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If I ever were to lose you I'd surely lose myself

Her hand shakes beside her as she tries collects herself enough to knock on the door to theater. Her hands are cold now, colder than the pipe was in her hands, than the gun that could’ve showed Nora mercy.

A lot of the blood on them got washed away by the rain that’s been falling incessantly since she left the hospital, leaving her numb and cold.

But they’re not nearly clean enough, though.

Her breath is still ragged and she forces her hand into a fist, banging on the wooden door. A lot of fast knocks, because slower ones would take her back to Nora, back to the hospital.

"It's me," she says. Her voice is shaky, foreign to her own ears.

It takes Dina a moment to open the door, a moment where she just stands there, waiting, her mind still clouded. Some droplets rolling down her face like tears, like she was actually feeling anything.

"Ellie," Dina says, relief clear in her voice as she steps closer to hug her. Her body is too warm, against hers.

Ellie swallows hard, not having the strenght to lift her arms, instead letting herself be hugged.

Should she be hugged?

"Are you okay?" Dina asks, taking a half-step back to look at her face, taking in her bloodied face, her stained clothes.

Her voice sounds distant, though, like Dina's miles away and Ellie's still in the hospital with the pipe on her hand. She can hear Nora's voice, pleading, the sound of the metal against bone, crushing.

It sounds too much like Abby's golf club at the mansion.

She can't look into Dina's eyes. She can't look into them and let her see how broken she is, though she's painfully aware it's impossible to hide. Her hands are cold, numb. Just like her.

She nods weakly, and there's Jesse's voice too, horrified as he asks if the blood is hers. She steps in, away from Dina.

Joel in the mansion.

She takes the map from her back pocket, swiftly unfolding it.

"She's hiding out in the..." she inhales, trying to steady herself, everything about her shaky, "in this aquarium."

She points it out in the map, quickly looking up at Jesse to check if he's following, then back to the paper.

She's leaving red smudges on it. Nora's blood.

"Okay." Dina's voice is gentle, as is her hand as she touches Ellie's arm. It's grounding, to be touched by her, but she isn't sure if she deserves it.

She lets Dina take the map from her hands, lets her hand it to Jesse and guide her to the back of the theater.

Abby with her club.

"C'mon, let's get you cleaned up," she says, and Ellie lets herself be shepherded away.

She doesn't feel her feet on the wooden floor, or Dina's warm hands on hers, pulling her to the dressing room. She doesn't feel her hands as Dina helped her with the backpack, then with her shirt. She doesn't feel anything.

Until she was sitting on the stool, without her gear, without her armor. Until she was just Ellie, stripped.

She tried to control her breathing, to calm herself as Dina looked for a rag outside.

Nora's shattered skull.

"Arms up," Dina asks, her voice calm, never anything less than comforting.

She helps Ellie take her shirt off and it hurts as it pulls away at the dry patches of blood, re-opening her cuts and making her move muscles that are impossibly sore now.

She keeps her head low, looking at Dina's shoes in front of her. How was that any better than what Abby did?

She can see Nora's eyes, her hatred as she spoke of Joel.

"Where's Abby?" She asked again.

"I'm fucking dead anyway. Why would I tell you anything?"

Ellie rested the pipe on the ground, squatting so their eyes were on the same level. She remembered Abby, standing over Joel with the golfing club, remembered his cries of pain, his hazel eyes swollen shut. The memory clawed its way from her chest, tearing at her heart and making her see red.

"Because I can make it quick. Or I can make it so much worse," she said, her voice full of icy rage.

Dina rests her hand on her neck for a second as she settles herself behind her, taking the rag from the bucket of water to clean Ellie's wounds. It hurts as she presses it against her cuts and abrasions, but her touch is careful, nurturing, loving.

It's an overwhelming kind of softness that her violence almost made her forget about; that even in the middle of cruelty there's still space for kindness.

Not that she deserves it.

"I made her talk," she blurts out, because keeping it in feels suffocating. Because it's easier to talk when she can't see Dina's eyes.

But the weight of having it out is oppressing.

She brings her hands up to her face in disbelief. She did that. She really did that to Nora.

How fucked up she really was?

"Hey," Dina whispers, "that's okay."

Dina wraps her hands around her shoulders, an anchor trying to bring her back to the present, away from what she just did. Her body is warm around Ellie. Alive.

She holds the hand Dina has around her shoulder, the one that's closer to her heart.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she says, her voice barely a whisper.

It hurts. To acknowlegde the horrible things she did, to remember Joel, to feel Dina pressed against her when she doesn't even deserve it.

But Dina moves behind her, getting closer to murmur a "good," by her ear, like she doesn’t see how fucked up Ellie is.

She kisses Ellie's cold skin, between her shoulders and neck, her lips too warm, too good for her.

Ellie closes her eyes, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

"You shouldn't have come here," Jordan had said.

Maybe he was right.

#wow its been so long since I wrote something #anything actually #tlou #dina x ellie #i tried to inspire myself to write sltlio but ended up with this #weird writing warm up #honestly i should be sleeping already #pls forgive my english i don't speak it #the theater #tlou spoilers

“futile gesture show them or columbine massacre show them?” “whatever ones worse!” is the best interaction to ever happen in an english comedy and im willing to die on this hill

#tops bus wankers #the dead fish incident #anything actually #i love jay #im so jay