#hinted marymissouri

[magdaclaire]

call me whenever you’d like

a continuation of this, as ellenmissouri is still eating my frontal lobe

There's a lot of reasons to hate the hunter community, all said. So many lives lost that Ellen couldn't count them all if she tried, names she doesn't even remember anymore that have passed through the doors of The Roadhouse since her daddy opened it all that time ago. It's dangerous work, and a callous memory to be lost to, a cause with no great end. It can wear a person right through.

Any reason to hate it, at least the Campbells still let her know when Mary passes away.

The idea of not knowing is something that could have kept her up at night for years, waiting for Mary's one more phone call, waiting to know if she was okay, if she was even alive (she isn't, she isn't, Mary's dead, and Ellen can barely feel her hands), she's glad Mary's brother took care of things. Body already burnt like any hunter, at least Mary got a gravestone. God above, Mary's boys. What'll happen to Mary's boys? Sure enough, Mary's husband- John, Noah, something biblical- would take care of them, raise them how Mary would've, but no one could do anything quite like Mary could.

Even dead, Ellen can't let her be anything less than perfect in her head. A girl made of fireflies. A mother in flames.

Ellen's chest hurts, feels fit to burst, but there's more to be done than just grieve. There always is. She grabs the phone off the hook and twists her fingers in the chord, dialing a number so familiar she doesn't even look at where it's carved into the wall above the phone anymore. Well, that's almost true. Something nervous in her always checks the last two digits, doesn't trust her head more than her eyes however that may be, but she punches it in accurate and accepts the long distance cost.

"Hello Ellen Joleen," Missouri says as soon as she picks up the phone. Ellen smiles for the first time all day. Missouri never checks before she leaps right in.

"Hey Miz," she says, the familiarity smoothing in a little levity despite it all. Despite the occasion. She climbs onto the counter beside the phone jack and leans her head back against the cabinet.

"Hey sweetheart. How you holding up?"

"Not that well, as it happens. I've... got something to tell you," she says, her lips pressed together like an envelope closing up her sentence, the tension across her shoulders enough to make her clench her teeth.

"I- I know, Ellen," Missouri says, and Ellen's eyebrows crease. Oh no, not...

"Oh, Miz." There are times when she hates the lot that Missouri was served in life, even as much as Missouri has told her that she wouldn't rather it go to somebody else. She closes her eyes, bites her lip. Readies herself. She isn't ready.

"She was wearing a nightgown, El- our Mary! A nightgown! And she was trying to protect her baby, El, she didn't have any weapons on her or anything, Mary," Missouri rambles, her voice slowing out to accommodate the pace of her tears. Mary Campbell, known to have at least two guns and two knives besides, holy water coming off of her by the gallon, their Mary, died empty handed. Died protecting her child without anything to protect him with. A demon death nearly a decade after she had gotten out. Ellen catches her temple on the door handle of the cabinet, but strange enough, it doesn't feel like it matters much. And Missouri had to see that.

"Oh honey." Ellen means to say more, but Missouri. But Missouri.

"And there was no one to tell! Couldn't warn her civilian husband, couldn't call you, have you stuck in the same vicious waiting period I always am, just telling people that horrible things are going to happen and never being able to stop what I see. I saw her, Ellen. On that ceiling. On fire. Bleeding." Missouri's voice is thin, reedy, makes Ellen want to hold her fingers between her own, feel Missouri's heartbeat in her palms. Make sure she felt her there too. 

"And you were alone with it. And I never want you to be again, alright? Missouri Rose, you call me if you see something you don't need to bear alone. You shouldn't have had to hold that by yourself, now. I'm here. Lean on me, darlin'," she requests, her face unconsciously tilted up, her socked feet knocking slightly against the wooden base of the counter. They don't have Mary any longer, so much as they even had Mary in the last few years at all. What she knows is that she's going to do whatever she can to make things easier for Missouri. Whatever Missouri will let her.

"And what? Call you every time I see something? Bother you every day with my most innocuous visions of what might happen, even if it's not important? I could waste a lot of your time like that," Missouri says, the purse of her mouth clear as day through the sound of her voice, and Ellen loves knowing someone so well. A few more phone calls from Missouri Moseley certainly wouldn't run amiss around here. 

"If that's what it takes? Missouri, you can call me whenever you'd like. Day, night, in the small gray hours of the morning, doesn't matter much to me. I'm never gonna turn you away, okay? I'll always believe you. You know that, right?" she asks, making her voice a little harsher, rougher, her meanness coming out a little through her nose. It always gets her when they do this. Try to take everything on by themselves. Missouri and Mary used to do it both. Just because she doesn't get active in the hunting scene much anymore since her knee got blown out doesn't mean she can't do the work.

"I- Of course, El. Of course I know that. Believing me doesn't always mean you wanna hear every single vision, though, does it?" There's a sarcastic lilt to her voice, as if Ellen is doing something terribly naive again. She doesn't care. What's naivety in a world like this?

"Maybe I just think you deserve to be heard. To talk about it. I can help, Miz. Let me help," she requests, throwing it out as her last ditch effort into coaxing Missouri into allowing Ellen to help to carry some of the load. Missouri gives her a disapproving tut, only a little bit tinged by her sadness.

"Now, you're not playing fair, Ellen Joleen," she says, sniffling just a bit. What Ellen wouldn't give to hold her. To see her. They've only met in person twice, but Ellen doesn't think there's anything she wouldn't do for this girl. It's the least she deserves.

"Life hasn't been fair to you, Miz. I'm setting out on evening scores," Ellen says, her voice barely more than a whisper, the receiver pressed so hard against her jaw that it'll hurt if she keeps leaving it like this. Her good leg is pulled up on the counter with her, her bum knee left extended so it can get a little rest. There's hair coming out of her ponytail. She's not paying any mind to any of it.

"Eventually, I will see something that hurts you again," Missouri reminds her, her voice harder again. She's building her resolve to argue her way out of this again. Ellen frowns.

"And I won't blame you then, either, sweetheart, what are you worried about? What are you afraid of?"

"All of it, Ellen! I'm afraid of seeing more people die and I'm afraid of telling you about it. I'm afraid that I'll see so much death that one day it will suck every modicum of life out of me, and I'm afraid that one day, you'll notice that it's doing that too. I'm afraid that I will have this, I will have you, and then I won't, El. What if this is what makes you tired of the future? Tired of-"

"Tired of you?" Ellen asks, not wanting to let Missouri work herself to any more of a fit than she was already.

"Tired of me," Missouri confirms, steady and hollow. Scared, but sure.

"And what if I don't, Miz?"

"What if you don't?"

"What if I never get tired of you? What if I want you to share everything that fucks you up? What if I don't want you to be alone? What if I want to be the one that's with you? What if I never want us to stop calling each other and talking? What if I wanna know it all?"

"Then one day, I'll lose you too. You'll die, Ellen. And I'll see it. And I won't be able to stop it."

"So you never want to have me at all? Five, ten, twenty, hell, maybe thirty years of this, of us, we could have that, and you're willing to miss out because you don't wanna lose me? Miz, I'll die either way, baby. You'll die either way. You decide when the grief hits. We've already lost Mary," she says, and the wound is somewhere deep within her that might never heal, but different, maybe, then it wouldn't have been if they had been close in the years before Mary's death. Mary had called her every now and again, of course, but not nearly so often as Missouri has in the last years. There's a metallic sound on the other side of the line.

"You're not pulling any punches today, my dear," Missouri says, and Ellen can hear her pull on a cigarette. Missouri smokes inside often enough Ellen could recognize the sound anywhere. She hits her head back against the cabinet again.

"I'm trying to convince you to let me help take care of you. In what world would this be the battle I chose to begin pulling my punches during, babe?" she asks, wishing a little bit that she had a cigarette of her own, but she's trying not to smoke inside anymore. At least not in the kitchen. Makes the food taste weird.

"I am ill equipped for logic right now, Ellen, dear. Perhaps try again next time." Ellen raises a brow.

"So you will be calling next time then?" she drills in, unable to let it go when she knows that her friend, her Missouri, is hurting. She can't let her keep thinking it's alright that she does it alone.

"Well, I would hate to disappoint, wouldn't I?" Missouri teases, sounding all buttoned back up and presentable, and sharp edged Missouri Rose Moseley, perfect and pressed and nothing less than impressive. Ellen smiles despite it all.

"And so you would. You gonna be okay, sweetheart?" she asks, just one last time. Never can be too sure. Missouri chuckles.

"I always am, dear. I'll call you soon?" she asks. Ellen nods, even if Missouri can't see it.

"I'll pick up."