Closed » It's much easier to forgive than to forget

[sparklequeen]

WHO: Glimmer and Abby
WHAT: Glimmer knows things and she doesn't know what to do with that. Maybe talking will help.
WHEN: Late Kingsway, about the 21st or 22nd.
WHERE: The Library, the Gallows
NOTES: Possible discussion of a gruesome murder, revenge quests, and all sorts of bad feelings. For a summary, click here

Glimmer had been sitting on this information for a short while. Not long, just long enough to think over what she wanted to do next. Ellie wasn't happy--clearly. This whole mess was gnawing at her and it made Glimmer's chest ache to see the way this still tore at her friend. Of course, Ellie wasn't the type to really open up about this. What was Glimmer supposed to do? How could she help? The answers was of course that she could only help if Ellie let her, and Ellie as a rule was not good at acceping help.

So the next best thing was to find out what she could. To that end, Glimmer has gone looking for the other party in question--the tall, muscular woman named Abby. It takes her a little while. She checks the training yard, the infirmary, the sleeping quarters... it's only when she spots her sitting with a book in the library that Glimmer finally has her target in sight. It's strange, looking at her and realizing this woman took away someone important from someone that Glimmer loved--and Glimmer wasn't afraid to say that, either. Ellie was her friend. Glimmer loved her, like she loved all her friends.

She couldn't go charging in like she knew everything about this, like she could somehow fix it. No, this had to be an attempt to understand. So Glimmer approaches calmly, skirts swirling around her ankles.

"Hey, Abby? Can we talk?"

Comments

[armd]

Okay. Abby can work with that, her stare level as Glimmer settles across the room from her. She's appreciative of the space, and being the person closest to the exit, but it doesn't quite coax her to relax.

Another breath in.

"You're the first..." her voice trails off, that uncertainty coming back twofold. Glimmer is so far removed that it's hard to know where to start, or to know if she even wants to do that. How is she supposed to lay all of this out? How much does she say?

Maybe she doesn't have to be the only person talking. Her head dips, brow furrowed, fingers knotting slowly together. "... What happened to your mom?"

[sparklequeen]

That surprises her a little bit. She hadn't expected the question to be turned back on her so quickly, but... it's fair, isn't it? As her initial shock begins to fade, Glimmer has to take a breath and steady herself for what's to come. Her hands drop, grip at her knees through her skirts. A breath in. A breath out.

"It's a long story." That much is true. She isn't even sure how much of it she can tell and how much of it makes sense without the context of Etheria. Without knowing everything that happened. She can remember telling Ellie all of this. It seemed so long ago now, in the grocery store of all places in New Amsterdam. Or had it been that too-small apartment she'd shared with Catra and Adora until they'd vanished?

"We were in this war. It's been going on since probably before I was born, right? And... our enemies, our whole planet, we were cut off from the rest of the universe and they were trying to find a way to get back in touch with their forces on the outside, I guess you could say. So they had this machine--this device. That was supposed open a portal to them." She twists her hands together, then forces herself to stop fidgeting.

"And. Um. The device was unstable. It wasn't safe. Turning it on could have ripped our world apart and then... someone did it anyway. Because she was hurt. Because she was desperate. For a lot of reasons." Relatable, maybe.

"All this crazy stuff was happening and--and to save the world, I guess, someone had to stay behind when the portals closed. And my mom was the one who stayed behind." She sacrificed herself for Glimmer, for Adora, for Bow, for all of them.

"That's why I'm, you know. Queen Glimmer." A weak sounding laugh. It's not funny, but she has to do something.

[armd]

Abby will wait her out, but the pause lingers so long she thinks Glimmer isn't going to answer. She chances a glance at her; she's only readying herself to speak in much the same way Abby was earlier. Fidgeting, and picking at her clothing, palms running over knees as if to ground herself.

The details don't make a lot of sense but she isn't here for those, so it doesn't matter much that they wash over her. She just watches Glimmer tell her story, her expression softening slightly at the evidence of her pain and loss, because that she can understand all too well.

It doesn't pass her by that making a sacrifice for the safety of the world is a common thread between their stories, either. It's an unfair assessment, but it occurs to her anyway.

"... I'm sorry it happened like that."

The inside of her cheek is between her teeth. "That's not fair."

[sparklequeen]

"It's not," Glimmer agrees. Her throat feels tight and raw, as if she's been screaming instead of just speaking like a normal person. Her head bows for a moment and she takes a breath. It still feels fresh, sometimes. And at the same time, so far away.

"...What happened to your dad?" She asks after a moment of silence, as if to gently redirect this shared grief. It's a support group now, Abby. You have to share.

[armd]

It's a careful exchange of information, but that makes it easier to speak, loosens up the block in her throat. Abby soaks in it for a moment, that mingling feeling of shared grief, and fills up her lungs with air in the interim before she starts to speak.

"... He was a surgeon." She's assuming that, due to Ellie, Glimmer already has a vague idea of what the world she used to live in was like and so she doesn't have to explain everything to her just to get her caught up. It helps. "We lived with a group who called themselves the Fireflies. We were looking for a way to make some kind of cure for the cordyceps virus, and... eventually she showed up."

Does anybody here know that about Ellie? Abby has no idea. It makes her pause for a moment, frowning, considering her words before she continues. "She was bitten by an infected and didn't turn, so the Fireflies thought they could harvest some kind of cure out of her. Doing that would have killed her, but–" A sigh. "... Dad wanted to do it, even though he got pushback from our leader. They argued about it for a long time."

She remembers that evening clearly, but mostly the look on Marlene's face, her muted grief and low current of her anger and helplessness. "They decided to do it in the end and he– stormed our base to get her back. Killed everybody he came across on the way in and out."

All those people. Dead bodies strewn across several floors, each discovery worse than the last. Culminating in Marlene spread out in the basement, a bullet wound in her skull. Her voice has gone flat, removed; she's recounting details, not feelings. "Found dad in the theater. Left the next day. Didn't go back."

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer listens, her hands clasped in her lap again as she tries to digest what Abby is telling her. She knows Ellie's world is harsh, that there are these mushroom monsters that spring forth out of people. That Ellie had been immune. She had heard vaguely about the trip across a ruined country, but hadn't known it's goal--to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies. As Abby continues, Glimmer's expression grows grimmer, unhappier. Sadder. Abby's words ring true to her--Ellie has always said that Joel wasn't really a good person. That he'd had enemies. She remembers the quiet, stoic man she'd met in New Amsterdam and tries to imagine him fighting his way through a base to rescue Ellie from death.

It's very easy.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "No one should have to lose their parents." She can't say she's unsympathetic. Her choice would be try and kill no one, but... killing a doctor? Just because he's in the way? She can't reconcile that. And she can remember some of the guilt she'd felt, nibbling away at Ellie. That explained so much.

"It wasn't right that Joel killed him."

[armd]

"No," she agrees, and it comes out sharp-edged and full of hurt. She runs her tongue along her teeth and looks away, angling her body ever so slightly as if to hide her face. It wasn't right. It was wrong. Even after all this time she still feels the injustice of it like a burn on her heart.

For him to have tipped her life upside down like that in hours– the way he looked at her before he died with his blood-stained teeth bared, chin held aloft as he told her to say your speech and get it over with–

"Took me years to find him again." Her voice is hard like ice. "He deserved everything he fucking got. But it wasn't worth it."

The ends didn't justify the means.

Worst of all, he wouldn't have wanted it. Her dad would be so horrified to know what she did, half in the sake of his name. Abby thinks she knew that the entire time, but in the end she chose not to let it stop her. Her eyes water, and blur.

[sparklequeen]

"...Yeah. It's not worth it." Glimmer says softly, her voice low. She knows that feeling. Even if it's a memory that she still struggles to categorize as really hers.

"When I was in New Amsterdam, we got... we got put in this alternate reality? Or something. I don't know how to describe it. But in those memories, from that place, the Aerie? I killed the person who killed my mom." She closes her eyes and tries not to think about the sensation of the cinderblock in her hands as she smashes it down onto the culprit's face.

"It--It wasn't..." She wraps her arms around herself. Why is she doing this? Exposing so much of herself, so much of the things she hates that lurk inside her memory.

"I don't know if it was real but it feels real. And it wasn't worth it." Part of her wishes that alternate self had let herself die in the judicial deathmatch, rather than give in to that horrible impulse. She reaches up, rubs at her eyes which sting with tears.

"I never did that back home--in my normal life but the memory is there and--it's awful. It's awful. I hate it."

[armd]

She has to nod in lieu of answering, pinching at the corners of her eyes with thumb and index finger.

They can talk to each other about this because they're the same. They felt the same things. It's intensely gratifying to hear it come from somebody else's mouth. Abby can fill in the gaps on her own because she understands that horror, the white-noise buzz of shock that extends all the way to fingertips and toes. She had thought that hurting Joel would feel good, and righteous, but she didn't feel anything at all.

And it was so recent. It happened only months ago, not nearly long enough for her to have smoothed any of those edges over.

But there's the tiniest comfort in not being alone. Abby lingers in it, holding it as close as she dares before she says anything else.

"I wish I could let it go," she mumbles, over a slow sniff. "I– want it to be over." Ellie doesn't seem like she's about to drag it out, but even then it's hard in a different way. Hard to see her around, and going about her life. Obviously, Abby is just supposed to deal with that, but she doesn't understand how she's supposed to. It makes her feel so tired.

[sparklequeen]

"I know," Glimmer says quietly. She, too, wants it to be over. It was supposed to be over when she came to terms with Catra, when she had put those feelings through her own head and decided that she didn't want to hold onto them. And then the Aerie had come along and thrown one giant spanner into the works. Slowly, Glimmer stands and shuffles across the space between them. She hesitates--reaches out to offer Abby her hand. She doesn't touch Abby herself, yet. Only offers the choice. Maybe it will help. Maybe it won't. She won't force it on the other woman, though. Glimmer is crying silently, tears running down her cheeks.

"It's hard to let go. I did it once and--and then this other me, this other reality, it just--it shoved me right back into that all over again and this time it didn't feel like I chose anything," she says.

"...I actually forgave the person who threw the switch that ended up killing my mom back home," she adds in a quiet voice.

"I'm not saying that you or anyone else has to do that. It's not up to me to tell you if someone deserves forgiveness, even if they're my friend. But the way I was looking at it--the way I felt whenever I looked at her, it filled me up with all these feelings that I hated. It made me want to do things that my mom never would have wanted me to do. It was eating me up. Hollowing me out." Her voice is strained, quiet. Almost haunted. It cracks with emotion and she closes her eyes tight as the memories of the arena in the Aeries mingle with her conversations with Catra, two lives blurring into one horrid experience of emotional turmoil akin to some sickeningly bubbling cauldron.

"It was something I did for me, not for her."

[armd]

She wipes her eyes again when Glimmer stands as if embarrassed, even though it's only them in the room, two people who have experienced such similar loss. When her hand extends out across the tiny gulf between them, Abby can only look at it. People seldom offer her comfort without her having to ask.

(She never asks.)

Glimmer's hand is warm when she takes it, and it helps.

Abby can match her almost thought for thought. She listens to her talk, watching their linked hands, Glimmer's skin a soft comfort on the calloused pads of her palm. Owen spoke similarly back in the aquarium, fingers skimming her wrist before he took her hand in his like he used to do when they were teenagers. We can choose to be happy, he said. We're allowed to be happy. It came so easily to him. He'd already figured it out, he just was waiting for her to catch him up.

And now he's dead.

She takes her hand back out of Glimmer's, stung by the memory.

"I can't."

She won't. Maybe that's fucked up, maybe she deserves to feel exactly as Glimmer said: eaten up, hollowed out, but she can't even begin to think about forgiving Ellie. It makes her want to be sick. Some things aren't forgivable.

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer squeezes Abby's hand in hers for the brief moments it's in hers. She can feel the strength there, the callouses. Abby has worked and fought and struggled, that much is painfully obvious in a way that makes Glimmer want to weep in sympathy. And then Abby pulls away. Glimmer doesn't hold on--lets the other woman take the space she wants or needs. Her nod is small and quiet, subdued.

"I understand," she says. "I... It's not something everyone can do. Or should do. It's--" She struggles for a moment, trying to find the right combination of words that might help.

"I just... I know how you feel. I know how much it hurts to carry those emotions and those feelings." She wishes she could say this to Ellie. Wishes that Ellie would listen to her, would maybe let someone else help for once.

"I'm sorry. You didn't deserve any of this." No one did. They're all just caught up in a storm bigger then all of them and all they can do is desperately hope to find calmer waters.

"I--" A breath. She's putting herself in the midst of this, positioning herself between two women who seem determined to hate each other until the end of time. Yet all she can think is that she has to try.

"I want to help. Even if it's just knowing how you feel and being here. Nothing--nothing you say to me will ever go to anyone else. I promise." Is Ellie going to feel betrayed if (when) she finds out? Almost certainly. Glimmer can't possibly do anything else. She wouldn't be her mother's daughter if she did.

[armd]

Nobody has ever tried to commiserate with her before. It's a new feeling and Abby silently soaks in it, her arms folding across her chest to lock herself off while she processes, tongue running over her teeth. She wonders if Glimmer gets the same strange comfort back, and that's why she keeps reaching out, why she looks at Abby with her brow furrowed and her arms crossed and tells her she didn't deserve it. That she wants to help.

That's the bit that Abby can't understand. She looks at Glimmer in confusion.

"... She won't forgive you."

It's impossible for this action not to have consequences for the both of them, when it's all too raw, too new for there not to be sides, and Abby has taken from Ellie before. She knows what the price of that is. "And if you hurt her on my behalf, she'll come after me for it."

That's the kind of person they are. Both her, and Ellie. Once you have people, they're important. You'd do anything for them.

[sparklequeen]

"We've been through a lot, her and I," Glimmer replies. Her voice is quiet, but there's steel in it too. The young woman who's faced down many dangers, who stood defiant against the warlord threatening to destroy her home. She's faced worse than Ellie. And Ellie is someone she loves. That alone is enough for her to feel that she has a chance.

"If she won't forgive me then I'll figure out what to do next. And I don't plan to hurt her on your behalf, unless you think me offering to listen to you when you want to get outside your own head is something she'll see as hurting her," Glimmer continues, her voice cool and composed. This is the queen. The young woman with responsibility thrust on her, who has made difficult choices.

"I'm not throwing her away. I'm just trying my best to help someone who looks like they could use it."

[armd]

That's exactly what Abby thinks she'll see it as. Why does Glimmer thinks she's worth risking that relationship? It can't be just to help. She doesn't trust her, not yet, even though she's trusted her with more than she has anybody thus far, but...

"... Okay," she relents, uncertainty creeping into her tone.

It's a strange position to be in. She thinks she'd benefit from the camraderie, but it doesn't feel like it's that easy to reach out and take. Or, rather, she can't believe that it really would be that easy. That somebody would know her, all of her, everything she did, and want to help anyway.

Glimmer doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation. She's shorter than Abby, but when she faces her with her back straight, her voice calm and certain, she seems so much taller, like she could fill the room.

Still, she tries one more time. "You don't have to do this. I can work it out by myself."

[sparklequeen]

"I don't have to do anything. I choose to try and help people because that's what I want to do," Glimmer replies in that same calm tone. She wonders if this is what her mother felt like--putting forth a certainty and a control that she only really half-feels. She's made her choice, though, and there's no going back now that her hand has been extended.

"I don't like seeing people suffer, Abby. If I can help make things better, then I want to try. If I get hurt in the process, then I'll manage it. That's all there really is to." She nods her head firmly. Glimmer is stubborn and now that her course is set, moving her from it is going to take a hell of a lot more than simply warning her that it might not be easy or that there might be pain involved.

[armd]

Yeah. She's getting a clear impression of that stubbornness.

Abby laughs, but it isn't humourous. More to break the mood than anything else, maybe disrupt the unease clustering in her chest. This entire experience has been strange and, after prodding gently at her own feelings, she realises that she's tired. She hasn't spoken about what happened to her dad this candidly in years, and it wasn't easy for her to do. She's found that grief sits like a spike in the back of her throat, and though its point dulls ever so slightly as time passes, it's still a fucking spike. It's still something she has to swallow around with difficulty.

She sighs. Her shoulders drop. Talking about this has lifted a bit of the weight off, but she'd like to be alone now.

"Anything else you want to know?" And Glimmer is lucky, to be given the opportunity to ask, "Before I go. I– need to think."

[sparklequeen]

"...No. Not right now." Glimmer admits, though she thinks about it for a long moment. She's not willing to press Abby much further at this point, and it might be better for both of them to have some space. She feels wrung out and exhausted from the conversation, though maybe not the same way as Abby.

"Thanks for talking to me."

[armd]

"Thanks for listening."

She's silently relieved that Glimmer doesn't have more questions for her. Abby had been resigned to answer them, but they're brushing up incredibly close to details she isn't ready to divulge. Glimmer doesn't ask her about the people that Ellie killed, for example, and she's grateful for that. She wouldn't have answered.

Tired, but calm. It's good. A wrung-out kind of feeling. "I'll see you around."

[sparklequeen]

"Yeah. See you around, Abby," Glimmer replies softly, leaning up against the wall. She'll let Abby go first, especially since she's nearest the door. Glimmer thinks she might have to stay and think on some stuff, just a little longer.