Ellie gulps in tight and rapid lungfuls of air, a ferocious stare pinned on the figure skulking in the shadows. The person’s words swim through the disoriented fog rattling around in Ellie’s skull. A woman, she realises.
Sharp fragments of memory suddenly siphon in over the top of the last things she remembers: the motherfucker with the foul breath howling in sudden hellish agony; a person cutting Ellie loose from the ropes gouging into her wrists and the ground rushing up as Ellie collapsed in a ragged heap; a woman saying something to her while slinging Ellie’s arm, numb from being strung up for hours, over her shoulders and hauling Ellie to her feet. And then, a stumbling, blurry haze of getting the fuck out, of a woman – this woman lurking in the shadows right in front of her now? – hauling Ellie the whole way until they reached… a boat? Water?
Ellie swallows – her mouth is dry, her tongue rough with thirst – and surrenders the pain in her ribs. She doubles over, still clutching her flank, and wheezes a soft, “Oh, fuck,” to the floor. Recognition that maybe she is safe, that she is not in danger, takes over. Her knees buckle and she sags a swaying step backwards, her ass bumping against a stray piece of rotted furniture.
She fumbles a hand behind her, grabbing on for purchase; the furniture's wooden legs utter a deep scrape against the floor in protest. Fuck. Okay, breathe, just breathe. She sucks in a deep breath and utters a capitulating grunt upon exhale as she leans back against the rickety furnishing.
“Who the fuck’re you?” she manages to demand of the woman, this time with less animalistic bite and more confounded recognition.
Root has an incredible capacity to keep going through immense duress. She once faced down a threat of trepanning and pleaded for the Machine not to give up, to let her go through it and find someone else to replace her. A sprained ankle would not deter her from getting them out, from stabbing that foul man right in the eye with a makeshift shiv -- he deserved worse -- and cutting the other prisoner down and pulling her out with her.
She might never walk the same again after this, from walking on the sprain so much, from hitching rope around Ellie's torso and arms and winching it up the stairs to get them up to the second floor using arm strength alone. She might never be the same. She doesn't care. The amount she doesn't care is blaring loud and clear, Root cold and certain and unperturbed.
"Call me Root," she answers, tired and steady. She doesn't offer to help at all. "I thought I'd at least get a thank you."
Okay, so she's still a little shit. What's the point in surviving if she's squashed everything of who she is? No point, that's what.
and then it took me a couple of days to recover from nye 🥴
Root… Ellie keeps an assessing stare fixed on the woman. A ‘thank you’? Really? She drags in another steadying breath as deep as her bruised (maybe even broken) ribs allow. Her damn heart is still racing; the lingering dregs of the nightmare that ripped her awake is still clinging to her mind like a stain. Ugh, she needs to sit down.
“The fuck kind of name is Root?” Ellie utters, doubling over to ease herself down onto the chair. It creaks under her weight. A gasp of pain juts out of her before she carefully leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees, hands dangling between her thighs. She lets her head drop forward. Oh, man, everything hurts like a bitch.
Her eyes are drawn to her wrists, rubbed red and raw from the chains that had held her strung up. She gingerly touches a welt on her inner left wrist with a fingertip. It smarts, stinging and sharp; Ellie grimaces. More memories swim hazily into focus, all images of rage-filled terror and helpless rage. She was going to die back there.
A beat later, Ellie lifts her eyes back onto the woman. She notices properly this time that this woman – her rescuer, named Root, apparently – is just as dishevelled with visible evidence of inflicted suffering. Another gusty moan of wind rumbles outside. The barn groans in its brittle bones.
“…Thanks. For… whatever it was you did to get me outta that place.”
"It's my name," she answers with a trace of chilliness. She hasn't been Samantha in a very long time, and no one gets to call her that. Even Harold eventually caved on the Ms. Groves thing. Root doesn't appreciate other people telling her who she is.
But it's a good sign that Ellie can pull herself together enough to thank her, and it provokes a flash of a perky, irreverent smile from Root. She'd made that comment flippantly, not really caring whether or not she got any gratitude, but it is a good way to judge character and what kind of reception she's going to get going forward. Ellie's obviously very hurt and panicked. Root knows logically it's almost impossible this is her first traumatic experience, so that makes sense. To survive in this kind of society as a young woman takes a lot more than just willpower -- it takes viciousness, the sort Root was capable of from a young age but most people aren't.
Assured she isn't an immediate threat, Root continues making her way to the next window, peering outside it from the side with the habitual paranoia of someone who has memories of being killed by a sniper. What she'd done to get them out and over here isn't really worth going over. It's a pretty unremarkable occasion as far as she's concerned.
"There's medical supplies if you want 'em. You didn't seem like you were going to die," she explains frankly, "so I thought you'd rather I wait until you were awake to see to anything."
It's a tacit offer to assist, or not, as she prefers. Root can stab someone in the eye and be considerate of physical boundaries with equal ease.
Ellie follows the woman to the window with her eyes until another sharp throb in her ribs overrides her focus. And so while this woman – Root – spies a watchful look out the window from the lurking safety of windowpane’s edge, all Ellie can do is hunch over with slow, shaky breaths and restless back-and-forth rocking, willing the pain under control with as much might as she has left in her.
The woman’s offhand allusion to medical supplies being around drags Ellie to attention. That’s what she needs: to patch herself up, something purposeful and solid to pin herself onto.
“Yeah,” she rasps, nodding, short and fast. She attempts to push herself straight in the rickety chair – and she can’t; she gasps and blows out a agonised sharp breath, and then slumps in defeat. “C-Can you…?”
Bring the supplies to her. She will attempt to make a go of patching herself up on her own, if she can manage it. And then she will ask questions. Figure out who this woman is, what happened, where they are. Where Abby is.
There was a relatively short period in her life where Root would have responded to that request by softening, demonstrating a capacity for sincere sweetness that rarely surfaced even then. Now, months into her post-mortem stay in this frayed society, completely alone, questioning the purpose of her existence and what the Machine would or could even want from her like this --
She still helps, and she isn't cruel, but her motions are brusque. Root sets the safety on the rifle and slings it over her shoulder by the strap, then gathers the supplies she mentioned and approaches Ellie with them.
"You want me to do it?" she asks, kneeling in front of her and starting to unpack things. It's nothing special, but there's cleaned cloth strips and compression tape she'd found. There's a hefty length of it wrapped around her ankle already. "I did drag you all the way here," Root says lightly. "I'm at least a little invested at this point."
Something in her, habitually, keeps trying to save people even now, like she can't let go of that one last thread tying her to the people and the being she'd found.
Every inch of Ellie that has survived for months on ruthless mistrust and hateful grief and cold-blooded readiness to fight back at any sign of threat tenses as the woman approaches. Her breath picks up; her muscles tighten and brace; her watchful gaze is pinned on the woman like an animal ready to lash out. Ellie watches her kneel in front of her and she rakes an icy watchful look all over her – at the rifle the woman has slung over her shoulder, at the medical supplies in her hands, at her face. She hurriedly scrambles over the woman’s offer – Do you want me to do it? – in her racing thoughts.
After a chary deliberating beat, she relents: there is no way she can tend to her ribs or even her raw wrists on her own. She has no choice but to trust this woman. Root, she repeats to herself, turning the name over again in her mind. She nods as she lets her weight rest upon her elbows propped on her knees.
Ellie swallows, and ugh, her tongue is sandpapery, her throat is parched with thirst. She licks her dry and cracked lips, tongue dragging uselessly across it. Her hands, hanging slack between her knees, are trembling from pain, from exhaustion, from unnerved adrenaline at the nearness of this woman kneeling right before her.
“Why?” she asks. It’s a question to Root confirming that she had dragged her all the way here, wherever here is. “Why didn’t you just… save yourself?”
Root isn't about to try to convince her to trust her, to relax or calm down or feel safe. There's an absurdity to the idea that is distasteful to her. Back home she'd been faking who she was most of the time, taking on and discarding identities like clothing; here, the ratio is flipped. She only pretends once in a while, like when they were both held captive and Root was trying to be convincing as a hapless, defenseless woman so they'd let their guard down.
Most of the time, she just isn't around another human being long enough for it to matter what they think of her. And if Ellie does lash out, so what? Root can handle a little -- or a lot of -- pain. There's a stapes missing from her right ear that can attest to that.
Conscientious that they might be together for some time out of necessity if nothing else, Root answers honestly.
She pauses before trying to tend to her, hands raised and lingering midair as she meets her gaze steadily. "I used to know someone," she says, calm but with grief lining her eyes. "She thought I was the kind of person who saved people. I guess I'm not ready to let go of that yet."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hi sorry it's taken me a moment to tag back, xmas took over
Sharp fragments of memory suddenly siphon in over the top of the last things she remembers: the motherfucker with the foul breath howling in sudden hellish agony; a person cutting Ellie loose from the ropes gouging into her wrists and the ground rushing up as Ellie collapsed in a ragged heap; a woman saying something to her while slinging Ellie’s arm, numb from being strung up for hours, over her shoulders and hauling Ellie to her feet. And then, a stumbling, blurry haze of getting the fuck out, of a woman – this woman lurking in the shadows right in front of her now? – hauling Ellie the whole way until they reached… a boat? Water?
Ellie swallows – her mouth is dry, her tongue rough with thirst – and surrenders the pain in her ribs. She doubles over, still clutching her flank, and wheezes a soft, “Oh, fuck,” to the floor. Recognition that maybe she is safe, that she is not in danger, takes over. Her knees buckle and she sags a swaying step backwards, her ass bumping against a stray piece of rotted furniture.
She fumbles a hand behind her, grabbing on for purchase; the furniture's wooden legs utter a deep scrape against the floor in protest. Fuck. Okay, breathe, just breathe. She sucks in a deep breath and utters a capitulating grunt upon exhale as she leans back against the rickety furnishing.
“Who the fuck’re you?” she manages to demand of the woman, this time with less animalistic bite and more confounded recognition.
right back at you, no worries at all!
She might never walk the same again after this, from walking on the sprain so much, from hitching rope around Ellie's torso and arms and winching it up the stairs to get them up to the second floor using arm strength alone. She might never be the same. She doesn't care. The amount she doesn't care is blaring loud and clear, Root cold and certain and unperturbed.
"Call me Root," she answers, tired and steady. She doesn't offer to help at all. "I thought I'd at least get a thank you."
Okay, so she's still a little shit. What's the point in surviving if she's squashed everything of who she is? No point, that's what.
and then it took me a couple of days to recover from nye 🥴
“The fuck kind of name is Root?” Ellie utters, doubling over to ease herself down onto the chair. It creaks under her weight. A gasp of pain juts out of her before she carefully leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees, hands dangling between her thighs. She lets her head drop forward. Oh, man, everything hurts like a bitch.
Her eyes are drawn to her wrists, rubbed red and raw from the chains that had held her strung up. She gingerly touches a welt on her inner left wrist with a fingertip. It smarts, stinging and sharp; Ellie grimaces. More memories swim hazily into focus, all images of rage-filled terror and helpless rage. She was going to die back there.
A beat later, Ellie lifts her eyes back onto the woman. She notices properly this time that this woman – her rescuer, named Root, apparently – is just as dishevelled with visible evidence of inflicted suffering. Another gusty moan of wind rumbles outside. The barn groans in its brittle bones.
“…Thanks. For… whatever it was you did to get me outta that place.”
it is all good <3
But it's a good sign that Ellie can pull herself together enough to thank her, and it provokes a flash of a perky, irreverent smile from Root. She'd made that comment flippantly, not really caring whether or not she got any gratitude, but it is a good way to judge character and what kind of reception she's going to get going forward. Ellie's obviously very hurt and panicked. Root knows logically it's almost impossible this is her first traumatic experience, so that makes sense. To survive in this kind of society as a young woman takes a lot more than just willpower -- it takes viciousness, the sort Root was capable of from a young age but most people aren't.
Assured she isn't an immediate threat, Root continues making her way to the next window, peering outside it from the side with the habitual paranoia of someone who has memories of being killed by a sniper. What she'd done to get them out and over here isn't really worth going over. It's a pretty unremarkable occasion as far as she's concerned.
"There's medical supplies if you want 'em. You didn't seem like you were going to die," she explains frankly, "so I thought you'd rather I wait until you were awake to see to anything."
It's a tacit offer to assist, or not, as she prefers. Root can stab someone in the eye and be considerate of physical boundaries with equal ease.
no subject
The woman’s offhand allusion to medical supplies being around drags Ellie to attention. That’s what she needs: to patch herself up, something purposeful and solid to pin herself onto.
“Yeah,” she rasps, nodding, short and fast. She attempts to push herself straight in the rickety chair – and she can’t; she gasps and blows out a agonised sharp breath, and then slumps in defeat. “C-Can you…?”
Bring the supplies to her. She will attempt to make a go of patching herself up on her own, if she can manage it. And then she will ask questions. Figure out who this woman is, what happened, where they are. Where Abby is.
no subject
She still helps, and she isn't cruel, but her motions are brusque. Root sets the safety on the rifle and slings it over her shoulder by the strap, then gathers the supplies she mentioned and approaches Ellie with them.
"You want me to do it?" she asks, kneeling in front of her and starting to unpack things. It's nothing special, but there's cleaned cloth strips and compression tape she'd found. There's a hefty length of it wrapped around her ankle already. "I did drag you all the way here," Root says lightly. "I'm at least a little invested at this point."
Something in her, habitually, keeps trying to save people even now, like she can't let go of that one last thread tying her to the people and the being she'd found.
no subject
After a chary deliberating beat, she relents: there is no way she can tend to her ribs or even her raw wrists on her own. She has no choice but to trust this woman. Root, she repeats to herself, turning the name over again in her mind. She nods as she lets her weight rest upon her elbows propped on her knees.
Ellie swallows, and ugh, her tongue is sandpapery, her throat is parched with thirst. She licks her dry and cracked lips, tongue dragging uselessly across it. Her hands, hanging slack between her knees, are trembling from pain, from exhaustion, from unnerved adrenaline at the nearness of this woman kneeling right before her.
“Why?” she asks. It’s a question to Root confirming that she had dragged her all the way here, wherever here is. “Why didn’t you just… save yourself?”
no subject
Most of the time, she just isn't around another human being long enough for it to matter what they think of her. And if Ellie does lash out, so what? Root can handle a little -- or a lot of -- pain. There's a stapes missing from her right ear that can attest to that.
Conscientious that they might be together for some time out of necessity if nothing else, Root answers honestly.
She pauses before trying to tend to her, hands raised and lingering midair as she meets her gaze steadily. "I used to know someone," she says, calm but with grief lining her eyes. "She thought I was the kind of person who saved people. I guess I'm not ready to let go of that yet."
A beat of silence.
"Where do you want me to start?"