faderift | clopen.

Entry tags:

clopen.

WHO: Tony Stark and the Ironettes, and some of my other guys.
WHAT: Business as usual, probably.
WHEN: Just generally Justinian
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, etc.
NOTES: Some open prompts in the post for any and all, but also a gathering place for some specific starters.

Nightmares are just another excuse to join the insomnia brigade, a disparate club of people constellated around the Gallows, lit rooms, lit hearths. Nowadays (nowanights?), Tony often takes himself and his restless hands out of his private quarters, now that he has a full human woman to share personal space with and she might not appreciate the sounds of tinkering and miscellaneous farting around one wall over.

So his colleagues might find him in the peace room, drinking coffee at stupid o'clock and going over paperwork, or those who know him well might hear the sounds of clicking tools being worked and set down again in the Research work spaces, where it is much too dark to see by the single candle he has going, but that's what enchanted sunglasses are for.

During the day, he is:
- jogging, sometime past dawn, stairmastering down the tower and then running a circuit through the expansive courtyards, and then out towards the docks, before the day has a shot at getting unbearably hot and sticky;
- chained to his desk to make himself, you know, available, some paperwork stacked at his elbow while he desperately seeks some dopamine by carefully folding a paper airplane instead;
- clattering a plate of pizza down on a taken table in the dining hall, and while it's a little lopsided, it is at it promises to be, melted cheese and flat circles of meat, everything sliced into slices;
- at the training grounds where the archery range is set up, wearing some light-weight leather armor and a more elaborate gauntlet, with articulated loops around the wrist he is adjusting. "You know the story of William Tell?" he says, positioned not where the archers are, but standing amongst the dummies, which should probably be some kind of sign. "Me neither, but probably worked out okay." He readies a defensive stance. "Hit me."

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Yes, that is true, so Ellis doesn't contest it further. His gaze sweeps the workbench, perhaps assessing again the extent of what Tony was working with and on, before he looks back over to Tony himself.

The glow of light in his chest is nothing new, but it's so rarely on clear display. Ellis has never asked after it. But it seems inevitable that it was preceded by a wound. Something that should have killed but didn't.

Ellis takes a sip from his mug.

"Snoring."

Ha, ha.

"Oh yeah?" Tony says, the usual precursor to mounting a protest. "Guy like you can't sleep through a room of pre-morning breath and communal farting?"

He sips his tea. It is comfortingly bitter and room temperature. Wait til he drops the eight different high priority Research projects on his to-do list and introduces the world to an espresso machine. Then he'll NEVER need to sleep.

"Seriously though."

Seriously though nets raised eyebrows over the rim of his mug.

Tony doesn't need to be more specific than that. Ellis catches his meaning. That attention is like the pressure of a blade, not breaking skin but pressing down. It's inescapable.

Ellis sits with it for a long moment. As long as he can get away with, before Tony might say something else, such as—

"Second verse same as the first."

Because of course, Tony can be reliably counted on to fill the silence. "Only worse," he adds, with a tip of his tea cup. "I'm drifting. On every side of me, up, down, left, right, night sky. Infinite void. And the thing about the void is that it's meant to be empty, but it's not."

He says all this, at first, at a clip, pacey tempo, but it slows, gradually, loses some of that manic energy. Inevitable.

"It's full of so much unknown. I've seen tears through time and space that produce nightmares, exclusively nightmares. It's death out there, made into incomprehensible shapes with unstoppable momentum, but it's not my death. Worse, it's everyone else's. And there is nothing I can do or think of or make that can stop it."

But he did stop it, eventually. Maybe that's a bedtime story for another night.

"Got a handle on it now. Now it's just when I sleep."

Ellis knows a shakedown when he sees one.

But he also knows this to be a genuine recitation of something Tony fears. One of the very first things they had ever conversed about was of terrors falling out of the sky. This feels much in the same vein. Familiar, even though it's been years since.

Nothing is said in the wake of it. Not immediately. Ellis is quiet, letting the words settle. Perhaps turning them over in his head, thinking on what it would be like to have a weight like that to bear.

"So you don't sleep," is not really a question. This is far from the first time he's found Tony awake at an absurd hour of night.

Tony tips his head, yes and no. "Caught me on a bad night. I heard a lack of sleep and an uptick in caffeine does a lot for anxiety, though, so cheers," and he raises his mug of tea, to take a sip from it.

More seriously, "They make me want to do something. Anything. It's not—I mean, yeah, I think I'm allowed a little avoidance, but it's hard to lie down and go back in when you're thinking about all the shit you have to do. So I come here, and I work. Also I don't sleep alone, so."

Practicalities.

Something in there worth congratulating. Ellis clocks it, amid the more somber themes in Tony's recitation.

"Joselyn?" to clarify.

Ellis was gone a long time. He remembers the undergarments at the joust, a year ago now. Whatever that had been, it had felt new. But a year later, perhaps it's deepened past newness into something more.

That prompts a crooked smile, brief. "Yeah."

It doesn't require much more explanation than that. Boy meets girl, boy squares with the reality that this is his forever universe and tries not to let mourning for the other girl he met get in the way, and is mostly successful. That old chestnut. The somber mood, accordingly, doesn't fully lift, but,

he can afford to be a little smug. "She's good for me," he says. "Figure she'll stick around a little longer if I don't throw off her circadian rhythm twice or more a week."

"Aye, that's true."

It's not a small thing. Ellis is equally solemn in his rejoinder, but he senses the broader picture, the flicker of happiness in Tony's expression signaling towards something more than just a bed partner.

A good thing. Ellis is glad for him.

"I think I am meant to say congratulations."

And perhaps to tell Tony to go back to Joselyn instead of sitting up here in his workspace with him, but.

"Yeah," Tony agrees, "but we're talking about other stuff."

Good humour is still present. Creased in at the corners of his eyes more so than a smile. For a guy who's always after a line, that latter thing is a little rare, which is why Ellis can do things like deduce his mood when it manages to occur. Tony sips his tea, something of a reset, slouching down further in his seat.

Gestures. "If I ask you what you dreamed about, are you gonna try your best not to answer?"

The look Tony receives in return is some shade of amused, good humored in spite of the sense that Tony isn't going to be so easily swayed away from the topic at hand.

Ellis shakes his head slightly. Not an answer, just resolving something in himself before giving up the inevitable, "Aye."

Predictable.

"They're only dreams," carries the unspoken I don't like talking about them. This too is predictable.

"They keep us up at night. That's not nothing."

Tony considers the other man across the short stretch of dim room, assessing his own impulse. Is it just curiousity for his own sake, that he wants to know? Does he feel entitled to this information? Does he feel, in some ways, at a disadvantage, with Ellis having already known the contours of the subconscious bullshit that haunts Tony's dreams? The answer is: yes to all.

But also—

"You know you're the best friend I have here," almost at a sigh, an open handed gesture. "And like even if my actual best friends from home arrived someday, they'd have a run for their money."

This admission comes as pressure applied to a bruise. An ache. Quiet, dull and far off, but unavoidable.

"Don't let Wysteria hear you say that."

Ha, ha. (But no, really.)

But fully directing the sentiment would be cruel, and Tony's doesn't deserve that. Ellis looks back to him, expression creased with exhaustion, and something near to apprehension.

"I feel the same."

In the interest of transparency.

"I'm fully prepared to tell her the same thing," Tony says, a lazy slice gesture of a hand, and then relenting, "I mean, it's not not true. I remember when luck of the draw threw us altogether, and it was—I dunno. Like I was still stranded but at least I had some guys there on the island with me, for the first time."

Maybe he wouldn't have made it, if that had never happened, and he doesn't know what that looks like. Well, probably a total crack up. He's cracked up before.

However, saying all this makes something in his chest squeeze, which is disgusting, obviously, but he's a little better at saying the things you should probably say before it's too late. Before the void does its thing.

"I think you hold onto stuff so hard that the prospect of letting it go in some way seems like it'll break something, and it stresses me out to watch. So I vote you should try different. Take a load off."

Take a load off provokes a low snort of a reaction.

It sounds simple, the way Tony puts it. Try different, as if unspooling what rattles and claws at the edges of his mind can be easily done. Ellis feels the way his entire body braces at the prospect, cinches like a vise against whatever might be shaken free of him.

Who has he ever spoken these things aloud to? (Joppa is gone. Cathán is gone. And those had not been conversations so much as implicit understanding, discussions that skirted the naming of the thing.) He lifts his gaze to Tony, observes the his expression, the glow of blue in his chest. He looks tired, even in spite of the intention in his eyes.

"You have enough to contend with, without what troubles me at night."

They really need to invent therapy. Tony swears by the stuff.

He sips his tea while he waits for Ellis to mull that over, waits to see what comes out, and what he produces is not surprising. Not helping his case, Tony brings up a hand to rub at his eyes, massaging them through closed lids, before his hand flops back down.

"Now that's not fair," is a little jokey, as opposed to a serious complaint, even with that undercurrent of earnest concern. "Putting it on me and my blood pressure? Please. You don't know what I contend with," maybe a little sharper, which,

is hardly Ellis' fault, or anyone, and Tony kinds of waves it away.

"I wanna know. I like knowing things. It's the not knowing I have a hard time with."

The sweep of Ellis' gaze towards the door betrays some silent calculation: suppose he stood up and left?

But he maintains his seat. For the moment.

The room is warm, brightened by the fire but not enough to dispel the shadows cast over them both. The Gallows is deceptively quiet around them; Ellis is certain they are not the only two awake at this hour, chewing over dreams. Perhaps not arguing over dreams, but—

"I don't think you'd like knowing any of this," feels like a reasonable summation to Ellis.

He knows that Tony likes discovering things, loves knowledge in a way Ellis understands very well even if he can never quite participate in its acquisition the way Tony does. But he thinks knowing a terrible thing, one that looms large and is so deeply gouged into a person that it cannot be extracted, is not the type of knowledge that Tony might celebrate.

There is a subtle sound out of Tony, just a harder exhale through his nose, when he clocks Ellis checking his exits. Not quite disbelief, but bordering it.

He can tell they're nearing that territory, that spooky silent centre of things that the Wardens surround as if they're as much in the business of guarding their own secrets as they are protecting the world from darkspawn. Problem is, he's also familiar with it. Being alone with it, whatever 'it' happens to be. Its corrosive properties.

"Maybe not," he agrees. "But I want to anyway."

"You're not going to let it rest, are you?" is a question derived of the same impulse that had Ellis considering the door. Measuring Tony's investment in the topic, whether or not this is something possible to deflect in due time, or simply beg off from.

They are persistent, Tony and Wysteria. This is not quite the same as being stood in a frigid garden on the opposite end of Wysteria's agitation and wounded confusion, but it is akin to it. Tony is very deliberate in his interest. Steady and focused the way Ellis has seen him in his pursuit of other curiosities. Prying at a wound he understands lives in Ellis. He's going about it gently, but diligently.

It is difficult to bear up under all the same.

Tony's smile is pressed thinly, not quite a smile at all, in a way. He could say something flippant, playful, but what comes out is a compressed sounding;

"Can't."

Aware that Ellis is a person that could well interpret an ultimatum as an excuse to walk out, and maybe a handful of months ago, Tony wouldn't have risked it. It's not that he thinks he could live without a whole person in his life, this one in particular, but he's willing to gamble on his own importance.

Can't is about the answer Ellis had expected.

But still, it is met with a long stretch of quiet. Ellis' eyes sweep the room again. Not for a door. His hands fold, right over crooked left, thumb pressing at the knuckles.

Maybe thinking of a way to say no. Maybe measuring out what is tolerable to share.

It is not a matter of trusting Tony. It is about the way that speaking of these things feels akin to putting his hand into a fire, holding it there and bearing the lick of flame on his skin. (Whatever parts of the thing aren't bound up by millennia-old oaths. Things he won't say.)

He isn't looking at Tony, when he begins to speak. Ellis addresses his hands, the pressure of thumb against knuckle increasing as he goes. A tell, illustrating something his steady voice does not.

"It's always the same," is a carefully chosen turn of phrase. Perhaps intended to head off some other question (How often—) before it is formulated. "It is dark, in the deep roads. Torches only carry light so far, and if you have no torch..."

A shrug. It is far underground. Tony understands.

"I hear my mother in it. Her, and my father. Far off. Screaming."

Economical. Pared down to this part which can be offered over, without the whole of what comes snarled up along with it. (Other voices, hissing and indistinguishable and alien, worming into his mind in the dark.) Ellis lapses into quiet, letting the answer settle between them. Apparently content to elaborate no further.

The dark, deep roads. The screaming of loved ones.

Then silence fills in between them, and Tony fidgets his thumb against the edge of his cup, tries not to let his expression betray him. Because! It! Seems kind of rude to say that's all? to something you've surgically excavated out of your friend's soul, that you were warned against even knowing. Maybe you had to be there.

Except he can fathom it. The crushing underground and the weight of it. The things Ellis isn't describing, such as the blind panic, the knowledge of being alive while others are dying. The long march that Wardens are duty-bound to take, into the pitch black crevices of the world, full of rot and death.

And still. It feels like half the story.

"What do you do?" he asks, unable to help just a little more probing. Seeing what else ekes out.

The brief, slanting look sideways is—

Not quite nettled. Closer to tired, worn painfully thin.

It passes. Ellis' thumb sweeps back and forth over the disjointed break, badly healed, as he addresses his hands.

"Run after their voices, in the dark."

Bitter over the words, for reasons Ellis doesn't delve into.

"Everything echos in the Deep Roads. Anything loud, you can hear it from far off, but it bounces. There are hundreds of empty, dark spaces that'll amplify a sound. Sometimes I never find them, but I can hear them dying."

Those are good nights, arguably.

"And sometimes I find them. And it's worse."

Flatter. Bad nights. Stripped of detail still, pared down to the barest truth without illustration. Ellis' mind is unchanged as to what does and doesn't need to be shared, what Tony need carry on his behalf.

Tony agrees.

At least as far as the gory details are concerned. He never described, anyway, how heavy the bodies of his friends, how pale and how blind. It is not exactly his intention to frogmarch Ellis back down memory lane, even though that part's inevitable, but to have a sense of what dark tunnels exist beneath the surface, and where they go.

He knows there's more. But it's a start.

"Your folks," he asks, into the quiet. "In the real world."

"Aye."

A word falling like a stone. Weighted down with all that comes attached to it.

Ellis' jaw works around something. Some sentiment he is turning over in his head, stripping down to the barest parts.

It is nearly imperceptible, the tilt of his head. But it comes as they speak of this, this dream, the Deep Roads, what Ellis might find there. A slight tip towards seemingly nothing, because what is there to hear but Tony? The Gallows is quiet, in spite of all the unrest contained in the main hall or the adjacent offices.

(But there is something. Whispers, chillingly harmonious, rising and falling as Ellis speaks. Something he's heard before.)

"It is a bad way to die," Ellis says slowly, "Dragged into the Deep Roads by darkspawn."

A bad way contains such heavy, ugly things inside of it.

"I don't know if it's what became of them," is tacked on a tempering explanation. Ellis doesn't know. But he fears it.

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