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“I need new clothes.” Her tongue felt like sandpaper, the words chafing her throat as she spoke, her chest expanding and compressing, bouts of tingles crawling underneath her skin. She pulled at shreds of skin around her cuticles, the pain grounding her, keeping her mind from spiraling up and through the ceiling, into smoke and frosty white snow.
Then Maria looked up at her from across the table, meeting Ellie’s puffy, red eyes.
“Would you have anything to trade?” Maria asked with brows raised.
“I-“ Ellie ticked through the mental inventory list of things she owned, a habit she picked up on the road, so she was careful to never leave anything behind.
Switchblade
Jacket
Canteen
Gun stolen from Bill and Franks (re-gifted by Joel)
Will Livingston
Riley’s pendant
Photo strip of Riley
Letter from Mom
shoes
A flannel Joel found in some abandoned suitcase.
Jeans that are a size too big
A sweater
Ellie could offer nothing. Not the clothes off her back, not the things she lost, and she certainly could no longer offer her immunity. Some things could belong only to her—never to share. And other things were always up to grab—subject to loss so profound she felt it on her bare back.
Saying nothing at all, Ellie turned away from Maria and left the dining hall, taking all she owned with her.
~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~
“This is our new home.”
Joel had said, perching his arm around her hunched shoulder as they stood before the threshold. Ellie peered in through the open door, willing herself to feel the same excitement that radiated from Joel.
She willed herself to smile, to lean in to him and soak in all the good things he would want her to. But she could no longer be a sponge, her wonderment sprawling through all the good things she carried so closely with her, now lost to a crushing sense of failure. Ellie felt emptied and hallowed. The space existed, but she could not fathom trying to fill it, the holes gouged into her too vast, too serrated to hold anything in long enough to cherish–it all fell through desperate fingers.
The floors, her lowered eyes bored into, held a thick layer of dust, scattered with dead insects and debris. The floral wallpaper had been lifted, water damaged, and slowly peeling back to expose the drywall. Light sconces hung from the walls, strewn in wisps of cobwebs and clumps of lint. She could see half of a rickety dining room table, and a chair peeking out from an archway. Built-in shelves sat empty, save for a dead moth and a few hardcover books, eaten away at by time.
“She’s a bit rough around the edges, but she’s got good bones. We’ll fix her up.” Joel boasted,
For a moment, she wondered if he meant her, or the house.
Ellie imagined rot under her splintering floorboards, and black, cloudy mold growing through the cracks in the baseboards. The doors would jam from warped frames, the brass knobs loose and rusted. She imagined trying to hang posters and photo frames, but the walls fell away under her touch like decomposing flesh—maggots and fungus emerging from burning wood beams. The furniture collapsed into heaps of ash, the ceilings dipping low, fracturing the bones that held her up. Ellie could only exist there alone, with everything she owned worn on her body, or held in her hands, waiting for the roof to cave in on her. Nothing that a few nails and the slap of a hammer could ever fix. Even if it were Joel, taking his time and carefully rebuilding the rotting parts of her, nurturing love back into her crumbling walls.
Ellie tried, but the idea of ownership fell through her fingers. Her home was unsalvageable.
The best thing to do was demolish it. Tear it apart brick by fucking brick.
~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~
Ellie did not stir from where she laid on the bed when she heard subtle knocks at the door of her bedroom. Her eyes stayed trained on the ceiling, burning and red as tears threatened to fall. She had been counting the dingy blue stripes that ran along the length of the ceiling, pushing back the thoughts that threatened to shorten her already unsteady breath. Her hands were clasped at her navel, her left thumb scratching her right palm raw.
The night had turned white, a frost webbing across the bedroom window, an icy chill blowing in through the cracks of the sill, caressing her bare arms.
“Ellie,” Joel rasped softly from the other side of the door. She could hear the knob turning to the left, then right, as Joel attempted to pull it open. She had locked it before pitching herself to the mattress, letting the pillow soak up the tears from her cheeks. “Open the door.” Not a question, not a demand–must have been a plea.
She said nothing, rolling onto her shoulder to face the window that dappled in beams of silver moonlight. For a moment she imagined the beams grew long fingers that curled around her and drew her up into the sky. She imagined herself weightless, floating past the moon, into an explosion of color, catapulted into the glow of the stars, capturing all the treasures she imagined the cosmos held in the palm of her hand.
“I’ll be ‘cross the hall when you’re feeling ready to talk.” She listened to the heavy thuds of his boots as he trudged to his own room. She listened for his door to slam shut, but all she heard was a faint squeak of the hinges, but no click of the lock. Joel had a habit of leaving his door open. Ellie wouldn’t mind if he shut it, in fact, she wished he would.
~/\~/\~ ~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~
Joel surprised Ellie with a new backpack before her morning shift at the stables. It was hanging from her rickety wood chair at the dining table; Army green, sturdy feeling, with brown stitching, and tons of pockets. Possibly a few too many pockets. The only thing about the unremarkable pack that caught Ellie’s eye was a small, steel purple alien head pin that was fastened to one the front pockets. Even then, she appeared wholly unimpressed with her new pack–Only because it was nothing like the one she lost in Utah, and held nothing of what she missed so profoundly.
“You don’t like it.” Joel had drawled, watching Ellie eye the backpack with a clear look of disdain. His jaw tightened as his teeth worked to chew the bacon he picked at on his plate. God, he missed bacon. His old teeth did not.
“It’s not that.” Ellie pushed her chair in and lifted her full plate of breakfast that Joel had prepared for her–as he always did, every morning without fail–from the table. “I’m going to take my breakfast to-go. I’m already late.” She brought her food to the counter and began rummaging around the cabinets for something to shove her pancakes and bacon in.
Ellie had made a habit of being ubiquitously evasive, especially when it came to her interactions with Joel. He would never tell her how it kept him up at night as he picked apart her newly ashen mannerisms. He asked his shadow, casting off the wall in the glow of his lamp light, if there was anything he could do to shed a little–even just a sliver–of light on to Ellie who had become like a ghost haunting the house–the essence of her child-like innocence tangled in the cobwebs of his decision, made to preserve her precious light that his world could never be without, and now he watched it dim right in the palm of his hand.
“Bottom cabinet on your left.” Joel piped with eyes down, shoveling a hearty bite of syrup drenched pancakes in his mouth. One of the stable mates–he recalled her name had been Becca–made the maple syrup, and Joel wasted no time trading some cans of chopped pineapple he had looted while on patrol. He found it had been his favorite trade yet. He mentally knocked himself for not understanding how great communism could actually be, if executed correctly. Homemade maple syrup for canned fruit was the best execution, in Joel’s humble opinion.
Following Joel’s directions, Ellie found a small trove of empty glass jars and a thinning roll of aluminum foil. “Thanks.” She huffed under her breath, pulling the roll of foil from the cabinet and tearing off a sheet.
“For the backpack, or the foil?” There was an ingenuine playfulness to Joel’s tone, and for some reason Ellie felt a pang of guilt. No matter the attempt, his altruistic acts of service fell flat.
Ellie kept her back to Joel, flopping her sticky, buttery breakfast onto the sheet of foil and haphazardly wrapping it, paying no mind to the sticky mess she made in the process. Cleaning up after herself hadn’t been a strong suit of hers. If Joel minded, he said nothing to Ellie. “Both. If that makes you happy.”
Joel could not help but scoff. “You can tell me if you don’t like it.”
If he craved her honesty so much, she figured she wouldn’t make him ask twice. “I don’t like it.” Ellie bit down on the inside of her cheek as soon as the words left her mouth. Her tone had been harsher as intended, but she meant it. “I needed clothes, not a backpack.”
"I can get you new clothes, Kiddo." Joel said, featherlight, standing from the table and pushing his chair in. He grabbed Ellie’s new pack from her chair and walked over the stiff fifteen year old standing at the counter. Her head was down with her hands resting on top of the bundle of foil that held her breakfast. He noticed her ponytail was loose, and sat askew at her neck. Some tufts of her hair were still tucked sloppily into the elastic, and some strands didn’t even make it into the elastic. Just another surefire, worrisome sign that Ellie had not been taking care of herself.
His fingers brushed the tips of her hair, his fingers gently working the knots out in a way that never caused her any pain. He felt Ellie stiffen beneath his touch, yet she fell backwards into him, the back of her head resting on his chest below his chin. She tucked himself into his warmth, even if she felt the icy blight rolling through her veins. What little heat he could offer her, she clung to it in hopes it would thaw her out.
"It's fine." She breathed,
"It's cold out." He said softly before stepping out and away from him.
"I said I'm fine, Joel." She smoothed her hand back over her hair, her chewed nails catching the strands. "I gotta go." She took the strap of the pack from Joel, feeling the weightlessness of it nearly carting her to the ground in all her longing. She unzipped it, dropped her breakfast in to the pocket, and shrugged in on her shoulders, goosebumps gracing the bare skin of her arms.
"Now wait a minute, Ellie." Joel began to unbutton the flannel he wore, and pulled it off, leaving himself in an olive green tee shirt.
"Joel," She started, her brows pulled down. He gestured Ellie to take off the backpack, and she dropped if from her shoulders with a roll of her eyes, letting it hit the ground. She allowed Joel turn her around and work her arms into the sleeves, a warmth like firelight enveloping her in a caress of musk, coffee beans and Joel. It hung loose on her, the sleeves passing over her hands.
"I know." He turned her around, his hands fastening the buttons one by one "I'll get you something warm of your own to wear." Something untouched. I want you to feel safe. Taking the cuffs of the arms, he rolled them up at her wrist, pulling her into his embrace and tracing circles into the small of her back. He saw her off with a pat to her shoulder, helping her slide the pack back on her back.
~/\~/\~ ~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~
Though she never learned how to swim, and never had her head below water, Ellie felt as though she were drowning, clawing in vain just below the surface of affliction so thick, she felt suspended in it, like she had fallen through thin ice that sealed itself up above her head. Darkness surrounded her from every side, but his voice shot through the shadows like stray bullets, tearing into her so loud she could feel him in the space between her ears.
You're mine, Ellie.
I'm going to keep you. I'm going to teach you .
I'm with you always, Ellie.
Your violent heart is mine.
She awoke from the tremors of her sleep with a choked whimper, embers of her screams mirages on her dried, cracked lips. She kicked the sheets from her feet, gasping as she shakily coaxed herself to breathe, his voice still echoing as she gasped, clawing at her chest, pulling the fabric of the brown sweater that bunched up at her neck, suffocating her--she half expected her fingers to come away wet with blood.
Ellie clamored from the bed, pins and needles shooting up her legs as her feet hit wood. She pulled it over her head with a cry, throwing it hard and far from her, the smell of blood swelling in her nostrils. Then she was on her hands and knees, heaving, gasping, sobbing.
Joel was with her the next moment, lifting her from under her arms and bringing her into his chest, cradling the back of her head. He whispered comforting nothings, and she clung to every word, dispelling the rancid taste David's words left in the back of her throat.
"It's ok, Ellie." I won't let anything happen to you. "You're safe."
He eased her head down on his lap as he sat them on her bed, trailing his fingers up and down her arm, his other hand combing gently through her hair.
"I'm so cold." Ellie shivered, curling her fingers into the soft material of Joel's pajama bottoms.
Joel reached to the foot of her bed, pulling the comforter up and over her trembling body. "All you wore to bed was a tank top?" He questioned, rubbing his palm up and down her arm, creating pockets of heat under the comforter.
"I wore the sweater." She replied in a whisper, sniffling. "It's all I had." All she had to keep her warm.
His hands paused, Ellie feeling him go stiff as a board. "What happened to flannel I gave you?
Gave. As in it belonged to her, right off Joel's back.
"It smelled like horse shit." Was her response, her eyes finding the bunched material in the corner of her room. In the dark, she swore she could still see the spatters of blood.
"I spoke to Maria today." Joel soothed, clearing his throat. "She said she has a box of clothes you can sift through when you get the chance."
"I don't have anything to trade." Nothing she could let go of. Nothing that wanted to let go of her.
"S'not a trade." He sighed, something like fatigue gripping his tone. He edged an arm under Ellie's shoulder and lifted her head up from his lap. She grabbed onto the collar of his shirt as he stood to leave.
"I'll be back. Keep yourself covered. It's cold."
Ellie watched as Joel left her room, and disappeared into the hall, pressing her back into the headboard and drawing her knees up to her chest. She held the blanket up to the base of her neck with shaking hands. Joel returned not a minute later, another flannel draped over his arm.
He helped Ellie ease into it, quickly fastening the buttons the same way he did that morning. She let him take her by the hand, pulling her off the bed and to her feet.
"Where are we going?" She asked, watching as Joel yanked the comforter from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. It pooled at her socked feet.
"Like I said, it's cold." He stalked to the corner of her room and plucked the bunched up brown sweater off the floor, as if it didn't hold a brute burden of grief and untouchable memories, holding it between his fingers at his side. The brown fabric caught moonlight, the blood spatters gone—the sweater looked clean again.
Joel pulled Ellie into his side, his arm going around her shoulder and squeezing gently. “Let’s go start a fire.”
~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~
Ellie knelt before the hearth, her knees folded under her, a mug of hot cocoa held closely to her chest, and the blanket draped over her shoulders. She watched the dancing flames with glassy eyes as Joel tendered the fire with an iron poker.
Through the crackles of split, burning wood, Ellie heard phantoms of screaming, wailing, begging for a life so precious, a life that would cure the world of sickness and anguish—pleas that went unheard until she served it to them on a silver platter, no conditions or stipulations. She wouldn’t beg for a life that no longer belonged to her.
You have a greater purpose than any of us could ever imagine
And then she had no purpose at all. The best parts of her cut away and left behind in the embers and ash, finding home in the gnarled flesh and splinters of bone that belonged to a beast who crushed her innocence as easily as she crushed his skull under the blade of a meat cleaver.
Joel leaned the poker against the stone of the mantle and sat beside Ellie, pulling her into the nook of his shoulder. She let her head settle in the crook of his neck. "Feel warm now, kiddo?"
Placing the half-empty mug at her side, she nodded, sweat beading at her temple. She felt like a furnace under the blanket, absorbing all the heat from the fire. She preferred it over the frigid cold.
The night Joel led Ellie from Silver Lake, she had fled the decrepit cabin after he had finally nodded off, his breath sputtering as he succumbed to the pain of his stab wound. She held his hand, coaxing him to shut his eyes. He deserved-- No-- needed the rest. He had practically carried her down the mountain as she remained catatonic. He found them a safe shelter, taking care to clear each room of any danger. He gingerly cleaned the blood from her face and fingers, scrubbing under her fingernails as she sat there--Saying nothing. Staring at nothing, while Joel did everything for her.
And when she found herself alone, Joel on the flat of his back, she watched the rise and fall of his chest, counting each ragged breath as if it would of been his last. She laced her fingers into his, gawking when she saw the blood that stained the sleeves of her sweater peeking out from underneath Joel's coat.
She had ripped her hands away from his, Joel still in the clutches of sleep. The walls began to close in, an abject heaviness falling over her, like a crushing weight around her windpipe.
Before she could register her actions, she had been outside on her hands and knees, icy snow soaking into her jeans, the sweater pulled from her body as she shoved it down into the hard packed snow, bare fingers scrubbing at the brown fabric, lifting away the blood and brain matter. Her hands collected pins and needles, her skin losing layers as her knuckles burned against ice as she scrubbed, and scrubbed.
Scrubbed away the evidence he existed.
That he touched her.
Hurt her
Broke her.
Infected her, sinking his tendrils under her skin, burrowing deep into a place she could never reach, a place her immunity held no leverage.
She scrubbed him away, until her hands were raw and bleeding, her blood mixing with his in the reddened slush.
Frigid wind had whipped at her bare back, a blizzard building in her head, but she felt nothing past the ache of adrenaline and a symphony of sobs that she wailed into the night.
That's how Joel found her-- on her hands and knees, gasping broken cries that were carried away with the wind. Covering her with his own coat, he towed her up, clutching her to his side as her legs wobbled beneath her. Once back inside, he started a fire after lowering her down to the dust coated floor, running his hands up and down her covered arms in a futile attempt to bring color back to her cheeks, to get her shivers to still, but even just a foot from the flames, she trembled, her aloof eyes intent on the brown sweater Joel hung from the mantle to be dried.
Ellie blinked, and she was back on the living room floor of their home in Jackson, the fire shifting in the hearth, releasing a rising cascade of cinders. Turning her face into Joel's chest, she breathed in deeply, releasing it when she felt his hands sink into her hair and scratch small circles into her scalp.
"When you're feeling ready to talk-"
"No talking."
Joel relented, the two falling into a comfortable silence, sitting before the lit fireplace, sipping at their ceramic mugs. The only thing breaking the silence, the soft hums falling from Joel's lips as he rocked them back and forth.
Then the walls started to close in around them. Her breath hitched and Joel immediately pulled back, taking her face between his hands his brown eyes begging for her to look at him, to see him, to know she is safe, safe in his arms, safe within these walls she was allowed call home.
But even a home could have cemeteries, and Ellie dug plot after plot. She could count them on her fingers, but those without names, faces, retribution, there wasn't a graveyard big enough inside her chest where she can lay them to rest. So she dug empty graves, turning over dirt in the sludge of her grief, with the anticipation that each one will eventually hold a body, even those she couldn't fathom losing, while her own remained empty.
"Joel," A tear fell from her lashes, her teeth chattering, her hands white knuckled as she adhered herself to his chest, his hands falling from her face and wrapping around the small of her back.
"Why did you keep it, Ellie?"
Ellie felt her chest seize, her lungs folding, bending, shredding as she grasped for an explanation deserving enough to reconcile the arbitrary decision she made to keep that fucking sweater. After they reached a city near the border of Utah, Ellie was able to find new clothes--conventional given the warming climate. She had changed, discarding the snow boots and undergarments, though some layers couldn't be shed, smoke still billowing under her skin. Joel had found her, on her knees, grunting with frustration as she attempted to shove the sweater into her backpack, the zipper not reaching over the protruding brown cotton. He didn't question her, knowing his inquiries would be wasted on walls of stone. Instead, he offered to carry it in his pack; He had plenty of room. If she wanted to keep it, he would carry it for her.
Ellie knew why she kept it, why she let Joel take up precious space with something that weighed so heavily on her. She knew, even if the explanation dried up on her tongue-- fearful that verbalizing such darkness would cast it into her world.
"Are you ready," Joel murmured, his thumb stroking just below her shoulder blade. "to let it go?"
Where can I put it down?
Could she make room on a shelf overflowing with novels of guilt, failure? Could she scoop deep enough, peel enough layers back, to become even a sliver of who she once was? Could she forget the burn of where he touched her, rough hands imprinting invisible scars on her skin. She wore his ghost like a necklace, his hand reaching down her throat and ensnarling around her goodness, unrooting her from familiar soil, petals falling away, wilting, decaying, withering into ash. She could smell it on the sweater, the specter of winter lulling her into her darkest fears at night, now familiar, like a friend, the only friend she has, like a shackle entrapping her underneath him.
Joel pulled back, keeping her within the circle of his arms. "Ellie,"
"Okay." She did not feel her lips when she spoke, her throat uncomfortably dry.
Joel handed her the sweater, cupping his hands over hers. She swallowed, needles of mourning lodging in her throat, a pain so deserving held in her palms.
I deserve this.
To wear him on her back, to carry him, them in her heart stitched thread by thread, blood soaking the strings that held her together.
Let it go.
She can leave herself there, underneath him on the red carpet, squirming like the animal he made her, locking her in a cage, taunting her. He could keep her-
No.
Teach her to embrace her violent-
Let it go.
Joel guided her hands close to the fire, careful to keep her from being burned by the fawning flames, and with a feeble gasp, she let the sweater fall from her fingers, Joel pulling their arms back as the fire accepted it, a blaze or orange, yellow and red stretching up the brick of the fireplace, a gale of heat caressing her face.
She watched the fabric catch, black holes tearing into the fabric as it collapsed into cinders and ash, the roaring in the back of Ellie's head fizzling out as Joel held her against his chest, his heartbeat singing in her ear.
Only when there was nothing left, and the fire swelled and mellowed, did Joel interrupt the crackle of the wood. "Do you still feel cold?"
Ellie shook her head, breathing in and exhaling. Joel then stood up, grabbed the poker and spread the burning wood around the hearth, suffocating the fire with soot. After replacing the poker, he reached his hand down to Ellie and pulled her up to her feet. She sleepily fell against him, tugging on the hem of his shirt-- a wordless request he flawlessly understands.
The blanket fell away as he lowered himself, her arms circling around his neck as one arm came around her ribcage and the other under her knees. Joel lifted her effortlessly, but not without a grunt that awarded him a giggle from Ellie and a playful fist against his chest.
"M'not that heavy."
"No, baby girl, you're not."
~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~~/\~/\~