It's not unusual for Ness to seek Stephen out in the course of a working day—they're still training her magic, after all, and also she just enjoys being around him, and likes to do her work in his presence while he does his in hers. She's usually looking less determinedly serious than now, though, stepping into his office stiffly, back straight, like she's going to war. It's also usually earlier in the day than right before dinner, when most people have already left their work for the day. An armful of notes is a more common sight than her furrowed brow, but even those she doesn't usually hold to her chest like a shield.
"Stephen," she says, and that's the most unusual part of this—she's never used his given name before. "I'd like to make my case for amputating my anchor shard within the month."
Somewhere along the way, though he wouldn’t have been able to consciously tell you when, Stephen has long-since granted Ennaris first name privileges, and he would have told her so if she’d thought to ask, so that isn’t the thing which gives him pause —
No, it’s the suggestion itself.
His pen falls out of his numb hand and drops and hits the table with a clatter, almost rolling off before his quick reflexes snatch it in time. He stills the movement and then looks up at her from where he’s seated behind his desk. “Within the month?” he repeats, shocked. “What? Why?”
He’d thought, hoped, that he’d forestalled this measure for a bit longer than that —
"The elf from Faerûn, Tav, he disappeared last month. Back to Faerûn, or the Fade, or wherever Rifters go."
She closes the door behind her, and approaches his desk, spreading her notes out in front of him.
"I knew you'd think I was being hasty if I came to you when we first noticed, so I made sure to wait. I tried to think of everything you might say, and I came up with rebuttals, and then I tried to think of everything you would say to those and come up with rebuttals to that."
Each page of her notes is titled as a numbered list—1. No one knows how much time they have, 2. It might not even work, 3. What if it does work and more Rifters want to do it, 4. We still don't have penicillin and our healer is missing. Each page has a list of points and counterpoints, written in the shaky cursive of one writing with their off-hand.
"I can't live with this hanging over my head, Stephen. Not with everything else I already fear. It will drive me mad, to know I can't be certain that I won't just disappear at any moment. All of this, everything I do, everyone I care about, it could all be for nothing, and I—"
She cuts herself off, taking a shaky breath. For a moment, she closes her eyes, and breathes deeply, centering herself. When she opens her eyes again, she looks Stephen in the eye, steely.
"I can summarize each page if you want, or we can go through the whole debate and I'll try to listen to you. But to dissuade me entirely will be very difficult for you."
He flips through the pages of precious paper, reading Ness’ writing (shaky, but nowhere near as shaky as his own). Each meticulously-numbered point is precisely the rationale he would have used with her to argue against this. Despite himself and his alarm and worry, the smallest smile flickers at the corner of his mouth before he’s able to bite it back.
This is exactly why she’s his mentee, and would be his favourite even if he had several —
“It sounds like you’ve been through the whole debate with me already,” Stephen says, and there’s a touch of dry humour as he turns back one of the pages, and then straightens them into neat lines and puts the pile back into order. Meeting her eye, then:
“You already know what I’m going to say, it seems. So play it out for me.”
She’s done all the work; he wants to hear each rebuttal and counterpoint.
She purses her lips, narrows her eyes—trying to divine his angle, trying to work out where he means this to go so that she can get two steps ahead, three, as many as necessary. She could read his mind to do it, and he wouldn't even have to know. Won't, but she could.
There are approaches to weigh—casual, sitting in the chair across from him, animated in debate; formal, like a student reciting their thesis, stood at attention with hands behind her back. When it comes to something this important, Ness always errs on the side of formal. She raises her chin, and clasps her hands behind her back.
"One: No one knows how much time they have. Accepting the impermanence of life is important, and we can't try to circumvent it lest we become evil lich-kings feigning godhood ourselves.
"Reasonable caution, however: Do you not encourage people to limit their risk factors? I've heard your grumbling about people smoking. Drinking to excess must be limited not just for the sake of one's work and temperament, but also because it damages the organs and could lead to illness and death. The anchor shard is not just a risk, but a guarantee of a premature death. It is a risk factor, I want to limit it."
A tilt of his head, listening, taking it in. Stephen opens his mouth for a moment as if to kneejerk argue back, but clamps it shut as Ness can see those gears turning, her arguments and his own warring back and forth in his mind.
He does lecture people about the smoking. He lectures the templars even more about their lyrium intake: another guarantee of premature mental deterioration, if not death itself. And isn’t the anchor-shard in his own hand another risk factor just like the lyrium?
Hypocrite, murmurs a voice in the back of his mind, which still sounds so very much like Wanda Maximoff.
“In terms of risk factors,” Stephen begins, slowly, “this one’s much less dramatic, almost negligible. The greater initial risk is if the shard embeds itself closer to the heart or brain, and not in an extremity like the palm. Otherwise, we’ve seen people carry their anchors safely for years. The captain’s coming up on nine, almost a decade.”
The way he refers to Gwenaëlle shows he’s clearly in professional mode; he’s speaking to Ness today as the Head Healer, not Stephen, not even her teacher.
“Even I’ve had mine more than twice as long as yours, and no ill effects.”
Her expression betrays no smugness, but Ness nods, and points to a line halfway down the first page: she anticipated this, too.
"And yet Tav had his for little more than a year, and he disappeared. Other Rifters have had theirs for less than a year, and disappeared."
And before Stephen can retort, she points to the line below that.
"Whether or not you consider that death, or merely passing on to some other existential state, is immaterial. If I return to Faerûn, I'm still dead. If the energy that makes me me reabsorbs into the Fade, I'm functionally dead. There's no way of knowing I won't reincarnate, or pass onto some kind of divine plane of reward and/or punishment if I were to die in the usual fashion; not being certain, we err on the side of staying alive for as long as is natural—by limiting risk factors."
Her hands return to their position behind her back, and she tilts her head, waiting for Stephen to rebut again.
The man seated at his desk, and the girl ramrod-straight standing in front of it, presenting her reasoning. It makes it feel more comfortably like debate club than an actual argument, the sort of philosophical volleying back-and-forth that he usually enjoys; if Stephen squints, he can pretend it’s entirely an academic discussion, and not at all one responsible for whether or not he winds up sawing off Ennaris’ arm.
He’d been more concerned with actual biological death rather than the vanishing, but now that they’re here on the subject, he’ll keep marching stubbornly along:
“We’ve had examples of rifters leaving and coming back: Niehaus, Loki, the old Provost. Ellie and Granger both remember interim jaunts in other worlds as well, before their spirits woke up here. Accordingly, I’d say there’s evidence that the energy that makes you you does persist in the multiverse.”
She doesn't quite look caught out—she anticipated this too—but Ness does purse her lips a little before she can school her features back to impassive logic. This is not her most compelling point, and she knows it.
"And there have been how many other Rifters who disappeared and have never returned? I am not comfortable risking my entire existence on a vanishingly small chance that I'll come back, or go somewhere else. Thedas, at this point, is a known quantity, where I can at least have a reasonable level of certainty I won't vanish from the world entirely from one moment to the next."
This is where she tries to employ some rhetorical subterfuge—her point wasn't logically sound, it's based on her feelings more than reason. She's afraid, so she's acting irrationally; Stephen would pounce on that in an instant if she gave him the opportunity, but if she can subtly redirect his focus, give him another point to respond to...
"I might be murdered in the war, yes; but I can avoid putting myself in situations out of my depth, I can train myself to become more adept at combat and survival. I cannot avoid or lessen the danger posed by my anchor in any way short of removing it."
“Hm,” Stephen says, and he knows that he can’t push back against this one as strongly as he’d like.
Perhaps it’d be easier for him to argue against it if he weren’t a rifter himself, with the exact same worries dogging him. If that shard in his hand hadn’t crippled him from making meaningful connection for his entire first year here: one foot out the door, always waiting to see if he would simply vanish one day. It was no way to live a life.
And he already knows the rebuttals to point number two, because he can run that argument in his own head, and has done. It’s not his own most compelling point either. It might not even work — but they’ve no way of knowing until they try. They need information, and the doctor’s generally in favour of gathering information. Experimentation, even to one’s own personal detriment. Lyrium warping his skin.
So he skips right to the one after: “So. Point three. What if it does work, and others start following you en masse in lopping off their hands? Besides the operational impact of an organisation full of amputees, we literally need shard-bearers to close rifts. This world might well be ripped apart at the seams without it.”
He wonders, sometimes, if it would look very much like an incursion.
Despite the way Ness is watching him, eagle-eyed for any hint that he finds her logic wanting, there's no clue as to whether Stephen caught that particular bit of rhetorical legerdemain. Either way, they've moved on to a point she has a better rebuttal to; she'll take it for the win it is.
"I propose that we don't publicize the purpose of the amputation. Of course the Division Heads would have to be made aware, the Provost most especially. And I would not want you to lie to Captain Baudin if it would affect either of you negatively. But other than that..."
She shrugs, and switches her stance, holding her hands in front of her lap.
"An accident can be arranged. Amputation is needful when bones shatter, isn't it?"
She is, perhaps, a little too cool with the idea of grievous bodily injury as the solution to this problem—or it may appear that way, so long as Stephen doesn't glance to her hands: bleeding white at the knuckles from how hard she's clenching them.
Stephen arches an eyebrow, perhaps surprised at the commitment. And she knows him well enough, and her arguments are logical enough, that they’re finding their mark, squirrelling in beneath his skin.
“Hm. Run over your arm with a cart, shatter the bones, so it seems medically necessary to amputate?” he repeats, floating the thought. Then: “Apart from me, how many people have you already told about your desire to cut off your arm?”
"Captain Baudin is the one who gave me the idea. I don't think I've said in so many words that I intend to follow through with it, but even should you not tell her, she'd likely be able to see through the pretense. Other than her..."
She thinks carefully—she's pretty sure she knows the answer off the top of her head, but better to give it real thought and be sure than answer flippantly and forget someone.
"I don't believe I've even mentioned the possibility to anyone else. If I have, never more than in passing."
That raised eyebrow turns a little sardonic at the invocation of the Captain, with an ironic turn to his expression. Being charitable: Stephen thinks Ness is simply answering his question and doesn’t mean to play it like another trump card, but crediting the other woman is a card nonetheless.
Then again, he doesn’t rule out manipulation. He’s seen the way the girl argues.
Another hm, not quite agreeing, not quite dissenting. Moving on: “Point the fourth: We still don’t have penicillin and our dedicated healer is missing. Try as I might, I’m not able to cast Thedosian healing spells. Other mages with the facility don’t have the same grasp that Isaac did.”
Whether she's manipulating him or not, she doesn't press for any more of a response to point three, just lets him move them right along to—well, in her opinion, it's the one he's most likely to agree with.
"Even if Isaac were here, there would be some reason not to move forward. An upcoming battle, or one of us needed on a mission, or a concern about my health, or yours—Doctor, you know better than I that ideal conditions don't exist. To put off a time-sensitive procedure with an unknown expiration date waiting for them is folly.
"That does not, of course, excuse recklessness," she allows, anticipating that particular rejoinder, "there's a difference between waiting for survivable conditions and an elusive ideal. But even in that case, Stephen—"
Ness's eyes have been focused on Stephen's this whole time, tracking his every twitch and hum to gauge how her arguments are landing. She doesn't look away, now, but her eyes soften, dropping the logical mask to let her true feelings shine through.
"Who could have a better chance of seeing me through this than you? You have knowledge of technique and science that no one else on this entire continent could even dream of, decades of experience, and a track record that speaks for itself. Yes, it would be better to have Isaac—but you are a doctor, not a healer, and of the two I will take preference for the doctor, any day."
It's hard to believe that they haven't even known each other a whole year. Stephen has become so important to her in such a short period of time—half a year, a little more than, and she's ready to put her life in his hands.
Stephen exhales. Even now, he has a tendency to combat earnestness with humour, and so he says, “Flattery is a low blow, Ennaris, but it does get you everywhere.”
He instinctively straightens more of the paperwork, and out of the corner of his eye, sees point four on the list like a meeting agenda. Continues, “And I dunno, I’d still like the magic. I’d actually feel better if we were cutting open your skull vs chopping off your limb. I’m not a cardiovascular surgeon. Cardiovascular surgeons are assholes.”
Some of that professional mask had dropped, his tone turning lighter in reflexive defensive response to all that heart-open desperate faith and trust. They’ve reached the end of the list. He’s stalling.
Usually, Ness respects his recoil from earnest emotion. She doles her affection and admiration out in small doses, titrates up every so often as he develops more of a tolerance—there is no surer way to put someone off a thing than to force it on them, after all.
"Stephen."
She says his name, and stops there. She won't continue until he looks at her, and perhaps when he does he can see the exact moment that she decides to approach his desk, to lean forward and hold his hand, the way he had held hers in the library.
"I trust you. I trust your mind, and your medicine, and your hands. My skull or my arm, it makes no difference to me."
Edited (i didn't want you to think i was rejecting your subject) 2025-03-28 02:32 (UTC)
And it’s not the physical touch, or the emotional appeal, or the compliment, or the exacting list of back-and-forth rationale and justification. It’s all of the above, like the ceaseless tide wearing away at a rock until it finally crumbles into the sea. As Ness takes his hand, Stephen feels the moment that he gives in at last, and feels his reasoning falling away.
There’s a defeated sag to his shoulders, a twist of his mouth, his hand squeezing hers back once.
“Alright,” he says. Because he’d promised, too, that he would at least consider it if she gave it time. Didn’t rush it. Came back to him after a year. It’s sooner than planned, but all of his arguments against it have been punctured and meticulously deconstructed. “It’s your choice.”
And if anyone’s going to do it for her safely, of course it’s going to be him.
He says alright like he's just signed her death warrant, with such defeat it hardly even feels like a victory—but it is a victory, albeit one she won't be crowing over any time soon. Ness squeezes Stephen's hand back, then lets it go.
"Thank you," she says, sincere as ever, "for trusting me back."
There will be time for them to discuss the particulars of how they're going to accomplish this later. For now, Stephen's just agreed to something he'd prefer not to do, and Ness won't make him deal with her any more today. She gathers her notes, says her goodbyes, and leaves Stephen to contemplate what he's just signed up for.
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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action; it's Time
"Stephen," she says, and that's the most unusual part of this—she's never used his given name before. "I'd like to make my case for amputating my anchor shard within the month."
Whoomp, there it is.
no subject
No, it’s the suggestion itself.
His pen falls out of his numb hand and drops and hits the table with a clatter, almost rolling off before his quick reflexes snatch it in time. He stills the movement and then looks up at her from where he’s seated behind his desk. “Within the month?” he repeats, shocked. “What? Why?”
He’d thought, hoped, that he’d forestalled this measure for a bit longer than that —
no subject
She closes the door behind her, and approaches his desk, spreading her notes out in front of him.
"I knew you'd think I was being hasty if I came to you when we first noticed, so I made sure to wait. I tried to think of everything you might say, and I came up with rebuttals, and then I tried to think of everything you would say to those and come up with rebuttals to that."
Each page of her notes is titled as a numbered list—1. No one knows how much time they have, 2. It might not even work, 3. What if it does work and more Rifters want to do it, 4. We still don't have penicillin and our healer is missing. Each page has a list of points and counterpoints, written in the shaky cursive of one writing with their off-hand.
"I can't live with this hanging over my head, Stephen. Not with everything else I already fear. It will drive me mad, to know I can't be certain that I won't just disappear at any moment. All of this, everything I do, everyone I care about, it could all be for nothing, and I—"
She cuts herself off, taking a shaky breath. For a moment, she closes her eyes, and breathes deeply, centering herself. When she opens her eyes again, she looks Stephen in the eye, steely.
"I can summarize each page if you want, or we can go through the whole debate and I'll try to listen to you. But to dissuade me entirely will be very difficult for you."
no subject
This is exactly why she’s his mentee, and would be his favourite even if he had several —
“It sounds like you’ve been through the whole debate with me already,” Stephen says, and there’s a touch of dry humour as he turns back one of the pages, and then straightens them into neat lines and puts the pile back into order. Meeting her eye, then:
“You already know what I’m going to say, it seems. So play it out for me.”
She’s done all the work; he wants to hear each rebuttal and counterpoint.
no subject
There are approaches to weigh—casual, sitting in the chair across from him, animated in debate; formal, like a student reciting their thesis, stood at attention with hands behind her back. When it comes to something this important, Ness always errs on the side of formal. She raises her chin, and clasps her hands behind her back.
"One: No one knows how much time they have. Accepting the impermanence of life is important, and we can't try to circumvent it lest we become evil lich-kings feigning godhood ourselves.
"Reasonable caution, however: Do you not encourage people to limit their risk factors? I've heard your grumbling about people smoking. Drinking to excess must be limited not just for the sake of one's work and temperament, but also because it damages the organs and could lead to illness and death. The anchor shard is not just a risk, but a guarantee of a premature death. It is a risk factor, I want to limit it."
no subject
He does lecture people about the smoking. He lectures the templars even more about their lyrium intake: another guarantee of premature mental deterioration, if not death itself. And isn’t the anchor-shard in his own hand another risk factor just like the lyrium?
Hypocrite, murmurs a voice in the back of his mind, which still sounds so very much like Wanda Maximoff.
“In terms of risk factors,” Stephen begins, slowly, “this one’s much less dramatic, almost negligible. The greater initial risk is if the shard embeds itself closer to the heart or brain, and not in an extremity like the palm. Otherwise, we’ve seen people carry their anchors safely for years. The captain’s coming up on nine, almost a decade.”
The way he refers to Gwenaëlle shows he’s clearly in professional mode; he’s speaking to Ness today as the Head Healer, not Stephen, not even her teacher.
“Even I’ve had mine more than twice as long as yours, and no ill effects.”
no subject
"And yet Tav had his for little more than a year, and he disappeared. Other Rifters have had theirs for less than a year, and disappeared."
And before Stephen can retort, she points to the line below that.
"Whether or not you consider that death, or merely passing on to some other existential state, is immaterial. If I return to Faerûn, I'm still dead. If the energy that makes me me reabsorbs into the Fade, I'm functionally dead. There's no way of knowing I won't reincarnate, or pass onto some kind of divine plane of reward and/or punishment if I were to die in the usual fashion; not being certain, we err on the side of staying alive for as long as is natural—by limiting risk factors."
Her hands return to their position behind her back, and she tilts her head, waiting for Stephen to rebut again.
no subject
He’d been more concerned with actual biological death rather than the vanishing, but now that they’re here on the subject, he’ll keep marching stubbornly along:
“We’ve had examples of rifters leaving and coming back: Niehaus, Loki, the old Provost. Ellie and Granger both remember interim jaunts in other worlds as well, before their spirits woke up here. Accordingly, I’d say there’s evidence that the energy that makes you you does persist in the multiverse.”
no subject
"And there have been how many other Rifters who disappeared and have never returned? I am not comfortable risking my entire existence on a vanishingly small chance that I'll come back, or go somewhere else. Thedas, at this point, is a known quantity, where I can at least have a reasonable level of certainty I won't vanish from the world entirely from one moment to the next."
This is where she tries to employ some rhetorical subterfuge—her point wasn't logically sound, it's based on her feelings more than reason. She's afraid, so she's acting irrationally; Stephen would pounce on that in an instant if she gave him the opportunity, but if she can subtly redirect his focus, give him another point to respond to...
"I might be murdered in the war, yes; but I can avoid putting myself in situations out of my depth, I can train myself to become more adept at combat and survival. I cannot avoid or lessen the danger posed by my anchor in any way short of removing it."
no subject
Perhaps it’d be easier for him to argue against it if he weren’t a rifter himself, with the exact same worries dogging him. If that shard in his hand hadn’t crippled him from making meaningful connection for his entire first year here: one foot out the door, always waiting to see if he would simply vanish one day. It was no way to live a life.
And he already knows the rebuttals to point number two, because he can run that argument in his own head, and has done. It’s not his own most compelling point either. It might not even work — but they’ve no way of knowing until they try. They need information, and the doctor’s generally in favour of gathering information. Experimentation, even to one’s own personal detriment. Lyrium warping his skin.
So he skips right to the one after: “So. Point three. What if it does work, and others start following you en masse in lopping off their hands? Besides the operational impact of an organisation full of amputees, we literally need shard-bearers to close rifts. This world might well be ripped apart at the seams without it.”
He wonders, sometimes, if it would look very much like an incursion.
no subject
"I propose that we don't publicize the purpose of the amputation. Of course the Division Heads would have to be made aware, the Provost most especially. And I would not want you to lie to Captain Baudin if it would affect either of you negatively. But other than that..."
She shrugs, and switches her stance, holding her hands in front of her lap.
"An accident can be arranged. Amputation is needful when bones shatter, isn't it?"
She is, perhaps, a little too cool with the idea of grievous bodily injury as the solution to this problem—or it may appear that way, so long as Stephen doesn't glance to her hands: bleeding white at the knuckles from how hard she's clenching them.
no subject
“Hm. Run over your arm with a cart, shatter the bones, so it seems medically necessary to amputate?” he repeats, floating the thought. Then: “Apart from me, how many people have you already told about your desire to cut off your arm?”
no subject
She thinks carefully—she's pretty sure she knows the answer off the top of her head, but better to give it real thought and be sure than answer flippantly and forget someone.
"I don't believe I've even mentioned the possibility to anyone else. If I have, never more than in passing."
no subject
Then again, he doesn’t rule out manipulation. He’s seen the way the girl argues.
Another hm, not quite agreeing, not quite dissenting. Moving on: “Point the fourth: We still don’t have penicillin and our dedicated healer is missing. Try as I might, I’m not able to cast Thedosian healing spells. Other mages with the facility don’t have the same grasp that Isaac did.”
no subject
"Even if Isaac were here, there would be some reason not to move forward. An upcoming battle, or one of us needed on a mission, or a concern about my health, or yours—Doctor, you know better than I that ideal conditions don't exist. To put off a time-sensitive procedure with an unknown expiration date waiting for them is folly.
"That does not, of course, excuse recklessness," she allows, anticipating that particular rejoinder, "there's a difference between waiting for survivable conditions and an elusive ideal. But even in that case, Stephen—"
Ness's eyes have been focused on Stephen's this whole time, tracking his every twitch and hum to gauge how her arguments are landing. She doesn't look away, now, but her eyes soften, dropping the logical mask to let her true feelings shine through.
"Who could have a better chance of seeing me through this than you? You have knowledge of technique and science that no one else on this entire continent could even dream of, decades of experience, and a track record that speaks for itself. Yes, it would be better to have Isaac—but you are a doctor, not a healer, and of the two I will take preference for the doctor, any day."
It's hard to believe that they haven't even known each other a whole year. Stephen has become so important to her in such a short period of time—half a year, a little more than, and she's ready to put her life in his hands.
how dare u
He instinctively straightens more of the paperwork, and out of the corner of his eye, sees point four on the list like a meeting agenda. Continues, “And I dunno, I’d still like the magic. I’d actually feel better if we were cutting open your skull vs chopping off your limb. I’m not a cardiovascular surgeon. Cardiovascular surgeons are assholes.”
Some of that professional mask had dropped, his tone turning lighter in reflexive defensive response to all that heart-open desperate faith and trust. They’ve reached the end of the list. He’s stalling.
🔪🔪🔪
"Stephen."
She says his name, and stops there. She won't continue until he looks at her, and perhaps when he does he can see the exact moment that she decides to approach his desk, to lean forward and hold his hand, the way he had held hers in the library.
"I trust you. I trust your mind, and your medicine, and your hands. My skull or my arm, it makes no difference to me."
🎀?
There’s a defeated sag to his shoulders, a twist of his mouth, his hand squeezing hers back once.
“Alright,” he says. Because he’d promised, too, that he would at least consider it if she gave it time. Didn’t rush it. Came back to him after a year. It’s sooner than planned, but all of his arguments against it have been punctured and meticulously deconstructed. “It’s your choice.”
And if anyone’s going to do it for her safely, of course it’s going to be him.
He always has to be the one holding the knife.
🎀!
"Thank you," she says, sincere as ever, "for trusting me back."
There will be time for them to discuss the particulars of how they're going to accomplish this later. For now, Stephen's just agreed to something he'd prefer not to do, and Ness won't make him deal with her any more today. She gathers her notes, says her goodbyes, and leaves Stephen to contemplate what he's just signed up for.