CLOSED | She said, "Where'd you wanna go? How much you wanna risk?"

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie & Jude, Various
WHAT: Various closed prompts in one convenient place!
WHEN: (Spanning) Fantasy September
WHERE: Gallows, Kirkwall, Arlathan Forest
NOTES: Gonna have some fallout/followup threads from this log re: Abby's canon update! Mind the warnings. Graphic injuries. Spicy/sexual content. Hookah use. More TBD.

Comments

For Bastien

[notathreat]

Thankfully, her face isn't more beat up than it normally looks. A couple of bruises and scuffs here and there, and her arm is really fucking tender, but Ellie's good enough for work.

For the most part, she does an excellent job of hiding it, or at least playing it off. She usually rocks up after her frequent missions with a few dents, dings and bruises to show for them, so thankfully it's not hard to hide.

But there are a few people who pay more attention than most, and Ellie doesn't always have her guard up.

It's why she forgets, once, while reaching up to grab a book on one of the higher shelves above her head. Forgets that she shouldn't be lifting her left arm higher than her shoulder.

It's small. Just a pause and a flinch, the way her back goes tight and her breathing hitches for half a second in pain. She lifts the book, tucks it into her right arm instead and stays facing the shelf for a moment too long.

Turns, and nearly runs into Bastien, nearly dropping the book.

"-shit. Sorry."

[cozen]

"My fault," Bastien says, which is true. His shoes are soft-soled, his footsteps habitually quiet when he isn't putting on a show of being noisy. And he's the one who's come up behind her—first planning to trap her in a friendly chat, probably about music, before that flinch and brief freeze made him furrow his brow instead.

They're still furrowed. He looks at her arm, openly searching for the source of the problem.

"Are you alright?"

His attention shifts from her arm to her face with a pleasant sort of warning communicated in the tilt of his head and slight narrowing of his eyes. The phrasing is only polite. She better not try to say she is.

[notathreat]

A few points of attention connect; Bastien noticing, Ellie noticing that he's noticing, and she very momentarily looks frozen in place, caught out.

"Fantastic," she says automatically, then reaches up to lightly touch the spot that he noticed, acknowledging it.

"Just fucked up my shoulder. Waiting on the son of a bitch to heal."

[cozen]

Fantastic earns a further narrowing of his eyes, but she relents quickly enough, and he shifts easily from stern to sympathetic with a tongue-click.

"All these mages," he says, "and there are still limits to healing. But I suppose if there were not, no one wealthy would have ever died of anything for the last thousand years."

A breezy, conversational kind of sympathy. They're a military organization. People fuck up their shoulders. Even if he suspected drama he wouldn't accuse her of it.

But he's still asking, "What did you do?"

For Derrica (cw: injuries, blood, broken bones)

[notathreat]

Over the crystal, first: private, distracted. Ellie's voice sounds a little distorted because she's speaking through a swollen lip and a nose that may or may not be broken. Again.

"Hey, um. When you're not busy, can you please meet me in my room?"

It could sound like a come-on, but the tone makes it clear that it isn't. So does the please.

[tender]

No, this is not a come-on.

Of course is the immediate answer, prickling with a kind of quiet concern. Even with the implication that Derrica needn't rush, she simply finishes wrapping the roll of bandages and puts it into the basket before leaving the infirmary.

She goes directly to Ellie's door, enters when bidden. Rushes the last few steps to Ellie upon seeing the state of her, bloody and bruised, injuries stark and fresh.

"What happened?" stands in for are you alright? Obviously she isn't.

[notathreat]

Ellie's nose is still bleeding, sluggishly. She needs to go down to the storage room tomorrow and clean up all the mess left there, but it should keep for tonight. Nobody's been in there in years.

For now though, she's seated on her bed, has managed to pull off everything but her tunic and a pair of leggings. She's kind of dreading the tunic. Maybe she can do her arm and head first, then guide it down that arm-

Ellie starts, slightly, at the knock on the door. Shuts her eyes for a breath, gathering herself. She's still scattered as hell, but she needs the help, trusts Derrica not to go telling anyone.

"Don't be mad," she starts with, which is extra stupid, because that always precludes something that someone has every right to be mad about. She winces, visibly.

"... Abby had a dream. About where we're from. She came back, and wanted to talk to me, and... brought up some stuff."

Ellie glances down at her tunic, at the blood spots from it, brings the cloth back to her nose.

"So I started some shit," she says softly.

[tender]

A breath, held and let out as Ellie finishes speaking.

Briefly thinking back to other conversations with them both, trying to suss out the lines of the fracture between them. Trusting them both when they described a truce.

But anger doesn't come. Disappointment, maybe, creasing her expression. Worry too, stirring up as she looks at Ellie and sees all these wounds. Who is tending to Abby? Derrica has no doubt that she has just as many injuries as Ellie.

One thing at a time.

"Let me see," is what she settles on, fingers very light at Ellie's jaw. Underscoring the order. "Tip your head back."

To stem the bleeding. Give her opportunity to assess exactly how serious the injuries are before she goes to work on them.

For Iron Man

[notathreat]

Man, there was so much blood in that storage room.

Ellie's sort of gotten cleaned up, in the sense that she's rinsed the blood from her face, but her nose is still sluggishly bleeding into the cloth she has pressed to it, and she's doing everything more or less one handed because of it.

The apothecary's technically closed, but she stupidly used the last of her potions on her last run of courier duty after getting jumped by bandits, and hadn't restocked. So she's due to get another for her kit, really. It's not stealing.

She just... doesn't want anybody to see her while she does it.

Privacy's not a crime, right?

Anyway. She palms the potion, turns around to slip out and lock up, and freezes in place. Shit. Somebody's coming.

[propulsion]

Tony should probably figure out if Dickerson is following the modern medicine measures he'd inflicted on Isaac all those years ago. Well, he'd kind of inflicted on the group as a whole, nasty plague-carriers that they are, and Ellis had done the rest for him in terms of getting something official, because he was a lunatic nobody at the time as opposed to his current lofty station as lunatic somebody, but, you know.

They're overdue for a process review.

For now, however, he's doing a quick little restock, because playing courier for the resident alchemist is sometimes his job. She's real pretty, is the thing. His arrival is heralded by the sound of his easy and unstealthy footsteps, the click and clink of glassware in a wooden case, and the sudden and confident swinging open of the door.

And sees Ellie, and stops. Puzzled. She looks—caught, mainly, seeing that first before he notices any roughness. "Uh. Crimes?"

[notathreat]

Ellie might've gone invisible. Problem is she's also made a minor mess while searching for the right kind of stuff to re-pack her kit, and that's gonna raise way more eyebrows than if she owns up to it.

Bad slip.

"Uh. Maybe?" she admits, and holds up the potion flask in her bloody, bruised fingers.

"I was gonna sign it out. I just didn't want to wait until morning."

Maybe if she plays this off, it won't be a big deal. Maybe that would work, if she didn't look like she has at least one brewing black eye.

[propulsion]

"Sure."

Tony, this time, steps into the apothecary, using his heel to shut the door after him. He's holding a small open crate with glass bottles all separated out with cloth, so they don't rattle very much as he goes to set them down.

"I'd ask if you got hit by a car, but I haven't invented those yet. What gives?"

At this hour. People get banged up in the field, sure, but Ellie's a little close to home to be sporting that amount of fresh bruising.

For Clarisse

[notathreat]

It's been a few days now. Ellie's had time to heal, both magical and otherwise, but... well. You can't get the shit beaten out of you without accumulating a lot of bruises, and those hurt.

When Ellie had treated her wounds, she'd concentrated on her face, her hands, her collarbone. The part of her that were visible, the parts that needed to function. It meant the other constellations of bruises, normally hidden beneath clothes, were an afterthought.

And so was her emotional state.

After the high comes the crash, and while she's talked to people, it only goes so far. Now, she just needs to process. She swings wildly between being uncomfortably numb and feeling too sensitive to breathe, her skin aching so badly she wants to slough it all off. From wanting to drown herself in intimacy to not being able to stand the lightest touch.

So when she wakes up from her early night going to bed, well past midnight, she knows she won't be sleeping again any time soon. So she drags herself out of her sweaty sheets and heads to the hot, shared bath. It should be deserted this time of night. If not she can just stay in the water until everyone leaves.

Ellie scrubs herself first until her skin turns a little pinker than it should be, then eases herself into the hot water with a sigh, shutting her eyes as the heat slowly seeps into her sore shoulder and the bruises that litter her body.

[laruetheday]

It's so late, Clarisse isn't expecting anybody else to be in the baths when she shows up. In fact, that was the whole plan. The sight of somebody else already sunk into the hot water makes her stop short as she enters the room, and she feels annoyance twisting itself around her chest, heating up her blood. But it's not like she can actually yell at someone else for... having the same idea she did? And getting there first? And she's not about to turn around and leave; that would just make her look weak.

She's not planning on making conversation or anything, but she can see through the steam that the room's only other occupant is someone she's actually talked to before, and didn't hate, and so she mutters a quick "Hey" as she shimmies out of her basketball shorts.

[notathreat]

Ellie catches her breath when she hears the door open, shifting up in the water to peer through the steam, wondering if she should call out, dreading the thought of Abby coming in.

And for one horrible second Clarisse, with her build and her long hair, looks enough like Abby to send her heart rabbiting up into her throat.

Slowly, she releases where she'd been white-knuckling the side of the bath and sighs. Rubs one wet hand over her face and tries to shake off the lingering tension.

"Hey," she answers.

She thinks of asking why she's here so late, but. It's obvious. Neither of them can sleep.

[laruetheday]

Ellie's minor freakout goes mostly unnoticed, since Clarisse is doing her best not to look creepy and keep eyes on her. Instead she puts her singular focus into getting undressed. The rest of her clothes go in a messy pile over the shorts, and then Clarisse lowers herself into the water a decent distance from Ellie. She submerges her head, holds her breath until her lungs start to burn, and then reemerges to lean against the wall of the pool and close her eyes. She's not tired, but she's hoping that if she sits here long enough tiredness will take over at some point.

"I thought it'd be empty in here." Not accusatory exactly, just an explanation. Her eyes are still shut. "You always take a bath at one AM?" Like Ellie's the weird one for being in here, not her.

For Glimmer

[notathreat]

It's not something Ellie wants to do.

But if Glimmer finds out from someone else, she's going to be furious and hurt, and that's the last thing Ellie wants for her friend.

Hell. She's already going to be furious that this happened, and worried about Ellie, and... well. All things that Ellie doesn't very much want to think about.

So when she knocks on Glimmer's door the day after her fight with Abby, she's healed up enough for the public eye but still kind of looks like she's had an extremely crappy night.

"It's me."

Re: For Glimmer

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer doesn't know something's happened, but there's been a feeling. Especially since Ellie usually tried to find her at meal times, when the two crossed over. The last day or so, it had been weirdly quiet. So when she hears the knock at the door, the voice, she opens the door immediately.

"Hey," Glimmer says in a soft voice, studying Ellie. A long night? But they'd all been having those lately. This... this must be something else. As she closes the door behind Ellie, Glimmer turns, studies her again.

"What's up?"

[notathreat]

Ellie doesn't quite meet her eyes, and she's glad that Glimmer doesn't immediately go for the usual hug. She was prepared to allow it, but it would've hurt.

"Um..."

Ellie bites her lower lip, taps one foot slowly, unsure of how to get into it.

"Abby and I... broke the truce." And then she recognizes how this sounds, and rushes to reassure her. "She's fine. We're both okay."

For Bene (cw: smoking)

[notathreat]

Ellie smells it outside the room about a week later; the sweetish breath of smoke. It's not the first time, but she's so tired, she decides, fuck it. She'll see what's going on.

Hand in her pocket to take the pressure off her shoulder, Ellie knocks with her good hand.

arrives with starbucks

[altusimperius]

"Come in~," calls the sing-song tone of someone who is already very much feeling the effects of what he's been smoking, and sure enough, there lies Benedict: he's sprawled languidly across several pillows like a lazy cat, the hookah's hose resting thoughtfully against his chin as his unfocused eyes struggle to parse who's just entered the room.

"Oh," he sighs, by way of greeting. A girl.

[notathreat]

Yep, somebody's skunked.

Ellie opens the door and pokes her head in, only to pull a face at Benedict.

"Fffuck, man, I can leave," she offers.

For Viktor

[notathreat]

They miss each other sometimes, like ships passing in the night. Ellie's often out on missions, and for a while she doesn't go to the library. It may or may not be Abby-related, but who can say?

(It definitely is.)

But eventually, Ellie runs out of books, decides to chance a late-night run where there's sure to be only a few people on staff about. Mobius, maybe- or Cosima. They'd help her find stuff. Hell, maybe even Tony if he's been bitten with the insomnia bug again, and that's everybody lately.

Ellie's not much to look at; a slight young woman of mid-height, reddish-brown hair and a long cloak. Freckles, lots of them. But there's a bow across her back and she's never shaken the liquid way she moves.

She comes with a stack of books, heading over to the counter and putting them down, then going up on her toes to see if anyone's about. Movement, down one of the aisles between the tall bookshelves.

Hesitation, just for a second, when she realizes it's not anybody she knows.

"Working late?"

[grindset]

Ellie rarely goes to the library; it seems Viktor rarely leaves it.

Movement, a slow series of taps, the soft shhf of a book pulling free of its brethren. The source of these mysteries is a scrawny figure with unusual posture, momentarily stiffer for the sudden address. A tall, bent stick leans on the shelf next to him; next to that is a candle in its holder, throwing warm light on the gaunt angles of his face. A scaffold of straps, shanks and hinges hugs his right leg.

"Oh— yes, I— I was just," mildly stunned by the surprise company, he glances down at the book in his hand, lifts it in support of, "picking out a bedtime story. Actually."

It's not anybody she knows in person. Though it comes up very rarely over the sending crystals, his voice is quite distinct: low, soft timbre, uncommon accent.

[notathreat]

The crutch reminds Ellie instantly of Silver, though this man obviously still has that leg- and the contraption wrapped around it clearly has some use. She looks at it openly, curiously, the kind of wonder that would probably be more befitting someone much younger.

It takes only a few halting words for Ellie to place that voice, and her eyes go a little wider, a smile of recognition flickering suddenly into place. It catches her by surprise.

"What's a bedtime story look like for you?" she asks.

"Riddles?"