"No kidding," Abby mutters, looking at it critically, deciding where to start: down up will be best. The thought of having to fold herself in half to work on it properly isn't appealing. Kneeling before her isn't either.
She compromises by tapping the kitchen counter. "Sit." They can wipe it down later.
"Another one to add to your collection?" she adds blithely as Ellie reveals more inches of fucked up hip and waist. Abby looks much the same underneath of her own clothing but her gaze is still drawn to the most recent and the ugliest of the lot. A hooked claw shape. The skin is puckered from stitches that lay badly or were ripped out early.
She almost touches it without thinking, only just curbing the impulse. She busies herself with threading the needle instead.
Possibly to her credit, Ellie doesn't bitch about it. It'll put Abby more eye-level with the cut, though moving as she must to get up on the counter does mean she bleeds all the fuck over it.
(Astarion's gonna give her hell later. He can probably smell her blood a mile away. They'll just have to clean up well.)
"Right," Ellie huffs, and awkwardly catches sight of how Abby stops herself from touching one of her worst scars, that puckered monstrosity. She keeps talking, like that'll stave off how fucking weird this is, keep her from thinking about it.
"I'll just keep my assassination attempt in Rialto right next to my Rattler trap gut wound."
She's not really listening. She doesn't care about Ellie or where she got her disgusting looking scar from. She threads the needle, and looks at the gash on her hip critically before taking one of the kitchen's clean cloths so she can blot at the blood.
"You stitched it yourself?" The puckered thing on her waist. What a hack job... she's lucky Abby accidentally walked in on her, and Abby doesn't say as much out loud but it's definitely implied in her judgy little silence.
She has to put Ellie's thigh between her legs so she can keep the hip centered, and her free hand flat on the bone to keep her taut. Makes the first few stitches a little easier.
It's not weird if neither of them acknowledge it, so don't.
"Yeah," Ellie grumbles, sensing that judgment, sensitive to it. Given how she got it-
She falls into silence as Abby leans in close, trapping one of her legs between hers, close enough to get a whiff of the pine soap Abby's favored even in Thedas. It makes her stomach turn over.
"I got caught in a snare around my ankle. Swung back and hit the tree. There was a broken-off branch. The part that was left was sharp. It went in a few inches."
She'd like to see Abby find a way to fucking survive that, let alone make it look pretty. But really, she's talking just to talk. Like that'll somehow stave off the intense weirdness of having Abby this close to her. Helping.
Ellie breathes out, and manages not to jump at the sting from the needle going in, tugging at her. She takes deep, slow breaths. It's familiar, but still very gross sensation.
Predictably, the wound protests immediately to being stabbed. Abby has to keep the cloth handy, wadded up on Ellie's thigh. It's easy to detach while she does this and focus on the task at hand, but she still winces in response to the story, grimacing as she pauses to wipe away fresh blood.
"Fuck," seems like the most appropriate response to that. "Did it pierce anything?" That Ellie got caught in a snare that was obviously built to hold the weight of a human is passed over without comment. The stark reality of it makes Abby feel sick, and she doesn't want to think about it any more than she has to.
Slavers. Unfortunately, she can put two and two together. And the hip gash is, mercifully, far more straight forward. And less dire.
"Nothing vital," Ellie answers, her voice tight as Abby wipes away the blood. It's good to have something else to focus on, so she doesn't have to fucking think about the fact that it's Abby sewing her up.
She mostly manages to get past it. To see Abby as a person, an ally, a fellow member of Riftwatch, rather than an entity that still rocks in and fucks up her nightmares.
It's so much easier not to think about it, but it still clamors to be heard.
Ellie drowns it out. She's coming to realize that all of these feelings can exist and all be true at the same time, but it's still difficult to reconcile.
"I didn't bleed out, but it still fucked me up pretty good. I don't..."
She trails off, realizing, and not for the first time, how truly insane those days in Santa Barbara were. How un-fucking-hinged she had to be to do everything she'd done. To keep on going while she was that hurt.
She wonders if letting Abby this close makes her more bonkers or less.
But it went deep into her trunk, where she undoubtedly helped it along by still moving, and fighting, ignoring it as it tore open further. Abby is guessing here, but she thinks she's right. She understands not being able to stop and take care of yourself in the moment. Understands even more being impatient with wound care. Her and Ellie... she has to admit that they have a lot in common, even though it makes her wildly uncomfortable.
She hums as an answer. She's not about to say that she's glad Ellie didn't die of it, but can't say she wishes she had either. It's complicated.
Making good progress on the stitches now. She's keeping the thing smeared with the elfroot salve as she goes, and it's really helping with the inflammation.
Offhandedly, as if she's just thought about it, "You didn't want to see a healer?"
Probably best not to think on it anyway. It probably won't wind up yielding anything like answers. So Ellie just shuts her eyes and breathes through the pain. She's had practice, so thankfully it's not as hard as it might've been. For all Abby's bulk, she's not heavy-handed with the needle, so there's that.
That, and the elfroot. It's good stuff. Even if it can't stop the hurting, it does take the edge off.
"Would you?" she asks a little dryly, knowing the answer. Maybe the answer's different for the Riftwatch folks, or the natives of Thedas, but Ellie and Abby operate on a different level. One that means doing their own stitches, or sewing up allies on countertops by lantern-light.
It feels weird, knowing that Abby really is her only link to home.
Abby grumbles wordlessly because she doesn't need to answer that. They both know that she wouldn't. In fact, if it had been her with the gash their roles could have been easily and perfectly reversed, except that she wouldn't be trying to stitch herself up in the fucking kitchen to begin with. It's unsanitary.
Another pause, to dab the blood away.
Every single time they interact, Abby is reminded of how they're more similar than she cares to acknowledge. It both comforts, and pisses her off. "Nearly there," she adds. She's come to the trench of the cut anyway.
Also, "Fuck the Crows." Fucking... scary bastards. Abby thinks she doesn't rattle easy, but there was something very bloodless about the one that tried to abduct her in the marketplace. "What happened?"
Ellie shuts her eyes as the thread of the sutures pulls at her, breathing deeply. This is always the worst part, where she can feel the skin drawing together. It's the bit that turns her stomach, makes her want to dip her head. Instead she concentrates on her breathing, on Abby's low voice, and numbs it out again.
"Ah..." it was sharp. A deep breath in, and she answers.
"Wasn't professional. If he was he would've poisoned the knife," she mutters, then considers that she's already dosed on antivenoms, so it could be that it was poisoned, and it just wasn't able to take hold.
"Caught some dude skulking around the griffons. I got him from behind but I wasn't expecting his neck to be armored. Knocked me around some."
Ellie sounds bitter about it, like it's the equivalent of falling off her horse. Normal, expected to happen at times, but she's experienced enough to recognize the lapse in judgment for what it was.
Abby almost mutters an apology and catches it just in time. Ellie knows she's only doing a job, and she knows the sickly, bodiless feeling of a needle gliding in and out of skin all too well. There's nothing to be sorry about, it is what it is. Best thing she can do is keep Ellie talking, and distracted from what's going on at her hip. She's doing well, holding very still for Abby while she makes her row of strong, neat stitches. It will barely scar.
"Shit." She's not playing any of it off, just– she had that same, bitter feeling about the guy in the marketplace, like she should have known better. Opting to share what's on her mind for once, she adds, "One of them tried to kidnap me yesterday. Almost got me in the fucking spleen when it went south."
She was lucky Barrow was there and acted when he did. Really lucky.
She has to pause for just a second to breath in again, and steady up her hands. "They know what they're doing."
Compared to the Scars, they're abjectly terrifying.
Ellie can tell from the feel that it's going to be one of the better stitch jobs she's had over the years, especially given that they're in a safe place with the proper tools. She leans her head back against the tiled wall, breathes out, and stays still for her.
"Yikes," she mutters, and nearly follows it with good thing you got away. An uneasy feeling settles over her, and she opens her eyes, finding Abby's face in the lantern light, frowning.
"I thought they wanted to kill us. Why would they kidnap us instead?"
"Dunno," Abby answers, and her tone is casual enough, but her shoulders have gone rigid. This lends itself to even more pedantic stitches, but hey. Ellie's not gonna be able to rip these ones out unless she does something truly fucking stupid, so there's that.
She can feel her looking at her. She glances up, catching her eyes for a moment before she returns to her work. Wonders if she imagined seeing a glimpse of what Ellie left unspoken there.
"For my shard, I guess? I was with Vanya, and they chose me over him."
It feels unnecessary to add: and look at me. Who the fuck would choose me?
Edited (if i use the same big word twice in a tag i'll explode) 2022-05-17 01:21 (UTC)
It's uncomfortable to think of Jim, given that his loss is still so fresh, but she can't help but think of him. Of what he'd said. How she'd taken it in stride, because being kidnapped and experimented on is... well. Not a new thought.
But she hesitates to introduce it to Abby for a moment before deciding that she should know.
"Yeah. It's probably because of your shard," she says quietly, indicating her hand. "You had it covered though, right? That means some of 'em probably know you're a Rifter."
"Haven't taken off my gloves since I got here." Well. 'Cept for now, here in the kitchen with Ellie, the shard providing a tiny bit of extra light for the stitches. And when she's bathing, obviously. And in the mansion from time to time, but they're always in her pocket, ready to be slipped back on again.
It just feels like she fucked up, that's all. Made some kind of stupid mistake which resulted in Derrica, having to tend to her wounds. Again.
Abby sighs. She wipes a last smear of blood away with her thumb and asks, "Can I borrow your knife."
Ellie glances down between them, fighting the tiniest bit of a glint in her eye before she decides to say nothing. They both know what Abby means, she isn't going to be a shit about it. Sadly, if she and Abby had been friends, she would've.
Instead she shrugs the shoulder opposite of the wound, makes a low noise.
"Wouldn't be that hard to build up a list of people they know are a part of Riftwatch. From what Yseult says, these guys are professionals. Makes sense to do their homework."
She pauses at the question, more on principle than lack of trust. Does she believe that Abby would do anything? No. But the several times Abby had contact with this knife, it was because Ellie was stabbing her with it.
She rocks to one asscheek, eases it slowly out of her back pocket, and hits the catch to flip the switchblade open. She flicks her hand to hold it by the blade, then hands it over.
It feels like more of a statement than anything else they've said tonight.
She wipes her hand off of her pants before she takes the switchblade, getting Ellie's blood on her without noticing. She's busy thinking about what she just said, because it almost felt like reassurance. These guys are professionals; it wasn't your fault. Hrm.
She cuts the excess thread and presses gently over the edge of the last stitch. It's a good job, she's happy with it; moreso it feels more than a little surreal to have Ellie at the pointy end of a knife for once. It's like a role reversal and a sick joke is right on the tip of her tongue before she realises, bites it back.
God. The fuck is wrong with her?
"Thanks," she says shortly, and shuts it with a click to hand it back. Recognises it the moment it's out of her hand, her gaze lingering unsubtly. She clears her throat, brow furrowing. "... Did it come through the Rift with you?"
Ellie watches her do it, doesn't wonder at the way she lingers. She'd do the same if their situations were reversed.
Abby came when her friends' deaths were fresh. She's had even less time to process than Ellie has.
Or maybe it's that she's been processing since they were fourteen, and she found what Joel did in that hospital.
She holds out her hand to accept the knife back, holds it in her palm a moment as Abby asks, weighing what to say, because there's... so much. Abby recognizes it, Ellie knows.
"It used to be my mom's," she says, rubbing her thumb over the inlay along the side. "Never met her. She and Marlene were friends, though. A long time ago."
For the first time, she wonders, threads things together. Abby's father was a doctor. Her mom had been a nurse. Had they known each other, all those years ago? Before Abby or Ellie came along?
She banishes the thought, relegating it to the back of her mind. One more thing to chew over when she can't sleep.
"I lost it, in Santa Barbara," she adds. "But in the Fade, I dreamed I had it. So it came through the Rift, too."
She watches Ellie's thumb rub over the lip of inlay and realises what she's feeling is envy. She's envious of her getting to have something that came from her mom, when she has nothing from her dad. She kept all his stuff in her room back at the stadium and when whatever's left of the WLF goes through that room, her and Manny's, they'll box everything in there up and redistribute it, clear it out. Survivors don't throw anything away. Somebody else will get all of Manny's photography equipment, lovingly collected and restored over the years; her cassette tapes, her favourite books, her dad's alma mater mug.
It takes real effort to put that thought aside, try to banish it.
"I came here out of a nightmare." Her usual: the long hospital corridor bathed in red light, alarms wailing, "My bag wasn't even full."
But she doesn't want to talk about it. Knowing about the knife is enough, really, and that Ellie wanted to tell her about it. Abby clears her throat and takes a good step back to clear her head. "Try stretching your leg."
Ellie is quiet, reading but not reading the thoughts Abby's having underneath the surface. She can sense the tangle of emotions, mostly because she knows them well. She just can't do anything to understand details.
That's what doesn't fit about Abby. The details.
She wonders if she's ever known anyone so well, and yet not at all.
Ellie wrestles with it, the idea of asking about it. Her nightmare. Whatever would keep her with a half-full bag.
What was the worst day of your life?
Was it because of me?
She resolves to do it. To ask. To say it out loud, to ask about Abby as a person and damn the consequences, but then Abby brings it back to her hurts, and the moment shatters. Ellie shakes herself out of the strangeness and back to the present, and stretches out her leg in front of her, flexing the muscles before she slides off the edge and onto her feet. Puts weight on it.
"Good." Both in response and reaction to Ellie testing her weight until Abby's critical eye. Easy. They're done here.
But it feels too abrupt to pack herself up and leave.
It always feels like this lately with Ellie, like they aren't finished talking even though they've run out of things to say. Even now there's a strange tension, not necessarily unbearable, just- undeniably there. Abby pinches the inside of her cheek gently between her teeth, worrying the skin.
She says, lamely, "Do you... need help cleaning up?" They kinda got the blood all over the place. Abby wasn't exactly careful with where she was leaving the cloth either.
Running out of things to say around Abby is starting to become the norm. But something always hangs in the air between them after they stop, because they're not going to bother will the bullshit of small talk, and they're both too aware of the pain they'd be prodding into if they asked questions.
It's a weird sort of mutual respect, something unique to her, and Ellie doesn't know what to do with it. She glances up, at Abby's face, following the way she fidgets. She doesn't pick her fingers like Ellie does, but there's always a muscle working in her jaw.
At her question, Ellie glances back at the counter, blinking, frowning with she realizes what a mess they've made.
"Yeah," she says gratefully, heading for the water and the cloths, all the better to scrub up. "Or they're gonna think we got into it."
It loosens her up. She takes the wadded up cloth, and uses the last clean edges of it to blot at what they've left behind. Obviously it'll come out of the cloth in cold water, but... well, it probably shouldn't go back into the rotation of cloths used in the kitchen, huh. She can stuff it in her pack and keep it for first aid.
She comes to wash it out at the sink where Ellie's scrubbing at herself, getting under fingernails. Idly, "Guess they'll think I won. With all the blood being yours."
Abby's laugh is nice, soft and rumbly, uplifting itself at the end. Ellie talks down a shiver that tries to work its way up her back. Holds herself steady as Abby takes a place next to her, the two of them side by side like this is the most normal thing in the world.
Slow, it's becoming more normal than the shadows of themselves they left behind.
She snorts under her breath, lets herself have this, tentatively.
"Like anyone's gonna know it's my blood. Astarion, maybe, or Mado. Maybe. But we both bleed the same."
She snorts over the mention of Astarion, slipping a mutter of, "You the Mina Harker to his Dracula, or something?" underneath the bustling of hand-washing and cloth-wringing, which is maybe an unfair comment. But it's also true. "You're the one with all the blood on your clothes."
Which is not true, because there is some on her pants where she wiped her hand. Obviously she hasn't noticed that yet.
Too busy settling into this strange dynamic they seem to be trying. It's not good, but- it's not bad, either. It's just new.
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She compromises by tapping the kitchen counter. "Sit." They can wipe it down later.
"Another one to add to your collection?" she adds blithely as Ellie reveals more inches of fucked up hip and waist. Abby looks much the same underneath of her own clothing but her gaze is still drawn to the most recent and the ugliest of the lot. A hooked claw shape. The skin is puckered from stitches that lay badly or were ripped out early.
She almost touches it without thinking, only just curbing the impulse. She busies herself with threading the needle instead.
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(Astarion's gonna give her hell later. He can probably smell her blood a mile away. They'll just have to clean up well.)
"Right," Ellie huffs, and awkwardly catches sight of how Abby stops herself from touching one of her worst scars, that puckered monstrosity. She keeps talking, like that'll stave off how fucking weird this is, keep her from thinking about it.
"I'll just keep my assassination attempt in Rialto right next to my Rattler trap gut wound."
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She's not really listening. She doesn't care about Ellie or where she got her disgusting looking scar from. She threads the needle, and looks at the gash on her hip critically before taking one of the kitchen's clean cloths so she can blot at the blood.
"You stitched it yourself?" The puckered thing on her waist. What a hack job... she's lucky Abby accidentally walked in on her, and Abby doesn't say as much out loud but it's definitely implied in her judgy little silence.
She has to put Ellie's thigh between her legs so she can keep the hip centered, and her free hand flat on the bone to keep her taut. Makes the first few stitches a little easier.
It's not weird if neither of them acknowledge it, so don't.
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She falls into silence as Abby leans in close, trapping one of her legs between hers, close enough to get a whiff of the pine soap Abby's favored even in Thedas. It makes her stomach turn over.
"I got caught in a snare around my ankle. Swung back and hit the tree. There was a broken-off branch. The part that was left was sharp. It went in a few inches."
She'd like to see Abby find a way to fucking survive that, let alone make it look pretty. But really, she's talking just to talk. Like that'll somehow stave off the intense weirdness of having Abby this close to her. Helping.
Ellie breathes out, and manages not to jump at the sting from the needle going in, tugging at her. She takes deep, slow breaths. It's familiar, but still very gross sensation.
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"Fuck," seems like the most appropriate response to that. "Did it pierce anything?" That Ellie got caught in a snare that was obviously built to hold the weight of a human is passed over without comment. The stark reality of it makes Abby feel sick, and she doesn't want to think about it any more than she has to.
Slavers. Unfortunately, she can put two and two together. And the hip gash is, mercifully, far more straight forward. And less dire.
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She mostly manages to get past it. To see Abby as a person, an ally, a fellow member of Riftwatch, rather than an entity that still rocks in and fucks up her nightmares.
It's so much easier not to think about it, but it still clamors to be heard.
Ellie drowns it out. She's coming to realize that all of these feelings can exist and all be true at the same time, but it's still difficult to reconcile.
"I didn't bleed out, but it still fucked me up pretty good. I don't..."
She trails off, realizing, and not for the first time, how truly insane those days in Santa Barbara were. How un-fucking-hinged she had to be to do everything she'd done. To keep on going while she was that hurt.
She wonders if letting Abby this close makes her more bonkers or less.
"I probably shouldn't have survived it."
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She hums as an answer. She's not about to say that she's glad Ellie didn't die of it, but can't say she wishes she had either. It's complicated.
Making good progress on the stitches now. She's keeping the thing smeared with the elfroot salve as she goes, and it's really helping with the inflammation.
Offhandedly, as if she's just thought about it, "You didn't want to see a healer?"
Isn't she all... buddy-buddy with Derrica?
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That, and the elfroot. It's good stuff. Even if it can't stop the hurting, it does take the edge off.
"Would you?" she asks a little dryly, knowing the answer. Maybe the answer's different for the Riftwatch folks, or the natives of Thedas, but Ellie and Abby operate on a different level. One that means doing their own stitches, or sewing up allies on countertops by lantern-light.
It feels weird, knowing that Abby really is her only link to home.
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Another pause, to dab the blood away.
Every single time they interact, Abby is reminded of how they're more similar than she cares to acknowledge. It both comforts, and pisses her off. "Nearly there," she adds. She's come to the trench of the cut anyway.
Also, "Fuck the Crows." Fucking... scary bastards. Abby thinks she doesn't rattle easy, but there was something very bloodless about the one that tried to abduct her in the marketplace. "What happened?"
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"Ah..." it was sharp. A deep breath in, and she answers.
"Wasn't professional. If he was he would've poisoned the knife," she mutters, then considers that she's already dosed on antivenoms, so it could be that it was poisoned, and it just wasn't able to take hold.
"Caught some dude skulking around the griffons. I got him from behind but I wasn't expecting his neck to be armored. Knocked me around some."
Ellie sounds bitter about it, like it's the equivalent of falling off her horse. Normal, expected to happen at times, but she's experienced enough to recognize the lapse in judgment for what it was.
"Didn't notice I was bleeding until I got back."
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"Shit." She's not playing any of it off, just– she had that same, bitter feeling about the guy in the marketplace, like she should have known better. Opting to share what's on her mind for once, she adds, "One of them tried to kidnap me yesterday. Almost got me in the fucking spleen when it went south."
She was lucky Barrow was there and acted when he did. Really lucky.
She has to pause for just a second to breath in again, and steady up her hands. "They know what they're doing."
Compared to the Scars, they're abjectly terrifying.
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"Yikes," she mutters, and nearly follows it with good thing you got away. An uneasy feeling settles over her, and she opens her eyes, finding Abby's face in the lantern light, frowning.
"I thought they wanted to kill us. Why would they kidnap us instead?"
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She can feel her looking at her. She glances up, catching her eyes for a moment before she returns to her work. Wonders if she imagined seeing a glimpse of what Ellie left unspoken there.
"For my shard, I guess? I was with Vanya, and they chose me over him."
It feels unnecessary to add: and look at me. Who the fuck would choose me?
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But she hesitates to introduce it to Abby for a moment before deciding that she should know.
"Yeah. It's probably because of your shard," she says quietly, indicating her hand. "You had it covered though, right? That means some of 'em probably know you're a Rifter."
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It just feels like she fucked up, that's all. Made some kind of stupid mistake which resulted in Derrica, having to tend to her wounds. Again.
Abby sighs. She wipes a last smear of blood away with her thumb and asks, "Can I borrow your knife."
Just to cut the thread, that's all.
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Instead she shrugs the shoulder opposite of the wound, makes a low noise.
"Wouldn't be that hard to build up a list of people they know are a part of Riftwatch. From what Yseult says, these guys are professionals. Makes sense to do their homework."
She pauses at the question, more on principle than lack of trust. Does she believe that Abby would do anything? No. But the several times Abby had contact with this knife, it was because Ellie was stabbing her with it.
She rocks to one asscheek, eases it slowly out of her back pocket, and hits the catch to flip the switchblade open. She flicks her hand to hold it by the blade, then hands it over.
It feels like more of a statement than anything else they've said tonight.
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She cuts the excess thread and presses gently over the edge of the last stitch. It's a good job, she's happy with it; moreso it feels more than a little surreal to have Ellie at the pointy end of a knife for once. It's like a role reversal and a sick joke is right on the tip of her tongue before she realises, bites it back.
God. The fuck is wrong with her?
"Thanks," she says shortly, and shuts it with a click to hand it back. Recognises it the moment it's out of her hand, her gaze lingering unsubtly. She clears her throat, brow furrowing. "... Did it come through the Rift with you?"
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Abby came when her friends' deaths were fresh. She's had even less time to process than Ellie has.
Or maybe it's that she's been processing since they were fourteen, and she found what Joel did in that hospital.
She holds out her hand to accept the knife back, holds it in her palm a moment as Abby asks, weighing what to say, because there's... so much. Abby recognizes it, Ellie knows.
"It used to be my mom's," she says, rubbing her thumb over the inlay along the side. "Never met her. She and Marlene were friends, though. A long time ago."
For the first time, she wonders, threads things together. Abby's father was a doctor. Her mom had been a nurse. Had they known each other, all those years ago? Before Abby or Ellie came along?
She banishes the thought, relegating it to the back of her mind. One more thing to chew over when she can't sleep.
"I lost it, in Santa Barbara," she adds. "But in the Fade, I dreamed I had it. So it came through the Rift, too."
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It takes real effort to put that thought aside, try to banish it.
"I came here out of a nightmare." Her usual: the long hospital corridor bathed in red light, alarms wailing, "My bag wasn't even full."
But she doesn't want to talk about it. Knowing about the knife is enough, really, and that Ellie wanted to tell her about it. Abby clears her throat and takes a good step back to clear her head. "Try stretching your leg."
It's a much safer topic of conversation.
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That's what doesn't fit about Abby. The details.
She wonders if she's ever known anyone so well, and yet not at all.
Ellie wrestles with it, the idea of asking about it. Her nightmare. Whatever would keep her with a half-full bag.
What was the worst day of your life?
Was it because of me?
She resolves to do it. To ask. To say it out loud, to ask about Abby as a person and damn the consequences, but then Abby brings it back to her hurts, and the moment shatters. Ellie shakes herself out of the strangeness and back to the present, and stretches out her leg in front of her, flexing the muscles before she slides off the edge and onto her feet. Puts weight on it.
It pulls a touch, but it's sturdy.
"Stitches aren't going anywhere."
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But it feels too abrupt to pack herself up and leave.
It always feels like this lately with Ellie, like they aren't finished talking even though they've run out of things to say. Even now there's a strange tension, not necessarily unbearable, just- undeniably there. Abby pinches the inside of her cheek gently between her teeth, worrying the skin.
She says, lamely, "Do you... need help cleaning up?" They kinda got the blood all over the place. Abby wasn't exactly careful with where she was leaving the cloth either.
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It's a weird sort of mutual respect, something unique to her, and Ellie doesn't know what to do with it. She glances up, at Abby's face, following the way she fidgets. She doesn't pick her fingers like Ellie does, but there's always a muscle working in her jaw.
At her question, Ellie glances back at the counter, blinking, frowning with she realizes what a mess they've made.
"Yeah," she says gratefully, heading for the water and the cloths, all the better to scrub up. "Or they're gonna think we got into it."
It's a stupid joke, but.
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She chuckles. "Probably."
It loosens her up. She takes the wadded up cloth, and uses the last clean edges of it to blot at what they've left behind. Obviously it'll come out of the cloth in cold water, but... well, it probably shouldn't go back into the rotation of cloths used in the kitchen, huh. She can stuff it in her pack and keep it for first aid.
She comes to wash it out at the sink where Ellie's scrubbing at herself, getting under fingernails. Idly, "Guess they'll think I won. With all the blood being yours."
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Slow, it's becoming more normal than the shadows of themselves they left behind.
She snorts under her breath, lets herself have this, tentatively.
"Like anyone's gonna know it's my blood. Astarion, maybe, or Mado. Maybe. But we both bleed the same."
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Which is not true, because there is some on her pants where she wiped her hand. Obviously she hasn't noticed that yet.
Too busy settling into this strange dynamic they seem to be trying. It's not good, but- it's not bad, either. It's just new.
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