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."
It's lucky that he turns back; she isn't prepared to interrupt any escape attempts. Or for this apparently, given the baffled look he receives in answer. Flush with mortification or exasperation, Wysteria struggles after some better reply but finally just finds her way to:
"But this is exactly my meaning, Mister Ellis! If it's not myself or Mister Stark, then it is the—the friendship itself. And I don't understand why it troubles you so, or why you shouldn't think it unwarranted, or in what way it doesn't—" She makes a frustrated noise between her teeth. "Align with the way in which you see yourself."
In the course of her questioning, Ellis has strayed further from her towards the covered garden beds. He'd barely noticed the movement. She is asking him for something he has never shared. Wysteria's face is flushed from cold or from anger and Ellis wants to go to her and take her hands and ask her to set all of this aside. But the distance put between them remains.
If he tells her the truth, will she ever look at him kindly again?
Or worse, if he is to unspool all that he has done in his life, all the mistakes, all the blood, all the death, and for her to take it in stride? It is not something to be excused. He cannot hear that from her.
"Because I'm not as good a person as you think I am," Ellis says, turning back to her. "And I am sorry, I—I'm sorry that I cannot give you a better answer."
"And this is how you would see that managed? By using our care for you as something to berate yourself with?"
He is very far away. Maybe that's why there is room again in her for some flash of anger to spark out from under the distress. Wysteria stamps one of her feet on the courtyard's paving stones, the calfskin boot's tread so soft thwap that it fails to startle even the chickens.
"Well I never agreed to it. And I doubt Mister Stark would be any more pleased to know it."
This is the danger in giving half an answer, though he is caught somewhere between at this point: reluctant to say more, but having said too much, and poorly at that. His hands fold together, cracked knuckles curled into a fist, pressed into opposite palm. The fingers of his left hand have gone stiff with cold. It's a grounding thing, something Ellis holds fast to as he looks back to her.
It's a good question. For a split second, it seems like it might check her.
"You might try not shutting yourself away while I cram my entire foot into my mouth, for starters. Or say it, when you've been harmed. Or just—We're not any of us breakable things, Mister Ellis. I think we are all capable of weathering being a little sharp with one another when the circumstances warrant it. Or do you really think my opinion is that flexible?"
From the edge of the planter box, and under snug fit of her felted hat, she has puffed up considerably. An uncharitable parallel might be drawn between her and the rustled feathers of a small flock's worth of chickens, or an especially harried small dog who believes it her task to wrangle them.
Were they speaking of anything else, at any other point in time, Ellis' expression might have softened in amusement at her outrage.
But that is not a possibility in this moment.
It's not so simple as yes or no. It's about the weight of all this ugliness, and wanting so badly to draw a line around it, wall it away so it would never reach this house or this garden, so Wysteria never has to decide if her opinion of him needs changing.
Rather than answer the question immediately, Ellis tips his hands back, lifts his hands to his face. The great inhale and exhale of cold air rasps in place of a reply, as he plucks at the threads of his composure, steadying himself. Waits for words to come to him.
What does that look like from across a little garden courtyard? Maybe like a series of papers, folded over and left unanswered.
She waits for a beat. And then uncurls her arms from about her and leans down, shooing the chicken off the pan so it might be tipped up and the remaining grain dumped on the paving stones Ellis had spent all summer carefully digging up and relaying. The pan is tucked under her arm and she rises, brushing invisible straw bits from her skirts. The edge of the scarf is tossed back behind her shoulder and—
And.
She is meant to make her way past him and into the house now. She could do it without saying anything.
"Do you want an escape route? The gate is just there. I can look the other way."
"No," is clipped, short enough that his voice doesn't give way.
Wysteria won't forgive him for leaving.
Ellis pushes his hands back, heels grinding briefly against his eyes before he shoves fingers through his hair, then lets them drop back to his sides. His face is flushed from the cold. There is a catch in his throat that won't settle, no matter what he does. It puts a hitch in his tone wen he speaks again.
"Do you remember when you asked me if there was something troubling me?"
If there is a brief surge of satisfaction from his refusal to go, it has no opportunity to either resolve or form fully. Instead it catches high in her chest and hangs there, a hook to secure her in place. There is no divorcing herself from this section of space.
The pan is clutched tight between her arm and side, mittened hands tucked about its curved edge. But it doesn't really matter what her hands do, does it? He's out of reach.
"I said I didn't want to talk about it. Or something close," he reminds her, unnecessarily, but it's close to the point and Ellis is trying to scrape together thoughts that scatter away from him. They'd been sitting out in the sun. She'd had Richard's snake among the flowerbeds. The chickens hadn't been here yet. Ellis turns his head briefly towards the place, but it's irrelevant. The point is not that day, not exactly. It was something that had been enough at the time.
"It's not something I'm hiding from you, or from him. I don't talk about any of it because it's painful, and I can't—"
They're edging towards the most he's spoken at length outside of a letter. Which registers, as Ellis breaks off, thumb pressing down over one knuckle.
"I can't," he repeats, a complete statement rather than an involuntary stop.
She studies him for a long beat after, no ready thought occurring immediately to her. It is like a measuring of space, a habitual and largely unconscious flattening of world so she might compare him to all the thing surrounding him.
And then Wysteria hikes the pan a little higher under her arm, saying briskly, "Then don't expect me to know your mind well enough to be able to avoid pain. It is only natural to eventually stub a toe when moving about in a dark room."
With a flick of skirts, she wheels toward the doors leading into the house.
"There is honey wax for your hands in the usual cupboard if you care for it."
As she rises, Ellis draws a few steps closer to her. Still mindful of how she'd pulled her hands back from him, he doesn't reach back to her.
"I'll tell you, if you're too sharp with me."
He wants to say And I'll tell you all the rest, someday. But he can't tell if it would be truth or not, and he doesn't want to lie to Wysteria. So there is this small give, something that feels as if it can be done.
"And one more thing, if you'll help me with the wax."
The look she shoots him is sharp. Bristling, to make up for the sting of some secret cut—turning rapidly past the blank space where the words 'You're not the only person in the room,' could live. She sniffs as she breezes past him to the door. A very small piece of irritation can be hammered out thin and turned into plate.
"Very well. If you're quick about it. Shoo!"
This last is for a pair of intrepid chickens making to follow after her. Wysteria flaps her skirts at them, then forces her way through the door into the dimly lit kitchen beyond.
Door closed behind him, Ellis tugs the scarf loose from his neck, loosens the fastenings of his jacket. The welcome seems precarious, so he doesn't make himself too comfortable beyond those small adjustments.
The wax is retrieved, a chair pulled out for her. Ellis still hesitates a moment before he taps his fingers against the chairback.
"Here."
He'll draw up another adjacent to her, assuming she does sit.
She busies herself with the setting aside of the pan, the shedding of her mittens, by unlooping her scarf and tossing back the edges of her capelet. It's clear that Wysteria doesn't intend to linger long; by the tell-tale folio all stuffed with papers, she must have business somewhere in the city. Nonetheless, when the seat is drawn out she does indeed eventually accept it.
The lid of the wax's jar is popped unceremoniously free. The contents are chilled enough that the sweet fatty smell is reduced to nearly nothing until Wysteria scuffs a wedge of the stuff out onto her thumb.
The chair scrapes slightly as Ellis scoots it in towards her, putting his right hand palm down on the table. His left hand rests on his thigh palm up. It'll be easier to move his fingers once he's gotten warmer.
He realizes he doesn't know how to start this story. It's maybe the easiest to tell, because half of it would have been easily puzzled out by Wysteria if she weren't a Rifter, or if she'd read any of the thick, dusty historical tomes on the Blight that Fitz had irritably shelved along the bottom of bookshelf.
"I was eighteen at the time of the Fifth Blight," is what he says, looking down at his hand on the tabletop rather than at her. "Younger than you were, in the dream."
Younger than she is now.
"Did you come across anything on it, in your reading?"
"Naturally. I have read all about the fall of the fortress at Ostagar and the civil war. There is an excellent account regarding the economic impacts of the Fifth Blight by Enchanter Adair. I'm not usually inclined toward such texts as they tend to be desperately dry, but Adair is--or was, as I have seen no work from her otherwise so who can say if she survived the Mage-Templar conflict--a dab hand at making the stuff digestible. This may sting."
With the clump of wax sufficiently softened, Wysteria shifts up to take his right hand in both of hers. It's a fine thing to concentrate on--working the thick salve mercilessly across the hills and valleys of chapped knuckles, unhesitating with respect to the rawest portions of skin. In the dream, her hands had been very strong - well acquainted with the kind of power necessary for the detail work of manufacturing, of handling tools and bending metal and stripping and cutting of wire. Here, they are largely ink stained and without callous. The dark burn scar which peppers the skin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand is the only real testament to work.
It does sting, but Ellis doesn't flinch at it. His fingers are loose in her grip, pliable in spite of the rising thud of his heartbeat. He can feel a prickle of sweat at the nape of his neck.
The answer twitches a smile that fades as Ellis continues.
"When Ostagar fell, there was nothing to protect us, you see. I don't know if they write about that. All the villages and towns left undefended."
It would be easier if Wysteria had read a different book.
"We lived in a small town. Barely more than a village, I think. No walls, not that walls would have made a difference," Ellis says slowly. "When the hoard reached us, there was nothing—nothing could be done. You understand what that means, aye?"
If there is any part of her which is lacking in confidence, her thumbs at least are unaffected. The salve is rubbed into parched skin until his hand and fingers are flush from the friction of brisk, no-nonsense handling.
"Of course I know what that means."
In a sense. The sky goes black; crops rot in their fields; the sweep of darkspawn progresses unimpeded and what becomes of the places left in their wake and the industries which were fished or farmed or traded by people no longer in residence? These as issues of economy too.
A pause, where Ellis lifts his hand and carefully flexes his fingers before leaning back slightly in his chair. Wysteria understands some aspect of this, but he doesn't see the gravity of it in her face. He doesn't know how to say this, or if he wants to say it.
The silence stretches as he sets his left hand onto the table.
"Everyone was killed. Or taken. I didn't know until later that darkspawn had a tendency for that, but it means the same thing in the end."
A pause. A deep breath. Ellis doesn't know how to make it real for her without bringing something horrific into the warmth of this kitchen.
"I ran," is what he says instead. "They were in our house, they'd gotten hold of my mother, and my father told me to run out the back door, so I did. I left them."
Which is the point. He'd left. The opaque description of the thing is enough illustration.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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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"But this is exactly my meaning, Mister Ellis! If it's not myself or Mister Stark, then it is the—the friendship itself. And I don't understand why it troubles you so, or why you shouldn't think it unwarranted, or in what way it doesn't—" She makes a frustrated noise between her teeth. "Align with the way in which you see yourself."
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If he tells her the truth, will she ever look at him kindly again?
Or worse, if he is to unspool all that he has done in his life, all the mistakes, all the blood, all the death, and for her to take it in stride? It is not something to be excused. He cannot hear that from her.
"Because I'm not as good a person as you think I am," Ellis says, turning back to her. "And I am sorry, I—I'm sorry that I cannot give you a better answer."
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He is very far away. Maybe that's why there is room again in her for some flash of anger to spark out from under the distress. Wysteria stamps one of her feet on the courtyard's paving stones, the calfskin boot's tread so soft thwap that it fails to startle even the chickens.
"Well I never agreed to it. And I doubt Mister Stark would be any more pleased to know it."
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This is the danger in giving half an answer, though he is caught somewhere between at this point: reluctant to say more, but having said too much, and poorly at that. His hands fold together, cracked knuckles curled into a fist, pressed into opposite palm. The fingers of his left hand have gone stiff with cold. It's a grounding thing, something Ellis holds fast to as he looks back to her.
"What would you have me do, Wysteria?"
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"You might try not shutting yourself away while I cram my entire foot into my mouth, for starters. Or say it, when you've been harmed. Or just—We're not any of us breakable things, Mister Ellis. I think we are all capable of weathering being a little sharp with one another when the circumstances warrant it. Or do you really think my opinion is that flexible?"
From the edge of the planter box, and under snug fit of her felted hat, she has puffed up considerably. An uncharitable parallel might be drawn between her and the rustled feathers of a small flock's worth of chickens, or an especially harried small dog who believes it her task to wrangle them.
no subject
But that is not a possibility in this moment.
It's not so simple as yes or no. It's about the weight of all this ugliness, and wanting so badly to draw a line around it, wall it away so it would never reach this house or this garden, so Wysteria never has to decide if her opinion of him needs changing.
Rather than answer the question immediately, Ellis tips his hands back, lifts his hands to his face. The great inhale and exhale of cold air rasps in place of a reply, as he plucks at the threads of his composure, steadying himself. Waits for words to come to him.
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She waits for a beat. And then uncurls her arms from about her and leans down, shooing the chicken off the pan so it might be tipped up and the remaining grain dumped on the paving stones Ellis had spent all summer carefully digging up and relaying. The pan is tucked under her arm and she rises, brushing invisible straw bits from her skirts. The edge of the scarf is tossed back behind her shoulder and—
And.
She is meant to make her way past him and into the house now. She could do it without saying anything.
"Do you want an escape route? The gate is just there. I can look the other way."
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Wysteria won't forgive him for leaving.
Ellis pushes his hands back, heels grinding briefly against his eyes before he shoves fingers through his hair, then lets them drop back to his sides. His face is flushed from the cold. There is a catch in his throat that won't settle, no matter what he does. It puts a hitch in his tone wen he speaks again.
"Do you remember when you asked me if there was something troubling me?"
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The pan is clutched tight between her arm and side, mittened hands tucked about its curved edge. But it doesn't really matter what her hands do, does it? He's out of reach.
"I remember."
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"It's not something I'm hiding from you, or from him. I don't talk about any of it because it's painful, and I can't—"
They're edging towards the most he's spoken at length outside of a letter. Which registers, as Ellis breaks off, thumb pressing down over one knuckle.
"I can't," he repeats, a complete statement rather than an involuntary stop.
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And then Wysteria hikes the pan a little higher under her arm, saying briskly, "Then don't expect me to know your mind well enough to be able to avoid pain. It is only natural to eventually stub a toe when moving about in a dark room."
With a flick of skirts, she wheels toward the doors leading into the house.
"There is honey wax for your hands in the usual cupboard if you care for it."
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"I'll tell you, if you're too sharp with me."
He wants to say And I'll tell you all the rest, someday. But he can't tell if it would be truth or not, and he doesn't want to lie to Wysteria. So there is this small give, something that feels as if it can be done.
"And one more thing, if you'll help me with the wax."
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"Very well. If you're quick about it. Shoo!"
This last is for a pair of intrepid chickens making to follow after her. Wysteria flaps her skirts at them, then forces her way through the door into the dimly lit kitchen beyond.
no subject
The wax is retrieved, a chair pulled out for her. Ellis still hesitates a moment before he taps his fingers against the chairback.
"Here."
He'll draw up another adjacent to her, assuming she does sit.
no subject
The lid of the wax's jar is popped unceremoniously free. The contents are chilled enough that the sweet fatty smell is reduced to nearly nothing until Wysteria scuffs a wedge of the stuff out onto her thumb.
no subject
He realizes he doesn't know how to start this story. It's maybe the easiest to tell, because half of it would have been easily puzzled out by Wysteria if she weren't a Rifter, or if she'd read any of the thick, dusty historical tomes on the Blight that Fitz had irritably shelved along the bottom of bookshelf.
"I was eighteen at the time of the Fifth Blight," is what he says, looking down at his hand on the tabletop rather than at her. "Younger than you were, in the dream."
Younger than she is now.
"Did you come across anything on it, in your reading?"
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With the clump of wax sufficiently softened, Wysteria shifts up to take his right hand in both of hers. It's a fine thing to concentrate on--working the thick salve mercilessly across the hills and valleys of chapped knuckles, unhesitating with respect to the rawest portions of skin. In the dream, her hands had been very strong - well acquainted with the kind of power necessary for the detail work of manufacturing, of handling tools and bending metal and stripping and cutting of wire. Here, they are largely ink stained and without callous. The dark burn scar which peppers the skin between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand is the only real testament to work.
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The answer twitches a smile that fades as Ellis continues.
"When Ostagar fell, there was nothing to protect us, you see. I don't know if they write about that. All the villages and towns left undefended."
It would be easier if Wysteria had read a different book.
"We lived in a small town. Barely more than a village, I think. No walls, not that walls would have made a difference," Ellis says slowly. "When the hoard reached us, there was nothing—nothing could be done. You understand what that means, aye?"
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"Of course I know what that means."
In a sense. The sky goes black; crops rot in their fields; the sweep of darkspawn progresses unimpeded and what becomes of the places left in their wake and the industries which were fished or farmed or traded by people no longer in residence? These as issues of economy too.
"Give me your other hand."
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The silence stretches as he sets his left hand onto the table.
"Everyone was killed. Or taken. I didn't know until later that darkspawn had a tendency for that, but it means the same thing in the end."
A pause. A deep breath. Ellis doesn't know how to make it real for her without bringing something horrific into the warmth of this kitchen.
"I ran," is what he says instead. "They were in our house, they'd gotten hold of my mother, and my father told me to run out the back door, so I did. I left them."
Which is the point. He'd left. The opaque description of the thing is enough illustration.
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put a bow on this pls
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