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.
Technically, it's not at all unusual to see Ellis occupying the space in front of the fire in the dining hall. It's not his preference, but he had taken up space there often enough, taking advantage of a spot where the light is good and Noose comes to drape across his feet when it is perhaps too late to travel to Wysteria's house to spread his mending across her kitchen table.
Had no one been paying close attention, the sight of Ellis returned to his seat there might be so routine so as to be unremarkable.
But perhaps the five month absence and the massive red-hued mabari stretched luxuriously across the hearth warrant a second look. (The assortment of items to be mended is much diminished, and the habitual whistling is absent. The mabari bears an assortment of scars, outstrips Noose in size easily.) The patter of boots on stone prompts no particular reaction from either party, but should the footsteps veer closer—
The mabari's eyes crack open, then narrow at the approach of a stranger. Ellis' head lifts from his work, fingers stilling over the thread long enough for a minor nod of acknowledgement.
Joy, like all emotions in Jone's heart, lives close to rage. She's glad to see him. She's angry he's left. Her first action is to vent the latter, not the former. Maybe if she could smile, grin, give a whoop of girlish enthusiasm, she'd be a better person. But as it stands, all she can think to do is smack his shoulder and rattle his chair.
"You horse's arse. Least you could to is mention a return. Have to be bleeding mysterious, ennit?"
Instinctively, Ellis' hand closes over the whole of his mending at the jostling welcome Jone bestows upon him. The pin digs into his palm, but the spike of pain barely registers.
On the floor, Ruadh has rolled up onto his belly, still laid out but shifted to something approaching motion. Not fully upright, but the languid stretch of his body has transitioned to wary preparedness as he observes Ellis' reaction.
"You know I'm not one to make a fuss."
Is probably not much of an explanation. But the idea of announcing himself felt as impossible now as it had the first time he'd arrived, if not more so now.
"Oh, some fucking excuse, that is. I'm won over." She rattling his chair more, because it occurs to her that, knowing him, he might be hiding an injury. A secretive bastard through and through. "If you've a mind to lie, at least make it good."
There is very little room, but Ellis makes an effort to lever himself up out of his chair. His hands catch at her arms, a minor attempt to stymie Jone's rattling.
"I was caught in the belly of a dragon, and had to cut my way out."
"No," is the truth. "Sore, from too much time in the saddle. But it'll pass."
Too much time in the saddle, to many nights sleeping on hard ground without proper gear. He hadn't been able to hide away enough to make the journey easy. But he'd managed to get here, so what objection can there be?
"Are you alright?"
In which alright is such an open-ended thing. He's been gone so long. She seems unchanged to him, but what does that account for, really?
It's all the permission Jone needs to start pulling him into a headlock, adding her knuckles to his scalp with a firm rub if he'll let her. "I'm fine. I'm fine. You, lad, disappear for who knows what else in the bloody dark without a word, oh, I'm fine, I am."
It's not comfortable, but there is a very specific kind of familiarity in Jone's rough-handling. Stretched across the floor, Ruadh's contribution is a series of loud barks, more excitement than affront as Ellis twists in Jone's grasp.
She's permitted a few moments of grinding her knuckles against his scalp before he pivots reaching up to catch at her hands.
"Jone," is a groan of objection, slightly strained under the exertion.
She lets him go, laughter light in her throat. Happy to roll back into the floor, she settles in next to the dog. Ought to pay the piper, so to speak. A guard dog is only as good as it is useful. She pets the thing between its ears.
Resettling, Ellis braces his forearms on his knees to watch Jone and Ruadh. The tension in the mabari's frame eases, his eyes moving from Ellis back to Jone, skepticism fading under the application of pets.
He'd missed her.
"He likes you."
Or tolerates her. Will like her, sooner or later. Ellis has a strong sense of Jone's chances. She's still Ferelden at the end of it all. Who else has thrown themselves down to pay Ruadh this kind of attention?
"Yeah, he'd better. I'm in with his boss." She pats the dog's head, and doesn't look at it. Dogs are fine, she supposes, though she'll never understand the mania her countrymen have for the beasts.
"Reckon you'll not say, if I ask where you've been."
The plan, ever since Bastien's habitual tab-keeping informed him second- or third-hand that Ellis had been spotted alive in Kirkwall, has been where's my leaf? with the expectant look of wealthy child whose father has returned from the city.
The tone of that aye sends the plan out the window.
Instead, Bastien stops, not close enough to be considered to have joined Ellis by the fire. "Welcome back," he says. That's nearly all he says. His weight shifts back like he's about to keep walking. But then he looks at the bear of a dog, glaring at him from the hearth. He stays poised to move on, but first: "Who's this?"
Ruadh is out of arm's reach, but not so far that Ellis can't set a boot gently at his hind paw. Reassuring. Receiving a huff in response, as the mabari stretches, eyes remaining on Bastien.
"Ruadh," he answers, before setting aside the mending, needle lanced through tear to hold his place. Roo-ah, Ellis' voice warming over the syllables, rolling softly over the r.
It doesn't feel like he fits back into the space he'd left. Ruadh is outsized, almost a visual representation of the mismatch. Ellis can feel it, all the ways his time away has reshaped him. And how that will disappoint.
"Sit," he presses, tipping his head to the empty chair. "He'll greet you, in his own time."
His mouth twitches, at sit, the proximity and topic of the dog giving it a tint it wouldn't otherwise have. Under other circumstances he might make a joke of it. The silent suggestion that he's considering it will have to do now.
He says, "Hello, Ruadh." His mimicked pronunciation, filtered through his accent, makes it clear he would spell it Rueax or something if he had to write it down. He doesn't bow to the dog—that would be ridiculous—but he does tip his head politely before he sits, legs extended and ankles crossed, arms sprawled on the arms. All very casual, except for how after the chair creaks once in any given wooden joint, he moves in such a way it doesn't creak again.
He looks Ellis over from the corners of his eyes, unsubtly, in a search for more grey or new scars or perhaps two missing feet, to explain what took him so long.
"I hope there was nothing in that envelope that you regret," he says.
The greeting is met with silent scrutiny; Ruadh's concession to company being to roll up onto his belly rather than maintaining his snoozy position on his side.
For his part, Ellis tugs his last stitch taut, then slips the pin between a pinch of fabric. He isn't unaware of Bastien's observation. He'd taken some time in the wake of Tsenka's departure in the baths to look himself over, note that he's grown lean, that exhaustion has ground into the lines of his face. Maybe he's a little greyer (Wysteria has yet to make a proclamation one way or another.) but if he is carrying new scars, they are out of sight.
"No, there wasn't."
No hesitation over the answer.
"I'm sorry," is sincere too, Ellis looking across to Bastien with the half-mended tunic folded across one thigh. "But thank you, for delivering it."
A shrug, and, "I am up there all the time anyway," he says, as if it's the stairs that were the difficult part.
But it's less brittle a joke than the sort he made when Ellis was leaving, rather than returning. The accompanying smile is more genuine—evidenced by the fact that it's smaller, a little tired, not flawlessly cheerful.
"I don't suppose," with a hopeful note; he'd prefer to suppose, "you want to explain where you've been."
This is not an answer, but it feels more honest than any location he could have given. He had been so far from them. The crystal had not been as much a tether as Tony might have hoped it to be.
Thot could have flown away with it, and that would have been the end of everything. Gone and done with.
The boot draws back, Ellis perhaps content that Ruadh has acclimated to present company.
Bastien hums, leaning in the chair—silently, still no creaks, for the game he is playing with himself—to make is sidelong look that much longer and sider.
"Weisshaupt."
An educated guess as to what specific barren, leafless place a Grey Warden might top-secretly go, or a benefit of close (relatively) personal (again,) friendship with Yseult, or some mix of the two.
"But on your way back, you passed through a village in the Merdaine," is geographically implausible, but geography is not his strong suit, "where there were only women. Their last man had died three years ago, and they had not seen one since. They meant to let you pass through, of course—they were not monsters. But then, that face. Those shoulders. It was like a spell. They framed you for the theft of a sword so they could have a reason to lock you up, and every night a new woman came to bring you a different meal and ask you to marry her."
But it's good to hear Bastien unfurling some absurdity. The last time they'd spoken had been such a strained affair.
And it untarnished by the invocation of Weisshaupt. Ellis has less question as to how Bastien might have come by this information than he might have before Bastien mentioned his occupation.
"And still, I arrived without a wife," Ellis reminds.
“Of course you have. You are nothing if not dedicated, Monsieur Warden.”
Devoted, he might have said, but he’s playing the part of a man who didn’t neatly, expertly lift the seal from Ellis’ letters through a heady mix of curiosity and mourning and spite. Promises to a dead man were meaningless, and hadn’t he a right to know what misery he was now about to inflict on the living, and.
He intends to play this part forever.
He also intends to make Ellis ask for his ring back. Perhaps not to give it to him when he does. It depends.
His attention slides to Ruadh. Hopeful interest on his face, but he doesn’t click his tongue or reach out a hand. In his own time. That’s fair. Back to Ellis.
From the floor, Ruadh is watching Bastien speculatively. Unwavering. Sniffing the air every few moments as Bastien and Ellis speak.
The question is a surprise. It shouldn't be, but it is. Ellis has been weighing up this exact question. Was it worth it? All these months? Coming back without the answers he'd been seeking, and information that feels insubstantial set against it?
It's not nothing. Ellis knows he hasn't come empty-handed. But the feeling in his chest, this hollow unease—
"I don't think I found what I was looking for."
Working his way around the question, circling an uncertainty. But he predictably lapses into quiet while Ruadh yawns, stretches up to lick his chops as Ellis continues, "But I have a leaf. You'll have to tell me if it's interesting."
Sight unseen. He's confident, anyway. The leaf itself matters less than where it came from and who it reminds him of, same as the bits of string and buttons and wine corks and pebbles and sea shells that are the only physical evidence of the first thirty years of his life. Important, though. With all the time he's spent pretending, sometimes he feels like he's invented things that really did happen, too.
Now if it ever seems too absurd that he once knew a Warden who wandered off the Weisshaupt and left him with poetry to deliver and a ring that knew everyone's names, he'll have some proof, for as long as it takes a rarely-handled leaf to turn into dust.
But pleased as he is to not have been forgotten, especially while Ellis was enduring such a terrible ordeal as being imprisoned and proposed to nightly for weeks, he's not quite deterred.
"Are you going to go again?" he asks—to look for whatever it is—and there's a pause before he remembers that his usual habit of being quiet with quiet people and less so with the noisy ones has not been the best tactic with Ellis. Then he supplies more: "I suppose that is what Grey Wardens do. It is probably your oath. I will go away, maybe I will not come back, I will be eternally dissatisfied, I will answer no questions.”
Bastien is kind. Or Bastien is clever. Or both. He poses a question that needles and tugs at some deep, private uncertainty and couches it in some easy sort of humor. It's an attempt to make it easier on Ellis, maybe.
Ellis says nothing. A shadow of a smile comes in answer, because he is not unaware that Bastien has something funny, not necessarily about Wardens but about Ellis specifically. But the question itself—
Looking away from Bastien, he leans forward to set his elbows on his knees. Rubs a hand over his face, palm pressed hard over his mouth while he dredges about for an answer and comes up with nothing but uncertainty, and a messy tangle of feeling that won't resolve into words. Ellis is hardly certain he cares to give all of it up, regardless.
Ruadh sits up completely, pretense of nap abandoned in favor of more focused watchfulness in reaction to the shift in tone. The regal affect somewhere marred by the jaw-cracking yawn that follows, but that can hardly be avoided.
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ota.
Had no one been paying close attention, the sight of Ellis returned to his seat there might be so routine so as to be unremarkable.
But perhaps the five month absence and the massive red-hued mabari stretched luxuriously across the hearth warrant a second look. (The assortment of items to be mended is much diminished, and the habitual whistling is absent. The mabari bears an assortment of scars, outstrips Noose in size easily.) The patter of boots on stone prompts no particular reaction from either party, but should the footsteps veer closer—
The mabari's eyes crack open, then narrow at the approach of a stranger. Ellis' head lifts from his work, fingers stilling over the thread long enough for a minor nod of acknowledgement.
"Aye?" is polite, more question than welcome.
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"You horse's arse. Least you could to is mention a return. Have to be bleeding mysterious, ennit?"
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On the floor, Ruadh has rolled up onto his belly, still laid out but shifted to something approaching motion. Not fully upright, but the languid stretch of his body has transitioned to wary preparedness as he observes Ellis' reaction.
"You know I'm not one to make a fuss."
Is probably not much of an explanation. But the idea of announcing himself felt as impossible now as it had the first time he'd arrived, if not more so now.
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"I was caught in the belly of a dragon, and had to cut my way out."
Ha.
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She relents, arms going slack. "You hurt any?"
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Too much time in the saddle, to many nights sleeping on hard ground without proper gear. He hadn't been able to hide away enough to make the journey easy. But he'd managed to get here, so what objection can there be?
"Are you alright?"
In which alright is such an open-ended thing. He's been gone so long. She seems unchanged to him, but what does that account for, really?
sorry.
incredible.
She's permitted a few moments of grinding her knuckles against his scalp before he pivots reaching up to catch at her hands.
"Jone," is a groan of objection, slightly strained under the exertion.
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"Glad you're back in one piece, luv."
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He'd missed her.
"He likes you."
Or tolerates her. Will like her, sooner or later. Ellis has a strong sense of Jone's chances. She's still Ferelden at the end of it all. Who else has thrown themselves down to pay Ruadh this kind of attention?
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"Reckon you'll not say, if I ask where you've been."
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Boss. That's hardly the word, but Ellis lets it pass while he considers the question Jone is hedging around asking.
"I'll tell you it's Warden business."
True. In a manner of speaking.
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The tone of that aye sends the plan out the window.
Instead, Bastien stops, not close enough to be considered to have joined Ellis by the fire. "Welcome back," he says. That's nearly all he says. His weight shifts back like he's about to keep walking. But then he looks at the bear of a dog, glaring at him from the hearth. He stays poised to move on, but first: "Who's this?"
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"Ruadh," he answers, before setting aside the mending, needle lanced through tear to hold his place. Roo-ah, Ellis' voice warming over the syllables, rolling softly over the r.
It doesn't feel like he fits back into the space he'd left. Ruadh is outsized, almost a visual representation of the mismatch. Ellis can feel it, all the ways his time away has reshaped him. And how that will disappoint.
"Sit," he presses, tipping his head to the empty chair. "He'll greet you, in his own time."
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He says, "Hello, Ruadh." His mimicked pronunciation, filtered through his accent, makes it clear he would spell it Rueax or something if he had to write it down. He doesn't bow to the dog—that would be ridiculous—but he does tip his head politely before he sits, legs extended and ankles crossed, arms sprawled on the arms. All very casual, except for how after the chair creaks once in any given wooden joint, he moves in such a way it doesn't creak again.
He looks Ellis over from the corners of his eyes, unsubtly, in a search for more grey or new scars or perhaps two missing feet, to explain what took him so long.
"I hope there was nothing in that envelope that you regret," he says.
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For his part, Ellis tugs his last stitch taut, then slips the pin between a pinch of fabric. He isn't unaware of Bastien's observation. He'd taken some time in the wake of Tsenka's departure in the baths to look himself over, note that he's grown lean, that exhaustion has ground into the lines of his face. Maybe he's a little greyer (Wysteria has yet to make a proclamation one way or another.) but if he is carrying new scars, they are out of sight.
"No, there wasn't."
No hesitation over the answer.
"I'm sorry," is sincere too, Ellis looking across to Bastien with the half-mended tunic folded across one thigh. "But thank you, for delivering it."
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But it's less brittle a joke than the sort he made when Ellis was leaving, rather than returning. The accompanying smile is more genuine—evidenced by the fact that it's smaller, a little tired, not flawlessly cheerful.
"I don't suppose," with a hopeful note; he'd prefer to suppose, "you want to explain where you've been."
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This is not an answer, but it feels more honest than any location he could have given. He had been so far from them. The crystal had not been as much a tether as Tony might have hoped it to be.
Thot could have flown away with it, and that would have been the end of everything. Gone and done with.
The boot draws back, Ellis perhaps content that Ruadh has acclimated to present company.
"You don't want to make a guess or two?"
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"Weisshaupt."
An educated guess as to what specific barren, leafless place a Grey Warden might top-secretly go, or a benefit of close (relatively) personal (again,) friendship with Yseult, or some mix of the two.
"But on your way back, you passed through a village in the Merdaine," is geographically implausible, but geography is not his strong suit, "where there were only women. Their last man had died three years ago, and they had not seen one since. They meant to let you pass through, of course—they were not monsters. But then, that face. Those shoulders. It was like a spell. They framed you for the theft of a sword so they could have a reason to lock you up, and every night a new woman came to bring you a different meal and ask you to marry her."
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But it's good to hear Bastien unfurling some absurdity. The last time they'd spoken had been such a strained affair.
And it untarnished by the invocation of Weisshaupt. Ellis has less question as to how Bastien might have come by this information than he might have before Bastien mentioned his occupation.
"And still, I arrived without a wife," Ellis reminds.
No wife, just a massive dog.
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Devoted, he might have said, but he’s playing the part of a man who didn’t neatly, expertly lift the seal from Ellis’ letters through a heady mix of curiosity and mourning and spite. Promises to a dead man were meaningless, and hadn’t he a right to know what misery he was now about to inflict on the living, and.
He intends to play this part forever.
He also intends to make Ellis ask for his ring back. Perhaps not to give it to him when he does. It depends.
His attention slides to Ruadh. Hopeful interest on his face, but he doesn’t click his tongue or reach out a hand. In his own time. That’s fair. Back to Ellis.
“Was it worth it?”
The journey.
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The question is a surprise. It shouldn't be, but it is. Ellis has been weighing up this exact question. Was it worth it? All these months? Coming back without the answers he'd been seeking, and information that feels insubstantial set against it?
It's not nothing. Ellis knows he hasn't come empty-handed. But the feeling in his chest, this hollow unease—
"I don't think I found what I was looking for."
Working his way around the question, circling an uncertainty. But he predictably lapses into quiet while Ruadh yawns, stretches up to lick his chops as Ellis continues, "But I have a leaf. You'll have to tell me if it's interesting."
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Sight unseen. He's confident, anyway. The leaf itself matters less than where it came from and who it reminds him of, same as the bits of string and buttons and wine corks and pebbles and sea shells that are the only physical evidence of the first thirty years of his life. Important, though. With all the time he's spent pretending, sometimes he feels like he's invented things that really did happen, too.
Now if it ever seems too absurd that he once knew a Warden who wandered off the Weisshaupt and left him with poetry to deliver and a ring that knew everyone's names, he'll have some proof, for as long as it takes a rarely-handled leaf to turn into dust.
But pleased as he is to not have been forgotten, especially while Ellis was enduring such a terrible ordeal as being imprisoned and proposed to nightly for weeks, he's not quite deterred.
"Are you going to go again?" he asks—to look for whatever it is—and there's a pause before he remembers that his usual habit of being quiet with quiet people and less so with the noisy ones has not been the best tactic with Ellis. Then he supplies more: "I suppose that is what Grey Wardens do. It is probably your oath. I will go away, maybe I will not come back, I will be eternally dissatisfied, I will answer no questions.”
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Ellis says nothing. A shadow of a smile comes in answer, because he is not unaware that Bastien has something funny, not necessarily about Wardens but about Ellis specifically. But the question itself—
Looking away from Bastien, he leans forward to set his elbows on his knees. Rubs a hand over his face, palm pressed hard over his mouth while he dredges about for an answer and comes up with nothing but uncertainty, and a messy tangle of feeling that won't resolve into words. Ellis is hardly certain he cares to give all of it up, regardless.
Ruadh sits up completely, pretense of nap abandoned in favor of more focused watchfulness in reaction to the shift in tone. The regal affect somewhere marred by the jaw-cracking yawn that follows, but that can hardly be avoided.
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