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

[notathreat]

"That's one of the reasons," Ellie acknowledges, studying him right back.

Desperation. Survival. Pain. There are a lot of reasons why somebody would justify hurting another person. Some of those reasons even make sense.

"What about your world? You told me a little about the magic and the technology, but what was your world like?"

[grindset]

Ellie's answer opens into a question, and he seems suddenly restless, lets slip a hint of impatience in this momentary tilt and sway, the shifting of his weight to the other hip and back again, like he's uncomfortable with the question. A momentary pinch in his expression—barely a flicker of it.

"I lived in a city." His tone is unchanged, however, soft and even as before. "Two cities, together, not unlike this one," and this flick of his head says, Kirkwall. "One half stretched up to the sky, the other deep into the ground. A river ran between them on the surface, and a single bridge. It was... tense. But between the city's resources and the undercity's resourcefulness, the culture of ingenuity shared between them was unmatched."

(Except, perhaps, by the pain in speaking of it in past tense.)

[notathreat]

For a second Ellie thinks that she pushed him too far by asking, but then his tone doesn't change, and he readily tells her.

Shit. That was discomfort, yeah. But not for the subject. She's kept him standing for a long time.

For the moment, though... a world, distilled down to the hurts of two cities, locked together as one. Ellie grows very quiet as her mind automatically fills in the blanks with things she knows. Not entirely accurate, of course, but enough to follow.

Boston. Seattle. Kirkwall.

Was, Viktor says. Past tense, in a way she's not sure is because it's his past or because the city was a city and no longer is. Maybe it's the same in some ways. Their worlds are far beyond their reach now. For better or for worse.

Ellie thinks on that, her grey-green eyes traveling sightlessly over the desk near her hand.

"One more question," she says. "And then I'll let you sleep, 'cause I interrupted..."

Ellie trails off, trying to think of how to phrase it.

"Which part of the city were you from?"

[grindset]

This flicker of hesitation is so brief, it likely doesn't even register. They don't know each other well enough to mark such subtleties.

"The undercity."

He isn't ashamed of it, doesn't qualify—though Ellie would no doubt find that story interesting—doesn't lean into it as an assertion, doesn't even expect her to take it poorly, but a part of him is nonetheless waiting to see where that information lands. He wouldn't have been asked at home; anyone would simply have looked at him, known, and made their judgments. (Even him. Even though he tried.)

Strange, to both appreciate a thing and be disappointed by it in the same thought.

[notathreat]

Ellie is a person who moves like a knife, all cuts and sharp angles. She has a young face that makes her look younger than she is despite the scars, wary eyes and maimed hands. She stays precisely far enough away from people when she talks to them that they can't touch her with an outstretched hand, like she's always gauging the distance of someone's reach, even when there's no threat to be had.

And something in her relaxes when he says that. Like a piece has clicked into place, like she's letting go of a tiny bit of her guard.

She nods to herself, like it makes sense.

"I'll bring the telescope by later tonight." And leave it there, along with blankets.

[grindset]

It's a mutual unwinding—barely a conscious thing. It makes sense, and it makes sense Ellie would accept it.

No hurry, he would like to tell her, and it can wait until tomorrow, but those sentiments had fled from his vocabulary long before he came here and took on a rifter's existential uncertainty. Far from a new and terrifying concern, it's almost a relief—if the Fade took him back suddenly, at least then the failure wouldn't be his.

"I'll be here," is what he settles on, and can only hope it's true.