WHO: Ellis + OTA WHAT: Homecoming WHEN: Guardian WHERE: Kirkwall NOTES: Thread collection. Closed and open starters in the comments. Holler if you want something bespoke or drop in a wildcard, I'll roll with it.
It is a hard journey south, made harder by how he'd chosen to take his leave of Weisshaupt. He is carrying very little. (All he could stash without drawing attention, all in service of leaving under muddled, potentially involuntary circumstances.) And while he means to cover much ground very quickly, he can only push Gruagh so hard; horses have their limits, even hardy Aavar mounts. Ruadh ranges away and back, sometimes with some small game clenched in his jaw while Thot hops and chirps merrily at his shoulder, unbothered by their hasty departure and the ensuing misery of the trek.
Ellis has lived this way before. He has traveled on next to nothing, and made his way across Thedas without benefit of steed or mabari or make-shift bird. He knows how to weather the long road back to Kirkwall, growing lean, dodging Imperial soldiers, winding his way southwards: skirting the edges of Nevarra, through the fields of Ghislain, cutting through the Vinmark Mountains, descending through the scattering of villages until Kirkwall proper looms up around him.
There is some difficulty hauling Gruagh aboard the ferry. It is very late and the ferryman is muttering mutinously under his breath, but between Ellis and Ruadh, there is sufficient motivation to indulge, and deliver them both to the Gallows.
After the stables, after coaxing his crystal from Thot one last time and sending her on her way, there are a number of places Ellis might go. The baths. His room, to see if it's still intact. To the kitchen.
Instead, he climbs the stairs to push open the door to Tony's office without bothering to knock in hopes of finding him there.
Tony is where Ellis might expect to find him: not behind his desk, or installed into the weird little reading nook offshoot to the right, but standing at the table that likely once was used to host meals and discussions, maps and reading material, but has instead been a nexus point of accumulated scrap, a sort of mini-workshop of his own.
It's late. There's not a lot of light. A big vibrant hearth does its best, and there's a lantern nearby and some lit candles, but otherwise, it's too dim to be doing this kind of work by. But likely Ellis can also recognise the eyewear, enchanted to allow the viewer to see everything as clear as day. The object he's working on is held up at eye level by a spindly frame, a glowing source of refined lyrium that splashes ill-light across the worktable. Using some kind of fine, long handled tool, Tony does not look over at the sound of the door opening as he positions a delicate ring of bright silvery metal around it, and when he releases it, it hovers in place, and begins to slowly rotate.
Tony straightens from his slight lean. The hearth has warmed the room enough that he can roll the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and out of the way, all ordinary day-clothes dismantled into their more comfortable form, feet in winter socks. He looks no different from a few months ago. Who could tell?
"Coffee's on the desk," he says, to whoever has opened his door, failing to look up as he pivots away to check the numbers on a thaumoscope. "Or whiskey, depends on you."
Because late-night intrusions are either coffee-conversations or whiskey-conversations.
There is no reason for it, but Ellis feels such a deep ache in his chest, watching Tony. He'd missed him. And here he is, right where Ellis had left him. Working on something just as unfathomable, at an absurd hour of night. Ellis struggles to find a response for a moment, as Ruadh trots past him to take advantage of the warm and unoccupied space in front of the hearth.
"No food to accompany it?" is not necessarily about Ellis, who certainly has not eaten as he should on the journey, but about Tony, who doesn't eat as he should without reminders, in Ellis' experience.
He is still rooted there, just inside the door. This feels fragile. As if it will all come apart at the slightest movement.
Good thing Ellis didn't speak up while Tony was carefully placing a Veil quartz-infused silverite stabiliser in range of a lyrium reactor, because that could have gone awry and the neighbours would complain.
As it happens, Tony is just holding the corner of a piece of paper, and this is dropped, first, and then second, he turns to the door. He palms off his sunglasses to stare at the travel-worn, haggard, very much alive version of his best friend just standing there, doofus-like. The sunglasses are tossed with a negligent clatter onto the table.
"What time do you call this?" is the best he can do, a joke like a holding pattern while his brain calibrates to new information, the unexpectedness of it. He'd clocked out of having feelings, so give him a second.
Unbothered by impending displays of affection, Ruadh circles in front of the heart and folds himself into a ball to luxuriate in front of the fire.
Ellis, meanwhile, moves only to shift his grip on the doorknob with a shaky attempt at feigned thoughtfulness. He is gripping the handle very tightly, watching Tony. His expression softens, but he doesn't quite manage a smile. That doesn't come so easily after months without much reason for levity.
"I could come back in the morning if I've missed your office hours, Provost."
Truthfully, Ellis has very little idea of what time it is other than late. And even if there were some miniscule bit of propriety in him, it would have been absolutely overruled by the desperation to see Tony. There is no way to simply retreat to his room without laying eyes on him.
(Wysteria is asleep by now. Wysteria has a husband. Wysteria is—
Ellis isn't ready to see her.)
At the hearth, Ruadh yawns, comically and unnecessarily loud.
It's a whole lot of dog entering his room and getting comfy that Tony manages not to blink at or appear to even process. Busy processing Ellis, who is here after so long, and then the differences, the leanness, the haggardness, the exhaustion, all worn well enough to not let multiple stairs up a tower deter him.
"Do that and I'll probably think I hallucinated this whole thing," Tony says, a small cancelling slice gesture at his side, "and we'll have to start over. You planning on letting out absolutely all the heat, or—"
He is talking nonsense, just words to fill the space between them standing twenty feet apart and Tony walking over, running out of them as his hands come up to hook on Ellis' shoulders. Only sometimes does Tony actually consider the age difference between them, does he remember that Ellis is likely a young man who has seen some shit, but there's cause to consider it more often, lately,
so he opts to be the one to pull him into a hug. Not even a detachedly manful one, back slaps and shoulder claps, but warmth and gratitude and welcome. And great relief.
The door does shut. Ellis has the presence of mind for it, feels it as some urgent thing at the look on Tony's face. It's a private thing.
It somehow hadn't come to mind that Tony would reach out to him. It shouldn't be a surprise, but Ellis wasn't prepared for it. And it takes a moment, for Ellis to remember what to do with all this closeness.
But he does crumple into it all at once, tension bleeding out of him within the cinched circle of Tony's arms. He breathes out hard against Tony's shoulder.
Ellis has not once said aloud that he misses Tony. That he misses Wysteria or that he misses the chaos of Riftwatch or the drafty halls of the Gallows. He couldn't. It would have made everything unbearable in a way Ellis still doesn't know how to weather.
But it's there, in the minor shudder that runs through him, and how tightly he wraps his arms around Tony in return.
Tony also missed Ellis, the kind of thing he likewise didn't say out loud in case it felt like he was saying it about someone he'd never see again. Holden's abrupt departure felt like a bad omen, niggling superstition. If only satellites existed. If only computers and drones and missiles and phone towers and jets existed.
(He remembers the kid, for a moment, now that there's just an entirely new bank of sense-memory to import from. He only remembers blearily, in those few moments of cognition circling the drain. It would have been good to bear-hug him just once, before he had to go.)
"Did a big dog also come in here?" he asks, after a long moment of simply this, tipping his chin up enough so as not to go muffled into Ellis' shoulder.
As late as he'd arrived, as little sleep as he'd managed (he'd thrown his blanket onto the floor for Ruadh to curl up on, dropped his pack, and stretched out on his bed, but the strangeness of the room, the pieces of his life he'd been uncertain whether or not he'd see again, it makes sleep impossible.) dawn still finds him on the first ferry into Kirkwall.
It's biting cold. (It is strange to be without his armor.) Ellis turns the collar of his coat up against the chill, draws his scarf up a little higher. Ruadh huffs as they disembark, falls into step at Ellis' side as they wind through the empty streets towards Hightown.
(This too is strange to the point of surreal.)
The gate creaks on its hinges. Ruadh trots through first, while Ellis lingers, testing it once, twice, three times before easing it closed.
The chickens are still tucked away inside their coop, and there is no immediate evidence of the rumored goat, but there is signs that the garden itself hasn't been well-prepared for the change in seasons. He should have given Oona the coin for it, but he hadn't been intending for his absence to stretch as long as it had.
He stands for a long moment looking up at the darkened house. But rather than let himself in (it's too early. it's too soon.) Ellis turns his attention to what is most familiar, and closest at hand. While Ruadh inspects the perimeter of the garden, Ellis gathers hammer and nails, rakes and shovels, and begins tending the raised garden beds. Too late, maybe, but the work is easy and familiar and grounds him in the present.
Ruadh's the first to sense movement. The mabari's great squared head lifts from snuffling at the far fencing to swivel towards the house and give a soft, suspicious boof in answer to whatever movement is occurring. No proper bark, so Ellis only clucks his tongue in dismissive answer, attention set on levering the corners of the raised bed back together before reaching for his hammer. It's early yet. (He's not yet decided whether or not he is going in.) This can be finished and the chickens can be fed before Wysteria rises, before Ellis enters the house.
The exact nature of the disturbance from within the house doesn't make itself known for some minutes. The time allotted before any notable change occurs is almost exactly number of minutes required for, say, a dog led by the noise of trespassers to sniff suspiciously around the entirety of the kitchen's door and then to pad responsibly through up through the house and sit for some minutes scratching at the door to her mistress's bedroom, and then to be scolded by the person in question for scratching at the woodwork, and then some minutes more to convince this person that they ought to come investigate the state of the garden and all its offensively unfamiliar smells and sounds. To add insult to injury, this diligent creature must tolerate being misinterpreted and the resultant delay required by fetching the goat, and it's only after a great deal of bickering (the dog is not involved; the goat and the young lady are) that the house's year door springs open and the mop-like fawn colored briard is allowed out into the glum grey morning.
The Avvar goat with a rope collar around its neck is hot on her heels, as is Wysteria in her shift and slippers and undone hair hissing a curse after the both of them: "There. For gods' sake, I don't see what all the fuss was about—"
The briard draws up short. Nearly tripping Wysteria in the process and definitively blocking her thoughtless exit from the house, the dog plants herself firmly just past the threshold and lets out a single threatening bark at the strangers in her garden.
The pile up of dog, goat and girl in the doorway cannot be missed; it is not a quiet affair.
Ellis doesn't have to turn towards the door. He simply looks up and there she is. (It is in this moment that he considers: He has never seen Wysteria's hair loose in this fashion.) Having caught sight of her, Ellis has little attention for anything else for a long moment. The hammer in his hands, the bite of the cold, even the briard and the goat.
But Ruadh has no such hesitations. Abandoning entirely the scent he'd been snuffling after along the fencing, Ruadh wheels around to face the approaching...threat. Challenger. Irritant. There is no answering bark, but a raising of hackles, the suggestion of teeth, as Ruadh trots forward. Perhaps to inspect, perhaps not.
Which draws Ellis back to reality, enough that he drops the hammer to catch Ruadh before he can pass with a soothing murmur. His hand passes over old scars, sleek, short fur, before his gaze turns back to Wysteria.
What is there to say? If he thinks of anything, it's blotted out by the sight of her. That's the trouble, of wanting so much, of feeling so much. There's nothing to be done with it.
The goat isn't deterred by either dog, the fall for the hammer, or any of the various personal dramas (canine or otherwise) which might be occurring in it's vicinity. It barges past the briard and makes its way directly toward it's favorite part of the garden—directly beside the chicken coop where two stacked bales of hay are covered by a tarpaulin—with little more that a dismissive flick of the tail.
That leaves just the dog and the girl in the doorway, the latter of which has clearly been stunned into rare silence. Perhaps it's the grey early light, or her state of undress, or the shock of her partially amputated arm with its vivid red scar, but for a moment she looks especially dumbfounded to have discovered Ellis and a mabari in her garden. And then, with much the same attitude as the goat before her, Wysteria is shoving past the briard.
"You horrible villain! You're not meant to be here!" is outrage or shrill relief or both all at once. Her face flushes twelve shades of red as, with a suspicious dog following tightly in tow at her heels, Wysteria storms across the narrow garden toward him.
Only the briefest of looks is spared for the goat (handsome, whoever gifted it chose well) to be sure of it's trajectory away from anything delicate and in need of tending. There is some comic similarity in both Ellis and his newfound companion, the pair of them both shooting a scrutinizing glance sideways before swiveling back to mark Wysteria's approach.
You're not meant to be hear is one of those things Wysteria means nothing by, but catches at him regardless. It wedges like a splinter. Ellis is distantly aware of it; more present in his mind is the creaking ache of his joints as he levers out of the crouch by the raised garden bed, straightening fully upright to meet Wysteria as she approaches.
She's going to be cold, he thinks. She's not properly bundled against the frigid morning.
But the sight of her is so, so welcome. He can do nothing but look at her, one hand drifting back to Ruadh's shoulder as a safeguard against any further hackle-raising.
He should say something, he knows. The expression on his face will resolve itself into words, sooner or later, but even the questions or cautions won't stick for the revelation of her, unchanged and flushed and blustering across the garden to scold him.
It's outrageous that he should be standing there in the garden, looking battered and tired from travel and rough living but definitively not dead or missing or called off to some dark Warden business in the Deep Roads. It's absurd! It's insulting! It's the sort of make believe thing she has been stubbornly convincing herself would happen since the delivery of that dreadful note he'd left for her—
(The note wasn't dreadful. The purpose of it was. Maybe in the next days, she'll reread it stripped of the context of Ellis isn't coming back and find something more satisfying in it.)
—And, as it always is, being correct is so very satisfying.
"You might have sent word. A raven. Anything! Déranger, down!"
His dog is in her way as well. So either the mabari will cede ground or it will find itself contesting with Wysteria's intentions to trample into Ellis's space and throw an arm about him.
Whatever Ruadh had intended (it is likely he had intended on keeping well in the way of both approaching female and her canine) doesn't matter. Ellis' hand leaves his shoulder as steps immediately around Ruadh's bulk to catch hold of Wysteria, crumple down into her, put his face in against her neck as his arms came round her waist.
An explanation is for later (He was alone for miles and miles, and it had never felt safe to take any risk, to call Thot down and have her force up his crystal so he might indulge himself. He'd wanted to hear her voice, Tony's voice, so badly that it was impossible to trust that urge.) after he has somehow had his fill of her. She is bristling with anger and so warm in his arms and she looks herself again, healthier than he remembers her being when he left.
He's holding onto her so very tightly as Ruadh pads around to his opposite side in a paltry attempt to ignore Déranger, at whom he is still huffing and curling a lip at. Ellis' hands flatten against her back, over her shoulder blades, cinching her in tight against him while he fails to do anything other than hold onto her. He exhales a hard, shuddering breath against her neck. If he says something, it's muffled beyond hearing by the fabric of her housecoat.
That deserves a scolding to—this part where he doesn't immediately jump to explaining himself. Surely he must have a half dozen excuses prepared, and maybe even one of them will be satisfactory enough to excuse a very modest measure of the worry she and Tony have been dutifully laboring under. How dare he not launch directly into one.
Instead, Wysteria finds herself tightening her arm more stubbornly about him. There is a dreadful knot wound in her chest which she has been steadfastly ignoring for some time, and now as it begins to loosen in the proof of his presence she finds herself fiercely angry. Or protective. Or relieved. Or pleased. Or some combination of all of them, none of which would be particularly happy to be dislodged from him by concerned dogs, or by the cold leeching up from the paving stones through her soft soled slippers and from his clothes, or by propriety. She has not, however, stopped speaking:
"How dare you not come indoors immediately! I can hardly believe you mean to—what? Fuss about in the garden until I noticed otherwise? When did you arrive back—Oh really, Mister Ellis. If you've been in Kirkwall for any time at all and have said nothing to me, I really will be very cross with you. Déranger, stop that!"
(This last to the fawn colored briard, who has taken to nosing insistently at Wysteria's side in an vague attempt to insinuate her moppish body between them, and so shepherd her from the vicinity of the sour tempered mabari—)
Normally, Ellis doesn't make much of the baths. It's always been a quick affair, over and done without lingering.
But it's very early, and his entire body aches. And so after the slow, miserable shedding of layers of clothing stiff with dirt from the road, and some minor attention paid to new bruising and old scarring, Ellis eases into the water. He draws in a deep breath, and then exhales it, letting himself slouch into the warmth up to his neck.
It's good. (Enough so that he can give a little space to the depth of his exhaustion, and the tangle of conflict knotted in his chest.) He's closed his eyes, more or less satisfied with the idea that most everyone is asleep at this hour.
And then, of course, because this is how Ellis' luck tends to work: footsteps on damp stone.
His eyes open, straightening by degrees to assess the approaching individual.
An unfamiliar face—and all the rest of her, wrapped in a loose robe with her hair piled up atop her head, the mess of it not entirely hiding the pointed ears that confirm, presumably, what the slight frame might have suggested in the first place. Her wrists and ankles are discolored in a particular way that suggests other reasons for that slightness, but as elven women go she's on the taller side and as Riftwatch goes, she certainly doesn't carry herself with any timidity. Not even the ordinary sort one might feel, approaching a stranger in a hot bath—
“Morning,” a Starkhaven-accent, a low, smoky voice, “ought to be more than enough room for the both of us. You want some of this?”
This—appears to be an entire jug of coffee, lifted from the dining hall's breakfast set out on her way down here. Tsenka doesn't actually live in the Gallows any more, but far be it from her not to take advantage of the amenities when she's about; her loft hasn't got anything like as nice as these baths, and she's had a vigorous morning.
(It isn't surprising that people might have come and gone. It should have occurred to him sooner.)
The discolorations at her wrists and ankles don't go unnoticed. Ellis' gaze skims over her, studying and assessing, before he nods.
"Aye," he answers, as his gaze lifts up and away as she settles into the bath. The discarding of the robe, the descent into the tub, she doesn't need eyes on her for the process of it. "D'you have a cup, or were you intending to drink straight from the jug?"
The jug is set down at the edge of the tub when she lowers herself into it, and she gazes at it for a moment at his question before laughing—
“I was carrying enough to begin with,” she says, rueful. “Thought I'd stash it in my brother's office to collect before I take the ferry back in the evening.”
A more salient question than how they plan to spit this coffee. He's levered up slightly, straightening from the boneless slouch that feels—
Uncouth isn't the right word. But it's close enough, edging around the need to reel himself back in, pull himself together in the presence of an unknown quality.
By contrast, Tsenka does not feel any particular need to reel in; he straightens and she's slouching, sinking low and comfortable in the water, her hair out of the way so she can dip low enough to almost touch her chin to the surface.
“Marcus Rowntree,” with a yawn, still sort of becoming a person. “Captain of the Guard, now, very swank of him. Minded to check on him with his blondes off Antiva way.”
Her solution to the coffee problem is simply to push it so it's easy for them both to reach. Might as well share.
A shake of her head that sets her thick hair bouncing—
“Abendroth,” she supplies. “Tsenka Abendroth. It's not a blood relation, him and I; we were brought up together.”
In the Circle. There's really no getting around that, but neither is Tsenka inclined to launch into every conversation with every new person she meets here with how would you like to hear about the worst parts of my life. There's frank and there's— whatever that would be.
They're mages. Draw your own conclusions.
“And he is. Capable.” That she's proud of him is understated, but obvious; the teasing, little sister way she refers to his promotion, the warm glow of affection when she agrees with Ellis's assessment. Her big brother is extremely badass and cool, thank you, she's been saying. “Are you new, or only back?”
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closed.
tony.
Ellis has lived this way before. He has traveled on next to nothing, and made his way across Thedas without benefit of steed or mabari or make-shift bird. He knows how to weather the long road back to Kirkwall, growing lean, dodging Imperial soldiers, winding his way southwards: skirting the edges of Nevarra, through the fields of Ghislain, cutting through the Vinmark Mountains, descending through the scattering of villages until Kirkwall proper looms up around him.
There is some difficulty hauling Gruagh aboard the ferry. It is very late and the ferryman is muttering mutinously under his breath, but between Ellis and Ruadh, there is sufficient motivation to indulge, and deliver them both to the Gallows.
After the stables, after coaxing his crystal from Thot one last time and sending her on her way, there are a number of places Ellis might go. The baths. His room, to see if it's still intact. To the kitchen.
Instead, he climbs the stairs to push open the door to Tony's office without bothering to knock in hopes of finding him there.
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It's late. There's not a lot of light. A big vibrant hearth does its best, and there's a lantern nearby and some lit candles, but otherwise, it's too dim to be doing this kind of work by. But likely Ellis can also recognise the eyewear, enchanted to allow the viewer to see everything as clear as day. The object he's working on is held up at eye level by a spindly frame, a glowing source of refined lyrium that splashes ill-light across the worktable. Using some kind of fine, long handled tool, Tony does not look over at the sound of the door opening as he positions a delicate ring of bright silvery metal around it, and when he releases it, it hovers in place, and begins to slowly rotate.
Tony straightens from his slight lean. The hearth has warmed the room enough that he can roll the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and out of the way, all ordinary day-clothes dismantled into their more comfortable form, feet in winter socks. He looks no different from a few months ago. Who could tell?
"Coffee's on the desk," he says, to whoever has opened his door, failing to look up as he pivots away to check the numbers on a thaumoscope. "Or whiskey, depends on you."
Because late-night intrusions are either coffee-conversations or whiskey-conversations.
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"No food to accompany it?" is not necessarily about Ellis, who certainly has not eaten as he should on the journey, but about Tony, who doesn't eat as he should without reminders, in Ellis' experience.
He is still rooted there, just inside the door. This feels fragile. As if it will all come apart at the slightest movement.
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As it happens, Tony is just holding the corner of a piece of paper, and this is dropped, first, and then second, he turns to the door. He palms off his sunglasses to stare at the travel-worn, haggard, very much alive version of his best friend just standing there, doofus-like. The sunglasses are tossed with a negligent clatter onto the table.
"What time do you call this?" is the best he can do, a joke like a holding pattern while his brain calibrates to new information, the unexpectedness of it. He'd clocked out of having feelings, so give him a second.
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Ellis, meanwhile, moves only to shift his grip on the doorknob with a shaky attempt at feigned thoughtfulness. He is gripping the handle very tightly, watching Tony. His expression softens, but he doesn't quite manage a smile. That doesn't come so easily after months without much reason for levity.
"I could come back in the morning if I've missed your office hours, Provost."
Truthfully, Ellis has very little idea of what time it is other than late. And even if there were some miniscule bit of propriety in him, it would have been absolutely overruled by the desperation to see Tony. There is no way to simply retreat to his room without laying eyes on him.
(Wysteria is asleep by now. Wysteria has a husband. Wysteria is—
Ellis isn't ready to see her.)
At the hearth, Ruadh yawns, comically and unnecessarily loud.
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"Do that and I'll probably think I hallucinated this whole thing," Tony says, a small cancelling slice gesture at his side, "and we'll have to start over. You planning on letting out absolutely all the heat, or—"
He is talking nonsense, just words to fill the space between them standing twenty feet apart and Tony walking over, running out of them as his hands come up to hook on Ellis' shoulders. Only sometimes does Tony actually consider the age difference between them, does he remember that Ellis is likely a young man who has seen some shit, but there's cause to consider it more often, lately,
so he opts to be the one to pull him into a hug. Not even a detachedly manful one, back slaps and shoulder claps, but warmth and gratitude and welcome. And great relief.
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It somehow hadn't come to mind that Tony would reach out to him. It shouldn't be a surprise, but Ellis wasn't prepared for it. And it takes a moment, for Ellis to remember what to do with all this closeness.
But he does crumple into it all at once, tension bleeding out of him within the cinched circle of Tony's arms. He breathes out hard against Tony's shoulder.
Ellis has not once said aloud that he misses Tony. That he misses Wysteria or that he misses the chaos of Riftwatch or the drafty halls of the Gallows. He couldn't. It would have made everything unbearable in a way Ellis still doesn't know how to weather.
But it's there, in the minor shudder that runs through him, and how tightly he wraps his arms around Tony in return.
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(He remembers the kid, for a moment, now that there's just an entirely new bank of sense-memory to import from. He only remembers blearily, in those few moments of cognition circling the drain. It would have been good to bear-hug him just once, before he had to go.)
"Did a big dog also come in here?" he asks, after a long moment of simply this, tipping his chin up enough so as not to go muffled into Ellis' shoulder.
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wysteria
It's biting cold. (It is strange to be without his armor.) Ellis turns the collar of his coat up against the chill, draws his scarf up a little higher. Ruadh huffs as they disembark, falls into step at Ellis' side as they wind through the empty streets towards Hightown.
(This too is strange to the point of surreal.)
The gate creaks on its hinges. Ruadh trots through first, while Ellis lingers, testing it once, twice, three times before easing it closed.
The chickens are still tucked away inside their coop, and there is no immediate evidence of the rumored goat, but there is signs that the garden itself hasn't been well-prepared for the change in seasons. He should have given Oona the coin for it, but he hadn't been intending for his absence to stretch as long as it had.
He stands for a long moment looking up at the darkened house. But rather than let himself in (it's too early. it's too soon.) Ellis turns his attention to what is most familiar, and closest at hand. While Ruadh inspects the perimeter of the garden, Ellis gathers hammer and nails, rakes and shovels, and begins tending the raised garden beds. Too late, maybe, but the work is easy and familiar and grounds him in the present.
Ruadh's the first to sense movement. The mabari's great squared head lifts from snuffling at the far fencing to swivel towards the house and give a soft, suspicious boof in answer to whatever movement is occurring. No proper bark, so Ellis only clucks his tongue in dismissive answer, attention set on levering the corners of the raised bed back together before reaching for his hammer. It's early yet. (He's not yet decided whether or not he is going in.) This can be finished and the chickens can be fed before Wysteria rises, before Ellis enters the house.
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The Avvar goat with a rope collar around its neck is hot on her heels, as is Wysteria in her shift and slippers and undone hair hissing a curse after the both of them: "There. For gods' sake, I don't see what all the fuss was about—"
The briard draws up short. Nearly tripping Wysteria in the process and definitively blocking her thoughtless exit from the house, the dog plants herself firmly just past the threshold and lets out a single threatening bark at the strangers in her garden.
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Ellis doesn't have to turn towards the door. He simply looks up and there she is. (It is in this moment that he considers: He has never seen Wysteria's hair loose in this fashion.) Having caught sight of her, Ellis has little attention for anything else for a long moment. The hammer in his hands, the bite of the cold, even the briard and the goat.
But Ruadh has no such hesitations. Abandoning entirely the scent he'd been snuffling after along the fencing, Ruadh wheels around to face the approaching...threat. Challenger. Irritant. There is no answering bark, but a raising of hackles, the suggestion of teeth, as Ruadh trots forward. Perhaps to inspect, perhaps not.
Which draws Ellis back to reality, enough that he drops the hammer to catch Ruadh before he can pass with a soothing murmur. His hand passes over old scars, sleek, short fur, before his gaze turns back to Wysteria.
What is there to say? If he thinks of anything, it's blotted out by the sight of her. That's the trouble, of wanting so much, of feeling so much. There's nothing to be done with it.
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That leaves just the dog and the girl in the doorway, the latter of which has clearly been stunned into rare silence. Perhaps it's the grey early light, or her state of undress, or the shock of her partially amputated arm with its vivid red scar, but for a moment she looks especially dumbfounded to have discovered Ellis and a mabari in her garden. And then, with much the same attitude as the goat before her, Wysteria is shoving past the briard.
"You horrible villain! You're not meant to be here!" is outrage or shrill relief or both all at once. Her face flushes twelve shades of red as, with a suspicious dog following tightly in tow at her heels, Wysteria storms across the narrow garden toward him.
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You're not meant to be hear is one of those things Wysteria means nothing by, but catches at him regardless. It wedges like a splinter. Ellis is distantly aware of it; more present in his mind is the creaking ache of his joints as he levers out of the crouch by the raised garden bed, straightening fully upright to meet Wysteria as she approaches.
She's going to be cold, he thinks. She's not properly bundled against the frigid morning.
But the sight of her is so, so welcome. He can do nothing but look at her, one hand drifting back to Ruadh's shoulder as a safeguard against any further hackle-raising.
He should say something, he knows. The expression on his face will resolve itself into words, sooner or later, but even the questions or cautions won't stick for the revelation of her, unchanged and flushed and blustering across the garden to scold him.
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(The note wasn't dreadful. The purpose of it was. Maybe in the next days, she'll reread it stripped of the context of Ellis isn't coming back and find something more satisfying in it.)
—And, as it always is, being correct is so very satisfying.
"You might have sent word. A raven. Anything! Déranger, down!"
His dog is in her way as well. So either the mabari will cede ground or it will find itself contesting with Wysteria's intentions to trample into Ellis's space and throw an arm about him.
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An explanation is for later (He was alone for miles and miles, and it had never felt safe to take any risk, to call Thot down and have her force up his crystal so he might indulge himself. He'd wanted to hear her voice, Tony's voice, so badly that it was impossible to trust that urge.) after he has somehow had his fill of her. She is bristling with anger and so warm in his arms and she looks herself again, healthier than he remembers her being when he left.
He's holding onto her so very tightly as Ruadh pads around to his opposite side in a paltry attempt to ignore Déranger, at whom he is still huffing and curling a lip at. Ellis' hands flatten against her back, over her shoulder blades, cinching her in tight against him while he fails to do anything other than hold onto her. He exhales a hard, shuddering breath against her neck. If he says something, it's muffled beyond hearing by the fabric of her housecoat.
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Instead, Wysteria finds herself tightening her arm more stubbornly about him. There is a dreadful knot wound in her chest which she has been steadfastly ignoring for some time, and now as it begins to loosen in the proof of his presence she finds herself fiercely angry. Or protective. Or relieved. Or pleased. Or some combination of all of them, none of which would be particularly happy to be dislodged from him by concerned dogs, or by the cold leeching up from the paving stones through her soft soled slippers and from his clothes, or by propriety. She has not, however, stopped speaking:
"How dare you not come indoors immediately! I can hardly believe you mean to—what? Fuss about in the garden until I noticed otherwise? When did you arrive back—Oh really, Mister Ellis. If you've been in Kirkwall for any time at all and have said nothing to me, I really will be very cross with you. Déranger, stop that!"
(This last to the fawn colored briard, who has taken to nosing insistently at Wysteria's side in an vague attempt to insinuate her moppish body between them, and so shepherd her from the vicinity of the sour tempered mabari—)
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literally makes you wait a million years for a dialogue-less tag, forgive
a GREAT dialogue-less tag
weLL
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bow on this y/y?
yyyy : ' )
tsenka.
Normally, Ellis doesn't make much of the baths. It's always been a quick affair, over and done without lingering.
But it's very early, and his entire body aches. And so after the slow, miserable shedding of layers of clothing stiff with dirt from the road, and some minor attention paid to new bruising and old scarring, Ellis eases into the water. He draws in a deep breath, and then exhales it, letting himself slouch into the warmth up to his neck.
It's good. (Enough so that he can give a little space to the depth of his exhaustion, and the tangle of conflict knotted in his chest.) He's closed his eyes, more or less satisfied with the idea that most everyone is asleep at this hour.
And then, of course, because this is how Ellis' luck tends to work: footsteps on damp stone.
His eyes open, straightening by degrees to assess the approaching individual.
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“Morning,” a Starkhaven-accent, a low, smoky voice, “ought to be more than enough room for the both of us. You want some of this?”
This—appears to be an entire jug of coffee, lifted from the dining hall's breakfast set out on her way down here. Tsenka doesn't actually live in the Gallows any more, but far be it from her not to take advantage of the amenities when she's about; her loft hasn't got anything like as nice as these baths, and she's had a vigorous morning.
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(It isn't surprising that people might have come and gone. It should have occurred to him sooner.)
The discolorations at her wrists and ankles don't go unnoticed. Ellis' gaze skims over her, studying and assessing, before he nods.
"Aye," he answers, as his gaze lifts up and away as she settles into the bath. The discarding of the robe, the descent into the tub, she doesn't need eyes on her for the process of it. "D'you have a cup, or were you intending to drink straight from the jug?"
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“I was carrying enough to begin with,” she says, rueful. “Thought I'd stash it in my brother's office to collect before I take the ferry back in the evening.”
So, no cups.
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A more salient question than how they plan to spit this coffee. He's levered up slightly, straightening from the boneless slouch that feels—
Uncouth isn't the right word. But it's close enough, edging around the need to reel himself back in, pull himself together in the presence of an unknown quality.
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“Marcus Rowntree,” with a yawn, still sort of becoming a person. “Captain of the Guard, now, very swank of him. Minded to check on him with his blondes off Antiva way.”
Her solution to the coffee problem is simply to push it so it's easy for them both to reach. Might as well share.
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A promotion. How things change.
"I'm glad he's still here. He's capable in a tight spot."
And what is Riftwatch but a mess of people wrangling series of difficult situations one after another?
Ellis carefully does not inquire after the blondes. That's not his business.
"Do you share his surname?"
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“Abendroth,” she supplies. “Tsenka Abendroth. It's not a blood relation, him and I; we were brought up together.”
In the Circle. There's really no getting around that, but neither is Tsenka inclined to launch into every conversation with every new person she meets here with how would you like to hear about the worst parts of my life. There's frank and there's— whatever that would be.
They're mages. Draw your own conclusions.
“And he is. Capable.” That she's proud of him is understated, but obvious; the teasing, little sister way she refers to his promotion, the warm glow of affection when she agrees with Ellis's assessment. Her big brother is extremely badass and cool, thank you, she's been saying. “Are you new, or only back?”
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