WHO: Mine and yours WHAT: Catch-all WHEN: ~Harvestmere WHERE: Various NOTES: Closed starters (for now); if you're after something or someone, hit me up and I'll craft you something bespoke!
"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?
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."
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.
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.
Oh um okay. She holds still for a moment while Clarisse cross the deck but exhales once she's there, attempting to relax. "Do you know what dumb shit I actually did do recently? Said I'd conduct interviews with everybody in Riftwatch, for Cedric. So get ready for one of those, I guess."
"When you say it like that you make me sound like a zombie." Y'know, the mushroom kind.
Clarisse is raising her eyebrows at the interview thing, though, brushing past the quip (and the way Abby let out that breath when she walked over, too. Not subtle). "Interviews about what?"
If she stays right where she is, a couple feet distant, this feels okay. Faking normal until they make it.
"Oh man," she sighs, still sloughing off the last of the awkwardness. At least Clarisse is doing her the courtesy of pretending she can't tell she's acting like a weirdo. "You'd be the worst zombie. So hard to kill, I mean.
"And about anything. He wants more in depth profiles on the rifters for the library so we can be remembered." She glances at her, noting where she stopped. Hesitating, before she asks, "Want to write something about Ellie with me?"
That's the last thing Clarisse expected Abby to say, and not for the first time she wonders what Abby's thoughts are on the whole Ellie thing. She's always been quieter about it, whereas Ellie was apt to bring Abby up at random. She wonders if talking about Ellie puts a bad taste in her mouth, or makes her angry, but the look on Abby's face is... unreadable.
It still means more than Clarisse can put into words, that Abby is willing to talk about her for Clarisse's sake even if she doesn't want to.
She realizes she hasn't said anything and manages, "Okay. Sure."
Looking at Clarisse gets too intense all of a sudden so she looks away, rubs her shoulder with one arm and pressing her fingers into muscle, squeezing like it's sore. They've hardly spoken about Ellie, really only where necessary, and she knows that she's got to be confusing Clarisse. She should know that Abby's been confused about all of this too.
"Thanks." She keeps going after a moment, choosing her words. "I... feel like I knew some really important stuff about her, and like I have no idea who she really was at the same time. If that makes sense."
It's okay if it doesn't because it barely makes sense to her.
It makes sense. Like, she gets why Abby doesn't talk about Ellie much, as weird as it can be for Clarisse at times. She wouldn't want to hang around someone she had that kind of history with either, or... get to know them, or listen to their girlfriend talk about them like they're some nice person, or whatever the fuck.
"Yeah," she says, "it does. Sometimes I felt that way too."
That sounds way nastier than she meant it to, so Clarisse amends, "Just, I mean, she used to try to tell me bad things about herself and I would stop her. I guess I didn't really want to know." She kept all the good things and ditched the rest, until she couldn't anymore.
She lifts a hand and scratches softly at the side of her neck, feeling awkward. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, though."
Abby looks surprised at that, even hums a sort of huh sound without realising. It doesn't sound nasty to her at all, it sounds... a little sad, a little indicative of what Ellie is like as a person. Complicated. Strange. Hard to understand. Why would she want to tell Clarisse all of the bad things about her?
She feels a little unsteady. She asks suddenly, "She loved him, didn't she. Joel."
His name felt strange coming out of her mouth and she wonders for a wild moment if she even said it right. She hasn't said it out loud for years. And this is something she never would have asked Ellie, something Ellie never would have told her. And Abby knows the answer, but it's still the last piece of the puzzle and somebody has to say it out loud.
"Yeah. Of course. He saved her life, he was like her dad."
Clarisse sucks her teeth, not sure whether to leave it at that or not, but it's like she can't stop herself. "She kind of idolized him, I think, because he took her away from Boston. Even the stuff that was bad, I don't think she knew it was bad. Or she knew it but she didn't really let herself believe it."
It sounds dumb as hell for Clarisse, of all people, to be judging somebody for overlooking their father's faults, for idolizing them to a point of self-damage. But it's always easier to see it when it's somebody else doing it, not yourself.
"It's not just that. They had this huge fight and didn't talk for a long time, but finally she said she wanted to try and forgive him. But that was the night before—" A pause. She doesn't need to say the rest, right? "So they didn't have the chance to fix anything. I think she kind of hated herself for that."
All of a sudden Clarisse becomes aware of exactly how much she's just word vomited about Ellie and Joel to Abby, of all people. She shuts the fuck up very abruptly and crosses her arms, looking away.
Abby doesn't say anything, too busy turning over these new pieces of information in her brain. There might be something else hidden underneath them, but there really isn't — it's exactly as she thought. Yeah, of course she loved him. He was like her dad.
There was so much more to Joel than what he did to the Fireflies, to Abby — she's known for years that he shot Marlene to save Ellie, stormed their base to get back something they took from him, but she had trouble looking at it head on, like bright light. When he died she expected the monster to be slain and all she saw was a man crumpled dead at her feet.
She barely notices when Clarisse stops talking because her own thoughts are so loud in her head.
Eventually she says, "I hated myself for it too." Quiet, steady. "But I wasn't supposed to. I wasted all that time looking for him. You know? I dragged everybody else into it. And then it was supposed to be over, but it wasn't." It was easy to tell; the nightmares didn't stop. "Because I did the same thing to her that he did to me."
Clarisse doesn't know what else to say. She can't bullshit Abby and say what she did wasn't that bad, because Abby would just see through it. She's too smart to fall for Clarisse's bullshit. And saying that Ellie wasn't innocent in everything that happened would be pointless, too, because they both already know that. It doesn't change anything.
"Sometimes we don't realize things until it's too late. It's just how it is. But—" She swallows and feels her teeth press together, her jaw going tight. She tips her head back a little so it's easier not to blink. "I think she was happy. Here. A lot of the time."
She nods. It doesn't make the cold, heavy feeling in her stomach go away but it doesn't make anything worse, either. Clarisse is totally right. Abby didn't know. It's just how it is. If she could go back and do it all over again —
But she can't.
"I think she was too." Obviously Abby didn't have a good reference for Ellie being happy in her mind but she's seen her at the opposite end of the scale, heard her broken-up screams on a blood-slick floor. That feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
She shakes her head. It's like she's not all here. Half of her is still on that rooftop, sharing a blunt and being told about stars. "She asked me if we were friends before she left. I said we could try."
That finally gets Clarisse to smile, even if it's still a little sad. A question like that is just... so like Ellie. It's like she couldn't help herself sometimes.
"I think you could've done it." Hell, they were already all sharing a tent, how much closer can you get to another person? It reminds her of something, though, and she snorts, stepping closer.
"One time we were up in the mountains and she told me she thought you were cool. Out of nowhere, almost."
"Same." It's not embarrassing or sad to tell Clarisse that either like she thought it would be, it actually helps to say it out loud. Helps even more to see Clarisse smile at it, affirming. Abby isn't naive, she knows it wouldn't have happened overnight but if they'd had more time, another couple of years — it had felt like it was possible.
She snorts, feeling herself grin a little. "Oh. Really?"
Dork.
"She's kinda cool too, I guess. I always thought her paintings were really good."
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"Shit happens. I don't... regret it."
She regrets Owen. She won't regret Clarisse. Like she said, she didn't learn her lesson.
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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?
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And seeing her reddening ears makes her feel weirdly squirmy.
"You mean you've done dumber shit." Who faced the dragon, exactly?
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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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Oh um okay. She holds still for a moment while Clarisse cross the deck but exhales once she's there, attempting to relax. "Do you know what dumb shit I actually did do recently? Said I'd conduct interviews with everybody in Riftwatch, for Cedric. So get ready for one of those, I guess."
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Clarisse is raising her eyebrows at the interview thing, though, brushing past the quip (and the way Abby let out that breath when she walked over, too. Not subtle). "Interviews about what?"
If she stays right where she is, a couple feet distant, this feels okay. Faking normal until they make it.
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"And about anything. He wants more in depth profiles on the rifters for the library so we can be remembered." She glances at her, noting where she stopped. Hesitating, before she asks, "Want to write something about Ellie with me?"
She should have a record too.
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That's the last thing Clarisse expected Abby to say, and not for the first time she wonders what Abby's thoughts are on the whole Ellie thing. She's always been quieter about it, whereas Ellie was apt to bring Abby up at random. She wonders if talking about Ellie puts a bad taste in her mouth, or makes her angry, but the look on Abby's face is... unreadable.
It still means more than Clarisse can put into words, that Abby is willing to talk about her for Clarisse's sake even if she doesn't want to.
She realizes she hasn't said anything and manages, "Okay. Sure."
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"Thanks." She keeps going after a moment, choosing her words. "I... feel like I knew some really important stuff about her, and like I have no idea who she really was at the same time. If that makes sense."
It's okay if it doesn't because it barely makes sense to her.
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"Yeah," she says, "it does. Sometimes I felt that way too."
That sounds way nastier than she meant it to, so Clarisse amends, "Just, I mean, she used to try to tell me bad things about herself and I would stop her. I guess I didn't really want to know." She kept all the good things and ditched the rest, until she couldn't anymore.
She lifts a hand and scratches softly at the side of her neck, feeling awkward. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, though."
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She feels a little unsteady. She asks suddenly, "She loved him, didn't she. Joel."
His name felt strange coming out of her mouth and she wonders for a wild moment if she even said it right. She hasn't said it out loud for years. And this is something she never would have asked Ellie, something Ellie never would have told her. And Abby knows the answer, but it's still the last piece of the puzzle and somebody has to say it out loud.
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Clarisse sucks her teeth, not sure whether to leave it at that or not, but it's like she can't stop herself. "She kind of idolized him, I think, because he took her away from Boston. Even the stuff that was bad, I don't think she knew it was bad. Or she knew it but she didn't really let herself believe it."
It sounds dumb as hell for Clarisse, of all people, to be judging somebody for overlooking their father's faults, for idolizing them to a point of self-damage. But it's always easier to see it when it's somebody else doing it, not yourself.
"It's not just that. They had this huge fight and didn't talk for a long time, but finally she said she wanted to try and forgive him. But that was the night before—" A pause. She doesn't need to say the rest, right? "So they didn't have the chance to fix anything. I think she kind of hated herself for that."
All of a sudden Clarisse becomes aware of exactly how much she's just word vomited about Ellie and Joel to Abby, of all people. She shuts the fuck up very abruptly and crosses her arms, looking away.
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There was so much more to Joel than what he did to the Fireflies, to Abby — she's known for years that he shot Marlene to save Ellie, stormed their base to get back something they took from him, but she had trouble looking at it head on, like bright light. When he died she expected the monster to be slain and all she saw was a man crumpled dead at her feet.
She barely notices when Clarisse stops talking because her own thoughts are so loud in her head.
Eventually she says, "I hated myself for it too." Quiet, steady. "But I wasn't supposed to. I wasted all that time looking for him. You know? I dragged everybody else into it. And then it was supposed to be over, but it wasn't." It was easy to tell; the nightmares didn't stop. "Because I did the same thing to her that he did to me."
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Clarisse doesn't know what else to say. She can't bullshit Abby and say what she did wasn't that bad, because Abby would just see through it. She's too smart to fall for Clarisse's bullshit. And saying that Ellie wasn't innocent in everything that happened would be pointless, too, because they both already know that. It doesn't change anything.
"Sometimes we don't realize things until it's too late. It's just how it is. But—" She swallows and feels her teeth press together, her jaw going tight. She tips her head back a little so it's easier not to blink. "I think she was happy. Here. A lot of the time."
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But she can't.
"I think she was too." Obviously Abby didn't have a good reference for Ellie being happy in her mind but she's seen her at the opposite end of the scale, heard her broken-up screams on a blood-slick floor. That feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
She shakes her head. It's like she's not all here. Half of her is still on that rooftop, sharing a blunt and being told about stars. "She asked me if we were friends before she left. I said we could try."
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"I think you could've done it." Hell, they were already all sharing a tent, how much closer can you get to another person? It reminds her of something, though, and she snorts, stepping closer.
"One time we were up in the mountains and she told me she thought you were cool. Out of nowhere, almost."
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She snorts, feeling herself grin a little. "Oh. Really?"
Dork.
"She's kinda cool too, I guess. I always thought her paintings were really good."
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