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So, it’s stupid, it really is. Jesse had always had this drum set in his room that he’d used maybe twice total, and she’d always made fun of him for keeping it. He’d just sagely tell her that someday, it would find its place.
God, she hated telling him he was right. He would be so smug if he could see her now.
After Ellie had left, there had been nothing to fucking do. Embroidery let her mind wander too far, she’d lost the farm, and- well, she kind of had fucking nothing anymore. Nothing to do except sit and wallow in it all. That didn’t help her, it didn’t help JJ, it wasn’t healthy and it didn’t feel good.
So, drums it was.
She’d found a man in town who knew how to play. He gave her a few pointers, taught her the basics of reading sheet music for percussion and wrote out a book of practice exercises, and she set to work in her new room- Jesse’s old one.
And, actually? It was pretty good. She liked it. It was the distraction she’d so needed. JJ squeals along with the bass drum and it’s louder, for a minute, than her own blood in her ears.
Dina mourned Ellie in her own way. She couldn’t find it in her heart to forget her, so instead she moved backwards. She visited the spots they’d sneak out to when they were kids, she went to the dances that, once upon a time, she’d drag Ellie along to. She listens to that shitty music that had made Ellie so happy, back when it felt like she knew how to be happy at all.
The music is trashy. It’s loud and foul and pissed-off. Dina’s sure her mother would’ve never approved.
On the day the headphones finally (after two users’ worth of hard use, high falls and being thrown against walls in frustration) break, someone comments to Dina that their kid listens to that garbage too.
Later, Dina finds that the kid is nineteen and has those vicious top-volume vocals down pat. She knows because she overheard it from the top floor window walking by one day.
She knows the kid, actually- his mother had been convinced he’d “broken the electricity” (faulty fuse- he couldn’t have done it, although Dina couldn’t convince his mother of that) and had been punished by having to “help Dina fix it”. He's not a bad kid, just… angry. He’s got nowhere to put it all. Just feels a little too hard with a heart that’s too fierce for a kid.
He’s familiar like that.
The guy with the practice book plays guitar, too. He says he used to be pretty good, back when that mattered.
Someone finds an electric guitar and brings it back to town; a novelty. The musician gets it, naturally, and he gives a little concert at the Tipsy Bison when he’s got it fixed and hooked up. Dina makes sure to compliment him through watery eyes, and he does her the favour of ignoring that detail
“You should drop by some time, let me see if you’ve learned anything,” he grins. “We could get something together.”
She kind of wants to refuse. She doesn’t, and she’s kind of glad for it.
One jam session turns to a habit, and Matt’s great, actually. He doesn’t make fun of her newly eclectic music taste, just smiles and tunes up. She likes playing with others- it’s easier, putting the pieces together.
She always denies his offer to do a show together, though. It feels like too much. She hasn’t done enough for that yet, not enough to show off in public again. Maybe that part of her should be put away again.
That part of her life might be over.
Then she comes to Matt’s one day and Dina has fucking had enough. It’s not his fault, but some days are worse than others, and she’s mad because she’s a mess, her life is in fucking shambles and none of it, fucking none of it is her fault. She deserved none of this, she deserved a happy life and a family and she had that and had it ripped away from her and-
She puts a fucking hole right through Matt’s snare. Rips the batter right under the fucking drumsticks.
“Fuck, Dina.” He inspects it as she’s apologizing profusely, almost in tears out of frustration. Then he looks up. “You know what I bet would be good for you?”
If Ellie’s records are loud and awful, these are even worse. Louder, angrier, driven.
Dina kind of likes it. Everything is a wreck and she’s mad as hell. Why not sound like it?
The kid who broke the electricity is named Robbie, and his mother is fucking insufferable. She “just heard a rumour” that Dina and Matt could play and she was “just hoping” that they could please teach him because he’s been begging for a guitar for forever now, and so in favour of these pleas that are supposedly not demands, she drops Robbie off at Matt’s and leaves him there, right when Dina is supposed to be on drums. He sits on the couch sullenly as Matt leads him through a few beginner’s exercises.
“What kind of music you like, man?” Matt asks, and Robbie scowls hard.
“You won’t know it.” It’s a clear challenge.
Turns out, Matt and Dina both know it.
It’s not at all what Robbie’s mother had planned with this, but they spend the afternoon learning the rules of punk, which is basically that there are none. Robbie actually cracks a smile or two, and they almost get him to sing (almost- Dina swears she nearly had him when she started yelling the lyrics along with Matt).
It feels good. Anger feels so good, and it doesn’t have to be the destructive secondhand wildfire that burned Dina into a new person. It means something, if she wants it to. It’s allowed.
By the time that Robbie starts to sing, he’s already progressing faster on the guitar than either of them had expected. He’s good- not even good for a kid, just good- good enough that Matt steps off mirroring his part and switches to another type of guitar that he tells them is the bass. It’s low and dark and sounds like a threat when Matt hammers down on riffs and hooks. With some loud cheering from Dina and Matt, Robbie sings, and he’s just as good in person as he is through a bedroom window.
Dina’s heart doesn’t ache on Wednesday nights. It’s on fucking fire.
She and Robbie shoot down Matt’s first and second offer at a concert, but by the third she knows he means it. He wouldn’t push so hard if didn’t think they were really good at this.
So, they need things first, before they can make a show. They need a set, they need a plan, and Robbie insists that they’ll also need a name.
Dina guesses she’s in a band now.
“Hey, are you busy in three weeks’ time? That Saturday?” Dina asks suddenly. Robin looks up from his book.
“No, why?”
“I’m, uh…” How is she supposed to say this? There’s still doubt at her edges, worrying away at her.
“I’m doing a show,” she tells him finally, her voice not quite as bold as she’d like. “I’m on the drums. I’d like you to be there.”
Robin’s face breaks into a grin. “Glad to see them finally getting some use.”
Somewhere up there, she just fucking knows Jesse is laughing at her.
Ellie comes back the next Wednesday, a day that should have been normal. Dina is at rehearsal, and then she’s walking back home with her drumsticks in her hand and there’s a fucking ghost in the road.
Dina sees her before she’s supposed to, while Ellie is on the way to her halfway house and a real shower; she’s still covered in dirt and so much dried blood, and Dina can practically fucking count her ribs from here. It’s terrifying, and not in the way Ellie has ever been to her.
She knows Ellie is a killer. It never occurred to her who her real target always was until it was too late to take the knife from her hands.
Ellie stares at her. Dina stares back.
Ellie puts up a hand, opens her mouth-
And Dina turns on her heel and marches the long way home.
She’s not doing this again.
She talks to Ellie on Friday night. They both deserve closure.
It’s hard- maybe the hardest thing she’s ever done. There is screaming and so much crying, and they both say things they regret right after they're out.
Ellie apologizes, though, and means it.
And Dina relents, the barest bit.
They work an arrangement out. Ellie’s going to come over on Thursdays to see JJ for an hour or so. Dina’s going to stay with them the whole time, and neither of them have to say out loud that he’s not going to call her a title she hasn’t earned, but somehow Ellie seems thrilled anyway.
Neither of them cry. They’ve gotten that part over with all in one night, and, like they’re going backwards, now they’re hitting this awkward standoff where neither wants to show too much hurt at once.
A tiny, cruel part of Dina wants to push Ellie until she loses that fight- to make her feel all that aching pain that Dina had been put through.
Both of them know, though, that revenge does nothing but tear you to shreds.
They don’t have much else left that they’re willing to lose for that.
When Ellie scoops Dina’s boy up into her arms from off the kitchen table, where he’d been engrossed in his crayons, she makes a small sound of recognition, pointing at the book Dina had left too close to JJ’s mess.
“Drums?”
Dina’s face turns hot immediately, like it’s something she didn’t want Ellie to know about. “Oh, uh, yeah. Jesse had an old set, remember?- I... wanted something to do, I guess.” To Ellie’s credit, she only winces a tiny bit at his name. JJ picks up on it, though- he’s so smart , Dina thinks- and kicks his feet more insistently, whining. Ellie laughs, quieter than ever, and puts him down, and right away he takes off on unsteady little feet for his stuffies.
“Does this have anything to do with that show next weekend I keep hearing about?”
Somehow, this makes her heat up even more. Does she want Ellie to know?
“Yeah,” she decides. “I sort of ended up in a band. Don’t ask me how- I don’t even think I know.”
Ellie settles into the kitchen chair with an unease she never had before, leaning hard on one knee as she does. “Well, damn. Maybe you’re finally working on that groupie potential you’ve got.”
Before she can think, Dina laughs and smacks Ellie’s arm, and for that one second nothing ever happened. She remembers these nights in the kitchen of their house.
They were beautiful, she remembers.
One second is short, though, and Jesse’s parents’ kitchen fades back in, bringing reality with it. There’s a tugging on her pants leg- JJ, pulling himself up. He hands her a stuffed rabbit with wide, solemn brown eyes, babbles something, and toddles back again, leaving it with her. When Dina turns back to Ellie, she’s smiling fondly at the floor, like she was caught in the same memory.
“Would it be alright if I came?” Ellie asks her, almost whispering.
Would it?
“I understand if you don’t want that.”
Dina had just fucking gotten used to the shifting grounds beneath her, and now they’re moving again.
Ellie always had a way of changing Dina’s world.
“No, come,” Dina tells her firmly. “I’m not going to keep you from it. I’m sure there are people you want to see.”
“Not anymore-” Ellie shrugs towards JJ, who is pushing himself to stand again- “but hey, I… I wouldn’t mind seeing that. You on the drums.”
It gets awkward again, and it stays that way until Ellie leaves.
JJ is with his grandmother, who had stayed home, telling Dina her tinnitus was acting up. Whether that was true or a favour disguised as a white lie, she doesn’t know, but he’s going to be fine. She’s practiced- a lot, probably too much, how much is weird to practice for a concert?- and she has everything with her that she needs. There’s a drum set here, although it’s not Jesse’s- or hers, she supposes, she can probably call it hers by now.
Anyways, things are completely fine. She knows because she’s run through them all at least seven times in the last forty-eight hours. Dina just feels like she’s going to explode.
Things are fine.
They never did pick a name. All of Robbie’s suggestions had been outvoted (Dina wasn’t going to say anything to his face, but “Exit Wound” wasn’t exactly the kind of energy she wanted to bring into the world), and Dina herself had had very little to contribute. Naming her son had been easier than this. Matt had instead promised to come up with something on the fly, and then promised that plenty of the greats changed their names once or twice. It was part of the creative process.
( Ellie is somewhere in that crowd , Dina thinks.)
She spins the drumstick between her fingers.
(She’s going to be watching.)
Can Dina actually do this? She’s not a nervous person, not by a long stretch, but her stomach is starting to hurt. Just like fucking always, Ellie has come back into her life like an atom bomb and changed the composition of the earth underneath her, changed the course of Dina’s life again.
Drumming, music, was certain for Dina- it's been her certainty for months now, and all of it is gone again, because she doesn’t hate Ellie for what she did. She never has, even on nights when it felt real. She’s angry beyond meaning, hurt more than she ever has been in her life, in pain with her and for her and because of her, but there’s no hatred and she’s not sure there ever will be.
When she gets on stage and gets settled on her stool, tucked in the back for a little more privacy, there’s a whirlwind of things she can feel all at once.
Dina looks out into the crowd, and there’s a familiar half-grin leaned up against the bar.
She doesn’t acknowledge it, because she doesn’t need to- she just resolves herself for later.
This stalemate, this thing where they dance around it all like it hurts to touch? It’s fucking stupid. It’s the kind of thing JJ does when he thinks he’s going to get in trouble for getting himself hurt.
It fucking ends tonight.
Matt introduces them and takes name suggestions from the audience: “the Jackson Three” stands out, as does “Guns ‘n’ Fungus”, but he ultimately yells that “we are the Creative Process” before nodding and letting Robbie onto the mic. He’s a natural right away. The few older folk present seem to like it less, but he’s got every kid his age jumping along (damn, Dina feels old saying that).
Maybe there’s a little less indignant rage in it tonight- not gone, not softened, just lessened. Maybe there should be. There will be a jagged edge to her forever, but it’s her choice to keep running her fingers over it like it’s something to be bathed in instead of a new fact of her being.
Passion, though? Dina’s got that in spades, and that’s enough to carry the music through. It’s enough to give her one more taste of weightless freedom, head tossing back and forth, smiling wide when Matt gives her a moment to play off of.
When they were young, Ellie would always shush her right before the middle of a shitty song, telling her to “wait for the drum solo, it’s so good”. It wasn’t- it had sucked ass, frankly- but playing one? Now, that’s something else.
Their set ends. Dina looks up, running a hand through her hair, now tangled and falling, and her eyes meet Ellie’s like she’s drawn by a magnet.
And she’s in awe.
“Hey, that was- fucking amazing,” Ellie tells her, almost breathless. She had hovered a hand over Dina’s shoulder as she was turning to go, before she could leave the building. “I’m headed home, but- man, I just had to say. You’re fucking good at that.”
“Let me walk you.” It’s not as much of a question as an offer- one Dina’s banking on her not to refuse.
Ellie shrugs, and off they go, Dina’s fists clenched hard around her favourite sticks and Ellie’s jacket too loose on her frame.
“How’d you all meet?” Ellie asks, just after it’s been too long to walk in silence.
“Matt offered to teach me drums for something to do, then Robbie’s mom kind of forced us to adopt him,” Dina laughs under her breath.
“Ugh, Betty with the apple tree?”
“Betty.” Dina nods grimly.
Ellie snorts. “Never change, old lady.”
Dina almost waits too long to speak up again. She doesn’t want to ruin what they have going. It would be so much easier not to surrender. They can keep pretending that they don’t need to talk about it again- that it’s over.
But Dina knows that the questions she has will never leave her, and if the questions don’t go away on their own, she’ll never feel like she can put them to rest.
Being angry can be fireworks, or it can be forest fire. Eventually, Dina’s gonna run out of kindling.
“What made you come back?” she asks quietly. She doesn’t make eye contact.
There isn’t a right answer, she supposes. Just a wrong answer for the moment.
Ellie opens and closes her mouth for a second before shaking her head. “I had to.” After a couple seconds, she elaborates.
“I guess I thought about wandering. Exploring for… however long I wanted to. It didn’t feel right, though. Jackson’s a good place, and- there was all this stuff that I kind of just left hanging.”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess-” she coughs- “I mean, I wasn’t sure… I didn’t know if I would be coming back, so I felt at the time like I could drop everything and just go, and then it would be someone else’s problem.”
Someone else’s.
It sure was , Dina thinks. It was mine .
“It was shitty,” Ellie blurts out. “It was so fucking shitty of me, and it was wrong.” Neither of them will look into the other’s eyes, but Dina hears her sniff and knows she’s crying. “I can’t believe I forgot how much good is here.”
Slowly, deliberately, Dina forces herself to ask what she’s wanted to for months. “Why did you forget that when we were right there?”
Ellie takes a short, sharp breath- one Dina’s heard escaping her when she gets hit in the chest. “I don’t know.”
They walk in silence for another minute, and then she picks up as if she’d never left off. “I thought about both of you every single day, you know. I must have thought about turning around fifteen times before I even crossed the California border.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Maybe it’s a little too harsh. She knows it, but not until after she says it.
They’re outside the house Ellie’s living in.
“Because I think I wanted to end it,” Ellie says, very quietly.
Part of Dina wants to scream at her, to cry for that. Does she not know what that would have done to her? Does she think everything would just magically be okay if-
“I wouldn’t have hurt you anymore,” Ellie says, more urgently now. “You would never have to talk me down again. I was never going to scare JJ or fuck up the cooking or anything, and- I wouldn't ever have to think about anything again. All of it. I would never have to feel guilty for being alive.”
Before Dina can even say it, Ellie takes the words right out of her mouth. “That was fucking stupid. I- I don’t know how much I hurt you by doing what I did, but I know it was fucking bad. You don’t have to forgive me, it’s just- I have to say I’m sorry.”
She wants to say that it doesn’t change anything, that that hurt is always going to be there, that Dina isn’t sure she can heal from this no matter what.
What she says is, “Is it over for you?”
Immediately, Ellie stops, looks her in the eyes- green eyes, fucking beautiful as the day they had met- and says, with more stubborn decisiveness than Dina had ever heard, “I want to live.”
“And… Abby?”
“I- It’s over. All of it. It has to be.” Ellie sighs, and Dina has to hold herself back from trying to comfort her the way she might have before. “I had the chance to kill her, and… I don’t think it would have changed anything. I wouldn’t feel better. Just another dead person and another kid left behind.” Her voice trails off at the end.
“I’m working on it,” Ellie tells her. She gestures weakly to the house. “Dr. Gorman’s been helping. Got a long fucking ways to go, and it’s never gonna be like it was before, but… he thinks I could maybe fix some stuff. Could make me feel a lot better.”
“Okay,” Dina says simply. “That’s- that’s good.”
“And I mean it.” Ellie nods, as if trying to tell her how serious she is. “You don’t have to do anything. No pressure. If you want to be mad, do it.” She almost chuckles- “Take it from me, don’t bottle shit up.”
“I am- I am mad,” Dina says slowly.
Fuck, this really isn’t how she thought it would go.
“I’m so fucking mad. But I feel like… mad isn’t… it’s not better.”
Ellie raises her head again, looking at her with a question in her eyes.
“I want to move on,” Dina tells her. “What I said still stands. I’m so fucking pissed at you, and… I don’t know if we… I can’t be with you right now.” Fuck, she’s crying. So many emotions tonight. “I don’t want you gone, though.”
There’s a moment of silence before Ellie lifts her arms.
In all the years they’ve known each other, Ellie almost never initiates a hug.
Dina walks to her, letting her wrap her arms around her. Ellie is way too fucking skinny right now, all bones, but it’s her. It smells like her, feels like her shirt, and she mutters “it’s okay” once and Dina is crying in earnest.
“Would friends be okay?” Ellie asks after a second. “I don't... I’m not sure if I know how to not love you, a little.”
It’s not what Dina wants. She wants them back- but them before didn’t work. There was too much unsaid, like a mansion with rotting foundations. Maybe the past wasn’t the best model to look to.
Ellie loves Dina, though. Dina never really stopped loving Ellie, and this was how it had all started before: as friends.
The pieces are broken, but they’re all still lying there. With enough time and glue, they could maybe make it work. Ellie could get better, and if she’s honest with herself, Dina could too.
“Friends,” she says- then adds, very quietly, “and we’ll see what happens from there.”
Ellie hears her, whether she meant for that or not, and she laughs, the vibrations of it passing through them both. “We’ll see.”
They stand there, crying in the street like overdramatic children, before Dina steps back and waves Ellie goodbye. She starts down the street to her house- Jesse’s house.
The drums got their fucking use, she thinks.
Another thing that Jesse had always said was that he was pretty sure Dina ended up with Ellie in every conceivable universe, like they were fucking soulmates or something cheesy like that. No matter what either of them did, they would work it out, often faster and more effectively than Jesse ever did with Dina. He had been their first supporter- all it had taken was Dina explaining the situation, and he had smiled (a little sadly, sure, but he smiled) and told her that he’d already known. Best friends or lovers, they always stood the strongest chance of moving on together.
Fuck you, Jesse, Dina thinks, grinning. The guy was never wrong.
It takes them two years, but this time, Ellie asks Dina out.
And this time, they fucking last.