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Ellie always feels slightly off with her hair down.
She doesn’t really know why or how, but she does. She doesn’t even know what the feeling is save for the fact that something feels off . Staring at herself in the mirror whenever she washes the gel and product out of her hair makes her feel uncomfortable, wrong.
It’s the same feeling she gets whenever her clothes fit a little too tight or whenever she used to go dress shopping for homecoming before she dyed her hair.
Looking at dresses always carried something strange with it. Like it was more of a tradition versus something she was doing because she wanted to. She still remembers how happy her mother had looked as she’d tried on some short blue dress for Freshman year homecoming. It sticks with her.
(Freshman year homecoming had been good.
It’s something she tries not to think about, but it doesn’t change the fact that it had been good. It’d been amazing, actually.
Sure, looking at herself in the blue dress made her so uncomfortable she thought she was going to die, but it’d been good in every other possible way.
Kylie had left her alone, too caught up in flirting with some guy to even give her shit for anything. Brucks had apparently gotten sick that week so homecoming was a no go for her.
It was…nice.
She’d felt like she could just relax and be herself for once. Well, mostly herself. She still tugged the blue dress down and covered her mouth a bit too much, but it’d been fine other than that.
And she’d still been friends with Demi at that point. Demi, who’d decided to subtly cosplay David Tenant’s Doctor Who, had stuck by her side all night. She’d bought her drinks and food, talking about the differences between Inspector Spacetime and Doctor Who.
Ellie always found herself entranced by Demi’s voice. Like she could listen to her all day and never get tired of her. That’s obviously changed, but the memory is still nice to think about sometimes.)
In some ways, homecoming that year had been a realization. She’d stopped buying dresses that year, claiming that she never really looked good in skirts anyways and that she’d wanted to wear jeans more.
Joining Cobra Kai and getting a tattoo and learning karate and transforming her wardrobe had all been good for her in a way. She felt more confident, at least. The uncomfortable feeling that had filled her during homecoming was no longer there whenever her hair was up and her leather jacket was on.
It’d been bad in other ways. Fighting with Demi, fighting with her other former friends, never feeling anything other than anger most of the time. Sometimes, high on a win, she would feel euphoria and then numbness or anger afterwards.
She’d also started fighting with her mom. Her mom was concerned that she was never home, that her grades were dropping, that her “best friend" wasn't coming around anymore. That her daughter glared any time she heard her own legal name instead of a nickname.
Standing in front of the mirror, red hair pushed back and wearing a muscle tank top and her red sweatpants, Ellie gets a feeling that the girl she used to be would be scared of her. The old her would go running and find Demi just so she could have a shield in front of her.
Sometimes Ellie wishes she was the kind of person who would extend a hand to her old self. The type of person who would kneel down and help them up and show them everything they could have. Ellie’s never been that kind though, not even when she used to be that girl.
She kind of wants to kick the shit out of the girl she used to be. She kind of wants to show her how cruel the world can be and how tough you have to be to get by. She kind of wants to tell the old her that one day being punched in the face is going to feel just as shitty as it used to, but this time she’ll know how to fight back.
Ellie wishes she was the kind of person to want to hug the old version of herself. Instead, she dreams of the day time travel is invented so she can tell her past self how much she deserved to be treated the way she did.
That’s what happens when you’re unconventional and weird. When you’re cute like a pathetic little dog instead of cute in a way that will get you asked out by an attractive guy.
She should have known, really. Girls like her didn’t get guys, they got pushed into lockers and made fun of online and called smart but never pretty.
She hates how she let herself be treated like that for so long. How much she just sat back and took it without ever saying anything, too scared to be mean or loud or a bitch . And god, sometimes it sucks to get called a bitch, but she will take that over sweet or kind any day of the week.
Truthfully, being seen as a bitch at least makes people look at her and acknowledge her as a force to be reckoned with. She’s so sick of teacher’s pet, popular girl pet, best friend’s pet. She’s so fucking sick of being a pet.
She’s sick of sitting there while people talk at her or like she’s too stupid to know she’s being played, conned into doing something she’ll probably regret.
Teachers always knew she was too much of a suck up to not stay after class and help with papers or organizing a classroom or letting them chat at her about drama in their own lives. Popular girls knew she was too scared to turn down their invitation to sit with them and let them take turns poking fun at her hair that was always just a bit too messy or sweaters that were unstylish. Demi knew that Ellie relied too much on her company to not go along with whatever Demi had decided they were going to do that day.
God, Demi.
Demi’s the worst of that fucking bunch. At least she can tell teachers she’s busy now and snarl at popular girls until they get the message she’s not to be fucked with. Demi just can’t seem to take a fucking hint.
She’s obsessed with trying to get Ellie to come home and come back. To have her magically turn back into the comic-reading, sweater wearing dork that she used to be.
(In truth, some secret, hidden part of her sometimes wishes to be that girl again. It was so, so easy and she didn’t have to cover the part of her that wanted to show emotion. That wanted to be loved and love in return.
There was not a day of her life she did not fight when she was that girl, but she could at least cry about it after a long day.
Now, she just turns to the punching bag.)
Ellie can’t come back though. She can’t be that girl again and she can’t just sit there while she lets Demi protect her from everything. And look, it’s not that she still doesn’t like comics or coding or Doctor Who. She’s just better at hiding it now, better at suppressing the part of her that wants to indulge in the things that interest her. But karate interests her too and so does not being seen as weak.
She can handle herself now and she’s pretty damn good at it too.
She doesn’t need anyone else.
(Though maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
Staring at herself in the mirror, Ellie thinks maybe she doesn’t need anyone but maybe she wants someone. She wants someone to pull her hair back and carefully cut away the red strands until she’s left with something shorter, something that makes her feel more like herself.
Something about the thought of the way Demi used to cut her hair for her when she was too scared to go to the salon makes her tear up sometimes. Silently, she misses that.)
She pulls a strand back from her face, sighing.
There is something so soft about memories of the old her and yet so many of them feel like heartbreak. It’s strange in that way. That the way her and Demi separated always felt so crushing, like someone had slowly crushed her heart between their hands.
It’s like something left a hole in her heart, the space in her chest empty for weeks and weeks after they’d stopped talking. It’d hurt in some weird, uncomfortable way.
She’s always blamed it on how soft her stupid heart is. How even though she tries her best not to, she cares. God knows why she does, but she does.
(She’s always been told she has a big heart. She’s a fucking sympathetic crier and she gets mad when other people get mad. She feels so stupidly malleable, like none of her emotions are ever her own. Or if they are, then they feel so stupidly twisted by rage that she can barely process them.
She would blame Kreese for making her angry like this, but she has a feeling she's always been this way. She's just never let herself be angry like she deserved to.
In truth, she's been victim to anger all her life. In letting that anger eat her up inside and tear her apart until she's nothing but shreds of a person.
Maybe it's why she stuck with Kreese. Maybe it's why she fucked up Brucks's face. Maybe it's why she broke Demi's arm.
Or maybe breaking Demi's arm was something else. A separate incident that showed just how much she'd changed.
Torey had been proud of her, this big grin on his face about it. Ellie could only feel blood on her hands.
She's not proud of that. She never could be. And maybe that is why she doesn't go back to Demi. Because every damn time she has some stupid fucking nightmare about breaking Demi's arm, she can only think of the way Demi would tell her she deserves them.
And she does deserve them is the thing. She wouldn't be angry because she doesn't deserve them.
It's because despite everything, Demi would be right. She'd be so fucking right.
And more than anything — more than Ellie hated being perceived as weak — Ellie hated when Demi would shove how fucking right she was in her face.)
She's so fucking tired of all the karate shit sometimes. Sometimes she imagines going home but not to her house.
Home as in a place that felt like maybe she could relax for once. A place where she wasn't so angry. A place where she didn't yearn for violence just to get by.
She doesn't think she'll ever find it though. Not while she's here anyways.
She doesn't even believe a place like that exists even. If it does, it probably only exists in fantasies or movies with really hopeful endings.
Places like that probably only exist for good people though. Or people who beg for forgiveness and love for their bad actions. Places like that aren't for people like her.
She pulls at a piece of long, red hair and watches as it falls to the stained carpet.
(She hopes to get to a place like that one day anyways, in spite of everything.
She just has to find it first.
And if some stupid part of her brain that still clings to the past thinks she found that place in Demi's stupidly cold bedroom with stupidly nerdy posters on the wall, then that part of her can go fuck itself.)