faderift | player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 5

Entry tags:

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.

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.

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They're both still here.

Ellie reaches for her again, and it's like giving her permission. Clarisse rests her head against her shoulder, and sinks down into the same position she was in before, lying with her upper body on Ellie's, their legs touching. She keeps her eyes closed, breathing her in.

"I would have lost it if you hadn't been here when I came back," she admits. "I was so fucking freaked out, I just laid on the floor of the armory for a while. Then I grabbed onto Flint 'cause he was the first person I saw." Embarrassing. "And then I walked around looking for you for ages."

It hadn't been that long, really. But it had felt like forever.

Clarisse comes down on top of her and presses all of the air out of her lungs. Like a kind of surrender, Ellie lets it happen. Lets her push everything out until there's nothing left.

It makes the air taste sweeter when she finally breathes again, lifting them both. Listens.

"I was on the ferry," she says quietly. "When I got off, Abby was there-" Ellie breaks off, an airless whisper of noise. "I almost knocked her over. I knew you were here, because she was. I would've used the crystals, but."

She chooses not to say why. The both of them were in shock.

"We both went looking for you."

Underneath her, Ellie's chest rises, and she feels herself lifted up with it.

"I saw Abby in the middle of the ambush. She was hurt, but not too bad. We parted ways and I didn't see her again after that, but..." Clarisse wets her lips. "I think I knew, anyway. Deep down."

Slowly, not thinking too much about it, she slides a hand into Ellie's, threading their fingers together and tracing the lines in Ellie's palm with her thumb, over and over. Life line, heart line, head line.

"Yeah," Ellie says quietly back. For all that she wouldn't believe it, she'd known too.

It settles again, the shadows of memory threatening to take that pain and gouge it deeper. Remembering. Clarisse's hand in hers interrupts that. The slow trace of the lines of her palm.

It's so familiar, a sensory interruption of something Clarisse has done many times before. Her hand grows lax under Clarisse's touch, and she breathes again. Focuses on the warm weight of her.

"... how is she?"

It's a question Clarisse isn't sure how to answer.

"I don't know. Okay, I guess," she says after a pause, even though she knows there's no way Ellie will believe that. She doubts there's a single person in the Gallows who could be described that way right now.

She opens her eyes, finally, but keeps tracing Ellie's palm with her thumb. It's calming for her, too, that and the steady rise and fall of Ellie's chest.

"I told her I loved you three months ago. She gave me a deadline. Said if I didn't tell you in three months she would do it for me." And, look, Clarisse did miss the deadline, but it wasn't her fault. It was definitely the dragon's fault.

Ellie pulls a face at the answer, but doesn't call her out on it. Nobody is anywhere in the realm of okay -- but then again maybe it was an unfair question. What's she gonna say, shitty? Probably shouldn't be alone right now?

(She tucks that thought in the back of her mind so she doesn't have to look at it in the moment, but it'll stick there.)

Ellie soaks in the warmth of Clarisse's fingertips on her palm, lets it bleed the tension slowly, slowly out of her. Like it's defrosting.

That shocks her, though- so much so that a laugh rips out of her, surprised and a little painful, and she reaches up with the hand Clarisse doesn't have to fist a hand in the back of her shirt, holding onto her while she struggles to catch her breath, and can't.

"You fucking-- are you serious?" God, she can just picture Abby saying it, too. Just being so goddamn done with the two of them.

Ellie's laughter shocks something like a smile onto Clarisse's face. The closest she's come to one today, anyway. It's good to hear Ellie laugh.

"Yeah," she admits. "It was right after all that stuff happened where we got each other's memories. I went back to my room and we talked for... a while."

The day after the horrible conversation they'd had, when Clarisse had realized that part of the reason she was so fucking pissed at Ellie was because she loved her, too. That she couldn't be as furious as she was and not love her.

It hurts a little. It's the first time she's laughed since Clarisse died; she's barely cracked a smile. It feels like stretching out a stiff, sore muscle. Like finally taking a full breath. She was unprepared for how good it would feel, even if it aches.

She turns her face into Clarisse's hair, calms herself down.

"... that long, huh?" she manages, this time in a soft, amazed whisper. It does make sense. She's curious about the rest of it, too- what did Abby tell her? What did she tell Abby?

All this time she's kind of assumed that Clarisse didn't talk to Abby about them, but. It would make sense. It's strange to think that she has an opinion. And from the sound of it, that it's positive.

... it's a really weird feeling.

That long.

Looking back, it seems so stupid that she never said it, but— "I was waiting for the perfect moment," Clarisse admits.

There had been a hundred times where she could have told Ellie she loved her, and almost did. But Clarisse was thinking about something big, something amazing, something unforgettable. She was waiting for it.

In the end, all waiting got her was that last panicked minute, her fingers twitching as she tried to force herself to reach for her crystal, knowing it was already too late.

Her thumb slows to a stop on Ellie's palm.

There's a kind of weird poetic symmetry in it. The both of them, knowing how they felt. The both of them waiting for the perfect moment to say the words. Fussing over it silently, dancing around it.

"Me too," Ellie whispers back. And she parts her lips to say something else, something about that day in the docks, watching the sunset, and how close she'd been to saying it then. How she'd listened to everything Clarisse was saying, and heard it in every word.

As long as I can choose you, too.

But Clarisse's thumb slows, stops, and Ellie curls her fingers around it, holding on. Ellie knows it means she's thinking of something that's bothering her. She squeezes, a silent encouragement and gentle question.

She shouldn't tell Ellie this part. Clarisse knows she shouldn't, that it will only hurt them both if she does, and yet she pulls a shallow breath in and opens her mouth to say it anyway.

"I tried to call you. Right at the end. I was lying there, and all I wanted to do was tell you. Hear your voice. But I couldn't reach my crystal. I couldn't move. I was... drowning." Her voice wavers on the last word, just a bit, but everything else sounds strangely flat.

She'll relive it inside her head, over and over again. Forever, maybe.

"I should have just said it," she says, staring off at some fixed point on the far wall, not really seeing it. "The first time I thought it, I should have just said it."

It does hurt. It cuts hot and deep, and Ellie's breathing stutters for a moment before she can fully resume. She takes her fingers from Clarisse's back and puts them in her hair instead, holding her while she gets it out.

Drowning.

She remembers it. All that black congealing blood. The way her mouth was soaked with it even though the injuries hadn't been anywhere near her face. How her eyes had still been a little bit open, looking off to the side somewhere, away from the fight. Her crystal had been in the ashes.

Ellie hadn't known. She'd been somewhere else, doing something else, something that didn't matter at all. Be back in a few days. If Clarisse had called her, she would've had to hear her die.

She curls her fingers and runs them slowly through her hair, shutting her eyes.

"I knew. Maybe you didn't use those words exactly, but I heard them anyway."

"It doesn't matter if you knew." She squeezes Ellie's hand so tight it probably hurts her, but she can't let go. "You shouldn't have to... to just know, without me saying it."

Yeah, things would be a hell of a lot easier if that's how it worked, and maybe before this Clarisse would've had a more self-forgiving view of the whole situation. But it doesn't work like that.

She didn't tell Ellie she loved her, and then she died. And by all rights that should have been the end of it, except somehow it wasn't. Somehow she got a second chance. And she doesn't know what makes her any more special than any of the billions of people who've died and not gotten this opportunity, but it's already weighing on her, making it hard to breathe.

It does hurt her, but Ellie doesn't really give a damn. She needs the hard grip as much as Clarisse does, and she curls her fingers tight to hold her back. Like she can be an anchor to the world right now.

Something in her cracks at the note in Clarisse's voice, in how close she sounds to not being able to keep it together.

"... yeah," Ellie whispers, laying her cheek against her, closing her burning eyes. "But we couldn't have known we didn't have more time."

Ellie doesn't pull out of her grip; she curls her fingers around Clarisse's and squeezes just as tight. The pressure helps. It makes all of this seem more real—the bed, the blankets, Ellie's heartbeat.

"If anybody should have known that, it's me."

How many people has she seen die? So many of them. Silena and Beckendorf with their college plans, Lee playing guitar at the campfire after they won the golden laurels together, Michael standing on his toes to fight with her. So many ghosts who had even less time than she did, who should've reminded her—

The fact that she made it to twenty should have been treated like a fucking miracle, and instead she just got cocky.

Her next breath comes out shaky. The first tear spills out of the corner of her eye, and it feels scalding.

Oh.

Ellie's heart drops. She knows what it is to feel like you're living on borrowed time, to feel like a part of you died with the people you loved through the years.

Ellie thinks of Silena, of the I love yous that never passed her Clarisse's lips. And here she is. Here they are. Alive. Alive, when so many aren't.

The tear is warm against Ellie's neck, along with Clarisse's shaky breaths. Ellie strokes through her hair with the hand that's not gripping hers, her chest rising and falling under her. Warm heartbeats.

Ellie wets her lip, and thinks of the battlefield, the village center, of ashes. Of Clarisse too-limp and bleeding in her arms. Not from the pump of a heart, but of finality, disturbed.

Warm tears, now. Instead of cold blood.

"You told me," Ellie whispers to her, watching the ceiling, "That the fates have written out every possible action we could take. If that's true, then this was written too."

She did say that. And she believed it. Still does, but...

It'd been easier to say it then, when she hadn't had to grapple with ideas of going back in time, reversing people's deaths.

"Yeah," she whispers. Yeah, Ellie's right. She'll need to think about it more, sometime when she has the mental energy, when she isn't so solely focused on making it through the next moment, and the next, and the next.

"Can you tell me something?" It's quiet, would be almost embarrassed if this was any kind of normal day. Right now, Clarisse just sounds kind of desperate. "Just talk to me for a minute?"

"Yeah," Ellie says, immediately. It helps to know exactly what Clarisse needs from her.

She's silent for a moment, thinking, and finds that it's hard to think of something when you're put on the spot like this.

"A day on Mercury is longer than a year," she starts with. "Because it spins so slow." Another breath. The next is easier. "Astronauts get taller in space. Because the lack of gravity stretches out the spine."

Another pause, another breath. Seconds pass, and Ellie watches the stone ceiling, her eyes hot.

She hums. A soft song in the back of her throat, a refrain. When she sings, her voice is scratchy, very slightly off key, higher and sweeter than her speaking voice.

"You got a fast car..."

She's heard Ellie sing before, but not like this. This is something soft and just for her. It's a song Clarisse recognizes, one that makes her remember looking out the window from the passenger seat of her mom's car, extending her arm to feel the breeze as she hummed along.

Slowly, almost painfully, she feels the muscles in her back and shoulders start to loosen. With her eyes closed she can concentrate fully on Ellie's voice in her ear and the warmth of her body, the way she lifts them both up each time she breathes in. Ellie's voice doesn't leave any room for memories of the battle, or the dragon, or lying in the ashes.

It's not sleepiness, but it is comfort, and it has the same soporific effect. Her lips part slightly and her breathing slows and for the few minutes Ellie sings she lets herself get lost in it.

Ellie slips, sings it twice. Threads around and back, melding her breathing with her heartbeat. She gets as lost in it as Clarisse does, in her own way.

She loves music. It's meditative, it's nostalgic. It draws out tears and peace. There are some songs that make her cry, still. Every time she hears them. There are some songs she's still not ready to hear again. And some stick with her, years and years later.

Ellie runs out of words, humming instead, stroking her fingers through Clarisse's hair. Her eyes drift shut.

She needed this. They both desperately needed this.

Edited 2023-08-30 23:19 (UTC)

She doesn't want Ellie to think she's sleeping. She just... doesn't want to open her eyes yet.

She lies still until Ellie finishes the song a second time and begins to hum instead, and then Clarisse takes a deep breath like someone startled out of a doze, and starts running her fingertips up and down Ellie's forearm, slow and a little haphazard.

"That's nice," she says quietly, after a minute. "Thanks."

Not ever something she would've thought to ask for, but she can't say it isn't doing what she wanted.

Ellie's eyelids flutter, then fully shut as Clarisse strokes down her forearm, over her tattoo. The first few times she did it it felt strange, but now it's a welcome little shiver of misfiring nerves. Familiar.

"You bet."

Ellie combs Clarisse's hair back from her face again, gently hooking her fingers, then rubbing her thumb firmly against the nape of her neck.

"I'll offer to get my dulcimer," she says quietly, "but then I'd have to stop holding you."

Not on the table right now.

Clarisse's fingers squeeze around Ellie's forearm in a brief, silent plea for her to stay put, and then she goes back to running them over her skin.

Not that she doesn't like to listen to Ellie play, but it isn't about the music right now. All she wants is Ellie here, and the slow rise and fall of her chest, the way her hand cups the back of Clarisse's head and her thumb rubs just firmly enough to work some of the tension out of the muscles in her neck.

"I just want to hear your voice."

Ellie responds instantly to the squeeze, and squeezes gently back, silently reassuring.

"Okay," she whispers, and runs her fingers again over Clarisse's neck, soft, tracing things that aren't there. And then, slowly, she picks out chords. It's gentle, from memory.

She sings again, this time softer, sweeter, the huskiness moving to the edges of her voice.

"I think the universe is on my side..."

This one's more cheerful, heartfelt, and when she fades out, Ellie leans forward just a little to kiss Clarisse's forehead. She lingers there for a moment, thinking, emptying her mind and letting her fingers wander. The maimed ones still move, and she ignores it, it's a part of her now. The holes. She still hears it.

"And I'd give up forever to touch you,"

One song Clarisse doesn't recognize, the next she does. It doesn't matter, and even with the pause in between they seem to blend together seamlessly, with Ellie's fingers brushing gently against her neck almost like she's the instrument.

It has to end eventually. She could lie here for hours, probably, listening, but it wouldn't be fair to Ellie. So when she finishes again, Clarisse sighs, letting all the air deflate from her lungs before she takes another breath in and opens her eyes.

She glances up to meet Ellie's eyes and smiles. Kind of. It's not quite her normal smile, but she's trying.

"Thanks," she says again. "I'm okay." She's not really okay, but... it helped. She feels slightly more tethered to the world again, less lost.

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