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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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.

It soothes the both of them, regulates Ellie's breathing. Lets her close her eyes and trust that Clarisse will still be there, still in her arms when she opens them.

Ellie smooths her warm palm over the back of Clarisse's neck, where she's been rubbing with fingertips.

Clarisse is not okay, but she's better than she was, and Ellie will take that much as ground gained. She tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"I'm..." Ellie trails off. Neither of them are really okay. "Stay with me for a little while, okay?" she asks. "I can even come bunk with you and Abby if you want, I just-"

Yeah.

It's something that Clarisse should talk to Abby about before answering, probably. If this were any other time, she wouldn't even know what to say in response.

But if this were any other time, Ellie wouldn't be suggesting it in the first place. And Clarisse can't imagine just... leaving her to go back to her room, in the same way she can't imagine leaving Abby alone while she moves in with Ellie, even if it's only temporary. Not after all this. She feels guilty already for leaving her alone as long as she has.

"Yeah," she says, "yeah, of course. You can stay with us."

"Okay."

The relief in her voice is hushed, but huge. Which is stupid because she didn't doubt that Clarisse would stay with her, so why-?

This awful, irrational fear is not going to leave her, at least for a little while. Reality will have to prove itself all over again.

Ellie leans up enough to press a soft kiss to Clarisse's temple, and then her forehead, lingering there and shutting her eyes.

It doesn't occur to her that Abby would say no. In fact, she's pretty damn sure she'll want the two of them there for this. Ellie and Abby have had a weird fucking relationship for a long time, and it's going to continue to be weird, but it's changed again after losing her.

It's changed again after finding out that Abby knew Clarisse loved Ellie first, and gave her a deadline. And threatened to tell her herself.

At the heart of it, Ellie knows it's not just for Clarisse.

There's obvious relief in Ellie's voice, and it makes Clarisse wonder if she'd been expecting a different answer.

To be fair, even in this, the most fucked up circumstance she can think of, the idea of walking into her bedroom with Ellie while Abby's in there and the three of them just, like, existing together for the first time ever? It makes her fucking nervous. It makes her wonder if she maybe should have said no and done her best to split her time between Ellie and Abby the way she always has before now.

But she's tired. She's been tired of essentially living two different lives and never talking about it. Keeping the act up now, after what just happened? She doesn't think she can.

Ellie kisses her temple, her forehead. Her eyes are shut, and Clarisse just watches her for a minute, and then she reaches up and brushes a fingertip first over one closed eyelid, then the other. Right now she looks fine, but Clarisse can picture what she would've looked like after four weeks of grieving. Her eyes would've looked bruised from lack of sleep. Fingers twisting around each other the way she does when she's upset or anxious. Too thin, not eating. Just existing.

Ellie lived a whole month without Clarisse, but without Abby, too. The split custody thing must seem so fucking ridiculous after that. Pointless, laughable.

"We can go whenever you want. Whenever you're ready."

Ellie leaves her eyes closed, relaxes again at Clarisse's touch.

Her body might not be what it was after weeks of grieving in that other reality, but the ghost of it clings to her still. She's exhausted, even if her body isn't. She's been keeping it together, but fuck, they all need a rest.

"Okay," she says again, and puts one of her knees up, brushing one more kiss against Clarisse's cheek. "We can go. I have-"

She gestures over to the basket on the side table. A loaf of bread sits in it, unbroken, in case they worked their way around to eating tonight. Ellie's still not sure if they will, but hey.

"Should I bring a blanket or anything?"

Clarisse looks over, following Ellie's gesture, and sees the basket with the bread for the first time. She hadn't even registered it when she'd come into the room and climbed onto the bed, too preoccupied with everything else.

It makes her realize that she hasn't thought about eating in hours. Hasn't had any food since breakfast this morning. Her head's so fucked up, she probably would have just kept going until it all caught up with her at once. But Ellie brought her food, Ellie knew she'd be hungry eventually and she grabbed something for her. Clarisse's throat goes tight, and for a second she thinks she might cry.

"I have blankets," she manages after a few moments.

They get up, and Ellie realizes where Clarisse's eyes have stuck, the look on her face.

She reaches out and winds an arm around her waist, pulling her tight to her side. With her other hand she grabs the basket.

"Then... y'know. That's all I need."

Now. Before she loses her nerve.

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