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.

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[notathreat]

Ellie turns, and the gentle tugs seem to work at her frayed ends. She feels less tight, and less together. She lets herself be tugged apart and rebraided.

Tonight's a night of heightened emotion, of fog, of old hurts and old traumas come back to catch her in their teeth. She's hungry for anything outside of that, for truths triumphs and pains and memories. Her life is a thousand dusty rooms with shattered glass on the floor, filled with ghosts.

It's a strange thing not to count herself among them.

"Joel used to say you could never outrun it."

[tender]

"The past?" Derrica asks. The motion of her fingers doesn't stop, but it slows. Perhaps to acclimate the angle, the loose plait Derrica is fashioning, or because she wants to make space for Ellie's tone. Let the gravity of what Ellie is speaking of have space to fall into.

[notathreat]

"Yeah," Ellie says softly.

He'd been looking at a picture of his daughter as he said it. At her smiling face caught in a creased, sun-faded photograph. A man he'd been more than twenty years ago, all pride and warmth and easy love.

"But I don't think he was talking about just the bad things."

[tender]

"The good things stay too," Derrica agrees. Her touch is very light as she ties off the plait.

There is a pause as she arranges herself alongside Ellie, mindful of jostling her with all those residual aches and pains. She curls on her side, hand tucked up beneath the pillow, watchful.

"I didn't learn that until I came here."

Maybe she wouldn't have been able to ever look at the best parts of her past otherwise. It had hurt so much for so long. It still hurts. But she knows better how precious the good pieces are. How tightly she should hold to them, instead of trying to keep them at a distance.

[notathreat]

"I think I'm still learning that," Ellie admits, turning her head despite the ache in her neck.

She's quiet a moment, reaches out to brush the edge of one curl from Derrica's face with her forefinger, tension in her brow subsiding, though her jaw stays tight.

"Maybe you never stop learning this stuff."

[tender]

"I don't think so," Derrica agrees. Even in the time they've known each other, they've both changed and changed. Every person they meet teaches them something new, for better or for worse. Derrica has seen Ellie processing, has listened to her just tonight express what she has resolved.

Derrica reaches up to catch Ellie's hand, bring it to her lips to kiss her bruised knuckles.

That tension in her face hasn't gone unnoticed. Derrica doesn't know how she might ease it without aggravating all the other lingering hurts.

"I hope you have room for the good things. That we've helped you find a place for them."

[notathreat]

Ellie stills at the kiss, all mixed feelings. She welcomes the comfort and closeness, but it stings too. Another day, she'd pick up and examine those feelings. Tonight, she's exhausted, so emotionally raw that she doesn't have the energy to hold it in her mind.

She'll let herself have this.

"You have," she whispers. "And I thought I was doing better." And really, that's part of what has her so heartsick. She'd thought she was beyond this.

In the morning, she'll recognize the differences. Once the dust settles and she has room to think, once the old hurts stop clamoring for her attention.

"But for a minute there..."

Not so much.

[tender]

"I know."

It's not exactly the same, their respective losses, the parts of them that are hurt and broken. But Derrica understands what it is when all that pain comes back. It is hard to anticipate. It can be overwhelming.

It is hard to weather it.

Maybe she has been unfair. But it is hard to observe Ellie break apart, see all the ways she's hurt herself and consider how she has hurt someone else.

"Close your eyes," Derrica tells her, lacing their fingers together in the space between them. "I'm here. I promise."

[notathreat]

Ellie shifts, getting more comfortable on her good shoulder, silently dreading whatever nightmare's gonna leak into her brain tonight. She hopes she won't dream. She hopes she's not breaking open Derrica's old wounds, either.

Derrica's hand is steady on hers, though. And maybe it's just from remembering the hall where they'd fallen asleep like this once, but she does feel beyond exhausted. Her body's crashing in response to the hurt followed by the safety.

"Thank you, Derrica."

She shuts her eyes.