heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

The surge of relief Ellis feels in response is staggering, makes his immediate scramble forward clumsier than it should be. There is blood on him, and that only occurs to him in the split second before he reaches for her, followed by the worry that she might prefer not to be touched so after what's happened. His hands curl in on themselves as he settles on his knees, close enough that there's no need to raise his voice to draw her attention.

"Wysteria," he says, softly, like a question. Asking permission.

His mace is set out of her sight line, but well within his reach. Has he ever used it on a human in her presence? The worry for that is stowed far off, something to consider after he's certain the splattering of mud on her isn't masking any injuries worse than bruising.

As the barrier has crumbled, so too had the raised angle of her face. It's buried clumsily back against the awkward angle of her arm now, left hand trembling where it's cinched close near her ear and the mud streak nape of her neck. She's breathing hard. There's blood splattered about about person, bright against the blue of her sleeves and dark in her hair, but so much of it seems—

Like it doesn't belong to her. There's a long scrape on her forearm, but thanks to the length of her (now shredded) sleeve it's only angry welted red rather than bleeding outright. Some artifact from being dredged down out of the wagon, more likely than not.

Eventually, she blindly extends her hand—the one still safely in its mitten—toward him.

"Have they gone?"

Once Ellis takes hold of her hand, he seems to have more reeled himself into towards her than anything else. Rather than ask Wysteria to move, he crowds closer, holding tight to her hand as he comes to be kneeling half over her, opposite hand very gentle at her shoulder.

"Yes, they've gone."

Blessedly they'd even dragged the poor bastard Ellis had laid out with his second blow. If they don't have a healer—

Well. Ellis doesn't regret it.

"What hurts?" is an old, borrowed question. It's asked very tenderly, though Ellis' face is still pinched with worry, relief giving way to concern and the shaky, breathless return of all the fear he'd stowed away in the course of the scuffle.

Everything is the ridiculous answer of a child with a skinned knee.

"It's nothing. I just—a moment. Just a moment to catch my breath."

Her left hand flexes and closes slowly, anchor slash glinting. Her right hand twists in his. Draws into a loose fist—a gentle, uneasy thing.

She jerks suddenly, twisting toward him—her face all starkly pale and alarm fixed plain in it. The rabbitting leap of her pulse spikes sharp and high.

"Are you well?" And. "The wagon. Where are the horses? That's not—" She stutters over it, shaking her anchor inflicted hand as if she's touched a hot stove. That's not meant to happen.

"I'm not hurt," he answers first, very firm over the words. "We're alright. The horses won't have gone far. We'll walk along the road and meet them, I expect."

And if not, the Ambassador will have to smooth it over. Ellis finds himself unable to invest any kind of concern in the whereabouts of that cargo. There's no pressure in the words. He's content to sit here on the roadside until she's steadied herself.

"You're alright," Ellis says, displaced hand returning to join their linked palms, finish cupping her mittened hand between his own even though he'd prefer to touch her face, coax her to let him see the scrape on her arm. "You did very well."

Though she shouldn't have had to. That consideration sticks in his head.

For a moment, her attention remains fractured between the half dozen available points—scattered and clearly baffled by the shock of the thing.

And then she sharpens, focus narrowing. Color floods hot back into her cheeks and she kicks to free herself from the tangle that her skirts have become so she can clumsily lever herself more toward something lying sitting upright rather than lying on the cold ground.

"Oh—gods damn it all!" Is all bitter frustration. For the state of her clothes and the road and the missing horses and wagon and how ridiculous the whole affair is. "You would think that if I must be here with this wretched thing in my hand that the least it might do would be to have the courtesy of behaving in a predictable fashion. It is very late indeed for it to have decided to do—to do anything at all. Oh if the wagon is gone I will be truly furious. I've a notebook there with the things I brought along."

It's the beginnings of a very fine rant, but before Wysteria can truly get her momentum going she's forced to pause. To catch her breath. To smooth down some wave of nausea and lightheadedness. With her rift handle folded in tight against her middle, she regards him all mud splattered and flecked with blood. And then there is the mace just there.

Her eye flickers toward it, then away. Wysteria's nod is as curt as it can be.

"Well done, Ellis. I think she might have had my head if not for that. You're certain? You're unharmed?"

Belatedly, Ellis is very relieved he hadn't lead with the instinctive question about her shard. He certainly doesn't take the moment to volunteer what a boon he finds this malfunction. A barrier to force out anything that might harm her? Ellis can't find it in him to resent this one aspect of the thing.

Something else might have been said: the horses aren't so ambitious that they'd have carried the cart off to parts unknown, her notebook will be salvaged, they'll likely only need go a little farther up the road—

But he follows the angle of her glance and the turn of her head, and says none of that at all.

"I can't say there won't be a bruise or two," he says slowly, eyes falling from her face to her hand in his own. As he speaks, he begins to pull her remaining mitten off. It's nonsensical. He wants to feel her skin, not wool. "But it's nothing to concern yourself with."

Practicality says: they'll stay the night in the village. There will be a bath, a chance to repair her sleeve, replace her mittens.

Instead, he says, "And I'm sorry."

The space after which is filled with complicated sentiment, none of which quite fit neatly into words. He had never wanted Wysteria to see such a thing. There is a difference between watching him take demons apart, and seeing what he can do to other living things. He'd risked her and he's sorry for it. Her mitten is closed into one hand, as his thumb runs across her bare palm.

"Let me see your arm, please?"

"Sorry? Maker, whatever for," is less a real question and more an absent dismissal as he removes her mitten. The warmth of his hand which follows is bizarrely comforting - shocking for the sudden simple skin heat of it. She's startled to see that hand is trembling too.

It's only when Wysteria surrenders her other arm, drawing it away from her center and holding it out to him so that Ellis might examine the long scrape along the back of her forearm, that she realizes the phenomena isn't limited to her hands. That she's shaking all over, heart racing fast and every part of her all too cold or too warm in turns.

It's fine. She's only startled and tired.

"I should have fetched the knife out of my boot. Remind me when we reach the village to bind it. That is Kalvadan," she explains, distantly aware that it must sound like the senseless blather of some weak nerved individual prone to losing their head at the slightest inconvenience. "I shouldn't have let the horses slow. Of course that man in the road was a scoundrel. How stupid."

He seems uneasy, doesn't he? More anxious than he ought to be? Strangely apologetic?

"I am well, aren't I?" She prompts, a sudden cold dread washing over her. "Has something happened to my face that I can't see? You must tell me if it has. I can't bear not to know."

Edited 2021-03-09 23:14 (UTC)

A scrape. Easily washed clean, once they're in a place for it. There's salve in his pack which is hopefully still beneath the seat of the wagon, and will be enough to soothe the injury.

And once assured that there is no break, no blood, nothing that can wait, the more urgent matter becomes Wysteria's trembling hands. Ellis folds them both back between his own, secure as he looks back up to her face. His brow furrows, a beat of quiet passing as he sorts through the trip of her questions before coming to some decision as to which he'll address. (It is not her fault. It's an old trick, old because it works, and if he had said—)

"Your face is just fine," he reassures her, with a press of his hands around hers before he tips his head, lifts one hand first to his own face as he continues, "A little mud, just here—"

Gently, Ellis' fingers skim her cheek. It serves the dual purpose of tilting her head just so, the better to examine her eyes, mark the state of her. It is familiar. Ellis knows it because he has been there, and has had others maybe more adept than he is now to pull him back.

"But you needn't worry. I'm Fereldan, and by all accounts we're very fond of mud. I still think you look very pretty."

This is said very solemnly, which thankfully suits for the joke as much as Ellis' own personal worries. (The mace, what he'd done, the misstep in the handling of it.) When he moves in the wake of that statement, it's to shift to sit alongside her, make himself easy to lean in against.

She doesn't think to be anything but amenable to the examination. And if there is something slightly too bright about her eyes or a dialation of the pupils, then at least her color is good. And if she is slightly slow on the uptake—he does sound so very serious—, then at least her response is whip sharp as he moves alongside her.

"Oh really, Mister Ellis. As if my looks were at all my concern."

(Of course they were. Good. She is relieved.)

She does allow herself to lean on him just a slightly, shaking and clammy and out of sorts. She takes one of his hands back as they sit there, fluttering grip of her right hand secure enough. The anchor ridden left one remains in her lap, tender and aching—

"It's only on account of the anchor. I have always been perfectly well in these sorts of situations otherwise."

The urge to reach over to take her left hand, close his own over the gleaming green flicker embedded there, is kept in check as Ellis instead winds an arm around her. He rubs his hand up and down her bicep in silent attempt to ease the shivering from her. Being solid and warm and reassuring is the most he can do for her in this moment. Wysteria will right herself in due time.

"I know."

Agreement punctuated by the lift press of a kiss to the top of her head. Yes, Ellis is aware Wysteria has managed in more difficult situations. She's been kidnapped twice that he knows of, and come back unshaken. (Discounting the dream, of course.)

"It doesn't hurt?" he prompts, question asked nearly into her hair as he tucks her into him by degrees. He's never asked, but he'd wondered. He's seen her and Tony use them over and over, but it hadn't been quite like this.

"And you were very dashing," is what she says at first instead of an answer. "It was very decisively done. I wouldn't have thought to exert such a show of force, but clearly it was quite necessary. Do you know I have a cousin who once knew someone who was robbed on the road. I believe they killed the driver. Or at least that was how he told it to me. I suppose it might have been just him trying to frighten me. I was very small, and we were visiting and had to take a long road home. That scoundrel."

He is warm. His breath is too, and the sound of his voice pressed so close is pleasantly reassuring.

Wysteria looks down at the hand in her lap.

"Yes, it does. When I'm near to a rift, or helping to closing one. It does ache somewhat then." She closed her hand into a fist. "And a little more right this moment, I suppose."

The application of dashing and decisive are meant as praise, but don't quite land as intended. But he doesn't contradict her.

"I'd thought as much," he says instead.

Not that anything could be done for it. There's no way for him to do anything about it. He doesn't tell her that he's sorry, because what would she do with such a sentiment?

After a few moments of quiet, he says, "Here," and releases her hand long enough to undo the fastening of his gambeson, take her left hand and lift it to press squarely against his chest over his heartbeat. Less for the pain, more to keep the gleam of it out of sight, underline the rise and fall of his breath and the steady thud of his heart beneath his tunic.

"I had a cousin who would tell me stories about werewolves," Ellis tells her, as he reclaims her right hand, lacing their fingers together. "And he did frighten me, because for a few months I wouldn't go out of the house after dark, even with a torch. I was afraid I'd drop it, and when the light went out the monster would get me."

That pocket of air between gambeson and tunic is brazier warm. She thinks that first. And then after feels the regular beat of his heart. She thinks of counting it. And then does count it—beat one, beat two, beat three.

"Do you suppose it is a rule that all cousins must be little beasts?"

It'a not really a question that needs an answer. Cinched in close to him, sitting in the mud and end of winter brittle vegetation, Wysteria closes her eyes. She breathes in and thinks of not holding it overlong. Breath one, breath two, breath three.

"How did you stop being frightened?"

A soft hum in answer. What a moment to think back, sitting here with blood on him in the road. The pass of his hand up and down her arm slows, lingers at her elbow before ascending back up to her shoulder.

How did he stop being frightened? Thinking back, it is hard to think of one specific moment when the concern of being snatched in the dark faded away.

"My father," he says, and then stops. He inhales deeply, chest rising beneath Wysteria's hand. "We'd go out together, without a torch. I think it must have stopped worrying me when nothing tried to eat me."

And then, after the Blight, what was there to be frightened for? (No. He's been reminded, since he's come to Riftwatch. He was reminded just today, when Wysteria had been ripped from her seat in this cart.) He ducks his face briefly into her hair, grip tightening on her arm.

"Remind me later. I'll tell you the werewolf stories I remember."

His chest rises under her hand. Her eyes are still closed, but she can imagine the look on his face which must come with it (counting still—Eight, nine, forty, forty-one, two, three—if she focuses on it, the rhythm of the ache in her hand fades and her own breathing begins to feel even).

"Yes, thank you. I would like to hear them."

For the narrowest instant, she can feel a knot forming in her throat. Tears stinging in her closed eyes. She doesn't have time to sort where either comes from before both subside, though. And then they are just sitting on the ground and it occurs to her that she's getting cold from it.

"Well. For now, we may as well track down the wagon. At this rate, I'll have almost no time at all to get a look at my caves."

Yes, they might as well see how far the horses got before they were distracted or exhausted. And Wysteria seems steadier, or at least, the shivering has subsided. But Ellis doesn't make to stand just yet.

"I had an idea," Ellis says. "That we stay the night there, and we can see your caves on the way back. Tomorrow."

Though he wouldn't blame her if she'd rather speed back to the Gallows, Ellis thinks she deserves the option to put herself back together.

"Oh." And. "Yes. That seems perfectly reasonable. The horses would do well to be put up for the night."

And the idea of sitting on a hard cart seat for further hours on end sounds miserable. And he looks dreadful and will need a bath. And she is tired, and dirty, and sore. And then she will get to see her cliff caves and they may forget all about this nonsense. And in a few hours, once the pain has faded, she may speak to Tony over the crystal regarding the event in the road and it will be as if nothing at all remarkable had occurred save for the activation of her anchor shard.

There. Decided. It's a fine plan.

"Very well. Can you stand, or shall I make the first attempt and dredge you up after me, Mister Ellis?"

That's a good joke. She decides that too.

In the wake of her brisk little joke, Ellis can almost forget the axe hooked over the edge of the wagon, so close to her arm. Or the crackling dome of green, obscuring her from view. He smiles for it anyway, brings her hand to his mouth to smack a light kiss to her knuckles before leveraging himself up with a groan.

"Here we go."

Unattended, the horses had meandered farther down the road than anticipated before being distracted by grazing opportunities. Wysteria's notebook is recovered. They make it into the village, later than expected but before nightfall. Ellis unloads the cargo, amidst a pattering of faux casual questions and a gaggle of village children. The interest is understandable, considering the state they arrived in. (Ellis' mace is concealed until he can rinse it clean in the trough behind the stables.) There's a little inn that doubles as the tavern, and a few coins gets baths, dinner, a room on the third floor with sloping ceilings but a warm fire. The events of the day recede by turns, and Ellis doesn't summon them back when he scribbles the news of their delay into the book, addressed to Matthias.

"They'll wash out our clothes," Ellis is telling her, hands deftly winding bandages over the scrape on her arm. His hair is still damp from the bath, having returned to her in just his tunic and a pair of borrowed trousers. The salve-smeared scrape disappears by turns as he winds the cloth into place. "And promised us breakfast, if I chop wood for them before we go."

So all in all, a decent bargain.

All things considered, it's a perfectly comfortable arrangement. What more could be asked for after a such an extraordinarily long day? She has fended off the interrogation of a dozen children while the wagon was been unloaded, and gossiped ferociously with the innkeeper's wife and daughter while she'd sat in a shallow bathing pan and they'd helped to scrub all the mud and blood out of her hair. They'd been kind enough to use some sweet honeyed soap made in the summer and to lend her a clean shift and a plain but beautifully cedar smelling dress from the bottom of some chest, and here in the evening with a fire roaring in the narrow upstairs room, she is almost beginning to feel human again.

Her long pale hair in its straight forward plait is draped forward over her shoulder. There is just one chair in the little room, so they're instead seated on the yarn hooked rug because it's convenient and because it's closest to the warm hearth stone. She has her knees drawn up, her chin resting on the peak of them, and is just patient or tired enough to submit to being tended to.

"Is that so? I'll bet that was a suggestion from Alma, the cheeky old bat." Wysteria lowers her voice to a stage whisper. "She thinks you're quite good looking. I tried to dissuade her with descriptions of your terrible temperament, but by the sound of things I wasn't successful."

A mage could erase the wound easily, but Ellis has to make do with what he has. Even if Wysteria is humoring him, it still eases some lingering sense of guilt for what feels like a mistake; if he'd done it all properly, surely she would have come through it without a scratch.

But it helps that Wysteria seems more or less herself. She's resilient, far more than she gets credit for. Once the scrape is obscured, this could be any other stop-over in the midst of an errand gone on longer than intended.

"I'm going to have to disappoint her," Ellis answers, a smile working at the corner of his mouth. His hands move carefully at her wrist, tucking and securing the last ends of the bandages. "I've had my head turned by an extraordinary woman. There's nothing for it."

A sweep of his thumb along the heel of her hand, and Wysteria is released. These words come easier now, though not without a small pang of some complex feeling.

None of that touches his expression now. Instead, Ellis smile widens just a fraction as he continues, "But maybe we wait tell her so after we've eaten."

Her arm is folded accordingly back, tucking in about her legs so she might secure them to her. It's a comfortable thing, easily done as she hmms and oh?s and so on to the effect of humoring him.

"I agree that would be best. I couldn't bear to see that woman's heart broken after she and her family have shown such hospitality to me. —Well, to us. But in exchange for keeping your secret, you will have to tell me all about this fine lady who has you put you in such an inconvenient position. Because I won't stand for it. I'm extremely jealous, Mister Ellis, and was under the impression that we had become reasonably close."

"I have a sense you'd like her."

Between them, on the rug, Ellis has set to packing away what he'd taken out of his kit: rewinding bandages, sealing the little tin of salve, tucking them into the pockets and straps where he'd drawn them from.

"She's very clever. One of the smartest people I've met in all my travels," Ellis tells her, watching Wysteria's face from the corner of his eye. "And pretty. Even in a borrowed dress."

Had things gone differently on the road, he might have said other things, teased her about her driving. But it is too soon to invoke any of it, and Ellis lets the list end there, lapsing into quiet as he ties the leather straps securely into place and turns to slide the kit back into his pack.

She scoffs, a singularly skeptical noise whose force isn't represented in the ease of her posture.

"Well now you've put me at quite the impasse, Mister Ellis," she says, watching as he repacks the kit and stows it away. "For I'm naturally suspicious of anyone who is so easily praised, and so would naturally assume that I would find this lady to be quite dreadful in practice. But, I also know your word to be fairly reliable and your judgement sound. So I suppose, in the name of our regard for one another and because you are so well traveled, I have no choice but to accept your evaluation. Much as it pains me to do so."

It is pleasantly warm in the room and the birch bark used for tinder in the fireplace has a sweet smell to it. Were the circumstances of their presence here more different, she might hardly give much appreciation to either, or to the crusty bread that had come with dinner, or the scratchy woolen stockings she's been lent.

Seated there on the latch hook rug, she allows the link of her hands to slip from her knees to loose about her ankles. So long as they are here and have the time, there is some reading she might do in A Field Guide to Earthly Phainomenon, Vol.II refresh herself on what they may find in her cliff caves tomorrow. Or she might work on drafting the report they will need to make (or the one for their latest excursion into the Vinmark's and measurements taken from the rift which was closed there which she still owes a hard copy of to Felandaris and Provost Stark). Or any number of things. Or—

"Are you very tired?"

Had he always been so fond of her scoffs? When exactly did that softness develop in him, that he is more prone to a grin than anything else in response to them?

The moment of consideration in the wake of her question has very little do with self-assessment. Ellis knows his answer. But he doesn't respond until he's nudged his kit into place among the other items in his bag, securely refastened the buckle and set it back against the leg of the chair.

"No," he answers her. "But I thought you might be."

Edited (changes literally 1 word) 2021-03-10 20:48 (UTC)

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