Chapter Text
(1)
The cold sea breeze is what wakes Ellie up. For a second, lying there on the soft sand, she wasn’t on the beach in Santa Barbara. A similar cold air was hitting her, but it didn’t have the same watery feel. It was a type of cold only Jackson, fucking Wyoming, could produce.
Cracking open her eyes, she half expects to see Joel’s hunched-over form. He hated her having her window open at night, so he’d sneak his way through her room to shut it. But ever since arriving in Jackson, his stealth was pretty shitty. Well, at least when he was at home. He’d step on all the creaky boards Ellie knew he knew were there and–
What the fuck was she thinking? Joel– Joel was dead. That bitch Abby had killed him. And she’d let her go. Right there, Abby was right fucking there. Ellie had her in the palm of her hands, but no, she couldn’t kill Abby. Because of the scar kid, who looked no older than 14, and so so fucking pathetic on the ground next to Abby. Jesus, what would Tommy think? The man who’d been her, something close to an uncle, he expected her to kill Abby. That’s why she left Dina and JJ. (Well, really, if she were being honest with herself, she’d left those two far before she even left the farm. She wasn’t even really on this damn beach. No, she was back in Jackson, lying next to Joel’s grave, because she died with him that day.)
Ellie decides to finally sit up from her sandy deathbed. Looking around, there isn’t much on the beach. No blood, no bodies, well, other than her. At some point, the water must have risen and washed the sand. It’s about midday, she decides, or at least that's what the sun is telling her. Just how long had she been out? With the way her stomach feels, she guesses it’s been about a day or two. Her eyes catch on where Abby’s boat launched from the beach. But the marks in the sand are barely there. Again, the ocean washed away any proof of a fight having happened. Bringing her knees up to her chest makes it painfully obvious where she’s hurt, which is everywhere.
She should get up. Should. But god fucking damnit, everything hurts. From the top of her head to the soles of her feet–there’s nothing but a soul-crushing ache. Kind of like the first time she got punished at the FEDRA orphanage. She doesn’t even remember what stupid shit she’d been pulling to be worked so hard (she remembers the way the shovel blistered her eight-year-old-sized hands, forced to dig burn pits for the bodies of infected).
The guy in charge of her age group really fucking hated her, so it probably wasn’t anything that bad. She should stop thinking about FEDRA. Thinking about FEDRA leads to thinking about Riley. And– and well, she didn’t want to think about Riley, so yeah fuck her shitty brain, she needed to get up.
Letting her legs down from the awkward way she had them, she pushes herself to her feet. It’s a slow ascent, and she suddenly understands why Joel used to complain about being old. The thought brings a bitter taste to her mouth, and she pushes it away. Her heels dig into the sand, and suddenly, she becomes aware of some blisters she hadn’t felt before. But she’s up. A few feet away, she spies her bag, covered in sand.
Every step toward it feels like walking on nails. She nearly collapses twice, and well, if there's more sand on her than before, that's between her and the ground. When she finally gets over to the old bag, she falls hard onto her ass. Sand sprays into a large gash on her thigh, and she bites her tongue to keep a scream down.
She rifles through the bag with clumsy fingers. That whole walking thing had taken more out of her than she thought it would. Fucking shit. She starts breathing too fast, and she can’t find it. The watch– his watch. Joel’s watch. It’s not in her bag–(“Deep breaths, kiddo,” Joel’s voice says, somewhere she can’t quite reach). Her panic is eased just a bit by the ghost lingering in the back of her mind. And then she finds it. Buried at the bottom, with nothing around it, for some fucking reason. Like she hadn’t wrapped it up in three layers of clothes to keep it safe.
She pauses before grabbing it, staring at where it lies on top of Joel’s old revolver. The only weapon she has with more than three bullets left. Slowly, she reaches for the watch, its familiar shape in her left hand. Thumb tracing over the shattered face. Looking away from it, she uses her right hand to grab the old revolver. It’s cold and heavy and familiar in a way the watch isn’t. It’d probably hurt less than if she were a vampire clutching a cross. The pain serves as a reminder that he’s probably watching her, somewhere, and he knows exactly how badly she fucked it all up. Tears prick the corners of her eyes.
Before her pity party can really get started, she hears the telltale sound of infected shuffling closer. She lifts her eyes to see them wander closer. The fuckers haven’t seen her yet. She figures they’d heard her panic and wanted breakfast or lunch or some shit. They’re far enough now, but soon they’d see her if she made enough movement. She has enough ammo in the revolver to shoot them. She should shoot them and haul her sorry ass out of here.
Ellie should go back to Jackson, despite the ever-looming thought of what’s there for her. So she could find Dina. Be able to hold JJ. Try, somehow, to fix the little family she’d made for herself. Stick herself back into the puzzle she’d ripped her way out of. But would Dina take her back?
No, she doesn’t deserve to have Dina and JJ back. So that's out of the picture.
She should go back to Jackson for Tommy, then. Tell him she couldn’t kill Abby. That she’s sorry she failed. Sorry for fucking everything up. Yet, a small voice whispers to her that Tommy would rather she not come back, because then he could assume she killed Abby or at least died trying. Maybe that’d be enough to quench his blood thirst. And really, it's good enough for her. So she tries to think of other reasons to go back to Jackson. After a moment of turning the gun over and over, she comes up short. And even if the voice is lying, she’s always been shit at doing what she should.
Her throat tightens. Dina shouldn’t have to look at her. Not a shell of the woman she once loved. Tommy should hate her. Hell, she hates herself enough for both of them. Really, no one should have to deal with her ever again. She’s as much of an infection as the cordyceps that forced the dead to walk. All Ellie Williams did was ruin. Everything she gained, she lost just as quickly.
The infected are closer now. The fucks seem attracted to the sound of her very noisy emotional turmoil. They’re snarling and hungry. She can tell they haven’t eaten in days. Good. She lifts Joel’s pistol. Presses the barrel to her temple. The metal is cold. So fucking cold to the point it’s burning. One second. That’s all it would take. One second, and it’s lights out for good ol’ Ellie.
She isn’t a praying woman, she’s cursed god out more times than he probably deserves, but she hopes she’ll see Joel again. In whatever afterlife there could be, at the very least, she thinks they’d both be on the same side. Joel might’ve been a good man to her, but he wasn’t exactly a saint. She knew that. The past year of her life had made that point very fucking clear.
Maybe she’ll see her mom, too. Or maybe it would all just stop. The thoughts, the memories, her world would just stop spinning. Her finger finds the trigger. Her breath hitches. Chest burning like she’s back in Jackson, taking her first hit of a blunt. Smoke had curled into her lungs and forced its way back out, leaving her a hacking mess. Dina had gotten a kick out of seeing her get taken out by one small puff. Ellie remembers Dina’s hand lightly patting her back, her shoulders shaking with laughter, a weak attempt to look like she was helping.
The first infected stumbles into a run, a wet, rattling noise tearing from its throat. If Ellie could, she would rewind to when it was just her and Joel on the road, when she first tasted the nectar of freedom. From FEDRA, from Boston, from the grave of the first person she’d ever lost. Learning cool shit and making bad jokes, god, what a dream. Something straight out of the stupid comics she used to read. But that’s all it is, fiction, because in this world, people don’t get second chances.
The footsteps are awfully close now. And if anyone found her body, they’d assume she made the only choice she could, despite the revolver's full cylinder and only two infected. Joel’s watch in one hand and his favourite gun in the other, what an exit.
Ellie squeezes her eyes shut, inhaling the salty sea air.
“M’ sorry,” she mumbles, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
And she pulls the trigger.
Ellie didn’t think death would be so fucking loud.
Something or someone is banging on what sounds like a door. Again and again, and god damn it’s like whoever's doing it is trying to break in. Break in where she has no fucking clue. She’s supposed to be dead, and she’s pretty sure death has an open-door policy. Her eyes stay shut. Her head’s pounding, and she feels like shit. She’d hoped death would relieve her of her mortal pains, but death doesn’t seem to like her so far. The air smells like… weed. And the perfume she used to use in Jackson. Like the one Maria gave to her. Huh.
She shifts, and her muscles ache. Not from pain, though, not like how she’d felt on the beach. Just the stiff, shitty ache of sleeping in a bad position. It’s not exactly unwelcome. Maybe death didn’t hate her so much, considering she was starting to feel like she hadn’t just shot herself. Thinking about it, what was under her? It was sure as hell more comfortable than anything she’d slept on in a long time. It felt like her mattress back in Jackson. Thick enough for it to support her back. Though a little lumpy. Definitely not a beach. Not heaven either.
She cracks one eye open. She sees the rafters of the garage she’d made a house behind her real home. Her closet wasn’t empty like how she’d left it when she moved to the farm. Behind her, she hears the sink she’d tried fixing dozens of times, dripping. No. No fucking way.
In a second, her hands are propping her up. The springs under her scream disapprovingly. Her breath catches. This is her room. Her stupid half-built room in Jackson. Walls decked out with her peeling posters and squeaky couch. Same piece-of-crap alarm clock she hardly used, blinking 6:37 AM. In some twisted order of events, it was as if she were plucked from the beach and dropped back here.
Did the universe hear her bitching about second chances and decide to throw her one? Yeah, right. She’d had a dream like this a million times, so this is all it is. Whatever higher power there is wouldn’t be so nice to her, Ellie Williams, of all people. Because for there to be a time and place where there was no beach. No revolver. No Abby. No Joel. Joel–
She needs to throw up, she decides. But the thought of standing makes her swallow it down. This has to be a dream. Or some kind of sick afterlife prank. Whatever divine presence’s punishment. “Congrats, you killed yourself because you're a coward. Here’s what you were running from on loop!”
Ellie needs to find out just what the hell this is. For all she knows, she could be in hell. Her feet plant on the cold concrete as she swings her legs over the bed. The sudden movement makes her stomach churn. Her chest fills with air as she tries to get the feeling to go away. She looks away from the ground, her eyes settling on the door. Light spilling in from outside. Pushing herself up from the bed, she finds walking isn’t too bad.
And then–BANG. That banging again. Right outside her door. Walking closer to it, she hears a voice she's used to hearing in memories.
“Come on, Ellie! You were supposed to be ready five minutes ago!” Jesse yells through the door.
Jesse, the second person Abby killed that mattered to Ellie, was alive in this dream. Wow, super fun for her. Ellie’s heart stutters as she bolts over to the door. Twisting the handle gently and swinging it open. There he was. Her best friend in all his pre-Seattle glory. He gives her an odd look, like he knows everything, and she almost vomits the truth out.
“Finally, man, Mornin’”. He grins as he leans on her door frame. She takes a small step back.
“Hey,” Ellie chokes out, despite her one-minute prep to see the guy, it’s doing nothing to help her nerves. She scrunches up her face to keep herself from crying or throwing up, she can’t tell. God, she probably looks like a fucking mess. “I…uh, overslept, sorry,” she croaks, her throat tightening up, “change…let me change?”
Why the fuck is she asking him? Jesse looks like he's thinking the same thing, and as he's about to open his mouth, she shuts the door. She turns away from the door. Pacing in a circle in front of it for a moment. If she were here, whatever that meant, she could save Joel. Then nothing that was going to happen would, and everything would be capital A okay, right?
She’s insane. Delirious. Probably still bleeding out on that beach. But on the off chance she’s not, on the off chance this is actually happening, she needs to grab her pack and move.
She stumbles over to the chair, yanks her bag off the back, and slings it over her shoulders with ease. Her eyes land on her knife. Without thinking, she grabs it automatically. Shoes, too. Her laces are loose, but it doesn’t matter. Jesse’s still out there. Probably thinking about her weirdness instead of asking real questions. Which is perfect. Because if she looks at him too long, she might break down right there and then.
He’s alive. He’s right there. The same Jesse she got killed. The same Jesse she left behind without even–No. Fuck. Focus. She shakes it off, biting the inside of her cheek so hard she tastes copper. She can’t go out there. Even if this is all just some coma dream or cosmic joke, she just can’t. Outside her door, Jesse repeats what he’d told her before (“You know Joel and Tommy were sent out about 4 hours ago-“). Ellie already knows the rest of the details he has to spare.
Turning on her heel, she speed-walks over to the window, hands gripping the latch.
Okay. So, Jesse just said Tommy and Joel left four hours ago. Same schedule as last time. Shit. How the fuck was she supposed to do this? Well–whatever. Problem for future Ellie. The one with a horse and a better plan than right now.
She slides the window open, wincing when it lets out a sharp squeak. To her left, she hears the crunch of boots on snow, Jesse pacing in front of the door. Shit, shit, shit. No time.
She scrambles through, one leg over the ledge, then the other. Her foot catches, and she half-slides, half-eats-shit on the way down. The landing’s a mess, her knee buckles, and her shin scrapes against the wall, but she hits the snow in one piece.
“Nailed it,” she hisses, shaking out her foot.
She crouches low, breath puffing in the cold, and catches sight of Jesse about to knock on her door again, his brows scrunched in that way they always did when he was worried. A sharp pang of guilt stabs through her chest. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. None of them did.
But–fuck–she can talk to him later. She swallows the lump in her throat and takes off.
Getting to the stables isn’t hard. Her legs carry her on autopilot, something between a speed walk and a half-sprint, her body remembers how to move even if her mind is still catching up. More than once, she thinks she hears footsteps behind her, hears Jesse’s voice, even, but every time she looks, there’s no one there. Just the streets of Jackson filled with people getting their day started.
She doesn’t let herself stop. Doesn’t let herself think too hard about it. She keeps her eyes down, focused on the snow under her boots, on the next step and the next. Avoiding eye contact is easy when you don’t look up at all. She makes it to the stables and walks in.
She gives one of the stable hands a nod, a man whose name she can’t quite remember. She thinks she knew it once, but it slips through her fingers like sand.
“Can I take Shimmer out?” she asks, her voice rough, pointing toward the familiar chestnut mare. The horse she’d lost chasing Abby, back in what she considers hell on earth, Seattle, Washington.
When she looks back towards the guy, his head is tilted down, as if he’d fallen back asleep. His brain must’ve shut off for at least a second because he startles when she speaks. Blinking wearily, the man barely glances up from where he’s sitting on a stack of hay bales, nodding easily.
“Yeah, sure,” he says, giving her a lazy thumbs-up.
As she walks over to Shimmer, it hits her. She has to figure out how to get out of Jackson without tipping off Jesse or Maria. Shit. They were probably already wondering where the hell she was. Workers are already gearing up, people moving around, and here she was planning…whatever the fuck this was.
If this whole situation weren’t so batshit, maybe it’d be worth telling someone. But how the hell was she supposed to explain it? That she somehow knew a group from Seattle, people none of them had even heard of yet, were already a few miles out, planning to kill Joel? Yeah. That’d go over real well. It definitely wouldn’t end with Maria keeping her off patrol. Anyway, she didn’t want to see anyone who knew her, so her best bet was going incognito.
The best option for her to even get out of the gates would be just to rush out the front ones. If she’s lucky, no one is out there just yet.
Her luck runs out, and the three other people meant to be on patrol are already near the gate. Albeit off to the side, huddled around a bonfire, trying to warm up. If they were already here, then she had zero time before Jesse would come around.
She leans back again to look at the gates through the open doors. Four people manning the gate, two people just milling about in front of the stables. Okay, easy enough, right? She’s taken down plenty of guards and shit before. She could do this.
God, what was she even thinking? This is Jackson, not the rattlers or the WLF. All she has to do is ask, right? If her memory serves her correctly, then she’s in good enough standing with people.
Glancing back at the stable hand, she unlocks Shimmer's door. Seeing the horse makes her heart twinge with something she can’t name. She reaches out to comb through the horse’s long mane, picking out tiny burrs. Flashes of picking out bone fragments from her hair run through her mind.
“Hey girl,” she picks out a bigger piece of dirt. Ellie drops her voice to a whisper, being mindful of any prying ears, “I’m sorry about Seattle… but that won’t happen this time, I swear.” Shimmer chuffs at her, leaning closer. Ellie swears if the horse could talk, she’d be getting affectionately cursed out.
She closes her eyes, rolling her own words around in her head. Fuck how was she meant to face any of these people? Literal ghosts were alive again, and she was just supposed to be cool with that? Right, breathing, she needs to relax. Bringing her hands up to cover her face, she takes big breaths. One in, two out, three in, four out.
‘Come on, kiddo, you gotta get a hold of yourself, calm down, think of a plan, you can get yourself out of this.’ A familiar southern drawl coaxes her out of her small freak-out.
Shimmer makes a noise, and Ellie remembers the task at hand. She grabs Shimmer’s reins and leads her out of the stables, waving goodbye to the half-asleep stable hand. Ellie mounts Shimmer. It’s nice to ride her horse again, she was a good companion.
Knowing the guards wouldn’t want to let her out alone, she racked her brain for ideas. On top of the guard, she had the other patrollers to worry about. Shit, it’d be easier to just take all of them out, but that’s fucked up. So she just has to crank up the charm and channel her inner 19-year-old self.
Narrowing her eyes at the four guards, she tried to think of who they might be. She has no clue who the two are up on the wall, but looking at the girl next to the gate, her brain supplies her with a name.
Whitney, a twenty-year-old who’d come to Jackson after her settlement in Montana collapsed, might be her way out. Ellie had talked to her a few times before, friendly enough exchanges. They’d bonded over some shared nerdy shit, even if their circles didn’t really overlap outside of community events. Still, Ellie had a hunch she could get Whitney to open the gates. The girl knew a little about her and Joel’s history. Knew that they had crossed the country together. It could be enough to give Ellie a bit of leeway.
Ellie nudged Shimmer toward the gates, practising a few lines through her head. Practice might’ve been a stretch. She was desperate to get out there and save Joel. She was sure anyone other than a sleepy stable hand could sense how off she was. The image of Joel on that floor flashes behind her eyes, and she clenches her jaw, trying not to spiral.
She glances up at the gate again, sizing up the distance. Her heartbeat isn’t racing, not exactly. It’s more like this steady, pressurised thrum in her chest. Kinda like how she felt when she'd first made it to Seattle. Knowing the woman who killed Joel was somewhere in that god-forsaken city. That she could be just around the corner, and Ellie could have no idea.
She shifts her weight in the saddle and exhales hard through her nose. One shot. That’s all she needs, just one person to believe her, or at least not ask too many questions. Eyes locked on Whitney, Ellie nudges Shimmer forward again.
She sees Whitney look up once she hears Shimmer’s hooves clomping over. A friendly smile on the girl's face, and before Ellie can appreciate it, the girl speaks.