faderift | (CLOSED) You wouldn't hurt them

Clarisse lets her go, not speaking, her lips pressed together and bloodless, and watches as Gela messes with her hair.

She's disgusted on Gela's behalf for having been violated like that, and she's also trying very hard not to wonder what it means that the demon had gotten so fixated on her. If that had been it, alone, looking for a backup body, or if that had been for... some other reason.

It's not like she can ask.

Instead she only says, "Of course," and finds a spot to sit down so she isn't looming over Gela anymore. All of Gwen's stuff is so fancy, though, all velvet cushions and hanging draperies. She feels like she can't lean on anything or she might ruin it, so she sits up straight.

"I'm sure you're tired," understatement of the year, "but I hope you're coming back to the Gallows soon."

Yes and this is supposed to be a spare room. Gela can't imagine having a room like this and not going into it all the time or wanting to stay in it. It's so soft in here. She feels a little like she isn't back at home at all, having stepped out of the cage nightmare and into this odd dream full of pillows and soft blankets, food whenever she'd like it (she has not been eating much).

Clarisse is sort of hovering there in her seat, barely relaxing. Is she worried?

Gela smiles at her to try and calm her down.

"I will be. They want be to be in the infirmary with the others and not out here where they can't watch me, I think." She supposes she doesn't mind that. In a weird way she really misses Vanya, Edgard and Benedict and has been having trouble going to sleep alone, even though the rocking of the boat is very soothing. "Is everything alright back there?"

Yeah, makes sense. The fact that Gela was allowed to come here in the first place and wasn't ordered to the infirmary on Day One is more surprising to Clarisse, but it did end up working out in their favor, since her sudden reappearance would have tipped off the demon like nothing else.

"Things were pretty wild for a few days," she admits, leaning forward a little in the chair so she can rest her arms on her thighs and clasp her hands together. "But they're okay now."

Probably better that Gela wasn't hanging around in the infirmary when everyone started showing up with wounds inflicted by the demons, now that Clarisse thinks about it.

"I heard."

It's uncharacteristically sarcastic coming from Gela. She props up an elbow and leans into it, rolling her eyes. Over the last couple of days she's been dealing with an onslaught of emotions: sadness, fear, worry, anxiety, exhaustion. Anger is piercing through the veil now, even though there's nothing left to be angry at (that only makes it worse).

Gwenaëlle hasn't talked about it much. She's probably being polite and waiting for Gela to ask but Gela hasn't felt like asking until very recently; today it has been bothering her.

"What did it do?" She's looking at Clarisse quite attentively, not entirely relaxed. "To make you realise it wasn't me, I mean. Did it — say something?"

Her heartbeat feels quick and sharp. All in all, she can only hope that if it did tell somebody about her curse they would think it was completely out of character, having never heard about it before.

The sarcasm isn't like Gela at all, and Clarisse watches her, frowning. It's warranted, and if she were in Gela's place she'd be handling this so much worse, probably in very loud, very childish ways—

but it's a little worrying all the same.

"Yeah," she admits. "Little things? At first I thought you were pissed at me, and then it seemed like you were trying to mess with me."

She sighs, then adds, "'You,'" a little sarcastic herself. "I know it wasn't really you. Like, it wasn't your real thoughts, obviously."

It still feels kind of shitty to say them out loud, though. Like 'here's all the weird shit you said and did when you were blacked out' vibes, only a million times worse.

"In what way?" Gela presses. Maybe this is something she should be afraid to know. Maybe Clarisse will tell her something and she'll realise they're thoughts she's had before but known not to say out loud because they are rude or mean or angry-sounding. The demon was dipping into her thoughts and memories so there could have been a shred of truth to it.

She is biting the inside of her cheek.

Little things... it doesn't sound like the demon said something it shouldn't have but she still can't relax.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me," she says suddenly, as if remembering that this could be making Clarisse uncomfortable. "I can ask somebody else."

Edited 2024-04-30 02:46 (UTC)

It's not fair, but when Gela says she'll ask somebody else, like it's just that easy, it hurts, and the hurt quickly turns to resentment. Clarisse feels the familiar burn in her chest that signals danger, and she looks down at her interlocked fingers, willing herself not to get upset.

Part of it's that nothing the demon said to her was overtly threatening. When she repeats it out loud, it's going to sound so stupid. The other part is that she doesn't know what the demon might have said or done to the other people in Riftwatch, but she hasn't heard anything from anyone about it fucking with them the way it did with her.

She shouldn't feel guilty—enough people have told her she shouldn't feel guilty, Gela has told her she shouldn't feel guilty—but it's hard not to feel like it falls on her anyway. Like she should have realized sooner and done something sooner and not let it go on the way she did.

"First," she says slowly, "it called me and told me that it thought that Ellie and I are always the center of attention. And that lots of other people in Riftwatch feel the same. Hurt my feelings, so I avoided you for a little bit, but then a couple weeks later you said over the crystals that I'm your favorite person in Riftwatch and talked about things I like, and when I called you out on how weird you were being, you just said it's "okay" that I have self-esteem issues."

She doesn't even seem to notice that she's stopped saying "it" and started saying "you."

Clarisse stops looking at her and she wonders if she's said something wrong or out of place, holding the question in her mouth to keep from saying it right away. She usually would have; she wouldn't have ever strayed down this path to begin with, either. Gela's skin is prickling. She's thinking too hard. The inside of her head feels crowded and hot.

At least Clarisse breaks the silence before she can. Gela, listening carefully, feels her brow furrow.

"That's awful," she says. It is awful, to be picked at like that by a friend over someone special, like Ellie is to Clarisse, it sounds cold. And mean. Hurtful. Things she always tries so hard not to be. Why Clarisse?

But of course she now knows that they were envy demons.

"Was it doing this to anybody else?" feels like reaching. If the demon spoke to everybody like this it would be fine and Gela wouldn't have her suspicions right now. Her face feels overly warm, a flush creeping down her neck. She tucks her hair behind her hair and fingers a curl, twining it around and around, tugging.

"Maybe."

Clarisse isn't sure. There was a few weeks when she didn't see much of Gela, was going out of her way not to see Gela, and that means she also wasn't paying attention to who else the demon might have been talking to. Or about what.

"If it was, I didn't hear about it." Not during. Not after the fact, either. When she brought up Gela's name, no one came over the crystal to say you know, she was being weird to me, too, which isn't to say it didn't happen. But she kind of doubts it did, at least on the same level.

Clarisse sits up straight again, taking in the awkward way Gela is twirling hair around her finger, how stressed she looks. Talking to Gela has always been easy. It's almost always been pleasant. The fact that both of them are feeling this way now, she hates it. It makes her wonder if it would've been better to wait to visit her after all.

"When the scoutmaster made an announcement about the demons, I still wasn't completely sure, but I felt like the chances were good enough to act on."

Gela makes a soft sound of understanding, a little mhmm under her breath. So Clarisse didn't tell anybody about it? Did she bear this on her own, uncomprehending, trying to work out why Gela had suddenly turned on her? That's so sad. Her lips curl in an anxious little smile. There's a laugh caught in her chest, some nervous giggle and she has to fight to keep it down.

Is it morbid to keep asking?

"What happened then? They told us you didn't catch any of them."

Us meaning the four people who were replaced. Herself, Vanya, Benedict and Edgard. Four chances.

Clarisse isn't sure what to make of the weird little smile Gela gives her—is it embarrassment, nervousness? She brushes past it and continues, frowning.

"The original plan was to capture it, yeah, but that didn't work out. Ellie and me acted like we were about to go off on some secret mission, and Gwenaëlle was following us at a distance, keeping hidden. But things went off the rails pretty quick, and we had to... you know."

Clarisse has never had trouble saying the word kill before, but in this case it seems almost inaccurate—way too simplified. It wasn't like it was instant, some quick stab with a sword and down went the fake-Gela. There was the whole... skin suit thing, which she's probably going to see in nightmares for the rest of her life.

"It was gross," she adds vaguely, staring off.

Gross. Yes, it probably was gross to find a demon hiding in somebody she knew and have to... deal with it. You know. Gela actually doesn't know but she remembers so clearly the conversation she had with Ellie down in the training yard, Ellie telling her in detail about the delicate balance of a knife blade, so she can imagine what happened. She feels oddly detached in imagining it.

"And that worked, telling it there was a secret mission that you and Ellie were on," is an internal thought accidentally voiced, Gela frowning through it. It's embarrassing, actually. Something that copied her thoughts and feelings fell for... that. It seems so obvious.

She presses her lips together.

"I think," she starts, and stops. She sighs. "I'm sorry. I think I understood why it was doing that."

Gela's voice is what pulls Clarisse out of the sticky hypnotism of her own thoughts, and she refocuses her eyes on the woman sitting across from her. She fixes the image of black bile and loose skin folding over on itself with Gela, lips bowed in a frown, but alive and well in front of her.

"You do?" she blurts before she can stop herself. She hadn't been planning on asking, but here Gela is offering instead, and it's hard to let the opportunity go. She's been wondering about it for weeks.

"You don't have to go into it if you don't want to," Clarisse adds, halfway convincingly even though she feels fake as hell saying it.

Gela's mouth twitches into half a smile. "It's okay, it's — embarrassing for me, but I think I may owe you some truth." If only to resolve some of that strangeness that must still be lingering... If Gela can do that much they'll both be more at ease.

Or so she tells herself, to make it easier to say this. Ellie knows a tiny bit of this story but only her; she never told Jude. She would have, if they had time. "This will sound so strange," she prefaces, "and I'm sorry about that. But before now I have felt envious of you and Ellie together, because I left somebody behind in Nevarra, and I miss her. Things between us didn't end well.

"So I think that if the envy demon was just that, envious. I can see why it would have picked on you. But I promise I never felt like that before, never that strongly, and none of it is yours or Ellie's fault, I..."

Trailing off, she shrugs a shoulder. Offers a little, rueful smile. "I should have laid it to rest by now, I know. But I haven't."

Well, that makes a lot of sense.

Suddenly Clarisse is realizing how little she really knows about Gela's life before she joined Riftwatch. And while there are lots of people in the Gallows she doesn't know anything about, despite seeing them nearly every day, this feels different because she's supposed to be Gela's friend, isn't she? Shouldn't she know more? Shouldn't she have... asked more?

"It's not embarrassing," Clarisse says slowly. She wants to choose the right words. "Everybody wants things, and... I mean, you can't just turn off your feelings. Even when the feelings are bad." Especially when they're bad. Sucks that it works out like that, but it does. "It's only shitty because something took your feelings and blew them up until they were the only thing left. But that's not your fault."

A small pause, and then she asks, "You ever thought about getting back in contact with her? If you miss her, you should tell her."

"I know," she admits, and rubs her face with her hands. She pushes her hair back (it immediately spills back into place the moment she takes her hands away), teeth pressing around the inside of her cheek. If an envy demon had to get into her brain and pick something to fixate on, to display to other people, she is glad that it picked this, of all things.

But...

She sighs and puts her chin in her hand.

"I think about it all the time. There's still so much I want to tell her." They were supposed to be together for so much longer, perhaps even forever... It had felt like that when Gela was still at home and everything was fine. "But I'm the one who ruined it, I — left without saying anything to her. And I didn't write. I've never written. I can't start now."

"Sure you can. She'd probably want to hear from you." If Gela really did just up and leave without a word, and it's been this long, whoever this person is probably just wants to know that she's okay. Alive, even.

"You could at least give her an explanation, and then it would be up to her whether to write back or not. But..." wait, "why'd you leave like that, anyway? Without saying anything."

Clarisse starts chewing at her thumbnail. Awkward. She probably should've asked that first before launching into her unwarranted advice.

"I don't know..."

That's the problem, really, that Gela has entertained all sorts of scenarios across the years of no contact; she thinks she knows Pavia well enough to understand that she would want to hear that Gela is alive (if their places in the situation were reversed this is also what she would want). The thought of sitting down and actually penning something fills her with anxiety.

Over this next question, she hesitates. Only for a moment. She has never had cause to mention much of this to anybody and Clarisse is right there, warm and sympathetic, trying to understand. They are friends. "I had a terrible argument with my father and he threw me out. Of the city, I mean, he told me to leave Nevarra and not come back and I was scared, so I went straight away without looking back."

Saying nothing, to no one. She left in the dead of night.

Edited 2024-06-06 04:56 (UTC)

Clarisse is nodding, but she doesn't quite get it. If the argument was between Gela and her father, why's she so anxious over the thought of writing to someone else? And for that matter, what could Gela and her dad have been arguing about that was bad enough to get her kicked out of not just the house, but the entire city?

"Are you worried he's been telling people things about you that aren't true? To make it seem like he was justified?"

If that's the case, she can understand Gela's hesitation. Kind of hard to disappear and then try to get back in contact knowing everyone you left behind think you did something heinous.

Gela laughs but not because the question was funny.

"He's telling people that I'm dead."

She has wondered this for a long time now and that familiar solider she saw in the Silent Plains, the one who thought she was a ghost, cleared everything up. She isn't even really angry about it she just feels numb and strange. "Pavia must think that also, if she's ever asked after me."

And this was years ago. Enough time has passed that she may have grieved Gela and got over it.

Clarisse's brow furrows. "That you're dead? Why?"

Whatever, it doesn't even matter. Gela doesn't seem angry about the whole thing, but Clarisse is. Instantly, entirely, like sinking into scalding water. Why's it always dads who are fucking things up and getting away with it.

She leans forward in her chair, gesturing with one arm as she says, "Then you should write and tell her you're not! Or go back and tell her in person. You can't stay away forever just because your dad's on a power trip. That's not fair."

To either of them.

"I suppose because it's much easier to say I'm dead than explain everything," Gela mutters and then goes quiet, because she still remembers so clearly his silence and cold shoulder to her being unbearable after she returned home, the way he acted as if she were a ghost; by now he has probably gone and convinced himself she is one.

Clarisse's anger on her behalf is unexpectedly soothing. Gela twists her mouth.

"I'd like to, it — just feels so impossible to me now." She wouldn't know what to say, what to do. And what if she's gone? What if she left Cumberland? Nevarra? Her expression crumples thinking about it.

"You're right," she concedes, soft. "I won't stay away forever. I'll go back eventually. He's not the only thing keeping me away, see, I — it's me, I'm scared. Some terrible things happened there."

Clarisse doesn't see what could be so freaking complicated that telling everybody your daughter died becomes the easier option. The whole thing seems like a bunch of bullshit to her, in fact. Making Gela leave home, leave the city entirely, making everybody think she's dead—for what? What could she possibly have done that warrants that kind of reaction?

"... I could go with you," she offers. "If it would help. I would go with you."

She would twist Gela's dad's head off his shoulders, too, but she's not saying that part out loud.

That's so nice. It makes Gela's eyes go hot and blurry; she isn't shy about the tears, simply wipes them away with her fingers one at a time when they skip down her cheeks. "Thank you, Clarisse. I — think I'll try, some day. If you could come with me then, I'd be grateful."

And Jayce, he said that he would come too. Maybe, with friends on either side of her, she could be brave enough to go back. It would help.

She curls her legs up on the couch, hugs her arms around them just to make herself feel small. "I know I haven't explained everything," she acknowledges, "but it's hard to talk about. I'd like to tell you, though. It actually—" and she laughs a bit here, wiping one eye, "helps to talk about it with you? Would you mind if I tried again later?"

"I wouldn't mind," Clarisse says. "Of course you can."

She means it. She isn't good at talking about the emotional stuff, but she is getting better little by little. And even if it's still hard for her to talk about her own shit a lot of the time, she can listen to somebody else.

She gives Gela a little smile, embarrassed but genuine. "I'm glad you're okay, Gela. For a couple days I thought you might not be." And honestly, she hadn't realized how heavy it had been weighing on her until the weight was lifted. Not just the fear that Gela was dead, but the idea that the responsibility somehow fell to her.

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