Chapter Text
There’s a stillness in her that feels utterly foreign. In the last several months Ellie feels like she hasn’t been anything but restless - her thoughts wander without end and refuse to give her any peace; she’s developed new nervous habits: bouncing her legs, chewing at her nails, anything at all to keep herself in motion. With Dina in her arms it feels possible to forget all of that for a moment and Ellie relishes in the feeling of possibility that sparks somewhere in the back of her mind and dims the moment Dina begins to pull away from her. Her hands go slack and fall away from Dina’s hips in an instant, whatever vestiges of her former self she has to offer allowing her to recall an almost innate ability to care for Dina even as the knowledge that she’d almost been willing to forever cast that aside lingers, cold and heavy, in the pit of her stomach.
Dina takes a step back and Ellie feels all of her ‘I love you’s’ and ‘I’m sorry’s’ and ‘I never should have left’s’ rush through her only to crash against the back of her teeth as she watches the mounting horror build in Dina’s expression as her dark eyes linger on what remains of Ellie’s damaged fingers and the new chemical burn on her forearm. Ellie’s face burns - she recognizes shame in the response and crosses her arms almost out of reflex, tucking her damaged hand beneath her bicep as though it’ll make either of them forget the sight.
“Jesus Christ,” Dina’s voice is low and strained and Ellie misses the relief she’d heard in it moments before.
She can’t seem to raise her eyes to meet Dina’s and she imagines, for a brief, hysterical moment, her intense gaze burning a hole in the wooden floor in Maria’s kitchen until it consumes the both of them. Stop it, she thinks, you fucking did this to yourself. You don’t get to cry about it. Her jaw works from side to side and the sound of her teeth grinding, at least to her own ears, is almost an explosion ringing in her ears— when she finally raises her gaze from the floor to meet Dina’s eyes she finds herself staring, detached, while she watches tears roll down Dina’s face in earnest and she wants to scream. She wants to move - to reach for Dina and apologize the way she’s been practicing in her head between nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks. To remind her that for every bit the broken woman Ellie finds herself to be she knows she did something right in loving Dina and it’s all she wants for the rest of her life whether she has to do it alone and away from her or otherwise.
Ellie’s fingers tremble with the weight of her inaction and she clears her throat to prepare herself to say anything at all, and finds nothing is willing to come. She imagines her own gaze is pleading and full of every ounce of regret she wants to allow into the world but can’t seem to find the words for; even during their most difficult conversations she’s always found a way to talk to Dina and her own anxiety induced muteness is so frustrating she wants to cry in earnest in the way she’s refused to allow herself to do since Santa Barbara.
“I just,” Dina’s voice cracks and she pauses to compose herself, wiping at the tears on her face before she squares her shoulders, sets her jaw, and looks at Ellie pointedly. “Fuck, Ellie. I shouldn’t have come here,” She pauses to sniffle and Ellie watches her dark eyes harden with something that prompts something sharp and fierce to slip between the spaces in her ribs and carve something away from her she can’t be sure she’ll ever replace. “I have to go. I can’t do this right now.”
Dina turns on her heel to leave and she makes it out of the house and halfway down the street before Ellie surges with a sudden ferocity of movement that propels her along with strength she hasn’t felt in months, her socks soaking in the mud on the street and sending shocks of cold rippling through her body that seem almost meaningless to her in that moment. “Dina!” Her own voice is desperate and raw, choked with everything she can’t seem to say in spite of her best efforts. Dina only hesitates for a moment before she continues walking and Ellie calls her name again only to watch Dina slip her hands into the pockets of her jacket, lower her head and continue on.
Static burns through Ellie in an instant— her head feels clouded and too heavy, her limbs awkward and out of place, her lungs rattling to no avail to allow her the space to breathe. Her injured hand rises to her chest and she presses the heel of her palm into her sternum as her heart beats that much faster until she feels it might beat clear out of her chest for all the wrong reasons. Her shoulders shake and the first deep breath she manages is accompanied by a wracking sob that chokes her until she feels the distant rush of the ground coming closer to her body, her knees buried in the dirt and tears streaming down her face. She feels a hand at her shoulder and shoves it away out of reflex, the touch stinging even through her clothes, “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“It’s me, Ellie,” Maria’s voice is soft and measured, but it doesn’t make it easier to focus. It doesn’t make the sight of Dina walking away from her any easier to stomach. It doesn’t make her guilt fade or her breaths even out and it only seems to reinforce Ellie’s conviction that she should never have returned to Jackson in the first place. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
People are staring. She can feel their eyes on her as Maria guides her to her feet with firm but gentle hands and she wants to meet their eyes— wants to return their curiosity with ferocity and indifference and anything at all that isn’t the immense sadness she feels bleeding from her with every beat of her heart. It’s all pointless, she thinks. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy to reconnect with Dina, and she knows that the other woman has every right to walk away from her after Ellie had made that choice for both of them months ago. She knows all that in the part of her mind that hasn’t been eroded by grief and violence and a rage unlike any she’s ever experienced in her life. It’s that small part of her that had clung to the memories of their farm; of JJ in her arms and the clumsy carving of their names on the knotted oak tree in their yard, of dancing with Dina at the clothesline with nothing else in the world to threaten any one of them.
“I wish she’d just killed me.” Ellie doesn’t mean to say it aloud and it takes the fierce coldness in Maria’s blue eyes to allow her to register that the words had passed her lips at all. Maria is silent until her front door closes behind the pair of them and the tension that builds between them in the short distance from the street to the interior of the home is enough to prompt another wave of static in the back of her mind that Ellie knows precedes all of her panic attacks.
Maria’s hand slides away from her shoulders as they reach the staircase Ellie knows will lead up to a few bedrooms in much the same way it had in Joel’s house, and it’s all she can do to remain on her feet without crashing to the ground with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. She manages to press her back against the nearest wall before she sinks heavily to the floor and focuses on her mud caked socks, peeling them from her feet to reveal several half-healed blisters she’d long since stopped noticing after having had them for weeks.
“If watching her walk away from you is enough to make you feel that way… you may as well turn around and leave now,” Maria’s voice is stern, and Ellie feels, all at once, like a child being reprimanded for throwing a tantrum about something she was at fault for to begin with. “I know you’re hurting, sweetheart— it’s plain as day. But Dina’s hurting too. You left her and you left that little boy, and she doesn’t have to forgive you for that sooner than she wants to.”
As much as she hates to hear it Ellie knows she’s right and she knows, equally, that she needs someone to remind her that Dina and JJ are worth every ounce of effort she has left to give in the world— she doesn’t care if it takes years, she knows she wants to get her family back no matter what it takes. But she’s not well, and she’s not better, and she needs so many things to get anywhere near anything resembling peace that she doesn’t quite know what to do other than offer her broken pieces to Dina and hope she sees enough there to want to be around while Ellie attempts to glue herself back together.
“I know that,” Ellie’s words are more of a grunt, a Joel-like gesture that she notices almost makes Maria smile just before it makes her roll her eyes, but the hint of a smile is enough to encourage Ellie to keep speaking. To force herself into something resembling a conversation with someone that isn’t a memory trapped in her mind. “I couldn’t…” She trails off and swallows, sharp and hard, “When Tommy came to the farm I wanted... fuck . I wanted to prove to myself that I could… that I could just be satisfied with being happy. I wanted to stay with Dina and JJ and prove to both of them that they were enough for me, and I fucked all of that up. I fuck everything up. Jesse’s— he’s dead because of me. So many people are…” Her hands find their way to her face the moment her eyes begin to sting with tears again and she forces herself to choke down her emotions in the way she has so many times before, the embarrassment of allowing her own weakness into the world too much for her to bear.
Maria’s eyes are softening by the second and when she moves closer to crouch in front of Ellie it’s all the encouragement the younger woman needs to continue speaking, “I let her go,” Ellie whispers, watching as Maria’s eyes widen a fraction in genuine surprise. “All of the shit I left behind and I couldn’t… All I could think about was Joel, and how fucked it would be if I wasted the chance he gave me. I was… God, I was so fucking angry with him. I thought killing all of them… killing Abby— I thought it might help. Make me… less angry, or something. I thought I needed to do it because Joel did the same thing for me. Or he would have, I guess.” She sniffles, hard, and wipes her nose with her hand like she’s a little girl all over again. “Tommy’s gonna fucking hate me, isn’t he?” She asks, a hollow laugh turning into a genuine whimper of grief that threatens to unravel her all over again before Maria rests a hand on Ellie’s knee and squeezes gently to draw her attention.
“I don’t know how Tommy’s gonna feel, Ellie— he won’t be happy, but he’s a grown man— if he can’t understand why he never should have sent you to finish things then that’s tough shit and he’s gonna have to find a way to get over that. But it’s not on you, hear me? Tommy’s gonna have to deal with his feelings and that doesn’t have anything to do with you. No matter what happens, okay? You’re our family. Tommy will remember that.”
Ellie’s always found Maria to be inherently practical in a way she’s never had any choice but to respect, and though she knows Maria knows Tommy better than just about anyone in the world she feels another flicker of anxiety in her chest at the thought of meeting Tommy’s eyes in much the same way she had in the farmhouse and admitting that after everything they’d gone through she had found mercy to give Abby for the sake of them both. She’s not sure she’ll ever be ready to have that conversation, but she trusts Maria more than enough to shield her from Tommy’s wrath until she is ready. Or until she can’t handle Tommy being a prick about it anymore, she supposes, whatever comes first. She sniffles again and nods, “Okay.”
Maria reaches out to brush Ellie’s hair from her face and there’s a maternal care in the gesture that makes Ellie want to shrink into the wall, but she allows it and tries to relish in the warmth of being loved by someone in the world who doesn’t expect anything more of her than whatever she can manage in any given moment. “Why don’t you go take a bath? I’ll get you some clothes, and you can sleep here tonight. We’ll go down to the clinic tomorrow to see Carrie and sort some other things out; sound good?”
Her throat tightens all over again and Ellie wonders how she’s managed to cry more in the last hour than she thinks she ever has in her life, but it’s cathartic in ways she still can’t quite think about and she wants her frazzled mind to allow that to be enough for at least a little while.
“Sounds good.”
One month earlier
Salt stings in her wounds. Is it her tears, or the ocean? Ellie can’t tell. The water is soaking into her clothes and if she pauses long enough— if her eyes find clarity for even a moment— she can watch the blood on her skin slough off with each ripple against her skin but there’s too much of it. She’s drowning in it. Her fingers are throbbing, bleeding almost more than the wound on her side, and she knows she needs to do something about both of them before everything goes to shit. If she tries hard enough she can still hear the Rattlers and the prisoners fighting on the resort grounds but even their screams and the roar of flames are fading with her every breath; she’s going to pass out soon if she doesn’t move and she knows that. She chokes on the last of her tears and rises from the sea to trudge back to the boat she’s managed to secure for herself by some stroke of luck she can’t be sure isn’t God laughing at her for being such a fucking moron for the sake of the choices she’s made. She’s never believed in God, and she still doesn’t but thinking about the idea of a God at all makes her think of Dina, and that makes her think of JJ and that’s enough to encourage her to move. To tumble over the side of the boat onto the boards that comprise its seats in a way that makes her side throb all over again, and she nearly vomits from the pain before she inhales deeply, shaking, and starts the boat with trembling fingers.
“It’s over,” Her voice is more of a whimper than any real sound, and she wants to break down and sob all over again but she forces herself to focus on the task at hand. She needs to get as far away from the Rattler compound as she can manage, and then she needs to treat her wounds. One step at a time.
‘You keep finding something to fight for’. Joel’s voice is there in her head again, but she’s grateful it’s the sound of him speaking and not simply the sound of his screams in her ears over and over and over again. She’s half an hour up the coast before she feels comfortable setting up some kind of temporary shelter in a small cove that seems to be hidden from any other access ways by a few cliffs and more than a little foliage. Starting a fire becomes far easier when she uses the alcohol she has in her pack to soak a piece of wood and then there’s the task of cauterizing her injured fingers. Ellie digs a spare t-shirt from her pack and tears it into strips with her good hand and her teeth only to stuff one of them into her mouth after she’s held her switchblade in the fire for long enough that she feels confident it’ll get the job done. She takes several hurried breaths before she applies the knife to the wounds on her fingers, heats it again and applies it to her side and feels pain explode beneath her skin with an intensity that takes her breath away and it’s only when she’s finished that she hears her own screams in her ears.
“Fuck,” She gasps, “Fuck, that sucked.”
It’s an understatement that prompts a laugh from her that catches her entirely by surprise— it’s a harsh thing but it makes her shoulders shake until her laughter is yet more tears and she’s sobbing into the fabric of her backpack and wishing things were different as she has every day since she’d left her family behind. Her too-thin frame seems to fold in on itself as Ellie curls up with tears slowly drying on her cheeks and snot running over her lips, but her thoughts are quiet for once. Granted, she thinks, I’m in a lot of fucking pain so I guess that helps. For the first time in months, when she drifts off to sleep, her rest is dreamless.
Ellie sits up in bed with a sharp gasp— her heart isn’t racing the way it normally does after one of her nightmares, and even as her dream slips away from her as her brain stirs in the space between sleep and consciousness, she knows it wasn’t a nightmare plaguing her. Simply a memory. A reminder that the only thing that had carried her home was her desire to be with her family again— she can still see Dina walking away from her when she closes her eyes, and the sting of it makes her ache but she can breathe through it to some extent. “Who needs therapy, huh?” She mumbles dryly, rolling her bleary eyes towards the clock on the bedside table in Maria’s guest room. It’s only a quarter after seven in the morning but Ellie knows patrols will have left for the day and takes a moment to wonder whether Maria will allow her out on them again one day, or if she even wants to be allowed to go. Her stomach growls loudly for the first time in what feels like small eternity and the sound is enough to genuinely startle her before she raises her left hand and presses it to her stomach briefly like that’ll get her stomach to make a repeat performance and assure her that she’s not hallucinating something that makes her feel normal for a fraction of a second.
The floor’s cold beneath her feet and it takes her a moment to be able to stand without flinching away from the feeling; then again, she’s lost so much weight that it’s a small wonder she can carry any heat in her body at all and at least the chill in her toes reminds her that as small a gesture as it is: she can still feel something if she lets the feelings seep in through the haze that threatens her every waking moment. When she opens the door to the bedroom in the hopes of finding Maria to thank her for giving her the room for the night, she finds a neat pile of clean clothes and a folded slip of paper atop them. She reaches for the note with a quirked eyebrow, scanning it with a twitch of her chapped lips that actually transforms into a grateful, genuine smile for more than a second.
Something as small as a change of clothes has more power to improve her mood than she’s ever truly understood, and even when her fingers fumble with the buttons on the clean maroon flannel she slips over her lanky frame she appreciates the effort Maria is putting into making her feel comfortable and settled. The voice that reminds her she doesn’t deserve any sort of kindness is ever present but it’s quieter somehow - it lingers in the way a song stuck in her head might, but songs come and go and she can only hope that the nagging voice will do the same with time.
“Maria?” Ellie calls as she steps out of the bedroom tentatively, wiggling her toes in her socks as her eyes adjust to the soft light filtering into the hallway. There’s no answer and she has to force a wave of panic down at the silence that greets her— silences don’t have to be nearly as terrifying as they have been in her time alone, and though her breathing goes shallow for nearly a minute Ellie manages to urge herself down the stairs to find another note on the kitchen table to inform her that there had been some emergency on the other side of town that required Maria’s presence and they’d go to the clinic the moment she returned. “See? You’re freaking out about nothing. Dumbass.”
She runs a hand over her face with a slow sigh, shifting from one foot to the other and bringing her thumb up to her mouth to chew at the skin around her nail in the way she can vaguely remember doing as a child and seems to do even more regularly as an adult. She stops when she tastes blood on her lips and wipes her thumb off on the edge of her flannel out of reflex, a roll of her eyes the only indication of her own annoyance at having stained what had been a clean shirt ten seconds before. There’s an indecision in the way she paces around the kitchen table for nearly a full five minutes, lingering on the edge of several things she could be doing without a decent grasp on what she needs more than anything in that moment. It’s been a long while since she’s given any thought to her own needs— it’s always been easier to focus on getting from one day to the next, or caring for the people around her more thoroughly than she cares about herself but it’s going to be something she needs to work on if she wants to do anything at all that feels like healing.
It’s not all that difficult for her to recognize that most of her urges are leaning towards finding Dina— trying to get her to listen to her for just a few minutes so she can explain herself, but Ellie knows that’s selfish. Maria’s right— Ellie had been the one to leave both of them behind and she doesn’t expect Dina to forgive her for it any time soon, if she ever manages to do it at all. As much as she wants to see Dina and spread the broken parts of herself at her ex-girlfriend’s feet in offering - she can’t. Or, she won’t. Not yet, at least. Not until she feels a little more settled. “Who knows when the fuck that’s gonna be,” Ellie grumbles under her breath, rapping her knuckles against the edge of the kitchen table before she inhales deeply and heads for the front door. She leaves her pack behind after another moment of debate— she’s safe in Jackson, and as difficult as it is to consider anywhere safe when she’s so on edge even the slightest sound is enough to make her jump with adrenaline, she knows she needs to start trusting that.
Her boots are free of mud when she steps out of the house to collect them and it earns another hard won smile from Ellie, even as she finds herself rolling her eyes simply to keep from crying. It’s never been so difficult for her to accept basic acts of kindness and a part of her can’t help but wonder whether she’ll ever find herself deserving of them again for the rest of her life. It’s still early enough that the streets are more or less quiet— people are wandering towards the Tipsy Bison for breakfast, or to the blacksmith for trading but they give her a relatively wide berth as she passes save for a few of the younger teenagers who give her shy waves as she passes. She has the presence of mind to greet them with vague smiles and firm waves, but she can’t feel any earnestness in the gestures and she hopes they’ll forgive her for the numbness she can’t shake. Her positive emotions are fleeting at the very best, and try as she might she hasn’t been able to hold on to any one of them for more than seconds before they’re torn away from her again and again. She hopes that won’t be the case if she gets to see JJ again— she’s missed him terribly, but thought of looking at the boy she’d started to consider her own son and finding that she can’t feel happiness even in his presence is one that she wants to throw as far away from herself as she possibly can.
Ellie wipes her nose on her jacket sleeve as she approaches the gate that leads to the cemetery— it’s been over a year since she’s visited Joel’s grave for more than a minute at a time, but she hadn’t been able to stomach it in the time between Seattle and Santa Barbara. As much as the notion of sitting in front of him, to the extent it will feel like that, makes her stomach churn, she thinks it might provide some kind of clarity if she’s willing to let it do just that. There are fresh flowers settled against his headstone when she arrives and she wonders who she has to thank for that, or if she could stand to thank anyone at all for looking after Joel while she avoided doing just that for as long as she could. She shakes her head firmly to cast the thoughts aside and sits cross legged in front of his grave with a tightness in her throat that she can’t shake. “Hey, old man,” Ellie murmurs, rocking up for a moment to brush her fingers against Joel’s name on the stone for a moment before her tears begin in earnest.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” She admits, wiping at her nose again, childish and lost. It’s difficult to speak to someone who can’t speak back but she’s been doing it with the difficult parts of herself for months on end, and if that hasn’t made her an expert in her field then she really doesn’t know what will. “I tried, Joel. I tried so fucking hard to make everything worth it and I— I couldn’t go through with it. I just kept thinking about you. About how pissed you’d be if I threw everything away just to kill her. Or maybe you wouldn’t be pissed at all. At least… I don’t know. At least I’d be able to see you again, you know? If I’d died. I wouldn’t have to sit here and pretend that I’m actually talking to you or wanna like, fucking cry whenever I smell coffee.” Ellie doesn’t even know what she’s saying at this point, she’s rambling as if every thought she’s had of Joel in the last year and a half has found a reason to escape her all at once and she has no choice but to let each and every one of them out into the world for the sake of everything Joel has ever and still does mean to her.
It’s not until she’s crying so hard she feels almost blind that she reaches for his name again and tries to remember the last time she hugged him, or the last time she saw him smile, “I miss you, Joel. Fuck, I miss you so much. I don’t wanna be alone.” She hiccups and presses her face into her hands as she sobs before a soft breeze ruffles her hair and the collar of her flannel and she wants to believe that it’s Joel somewhere trying to comfort her in whatever way he can. Even if she doesn’t believe it, it helps, and when her tears slow and her breaths even out she can look at Joel’s grave and not feel like crumbling into dust. “I’m gonna try to fix things. I can’t… I can’t fix us, but I’ll make what you did for me worth it. I promise.” She touches his name again as she stands, unable to help herself, “I’ll see you around.”
She turns around and pauses abruptly at the sight of an all too familiar figure she mistakes for Jesse for far longer than she feels is entirely appropriate, but when she blinks the figure clarifies and she can recognize his father James lingering at a bench just a few feet away from her looking as though he wants nothing more than to give her a hug or speak to her or do something else she’d probably deserve at the end of the day. Ellie clears her throat and approaches him tentatively, her shoulders tense and her fingers trembling before she pauses in front of him and he beats her to speaking first.
“Welcome back, Ellie,” His voice is soft, but it’s warm and familiar and has the same affection she’d always recognized in Jesse’s and it’s almost enough to break her all over again. She sees Jesse’s body on the theater floor and has to choke back a gag as she fights to keep her eyes from closing before James reaches out and rests a hand on her shoulder.
She swallows hard, “How did you—?”
“Know you were back?”
She nods and studies a point somewhere behind him for a long moment before she finally manages to look up and meet his eyes.
“Dina told us,” James admits.
Dina. Even hearing her name is enough to make Ellie’s heart beat that much faster and she can recognize and admit, at least to herself, that her feelings for Dina have only strengthened in the time she’s been away. The concept of soulmates is one she’s read about and she imagines Dina wouldn’t agree that they were each other’s at the moment but some naive, endlessly hopeful part of Ellie that hasn’t been crushed by the world at large is willing to commit to the concept to comfort herself. Even that sends a wave of guilt rushing through her and she shifts awkwardly in place, reaching for the bottom fingers on her left hand out of reflex only to brush against the remains of them both.
“Is she… okay?” Ellie asks.
“I don’t know,” James’s broad shoulders rise in a shrug, “She asked us to take JJ for the night when she got back yesterday and we’ve had him since then. She uh, she lives in the house next to ours. You remember where our place is?”
Ellie nods. Jesse was one of her best friends— she’s known where his parents’ home was since she was sixteen years old and she can’t allow herself to forget— she’s afraid she’ll forget everything else if she gives herself permission to forget anything at all. “Yeah, I remember. Do you uh, do you think she’d see me?”
James hums, and it’s a long while before he answers, “I can’t say for sure, kid. She’ll come around, I reckon, but you’ve got to give her time. It’s not gonna be easy, but she’s worried about you. Ginny and I - we can both see it. She tried not to talk about you much while you were gone, but… I don’t think she could help herself.” He reaches up to rub the back of his neck before he smiles sheepishly, “She’d probably kill me for tellin’ you all of this. Just, uh, know that I want you both to be happy. Jesse would want that for both of you. Anyway. Ginny sent me out for some food and I’ve been gone way too long, but uh, maybe try and go see Dina today. See how it goes. Could turn out better than you’re thinkin’.” He gives her shoulder another squeeze and Ellie feels her heart clench painfully at the gesture before she takes a deep breath, only exhaling when James turns away and leaves the cemetery.
She feels like she’s on autopilot when she leaves a few minutes later and slips between houses and through alleys and finally finds herself lingering in front of the smaller home beside Jesse’s parents’ place. There’s wind chimes hanging on the porch with a little Hamsa charm that seems to have been carved by hand, and she can’t help but reach for the bracelet she’s never been able to return to Dina. Ellie feels lightheaded as she takes the porch steps two at a time and clenches her shaking hands into fists to steel herself for whatever the fuck it is she thinks she’s about to do. With her luck Dina will slam the door in her face and she’ll have to deal with the pain of that for the rest of her day. “Just fucking knock, Ellie, Jesus Christ.” She does. Three firm, loud knocks that sound like the cracks of her rifle for all the sound they seem to generate. It takes nearly a full minute for her to catch the sound of movement behind the door and another thirty seconds before it creaks open and Dina is standing there, disheveled and wearing a flannel Ellie recognizes as one that went missing from her closet six months ago. She wants to laugh at the sight of it, or cry, or do anything at all that isn’t stare at it like it’s a lifeline she doesn’t know how to take.
“Hey,” Ellie manages, “Can I uh… can we talk?”