a knife through Ellis’ jugular, beyond his previous expression of disappointment over his ongoing existence.
An exchange he was asked to forget about.
He must feel very strongly to have brought it up again on his own.
“Mm,” he says, instead of you’re welcome. And at least in clear part due to the wine being better than he expected. “I’d have mentioned it before, but it's never seemed important.”
Not that Ellis needs or even wants to know. It's not his business. He hadn't pressed Tony, and he doesn't care to press Richard. Silas.
He'll have his reasons. Ellis has known him long enough to know that he doesn't do things ildy. Silas will have a reason. Even when Ellis disagrees with them, he appreciates that quality in him.
“If you die alone in Weisshaupt, I’d like you to know who you have to blame.”
Silas says so very reasonably, as he also has a way of doing. There’s an affectionate resignation to the otherwise chilly grip of his reproach in a look.
That claps some of the shade off him -- mid-swallow, even, a small sip turned into a longer pull, his brow furrowed in the vacuum of whatever technicality he’d intended to disarm. Had he assumed Ellis didn’t have a family name?
It seemed as likely as any other explanation.
“Atheris,” he replies, compelled, for whatever reason, to keep things even.
Thot closes her eyes, piano wire muscle abuzz with her purr under the velvet of her hide.
There is, as ever, the urge to draw a line after the admission. This can go no further. But he thinks Silas understands that. Ellis has not spent nearly three years in this place without disclosing the information for it to be circulated.
Of all people Ellis has met here, Silas is one for an appreciation of holding information close to the chest.
He has other questions, but none that need asking in immediacy. There’s a more thoughtful weight to his quiet in contemplation all the same -- curiosity folded up and filed away for later.
"Three days," Ellis says, and, by way of explanation, "My armor should be repaired by then."
And it's enough time to see to any number of minor chores, make arrangements for his chickens, be sure the Hightown house is not in position to be consumed by an ambitious science experiment in his absence.
His hand smooths down Thot's arched spine, before he lifts her onto the table.
"I should go."
As he has run out of distractions for the day, and they shouldn't tempt fate.
Thot’s legs hang useless as she’s lifted, and languish loose in their joints where he tries to place her, so that Ellis must lay her down on her side like a broken doll. Silas looks on, briefly distant in his disapproval, wine in hand. He does not prompt her to behave.
“Of course,” he says. The door is open.
Not technically, technically it’s closed. They’ve been over this already. Reluctant instinct sees him up on his feet, wine and all, to cross for the door first.
Maybe Ellis is thinking again of the shrike in the dream. Maybe not. The roads are dangerous regardless, and armor won't go amiss.
As he stands, he gives Thot a last pet, a light chuck beneath her chin. Sprawling across the table in such a fashion cannot be so comfortable, but Ellis leaves her to it as he follows Silas towards the door.
"Thank you for the hospitality," is a little like a joke, some dredged up bit of manners from when Ellis was a functioning person who acknowledged such things regularly.
...Is an easy reminder, joke or no, coupled with a dry glance as Silas opens the door and steps aside. He’s glad they could come to an understanding.
“I’ll be ready in three days.”
He waits for Ellis to step out to say so, eyes keen until they’re closed away behind the crack. Somehow this alone imparts the impression that he might be scarce to find for the purpose of renegotiation over the next 72 hours.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He can guess.
He is guessing, the off-axis tuck of his chin already offended by some slight he’s imagined -- a matter of personality, or ability, or trust, as so often seems the case of late. It’s almost certainly his martial ability -- he thinks to the meaty clop of a Shriek’s blade into his thigh. Even in his dreams he’s pathetic.
It doesn’t really matter. The cold knot in his gut is the same.
“How deadly will it be for you?”
no subject
But it resolves into neutrality, a spreading of one hand across the table while the other keeps Thot pinned against one thigh.
"I'm one of them."
A statement meant for Richard to draw assumptions from.
If he were making this case to Vance and Adrasteia, the greater context would be so clear. Ellis was very much one of them. He had the track record for it, after Adamant, after what he'd done in the Western Approach. The odds of finding someone who recognized him in Weisshaupt was very high, and that would be a shield.
And even if it wasn't, what could be done to him?
"It only matters if they've reason to suspect something of me, and they won't. I've never had that kind of reputation."
In which reputation means ambition.
no subject
But packing it all away still comes naturally -- a kind of psychological reflex upon recognition of how far off the cliff edge he’s strayed. All it takes is a pause for perspective to check against the dazzling flash of an impulse that’d see the table turned over and the lamp spilled and the wine bottle broken, very wasteful. And embarrassing besides.
So he’s quiet until it’s neutral on neutral.
“I could send Thot with you.”
She’s cleaning between her toes, which are splayed like Ellis’ hand over her belly. The faint fork to her tongue rasps once or twice at his wrist along the way.
no subject
Ellis had taught himself some similar skill, how to weather something destructive until it's been winnowed down to nothing. (Ellis' temper isn't absent, only deadened and dulled to almost-lifeless embers through year of strict practice.) The quiet stretches, unbroken, with Thot's casual movements under his hand noted distantly at the edges of his attention, some minor fraction spared from his study of Richard's face.
"You'd miss her."
His eyes don't drop to his lap to the cat in question.
"You could come with me to Skyhold," is a halving, an assessment of risks. Skyhold, but not Ansburg, not Weisshupt. It's not so dissimilar to what he had considered with Holden on the road. It is an offering, an outstretched hand.
It does not feel to Ellis that Skyhold is Richard's preferred destination. But it's at the very least the beginning point.
no subject
If Wysteria hadn’t stepped in to assist him he might never have managed to fish her out of the Fade in the first place.
He sighs at the thought as he looks to her.
The shape she’s coiled herself into in Ellis’ lap is an unlikely one, feet kicked up and out, her head twisted under and around to get at them. Not quite an ouroboros, but certainly closer than any cat with a mammalian spine should be.
“I could,” he cannot quite help but needle back, claws pricked and retracted before he hoists himself back up into eye contact. Earnest. “I’d like to.”
no subject
Ellis' hand lifts only to find Thot's sleek little head and thumb back and forth over her forehead.
"You'll need a warm coat."
no subject
It would be magnificent if not for the scorched fur, the edges of stitched hide crisped black by demon fire, the faint stink of blood that clings coppery to the interior.
His arms are still folded, the carve of his frown preoccupied — with the logistics, perhaps. Thot pauses in her grooming to tilt her chin up after the attention her brow is getting.
“Would it surprise you terribly to hear that my name is not actually Richard Dickerson?”
no subject
Surprise isn't exactly right. Not surprise just—
"I wouldn't have expected that it wasn't."
What use did Richard have to employ a fake name? Stranded here in a world full of unfamiliar people, who would know the difference?
But then, Tony had used a false name as well, for a little while. And Ellis had never understood that either.
If Richard expects Ellis to ask outright, he'll be disappointed. His gaze holds on Richard, curious, but nothing follows after the answer.
no subject
Skyhold is something.
He contemplates standing and slips a slender folding knife from his vest instead. Once it’s flicked open, he can reach to take the bottle on his table by the neck.
“You’re free to leave,” he says while working steel through cork, as if he hopes it should have gone without saying. “I closed the door to argue in private, not to detain you here.”
no subject
He keeps his seat. For the moment. And he watches as Richard works the bottle open, letting the quiet spin out before he asks—
"Which do you prefer?"
no subject
The cork is fiddly work and he is well-tuned into the twist of it, lest he slip and spill blood across his trousers. When the catch of it finally releases with a grimace and a muffled thwonk, he’s careful to fold the blade away again before he adds:
“But I will answer to either.” Or ‘Mister Dickerson,’ as the case may be.
He does not seem put off by his decision to stay. Even if it does mean that he’s forced to stand and plant the open bottle on the table so that he can retrieve a cup from the trunk at the foot of his bed. Thot has rolled and stretched a paw up in pursuit of Ellis’ chin.
no subject
A kind of cornering question, asked quite steadily in spite of questing paw. Thot is allowed her attempts to scrabble at the bristle of his beard while Ellis watches her counterpart plunk said cup down onto the table.
no subject
Ellis called him to assist in the construction of a chicken coop and hadn’t squeezed his head off his shoulders when he’d informed him of his betrayal of Masters Stark and Poppell-de Foncé. His confidence in the shape and nature of his classification in whatever rolodex of non-Wardens is absolute.
Because he can be merciful, particularly after having held Ellis’ feet to a very small but also very persistent fire, he adds (as he pours) a more concrete: “Yes.”
no subject
"Alright."
In some ways, this was already a foregone conclusion. Ellis considered Richard a friend. If he hadn't, Ellis might have granted his request already. It's still a hard thing to consign someone to, but Ellis knows it comes easier with near strangers.
You never answered my question goes unspoken. Maybe Richard stalling at consider rather than yes, of course I would cut your throat is it's own kind of answer. Or drawing that conclusion is a presumption.
"Thank you."
In recognition of having been given this piece of information apropos of nothing. A measure of unearned trust.
no subject
An exchange he was asked to forget about.
He must feel very strongly to have brought it up again on his own.
“Mm,” he says, instead of you’re welcome. And at least in clear part due to the wine being better than he expected. “I’d have mentioned it before, but it's never seemed important.”
no subject
Not that Ellis needs or even wants to know. It's not his business. He hadn't pressed Tony, and he doesn't care to press Richard. Silas.
He'll have his reasons. Ellis has known him long enough to know that he doesn't do things ildy. Silas will have a reason. Even when Ellis disagrees with them, he appreciates that quality in him.
no subject
Silas says so very reasonably, as he also has a way of doing. There’s an affectionate resignation to the otherwise chilly grip of his reproach in a look.
no subject
"I'm not going to die alone in Weisshaupt."
There will most certainly be a great number of other Wardens in attendance, if such a fate came to pass.
But before Silas can argue the point, a discussion Ellis is very uninterested in pursuing, he continues, "My family name was Ginsberg."
no subject
It seemed as likely as any other explanation.
“Atheris,” he replies, compelled, for whatever reason, to keep things even.
Thot closes her eyes, piano wire muscle abuzz with her purr under the velvet of her hide.
no subject
Of all people Ellis has met here, Silas is one for an appreciation of holding information close to the chest.
"Silas Atheris," Ellis repeats back, familiarizing himself. "Alright."
Alright ringing to the tune of thank you.
no subject
He has other questions, but none that need asking in immediacy. There’s a more thoughtful weight to his quiet in contemplation all the same -- curiosity folded up and filed away for later.
“When should I be prepared to travel?”
no subject
And it's enough time to see to any number of minor chores, make arrangements for his chickens, be sure the Hightown house is not in position to be consumed by an ambitious science experiment in his absence.
His hand smooths down Thot's arched spine, before he lifts her onto the table.
"I should go."
As he has run out of distractions for the day, and they shouldn't tempt fate.
no subject
“Of course,” he says. The door is open.
Not technically, technically it’s closed. They’ve been over this already. Reluctant instinct sees him up on his feet, wine and all, to cross for the door first.
“I’ll bring mine as well.”
slaps bow onto this
Maybe Ellis is thinking again of the shrike in the dream. Maybe not. The roads are dangerous regardless, and armor won't go amiss.
As he stands, he gives Thot a last pet, a light chuck beneath her chin. Sprawling across the table in such a fashion cannot be so comfortable, but Ellis leaves her to it as he follows Silas towards the door.
"Thank you for the hospitality," is a little like a joke, some dredged up bit of manners from when Ellis was a functioning person who acknowledged such things regularly.
BOW
...Is an easy reminder, joke or no, coupled with a dry glance as Silas opens the door and steps aside. He’s glad they could come to an understanding.
“I’ll be ready in three days.”
He waits for Ellis to step out to say so, eyes keen until they’re closed away behind the crack. Somehow this alone imparts the impression that he might be scarce to find for the purpose of renegotiation over the next 72 hours.