It’s been a few weeks and a lot of favours in the making, but Abby drags Ellie out with a hand wrapped around her wrist and the ease of a very hush-hush borrowed boat. There are the usual precautions – Scars here or there, trespassers, clickers hiding in the fold, but for the most part, the journey is stress-free and the knowledge that they’ve both been put in for a couple of rest days on the trot is pretty fucking liberating. (Rather, Abby’s swapped hers with Manny and Nora to put the whole thing into motion, along with some extra protein bars and a night shift for their help with moving some shit over and sourcing some much needed equipment. She might regret it at 4am next week, but for now, it’s fine.)

Ellie doesn’t shut the fuck up. She never has – that damn kid likes to run her damn mouth, as has been said many, many fucking times, but Ellie asks where they’re going, why they’re going there, what she’s got planned and what’s going on, whilst simultaneously trying to guess what’s happening, and Abby only offers a wry smile out of the corner of her mouth as they draw closer to the aquarium. She figures Ellie’s about to burst with curiosity, so it’s fitting that she kills the engine and eases them in to the side of the shore.

“Here.”    So maybe it’s not so exciting from the outside – they go to the aquarium pretty regularly, in between fretting about training and keeping an eye on the clock ‘cause they have to be back by six (from Abby), but it’s different. She slings her backpack over a shoulder and tugs the rope into an easy loop around the port-side cleat and ties it before offering out her hand.

            “I think I remember leaving some stuff in the café. Figured it’d be a good time to clear it out – take stock of what we have here and stuff. Some of those Scars left some belongings and shit we should sort out too, so.”    She can’t resist – pick the dullest job and pretend Ellie’s birthday isn’t coming up, just to see the look on her face.

abby doesn’t answer a single question and ellie’s the annoying one. she’s not asking her to give the whole thing away (at least not at first. by the time they’re bobbing along on a boat, ellie’s definitely angling for full and complete spoilers) she just wants something. a hint. even if she knows she’s not going to get it. this isn’t the first time they’ve done this— abby’s a little too good at the whole surprise thing and ellie’s learned that, whatever it is, it’ll be well worth it in the end. even if she can’t stop talking the entire time and her knee’s jiggling in anticipation and abby’s got that smug little smile going on that’s both irritating and kind of hot.

she loves the aquarium. she does. it’s the only place in seattle that feels like it’s theirs. as dedicated as ellie is to honing their skills so they can make joel pay for killing jerry and marlene when they find him... it’s nice to escape all that every once and a while. just be in their blue-tinted hideout. abby promises the most mundane set of tasks as she hauls ellie out of the boat and onto solid ground and while it’s not exactly what ellie was expecting, it’s not the worst thing she’s ever heard. (she refuses to give abby the satisfaction of any sting of disappointment).

[ ✉ : CAMERON SOLOMON ] Being  a  savvy  businesswoman  does  NOT  make  me  a  satanist!  

[ ✉ : CAMERON SOLOMON ] Are  there  actual  satinists  in  the  town,  by  the  way?  People  really  jumped  on  calling  us  that,  like,  really  quickly.

                  Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Why does she like him again? Someone should get her brain checked, half of the people in the school would agree to that. “Yeah well, there was a line! You know how girls at this school get.” Or maybe, maybe, she spent a little too long in front of a mirror trying to make herself look presentable for him, but he definitely didn’t need to know about that. Hell, she doesn’t even want to know about that. It’s embarrassing to say the least, even worse that she’s blaming other girls for what she did, even if she doesn’t like the majority of people in school.

So much for feminism. Congratulations, Mary Jane, you’re officially the worst. “Are you sure this is safe? If the gloves melt and this gets to your skin, I don’t think–” she pauses, eyebrows meeting in a frown. Help, right! Shaking her head, MJ grabs her gloves off her bench and looks around the table for her goggles, bursting out into laughter when she catches them buried in foam, “you’re going to have to make it up for me somehow, okay? My notes are under that.”

“held to unrealistic beauty standards?” he supplies, assuming it’s either that or gossip that holds girls up in the bathroom for so long. where else do they have that kind of privacy from guys? he imagines it’s like the boys’ locker room, except it probably doesn’t smell as bad. 

felicia reached over, snagging an apron out of a drawer as she wrapped it around her waist, then tied back her hair. “alright, so here’s what we’re going to do,” she said, taking charge of the situation like a general stepping on to the battlefield. she had been waiting for him to ask for help for the past fifteen minutes as he desperately tried to keep three things from burning and he still hadn’t managed to get the pasta into the bowling water. making dinner just one person was hard. and while it was sweet that he wanted to cook dinner for date night – cooking together could be fun too. 

“put the pasta in the water, then set a timer for nine minutes,” she said, lowering the pasta sauce down to a simmer as she snagged the spatula and rolled the meatballs so they didn’t burn. “after that, pop some butter in a dish into the microwave for thirty seconds at a time. Once it is melted, start to grate some garlic into it. We’ll make our own garlic bread,” she promised, pausing for a second to kiss his cheek. “We’ve got this.” 

felicia rides in like a white knight to save him from himself and the would-be disaster he’s created and it’s merciful. there are some categories he’s sure he knows better: biophysics, biochemistry, applied quipping. but dinner isn’t one of those and peter can’t deny the merit in a good team-up. (he thinks, more and more often, about how nice it would be if they made this a permanent team-up).

he sets to following her instructions, grateful for them, for her. water, pasta, pasta in the water— peter delegates the timer to his phone, telling it to tell him when nine minutes is up. there’s a hitch in the butter plan; he has the spare seconds to watch her do her thing and he can’t help but take them, even if that thing is just rolling the meatballs around so they don’t turn into inedible charcoal balls from his negligence.

          dina can barely feel anything due to the cold.  she doesn’t know how ellie’s brain is still working in this snowstorm, let alone her body. but then again, ellie has been in far worse conditions than dina has over the years, and has certainly adapted to harsh circumstances. she lets ellie help her up out of the snow, hooking her arm over her neck and hissing a little as she puts weight on her injured ankle. “shit.” she looks around, not knowing why she expects to see anything but complete whiteness. her hand stays on her gun, knowing that if any of the hunters do show up, they won’t even know until it’s too late.

          “you’re not gonna be able to carry me the whole way back.” she has to speak up over the sound of the wind. they’ve lost the horses, they’ve lost their bearings. if they weren’t in the middle of a deadly snowstorm, dina would suggest to just leave her behind a tree or something and go get help. not really an option on this particular day, but still, she is slowing her down.

ellie wills herself to stay in the present. joel’s not squirreled away in a nearby house, alone and injured and waiting for her to return to take care of him. not at the bottom of a long flight of stairs, beyond a door, surrounded by wolves. winter is a historically unforgiving season for ellie in particular. but this is just a sprained ankle. a sprained ankle in a snowstorm. she won’t let anything happen to dina.

“is that a challenge?” she has to get a word in edgewise while she still can with the wind beginning to howl. it’s never been muscle that keeps ellie going— though she has a little of that— it’s sheer force of will, and if she had to carry dina back she’d find a way. she doesn’t think she has to. at least not all the way back. maria hadn’t sent them out just because they’d volunteered; they have a good sense of the land surrounding jackson, at least when it’s not blanketed in white.

It’s the loud whistle that draws Abby flat against the side of the shipping container. Fuck. It’s loud, and alert, and she thinks she’s heard that pitch too many fucking times for it to mean anything other than man down, Wolves are here. (She hears something, too. Trespassers, Wolves, apostates… she can barely make it out above the whistling, but part of her curses herself for pushing forward without looking to her left. Fucking Scars.)

Abby attempts to catch her eyes, closing her grip around her gun as Ellie reaches for hers. Two left. Ellie can take one, and she’ll take the other – it’s how they work. Equal sharing. There’s no burden sidled onto one pair of shoulders when the two of them push and pull with the same kind of resistance. Abby pushes forward, Ellie hangs back. Or Ellie crawls through the grass in some stealthy ghost shit, and Abby hangs back. Either way, one has the other in their sights the whole time, and a bullet trained on whatever might jump-the-fuck-out at them. 

(It reminds her of some of the first times they went out on patrol in Seattle – it was different to the Fireflies. Isaac was more fuck Scars than fuck FEDRA, but it all comes from the same place. There’s a hate she buys into more often than not – she festers in it like it’s the only thing that’ll keep her alive in this world, and she burns through it like fucking fuel in a generator. It feels like she’s been running on fumes for the last year and it has nothing to do with Scars.)

She pushes the latest body over with the kick of her foot, and Abby crouches forward to get ready to run. Ellie opts for a rifle, and Abby will follow in suit (they listen to each other, which is more than what can be said for the past couple years – they listen to the way they move, to what they say with their eyes, to the sharp countdown, but not to whatever the fuck they can’t bring themselves to say. It’s easier this way, but it’s not right. It’s shitty through and through and while there’s no time to ruminate over that, she’s got some considering to do as soon as they get those kids out of there.)

When she raises her gun and stares down the barrel at a huddled figure with a fucking scythe (I mean, really? Freaks) it makes her think of what she would’ve done before. Bullet to the kneecap. Finish it off with her knife after bolting toward them. But there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to risk the unnecessary violence. She is a brute. Manny used to grab her by the shoulders and call them both Isaac’s grunts. There’s a ferocity that twists the palms of her hands as she tugs a neck out of place and slams a body down into the dirt, but right now, she figures it’s not… right to test that. Headshots only.

So she does. It’s not as quiet as it should be, but Ellie’s more than ready and two-on-two could be a whole lot worse. It’s almost perfect, and it’s a trained eye that watches the way the bullet tears through the back of the head. Fuck, that’s gnarly. Ellie, your turn.

she brings the rifle up in another practiced motion. they’ve drilled, they’ve trained— it was basically all they did when they first made it to seattle, to the wlf. basically. in between falling in love and trying to craft some semblance of a life they’d eventually burn down. ellie has, anyway. abby— isaac’s favorite—probably still has a chance, however slim, to go back, though she’s clearly trying to get a spark to catch. whatever’s on the other side of these scars they’ve dropped might be her last strike but abby takes the shot anyway. ellie’s follows like an echo, quick, clean. a few minutes ago this shipping yard had been crawling with scars and now it’s just two wolves, blood, and bodies.

she doesn’t take a second look at any of them, not once they’ve fallen. they’d all just have his face— the face of the one she couldn’t kill. the bar she’d eaten roils uncomfortably and ellie grips the gun tighter as if that’s going to keep it down, settle the sea of her stomach, stop her hands from shaking. she drops the rifle, brings it back to rest in its appropriate loop, pushes through and forward. “we should move. before more of them show up.” somehow it feels like the continuation of a conversation rather than the first words they’ve spoken to each other since abby laid out the option— or lack thereof— to kill these people.

        It’s a familiar thing  —  despite the new surroundings, the home that he has risen around them  —  to hear the whack of Beauregard training, the steady thumps of a bo against arcane straw and leather, burlap and a bit of sand that now leaks out of one side.  It will hardly slip past her perception, Caleb knows full well Beau’s keen eyes, yet he is curious to see how she notices in the small lull, the rough fabric of the dummy silently stitching itself back together, the stray bit of sand from the ground rising gently up to slip back into the ragged point where it had leaked from Beau’s repeated hits.

        He leans against the doorframe for a moment, hands folded over his chest, something like pride rising in the back of his throat even as  —-  and perhaps because  —-  of the familiar joke, and the lack of surprise that she, like everyone else, has been experimenting with the Tower’s limits.  Not too long earlier, he’d seen a trail of very happily-drowsy cats slipping forth from Jester’s bedroom  —  presumably from a nap, perhaps a few from the bits of crumbs he could have sworn he’d spotted on their whiskers.

        There are, of course, the darker portions of the tower  —-  the floors that, as yet, as far as he knows remain unexplored by the others  —-  but for now, Caleb keeps that recollection to himself, hopes that the spark in her eyes is mirrored enough in his own to keep that down for now.  ❝ Well, the tower does seal it a bit, doesn’t it? ❞  A twinge of a small smile on the edge of his lips, head leaning against the doorframe for a moment before he restlessly adjusts once again.  ❝ It is almost like you are far more than a real monk now, too, Expositor. ❞

the dummy stitches itself back together and that’s a limit— or lack thereof— that she notes, too. beau’s determined to find something that caleb didn’t think of as he spent his endless hours playing with bits of colored glass planning this place for them. someone has to challenge him. beau’s taken it upon herself. in terms of the tower, it’s more an exercise in her own amusement than anything. a thought exercise to couple with the sweat she’s broken. he’s thought of this, but there’s yet more tower to explore.

she wont let him become one of those stuffy wizards, tower or not. the likes of trent and vess don’t get to have him, in more ways than one. the nein have done a lot as far as lightening caleb up, getting him to open up. they’ve done the same for beau. he’s made this tower a monument to that, in a way. it’s the silly cat butlers that cement it. (certainly not their lovingly crafted and remarkably well-thought-out personalized quarters).

          the line is often blurred between what’s real and what’s a product of yasha’s rage.   while she doesn’t lose control when she rages, her natural instincts tend to take over whatever may be going on in her brain. so in the middle of a fight, she’s able to take hits and dish them out stronger and more focused. and when things go wrong, that tends to make her more violent and hungry. a lot of it can be mindless — adrenaline coursing through her veins and her heart pounding in her ears — especially when beau is in the thick of it and could potentially be killed. there’s always an instinct to protect her first, and there’s always the panic that swells up within her whenever something happens.

          it takes her a moment to realise that this is the first time she’s ever actually hugged beau, a fact that would probably scare her away, under normal circumstances. instead, she holds her tightly between strong arms, ignoring the fact that they’re both spattered with blood. which is easy enough, because it’s extremely nice to just have beau in her arms. yasha exhales loudly. “i did see the other guy.” it comes out as a soft murmur, her rage finally beginning to subside. she can still hear her own racing heartbeat in her ears, and she doesn’t even know if she’s holding beau too tightly. “i was just… worried for a minute.”

beau knows the value of appearances. what something does or doesn’t look like matters to people. appearances could shape opinions, and beau used to be more worried about what she shaped for the nein. she had to be strong and she had to be an asshole and she didn’t care. but that all came out as bullshit and bluster a long time ago. now she doubts hugging yasha in the wake of a fight is going to come as a surprise. (maybe it never would have— these arms are worth a lot). and the reality is... in this moment, the last thing she’s thinking about is the rest of their friends.

yasha’s held her before. carried her. beau’s played the damsel more than once in hopes of winding up in her arms, and yasha hasn’t disappointed. but this is different. they’ve never hugged. the closest they’ve been is beau landing on top of her, soaking wet and bruised from the impact. she could get used to it, even if what she thinks is the rage is making yasha hold her almost too tightly. (maybe because, stripped down to instinct, yasha wants to hold her too tightly). beau squeezes tighter herself. it’s meant to be reassuring.