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

The scrap of paper is accepted eagerly and is what finally prompts Wysteria to unfold the drawn up line of her knees and settle there more comfortably before the fire and beside him so she might turn the page about or fold it this way and that with her right hand. Her left remains set in her lap, fingers curled into a loose fist about the anchor's blow.

"There are pieces of it which seem similar. This portion of the pattern here, you see? That's not so different from the sort of trim which is typical in the formal wear of some upper castes. Well—according to the drawings I've seen in any case. I wonder if there if there isn't a familial element to it—if each ancient thaig perhaps pattern making which was distinct to those who lived there. If we do indeed ever manage to go to Orzammar, let us look into it. See if we can't find some connection between whatever remains of the oldest city there and the traditional fashions.

"You may be my partner in the investigation. If we find something, we might write a paper on the subject together. De Foncé would surely expire on the spot then," she says, turning her attention from the page to him. He is quite close. There is—

"Oh, you've a small scratch there." Wysteria taps the apple of her own cheek. "Wounded after all."

The second person in so many weeks who has expressed interest in Ellis writing a paper. He takes Wysteria no more seriously than he had Mhavos, chuckles over it and leaves the suggestion be as Wysteria makes an examination of his face.

Mirroring her, Ellis taps his own cheek, finds some minor point of tenderness.

"Ah," he says, considering the bruises he's acquired and declining to volunteer news of their existence. "Is it dashing? Or will I need to wear a veil when we leave this room?"

When his hand leaves his cheek, it's to reach for her left hand in a mimic of the moment on the cart, how easy it had been to lace his fingers through hers then.

Given the readiness of her grin and how cheerful she sounds saying, "A mask, I think. It really is quite the shocking wound," the way her hand shifts away before he can take it might easily be entirely accidental.

The page with his sketch is folded in half and tucked neatly back into her booklet for safekeeping.

It could be accidental. Ellis considers the possibility while he watches her slip his sketch into her notebook. Instead of reaching for a second time, he straightens slightly, folds his own hands together, studies her face.

"Is it still hurting you?"

A shift, treading towards more serious territory than the Deep Roads or the nick on his face or what Val de Fonce is or isn't taking seriously.

"Hm? Oh." She glances down at it, and has the hesitating look of a person deciding when she says, "No. --Or rather, hardly at all. It is a little like a bruise. Say, would you care to play a game? I might draw us up a board and we could play fox and geese. Or I've a book we could read. Or you might tell me your werewolf stories if you like. Or you may tell me all the best gossip you have of Riftwatch now that we are well away from Kirkwall. I would offer to do the same, but I've told you all the best things I know already."

She winds the leather cord about the booklet to secure it shut.

"Or we might fill the time however you like if you have some other suggestion," is light and purposefully airy. "I would only prefer not to sleep just yet."

They're all fine ways to pass the time. Ellis likes when Wysteria reads to him, even if they rarely make as much progress in the actual book she's chosen as they could for breaking away for questions. He'd like to tell her werewolf stories, or hear her gossip, but—

"I'll sleep on the floor," is what Ellis says instead, watching her intently. "Or in the barn with the horses, if you'd rather. I've slept in a hay loft before."

Is that the worry? Or is her hand still? Or is it the lingering anxiousness of their journey here?

"And I'll stay up with you, if that's what you want, as long as you like. But not to put off something you don't need to be anxious about."

Rather than reach for her, Ellis' hands shift, one over the other then back again. He is still sat close, but there's no catch of fingers to anchor her to him. Would it be easier to discuss if she'd have let him take her hand? Maybe for him. Ellis can't tell if it would work in reverse.

The look he receives in return is remarkably blank—so remarkably uncomprehending that it's as if he has spoken suddenly in a foreign language. She gets as far as, "Why should you—" before the logical answer reaches her.

She laughs, shrill and sudden like a question mark. "No. I mean, no. It has nothing to do with that. That isn't at all what concerns me. No, that would be—Not that I would suspect—The thought hadn't even occurred to me."

Wysteria laughs again, higher still. There is color rising up the back of her neck. She can feel the heat of it beginning to tinge the tips of her ears. Her arms fold in, clutching the booklet to her.

"I could hardly have you sleep on the floor. And it would be the very image of impoliteness to—to ask our hosts to rearrange now. No. It is quite all right, Mister Ellis. I am a member of Riftwatch. I have made do with every kind of sleeping arrangement. Not that I mean to say your company is something that one must make do with. You must understand me to mean that it is perfectly all right. That it would be perfectly all right for you to—"

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"Stay. If you care to, I mean."

"I do."

But that, to Ellis, is not the guiding factor between them.

There is no easy place to touch her, with her hands so securely closed off. Ellis is quiet for a moment, aware of being sat close to her without any deliberately initiated contact. It takes him a little time to weight out what he means to ask, how best to say it, whether or not it would be a reassurance if he touched her cheek when he said it.

"Would you tell me what does concern you?" he asks at last, sifting past all else that's been said to one particular turn of phrase. His hands remain loosely clasped, kept to himself. That's the one that sticks out to him, not the rush of reasons that came after. There is a concern. His first guess at it had been wrong, but there's something she's worrying over.

Edited (rearranges everything) 2021-03-11 15:47 (UTC)

She laughs again, restlessly setting the booklet in her lap.

"It's nothing," is the first automatic answer, and a lie. The booklet is relocated still further to the rug beside her. "It is at the very least highly superstitutious."

Oozing flustered embarrassment, her hands have looped themselves together against her middle—left in right, right thumb thoughtlessly scuffing against the edge of her palm. If she continues talking on the subject, it is because otherwise she might have to address—

"A great many people with anchor shards develop certain abilities with them, Rifters and those native to Thedas alike. It's no cause whatsoever to be concerned. But—"

But. She hesitates. The fleeting line of Wysteria's attention, which has been dancing around the room, now returns to him.

"If I say it, you must treat it like it's nothing. Otherwise I will only think on it more. And it is nothing. I guarantee you."

It seems doubtful that it is nothing. Some of that skepticism passes across Ellis' face, a brief drawing together of his eyebrows before he nods slowly in response.

"Aye. I promise," he answers. There is still no good point to say I am glad you've something to protect you where I can't. It's more complicated than the shard affording her some protection, Ellis knows this.

Yet she lingers just a moment more, studying his face. And then the room, and the fire in the hearth, and narrow strip of rug visible between their knees.

"I am concerned that if the anchor is becoming something else now that it might imply some...instability. I've been here so long. Statistically speaking—Mathematically, I'm one of very few Rifters who has lingered here so long in this way. And it has only just occured to me here in the last few hours, but now that I've thought it—

Wysteria forces her hands to be still. She glances sideways at him.

"What if I go to sleep and travel back through the Fade? That's how I came here in the first place. While dreaming."

No, Ellis has not thought of that.

There is quiet for a moment while he gives himself the time to consider the possibility of waking tomorrow, alone in this room. (In a dream, Richard speaking of Tony waking in his own bed, in his own world, Thedas forgotten.) What would that moment be, other than devastating?

But he promised. So he does not say so.

"You won't."

As if it is so simple, as if this quiet, steady denial is all that it takes to close off that possibility entirely. Ellis shifts along the rug, settling in front of her. He reaches again for her hands, very slowly, easily avoided.

"You've grown stronger. That's all it is."

There is no casual avoidance. He reaches for her hands and she all but sets them into his—all at once very keen on the idea of contact however much the anchor might ache.

"Yes, I agree. There's no reason to be concerned at all. Only I would never forgive myself if—is it very cruel of me, do you think? To make myself a companion to you and a friend to Mister Stark and Mister Dickerson and Lady Asgard and even to de Foncé, that scoundrel, when there is every possibility that eventually I will go away and apparently never even recall that I was here at all."

If Ellis was under the impression that he would be doing the comforting hand holding here, he evidently was quite mistaken. Wysteria's grip is gentle but firm, and as the mortification has drained out of her it has left behind something very fierce and serious indeed.

"I don't want to one day cause you pain."

Wysteria may as well have held up a mirror, unknowingly reflecting back a sentiment Ellis has struggled with for months.

He says nothing at all in return, taking his time instead to squeeze her hands gently before turning them in his own, thumbs drawing over her palms in tandem. The anchor gleams between them, obscuring momentarily by the pass of his thumb. When he bends, it's only to meet her hands, put a soft kiss to the ache of her left palm as his answer resolves itself.

"It will be worth it," he says finally, very quiet. He is looking down, rather than at her face while he works his way through the sentiment. "If that were to happen, someday, I think it would have been better to have had..."

The sentiment trails into silence. Part of it is simply his own uncertainty about what the future of their companionship looks like, and part of it is how very clearly he sees his own attachment to her, and knowing it to be difficult to pin down into words.

For a moment, she lets the quiet linger. There is a space there for if he decides to find his way to the end of that thought.

But not much of one. After a moment's serious study of the tipped low line of his brow she says, "Good. Because I don't know that I could bear to be so removed from other people and I should find it very difficult to stop speaking our mind about one another not that I have gotten into the habut. And anyway, it's quite possible it will never matter at all. Provost Baudin and Madame de Cedoux both have been here for far longer than I . It is entirely possible that you will be stuck with me for a very long time and that all your hair will go entirely grey because of it."

He's bent low enough that she can kiss him at the place where his poor hairline has already silvered.

So. There.

What a sweet thought, to have such a life. How slim the chances are that a man like him might be so fortunate to be allowed that kind of blessing.

Ellis' thumb passes over the shard again, obscuring the flickering light of it. Her right hand is released, only so Ellis can touch her cheek.

"I would be a very lucky man."

Is this the moment to tell her? Ellis feels the weight of what he's kept aside, the Calling, the poison in his blood, the death that waits so patiently for him, all bearing down at once. This room is comfortable and warm and far removed from it, and he balks at the thought of inviting in such a thing.

No. Not yet.

"Are you sure you don't want me to sleep in the stables?" is a shift in topic, a roundabout way of soliciting some confirmation that her concerns have eased.

Wysteria's cheek pulls in his palm as she wrinkles her nose.

"And be stuck next to you all of tomorrow while you smell of horse? Anything but that."

Have her concerns been eased? In parts and pieces, maybe. Logically she knows the likelihood for worry is small. And there is some reassurance in Ellis' willingness to—be there in the room regardless. Those can be enough.

"And please don't sleep on the floor. It would be beastly of me to insist on," is gentle, meant to be soothing in kind. Half the reason she'd hesitated over the matter of not sleeping was in effort to spare him the flicker of tension that she can feel weighs on him now.

Then, brisker— "But when we go to sleep, you will swear to keep your eyes closed until I've gotten under the covers. And we will never say it occurred to another living soul. And if I snore you must promise not to tell me because I'm tortured by the possibility and would prefer to be happy oblivious."

"I promise," is easily bequeathed.

In other circumstances, Ellis could have put her at ease by reciting a litany of terrible sleeping habits he's persevered adjacent to in his time. Joppa hadn't quite snored but he had made a particular sound, a terrible wheezing noise that he'd claimed was likely the product of having been hit round the chest too many times. Cathán had tended to kick, but only at people laying along his left side, something he and Ellis had often forgotten on their most exhausted, miserable nights until it was too late.

Comparatively, Ellis is hardly worried about Wysteria. Though in return—

"Listen," he says after a moment, fingers slipping gently across her cheek, falling down the line of her jaw to bracket her shard-pierced hand where he holds it between them. "I've—I know that I have nightmares. Wardens usually do."

A phrase that distances the thing from Ellis specifically: Wardens suffer this.

"But you should know. So it doesn't catch you too much by surprise."

In reply, Wysterja makes some low tutting noise, all mingled surprise and fondness and a childish kind of sympathy. She doesn't turn her hand to pat his, but she does clearly consider it. Poor thing.

"I imagine that is quite normal, given the demands of your occupation. Shall I wake you if I notice some disturbance? Valiantly rescue you from sleep."

(Is the offer of someone who doesn't know how dreadful nightmares can be, someone who has never shared a bed with anyone in her entire life, and a person who thus grossly underestimates her ability to sleep through the end of the world. But still.)

It's not unexpected. Ellis knows her. He knows he's asking her to reach for something that exceeds her grasp.

But Ellis isn't certain how to make it real for her in any meaningful way.

"Push me off the side if I've woken you," is his advice, though he isn't so sure he'd wake her regardless. Or how well he'd respond to being shaken awake, which very quickly becomes the bigger concern in his mind. He shakes his head slightly as he says, "But it's more likely I'll wake on my own and go sit by the fire there."

He looks down, pausing as he laces their fingers together slowly.

"This might all be for nothing. But so you know."

As promised. An attempt to do better, to keep her from moving about a room in the dark.

So you know, he says, and despite how plain the flicker of unease is in him she can't help but be a little satisfied. There is something—good, rewarding even in knowing something a little like a small secret. Or to be given the consideration of being thought of so far in advance so as to be given the benefit of a disclaimer.

It's kind. Sweet, even, though she'd never say so to his face. One doesn't tell a grown man he is such a thing with any directness, and certainly not when the matter in question is being talked about with such painful sincerity.

Her smile twitches, slanting briefly wide.

"I swear to kick you out of your side of the bed straightaway should I notice anything amiss." And then because it is there, she kisses his brow again. And then because he seems so grim, she kisses him there a third time.

This is as serious an answer as he can hope for, perhaps. And it is good to see the flex of Wysteria's smile. He'd have been content with that, even without the kisses she punctuates her agreement with.

They are sat at the wrong angle, but Ellis sways forward anyway, the urge to simply lean his head on her shoulder, turn his face in against his neck coming and going within the span of a moment. His grip tightens on her hand, before he straightens by degrees. Some of the concern has left his face, but it's still in his voice, which thaws by degrees as he asks, "Can I kiss you good night? Please?"

Tacked together because she'd asked for such consideration and he doesn't mind adopting it.

"Just once, and then I'll close my eyes so you can get into bed," is added, a small clarifying edge to what he's asking her for.

It's quiet and his hands are about hers and she is so much better at seeing him like this when he is this close and it's just the two of them, that it's difficult not to recognize the quiet sense of urgency which lingers about the edges of him. He is so often quiet and still that any restless impulse glows like the after image of magic at the corner of her eye.

She doesn't answer as she ought to. Instead, with her hand in his, she leans forward and kisses him. It's meant to be a tender, soothing thing—forget what she's said and her long series of nonsense worries, and the events of the day, and all the things which have put that serious furrow in his brow. And for a moment it is.

And then—having made that list of things which might yet be weighing on him in her own mind and recognizing how the shape of them threaten to linger; weighing her own self satisfaction and fear like a stone in each hand; because he had thought her uncertain and tried to reassure her—when she ought to stop kissing him, she exchanges gentleness for insistence.

This, the third time, still holds the same surreal quality as the first two kisses they'd traded.

This is happening. They are here. He is alive and Wysteria is kissing him and the sweetness of it roots somewhere deep in his chest. Briefly, he thinks of spring, and their garden. Her mouth is so gentle at first; all the tension draws from his body as she kisses him. His free hand raises unconsciously to her hip, but no further. He expects her to draw back, remembers just a little of how she had done in the kitchen.

Instead, the point of deliberation is almost a tangible thing, softness tipping into something more deliberate. The decision is there in the way Wysteria shifts into the kiss, and for a moment there is just the blurred impression of her mouth, the clutch of their hands, and the brief pull of his hand, slid to her waist as if to encourage her forward.

When Ellis checks himself, it should be familiar, even this close. She has seen him sparring. It's the same hitch from the training yard, the sudden awareness of a blind spot. Ellis makes a soft sound as he breaks from her, drawing a deep breath. He leans his forehead against hers.

"Wysteria," said like a question, murmured so close to her mouth. When he takes his hand from her hip, it's only to lift up to her shoulder, flip the long end of her braid in his fingers on the way up to touch her neck.

His hands are all work rough, warm about hers and broad against the side of her neck; his lip and chin are a scrape of beard bristle, and even like this with them both settled on the latch hook rug he is the sort of broad and sturdy which on any other person might qualify as daunting. It would be simple to be ill at ease, to think of the work of his mace and to sense some natural lack control, which between two people she thinks must be the least bearable sensation in the whole of the world. But that check is telling. He is careful and deliberate, and the way he says her name sounds pained and grateful all at once.

It's very charming to be obeyed. To know how dreadfully sincere he is in his affections (uncreative and dull, she'd once been mistaken in thinking), and then to sense his restraint. It's like being handed a guiding rein.

"Will you tell me what you're thinking?" Is like a trade. He'd been good enough to ask the same, hadn't he? To reassure her. To pretend that arcane things could be easily understood. It is only fair to extend him a similar courtesy.

Though maybe it's different when it comes from so close, looking intently at him from such a proximity that she can see little more than his eyelashes and the weather ruddy curve of his cheek, the scrape on his face.

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ellis u dumbass

it's Fine

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