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player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 5
WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Everything's fine and we're going to have feelings about it.
WHEN: August 15 9:49
WHERE: Primarily the Gallows! But potentially anywhere.
NOTES: We made it! You are all free of my tyrannical plot grasp! There is a final OOC post with some notes + space for plotting here.
WHAT: Everything's fine and we're going to have feelings about it.
WHEN: August 15 9:49
WHERE: Primarily the Gallows! But potentially anywhere.
NOTES: We made it! You are all free of my tyrannical plot grasp! There is a final OOC post with some notes + space for plotting here.
This is a timeline where, some mild chaos aside, things for the last month have carried on as normal. Riftwatch hasn't lost anyone at all. There were no funerals. The work continued. The late afternoon of August 15 may find people at their desks, in the midst of meetings or debriefs, in the library, in the sparring yard. Or maybe afield, seeing to errands or meetings or missions somewhere else in Thedas. Maybe, if they are particularly unlucky, they are deep in conversation with an ally or embroiled in combat with an enemy agent at the precise moment when the magical connection between two realities closes and the diverging timelines snap together into one existence.
At that moment, everyone forgets what it is they were just doing. Instead they remember what they might have been doing in the world where a third of Riftwatch's number was lost, despite their hands suddenly occupied with the normal business of handling pens or swords or books they don't recall picking up.
For the always-living, it may feel as though they have been magically transported somewhere new mid-thought. For the dead—the formerly dead, the might-have-been dead—it will feel as though they have just woken up. Perhaps they'll have a vague sense of a dream they now can't recall, in between their last conscious moment amid the blood and screams in Granitefell and awakening just now in a quieter world, or perhaps they'll have a sense of nothing at all.
For a few hours, the worse world will be the only one anyone can remember. Over time, memories of the other world—the only one that really exists now—will filter in, competitive with other memories in a way that might require everyone to double or triple check whether they wrote a letter or completed a mission in that timeline or this one. But the memories of death and dying will never fade into anything less real.
At that moment, everyone forgets what it is they were just doing. Instead they remember what they might have been doing in the world where a third of Riftwatch's number was lost, despite their hands suddenly occupied with the normal business of handling pens or swords or books they don't recall picking up.
For the always-living, it may feel as though they have been magically transported somewhere new mid-thought. For the dead—the formerly dead, the might-have-been dead—it will feel as though they have just woken up. Perhaps they'll have a vague sense of a dream they now can't recall, in between their last conscious moment amid the blood and screams in Granitefell and awakening just now in a quieter world, or perhaps they'll have a sense of nothing at all.
For a few hours, the worse world will be the only one anyone can remember. Over time, memories of the other world—the only one that really exists now—will filter in, competitive with other memories in a way that might require everyone to double or triple check whether they wrote a letter or completed a mission in that timeline or this one. But the memories of death and dying will never fade into anything less real.
no subject
Abby does not let her go. Ellie is an anchor, a constant. She has always been a haunting, a vengeful ghost screaming herself hoarse in Abby's nightmares, reliable in a terrible way. Always there, always, and she's always appreciated this about her, that for better or for worse she is ceaseless. That she's here now, holding Abby up and telling her she died, validating a jagged memory, feels so normal.
She realises she's staring, uncomprehending, that she's been watching Ellie talk without taking any of the words in.
They hit her slow.
"Clarisse," she says, the word thick in her mouth. She lifts her gaze again, looking. "Where is she?"
no subject
It still threatens to unhinge her heart that her next question is about Clarisse.
There are some things that Ellie and Abby have an unquestioned, shared understanding over. Fighting. Missions. Abby's feat of heights. How they always check the perimeter, how they both can't stand basements or the smell of rot.
They both love Clarisse.
Ellie's fingers tighten on Abby's arms, digging in. They're numb.
"I don't know. You're the first person I've seen."
no subject
"Yeah," she says, without much of an idea of what she's agreeing to. Her brain keeps sliding off the present, skipping into the past or pushing ahead, wanting to know where other people are, not just Clarisse. Ellis, Barrow, Peter. A dozen more besides. They're all back, right? It's not just her?
She won't feel truly okay until she finds them. Proves that they're okay, to herself. She's lost too many people to start believing in promises.
"I saw her right at the end," Abby recalls. Her brow furrows, expression twisting suddenly. Her heart is beating quickly again, the hand that touched her face back on Ellie, grasping her shoulder. It doesn't seem like that was a conscious action. "When it was getting bad, when we knew we weren't going to make it. I didn't know how to make her leave."
It spills out of her like a confession. She doesn't think that she could have made her. It's Clarisse. But it still feels like she should have done something.
no subject
It's not an apology; Ellie would never think to ask for one. But the guilt is there in Abby's eyes, plain as day, and Ellie knows exactly why Abby would tell her this. Ellie, of all people.
"Nobody could've made her leave." Ellie says, because Abby needs her to say it out loud.
"Either of you."
And as pissed as Ellie is with them, there's a twisted sort of pride, too.
no subject
"Ellis tried to make me go," she huffs, in a tone that implies as if. And then what she's saying catches up with her and she tightens her grip on Ellie again, squeezing, looking again. "Where is he?" It's as if she thinks they're all here, somewhere, hiding just out of sight. Waiting around a corner. But it's just her and Ellie out on the pier, people moving around them, getting on and off the ferry. None the wiser.
She can feel Wags leaning his weight into her leg. It's nice.
no subject
He hadn't, when Abby saved him. Even less so when it came to the blood magic.
"Probably close," she answers, shaking her head. She can't remember anything. Not why she was here, where she was going. Who she was with, if anyone. "If he's not on a mission, he's- probably in the training yard."
no subject
Training yard. She says, “I have to go find him.” She doesn’t mean to sound so urgent but she doesn’t know how else to sound. She really does have to go and find Ellis and Clarisse, and Barrow. Everybody she saw that day. It might help.
Training yard isn’t far. She has to let go of Ellie now, and doing that feels so much harder than it has any right to. Abby doesn’t even think she really wants to leave her, the one, solid link to this new reality, but she doesn’t want to ask her to come along either. Things between them are better than they have ever been, but they are not perfect. There are things Abby will always struggle with.
“I’ll… probably see you later,” isn’t not true, so.
no subject
They've come a long way.
Ellie squeezes her, leaving divots in her forearms, and takes a deep breath.
"I'm glad you're not dead."
no subject
She knows that the context is different, that they’ve come a long way since Seattle. Since Santa Barbara. If the roles had been reversed, and Ellie had died out at Granitefell, Abby doesn’t doubt that she would have said something very similar back to her, I’m glad you’re not dead.
But she still stares.
“It is… so fucking weird hearing you say that.”
no subject
Now, it's heartfelt. And there's no taking it back. No denying. Abby's a part of her and has been for years. She's in her blood, now. In her bones. Losing her had felt like losing a part of herself. Most days Ellie feels like she has very little of that left.
"It's weirder to say."
Ellie sighs. Something that should take the breath out of her lungs, clear it all away. It doesn't.
She makes herself release her grip on her forearms. Enough to just be laying her palms against her. Her relaxed fingers. There are half-moons in Abby's sunburnt skin. Ellie grips to squeeze. This time, just a touch more gently.
"... if I find Clarisse first I'll send her your way," she promises.
no subject
"Thanks."
For saying she'll send Clarisse in her direction; for finding her first, and grounding her. "Same."
She's looking at Ellie with a thoughtful expression. There's a pause before she realises she's still holding her too, that in order for Abby to go anywhere they both have to let go. She almost laughs when she notices, and releases her.
no subject
Ellie says it as an echo, a breath, and they keep holding each other. She has a flashback, a thought, a memory of Abby with blood on her face, every muscle trembling as Ellie dragged her back and into her arms, away from a stalker on the floor.
She'd showed her the bite on her arm, They'd said they were sorry.
Abby laughs, and releases her, and Ellie stares at her face, swaying on the spot. At her eyes, the both of them whole, thoughtful. Scared, but real. Another tear skips down her cheek. After all those weeks being bottled up, she can't seem to make them stop. She's like a tap, just leaking.
Some other time she may have resisted the urge, but today she doesn't. She reaches up to Abby's cheek and cups it, trailing the warmth of her fingers and palm along Abby's cheekbone and down her jaw. All the places where the blows had cracked her, broken her. She places her thumb on the bridge of her nose, rests it there. Whole. Real.
Ellie's eyes flicker from Abby's intact face, and back up to her eyes. Blue, blue, with that ring of hazel around the center.
Real.
no subject
Before she can reach up to feel her face, check the skin and remind herself that it isn't broken, Ellie surprises her by doing it for her.
Her hand touches Abby's cheek, holds it, tracing across the places she remembers being hit. There isn't any pain associated with the touch, because she's uninjured, whole. It is very hard to keep from flinching away. She exhales, and Ellie's thumb sits on her nose like she's casting a spell. Grounding her.
Abby looks back at her. Wet-eyed, tired. Green gaze, filmy with tears. She says, quiet, "You good?"
no subject
It clenches in her stomach, in her chest. Ellie hadn't expected her to pull away when she reached because last time she'd been unable to.
Ellie presses lightly with her thumb on the bridge of Abby's nose, and pulls her hand back abruptly, like she's coming back to earth. To reality. This one, anyway.
"No."
Blunt, and without expectation. No, she's not good. No, she doesn't expect Abby to do anything about it.
no subject
"Same."
But it hasn't hit yet, and she's trapped in an emotional twilight. Knowing it will hurt, feel bad and all-wrong, waiting for that to hit. Kind of wishing it would so she could get it out of the way already. Of course it doesn't work like that.
She's grieved so many people before, and never herself. Never considered somebody else doing it either, let alone Ellie.
"I'll message you later." A reckless, awkward promise. But she will.