CLOSED | She said, "Where'd you wanna go? How much you wanna risk?"

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie & Jude, Various
WHAT: Various closed prompts in one convenient place!
WHEN: (Spanning) Fantasy September
WHERE: Gallows, Kirkwall, Arlathan Forest
NOTES: Gonna have some fallout/followup threads from this log re: Abby's canon update! Mind the warnings. Graphic injuries. Spicy/sexual content. Hookah use. More TBD.

Comments

For Bastien

[notathreat]

Thankfully, her face isn't more beat up than it normally looks. A couple of bruises and scuffs here and there, and her arm is really fucking tender, but Ellie's good enough for work.

For the most part, she does an excellent job of hiding it, or at least playing it off. She usually rocks up after her frequent missions with a few dents, dings and bruises to show for them, so thankfully it's not hard to hide.

But there are a few people who pay more attention than most, and Ellie doesn't always have her guard up.

It's why she forgets, once, while reaching up to grab a book on one of the higher shelves above her head. Forgets that she shouldn't be lifting her left arm higher than her shoulder.

It's small. Just a pause and a flinch, the way her back goes tight and her breathing hitches for half a second in pain. She lifts the book, tucks it into her right arm instead and stays facing the shelf for a moment too long.

Turns, and nearly runs into Bastien, nearly dropping the book.

"-shit. Sorry."

[cozen]

"My fault," Bastien says, which is true. His shoes are soft-soled, his footsteps habitually quiet when he isn't putting on a show of being noisy. And he's the one who's come up behind her—first planning to trap her in a friendly chat, probably about music, before that flinch and brief freeze made him furrow his brow instead.

They're still furrowed. He looks at her arm, openly searching for the source of the problem.

"Are you alright?"

His attention shifts from her arm to her face with a pleasant sort of warning communicated in the tilt of his head and slight narrowing of his eyes. The phrasing is only polite. She better not try to say she is.

[notathreat]

A few points of attention connect; Bastien noticing, Ellie noticing that he's noticing, and she very momentarily looks frozen in place, caught out.

"Fantastic," she says automatically, then reaches up to lightly touch the spot that he noticed, acknowledging it.

"Just fucked up my shoulder. Waiting on the son of a bitch to heal."

[cozen]

Fantastic earns a further narrowing of his eyes, but she relents quickly enough, and he shifts easily from stern to sympathetic with a tongue-click.

"All these mages," he says, "and there are still limits to healing. But I suppose if there were not, no one wealthy would have ever died of anything for the last thousand years."

A breezy, conversational kind of sympathy. They're a military organization. People fuck up their shoulders. Even if he suspected drama he wouldn't accuse her of it.

But he's still asking, "What did you do?"

[notathreat]

Ellie notices; Bastien's never been anything but kind to her, but he's a sharp man, and she values his opinion of her. She thinks briefly of playing it off, but then he asks directly.

"I..."

Fuck. Ellie's expression pinches, and she hesitates.

"I got into with Abby," she says, plainly. "But it's not something either of us want to involve Riftwatch in."