(Closed) Even when I try, you don't believe it

[armd]

WHO: Worst girls (Abby, Ellie) & guests
WHAT: Shit going down September
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: the Gallows. Fitting!
NOTES: Oh no. CW for eventual violence, & discussion of past violence, murder, slavery, child abuse, torture, stalking. Will update as we go along too

The nightmare is an entirely different beast, unlike anything she's had before. Abby doesn't even remember getting to her bed and falling asleep; why would she? Nothing about tonight was abnormal, until now.

She finds herself dreaming, unusually lucid, and completely aware of the cool night air and thick pain pulsing in her thigh and shoulder, blood a hotter wet contrasted to the rain. A trickle of understanding: she's walking back from the theater? Lev is ahead of her, bow in his hands, drawn. Ready. He's wearing her jacket, and he turns to look over his shoulder as if he heard her think his name. It's so good to see him again she could cry and maybe she is, just a little, but it's hard to tell in the rain.

The memories start off slow, catching her up, taking them back to the aquarium and then further, to the next day, a week out–

The time on the boat could go even slower. Abby wants to savour going down the coast with the kid in tow, the two of them bruised silent for days before they relax into the routine of handling the sails; Albany isn't long enough. There's Lev, fishing off the side of the boat. Abby, writing letters in the cabin, curled up on her side. Together they comb through Florence, Port Orford, Ferndale, heading south, hunting Fireflies, months of travel covered in a night of sleep. He teaches her how to whistle like a Seraphite with two fingers in her mouth, and Abby wakes him the morning dolphins pull up alongside them in Santa Rosa; it no longer feels like they're running from ghosts.

Every lead they get runs to a dead end. It's hard to shake the feeling that they're going the right way anyway– or maybe Abby didn't notice the way Lev looked at her then and does now. He rolls with every disappointment, and her enduring hope; he doesn't care if they find any Fireflies, or not. He's fine with the way that things are so long as they're together.

A disappointment in Anaheim leads them to 2425 Constance, Santa Barbara, and she wishes that part would go much faster.

Wagner notices that Abby has begun twitching and whimpering in her sleep: he does his best to wake her but can't, even when he jumps on to the bed to drape over her legs like a sack of anxious potatoes. Abby doesn't notice, dead to everything else but the dream as it turns on its heel to attack her. Perhaps it's lucky River isn't around when she claws her way up and out with an airless sob, a crying heave for breath. Seconds ago she'd been drowning in the ocean. She was fighting for air, through blood slick fingers and hands.

Her own scrabble at herself, palming her body and throat. Still here, still intact. She can feel the spot where her braid caught between the back of her neck and her pillow but everything slots into place with little relief–

She cries.

It's only her in the room and a whining dog (who knows something is wrong but not what). She's got a fistful of her own hair and she knows where she is, but the pattern of cage bars has burned onto the undersides of her eyelids, claustrophobia crawling up and down her spine. She can almost feel Lev asleep and fitful, tucked into her side (Wags, his weight leaning into her, wet nose burying into the crook of her arm in an attempt to soothe). By the time he was cut down from the pillars and fell into her arms, he weighed next to nothing. Abby was no better; their bones were hollow. She runs her hands slowly up herself, a stomach no longer concave, and skin no longer blistered.

They were the same size as each other. The fight was almost fair.

Ellie.

Abby flinches from the memory of her, and irons both hands up over her face, peering through her fingers. She shivers around the urge to dry heave. Is she imagining the tang of salt water in the back of her throat?

She's moving before she realises. She's pulling clothes on, keeping the protesting dog inside with her leg as she opens and shuts the door to go out. She has to accept that she knows her well enough by now to check her usual haunts: the tower to the griffon keep, closest, Abby's first guess: empty. It's too late for the library or the stables to have many people left in them, good. She can't risk running into anybody else, not volatile like she is, a loaded gun.

She doesn't know what she wants. They are past talking. Or rather: she thought that they already spoke about this, and cleared whatever air they could. She certainly didn't think that finding out Ellie withheld information from her would hurt like this: sharp, and knife-like, jammed into her ribs.

All she wants to know is why.

Comments

[armd]

Wags sinks on his haunches, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. He is seemingly more content to sit now that Jude is going to stick around for a moment, his muzzle at Abby's fingertips. She scritches his nose, and then smooths her hand up, between his ears. Is it weird? Maybe. Whatever.

She's using the same hand to pet him that she hit Ellie with. Her knuckles still bear the marks.

The urge to cry is suddenly overwhelming. She goes silent for a moment, working through it, blinking. She lets out all her breath. Jude's eyes are warm, and yellow. She tells him, "It's okay," and then snorts. The fuck is she lying to a wolf for? "It'll be okay. Don't worry."

[foolsmakeitcolder]

Oh, he feels that. That skip. That almost. That something that tugs. She blinks it all back, and Jude gives her bruised knuckles a soft, warm lick, comforting the hurt.

Not, it's not weird.

He pushes closer, setting aside any strangeness for the warmth of it, nudging into her hands. He sits down in the grass, deliberately, puts a paw against her boot.

[armd]

Wagner mirrors the behaviour without thought, his weight sinking into Abby's leg. He does this whenever she's sitting down, finds her knees and leans. It's something she loves about him, the silent, doggy reassurance of him being there, and close. Abby sighs, and sniffs, and shrugs a shoulder.

She doesn't know what to say. But Jude sits, his paw finding her boot like a warm palm might find her shoulder and suddenly, it spills out.

"... I had a dream about being home, and everything that happened to me after I left." Doesn't explain the black eye, but it doesn't have to. The dream was the catalyst. She feels numb. Paralysed, rooted to the spot. Quietly, "It was bad. It was really fucking bad. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

There's nothing she can do, is the problem. She can't go back for Lev. It's eating away at her.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

Jude pauses, one ear flicking back towards her, and he leans with his shoulder, pushing against Abby's legs until he has no choice but to sit down.

He licks her face. Delicate, like she's something so much smaller, careful over her bruises and black eye.

Listening, still. Comforting. Abby needs to purge this, somehow. The sickness of it fills her to the point of rupture, and he can tell that she's not telling him for the sake of him knowing, it's because something needs to escape through the valve he's slowly wrenching open.

cw mention of slavery

[armd]

Abby sits forcibly with a whump of breath and her attention sticks on Jude as he noses into her space, playing pup. He sits between her knees. The rope of Wags' leash is still tight around her hand but she loosens it, lets it go. He doesn't dash. He seems to understand the gravity of the situation. One of Abby's hand drifts to Jude's shoulder and anchors there, fingers clenching against coarse, warm fur.

She gathers her breath, holding it until she feels like she might burst.

"I was traveling with this kid back home. He saved my life and I wanted to pay him back for that, make it worth his while. And then all we had left was each other, so we decided to keep going." Together. Her, and Lev. Her other hand joins the scruff, worming her fingers in, feeling the tufts. Closer to his heart, Jude is soft, and warmer. "The people he used to be with tried to hurt him. All I wanted to do was to find some place he could be himself, be a kid, but I got us caught."

That fucking radio... She's thought about it a lot since the nightmare. What if that hadn't been the Fireflies at all? What if the Rattlers set the whole place up as a decoy to catch stupid, hopeful idiots like her. She gave away everything in a sixty second call: her name, the size of her group, and their exact location.

She shudders, swallowing thickly. When she blinks two, huge tears roll down her face. She releases Jude to thumb them away, her hand dragging down her face, over her mouth, curling up there. She digs her teeth in the heel of her palm, and breathes. "Caught by a group of hostile survivors. There was too many of them, I couldn't fight them off, and they hurt Lev so I couldn't even try. So I gave up and they took us back to their camp. They had a lot of other slaves there, down in the basements, in cages."

Abby looks rattled just recounting it. She is pale and quiet, her gaze darting up. There is nobody here but the three of them: her, the dog, and the man in-between. Her fingers dust the top of his head, between his ears. She whispers through the spaces between her fingers, "I thought they were going to kill us. But it was worse than that." Dying would have been final. What the Rattlers did to her and Lev went on, and on, and on.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

What Abby says is just as significant as what she doesn't. What she glosses over. She talks about the point of capture, about how she tried to stop it, about how she felt that she should have, even when it would have been impossible.

Lev was hurt, and being used against her. She'd done whatever it took to keep them alive, even if it meant complying.

She is haunted, hurting, and some part of her is still trapped there, guarding and struggling to survive it. For her, the trauma is still ongoing, and it's compounded by it not being visible to anyone around her.

Jude settles his bulk across her lap, though he's probably heavier than she is, and blocks her in with his body, giving her a place to hide. If anyone happens upon him they'll see only him, standing guard.

He puts his massive head over her shoulder, his cheek to hers, a canine version of a hug.

[armd]

A beat, and Jude pushes forward into the circle of her arms. The biggest reason to not speak about what happened is having to weather any one reaction: the inevitable horror of realisation, jaw-clenching sympathy. The wolf can't express any of that. Abby blinks through a rush of nauseating relief, and her eyes water, and blur. She'd sooner split open down the middle than keep trying to hold it back– she drops her face into his rough, warm fur.

Nobody can tell that she's here, right? Jude moves closer, to hide her away behind his body, and it makes Abby feel smaller, vulnerable. Safe, for the first time since the dream.

She gasps, wet and crushed into his shoulder, and holds on so tight.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

There you are.

Jude shuts his eyes, reaches down deep, pulses out the warmth he so easily has a handle on in a wholly different reality, the sense of safety and stillness. An anchor for Abby to tie herself to in this storm.

Leaning his wolf-bulk back into her, he catches and steadies her effortlessly, letting her put her full weight on him. He takes it willingly, gladly, siphoning off that terrible hurt.

There's a rumble, deep in his chest, like distant thunder, and he settles. Unmoving.

[armd]

Jude pushes up and into her until she realises that she can crumple against him; there's a real, disgusting freedom in allowing herself to draw breath (warm, wolf-scented) and sob into him, her shoulders sagging. There's so much pain to expunge. It won't stop until it all comes up, every little bit of rage she felt in the nest, all the horror and guilt. She leaves a wet spot on his coat.

It's been such a long time since she let herself cry like this. It's like being gutted, so rotten and satisfying.

She doesn't know how long it takes for her to stop. Time blurs, and when she comes back into herself she's mostly quiet again, save for wet, thick inhales. At some point she had to turn her face to the side to catch her breath, but her eyes are still shut. They're hot, and sore.

Her hands, still clenched against Jude's sides, shiver, and pet through him a few times, the motion soothing in its repetitiveness.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

It's terrible, these echoes. What catches and stirs like a leviathan beneath his senses. A yawning pain and terror and helplessness and hurt. Lost, so lost.

But there is relief in tears, in purging the stress and grief and hurt and guilt. It may leave her empty and aching, but that rawness will give her room.

Even after Abby's crying quiets, Jude doesn't move. There's no hurry here, no end. No need for him to be anywhere else. He's grateful, so grateful that he can do this much. That he can be safe.

He reaches in deep, pushes it out. It feels like an oar trying to find purchase in an ocean, but he stirs and stirs.

Safe.

[armd]

Her heartbeat slows to normal, brings a lead-weight exhaustion with it, until she thinks she could doze off slumped against Jude's ruff. She sighs upon realisation, but doesn't try to sit up. Not yet. Five more minutes, and she'll pull herself together again.

Wags registers to her then, a sweet and anxious presence fizzing at her elbow. She drops a hand down to knuckle between his ears, and he ends up licking her hand, mouthing her fingers. He's trying to help too, so Abby rustles up half a smile for him, something tired and tiny.

She sits like that for maybe longer than five more minutes, breathing, and patting her dog, and then she lifts her weary head until she's more or less straight backed, sitting up. Her limbs are made of fucking concrete, and she's completely unable to save face at this point but who is going to tell? Jude won't say a word, and not just because he can't.

Likewise, Abby doesn't know what to say either. She swipes underneath her reddened eyes, and looks at him.

Wait. "Thanks," is probably a good start. Her voice croaks around the word.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

It takes time, and that's fine. He has more than enough of it.

When Abby pets Wags, Jude shifts enough to keep his head over her shoulder, his chin resting against the back of it, the canine version of a hug.

He longs to shift back, to properly hold her, but that might be too much right now. Instead when she turns to him, he delicately licks her face, cleaning up her tears. Careful, gentle of the bruises, as if she's much smaller than she is.

His eyes are deep golden-yellow and very steady.

[armd]

Abby is actually really glad he stays in his wolf-form. If he were human, she'd feel the need to act like an adult, to pull herself together; in this moment, she can allow herself to feel child-like, and vulnerable. In need of care.

But she still laughs when he licks her cheeks. The sound is so, so snotty.

"Okay, okay," she says thickly, lifting her face away from him, out of immediate range, "I get it." She's a mess. Right now, anyway. Maybe one day she could be okay again.

She wipes her cheek off with a curled fist and sighs, closing her eyes tight in a long blink. "Think I'm gonna walk," is her conclusion, the all important answer to now what? She'll walk with Wags, and then she'll go back into her room and lie down and try to get some goddamn rest. She's actually in the mood to try for sleep, and oddly lighter, as if those tears had been weighing her down all this time. "D'you want to come?"

[foolsmakeitcolder]

He loves her laugh.

It does help. Jude reaches for her again, letting her heartbeat roll over him. It's less of a strain now, now that he knows how to listen. It's so very quiet compared to what he's used to, and it flickers in and out. But it still breathes life into him.

One last lick to her cheek, and Jude stands to permit her to get up, ducking his head under her hand in answer. Yes, he wants to come.

He'll walk her back to her room, or wherever she chooses to be. His presence is a guard, taking away that need for responsibility and vigilance, silent and protective. It's the most himself he's felt in months, and perhaps that's selfish, but he needs this just as much as she does.