ellie

[formicine]

[Backdated to 11/11]

Blue's sitting on her bed staring at her phone.

It's been a week and a half, now, since the Purge. In her memory, half of the night is a blur, half of it horrible, vivid moments she can't shake from her head. Watching Alec struggling to breathe under Magnus' hands with them both trying desperately to turn it back; the way the ground had opened up, the demons and the violence on the ground. She can barely remember making her way from the city to Harley and Effy's, or that she'd stopped in Cabeswater, but the 10 seconds she thought that the way she was going to die on Purge night was by Ellie shooting her seem like an hour. For some reason, remembering the solid, empty dead bodies of that night always takes her to sitting between the mirrors in the attic holding Persephone in her arms, and she's been doing her best to not think about it. To instead think of the cats, the coffee, the next thing she has to do.

There's another body those casualties of Purge Night recall her to. It's been five days now since they defeated -- since Gansey defeated the Unmaker. Lying there, blue-lipped and unGansey, still and horrible. Since Noah had torn off his necklace, since she and Ronan and Adam had sat around him and reached to Cabeswater to plead no, you can't, take what you need from us. Without a thought for what that might mean or who it could affect.

Since she'd reached, treelike into Cabeswater and soaked up that power so opposite to her own, reflecting outward, and kissed it back into Gansey's lips, desperate and hopeful. Hoping, hoping that it this wasn't like the first time some version of her had kissed Gansey.

It's been enough time to relive it, enough time to not think about it, enough time to justify it and that panic as understandable. Enough time to think about what she might have given up besides, apparently, allowing Noah solidity, or boosting Magnus' powers.

She should have wanted to run to Ellie. She has, so often, felt so comfortable just driving around with her or flopping on the couch until she wants to talk about what's in her mind. But she's finding that every time she's too busy to warrant texting her, or calling, she's relieved, instead of annoyed. It's been a week since they almost died together, and despite being on edge that something will happen to her and Blue won't know, despite how nauseous she feels over her own thoughts, she doesn't want to see Ellie.

She stares at her phone. And then she texts her. Hey. Can we talk about stuff? In person.

Comments

[and_survive]

A week and a half since the city decided it wanted to become the kind of place she remembered. Just... turn into it, for a night, no cordyceps to blame. Not even one of the various other cataclysms she'd heard about. Just because they could.

The crazier part was that everything had just come right. The second siren had sounded; everyone had gone back to more or less normal, it was just that now she knew that there were people here who would turn that way if given the chance.

But then, she'd always known that. She wasn't quite in the same category, but there were things she'd do if pushed. She'd known that already, too. But knowing wasn't the same as doing. But you did what you had to. Endure and survive, always, fucking endure and survive.

And now she was staring at a message on her phone that also seemed threatening, or at least ominous. She'd been here for years. People didn't do in person for minor stuff. Hell, she didn't.

Well, last week she'd killed people, again, so whatever. She'd deal. I'll come over.

[formicine]

Even how to answer that seems like a mystery. See you soon Blue finally types back, and sits there fro just a moment, getting up and pacing around her room. Maybe this isn't the time, a small voice tells her. Maybe it's too soon to be talking about anything. We're both coping with a lot.

It's true, and it's also sort of irrelevant, and neither of those things, regardless of those truths, make her stomach feel any better or less like she's about to cry. She rolls her shoulders as if stretching is going to help the things swirling around in her mind.

And then she goes to the kitchen and makes some tea, because it's a thing she knows how to do. Around the time the water boils, she hears the familiar sounds of Ellie's truck, and instinctively she wants to smile, and it sucks. We could not talk, her brain suggests. We could just take a drive and let all this go.

It occurs to her that maybe they've been not talking about Gansey, at least, for months. So she waits, instead.

[and_survive]

Generally, she'd found the whole converted warehouse thing kind of neat, it had a kind of cool to it. After the Purge, though, she couldn't help looking at it with fresh eyes, or maybe old ones, and compare it to how people had lived back in her world. Where sleeping in warehouses wasn't charming but necessary. She found herself resenting the building a little, like it was playacting.

Which was dumb, because it wasn't like Blue and her friends hadn't been in the shit.

Nonetheless, she sat in the car maybe a minute longer than she needed to, kicked the truck's door closed on her way past rather than just close it. Tried whistling and gave up after a couple of lacklustre, unenthusiastic notes that were probably worse than not having bothered at all. Headed on up.

[formicine]

It takes Ellie longer than it might to come upstairs, which Blue guesses is fair; she isn't even sure how to react, anyway, when she opens the door. She wants to smile, hug her hello, be relieved. Her whole body is relieved, by instinct, with Ellie here, and also more anxious at the same time, and it all sucks.

The last time she had a talk with someone, it wasn't a talk, it was her trying to explain to Adam why not kissing him didn't mean anything really from her, didn't even mean she didn't want to; it had been him throwing a fit and her ordering him out. It was easier, then, to be angry. She's not angry at Ellie. If anything she's angry at herself.

"Hey," she says with what she hopes is a normal facial expression for some human emotion, any one of them really, because it feels like her features are all trying out different approximations of personhood. She gestures in vaguely.

Blue runs a hand through her hair. It's getting long, by her standards, long enough to pull back into a ponytail with one hand, and she does and lets it go. "I'm -- I should have called. Or come over. Or something. I'm sorry."

[and_survive]

She wasn't sure what this was, exactly, and consequently wasn't sure how to behave, either. Was it just catching up? Just seeing how everything was? It felt more fraught than that, but maybe that was just her, just the Purge reminding her that everything would eventually go to hell.

That the Purge had turned out to be as temporary as advertised might have been an argument against, but she couldn't help but look at it more as a preview.

"'s okay," she said, shrugging a shoulder, drifting closer while deliberately leaving a space in case Blue wanted a space. "Everyone's had a lot to deal with, I think."

Except, in a way, she hadn't. Some bodies to deal with, which had been new, not just leaving them where they lay and moving on. But the fact of the bodies, of how they'd gotten that way, that was just something that happened. Sometimes it worried her. Sometimes it didn't.

[formicine]

She drifts closer, eyes a little questioning and Blue doesn't quite step back, but she wraps her arms around herself. Ellie hasn't done anything wrong here, not objectively; of the two of them, it's her who has the problem, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have it.

"Yeah," she says, presses her lips together. "I keep closing my eyes and seeing bodies. " She shakes it off herself and goes to take the kettle off the stove. She doesn't want tea. She doesn't want anything. "You heard Edith died?" She doesn't know how well Ellie knew Edith; at this point it feels like a laundry list of people who are gone. Cassie, Dee, Hild, Merry, Edith. Only Edith's actually dead. Noah practically is.
Gansey could have been on that list too; lips blue and eyes staring. She'd nearly been responsible for Alec and Magnus half strangling on Magnus' own magic.

Her hands shake on the kettle and she puts it back down and turns around to Ellie.

"I kissed Gansey," she says, instead of any of that. It's like a confession, or a challenge, the way it erupts out of her mouth. It's so much easier for someone to be angry. "When we were getting rid of the demon in Cabeswater--"

[and_survive]

It wasn't what she expected. It was, for half a second, almost prosaic, almost some kind of bizarre relief, in a way she couldn't or simply wasn't prepared to examine. It wasn't the inevitable descent of the world into a place where you killed or were killed, it wasn't a world ravaged by an infection laced through her own self. It wasn't an immunity she didn't know what to do with, here, didn't know what to do with back home, either.

She could at least know how to respond. Be angry, be upset.

Except then Blue said demon and Cabeswater and it was more complicated than that, because it always fucking was.

"You- what?" she said, not sure what part of this she was asking after. Not sure if the parts went together or not.

Well, except Blue and Gansey. Those were parts that went together, you just had to have fucking eyes, and not lie to yourself. But Ellie had gotten pretty good at that part. She could keep it up for a long while. Maybe not a forever while, though, not yet.

"And you just- what. Got caught up in the fucking moment?"

[formicine]

"No!" she snaps, defensively, then, "Yes. Maybe, I don't know." Blue isn't sure which feels better or worse, the betrayal in Ellie's tone now, or the surprise and confusion in her face and voice at first. It all feels terrible, like she wants to claw her way out of her skin. The worst part is that it's not just about Gansey; if it had just been about Gansey it would be easy and she could be that sort of asshole she hates. But it's more complicated. If it had just been about Gansey, it might have happened a long time ago, but she cared that it not be like that.

She runs a hand through her hair. "The magic, everything that's been fucked up here for the last month, there was a demon. Draining the ley line, unmaking it. It needed a willing sacrifice, and Gansey tried to do it. I mean, he did. He was -- just -- just lying there, like --" Her eyes fill with tears and she's angry at them.

Lying there like the man they'd shot. That Ellie'd shot, but that they'd shot, because she'd been there. Maybe they'd had to, but when people are dead they look a lot alike, just, heavy and limp and blue and devoid of any motivation.

"We-- we asked Cabeswater to keep him alive." She looks away, shifty. "If we could do something to keep him alive."

[and_survive]

A demon didn't explain everything fucked up with Darrow, she didn't think, not even in the last month. Or, hell, maybe it did. Maybe the Purge was because of that, rather than because that kind of chaos was natural for people.

She didn't really think so, though.

Still, it was a thing she didn't understand. Gansey couldn't be dead, because he was clearly alive. Except Noah was dead, too, so who the fuck knew. It just made her feel ever more out of her depth, like she'd found herself somewhere she wasn't meant to be. Which was a dumb thing to be concerned about, when people were dead and demons were destroying things. Everything just went towards making her mad at not having a handle on it.

"And what, the magic fucking forest thing wanted you to make out?"

[formicine]

No, it wasn't everything fucked up. The Purge was just good old fashioned people being awful; maybe it would have been better if that had been the demon too. If Blue had been thinking more clearly, she'd have phrased it better: the problem was, it had started before the Purge. Aurora had been here in what seemed like such a windfall, and then died in some sort of rotting gore; Cabeswater had disintegrated, the dream objects and the animals had gone bad, Magnus' powers had gone haywire and nearly killed Alec, her own hadn't been working. The Purge had almost seemed like some natural conclusion of the interior violence spreading outwards from Cabeswater, as though people's minds were all rotting into something violent and dark too.

But they weren't. They were just like that.

And she wasn't forced by some demon to kiss Gansey. She was just like that, too, and that was the problem.

"No," she says, and sits down on the arm of the chair, looking at her hands. "No, I. I just kissed him." Her face is hot, and she feels a little sick. "I thought he was dead and I just --" It hadn't exactly been making out.

Kissing him wasn't even the problem.

"The forest wanted -- something. We didn't know what. I told it it could have anything." Her voice shakes a little. "It took our power. Adam's connection to Cabeswater, and my ability to charge up supernatural things, and Noah's -- body, sort of. I told it it could have anything and that's what it wanted." It could have killed her; she realizes. Maybe she'd realized that then, but she hadn't cared, her fate coming so drastically to fruition in front of her eyes. It basically re-killed Noah, because of the way Noah had gone about it.

She stares at the space just in front of Ellie's feet, guiltily. "I didn't even think."

[and_survive]

she flexed the fingers of her right hand, avoided looking down at her arm. A sacrifice of the special things, of the powers. The only thing special about Ellie was that she was immune to cordyceps. Would she give that up to save someone?

Once she would have been able to say she would have. Easily. Now, though... she didn't know what she would have done. Maybe that was the problem. Blue would give up all of this for Gansey; Ellie didn't know what she'd give up for Blue. She'd kill to protect her, sure, but fuck, killing was easy. Living was the hard part.

"And now he's alive again," Ellie said. "I mean- shit. I can't be against that, of course I'm not against that. You fight for every second you can. Just..."

She didn't even know what the next part was. What any of this was. She couldn't just throw a nail bomb at whatever this was. She'd never been great at this. At staying or leaving, or knowing which was the thing to do.

[formicine]

Ellie could have been against that, it wouldn't have been something Blue would have been particularly angry about her holding against Blue. It was a fucked up thing to do, to not even think of what Ellie might think or might lose if she offered anything to some magic forest.

For some reason, that's what actually spills the tears over, the fact that Ellie understands, and she shoves it away. She hates crying, and this isn't meant to make her look like some victim.

"Just," she agrees miserably, and tucks her feet under her, balanced on the arm of the chair. "I. It's not about choosing one of you, you know?" She chances a glance up at Ellie. She's never had to be in a situation where Ellie was dead, so maybe it's a little bit bullshit, but she thinks that she'd be just as frantic. "I -- " Maybe it isn't the right time to say I love you. Maybe that just makes it worse. It doesn't make it untrue, or if it's not true, it feels like it's true.

"You're so important to me," she says instead. Fuck, Ellie's been her first everything, beyond "kissing someone to try out the action of it". Noah and she had smooshy feelings, maybe, but it had been so much about him never getting to kiss someone again and her not being able to kill him. Her first kiss. Her first girlfriend, longterm any relationship. Her first anything physical.

This fucking sucks. She stares at her hands. It would be so easy to apologize, wouldn't it? To swear this was a one-off. She thinks about that time they stood on top of that broken down roller coaster, laughing. This feels like the fall down the slope.

"I just. Think maybe I've been treating that like it's enough. Because I want it to be enough, and you make me happy. But you deserve someone whose head isn't in two places. I -- " Blue shakes her head and glances up at Ellie again, and past her. "I want to be the kind of person who's all in, and who makes you realize how important you are, and I don't think I'm doing that."

It didn't even touch how shaken up she still was by the Purge, but that's not as important as the stuff that's been going on for months now. Maybe if she was better for Ellie, she wouldn't be as shaken by it, she thinks.

[and_survive]

She knew it was a thing some people did, the not-choosing, that for some people it didn't resolve down to just one person, all the time. But she was just getting used to the idea of one person, of being somewhere where maybe things didn't just burn down all the time.

And she couldn't even get used to that because she'd been right all along. Everything would burn the fuck down. Somehow, the Purge hadn't lasted, but one day something would.

"Kind of sounds like it is about choosing," Ellie said, digging her heel into the unyielding floor, looking down at it because Blue was crying and she didn't know how to deal with that. She was more comfortable shooting someone than comforting them, how fucked up was that?

[formicine]

"It's not, I'm not -- just picking him over you," she starts, petulant and defensive, and stops. There's no reason Ellie should believe her. And she knows there are plenty of people here who could have pledged their love unyieldingly to both, if Ellie had wanted that, which she wouldn't, Blue thinks, and Blue doesn't think she does either. Maybe back home, some future her that isn't her. Maybe that her can be a part of something like that, anyway, like Gansey had said, something building between him and her and Henry. But that's not what she wants. She mostly thinks right now she's not good at this. For anyone.

This what she does. She falls a little in love with everyone, the girl who thought she'd never fall in love with anyone. Sometimes it's easy, like Noah, like Adam, where it's love but not the kind that wants to kiss anyone, just the kind that isn't anyone without them. Sometimes it's not and no matter what you do about it it feels like your guts are being scraped out because someone gets hurt.

And it doesn't matter what her good intentions are, she's fucked it up here.

"It's not -- I could just have done that, if that's what I wanted. I didn't. I don't."

[and_survive]

"Well- shit, maybe you should," Ellie said, a quick burst, because that almost seemed as if it would be easier. If Blue would just decide she was going to be with Gansey, then Ellie could be mad about that and it would be done, and settled.

It wouldn't so hideously and awkwardly complicated that she wasn't even sure what she should be arguing for.

"I mean, do you even know?"

[formicine]

"I should -- what, just pick him?" Blue asks quietly, tipping her head. It feels oddly like a punch to the gut. Both because it sounds really passive aggressive, but also because she does love Ellie, and if it's not passive aggressive, if it's serious, Ellie deserves better than to just say she's not worth it. That's why Blue is saying all this at all. Because she deserves better than to not feel like she's wanted.

But then she keeps going and she finds herself getting a little angry. "Do I know what, who I would choose if I had to? That's fucked up, Ellie. I can't choose not to have thoughts. I'm not with Gansey, I'm not like -- fucking Gansey or something. I'm with you, no matter how complicated that is. That is a choice I made." She can still remember screaming at Ronan; it's still something that hasn't been totally forgiven, and now it feels like the whole thing was some sort of ridiculous farce.

"I can't choose not to have feelings. Hell, Gansey came straight from a place where I was dating him, and he never even asked me to choose like that." She can feel tears pricking her eyes, but this time they're angry tears and she can't even help it.