How do you feel Elle Douglas would have felt about and reacted to any of the companions that weren’t mentioned during The Ballad?
ooooh, this is a tasty question and interesting to think of! thank you for asking it!!
it was in fact SO tasty, that it got super long and needs to be under a cut
Cait - okay so the thing to remember here is that Elle is... this is more subtext than text in Ballad, but the woman is INCREDIBLY male-centric in her approach to the world. she does not think men are BETTER than women by any means but she definitely is one of those women who is mostly friends with men and wants men's approval and mostly thinks of MEN. there's issues there around her dad and family that cause it but, yeah. MEN are very important to Elle in a way that women kind of just aren't.
therefore, I think Elle's feelings toward Cait could potentially have a LOT to do with her friends' reactions to Cait. especially Preston and Hancock. realistically if those two were to like Cait or feel empathy or pity towards her, Elle could probably get there as well.
hilariously, i think that Danse would potentially REALLY not like Cait, and I think that could actually endear Cait to Elle because of the way she gets very contrarian with him near their end
upon meeting Cait though, for sure Elle would be pretty disgusted by Tommy and the way it feels like he's trying to give this human person away to a stranger. she would find the situation jarring and odd. she would think it was all creepy as fuck and would definitely think the worst of Tommy. at that point I think her do-right instincts would kick in and she'd be like, "girl let us get you away from this"
after that, I kinda feel like Elle would have no idea what to do with Cait, and would maybe have a hard time coming down to any one interpretation of her as a person. Cait's brusqueness would appeal to Elle, since she likes women like that (see her immediate like of Ronnie Shaw), but Cait's slow reveal of herself as an open wound full of hurt and fear and regret could either drive Elle away, or bring her in close. I think that part of it would depend on where Elle is in her own journey. at the beginning of Ballad where Elle is ALSO a gaping wound, this maybe wouldn't work out. nearer to the end when Elle is a bit more together, it could be totally fine.
I'd like to think Elle and Cait could grow to be good friends (remember also that Elle is the straightest woman alive......) but so much depends on timing and other people's input. it's perhaps more likely that she does the bare minimum to help Cait and then mostly forgets about her as she gets sucked back into whatever else is going on
Curie - Curie is actually kind of a fascinating one for Elle if you take the long view. like the reason she DOESN'T meet Curie in the fic is that we would have had to take a LONG detour while she figures out her feelings about robots vs. synths vs. people vs. souls vs. the universe and all of it
so for context, when Elle has her first in-fic encounter with Codsworth, she's vaguely cold towards him, even though she literally had him pre-war. my canon for this is that, having grown up poor, Elle is somewhat uncomfortable with the finer things in life, and almost has this weird pull toward the harder ways of accomplishing things. you can see this in her emphasis on things that are natural vs. unnatural, like her disdain for the artificiality of the institute. Codsworth, to her, is unnatural, not a person. she never wanted Codsworth, NATE wanted a Mr. Handy and Elle indulged him there. now Codsworth floats around Sanctuary as reminder of what she's lost, serving a similar function to a dogtag or a wedding ring that can also make food. she's not huge on robots in general, and definitely not on Codsworth in specific - though to me, he pretty obviously loves her like family.
so then I think that meeting Curie would be more of the same, at least at first. if Curie was never put into that synth body, I think Elle's impression of her would be very utilitarian, kind of "this is a smart tool/thing that can help settlements, let's bring it with us". but I also think that longterm travel with Curie and progressing through affinity could potentially change that attitude for Elle. she's already dead set on the idea that synths are humans, very early on, because of her relationship with Danse, so I think the transplant of Curie into the synth body would wake her up to the fact that the line between "robot" and "thing with a soul" is perhaps not as stark as she thought it was.
spending long enough with "human Curie" would probably have Elle moving further toward an ethos of robots ALSO having souls, or at the very least thinking that they're deserving the basic respect afforded to all persons. and if she got there, she'd probably warm up to Codsworth as a result.
Dogmeat - I have to admit that Dogmeat is not included in the fic for two very specific reasons: one is that i never travel with him in-game because i HATE that sweet and terrible noise he makes when hurt, and two is that I actually didn't own a dog (and HADN'T owned a dog as an adult) when I started writing the fic. my family's beloved "shitty knockoff dogmeat" came into our lives after writing had commenced, if you were wondering. therefore in my games I always set Dogmeat up with armor and a sweet pad in Sanctuary, and leave him to a life of doggy luxury.
Elle wouldn't have a problem with Dogmeat. realistically, if he existed/was around in Ballad, she maybe would let him follow along in addition to other companions. she would also definitely be okay with him staying at a settlement. i don't think she'd be overly attached, since she didn't come from a pet household growing up and because i think she'd be cogent of how fragile a dog is in the wasteland compared to a person.
Strong - Elle is already way more primed to see super mutants as people than she is to see non-synth robots as people. I think that meeting Strong (or Erickson in Far Harbor) would basically just confirm what she already knows - that she SHOULD be conflicted about killing super mutants, at least as much as she is when its raiders or gunners. this is one of the dividing lines between her and the brotherhood early on, so this wouldn't be challenging to her the same way that Curie's essential humanity would be.
all that said, I think she would accept Strong, but I can't imagine her becoming super close to him. I think that like Hancock, Strong holds up a mirror to her prejudices (and her time with the bigot brotherhood) in a way that would probably make her uncomfortable. unlike Hancock, Strong would probably not love her, and therefore wouldn't have a vested interest in soothing that guilt. further, her tepid involvement with the institute would complicate things between them, like it did with literally everything else
Old Longfellow - this comes completely down to how Old Longfellow treats Nick. theoretically she would most likely do Far Harbor with Nick, so if Longfellow was chill with Nick, Elle probably would be chill with Longfellow. if Longfellow were mean or bigoted, Elle would cop an attitude and never let it drop, ever. she could theoretically really grow to love his whole curmudgeonly vibe, as long as she felt the gruffness was pointed in the right direction.
if she got to feeling like Longfellow was a good person, and if she engaged in settlement building/minutemen recruitment on the Island, she'd probably try to put him in charge of something. now, i have no idea if that would be smart of her to do, but she'd do it.
Porter Gage - most likely sniped from a distance.
sorry Porter, you are beloved to me but likely just target practice for Elle. best case scenario he's the raider that she has that exhausted conversation with in Diamond City and just lets him live, because she's tired of her own goddamn posturing at that point.
that said, in some wacky little au where maybe Elle doesn't shoot first, ask questions later with raiders, they actually really might get along. the Overboss in The Raider and The Bear is sort of like a twisted version of Elle Douglas, so it sort of stands to reason that Elle and Gage could potentially make it work in an au where they'd get a chance to meet on their own terms. perhaps even romantically.
if that were the case, I think she could really understand him on the level of coming from poverty and doing something potentially really stupid and definitely harmful to others in order to get out of it (what really, is the difference between raiders and the us army/brotherhood, other than the sheen of respectability?) i also think that down home country boy thing he's got going on would probably remind her of home, in a good way.
there's a universe where a less-good-aligned Elle maybe sees something in Gage similar to what she sees in Hancock - since I'd posit that the romance storyline for both characters is pretty similar
(sorry to Automatron DLC enjoyers, I have not played it and won't guess in regards to the companions there)
