THE LAST OF US PART II SEATTLE DAY 1 —  ELLIE

it comes with the territory. she remembers passing through pittsburgh, and the way joel would creep into silence the moment they got anywhere near a high-rise warehouse building that looks like it could’ve been an industrial office once upon a time. they avoided chicago completely - she’s still heard all sorts of shit rumours about their QZs - and kansas was a held-breath state. (joel told her - in part - about the life he used to live, and with the way he dealt with hunters, there’s a niggling part of her brain that tells her it’s insider knowledge.) 

ellie is no longer disillusioned - there’s no searching for the best in people, or handing out her name the moment she meets someone. (she thinks back to the fucking cannibals, and the times she kept turning away from because all it does is make her fucking hyperventilate in the corner - there’s a lurch in her stomach when her brain turns to david, and that fucking restaurant.)

          “they’re not like us.”    she’s confident. there are factions spawning from factions and organisations that run under the guise of safety and strength in numbers, but anyone who isn’t an us is a them, and taking her name, or her knife, is like getting blood from a fucking stone these days. (fireflies v. fedra. inside v. outside. ellie and joel v. everyone else.)

                         “it’s fucked up out there.”   out there, in here - she thinks that she won’t ever find anywhere to call home, because boston was about as fucked up as it came, and the scuffle of dirt that’s left when some fucker runs a temperature and they’re taken out. (they used to say it was to quarantine, but there’s the unmistakable sledgehammered bang of a rifle that keeps everyone in the ration queue silent until they’re in the safety of their own home. or school. or tiny little fucking box room with comics stuffed so far under the mattress, no one would ever find them.)

           “- the world is a real fucked up place right now.”

the silence is ringing in her ears, heavy and pulsing like the goddamn adrenaline rush that left them there in the first place. there’s a hand on her shoulder, briefly, carefully - carefully, she thinks, to avoid a loud reaction. (there’s a mangled set of clickers walking two by two like it’s noah’s fucking ark down there, and ellie offers a nod in return.)

               don’t move too quick. keep the noise down.

she’s lucky she’s small - joel still makes her do all the awkward, tight spaces, the same way she makes him do all the heavy lifting. (she notices now that she’s been holding her breath for the past minute, so she allows for a shallow exhale and slowly reaches back to the knife.)

she figures thirty years ago, no one really knew how much the dead fucking reek. even in boston, until she met riley, temperature checks and visual inspection made it a whole lot easier to find the infected and take them out before they turn. (fuck fedra. you run a temperature on a ration run and you might as well have painted a target on your back. more food for them.) jackson was different - fewer bodies, more food, and the occasional runner once joel trusted her enough with a rifle and a good buddy in the horse at her side. 

              she’s never seen anything quite like salt lake city, which was pretty much just a mauled wound in the sewers. so many fucking bloaters. 

there’s a pack of clickers, but if she’s quiet enough and the rubber under her chucks doesn’t squeak, she can take one and rick, the other. she’s poised, slowly closing her hand around the hilt of the knife and crouching toward them. (yeah, that smell’s really finding its way up her nose now - goddamn rot. thirty years ago, no one really knew how much the dead reek and she feels like she hasn’t been able to shake the smell once it made itself at home in her head.)

        she points, angling her knife toward one clicker and then back to rick. you get that one. i’ll deal with that one. 

the theatre is quiet, and ellie’s noticed that the only time it’s not is when the squeaking of floorboards shift slightly under her feet. they tend to allow each other to just be in their company - she thinks it’s because dina doesn’t know what to say, or if there’s anything she can say, because ellie’s shoulders slump forward and she stares over at the abandoned guitar like it’s the reason she’s here. (it was a good find - fuck, it was a great find. but she touches over the strings and she just hears joel’s laugh in her head. well, what’re the chances of that, kiddo? they would laugh, and joel’d play something stupid and old-worldy.)

they don’t have to talk. they’ve both sacrificed comfort and waking up neck-pain-free for the past few months, and the lumpy couch in the back of the theatre really hasn’t helped a single fucking bit, but when ellie sits up and rolls her neck with an arched stretch in her back, dina follows her and they sit for a while. ellie carefully reaches out for her hand and once she finds it, she sits them both in her lap and the theatre is quiet again.

hey... she hears the exertion when dina reaches out for the brush on the side - it’s a quiet, stubborn ngh born from the comb being slightly out of reach, but she finds it eventually and starts with her fingers. (it’s gentle. dina slides her fingers through the knotted mess at the back of her head before following the same thread with the comb.)

           “thanks.”    it’s hoarse, but ellie shifts so dina can reach and, well, it’s been a hot sec since she’s done anything since tie her hair back and hope for the best.       “can’t sleep. don’t know why i thought i’d be able to.”

if it’s between here - a dusty, dim-lit parking garage with veins of spores crawling out from the cracks in the walls and the stench of fucking rot criss-crossing between each car and empty fucking tank - or out there, she’ll pick here. (she can hear the slam and screech of body after body piling up against the waning garage gate, and there’s a two-inch sliver of slight that’s cracking through the bottom of the shutter door, and a tense metal chain starting to bow under the weight. fuck.)

she’s crouched down the side of one of the trucks - thanks, fedra, for using tires bigger than her entire fucking torso, because she tugs one foot up from the other and she hauls herself under the body of the vehicle. she breaths heavy, quiet, the rise and fall of her chest being the only thing she can focus on while the horde outside echoes through the entire garage - slam, fuck, god, okay, fucking think, ellie, fucking think. abby has her trapped, mostly, because there’s only a few discarded vehicles to hide behind, and three of them have been rocked onto their sides and their windows shattered out.

(she’s been tracking her for a while. body after body. one wolf to the next, and there’s a whole fucking trail of blood that she can’t quite scrub out from the soles of her converse. where is abby. where the fuck is abby. in an ideal world, they’d be alone. in an ideal world, it’d be over - one bullet between her fucking eyes, just to get it over with, or she’d grab the crowbar from the other side of the lot and show her exactly what it felt like. but it won’t happen like this. she doesn’t want to lose her, but what’s gonna happen at the end of this?)

“not until you fucking die.”    it’s coupled with a single, surprisingly well-placed shot toward the garage door. it’s all a game of faith - having faith in how these fuckers work, in the way the bullet clinks against the chain and the way it loosens and whips out like a snake. the shutter shoots up and for a moment, the light is blinding, followed by the screaming of runner and clicker alike. holy fuck, that’s a lot -

        (it’s an opportunity and she seizes it, yanking her backpack from under the truck and bolting out in the distraction. holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck.)

she thinks that anyone can take comfort in jackson - there’s space for anyone. she sees the hmph on maria’s face as she tries to think about how they can make space for stragglers, but the way there’s something in her eyes that does want to make the compromise for it. they have butchers and bakers and fucking history professors from before that ellie sometimes makes a habit of listening to while she’s wandering past on a rest day. they have people from before, and people from after (dull-eyed, soot-stained after, but she can say that. she figures she’s the poster child for after - half a foot shorter than she could’ve been and skinny enough to count her ribs from ten metres away.)

sometimes when she thinks about how she came here, how the east gates swallowed her up and she spent the next three months smuggling jerky out because what the fuck holy cow how do these fuckin’ people have so much fuckin’ food?! but somewhere along the way, in between callous-fingered guitar lessons and early mornings that made it feel like she was up before the sun (let me fuckin’ sleep or i’ll shoot you in the foot) she started seeing it as a home.

                “i know. and i’m not gonna fuckin’ lie to you, there’s no... going back to the old way. and there hasn’t been for some time. but jackson’s probably as close as it gets. no fedra, and we’ve got like. tons of cool shit.”