Chapter Text
Hey Kiddo.
Her eyes opened. Back to the beach, back in the water. Alone.
Her knife was gone, lost in the fight with Abby. She didn’t even bother looking for it. She deserved to lose it. Maybe it was her first step of compensation for all the pain she had caused, all the lives she had ended.
With that thought, the memories were reluctantly brought to the forefront of Ellie's head. As she watched, it was easy to observe these memories and see nothing but dull blinding rage clouding every part of her mind, invading her thoughts and actions, and leading her to make decisions she regretted. Now, sitting alone in the shallow water, Ellie realized that the same rage had chipped away at her personality with each heinous and hate-fueled action.
Ellie could feel the fog of anger slowly extricating itself from the memories, allowing her to see all of the pain she had inflicted. She wanted to know. She wanted to see the full extent of her actions. She was so tired of her excuses, so tired of blaming everyone else for her own problems. It was time to let go.
Flashes bombarded her, recollections so sudden it was hard to let her brain articulate all of the information coming in.
Nora’s face was slowly bashed and bloodied; worse and worse with each hit of the pipe, until she could barely even let out the words that Ellie so desperately needed to hear escape her lips. Each letter Nora tried to speak into existence made the blood pooling in her mouth splatter sickeningly onto the floor. The quiet strained whispers mixed with the blood’s noise, tainting it even more than it already had been.
The sound of the gun firing and the bullet pulling through Mel’s flesh, the anguished cries leaving Owen’s body as he tried desperately to explain the situation. Ellie watched the light leave Mel’s eyes, not yet knowing that two lives faded with the single bullet she let fly.
Ellie pulling her dagger, her mother’s dagger, right up to the kid’s throat, goading her into a fight, using Abby’s own love for him against her.
Ellie punching and jabbing at Abby again and again, trying to funnel all of the pain, all of the loss, the hurt, and the guilt into punching the girl that she hated so much to death. Realizing that within all of that pain, all of that anger. The only reason she was trying to kill Abby now wasn’t because of justice for Joel at all- it was Ellie’s selfishness, rage, and depravity trying to erase all of the hurt from her life. Trying to run from it by killing Abby instead of confronting the reality of Joel’s death. In that moment, realizing all of her monstrous actions, Joel came back for his wondrous encore in Ellies mind, and Ellie- well, Ellie just stopped.
It was too much.
She was sobbing now, the feeling of overwhelming guilt coursed through her head to the bottom of her feet, back and forth through her body, the sensation only amplified with each memory that came to her. She was crying in little sporadic bursts now each sob a desperate attempt to breathe, but it was so hard. It was too hard.
She was dying, she had to be, this was worse than before, in the barn, Dina was there to calm her down in the barn. Dina isn't here now. Ellie had left her, torn her entire future right out from under her by removing herself right when things got hard by sinking back into the excuses into revenge.
The ignorance of the pain she had surely caused the woman she loved hit her in the stomach like a truck. It was painful. It was overwhelming. It was all too much.
The crying slowed to an eventual stop. Ellie exhaled slowly, lethargic. Calming herself she closed her eyes, and with a pained look of determination on her face she plunged her head into the water.
Ellie kept pulling her head out just before she would lose consciousness, before shoving it right head in again, opening her mouth then her eyes to watch as the air bubbles sprang up fast and then slowly ceased until she felt her lungs tighten and water rush down her throat and at that instant she would bring her head up cough violently and then repeat the process.
She needed to feel this pain, needed to feel some sort of punishment for everything she had done, the horrible monster she had become. After a while she blacked out.
Ellie woke to sounds of splashing and muffled voices. Her eyes were crusty and coated in sand and water and she could barely see what was going on around her. There were some loud shouts, and then rushing sounds that grew closer and closer. She just started to feel a hand grasp her limp shoulder as she drifted back into unconsciousness.