WHAT: Eleven prepares to go into Stabby Mode, and Blue talks her through some very reckless intentions WHERE: The Outpost, moving into the forest WHEN: 2029, some time after the Outpost was established WARNINGS: Loss, grief, mentions of vengeance and murder STATUS: Complete
Eleven shouldn’t be using her powers. No one should be using their powers – or whatever was left of them – but the amount of shits she gave about it dwindled with time. The days dragged on, becoming weeks. Then months. Years. Plural. They hadn’t reached the point where it had been several years yet, but it was coming.
She felt it in her bones.
What remained of her telekinesis was something she hadn’t quite tested out yet. The void tracking, however, hadn’t failed her. El could still do it to an extent. She used it outside of Outpost territory. She closed her eyes after turning on a battery-operated radio, letting the static fill her senses and lull her mind into this headspace that existed between the physical and metaphysical. Intel about certain covens hit the Outpost sometimes – member names, old photos, and that would be enough.
By now, tracking them down and doing away with them had become a practiced sport. If they were lurking in the forest, trying to suss out locations of Outlanders, then that meant they were available to be put down like rabid dogs.
“I need a knife!” Eleven called out from outside of Blue’s room, wiping the last bits of blood away from beneath her nose. She had to gather supplies if she were to go out. Some rations, a few weapons, and she knew Blue typically had a good bit of sharp objects to borrow. “I left my last one in someone’s chest.”
It had been a good knife, too.
Blue used her powers differently in the last few years. Boosting when people needed it desperately for a battle, and sucking it right out of the others when they were surrounded by wraiths and magically corrupted monsters. She was best known for her dampening shield over scouting missions, which was tenuous assistance at best. But sometimes it was all they had to pass under the detection of Interitus forces.
She was better with a knife anyway from a distance, as her only other defense against those under the Thrall who didn't require magic to best them. Blue thought she might be nursing injuries from those close skirmishes forever. It did little to help her self-esteem, but it helped her not focus on her long-standing grief if she was concentrating on staying alive.
Her room was nothing more than a mattress, a few crates with Gansey's clothes and hers stuffed together, and, well, a severe number of sharp weaponized objects. A curtain felt like her only privacy, and it was currently shut. That was until she heard El's voice calling for a knife. Blue threw open the curtain, and paused in welcoming her in. Blue gave her a once over.
"You know I'm good for it, but why?" Blue asked, her way of trying to remain responsible, or at least sound like she wasn't just passing out weapons for the hell of it.
“Members of the Vorerra coven are camped out not far from here,” El explained, not the least bit shy about letting someone know her intentions. It wasn’t a recent development. Since Mike’s death (or murder, let’s be honest), she’d made it a mission to track down as many of those members and, personally, take them out. Their powers were similar to hers - and while she refrained from snapping their necks with a flick of her wrist, she knew damn well how to shield her mind.
She was definitely dressed for travel, too - something light that didn’t hang loose (to avoid getting inconveniently snagged by branches), steel-toed boots and a backpack.
The sight she let out blew the bangs away from her eyes. “I will bring it back this time,” she vowed. “I promise.”
Blue's expression was neutral, having heard the same request from multiple people through the years. Always someone or something scouting nearby, always the possibility of getting the drop on them, always risking the possibility of not coming back. With El, it was different. She reminded Blue of herself, and they had only grown closer throughout the years. Her grief and her anger and her vengeance were shared with Blue, and the sensible part that should have told El not to go seemed to be nonexistent.
Instead of answering her, Blue turned back inside her room, and grabbed her own light pack, a knife, another knife, another one that looked particularly gruesome, and the one she handed to El. "I want that one back," Blue said, nodding to the mermaid switchblade. It had been a gift from Henry nearly a decade ago, and she had managed to hold on to it since—a rarity in this future, as like with El's predicament, knives tended to be left behind in people.
"And to make sure that happens, I'm coming with you. You shouldn't be doing anything alone," Blue said, sheathing one of the knives in her thigh holster. They were practical. Sort of.
Blue lifted her chin, as if a challenge, and said, "It's either me, or I tell someone else."
El looked down at her offer – and she was tempted to say it was too pretty to jam into someone’s chest, too valuable to simply give to her for a few therapeutic kills. This weapon had history, but she also knew they couldn’t be too picky with what weapons were available to them. Tentatively, she took the switchblade and gave it a quick look over before focusing back on Blue.
It was always a little weird to be taller than someone who was older than her.
“Fine,” she relented, biting back a sigh. The switchblade was tucked into her back pocket. “The only person I don’t want to know where I am all the time is Joyce – she worries.” Eleven didn’t feel guilty about her methods of helping their cause; this coven in particular sided with Interitus, and their powers were of great use to him. Killing them was hurting him. “I hate the disappointed mom look.”
"I won't give you a disappointed mom look," Blue said, though wondered if by saying it, she was already sounding like a disappointed mom. She shook it off. Kids were out of the picture for her anyway. "But I will give you the are you kidding me friend look if you went out by yourself. Which might be worse, if you ask me."
Blue shut the curtain on her room, because she was trying to maintain a semblance of privacy where she could and it felt normal—or as normal as living under a mountain was—and led the way through the halls to the exit. Being short and putting on an air of stern confidence as she passed the remaining Outlanders didn't give much room to ask questions or wonder what she was up to with Eleven. They were always coming and going.
"But I won't tell Joyce. She might find out later though after the fact. If we find one of those assholes." Blue verbally paused, then stopped mid-step. "Just one or are there more?" Her own need to extract revenge alongside El seemed to finally subside, and she was asking clearer questions. They could be walking into a trap.
There was safety in numbers, but Eleven wouldn’t like that she did enjoy going out by herself sometimes – she was not a fan of torture but it gave her the opportunity to be a little more brutal without an audience that might judge her. Their side was losing, numbers dwindling a little more every day. And this was an outlet for her rage.
Her grief, which she knew she shared with Blue. What was that saying? Misery loves company? something like that.
“Two,” she told her, adjusting the tightness of her ponytail as they ventured towards the exit. “They are not far from our old cabin, which means they are not far from the bunker. I overheard them – the bunker isn’t their goal, but they’re too close. It’s only a matter of time. I don’t think they sensed me.”
Who knows, though. It could be a trap. That always made things a little more interesting.
Blue was making calculations in her head as El spoke. She never needed to be analytical or strategic until the world started to fall apart around her. She had left those things for Gansey and Adam. And now neither of them were here to help, and filling the void always felt like an uphill struggle. Blue found it hard to fall into the role she had taken on out of necessity.
"Two? Near the cabin. And you're not positive they didn't sense you?" Blue asked. She wanted to tell El to be more careful, to not use her powers unless it was required. There were too many people who were mentally vulnerable and she didn't need to put herself in harm's way, but it was already done. What was the use of getting frustrated at something she couldn't change? It was the only way she found a way to sleep at night after Gansey died, and so she applied the sentiments here.
Blue let out a long, deep sigh, because she knew the next words out of her mouth weren't going to be universally liked. "We're going out there to confirm location, not to engage." Where El might have been interested in a trap, Blue was decidedly not.
"We're not taking the risk without confirmation, got it?"
Nope. Eleven did not like those words. It was etched all over her face – the way she tensed, how her jaw ticked. Sometimes, she felt as if people handled her with kiddy gloves still, as if she hadn’t been taking lives since she was a child. Her powers weren’t what they used to be, and she thought she had compensated for that over the years by proving to be capable of using other weapons. One swing of her fist could break a nose. She was an above-average shot with a gun. She knew how to handle a knife, and knew how to stab to make it count.
Her track record was impressive. It had also made her cocky, and Hopper had told her more than once to be smart. She chose violence instead.
“I can handle a trap, Blue,” she insisted, dishing out some attitude. “If they’re there, there is no point in waiting. We should take them down.”
Her feet stopped moving once they reached the outdoors, fresh air hitting them and the sun setting as a backdrop. Moving through the forest without sunlight was risky but it could also work to their advantage. “We can do it quickly, it will be fine.”
This was the part she hated, being sensible and safe when all she wanted to do was run herself ragged until there was nothing left. But in the back of her mind, she knew Gansey would hate it. And while she didn't want a dead man calling the shots of her life, she couldn't ignore the logic in that little voice.
"If they're there," Blue countered as she stepped up next to El, now that they were finally outside. "Who is to say more aren't on the way? Taking the two there down will only cause suspicion that someone is close and they may start to branch out further and find the bunker." Blue was hedging toward worst-case scenario. She had to. Their lives up until this point had been one worse-case scenario after another.
"I know you're capable. I know you can handle a trap, but we don't know what kind of trap it is and I'd rather not set it off before learning how it works." She started to move away from the Outpost, toward the forest. They were still going; she needed to show El that she wasn't saying no.
Blue paused to look back at El. "You'll get your revenge, I promise that you will, but it can't be at the safety of the other people here."
Eleven’s nostrils were flaring.
She had a penchant for being irrational sometimes, and often too stubborn.. Just – always ready for a fight, otherwise she’d grow restless and feel like she wasn’t doing her part. Not fighting hard enough was why the people she cared about kept almost dying or actually dying. Adopting the ‘get them before they get you’ attitude was how she thought she could do this because that seemed smart, didn’t it? It made sense.
But deep down, she knew Blue was right. It didn’t mean she was happy about it.
“Fine,” Eleven huffed out. She had been stomping while she was mulling it through. She needed to stop that – it was childish. “I used to be able to get in people’s minds from a distance, and figure out what they were doing, and I could kill them that way, and –”
Part of her wanted to try, just to see if she could.
Another part of her knew she couldn’t, because that might risk the safety of those around her – like Blue had put it before – and she hated all of this a lot. The frustration was written all over her face.
Blue understood that frustration. She had been that frustrated before, angry and vengeful too. She had run the gamut of emotions in the beginning after losing Gansey. And though that didn't make her unfeeling now, she knew keeping herself together and not letting one emotion win over the other was the most important. But fuck, did she sometimes want to track down every asshole she came across and make them pay for what they did and who they decided to align with.
If not for the magical deterioration over the years, Blue was sure that everyone—including El—would have burned themselves out in the same relentless eradication efforts Interitus had against them.
"We all used to be able to do a lot of things, El," Blue said, not unkindly, as she slowed her pace around the steep drop from the Outpost. "And if I thought we could get away with it, I'd say you should give it a try and burn their brains from the inside out. But—" And she held up a finger because she didn't want to give El ideas, even if they sounded cathartic.
"I'd rather you live another day so that we can find a way to do it without it backfiring in our faces. People still need you here, okay?"
Blue slowed, and so did Eleven – but her steps came to a complete stop, like she needed a minute to recalibrate. Her hands were on her hips, and her brows were so deeply furrowed that she was bound to develop wrinkles in her twenties at this rate. She had always been a creature of feeling, always motivated by her emotions and impulse.
Getting older hadn’t made her grow out of it. It had gotten worse, if she were to be honest, and she often needed someone to reign her in as if she were a wild animal. A rabid dog, needing something to sink her teeth into.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed out, letting her eyes fall shut. It might even be construed as a sign of submission. “You’re right. This is some kind of mom lecture, by the way.” Her eyes opened up again, and she was giving Blue an amused, sheepish sort of look.
Or she was trying to – she was still visibly tense, but there wasn’t metaphorical steam coming out of her ears due to all that impatience.
“Maybe more of a big sister one,” she amended after a moment, hands dropping from her hips. “You’re not old enough to be my mom.”
"Apology accepted," Blue said, though she didn't think one was necessary. How many times had she talked herself out of doing something reckless and impossibly heroic? How many times had she been in the same shoes as El, wanting to burn down the world because of the unfairness of it all? Blue wasn't sure what had actually stopped her all those times—a burdened conscience, maybe; the realization that she was not, in fact, alone in this world—but she was sorry too. And no one was around to accept it when she needed to say it.
But her eyes narrowed at the mom lecture. Had all these years grown her that much? Maura would be proud, or disappointed that she had become too adult, too fast.
"Nice catch. I'd rather save the mom lectures to actual moms." She would never be one now, but she was something close with Nora. And Blue could be a sister, growing up in a household full of women had given her the aptitude for sibling energy. For a second, Blue was overcome with a deep fondness for El, the realization that her protectiveness might have been unnecessary, but she was still going to do it anyway.
She started to move again. They might not be slitting throats or crushing people's brains with telekinesis today, but Blue wasn't going to leave a stone unturned. "Stay alert, all right? I know that you know this, but it bears repeating."
Eleven smiled at her.
It was probably the first genuine one since the start of their conversation. There wasn’t much to smile about these days, but – here was one, something small but nevertheless sincere. Maybe because Blue had always radiated Big Sister vibes anyway, especially during the awkward teen years when she traversed the social hierarchy of high school. And now.
Especially now.
“I know,” she responded, with more grace and a much less petulant attitude now that she’d been humbled. Her steps were deliberate; she avoided stepping on too many fallen leaves to avoid a loud crunch beneath her beats, and branches that would surely crack loudly under pressure. Eleven wasn’t a professional in the art of stealth but she was always careful, and she looked around for certain markers.
Because when she looked in the void, it was usually just darkness, all encompassing, the surface beneath her black waters that didn’t suck her in. It showed her just people most of the time. If she concentrated enough, though, she could see certain things around them. Furniture, if they were in a room. A vehicle, if they were around one. Part of the forest, if they were camping out.
“At the mouth of a cave,” El whispered softly, beginning to crouch down and use the foliage around them as a shield. “They had a fire going. I can smell it.”
The odor of wood burning. The flames weren’t anything large – too much smoke would give their location away if the wind blew – but the scent was distinct.
Blue followed Eleven's steps. Even after years of doing this sneaking around, and having the advantage of a height disadvantage, Blue was still a novice. She wouldn't let anyone think of her as one, but that internal need to be better and to compete with herself was always going to grind at her. Gansey would tell her to go easy on herself, and Blue would have argued. She wondered, briefly, if she still would now if he came back.
She stayed crouched near El, keeping her eyes sharp and alert—she would have been a hypocrite if she didn't, considering her earlier warning. She wanted to put a hand on El, as if she could protect her from both the real world and whatever was in the void, but she knew not to interrupt. Hovering was the best Blue could do.
And wait, until El mentioned the fire. With her voice low, Blue asked, "Anything else? More people? Another marker?" She knew she might be asking for the impossible—El's senses could only go so far and so long before they pinged the magical radar—but if they were taking the risk, might as well blow it on as much info as they can gather.
"If you can smell it, that means other people can." Her mind went to the werewolves, on their side. Mostly.
“Oak trees,” she told her, and then after a moment, “water. A pond nearby. They are close.” The cave was most likely some camp out shelter; nothing meant to be long-term, but likely enough for a few days of scouting before they moved on.
Eleven reached up to wipe beneath her nose to wipe it, smearing a red above her lips. She didn’t want to linger long and let herself become a beacon – and she had a good record of slipping beneath their radars so far, she didn’t have intentions of ruining that streak. Reckless in other ways, but smart about how to handle at least that. “Still only two,” she told Blue. “No signs that they found the bunker yet. I didn’t want to stick around to hear their chatter and have them notice me.”
The longer she lurked around, the more someone sensitive could feel her – and the Vorerra were very sensitive.
Blue's expression turned hard as El explained more of the location. Blue would swear she had been to that same pond, and had probably rested against those oak trees between meetings with other scouts. She felt violated that the Vorerra had camped there, close. She'd have to send out a message to others who patrolled to keep a wide berth, that place was compromised for the foreseeable future.
"El," Blue whispered, seeing the blood run down her nose. In the most motherly fashion, Blue lifted the hem of her shirt—an old polo that had been Gansey's that she repurpose—and wiped the rest of the blood away.
The moment that El said she wanted to get out of there so they didn't notice, Blue was already turning her around and marching back. "Smart, good," Blue said, "We'll brief the others with the information you gathered, and if they pull a team together, I'll make sure they put you on it. You deserve that much."
Maybe she hadn't come out here with the same vengeful mission that El had, but Blue understood that giving her opportunities would be better than denying them to her. It was the best Blue could do. And she hoped El knew it too.