tw dubious consent/rape, stops at the ***

Ela wakes up late the next morning to sharp knocking at her door and the sound of Echo's voice pushing under the door into Ela's ears. Sunlight's pulling down through the windows, shining sheen over the sheets, it's the first thing Ela sees when she parts her eyelids.

"Ela, can I come in?" Echo calls through the door. Ela groans in reply, unmotivated to unlock the door, but half of her wants to know what's going on. Why the hell would Echo want to visit Ela? Unless it's to smoke or for sex.

Ela gazes at the door, knowing very well that's probably why he's come. She swallows back her laziness and after a long, drawn-out sigh she pulls herself out of bed and reaches for the doorknob, opening it gently, "What is it?"

"Can I come in?" Echo asks, nudging at the door. Ela pulls it toward herself, allowing Echo entrance to her room. Almost as soon as the door is closed, Echo's lips are on Ela's, pushing her back toward the bed with a swift force. Ela's breath is hitched, taken by his own and she can't process what's happening until they're both on the bed and her shirt is literally being ripped from her body.

"Echo," She warns, pushing him back. Almost immediately, he's pushing her down, though, and she begins to panic, adrenaline surging through her brain as she says again, but louder, "Echo, stop."

He's shoved away, their strength equally matched as he stares back at her, confused. She fixes her hair, staring him intensely right in the eye, "Not right now, what's up? Is that all you want?"

"Please?" Echo groans, pushing her back down, a knee between her thighs. In a deeper voice he asks, "You want this, don't you?"

"I did, I've been feeling off, though." Ela replies, "Not now, I'm-"

Echo pushes his knee in deeper, Ela gasps, squirming away from it, "Echo."

"Please? I promise it'll be quick." Echo tries, pulling her closer. In honesty, it's not that the intimacy feels like a bad idea, but it's a mixture of the night before and the thought of Echo and what Dokkaebi said about him. She doesn't want to fuck people like that, not people who get others high just so they can't say no. It's fucked.

"Echo..." Ela whines, staring him in the eyes. He looks at her right back, eyebrows raised asking, "what?" without the words.

"It'll be so quick, I promise, I just-" Echo pushes Ela back down into the bed, climbing on top of her, "Relax? We've done this before."

Ela stares at Echo, still reluctant, but finally, after a deep sigh, she lowers her eyes and in defeat says, "Fine."

Before she can say or do anything else, Echo's got her laid forward on the bed, tugging off her pants in a fit of arousal and is rubbing his cock with his own saliva. Ela just buries her head into the pillows and tries to relax, her mind stuck on Dominic and Ying and Dokkaebi and everything from the day before. It's not an enjoyable time, but it's also not the worst thing in her life. She figures if she waits it out it'll be alright.

As Echo promised, it's quick and with a zip of his pants, he just leaves. He doesn't even say goodbye, doesn't say thanks, nothing.

***

Ela just lies there, her head still buried face-first in the pillow on the bed. She's feeling a lot of emotions and she isn't sure how to work through them all. First off, she feels numb. Number than anything, she's processing everything that just happened. Echo coming in, taking what he wanted, and leaving and not listening to a single "no" until she just gave in.

Second is dirtiness, not of the sex, but of Echo. Of associating with someone that Dokkaebi specifically said was a shit person and of letting him do that to her and from that dirtiness sprouts guilt. Guilt that she didn't just say no and force him out, guilt that she feels dirty when she, herself, agreed to it in the end.

Ela must lay there for the next hour at the very least, just processing and reprocessing and feeling depressed and then anxious and then guilty. Through each of these emotions, though, at no point does the idea of telling someone come up. That's not what she does, that's not Ela. She doesn't immediately get the word out because she doesn't want people getting under her skin. She doesn't want to be taken advantage of. She's had a few too many people say hurtful things to her, and she's surprised with herself that she even opened up to Dominic as much as she did.

She can figure it out on her own and see how she feels and maybe smoke on it. In fact, that's the first thing she does after that initial hour. She raises her head from the pillow after she'd been staring at the wall for ten minutes straight and pulls herself to her feet, tugging up her jeans. She snags her cigarettes from the bedside table and lights one up, not even bothering to open the window. She just wants to feel something.

She begins crying at some point, tears salty and warm spilling from her eyes, down her cheeks and fall to the floor. She feels so numb, so painfully numb that it hurts. Guilt and hurt and depression just mix inside her, pushing at her heart and swallowing her breaths. She wipes her tears from her eyes, puffing deeply on her cigarette until it hurts. Green clouds her vision, her hair matted in her face as she just replays what happened over and over and over again, until she's obsessive over it and nothing else can replace that feeling and she feels like her lungs are going to collapse and the cigarette is only halfway gone and her head has gone light and-

Bzz... Bzz...

Ela's mentality disappears as soon as she hears her phone buzzing on the bedside table, "Mom" appearing in thin, white lines on the phone screen. She blinks at it, stares for a good ten seconds, before she picks it up and finally presses the green button to accept the call.

"Hello?" Ela asks, trying to keep the emotion vanished from her voice. She hears a long, drawn-out moment of silence before her mom comes in on the other end.

"Ela, Dear, is that you?"

Ela takes a puff of her cigarette, trying to stay as quiet as possible with it, "Yeah, it's me. What's going on? You alright?"

"Zofia told me you aren't coming back." Her mother says shortly, "Why is that? You were doing great in GROM, I'm sure they'll let you back. Your father would be so proud."

Ela cringes hard and immediately takes another puff, her heart sinking at the idea of her father being proud of her. The thing is he wasn't and she knows it. She expresses it as she replies, "Mom, he doesn't fucking care if I'm in his squadron or not because that's the thing is I'm going to keep working myself trying to... trying to prove myself to him. It gets unhealthy after a while. I'm trying to realize that and come to terms with the fact that he's the only reason I'm still in the military. I want time to figure myself out."

She knows damn well her mom won't take that well, so she just takes a long drag of her cigarette as she awaits the reply she'll receive.

"Ela..." She sighs, groans in frustration before she finally says, "You've already had that time. That's what art school was for so you could get through your little creativity phase and get past this. You are not pushing back into that, Ela. You have to have some sort of real job."

"Who said I'm going back to art? Who says I'm not just trying to stabilize myself and find a healthier alternative to all this fucking terrorist work?" Ela says, raising her voice slightly. She's getting upset, though, and she doesn't want to deal with this now. Not even a little bit.

"Stop being so stubborn. What the fuck are you going to do, then, huh? Just leave all of your responsibilities behind, Ela? Are you really going to be like this again?" Her mom asks, yelling now.

"I'm not leaving shit behind, Mom! I'm taking a break, that is it. I am finding my ground, I am talking to people to find a better choice for my future, how hard is that to understand? How hard is it?"

That's when her mom spits out a vial of poison and from her tongue, she crafts the harshest words Ela has heard in a very long time.

"Why can't you be more like your sister?"

And then the phone hangs up and silence fills the room again. Ela stares at the wall. And stares. And stares. She doesn't even react. She feels so many emotions crawling under her skin and she simply crawls back under the covers, finishes her cigarette and decides at exactly noon that day that tomorrow is going to be a better chance for her.

She falls asleep gazing at the wall, the sunlight projecting onto the wall in a thick stream of light, dust and smoke stale in the air. The sounds of boots echoing outside her door, the chatter from across the hall, and the thought of Ying occupying her brain. All thoughts of Ying hating her, of opening up too far to Dominic, of the dirtiness of Echo, and her disappointment to her father and now, her mother; they all just drift away into the darkness of dreamless sleep and for the next sixteen hours, all emotion leaves her.