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.
It's weird that this is the first time Abby is doing this for somebody else. Other people have done this for her, approached her grief slow as if it were a wild animal, hands out. She wonders if Owen felt like this when he was trying to coax her to stand up from the slick hospital floor, clumsy and useless.
It's achy in her throat, this harsh sadness, and she hates that she doesn't have anything other than words right now. Nobody wants to hear shit like 'I'm so sorry' but it's really all there is. This isn't like when Yara was killed and she had to keep Lev moving no matter what, pushing him through the loss; her and Clarisse aren't running for their lives, they're just sitting in a tent with Ellie's stuff left in it. They're alone.
"She's gone."
She swallows and tries to say it again in another way, as if Clarisse won't believe her otherwise. "She went back."
She's gone somehow lands more softly than she went back. That one feels like a bone snapping. Clarisse flinches, her mouth opening.
She wants to argue that Abby doesn't know, actually, where Ellie is. That if the leading theory is true, the Ellie who was here doesn't exist anymore. A person can't go back to a place they never left. She might just be nowhere. Nowhere.
She thinks those things, but she can't seem to make any sound. She doesn't think she can breathe. All the muscles in her chest are seizing up. She might be nodding—she thinks she is nodding—but it feels unreal, like she's no longer connected to her body. Like she's the one who disappeared.
She's gone.
She knew it when she reached out for Ellie in her sleep and there was nothing there. She knew it when she sat up and brushed a hand over Ellie's blanket, pulled up all the way to the pillow, and it had still felt slightly warm. Like she'd just gotten up, like she'd be right back. When she had looked outside and seen Ellie's shoes and the grass covered in dew with no footprints leading away from the tent.
All day. Ellie's been gone all day.
Clarisse lifts a hand to her mouth as if she can stop what's going to happen next. She can't. She says it anyway.
"I know." Her voice is stretched taut, a rubber band about to snap. "She's gone."
It doesn't help to hear her say that. Abby thought it'd bring the relief of having broken through a seal; it has, but now everything behind it is pouring out and she has to try and keep her chin above it. She has to look up and see Clarisse sitting frozen still, clenched muscle evident in the blunt line of her neck and jaw, and the grief setting down on her like a weight trying to snap her in half.
Abby's mouth feels tacky, like she needs to drink water. She's dimly aware that her and Clarisse probably haven't eaten much of anything, all day. She saw Clarisse take those few spoonfuls of breakfast but that was hours ago, hours of searching ago. They've been tearing this fucking place apart for somebody they both knew was already gone.
She wants to say she's sorry but she can't. Not because she isn't, but because it won't come out, and because she feels sort of wild right now, more angry than upset. Maybe even the same way Clarisse was feeling before when she nearly hit her.
She's angry at Ellie. It's a nice, safe way to be.
It's starting to really come down outside. It's the only sound there is and Abby reaches out under the cover of it, putting her hand on Clarisse's arm and squeezing. She doesn't do anything else just yet, just — tethers them, silently.
This is a nightmare and all Clarisse needs to do to wake up is move. Twitch a finger, blink her eyes, take a breath, and the spell will break and she'll wake up and her heart will be pounding and she'll feel sick to her stomach but she'll be warm under her blanket and Ellie's back will be rising and falling slowly under her open hand.
It will. They both promised.
She is frozen, and maybe that's a good thing, because if she wasn't, she's not sure what would happen. Whatever is rising up in her chest is something awful and nameless and when it crests like a wave it might drown her, but at least she'll go quietly.
Clarisse looks at Abby and waits for her to say something that will fix this. Abby always knows what to say. She's rolled over in bed and given Clarisse words of comfort too many times to count, but now, when Clarisse needs her the most, she's quiet. Instead of hitting her to make her shut up, Clarisse wants to hit her to make her talk, to make her say something that will make sense of this. This nightmare.
It's Abby who moves first. She just reaches out and puts a hand on Clarisse's arm and squeezes. Clarisse can't feel it. The simplicity of it makes her think of Granitefell, the way they'd bumped knuckles and smiled even though they already knew they were dying, how they hadn't said anything out loud but she'd still felt it, known it.
She wonders if Abby is saying anything to her now, silently, with that hand on her arm, and she just can't hear it because of the screaming inside her own head.
"Abby?" she manages in a shaking voice, and can't say anything else.
Clarisse's voice breaking on her name dislodges Abby instantly.
"Hey." She scoots her body across the tent and opens her arms instantly. This time, she won't keep herself from reaching out to her best friend in the face of the worst happening (of course she's thinking about Granitefell; somehow, it was easier than this. Why is it easier to walk to your death than to lose somebody important?). She lets go of Clarisse's arm but only so she can wrap her in an embrace, pulling her bodily closer. Holding on. Holding them both together, tight as she can.
"I'm here," she says. Her voice is low, a little trembly. The rain is so loud on the roof of the tent. "I'm still here."
Shitty consolation prize, huh? But it's all Abby has right now. God, she hopes it can be enough.
She wouldn't have ever asked for it, but when Abby reaches out and pulls her into a hug Clarisse falls into it. She presses her face against Abby's shoulder and holds onto her like she's terrified of what will happen if she lets go.
When Silena died, nobody touched her. She just held the body and wept and eventually she got up and went into battle. And nobody touched her, even long after the enemy had retreated. Chris hung back. Waiting, he said later, for her to tire herself out.
This time there is no body to cry over. And it doesn't make sense. She can understand death, and tragedy, and loss. But in this way, where the other person just disappears, and there is no closure and no reason? She can't wrap her head around this. It feels like she's drowning in the contradictions of it, and the only thing she can do is cry into Abby's shirt and hold on tighter.
Abby keeps feeling like Ellie's going to walk back in at any moment. She can sort of imagine Ellie coming in and seeing Clarisse in her arms — something out of a sitcom, funny and stupid, a misunderstanding. But she isn't coming back, the thought shattered, rebuilt, shattered again when Clarisse slumps her weight into her and cries into her shirt hard, holds her even harder.
This is so horribly familiar. Losing someone; the little moments where you look instinctively for them and realise all over again that they are never going to be there again; when you forget temporarily while you're distracted with something else, then remember and feel guilty. She's done this before, so many times.
Abby can't tell if she cries because she's upset, or if she's crying because Clarisse is crying and listening to her hurts. Either way she doesn't move. She holds onto her just as tight, wet cheek pressed against her head.
It hurts. Something wrenched out of her chest, replaced, ripped out again. It feels like the kind of pain that should, at some point, reach a peak and then start to recede, but it doesn't. It only seems to get worse, and worse, and worse.
She lifts her head and looks at Abby, trying to find some kind of reason, some kind of relief. There isn't one. Abby's crying, too. And later Clarisse will see that it was wrong to expect something so insurmountable from her. She'll understand that Abby is hurting, too, in a way that must be far more complicated and fragile than her own grief.
Right now she can't stop herself. The hurt is too huge.
"I don't understand," she chokes out, "I don't understand, I don't understand how she could just... leave, and be gone, in the middle of the night, and never come back, I—what should I have done?"
There has to be something she could have done to keep Ellie tethered to this place. She could have been better, done more, not taken it as a matter of course that she'd close her eyes and that Ellie would still be there when she opened them again. Not taken it so much for granted that someone had loved her, chosen her, out of everyone she could have had. She could have been someone worth staying for.
Clarisse puts both hands over her mouth like she's going to be sick, like if she presses hard enough she can keep her grief from spilling out. The sobs just keep coming, so forceful that she can barely breathe.
"Hey." Her voice breaks on the word and a few more tears well up hotly, skipping down her cheeks when she blinks. "Don't do that."
Yeah she's saying it for Clarisse — it's heart-wrenching, that she would assume this is somehow her fault — but she's saying it for herself too, because she doesn't know how to begin talking Clarisse down from the ledge of this idea. It's not like Abby can offer hard proof or reassurance of any kind, not when nobody even knows why rifters disappear when they do or like they do, with no warning, like they'd never been there in the first place.
She takes Clarisse's shoulders, smoothing her thumbs up and down her arms. Is reassurance even going to work when she's got tears in her eyes? Her throat hurts so bad, there's a spike in it. "It's not you. Okay? It would never be you."
Clarisse has her hands over her mouth. Her breath comes through her fingers in quick, ragged gasps. Abby changes track: she takes her wrists, eases her hands from her mouth and holds them tight. They're clammy from Clarisse's rough, wet breathing, filmy with tears, but she links their fingers together, she squeezes her hard. She raises her voice. "Clarisse, listen to me. If there was a way to keep people here for good, we would have figured it out by now. This isn't on you — or her."
But she gets why it hurts, why it feels like somebody should take the blame. The only thing they can point fingers at is a fucking rip in the sky.
Abby squeezes her hands tight and Clarisse takes a gasping shudder of a breath in response. Everything looks blurry and unreal. Her eyelashes are wet, her cheeks feel hot, her chest aches.
She can't speak to acknowledge the things Abby is telling her. She only listens, absorbing the words and tucking them away to go over again later, later when she's not so close to the knife's edge of this and can start to process it. Later. But the thought of the hours and days stretching out in front of her is its own gut punch.
All that time ahead of them, without Ellie in it.
Clarisse makes a little moaning sound, sick. "Don't leave," she begs, like it's something Abby can promise her, like by saying it out loud they can stop the worst thing from happening. Maybe it's even true. She and Ellie never said those words to each other: don't leave, don't go back. They never thought they had to.
"I'm not gonna leave." This is wildly wrong of her to say, it's not something she gets to decide. Abby has already considered that Ellie arrived only months before her, is this... heralding something? Is this the warning shot? She has no idea but she does know that she doesn't want to go and wouldn't choose to either, if she ever got to. Knowing that makes it easier to hold Clarisse so tight. "We're gonna stay here, both of us. You and me."
Together.
It doesn't make losing Ellie so abruptly more bearable, but it will. Eventually it will.
God, she's basically implying that Ellie chose to go or left on purpose. How dare she, Abby would never do that, not to Clarisse. Ugh. It's not like she's any better, just that she doesn't know what else to do other than lash herself to Clarisse as tight as she can right now to ride out the storm. It's just for now.
"It'll be okay."
Not it is, but it will be. And she pries a hand away to pat Clarisse's shoulder, soothing, then her back. She rubs up and down her spine. She has barely-there memories of being a kid, soothed like this after a nightmare or injury. Something that could be healed over time.
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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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It's achy in her throat, this harsh sadness, and she hates that she doesn't have anything other than words right now. Nobody wants to hear shit like 'I'm so sorry' but it's really all there is. This isn't like when Yara was killed and she had to keep Lev moving no matter what, pushing him through the loss; her and Clarisse aren't running for their lives, they're just sitting in a tent with Ellie's stuff left in it. They're alone.
"She's gone."
She swallows and tries to say it again in another way, as if Clarisse won't believe her otherwise. "She went back."
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She wants to argue that Abby doesn't know, actually, where Ellie is. That if the leading theory is true, the Ellie who was here doesn't exist anymore. A person can't go back to a place they never left. She might just be nowhere. Nowhere.
She thinks those things, but she can't seem to make any sound. She doesn't think she can breathe. All the muscles in her chest are seizing up. She might be nodding—she thinks she is nodding—but it feels unreal, like she's no longer connected to her body. Like she's the one who disappeared.
She's gone.
She knew it when she reached out for Ellie in her sleep and there was nothing there. She knew it when she sat up and brushed a hand over Ellie's blanket, pulled up all the way to the pillow, and it had still felt slightly warm. Like she'd just gotten up, like she'd be right back. When she had looked outside and seen Ellie's shoes and the grass covered in dew with no footprints leading away from the tent.
All day. Ellie's been gone all day.
Clarisse lifts a hand to her mouth as if she can stop what's going to happen next. She can't. She says it anyway.
"I know." Her voice is stretched taut, a rubber band about to snap. "She's gone."
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Abby's mouth feels tacky, like she needs to drink water. She's dimly aware that her and Clarisse probably haven't eaten much of anything, all day. She saw Clarisse take those few spoonfuls of breakfast but that was hours ago, hours of searching ago. They've been tearing this fucking place apart for somebody they both knew was already gone.
She wants to say she's sorry but she can't. Not because she isn't, but because it won't come out, and because she feels sort of wild right now, more angry than upset. Maybe even the same way Clarisse was feeling before when she nearly hit her.
She's angry at Ellie. It's a nice, safe way to be.
It's starting to really come down outside. It's the only sound there is and Abby reaches out under the cover of it, putting her hand on Clarisse's arm and squeezing. She doesn't do anything else just yet, just — tethers them, silently.
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This is a nightmare and all Clarisse needs to do to wake up is move. Twitch a finger, blink her eyes, take a breath, and the spell will break and she'll wake up and her heart will be pounding and she'll feel sick to her stomach but she'll be warm under her blanket and Ellie's back will be rising and falling slowly under her open hand.
It will. They both promised.
She is frozen, and maybe that's a good thing, because if she wasn't, she's not sure what would happen. Whatever is rising up in her chest is something awful and nameless and when it crests like a wave it might drown her, but at least she'll go quietly.
Clarisse looks at Abby and waits for her to say something that will fix this. Abby always knows what to say. She's rolled over in bed and given Clarisse words of comfort too many times to count, but now, when Clarisse needs her the most, she's quiet. Instead of hitting her to make her shut up, Clarisse wants to hit her to make her talk, to make her say something that will make sense of this. This nightmare.
It's Abby who moves first. She just reaches out and puts a hand on Clarisse's arm and squeezes. Clarisse can't feel it. The simplicity of it makes her think of Granitefell, the way they'd bumped knuckles and smiled even though they already knew they were dying, how they hadn't said anything out loud but she'd still felt it, known it.
She wonders if Abby is saying anything to her now, silently, with that hand on her arm, and she just can't hear it because of the screaming inside her own head.
"Abby?" she manages in a shaking voice, and can't say anything else.
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"Hey." She scoots her body across the tent and opens her arms instantly. This time, she won't keep herself from reaching out to her best friend in the face of the worst happening (of course she's thinking about Granitefell; somehow, it was easier than this. Why is it easier to walk to your death than to lose somebody important?). She lets go of Clarisse's arm but only so she can wrap her in an embrace, pulling her bodily closer. Holding on. Holding them both together, tight as she can.
"I'm here," she says. Her voice is low, a little trembly. The rain is so loud on the roof of the tent. "I'm still here."
Shitty consolation prize, huh? But it's all Abby has right now. God, she hopes it can be enough.
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When Silena died, nobody touched her. She just held the body and wept and eventually she got up and went into battle. And nobody touched her, even long after the enemy had retreated. Chris hung back. Waiting, he said later, for her to tire herself out.
This time there is no body to cry over. And it doesn't make sense. She can understand death, and tragedy, and loss. But in this way, where the other person just disappears, and there is no closure and no reason? She can't wrap her head around this. It feels like she's drowning in the contradictions of it, and the only thing she can do is cry into Abby's shirt and hold on tighter.
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This is so horribly familiar. Losing someone; the little moments where you look instinctively for them and realise all over again that they are never going to be there again; when you forget temporarily while you're distracted with something else, then remember and feel guilty. She's done this before, so many times.
Abby can't tell if she cries because she's upset, or if she's crying because Clarisse is crying and listening to her hurts. Either way she doesn't move. She holds onto her just as tight, wet cheek pressed against her head.
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She lifts her head and looks at Abby, trying to find some kind of reason, some kind of relief. There isn't one. Abby's crying, too. And later Clarisse will see that it was wrong to expect something so insurmountable from her. She'll understand that Abby is hurting, too, in a way that must be far more complicated and fragile than her own grief.
Right now she can't stop herself. The hurt is too huge.
"I don't understand," she chokes out, "I don't understand, I don't understand how she could just... leave, and be gone, in the middle of the night, and never come back, I—what should I have done?"
There has to be something she could have done to keep Ellie tethered to this place. She could have been better, done more, not taken it as a matter of course that she'd close her eyes and that Ellie would still be there when she opened them again. Not taken it so much for granted that someone had loved her, chosen her, out of everyone she could have had. She could have been someone worth staying for.
Clarisse puts both hands over her mouth like she's going to be sick, like if she presses hard enough she can keep her grief from spilling out. The sobs just keep coming, so forceful that she can barely breathe.
"Why wasn't I enough to keep her here?"
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Yeah she's saying it for Clarisse — it's heart-wrenching, that she would assume this is somehow her fault — but she's saying it for herself too, because she doesn't know how to begin talking Clarisse down from the ledge of this idea. It's not like Abby can offer hard proof or reassurance of any kind, not when nobody even knows why rifters disappear when they do or like they do, with no warning, like they'd never been there in the first place.
She takes Clarisse's shoulders, smoothing her thumbs up and down her arms. Is reassurance even going to work when she's got tears in her eyes? Her throat hurts so bad, there's a spike in it. "It's not you. Okay? It would never be you."
Clarisse has her hands over her mouth. Her breath comes through her fingers in quick, ragged gasps. Abby changes track: she takes her wrists, eases her hands from her mouth and holds them tight. They're clammy from Clarisse's rough, wet breathing, filmy with tears, but she links their fingers together, she squeezes her hard. She raises her voice. "Clarisse, listen to me. If there was a way to keep people here for good, we would have figured it out by now. This isn't on you — or her."
But she gets why it hurts, why it feels like somebody should take the blame. The only thing they can point fingers at is a fucking rip in the sky.
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She can't speak to acknowledge the things Abby is telling her. She only listens, absorbing the words and tucking them away to go over again later, later when she's not so close to the knife's edge of this and can start to process it. Later. But the thought of the hours and days stretching out in front of her is its own gut punch.
All that time ahead of them, without Ellie in it.
Clarisse makes a little moaning sound, sick. "Don't leave," she begs, like it's something Abby can promise her, like by saying it out loud they can stop the worst thing from happening. Maybe it's even true. She and Ellie never said those words to each other: don't leave, don't go back. They never thought they had to.
"Don't leave. I don't know what I'd do."
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Together.
It doesn't make losing Ellie so abruptly more bearable, but it will. Eventually it will.
God, she's basically implying that Ellie chose to go or left on purpose. How dare she, Abby would never do that, not to Clarisse. Ugh. It's not like she's any better, just that she doesn't know what else to do other than lash herself to Clarisse as tight as she can right now to ride out the storm. It's just for now.
"It'll be okay."
Not it is, but it will be. And she pries a hand away to pat Clarisse's shoulder, soothing, then her back. She rubs up and down her spine. She has barely-there memories of being a kid, soothed like this after a nightmare or injury. Something that could be healed over time.
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