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!
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."
Clarisse nods, still smiling. "Yeah, we were on a date, and it was... I didn't know what to say so I just changed the subject."
In the moment it had been awkward for her, and she hadn't known how much she could bring up either one of them around the other, but it's something funny she can look back on now, at least.
"You should see some of the stuff she sketched sometime. I bet there's drawings of Wags in there." She's sure there is, actually. And the griffons, the horses... probably a lot of the people in Riftwatch, too. Maybe she should go through the sketchbook and hand out whatever's in there, sometime.
Clarisse doesn't know she's not only seen the drawings but ripped some of the pages of the book out for herself and Abby decides she's not going to, not if she can help it. She just relinquished something, the fact that Ellie asked if they were friends right before she up and disappeared; that's enough. It's not like she's keeping everything from her, just this. Sketches, desperate lines of poetry. Her eyes scribbled over in black. Does she think she's protecting Ellie from judgement?
This version of Ellie is still new to her, the one that went on dates with Clarisse and sketched in her free time, filling in page after page of her book with pencil lines. Just a girl, not a threat.
Abby finds herself saying, "What was she like when it was just the two of you?"
Clarisse doesn't answer immediately. She's thinking—it's hard to sum a person up in just a few sentences and she wants to do a good job of it. Of course now that she's been asked the question, it feels impossible to cover everything.
What the hell. She'll do her best anyway.
"Funny," she says after a minute, "but in a dorky way. And thoughtful. She used to buy me chocolates sometimes just because, or plan something we could do for fun and surprise me. And she was smart, you know? She liked to read about history and art and space. She liked to know things about people and when she talked about them you could tell she really saw them and paid attention to them. She used to tell me stories about living in Jackson or being on the road with Joel, and she'd ask me things about my mom or what it was like at camp. And we'd just talk for ages."
She scuffs the wood boards under them with the heel of one boot. "She was... softer when no one else was around. Is that what you thought I'd say?" She really has no idea what Abby used to assume they talked about or did back when Clarisse would spend half the time with Ellie. Or if she spent time thinking about it at all.
Abby nods, feeling oddly soothed by this explanation — she already knew this about Ellie, all of it. Had to hear her puns come through over the crystal, listened to her explain the ways the night skies in Thedas were completely different to the ones on Earth. And Ellie was the one who looked after Wags while she was dead in another time, the one they left behind. She would have done it again if it had happened again.
Maybe Ellie wasn't so unknowable to her after all.
This all feels weird and complicated. That same sadness she talked to Gwen about still sits in her, tangled up tight with anger and regret. It's unfair that this happened when it did and it's childish to want to call it unfair so she can't. The whole thing is out of her control; maybe that's why Abby hates it so much.
"Yeah," she says. "I guess." She has no idea what kind of face she's making right now but she understands that this moment is finite and tender, that anything could break it open. She presses her fingers into her jaw and finds the point where everything draws tight. Talking helps. It always has.
Maybe to somebody else those words would sound weird coming from Abby, but to Clarisse it makes sense, and she nods.
Even with their fucked up history, it must have been comforting to have somebody else who came from the same place, who understood what life was like there and who didn't need to have anything explained to them about it. And though the reason for it might be awful, the two of them were connected. Irrevocably. The strings of their destinies overlapping and tied up together.
For that to just... end, with no closure, with no warning, has got to be impossibly hard. Ellie disappearing was devastating for Clarisse, but in some ways she thinks Abby must be even more fucked up by it. It's not just loss of the future for her, it's loss of the past, too.
"I know you do." She swallows. "I wish I'd gotten to see you guys be friends."
"Yeah," Abby says, and laughs because it hurts and she doesn't know how to deal with that. "I bet." Clarisse was stuck in the middle of them the entire time, it must suck to have so nearly made it to them being friends, only to have it taken away. Her eyes feel sort of hot and prickly. Abby pauses, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek until the heat recedes somewhat.
She says carefully, "It would have been so weird."
Right? For them to be friends? How couldn't it have been weird?
"Maybe," Clarisse agrees, because yeah. Of course it would be weird, at first. Even for her, it had been weird seeing Abby and Ellie in the same room, after Granitefell. But she figures every day would have been a little less strange, and eventually it all would have seemed normal. Just another day in the Gallows.
"It's not like you two are all that different, though." Not that that's the only thing you base a friendship on, but it can't hurt. "You're both into... nerd shit."
It makes her laugh a little, some of that awful sadness breaking up as she does it.
Abby wrinkles her nose. It's not the first time that this has been said about them — Abby's thought it herself more than once — but it still makes her instinctively bristle. Old habits are hard to break. "It's not the same nerd shit," she argues half-heartedly, already grinning despite herself (and in response to Clarisse's little huff of laughter). "But you're right."
It would have been weird. But it would have been good, too. Both can be right.
"You're the kind of person nerds like hanging out with. Ever consider that?"
No, it's not the same nerd shit, and Clarisse is glad for that. It'd be so weird otherwise. And she has to admit that Abby is less vocal about her coin collection and thing for romance novels. She's never started monologuing about them to Clarisse like Ellie sometimes did about constellations or dinosaurs.
But just as Clarisse found Ellie's excitement charming, she finds Abby's quieter enjoyment of her hobbies equally so. Dork.
"Yeah," she says, "it's because they want my coolness to rub off on them."
She's never thought of herself as cool or even uncool, she just — is. And whatever she is, Clarisse seems to like that, so it doesn't especially matter. Abby likes this anyway, the way they poke at each other and tease, this is exactly what she wants talking with Clarisse to be like.
This is what she doesn't want to lose. So it's good that they talked.
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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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In the moment it had been awkward for her, and she hadn't known how much she could bring up either one of them around the other, but it's something funny she can look back on now, at least.
"You should see some of the stuff she sketched sometime. I bet there's drawings of Wags in there." She's sure there is, actually. And the griffons, the horses... probably a lot of the people in Riftwatch, too. Maybe she should go through the sketchbook and hand out whatever's in there, sometime.
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Clarisse doesn't know she's not only seen the drawings but ripped some of the pages of the book out for herself and Abby decides she's not going to, not if she can help it. She just relinquished something, the fact that Ellie asked if they were friends right before she up and disappeared; that's enough. It's not like she's keeping everything from her, just this. Sketches, desperate lines of poetry. Her eyes scribbled over in black. Does she think she's protecting Ellie from judgement?
This version of Ellie is still new to her, the one that went on dates with Clarisse and sketched in her free time, filling in page after page of her book with pencil lines. Just a girl, not a threat.
Abby finds herself saying, "What was she like when it was just the two of you?"
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What the hell. She'll do her best anyway.
"Funny," she says after a minute, "but in a dorky way. And thoughtful. She used to buy me chocolates sometimes just because, or plan something we could do for fun and surprise me. And she was smart, you know? She liked to read about history and art and space. She liked to know things about people and when she talked about them you could tell she really saw them and paid attention to them. She used to tell me stories about living in Jackson or being on the road with Joel, and she'd ask me things about my mom or what it was like at camp. And we'd just talk for ages."
She scuffs the wood boards under them with the heel of one boot. "She was... softer when no one else was around. Is that what you thought I'd say?" She really has no idea what Abby used to assume they talked about or did back when Clarisse would spend half the time with Ellie. Or if she spent time thinking about it at all.
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Maybe Ellie wasn't so unknowable to her after all.
This all feels weird and complicated. That same sadness she talked to Gwen about still sits in her, tangled up tight with anger and regret. It's unfair that this happened when it did and it's childish to want to call it unfair so she can't. The whole thing is out of her control; maybe that's why Abby hates it so much.
"Yeah," she says. "I guess." She has no idea what kind of face she's making right now but she understands that this moment is finite and tender, that anything could break it open. She presses her fingers into her jaw and finds the point where everything draws tight. Talking helps. It always has.
"I miss her."
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Even with their fucked up history, it must have been comforting to have somebody else who came from the same place, who understood what life was like there and who didn't need to have anything explained to them about it. And though the reason for it might be awful, the two of them were connected. Irrevocably. The strings of their destinies overlapping and tied up together.
For that to just... end, with no closure, with no warning, has got to be impossibly hard. Ellie disappearing was devastating for Clarisse, but in some ways she thinks Abby must be even more fucked up by it. It's not just loss of the future for her, it's loss of the past, too.
"I know you do." She swallows. "I wish I'd gotten to see you guys be friends."
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She says carefully, "It would have been so weird."
Right? For them to be friends? How couldn't it have been weird?
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"It's not like you two are all that different, though." Not that that's the only thing you base a friendship on, but it can't hurt. "You're both into... nerd shit."
It makes her laugh a little, some of that awful sadness breaking up as she does it.
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It would have been weird. But it would have been good, too. Both can be right.
"You're the kind of person nerds like hanging out with. Ever consider that?"
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But just as Clarisse found Ellie's excitement charming, she finds Abby's quieter enjoyment of her hobbies equally so. Dork.
"Yeah," she says, "it's because they want my coolness to rub off on them."
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She's never thought of herself as cool or even uncool, she just — is. And whatever she is, Clarisse seems to like that, so it doesn't especially matter. Abby likes this anyway, the way they poke at each other and tease, this is exactly what she wants talking with Clarisse to be like.
This is what she doesn't want to lose. So it's good that they talked.