Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ellie lifts her eyes from her beat-up journal. She’s a close second from tearing it apart or using the precious gas in her lighter to set it ablaze. Instead, she takes a big breath through her nose and closes it before shoving it in her even more beat-up bag, pretending not to notice the trembling of her hands.

Her bag resembles more of a torn cloth holding on by loose threads and miracles than anything. She should look for another one. Maybe she can just take the precious pins which serve as her only memorabilia and put them somewhere more deserving. She doesn’t want to. It’s stupid. Everything is so fucking stupid.

The setting sun is shouting at her from low in the horizon, warning her of the little time she has left to find shelter. She kind of wants to stay there and merge with the grass, feel her body sink into the dirt as the maggots crawl against her skin until they pepper holes into her flesh and let her blood soak the soil to maybe make something new again.

But she gets up, one foot after the other. Her left thumb taps the two little stumps next to it. It does that a lot, she noticed.

She looks around, as if her surroundings had changed within the last seconds she did exactly just that. Flash alert, they didn’t. And there’s jackshit. Just the same overgrown road she’s been following for the last days, weeks? She has no clue, but she knows she’s on the same road judging from the few busted signs she passed. There are some cars scattered around and she hasn’t seen any Infected in… who knows. In a long time. Longish. She wouldn’t mind the thrill actually.

She might just crash in an empty car and call it a night. She’s done it before, it wasn’t the actual worst. She even found one of the comics cards she was so fond of. She merely looked at it, and put it back in the little drawer in front of the passenger seat. Glove compartment. A flash of Joel telling her these exact two insignificant words came to mind. She smiled, and her hand came of its own accord to swipe the lone tear sliding down her cheek.

She walks until the sun begs her to stop.

She pries the door of an old rusty camper open with a crowbar she found some time ago. Handy find, even though it gets stuck when she’s climbing around various boulders and bombed-out buildings.

She found it in Salt Lake City, she thinks. She didn’t mean to end up there again. She just wanted to go South, escape the harsh weather and the harsher memories. When the familiar skyline came into view, she just blinked. Her body tensed up and started to tremble, but she kept going.

Next thing she remembered after that was waking up in the tiniest busted-up building right on the road. She groaned and stretched, her breath hitching when a bout of pain surged from her right shoulder down to her fingertips. Her body is always in some kind of pain. She had no idea where the fuck she was, but one look outside told her she was on route 15, which assuming she was still going in the same direction, was the right one. And in her backpack, was this crowbar she didn’t remember picking up.

The first time she lost track of time, of self, had freaked her out. It was about fifteen minutes. Dina was there. She didn’t notice, which was a relief because Ellie absolutely didn’t want to talk about it. But it kept happening, at various intervals, seemingly at random. And she was still fucking breathing. So she guessed there was nothing to really worry about. Her survival instinct is a tough motherfucker and doesn’t fail even when she’s not really there. Where the fuck does she go?

She smothers the part of her that wishes she didn’t come back.

She opened her journal after Salt Lake to see if she had written anything. She does that sometimes, and it makes her heart beat faster and her mouth dry to squint at scribbles she doesn’t remember putting on paper. Even the letters look slightly different.

She didn’t write anything this time. Just a loose sketch of Joel. Nothing detailed, just his figure from afar, guiding a horse by the lead. She blinked at it and closed the journal delicately.

She doesn’t have to be a genius to know why her mind would shut down sometimes. She doesn’t always see the catalysts though. But this one was pretty obvious. She doesn’t get it because she was thinking about it when she got back, like she could ever escape the thought crippling her fucked up mind. She thought about the big fight with him, outside the hospital. She remembered the rage, the white hot betrayal overwhelming all of her senses. It was fucking laughable now. Disgusting. She remembered the tiny part of her that reveled in the slight crumpling of his features. We’re done.

She thinks about that day, a lot, and she thinks about it now, as she glides in the busted car, thinking it will do for the night. She falls asleep easily, her body shutting down from the overexertion she puts it through on a daily basis.

She thinks about it the second she wakes up too, making her mourn the state she was in a moment before. She used to have nightmares memories, making her sweat, and scream, and grind her teeth painfully. She can’t pinpoint when they stopped harassing her even in sleep. But they’re harassing her constantly, and now, she sees it, his constant furrowed brows as they made their way back from the hospital. She feels it, the exploding hate clouding her vision, her thoughts, everything they had built together.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She shouts at no one, at herself.

She sits, her fists clenched, thumping her head on her knees. She hastily gets out of the car when the tingling in her limbs is impossible not to notice. When she’s like this, it’s like she’s floating. She’s fully there, not out like she can be, but it’s like she can’t control herself, not really. Her fists meet the rusty shell of the car, her gruntings getting heavier as the pain shoots down her forearms.

“Fuck!” She clutches her right fist to her chest. She might have broken a knuckle. Fucking stupid.

Okay, today is a bad day then. Bring it on.

She shakes her canteen and gulps the remaining water to soothe her parched throat. And without a last glance, she goes.

It’s been around seven days since she woke up after not remembering crossing Salt Lake. She’s still trying to follow down this road, the number 15. She had to make a pretty large detour when following it meant crossing the city. But now she’s back on track.

It’s a stupidly beautiful day, somewhat cold, but nothing too harsh considering the season. She has no clue of what the exact date is, but would wager she’s around November. Not that it fucking matters.

It doesn’t take her long to stumble into what might be another city. Not as big as Salt Lake but houses come to view pretty soon and her steps falter.

Crossing a town is never a good idea. Between the Infecteds that got stuck and had time to marinate and mutate or whatever the fuck Cordyceps does, and possible people lingering and gathering there, her journey could be cut short drastically.

So she turns left, following the outskirts as best as she can, but with the rapidly growing trees and the uneven terrain, it’s a pain in the ass, to say the least. The woods are swarming with life, and she can only hope death isn’t lurking around the corner too.

Between the insects, the various birds tweeting, and flapping, and crowing and the crunches of her shoes over the dead leaves littering the soft ground, her alertness is dim. At least the season allows her a pretty clear view, with the trees mostly naked safe from the pines, but still, it takes a lot of effort and focus for her to move forward.

She sighs in contentment when a large body of water comes into view. She vaguely wonders if it’s the salt lake that wretched city is named after.

To her dismay, the town is very near this huge lake—or at least she thinks it’s a lake. Which means she can be spotted pretty easily if there’s anybody in the area.

There’s a wooden cabin, still holding on by some kind of miracle, perched on a rotting wooden bridge to overlook the water.

Probably a very bad idea. But that’s all she’s got, and the sun is starting to lower down in the sky.

She peers down the windows, trying to get a feel of what could be hiding inside. It doesn’t look inhabited by humans, but it could very well hide fungi. She glues her ear to the dirty window she can’t see through, trying to abstract from the sound of the gusting wind and the water crashing softly on the edge.

She thinks she makes out some kind of moaning sound coming from inside, and tries to determine if it would be worth the hassle to come in and just check it for herself. She could take out a Runner or a Clicker, hell even these horrendous Stalkers, but she doesn’t have it in her for something more drastic.

She risks a knock at the window, trying to get a feel for what may be clustered in the small shelter. But it doesn’t seem to wake anything. The quiet moaning continues, though. Weird.

She goes around the cabin carefully, attentive about each step on the tumbling boards, and curses herself when she notices the front door wide open. She should have checked that first. That was fucking careless.

At least, she reasons, if there were any Infected, they would have come out with her knock on the glass by now.

She peers inside, and relents at the horrid smell assaulting her nostrils. She closes her eyes shut, as if it would help in any way, and brings the scarf she had blissfully found a while back on the lower half of her face.

A large scrawny dog lies, flies buzzing all over the place. She winces, and steps forward, looking for any teeth marks and torn flesh. There isn’t, and she can only imagine the cause of its death. But as she steps closer, tightening the cloth over her nose and mouth, a small bundle of fur comes into view. A small high-pitched whine cuts through the air, and the light reflects onto two small eyes.

The whines are more insistent as soon as they spot Ellie a few feet over.

“Fucking shit,” she mutters to herself.

She looks back outside, debating if she can just pretend she never stepped foot here in the first place when a little cry makes her heart pang. She freezes, closes her eyes and fills her lungs with a deep breath. She regrets it instantly, as the smell of the rapidly rotting flesh makes her gag and fold in on herself.

When she looks back at the lying corpse—corpses, she corrects herself, because the big one must have been the mom surrounded by her lifeless babies, the little survivor has untangled itself from its decaying siblings.

It’s small, and Ellie, with her very poor knowledge of dogs, can’t figure out its age. But if she compares it to the newborn sheep back at the ranch, she’d say one or two months. Tops.

She can’t leave it here, and she quickly bends to pick it up in her arms. It comes willingly, without fighting, or barking, or biting or whatever she thought dogs would do. It doesn’t help her whatsoever in her decision to put it out of its misery.

She takes out her switchblade from her pocket, pulling it open in one over-practiced swift move. But when she draws the merciless blade close to its neck, her hand falters and she can’t take her eyes off the small pup.

Her remaining fingers thread through the unbelievably soft fur, its too-big little ears flapping over its head.

“Stop being cute,” she hears herself say. The pup doesn’t listen at all and tilts its head to the side. Ellie groans with her head tipped back.

When she looks back down, her fingers are scratching it behind the ear and if dogs could smile, this one really would, she thinks.

“How are you even alive,” she breathes, looking past this bundle of cuteness to the other bundle of decay. “I’m doing you a favor,” she grits. “Better this than getting pulled apart by a Runner, or a damn crow, with the size of you. You’d most likely starve,” she begs him to understand.

It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. Because it’s a damn dog. A cute little baby dog.

“I’m going to put you there and I’m going to walk away,” she decides.

And she does, walking out the door without a glance back.

But when she reaches the back of the little cabin, the same little whine makes her freeze, because it sounds like it’s right behind her, and it sounds pleading.

She turns and looks down at the pup, her eyebrows furrowed.

“You can’t come with me!” She shouts, way too loud to talk to a baby whatever. And way too loud for her surroundings. She doesn’t care. “Go back! Just fucking go back!” The pup doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch. “You’re no better off with me, I swear. And you’re gonna get me killed,” she crosses her arms.

The gray pup doesn’t budge. It has a lighter spot on the top of its head.

“I’m leaving,” she deadpans. “And you’re going to stay right here.”

She stomps off the damn bridge and heads to the nearest house, hoping it won’t be habited. She can deal with Infecteds. She’d rather have ran into them than this fucking pup.

She doesn’t look back to see if it listened, if it understood that it couldn’t come. But somehow, she has a feeling it’s right there. No, more than a feeling. She can hear its little feeble precarious weight shuffling through the tall grass.

“I’m not taking you,” she grits again.

One of the upper windows is broken, and she can easily swing through to hopefully find shelter. She starts the easy climb when she makes the mistake of looking back.

It’s right there, looking up at her. She curses, comes back down, and shoves it in the front of her jacket.

It’s warm, and not at all comforting. It’s a pain in the ass to move and to be careful about not crushing it when she slides through the window. It’s not being petulant and moving around everywhere. It’s just there, sitting on Ellie’s chest with its little mouth open and panting. Ellie glances down at it and clenches her jaw.

She lands with a low thump on the floorboard, and a quick look around tells her she most probably is alone. That’s a fucking relief.

The place has been scattered and shattered. Furniture on the floor, split open.

She does a quick but careful scouting, her left hand supporting the small little burden over her chest. It’s a small room, with no higher levels and with the door barricaded from the inside.

She looks down at the pup, its eyes growing heavy.

“Yeah, me too,” she says. “We’re going to be good here.”

She doesn’t linger on how it sounds like they’re going to stick together. They’re not.

She finds dirty pieces of cloth in a corner, and folds them together for a makeshift bed, before putting down the sleepy pup on it.

She looks around, and spots a bucket, which she takes greedily, hoping she won’t find any cracks in it. There are none, but it smells horrid. Whatever, she needs it.

She takes out the rope in her bag and ties it to the nearby desk, which seems sturdy enough for what she needs.

“You stay there,” she tells the lying pup. “I’m coming back.”

And she hops over the window, to head over to the lake. It’s a short walk, and the setting sun is a blessing and a curse. She’s not so easily spotted with the rapidly growing darkness, but she doesn’t dare switch on her lamptorch. There were no Infected on the way in or back but she stays alert either way, these fuckers could really surprise you.

But she needs water. The pup needs water.

The lake laps on a sort of rock beach, the sound of her shoes stumbling over them the only thing she can make out. She looks around her, squinting and trying to spot any moving shadows. Nothing.

The water is freezing cold as she steps into it—shoes and all, and she bends to scrub as much grime as she can off the stinky bucket. She can only imagine what it’s been used for and she doesn’t want to think too much about it.

A ruffling sound echoes behind her and she stops, her heart pounding madly in her chest. She turns her head slowly but there’s nothing. It’s easy mandatory to be paranoid in this world, but after a full minute of the same nothingness, she scrubs the bucket one last time and waits for it to fill up.

That’s when the sound of someone something walking over those rocks is unmistakable. She turns around, switchblade clenched in her fist, but at the same time, one of those damn Stalkers lunges at her with an ear-splitting screech.

Her body reacts before her mind can register what’s happening, blocking and pushing it with as much strength as she can muster. The particular smell of rotting flesh mixed with dirt clouds her senses—it’s way too close. Its teeth clacking an inch from her face. She’s got no leverage to plant her blade in its face or neck, so with a heavy grunt, she pushes it back and manages to make it step backwards just enough.

With a cry she slashes its neck, with another its face. It stumbles, and she digs her trusted weapon in its temple. It crumples to the ground with a shake and a dying moan in its throat.

Ellie’s heart is hammering, blood rushing in her ears.

She doesn’t take the time to catch her breath. Lone Stalkers are a rare thing, and she doesn’t want to fight another one.

She grabs the sufficiently filled bucket and runs to the house, water splashing everywhere. It’s big, and she can only hope she’ll have enough.

As she closes in to the building, she can hear them. Their small cries and shufflings around.

It’s a really small and easy climb to safety, but she also needs to tie the bucket to the rope so she can bring it in. Her fingers falter and she has to try the knot twice to secure it.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she chants, glancing around while her hands struggle.

A deformed shadow pops up a few feet over, its crawling silhouette hiding behind another spot. No matter how many she came across, they always manage to make her choke. There’s just something about them, like they’re thinking, and what does she know, they just might and it freezes her to the spot.

A glass bottle not too far gets her attention, and before thinking too long about it, she grabs it and throws it in the Stalker’s general direction. It screeches as it gets up and Ellie climbs the wall to slide through the window as fast as she can.

Thank fuck the wall can’t be climbed with rotten feet and fingers and she watches as the Infected crawls around the place.

Ellie carefully brings back the half-filled bucket of water and pushes the desk to the broken window just in case.

As her butt hits the ground, drenched in ice water and her chest heaving, a small creature comes close and licks her hand.

“Told you I would be back,” she groans, letting her body slump down while her fingers hitch that spot the little fucker seems to like.

Chapter Text

“Dipshit, stay close,” Ellie calls as she sees the pup shuffle around the tall grass a bit too far for her liking.

He’s not too small as to be overshadowed by them, but he’s not tall enough for her to know where he is in a quick glance. Right now he’s lifting one of his back legs and pissing on the wheel of a car.

It’s been nine days since she found him he followed her around with no clear intention to ever fuck off. She knows, because she figured it was one way or another to keep track of time, since she didn’t know the actual date and didn’t have a clue how to get to know for sure. So she put down a streak in her journal every morning on a page titled Since Little Fucker. And today she put down the ninth mark.

She hasn’t named him. She kind of refuses to. Also, he doesn’t really need a name since he responds to about anything Ellie tells him, or just mumbles to herself. One sound escapes her throat and the leech appears from thin air. It’s not cute. It’s like the opposite of cute.

He’s gray with darker patches, except for the light blob he has on the top of his head. One of his ears flops down everytime he bounces around, but she can tell it’ll right itself once he’ll grow. He kind of looks like a wolf, not that she’s ever seen one. But she’s seen pictures here and there.

The little monster arrives as soon as he finishes his business and she catches herself smiling down at him when he looks up at her with his big bright eyes and his wagging tail.

“You better not fucking die,” she frowns down at him.

He goes and sniffs around, tries to catch a fly and misses ridiculously. JJ would have liked him, she thinks. He must be so big now. No longer crawling and babbling, but maybe running to nowhere only to end flat on his butt. Probably throwing tantrums while Dina would look at him with an amused look and hands on her hips.

Dammit, she really fucked this dreamed life that was handed to her on a fucking silver platter. You were never meant for domesticity, she thinks.

No, I was meant to be useful. Provide a cure, save people.

Oh, so you’re a fucking martyr, now? An angel who got their wings cut off?

“Shut up,” she mumbles. The leech stops a few feet further and tilts his head back to Ellie. “Not you,” she sighs before thinking she’s really starting to lose it.

She’s been by herself for months. She’s crossed some loners’ paths. Like that older chick who was a bit strange but nice and from whom she got a can of ravioli. Others too. But she doesn’t think they really count.

The last person she saw who meant anything to her was… her. Abby.

She didn’t go by Jackson after the ranch. She didn’t want to look at Tommy and tell him she failed. And that she wouldn’t try again. She didn’t want to look at Dina and have a glimpse of what she had, what she could have had, only to know how she fucked up. She just couldn’t go back. There was nothing left for her there.

She thinks about her. Often. About this last critical moment they shared together.

Come on, she had said, there are boats over there.

But she had come all this way, and it didn’t matter what these sick fucks had done to her, had done to all these people. Surely it meant something for her to be still breathing as Ellie finally reached her. It meant Ellie had to kill her for good this time.

That’s what she thought at the moment, at least. And for way too long after that. Now, she’s not so sure. Depends on the day, really.

Fighting with Abby was nothing like Ellie had ever experienced. It was… liberating. Almost. To just feel one and only thing, focus all of her energy on this one goal. Shred her beyond recognition. Watch as doubt set in her eyes, that little second when she finally believed her end was imminent.

But one look at this fucking kid and everything came crashing onto her.

Until this very day she doesn’t know if she regrets it. Letting her go. Letting her live, love.

A part of her wonders if throwing the final blow would have magically unbind her from her grief, from her deepest remorse, from herself. People say it wouldn’t have, but people say shit they don’t mean all the time. And they don’t know what it was like. What it is like.

They don’t know a bond so strong it seemed immuable until it wasn’t. Until betrayal came ruining everything. Until revenge did, until a golf club shattered everything she‘s ever known and hoped for.

But it’s like Ellie can’t just feel. It always blows out of proportion. When it’s good, it’s really good and she wouldn’t trade it for the world. But when darkness envelops her whole and makes her its puppet, there’s nothing anyone can do. Not even herself.

A small barking sound snaps her out of it. She blinks and her eyes focus on the little face by her feet.

“What,” she asks. But the pup doesn’t answer because he doesn’t have vocal cords, or something like that.

She bends and picks up a stick which seems very interesting to the little menace. He bites on it ferociously—or what he might think is ferocious, more likely—and Ellie chuckles at the sight.

“Aren’t we gonna make a real hunter out of you. I keep doing all the work around here.”

An hour later or so has them entering what seems to be a little town. Maybe calling six or so houses next to each other a town is a stretch though.

The weather has been more bearable as days go by. She has no clue how much distance she’s putting behind her and her old life she’d never go back to, but she’d bet her remaining fingers Jackson is buried under snow by now. Tommy shovelling and mumbling profanities under his breath. Dina and JJ having their first snowball fight. Hell, even Cat crosses her mind. Ellie hopes she found someone more suitable than her. She didn’t take the breakup pretty well. I hope you and Dina a swift life together, she had thrown before stomping off Ellie’s garage. Ellie had scoffed at the time. Sure, she always had something for Dina. But Dina was with Jesse, and they were the perfect little Jackson couple together. Guess Cat had been right, even though their small time together had been anything but swift.

“Here,” she says to the pup who comes easily as she approaches a house.

She wouldn’t spit on a few resources, she’s low on everything. Time to scout around.

The door is wide open, and she slides through with the little leech by her feet. He’s a clever thing, that one, not stepping too near and remaining silent. There’s no sound coming from inside, but she spots stairs at the far corner of the room, and a dormant Clicker or Runner wouldn’t be too far-fetched of a thing to stumble into.

She motions the dog to sit (she’d successfully accomplish this small miracle a few days ago, and against her better judgment, it wasn’t as hard to achieve), and silently goes around the room, then makes way to the wooden stairs, careful not to make a tumbling board creak under her weight. She glances back but the pup is still waiting, his eyes fixed on her.

The house is in pretty neat condition, considering all the time it had to go through, and when she makes it to a bedroom, remains of a settlement are scattered over the floor.

The wooden bed frame has been turned over and put against the wall, barricading a window at the same time. A sleeping bag lies haphazardly on the floor, with books arounds. No backpack. Their owner may come back, and she doesn’t want to cross their way.

They could be a threat, or worse, they could be nice. She doesn’t want to deal with either.

Ellie hasn’t killed anyone since Santa Barbara. She’s run into people she would have killed in a blink, were it another time of her life. Hunters, and older men with salacious gazes that crawled down Ellie’s body. She shot one in the foot, the others she stabbed in various places. They’re probably dead by now, but she didn’t have to witness their pathetic lives slipping out of them.

She doesn’t want to ponder on why. Why can’t she take one more life when she took out hundreds, thousands? Ellie’s never been good with numbers.

Ellie wanders rapidly around the room, grabbing what she can and sighs in relief when she gathers three bullets for her handgun.

She looks in the sleeping bag for good measure, and her hand catches on a piece of paper.

“Pup,” she calls softly and doesn’t smile at the adorable clinks of his nails as he climbs up the wooden stairs.

She crumples the letter in her hand before tossing it in a corner. This thing must be more than six years old. No one is coming back. Maybe Sam and Cal are reunited now. Or maybe there’s nothing. They’re just gone.

“Okay shitface, last night,” she stops in the middle of the stairs as if it would emphasize her words. “No big puppy eyes and snuggling and trying to convince me to stay here. I’m immune to your cuteness,” she huffs and she resumes the small climb to the room they were occupying for way too long.

She actually has no idea where to go, but they need to move. Now. This place is wrecked and it would take way too long and too much effort to repair.

She opens the door and freezes on the spot, the faint smile lingering on her lips dying instantly. She quickly reaches for her switchblade.

“Drop it,” the boy invading her room says steadily, unwavering, way too sure of himself considering his frail stature.

Ellie clenches her jaw, considers her megre options but the thud of her knife on the floor echoes around the room along with the sound of the useless dog’s paws walking to the intruder with a wagging tail.

The boy’s eyes don’t even focus on him, clearly unimpressed, as the little menace sniffs him and sits in front of him with his tongue out. Fucking great.

“What do you want?” She grits. She doesn’t have a lot to offer, but she gathers she could get out of this unfortunate encounter. After all, she’s still breathing. He could have planted an arrow between her eyes as soon as she stepped in. She doesn’t question his abilities. She can see it, in his posture, his hard gaze, the steadiness of his fingers on the string. This boy can kill, no matter how fucking young he is. Ellie has seen full grown ups falter for less.

He’s got dark straight hair, the top half scrunched into a bun at the back of his head, and the small strands falling down his face shadow his features. Her eyes widen when she spots the scars on his cheeks.

“Don’t move,” he warns instantly, surely having picked up on the flicker of recognition in her eyes and in her involuntary step forward.

Her eyes immediately dart around the room, a surge of dormant but seared anger flashing through her.

“Where’s Abby?” She hears the words as they leave her lips, as if the last months had not existed at all. She didn’t want to go down this rabbit hole again, and she fucking hates the part that relieves in these little words she used to hold onto like a lifeline.

“I need your help,” he answers after a second too long. The flicker of something flashes in his eyes, but his bow is still steady on her. She feels restless.

“Lower your bow.”

“I can’t do that,” he says as he shakes his head, his eyebrows slightly furrowed on his youthful face. “Hand over all your weapons.”

“For fuck’s sake! Are you here to rob me?” She shouts, and he stands straighter.

“No. I just want to talk. And I need you unarmed.”

“I could kill you with my bare hands,” she scoffs.

“You don’t want to try,” he just answers with a slight twitch of his eyebrow. So fucking sure and unwavering for a fucking kid. She can’t believe this is happening to her. “Your weapons,” he insists, his tone indicating he won’t ask thrice.

With a grumble, she nudges her switchblade closer to him with her foot, then she slowly puts her backpack on the floor, and turns around with her hands up, showing that she’s bare and without a weapon tucked wherever. As their eyes meet again, he lowers his bow, and grabs her backpack, putting it further away from Ellie.

Then he does the last thing Ellie would have guessed. He tosses two dead rabbits that were hanging on a string against his back right between the two of them.

“I didn’t come empty-handed.” Both rabbits have been killed with one clean shot right in the middle of the eye.

She didn’t find anything to eat today. She went looking around the nearby buildings, mostly looking to stock up on munitions and other practical stuff. She’d found a small stash of shotgun’s bullets, and some others she could use for Joel’s pistol. Some bandages that were nowhere to being clean but that she picked up anyway, a bit of whiskey.

“Thanks,” she mumbles in a sarcastic voice he doesn’t seem to pick on when she sees him nodding solemnly, and grabs the pup by the skin on the back of his neck when he gets too close to dinner. “Thank you for backup,” she scowls at him and all he does is close his eyes with his mouth open, panting. She sighs and puts him back down.

“Okay let’s get to it then,” she says and wonders what the fuck she found herself in.

They each skin and gut and cut a rabbit, in a way too comfortable silence for her liking. She should feel on edge, prepared for the worst, but instead, the sound of another knife slicing and clinking, mixed with the little noises of the pup relieve something within her she refused to dwell on all of these past months.

Ellie Williams has never been one for loneliness and no matter how much she tried to convince herself that she was, that she could be, the little pup all but proved her otherwise. And now, having a human company that she doesn’t question whether or not they would smother her in her sleep is like breathing right for the first time.

It’s an awful, awful feeling. She can’t surrender to it. This boy is Abby’s boy. She doesn’t know what he means to her, she doesn’t know how a Scar and a Wolf came to be this close, but most of all, she doesn’t care. She can’t. And after dinner, she’ll tell him she can’t offer him the help he needs. Whatever it might be.

Somehow she thinks it’s something about finding Abby. Which she absolutely will not do.

Surely the kid can handle himself.

She already feels the simmering rage boiling inside of her just from the mere mention of her. She knows she’d only want to kill her slowly as soon as her eyes would land on her. And she doesn’t want that. She let her go. And even though she blamed herself for it, even though she woke up some nights gasping for air with her name on her lips, she also knew, deep down, that she made the right decision.

And one of the reasons she so suddenly changed her mind was standing right beside her now.

“How did you find me?” Ellie asks in-between absolutely delicious bites. They cooked the rabbits on a little fire they had going on a busted part of the house. She even put some salt on it that she had found a while back and was saving for special occasions. Surely this counted as one.

She’d prepared a small plate for the furry leech under the watchful gaze of the boy in front of her. He’d devoured it before Ellie could dig in her own plate.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he answers. “I think She put me on your path. And this has to mean something.”

Ellie doesn’t ask who ‘she’ is. She adamantly doesn’t give a single fuck.

“I saw you a while back,” he continues, and Ellie almost chokes on her food. “I wasn’t sure it was you and then I recognized that drawing on your arm,” he nods towards her forearm that she instinctively covers with her hand. “So I followed you,” he shrugs.

Ellie blinks at him. “What do you mean ‘a while back’? For how long have you been following me?”

“About two weeks ago?” He answers and she truly does choke now. “I was in a town near a lake, and I saw you. I thought you were going to be eaten alive by that stealthy demon.”

“The Stalker?” She scowls and he shrugs again. “Thanks for the help,” she snorts as she shakes her head to her plate. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me, but I can’t help you. I can’t help you find A—I can’t help you find her.”

“But you always do,” his eyes are fixed on her, and she has to focus really hard not to squirm under their weight.

There’s something about this fucking kid. She remembers him, at the theatre. She remembers him, on the bridge of death in her arms, on the boat. One look at him had made her spare Dina. One look at him had made Ellie spare Abby. But she can’t promise she would do it again.

She tried. She fucking tries daily to get over the all-consuming rage that made her lose everything she got. But then she thinks she started this. If Abby hadn’t—Fuck. There. Here she goes again.

“I had this very knife ready to slice your throat, you know,” she says instead, holding her switchblade up. She doesn’t really know why. Maybe to scare him, to make him see how unfitting they would be.

He just looks at her, as if studying her. He’s grown since the pillars. But some expressions he has betray his youth.

“You didn’t, though,” he just answers after a while.

“No, I didn’t,” she says as she digs back in her plate. She doesn’t want to go there. She doesn’t know why she mentioned it.

“Why?” He asks, in a way like he knows the answer. And she doesn’t. She shrugs. “Please,” he continues as she’s trying to get control over her shaky hands. “It’s my fault. They took her and it’s my fault,” he starts frantically rambling.

She doesn’t try to calm him down. She has to try and calm herself first. She sees her, her beat-up face under the water as Ellie pushed with all her strength down her neck. Her weakened body by months of torture, tied up to a pillar, getting tormented by the harsh elements. Her burnt skin and her cropped hair as punishment.

“We wouldn’t have been there if not for me,” he continues babbling. He sounds so so young now. She doesn’t look at him. Can’t. “She wanted to find that group she was in years ago, but she saw how this was the last thing I wanted. Every group I know kill and hurt and—”

She doesn’t hear him over the white noise clouding all of her senses. She vaguely acknowledges the pup climbing onto her lap.

“Do you mean the Fireflies?” She whispers, her mind whirling.

“Y—yes.”

“The Fireflies are gone,” she looks at him now, and he looks confused, with streaks down his face. She doesn’t know when he started crying.

“We were in contact with them before the—before the Rattlers,” he shivers. “Before they got us.”

Ellie gets to her feet, her breaths becoming more ragged.

“Where?” She asks. “Where?” She shouts when he doesn’t answer.

“I can’t tell you that. I need your help. We can trade.” She notices how he wavers now. Way less sure of himself without that bow of his ready to kill.

Ellie groans, and punches the wall next to her before leaning on it for support, shutting her eyes close tightly. Fucking fuck. She could make him talk—she could. No. Fuck! She stays like this for a while, weighing her few possibilities.

“When was the last time you saw her?” She asks through gritted teeth.

Chapter Text

Ellie looks at the young boy sleeping soundly right in front of her, with her hand stroking mindlessly the also sleeping pup and her mind going a thousand miles a minute.

It’s like a spark had reignited the fire within her. And she didn’t know she lost it until she found it again. She didn’t know nor think it was a good thing—were there such things as good things, anyway?—but it made her feel more alive than she has felt in forever.

Ellie has a purpose again, something to look forward to, and hopefully, it will be the last.

She hasn’t told the boy what she wanted from the Fireflies, nor did he ask.

They didn’t ask each other pointless, personal questions. They were not friends, and the boy seemed to have understood that well enough. But having him around may not be the worst thing to ever happen, as having another pair of eyes watching around was more than necessary.

Ellie was lucky nothing had happened to her all these months by herself. In a group of at least two, one would take watch while the other would have some much needed rest, and then they’d turn. She couldn’t do that by herself, obviously, and the new furry addition had demonstrated to be absolutely useless. She vaguely wonders how she could train him to be a bit more defensive or if he’ll maybe just grow and understand the peculiarities of this fucked up world he had the misfortune to survive into. But then she thinks about the dogs of the WLF and a shudder runs up her spine. She doesn’t want that for him either.

She could should have slept tonight, as tomorrow, which will come in a few short hours, will be a long day. But she feels so restless she can’t even think about it. She feels like a million of tiny ants are crawling in her veins, making it impossible for her to stay still for more than a few minutes.

She paces around the room, the urge to run or do something almost impossible to ignore. So she takes out the map she’d found a few days before, and looks at all the marks her and the boy have put down. The boy knew where they were, which was another bonus point for his presence.

The catch is that it’s near impossible to know where Abby was taken. The boy was sure she was captured, as he scouted the area up and down trying to find her and never found her corpse, or her roaming around as an Infected. He’d told her that with such a quiet and pained voice, one only used for the person you hold dearest in the world. She’d quickly changed the subject. Not for him, but because she didn’t want to hear how she was loved that much, and she needed to stay focused on the task at hand.

Honestly Ellie thinks she’s long dead, but she didn’t tell that to the boy. She figures that she’ll get to know the location she’s looking for at some point. And if he doesn’t want to, she’ll make him talk. Perhaps tell him about her immunity. What the Fireflies could get out of her.

He’d lost her about a month ago. They’d been resting and living in an isolated house for months before that, and she swallowed back the bile climbing up her throat when it reminded her too much of the ranch. He’s pretty sure the people who assaulted their house were part of a big community, from the numbers of them and how heavily armed they were.

They were closing on them dangerously, knowing from all the proof of life scattered around that they had stumbled on people. First, they slaughtered their horse. Then their chickens. And it quickly escalated into a man-hunt. So Abby had put their attention on her when the moment was critical and they were about to discover them both. She sacrificed herself for him to be able to go away. He hated himself so much for leaving it was painful to watch. Ellie hadn’t commented. She wasn’t here to reassure the boy.

The thing is, there’s no big group or community in the area where it happened. Ellie had been around there and would have seen something. The boy had looked around everywhere too. So they must be coming from afar. Why they were there and so far away from their homebase was impossible to guess, and it was also pointless at this very moment.

Going North wasn’t an option. There was nothing there anymore. There was Jackson, and maybe other smaller communities like it, but they weren’t an option. So they could go South, East, or West.

The boy stirs a short hour later, as the sky turns into hues too pretty for the world they live in.

Ellie has everything prepared already, and swings her backpack over her shoulders.

“You ready?” She asks.

He nods, scrubbing his hands over his eyes. He looks so young like that, Ellie has to look away.

“We’re completely blind here. You sure you don’t remember anything more?” She presses.

“Why would I hold on things that could get me back to Abby?” He spits back like the petulant child he is.

“I dont fucking know, do I? Maybe you heard something while you were out there, with the Rattlers.”

The boy freezes. It’s a painful memory, for them both, for different reasons entirely.

“It’s on the other side of the country, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Clearly you’ve been sleeping on your geography lessons. Of course it matters!”

“I—,” the boy falters and Ellie doesn’t know if she should feel annoyed or worried. No matter how she feels about him, about them, no one and certainly no kid should have to go through what they must have gone through while they were captive there. ”Some guys were talking about something called Haven? Eden? Something like that.”

“Why did you not mention it earlier? That’s a lead!”

“Because it’s not! It’s too far and I—She can’t,” his voice wavers and Ellie tries to control her rapidly building nerves. “If they’re working with the Rattlers, she’s gone,” he finally says, his teary gaze fixed on her. “So that just can’t be it.”

Ellie gulps, not wanting to trouble the kid further.

“It’s a lead,” she repeats, way calmer, attempting a step closer to him. “Do you think you can remember anything else about this group or whatever they may be?”

The boy’s chin trembles slightly before he gets a hold of himself. It’s pretty impressive, and almost heart wrenching, if one would still have a heart to feel that sort of thing, which she does not. She can see how thinking about his time there is the very last thing he wants to think about, but this very well could be it.

“I—yes,” he nods sternly. “Just give me a moment. I guess we head South then.”

“South,” she agrees as she hands him her canteen.

He takes it quietly and gulps some water before wordlessly giving it back to Ellie.

They take the road a short time after, the little pup following dutifully and a good distraction for them both, as if his mere presence hid the fact that they shared the same air, headed the same way. Had a common goal.

The boy is swift on his feet. And fast. Deadly quiet. As if he saw every crunchy leaf and twig on the way, his feet avoiding them without him needing to pay attention. His gaze roaming around at all times. Alert, but pensive at the same time. Of course all his effort is crushed by the careless pup following them around, and Ellie’s steps that will never match his quiet ones.

“Boss gave me cargo duty to take the bitches to Eden,” he says at some point.

“What?” Ellie stops and frowns at the boy a few feet on her left.

“I’ll make sure to have fun but that heat is a son of a bitch,” he continues. Ellie blinks, a shiver running up her spine. “Stop whinging, I’m on cell cleaning duty.” He turns to Ellie. “That’s what I remember some guards saying a short time before—before we tried to escape.” Ellie gulps.

“Okay,” she breathes. “That’s good, that’s something.”

“Yeah,” he nods. “I don’t want to think of what it might mean. What it would mean for Abby to—”

“There’s a lot of possibilities, kid. Let’s not dwell on the worst ones.”

“Do we—do you think we have to go back?” He asks, his eyes fixed on the ground, but Ellie doesn’t miss the tremor in his hands. “There. To the Rattlers,” he lifts his eyes to her. So fucking young.

“No,” she’s too quick to answer. She doesn’t know why. “I’m pretty sure they’re gone anyway.”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps walking with his head hunched until a noise on his left makes him remember he can’t afford to look down, to dwell on things. Not in this world.

Ellie turns around, to distract her gaze from the troubled boy and not at all to check if the little furry monster is still following like he was the minute before and hasn’t been torn apart by a very stealthy stalker or something in the likes. She absolutely doesn’t smile when she spots him lapping from a puddle in the destroyed cement.

Ellie absentlessly gets the map out of her back pocket and scans the possible areas. As much of a jab she made about his geography lessons, Ellie is far from better herself. She tries to guess what regions could have a ‘son of a bitch heat’, and she dwells on Joel’s tales from a world she struggles to believe had actually existed.

—

The boy seems reluctant to slow his steps as dusk taunts them more and more every minute.

“Just a little further,” he throws over his shoulder.

Ellie sighs, more as some sort of far away twin feeling than annoyance. She remembers what it felt like, to scavenge for something, anything, as she had no idea if Joel had survived the last hour. She remembers the beacon of hope her young self allowed herself to feel when she met these two men, bargaining the deer she just hunted for Joel’s salvation. Only to be knocked off her feet moments later, seeing her short but too eventful life flash before her eyes.

She realizes now that she’s this kid's hope. His hope to find her. To find Abby. And she also knows that she won’t be the reason this boy’s world would completely twist on its axis. Because she isn’t a fucking cannibal ready to butcher him.

She takes two long strides and tugs on one strap of the boy’s backpack. He turns around faster than she can blink, eyes set but panic swimming in them, throwing Ellie’s arm off him in one effective swing of his own.

Ellie doesn’t comment. Just takes a careful and sure step back.

”We need to rest and set up camp. The road’ll still be here by morning.”

The boy looks back, to where he was heading, mindlessly walking in the hopes of stepping one step closer to the one he was looking for. She sees as his throat bob, as if swallowing back words he decided too late not to let out.

“Come on,” she insists, her voice sounding way softer than she intended.

They find a more secluded spot not far, a patch of dirt against a torn wall. But a wall means one side less to be watchful of, so they’ll take what they get. It’s not like it’s Ellie’s first time sleeping in the open, and judging from how comfortable the boy is in the woods, it’s not his first either.

“I’ll look around, just to make sure, can you put on a fire?” Ellie asks him.

“I could look around, pretty sure I could find us some dinner at the same time.”

”I’ll cover dinner tonight,” she throws a careless hand to his direction, feeling the weight of the can of ravioli she was saving for who knows what pushing down her bag. She shouldn’t get attached to two-decades old pasta trapped in metal. They’re going down tonight.

The boy squints at her in suspicion but she walks further away, keeping an eye and an ear out for any Infected. They haven’t seen any today, and Ellie thinks it’s pretty unlikely they’ll stumble into some, but you can never be too careful.

Her eyes scan the surrounding area dutifully, not wanting to be caught off guard by one of those dreadful Stalkers. How did the boy called them? Stealthy demons, she almost huffs a small laugh but thankfully it doesn’t get past her own head.

The area is clear, the crisp night air weaving in with the singsong of the birds settling for the night.

There’s a small controlled fire burning when she returns back to their temporary camp, the orange wavy light dancing on the crouched boy’s features.

Ellie allows herself a good stretch that turns out to reveal all the built-up soreness of the day, of the past months, years really, and rummages through her bag that threatens to tear itself with every step. She fishes for the can she was saving for fuck knows what exactly, feeling the weight in her hand.

She looks at the boy who quickly averts his eyes back on the fire.

”Have you ever had this before?” The boy looks at her again, as if he wasn’t lurking two seconds before. “I can’t promise it won’t all be moldy and gross but…,” she shrugs, distracting her gaze with the sniffing pup around the camp.

“What is it?” He answers with a soft voice but curious glinting eyes.

“Raviolis,” she breathes, unable to control the painful smile painting her lips. The boy looks even more confused. “It’s like pasta with a filling stuffed inside in a slimy sauce.”

”Yum,” he answers sarcastically before composing himself. “I mean, no I haven’t but thank you.”

Ellie huffs a small laugh.

“Yeah, doesn’t sound too good, but I’m telling you, this is divine.”

The can opens under Ellie’s blade, revealing blissfully intact raviolis. Her mouth stretches into a toothy grin and she shows it to the boy who smiles in return. She approaches the fire under his watchful gaze, placing a metal plate she’s been carrying around right on the flames to put the can onto it.

It doesn’t get long for the unappetizing but delicious mixture to bubble up and Ellie retrieves it with sticks, praying that their feeble dinner won't topple over. Thank fuck it doesn’t and she spoons the better half of it in the kid’s bowl. If he notices the very good portion she serves him, he doesn’t mention it, just mumbles quiet thanks, his face flushed from the closed flames. She then takes some of it for herself, leaving a few pieces on the bottom to cool down to give to the furry leech who’s silently pleading to have some. If she starves because of him, she’ll kill him. Probably eat him. She tilts her head to him and laughs to herself. She never would, of course.

She watches with her head bent, fiddling with her spoon, as the boy’s eyes widen at his first bite and she can’t help the surging warmth flooding her.

“Good?” She can’t help but ask. Like she should care, like they’re the beginning of something. The boy nods eagerly.

In just that one little word, she could hear Joel, and not herself, and instead of wanting to make one with the dirt and plunge her switchblade right through her heart, it makes her smile.

That first bite makes her eyes prickle, and takes her back years ago, to simpler times. Times she refuses to let herself to dwell on. But now, it feels okay, and Ellie doesn’t quite know how to process this new feeling. So she basks in it.

The boy’s spoon scraps his bowl already, trying to get every last bit of it, and he clears his throat. She puts her fingers on the metal can, busying herself for what’s to come and giving it to the hungry pup who plunges his head in immediately.

“So,” Ellie beats him to it. “What’s your name anyway?”

There’s a long silent second passing through, making Ellie fidget and slightly uncomfortable.

“Lev,” he finally answers.

She looks at him, small strands of hair clinging to his forehead with the heat of the fire they’ll have to put out too soon. His roseing cheeks that are still round and plum with youth. She remembers, not too long ago, she looked like that. It feels like an eternity ago.

“What’s yours?”

Ellie blinks. And it’s his turn to fidget.

“You don’t know my name?” She finally manages to ask. He shakes his head softly, and a surge of heat flames her head up, her nostrils flaring. “I’m Ellie,” she tries to answer calmly but it doesn’t sound like she is calm at all. She is the opposite of calm—

“Ellie,” he repeats, as if testing how the name forms in his mouth.

“You mean to tell me Abby never once spoke my name?” She can’t help but prob. It sounds very very unlikely—

“No?” He answers. “You were always ‘the Jackson girl’.”

“Right,” she grits.

She doesn’t know why it infuriates her that much that Abby never spoke her name—maybe she didn’t even know her fucking name. When Ellie had hers memorized so long ago, seared into her like a thorn in her lungs. She’d written it so many times, scrawled it, scratched it. Written it on her thigh with mindless fingers. Repeated it in her head like a terrible chant.

“I’m sorry?” The boy—Lev—tries.

“Don’t be,” she gets up hastily, her finished bowl in one hand and taking his in a swift move. “Put out the fire, we don’t want to attract unwanted attention. This one is pretty useless, as we’ve established.”

“But he’s cute. I don’t really like dogs, but this one is pretty cute. I’m glad I didn’t have to kill him.”

Ellie snorts at that, shaking her head as she puts dirt into the bowls. They’ll wash them properly when they encounter a stream or something. Hopefully pretty soon.

“I’m taking first watch,” she mumbles. “Get some rest.”

——

The sun is a warm welcome on her face and Ellie allows herself to shut her eyes and bask in it. She feels how her mouth stretches her cheeks, how her hand comes to find the one beside hers. She loves how Dina’s hand feels in hers. The delicate fingers slotting perfectly in her palm.

“Come on, you know how Joel is in the kitchen, we have to dampen the damage.”

Ellie laughs and opens her eyes to drown them in Dina’s. Her long lashes frame them so beautifully, faint freckles that only appear during the summertime peppering the apples of her cheeks. Ellie brings the hand she holds onto and brings it to her mouth, placing a careful kiss on top of it.

Ellie wakes up, a smile still dancing on her lips. And then she realizes the sun isn’t warming her face like a second before. It’s barely rising actually, and she can’t even see it, hidden behind thick heavy clouds. Her smile falls, and tears soon follow. She clenches her jaw, trying to keep them at bay, but a sob tears through her.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She shouts as she bangs her head on the ground beneath her.

She steadies, but the tears keep streaming down, while the pit she’s been used to for the longest time digs at her insides.

She finally manages to get into a sitting position, rubbing her hands over her face, chasing the tears away. There’s some fumbling around her, and Lev is with his back to her, organizing his backpack or at least pretending to, giving her some space she doesn’t care for or need. She doesn’t care for anything today.

He glances at her, seems to hesitate, and walks to her before offering his hand. She considers not taking it. Ignoring him for the rest of the day, the year. But it’s right there, so she takes it, and he helps her hoist herself up on her feet that seem so foreign she almost crumbles.

A small whine makes her look down and she mindlessly crouches to stroke the pup on that spot he likes so much. Her throat aches, thousand needles poking it from the inside, threatening to burst out. She blinks, look at her maimed hand as she clenches it into a fist. Unclenches. Feels the stumps with her thumb. Except she doesn’t feel it. And whose hand is that, and—

Chapter Text

The edges of Ellie’s vision are blurry. All is green before her, her feet are moving, one step after another, she feels the air filling her lungs. She blinks and looks around. Trees and tall grass. A boy with scars and a pup. She trips on a rock and falls on her hands, her breathing grows heavier and heavier, as if it were too thick for her body to handle.

A small weight at her elbow.

“Are you okay?” A soft, almost concerned voice, from the boy. Lev. Who she shared raviolis with last night. Was it last night? They’re looking for Abby. Where is Abby? She’s looking for Abby and she’ll finally get the job done. No. They’re looking for Abby for the kid. And Ellie will know where the Fireflies are. Where she can matter.

The pup goes to her, a small whine escaping his tiny throat. She can’t pet him because both of her hands are burying themselves in the wet grass, she feels dirt beneath it.

“When,” she swallows. Her throat feels raw, a stale taste in her mouth. “When did we leave camp?”

Lev doesn’t answer. He’s so quiet she could have dreamed him. She’s scared of turning her head and seeing nothing. Maybe she’s imagined it all. The boy and the pup. Some sick trick of her deranged mind, as if breathing wasn’t hard enough.

“Lev,” she breathes, a question getting stuck in her throat as she closes her eyes shut. Begging.

“Yes,” he answers and she exhales deeply while a tear rolls down her cheek. She waits for the pit always digging her guts to stop, just for a moment. It does. “Can you stand? Let’s sit for a second.”

Ellie nods and her head feels too heavy for her own neck. But when the boy lifts her up, she follows. He makes her sit onto a rock, offers her his canteen. She takes a grateful sip.

“When—”

“We left after dawn. We’re in the middle of the afternoon.”

She nods and takes careful breaths to steady her back into her body.

“Don’t—Don’t you remember?” His voice wavers and she looks at him then. His eyebrows furrowed, the downturn of his mouth. His gaze roaming around her face. She feels out of place.

“No,” she just answers before standing up to resume the walking she doesn’t recall doing.

They don’t talk after that. They just continue walking. Lev with his barely-there footsteps. The pup with his already too-loud ones. Ellie with her all-encompassing thoughts clouding everything. Part of her wants to plunge back into that other state. But the stronger, more stubborn part of her never wants to ever again. This is a liability. And she can’t afford to die. Not now. She needs to die like she was meant to. Carved open by chirurgical scalpels. Trust others to do what’s right.

—

This time, Lev is the one to stop for the night. Ellie doesn’t argue. She gets a fire going as he skins the few squirrels he shot during the day.

Lev is the first person to witness her when she went away. Or Dina was, but it was never for so long that she ever noticed. And Ellie had never wanted to breach the topic with her. Show how much more of a freak she truly was. She wants to ask him. But the words stay stuck in her throat. Make swallowing the dinner she certainly needs almost impossible. She looks at the dancing flames in front of her, just as a distraction. Something else to focus on but the pain in her throat, in her stomach, in her bones.

“How—What,” she sighs. When has talking become so fucking complicated? The boy indulges her, though. Doesn’t say anything. Just listens. Waits. “How was I?” She settles for. “Today.”

“You just walked. You didn’t talk but I just thought—I don’t know. I didn’t notice you were gone,” he answers with a small voice. Ellie nods faintly. “Where did you go?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie huffs a laugh that is so far away from one she has trouble remembering when was the last time she laughed for real. And not in a dream with Dina, or JJ, or Joel. “It’s like I don’t exist anymore. But then I wake up.”

She hoists herself up, battling with the sting in her eyes. Paces around the makeshift camp, bends her legs, waves around her arms.

“The dog seemed more alert,” he says with a smile in his voice. “When you were gone. Stayed at your heels the whole time. But then got back to his useless cute self.”

Ellie looks at the pup who’s sniffing around, hoping for pieces of meat that might have escaped their mouths, and smiles.

“What’s his name?” Lev asks.

“Huh?”

“The dog, doesn’t he have a name?”

“Leech?” Ellie tries but Lev only blinks at her, very unimpressed. She considers the dog, the little lighter spot on his head. “Hat,” she concludes with a soft voice she hasn’t heard coming from her, or anyone in months.

“Hat?” Lev repeats, even less impressed.

“Short for Hatosaur,” Ellie answers as if it was common sense. Of course it’s not but the confused frown on the boy is enough to get her going. To not let her dwell on the best and most heart-wrenching memories she has.

“You make no sense!” He groans, but she can see a dimple forming on the side of his mouth. How he fights his smile. And for a precious moment, it’s all that exists. It’s all that matters.

“Sure I do! It’s a dinosaur. The cutest, littlest dinosaur to have ever walked on earth,” she says with the stupid voice no one is above making when faced-to-faced with such cuteness. She approaches the pup and swings his head lightly side to side. He opens his mouth and tries to bite her with his teeth, sharp as needles.

“A dino—what?” Lev asks again, and Ellie blinks, stops with the dog and looks at him with her mouth hanging open.

“A dinosaur, Lev,” she says very slowly, as if it would click into place if she repeated it more clearly. He shakes his head and Ellie recovers a standing position, not quite believing what she’s hearing right now.

“You don’t know what dinosaurs are?!” She exclaims. “Lev!”

The boy shakes his head, his mouth stretched wide and looking all around.

“No, I don’t but keep your voice down,” he starts to giggle and the pup becomes excited at the foreign sound.

“How am I supposed to keep my voice down when I’m about to introduce you to one of the most insane, coolest things to have ever happened to this sorry excuse of a planet?!”

His eyes widen and he can’t stop smiling and laughing, the light of the fire reflecting on the apple of his cheeks. He listens with his eyebrows doing all sorts of things when Ellie describes her favorites. He lets out small laughs but mostly he shakes his head and looks at Ellie like she’s grown a second head.

“You know I’m not a little kid anymore,” he arches an eyebrow at her. “I’m not going to sit here and believe there were giant lizards roaming around.”

Ellie groans in despair.

“Not just lizards! Some were flying, with wings! Feathers, everything!” She’s frantic, her arms swaying around and unable to stay still, to Lev’s and Hat’s great amusement. “They were everywhere. On earth, in the sky, in the sea,” she crouches in front of him and sees a flicker of something ignite in his dark eyes.

“In the sea?” He asks.

“Yeah! Like giants swimming around. Bigger than any shark or whale we have around,” she nods.

“You’re making fun of me,” he huffs.

“Am not! How could I invent such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” he laughs.

“I’ll prove it to you, Lev, mark my words!” She stands again, goes to sit back to her side of the fire.

“If they’re all dead, you really can’t.”

“There’s proof, kid. I’ve seen them with my own eyes.” This seems to destabilize him, and she’s one step closer to making him see reason. “In a museum.”

“A museum?”

“Yes, like a big building where they used to display shit for people to learn. Back when the world wasn’t so fucked up.”

Lev doesn’t smile anymore, seems to be in a place far away, focusing on the dying flames in between them.

“I—,” he starts. “They say the world has always been… fucked up.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re right. But they sure had cool shit.”

Lev laughs a bit at that and smothers down the rest of the fire.

“I’ll take first watch, okay? I think you need the rest.”

“Oh,” she blinks. “Okay, thanks,” she answers with a smile that comes easier and he throws one of his her way with kind eyes.

He’s a good kid, she thinks as she sees him climb up a tree like nothing and makes himself comfortable on a low branch.

“Show off,” she mumbles.

“Good night, Ellie,” he snorts before steadying his gaze around them.

She falls asleep quickly, with Hat’s head propped on her stomach and thoughts of giant lizards surrounded by soft chuckles.

“Ellie.”

Her eyes open on their own accord, her heart thudding in her throat. She tilts her head to the sound. Lev’s wide eyes meet hers.

“You wake up very fast,” he blinks. “It’s your turn.”

“Right, okay, thanks,” she mumbles, as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes.

She’s still adjusting to the darkness when she stands to pace around camp, making her body understand that sleep is out of the question. Mercifully, it’s a cloudless sky with a bright full moon, and she has less trouble making out her surroundings than most nights.

She props Lev’s bow on her shoulder, figuring a soundless weapon would be more than adequate if they get jumped by infected. They haven’t crossed any since she’s been with him but what she doesn’t want is to get too comfortable. With her experience, she knows they have less chance crossing them on the road, as they like to roam around and regroup naturally together to rot in more cemented areas. They’ll need to scavenge a city, sooner rather than later. Stock up for what’s to come.

The bark of the tree digs in her back when she sits against it, opening her journal and making use of the bright moonlight filtering through.

Lev is already fast asleep, a frown that shouldn’t be there on his too-young face. She doesn’t wake him up from his nightmare. It’s always like that, and at least he’s not moving around and mumbling during the night, unlike her. Or that’s what Dina has told her. And the look in Lev’s eyes when he wakes her up for her shift.

—

Three days later they make the necessary detour to a nearby town, under Lev’s protests and Ellie’s command.

“We’re just so far away, we need to keep moving. If where she is is where it’s hot, we have a lot to walk,” Lev had noted.

“You were there during the Summer. We’re in like November, it’s not gonna get too hot either way. We’ll be around Las Vegas in no time. Two weeks top,” Ellie throws at him, scanning the still city from the elevated spot they found.

“Ellie,” Lev sighs. “We’ll be in January in a few days.”

Ellie stills. Thinks. Blinks. Is that even possible? She can’t be multiple months off.

“Are—are you sure?”

“Yes. I lost Abby in November. I keep track. Always have, it comes almost naturally now.”

“Right. Okay. January. Fuck,” her head drops. “Let’s go.”

Ellie falters when she sees Hat. He might have grown in the past weeks he’s been with her them, but he’s still so small and innocent.

“Should we let Hat here, come back for him when we’re done? We don’t know what’s waiting for us there,” she asks Lev. She can’t be trusted to make these kinds of decisions on her own. His eyes widen immediately.

“What, no, what if a demon comes and he can’t escape?”

A flash of a Stalker tearing apart this bundle of fur, Lev and Ellie coming back to blood and guts makes her shiver.

“Ugh. Right, you’re right. Hat, you better follow us and do as we say.”

Hat answers with glittering eyes and his tongue out. Here goes nothing.

Ellie takes the lead, with Joel’s pistol in a tight grip, her switchblade tucked at her waist. Hat follows dutifully while Lev stays a few steps back, eyes set and roaming around everywhere, the string of his bow tight and at the ready.

They barely spare a glance at the houses before them, aiming for shops. They’re pretty far from the big cities and old FEDRA bases, so Ellie thinks they have a good shot at finding something useful.

They make their way to a hardware store, picked over by stragglers in the last decades. Nothing salvageable. Ellie curses under her breath. She doesn’t want this small mission to be more complicated than it ought to be, and they’re on a rough start.

Lev blows a small whistle, startling Ellie and bringing her back in the forest, torch lights closing in on her. She blinks, sees as he mouthes apologies. Ellie shakes her head.

“You’ve got to teach me that,” she whispers.

“Sure,” he chuckles softly. “Works on him too,” he gestures to Hat who came from wandering around at the high-pitched noise.

“I can’t whistle.”

“Everybody can whistle,” he shakes his head with the ghost of a smile.

“No I swear,” she laughs. “Joel almost went crazy teaching me.”

Lev looks at her, the ghost of his smile having turned corporeal. Ellie lets her chuckle faint, before realizing who she just spoke of. How it didn’t tighten her heart in a vice grip.

“Come on, let’s do the store next door,” he prompts her to follow.

When has this kid turned the leader of this escapade? She shrugs, and follows.

There’s nothing there, and Ellie starts to feel restless. They’re losing time, they’re wasting time.

They walk for long minutes until they arrive at a motel. It’s barricaded, overgrown, the roof collapsing in some parts of it. Ellie and Lev exchange a glance and they go.

There’s one window accessible, already busted, and they go through, pup in Ellie’s arms.

Ellie takes the lead, pistol in hand, and kicks the door open. She closes it back almost instantly when she spots the deadly particles flying around.

“Spore,” she whispers to Lev over her shoulder. “Take him with you outside and wait for me to come back.”

“What about you?” He frowns.

“I’ll be fine,” she answers quickly. “I have a gas mask,” she lies.

“Come with us, it’s not worth it.”

“High-risk places have more chances not to have been picked over that much,” she reasons. “I’ll be quick.” She hands him her gun, not Joel’s, the other one she cares less about. “Hand me your bow, it might come handy.”

“Can you use that?” He arches an eyebrow, but passes it to Ellie all the same.

“You cheeky brat,” she chuckles with a swat on his arm.

“I don’t know what that is but it sounded mean,” he smiles.

“Me?” She pretends to be outraged. “I would never.”

Lev shakes his head and crouches to gather Hat into his arms and walks to the window to climb back out.

“Ellie?” He calls softly before jumping over.

“Yes?”

“Just… Don’t die,” he says, his intense gaze of his focused on her.

“I won’t,” she promises, and waits for him to disappear to open the door back, bow at the ready.

Two steps in and the spores fill her nostrils unpleasantly. Like she’s in a particularly stuffy room, but moldy and rotten. She vaguely wonders if she’s immune because she’s herself rotten to the core, and even the cordyceps can’t do anything worse. She shakes her head, remembering the task at hand.

Her flashlight catches on the gigantic fungi formations in the corners of the hallway she found herself in. The red veins forming deadly paths in senseless directions. A quick swipe of her lamp tells her the hallway is infected-free, but she knows what’s waiting behind these closed doors. She can only hope they won’t reveal too many of them.

The light reflects on a bottle lying there, and she quickly grabs it to put an alcohol-soaked cloth in it, ready to throw, tucked in the pocket of her jacket.

It’s a long and narrow hallway, completely in the dark with all doors closed. Some are barricaded with heavy furniture blocking them.

She sticks her ear to the first available door, hoping to catch any sound coming from the room behind. She doesn’t hear shit, which means nothing. There could be dormant Runners or Clickers, Stalkers hibernating in these filthy fungi nests of theirs. Even worse but she really doesn't want to jinx herself so she refuses to think about that.

Very slowly, she opens the door and peers inside. A Clicker in the far corner clicks at the faint sound and Ellie’s heart thumps in her throat. It feels like ages ago since she had to fight Infecteds but her body seems to get into position immediately. The Clicker doesn’t budge more, stays still and Ellie releases a small sigh. She doesn’t need it to screech and lunge at her just yet when the rest of the Infecteds would hear that and all come at her to tear her to pieces.

She glances left and right, but she’s in a small corridor and she can’t make out the right side of the room. Directly on her right is an open door leading to a trashed bathroom. She quickly inspects it and her eyes bulge when she spots some paracetamol. It’s near impossible to find these days and it could come in handy either for herself or Lev, or as a bargaining chip with people they could meet on the way. After bagging them and quietly opening the drawers where she finds some bandages and antiseptic, she goes back to the room, ready to plant her trusted switchblade in the Infected’s skulls.

As she thought so, it’s not only the Clicker waiting in the corner, but two Runners are dormant by the bed. She slashes them quietly before handling the more robust Clicker. Heart still pounding when it goes down, Ellie braces herself on her thighs, waiting for her breathing to even out. All this peace and quiet the last few months have put a toll on her endurance and she curses herself. But she needs to pull that mission through. After this paracetamol find, she can’t back down, she’s got good instincts about this place. Which also means a shit load of Infected she has to kill swiftly.

She goes through three other rooms, all having one or two dormant Infected hiding inside. She doesn’t find much, except for some two-decade old gin and some things she can craft with. She also takes a backpack which doesn’t look like falling off any second and stuff it with clothes she finds in a closed bag, which are in pretty neat condition considering.

The motel is pretty big, and even though the better half of it is impossible to scavenge with its roof caving in, there are so many more rooms she could look through. She doesn’t have the time, as she thinks the boy would barge in if she takes too long. And in all honesty, she doesn’t have the energy to go through all this and kill that many Infected that were sure to be behind these closed doors.

There’s a sign indicating the reception, and decides it would be a good place to go through before going. The mission goes well, no close-call, and she feels confident she can take whatever lies beyond. She follows it, walking on her toes to make the least sound possible, taking notes from Lev’s sure steps. When she arrives at the door, of course, it’s closed. One of the glass panels of the door is blissfully cracked so she glides her arm through and she’s able to unlock the door from the inside.

The room is Infected-free. A complete mess otherwise. Fungi merging with papers and files. Desk thrown over. A slim line of light escaping from the boards blocking out the window.

A safe. Completely covered by mushrooms and their weird veins, but a safe nonetheless. Ellie grins.

Her head automatically goes to the old board still hanging on the wall. There are a few useless notes like the cleaning schedule, reservations that never saw the light of day, and a pinned sticky-note. Bingo.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ellie mumbles, her eyes swiping around, hoping to land on a calendar of some sort. She blinks at the thrown over desk. “Of course you would be there,” she sighs.

She weighs the pros and cons of going through the trouble of toppling this desk over, which is sure to make more noise than she can afford. Then she eyes the safe.

Ellie Williams was always blamed for her curiosity.

“Fuck it,” she says as she approaches the desk.

Of course it’s fucking heavy, real oak wood or whatever the fuck. Joel would know. None of that cheap wood that disintegrates after a few years without care. It takes her a few seconds and a shameful grunt to have the thing standing the right way, but she made it somehow, and without alerting the nearby Infecteds. And bingo, there’s a fucking calendar glued on it. Looking pretty pristine since that heavy bastard of a desk must have been thrown over twenty years ago, protecting it from the light and the dust and everything that could fade it away.

But of course there are three birthdays marked on it. And then she realizes she won’t have the year. “Gareth's 60!!” is written in big letters next to the 3rd of March. She can only hope it was Gareth’s sticky-note.

Ellie sighs and goes to the safe, pulling out her switchblade to cut out the fungi blocking her access from it.

“03-03-53” she tries, holding her breath at the last digits. It makes that pleasant clicking sound and Ellie almost whoops, excited to see what’s inside.

“Fuck yeah,” she nods with a hum, bagging the multiple ammo and various other stuff.

Then her breath is cut out of her lungs and she’s hauled backwards. She plants her knife where she can, eliciting a gut-wrenching screech from the Infected who got her. Fucking Stalker. It howls and with her heart in her throat, she points her gun at its face and shoots, the piercing bang blasting her eardrums and alerting every fucking one of those beasts in the building of her position.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chants as she hauls the bags up her shoulders along Lev’s bow and bolts.

She’s quickly followed by various Infecteds of various speeds and she tries to light the makeshift Molotov she had in her pocket.

“C’mon, c’mon,” she begs as she runs while her lighter decides to not operate and let her fucking die in this miserable place.

It’s a quick run to the door with the busted window, so she makes it here quickly, shouting as she bangs the door open.

“LEV! FUCKING RUN!”

She hoists herself out of the window, getting rid of a grabbing hand on the way and spots Lev’s wide eyes a few steps over. He’s got Hat in his arms and she sees when his steps falter, unsure on whether to run or to come and do something stupid like saving her.

“RUN!” She repeats, while running herself, completely out of breath already.

But Lev puts Hat on the ground and fiddles with something she can’t see from here but also she really doesn’t give a fuck because the pup is going to be eaten alive and they’re all gonna die and—

There’s a giant explosion behind her, making her stumble forward.

Lev just dropped a fucking bomb. She lifts her head to him with her mouth wide opened.

“Run!” it’s his turn to shout. “They’re still coming!”

With a laugh, Ellie does. They crouch behind a car, pup on their heels and Lev gets another one of these things out of fuck knows where and throws it in the store facing them. Ellie frowns at him, wondering why he didn’t shoot it at the dozen of fucking monsters urging at them.

“It will distract them,” he hushes. “Come,” he says with a nod of his head in the opposite direction.

They soundlessly make it to a nearby house to catch their breath and a laugh bubbles inside of Ellie that she can’t control. So she laughs, and laughs. Hat bouncing around and Lev looking at her like she completely lost it.

“My lighter died,” she says when she recovers a semblance of breathing rhythm.

“Nice gas mask,” Lev just answers with a glint in his eyes and a perfectly arched brow.

Ellie grins.

Chapter Text

They’d arrived in Nevada about a week ago and there was no sign of activity whatsoever. Three weeks since Lev had bombed all those Infecteds chasing them in that deserted little town. And she could see Lev’s hope fleeting at each passing day. She shouldn’t care. They were looking for Abby, but well, anyone who would meet the fucking kid would rapidly give a fuck. And turned out she wasn’t immune to that, to him.

“You should leave me, I lose everyone,” Lev had mumbled a few days ago. She swore she heard her own heart shatter.

But all she answered was, “me too,” with a scoff. Because she didn’t know how to do this.

Lev blamed himself. In more ways than one. Ellie didn’t know how deep it ran exactly, but he didn’t blame himself only because he left. There was some cosmic weird shit going that he was sure was punishing him for who knows what. Like he somehow deserved all that he lost.

“Do you have regrets?” He had asked, frowning at the fire.

Ellie had let out a sour laugh. Otherwise she would have curved into a ball and sob until she made one with the earth.

“They’re maybe the only things I have,” she answered after a while.

“We’re not supposed to have regrets,” he said. Not to Ellie, that much she could tell, but more like he tried to convince himself. “But maybe… Maybe if I behaved none of this would have happened.”

Ellie had barely any clue what he was talking about. Maybe he was talking about the Rattlers. Maybe he was talking about losing Abby. Maybe there was some other stuff too, but she didn’t want to pry. And she didn’t know what he meant with that behavior shit but she’s pretty sure she would have lost her shit too if she’d grown up with the Seraphites. She lost her shit either way, to be honest.

“You had your reasons,” she settled for and he looked at her then, eyes filled with sorrow.

“Maybe they’re bad reasons. Selfish. We’re not supposed to be selfish.”

“Every fucking one is selfish, kid, that’s humanity for you, and trust me, you’re part of the better half,” she said earnestly while poking the fire with a stick. Little sparks flying around, like fireflies.

“You don’t know what I’ve done. Who I am.”

“I know enough to know so. Much better than me, which isn’t a feat in itself, but you’re a good kid, Lev.” And much better than Abby, but she didn’t want to go there.

“...Thanks, Ellie,” he frowned again. “You’re not as bad as you think you are.”

“You… You know what I’ve done,” she breathed as she saw the swell of a belly when she blinked. Crimson pouring out of throats. Bullets finding their marks and painting walls a bright red.

“Yeah, I know,” he let his face drop on his knees. “I killed my mom. And Yara is dead because of me. My sister… I could have held the guns, it would have been the same.”

“I’m sorry,” her heart clenched. There must be more to it, but she knew better than anyone how you could blame yourself for death you didn’t cause directly. She was the direct cause of so many and yet the guilt eats her for the ones she didn’t commit.

“I can’t lose her too. I can’t have her killed too,” he pleaded. Ellie’s mouth went dry. “Do you really think we have a chance of finding her?”

“I don’t know,” she told him. It’s the first time she told him she’s not sure of the outcome of their rescue mission. He looked at her and nodded, with a wobbly chin but gratefulness in his teary eyes. “But as you said. I always find her, am I right?”

Lev smiled at that, nodded once again, and stirred to lie down, his face turned away from the fire and from Ellie. She smothered the flames and with careful steps she approached Lev who had already got his eyes closed. Without thinking too much of it, she shrugged off her jacket and put it on the boy who had too much weight on his shoulders, wishing she could carry it for him.

And now here they are, walking with their poisoned minds rotting the air between them. She wishes she knew what to say. Joel would. He was a man of few words, but once upon a time she just needed the one. And then there was none, because Ellie wouldn’t allow it. All this fucking time lost.

“Ellie?” Lev’s voice is distant. Concerned. “Ellie, you’re okay?”

She feels his hand on her shoulder and she blinks away the tears that gathered and clouded her vision.

“Yeah, sorry,” she gulps. “I’m fine.”

—

Their goal has always silently been Las Vegas, for no other reason that it’s the first big city in a hot state, and not too far from Santa Barbara, where the Rattlers could do trade with this group Lev has heard them talk about. Ellie had made quite the detour last time she was in the area. Lev hadn’t been either. And she’s starting to think they shouldn’t have come this time around.

They arrive from the North, and after weeks of nothingness, they stumble upon something even Ellie couldn’t have imagined.

The stench hits them first. Lev pukes on the side and Ellie has to focus not to join him.

Then they hear them. The crows.

Hundreds of them. Thousands. Feasting on decaying flesh. Some were Infected, some weren’t. A pile of them, discarded there. An open cemetery. A corpse dump.

Ellie’s steps falter, and she brings her arm to her mouth and nose. Then she grabs Lev by his sleeve, shakes her head. He’s blank, no expression on his face.

She makes him follow her. Calls Hat and forbids him to wander, not that he is. Even the dog doesn’t want to be in this fucking place.

They’re near a community alright. But what kind of people would do this? Doesn’t bury their dead, toss them with the Infecteds?

They make it to Las Vegas shortly after.

The city is trashed. Barely a city at all. Bombed from two decades ago, as expected, like major cities shortly after the outbreak. But when trees and plants had reconquered what they’d lost in cities like Seattle and Boston, Salt Lake City, even, here, nothing grew back. So it looks exactly like outbreak day, Ellie thinks, or worse even. Rusted, rotten, completely decaying.

Neither Lev or Ellie dare to talk as they enter this wretched city. They just walk and walk. Which is more climbing than walking, and Hat is getting big and heavy, not the easiest to carry around busted buildings.

“We’re gonna get cornered,” Ellie gulps. Her heart thumps too loudly in her chest, and not in the good way that gives her strength and enables her to come out alive despite everything thrown at her. Ellie is fucking scared. “By Infecteds, stragglers, you name it. It’s not safe.”

She’s hauled down by Lev who’s already crouching beside her, his index finger on his mouth. Ellie frowns at him, looking around for what he’s hiding for. He gestures to his ear, motionning her to listen. She does. She doesn’t hear anything. Her hearing has drastically lowered the past years. She shakes her head to Lev who’s covering his mouth with his finger again.

Then she hears it. The rumbling of an engine. A car. A very big car. A truck, maybe multiples. She props herself a little higher to see where the sound is coming from. It can’t be that close, they’re on a route impossible to navigate motorized. She can’t see shit from where they are.

“We need to get closer,” she whispers to Lev. She sees him hesitate, blinking eyes, lost in thought. “You should stay here, with Hat,” she nods to the sitting dog next to them. Lev shakes his head immediately.

“No, no, I know she’s here, I just know it.”

Ellie nods slowly. She doesn’t tell the kid Abby has more chances to be in that dump than anything. And weirdly, she hopes she’s wrong. For the kid’s sake.

It takes them at least twenty minutes of walking and climbing down to find the solid ground again, guided by the shouts of people ordering around. She’s certain she hears Infecteds but somehow no screams follow so they’re not attacking.

When they finally make it not too far from the truck and its people, it’s to discover men gathering Infecteds around. Ellie can’t even begin to imagine why on Earth would they do that but that’s not the answer she’s looking for here.

“I’ve got an idea,” Ellie frowns. “Watch Hat.”

She bolts before Lev can protest.

“Come on you rotten bastard, just a few more steps,” a burly man cackles as he pushes a Clicker he’s got tied from the neck on a long enough stick for it to keep some distance with him.

Ellie counts six men, doing more or less the same thing. She spots three Runners. Two Clickers.

“What are you sick fucks doing,” she mutters while fishing in her bag for a makeshift smoke bomb she made a few days ago.

She waits for the men to gather closer together and sends it with all her strength right in the middle. They startle, and before they can question it they’re blinded by the smoke.

“What the fuck!” One of them screeches.

“We’re under attack—”

Ellie sends an arrow to his shoulder before he can finish that, the Runner he had on hold turning to him and feasting directly from his clawed-out guts.

“Fuck, fuck, retreat! Retreat!” Another scrambles around and tries to open the truck’s door, without such luck. “Liam you son of a bitch! Open this fucking d—” His plea is cut short by a Clicker tearing his neck apart.

Ellie hops rapidly from where she was more or less hidden and makes quick work of the few Infecteds roaming around with Joel’s pistol. And two perfect head shots on two nearby men before they even spotted her. Now she’s out of bullets but she had to use them at some point, right?

She jumps on the last Runner’s back who had zeroed in on one of the last men and plants her switchblade in its temple until it collapses. The man is still on his ass, looking wide-eyed at Ellie, fumbling for some weapon. Before he reaches one, Ellie has her pistol aimed right between his eyes. Her empty pistol. But he doesn’t have to know that.

“Sweetheart,” he drawls and manages a fucking grin she wants to carve out of his face. She’s so fucking tired of these fuckers. He’s lucky her gun is dead. Maybe not, from what she’s got planned for him. Her blood is like fire in her veins and she can’t fucking wait to scratch that hitch.

“Shut the fuck up,” she says while she takes a step forward. “Lev!” She calls, not tearing her eyes from the man on the ground.

In a blink she feels him at her side.

“Bring me some ropes,” she tells him without even glancing at him.

A few seconds later and he brings her what she asked for. She puts the bow back in Lev’s hands and takes the necessary step to bind the fucker’s arms behind his back.

“Honey—,” he starts, again.

She stuffs a rag in his mouth.

“I told you to shut the fuck up!”

She walks to the truck, Molotov in hand and motions Lev to follow her.

“Now, Liam,” she calls. “You can either come out nice and slow or I can throw this and watch you burn.”

After a few seconds, a lanky guy stumbles out of the front door with his hands up. He’s shaking. He mustn’t be much older than Ellie. She gulps and puts the thought very far away before tying him the same way as the other.

Her heart is pounding a thousand miles a minute. She’s never done that before, and yet she’s done worse. She knows exactly what she has to do.

She’s Joel’s daughter after all.

“Watch this one,” she tells Lev. “I’m taking this one for a little one-on-one.”

When she’s sure five minutes ago he would have grinned and made some fucked-up innuendos, now he doesn’t look so confident. A gulp. The twitch of a leg. Ellie’s mouth curves upwards. Stinky fucker.

“Up,” she tugs at his binded arm. He stays as a dead weight, looking right in her eyes and baring his teeth. “I said up,” she plants her knife in his right shoulder.

He screams in pain but does as he’s told.

She doesn’t bring him too far, wanting to stay in ear-shot if Lev has a problem. But she needs intel, and the other one can’t hear what this one is going to tell her. So she binds him to a lamppost, and sighs.

“I’m not telling you anything you stupid bitch,” he spits. She doesn’t even glance from her bag.

The soft leather of her sketchbook is soft beneath her fingers. In a swift move she opens it right at the page she wanted and puts it in front of his snarly face.

She sees them, the blinks. The recognition. Her jaw clenches.

“Where is she?” She asks.

He spits in her face.

Her knife finds its place in his kneecap and she pulls toward herself, feeling the bone pop under the blade. Crows fly and croak in panic at the sound of his screams.

And then he laughs, and her stomach drops.

“Your girlfriend is lost you fucking dyke,” he cackles like a mad man.

Without pausing to think about it, she slashes her knife through his throat, watching as his eyes widen and his mouth gape, gurgling on his blood. In a matter of seconds, his head drops on his chest. She sighs. It shouldn’t feel this good.

In a blink she finds herself face-to-face with the scrawny kid, and pushes her fist into his jaw. She turns to Lev briefly, who still has his bow trained on him, but his eyes are on Ellie, and she turns her face quickly, not wanting to face his gaze. See herself through his eyes.

“I had a lovely chat with your pal over there,” she grits, pulling his face backwards with a fistful of hair. “So I’m going to ask you some questions, and it better fucking match up.”

Of course, she didn’t get anything from the other guy, but this one doesn’t have to know that. She fucked up, of course she did, but her knife was quicker than her brain. Always is.

The acrid smell of urine fills her nostrils, and with a glance down, she sees him trembling, his pants turning darker. She gulps and blocks her nose, takes her book from her back pocket.

“Where is she?” She asks, calmer than the first time.

“I—I don’t know,” he babbles while shaking his head. “Oh god, god, fuck, I don’t want to die.”

“Why don’t you open your fucking eyes and we’ll try that again, yeah?” She yanks at his hair.

“Yes—yes,” he finally says after a few seconds. “She’s their favorite—”

She hears Lev gasp behind her.

“Where?” She asks, tossing her book aside and fishing for her knife. “Where?” She screams, the point of her blade digging at the base of his jaw. His eyes fall tightly shut again, his mouth drooling and babbling in fear.

“You’ll kill me,” he pleads. “I can help you, I know them, I can—”

“If you tell me where your community is, I won’t kill you,” she answers with an even tone.

“North-West from here, about fifteen miles outside of the city,” his whole body shakes. “I—I can take you ther—“

“No thank you,” she answers while her knife slashes his throat.

She wipes it clean on his shirt and turns back to Lev.

“Come on, we need to find camp, and we leave first thing in the morning.”

“You,” he frowns at her. “You said you wouldn’t kill him.”

She can’t stand his gaze on her and takes a few long strides, urging him on.

“I lied,” she answers without turning back.

—

They find a secluded place to set camp on an upper level of a busted building where they have a pretty clear view of the city if something were to happen. If back ups were to arrive to look for the missing soldiers Ellie has terminated. Somehow she highly doubts someone would show up for them.

Lev has been silent ever since they got the location. Ellie too, even though her mind doesn’t allow her such rest. Her skin is still buzzing, her knuckles aching from the punch she threw. Like old times, she thinks bitterly. Worst of all? It’s calming.

Her heart stops when she notices Lev with her sketchbook. Tear marks are staining his cheeks. She approaches him, clenching and unclenching her throbbing fist, trying to soothe the nerves building up inside her.

Then she glances down.

He’s looking at the sketch of Abby. She drew it when she couldn’t think about anything else but her face. She knew it would come in handy someday. She should offer it to Lev, instead of staring at it when she can’t sleep.

“You dropped it near the—,” he blinks, not tearing his eyes off it. “You dropped it.” Ellie doesn’t answer. “So she’s there,” he lifts his eyes then. They’re full of rage, of doubt, of everything this fucked up world sucks you in. “She’s their favorite,” he grits. “That’s what he said right. What does that mean,” his voice cracks.

“It means she’s alive,” she answers automatically, crouching in front of him, taking his wrists in her hands. “That means we’re close.” Lev nods and looks back at the sketch one more time before giving the book back to Ellie.

“I can take first watch if you w—”

“No,” Ellie cuts. “You get some rest, I—I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.”

Lev nods, a lone tear escaping his left eye.