Katarina (miss_fixit) wrote in freedomtownic, @ 2020-07-15 17:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | ellie williams (_endure_survive), katarina (miss_fixit) |
Who: Ellie and Kat
Where: Kat's Room
When: Following their network interaction here
Rating: PG-13 for possible triggers
Spoilers/Notes: Quotes from Riley were taken from The Last of Us: Left Behind DLC. The game never mentioned what the girls did after they were infected. Kir filled that in herself.
Kat had mentioned on the network that Ellie had been lost in her head and that they should spend time together. Whether Ellie wanted to talk about what was on her mind was ultimately up to her. At first she'd said that she probably wouldn't want to talk, but during her shift and Sin & Quinn's Super Mega Pop Culture Emporium the more that she thought about it the more she wanted to talk. Once she made the decision she let Sawyer know where she'd be. She might arrive at home late or spend the night at Kat's, but not to worry and that she'd talk to him soon.
When she arrived at Kat's home she was still dressed in what she wore to work: sneakers, jeans and a t-shirt that said 'Small but Mighty'. She shifted anxiously from foot-to-foot and knocked at Kat's door with a bunch of magenta lilac's in her other hand. The florist had told her that they signified love and passion, so they seemed appropriate. One day she'd find out what Kat's favorite flower was. "It's Ellie," she called out, embarrassed and ashamed for how their network conversation had ended. Kat had mentioned doing something amazing for her and she'd been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn't replied appropriately. That was not how you expressed love and appreciation for someone.
She was scared, though. Scared that this happiness that she felt with Kat wouldn't last. The last time that she'd been so happy--well; that was something that they were going to discuss. "I'm sorry for being a jackass," she added.
When Kat answered the door, it was clear she'd been working on rebuilding the stuff in her workshop that had been destroyed. She had on baggy cargo jeans, a tight, slightly-dirty white tank-top, and black work boots, her hair in a messy ponytail and a few little smudges of dirt on her face. Still, she gave a smile, bright but full of both concern and fear, when she saw Ellie. "Oh stop, you weren't a jackass." Kat chuckled, ushering her in. "Sorry I'm all dirty. Been working most of the day."
She had a feeling she knew what was wrong. Somehow, the two of them had been able to see through each other almost from their first meeting. But it still scared her, seeing Ellie pull away this badly already, when Kat still felt in that 'uber-lovey honeymoon phase'.
"You know that I like dirty," Ellie replied. And it was true. Her eyes lingered on Kat for a few seconds, just taking in the beautiful mess that she was in. "Oh. Here." She handed Kat the flowers. "One day you gotta tell me what your favorite are. Otherwise you're just gonna get random flowers for the rest of our lives." 'Random' wasn't entirely true. She'd actually asked the florist about different kinds of flowers before picking the lilacs.
".....what if I say I kinda love when you surprise me like this?" Kat asked, her spirits lifting a bit at hearing 'the rest of our lives'. Maybe she had worried for nothing after all. "C'mere." The tiny mechanic told her, walking over to a large bean bag she had sitting on the floor. She plopped down, sitting against it as she patted the spot beside her. "Prolly shouldn't sit on the bed in this state, you know?"
Ellie took the flowers and set them aside, then plopped down next to Kat, shifting in her seat to get comfortable before curling her arms around the other girl and tugging her in. "Well, to be fair you probably wouldn't have been in those clothes long anyway," she pointed out with a lopsided smile.
Oh thank goodness.... it already felt like the Ellie she knew and loved was back. She nuzzled into Ellie, kissing the side of her neck. "You're right. Even right now I can barely keep my hands to myself. BUT." She said, again, doing the mature thing, as she looked at the other girl. "Talk to me. El, I love you so much... and I want to be there to go through any issues with you. You don't have to face anything alone anymore, sweetheart. Now we face things together."
Ellie nodded and let out a shaky breath. Facing things together was what had frightened her, but probably not for the reasons one would think. She touched her fingers to the scar on her forearm, falling silent while she remembered how she got it. It was a bite, but there were also raised bumps along the skin, like burnt plastic. She let out another shaky breath. "Did I ever tell you how I got this?"
"No." Kat replied, taking a deep breath. Whatever came next... this was going to be a major moment for Ellie, and for their relationship. "But... if you're ready to tell me, I'd like to hear it."
Ellie nodded. It was time. She stroked her fingers along Kat's hair, taking comfort in her physical proximity. "I guess I should start earlier than that." She nibbled on her bottom lip thoughtfully. "Where I'm from there's this thing called Cordyceps Brain Infection. CBI. It started before I was even born. It's basically this mutated fungus. You either get infected by a bite or breathing in spores. It's not... not pretty." She let out a shuddering breath. "At first you lose your higher brain functions, then you become hyper-aggressive. Over time the fungus overtakes the head, the eyes. You're not human anymore. Basically being bitten is a death sentence." She paused and looked at Kat. "Except for me."
Kat felt her eyes widened, processing that. Oh, this poor sweet girl... she'd been essentially bitten by a zombie, but somehow lived through it. "Oh, Ellie..." Kat whispered, stroking the girl's hair lovingly. "You brave, tough woman..."
Ellie didn't feel brave for the tears that threatened to fall. "It gets worse," she said softly, leaning into Kat's touch with a shuddering sigh. "I was with my best friend, Riley." Ellie had mentioned Riley once or twice, but not the nature of how she died. She made a mental note to show Kat the polaroid that she had of them together. It was one of the few possessions that she had when she arrived on Galador and she cherished it. "I hadn't seen her for a long time. 46 days, technically." She smiled briefly. Riley had counted the days. "Where I lived--well; Boston was a police state. The orphanage that I lived in we'd do military drills. All the kids there were basically conscripted into the military on their sixteenth--" Ellie paused, feeling though she was getting off-track "--Anyway. There was also this group called The Fireflies. They were this militia group who were fighting to restore any kind of government we once had."
Ellie smiled wryly. She'd admired The Fireflies once, but as she grew older she realized that what they were fighting for was impossible to achieve. "Riley had joined them. I remember being so pissed when she showed up in my room that night. I really thought that she'd just left and died somewhere. They said that the Quarantine Zone was safe, but people still died, so... it was possible." Again, it felt like she was getting off-track. Still, she decided to press on. Once she'd started talking she couldn't bring herself to stop.
"We snuck out of the orphanage and she took me to this mall that we'd been to before. She basically filled the night with all the fun stuff that I'd like. Breaking car windows, wearing stupid masks. She even got the power going so I could ride the carousel. The arcade machines were busted, but she had me close my eyes and imagine how it was played." Ellie smiled fondly at the memory. "All night I kept asking her 'why now?' and she eventually admitted that it was our last night together. That she was being shipped off somewhere else. I won't lie. I was pissed at first. I told her to go. But as the night wore on and we were having such a good time, we were dancing and I just--I looked at her and said 'don't go' and she tore off her Firefly medallion and dropped it and I just went for it and kissed her. I said 'sorry' and she said 'for what?'"
Ellie chuckled, but the smile from her face faded when the memory of what came next followed. "Infected found us. We'd had music playing and they just--so we ran. We ran so hard and so fast. It felt like they just came out of nowhere, you know? We'd been there for hours and didn't see one and suddenly there were dozens of them. We almost got out. We were almost fucking out and I fell. I fell off of fucking scaffolding and got jumped straight away. It bit me then. Riley jumped down and shot it, trying to save me, but then she was attacked and suddenly I was saving her. After... she looked at me and pointed out that we were both bitten."
"I'll never forget what she said after that," Ellie said softly, wiping away a stray tear that fell down her cheek. "I mean. After I pitched a fit and broke things. I asked her 'what're we gonna do?' And she said that we had two options. Option one, take the easy way out. Option two, we fight. 'There are a million ways we should've died before today. And a million more ways we can die before tomorrow. But we fight... for every second we get to spend with each other. Whether it's two minutes... or two days... we don't give that up. I don't want to give that up. My vote? Let's just wait it out. You know we can... be all poetic and just lose our minds together.'"
"When I asked what Option three was... she just said 'sorry'." Ellie sniffled. "We left. We didn't know where to go, but--after a while we went to the Firefly base to explain what had happened. Marlene, the leader, for whatever reason didn't kill us on sight. She gave us a little longer together, but Riley was getting worse and worse and I was just--I mean; I was hurt, but I was still me. I wasn't changing. Riley... it didn't take long. One day she was there and no more than two days after that she just... wasn't." Ellie broke into a sob. She'd held it together for most of what she'd said up until that moment. She bent over and finally let the tears come.
"We'd had such a good night, you know? We were just being kids and the world decided to take that away from us." She sniffled and wiped the tears and snot away with the heel of her palm. "We could've--we could've been a lot more. She could've been a lot more." Ellie's body shook with each sob. "After the night that you and I actually... spent together I thought 'I can't remember the last time I was this happy' and it just came in a rush. That night. With Riley. And that... that old stupid part of my brain just shut down at the thought of ever losing you like that. Being that happy again, it was like," she paused, trying to find the words, "'No. You don't deserve this. This world will find a way to take her away too.' And I just--I panicked. I freaked out. Loving someone that much has always meant losing them."
"And that stupid part of my brain just went 'hey, wouldn't it be better if you just stopped? Wouldn't it be safer, to save you both pain?'" Ellie sniffled, coming back to herself. "But at work today I just... couldn't stop thinking about what Riley said. 'We fight for every second we get to spend with each other'. If something ever happened to you I don't know what I'd do... but I'm gonna fight for you, too. I'll fight for every minute. Every second. Because loving someone doesn't always mean that you'll lose them and even if that happens... I'll be better for having you in my life than not having you in it at all. And I know that you said something similar recently. I just can't shake those old thoughts. Everyone I've ever loved has left me. Except for Joel. Except for Sawyer and Juliet. And now you."
"Kat, you just... you have no idea how much I love you. Or how much it frightens me. But I hope that by telling you about Riley... that maybe you'll understand why I pulled away for a minute there. Loving someone has always meant loss for me. My heart just... tried to protect itself from more pain. And I know that that's wrong now. I will take every single minute with you that I can. Every. Fucking. Second."
"I do understand." Kat told her, tears in her eyes from hearing the hardships this wonderful girl had already had to endure. She kissed Ellie's forehead lovingly, taking a minute to let all that she said sink in. To let the girl shed those obviously long-held-in tears.
"I hate that you had to go through all that. I hate that you had to lose Riley. Lose your childhood. Lose all of it. But I'm also flattered more than I know how to say, that you shared it with me. I'm not like most other girls. And while usually that's a bad thing, in this case? It's a good thing. Because I love guns and tech the way most kids love sports and games. And there ain't nothin' out there that's gonna take my tiny ass out without some major collateral damage."
She made a note to make a similar gesture to Ellie. She'd never really told anyone the extent of her bullying. Of the physical and emotional damage it had done to her. But for the first time, she felt herself WANTING someone to know.
"We're in this together, baby. I went through too d'ast much to find you.... I ain't never letting anything come between us. And between me, Juliet and Sawyer, and my mom and dad? You finally have a family, honey. Because my dad already likes you, and while my mom can play her cards a little closer to the chest than most, when she sees how much you mean to me? She'll move heaven and earth for you."
Ellie let out a brief surprised laugh at the mention of Kat's 'tiny ass', but she'd raised a valid point. She was a fighter. The tension left Ellie's body.
"Family," Ellie repeated with a soft, grateful smile. Some nights at the orphanage she wondered what families did together--whether before or after the pandemic. She could only dream until she came to Galador and was taken in by Sawyer and Juliet. She kept her distance at first, slept on the floor at first too (that's a discussion for another time), but over time she let those walls down and let them in. She'd even started calling Juliet 'Mom'. So... she was getting there. She was learning to love and accept that this was her new home.
She awkwardly curled onto her side to face Kat and caressed a hand down her side. It felt like she'd always want to touch her now. Always want to be near her. She let out another little shaky sigh and nodded. "Yeah. I like the sound of that."
"You're not going through this alone." Kat told her, looking deeply into the girl's eyes with love and understanding. "I mean, your situation in particular, sure. But we all have things in our past that we have to overcome. All of us." Kat added, a dark expression briefly coming over her. "My point is that no matter how bad the past might've been... what was the point of making it through if you're not going to do everything in your power to enjoy the hell out of what you've got now?"
Ellie saw the cloudy expression that crossed Kat's face briefly. The expression coupled with her words made Ellie realize that she wasn't the only one who had suffered. "I know. I know that you're right. Worrying about the future, worrying about what might happen is no way to live." She traced her fingertips along Kat's bare arm and a small lopsided smile came across her face. "How'd you get so smart, hm?"
"Being the biological kid of one of the greatest minds of all time, then being raised by another probably helped..." She winked, wiping at a smudge of dirt on her cheek.
"Hmmm. Nah. I think you did it all on your own," Ellie murmured. She leaned in and pecked at that spot on Kat's cheek, then another, then the tip of her nose. "You wanna talk about where your mind went just a second ago?"
"Wouldn't that be kinda stealing your thunder a little?" Kat chuckled, beaming at all the attention. "Besides, EmoKat kinda sucks."
"I dunno. I kinda like her," Ellie murmured, a teasing lilt to her voice. She let a kiss linger on Kat's cheek and just quietly held her for a minute. "Only if you want to. Tell me, I mean."
"My baggage is nowhere near as bad as yours." Kat laughed, cleared rattled by it still. "You hear a lot about bullying, you know? But unless it's happened to you, you never really know how horrible it is."
Yep. She was finally opening up. Ellie deserved to be the one. After she trusted Kat with her past? Kat owed her the same.
"From the time I was little, the other kids picked on me. I was tiny, I was super smart, I had no social skills at all, and the part they really latched onto? My dad's a talking raccoon." She sighed, instinctively pulling her knees to her chest in emotional self defense.
"I was the weird raccoon girl. They asked me if I had a tail. If I ate people's garbage. They thought it was so funny, too. They'd push me down stairs. Shove me into my locker. Tell me I was ugly. A boy I liked asked me to a school dance, then after I got a dress and showed up... he was there with another girl and they just laughed at me and told me nobody would ever REALLY want to go out with me..."
She sniffed, hiding her face in her knees.
"It doesn't sound like much... but when you spend half your life hearing how pathetic, worthless, and unattractive you are... well, you start to believe it. I came home from school every day and cried myself to sleep, hoping I'd never wake up. And I never told my parents JUST how bad it was. Because mom would've went flarnak and killed everyone, and because it would've broken Daddy's heart to know he was part of the reason I was teased."
She sighed, shaking her head.
"To this day, I hate how I look. How I am. How silly and impulsive and immature I am. Enid... she doesn't even realize it, but when she made the bullying stop? She saved my life. Because I had started having... some really dark, final thoughts." She said, raising an eyebrow. She didn't say the words, but the way she said it? It was clear what she meant.
Ellie listened quietly. Kat had mentioned being bullied before, but not where that bullying almost took her. She brushed a few stray strands of hair away from Kat's face. "I hate that those kids bullied you," she started to say softly. Despite the fact that they were alone in the room there was something intimate about the fact that they were talking in hushed voices. "I hate that they almost took you to a place where we would never have met. I hate that their--that their bullshit makes it hard for you to see how beautiful you are, how smart and talented--okay; and maybe a little impulsive, but when is that necessarily a bad thing?" She gave Kat a nudge. "I happen to love that about you. I love how excited you get when you have a new idea. It's like this... this energy that you have. I mean, you're so little, but it just... fills any room that you're in. It's hard not to be swept up by that or excited by that."
Ellie paused briefly, unsure if she was wording what she wanted to say correctly. "I'm grateful that Enid helped you that day. I'd hate to think--" No. She wasn't going to circle back to that. "--More than anything I'm glad that you don't have to deal with that anymore. And maybe given enough time you'll be able to see yourself through my eyes. Because you? Are beautiful. And perfect. Just the way that you are. So fuck those kids. They don't know what I know."
"I never told anyone this before, but..." Kat took a deep breath, before finally letting it out. "I began to hate myself. And I still do, even now."
She looked ashamed of herself, and felt the same.
"I'm sorry. I know that sounds silly and stupid and immature..."
"It's not silly at all. Or stupid. Or immature," Ellie replied. She rubbed a hand along Kat's arm comfortingly. "Anyone who suffered that kind of abuse--well; I mean. You shouldered it for years. Of course you were gonna start believing their shit if it was all you heard day in and day out. Maybe... I mean, maybe that's something that we can work on together? You learning how to love yourself."
"I'd do anything you asked me to do." Kat told her, before shifting a bit, and rolling so that she was straddling Ellie's lap, looking into her eyes. "I just know that when you kiss me... I know I must have something special about me... because only someone special gets kissed like that."
Ellie rubbed her hands along Kat's thighs. "You're all kinds of special." She gave Kat a cockeyed look. "I swear that sounded more romantic in my head." Maybe that needed that levity right then after the seriousness of what they'd just discussed, though. She cupped Kat's cheeks. "Do you need a reminder for how special I think you are?"
"Depends..." Kat said with an impish grin. "Are we both done internalizing things? If either of us is upset, we share with the other?"
Ellie nodded. "We'll talk," she promised. For Ellie's part, she'd kept things to herself for far too long. Now that they were a couple, they could help shoulder each other's worries. She smiled and pulled Kat toward her so she could kiss her like she'd wanted to from the moment she walked in the room.