SEVEN MONTHS LATER ; NEW YORK CITY,
NEW YORK

THE PHONE RINGING makes the entire room go silent.

She has to admit that she's forgotten the sheer space the penthouse really has. Regardless of how many people are in here- fifteen, currently- there's still enough space for her to jump that half foot in the air at the counter and swivel her head towards her auntie, stiff in preparation.

"Shit," Abi curses, fishing the phone from her jacket pocket. "Thought I turned this thing off."

"Who is it?" Tara asks, tone sharp in a manner none of them have used in months now. The tension of the room has thickened in a way Ellie-Marie is unfortunately all too familiar with, nails digging into skin soaked with citrus as she hoists herself onto the countertop, orange peeling momentarily forgotten as she forces herself to breathe.

Fuck, she hates phones.

Abi holds up one finger as she checks the caller ID, expression slacking before she answers all too quickly for Ellie's liking.

"Sidney Lianne Prescott, why the hell do you think calling someone is a good idea in this day and age?"

"Tell her we said hi!" Dad's back to grinning in a way Ellie knows has been a rarity outside of her presence over the years, panic disengaged the moment Abi relaxed.

"And to stop calling without any warning. She can learn how to text." Lou pitches in, deadpan as ever despite the pinching crinkle Ellie knows how to spot best. There's a lack of severity to her tone that's the intentional giveaway of an attempt at a joke, all the permission Ellie-Marie needs to let out a small giggle that's met with a glance from her cousin, that crinkle deepening despite the lack of a visible smile. It's a pleasant sort of familiarity that doesn't char her bones with dread like many things otherwise seem to do, a warmth selective to Lulu and Lulu alone formed in the smile Ellie offers back.

"Are there any horror movies where the killer texts?" Chad pipes up from his spot near the window, arms folded over his chest in a move Ellie can tell they're all slowly starting to copy. "Good ones. Not that B-rated shit."

"The B-rated ones are where the gore's at!" Mindy shoots back. "If we were gonna go by any movie at all, I'd start going by the B-rated ones. It's what our-"

"Too soon, babe," Rory interjects. "I'd rather my life be like, fucking 'Legally Blonde' at this point. A hot blonde getting her own sounds way better than 'hot blonde gets chased by a dipshit in a mask for the eightieth time'."

"That's literally every 'Halloween' movie," Buffy's grin is crooked as she focuses on tag teaming Rory, leaning forward to knock her shoulder playfully. "Jamie Lee is the original hot blonde target! Dad, back me up here."

Uncle Randy seems to perk up at the mere mention of Jamie Lee. Ellie cuts her eyes briefly to Julie in a show of silent solidarity, giggling when her aunt just shakes her head with a smile. It's nice, she thinks, all of them being together when they aren't binded solely by terror or funerals.

Or exploitive novels.

It'd been a fear of Ellie's since they were each released from the hospital, one stab wound sealed up at a time, that Mom would use the opportunity to feature her own injury in yet another novel. It'd be her right to do this time around considering the severity of what Quinn had done to her. Even though Jules, Abi, Lulu and Dad all know the depths of it, Ellie still isn't entirely sure what happened between the penthouse and Mom's arrival to the hospital.

She doesn't want to anymore.

The novel itself was never written. The fear fell away when Ellie-Marie came by the penthouse one month after Mom was released, no longer surprised by the presence of her father playing nurse, and found that the only novel due to be published was one Mom started years ago. A fiction project that she didn't even plan to finish is three-quarters of the way done now, fleshed out in a way that Ellie couldn't enjoy more.

"Mind if I join you up there?"

Tara's smile shines brighter than the rare beams of sun that come through the clouds. It makes her soar in a way she never believed she could as she scoots over on the spacious counter, patting the spot next to her. "You don't even have to ask, Moonlight."

Suppressing her amusement at how Tara has to jump in order to get on the counter has gotten easier in their time of living together, knowing full and well what the punishment for such is (for a small woman, Tara's got an insane ability to steal blankets) and keeping it to herself for the sake of staying warm when they get home. For now she bites her smile back into a slice of her orange, taking the bigger half and offering it to her girl.

"Are you really not gonna say anything about us being up here, Gale Weathers?" Tara calls with a smirk, switching her half an orange to the other hand before holding her free one out once more.

"You want another?" Ellie asks, passing over her half without a moment's hesitation.

"Nah, just know you don't like the white stuff."

In her seat Mom twists to face the two of them, narrowing her eyes in a way that doesn't match the smile playing at her lips. "Would either of you listen?"

She's been lighter, Ellie's noticed. Happier. It's nice to see her mother the way she remembers from days she's dreamed of reliving, shining with a glow rather than with the burning force of a supernova doomed to go out. That doesn't mean she's not shimmying the moment displeasure is partially displayed, mouth opening to apologize before she's cut off.

"I was kidding, Els. After the shit we've been through, that counter means nothing to me."

The arch of Lou's brows doesn't go unnoticed even as Ellie goes to reposition herself, grinning when Tara hands back her fully peeled orange.

"Are you implying it took nearly dying to gain a redemption arc for yourself?" Lou remarks casually, not flinching when Mom's attention spins back to her nowhere near as sharp as Ellie knows it could be.

"I was implying that the counter is four thousand dollars. The hospital bill, on the other hand-"

"Sidney says hi!" Abi interrupts loudly, grin mischievous as ever as she holds up her phone.

"I said to stop fighting," Sidney calls through the speaker. "I said hi to the kids!"

"Hi Sidney!" Ellie calls, nudging Tara until her girlfriend follows the lead. It's more than worth seeing Mom's dramatized irritation when it shifts into a smile that seems as real as the agony once had.

At her side Tara pulls an arm around Ellie's middle, hand resting closer to the scar still healing. She doesn't shy away from it the way reflex whispers for her to do anymore; open wounds take time to heal, and she's loath to run away from a loving hand while they do.

"You're quiet," Tara murmurs, head resting on Ellie's shoulder. "What're you thinking about?"

A loaded question.

For a while there Ellie-Marie knows her hope was hanging on by a thread. As much as she laughed her way around questions pressing their way further and further into her life and everyone else's, negligent of how her heart would skip when the phone rang or how looking out her bedroom window would make her hands shake, Ellie knows her optimism exists, if not thrives out of spite, off the black cloud following her and her family. It's been suggested on several occasions that her sun shines in spite of the rain, because she needs to pull the oceans of sorrow from the core of her homeland, but Ellie is beginning to believe that it exists because of the downpour. Even if the umbrella in hand is slipping dangerously out of hand with the force of the wind, clutching onto it will shield at least a little of the impact.

She'd like to think she's been able to do that now. For all her coping may rely on the happiness of others, Ellie-Marie is grateful that she's good at faking it until she makes it. It would've been her last straw on this, in Rory's words, bitch of an Earth if she'd been unable to radiate like the rain of bloodshed didn't touch her.

But she did it.

This is what it was all for, she thinks tenderly. Everything. For all we've been through, this is the closing scene. We can live again.

"Nothing," she hums finally, leaning to rest her head atop Tara's. The way Dad subconsciously wraps his arm around Mom's shoulders isn't unnoticed by her, nor is the way Mindy's hand has slipped towards Rory or the way Buffy has made her way over to Juno, settling beside him until they look a little bit like a picture Ellie took long ago, starting out at six years old. "Just happy, that's all."

They did it.

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FIN.
thank you to everyone who has supported me
and this silly little fanfic. i, personally, never
thought it'd get this far or have an eighth of
the support it has been shown. this has been
such a fun way to connect and share my
thoughts with people i've come to adore in
individual ways. thank you all for everything.

with love,
tatum.

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