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

"No," is instantaneous. That would be absurd. She can't ask him that any more than she can pull down the sun out of the sky, no matter how much she might enjoy his company.

"I'm telling you why your reason for not asking me seems kindly intended but ultimately highly impractical. And that I would prefer to be a widow some time from now rather than a dishonorable woman."

Her hand at his cheek turns, plucking faintly at Ellis's beard.

"You've said before that I am to state my preferences."

"I did say that. I like when you do."

Having studied his hand at her knee, the way the fabric of her chemise is drawn in by the placement of his palm, the way it drapes at her hips and stirs at the movement of her hand, Ellis raises his eyes up to her face.

"I have nothing to give you," is a more practical objection. "No name, no land. No family."

She is looking at him already, and so the moment Ellis raised his attention hers is there to meet him. There is a soft pinch at the corner of her mouth—that fixed and thoughtful look she adopts when confronted with a puzzle which requires solving.

"I don't have any of those things. And I'm a rifter. Are you implying that I'm a poor prospect, Mister Ellis?"

Her hand in his hair tightens by a fraction—a soft, chiding tug.

"You," Ellis begins, letting the grip in her hair carry him upwards. His hand moves from her knee to her thigh to her hip, holding there as he straightens. "You are too good for me."

No time wasted on the protest that Ellis should be giving all of those things to her. Isn't that what he is meant to promise? Hearth and home, and then himself, all to be put into her hands?

The Blight too the former, and Ellis gave the Wardens the latter. What's left? He hadn't realized there was a need to save anything. There would never have been a way to predict Wysteria.

"Can you be content if we don't marry?" he asks, lifting a hand to her cheek.

This too is not romantic. But it is practical, trying to find an understanding of her boundaries, of what is tolerable to her.

I don't know, she'd said all those weeks ago in that little kitchen when he'd first kissed her. She had been telling the truth then. Most sincerely so. Being uncertain then had been like bending to press her cheek into his raised hand is now; it's something she wanted, genuine and urgent.

"I find it difficult," she says after a long moment with her face in the curve of his hand. What she wants is— "To not think about what other people think of me. But I'm very selfish. And should you ever be held hostage by a Lady again, I would prefer to not come rescue you under the guise of being your colleague."

It's not an answer, but also it is. Before they lay down, he will have to go around and lock both their doors. And they will have to rise early to slip away. And she will refuse to hold his hand as they cross thresholds into ornate drawing rooms. And that's very dreadful. And also—

"I want—" Lots of things. Her hand has slipped from his beard and raises abruptly to absently pick at her lower lip. A soft, embarrassed impulse which after a moment resolves into: "But I can't. I know it isn't how anyone at all is in Thedas, but I can't."

Maybe it's not outright yes or outright no, but it is an answer. Ellis understands what she is telling him, these points upon which she finds herself caught. They are immovable. He understands that too. They are parts of her that Wysteria can't excise.

Kissing her isn't an answer either. It's an acknowledgement, maybe, absorbing all that was said and accepting it. It's a very tender kiss. His hand slips to curl at the nape of her neck, thumb at her jaw, and he kisses her slowly, lingering. Sets his forehead against hers as he breaks.

"Alright."

This is not romantic. It is not even a proposal, not the way Ellis would have done if he were the boy he'd been once. It is nothing more than acceptance. These are Wysteria's terms. It is what makes so many things bearable for her.

And Ellis has in many ways grown so used to giving her what she wants, to the best of his ability.

Alright is not an answer, no matter how sweet or pleasant the kiss which precedes it is (though it's both).

In that narrow space, freshly kissed, she studies him with her eyes wide open and her heart full in her chest, tucked tightly behind the shape of her ribs. He is so present, and his eyes are clear, and his eyelashes are quite dark— Her fingers hover at his tunic collar. It's a tentative thing, where her attention on him fundamentally isn't. Her chemise is very thin. The fire is warm.

"Alright?"

"Alright," he says again, no clearer now than it was a moment ago.

Alright twisting up regret in his chest. He has so little to give her. He cannot even give her all of himself.

Ellis thinks to kiss her again. He might simply do that, kiss her until there is nothing else to say. Maybe it would be a better answer than anything else he might give her. He can feel the beat of her pulse underneath his thumb. His palm has curved comfortably at her waist.

"I've no ring for you," isn't necessarily an answer either. "So you'll need to be patient, until I do."

It's not at all how one is meant to receive a proposal. Maybe that's why there is some element of unreality to it—as of even now they are speaking only in hypotheticals. If it mattered so much to her, then maybe he might say Alright— Or make excuses about the lack of a ring, or speak to patience, or appear so miserable there in the corner into which he's been backed.

It takes her a moment to sort these pieces and align them with reality, during the interim of which something bright and hot flares behind her ribs and threatens to crack open. But that is sensibly tamed, of course. Indeed, she has the sensation well in hand before she ever says, "Oh."

Or, "Well I shouldn't care to force you. I'm only explaining my perspective on the subject, Mister Ellis. It is perfectly alright"—what a dreadful word—"If you disagree."

His hand is curled at her waist, but that's never stopped her from drawing delicately back from him.

"In any case it's hardly as if it matters tonight, now does it? You will have to lock the doors, as previously discussed. I'm afraid I did no such thing before leaving my room."

"Wait," comes as Ellis cedes his grip on her hip, his hand at her neck, physical connection winnowing to a loose catch at her wrist.

Yes, he will go around and lock the hallway doors. He will close up this room so they might get into this great bed together and Wysteria will feel secure in it. But not just yet.

"I know you are lowering yourself to meet me here," he tells her, in which here has nothing to do with this room or this bed or even this estate, but with the kind of marriage they might make together. It cannot be what she had ever hoped for. "I should ask you properly, with a ring and some ceremony, aye?"

So that at least some part of it might be as she imagined.

Nevermind what Ellis might have imagined. He has some idea of the way these things must go, and that is enough of a guide.

Her retreat, hardly begun, is easily halted by his hand at her wrist.

"Not at all."

She has spent the bulk of the evening pretending to be in good humor, so clearly she is capable of it. What is equally clear is that Wysteria is making no effort to temper her most reflexive reaction. Her frown flashes broadly, and the diminished flush in her face aburptly burns hotter.

"Those things don't matter at all to me. If that's how you believe it's meant to be done properly, then— But I need only know your intentions. And that they're sincere and not because I've persuaded you." And, because it's the thing which seems most obvious in this moment: "You look perfectly miserable at the prospect, Mister Ellis."

"You should have a ring," he tells her, in a low aside, as his thumb strokes gently along the inside of her wrist. It's not so much an indication of intention, perhaps, but a quiet, stubborn assertion that's easier to speak aloud than navigate the difficulty of what he wants, whether or not he is so very miserable at the idea of marriage.

"Sit, please," is a prelude to drawing her those last few steps to the edge of the great, ornate bed. Ellis has seemed to think better of sitting there beside her, regardless of being fully clothed. The one concession towards retiring to bed: the laces drawn open at his throat. It is no more scandalous than how he has often come to her from the training yard, gambeson undone and tunic open, but the presence of the bed in the room shifts most everything. He's aware of it.

A moment ago when she'd had her hem hiked, it would have been a request fit to fluster her. But like this, with high spirits tangling at the edge of temper and hurt, she hardly gives it a second thought. She allows herself to be drawn there. She sits. Her wrist is still in his possession.

What does a ring matter? What does ceremony matter? When so much of this has been half veiled, carried out in quiet privacy—not quite a secret, of course, for there are very few in the Gallows and she is very bad at keeping them besides. But near to it, and purposefully so.

But yes, all right. See? She is sitting.

Yes, she is sitting. His hand shifts, trading grasp on her wrist to lace their fingers together as he stands before her. Rather than sit beside her, he crouches down before her. Habit now, perhaps, when he is appealing to her, trying clumsily to make some part of himself known or ease some hurt.

"I'd thought of it before. Marrying you. That night you had us sit up in that little attic after the business with the cart."

The memory is brought forward, in all it's parts and pieces. The price they'd agreed upon. Wysteria sitting beside him on that knit rug. How she'd put her hand into his hair then, made him close his eyes rather than look at her get into bed.

Ellis releases his grip on her hand, draws both of his to clasp between his knees as he looks up at her.

"And before that too. Once or twice."

Some quiet truth carried along with these words: Ellis has loved her for such a long time.

"But I am—"

A break. Ellis' expression creases towards a frown, scraping together some coherent answer.

"I have so little to give you. If I look miserable, it is because of that. Not because I don't want you," he tells her, in which want stands in for all manner of things. "I'm already yours in every other way."

She listens with the scowling intent of a person determined to solve a puzzle, or to answer some complicated equation of math, or to see through the untangling of a particularly dense passage in a very old book. There is something in this always—this thing where he becomes wounded and raw edged and very earnest about insisting on being complicated—which rankles at her. It doesn't stop her from listening; it only makes her a little furious. Maybe this is how cats feel when you pet them in the wrong direction.

(Or when they're tricked into bags.)

It seems to her very much like making a simple thing unnecessarily complicated. And then even more so, because he is so sincere in the belief of its difficulty. It leaves her with a frustrated, untethered feeling. As if, sitting there at the edge of the bed with him knelt before her, that she is missing vital context or vocabulary in a language she likes to imagine she knows quite well.

"But what else could I possibly wish for? If there are things you think I'm expecting because of some advantage of my position in Kalvad, I think you are quite overestimating both my place here in Thedas and perhaps the quality of marriages in both. And also, why should I want anything else? If I did, I would ask for them. Are you disappointed that I haven't?"

By contrast, Ellis has no misgivings that he is not soothing Wysteria. If anything, he has exacerbated the initial hurt. It was not his intention, but it is what he has wrought.

"You could never disappoint me."

Is mostly true. It is true if they do not count when she sets off explosives in the basement or prods at things larger and more dangerous than herself, and disappointment is not always the word for those moments.

It's also easier said than anything else. (That he is not enough. That he will sicken and weaken and leave her. That he is broken in ways that she will snare upon. That he sleeps poorly and eventually that will disrupt her nights as well. That there is a chance they will do this and she will regret it.) Were she less bristled into temper, Ellis might have simply leaned forward to put his head into her lap, conduct conversation from there. Instead, his right hand covers the bent fingers of his left, head tipping down to study the effect as he says—

"But I am."

A pause. His head shakes.

"I was engaged before. I remember all that I meant to give to her. And I have none of it now."

"I'm not her."

It's a very cruel thing to say. She knows it before she has even fully spoken the words, fully in time to halt herself, but she speaks them anyway.

"And neither am I who I was in Kalvad anymore than you would claim to be the person who probably once made a very fine proposal and prospect. But I don't know that man at all. I only know this one, and am quite bright enough not to have anticipated being given anything you don't have. It is very unfair, Ellis. To insist that I share all the expectations you've put upon yourself. I know you mean it sweetly, but it seems very cruel to me to ask that I be so unkind to you. I don't wish to be some villain you only reminds you of any of that."

It's a cruel thing, but it is a true thing too. That is why her words land as they do, become the kind of blow that comes as a crack and raises up a stinging sort of pain in its wake.

And there is that same unconscious flinch of movement too, the way Ellis' body shifts as if to rise and create distance between them. The floorboards creak beneath his weight as he rocks back, hands twisting one over the other before the restless impulse passes into stillness.

"I'm sorry," comes quietly, steadily into the wake of that reaction, all absorbed in the span of a few moments. There are things he might say after, that he didn't mean to be unfair, to ask her to be unkind. But what he meant to do and what he has done are separate things. He draws in a deep breath, head shaking a second time. The tangled snarl of uncertainties are shunted aside, boxed and walled off.

A last turn of his hands, bent fingers obscured behind one palm, before Ellis dredges up a searching question, "Will you tell me how you'd have me?"

"I have already," is quite instant, and so it must be the truth unvarnished for she requires a pause to generate any sense for tact. Indeed, she is still frowning a little; had she been after his apology?

"And in Kalvad you would be required to ask my father for permission and then we would stand up in front of the parish and there would be a fine little party and you might get me some little token and I would give you a very handsome purse on account of my family's name. But we're not in Kalvad and I like you as you are. And," she hastens to add, for it makes her point quite well. "I'm very poor on a Riftwatch stipend, but you don't see me apologizing for being unable to provide you with the proper coin. So clearly we are, at the very least, shorting one another entirely equally."

All this, she says in a rush as if attempting to outpace the little measure of guilt or sympathy which threatens to find her. She has wounded him. She can see that much. But it's an important sort of cut, she would insist. Like hacking out something poisoned.

"I want to have you how you are. Not how you think I deserve to. The latter is far too much responsibility for us both."

Here is a truth: Wysteria has had him for ages. Long before he finally kissed her in her little kitchen in the wake of a terrible dream.

He wants to tell her that again, but in a better way, so she understands what he means by it. But the words catch in his throat. So instead, he lets the lingering sting of the slice her words created carry him upwards, straightening rather than turning as he rises. Ellis is not sure this is true, that they are shorting each other equally, but it is kind of her to say, and he is not such a fool as to contradict her.

"Alright," comes first, as Ellis catches up one of her hands. It is good to have hold of her. It roots him here in this room, in this moment, his focus narrowing to Wysteria's face. "You have me. And once we leave here, we'll say our vows, so we can belong to each other properly."

What else is there for him to do but give over to her what she's had hold of already?

He still wishes to find her a ring. But she'd wanted his intentions, and here they are: he will be her husband, and they will weather what comes together.

"And so we are clear, and there is no misunderstanding, you didn't persuade me to anything I have not already wanted."

If she persuaded him of anything, it's that he would create more damage by holding onto his doubts than trusting Wysteria.

There is a brief but real fear which manifests as he rises that he will draw back and she will have no hold on him to with which to counter a retreat. And so his taking her hand is of great relief. Her grip instantly turns very fierce indeed, tightening in sync with the promise he makes her.

It's a very selfish thing to be motivated by. That, good. He will be fully hers. He may be a Warden, or a member of Riftwatch, or a tamer of cats only on loan, and it will be very benevolent of her to allow for all of it at once. And she will be his, anchored so firmly to something in this world that she imagines it will somehow be more difficult to remove her from it. He won't allow the Fade to swallow her back up. Those will be the rules.

With her face tipped up to study him, Wysteria says, "That's quite the relief. Because I was prepared to argue with you further, but I believe we're meant to be leaving very early in the morning."

"Yes, and I have to lock the doors, and bank the fire, so we might go to sleep," Ellis agrees, thumb drawing along the back of her hand. All of these tasks mean drawing his hand from her grasp, so he lingers instead, watching her face.

What had he ever done in his life to deserve this? Wysteria, prepared to dig her heels in and keep hold of him, even when he would let a myriad of doubts and worries propel him from her. She is a miraculous occurrence.

Ellis bends to her, nearly without thinking anything else beyond that he is so painfully in love with her and so fond of the look on her face and the strength of her grip on his hand. He might say again I love you but instead it bleeds from him, telegraphed in the open, supple quality of the kiss, his hand held tightly in hers.

It is, she decides in that moment, the sort of kiss she likes best from him. Not that there has been anything at all wrong with the brief way he sometimes kisses the corner of her mouth or how gently he sometimes bends to her, or even the heated shape of his mouth that afternoon as they'd lain in that sweet patch of clover. But this masters them because it's feeling and impulsive, because she can't taste the hum of his thoughts on his lips. Because it's both very simple and very full all at once, pleasingly certain. Or maybe because when he kisses her this way, she is pleased with herself afterwards—how clever she must be to earn that kind of affection—, and there are only a few things Wysteria loves more in the world than a sense of her own accomplishment.

After, with her face turned up to him still and her mouth lingering against his, Wysteria bats blindly at him with her spare hand.

"Go then. And be quick, or I will get cold and become cross with you all over again."

(It will only be once he is briefly gone from the room that she will clamber in under the covers of that grand bed, and there between the blankets indulge in the impulse to kick her feet a little and muffle a laugh into one of Lady Paget's very fine down pillows. Yes, she is quite pleased with herself.)

The swipe of her hand doesn't deter him from one last soft press of his mouth to hers, then a last kiss to the corner of her lips, before he straightens and departs.

The door of her room is locked. The balcony entryway to her room is nearly closed, left propped open for easy of Wysteria's return. And the glass doors to his own room are securely closed behind him, drapes falling over the windows.

Lastly, the latch is turned at his own door. The house has fallen silent. And Ellis returns to the chair drawn up alongside the fire to sit, and begin unlacing his boots. The work of his hands is smooth and methodical, but his eyes return to her, over and over.

They've shared a bed before. It is not that. It is all that's been said, and alongside it, the simple fact of her presence. Even without declarations and marriage, having her there is a particular kind of delight.

Somewhere in there, she has removed the fistful of pins from her hair and set them aside on the absurdly ornate side table so that here as he unlaces his boots she is doing the opposite—winding her pin curled hair into a braid across her shoulder, half buried under the smooth sheets and blankets and the very fine coverlet. She can do it automatically without looking at all, which means it's very easy to observe him there in the chair by the fire and to occassionally catch him looking and be pleased all over again.

She is, she thinks, very patient. She waits until he has removed both his boots before pssting at from the sea of overstuffed pillows.

"Ellis," is a very soft little call, quieter even than the tone she'd taken when they'd been speaking only just minutes ago as if the distance across which she is addressing him makes it more likely for her to be heard beyond the door.

Wysteria extends her hand toward the edge of the bed. She pats there in invitation.

He is very far away.

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