Work Text:
-x-
The cold touched her before anything else, a gust of chilly wind while on watch— reminding her of the university when she shielded herself from the wind against Joel. They were good memories initially, talking about football and fighting smiles because he took her back… but then as the leaves settled onto the ground and the whistling in her ears stop, she could remember the nights alone waiting for Joel to die. How every day it only got colder, until the snow first fell.
She took a deep breath and focused on the distance once again, her eyes following the trees and the mountains, the sun that never reached the top of the sky and the light fog that never dissipated.
-x-
Dina’s laugh pulled her back to earth. Light and a bit tipsy, her head thrown back, mouth open. Jesse threw his cards on the table huffing, losing another round. Ellie didn’t move transfixed by an angelic experience.
“Oh man! Jesse! You do talk some shit, but I’ve never personally see you win.”
“Yeah, well, whatever. Cade set me up when he was dealing the cards.”
“I did not. You’re just bad at poker.” Cade says, picking up the cards, plucking the ones in Ellie’s hand from her grasp. “Are we playing another round?”
Dina sits up once again, glancing at Ellie who is still enamored. She can guess that Dina is waiting for her to respond but the muscles in her mouth don’t let her say that she just wants to go home and kiss her. Dina blinks, once, twice— Ellie swears her eyes change colors and she feels understood.
“Nah, El and I are gonna head back. It’s getting late.” The legs of her chair scrape against the wooden floor of Jesse’s house and she picks up her glass, swigging the last of her bourbon before setting it back down, putting her arms through her jacket. Ellie follows on auto-pilot, stepping over Jesse’s old-as-shit dog and waving goodbye to her friends.
Dina opens the door and they both step out, the sky is darkened with midnight and stars are brightly visible in the atmosphere. She never learned much about the solar system, except that she lived on Earth and there were other planets near it.
“I love making Jesse mad, it’s just so funny,” Dina says, their steps falling together, eyes set upon the houses two streets down.
“Well if you keep challenging him to poker and winning, I don’t think it will be gone for long,” Ellie responds.
Dina snickers. “I can’t believe I used to date him… he’s just so-“
“Childish?” Ellie offers.
“No-No. Actually, yes. He’s a little childish. I thought he would grow out it, two years ago.”
“Remember when you broke your leg jumping from my window because he double-dog-dared you?”
“Ouch, yes. Way to bring back a painful memory, El.” Her voice is joking, and Ellie doesn’t even bat an eye at her sarcastic tone. “I had the biggest crush on him, I mean he was the only boy around that wasn’t 40 years old or 5.”
“And I didn’t know them that the cute little girl had wet dreams about me at night too.” She smirked and Ellie laughed, pushing her. Dina giggled, her laughs floating through the airs vibrating those stars and Ellie feels infinite as Dina regains her balance by lacing her fingers with Ellie’s, the cold slenderness rubbing circles on the back of Ellie’s hand.
They walk in comfortable silence, holding onto each other as the houses get closer. Ellie can her Dina’s breathing and the cold bite on the roots of her hair and she shivers as the chill spreads. “It’s snowing,” Dina says, barely registering as a whisper.
Ellie feels as if Dina will wrap herself in childlike glee, spin and twirl on the streets as each snowflake touches the ground, but Ellie holds Dina’s hand tighter and walks a bit faster towards the porch with the broken stair-rail and the flickering light.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Dina asks, detaching her hands from Ellie’s and Ellie nods, pressing her nose to Dina’s head and kissing her. She tastes sweet liquor on her lips and the chili they had for dinner mixed with saliva.
“Yeah, I’ll come over to your place once I’m done on watch.”
Dina pulls away with a smile, I love you still floating in the air. Ellie notices the emptiness on her hands and the turns her palms up to the sky watching the snowflakes land. She bites her lip and tries not to cry.
-x-
It’s too dark to register but her eyes open when she hears her door creak open. It barely takes. second before she notices that it’s Joel, watching her, checking on her. He’s being a father and she wishes she was small and fifteen again so she could curl up in a ball and he could hold her.
She doesn’t say anything but watches his shadow on the other wall, his body backlit by the hallway light. His boots make the wood on the floor creak as he crosses, sitting behind her the bed dipping. She holds her shaky breath and feels the trail of her own tears on her cheeks. He pets her hair back and then kisses above her ear, lightly, as not to wake her up. Her eyes are strewn shut and she waits until she hears the click of his bedroom door down the hallway before she sobs.
-x-
The next morning, Tommy and Maria’s son is running down to Ellie’s room, throwing open her door and pouncing on her stomach, a toothy grin accompanied by unbrushed hair and applesauce dried on his chin. “El-El it snowed!”
She lets him stand on her bed and move to the window where he presses his chubby hands against the window, fogging the glass every time he breathes out. “Dada says we can make snowmen when he gets back. And you can eat the snow.”
“Who told you that you can eat the snow?”
“Joel,” Ethan answers and it’s the first time Ellie smiles because he told her the same thing. He drops to his little knees, crawling towards Ellie and snuggling into her, playing with the bracelet on her wrist. “He says wake up.”
Seeing outside how the snow clings to the trees and the sun turns them white, it makes her shiver even while holding Ethan and under her blankets. A bird lands on one of the branches and the snow falls trickling down adding onto the sheet on the ground.
It’s poison and her bones ache.
-x-
She winces stepping into it and her hands shake when she touches it, helping Ethan form a head for his snowman. She’s spacing out again, not paying attention to him and every few seconds she forgets where she is and catches herself before she screams.
Dina and her meet up after Ethan goes down for a nap and they sit on Tommy and Maria’s couch holding hands and lazily making out. Ellie pulls away their lips disconnecting and she lets Dina rest her head on her shoulder. “You taste sad,” Dina says, Ellie doesn’t laugh. She can’t laugh because her insides have become the wet snow that got trapped in her jacket five years ago, she’s cold, craving for safety.
“How do I normally taste?”
“Like cinnamon, life, a hint of carelessness.”
“I hate cinnamon,” Ellie says, running her fingers up and down Dina’s arm.
“You're not kissing me like you normally do, you’re forceful and greedy. I like it. Now you let me lead.” Leave it to Dina to interpret Ellie’s feelings through her kisses, and Ellie feels like she’s been opened. Dina sits up and looks at her, placing a hand on her cheek caressing it with her thumb. Ellie stares at the fireplace and doesn’t realize she’s crying until Dina wipes away her tears.
But by then it’s too late to stop, and she cries into her girlfriend's arms watching the flames between the droplets of tears that form. She’ll make her promise to not tell Joel, pinky-swear. Because Joel would walk on eggshells with her, for the fifth year. He’ll check on her every five minutes. Maybe it will be like two years ago when he took away all the knives, sharp objects, and guns because she tried hurting herself in a traumatic haze.
These days are always dark, and it eats away at her insides until she’s a pale corpse lying in that burning restaurant, violated, with her jeans and underwear at her shins.
-x-
Dina tells Joel that evening, waiting in their living room for Joel to come home from his shift. It scared her, she had never seen Ellie that quiet. She knew that winters made her duller, summer was when she bloomed. It was normal for people to hide from the cold, curled up inside dozing with a cup of hot chocolate. But it wasn’t normal to shut down, for Ellie to cry to herself until she fell asleep.
Dina brought her home and coaxed her into taking a shower, she stood outside of the bathroom door and heard her sobs. She made Ellie pasta and sat with her at the table watching her take shaky, slow bites, her eyes empty. She rubbed her back until she fell asleep, shutting the windows because Ellie didn’t want to see the snow.
It worried her because just two days before she was Ellie. She’s watching a ghost move around and she doesn’t know how to reach her.
“There’s something wrong with Ellie. I don’t know what it is, but she isn’t herself. She told me not to tell you, but I have to— it’s scaring me.” Joel freezes in the doorway before he slowly peels off his jacket, closing the door behind him. “She cried for a while today until she tired herself out. She barely ate.”
Dina feels herself beginning to cry but she bites the inside of her cheek sharply. Joel sighs and throws his jacket on the back of the couch, coming around to sit next to Dina. “I know.”
Dina’s eyes widened, eyebrows coming together in a confused line. “What-“
“Five years ago, something happened to her. Right around this time. I was there after it happened, and saw what it did to her. Every winter she gets like this.”
“What happened?” Dina asked and Joel shakes his head. “That’s her story to tell you.” He answers and Dina nods.
“Well, how do we help her?”
Joel shrugs. “It’s different every year.”
“Does it get worse?”
“You have no idea, kid. But when it does, you’ll be the first to know.” It’s not a compliment, but it’s taken as one between the both of them. Joel was forever protective over Ellie, and he’ll admit he’s especially sensitive around this time of year when his Ellie seems to grow empty and not full like she’s supposed to be. He’s sharing the innocence and vulnerability of Ellie with somebody because he knows Dina would never harm her.
“She’s upstairs asleep, hopefully. I should get going.” Dina says, standing up. “Can I come by tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
Dina gives a tiny smile, before letting herself out of the house. Joel sits on the couch for a few more minutes, listening to nothing and staring at the popcorn ceilings. Every year he’s clueless on what to do. It’s always a different type of grief. When it initially happened, she was drawn away, Joel was holding onto her by the threads of her clothes trying to rope her back. When the next winter marked the anniversary of her attack, she cried. She cried until she slept, until she was dehydrated, clinging onto Joel like a lifeline. He held her tighter and waited.
The second year she was angry. They got in an argument and he told her that he knew she was hurting. She unleashed hell and hit him, although it felt like mild taps until her arms grew weak and she broke down. He waited until she was done screaming to bring her to bed.
The third year she was trapped in that cage that she told him about, she could remember the way the carpet felt on her hands and knees. How helpless she felt as he was choking her. She stared at the guns for too long, so Joel took them away, keeping his locked and hidden. Then she flicked her switchblade to slowly, thoughts bubbling in her green eyes. He had to hide that too. He waited until spring before he put the switchblade back on her pillow and summer before they went hunting together.
The fourth year she slept a lot, ate occasionally, and moved through the days with a glaze over her eyes that nobody could break. Even the giggles of his four-year-old nephew, three at the time, didn’t bring her out. He waited again and the night that she sat next to him on the couch and cried into his shoulder, he stayed there as long as she needed.
He watches her every winter, and he knew the minute the temperature first dropped that it wasn’t going to be easy.. it never was. He heard her that night crying, he knew when he kissed her on the head that she was awake, waiting for him to leave.
Standing outside of her door he can hear her sniffles, her sobs, and his heart aches. He sits against the wall listening until they stop, another thirty minutes pass before he steps inside and pulls the blankets to her chin, wiping the dried tears and tucking the bangs behind her ear.
-x-
Joel doesn’t send Ethan to wake Ellie up, and he tells Maria and Tommy that Ellie’s feeling under the weather, and he’s not feeling great either. Tommy says something about the flu and Joel goes back home. She wakes up at noon, running down the stairs in sweatpants and a ski-lodge shirt that hangs off her shoulders. “What the-Joel! We have to go!”
“I told them to give us the day off, we’re not going anywhere kiddo.”
His voice tells her that he knows and she rubs her eyebrows, swearing to kill Dina later. “Joel-“ She rounds the couch and sits next to him, looking him in the eyes, his surrounded by age and survival. “I’m okay, I’m fine. I can work.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. I just figured we could use the day off.”
But they both know that the days off aren’t going to end until she cracks, like always. Joel putting the rest of the world on hold until Ellie resurfaces, regaining her breath and walking again.
-x-
Tommy, Maria, and Ethan come over for dinner and Ellie tickles Ethan on the couch, taking a break from the 1000 pound weight on her chest. She cooks with Maria, burning the edges of the chicken and tells jokes to Tommy who finds them funnier than Joel does granted he’s heard them for the past five years repeatedly. She smiles and smiles, but then Tommy mentions that a blizzard is headed their way and she puts down her fork and doesn’t eat for the rest of dinner.
She thought the blizzard already came.
-x-
Dina knocks on the door and Joel opens it, the bags around his eyes more prominent. She already knows the answer, but she has to check.
“Can I see Ellie?”
“Her door is locked.”
-x-
The sky fills up with grey and Joel goes with Tommy to get firewood, letting Dina sit at the house while he’s out. He can feel the cold through his jacket, and the courtyard is empty, people huddled in their homes prepared for the storm.
“How’s Ellie doing?”
“Not well, baby brother. I don’t know how she’s going to take this storm either.”
Tommy frowns. “Well, just let her know that we care about her. We really hope things look up soon.”
“Me too.”
-x-
That nights snow pelts the side of the house and winds shake the dead trees. Their porch stairs disappear under the snow and fire crackles in the fireplace. Joel keeps the lights off, no use wasting electricity during a time like this and fixes guns that people have given to him. Those with stuck and wedged triggers, or one that won’t shoot.
The walkies are all turned off and every few minutes he looks out the window to try and see the streets but it’s hard to see through all the wind. Ellie’s door is still locked and the outside elements are too loud for him to hear if she’s crying. Though he hopes with everything in him that she’s sleeping through the storm.
There’s a key in his bedside table to unlock the door, but he leaves it there knowing that she’ll come out eventually. To use the bathroom, to eat, or to look him in the eyes. He leaves a candle on in his room and the door stays open so he can see down the hall while laying on his left side.
He thinks its just the storm causing the floorboards to creek, and the walls to creek but then he sees her in the darkness of the hallway, standing there looking at him. She walks slowly into his room and her face is swollen, strewn with tears, her lips are cracked and her hair is knotted.
She sniffs and wipes her eyes "Joel.” She whispers and he scoots over letting her cry onto him as he pets her hair and kisses the scar on her eyebrow. He holds her while the blizzard hits blowing snow and ice all over the town, shushing her cries until she’s sleeping. By then he can see the glimmer of the sun behind the trees.
-x-
Six days later she asks him what the mermaid wore to math class.
He says that he doesn’t know.
“An alge-bra!” Dina chokes on her drink, water dripping from her nose and Joel walks away from the laughing pair to the bathroom so she doesn’t have to see him cry in relief.