I do Not have the time to write fic right now, in fact I shouldn't even be online right now because I have so many things to do, so I definitely don't have the time to write the longfic this idea deserves to be but -
I had a random thought and now I'm just obsessed with the idea of an Elinor Lives AU where Ellie finds Bernie when everyone thinks she's dead.
Doesn't really matter why Elinor lives, can be full on AU ignoring any of that ever happened or just turning the same storyline into her just barely surviving or anything in between... But she's alive, she was around for the whole Bernie/Serena debacle and now she sees her mum break after Bernie's disappearance and 'death', and while everyone who knew Bernie is paralyzed by worry then grief, Elinor needs to do something.
Maybe she chats with journalist students in her dorm, or a professor who used to be a war correspondent... She gets some contacts needed to start her research, it's not like she can actually leave the country, she couldn't do that by to her mum and she's to scared anyway, but she ends up playing a literal game of telephone passing information back and forth and asking others to ask others about the missing blonde, and it's hard but she's already failing her semester so she might as well do something worthwhile instead of focusing on exams she'll have to repeat anyway... And she wants to do her damnest to figure out where that woman who her mum loves and who disappeared might have gone, because grieving for someone when there's no body is just 'bloody stupid', and she knows she's been a brat a lot of the time but she just wants her mum back, her mum who's happy and annoyingly curious and always there for her, okay?
And then, when it's time for the funeral (okay, very dramatic daydreaming on my part here, maybe if someone wants to write this into an actual fic you can go less Last Second) she's just found out where Bernie is, and proof that she's alive, and shows up like 'well, let's get this farce over with' 'farce?' 'oh idk maybe that her ex is giving her speech and her other ex is pretending to be her fiancé, or, oh, maybe the fact that you're burying an empty coffin in honour of a woman who isn't even dead?'
Serena gasps. Elinor hadn't seen her, she was just ranting at whoever stood closeby outside of the building while she was looking for her mum, but now Serena's by her side immediately. 'Elinor?? What are you doi- what are you talking about??'
So she tells her. She's alive, in hospital, injured but alive, conscious even, doesn't have a phone but I managed to get the number of a nurse at her station so we can call, if you like... Maybe she has a picture of her too, grainy small image someone else took with a phone camera worse than her own, of Bernie lying there pale in a hospital bed, smiling awkwardly at the camera.
And for the first time in what feels like forever, Elinor sees her mother look happy again.
