[closed]

[heirring]

WHO: Tony Stark & Wysteria Poppell & Ellis
WHAT: Shop talk and self defense.
WHEN: Justinian (Nowish Catchall so I don't flood the comms)
WHERE: On the boat back from the jungle adventure; some might call this 'the Jungle Cruise'; Kirkwall
NOTES: N/A, will add if Wysteria throws Tony overboard or stabs the wrong training dummy.

TONY SPARK.

[Ordinarily, she has very little in the way of fondness for boats. Ships? She cannot even begin to fathom where the difference lies. But after days spent stumbling through the jungle, preceded by days being treated to the poor keeping of Venatori agents, she might find some charity in her heart for transport on a sufficiently wide board so long as it meant no further walking on her own two feet. Further, when relieved of the prospect of how they are getting where they are going and in what direction, exactly, where is, one finally has time to indulge in philosophical questions such as What must need doing upon our return?, or--

Well, there are lots of questions one might ask themselves under such circumstances. But that is by far the one which she prefers.

Hence her sudden appearance at his elbow (although to say it comes as a surprise would be to discredit Wysteria's propensity for charging about).]

Now then, Mr. Stark. Where were we?

MR. ELLIS.

I see no reason why we cannot simply do this in the back garden.

[She is referring, of course, to the dreary little courtyard with its planters and cracked old paving stones over which Ellis has been laboring to make slightly less overgrown and dreadfully unkempt alongside the house in Hightown. It is where their lessons have always taken place prior to this one.

True, there really isn't much room for wielding a bow and arrow in the garden and her neighbors already resent the new occupant of the mansion terribly; and true, that those tutoring sessions with swords or little knives or whatever you like had tended to devolve into her sitting on one of the planter walls, weeding the dirt and discussing books rather than doing much with sharp objects. But really, it hardly seems necessary to go to these lengths.

Meaning the Gallows practice yards, wherein Miss Wysteria Poppell looks rather out of place in her skirts. Nevermind that they are very recently late of adventuring through jungles, and there she wore very nearly the exact equivalent of what she has on today. There is something about being fresh faced, clean and well-pressed in breezy summer cottons and little leather boots with flowers stamped at the ankles which simply lends poorly to such an environment.]

Comments

[heirring]

Ah.

[She expressly does not wrinkle her nose as she turns toward the sea, her hands settling flat there on the railing alongside him. Her posture is rather more stiff, but that has always been the case - something in the way she holds her chin up, or the fixture of her shoulders.

Yes, well.]

I expect this vacation will have to occur quite soon, so as to avoid any possibility of Mister Ellis realizing he might be entitled to second thoughts.

[propulsion]

And don't oversell it. He'll flip on you and get overprotective.

[ This horizon is doing nothing for him, so Tony turns his back on it and leans against the railing, arms folded.

He looks at her again. On account of all the stress he has been personally processing, as the real victim here, and the general fuckery that was getting from point A to point B after figuring out where on the alphabet they even were, there hasn't been a lot of time for assessment, so he makes up for it now. ]

I know the type.

[heirring]

A friend from home, I presume.

[What is there to see really but a freckled face that has seen too much sun - and here she was, having just gotten her complexion back -, grubby clothes, and the unpleasantly straw like quality of hair washed in streams of dubious origin? Days spent struggling through the jungle has made them all synonymous in their unkempt states.

She is picking dirt out from under her fingernails - or at the very least, has done so enough times in the last week that it has become thoughtless habit.]

I'll see what can be done. Though I insist that we do very little walking between Kirkwall and Orzammar. My feet have done enough work for quite so time, thank you.

[propulsion]

Yeh. Hero everywhere you turn.

[ He looks at her looking at her nails, and then maybe becomes conscious to his own looking so he steers his attention to the deck, the people manning it, tugging little ropes to configure little sails and it's a marvel of engineering and all but you know it's also.

Depressing. Tony looks at the sky. ]

You can take a break, [ because he can't help it. Just a prod. ] From Riftwatch, after all this. They don't owe you anything, you know.

[heirring]

[Her attention rises from her fingernails, cuts hard over, and the look Wysteria gives him is stuck somewhere between baffled and trepidation - as if he has suggested she close her eyes and touch something squishy with her bare hand.]

And do what, exactly? Let my work pile up for another month? I think not. The Seneschal must be overwhelmed as it is. You know the man's temperament. He has probably spent the past three weeks adjusting my chair in relation to my desk.

And de Foncé will be all eagerness to see some progress on the project, and [she has returned to her fingernail inspection as she prattles on] I fully anticipate upon my return to find a letter from my friend in Markham about— well it hardly matters. You understand my meaning entirely.

[A look, sidelong.]

Why? Are you planning to take time away?

staggers into frame

[propulsion]

[ He keeps looking skywards because he can feel that look, with her little beady eyes. Doesn't laugh at her, but does seem to be suppressing something that is amusement-adjacent. ]

Me?

And let Corypheus win? [ comes with a somewhat lazy rather than emphatic beat of his palm to ship railing. ] I'll sleep when I'm dead, Miss Poppell, but thanks anyway.

[heirring]

Well then. Just so.

[She nods, short and short and very decided, then begins the process of untangling the absent lacing of her fingers. Wysteria smooths the front of her skirts and tucks pale flyaway hairs behind her ears, and then that is that.]

When we go to Orzammar, is there a particular point of interest there you'd like to look into? It might help to know if I'm to convince Mr. Ellis of the importance of the expedition.

[propulsion]

Material resources.

[ Tony has switched to landing one hand on the rail, facing her at a lean. ]

I need a supply of crystallised refined lyrium that doesn't come cheap. Some other components, minerals. We need some connections, and I don't wanna call in favours with Diplomacy. That guy looks like some other guy's evil doppelganger.

[heirring]

[A pause, in which she doesn't point out that they have the same facial hair and so perhaps Byerly is his evil twin, and she instead settled on wrinkling her nose which is more or less an expression of her agreement.]

No, I'd rather avoid involving Ambassador Rutyer in this if at all possible. He and I have something of a tentative agreement already, and I would rather not risk complicating it any further than it already is. Perhaps Mr. Ellis has old friends in the city who might be willing to make further introductions. Or, [she squints, regarding the sea as it travels under the ship's side.] I might see if I could reach a friend of mine. I believe she was lately of the city in question, and trained as a smith there.

But none of this solves the question of cost, Mr. Stark.

[propulsion]

[ That's not how the Mirror Universe works, Wysteria. ]

Question of cost's directly proportionate to who we're doing business with. I bet dwarves take credit. Plus I have a budget now, so.

[ He had people for this. His dismissiveness is impatient. ]

Maximum ten things at a time. Okay? First step is the yellow brick road. We'll figure out the bill in Emerald City.

[heirring]

[She is reasonably certain the road in Ferelden is neither yellow or made out of brick, as that seems like something that might have been mentioned in at least one of a half dozen somewhat relevant books. But who can say?]

I'll see what can be done, then. Though honestly, I have no idea why it must be such a production. Certainly Mr. Ellis was reticent when first we first broached the subject, but he is so about a great deal of things.

[propulsion]

You don't get the sense he's got some hard limits?

[ Head tilt. ]

Can't have a mysterious past without some of those lying around.

[heirring]

What about it is so mysterious? I have known him to be nothing but forthright with only just a little encouragement.

[Hm the horizon line is very interesting. They don't make them like this in the South, do they?]

No, I will grant you that he is rather reserved - shy, even -, but many people are. And he has been very willing to assist us thus far even when it is dangerous or unpleasant.

[propulsion]

[ Eyebrows up at this first part. Well, okay. ]

Dangerous-unpleasant's kind of where he lives. I think he's got some reservations about us going there.

[heirring]

Well yes, of course. But that makes sense. He's a Warden, and said himself that he is largely familiar with Orzammar only as a way into the Deep Roads. If you had gone to a place only for unpleasantness, I imagine you might have reservations about returning there too. Nevermind the fact that we're unlikely to go anywhere near where it would be most dangerous.

[Cut to: science club in the Deep Roads.]

[propulsion]

Uh huh.

[ Can't wait to visit the Deep Roads. ]

He ever mention why he got into all that?

[heirring]

[Her attention swivels around, quizzical.]

Into what? Being a Warden? [Why become a soldier, or a candlestick maker, or a goat farmer? Surely out of all professions, it makes perfect sense for a Ferelden to join forces in a campaign against Darkspawn.] No. I've never asked.

[Though it begs the question--] Why, have you?

[propulsion]

[ It makes a kind of perfect sense, sure. You go to the front lines to do the right thing, except that's not how that works all the time, in Tony's experience. Most times they need convincing, and if it's not money, desperation, something else, it's the campaign that makes them think they're in it to do the right thing. Not everyone is Steve Rogers.

As he will explain later, Ellis is not a far cry from that type. But still. ]

I asked him why Riftwatch, so it's probably the same answer, right? Kill the monsters.

[ Hard pivot, suddenly, save that monsters have been mentioned, to focus in on Wysteria rather than their absentee stuff holder; ]

Welcome back, by the way.

[heirring]

Oh.

[Balking like a small dog from a flicked nose, she blinks at him once then does a hard pivot of her own back to the observation of the rippling sea. A short inhale, the preparation for saying something, is taken and summarily wasted.

And then isn't.]

I apologize for being so short with you, Mr. Stark. I was angry, and for reasons that had very little to do with you.

[propulsion]

[ Tony blinks back, and he wrinkles his nose a little as he casts his attention back out at the ocean wide. Sincerity is itchy. ]

Don't mention it, [ he says. ] Save it, for when it's all about me next time.

[ He straightens up out of his lean, like a puppeteer jerked up the thread through his spine. ]

Okay. Bring it in.

[ Arms out and wide. Going in for a hug. Slightly grimly. ]

Come on, let's go.

[heirring]

[Sorry, what?

Her hands float up off the rail and her face does a thing, the combination of which is the human embodiment of an ambiguous ellipses.]

That's hardly necessary, [would carry more weight were it not said while capitulating to his demands, giving in to a hug which somehow manages to be both the concept of oops all elbows and— perfectly fine.]

[propulsion]

Yeah kind of it is.

[ Tony closes his arms around her and holds there, as if prepared to just fold in all the awkwardness and elbows himself, but it's not as bad as that anyway. It doesn't vanish off all the worry and then the sheer stress that has been the past x amount of days, but it's something.

He probably holds on a second longer than necessary before he frees her and also himself, steadying them both with a pass of his hands to her shoulders as he goes. ]

Good talk.

[heirring]

[Will she give this some further consideration later once the sun has set and they are all of them packed into hammocks strung above deck (because it is too hot to suffer sleeping below and there is little enough room for it besides)? Not the specifics of the embrace and the fiddly question of what she's meant to be doing with her hands during it, or the silliness involved with smoothing her skirts and straightening her sleeves afterward, or saying,]

Yes. Very good. Thank you. And I'll let you know once I've convinced Mr. Ellis so that we can begin to make all the necessary arrangements. I doubt the Seneschal will be pleased to lose my assistance again so soon, but I'm sure that with actual forewarning someone can be found to replace me on a very temporary basis.

[but maybe the unanticipated satisfaction of the thing. After all, the last time she'd come hot off a kidnapping attempt and a long trek across an unforgiving landscape back to Kirkwall, it was to arrive at her own funeral on a broken heel and the rather disappointing realization that she must be third or fourth in the rankings of 'People I will express my satisfaction to when we discover they aren't dead after all' among a great deal of her close relations. And no, this is hardly so exact a mirror of those circumstances to be truly definitive about anything whatsoever, but will perhaps the gesture of the thing occur to her then?

No. Because she is twenty-four, and more sentimental in theory than in actual practice, and there is the distracting prospect of the return to work to keep her thoughts occupied. But that is a far cry from the prickling sensation of loneliness, so what does it matter really whether a thing is consciously turned over.]

—Oh, Mr. Stark. Before I forget. When we return, de Foncé has agreed to visit the Hightown house weekly so we might more seriously discuss the matter of our collaboration. If you're keeping any work in the house you would prefer he not see, I might recommended you place it in one of the locking drawers for safe keeping. I'll do my best to keep him occupied, but the man's skill for intrusion is not to be underestimated.

[propulsion]

First of all I keep nothing classified, sacred, or otherwise sensitive in your haunted fire hazard so don't worry about it.

[ Back to a familiar pattern, which Tony finds even more reassuring than the hug that preceded it. The pattern being: a race to see how fast either of them can talk at a given moment, although Wysteria wins automatically on sheer volume. ]

Second of all -- what, and why. Weekly seems excessive. Does this guy have nothing else going on?

[heirring]

It's not a fire hazard. [But it is haunted.] And that - the gentleman's schedule - is precisely why I've arranged for more frequent meetings. I would rather he not forget about the importance of the project. You see, I am most determined to have a prototype complete by midwinter, and like it or not de Foncé and I have an agreement which predates our [she gestures between them] association.

[And because she has a bet with him, but that's not important.]