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It’s almost silent in their little bathroom, just the sound of Ellie’s quiet sniffles and the sharp, soft sound of the scissors in her hair. She tries to focus on that: counting the snips, watching the short bits of reddish strands fall on the tiles under the moonlight from the window. It distracts her enough.
“Ellie-”
“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
She can hear Dina inhale, and she knows she’s shaking her head even though she’s behind her. Her motions with the scissors never get more angry, though. That’s Dina to Ellie- always soft, always so willing to stay kind even when she has every right not to be.
She’s better than her in every way, and Ellie knows it.
Nope, dangerous thought path. She goes back to counting the cuts. One, two, three , and another lock falls in her lap. She brushes it off idly.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” It’s autopilot. Is she okay? She gives it some thought. She doesn’t feel angry or sad. She isn’t in pain, just a simple, floating numbness in her fingers and the faint feeling that her brain is wrapped in layers of cotton.
She doesn’t really feel anything at all.
So yes, she supposes she’s no worse than usual.
“Ellie, I mean it, is everything okay?” Dina lays a hand on one shoulder, rubbing it gently. Ellie reaches up and grabs hold, strokes her thumb over the back of Dina’s hand. She doesn’t respond.
Dina wipes the back of her neck with the towel around her shoulders and comes to sit in front of her, somewhat awkwardly. She’s stolen that hoodie she’s wearing from Ellie, and if it weren’t already big on her to begin with she might have been worried about how Dina was stretching it out. The bottom of her stomach peeks out from the hem, and she rests her hand there when she sits at the edge of the tub, facing Ellie.
“What happened, baby?” Her dark eyes are pleading, reddish from losing sleep, and Ellie can’t keep contact with them for longer than a second at a time. She feels the place behind her own eyes start to sting, and shakes her head to clear the stupid tears she knows are coming.
“I told you. I freaked out and cut it off.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know, it itched.”
Partially, yes, it was that- the feeling of her skin crawling over her body, her own flesh betraying her like the fungus was finally taking over the way it should have five years ago. Her hair had been long enough to brush her shoulders before, and yes, on occasion, it had felt like steel wool against her, mostly when her brain was already deciding to attack and tell her how everything in the world was a danger.
Partially, though… it looked too much like it had back then. Every time she passed a mirror, she would jump at the bloodstained wreck she thought she could still see there. She could feel the weight of the pipe in her hand, feel the sharp throb of a broken nose that wasn’t broken anymore. Seeing that girl in reflections made her scars feel like open wounds again. She had thought that maybe she could fix that, but as usual, she seemed to be pretty bad at fixing anything.
“I could’ve done it for you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t wanna bother you. You need rest, I thought I could handle it.”
Dina sighs, and Ellie’s heart sinks. She knows when she’s disappointed her, and it hurts her as much every time. “It’s not a bother. I like helping you.”
“You don’t have to,” Ellie insists. “Doctor’s orders, you should be resting now.”
“I don’t want to rest if you can’t,” she demands, exasperated. “I’m pregnant, not dying, Ellie.” Bad choice of words- inside Ellie’s head, the most horrific movie starts to play again. Dina falling through the roof, Dina passed out at the theatre, Dina with her face smashed against the floor over and over again, and Abby -
“Ellie, breathe.” Dina is in front of her, and she doesn’t remember how she got there. Warm hands find her own, and then one is laid over her chest. Dina breathes in deeply, and Ellie tries to follow, focusing on the pounding of her heart, the brown of Dina’s eyes, anything but what her mind is trying to pull itself into again.
After a short, terrifying moment, she calms, and her shoulders sink. Dina keeps hold of her hands, pulls one to her lips and kisses her palm as if she doesn’t know what it’s held, what Ellie has done. It’s more forgiveness than she’ll ever deserve, and she lets out the smallest sob.
“Can you talk to me, baby?” Ellie shakes her head, stubbornly holding back tears. Dina stands and tries to pull her into a hug around her belly, and it’s awkward, but it comforts her enough to vow to try. Dina, of all people, deserves the truth from her, in all its ugliness.
“I wanted to cut it because it made me feel bad,” she breathes in a rush. “It itches when I freak out and I didn’t want it touching me anymore.”
“Why couldn’t you just pull it back?” There’s no judgement, just simple confusion.
“Because it reminded me of Seattle.” Her voice shakes slightly, but Dina doesn’t mention it. “The only way it was all out of my face was the way I wore it then, and it made me think about it all the time. It was like a neon fucking reminder.”
Ellie, standing in front of the mirror in the dark with dull silver scissors borrowed from Dina’s sewing kit. Grabbing a hank of red hair and carefully chopping it off, leaving it as short as the top of her ears. Grabbing another handful, and another, and watching her hands start to shake.
It could’ve been soothing- repetitive work tended to be for her- but at some point her mind had started to wander. This one thing, this one small thing, and she couldn’t even do that to take the pressure off Dina. She’d woken her up when she’d dropped the scissors on the tile, and Dina had found her hyperventilating on the bathroom floor, half of her hair gone in choppy bits.
At one point, she’d cut too far up near the back and caught a glimpse of her scalp, and that, inexplicably, had morphed her reflection into the boy from Seattle, bow at his side, looking on, horrified. She dropped the scissors and stumbled back, gasping. The blade shining on the tiles, blood that can’t really be there, and the edges of the room fade out to black and someone is making these gasping, strangled groans-
Dina pulls back slightly, Ellie still holding onto her waist like a lifeline. “I could’ve helped you, El, why didn’t you just ask?”
“It’s not that easy,” she grits out. Nothing in Ellie’s life has ever come from “just asking”- you learn to live for yourself, or you die, and maybe the stakes here aren’t so high, but giving up control still feels like some form of death to her.
A lot of things do, lately. She can’t even seem to stay in control of her own mind, and that is its own small death.
Dina rubs Ellie’s hands before putting her palms on her cheeks and kissing her forehead. “You know you can always ask if you want to, though, right?” Ellie shuts her eyes tightly, tight enough to keep the tears in. “Anything you need. I want to help you, too.”
“Okay,” Ellie mumbles.
Dina’s known her too long to fall for her first answer, though, especially when one of her hands has fallen to the inside of her elbow, scratching a little too rough at the moth that lays there. She moves Ellie’s hand away, threading their fingers together instead, and Ellie fights with herself to not hold on too strongly the way she wants to. Part of her always wants to, to hold Dina as tight as she can and make sure the world can never hurt her again.
“Please, Ellie.” She can’t, though, because Dina doesn’t deserve to have to help her, Ellie should be holding her own, should be helping her instead. God, she’s nearly eight months pregnant and can’t even sleep because of her.
“I promise, I just want to help you.” The first tear rolls down her cheek, and Ellie’s never felt more disgusted with herself.
Dodging the question, she whispers, “I love you. So, so much.”
Dina seems to take it as acceptance, or at least pretends to. She sighs and kisses Ellie gently, on the mouth this time, and pulls away to run her fingers along the short hair at the sides of her head, half-smiling. “I love you, too.”
“How do I look?” Ellie jokes, cocking her head to get another angle.
Dina pulls a face. “Well… it’s not your best, babe.”
“Damn.”
“I think you’d end up with a little bit of a mullet if you’re gonna let it grow out again.” Dina smiles at her, now scratching the back of Ellie’s head where it meets her spine with short nails. It takes all her self-control not to lean into it, and she tilts her head back a little anyways.
“You don’t think I’d rock that, though?” She stands from the stool, shaking her head side to side, enjoying the strange lightness of it. Dina makes a noncommittal noise. Ellie rolls her eyes, pecks her on the cheek and stares into the mirror with some hesitation.
Dina’s done a good job salvaging the mess she’d made- the choppy sections don’t look quite as bad, and she’s evened out the back and sides where she’d cut almost to her skin. She’s never had hair this short before, and it’s odd, but… not too bad. She likes it. It’s the first time she can almost meet her reflection’s eyes.
This, a small part of her brain reminds her, is the result of trusting Dina with things. You get something new out of what’s broken, something that in the right light even shines beautiful. It aches that she can’t do that so often, because if everything in her life could be fixed like this… that’s a life Ellie can see herself living instead of surviving. It’s why they’re here, on a farm outside town with good food and hard work and a baby on the way, a child. Their child. They’re going to have a child, and they’ll be beautiful too, because they came from Dina.
Dina takes her hand and tugs gently, leading the way back to their bedroom in silence. Ellie follows, like she always has.
It’s not an easy sleep, but for the first time in a long while, she feels like she can rest.