Clarisse sits back on her heels and watches Abby as she blinks the sleep from her eyes and props herself up on one elbow. As soon as it seems like Abby is coherent, she continues, "Did she wake you up? Did you see her leave?"
The tone of her voice is accusatory and impatient, but not Clarisse's usual waspishness sparked from embarrassment or hunger or boredom. She sounds like someone who's snapping at their kid because they ran into the road and almost got run over and now they don't know what to do with all the adrenaline shot through them.
The tent isn't that big, that's all. Not with three people sharing it. There's room for their bedrolls and some of their stuff and not really any free space, and she's been sleeping in the middle so it's not as awkward for any of them, and it's weird that she wouldn't have woken up when Ellie basically climbed over her to leave the tent. One of them would have woken up, surely. If not her, Abby.
"What?" This is a lot for having just woken up. Abby sits up, legs crossed, blanket pooled at her waist. She kneads her knuckles into the side of her neck and looks over Clarisse's hunched body at Ellie's bedroll: empty, sheets pushed back. "... Clarisse, she probably went to the bathroom."
Clarisse's frantic energy isn't completely misplaced. It has been really strange being in the tents, not unlivable, but not entirely comfortable either. The three of them are sharing with little tension, the weirdness having more or less dissipated over time. It is what it is. Abby still wants their rooms back but right now, she can live like this.
She looks at Clarisse. There is something undeniably off about her. It's giving Abby a sort of tummy ache, a strange nausea. "You okay?"
She's overreacting and Abby's right. It's a relief to hear someone say it out loud, even if it makes Clarisse feel a little stupid. Yeah, Ellie is probably, like, peeing. Or trying to take a bath. Or she couldn't sleep and decided to take a walk.
She exhales, "Yeah," all in a rush, and pulls her legs out from under herself so she can sit properly.
It had just been so weird to wake up like that. Her body had known something was wrong first, and she'd woken up with one arm stretched out and reaching for someone who wasn't where she should be. The blanket had been pulled up most of the way. Clarisse had crawled to the tent flap and looked out and there had been Ellie's boots next to the entrance. Further down, Artichoke, asleep with his head tucked under one wing. Nothing outside had moved, aside from the slow, smoky coils fog just above the ground.
It had felt really strange. It had felt really wrong. But she's a little better now, a little less anxious.
"Maybe I had a weird dream," she says, like that excuses the way she woke Abby up. "I can't remember it."
Abby watches her uncoil, the tension sloughing off when she sits. Aside from the two of them talking inside the tent, the morning is still. Quiet. Most people are probably still asleep and Abby could lie down, try grab another hour, but she knows there's no point now. She's up, it's fine.
Skimming her hands through her hair, she follows the motion back and plucks the tie from the end of it, shaking her braid out with her fingers so she can redo it. It was all fuzzy from getting slept on.
"Maybe." She yawns saying it, the word becomes the yawn, maaaaybe. In hindsight it is a little odd that Ellie didn't wake her up when she was leaving, because she would have had to step over Abby's legs to get to the tent flap. She would have had to open it and let in a bit of cold air on the way out and that usually does wake her up a little in the morning, enough that when she falls back asleep again she has one of those weird, forty-five minute dreams that are ridiculous, vivid and never make any sense.
She's at the end of her braid already, her hands were moving on autopilot. She takes the tie off her knee where she put it. "What are you guys doing today?"
There's no way she could fall back to sleep now, so Clarisse runs a hand through her own hair a few times in a vague approximation of brushing it—good enough—and then reaches over to grab some clothes out of her pack. They've all gotten pretty good at living out of a tent, keeping what's left of their stuff organized and easy to find.
"Not sure yet, we haven't talked about it," she admits. "Maybe we'll get a drink after work or something."
Since, you know, the tavern is sitting there completely undamaged and they might as well use it. The thought of a cold drink after a day of hauling rubble around does sound appealing. She pulls a clean shirt over her head and asks, very slightly muffled, "You want to come?"
By the time she's finished getting dressed, Ellie still hasn't come back. Clarisse decides to give her a few more minutes, but she's visibly antsy, cracking her knuckles and then messing with a half-healed scrape on her wrist.
Seems kinda pointless to ask something like 'what are you doing today' when all of them have been doing the same thing every day for a while now: clearing rubble, sweeping up, getting everything back in order. Once they sort out the structural integrity of the remaining tower they'll be back in there and doing much of the same. Abby doesn't mind it, she likes good, repetitive work. She likes being tired and sore at the end of the day because it sends her to sleep quickly.
Having a drink after work doesn't hurt, either. She grins, even though she's still got that weird, nauseous cramp in her stomach. She's probably just hungry. "Okay."
There's a loud noise — Abby flinches and Wags comes barreling through the tent flap with something in his mouth, tail going at a hundred miles an hour. She swears and grabs at whatever he has, tugging. "Hey, give that—" It's one of Ellie's boots, an old favourite. She's expecting Ellie to come charging into the tent after him, but she doesn't.
For a split second she's sure the sound outside must be Ellie coming back, but then Wags comes busting into the tent with her boot in his mouth instead. And it should be funny watching Abby lunge for it, but it's not. Clarisse can already tell there's nobody following him in, that the area just outside the tent is quiet and still.
It wouldn't have been out of character for Ellie to take Wags out for a walk. Without shoes, though? One of them's in Abby's hand right now and the other one is still sitting outside the tent. Clarisse feels the first fluttery sensation of nerves again, rising in her stomach.
It's strange that Ellie would—
She shuts the thought down before it can finish.
"I'm going to go find her," Clarisse says. She hates sitting around waiting for people; she should've gone and looked around before she even woke Abby. She'll check the baths first. "I'll see you at breakfast."
It is strange. This time Abby feels it in that same way Clarisse seems to, a sudden twitchy need to get up and move, do something. Go look. She stops tugging the boot and Wags actually lets it go because she isn't playing with him anymore. She's looking at Clarisse; Clarisse is looking intently at the entrance to the tent like she can see through it.
The dog whines and it cuts the silence.
"Okay," Abby says. She glances down between her and the dog where Ellie's boot is on its side, a lace all chewed-up and spitty. "I'll..."
Abby doesn't know what she's gonna do. She waits as Clarisse leaves and then she thinks to send the dog too, actually. "Go help," she tells him, holding the tent open so he can go bounding out, racing to catch up. And then she's alone, the last to actually get up. She hangs around for longer than she means to, folding up their bedrolls and waiting to be interrupted but nothing happens; she's late to breakfast but not the only one to take food away at this time, go sit down with a bowl of porridge.
Clarisse shows up too late to grab breakfast and makes her way to Abby's spot. Wags is with her. He's spent some of the walk darting ahead, some of it trailing behind as he stopped to sniff at something interesting, but more or less having stayed by her side as she went from place to place.
She sinks onto the bench across from Abby. "I can't find her." Obviously. "I looked everywhere," she adds. Everywhere in the Gallows, including circling around the giant heap of rubble that used to be the Mage tower just in case Ellie was... poking around trying to find more of her stuff, or something. Whatever. Anything.
She's petting Wags in a detached way, squeezing the loose skin between his shoulders and then releasing it over and over again but not looking down at him while she does it. All the muscles in her shoulders and her neck feel like they've stiffened up and there's a low, anxious nausea rolling in her stomach. It started when she got to the baths and found them empty, and has gotten worse with each place she's checked since then.
"I'm going to take Blunder." To the city. Riftwatch is helping out there, too, offering assistance with the rebuilding going on, and of course the stables are across the bay. It's not... it's not impossible that Ellie could be there. "Can you, like—keep checking around? Just in case she goes back to the tent or shows up somewhere?"
The please? is unspoken but definitely there. Right now it feels like she's balancing on a knife edge between handling this like a normal person and doing the opposite of that, and however Abby responds is gonna push her one way or the other.
Abby doesn't eat. She sits with her bowl of porridge and brings her crystal out of her pocket, fiddling slowly with it as the food goes cold. She was gonna get Ellie on and tell her to pull her head out, something like that, but she's just realised if Ellie doesn't reply it's going to freak her out, it's going to make this so, so real. She puts her crystal on the table instead, in case Clarisse reaches out.
She sits and stares off into space for she doesn't know how long and then Clarisse is there, sitting across from her, Wags at her side, sticking close. He's leaning into her while she rubs him down because he knows she needs comfort. He does that for Abby when she's upset.
Without a word, Abby pushes the bowl of untouched food across the table toward Clarisse as if she got it for her.
"Yeah." She says it instantly, the moment Clarisse's mouth shuts. "I'll go back to the tent and then I'll do a couple rounds. Yseult'll know."
She feels so strange. She feels off-balance, the same way she does whenever she's staring down over the side of a sharp drop and feeling like she's about to fall. Her voice is so, so calm. "Take Blunder," she encourages, scooping her crystal, slipping it into her pocket, getting up. "Call me in an hour."
Abby, as usual, somehow manages to say the exact right thing. She sounds so calm—not unbothered, just steady, and it settles Clarisse the slightest bit. The house of cards trembles and then rights itself, an internal storm quieting.
"Thanks," she says quietly as Abby stands up. She feels like this is less out of their control now that she knows somebody will be checking in back at the tent, the most likely place for Ellie to stop whenever she comes back. She lets go of Wags and watches him trot along with Abby as she walks out of the dining hall.
She isn't hungry, but she knows she needs it, so Clarisse forces herself to eat half the bowl Abby passed to her. Three big, tasteless spoonfuls, and then she can't manage any more. She needs to be moving, to be doing something. So she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and moves.
It takes her longer than an hour to call Abby. She stops at the stables and walks down the length of the building, looking into each stall as she passes it. She checks Viscount's Keep and the temporary scaffolding at the staircase. She checks any place she recognizes as a spot where she and Ellie have stopped, any place that looks like somewhere Ellie might like. She calls Ellie on her crystal. She doesn't cry, she doesn't panic. Her anxiety feels like some distant thing, like she's watching somebody else.
Finally she does it. "Anything?" She knows the answer already.
Abby does go back to the tent first. It's still empty, she knew that it would be, but she still finds what she's actually here for — Ellie's pack, leaning up against the side of the tent, right where it shouldn't be. She's been thinking about it ever since she got that boot out of Wags' mouth and kneels beside the bag now, dragging it across the ground toward herself. She opens it.
All of her things are inside. Weapons (knifes, not all of them sheathed), first aid supplies, a couple trinkets, her sketchbook, wrapped food. There's stuff all smashed into the lining at the bottom, pencil shavings and crumbs, lint, loose hairs, woody splinters that might have come off of arrows.
Wags is sitting beside her being usually silent; she lifts the bag up to him to let him get a good sniff inside. "Go find her," she says, rubbing his back urgently. "Find Ellie. Go find her."
He tilts his head. Wags isn't a tracking dog, he doesn't know what she's asking him to do. She stares at the bag, the one she knows Ellie would never leave behind for any reason and then she slings it carelessly toward the bedrolls, grabs her stuff and leaves. She's done a full circuit and asked a few people passing by if they've seen Ellie anywhere (they haven't), when Clarisse's voice finally crackles through the crystals.
"Nothing." It's like she just... vanished into thin air. Abby's still moving though, still walking. She says, "Clarisse," and then her throat closes up and she can't say anything else, can't complete the sentence.
A silence follows, hanging in the air between them. Clarisse knows that if she lets it go on for too long, Abby will say something terrible. She tips her head back, pressing the crown of her head against the soft feathers of Blunder's chest. They've made their way to the docks, back to the point where she might climb into the saddle and make the short trip across the water to the Gallows.
Back to the place where Ellie isn't.
She's already mapping out the area surrounding the city in her head. The mountains are right there. Ellie likes to explore, camp out. Maybe she got sick of sharing the tent and needed time to be alone. Once she borrowed that special climbing gear from Tony. Did she still have it? Clarisse can't remember seeing it, but it doesn't mean—Ellie could have—
"I'm going to keep looking," she says, before Abby can continue. "Call me if anything changes."
She's already swinging herself back up and into the saddle.
Abby wrestles with herself hard for a moment, knowing what she should probably say here and not wanting to, dreading it. If she says it now, neither of them can go back.
"... Okay." Great. She's a coward. "I'll keep looking too."
And she will, even though she knows it's pointless. She's not gonna ask anybody else if they've seen Ellie though, there's no need to start a manhunt over it; from a distance her brisk pace will look like she's exercising or running an errand rather than searching for somebody. She grabs her crystal again. "Come back before it gets dark." It's not a request, it's an order. She's not gonna deal with something preventable and stupid happening to Clarisse on top of Ellie being gone.
Oh, god. She's gone.
The weight of it slams into Abby like a baseball bat. She gasps like there's no air in her lungs, pausing to heave down a couple breaths. She has to wait for that heavy, sick feeling to subside, to be certain she's not about to throw up — then she keeps walking, to go check the tent.
Clarisse does come back, just before sunset. It's not because she wants to, or even because Abby has ordered her to, only because she hadn't planned on being gone all day when she left this morning and she has no supplies. Blunder needs to rest. She needs to gather up the things she'll need.
The sky has gone cloudy with impending rain, cool gusts of wind whipping up and blowing her hair back as she unsaddles Blunder and then makes her way back to the tent. She can't make eye contact with Abby as she walks in. It feels like everything's moving too slowly for the frenetic energy coursing through her body, and her hands are shaking as she crouches to start throwing supplies into a spare bag.
She'll need a change of clothes, probably, if it rains. Her bedroll. An extra blanket. Rope. A knife, of course. She'll have to stop and grab food for Blunder, water. Should swing by the infirmary and grab something she can use as bandages or a sling, too.
"I'm going back out," she says without looking up.
Going back to the tent feels awful, it's so empty. Abby doesn't think she'll stay. She will keep walking around and looking like she said because she doesn't know what else to say and moving helps (if she sits down she won't be able to get back up again). She's back here for that same bag again, grabbing it from where she threw it in a corner, yanking it open. She takes out Ellie's sketchbook.
Paging through it from the start, her eyes slide over the words in messy handwriting, sketches of pine trees covered in snow, deer, giraffes. A drawing of Joel with his eyes scribbled through, captioned: Tommy said her name was ABBY, her name boxed off from the rest of the sentence in angry black lines. Abby skips ahead.
She's seen Ellie's drawings of her once before. Now she finds the same page and tears it out inelegantly, turns back to the book, searching for more. When she sees a hint of herself, the shape of her face or eyes, her braid interlocking edges of a page (there is a lot of braid), she takes it out, easing it from the binding of the book with her thumb. She places each one by her leg, makes a little pile. She'll read them later. Or maybe she won't, she just — wants them, they belong to her. They are of her.
She shoves them inside her own bag, puts everything back the way she found it and leaves, only comes back once the sun is starting to drop because she told Clarisse to come back, and she has to be there when she does. Having her back fills Abby with both relief and dread because she's realised that Clarisse isn't going to say the quiet part out loud. She's going to make Abby do it, and she's probably going to fight her every step of the way.
"You can't." Clarisse is too busy shoving things into her pack to look at her but Abby reaches over and takes the length of rope back out, holding tightly onto it. Maybe she can use it to tie Clarisse to her bedroll if she has to? "It's getting dark — and it's gonna rain. It's not safe to go flying."
She can feel Abby's eyes on her, but doesn't turn around until Abby reaches down and takes the rope out of her bag. She just doesn't want to see the look Abby's giving her, or hear the logic in what she's saying.
"I don't care." She feels desperate. She feels like she's running out of time, and every second she spends standing here is a step closer to the end. "What if she's hurt?"
In the dark. In the rain. It makes Clarisse want to throw up.
"I don't have to fly. I'll leave Blunder in the stables and take a horse." That would be better, actually. She wouldn't be able to see shit from the air after sunset anyway.
"She's not hurt." Abby changes her mind and puts the rope down, reaches out for Clarisse's forearm. She holds that instead. She isn't gentle about it, in the gesture or her tone. She clutches Clarisse, can tell that she sounds stressed out, her voice all tight like she's forcing it out from between her clenched teeth. "You have to stay here."
A horse would be worse. When she thinks about Clarisse riding all by herself out there in the dark while it's raining, calling Ellie's name, it makes her want to cry, it just — hurts. That spike is back in her throat, making it hurt to swallow. She doubles her grip.
If Clarisse wants her off so she can get up and move outside she's going to have to throw her off.
Abby's not fucking around. It's clear in her tone that if Clarisse tries to leave again this is going to be a problem. Abby wants her to just give up, and stop looking, and wait around like Ellie would ever do this on her own, like this is something that can just wait until tomorrow.
"God, this is like a dream come true for you, isn't it?" she says quietly. Ellie missing. Maybe hurt, maybe dead, maybe just—
she stops the thought.
Clarisse has never raised a hand to Abby before. Not in anger. They've sparred plenty, and it's gotten pretty rough, but it's all been in fun. Now she's staring down at Abby's fingers closed tight on her arm and all she wants to do is wrench out of her grip and haul back and hit her as hard as she can.
She does—wrench her arm back, anyway. Abby's grip is not gentle. She uses all of her strength to do it and then stops that way, arm held back like she's about to go at her, breathing heavy through her teeth. For a second the look on her face looks so much like the god they met in the desert, like she's given up everything human in her, and then it drops and she looks like herself again, exhausted and hungry and so fucking scared.
What the fuck is she doing, standing there like she's about to hit Abby? Standing there just like her father always stood over her, with a raised fist. She swallows around what feels like a jagged rock in her throat. She thinks she might cry, or throw up. She doesn't know what to do.
She hugs her arms around herself. "I'll wait," she says, hating herself more with every word. "Until Blunder eats. And rests."
Abby ducks her head at that, feeling her teeth with her tongue, all the parts where the enamel's gone smooth and oddly flat in juxtaposition with the sharper gaps between them. What Clarisse said sounds like Joel's raspy voice in her ear, Why don't you say your little speech, because he expected her to be satisfied in his death and she wasn't. She couldn't work out why not. She can't work out how to tell Clarisse it feels like she's having a nightmare.
Taking advantage of her silence, Clarisse yanks out of her grip like Abby knew she would. She's stronger. Really, if she wanted to go, she could. And, glancing up — her pulse quickens at the look on her face because it isn't anything she's seen before. It's beyond. She doesn't know what's going to happen, she's just crouched there staring up at Clarisse with her heartbeat clanging against the inside of her chest, a warning klaxon. She gets a sudden crawling sensation on her skin that doesn't fit right, not when she's looking at her best friend, but then sense floods back into Clarisse's face. She drops her arm.
Abby is still staring.
"Okay." Her voice sounds like it's on the other side of the tent. She can see the indents of her fingers on Clarisse's arm as she's hugging herself, white half-moons where her nails dug in.
Now that she's made the decision to stay (to stay until Blunder can head back out), she's not sure what to do. She sinks back to a sitting position and pushes the bag back against the side of the tent, and once that's done and there's nothing to busy herself with, she's lost.
It feels like she can't look at Abby. Somehow it's worse because Abby isn't being mean now, isn't lashing out the way Clarisse would have if this had happened with their positions in reverse. Abby's going to wait with her anyway, like Clarisse didn't just say something horrible and then come within seconds of fighting her.
She stares at her lap instead, and messes with the fabric of her shirt, tugging at it even though there's nothing wrong with it. She still feels sick with anxiety, with all that energy and nowhere to put it, and she knows what she should say, but the longer she doesn't say it the harder it gets to say anything at all.
Finally, still not looking up, she manages. "I'm sorry I said that to you. I know it's not true."
Abby doesn't know what to do either. Well — she'd love to get out of the fucking tent and maybe go for a hard run, push all thought from her mind, but she can't leave or Clarisse will take a horse out into the oncoming storm. She cracks her knuckles slowly and slumps in place. She feels a bit sweaty, not entirely comfortable. The side of her face aches from clenching her jaw and she's trying to relax it, to stop the oncoming headache it'll give her, but it's impossible right now.
She grunts at what Clarisse says, rubbing the back of her neck. It's equally as impossible to reply to her the way she wants to right now. Seems important to choose her words carefully.
"Yeah." Abby herself doesn't really know if it's not true, though. It'd be easier if it was.
She isn't looking at Clarisse either. "She left her bag here."
Clarisse looks at the spot where Ellie's bag should be, and yeah, there it is. It looks pretty much just the way it looked the previous night when they'd gone to bed. She's pretty sure it does. She'd seen it this morning, too, she realizes that now, but it's like her brain had skipped over that in the moment. She had been so focused on convincing herself that nothing was wrong that she thinks her brain must have skipped over a lot.
She nods. Abby's not looking at her, though, so she says, "Yeah."
Yeah, but what if Ellie hadn't planned on being gone long? What if someone hurt her? Took her? People do weird things all the time. People act in ways you don't expect. Maybe Ellie left her bag behind because it's supposed to mean something and Clarisse is too fucking stupid to figure out what. Maybe she left it and it doesn't mean anything at all.
"It doesn't mean anything," she decides out loud. It can't.
It sounds weird the way she's saying it, like Ellie being gone hinges on the bag being here without her but — it kinda does. Abby wouldn't go anywhere without her stuff and Ellie came here from the exact same apocalypse. They're survivors, Ellie even wrote that out in her sketchbook a couple times, the words carefully printed, endure and survive. "Her shoes are here."
It's like she's lining up dominoes just to knock them all down. She doesn't know if it's right to force Clarisse into putting two and two together like this, but she does know that she's exhausted, upset, freaked out, she's absolutely dreading the thought of having to try and stop Clarisse from leaving again in a couple hours time.
Clarisse is stubborn, not stupid, and there is a limit to how much even she can metaphorically cover her ears and pretend that Abby isn't making any sense. She knows, and has known all day, that the idea of flying off into the mountains and actually finding Ellie there is laughable. As ridiculous as the idea that Ellie would leave the Gallows without her bag, her shoes, or her griffon. And that she'd do it without saying anything.
It's Clarisse who's not making sense. And she knows that but it feels like she can't stop, either, because stopping would be admitting that there is no chance, and no hope.
This—whatever she says or does next—is going to change everything. Clarisse knows that. It feels exactly like it did after she landed the chariot in Manhattan and she knew, she knew that as soon as she stepped down onto the street that her life would be different. Permanently, irreversibly.
So she says nothing, does nothing. She doesn't blink, she can't even breathe. On the canvas above them, she hears the first fat raindrops hitting the tent. She watches Abby, as if there's something Abby can say that will somehow undo this, somehow make it right.
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Clarisse sits back on her heels and watches Abby as she blinks the sleep from her eyes and props herself up on one elbow. As soon as it seems like Abby is coherent, she continues, "Did she wake you up? Did you see her leave?"
The tone of her voice is accusatory and impatient, but not Clarisse's usual waspishness sparked from embarrassment or hunger or boredom. She sounds like someone who's snapping at their kid because they ran into the road and almost got run over and now they don't know what to do with all the adrenaline shot through them.
The tent isn't that big, that's all. Not with three people sharing it. There's room for their bedrolls and some of their stuff and not really any free space, and she's been sleeping in the middle so it's not as awkward for any of them, and it's weird that she wouldn't have woken up when Ellie basically climbed over her to leave the tent. One of them would have woken up, surely. If not her, Abby.
So.
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Clarisse's frantic energy isn't completely misplaced. It has been really strange being in the tents, not unlivable, but not entirely comfortable either. The three of them are sharing with little tension, the weirdness having more or less dissipated over time. It is what it is. Abby still wants their rooms back but right now, she can live like this.
She looks at Clarisse. There is something undeniably off about her. It's giving Abby a sort of tummy ache, a strange nausea. "You okay?"
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She exhales, "Yeah," all in a rush, and pulls her legs out from under herself so she can sit properly.
It had just been so weird to wake up like that. Her body had known something was wrong first, and she'd woken up with one arm stretched out and reaching for someone who wasn't where she should be. The blanket had been pulled up most of the way. Clarisse had crawled to the tent flap and looked out and there had been Ellie's boots next to the entrance. Further down, Artichoke, asleep with his head tucked under one wing. Nothing outside had moved, aside from the slow, smoky coils fog just above the ground.
It had felt really strange. It had felt really wrong. But she's a little better now, a little less anxious.
"Maybe I had a weird dream," she says, like that excuses the way she woke Abby up. "I can't remember it."
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Skimming her hands through her hair, she follows the motion back and plucks the tie from the end of it, shaking her braid out with her fingers so she can redo it. It was all fuzzy from getting slept on.
"Maybe." She yawns saying it, the word becomes the yawn, maaaaybe. In hindsight it is a little odd that Ellie didn't wake her up when she was leaving, because she would have had to step over Abby's legs to get to the tent flap. She would have had to open it and let in a bit of cold air on the way out and that usually does wake her up a little in the morning, enough that when she falls back asleep again she has one of those weird, forty-five minute dreams that are ridiculous, vivid and never make any sense.
She's at the end of her braid already, her hands were moving on autopilot. She takes the tie off her knee where she put it. "What are you guys doing today?"
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"Not sure yet, we haven't talked about it," she admits. "Maybe we'll get a drink after work or something."
Since, you know, the tavern is sitting there completely undamaged and they might as well use it. The thought of a cold drink after a day of hauling rubble around does sound appealing. She pulls a clean shirt over her head and asks, very slightly muffled, "You want to come?"
By the time she's finished getting dressed, Ellie still hasn't come back. Clarisse decides to give her a few more minutes, but she's visibly antsy, cracking her knuckles and then messing with a half-healed scrape on her wrist.
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Having a drink after work doesn't hurt, either. She grins, even though she's still got that weird, nauseous cramp in her stomach. She's probably just hungry. "Okay."
There's a loud noise — Abby flinches and Wags comes barreling through the tent flap with something in his mouth, tail going at a hundred miles an hour. She swears and grabs at whatever he has, tugging. "Hey, give that—" It's one of Ellie's boots, an old favourite. She's expecting Ellie to come charging into the tent after him, but she doesn't.
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It wouldn't have been out of character for Ellie to take Wags out for a walk. Without shoes, though? One of them's in Abby's hand right now and the other one is still sitting outside the tent. Clarisse feels the first fluttery sensation of nerves again, rising in her stomach.
It's strange that Ellie would—
She shuts the thought down before it can finish.
"I'm going to go find her," Clarisse says. She hates sitting around waiting for people; she should've gone and looked around before she even woke Abby. She'll check the baths first. "I'll see you at breakfast."
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The dog whines and it cuts the silence.
"Okay," Abby says. She glances down between her and the dog where Ellie's boot is on its side, a lace all chewed-up and spitty. "I'll..."
Abby doesn't know what she's gonna do. She waits as Clarisse leaves and then she thinks to send the dog too, actually. "Go help," she tells him, holding the tent open so he can go bounding out, racing to catch up. And then she's alone, the last to actually get up. She hangs around for longer than she means to, folding up their bedrolls and waiting to be interrupted but nothing happens; she's late to breakfast but not the only one to take food away at this time, go sit down with a bowl of porridge.
Clarisse isn't there yet, though.
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She sinks onto the bench across from Abby. "I can't find her." Obviously. "I looked everywhere," she adds. Everywhere in the Gallows, including circling around the giant heap of rubble that used to be the Mage tower just in case Ellie was... poking around trying to find more of her stuff, or something. Whatever. Anything.
She's petting Wags in a detached way, squeezing the loose skin between his shoulders and then releasing it over and over again but not looking down at him while she does it. All the muscles in her shoulders and her neck feel like they've stiffened up and there's a low, anxious nausea rolling in her stomach. It started when she got to the baths and found them empty, and has gotten worse with each place she's checked since then.
"I'm going to take Blunder." To the city. Riftwatch is helping out there, too, offering assistance with the rebuilding going on, and of course the stables are across the bay. It's not... it's not impossible that Ellie could be there. "Can you, like—keep checking around? Just in case she goes back to the tent or shows up somewhere?"
The please? is unspoken but definitely there. Right now it feels like she's balancing on a knife edge between handling this like a normal person and doing the opposite of that, and however Abby responds is gonna push her one way or the other.
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She sits and stares off into space for she doesn't know how long and then Clarisse is there, sitting across from her, Wags at her side, sticking close. He's leaning into her while she rubs him down because he knows she needs comfort. He does that for Abby when she's upset.
Without a word, Abby pushes the bowl of untouched food across the table toward Clarisse as if she got it for her.
"Yeah." She says it instantly, the moment Clarisse's mouth shuts. "I'll go back to the tent and then I'll do a couple rounds. Yseult'll know."
She feels so strange. She feels off-balance, the same way she does whenever she's staring down over the side of a sharp drop and feeling like she's about to fall. Her voice is so, so calm. "Take Blunder," she encourages, scooping her crystal, slipping it into her pocket, getting up. "Call me in an hour."
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"Thanks," she says quietly as Abby stands up. She feels like this is less out of their control now that she knows somebody will be checking in back at the tent, the most likely place for Ellie to stop whenever she comes back. She lets go of Wags and watches him trot along with Abby as she walks out of the dining hall.
She isn't hungry, but she knows she needs it, so Clarisse forces herself to eat half the bowl Abby passed to her. Three big, tasteless spoonfuls, and then she can't manage any more. She needs to be moving, to be doing something. So she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and moves.
It takes her longer than an hour to call Abby. She stops at the stables and walks down the length of the building, looking into each stall as she passes it. She checks Viscount's Keep and the temporary scaffolding at the staircase. She checks any place she recognizes as a spot where she and Ellie have stopped, any place that looks like somewhere Ellie might like. She calls Ellie on her crystal. She doesn't cry, she doesn't panic. Her anxiety feels like some distant thing, like she's watching somebody else.
Finally she does it. "Anything?" She knows the answer already.
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All of her things are inside. Weapons (knifes, not all of them sheathed), first aid supplies, a couple trinkets, her sketchbook, wrapped food. There's stuff all smashed into the lining at the bottom, pencil shavings and crumbs, lint, loose hairs, woody splinters that might have come off of arrows.
Wags is sitting beside her being usually silent; she lifts the bag up to him to let him get a good sniff inside. "Go find her," she says, rubbing his back urgently. "Find Ellie. Go find her."
He tilts his head. Wags isn't a tracking dog, he doesn't know what she's asking him to do. She stares at the bag, the one she knows Ellie would never leave behind for any reason and then she slings it carelessly toward the bedrolls, grabs her stuff and leaves. She's done a full circuit and asked a few people passing by if they've seen Ellie anywhere (they haven't), when Clarisse's voice finally crackles through the crystals.
"Nothing." It's like she just... vanished into thin air. Abby's still moving though, still walking. She says, "Clarisse," and then her throat closes up and she can't say anything else, can't complete the sentence.
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Back to the place where Ellie isn't.
She's already mapping out the area surrounding the city in her head. The mountains are right there. Ellie likes to explore, camp out. Maybe she got sick of sharing the tent and needed time to be alone. Once she borrowed that special climbing gear from Tony. Did she still have it? Clarisse can't remember seeing it, but it doesn't mean—Ellie could have—
"I'm going to keep looking," she says, before Abby can continue. "Call me if anything changes."
She's already swinging herself back up and into the saddle.
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"... Okay." Great. She's a coward. "I'll keep looking too."
And she will, even though she knows it's pointless. She's not gonna ask anybody else if they've seen Ellie though, there's no need to start a manhunt over it; from a distance her brisk pace will look like she's exercising or running an errand rather than searching for somebody. She grabs her crystal again. "Come back before it gets dark." It's not a request, it's an order. She's not gonna deal with something preventable and stupid happening to Clarisse on top of Ellie being gone.
Oh, god. She's gone.
The weight of it slams into Abby like a baseball bat. She gasps like there's no air in her lungs, pausing to heave down a couple breaths. She has to wait for that heavy, sick feeling to subside, to be certain she's not about to throw up — then she keeps walking, to go check the tent.
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The sky has gone cloudy with impending rain, cool gusts of wind whipping up and blowing her hair back as she unsaddles Blunder and then makes her way back to the tent. She can't make eye contact with Abby as she walks in. It feels like everything's moving too slowly for the frenetic energy coursing through her body, and her hands are shaking as she crouches to start throwing supplies into a spare bag.
She'll need a change of clothes, probably, if it rains. Her bedroll. An extra blanket. Rope. A knife, of course. She'll have to stop and grab food for Blunder, water. Should swing by the infirmary and grab something she can use as bandages or a sling, too.
"I'm going back out," she says without looking up.
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Paging through it from the start, her eyes slide over the words in messy handwriting, sketches of pine trees covered in snow, deer, giraffes. A drawing of Joel with his eyes scribbled through, captioned: Tommy said her name was ABBY, her name boxed off from the rest of the sentence in angry black lines. Abby skips ahead.
She's seen Ellie's drawings of her once before. Now she finds the same page and tears it out inelegantly, turns back to the book, searching for more. When she sees a hint of herself, the shape of her face or eyes, her braid interlocking edges of a page (there is a lot of braid), she takes it out, easing it from the binding of the book with her thumb. She places each one by her leg, makes a little pile. She'll read them later. Or maybe she won't, she just — wants them, they belong to her. They are of her.
She shoves them inside her own bag, puts everything back the way she found it and leaves, only comes back once the sun is starting to drop because she told Clarisse to come back, and she has to be there when she does. Having her back fills Abby with both relief and dread because she's realised that Clarisse isn't going to say the quiet part out loud. She's going to make Abby do it, and she's probably going to fight her every step of the way.
"You can't." Clarisse is too busy shoving things into her pack to look at her but Abby reaches over and takes the length of rope back out, holding tightly onto it. Maybe she can use it to tie Clarisse to her bedroll if she has to? "It's getting dark — and it's gonna rain. It's not safe to go flying."
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"I don't care." She feels desperate. She feels like she's running out of time, and every second she spends standing here is a step closer to the end. "What if she's hurt?"
In the dark. In the rain. It makes Clarisse want to throw up.
"I don't have to fly. I'll leave Blunder in the stables and take a horse." That would be better, actually. She wouldn't be able to see shit from the air after sunset anyway.
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A horse would be worse. When she thinks about Clarisse riding all by herself out there in the dark while it's raining, calling Ellie's name, it makes her want to cry, it just — hurts. That spike is back in her throat, making it hurt to swallow. She doubles her grip.
If Clarisse wants her off so she can get up and move outside she's going to have to throw her off.
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"God, this is like a dream come true for you, isn't it?" she says quietly. Ellie missing. Maybe hurt, maybe dead, maybe just—
she stops the thought.
Clarisse has never raised a hand to Abby before. Not in anger. They've sparred plenty, and it's gotten pretty rough, but it's all been in fun. Now she's staring down at Abby's fingers closed tight on her arm and all she wants to do is wrench out of her grip and haul back and hit her as hard as she can.
She does—wrench her arm back, anyway. Abby's grip is not gentle. She uses all of her strength to do it and then stops that way, arm held back like she's about to go at her, breathing heavy through her teeth. For a second the look on her face looks so much like the god they met in the desert, like she's given up everything human in her, and then it drops and she looks like herself again, exhausted and hungry and so fucking scared.
What the fuck is she doing, standing there like she's about to hit Abby? Standing there just like her father always stood over her, with a raised fist. She swallows around what feels like a jagged rock in her throat. She thinks she might cry, or throw up. She doesn't know what to do.
She hugs her arms around herself. "I'll wait," she says, hating herself more with every word. "Until Blunder eats. And rests."
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Taking advantage of her silence, Clarisse yanks out of her grip like Abby knew she would. She's stronger. Really, if she wanted to go, she could. And, glancing up — her pulse quickens at the look on her face because it isn't anything she's seen before. It's beyond. She doesn't know what's going to happen, she's just crouched there staring up at Clarisse with her heartbeat clanging against the inside of her chest, a warning klaxon. She gets a sudden crawling sensation on her skin that doesn't fit right, not when she's looking at her best friend, but then sense floods back into Clarisse's face. She drops her arm.
Abby is still staring.
"Okay." Her voice sounds like it's on the other side of the tent. She can see the indents of her fingers on Clarisse's arm as she's hugging herself, white half-moons where her nails dug in.
"I'll wait with you."
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Now that she's made the decision to stay (to stay until Blunder can head back out), she's not sure what to do. She sinks back to a sitting position and pushes the bag back against the side of the tent, and once that's done and there's nothing to busy herself with, she's lost.
It feels like she can't look at Abby. Somehow it's worse because Abby isn't being mean now, isn't lashing out the way Clarisse would have if this had happened with their positions in reverse. Abby's going to wait with her anyway, like Clarisse didn't just say something horrible and then come within seconds of fighting her.
She stares at her lap instead, and messes with the fabric of her shirt, tugging at it even though there's nothing wrong with it. She still feels sick with anxiety, with all that energy and nowhere to put it, and she knows what she should say, but the longer she doesn't say it the harder it gets to say anything at all.
Finally, still not looking up, she manages. "I'm sorry I said that to you. I know it's not true."
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She grunts at what Clarisse says, rubbing the back of her neck. It's equally as impossible to reply to her the way she wants to right now. Seems important to choose her words carefully.
"Yeah." Abby herself doesn't really know if it's not true, though. It'd be easier if it was.
She isn't looking at Clarisse either. "She left her bag here."
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She nods. Abby's not looking at her, though, so she says, "Yeah."
Yeah, but what if Ellie hadn't planned on being gone long? What if someone hurt her? Took her? People do weird things all the time. People act in ways you don't expect. Maybe Ellie left her bag behind because it's supposed to mean something and Clarisse is too fucking stupid to figure out what. Maybe she left it and it doesn't mean anything at all.
"It doesn't mean anything," she decides out loud. It can't.
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It sounds weird the way she's saying it, like Ellie being gone hinges on the bag being here without her but — it kinda does. Abby wouldn't go anywhere without her stuff and Ellie came here from the exact same apocalypse. They're survivors, Ellie even wrote that out in her sketchbook a couple times, the words carefully printed, endure and survive. "Her shoes are here."
It's like she's lining up dominoes just to knock them all down. She doesn't know if it's right to force Clarisse into putting two and two together like this, but she does know that she's exhausted, upset, freaked out, she's absolutely dreading the thought of having to try and stop Clarisse from leaving again in a couple hours time.
She needs them to be on the same page right now.
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It's Clarisse who's not making sense. And she knows that but it feels like she can't stop, either, because stopping would be admitting that there is no chance, and no hope.
This—whatever she says or does next—is going to change everything. Clarisse knows that. It feels exactly like it did after she landed the chariot in Manhattan and she knew, she knew that as soon as she stepped down onto the street that her life would be different. Permanently, irreversibly.
So she says nothing, does nothing. She doesn't blink, she can't even breathe. On the canvas above them, she hears the first fat raindrops hitting the tent. She watches Abby, as if there's something Abby can say that will somehow undo this, somehow make it right.
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