(( Nostalgia is a dirty liar that makes things seem a lot better than they actually were. ))
Some days, Ellie would think of her life before the hideout. The warm summer nights when she would curl beside her mother on a roof somewhere, and watch the stars blink back at them from above. But those days were few and far in between. And the bad memories far outweighed the good. So why was it so painful to remember those moments? And why did she, now, find herself agonizing over leaving the hideout when she knew that not much would change. The people she was with would still be there. The friends she’d made in this place were more like family--when before, they had been complete strangers. Perhaps, she thought to herself, that was the reason. Just like the people, the place had once been foreign to her. But it, overtime, became a home. And it was the first home she’d ever known. Each corner held in its crevices a memory. Pieces of herself were still suspended here. In the hall where she first became a scout and felt like she would have a purpose. In the alleyway behind her home where she’d had her first kiss and also her first heartbreak. In the window of her room where she would read books until dawn.
And, in that same room, her mother had taken her last breath.
Perhaps that’s what was holding her back most of all. The fact that she had dug her mother’s grave with her own hands and was now leaving her behind. That there would be new memories, and new parts of her that her mother would never get to know.
Everyone, she knew, was dealing with this in their own way. Everyone had things they would miss here, and they had been working all day to load the essential supplies into their vehicles. It was almost time to move out completely.
As Ellie made her way back towards the medical wing to see if there was anything else left to carry out, the brunette heard a loud thud. She turned quickly to the source of the sound. “Hey. Do you need help with that?”
