Chapter Text
The second the door to the kitchen closes, Dina slides down it to crumple on the floor, choking back sobs she’s sure Ellie would be able to hear from inside.
Fucking Ellie. She’s really back.
How dare she, she thinks. She can’t just do this, can’t leave Dina for almost an entire year and come back practically on her knees saying she’ll be better and asking for forgiveness Dina doesn’t think she has the strength to give.
And yet, something soft inside her reminds her of every night she stayed up praying for Ellie and asking, as if her love could hear her, to come home and just hold her again. All she’d wanted was for Ellie to come back and love her, for one night at least. She’d lost fucking everyone else. Her mother, her sister, countless friends, Jesse. She couldn’t end up alone again, she just couldn’t.
Robin is at her side immediately, helping her up to the kitchen table, where Jamie is waiting. They’ve been so good to her and JJ, never pressuring her to talk but always leaving room to ask. JJ is really happy here. Dina remembers the weeks after she left, the nights he cried until morning for the mother he didn’t have anymore. He wasn’t even a year old. He didn’t understand.
Dina had pretended to him that Ellie had never existed at all. He’d forget her.
He was lucky that way.
Today, she’s sobbing at someone else’s kitchen table with someone else’s arms around her, and still all she wants is Ellie back, even after everything. Not just Ellie, even, but her Ellie, the one who helped raise a son that Dina had been terrified she wouldn’t want, who woke her up with the sweetest kisses on their worst days, who learned old love songs just for her and who risked her life for her until she had risked it for nothing. It was so fucking pathetic, really.
She doesn’t tell Jesse’s parents about it. She couldn’t go over that again without breaking down fully.
She heads upstairs to the room she was borrowing instead, the one that used to be his . Her mind was filled with her, though; betrayal, anger, shock and far more love and wanting than she would ever admit. She didn’t want to love her anymore, but her stupid fucking heart didn’t get the memo, she supposes.
She can’t sleep. Her son sleeps peacefully in the next room, all tired out from his big day of doing nothing but being a baby. He hadn’t woken up, even as Dina had screamed at Ellie right beneath him. Why did she feel bad for doing that? She probably shouldn’t feel bad for that.
After two hours, she’s tired herself out. She’s stopped crying, composed herself a little and wandered around the room picking at things in order to not stop and give a real breakdown room to fester. She checks in on JJ, who smiles and gurgles in his sleep when she kisses his little cheek. She prays and hopes it means something.
And she sneaks out through the window.
She’s done this in reverse, when she was younger, when she was with Jesse. Most times it was him sneaking into her empty house, but there were nights she couldn’t spend alone and she had snuck into his place without warning. He’d let her snuggle into him and never complained, not even jokingly. He had been a great boyfriend and an even better friend.
Sometimes she misses Jesse like a hole in her lung, sucking the air out and feeling like she’ll die. Sometimes it’s just a dull ache like this, like her shoulder where the boy’s arrow hit that acts up sometimes in damp weather.
She doesn’t really have a plan. She ends up in the town square, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her old jacket. People used to stare when she went out at night like this. She knows they still talk. She doesn’t really blame them- a two-time widow is something like a circus freak in as small a town as this. It probably doesn’t help that her last partner had been a woman, or that that woman had been Ellie Williams, Joel’s daughter, the spitfire guitarist who could become someone terrifying outside the walls and came back soft-spoken and covered head to toe in human blood.
It’s an easy decision to head to the bar. Nothing quite like drowning your sorrows in a glass of whiskey or beer or whatever blinding moonshine the boys brewed this week. She slips inside and, for the first time in her life, hides away in a corner booth, intent on talking to nobody.
This was what Ellie used to do, a cruel voice whispers to her, and she can see why. The solitude is a balm, and from here, she can see almost everyone without them noticing her. The town goes about their business like nothing has changed for them when everything has just changed for her. It’s like watching from inside a glass cage as everyone mills about, unaware that she’s even there. People are talking trades, local gossip, patrol routes. She orders a glass and waits for something.
Tommy isn’t here tonight, which is a change for him. Then again, it’s just past midnight and he’s getting old. Alcohol still won’t come before his sleep, however little of it he may get now.
Ellie is here.
She notices her at the bar, no longer hiding in a corner but sitting at the front with whiskey in her hand. That was always her drink of choice, a habit she probably picked up from Joel. Dina remembered the smell of it when she was pinned up against her, the taste on her tongue when she kissed Ellie roughly enough. Her mind spiraled into their nights and the way Ellie’s lips had felt on her neck, her thighs... everywhere else.
Dina felt ashamed at the hungry way she stared at Ellie’s throat when she drank. She had told Ellie she wasn’t hers anymore. She had pushed her away, and it was for her own good.
Because what if she left again? What was stopping her? Loving her certainly hadn't.
Dina wasn’t enough- JJ wasn’t enough to make her stay.
Ellie isn’t crying anymore, which is good, because that had just made Dina angry. She didn’t get to cry over something she could’ve fixed or, better yet, stopped before it began. Her eyes were a little red, but nothing that couldn’t have been blamed on lack of sleep. Was she sleeping well? Why does Dina still care?
She’s wearing Dina’s bracelet on the same arm she always has.
A woman Dina doesn’t recognize comes up and sits down next to Ellie at the bar, smiling and staring. Dina feels wary, but holds back. She’s short and honestly quite pretty, with long black hair and wide hazel eyes.
Dina’s drink arrives, and she looks away for a while to drink in peace.
When she looks back, because she can’t seem to tear her gaze away, the woman is laughing with a hand on Ellie’s tattooed arm. Ellie is smiling in that slight way of hers, like she doesn’t quite know what to say.
Dina looks away quickly. Not her business.
She can’t hear them, though. She wonders what they’re talking about.
The woman is all exaggerated smiles and giggles, and she won’t take her fucking hand off of Ellie’s fucking arm. She’s leaning in closer than Ellie lets most friendly people near her. Dina’s grip on her glass tightens.
She should leave. She should let whatever’s happening here happen. Ellie can do whatever she wants.
The idea makes her blood turn to molten steel.
She’s tracing her tattoo with her fingers the way Dina used to as Ellie explains something to her. She nods along.
Ellie looks drunk.
It’d probably be doing her a favour to pry this woman off of her. She wouldn’t want this, and definitely not while she’s drunk. She wouldn’t even sleep with Dina when they’d had too much, promising to make it up to her in the morning. She used to make good on her promises.
The woman whispers something right in Ellie’s ear and Ellie laughs, really laughs. It might be just out of shock, but it looks like she’s really enjoying herself. Dina hopes she’s fucking enjoying herself.
She shouldn’t say anything. She’s had a jealous streak a mile wide ever since they were kids, icing out poor Cat the minute Ellie had told her they were together. Ellie had never seemed to notice that whenever she and Cat had made up, so had she and Jesse. Dina… well, she had never liked to be alone.
The look in the woman’s eyes is unmistakable. Dina slams back the rest of her drink, never breaking contact.
She has no way of knowing what the woman says to Ellie, but her eyes widen and she’s stuttering out some nonresponse. The woman giggles, shaking her head. Then she takes Ellie’s right hand in hers and plays with her fingers, and Dina sees red.
She’s not even drunk- she can’t blame what she’s going to do on alcohol. This is a bad idea.
She goes right up to the two of them.
“Excuse me.” She keeps her words sweet and utterly poisonous, an infinitely useful Southern trick she’d learned young. “What’s going on here?”
Ellie is silent and looks so mortified that she might pass out right there. The woman still does not take her fucking hands off Ellie.
“Just making some friends,” the woman drawls. “Kind of a hot friend, if you ask me.” Oh, she’s drunk for sure. She smiles like she knows exactly what she’s doing, or maybe that’s just Dina’s perception and the way this situation is making her want to commit a crime.
All the same, she shoves the woman right off the stool.
Her words rip their way out of her, raw and as loud as she can make them. “Get your fucking hands off my wife!”
“What the fuck , Dina-”
The woman is on the floor, staring incredulously at her. She doesn’t even bother to say anything, just gets up and all but runs out the door.
Everyone is staring. The bar has gone quiet. “What the fuck are you looking at? Mind your damn business,” Dina barks. Slowly, the bar goes back to its chatter, some patrons still sneaking glances behind in her direction when they think she can’t see.
She takes Ellie’s hand securely in hers without thinking. It feels strange. She looks down and sees- oh, God. Dina stifles a gasp and, before Ellie can protest, tightens her grip and drags Ellie out of the bar.
Ellie is talking all the way. “What the fuck is wrong with you” and “she wasn’t doing anything to you”, and Dina doesn’t care. She is completely silent when she pulls Ellie into the shed behind what used to be Joel’s house and locks the door behind them.
It’s dusty and smells old now. Nobody’s lived here since they left for the farm, and they’d only left the shelves, the bed and the basics they didn’t want to take. Dina stomps into the bathroom and finds the first aid kit they squirrelled away years ago and had figured out (during her labour, no less) that they’d forgotten to take to the farmhouse.
Ellie is still standing and ranting in the middle of the room when she comes back out. Dina cuts her off. “Sit down.” To her surprise, Ellie does, right on the old bare mattress.
Wordlessly, she turns on the lamp on the bedside table and sits next to her. She takes Ellie’s left hand into her own and inspects it.
“What happened here?” she asks quietly.
“Dina, you can’t just do shit like that-”
“Ellie. Tell me what happened.”
“I got bit.” She won’t meet Dina’s eyes.
“By a fucking bear? Why the fuck is half of your hand gone?” There’s just a knuckle left to the last two of her fingers, and the tips are still red and scabby. Ellie’s probably been picking at them, because she always had a bad habit of picking at her wounds. They could get infected like that. Worse still, there’s a very faint scar- a healed bite completely uncovered on the side of her palm. She could’ve gotten herself shot if that woman had caught on.
Ellie sighs. “The bite was from a clicker. The fingers- that was Abby.”
“She bit your fingers off?” By all logic, that should’ve already gotten infected. People’s mouths were dirty, and God knows where Ellie had been sticking her hands on her way back.
“Yeah,” Ellie replies simply. “Hurt like a bitch.” Something about her seems more relaxed, and Dina doesn’t know why. “I cauterized ‘em, though. That probably helped.”
“Cauterized with what?”
“I don’t know, some scrap metal I found,” she mumbles. Dina sighs. She’s so reckless sometimes. She probably did that alone, too, in a moldy old basement somewhere.
She roots through the kit to find what she’s looking for. She pulls out her supplies and sets them on the bed: strips of bandages, rubbing alcohol and some kind of soothing ointment she’d found on patrol once. Ellie looks at her in confusion, but she shoots her a look and she backs down instantly.
She doesn’t like this Ellie who looks terrified of her. She wants the version back that she knows, who makes bad jokes and who she could never stop from flirting with her when they were alone together. Not that she wants Ellie flirting with her anymore, she reminds herself, but that’s a cardboard kind of lie.
“This will hurt,” she warns her, before dousing a bandage in alcohol and pressing it to her wounds. Ellie hisses and curses and doubles over, rocking back and forth, but Dina keeps pressure to it. She pulls it away, wiping the area dry gently.
Next is the cream. She uses it sparingly most of the time, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t waste a little extra on Ellie. She covers the raw ends of her fingers’ stumps, then the healing bite with a little more than she needs. She remembers how Ellie told her that her bite, her first one, had itched as it healed, how a lot of the worst scars were from her scratching it. Maybe this one wouldn’t scar.
She doesn’t want to think about how Ellie’s hands are rougher now, or maybe hers are softer. She wraps the bandage quickly but neatly- this, she had practice at.
“Got any others I should know about?”
“A couple.” Ellie never used to admit to being injured. Now, she pulls up the side of her sweater, and there’s a horrifying scar carved into her torso. It’s red and jagged and somehow looks much worse than her fingers. The stitches look like a child’s shaky patchwork. Dina bites her lip to keep tears from filling her eyes and nods shortly. “This is the worst one,” Ellie says casually.
“Shirt off, let’s take a closer look.”
Ellie obliges. God, she’s worn thin now. Dina can see her ribs poking out and her hip bones jutting out from the top of her jeans and part of her aches for the round-faced girl she fell in love with.
“Lie down.”
She does. Dina is careful with her hands, pressing gently around her stomach and stopping whenever she hears her whimper.
“Who the fuck stabbed you?”
Ellie laughs humourlessly. “A tree.”
“Quit fucking around, Ellie.”
“I'm not,” she insists. “I got caught in this stupid trap and I slammed into a tree branch and got fucking impaled.”
“And let me guess, you stitched it yourself?”
“Yeah.”
Typical Ellie.
Dina shakes her head. “They’ve gotta come out. They’re gross, Ellie.”
“I thought you liked my scars,” Ellie jokes, almost smiling. Dina glares at her, and that shuts her up.
“The stitches are dirty,” she mutters as she threads a new needle. “If you get an infection here in your belly, or if it hits one of your major organs, there’s nothing we can do for you, you’ll just fucking die.”
She laughs. “I can only hope.” Dina hits her arm hard, and Ellie looks up at her, surprised.
“Stop fucking making those jokes.” She snips out the old janky stitches, gentler than she wants to be, and wipes it down with alcohol. Ellie curses loudly, kicking the bed underneath her.
Dina starts to stitch it back up. It looks alright, if a little swollen. She’ll probably be fine, but Ellie was right- it’ll scar again. It hurts to think there are scars Dina doesn’t know now, that she won’t be able to help with. She had spent so long memorizing her and her body, and now everything about her felt like it had changed.
“Dina,” Ellie starts. “I really am sorry.”
“For what?”
Ellie yelps at the next needle poke. “Well, everything, but right now, the bar. I didn’t think she was- you know, after me. I wouldn’t have gone home with her or anything anyway.” Dina wants to cut her off again. She doesn’t, though. Ellie continues.
“I mean it. As for the rest… what I did was a mistake and no matter what you want me to do, I need you to know I never stopped loving you. If you want me to never see you again-” her voice cracks- “I will, I’ll go away. But I can’t stop this. I understand that you don’t want me back and that’s okay, I understand why. I just wanted to say I regret it and I’m sorry because I’ll always love you.”
Dina’s hand pauses before she ties up the last stitch. It’s shaking. She won’t look at Ellie, she won’t, and she won’t cry either. She ties it, closing her eyes and taking one heavy breath
“Sit up,” she whispers. Ellie sits up. “It’s not… it’s not that I don’t love you.” Ellie’s eyes widen slightly. “It’s just that I can’t trust you right now. I’m sorry I yelled at you, but after what you did I cannot trust you the way I used to. If you left again, JJ won’t forget it this time. I won’t be able to live through that again. You’ve got no proof that you won’t run away in the middle of the night again, after Abby or anyone else.”
“I won’t.” Ellie sounds like she’s begging. “I swear on whatever you want, I’d never do that again.”
“How do I know that, other than your word?”
Ellie pauses before reaching for her bag, which she’d dropped on the floor. She pulls out two books, only one of which Dina recognizes.
“You don’t have to, but I’d like for you to see these,” she mumbles, almost embarrassed. “That one’s my journal-” the brown leather book in better condition- “and that’s something I found in Salt Lake on the way home.” The other is slightly larger, some kind of medical text. Dina picks that up first.
“I have this condition, apparently.” The margins are filled with jot notes and doodles, most in Ellie’s looping hand. “Uh, PTSD. It stands for post traumatic stress disorder. Basically, all the messed up shit that happened to me changed the way my brain deals with life. It’s still living in survival mode, even when I should know I’m safe. That’s why I have nightmares and flashbacks and why I do stupid shit sometimes and just hope it kills me. Sometimes I make bad decisions because of it.”
“You’re blaming this on a condition you’ve got?” She’s not going to cry here, not now. Ellie’s made notes of her life- every waking nightmare next to an explanation of flashbacks, her road trip with Joel scribbled into a question above a paragraph about childhood trauma. “You’re trying to tell me you can’t help it, then, so it’s not your fault?”
“No, no, it- what I do is still my fault. I’m not going to blame anything or anyone but me. I just-” she scratches at the bandages idly, and Dina moves her hand away from it. “It says I can get better , Dina. I won’t always be like this. I’ve been trying some of the stuff it says, like this.” She flips to a page, something about expression instead of repression, and runs her hand along it. “I think it’s working. I think I can be a good person again, and if you’ll let me, I want to prove that for you.”
“You weren’t a bad person, Ellie-”
“I acted like one. The journal, on the other hand, that’s- just read it for me. That’s the best way I can explain where my head was back there.”
It feels like Ellie’s cut out her heart and laid it in her hands. She’s never read her journals before, not even when they were living together, not even when they were children. It felt too precious, too much to ask, no matter how much they loved each other. There were just walls they didn’t cross.
“I’d like you to tell me what happened after I left,” Ellie starts.
“I can’t do that.”
“You don’t have to, but I know you can. I want to know everything you have to say. Tell me how you felt. I don’t care if it hurts me, alright? Just- please tell me. I’ve got to know.” The unspoken hangs between them: maybe then I can start to build from it, and maybe someday fix it for you .
So she does, against all common sense.
Dina tells her everything. How she couldn’t drag herself out of bed in the mornings, how JJ had cried for weeks and she could only soothe him using one of her shirts as a blanket, how she had been so angry at first she would’ve hit Ellie if she’d come home. She says out loud, for the first time, how much it hurt to know Ellie didn’t seem to love her enough to stay. How it felt like nobody ever did. Ellie never says a word the whole time, just watches with sad eyes and nods along slowly.
When she’s finally done, Ellie wipes her eyes and smiles. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, letting it sink in.
“I still want you,” Dina whispers. “I’m still so in love with you that it hurts some nights. I don’t want you to leave me again.” She starts to cry again, quietly, muffling it behind her hand. Her whole body shakes.
“Is it okay if I hug you?” She’s barely finished the sentence before Dina nods frantically with a choking cry and reaches out for her.
This is what she’s wanted for months now, to be here again, just sitting with her and being comforted by her. Ellie’s hug is tight and she cradles the back of Dina’s head close. She gives her quiet reassurance and rocks her back and forth like a child as she sobs loudly and balls her fists into her soft naked chest. She lets her cry. She kisses the top of Dina’s head hesitantly and Dina starts sobbing all over again because for a minute, it’s like she never left.
When she’s tapering off, Ellie lets her go again, folding her hands in her lap with her right on top in a way she never did before.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” Dina manages, wiping her face with her sleeve.
“Never again,” Ellie promises, and her teary eyes are like fire with resolve.
She ends up lying down on the mattress in the late summer chill, and Ellie turns to go.
“I said don’t leave.” Her words are small and a lot less of a joke than she intended. Ellie immediately drops the bag and sits back down, and Dina pulls her until she’s lying down with her.
“You said you’d do whatever I want,” Dina starts. “Then just stay with me tonight and pretend like nothing’s wrong. Just tonight.”
She knows it’s not right, probably not healthy, but she wants this so badly she can feel it gnawing at her. Ellie’s smile grows teary and she nods, pulling Dina into her arms. It’s the way they used to sleep, facing each other, as close as they could get.
“And what about tomorrow?” Ellie asks hesitantly.
“I want to try again,” Dina states firmly, before she can find the common sense to back out. “I still want you, but we can’t just go back like this never happened. You still have to prove to me you’ll be okay and I can trust you. Start small.”
“Anything.” Her green eyes are so full of hope, and maybe a bit of excitement. She really did mean everything she said, Dina thinks.
“So, friends again?” Ellie asks. Dina considers this before responding.
“I don’t think I can handle just trying to be friends with you again,” she mumbles, thinking of the woman at the bar as jealousy spirals in her gut. “Do you want to go on a date with me instead, start there?”
“Yes.” Her answer is so immediate it almost cuts Dina off, and she gives a teary laugh that shudders through both of them as she pulls her closer, sighing into her hair. “God, do I.”
There’s silence for a moment where it’s just them smiling at each other and the sounds from outside and the comfort of the room.
“Thank you so, so much,” Ellie whispers. “I don’t deserve you. I’m gonna make it up to you if it kills me.”
“Ellie,” she says seriously. “I’m going to kiss you right now.”
Ellie doesn’t even respond, just nods, wide-eyed, and Dina does. Ellie’s lips are chapped and they are both so sweaty by now and it is long and sweet and perfect. She wants to stay here forever, in the moment she’s waited for for the loneliest year of her life. She pulls away and settles back into her arms, hiding her grin into the harsh line of Ellie’s collarbone.
Another moment of quiet follows before Ellie pipes up again.
“So I’m your wife now?” She can hear the smirk in her voice. It’s relieving, falling back into banter with her. Ellie is making good on her promise of pretending everything is fine. “That’s what you said at the bar: ‘get your hands off my wife ’. I don’t remember being consulted about that.”
“Make it up to me and we’ll see,” Dina retorts. “But… yes.” She softens her tone. “I want you to be if you can.” Ellie smiles shyly and nods.
“I’ll read the journal tomorrow,” Dina promises. “Come by Robin and Jamie’s for six.”
“I’ll be there.”
In the morning, Ellie is gone, but she’s left things on the nightstand for Dina. Her journal, the other book she’d written in and a note torn straight from her journal’s back pages. Ellie thanks her again, and she says it three times in true Ellie fashion- she had always been so shocked when someone forgave her, even as children.
You mean so, so much to me. This is so much more than I deserve, and I’m going to make sure I never hurt you again, not even by accident. I want you to be happy forever, and I’ll do anything to make that happen. I love you.
Am I allowed to say that before the first date?
I love you so much, D. Always have. See you tonight. Say hi to the potato for me. If it’s not too much, can I see him too sometime soon? I’ve missed you guys.
There’s still doubt in Dina, but it’s small and bitter now, and she can handle it softly and put it away for a while if she wants. There might be no way to know yet if she’s making the right choice, but when she thinks of Ellie it hurts that little bit less, and when she sees her that night at six it feels the way it used to. For now, she thinks, this will be enough.