[ It has not really occurred to Ellis that Bastien might decline to return it, though he does some very minor calculations as to those odds in the moment. ]
[ Sort of. He would sleep worse at night thinking there were a hundred more floating around Thedas. But a shame for either the Scouting division or for Ellis. He hasn't decided which yet. ]
Have you ever used it? It is a little small for your hands. For mine, too.
[ The sort of sound that might precede something flirty or challenging, except distant and subdued. He's not enjoying this. It's just an obligatory I'm not scared of you gesture. ]
Someone else might have appealed to my compassion, you know. Told me what is so much more important than the good it could do us. [ That's not an invitation. He knows Ellis won't, especially right now. He doesn't leave a pause to fill. ] I am in my office, if you want to come by.
Gesture noted. Ellis understands what it means, takes it in stride.
And there is a pause in the wake of that. Not for Bastien to fill, but for Ellis to weigh up the wisdom of taking him up on this opened door. Consider the distant beat of temper, the simmering, sullen anger at his own past judgements.
But, eventually—
Ellis, alone, comes knocking on Bastien's office door.
“Entrez,” sung through the closed door, is bright and friendly. For the sake of passers by and those working in the adjacent division rooms, and for the slight chance it isn’t Ellis.
Inside, Bastien is on his feet beside his desk, comparing the quirks of handwriting on a page of symbolic code to a stack of Trade-language letters, one at a time. Some he discards quicker than others. During the transition from one handwriting comparison to the next, Bastien looks up at Ellis, and he smiles with one side of his mouth and none of the false cheer from entrez.
The ring is on the corner of his desk nearest to him, with its chain curled around it in a spiral.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I keep bringing pastries to see if I can bribe anyone to help me with this—“ All of this, the office cluttered with signs of a spy’s unfinished tasks. “—and then eating them all myself.”
It’s kind, but it feels like stalling. A diversion from their earlier conversation, which has not been ended, only minorly delayed.
The following look is expectant. Bastien asked him here for some reason. If it’s to simply hand over the ring, Ellis will be happy to take it and excuse himself. Otherwise, they may as well continue.
Bastien sighs a little—at the thought of all of the food he's doomed to eat, of course—and pauses his work to turn fully toward Ellis, both hands still occupied with documents.
"Do you know what it does?"
The ring's position, stone facing away from Bastien, is as careful and deliberate as the evenly-spaced spiral of the chain. He slipped it midway down his pinky before Ellis came, to expunge any names already collected. He's plenty aware that that might not be enough to keep his own secret, if he gives it back.
If he'd decided for sure not to give it to Ellis before he came back, he could have just claimed to have dropped it in the sea, perhaps thrown it there intentionally as a private funeral when it seemed Ellis wouldn't return, very sorry about that.
More or less. Wysteria had explained. A small thing, a little bit of magic.
Ellis should have pried up stones in the courtyard to safeguard it.
But nothing else follows after the answer. Just steady expectation, anything else behind it flattened into nothingness. Bastien has a point. Ellis will give him due time to make it and nothing else, for the moment.
Bastien's head tilts, his mostly-impassively pleasant expression tinging with disappointment. Ignorance would have been better.
"Then you knew how we could use it," he says. Knew and never mentioned, never offered. Bastien doesn't know of any Riftwatchers killed by liars they couldn't see coming, but as a liar people couldn't see coming, he knows that's luck. It might run out any mission now.
He turns back to his sorting.
"I suppose taking whatever you decide you need to win your war is only for Emperors and Grey Wardens, non?" His head and elbow dip toward the ring in a gesture that say go on then. "But Yseult might ask you to borrow it sometime. Don't be surprised."
(No. Ellis is not a spy, his recent six-month jaunt notwithstanding. It had never occurred to him that there might be a use beyond what he had said once to Wysteria: a ballroom, keeping the names of high society in order.)
But Bastien hadn't posed it as a question, and Ellis' reaction is limited solely to a minor furrow of his brows, there and gone without any accompanying clarification. The conclusion he's drawn is left as is. Just like the accompanying barb is taken in stride, registering without shifting the impassive expression on his face.
"It isn't something that can be given away," is very steady, unwavering as Ellis sweeps ring and chain into his palm.
“Sure,” Bastien says, with mild and uninterested agreeableness, the same way a hungry fellow might want to breeze past commentary on the taste of bread he can’t have. Ellis isn’t going to tell him why it matters. He is—or he was, before correcting Ellis’ impression of him today—good for holding and delivering things. Alright.
(Maybe he is digging up stones to patch the holes in his friend-repelling wall before Ellis goes off again. Maybe.)
Really, it’s a relief to have it done. The ring’s in Ellis’s hand. The rope from his internal tug-o-war lies slack. If the enchantment could help them or couldn’t, if Yseult is going to be cross, if that stone winds up pointing in a direction he’d rather it not, it’s out of his control now. Dealing with things is much easier than deciding them.
His attention goes back to his work, drawing one paper close to his nose to evaluate the penstroke of an O. “Bonne journée,” comes at a distracted delay, with a strained smile, but that’s not as bad a sign as a big fake one would have been.
Ellis parses this for what it is too: a dismissal.
There is some other order of events where Bastien might have said something different, and Ellis might have given something up in the wake of it. Where he might have tread closer to the shape of a true thing, one Bastien has already skirted towards before.
But everything is harder now. (Being here is difficult, however Ellis makes it look otherwise.) And the flow of Bastien's response is a closed door. Ellis doesn't know how to pry at it. He doesn't know if he wants to.
It's been a long time since's it's been in his nature to press a point, to argue in his own defense rather than simply letting go of a thing.
So he settles on "Aye," as a rejoinder, turning on his heel to make for the door.
Bastien doesn’t watch him go. He examines the letter in his hands until he’s alone, and then he stares at a fixed spot on that letter. Ten seconds of nebulous bad feeling. What an asshole mixed with what’s wrong with me. I should apologize and he can fuck off in equal measure. What did Ellis expect. What did Bastien expect. A bit of wonder: the gulf between not really friends and really not friends feels unexpectedly wide.
He puts the letter down. The next one he lifts—Magota Batteux, what an unfortunate name—has the most promise of any so far. Matching loops and angles. Could be her. Look at those As against these triangles. And he’d turn traitor, too, if he’d grown up being called, inevitably, Maggot-a.
He will think more about Ellis later, probably, when he’s run out of things he has a better idea what to do about.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crystal. sometime during...waves hand at fantasy march
no subject
[ Finally.
Though now that he's done it, ignoring the pull of good manners long enough to outlast him does not feel as triumphant as he'd hoped it would.
A pause. Very quietly, there's the metal slither of the ring and its chain coming out of his pocket. ]
Who is it you are safeguarding it for? You didn't say.
no subject
[ It has not really occurred to Ellis that Bastien might decline to return it, though he does some very minor calculations as to those odds in the moment. ]
Is it necessary, that you know?
no subject
Unless you know how it was made, whether there are more, whether there could be more—yes.
no subject
No, there aren't more. And I expect there won't be.
[ It goes without saying, obviously Ellis doesn't know it was made. ]
no subject
[ Sort of. He would sleep worse at night thinking there were a hundred more floating around Thedas. But a shame for either the Scouting division or for Ellis. He hasn't decided which yet. ]
Have you ever used it? It is a little small for your hands. For mine, too.
no subject
no subject
[ The sort of sound that might precede something flirty or challenging, except distant and subdued. He's not enjoying this. It's just an obligatory I'm not scared of you gesture. ]
Someone else might have appealed to my compassion, you know. Told me what is so much more important than the good it could do us. [ That's not an invitation. He knows Ellis won't, especially right now. He doesn't leave a pause to fill. ] I am in my office, if you want to come by.
no subject
And there is a pause in the wake of that. Not for Bastien to fill, but for Ellis to weigh up the wisdom of taking him up on this opened door. Consider the distant beat of temper, the simmering, sullen anger at his own past judgements.
But, eventually—
Ellis, alone, comes knocking on Bastien's office door.
no subject
Inside, Bastien is on his feet beside his desk, comparing the quirks of handwriting on a page of symbolic code to a stack of Trade-language letters, one at a time. Some he discards quicker than others. During the transition from one handwriting comparison to the next, Bastien looks up at Ellis, and he smiles with one side of his mouth and none of the false cheer from entrez.
The ring is on the corner of his desk nearest to him, with its chain curled around it in a spiral.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I keep bringing pastries to see if I can bribe anyone to help me with this—“ All of this, the office cluttered with signs of a spy’s unfinished tasks. “—and then eating them all myself.”
no subject
But as to the offer—
“That’s kind, but no.”
It’s kind, but it feels like stalling. A diversion from their earlier conversation, which has not been ended, only minorly delayed.
The following look is expectant. Bastien asked him here for some reason. If it’s to simply hand over the ring, Ellis will be happy to take it and excuse himself. Otherwise, they may as well continue.
no subject
"Do you know what it does?"
The ring's position, stone facing away from Bastien, is as careful and deliberate as the evenly-spaced spiral of the chain. He slipped it midway down his pinky before Ellis came, to expunge any names already collected. He's plenty aware that that might not be enough to keep his own secret, if he gives it back.
If he'd decided for sure not to give it to Ellis before he came back, he could have just claimed to have dropped it in the sea, perhaps thrown it there intentionally as a private funeral when it seemed Ellis wouldn't return, very sorry about that.
Ah well.
no subject
More or less. Wysteria had explained. A small thing, a little bit of magic.
Ellis should have pried up stones in the courtyard to safeguard it.
But nothing else follows after the answer. Just steady expectation, anything else behind it flattened into nothingness. Bastien has a point. Ellis will give him due time to make it and nothing else, for the moment.
no subject
"Then you knew how we could use it," he says. Knew and never mentioned, never offered. Bastien doesn't know of any Riftwatchers killed by liars they couldn't see coming, but as a liar people couldn't see coming, he knows that's luck. It might run out any mission now.
He turns back to his sorting.
"I suppose taking whatever you decide you need to win your war is only for Emperors and Grey Wardens, non?" His head and elbow dip toward the ring in a gesture that say go on then. "But Yseult might ask you to borrow it sometime. Don't be surprised."
no subject
(No. Ellis is not a spy, his recent six-month jaunt notwithstanding. It had never occurred to him that there might be a use beyond what he had said once to Wysteria: a ballroom, keeping the names of high society in order.)
But Bastien hadn't posed it as a question, and Ellis' reaction is limited solely to a minor furrow of his brows, there and gone without any accompanying clarification. The conclusion he's drawn is left as is. Just like the accompanying barb is taken in stride, registering without shifting the impassive expression on his face.
"It isn't something that can be given away," is very steady, unwavering as Ellis sweeps ring and chain into his palm.
no subject
(Maybe he is digging up stones to patch the holes in his friend-repelling wall before Ellis goes off again. Maybe.)
Really, it’s a relief to have it done. The ring’s in Ellis’s hand. The rope from his internal tug-o-war lies slack. If the enchantment could help them or couldn’t, if Yseult is going to be cross, if that stone winds up pointing in a direction he’d rather it not, it’s out of his control now. Dealing with things is much easier than deciding them.
His attention goes back to his work, drawing one paper close to his nose to evaluate the penstroke of an O. “Bonne journée,” comes at a distracted delay, with a strained smile, but that’s not as bad a sign as a big fake one would have been.
put a bow on this y/n
There is some other order of events where Bastien might have said something different, and Ellis might have given something up in the wake of it. Where he might have tread closer to the shape of a true thing, one Bastien has already skirted towards before.
But everything is harder now. (Being here is difficult, however Ellis makes it look otherwise.) And the flow of Bastien's response is a closed door. Ellis doesn't know how to pry at it. He doesn't know if he wants to.
It's been a long time since's it's been in his nature to press a point, to argue in his own defense rather than simply letting go of a thing.
So he settles on "Aye," as a rejoinder, turning on his heel to make for the door.
no subject
He puts the letter down. The next one he lifts—Magota Batteux, what an unfortunate name—has the most promise of any so far. Matching loops and angles. Could be her. Look at those As against these triangles. And he’d turn traitor, too, if he’d grown up being called, inevitably, Maggot-a.
He will think more about Ellis later, probably, when he’s run out of things he has a better idea what to do about.