faderift | closed. // spun like the spell you spin

Entry tags:

closed. // spun like the spell you spin

WHO: Beth Greene, Wysteria Poppell, Ellis
WHAT: Beth comes out of a rift, promptly freaks.
WHEN: Early Cloudreach
WHERE: Outside Kirkwall
NOTES: Violence, other notes tbd

Here are the things Beth remembers: The hard metal of surgical shears, made warm from her skin. The fabric of Dawn's uniform against her hand. And an explosion of sound, the incomprehensible crack of a gun right beside her before everything stops.

That's it. But it's enough that she can piece together why she opens her eyes and she's not in a hospital anymore. Muddy ground, a green glow that's so acidic it doesn't look real, the smell of grass and saltwater--someplace outside, somewhere she's never seen before. There's a screeching that puts chills down her neck, and then she realizes that she's actually cold. And something else, hooded and swooping down at her like an angry crow, tattered fabric flapping around it as it comes at her.

She doesn't scream, but it's a near thing, her breath catching painfully in her throat. (You can't scream, more will come.) Fumbling for her knife--the shears are long gone, stuck in the chest of a woman she hopes to God is dead--she stabs at the creature. It gets close enough that she can see its face is hideous, worse than walkers. Its breath is freezing, its claw-like hands sharp at the tips, and all she can think (besides don't scream, don't scream) is I thought Hell would be warmer.

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"I mean, I'm here." And maybe not her very best self at the moment.

Wysteria's set a flame to a hopeful little tealight in her chest, though--I'm very much alive--and maybe, maybe she's wrong. Maybe the bullet hit the ceiling. Maybe it wasn't a gun at all, just the sound of one of those green cracks opening up and swallowing her whole.

Beth reaches up, feels under her jaw, and finds puckered skin. It's already scabbed over, if not scarred over--a dream of surviving a gunshot to the head--but she knows the shape. She knows the size. When she touches the top of her head, her hair's dried and stuck together, the kind of filth she's cleaned out of it after a walker died messier than usual.

"That's blood in my hair," she says, her chest tightening up painfully around the words, "isn't it."

The jaunty little whistle Ellis has taken up on his way back carries ahead of him, though he has only made it part-way back to them. As he's presently treading over the churned up, muddy earth Beth had been dropped onto from the rift, he's at too great a distance to weigh in as to whether or not it's blood in her hair.

The lilt of the whistle is a familiar one, though for the life of her in this moment she would be very hard pressed to name the tune. She has a rather poor ear at the best of times--

"Well yes, I suppose it is blood," she tells poor Miss Greene. "But you feel well enough, yes? All things considered, I mean. I understand coming through the Rift can be disorienting. I twisted my ankle when I feel through, you know. But beyond any residual effects of that, I would say that you look remarkably fit for a dead person."

This may be an exaggeration - it is quite a lot of blood, and Beth looks like she might be well due for a general scrub all over -, but if so it is only a very slight one. She has known no corpses all at which could walk and talk. Not so well, in any case.

"Mister Ellis!" She turns to face him and finds him much closer than she'd realized, all but shouting directly at him. "There you are. Introduce yourself to Miss Greene and attest to her how very alive we all are."

Mister Ellis can attest to anything he likes, for as long and as loudly as he cares to. It may or may not actually penetrate, the same way what Wysteria's going on about starts to sound less like speech and more like some persistent empty sound. I suppose it is blood is the only thing that matters; everything after that just fills space.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and it doesn't do a damned thing to stop tears from leaking out. One hand's made a fist, the other still on her throat--touching it, trying to hide it, she's not sure which. What does it matter? She died.

The whistling tapers off. Ellis turns a bewildered expression to Wysteria, momentarily stalled just outside arm's reach before he seems to achieve some clear focus on what's to be done.

It doesn't include asking what's happened? but it's a near thing.

"Wysteria, can you have me the water skin from my pack?" is the first thing, while Ellis draws off the scarf wound around his neck. It's mostly clean, and it will do for no, he thinks, as he bends, lowering himself by degrees before gently touching Beth's balled up hand to draw her attention.

"Miss Greene?" he attempts, voice very gentle. "Are you hurt?"

Truly, is there anything in the entire world so dreadful as someone else's tears? It makes her so very aware of things like her elbows and what she is or isn't doing with her hands, and so Ellis' request to fetch comes as a great relief. With a squawk of assent, Wysteria scuttles to the nearby collection of their gear.

The bow and quiver are thrown thoughtlessly down there, and she returns just a few moments later with the requested water skin.

Once--it feels like years ago, but it wasn't--she told a friend that she didn't cry anymore, and for a while, she even believed it. But it wasn't true then, and it isn't now. And then she thought that maybe she was at least over the embarrassment and misery of trying to keep sobs from cracking her ribcage into pieces, but she's not. Sitting between two strangers and weeping sucks. It's embarrassing. And it's miserable. The fact that they're nice doesn't make it suck any less.

Mister Ellis is asking her a question, though, and Wysteria's clattering away. If he thinks she's actually hurt, not just an idiot--I thought it would just be over competes with I thought I'd make it in her mind, and both thoughts feel stupid and naive--that'll probably make things worse.

"I--" and she has to swallow and try to take a breath before she can get further than that, pushing the tears away from her eyes with one hand--"I think I was shot."

She draws an imaginary line parallel to her head, a straight line that goes from her jawline up past her ponytail. A bullet's path. It doesn't occur to her that they might not have bullets here.

"Thank you," is for Wysteria, an undertone accompanying the speedy delivery of water skin.

And that's all there is for a moment. Ellis uncorks the water skin with his teeth as Beth takes a gulping, unsteady breath. He douses the scarf with the contents, eyes lifting up to Beth as she speaks, following the trajectory of her hand illustrating an injury Ellis doesn't fully grasp. (Shot with what? Surely not an arrow.) He looks to Wysteria first, taking in her reaction as much as Beth's before he gives a small nod.

"Could I take a look?" is for Beth, alongside the minor lift of sodden scarf to telegraph his intention.

Beth's teeth dig into her lower lip as she watches him wet the scarf and hold it out. The idea of anyone touching her right now is hard to tolerate--but he moves slowly, hesitating rather than trying grab her. And there's something in his face that says gentleness to her.

So she nods, jaw clenched a little, and tries to sit still.

Wysteria, fidgeting at the margins of this, does show some flicker of confusion but it's reserved for the line itself and perhaps the shape of the blood in the younger girl's hair.

"Oh, but it must be that you dreamt it. Almost everyone who arrives in Thedas comes here through a dream. And sometimes little details of it come through. That would almost certainly explain the blood, Miss Greene."

Carefully, Ellis lifts a hand to Beth's chin and tilt her head away, reveal the underside of her jaw. Every single movement of his hands is telegraphed, easy to halt. When he draws the damp scarf along her skin, the wound beneath the grime is...unfamiliar to him.

Confusion wrinkles his brow for a split second before he redirects, turning his head to nod at Wysteria. Yes, that's helpful.

"Wysteria knows more about rifts than most anyone I know," Ellis tells Beth, glancing back to Wysteria, eyebrows raising in encouragement. "She came through one as well, but I wasn't there for it."

She does her best to hold still, but once or twice, she has to swallow a flinch as best she can. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't feel like much of anything. But having someone this close to her--with her throat bared, no less--doesn't feel easy right about now.

"What were you doing before it?" Beth asks, her eyes shifting towards Wysteria again. She had seemed like she knew what she was doing--and she'd had the light pouring from her hand, the same as Beth's wrist. "Just...sleeping?"

"Just sleeping," she confirms from behind Ellis's shoulder, nodding firmly.

"I was traveling on a boat, and I don't recall falling asleep but must have been for the next instant I was walking through a hole in the sky. Do you know," she says, and this is as much for Ellis as it is for Beth (or for herself, for she can hear herself rambling a little in an effort to distract from the shedding of tears). "My traveling case when I arrived was full of birds. It certainly wasn't that way when I packed it, and I should have liked for it to have been as it was in reality. I came here with only the dress I was wearing!"

In the midst of their conversation, Ellis is doing his best to keep out of the way. There's nothing he can do for her hair, so he drops to her hands instead, swiping away mud. It gives her space as well, Ellis sat back on his heels, expression settled into quiet interest while he listens.

The neat-punched hole doesn't make sense to him. An arrow wouldn't leave such a mark behind. But it doesn't bode well, considering the blood in her hair. Ellis can't know without looking, and he doesn't care to say as much aloud, but maybe all those fears aren't so unfounded.

"Oh." She lets Mister Ellis touch her hands, telling herself not to pull away. (It's not like you have to, your knife is right there if you need it. And there's something comforting about it, the same kind of feeling as her mother stroking her hair when she was sick. But it's not easy to sit still for that kind of attention anymore, even if she wishes it was.) And she tries to figure out what to say to a story of birds in suitcases and traveling on the water.

It turns out she's not really sure what to offer in return. She's quiet, looking down at her hands and Ellis' and the bracelets on one wrist. "I...wasn't asleep. It was real, I know it was."

What to say to such a thing? Wysteria glances from Miss Greene's bowed head, to Ellis—the uncertainty written clear in her expression—and then back again.

She at least sounds all light and easy when she says, "And yet here you are, as well as anyone. So whatever dreadful thing might have happened to you there, is seems to hardly have followed here. Why, with a bath and fresh clothes and perhaps a little attention from a healer, you will be right as rain."

The motion of Ellis' hands has stilled.

There is some conflict in his expression, a tension working through him. What comfort can he offer her? (Is there some element of tired jealousy working at the very edge of his awareness? It's farther from him now than it was before.) The tears have passed, but what's left in their wake is harder to read.

The shard in her palm glimmers beneath the fold of his scarf. Ellis looks at it before raising his eyes to Wysteria and away, back to Beth's resigned face.

"Aye, Wysteria's right. Whatever happened, it can't touch you now."

Dead or not, that's the truth. The rift is closed. Nothing can reach through after her now.

"You're alive here," he asserts, steadily. Whatever that means in the grand scheme of things, it's hopefully some kind of comfort.

They both make a good point--a couple of them, actually. The obvious one, that she's basically alive right now, even if she's not supposed to be. And the one that she hears underpinning Mister Ellis' careful speech and Wysteria's bright chatter, whether it's actually there or not: She can't just sit here and cry all day, even if it feels like it'd be the easiest thing in the world.

Beth presses the fingers of one hand against her other wrist, right by the thin green shard. (I'm gonna need more bracelets is the only thing she can think, looking at it.) And her blood's still moving there, her heartbeat echoing through her veins. If she should be dead right now--or worse, mindless and rotting, nothing behind her eyes anymore--it seems like God forgot.

"Where are we?" she asks, swiping one more time at her wet face and making herself stand up. If the words still come out wobbly, they at least aren't accompanied by more tears.

Taking a half step back to accommodate Beth standing, Wysteria puts her hands briefly at her own hips and then decides that isn't quite right and removes them again. She ought to have brought the thaumoscope with her. Then she'd have a series of dials to fiddle with, or at the very least might now be making adjustments to the lay of the case's carrying strap.

"We are in Thedas, just across the border into Wildervale. And as I suspect that means nothing at all to you, you might think of it as having gone from one room—wherever you came from—down the hall, which is the Fade, and then into some adjacent parlor. That is Thedas. Where did you come from? Perhaps we know it."

Beth standing prompts Ellis to rise back to his feet as well, hands drawing back to occupy himself with waterskin and now-muddied (and bloodied) scarf. He recedes a step further back, to stand beside Wysteria.

While he doesn't offer any additional clarification about their surroundings, he does silently pass the waterskin to Wysteria to re-cork while he wrings the excess dampness from his scarf. It's space left for Beth to answer, even if Ellis isn't so optimistic about recognizing any place she names.

"Georgia?" she offers, though it's hard to imagine either of them are going to light up with recognition. "I was in Atlanta when..."

Never mind.

Belatedly, it occurs to her that Wysteria sounds like she's from England, so Atlanta might not help a lot. So she adds, glancing at both their faces in search of some recognition, "In America?"

Georgia clearly means nothing if the stock look of pleasantness is anything to go by. However, the alteration which overtakes Wysteria's face us immediate in response to this last bit. She lights up, blue eyes all bright and a palpable sense of relief (because it is so nice, isn't it? To just know things) colors every corner of her seemingly elastic expression.

"Oh America! Yes, we are very familiar with that. It's on Earth. A great number of the Rifters in the company are from there. Why, the Provost himself is. In fact I would say it is almost common. Do you work for Shield as well?"

The first thought: She didn't arrive zippered into a bag.

But thinking on it a moment, Ellis can't be certain if that's a necessary requirement of the job. It occurs to him that Fitz had said very little of it, and Tony's initial reaction had been unfavorable.

A thoughtful frown creases his face, expression attentive even as he makes a second go of wringing water from the scarf.

"We...don't really work for people. Not anymore." For the most part, anyway--she can't think of much she'd like to get into less than the exceptions.

Maybe Shield is what someone calls their group, though. If you were living in a police station, it'd be a pretty good name.

"Oh, my apologies!" Wysteria hastily interjects, immediately reverting to that fidgeting, flighty state at Ellis' elbow. "I shouldn't wish you to think that you looked as if you required a profession. That was very rude of me."

Imagine. Have to keep a job. How very poor.

"Well no matter. My meaning is that we are very familiar with Earth and that you will hardly be alone once we return to the Gallows. --Which is the name of the fortress which Riftwatch occupies. It is a very grim name for the thing, but I believe nothing can be done to change it as it is one of those very old institutions and you would never successfully convince anyone it had been renamed even if you tried to."

Edited (html??) 2021-04-25 04:58 (UTC)

"Aye, you're not the first," is Ellis' quiet contribution, before advising, "The templar tower has hot water."

Because presumably that'll be more relevant to Beth when they arrive.

"That's not what I--" she starts to say, in the space between Wysteria's comments, but it drops quietly away. Maybe it's better if that's what they think: I'm just that rich, jobs still exist and I don't want one.

Something about the idea makes her throat ache like she might cry again, but Beth doesn't want to think about the why right now. There's other things to figure out, anyway, small things and large. Why she's here instead of nowhere, whether she should really be tagging along with the first people she meets and assuming they mean well, just what a provost is.

Instead, she says, tentative, "Hot water sounds good. Do I, um, owe you anything? For helping me."

"Owe us?" Wysteria's laugh is a thing that's more baffled than it is truly humorous--brief and lopsided as she sets to dusting off the front of her skirts. They're not really particularly dirty, but it gives her something to occupy her hands with.

"Not at all. Although Mister Ellis and I need to fetch the stakes scattered about this field from where they've been planted and collect them all to return to that bag there. If you like, you may help us fetch them, and then we may be on our way back to Kirkwall. We have been measuring the Fade energy which was emitted by your Rift and they are part of the instruments we use to do it. It would hardly do to leave them and three sets of hands at the work will be much better than two."

Edited (wobbles hand) 2021-05-01 23:34 (UTC)

"Aye, we'll make quick work of it together," Ellis agrees. He touches Wysteria's elbow briefly, drawing her attention to him as he nods towards the far end of the field. "I'll start there, and the pair of you can gather the ones to the left and right. They're nearer."

Normally, Ellis would gather them himself. But he thinks Beth and Wysteria both would benefit from some minor task at the moment. Wysteria's offer is a useful one.

Wysteria looks at her like she's crazy, so that's...something, Beth thinks. (Or hopes.) Still, she keeps all of this lodged in the back of her mind: two people came to get her, they helped her kill a demon, they helped her close up the tear she came through. What that's worth, she's not sure, but it's not nothing--even if they don't look like they want her to pay up right now.

"Okay. Sure." She's saying it more to herself than them, even if she doesn't quite sense as much. This still doesn't feel real. Her hand moves again to the scarred skin under her jaw, knuckles brushing up against it. "Um--thanks."

Anyway, she'll go start picking up these stakes.

Wysteria hesitates for just a moment as Beth moves off as directed, attention flicking from the stakes to the girl and then finally to Ellis where her expression becomes wide eyed and all eyebrows as if to silently communicate 'Well this is strange and terrible, isn't it? Would you rate this higher or lower than the bird girl?' or perhaps 'How very fascinating that someone has arrived because of some mortal wound rather than by dreaming; when do you think might be an appropriate time to interrogate her about the details?' all through the sheer force of her expression.

And then she looses herself, trotting gamely off to fetch to the righthand stakes, calling out to the world at large, "Let us be quick about it for I should like very much to return to the Gallows and have myself a hot bath before it gets too late."

Good work, everyone.

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closed. // spun like the spell you spin

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