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She can still see her knife in her throat. The blood gurgles up and her eyes are wide staring back with a fast-fading frantic gaze. Ellie doesn’t catch the familiar motion of her hand. She doesn’t connect the dots, the adrenaline rushing through her blood too fast for deductive reasoning skills. She doesn’t think about, or process, the woman’s - Mel’s - hand moving to her stomach. She doesn’t think about Dina thumbing her abdomen with absent fondness, or clutching worry. The only thing she thinks in that split second is: I didn’t stab her there. But it doesn’t matter what she thought then, not really because it’s all she thinks about after. She can’t look at Dina the same. She can’t hold her the same - not anymore.
So she slips out of the bed covers quietly so as not to wake her, but the small girl reaches out at the absence sleepily. It makes her want to cry again, the heavy nauseating panic that steals her appetite, her willpower. Outside the room, her lungs rattle and her hands shake. She sees Mel’s hand in her dreams, but it’s nothing compared to the waking flashes of Dina. Instead of Mel, it’s Dina. Instead of Ellie, it’s Abby. It’s worse in her nightmares, where it’s not Abby, and she’s not Mel. Where it’s her own hands, the leaves of her tattoo peeking out from the bloodied cuff.
Ellie hunches over in the clustered mess of discarded instruments and stage props. She chokes on air and can’t quite breathe. Everything is so tight, and her throat bruises with tension, that’s the exact second she realizes her own hands are clutched tightly around her neck. She doesn’t release though, her nails ripping lines across the flesh instead. It’s all too much. Dina’s hands. Dina’s stomach. Dina’s eyes. Dina’s smile. It’s too heavy because now all she can see is her. All she can hear is him, sputtering his last words: “ She’s… she’s… Pregnant.”
The murmur of conversation snaps her out of it, and she tries to catch a breath that’s long lost to her. She wonders if, in all of this pain, her body will become so desensitized it will forget how to breathe - how to live. It’s not too foreign a concept.
She cautiously pushes back the curtain to reveal Tommy and Jesse, talking over a map. When they look up and glimpse her puffy eyes and scratched throat, she’s thankful they don’t mention it, even if their faces can’t hide their worry.
“Hey,” Jesse says, placing the pen down on the map.
“Hey.” She all but whispers, crouching down beside them.
“We’re plotting our way back to Jackson.” Tommy nods to the map and places his finger on the thick sharpie lines. “It’ll take a few weeks at our fastest, but it’ll do. Any suggestions?”
The question he says isn’t the one he asks - she knows that. She knows he’s asking a million other things. Will she leave with them? Will, she let Abby go? Will she, will she, will she? She knows the right answer, the choice she wants to make. Protect Dina, bring her home, keep her safe, and forget about Abby. But a meaner, savage, part screams to stay.
She traces a phantom line across the map. “This is all blocked off. We can go over it but it’s dangerous. WLF are all over it and its a shit load of rubble.” Her eyes flit to the curtain behind her. “We got over it once but… knowing… I uh… it’s too risky now.”
Jesse nods and Tommy crosses off the path he drew there. Grunting, he skims over the map with his lip between his teeth. “Eh… next fastest thing adds three days. That all good?”
“Has to be.” Ellie nods and he draws a new line.
“When we get back to Jackson…” Tommy starts and bites his cheek. “You’re gonna come back with me. Right?”
Ellie swallows and thinks of Dina softly sleeping, her hand reaching out at the absence of Ellie. She thinks of hands around her throat and bruises that don’t ever seem to fade. She thinks of the fear that plastered her face as Ellie walked in the door, stiff and doused in blood from various sources.
“No.” She whispers, thumbing her temple. “I’m gonna stay this time.”
“Ellie,” Tommy warns. “You said-”
“I know what I said. That was before -” She cuts herself off and swallows. “He wouldn’t want this for us.”
“The hell you talking ‘bout? He was my damned brother. You were right about one thing, it were you or me he’d’ a been done with her already.” Tommy scolds. “Come back to Seattle with me after. Are you really going to let him down like this?”
“I let him down when I sacrificed the people I love to come here in the first place. I’m not doing that again.” The conviction on her face is unshakeable and for a second she thinks Tommy is going to budge. His eyes shift back and forth between hers, searching, and find no traction. Instead, he shakes his head and tails off towards the front lobby with a low scoff of disapproval and a vague muttering of “Brave girl my ass.”
Jesse frowns at her with concern and hesitance tightening his features. He knows what she did, and she wonders if the hesitance is buried fear rather than care. She locks eyes with him and they both force the contact, submerging their mutual instinct to break it.
“Please don’t look at me like that.” Is all she says. She knows she deserves to be looked at like a dog that bit it’s owner once too many times: the look where you question if it’s time to put them down.
“Like what?” He whispers in return and cocks his head.
“You know, that look.” She gestures to his face. “The: I don’t know if your gonna break yourself or break someone else, look.”
“That’s not how I’m looking at you.” He breaks her gaze to sit beside her.
“Sure feels like it.”
“You’re projecting.” Jesse smiles partway. “I’m worried, but on top of that?” He doesn’t quite meet her eye but does turn to face her. “I’m proud.”
Ellie does a double-take, reeling back and shaking her head vigorously in disbelief as he genuinely smiles at her. It catches her off guard, and even if she could believe it she wouldn’t want to, not when she knows how much blood is on her hands. Not to mention the fact she has an unborn child on her body-count list now.
“You shouldn’t be.” She stands abruptly and corrects herself. “ Don’t be.”
“I am.” He nods. “You’re not perfect Ellie. We all do bad things sometimes, but you’re making the right choice.”
“Right choices don’t count after you’ve made so many bad ones.” She grits her teeth.
“I think they do.” Jesse sighs. “And I think you think so too.”
She doesn’t answer as she tries to work out what the hell he’s referring to. He’s got this serious frown on his face as she rambles and freaks out like she should know what he’s talking about, but she fucking doesn’t. She can’t think of a single circumstance in which it applies. All she can think about is Abby, who’s made too many bad choices to be redeemed, and her, whose never going to allow herself forgiveness.
“I haven’t been the best person my whole life.” He says, and where is he going with this, because this certainly isn’t something she knew.
“You’ve lived in Jackson for ages though. You haven’t had to be outside those walls since I’ve known you?” She shakes her head in confusion.
“At the moment, it was the right - no, the only - choice I had. It was that or die, and I chose to live at a price that no one should ever have to pay.” He goes still. “I had to kill a kid. On patrol. He was about ten and had sloppy brown hair. He had an ambush all laid out and if I didn’t shoot we would have died.”
Jesse’s eyes close and that look she can feel on her face. The look where you place yourself back at the moment and can smell the air like you’re still there.
“I killed him. Nobody talked about it because he was trying to kill us as if that made it okay.” Jesse shakes his head again. “You killed that woman, you didn’t know she was pregnant and that doesn’t make it okay. I know it wasn’t okay for me - but that doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“You don’t think I’m a bad person, do you?” He looks up at her again and when he asks the question she can tell part of him wants a genuine answer.
She shakes her head no because it’s the truth. She’s seen that man take bullets for her and she knows he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Hell, he’d probably take a kill shot if it came down to it. He was one of the most selfless people she had ever met.
“You came all the way out here to avenge Joel, after all, he’d done. You told me once he used to be a hunter. Do you think he was a bad person?” This time, she hesitates. He was a bad person. He killed innocent people and he left the world without of cure because of her, by definition she’d say he was. “Ellie?” Jesse interrupts her thoughts and this time its confusion on his face. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah to which thing? Hearing me or…”
“He wasn’t a good person at least.” Ellie choked. “I loved him. I loved him so much he was my dad. But you just can’t forgive some things. He can be a bad person and I can still love him.”
Jesse doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. He breathes shallowly and looks out over rows of plush red theatre chairs at her side. There’s an air of discomfort but it fades quickly as they bask in each other’s broken company.
“I don’t think you’re a bad person Ellie.” Jesse finally whispers, and this time she smiles.
A crack and thud breaks the moment, and they jump to their feet. The exhilarating rush of the fight floods through their veins and they reach the door faster than they can take a full breath in. When the door swings in, the air in their lungs gets caught halfway between as Jesse’s stalls with a BANG. Ellie swallows her inhale and turns to the bloodied face of Jesse as it smacks against the ratty grey carpeting. She’s shouting - Abby - but the words aren’t fully processing. Adrenaline is supposed to fine-tune your senses, right? So why is she suddenly deaf?
“GET THE FUCK UP” Abby shouts and Ellie’s eardrums burst, the floodwater current pressing hard against her head.
“Don’t do it, Ellie! Get out of here!” Tommy shouts with a hacking cough, but she can’t rip her eyes away from Jesse.
“STAND UP! Or I’ll shoot this one too!” The metal of the pistol rattles as she jams it against the back of his head.
Her thoughts are still on Jesse, and trail off to Dina sleeping in the back room. The rustle of the bedsheets as her arm reaches for Ellie’s empty half of the bed plays on repeat like a melody. Undoubtedly she heard the gunshot. Undoubtedly she’s awake and coming to help. Ellie replays Jesse opening the door, the gunshot so fast he never would have had time to process the other side. If she squints hard enough, she can imagine Dina rushing in behind her, the barrel flaring reflexively…
“Stop!” Ellie stands up, gun still in hand and palms clamming up against the rubber grip. “I’m the one you want! Alright? Let him go!”
Silently Ellie prays for Dina to just stay put. “ Sometimes just little ones to myself. I think it calms me.” She remembers Dina telling her in the synagogue. Even if she doesn’t believe in anything beyond, she hopes for her sake that those prayers do make a difference.
Abby cocks her head to the side, and this time Ellie’s tunnel vision widens to the expanse of the room she nods towards. Behind her, a scarred boy with a bowstring pulled tautly strafes around her.
“Toss your weapon!” Abby nearly growls.
Fuck. She spits, and yields, throwing the pistol over the countertop. Days and days in Seattle, weeks to get her, have all been consumed by rage, anguish, and pain. It isn’t until now that she’s afraid. Walking into fire-fights she didn’t fear death. Blindly chasing Abby, she didn’t fear the possibility of losing. Now? Now her chest is empty of the hot zeal and fervent determination, replaced by cold and shivering dread. Her dad is dead, her friend is dead, and soon enough she could lose Tommy and Dina and the unborn child in her stomach. Just yesterday Dina had teared up on the makeshift beside her and placed Ellie’s shaking fingertips on her stomach, which was just barely beginning to show.
“ Can you feel that?”
Dina’s white teeth peek out fondly behind her lips and her gaze holds just below Ellie’s. Ellie still fazed and dizzied from the events of the day, squints in confusion.
“What?”
“The fluttering,” Dina whispers. “It’s almost nothing, little potato telling me he exists.”
“He?” Ellie whispers back.
“It’s just a feeling.”
“So you keep telling me.” Ellie cracks a smirk, and although it shakes at the edges, it doesn’t sink into her heart.
Dina holds Ellie’s hand closer, lifting her shirt and pressing the pads of her fingertips against the soft skin. Ellie can’t help but lose herself for a moment, as she waits for the movement she can’t find. Her thoughts don’t drift to Abby, or Joel, or Seattle. She’s here, and that’s almost enough.
“What are you doing Dina?” Her voice cracks and Dina’s brow furrows in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… this.” Ellie pulls her hand away from Dina’s stomach. “Why are you… with me?”
The words all muddle together in the vague ideas Ellie can’t convey concisely. So instead, she pieces together the fragments of words and ideas hoping she’ll understand, and of course, Dina does. She always does.
“Ellie. I love you. Just because things are messy doesn’t change that for me.” Dina sighs and places her hand on the uninjured shoulder of Ellie. “If… If it changes things for you I get it. I didn’t mean to… place this on you. I guess I wasn’t thinking-”
“It doesn’t.” Ellie huffs out in interruption, her own confidence in that statement shocking even her. “Change things for me, I mean.”
“Good.” Dina’s voice is soft and she leans her head into the crook of Ellie’s neck.
“I just don’t… get it. With Jesse. I mean I know you keep saying you guys are done, and I believed that. I really did. But… you have a baby. HIS baby… now. How doesn’t that change things for you?” Ellie rambles worriedly.
“El,” The nickname sends butterflies through her stomach, and for a second she wonders if that’s what Dina meant by ‘fluttering’. “It’s complicated. Of course, it’s messy and difficult I know - but I love you. Jesse will be a part of this baby’s life, hell he probably would have been - father or not - but who I choose to be with? That’s not his choice, or this baby’s for that matter. We’ll figure it out, babe. I want YOU.”
The words send shockwaves through her heart and she’s nowhere near Seattle. She’s in a farmhouse in the countryside near Jackson like Dina daydreams about. She’s standing over a crib she carved with her own hands and Joel’s old woodworking tools. She’s playing that damned song so softly over her sleepy baby boy, not knowing Dina is listening and tearing up on the other side of the nursery door. Jesse ties up his horse and knocks on the porch door with a grin and a bag full of baby toys he collected on patrol. The border of their land is all wired up with alarms, Jesse’s work as a condition for not staying in Jackson’s walls.
“I want you,” Ellie whispers into Dina’s hair, massaging soft circles into her lower back.
That’s all gone now, is all she can think as she tries not to look at the body on the floor beside her, as she tries not to think of Dina with paled skin and pools of blood running through the bristles of the carpet.
“Step forward!” Abby shout and Tommy grumbles in protest, earning him a swift and solid kick to the ribs. “I said FUCKING STEP FORWARD!” Ellie complies, weaponless, and shaking. Every part of her screams to fight back but she forces herself forward with no moves to challenge her.
“Please just… leave them out of this. I - You’re a firefly, or were, I guess… I’m the reason there’s no cure, I’m the reason Joel slaughtered your people, I’m the reason your friends are dead okay? So just - please -” Abby burns up in front of her with escalating rage as Ellie pleads. She seems to ignore her use of them, rather than him, opting for a verbal attack instead.
“He didn’t just kill my people, you - you - bitch!” Her face flushes red. “You don’t fucking get it, do you? He killed my fucking dad! Whatever shit you think you’re going through save it! I lost my dad and my fucking people! I let you live! I let your people live! So what? Your dad slaughters my people once, and now you’ve come to finish the fucking job?” Abby’s finger twitches dangerously on the trigger. “I lost so much more than you ever did! I accepted one life as payment for hundreds! I could have made it even! I could have killed half your little town! You’ve come and murdered tenfold what he did! My fucking friends!”
Ellie’s face sinks as she processes the words, one life as payment for hundreds. Her eyes can’t help but focus on the still smoking gun barrel as her mind trails back to Jesse and Dina. There’s an unspoken message there that Ellie can hear between the breaks in her voice - One won’t do it this time. The hammer cocks back, snapping Ellie out of her dazed state and she hears the door creak only steps behind her.
Her eyes flash backward and forward again faster than she can blink. The worn and sunbleached orange shirt peeks out from the cracked open door and the gun raises from Tommy’s head, up and up and - She’s there. Ellie rushes in front of Dina faster than she has time to process the decision she’s making.
“NO!”
The gun shakes just before the barrel flares and she watches as Tommy grabs the woman, shaking Abby’s aim. The bullet whistles past her head and she’s yelling, as an arrow embeds in his back, as Abby shouts and tries to shake from his quickly weakening grasp.
“Go! Dina fucking go!” Ellie screams and practically pushes her back into the theatre, rows of red chairs fill her vision like a sea of blood. “Run!”
She doesn’t have time to think about Jesse or Tommy, or even Joel right now. It’s just Dina, but it’s not just Dina anymore, is it? The door crashes behind her as Dina breaks through the curtain to the backstage. Snapping on her heel she fires blindly with her other pistol, stalling the ox of a woman for just a second before disappearing. Dina’s white-knuckling her pistol, flinching as Ellie breaks through, but Ellie is already guiding her further inside with a hand firm on her back before she recognizes in that split second the gun was pointed at her. The curtain rushes behind them.
“Where the hell are you!?” Abby shouts. “Fucking fight me! That’s what you came here for right?” Her voice echoes off the boxes and shelves.
Ellie pulls Dina to the side door and whispers, “ Get out of here,” under her breath so Abby won’t hear. Dina shakes hear head teary-eyed, mouthing ‘ I won’t leave you.” Ellie turns to look over her shoulder, Abby still long out of sight. Please, hide.
To that sentiment, Dina reluctantly nods, ducking down the hall towards their room with fogged and blown mirrors. Ellie grits her teeth in agony. So many conflicting feelings burn through her chest. Rage, fear, worry, and a feeling that she attempts to bury. She doesn’t want it to take a place in her chest alongside the rest but an ounce of regret butts its ugly head. When it comes down to body count, Abby wasn’t wrong.
She strafes around the boxes, picking up her discarded shotgun, and hides at the bottleneck of the hallway in wait. If she can surprise her, if she can get the jump on her she can win this fight, so why does it leave such a sour taste in her mouth? The footsteps grow closer and she pulls the shotgun close to her chest like a lifeline. Step after step grows louder and there are moments they are so blaring in her ears she’s sure Abby is in front of her.
BANG
The shotgun fires to the side as Abby throws her weight into the barrel, knocking Ellie to the floor. Hands are tight around her throat and her eyes bug out at the sudden lack of oxygen, all she has remaining capped up and wasting in her lungs. Her nails claw at Abby’s hands and the back of her head slams into the floor, once, twice, three times.
“Why couldn’t you just let it go?!” Abby shouts and loosens one hand to break it across her face, blood spattering on the floor away from her.
Oddly enough as her eyes focus on it, Ellie thinks of art. She thinks of the blow pens Joel had found on patrol one day and brought to add to her art collection. They were bad, horrible tools for art that sprayed spattered patterns, not unlike the blood shot across the floor.
“They were always kind of bad.” Joel chuckled as Ellie splattered the canvas in spotty orange. “I guess twenty-five years won’t do them any better.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Ellie scolded but laughed all the while, splattering the canvas in red.
“I ain’t no creative kiddo, how’m I supposed to know?” He dropped the bucket of blow pens beside her desk. “You’re the art-ee-st. I trust in your abilities” He emphasized the syllables and scoffed.
“Trust? In my abilities? What are you on about?” Ellie chuckled and tossed the blow pen on her desk.
“Young lady I am commissioning you for a painting to put in my brand new house.” He smiled. “Using these - mighty fine - tools right here.”
Ellie’s jaw slackened and her eyebrows raised questioningly. Blinking a couple of extra times for good measure she finally lets out a long and earnest laugh.
“Wait *laugh* wait, you want what now?” She shakes her head. “You’re fucking with me.” He doesn’t change his expression and so this time she raises her voice louder in disbelief. “You’re fucking with me! These - these - sad excuses for art utensils, absolutely CANNOT craft ANY quality work of art!”
Joel grins and leans against the door with a smile, shaking his head. “You’re right baby girl, they can’t make anything without you.” He jabs his finger in the center of her chest, just above her heart. “The art-ee-st.”
“I swear you’re gonna be the death of me.” She shakes her head. “They’ve got no control! They splatter everywhere and -”
“And I believe in you kiddo.” He winks and begins to walk out the door. “Bring it to me by the end of the week and I’ll have a whole new comic series on your door by Monday!”
“Wait - what?” She shouts after him. “Whole as in… complete? Full set? JOEL!”
Abby sends another swing across her jaw now, creaking under the impact, she groans as footsteps reach out from the darkness. A hammer, Ellie’s lightweight discarded one, cracks across Abby’s head, only to be wrenched out of Dina’s hands with a gasp. It’s too easy, how she overpowers her. It’s too quick how her attention snaps from Ellie, dazed and bloodied on the ground, to Dina, now empty-handed. Soon the weight is off Ellie, and muscled fists crack across Dina’s cheek, sending her to the floor in a heap.
“Don’t” Ellie groans, forcing herself to her feet.
She can’t see it, of course, but her face is drowned in blood as her eyelids begin to wince themselves shut with swelling. Abby seems to pay little attention to her as Ellie stumbles over. She hits Dina again, and again, this time a knee coming up to meet her chin. The rage pools back into Ellie’s chest and she pushes Abby to the side.
She knots the periwinkle ribbon around the canvas with her tongue between her teeth in focus. The image itself is obscured by thin baking sheet paper, glazed and foggy to preserve and temporarily keep it surprise enough. It’s not wrapping paper by any means, but why waste it when it’s going to be opened in minutes anyways?
She tucks the canvas under her arm, it’s comically big for her frame and she continues to adjust it to new positions in hopes of carrying the sheer monstrosity for long enough to make it to Joel’s house. At about the halfway mark she falters, unable to hold it up anymore. She’s too young, too small, and no matter how strong she is there are some things you just can’t carry. Not alone at least.
Dina rushes over, her bun messy and unkempt. Handing off the bridle of the young horse in tow to Jesse, she grabs the other end of the painting and lifts it with a grin.
“What’re you doing out so early El? The hell is this?” She laughs and the sound sends ripples through her. It shouldn’t though. She’s with Jesse, and Ellie is - with? - Cat?
“It’s for Joel, he’s got a new comic series for me in exchange.”
Ellie smiles and now, although even between the two of them sometimes they teeter or careen into walls, they make it the rest of the way to Joel’s house. Dina let down her end of the painting and waves.
“Well uh, I’ll leave you to it. Jesse’s taking me out on a short patrol route for practice.” She bites her lip and averts her gaze, a sign lost on Ellie. “Maybe soon enough I’ll be ready and can go on patrol with you.”
Ellie nods and grins, oblivious. “I’d like that. See you around?”
“See you around.”
She knocks on the door vigorously, half hugging the painting to her side, half leaning on it as she waits. Inside there are loud crescendoing footsteps down the stairs and an echoing “I’m commin, ‘m commin alright hold your horses.” The door opens and Ellie holds out the painting to Joel with a smile.
“I’ll be damned. You actually did it.” He laughs and picks up the painting. “Come inside kiddo, let’s take a look.”
Laying it out on the lightly floured kitchen counter he gingerly unwraps the ribbon with a tenderness unexpected from such scarred and calloused fingertips. He peels back the baking paper and his face stills as the image is revealed. Ellie nervously begins rambling on to fill the silence.
“I didn’t know what to do with them so I had a couple of ideas trying to figure it out, so I kind of just threw it all together? Well, I was thinking of how MESSY it all is y’know? With the… paint… and… and real-life things too? Like I was thinking of us and how sloppy things are, and were and like… I could have never met you. Isn’t that crazy? If I hadn’t gotten -” She stiffens and glances around to whisper the word. “- bitten, I never would have met you, and isn’t it crazy how convoluted that is? Like.... you’re like my dad I guess and I coulda - nevermind - but the mess, yeah that’s what I was talking about. The pens were messy too and they’re allowed to be messy, right? That’s just how they are. Sometimes when things are messy they just need a little help and guidance, so I made some stencils to help them out but it was still messy of course because that’s just how things are and I thought -”
He cuts off her rambling by wrapping her in a tight bear hug that nearly squeezes the life out of her. For a moment she stiffens in his grip, only to loosen into it and hug him back tightly. The smell of cedar and gunsmoke from his shirt fills her lungs as she buries her head in his chest.
On the counter behind him two hands, one large and calloused reaches out to a smaller one, paint-splattered messily across lines that were supposed to be clean. Droplets leave streaks down the verticality of the piece and anyone would know who those two hands were. No bodies, no faces, no names were necessary.
“Thank you, baby girl. I love it.”
Getting on top of her and throwing punch, after punch, she can see Dina groaning on the floor, blood falling from her nose, and staining her shirt. An arrow whizzes into Ellie’s shoulder, ripping through flesh and pushing her back. Her knuckles are split and bloodied from crimson on Abby’s face, messy and broken with force.
Her eyes catch with the kid in the background, nocking another arrow and pulling the string taut in preparation. In that split second Abby gains the upper hand, throwing Ellie back and to her feet, stumbling. She smacks the wall, the arrowhead that has protruded through the skin of her back, hammering itself back in as she hits the wall with a thud.
“Fuck!” She shouts and a shoddily made shiv buries itself in her stomach. Shoving Abby back and gaining her breath she coughs
“Why couldn’t YOU let it go?” Ellie mirrors Abby’s previous statement, her hand pressed to her abdomen as blood spills between her fingertips.
“ Ellie.” Dina’s voice is faint and overflowing with concern.
Abby freezes in place, momentarily stumped on the question, before shaking her head rapidly. “Let it go? He killed my dad!”
“And you killed mine!”
“Fair is fair!”
“But I didn’t do that to you! I didn’t kill your dad!” Ellie groans and winces at the pain in her stomach. “And you don’t realize the same thing he did to you - you did to me!”
“It’s not the same thing!” Abby holds the bloodied shiv tighter in her palm. “And it doesn’t matter anymore anyway! You killed Nora, and Owen, and Mel. You fucking killed my friends.”
Instead of rushing Ellie, like Ellie had been bracing for, the woman puts the shiv to Dina’s throat and drags the dazed girl to her feet. The air rushes out of her lungs.
“Don’t hurt her. She didn’t do anything.”
“YOU LOST NOTHING!” Abby shakes her head. “You lost nothing and you came here to just give up EVERYTHING.”
“You think one death hurts? Do you think Joel hurt? You’re gonna feel what I feel. You’re going to lose !” She shakes Dina in her grasp, knuckles pale from pressure against the shiv.
“She’s pregnant! Please. Please -”
“Good.” She spits and Dina stiffens, a tear running a path down her cheek as the shiv begins to skim across the skin.
Whiiiiiiiiiiiii- thunk
She drops the shiv out of her palm abruptly, pausing in shock. Behind her, the bow is empty and the boy shakes his head with glassy eyes. The arrow has buried itself perfectly in the shoulder joint of the arm that once held the blade.
“Lev?” She whispers.
“I’m sorry Abby. This isn’t right. None of this is right.” He takes a step back. “In the texts, she says that you can go in circles resolving nothing, or you can step out of the circle and truly face the issue.”
“Lev! Now is not the time!” Abby snaps and Ellie rushes forward.
In a flash, she pushes Abby backward to the ground and steadies Dina behind her. She seizes the shotgun up again, pulling it up towards Abby. She’s too far now to do the job, so instead, she readies herself with a snarl.
“Stop it!” Lev shouts between the two of them, clutching at his bow.
Abby finally backs up and turns on her heel to run, Ellie trailing after her. Dina grabs her shoulder roughly first, shaking her head with fear.
“You’re hurt it’s not worth it! Ellie, it’s -”
“She’ll never quit it! She’ll come back, she’ll hurt you-” Ellie’s eyes are shot with a medley of emotions, a look that Dina has never seen in her eyes before. In a second it’s gone, and so is Ellie, running shotgun in hand after Abby.
“You’re going in circles! Stop! You’re both doing the same things! Can’t you see that? It’s like she says - when you can’t recognize yourself you can’t acknowledge your reflection! See yourself in your enemies, for everyone has humanity. Only the harmed harm each other! Stop it!” Lev shouts after Ellie rounds the corner after Abby.
“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?” Ellie shouts, pumping the shotgun with a pop. “COME OUT AND FIGHT ME! THAT’S WHAT YOU WANTED!”
Abby darts out from the boxes in a flash and she’s too far for it to kill her, but the spray of buckshot has her cry out as she tumbles down. Ellie storms forward grabbing her by the collar and throwing her against the metal wall with a CLANG. Abby’s face and body are marred and blown-out with shrapnel and Ellie isn’t in much better shape.
“You’re going to regret coming after him. You’re going to regret coming after me. You’re going to regret ever hurting my family.” Ellie’s mind buzzes in a rage-fueled numbness. Nothingness.
“Stop! Not everything is black and white! ‘ Look in your enemy and find he is not evil, for evil is a deed, not a person.’” Lev shakes his head. “You don’t want to do this! It won’t fix anything! It will never stop! Just like the violence between the Seraphites and the Wolves, it doesn’t stop unless you break the cycle!”
Lev shakes his head and looks at Abby’s mangled face. “We can separate ourselves from the cycle! We can give each other a second chance! We can give ourselves a second chance! Don’t do this - It’ll never stop! It only gets messier! Step out of the circle!”
Ellie freezes, her hand clutched around the bloodied woman’s shirt fabric tightly. She can’t differentiate what blood is hers and which blood is… hers. Words swarm in her head and she pauses. There is so much blood and part of her screams to spill more, but she pauses and chooses to lets herself think.
Dina, and potato. Fluttering and cuddles. Guitar and sketchbook drawings. Joel and the canvas painting of their hands. That damned canvas painting.
“I was thinking of us and how sloppy things are, and were... and like… I could have never met you. Isn’t that crazy?”
Paint-splattered messily across lines that were supposed to be clean.
“I love you. Just because things are messy doesn’t change that for me.”
“Sometimes when things are messy they just need a little help and guidance, so I made some stencils to help them out but it was still messy of course because that’s just how things are and I thought -”
She can hear the lull of late-night guitar, she can see him on the porch. He’s strumming lightly and smiling at her like nothing is wrong. The smell of coffee is disgustingly strong and bitter, she hates the taste but the smell is so undeniably Joel she can’t help but lean into the memories of her senses.
“If somehow the lord gave me a second chance at that moment.”
“I would do it all over again.”
It’s unspoken but she hears it.
‘For you.”
Her fingertips loosen around the fabric. Joel never would have wanted this for her. He’d want her to be happy, and deep in her chest as much as she’d wish to deny it, he’d fight through that hospital all over again even if he knew his consequence would be death. He would.
She can feel Dina’s eyes behind her, soft and filled with worry, and she hates the idea of turning to see that look.
“Right choices don’t count after you’ve made so many bad ones.”
“I think they do.”
“I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that.” Ellie can’t snarl the words, they’re too familiar. Too fresh. “But,”
She drops Abby to the ground.
“I can try.”