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

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."

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?"

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."

Glimmer isn't judging. She's here to support and love her friend through whatever the fuck is happening.

Of course, whatever the fuck is happening is that she and Abby went at each other again. After months of what had seemed like things getting better. Glimmer swallows, biting down her first instinct to snap something.

"Why?" It's the first coherent word that she manages to speak. "What happened?"

Ellie scuffs the sole of her boot against the floor kicking it forward, still not quite meeting Glimmer's eyes. It's not her proudest moment.

It occurs to her that Glimmer's seen her in a lot of less than proud moments. She tries not to read too much into that.

"She dreamed about... home," Ellie says, halting. "We both remember the same things now. So she came to to talk to me. About something I left out."

"Oh." Oh. It feels like she's been hit, if only because she had hoped this wouldn't happen. Not when she cares about both of them so much. She can feel something behind her eyes, an ache building in her sinuses.

"...What did you leave out?" What was bad enough to make Abby and Ellie fight again?

"That I threatened Lev."

Ellie's words are quiet. If she has to tell Abby the truth, then it's only fair that Glimmer know, too. The words are choppy, halting. What's one more atrocity, really? One more horrible thing that Ellie's capable of doing?

Maybe everyone who knows her should have a right to know this. Maybe they deserve to make that choice.

Maybe she's a giant hypocrite who did this on purpose.

"The kid she was traveling with. Maybe- twelve. Thirteen. I don't know. But I put a knife to his throat, because she didn't want to fight."

Ellie feels vaguely like throwing up. She still can't meet Glimmer's eyes.

Glimmer feels a little sick. She loves Ellie. Would fight for her. Die for her. Has held her while they both wept. She wasn't quite sure she was ready to hear that admission, though. No matter how much Glimmer wants Ellie to be truthful with her, hearing that your friend has threatened a kid to get at someone for revenge is hard to process.

Glimmer had threatened people before, people who were helpless--but never a kid.

"Oh, Ellie..." Glimmer starts, her mouth moving a moment longer as she struggles to find the right words to say. Something that will make the world okay again even though it doesn't really feel that it ever will be. This is another part of Ellie Glimmer will have to process and understand.

Maybe she gets it a bit better, now, why Ellie had always insisted that she wasn't a good person. That she'd done bad things.

"You... You wouldn't have..." Even that justification tastes like ashes in her mouth.

"Ellie..." She isn't crying. She isn't, because she has to keep her shit together, at least once. Even as exhausted and angry and upset as this makes her feel.

"Yeah, well... she didn't know that."

Abby had fought. She'd believed in the look in Ellie's eyes enough not to risk calling her bluff. Ellie still can't look at her.

And of course there's more.

"She said that I kept it from her on purpose. So I told her all the other things she didn't know I did. What I did to her friends."

Ellie pauses again. Glimmer knows that, at least. The torture. What she did to Nora. Even if she's never really sat down and processed what happened.

"And... we fought. And I didn't want you to find out from somebody else, so."

Ellie shrugs, a small jerky movement.

Edited 2022-09-09 23:34 (UTC)

Glimmer swallows. She knows the barest details about what it was that had happened and even that feels like more than she really would want to know about the whole thing. And yet she does know. The terrible burden of knowing.

"...I'm sorry," Glimmer says, because she isn't quite sure what else she can say in response to that.

"Is... is Abby okay?" A pause. "Like, physically."

"Fucked up her face a little. But nothing broken."

Ellie runs a hand along her arm, just breathing, then blurts it out.

"She stopped us. Before it went too far."

Too far is so very subjective.

"Well. Good." That's the most that Glimmer can think to say about that. She's not sure what to do or say next. Her feelings are roiling and conflicted--happy that neither of them are seriously hurt, that one or both of them had the sense not to take it too far.

And yet there's a feeling of hurt and grief. She loved this woman. Part of loving Ellie was acknowledging that she had done awful things and loving her anyway and Glimmer would choose that every time. She takes a step forward and hugs Ellie tight.

"I... Yeah." What else is she supposed to say? She's not going to ask Ellie what she was thinking or berate her or anything like that--Ellie probably does that to herself enough as it is.

"You... You wouldn't do it now, right?"

Ellie flinches when Glimmer hugs her. Not flinching back, just flinching because it hurts. She reaches up with both hands to hug her back, but has to keep one low, because she can't reach very high. Her collarbone is being helped along by magic, but it's still tender.

Ellie kind of wishes that Glimmer would tear her a new one. She does deserve it. She can see that now; that she was cruel, needlessly cruel, and being hurt wasn't an excuse.

"... I thought I wouldn't do it again, period," she admits, and she just sounds fucking tired.

"I thought..."

God, she doesn't know what she thought.

"She doesn't want to see me anymore."

How is that upsetting? How is Abby, Abby, not wanting to see her something to be upset about?

Glimmer releases Ellie as she notices the flinch, steps back. Awkwardly she sits on the edge of her bed and gestures for Ellie to do the same if she wants, hands folded in her lap. Glimmer can feel a spark of anger in her, but there's so much she worries about risking if she does let it loose at Ellie.

It's there, though, a spark waiting for fuel.

"I get why, Ellie," she says. It's blunt, but sympathetic.

"I think Abby has a pretty good reason not to want to see you right now. And..." She struggles for a moment, trying to find the right words. If Bow were here he'd know what to say. He was always better at this than her.

"...and I think if you're upset by that, that's also, like... understandable." She says, not quite sure if she's landed on what she wanted to say. It'll have to do.

Glimmer pulls away, and Ellie feels the loss more than she did the pain. She straightens her spine, sucks in a breath, and sits down stiffly, wrapping her hand around her missing fingers so she won't pick at anything.

She can hear the anger under Glimmer's measured replies, and it sets her on edge, all the moreso since she can't address it head-on.

"I know."

It sits in her throat, though, a tangle of things she has no idea how to express. She can't make sense of any of it.

"I never tried to get her to trust me," she says bitterly, almost to herself.

The bitterness is a thin veneer over the pain. Abby had cried, after. And she hadn't talked about them. Or even about Lev. She'd talked about the cages. The same way she'd talked to Ellie about so many other things, the two of them falling together, because only the two of them knew what it was like.

"I don't understand her."

"I don't know that I understand her exactly, but I do understand her feelings," Glimmer says softly. She'd lost both parents, one taken from her by an enemy. They'd had that conversation before, more than once. Glimmer looks at Ellie, the swirl of emotions in her gut making her feel as if she might be sick. Anger. Grief. Sympathy. Hurt. It's all so much and she doesn't know what to do with all of it. Venting it all on Ellie isn't fair. Ellie certainly seems to feel bad enough about what she's done.

And at the same time part of Glimmer wishes she could just let it loose and be angry and sad instead of being kind and supportive.

"What don't you understand about her?" Glimmer hesitates--reaches out to lay her hand on Ellie's as they sit on the bed.

Some of Ellie's hardness seems to ease off at the touch of Glimmer's hand. It's grounding, a reminder that she's real and something that can be touched.

Grinding her teeth, Ellie attempts to make some semblance of fucking sense of everything rolling around in her brain right now. Sighs.

"I mean I get why she's mad about what I did," Ellie clarifies. It's a given. Obviously anybody would be fucked up about that.

"But I don't get why she expected anything better."

Her voice buckles on the last word.

"I wasn't trying to fool her. I didn't ask for her to give a fuck about me. I didn't try to make her trust me."

How can she still feel like she's letting Abby down? How can she care about whether she lets her down or not?

"She's always- fucking been like that, too," Ellie goes on, more a stream of thought than anything. Agitated. "You know what she said when I found her again, back in our world? Because I was coming to kill her?"

Ellie laughs, humorless, and the pain bubbles up in her chest.

"She said there's boats this way. Like she really fucking thought-"

It fractures, and her voice breaks, and she feels fucking stupid. It hurts, because she finally convinced Abby that she was the monster she was trying to be all along. Just when she was starting to try to be something different.

Glimmer is quiet as she listens to Ellie tell the story of when Ellie was on her way to kill Abby. Tells her that Abby had told her there were boats, as if they could escape together. The way Ellie says it cracks open Glimmer's heart because it tells her so, so much about how her friend thinks of herself. Or thought of herself, at the time.

It also makes Glimmer angry. Angry at Ellie for thinking that of herself, for being so fucked up that she thought she had to do something that awful for... revenge or justice or whatever it was she was after. Her free hand balls into a fist and she takes a deep, hitching breath.

"That's not her fault," Glimmer says. She's not loud, just firm. But it's the voice she pulled out as queen. When she was mad, when something needed to be done, when she was tired and just wanted to cut through all the bullshit.

"It's not her fault for thinking that maybe you'd let them go when you--you stumbled on them in where ever the hell that place was? Slavers? It's not her fault for thinking better of you!" Glimmer pushes herself onto her feet because she needs to move, to force out all the nervous, angry, upset energy bubbling free of her all at once.

"I thought better of you!" The words tear out of her before she can think them over or stop them.

"The thing that pisses me off the most is that you don't think better of yourself even though everyone else does! You're just--" She covers her face with both hands and lets out a faint sound of anguish.

"I love you, but fuck you. You fucking--fuck!" She's cursing now, devolving into incoherence as she tries to make her feelings understandable.

"You set yourself on fire and then you're surprised when the people around you get burned!"

It shouldn't come as a surprise. Glimmer's been sparking like the fuse on the bomb about to go off ever since she came in. It's almost a relief, watching her go off, lancing the pressure.

But god damn does it hurt.

It leaves Ellie cut up and breathless, and rightfully so- because Glimmer isn't wrong.

For once, Ellie's speechless.

Glimmer turns away for a moment and covers her face. She hates being angry sometimes because her instinct is to cry and it makes her feel so weak, crying when she's angry but she can't stop it.

"God. I love you so much it hurts, Ellie. You're--you're one of my best friends and I would fucking take an arrow for you but this isn't her fault. You did this, the whole thing!" She feels exhausted. Maybe this is the wrong thing to say, maybe she's ruining her relationship with Ellie but it needs to be said.

"You didn't have to chase her down the first time or the second time or do any of it. And she didn't have to come after Joel. You two are so fucking alike," she had said the same thing to Abby, months and months ago. Maybe it would land on Ellie and make her think for a minute. She doesn't know.

Glimmer just hopes she hasn't burned one of the only bridges she has left.

Ellie rocks back as if punched, left breathless, and before she knows it she's on her feet. Not to bare her teeth, but to get the fuck out of here, or find someplace quiet to break a lot of fucking furniture, like she did when she got bitten-

Anything but stand here and listen to all the things she's been screaming in her own head since forever, terrified to say aloud because then she'll have to find out if other people think it, too.

Because they do, and Glimmer's handily confirmed it for her. She'd thought she was better than she used to be. She thought she'd been trying to change, but-

Well. Maybe not as much as she'd thought.

Ellie grabs up her bag in one hand and just- stands there, her knuckles white on the top loop, trembling. The fact that this needed to be said doesn't make it easy to hear.

"You got anything else to say?" she asks, and her voice sounds even, but like it comes from far away.

"No. I--" Glimmer hesitates and chokes down a sound of frustration as Ellie gets to her feet. To leave. Everything hurts.

"Just... just take care of yourself. I love you, Ellie," Glimmer says in a soft, miserable voice.

Ellie stands there for a moment in stasis, caught between one breath and the next. It hurts, and it hurts, and it's always going to hurt. And maybe some part of her will always be deep in the dark.

But reaches for her, her bruised fingertips cautiously finding Glimmer's palm, curling around it to hold.

And maybe a part of her is in that farmhouse, watching Dina's back and how she holds herself in like she's going to spill all over the floor, and she can't do that again-

And deep down, Ellie hasn't yet realized just how much she's learned, just how much she's changed, even if other things never will.

Her lips find Glimmer's forehead.

"I'm sorry," she whispers against feverish skin. "I fucked up."

Glimmer wasn't expecting Ellie to turn back. As long as she's known Ellie, she's always... run away. Conversations that were awkward or fraught or just unpleasant were things that they avoided. This wasn't the sort of thing she was used to.

But God is she ever grateful. Her fingers curl against Ellie's hand and her grip tightens, tears still gleaming in her eyes as she feels lips against her skin.

"Yeah, you fuckin' did," she murmurs, sniffing as she tries to fight back the gross congestion that seems to come with tears.

"But that doesn't make you irredeemable or inherently bad or anything, you know that right?"

Ellie's eyes flutter shut, and she grips back, hard enough to stop the tremors. The both of them are trying, here. Her chest hurts. Her skin hurts.

"Yeah?" she whispers, though it feels rotten. It's a good thought, but it's not something Ellie can fully believe about herself. Not quite yet. Not when she keeps on fucking up exactly the same, over and over.

One step forward, two steps back.

And even if she's not an inherently bad person, it doesn't mean that she feels any better about what she did.

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

For Glimmer

Re: For Glimmer

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: references to torture

Re: cw: references to torture

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)