"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."
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"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."