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.
"The who?" Ellie asks, tilting her head at Abby, but quickly letting it go. There were times when old-world references flew over her head, and she'd never understood the whole vampire thing.
Instead she rolls her eyes, then indicates her outfit, which after being pulled back in place shows a very clear and obvious blood seepage and cut from where the knife slashed her open.
"This could have been from stabbing you," she insists.
"The- Mina Harper." Not letting it go. "Dracula?" Ellie's obviously ignorant to what she's talking about, no matter how hard Abby squints at her for it. She sighs, "Why has nobody here read that book?"
And what's the point in making really funny references if nobody gets them...
Whatever. Ellie's suggestion gets a raised eyebrow, half a laugh. "It could have been from missing me, and falling on your own knife."
Later, she'll think about how good it felt for Ellie to say no one back home like that, off the cuff, like they're that familiar with each other. She's grinning as she wrings out the cloth, but it twists into exasperation as she follows the gesture down to-
"Oh goddamnit-" not her pants. She swats at the stain uselessly, huffing, and gives Ellie a rueful look. Her gaze lingers for a moment too long. Or, it feels like that anyway.
Fuck.
No matter how she spins this inside of her own head it's weird. Right? She opens her mouth, realises she doesn't know what to say, and stuffs the damp cloth into her pocket.
"I'm- gonna go change." There. An escape for the both of them.
Ellie snickers under her breath, lets the edge of a smile sneak out at the look on Abby's face. She'll hate herself later for it, but in the moment, it feels good to just be human for a second. The let this linger in the air until they both have to come down, and remember who they are.
It's uncomfortable to realize that they would've liked each other.
Maybe they even would've been friends.
The smile fades from both of their faces at about the same time, and Ellie feels another twinge, confines her response to a nod.
"Yeah, me too. After you."
An awkward pause. Ellie's shit is still in the room.
Oh god she said bye and now they're walking in the same direction
Abby holds in place for a moment but she can't figure out what exactly she's waiting for... something else to happen? A lot has happened this evening already. She wants a bath, she thinks, she might- go back to the room and get her shit, leave it empty for Ellie to come back to. Go stew in some hot water.
She turns to go, and hopes very hard that Ellie will take the hint and give her a good head start. Even though it wasn't the worst interaction they've ever had, far from it.
Probably one of the best, actually. Up there with the conversation by the fire anyway.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
"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?
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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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Instead she rolls her eyes, then indicates her outfit, which after being pulled back in place shows a very clear and obvious blood seepage and cut from where the knife slashed her open.
"This could have been from stabbing you," she insists.
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And what's the point in making really funny references if nobody gets them...
Whatever. Ellie's suggestion gets a raised eyebrow, half a laugh. "It could have been from missing me, and falling on your own knife."
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But she laughs again, and this time it doesn't twist Ellie up in knots.
"Then how're we gonna explain where you sat in it?"
She gestures.
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Later, she'll think about how good it felt for Ellie to say no one back home like that, off the cuff, like they're that familiar with each other. She's grinning as she wrings out the cloth, but it twists into exasperation as she follows the gesture down to-
"Oh goddamnit-" not her pants. She swats at the stain uselessly, huffing, and gives Ellie a rueful look. Her gaze lingers for a moment too long. Or, it feels like that anyway.
Fuck.
No matter how she spins this inside of her own head it's weird. Right? She opens her mouth, realises she doesn't know what to say, and stuffs the damp cloth into her pocket.
"I'm- gonna go change." There. An escape for the both of them.
no subject
It's uncomfortable to realize that they would've liked each other.
Maybe they even would've been friends.
The smile fades from both of their faces at about the same time, and Ellie feels another twinge, confines her response to a nod.
"Yeah, me too. After you."
An awkward pause. Ellie's shit is still in the room.
no subject
Abby holds in place for a moment but she can't figure out what exactly she's waiting for... something else to happen? A lot has happened this evening already. She wants a bath, she thinks, she might- go back to the room and get her shit, leave it empty for Ellie to come back to. Go stew in some hot water.
She turns to go, and hopes very hard that Ellie will take the hint and give her a good head start. Even though it wasn't the worst interaction they've ever had, far from it.
Probably one of the best, actually. Up there with the conversation by the fire anyway.
She'll figure it out later.