“You are very good at it, Ennaris,” Stephen says. Against all his instincts — a comforting gesture rare and alien from him — he reaches out and lays his own scarred hand over hers. A reassuring squeeze of the hand she can still feel. He’ll undo the cuff eventually, but not just yet; he can’t have Ness distracted from this conversation by that pain in the arm once it resurfaces.
“I’m the biggest fucking hypocrite,” the swearing is a sign that he’s letting some more of the formality fall away, he is speaking to her as a teacher and a mentor and the Head Healer and perhaps, finally, as a friend, “but if there is one thing I know professionally, it’s that the body is a machine like any other. Your brain quite literally deteriorates with sleep deprivation. The body requires maintenance, and it can wholly break down if you push it, yourself, too hard without rest and healing.”
It’s very do as I say and not as I do, but still. It’s worth an attempt.
And then, awkwardly feeling his way through the conversation, away from the familiar territory of medical advice and over to something even more delicate: “And Sarrux was… it was a lot, for one of your first combat missions. Needing to take some time to recover doesn’t make you bad at your job.”
If his goal was to avoid distracting her from the conversation, he's failed miserably: the second his hand touches hers, Ness's eyes snap to it, and a buzzing sound starts in her ears, low at first but growing. The last time she'd been touched by anyone as more than an introduction, or a bit of glancing contact—was it Cedric, a few weeks ago in the Quartermaster's office? Did that count? If it didn't count, it was Gwenaëlle, throwing herself into her lap in a fit of dramatics. And if that didn't count, it was Cedric again, months ago, when she was new to Thedas and still afraid of her magic. People don't touch her, they never have.
Stephen's hand is warm. She can feel the scars on his palm, the rough and damaged skin. It trembles overtop of hers, just a little, but he still squeezes so gently and hasn't let go. She's counted seconds, certain he'll pull away eventually, but second after second passes and his hand is still there. Eventually she has to actually engage with the conversation they're having, which necessitates navigating back through everything he said while she was desperately occupied.
"If I don't push myself through it—I'm only worth what I bring to the organization, Doctor. No one will care for me, about me, if I'm not delivering some kind of results."
The thing is, Ness knows how it sounds, even as she says it. Her face scrunches with a distaste for melodrama, for irrationally emotional thinking, but—it feels true, also, in a way most of her more melodramatic thoughts don't once she's said them out loud.
"Sarrux was..." she trails off, far away, before she abruptly forces herself back into the conversation again. "I can stop thinking about it. I'll ignore it. I want to keep my job, please."
Stephen pauses. Squeezes her hand one more time before letting go and leaning back, straightening up in his seat. The look he gives her is— not incredulous or pitying, exactly, but there’s a question mark in his gaze. This isn’t territory he’s particularly good at wrangling, the emotional delicacies of it, but:
“Ennaris,” he says, going straight for the practicalities, “I’m not the seneschal. You’re not losing your job.”
Ness has enough self-control—enough shame—that when Stephen lets go of her hand, she doesn't pout, or try to catch his again to keep holding on. Her lips thin, though, and she looks away from him. She gets the distinct impression she hasn't understood the point of this conversation, and she hates that feeling, the squirming inadequacy and wrong-footed anxiety that roils through her stomach while she tries to figure out what she's supposed to be saying.
"I don't understand." It's an admission that feels as difficult as pulling teeth, offered quietly. "You said I'm performing poorly because I'm unwell. You're not going to tell the Seneschal?"
That's irresponsible, and frankly nothing like the man Ness has come to know. If he thinks she's inadequate to the task—any task—Stephen wouldn't let whatever small affection he might feel for her keep him from doing what was right for Riftwatch and Thedas.
He has enough self-awareness, thankfully, to not roll his eyes, because this is clearly a level of self-loathing anxiety he wasn’t quite prepared to finesse. The sheer inconvenience that Riftwatch needs a therapist but all it has is him; he’s not particularly great at it —
“I’m telling you, as a medical professional, that you need to rest,” Stephen says, “as any and all of us need to rest we’ve been through a traumatic event, and/or when we’ve been pushing too hard.”
And because he knows he’s not exactly innocent of that himself, what with the frenzied research spree Ness hadn’t been privy to, he’s compelled to add: “Nothing is currently on fire. We’re at the end of the year, and Kirkwall is slowing down for the holidays, for that period between Satinalia and Firstday. The war’s still on but that’s always on. I promise that you can slow down, too, in order to do your best work going forward. It doesn’t mean you need to lose your job over it.”
You'd think he'd asked her to move to the Fallow Mire, with the anxious way her face twists, teeth set to chewing on her lower lip. Her thoughts are such a tangle it feels impossible to tug anything useful out of them, a mess of anxiety and intellectualizing and compulsion, and the longer she makes Stephen wait for a response, the worse it gets. This is a conversation, she has to do something, he's going to figure out she's not worth spending the time on—
"Did you—"
Ness cuts herself off, grimacing, face red and eyes on the table. She intended to agree, and leave it at that, and steer them to a new conversation topic. Back to the runes on the cuff, maybe, or showing him how she can prestidigitate stains out of fabric. She still could, probably, if she thought about it enough.
But gods, she wants to know.
"Did you mean it?" She looks up to meet Stephen's eyes, then back to the table, and then, slowly, back to his eyes, searching. Desperately, stupidly hopeful, embarrassing, juvenile, selfish.
Stephen is struck by the fact that he’s sitting here soothing a teen girl’s anxieties, his one sleeve sheared off and arm bared to the elbow, her own bloodied with it. What a situation. There’s a helpless laugh bubbling up in the back of his throat but he doesn’t let it out.
“Ennaris Tavane,” he says, a little sharp in order to drive the point home.
“I don’t lie to people to coddle their pride. I don’t soothe with empty flattery; I would never bother, it would be a waste of my time and yours and inaccurate besides. You are good at your job. You hit the ground running and embraced responsibility, what, a mere month after your arrival? It took me a year to come around on it and decide to commit. Whereas you jumped in and immediately started getting your hands dirty tackling supply issues, the penicillin manufacture, the trade for glass and paper.
Ness hasn't thought about anything she's done in Thedas that generously, and it shows in the startled bewilderment of her expression as Stephen lists her accomplishments. She's always felt herself behind, not doing enough, constantly trying to prove that she's worth the effort expended on her, that she should be allowed to stay—the idea that she's done more than others, than Stephen, more than anyone would have expected of her—
She blinks at him, wide-eyed and processing, for a long moment. When a slow smile finally spreads across her face, it's not just gratitude that lights her up—though that's there too, in no small measure—but also... relief.
"Thank you. I'll... try to rest more."
Her smile lingers for a moment, buoyed by his praise, before Ness refocuses, looking to her injured arm and the cuff, assessing. Yeah, that wasn't her smartest move, was it? She hesitates, then raises her eyes back to Stephen's, smile gone tentative, a little shy.
"I should get a potion for this. Would you come with me? We can theorize on how the cuff works while we walk."
“Certainly. And we’ll have to get that cuff off,” and it isn’t going to be pleasant when they do so, “but I’m hoping the potion will dull the pain when it hits.”
Stephen rises from the table, not wasting any time for them to pack up their things and head off to tend to the wound properly, the man ceaselessly awake despite the late hour thanks to that jolt of adrenaline. He’s not always warm or kind in his compliments — it’s more like a stern performance appraisal, the flattery doled out like the crack of a whip — but at the end of the day it was, still, a compliment. He thinks well of Ennaris.
She got her hands dirty and she did the work. That’s all any of them can ask for.
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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no subject
“I’m the biggest fucking hypocrite,” the swearing is a sign that he’s letting some more of the formality fall away, he is speaking to her as a teacher and a mentor and the Head Healer and perhaps, finally, as a friend, “but if there is one thing I know professionally, it’s that the body is a machine like any other. Your brain quite literally deteriorates with sleep deprivation. The body requires maintenance, and it can wholly break down if you push it, yourself, too hard without rest and healing.”
It’s very do as I say and not as I do, but still. It’s worth an attempt.
And then, awkwardly feeling his way through the conversation, away from the familiar territory of medical advice and over to something even more delicate: “And Sarrux was… it was a lot, for one of your first combat missions. Needing to take some time to recover doesn’t make you bad at your job.”
no subject
Stephen's hand is warm. She can feel the scars on his palm, the rough and damaged skin. It trembles overtop of hers, just a little, but he still squeezes so gently and hasn't let go. She's counted seconds, certain he'll pull away eventually, but second after second passes and his hand is still there. Eventually she has to actually engage with the conversation they're having, which necessitates navigating back through everything he said while she was desperately occupied.
"If I don't push myself through it—I'm only worth what I bring to the organization, Doctor. No one will care for me, about me, if I'm not delivering some kind of results."
The thing is, Ness knows how it sounds, even as she says it. Her face scrunches with a distaste for melodrama, for irrationally emotional thinking, but—it feels true, also, in a way most of her more melodramatic thoughts don't once she's said them out loud.
"Sarrux was..." she trails off, far away, before she abruptly forces herself back into the conversation again. "I can stop thinking about it. I'll ignore it. I want to keep my job, please."
no subject
“Ennaris,” he says, going straight for the practicalities, “I’m not the seneschal. You’re not losing your job.”
no subject
"I don't understand." It's an admission that feels as difficult as pulling teeth, offered quietly. "You said I'm performing poorly because I'm unwell. You're not going to tell the Seneschal?"
That's irresponsible, and frankly nothing like the man Ness has come to know. If he thinks she's inadequate to the task—any task—Stephen wouldn't let whatever small affection he might feel for her keep him from doing what was right for Riftwatch and Thedas.
no subject
“I’m telling you, as a medical professional, that you need to rest,” Stephen says, “as any and all of us need to rest we’ve been through a traumatic event, and/or when we’ve been pushing too hard.”
And because he knows he’s not exactly innocent of that himself, what with the frenzied research spree Ness hadn’t been privy to, he’s compelled to add: “Nothing is currently on fire. We’re at the end of the year, and Kirkwall is slowing down for the holidays, for that period between Satinalia and Firstday. The war’s still on but that’s always on. I promise that you can slow down, too, in order to do your best work going forward. It doesn’t mean you need to lose your job over it.”
no subject
"Did you—"
Ness cuts herself off, grimacing, face red and eyes on the table. She intended to agree, and leave it at that, and steer them to a new conversation topic. Back to the runes on the cuff, maybe, or showing him how she can prestidigitate stains out of fabric. She still could, probably, if she thought about it enough.
But gods, she wants to know.
"Did you mean it?" She looks up to meet Stephen's eyes, then back to the table, and then, slowly, back to his eyes, searching. Desperately, stupidly hopeful, embarrassing, juvenile, selfish.
"That I'm good at it. You mean it?"
no subject
“Ennaris Tavane,” he says, a little sharp in order to drive the point home.
“I don’t lie to people to coddle their pride. I don’t soothe with empty flattery; I would never bother, it would be a waste of my time and yours and inaccurate besides. You are good at your job. You hit the ground running and embraced responsibility, what, a mere month after your arrival? It took me a year to come around on it and decide to commit. Whereas you jumped in and immediately started getting your hands dirty tackling supply issues, the penicillin manufacture, the trade for glass and paper.
“So, yes. I mean it.”
no subject
Ness hasn't thought about anything she's done in Thedas that generously, and it shows in the startled bewilderment of her expression as Stephen lists her accomplishments. She's always felt herself behind, not doing enough, constantly trying to prove that she's worth the effort expended on her, that she should be allowed to stay—the idea that she's done more than others, than Stephen, more than anyone would have expected of her—
She blinks at him, wide-eyed and processing, for a long moment. When a slow smile finally spreads across her face, it's not just gratitude that lights her up—though that's there too, in no small measure—but also... relief.
"Thank you. I'll... try to rest more."
Her smile lingers for a moment, buoyed by his praise, before Ness refocuses, looking to her injured arm and the cuff, assessing. Yeah, that wasn't her smartest move, was it? She hesitates, then raises her eyes back to Stephen's, smile gone tentative, a little shy.
"I should get a potion for this. Would you come with me? We can theorize on how the cuff works while we walk."
🎀
Stephen rises from the table, not wasting any time for them to pack up their things and head off to tend to the wound properly, the man ceaselessly awake despite the late hour thanks to that jolt of adrenaline. He’s not always warm or kind in his compliments — it’s more like a stern performance appraisal, the flattery doled out like the crack of a whip — but at the end of the day it was, still, a compliment. He thinks well of Ennaris.
She got her hands dirty and she did the work. That’s all any of them can ask for.