girlwithout | (no subject)

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It shouldn't be a surprise, when she can't quite get to sleep, even though she's exhausted. It's like every time she so much as shuts her eyes, there's these images imprinted on the back of her eyelids, images of dead girls and Bernard killing them. Something like an hour after she bundles herself in blankets, she finally rolls over to the edge of the bed to see Dogmeat. He looks back at her and thumps his tail against the floor, and she feels a little bit of a smile pulling at her mouth.

She pats the bed next to her. "Come on, get comfy."

With her fingers buried in soft fur, she manages to sleep.

(She jolts awake with Dogmeat whining in her ear and glances at the clock.

It's only been an hour.

It's going to be a long night.)

In the morning, she still feels barely less exhausted than when she started last night, but at least she tried. Now - or at least after she takes another shower and gets dressed - seems as good a time as any to assure Ellen that her dog hasn't been kidnapped.

Barely half an hour later sees her wandering through the hallways, suddenly realizing that she really has no idea how to navigate the room numbering system to find any room that isn't her own. Rikki glances down at Dogmeat. "If I tell you to go home, would you know where it is?"

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Ellen nods. "Moon Shadow's told me there are people in his world without powers who do the superhero stuff anyway," she says. "Gadget heroes, most of them- anyway, I understand what you're saying."

She nods quietly at the second part, though. "And that made it personal," she says. "Not 'it could have been anybody', but 'it was going to be me, specifically'. Which just makes it a thousand times harder to get out of your head."

"Pretty much."

Gadget hero. Huh. She hadn't really heard of them being called that, but she guesses it makes sense. Even if it's a little bit misleading - it's not like she relies solely on gadgets or anything. "So, um, what did you do?"

"Made sure the people in Andale couldn't hurt anybody any more," Ellen says after a moment's thought. Rikki might not be powered, but if she's part of the superhero community, taking them all down with an alien energy weapon before they could kill me probably isn't going to go over well. Outside of Thor and Wonder Woman, and maybe Steve, the superheroes she's met haven't been the sort with much room for lethal action. "Made sure what- what I could find of their victims got a decent funeral. That helped a lot, at least for me... at least it meant I got to do something for them. I kept busy after that, too- I was trying to find my father at the time, so I had searching for him to focus on. But sometimes I just had to remind myself that it was over. The memories might be really, really vivid, but the whole thing was over."

Her shoulders slump a little when she exhales. The way Ellen says it... she gets the feeling they didn't just walk away from it. Of course, in a world like hers... would they even have prisons?

"I tipped off the police," Rikki says, quietly. "They already identified a couple of the girls, so. They'll figure out where the, um, bodies should go."

Ellen nods. "That's something," she says. "I'm glad you have them- police, I mean. To handle things from here. And to let the girls' families know what happened. There's... there was no way of identifying the people in Andale, let alone finding their families, if they even had any. At least the girls' families wil know, now, instead of wondering forever."

Instead of wondering forever.

It just... hits her, then (and she suddenly spins around so she's looking at Dogmeat instead of Ellen because she's trying so hard not to cry) that she may not be a body in the basement with the other girls, but she has folks back home who think the granddaughter they raised is dead and don't even have a body to bury. At least they would have been told what happened, but what kind of comfort is that?

Uh-oh. Ellen's seen that face before. Mostly on the people who've been brought back from the alien ship, trying like anything to hold it together.

She gestures to Dogmeat, who gets up and pads over to Rikki.

"IF you need to vent, go ahead," she murmurs. "No one will ever hear about any of this from me."

God. God, she is such a pathetic mess right now. Rikki drops down to the floor with a little bitter twist of deja vu. Apparently she can't even be away from Ellen's dog for five minutes.

Once she's safely settled with an armful of dog and doesn't have to look at the person she's talking to anymore, she lets the words spill out. "My folks think I'm dead."

It's been a bad day. Everyone gets those.

"Oh, jeez," Ellen says. "I didn't- I'm sorry. Is.... is there a reason for that?"

.... that was possibly the stupidest possible way to phrase the question. Way to go, Ellen.

Rikki wipes at her eyes with the back of her wrist, wishing she could pretend like it didn't come away wet.

"I, um." She lets out a sound that might have started out life as a laugh. "Probably cause I died."

"... that'd do it," says Ellen. "I'm sorry, I really could've phrased that better. I take it something happened to change that?"

"I did something that was supposed to... to save people." She scoots up against the closest wall so she can lean her head against it. "And then I woke up in a world that's pretty similar, except no one knows me because Rikki Barnes died in childbirth. I don't know why."

She occupies herself pulling a little tuft of shed hair out of Dogmeat's fur. "Sometimes I think it's like a purgatory? Like I wasn't good enough for Heaven or... or Valhalla or whatever. So I got sent away to do better."

It's a small room. The nearest wall's not far.

Ellen makes her way over to sit on the bed, because just at the moment it doesn't look like close contact would be welcome. "It's possible. I can't claim to know what your world's metaphysics are like, or whether God or whoever controls it would do that kind of thing," she says. "But- look, for what it's worth, I'm a military chaplain. And just speaking from my experience as a soldier, I've found that when you do impossible things and live to tell about them, more often than not, your reward is being asked to do something even harder. It's not a punishment. It's that your deeds stand out."

"I know it's not comforting, it's just- I don't think it's that you weren't good enough. It sounds more like you did something amazing enough to get you noticed when somebody amazing was needed."

That's... it's comforting, but also kind of terrifying. "I don't know if I believe in an all-powerful god that controls everything. There might be an afterlife, but that's mostly cause I used to know a Norse god and he knew valkyries. I always figured that was more like a different dimension than a heaven."

She breathes out. "I know I took on a lot of stuff. And I don't regret it, cause I did some good and met some people I never would have known. But... I'm sixteen, you know? Sometimes I feel like I'm barely keeping it together. I have one real friend where I'm staying, my family's dead, and I live in a shitty building that should probably be condemned. I don't know how much more I have to give."

"It's okay. I was never taught that God was all-powerful, myself," Ellen says. "I mean, I know that's what people used to believe before the War, but neither Reverend Avellone nor Knight-Captain Colvin ever said I should believe that God was all-powerful. I just meant that if there was some entity that did control things like that in your world, I didn't know their rules."

She rubs at the back of her neck with one hand. "I'd say you deserve at least something of a break, after all that. Even if it's just a rest somewhere, to help you get yourself back together. When I was your age I was just taking the test that was supposed to determine the job I'd be doing for the rest of my life, so for what it's worth you're way ahead of me in terms of accomplishments for your age. I kinda think you might be entitled to sit back and gather your marbles for a bit."

"Yeah. I guess."

Her life doesn't seem to have a lot of downtime, lately. If she's not being Nomad, she's struggling to keep her life afloat. It's... kind of nice, thinking about taking a vacation from that for a little while. "For a little while, at least."

"They put me on leave for a week or two after I got back from ... well, it wasn't the worst mission I ever had, but it was up there," Ellen says. "And then they put me on light duty around the garrison instead of the field. It wasn't much, but it helped- if you can stay here for a while it'll probably help you too."

"I think I can." She bites her lip. "I don't like using the minors' fund a lot, but I guess this is what it's here for? A kind of vacation would be good for me." Her voice tilts upwards at the end, almost in question.

"That's what I hear it's meant for," Ellen says. "Consider it the mental equivalent of vitamins, or bed rest after a poisoning. It's a necessity, just a different kind of one."

She can't help but make a face a bit at bed rest after a poisoning - that was pretty recent still, huh.

"Yeah. I... yeah. That sounds good."

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