Chapter Text
Those three words bounced around in Ellie’s skull, while she attempted to sit up. The dull stabs of pain across her body felt rather like being jabbed with a rusted sword, something she unfortunately knew, first hand what that was like. Back in the military school, a group of older boys had cornered her in the gym after lights out. They all had somehow found a box of daggers and cutlasses, still sharp, dusted with the clementine tinge of rust. She still didn’t truly know why they had chosen her. Maybe they knew she was a lesbian, even before she did. Maybe they wanted her mom’s switchblade. Maybe they just thought she was an easy target.
Ellie shook her head, wondering why her focus was on a long-passed memory and a long-healed scar when Joel was fighting for his life down the hall, or was maybe even already dead. She bit back that thought, sinking her teeth into the bitter terror of it all, and swallowed it, before it could take root in her brain and fester.
Propped up on a pillow that Dina placed carefully behind her back, Ellie tried to focus her eyes on Dina’s. Even with her fuzzy vision and the terror that was clouding her mind, despite her best attempts, she was struck with how beautiful Dina’s eyes were. For the umpteenth time. They were the same shade as brown as the soft earth in the forests just after it rained, like the glossy back of a stag, with the richness of copper dipped in dark wine. Ellie twitched her head again, and did her best to meet Dina’s gaze.
“Joel. Joel,” Ellie managed to splutter out. Her throat was bitter and the words tasted thick and sour on her tongue.
“He’s here, Ellie. I promise he is. He’s a few rooms down, with the best doctors Maria could find. Tommy, too.” Dina turned away from her for a few seconds, before profering a styrofoam cup, filled with water.
“Drink, if you can, honey.” Her voice was soft and soothing, a tone Ellie recognised from years of watching her expertly train the most frightened horses.
The scared, twisted part of her wanted to knock the cup out of her hands, and run down the hall to find Joel, but she knew that would end up with her on the floor again. She reluctantly brought her lips to the rim of the cup, and gulped down its contents. The icy liquid cooled the stinging in her mouth and throat, and her breathing became less hollow and ragged. Ellie leaned back heavily on the extra pillow, and let out a few gasps, the pain still twisting in her chest. The sharp pierce of fear and the dull ache of battle wounds mingled inside her, wrapping up her lungs and heart with grisly ribbons, pulling tight and taut.
Dina, with another slow and careful motion that reminded Ellie of seeing her with Jackson’s horses, reached out to smooth Ellie’s matted hair. It was caked with blood, and smelled of the rotten floor boards she’d been held against. Ellie shuddered, thinking of the dank room, of the boot against her back, of Joel’s mangled hands and gored face. Dina’s fingers were warm, soft, and comforted her a little, enough to open her mouth again.
“Can I.. Can I see him? Joel?”
“Soon, I promise. They’re still working on him. I thought you might like this, though.” Dina passed over an olive and grey checked shirt, splattered with blood, but filled with the homely scent of woodsmoke, bourbon and just Joel, the only home she had ever really known. Ellie wrapped her fingers around the familiar material, and held it against her face. It was only now that the tears she had been holding in since crawling through the windows of the mansion spilled over her eyelids and dampened her cheeks. The scent that filled her nostrils reminded her of the many times she had been enveloped in Joel’s strong, safe arms, and the years she had wasted rejecting each hug, kind word, and display of affection. She had almost lost her father, still could lose him. It seemed a rather cruel fate that this transpired only a few hours after Ellie admitted she wanted to try to forgive him. Though the sting of betrayal still soured her stomach, Ellie would forgive him for any crime if it meant he’d pull through. This was not how it was supposed to be.
*
Ellie shuddered awake, a loud clanging dragging her from the tendrils of sleep. Instinctively, her hand went for her switchblade, stabbed into the table next to her bed. Instead, her fingers felt only the empty styrofoam cup. She blinked the sleep from her eyes, and felt a boulder of despair hit her square in the abdomen, as she remembered why she was here, and who was in the next room. Dina sat by her, though, her gentle snores comforting in the clinically sinister blue glow of Jackson’s medical centre. The artificial lights from the machine Ellie was hooked up to emitted a presence that put her on edge, her heart already hammering in her chest.
She tested her legs, once again, feeling stronger now. Shakily, she crawled to her feet, careful to not nudge Dina, or the plastic chair she was curled up in. She leaned down and pressed her chapped, scarred lips against Dina’s hair. Ellie could hardly believe it’d only been mere hours since they were wrapped up in each other’s embrace, the warmth of the basement, and the giddiness of Eugene’s old joints. She wished herself back there briefly, before forcing herself to move a few steps.
By some miracle, the machine attached to the wire stabbed into her hand, at the base of her leaves, was on wheels. She grabbed onto the stem of the machine, its silver shade and thinness reminding her all too well of the weapon the blonde soldier used on Joel. The thought caused her stomach to lurch, but she choked it down the best she could. Ellie knew that throwing up right now was not going to get her any closer to Joel, and would probably alert Dina or a medic. The acrid vomit soured her gut, but stayed put.
With the movement, the ache spread across her back, and a hastily stitched laceration across her forehead protested being upright. Considering everything, though, Ellie was rather stable, and she risked crossing the room.
The corridors here weren’t unfamiliar, from an adolescence spent getting into all sorts of scraps, with friends, enemies and infected alike. She remembered accompanying Jesse to get his broken arm set when he was bucked off an unruly horse; the time Cat slipped and fell on their ice-skating date last winter, and gave herself a nasty concussion; she thought of Dina holding her hand when Ellie herself got stitches across her thigh. The latter memory was fuzzy, both from the alcoholic haze that led her there in the first place, and because it was the first night she’d ever cuddled with Dina. Reminiscing could be done, later, though, as soon as she could see Joel. With one hand on the stem of the machine, and another pressed against the whitewashed wall, Ellie dragged herself down the halls, peering in each window for a glimpse of whiskered beard, weathered skin, or any other sign that might suggest it was Joel tucked up in the pressed sheets.
The ache across her back was making itself known, now, and Ellie staggered a little. The hospital gown they had dressed her in was both proving to be poor cover, and sent further chill down her spine, making her think of the last time she’d been in one of these, at the Firefly hospital. Even with the fresh reminder of Joel’s deceit, all she wanted to see was his face. She pulled herself to the last window at the end of the corridor. The glass was frosted, but Ellie was so sure the man lying in the bed had a greying beard, and that the rifle Joel carried everywhere was leaning against the spare chair. Swallowing the idea that it could be any older man, Ellie jiggled the doorknob, which gave way to her grip.
A creak split the air of the room, and Ellie shuffled her way through the door. Her eyes flickered to the man under the starched hospital sheets, regulation white, and something inside her snapped. There was a hope she had been holding onto that the beating she had witnessed was a figment of her twisted imagination, another nightmare scenario she had conjured up, much like the one where David, the hunter from Colorado, had his way with her before she could save herself, or the one where she falls asleep next to Dina and wakes up to Riley’s mutilated corpse. She was well-versed in her brain doing its best to fill her with dread and fear, but this.. This was all too real.
Ellie’s eyes scanned the man before her, the man she had relied on to protect her for years, and the man she had spent longer hating the sight of. One side of his face was purple with bruises, and the other had a deep laceration that had already bled through its bandage. She could not tell if his eyes were closed, or if they were swollen shut. His nose was crushed, bending an odd way, checkerboarded with a mix of dried scarlet blood and the same shade of purple as his cheek. She was sure that his jaw hung oddly, hoping it was from whatever opioid the doctors could pump into him, but a nagging fear wondering if it was broken. Her eyes scanned down further, taking in the ring of bruising on his neck, imagining some soldier’s brash hands choking the life out of him, probably laughing as he gasped and spluttered. The mingling of slashes and bruising across his bare chest came next, followed by the sterile bandages that wrapped across his ribs. The blankets began there, white overlapping white, and Ellie could only imagine the devastation that lay underneath them, the damage that the golf club could have wreaked internally, the mangling of his knee from the shots that rang out as Ellie raced into the room. On top of the blanket lay his hands, and Ellie counted her blessings that they were covered in gauze. She had seen what they had done to them, nails ripped off and fingers dislocated. A sob caught in her throat as she imagined those same fingers teasing beautiful music from his guitar. She briefly wondered if she would ever hear him play again.
Ellie wished she could curl up against him, like she did their first few weeks in Jackson. She was terrified of being in the same place, day after day, even with the safety procedures in place, nightmares waking her up every time her eyes closed. Joel suggested she might want to sleep next to him for a while, assuring her that it was perfectly normal, especially after they had been sharing a tent for almost a year. It didn’t last long, but it was comforting, a parental action that had warmed Ellie from the inside out. If she tried hard enough, she could remember the feeling of his bulk stretched out next to her, the sag of the bed that left her clinging to her side of the mattress, and the comforting scent of his spearmint tooth and the coffee he drank without fail, morning and night. If she knew it wouldn’t hurt him, she’d crawl onto the sheets and fall asleep, pretending she was fourteen again and that Joel had never lied to her, that he wasn’t clinging to life next to her.
Instead, Ellie lowered herself into the guest chair next to him. She ignored the pain that still radiated from her back, and extended one arm, the one free of wires, to rest her hand on Joel’s forehead. From what she could see, it was mostly unscathed, other than one small bandage across his left eyebrow. Her fingers felt the leathery texture of his sun-beaten skin, and she tried her hardest to match Joel’s laboured, steady breaths.