Ellie's eyes drift shut. Her lashes are damp, but nothing more. She takes a deep breath. Lets the feeling of Derrica's hands on her cheeks steady her. She strokes her thumbs along the backs of Derrica's wrists, letting herself be held until her heart rate eases.
"I'd tell you anything," she says, frankly. "But sometimes don't know where to start."
Finally, she blinks her eyes open, visibly bracing herself for the rest of it. It puts it in a different perspective. Rather than bracing for the pity, she braces instead for how hard this will be for Derrica to hear.
She's started, now. She's broken through.
Ellie gives her a soft tug, enough to guide her to sit down next to her, so she doesn't have to remain standing. It's not a quick story and her legs will ache by the time she's done. After a moment of thought, she shrugs off her overshirt, enough to leave her in a sleeveless tunic that shows all of her arms, the pale starkness of the acid-burn scars underneath her tattoo.
"When I was thirteen," Ellie begins, trailing her fingers along the tattoo -- or more accurately, along the scarring beneath it. "I snuck out from military school with my best friend, Riley." Both military orphans, training to become soldiers. Little cogs-to-be in the great machine.
"We ran across a skirmish between some of the FEDRA soldiers and a rebel group in the city," she explains. "They called themselves the Fireflies. They wanted to topple FEDRA, put an end to the military rule. They were also the only ones looking for a cure, at the time. Everybody else had given up." Ellie wets her lips.
"Riley wanted to join them."
It doesn't escape her, the echoes and parallels that still ring today, in Derrica's eyes when she talks about the Chantry, about the circles. The way she'd asked her to stay and fight.
Ellie had wanted to run then, too.
"We fucked up, gave away our position, and we ended up getting bagged by some of the Fireflies themselves. I tried to fight us out, but we were just kids. The only thing that stopped them from killing us was because their leader recognized my face."
Ellie's expression crumples, just a little, and only at the edges.
"Her name was Marlene. She'd known my mom. Turns out..."
Ellie sets her jaw, bulls onward, though the part of her voice that wants to shake.
"Turns out that when my mom died, she asked Marlene to take care of me. Marlene put me in the safest place she could think of. But she didn't let me know that she existed. I figured at the time- that that made sense, right? Leader of a rebel group. Too dangerous to have a kid tagging along. But-"
This is more than Derrica had thought Ellie would ever want to give up to her. She knows that each part of this story is a painful thing to unearth, made more so by Derrica's scrutiny. It is never easy to offer up the raw, wounded parts of the past for another person to observe.
For her part, Derrica tries to make this easy. All her instincts beg closeness. She would wind herself into Ellie's lap, if she felt it would be a comfort. All Derrica's instincts urge her closer, as if it were possible to absorb the muted hurt in Ellie's voice through simple touch.
But she curbs it. Settles for just a hand, reaching out to catch at Ellie's fingers as she winds her way to her point.
"If Marlene hadn't sent you away," Derrica finishes for her. She watches Ellie's face, searching. "Do you wish she'd chosen differently for you?"
What would Ellie be like? Maybe she wouldn't carry around this kind of pain. But Derrica has to wonder whether it would just be replaced by something else. She isn't nearly as familiar with Abby, but nothing about her has given Derrica the impression that she isn't hurting somewhere too.
Ellie winds her fingers around Derrica's hand, and the hold keeps her from wringing them on habit. It's something she never realizes when she's doing. It's good to be still. To be stilled.
"Yes," she says, and her expression crumples still more at the edges. It sounds like a confession, like something guilty. Like something that Ellie's carried for a long, long time and never let herself look directly at.
"It wasn't such a big deal when I didn't know where I came from, because I figured nobody knew. But she knew everything. She knew my mom, and she kept that from me. I never got to just... sit and ask her anything."
The bitterness leaks in, try as Ellie might to keep it out of her voice. She was a kid who grew up utterly, completely alone, always shuttled off to somewhere else. Always the problem that no one wanted wanted to have.
"I didn't know. All that time, there was another Firefly base she was in touch with. She made it sound like just a lab, just some scientists, but it wasn't just that. It was families. With kids."
What Ellis is describing is such an unknown to Derrica.
She had been taken away at a young age, left somewhere safe. Had she been wrong, to let any opportunity to ask after her mother slip away? To find whether or not her father is alive, and if he knew of her?
It had never felt important.
But she hears all this pain in Ellie's voice over the absence of it. Ellie had lost something, and what she'd been given in it's place hadn't been enough to sustain her. Derrica leans in her, hips, thighs, knees all connecting in a warm line. Grip tightening on Ellie's hands, then loosening, thumb stroking gently along her knuckles.
"I don't know," Ellie says immediately, and then more slowly: "A little?"
She sighs, opening up the palm of her hand to let Derrica touch her, looking down at their tangled fingers. It feels nice, the way Derrica uses her like a worry stone, almost. Like touching her is soothing. She likes the thought of being easy for somebody.
She relaxes where Derrica touches, like it reminds her of where the tension is, and to let it go.
"For all I know it could've been worse," she says, the corner of her mouth twitching into something almost like a smile.
"I got kicked out of half the schools in the QZ. Maybe the Fireflies wouldn't have tolerated my ass either."
Her smile widens. Either she grew up, or it took Maria to keep her in line, and then Yseult.
Of course Ellie was trouble growing up. Derrica might not have seen it in her when they'd first met, but she has caught glimpses of it over and over as Ellie settled, lost some of the haunted weight in her face. Mischief. Good humor. Derrica can only imagine what she had been like younger, before all that had happened to her.
"You would have been very different, if you'd grown up with them."
The smile settles and disappears, leaving something more sober behind. But it's not sad, not haunted. Just... thoughtful. Ellie traces a line with her fingertip, from the top of Derrica's thumb to her pulse point, the tender softness just inside of her wrist, like she's drawing a line of thought.
"Maybe. It's hard to say without knowing," she admits. "Could have been that it all happened anyway, just that I was on the other side of it. I could have had everything I ever wanted and then had someone take it from me overnight."
It's the closest she's come to saying aloud that she understands what Abby did and why. Once, that would have burned her hollow, the anger and pain licking her up inside. Now, she still burns, but it's different. It still tests her, but she's more. She and Abby are both more.
It settles, and it hurts, but the hurt isn't all there is.
"Maybe it wouldn't have been so different after all."
Permission. Derrica takes it for what it is: a gift.
And maybe she could press Ellie tonight, try to draw a little more poison from her so the pain behind it might be less. But it's been a difficult conversation, maybe more than Ellie had bargained for when she arrived. So—
"Not tonight," she stipulates. "We should walk down to the kitchen and get something to eat, and talk about something else. Please."
Ellie presses the breath out of her lungs and tries not be relieved, because it feels cowardly. But she can't help but be fine with being out of the hot seat for tonight.
She presses her forehead briefly to Derrica's shoulder to hide her smile, and nods against her.
"Don't have to ask me twice."
When she gets to her feet, she offers Derrica her hand first, and tries not to act like that's new, when she doesn't let go.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"I'd tell you anything," she says, frankly. "But sometimes don't know where to start."
Finally, she blinks her eyes open, visibly bracing herself for the rest of it. It puts it in a different perspective. Rather than bracing for the pity, she braces instead for how hard this will be for Derrica to hear.
She's started, now. She's broken through.
Ellie gives her a soft tug, enough to guide her to sit down next to her, so she doesn't have to remain standing. It's not a quick story and her legs will ache by the time she's done. After a moment of thought, she shrugs off her overshirt, enough to leave her in a sleeveless tunic that shows all of her arms, the pale starkness of the acid-burn scars underneath her tattoo.
"When I was thirteen," Ellie begins, trailing her fingers along the tattoo -- or more accurately, along the scarring beneath it. "I snuck out from military school with my best friend, Riley." Both military orphans, training to become soldiers. Little cogs-to-be in the great machine.
"We ran across a skirmish between some of the FEDRA soldiers and a rebel group in the city," she explains. "They called themselves the Fireflies. They wanted to topple FEDRA, put an end to the military rule. They were also the only ones looking for a cure, at the time. Everybody else had given up." Ellie wets her lips.
"Riley wanted to join them."
It doesn't escape her, the echoes and parallels that still ring today, in Derrica's eyes when she talks about the Chantry, about the circles. The way she'd asked her to stay and fight.
Ellie had wanted to run then, too.
"We fucked up, gave away our position, and we ended up getting bagged by some of the Fireflies themselves. I tried to fight us out, but we were just kids. The only thing that stopped them from killing us was because their leader recognized my face."
Ellie's expression crumples, just a little, and only at the edges.
"Her name was Marlene. She'd known my mom. Turns out..."
Ellie sets her jaw, bulls onward, though the part of her voice that wants to shake.
"Turns out that when my mom died, she asked Marlene to take care of me. Marlene put me in the safest place she could think of. But she didn't let me know that she existed. I figured at the time- that that made sense, right? Leader of a rebel group. Too dangerous to have a kid tagging along. But-"
Deep, deep breath.
"Abby grew up with the Fireflies."
no subject
For her part, Derrica tries to make this easy. All her instincts beg closeness. She would wind herself into Ellie's lap, if she felt it would be a comfort. All Derrica's instincts urge her closer, as if it were possible to absorb the muted hurt in Ellie's voice through simple touch.
But she curbs it. Settles for just a hand, reaching out to catch at Ellie's fingers as she winds her way to her point.
"If Marlene hadn't sent you away," Derrica finishes for her. She watches Ellie's face, searching. "Do you wish she'd chosen differently for you?"
What would Ellie be like? Maybe she wouldn't carry around this kind of pain. But Derrica has to wonder whether it would just be replaced by something else. She isn't nearly as familiar with Abby, but nothing about her has given Derrica the impression that she isn't hurting somewhere too.
no subject
"Yes," she says, and her expression crumples still more at the edges. It sounds like a confession, like something guilty. Like something that Ellie's carried for a long, long time and never let herself look directly at.
"It wasn't such a big deal when I didn't know where I came from, because I figured nobody knew. But she knew everything. She knew my mom, and she kept that from me. I never got to just... sit and ask her anything."
The bitterness leaks in, try as Ellie might to keep it out of her voice. She was a kid who grew up utterly, completely alone, always shuttled off to somewhere else. Always the problem that no one wanted wanted to have.
"I didn't know. All that time, there was another Firefly base she was in touch with. She made it sound like just a lab, just some scientists, but it wasn't just that. It was families. With kids."
Ellie's voice breaks, just barely. Just enough.
no subject
She had been taken away at a young age, left somewhere safe. Had she been wrong, to let any opportunity to ask after her mother slip away? To find whether or not her father is alive, and if he knew of her?
It had never felt important.
But she hears all this pain in Ellie's voice over the absence of it. Ellie had lost something, and what she'd been given in it's place hadn't been enough to sustain her. Derrica leans in her, hips, thighs, knees all connecting in a warm line. Grip tightening on Ellie's hands, then loosening, thumb stroking gently along her knuckles.
"Are you..."
A pause, Derrica's eyes moving over Ellie's face.
"Do you think you envy her, growing up there?"
no subject
She sighs, opening up the palm of her hand to let Derrica touch her, looking down at their tangled fingers. It feels nice, the way Derrica uses her like a worry stone, almost. Like touching her is soothing. She likes the thought of being easy for somebody.
She relaxes where Derrica touches, like it reminds her of where the tension is, and to let it go.
"For all I know it could've been worse," she says, the corner of her mouth twitching into something almost like a smile.
"I got kicked out of half the schools in the QZ. Maybe the Fireflies wouldn't have tolerated my ass either."
Her smile widens. Either she grew up, or it took Maria to keep her in line, and then Yseult.
no subject
Of course Ellie was trouble growing up. Derrica might not have seen it in her when they'd first met, but she has caught glimpses of it over and over as Ellie settled, lost some of the haunted weight in her face. Mischief. Good humor. Derrica can only imagine what she had been like younger, before all that had happened to her.
"You would have been very different, if you'd grown up with them."
An easy conclusion to draw.
"Would you have wanted that?"
no subject
"Maybe. It's hard to say without knowing," she admits. "Could have been that it all happened anyway, just that I was on the other side of it. I could have had everything I ever wanted and then had someone take it from me overnight."
It's the closest she's come to saying aloud that she understands what Abby did and why. Once, that would have burned her hollow, the anger and pain licking her up inside. Now, she still burns, but it's different. It still tests her, but she's more. She and Abby are both more.
It settles, and it hurts, but the hurt isn't all there is.
"Maybe it wouldn't have been so different after all."
no subject
Everything is fragile. Derrica knows this, has had it demonstrated to her very thoroughly. It's not the kind of lesson a person forgets.
Her hand relaxes under Ellie's fingertips.
"Thank you for telling me," she murmurs. "I know it's not easy to talk about all this."
no subject
It's long and depressing and emotionally galvanizing to go through, even just to hear about, and Ellie's proud of exactly none of it.
"I'll... tell you more, okay? And you can ask questions. Sometimes that's better."
put a bow on this y/y
Permission. Derrica takes it for what it is: a gift.
And maybe she could press Ellie tonight, try to draw a little more poison from her so the pain behind it might be less. But it's been a difficult conversation, maybe more than Ellie had bargained for when she arrived. So—
"Not tonight," she stipulates. "We should walk down to the kitchen and get something to eat, and talk about something else. Please."
Y! <3
She presses her forehead briefly to Derrica's shoulder to hide her smile, and nods against her.
"Don't have to ask me twice."
When she gets to her feet, she offers Derrica her hand first, and tries not to act like that's new, when she doesn't let go.