the grand appeal of ellie and abby is that they're literally looking in a mirror the entire time, and rather than Ellie admit that truly it becomes this violent obsession to kill... herself...?? and the fact that at their core, their humanity transcends; abby's gonna hunt Joel. ellie's gonna hunt abby. but it was the reflection that made her stop.
abby killing the man who killed her father sure. she had no idea that she would then walk down the exact same path he did and find her own humanity and redemption and then you have Ellie hunting abby to kill the one who killed her father sure. she had no idea that she would then walk down the exact same path she did, and it's the reflection that she cannot see, it's abby holding lev as joel held ellie and it's telling someone who tried to kill her… there is safety this way. and then refuse to defend her own life against ellie's grief.
abby staring in the face of someone so broken by this, abby sees the reflection, she still hears ellie’s sobs for her to just. Stop. Please. and abby is so much more journeyed than ellie at this point, and she doesn't flinch from the familiarity.
abby surrenders her life to it, a wolf finally ready to be put down and who BETTER to do it, abby accepts her own death, and had ellie not been early abby Ellie wouldn't have threatened lev's life, abby's ELLIE, and Ellie watches as a fallen abby stands as joel, and ellie's.. furious.
abby is not supposed to be changed like him, abby is not supposed to be like him, Ellie has to end it before she does what ellie does and looks for humanity, she'd done it before, and if she finds it she will stop and realize she is her. right in that moment, she is holding a club and she needs vengeance. but hey... that makes her abby. and throughout the game we see Ellie Trying to be like brutalist joel and she.. fails. she's not Joel. that's not her. so it's this insane warring dichotomy of killer Joel or vengeance abby.
there is something singularly painful about guilt's influence on grief, if it's a natural loss or not, abby could foster her grief into revenge and hunt down that person. but Ellie's great loss, her first great loss, was, in her eyes, her own fault. she had failed to save riley, and then she had failed to be the cure.
there's no one to hunt down except herself. and it must've felt extraordinary to hide riley's grief in Joel's grief; she couldn't bring her back, she couldn't undo the loss of her sacrifice, but she could hunt down someone viscerally and feel control of that grief in that form, while actively ignoring the reason abby killed Joel: because he stopped her from being the cure. The cure that would’ve saved Riley. her survivor's guilt compounding, her own self worth just a luxury she can't afford, did she deserve to be saved, does that mean that those fireflies, marlene's fireflies, riley's fireflies, deserved to be killed like that? and it's so agonizing because there is no correct answer to that, so the grief has no home and it rattles violently inside her, down the same steps she fell down when it was her life or david’s at the end of that machete. a child. a child truly terrified and alone, frantically butchering a full grown man because she is utterly terrified of what will happen if she stops swinging.
and it's like, that moment changed ellie. She made the mistake of trusting. Pure blind panic and bloodshed took over her. And she was numb, but if she could finally save people then maybe it wouldn’t have been for nothing. and that life-changing struggle wasn't a footnote in her mind years later, like she has shut that moment away tighter than losing Riley. Was it a throughline, the butchered face of David and the bludgeoned face of Joel; had she ever been that sick of the burden he put on her that the intrusive thought picked at her? she knew he was lying but that truth was too heavy so she just. shut it away. and she had to contend with the fact he would always pick her life over anyone else's. so it has to be the same, she has to go on her own rampage of killing wlfs as he killed fireflies because she can't accept losing the person who was the reason she was still breathing and the cost. she can't have the one person who bore that with her gone, she can't end up All Alone with This.
and then tlou2 says ellie won't end up all Alone with This because there's a girl standing in front of her who was irreparably changed by the exact same events. and the burden is so great for that girl that she lets ellie kill her but ellie Can't kill her? because who knows her that deeply without ever having a conversation with her, who knows the dark ugliness of grief and guilt more than her,
ellie went hunting for the love she lost only to find it in the person who took it from her. Two girls with a lot of the same scars unable to kill each other, reminding each other of their own humanity. Causing so much pain to each other with their violent coping methods, and yet they somehow make each other better, somehow inspire empathy in each other. abby hunting ellie and but this time she lets her grief soften her. abby threatening ellie to stay away from her, and her first words to ellie again are safety is this way. Someone who killed her family, directly and indirectly. If any other opponent met abby on the beach, would she have still chosen peace? If Ellie was unarmed, would abby only have subdued her. The way the brokenness in each other softens them, it’s just. ellie letting them go, letting a Joel/Ellie go, and she sits there alone with her ghosts hovering around her like fireflies.
Would she track down these fireflies, would she think of how no one will love her as dark as joel so if her immunity is her life as least now no one will object. She can finally atone for living too long, for still being around when better people weren’t. So she has to go. The last time she tried to kill someone with a blade she walked numbly down the corridor of her death, why not now, now when she deserves that penance so much more. And incredibly how insane would it be if abby goes from willing to be a sacrifice herself to refusing to allow ellie to do it, and it’s this distorted deformed “you can’t leave me all alone with this” and it’s like ellie’s true cure being so worthy of love she makes hurt people want to keep going
and then she punches abby and is like thank god you’re not on steroids anymore and abby starts slapping her like she doesn’t need steroids to kick her ass and it’s this bizarre juxtaposition that these girls who once were fireflies would’ve always found each other and been friends and they’re finally friends but this is the Angst edition and abby weirdly blushes when ellie talks about girls and it’s odd how in any capacity from murder to smalltalk Ellie and abby can’t just relax around each other, like they need forgiveness but from one person but they would rather die than ask for it. They’d rather die than admit they’ve kinda been refusing to see the other die for a long time so saving~ them doesn’t mean anything like they didn’t not kill each other just to see the other get killed by an infected and oh but there’s something weird about that growing concern. Finding out that the situation made you hate someone and you actually don’t hate them they’re actually pretty cool wait no absolutely not
