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konstantyaTitle: I’m Not Yours Anymore, You’re Mine
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: AU, drama, angst, gen.
Characters/pairings: Ellen Graham (Michael/Ellen and implied Raven/Ellen)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,330
Summary: She hates him, she thinks. She hates him for having the decency to disappear from her life, but the cruelty to linger everywhere else. (Or, Ellen and the aftermath of trauma.)
Notes: Follows the same continuity as my other TGFH fics, which is to say: Raven somehow escaped at the end of the film.
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
The weariness hits her in the afternoon, at the station, when she’s coming up on thirty-two hours without any substantial amount of sleep. She made her statements, got questioned to hell and back, and they even managed to get Senator Burnett on the phone to confirm the whole story and congratulate her on the written confession. Ellen wants to say it wasn’t her doing, not really, and three men died besides, but she’s tired, so tired, and feeling so uncharacteristically fragile in that moment, so she merely accepts his gratitude as best she can. She wanted to help her country, and she has, she supposes, though she hardly feels like much of a hero.
Michael notices the shadows under her eyes and the overall brittleness to her being, and pulls some strings to get her freed from custody for the day. He’s apologetic and sympathetic, and personally drives her back to her hotel—the hotel she never actually did get to spend the night in—but not before stopping to buy her a sandwich from a deli and tenderly telling her he loves her.
Raven’s coat stays at the station, as evidence. For all that she was reluctant to take it when he thrust it at her the night before, Ellen suddenly wishes she could wrap it around her once again.
---
At the Wilshire, she brushes out her tangled hair, peels the ruined stockings from her legs, and scrubs a nightmare’s worth of soot and sweat from her person. She eats her sandwich while she soaks her twisted ankle in the tub, and it’s then that the emotions finally catch up with her. She sobs—a great, fervent wave of fear and anger and grief—and collapses on her bed while the sky is still light.
She dreams of monogrammed playing cards and dead cats, of cold eyes and deformed wrists. She dreams of Willard Gates’ bloody corpse on the floor and his chauffeur’s gloved hand over her mouth, and when she bolts awake, gasping, she half-expects Raven to be beside her again, his arms sliding around her in strange support. Worse yet, she half-wants them to be.
The room is now dark, and Ellen stumbles to the bathroom, splashes her face with too much water—as if she could somehow wash away the last forty-eight hours—then goes to the window to stare numbly out at the stars. She ponders a myriad of things into the night: Where has he run off to, now that he’s gotten his revenge? Will she ever see him again? Would she even want to, assuming she had the chance? She doesn’t know the answers, to any of the questions, and the uncertainty is as exhausting as the past two days’ experiences.
She falls asleep again, despite her best efforts. She dreams of tall brick walls and train yards, of fishing poles and white handkerchiefs. She dreams of Raven helping her sit up, but his mouth is closer this time, and when he speaks, his lips are constantly on the verge of brushing against hers. She dreams of him in the condemned building, of him pointing his gun at her and pulling the trigger, and when Ellen wakes for good with the morning sun, she doesn’t feel the slightest bit rested.
---
She calls Michael that evening, takes a cab over to his flat, and is barely in the door before her hands are around his lapels and her mouth is on his. They’ve done this before but not often—Michael keeps saying he wants to do right and make an honest woman out of her—but it’s something she needs now, in a way she maybe never has before, and she nearly weeps with relief when he doesn’t resist. She needs the distraction, the release, the overwhelming sensation, and when he at last moves on top of her, she tugs at his hips, urging him faster.
She’s never been with another man like this, has never wanted to be with another man like this, but finds her thoughts involuntarily turning to Raven. How would he make love, she wonders in the middle of things. Has he ever made love before? Would he hold himself back, being mindful not to hurt her, the way Michael always does? How would he kiss? Hard and demandingly, like the hired killer, or softly and sweetly, like the boy who loved cats? And why does she even care in the first place?
She hates him, Ellen thinks, as she clamps her eyes shut and chases oblivion. She hates him for having the decency to disappear from her life, but the cruelty to linger everywhere else.
---
She and Michael break up a month later, when all the police leads have run dry and after he brings up marriage for the third time since the ordeal.
He’s kind about it, as kind as he can be, and is far more remorseful than rancorous. Ellen cries—she can’t help it—and tries to talk him out of it. She loves him, she does, and they can make it work, she swears—but Michael gently points out that they aren’t making it work, that they haven’t been since her brief stint at Gates’ club, and to insist otherwise would just be fooling themselves. She’s changed, he says, and he could give her more time, but no amount of time, he’s afraid, would be enough. He’s sorry, he is, and he wants her to be happy, but he doubts being a housewife would do it anymore. Ellen is dismayed to realize she agrees.
She goes back to San Francisco and tries to get a job, but the local gossip mill has since gotten wind of her adventure, so rather than asking about her magic skills or her song repertoire, it’s all, Aren’t you the girl who got mixed up in that payroll heist? and, Goodness, how terrible, to have been taken hostage by that hoodlum, and after a half-dozen audition attempts, Ellen wants to scream.
They don’t know, she laments, late at night in her boarding room. They don’t know about chemical formulas or dark, hushed rail cars. They don’t know about abusive aunts or how he saved her life. They don’t know he was reasonable, more of a misguided man than an irredeemable monster. They don’t know anything. No one does.
No one besides Raven, because he was there.
---
She writes to an old friend, Millie Kieslinger, stage name: Millicent Key. Ellen hasn’t seen her in more than two years, not since she left St. Louis for the bright promise of the west coast, and hasn’t contacted the other woman in months—a Christmas card Ellen sent not long after Pearl Harbor, wishing her well and hoping she was all right. The last legitimate letter was in the fall, around Halloween. Millie’s in Chicago now, steaming up the club floors with a dashing Latin dance partner, and Chicago, Ellen thinks, sounds distant enough.
She explains the situation in half-truths and generalities, focusing on her broken heart because it isn’t a lie, not really, not even a little, and Millie quickly responds, all brassy warmth and understanding. She has a couch, she says, that Ellen can crash on for as long as need be, like when they shared an apartment back in their chorus-girl days. She says she can show her around town and help with references. Ellen buys a train ticket within an hour.
And so, she goes east, to Great Lakes and harsh winters and the flurry of a new life. And if she scans the papers for something other than updates about the war, and pauses every time a five dollar bill is in her palm, well, what of it? She tosses her hair over her shoulder, joins in the gloriously thick foot traffic of Michigan Avenue, and tries not to think about dangerous men with tragic pasts, who almost murdered her then fiercely defended her as a friend.
Ellen tries.
-----
A/N: Originally this was just supposed to be a short drabble/ficlet, much like my Black Angel character studies—a little snapshot of Ellen immediately post-film, you know?hence the different style and especially the use of present tense—but then it turned into a legit, in-depth exploration of trauma, oops. (I got to work in a lot of headcanon I’ve had hanging around, though, so I guess that’s nice?) Anyway, in hindsight, it’s really no surprise that she’s so keen to keep Raven around upon their reacquaintance (and is consequently so pissed off when he makes to leave); there are a lot of feelings surrounding him and that time in her life that she never properly sorted out.
In other news, it looks like Millie’s officially of German (or Austrian?) descent. Unfortunately “Kieslinger” is a mouthful and doesn’t look sexy on a marquee, pfft.
Title taken from “I’ve Got You,” the second song Ellen sings in the film (AKA: the dominatrix fishing number).
All other fics can be found here.
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: AU, drama, angst, gen.
Characters/pairings: Ellen Graham (Michael/Ellen and implied Raven/Ellen)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,330
Summary: She hates him, she thinks. She hates him for having the decency to disappear from her life, but the cruelty to linger everywhere else. (Or, Ellen and the aftermath of trauma.)
Notes: Follows the same continuity as my other TGFH fics, which is to say: Raven somehow escaped at the end of the film.
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
- I’m Not Yours Anymore, You’re Mine -
The weariness hits her in the afternoon, at the station, when she’s coming up on thirty-two hours without any substantial amount of sleep. She made her statements, got questioned to hell and back, and they even managed to get Senator Burnett on the phone to confirm the whole story and congratulate her on the written confession. Ellen wants to say it wasn’t her doing, not really, and three men died besides, but she’s tired, so tired, and feeling so uncharacteristically fragile in that moment, so she merely accepts his gratitude as best she can. She wanted to help her country, and she has, she supposes, though she hardly feels like much of a hero.
Michael notices the shadows under her eyes and the overall brittleness to her being, and pulls some strings to get her freed from custody for the day. He’s apologetic and sympathetic, and personally drives her back to her hotel—the hotel she never actually did get to spend the night in—but not before stopping to buy her a sandwich from a deli and tenderly telling her he loves her.
Raven’s coat stays at the station, as evidence. For all that she was reluctant to take it when he thrust it at her the night before, Ellen suddenly wishes she could wrap it around her once again.
At the Wilshire, she brushes out her tangled hair, peels the ruined stockings from her legs, and scrubs a nightmare’s worth of soot and sweat from her person. She eats her sandwich while she soaks her twisted ankle in the tub, and it’s then that the emotions finally catch up with her. She sobs—a great, fervent wave of fear and anger and grief—and collapses on her bed while the sky is still light.
She dreams of monogrammed playing cards and dead cats, of cold eyes and deformed wrists. She dreams of Willard Gates’ bloody corpse on the floor and his chauffeur’s gloved hand over her mouth, and when she bolts awake, gasping, she half-expects Raven to be beside her again, his arms sliding around her in strange support. Worse yet, she half-wants them to be.
The room is now dark, and Ellen stumbles to the bathroom, splashes her face with too much water—as if she could somehow wash away the last forty-eight hours—then goes to the window to stare numbly out at the stars. She ponders a myriad of things into the night: Where has he run off to, now that he’s gotten his revenge? Will she ever see him again? Would she even want to, assuming she had the chance? She doesn’t know the answers, to any of the questions, and the uncertainty is as exhausting as the past two days’ experiences.
She falls asleep again, despite her best efforts. She dreams of tall brick walls and train yards, of fishing poles and white handkerchiefs. She dreams of Raven helping her sit up, but his mouth is closer this time, and when he speaks, his lips are constantly on the verge of brushing against hers. She dreams of him in the condemned building, of him pointing his gun at her and pulling the trigger, and when Ellen wakes for good with the morning sun, she doesn’t feel the slightest bit rested.
She calls Michael that evening, takes a cab over to his flat, and is barely in the door before her hands are around his lapels and her mouth is on his. They’ve done this before but not often—Michael keeps saying he wants to do right and make an honest woman out of her—but it’s something she needs now, in a way she maybe never has before, and she nearly weeps with relief when he doesn’t resist. She needs the distraction, the release, the overwhelming sensation, and when he at last moves on top of her, she tugs at his hips, urging him faster.
She’s never been with another man like this, has never wanted to be with another man like this, but finds her thoughts involuntarily turning to Raven. How would he make love, she wonders in the middle of things. Has he ever made love before? Would he hold himself back, being mindful not to hurt her, the way Michael always does? How would he kiss? Hard and demandingly, like the hired killer, or softly and sweetly, like the boy who loved cats? And why does she even care in the first place?
She hates him, Ellen thinks, as she clamps her eyes shut and chases oblivion. She hates him for having the decency to disappear from her life, but the cruelty to linger everywhere else.
She and Michael break up a month later, when all the police leads have run dry and after he brings up marriage for the third time since the ordeal.
He’s kind about it, as kind as he can be, and is far more remorseful than rancorous. Ellen cries—she can’t help it—and tries to talk him out of it. She loves him, she does, and they can make it work, she swears—but Michael gently points out that they aren’t making it work, that they haven’t been since her brief stint at Gates’ club, and to insist otherwise would just be fooling themselves. She’s changed, he says, and he could give her more time, but no amount of time, he’s afraid, would be enough. He’s sorry, he is, and he wants her to be happy, but he doubts being a housewife would do it anymore. Ellen is dismayed to realize she agrees.
She goes back to San Francisco and tries to get a job, but the local gossip mill has since gotten wind of her adventure, so rather than asking about her magic skills or her song repertoire, it’s all, Aren’t you the girl who got mixed up in that payroll heist? and, Goodness, how terrible, to have been taken hostage by that hoodlum, and after a half-dozen audition attempts, Ellen wants to scream.
They don’t know, she laments, late at night in her boarding room. They don’t know about chemical formulas or dark, hushed rail cars. They don’t know about abusive aunts or how he saved her life. They don’t know he was reasonable, more of a misguided man than an irredeemable monster. They don’t know anything. No one does.
No one besides Raven, because he was there.
She writes to an old friend, Millie Kieslinger, stage name: Millicent Key. Ellen hasn’t seen her in more than two years, not since she left St. Louis for the bright promise of the west coast, and hasn’t contacted the other woman in months—a Christmas card Ellen sent not long after Pearl Harbor, wishing her well and hoping she was all right. The last legitimate letter was in the fall, around Halloween. Millie’s in Chicago now, steaming up the club floors with a dashing Latin dance partner, and Chicago, Ellen thinks, sounds distant enough.
She explains the situation in half-truths and generalities, focusing on her broken heart because it isn’t a lie, not really, not even a little, and Millie quickly responds, all brassy warmth and understanding. She has a couch, she says, that Ellen can crash on for as long as need be, like when they shared an apartment back in their chorus-girl days. She says she can show her around town and help with references. Ellen buys a train ticket within an hour.
And so, she goes east, to Great Lakes and harsh winters and the flurry of a new life. And if she scans the papers for something other than updates about the war, and pauses every time a five dollar bill is in her palm, well, what of it? She tosses her hair over her shoulder, joins in the gloriously thick foot traffic of Michigan Avenue, and tries not to think about dangerous men with tragic pasts, who almost murdered her then fiercely defended her as a friend.
Ellen tries.
-----
A/N: Originally this was just supposed to be a short drabble/ficlet, much like my Black Angel character studies—a little snapshot of Ellen immediately post-film, you know?
In other news, it looks like Millie’s officially of German (or Austrian?) descent. Unfortunately “Kieslinger” is a mouthful and doesn’t look sexy on a marquee, pfft.
Title taken from “I’ve Got You,” the second song Ellen sings in the film (AKA: the dominatrix fishing number).
All other fics can be found here.
