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.
"To meet me?" Wysteria's freed hand hovers briefly over the blunt shape of the mabari's great square head. After a moment, she offers a tentative pat pat between his ears.
"I think you greatly over estimate my affinity for creatures of all kind, Mister Ellis. You and— Well. I'm sure you're quite the grizzled old gentleman, Ruadh," she says, addressing the mabari directly. "And I'm sorry for Déranger's behavior. She doesn't mean anything by it. She has only been educated very strictly. And I'm pleased that you've attached yourself to Mister Ellis. Maybe now that he has you to mind he'll stop bringing me whatever little beasts be comes across in Lowtown."
The small pat of her hand seems enough encouragement that Ruadh bequeaths a brief lap of tongue to her palm.
"I found a bell in my mailbox," Ellis tells her, watching them. Neither confirming nor denying the status of future little beasts. "I expect it's for the goat."
He's sat back on his heels, looking up at her. It's good, for Ruadh to know her. To know everyone who needs protecting, and commit their scents to memory.
"I'm amazed anyone could fit anything else in your mailbox," she says airily, wiping her tongue wet palm off on the hip of her housecoat. Gross. "Given the prodigious amount of mail in—Oh!"
If Ruadh in his grizzled state is at all prone to starting from sudden exclamations, then this might send him twitching back. But surely he's witnessed things more dreadful than a young woman in her sleepwear abruptly rounding back toward his master in alarm.
"I've something for you! It wouldn't fit in your box, so I told myself I would just give it to you in person when you came back and now it's been sitting and waiting for ages."
Ruadh's ears flick, weight shifting but not transitioning into a retreat. Instead, he circles around behind her to hover at her right hip. All the better to observe Ellis, maybe.
"You needn't have done that," Ellis tells her. "You've been generous already."
In the early hours of the morning, he'd gathered the contents of his mailbox. Wysteria has left him so much.
"Well it's done, and for so long that I can't undo it so you'll just have to manage I'm afraid. Mind the kettle. I think there are clean cups still, and if not then the ones on the table have only been dirty a little while and only have had tea in them besides. I'll go and fetch it."
She has been making moves to crab walk out from between him and the mabari and back toward the door leading into the house—seemingly the only time she's spent stationary having been that brief moment where she'd been all but held in place by the anchor of his hands—, but pauses abruptly here so she might reach down and catch him by the collar. At some point when she'd thrown her arm about him, it was rumpled. Wysteria smooths it down now.
"Cheer up, Mister Ellis. There's no reason to look so tired. You're home now."
The reassurance catches at him much the same way Tony's casual reference had months ago.
Home.
His throat tightens.
Is this home? When had that become something true? He must have had some inkling of it, but it's been rendered in such sharp, undeniable relief by his return. Hearing it echoed to him from her feels much the same as pressing down on a half-healed bruise.
Ellis' hand lifts to catch Wysteria's, bring her knuckles briefly to his mouth. His eyes close, just for a moment, before he loosens his grip to tell her, "We'll manage the cups. Go on."
As if Ruadh is going to take some active part in the preparation of morning tea, instead of just trailing Wysteria as far as will be permitted.
This evidently satisfies her. After a brief pat to Ellis's bristly cheek, Wysteria makes her way promptly from the kitchen. It takes some shooing on her part to ward off a dog from either side of the door—no, Ruadh, stay here; absolutely not Déranger, and so on—, but eventually she affects her escape and the sound of her socked feet thump thump thumping fades off and away into the deeper interior of the house.
She's away for longer than it ought to take to simply fetch an item. The first presage of an explanation is the sound of her eventually returning footsteps—the harder, staccato tap of her sturdily shot boots. Then, bursting back into the kitchen—
"No! Back into the corridor! Oh for gods' sake."
The caramel colored briard butts insistently through the door ahead of her. Wysteria, hot on the dog's heels, has swapped her housecoat for a blue patterned dress. Her hair is loose still, but she's tugged a felt cap over it. Most significantly, her left sleeve is filled rather than pinned back—the brushed metal of the prosthetic tucked at a right angle against her side in parallel to her other arm under which she has clutched a sizeable package wrapped in brown paper.
Déranger makes a soberly sniffing beeline for Ellis, Ruadh be damned.
The prosthetic is new. Tony's work, Ellis knows. There's a faint pang of regret for it. He'd missed so much, and he'd missed what was sure to have been a number of lively testing sessions. It isn't a surprise that all had gone on apace without him, but it is unexpectedly bruising to consider exactly what he had been absent for.
Déranger is a fine distraction, in spite of Ruadh's outright consternation. All Ruadh's massive bulk comes sniffing along behind the smaller dog, watchful as Déranger butts up against Ellis' kneecap. Ellis clucks his tongue softly, though he permits the inspection, allows the dogs to continue their business as he steps around them to put mugs onto the table.
"Let it seep," is his instruction. "I've just poured it."
Though he pauses there, taking in the picture of her. Loose hair. Gleam of that prosthetic. The blue of her dress. Ellis draws in a deep breath.
What is there to say? There's no point in repeating himself, though he feels it deeply every time he looks at her. (He's missed her so.)
"Yes, all right. You really must forgive her, Mister Ellis. She's only doing the job she was engaged for," she insists, setting the parcel on top of a series of stacked papers. Without thinking, evidently having become some accustomed to adjusting it
—(or out of an absent sort of self consciousness, having caught a look at herself in a mirror as she'd swept upstairs and immediately feeling somewhat glum and embarrassed by the whole disheveled and disassembled look of herself. If he'd only said something before materializing in the garden)—
Wysteria touches the angle of her artificial elbow and corrects it from where it's clicked slightly out of place. The clamp end of the limb (there is no hand shape to speak of there at the end of her neatly buttoned sleeve) hovers benignly at side.
"Here." She pats the back of one of the little chairs, drawing it out invitingly. "Sit here and open your present. Oh, but wait until I've sat across from you to do it. I want to see your face."
(At what point does Wysteria's enthusiasm become ominous?)
That suits Ellis very well. He has not gotten his fill of her. She looks very well, color back in her face and upright again; she’s been fighting off illness and recovering from surgery when he’d left, and he hadn’t doubted her recovery, it’s only a very different thing to see the effect for himself.
Ruadh abandons him to the determined little briard to round the table and set himself down alongside Wysteria’s chosen chair with a great huff of breath. Perhaps all the better to observe the briard’s antics from beneath the table, who can say.
Ellis lowers himself slowly. His body is all aches and lingering stiffness not cured by the warm bath or truncated attempt at sleep in a proper bed. But he sets himself into the chair as he has done so many times before, and runs his better hand over the ties of the parcel without making any attempt to tug them loose.
“I had something for you. I hadn’t thought to bring it.”
He’d forgotten. Satinalia was an age ago. He hoped it was still where he had left it, tucked into a corner of his trunk.
"Oh that's all right. There'll be every opportunity for you to make it up to me."
Much like the moppish brown dog who has taken up a post just outside of easy reach from which she may studiously observe Ellis, Wysteria hustles around to the chair across from him. If by chance she happens to tuck a foot up between herself and the seat in order to elevate herself by a few eager inches, then that's between the fall of her skirts and the only likely witnesses—the two dogs at odds under the table.
"You must at least pretend to be impressed when you open it, by the way. I require it."
In the course of Wysteria settling, Ruadh shifts closer with a huffy exhale, though he certainly has not been asked to provide makeshift bulwark for Wysteria. Is this a means of agitating his competition across the room or a quest for Wysteria’s grudgingly given pets? Regardless, he is wound close enough to nose at one ankle, should he care to, while Ellis politely ignores the scrutiny from Wysteria’s watch dog.
“I’m sure I won’t have to pretend.”
His hands are very gentle, methodically attending to the ties securing the parcel’s shape. Nothing is torn as Ellis works to shuck the paper from the gift he’s been given.
Perhaps he takes more time than necessary for her benefit. Ellis isn’t given to the dramatic, but in certain moments he can summon some sense of weight within proceedings.
It's an instinct Wysteria appreciates whether she's fully conscious of the effect or not. It gives her the opportunity to set her chin in the sway of her upturned palms, hovering over her side of the table with the sort of anticipation that isn't fully divorced from the sort of steadfast focus either dog in the room is currently engaged in. Her attention remains riveted on his face, already fully pleased with herself, as Ellis unwraps the parcel.
The box inside the paper is just a plain pine box. But inside, cosseted in a bed of shredded curly cue'd straw, is a copper colored metal dog. In it's rough shape, it's very like a certain folded paper dog she'd once left for him tucked in the pages of a book albeit three times the size and comfortably dimensional enough to sit on its haunches once liberated from the straw.
"The winding mechanism is in its collar," she chirps enthusiastically from across the table, and indeed the long tab hanging from the dog's collar may be twisted round. And once released?
The copper figure's fat tail wags back and forth at jerky half speed, some interior mechanism click click clicking in its casement.
In the small, topmost drawer of the little table beside Ellis' narrow bed in the Gallows, that little paper dog has been carefully tucked inside a book of floriography, preserved.
Ellis thinks of that small token briefly, as he cracks the box open and catches sight of its contents.
Wysteria's attention is unwavering, so keen as to be inescapable. Ellis is always wholly aware of her, knows her position in any room they both occupy and any field they move through together, and he is aware of her now, watching him brightly as he lifts her gift from the box and very gently brushes away from clinging bits of hay. Turns the tab at her prompting, fingers stroking down the cool metal as he sets the little machine down so it might be observed properly.
His throat tightens, pressure cinching like a vise for this gesture and for her, the revelation of her presence after so long without. There is a moment of soft clicking, Ellis' palms settling loosely onto the tabletop to bracket the performing canine. Ellis draws one unsteady breath, then another, then lifts his eyes to her.
"Did you make this?" is what he manages after a moment, after the wagging has ceased. Under the table, Ruadh's nose resumes snuffling surreptitiously at Wysteria's hem.
"Yes— Well, no. I did the drawings for it and assembled it. Someone cut a great deal of the pieces for it. I did a little of the filing though, and a little of the measuring and cutting for the inside parts. Those are fine enough that it hardly took any strength at all to manage. Oh—!"
This last exclamation is in reply to the wet edge of Ruadh's wet nose. She turns discouragingly at him, a brief distraction, before continuing resolutely on:
"But yes, I suppose I made a great deal of it. Only you can't give me too much credit. I took apart one of those pretty birds you gave me and looked at how it worked and I still haven't quite gotten it out back together properly. It makes this little grinding noise that I can't quite— I couldn't sorted out how to make this one wag it's tail quietly either. There's some friction somewhere, which probably means it will break. So when it does, you'll have to bring it back to me so I can put it back to rights."
This she has all rambled through almost without so much as a breath save for that briefest of interludes to scold the great mabari lurking about her hems. But Wysteria pauses now. Her chin is still in her hands and she is still looking directly at him as if he were a thing she could see directly into.
Ruadh is undeterred. And perhaps too large to be comically stretched around Wysteria's chair in such a manner. But Wysteria was never going to be impressed by any beast Ellis brought into this house, so he might as well be allowed to go about his business while Ellis' brow knits and he swallows hard before saying thickly, "Yes."
The wagging and accompanying noise have ceased. Ellis' palms come up off the table to handle the thing, turn it in his fingers as if it were made of fine china rather than copper. It's a handsome color. Wysteria couldn't have anticipated Ruadh, red-toned, coat as rich as earthen clay and a few shades brighter than this polished copper, but there is similarity there. A sign of something, maybe.
He has been silent too long. He clears his throat, hard against the catching pressure there, and tells her again, firmly and steadily: "Yes, I like it very much."
His gaze has lifted to hers again, her gift caught between the tips of his fingers. Wysteria has such a particular way about her; the attention she directs is so very pointed. Months, years ago, he would have looked away. But it is impossible today, when it feels as if he cannot get his fill of her after so long without.
What a relief it is to see him there, even as road worn and tired as he is—so ground down by travel and his time away that he seems almost briefly transparent, as if the shape of the thing that he keeps clearing his throat around were something she might hold gently in her hand. Whatever anxieties she'd been nursing had intensified sharply in the wake of Holden's quiet disappearance, and the sudden relief of them is like the cracking open of a great old sluice gate. The first rush of water may have cleared the way, but the current is still running and there is yet some sense of equilibrium she has yet to regain while sitting there before him.
She has missed him so very acutely.
Wysteria, her fingers warm on her own cheek, shifts her chin absently in her upturned palm without breaking her study of him. If it were still easy and thoughtless to do, she might reach a hand out across the table to him then. Instead, the hook end prosthetic remains exactly as it is tucked against her side.
Good, she should say. I'm glad that you do.
"Don't leave again," she says instead. "Not like that, I mean. Please don't."
literally makes you wait a million years for a dialogue-less tag, forgive
Wysteria knocks the breath out of him. It is hard to speak in the wake of her request, to pare down the choking pressure of reaction to offer her a steady, reasonable answer.
There had been whole days, maybe even weeks, where Ellis had thought of what it would be like to let go of her. He could have let the Anderfels, Weisshaupt, the embattled squabble of Wardens, have him back. In time, he would be as he was before he came south. (Someday, he won't have the opportunity to choose that path. It waits for him.)
It is not very difficult to disappear. Ellis has done it before. Maybe there would be relief and numbness in due time, once he'd cut away the part of himself that feels so much for Wysteria out, once the bleeding stopped. He'd seen that path very clearly, understood what it would look like if he chose it.
But here and now, looking at her, it is hard to think that he wouldn't bleed to death of it if he were to try. The roots of what he feels are set so deep that there would be no staunching the wound if he attempted to cut them out.
Please don't, Wysteria says, and Ellis draws a deep, ragged breath in, shakes his head. His gaze drops, but inevitably, quickly, returns to her. Lips part, but nothing comes, though the answer breaks across his face. It is a pained thing, raw in it's inevitability: no, he couldn't do that again.
She isn't blind to it—the weight of some thing slung about him like a millstone. Maybe it's all the time spent on the road, or whatever he'd found at Weisshaupt, or just simple exhaustion, or how much he has missed her and Tony and the Gallows (unbelievable as this very last thing must be; the Gallows, she has heard, is a difficult place to feel any affection for). There are a great many instances in which that look on his face and Ellis' lack of some spoken thing would be a perfectly satisfactory response. Yes, yes; she understand the sentiment even if he can't put the thing into the right shapes. And she will be easy on him, and let him go along so long as they understand that they both understand one another.
But there are some things which simply must be said. One cannot make an oath without speaking the words, and that is what she is binding him to.
"That's not an answer," is patient and not without humor, but is most certainly insistent.
(—is the thing she'd told Mister Stark too, when he'd tried to avoid the subject of forming a rescue party.)
The answering wrench of a laugh sounds like a wound. It comes as a brief, low burst of sound that raises Ruadh's head from where he had still been flattening himself along the floor, nosing towards Wysteria's ankles. Assessing, with a short keen of a whine in answer, but not huffing up onto his feet. Not yet.
Wysteria is so very clever, and she knows him well by now. Ellis abides by his oaths, keeps his promises. That is what she is after: the kind of assurance that Ellis will always, always honor.
There are some things that simply must be said. Ellis can feel the catch of one such thing at the back of his throat, held carefully in check for such a long time now. And he knows that it will color every single word he says to her here, unmistakable but silent. Easy to look past.
"I can't leave you," he tells her thickly. This is a different kind of oath, drenched in some long-held, unacknowledged thing. "Not so long as I'm drawing breath."
The metal of the little machine in his hands has warmed from handling. Ellis' thumb runs down along the flank of the little dog in a small, unconscious movement. His eyes never leave Wysteria's face, gaze very steadily watching her in return.
That laugh that's dragged free of him is jagged enough that it probably ought to induce some sympathy in her rather than the warm flare of affection that it does. But she's always enjoyed being right and getting her way, and she knows before he says anything at all that she's successfully cornered him. Or that he's allowed her to do so. It doesn't really matter which, does it?
And the promise he gives her—it would be a good one even if it weren't in answer to her asking for it.
Across the table from him, Wysteria's expression where she has her chin in her palm falters just a little. Not failing, just straining under some abrupt inexplicable prickle of feeling that's lodged in her throat. She has done so very well at not crying, but he is so dreadfully serious when he says it and it's a matter of either being struck by the sentiment or laughing at him and no measure of high spirits is quite powerful enough to swallow up the effect of all those weeks of worry. So the smiling line of Wysteria's mouth wobbles. She sniffs once and hurries to turn her hand and brush away the threat of extremely silly tears.
"Good," she says. "That's good. Because I'm afraid I become entirely intolerable company when you're not here. Everyone is thoroughly sick of me saying Mister Ellis this and Mister Ellis that. I'm quite convinced that even Lady Asgard is tired of hearing about you from me."
When she does laugh, it's short and no doubt in place of sniffling and entirely at herself.
A tabletop's worth of separation feels intolerable.
Someday, he will have to leave. There is nothing else for it. He is a Warden, and that's what Wardens do. They fight monsters. They die. That is the only end to the story. As far as Ellis knows, that is the final chapter. It waits for him. That has always been a comfort.
Except now, in this moment, there is no finer thing that Wysteria's laugh over that brief wobble of her mouth, that moment when her brow pinched and Ellis saw some familiar thing there followed by another familiar reaction, the way Wysteria holds the former reaction in check. His study of her is so very intent.
How could he ever leave her, so long as there is enough life left in his body to keep him here?
"Then for Lady Asgard's sake," is a very little joke, faltering slightly as Ellis sets down the little mabari. It's for no one's sake but Wysteria's, and certainly not for a woman Ellis has only ever met once in the midst of a haphazard skating game.
There is a beat of quiet there. Ellis draws breath. Opens his mouth.
Says nothing.
Instead, he covers over the crooked fingers of his left hand, makes an effort to sit back slightly in his chair. Inhales deeper, steadying himself.
(This useless thing living in his chest, dug in so deep that there is no reaching in to snuff it out, even if he could bring himself to attempt it.)
"Well obviously," she laughs again, willing her eyes to stop their watering with a wrinkle of her nose. In a last ditch defense, Wysteria fetched her heretofore untouched cup and swallows down a great deal of hot tea in one gulp. "Myself and Mister Stark are simply too good of company compared to the sorts of rocks and sticks and whatever else is in the Anderfels. No wonder you had to acquire yourself the world's largest dog to make up for it."
The cup is set resolutely aside. Wysteria's sleeve makes a last swift pass at the corner of of an eye, compulsive, and then all at once she shifts where she is sitting as if to rise up and out of the chair. Déranger, whose attention has been studiously pinned on the Warden in the room, pivots her bead eyed mop face toward the movement.
"This is silly. It's too cold and dark in here by half and far too gloomy. If we stay here much longer, you and I will both become far too serious and grim when this is nothing but a reason for good spirits." She bangs her fist decisively on the table, rattling dishware. "Come along, Mister Ellis. We should go find ourselves a proper breakfast. We can get those crossed buns and a great slab of bacon and take it over to Gallows and surprise Mister Stark with it before, and you can tell us all about how miserable you've been before he gets too deep into his papers."
A low grumbling comes from somewhere beneath the table, whether in response to Déranger or to the implication of impending movement is anyone's guess. (Perhaps an objection to being named simply a dog.) Across the table, Ellis manages an unsteady laugh, punched out and shaky as he rises with a scrape of the chair.
"Aye, I'd like that."
Not so much the conversation, but being in the room with the two of them. In due time they'll hit upon something to debate over, and Ellis can lapse into quiet, listening as they banter back and forth. It will be a very good way to spend a morning.
Ellis has not let himself fully consider how much he would have missed such an occasion before this exact moment. It is not so far removed from the prickle of feeling returning to frozen limbs after coming in from the cold.
Under Déranger's watchful eye, Ellis rounds the table, extends a hand out to her, inviting, as he reminds, "You'll need your cloak. It's cold."
Even if he cannot say the rest, cannot tell her a true thing, the sentiment comes couched in such a small offering of care. That is enough for Ellis, in the moment.
Without the obstacle of the table between them, it's a matter of course that Wysteria accepts the offer of his hand. Only at the last moment does she recall to be mindful of her feet so she doesn't accidentally trod all over some bit of the mabari lurking under her chair, leaning hard on the benefit of Ellis' hand to keep her balance as she quick steps to avoid Ruadh.
"Ah, yes. The cold," she says in some knowing tone, all forced lightness for she refuses to shed so much as a single silly tear. Standing there between Ellis and the chair and amidst the grumbling of two dogs displeased with this rearrangement, Wysteria fixes him with a serious look which she can maintain only for as long as it takes her to say,
"That must account for why you've let your all the hair on your head grow so long. You're positively shaggy, Mister Ellis."
Before she flashes him a wobbly smile, fiercely squeezes his hand, then separates to fetch the bright red cloak from its peg.
"Come along, Déranger," she calls to the briard with a snap of her fingers once the cloak has been donned, the coals in the fireplace shoved all the way to the back wall, and the little copper mechanized dog has returned to its box and gentle bed of wood shavings. "You may as well make good your acquaintance with both these gentlemen. I suspect you will be obligated to tolerate their company for quite some time to come."
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"I think you greatly over estimate my affinity for creatures of all kind, Mister Ellis. You and— Well. I'm sure you're quite the grizzled old gentleman, Ruadh," she says, addressing the mabari directly. "And I'm sorry for Déranger's behavior. She doesn't mean anything by it. She has only been educated very strictly. And I'm pleased that you've attached yourself to Mister Ellis. Maybe now that he has you to mind he'll stop bringing me whatever little beasts be comes across in Lowtown."
She fires Ellis a sidelong look.
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The small pat of her hand seems enough encouragement that Ruadh bequeaths a brief lap of tongue to her palm.
"I found a bell in my mailbox," Ellis tells her, watching them. Neither confirming nor denying the status of future little beasts. "I expect it's for the goat."
He's sat back on his heels, looking up at her. It's good, for Ruadh to know her. To know everyone who needs protecting, and commit their scents to memory.
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If Ruadh in his grizzled state is at all prone to starting from sudden exclamations, then this might send him twitching back. But surely he's witnessed things more dreadful than a young woman in her sleepwear abruptly rounding back toward his master in alarm.
"I've something for you! It wouldn't fit in your box, so I told myself I would just give it to you in person when you came back and now it's been sitting and waiting for ages."
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"You needn't have done that," Ellis tells her. "You've been generous already."
In the early hours of the morning, he'd gathered the contents of his mailbox. Wysteria has left him so much.
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She has been making moves to crab walk out from between him and the mabari and back toward the door leading into the house—seemingly the only time she's spent stationary having been that brief moment where she'd been all but held in place by the anchor of his hands—, but pauses abruptly here so she might reach down and catch him by the collar. At some point when she'd thrown her arm about him, it was rumpled. Wysteria smooths it down now.
"Cheer up, Mister Ellis. There's no reason to look so tired. You're home now."
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Home.
His throat tightens.
Is this home? When had that become something true? He must have had some inkling of it, but it's been rendered in such sharp, undeniable relief by his return. Hearing it echoed to him from her feels much the same as pressing down on a half-healed bruise.
Ellis' hand lifts to catch Wysteria's, bring her knuckles briefly to his mouth. His eyes close, just for a moment, before he loosens his grip to tell her, "We'll manage the cups. Go on."
As if Ruadh is going to take some active part in the preparation of morning tea, instead of just trailing Wysteria as far as will be permitted.
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She's away for longer than it ought to take to simply fetch an item. The first presage of an explanation is the sound of her eventually returning footsteps—the harder, staccato tap of her sturdily shot boots. Then, bursting back into the kitchen—
"No! Back into the corridor! Oh for gods' sake."
The caramel colored briard butts insistently through the door ahead of her. Wysteria, hot on the dog's heels, has swapped her housecoat for a blue patterned dress. Her hair is loose still, but she's tugged a felt cap over it. Most significantly, her left sleeve is filled rather than pinned back—the brushed metal of the prosthetic tucked at a right angle against her side in parallel to her other arm under which she has clutched a sizeable package wrapped in brown paper.
Déranger makes a soberly sniffing beeline for Ellis, Ruadh be damned.
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Déranger is a fine distraction, in spite of Ruadh's outright consternation. All Ruadh's massive bulk comes sniffing along behind the smaller dog, watchful as Déranger butts up against Ellis' kneecap. Ellis clucks his tongue softly, though he permits the inspection, allows the dogs to continue their business as he steps around them to put mugs onto the table.
"Let it seep," is his instruction. "I've just poured it."
Though he pauses there, taking in the picture of her. Loose hair. Gleam of that prosthetic. The blue of her dress. Ellis draws in a deep breath.
What is there to say? There's no point in repeating himself, though he feels it deeply every time he looks at her. (He's missed her so.)
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—(or out of an absent sort of self consciousness, having caught a look at herself in a mirror as she'd swept upstairs and immediately feeling somewhat glum and embarrassed by the whole disheveled and disassembled look of herself. If he'd only said something before materializing in the garden)—
Wysteria touches the angle of her artificial elbow and corrects it from where it's clicked slightly out of place. The clamp end of the limb (there is no hand shape to speak of there at the end of her neatly buttoned sleeve) hovers benignly at side.
"Here." She pats the back of one of the little chairs, drawing it out invitingly. "Sit here and open your present. Oh, but wait until I've sat across from you to do it. I want to see your face."
(At what point does Wysteria's enthusiasm become ominous?)
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Ruadh abandons him to the determined little briard to round the table and set himself down alongside Wysteria’s chosen chair with a great huff of breath. Perhaps all the better to observe the briard’s antics from beneath the table, who can say.
Ellis lowers himself slowly. His body is all aches and lingering stiffness not cured by the warm bath or truncated attempt at sleep in a proper bed. But he sets himself into the chair as he has done so many times before, and runs his better hand over the ties of the parcel without making any attempt to tug them loose.
“I had something for you. I hadn’t thought to bring it.”
He’d forgotten. Satinalia was an age ago. He hoped it was still where he had left it, tucked into a corner of his trunk.
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Much like the moppish brown dog who has taken up a post just outside of easy reach from which she may studiously observe Ellis, Wysteria hustles around to the chair across from him. If by chance she happens to tuck a foot up between herself and the seat in order to elevate herself by a few eager inches, then that's between the fall of her skirts and the only likely witnesses—the two dogs at odds under the table.
"You must at least pretend to be impressed when you open it, by the way. I require it."
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“I’m sure I won’t have to pretend.”
His hands are very gentle, methodically attending to the ties securing the parcel’s shape. Nothing is torn as Ellis works to shuck the paper from the gift he’s been given.
Perhaps he takes more time than necessary for her benefit. Ellis isn’t given to the dramatic, but in certain moments he can summon some sense of weight within proceedings.
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The box inside the paper is just a plain pine box. But inside, cosseted in a bed of shredded curly cue'd straw, is a copper colored metal dog. In it's rough shape, it's very like a certain folded paper dog she'd once left for him tucked in the pages of a book albeit three times the size and comfortably dimensional enough to sit on its haunches once liberated from the straw.
"The winding mechanism is in its collar," she chirps enthusiastically from across the table, and indeed the long tab hanging from the dog's collar may be twisted round. And once released?
The copper figure's fat tail wags back and forth at jerky half speed, some interior mechanism click click clicking in its casement.
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Ellis thinks of that small token briefly, as he cracks the box open and catches sight of its contents.
Wysteria's attention is unwavering, so keen as to be inescapable. Ellis is always wholly aware of her, knows her position in any room they both occupy and any field they move through together, and he is aware of her now, watching him brightly as he lifts her gift from the box and very gently brushes away from clinging bits of hay. Turns the tab at her prompting, fingers stroking down the cool metal as he sets the little machine down so it might be observed properly.
His throat tightens, pressure cinching like a vise for this gesture and for her, the revelation of her presence after so long without. There is a moment of soft clicking, Ellis' palms settling loosely onto the tabletop to bracket the performing canine. Ellis draws one unsteady breath, then another, then lifts his eyes to her.
"Did you make this?" is what he manages after a moment, after the wagging has ceased. Under the table, Ruadh's nose resumes snuffling surreptitiously at Wysteria's hem.
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This last exclamation is in reply to the wet edge of Ruadh's wet nose. She turns discouragingly at him, a brief distraction, before continuing resolutely on:
"But yes, I suppose I made a great deal of it. Only you can't give me too much credit. I took apart one of those pretty birds you gave me and looked at how it worked and I still haven't quite gotten it out back together properly. It makes this little grinding noise that I can't quite— I couldn't sorted out how to make this one wag it's tail quietly either. There's some friction somewhere, which probably means it will break. So when it does, you'll have to bring it back to me so I can put it back to rights."
This she has all rambled through almost without so much as a breath save for that briefest of interludes to scold the great mabari lurking about her hems. But Wysteria pauses now. Her chin is still in her hands and she is still looking directly at him as if he were a thing she could see directly into.
"Do you like it?"
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The wagging and accompanying noise have ceased. Ellis' palms come up off the table to handle the thing, turn it in his fingers as if it were made of fine china rather than copper. It's a handsome color. Wysteria couldn't have anticipated Ruadh, red-toned, coat as rich as earthen clay and a few shades brighter than this polished copper, but there is similarity there. A sign of something, maybe.
He has been silent too long. He clears his throat, hard against the catching pressure there, and tells her again, firmly and steadily: "Yes, I like it very much."
His gaze has lifted to hers again, her gift caught between the tips of his fingers. Wysteria has such a particular way about her; the attention she directs is so very pointed. Months, years ago, he would have looked away. But it is impossible today, when it feels as if he cannot get his fill of her after so long without.
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She has missed him so very acutely.
Wysteria, her fingers warm on her own cheek, shifts her chin absently in her upturned palm without breaking her study of him. If it were still easy and thoughtless to do, she might reach a hand out across the table to him then. Instead, the hook end prosthetic remains exactly as it is tucked against her side.
Good, she should say. I'm glad that you do.
"Don't leave again," she says instead. "Not like that, I mean. Please don't."
literally makes you wait a million years for a dialogue-less tag, forgive
There had been whole days, maybe even weeks, where Ellis had thought of what it would be like to let go of her. He could have let the Anderfels, Weisshaupt, the embattled squabble of Wardens, have him back. In time, he would be as he was before he came south. (Someday, he won't have the opportunity to choose that path. It waits for him.)
It is not very difficult to disappear. Ellis has done it before. Maybe there would be relief and numbness in due time, once he'd cut away the part of himself that feels so much for Wysteria out, once the bleeding stopped. He'd seen that path very clearly, understood what it would look like if he chose it.
But here and now, looking at her, it is hard to think that he wouldn't bleed to death of it if he were to try. The roots of what he feels are set so deep that there would be no staunching the wound if he attempted to cut them out.
Please don't, Wysteria says, and Ellis draws a deep, ragged breath in, shakes his head. His gaze drops, but inevitably, quickly, returns to her. Lips part, but nothing comes, though the answer breaks across his face. It is a pained thing, raw in it's inevitability: no, he couldn't do that again.
a GREAT dialogue-less tag
But there are some things which simply must be said. One cannot make an oath without speaking the words, and that is what she is binding him to.
"That's not an answer," is patient and not without humor, but is most certainly insistent.
(—is the thing she'd told Mister Stark too, when he'd tried to avoid the subject of forming a rescue party.)
weLL
Wysteria is so very clever, and she knows him well by now. Ellis abides by his oaths, keeps his promises. That is what she is after: the kind of assurance that Ellis will always, always honor.
There are some things that simply must be said. Ellis can feel the catch of one such thing at the back of his throat, held carefully in check for such a long time now. And he knows that it will color every single word he says to her here, unmistakable but silent. Easy to look past.
"I can't leave you," he tells her thickly. This is a different kind of oath, drenched in some long-held, unacknowledged thing. "Not so long as I'm drawing breath."
The metal of the little machine in his hands has warmed from handling. Ellis' thumb runs down along the flank of the little dog in a small, unconscious movement. His eyes never leave Wysteria's face, gaze very steadily watching her in return.
"Not again."
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And the promise he gives her—it would be a good one even if it weren't in answer to her asking for it.
Across the table from him, Wysteria's expression where she has her chin in her palm falters just a little. Not failing, just straining under some abrupt inexplicable prickle of feeling that's lodged in her throat. She has done so very well at not crying, but he is so dreadfully serious when he says it and it's a matter of either being struck by the sentiment or laughing at him and no measure of high spirits is quite powerful enough to swallow up the effect of all those weeks of worry. So the smiling line of Wysteria's mouth wobbles. She sniffs once and hurries to turn her hand and brush away the threat of extremely silly tears.
"Good," she says. "That's good. Because I'm afraid I become entirely intolerable company when you're not here. Everyone is thoroughly sick of me saying Mister Ellis this and Mister Ellis that. I'm quite convinced that even Lady Asgard is tired of hearing about you from me."
When she does laugh, it's short and no doubt in place of sniffling and entirely at herself.
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Someday, he will have to leave. There is nothing else for it. He is a Warden, and that's what Wardens do. They fight monsters. They die. That is the only end to the story. As far as Ellis knows, that is the final chapter. It waits for him. That has always been a comfort.
Except now, in this moment, there is no finer thing that Wysteria's laugh over that brief wobble of her mouth, that moment when her brow pinched and Ellis saw some familiar thing there followed by another familiar reaction, the way Wysteria holds the former reaction in check. His study of her is so very intent.
How could he ever leave her, so long as there is enough life left in his body to keep him here?
"Then for Lady Asgard's sake," is a very little joke, faltering slightly as Ellis sets down the little mabari. It's for no one's sake but Wysteria's, and certainly not for a woman Ellis has only ever met once in the midst of a haphazard skating game.
There is a beat of quiet there. Ellis draws breath. Opens his mouth.
Says nothing.
Instead, he covers over the crooked fingers of his left hand, makes an effort to sit back slightly in his chair. Inhales deeper, steadying himself.
(This useless thing living in his chest, dug in so deep that there is no reaching in to snuff it out, even if he could bring himself to attempt it.)
Instead: "It was intolerable, being so far away."
Half a sentence. Close enough to the truth.
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The cup is set resolutely aside. Wysteria's sleeve makes a last swift pass at the corner of of an eye, compulsive, and then all at once she shifts where she is sitting as if to rise up and out of the chair. Déranger, whose attention has been studiously pinned on the Warden in the room, pivots her bead eyed mop face toward the movement.
"This is silly. It's too cold and dark in here by half and far too gloomy. If we stay here much longer, you and I will both become far too serious and grim when this is nothing but a reason for good spirits." She bangs her fist decisively on the table, rattling dishware. "Come along, Mister Ellis. We should go find ourselves a proper breakfast. We can get those crossed buns and a great slab of bacon and take it over to Gallows and surprise Mister Stark with it before, and you can tell us all about how miserable you've been before he gets too deep into his papers."
bow on this y/y?
"Aye, I'd like that."
Not so much the conversation, but being in the room with the two of them. In due time they'll hit upon something to debate over, and Ellis can lapse into quiet, listening as they banter back and forth. It will be a very good way to spend a morning.
Ellis has not let himself fully consider how much he would have missed such an occasion before this exact moment. It is not so far removed from the prickle of feeling returning to frozen limbs after coming in from the cold.
Under Déranger's watchful eye, Ellis rounds the table, extends a hand out to her, inviting, as he reminds, "You'll need your cloak. It's cold."
Even if he cannot say the rest, cannot tell her a true thing, the sentiment comes couched in such a small offering of care. That is enough for Ellis, in the moment.
yyyy : ' )
"Ah, yes. The cold," she says in some knowing tone, all forced lightness for she refuses to shed so much as a single silly tear. Standing there between Ellis and the chair and amidst the grumbling of two dogs displeased with this rearrangement, Wysteria fixes him with a serious look which she can maintain only for as long as it takes her to say,
"That must account for why you've let your all the hair on your head grow so long. You're positively shaggy, Mister Ellis."
Before she flashes him a wobbly smile, fiercely squeezes his hand, then separates to fetch the bright red cloak from its peg.
"Come along, Déranger," she calls to the briard with a snap of her fingers once the cloak has been donned, the coals in the fireplace shoved all the way to the back wall, and the little copper mechanized dog has returned to its box and gentle bed of wood shavings. "You may as well make good your acquaintance with both these gentlemen. I suspect you will be obligated to tolerate their company for quite some time to come."