This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie + OPEN (Grab me if you want a custom starter, even if they haven't interacted yet!)
WHERE: Dreamscape!
WHEN: September 22-25 2512
WHAT: Ellie's managed to keep y'all out of her head until now, but everything's got a breaking point.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, death, torture, body horror (zombie-type), violence towards a teenager.

Radio Nowhere

Comments

[armd]

Everything around Abby is cold, and dull, and there's the stink of salt in her nose. Like being underwater. She half expects bubbles to come trailing out of her mouth when opens it to exhale, sucking air back in as if it's the last breath she'll get to take.

Ellie's gaze is scalding by contrast. Abby glances away, uncomfortable, and watches her fingers bend and bleed down her skinny wrist instead.

"Yeah. It's actually me."

She knows she looks different, but it's– still her. Whatever the fuck is left of her, anyway. As if Ellie of all people is owed a proper explanation.

"Can I go now." She wants to go. She doesn't want to stand here and get stared at any more. Abby wants to wake up in a cold sweat already, she wants to get up out of bed and go and stare at the closed hatch of the safehouse in silence until she feels tired enough to try again. "I told him already. I'm done. With both of you."

cw: gore/death, abuse

[notathreat]

It hurts. The way she looks away. Because it tugs at her, calls to her, threatens to pull Ellie out of focus on her feelings. It was so easy to hate her for so long, to picture her how she was in the lodge. Bloodstained and horrible. To picture her with a knife to Dina's neck and bleeding in half dozen places, filled with rage and contempt. To picture her brutal efficiency in the way she shot out Jesse's life, the way she tried to execute Tommy on the ground.

Instead it makes her remember that horrible moment on the beach, with Abby tied up, injured and starving and a faded shade of her former self. The way she'd fallen to the ground and still gotten to her feet, still made herself move, to get to that kid.

The way she'd told Ellie where the boats were. Almost like she was inviting her along.

Ellie feels cold and wrecked, and her eyes swim with what she won't let become tears. Her feet are cold -- even in the bottom of this stairwell, the cold salty tide laps at their feet. Her fingers throb.

"You told who?" she asks, and it's not angry. It's just lost, and it sounds like it's coming from a long way away.

cw violence, gore mention

[armd]

"Joel," she says, even though she doesn't want to. Abby doesn't want his name in her mouth any more. She held it there for years, for far too long and all its even done is make her tongue taste like blood. It's why she whispers it now, as if quieting the word will make it cut her less.

Ellie's hand is a slender white claw on the doorknob, blocking the only exit. Abby wants to pry her fingers off one by one but she doesn't want to touch her, for fear that she could be warm underneath the cold front, the icy ocean water. It's sucking at their shins, now.

"I don't understand what you want from me."

It's more than just that. She doesn't understand why Ellie stopped killing her on the beach either, why the blood-slick noose of her fingers loosened from Abby's throat at the last second to let her up out of the water. She doesn't know why Ellie let her and Lev go, or why she sat on the beach in the water after she did and cried like it was all she had the energy left to do. Why she didn't immediately make for a boat to try to save herself.

Maybe she hadn't cared to. Maybe she's still there, curled up like a dead thing over her crossed legs, stuck in the surf. Bleeding, and crying, and shaking. Abby wants to hate her for that, but she can't. The thought only makes her feel hollow, and wrong.

[notathreat]

... she saw Joel.

The knowledge is staggering, sparks fear and anger and... everything. Everything else in between. Ellie wants to be sick, and the urge makes her head spin, too hot and too cold. Abby saw Joel.

And she told him she was done.

It rears up, all the anger and all the hurt and all the helpless grief, and she wants to fling it at her. You can't decide that. You don't get to be done. You can't just walk away. I know I can't.

But the hollow, awful, empty feeling of the beach rushes in around them, and the tears flood her eyes. Water up to their knees. Salt water. Maybe it's not the ocean at all. Maybe this is some version of Alice Through the Looking Glass, and she's going to drown them both.

... but they were done. They were both done there, on that sand and in that fog. With Abby throwing up seawater and Ellie crying her heart out, because it wasn't enough, and nothing would ever be enough.

"I don't know either," she admits, her voice soft, and wrecked.

She wants to keep her here. Imprisoned with her. Until she knows what she wants. Until Abby coughs up some magical fucking answer that'll make it all okay again. Until something clicks, and fixes her.

But if she keeps them here, they'll both drown.

Ellie looks down at the door, pulls it, and her fingers slip on the bloody metal. The pressure of the water keeps it shut.

Her heart gives an awful ache, and she parts her lips, and tugs harder. With all of her strength. It tries to come, but the pressure of the water keeps it shut. She can't break the seal. Not alone. Her fingers are slipping on her own blood, and the water's coming fast. Up to their thighs.

[armd]

Ellie a tempest, wild and desperate, the pitch and shift in her expression making Abby want to duck and brace against the expected tidal wave of violence to follow. This is why she doesn't want to fucking ask why Ellie stopped, because the reminder of it might make her start again. She has reason to want Abby dead, and Abby has reason to want her the same and she can see this stretching out ahead of them and into the distance and the notion makes her want to run away. It's not who she wants to be any more, but what if that's all she knows how to do? What if all she ever amounts to is carrying this bloody weight around with her, until she sinks to her knees and can't move it any further?

That's not true. Lev would tell her otherwise. Abby knows he would, but he's not here with her right now to confirm it. She misses him. She needs him. She's scared to think of him being on Catalina, carrying on without her, because that would be better for him in the long run but it isn't what she wants. She's too selfish, too alone, and too heavy with grief.

"Ellie." Her voice is a low, slow warning. The water is moving up her thighs, to her hips. To her stomach, fast, and so cold. "Ellie."

It isn't working. The door won't move.

Abby surges forward, making her decision, and Ellie is warm when she grabs the back of her hand to help her try and push it open. She puts her shoulder to the wood, and shoves with the water at her waist. Lapping at the bottoms of her elbows, even higher on Ellie, who is shorter, smaller. Sharper.

Alone she wouldn't be able to do it, but together–

[notathreat]

Together they might.

Abby's hand curling over hers feels like a shot of adrenaline directly to the hard. Sadness and anger and exhaustion, soul-deep exhaustion, and fear. The fear is what hits hardest, the desperation of let me go that strikes and sinks deep, because it so thoroughly mirrors her own.

All of it does, in fact.

Ellie immediately wants to pull her hand away, as if she's been burned. It's disgusting, this is disgusting, and seeing Abby so clearly as not just a person, but one she can fully understand, makes her want to be sick.

But she swallows it back, feeling frantic and blurred, desperate and angry and grieving not just Joel, but all the parts of herself she burned on the way here. The door creaks and cracks and she wonders if it's going to give, but then it finally moves.

The water rushes in a wave, pushing them both, shoving through the door as it tries to equalize. They are swept away.