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

"No. There is little reason for a young lady to swim in Kalvad," is her initial, simple reply. Still clutching at him, under the water she is making some small minor adjustments. Letting the line of her back relax and then tightening it over again when she begins to sink.

"If anyone would have taught me, I think it might have been my grandfather but he died when I was still very small. And anyway, my mother certainly doesn't know anything about swimming so maybe he would have treated me differently when I wasn't a child."

"Stretch your arm out," Ellis advises, though she's yet to loosen her hold on him since reclining into the water in the first place. It's a placeholder response, while Ellis considers the information parceled out to him.

It's not such a surprise. He'd pieced together that Wysteria came from some kind of—

Nobility? Not exactly right. Well off, enough so that she was sheltered up until she wasn't.

"You won't have much reason to swim here either," Ellis admits, knowing that she'll keep busy in the Research office and apart from the Ambassador having a second beach party this year, she need not do this again unless it's for Ellis' own sake. "Maybe I should have taught you how to throw axes instead."

Luckily Ellis has some sense of concern for their fellow agents, enough that he wouldn't subject them to the lottery of Wysteria's aim.

"I suppose it is possible the ferry might sink," is a fine placeholder all on its own as she decides which arm he means. She cannot possibly disengage both her hands from him. She is still fumbling a little--kicking her feet here and there, an ungainly conglomeration of limbs and not quite certain of the level at which to carry her breastbone or how exactly she ought to arrange every part of herself to keep her feet from the bottom of the pond.

But eventually she does carefully disentangle one hand from where she is clinging to him. It's a touchy, skittish thing, gone and returned again in a few false starts before she tentatively follows direction.

"And I refuse to learn a second weapon when my rifle is so near to finished. You'll see why then."

"Alright," is a rather tepid response, all things considered. Ellis' understanding of what the rifle does is minimal at best, possibly by choice. It sounds like there's less of a margin for friendly fire involved, which is a bridge to cross when they come to it.

And regardless, he's enjoyed the rapid discussion of it across the table between her and Tony.

"How does it feel? Uncomfortable still?"

Which to Ellis' mind is the chief thing to tackle today, and everything else will come in time if he can persuade her into the water a second time.

She is silent for a moment, thoughtfully assessing. After a beat, still wobbling half submerged and half floating with her scrunched up face hovering just above the water's surface—

"I feel like a beetle that's fallen into a cup."

Is that a positive or a negative?

Either way, it draws a bright peal of laughter from Ellis, head momentarily tipping back and arm shifting in her grasp before he recalls his task as tether and stills.

"Alright. Tell me, would you rather learn the back stroke or put your face in the water?"

The former is hardly going to dispel the beetle-like nature of the position, but the latter is almost certain to be met with some complaint. Ellis has drawn her in slightly, closer to him from where she'd drifted, propelled by the fidgety movement of her limbs.

Given the givens, and how she'd threatened him should he do it, that bright laugh should irritate terribly. Instead it warms something at the very center of her chest, a burgeoning pleasantness alike to the sun on her face.

Her feet must find the ground for she's a little steadier when next she opens her eyes to look at him. With some legitimate confusion—

"What's meant to be so difficult about putting my face in the water?"

"We're going to touch the bottom," Ellis explains. "And shout. Whatever you like, until all your breath is gone. Then we'll come back up."

Easy.

But Ellis doesn't say as much, leaving Wysteria to judge what is and isn't difficult.

That strikes a distinct cord of alarm, a flicker of it writ broad in her face.

"Touch the bottom with our feet, you mean."

Right?

Right?

"Aye, our feet. And our hands."

Information delivered very serenely, his hand shifting to cover hers more securely.

She makes to snatch her hands back from him, all mortification—and then catches his hand and arm again, alarmed twice over for having been briefly untethered.

"Oh."

Well.

"Well."

Her feet are right there. It is not so far. Why, at least twice daily so bends so low to do the laces of her boots up. And yet.

"Perhaps you might explain the backstroke."

In return Ellis nods, a flicker of a smile lingering around the corners of his mouth as Wysteria weighs up her options.

"It's not so difficult. You can already float, so it's just a matter of coordinating your kicks with the movement of your arms."

Not so difficult.

Ellis seems to consider this, then amends—

"You've already been kicking, enough that if I'd stepped back you might have gone along without any issue. The arm movement, it's just..."

A break to demonstrate with his free hand, making a wide circle once, then again. He doesn't point out the obvious. It's not the kind of thing she can do with only one of her hands free.

No, he doesn't point out the obvious. He hardly needs to.

After a beat—

"I suppose I don't need to tell you that I dislike both these options," she says in perfect miserable deadpan where she bobs restlessly in the water right alongside him.

"I'll keep hold of you," he promises, without qualifying which option he's referring to. Either. Both. It's not a hardship to keep a hand linked to her.

But those are the options.

Unless she opts for the third option, which is to get out of the water entirely. Ellis assumes Wysteria knows she has that, and at whatever point she tires of this she will revert to it. It's a pleasant day. She can wade along the shallows and they can eat what he'd packed and ride back and it would still have been successful, in Ellis' book.

There is a very brief, but very stark instant of indecision. And then she must at last recognize it for what it—a creeping, ridiculous and frankly illogical sort of fear when they are standing in a pond in the middle of the day, with the sun shining and no danger whatsoever to speak of—for abruptly she frowns very harshly, solidifies her footing. Standing very upright (the effect somewhat minimized by the fact that she's neck deep in a pond), she takes one of her hands from his arm.

"This is nonsense," she declares, which may be in reference to the subject of swimming or regarding her hesitations. Either way— "But so long as we're out here and my hair is wet already, then we may as well touch the bottom while we're at it."

Nonsense is about the verdict Ellis had expected to receive, regardless of how well swimming lessons went.

The small smile on his face is more for the way Wysteria steels herself, turns stubborn in the wake of the frown. Ellis reaches back for her under the water, finding her waist rather than her newly freed hand. If he were a different kind of man, he might have something clever to say, some flattering turn of phrase to sum up his admiration.

Instead, he has the light squeeze of his hands at her hips, stood close to her in the water.

"When we put our hands on the floor of this pond, shout that as loud as you like. That it's nonsense."

Marginally more proper than the profanity his own teachers had suggested.

"Come up when you've done."

There is something in that lopsided tilt of his expression which sparks something warm and makes her feel abruptly twice as foolish all at the same time. It sees her setting a jaw a little, a very obstinate sort of decision making. Right. She will touch the bottom of this dreadful, picturesque pond, and she will scream at it when she does, and when she has righted then they will do whatever the backstroke it. It is hardly difficult.

"Yes yes, shout as loud as I can. Come up once I've finished. Easy enough. I will count it down from three."

Is like a dare. So crisply, without hesitation: "Threetwoonego."

With a great suck of air, Wysteria plunks her face down unto the water and wills herself to lunge down through it.

A brief bark of laughter escapes as Wysteria plummets into the water. There's a little sploosh, water slapping against Ellis' chest as he steadies himself, takes a deep breath and follows down after her.

The water isn't exactly clear, but when he opens his eyes, Wysteria is easily seen. Wisps of gold hair float up around her face. Their knees bump. Ellis feels his held breath like a vise around his chest, pressure vibrating as he looks at her.

Instead of touching the pond floor, he puts his hands over hers.

In the upsidedown space below the water's surface—not weightless; she can feel it pressing against her, working to undo all this effort she's made—, Wysteria's eyes are clamped tightly shut. Where her hands have found floor of the pond they've pressed in, fingers digging into the moss and the mud. Closing over small stones and the filament detritus of twigs. When he touches her hand, she turns it over. Clutches blindly at his wrist—

She doesn't know that she shouts anything so much as she just yells—a pitched shriek gone flat from the press of water and all the space in it, bubbling out in that narrow space between the bump of their knees and the tangle of fingers even as she's tugged gently upward. Loses contact with the bottom of the pond.

When she runs out of air to shout with, she jams her legs straight. Hand closed tight over his wrist, Wysteria makes to dredge him back up with her.

Even muffled into incoherence, Ellis thinks it's perhaps the most unchecked display he's ever seen from her.

But she yells and Ellis does not, distracted first by her and then by the insistent upwards tug of her hand. It feels like a success, so much so that the first spluttering gasp of air as he breaks the surface, clumsily staggering a step forward before getting his bearings.

"Was it as terrible as you expected?" he asks, voice light with a mingling of amusement and affection. His wrist turns slightly in her grip, fingers coming up to link around her wrist in return.

She's spluttering a little, her loose hand rising to thoughtlessly wipe the excess water from her face without considering that her hand too is damp.

"It was—" Blinking back water, she looks at him and is struck by the humor in his face and how the water has stuck his dark eyelashes all together in places.

"No, it wasn't terrible. Only awful." Her hand drifts to cover her nose and mouth. From behind it—"And I think water went up into my nose, which seems like it ought not to happen."

"It shouldn't, but it does sometimes," Ellis tells her. He is no dryer than she is, but his hands lift to her face anyway, smoothing back stray locks of hair plastered across her forehead and temples and swiping away running drips of water. "It's helpful to blow out your nose, but you won't need that for the backstroke."

Surely this is a point in it's favor: there's no need to put her face back into the water.

"Do you want me to demonstrate it?" is a little concession to the sense that he's not as adept an instructor as he would like to be.

She wrinkles her nose at his attempts to put her back into order—not a protest, just mentally logging some absent recognition of the thought that she must look rather out of sorts.

"If you would. I may as well know what it's meant to look like." Much though it means—

Carefully, Wysteria undoes her hand from about his wrist. Untethers herself.

"You're alright," is automatic, whether or not the reassurance is strictly necessary. His hand lingers at her jaw, then breaks away in turn. He hops a few light steps back, careful to stay well within arm's reach.

Belatedly, some spark of self-consciousness manifests. This is not as similar to displaying the right way to nock an arrow as he'd thought.

But the sense of it fades by degrees once he's properly aligned in the water. Ellis circles her once, in easy, smooth sweeps before angling back in towards her and letting himself catch hold of her waist to break the momentum rather than continue. Reclining in the water, he kicks lightly, drifting back close to her as he turns an inquisitive look up to her.

Her feet are firmly beneath her. And were she to somehow loose them, coursing back upward to break past the water's surface has already proven itself doable. So yes, she is alright--steady enough that when he shifts back and begins to make his way in that slow, deliberate circle that she is (comfortable isn't the right word) secure to follow the lines of his movement, her attention very fixed and stern.

He looks very well in the water, is a distant and largely abstract thought. It falls in line with a great host of things Ellis is so accomplished at: swimming, and swinging a mace, and being an excellent hiker, and sound in any situation where tensions are pressed high, yes. But also things like how readily he digs into the earth. The cultivation of a hundred gentle little flowers in the shadows garden of the house in Hightown. His hands and shirt front streaked with dust from the tidying of that place.

--Is not a thing she thinks about, really. But the sensation, low in the center of her, is the same here as then. So that when he looks at her, she says first:

"You're very good at that."

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