faderift | closed.

The sting of the cloth is distant, and Ellie shuts her eyes, not quite able to meet Derrica's. It's almost humiliating, being so vulnerable. It's difficult to let herself need this, especially when any breath of kindness threatens to crack her apart. She wonders if there'll be a day when it doesn't feel like stealing.

It makes her angry with herself.

Ellie shakes her head, but is at a loss for words when it comes to explaining why.

"Even when he was there- I'm not the same person he knew."

Joel would have insisted otherwise, but they both knew the truth. He'd taught her everything he knew, including all the things he'd never wanted her to be. It hurt him, every time he saw it, and he was shit at hiding it.

Maybe with time they could've repaired things, rebuilt themselves. Found out who they were now. But that was time they didn't have, and it was a world that wouldn't have allowed them the space.

"... and she was there, too."

Ellie swallows.

"Abby."

A flicker of shock crosses Derrica's face at the name, thankfully unseen.

It's an assumption, one that she immediately questions, but it seems impossible that Ellie's speaking of anyone else.

But the buzz of questions subsides, pushed away because this isn't about Derrica's curiosity. It would be a kind of prying that would do harm, and Derrica can't bring herself to engage in it. How could she dig her fingers into Ellie's wounds, try to draw out answers Ellie wasn't ready to give?

"Ellie," Derrica begins, stops, draws a breath. She lowers the cloth to the basin. "Ellie, are you and she going to be able to stay here together?"

The Gallows is a massive structure, but it feels small most days. Riftwatch overruns itself. And what would that be like for Ellie, trying to share space with someone who had dealt her this kind of wound?

"Were you...you and he, were you able to be there with her in that other place?"

Ellie's expression crumples completely, and it takes her a moment to pull herself back together. Derrica's question is a good one, a vital one, and it's the one that she's been avoiding thinking about.

"... I don't know," she says quietly, truthfully. The thought of waking up and seeing Abby's face every day, skirting around her, hearing her voice, it all seems like a special sort of hell.

... but they've avoided each other for this long. She met her in the city, not in the Gallows.

"But I could have killed her today. And I didn't."

Ellie breathes out, trying to straighten her shoulders, swallowing hard. "Joel said he talked to her, back there. And that they were done."

Edited 2021-08-23 05:44 (UTC)

Derrica's thumb rubs back and forth over Ellie's knuckles, silently soothing, as she examines Ellie's face. The bruises have come up, livid and dark, and the absence of blood doesn't alleviate the severity of the damage. And Ellie is miserable in a way that has nothing at all to do with whatever pain must come from those marks. Derrica's brow knits into an empathetic frown as she takes it all in.

"Done," Derrica echoes, uncertain of the meaning. It has a different ring to it than what Ellie had described arriving to with Abby here. "Is that why you stopped yourself from killing her today?"

"No."

This is difficult. Because it's something that Abby -- this Abby -- doesn't know and will never remember. She swallows again, painting the taste of blood along her tongue, copper and salt. Her face feels hot despite the water, her eyes stinging, and not just from the swelling.

"I just..."

Ellie trails off, looking down into the murky crimson surface of the water in the basin, and the way Derrica's holding her hand. Her knuckles are crisscrossed with scars, some long healed and layered over with fresher ones.

Her missing fingers.

"It wouldn't fix anything," she whispers.

"It wouldn't fix me."

Fix.

That word sticks. It isn't the right word. Not for something like this. Ellie looks down and Derrica watches her, trying to parse what she means to say before she slowly curls her fingers beneath Ellie's. She lifts one hand from the basin, lacing their fingers together.

"It's not the kind of thing that you fix," Derrica says quietly. "Nothing fixes something like this."

Seven years since Dairsmuid, and Derrica still feels that loss. She still chokes on rage when she sees templars, hears people praise the Chantry. She doesn't know that such an anger will ever go away, or that she'll ever stop feeling grief over all that was taken from her. It comes back, no matter how long it's been.

"But you grow around it. It will always be a part of you, but I promise, it won't hurt like this forever."

No promise of a timeframe. How could Derrica know? How can she pretend her life is any measuring stick for Ellie's? How can she compare their losses? There's no science to such things.

"Have you ever seen a wounded tree?" sounds nonsensical, but nothing about Derrica's expression indicates that she's joking.

Everything she's saying are things that Ellie knows; smart, good advice. It may even eventually help, but now and in the thick of it, it doesn't seem like anything will ever heal up. She's had years now, and still wakes up screaming. A sound or a smell will still put her back in the moment. She's violent, far more than she needs to be, and still jumps when people touch her when she's not expecting it.

She knows Derrica's trying to help, but Ellie's world is still cold and colorless. Without her anger to keep her burning, everything just tastes like ashes, and she has to live amidst the ruin of what she fed to the flames.

Some part of Ellie is still holding out for the moment that Derrica realizes she can't help her, and moves on. She's terrified of it, but holds it inevitable.

It's stupid, yes, and self-sabotaging. And she knows it. It doesn't stop her from feeling it.

The thoughts pause, though, at Derrica's question, and Ellie frowns, focusing on her again as the water drips down her face.

"... yeah?"

Having draped the cloth over edge of the basin, she lifts her hands after one final squeeze to Ellie's, then rinses them briefly in the water. Shaking the stray droplets from her fingers, she raises her hands in silent appeal as she begins to speak.

"I've seen some, in Rivain, when I was younger. They were so old, maybe older than my mentor," Derrica begins, choosing her words carefully because this is not the moment for a diversion about Circles, about the people she's lost. "And you could still see where they'd been hurt, whether it was a woodsman with an axe, or a fire, or disease. There were wounds there that were older than I was, from years and years ago."

The silent appeal: Is it alright if I touch your face?

It's unmistakable, but Derrica's hands hover, refusing to make contact without a nod from Ellie.

Ellie lifts her head up to meet Derrica's eyes, listening to the sound of her voice as much as the words she's saying.

Every time they touch there's less hesitation. It's hardly noticeable before Ellie leans silently forward, bringing herself within reach with a small nod. Just a tip of her head.

Her face feels overwarm, already starting to swell. Her eyes itch, but she makes herself focus on her instead of everything else.

A nod in return, but even so, there's still a beat of hesitation before she cups Ellie's face in her hands. It's a deliberately loose clasp. Ellie can easily shake her off, at any point. Derrica's as attentive to the possibility that Ellie might need to break away as she is to Ellie's injuries.

"You couldn't tell exactly how bad the damage was," she says instead, her thumb moving carefully across Ellie's damp cheek. She's studying Ellie's face but not exactly studying Ellie's face; her attention has shifted to the injuries, halving her focus on Ellie's expression. "But even with the deepest gouges, cuts that you might think would have made them weaker or caused them to rot or fall in a storm..."

A trailing pause. Derrica draws a breath. A cool wash of sensation spreads outward from her palms. Her thumbs stroke again over Ellie's cheeks.

"They grew anyway," she says, a little winded. The sensation doesn't falter. Ellie's pain dulls by degrees, dialing down to nothing. "And the scars became just another part of them."

It takes years. This Derrica doesn't say. Ellie knows that, surely.

The clasp is loose, but cool, soft. Steadying. Her hands feel good on her feverish skin, though Ellie's chest feels tight.

It's been a long time since she was regularly touched. Touch in New Amsterdam meant being laid bare, meant minds and memories and emotions spilling over. Brushing up against Ellie's deluge of thought was regularly too much, even for the people that cared enough to brave it.

There is safety in the quiet, and the brush of Derrica's thumbs is so tender, the corners of Ellie's mouth twitch and draw tight as the pain ebbs slowly away. Gentled by touch and the sound of her voice. Ellie slowly breathes out, every ache and hurt easing like she's bleeding out poison. The relief is dizzying.

Ellie wonders just how long she's carried herself tightly, to accommodate old injuries, afraid to put her full weight anywhere.

"Dunno if it works like that with people," she mutters.

You think this is easy? comes the echo, and Ellie tries to shake it off, but the memory's so close to the surface.

Bruises fade. Bone knits back together. With the majority of the blood cleared from Ellie's face, it's almost as if nothing happened at all. The chilly flow of energy ebbs away, though Derrica's hands remain.

"It does. I promise."

All this pain that Ellie's carried hasn't broken her apart. There's strength in that, whether Ellie sees it or not.

There's quiet then. It's not that Derrica hadn't marked the way Ellie carried herself, but the shift between how she knows Ellie to hold her body and the way she relaxes now is so stark that it hurts to observe. Derrica had intended to reach down to her wrist, but she lingers, the light sweep of her thumbs continuing even though the spell has ended.

"It just takes time," she tells her, softer. More time than Derrica could say. She still feels the slice of grief every time she speaks of Dairsmuid, even after seven years have passed.

Even if Ellie can't believe it now, at least not in her case, the words are soothing. She wants to believe them when Derrica says them, especially because she knows that Derrica has hurt too.

Nobody who speaks this way, who tries so hard to be kind, has had it easy.

Ellie's eyes settle completely shut as Derrica strokes her cheeks, letting her breath out in a sigh of relief, her breathing slowing. There are some levels of pain that just become a part of you. Ellie hadn't realized just how much everything hurt until it doesn't.

She lifts both her hands, rough and scarred, and puts them on the back of Derrica's wrists, curling her fingers lightly over her skin, pressing gently with her thumbs. She just keeps them there, keeps the contact, eyes shut. Like she can draw out this moment of comfort before self-consciousness catches up with her, and she tries to deflect.

It's not as if Derrica hadn't had some inkling as to how deeply Ellie had been hurt. But it is painful to assess the depths of that hurt, grapple with the breadth of it as Ellie's eyes close.

There is nothing to do but hold on to her. Derrica thinks of several different things, considered and discarded as the unfaltering repetition of her thumbs across Ellie's cheeks.

"Do you want to stay?" Derrica asks, after some time. "I can give you something that isn't bloodstained, and you could stay if it will help."

The lack of pain and the coolness of the fading magic, combined with Derrica's hold, contrives to relax her. Ellie's eyes stay closed, and she stays like that, as long as Derrica will let her. She just concentrates on the smooth stroking of her thumbs on her cheeks.

It feeds something deep inside her that she usually ignores.

It takes a moment to parse what Derrica's saying, when she speaks. It's like waking from a deep sleep and trying to make sense of something new. She frowns, her brows knitting together.

"Stay?" she asks. "Like, sleep here?"

"Yes."

Clarification that's allowed to sit between them. Derrica's thumbs slow, but don't stop their movement. Her eyes follow the play of expression on Ellie's face, trying to parse her reaction.

"Only sleep," is clarification too, staving off any misconception of what this invitation is. "If it would help."

Maybe it wasn't something that would be soothing to Ellie. Derrica had always found it so, but Derrica was raised in communal spaces. Before she'd come to Kirkwall and Riftwatch, she had never slept in a room with a door she could close against everyone else. She'd shared beds and shared spaces with people, had always fallen asleep to the sound of others breathing and snoring and shifting in their beds. It was a comfort to her.

And it was such an easy thing to offer, easier still having seen how Ellie had leaned into her hands.

It's unfortunate that she's looking right at Ellie when she clarifies, because Ellie's cheeks noticeably pinken, easy to see under her freckles. She shuts her eyes for longer than a blink, willing away the thoughts -- it hadn't been like that, but there it is.

It's tempting to stay, and tempting to pull away, to gain back the hard-fought distance between herself and the world. She knows from experience that opening herself up to people inevitably hurts, but she's... tired. She's just so fucking tired.

Ellie had always slept better with other people, too. Better next to Joel, best next to Dina, with a small warm body curled between them, little hands thrown out to the sides.

For a split second the weight in her chest is crushing, but she makes herself nod through it.

"... sure," she whispers. "I'd like that."

It hadn't been like that. It might have been, if Derrica had the sense it wouldn't be more harm than good to offer Ellie anything else.

And Derrica really, truly, doesn't want to do Ellie any harm.

Her fingers stroke once, twice, three times more along Ellie's cheeks before she lifts away.

"I think we're nearly the same size," she tells Ellie, with a small smile. Give or take an inch, they're of height. It still takes Derrica a moment to extricate her wrists from Ellie's hands so she can lift the basin from her lap. "You can take whatever you like."

Some people fold their clothes and put them away. Derrica is not really one of those people. An effort is made, yes, but there are still items draped over chairs and hooked on pegs. When Derrica turns back from setting the basin back on the set of drawers against the wall, she looks at Ellie, her bloody clothes, and tips her head in momentary assessment.

"I have some light things. What are you comfortable in?"

Derrica has a talent for clarifying things without making them feel like a rejection. The warmth of her hands lingers on Ellie's cheeks after she pulls away, and Ellie makes herself open her eyes, and try to come back to the world.

She gets up from her bed, reaching to undo the cloak, loosen the tunic over the top of her clothes. She has things on under it, but it'll be best to get these off, so she doesn't mess up Derrica's room further.

"Anything that isn't a dress," she says with a wry smile. "Other than that I'm easy."

Though it has been rather frustrating to find things in her size that aren't dresses. Riftwatch thankfully has been better about it than the marketplace.

Oddly gratifying to hear that her instincts had been correct.

And it's fortunate that Derrica's tastes tend to run similarly. Dresses aren't practical for any part of her life now, apart from the occasional formal event that requires more than just the Diplomacy division. She pulls a few things from the drawers, then tugs a last item from beneath the scattering of clothes on the chair by the window.

"Here," she offers, presenting the assortment of tunics and leggings for Ellie's perusal. "These are soft enough to sleep in."

Speaking from experience, though generally Derrica has slept in them in situations such as camping or being stranded in inconvenient parts of Thedas. Surely the principal is the same.

Ellie reaches out to feel the cloth -- definitely more than soft enough. She's slept for weeks in the same clothes before, this is practically a luxury. The Gallows in general are.

"Perfect," she says, and gives Derrica a glance before she decides she's too tired to give a fuck, and reaches down to undo her boots, start working off the rest of her clothes.

(She keeps her underthings, though, for Derrica's sensibilities.)

... and the scars are everywhere. Burn marks, bullet holes, stab wounds. Plenty of evidence of stitches. A fresher one on her side covered with puckered, pinkened scarring, where something all but skewered her in the gut.

Her right arm shows evidence of being broken, and badly, and that's on top of the acid burn scars.

Derrica's healed it all, but these are old injuries.

"Thanks. For this."

Even in the few seconds it takes her to avert her eyes, the scars on Ellie's body make an impression. Maybe it's not enough of a look to see everything, or distinguish them into particular types of injuries, but it's enough to mark that Ellie's survived so much. The wounds are so extensive.

But she doesn't say anything. She's already asked Ellie to unearth something painful. It would be cruel to try and pull anything else from her.

"You're welcome," Derrica tells her, as she lifts her satchel from the floor. There's a strip of bandages to be wound back into a neat roll, and she occupies herself with that while Ellie changes. "But you don't need to thank me. I don't mind helping my friends."

A very deliberate addition, meant to make a point.

Ellie's used to these glances now; her scars weren't commonplace even back home, unless someone was older, or had come in from outside of Jackson. In New Amsterdam they'd set her apart. Here, in war-torn Thedas, it's much more common to see these things on soldiers.

But she still catches the look, and gives Derrica a wan smile. Nobody asked about her scars, or even her fingers here. And she doesn't think that it's because they're lacking in guts or curiosity.

She's slipped the tunic on over her head, and is drawing the leggings up her thin hips when the rest of what Derrica says hits. Sticks. She pauses halfway there, the breath caught in her throat before she makes herself finish, and smooth the fabric and straighten up. She grips the edge of the tunic, wisps of hair falling around her face, damp-edged and escaping the simple twist she'd put it up with.

"Me either," she says softly. Making a point back.

So many times, she's been a shitty friend. Just this once, she hopes she can make sure she doesn't fuck it up.

So they are in agreement. Derrica glows over it, small smile widening just a fraction before she crosses to a peg behind the door to retrieve her nightdress.

"Good."

As if to seal some arrangement.

When Derrica sheds her own tunic, there's mottled scarring along her right side. Even turned away from Ellie, the marks are visible still, until they vanish beneath the fall of loose fabric. Derrica shimmies from her trousers after, stepping out of them after they've pooled to the floor. When she returns to bed, she sits beside Ellie, tucks an ankle beneath her knee, and begins undoing the loops of braids her hair had been held up in.

"You can lay down, if you want. This won't take me very long."

Ellie nods, and takes her hair down, ruffling her fingers through it. It nearly reaches her shoulders now, cut straight in a place that's settling down into only memories.

As she settles on the bed she averts her eyes out of respect, but they draw back to Derrica's side, somber as she takes it in, trying to parse what could've made that mark. Ellie looks small without her gear, settled down with her head on the pillow, watching her.

The familiarity of it is bittersweet. She craves, it, but it still stings.

"... what happened here?" she asks, her voice soft and she indicates Derrica's now-covered side.

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OOPS

MY BAD

you're fiNE i was just speedy

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