Prisoners, then we're free, it's a thin line

Nick looked over at the bathroom door, his heart pounding in his chest. He didn’t know what to expect, or who would be coming to greet him. If it really was Cinder, and not Ella, then how would she respond to everything that happened last night? Would she lash out and get angry? Would she be frustrated that she was still wearing the collar, even after everything that they did together and how many times that she came?

On the other hand, if it was Ella… how was he going to explain everything that Cinder had gone through yesterday?

No matter how Nick looked at it, he was going to have a troubling conversation to get through, and it was only made more complicated by the fact that Dawn was still sleeping on his chest, which kept him from getting up or even getting dressed.

It would be so much easier if he could at least put clothes on, but…

No sense in complaining about it now.

Nick swallowed and raised his eyes to meet the gaze of the girl standing in the doorway. The look on her tired face…

“…Ella?” He asked, hoping that it was her and not Cinder. Maybe that was mean of him to think, but after everything that had happened with Cinder, he couldn’t help himself.

The latina blinked. Her face grew enflamed, and she meekly nodded her head.

“…Yeah,” she confirmed, quietly plodding over to the bed. She leaned over Dani and looked down at him, chewing on her lip. “It’s me…”

At that moment, Dawn rolled off of Nick’s chest and into the empty space on the bed that had previously been occupied by the maid’s body.

Nick realized that if he didn’t move now, he was going to be trapped. So, he sprung up out of bed before Dawn could grab hold of him, just barely avoiding the swing of her arms. Dawn scrunched up her face in her sleep, frustrated, but as bad as Nick felt for her, this was something that he couldn’t avoid.

Ella responded herself. Not expecting Nick to just come shooting up out of bed like that she let out a tiny yelp and staggered back, nearly tripping over Mary’s bed in the process. It was only due to sheer luck that she didn’t land right on the dozing redhead, waking her up prematurely and complicating the entire situation.

They both stared at each other nervously, hearts pounding as they realized the tension in the air. Once everything calmed down, and it was clear that no one was going to wake up, Nick could finally let out the breath he had been holding, get up out of bed, and actually get dressed.

Ella tried to hide her disappointment. But she averted her eyes regardless, knowing that what was happening right now was a little too much, even for her. He deserved his privacy, after all, and she had no interest in violating it.

Well, almost no interest.

Mostly no interest.

…

…Ella was going to be good. After everything that had happened last night, she needed to clear the air.

Nick knew that he probably needed (definitely needed) a bath, or maybe even a shower. But doing things in the order of bath > clothes > talk would take too much time. And it didn’t feel right to go clothes > talk > bath, either, because, well, then he’d be sweating up his clothes.

“Um-!” Ella blurted out, startling him. He turned to look at her, covering himself with a pillow, and she fidgeted awkwardly.

“I… I already… saw it,” she mumbled out, her eyes drifting down towards his crotch for a second before racing back up to his face. Her blush deepened. “You don’t need to, um, cover yourself… like that… I’ll… I’ll try not to peek…”

She was feeling really uncomfortable about this whole thing herself. That was when Nick realized that her hair was a little damp.

Ella glanced behind her, towards the bathroom. “I… drew a bath,” she said, keeping her voice at a low whisper. “If you wanted to… use it, then… …We could talk?”

She had a lot she wanted to talk with Nick about herself. And while she certainly wasn’t going to JOIN him in the bath, she could at least be in the same room as him, couldn’t she?

Yes, there was certainly nothing wrong with that! Ella was determined to see this through properly, and she hoped he felt the same way.

Nick could tell that this whole situation was maybe getting a little out of control. But he wasn’t going to argue with Ella, not if she was putting this much of an effort in. “…Okay,” he agreed, and got a change of clothes out of the closet before rushing over to the bathroom.

The bath was still warm. Ella waited outside until he was fully submerged, then slipped in behind him and closed the door.

Finally, they were alone together, and they could talk without anything getting in the way. Well, anything other than Ella’s pounding heart.

Ella turned her back to Nick while he sank lower in the bathtub, and sat down on the toilet facing away from him. Her face was burning and her heart was trembling but she forced herself to push through, knowing how uncomfortable this had to be for both of them.

“…I already saw it,” she repeated, mumbling to herself. “I don’t, um… remember it so well, because… because it was Cinder who actually saw it, but, well…”

Her body and mind were tricky things.

“…It was one of my first transformations,” she said, “do you remember?” Ella reached towards her wrist out of instinct, only to realize that Cinder must have lost her rubber-band at some point during the evening. She had extras back in her room, but, well, now was hardly the time for that.

Nick realized what she was talking about.

“The one where you share your experiences with Cinder, right?” He asked her quietly.

Ella bit her lip and nodded.

Nick thought back on the text of the transformation, as well as he remembered it, and Ella did the same. They were both embarrassed by what it said for different reasons.

• Passenger Seat: Contrary to popular depictions of DID, Cinder and Ella are not present in their mind at the same time, and do not associate things that happened to the other persona as happening to them. For the purposes of sexual activity, that is no longer the case. Now, whenever Cinder or Ella experience sexual pleasure, the other persona will feel as though they were given the same pleasure, and knowledge of that will carry over the next time they take over. [NOTE: The persona will still not be present in the moment, this will only affect what they remember of the events.] (Switch)

“So, it, um, it’s not like… a perfect memory, but… this last day… I… I felt… a lot,” Ella admitted. She reached up and played with the collar around her neck. It was a fresh memory that burned in her mind, even though it wasn’t really HER memory to own.

“What exactly do you remember?” Nick felt very embarrassed just by asking that question, but he had to know what was bouncing around in Ella’s head. If he had a better idea as to what sort of things she was dealing with, maybe he would be able to figure out how to help her with them.

A small smile touched Ella’s lips. It was a kind gesture, on his part, and she appreciated it, she really did, but…

Things weren’t so easy, unfortunately.

“I remember… more than you might think,” she told him, keeping her eyes focused on the gold tiles flooring the bathroom. “My collar, I… I know what it’s there for.”

“Really?” Nick raised his eyebrows. Explaining the context behind that had been something he’d been dreading, because he knew how tricky of a topic it was. “You do?”

Ella meekly nodded. “It’s the same thing with challenges and stuff… remember? Dakota… she said it… that any memories I have about rules and stuff, they’re shared with Cinder… so she doesn’t have to explain the same thing twice. Echo did that, but for… for the collar, so… I know everything about it, and how it works.”

“Ella… Cinder really didn’t want you to have to deal with that,” Nick said softly. “She tried really hard to get it off of her and keep it from affecting you, but-”

“No, I know,” Ella softly interrupted him. She shook her head. “She didn’t need to go that far, though… after all… it’s not like… it’s not like I’m actually going to be affected by it… or anything like that… you know?”

She turned her head and looked at him. Nick froze in the water, stunned that Ella would take that sort of initiative on her own.

“…I already, um… I know… the rules, and… it’s only going to trigger if I break them,” she pointed out. Softly, she shook her head. “I just… won’t do that, then. Right?”

Ella smiled a tiny smile, as if it was really that simple. Nick was proud of her for being so brave, but he still felt uncertain.

“You don’t need to force yourself,” he assured her.

“I’m not.” Ella shook her head adamantly. Wait… putting spicy food in Nick’s dishes, that didn’t count as breaking the rules, right? Certainly not! No, Ella had been very good about making sure not to violate any of those rules!

“…I’ll be fine,” she said again, giving Nick a swift nod.

Nick decided he could trust her that much, at least.

Especially when Ella quickly spun her head around, incredibly conscious of the fact that Nick was still sitting in the water in front of her, stark naked. She wasn’t quite ready to have THAT sort of conversation with him yet, no thank you!

“…Cinder, she… she really felt a lot of pleasure yesterday, didn’t she?” Ella looked down at her clothes. “To tell you the truth, um… I-I’m not… I’m not, uh…”

Her heart wavered and her voice refused to speak the embarrassing fact that was surging through her body right now.

The truth of the matter was that Ella wasn’t wearing any panties. The ones Cinder had on last night? Yeah, those were ruined. Her fluids had soaked them through so thoroughly that when Ella woke up this morning, she’d taken one look at them and almost gagged. They were sticky, stained, and somehow starchy, all at the same time.

She had too much dignity to wear something like that- she could barely put on the maid costume she was wearing now!

So, no, Ella wasn’t going to tell Nick that part. Saying “Actually, I’m not wearing any underwear right now, tee-hee!” was the sort of embarrassing self-humiliation that she would rather avoid, and it would just be distracting.

Ella would prefer not to distract from the matter at hand with stories about her own embarrassment, thank you very much.

There were plenty of other things that she could be embarrassed by at the moment, after all.

Ella took a slow, deep breath, exhaled, and tried again. “…To tell you the truth, Nick… she was feeling sexual pleasure through most of last night. So… I have a good idea of everything that happened, even though I wasn’t actually there.”

Nick replayed the sequence of events from the last night over in his head, and all the things that he had done with Cinder and Dani and Dawn.

…

Yeah, he believed that.

“…I’m not sure if I should apologize or not,” he said, only half-serious. But if Ella was agitated, then he could easily switch to being completely serious about everything, if that was what she wanted from him right now.

Luckily, it wasn’t.

“No, that’s not necessary!” Ella sat up straight like a jolt of electricity had just run down her spine. “Really, it’s not!” She assured him. “I… I just, um…”

It was hard for her to admit how much she’d liked those sensations, playing them back in her brain. She hadn’t been consciously present when Cinder was doing all of those things with Nick, but her body and mind could remember them, and they felt good.

Maybe better than they should have.

“…Do you regret what we did together?” She asked him quietly.

Nick stared at Ella’s fidgeting back, not sure how to answer that question.

“…No,” he finally said, coming to the honest truth of the matter. “I don’t. I really… I sincerely did enjoy myself… so long as you enjoyed it, too,” he said. “…And, I mean, Cinder, of course, Cinder too… if Cinder enjoyed it…”

“Cinder and I are the same person,” Ella quietly corrected him. “I know what you said last night, and I understand why you said it, but…”

It was complicated. Ella’s heart was split in half over the difficulty of her present situation. In her mind, she and Cinder were different people. But the fact was, they were still the same person. And while it may have been better to treat herself as one person with two separate sides, that was difficult to do when part of her was just so much different from how she always was.

She knew that Nick didn’t mean anything by his statements, but that didn’t make them any easier for her to live with.

“Nick… I… I’m glad that you can accept Cinder as a part of me, I really am,” Ella confessed. “At the same time… I don’t know if Cinder can ever accept that… or if I can…”

Her hand drifted back up to her neck, and she gingerly rubbed her fingers against her collar, thinking about the situation she found herself in.

It wasn’t an easy thing to do.

“Nick, I… I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “Being with you like that… it felt so amazing, but I could also feel Cinder’s frustration and agitation through it. I don’t know what she wants… which means… I don’t entirely know what I want, either.”

That was the part that hurt the most for her.

In Ella’s heart, she would have liked to establish a serious, mutual relationship with Nick, because she cared about him. Maybe she was even in love with him. Or maybe it was just an infatuation. She honestly didn’t know for sure… but what she DID know was that her relationship with him was serious. It was tangible, and real, and she valued it.

Maybe it was the wrong thing for her to do, or maybe it was what she needed to move past her present existence and become someone capable of functioning in the world.

Those were questions that Ella wasn’t prepared enough to answer about herself yet, and a part of her feared that she never would be.

Which was why all she could do was brace herself for a negative outcome, and try to avoid those outcomes as best she could.

Whether or not that was possible, well…

Cinder wasn’t exactly making it easier for her.

“…I… I want… I want more than just… what we did last night,” Ella admitted. “But I also don’t want to damage my relationship with Cinder. This might sound strange, but… we’re almost at a good place right now, I feel. Does-does that make any sense to you? At all?” She asked, her voice aching for understanding.

Nick nodded slowly, sort of seeing where she was coming from.

“Yeah, I… I think it does,” he agreed. “But Ella, there’s something I need to tell you about, too.”

“Eh? Something to tell me?” Ella swung her head around and looked at Nick in surprise, only to remember that he was naked and they were alone. She let out a tiny squeak and quickly turned back around, embarrassed.

Nick almost laughed. Except he had something important to discuss, something serious, and he couldn’t let himself be rattled.

“While you were taking a bath this morning,” he said, realizing awkwardly that he was using the same bathwater that Ella had been using, “Echo came to see me.”

Ella audibly gulped. “She-she did?”

Squirming, Ella chewed on her lip.

“…What did she want?” She asked.

Primarily, she’d wanted to rattle him. But that wasn’t actually an answer to the question.

“She gave me a task to accomplish today,” Nick told her. “In order to satisfy the audience.”

He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

“I think… she wants us to have sex tonight,” he confessed.

Ella gulped. “Sh-she did?! Did she say that?!”

“Not-not explicitly,” Nick stammered, shaking his head, “but it was pretty clear that’s what she wanted. Specifically, I’m supposed to, um… ‘comfort’ you today, so you’re more comfortable with having sex with me… you and Cinder both.”

“…I see…”

Ella was quiet for a long time after that. Nick stewed in the cooling bath, which his blush was doing a good job of maintaining the temperature of, and he found himself stuck in a difficult position at the moment.

“…Would you… want that?” Ella asked, turning to look at him.

Her face was scarlet, but her eyes were curious and expectant.

Nick didn’t really know what to say.

“…I do like you, Ella,” he admitted. “But for me, it’s all about you. What you’re comfortable with. That’s the whole point of this task, I think.”

It was obviously the case. But he didn’t want to pressure Ella too hard.

“…I’m open to it,” she confessed. “You, um, ‘comforting’ me. But, that doesn’t mean, um, that I’m willing to have sex, just…”

Ella was willing to be comforted.

That was about all she could admit to, at this point.

Even if she wanted a little bit more.

Hypothetically.

“…You did a lot with Cinder,” she pointed out. “And you were very considerate of her- and my- feelings… so… thank you.”

Summoning her courage, Ella stood up and turned fully to face Nick, looking directly at him.

Before Nick could respond, she walked over to the side of the bathtub and crouched down beside him, not taking her eyes off of him.

“You and Cinder did a lot of stuff together,” she said, puffing out her cheeks. Her voice had a note of jealousy in it. “Not really fair.”

Nick swallowed, feeling self-conscious now that she was right next to him. “W-well, that was just, uh… you know…”

“I want my share,” Ella insisted, even though her chest was pounding with embarrassment. She leaned forward, and before Nick could stop her, planted a kiss right on his lips.

Nick gasped, and Ella immediately dove her tongue down his throat, startling him.

“Mmmff!” Ella moaned into his mouth. Passion surged through her body and her legs trembled with delight. She kept making out with him even through the pleasure, and relished in it.

*CLICK*

Her collar snapped right off and fell with a clank onto the bathroom floor, startling them both. Ella jerked away from him, her eyes wide, and they stared at each other for a few seconds while processing what had just happened.

Then they both broke out into an awkward laugh that they shared, amused at the circumstances. It was pretty damn ironic.