[The laugh is encouraging, and Ellie cracks a smile, relieved. As least he isn't telling her to fuck off, after she tore his friend a new one in public.]
Yeah, if you want.
[She can't pretend she isn't curious, and she lets that curiosity cover her nerves. No way he's completely fine with her right now.]
[ Well, he knows a lot about those circumstances now, doesn't he? More than he would have before. And with that new perspective comes a little compassion for the young woman currently on his balcony.
To note; he leads her back in through the balcony doors, through his bedroom where the Antivan grenade she left on his doorstep for Satinalia is being used as a book stop. Dangerous living there, Laufeyson. Down some stairs to the kitchen, the entire way lit with glass-enclosed candles, and a green ball of light Loki summons in his hand as they approach the stairs.
Downstairs, the kitchen is immediately off the stairs, and Loki goes through the motions of lighting the hearth in order to heat tea. Quite the production, if you ask him, but he doesn't say anything the whole way down, trying to figure out... what to say.
Finally, he opens with: ]
I'm not angry with you. [ Slight eye-narrowing. ] About the thing with Abby. I was for a moment there, but. [ He shakes his head. ] She is my friend, though. You should know that.
[Ellie wonders, the deeper they go into Loki's place, if he's leading her to his murder room. She's definitely never been this deep into the property, and that's kind of the vibe here.
She doesn't stop following him, though.
Eventually she realizes it's because he's at a loss for words. It's the tea that tips her off. People make tea when they don't know what the fuck else to do.
Ellie leans against the counter, picking at her nails.]
I'm not mad at you either. For being Abby's friend. I'm not mad at anyone for it.
[ That she's not angry that Abby has friends. That she's not angry that Loki is one of them. He kind of likes Ellie, as a person, despite... all the hindrances therein.
The hearth is finally warm enough for the kettle so Loki engages with that for a moment. ]
She is a good friend, I think. Though I'll admit I have precious few of them in comparison with how long I've lived, but that has mostly been a result of my own poor behavior in the past.
[ The fact that he hasn't made any real enemies since arriving is some kind of testament. To what, exactly, he has no idea, but still. ]
We don't... have to discuss this. I just wanted to be sure we weren't on unequal footing, I suppose.
[Ellie considers it. It's a good move, offering to move on from the subject. Generous, because she knows Loki must have questions. Everyone has questions. But it's still nice to have her comfort taken into account.
The thing with Ellie, though- she's inclined to mirror what people give her first.]
It's fine. I'm betting Abby didn't get into details.
[She sounds vaguely uncomfortable, but probably not for the reasons one would think. She's starting to realize that despite telling the truth, the both of them actually haven't been talking shit about each other.]
[Ellie takes the cup -- such a tiny, fragile thing that feels bird-bone thin in her hands, and sips. It's good, more complex than she's used to. Several things she can't name. She doesn't add anything to it.
Despite how unfamiliar the surroundings are, the feeling is familiar. Haunting, fraught talks in half dark kitchens in the middle of the night. She doesn't ask where to start- maybe the difference in perspective is going to add to it.]
The world... I don't- know how to describe it before the infection, because I was born after, but- it was advanced. More than Thedas. There was no such thing as magic, or mages, or anything, so it was all science. But they'd managed to travel into space, put a man on the moon and everything. They had ways to put an entire library in a machine that could fit in the palm of your hand. They had machines that were just for playing games.
[The smile in Ellie's eyes shows a kid who would have dearly loved to see those things. Who would've given anything for a glimpse of a fantasy of old.]
And then the outbreak happened, and... well. Within a couple of days, everything just- broke. Joel said they'd heard about some people in the cities getting sick. And then suddenly things just... went crazy. People went crazy. They turned on each other.
He was... trying to get his daughter to safety, you know? She was just a little kid. He was holding her in his arms. And a soldier shot at them. No warning. Just because he thought they might be sick.
[Ellie goes silent, then, gathering her thoughts. The tea's forgotten in her hands.]
The Quarantine Zones were like that. I grew up in one, out in Boston. When I was little I'd be on the bus, going to school- and the FEDRA soldiers would catch somebody where they shouldn't be. Outside their assigned work zone, or without identification, or out after curfew- anything, really.
They'd test them, first. To make sure they were clean.
And if they came up infected, they'd shoot them. Right there in the street.
[ Ellie's description of her world before the outbreak sounds not that far off from the Midgard he's familiar with, technologically at least, barring the exclusion of magic in any form. Granted, he knows that he more or less blew the lid off of that secret when he attempted to take over the planet. Things he ponders as he adds sugar to his own tea, blowing on the surface of the liquid.
He's spoken with Abby about the place these two come from before, but it had all sounded frankly terrible. Haunting and haunted by turns. The dead, fighting the living, in the mindless pursuit of causing suffering and pain. A hunger for it, even.
Trying to imagine what it would be like to know that life is so causally discarded by those in power and coming up relatively empty-handed. Trying to imagine what it means to have children in a world that is actively, horrifically, dying around you. ]
Abby told me there was no cure for the infection. [ He shakes his head a little. ] It all sounds so terrible.
[ Terrible and pointlessly savage. An entire planet suspended in it's own fear of death, which in turn is quite active. ]
[Ellie remembers to take a sip of her tea, and thankfully it's still warm, while she lets Loki digest what she's given him.]
It was just how it was for us. We didn't know anything different. Anything that wasn't that was just stories.
[She falls quiet again. There's no way she can describe what it is to live in a world populated only by ruins and ghosts. To walk through a shopping mall in the process of being reclaimed by nature, listening to an old soldier recount what it was like in this very mall at Christmastime, lit up with lights and families shopping with their excited children. Safe, always, and without a inkling of what was coming for them.
And it came for them.
No wonder Winston spent his time drinking himself half the death, with only his horse for company. It strikes her that she might be only person alive who remembers that he lived at all.
Carefully, she comes back to the present.]
There wasn't. But... there might have been. If things had been different.
[Ellie doesn't look at his face. She doesn't know if Abby told him this part.]
When I was fourteen, I was out after curfew with my best friend. And we both got bit.
[She swallows, touching her forearm, and pulls back her sleeve. The tattoo is on top, old ink over scarred, burned skin. Layer after layer, keeping it hidden. She runs her fingers over it, a mute testament to all she'd done to hide it.]
If we'd gone back to our school they would've killed us as soon as they scanned us, and we came up infected. We figured we didn't have much time left, so we decided to spend all of it together.
She didn't make it. But for some reason, I did.
[Ellie stops. She's not sure why she mentioned Riley, but it still hurts to talk about her. She doesn't want to. She rubs the side of her nose, pushes on. She does not describe what happened. Maybe she never will.]
It usually takes a few hours for somebody to turn. For the infection to eat your brain and turn you into one of those things. The longest is two days. It was probably two weeks in before I really believed that I wasn't going to go to sleep and wake up with spores growing out of my face.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Yeah, if you want.
[She can't pretend she isn't curious, and she lets that curiosity cover her nerves. No way he's completely fine with her right now.]
no subject
To note; he leads her back in through the balcony doors, through his bedroom where the Antivan grenade she left on his doorstep for Satinalia is being used as a book stop. Dangerous living there, Laufeyson. Down some stairs to the kitchen, the entire way lit with glass-enclosed candles, and a green ball of light Loki summons in his hand as they approach the stairs.
Downstairs, the kitchen is immediately off the stairs, and Loki goes through the motions of lighting the hearth in order to heat tea. Quite the production, if you ask him, but he doesn't say anything the whole way down, trying to figure out... what to say.
Finally, he opens with: ]
I'm not angry with you. [ Slight eye-narrowing. ] About the thing with Abby. I was for a moment there, but. [ He shakes his head. ] She is my friend, though. You should know that.
no subject
She doesn't stop following him, though.
Eventually she realizes it's because he's at a loss for words. It's the tea that tips her off. People make tea when they don't know what the fuck else to do.
Ellie leans against the counter, picking at her nails.]
I'm not mad at you either. For being Abby's friend. I'm not mad at anyone for it.
[It comes out soft, awkward as he is. Pained.]
... she's-
Probably not a bad friend, actually.
no subject
[ That she's not angry that Abby has friends. That she's not angry that Loki is one of them. He kind of likes Ellie, as a person, despite... all the hindrances therein.
The hearth is finally warm enough for the kettle so Loki engages with that for a moment. ]
She is a good friend, I think. Though I'll admit I have precious few of them in comparison with how long I've lived, but that has mostly been a result of my own poor behavior in the past.
[ The fact that he hasn't made any real enemies since arriving is some kind of testament. To what, exactly, he has no idea, but still. ]
We don't... have to discuss this. I just wanted to be sure we weren't on unequal footing, I suppose.
no subject
[Ellie considers it. It's a good move, offering to move on from the subject. Generous, because she knows Loki must have questions. Everyone has questions. But it's still nice to have her comfort taken into account.
The thing with Ellie, though- she's inclined to mirror what people give her first.]
It's fine. I'm betting Abby didn't get into details.
[She sounds vaguely uncomfortable, but probably not for the reasons one would think. She's starting to realize that despite telling the truth, the both of them actually haven't been talking shit about each other.]
Any holes in the story I can fill?
no subject
He doesn't expect Ellie's offer. It startles him, eyes wide in the half-dark.
Loki blinks. And then he chuckles. ]
I would know more about the world you both come from. That would turn children into warriors of such terrible things.
no subject
Despite how unfamiliar the surroundings are, the feeling is familiar. Haunting, fraught talks in half dark kitchens in the middle of the night. She doesn't ask where to start- maybe the difference in perspective is going to add to it.]
The world... I don't- know how to describe it before the infection, because I was born after, but- it was advanced. More than Thedas. There was no such thing as magic, or mages, or anything, so it was all science. But they'd managed to travel into space, put a man on the moon and everything. They had ways to put an entire library in a machine that could fit in the palm of your hand. They had machines that were just for playing games.
[The smile in Ellie's eyes shows a kid who would have dearly loved to see those things. Who would've given anything for a glimpse of a fantasy of old.]
And then the outbreak happened, and... well. Within a couple of days, everything just- broke. Joel said they'd heard about some people in the cities getting sick. And then suddenly things just... went crazy. People went crazy. They turned on each other.
He was... trying to get his daughter to safety, you know? She was just a little kid. He was holding her in his arms. And a soldier shot at them. No warning. Just because he thought they might be sick.
[Ellie goes silent, then, gathering her thoughts. The tea's forgotten in her hands.]
The Quarantine Zones were like that. I grew up in one, out in Boston. When I was little I'd be on the bus, going to school- and the FEDRA soldiers would catch somebody where they shouldn't be. Outside their assigned work zone, or without identification, or out after curfew- anything, really.
They'd test them, first. To make sure they were clean.
And if they came up infected, they'd shoot them. Right there in the street.
no subject
He's spoken with Abby about the place these two come from before, but it had all sounded frankly terrible. Haunting and haunted by turns. The dead, fighting the living, in the mindless pursuit of causing suffering and pain. A hunger for it, even.
Trying to imagine what it would be like to know that life is so causally discarded by those in power and coming up relatively empty-handed. Trying to imagine what it means to have children in a world that is actively, horrifically, dying around you. ]
Abby told me there was no cure for the infection. [ He shakes his head a little. ] It all sounds so terrible.
[ Terrible and pointlessly savage. An entire planet suspended in it's own fear of death, which in turn is quite active. ]
no subject
It was just how it was for us. We didn't know anything different. Anything that wasn't that was just stories.
[She falls quiet again. There's no way she can describe what it is to live in a world populated only by ruins and ghosts. To walk through a shopping mall in the process of being reclaimed by nature, listening to an old soldier recount what it was like in this very mall at Christmastime, lit up with lights and families shopping with their excited children. Safe, always, and without a inkling of what was coming for them.
And it came for them.
No wonder Winston spent his time drinking himself half the death, with only his horse for company. It strikes her that she might be only person alive who remembers that he lived at all.
Carefully, she comes back to the present.]
There wasn't. But... there might have been. If things had been different.
[Ellie doesn't look at his face. She doesn't know if Abby told him this part.]
When I was fourteen, I was out after curfew with my best friend. And we both got bit.
[She swallows, touching her forearm, and pulls back her sleeve. The tattoo is on top, old ink over scarred, burned skin. Layer after layer, keeping it hidden. She runs her fingers over it, a mute testament to all she'd done to hide it.]
If we'd gone back to our school they would've killed us as soon as they scanned us, and we came up infected. We figured we didn't have much time left, so we decided to spend all of it together.
She didn't make it. But for some reason, I did.
[Ellie stops. She's not sure why she mentioned Riley, but it still hurts to talk about her. She doesn't want to. She rubs the side of her nose, pushes on. She does not describe what happened. Maybe she never will.]
It usually takes a few hours for somebody to turn. For the infection to eat your brain and turn you into one of those things. The longest is two days. It was probably two weeks in before I really believed that I wasn't going to go to sleep and wake up with spores growing out of my face.