A/N: You're all fucking amazing. It's astounding that with my sparse updates people still follow this story. Every time I get a new subscriber, I'm flabbergasted and very grateful. Thank you all.
Her first instinct is to flee. Her mind hurriedly counts the steps it would take to clear the second bed and make it to the door. She feels trapped, the room is suddenly compact and stale. Ellie can't hear a single sound outside and she tries to focus on the quiet hum of the heater. She runs through all of the possible outcomes that are attached to any word choice. She doesn't know why she bothers, logic never really plays into emotions, into actions. Besides, Sean is a gamble with every conversation and she never knows whether she's going to win or lose until all of the cards are on the table.
She considers apologizing; she knows she has no right. Or does she? Sean tore her life apart without so much as a thought. She wants vindication for how her life is, how she is.
"I think I deserve to know."
Ellie chews on her lip, wax and shea butter creating an unsavory mix on her tongue. It doesn't matter how painful it is for him to talk about, she tries to rationalize. He broke her in half and left her to mend her wounds, to replace the pieces of her severed spine so she could hold her head up once more. Sympathy won't get her answers, tip toeing around troubled topics won't help her sleep at night. She has so many things she wants to ask from way before Wasaga to mere hours ago, but they catch in her dry throat.
No, she can't talk about that, not right now. Not with what she assumes is Jay's impending approach. But this, this is a start. She may never get a middle or an end, but damn it, she deserves a start.
"Did you always want to be a journalist, even in high school?" Sean inquiries and she wonders if it's sad that she's surprised he remembers that about her. Ellie nods slowly, not sure why it matters.
"Man, I didn't even think I had a future. I never thought about the military, never thought I'd join." He closes his eyes, dark lashes fluttering and falls back onto the bed. She's reminded of lying on the roof as he traced his fingers down her scars and didn't flinch. Ellie recalls his fingers intertwining with hers and the absolutely terrifying and invigorating feeling of human contact.
Most of all she recalls that, for once, he stayed.
He doesn't say anything for several minutes. Sean's begun his very own war, the Cameron Conflict. It takes place inside his head. The terrain is covered in landmines and each thought drifts cautiously through them. Sean wants to give her the answers she seeks, but how can he pull each one from the rubble? So much time has passed he's not sure if he's capable of bringing her any sort of solace. He doesn't know what he bothers, he doesn't owe her anything. Or maybe he does. It gets tangled and twisted like a parachute caught high in tree branches. Sean doesn't know how to cut it down, but he knows he should try. At one time she was his world and he owes her any sort of peace he can extend to her.
"And yet, you did." Ellie says, socks scuffing along the carpeting as she paces the room. She can't explain why it calms her. Half the time she doesn't make the conscious decision to start, just realizes after awhile that she's circled the entire room over and over. Maybe, she just needs the simplicity of her feet moving without any set destination.
"You need to get a wheel." Sean comments, and he doesn't have to look up to know the exact confused look on her face. "Like a hamster wheel. The pacing, it's distracting."
"Hamster is not on the approved word list. It's too closely linked to ferret." She notifies him, a brief pang of sadness hitting her. It's been years, but sometimes she still thinks of Bueller. He'd relied on her, she'd been responsible for his well being and he'd died in her care. She knows she failed him and wonders how many other people she'll fail.
Ellie shuffles across the room, scraping her socks as loudly as she can against the plush fabric. She sits on the bed Sean occupies, facing forward. She can only see him out of the corner of her eye and as she smooths her skirt she thinks that's all she can handle at the moment.
"You've never killed anyone, El. You don't know what it's like." Sean grunts. He's frustrated; frustrated that he can't articulate exactly what he means and how he feels. Sean hates the clumsy entanglement of syllables that he speaks each time he tries to take a thought and turn it into words.
"Explain it to me." She's not bothering with the eggshells anymore, they can crack beneath her and bloody her soles. Ellie wants answers, she demands them. She's waited too long and thought too much about it. It's time he helps to fill in the pieces, to unscramble the waterlogged puzzle of their past.
"It's putting a fucking pin into the side of a balloon and watching the air drain out. I watched his eyes gloss over, his body go still."
He pauses, fingers fiddling with the bedspread.
"I'm washing dishes three days later and I stop because I can't stop staring at my hands. I'm scrubbing a pot and it's hilarious and sick, because his blood is gone but I still feel it. It's like it's sunk into my skin, it's stained me. All I can smell is gun powder and the ringing in my ears is so loud that it screws with my balance. At school, people stare, they whisper. It doesn't matter what the courts or papers say, that the killing was 'justified.' I am still a killer and they know not to lose sight of me."
Ellie makes no movement to comfort him. She has never heard this side of the story, Sean's side. His aftermath. She'd been there for some of it, but she needs to know certain things, the things she wasn't permitted to be there for. Ellie needs enlightenment, so she can shut the door on this chapter of her life. She almost starts speaking but he continues.
"You take a life and they take your life. It's a pretty fair trade." Sean sighs and it's as though an anchor has been laid across his chest. "I got away, thought that might help. Came back and did the high school thing, the car thing. I started running out of money and that's when you really start to run out of options. I got a pamphlet in the mail for the army and I just stared at it."
His chest rises, then slowly falls and Ellie can hear each pained breath but she can't move.
"It was like, what's one more body? One more life, ten more lives, it doesn't matter. None of them would make it anymore difficult then it already is to sleep at night. I tried to make it make sense; that I would be killing the bad guys. At the end of the day, who the hell was I kidding? There was still blood on my hands and it didn't matter who it belonged to. They called me a hero, but it's all- what's that word you use? Semantics... Yeah, it's fucking semantics. I'm a murderer, Nash. Be glad I left, that I spared you from all of this shit."
Sean is blatantly aware that Ellie will not turn and look at him. Her spine is ramrod straight, her fingers tightly curled and legs crossed at the ankle. "You spared me?" Her voice is hushed and he strains to make out each word.
"Yeah, I-" He's cut off, as he should have suspected.
"You left me alone in an apartment I couldn't afford! You abandoned me, Sean. I needed you and you needed me. You wouldn't let me in! I wanted to help you so much."
Ellie's voice catches with anger. She has to get it all out there. This is her only chance. She swallows hard.
"You can spin it anyway you want to, anyway that helps you cope, but let's get something straight. You didn't leave to save me and you're not a fucking martyr because you bailed." She shakes her head and looks back at him. "I must have been some kind of fucking experiment. It's funny, I used to think that for a little while, you loved me."
Ellie rises up from the bed and stares at him. She can hear the rush of blood in her ears and feel her heart beating inside her skull. She delivers her final parting shot.
"God, I hope Emma can save you, because you won't fucking save yourself."
The door flies open with a thud and Jay shuffles in, weighted down with bags. "I got beer!" He proclaims loudly and Ellie rushes to close the door before any complaints can be lodged.
"There's food and shit in there too." He sets down the three bags and take out a bottle from one, popping the cap on the side of an end table. "Cameron, why the hell are you all red?"
Sean is seething, he is a boiling kettle and he may explode. Ellie cuts in before anything can be said because she refuses to let her personal business become public knowledge.
"We were just discussing what time we thought would be safe to leave tomorrow. It got heated but it was decided that bright and early was the best plan." She looks to Sean for confirmation but he won't meet her eyes. He takes two beers from the paper bag and heads out the sliding glass door to the small cement deck.
"You know," Jay says as the door clicks shut. "while your delivery was impressive, the lie itself was weak. Work on the fundamentals before you move onto the accoutrements, Nash."
