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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Ellie turns her whole body away, folding her good arm on the edge of the bath, pillowing her chin on it and letting her eyes fall shut. Her hair's loose, just long enough to trail into the water now.

There's nothing to see like this, with most of her underneath the water anyway -- the both of them looking away so hard it'd probably be fucking funny if they realized they were both doing it.

Once the splash and the direction of her voice makes it clear Clarisse is in the water, Ellie glances back over her shoulder, snorts a laugh before she can fully think it through.

"Always," she says with a sunny lightness she doesn't feel, then notices Clarisse's eyes still closed.

Instead of commenting on it, she just waits, her eyes on Clarisse's face. How long is she gonna hold out?

"Me, too. Best time for it." It's not even totally a joke. The bathrooms at camp were all communal, too. Sometimes sneaking out after lights out to take a shower without anybody else around was the best part of her day.

Clarisse opens her eyes, finally, sees Ellie half turned around and watching her, and raises both eyebrows in a silent "what the fuck?" But she can't help laughing, at the same time. It's so dumb, like they've been playing chicken and both decided to forfeit at the same time.

Ellie raises her eyebrows too, entirely not on purpose, and completely fails not to laugh with her.

"I was starting to wonder," Ellie adds, fully aware she's being a shit, "If you always take baths with your eyes closed."

"Oh." Clarisse straightens up a little. "No, only when I take baths with mortal girls as skinny as you."

At least when Ellie's being a shit, she's doing it in a way that makes sense to her, that sounds like it could be coming from one of Clarisse's own friends and that she feels comfortable throwing back at her. It doesn't feel dangerous, or like she's risking anything too big. It's nice, actually, being able to joke around like this.

Ellie splashes at her, pulling a face, but doesn't deny being skinny; she's put on a lot of weight and muscle since coming here!

"I here I thought you weren't looking," she challenges her instead, with a slow smile.

It's nice. It's good, getting out of her goddamn head like this, thinking about anything other than everything good in her life starting to fall through. About anything but her own bruises, inside and out.

"My eyes were closed. Swear. Your skinniness is just so obvious."

Clarisse flicks a finger at the water's surface, sending a spray in Ellie's direction.

She adds, "Would you be pissed if I was looking?" Look, she's just... feeling things out. She isn't going to be offended (well, not a lot) if Ellie says yes.

Ellie slows to a stop, pressing her lips together, a tingle of strange shivery awareness passing over her.

It's not often she gets this feeling. It's even less that she finds that she likes it. Plenty of people are curious. But it's not often she feels like somebody actually likes what they see.

And for a second, it knocks all of the other thoughts right out of her fucking head.

"No," she says suddenly, her eyes coming back to fix themselves on Clarisse's face. Her entire focus is an intense thing, and the answer seems to surprise her, too.

One more beat, and Ellie decides to throw caution to the wind.

Ignoring the dull screaming in her shoulder, Ellie puts both elbows and forearms up on the lip of the pool, facing out -- the water barely covers her. (It doesn't cover the bruises that blacken her shoulder, her collarbone, down her chest.)

"You want a better look?"

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."

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

For Bastien

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

For Iron Man

For Clarisse

For Glimmer

For Bene (cw: smoking)

Re: For Glimmer

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: references to torture

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: sexual

Re: cw: references to torture