"IT WOULDN'T SURPRISE me if that little dickhead was the one behind it."

Leaving the station behind felt like pulling a tooth.  Ellie was reluctant to be away from her family longer than undoubtedly necessary,  dragging her feet down to the lobby until she saw Rory's car pull into the parking lot.  A text from Tara updating her on where she has disappeared to was met with a request  (demand?)   for her to go back to her and Sam's apartment.

She's been withholding this information from Rory for a reason.  Everything else,  however,  is free game.

Despite herself Ellie giggles at Rory's decisive remark,  shifting in the passenger seat until she's facing her friend entirely.  "Ethan?  He's a little guy!"

"Yeah,  probably in more ways than one."  Rory scoffs,  taking Ellie's sound of shock as an opportunity to continue.  "Let's be real here,  gumdrop.  He's a total incel creepo who happens to be dating Buffy.  If he weren't,  would you seriously trust him?"

A beat too long to back up Ellie's defenses passes,  sinking into a silence that only answers her friend's question.   There's a guilt behind this that Rory can gauge regardless of how shallow people believe her to be,  one that hangs in the air surrounding her like a damp cloth.  She hates not being able to completely trust Ethan,  especially not when she can trust everyone else so wholly.   "You got me,"  she admits.   "Ethan's kinda weird.  He reminds me of Jason,  y'know?   He's just so...so..."

"Purposely dense?  Dodgy?  Unable to read a fucking room?"

The look Rory cuts her is enough to make Ellie give in,  sighing before she admits what she's been holding in the last few hours.   "I know I should trust him.  Buffy does,  and I wanna support her no matter what,  but he gives me serious ick."

"Thought so."   Rory hums,  taking a few seconds aside to flip off the raging driver behind them.  "That does make two of us,  gumdrop.  I've been around enough guys like him to know that he's the literal definition of ick.  It would make total sense for him to take inspiration from that lying fuck and his underaged bitch, use his role as Buffy's boyfriend to gain an in."

This thought makes a string tug at Ellie's heart.  No one deserves the happiness Buffy currently has more than her.   No one deserves to have their joy ripped away just like that,  doubted and brushed aside because the classic boyfriend-turned-killer motive,  but especially not Buffy.  No one deserves to have their trust be placed in the hands of a monster.  Especially not Buffy.

Tara didn't deserve it either.   Sam didn't.  But she can't save what they had stripped from them,  can't run interference or prove anyone's innocence.   There's nothing to do about the past waiting for her to fall back into it's waiting claws.  There's nothing to do about the future,  cold and uncertain beneath the thickening coat of blood.   There's nothing to do besides work in the moment.

She can't do that if she's living in a land of make believe.  She can't pretend Ethan isn't strange,  can't pretend it's not awfully convenient that he wound up with Chad,  can't pretend Buffy being lovestruck means all these little red strings don't tie Ethan down to the board of suspects.   There's a game of danger being played with each hopeful gamble,  and it won't be worth that if it costs Buffy her life.

"Ellie.  Ellie-Marie.  Gumdrop.  Hello,  anyone home?"

Rory's voice cuts through the barrage of thoughts like a clap of thunder shaking a silent night. Quickly Ellie shakes her head as though erasing her anxieties like an Etch-a-Sketch, refocusing herself on the conversation at hand.  It's getting easier with time to guilt herself for battles both won and lost,  deaths she should have stopped and deaths that still seem like they were dealt at her hand.  She knows better than to let herself wander down dangerous roads yet every silent moment leads her tracing the tracks back to the heart of her hatred.   “Sorry-”

“Ah ah ah!”   Removing one hand from the wheel Rory wags a finger Ellie’s way.   “We talked about this.  Stop apologizing for shit out of your control.  It makes people think they can walk all over you.”

“Right.”  The same lesson Ellie is grateful for is the one she forgets most.  Rory has been hellbent on breaking her from this little habit formed over the years,  and despite what many expect,  she's been wildly supportive despite how little Ellie can stick to it.  “Right.  I was just thinking, didn't mean to space out.”

“But was that your fault?”

Another little exercise.  Ellie can't help the laugh she gives before obliging,  keeping to the script they've rehearsed what must be well over a hundred times.   “It wasn't my fault.”

“There we go,  baby!”  Rory cheers.  “You didn't even hesitate this time.  What were you thinking, hm?”

“I was thinking about Tara telling me to stay at her place.”

It's an utter lie.  They both know it,  Ellie can tell.  Rory has never been one to miss a liar’s tics or miss calling out a sharp change of topic,  so she's either acting generously oblivious today or she's able to tell how little Ellie wants to push on their prior conversation.

Knowing her,  it's almost guaranteed to be the latter.

“Shut up.”  Rory replies anyway, jaw dropping for added effect.  “Shut up!  Why the hell didn't you lead with that?”

“Before or after the almost dying part?”

Waving the question aside with a perfectly manicured hand Rory rolls her eyes,  a move that's become more synonymous with playful rather than cruel after all their years of unlikely friendship.  She exudes confidence with every move she makes,  even in private.   It would be more enviable if Ellie didn't know the cost of it.   “I picked you up alive,  didn't I?  We totally could have covered the added trauma later.”

There's a relief in how effortlessly Rory keeps her from wandering back to her own thoughts.  Ellie can feel herself relax despite the tension of the day weighing heavy,  settling back in her seat.

“What do you wanna know?”

WHEN SHE LEFT Rory in the parking lot with the clear instructions of ‘treat any crazy person with a knife like a speed bump’,  Ellie knew she was signing herself up for trouble.

It's against all rules of survival.  She's not stupid nor is she blind to the reality of being alone,  but she can't bring herself to keep up the presentation that is being put together.  For five minutes she needs to be able to lose her shit in the way she's been needing to since leaving this godforsaken building.  It's got nothing to do with Rory,  got nothing to do with anyone.  She needs to be alone until she's collected enough to get through this with a straight face.  Plain and simple.

Knowing this doesn't stop her skin from crawling when she steps in the apartment.

“Sir Purrington!”  Ellie calls out, holding her breath as she clicks the door shut.   The familiar little jingle of his collar is always the first thing she hears when she opens the door,  followed immediately by a meow of greeting and a coil of fur around her ankles.

This silence is deeply unsettling.

“Sir Purrington?!”   She tries again.   Desperation is starting to leak into her tone despite her best efforts to fight it,  forcing herself away from the door despite how her feet feel like cement.   “C'mon,  baby!  C'mere!”

Still nothing.

Ellie feels like she's going to throw up.  No further venture is needed to cement the image unfolding in her mind, throat slowly beginning to close around tears that couldn't choose a worse time to arrive.  Now isn't the panicking time.  It doesn't matter that she can see her poor cat disemboweled in her mind's eye now,  doesn't matter that she's unable to get his attention with several clicks of her tongue that would typically send him sprinting her way.  Envisioning this potential outcome is only going to make things worse.  She won't know until she looks,  won't know until she finds him herself- be it out like a light or truly gone.

This doesn't help her stomach from churning as she steps further away from the door,  not once removing her eyes from her surroundings when she arrives at her couch side drawers and retrieves another pistol from inside.  She can't afford to be caught off guard now.  Too much is at stake for a little mistake to send her blood splattering across windows.  One wrong move and she becomes another name added to a list of victims.
Right beside her aunt Tatum.  Right beside aunt Rebekah.  Right beside Maddie.  Right beside Luke.  It didn't matter then, much like how it doesn't matter now,  that they had lives to live and a world to see.  It didn't matter that their loved ones needed them.  It didn't matter that they were people regardless of how their deaths stole their dignity,  from a pet door to a blood-soaked diamond ring that left an echo of one last laugh from the person who already took it all.

One wrong move is all it takes.  Sometimes not even that.

With her gun in one hand and the other curled into a fist,  Ellie is on high alert as she takes another cautious step.   “I swear to God,  if someone's in here-”

Her phone ringing cuts her threat short.

Ellie-Marie can feel her blood run cold as she processes what's happening,  breath catching in her throat as she shakily reaches in her pocket.  She knows better than to not answer.   It's almost a test of intelligence,  this act of how willing she'll be to play along until the knife is drawn.  Not answering takes away every chance of winning.

And with it,  her life.

Pressing the green button Ellie holds the phone to her ear,   ignoring how her heart roars like the sea as she braces herself.  "Hello?"

"I thought you didn't take calls from strangers."

Ellie has expected this moment for years,  planned for it ever since she spent her eighth birthday counting the stitches etched in her side while replaying the memory of answering that phone in full naivety.   She blocks unknown numbers,  forwards suspicious ones to her father once they call more than twice.  She has four deadbolts to hover by with each call she accepts,  gun in hand while waiting for her luck to tick down to its final moments.  There's nothing she hasn't done in order to prepare,  but the voice coming through the phone still finds a way to chill Ellie to the bone.

"I don't."

It's difficult to not slip into the panic her nightmares often write her into now that she is living it all over again,  listening with an increasingly tightening grip as the ghost of her past laughs.   "What makes me so special?"

"Nothing,"   she responds,  focusing on keeping her voice steady.   There's nothing good that can come of alerting on her fear.   "I figured it was time to stop hiding.  How about you,  huh?   Why me?"

"I think you know why."

"Humor me.   You wanna play psycho killer?   You gotta tell me the rules first."

"I'm not like the others,  Ellie-Marie."

Clicking the safety off she turns where she stands,  back to the door as she surveys her surroundings.   "Neither am I."

The voice carrying through the phone seems to convey a smirk too bloody to be teasing.  She can hear their breath for all it is,  shallow and shaking with sick anticipation.   “Good,”  comes a croon deceptively soft.   “I knew you wouldn't be.  You've been waiting for this,  haven't you?”

He has no idea.
No one does,  not really.   Only her parents,  auntie Abi,  Lou,  and Buffy have the vaguest idea of how she's been preparing for this since the day she faded from being a child to being a victim.  When she was the one crying for help,  when that knife plunged into her hip,  when she was the one left dying while her father was helpless to stop it- little things that built up,  turning into something bigger until she was ready to center her life around not being afraid.   She wants so badly to be the best person she can be.   She knows what the world is capable of,  knows that there is no guarantee of this kindness she carries.  It just drives her to be better than that.

But underneath the love is still what she trained herself to be.  Beneath it all she's a damn fighter,  and she's not about to let her nightmares take her life away.

“Where the fuck is my cat?”

Ellie doesn't know she's making a demand until it's made.  Trepidation still seeps through her veins and makes her feel like ice despite the coziness of her apartment,  still makes her feet almost drag across the floor despite how she focuses every conscious effort upon moving them,  but some things have to be motivation rather than a diversion.

“Huh?”

Cocking her gun Ellie-Marie feels her patience grow thin.   “My cat.  Where.  The fuck.  Is my cat.”

“If you think I let your cat live after he attempted to attack me himself,  you have an ugly surprise coming.”

“You wouldn't have killed him,”  a confident claim regardless of how she absolutely does not know that.  “Not before I got home to see.”

“And if I did?”

“Listen here,  buckaroo.”  Ellie is self-aware enough to know the nickname is hardly intimidating and seething enough to not care,  too busy trying to keep herself from snapping on the reminder of everything she's had to survive.   "I really,  really don't wanna hurt anyone.  That doesn't mean I won't.  I'll have you know that,  if you hurt Sir Purrington,  the coroner will be scraping you into the bodybag.  So please hang up,  give me my cat,  and maybe go to therapy before I have to handle you myself,  capiche?"

The silence that answers her is deafening.   She can feel her heart clench in her chest as she awaits her confirmation,  looking around wildly.  In part,  though not of the majority,  Ellie has done this for a reason.  If she's alone in the apartment,  nothing will change.  If she isn't-

A familiar meow cuts through her thoughts before they can finish.  Ellie feels relief warm some of the frozen fear lodged in her arteries as she kneels down,  waiting until Sir Purrington is close enough to scoop him into her arms.  A quick once over shows that his collar has been discarded but he's otherwise fine, garnering a sigh of relief before she shifts him to one arm.  She'll take his claws and indignation at being held with one arm over what her mind created.

Turning her attention back to the threat at hand Ellie-Marie raises the phone back to her ear,  shifting her cat around until she can comfortably aim her gun just beneath him.  She's been using guns for over a decade; her aim may be the one thing she can trust at the moment.

“Smart.”   Ellie acknowledges,  pressing the phone between her ear and her shoulder.  She'll need the free hand.   “What made you have a brain all of the sudden?”

Don't taunt the person who holds your life in their hands.   Don't taunt the person who holds your life in their hands.   Don't taunt the person who holds your life in their hands.

“I figured you were right.”  The amount of nonchalance is disturbing at the best of times,  the shrug through the phone nearly audible.   “There’s no fun in letting you play detective all by yourself.  Tara told you guns were on the table, didn't she?  We can fire away at each other and see who earns that final blaze of glory.”

“Like hell.”

With her hand on the doorknob Ellie twists the handle,  whipping around at breakneck speed to get the fuck out now.  She's prepared for anything.  Rory,  downstairs and waiting,  isn't as lucky.

Her words from only an hour before ring in her mind clear as day.  I can't lose anyone.  I won't.

She has to get her priorities in line.  She's prepared for anything and everything,  from a masked killer waiting beyond the corners of her room to a liar whispering what lives in the quarters of her mind.   She knows better than to be afraid now.  Fear means you lose control,  and once that's lost,  you lose it all.

She's prepared for anything and everything.

Everything except the shriek that pierces the air when she swings the door open.