Chapter Text
It's Ellie's third day in Seattle.
The days almost blend into each other. She can't remember any details from the past couple of months, only that her hatred for Abby has consumed her thoughts.
She has been abusing her body recently, never giving it the rest it has been begging her for. Her back is littered with cuts and a gash on her right shoulder that was deep enough that Dina had to stitch her up last night in the theater. Bruises cover her entire body, and her neck and muscles are stiff and sore from all the times she has fallen through the floor and been tossed around like a doll.
But she's come so far. She can't give up now... not after everything.
"I need to get clear on something." Ellie's head raises up at the sound of Jesse's serious tone. "When we find Tommy, you're good with going home?"
"Yeah," she says, though her voice sounds unsure, even to her ears. But luckily, Jesse seems to listen to her words, not her tone.
"You'll be leaving some of those assholes alive," Jesse persists.
"Dina should be back in Jackson." Frankly, Ellie wasn't fine leaving anyone in this city alive, but she was being honest about one thing, Dina's far too sick to be here right now. She needs to be at home, giving herself and her baby some rest. Ellie just needs a couple more hours to find Abby. She will kill her, and then they can all go back to Jackson after they find Tommy.
Simple as that.
He hums in agreement. "Okay. Good."
Silence passes between them as they continue to head towards the Seattle Aquarium where she hopes Abby is.
"Hey," Ellie clears her throat, capturing his attention. "I just wanted to say thanks for coming," Ellie tells him, trying to sound nonchalant. Jesse looks her way, but she doesn't meet his eyes as she continues walking. Saying thanks was a lot of emotions for her already, eye-contact would be pushing it.
"My friends' problems are my problems."
Ellie smiles softly. "You're such a sap."
Jesse chuckles. "Alright how about... my friends don't know how to get out of their own damn way."
"That's better."
"I would've come, you know," Jesse tells her. "If you had told me you were leaving Jackson."
"I just- I didn't think you'd be okay with all of this." She looks around her. Honestly, she's not okay with all of this, but she doesn't admit that. All that swarms her brain is how every death and every bad thing she has done in this city will be worth it when she finds Abby, looks her in the eye and-
"I looked up to Joel," Jesse says sincerely. "What happened to him was messed up. I would've come."
There's something so calming about Jesse's voice. Ellie always thought that he was annoyingly wise - though she would never tell him. He had an old soul, even if he was only a couple years older than her. He always put his friends and family first. That much was proved since he came all the way to Seattle to help them.
His company is nice. Especially after what happened with Nora... Ellie feels like she can't be alone with herself. Her skin itches and if she thinks about it too long then she'll start to feel guilty. She can't bear to feel that. It suffocates her.
So, she takes in Jesse's silent company as they continue to travel miles towards that stupid Ferris wheel.
They both grunt as they push whatever is blocking the hole in the wall. It's the only way to get out of the stuffy and gross building they're in.
"I just gotta ask..." Jesse says as he kneels and squeezes through the wall and to the fresh air of the outside. "Why didn't Dina tell me about it? The pregnancy?" Jesse asks, attempting to sound unbothered but Ellie knows that it hurt him that Dina didn't tell him the truth.
"Listen," Ellie sighs and follows him through the crack in the wall, "I'm sure she'll tell you about it when-"
"Shh!" Jessie's face is alarmed as he pulls Ellie down behind a concrete barrier.
They can hear two Wolves talking and they know there are more around. "They say when we ship out?" a female voice says.
"It's going down today. All the units are being rounded up," a male voice responds.
"Who did you hear it from?"
"Top man himself. We make sure this area's clear, wait for the other units... and then take the fight to the Scars."
"But last time-"
"It won't be like last time."
The two soldiers go silent. Ellie and Jesse glance at each other quickly, nodding their heads as confirmation that they know what to do. Jesse goes left as Ellie goes right. Ellie crawls on her stomach, staying in the tall grass as she aims her handgun with a suppressor attached. She closes one eye and cocks the gun back before pulling the trigger.
She hits the male soldier in the head, and he goes down silently. Jesse does the same with the female. The bodies silently fall into the tall grass - concealing them.
They take out the rest of the Wolves slowly and quietly. They don't want to risk bringing attention to themselves.
"Think that was the last of them," Jesse says, standing up and stretching his legs.
"Yeah, I think you're right," Ellie agrees while reloading her pistol with ammo she found in the buildings next to them.
They start searching the buildings for more supplies when Jesse suddenly stops in his tracks when they are both outside in the open. "Something doesn't feel right," he says.
Ellie watches him apprehensively. "What do you mean?"
It all happens in slow motion.
She hears a gunshot, ducks and covers her head before launching herself to hide behind something. When she turns around to see if Jesse does the same, he's falling to the ground.
"Jesse?" she says in horror. She grabs under his armpits and drags him to cover. She shakes his shoulder and begs him to wake up. "Jesse, get the fuck up! We've got to go," she whispers harshly, her brain choosing to ignore the bullet in his cheek.
"Scars are here too!" an unfamiliar voice shouts.
Ellie glances around wildly, at a loss of what to do.
Her ears are ringing but she can still hear fighting. Good. It gives them time to escape while they are distracted with each other.
She pathetically continues to try and drag Jesse into the building next to them, but as soon as they are inside the building, hands grab her from behind. She shouts angrily and tries to weasel her way out of their grips, but they only tighten around her arms and drag her away from Jesse. She screams and struggles until a woman with a hammer in her hand steps in front of Ellie and swings the metal into her temple.
Involuntarily, she succumbs to the darkness. The last thing she sees are Jesse's lifeless, dark eyes staring back at her.
Ellie feels like she's underwater when she wakes up. Her thoughts are muddled and her head pounds unforgivingly. She can't think straight nor breathe properly. But she is nowhere near water. She's sitting straight up against a rough wall that digs into her back. She tries to lift her head up and look around her, but her vision swarms and she hangs her head low like how it was when she first woke up. Her neck is strained and her entire body aches but those things she has grown accustomed to.
She feels something wet and sticky drip down her forehead, and she doesn't need to touch it to know it's blood, but her hand instinctively moves towards her face.
She panics when she realizes she can't move her hands. She can't feel her hands.
They are tied above her. Blood drained from them.
She wants to fall back asleep so badly. She knows she shouldn't... but it's too tempting to just close her eyes and lose consciousness once again. That way she won't have to think about anything like why she's bleeding and tied up, or if Jesse made it out alive.
She knows he didn't survive.
His wide, unfocused eyes staring up blankly was proof that the bullet that had lodged itself in his cheek was fatal.
He was dead the second his body hit the ground.
Dead.
She hates the Scars more than she ever has. She'll fucking kill every single one of them when she gets out of here. Slit their throats. Watch them flop onto the floor, clutching their neck./p>
"I remember you." Ellie's head snaps up and over to where a girl's voice comes from, and she immediately regrets it when the world sways and her vision blurs. She definitely has a concussion.
"You're that girl from Jackson," the girl's bleary lips move, forming words that take Ellie a second to process. The name of Ellie's hometown back in Wyoming rings alarms in her head. How the fuck would anyone know that? She squints her eyes further, desperately trying to see who is chained up to the wall opposite from her. Is it one of Abby's friends? That's the only way someone would remember her.
When Ellie finally gets a good look at the girl's face, her heart pounds and her skin boils as white-hot rage floods through her body.
It's her.
"Abby." The name spills from Ellie's lips, sounding like a threat. She doesn't say her name with any ounce of uncertainty. She knows it's her. How could she ever forget that face? The face that has haunted her nightmares for months. That cruel, unforgiving face has seared its way into Ellie's brain. The face that will never go away.
The last photo Ellie has seen of her was from Leah's polaroids. The one polaroid where Abby stands next to the guy named Owen, grinning disgustingly wide as they wrap their arms around each other's shoulders. In that photo she looked happy, she looked free.
It's a different girl from the one Ellie sees sitting in the corner of the cell.
There is no crooked grin on her face. Abby is staring at Ellie numbly, with her arms above her, tied together to a thick metal pole and her ankles zip tied, mirroring Ellie. The lantern in the middle of the dark room illuminates barely Abby's face. There's dirt smudged across it and her right eye is swollen shut. Her wrists are red and irritated - no doubt from her trying to escape her restraints. Her dirty blonde hair is the same as it was in the picture, a Dutch braid starting at the middle of her head and ending halfway down her back. Albeit, unlike in the polaroid, it's messy and tousled, like someone gripped her hair and violently pulled it.
Abby hums in acknowledgement.
Ellie grows irritated at her nonchalant expressions. She wants her sworn enemy that she's been hunting down for months to look angry or scared. She wants her to look ready to put up a fight so that when she kills her it's victorious, but Abby's face isn't filled with rage or the same hatred that Ellie's holds. Abby stares back at her with something that could be called pity. It angers Ellie impossibly more.
She'll kill her either way. Whether that bitch looks like she's ready to put up a fight or not. That wasn't something Abby cared about when she killed Joel, so neither should she.
Ellie tugs on her restraints. The handcuffs clank loudly against the pole as Ellie growls - the sound is guttural and comes deep from her throat. The only hint that Abby heard her was a slight twitch of her eyelid - the one that wasn't swollen shut.
She can't believe Abby is here right now. After months of traveling to Seattle and three days in this city trying to find her, she's finally here... six fucking feet away from her. But Ellie's chained up right now, unable to get to her. She's close enough to see the other girl's freckles scattered over her face and arms, yet she can't cover them with blood and slash her skin with a knife like she has been longing to do.
This has to be the worst kind of torture. This has to be her karma.
"How long have you been here?" Ellie asks. Has she been chasing a ghost this whole time? Wandering around the city and torturing her friends in search for the girl that has possibly been here the whole time?
"Two days longer than you" Abby eventually answers, watching her silently.
"And they haven't killed you yet," Ellie scoffs, she finds that hard to believe. Not that she wants the Scars to kill Abby. That's her job.
"Lucky you, huh? Isn't that why you came all this way? To kill me?"
Ellie grinds her teeth together. "You traveled all the way to Jackson to kill Joel."
Abby just nods her head again. Her expression is still unreadable. Ellie gauges for any reaction she has, but none comes.
"I'm going to fucking kill you," Ellie says hoarsely, her throat dry from the lack of water. Ellie knows that if she was given a mirror right now, she wouldn't recognize herself. Hell, she can't even recognize her own voice as she speaks. It's raspy and vengeful.
Abby lets out a snort but it's weak and humorless. "Not in that state you won't."
Ellie glares, hating that she's right. Abby stares back at her, her jaw clenched. "Sucks that we're probably dead anyways," Abby says dryly.
Ellie scoffs malevolently. "I didn't know you were such a fucking coward. Giving up that easily."
There. She finally reacts, pressing her lips together as she winces slightly. It's hardly noticeable but since Ellie is doing nothing but staring at her, afraid that if she looks away Abby will be gone, she notices. It makes her swell up with a feeling of accomplishment.
"When I get out of here, I'm going to fucking gut you, bitch," Ellie threatens but to her dismay, Abby doesn't look one bit threatened. Ellie thinks it's probably hard to look threatening when she's tied up and incapable. "And then I'll put your head on a goddamn platter," Ellie seethes.
"I get the picture. You painted it perfectly," Abby deadpans, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"No, you don't get it," Ellie snarls. "I'll make it fucking last a long time." Like you did for him.
Unspoken words float in the air. But they both hear them loud and clear.
At some point when she was unconscious and dragged into this cell, someone must have stripped off her jacket because now she's only left in her grayish-blue button up shirt she had been wearing on her second day in Seattle. Her faded blue jeans are dried with blood she knows isn't her own. Her hair falls in front of her face and she itches to tie it back. It's not nearly enough clothes to stay warm in this type of weather.
If the Scars won't kill her, she's worried she'll die from some natural cause like hypothermia or infection from her cuts... after all, she's not immune to that kind of infection. Sometimes she wishes she was immortal, so that way no number of bullets, infected, or natural deaths could ever stop her from reaching Abby.
Funny how when she was younger, she wished she was immortal so she could live a long happy life with Joel by her side. Now she wishes she was immortal so she can kill Joel's killer.
She would never purposely try to kill herself or be killed; she wants to be with Dina and her baby on the farm she always talked about living on. But once Abby's dead, she has no problem with the idea of dying. It would save her from the lifetime of-
No. She can't afford to think like that right now. She needs to kill Abby and then find Dina and Tommy so they can get the fuck out of here.
She needs as much information as she can get if she plans on getting out of here.
"Why haven't they killed us yet?" Ellie asks her after finally sucking up her pride.
Abby looks up in surprise, like she hadn't thought Ellie would say something to her other than I'll fucking kill you and I'm going to gut you, bitch. Ellie's honestly surprised by it herself. "Oh, are we being civil now?" Abby asks with her eyebrows raised almost as high as her hairline.
Ellie scowls. "Just answer the fucking question."
"I don't know," she simply says.
Ellie doesn't want to know if that's a good or bad thing that Abby doesn't have a clue of why they're still alive, but at this point, it can't get any worse. She's stuck with her own spiraling thoughts, and worst of all, she's stuck six feet away from the girl that murdered Joel.
Revenge is right in front of her, taunting her as she's chained up in a fucking Scar camp.
And she only has herself to blame.