hisstrength | IC INBOX

I'm fine. Nothing happened.

[Reassuring comes first.]

He was... well, he seemed pretty normal. Kind of awed at everything, like how there was food to go around and how the whole place was in good shape. Pretty calm for someone who just got here.

He would be.

[It comes out almost angry, and she schools it back. It's the terror talking.]

... he acts nice. At first.

[And that's what's so telling as far as Tris is concerned. She's never witnessed Ellie be this angry at anyone. Not even when the school got burned down.]

And then?

[David hadn't done anything to her that so much as bothered her. Hadn't gotten the chance, she supposes. But she wants to know.]

He tries to gain your trust. Tells you everything happens for a reason. Then, if you don't take the bait and follow him, he has you followed. And kidnapped. And put in a cage.

And then he tells you you're special, and he's trying to convince the others that you'll come around.

[What she says already sets Tris' teeth on edge. What she probably isn't saying makes it worse.]

Come around, huh.

[Because one just comes around when one is kidnapped and trapped. Come around to what? Just following him? She suspects there's more than that, given the amount of shit already at work here.]

Oh, you know. Being a cannibal.

[The sarcasm practically drips from the words, and she isn't masking the anger or disgust.]

No big deal, right? At least he's honest about it.

[And Tris remembers every time food was given to the hungry of her city, how it was never really enough. She remembers him saying that this didn't look like any kind of shortage, and wonders how hungry people have to be before they start eating each other.

But that doesn't change what he's done to Ellie. It makes her sick.]

... Yeah, because honesty fixes everything about that. What the hell.

There was game in those woods.

[Ellie's voice is dark, damning.]

I bagged a deer and a rabbit that day. I traded them the deer for medicine.

[Part of Tris remembers that she's supposed to look for the needs of other people. That she doesn't know a thing about hunting, or about how many people there were to feed. But that part is too quiet to make it past Ellie's words, and her anger just flares. When she speaks, there's that same damning note to it.]

I guess that deer wasn't enough. He wanted the hunter too.

I tried to lead them away from Joel.

They shot Callus. The fucker had the nerve to tell me he was sorry about it, while he was hunting me down.

So, wait. Was something wrong with Joel back then? Was he sick?

[He doesn't seem like someone who needs to be protected from people, generally...]

Yeah. He got hurt bad, back at the college. We were going through some of the old stuff in the science building and these bastards starting shooting at us.

We found out they were David's guys, later. Out hunting.

One of them jumped Joel and he fell onto a piece of rebar. It went right through him. I managed to get him stitched up but- he ended up with a bad fever. He wasn't even awake a lot during that winter.

[Meaning she'd taken care of the both of them, possibly for months.]

[And there's more than a bit of awe here.]

Holy shit, Ellie.

I used to help out in the med bay, back at school. I would stitch up the soldiers when things got bad.

... he's got a wicked scar now.

I bet.

...I wonder why you didn't get Healing for a power when you got here, you could do more with that than me. [Tris you can't just ask people why they don't have Healing.]

Because somebody up there's got a real sick sense of humor.

[Mainly because of the... stuff growing in her body, but that's neither here nor there.]

[She doesn't really get it, and she can't really guess it, even if she gets the feeling there's something she isn't being told. But for once, she doesn't pry.]

I guess.

So what did you do? To get away from David and his people?

Made them think I was one of the Infected. Bit David. Ran away.

He caught up. He figured it out. Nobody who's dying fights this hard to stay alive.

[So he's good at making nice, and he's got a lot of people at his disposal, he's manipulative, brutal, and clever. It lines some pieces up. Tris knows she doesn't like where that must've gone.]

Shit.

[She's read it precisely right.]

He caught up, but I ripped off his face with a machete.

[There's a line crossed here somewhere. She's losing track of them, because she doesn't want to imagine what it's like to be hunted down by someone like that and have to fight them. But she does. There's a pause before she answers, a moment of quiet breathing.]

I hope he never shows up here again.

[Ellie takes a few deep breaths before she responds. On a good day, she might be braver. She might pull on her game face and tough it out, but Tris knows more about her than that, more than a lot of people.]

Yeah. Me too.

[There's another pause. She isn't sure if this is something she's allowed to ask, but it feels like something that's important to know. Because someone who's been here once, well. There's always a chance they'll be here more than once.]

If he does, though. Do you think... you could stop yourself?

[And she thinks about what she'd do if Jeanine Mathews was here - but she isn't nearly as frightening on her own, without the entirety of Erudite behind her.]

I don't think I should.

[When it comes down to it, no. She will never not feel that he's better off dead, that the world is better off without him in it.]

[There's a long pause. She isn't sure if there's a solution to this. If David came here like they did, linked to one of the gods, he'd be brought back to life again and again, every time. Not that she's arguing the world isn't better off with him dead, but she doesn't want her best friend here to make it her life's mission to kill a guy day after day after day. Because there's nothing right about that, nothing whatsoever.

Ellie can't see her shake her head, but there's a sigh as well.]

Not gonna argue that. Anyway, are you... are you gonna be okay?

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