It's almost a singular talent of Wysteria's, managing to say something Ellis could not have expected even if he'd had a week to try and consider all the potential responses she might have decided upon.
"I'm angry?" he questions, startled confusion rattling the level moderation from his tone. His eyes leave the chickens as he half-turns towards her. "Who told you I was angry?"
If anything, he'd presumed Wysteria to be angry. Or worse, to be disappointed, or curious in a way that would inevitably mean Ellis would disappoint her. (He does not think of how sharp her voice had been in the dream. It was a dream.) He does not mention the closings of her letters, nor the suggestion of removing the chickens and all else from the house, simply stalls after the second question, watching her face.
The fixture of her attention on that removed point intensifies, threatening to draw her back into that person at the edge of the planter. She struggles against it, and the silence produced by it is at once braced and brittle.
"You returned the survey. You refused every invitation to participate, despite my insistence of its importance. You have attempted to surrender the care of your things here and in fact made every effort to avoid crossing my path when I insisted otherwise. After I--" She lapses. It's a brief, furiously closed tight thing.
"I'm not an imbecile, Mister Ellis. I don't need to be told to know."
The recitation pulls him forward, closes the gap between them. Chickens scatter as Ellis crouches in front of her, heel to haunch, arms resting on his knees.
"I'm not angry."
A passing notion: if he took her hands maybe she would look him in the eye. But he doesn't reach for her. There is a distance, some chilly gulf between them that Ellis isn't sure he's invited to broach.
"But I think you might be angry with me," he says, aware of the ridiculousness of the statement, turning it back in this manner. "And I don't think it's...I think the survey is only part of what's troubling you."
And worse, that he is going to disappoint her. He is going to tell her no and he doesn't know that she'll be so accommodating of him now as she was the first time.
It's a nasty sort of repetition, half baffled and half mocking, secured by the fact that fixture of her attention doesn't waver from where it's posted away from him and rattled off automatically to keep herself from saying some other thing. Or thinking some other thing.
It's forced to be a flat, simple kind of irritation. It's so much easier to carry around without being cut by it that way.
Wysteria does cross her arms then. And lifts her chin a few degrees further, though he has already made himself so low.
The look she receives is patient, eyebrows raising. The patter of their conversation is still the same, in spite of the dread curling in Ellis' chest. He folds his hands together between his knees (no mittens, in spite of the cold) and watches her face.
And says nothing.
It's the survey, and it isn't the survey. It's the tightness of her voice in a cabin in a dream and the snap between them in a chilly campsite. They all come from the same place, from a deficit in him, but he waits to hear it confirmed aloud by her.
The presence of his attention is like the pressure of a thumb. She doesn't have to be looking to be aware of it hanging there, his face a persistent blur at the edge of her vision.
In reply, Wysteria cinches the wrap of her arms tighter. The chickens peck at the pavers. Feathers are ruffled. The day is gray and drab and no sun reaches this small walled garden. The doors to the house remain closed.
"I am not angry," she says. And then allows, "At you."
Some shadow of skepticism edges across his expression, but Ellis doesn't contradict her. He has the sense they're teetering on the edge of a real argument (if the letters hadn't been one on their own) and he's hesitant to gamble on what will and won't tip them across that line.
"Then who?"
Or what, maybe would be more accurate. But Ellis has a starting point. He's attempting to proceed delicately.
What a stupid question. From a person who has committed himself so wholly to being purposefully dense, she thinks. Is it not enough to just be guaranteed on this part? She could decline to tell him. It would be entirely fair to do so.
This too sparks hot some ember of irritation. It is a stark lack of charity; how unpleasant the shape of it is, and how bitter the tang of the air which lingers about it.
Like a locked door whose handle is being braced by a closed hand on one side, she picks her words carefully. They are all crisp edges, perfectly enunciated as if selected one by one for their sound rather than their meaning. "I am angry," she says. "At myself. For being so short tempered. And unkind. So there. You see the difficulty."
"Aye," comes slowly, brows drawing together in confusion. There's an urge to rebut the charges, but the trouble is that he can't see where they may have come from.
(The dream. Tony's bedside. The sharpness of her voice.)
"Tell me what brought this on," Ellis says, which is perhaps equal parts stalling and self-preservation. "Please."
"Oh please, Mister Ellis," is snapped back. "What has not brought it on? Everyone knows it is true and there it was, made plain as day. Even you can't deny it, having seen the thing first hand."
It takes great effort to clamp her teeth down around the impulse to continue. There are a dozen different things which threaten to follow on the heel of that out of her, rising hot like the color in her face. She hammers them down. The heels of her calfskin colored boots, all stamped with flowers, scrape on the paving stones - a literal digging in as she exhales hard through the nose. A puff of frustration.
"I know it makes no difference really, given that were are here and everything is well after all. But it was cruel of me. To leave. And to abandon him to you. I know these things upset you, so it is only natural that you should dislike me for it."
She looks at him then, all drawn and scowling.
"There are lots of people who are very cross with one another. And you did refuse my survey."
Regardless of whether or not Ellis ever intended to directly speak about what had happened at the tail end of the dream or not, the response comes to him very quickly.
"I could never be angry with you for that," Ellis tells her, firm over the assertion. "You were upset. Even if we were still there, I'd not hold it against you."
A particular challenge: talking around exactly what they'd both been upset about. Ellis is reluctant to invoke Tony's condition in the dream, as if it could cement it into something real.
"It was a hard thing. None of us handled it as well as we would have wanted to."
She looks away again, jaw setting very hard in place of some other, more vulnerable thing—a knot in her throat or the sting of something silly behind the eyes to be blinked away. It's fine.
"Well I think that's a poor excuse. Just because a thing is difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't admit to having done it badly. And—" And. "It is not just that, or only in that terrible dream either. It affects the work, you know. To be so..."
She searches for the right word, falters, and lapses hard across some invisible line and into a long, clumsy silence.
He looks up into her face and thinks again that there is such bravery in how Wysteria carries herself through the world. To meet grief and fight it, rather than be broken, that is something worthy of admiration. Ellis hadn't managed it.
Ellis shifts, weight grinding his boots against the dirt.
"You did the best you could," comes more quietly, entreating.
"Then why would you not just—" She closes her eyes, breathes in. Stops.
There is a question. It isn't Then why would you not just help me?; this is hardly the first work she has done for Riftwatch which has required cornering people in corridors for an interrogation or catching them in stairwells to shake them down for information. It's a better question. A more pressing one. Because if he isn't angry, then what is he? And if he thought her furious, why not object? Insist otherwise. Protect some thing at risk.
With a prompt unraveling of her crossed arms, she presses her mitten hands briefly to her eyes and quickly swipes whatever lurks there away. All is in order. It hardly matters, and so see! After the briefest pause, she may be all bolstered cheer after as she drops her hand. It is an easy thing, as simple as dipping faded paper in bright dye.
"Well. Then it seems there is no cause for concern at all. How good. I hope you may now be perfectly at ease. Take this if you please, Mister Ellis."
The pan with the remaining seed is fetched up from beside her and passed to him.
Is it a kindness to watch Wysteria pluck up a smile and spark some brightness into her voice and think to let the conversation drop? Maybe it would be as simple as that, sweeping all of it aside and leaving it alone. But—
He closes his fingers over her mittened hands on the pan, stalling against the possibility of retreat before Wysteria can make a move towards it. The cold has reddened his knuckles, but his grip is firm.
The curve of her mouth slips, slants, and then forcefully reasserts itself. The pan is pushed to him despite the brace of Ellis' hands—a gentle kind of insistence. How satisfying it is, she stubbornly thinks, to prove to yourself that you can do something after all.
In the midst of the determined nudge of the pan and shifting of grain on tin, Tony's assertion of months before comes back to him: "Well it's important the whole time, Ellis."
It would be selfish to take the out. Ellis doesn't even know if he's capable of answering her, if her curiosity is directed in any direction he's expecting. But even if he can't wrench together an answer for her, he can at least explain it's absence. Surely that's better than nothing.
He wouldn't keep her here if she were determined to leave. This isn't inescapable. Revolting against his hold might spill the contents of the pan, but it's all destined for the ground already so what harm would there be in it?
There is a visible struggle as she scatters in a dozen different directions. There are so many ways the question might be clarified that picking one seems—
What a thing to have to contemplate, holding Wysteria's hands over a tin of chicken feed in the cold.
His grip loosens, shifting along to draw the pan from her with one hand while keeping hold of at least one of Wysteria's hands in the process of putting the tin down on the ground. The chickens are resourceful enough to manage.
"I don't understand."
Potentially a better answer than I am cared for, which feels true but likely doesn't reach whatever Wysteria is holding up to mark a sufficient level of care.
Despite the apparent willingness of the hand he still has a hold on, Wysteria is quick to snatch the freed one back to herself the very instant it's loosed. It is thoughtlessly applied to the task of some minor rearrangement of her scarf about her neck—immediate and avoidant of being captured again.
"If someone did that to me—left me with what I left you with—I would be furious with them. And you couldn't say where you'd been when we'd asked. Which doesn't matter, really. Those things maybe don't count like they would otherwise because it was all Fade walking nonsense. But there are things you won't discuss here too, and if you thought I was angry with you then why not fill out the ridiculous survey, and sometimes it's as if you—
"I don't know," is a sudden sharp stop, when she had just been finding that stone rolling down a hill momentum. "See? I told you. This is very stupid. Pretend I said nothing at all."
He can't rightly keep hold of her, can't reconcile the urge to tighten his hand around hers with the obvious: she wants him to let go. She pulls, and his grip loosens, releases his hold on her hand. If he regrets the loss of that small contact, well, that's his problem. It's not Wysteria's task to steady him in this moment. He closes his hand in on itself, shakes his head slightly.
"You know."
Wysteria knows her own mind. She's clever, unravels everything quickly when her interest is piqued. Whatever lurks unspoken after that break in her recitation is likely another piece of evidence he'd rather she turn her attention from. The skin over one knuckle has split in the cold, dot of blood rising and then shaken away as Ellis looks at her. There's some immediate urge to apologize, but he can recognize that for what it is: a stopgap against the bigger problem, even if his remorse for her upset is sincere.
That hand too is tucked up close against her. It's a different breed of crossed arms--low across her middle, mitten hands tight against her sides. Between them are her knees, and the scuff of her boots, and him balanced on his heels and the smudge of blood on knuckles. At least one of the chickens is clever enough to peel away from the little flock and coming questing back toward the pan, peck-peck-pecking experimentally at its edge.
"Sometimes I think you're ashamed of our friendship. Mine. And Mister Stark's."
I am devoted to you, he had said so long ago. It had seemed so painful to him then.
When Ellis rises, it's a sudden enough movement to startle away one intrepid chicken. A squawk and flap of wings sees the creature hopping ungainly around to the far edge of the tin as Ellis straightens up to his full height. He wrings his hands as he turns away and then back, as if thinking better of whatever urge would have propelled him to pace away from her.
"I could never be ashamed. Not of either of you."
It would help if he sounded less wretched over it, maybe.
"Your friendship is more than I deserve, more than I ever expected when I came here. And I—"
A place where his voice breaks, words coming apart as he struggles to find something true to tell her. (It is the wrong moment to think of Cathán, but he does; remembers a similar argument ending in shouting and departures.) There are so many parts of his life he doesn't want to ever touch Wysteria's.
"I'm ashamed of myself," is what he settles on. "Not you. Never, ever you, Wysteria."
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"I'm angry?" he questions, startled confusion rattling the level moderation from his tone. His eyes leave the chickens as he half-turns towards her. "Who told you I was angry?"
If anything, he'd presumed Wysteria to be angry. Or worse, to be disappointed, or curious in a way that would inevitably mean Ellis would disappoint her. (He does not think of how sharp her voice had been in the dream. It was a dream.) He does not mention the closings of her letters, nor the suggestion of removing the chickens and all else from the house, simply stalls after the second question, watching her face.
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"You returned the survey. You refused every invitation to participate, despite my insistence of its importance. You have attempted to surrender the care of your things here and in fact made every effort to avoid crossing my path when I insisted otherwise. After I--" She lapses. It's a brief, furiously closed tight thing.
"I'm not an imbecile, Mister Ellis. I don't need to be told to know."
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"I'm not angry."
A passing notion: if he took her hands maybe she would look him in the eye. But he doesn't reach for her. There is a distance, some chilly gulf between them that Ellis isn't sure he's invited to broach.
"But I think you might be angry with me," he says, aware of the ridiculousness of the statement, turning it back in this manner. "And I don't think it's...I think the survey is only part of what's troubling you."
And worse, that he is going to disappoint her. He is going to tell her no and he doesn't know that she'll be so accommodating of him now as she was the first time.
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It's a nasty sort of repetition, half baffled and half mocking, secured by the fact that fixture of her attention doesn't waver from where it's posted away from him and rattled off automatically to keep herself from saying some other thing. Or thinking some other thing.
It's forced to be a flat, simple kind of irritation. It's so much easier to carry around without being cut by it that way.
Wysteria does cross her arms then. And lifts her chin a few degrees further, though he has already made himself so low.
"What could I possibly be angry with you for?"
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And says nothing.
It's the survey, and it isn't the survey. It's the tightness of her voice in a cabin in a dream and the snap between them in a chilly campsite. They all come from the same place, from a deficit in him, but he waits to hear it confirmed aloud by her.
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In reply, Wysteria cinches the wrap of her arms tighter. The chickens peck at the pavers. Feathers are ruffled. The day is gray and drab and no sun reaches this small walled garden. The doors to the house remain closed.
"I am not angry," she says. And then allows, "At you."
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"Then who?"
Or what, maybe would be more accurate. But Ellis has a starting point. He's attempting to proceed delicately.
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This too sparks hot some ember of irritation. It is a stark lack of charity; how unpleasant the shape of it is, and how bitter the tang of the air which lingers about it.
Like a locked door whose handle is being braced by a closed hand on one side, she picks her words carefully. They are all crisp edges, perfectly enunciated as if selected one by one for their sound rather than their meaning. "I am angry," she says. "At myself. For being so short tempered. And unkind. So there. You see the difficulty."
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(The dream. Tony's bedside. The sharpness of her voice.)
"Tell me what brought this on," Ellis says, which is perhaps equal parts stalling and self-preservation. "Please."
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It takes great effort to clamp her teeth down around the impulse to continue. There are a dozen different things which threaten to follow on the heel of that out of her, rising hot like the color in her face. She hammers them down. The heels of her calfskin colored boots, all stamped with flowers, scrape on the paving stones - a literal digging in as she exhales hard through the nose. A puff of frustration.
"I know it makes no difference really, given that were are here and everything is well after all. But it was cruel of me. To leave. And to abandon him to you. I know these things upset you, so it is only natural that you should dislike me for it."
She looks at him then, all drawn and scowling.
"There are lots of people who are very cross with one another. And you did refuse my survey."
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Regardless of whether or not Ellis ever intended to directly speak about what had happened at the tail end of the dream or not, the response comes to him very quickly.
"I could never be angry with you for that," Ellis tells her, firm over the assertion. "You were upset. Even if we were still there, I'd not hold it against you."
A particular challenge: talking around exactly what they'd both been upset about. Ellis is reluctant to invoke Tony's condition in the dream, as if it could cement it into something real.
"It was a hard thing. None of us handled it as well as we would have wanted to."
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"Well I think that's a poor excuse. Just because a thing is difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't admit to having done it badly. And—" And. "It is not just that, or only in that terrible dream either. It affects the work, you know. To be so..."
She searches for the right word, falters, and lapses hard across some invisible line and into a long, clumsy silence.
"Tiresome."
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There is no hesitation over that point.
He looks up into her face and thinks again that there is such bravery in how Wysteria carries herself through the world. To meet grief and fight it, rather than be broken, that is something worthy of admiration. Ellis hadn't managed it.
Ellis shifts, weight grinding his boots against the dirt.
"You did the best you could," comes more quietly, entreating.
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There is a question. It isn't Then why would you not just help me?; this is hardly the first work she has done for Riftwatch which has required cornering people in corridors for an interrogation or catching them in stairwells to shake them down for information. It's a better question. A more pressing one. Because if he isn't angry, then what is he? And if he thought her furious, why not object? Insist otherwise. Protect some thing at risk.
With a prompt unraveling of her crossed arms, she presses her mitten hands briefly to her eyes and quickly swipes whatever lurks there away. All is in order. It hardly matters, and so see! After the briefest pause, she may be all bolstered cheer after as she drops her hand. It is an easy thing, as simple as dipping faded paper in bright dye.
"Well. Then it seems there is no cause for concern at all. How good. I hope you may now be perfectly at ease. Take this if you please, Mister Ellis."
The pan with the remaining seed is fetched up from beside her and passed to him.
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He closes his fingers over her mittened hands on the pan, stalling against the possibility of retreat before Wysteria can make a move towards it. The cold has reddened his knuckles, but his grip is firm.
"Ask your question."
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(Be reassuring.)
"Another time. It's hardly important."
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It would be selfish to take the out. Ellis doesn't even know if he's capable of answering her, if her curiosity is directed in any direction he's expecting. But even if he can't wrench together an answer for her, he can at least explain it's absence. Surely that's better than nothing.
His fingers tighten by degrees over hers.
"No. Ask me now, Wysteria."
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"Why don't you want any of this?"
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"Any of what?"
Presumably not the chickens.
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"To be cared for."
Unfair.
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His grip loosens, shifting along to draw the pan from her with one hand while keeping hold of at least one of Wysteria's hands in the process of putting the tin down on the ground. The chickens are resourceful enough to manage.
"I don't understand."
Potentially a better answer than I am cared for, which feels true but likely doesn't reach whatever Wysteria is holding up to mark a sufficient level of care.
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"If someone did that to me—left me with what I left you with—I would be furious with them. And you couldn't say where you'd been when we'd asked. Which doesn't matter, really. Those things maybe don't count like they would otherwise because it was all Fade walking nonsense. But there are things you won't discuss here too, and if you thought I was angry with you then why not fill out the ridiculous survey, and sometimes it's as if you—
"I don't know," is a sudden sharp stop, when she had just been finding that stone rolling down a hill momentum. "See? I told you. This is very stupid. Pretend I said nothing at all."
She makes to extract her kept hand.
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"You know."
Wysteria knows her own mind. She's clever, unravels everything quickly when her interest is piqued. Whatever lurks unspoken after that break in her recitation is likely another piece of evidence he'd rather she turn her attention from. The skin over one knuckle has split in the cold, dot of blood rising and then shaken away as Ellis looks at her. There's some immediate urge to apologize, but he can recognize that for what it is: a stopgap against the bigger problem, even if his remorse for her upset is sincere.
"Finish your thought."
And then what?
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"Sometimes I think you're ashamed of our friendship. Mine. And Mister Stark's."
I am devoted to you, he had said so long ago. It had seemed so painful to him then.
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"I could never be ashamed. Not of either of you."
It would help if he sounded less wretched over it, maybe.
"Your friendship is more than I deserve, more than I ever expected when I came here. And I—"
A place where his voice breaks, words coming apart as he struggles to find something true to tell her. (It is the wrong moment to think of Cathán, but he does; remembers a similar argument ending in shouting and departures.) There are so many parts of his life he doesn't want to ever touch Wysteria's.
"I'm ashamed of myself," is what he settles on. "Not you. Never, ever you, Wysteria."
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put a bow on this pls
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