faderift | [open] and when i wake up you'll be here

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[open] and when i wake up you'll be here

WHO: Clarisse
WHAT: Arrival + some quarantine stuff
WHEN: Now, ig
WHERE: Ferelden somewhere + the Gallows
NOTES: n/a

Arrival

Weird dreams are a near nightly thing for demigods, so Clarisse doesn't bat an eye when she finds herself waiting for the elevator at the top of the Empire State Building in her basketball uniform, other than to wonder what kind of weird symbolism it is and hope that it's not going to interfere with her midterms. Even when the doors open and she steps in and lands on nothing but empty air, she manages not to scream. It all happens too fast, anyway.

Clarisse only has time to think, oh shit, and then she hits the dirt hard. The breath gets punched out of her chest and she wheezes pitifully, wondering since when her dreams are realistic enough to hurt. She rolls onto her back, wipes at the dirt on her chin, and finds herself staring up at something she can't comprehend, much less identify. The air looks... torn open, and through the jagged green split, she can see patches of concrete and red rocks.

The view is interrupted by something moving—something humanoid but elongated, with a grin that spreads too far in each direction. That's comprehendible. She's not sure what she's looking at, specifically, but she knows bad news when she sees it. Clarisse pushes off the ground at a run, angling herself away from the whatever-the-fuck-that-thing-is and trying to put some distance between her and it.

Quarantine - Dining Hall

At least the food here looks... pretty normal. She should be thankful for that.

Clarisse is in the dining hall, sitting straight backed and uncomfortable and pushing a piece of beef (probably?) around with a fork. She looks a little bit miserable, but what else is new? Push, push, push. The fork never seems to actually make it to her mouth.

Finally, she can't stand it anymore, and says to whoever's nearby: "Is there a place around here I can make an offering?"

Quarantine - Training Yard

Maybe she'd been slacking off on training a little bit, before she'd fallen out of the fucking sky, but that's over. If anything, the practice gives Clarisse a sense of familiarity, even while she's stuck in a place that's the complete opposite. She knows the moves. She's done them almost every day, for years. Doesn't matter where she is.

For anyone who happens to walk by and see her, it's clear that Clarisse is no beginner with the spear. She handles it with practiced ease, and it seems like she'd have no problem showing anybody else what it's like to be on the other end of Maimer's barbed tip. But when she does notice somebody watching, Clarisse only gives them a terse nod.

"You waiting for the space?"

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The name doesn’t mean anything to Clarisse; it just sounds cool. Still, that’s as good a reason as any, and besides, she’s sure it does have a meaning, to Ellie at least, and so she gives her an approving nod.

“Nice. What’s it mean?”

Also, stupid and dramatic are both things she loves, so.

The corner of Ellie's mouth twists, and she bites down on it, framing out her answer as she works over the horse's mane.

"It's the name of a constellation here in Thedas," she says. "It's of a girl with her head in the clouds."

Another pause, because she could leave it there, but.

"There was this... guy, a mage, who wanted to hurt her. So her dad sent her to live in the sky. The mage got angry, and killed her dad. And she became the constellation."

She pauses again.

"It's also called The Sacrifice."

Clarisse is nodding, even as she bites her lip in an almost unconscious mirroring of the expression on Ellie's face. The whole thing sounds like it could be straight out of a Greek myth... all tragic and weird.

She's deliberately not asking why Ellie'd want to name her bow after that very specific constellation. The unasked question sort of hangs there between them for several moments.

"It's a cool name," she says, finally, to break the silence. "You like all that shit? Constellations and planets."

Ellie holds her breath while Clarisse chews over that information, and it breaks good. She's glad she won't have to explain that one. She's not sure how she'd begin.

She decides that she likes Clarisse. There's a strange aura of home around her, not the place but the attitude. Of someone used to profoundly shitty things but still kicking out of spite, still surviving even when everything converges to make it a nightmare to do so.

Ellie still doesn't know very much about her, but she's all right.

"Thanks," she says to start, and then a grin breaks across her face, making it obvious that this is her favorite thing, actually.

"Yeah. I love that shit. It's- kinda dumb, but when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up."

Ellie tugs the comb gently through a snag. "And when I came here, Wysteria lent me her telescope. So I've been studying the sky here ever since. Learning all the stories and stuff."

It doesn't sound dumb to Clarisse. Somebody's gotta grow up to be the astronauts of the world, after all. Not her, of course. She's almost positive that there was some kind of mist-related fudging of her college applications. But somebody like Ellie? Sure, why not.

"You still could," she says, sounding completely serious. But she can't help grinning as she adds, "Bring Thedas into the space age. Come on."

Maybe she could figure out how to warp them home, or something.

"Sh'yeah, I could bribe Tony to build me a rocket," Ellie snickers, a smile peeking out before she knows what to do with it.

Head out there just to see the sunrise."

"Fuck that." Clarisse is still smiling, but it takes on a little bit of an edge. "I'd watch the sunrise and then get the hell out of here."

She's still so new. The denial hasn't totally worn off yet. Part of her still thinks this is some kind of fucked up punishment from her dad, and if she suffers through it long enough, he might pluck her out of here and send her back home.

"But you'd still stop to watch the sunrise," Ellie points out, grinning wider.

"I would. I've seen pictures of it. I don't think anything's gonna compare to the real view."

As she talks, her smile eases into something more thoughtful.

"Is your world that great?"

"Yeah!" Clarisse admits. "I would do it so I could tell people I did." Not because she thinks sunrises are pretty or something.

She almost answers Ellie's question without a thought. Yeah, her world is great. She's the daughter of a god. But if she takes a second to think about it, okay, yeah, there are plenty of shitty things about the place she comes from. She shrugs one shoulder. "It's not that it's perfect. It's mine. This place is just, I don't know. I don't fit here.

Besides, like. My mom is there." This is sort of an afterthought, though. Clearly.

Ellie nods to herself, taking it all in. It's a serious answer, a serious question, even if she hadn't thought she framed it that way.

Shrugging one shoulder, she rubs her hand along the horse's back, getting rid of the loose stray hairs. She's all clean, but she's just loving the attention now.

And maybe Ellie's quiet for a touch too long.

It's mine, Clarisse says, and it makes Ellie wonder if any place is hers, now. If any place ever really was hers.

"Your mom?"

Clarisse circles back around to the mare's front, running her hand over the velvety nose again, feeling the soft, warm breath on her palm. "Yeah. She's mortal, obviously. She lives in Arizona, and I left when I was eleven. But I moved back earlier this year so I could live near her again."

It had been this whole plan. She was never going to get into NYU like Silena had, but she could go to school back home, near her mom. Maybe they'd stop being virtual strangers and be more like a family again, the way it had been before Clarisse had left home in the first place. The two of them against the world. And then she'd figure out what to do with herself, and assuming she didn't get taken out by a random monster or called back to fight in another fucking war, she'd... live a life.

Obviously, that's not happening anytime soon.

Ellie sits with that for a minute, just thinking about it while she goes to get the halter, standing next to Clarisse to buckle it on. The mare nibbles gently at Clarisse's palm, curious and mollified by the attention, hopeful about treats.

Things looked up immediately when Clarisse came in! Maybe she's a new friend!

"Why'd you leave?"

Clarisse blows some hair out of her face and doesn't look up from the mare's gentle eyes and quiet sniffing. She could say it's none of Ellie's business, but at this point does that really matter? It happened a long time ago. The hardest part is trying to condense the story into something close to conversational.

"I didn't know who my dad was, growing up. The gods don't really... stick around, you know? I only knew something was weird about me. And the older I got the worse it was. Monsters started coming after me. First once in a while, then a lot. There are satyrs whose job it is to search for demigods and try to rescue them before they get killed, and that's what happened with me. They took me to New York to live at this training camp where I'd learn how to fight, but I had to leave my mom."

She's not embarrassed by the story itself—she was just a kid, after all—but by the admission that her father hadn't been around at all when she'd been born. Being a war god's daughter wasn't some special honor, she hadn't been planned on, there was no sense of royalty or being born into greatness for her. She's just one of dozens (hundreds), painfully common.

Ellie listens, getting the sense that it's longer, more complicated. All lives are, but the people who end up pulled through the Rifts into Thedas are anything but ordinary.

"That sucks," she says, heartfelt, but not pitying. It does fucking suck.

"I hope you get to go back to your mom."

Ellie's never had parents, not technically. She's never had a mother to miss, just a switchblade and a letter. But if it was anything like what she had with Joel, it's got to be hell to be apart.

"Maybe someday." Clarisse gives the mare's nose a final stroke with her palm, then takes a step back. "It's okay, though. I don't regret it." It's just what happened.

Her mind's circling back to the question Ellie'd asked, the thing about her world being so great.

"You don't want to go back? To where you're from." Because that means either Ellie's home is just that shitty, or being here long enough has warped her into choosing to stay here regardless. Like Stockholm syndrome, or something.

Ellie presses her lips together in a thin line as she turns away, getting out a saddle blanket. She tucks it against her chest as she walks back, thinking.

"No." It hurts to say, though much less than it used to. She pauses again, spreading the blanket over the mare's back, smoothing it down like she can order her thoughts. It always feels so impossible to condense, because nothing can adequately explain it.

"There was a zombie apocalypse? But like, a fungus that eats your brain. It happened a while before I was born. Like years."

She shrugs.

"It makes this place seem like a vacation."

Clarisse's eyebrows furrow. Zombies. A fungus that eats your brain. It sounds like some shit right out of a movie, but she can tell Ellie isn't kidding. Her eyes briefly dart down to look at Ellie's hand, then away again.

"Shit. Guess it would."

Ellie catches the glance, shrugs one shoulder up.

"Hot water, food, and a war we actually have a chance at winning? I'll take the other weird shit any day."

She takes the mare's halter rope and thumps it into Clarisse's chest.

"Here. You might as well name her."

"Wha—"

The rope hits her in the chest, and she fumbles for it before managing to grab it. Did Ellie just give her a horse? She doesn't want it. She's pretty sure it's not even Ellie's to give to her, or to tell her to name. Like, it probably already has one.

"Potato." It's the first, dumbest thing that popped into her head. Mostly she just wants Ellie to veto it and take the halter back.

If it has a name, then the horse's last owner didn't share it. Ellie shrugs; hell, it's not her horse to name or give away. But she lives here in Riftwatch and they need something to call her.

Ellie snorts, not bothering to hide her smile, and crosses her arms over her chest, lifting her shoulders.

"There's already a griffon named Potato. Sorry."

"Shit."

Can't have two Potatoes running around, that's true. Clarisse looks more closely at the mare, really sizing her up. Several seconds pass while she thinks it over.

"Okay," she says with a sigh, like there's just no way this can be helped. (Also, it's Ellie's fault.) She gives the horse a brisk, affectionate pat on the neck. "You're a good girl, Limp Bizkit."

Ellie makes a disgusting bastard noise between a laugh and a honk in the back of her throat, reaching up to cover her mouth, but her eyes are shining when she looks at her, and she does not throw out that perfect name, thank you.

"Best girl," she says, her voice tight.

"Oh, yeah," Clarisse says, grinning and continuing to just... be terrible. As she often does. "I am, aren't I."

Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares, slayer of the Lydian drakon, namer of unfortunate horses.

Ellie quite obviously and visibly bites back a laugh. Of course, there's no saving it. But she tries.

"I obviously meant the horse."

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[open] and when i wake up you'll be here

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