faderift | When she was just a girl, she expected the world

Entry tags:

abby,
ellie

When she was just a girl, she expected the world

WHO: Abby, Ellie
WHAT: The conclusion of Cuntgate
WHEN: End of Bloomingtide
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: They haven't spoken since, y'know, this

Ellie's back from a mission. Sweaty. Tired. It's late, and all she really wants is to soak her feet. She's still too keyed up to properly go to bed.

Once the kettle's warm enough to take off the brazier, she pours the steamy water into a basin next to her bed. Pulls her boots off one by one. Eases her feet into the water and lays back on the sheets with a low groan.

"Fuck," she mutters under her breath. Deep breath in, let it all out.

A snuffly-nosed overgrown puppy lets himself in. Noses around her fingers until she moves her hand to scratch him behind the ears.

"Hey, buddy," she mutters, but doesn't get up to play or properly pet him. He licks at her fingers, whines softly, then fucks off for something much more interesting -- one of her boots.

"No, don't-" Ellie mutters as Wags scoops up one of her boots in his mouth, then takes off excitedly running down the hallway. Ellie stares after him, considering, then lets out a deep sigh and lets it go.

She's due for new boots soon, anyway.

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Shrug. "I didn't plan to. He needed me more."

Well. The WLF never needed her. Isaac said that he did but that wasn't true. Hindsight has offered Abby a lot of clarity, and she's realised that they were using each other the entire time, because she wanted information about Joel, and he wanted bodies for his war. At the time it was an equal trade off.

Now, thinking about it makes her feel sick. Lev was hardly the first kid to fall into the jaws of the WLF after all, just the first kid that Abby actually bothered to give a shit about. There is so much blood on her hands.

"Why are you trying to justify it?" It's a little heated, maybe. It feels like she's been on the back foot for most of this conversation. Ellie hasn't been answering anything, so Abby asks her, "Why do you care?"

Ellie presses the breath out of her lungs, scoots back on the mattress, until her back's against the stone of the wall. Sits there, trying to gather her thoughts.

It's insane, isn't it? Sitting here, talking honesty with the person she's tried so hard to kill? It's hard to make this Abby, the Abby that she knows, exist in front of her and in her memories at the same time. The reassurance from the others helped, but they never knew Abby and Ellie. Not back then.

Maybe that's what makes Abby so terrifying now.

She knew her back then.

"I'm not," she says, then examines that feeling. Is she? Why does she care?

Why does she care?

Ellie squeezes her knuckles in her lap, trying to sort through the tangled mess of thought, teasing out the edges. Finally, she lifts her gaze from Wags to Abby.

"Because," she whispers. She cracks her knuckles, and the sound is loud in the enclosed space. The brazier crackles a response.

"You're the only one who knows what it's like."

When Ellie moves Abby does too, the two of them tapping out for moments to rearrange themselves, settle into the conversation they're having. It's a welcome release from some nervous tension. Abby sits down properly on the floor, pressing the small of her back against the wall and Ellie watches her, cat-like, from the bed. It's almost laughable how they press away from each other as best they can, leave so much space between. Wags flops down at her hip, head on his paws.

What Ellie says rings so, painfully true. Abby lets it hang in the silence for a moment, her hand rubbing up behind the dog's velvety ears.

"Yeah." She is the only one, and so is Ellie, to her. "I think about that a lot. You just... get it. I don't have to explain things to you."

It's a comfort she hasn't acknowledged until now. Saying it out loud, finally, gives her the courage to add, "We don't have to be friends. That's not what I want, not with you." No offence. "But we can be friendly. If... you want."

And she looks up. She looks, at Ellie.

Ellie listens, staring at the patch of floor Wags is settled on. They keep finding each others' eyes, letting go again, all the space between them filled with all the horrible things that'll never go away.

When Abby looks up, she's there. Right there looking back at her, carrying everything in her chest.

It comes out of her in a little huff of sound, and she presses her lips together, so they won't tremble. She thinks of Joel, and the horrified, gutted look in his eyes when she told him what she'd done, in that brief window of time she'd had him back. She thinks of the dream built by herself and the Abby of a reality away, the both of them struggling to open a door, to turn the knob that needed the both of their strength to open, or they'd be drowned.

She thinks of Abby in that haunted place, standing in the doorway and watching the crystal-clear memories of her father. The last few hours before his fate was sealed.

She thinks of Abby on the cliffside, hugging it and breathing fast as Ellie leverages her weight to keep her from falling. Abby stitching her up by candlelight, Abby sitting next to a bonfire, asking the question that nobody, not once, had ever bothered to ask her before.

"Yeah," she whispers. And it feels like so much less than what's needed to carry the feeling of it.

"Okay."

"... Okay," Abby echoes. It comes out in a sigh when she releases a breath she didn't even realise she was holding. She irons her palm over her knee, grounding herself, and Ellie looks at her, and she realises she's stopped being afraid of the smallest moments between them feeling significant because she isn't grasping for something to say, she's... sitting with this. She's absorbing the calm strangeness of being on the floor of Ellie's room in something along the lines of a comfortable silence.

Her hand rubs the dog's belly when he rolls lazily over, stretching out. She thinks she feels glad, that they could agree on this, together. Her and Ellie.

Eventually, Abby says, almost absentmindedly, "How many people came to talk to you after you said that, anyway."

Cuz the public fight definitely raised a few eyebrows on her end...

Ellie makes a coughing noise in the back of her throat, something like a laugh, and reaches up to rub her ear. She can just guess how many came to Abby, wanting to know if she was all right, and also what the fuck.

"Three."

She bounces her foot, thoughtful, and looks up at Abby. It's easier than she thought, now that she's agreed start trying to unwind herself from this noose. She's still bound to get tangled up, but for now it's easier to breathe.

Kind of blows her mind. But she doesn't dislike it, this silence punctuated by thoughts and the rub of Abby's hand across a Mabari puppy's belly.

"How about you?"

Mobius, River, Loki... Abby's nose scrunches in memory. Derrica. "Four."

And she didn't even get the worst word in. What gives, right. Her mouth hikes up at one corner ruefully, eyes on her pup. She's found the spot he likes scratched most and one of his legs is churning madly in midair, occasionally catching her in the arm. She doesn't mind.

"Couple of them thought we might attack each other, or something."

Even though she'd already told them about the truce. That's what she doesn't understand. Nobody will take her goddamn word for it, and she can't tell which of them can't be trusted. Her, or Ellie.

"It's not a competition," Ellie mutters under her breath, her attention drawn to the way Wags is wriggling in ecstasy over there. Tension effectively broken. He's a good little guy.

"I don't think any of mine thought we were gonna attack each other, but."

She pauses on that, purses her lips together, forces the air slowly out of her lungs.

"You make good friends."

It's soft, a little awkward. Heartfelt. River is a keeper. More than she knows, or probably believes. She reaches up, rubs the side of her nose.

"River wanted to know why you were a... you know. Wouldn't really take no for an answer."

She can't say it without fighting a smile.

"And Mobius was... he was good."

There aren't any words to describe how much she'd needed that talk. Both of them.

Abby stifles a laugh against the back of her hand, clearing her throat, and glances up just in time to catch a look on Ellie's face that's a little softer than what's usually there. It gives her a weird feeling, not necessarily unpleasant. Just weird. It will take a while for them to navigate this without some feeling of strangeness. Or maybe they won't ever learn; the thought doesn't bother her.

"Thanks?" Is that something you say thanks to? "She's- something else, huh. She came to talk to me after she spoke to you, she said-" She forgot she was supposed to hate you. Abby stops stretching her legs out. She draws them back in close, and doesn't finish her sentence, shrugging it off.

Doesn't matter.

"... I actually ended up talking to Loki about what happened." Now it's her turn to sound awkward. Her voice drops, soft. "S'kinda the first time I've said anything about it since I got here." And that felt good, even though it was hard.

She said-?

Ellie frowns at her thoughtfully, seeing if she'll go on. She's disappointed when she doesn't. Wonders what River said about her, or if it was more about Abby. Nothing about Ellie's shit is a secret, though. Ellie's not built for hiding her feelings.

What Abby does say is a rush of mixed feelings. A year ago she'd have been horribly fucked up over the thought of anybody comforting Abby over it, considering what she did. Now-

Well. Ellie's not much better, is she? And they both have to live with it. Maybe this is part of figuring out how.

"Really? The first?"

This is profoundly strange. She kind of can't believe she just said that, to Ellie. Of all people.

Abby goes, "Mmhmm," and shrugs a shoulder. She's loosened her grip tentatively on Wags' collar at long last and he's remaining idly at her side, being good. For once. She rumples his ears up in gratitude, and he huffs, his tail thumping against her thigh.

She doesn't like talking about it, and doubts Ellie is any different, so she veers off the subject, taking refuge in something less painful instead. "Been having to explain the infected a lot, too. There's no..." What's the word, "Normal way to say it. Y'know?"

Ellie snorts aloud, like she's trying to swallow a laugh, ducking her head and lifting her shoulders. God, there really is no normal way to tell people about their world, about the infected.

"Do they give you that look? Like the 'oh-shit-I-didn't-think-it-was-THAT-bad-but-that-explains-so-much-about-you' look?"

There really is no normal way to react, either, but that's the one she always gets.

"Literally every single time," she deadpans, thinking immediately of Benedict, "It's so weird. Not used to people acting like that about it."

It makes sense, but. At the same time, it just doesn't?? And what's the point in getting scared or concerned about it when the threat didn't follow her and Ellie here, anyway. Speaking of, she jokes, "I've almost stopped freaking out when I accidentally drop something on the ground in the middle of the night."

Sudden loud sounds, man...

Ellie snorts aloud, this time not bothering to hold back the laugh.

"I dropped a soap caddy in the baths. My hand was on my knife so fucking fast."

It's nice to be able to laugh about this, instead of getting concerned looks.

"Do basements still freak you the hell out?"

"Yeah," Abby says fervently, Wags perking up a little at all the excitement. "They're the fucking worst, they make my palms all sweaty." It's awful actually, she remembers having to grip her gun so fucking tight sometimes, just to keep from dropping it.

"Don't get me started on the spiral staircases." Sometimes they're just... you don't know what's lurking around the corner, you know?? And also the whole fucking thing is a corner

"Right. Going up a spiral staircase isn't so bad, it's going down that fucks with me," Ellie admits. The fresh air helps, and the way the stone gives back the sound.

"There's some places in Kirkwall that get me, too. Darktown?"

"Hate it. Hate going there." This is fun, "The mess hall at night sucks too, it's too big."

"The practice yard."

This is so fun, just throwing these out. Getting to hate on perfectly normal things and have someone instinctively understand why.

"Too open, with too many places to hide all around it."

"Lowtown after dark?" She grins. "Though I guess once the sun goes down the danger is more from the people who already live there, huh." All the scoundrels, and such.

Wags gets to his feet, but he goes to Ellie this time. He drops his chin on her knee. Abby watches him, and rolls her eyes. "He really likes you."

What bad taste. Kidding, kidding...

"Yup."

Ellie huffs under her breath, almost a laugh, and holds out her hand in welcome even before Wags anoints her knee with his puppy slobber. Good boy. Best boy.

She fondles his ears, giving him a really good scratch in the places under his collar where he can't reach.

"Yeah, well..." she trails off, her stomach churning. Remembering. But she's in too deep. They can't dance around everything forever.

"I usually get along well with animals."

They both remember the exception.

"Yeah, when they aren't coming at you."

It's a dark thing to say and the skinniest of olive branches, because Abby gets it, really, if she pushes past the hurt and indignation. Alice came at Ellie in defense, and she reacted. You can't have a level conversation with a dog.

She watches Wags rub his face happily all over Ellie's knee. Thinks about Lev and Yara, and their fear of Alice, and how many times she had to reassure them both that she wouldn't attack them.

"... She wasn't my dog," she says, numbly. It's not to reassure Ellie or absolve her in any way, it just spills out. "She was the WLF's. They all were, we didn't own them." And Alice was always the less egregious of what Ellie did to her, anyway. "We used them against the Scars. Seraphites."

It feels more like a twist of a knife than an olive branch, but maybe acknowledging what happened directly is one of the first steps to... not forgiveness, exactly. But not fanning the embers of the fire that burned between them.

Ellie absorbs the information quietly. She doesn't know how to speak on it. She knows that if this were just someone from her world, she wouldn't push, wouldn't press, wouldn't be demanding answers.

... but this is Abby. And there's an awful intimacy that comes in being each others' worst source of pain.

"Why did you join them?" she asks. "The WLF? Everything I found out about them just made them seem like FEDRA, but without as many rules."

Abby smiles, but it isn't a nice smile, closer to a baring of teeth. She isn't angry with the question, just remembering. The Fireflies fled Utah in tatters.

Her voice is blunt when she explains, "There weren't many of us left. They offered to take us in if we'd fight for them. We said yes." The WLF had a lot of reach back then, but Abby doesn't expound. She won't tell Ellie that she put her head down and did the work, climbing ranks and using them as leverage to start asking around. Casually at first; know anybody named Joel Miller?

"They had a lot of land. They had a lot of food. You didn't ever see inside the old stadium, did you. Couple thousand of us were living there."

It's horribly practical, but it's in a way that Ellie understands. They had food. Ellie was privileged compared to some of the kids she knew, but she still understands what it is to have her body starving to death under her, even as she demands more of it.

It was more than survival for Abby, clearly. It was information, weapons, supplies.

She remembers Seattle.

"Never had to. Must've deployed a few hundred just looking for us," Ellie says, without looking away from Abby's face. "And the Scars wiped out the rest. We heard it, on the radios."

Abby knows where. But then, Ellie remembers:

"I never went to the island, but I saw it burning."

"Yep."

Maybe her tone indicates exactly what she thinks of that particular decision, but-

There's no point commenting on it, not really. Isaac did what he did. Most of the WLF paid the price. Abby's expression changes then, her gaze storming over and she looks haunted, remembering. "I was there. Lev– he tried to go back, we had to go get him. It was terrible."

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