But by and by, the ferry comes in. Delivers horse and man and mabari to the Gallows, all spattered in mud. Man and mabari part ways there at the dock; Ellis to the stable with his great Avvar draft horse and Ruadh in all his rain-soaked glory into the Gallows itself.
Ruadh's inspection winds through the usual haunts. The office of the Provost and adjacent lodgings, where the scent has grown stale and cold. Through the research workrooms, snuffling insistently, and beyond.
And eventually, the search wanes. Eventually, Ruadh comes to press his damp bulk against Wysteria, wherever she may be, whining low and plaintive.
It can be assumed that sooner or later, Ellis will appear too.
The long defunct Project Felandaris office, heretofore the unofficial hiding spot for all things suspect and gruesome entertained by herself and Dickerson, has seen only very minor transformations in deference to the comings and going of the lyrium tests volunteers. Certain papers have been filed away. The jar containing Wysteria's pickled arm has been judiciously moved behind the jars of dissected fade-touched nug calves, and those even more prudently kept to the far side of the room and half hidden by more innocent elvish artifacts, a defunct component from a V.A.N.E. tower, miscellaneous diagrams, and certain pinned notes: Remember!, one declares. Lyrium is a dangerous substance and should only be handled by trained members of research! For your own safety, please carefully follow the directions of the individual supervising your trial!
Otherwise, the changes to the room are restrained to a plethora of fine glass ampuls carefully arranged in wooden racks glowing with the soft blue light of refined lyrium, a suspect case roughly the length of one's forearm presently shut tight, and a series of chairs arranged to the side of the room.
Wysteria isn't presently occupying one of those. Instead, she is sat at the office's desk which is presently piled high with notes. She is in the middle of sorting these when the mabari arrives and has clearly been at it for some hours, as even the small white dog lying at her feet is too bored to bother with springing up to greet his long absent friend. Tab simply wags his little curl of a tail and sniffs out a hello. Wysteria meanwhile lifts her pen from the page, and her elbow too so she might peer under it at the unhappy dog.
The Felandaris office is not high on Ellis' list. Without the benefit of keen senses, he will have to make his way there under his own steam.
In the meantime, Ruadh puts his great square head onto Wysteria's knee after a cursory lick to Tab's face. If it were possible for such a large creature to insinuate himself into her space more fully, Ruadh might have done. As it is, he is apparently content to stay there, reassured by having pinned Wysteria in her chair.
It will be some time before Ellis appears in the doorway, still carrying his pack, soaked and mud-flecked from the road. Unpresentable by any standard, though stopping to rectify that was more or less out of the question. Chilled through by the rain and pale with cold, the scars at his throat stand out stark against his skin.
And, predictably, Ellis has nothing to say in that exact moment as he looks through the door at her.
If she needed to steel herself, it would be plenty of time to have done so. But she doesn't need to. For she has been rather cross with him for some weeks now, or maybe some months even, and she has decided that fierce little ember makes for a fine distraction. And she has a fine plan. When he arrives, she will hold Mister Stark's letter over him until he agrees to her demands. Namely, that he is to apologize to her for not saying something before leaving the Gallows so soon after the Granitefell mess was put to order. Second, a promise that he should not meddle in her affairs unless requested. Third, an agreement that she will not be held responsible for his managerie of creatures, and if he intends to continue spending so much time abroad then it would behoove him to see them relocated to the Riftwatch stables. And what if Mister Stark were still here? Would he have simply refused to see her forever? What insensible tosh!
No, she is well prepared to receive Ellis now that he has decided he will stoop to see her. She hardly requires the forewarning of Ruadh's heavy head in her lap to prepare for his appearance in the doorway.
So Wysteria resumes writing, making furious little marks on this sheet and that page. Churning her fury studiously over while strictly ordering this sheaf of papers alongside that one. By the time the man in question appears dripping in the open doorway of the Felandaris office, she has stoked that impatience and annoyance into a very fine point indeed.
A scuff of boots at the threshold raises her attention. In the haunted glow of lyrium light beyond the influence of the little desk lamp, bedraggled from the rain and the road and the effort of getting this far, he looks very like a spirit.
Wysteria's chin gives a tell tale wobble before the tears start to well up.
Through this entire stretch of time, since Cosima's voice came over the crystal to break this news (since Granitefell, since sitting on that bench with Tony while the aftershocks of it all worked through him) it had been hard to feel anything at all. So he was drenched, so he was so achingly cold that the feeling had worked its way through to his bones. It suited well enough.
If there is grief, it is slow in coming. A distant pressure, like pressing down on a frozen limb. Even as it gathers force when Wysteria's head raises to look at him, Ellis is still aware of it as a far off thing, dulled and slow to sink into his body, but the pain it promises is no less excruciating.
The heavy thud of his pack hitting the floor startles Tab upright. Ellis has time enough to discard his heavy overcoat before he has rounded the desk, stepped past Ruadh's shifting bulk, to fold his body down into Wysteria to hold her.
Later, perhaps only a few minutes or so on, she will feel very foolish about all of this. Stop crying, you silly girl! This is a natural occurance, and ultimately sad only for the people left behind. Nothing is over. Where were all your tears for James Holden, or Mister Dickerson, or any of the others? Only there is a thing she has been thinking about for many hours, now. Days. Since Miss Niehaus delivered the terrible news. And when she thinks of it now, with Ellis here in the room, the shape of that thought fills the space until it overwhelms.
She cries a blubbering note as Ellis' arms find their way about her, her own squashed between them as Wysteria has raised her hand to clamp tight across her eyes in that way children who know they shouldn't cry do to pretend they're not.
And how much time Ellis wasted away from here, away from both of them.
Wysteria's sob twists in his chest, becomes a burning flame of pain behind his ribs. She'd be forgiven for thinking the whole of Ellis' response is simply the tightening of his arms around her as his body bows into hers. A proper embrace, for all Ellis' wet curls and cold hands.
The words, when they come, are dragged out of him. Dredged up like so much debris, wreckage scattered across a shoreline. Words pressed against her temple as his hands flatten across her shoulderblades.
"Were you with him when he went?"
Hedging past the undeniable agony of that wailed knowledge. That Tony Stark is gone and he is dead and there is nothing either of them can do about it.
"No." No, but she thinks he was meant to come help her here, and she had chalked down the missed appointment to the usual extraneous demands of the division office, and then had forgotten to harrangue him over it, and suddenly a week had passed and here she had been with her nose in her notes none the wiser. How horrible of her. At least in that terrible dream, she had known what she was running away from when she'd left poor Mister Stark languishing in Ellis's company.
"No, he was just gone," she cries a little, mouth working at angles to keep herself from sobbing, hand still clamped tight across her eyes despite that tightened embrace. "But I don't understand. He had friends and was happy. That's meant to have kept him here."
The word reverberates, sticks like a bramble. There is such finality to it that Ellis, not a man given to optimism, finds it hard to clutch on to even the sliver of a question: do Rifters come back?
Some have, he knows. But Richard Dickerson has been gone a very long time. And Holden had never reappeared. And now—
There is a tinny pressure building in Ellis' ears. He can feel his body because he is holding Wysteria so tightly. The hitch of his breath comes and goes, unsteady, as his hand slides up her back, settles at the nape of her neck. Finds no words to offer, no other useless question. If Wysteria doesn't understand, then Ellis certainly won't. He has been piecing together understanding from what Wysteria and Tony shared, all this time.
For better or worse, Wysteria is very good at filling silences. Even terrible ones like this one, where it might be better to say nothing at all instead of:
"I should have made him cut his anchor out. If that's really the only way to stop it, then we should see that everyone does it right away. Oh, if was horrible," she says, blubbering stupidly. There are hot tears against her palm. She can feel them, and feels stupider for them. "His rooms. They were all just perfectly ordinary. All his shirts and things just in their places. I felt like some kind of thief rifling around until I found the letters. I should have just let the servants do it. Or Miss Niehaus. I didn't look at you when you were dead, and I shouldn't have gone looking for him either."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
But by and by, the ferry comes in. Delivers horse and man and mabari to the Gallows, all spattered in mud. Man and mabari part ways there at the dock; Ellis to the stable with his great Avvar draft horse and Ruadh in all his rain-soaked glory into the Gallows itself.
Ruadh's inspection winds through the usual haunts. The office of the Provost and adjacent lodgings, where the scent has grown stale and cold. Through the research workrooms, snuffling insistently, and beyond.
And eventually, the search wanes. Eventually, Ruadh comes to press his damp bulk against Wysteria, wherever she may be, whining low and plaintive.
It can be assumed that sooner or later, Ellis will appear too.
cw: mention of animal testing
Otherwise, the changes to the room are restrained to a plethora of fine glass ampuls carefully arranged in wooden racks glowing with the soft blue light of refined lyrium, a suspect case roughly the length of one's forearm presently shut tight, and a series of chairs arranged to the side of the room.
Wysteria isn't presently occupying one of those. Instead, she is sat at the office's desk which is presently piled high with notes. She is in the middle of sorting these when the mabari arrives and has clearly been at it for some hours, as even the small white dog lying at her feet is too bored to bother with springing up to greet his long absent friend. Tab simply wags his little curl of a tail and sniffs out a hello. Wysteria meanwhile lifts her pen from the page, and her elbow too so she might peer under it at the unhappy dog.
"Oh. Hello Ruadh."
no subject
In the meantime, Ruadh puts his great square head onto Wysteria's knee after a cursory lick to Tab's face. If it were possible for such a large creature to insinuate himself into her space more fully, Ruadh might have done. As it is, he is apparently content to stay there, reassured by having pinned Wysteria in her chair.
It will be some time before Ellis appears in the doorway, still carrying his pack, soaked and mud-flecked from the road. Unpresentable by any standard, though stopping to rectify that was more or less out of the question. Chilled through by the rain and pale with cold, the scars at his throat stand out stark against his skin.
And, predictably, Ellis has nothing to say in that exact moment as he looks through the door at her.
no subject
No, she is well prepared to receive Ellis now that he has decided he will stoop to see her. She hardly requires the forewarning of Ruadh's heavy head in her lap to prepare for his appearance in the doorway.
So Wysteria resumes writing, making furious little marks on this sheet and that page. Churning her fury studiously over while strictly ordering this sheaf of papers alongside that one. By the time the man in question appears dripping in the open doorway of the Felandaris office, she has stoked that impatience and annoyance into a very fine point indeed.
A scuff of boots at the threshold raises her attention. In the haunted glow of lyrium light beyond the influence of the little desk lamp, bedraggled from the rain and the road and the effort of getting this far, he looks very like a spirit.
Wysteria's chin gives a tell tale wobble before the tears start to well up.
no subject
If there is grief, it is slow in coming. A distant pressure, like pressing down on a frozen limb. Even as it gathers force when Wysteria's head raises to look at him, Ellis is still aware of it as a far off thing, dulled and slow to sink into his body, but the pain it promises is no less excruciating.
The heavy thud of his pack hitting the floor startles Tab upright. Ellis has time enough to discard his heavy overcoat before he has rounded the desk, stepped past Ruadh's shifting bulk, to fold his body down into Wysteria to hold her.
no subject
She cries a blubbering note as Ellis' arms find their way about her, her own squashed between them as Wysteria has raised her hand to clamp tight across her eyes in that way children who know they shouldn't cry do to pretend they're not.
"But he's dead there," she warbles.
no subject
And now he is gone.
And how much time Ellis wasted away from here, away from both of them.
Wysteria's sob twists in his chest, becomes a burning flame of pain behind his ribs. She'd be forgiven for thinking the whole of Ellis' response is simply the tightening of his arms around her as his body bows into hers. A proper embrace, for all Ellis' wet curls and cold hands.
The words, when they come, are dragged out of him. Dredged up like so much debris, wreckage scattered across a shoreline. Words pressed against her temple as his hands flatten across her shoulderblades.
"Were you with him when he went?"
Hedging past the undeniable agony of that wailed knowledge. That Tony Stark is gone and he is dead and there is nothing either of them can do about it.
no subject
"No, he was just gone," she cries a little, mouth working at angles to keep herself from sobbing, hand still clamped tight across her eyes despite that tightened embrace. "But I don't understand. He had friends and was happy. That's meant to have kept him here."
Nevermind that it hadn't for Mister Adjei.
no subject
The word reverberates, sticks like a bramble. There is such finality to it that Ellis, not a man given to optimism, finds it hard to clutch on to even the sliver of a question: do Rifters come back?
Some have, he knows. But Richard Dickerson has been gone a very long time. And Holden had never reappeared. And now—
There is a tinny pressure building in Ellis' ears. He can feel his body because he is holding Wysteria so tightly. The hitch of his breath comes and goes, unsteady, as his hand slides up her back, settles at the nape of her neck. Finds no words to offer, no other useless question. If Wysteria doesn't understand, then Ellis certainly won't. He has been piecing together understanding from what Wysteria and Tony shared, all this time.
no subject
"I should have made him cut his anchor out. If that's really the only way to stop it, then we should see that everyone does it right away. Oh, if was horrible," she says, blubbering stupidly. There are hot tears against her palm. She can feel them, and feels stupider for them. "His rooms. They were all just perfectly ordinary. All his shirts and things just in their places. I felt like some kind of thief rifling around until I found the letters. I should have just let the servants do it. Or Miss Niehaus. I didn't look at you when you were dead, and I shouldn't have gone looking for him either."