faderift | (Closed) Do you feel home from all directions?

"Right." Despite everything, it's still a comfort that Abby is from, if not her world, a world that's similar enough to have these cultural touchstones. Like, at least Clarisse doesn't have to explain what an Argonaut is. Or a Cyclops. It's the little things.

"It came down to the wire, but yeah, I did finish it." And a little of the bragging crops back up, too, because if nothing else she's still really fucking proud that she did that. "I was on kind of a time crunch, and my prophecy wasn't... super hopeful."

She's still looking down, but she shrugs a shoulder. "Whenever we were given a quest, the leader had to go consult the Oracle and get a prophecy read to them."

"So they told you it was a long shot before you even started it? That's pretty — rough." She almost said that it was fucked up, that Clarisse was only a kid, right? Why would they do something like that to a kid? But that's just the way that it was in her world, and she caught that little, thin note of pride in Clarisse's reply. She's pleased with herself. It was hard, but she did it. Abby doesn't want to detract from that.

"Congrats," she says instead, and wipes her palm on the leg of her pants.

"Bet everybody in the camp shit themselves when you came back alone with the fleece."

"Dude," Clarisse says, "they rhymed it. You shall sail the iron ship with warriors of bone, you shall find what you seek and make it your own, but despair for your life entombed within stone, and fail without friends, to fly home alone."

So that was really nice to hear before she set off.

"But yeah, it was pretty cool bringing the fleece back." She scuffs her boot across the wood, thinking. "The thing is that prophecies always come true, but they're up for interpretation. So you can't say they're wrong even if they're not what you thought would happen."

Finally she looks up again, checking to see if Abby's still avoiding her and then looking at a spot over her head, into the darkness.

"Me and Ellie used to argue about that sometimes. Fate and stuff."

Edited (oop) 2024-11-18 02:40 (UTC)

Not avoiding her so much as looking obediently in the direction of the eluvian but Clarisse is free to interpret that any way that she wants.

"The oracle has too much time on their hands." But she likes that Clarisse memorised it. How many times did she repeat it to herself while everything was going wrong around her? Despair for your life entombed within stone what the fuck—

She's grinning again a bit and it tapers off when Clarisse brings up Ellie, but not because she doesn't want to hear about Ellie or anything (it's actually kinda nice to hear about her, especially from Clarisse). She hums. "Yeah? I haven't ever really... thought about it that much, I guess. You believe in fate?"

The way she interprets that: bad.

"Yeah, I do."

It's easier to say than Clarisse expected it to be. If she admits she believes in fate, she's saying she believes Ellie was supposed to go, right? To die, or disappear, or... whatever happened to her. But believing in fate doesn't mean she believes that fate is kind. Actually, it's the opposite, most of the time.

She hadn't really meant to bring up Ellie as a way to skew the conversation away from quests, back to all this awkward bullshit, but now that she has, and now that she's seen the way Abby's smile has dropped, it seems like it would be stupid to try and steer things back the other way.

"Um," she says, hating the way her voice sounds, so unsure all of a sudden. "Abby... can we talk?"

She waits for Clarisse to elaborate on that but she doesn't say anything else. Yeah I do is all she had to say and it leaves Abby in her thoughts for a while, to wonder whether or not she would have teased Clarisse for believing in fate, something that only seems to happen in books, if they both weren't acting like what happened didn't actually happen. She probably would have. Then Clarisse would have told her to shut up or just punched her, and they'd end up having a deep discussion about it.

Abby opens her mouth. She wants to know more. She's not satisfied by yeah I do.

But Clarisse beats her to it, a hesitant little um into the silence, loud enough that it'd be a dick move to interrupt it. Her tone makes Abby's stomach sink instantly.

Can we talk. Fuck.

"I dunno," she says. She doesn't mean it to sound defensive but it must, right? Her shoulders are hunched up. "Can we? You didn't want to talk before."

Abby's tone is off. Her shoulders hunch up, stiffly, and stay that way. The shift is immediate and awful and exactly what Clarisse was afraid would happen and then convinced herself wouldn't. It makes her want to lean back again, press her own back against the rail even harder, but then she remembers how old this ship is and stops herself.

Besides, that's weak.

Can we? You didn't want to talk before. She rolls the words around in her head for a few seconds, trying to figure out the best way to approach. Yeah, she hadn't said anything earlier, but it's not like Abby had tried to, either. They'd both skirted around each other, both kept each other distant.

"Well, neither did you."

The injustice of this comment makes Abby look up immediately. This conversation definitely doesn't need any arguing thrown in but it's easier to get the words out if she's defensive. "Yes I did. I sent you a message asking to talk and you ignored it!"

Because that is what happened, right? And she had truly thought so up until this point when she said it out loud while looking at Clarisse, who wouldn't ever do something like to her purposefully cuz they're friends (and it's not like Clarisse is exactly shy about letting you know she's not talking to you, either). No, she wouldn't have done that.

But Abby doesn't know what the real answer is, she doesn't know how to feel about that evening she spent waiting in their room for Clarisse to show up and going to bed early when she didn't, lying restlessly in the dark with her eyes shut and heart racing, feeling like shit. Not understanding.

She's still looking at Clarisse, but she's softened out of her stubborn frown into something more like confusion. Maybe even a little hurt.

Abby isn't lying. It's obvious in the expression on her face, a lot confused, a little hurt. Clarisse is thinking back on the past few weeks, trying to pinpoint when this could have happened, when she could have done this, except she didn't do this. She knows she didn't.

She wouldn't have, no matter how uncomfortable she was.

"There was no message." She's not accusing Abby, but something is fucked up here. "I wouldn't—"

Abby doesn't think that of her, right? That she'd ignore something like that and force them both to live like this?

Except she does, clearly.

Abby doesn't say anything. She folds her arms across herself and squeezes while Clarisse looks at her, at a loss for any explanation. Now that she's thinking about it it's so clear that all she had to do was swallow her nerves and ask Clarisse about it at the time. It could have been as simple as did you get my message? But she let the silence validate her worst fear of having fucked up another friendship. At the time, the nerves were a wall, unable to be scaled.

"No," she says, agreeing. She rubs her arms like she's cold, building up steam. Keep going. "I guess it didn't get to you."

An unsatisfying answer, but still an answer. This is what she wanted isn't it? The awkward moment of confronting everything head on just to finally lance it. Clarisse feels like she's standing so far away even though she's right there. "I thought you were mad at me."

Edited 2024-11-18 19:57 (UTC)

It is an unsatisfying answer, and it doesn't seem to have smoothed things over the way it should have. They're both still standing opposite each other, too far apart for it to be natural, arms crossed.

"I wasn't mad at you," Clarisse says, thinking, I thought you were mad at me. "I just—I didn't know what to say to fix anything, and I didn't want my stupid mouth to make it worse. And I didn't know you wanted to talk."

So she'd let it be weird, instead, promising herself that as soon as she figured out what to say—the right thing to say—she'd say it. But every day it had only gotten more uncomfortable, made her feel worse about everything.

"You wouldn't have made it worse," Abby says instantly, half over the top of Clarisse, "It's — we've both been avoiding it." That feels fair to say. That was what was making it worse. The advice from Benedict and Gwenaëlle is being acted upon a little late here but at least she's doing it now, right? She's talking.

"I just don't want it to be weird." It's a rehash of what she said over the crystal, what Clarisse never heard when she was supposed to. A good enough start. "I don't want to not be friends with you over something like this."

"I don't want that either." Clarisse uncrosses her arms, takes a step forward. "I missed you."

It still feels like she fucked up in a way she's not entirely sure how to talk about, like they're going to have to slog through a field of emotional landmines before they can truly get back to the way things were. Suddenly all the wise shit Cosima said to her has disappeared out of her mind.

But this is something, at least. And it's true.

"Yeah," Abby agrees, "I missed you too." But that knot in her stomach isn't loosening up, because they haven't got to the heart of it. Maybe that isn't something they can do right away. Maybe it'll take time? Clarisse has come closer. They've been talking at each other from either side of the boat until now like somebody drew a line down the middle of it so Abby follows suit, dropping her arms and stepping forward.

Why is this so hard? She has the urge to cover her face with her hands.

"About the..."

You know. The thing. She can feel hot how her face is right now and that isn't helping it not be hot. She pushes through in a rush. "I feel like an asshole. I don't — know what I want, but I don't want to fuck you over, or presume anything..."

Feel free to jump in any time and save her. Please.

I fucked up, Clarisse is about to say. She is about to launch into this half-prepared speech about her stupid feelings and about Ellie and about how she feels like shit about the way she let being lonely push her into potentially fucking up a friendship. And then Abby keeps talking, all in a rush, her face red.

Clarisse had expected oh, we were high and it didn't mean anything, not I don't know what I want and I don't want to fuck you over or presume anything, and it catches her so off guard that she loses the half-prepared speech entirely and just sort of stands there looking stunned.

"I," she manages finally, "I shouldn't have... not because it was you, but..."

This is torture, actually. How do people do this?

"I don't want to fuck up our friendship." There. That seems like the safest thing to say, because it's 100% true. Maybe there are still other things layered underneath it—the shit she said about having thought about Abby before, about having wondered if that's why she asked her to move in, that didn't just manifest out of thin air because they were stoned—but she can't think about that right now. She won't let herself.

She's thought this too, that they shouldn't have, but for some reason hearing it out of Clarisse's mouth hurts somewhere down in the center of her chest. She goes silent but doesn't avert her gaze. It's at least a relief to see Clarisse being as nervous as she feels, just as slow to bring any words up out of her mouth like she's choosing them carefully. Abby's not sure what she was expecting to hear but I don't want to fuck up our friendship is — fine.

It's fine. She feels the same way; above everything else she doesn't want to lose Clarisse as a friend and that's something that she's always said, but it doesn't seem entirely okay like this either. Something is off. She can't tell if that's coming from her or the both of them.

"Same." The safest reply.

There's pain in her jaw, a nauseating ache. She presses her fingertips into the hinge to rub and can't ever imagine being able to joke about this, even say something as honest as It was good. Did you think it was good?

Shrugs a shoulder after a while. "So we won't."

"Good. Okay."

But it's not. Something is still off. Clarisse forces her shoulders to relax. This was... really the best outcome she could have hoped for. It was hardly even what you could call a conversation, much less the drawn out talk she'd been preparing herself for.

She can't exactly pinpoint the way she feels right now, but it's not the relief she expected.

It feels like she needs to say something else, but she's not sure what. Finally: "Sorry it took me so long to say anything. I needed to... figure some shit out in my head. And I guess I thought you were pissed at me."

Okay. That's it?

She's silent and vaguely uncomfortable until Clarisse says something more, something she can answer. "It's okay. I wasn't pissed at you, I just — didn't know how to start talking about it." And when she tried the attempt was seemingly rejected but they've already cleared Clarisse of any fault on that so she won't bring it up again.

"I was pissed at myself," she admits. "Needed to figure that out first too." And she sort of has, though not as much as she would have liked.

Edited (h) 2024-11-19 22:04 (UTC)

"Why would you be pissed at yourself?"

Clarisse kind of gets it, though. She's been feeling the same, despite what Cosima said to her about not beating herself up about this. And maybe it's for a different reason, she can't be sure until Abby says more, but does that even matter? Feeling that way sucks.

"Because this is what I do." Maybe it's reckless to mention this but she's past of the point of caring about that considering what they've done. Clarisse has seen her with her trousers unbuttoned and hair in disarray so whatever. "And I fucked up a friendship the last time, so I... just assumed I'd done it again, with you, and I was mad at myself for not learning a lesson."

This is probably the most honest she's been about her inner dialogue with anybody. It feels stupid saying it out loud, private-journaling into Clarisse's ear.

Clarisse squints, not understanding. Well, she gets what Abby's saying in the general sense, but the specifics are what's confusing. She's not sure what "this is what I do" is supposed to mean, or what exactly Abby is admitting to doing "last time." Fucking a friend? Fucking a friend who's already in a relationship?

Is Clarisse already in a relationship?

She presses her lips together. It's not Abby she's angry with. Increasingly she's finding herself annoyed with Ellie. Or... not Ellie, the real person, but whatever is left of her presence here. That's what has her so fucked up about this. It's like there's a third person on the boat with them right now, a silent ghost whose only purpose is to make Clarisse feel guilty. And maybe she's got Abby feeling that way too.

"I made my own choices," she says. "This isn't on you. Or—I guess it's on both of us, but—it's not like we did anything wrong." Her voice comes out flat until the last word, which rises in a way that's telling. It's defensive, like she's trying to convince herself.

Yeah it's not hard to hear that note in Clarisse's voice, the need for Abby to agree with her and cement this as a shared fact. "No," she says quickly, because she does agree with that. "We didn't." No matter what she thinks of Ellie's noticeable absence from this conversation, nobody has been wronged by this. The timing was bad. Or — she doesn't completely understand what Clarisse thinks of her and Ellie's relationship (what's left of it, anyway). She's never asked and doesn't know if she's even allowed to.

"Shit happens. I don't... regret it."

She regrets Owen. She won't regret Clarisse. Like she said, she didn't learn her lesson.

They didn't. Doesn't matter if she still feels guilty sometimes, it wasn't wrong.

And Abby doesn't regret it, apparently, whatever that's supposed to mean. Clarisse feels the tips of her ears start to burn and utters a short, awkward laugh.

"It was stupid, but we've done dumber shit." Remember that time they stood their ground against a fucking dragon?

A bubble of pressure bursts when Clarisse laughs and Abby does too, a nervous sound. She still feels strange, she still has questions, but she can deal with that for now. Knowing Clarisse isn't mad at her helps with all of that.

And seeing her reddening ears makes her feel weirdly squirmy.

"You mean you've done dumber shit." Who faced the dragon, exactly?

"But when you're with me, you do the dumb shit too."

This is okay, right? It's like when Abby teased her earlier about losing her crew. Still not completely back to normal, but way better than how things have been.

After a moment of internal debate, Clarisse crosses most of the rest of the distance between them, so they don't have to talk across all that empty deck space. There. She's done being weird about this.

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