As much as it didn't make sense to choose to return home when you were only going to end up dying, Elle entertained the thought from time to time. She had managed to come out unscathed during her probationary period, but often she found her mind wandering and scheming about jobs she could plan or ways to find a small piece of revenge against her sister. The problem, though, was Atlantis itself. She might not have be monitored as closely as she had been at first, but she knew being detected in some way or another would be high. Not to mention Alicia's golden status with most of the people here. Still, she took pleasure in how only her presence seemed to get under her skin especially when it came to her first outing with Marcus Flint. Elle hadn't a clue why that bothered her as much as it did, but she honestly didn't care. She was just thankful that there were now some friendly faces in Atlantis with Marcus’ and Bole’s arrivals.
She'd had a couple drinks the night before after her shift at Cava was over to celebrate the new arrivals, but she didn't think that she'd gotten herself that sloshed. When she woke up on a raft in the middle of the ocean, Elle started to wonder what exactly had been in those drinks.
“What in Merlin’s name…” Elle’s voice trailed off when she looked to see others on the raft with her. As the others started to wake up, she looked around to see who she recognized. And, boy, did she recognize the person next to her. “Oh, you've got to be bloody kidding me.”
Elle had the mind to shove Alicia off the raft right here and now and call it a day, but she just gave her a hard nudge instead to help wake her up.
Things couldn't get more annoying. Lately, it felt like Atlantis was trying to fuck with her in as many ways as possible. She kept her eyes tightly shut hoping that the warm weather and pelting drops were just her mind playing tricks on her.
Trying to will herself back to sleep she heard her sisters voice and felt a nudge that was a lot harder than it needed to be. Her eyes opened blinking as she sat up. Her eyes focused on Elle for a moment with a hard expression before looking away.
"Trying to knock me in the ocean?" She snarled. Alicia at least had done the wake up in a strange place thing a few times, but with Elle, everything felt a million times worse. Ignoring her sister she moved enough on the raft to get a good look around. Alicia's mind focused solely on how to get away from her sister and to land.
“If I’d tried, you would have already been in the ocean,” Elle snapped back and rolled her eyes. Of every person in Atlantis, she had to be stuck on this raft with Alicia. The only other person who might have been worse company was Rocco.
Looking around, she tried to determine which way the island was. It was terribly cloudy, so finding the position of the sun wasn’t going to be possible at that moment. She had no way in knowing if they were on the beach side of the island or if they’d drifted all the way around to the opposite side. As she was about to speak, there was a quiet rumble of thunder in the clouds above them and soon rain began to fall. A storm while they were stuck out in the middle of the ocean. That was just lovely.
Groaning and not even bothering to try to cover up from the rain, Elle checked herself and realized she didn’t have her wand on her. It wasn’t a surprise but was still frustrating. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance you happen to have your wand on you? Since the faster we get off of this bloody raft, the sooner we can continue ignoring the other.”
Alicia was studying the clouds ignoring her sister trying to figure out which direction they were supposed to go in and where the hell they were. She closed her eyes trying to remember the weather forecast from the night before. Winds out of the west, not that it really helped to pinpoint where they were, she just had a general feel.
Pulling out a bobbypin from her hair she looked at it for a moment. "Do you have anything like cork, or something that'll float?" Alicia asked ignoring her wand question. "We can make our own compass, but I need something to float this on," she said holding up the bobbypin before taking off her watch.
Elle nearly started to ask why in Merlin’s name would she ever have a piece of cork with her, but as started to pat down her pockets to make it clear she had nothing, she felt something small and hard in her pants’ pocket. When she pulled it out, sure enough, it was a wine cork. She’d been working a shift at Cava the night before, but she definitely didn’t recall stashing this in her pocket for no reason at all.
“Here,” she said and tossed the thing over to Alicia. “Stick the bobby pin through it.” It was something Alicia likely already knew, but Elle wasn’t about to blindly assume her sister knew what she was doing.
Alicia took the cork and didn’t even bother paying attention to her stupid comment, her eyes did roll. She finished setting up making sure to do everything carefully so it’d work and looked around for a second finding a way to block off an area to put the compass on a little water.
Giving it a moment she looked down with a sigh. “At least we know where north is now.” It was useful but it wouldn’t actually tell them exactly where they were. “Winds out of the west, north, Atlantis is probably….” she paused pointing North East of their position. “Unless you want to second guess me.” Alicia had learned a lot from Oliver Queen and her nearly two years here.
Elle rolled her eyes as Alicia started to work on the makeshift compass. “Hurry up,” she said after a moment as the rain started to fall harder. If working with Alicia got her out of here then so be it, but she didn’t want to stay on this raft any longer than she absolutely had to.
Once their possible location was found, she looked around for some sort of ore, but of course came up empty. This blasted world liked to play its tricks. So instead of simply reaching her hand down into the water, Elle pulled off one of her shoes and started trying to paddle in what she hoped was the right direction. The shoe wasn’t much but it worked better than if she’d only used her hand.
“Well, come on then,” Elle said. “Don’t just sit there.” If a shark happened to come up and bite off Alicia’s arm or better yet pull her completely into the ocean then that wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.
“Bitch.” Alicia muttered under her breath as she took off her own flipflop and knelt down to start paddling on the other side. They weren’t moving exactly fast given they were using their hands and the water was choppy from the storm.
“Listen, I don’t know if it’s going to work but I’ve been getting better with wandless magic, I can try and get us propelled forward faster but it might backfire.” She hated admitting any kind of weakness to Elle but she also didn’t want to just try something and send them both flying into the water because Alicia would probably have to save her sisters life while her sister would probably try and drown her. (At least that was how Alicia thought it would go.)
“So, want me to try it?”
Elle looked at her sister suspiciously, wondering if she was planning something with her use of wandless magic. It would be what Elle would do if she was any good at it, but she’d long ago stopped practicing wandless magic in exchange for occasionally getting by the old-fashioned Muggle way. It’s what she’d had to do in order to get by on some of her and Trent’s jobs when there were magical safeguards there to protect the item they planned to steal.
As she paddled without much success, she figured what the hell. They couldn’t possibly be worse off than they were now. At the rate they were currently going, it probably would have been faster to swim back to the island.
“Go right on ahead then,” she said but kept her attention on her own paddling. “Though, if we drown then I suppose one of your wishes will come true.”
Alicia had spent so much time with Wanda and by herself working on her wandless magic that she’d gotten pretty decent at it compared to how it was at home. She heard Elle’s snide comment and looked at her pausing in her focus.
“I wasn’t the one that wanted a family member to die.” She remarked making a point to ignore anything else Elle had to say after that.
Taking a deep breath she focused breathing slowly, controlled as she managed to get them to propel forward, it wasn’t exactly straight but they were moving faster than they were with the two of them paddling, she just had to keep her focus.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Elle muttered and rolled her eyes as she waited to see if the wandless spell would work. She half expected it not to, but when it did, she held onto the side of the raft as they propelled forward. It wasn’t exactly in a straight line but it was good enough that after a few moments she started to see the coastline up ahead.
Yes, she was glad to be able to see land and be that much closer to getting off this raft. No, she was not planning to thank her sister for it. She doubted that Alicia even wanted to hear a thanks from her, not that it made any difference to Elle.
The spell started to give out, and it was close enough that they’d likely come in with the currents along with a little paddling help. As they worked getting back to shore, the waves finally started doing the work for them. She let out a sigh. “Finally.”
Ignoring Elle was the best thing she could do for both of them. She knew Elle would never listen to the fact that she didn’t want her dead, she just wanted her caught.
Breathing a little heavier as she didn’t stop paddling even with the wave she grumbled as the raft started to turn getting ready to flip.
“Fuck it.” Alicia let out as she gave up, diving into the water to swim the rest of the way. She was already soaking wet, she might as well just swim the rest of the way. She didn’t look back to see if Elle had decided to swim too or try and stay on the raft.
Catching sight of the wave at the last second, Elle managed to jump from the raft before it toppled over on top of her. The wave crashed over her head, and it took her a few moments before she was able to reach the surface. Just perfect, she thought to herself and started swimming towards the shore.
She could see Alicia a little ways up ahead of her, and as she began to get to water that was shallow enough where they could touch the bottom, Elle trudged forward as best that she could. Alicia made it to the beach ahead of her, and Elle stared at her back the entire rest of the way. They were both dripping wet from head to toe, and it was not going to be a fun walk back into the city for either of them.
“Fun day,” she said as she passed her sister by without stopping. “Let’s never do that again.” The sooner she got away from her the better.
Alicia rolled her eyes shaking her head as she watched Elle pass her and complain about never doing it again.
"Bitch." Alicia breathed out as she pulled her hair to the side and pulled some of the water out of it. It didn't do a lot of good given the rain.
Heading back to the water she waded in to make sure the raft was pulled to safety and she could come back to get it later.
Hearing that word for the second time, Elle whipped around and turned towards her sister, her wet hair flying and sticking to her face. “What do you want me to say?” she demanded and not really referring to their little swim in the ocean. “I didn’t ask to come here. I never picked up one of those blasted coins everyone keeps going on about when they arrive.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You hate me. Fine, I don’t have happy thoughts about you either, Alicia, but today aside, I’ve avoided you here. I’ve avoided your precious friends. What the hell do you want? For me to return home to die? Because, frankly, you can piss off if that’s what you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I said bitch, which is pretty much your go to speed.” Alicia snapped back at her crossing her arms.
“I never wanted you to die, and it’s not my fault you decided that breaking the law and being a con artist was the best career path, excuse me for actually giving a shit about our family and not using them to my own selfish gains. I don’t care if you are here or not, but you can stop with the ‘poor me’ shit everything that happened to you was your own damn fault.”
“It’s not far off from your speed either,” Elle retorted. “And it’s not just to me either.” She didn’t cite specific examples, but she figured Alicia could figure it out on her own. Although, Elle assumed that part of the reason her sister was being spiteful towards Marcus Flint did have to do with her, she wasn’t narcissistic enough to believe she was the only reason. She and Marcus didn’t talk about Alicia, in fact Elle tried to avoid the subject, but she could read. “When someone doesn’t kiss your ass, I suppose that’s all it takes for you to turn your nose up at them.”
Elle had her own internal issues with the choices she made, and she wasn’t going to try to justify and explain them to Alicia of all people. She didn’t owe her anything. “If you care so little about my being here then start acting like it.” She said and started to walk away from the beach.
Alicia laughed. Actually laughed at her sisters bullshit words. Alicia knew she could be a bitch but she didn’t purposefully use people and put them in danger for selfish gains and she knew she had that over her sister.
“Guess you’re just upset that people actually like me and I don’t even have to trick them into it.” She responded shrugging her shoulders.
Alicia didn’t do anything to try and stop her. In fact she was perfectly fine ending the conversation.
What she wanted to do was to turn around and punch her sister square in the face as hard as she could. She should have shoved her off of that raft and found her own way back, but Elle only rolled her eyes as she continued to walk away, otherwise ignoring the laugh and smartass comment. She couldn’t care less about Alicia’s friends or who liked or didn’t like her. Rather than replying, she just kept walking until she could as much space as possible between herself and her sister. That and to get somewhere to changed out of these bloody wet clothes.