Death overran the world. Grief battered her heart. It beats to a tune of vengeance, a dark, thrumming song. Ellie knows nothing anymore.
But she knows there's you.
The resilient, soft-hearted but hard-shelled girl she saved from a Seraphite attack...
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Ellie
Two fucking days.
It's been two fucking days, and you're still here, an incessant thorn lodged in her fucking side.
She intended to lead you to your belongings and part ways without as much as a departing word; which was a display of kindness she didn't feel internally in itself. She could've just left you in that deteriorating garage with nothing but the gaping wound in your thigh and the mud-stained shirt on your back and let you crawl your way back to your gun.
Could've just left you in the forest to rot away in a puddle of your own blood.
But she fucking didn't. And she's really fucking pissed off about it.
When she killed those Seraphites it was purely for her own twisted gain; cleansing the already corrupted earth of those vile, cultish fucks was her honor. They were simply obstacles between her and the few sparing miles stretching to Lakehill. She never meant to be your Knight in shining fucking armor.
You would've been a perfect distraction for her to slip away unnoticed. While the Seraphites were preoccupied with tearing the trailer park to pieces to locate you, she could've saved her ammo, preserved her strength, darted right on by without them having even known she was invading their territory.
But then she heard your scream of pure, undiluted terror ricochet through the woods.
Admittedly, and only a little regretfully, she was going to disregard it. It wasn't her fight. She wasn't the dumbass who had walked directly into an open field of untouched goods.
But then she fucking saw you.
Running clumsily but lightening-quick down the hill, arms waving wildly, raw panic contorting your face, tears streaming down your mud-slicked cheeks.
Her heart had twinged at the sight. At the thought of your naïveté; how you likely celebrated the discovery of unopened canned foods and partially stabilized lodging and dusty comics and working tools. How you likely let yourself feel a flicker of hope, happiness, at the vast supplies.
She didn't feel sorry for the random woman who'd fallen victim to her hope; she resonated with the scared little girl that glinted in said woman's eyes.
You were lucky that little girl within you was still alive at all.
Maybe it's fucking weird or whatever, but there was a part of her that felt obligated to protect that tiny shred of innocence she saw. Like it was something she owed to her younger self.
Now, she assesses you thoughtfully from over her shoulder, her grip loose but present on her switchblade.
You wrestle the weight of your shotgun and overflowing backpack, face sweat-slicken and scrunched in extortion, eyes trained hazardously on the rocky hill, concentrated on not toppling over. Your hair is unbound and tousled, coiling from the humidity, damp from earlier's rain.
