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when i go towards you it is with my whole life.
 | You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me—I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that’s how I knew I loved you. Because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end— I drew the gown over my head; a red flush covered my face and shoulders. It will run its course, the course of fire, setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes. You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face as though you had felt it also- you must have known, then, how I wanted you. We will always know that, you and I. The proof will be my body. — louise glück |
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Does it suit her? He cannot say.
But it does feel like drawing close a whole bevy of ghosts. It feels like trying to hold the pieces of a shattered vase in his hands. His fingertips press just a little further into his hair as he breathes out, steeling himself before straightening by degrees to look into her face.
No question is forthcoming, but there is a prompting quality to his expression. Go on, hanging in the quiet between them.
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But it's good to look at him too. Better in an instant such as this, where she will likely have to struggle to decipher all the little hints his face does or doesn't give with respect to the shape of his thoughts behind it. She makes up for that lack of forte by being instantly prepared to answer his searching look, so ready is her next remark that she hardly even requires to be prompted before saying it:
"It is far less robust than I had guessed it might be. I had estimated you for a Chadwick or a Landrin or an Arnott or something similar which you will agree wouldn't have suited at all. Whoever heard of a Wysteria Arnott? No one, as it's terrible. Is it spelled with a 'u' or an 'e'?"
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His fingers run along her cheeks, before his hands lift and relocate to her hips so as to allow conversation to flow more easily. He is still considering putting his mouth back to hers rather than navigate the question of his family name.
She is a little flushed, and Ellis cannot make up his mind whether it is the cold or their kiss. He'd like to experiment more thoroughly, but rather than interrupt, he tucks his hands beneath the fall of her cape, studying her as she processes his answer.
He might prompt her, had he any doubt she will offer up her opinion freely in due time.
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It is a statement with such conviction that one might think there really was some difference between the two—as if the presence of an 'e' was in some fashion legitimately somehow more aesthetically or aurally pleasing than a 'u' might be, when in fact that could be no functional difference whatsoever. Only—
"I find 'e's much more charmingly written, you see. And it would be a great shame to interject a droopy 'u' into the whole arrangement. Which I wouldn't have said if it were spelled that way, but I'm pleased that it isn't. Do you think," she says suddenly, with no warning for the impending subject change. "That it would be acceptable if I were to take it and for it to he a secret? It's not as if anyone in Thedas uses a surname as they ought to, which is very shocking by the way. And anyway I will have to continue working under the name Poppell or risk being forgotten entirely.
"So I think it could easily be hardly spoken of at all, if you preferred it not to be. But I shouldn't wish to steal it, of course. Only to keep it rather like one might something in their pocket, you understand. A private sort of name. Wysteria Arnott is very terrible, but Wysteria"—a humming mumble of syllables as a placeholder for Ginsberg; she staunchly refuses to apply it without permission—"Well, that isn't so dreadful."
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Somehow, he finds himself without any clear idea of what to say. The furrow of scrutiny doesn't ease, but the line of his mouth softens as he watches her work her way to her conclusion. That stretch of vaguely familiar mumbles very nearly fits into a shape that Ellis is surprised to find pleasing.
"I wouldn't want to impede your work," he tells her first, settling one aspect between them. Or so he thinks. Was this ever something that needed to be settled? Of course she would continue her work, and of course she would use whatever name most benefitted her to do so. What is there to question?
But the rest—
"Would you want it to be that way? A secret?"
It seems unfair, to saddle her with a secret. Wysteria has to his knowledge kept every secret he's asked of her, but their marriage, his name, that seems like a different matter than asking her not to repeat confidences about his past.
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She is so matter of fact there in the shelter of his shape, her face tipped faintly up to him so that she may deliver her opinion in the most straightforward fashion.
"So as far as everyone else may be concerned, I will simply keep my name as that is apparently acceptable and not completely outrageous. You will be Warden Ellis and I will be Madame or Messere or whatever is ordinary Poppell, who is his very headstrong and independent wife who has refused to give up her own name. But secretly, as the sort of thing we need not tell anyone at all, I might assume the other thing. And it never need be used or uttered, but I will know and that would be fine."
And abruptly she adds— "Unless you should care to use it. But of course you will not."
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In the moment, he is left to contend with the full force of her consideration for him. He feels it much like he had felt her profession of love, like all the little ways she expresses preference and care for him. It stops his breath for a moment as he considers the offering in its entirety, along with her expression, the sweetness of her face tipped up to him.
She is good to him. He has nothing to say for a moment, but he bends back to kiss her again in lieu of an immediate answer. He kisses her very softly, hands spanning her waist, slipping just so along to her back even as he maintains careful distance to spare her the chill of his armor. When the kiss breaks, Ellis remains close. His nose bumps Wysteria's as he breathes out, murmurs against her mouth, "Missus Ginsberg."
To say it aloud is not without a kind of pain. It's shadowed with some other life that he might have had still, but there is some breathing room maintained in this space between them.
"It's yours," he tells her, punctuated with a second, soft kiss.
He will have to deny her something, one of these days. But not today.
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For an instant, she doesn't fully register all that his happened. Just the softness of his kiss and the careful set of his hands and—
In a haphazard but fully genuine burst of enthusiasm, Wysteria surges up against the soft press of his mouth and throws her arms about his neck despite any inconvenient poking or touch of cold from the shape of his armor. That kiss, so delicate and sentimental, turns into a clumsy, laughing thing. It narrowly avoids some clash of teeth by little more than Andraste's grace.
How fine it is to be so well loved.
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The wind is still whipping at her hem and the fall of his cloak when he lifts her, spins her a turn in some silent mirror of her enthusiasm. (An echo of a man he'd used to be.) It wouldn't be entirely comfortable, where he to lift her into his arms, so he refrains from doing so. He doesn't care to cede his grasp on her regardless. His hands have come round her tightly, spanning her back, catching her up against him.
"I love you," is said low against her mouth, more weighted down with affection than amusement. Is this the first he's said that particular string of words aloud? Perhaps.
There's some novelty in that, in the speaking of it. But there's hardly any novelty in the sentiment. It's been couched in all that he's done for ages now, concealed just beneath the surface. It has always been close at hand, withheld for so many reasons that have now dwindled away.
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Maybe were he to say the thing in her father's garden or in her mother's sitting room with the mantle clock whirring softly in the background, she might accept it more soberly. But here, all disheveled by the weather and him speaking the words so close as if to guard them by the wind, it prompts a laugh to bubble straight out of her.
"Yes, I know that." He must, otherwise he wouldn't be so willing to indulge her. To say nothing of all the hundred other ways he shows the thing. It makes some bright thing go bursting behind her ribs, the incandescence of it lighting all the way up into her face.
"But you should say so whenever you like. It's very charming to hear," is her last smug and highly self-satisfied addition before she presses a series of short, silly kisses to Ellis' mouth and cheek and chin.
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Ellis has loosened his hold only to allow her feet back to the ground, and give her some respite from the cold surface of his breastplate. He still kisses her first, catching her mouth in the course of her ministrations so as to kiss her deeply, more intently than he likely should considering they are on a wind-struck island in pursuit of ruins that may or may not exist. There is work to do that means he cannot keep her hemmed in against this bit of crumbling wall for the rest of the day.
But still.
It is a kiss full of very focused intention, that tapers into the expected acquiescence:
"Alright, Missus Ginsberg."
Whenever he likes is easier promised than whenever he thinks of it, for he is always considering this fact. He is in love with her, and it has been a factor in how he moves through the world for such a long time, a constant thing. Were he to tell her as often as it occurs to him, she would surely grow tired of hearing it.
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Instead, she places her mitten hands at his wind scuffed cheeks. It would be difficult not to smile at him, so she doesn't bother trying.
"See, I think that's quite good."
regret to report this feels like a it has reached bow-tying status
Because it pleases her, first and foremost. The rest will come in time, perhaps. He can't pretend there isn't any sweetness to referring to her in such a way, just like he can't pretend there's no part of him eager to call her wife.
He lifts a hand to cup hers, hold it while he turns to press a kiss to her mittened palm.
"Shall we find your ruins now, or do you have any other demands we should see to first?"
tragic but true
With a last flashing of her broad smile, her loose hand pats him on the cheek and the Wysteria moves to untangle herself. Her hat is righted. Its ribbon is untied and then re-secured, and she stoops to fetch her field kit from where it had been set down at the base of the crumbling wall.
"We should be on our way before it gets too dark. I shouldn't like to camp here if it can be avoided. I dislike a cold dinner, and I doubt even you could keep a fire lit in this weather."
All very sensible points, she is pleased to think as she claps her hand back to the top of her hat to keep it secured. But these semantics do very little to dampen the bright, absurd sort of happiness living very high in her chest as she says, "Lead on, if you please," and then falls once more into step alongside him at whatever angle is most sheltered from the cut of the wind.