˗ˏˋ ⌞ B R O O K L Y N ⌝ ˎˊ˗ @brooklynsbookworm - Tumblr Blog

Apr 20

500 ᴍɪʟᴇꜱ

…ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪ ᴀᴍ ɢᴏɴᴇ…

You joined Ellie in pursuit of the bastards who mutilated Joel, gunning down half of Seattle to find the one woman who orchestrated the entire thing, and bring her to justice. It proves a lot more damning than you both thought it would be, and it’s going to cost even more blood than you expected to spill.

Ellie x Fem!Reader

cw: Angst angst angsty angst, someone give both of ya’ll a hug. Sorry for any mistakes, I’ve been working on this forthe last 6 hours my eyes are TIRED.

Don’t steal, please!

8.6k words

The room is watching you, waiting with its breathing floorboards and smiling–grinning–with its crumbling foundation at your pain, and you know that.

It's empty and decrepit and smells of something inexplicably sour, but you aren’t here for comfort, and it knows that. This damn hallowed husk of stone feels more alive than you do.

You stare at the wall, unmoving and unblinking, your revolver strewn over your raised knee while your fingers loosely curl over the grip, and you listen to the rain fall diagonally against the boarded windows. The mold slithering up the concrete, not unlike a tendril of ivy, peeks from beneath flaying floral patterns to pulse and quiver at you amongst stagnant air, though your flashlight has since begun to dim. You damaged the glass when you dropped it.

You don’t know how long you’ve been here, aren't sure whether it’s been days or minutes or hours, hiding, shivering like an abandoned stray on corroding softwood floors.

Your other hand is in your lap, resting atop the leg folded underneath you, but that is of unimportant detail, because it is empty. It lies there limp, facing towards the ceiling, half-curled and meek, as if waiting for something to grace the dip of its palm; a leaking solution, perhaps, but rainwater it is given because nothing is ever that easy. Not that you thought anything about this little crusade of yours would be simple.

Even if Joel Miller wasn’t the most outwardly affectionate toward others, the man always made sure to offer an open ear, a helping hand, or whatever else he could in classic, Texan altruism. And you noticed how he would hover around Ellie at a distance, reluctant, adhering to her wordless need for space but also never too far away. It was no secret how much he cared for her, and it is also no secret how fucking unfair life could be, because there was this singeing smell—assaulting and metallic and densely warm—that hit you before you even passed through the door.

The sight of his body, mangled and glistening under an ample amount of his own drying blood, would be etched into the back of your eyelids for days to come. It was a terrible thing, purposeful, evil, and the following sight of Ellie lying in a small bit of her own, facing him, was even worse.

For the first few days, she refused to come out of the garage, and the day she was ready to open the door for you, her haggard state was made plainly obvious.

Eating was optional, sleep was elusive, and showering was completely disregarded, and you could see everything, once hidden within the roundness of her face, had come to light in the shadows of her sunken cheeks. The regret and anger and every other emotion she could feel settled at the bridge of her nose all at once. She was swaying on her feet, pale and heavy, even her freckles seemed to have dulled, and your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth. A wedge of bitterness had furrowed the space between your eyebrows, and the same searing pain, separate from everything else, twitched in the corner of Ellie’s frown. Everything was so unfair.

She didn’t utter a word, barely looked in your direction, but you knew without them that she was grateful for you being there, and it took her a week to finally speak again.

Her voice was so small, so broken, when she parted her lips to ask if you could spend the night quietly, you almost didn’t recognize it as hers. Ellie, who always sounded so witty and strong and just the right amount of awkward, was cracking along the edges of her letters, husky and watery in the way of someone barely hanging on to their last thread of sanity. However, the next morning was different.

“I’m going after them,” she had said, nodding her head. “I…I need to. I'm not going to ask you to come with me,” she continued, “I’m just telling you what I want to do, so...”

She had this tautness slotted between the gaps of her grinding teeth, her usual tough exterior slipping back into place along the stiff line of her shoulders, in stark contrast to the raw emotion you rarely got to see. You could sense it; she had hardened throughout the night, thrown something vulnerable under lock and key and steel chain, and desperately squeezed her hands around the bleeding wound in her chest where Joel had been to provide some haphazard form of self-healing.

You stood in front of her, the coffee table stretching the blanket of silence between you even wider, and drew in a deep breath, toying with the lint inside your pockets while you observed her, watching as her eyes darted from the floor to your face and back to the floor. You knew she was angry, hurting, resigned to her simmering need for vengeance, and you didn’t blame her for it. You had only hoped that what she wanted to do was something that would truly help her cope, because once Ellie had her mind set, there was little anyone could do to change it.

“Are you going by yourself?”

Ellie nodded. “With, um, with Tommy.”

“Then,” you took a few steps forward, and Ellie’s eyes followed your movement, grabbing your hand and swiping her thumb over your knuckles almost instinctively, like she needed to be physically touching you in that moment without her realizing it, “I’m going with you. You go, I go, remember?”

A crack of thunder begins quietly, rumbling through the clouds, low, not unlike a lion’s guttural purr, and it grows and grows until you can feel it grumble beneath the soles of your feet. Your mind snaps back into the present, and you blink, finding yourself back inside this damn building.

Something in the ceiling pops, a loose tile possibly, and it almost feels mocking; a little snort provided by crumbling infrastructure because you dared to reminisce as if saying, “Why bother? You’re dead anyway.” You startle a little at the sound.

…The bite burns.

Unbearably so, beneath your long-sleeved shirt, and no amount of waiting combats this insufferable sensation, but at least it’s stopped bleeding, you suppose.

You pull your sleeve back and stare at the bandage for a moment, shoddy and hastily wrapped in a panic. Your eyes observe your blood and how it’s now seeped into the gauze, soaking it an amaranth pink before pulling that back too.

Your skin is red, raw, and the small indents made by rotten teeth and gnashing jaw feel uncomfortable and dirty. There's a prickling, this scorching unfamiliarity squirming above your bones and making your arm itch, but you don’t scratch because you know you won’t be satisfied until you’ve peeled this gross flesh clean off. You fucking hate stalkers.

But, despite everything going through your mind right now, the only thing you can truly focus on is that you can’t hide here forever. It had taken some convincing on your part to momentarily split up, leaving Ellie at the theatre while you searched the surrounding buildings for supplies, at least, that was the lie you gave her. In truth, you just needed some time to think.

You would have hoped for an older death, dying peacefully in your sleep like that woman at the end of that old, old movie Ellie practically begged you to watch, if only to share the frustration about her dropping that millions-of-dollars-worth necklace off the boat.

“She could have, at least, given it to her granddaughter! What was the point of keeping it for all those years just to do that shit?”

Never mind that Tommy left before the both of you. You’ll never get to hear her complain about stupid, old movies ever again, never get to patrol with Dina and make fun of how Jessie is going to come crawling back a day after they break up for the umpteenth time, and never see home again. It takes two days to turn after you’re bitten.

You won’t be making it back.

A laugh is coming, you realize–bitter and sullen and hidden behind your liver. It burns on its way up past your lungs and sears the back of your tongue, and then you’re giggling. It starts small, quiet, not unlike this annoying rhythmic drip drop drip of rainwater leaking through a hole in the ceiling you can’t seem to fucking find, until it flares louder within the vibration of your shoulders.

It’s spiteful, this laugh of yours. You cover your mouth with your hand, your snicker half veiled behind the cup of your sweaty palm, but your chortles don’t stop; in fact, they tickle you even more. You snort, taking in a pathetic inhale, and this sound, a whiny, perturbed mess of a thing, weaves through the gaps of your teeth and gurgles out more laughter, and it hurts. This is it.

You’re going to die, who knows how many miles away from home.

100? 200?

Maybe more than 500, who’s to say?

A tear slips from the corner of your eye, but you hurriedly wipe it away before it can salt along your cheek, your empty stare hardening into a glower strong enough to put a hole through the roof, and then you’re becoming angry. It simmers in your stomach, slow yet consuming, warming the expanse of your back and fanning the shells of your ears and knitting your eyebrows together. It continues to spread until your giggles begin to dip, and then they’re gone.

“Fuck,” you gasp and double over, gripping a handful of your hair with a tight fist, “fuck, fuck!”

Why is it today?

What do you do?

Where the fuck is that dripping sound coming from!?

Your arm gives a twitch, and it’s only then that you remember the gun in your other hand. Its weight, heavy and molded into your palm since you were thirteen, is suddenly foreign to you as the cylinder rests against your temple, your head seeking asylum within the barricade of your raised arms.

Your gun. Right..

Should you just...do it now?

It would be easy, you think, moving to tap the barrel of your revolver to your bottom lip over and over as if to replace a contemplative index finger. The aluminum is cold, icy, and a crisp contrast in how this damned infection spreads within your blood and sets your skin aflame; it makes you wonder if you’ll even feel the bullet amidst your own body heat.

You almost wish you had a flower in front of you, plucking off petals one by one to decide whether or not to shoot yourself in the head with the childhood naivety of leaving your crush’s feelings down to the last sepal. The simplicity might make this a bit easier.

Should you kill yourself? Should you not? So many options to choose from!

A subtle click of the cylinder moving a fraction of an inch as you press the gun against your temple sends a chill down your spine, and it cements that this is real. You take a sharp inhale.

You point the gun to the ceiling.

You put the gun to your temple, releasing a long exhale.

Then, you point the gun to the ceiling.

Your trigger finger dances, swaying back and forth from a half step up to a half step down, curling and uncurling from the trigger guard as if it's forgotten the next step of the routine.

“No,” you drop the gun, wincing at the sound of it plonking onto the hardwood a little too harshly, “no, no, this isn’t right...”

It’s unfair, you realize, cheap to do it without Ellie knowing, without knowing why you have to do it. She thinks you’re on a supply run; she thinks you’ll come back. You always come back.

You have to tell her.

“Get up,” you murmur, but your limbs only remain still as if cemented under wood, embedded in a layer of concrete beneath the boards like the spiraling roots of a tree, “get up.” But, you don’t. “Getupgetupgetup.”

Maybe you’ve already turned, simply replaying the last few moments of your humanity as you sat there battling yourself. Maybe the infection siphoned you down to your last drop of consciousness and left you there rotting away–a looping memory unseen through convulsing extremities and sharp snaps of the jaw looking for their next victim to infect.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Maybe you’re running out of time. No, not maybe.

You are.

You’re running out of time, and you’re sitting here pitying yourself?

Get up.

GET UP!

“No,” you grunt, releasing your hair to smack yourself on the cheek, and promptly shake off the sting. It makes you blink, distracting you from the pain beginning to numb on your arm for a moment, and you’re thankful for it. “No, fuck this.”

There’s no use. You got bit, and you’re going to die by either your own bullet or someone else's after finding you forgotten to waste among the silken curtains and disintegrating playbills of that damn theatre. Being hysterical isn’t going to help you. Nothing can help you now, and you have to get up. You have to go back.

To say goodbye.

And it doesn’t take long to find her once you get back an hour later. You have a feeling about where she is the moment you hear muffled radio static swimming down the hallway, and you follow.

Ellie’s back leans against a desk drawer, and she looms over the map on the floor, a piece of auburn hair falling into her eye as she skims over drawn arrows and messy circles. There are polaroids scattered in front of her, some covered in red X’s to showcase their brutal demise, and some left alone. It’s most likely in consideration of you, since you’re sure all of those faces are burned into Ellie’s psyche. The one in her fingers is tossed onto the map, a quiet curse slipping from her mouth when the radio temporarily loses signal.

You linger, your sleeve you’ve long since pulled back down, brushing the door frame as you peek through the crack in the ajar door to just…watch her for a few moments.

Her jean pullover is thrown onto the desk, momentarily abandoned, and it leaves her in this black t-shirt that clings to her lean frame. Her tattoo, a detailed moth perched on a branch of leaves, catches the light, and the design glistens under a thin sheen of sweat beneath the warm bulb while she gives the radio a rough knock to the side.

She had asked for your help before she had it done, poking your side and groaning about how she couldn't finish the sketch on her own. You knew she was lying, but you decided to throw something out there anyway.

"I don't know," you had rolled your eyes and pushed her arm away from you with a chuckle, "a bunch of leaves or something?"

You also notice the raised scar beneath the ink, the healed lesion Ellie had once tried to tell you the truth behind, but you believed it to be, “absolute horseshit”, and it glares at you, smug, because you found it out to be true.

It was something else watching your girlfriend breathe in spores, unbothered, as if it were second nature. Her shattered mask had fallen to the floor, her hands hurriedly grabbing onto your wrists to stop you from covering her nose in panic before she used the leverage to push you against the wall.

“I’m immune! I’m not coughing, do you see?”

So much happens after that, and the moments don’t come to you clearly. Images flash through your skull in blurry, adrenaline-induced smudges until they come to an abrupt stop at one, and your lips press into a line.

Ellie’s voice, a low, “there we go,” after the person speaking on the radio crackles back to life has you pushing open the door, slightly wincing at the creak its hinges provide. She looks up, the frustration woven into her frown leveling at the sight of you, and she offers a small smile, stretching the small wound cutting the width of her chin.

“Hey,” she says, and it’s only a word.

A word you’ve heard her give you many, many times–sometimes when she’s in too much of a hurry, it comes with a quick peck. Sometimes she would say it when you found yourself waking up to her staring at you, the shining sun kissing her freckled cheeks, and green eyes sparkling with affection and this quiet vulnerability only available to you. It’s only a word, but it sends a wave of emotion down your spine anyway.

Because you know that you won’t get to hear it anymore, and this time is fleeting.

‘Tell her.’

You nod, crossing your arms, and your nose scrunches when the covered bite presses against your middle, heavy in all the ways of a secret you’re about to tell.

“Hi. What’s,” your eyes drift to the map on the floor, and you gesture to it with your chin, avidly avoiding having to look your girlfriend in the face just yet, “what’s next? Where do we go from here?”

‘...'We', huh?’

“Well,” Ellie sighs, glancing down at the map, “I’m going on a guess here since these assholes encode everything, but,” she points to a word in the middle of a pair of lines, one red and the other blue, stretching her torso to reach across the map, “I think this is where Tommy might be.”

You step closer into the room to crouch and squint at the letters printed above Ellie’s index finger, offhandedly noticing that her nails are starting to get a little longer than she’ll usually allow.

“Hillcrest,” you read, “okay,” then you fall silent.

You can’t find anything else to say, and what you need to get out is choking you, knotting at the base of your throat and making your mouth dry. You try to swallow, and it goes down agonizingly slowly. The map in front of you begins to blur, neighborhoods and street names blending into an unintelligible blob of faded brown when your eyes lose focus, and you hear a stuttering, erratic thump in your ears that falls in sync with your heart. Your bottom lip slots between the ends of your teeth.

‘Fucking tell her! Now!’

The voice in your head doesn’t sound like you anymore, and it growls out curses, animalistic and violent. Your teeth pull at a loose piece of skin, and you feel it lift, and maybe it is your voice.

‘Tell her, tell her now! Tellhertellhertellher-’

It pulls and pulls and pulls, and you’re sure it’ll never stop pulling until your entire lip comes off–why doesn’t this hurt?

‘FUCKING SAY IT!’

But it does come off, and when it does, there’s this brief taste of copper, red, and iron-based that dots the roof of your mouth, and you swallow the piece of torn skin. It doesn’t taste of anything. Why infected find the taste of skin so appealing when it has no real flavor, you wonder.

“...Ellie,” you whisper, and her eyes retrace along their shaking trail the moment her name leaves your wobbling lips, but you don’t notice because you refuse to look at her. Still.

She picks up on this.

Ellie notices how uncomfortable you seem to be, your upper body coiled into yourself like a spring bent out of shape, and her brows scrunch at the blood beading from the corner of your mouth. She wants to ask what’s got you so nervous, wants to ask what’s making your nails claw into your biceps through the material of your shirt, so she does.

“What’s up?”

And her eyes study you, because maybe you’re backing out of this, having second thoughts. She wouldn’t blame you.

Joel’s death had shaken Jackson, and the gaping hole left by his murder, clawed to the center with jagged nails, was noticeable to a lot of the community. Even to Buckley, the old boy whining when his wrapped body had been brought back to town. Though none was more inconsolable than Ellie.

She didn’t utter a word, didn’t move, and you didn’t make her. You simply sat beside her and rubbed circles into her back as she blankly stared at her socks, hoping it brought her some comfort, if only slight, and Ellie couldn’t begin to word how grateful she was for it.

Her room, devoid of the light and warmth there had once been, seemed to grow smaller and smaller over the sound of her muffled sniffles as she gripped the back of your sweater, her knuckles turning white with such visceral desperation because everything was so raw and open. You had no choice but to hold her back until you both fell asleep that way, and she welcomed it.

It was unfair, so fucking unfair, because Ellie had just made her peace, just attempted to patch things up with the only father figure she’s ever had, and he was stolen from her. He was stolen in no less than two days after Ellie grew tired of the wasted years of awkward conversations and lingering survivor’s guilt by some random group of assholes out for old blood, and they made sure she watched.

But they made a mistake, a fatal mistake that’s going to cost them.

They let her live.

It took a lot to get where you are now, and neither of you expected to encounter so many WLF soldiers on the way, so Ellie doesn’t blame you if you realized that this is nowhere an easy job for just two people. In all actuality, she didn’t fully think this entire thing through, fully driven by her blossoming desire to see Abby’s head detached from her shoulders. She doesn’t know if she’ll get to kill her or simply die trying, but she’s for damn sure going to aim her hardest for the former.

However, Ellie watches you, observes the way you visibly struggle to say something so obviously weighing on your mind, and thinks that maybe this is becoming too much for you, and you want to stop, to go home to Jackson.

To leave her.

You’ve always been the levelheaded one, the one who never lets it go too far, and you’ve spilled more blood in the last few days than perhaps your entire life. Ellie’s been there before, and she won’t lie, it’s heavy, but she’s gotten used to it. Though it begs a question.

Would she be able to go with you?

“Ellie,” you repeat, clearing your throat, and your voice comes out a bit louder, “I know that you’re immune.”

“..Yeah?”

“Do you think,” you hesitate, “do you think there are…more people like you? More people who can’t get infected?”

“...found her or someone else that’s immune…”

“Uh,” she blinks, “I’ve never met anyone else, but…maybe. I can’t…be the only one in the world, right? Joel would always tell me to never tell anyone, so maybe it was the same thing if there was anyone else. Why?”

Your mouth opens before it closes, then it opens again.

Ellie hears it, a tiny pocket of air that escapes near your tonsils–a dying sentence that reworks and reforms around your gums over and over again the longer you hunch into yourself. Your reluctance, your reasoning for bringing up Ellie’s immunity, could just be chalked up to curiosity if she didn’t know any better, and she wishes she didn't know any better, but she knows you.

You’re nervous, scared even, and Ellie sees it in the twitch of your eyebrows, in how you choose to keep your face pointed toward the floor to avoid her eyes. No, she realizes, you’re terrified, and then she feels it, a creeping coldness rising from the bottom of her gut.

You haven't brought up your supply run.

This is leading up to something.

“I just,” you exhale, picking your head up, and your shoulders sag, a small smile devoid of any true joy spreading across your lips that has that damn chill churning in her stomach uncomfortably, “wanted to know if I had a chance.”

“...Why?”

There’s another crack of thunder, but it only vibrates and fades amidst the rain, a small hum compared to the increase of this weird fucking buzzing in the middle of Ellie’s ears, and she feels like her breathing might stop.

"Why?"

You don’t respond, but she almost knows your answer in the way your smile falls before your jaw clenches. You’re closing up, sharpening around where things were once soft, but there’s also a sadness, a blatant, hopeless need for her to understand this thing you can’t seem to verbalize.

You don’t say anything, and she’s not sure if she doesn’t want to know or if she should just demand that you say it.

For a second, a name flashes through Ellie’s mind, a name and a face she hadn’t thought of in years until just now, and she now knows what this feeling is from having felt it before.

A realization.

And she hopes, prays to whoever might be listening, that she’s really fucking wrong. But, like always, her prayers go ignored.

“Ellie–”

“Let me see,” she interrupts, her voice surprisingly even, though a sense of deja vu tingles across the back of her neck that she wants to hack away with her pocket knife because this shouldn’t remind her of that.

The day she lost Riley.

Tess.

Sam…

“No,” she shakes her head, blinking erratically as if trying to flutter this budding foreboding away with her eyelashes, and runs a hand through her auburn hair to push it away from her face. “No, there isn’t–there’s no fucking–”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen–”

“You,” her mouth twists and her nose scrunches at the bridge, her voice rising in pitch. She whips her head away from you, hiding the swell of emotion swimming in her eyes, but you hear her words pool along the length of her tongue in an unsteady warble, “You’re not going to fucking–no. No.”

Her breath begins to come in shakily, and leaves just as unstable.

“No,” Ellie places a hand to her chest, “no, fuck!”

She doesn't hear you shuffle closer, doesn’t feel your presence filling the space beside her because she’s too busy fighting off that annoying ringing, and only when your hand, so familiar yet so light and entirely too warm, falls to her arm does her gaze snap over to you. Your face is unreadable, blank, and your cheeks shine from sweat, but your eyes say what your expression doesn’t.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I love you.’

‘I’m so fucking scared.’

And Ellie feels her lower lip tremble.

“Let,” the word retches from the back of her mouth like risen bile, and she stops herself, taking a deep breath. “Let me see it… Please.”

Wordlessly, you present your arm to her, your eyes drifting down to your sleeve, and Ellie wavers in her instinctive reach for you, her fingers flexing over nothing. It’s the only confirmation she needs, your silent acceptance, but she has to see it for herself, she has to know if the bite is truly there or if this is all some sick cosmic joke.

Ellie rolls up your sleeve, her breath hitching at the sight of your bandage, dark from your dried blood, and swallows thickly. She grasps the end of the gauze and slowly begins to unravel, moving languidly, as if it would make any difference. In her mind, the slower she moves might just make everything disappear, but it all comes off eventually, much to her chagrin.

Once the bandage finally falls from your arm after a few torturous minutes, Ellie stops, and a fucked-up symphony of feelings gurgle within her, akin to an overflowing soup—fear, disbelief, and an overwhelming urge to flee the room, but she only tightens her grip on your arm.

“I know it’s not pretty, but you don’t have to make that face.” You attempt a joke, but it falls unbelievably flat, and your voice slips into this somber, guilty tone that quivers out the side of your neck.

Ellie doesn’t laugh.

She doesn’t move.

She might not even be blinking for all she knows, because she’s too busy staring.

She stares at the bite mark, her eyes running over the length of black tendrils beneath your skin already halfway up your arm, and releases a breath. Releasing isn’t the right word; it’s forced out of her, her heart skipping as if she was punched in the chest by a particularly heavyset fit, and she takes in how warm your arm is. It’s unnaturally hot, and it doesn’t make her a genius for being able to discern how your raised skin is trying to fight off the spreading infection.

She draws a deep, deep breath.

“How long has it been?”

“Nine hours or so.”

Ellie licks her lips, frustration tightening the tendons of her jaw. Nine hours…

When you were both leaving the subway tunnels.

Telling you that she’s been immune the whole time, you didn’t have to take your mask off for Ellie to see the look of betrayal and confusion on your face. She didn’t have much time to explain why she hid it from you, didn't have any time to apologize because you, of all people, should have known, because a horde had shown up. It was madness, and with runners and clickers and a bloater or two, just because life loves making things difficult, it makes sense for something to slip through the cracks.

A stalker had cut you off when you were running, crashing into your side and sending you both to the floor in a flurry of flailing limbs. You yelped, and Ellie wasted no time in pulling out her pocket knife to race up behind it to pull it off, stabbing it in the neck.

“Go!”

Was that when it happened? Right in front of her, and she didn’t notice? Was she too slow?

“Hey,” your voice cuts through her thoughts like a knife through glass, and you press a finger to her forehead in a weak jab, “don’t do that thing you do.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you think everything is all your fault.”

You know how she gets, her bleeding heart, as much as she likes to deny it, making everything fall so hard on her, even if it’s something outside of her control. She had told you about Riley once before, but only that she died, not how, and there was this impersonal tone about it as if there was another half to the story she wasn’t ready to tell. When she finally told you that only Riley had turned, you knew why, aside from keeping her immunity a secret. She thought it was unfair that she was the only one who lived.

Ellie’s hold on your arm slackens, and you use her now-loose grip to pull away. In a shuffling rearrangement of limbs, you sit beside Ellie on the floor, your back leaning against the desk, and pull your knees up. You don’t pull your sleeve back down, feeling no need to anymore, and the cool air gives a nice contrast on your skin. Ellie’s eyes follow your movements, glaring at your arm atop your knees like an animal prepared to attack at the slightest sign of motion. Her unintentional pout almost makes you want to laugh, but you don’t. You just lay your head on her shoulder, ignoring how tense she becomes, and relax into her side.

The rain is much more calming against the theatre windows, light against the glass in consistent muffled thuds instead of harsh, loud smacks. Or, maybe it’s only because you’re here with Ellie, left with nothing else unsaid between you except the final goodbye. The radio falls into static, losing signal again, but you both just leave it be, and it lulls into the background, bleeding into the rain and deep thunder.

Ellie can feel your skin through her shirt, hot and clammy and unequivocally not you because it’s way too much, and she bites down a whimper of devastation. This isn’t how it should have gone.

You should be fine, coming back from the supply run with an expired can of peaches and a bottle of alcohol and all of your skin intact like you always did, but instead you’re both here, biding time until you have to do something you should never have to do. This shouldn’t be how it all ends for you. You deserve better. A lot fucking better, and despite you scolding her for thinking this, it’s all her fault.

She wanted to go after every last one of them, wanted to hurt them in worse ways than they hurt her, and it cost you, since you were worried she would get herself killed, and she probably would have. A few times over. This was never about justice; it’s always been about vengeance, and the thirst of it, that wolfish salivation in the middle of her tongue, delivered you right to death’s door because you’re foolish enough to love her as much as you do. Because of her, you’re going to die in some piece-of-shit, rundown theatre, far away from everything and everyone you’ve ever known, and it kills her.

She should have left without saying anything, should have stuck with her first plan of slipping from Jackson on her own. You might have been mega pissed if she came back, but at least you would be alive.

Ellie’s hand slips over her eyes, a broken, dry sob tumbling from her mouth before the tears truly begin, and the sound tears through your heart like a pair of scissors through paper.

“..I’m sorry,” you exhale, swallowing the pain to finish, “that I have to go—”

“You go, I go, remember?”

“No,” Ellie cries, but you keep going, sucking in a breath that trails off into a short wheeze.

“—but you have to stay, okay? Don’t come with me.”

She cups a hand around your head and brings you closer with a wail, pressing you into her neck with the force of someone trying to spite death, because he can’t take you. Not from her, not you, not yet.

“Please,” Ellie snivels your name, feeble and pathetic and destroyed.

It’s hard, listening to her sob for you like this, someone so used to playing a strong role in life that they’ve forgotten how to talk about the hard parts, and you pick your head off her shoulder. It’s not much better looking at her, a flush staining her running nose and across her tear-streaked face, but you only smile, sad and embracing as you cup your palm over her freckled cheek.

She leans into it, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment before they’re peeled back open just as quickly, almost as if you’ll disappear the very moment she looks away, and she hiccups, “I’m…sorry.”

The anger, the bitterness, and the pain, it’s all gone away, and the only thing left is regret for a past that was and a future that never will be.

“It’s okay,” a tear slips down your cheek, your smile turning wistful, “I’m okay, and you will be too. I can feel it.”

Ellie shakes her head, a few loose pieces of hair swaying at the movement, but you stop her with a kiss. It’s light, probably more a brush of lips at first, but then it becomes harsher and despairing because Ellie is bending into you, holding your face in her hands with all the love she’s ever given and ever will give you, hoping it’ll be enough to save you like those stupid, kid movies where they solved everything with true love’s kiss. It’s electric, intense in how she’s trying to kiss her very own life, her immunity, into you through the enamel of her teeth, and it steals your breath away.

But this isn’t a fairytale, love isn’t enough, and you’re running out of time.

A thin string of saliva stays between you even after you pull back, and when you would once smirk, teasing Ellie about how even her spit can’t be away from you, you only sniff and wipe it away.

“I’m ready,” you say, and Ellie looks at you through her lashes, clumping together in her tears. “I’m ready…”

“Fuck no, I’m not gonna do this—“

“Ellie,” you suddenly snap, the gentle tone of voice you’ve been using this entire conversation sharpening so unexpectedly that it makes her jump. You breathe in through your nose, close your eyes, and lower your voice, “I’m not turning. Please, just…make this a bit easier for me.”

A distant memory flashes through her brain like an uninvited guest once you say those words, and the iron strikes just as fresh now as it had nine years ago.

“Come on, make this easy for me...”

You watch her silently for a while, watch as her face scrunches and relaxes and hardens in that familiar way where she’s placing her own feelings wayside to be buried beneath her ribcage, but it makes you frown. You don’t want to go there, where all the bad and ugly join in this amalgamation of suppressed memories she’s too afraid to talk about. You want her to think about you and be happy, if a little bittersweet, because you were here. You lived, and you loved, and you loved her.

Ellie lets you wipe away the wetness on her face, lets you smooth the wrinkle in between her scrunched, auburn brows, if only to let you touch her a bit longer. Even with the tendrils now moving up your neck, you’re still beautiful. There’s no feeling to fully describe this, that the hands cradling her so gently, worrying more about her in this moment than the dwindling time they have left, will soon be cold. They’ll rot here, eaten away by bugs and time and wandering wildlife, and their bones will stay, binding a beautiful soul somewhere undeserving of its final resting place.

You stand up, and Ellie is only just now realizing how quick your breathing has gotten.

“I don’t need,” you rasp, pausing a moment to catch your breath, and there’s a disgusting, subtle gurgle at the back of your throat that’s never been there before, “you seeing this.”

Ellie almost rebuttals, almost screams with all of the air in her lungs that she needs to be with you, needs to hold you until you’ve gone icy and stiff because you’ve always been together, but she can’t. She knows what you’ll say if she does.

“That’s a little unhealthy, Els.”

“What? I can’t eat the food from your mouth and vice versa, reverse-human-centipede style?”

“If we don’t swallow it, we aren’t really eating, though. We would starve.”

“Maybe, but we would starve together.”

“I…don’t want us dying together?”

“Why not? It would be hella romantic. Some real and Juliet shit, you know?”

“...You need help.”

“You love me.”

“I love you,” you say, resolution hanging from the corner of your small smile that she fails to reciprocate, and you don’t blame her for it.

“...I love you too,” and Ellie is sure her voice is the same small and broken thing you heard in the garage, quiet in the same sense of exhaustion from losing someone else she cares about to a world that couldn’t give a damn about her, but she doesn’t mind how frail that makes her sound. She’s losing you.

She’s losing you, and she can’t even get off the fucking floor.

Then, you leave, opening and closing the door behind you so softly that the click of the latch is barely audible.

Your hand lingers on the doorknob for a moment, trembling around the brass, until you let it fall to your side. There are so many things going through your mind as you walk down the hall, but it’s all aimless. You don’t know where your feet are taking you as you leave the theatre, don’t know where you’re going to spend your final moments as you’re pelted in rain, don’t know where you’ll end up after you die, don’t know how Ellie will feel when she finds what you left her, but it’s too late to think about any of that now.

You don’t have many regrets to fall back on, but if you had to choose one, it would be that this happened in front of Ellie, of all people. The world has already taken so much from her, yet it still managed to write you into the still-growing list of names stricken from life. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, you know this is just going to break her all over again. It’ll make her angry and sad, but most of all, it’ll make her even more resentful.

Resentful of a life that’s forcing her through so much death.

Only so many times can a heart break and reform before it all eventually collapses, utterly tired and beaten into this cowering ball of resignation that everything is shit and nothing will get better. You can only hope that doesn’t happen after you’re gone.

A sudden pop of tile brings your mind back to the present, and you realize, with a start, that you’re out of the rain.

Your eyes take in the rotted floorboards and peeling, floral wallpaper, and it all strikes a familiar cord with you. An empty chuckle escapes the back of your throat.

“It’s just you and me again, huh? Fine,” you inch your way onto the floor and lean your back against the wall with a long, deep sigh. Everything about you is heavy–not tense, but heavy–like a tightness in your chest you can’t run away from, but you’re ready. You have to be; there’s nowhere else to go.

You take out your revolver from the waistband of your jeans, and smile. Your last, real smile.

“...You win.”

Ellie stares at the door for a long time, bores into the splinting hardwood hoping that her vision will wobble and distort and she’ll shoot up in bed, in Jackson, in the garage, and this will all be some sick nightmare. You’ll be sleeping right next to her, peaceful, hugging her pillow you’ve somehow stolen in the night against your cheek, and she’ll kiss you hard. She’ll kiss your cheeks and lips and nose and eyes that will be tendril free, and she’ll love you even harder.

And Joel will eventually knock, but never come in. Maybe the doorknob makes a sound, one you hear when someone puts their fingers around it and half-turns, hesitating to open the door, but still doesn’t open it. Then he’ll talk, mentioning in his rough, southern drawl behind the wall that it’s her turn for stable duty. She won’t ignore him like she used to, won’t grumble at him to go away because she couldn’t get over herself and took it out on him undeservedly. Instead, she’ll yank the door open with enough strength to rip it off its hinges, and jump, wrapping herself around the old man in a hug delivered five years too late, and she’ll tell him that she loves him and that she’s sorry and that she would punch herself in the fucking face if she could. Except, none of that happens. Because this is all real.

And then, amidst the rain and thunder and radio static, a gunshot rings out, a bit quiet as if a few buildings away, and it tears through Ellie like an arrow to the throat.

None of it–the rage and death and overcompensation to make up for her years worth of regret–was worth it. It would never be.

Joel is gone.

You are gone.

And the ride back to Jackson is completely silent.

Ellie can’t stand to look at anyone when she comes through Jackson’s front gates, alone, when she had not left that way. Jessie and Dina knew you both left, and when they see you aren’t with her and your backpack has been tied to the saddle instead, their faces say enough.

‘I’m sorry.’

She doesn’t speak, doesn’t answer anyone when they ask her where she had been and what she was thinking, and doesn't do anything but press her lips to hide the wobble when asked about what happened to you. About Tommy.

Ellie moves with an almost robot-like precision while getting off of Shimmer, untying your bag, and walking off down the road, a road engraved to the bottom of her canvas sneakers for the last five years.

This particularly walk feels a lot more grueling.

A thin sheet of dust settled over everything in the garage while she was gone, including a DVD left on her night stand that neither one of you bothered to put back in the case before you left. Ellie stares at the title.

Sleeping Beauty.

There’s a subtle shift, pulsing through the once still air of the empty garage. Ellie feels it in her upper lip, this vibrating discomfort that hammers in the bridge of her nose, and it takes a moment to realize that the shift is coming from her.

Why is she not surprised that it’s a fucking feel-good movie? One of those movies where everyone wins and evil is vanquished and everything is just so goddamn perfect, right? A movie where no one has to feel this fucking empty and battered by life, huh?

Her mouth curls into a sneer.

“Liar,” she spits, yanking the DVD off the table, “liar,” and in one, quick motion, snaps the movie in half before tossing the pieces against the wall. They clatter to the ground noisily, but otherwise leave everything else undisturbed. This spurs Ellie on more, “Fucking liar!”

There are no happy endings, not anymore.

She sees you in her bed watching a movie, at her desk reading her comics, in the middle of the room telling her that you’ll go find Abby together, but it’s all too fresh.

She doesn’t think, fueled by this incessant need for destruction, and only moves to pick up the lamp from the same bedside table. The power cord makes a light popping sounds as it rips from the wall, but she doesn’t care and throws it to the ground. It shatters instantly, spraying glass all over the floor, but she doesn’t stop. Her blankets hit the floor, then her pillows. She makes it across the room in one great stride towards her couch, and kicks over the coffee table with a shout, knocking it on its side and all of the contents with it.

“Fucking-!”

Everything becomes a haze of flying books and torn posters and shattered dishes. She knows she’s crying, she knows she’s screaming, and she knows this is pointless since she’ll have to clean it all up, but she doesn’t care.

You’re gone. Joel is gone. Tess is gone. Sam is gone. Riley is gone.

How many more people is she going to lose? How many until it’s enough? How many more times is it going to kill her? How many times is it going to be her fault? And, unintentionally, she begins doing exactly what you said she does, and starts blaming herself, and you aren’t around anymore to stop her, and that kills her too.

If she hadn’t snuck out that night, Riley would still be here.

If she didn’t need to find the fireflies to make a vaccine since she seems to be the only immune person in the entire fucking world, Sam and Tess would still be here.

If she had just said ‘sorry, I forgive you’, and traded routes with Joel like she wanted to, you and Joel would still be here.

If she was never immune in the first place, all of you would still be here.

Ellie collapses in a heap of limbs in the middle of the now messy room, her chest heaving with haggard breaths and broken cries as she curls in on herself. She doesn’t care about the glass and debris cutting through the material of her jeans, but welcomes it instead. After all, it’s what she feels she deserves.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpers, “I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t want this…I didn’t want this.”

Eventually, Ellie will stop crying.

She’ll get up and grab your bag and look through it where she’ll come across a letter. A letter addressed to her, a letter that she can tell is your handwriting in the dumb way you write your e’s just to piss her off, and then she’ll open and read that letter.

And that letter will say:

Dear Ellie,

This was no one’s fault, and I need you to know that, so don’t blame yourself. Please.

I chose this, and I don’t regret going with you. I saved your ass too many times to think you didn’t need me, so I stayed. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten this far. I’ve made my peace.

I won’t be mad that you have to leave me where I am. I expect it, actually. We’re too far, I’d probably be completely rotten by the time you made it back with my body, anyway. Ew lol.

Get the bitch for me, okay? And even if you don’t, none of that survivor's guilt bullshit. It was always either gonna be this way, starvation, or old age, and this is a LOT more badass.

Don’t join me too soon, and make my grave look pretty.

I love you. ♡

She’ll laugh a little at how casual you are in a letter about your death and cry a lot more, but it will be a different cry. It will be full of love and hate and hurt, but it will also be healing, because you’re helping her even after you’re gone.

Then, she’ll eventually move on.

She’ll get her own place on the other side of Jackson, not to avoid the old house and all of its memories, but for a change of scenery. She’ll make new friends and still hang out with the old ones. She’ll get new tattoos and pierce her eyebrow. She’ll still visit Joel’s grave with a fresh bouquet of flowers every two weeks, and have a second bouquet waiting in her other arm to set on the grave next to it, although the land beneath it will forever remain empty. She’ll even talk to them, telling them how there’s a woman she’s beginning to like, and that she feels really guilty about it.

Eventually, she’ll have moved on. Fully. Then, she’ll live the rest of her life carrying all the people she’s lost in her heart until the day she’ll die in her bed, old and wrinkly like the lady from the end of that old, old movie she used to complain about with you.

However, until all of that happens, before all of the eventually’s, Ellie will be curled on the floor for a bit longer, crying with broken glass cutting into the skin of her legs and a heart too ripped open to keep going.

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