"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.
It's not like it's anything Abby can control, but it still helps, hearing her promise not to leave. That they'll stay together. It takes what happened and twists it into something different, something that isn't predestined. Into a choice.
I feel like we were fated to meet, she'd said to Ellie over a year ago, sitting on a half-wall and watching the sun go down. But you were also my choice.
At the time it had seemed like a good thing, that strange intersection between destiny and free will. Maybe that's the trick of it. That she is fated to make the choices that will hurt her the most in the end, just like all the other heroes. She's no different from any of them.
Abby rubs her back, the palm of her hand following the curve of Clarisse's spine down and then back up again. She tries to match her breathing to it, inhale, exhale, repeat, focusing on that. And it works, sort of—a heavy exhaustion spreads through the core of her, making her feel weighed down in a way that feels almost good, because it means she's too tired to panic. She's aware of the way her eyes ache and her cheeks feel sticky with half-dried tears, and she wipes them with the hem of her shirt. Abby's still holding her other hand, and Clarisse could extract herself from it but she doesn't want to yet.
"We have to—tell everyone," she manages after a minute, grasping for something that makes sense. "Figure out what to do with all... her stuff."
They sit together like that in silence for a while. Rubbing Clarisse's back helps Abby too because all she has to do is concentrate on that movement, keep it going, slow and even. Up and down. She can feel Clarisse's breathing starting to slow under her palm and if she thinks about that, lets it fill up her mind, she can walk herself back from the edge of needing to scream.
She tunes back in inelegantly, hand stalling but remaining, tethered, to Clarisse. Oh, fuck. "Yeah.
"Tomorrow." There's no way she could figure something like that out right now. She eyes Ellie's bag where she left it, sitting in the tent. Opens her mouth to tell Clarisse that she went through it before and took things out of it to keep, that she can have the rest — and closes it again. She doesn't need to know that. And what if she asks Abby to give it back? She has the better claim to it but Abby feels oddly possessive over the Ellie that existed before she came through the rift, even the Ellie that, in the early days of them being here together, stabbed her in the marketplace.
She has so few things to remind her of it. Scars and old notebook pages.
Clarisse lets the air out of her lungs in a tired sigh. "... Yeah."
In a way, it's a relief being given permission to put those things off until the next day. She would have done them tonight if Abby had wanted to but the thought of having to divvy up Ellie's things makes her feel like throwing up. So does the way she'd brought up the idea almost as soon as she'd finished crying, like some fucking vulture.
It's just that she doesn't know what else to do, and if she's not doing something, Clarisse doesn't know how to handle herself. She opens her mouth a couple times and closes it again, feeling like she should say something to Abby but not sure what.
Slowly, she extracts her hand from Abby's, though she doesn't try to move away from the palm resting on her back. Secretly, she hopes Abby keeps it there. The weight of it is warm and comforting.
"Kind of wish we had some Ambien right now." As an attempt at humor, it mostly falls flat. And she's not even a little bit kidding, anyway. She would absolutely say yes to being unconscious for a while right now.
She keeps it there, not in a firm grip, clinging, but gentle, moving every so often in a slow circle; it's helping her as much. Feels good to move, to feel like she's helping in some way, even if all she's doing is rubbing Clarisse's back, keeping them linked. It's a reminder, a reassurance. I'm still here. I won't go.
She laughs, once. It sounds flat, fake. "God, yeah. Same.
"Want me to punch you in the head until you're out cold? I'd do it."
It wrenches a shaky, morbid laugh out of her, too. "Don't tempt me."
Clarisse sniffs. She's not really crying anymore, but every so often her chest hitches. She pinches the bridge of her nose and blinks, hard. Her eyes feel swollen, scratchy.
It's dark out now, helped along by the rainstorm, but not that late, all things considered. She'd never go to bed this early normally, but what else are they supposed to do? Go get dinner, and have to explain why it looks like they've both been crying? Potentially field some awkward question about where Ellie is? Her stomach flips, and she bites down on her lower lip, hard.
"Did you eat?" she asks Abby, finally. "There's food in..." Well. In Ellie's bag.
Abby's lip twitches but she doesn't say anything more, falling silent to listen to the rain on the tent and Clarisse sniffling, her own heart thumping in her ears. There's so much to think about... where the fuck does she even start, with all of this? She kind of wants to lie down and curl up.
It's a relief when Clarisse says something and she has to focus on that instead.
"No." It makes her realise that she's actually really fucking hungry, and that she hasn't eaten anything all day. Too busy looking, too busy worrying, waiting for everything to turn out in the end. She didn't even pretend to finish off that bowl of whatever she made Clarisse eat in the morning, she left it there at the table missing three big bites.
She looks at the bag for a long moment before she gets to her feet to go retrieve it from the corner of the tent. "She won't mind." She doesn't need it any more. Survivor rules. Abby opens it up like she's never done it before, extracts some fruit and bread, something wrapped in wax paper that smells sweet; she tosses the little package to Clarisse.
Abby says she won't mind, but it still feels like stealing to Clarisse as she watches Abby go and get Ellie's bag from the corner, open it up, and take out the food. She doesn't even hesitate.
Clarisse has been to Seattle. She remembers the way they went out and picked over dead people's stuff, and that it was normal, but she hadn't known those people and hadn't cared about them, which had made it easy. Ellie's not dead. She didn't bequeath them her stuff, or anticipate last night when she went to bed that the following evening Clarisse and Abby would open her bag and dig through it for food. It feels gross and wrong to be doing this. Clarisse catches the package Abby tosses her way, on instinct more than anything, but doesn't unwrap it yet. It smells like something sweet inside.
Ellie wouldn't mind. Ellie shared food with her all the time. Sometimes she brought food along just to give to Clarisse, if they were out for the day, because she knew that Clarisse would get cranky and annoying if she didn't eat something. For all she knows, this little package of wax paper could have been intended for her.
Telling herself this, she slowly unwraps it. There are three cookies inside, hard biscuits with raisins baked into them. She takes one and offers the rest of the package to Abby.
"Trade you for some of the bread." She's not very hungry, though. Her stomach feels like it's all knotted up. Still, she'll eat if Abby does, just to keep herself going.
All Abby takes is the food. She doesn't keep rooting around, once she's got these things and tossed the third one to Clarisse she puts the pack back down where she found it in the corner. If this were reversed — if she left and Ellie had her stuff she'd do the same thing, Abby has no doubt.
She's bringing Ellie's apple to her mouth and thinking about what she would have found in Abby's bag, what she'd be standing here eating now. Bread and nuts. Oh, and that jerky she got from the Kirkwall markets last week.
She's gotta be making a face while she eats but Clarisse hasn't pointed it out.
"Sure."
Abby comes to sit. She takes the package and hands her the bread in return, glancing into the wax paper wrapping, lifting it up to sniff. Then she sighs. "I hate raisin cookies." Like Ellie did this on purpose, to spite her from beyond the rift.
Clarisse is tearing the bread in half and doesn't say anything until she's finished and can set one piece aside for Abby. Then, "Ellie doesn't like those either."
She lifts the cookie to her mouth and takes a bite out of it, but it's clear her heart isn't in it.
They agreed on dealing with it tomorrow, but she's still thinking about what else is in the bag and what they'll end up doing with Ellie's stuff. Most of it will get absorbed back into Riftwatch, she guesses, like any extra supplies. Weapons. The knife she made Ellie she doesn't want going to anyone else, but she doesn't want it for herself, either.
This sucks. Part of her hates how unfair it is that she's going to have to figure this out. The other part of her wouldn't trust anyone else to do it. Except for Abby, but she's not sure how much Abby will want to involve herself in dealing with Ellie's things.
Abby watches her take a bite out of the cookie and then she looks away, down at her hands instead. She takes the bread that Clarisse ripped off for her and puts it absentmindedly into her mouth, ignoring the dull ache when she clenches her teeth down to bite through the crust. Her stomach feels like it's in her shoes.
It's just gonna be like this now, huh. Everything is gonna remind her of Ellie one way or the other until enough time passes that it doesn't. Even shitty cookies aren't safe. It feels a little like she has a gut wound, like she's gonna be working around it for a while, instinctively moving her body in a different way to protect the part that's hurt.
Wags has put his chin on her knee in an attempt to commiserate — or maybe he just wants some of the bread.
"Wanna stay up and just... watch the rain?"
She doesn't know what else to do. There is nothing else to do right now except wait until tomorrow, when they can start doing something about this.
Clarisse sees Abby look away, and the bite of cookie feels like it turns into a dry lump in the back of her throat. She swallows it down, feeling even worse now. She hadn't meant to make Abby feel bad, it had just... been the truth. But she shouldn't have said anything about Ellie. She's always saying things, never thinking about them first.
She forces herself to eat the bread, at least. It's better than nothing. And tomorrow she'll make herself eat breakfast even if she doesn't want that, either. That's step one.
Unfortunately, step one being several hours in the future means they're still living in step zero right now, so it's a relief when Abby finally speaks up.
"Yeah. I don't think I could sleep." Maybe if they sit watching the rain long enough, it will sort of... lull them?
"Neither." It's gonna be a shitty first night, but you only have to do the first night once. "C'mon."
She's getting up, grabbing her bedroll and bringing it over to the lip of the tent, pulling back the front of it so that it exposes the rain fall. Still loud and heavy but there's no wind, so it comes straight down. She parks it on the bedroll, turned to face the outside. This way they don't have to sit inside the tent and feel how empty it is, or have to look at Ellie's bag slumped in the corner. They can sit here instead and stare at the rain until it stops or until they finally get tired and have to go to bed. Whatever comes first.
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no subject
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.
no subject
I feel like we were fated to meet, she'd said to Ellie over a year ago, sitting on a half-wall and watching the sun go down. But you were also my choice.
At the time it had seemed like a good thing, that strange intersection between destiny and free will. Maybe that's the trick of it. That she is fated to make the choices that will hurt her the most in the end, just like all the other heroes. She's no different from any of them.
Abby rubs her back, the palm of her hand following the curve of Clarisse's spine down and then back up again. She tries to match her breathing to it, inhale, exhale, repeat, focusing on that. And it works, sort of—a heavy exhaustion spreads through the core of her, making her feel weighed down in a way that feels almost good, because it means she's too tired to panic. She's aware of the way her eyes ache and her cheeks feel sticky with half-dried tears, and she wipes them with the hem of her shirt. Abby's still holding her other hand, and Clarisse could extract herself from it but she doesn't want to yet.
"We have to—tell everyone," she manages after a minute, grasping for something that makes sense. "Figure out what to do with all... her stuff."
no subject
She tunes back in inelegantly, hand stalling but remaining, tethered, to Clarisse. Oh, fuck. "Yeah.
"Tomorrow." There's no way she could figure something like that out right now. She eyes Ellie's bag where she left it, sitting in the tent. Opens her mouth to tell Clarisse that she went through it before and took things out of it to keep, that she can have the rest — and closes it again. She doesn't need to know that. And what if she asks Abby to give it back? She has the better claim to it but Abby feels oddly possessive over the Ellie that existed before she came through the rift, even the Ellie that, in the early days of them being here together, stabbed her in the marketplace.
She has so few things to remind her of it. Scars and old notebook pages.
"We'll figure it out tomorrow."
no subject
In a way, it's a relief being given permission to put those things off until the next day. She would have done them tonight if Abby had wanted to but the thought of having to divvy up Ellie's things makes her feel like throwing up. So does the way she'd brought up the idea almost as soon as she'd finished crying, like some fucking vulture.
It's just that she doesn't know what else to do, and if she's not doing something, Clarisse doesn't know how to handle herself. She opens her mouth a couple times and closes it again, feeling like she should say something to Abby but not sure what.
Slowly, she extracts her hand from Abby's, though she doesn't try to move away from the palm resting on her back. Secretly, she hopes Abby keeps it there. The weight of it is warm and comforting.
"Kind of wish we had some Ambien right now." As an attempt at humor, it mostly falls flat. And she's not even a little bit kidding, anyway. She would absolutely say yes to being unconscious for a while right now.
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She laughs, once. It sounds flat, fake. "God, yeah. Same.
"Want me to punch you in the head until you're out cold? I'd do it."
You know, as a friend.
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Clarisse sniffs. She's not really crying anymore, but every so often her chest hitches. She pinches the bridge of her nose and blinks, hard. Her eyes feel swollen, scratchy.
It's dark out now, helped along by the rainstorm, but not that late, all things considered. She'd never go to bed this early normally, but what else are they supposed to do? Go get dinner, and have to explain why it looks like they've both been crying? Potentially field some awkward question about where Ellie is? Her stomach flips, and she bites down on her lower lip, hard.
"Did you eat?" she asks Abby, finally. "There's food in..." Well. In Ellie's bag.
no subject
It's a relief when Clarisse says something and she has to focus on that instead.
"No." It makes her realise that she's actually really fucking hungry, and that she hasn't eaten anything all day. Too busy looking, too busy worrying, waiting for everything to turn out in the end. She didn't even pretend to finish off that bowl of whatever she made Clarisse eat in the morning, she left it there at the table missing three big bites.
She looks at the bag for a long moment before she gets to her feet to go retrieve it from the corner of the tent. "She won't mind." She doesn't need it any more. Survivor rules. Abby opens it up like she's never done it before, extracts some fruit and bread, something wrapped in wax paper that smells sweet; she tosses the little package to Clarisse.
no subject
Clarisse has been to Seattle. She remembers the way they went out and picked over dead people's stuff, and that it was normal, but she hadn't known those people and hadn't cared about them, which had made it easy. Ellie's not dead. She didn't bequeath them her stuff, or anticipate last night when she went to bed that the following evening Clarisse and Abby would open her bag and dig through it for food. It feels gross and wrong to be doing this. Clarisse catches the package Abby tosses her way, on instinct more than anything, but doesn't unwrap it yet. It smells like something sweet inside.
Ellie wouldn't mind. Ellie shared food with her all the time. Sometimes she brought food along just to give to Clarisse, if they were out for the day, because she knew that Clarisse would get cranky and annoying if she didn't eat something. For all she knows, this little package of wax paper could have been intended for her.
Telling herself this, she slowly unwraps it. There are three cookies inside, hard biscuits with raisins baked into them. She takes one and offers the rest of the package to Abby.
"Trade you for some of the bread." She's not very hungry, though. Her stomach feels like it's all knotted up. Still, she'll eat if Abby does, just to keep herself going.
no subject
She's bringing Ellie's apple to her mouth and thinking about what she would have found in Abby's bag, what she'd be standing here eating now. Bread and nuts. Oh, and that jerky she got from the Kirkwall markets last week.
She's gotta be making a face while she eats but Clarisse hasn't pointed it out.
"Sure."
Abby comes to sit. She takes the package and hands her the bread in return, glancing into the wax paper wrapping, lifting it up to sniff. Then she sighs. "I hate raisin cookies." Like Ellie did this on purpose, to spite her from beyond the rift.
no subject
She lifts the cookie to her mouth and takes a bite out of it, but it's clear her heart isn't in it.
They agreed on dealing with it tomorrow, but she's still thinking about what else is in the bag and what they'll end up doing with Ellie's stuff. Most of it will get absorbed back into Riftwatch, she guesses, like any extra supplies. Weapons. The knife she made Ellie she doesn't want going to anyone else, but she doesn't want it for herself, either.
This sucks. Part of her hates how unfair it is that she's going to have to figure this out. The other part of her wouldn't trust anyone else to do it. Except for Abby, but she's not sure how much Abby will want to involve herself in dealing with Ellie's things.
no subject
It's just gonna be like this now, huh. Everything is gonna remind her of Ellie one way or the other until enough time passes that it doesn't. Even shitty cookies aren't safe. It feels a little like she has a gut wound, like she's gonna be working around it for a while, instinctively moving her body in a different way to protect the part that's hurt.
Wags has put his chin on her knee in an attempt to commiserate — or maybe he just wants some of the bread.
"Wanna stay up and just... watch the rain?"
She doesn't know what else to do. There is nothing else to do right now except wait until tomorrow, when they can start doing something about this.
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She forces herself to eat the bread, at least. It's better than nothing. And tomorrow she'll make herself eat breakfast even if she doesn't want that, either. That's step one.
Unfortunately, step one being several hours in the future means they're still living in step zero right now, so it's a relief when Abby finally speaks up.
"Yeah. I don't think I could sleep." Maybe if they sit watching the rain long enough, it will sort of... lull them?
no subject
She's getting up, grabbing her bedroll and bringing it over to the lip of the tent, pulling back the front of it so that it exposes the rain fall. Still loud and heavy but there's no wind, so it comes straight down. She parks it on the bedroll, turned to face the outside. This way they don't have to sit inside the tent and feel how empty it is, or have to look at Ellie's bag slumped in the corner. They can sit here instead and stare at the rain until it stops or until they finally get tired and have to go to bed. Whatever comes first.