in support of palestine ∙ the reality of tlou ∙ resources
pairing: ellie williams x fem!reader (?)
music: a world of madness - akira yamaoka
word count: 2.3k
summary: you're dead. with how ellie's been coping, she might as well be. that is, until she sees you, or rather, a woman with your face.
WARNINGS: heavy discussions of grief, illness, death. implied hallucinatory sequences, general themes associated with silent hill 2. smut, oral (r!receiving).
cat says ⎯ were ya'll waiting for pyramid head to show up?
if i could be … her.
but i’m not her
and she’s not me.
and you’re somewhere different.
on a different planet.
cold.
the merciless descent of winter had done nothing but bury ellie in a fog. a blur of forgetfulness, of numb reaction.
everyone had told her it would become easier. the festering pain in her joints would fade, the endless congestion in her head, like a dragnet of her slowed thoughts, would release.
“grief is just one of those things that you have to learn to live with.”
ellie wasn’t sure if she was learning. if she knew what that even felt like. what was it, to learn to love an absence? a gaping chasm, in one’s soul?
plagued. the sweetness of your voice lingered like stubborn molasses in her ears, a ghosting touch, nails scratching at her scalp, she could feel it. at least, for a few fleeting moments. in the sticky dark of her bedroom, memories of you clung to her back.
the pavement, slick with thin ice and dirty snow, echoed the song of her footsteps in the empty streets. she needed milk. a sick darkness had descended on the small space of her apartment, and her fridge stunk of something sour.
the hairs on the back of her neck prickled in the bitter wind. she hadn’t been sleeping.
she had thought, maybe, the chill in the air would help her. that the light would snap her from this daze, bring her to see this delusional miasma for what it was. but the wet sun, shrouded in grey, granted no such reprieve. she still saw you everywhere.
the shine of the linoleum tile seemed blinding in artificial light. ellie squinted in the change, her skin dry, pale and discoloured from weeks inside.
she can feel the clerk’s gaze burning her through her clothes. she shakes the dusting of snowfall off her shoulders, and sees the tracks of mud she’s pulled in from outside. oh.
she scrapes the soles of her sneakers along the peeling grout of the tile, and shuffles her way along the aisles. the rows of fridge doors buzz in the dim silence of the store, there’s something metallic in the air.
it was a dying habit, beelining for the skim milk. something you had put her on to, with your endless buzzing about dairy. it was comforting, following a path well-trodden through the small grocer, one she had so often taken when she had a softness to return to. her footsteps fell, heavy and loud and ringing her ears, empty.
ellie grunts a hoarse ‘excuse me’ to the woman standing in front of the milk fridge. she wasn’t grabbing anything, just standing … watching the milk as if waiting for it to move. so, ellie figured it was okay to push past. the woman moved back without a word.
the jug felt cool, and almost anchored, beneath ellie’s fingertips. something to latch on to, tangible in this maze of wretched passing time.
“sorry! i didn’t see you there.”
ellie bit so hard into her cheek it drew blood. warm, foreign in her mouth, an iron taste.
your voice was not an uncommon ringing in her ears, in these hellish pastimes. the open world teased her, so often she heard you in a gentle ripple of water, the humming engine of a passing car. but this …
it was you. ripped from fresh fucking dirt.
well, ellie wasn’t sure. a ghost in the corner store was not something she was eager to find, if that’s what this woman was. what you were. she could feel her hand twitching in her jacket pocket, an obsessive itch to reach out, to feel the tangible, the absent real.
your name slips past her lips like a familiar groove in her tongue, and the woman laughs. it’s deeper than yours, jilted, not sweet.
“are you confusing me with someone else?” she asks. no, no, she can’t be. it’s your face, every mapped detail from the haze of her dreams, ripped from your coffin and supplanted here. on this body, obscure.
it could be a mask. ellie could dig her fingernails under your pretty, unblemished skin and tear it off this creature, this … offence. would you bleed the same?
“i-“ the milk jug suddenly felt too cold, burning into the skin of her palm. she hesitated, joints locked, body aching. whatever frantic obscenities ellie had wanted to hurl at her, at you, for the affront of your very existence, dripped back down her throat, made her choke.
the woman tilts her head in anticipation. you don’t do that, you didn’t do that.
it’s not you.
“ellie? you told me you weren’t coming today.”
she can still hear the wheezing undercurrent in your voice, a haunting possession of the brilliance in your body. you weren’t meant to exist somewhere so … clinical.
“i .. wanted to see you.”
your hand ghosts her cheek, the prickling of neglected texture along the bone. she refused to touch you. not like this.
ellie’s breath comes heavy in the heady air of her apartment. she can smell the stale rot in the walls, consuming her with every struggling heave of her lungs.
she had left the fridge door open when she left, the flickering cold light leaving a staggering crack along the darkness. she slumps against the wall of her kitchenette, pressing her hands into her muddy hair, as if trying to hold herself together at the seams.
she was going crazy, wasn’t she?
you’re haunting her. ellie supposes that she knew you would. a spectre, a shadow tethered to her feet. she had hoped, she could push past it, cradle your tenderness close to her heart, lock away the rest. naive.
she had become too complacent with the shell of you that malady had created. she’d forgotten how angry you could get. even from beyond the veil of death.
but it wasn’t you. no, no, ellie reminds herself. that … woman, was a coincidence. a trick of the flickering, sickening lights. her grief had muddled her mind, made her see things that weren’t there.
maybe she so desperately wanted to see you. deep within the dairy aisle. maybe, she no longer had the strength to turn away from you, like she once had. maybe, she just craves something you can no longer provide.
three raps knock the wood of her door, and ellie shakes. visceral.
she doesn’t remember answering, but the threshold was there, her hand warming the cool bronze of her doorknob.
this was just cruel.
“oh! it’s you again!” her smile is a wicked caricature, something hollow. snow sits in her hair, and ellie is blighted with your warmth, ghostly in this empty winter. “sorry, my phone’s dead. i’ve been asking around, is everyone on vacation? you’re the only one that answered the door.”
“wh - what?” ellie couldn’t listen.
you had broken your nose, as a child, a detail never lost on her in the intimacy of your nights together. she would trace her fingers over the bump the accident left, the irreverent flaws that endeared her, magnetised ellie to your person.
she studied this woman, her … perfections. the faultless slope of the bridge of her nose.
so … she was different? this wasn’t you. ellie wasn’t sure if the constant reminder was her anchor or her chain.
“can i use your landline?”
the question was simple, and ellie ached to oblige. invite her in.
“uh, sure.” it was a hoarse, quiet agreement. she shuffles to the side, carves a path for the stranger, who smiles at her sweetly, tight-lipped, in thanks.
her perfume was different. heavier, something darker. red fruit and earth. it caught in ellie’s nose, unwelcome. your name is a phantom on the dry ridges of her lips, and the woman snickers, the fur collar of her snow-dusted coat ruffling as she turns to meet ellie’s foggy gaze. the glory of what was once your gaze, now shared, was lost on this cheap copy.
“you keep calling me that. what, do i look like your girlfriend?”
ellie chokes on something that is not there.
“n-no, my late wife.” ellie could feel her gravity changing, re-centring. she crosses the floor slowly, listening to every creak of the old floorboards. reverent steps. “you … you could be her twin.”
she laughs, distant and deep, like a joke. like she couldn’t see the lines of desperation, of reaching hope that haunt the withering skin of ellie’s face. couldn’t she see? was she not aware of her own part she played in ellie’s torment?
or was she seperate from it all? was she simply passing through, a tourist in this purgatory?
the woman hangs up the receiver of the phone, having never called anyone. her eyes splay pity on this platter between them.
“i don’t look like a .. ghost, do i?” the teasing lilt in her voice was familiar. it was yours. she purses her lips. “maybe i shouldn’t have come. you’re clearly going through something.”
ellie’s hand darts out to ground itself on her skin, pressing into the bone of her wrist, the base of her body.
“ellie.”
she shook the molasses of your voice from her ears, pressed her eyes shut in beseeching of something free.
“please.” her voice was barely there, small in her throat, but enough to hear in the absence of wherever this was. wherever she has ended up. “you have to tell me who you are, if you’re real.”
the woman pouts, the way you did when you wanted something. her touch is soft, leading, like yours was, as it slips from ellie’s rusting grip and falls back, unceremoniously, onto the leather armchair in the living room. plumes of dust greeted her, only added to the stench in the air, the musk of unforgiving.
“it doesn’t matter who i am.” she says, and ellie almost stumbles after her, her knees aching as she falls, devout, ready to worship, if only this spectre gave her answers. “i know what grief’s like. and … i’m here for you.”
ellie breathes unsteadily, her hands shaking, cool sweat dripping down her back. the woman reaches out in the growing silence between them. her nails were bumpy, bitten down to the quick, covered poorly in thin, pink nail polish, as they scratch gently along ellie’s cheek.
“see? i’m real.”
an illness lined ellie’s stomach. wanton belief … this was real. there was a simplicity in this, in the dream that you had come back to her, after all. flesh warm and alive beneath her fingers, untainted.
“don’t you want to touch me?”
the image of you, of her, bleeds in ellie’s brain. you were asking with a sweetness you knew she could never ignore. temptation rots the soul, but hers had died with you. in your final breath, you had clawed it out of her.
there’s a certain cruelty to her touch, the way ellie splays her decay of passion upon this blank body. control is lost to her here, although a mirage of it echoes in her grip on your thigh, her nails ripping into the stranger’s skin, hoping to study whatever is beneath.
“please, please…” ellie’s voice is soft, chasing a dead docility up the woman’s inner thigh, her tongue pulling a cotton trail into familiar warmth. “i’m sorry…”
your head falls back against the edge of the armchair, soft, sweet whines dripping from the woman’s lips like honey, ellie’s nose pressing into the silk of your cunt, her tongue dazed and ever desperate to taste you. to feel you like you once were, broken, made whole again in the creeping twilight of an oncoming snowstorm.
a low rumble pulls through both of you, her lips a current on your clit, a tremor in the key of her voice. she has to pull herself up on her knees, push herself into your presence, to keep herself there, within this second chance. her body shakes beneath yours, in wait, for something that had long since disappeared.
she groans, something deep and distant below her throat. her tongue dances along the warmth inside you, painting her apologies, her dying grievances along the soft expanse of whatever lay inside, forever unheard. her fingers grip bruises into your stolen skin, a rough yank pulling you towards her.
you had hated when she was rough with you, but were you really here to complain?
“please, i…” her voice is something dark, muffled against your skin. “i need you, i.. you shouldn’t have left me. i’m sorry.”
“that doesn’t matter now.” firm and bitter, dry, calloused hands pull ellie up from her home between your legs. she could nearly whine at the absence of warmth, if the vitriol freeze wasn’t something she had so long deserved, so duly needed. ellie’s touch softens.
“nothing matters now.”
your gaze, her gaze, is scrutinising, painful to hold in her eye. but she needn’t look away, she shouldn’t. otherwise, she was sure you’d disappear. she couldn’t let you, never again. she could keep you alive, deep within the ire of her eye, she could, she was so sure.
something stings within her. feeling, it prickles back into ellie’s body like she’d been long asleep.
“i miss you,” ellie’s voice breaks against the cool, unwavering hand of the strange woman, the absence of mercy she so desperately sought. a sob shakes, sore in the column of her neck. the pain was welcome. “so, so much.”
tears run hot, her spine crooked as she falls back, looking up at you with a newly discovered vulnerability. you look at her, your eyes cold with pity and hate.
“i love you.” she chokes, begging like you’ll listen. “come back to me, i love you still.”
you shake your head. you won’t. ellie doesn’t deserve that kindness. no longer, anyway.
your wife slumps forward, pressing her face into the softness of your thigh like that would mean forgiveness, like that would bring back the innocence she had sorely stolen from you. your hand, with jagged nails, runs through ellie’s hair. brick wall comfort.
when you speak, your voice lingers in her ears like a bad hangover. it’s not yours, not anymore. whatever was left of you was rotten, spiteful.
ellievsbear
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