Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

That was then

Ellie stormed into Joel’s house, slamming the front door shut behind her. She ignored the sound of footsteps coming towards her from the kitchen, opting to instead shrug her backpack from her shoulders, kick off her shoes, and dump everything in a pile near the front door.

She made sure to keep the left side of her face angled away from Joel as he approached, coffee cup in hand. When he had almost reached the end of the hallway, Ellie turned, stomped into the living room, and threw herself onto the couch.

Despite muttering ugly words under her breath the whole way, Ellie could still hear him follow behind her. She waited as he wordlessly circled the couch and took a seat by her right side. 

Ellie just stared straight ahead. 

“Take your time, kiddo.”

“What?” 

Ellie's voice cracked as the word left her mouth. She frowned, but still didn’t look at Joel.

“You would have gone straight to your place if you didn’t wanna talk about it. So,” Joel said gently, pausing to lightly slap his knees with his hands, “whenever you’re ready.”

Ellie finally turned to face Joel, giving him his first good look at the bruise. 

The skin on her left cheekbone was coloured an angry purple. The mark continued up her face, parting around a swollen eye like a flowing river around a stone, before disappearing under her hairline. Her other eye was unscathed, but glistened with tears.

“It was Billy, okay? I don’t know what his fucking problem is,” she huffed, crossing her arms and scrunching up her face. “I wasn’t doing nothing, and he just took a swing at me.”

“Oh come off it Ellie. Do you expect me to believe that if I were to pay the Hendersons a visit, that Billy wouldn’t have a shiner to match yours?” Joel looked down at Ellie’s crossed arms. She tried to hide the reddened knuckles of her right hand in her lap, but it was too late.

He gave her a pointed look. “Don’t lie to me – who hit who first?”

Ellie paused for a beat, then dropped her gaze. Joel let out a sigh. 

“Ellie, Jackson is our home now. I know you haven’t really lived somewhere like it before, but this is our community. If you have a problem with someone, you have to try to work through it with them. Burn too many bridges and you’ll be stuck alone on that island you call a head.”

Ellie sniffed and looked up at him. “Damn, that was kinda poetic. Is that a Joel original?”

“No, it’s from the book I’m reading. Stop deflecting.”

Ellie went back to staring at her hands. They sat quietly, Joel taking occasional sips of coffee while Ellie fiddled with her fingers. Clearly, Joel had no plans to break the silence. Ellie sighed and started to speak.

“It’s just….it’s the first proper hot day we’ve had since we got here. A bunch of the kids were going to hang out at the lake, and they asked me to come. But the stupid bandage was giving me a rash,” she grumbled, scratching at her right forearm, “so I had to wear long sleeves.”

Ellie looked up at Joel with a hint of accusation in her eyes. He shifted slightly on the couch. Ellie knew that he could tell where this was going.

The bite on Ellie’s arm had been a sensitive topic since they arrived in Jackson a few weeks ago. Joel’s insistence that she keep it hidden, and Ellie’s resulting objections, had already led to several squabbles between them.

“I just don’t fucking get it Joel. You said the Fireflies found dozens of people like me! I don’t matt— the bite’s not a big deal anymore. Why do I still have to hide it?”

“We are not going over this again. The Fireflies weren’t...they weren’t what we hoped they would be.” Joel paused and cleared his throat. “But you don’t know who else might be out there, and what they would think if they heard about someone like you.”

“It’s not like I’m going to parade my arm around the forests of Wyoming, wearing a giant flashing sign that says ‘I’m fucking immune’!” Ellie shot back hotly.

Joel rubbed at his face. “Ellie...even within Jackson, I just don’t know. People wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t trust you — heck, they might even be scared of you. They might think that there’s something…wrong with you, and that that's why you’re immune.”

“Well they think there’s something fucking wrong with me anyway! I’m the weird girl who wears long sleeves in the middle of summer! I’m the girl that would rather get heatstroke than show anyone her string bean arms!”

Joel blinked. “So is that what Billy said to you?”

Ellie glared at him, but was more annoyed at herself for letting the reason for the fight slip. It seemed so trivial and childish now.

“Yes, alright?” she let out a huff, before adding quietly, “...it’s only okay when you call them that.”

Joel sighed. “Ellie, that boy is an idiot. He shouldn’t have said that, but you shouldn’t have punched him either.”

Ellie hung her head. “I know. I was being dumb.”

“Ellie, you can’t let something like this fester. It’s like...it’s like when someone’s been hurt real bad and they get an infection. Sometimes the only thing you can do for them is cut away the diseased parts. Give whatever healthy stuff that’s left a chance to live.”

“Hmm, thanks for the lovely visual,” she muttered. “So I should just cut my whole fucking arm off then? Nice. Problem sorted.”

Joel lightly slapped the back of Ellie’s head. “No, now knock it off. What you will do is march yourself over to the Hendersons and apologise. Billy's mother is a sensible woman, I’m sure that right now she is telling him to do the exact same thing.” Joel nodded to himself. “These things start so small, then next thing you know you can’t mend the rift anymore. I will not have you two holding a grudge over string beans.”

Ellie wasn’t happy, but deep down she knew that Joel was right. She sighed and stood up, heading to the front door. She could feel Joel’s eyes on her as she reached down to pick up her shoes. The cuff of her sleeve rode up her wrist, exposing the edge of the scarred bite.

“And maybe, when you get back, we can talk about that arm of yours,” Joel said from the couch. “Not much I can do about its uh...string-bean-ness. But there’s got to be other ways to cover up the bite. If you can come up with something that works better for you, well, I’m all for it.”

This is now

Tommy woke up the day after they buried Jesse. Ellie was checking the bandage on his cheek at the time, and had jumped back in alarm when his eye flew open. He must have been in a lot of pain, and had started to thrash around in confusion as he gained consciousness. Thankfully Dina had been nearby, and between the two of them they managed to hold him down until he settled.

That had been a few hours ago. Now Ellie was out on a supply run, scavenging for food in the nearby highrises. She had left Dina to fill Tommy in on what he had missed, and their plan to get out of the city.

If Ellie was being honest with herself, she was dreading her return to the theatre. She had no idea how he would react to the news that after Abby had killed Jesse, she almost killed the rest of them and was now back on the streets of Seattle. ‘Not well’ is a pretty safe bet, she thought grimly.

Unfortunately for her, it seemed like this part of the city had not been picked clean by either Wolves or Scars. It didn’t take Ellie long to find a hidden store of rations from when FEDRA still controlled Seattle, with plenty of food for the three of them. With a sigh, she packed everything she could fit into her backpack, then started to make her way back to the theatre.

---

Ellie knocked at the front entrance and waited for the familiar scraping sounds of the metal chair being lifted from the handles. Soon, the door swung open and Ellie stepped into the warm air of the theatre. She was made warmer still by the hug she was immediately enveloped in.

“Hey.”

“Hey, you’re back quick. Everything okay?” Dina asked, stepping out of the hug and giving Ellie a once-over.

“Yeah, all good. We’re going to feast tonight,” Ellie said, holding up the packet she had set aside while scavenging.

Dina’s eyes widened. “Hold up. Is that beef jerky?”

“Sure is.”

“Wow! And you’re sharing it with others now, not shoving it all in your pockets to eat later. Good for you Ellie!” Dina exclaimed, giving her a mocking punch in the arm.

“You ungrateful ass,” Ellie grinned. “Maybe I should have taken my sweet time out there anyway. Left you to deal with Tommy for longer.”

Ellie’s smile faltered as she looked over Dina’s shoulder to the doors beyond. “How is he, by the way?”

Dina turned to follow the direction of her gaze. She frowned slightly. “He’s...fine. Better than he was before. He wants to talk to you.”

Ellie nodded. She supposed there was only so long she could delay the inevitable. She left her backpack with Dina to sort through the rations and headed towards the auditorium. Once she reached the double doors, she rested her hand gently on the handle. She took a deep breath, then pushed the door open.

---

Ellie could see Tommy sitting in the front row, injured leg stretched out in front of him. She glanced at the central aisle, still stained with the trail of his blood from the day before. She opted to head down the aisle cutting through the right-hand side of the stalls.

As Ellie reached the final row of seats she could see that Tommy had dozed off, arms crossed, much like Ellie had done on her first night in the theatre. For a moment she thought she was saved from having to speak to him. However her footsteps, despite being muffled by the thick carpet, were still loud enough to wake him up. He cast his gaze about, looking for the source of the noise.

“Hey,” Ellie said cautiously. She stepped clear of the seats, moving in front of Tommy so he wouldn’t have to turn his head to look at her. She rested her back against the edge of the stage and stared at the carpet between her shoes. Through her eyelashes, she could see that Tommy was looking at her.

“So...Dina filled you in on the plan? I know we were thinking of going east through Mercer Island before, but there’s a lot of city between us and there. We’ll probably run into Wolves, Scars, infected, or some unholy combination of the three. Plus, if either bridge is down we’ll have to double back. I think it’ll be better if we go south then circle around once we get out into the suburbs. It’ll take longer to get out near Fall City but I—”

“Abby’s still out there,” Tommy said, cutting her off.

Ellie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she looked up at Tommy. His right eye was hidden under the bandage, but the left one fixed her in a piercing glare.

Ellie sighed. “Tommy...you’re in pain. It’s making you angry. I am not having this conversation with you right now.”

Tommy shifted his weight so he was sitting up straighter in his chair. “Oh yes we are. Because you’ve got one goddamn thing right — I am angry. She’s out there, still breathing, and you want to discuss the most efficient way to run away with our tails between our legs! What the hell Ellie?!”

Ellie gestured to the map spread out on the stage behind her. “Yesterday you, me and Jesse—” she cringed as her voice cracked over his name, but pressed on, “were standing right here having this exact same conversation. You said that they got what they deserved already. You were the one asking me if that was okay.”

“Yeah, and now Jesse’s dead, in case you didn’t notice. We can’t even bring that boy home to his parents. We can’t even bury him near Joel. The score’s changed, Ellie. We need to make this right! There hasn’t been justice yet, for either of them.”

Ellie had gripped the edge of the stage behind her tightly at the mention of Joel’s name. “Don’t you dare use Joel like that. Just say what we both know you really mean — you want to kill her now that she’s skewered your leg and fucked up your eye.”

“Fine, maybe I do. What about it?”

“That’s not justice, that’s revenge.”

“It’s the same thing!”

“It is not, and you fucking know it.” Ellie pushed off the side of the stage, closing the distance between her and Tommy. “I still want to kill her. For Joel, and Jesse. That hasn’t changed.” 

Ellie was standing next to Tommy now, towering over him as he sat in the theatre chair. She waved her arm around the room. “But look at us Tommy! We’re the walking wounded here...hell, you barely qualify as even that. Abby had us, she let us go — again — and this is our only move now.”

Ellie kneeled down so she was at his level. “Look, this eye for an eye thing...”

“She’s one up on me by that count,” Tommy grumbled.

Ellie glared at him before continuing, “...it’s not going to end well for us here.”

She looked down and sighed. “Tommy, she hasn’t paid for what she’s done. I know that. But Dina’s...pregnant. And sick. We need to get her home. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not doing too crash-hot either.”

Tommy pressed his lips into a thin line and exhaled through his nose. His eye flicked between his outstretched leg and her sling-bound arm.  “But we came all this way…”

Ellie pulled down the seat next to him and slumped into the chair. “I know. I fucking know. It sucks. But we don’t even know where Abby is. We either leave Seattle now, or we all end up dead. And as much as I don’t want to go, all of us dying in this hellhole sounds like even less justice to me.”

Tommy scratched at his beard. Ellie held her breath as he considered everything she said. Finally, he spoke.

“Damn it...you’re right. I hate to say it, but you are.”

Ellie exhaled. “I know. I hate it when I’m right too. But it is what it is.”

She patted the armrest of her seat then stood up. She turned and offered her hand to Tommy.

“Come on. We leave tomorrow at first light. You can have something to eat, and then sleep in an actual bed, before we head out.”

Chapter Text

That was then

“I fucking hate escort missions.”

Dina raised her eyes from the book she was reading. On the other end of the couch, Ellie was holding her playstation controller and scowling at the TV. Dina looked over and saw a red ‘MISSION FAILURE’ message flashing on the screen.

“I swear I’ve had to restart this level a hundred times. The end was right there! Then the fucking kid had to go and get himself captured,” Ellie whined, tilting her head so it hit the back of the couch.

Dina glanced back down at her book. Ellie’s running game commentary was making it next to impossible for her to make any meaningful progress; she had been stuck on reading the same paragraph for almost 20 minutes. She sighed and fished her bookmark out from her lap, marking her page then closing the book with a snap.

A triumphant laugh came from the TV, followed by a mocking voice: “Better luck next time, hero!”

Ellie groaned in frustration next to her, then lobbed the remote in her hand in the general direction of the TV. It clattered along the floor, sliding to a stop near the entertainment unit.

“Hey, be careful with that!” Dina chided. “Video game controllers don’t grow on trees you know.” She slapped at Ellie’s knee as she got up off the couch to go after the controller. She picked it up and turned it over carefully. Thankfully, it had landed on the rug. Other than a new chip in the plastic handgrip, Dina couldn’t see any further damage.

Dina returned to the couch, sitting closer to Ellie’s side than she had been before. She stretched out and propped her feet on Ellie’s lap. Ellie raised her arms to accommodate her, resting her forearms across Dina’s legs once she was settled. The bandage that Ellie was wearing to protect her fresh tattoo tickled her leg.

Dina hid a laugh as Ellie continued to glare at the TV. “You know Ellie,” Dina hummed, tapping her chin thoughtfully, “I don’t even know why you enjoy playing this game. Jak is a super-tough badass, and he ends up saddled with this useless kid that he has to save every other minute.” She paused for a beat. “It’s not relatable at all.” 

Dina grinned as Ellie’s jaw dropped. 

“Excuse me? I know you didn’t just try to compare this game to Joel and me. For one thing, the kid doesn’t even have a gun.”

Dina raised an eyebrow. “Okay, congratulations I guess? It’s a valid point. But I would hope that you can think of more differences than that.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Of course I can, if you would let me finish.” Ellie lifted Dina’s legs off her lap and shifted in her seat so she was facing Dina straight-on. “Before I came here, when Joel and I were travelling the country, I was fucking useful. There were so many times that he would have been screwed if I wasn’t there to save his ass.”

She considered Ellie’s point for a moment. “Yeah, but at least the kid is invincible. I’ve watched you lose at this level enough times to know that you just have to stop the guards from taking him away — their tasers don’t hurt him. You can hardly say the same.”

For a moment Ellie looked as if she somehow did have something to say, but then she clamped her mouth shut. Dina didn’t quite know what to make of that, but she set aside her moment of confusion as Ellie got up from the couch.

Dina watched Ellie stomp over to the playstation and jab at the eject button. She snatched the game disk as it slid out smoothly from the console and returned it to its case, closing it with a few sharp snaps of the plastic.

“I’ll finish the level later. There are way too many bad vibes in the room right now,” Ellie grumbled.

Dina stifled a smile. Even when Ellie was in a mood, she managed to be somewhat funny. “It’s times like these that I remember that you’re an only child.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Well for one thing, you’re not very good at sharing.” Dina held up the dented controller to illustrate her point. “Did you forget that you only have two of these? If you broke it, we wouldn’t be able to play games together anymore.”

The shame was written all over Ellie’s face. Dina could tell that, indeed, she hadn’t considered that.

“But,” Dina continued, “I was thinking more about how you’re used to everyone looking out for you. You’ve never known what it's like to constantly take care of someone weaker than you. Talia was always doing shit she didn’t want to do, just because it would make things better for me.”

Dina was looking down at her lap, but could see in the corner of her eye that Ellie had gone still at the mention of her sister. This wasn’t something she usually talked to anyone about — even her best friend. 

The couch dipped slightly as Ellie returned to sit on it, cross-legged and facing Dina. She felt Ellie’s hand gently close around her own. They sat quietly for a few minutes. Ellie was the first to break the silence.

“You’re right, I’m being a brat. Sorry. Do you...want to talk about it?”

Ellie’s voice at the end was tinged with hope. Dina knew Ellie wasn’t being nosy — rather, she was probably asking because she saw an opportunity to relieve a burden. Dina’s heart filled at the thought, and decided to give Ellie this little piece of her.

“Actually, yeah. I think I do,” Dina said after a moment. She took a deep breath and began to speak.

---

“...so yeah. That was just the way Talia was. She did so much for me and never made a big deal out of it. So much so, that when she died—” Dina’s voice caught in her throat. She coughed, then started again. “When she died, that was when I finally started to realise everything I depended on her for. I did the dumbest shit, and she wasn’t there to warn me to be careful. I have no idea how I survived before I found Jackson.”

Ellie had been sitting there quietly, listening to Dina bare her soul, for the past half an hour. Dina hadn’t been interrupted once; Ellie had only occasionally opened her mouth to ask a quiet question, or give words of encouragement when she saw that Dina needed help to continue talking. Now that the story was finished, Ellie spoke.

“You were so young Dina. You were a kid. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be all alone back then.”

Dina felt Ellie gently squeeze her hand. She looked up and was surprised to see tears in Ellie’s eyes. 

“Thank you for telling me about Talia. She sounded like she was an awesome sister.” Ellie reached up and scratched at her head. “Um, I know it’s not the same, but you know how I told you about when Joel was hurt? And I had to take care of him? That was just over a winter, but it was the hardest thing I have ever done. Talia was so strong to keep both of you going through all those years.”

“Thanks Ellie,” Dina said, giving Ellie’s shoulder a playful bump. “You may be shit at sharing, but I'll give you this...you’ve always been a good listener.”

They smiled at each other, then Dina reached behind her for the forgotten playstation controller. “So,” she said, holding it out to Ellie, "how are the bad vibes in here now? Do you think Jak can keep the kid safe this time?”

Ellie grinned. “I reckon he can, yeah.” She started to reach out, but stopped just shy of Dina’s hand. "Although....you’ve watched me fail a hundred times already. Do you want to give it a try?”

This is now

Dina guessed that they had been walking for at least 10 miles by the time they reached Renton, a small satellite city that sat between Seattle and the mainland. It was a journey that they could normally have covered in less than four hours; judging by the passage of the sun across the sky, they had taken closer to eight.

Dina turned to look at Ellie and Tommy trailing behind her. Honestly, she was impressed that Tommy was walking at all. The arrow wound in her shoulder still hurt like a bitch, and she couldn’t imagine the pain he must be in by putting his entire body weight on the similar hole in his thigh.

Ellie, for her part, was helping as much as she could. When they left the theatre, Ellie had pulled Tommy’s arm across her shoulder and helped support his left side as he hobbled along. Dina had already offered to trade places several times during the trip. Each time, Ellie had simply waved her off with a muttered ‘it’s fine’.

After one of these offers, Dina had caught Ellie looking down at her stomach with concern. It was obvious that Ellie was thinking about the life growing inside of her. 

Aside from Ellie’s tender apology after their first night at the theatre, they hadn’t talked about it. Dina still had no idea where Ellie stood on the whole thing. In any situation, it would be a lot to put on someone...and their situation was far from what one would describe as ideal. And while Dina was, of course, glad that Tommy hadn’t shuffled off this mortal coil, it was hardly a conversation she wanted to have in his presence.

So for the moment, they were stuck in an awkward dance. On one hand, Dina was frustrated that Ellie was suddenly treating her like such a fragile thing; like a gentle puff of wind would be enough to knock her over. But on the other hand, she had been through two waves of nausea in the last few hours alone. She was certainly glad that she wasn’t holding up a fully-grown man when they had hit.

So, Dina contented herself with the role of scout for their group. She swept the area ahead of them, occasionally using the scope of her rifle to scan the windows of the buildings they passed. She never went more than a block ahead of Ellie and Tommy, keeping them well within her sights as they left Seattle.

Neither Scar nor Wolf had bothered them. It was a small mercy, but a welcome one. Dina thought about Ellie’s off-hand comment from a couple of days ago, and how it was looking to be more and more possible — maybe they had simply killed each other off.

“All clear,” Dina called over her shoulder as they crossed yet another intersection. She turned and waited a couple of minutes for Ellie and Tommy to reach her. “We’re pretty far out from the highrises. We should find somewhere to set up for the night.”

---

They left Tommy resting in the backseat of a burnt out car so they could scope out the surrounding area. Dina was inspecting the broken-in door to a mechanic’s shop when Ellie emerged from the cafe next door. 

“No good,” Ellie reported, shaking her head. “No infected, but too many entrances and smashed up windows.”

“Same here, this one’s a bust,” Dina agreed. “Let’s keep looking.”

They walked down the road in comfortable silence for a few minutes. That is, until Dina couldn’t help but voice what she was fairly sure they were both thinking. “It’s taken us the better part of a day to get this far. Ellie...I don’t know how we’re going to get all the way back to Jackson like this.”

Ellie raised her head to look at Dina, causing her to miss the rock she had been kicking down the road with them. She looked back at it wistfully before responding. “I know. I don’t see what other choice we have though. I left my horse in my other pair of jeans so…”

“I thought that stealing material was frowned upon within comedy circles.” Dina said, smiling and raising an eyebrow.

“Whatever,” Ellie shrugged, then raised her arms to the sky. She could stick her left arm up straight, but she could only manage to lift her right one in the sling to just above her head. Despite the limited mobility, she managed to give her back a few satisfying pops as she stretched it out. “I’ll tell you what though. Tommy is fucking heavy.”

“Well, I did offer to take him a few times back there,” Dina pointed out.

“The poor guy’s been through enough already. Let’s not add to his burden by having you puke all over his shoes, shall we?”

Burden.

There it was, that word again. Dina stopped walking, her light and jovial mood gone in an instant. Her face fell and her hand crept around her front to rest on her stomach.

Ellie took a few more steps before she realised Dina was no longer by her side. She turned back, eyes widening when she saw the placement of Dina's hand. “Shit, Dina...fuck me, that was a poor choice of words. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Dina grimaced. “You have to admit, it's far from convenient to have to deal with this on top of everything else,” she muttered.

“Then fuck it. It’ll be inconvenient.”

Dina studied her for a moment. “Are you...are you saying that you’re okay with all of this?”

Ellie held Dina’s gaze as she closed the distance between them. “Uh, I don’t know what Ellie you’ve been hanging out with for the past year, because I’m pretty sure I am the furthest person possible from being okay with all of this, ” she said, gesturing vaguely around them.

“But...for this, ” she continued in a much softer voice, and Dina felt her hand on her stomach being covered by Ellie’s own, “I’m all in.”

Dina’s eyes filled with tears as she considered the implications of Ellie’s simple statement. Ellie gave her a lopsided smile and pulled her in for a hug. 

Dina could feel Ellie rubbing small, soothing circles into her back as she whispered near her ear. “You’re doing the best you can, Di. No one, especially me, will ever ask you for anything more than that.”

Dina nuzzled into Ellie’s shirt as she cried in earnest. Ellie patted her back gently until Dina got it all out. 

Although Dina’s throat was still thick with feeling, she managed to mumble a few words. “Is it too early for me to blame pregnancy hormones for all of these emotions?”

She felt Ellie shake against her as she laughed. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet. But how does this sound? You concentrate on keeping you and our baby safe, and I’ll take care of the big baby we left back at that burnt-out car.”

Our baby.

Dina’s smile returned just as quickly as it had disappeared. She tilted her head up and gave Ellie a tender kiss, which she felt Ellie return with just as much feeling.

“We should really get back to scouting out places to set up camp,” Dina murmured when their lips separated.

“A few more minutes. That was a super-cute speech I just made, I think I’ve earned this.”

Dina chuckled and turned her face into Ellie’s chest again, allowing herself to be completely enveloped in her warmth.

---

Eventually they moved apart and continued walking, hand in hand, down the road. Soon they reached the next cluster of buildings. “These look more promising," Dina said after giving them a look-over.

They paused for a moment, listening for the telltale moans or shuffling of the infected. They were greeted with silence, so Dina tried the door to the first building. Its front windows were boarded up, and whatever sign had been hanging up over the door was long gone. “Working lock. That’s a good sign. Let’s try the back.”

They followed the solid brick wall around to a side alley with a delivery dock. There was a padlock on the roller door, which Ellie snapped off with the butt of her rifle. She cleared away the broken lock pieces and lifted the door. 

“After you, m’lady,” Ellie said, bending at the waist as Dina hopped up on the elevated entrance. She turned and looked down at Ellie with a raised eyebrow. “You know, it doesn’t count as being courteous when you just want a good view of my ass.”

Ellie grinned as she vaulted up next to Dina. “Guilty.” She brushed the dust off her hands and they started to inspect the room. The walls of the loading dock were lined with large cardboard boxes. As Dina read the product description printed on the closest one and realised what kind of store this was, she returned Ellie’s grin. 

“Well, it’s no horse...” Dina moved to what she assumed was the door to the main part of the shop and opened it. She peered through the gloom and her suspicions were confirmed. “...but I think we’ve just found the next best thing.”

Ellie looked up from the pile of tools she had been inspecting. “Huh, really? This is a weird place to keep a dinosaur…” she joked, walking over to Dina and looking through the door. “Oh hell yes. I’ll go get Tommy.”

---

“You two know how to ride these?” Tommy asked, looking over the bicycles lined up in neat rows with scepticism.

Dina nodded. “I may be lousy on a skateboard,” she paused, giving Ellie a knowing look, “but Talia taught me how to ride a bike ages ago. I’m really good.”

“Same,” Ellie said. “Well — the kids in Jackson made fun of me until I learned.”

“Can you blame me?” Dina grinned. “What 15 year-old doesn’t know how to ride a bike? Or swim, for that matter?”

Ellie looked at Tommy like she was pleading for backup. He smiled and shook his head. “Sorry kid, you’re on your own there. I might not know much, but I know to not get involved in couple fights.”

Dina laughed. “It’s okay babe. Every relationship divides its strengths. I’m happy to take care of all the practical, life-saving shit, as long as you handle all the bad jokes.”

Ellie looked like she was considering it for a moment. “Well...it is a big responsibility. But I suppose someone has to do it.”

They grinned at each other, then Dina turned to Tommy. “Anyway, what do you think? We’ll be a lot faster with them.”

“We would,” Tommy agreed, “but I’ll be honest...I’m not sure if I can in this state.”

“Don’t worry, I have the perfect solution,” Ellie piped up. She held her finger up then disappeared down one of the aisles of bike racks. Dina heard some shuffling from the other end of the store, followed by a series of clicking noises. 

Soon Ellie rounded the corner, pushing a small bike in front of her. Pink and white tassels hung off the handles, matching the training wheels bolted to the back wheel. Multicoloured beads threaded onto the spokes were behind the clicking noise — as the wheels turned, the beads slid down the spokes and pinged off the rim. Ellie pointed to the basket covered in flowers that sat on the handlebar. “Ever heard of a little film called E.T.?”

“Oh, for christ’s sake,” Tommy replied with exasperation, “ever the comedian, this one.”

“It was a huge blockbuster back in the day, Tommy. Are you sure it doesn’t ring a bell? ” Ellie asked, shit-eating grin plastered on her face as she flicked the hammer of the bike’s bell.

Tommy rolled his eyes and glanced at Dina. “She couldn’t possibly have been this bad on the way to Seattle...right?”

“I know it’s hard to believe, but she was even worse. Apparently, Shimmer loved all of her jokes so much that she kept asking for more.”

“You truly have the patience of a saint, Dina.”

Dina laughed at the banter. She hadn’t known Tommy particularly well when they were back at Jackson, but their interactions so far showed that he was just as gruffly witty as his brother.

“Well I thought it was a great suggestion,” Ellie grumbled, “but I suppose we could go with my backup plan. You get your own bike, and I tow you.”

Tommy considered it for the moment. “Hmm, actually that should work.”

Dina smiled. “Well release the doves, Ellie Williams has just had a good idea.”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” Tommy chimed in.

“You two are the worst,” Ellie groaned.

---

They stayed in the bike shop overnight. The next morning they unlocked the front door and wheeled out their chosen rides. Ellie had linked several lock chains together as a makeshift tow rope; she clipped one end to the underside of her saddle and looped the other end through the handlebars of Tommy’s bike. 

Dina watched Ellie as she nodded at the setup and waved Tommy over. He hobbled over, gingerly lifted himself over the frame and settled on the seat. He positioned his right foot on the pedal, but his left leg hung straight down.

Dina saw the problem immediately. “One sec,” she called out as she went to join them. She took off her backpack and fished out the bike maintenance kit they had scavenged from the store. She found the right wrench and crouched down, unbolting the left pedal so it wouldn't hit his leg as the crank arm turned.

“Good idea,” Ellie said. She returned to her bike and swung her leg over it. But when she looked down at the handlebars, she frowned slightly. “Uh, doctor Dina?”

Dina zipped up the kit and pedal in her backpack and moved over to Ellie, who gestured at her sling-bound arm. “You gave me a few days in this thing to get the swelling down, and I’ve been good. Can I get the all-clear?”

Dina moved behind Ellie and untied the knot at the nape of her neck. She pulled the fabric away, Ellie helping the process by shrugging her shoulders. Dina felt around the fabric for a second, finding the rocketship badge and returning it to its usual spot on Ellie’s backpack. She circled back around to face Ellie and helped unwrap the rest of the material and the makeshift splint.

Dina breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the bruise had settled down considerably. Her skin was still discoloured, but it no longer looked like someone had smeared beetroot juice all over it. “Looks good. No pain?” she asked as she gently rotated Ellie’s arm at the elbow.

“Never better,” Ellie replied with a smile. She placed both hands on her bike’s handles and leaned forward to put some weight on them, nodding in satisfaction when her arms held.

Dina collected her bike and wheeled into position at the front of the group. When she glanced behind her, Ellie gave her a thumbs up and Tommy nodded. Dina nudged her bike’s kickstand up with her foot and pushed down on the pedals. 

It was a wobbly start — unlike Ellie, Dina didn’t have as much faith in her injured shoulder, so she was only holding onto the handlebar with her left hand. But after a few turns of the pedals she gained enough forward momentum to smooth out her balance, and Dina led them out of the city.

Chapter Text

That was then

“It’s okay buddy, I got you,”

Ellie whispered into her cupped hands as she hurried along the empty corridor of the orphanage. It wasn’t curfew yet so she was allowed to be out and about, but she didn’t really want to be stopped and have to explain what she was doing.

She reached the end of the hallway that led to the dorms and peeked around the corner. Things looked relatively quiet, so she started crossing the main hall at a brisk trot.

For most of the year, the residents of the Boston orphanage went to school like all the other kids in the QZ. But when the winter snows arrived, it made more sense to board a couple of teachers and hold combined classes in the large room at the heart of the building. It was the middle of January, so the orphanage had been running in this mode for the past few weeks. 

Ellie had finished her block of lessons with the rest of the 5 to 8 year-olds a couple of hours ago. She couldn’t wait until her birthday, when she would be bumped up to the next age group. The first graders were cute, but she definitely wasn’t going to miss their constant interruptions to ask to go to the restroom or for the teacher to tie their shoelaces. Ellie was a very mature 8 year-old; such things were far beneath her. 

Plus, today she had arrived a few minutes early for her classes, so she had to wait for the upper-elementary kids to finish up their lesson about the solar system. Ellie had watched with unrestrained envy as they brought their paper ball planets to the front table and the teacher helped hang them up on a frame. An old volleyball stood in for the sun at the centre of the display. 

The model remained in the room after their class had ended, and Ellie had to spend the next four hours listening to their teacher drone on about the basics of bartering, while literally the entire solar system sat in the corner of her vision. Needless to say, she didn’t learn a thing.

Now it was approaching 8pm. A few kids were dotted throughout the hall, sitting around the wooden trestle tables spaced out on the main floor area. Most were bent over notebooks and frantically finishing their homework before curfew, but there were a few groups huddled around the ratty board games the orphanage had accumulated over the years. Ellie gave all of them a brief nod as she passed, angling her body so her hands were hidden from view.

She reached the other end of the room, and the double doors that led out to the orphanage grounds, without trouble. She shifted her hands again so they were clasped in front of her, and leaned her back into the doors to push them open.

“Williams! What are you doing? Close that door before you let in half the snow in Boston!” 

The night supervisor was standing up at his table and glaring at her. Ellie smiled when she recognised Marcus. He was one of the few adults who talked to her like she wasn’t an idiot. And she knew that Marcus had a soft spot for her ever since she let him in on the discreet corner of the orphanage grounds where he could smoke undisturbed. He had even let her listen to music on his walkman a couple of times.

Now was the time to cash in those brownie points.

“Sorry, sorry! I’m just uhhh...just getting some fresh air! Give me a sec,” Ellie called over her shoulder. He sighed then waved her off and she ducked outside.

She picked her way across piles of snow to the iced-over garden beds that sat against the walls of the main building. She briefly assessed the sad remains of the corn crop that her class had planted as part of their farming lessons, then finally uncovered the precious cargo she had been carrying.

“Hey little guy,” she cooed as the small lizard uncurled itself in her hand.

“Sorry about Angie. You gave her quite a fright, you know. But it’s okay. You couldn’t have known that the bunkmate you picked was such a meanie.” Ellie smiled to herself as she thought about what had happened earlier that evening. 

Her dorm had been settling down for the night: most of the kids were in their pyjamas, either chatting to each other or sneaking in a bit of reading before lights out. That is, until Angie, the girl whose bed was next to Ellie’s, had pulled back her bedsheets and discovered that a lizard had made itself very much at home on her pillow. The ensuing chaos had resulted in no less than four supervisors bursting into the dorm room full of shrieking third-graders. By the time that they had managed to calm the kids down, Ellie had scooped up the terrified lizard and bolted out the door.

Now she examined the frosty earth around the plants with a frown. “Sorry dude. I know that you should be doing...uh, whatever reptile hibernation is called again...right now.” Admittedly, Ellie hadn’t been paying attention when they learned about animal behaviour either. And that day didn’t even have any space-themed distractions that she could blame.

“But the orphanage is a no-no for you,” she sighed, crouching and gently coaxing the lizard off her palm and onto the ground. “It’ll be hard out here, but if you stayed in there you’d have no chance.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Ellie turned and saw that Marcus had followed her outside. He was standing at the top of the stairs leading to the main hall doors with his arms crossed.

“Oh you know, all my friends,” she replied, waving at the row of scraggly corn stalks behind her. “Not big talkers, but they’re great listeners. You know, all the ears...”

Ellie waited for Marcus to get the joke, but he just raised an eyebrow and gestured with his head to the door behind him.

“You’re such a weird kid Ellie. Come on, it’s almost lights out, and you are not wearing enough layers to be outside in this weather.”

Ellie pouted as she walked towards him. “You were the one who gave me that joke book. Maybe you should have read it first. Then you’d realise that you are in the presence of a comedy mast—”

Ellie stopped mid-sentence as she stepped on a patch of ice. Her foot kicked out behind her and she lost her balance, falling forward and hitting her head on the concrete steps with a sickening crack. Her vision exploded into stars and she felt a blinding pain above her right eye. The stars quickly turned red as blood poured down her face.

She heard Marcus swear and run down the steps to her. It was stupid, but Ellie’s last thought before her vision went dark was that she hoped that this wouldn’t leave a scar.

This is now

They had to stick to the highway far more than when they were travelling on Shimmer, and there were several occasions where the road was so deteriorated that they had to dismount and walk their bikes through the rubble. But Dina was right: they were making much better time with the bikes.

Ellie watched Dina ride in front of her. She was a bit unsteady on her bike — no doubt her shoulder was still giving her a bit of trouble. It had been a few days since Ellie had redressed her wound in Renton. She made a mental note to check on it on their next stop. 

Ellie turned her head to read a sign on the other side of the highway. “93 miles out from Seattle,” she called out to the group, “what will we do to celebrate hitting a hundred?”

She heard Tommy chuckle behind her. “Wild guess...ride another hundred?”

Ellie scoffed. “I’d hardly call what you’re doing ‘riding’, you goddamn freeloader.”

“Freeloader, am I?”

She instantly regretted the snarky remark as she felt the pull of the tow rope attached to her bike suddenly increase. She whipped her head around just in time to see Tommy let go of his brake lever. He gave her an innocent look.

“Diiiina,” Ellie whined, “Tommy’s bullying me!”

She heard Dina laugh ahead of them. “Now now children, behave. Don’t make me turn this bike around.”

Ellie turned back to Tommy and stuck her tongue out. He grinned before returning to his usual one-footed pedalling, and the rope regained some of its former slack.

---

The afternoon sun stretched their shadows as they continued down the highway that cut through the mountains. Ellie rounded a corner, Tommy swinging out wide on the tether behind her, and saw that they were uphill from an abandoned town. Dina had already dismounted from her bike and was examining the closest buildings with a frown.

Ellie pulled up next to her and leaned on her bike’s handlebars. “That’s lucky. I was about to suggest we look for somewhere to spend the night.” She glanced at Dina. “This place looks alright…why the long face?”

Dina pursed her lips and squinted at the town, but said nothing.

“Dina, we’ve barely seen any infected this side of the Cascades. There was that group of runners back in Cle Elum, but apart from them—”

“It’s not infected I’m worried about,” Dina said, cutting her off with a wave of her hand. “Look, there. In the church.” She pointed to a white building with a steeply-pitched roof about half a mile from them.

“What’s this about a church?” Tommy asked as he wheeled his bike towards them.

“Just give it a second...there!” Dina pointed at the steeple, just as the long end of a rifle barrel became visible for a moment.

Ellie breathed in sharply. “Shit. It’s a blind. Hunters.”

Dina nodded and directed their attention towards the centre of town. “Look at the road leading to it. They’ve used cars to block all the side streets. Only one way in...or out.”

Ellie’s eyes followed Dina’s instructions. It was subtle, but she could see that the cars were not as haphazardly placed as they should have been. 

When the outbreak started, everyone packed up and fled their homes at the same time. Many people ended up abandoning their cars in the resulting traffic chaos, so invariably the roads leading out of towns like these became parking lots. Now that Dina had pointed it out, Ellie could see that while the smaller streets were indeed packed with cars, the main street was suspiciously clear of obstacles.

It was a trap.

Tommy shook his head next to them. “Damn Dina, how did you spot that?”

A shadow crossed Dina’s face. “Fool me twice,” she muttered bitterly, but did not elaborate further. “Come on, let’s keep moving. The sign we passed back there said that Ellensburg is less than 10 miles away. We can reach it before dark.”

Ellie examined Dina’s back thoughtfully as they resumed riding. Apart from the year she travelled across the country with Joel, the only life that Ellie knew was in either the Boston QZ or Jackson. She had forgotten that Dina had spent far less time in such relatively-safe areas. It made sense that she could recognise the telltale signs of a town full of hunters.

Ellie’s heart couldn’t help but ache at the thought of what Dina had gone through before she found Jackson.

---

A sun-faded sign marked their arrival in Ellensburg — or rather, Elle-sburg, as the ‘N’ had long since fallen off it. Yet another section of broken road had forced them off their bikes and on their feet, so they stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they examined the entrance to the small city.

Ellie glanced over at Dina, waiting for her assessment.

Dina nodded. “Better. Much better.”

Ellie grinned. “Excellent. Now I can do this,” she said, lowering her bike’s kickstand to keep it upright and stepping off the road. She approached the sign, reaching into her back pocket and pulled out her switchblade. She raised it to the sign, using the sharp point to carve a jagged ‘i’ between the second L and E of the city’s name.

She turned around and saw that both Tommy and Dina had crossed their arms.

“What? I had to fix it. It was a sign from above,” Ellie said as she returned to them, using her still-open switchblade to point to the sky.

She got no response besides an eye roll from Dina.

“Get it? Sign? Why aren’t you laughing?”

“Oh don’t worry Ellie, I get it.” Dina raised an eyebrow. “It’s just that a joke needs to be funny for me to laugh.”

---

The sun had set by the time they had found a promising residential area to stay the night. Ellie was the last to push her bike into the garage connected to their chosen duplex. She pulled down the roller door and walked over to the house’s front entrance.

“Honey, I’m home!” Ellie called out, smiling as she opened the door. But her smile quickly turned into a frown when she heard a long, low moan echo through the house. Dina immediately emerged from the living room, shouldering her backpack and gun in hand.

“Um...please tell me that was you,” Ellie whispered.

Dina shook her head. “Wish I could. It came from next door.”

“Where’s Tommy?”

“Right here,” Tommy said in a low voice as he stepped into the hallway behind Dina. “It’s too late to find somewhere else to stay tonight,” he sighed, unholstering his gun. “Let’s go pay our neighbours a visit.”

They filed out into the front garden and crept to the other house that shared a central wall with their temporary residence.

“They must be really old to not have heard us when we got here,” Tommy said, thinking out loud. He shone his flashlight through the glass set into the front door and nodded. “Yep, spores,” he muttered and turned to Ellie and Dina behind him. “Masks on.”

Ellie readied her revolver as Tommy and Dina strapped on their gas masks. 

“Uh Ellie...your mask?” Tommy asked.

Ellie furrowed her brows in confusion.

Tommy sighed and gave her a pointed look. “Don’t tell me you lost it.”

“Tommy, what the fuck are you going on about? I don’t nee—”

The glare that Tommy shot her through his face shield was enough to shut Ellie up. He jerked his head in Dina’s direction, who was looking at both of them with bewilderment.

Revelation dawned on Ellie. “Oh my god Tommy!” she exclaimed, slapping her forehead. Her raised voice set off the infected inside the house again, and she ducked her head guiltily. “She already knows,” Ellie continued in a softer voice.

“She...knows?”

“Yes, she knows.”

Dina, who had been watching Ellie and Tommy’s exchange with amusement, finally chimed in. “Yep, I sure do. Even the Cordyceps took one look at Ellie and said ‘no thanks’.”

Ellie spluttered in indignation and Tommy grinned. He stepped away from the front door to clap Dina’s shoulder. “Right, sorry about that. Well, uh...welcome to the inner circle, I suppose.”

Dina smiled. “Glad to be here.” She looked around the group. “Now, does anyone have any more revelations to share?”

Ellie pretended to ponder for a moment. “Hmm...nope, I think I’m good.”

“Excellent. That makes these infected the only things standing in the way of my dinner and a warm bed. Shall we?”

Chapter Text

That was then

“Mom? Deedee?! Where are you?!”

Dina looked down at the knife she was holding.

There’s so much blood. How can there be so much blood???

She tried wiping her hands on her jeans, but only managed to stain the fabric and smear the blood further into her palms. She quickly abandoned that idea, focusing instead on responding to the faint voice coming from outside.

“Talia, we’re in here,” she managed to call out with a shaky voice.

The door to the living room crashed open as Talia ran in. Dina’s eyes swept the space, trying to imagine what it would be like for Talia to walk in on the scene before them.

The bloody corpse of a young Raven guard lay at Dina’s feet. The blood from his multiple stab wounds had soaked into the carpet, creating a sticky pool around her shoes. Next to the body lay her mother, alive but still somewhat dazed from her earlier beating. She was looking up at Dina with a horrified expression. 

At ten years old, one could hardly describe Dina as ‘towering’, and yet that was what she was currently doing over the pair on the floor. A hunting knife was hanging loosely in her hand.

“Shit,” Dina heard softly from behind her as Talia approached. She gently eased the knife from her grip.

It had been a present from Talia for Dina’s most recent birthday. “This should not be a sensible present for anyone to give their kid sister...but this isn’t a sensible world we live in,” Talia had said somberly as a preface to the gift. “You need some way to protect yourself. And this family.” When Dina had reached for the knife, Talia held it back for a moment. “It’s for emergencies only, okay?”

“Deedee, what happened?”

The question snapped Dina out of the brief memory. She redirected her gaze from her mom to Talia, who had turned to place the knife on the table behind them.

“I was upstairs and I heard mom come home from picking. I was going to go down to see what she had come back with when someone — him,” she paused, pointing to the dead man at her feet, “kicked in the door and came in yelling.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and swiped at the tears gathering in her eyes before continuing. “By the time I got downstairs mom w—was on the floor and he was on top of he—her, beating her up. I had my knife with me and…” She trailed off. There was nothing else she could say.

As she was talking Talia had moved to their mother’s side and gently helped her sit up. Both sides of her face were darkening with bruises by the minute, and littered with cuts. Her nose was definitely broken — the bridge was kinked, and the tip was bent at an extreme angle. Blood from her split lip ran down her chin, soaking into the neckline of her shirt. But when she looked into Dina’s eyes, her expression changed from horrified to pitying.

“Oh Dina, sweetheart, I a—” her mom’s voice caught in her throat and she coughed, spitting out a tooth, “I am so sorry.”

Dina’s gaze followed the tooth as it bounced across the carpet, hitting the leg of the table with a soft ping before settling next to it. As their mother spoke, Dina saw Talia’s face harden out of the corner of her eye. 

“Mom...what did you do?” Talia asked, voice wavering with suspicion. She moved from where she was kneeling behind their mother to crouch in front of her. The move forced their mom to rip her focus from Dina to Talia.

Dina knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of a 'Talia Look': she already had a piercing glare as it was, and it was further exaggerated by the convex lenses of her eyeglasses. 

Their mother sighed, then immediately winced and clutched at her side. The Raven must have gotten to her ribs too. 

“Honey, it’s not what I did. It’s what I didn’t do,” she breathed, looking down at the body on the floor. She was silent for a moment before she continued. “This poor boy came to the house because...I didn’t submit to a scan when I came back.”

Dina furrowed her brows in confusion.They had been living in the compound controlled by the Ravens for the past two years. While it was far from an easy life, at least the people in charge of the place allowed for ‘pickers’: anyone who wanted to could go out and scavenge for resources. Upon returning to the compound, they were allowed to keep half of whatever they found in exchange for the Ravens’ protection.

Their mother left every week to scavenge for food. She had to go out further, and stay away from her daughters for longer, each time. But she always managed to return with enough food to keep the three of them from starving, even after the guards at the gate had taken their cut.

When the Ravens broke away from the Roswell QZ, they had taken one of the FEDRA-issued handheld Cordyceps detectors with them. So whenever a picker returned from the outside, they had to be scanned. No exceptions.

Dina took in the faces of her family. As far as emotions were concerned, it seemed like Dina had the monopoly on confusion. Because when she looked at Talia, she only saw anguish.

“Show me,” Talia whispered, barely audible.

Dina’s heart started beating faster as her anxiety heightened. Her head whipped back and forth between the two of them. “Show you what? Talia, what is going on???” she asked, desperate for an explanation as her sister and mother exchanged sorrowful looks.

Rather than speak, their mom reached down and gripped the cuff of her sleeve. She pulled it up her arm slowly, revealing a clearly broken wrist, presumably from the fight with the Raven. But that was not what drew a harrowed cry from Dina.

On the inside of her mother’s forearm, clear as day, was a bite. 

The flesh around it was puckered and inflamed, ballooning out from the ring of teeth marks like the crater that forms around a meteor when it strikes the ground. The veins that led from the bite up to her shoulder were visible under her skin — an interconnected highway paved in angry red, transporting the deadly infection to the rest of her mom’s body.

“I came across an abandoned supermarket. It didn’t look like any of the other pickers had found it yet. Turns out, there was a good reason for that.” She sighed and let her sleeve drop, covering the bite. “Three infected were on me before I could even think. I managed to run away...but it was too late.”

Dina joined her sister and mom on the floor. Wordlessly, Dina’s mom pulled both of her daughters in for a hug. Despite the injured wrist, Dina felt her mom run her fingers through her hair. She knew that she was doing the same to Talia with her other hand.

This position was a familiar one for the three of them. But what was new was the sense of finality that accompanied it.

“Girls, I’m so sorry. I know I should have stayed out there. But I couldn’t bear not saying goodbye.”

Dina was violently sobbing now. She clutched at the fabric of her mother’s shirt, tears soaking into the sleeve, like they would somehow wash away the bite hidden underneath.

“And now my poor Dina...you have done something that you never should have needed to do.” 

Dina felt her mom kiss the top of her head as Talia pulled out from the hug. Dina stayed in her mom’s embrace, but turned her head to the side in time to see the two of them exchange a glance.

“You girls can’t stay here anymore.”

“I know.”

“They’ll find him and they’ll come after you.”

“I know.”

“I trust you to keep Dina safe.”

“I know.” Talia reached her arm out and rested it on her mother’s shoulder. “What should we do?”

Their mother looked down at Dina wrapped up in her arms, then back at Talia. “Pack your things. I still have some time, I will help you get out of this place. After that...you will need to start answering that question for yourselves.”

---

The Ravens had already organised a search party for the missing guard, leaving only a skeleton crew to patrol the gate, so Talia, Dina and their mother were able to slip out of the compound undetected.

They had been travelling north along a dusty highway for a few hours, pace gradually slowing as their mom deteriorated, until she finally called for a halt.

“I...can’t. Anymore. This...this is it for me,” she said with a gasp, turning to rest her body on a nearby rock. Despite the cool breeze of the late afternoon, sweat was beading out at her hairline. Her breaths had grown more and more ragged, to the point where she had developed an audible wheeze.

She didn’t have much time left now.

Talia and Dina took turns giving their mom one last hug and saying a tearful goodbye. Dina went first. After she pulled away, her mom untied the hamsa bracelet she always wore around her wrist and pressed it into Dina’s hand. “For your protection,” she murmured gently.

After Talia had her turn, their mother reached down and unbuckled the holster around her thigh. It had two compartments — one for a pistol, and the other for a short-bladed knife. Both were currently occupied.

“For your protection,” their mom said again, but this time it was directed to Talia. She accepted the holster with a nod and strapped it to her own leg. As Talia and her mother looked up at each other, Dina could swear that they were exchanging unspoken words with their gaze.

Dina had been watching silently, but when Talia turned and started down the road, Dina called out in protest. “Wait, what? Talia, the gun…”

Talia’s shoulders slumped for a moment before she turned around. “Deedee...this is it. We go now,” she said lowly, looking back at their mother hunched over on the rock.

Dina’s eyes flickered between the two of them in a panic. “No. No no no...NO! We can’t!”

Dina’s mom looked at her with a pained expression. “Honey, this is how it has to be. Sui—suicide is sin.”

Dina was incredulous. “Are you kidding me? You are going to turn into one of those things if we do nothing!”

“And so be it. There is no one around here for miles. I won’t hurt anyone.”

“You don’t know that! How can you fucking know that?!”

She heard Talia gasp. “Hey, language!”

“You cannot be on her side for this Talia! This is not right!”

Talia squared her jaw. “Enough. It is what has to be done,” she said firmly.

Dina’s voice was starting to sound desperate, but she tried one last tactic. “It...it wouldn’t be suicide mom. It would be martyrdom to avoid possibly violating the Mishpatim for mu—murder.”

“Deedee,” Talia sighed, “Mom knows that. Look, I know this is hard. But you have to respect your mother.”

Dina stared at both of them, mouth agape. “I don’t believe this.”

“What Talia says, goes. When you’re older you’ll understand, honey,” her mother said resignedly. “Talia, please, take her. I will be gone by tomorrow. I don’t want you girls to see me get any more like...them.”

Dina felt her wrist being gripped firmly by Talia’s hand, but she did not put up a fight as she was led away from her mom. While Dina looked back every few steps to watch the receding figure of their mom sitting on the rock, Talia did not turn her head. Not even once.

---

Dina was ten years and 29 days old when she killed that Raven guard. It was the first time she had ever taken a life.

But the secret that Dina would take to her grave? On that very same night, after she crept away from their campsite and a deeply sleeping Talia wearing an empty gun holster, was when Dina took a life for the second time.

This is now

“I love the smell of fresh vomit in the morning.”

Dina lifted her head from the plastic basin she was bent over. Each time they found a place to stay the night, Ellie had developed the habit of announcing that she was off to find a new ‘barf bucket’ for Dina. Dina responded with a grumble every time, but she had to admit that whatever Ellie managed to find eventually came in handy. Like right now.

“El, you are so fucking gross.”

“Miracle of life, Di. No one said it was going to be pretty.”

Ellie stood in the doorway to the bedroom, smiling as she leaned against the jamb.

Dina sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “Okay, but they could have at least had the decency of calling this something else. Like, ‘morning sickness’? Yeah, right. I would love to only have to deal with this shit once a day.” Dina grimaced. “Sorry for not keeping down the rabbit last night. I know it was a pain in the ass for you to catch it.” 

It had been over a week since they had left Seattle, and their days were starting to settle into a routine. Each morning they would wake up, break camp, ride for about six hours, then in the afternoon find a small town to spend the night.

They were far from what anyone would consider ‘peak cyclists’; between Ellie having to tow Tommy on his bike behind her, and Dina’s shoulder plus her frequent bouts of nausea, it was slow-going. On their way up the Cascades, they were barely making 20 miles in a day. At least now that they had passed through the mountains that separated the Washington coastline from the rest of the state, they were making slightly better progress. 

Ellie had been the best at keeping track of the highway markers that they passed, and yesterday had announced to the group that they had done 40 miles that day. Unfortunately, the dinner Ellie had put together as a celebration had been marred by Dina’s temperamental stomach.

Ellie moved from the doorway to Dina’s side, flopping onto the floor next to her. Her hand found its usual spot at the base of Dina’s back and started to rub in small circles. Dina sighed and rested her head on Ellie’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t think the rabbit took offence,” Ellie whispered soothingly. “It’s been a big week. We’re making good time. I just worry about you...these are long rides, and I don’t know where you’re getting your energy from anymore. It can’t be from food at this point.”

Dina chuckled mirthlessly. “Pretty sure I’m running on pure stubbornness now. I think you’re starting to rub off on me.”

Ellie’s gentle backrubs paused for a moment, and Dina instead felt a sharp pinch to her side. She flexed her stomach away from the mischievous hand, and retaliated with a half-hearted swat to Ellie’s knee.

“Fuck, Ellie! Do you want me to throw up again?”

Ellie chuckled and Dina felt her move her hand again. But this time, she simply tangled her fingers in Dina’s hair and started to slowly massage her scalp. Dina sighed at the pleasant sensation.

“It’s not going to be like this the whole time though, is it?” Ellie asked, worry laced through her voice.

Dina furrowed her brows. “I hope not, but...I have no idea. The sooner we’re back in Jackson, the sooner we can ask someone, I suppose.”

They sat there, collectively lamenting their complete lack of knowledge about the process of bringing a human being into the world, until they heard a throat being cleared. Dina looked up and saw that Tommy had appeared in the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt, but we’re all packed up. You two ready?”

Ellie nodded and stood up, turning around to offer Dina her hand. Dina gratefully accepted and was pulled to her feet. Together, they filed out of the townhouse where they had stayed the night, and stepped into the early morning sunshine.

Dina raised her arms up in the air, sighing with pleasure as she gave her body a good stretch. “From what I saw when we got in last night, this town doesn’t look too picked-over. Should we take a look around before we head out?”

“Good idea,” Ellie agreed, and they started making their way down the road.

---

The first building they came upon was a two-storey block of apartments. Ellie threw a nearby brick into one of the windows, and nodded with satisfaction when there were no responding noises of any infected. Dina and Ellie left Tommy to go through the units on the ground level, and ascended the stairwell to the landing of the upper floor.

The elements had not been kind to this building. Over twenty years without maintenance had left it with little structural integrity, and it only took a well-aimed shove from Ellie to break through the rotted door of the first apartment. 

They moved through the unit automatically, the process of scavenging being one that both Dina and Ellie had learned a long time ago. They went through the small kitchen together, where Dina finally found a knife that fit nicely in her thigh holster. She still keenly felt the absence of her hunting knife that Abby had taken back at the theatre, but this was a decent substitute.

They separated in the hallway, Ellie heading towards the bedrooms as Dina peeled off to the bathroom. She checked the vanity cupboard, scoring a pair of scissors and a half-full bottle of rubbing alcohol. Next she opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and scanned the faded labels of the bottles neatly lined up on the shelf.  Folic acid, iodine, iron, vitamin B12…  

All of the bottles featured a pink stylised silhouette of a woman with pronounced curves.

...wait a second.

Dina was about to call out, but they must have been on the same wavelength; she heard Ellie’s voice first. “Hey Di, can you come in here for a sec?”

Dina followed Ellie’s voice down the hallway and pushed on the half-open door to one of the bedrooms. 

Oh.

It was a nursery.

The paint on the walls was a soft yellow colour, and peeling far less than the other rooms of the apartment. There was a rocking chair in the corner of the room, dappled sunlight hitting it so perfectly that it must have been consciously placed there for morning feeds. A wooden cot sat under the windowsill, and was so filled with stuffed toys that only the edges of the mattress were visible underneath. On the opposite wall was a changing table, stacked high with untouched diapers and washcloths.

Ellie was standing next to the cot, thumbing through a book thoughtfully. Dina approached her, and Ellie held the book up so Dina could see the cover.

“ ‘What to expect when you’re expecting’ ? Huh...good read?”

Ellie nodded. “There is uh...a lot more to it than I thought. And I already thought it was pretty complicated.” She turned to a new page and frowned. “Have you ever heard of human um...chorionic go...gonadotropin?”

Dina pulled a face. “Uh, no. Can’t say I have. Sounds gross, whatever it is.”

“Well, time to embrace your inner filth. Apparently, right now you’re full of it.”

“What? Let me see.”

Ellie turned her body so Dina could see the page. A detailed diagram took up most of it. The leftmost image was a circle next to a round thing with what looked like a tail. Next to that was a single circle, and the pictures next to it eventually morphed into a baby by the time they reached the right side of the page. Ellie pointed at a graph that sat above the images.

“Look. That fucking awful name that I won’t try to say again. It’s really high here, then drops off again.” She slid her finger down to a row of numbers at the bottom of the page, “and they’ve split it up into weeks.” 

Ellie paused for a moment. “Um...how long exactly has it been since...you know…” she stammered, the tips of her ears turning bright red.

Dina smiled at Ellie’s awkward question and returned her gaze to the page, focusing on the word underneath the leftmost image. But then she raised her head again, wanting to see Ellie’s expression as she sweetly replied: “...since ‘conception’ ?”

“Oh my god Dina. Now YOU’RE being gross!”

“Miracle of life, El.”

“Great, and now I’m going to throw up.”

Dina laughed at Ellie’s exaggerated gagging noises and pried the book from her hands. She considered the diagram for a moment. “It’s been about eight weeks, so...we’re here, I guess,” she said with a shrug, jabbing her finger at the third picture on the page.

Ellie paused her theatrics so she could assess the image, tilting her head one way then the other. “Looks like a lizard. Or an alien, maybe.”

“Ellie, our baby is not an alien.”

“So the jury’s still out on the lizard suggestion?” Ellie raised her hand to stroke an invisible beard, “interesting.”

Dina rolled her eyes and went to close the book, but Ellie shot her hand out to keep it open at the page. “Hold up,” she said, pointing to the right-hand side of the diagram. “At least it gets cute here. I for one, cannot wait until we reach the ‘potato’ stage of development.”

Even Dina had to admit that the picture had some semblance with a tuber, so she allowed Ellie the satisfaction of seeing her smile. This time, when she closed the book, Ellie didn’t move to stop her.

“I’ll take it with us.”

Ellie nodded. “Good idea...it’ll be good for us to have something more informative to read than ‘Sorority Secrets’ ,” she said, quirking an eyebrow.

Now it was Dina’s turn to go red. Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment as she thought about the book from that bookstore full of rainbows back in Seattle. “I didn’t think you had noticed that I had taken it,” she mumbled.

“Nothing slips past me Dina. I’m like the perception fucking master.”

“Oh really? So all those years I had a crush on you? You knew, and just didn’t feel like making a move?”

Ellie pouted. “Okay, nobody’s perfect.”

Dina chuckled and tapped Ellie’s arm with the side of the book. “Come on, perception master . We’ve still got the rest of the apartments on this floor to go through.”

Ellie cast her eyes around the room for a final time, gaze lingering on the cot. “If you’re taking the book,” she said, stepping towards it and reaching into the mountain of toys, “I’m taking this.” She pulled her arm back, a small stuffed elephant clutched in her hand.

“Fair enough. Alright, let’s go.”

Dina pulled Ellie out of the room, but she felt their hands unlink as she neared the front door of the apartment. Ellie had stopped next to the kitchen.

“What is it?”

Wordlessly, Ellie brushed her hand against the calendar stuck to the fridge. They hadn’t paid it any mind when they were sweeping the apartment —  there were countless calendars like it in these abandoned homes, all forever stuck on September 2013. But now, Dina saw that ‘DUE DATE’ was written in one of the boxes near the bottom of the month. The writing had faded, but she could still make out the love hearts drawn all around the day.

“September 29th,” Ellie breathes, “fuck, that was three days after Outbreak Day.” She looked back at the hallway and the open door of the nursery. “Do you think they made it?”

Dina followed Ellie’s gaze, considering the question carefully.

“You know what? Yeah...I’d like to think that they did.”

She reached for Ellie’s hand again, and together they left the apartment.

Chapter Text

That was then

“What’s Facebook?”

Joel looked up from his current whittling project with a start. His chisel almost clipped the intricate flight feathers of the eagle’s left wing, but he adjusted the tool’s position at the last moment and missed them by a hair. He spun around in his chair and looked at Ellie like she had sprouted a second head. “What’s what?”

It had been a few weeks since their return from the Wyoming Museum of Science and History. During the trip, Joel had found two Savage Starlight issues that Ellie didn’t have yet. She was spending the afternoon at Joel’s house, re-reading the series from the beginning with the new additions, hoping to fill in some missing events from the story.

Ellie rolled over from her usual spot on the floor. Despite her constant complaints of the sawdust, Ellie had to admit that Joel’s hobby room was one of her favourite places to read. The afternoon sun streaming through the window at just the right angle, combined with the constant scraping and rasping noises as Joel worked away at a block of wood, provided the perfect conditions for reading about Dr Daniela Star’s adventures.

Ellie hovered her hand over the comics spread out around her. Spotting the one she was looking for, she picked it up with a flourish.

“See? ‘Follow us on Facebook for more!’ ” she read off the back cover before turning it to face Joel. “And don’t say that it’s a book with pictures of people’s faces. I’m not an idiot.”

Joel smiled. “I would never say otherwise,” he said, absent-mindedly flicking away some stray wood shavings stuck to his jeans. “It’s just that I haven’t heard someone talk about that website for years.” 

Ellie cocked her head, raising an eyebrow at the unfamiliar word.

“Uh...it was something you could see on the internet.”

Her second eyebrow joined the first.

Joel rubbed at his face with his hand. “Right...how do I explain this? The internet was...a thing that used electricity—”

“Like TV? Or a radio?”

“Yeah, kind of. But these were a bunch of computers—”

“Okay those I know. Astronauts used them to go to space. And there are some really cool-looking ones in Savage Starlight. Bunch of screens and buttons and shit. Never heard of no ‘internet’ though.”

Joel gave Ellie a pointed look. “And you never will hear about it if you don’t stop interrupting me.”

Ellie smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. Go on. Computers?”

“Right. Computers...they were these things that could hold information, yeah? Well, the internet linked them together, so they could send that information to each other.”

“How?” The question slipped out before Ellie could help herself. She clamped her mouth shut, making a show of pinching her thumb and index finger together and miming a zip crossing her lips.

Joel chuckled, dismissing the interruption with a wave of his hand. “Well, at first it was all a bunch of cables. But later they worked out how to send stuff using these uh...waves, in the air.”

Ellie’s eyes bugged out of her head, desperate to ask another question.

“Look, don’t ask me how, I have no idea how it worked. A bunch of people way smarter than me figured out all that stuff. What I cared about was that I could go on the internet whenever I wanted to find out something, and the answer would be there.” 

Ellie watched Joel nod to himself, proud of his explanation. But she still wanted to know more.

Joel caught her expression and conceded. “Okay, you can talk now.”

“Fucking finally.” She got up from the floor with an exaggerated huff and moved to Joel’s workbench. She used her hand to clear away the curled ribbons of wood scattered across its surface, then sat on top of it. She swung her legs as she spoke.

“I’m still not sure I get it. So you could just go to a computer — any computer — and be like ‘Hey. Is it raining in uh...France?’ And it would talk to another computer in France...they’d come up with an answer...and tell you?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“That’s insane. How long did it take to get the answer?”

“Basically right away.”

“That is INSANE.”

“I know.”

Ellie pondered her next question for a moment. “How about all the dinosaurs from the museum. Did the internet know about those?”

Joel nodded. “Look, I’ll save you from going through your whole back-catalogue of weird niche interests...if it was anything humans knew, you could search for it on the internet, and you would probably find it.”

Ellie’s jaw dropped. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Oh my god.” Ellie’s head was reeling. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. What did people search for?”

His brows furrowed. “Hmm...pictures of cats, mostly.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Joel shook his head. “Dead serious.” He smiled softly. “Yeah, the internet was pretty great. You asked about Facebook? Well it...connected people. People shared their stories with the world. Families and friends that were oceans apart could see and talk to each other.” He sighed, clearly lost in fond memories. “We were so lucky. So many people carried the whole world in their pocket, and never gave it a second’s thought.”

Then he frowned. “But the internet was…” he paused, looking down at the chisel in his hand, “...a tool. And like any tool, people can misuse it.”

Ellie looked up at the sudden drop in Joel’s tone. “How?”

He thought for a moment. “We got uh...lazy? I guess. No one thought about things anymore. Anyone could put anything on the internet, including bullshit. But people just took whatever trash they saw there as gospel truth. And when Outbreak Day happened...things got really bad.”

Ellie stopped swinging her legs. Outbreak Day was never an easy topic of conversation for anyone who was old enough to have lived through it. But for Joel especially, that was the day he lost Sarah — and with her, his whole world. She could count on one hand the number of times he had spoken to her about it. She looked at Joel, eyes filled with sympathy, as he went on.

“It’s not like the whole country got infected overnight. And information spreads faster than any disease. Austin was hit pretty early, but I heard about some cities that the infected hadn’t reached yet, and well...in those places, things went to shit for entirely different reasons.” 

He sighed. Ellie could see that he was lost in his memories again, but that these were far less pleasant.

“Some people didn’t take it seriously. The news gave people conflicting information. No one trusted the government to keep them safe. Scammers hawked cures that were too good to be true...and that was exactly what they were — none of them goddamn worked.” 

He threw his chisel on the workbench next to him with frustration. Ellie had to quickly and awkwardly pull her hand away to avoid the sharp tool as it clattered across the work surface.

Joel hadn’t even noticed.

“The problem with the internet was that...well, it amplified all that garbage. It didn’t take long for it to completely come apart.”

It had been a while since Ellie had seen Joel lose his temper like this. At this point she assumed that the conversation was over, but when Joel looked up and saw her surprised expression and retracted arm, he glanced over at the tossed chisel with a look of shame. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm himself. 

Finally, he opened his eyes, muttered a soft apology and retrieved the chisel. When he turned to face Ellie again, he was gently juggling it between his fingers. After a moment, he continued.

“But for all its problems, there are still times where I do miss it. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have something bug you for days, knowing that back then you could have figured it out in a second with a Google search.”

Ellie considered interrupting again to ask about the new unfamiliar word, but let the moment pass. One would hardly describe Joel as a ‘talker’. Moments like these — where Ellie managed to get him on a roll, even considering the flash of frustration — were so rare that she knew it was best to just enjoy them while they lasted. 

Joel scratched at his beard and cleared his throat. “Now all that we have left are books...plus the random stuff that old fogies like me remember well enough to teach to their ungrateful kids,” he finished with an over-dramatic sigh.

Ellie warmed, the same as whenever Joel referred to her as his own. She cherished all the moments like that; like yesterday morning, when Gale from the trading store asked her what her ‘old man’ was up to; or last week, when Dina offered to help pick her and Joel’s matching clothes for the upcoming Jackson Father-Daughter Dance; or last summer, when Joel had returned from a disastrous patrol, and Anne allowed Ellie to rush to his side as per the ‘family visitor rules’ of the medical clinic.

But, when the affirmation came straight from Joel, it was just that much more special.

She stood up from her seat on his workbench and gave Joel a pat on the shoulder before returning to her comic books. She shuffled them together until they sat in a neat stack, then picked them up and turned to face Joel.

“Well, if I ever have kids,” she started, looking down at the pile in her hands, “they are going to be into comics or I will disown them. That is not negotiable,” she said resolutely. 

“But...even without the ‘internet’ , you’ve still managed to make this one,” she gestured to herself, “a half-decent guitar player. I'd say that makes you a pretty good teacher. So if I do have kids one day...would you help me teach them to play?”

Joel smiled gently. “I’d like that.”

This is now

“How the FUCK are we still in Washington? Does it ever end???”

Ellie tossed the complaint over her shoulder as they rode past a sign marking their arrival in Kennewick, yet another town in the north-west state.

Tommy chuckled behind her. “The US is a big place, Ellie. It takes a while to get around.”

Ellie hunched her shoulders over her handlebars. “If I had a rocket I could just shoot us into space and then land back in Jackson. We would be there tomorrow,” she grumbled.

“I’ve seen you drive a car Ellie. I don’t fancy my chances in a spaceship with you at the wheel.”

“Fuck you Tommy, I was an excellent driver back in Jackson. That tree grew legs and walked out in front of me,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, not that it matters, but you pilot spaceships with joysticks. ”

“Uh huh.”

Ellie squeezed the brake lever of her bike harder than necessary, bringing her to a skidding halt and forcing Tommy to twist his handlebars to swing wide around her. He stopped ahead of Ellie and turned back to face her with mutinous eyes.

Ellie clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, thoroughly enjoying Tommy’s fury. “See? A safe driver would have left a safe following distance from the vehicle in front of them. You gotta be ready to react to whatever situation presents itself. The road is a dangerous place, Tommy.“ she tsked.

“I didn’t crash into ya, did I? I’d call that an unmitigated success, all things considered,” he muttered, making a big show of stretching out his bandaged leg.

“Still blaming the leg, huh? You won’t be able to do that for much longer, old ma—” she paused, the term of endearment caught in her throat. She coughed to clear it, hoping Tommy hadn’t noticed. “...you old coot. Dina’s shoulder is already miles better.”

As if on cue, Dina appeared from behind a nearby building. When they had spotted the town, Dina had ridden ahead to scope it out. Judging by the smile on her face, she liked what she had seen. She called out to them as she approached. “If you two have had enough of bickering like an old married couple, it might interest you to know that I’ve found somewhere to spend the night.”

---

Dina’s chosen spot was an old library in the historic part of the town. Ellie could see why — it was well-built, mostly solid brick and with few windows that they would need to keep an eye on. They wheeled their bikes through the double doors of the front entrance, parking them where the chute built into one of the walls used to spit out returned books.

Ellie strolled over to the check-out desk, spotting a detailed map hanging on the wall behind the counter. The fold-out map they had brought with them from Jackson only covered the upper-left region of the country, so this framed representation of the continental United States drew her eye.

Ellie lifted the frame off the nail and lay it on the counter behind her. She curled all of her fingers into a fist except for her index finger, which she waved over the map as she searched for familiar names.

Dina had joined her by the time her finger landed on Boston. Ellie could feel her eyes on her as she dragged her finger along the glass towards the centre of the country.

“Is this where you went with Joel?”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, nodding. She started listing off the locations as her finger traced their cross-country adventure. “Boston...Pittsburgh...there was this university somewhere in Colorado...Salt Lake City.” She paused over the name for a moment before sliding her finger further up the map, “and then Jackson, where I met your sorry ass.”

“‘Sorry’? Of all the ways you’ve described this ass, I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.”

They heard Tommy’s barking laughter coming from deeper in the library. 

“Dina!” Ellie exclaimed. She could feel her face heating up — no doubt it was bright red — as Dina gave her a shit-eating grin. She gave Ellie a quick kiss on the cheek as an apology and leant down to inspect the map more closely.

Dina’s eyes traced the trail that Ellie’s finger had created in the layer of dust. Her face was so close to the glass that when she exhaled, her breath created eddies in the dust that remained.

“Wow, Ellie. Now that you’ve gone to Seattle, you have literally crossed the whole country. Boston must feel so far away now, huh?”

Ellie shifted from foot to foot. “Yeah, I guess so. Far away, and a hell of a lot smaller than it used to feel.” She twisted her lips together in thought. “Most of the places I’ve been to have been pretty shit though, besides Jackson. It would be nice to just pick somewhere and stay. In Jackson...or otherwise.”

Dina perked up at that. “Don’t tell me that you’re finally warming up to the farm idea?”

Ellie smiled. “I might be. I’ve been thinking about potential names.”

Dina furrowed her brows. “Uh...for the baby? Weird change of topic there.”

“What? No. I meant for the farm animals.”

“Ah, right...oh brother, do I even want to hear them?”

“Well so far I’ve got...Mooriel the cow, Hamlet the pig, and Princess Lay-a the chicken. Oh! You’ll love this one, it’s my favourite: Ewe-gene the sheep.”

Ellie could tell that the names were well received — Dina looked like she was about to murder her then and there. She turned away to yell vaguely into the building, “Hey Tommy! I have a proposal for you — ever wanted to live in a farmhouse? A vacancy has just opened up.”

Tommy’s chuckle echoed down the hallway that led to the front entrance, and he limped into the room shortly after. “Sorry, sounded like y’all were having a moment, I didn’t want to intrude. What’s this about a farmhouse?”

Ellie watched Dina gesture at the map on the counter. “Pick a state and we’ll go. I don’t care where. It just has to be somewhere that I’ll never have to hear another awful pun out of this one’s mouth.”

Tommy raised his hand to scratch his beard. For a moment he looked like he was seriously considering it, and Ellie was about to tell him that Dina was just kidding when she caught his sly grin. It was only there for a moment before he schooled his expression back to sincerity.

He strolled over to the map and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he raised his head and looked Dina dead in the eye. “May I suggest Pun-sylvania?”

Ellie burst out into laughter and gave Tommy a high-five. He took a mock bow as Dina rolled her eyes at both of them. However, she failed to hide her smile as she replied, “You two keep it up like this, and we’ll ride all the way to Punch-sylvania.”

“Heyyy, there’s my gal,” Ellie said, bumping their shoulders together and sharing Dina’s grin. 

Ellie returned her attention to the map. “Anyway. I know Pennsylvania already. And I’ve had more than enough of Washington. But these other places...there are so many that I’ve never even heard of.” She cast her eyes around the map, squinting through the dust to read some of the names. “Florida...Alabama...Kentucky...Kansas...Missouri...Arkansas…”

Tommy looked up. “What was that last one again?”

“Uh, Arkansas ?”

Tommy laughed. “Kiddo, it’s Arkansas.”

To Ellie’s surprise, he ended the name with an ‘aw’ sound instead of the ‘as’ sound that Ellie had been using.

Ellie blinked. “Well that makes no fucking sense. This one’s Kansas,” she started, jabbing at the middle of the map then dragging her finger down and to the right, “why isn’t this one ‘Ar-Kansas’?”

“Shoot Ellie, I dunno why. It’s got something to do with the French.”

“Well the French are dumb,” Ellie said, crossing her arms, “and I don’t see any of them here to stop me, so it’s Ar-Kansas now.”

“Suit yourself,” Tommy shrugged.

Ellie spun the map around on the counter so it was facing Tommy. “Well while mister know-it-all is gracing us with his presence,” she said, waving her hand over the map. “I’ve always wondered where Austin is. Have at it.”

Tommy brushed away at the dust near the bottom of the map and pointed to the middle of the largest state there without hesitation.

Dina piped up next to Ellie. “No way, that’s not that far from Roswell,” she said, her finger tapping at the state next to it. “Maybe you guys were around when I was a kid?”

Tommy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, unlikely. Joel and I didn’t stay in Austin for very long after Outbreak Day...too many bad memories there, ya know?”

He cleared his throat awkwardly in the resulting silence. “Uh yeah, we got outta there pretty quick. Spent a few years working our way up the east coast until we landed ourselves in one of the Boston smuggling rings. Joel stayed, I joined up with the Fireflies and well...you know the rest.”

Ellie’s jovial mood quickly disappeared as Tommy recounted the rather unsavoury parts of his history, before he had settled in Jackson. She had to steel her expression as memories of how Joel had been back then sprung into her mind.

Before she figured out how Abby was involved in all of this, Ellie’s prime suspect for Joel’s murderer was someone from his smuggling days. He was much more of an asshole back then, and had crossed a lot of people. By the time they left Boston together, Joel had left plenty of bad blood in his wake.

But in the end, it always came back to the fucking Fireflies. One way or another. Riley and Tess believed in them, and were given a bite for their trouble. Whereas Joel...well, Joel made the wrong choice. But the Fireflies were the ones that had given him his options, and put the gun to his head to make him choose.

And now he wasn’t even here.

She couldn’t get mad at him anymore.

She couldn’t demand that he tell her why anymore.

She couldn’t forgive him anymore.

Ellie clenched her fists, for once recognising the telltale signs of an episode starting to creep up on her. Not here. Not now. Please. Her fingers were curled so tightly that her ragged nails drew blood from her palms.

The pain sent a shiver up her spine. Ellie turned and ran out of the room before either Tommy or Dina could stop her.

---

Eventually Dina found her in one of the non-fiction aisles. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the shelf. Her elbows were on her knees and she was cradling her head in her hands.

Ellie watched Dina’s boots sidle up next to her through her fingers.

“Been a while since we’ve seen so many books, huh?” Dina said, breaking the silence with a cautious tone.

Ellie knew that she was referring to the old library outside Jackson. The one that harboured copious amounts of dead weed in its basement. Dina couldn’t have known that Ellie had a more recent, and more painful, memory that overshadowed that fond moment.

Ellie could feel Dina’s eyes on her, but stayed quiet. Only when she felt Dina’s shoe nudge at her own, did Ellie raise her head and look at her.

“Can you say something?” Dina whispered, lip quivering. “Yell. Cry. Throw things.”

She sat down on the floor next to Ellie and rested her hand on Ellie’s knee.

“Just...let me in. Please.”

Ellie sighed, releasing the muscles in her neck and letting her head fall backwards. It was a move she regretted instantly — the back of her head smacked the metal shelf behind her with a dull clang.

“Fucking really?” Ellie muttered, glaring over her shoulder at the offending shelf as she rubbed her poor head.

Ellie felt Dina cover her hand with her own, and she pulled away gratefully as Dina took over the job of massaging the sore spot.

Ellie stared ahead at the row of books in front of her. After a moment, she started to speak. “Do you remember that day in Seattle? When me and...Jesse...went out to find Tommy?”

Dina nodded.

“We ended up in this huge bookstore. It was blown to shit, like everything else in that fucking city. But anyway, he told me about his mom reading his favourite book to him as a kid. It was a really sweet story. Uh...something about a kid turning into a forest to save his village...fuck, what was it called?”

Ellie frowned. She could somewhat play back that conversation in her head, but the visuals had faded around the edges. And when Jesse got to saying the name of the book, her mind only supplied her with a few indiscernible, muffled syllables. It was like watching the memory slip away from her in real-time. She had more than a few memories that were starting to feel like that.

“I think about Joel every day. But sometimes...sometimes I somehow forget what his voice sounds li—sounded like.” She finally turned to face Dina. Dina gave her a sorrowful look and moved the hand that had been massaging Ellie’s sore head around to cup the side of her face. Her thumb brushed away the tear that dripped from Ellie’s eye.

“It’s only for like, a second. Then it comes flooding back. But that second is fucking terrifying.”

They sat in silence for a minute as Dina continued to caress her face. Ellie was lost in the sensation for a moment, but then her eyes drifted to the shelf over Dina’s shoulder and spotted a memorable purple spine.

“Okay...fuck Melvil Dewey.”

Dina had developed a level of tolerance for Ellie’s random topic changes, but Ellie could tell that this one still threw her for a loop. Dina pulled her hand away from Ellie’s face, instead curling it into a fist and using it to support her own head. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Ellie.

“Uh..why do we hate Melvil?”

Ellie waved her hand at the shelves around them. “We’re in the 520s aren’t we?”

Dina still looked confused, so Ellie reached her hand out and ran her finger along the row of books behind her. Most of the titles had faded into illegibility, but enough of the plastic stuck-on library labels had survived the pervasive damp of the library that Ellie was able to make out the familiar digits: they ranged between 520 and 529, followed by a decimal and a string of numbers and letters. Back in Jackson, her bookcase was stuffed with former library books that were all tagged in the same fashion.

Her finger stopped on the book that had originally caught her eye and she pulled it down from the shelf. ‘An Idiot’s Guide to Space’ , the cover loudly proclaimed.

She brushed her fingers over the book, tracing the outline of the planet and stars on the cover.

It was the last book Joel had read before…

Before he…

Suddenly, Ellie didn’t want to touch the book anymore.

She threw it to the floor and they watched it disappear under the shelf, hearing it slide to a halt somewhere in the aisle next to them.

Ellie twisted her torso to reach for her backpack. She pulled the zip down sharply and rifled around until her fingers closed around the worn spine of her journal. She took it out and balanced it on her lap, turning to face Dina again with a newfound sense of anger.

“Is this all there fucking is, Dina? We live, we die, we’re forgotten?”

Ellie ignored the startled look on Dina’s face in response to her abrupt change in tone. Instead, she yanked open the cover of her journal.

“We fight. And fight. And fight.” she muttered with increasing agitation, pausing between each statement to turn a page. “Then we die. It’s considered fucking lucky — lucky! — if we get to be buried near people we love. How fucking fucked is that?!” 

She turned another page furiously, but then she drew in a sharp breath. Her voice dropped and she whispered, “And if not...we get left behind. Completely fucking alone.”

She had finally found what she was looking for: her sketch of the Seattle skyline from Jesse’s tree.

Dina hadn’t seen it before.

Ellie spun the open journal around and shoved it into Dina’s hands. She watched Dina quickly scan the page, lingering on the caption Ellie had written at the bottom of the drawing. 

Ellie raised her voice again. “We end up in some shitty grave under a shitty tree in a shitty city. And the shitty people who put us there will never ever see us again.”

Dina just continued to stare at her with those big eyes of hers.

So earnest. So free of judgement. So full of forgiveness.

Ellie hated it.

“Can you fucking say something?” Ellie said, a barb in her voice as she threw Dina’s earlier plea back at her.

Dina looked down at the journal, taking one last look at the sketch before gently closing it. She put it on the ground beside her then turned to face Ellie again, raising her hands like she was approaching a frightened animal.

When Dina lay her hand on Ellie’s shoulder, she flinched at the contact but did not pull away. Oh so gently, Dina touched her more and more until Ellie found herself wrapped up in Dina’s arms.

“I miss them too,” Dina whispered softly, “so, so much.”

Finally, Ellie allowed herself to cry in earnest. She felt Dina tangle her fingers through her hair, holding her as the sobs wracked her body.

Gun to her head, Ellie wouldn’t have been able to say what she was crying over. Joel? Jesse? Henry? Sam? Tess? Riley? It was all one big ball of hurt inside her stomach. None of them deserved to die, especially if the price was for Ellie to still be alive. They had so much to give to the world, and the world cast them aside like they were fucking nothing.

Ellie didn’t know how long they sat there, but eventually she ran out of tears, her sobs subsiding into the occasional shiver.

Dina was the first to break the silence, speaking in a way that Ellie knew meant that she was choosing her words carefully. “I won’t let you think, for a fucking second, that they will ever be forgotten,” she said with conviction. “We will visit Joel’s grave in Jackson. You will play his guitar and sing the songs he loved.”

Ellie felt Dina reach behind her and heard the distinctive sounds of her backpack being rifled through. When Dina returned to their embrace, she reached down and held Ellie’s hand in her own. Ellie looked down and watched Dina fasten Joel’s watch around her wrist.

“He’ll be with you, always, Ellie,” Dina whispered.

Ellie stared at the watch in silence. Much like the busted up old thing, time seemed to stop as she stared at her reflection in the shattered crystal.

But she eventually had to blink, which broke the hold that the watch had over her. She sniffed and looked up at Dina. “And Jesse?”

Dina considered the question for a moment. “That was a beautiful sketch. I know he would have loved it. And,” Dina paused to rest her hand on her belly, “I know that we’ll see him every day in this baby. We’ll...we’ll go back to Seattle when they’re older. We’ll take them to Jesse’s tree and we’ll tell them his story. We had to leave Jesse there but...his memory will never die.”

Ellie felt a tiny bit of warmth as Dina’s words painted a picture in her mind — her and Dina, older but happy, were standing with linked hands in the ruins of Seattle. They were looking at the weathered carving on that fallen tree, while a scrappy kid laughed and climbed around its roots.

“Oh shit.”

“What?”

“I just remembered the name of Jesse’s book.”

The corner of Dina’s mouth turned up slightly. “See? Never forgotten.”

Dina drew Ellie back into the hug. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, Dina alternating between softly kissing Ellie’s forehead, running her hands up and down her back, and occasionally drifting up higher to gently caress the bump on Ellie’s head from earlier.

Eventually Dina patted Ellie’s knee. “Come on. I saw the children’s section on my way here, it looks decent. I wanted to take some with us anyway, and now we can see if they have a copy of Jesse’s book too.”

Ellie nodded and pulled away from Dina’s arms. With a groan, she got to her feet then turned to help Dina up from the floor.

“So uh...how many kids’ books about space can I take?”

Dina smiled. “As many as you want. Just remember that you’ll be the one to carry them all the way back to Jackson.”

Ellie returned her smile. “Challenge accepted.”

Chapter Text

That was then

One of Dina’s earliest memories was also one of her fondest.

The day had started simply enough — just one of the many that she spent with Talia while their mom was out scavenging. They had lived in the same abandoned house for the past few nights, which Dina knew meant that they were due to move on soon. 

They never stayed in one place for long. Her mother preferred to move around to different areas before they drew too much attention to themselves. But Dina had liked this house, and was going to miss it. The three of them had been sleeping in the main bedroom, where the bed was so large that Dina could snuggle in between her mom and her sister. It was calm. Cosy. Safe.

It had been Dina’s idea to pick some of the wildflowers in the overgrown front yard to thank the house for protecting them, so she was the first to spot her mother walking up the road. She placed one last stem in the empty tin can that she was using as a vase and stood as her mom reached the gate.

“Hey honey,” she greeted Dina with a tired smile, “those are beautiful.”

Dina held the can up to her mom so she could have a closer look. “It’s a present for the house. Look! Yellow, pink AND white,” she said proudly, pointing to each of the flowers in turn.

“Can you tell that we were learning about colours today?” Dina heard from behind her.

They both turned to face Talia as she stepped off the porch with a smile. She greeted her mom with a one-armed hug and a quick peck on the cheek, and reached down to ruffle Dina’s hair.

Dina ducked her head and batted Talia’s hand away. “I wanted to get those pretty red ones too...” she said with a huff. She pointed to a house up the hill from them, where she could still see the bright red flowers spilling out from a windowsill planter box, “...but Talia wouldn’t let me go there alone.” She looked at her big sister with a pout.

Her mom knelt down to look Dina in the eyes. “You know she is right, Dina. You need to be careful. It’s not safe out there for a six-year-old.”

“I’ll be seven in a month, mom!” Dina protested, sticking her lower lip out further. 

Her mom laughed and scooped her up in her arms. Dina squealed in delight, pout quickly forgotten as her mom lifted her up off the ground. Dina wrapped her legs around her mom’s waist as her mom peppered her face with kisses.

“And you will be the bravest seven-year-old the world has ever known,” her mom said, nuzzling their noses together, “but...you still need to listen to your sister. What Talia says, goes, okay?”

Dina sighed over her mom’s shoulder. “I know, I know. What Talia says, goes,” she repeated sincerely.

“There’s my girl,” her mom said, carefully lowering Dina to the ground, “thank you Dina.” She stood up straight and turned to Talia. “Anyway, I came back earlier today because I’ve found something for you, Talia. Are you girls all packed?”

Talia frowned. “Um yeah, we always are. I thought we had one more night here though?”

“It’ll be worth it. Dina, go give the house your present, and both of you go get your bags. It’s not far; we’ll have plenty of daylight left there if we leave now.”

---

“Ready, Talia?”

A gentle sunbeam from the late summer sun streamed into the store. It bounced off the walls and the peculiar objects that were lined up on display racks, creating pretty patterns of light on the floor. Dina had been watching the lights with fascination. She had already stood in several different places around the strange shop — an optometrist, she thinks that was what her mom had called it when they had first arrived — to see how blocking the light with her body affected the pattern on the floor. Now she was holding her hands up to the beam directly, folding her fingers in different ways to make various shadowy figures appear on the floor. She had just managed to create a decent-looking cat by adding her elbow into the game when she heard her mother’s question.

Dina dropped her arms and watched her mom approach Talia. Her mom had something in her hands — Dina looked closely and saw that she was holding something that looked like the things on the racks that surrounded them.

“These are called glasses, honey. You wear them like this.” Her mom briefly demonstrated on her own face, unfolding the glasses and balancing the middle on the bridge of her nose, tucking the long ends behind her ears. She took them off and offered them to Talia. “Do you want to try this pair on?”

Talia nodded hesitantly, tilting her head up so her mom could slip the glasses onto her face. From Dina’s angle, she could see that they distorted the appearance of Talia’s eyes. Specifically, the glasses made her eyes look much bigger, and after Talia blinked a couple of times, they widened even further to comedic proportions.

She pulled the glasses down her nose and looked at her mom over them, then pushed them back up to look through them again. “Mom, what is this?!” she asked in a shocked voice.

Their mom broke out into a grin and clapped her hands together. “I knew it! You’re hyperopic!”

“I’m what?”

“Farsighted! You’re farsighted, Talia! Are you seeing me better now?” she asked eagerly, stepping closer to Talia and adjusting the placement of the glasses on Talia’s nose.

“Yes! Mom, yes! What..what is this?” Talia asked again, slipping her fingers under the glasses to rub at the tears that were gathering there.

“I wasn’t sure when you were younger. I thought you might have just been a clumsy baby,” her mom started, laughing gently, “but then I saw how you were having trouble reading sometimes...” she paused when she saw that Talia’s cheeks had turned red. “Oh honey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of! I was an optometrist. This was precisely my job before the...well, before. I helped plenty of kids just like you.” She reached out to caress Talia’s cheek. “I’m just sorry that it took me so long to realise what was going on. And after that, it took me even longer to find one of these places.”

Talia blinked back tears and shook her head. “No, don’t…” her voice cracked, so she cleared her throat before continuing. “This, this is amazing mom. Thank you,” she said, looking around the room like she was seeing it for the first time.

Dina had been standing off to the side, grinning stupidly at Talia’s delighted reaction. Talia caught her eye and walked over to her, kneeling to look at Dina closely. She raised her hands up and patted at the sides of Dina’s face. Dina watched Talia’s eyes jump between the various freckles she knew were scattered across her face.

“Deedee,” she breathed in awe. “I never realised...how ugly you are,” she said with a grin. Dina laughed and poked her tongue out at Talia, too happy for her sister to bother reacting to the pretend insult. She leant forward to kiss Talia on the nose, bumping the glasses gently with her own nose as she pulled away.

Dina wanted to see what all the fuss was about herself, so she turned to the nearest display stand and pulled a pair of glasses down. She put them onto her face and looked around, but couldn’t see any difference, as far as she could tell. She looked at her mom in confusion.

Her mom stepped forward and pinched Dina’s cheek lightly. “Sweetheart, you don’t need glasses, don’t worry. Besides, the ones out here in the shop are just for show.” She pointed at the two pieces of glass in the pair sitting on Dina’s face. “These are called lenses. The ones on display just have normal glass.” She walked over to the counter at the back of the room. “We need the special ones back here.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon in that store, rifling through the glasses stashed behind the counter that had been prepared for long-gone customers. After their mother explained what sorts of numbers to look for on the labels, Dina ploughed through the boxes of glasses and enthusiastically offered the promising pairs for Talia to try. At first, Talia was hesitant to remove the glasses that had corrected her vision for the first time in her life, but after some gentle coaxing from her mother, she realised that there were other ones that did an even better job. Eventually, she settled on a pair with an oversized round frame and a dark wood-look finish that corrected her sight the best.

Their mom peered at the label of the box that it had come from. “Thank you Adelaide for having a prescription so close to my daughter’s,” she said with a smile. “Come on you two, photo time. While the light is good.”

Dina practically shot up from the floor with excitement. When her mother had shown her the camera she always carried with her, Dina had been fascinated by its intricate mechanics. But her mom had said that there was little film left, and that they didn’t have any spare batteries, so this was the first time that Dina would actually see it being used.

Camera in hand, their mother ushered both of them over to the wall next to the counter. It was bare except for a strange poster: it had a bunch of random letters printed on it, which got smaller in size the further down the poster they were. Dina made a mental note to ask her mom about it later, but for the moment she followed her mom’s directions to stand by the poster, in front of Talia. Talia wrapped her arms around Dina and rested her chin on top of Dina’s head.

“Say cheese!”

There was no need for that instruction as their mom snapped the photo — both sisters were already grinning widely.

Their mom lowered the viewfinder from her face and gave them a thumbs up. She looked down at the camera with a smile. “We’ll have to find a place that can develop these pictures eventually. I can’t wait to see how they all turned out.”

She offered a hand out to each of her daughters, and led them out of the store and into the setting sun.

---

“Deedee? Deedee?!”

Dina heard the distant call from deep inside the house and couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

I’ve asked her so many times to call me Dina. I’m almost thirteen, I’m not a kid anymore!

But she knew how much shit she would be in if she ignored Talia. “I’m here!” she called out.

She got an exasperated sigh in response. It was louder, so Talia was getting closer to her, but not by much. “Wow, so helpful. Where is ‘here’?”

“Garage! Be careful when you come in.”

Dina heard a series of banging and scuffling noises, accompanied by a few choice swear words, before Talia appeared at the door that connected the garage to the rest of the house. Her eyes were bleary, her cheeks were flushed, and her head was crowned with flyaways that had pulled out from her braid. Clearly, she had just woken up. She cast her eyes around the space until she spotted Dina crouched next to the open roller door.

“Have you seen my gla—hey! What are you doing with those?!”

Dina looked down at the pair of glasses in her hand guiltily. “I’m just borrowing them for a second. Come here, watch your step.”

She could tell that Talia was mad, but she followed Dina’s instructions and carefully wove around the contraption that Dina had set up in the garage. When Talia reached her side, Dina patted the concrete next to her in an invitation to sit down.

Talia flopped onto the ground with a grumble, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I hope you’re being careful with them.”

“I am, don’t worry. Now be quiet and watch.”

Dina held the glasses out into the morning sun, covering one of the lenses with her hand. She tilted the other one back and forth, finally finding the right angle to shine a sharp beam of light onto the driveway.

“Glad those optic physics lessons from mom are finally coming in handy,” Talia muttered beside her.

“Would you be quiet? They were in here before you started yelling. It’s a miracle you didn’t scare them off completely.”

“Scare who off?”

Dina held her finger up to her lips to ask for silence again before returning her attention to the road at the bottom of the driveway. Specifically, the dark space underneath one of the cars parked on the road.

Dina jiggled the glasses in her hand, making the bright point of light on the driveway dart around briefly. After a moment, she was rewarded with the sight of two small cats emerging from underneath the car.

They approached the light curiously, and Dina gradually tilted the glasses to lead them into the garage. She slowly reached down to grasp at the length of twine by her foot. It ran up over one of the beams supporting the roof, forking on the way back down to connect to the two boxes she had set up in the middle of the garage. She yanked at the end in her hand and the boxes flipped over simultaneously, revealing a pile of pillows under one and a bowl underneath the other.

The pungent smell of canned fish filled the air. At first the cats were startled by the flying boxes, but they were quickly drawn to the smell of the food coming from the bowl. They gave Dina and Talia a cautious glance, but the temptation of the meal was clearly too great. Soon they were happily sticking their little heads into the bowl.

Once the cats were comfortably eating, Dina broke the silence. “That one’s Goony,” she said, pointing to the grey one that was missing one of its hind legs, “and that one’s Ghost,” she continued, pointing to the larger white one.

“And that was last night’s dinner,” Talia said in dismay, watching the fish quickly disappear down the cats’ throats.

“I saved mine for them. You know I hate tuna,” Dina said, pulling a face and sticking her tongue out.

Talia sighed. “How many mornings have you been down here Deedee?”

Dina grimaced internally at the nickname again. But she knew that a cheeky grin was needed to pull off her confession, so she schooled her face into the appropriate expression before responding. “Uh...since we got here last week.”

“I should have known that you hadn’t suddenly become an early bird for no reason,” Talia said, shaking her head.

“This is the first time I tried feeding them though, honest! I mean...we can always find more food. But you know what’s much harder to come by around here? Unconditional love from two adorable fluffballs.”

Talia frowned. “...You tried to touch them, didn’t you?”

Dina glanced down at her arm before she realised what she was doing. Unfortunately Talia caught the look, and her hand darted out to grab Dina’s wrist. She turned Dina’s arm over, revealing the deep scratch that Goony had given her before Talia had arrived. It started under the crook of her arm, stopping just shy of the hamsa bracelet tied around her wrist.

“Um...it looks worse than it is?”

“Deedee! Even I can see that this is bad. It could get infected, you idiot!”

Talia’s raised voice spooked the cats and they bolted from the garage. Dina sighed as she watched them go.

“I was kinda hoping that they’d stay.” Dina was also kinda hoping that Talia would let her use one of the two remaining pictures on their camera’s film roll to take a photo of the cats, but knew that would really be pushing it.

She turned to face her sister, pulling out of Talia’s grip in the process. “My arm is fine, don’t worry about it. But didn’t you see how skinny they were Talia? The poor things. They just need someone to show them a bit of mercy.”

Talia raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure the one most in need of mercy around here is me, for putting up with you for all these years.”

Dina grinned. “You know you love me. Anyway, sorry. I know I shouldn’t have taken your glasses without asking,” she said, wiping the lenses of Talia’s glasses on her shirt and holding them out like a proverbial olive branch.

Talia rolled her eyes, but accepted the glasses and slipped them on. “Just don’t do it again. At least I can do my morning prayers now.”

“Please, like you don’t know the Torah backwards already.”

“Well that is how you read Hebrew...not that you’d know.”

Ouch.

Dina clenched her jaw. That one stung.

Her mom had managed to teach her the basics of the language when she was younger. But compared to Talia, Dina had never shown much interest in the only Hebrew reading material that was available to her. And now she mostly ignored Talia’s well-meaning attempts to teach her. Their half-burnt copy of the Torah, with its wafer-thin pages and densely-packed script, was daunting enough as it was. And, truth be told, Dina still couldn’t look at certain passages without hearing her mom’s voice reciting them in her head.

At least she could see that Talia had regretted the jab the second she had said it. “Um...sorry.” She shifted awkwardly on the floor, uncrossing her legs and shuffling around so she could face Dina directly. “That was a low blow. Would you...like to join me? I’ll read any passage you want.”

Dina shrugged noncommittally. She wanted to set up a more elaborate contraption for the next time Goony and Ghost visited, but she probably still had some ground to make up with Talia for taking her glasses.

“Fine, pray for five minutes...then can we have breakfast? I’m starving.”

“You didn’t have dinner. Of course you’re hungry.” Talia gave her a pointed look. “Fifteen minutes, then breakfast.”

Say what you want about Talia, she never let a conversation be out of her control for long.

“Ten minutes?” Dina countered. She stuck her hand out, which Talia reached out and gripped. But she didn’t shake it; instead, Talia turned her wrist over to examine the scratch again, this time with the help of her glasses. Judging by Talia’s reaction, she didn’t like what she saw.

“First we do something about this arm, then ten minutes, then breakfast.”

“Are the fifteen minutes still on the ta—” Dina started to grumble, but shut her mouth when her sister hit her with her signature Talia Look. 

“Please don’t argue with me Deedee. I’m serious. What I say goes, and I say that this looks like it hurts. A lot.”

Dina pouted, hating it when her sister pulled that line on her. But she had to admit that the scratch was really starting to bother her. “Okay, final offer. Arm, ten minutes, breakfast...and you stop calling me that.”

Dina held her breath as Talia considered the proposal. To her relief, Talia held her hand out again. 

“Oof, you strike a hard bargain. But you’ve got yourself a deal...Dina.”

This is now

To put it lightly, their bikes had seen better days.

By Dina’s count, they had already travelled over 300 miles since they had gained the bicycles back in Renton. The gears were certainly making their protests about that mileage heard every time they hit a rough patch of the highway.

As Tommy had been partly riding and partly towed by Ellie, his bike was fairing the best by far. But Dina had already given up on ever getting hers up to the highest gear again, and she knew that Ellie’s saddle was only hanging onto the rest of her bike thanks to prayer and copious amounts of duct tape.

When they finally pulled into a city called La Grande for the night, Dina had to admit that they were probably only a few days out from their bikes shaking themselves apart.

Ellie seemed to be reading Dina’s mind, as usual. After Ellie had swung her leg over her bike and stretched her back out, she frowned and rubbed at her behind. “I can’t tell which is going to give out first: my saddle, or my ass. Anyone want to make a bet?” she asked, directing the question to Tommy and Dina as they massaged out their own aches and pains.

“Pretty sure my ass is still back at the Oregon border. I definitely haven’t felt it since then,” Dina said, joining Ellie in her commiseration. “I miss Shimmer. Being saddle-sore from horses is one thing. THIS is a whole new realm of torture.”

Ellie smirked. “I miss her too. She was a good horse…” she drifted off. Dina mentally kicked herself for bringing up Ellie’s former horse — no doubt, her mind had immediately jumped to Shimmer’s gruesome demise. She walked over to Ellie and put her hand on her shoulder as a gesture of support.

Surprisingly, when Ellie turned to her, she was smiling. “Hey, do you remember that herd we saw in Baker City? When we were going to Seattle?”

Dina raised an eyebrow. “Uh yeah, vaguely…”

“I hope we see them again. I could totally lasso one and get it to take us back to Jackson.”

“Ellie, those weren’t someone’s horses that had escaped from a stable. They were proper wild. You’d have more luck getting Tommy into a dress than taming one of them.”

Tommy laughed at the comparison. “Honestly, if it means we get back to Jackson sooner, I’d be willing to take one for the team.”

“You would look beautiful Tommy,” Ellie agreed, a cheeky glint in her eye. “I’ve already dragged you halfway across the country. You might as well dress like a princess too. It’ll really complete the picture.”

Tommy was still straddling his bike. As Ellie was speaking, he swung his good leg over the frame to sit on his bike side-saddle. He blew a kiss to Ellie, who laughed as she mimed catching it, then tossed it over her shoulder. Tommy pretended to faint in response to Ellie rejecting his gesture.

Dina watched the exchange between the two of them with amusement. Ever since Ellie’s almost-episode when they were in Kennewick, Dina had tried to be more careful when she talked to Ellie. What things she mentioned...and didn’t mention. But seeing Ellie like this, laughing and sharing a smile with Tommy, made Dina forget all about that for a moment.

---

Tommy tossed another splintered chair leg into the fireplace of the house they had picked to stay in. It was going to be a brisk night, and the three of them had unanimously agreed to sleep in the living room together to be close to the open fire.

The sun was about to set, and they were starting to settle down for the evening — Tommy was in his sleeping bag, leaning up against the back of one of the couches as he pulled apart and thoroughly cleaned the components of his hunting rifle. Ellie was on the floor too, having dragged some of the couch cushions over to the corner of the room. She had her back to the rest of the room and was reading a book, occasionally adjusting the angle that she was holding it to best catch the light from the fire.

Dina didn’t recognise the book. As far as she knew, when they left Jackson Ellie had only taken her journal with her. She must have picked this one up from the Kennewick library at some point — how she had any room left in her backpack after she had ransacked the children’s section for all the books that even mentioned space, Dina had no idea. But she was glad that Ellie was reading something tonight, instead of the silent brooding that Dina had caught her doing for the past few nights.

Dina still had no idea how to approach this most recent development in Ellie’s mood. It was almost like Ellie thought she had a weekly allowance of Dina’s support, and that she had blown all of it already on their conversation amongst the library bookshelves. And now, instead of actually talking to Dina about the heavy shit, she either changed the subject, deflected with some dumb joke, or just folded into herself completely.

The first two were annoying, but the amount of times that Ellie was opting for the third one was seriously starting to worry Dina. It was straying far too close for comfort to an Ellie she hadn’t seen for a while: the Ellie she had to shake into consciousness in that ski lodge’s basement. 

That Ellie had turned to Joel’s body on the floor and seemed to look straight through him. 

That Ellie had wordlessly tied together the stretcher they used to pull Joel’s body out to the horses.

That Ellie had ridden Shimmer, staring straight ahead, the whole way back to Jackson.

That Ellie, to be frank, terrified Dina.

At least this new book seemed to be a good sign. No one knew Ellie for long without knowing how much she loved reading. Maybe this would be a good night for Dina to try talking to her again. After all, Ellie did look very comfortable in her cosy nest, and Dina fully intended on joining her later. 

Decision made, Dina thought, nodding to herself. But she would worry about that when they were getting ready for bed; for now, she was curled up on a couch on the other side of the room, thumbing through the baby book they had found back in Yakima.

Since finding the book, Dina and Ellie had taken to reading a few pages together each day. Ellie had reacted in all the right ways — cooing at the cute diagrams of the newborns, whooping when they found out that Dina’s morning sickness wasn’t going to stick around for much longer, and cringing in sympathy when they learned about the unpleasant parts that were waiting for them at the end of the whole process. 

Ellie always let her pick the section to read, and Dina had purposefully bypassed certain chapters altogether. Tonight, she was going through some of them.

It wasn’t like she was trying to hide anything from Ellie...there were just certain things that she knew she would prefer to read alone, at least for the first time. Certain things, like the chapter she was currently engrossed in:  ‘Chapter 20: When There’s A Problem’ . Dina herself had been ignoring the chapter for the past hour, but now she felt like she had enough courage to get through it. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that, she thought to herself.

Dina was about to ask to borrow Ellie’s pencil to make some notes when she heard her sigh from across the room. Dina raised her eyes over the top of her book and watched Ellie snap her own book shut. She rolled over, fighting for a moment to free herself from the cocoon of blankets she was wrapped up in.

Ellie’s cheeks flushed when she noticed Dina watching her with a raised eyebrow. “Soooo...I just want to have it on the record that I think book burning is wrong,” Ellie started.

“Um...okay?” Dina replied, unsure where this was going. “I guess I can be a witness for that…”

Ellie nodded then looked down at the book in her hands with disgust. “Good,” she said shortly, then tossed the book straight into the open fireplace.

It landed on top of the burning pieces of furniture, open and pages-down, so Dina could catch a glimpse of the cover — an ominous-looking black and white graphic, and the last name ‘Crichton’ in a dramatic red typeface — before it shrivelled up to a crisp.

Dina looked back to Ellie, who was shaking her head. “Guy should have stuck to the dinosaur stuff,” she said, disappointment clear in her voice.

Before Dina could ask for some much-needed context, a clicker’s screech cut through their formerly peaceful night. 

---

Tommy was up in a flash, using the bucket of drinking water they had collected from a nearby creek to douse the fire. Clickers didn’t react to light, of course, but their fire could be spotted if there were runners in the area.

“Hey, did you see a light coming from that house?”

Dina swore under her breath. Runners...or people.

“Shoot Dan, I dunno! Maybe concentrate on the fucking infected first?!”

The two male voices were clear, but still sounded reasonably far away. Either Dina, Ellie and Tommy had missed some infected on their initial sweep of the area, which had now drawn the attention of these guys, or the other way around.

Either way, they heard a few loud gunshots, the responding screams of the infected, and the fight was on.

The three of them used the gunfire to cover the shuffling sounds as they got ready. Ellie had her backpack on already and was quickly pulling her sneakers back on. Tommy looked down wistfully at his disassembled rifle for a moment before pulling out his pistol. Dina hadn’t taken her boots off yet, so she only needed to pull on her backpack and was ready to go.

Dina crept to the window that faced out into the street and tweaked the curtain to the side to assess the situation. In the light of the setting sun she spotted two guys on horseback, taking aim at a stream of infected emerging from the house across the road. As far as Dina could tell in the darkness, they were coming from the basement. 

Idiot.

She was the one who had checked the house earlier in the day, but hadn’t bothered going through the basement.

Ellie joined her at the window. “How many?” she asked under her breath.

“Two people...and way too many infected,” Dina whispered back. She was about to ask what the plan was when one of the horses gave a loud squeal. Dina’s head whipped back to the window just in time to see a clicker sink its teeth into the leg of one of the riders and pull him from his saddle. A couple of runners were right behind it, and Dina watched in horror as they took down the horse.

Suddenly, gunfire came from a new location. Dina pressed her face against the glass and saw that Tommy was out on the front porch, ducking behind one of the pillars between firing rounds from his pistol.

Shit shit shit shit!

They ran out to the porch together, Ellie vaulting over the railing to use a low garden wall as cover while Dina hugged the side of the house until she got to the driveway, ducking behind the car there.

It took Dina a moment to locate the remaining man: at some point he had dismounted from his horse, which was now nowhere to be seen, and had taken cover behind a car parked on the street. Tommy’s gunshots had drawn the attention of the infected away from him and towards the house, and the man was taking the opportunity to reload his rifle.

The infected had to pass through a narrow gate to get into the front yard. Dina watched Ellie take advantage of the bottleneck, waiting until there were a few runners jammed up in the gap before throwing a lit molotov right into the middle of the group.

The infected shrieked as they were bathed in the flaming alcohol. The ones near the back were spared from the initial hit. But Dina was yet to meet an infected with anything resembling critical thinking skills, and these were no exception — they were drawn to the noise of the burning bodies, stumbling forward until they themselves caught fire.

“Fucking morons!” she heard Ellie call out from the other side of the yard as the last runner finally succumbed to the flames.

Ellie emerged from cover, moving to the gate and inspecting her handiwork. The molotov had certainly done its job well, but now their original point of entry and exit was blocked by a pile of crispy infected. She and Tommy moved to join Dina on the driveway, and Ellie managed to shove the carport gate wide enough for them to slip out into the street.

Tommy limped over to the guy that Dina had spotted earlier by the car, while Dina went with Ellie to check on the fallen rider.

“Oh fuck,” Ellie said, cringing as they reached the infected’s first victim. He was definitely dead. In addition to the bite in his leg that Dina had witnessed from the house, his chest was criss-crossed with bloody claw marks, and his left arm had been torn off at the elbow. Dina had to turn away from the gruesome sight.

As she did, she heard a pitiful whinny. She followed the sound and found the dead man’s horse behind a car a few feet away. It was lying on the ground, its big-barrelled chest rising and falling rapidly as it kicked its legs out uselessly by its side. There was a large gash down its flank and a few sets of deep scratches around its neck.

Ellie appeared by Dina’s elbow and looked the horse over. “Uh...we should...” she muttered after a moment, waving the pistol in her hand at the creature. As far as anyone could tell, it seemed like the Cordyceps fungus only infected humans, so the horse was in no danger of turning. But anyone could also see that the wounds were fatal.

Dina pursed her lips, then nodded. “You...okay to do it?”

Ellie took a deep breath, exhaling slowly as she pointed her gun straight between its eyes. “Yep,” she said curtly, then squeezed the trigger.

Her aim was true, and the horse’s head hit the ground straight away. Ellie turned and headed back to Tommy without sparing the horse a second glance. Dina knelt down and gave the horse a pat on the nose before following along behind Ellie.

---

“...and do you have any loved ones in the area? If so, do you have any messages or items that you want delivered to them?”

Dina felt a chill run up her spine as they reached Tommy.

The words had been drilled into her during patrol training, but she was yet to find herself in a situation where she needed to present someone with their Final Wishes. 

It was one of the earliest rules that Tommy and Maria had established for Jackson. Maria herself was the one who taught them to Dina when she first signed up for patrols.

It went like this: if someone with an infected wound either arrived at the gate, or was found by a patrol member, they were not to be shot on sight whenever possible. Before they turned, the person who found them was supposed to ask for their Final Wishes — a series of questions that Maria and Tommy had developed to find out how to help that person in their last moments.

Dina felt humbled to hear Tommy himself saying the words to this man. But it also meant that he must be on the clock. She looked him up and down, eyes quickly spotting the inflamed bite on his shin.

“It’s just me and Dan,” the man responded solemnly. “We’ve been on the road for a long time. We were just passing through and thought this place was abandoned, figured we should try to see what we could find…”

“Dan?” Tommy probed gently.

“Oh, my brother,” the man clarified, turning his head to look in the direction where Dina and Ellie had just come from. Dina saw Tommy’s jaw tighten out of the corner of her eye, but she tried to keep her focus on the man. She could definitely see the resemblance between him and the face of the torn up body they had left further up the road. They had the same floppy brown hair and bridged nose. The dead man’s eyes had been closed, but Dina assumed that he also had the piercing grey eyes that were staring at her now.

“Is he…” the man started, but then trailed off. The question he was trying to ask was obvious. Dina shook her head gravely.

The man sighed, slumping back against the car that he was propped up next to.

Tommy cleared his voice to redirect the man’s attention back to him. Dina took the opportunity to move further away, joining Ellie who was leaning against the front fence of their temporary home. They were still well within earshot of the two men, but far enough away that the man wouldn’t feel surrounded or outnumbered by strangers. Dina knew that Tommy had this covered.

“Charlie, I’m sorry about your brother. I know this is tough. Can you answer these questions for him too?”

The man — Charlie — nodded. “Yeah, I can do that...I suppose your last question gets a ‘no’ from both of us then. There’ll be...there’ll be no-one left when I’m gone,” he said, dropping his head to look down at the floor.

Tommy rubbed at his beard before continuing. “Okay, uh…I won’t lie to you, this next one’s always a bit awkward. How would you like to go out?”

Charlie chuckled mirthlessly. “Guess I don’t have to answer this one for Dan, right?”

“That’s right,” Tommy confirmed. Dina had never heard Tommy use this tone before — his voice was so full of patience and empathy for the man before him. Briefly, Dina wondered how many times Tommy had done this before he had perfected this way of speaking. It certainly seemed like it was a learned skill.

It also seemed like Charlie had decided on his answer. “If you have the bullets to spare, I suppose that one up here wouldn’t be a bad way to go,” he said, tapping the side of his temple with a finger.

“We can do that for you Charlie,” Tommy said, gently patting at his holstered gun. “I’ve only got a few more of these to go, I promise.” He glanced back at Dina and Ellie before continuing. “Do you have any religious or cultural practices that you would like us to observe for your death, or for handling your bodies afterwards?”

“Jeez, uh...Tommy, was it?”

Tommy nodded.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t going to sugarcoat any of this.”

“I’ve found that honesty is the best policy here,” Tommy responded with a shrug. “Anyway, anything that we should accommodate for?”

Charlie blew out his cheeks as he mulled over Tommy’s question. “Nothing for me, but um…” he paused, glancing past Tommy at the pile of infected still smouldering at the gate, “it isn’t a cultural thing or whatever, but Dan hated fire. I don’t imagine he’d take kindly to a cremation.”

Tommy nodded again. “That’s okay, we tend to go for burials when we can.”

“Oh, I suppose that’ll be alright then. For the both of us.”

“Alright, last one now.” Tommy shuffled his feet awkwardly. “There’s never a delicate way to ask this one so I usually just say it. Is there anything that you’d want buried with you? And besides that, can we have your permission to take your things?”

Charlie broke out into laughter. Tommy didn’t react as far as Dina could tell — Dina guessed that he must have seen lots of people respond to that question in the same way.

Eventually Charlie calmed down and wiped tears away from his eyes. “Sorry man, you just gave me this sick mental image of me as a skeleton surrounded by a pile of guns,” he explained, looking up at Tommy with a smile. “Look, none of this stuff is useful to two dead guys. Neither of us are the sentimental type. Just...take everything. We’ve got decent rifles, and there’s a bit of food in Dan’s pack. Oh! And…”

Charlie curled his fingers into an ‘ok’ sign, and stuck the ‘o’ part into his mouth. He drew his lips around his fingers to create a seal and blew hard, sending a sharp whistle echoing through the street.

Moments later there was a responding whinny, and a horse emerged from behind a house near the top of the road. Dina heard Ellie gasp next to her.

Charlie whistled again and the horse started making its way down to them. When it reached Charlie, it lowered its head and nuzzled his chest.

“This is Sweetpea. Although she pretends she’s never heard of that name when you want her to do something, of course,” he said with a chuckle, leaning forward to kiss the horse on her nose.

“Will you take care of her Tommy? She’s...she’s a good horse.”

Tommy nodded, stooping to gather the reins from Charlie’s hands.

“Is there a Jewish horse god that we should be thanking for this?” Ellie whispered beside Dina.

“Jeez Ellie,” Dina muttered, keeping her voice low so the two men wouldn’t hear them.

“It’s weird though, right? We were literally just talking about this a few—”

“I know, but come on, have some respect. The guy’s not even in the ground yet.”

“Alright, sorry,” Ellie mumbled, then clamped her mouth shut.

Shit. Good fucking job Dina. There she goes, disappearing again.

Dina scrambled for something to say. “...besides, that’s not even remotely close to how Judaism works,” Dina tried, layering a bit of humour in her voice in her attempt to coax Ellie back to her.

Ellie’s only response was a forceful exhale of air from her nose.

Dina sighed, slumping back against the fence. Her earlier hope of talking to Ellie tonight was well and truly in tatters now.

“I’m going to go look for some shovels,” Ellie announced abruptly, loud enough for Tommy and Charlie to hear too. Dina watched her stride to the carport gate of their temporary home, push it open and disappear around the back of the house.

“Is it too morbid of me to offer to dig my own grave?” Charlie’s voice drew Dina’s attention back to the conversation.

“Gotta say, that’s the first time I’ve heard someone say that,” Tommy responded, the surprise evident in his voice. “It’s mighty nice of ya...but I don’t think I could ever ask that of anyone.”

“Well you don’t have to. I’m offering to do it.”

Tommy glanced back at Dina, and she responded with a shrug.

“Well...if you really don’t mind, I would appreciate it,” Tommy decided.

Charlie nodded and got up. “Put me to work.”

---

Ellie ended up finding a couple of shovels in the shed behind their house. She and Charlie got to work digging two graves side-by-side in a nearby park. Unsurprisingly, Ellie didn’t accept Dina’s offer to swap places for a bit.

The graves were about a third of the way dug when Dina went back to the house with Tommy. The adrenaline rush from the earlier fight had drained her, and Dina intended to just take a quick nap in the nest of couch cushions and blankets that Ellie had set up. If Ellie wasn’t going to let her help, the least she could do was be there for the end.

However, next thing she knew, she was being gently woken by Ellie. There was dirt on her face and heavy bags under her eyes, and the living room was flooded with sunlight.

Dina felt the guilt drop in her stomach like a rock. She had slept through the night, while Ellie had not slept at all.

“Hey,” Dina murmured.

“Hey. Do you want some breakfast before we head out?”

Dina blinked a few times. “It’s done?”

“Yeah, it’s done.”

The rock in her stomach became a boulder.

Dina glanced out the window and saw Tommy in the front yard, checking over Sweetpea’s tack. He looked similarly sleep-deprived.

She looked back at Ellie, who continued to watch her with expressionless eyes. Dina realised she was probably still waiting for her to answer the first question.

“Um...I’m not very hungry. Unless you want to eat something too?”

“I’m good. Let’s go then?”

Dina nodded, and followed Ellie out of the house.

Chapter Text

That was then

LIAR!

The voice in her head had been screaming the word ever since she found the handheld tape recorder.

LIAR!

It was so loud that for a moment Ellie wondered whether she should apologise to Shimmer for the noise.

LIAR!

But then the moment passed, and Ellie continued to stare ahead, holding the reins in a vice-like grip.

LIAR!

The voice was hardly a recent development. It had made a home in the darkest corners of her mind a while ago. It had been content with quietly feeding Ellie that word whenever she saw Joel, but Ellie always managed to brush it off eventually.

Until now.

Now, there was no ignoring it.

The voice wormed its way into her head, barely a whisper at first, when she woke up in the backseat of that car. When she looked down in confusion at the hospital gown she was wearing. When Joel acted like he was concentrating on navigating the uneven surface of the road out of Salt Lake City.

“Turns out, there’s a whole lot more like you, Ellie. People that are immune. It’s dozens, actually.”

Liar.

The voice grew into a low murmur when they reached the ridge overlooking Jackson. When she bared her soul and shared Riley’s story. When she confessed that she was still waiting for her turn. When Joel looked her right in the eye and said that their search for the Fireflies had been futile.

“No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.”

Liar.

The voice followed her around Jackson, shortening her temper, making her words more cutting than she intended and starting unnecessary arguments. When she was too young to be assigned to paired patrols. When she learned that Dina and Jesse were going out. When Joel took her on a mission for guitar strings, and they came across the bodies of that runaway couple in that coffee shop.

“Ellie! There. Was. No. Cure.”

Liar!

The voice had really liked that. It became insistent after that confrontation. Bold. Demanding. It pestered and pestered her until she couldn’t take it anymore. Until she took Shimmer from the stables in the middle of the night and rode for two days to St Mary’s Hospital. Until Joel found her the next morning, and she finally learned the truth of what happened there.

LIAR!

Ellie stared at Joel’s back as they continued to ride north. Maybe if she glared hard enough, she could burn through his stupid fucking backpack and his stupid fucking jacket, and brand the word into his stupid fucking back. It was going to take them a couple of days to get back to Jackson from Salt Lake City — she had plenty of time to try it.

Ellie even had a back-up plan in case she didn’t manage to spontaneously manifest superpowers. All it needed was for them to run into a horde. Or a few clickers. Hell, a lively runner would do. Ellie wasn’t picky.

She had it all thought out already: she’d stride past Joel with a scoff, right as he was in the middle of sharing some stupid strategy to carefully deal with the infected. Her immune ass would waltz right into the middle of the infected and she would mow them all down with her gun, wasted bullets be damned. Then she would turn back to Joel. 

“Is this why you didn’t let me die in that hospital, Joel? Is this why you doomed the world, Joel? Is this why you took away the one fucking chance I had to make my life matter, Joel? Because you are such a lousy shot, and you decided that you needed me to stick around so I could keep saving you?”

She would blow at the smoke coming from the barrel of her gun as she dropped the killer lines. In fact, the delivery would be so good that it would make the bullet-ridden infected at her feet rise again, hoist her onto their shoulders and chant her name as they carried her into the sunset.

Okay, Ellie had to admit that the plan had slightly gotten away from her at the end there. Infected cheer squad aside, it was a good plan.

But of course, the universe seemed content to continue its 17-year-old tradition of never giving Ellie anything that she wanted — their return to Jackson was completely devoid of a single mushroom-headed bastard.

Ellie entered the main gates ahead of Joel, and she made him wait with his horse outside the stables while she untacked and groomed Shimmer. She shouldered past him on her way out, refusing to look at his face and the kicked-puppy expression she knew would be there. But she had only taken a few steps when he opened his mouth.

“Ellie, I’m so—”

“Don’t.” Ellie muttered, cutting him off. She spun on her heel and finally looked at him. “I was serious back there Joel.” Her voice was pure venom. “Leave me alone. We are fucking done.”

She turned her back on Joel and walked away.

This is now

On their way out of La Grande, they passed by the park where the two brothers were buried.

~~~

“Um, Charlie...if you don’t mind me asking, why here?”

They had been digging for a couple of hours in silence. When they had first reached the park, Ellie had been surprised to see Charlie move away from the trees and start digging in the middle of a barren grassy area.

Charlie paused, looking at Ellie from the waist-deep hole he was standing in, and considered her question.

“I thought I had answered enough questions from your friend Tommy.”

“I’m sorry, I just—”

“I’m kidding, it’s fine.” He leaned against the handle of his shovel and stretched his back out, dropping his head back to look up at the night sky.

“I won’t bore you with my story, Ellie. It’s pretty much the same as everyone else’s. Safe to say, I’ve done plenty of bad things in my life. Made plenty of stupid decisions. Hurt people I cared about.” 

Charlie looked behind them, where his brother’s wrapped-up body lay while Ellie dug his hole. “I sure as hell don’t deserve everything you folks are doing for me. But…it’ll be nice to do something for Dan. He always liked looking at the stars.”

Ellie processed his answer for a moment, then nodded. She turned and stuck her shovel into the ground, lifting yet another pile of dirt out of the hole. She didn’t ask Charlie anything else until they had finished digging.

~~~

Ellie blinked away the memory, pushing down on the re-attached pedal of Tommy’s bike to take her away from the park. They had left Dina’s and Ellie’s bikes behind to rust in peace, and now Ellie was riding Tommy’s former bike, while Dina and Tommy were riding Sweetpea.

Sweetpea was a sturdy horse, and looked like she was used to long days of travelling. But the three of them were strangers to her, and Tommy didn’t want to push her too much while she was still getting used to them. So after they had finished piling the dirt back onto the graves, Tommy and Ellie consulted their map and settled on Union, a small town less than 15 miles away, as their next destination.

Dina was riding with Tommy upon Ellie’s insistence. Ellie hadn’t missed Dina’s guilty expression when she had woken her up that morning. She also hadn’t missed Dina’s frown when Ellie laced her fingers together and crouched in position to give Dina a boost to Sweetpea’s saddle.

In hindsight, Ellie wished that she had been less vocal about her saddle-sore ass. Now it had come back around to...well, bite her in the ass. Because despite her citing Dina’s shoulder and pregnancy as reasons to keep the same travel arrangement all the way home, Dina wasn’t having a word of it. She was adamant that she and Ellie switch places the next day, and refused to get up on Sweetpea until Ellie agreed.

Ellie wasn’t looking forward to the switch. Not because sharing a saddle with Tommy would be awkward, although it probably was going to be — more importantly, Ellie just knew that it would feel way too similar to when she was travelling on Callus with Joel.

That’ll be a problem for ‘tomorrow Ellie’ to deal with.

---

They reached Union in the early afternoon. Besides a few clickers in the town’s firehouse that didn’t put up much of a fight, it was deserted. 

The good thing about these smaller country towns was that a lot of people back then owned horses anyway, so it was easy to find a house with a small stable for Sweetpea. Ellie rode up the driveway and parked her bike on the porch. She started to sweep the house while Dina helped Tommy dismount.

It was a two-storey house but it was small, so checking it took no time at all. It had all the usual hallmarks of a home that was quickly abandoned after the outbreak — the wardrobes thrown open and clothes piled on the bed, the fridge full of faded packaging for food that had long-since rotted away, the note left behind, informing of the former house occupants’ plans in case anyone they knew came looking for them. Signs of just another family torn apart.

Ellie approached the hastily scribbled note sitting on the kitchen counter. These fragments of the past fascinated her, but there had been several occasions now where Dina had found a message that made her burst into tears. After Ellie read the note, she slid it off the counter and tucked it into her backpack — it was probably better if Dina didn’t see this one.

“Ellie?” she heard Dina calling her from the front door.

“It’s clear, come in,” Ellie replied, taking her backpack off and dropping it on top of the dining table. She flopped down on the couch, Dina joining her soon after.

“So...how is Sweetpea?” Ellie started, figuring the latest addition to their travelling party was an innocuous topic of conversation.

“She’s a good horse. Though I’m not sure if Tommy’s sitting weirdly in the saddle because of his leg or something, because she tends to drift to the right a bit.” Dina pulled off her boots and stretched her legs out on the coffee table. She wiggled her toes in her socks and gave a satisfied sigh.

Ellie watched Dina’s feet with amusement for a moment, then returned her attention to Dina’s face. “I noticed. She almost ran me off the road a couple of times when it was narrow.”

Dina exhaled through her nose. “Oops. Sorry about that. You’ll have to make sure Tommy’s paying more attention tomorrow so she doesn’t do the same to me.”

Ellie winced. It was a long shot that Dina would consider cancelling the planned switch, but she had hoped that it had slipped her mind.

“Either of you two planning on giving me a hand at some point?” Tommy’s voice drifted in from outside.

Dina and Ellie looked at each other guiltily — it hadn’t been that long since they had lost Shimmer, but they had already forgotten that compared to a few bikes, travelling with a horse was a bit more of a process.

Dina made a move for her boots, but Ellie kicked them away from her reach.

“Hey!”

“I got it Dina, don’t worry.”

“But you’ve been on the bike all day.”

“Exactly. I haven’t had a chance to get to know our new friend yet.”

Dina sighed and slumped back on the couch. “Alright, fine. But let me do it tomorrow, okay?”

Ellie nodded and stood up, heading back outside to help Tommy.

---

The dirt stuck under Sweetpea’s last hoof came out as one satisfying clump. Ellie lowered the leg, patting Sweetpea’s flank as she returned the hoof pick to the tools they had found in the stable. She waved her hand over the pile, but could only see one brush. She turned to Tommy, who was checking over the bridle and saddle that they had lifted off Sweetpea earlier.

“I got this,” she offered, holding up the brush, “if you wanted to go inside.”

Tommy nodded his thanks and headed towards the house.

Ellie turned back to Sweetpea and started clearing the day’s dirt from her cream-coloured coat. Thankfully, she looked very different to Shimmer, so Ellie wasn’t reminded of her former horse too much.

She smelled the same though. When Ellie finished brushing, she leaned into her mane and inhaled deeply.

~~~

Ellie was back in Wyoming. She was riding Shimmer and navigating the narrow, winding paths of the Wilson Valley patrol route. Jesse was ahead of her, talking to the kid that was sharing his saddle.

They had to cut their patrol short when they came across the young boy. He couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, and was covered in scratches from his attempt at navigating the thick forest, but there was nothing that resembled a bite.

He had been confused and scared when they found him, but Jesse had managed to calm him down eventually. Most of the credit had to go to Jesse’s horse though — the boy had been enthralled with the gentle animal when they approached his hiding spot in a hollow tree. It didn’t take much to convince him to come to Jackson with them when Jesse gestured to his saddle.

When they got back to Jackson, there was a commotion at the front gate. As Ellie would find out later, Joel and Tommy had found the boy’s mother on their patrol route, and had returned with her shortly before Jesse and Ellie got back with her son. It turned out that the boy was a sleepwalker, and had wandered away from their camp a couple of nights earlier. His mother had been looking for him ever since, to no avail. 

It was a miracle that both of them had stayed alive for as long as they did. As Ellie and Jesse approached the gate, the boy recognised his mother, who was talking to Maria. Needless to say, it was a tearful reunion.

The two of them ended up staying in Jackson — just one of the many families that had made the safe haven their home.

~~~

Just as quickly as it appeared, the memory was gone, and Ellie was back in the dimly lit stable.

Ellie stumbled backwards until she hit the side of the stall. It wasn’t like her previous episodes — this memory was pleasant, after all — but the sheer intensity of the flashback had taken her by surprise.

Sweetpea watched her, ears flicking in concern at Ellie’s rapid movement. Ellie forced herself to take a few deep breaths, and eventually her racing heart started to settle.

Once Ellie had calmed down, she approached the horse again.

“Sorry girl,” Ellie murmured, patting her side awkwardly. “That was...weird.”

Ellie dropped the brush on a nearby bench, and once she checked that Sweetpea could easily reach food and water, she headed out of the stable and towards the house.

---

“Hey Di, the weirdest thing just ha—” Ellie froze just past the threshold of the house, screen door swinging shut behind her.

Dina was sitting at the dining table, bent over and reading something. Ellie’s backpack was still where she had left it, but now it was unzipped and half its contents was strewn across the table.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Ellie yelled, striding towards Dina. “Who said you could read my journal?!”

Dina looked up in alarm at the sudden noise. “I’m not—”

“Jesus Dina, is nothing sacred to you???”

“Ellie, it’s not—”

Ellie was a few paces away from the table when she spotted the pencil in Dina’s hand.

“And you’re writing in it?! You’ve got some nerve—”

“Ellie!” Dina said with a raised voice, finally managing to get a word in. “I’ve never touched your journal!”

“LIAR!!!” Ellie screamed that last one. She was seething with rage. Dina remained seated at the dining table, staring at her with wide eyes.

Ellie heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and they both turned to look at Tommy as he entered the room.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked, eyeing Ellie and Dina wearily.

Dina lifted her hand and waved him off. “Tommy, please. I’ve got this.”

He looked at her with concern, but backed away when Dina shooed him for a second time. They waited in silence until he walked back upstairs, then Ellie turned to face Dina.

“You’ve got this,” Ellie repeated mockingly. “I don’t remember saying you could get my journal.”

“Ellie, for fuck’s sake, would you just LOOK for a second?” Dina said, exasperation clear in her voice.

Dina lowered her hand to the table beside her and picked up what she had been reading. Ellie made to grab it, but Dina held it up so Ellie was looking at the cover.

Ellie blinked. And blinked again.

She wasn’t looking at the dark leather binding of her journal. She was looking at a paperback cover with a white text box surrounded by a colourful border. 

Dina was holding the baby book.

“Wha—”

“I haven’t touched your journal Ellie.” Dina spoke slowly and carefully. “I’m not lying to you...when have I ever lied to you?”

Ellie opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water as she tried to answer Dina’s question. She must be too angry to remember…surely there had been one time…

But no. She couldn’t think of a single time that Dina had lied to her. 

Because this was Dina.

Dina, who was always happy to play Mafia during their game nights back in Jackson, despite being terrible at it and never winning a single round.

Dina, who didn’t hesitate to tell Maria when she had forgotten to close the gate to the communal coop, and that she needed help to round up 50-odd escaped chickens.

Dina, who was basically the only person in Jackson that had never exaggerated the number of infected she had taken out during a patrol. Not even once.

Ellie clamped her mouth shut, cheeks burning in shame.

Dina nodded and placed the book back on the table. “Didn’t think so,” she said, pulling out the chair next to her and gesturing for Ellie to sit. Ellie complied meekly.

“I found this progress chart at the back of the book. Here, look.”

The shame in Ellie’s cheeks travelled down her body, wrapping itself around her stomach like a snake.

Heh. Shame-snake. Stomach-snake of shame. Slithery, slidey, sneaky, shaming stomach snake.

Ellie took a deep breath and shook her head to clear the stupid thought. 

Really Ellie? Now is not the time.

She forced herself to instead focus on what Dina was showing her.

The book was open on a grid that spread across both pages. The columns were divided up into weeks, and the rows were split into a few headings: ‘Appointments/scans’, ‘Concerns’, ‘Diet/cravings’ and ‘Mood’ . Dina had pencilled in some notes for most of the weeks near the left-hand side of the chart.

The first row was, unsurprisingly, blank. The one underneath had ‘MORNING SICKNESS, UGH’ pencilled in, with an arrow drawn next to it that stretched across a few weeks in a row. Ellie sighed in relief — after the arrow ended, there was writing in the other rows of the chart, but the cells in this row were mercifully empty.

After the block of morning sickness, the ‘Diet/cravings’ row was filled in. Extensively. Ellie scanned across some of Dina’s entries with amusement: ‘Ate: squirrel and beans. Craved: chocolate’ | ‘Ate: squirrel and beans. Craved: pickles’ | ‘Ate: squirrel and beans. Craved: honey-dipped apples’ | ‘Ate: squirrel and beans. Craved: anything other than squirrel or beans’.

But then Ellie’s breath caught when her eyes flicked to the last row of the chart. Dina had drawn a horizontal line to divide the ‘Mood’ section in half: ‘Me’ was written in at the top, while the bottom was labelled with ‘Ellie’. Rather than writing, Dina had drawn smiley faces in each cell of the row. While hers were mostly either neutral or happy, Ellie’s row started with a few neutral faces before becoming a solid streak of worried faces. Dina wordlessly leant over, pencil in hand, and finished off her entry for the week — a sad face for her, and an angry one for Ellie.

Ellie’s shame-snake twisted violently.

Dina looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she cleared her throat and shut the book before withdrawing her hand.

“Anyway, I wanted to fill it in, so I borrowed your pencil. Um...sorry about the mess,” she said, waving at the things from Ellie’s backpack that were spread across the table. “I mean, really Ellie, I don’t know how you find anything in there. I would have asked you to get it for me, but you weren’t here, so…”

Ellie reached across the table and pulled her backpack towards her. “I have a system…” she mumbled, gathering her stuff in a pile in front of her. As she went to shove everything back into her backpack, she spotted her journal sitting, untouched, in its usual compartment.

Ellie felt Dina’s hand cover her own. She looked up and met Dina’s eyes again.

“Ellie, I get it. I know how important your journal is. I’ve only ever seen the sketch you showed me — the one of Jesse’s view in Seattle,” Dina clarified, squeezing her hand gently. “I would never, never, lie to you about anything. Especially stuff like this.”

Ellie felt the snake coil impossibly tighter around her stomach. She couldn’t hold Dina’s gaze any more, so she looked down at their linked hands.

“I mean, if anything, you’re the one who’s been keeping things from me…” Dina continued, her voice suddenly much softer and cautious. “...you’ve stopped eating.”

When Ellie stayed silent, Dina got up from the table and walked to the kitchen. Ellie heard her rummaging through the cupboards and drawers for a moment. When Dina returned, she was holding an open can of beans, two bowls and two spoons.

“Tommy’s had some already,” Dina said as she sat down next to Ellie again. She scooped the beans out into the bowls, scraping the sides of the can with one of the spoons to get every last bean out. 

As Dina was serving the food, Ellie noticed that one of the bowls had far more beans than the other. To Ellie’s surprise, this was the bowl that Dina pushed towards her.

“Eat,” Dina said, holding a spoon out to Ellie.

Ellie looked down at the bowl in front of her, then back up at Dina. “But...you’re eating for two now...” she tried, not expecting it to get her very far.

“Don’t give me that bullshit Ellie. Even when I was puking every other second, I still had more food in my stomach than you do now. This...isn’t okay.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat ...please.”

Ellie frowned, but took the spoon from her.

Maybe if Dina thought she was making progress with the physical stuff, she’d leave the mental stuff alone.

She took a mouthful of beans and swallowed, wincing as they slid down her throat and hit the blockage caused by her twisted stomach. It was almost like if Ellie listened closely, she would be able to hear the snake hissing at her.

Fuck you, you stupid snake.

She aggressively shovelled a few more spoonfuls of the beans into her mouth and swallowed. She felt the beans pile up behind the blockage, until eventually they couldn’t be held back for any longer. Ellie barely stopped herself from grinning in triumph as she felt the snake release its grip on her stomach and slink away, the beans flowing in to fill the newly vacant space.

Ellie made short work of the rest of her bowl, then ran the flat of her spoon along the bottom to collect the dregs of juice there. She stuck the spoon in her mouth and looked up at Dina, who was giving her an odd look.

“What?” Ellie asked, her mouth forming the word awkwardly around the spoon.

“Nothing.” Dina paused. “Thankyou,” she added quietly, then ate the last few beans from her own bowl.

---

They cleared the table then Dina took Ellie’s hand, leading her upstairs and into the main bedroom. Dina let go of her hand for a second to shove the piles of clothes on the bed onto the floor, but quickly reclaimed it to pull Ellie onto the bed with her.

Ellie scooted up the mattress so she was sitting upright with her back against the headboard. Dina stretched out flat beside her, tilting her head on the pillow so that she was looking up at Ellie.

Ellie opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, trying to search for the right words to break the silence with. ‘Sorry for yelling at you’ was a strong contender, as was ‘Why do you keep putting up with a jackass like me?’. If Dina noticed the false starts, she didn’t say anything.

Eventually something did break the silence, but it was neither Ellie nor Dina. It was a loud snore.

Ellie smirked. She swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood up. She followed the snoring out into the hallway, then gently shut the door to the bedroom where Tommy was fast asleep.

As Ellie returned to their room, she also closed that door behind her. She sat on the bed again, cross-legged this time.

When she looked down at Dina, she noticed that there was an errant bit of hair across her cheek that must have pulled out of her ponytail. Dina smiled as Ellie reached out and tucked it behind her ear.

Dina caught Ellie’s wrist before she moved away again. “Tommy’s got the right idea,” she murmured, pulling on Ellie’s arm until she was lying down too, facing Dina. Dina reached down and started tugging the bedsheet over them.

Ellie stuck her hand out to stop the progress of the sheet up her body. “Wait, what? Sleep, now?”

“Yes. Sleep now.”

“Dina, it’s the middle of the day.”

Dina sighed, then fixed Ellie in her gaze. “Since the last time you slept, you’ve killed a bunch of infected, handled Charlie, and dug a giant hole — plus biked a good 40 miles.” She rattled off the list in a single breath, then raised an eyebrow. “Did I forget anything?”

Ellie blinked slowly. Had she really not slept since all of that?

“Oh yeah. Then you ate about a week’s worth of beans,” Dina added, poking Ellie’s stomach gently.

“Hey!” Ellie protested half-heartedly, giving Dina a weak jab in retaliation. But rather than the soft and supple skin that she was used to, Dina’s belly was firm to the touch.

“Woah...” Ellie breathed. She slipped her hands under the bottom of Dina’s shirt and lay them flat against her stomach. Ellie felt the muscles under her hands tense.

“Your hands are cold,” Dina mumbled.

“Sorry.”

Ellie went to pull away, but Dina laid her own hands over Ellie’s. “It’s okay.”

Ellie smiled softly and slid her hands along Dina’s stomach, marvelling at how different she felt. Dina wasn’t showing yet, but there was definitely something growing inside her.

“It’s starting to feel really weird down there. I know.”

Dina’s hands were still covering hers, so Ellie turned her hands over and laced their fingers together. She played with Dina’s fingers for a while before speaking.

“This is all starting to feel really...real.”

“I know. Is...is real okay?”

Ellie took a deep breath before replying. “Yeah. Yeah, real is okay.”

Dina pulled their linked hands towards her and brushed her lips against Ellie’s knuckles.

Ellie shivered at the sensation. It had been a few days since they had been this close to each other.

“What were you going to say before?”

Ellie furrowed her brows, unsure what Dina was asking about. “Hmm? Say when?”

“Before. When you came in from outside? You were in the middle of saying that something weird had happened.”

Oh. Ellie remembered now. She was going to tell Dina about the strangely intense memory she had triggered when she was in the stable. It felt so inconsequential now.

Ellie shook her head. “Oh uh, it was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

She felt Dina squeeze her hand. “Ellie...you can talk to me. Please. I want to help.”

Ellie sighed.  “Really Dina, it was nothing. Um, Sweetpea just did something that reminded me of Shimmer, that’s all.” 

There. That was kind-of what happened. More or less.

“Oh...are you okay?”

“Yeah, it was no big deal. Really.”

Dina looked like she was still unconvinced.

Ellie really didn’t want to tell Dina more — she still wasn’t sure what had happened in that stable herself — but she was running out of options to end the conversation. Trying a different tactic, Ellie pretended to stifle a yawn.

“A-ha,” Dina said, “I knew you were sleepy!”

“Oh no, you got me,” Ellie said, forcing herself to smile. She tried to ignore the reappearance of her shame-snake as it smugly wrapped around her stomach again. She hated lying to Dina.

“Come here,” Dina murmured, tugging at Ellie’s shoulder.

“Di, I haven’t even taken off my shoes.”

“Stop complaining and just sleep with me.”

Ellie raised her eyebrows.

“Not like that, you ass,” Dina chided. She sat up and reached down to untie Ellie’s sneaker laces and pull them off. “Your feet stink.”

“Like a pile of hot garbage?”

“Exactly,” Dina replied, pulling the bedsheet over them as she returned to her position by Ellie’s side. “Okay, shoes sorted. Anything else? Or can we sleep now?”

“I’m not even that ti—” Ellie stopped to yawn, instantly undermining her own objection.

Her earlier yawn, despite being fake, must have triggered a very real wave of tiredness — Ellie suddenly found herself fighting to keep her eyes open.

“Sorry, what was that?” she heard Dina ask, but she sounded like she was very far away.

“Goodnight Dina,” was all that Ellie could manage to mumble.

“Goodnight, my hot pile of garbage,” Dina replied.

Ellie was too tired to bother objecting to the label. She felt Dina snuggle into her and give her a gentle kiss before she tumbled into sleep.

Chapter Text

That was then

“I’ve decided what I want for my birthday.”

Talia looked up from her breakfast. “Have you now?”

“Yup,” Dina replied, nodding emphatically as she rocked back and forth on her chair.

“Is this feast not enough of a present already?” Talia asked, sweeping her arm over the dining table.

Dina lifted the plate in front of her and pretended to search for more food underneath. After she returned it to the table, she gave the meal in front of her a critical look.

“What? Stale crackers, a mealy apple, and a handful of sour grapes? Yikes Talia, I thought you loved me.”

“You’re the sour grapes,” Talia returned, failing to hide a grin that matched Dina’s. “My baby sister has been thirteen years old for less than eight hours, and she’s already become a dirtbag teenager.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m doomed.”

“You really are. Because this dirtbag teenager demands a birthday present.”

Talia sighed and leant back in her chair, fixing Dina in her level gaze. “Alright fine. Do your worst. What do you want?”

“I want a new photo.”

It was like Dina could see the wiring of Talia’s brain short-circuit in real time. Whatever Talia had thought she might ask for, it certainly wasn’t this. She blinked rapidly a couple of times, the magnification of her eyes due to her glasses giving her the appearance of a flustered owl. “Are you sure?”

“Yup,” Dina replied, pulling her lips into her mouth as she said the word so she could really pop the ‘p’.

“I don’t know…”

“Oh come on Talia, pleeeeease? It’s been fucking ages since the last one!”

“Language!”

Dina smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. But come on! I was six in the last one — six! Practically a baby. It’s time for a new photo.”

Talia pursed her lips as she considered the proposal. Finally, she nodded. “Okay, fine. We’ll do it this afternoon, when the light is good.”

---

“Alright, birthday girl. Are you ready?”

Talia had surveyed the rooms of the house they were staying in, finally settling on the spare bedroom on the second floor. The afternoon sun streamed in through a wide bay window, bathing the room in a soft yellow light.

Talia put her hands on Dina’s shoulders and steered her to a blank wall facing the window. She took a few paces back and held up her hands, each thumb touching the pointer finger on the opposite hand. She peered through the resulting rectangle, stepping this way then that way until the angle looked good.

Dina watched Talia’s process with amusement, but furrowed her brows in confusion when Talia pulled the camera out of her pocket and started lining up the shot.

“Wait, what? Talia, stop.”

“What’s wrong? Is this not your good side?” Talia asked, smiling from behind the camera.

“No, I had meant that I wanted a photo of...of both of us.”

Talia lowered the camera. “Oh. Really?” A distinct blush appeared on her cheeks.

“Of course, how self-centred do you think I am? — Actually, don’t answer that.”

Talia laughed and stepped closer to Dina. “Are you sure you want your lame big sister in your photo?”

“You’re not lame. Now stop fishing for compliments and come here.”

Talia shuffled over and stood on Dina’s left. “This is going to be a lot harder to take myself,” Talia mumbled, flipping the camera around so the lens faced them.

“You can do it,” Dina said, patting her sister’s arm.

Talia nodded and held the camera out in her left hand, stretching her arm as far as she could.

Dina leaned into her big sister and pressed her temple against Talia’s cheek, mindful to not bump her glasses. 

“I think these were called selfies,” Talia commented absentmindedly, then draped her right arm around Dina to pull them even closer together. Dina gave the hand resting on her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

“Alright, ready?” Talia asked, finger hovering over the shutter button. “There are only two exposures left on the roll. We can’t stuff this up.”

“I know. I’m ready.”

“Okay, smile!”

*click*

“...I think I blinked.” 

Talia froze for a moment, then lowered her arm. When she turned to face Dina, she looked like she was about to kill her.

“I’m joking, calm down.” Dina took the camera out of Talia’s hands and looked down at it with a smile. “I’m sure I looked amazing...who am I kidding? I always look amazing,” Dina said, chuckling as she corrected herself. She looked back up at Talia. “I think we should be more worried about how you turned out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you actually smile? Or were you doing your ‘I’m the serious big sister, you can tell how serious I am by this face’ thing?” Dina asked, adopting a grouchy voice and putting her hands on her hips to imitate her sister.

“That is my smile,” Talia replied in a huff, her hands moving towards her own hips. At the last moment, Talia must have realised what she was doing, and shoved her hands in her jacket pockets instead.

“I am only tolerating this insubordination because it’s your birthday.”

Dina’s mouth dropped open and she lightly slapped her cheek. “Are you telling me I could have been a little shit ALL DAY?!”

“Language,”  Talia said with exasperation, but they both knew that Dina’s foul vocabulary was beyond saving.

“Sorry. Thankyou for the present. Really.” Dina grinned. “I fucking love you.”

Talia threw her arms up in defeat. But then, instead of dropping them by her sides, Talia wrapped Dina up in a tight hug. “I love you too Dina…in fact, I love you so much, I do have one more present for you.”

Dina looked up at her sister’s face. “Really?”

Talia smiled. “Yes.” She paused for effect. “It’s a bar of soap for that mouth of yours.”

Dina squealed and tried to escape, but Talia held her tight in their embrace. She shuffled backwards, Dina trapped in her arms, until they reached the bathroom. Talia plonked her down on the toilet seat and scooped up a sliver of soap from the dish sitting on the counter.

“Open up, birthday girl!”

Dina made a break for it, just managing to slip through the gap between Talia and the sink. The two sisters spent the rest of Dina’s birthday chasing each other around the house, shrieking in delight and laughing until their sides hurt.

---

*click*

Dina lowered the viewfinder from her face and glanced at the camera’s shot counter dial. Only a few weeks had passed since her birthday and the selfie with her sister. Now, the indicator arrow printed on the plastic window covering the dial was pointing past 35 — there were no more exposures left.

Dina turned on her heel and walked away from Talia’s grave.

This is now

About an hour before dusk, Dina heard Tommy shuffle out of the room across from them. Shortly after, she heard the downstairs screen door swing shut as he left the house, presumably to look for some food while it was still light out. 

Dina stayed and watched Ellie sleep. Her mouth was slightly open, a trail of drool dribbling onto her pillow. She was frowning slightly, but as far as Dina could tell, Ellie was too tired to be dreaming. As much as Dina wanted to pull Ellie closer to her, tangle their legs together, and smooth out the creases in her forehead with her thumb, she didn’t want to wake her. Plus, Dina wasn’t sure if she would be receptive to such overt gestures of affection right now. 

Ellie’s outburst when she returned from stabling Sweetpea, when she thought that Dina had been reading her journal, frightened Dina. She wasn’t scared for her own safety, of course — she knew that Ellie would never do anything like that — but Dina was growing more and more worried about whatever was going on inside Ellie’s head.

When they were on the road to Seattle, Ellie had been deeply haunted by Joel’s death. Sometimes a loud noise like a gunshot triggered her, or she would wake up screaming from a horrendous nightmare. Dina was always there to comfort her and calm her down, and the episodes passed fairly quickly.

Things got a bit more concerning after Abby attacked them in the theatre. When they found Tommy in the aftermath, Dina thought nothing of leaving Ellie to tend to his injury alone. So when Dina returned to the auditorium, she was alarmed at the sight of Ellie crouched on the floor, eyes squeezed shut and rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her. Dina managed to bring Ellie back, but it took more gentle touches and coaxing words than Dina had ever needed to use before. That, combined with the absence of an obvious trigger, was enough to make Dina worry even more.

It had been a similar situation back in the Kennewick library. The three of them had been standing around that map of the United States and chatting when Ellie abruptly ran off. Again, Dina had no idea what had set her off, but at least this time it didn’t seem to blow out into a full episode. And later, Ellie had managed to share a little bit of what she was feeling.

That had been the one saving grace of the whole situation: that no matter what, at least Ellie always talked to Dina about what was going on. Dina saw right through Ellie’s fake yawn earlier that day — it was obvious that she didn’t want to talk about what happened when she was with Sweetpea. If Ellie had had an episode, which was what Dina strongly suspected was the case, her not wanting to talk about it was a new and unsettling development.

Ellie’s communication skills weren’t the only thing suffering lately. Dina wasn’t an idiot; she could see that Ellie was eating less and less. And, worse still, that she was trying to hide it. When Tommy, Ellie and Dina had a meal together, Ellie would always volunteer to serve the food from the communal pot. She would dish out the same number of spoonfuls to each bowl, but would skim the surface of the pot with the spoon when it came time to fill her own bowl, so she’d end up with far less food. She must have thought that Dina wouldn’t notice. But she had noticed.

Ellie had also been sleeping even less than before. Depending on their sleeping arrangements for a given night, sometimes it was hard to notice. But if they were staying in a house with a double bed, it was hard to miss that Ellie spent most of the night awake. One morning, Dina had even woken up and saw that Ellie was staring straight up at the ceiling. Dina must have made some small noise, because Ellie quickly shut her eyes and opened her mouth slightly. Then, after a few seconds, she made a big show of waking up. To say that it broke Dina’s heart to see Ellie try to deceive her like that was an understatement.

But today, after Ellie realised that Dina was writing in the baby book, not her journal? Today, Dina caught a glimpse of an Ellie she had not seen for a long time. An Ellie that she thought had been left behind in the blood-soaked basement of that ski cabin. Finally, that Ellie gave Dina a sign that she was still there.

Dina had to hold back tears when Ellie inhaled her bowl of beans. It was more than Dina had seen her eat for the past few days combined. And now, Ellie was by her side, sleeping deeply, the heavy bags under her eyes fading away as the hours passed by.

Dina couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of hope flicker into existence in her belly, right next to her slowly growing baby. Maybe when Ellie woke up, she would finally talk to Dina. Maybe, they were going to be okay.

---

When the sun had set and their room got dark, Dina managed to sleep for a few hours. It was just a light doze though — she was still feeling well rested from her day on Sweetpea, as the gentle horse did all the hard work for her. Dina had felt pangs of guilt as Ellie toiled away on the bike next to them, but at least they were going to trade places tomorrow.

Dina still had no idea why Ellie was being so stubborn about the switch. Of course, losing Shimmer had been a big deal, and she wouldn’t fault Ellie for having some qualms about sitting on another horse’s saddle. But Dina did wish that she would be more practical about this, and realise that the two of them alternating was the most sensible way to get back to Jackson.

Dina was awake when the moon came out and bathed the bedroom in an ethereal glow. With this new source of light, Dina examined the freckles dusted across Ellie's face. It was one of Dina’s favourite ways to pass the time. The trick was to watch Ellie without her catching on, because the game was up once Ellie noticed Dina’s intense gaze and the freckles disappeared into the red flush of Ellie’s cheeks.

This was a game that Dina had been playing for a long time. It had taken some work to coax the lanky girl out from behind Joel’s shadow, back when the two of them had first shown up in Jackson. But when she finally did, the first two things that Dina learned about the girl were that 1) her name was Ellie, and 2) she had a shittonne of freckles on her face.

Dina’s game had been furtive back then — mainly quick glances in Ellie’s direction whenever Dina thought she could get away with it. After Ellie settled into Jackson life and was assigned jobs to do around town, Dina made sure to coordinate her schedule with Ellie’s as much as she could. The farm rotations were by far the best — it was clear that Ellie had never done anything like it before, and she had to devote her full attention to keeping the fragile plants in her care alive. Dina, on the other hand, could grow a fussy blueberry bush from seed in her sleep, so she took advantage of the untaxing job to watch Ellie working by her side.

As they grew closer, Dina grew bolder, and her game followed suit. She was still mesmerised by Ellie’s freckles, of course, but Dina’s gazes became much longer. She grew less concerned about what Ellie would think if she caught her. In fact, her game’s focus shifted to crafting a quality response for when Ellie inevitably did catch her staring. She was quite proud of her personal favourite: “Oh sorry, I was just reminding myself of how ugly you are. I had forgotten”.

After they kissed at the dance, Dina’s game changed again. Finally, Dina felt like she could stare at Ellie with reckless abandon. And with that, Dina developed perhaps her favourite iteration of her game: finding constellations hidden in Ellie’s freckles.

Ellie's love for space was no secret, and had snuck out of Jackson with Dina several times to take her stargazing. Despite Dina’s best efforts, the names and arrangements of some of the common groups of stars had managed to rub off on her.

Lyra.

It didn’t take Dina long to find her first one — Lyra, the stringed instrument from the northern sky. It was when they were in the weed den, right after Dina talked about her scar from riding a skateboard. In the silence that had followed her story — during which, Dina realised in hindsight, Ellie must have been internally debating whether or not to tell Dina about her bite mark — Dina spotted the constellation of freckles near the base of Ellie’s neck.

Dina had to blink a couple of times when she saw it. It was too perfect. A lyre, crossing Ellie’s throat: the source of her singing voice, the most beautiful sound in the world. It was in a spot that was normally covered by Ellie’s collared shirts, so Dina knew she might not be able to see it very often. She tried to work in giving Ellie a ‘real’ bite mark as an excuse to look at it closer. It was a shame that they were interrupted before she had the chance.

The Little Dipper.

The Little Dipper had been Dina’s next find. Admittedly, this one was a bit of a stretch...but if Dina used the scar slashing through Ellie's right eyebrow as the handle, four perfectly placed freckles on Ellie's forehead made up the rest of the celestial ladle. It was also a stretch because, as Ellie had gone to great lengths to teach Dina, the Little Dipper was an asterism, not a constellation. But whatever — Dina still counted it for her game.

She had first spotted the cluster when they were back in Jackson. It had been the night before Joel’s funeral, and Ellie had shown up at Dina’s house in tears. After mumbling something about a patch of slick ice, and showing Dina the badly bleeding cut on her knee, Ellie let Dina lead her inside. 

Dina had tended to Ellie’s wound with gentle hands. The sting of the rubbing alcohol made Ellie wince, but Dina knew that Ellie was far too used to cuts and bruises for it to have bothered her too much. Dina still tried to play it up though, praising her ‘excellent patient’ for being so brave after she tied off the final stitch. She didn’t have any lollipops to reward Ellie with, so she kissed her instead. 

After Dina leaned out of the kiss, she spotted the Little Dipper. It was only there for a moment though — Ellie’s knee must have twinged, because she frowned and the cluster disappeared into the creases on Ellie’s forehead. From that point onwards, Dina swore that she would never give Ellie a reason to frown. After all, it would be a shame to hide such a beautiful asterism.

Orion.

By far, the constellation that Dina was most proud of was Orion. It was one of Ellie’s favourites, which Dina remembered thinking was terribly cliché when Ellie had first told her. But when she found the hunter on Ellie’s face? Well, Dina suddenly discovered that she was a big fan of clichés.

Dina had first noticed his belt during their journey to Seattle. They were staying the night in a farmhouse outside Boise when Dina saw the three freckles almost perfectly lined up on Ellie’s left cheek. From that point on, when the weather was good and they spent the night under the stars, Dina made sure to look for the Greek legend in the sky and check the corresponding placement of freckles on Ellie’s skin.

Dina didn’t need to look at the sky anymore — Ellie’s Orion was thoroughly committed to her memory. Now, using the bright moonlight streaming into their temporary bedroom, Dina’s eyes retraced the familiar path in Ellie’s freckles.

She started at his shield, stretching down from the base of Ellie’s left ear. Dina’s eyes bounced over the freckle on Ellie’s cheek that represented his head, then easily found the top of his club just under Ellie’s eye. The position of Ellie’s head as she slept meant that Dina couldn’t see his knees, but she knew that if she were to tilt Ellie’s chin up, she would find the two perfectly-placed freckles along the edge of her jawline. 

However, much to Dina’s annoyance, she could only call it an ‘almost-perfect’ Orion — his right shoulder was missing. Ever since Dina had found this almost-perfect Orion, she had to resist the temptation to draw the missing freckle onto Ellie's cheek.

---

“Fuck, what time is it?”

Dina looked up from the book she had been reading. She had fallen asleep again at some point during the night, but like before, it had just been a brief doze. By the time the sun had risen, Dina was already wide awake. She still hadn’t wanted to leave Ellie’s side though, so she had picked up an old paperback sitting on the bedside table next to her. The story was starting to get good, but she put the book down as Ellie finally woke up.

Dina rolled over to face Ellie. “Morning, sleepyhead.” Dina made a show of looking down at her wrist, then back up at Ellie. “It’s a hair past a freckle.”

Ellie, who was still blinking away her last vestiges of sleep, snorted at Dina’s response.

“Don’t worry about the time,” Dina said, “I’m just glad you managed to get some sleep last night.”

Ellie smiled, then shifted closer to Dina and pulled her in for a gentle kiss.

When they pulled apart, Dina kept her eyes closed and rested her forehead on Ellie’s. She hadn’t imagined that Ellie would initiate any sort of intimacy when she woke up, so while the kiss was wholly unexpected, it was also very much welcomed. She inhaled deeply, too caught up in the pleasant surprise to care about Ellie’s strong morning breath.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie whispered, so quiet that Dina almost didn’t hear her.

“We have toothbrushes for a reason, don’t worry about it,” Dina murmured, still riding the high of their kiss and not realising that Ellie wasn’t apologising for her breath. But then she opened her eyes and saw that Ellie was looking at her with sombre eyes.

Ellie took Dina’s hand in her own and broke their eye contact to look down at their interlaced fingers. “Look…” Ellie started with difficulty. She looked up at Dina’s face again before she continued speaking. “Yesterday was...stupid.”

Ellie chewed at her bottom lip, a nervous habit Dina had noticed that she had picked up over the last few weeks. Dina stayed silent, giving Ellie the space to continue speaking if she wanted to.

“I was a dick. A huge dick. I just walked in and assumed something completely ridiculous. I was feeling weird, but me reacting the way I did wasn’t fair. At all.”

“Why were you feeling weird?” Dina asked encouragingly, not wanting Ellie to fizzle out now that she was finally talking.

“Um…” Ellie said, floundering in the face of Dina’s question.

“Hey, it’s okay, come on,” Dina said softly as she squeezed Ellie’s hand.

Ellie took a deep breath and nodded. “It’s nothing bad, I just don’t know how to explain it. I wasn’t lying before — Sweetpea did remind me of Shimmer. I was...I was back in Jackson. Like really back in Jackson. So it was weird because everything felt so real. This...wasn’t like my nightmares. Or even like what happened back at the theatre. Those were just like...flashes of memory. This time, I don’t even know how long I was gone. Nothing bad happened during it, but it felt like I was there forever…”

Finally, finally, Dina understood.

She squeezed Ellie’s hand again, then rubbed her thumb across Ellie’s knuckles. “It wasn’t a bad memory this time...but you’re scared that it’ll happen again, and that the next one will be bad.”

Ellie nodded and buried her face into Dina’s shirt. Dina tangled her fingers through Ellie’s hair and started lightly massaging her scalp.

Dina felt Ellie’s mouth moving against her shoulder, but could only hear muffled syllables. “Didn’t hear a word of that, babe,” she said, laughing gently as she felt more grumbling against her shoulder.

Ellie turned her head to the side so she could speak into the open air, but didn’t move away from Dina’s chest. “I said ‘I have plenty of bad memories to choose from.’” Her breath hitched for a moment, and she coughed to clear her throat before continuing. “And we can add me yelling at you yesterday to that list.”

Dina pressed her lips together, considering everything that Ellie had told her. After a moment, she replied in an even tone. “Yesterday...you were tired. And hungry.”

“That’s no excuse…”

“No, it’s not. But Ellie, I’m not talking about an excuse, I’m talking about a reason.” Dina paused before she spoke again. “Look. I don’t know what happened to you in the stable. It could have just been your sleep deprivation finally catching up with you. Maybe it won’t happen again.”

“But what if it does?”

Dina reached down to Ellie’s chin, lifting it up and away so Ellie was no longer leaning into her chest. “If it does, I’ll be right there with you. Okay?”

Ellie searched her eyes. Dina could only hope that they were conveying all the sincerity and love that she was feeling.

Ellie smiled softly. “Okay.”

Dina mirrored Ellie’s smile. “As for yesterday...you’ve already apologised.” Dina lightly tapped Ellie’s nose with her finger. “Now I’m giving you an ‘out’. Can you please take it?” Dina paused, and then continued in a small voice. “If not for you, then for me?”

Ellie swallowed. Then, much to Dina’s relief, she nodded. “I was tired and hungry yesterday...”

Dina’s smile widened into a grin as Ellie recited her words back to her.

“...which is no excuse,” Ellie added firmly, “but it is a reason.”

Dina was the one to initiate a kiss this time. She felt hot tears splash onto her cheeks, and when she pulled away, she saw that Ellie was crying.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Dina murmured soothingly.

“Sorry, this is just...a lot.” Ellie swiped at her tears roughly. “Fuck, I really hope this whole thing isn’t a dream, and that I’m about to wake up and you’ll still be mad at me.”

“First of all, I was never mad at you. Worried? Yes. Mad? No. And second, ” Dina paused to reach down and pinch Ellie’s arm, “this is no dream. I’m as real as it gets.”

Ellie smiled. “Thankyou.”

Dina flopped over so she was lying on her back and looking at the ceiling. “I just want to stay here all day…”

Ellie murmured her agreement.

“...but we should really get up. I’m sure that Tommy thinks he’s being quiet, but I’ve already heard him come and stand at the door twice to try to figure out if we were awake or not.” Dina sat up and threw the covers off her side of the bed. “Also, I want to find something that I can use to write more in the book.”

“Dina, I don’t mind you using my pencil. Really.”

“Well I don’t mind looking for a new one. People back then had all this stuff lying around anyway...In fact, I bet that if I were to just…”

Dina trailed off as she started opening the drawers of the bedside table on her side of the bed. It had plenty of junk in it, but not what Dina was after.

Dina shut the drawers in disappointment, but then looked over at the matching piece of furniture on Ellie’s side. She climbed over Ellie and started looking through those drawers instead.

“Come on Dina, what are the chances that—”

Ellie stopped talking as Dina pulled out a black pen with a flourish and waved it in front of her face.

“You were saying?”

Ellie was clearly miffed that Dina had managed to find the pen, but must have still thought she had the upper hand. “The ink in that will definitely be dried out.”

“Oh yeah, we’ll see about that. Hold still.”

Dina was still hovering over her, so it wasn’t like Ellie had a choice in the matter. Dina picked up Ellie’s arm and laid it across her chest. Writing surface ready, she started moving the pen around in circles on the back of Ellie’s hand. It was a felt-tip pen, so Dina knew that the nib was soft and wasn’t irritating Ellie’s skin, but the pen was refusing to work.

“I thought I was meant to be the stubborn one,” Ellie commented with an amused tone. Dina tried ignoring her, but was secretly about to give up when a black scribble suddenly appeared on Ellie’s hand.

Dina grinned at Ellie. “Again, you were saying?”

Ellie rolled her eyes in response. Dina shifted her position above Ellie so that she was straddling Ellie’s hips, hands resting on either side of Ellie’s pillow to hold up her weight. She leaned down to whisper in Ellie’s ear. “I’m only stubborn when I know I’m right.”

Ellie shivered in response. It had been a long time since they had been this close to each other. But when Dina looked at the scribble on Ellie’s hand, then the pen she was holding, and finally Ellie’s face, she had an even better idea.

“Hey Ellie. What’s the name of the star for Orion’s right shoulder?”

Ellie raised an eyebrow at the change in topic, but humoured her. “Right if you were looking at Orion, or right if you were Orion?”

“Looking at him.”

“Bellatrix,” Ellie answered without hesitation. “Why?”

Dina ignored Ellie’s question. “Thaaat’s right. And the other shoulder is...” Dina paused for a moment to sit back on Ellie’s hips. She tipped her head back to look up to the ceiling and tapped her chin thoughtfully. Then she snapped her fingers and looked back down at Ellie. “Betelgeuse! Is that right?”

“Um, yeah…” Ellie answered, still unsure. “Why?”

Dina continued to ignore Ellie’s question. “Now, I always forget. Is it Bellatrix or Betelgeuse that’s lower down? Like closer to his belt?” Dina waved her hand around — partially to paint a picture of her query in the air between them, but also as a distraction so Ellie wouldn’t notice that Dina’s other hand, the one holding the pen, was getting closer and closer to Ellie’s face.

It was Ellie’s turn to look up at the ceiling as she twisted her face in concentration. She squinted, like she was trying to look through the roof and see the constellation itself in the sky. “They’re more or less in line with each other...but, gun to my head, Bellatrix? I guess. Again, why?”

Dina grinned. “No reason.”

Poor Ellie. She never even saw the pen coming.

Chapter Text

That was then

Ellie cast a critical eye over the button-up shirt, pleated trousers and soft peaked cap that were laid out on the lower bunk of her dorm room. She could tell that she was far from being the first person to own any parts of this parade uniform. The shade of navy blue varied widely for each piece — clearly, there was a large difference in the number of times each one had been washed already.

Ellie started to dress, pulling up the pants and buttoning the shirt up to the top. She hooked her finger around her shirt’s collar and tugged at it; despite it being the oldest and most faded piece of the uniform by far, the school’s laundry had still managed to starch the shit out of it. She grimaced, the stiff collar scratching her neck as she looked down to pass a thick leather belt through the loops of her trousers.

Belt fastened, Ellie crossed her room to give herself a once-over in the mirror. A scrawny, fresh-faced 13-year-old girl glared back at her. The uniform was comically large for her: her wiry frame was swallowed by the extra fabric of the shirt, and the hems of her trousers dragged on the ground as she shifted from foot to foot.

Ellie groaned and rolled up the sleeves of the shirt to her wrists. She bent down to pull on her heavy combat boots, then tucked the extra length of the trousers into them.

I look ridiculous. Who decided to dress up the string beans in a fucking potato sack?

Granted, at least this school had more generous food rations than what she had been getting in the Boston orphanage. But not by much. And yet, they had gotten a full parade uniform together for her within days of starting her training. Nice priorities. At least the belt would help keep her pants up.

Barely a week had passed since her arrival at the military boarding school. It had been a whirlwind of new faces and routines to learn. She had only met Riley a few days ago, but it already felt like much longer than that.

Riley.

Ellie smiled as she thought back to exploring the mall with Riley, and learning to ride Winston’s horse. But her smile quickly turned into a frown — then there had been that explosion, and they ran into the Fireflies. She slid her fingers under the band holding up her ponytail and rubbed her head. It was still sore from when they knocked her out. 

And then there was the Firefly lady — Marlene. Marlene had known her mother, and had been watching over Ellie this whole time. Ellie still didn’t know quite what to think of that revelation, but she had already read the letter from her mother that Marlene had given her a hundred times. She walked back to her bed where the letter, together with her mother’s switchblade, were currently under her pillow. She retrieved both items from their hiding spot and slipped them into her trouser pocket. She also collected the peaked cap from her bed and put it on.

Ellie returned to the mirror, both to check the fit of the cap and to make sure that the switchblade wasn’t noticeable. It would surely be confiscated if anyone saw it, but she had taken to keeping it and the letter with her whenever she left her dorm. Satisfied that the switchblade’s distinctive shape was well-hidden in the copious folds of her clothes, she turned on her heel and headed towards the exit for her room.

Ellie cracked the door open and watched the flow of kids, all dressed in the same uniform as she was, walking by. She waited until she spotted a familiar bun peeking out from under a cap, then slipped into the crowd.

“Hey Riley!” Ellie called out, jogging a couple of steps to catch up to her.

“Hey sleepyhead. Didn’t see you at breakfast this morning,” Riley said, smiling at Ellie. She pulled Ellie to the side, out of the flow of the crowd in the narrow hallway, and looked her up and down. “Nice threads.”

The brief jog had made Ellie’s right sleeve unroll past her wrist. She scrunched up her nose and pushed her sleeve back up her arm as best as she could. “Wasn’t hungry. And ha ha, fuck you. It’s not my fault that my reputation precedes me.” Ellie puffed out her chest. “Obviously, they thought they would have to get a uniform together for a super-jacked badass.”

Riley raised an eyebrow. “Sure…imagine their disappointment when they actually saw you.”

Ellie blew a raspberry as she exhaled, the tips of her ears turning bright red. “I set that one right up for you, didn’t I?” she grumbled.

“Yeah, you really did,” Riley laughed, draping an arm around Ellie and clapping her shoulder in good nature. “Don’t worry, you’ll grow into them. They only give you one set for a reason. You’ll be grateful for the extra room soon enough. See?” Riley gestured towards her feet. Ellie looked down and saw that Riley’s trousers finished a good few inches above her ankles.

Riley playfully flicked the brim of Ellie’s cap to regain her attention. “At least they don’t make us wear this shit all the time. You just gotta suck it up for today.”

It was September 26th. Outbreak Day. The 20th so far, and the eighth one that Ellie herself could remember. In previous years, she and the other kids had been shepherded from the orphanage and lined up on the street to watch the procession. Now that she was a military recruit, she was more involved in the whole thing.

“The bad news is that this year it’s Corporal Dickhead’s turn to be in charge,” Riley continued. 

Ellie raised an eyebrow at the name. Riley tilted her head to direct Ellie’s attention further down the hallway, where an increasingly red-faced man was barking instructions to passing kids. It took Ellie a moment to recognise him — on her first day here, he was the guy who had given her that self-aggrandising speech about him being the only person stopping Boston from falling into chaos.

Corporal Dickhead indeed.

Riley rolled her eyes when Ellie’s attention returned to her. “He always makes us go in alphabetical order, so you’re on your own, kid. But I’ll see you later, yeah? We get the rest of the day off after this.”

“Shit, really?”

Riley nodded.

“I could hug you right now.”

“Please don’t,” Riley deadpanned, “I don’t want a super-jacked badass to break any of my bones.”

“Dick. I’ll see you later.”

Riley grinned back at her as she moved to rejoin the crowd. Just before Ellie lost her in the sea of uniforms, she heard Riley call out: “Don’t be too miserable without me!”

---

Ellie pushed the door to her dorm room open and stepped through. She wanted so badly to slam it shut. But as satisfying as that would have been, the consequences of waking up half her floor just weren’t worth it. Instead, she gently closed the door behind her, and contented herself with throttling the handle with her hands.

The cool metal felt good against her palms. Her hands had been in and out of a bucket of bleach for the past two hours, and were now red-raw and stinging. She rested them on the handle for a few more moments before she turned to face her room.

Over the past six months, she had managed to collect a few things to make her dorm feel more like a home. The walls were plastered with posters she had found in abandoned apartments around the QZ. Haphazard stacks of books occupied the majority of the available horizontal surfaces. Most of the cassette tapes in her collection were lined up neatly on top of her set of drawers, but one was lying flat in front of them. A handwritten label on the tape read ‘Apply generously to ears to decrease shit taste in music’ . Riley had gifted it to her earlier in the week.

Riley.

Ellie’s eyes wandered above the row of tapes to the polaroid stuck to the wall. When they had snuck out of school last month, they had come across the old camera. Riley had pulled Ellie towards her and flipped the camera over so they could be in the picture together. It was a fond memory, but now Ellie couldn’t help but scowl at it. Her face was a far cry from the shyly smiling girl in the photo.

Ellie turned her attention to her unmade bed. There was ample evidence of another night of little sleep: the blanket was all bunched up at the foot of the mattress, and at some point she must have outright tossed her pillow to the floor. 

For a moment she considered leaving her bed in this state, but the risk of being sprung by a random room spot-check was too great. She had pushed her luck enough already by not making it before she left for her morning chores.

With a sigh, she picked up her pillow and pulled the blanket tight across the mattress. She was smoothing down a crisp hospital corner when she heard the door behind her creak open, accompanied by a rush of cooler air from the hallway. 

She continued making her bed, leaning in further to tuck the blanket into the gap between the mattress and the wall, pointedly ignoring her intruder.

“Still no roommate, huh?”

Ellie jumped. She had wanted to keep the silent treatment going for a few minutes at least, but the abrupt words startled her and she hit her head on the slats of the top bunk. She groaned and stepped back away from her bed, rubbing at the back of her head where she could already feel a welt starting to form. 

She turned around and glared at Riley. Ellie had a growth spurt a few months ago, and was still getting used to being able to look Riley in the eye without having to tilt her head up. 

She frowned. “I bet Liz is starting to think the same about you, Riley. I went to get you for our shift of morning chores. But, surprise surprise, she was the only one I found in your dorm.”

Riley ignored the barb in Ellie’s voice and looked at her with a pained expression. “Ellie, that was a solid knock. I could hear it from here. Are you alright?” She reached out towards her.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Ellie snapped. “Where were you?”

Riley stood frozen, arm outstretched halfway between them. Ellie watched Riley open and close her mouth a few times as she tried to figure out what to say.

“You know what? Fucking save it. You’ve been missing more and more over the past few weeks. I don’t give a shit if you want to blow off an afternoon of drills to hang with Winston, or wherever the fuck it is that you go. But when you didn’t show this morning I had to do all of your jobs on top of mine.”

“You didn’t have to…”

“Yes, I did! You’ve been 16 for almost three months Riley! Your paperwork’s still stuck in the system, but you know that Corporal Dickhead is looking for any reason to get you out of here and into basic training!”

Ellie flung her arms about in exasperation. “He knows how...close we are, and he’s been asking me all this shit about you. If I had left the boys’ bathroom in the state that I had found it, he would have thrown you the fuck out.”

Riley winced. “Shit. I had forgotten that it was our turn for latrine duty. Now I really am sorry.”

Ellie ignored the apology. “You’ve got one chance Riley. Where have you been?”

For a moment Ellie thought Riley would be lost for words again. But then, she did speak.

“I can’t tell you.”

It wasn’t what Ellie wanted to hear. 

“Right,” Ellie scoffed. She started to turn away, but Riley stepped forward and caught her wrist. Ellie tried to pull free, but the grip on her arm was too strong.

“Look Ellie, I’m sorry. I really am. But don’t you think I fucking know how numbered my days are here? I’m trying to do something about that. And it’s something...something important.” She sighed and looked down, loosening her grip on Ellie’s arm but not letting go completely. “I can’t tell you yet. And I hate that. I really do.”

Riley’s face hardened. “But…to be honest? I thought you had enough faith in me to trust that I’m doing the right thing here.” She clenched her jaw. “You don’t always have to know everything, Ellie.”

Ellie paused for a beat. “Um, are you fucking serious?!” She shrugged out of Riley’s hold. “You don’t get to be pissed off at me — I’m pissed off at you!”

“Well, I guess we're both disappointed with each other then.”

Ellie gaped. She almost wished that Riley was shouting at her, because the tone she was actually using was somehow even more venomous. It was laden with disappointment, like how Ellie imagined a dismayed mother might sound.

“You are unbelievable.”

“Fuck off Ellie.”

Ellie stepped back like she had been stung. She crossed her arms and fixed her gaze on the corner of her room above Riley’s shoulder. Ellie knew that if she looked directly at her, Riley would see the hurt in her eyes, and there was a very real chance that Ellie would burst into tears. She spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t get to say that. Not when you’re the one who disappears every other night.”

Riley sighed, and shook her head. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here. For the record, I’m sorry about my chores. And your head.”

Ellie’s gaze remained fixed on the wall, but she could see Riley walking over to the door in her peripheral version.

Riley opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. She turned to face Ellie, hand lingering on the doorknob.

“Goodbye, Ellie.”

She pulled the door closed with a gentle click.

This is now

A week had passed since they left Union. They were starting to settle into their new routine and Sweetpea was growing more comfortable with her new travelling companions. They were averaging about 25 miles each day on the interstate that wound through rural Idaho.

It was late morning, and Ellie’s turn on Sweetpea again. Her hunch was right — riding with Tommy was awkward as fuck — but she had finally managed to somewhat separate the experience from when she rode Callus with Joel.

Maybe it was because she was taller now and could see over Tommy’s shoulder as they rode, compared to when she had just blindly hung onto Joel’s back as he navigated to the Colorado university. Or maybe it was because Joel had tended to alternate Callus between a walk and a canter, whereas Tommy preferred to keep Sweetpea at a consistent trot throughout the day. Or maybe because Joel had tended to stay quiet, while Tommy had the annoying habit of using the first thing that came to his mind to strike up a conversation with Ellie.

Regardless of the reason, she couldn’t deny the difference that alternating modes of transport with Dina made to their overall progress. Following a few hard hours on the bike with a few hours of rest on the back of their gentle horse was doing wonders for her sore legs. They were keeping a similar pace that they had set when they were all riding bikes, and finished their day of travel far less exhausted than before.

Suddenly, Ellie found herself having some faith that they would get to Jackson in one piece and in this century.

A tiny bit of faith, to be sure.

Microscopic, even.

But it was the first time she had even dared entertain the thought since they fled Seattle.

Ellie glanced at Dina riding beside them. Sweetpea was still a bit wary of the bike, with its mechanical clicks and whirring noises as the pedals turned and the chain cycled through its track. They had figured out that at least she seemed less nervous when she could see where the sounds were coming from, so Dina kept within Sweetpea’s range of vision while still giving her some distance.

Dina was managing a fairly consistent pace, steadily pushing away at the pedals as the unchanging scenery passed them by. She was a far cry from the fevered and nauseous state that she had been in a few weeks ago, which Ellie was extremely thankful for.

But things had been...complicated since Union. So much so that Ellie couldn’t help but wonder if sharing everything with Dina had been a mistake. Because instead of focusing on keeping herself safe, Dina had spent the past week watching Ellie like a hawk.

At first Ellie tried playing it off, joking that she didn’t realise that she was that attractive when she caught Dina staring at her. That didn’t seem to deter Dina, however. Ellie’s next strategy — ignoring the obvious stares completely — had not been successful either.

It was getting to the point of being annoying. It was like suddenly Dina couldn’t trust Ellie to do a single thing for herself. Like Dina felt the need to hold Ellie’s hand through every single problem. Like Dina was her mother.

They had clashed heads over it the day before.

~~~

They were clearing out the infected from the farmhouse that they had picked to stay the night. It was the usual fare for these remote areas — mostly clickers, plus a couple of runners. Nothing notable like shamblers, which thankfully seemed to be horrors exclusive to Seattle. And none of the infected had gotten so bad that they were producing spores, so once they had been dealt with, the house would be fine to sleep in.

Ellie went through her paces, picking the infected off with her bow while the three of them remained undetected. It wasn’t long before Tommy pulled out his rifle and made short work of the handful of stragglers. Ellie couldn’t help but notice that Dina was watching her carefully during the gunshots.

“What?”

“What?”

Ellie sighed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not looking at you like anything, Ellie.”

Dina stepped out from behind the tipped over couch they had been using as cover and started inspecting the bodies.

“I’ll go get Sweetpea,” Ellie announced as she stood up and started to head towards the front door. When they had spotted the first clicker, Tommy had tied her to a fencepost along the edge of the property so they could deal with the infected without having to worry about her.

“Actually Ellie, can you help me get these guys out of the house first? We can go get Sweetpea later.”

“It’s fine, she’s right outside. I won’t be gone for long.”

“Ellie, please.”

It took everything in Ellie’s power to not roll her eyes. “Fine. Whatever makes you stop mothering me.”

She stopped heading to the front door and instead turned to the nearest corpse. She picked up one of its legs and pulled. The bastard wasn’t moving without a fight, and Ellie groaned in frustration. Dina seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then made her way over to Ellie’s side and picked up the other leg. When the two of them pulled together, the dead infected finally shifted across the floor.

“You’re infuriating.”

There was a tentative humour in Dina’s voice. Ellie’s heart twinged at the line. She knew the exact words that Dina wanted to hear in response...but she just really wasn’t in the mood for banter. Instead, she just set her mouth in a straight line, accepting the line as a criticism and not saying another word as they cleared out the rest of the infected bodies.

~~~

Ellie frowned as the memory played out in front of her. Undoubtedly, she had been a jerk yesterday. But her sour mood had not stuck around for long — by the time they were eating dinner they were back to the normal lighthearted atmosphere. When they had gone to bed that night Dina had fallen asleep first, so Ellie tried to think about Dina’s peacefully dreaming face instead. Eventually, the memory faded away, and she returned to herself, back to her usual position on Sweetpea, staring at the back of Tommy’s head.

---

They arrived in Caldwell just after midday. It was a familiar sight, the small city being one of the many that Dina and Ellie had already passed through when they were travelling to Seattle. And much like that journey, this time they had decided that they would avoid Boise again. The Idaho capital unnerved Dina, so Caldwell was the last city they would see for a while — after spending the night there, they would leave the highway in favour of the smaller country roads that went around Boise.

They figured they might as well return to the same house that Ellie and Dina had stayed in previously. Dina got there first and was sitting on the bike, both legs on the ground and rolling backwards and forwards, as she waited for Tommy and Ellie to catch up. “Can you believe it only took us like two weeks to get to Seattle from here?”

Ellie swung her legs over Sweetpea’s back, grunting her agreement as she jumped to the ground. “I know. What are we up to now for the way back? Four weeks and counting?” She turned to help Tommy down from the saddle. “It’s amazing what a difference having to drag along this freeloader makes.”

“Again with the freeloader? Really? You need some new material Ellie,” Tommy said, unphased, as Ellie lowered him to the ground.

“I’d much rather you had a new leg, to be honest,” Ellie replied without missing a beat.

Dina laughed. “Do you two ever let up? With the amount of bickering I hear when you’re riding Sweetpea together, I’m surprised she hasn’t bucked you off already.”

“It’s not bickering, it’s lively conversation,” Tommy protested. “It’s not my fault that Ellie has some very strong opinions on basically everything.”

Ellie turned to Dina. “Babe, come on, you’ve got to be with me on this one. Okay, you know the ending of Titanic?”

“What? The ending where there was totally room for Jack on that door?”

“Ha! Fucking THANK YOU!” Ellie exclaimed in triumph, poking her tongue out at Tommy.

“Alright, fine. I should have known that Dina would be on your side,” Tommy said, turning towards Sweetpea and patting her nose. “That still means we’re tied though — Sweetpea obviously agrees with me.”

“Sorry, but I value my girlfriend’s opinion over the opinion of a horse.”

Tommy feigned offence, reaching up to cover Sweetpea’s ears. “Now now, don’t you go listening to the mean old lady. You are an important and valued member of this team,” he cooed.

Dina laughed. “Get a room you two! Ellie, I think we need to give Tommy some privacy with his girlfriend.”

Ellie shook her head in mock disappointment. “Whatever will Maria think? Divorced for a horse…”

The look that Dina gave Ellie told her that Dina knew exactly where she was going with this.

“...a div-horse, if you will.”

Tommy groaned as Ellie and Dina grinned at each other.

“I can’t even...Ellie, that was terrible.”

“Tommy, it was great and you know it.”

Tommy tapped at his chin for a moment. “Alright then, it was great. Now your reward is that you can get Sweetpea ready for bed.”

Ellie gave Tommy an indignant look as he dropped the reins in her hand. “But she’s your girlfriend!”

Tommy laughed and walked towards the house. “Treat her well, ya hear! I left Maria for her!” he called over his shoulder as he headed inside.

Ellie turned back to Dina and rolled her eyes. “Men.”

Dina smiled and pulled a couple of brushes out from Sweetpea’s saddlebag. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand. I’m sure we can come up with an even worse pun to tell Tommy by the time we’re done.”

---

“So. What’s the verdict?”

Ellie looked down at the pile laid out on the table. After they had finished with Sweetpea, they joined Tommy in taking stock of their supplies. They were going to spend the next few days far from any built-up areas, and wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t run the risk of running out of something.

“We could do with some more food, probably,” Ellie suggested. She poked at the remaining meat of the day-old rabbit that she had used for last night’s dinner. “No guarantee we’ll run into these guys much once we get out into the proper desert." Ellie paused. “Plus, the squatter is asking for more and more to eat every day,” she said, giving Dina’s stomach a pointed look.

“I’m going to choose to ignore that,” Dina replied, shooting a pretend glare in Ellie’s direction, “but yes. We should look for food. We only checked out this side when we were passing through, but we still managed to find some good stuff.” She turned to Tommy. “Do you want to stay in this area with Sweetpea and we’ll go have a look at the other side of town?”

Tommy shrugged noncommittally. “Y’all have been here before, you know it better than me. Tell me where to go and I’ll go.”

“Alright let’s do that then. Tommy you can look around nearby and see if there’s anything we missed the first time. Dina, let’s go check the north side of the city.”

---

They wandered around the streets of downtown Caldwell for a while, eventually coming across a group of buildings with a florist, a few restaurants, and a convenience store that looked promising. Unfortunately, the windows had been boarded up and the front door wasn’t budging.

Ellie sighed and stepped away from the door. “Why can it never be easy?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dina asked from behind her.

“I said easy. That doesn’t necessarily mean boring.”

Dina lightly bumped her shoulder against Ellie’s. “Come on. Let’s try around the back.”

They circled around the block, trying to find a delivery dock or staff entrance that would get them inside. They were inspecting one of the middle buildings when Ellie spotted an exhaust vent with its cover missing at around head-height. “What do you think?” she asked, pointing out the potential entry point to Dina.

Dina pulled a nearby dumpster over and shoved it up against the wall. She climbed on top of it and took a closer look at the vent. “Hmm. A bit of a squeeze, but I think we’ve just found our way inside.”

However, when she crouched and tried crawling into the vent, her backpack got caught on the top. Dina backed up and sat back on her heels, shrugging her backpack straps off her shoulders before returning to the vent. She slid her backpack along the smooth metal in front of her and crawled into the darkness.

Ellie copied Dina’s movements, taking her backpack off and pushing it in front of her as she followed Dina into the vent.

“Good fucking thing neither of us are claustrophobic,” Ellie commented as they progressed through the creaking vent on their hands and knees. There was a grate set into the bottom of the section ahead, and as Ellie crawled over it, she could see that they were above some sort of commercial kitchen. They must be in one of the restaurants they had seen from the front.

Dina’s soft laughter echoed from the darkness in front of her. “Agreed. I’ll take being in a confined space with you over having all the room in the world, but no one to share it with, anyday.”

“How do you manage to turn us crawling through a dank dusty vent into something romantic?”

“It’s one of my many talents.”

Ellie heard a snapping noise, followed by the distinctive sounds of metal being bent. “...Shit. Ellie can you give me a hand with this?”

Ellie felt around her backpack in front of her and clicked on the flashlight attached to the strap. Bright light flooded the small space, making Ellie squint until she redirected the beam in front of her.

Dina pressed herself against the side of the vent so Ellie could see the problem: blocking their path was a large metal exhaust fan.

“I got one of the blades off. There’s a bit of room,” Dina explained, pointing at her backpack that she had managed to push through the gap, “but I think we need to break off another one.”

Ellie nodded her understanding, and climbed over her backpack towards Dina. The vent creaked all around them, and Dina lay herself flat against the bottom to give enough room for Ellie.

“Hey,” Dina whispered, looking up at Ellie when she joined her at the fan.

“Hey yourself,” Ellie replied with a smile, lowering herself slightly to give Dina a quick kiss before returning her attention to their current dilemma. “I got a call about a problematic fan?”

“This is the one.”

They both reached out and held onto the edge of one of the blades. 

“Ready?”

Ellie nodded. “Go on three. One...tw—”

Her countdown was cut short by the sound of the vent collapsing behind them. The section they were in suddenly tipped down, throwing Ellie off-balance and making her slide down the vent.

Ellie heard her backpack land on the ground below her a second before she was unceremoniously spat out onto a tiled kitchen floor. She looked up at the vent and saw that Dina had managed to press her hands against the sides of the vent to slow her fall. But the brushed metal walls were too smooth and slippery, and a moment later Dina dropped out, landing on top of Ellie and knocking the wind out of her.

“Shit! Ellie, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Ellie wheezed as she tried to regain her breath. “Fuck, that hurt.” A vague memory flickered in the back of Ellie’s mind. This had happened before. And last time, they fell straight into a supermarket crawling with—

CLICK CLICK CLICK

Clickers.

They turned towards the noise just in time to see a clicker burst through a set of double doors at the end of the room and give a blood-curdling screech. But Ellie’s attention was not on the clicker — it was on the spores that billowed in from the swinging doors behind it.

To Ellie, the next few moments felt like they were in slow motion. Her eyes darted between the cloud of spores and Dina.

Between Dina and the spores.

Between the spores and maskless, barefaced Dina.

Dina’s hand moved towards her back in a practiced motion, but was of course only met with air. They both looked up at the broken vent where Dina’s backpack was wordlessly.

In a flash Ellie was up on her feet and dragging Dina away from the clicker. She looked around frantically and spotted the heavy metal door of a walk-in fridge in the back corner. She pulled Dina towards it, heaved the door open and shoved her inside. Ellie could only hope that there was still a good seal around the door as she slammed it shut.

The noise drew the attention of the clicker towards the back of the room. There was no time for Ellie to get to her backpack, so she pulled out the switchblade from her pocket. She ducked behind a metal shelf laden with mixing bowls and held her breath.

The clicker turned the corner and started moving towards Ellie’s hiding spot. She waited until it was within reach, then jumped out and drove her knife into its throat. She dodged its flailing arms as it made a last-ditch effort to grab her, and twisted her knife in deeper. The clicker screamed one final time, then fell to the floor.

Ellie dislodged her knife from its bloody neck with a grimace and rushed back to the walk-in fridge. Dina’s face was pressed against the window set into the door and she was looking at Ellie with undisguised panic. The glass next to her mouth was rapidly fogging then clearing as Dina took shallow breaths. Ellie could tell that she was on the verge of hyperventilating.

Ellie placed her hand against the window and Dina mirrored the movement. They made eye contact as Ellie lifted her other hand to her chest and mimed a couple of deep breaths. Dina tried to copy the action, but was shaking so badly that she couldn’t exhale smoothly; her breath fogged up the glass in a series of short bursts.

Ellie could hear more infected stirring in the room the clicker had emerged from. Its final scream was loud, and no doubt more infected were moments away from tracking the source of the sound to this kitchen.

Ellie looked at Dina with desperation and pulled her hand away from the glass. Dina’s face turned stricken and Ellie saw her start to reach for the handle. Ellie shook her head and held up her hand, palm facing Dina. She mouthed “stay” as she backed away from the door.

Ellie raced over to her backpack and tugged it on. She grabbed a frying pan off a nearby stove and approached the double doors. Through the round windows she spotted several more infected in the spore-filled room beyond.

“Fuck.”

Ellie gently pushed on one of the doors, careful to let in the smallest amount of spores into the kitchen as she could as she slipped through.

---

Ellie ducked behind the nearest table and surveyed the room. It was a very fancy restaurant — the kind that had white tablecloths, a stage off to the side for live musicians, and a giant crystal chandelier.

Oh, and it also had clickers.

A whole fucking lot of clickers.

They were riled up thanks to the noises from Ellie’s earlier fight and were stumbling around the room, chittering in agitation as they tried to find something to rip into. Thankfully, it seemed like none of the others had figured out how to get into the kitchen. Yet. 

There was also a large black piano in the middle of the room. Fungi was growing from the ground and up over the propped-open lid, like a wave frozen just as it was about to break. Ellie could just spot a shoe of the former host poking out of the bottom of the mess. It was the source of all the spores.

Ellie looked up at the chandelier hanging directly above the piano and had an idea.

It took her a couple of minutes to sneak to the other side of the room, keeping to the shadowy corners of the restaurant and waiting for clickers to pass by her before continuing on. The air was filled with horrible clicking sounds as the infected sought her out. Ellie’s heart was pounding out of her chest, ready to fight at any moment if she was spotted.

By some miracle, she managed to reach her target — a thick rope tied to a heavy-duty hook bolted into the wall — undetected. Ellie’s eyes traced the rope up to the ceiling and then back down to where it ended at the chandelier.

This will do.

Ellie pulled out her switchblade and began to cut the rope. It was a large rope, but time and the humid room had weakened it, so it didn’t take Ellie long to saw about halfway through it. She stopped when the rope gave a warning creak.

She lifted the frying pan she had taken from the kitchen and, after a few experimental swings to get a feel for the pan’s weight, Ellie lobbed it towards the piano.

She was hoping that it would at least bounce off the wooden side and make enough noise to attract some of the clickers. But even better, Ellie managed to throw it perfectly into the gap between the lid and the keys. The pan landed directly on the piano strings in a cacophony of sound.

Every single clicker in the room instantly turned at the noise. As they ran towards the piano, Ellie slashed through the rest of the rope, dropping the chandelier just as the infected piled underneath it.

After the dust had settled, Ellie approached the wreckage cautiously. She pulled out her pistol and dealt with a couple of clickers that had been spared from the full impact of the falling crystal, but most of them had been killed instantly.

Clickers dealt with, Ellie headed towards the kitchen again. She grabbed a few tablecloths from the tables furthest from the piano, hoping that they were less laden with spores.

Ellie slipped through the double doors again and looked up at the broken vent above her. From this position, she could see that the vent was suspended from the ceiling by a series of metal brackets. The brackets where the vent had broken and Ellie and Dina had fallen out were pulled out from the ceiling, but the one near where Ellie guessed the exhaust fan and Dina’s backpack were had remained stubbornly intact.

Ellie knotted the tablecloths together until she had a good 20 feet of fabric to work with. It took her a couple of attempts to arc her makeshift rope over the vent, but eventually she cleared the gap and caught the other end as it fell.

She held onto both sides and gave them a tug. The vent above her groaned, but continued to hold.

Ellie was one step away from screaming in frustration. “You fucking broke before. Why. Won’t. You. FUCKING. BREAK. NOW?!” she yelled, pausing to pull between each word.

Finally, the bracket gave way and Ellie jumped back as the section of vent fell down to the floor with a crash. She reached into the twisted metal and freed Dina’s backpack from within.

Ellie pulled out Dina’s mask and practically sprinted back to the walk-in fridge. She was alarmed for a moment when she didn’t see Dina at the window, but then Ellie shone her flashlight through the glass and spotted Dina huddled in the corner of the space, trembling. 

Ellie knocked on the window to get Dina’s attention, holding up the mask when Dina raised her head to look at her. But then Ellie looked down at her clothes. Specifically, at all the spores that were clinging to the fibres, and floated around her in a cloud every time she moved.

“Wait. I’m covered in spores,” Ellie said loudly, hoping that Dina could hear her through the door.

Ellie grabbed a tea towel from a nearby bench and wiped down the mask as best she could. She found a large soup pot with a lid and put the mask inside, then placed the pot next to the fridge door. Then Ellie grabbed a baking tray and flapped it around, trying to wave any remaining spores away from the rear section of the kitchen.

Having done all she could do, Ellie cracked open the door to the walk-in fridge and nudged the pot inside with her foot before closing it again.

Ellie stepped back, leaning against the bench behind her as she waited for Dina to come out.

After what felt like hours, but must have only been a few seconds, the fridge door swung open fully. Dina, mask securely on, stepped out into the light. She barely glanced at the dead clicker near her feet before she launched herself into Ellie’s arms.

Ellie was caught off balance and had to hold onto the edge of the bench behind her to stop them from falling over. But when she steadied herself she melted into the embrace, securely wrapping her arms around Dina’s shaking form.

“It was so da—dark in there and so hard to b—breathe.  You were gone so long, I—I thought you were dead,” Dina stammered, the words muffled by her mask.

Her hands roamed up and down Ellie’s back and clutched tightly at the fabric every few seconds, like she needed physical reassurance that Ellie was really there.

Like she was adrift in a storm and Ellie was her liferaft.

Ellie’s stomach dropped. The situation felt far too familiar.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Ellie whispered, nuzzling Dina’s shoulder. “I’m here, I’m here, it’s okay.”

They were pressed so close to each other that Ellie could feel Dina’s fluttering chest as she tried to take laboured breaths. “Hey hey hey. Dina, look at me.” Dina shook her head and only buried herself deeper into Ellie’s shirt.

Ellie winced as the hard plastic edges of Dina’s mask dug into her collarbone. She reached behind her to grasp one of Dina’s hands and pressed it over her own chest. She knew she was still cooling down from the adrenaline rush of fighting the clickers, but her heart was still much calmer compared to Dina’s erratically thumping one.

“Dina,” Ellie said in as firm a voice she could manage, “focus.”

This was the first time that Ellie ever had to do this — until now, she had only been on the receiving end. But it had happened enough times that Ellie knew what to do to stop Dina from falling apart right in front of her.

“Di. With me, come on. Focus on my voice.” Ellie said, lowering her voice so she could speak in a disarming tone. Dina cocked her head, and Ellie could tell that she was starting to get through to her. “That’s it, come on. Breathe with me.”

Ellie took a deep breath in, hearing Dina do the same from within her arms. Ellie held it there for a moment then released the breath slowly. She felt small puffs of warm breath against her arm as Dina’s exhale filtered through her mask. 

After a few more rounds of breathing, Dina started coming down from her panicked state. She was still shivering, but at least she was relaxing more and more into Ellie’s embrace. She breathed out one more time before slumping completely into Ellie, who readjusted to support Dina’s limp form.

Dina looked up at Ellie, who gave her a gentle smile in return. Ellie wanted to kiss away the tears she could see streaming down Dina’s face, but it was too risky to remove the mask while they were still so close to the spores.

Ellie pulled Dina’s arm across the back of her neck, supporting her side as she half-carried Dina out.

Chapter Text

That was then

Dina spent her early teenage years wandering around New Mexico, but never managed to find any leads on her sister’s killers. On her darker days, she couldn’t help but wonder if the Ravens had tracked them down to avenge the guard that Dina had killed. But with no concrete evidence one way or another, she never went back to the compound near Roswell to return the favour.

Spending her birthday alone had been the hardest.

She couldn’t remember doing anything other than lying in a bed, crying as she clutched her mom’s camera in one hand and Talia’s cracked glasses in the other. She almost wished her sobs would attract the attention of some infected so they could put her out of her misery. But there was no-one around for miles, so Dina continued to sob alone. 

Eventually, she did crawl out of bed. She had to move on to another location; the years of being constantly on the move were a hard habit to break, and Dina still found herself antsy whenever she stayed in the same place for more than a couple of nights. But on that particular day, as she packed her few possessions into her backpack, Dina’s gaze lingered on her mother’s pistol. It took all the strength she had to slip it into her backpack and zip it shut.

Another difficult birthday came and went before Dina turned north and just started walking.

For months on end, the sun rose at her right shoulder and set at her left. The landscape around her transformed from the arid deserts she knew well into mountains and lush forests. That winter she saw snow for the first time in her life, and experienced the cold like she never had before. She had to resort to breaking into an abandoned mall to find a heavy jacket. And still, she continued north.

---

The weather had warmed and then started to cool again by the time Dina finally stopped walking. She found herself surrounded by trees bearing the vibrant colours of fall. She was still getting used to the dramatic transformation that foliage in these parts underwent every year. The juniper trees that she had grown up with had some level of seasonal variation, but they were a far cry from the spectacle of orange and red that had followed her for the past month.

“Are you fucking planning on moving faster at any point, asshole?”

Dina frowned. Usually it was Talia or her mom that kept her company inside her head. And usually they were much kinder. She didn’t recognise this deep, profanity-laden voice that had suddenly started talking.

“Fuck you man,” a second voice said, joining the first. “I swear I’m carrying like, double the guns that you are.”

Dina finally realised that the voices weren’t bickering away in her head — there were actual people nearby.

She scrambled for cover behind a tree as she heard the crunch of heavy footfalls to her left.

“Did you hear something?”

Dina held her breath. The voices were suddenly much closer.

“What?”

“I thought I heard some noise coming from over there.”

“It’s probably a rabbit or something. Not worth the trouble. I heard the dam’s full of supplies, we shouldn’t waste any more time.”

“Toby had better be right about this. If we storm the place and it ends up not being worth it, I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“His intel is always good, relax. Any second now they’re going to gi— the signal!”

The voice suddenly sounded triumphant. Dina didn’t dare look for the signal he was referring to, so she remained huddled in the shelter of the tree.

“Alright, go-time. They’re about to start a distraction at the main gate. We’re with the team going in from the back.”

“For the last time, I was there when we were planning the raid. I know we’re on the infiltration team.”

“Alright, then let’s fucking go!”

Dina finally released the breath she had been holding as the two people moved away. When she could no longer hear their footsteps, Dina stood up and brushed herself off, still shaking from how close she had been to being spotted. She turned in the opposite direction from where she had last heard the voices and started to run.

However, she failed to spot a raised tree root hidden among the fallen leaves and tripped. She cried out as her ankle bent the wrong way and she lost her balance, slipping and tumbling down a steep slope next to her.

Halfway down she felt the back of her head strike a rock and pain exploded behind her eyes. She finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, dazed and aching all over.

The startled whinny of a horse drew her immediate attention. Dina forced her eyes open, squinting in pain as she tried to take stock of whatever she had just fallen into.

She seemed to have landed directly in the path of two people on horseback. They both had hunting rifles slung over their shoulders and were looking at her, sprawled out on the floor, in alarm.

Dina feebly raised her arms. “Please,” she croaked, her voice weak with disuse. “I’m unarmed. Your group...is over there.” Dina’s fall had left her disoriented, but she waved in the general direction where she thought the two from earlier had gone.

The strangers looked at each other, then back at Dina. “What group?” the woman sitting on the chestnut horse asked wearily.

“The dam...the raid…” Dina said between breaths. The back of her head was on fire and she was having trouble stringing together full sentences. 

The woman who had spoken dismounted from her horse. Her hand hovered over a pistol strapped to her side, but the gun remained holstered as she approached Dina cautiously. “What’s this about the dam?”

Dina side-eyed the woman’s weapons for a moment. Her best chance to get out of this alive was to be honest and direct. She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak properly. “You must be part of the uh, infiltration team? You’re not far from them, you can catch up.”

The woman again exchanged a look with the rider who remained sitting on her horse, then returned her attention to Dina as she crouched by her side.

Please don’t. I...I won’t be any trouble,” Dina pleaded, her voice barely a whisper.

The woman’s face softened. “I’m not going to hurt you, kid. What’s your name?”

“Uh, Dina.”

“Dina, good. My name’s Esther. Can you tell me what you know?”

“You’re going to raid some dam nearby. You’re here, so you must not be part of the team that’s about to make a distraction at the main gate,” Dina panted. The exertion of speaking so much was starting to overwhelm her. “That’s all I know, I swear. Please, just let me go.”

The woman — Esther — cursed under her breath and whipped her head around. “There are bandits heading for the dam. Go warn Tommy and the others. Take Japan, he’s faster.”

Esther’s riding partner nodded and quickly transferred from her current horse to the other one. She turned around and took off at a gallop.

In the meantime, Dina had managed to get an elbow underneath her and tried to lift herself off the ground. But there were just too many injuries crying out for her attention to hold the position for long, and she collapsed back onto the ground with a groan.

Esther, who had been watching the horse disappear into the thick forest, turned back at the sound. “Hey there, be careful. That was a mighty tumble you took just now.”

She reached out towards Dina, who flinched but was too weak to move away. When Esther tried to get her hand under Dina’s head she pulled it back, covered in blood. “Oh crap. This is bad. Dina….hey Dina? Can you hear me?”

Dina heard the question, but Esther’s voice was getting further away by the second. Black spots started creeping in at the edges of her vision. She tried opening her mouth to respond, but only a moan came out.

“Screw it, I’m taking you back to Jackson,” she heard Esther say, but it was like she was listening to her talk from the bottom of a well.

Dina didn’t put up a fight — she couldn’t even if she wanted to — as Esther scooped her up in her arms and carried her over to the horse the other rider had left behind.

But I don’t even know how to ride a horse.

It was Dina’s last thought before her eyes rolled into the back of her head and her world turned to black.

---

Pain.

That was Dina’s first thought as she wrestled herself free from the depths of unconsciousness. She tried to open her eyes, but was met with bright light and immediately shut them again. She groaned and tried to cradle her head, but found that her arms were pinned down. She panicked and started thrashing around in an attempt to free them.

“Hey! I just finished those stitches, don’t you dare ruin them!”

Dina froze at the sound of the voice. She forced her eyes open, this time just enough so she could squint against the glaring light, and looked for its source.

She was lying in a bed. The only thing holding her arms down was a tightly tucked-in bedsheet that had been pulled up to her chest. Dina carefully ran one arm up the side of her body and freed it from the sheet. She lifted her hand to her head and was met with a heavy layer of bandages and gauze.

“Some of my best work, if I do say so myself.”

Dina turned her head to the side and spotted a woman sitting on a chair next to her. She had gentle eyes, the kind that Dina could tell would be surrounded by laugh lines if the woman had been older. As it was, the woman was fairly young, maybe in her thirties. Her dark skin was smooth, save for a prominent scar that cut through her jawline and stretched across her cheek before disappearing under her ear. Her black hair was twisted into rows along her scalp before falling past her shoulders in tight braids.

She was fiddling with something in her hands — a stethoscope, Dina realised, as the woman leaned over to place it on a table beside them. The metal table was on wheels: half of the surface was dedicated to an array of medical supplies, while the other half was piled high with blood-soaked strips of cloth. Dina’s blood, she assumed.

“The name’s Anne, or Doctor Simmons if you’re feeling extra fancy. And I’ll save you the trouble — Esther tells me you go by Dina. How are you feeling?”

Dina was reeling from having seen more people in one day than she had in the past month, but for some reason she felt like she could trust the woman straight away.

“Uh...like shit,” she replied, grimacing as the words irritated her dry and scratchy throat.

Dina heard a gasp. “Swears!” a tiny voice exclaimed from somewhere behind Anne.

“Oops sorry, didn’t finish off the introductions,” Anne said, chuckling as a little girl poked her head out from behind Anne’s back.

“You okay with kids? Cadence here wanted to see what her mommy gets up to all day when she is ‘doing the medicine’,” Anne explained, using her hands to form air quotes around the last few words. “She loved watching me do the stitchwork on your head. Nasty cut, that one. But you liked the pretty green thread I used, didn’t you Cadence?” she asked, directing the last question behind her.

“Um, she’s fine. Sorry about the rude word,” Dina said. She had no idea if she was ‘okay with kids’, having spent the vast majority of her life either alone or with her mother and Talia. She wouldn’t know the first thing about kids. But they didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t be shy honey, come say hi to Dina,” Anne said encouragingly. A miniaturised carbon copy of Anne stepped out from behind her and gave Dina a nervous smile. Several of her front teeth were missing, but one gap was already half-filled with its permanent replacement. She couldn’t have been older than six or seven.

“Hi Dina,” she tried hesitantly.

Dina couldn’t help but smile in return. “Hi Cadence,” she replied, but her irritated throat made her cough before she could say more.

Anne moved to a table in the middle of the room, returning with a jug of water and a glass. “No swanky IV drips around here, unfortunately. We need to get you hydrated the old fashioned way,” she said as she poured water into the glass and handed it to Dina.

Dina drank the water greedily. Some of it sloshed down her front, but she managed to get most of it past her lips. When the glass was empty, she set it aside and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Anne...where is ‘here’, exactly? Where am I?”

While she was drinking, Anne had procured a clipboard with a single sheet of paper attached to it. She looked up at Dina’s question but then waved her off. “The Jackson medical clinic, but we’ll get to that in a moment. There is a process we should get through first, if you don’t mind.”

The words Anne used made it sound optional, but Dina could tell by her tone, and by the unmistakable bulge of a sidearm at Anne’s hip under her clothes, that she was expected to comply with this ‘process’. It irked her slightly, but she could hardly see another way out of the situation, so she simply nodded.

To Dina’s surprise, Anne handed the clipboard to her daughter. “Give me a hand with this one, honey. What’s the first question?”

Cadence screwed up her face in concentration, her mouth moving silently as she looked at the top of the sheet. “What is...your...name?” she asked haltingly, then looked up at Dina expectantly.

Anne laughed. “Okay we’ve covered that one already, sorry. Here,” she said, handing a sharpened pencil to her daughter, “write it in this space. D-I-N-A-H.”

“No H,” Dina corrected quickly, and Cadence scribbled out the letter she had just finished writing.

“Right, sorry. The next question?” Anne prompted her daughter.

“What is your age?” she asked, looking up at her mother like she was proud that she hadn’t stumbled on any of the words.

Anne smiled at her daughter, then looked at Dina again. “Could you humour her? Cadence’s class has been learning about multiplication.”

The corner of Dina’s mouth turned up. “I just turned, um...four times four? In the summer.”

Anne frowned but Cadence’s face lit up at Dina’s response. She flipped over the form on the clipboard and wrote the problem on the back. After a few seconds of intense thought, Cadence scribbled in her answer and showed it to her mom.

“Sixteen, very good Cadence! Yep write it in that space please,” Anne said once her daughter had turned the form back over. “How about the next question?”

Cadence looked further down the sheet. “Who else is with you?” 

Dina’s breath caught in her throat again. This time, it had nothing to do with thirst. “I’m...alone.”

Anne gave her a sympathetic look as Cadence drew a cross in one of the boxes.

“Mommy, I don’t know this word,” Cadence said, using the eraser end of the pencil to tap halfway down the page. “In...inspe…”

“Inspection, honey.” Anne explained, then hummed. “Best you leave this one to me. Why don’t you go and see Jesse at the radio station? Ask if there’s been any more news from the dam.”

“But mom—”

“Cadence, go,” Anne said firmly. It had been years since she had last heard it, but Dina instantly recognised the ‘stern mom’ tone in Anne’s voice. Her heart ached.

Cadence pouted but obeyed her mother, handing over the clipboard before leaving the room. Anne watched her go before turning back to Dina.

“Sorry about that.”

Dina shrugged.

Anne looked down at the clipboard in her hand. “Sixteen...you’re very small for your age, Dina. I wouldn’t have guessed more than thirteen myself. Have you come here from a QZ?”

“Um...I lived in Roswell for a bit, but I can’t remember much about it.”

“Roswell as in Roswell, New Mexico?”

Dina nodded.

“Wow. You’re a long way from home.”

“It’s not home anymore,” Dina muttered.

Anne pursed her lips in the resulting silence. “So...here’s the deal Dina. When they brought you in here, you were in bad shape. My priority was to stop your head bleeding, and everything else could come later,” she said as she lay her clipboard down on the bed. “Now...it’s ‘later’, and it’s time for ‘everything else’.”

Anne paused and fixed Dina in her level gaze. “Do you have any infected injuries to disclose?”

“What? No,” Dina replied straight away.

Anne nodded. “That’s good, that’s good. But I hope that you can understand that I can’t just take your word for it. We’ve had some...problems in the past. People showing up and hiding bites until it was too late and all that...”

She trailed off, then slapped her thighs with her hands. “So! You get to choose: Option one is that I stick you in a quarantined house and keep you under observation for a few days. Option two is a full body inspection right now, then you’re free to go.”

Dina frowned.

“I’m a medical professional Dina, but I understand if you’re not comfortable with that. People come here with all sorts of complicated histories. I don’t need to know what you’ve been through to get here, I just give you the choice.”

“No no, it’s not that,” Dina replied hastily.

She wasn’t self-conscious, but was having trouble processing the idea that she had just been asked to make a choice. Her mother, and later Talia, had always been the ones to decide when to move, where to go, how to live. Even when Dina had been alone, she mostly wandered aimlessly and reacted instinctively to danger. Her sudden northward trek hadn’t felt like something Dina herself had chosen — it was like something had pulled her here.

Now, for the first time in her life, this felt like a choice that was within Dina’s power. The emotional wave associated with that thought was far too complicated to verbalise to the stranger sitting next to her.

“Uh, the second one,” was what Dina ended up saying to Anne.

“Very well,” Anne responded, pulling back the sheet covering Dina’s body. “You can keep your underwear, but everything else comes off.”

With Anne’s help, Dina managed to sit up on the bed. However, the sudden change in position made her feel woozy and light-headed, and she stuck an arm out to grab onto Anne for support.

“It’s okay, take your time.”

Slowly, Dina stripped off her sweaty and dirt-covered clothes, then sat on the edge of the bed shivering.

Anne gave her a quick once-over. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll start at the top and work my way down.”

Dina nodded.

“I’ve had a good look at your head already so that’s fine,” Anne commented as she tucked a loose bit of gauze into the bandage crossing Dina’s forehead. Dina swallowed as Anne checked her neck, motioning for Dina to look to the side so she could lift her bun and check the back.

Next she lifted each of Dina’s arms in turn, examining her armpit, the crook of her elbow, and spreading her fingers to check between each digit before letting the arm drop back to Dina’s side.

“What happened there?” Anne asked, motioning to Dina’s forearm. Dina looked down at the faint scar that ran down along its length. “Cat,” she replied simply.

Anne chuckled. “Adorable little bastards aren’t they? It’s already so faded. Give it another couple of years and you’ll hardly notice it.”

After asking for permission, Anne briefly raised Dina’s sports bra to check her breasts. “I know, they’d have some nerve to bite someone here. But you never know,” she said to ease the tension. Dina chuckled lightly, which drew Anne’s attention lower to her abdomen. 

“Ouch. What about this?” she asked, probing the edges of the prominent scar over Dina’s right hip.

Dina twisted her lips together. “Skateboards and unsheathed knives are not a good combination.”

Anne laughed. “Oh jeez, I daresay you’re right about that one.”

“It happened the same year as the cat scratch, actually. That was...not a good year.”

“You’ve got some badass scar stories, Dina.”

“What about yours?” Dina asked before mentally kicking herself. The few years of living alone had done wonders to her social skills. “No, sorry, I shouldn’t have asked—”

“It’s okay,” Anne said, cutting her off. “You’ve shared yours, it’s only fair that I do the same.” She paused her inspection to look at Dina’s eyes again. Dina squirmed under the level gaze; it reminded her far too much of the look her mom gave her before telling her something serious. Maybe it was something that all medical professionals were taught during their training.

If Anne noticed Dina’s discomfort, she didn’t say anything. She absent-mindedly touched the scar on her cheek before smiling. “Cadence tells her friends that I fell into a tree when my stork dropped me off, if you can believe that. I have no idea where that girl learns these things. The poor thing is going to be in for a rude awakening when her class gets my sex ed lesson next month.”

Dina smiled. She remembered how Talia had awkwardly fumbled through the same topic a few years ago. She patiently waited for Anne to continue, having missed hearing stories like this.

“Anyway...this was from way back in my medic days in the Denver QZ. I had a patient that came in from outside the zone. No-one saw the bite until it was too late. He hadn’t turned completely, but the rage took over him. He grabbed a scalpel and…” she motioned to her face.

Dina winced sympathetically.

“So...you’ll forgive me for being armed,” Anne said, patting at the bulge at her hip that Dina had spotted earlier, “and for being thorough. Can I continue?”

Dina nodded.

Anne crouched to examine Dina’s legs, parting the toes of her left foot and checking between them, much like she had done with Dina’s fingers. “You wouldn’t believe the nonsense I’ve seen, Dina. A couple of years back, a fellow came back from a patrol that had run into some infected. He hadn’t even noticed the tooth stuck into his boot, but that was all it took.” She shook her head. “Shame. He was a good guy.”

Dina stayed silent, but then hissed as Anne touched her other foot. She looked down and saw that it was swollen and coloured a deep purple. Anne lifted her arms away from Dina’s foot and looked up at her reassuredly. “Sorry, I’ll leave that one alone. It looks fine. I would prefer to check if it’s just a twisted ankle or an actual break, but unfortunately I left my x-ray machine in my other pair of jeans.” Anne chuckled to herself again. “Sorry, just a little doctor joke.”

Dina smiled as Anne straightened her back and stood up. “Are you alright to stand? I need to check your back.”

Dina nodded, accepting the offered hand as she stepped down from the bed. She was prepared for the dizziness this time, and she clutched Anne’s arm for a moment until it passed. She kept her bruised foot off the ground, hopping in a circle until she was facing away from Anne.

She looked over Dina’s back briefly. There was another awkward moment when Anne checked under the waistband of Dina’s underwear, but she was quick and professional about it. 

“All done Dina, thank you. I can’t quite give you a clean bill of health, what with all your bumps and bruises. But you’re not infected so uh...you’re all good.” Anne quickly scribbled a few notes on the sheet of paper attached to her clipboard then signed the bottom. “Rest here for a couple of days, then you’re free to see Maria and get your housing sorted.”

“Housing…?” Dina echoed, confused.

“Well I assume you’re staying, no?”

“Uh…”

“I’ll leave Maria to give you the whole spiel about Jackson. You’re always free to leave if you wish, but I find it hard to imagine there’s somewhere else that’s better than here.”

Home. Home with Talia and mom. Home with my family. It was always where Dina would rather be. But what Anne was suggesting sounded pretty good too.

She gave Anne a small nod, who grinned in response. “You chose a good day to show up here. We got word earlier that a generator at the dam is up and running, so we’ve got electricity again.”

Anne pointed above her head and Dina looked up, noticing for the first time that the room was lit with several fluorescent light bulbs.

“We’ll put on a movie tonight,” Anne continued. “Let me know how you’re feeling later today. You can stay here and rest or I can take you to the rec hall to watch it.”

Dina smiled. Another choice that was freely given to her. She was really starting to like the sound of this Jackson place.

This is now

Dina opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t, frowning as a pounding headache hit her with full force. She raised her hands to her throbbing temples and pressed gently in an attempt to soothe the ache.

She heard shifting behind her and soon felt hands cover her own.

“Don’t. It might feel better for a second, but it’ll just feel much worse once you let go,” Ellie murmured, pressing soft kisses into the back of her neck.

Dina groaned but dropped her hands away from her face. Ellie’s hands followed, then wrapped around Dina’s waist and pulled her closer under the covers. She slid a hand under Dina’s shirt and started tracing random patterns on her belly.

“How are you feeling?”

Dina managed a smile. “Do you remember that time we snuck into the Tipsy Bison and stole a bottle of moonshine?”

Ellie chuckled lightly, the warm puffs of air tickling the baby hairs at the base of Dina’s neck. “I remember almost going blind from that shit, yes.”

“I feel like that.”

Ellie clicked her tongue. “You poor thing.”

Dina listened to the sound of them breathing in tandem in the otherwise silent room. The first few rays of sunrise gave the room an amber glow. In the weak light, she could dimly recognise her surroundings — this was the same bedroom they stayed in when they passed through Caldwell on their way to Seattle.

She could barely remember getting back here after they left the restaurant. There was only a vague memory of Ellie stripping them both of their spore-covered clothes before she let Dina take her mask off. A quick glance down confirmed that Dina was wearing a t-shirt instead of her normal orange button-up.

“I never thought I would say this, but...I miss my morning sickness.”

Ellie snorted. “I should have made you eat something when we got back. The crash is much worse on an empty stomach.”

“The crash?”

“The unfortunate side-effect of experiencing...well, basically every possible emotion at the same time.”

“Huh…‘the crash’ indeed. Very fitting.”

Ellie hummed her agreement. “The first time is the worst,” she continued after a moment of quiet. “Just stay here with me. I told Tommy that we were going to need a sleep-in this morning. No one’s in a rush.”

Dina’s heart clenched. Ellie seemed to understand how she was feeling far too well. “‘The first time’...” she repeated warily, “...exactly how many times have you felt like this?”

Ellie said nothing in response. She just nuzzled her face into Dina’s back.

“El?”

Dina felt Ellie press gentle kisses into her shoulder.

“Ellie. Do you seriously feel like this after your episodes?”

Her continued silence spoke louder than anything she could have said.

Dina’s heart plunged into her stomach. “Shit. Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, starting to roll over. “We could have taken it easy. I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard to get up the next day if I knew you were fee—” Dina stopped short when she caught sight of Ellie’s face.

Ellie looked...gaunt, for lack of a better word. Her skin was sallow, barely contrasting with the beige pillowcase she was resting her head on, and there were prominent bags under her bloodshot eyes.

Dina’s heart shattered.

I thought you were eating and sleeping again.

I thought you were getting better.

I thought—

“That bad, huh?”

“What the hell Ellie?!” Dina exclaimed, headache momentarily forgotten. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

Ellie reached out and gently stroked her cheek. “I know I’m not doing a very good job of it, but I am trying to be more...honest with you. So...no. I didn’t.”

Dina blinked at the answer. She wasn’t expecting Ellie to be so blunt with her, and couldn’t think of anything to say in response.

Ellie gave her a mirthless smile and continued to caress Dina’s cheek. But then Ellie broke their intense eye contact to shift her gaze to her arm.

“Did I ever tell you that it took Cat a few sessions to do my tattoo?”

Dina frowned. Ellie was changing the topic again. And to Cat, someone who Dina didn’t enjoy talking about at the best of times.

“I’m going somewhere with this, I promise,” Ellie added quickly, like she had read Dina’s mind. “The day that she finished the linework, she...kissed me. It was the first time anyone had ever…” Ellie blinked, “well, the first time since I got bitten anyway.”

Ellie looked up at Dina, eyes wide and pleading, like she was begging Dina to understand. “We watched a movie that night and she fell asleep on my couch. I just stayed up the whole time...watching her.”

Ellie’s breath hitched in her throat. “I didn’t know how any of this worked. I—I didn’t know if I was contagious, if I could infect s—someone just by...” She took a deep breath. “I freaked the fuck out when she kissed me, Di. I was so mad. And scared. I waited that whole night...watching for a cough, listening for a groan, any sign that she was about to turn…”

Dina reached up and lifted Ellie’s hand away from her cheek. Dina gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before resting it on the pillow between them.

“She was fine the next day, of course. Whatever is fucking wrong with me, at least I can keep it to myself.” Ellie shifted her attention away from their hands to Dina’s eyes. “But yesterday…”

“You were so careful.”

“Yeah but. If there had been just one missed spore…”

“I know.”

“I couldn’t help it. I had to stay up and watch you. If there was any chance that…”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Dina pulled Ellie closer to her, peppering her forehead with kisses. “I’m okay Ellie. You got me out of there and I’m okay.”

Ellie grumbled into her shirt. “ You’re the one that just crashed. Why am I the one being coddled right now?”

“Shut up and let me do this.”

To Ellie’s credit, she did stop talking. 

“You asked for a sleep-in and that’s what you’re going to get. You’ve seen that I’m fine. Now we’re not leaving this bed until you’ve had some decent shut-eye.”

Ellie sighed and shifted even further into Dina’s arms, tangling their legs together and resting her head on Dina’s bicep. “No fucking complaints from me about that,” she mumbled as her eyes fluttered shut.

“And Ellie?”

“Hmm?”

“From now on, can you promise that you’ll tell me when you uh, crash? Please.”

Ellie hesitated, and for a moment Dina thought she wasn’t going to say anything. But then she exhaled and nodded.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

---

They bypassed Boise without incident, sticking to the smaller country roads that meandered through the semi-arid corner of western Idaho. Compared to the highway, it was much harder to navigate the mostly unsealed roads on the bike. Thankfully, Dina had had the foresight to take several patch kits and spare inner tubes from the store that the bike had originally come from, so they were able to deal with wheel punctures with relative ease.

After a few days they rejoined the highway and were able to resume their usual pace. By that evening they reached a small town called Glenns Ferry. Ellie practically flew off the bike to hug the front fencepost of the first house they came across.

“A roof! Beds! Oh how I missed you.”

Tommy chuckled from atop Sweetpea. “These damn city slickers. Nothing better than sleeping out under the stars, I reckon.”

Ellie pulled off her right sneaker and turned it upside down to tap on the bottom. “The stars are great. It’s the sand I’m not going to miss. Pretty sure I brought half the desert with me.”

Dina smiled as she hopped off Sweetpea and helped Tommy dismount. “Well, there is that river that we’ve been riding next to for most of the day. What do you say we wash up before bed?”

“I say that is an excellent fucking idea.”

---

Dina was ripped from a deep sleep, rather unceremoniously, by a slap to her face. She blinked a few times, struggling to see in the dark room. “Ellie, what the fu—”

Dina stopped when she registered frantic movement coming from the other side of the bed. Ellie was tossing and turning beside her, muttering incomprehensibly.

Ellie was having a nightmare.

Dina’s heart clenched. The last few nights had been so quiet, she should have known that this was overdue. She carefully shifted over in the bed, mindful of Ellie’s arms in case they sent another slap in her direction.

“Ellie. Ellie, wake up.”

Dina’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness and she could start to pick out the details on Ellie’s face. Her eyes were screwed shut, brows casting deep frown lines into her forehead. Her cheeks were flushed and damp with tears.

 Dina reached out and lay her hand on Ellie’s shoulder. Ellie gave no sign of registering the touch, so Dina tightened her hold and shook Ellie gently.

Ellie’s muttering intensified. Dina was about to call her name again when all of a sudden Ellie’s eyes flew open.

“NO!”

Dina lay still, knowing that it would take Ellie a few seconds to process where she was. Right now she would be in a similar situation as Dina was when she first woke up — disoriented and unable to see anything in the room.

Ellie’s sense of touch was still intact however. Dina felt a hand cover the one that was still resting on Ellie’s shoulder. It was clammy and trembling.

“Hey,” Dina whispered cautiously, “are you with me?”

Ellie gave a shuddering sigh at the sound of her voice. She squeezed Dina’s hand. “Yes.”

“Nightmare?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Please?” Dina paused. “You promised.”

“...That was for crashing.”

“I don’t remember reading that in the fine print.”

Ellie exhaled and lifted Dina’s hand off her shoulder. Dina’s heart sank. Ellie was about to brush her off. Again.

But Ellie didn’t let go. Instead, she laced their fingers together and drew their hands closer to her, dropping her head to brush featherlight kisses across Dina’s knuckles.

Dina’s breath caught in her throat at the gesture of affection. She took a chance. “Joel?”

Ellie shook her head, nose bumping Dina’s fingers in the process. “No.” Ellie pulled Dina’s hand to her chest, resting it just above her heart. It was still racing from her nightmare. “You.”

Dina’s own heart skipped a beat. “Me?”

“Mmhmm.”

Dina searched Ellie’s face. She just looked so incredibly...weary.

“But before I tell you, can you promise me something?”

Dina nodded.

“Can you please try to stop...mothering me?”

Dina frowned. “I’m not—”

“You are.” Ellie said, pausing for a moment before continuing. “When we’re sweeping a building, you always get in front of me so that you’re the one to open the doors. When we’re in a shootout, you keep breaking cover to find me, or to ask if I need more ammo. When you’re riding the bike, you’re always looking over your shoulder at me.”

Ellie inhaled deeply. “Every time you’re checking on me, you’re not checking for infected. Or hunters. Or...or a random fucking hole in the road that will throw you off the bike.” She looked deep into Dina’s eyes. “It’s dangerous, Dina. I can do that stuff myself.” She paused. “You’re my girlfriend, not my mom.”

Dina blinked. Fine, maybe she was keeping a few more tabs on Ellie since her blowup back at Union. Of course it had worried her. But as Dina quickly ran through her own behaviour over the past couple of weeks, she realised that she had been doing all of the things that Ellie just listed.

Ellie was right. Dina was being reckless. She could have gotten them killed. And she hadn’t even noticed.

“Shit. Ellie, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to...”

“I know. But now that I’ve asked, can you try to like, tone it down? Please?”

“I will.”

“Thank you.”

Dina breathed deeply. “So...can you tell your girlfriend about your nightmare?”

Ellie was biting at her bottom lip, but eventually she stopped to speak. “We were back in that fucking kitchen. But I...I didn’t get you out of that fridge in time.”

Dina grimaced. “That’s...awful. That is awful, Ellie. And unfair — you did get me out of there.”

“I know that. I think my subconscious needs more convincing.”

Dina smiled and reached out to cup the side Ellie’s face. Ellie was receptive to the touch, nuzzling her cheek further into Dina’s palm. Gently, Dina guided Ellie to turn over so that she was facing away from her, then scooted forward so that her front was against Ellie’s back.

Dina brushed away the bits of Ellie’s hair that were covering her face. She wrapped her arms around Ellie’s waist, pulling her even closer so that her lips were right next to Ellie’s ear.

“Hey,” Dina whispered, “Ellie’s piece-of-shit subconscious.”

Ellie snorted.

“I’m right here,” Dina continued. “I’m staying right here. I’m not going anywhere. You hear?”

In the silence that followed, Ellie sniffed loudly. Dina realised that she was crying. “Hey, hey...it’s okay.”

Ellie raised a hand to her face and roughly swiped at her cheeks. “I don’t want to lose you. Fuck, I can’t lose you.”

“Good.”

Much like Dina had done back at the theatre, she kissed Ellie’s shoulder and held onto her. Soon, they were both asleep.

---

It was light the next time Dina woke up. She was facing the wall, so she rolled over slowly. The other side of the bed was empty.

“You’re really beautiful when you sleep.”

Dina raised her eyes from the vacant bed and spotted Ellie. She was sitting cross-legged in an armchair on the other side of the room.

Dina felt a blush coming on, but she didn’t want Ellie to know that. “You were watching me sleep? Hmm, little bit creepy.”

Ellie rolled her eyes but she was smiling. As she got up from her chair, Dina could see that she was holding her journal. She walked over and sat on the bed, drawing up her knees and scooting back so she could lean against the headboard. She rested her journal on her lap. 

“Wow. Considering that that’s what I get when I give you a compliment...no wonder everyone thinks you’re the romantic one.”

“Everyone thinks I’m the romantic one?”

“You literally just woke up. How are you already like this?”

“It’s one of my many talents.”

“You’re infuriating.”

Dina was grinning now. “Have you met you?”

“Ooooooh no no no. This is not going to become our fucking ‘thing’.”

“Too late! That ship has sailed!”

Ellie laughed and shook her head. She picked her journal up from her lap and opened it. Dina quickly looked away as Ellie fanned the pages. Eventually the noises of rustling paper stopped and Dina looked back again.

Ellie was holding a loose piece of paper. It was one of the many that Ellie collected to use as reference images for her drawings. This one looked like it was some sort of anatomical drawing of the human body, probably from a medical textbook. Ellie turned the sheet over so the blank side was facing Dina and waved it over her.

“Fuck it, I surrender.”

Dina filled her cheeks with air then blew the paper away from her face. “Really? What happened to ‘never give up, never surrender’?”

Ellie looked down at her with undisguised pride. “Surely my ears are deceiving me. Surely MY girlfriend did not just make a Galaxy Quest reference!”

“Well, everyone does say I’m the romantic one,” Dina said, smirking, “but it’s not my fault that my girlfriend’s love languages are weird.” She raised both of her arms, palms facing towards the ceiling, to mime a set of scales. “You say that I’m beautiful, and I quote one of your nerdy movies.”

“But I said that you were really beautiful...”

There was no hiding the blush this time.

“...what do I get for that?”

Dina poked her tongue out. “Don’t push your luck.”

Ellie screwed up her face in thought. “Hmm, that’s a tough one. Maybe from that episode of Seinfeld? Shit, it could be Scarface though.”

“Ooooh, so close. Try the Swan Princess,” Dina said, grinning.

“Oh. Wow. That is...that is an interesting choice.”

“Excuse me, I have excellent taste in movies. Admit it.”

“I love you?”

Dina rolled her eyes and lightly swatted at Ellie’s knee. Ellie gave her a cheeky smile in response, then stretched her legs out straight and patted her thighs. Dina accepted the invitation, scooting around to use Ellie’s lap as a pillow.

“Can I show you something?” Ellie asked, picking her journal up from the bed beside her.

Dina’s breath hitched. “Uh...if you want to show it to me.”

“I do.”

Ellie tucked her makeshift white flag into her journal, between the front cover and first page, and then leafed through the pages. Again, Dina pointedly averted her eyes — she was only interested in seeing whatever Ellie wanted to show her.

Ellie found the page she was looking for and smoothed out the spine. “Okay. Promise you won’t laugh.”

“I promise.”

Ellie rotated her journal and handed it to Dina, who rested it against her stomach to finally look at it.

Dina kept her promise; she didn’t laugh. But, for a moment, she did forget how to breathe.

It was a full-page sketch of a woman. She was lying in a bed, fast asleep, sheets twisted around her legs. The last few buttons of her shirt were undone and a small baby bump was showing underneath. One of her hands was resting protectively over her stomach, and the other was tucked under her head. Her thick dark hair fell past her shoulders in tumbling waves, framing her freckled face. Her eyes were closed, lashes resting lightly on her cheeks. The drawing had captured her right at the peak of an inhale, the nostrils of her prominent nose slightly flared. Her lips were parted, turned up in the faintest ghost of a smile.

It was her.

Ellie had drawn Dina.

And she was beautiful.

Dina was lost for words. Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to figure out what to say. 

“I drew you like one of my Jewish girls,” Ellie said, beaming. Then she paused for a moment, like she had to process what she had just said. “Wait, there is only one of you though,” she added quickly.

The sound of Ellie’s voice released Dina from her paralysed state. She swallowed thickly. “It’s alright Jack, I got the gist.” She looked at the drawing and then back at Ellie. “Is this...is this really how you see me?”

“Well, I took some artistic license when I left out the dribble at the corner of your mouth.” Ellie said, smiling as she brushed her fingers across the corner of Dina’s mouth in question, “and I know your hair’s up right now. But I’ve seen you wear it down,” she continued, running her fingers through the hair pressed against Dina’s scalp. “But, uh, yeah? Of course. I mean...it is you.”

“I think I’m going to cry.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow before leaning down to kiss away the tears dripping from Dina’s eyes. She lifted her head slightly, her breath warming Dina’s cheek as she spoke. “Too late. That ship has sailed.”

Dina’s throat was still thick with feeling, but she laughed all the same. “How? How long did this take you?”

“Uh…not long. I just woke up and started drawing.”

“You must not have slept much after your nightmare…”

Ellie straightened back up and sighed. “You’re mothering me again.”

Dina blinked. “That’s not fair,” she said lowly. She reached up and untangled Ellie’s hand from her hair, pulling it towards her chest instead. “This isn’t dangerous. I’m not going to be jumped by a clicker just for caring about you.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Please be serious.”

“I am.”

“El, stop. You’re immune, not cursed.”

“But back in Caldwell…”

“Caldwell was scary as shit. That doesn’t make it your fault.”

Ellie pulled her hand from Dina’s grip to scratch at her nose. When her arm dropped back by her side, Dina could see that Ellie had a black smudge across the bridge of her nose. She must have sharpened her pencil earlier; whenever she did, some filings always got caught under her fingernails.

Wordlessly, Dina reached up and brushed a finger against the smudge. She drew her finger back to show Ellie, who looked down at her offending fingernail with a frown. She gathered a loose end of the bedsheet in her hand and ran it under her nail until it was clean.

“I draw you a lot, Di,” Ellie whispered under her breath. Like she was making a confession. “I wanted to draw this one when I woke up because…” Ellie paused and stretched a hand out to rest on Dina’s belly. “...it was the first time I noticed that you were showing.”

Dina sighed in response to Ellie’s words and the reinitiation of contact with her body. She looked down and smiled at the sight of Ellie’s hand, which now had to arch slightly to cover her swollen stomach. But then she raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think I can’t see what you’re doing, Ellie Williams.” She reached down and lay her own hand over Ellie’s before speaking softly.  “You can’t just change the subject to this baby when you don’t want to talk about something.”

“Is it that obvious?” Ellie joked weakly.

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Sorry.” Ellie rubbed Dina’s stomach gently. “I guess that this little bud just feels like, uh...like low-hanging fruit. Something that I can help you with, you know? For once.”

“Alien...potato...squatter...low-hanging fruit…” Dina said, listing them off on her fingers, “...you keep talking about it, yet I haven’t heard you say one nice word about this thing.”

“Hey, ‘Potato’ is endearing. I can totally make it work. It’ll be one of those nicknames that evolve over time. Can you not picture Tate the angsty teenager?”

Dina smiled, surprised at how easily she could indeed imagine that. “Potato...okay,” she said, nodding to herself. “You’re in charge of making Potato happen. Do you promise?”

Ellie smiled.

“I promise.”

Chapter Text

That was then

The brisk winter air hummed with the sound of gentle guitar chords. Ellie was curled up in one of the chairs on Joel’s porch, blowing across the top of a freshly-made mug of hot cocoa.

Chocolate was a rare sight in Jackson, so when some traders had come through a few weeks earlier with a tin of the powdered stuff, Ellie hadn’t hesitated to give up her spare rifle for it. It didn’t hurt either that ever since the trade, Ellie had noticed an increase in Dina’s ‘spontaneous’ visits to her place. 

Ellie played along whenever she stopped by, to the point where they had developed a ritual: she would start making a cup for herself and casually offer a second one to Dina to ‘make the most of the boiled milk’. Dina would always initially refuse, but then accept the offer when Ellie insisted.

She had an extra reason to look forward to Dina’s next visit. Joel had found an ancient packet of marshmallows on his most recent patrol, which he had given to Ellie after she managed to convince him that they were so full of sugar that it acted as a natural preservative. She had no idea if that was actually true, but she tried one yesterday and hadn’t keeled over yet, which was good enough for her.

Ellie was so caught up in her thoughts that she only heard the last few lines of the song Joel was singing. As the final note echoed into the night, he leaned back in the other chair on his porch. The strings gradually stilled and he rested his hand on top of the guitar.

“Man. I was on the edge of my seat there, but I sure am glad that the cowboy got the girl in the end,” Ellie said, lolling her head along the back of the chair so she was looking at Joel sideways, “...just like the other hundred times I’ve heard you sing that song.”

Joel raised his open hand and placed it in the middle of his chest, feigning offence. “I will have you know, that song is a certified classic. Honestly, kids these days got no appreciation for the greats,” he grumbled, shaking his head in mock exasperation.

“Yeah yeah, ‘what is the world coming to?’ and all that,” Ellie replied, grinning. “C’mon, there has to be something that I haven’t heard you play before.”

Joel raised a hand to stroke at his beard, considering Ellie’s request. “Well...there is a good one that I remember fairly well.” He chuckled to himself. “It’s not exactly my genre, but if the lady insists…”

“The lady does,” Ellie confirmed, wiggling in her chair to find a comfier position. She aimed a finger gun at Joel. “Hit it.”

Joel shook his head at Ellie’s antics, then directed his attention down to the guitar’s fretboard. His fingers slid along the strings, settling in position for the first note. He played a few bars of a slow melody, then opened his mouth to begin.

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality”

Ellie shifted in her seat, ears pricking in attention at the unfamiliar tune. She smiled softly as Joel continued through the somber lyrics. 

“If I'm not back again this time tomorrow

Carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters”

He slowly built up the song, closing his eyes and layering more and more emotion into his voice, until:

“I don't wanna die

I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all!”

Joel stopped singing but continued to play, fingers sliding up and down the neck of the guitar in a passionate solo. He opened his eyes when the tempo slowed down to a trickle of gentle notes. Ellie leaned back and smiled. “The words were kinda sad, but that was nice. You should play that one more oft—” 

Joel held up his hand to quieten her. “Ah bup bup bup. Hold your horses, it’s still going.” 

Ellie tilted her head, puzzled. Joel readjusted his hold on the guitar, then abruptly switched to sharply strumming an open chord. He caught Ellie’s eye, grinning as he delivered the next lines.

“I see a little silhouetto of a man

Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the Fandango???”

Ellie sat up at the sudden change in the lyrics and Joel’s voice. 

“Whaaat?”

Her look of bewilderment only seemed to egg Joel on. He puffed out his chest, strumming with greater force and singing much louder than before.

“Thunderbolts and lightning!

Very very frightening, ME!”

Ellie looked around at the nearby houses. She hadn’t seen any lights flickering on, but at this point their neighbours were undoubtedly being subjected to this concert too. Ellie sent them a telepathic apology as Joel continued to spout increasingly nonsensical lyrics in as best a falsetto that his deep southern drawl allowed for.

Finally, Ellie could no longer contain herself and burst out laughing.

“Alright alright, hold up,” she said, waving her hands in front of her face. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that wasn’t you having a stroke. But really ? ‘Spare him, his wife, and his warm sausage tea ’?” She parroted Joel’s last line back to him. “There is no. way. that that’s a real song.”

Joel spluttered in indignation. “It absolutely is a real song. Have some respect, you heathen. Hearing Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time is a sacred moment.” He smiled. “It was basically a tradition for parents to play it to their kids so they could see them experience Freddie Mercury’s lyrical genius firsthand.” He paused and scratched at his beard. “Although, come to think of it, I wouldn’t say that I am a hundred percent confident about that particular line.”

Ellie snorted. “Yeah, no offence, but I’m not sure I ever want to experience something that involves warm sausage tea,” she said, raising her mug of cocoa to her lips, “sacred or otherwise.”

Joel rolled his eyes and frowned. “It’s been 30 years since I heard that song, and I still haven’t managed to find one of their records. Suppose I’ll have to ask around Jackson to see if any of the other oldies remember the words better.”

Ellie decided she had teased Joel enough for the night. She leaned over and tapped on the head of the guitar to get his attention. “I’m just fucking with you. That was a weird-ass song, but you put on quite a show. And if, one day, you do figure out that line...I expect an encore.”

This is now

“Potato, potato,” Ellie sang under her breath. With a deft hand, she carved another straight notch into the tree trunk in front of her.

“My little buddy potato,” she continued quietly. The sun had not yet risen, and the chill from the night cast an eerie silence around her. She looked back at the house that they had picked to stay in when they had arrived in Twin Falls. Fifteen minutes earlier, Ellie had left Dina peacefully sleeping in the master bedroom. There had been a tense moment when she had passed the living room and heard Tommy shifting around on the couch. But he had carried on sleeping, and Ellie had gotten out of the house undetected.

“No,” Ellie said, frowning, “My little buddy po-TA-to.” She tried the line again, this time adding a rising inflection to the middle of ‘potato’. She nodded at the improved melody then stabbed her switchblade into the tree, releasing the handle and leaving it sticking straight out from the soft wood.

Hands free, she stooped down to retrieve her journal. When she had selected this tree, she had taken her backpack off and laid it on the ground nearby, then balanced her journal on top of it to keep it off the dewy grass.

Journal collected, Ellie opened it and made a note in the margin next to her newest lyric. She still wasn’t sure what to name this potato-centric musical masterpiece, so for the moment her page was headed with ‘Mom-bo no. 1’. It was the first time she had thought of writing a song for Dina’s baby — our baby, she corrected herself quickly — but Ellie just knew that it would be a worthy successor to the Lou Bega hit.

Ellie knew the song well thanks to Riley’s cassette tape. While it was far from her usual taste in music, it was one of her favourites. She found out the singer's name when she played the song for Joel while he was working away in his hobby room. Unfortunately, Joel could offer no explanations for what a ‘mambo’ was, nor why the first four were missing. But that hadn’t stopped her from going to find Dina to share her newfound knowledge.

~~~

“Do you like jive music?”

Ellie had been hanging around the stables while she waited for Dina to finish her watchtower shift. Dina had arrived and was checking in her gun when Ellie sprung the question on her. She whirled around and raised an eyebrow at Ellie. “Hold your horses, Speedy McGee.”

Ellie grinned and leaned over the low wall nearest to her, placing her hands on either side of the head of the pinto mare occupying the stall. “Shimmer’s out in the paddock. Will Lacey do?”

Dina rolled her eyes and looped her arm through the crook of Ellie’s elbow. She tugged Ellie away from the unimpressed horse and out of the stables.

“It’s hard to know if I like something when I’ve never even heard the word before.”

Ellie held up her walkman, earbuds still plugged into the jack, by way of explanation. “You. Me. The park. ‘Mambo no. 5’. It’s great, I promise.”

Ellie readjusted the angle of her arm so that she was the one in charge of the link between her and Dina. She steered them towards the grassy area at the heart of Jackson and directed Dina to sit down under one of the young spruce trees. Ellie joined her, and together they lay down so they were looking up through the tree’s branches and the blue sky beyond.

“Here,” Ellie said as she offered one of the earbuds to Dina. The cord between the two buds was not very long, and Ellie had to scoot her head right next to Dina so they could both listen to the song. It was an arrangement that Ellie didn’t mind at all.

They got halfway through the first chorus before Dina interrupted. “Did he just say ‘a little bit of Dina's what I see’?”

Ellie paused the music and lolled her head to the side. “Sounded more like ‘Tina’ to me.”

“Oh. Are you sure? Keep going.”

Ellie hit play and the upbeat song continued. She watched Dina closely as the chorus started again. When they reached the line in question, Dina narrowed her eyes to focus her attention on the name. She pursed her lips and nodded in resignation, evidently agreeing with Ellie’s original opinion.

Ellie found herself sad that she was right. Dina totally deserved a shoutout in the song. She suddenly had an idea, which she spent the song’s bridge internally debating. But she knew that she didn’t have long to make up her mind; the next chorus was the last one. She threw caution to the wind just as two brassy trumpet notes signalled the imminent return of the chorus.

“A little bit of Dina in my life,

A little bit of Dina by my side,

A little bit of Dina's all I need,

A little bit of Dina's what I see,

A little bit of Dina in the sun,

A little bit of Dina all night long,

A little bit of Dina, here I am,

A little bit of you makes me your man.”

Ellie had listened to the song enough times that she had no trouble keeping up with the fast lyrics. She just had to focus on swapping in and emphasising Dina’s name for each line. The substitutions didn’t sound as good for the names that originally had three syllables, but Dina was watching Ellie with such delight that she probably didn’t notice.

Ellie stopped singing after the chorus finished. The song’s outro went largely ignored — both of them were too busy grinning at each other like fools. Dina’s cheeks had a noticeable blush to them as she reached up and removed the bud from her ear.

“I like your version much better,” Dina whispered, scooting closer to Ellie so their faces were barely an inch apart. Ellie glanced down at Dina’s mouth, then Dina moved in and captured Ellie’s lips in a kiss.

~~~

The memory dissipated and Ellie returned to herself. She had gotten used to these random vivid flashbacks interrupting her at rather inconvenient times. They had always been innocuous memories, and Ellie had tended to just brush them off. Although...she wasn’t sure she could call this one a memory. Each time she had these flashbacks, they had been faithful recreations of what had really happened.

Until now.

In reality, that listening session in the park back in Jackson hadn’t ended with a kiss. Rather, after Ellie had vastly improved the final chorus, she had turned red and mumbled something about a forgotten farm rotation before bolting from Dina’s side.

Ellie frowned, then looked down at the page of her journal thoughtfully. She had been making a lot of promises to Dina recently. At least it was reciprocal — Dina promising to ease off from mothering her, and later promising to not laugh at her drawing, reassured Ellie that there were equal amounts of give and take on that front. Plus, this latest ‘Potato’ promise was one that Ellie was happy to keep. In fact, Ellie was so committed to making it happen, she was sure that Dina would come to regret the request.

But...maybe it was Ellie’s turn to ‘give’ again. She had told Dina about the first of these memory flashbacks back when they were in Union, but this new, ‘not-quite’ memory was...something else. Dina deserved to know, especially since Ellie realised that she was starting to lose more and more time in them.

Sure enough, when she looked behind her, the first few rays of sunrise were creeping up over the horizon. There had been at least half an hour of darkness left when Ellie had come out of the house to look for her current carving project, so she must have been trapped in her own head for a good fifteen minutes.

She had been gone from Dina’s side for far too long already.

She returned her journal to her backpack and extracted her switchblade from where she had left it in the tree. She was almost done with the carving, but just as she was finishing off the final notch of the number ‘14’, she was mercilessly pulled into another memory.

~~~

“There,” Ellie said, brushing the loose wood dust away from the carving. She stepped back to inspect her handiwork, mindful to not trip on the twisted metal fence that the fallen tree had taken down with it. From her current angle, she could just make out the theatre’s marquee on the other side of the street from the park.

“Bright shining one,” Dina whispered.

Ellie turned to look behind her. “What?”

“Your name. It means ‘bright shining one’.” Dina approached Ellie, her eyes wet with tears.

Ellie turned back to the uprooted tree. She had carved an outline of a moth, and her own name, into the trunk.

“Huh. I don’t think I knew that.”

The corner of Dina’s mouth quirked up in a smile, but her eyes remained impossibly sad. “Please stay.”

Ellie tore her gaze away from the deep hole next to the exposed roots guiltily. She hadn’t even noticed that that was where her eyes had settled. “I love you—”

“Then don’t go. You don’t have to go.”

Dina took a step forward, but Ellie responded by taking a step backwards. Backwards, and closer to the hole.

Dina held up her hands, eyes begging for her to stop. “You go...I go.” It almost sounded like a threat.

“That’s up to you...but I know you won’t.” Ellie put her hands on her hips and exhaled. “I’m not like you, Dina. You can’t go — there are people that need you.” Ellie took another step back. The edge of the hole was only a couple of feet away from her now.

“People need you too, you idiot.”

Ellie looked over her shoulder. “Maybe they did...before. But I can’t help anyone anymore,” she said with a solemn shrug. “I have to finish it.”

While Ellie was looking behind her, Dina took the risk of stepping forward and holding Ellie’s face in her hands. She rested their foreheads together. Ellie could feel Dina’s hot tears splashing her nose, but she reached up and pulled Dina’s hands away from her cheeks.

“I’m sorry.” Ellie took one final step back. Her foot met empty air and she tipped backwards into the hole. Dina’s despairing face was the last thing she saw before the dirt walls collapsed on top of her.

~~~

This time, when Ellie came to, she was lying on her back in the damp grass.

Fuck.

The sun had fully risen now, bathing Ellie in its warm morning rays. She must have lost at least another fifteen minutes again.

Fuck.

The familiar sensation of a post-crash headache was lurking at the corners of her temples. Ellie knew from previous experience that while she could safely ignore it for now, in a few hours it was going to escalate into a debilitating migraine.

Fuck.

Oh. And Dina was standing over her, a barely-concealed look of worry on her face.

“Fuck.”

Ellie frowned. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

Dina wordlessly crouched down by Ellie’s side and helped her sit up, brushing the leaves from the back of Ellie’s jacket. “What are you doing?” she asked quietly. “I woke up and you weren’t th—th—there,” she continued, the final word getting caught up in a violent shiver. Dina must have immediately gone to look for Ellie after she had woken up. She was only wearing a tank top and her underwear. She didn’t even have shoes on. 

Ellie suspected that Dina’s lack of climate-appropriate clothing was only partly to blame for her shivering. But she moved on autopilot anyway, shrugging off her jacket and draping it around Dina’s shoulders, rubbing her arms through the material to warm her up.

“Sorry. I thought I could keep it a surprise.”

“Keep what a surprise?”

Ellie rocked forward, getting her feet under her and standing up. She was prepared for the dizziness, leaning her weight against the tree casually until the bright spots faded from her vision. Then she turned, offered Dina her hand, and pulled her up.

Ellie stepped behind Dina then looped her arms around her chest and hugged her tightly. Dina’s skin was still cool to the touch, but she was warming up by the second, the longer she stayed in Ellie’s embrace.

Ellie pressed a few kisses into the back of Dina’s neck then rested her chin on her shoulder. She rocked them gently side to side, gradually shuffling the placement of their feet until they had turned in a half-circle to face the tree. Dina’s breath hitched when she saw what Ellie had done.

Ellie had scraped the bark off of the trunk of the young elm tree at about chest height. She had carved a rough heart in the cleared space and added ‘D+E’ to the middle. Underneath their initials was the number that Ellie had just managed to finish off before she had fallen into her memory.

“Surprise,” she whispered next to Dina’s ear.

“Aww. You vandalised a tree for me,” Dina replied, a hint of humour in her voice. She turned her head and gave Ellie a quick peck on the lips. “What’s the occasion? And what’s up with the number?”

“Well, math isn’t my strong suit, but I think you’re fourteen weeks along now?”

Dina smiled and nodded.

“I only started putting the weeks since Yakima. When you found your baby book. But...I’ve been doing this since we left Seattle. For every city that we’ve stayed the night in. ”

Dina blinked. “Really? How have I only caught you now?”

“Why did you think I always took so long to find you a barf bucket?”

Dina aimed a slap at Ellie’s side. “Cheeky,” she murmured, resting her head against Ellie’s temple.

“It’s the one thing that I missed about your morning sickness,” Ellie continued lightly. “It didn’t take me long anyway. Later, I usually did it when it was your turn to tack up Sweetpea or make breakfast. But...there were a few times where I did sneak out while you were asleep,” she confessed sheepishly.

Dina sighed and turned within Ellie’s embrace so she was facing her. “Why? Why keep this a secret? I freaked the fuck out when I woke up and you weren’t there, Ellie.”

It was hard to hold Dina’s gaze when she was looking at her so earnestly. But Ellie forced herself to keep looking into her eyes. It was the least Dina deserved from her. “I know. I’m sorry. I just...I kept thinking about what you said back at that library in Kennewick.”

“The library?”

“Yeah. Were you serious about going back to Seattle? When the baby’s older?”

Ellie’s response must have helped Dina recall their conversation from a few weeks ago, because her eyes widened and she nodded. “Yeah...yes, absolutely. But um...only if you want to.”

“I do. They...they deserve to say hi to their dad.” Ellie looked up at the carving again. “It will be nice to do some sightseeing along the way. I figured I’d leave behind some sights for us to see.”

Dina was quiet for a moment. “That’s a beautiful idea. I’m sure they’ll love it.”

“Thanks. It was meant to be a surprise for you too though.”

“Don’t you think we’ve already had enough surprises for the rest of our lives?”

Ellie snorted. “Wow. When you put it that way, I sound like an asshole for trying to hide this from you.”

“Good. You are an asshole,” Dina said with a laugh. Dina wiggled free of Ellie’s hold and slid her arms into the sleeves of Ellie’s jacket so she was wearing it properly. She stepped towards Ellie again and rested her forearms on her shoulders, linking her hands behind Ellie’s neck. There was no music, but she started swaying them back and forth like they were dancing.

With a smile, Ellie followed Dina’s lead. She rested her hands on Dina’s hips, pulling her closer while still being mindful of the baby bump between them.

“Why were you on the floor?”

Ellie tripped over her feet at the unexpected question, stopping their dance for a moment. But Dina gently tugged at the back of her neck, encouraging her to fall back into the rhythm of the imaginary song. Ellie complied, looking down at her shoes to match the tempo that Dina had set. When she looked up again, she could see that Dina was patiently waiting for an answer.

“I...I crashed.” Ellie braced herself for the shame and guilt that she was sure would follow the admission. But, much to her surprise, there was only a soothing sense of release.

Dina hummed sympathetically. “Tell me?”

Ellie swallowed. “Do you remember what happened when I was in that stable with Sweetpea? Back in Union?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Well...that keeps happening. And this one—” Ellie paused. “...it was bad.”

Ellie felt Dina tense in her arms, but she kept holding her and swaying side to side. Ellie looked up at her carving on the tree again. “We were at Jesse’s tree. But the grave...the grave was for me.”

Dina pursed her lips. “I thought you said that these were memories. That’s not what happened.”

“I know, I was as surprised as you are. It was like...a not-quite memory.”

This time it was Dina that brought them to a halt. She unlinked her fingers from behind Ellie’s neck. “Oh Ellie,” she sighed, tucking a stray bit of hair behind Ellie’s ear before placing a hand on her chest. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? It’s not like you pushed me into the hole. I uh...fell.” Ellie winced at the tiny lie. But Dina didn’t have to know all the details, right?

Dina frowned. “I said I would be there for you if it happened again. It did...and I wasn’t there.”

Ellie twisted her lips together. “You couldn’t have known…”

Dina sighed and dropped her head so her cheek was resting on Ellie’s collarbone. “I would have known if I was here. I’m trying to work on my mothering. Really, I am. But I also meant what I said — you go, I go.”

Ellie’s heart skipped a beat at the achingly familiar words. Here, Dina said them with so much love, that the contrast with the Dina from her not-quite memory was almost painful.

“You’re such a sap,” Ellie said, nuzzling Dina’s hair with her chin. “I love you, but we’re not glued at the hip. You’d better not start following me when I need to like...pee, or whatever.”

Dina snorted. “I’ll try my best, but I can’t make any promises.” She lifted her head from Ellie’s chest and looked deep into her eyes. Ellie returned the gaze with just as much love, if not more.

“Just...tell me we’re going to be okay,” Dina whispered.

Ellie faltered. In the world they were living in, that sort of thinking was wishful at best, and outright dangerous at worst. But just for now, while they were wrapped up in each other’s arms and bathing in the warm glow of the gentle morning sunlight, Ellie allowed herself a moment of not giving a fuck about any of that. She took a deep breath and smiled.

“Yeah...yeah. We’re going to be okay.”

Chapter Text

That was then

It’s not like Dina was trying to eavesdrop. Honest.

But she was still getting the hang of the crutches that Anne had given her once it was clear that her ankle was actually broken, and the steps that made up the path leading to this house were not being kind to her.

She took a break about halfway up, panting heavily as she tried to catch her breath. She flushed in embarrassment at the sweat patches she could feel growing at her armpits, and adjusted the crutches yet again in an attempt to hide them. Once she managed to get her breathing down to a quiet wheeze, she realised she could hear voices coming from inside the house.

“I already said that I was sorry.” A deep voice with a southern accent spoke first. If Dina had to guess, she would say it was a man.

“I just can’t believe how close you were to taking that girl off his hands.” This second speaker had a slightly higher-pitched voice — probably a woman, and probably the ‘Maria’ person that Dina had been sent to speak to. She spoke with authority and confidence.

“But I didn’t. Her and Joel are on their way to that university right now, and I’m right here. Why can’t you just let it go already?” The man continued.

Dina winced. She really didn’t want to be listening to what was clearly a couple in the middle of a squabble. The last thing she wanted was to establish herself as the new nosy kid in town. She stumbled up the last few steps awkwardly, accidentally whacking her shin with one of the crutches in the process. She bit back a curse and hobbled towards the house.

“You were this close. This close to giving up everything we’ve worked for here. And for what? To chase the same empty hope that you had already wasted over ten years of your life on,” the woman replied, almost hissing now.

Dina was feet away from the front door. The two people in the house had somehow not noticed all the noise she had made as she got up the steps, and were continuing their heated conversation.

“It’s not an empty hope. Not anymore. I trust Joel’s word with my life. If he says the girl’s imm—” 

Finally, Dina had reached the door and quickly knocked. The conversation came to a sudden halt.

“Are you expecting someone?” The man whispered his question, but his deep voice carried through to Dina anyway.

“Um, is this Maria’s house?” Dina called out awkwardly. “It’s Dina...she wanted to speak with me?”

She heard shuffling noises for a moment then the door swung open. A blonde woman stood at the entrance. She had piercing and focused eyes, which Dina just managed to catch in the midst of a frown before the woman quickly put on a smile instead.

“Dina! Yes, that’s me. Please, come in,” she said brightly, stepping to the side and waving Dina inside.

Dina nodded, concentrating on aiming the rubber-tipped ends of her crutches at the middle of the door’s threshold. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself in front of Maria, who was — based on what she’d heard so far — in charge of the whole town. Thankfully, she managed to swing herself smoothly into the small entrance area of the house.

“Oh gosh Dina, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were on crutches,” Maria said, glancing out her front door before she closed it behind Dina. “I would have asked you to meet me somewhere else if I had known. I know my house ain’t the easiest place to get to.”

Dina shrugged, praying that her sweat had the decency to stay confined to her armpits and hadn’t spread to her back. There would be no way to hide that. “It was no trouble, really.”

She heard a laugh coming from deeper in the house. Maria sighed, but smiled as she directed Dina towards the sound. Dina maneuvered herself towards what turned out to be a cosy sitting room. A man with shoulder-length dirty blonde hair was sitting in one of the armchairs.

“No need to be so polite here,” he said with a grin, “I’ve done that walk after having a few too many at the Tipsy Bison. It’s far from ‘no trouble’.”

“There’s a reason I’ve given up trying to grow anything in those garden beds,” Maria said as she entered the room behind Dina. “Nothing survives there for long if my dumbass husband has anything to say about it.”

She walked over to the man and perched on the arm of his chair casually. “Once, I had actually managed to get some tulips going, only to find him fast asleep in them the next day.”

Maria gave the man a good-humoured tap on his knee, and he responded by gently headbutting her shoulder. Dina couldn’t help but smile at the loving interaction — whatever these two were bickering about before Dina arrived seemed to be long forgotten.

The man returned his attention to Dina. “Anyway, I only drink for special occasions. Like to celebrate new people showing up at Jackson.” He looked up at his wife. “Is this her?”

Maria nodded and the man stood up. “Well I’ll be. The name’s Tommy, it’s a pleasure to finally meet yo—”

The man — Tommy — had stuck out his hand and had been walking towards Dina as he spoke, but he had neglected to account for the low coffee table in his path. His leg swung into it with a crack, making a vase of flowers and a clipboard that were sitting on it rattle loudly. Tommy quickly redirected his hand to clutch at his shin.

“Christ almighty!!!” he yelled.

Dina winced in sympathy, mindful of her own throbbing shin from her earlier stumble. But she couldn’t help but hide a smile behind her hand as Tommy hopped around on one foot next to an amused Maria.

After rolling her eyes, Maria reached out and pulled her husband back into his chair. He gave the coffee table a glare before he leant down and gingerly rubbed at his leg.

“I take it you’ve already started drinking to celebrate my arrival then?”

The snarky remark slipped out before Dina could properly think about it. She clamped her mouth shut, eyes widening at the thought that she had just overstepped.

Mercifully, Tommy just looked at her for a moment before letting out a booming laugh. He looked up at his wife and chuckled again. “I knew I’d like this one!” he said, slapping his knee in delight. He stood up again, giving the low table a wide berth this time as he crossed to Dina’s side of the room. “Come come, sit down. Dina, right?”

Dina nodded and let Tommy guide her to the other armchair in the room. Dina sank down into it gratefully, leaning her crutches against the side to get them out of the way. She took off her backpack and set it down next to them.

Tommy glanced down at her foot. “That looks like Anne’s handiwork.”

Dina nodded again. After it was clear that her ankle wasn’t getting better after a few days of bedrest, the Jackson medic had declared it officially broken. There wasn’t any material for a plaster cast, but Anne had done a decent job of binding and immobilising Dina’s ankle with strips of fabric, two pieces of plumbing pipe and a PVC elbow connector.

“Do whatever you need to do to get comfy. Make yourself at home,” Tommy said, waving at the coffee table next to him.

“Oh uh...Doctor Simmons said I should keep it elevated, but I don’t want to be rude…” Dina trailed off uncertainly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tommy replied. He slid the clipboard on the coffee table away from Dina, replacing it with a throw cushion from the nearby couch.

She smiled and lifted her foot up, gingerly lowering it onto the cushion. She sighed in relief as the pressure on the joint eased and the baseline level of pain she had felt for the past few days dropped slightly. There was still the nagging ache of the cut on the back of her head, of course. But Anne had done her job well there too — the stitches had held, and when Anne had removed the bandages the day before, she had reassured Dina that the healing process was already well underway.  “Thanks.”

“I should be the one thanking you, Dina,” Tommy said earnestly.

Dina looked between him and Maria in confusion.

Maria spoke first. “We were both at the dam a few days ago. Do you remember the patrol scout you met outside the walls? Esther?”

Dina nodded slowly.

“She told us what you did. We had been dealing with handfuls of bandits for a while, but had no idea that a full-on raid was coming. The other scout came with your warning just in time.”

Tommy returned to his chair and picked up the rest of the story. “We...we still lost people. Good people. But we would have lost a whole hell of a lot more if they had caught us by surprise.”

Dina could feel herself turn red. “Um, it was nothing. Really. I was running away from them myself when Esther found me.”

“You’re being modest. That was a good thing you did, Dina,” Maria said kindly. “I just hope the clinic wasn’t too chaotic after we brought in our injured lot from the dam.”

Dina thought back to when she first woke up and found herself in Jackson. Only an hour after she had passed her inspection, the formerly quiet clinic had been filled with five people with all manner of gunshot wounds. At the time, Dina had no idea where they had come from, but she watched in awe as Anne expertly tended to all of them in quick succession. They had all walked out of the clinic the next day.

“Speaking of,” Tommy said, cutting through Dina’s thoughts, “I wanted to go check on them today. You good?” he continued, directing the question to Maria.

“Yep,” she replied, “I’ll see you out.”

Maria walked him to the door and Dina waited patiently until she returned to the room. When she did, Maria sat in Tommy’s recently vacated armchair and steepled her fingers, looking over them to fix Dina in a level gaze.

Dina squirmed slightly, but didn’t feel threatened by the intense look. Maria seemed...curious, more than anything else.

“Anne said that you were sixteen...are you sure? You’re very small for your age, Dina.”

“So people keep telling me,” Dina said. It came out with more bite than she intended.

Maria, for her part, seemed unphased. “From my experience, when that happens, it’s for a reason. Do you mind me asking what you were doing before you found your way to Jackson?”

It appeared that Maria wasn’t going to speculate on what this ‘reason’ might be, so Dina sighed and ran through her short, sad history. “I grew up in New Mexico. We — me, my mom and my sister — lived in the Roswell QZ, then a compound near it, for a couple of years. But besides that we basically uh, moved around a lot. When I was ten, my mom...” Dina’s voice caught in her throat, but she cleared it and made herself continue, “...died. Then my sister passed when I was thirteen. I eventually headed north and um...here I am,” Dina ended weakly, raising her arms to gesture vaguely at the room around her.

“Wow, is word about this place already reaching that far south?” Maria asked. There was keen interest in her voice, and she was leaning forward in her chair.

“Wait um...no. Sorry. I didn’t know anything about Jackson until the dam raid.”

Maria’s face fell slightly. “Oh...yeah no, I understand.”

Dina rushed to fill the awkward silence that followed. “This place is incredible though. Really. Anne was telling me that you and your father started the whole thing? That you wanted somewhere that was completely self-sustaining? I think that’s amazing.”

Maria perked up again. “It was always his dream. Tommy picked up where my dad left off and...here we are,” she said, echoing Dina’s earlier words with a smile.

They lapsed into silence again, but this time it was a comfortable one. Unfortunately, it was interrupted by a sudden growl from Dina’s stomach.

Dina clutched at her belly in embarrassment, the red flush from earlier returning with full force. “Shit, sorry! Clinic meals are so regular...I guess my stomach got used to it.”

Maria smiled. “Nothing to apologise for Dina. It’s a good sign that you’re settling in.” She got up from the armchair. “Stay there, I’ll make you something. What do you like to eat?”

“What do I...like…to eat?” Dina repeated the question dumbly. Who on earth had the luxury of caring about whether they liked something or not? If it was edible, it was going to be eaten. “Um, food?”

Maria chuckled. “Food it is. Give me one second.” She left to go to a nearby room that Dina could only guess was the kitchen.

Dina slid her hands along the arms of the armchair and stopped when she reached the ends. She flexed her fingers out straight, relaxed them for a moment before drawing them into as tight a fist as she could.

It was a habit that she had picked up from Anne. Dina had noticed her doing the movements as she puttered around the clinic. She wasn’t sure what Anne did it for, but Dina found that, for her at least, it helped her stay in the present.

Dina hoped this new habit would help break an old one — one she had developed while she was alone. She had the tendency to escape into her own mind for hours on end, especially when waiting for something or while doing a repetitive task. It featured heavily during her northward trek, which actually ended up being fairly dangerous; she had almost stumbled through areas full of the infected a couple of times without even noticing.

Now, of course, she was safe. But Dina didn’t want to slip back into her mind while she waited for Maria to come back, so she concentrated on her hand stretches for a few minutes.

But then a thought occurred to her. “Are you sure you don’t want any help?” she called out. She kicked herself for not offering earlier. Here she was, in the house of the woman who ran this whole town, feet up and waiting to be served with food.

Idiot.

“Almost done, don’t stress,” Maria replied, and sure enough, it only took another minute for her to return to the room with a plate. Dina could only blink wordlessly as Maria pressed it into her hands.

The plate was laden with precisely cut apple segments.

The apple segments were generously drizzled with golden honey.

And suddenly, Dina found herself struggling to hold back tears.

“I know we tend to ease people in with simple meals at the clinic,” Maria said gently. “It can be a bit overwhelming otherwise. But we’re in prime apple season, and the orchards have done really well this year.” 

“Um, this is…” Dina stopped to swallow thickly. “Thank you, Maria.”

If Maria noticed Dina’s tears, she had the decency to not mention them. She just waited quietly until Dina had cleared the plate, then held out a napkin.

Dina blushed; she had only been moments away from licking her fingers clean. She nodded her thanks as she accepted the napkin to wipe the sticky honey from her hands.

Maria bent down and retrieved the clipboard that Dina had noticed earlier on the coffee table. “Now, the only thing left to sort is your housing. We’ve just finished setting up the western quarter for accommodation so that’s where I’ll put you. Looks like…” Maria paused to scan the sheet attached to the clipboard, “...Jesse’s got a day off today. He can show you where it is and give you a hand with your things.”

Dina took a quick inventory. She had the clothes on her back and the hamsa bracelet securely tied around her wrist. Her gun and knife had been taken off her when she had been brought in, but Anne assured her she could collect them from the Jackson armory at any time. Apart from that, the backpack by her side contained the sum total of her worldly possessions: her mom’s camera and her sister’s broken glasses. Not even her family’s copy of the Torah had made it to Jackson — Dina was forced to use its thin pages as firestarters to survive the bitter winter months of the previous few years.

So, she still needed this Jesse person to show her to the western quarter, but she hardly needed a hand with her things.

“Thanks Maria. I’ve taken up enough of your time already. Where will I find Jesse?” Dina asked, returning her foot to the floor as she stood up with the aid of her crutches.

“Hmm. On a day off, at this hour? Probably getting lunch at the Tipsy Bison,” Maria said, stepping ahead of Dina to see her out. “Tell him I sent you. Here, I’ll help you down to the street.”

Dina followed behind Maria, but slowed as she passed the fireplace that took up a good portion of one of the walls of the room. She hadn’t noticed it until now, but the mantlepiece was filled with framed photographs.

Some of the photos were faded, a sure sign that they were taken before the outbreak. There were a few pictures of a young woman that Dina could only assume was Maria. Her hair was longer and tied back in a ponytail. In one photo, she was on the back of a horse in mid-jump; in another, she was facing the camera with a huge grin on her face, standing in front of what looked like a giant waterfall.

There was also an old photograph of a younger Tommy. He was clean shaven and his hair was cut short, and he was posing with another man and a little girl. Besides his black hair, the man had echoes of Tommy’s features in his face — probably Tommy’s brother, if Dina had to guess. They were crowded over a cake covered in candles, on either side of the girl. She was blonde and had a sweet face, and was in the middle of blowing out the candles. They all looked so happy.

But there were other, newer photos too. Dina’s heart couldn’t help but beat faster when she saw photos of Maria and Tommy together and looking roughly the same as they did now. She could even recognise the main street of Jackson in the background of one of the pictures.

Dina turned to Maria, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Maria...do you have a way of making photos here?!”

---

“Eugene? Yeah I know the guy. Why do you want to see him?”

Dina resisted the temptation to check, yet again, that her mom’s camera was still in her backpack. She had already checked twice while she was on her way to the Tipsy Bison. Both times, after confirming that it hadn’t spontaneously combusted, she had made sure it was nestled safely in the middle of her backpack. The last thing she wanted to do was break it and ruin the roll of film after all these years.

She looked at Jesse. After leaving Maria’s house, she headed to the Tipsy Bison as fast as she could on her crutches. She hadn’t even given herself the chance to be self conscious before she entered the crowded restaurant for the first time. After asking at the bar, she had found him eating with a few teenagers and quickly introduced herself. At first he seemed slightly annoyed that Maria had given him a job on his day off, but he soon agreed to help her settle in.

“Maria said that he can develop and print photographs,” Dina explained, keeping her eyes fixed on the uneven road. She needed to keep watching for safe areas to strategically place her crutches.

She heard Jesse laugh beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that he was taking odd half-steps as they headed down Jackson’s main street. With a start, Dina realised that he must be subtly trying to accommodate for her slow pace — surely, his long legs would be normally taking much larger strides.

Dina risked a glance away from the road and saw that he was giving her a kind smile. She flushed and returned her attention to the ground.

“He almost blew himself up on his first attempt — apparently one of the chemicals he uses is really flammable — but yeah, he sure can. He’s got a whole...what do you call it? Oh a dark room. He’s got a whole dark room set up now.”

“Can...can you introduce me to him? Sorry, I know I’m already cutting into your day off—”

Jesse put a hand on Dina’s shoulder to stop her. She looked up at him hopefully.

“I don’t mind. He’s not far from here, follow me.”

---

“Dina, right? Anne’s told me all about you.”

Dina wasn’t sure what she was expecting when Jesse showed her to a small house on a nearby street, but it certainly wasn’t a lively handshake from an elderly man with a wild mane of grey hair and a goatee.

“Um, yeah. That’s me,” she responded hesitantly. She hadn’t realised she was worth talking about at all, but it seemed like news of a new arrival got around the town quickly.

“Come in, come in,” he said, gesturing enthusiastically. “You too, Jesse.”

Dina followed Eugene inside. His home had a strong, peculiar smell. She couldn’t quite place it, but it reminded her of the herbal tea that Talia used to brew for her when she was sick, combined with the time Dina had an unfortunate run-in with a skunk.

“Living room’s on your left, head on in.”

Dina followed Eugene’s directions, but then stopped so abruptly that Jesse almost ran into her.

Every available surface of the room was covered with wiring, circuit boards, screens and countless other electronics that Dina didn’t even know the names of. 

“Holy shit Eugene, this is amazing,” she said, moving to the nearest pile of gadgets and hovering her hand over the incredible mess.

“Finally! Another tech head.”

Dina turned and found Eugene standing behind her, wearing a grin. Over his shoulder she could see Jesse leaning up against a wall. When he noticed her looking at him, he rolled his eyes.

“There are few people around here that appreciate this stuff,” Eugene said. “Including this one,” he added, nodding his head in Jesse’s direction.

“I have to warn you Dina, Eugene is the worst patrol partner,” Jesse replied with a small smile. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scavenged some ammo, but then Eugene makes me leave it behind so he can use the room in my backpack for some gadget or gizmo or whatever.”

“You’re just mad that I always pick the creek trails when we’re paired up. I know the valley routes tend to have more infected for you to square up with.”

“Hey it’s not like that!”

Dina couldn’t help but smile at how flustered Jesse was.

“I’m not—I’m not showing off. I just like keeping Jackson safe.”

“Uh huh, whatever,” Eugene said, turning to Dina again. “Anyway, I’m sure Dina here won’t need to worry about patrol partners for a while,” Eugene said. “What are you, twelve?”

Dina winced. This was getting ridiculous.

Thankfully, Jesse spoke first. “Jesus Eugene, you need to get your eyes checked man!” He moved away with the wall and gave Dina a quick once over, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I’d say…” he said, pausing before snapping his fingers, “sixteen! Am I right?”

Dina grinned.

Finally.

“Yeah! Just last summer.”

“Told you,” Jesse said, aiming a smirk in Eugene’s direction. “That means you can start patrols next year.” He faltered for a moment. “If—if that’s something you’re interested in. Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“I just want to help. If patrolling is helping, then I’m in.”

“Brilliant. You can have first dibs on Eugene as a partner when you start.” Jesse said, heartily clapping Eugene’s shoulder. “What can I say? I’m a gentleman.”

Dina and Jesse exchanged a smile. However, besides Eugene’s egregious low-ball of her age, there was something else bugging Dina about their conversation. Suddenly, she realised what it was.

“Wait, go back. You do patrols?” Dina looked at Eugene again. “But you’re so—” Dina clamped her mouth shut a millisecond before she stuck her foot in it.

“Old?” Eugene supplied, evidently seeing where Dina had been going with her comment anyway. She flushed with embarrassment for what must have been the hundredth time that day.

Fuck, am I going to almost insult every single person in this town that I meet?

But Eugene just laughed and gave her a good-natured pat on the back. “This body might be seventy and on the verge of falling apart — maybe Jesse’s right and I should get my eyes checked — but up here?” He raised a finger and tapped at his temple. “Still sharp as a tack.”

Dina smiled in relief that Eugene hadn’t taken any offence. He stepped away from her and cleared some space on the comfortable-looking couch in the middle of the room. He waved Dina over and she moved to the couch, easing herself down onto it. He plonked himself down next to Dina. 

“Sharp, but easily distracted. I assume you’ve come here for a reason besides hearing Jesse get a good ribbing. What can I do for ya, newbie?”

Dina quickly shrugged off her backpack and pulled it onto her lap. She stuck her hand inside and felt around for the camera. Her fingers closed around the familiar shape and she pulled it out to show Eugene. “Maria told me you were the person to talk to about this?”

He gently took the camera and turned it over in his hands, whistling appreciatively. “Wow. I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

“It’s got a full roll of film in it,” Dina said breathlessly, beyond caring how desperate she must have sounded at that point. “Can you develop them?”

He looked up at her with an easy smile. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

Dina was taken aback. “Uh…”

Once again, Jesse came to her rescue. “That’s Eugene-speak for ‘yes’. I don’t blame you if you’re already regretting your choice of patrol partner.”

But Dina had stopped listening after Jesse had said yes. She balled up her fists to stop herself from throwing her arms around Eugene, just in case he wasn’t the hugging type. “Shit. Thank you...so much.”

Eugene smiled. “You’ll have to help me though, it’s quite a process. But the way I see it, I’ve got a year to show you the ropes. Then you can help look for the right supplies when you start on patrols, because I gave up on him a long time ago,” Eugene said, waving in Jesse’s direction. “The last time I ran out of printing paper for the photos, I asked him to keep an eye out for more. Do you know what he came back with?”

“Printer paper. I brought him printer paper,” Jesse said with exasperation, then looked at Dina. “Oh don’t worry, I know the difference now. Eugene here made sure of that. But honestly, can you blame me?”

Dina laughed while Eugene shook his head. “They are completely different things,”  he muttered. “Kids these days, no respect for the crafts.” He looked down at the camera again before looking at Dina. “Anyway, what do you say? Might as well start learning now. The dark room’s out the back.”

Dina nodded, still not quite believing what was about to happen with her roll of film.

Eugene helped her off the couch and pointed her towards a door with a heavy black curtain hung up in front of it. Then Eugene turned to speak to Jesse again. “You, stay here. You’ll just knock something over.”

“Fine by me,” he said with a shrug, moving over to the freed up couch and sprawling out on it. He pulled his shoes off and put his feet up on the arm rest before closing his eyes. “Wake me when you’re finished being the two biggest nerds in Jackson.”

---

After Eugene had shown her the various trays, chemicals and machines that were needed to develop and print photos, he turned the lights off and plunged the room into complete darkness. Dina had to leave her crutches outside the room so they wouldn’t get in the way, so she stayed in one spot while Eugene talked her through what he was doing with her film roll.

It was even more complicated than she had imagined, but eventually she was helping him pluck thirty-six fresh prints out of the final chemical bath using long tweezers. Together, they clipped the photos to a clothesline that stretched across the length of the room. The blank sides were facing Dina, so she didn’t get a chance to see how they had turned out before Eugene had led her out of the dark room.

Jesse had promised that he would return to Eugene’s house to collect the photos later. In the meantime, Dina had gone with him to the Tipsy Bison for an early dinner.

“Do you think they’ll be ready yet?”

Jesse glanced over from the bar where he was ordering food for both of them. “What?”

“The photos. Would they be dry now, do you think?”

“We literally just left his house five minutes ago.”

Dina just continued to look at Jesse expectantly.

“No Dina. They won’t be ready yet.”

Jesse laughed at the pout Dina made in response. “I’ve got this. Can you grab us that table over there?” he asked, pointing to one of the booths near the back.

It was hard to navigate around the tables and chairs on crutches, but eventually Dina managed to reach the booth in question. She shimmied along the cosy seat, dragging her crutches in behind her so they wouldn’t be in the way for people walking by.

Jesse slid into the other side of the booth a few minutes later. He leaned on his elbows and studied Dina for a moment. Was it her imagination, or was he flexing his biceps slightly? Before Dina could decide one way or another, he opened his mouth. “So...what’s your deal?”

Dina slumped her shoulders. “Do you mind if I don’t talk about that? Maria got the whole thing already and I’m...tired.”

Jesse held his hands up in a peaceful gesture. “All good, I get it. Just making conversation.”

Dina nodded her appreciation and she went back to studying the wood grain of the table. She was a little overwhelmed by all of the talking she had done over the past few days. So many of the interactions so far had been so unbelievably awkward. It almost felt like she had left her wit and charm back in New Mexico. Thankfully, Jesse seemed to read her mood, and stayed quiet until their food arrived.

“Looks great, Seth,” Jesse said, breaking the silence to thank the man that was setting two plates down in front of them. Dina lifted her eyes to echo Jesse’s thanks, then looked back down.

To say that Dina’s jaw dropped would be an understatement.

It had been years since she had seen so much food at once. While living alone, it probably would have taken her a week to scavenge and eat the same amount of food that was before her.

One corner of the plate was piled high with fluffy mashed potatoes. Bright orange roasted carrots took up another portion of the plate, right next to a cluster of shiny green peas. A generous slice of roast beef rounded out the meal, and everything was covered in a rich brown gravy.

Jesse snorted at Dina’s reaction. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“What the fuck?” Dina muttered under her breath.

“I knew I should have ordered from the kid’s menu for you,” Jesse said with a smile, which widened into a grin as Dina hid her face in her hands.

Dina groaned, food forgotten for the moment. “Don’t remind me,” she said, words coming out muffled behind her hands. She separated her fingers slightly to look at Jesse through them. “Anne, Maria, AND Eugene. Why does everyone think I’m a kid?”

“Because you look like one?” Jesse offered. He tucked a napkin into the front of his shirt and started eating.

“I do not!”

“Okay not like, your face,” Jesse added quickly. He waved his fork, which was holding a piece of roasted carrot, in front of her. “That looks um, alright. It was how I could pick your age back at Eugene’s.”

“Wow, an ‘alright face’? Stop, I’m blushing,” Dina said in a deadpan voice.

“Shut up,” Jesse said with a smirk. “I was thinking more about…” he trailed off as he cast his eyes around the restaurant. Soon he spotted someone near the kitchen. “Hey, Cadence!” he called, “can you come over here?”

The familiar face of the Jackson medic’s daughter walked over to their table. “Hi Dina!” she said brightly.

“Hey Cadence,” Dina replied easily. She had grown quite fond of the young girl, who came to visit her regularly while her mom was working. She was naturally curious, and loved hearing stories about Dina’s history. It didn’t take Dina long to figure out that Cadence had lived inside Jackson’s walls for as long as she could remember.

“Damn, I didn’t realise you knew each other,” Jesse said. “I was going to ask you how old you thought Dina was.”

“Dina’s sixteen! Or four times four, or two times eight,” Cadence replied, puffing her chest out proudly.

“Wow you figured out another one! Nice work Cadence,” Dina said earnestly. She smiled sweetly at Jesse from across the table. “Sorry that Jesse made you come over here. He was trying to make a point.”

Jesse rolled his eyes. “And I still can. Can you stand up?”

Dina raised an eyebrow but did as Jesse asked. She stood up next to Cadence, holding onto the edge of the table so she could balance with her bad foot off the ground.

“Now Cadence, tell me. How old are you?”

“I’m seven! It’s lame though — seven’s a prime number. I miss being six.”

Dina was more than happy to indulge the young girl’s budding enthusiasm for math. She remembered being exactly the same when she was Cadence’s age, except with electronics and mechanics. “True, seven is kinda lame. But we all have to go through it at some point.”

Cadence nodded sagely at Dina’s response. Jesse took advantage of the pause in conversation to stand up next to them and hover his hand just above Cadence’s head. Then, keeping his hand at the same height, he swung his arm across to Dina, lightly tapping the top of her shoulder a few times. He gave her a pointed look.

Finally, Dina realised what Jesse was trying to get at. “Are you fucking serious?! — sorry Cadence, swears, I know — are you trying to say that I’m SHORT?!”

Jesse threw his hands up in the air in triumph. “Release the doves, she’s figured it out!”

Dina slumped back into the booth in a huff. “Can you excuse us, Cadence? I have some more words for Jesse that you probably shouldn’t hear.”

Cadence grinned and left them, happily bounding back to her mother on the other side of the restaurant. Dina watched her go, giving Anne a small wave when her daughter reached her side. Then she turned back to Jesse, who had slid back into the booth with a smug look.

“I am not fucking short.”

“Oh yes you are. Give Cadence a few more years and she’ll be taller than you.”

“I still haven’t had my growth spurt.”

“You’re sixteen, Dina. That ship has sailed.”

“Shut up.”

Jesse grinned and took another bite of his food. He gestured with his fork towards the untouched plate in front of her. “Alright, maybe you still have time to gain a few inches. But you definitely won’t grow if you don’t eat.”

“Maria fed me a few hours ago. Do you really expect me to eat again now?”

“Welcome to Jackson,” he said loudly, waving his arms around for emphasis. But when Dina still didn’t start eating, he lowered his arms and replaced his smile with a more serious expression. “Did you seriously not know?”

“Know what? 

“That you’re short.”

Dina paused. It was hardly a fair question. Short compared to what? She had been completely alone for the past few years. What was she meant to measure herself against — the trees?

But now that Dina thought about it...when she was young, she generally just wore Talia’s clothes. Scavenging for new things was always such a pain, and while she always helped Talia find things in a larger size, Dina tended to not pick up anything for herself. She much preferred to just adopt whatever Talia had outgrown.

Dina looked down at her current shirt. It had been washed for her since she arrived in Jackson, but she realised with a start that it used to be Talia’s. It fit her when she was twelve, and it still fit four years later.

Dina groaned and slumped over, resting her forehead on the table. “Fuck, I am short.”

She heard Jesse chuckle across from her and felt a hand on her shoulder. When Dina raised her head, she saw that Jesse was smiling gently.

“The adults mean well, really. I think they just sometimes forget…”

“Forget what?”

“How good it is here. Every day they see kids that have grown up in Jackson...running around and playing and eating and just, um...just being kids. Like they’re supposed to.” He ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “It’s jarring when someone like you comes in.” He paused. “ It’s almost like you got here too late.”

Dina worked her jaw back and forth. She still didn’t really understand what Jesse was saying.

“Take Declan over there,” Jesse continued, waving to a group of teenagers that had just entered the restaurant. “He’s the one in the beanie.”

Dina followed Jesse’s gesture and spotted the boy in question. His group was lingering near the door, and Dina watched him happily mess around with some of his friends. But she couldn’t help but notice that his eyes regularly darted away from the group to scan the restaurant wearily.

Just at that moment, someone dropped a glass behind the bar. Dina could see that the noise startled Declan, his body seizing up in a way that felt far too familiar. But then one of his friends gave him an amicable jostle and pulled him back into the conversation with a laugh. His shoulders relaxed and he broke out into a cautious smile.

“He’s fourteen,” Jesse continued and Dina turned back to face him. His eyes had a sad, watery note to them. He must have seen Declan’s reaction as well. “He showed up in the woods near here three years ago. Eugene was the one who found him. He never told us what happened to his family, but another patrol had dealt with some runners in that area the day before so...it was pretty obvious.”

“Damn...um, that sucks.”

“He’s grown like a weed since then. Compared to what he looked like when he first got here...well, you wouldn’t recognise him now.”

Jesse had finished most of his food at this point. His fork was still in his hand, and he started running it mindlessly through the shallow pool of gravy left on his plate.  “Can you really blame the adults for guessing that you’re younger than you are? Well, maybe ‘guess’ is the wrong word — it’s more like a hope.” 

Jesse shifted forward, resting an elbow on the table and placing his chin on his knuckles. “One time, Eugene told me that if he could, he would give his years to the kids we take in from outside. Give them a second chance at having a childhood.”

“Why does he care?”

Jesse blinked. “What?”

“My...my mom and my sister...they loved me. But they were my family.” Dina paused. “Why does everyone here care so much? I’m a nobody to them.”

The last sentence came out almost in a whisper.

Jesse’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. “Welcome to Jackson,” he repeated, together with a shrug and a smile.

Dina could only blink in response. After a few seconds of silence, she swallowed thickly.

“Seriously though, eat,” Jesse said, nudging Dina’s plate closer to her. “Anne’s been watching you like a hawk ever since we got our food. Pretty sure she’s five minutes from coming over here and feeding you herself.”

Finally, Dina picked up her fork and started on the feast in front of her. Like when she first woke up in the clinic and had spoken to Anne, she had no idea how to process the emotional wave that had just hit her. But as she continued to eat, she was filled with more and more warmth. It was hard to tell, but Dina strongly suspected that it was only slightly due to the delicious food. No, most of this warmth came from the love that Dina could feel emanating from the people of Jackson.

---

Dina was lying in an unfamiliar bed, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

My bed.

My ceiling.

Shit. I guess I need to get used to saying that.

After they left the Tipsy Bison, Jesse showed Dina to her new home then returned to Eugene’s. It had been about an hour since he had dropped by with the envelope that Dina was currently clutching to her chest. Despite her impatience with the photomaking process, she still hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to open it.

Her stomach was full. It was an unfamiliar but pleasant feeling. She ran her hand over her belly then poked at it, marvelling as the taught skin resisted her finger.

But eventually, Dina could glean no more entertainment from her comfortably stretched midsection. Instead, she rolled over to face her small bedside table and turned on the reading lamp.

Dina took a moment to reacquaint herself with the light cast by something other than the sun or fire. It had been a long time since she had been somewhere with electricity, and the strong steady glow of the incandescent light bulb was still a source of fascination for her. Then, after a deep breath, she pulled the photographs out of the envelope.

Eugene had kept them in the order that they had come off the roll, and had helpfully labelled the back of each one with a number. Dina leafed through the first twenty or so with mild curiosity. They were from whoever had originally owned the camera. 

1.

It looked like the original owner had gone on some sort of trip. The photo at the top of the stack was a picture of a family car parked on a driveway. It was stuffed full of towels, plastic toys, and a colourful umbrella. A man was standing next to the car and giving the camera a thumbs up. It looked like he had finished packing the car and was proud that everything had fit.

2-11.

Next came a series of fairly unimpressive scenic shots — mostly blurry trees or blurry mountains. A faint reflection of the camera showed up in the corner of each photo. These must have been taken from inside a moving car.

12.

The next photo was of a family. The man from the first photo was there again, leaning against the same car from before. There was a woman next to him, plus three young kids standing in front of them. Dina could see a glimpse of a dark blue ocean behind the parked car.

Everyone was in swimwear and giving a toothy grin to the camera. The woman was wearing a two-piece swimsuit and — Dina held the photo closer to her face to check — she could see that the woman had the distinctive swell of a pregnant belly.

Dina blinked before laying the photo down next to her. It was a different time back then — now, she couldn’t imagine having so many mouths to feed and smiling about it.

13-24.

Next were about ten photos of the same sandcastle from several different angles. The child who had built it, presumably, stood next to it. She was proudly posing with a small plastic spade in one hand and a bucket in the other.

Dina flicked through the sandcastle photos so quickly that she might have missed the transition to something different. But it was hard to miss the next one.

25.

It was a photo of the sun setting over the ocean. It was...beautiful. Dina traced the waves in the water with her finger.

She’d never been to a beach before. Maybe one day she’d get to see the ocean for herself. She admired the photo for a bit longer before sliding it away from the top of the stack.

26.

It took Dina a moment to realise the next photo was of her. She had never asked her mom when she had found the camera, but the Dina in this photo looked like she was about three or four. She was grinning at the camera and there was an unidentifiable orange-coloured food smeared all around her mouth.

A pre-teen Talia featured in the background, hair up in pigtails. Dina laughed — she had completely forgotten the love-hate relationship that her sister had with that hairstyle. Often, Talia went weeks insisting that her mom help style her hair into the two even ponytails every day, only to follow with several months where she would break down into tears if her mother even suggested it.

27-29.

Dina smiled at the next few photos: a picture of the ground; a picture of a solid orange mass that could only have been a thumb covering the lens; and a picture that, rather impressively, managed to feature the ground and a blurry thumb.

Her mom had been many things...but a good photographer, she was not.

30.

The next picture was of her and Talia when they were at the optometrist. Considering who had taken the photo, Dina was pleasantly surprised that it had turned out perfectly.

Here, Talia looked much closer to how Dina remembered her, both in terms of her hairstyle and the addition of her glasses. But Dina’s go-to mental image of Talia had her wearing a weary expression. In this photo, Talia was smiling in a way that Dina had only ever seen a handful of times. She stared at it for a long time.

She wasn’t expecting that she would get a photo of Talia like this, but she was certainly glad that she did.

Dina felt tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She let them fall, but made sure that the photos were safely out of the way first.

31.

Next was the only photo that Dina herself had taken. She had been tasked with the camera during Talia’s bat mitzvah, a couple of weeks after their trip to the optometrist. Dina remembered that she had taken a photo as Talia confidently read from their half-burnt Chumash. But when Dina’s eyes moved to look next to her sister, she swore.

Her mom had been by Talia’s side, following along with the scripture as Talia read it out loud, gently correcting her pronunciation every now and then. However, just at the moment that Dina had taken this photo, her mom must have reached out to adjust the page that Talia was reading. This movement, combined with the angle of the shot, meant that her mom’s arm was perfectly covering her face.

Dina ground her teeth in frustration. A second either side and she would have had a photo of her mom. She carefully put the stack of photos down on the bed next to her, and picked up her pillow instead. She pressed it into her face and let out a scream.

“You idiot, you had one fucking job!!!”

Unfortunately, her self-flagellation was cut short when she tried to breathe in and a bit of fluff got caught in her throat.

She pulled the pillow away from her face and, after a minute of spluttering coughs, Dina managed to regain her breath. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, the sound of her heart pounding in her ears gradually diminishing in the process. Finally, she released the tension in her jaw, concentrating on making her anger dissipate in much the same way.

Dina took one more deep breath and sighed. She gingerly retrieved the stack of remaining photos from the bed and looked at the top one again. It was a nice photo of Talia, at least.

She straightened up the edges of the stack, keenly aware of how light it was getting. Similarly, she remembered how at the time that the bat mitzvah photo was taken, their awareness of the number on the camera’s shot counter was at an all-time high. As a result, the time gaps between the next few photos stretched longer and longer.

At least the camera gained a more skilled operator at this point. Because after Talia started wearing her glasses, it hadn’t taken her long to take control of the camera.

32.

The next picture was a crisp, well-framed shot of Dina. She was holding a hand out towards the camera, a small baby tooth just visible between her fingers. Her other hand was pulling down her lower lip to show off the gap that the tooth had left behind.

As Dina went to turn the photo over, she realised that Eugene had written more than just the number on the back of this one.

Okay, the choice of Friday’s route is at stake. Jesse says that you’re 8 here, I’m betting that you’re 6. Please don’t break my heart, future patrol partner!

-E 

Dina chuckled to herself. “Sorry Eugene, you lowballed me again. Looks like Jesse’s going to have another opportunity to show off,” she said under her breath.

Dina found herself reddening at the realisation that Jesse had seen these photos. For some reason, she didn’t mind Eugene seeing them. But with Jesse, it felt far too...intimate that he had these insights into her childhood within hours of meeting her.

Dina shook her head. It was a complicated thought to file away and deal with later. She flipped the photo back over and moved it to the side.

33.

Next was yet another photo of Dina. But one that she wasn’t expecting.

Talia had taken a photo of her while she was fast asleep. The long shadows crossing her face hinted that a campfire was the source of lighting for the picture. The orange glow emphasised the furrow in her brow, her clenched jaw, the subtle glisten of recently dried tears on her cheeks.

In the photo, one of Dina’s hands was against her stomach, balling up the fabric of her t-shirt. The other hand was near her head, holding her knife in a firm grip.

Dina inhaled sharply when she saw what she was wearing — it was the first picture of her where she was wearing her mom’s bracelet.

Dina’s fingers ghosted over the bracelet in the photo, then moved to brush against the real one at her wrist. The worn and supple leather was pliant under her touch, the metal symbol cool and firm against her thumb.

Dina took a shuddering breath. She thought she had known what to expect for most of the photos, but this one was like a punch to the gut. Because even though she hadn’t known that Talia had taken this photo, Dina knew exactly when her sister had taken it.

In the photo, Dina was clutching at her stomach because she was refusing to eat, and she was wearing a soft grey t-shirt with the sleeve torn off. Dina remembered how Talia had ripped the sleeve, then done the same to the pocket of her own shirt, the day after they had left the compound controlled by the Ravens.

That could only mean that Talia had taken this photo during one of their first nights without their mother.

For the first few weeks that Dina and Talia were by themselves, Dina had been...unkind to her sister. She had been combative and stubborn, refusing to do anything Talia had suggested. She even had the nerve to throw Shiva in her sister’s face, saying that she was being a better Jew by not eating while in mourning. Dina had fainted after three days of this, and Talia had to practically beg before Dina finally ate something.

The fact that Talia had used one of the film roll’s last exposures to capture her in that state…

Back then, Dina probably would have thought that it was her sister being spiteful. A way to document her being a selfish brat. But now...she wasn’t so sure. She held the picture up and looked at it thoughtfully before adding it to the pile of photos that she had already gone through.

34.

When Dina looked down again, she saw that the next print was a solid black rectangle. She flipped it over to check the number and found another comment from Eugene.

I swear I didn’t fuck this one up. The negative looked like this too. 

Sorry.

-E

Dina winced. It was another unhappy memory, but at least she knew this one was coming. She remembered this exposure well.

Talia had found a place for them to stay the night and was unpacking their few possessions. When she pulled out the camera, she had seen that the counter was one number greater than it had been the night before. Somehow, the camera had accidentally gone off while it was in Talia’s backpack.

Talia had been inconsolable. They knew there was the risk of hunters nearby, and yet Talia reacted to the unintentional photo with more emotion than when she found out that their mother had been bitten.

It was the first time Dina could remember that she had to be the responsible and mature one. She had held her sister all through the night, stroking her hair and occasionally hushing her when the sobs got too loud.

Dina remembered that the next morning, as Talia was repacking their things, she made sure that the camera sat in her bag in a way that nothing would accidentally hit the shutter button. They never spoke of that night again.

35.

The second last photo was the only other picture of Talia and Dina together. It was the one from Dina’s thirteenth birthday, the photo that Talia had taken herself — the ‘selfie’, Dina recalled. Evidently, the strange word was still somewhere in the deep recesses of her memory.

Now this was the Talia she remembered well…as she had suspected back when the photo was taken, Talia had her stoic ‘serious big sister’ face on. Compared to the beaming Dina that she was hugging, one might be tempted to say that she looked frigid.

But Dina had known her sister far too well to make that mistake. Talia had a quiet dignity in and of itself. Dina knew that the cautious smile that Talia had adopted for the photo would have been an ear-splitting grin if it had come from anyone else.

Slowly, carefully, Dina slid her fingers over the photo. It was her favourite by far. And fine, perhaps she lingered on this one for longer than she would have otherwise, because she knew what was coming in the last photo.

She stayed in the happy moment for a while longer, then took a deep breath and put the selfie to the side, revealing the final photo.

36.

Dina thought she was prepared, but she was still overwhelmed with tears at the sight of her sister’s grave.

Dina had returned from a short scavenging trip when she found Talia. She had been shot dead on the front steps of the house that they had been staying in for the night.

The memory was hazy after that, but Dina remembered dragging her sister’s body into the house and pulling the gun from the holster that was still strapped to Talia’s leg. Dina kept Shemira over her sister for the rest of that day, frantically whispering half-remembered prayers as she watched the road outside. But Talia’s killers, whoever they were, were long gone.

Dina had waited for the cover of night before she wrapped her sister in some white bedsheets and dragged her out of the house. It was a horrible thought, but Dina remembered being thankful that Talia’s blood-soaked clothes meant that Dina didn’t have to wash her body. At least that had been one custom she could honour, unlike the many others she had to break, including that there was no pine box for the body, and that Dina had no way of getting Talia to a Jewish cemetery.

Ultimately, Dina had found a shovel in a shed of a nearby house and resorted to burying Talia in its backyard. She dug through the night and through a haze of tears and grief, but eventually had a hole ready.

As the sun was rising, Dina had whispered a final prayer for her sister, ripped through a seam of her t-shirt, and then rolled Talia into the hole. After filling it back in with dirt, Dina had gathered some white decorative stones from a nearby garden bed and arranged them in a Magen David on top of the grave.

It was at that point that Dina had retrieved the camera from Talia’s backpack and taken the photo that she was currently holding in her hand. She brushed away the last few tears at the corners of her eyes, then traced the outline of the six-sided star with her finger.

Perhaps the reason that she had taken this photo was the same reason that Talia had taken the one of her sleeping — the confusing, contradictory need to preserve an important memory, even a bad one.

Dina gave one final shuddering exhale, then gently added the photo to the rest of the pictures.

---

Before Dina went to sleep, she gathered up the photos spread out on her bed, setting aside the one her mother had taken at the optometrist and the selfie her sister had taken for Dina’s thirteenth birthday.

She leant these two photos up against the lamp on her bedside table, facing her. The table was small, but there was still room for one more. After thinking for a moment, Dina shuffled through the stack in her hand and pulled out the picture that she had taken during Talia’s bat mitzvah. Technically, it still was a photo of her mom.

She propped it up next to the other two, then put the rest of the photos in the bedside table’s drawer, intending to sort through them properly tomorrow. Dina wriggled under the bedsheets, settled her head on the pillow and looked up at the ceiling again.

My bed.

My ceiling.

My home.

She rolled over to turn off her lamp, but not before looking at the photos for a final time.

Mom...Talia...we’re home.

This is now

“Sooooo. I was thinking…”

Dina looked up from the baby book. “Why do I get nervous whenever you say that?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Ellie said, grinning and holding her hand out to Dina.

Dina accepted the offer, slipping her hand into Ellie’s and getting pulled to her feet. They were getting ready to head out after staying the night in Pocatello. The mornings were getting colder, signalling that they were getting closer to the proper mountains that straddled the Idaho-Wyoming border. So, half an hour before sunrise, Dina had bundled up to join Ellie outside.

After Dina had found out what Ellie had been doing for each town they stayed in, she started joining Ellie for her ritual. Now standing, Dina inspected the heart and initials that Ellie had just finished carving.

“Fifteen now, right?”

Dina glanced down at the book still in her hands. She had been diligently keeping track of her progress, and when she flicked to the page with the chart, she saw that they had indeed rolled over to a new week. “Yep, fifteen.”

Ellie nodded and quickly added the number to the bottom of the heart.

“Do I dare ask what you were thinking?”

“Well...maybe it’s lame to start adding this now, seeing how close we are to Jackson already. But you haven’t been showing for long, so it would have just been a straight line anyway.” Ellie said, smiling hopefully. “Now that you’re here when I do this, I thought it might be cool to um, show your progress too…” she trailed off, holding her knife loosely in her hands to wave it between Dina’s belly and the tree trunk.

Dina’s eyes darted between the tree, the knife, and her stomach, realising what Ellie was getting at after a moment. “Oh no, absolutely not. I’ve seen you take out enough people with that thing. I’m not letting it anywhere near my belly.”

“Why? Scared I’m going to gut you like a fish?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Come on, don’t you trust me?”

Dina sighed and trudged over to stand next to the tree. “I do trust you, that’s the annoying part,” she grumbled as she pressed the side of her stomach against the rough bark.

“Yes!” Ellie whooped, accompanying it with a celebratory fist pump. She knelt next to Dina and eagerly placed a hand against her belly, holding her steady so she wouldn’t move as Ellie traced her figure in the trunk behind her.

“Aren’t you worried that you’re going to dull the blade?”

Ellie furrowed her brow, pressing firmly into Dina as a signal for her to stop talking. Dina closed her mouth and waited until Ellie had finished the carving and was standing again.

Ellie flicked her switchblade closed with a flourish and slipped it into her back pocket. “Please. If slitting a hundred throats hasn’t dulled this thing, nothing will.”

“Babe, too morbid.”

“Sorry. Anyway, what do you think?”

Ellie took Dina’s hand as they both turned to inspect the tree, now marked with the heart, their initials, the baby’s week of development and Dina’s side profile.

“You’re building up quite a collection, you know,” Dina murmured, realising after a moment that she had said those words once before.

Dina heard Ellie breathe in sharply next to her. Evidently, she remembered too.

“Bite…burn...” Ellie started, looking down at her forearm with a gentle smile.

Dina followed her gaze, but knew that the purpling that had accompanied Ellie’s dislocated elbow from Abby’s attack at the theatre was long gone. Instead, she pulled her hand out of Ellie’s grasp and raised it to her face. She lifted Ellie’s chin with her knuckle, extending her thumb to brush at one of the dark smudges under Ellie’s eyes. 

“Bruise...” Dina whispered sadly, but with a note of hope. Ellie was still far from shifting the heavy bags, but Dina had noticed that she had been sleeping better over the past few days. And, as far as Dina could tell, she hadn’t experienced any more of those strange not-quite memories either.

Ellie’s smile disappeared from her face anyway. She nodded gently and pressed her cheek further into Dina’s hand.

“It’s okay, keep going,” Dina whispered. She slid her other hand up Ellie’s wrist, tapping at the hamsa bracelet that was tied there to signal that it was Ellie’s turn.

Ellie’s smile returned — smaller this time, but still, it was there. “Bracelet…” she breathed, reaching down to lift Dina’s hand from her wrist, moving it to instead cup Ellie’s other cheek. Dina stroked Ellie’s cheeks for a moment, then dropped her hands slightly so that her forearms were resting on Ellie’s shoulders.

Ellie’s arms remained by her side, but she gazed deeply into Dina’s eyes. They smiled at each other, then Ellie raised an eyebrow.

“Oh right. Um…” Dina paused, trying to recall what was next on the list.

Ellie glanced up at the sky, where the last few stars were fading away in the light of the impending sunrise, then looked back at Dina meaningfully.

“Oh! Badge!” Dina said, waving vaguely over Ellie’s shoulder, but unwilling to break their eye contact to show the rocketship pin that was fastened to Ellie’s backpack.

Ellie nodded, but then furrowed her brow. Her gaze had shifted to the tree behind Dina. Dina watched her open and close her mouth, making light popping sounds with her lips as she tried to think of a new ‘B’ word.

Dina herself had given up on thinking of a word related to Ellie’s carving, but she did have one that was somewhat relevant. She reached for Ellie’s hand and placed it on her swollen stomach. “Bump?” she offered, running her fingers lightly over Ellie’s knuckles.

Ellie grinned and nodded again. “Baby?” she suggested in return, gently rubbing Dina’s belly with the flat of her palm.

“Almost, but not yet,” Dina murmured.

Ellie dropped her head. “Fair enough,” she conceded. “How about...belonging?”

“Belonging?”

“Yeah. Wherever you are. Wherever you go. That’s where I belong.”

Dina paused. “You go, I go?”

“Exactly.”

Again, Dina used her knuckle to lift Ellie’s chin so they were looking into each other’s eyes once more. “A bit abstract, but...okay. Yeah. Belonging. I like it.”

Ellie smiled and leant in to kiss Dina. The cold morning air had chapped her lips, but they were still warm and gentle. Dina melted into the kiss, savouring the taste as she pulled her closer.

Their lips eventually separated, but Dina rested their foreheads together. Dina exhaled deeply, completely lost in the moment.

“Ellie! Found something for ya!”

Well, so much for the moment.

Ellie sighed at the sound of Tommy’s distant voice. “I just thought of another one: butting-in bastard,” she muttered, which earned an amused snort from Dina.

They moved away from each other as Tommy emerged from a nearby street.

“What?” Ellie asked shortly.

“Good morning to you too,” Tommy said cheerfully when he reached them. “I found something that I think you’ll like. Come on, follow me. It’s this way.”

---

Tommy had been out looking for supplies. He led them to a house and gestured for Ellie to go inside. Judging from the “oh my god” Dina heard as she followed in behind her, at least Tommy’s earlier interruption seemed to be worth it.

Dina blinked to help her eyes adjust to the dimly lit area. There was the dark outline of a couch and a coffee table near the door, so it must have been some sort of entertainment room. Ellie’s flashlight was bouncing around enthusiastically, briefly lighting up the many shelves and display cases that lined the walls of the room. When Dina clicked her own flashlight on and examined the shelf closest to her, she realised that it was packed full of comics.

“Dina! This person was a fucking nerd!” Ellie yelled excitedly from the other end of the room.

They both turned at the sound of Tommy’s chuckle at the door. “I knew you’d like it. Take your time, I’ll wait for you out here.”

Dina moved to Ellie’s side, adding the beam of her flashlight to Ellie’s so she had more light to work with. She could see that Ellie had taken a large folder off one of the shelves and laid it out on the floor. She was flipping through pages and pages of cards that were organised into neat rows within plastic sleeves.

“New Dogs...Society of Champions...No fucking way! They’re all here!” Ellie said, practically vibrating with delight. She stood up, folder in hand, and moved over to the coffee table that Dina had spotted earlier. She knelt and put the folder down on the table. Starting from the front and going slower this time, Ellie flipped through the sleeves.

“Is this more Savage Starlight stuff?”

“Yes and no,” Ellie said, pausing to remove one of the cards from its sleeve and lay it on the table next to her. “Same franchise, but kinda like a spinoff.” She flipped another page. “There is some overlap though, like...here!”

Ellie jabbed a finger at a card bearing the familiar face of Doctor Daniela Star. Then she slid the finger over to the card beside it and pulled it out of its sleeve with a flourish. “Holy shit, I’ve been looking for this one for ages!”

Dina squinted at the card in Ellie’s hand. “Captain James Ryan? That’s the ship’s pilot, right?”

Ellie grinned. “Yeah, the Kobyashi. How did you know that?”

“Despite my best efforts, some of your geeky ranting does end up stuck in my brain,” Dina replied, giving Ellie a playful shove as she went back to looking through the folder.

Ellie pulled one more card from its sleeve before she reached the last page and closed the back cover. She spread the three cards out on the table in front of them, examining them carefully in turn.

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen cards that look this new before,” Ellie noted, “this is what they must have looked like twenty years ago.”

Dina smiled and knelt by Ellie’s side to look at the cards that Ellie had selected. In addition to the Kobyashi pilot, there was also a buff guy in a mask called Sparkthug and a robot with a laser sword and shield called CBB-73.

“So why these ones?”

“I've found all the other cards already — I don’t mind that the ones I have are pretty beat up. But I don’t have these three yet.”

“Great! Now you’ve got them all and you can move on to your next nerdy thing.”

“Actually...I was thinking of just taking one.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

Ellie fiddled with the corner of one of the cards. “Finding them is half the game. It’d be kinda lame to get the last three all at once. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Alright, fair enough,” Dina said with a smile, “which one?”

Ellie scooped the cards up off the table and fanned them out. She held them up to Dina, facing away from her. “You choose.”

Dina hovered her hand over the cards, eventually plucking out the one closest to Ellie’s thumb. She flipped it over and saw that she had picked Captain Ryan.

“Fuck yeah. I was hoping you’d pick that one,” Ellie said with a grin, taking the card and slipping it into her backpack. She turned away from Dina and shone her flashlight around the room again. “Man...whoever lived here had so much cool stuff. This is totally what my place would have looked like if I had been around back then.”

Dina’s eyes followed the light, smiling as it lit up posters and action figures that wouldn’t look out of place in Ellie’s garage back in Jackson. “You were born in the wrong time, Ellie.”

“Huh. I said basically the same thing to Jesse.”

Dina faltered at the unexpected mention of his name. She turned to Ellie slowly. “What?”

“Back in Seattle? Some comic convention thing was on when Outbreak Day happened. They still had all the signs up and everything. Maybe whoever lived here travelled to Seattle for it.” Ellie scuffed her shoes on the ground awkwardly. “Um, anyway, let’s go? I’ve got what I need,” she said, patting her backpack.

Dina nodded and watched Ellie as she left the room. But as she got up from the floor, she looked back down at the two cards that Ellie had left on the coffee table.

When Ellie had mentioned Jesse, Dina’s mind was pulled back to their conversation in Twin Falls. When Ellie had asked about visiting Jesse’s grave with their child, Dina had to resist the urge to cry. It had been the first time since Seattle that she had heard Ellie plan for anything in the future beyond choosing the next town to spend the night.

Well, if Ellie could do that, then Dina damn well could too. She retrieved the cards from the table and slipped them into her jeans pocket. She would wait, maybe a couple of years, until Ellie forgot all about them. Then Dina could give it to Ellie for her birthday or something.

Dina herself had never cared much for her birthday, especially after her sister passed away. But she knew how important Ellie’s birthday was for her. And, after all, going another revolution around the sun in their fucked up world deserved a pretty big reward in and of itself.

Dina nodded to herself, then walked out of the room with a smile on her face and a hope for the future in her pocket.

Chapter Text

That was then

“Ready kiddo?”

Ellie wiped her hands on the back of her jeans. Annoyingly, her palms had started to sweat the second they were within sight of the gate. According to the sign, this was the main entrance to Jackson from the south. And it definitely looked like it — a tall, imposing gate was set into an otherwise unbroken wall of thick wooden planks packed tightly together.

“Ready.”

As they got closer, Ellie could see people standing on the watchtowers that loomed above either side of the gate. They were all holding heavy hunting rifles, which were currently trained on her and Joel as they approached the entrance.

“Joel Miller,” Joel said loudly, following the instruction to identify themselves that they had seen on a sign posted further back. “And Ellie...uh…” Joel turned his head sideways and leaned down. “Ellie, what’s your last name?”

Ellie smiled and looked up at the people on the watchtowers. “Ellie Williams,” she called out. Her voice was not as booming as Joel’s, but it still carried to them clearly.

“Can’t believe I didn’t know that,” Joel muttered beside her. “Sorry kiddo.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ellie replied easily. It was an unnecessary apology. It hadn’t come up in conversation before, so Joel had no reason for knowing her last name.

She felt Joel nudge her. When she looked up, she could see that he had raised his hands and was facing the gate with a calm demeanour. Ellie followed suit, and together they waited for the people of Jackson to make the next move.

One of the guards on the watchtower lowered their gun. “Miller?” they called out uncertainly.

“Oh uh, yeah...Tommy’s my brother. He or Maria around? They can vouch for us,” Joel replied.

The same guard waved at some unseen person behind the gate. A few seconds later, it started to slowly open.

“Thanks,” Ellie yelled, following behind Joel as they walked through the gate and entered Jackson for the first time.

---

“Giraffes? No fucking way Joel. You did not see giraffes!”

Ellie had been half-listening as Joel caught Tommy up on what had happened since they last met in the fall, but frowned as Joel reached that part of the story. It had been a personal moment between the two of them...or so Ellie thought. Joel seemed more than happy to share it with Tommy as the three of them walked along Jackson’s main street.

It hadn’t taken long for Tommy to show up after they had passed through the gate. When he found them, he had waved away the curious guards that had gathered around the newcomers and led them towards his house. Ellie had wanted to explore the unfamiliar town, but ended up following along with the brothers — mainly because she wanted to hear Joel talk about what happened at Salt Lake City.

Maybe it was because the drugs that they had given her were still wearing off when Joel told her what happened...but the events of the hospital still weren’t quite sitting right with her. Not for the first time, Ellie wished that he hadn’t pulled her out of there while she was still unconscious. She had so many questions for the Fireflies, and now who knew if she’d ever get the chance to ask them.

“I’m serious Tommy, giraffes! Ellie, tell him I’m no liar, will ya?”

Ellie raised her head at the sound of her name. It had been the first time she had been called upon during the story. She gave a half-hearted grunt, then returned her attention to the rock that she was kicking along the road.

“See? Giraffes. Told you so,” Joel continued with a chuckle. “We’ve been on quite the adventure, little brother.”

It was weird to hear the note of cheeriness in Joel’s voice. If Ellie wasn’t annoyed at him, she probably would have thought of a way to tease him about it. As it was, she instead channeled her frustration into her next kick.

The rock went flying several feet ahead of them, bouncing off of a pair of boots planted in the middle of the road. The three of them stopped walking. Ellie’s half-formed apology for the unintentional projectile died on her lips, however, when she raised her eyes to the person blocking their path.

It was a girl. She was wearing an olive green shirt tucked into dark jeans. Her jeans were held up by a chunky belt that her thumbs were hooked around. Her posture was confident and open, with a straight back and slightly set back shoulders.

Ellie’s eyes moved up further. The girl’s black hair was pulled back in a bun. Any loose flyaways were kept at bay by a strip of fabric the same colour as her shirt that was serving as a headband. She had freckles; far less than Ellie, but their darker pigment made them stand out against her suntanned skin.

Fuck. She’s pretty.

The girl was looking expectantly at Tommy, clearly wanting to talk to him. But then she glanced at Ellie. Ellie temporarily forgot that she was annoyed at Joel, and subtly positioned herself so that most of his bulk was between her and the girl. She only dared peek around his shoulder when the girl started speaking to Tommy.

“Hey Tommy! Glad I found you. Do you remember that radio that Eugene was having trouble with?” she asked, holding up a small two-way radio. “I don’t know who I’m supposed to give it to, but I fixed it.”

Fuck. She’s smart.

Again, the girl’s eyes slid away from Tommy and towards Ellie, who ducked her head at the sudden renewal of attention. She could feel the tips of her ears heating up, which just made her feel more embarrassed, and in turn made her whole face go red.

The girl was still talking. “And who’s the tomato?” she asked, but not unkindly. “Wait...oh shit. Are these the new guys?”

Tommy nodded. “Joel. Ellie. Dina,” he said quickly, gesturing at the respective person for each introduction.

Dina.

Somehow, knowing her name made the girl — Dina — seem less intimidating. Ellie smiled at her, pleased to feel that the burn in her cheeks was starting to cool off. She stuck her hand out towards Dina, remembering the haphazard bandage around her bite mark just a moment too late. The sleeve of her hoodie rode up, exposing the rushed cover-up job.

Ellie tried to pull her arm away, but Dina was too quick. She grasped Ellie’s hand in her own warm one and gave it a solid shake.

“Hey! Ellie, right? Sorry, small town, it doesn’t take long for rumours to blow all the way through it. Judging by that,” Dina paused to nod at the bandage briefly, “you must have come straight from the clinic. Was Anne — oh uh Doctor Simmons I mean — on shift? She’s so fucking cool. Anyway you’re here, so I guess you chose to do the inspection. When I heard from one of the watchtower guards that there were some newbies around, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to wait for a quarantine period to meet you, so that’s great! Are you going to live here?”

Ellie blinked. Maybe it was because she had spent most of the last year alone with Joel, who wasn’t exactly chatty, but she was pretty sure that Dina had just said more in thirty seconds than what Joel would typically say to her in a week.

After a moment, Ellie realised that Dina was looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

Right. Ellie, she asked you a question. A few, actually. No fucking clue about any ‘inspection’, but you do still remember how conversations work, right? You’re supposed to answer her now.

“Uh…” was the most eloquent response Ellie managed to come up with. 

Smooth.

Thankfully, Tommy came to her rescue. “Hold your horses there Dina, let’s not spook them off before they get a chance to settle in,” he said with a chuckle. “Take the radio to Jesse at the patrol station. He can assign it to one of the watchtowers. How about you take Ellie with you and show her around?”

Okay, so Tommy rescued her from an awkward moment...only to throw her headfirst into another. And Joel wasn’t helping either — he just nudged her in the back to move her closer to Dina.

“Go on kiddo. You lived the story, you don’t need to hear me tell it again.”

Ellie internally cursed the Miller brothers, but externally put on what she hoped was a dazzling smile. She gave Dina a nod.

“Great!” Dina said brightly. “Follow me, it’s this way.”

---

“I’ll be old enough to go on patrols soon.”

Ellie looked away from the patrol board at the sound of Dina’s voice. When they reached the empty patrol station, which was in a corner of the town’s stable next to spare bits of tack, Dina had briefly explained that the groups that had left before dawn would be arriving soon. She had then left Ellie there while she went to check on one of the horses. Ellie had been examining the map pinned to the patrol board with interest when Dina had popped her head out from a nearby stall.

“I’ll have to miss some school when I start, but I’m so fucking ready to be more helpful around here. Do you know how to ride a horse?” Dina asked as she ducked under the rope tied to the chestnut horse’s halter.

“Yeah,” Ellie replied, turning so she could casually lean against the wooden table next to her.

She had done a double-take when she had first seen the table. It was set up with a generous range of snacks for people to grab as they headed out on patrol. She had never seen so much unattended food in one place before. There were two insulated metal jugs filled with coffee and tea and a few platters with biscuits and fruit. There was also a glass jar full of beef jerky...well, less full compared to what it was a minute earlier.

As Dina approached, Ellie glanced down to make sure no stray bits of jerky were sticking out of her pocket. She thought she was being subtle, but Dina followed the direction of her look anyway. Ellie tried to quickly think of something to say to distract her.

“So um, patrols? How old do you have to be to do that?”

Dina mirrored her stance, resting her hip against one of the posts supporting the stable’s roof. “Better question. How old do you think I am?”

Ellie furrowed her brow in thought. “Well I’m fifteen so, I dunno...sixteen? You threw me off when you mentioned school but—”

Ellie stopped talking when she found herself being swept up in a hug.

“You’re the fucking best!” Dina exclaimed, tightening her grip around Ellie’s body.

Ellie’s brain short-circuited as Dina easily lifted her off her feet, held her aloft and gave her a quick spin.

Fuck. She’s strong.

Thankfully, Ellie managed to regain some control of her body so she didn’t fall over when Dina eventually lowered her to the ground. Once Ellie’s shoes were safely back on the hay-covered floor, Dina let go and quickly stepped away.

“Shit, sorry. That was probably too much.”

“No no, it’s fine! You just caught me by, um...surprise.”

Dina gave her a small smile. “When I first got here, everyone got my age wrong. I know it’s not anything important, but...it was really annoying. You’re one of the few who guessed right.” She shifted her feet, moving slightly closer to Ellie again. “You are right about school though. My class is full of twelve year-olds, but...I’m like you. I mean, I came from the outside. Don’t get me wrong, my family taught me a lot. But turns out, there’s still a ton of things that I don’t know,” she admitted with a sheepish grin. “Do you...do you think you’ll go to school here too?”

The note of hope was clear in her voice.

“Um, I’m not sure. I grew up in a QZ so I’ve done a lot of that shit already…”

“Oh,” Dina said quietly.

Ellie winced. “But patrols sound pretty cool!” she added quickly, hating the look of disappointment that Dina was failing to hide. “They go in groups of two, right?” she asked, waving at the paired names on the board behind her. “Maybe we can go out together?”

Oh my god Ellie.

“Uh, I mean as a couple—”

Oh my fucking god Ellie.  

“—as PARTNERS doing it together—” 

Oh my FUCKING god Ellie!!!

“—doing PATROLS together!!”

Ellie clamped her mouth shut before it could say something even worse. If such a thing was even possible. Dina, who had been watching with an amused smile all through that, started to laugh. She had a really nice laugh.

“You’re weird,” Dina said between chuckles.

“I am aware,” Ellie grumbled, shaking her head and adopting a self-deprecating grin to distract from the heat rising in her cheeks. “Fuck me.”

Dina quirked her eyebrow. “I got that message already, thanks.”

Fuck. She’s funny.

Ellie’s whole face flushed. Any hope that she had of hiding her embarrassment had gone swiftly out the window. “I’m just going to stop talking now.”

“Aw come on, that was spectacular!” Dina protested, lightly clapping Ellie’s shoulder. “It’s good to know that my future patrol partner has a good sense of humour.”

Fuck. She’s kind.

Ellie felt herself get even more red, but at least this time it was with pride from Dina’s compliment. It took her a moment to realise that Dina had just agreed to do patrols with her.

Thankfully, Dina seemed happy to move the conversation on, pivoting instead to the practical side of things. “Training has already finished, but you can join the next round when it starts in a few months. I’ll introduce you to Jesse when he gets back, so make sure you let him know you’re interested in patrols. He’s out doing the…” Dina trailed off, looking over Ellie’s shoulder.

Ellie turned to follow her gaze and saw that she was looking at the patrol board. Under a wooden plaque with ‘Colten Bay’ written on it was a smaller plaque bearing Jesse’s name.

Dina must have spotted it at the same time. “Damn, the bay trail is pretty long. He won’t be back for a while still. Did you want to go back to your dad?”

“No I’m good. But Joel isn’t my...he’s not…” Ellie stammered.

“Shit, sorry! I didn’t mean to assume.”

Suddenly their situation was reversed, and Dina was the one who was embarrassed. Compared to Ellie’s earlier fumble, this seemed so minor. And yet, Dina sounded so flustered that Ellie wanted to apologise for Dina thinking that she needed to apologise. “It’s okay! Really. We get it all the time. He’s just my...he’s just Joel.”

“Right. Still, sorry. Can I make it up to you?”

“Oh uh…”

“We need to kill some time while we wait for Jesse anyway. I was going to suggest that we hang out at my place — it’s really close to the stables — but you must be hungry.”

Was it Ellie’s imagination, or did Dina just glance down at her pocket? Surely not.

Dina was still speaking. “So how about lunch? It’s on me.”

Fighting the urge to check on her smuggled jerky, Ellie nodded instead. “Okay, yeah! Let’s do lunch.”

Ellie’s heart clenched as Dina grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the stables.

Fuck. I’m fucked.

---

“I like your clothes, by the way.”

Ellie looked down at the pair of jeans and the red checkered hoodie she was wearing. She was glad that after Salt Lake City, when she had woken up in the backseat of the car, that she had insisted that Joel stop and let her find something to wear. Showing up at Jackson in a hospital gown? Now that would have been an interesting first impression.

“Thanks,” she replied with a smile, then gestured at the stool next to her. Dina had left her in charge of finding somewhere to sit while she ordered their meals. Ellie had to search the busy restaurant for a few minutes before she finally found two spots at the bar beside each other. By the looks of it, they had arrived right at the start of the lunch rush. 

“What did you order for me?”

“Food,” Dina said cryptically as she sat down.

“Oh nice! That’s my favourite, how did you know?” Ellie snarked in return, already enjoying the banter between the two of them.

Dina smiled, then looked around the restaurant. She looked nervous. “I didn’t realise what time it was. I try not to come to the Tipsy Bison when it’s so busy,” she said apologetically. “Our food might be a while. At least that gives you plenty of time to spill your guts.”

Dina spun on her stool so she was facing Ellie directly. She propped her elbow up on the bar, rested her chin on her knuckles, and fixed Ellie in an eager and curious look. “Your story. Go.”

“It’s pretty short and boring, so you should start thinking of something else to talk about,” Ellie started, taking a few seconds to mentally run through the backstory that Joel and her had agreed on. “I grew up in Boston...oh, do you know where that is?” she asked as Dina cocked her head at the name.

“Sorry, no. We’re meant to start doing some geography next week though,” Dina replied, a hint of pink showing in her cheeks.

“That’s okay, the US is a big place,” Ellie said with a smile. “Okay so this is the United States…” she started, drawing a rough rectangle on the bar in front of her with her finger. Their glasses of water marked the top corners and the edge of the bar was both of the bottom corners. “...more or less. Jackson is here.” She paused to jab her finger at the top left quarter of the imaginary country, “and Boston is here. In Massachusetts.” She slid her finger up and to the right, stopping just short of her glass of water.

“Shit, that’s so far. How did you end up out here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Hey! You just said it was a short story.”

Ellie grinned. “Just checking that you were paying attention. With me so far?”

Dina rolled her eyes and leaned closer. She pointed to the middle of the bar in front of Ellie. “Here’s Jackson,” she repeated, then ran her finger across the surface to where Ellie’s hand was still perched.

“Here’s Boston, Massa-something,” Dina said once her finger bumped against Ellie’s. Ellie held her breath as Dina lingered there for a moment. But then she lifted her finger off the bar and gave Ellie a light poke in the stomach. 

“And here are guts that still need to be spilled.”

Ellie had let out a squeak at Dina’s unexpected jab, but quickly composed herself. “Alright alright,” she said with a laugh, batting away Dina’s arm to discourage any more surprise attacks. 

“As I was saying... I grew up in Boston. I was about to age out of the military school there,” Ellie paused to pull a face, “and I didn’t want to become a soldier. So I ran away. That’s when I met Joel — he had a falling out with his smuggling group and they ran him out of the city.”

Ellie lifted her glass of water to her lips and took a quick sip. “Oh! Joel is Tommy’s brother, in case you didn’t figure that out. That’s how he knew about this place. But anyway, neither of us had anywhere else to go so we just, uh...ended up sticking together and coming here.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, Dina evidently taking some time to process the story. Ellie lowered her hand to her stool and fidgeted with the plush velvet fabric, using her fingers to smooth the fibres in one direction, then another.

Eventually, Dina nodded. She looked back at the counter, using her eyes to retrace the imaginary map that Ellie had drawn. “I would have guessed you came from somewhere south,” she mused. “I mean, you did show up at the southern gate.”

Ellie pursed her lips. Dina was sharp; she was going to have to pay more attention to what she said around her. Ellie made a quick mental note to mention the inconsistency to Joel. She knew that he didn’t want them to end up with conflicting stories.

But for now, she adopted Dina’s earlier pose, resting her elbow on the bar next to them and holding her head up with her hand. “Well Dina. I’m glad you’re sitting down for this, because I’m about to blow your fucking mind.” She paused dramatically. “You see...outside Jackson, there are these things called the infected. And — get this — sometimes they’re between you and wherever you want to go.”

Dina aimed a light slap at her knee. “Fuck you,” she said with a chuckle.

“Fuck me,” Ellie replied, grinning.

Their conversation was cut short by the sounds of two plates sliding towards them, accompanied by a mouthwatering smell. Ellie turned away from Dina to thank whoever had delivered their food, but there was no-one there. Ellie quickly scanned the space behind the counter, eventually spotting an old man at the other end. She shrugged and looked down at her meal.

The first thing her mind supplied to her was that she was looking at some sort of...sandwich? It was a far cry from any sandwich she had eaten before. There was clearly bread involved, but rather than slices cut from a larger loaf, it looked like it had been baked as an individual portion and then cut in half to contain the fillings.

Ellie had eaten cheese before, and she guessed that was the yellow stuff poking out from the top of the fillings. Underneath that was a crisp leaf of lettuce and — Ellie lifted the lettuce to double check — a couple of bright red slices of tomato. Keeping the top half of this strange food raised, Ellie spotted the main source of the divine smell: a generous portion of ground meat that had been formed into a rough circle and grilled.

“Um. What’s this?”

Dina laughed next to her. Ellie looked over and saw that Dina had ordered the same thing for both of them. “It’s called a burger. I ate my first one a few months ago. Prepare yourself — it’s about to blow your mind.”

Ellie watched as Dina picked up her burger with both hands and took a generous bite. A bit of sauce dripped from the edge of a lettuce leaf and landed on her chin. Ellie’s fingers twitched at the sudden urge to reach up and dab at it, but then Dina’s tongue darted out from behind her lips to lick it away.

When Ellie glanced up from Dina’s chin, she realised that Dina was looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

Shit Ellie. You’re staring.

“Well, go on then,” Dina mumbled around her mouthful of food. “Before it gets cold,” she added, gesturing towards Ellie’s plate.

Ellie nodded and gathered the hefty burger in her hands. It was a bit awkward, and Ellie could feel the ingredients sliding around between the bread, but she held it steady to bite into it. Her mouth was immediately flooded with juicy flavour, and she quickly returned the burger to her plate so she wouldn’t accidentally drop it.

“Oh my god,” she said, unashamedly letting out a moan as she continued to savour the taste, “that is fucking incredible!”

Dina, who had also put her burger down to take a drink of water, laughed lightly. “Right? So fucking good.”

Ellie quickly retrieved her burger and took a few more blissful bites. However, when she almost reached the middle, there was a sudden punch of acidic sourness on her tongue. She pulled the burger away from her mouth and saw that there was something green — a lighter green than the lettuce — poking out from it.

“Ew! Is this a fucking pickle?” Ellie asked in disgust, wiggling her fingers between the layers of the burger and pulling out the offending ingredient.

Most of the food that she grew up eating was heavily preserved — either canned or pickled in some way. So, while burgers as a concept were new to her, she recognised the briny taste of pickles far too well.

“You don’t like pickles? Seriously?”

Ellie wrinkled her nose in confirmation.

“Your loss!” Dina said triumphantly as she plucked the pickle slice from between Ellie’s fingers and popped it into her mouth. Ellie could hear crunching sounds as Dina chewed then swallowed the whole thing.

Ellie. You’re staring again.

At least Dina was distracted by the bonus pickle this time and didn’t seem to notice Ellie’s gaze. She simply nodded her thanks, and they continued to eat their respective burgers in companionable silence.

Dina finished first. “Man, I love pickles,” she said breathily. “My mom found a jar of them when I was young and they were like...the best things ever.” She slid her finger along the side of her glass of water, drawing patterns in the condensation that had gathered there. “I randomly got the biggest cravings for them ever since.”

“Well, call me generous. You can have first dibs on all of mine.”

“You’re the best.”

Dina seemed content to carry the conversation while Ellie continued with her meal. “It took me a few months to figure out what was so weird about the food here.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow, so Dina gestured to the burger in her hands. “It’s so, um...assembled, I guess? Like, someone had to plan and put it together. It’s not just whatever someone managed to hunt that day. Or—or whatever someone found at the back of a cupboard.”

Ellie still wasn’t sure what Dina was getting at, so she waited patiently for her to elaborate.

“Right. I guess I mean like...okay, take the bun, for example,” Dina started, directing their attention to the bread in Ellie’s hands. “That was made with flour. That flour came from wheat. So someone had to wait for that wheat to grow, harvest it, then process it to make the bun.” Dina looked at Ellie again. “With me so far?”

Ellie smiled, loving that Dina could dish it just as well as she could take it. She put her burger down so she could give Dina her full attention. “Wait. Do you have some paper? I feel like I should be writing this down.”

The comment earned her another light slap to the knee.

“Ha ha. You’re the worst. Besides, that’s just the bun. The tomatoes are pretty easy. There’s always a greenhouse or two going with them. But leafy greens are super seasonal — you can only grow them in the warmer months, really. Seth tweaks the menu when it starts getting cooler...I think he serves like a pulled pork and slaw thing, I’m not sure. I'll order something else when he makes that switch.”

Dina paused to take a breath before continuing on her spiel. “Anyway. The ketchup? Well there are your tomatoes again. And while you’re at it, throw in onion powder, garlic, salt, sugar…” Dina’s tongue slipped out from behind her lips again and slid towards her chin, like she could somehow taste the memory of the sauce that had been there before.

“Plus vinegar, I think. And speaking of...well, you know pickles. That’s more preparation and planning to get your cucumbers pickled. And let’s not forget the patty — now that’s a whole process of coordinating with the ranchers to select the cows and get them through slaughter.”

Dina waved at the half-eaten burger on Ellie’s plate. “All in all, that’s hours and hours of work so that we can enjoy this for like, ten minutes. It’s spectacular, isn’t it?”

Ellie thought for a moment. “When you put it that way, yeah, I guess it is pretty spectacular.” She paused to glance down at her plate. “You forgot about the cheese though.”

“Don’t get me started on the cheese.”

Ellie smiled. “Okay, I won’t get you started on the cheese.”

Ellie returned to her burger with renewed appreciation. Somehow, Dina’s analysis made the last few bites taste even better. Briefly, she wondered about Dina’s background — sure, Ellie had never eaten a burger before, but it wasn’t too dissimilar to other meals she used to get back in Boston. An ‘assembled’ meal, as Dina described it, was hardly a source of excitement for her.

But maybe Dina hadn’t been so lucky.

When Ellie had finished her burger, she noticed that Dina was doing something strange with her hands. She had laid them out flat on the bar, on either side of her empty plate. As Ellie watched, she flexed her fingers so they were hovering above the surface of the counter, relaxed them for a moment, then curled them into her palm to form a tight fist.

“You okay?”

Dina looked at Ellie, then followed her gaze to her hands. “What? Oh um. Yeah, I’m fine,” she muttered. Her hands slid off the counter into her lap. “There’s just...there’s a lot of people in here.”

Ellie looked around her. The lunch rush still hadn’t died down. If anything, the Tipsy Bison was even more packed than it had been before.

In a strange way, it reminded Ellie of the orphanage back in Boston. While pleasant memories of that part of her life were few and far between, she did remember the mealtimes with fondness. There was always less food on their plates than they hoped for, but Ellie had lived for those loud, rowdy and chaotic parts of the day.

Dina, on the other hand, was looking increasingly agitated about their current situation. Ellie stood up from her stool and held her hand out. “Hey. Do you want to get out of here?”

It was a telling sign that Dina didn’t even react to the suggestive phrasing of Ellie’s question. She just nodded and slipped her hand into Ellie’s, and they quickly headed out the door.

---

“Um...I’m sorry about that.”

They were walking along one of the smaller roads that branched off from Jackson’s main street. Dina had let go of her hand when they had left the Tipsy Bison, but they had kept close to each other, gently bumping shoulders every few steps.

“Don’t worry about it.” Ellie glanced at Dina by her side. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Dina said quickly, “yeah, I’m okay. I thought I was getting used to it, but um...sometimes crowds can still get to me.”

Ellie nodded, her curiosity of Dina’s background growing even more. If she considered the patrons of the restaurant a ‘crowd’, then surely she hadn’t spent much time in QZs. She was about to see if she could glean more details about this mysterious girl, but Dina spoke first.

“It’s a shame though.”

“What is?”

“I wanted to stay for something sweet. Esther bakes all this stuff that she drops off for Seth to serve at the end of lunch and dinner. She makes a mean blackberry pie, and they’re in season right now.” Dina stopped walking and faced Ellie directly. “I guess we’ll have to settle for beef jerky for dessert,” she added with a grin, looking pointedly at Ellie’s pocket.

Ellie swore mentally as she realised that she had been caught, red-handed and red-faced. Dina must have known the whole time, and was just waiting for the opportune moment to call her out. She sheepishly reached into her pocket and pulled out a few strips. “Sorry. I should take them back to the patrol station, shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know...stealing from the town, it’s a pretty big deal,” Dina replied, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “If Maria hears about this, who knows what she’ll do? She might just kick you out.”

Ellie’s jaw dropped. “Fuck, I didn’t know that! I mean, all that food was just lying there…” she protested weakly, looking down at her shoes in shame.

As she wasn’t looking at Dina, it took a moment for Ellie to register that she had started to laugh. She raised her eyes and saw that Dina was doubled over, clutching at her stomach as she howled with laughter.

Dina quickly waved her arms in front of her. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Oh man, you should have seen your face.”

Ellie put her free hand on her hip. “Oh my god, you scared the shit out of me! Fuck you!”

“Fuck me!” Dina replied with a grin.

Ellie pouted. Evidently, that had already become a ‘thing’.

Dina plucked one of the strips out of Ellie’s hand. “Seriously, it’s fine,” she said, tearing a corner of the jerky off with her teeth and chewing it. “One of the first things I learned about this place is that everyone cares for each other. If you want some jerky, you can have some jerky…just don’t be a jerk about it.”

Ellie smiled. “Oh brother, that was terrible,” she said, shoving the rest of the jerky back in her pocket. “But uh...thanks.”

Dina returned the smile with warmth. “Welcome to Jackson.” 

---

“Ellie! There you are kiddo.”

After lunch, Dina and Ellie had continued to walk around the town. Dina told all manner of stories about Jackson and the people who lived there. She had just finished showing Ellie the squash and beans that she had planted earlier that day when Joel found them.

“Hey,” Dina said in greeting when Joel had weaved between the greenhouses to reach them.

“It’s Dina, right?”

“Yep,” Dina confirmed, stepping out of the clear plastic structure and pulling the door closed behind her.

“Thanks for showing Ellie around,” he said kindly. Then he turned his attention to Ellie. “Are you ready to go? Maria has assigned us a place.”

Ellie looked over at Dina, who waved her off with a smile. “Go on, we can catch up with Jesse later.” Dina started down the path that led out from the greenhouses, but then turned back to face them. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“For sure,” Ellie confirmed with a grin, then mouthed a silent ‘fuck you’ towards Dina.

Dina poked her tongue out, then mouthed ‘fuck me’ back with an even bigger smile.

After Dina had turned away and disappeared around a corner, Ellie faced Joel again. “Lead on, my dude.”

Joel chuckled at the instruction, then led Ellie back to the street. They weren’t walking for long before the questions started.

“How is Maria? What house did she assign to us? Is it near the stables? Is it nice? Do we have to share a bathroom? Do I get my own room?”

“Woah woah woah, calm down there.” Joel paused. “Hold up, why do you want to be near the stables?”

Ellie turned red. She hoped that burying that question in the middle would divert suspicion, but of course it was the one Joel decided to focus on.

“Uh...no reason.”

“Right,” Joel said, sounding very unconvinced. “Anyway, I can answer most of those in one go; we’re here.”

Ellie stopped and turned to face the direction that Joel was pointing. They had arrived at a two-storey house at the end of the street that ran parallel to the greenhouses. It was clad in beige weatherboards and had a large porch leading off from the front door.

“No fucking way,” Ellie said as she darted up the stairs and along the path to the entrance. “This place is massive!”

She tried the front door and it opened smoothly. Joel followed in behind her as she stepped inside and surveyed the ground floor with delight. To her right was a living room, complete with a cosy-looking couch and armchair. To her left was a dining room, which Ellie walked through to reach the kitchen at the rear of the house.

Sunlight flooded through the kitchen, reflecting off the light marble countertops and bathed the room in a warm glow. Ellie basked in the heat for a moment, then completed her loop of the area and returned to the main hallway. But when she put her foot on the first step of the staircase that led to the second floor, she was stopped by a hand on her shoulder.

“Wait up. I want to show you something outside first.”

Ellie gave Joel a puzzled look, but followed him to the end of the hallway and through a door that led to the backyard. Joel walked over to a detached garage tucked away in the corner and opened the door. Ellie followed and stuck her head inside, taking in the dusty and dim interior.

“So uh...it’s your choice,” Joel mumbled, suddenly sounding uncharacteristically awkward. “There’s a spare bedroom in the house but...we’ve spent almost a whole year together, and I understand if you want your own space.” He patted the doorframe. “This place has good bones. Whoever lived here before the outbreak did a good job converting it. It’s got plumbing, and it’s been well insulated. I can help you tidy it up if you want to stay here.”

Ellie took another look inside. It was easy to imagine a couch near the door, a bed in the alcove off to the side, and a desk at the back of the space. She grinned and turned back to Joel. “That sounds awesome but...are you sure?”

“Of course.”

Ellie reached up and gave Joel a hug around the neck. “Thank you,” she whispered into his shoulder.

Joel cleared his throat, and Ellie looked up just in time to see him give her a rare smile.

“Welcome home, kiddo.”

This is now

Jackson.

It took Ellie a moment to comprehend that they had finally reached their home. She was the one riding Sweetpea with Tommy when they had crested one of the hills that surrounded the town.

It hadn’t changed a bit. Not that it had any reason to, really. But it was a jarring reminder that the people of Jackson had continued to live their normal lives while Ellie’s own life had been dragged through hell.

“Ain’t that a sight for sore eyes?” Tommy said, wonder in his voice. He tugged on Sweetpea’s reins gently to bring her to a stop. “Do you mind if we hold up here for a bit?”

Ellie nodded, then realised that Tommy couldn’t see that response. “Yeah, sure...do you want to get down?”

“Please.”

Ellie slid off of Sweetpea’s back and turned to give Tommy a hand. After weeks of travelling like this, they had more or less perfected the process, but it was still a bit awkward. She could tell that Tommy’s leg still bothered him whenever he dismounted.

Sure enough, when he reached solid ground, Ellie caught him frowning and rubbing at his thigh. Dimly, Ellie wondered why they had stopped here instead of going the final mile or so to reach Jackson.

“You’re probably wondering why I stopped here,” Tommy started. He was still taking in the view of Jackson, so he wasn’t able to see Ellie’s brief smirk as she stood by his side. But then he turned to face her, an unexpectedly serious look on his face. “Do you know where we are?”

Ellie cocked her head then looked at either side of them. Trees, rocks, shrubs...nothing particularly notable. “Um, no? Should I? I mean, I guess there are a couple of patrol routes that I haven’t done yet.” She scratched at her chin absent-mindedly. “Does the bay trail go through here? Dina would know...”

She turned to look over her shoulder, expecting Dina to be nearby. She always was. But, to Ellie’s surprise, she saw that Dina was halfway down the slope behind them.

Ellie kicked herself mentally. They had stuck to sealed surfaces as much as possible during the trip because of the bike, but had been forced to leave the road to climb this hill. She had been so caught up with being this close to Jackson that she had forgotten about the logistics of their modes of transport.

Ellie made a move to help her girlfriend, but was stopped by a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s alright. I asked Dina if she could hang back when we got here.”

Belatedly, Ellie saw that Dina wasn’t struggling with the bike — rather, she had leaned it against a tree and was resting on a nearby rock. Tommy lifted his hand from Ellie’s shoulder and waved. Dina returned the wave, then pulled a book out of her backpack and started reading.

Ellie directed her attention back to Tommy, who gestured with his head to the view of Jackson again. “It’s not the bay trail. This is where we ended up the day I met you.”

“Oh…” Ellie breathed, glancing around her again. Tommy’s hint pulled vague memories to the surface of her mind and suddenly, she did recognise this spot. “...right. After I stole your horse and ran away from the dam.”

“Bingo,” Tommy said with a small smile. “History has a funny way of repeating itself, doesn’t it?”

Ellie moved to Sweetpea’s side and gently patted her neck. It felt like a way of showing Tommy that she was repaying him by bringing a new horse to Jackson.

Tommy titled his head at the gesture, then continued. “That was a good day, Ellie. We saved the dam, we got the power back, and...oh, did Dina ever tell you that that was the day she showed up?”

Ellie blinked. She knew that Dina hadn’t lived in Jackson for very long before her and Joel had arrived from Salt Lake City, but didn’t realise how close their paths had been to crossing. She shook her head slowly.

“I think about that day a lot,” Tommy added, his expression suddenly turning somber. His good eye flicked between Ellie, Sweetpea and Jackson before finally fixing her in a piercing gaze. “If somehow the lord gave me a second chance at that moment…”

Ellie’s breath caught in her throat at the hauntingly familiar words. She clenched her jaw and broke their brief eye contact to look at Sweetpea. She ran her hand through her mane to hide the way that it had suddenly started trembling.

Thankfully Sweetpea was standing on the side of Tommy’s bad eye, so he didn’t appear to see the action. He also seemed to be too caught up in his own thoughts to notice the shift in her mood. He rocked back and forth on his heels and hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans.

“I don’t know what I would have done. If Joel hadn’t...if I had been the one who took you to the Fireflies instead...who knows if we would have even made it to that university, let alone Salt Lake City.”

I was supposed to die in that hospital.

Maybe your brother would have done the right thing.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ellie saw Tommy take the reins dangling from Sweetpea’s bridle and gently tugged her head away from Ellie’s reach. Her hand slipped free of Sweetpea’s neck, her long mane trailing through Ellie’s fingers.

“C’mon Ellie, look at me. Please.”

Ellie watched the last few hairs slip out of her grasp, then she turned back to Tommy.

“He was my big brother.” Tommy paused to take a deep breath, exhaling with a loud sigh before continuing. “Always the better fighter. Faster. Smarter. Hell, he even held his liquor better than me.” He flicked at his nose with his thumb. “I—I don’t think I would have been as strong as he was.”

I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that.

And now, I don’t have that chance.

The trembling got worse. Ellie could feel herself on the edge of tipping into another memory. Already the corners of her vision were prickling with darkness, pressing ever closer with every breath — breaths that were slowly increasing in pace and decreasing in depth.

My life would’ve fucking mattered.

Please. Fuck, please let it matter.

Desperately, Ellie clutched at the last option available to her: anger.

The anger that was ever-present in the darkest parts of her mind.

The anger that had carried her through all the unspeakable things she did in Seattle.

The anger that was currently ringing in her ears, beckoning her to answer its call.

She curled her fingers into fists and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Strong? Strong?” Ellie let out an incredulous laugh. “That’s not exactly the fucking word I’d use for what he did in that hospital.”

“C’mon Ellie, don’t be like that. I didn’t know you back then, but Joel sure as hell did. And he lov—”

“Don’t,” Ellie whispered, the warning clear in her voice. “Please. Just...don’t.”

But Tommy wasn’t backing down. He straightened up as much as he could with his bad leg, turning so he could face Ellie directly. “‘Don’t’? Don’t what? You ‘don’t’. I haven’t forgotten what you said back at that theatre,” he said in a level tone.

“I said a lot of shit back then. You’ll have to be more specific,” Ellie threw back. “Was it before or after I saved your fucking life? — which you never thanked Dina or me for, by the way.”

“After, but that’s not important. You know exactly what I’m fucking talking about.” Despite the growing harshness of his words, Tommy’s voice stayed infuriatingly even. “We got Dina home. I didn’t want to say anything until we did, but...we’ve done it. We’re here. Now what?”

Ellie ground her teeth at the tone of expectation in Tommy’s question. He still wasn’t reciprocating Ellie’s rising emotions — he remained cool and calm, like he was delivering the daily farm rotation report rather than picking at her old wounds.

“‘She hasn’t paid for what she’s done.’ That’s what you said,” Tommy continued, jabbing an accusatory finger in her direction.

“Fucking hell Tommy, I KNOW what I said!” Ellie exclaimed, waving her arms around in exasperation. “But you know what else I said? That we have no fucking idea where she went. She wouldn’t have stayed in Seattle after all that shit went down between the Wolves and Scars. She’s...she’s gone.”

Her tirade ended in a whisper. The spark of anger that she was desperately clinging to was slipping away from her, much the same way that Sweetpea’s mane had slipped through her fingers earlier.

The fiery red heat was being sapped from her cheeks and chest. It left behind a cold empty sensation in its place.

It felt like she was being pressed into a frigid tiled floor.

Ellie remained standing, but her perspective suddenly tipped so it felt like she was lying horizontally. She was back in that fucking basement, complete with Joel’s ravaged body on the ground. Abby’s dark form was standing over him and holding the golf club, blood and gore dripping from the end.

Ellie stumbled back from the sight, but only got a few feet away before she ran into Sweetpea’s flank. The horse gave a deep rumble in protest.

“Woah Ellie. Hey,” Tommy said. He stepped forward, concern at Ellie’s sudden turn clear on his face. But she didn’t spare him more than a glance — she was staring at Abby, who had turned and started to advance on her.

“Dina!” Tommy called out wearily, throwing the name over his shoulder. His raised voice made Ellie flinch, and she could see him lift his hands up in her peripheral vision.

There were the sounds of rustling grass and quick footsteps as Dina made her way up the hill. She was probably only seconds away from reaching them, but Ellie remained transfixed on the sight of Abby, who had raised the golf club over her head.

With every ounce of her willpower, Ellie forced her tongue into order so she could say what she needed to say. “I’ll make her pay. Abby will fucking pay.”

The words came out strangled, but they came out. And they banished Abby’s shadowy figure from Ellie’s vision just as Dina crested the hill.

Ellie blinked then straightened up, using the solid presence of Sweetpea at her back to support her unsteady form. She watched Dina’s eyes dart rapidly between the two of them in alarm, eventually settling on giving Tommy an accusatory glare. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, we were just talking,” Tommy grumbled, kicking at a clump of grass near his boot.

Dina rolled her eyes and approached Ellie instead, holding her arms out in a placating gesture. “You okay?”

“She’s fine,” Tommy muttered.

“Did I fucking ask you?” Dina shot over her shoulder as she reached for Ellie.

Ellie let her take her hand, focusing all her attention on not letting it shake. “I—I’m fine Dina. Sorry. Tommy didn’t...he didn’t do anything,” she said, relieved that her voice didn’t betray the tumultuous feelings swirling around in her head.

Dina looked back at Tommy guardedly. “Okay…” she started, sounding unconvinced. She tugged on their linked hands to move Ellie away from Sweetpea’s side. “Tommy, how about you go on ahead? We can walk the rest of the way. Ellie could you…” she trailed off, gesturing at Sweetpea’s saddle.

Ellie nodded and waved Tommy over. She laced her fingers together and crouched next to the horse, giving Tommy a boost when he was ready. Once he was settled in the saddle, Dina reclaimed Ellie’s hand with her own. Together, they watched Tommy direct Sweetpea down the slope towards Jackson’s main gate.

“What was that all about?” Dina asked after he was out of earshot. She tried to make the question sound light, but Ellie could hear the note of worry in Dina’s voice.

Ellie shivered, but managed to turn it into a shrug before Dina could notice. “Must be something about a good Jackson view. It always gives the Miller brothers the urge to give a super dramatic speech.”

While Dina’s eyes stayed trained on Tommy, Ellie instead directed her gaze to the mountains to their right. They were approaching Jackson from the west this time, but when Ellie looked to the south, she could see the stream that she and Joel had followed when they had arrived from Salt Lake City.

There were trees in the way, but she could even catch a glimpse of the cliff where they had had that fateful conversation. Where Joel had lied right to her face about what he had done, and the gears that his actions had set in motion. The gears that eventually tore her life apart.

Ellie turned her attention back to Dina as she started speaking.

“Fucking Tommy. I thought he wanted to have like, a heart-to-heart conversation with you or whatever. I never would have agreed to leave you alone if I knew how shaken up you’d be.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Ellie. You’re shaking. Literally.”

“Oh.”

Ellie had forgotten to focus her attention on the hand that Dina was still holding. Far too late, she realised that it was trembling.

Dina guided her to a nearby log and they both sat down. Ellie rested her forearms on her knees and took a few deep breaths to collect herself. Dina sat patiently by her side, occasionally giving her thigh an encouraging rub as the residual tremors from her earlier flashback subsided.

“One last bit of excitement right before we get home,” Ellie muttered, eyes fixed on the ground between her shoes. “Figures.” She felt Dina squeeze her knee and looked up at her.

“Welcome to Jackson,” Dina mumbled. But then she frowned and shook her head. “No. That’s not helpful,” she said, correcting herself with a sigh. “Fuck, this is not going to be my last memory of this trip. You said you wanted to do one last carving when we reached home, right? How about here?”

Ellie swallowed and nodded, grateful for the change of topic. She got up and approached a nearby tree that had a good view of Jackson. The process was basically automatic now — she took out her switchblade from her back pocket, flicked it open, and ran the flat of the blade along the trunk to strip away the outer layers of bark. As she dug the point into the wood underneath to start carving, Dina gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“I’ll be right back,” Dina murmured into Ellie’s ear before she stepped away.

Ellie hummed in acknowledgement. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Dina started back down the hill they had climbed before, and continued to carve a heart into the tree.

True to her word, Dina returned less than a minute later, accompanied by the mechanical whirs and clicking sounds of the bike.

“Sixteen?” Ellie asked, knife hovering above the blank space under the initials that she had just finished carving.

“Yep,” Dina confirmed, nudging the bike’s kickstand down with her foot to leave it standing up near them. After Ellie added the number, Dina took up her position against the tree.

As Ellie traced Dina’s profile on the trunk, she took a moment to marvel at how rounded her girlfriend’s belly had already become. “We still have so far to go,” she said as she passed Dina’s hip, “you’re going to look like a fucking planet pretty soon.”

Ellie moved the sharp knife away from Dina’s stomach when she started laughing.

“I love that. It—it’s fitting,” Dina eventually managed to get out between giggles.

“What?”

Dina waved back at the direction they had come from, then down at her belly, with a smile. “We’ve gone to the edge of the universe and back.”

Ellie returned the smile. “Did we endure and survive though?”

“I think so...though I'm not sure about old Sweetpea Senior here,” Dina said, patting the saddle next to her affectionately. The endless miles of travel had not been kind to their bicycle. It was a miracle that the whole thing had kept together to the very end.

With almost comedic timing, the chain slipped off the pedal’s chainring.

“Fuck, I’m not going to miss fixing that,” Dina said with an exasperated grin. “I do want to give her a proper send-off though. What do you think?”

Ellie nodded and took hold of the handlebars. She turned the bike around and followed behind Dina. The chain kept snagging on the pedal, but they weren’t far from the ridge that overlooked Jackson.

“Any last words?” Ellie asked, rocking the bike back and forth to build some momentum.

“Farewell Sweetpea Senior. You were the biggest metaphorical AND literal pain in the ass. But you got us home so...thank you.”

“Good fucking riddance to a good fucking bike,” Ellie agreed. She pulled the bike back one last time before shoving it forward and letting go of the handlebars. It sailed over the edge of the ridge and first hit the ground with its front wheel. Worn down pieces broke and flew off as it continued to bounce down the hill. Eventually, it settled near the bottom in a tangled heap of metal and rubber.

Dina gave a mock salute and turned to Ellie with a satisfied smile. Ellie was about to return it, but then spotted movement over Dina’s shoulder. “Look, Di. A patrol’s back.”

Dina turned to follow Ellie’s gaze. Two small figures on horseback had emerged from the trees near the southern gate. The angle of their approach suggested they had just finished one of the valley routes. Together, Dina and Ellie watched the pair reach the gate, which opened to let them back into the town.

“Two out, two in,” Dina said under her breath. It was one of the many rules drilled into them during patrol training, but it was by far the most important. You don’t leave your partner behind.

“Although...I guess it’s ‘three in’ this time,” Dina added with a chuckle, massaging her belly gently.

Ellie frowned in confusion. She thought back to the conversation they had when they first found the baby book. “But you and Jesse...that all happened before we left for Seattle…” she said, trailing off awkwardly.

When Dina turned to face her again, she had a surprisingly serious look on her face. “Ellie...I don’t want to do this without you. I’m not sure I even can. You know that...right?” She glanced down at her belly before returning her gaze to Ellie’s eyes.

“I know that it took me a while to figure out what was going on. But even when I did…” she paused to glance at the carved tree behind them. “I knew it would take us weeks to get back to Jackson. But even being way out of the safe window, and even with Jesse gone...I still couldn’t bring myself to think about this thing in me being a—a baby...until you told me that you were all in,” she said, her voice wavering near the end of the confession. “Do you understand?”

Ellie inhaled sharply.

She did understand.

Instinctively, she reached for Dina’s hand and pulled her in for a tight hug. Her baby bump was really starting to get in the way, but Ellie still managed to wrap her arms around Dina completely to surround her with warmth.

She knew about women in Jackson who had been in the same situation; those that weren’t ready for kids, but found themselves having to make one of the hardest choices of their lives. Anne was amazing, but the Jackson medic could only do her best with the limited supplies and resources available to her. For women that came to her more than a couple of months into a pregnancy — the ‘safe’ window, as Dina referred to it — the process was...never easy.

Ellie herself didn’t need to worry about any of that, so she felt like she never had the right words to say to those women. Dina had always been the one who knew how to comfort them afterwards. Free of judgement, full of support...that was just how Dina was.

Ellie took a moment to be thankful that Dina had brought it up so early on their journey back to Jackson. Because back in Seattle, when Jesse had asked her about whether or not Dina would keep the baby, Ellie had been honest when she said that she didn’t know — as far as she was concerned, the decision was entirely up to Dina. But at that time, she had been so busy fighting to keep them alive in that horrible city, that she didn’t stop to think that Dina still had to go through all those thoughts...and she had to go through them alone.

The fact that Dina could only set them aside after Ellie’s reassurance that she was okay with all of it...well, it made Ellie’s heart absolutely shatter.

Ellie stayed there for as long as Dina needed her. She definitely wasn’t going to be the first one to move away. She murmured quiet words of comfort into Dina’s ear, and slid her hand under Dina’s backpack to rub her back gently.

Ellie didn’t know how long they stayed in that embrace. But eventually, she felt Dina nod into her shirt, so she slowly released her hold.

When Dina took a step back, there was a new nervous energy in her stance. She was shifting her weight from one foot then another, and was doing that thing with her hands where she alternated between stretching her fingers out and balling them into fists.

When Ellie had first arrived in Jackson, she had noticed Dina going through those motions fairly often. But their frequency had petered off as the years passed, to the point where Ellie couldn’t remember the last situation where Dina needed to call upon the old habit.

Ellie frowned; despite not having seen them for a while, those hand stretches were a sure sign that Dina was way out of her comfort zone. And yet, when she started to speak, her voice was steady and even.

“Look...back in Seattle, I was pretty out of it. But before Abby showed up at the theatre...I know the only reason you were planning on leaving was because of me. Because I was sick. Because of the baby.” The corner of Dina’s mouth turned up as her gaze dropped to her belly. But when she looked up again, her eyes were solemn.

“I’ve lost too many people, Ellie. My mom was first. And then it was Talia. And then Jesse.” Her voice cracked slightly, but she pressed on. “I can’t lose you too.”

Ellie bit her lip for a moment before responding. “You...you won’t lose me Dina. I’ve finally found something — someone — worth fighting for,” she said, her fingers ghosting across the hamsa charm on the bracelet tied to her wrist.

“Don’t bullshit me Ellie. I heard you say her name when you were talking to Tommy. But even if I hadn’t...I know that only Abby can make you that upset.”

“That—that was…” Ellie said, stammering, “...it wasn’t like tha—”

Dina cut her off by grabbing her wrist. “Tell me that you’re not just going to drop me in Jackson, turn right around and go back out there to find her.” She squeezed her hand slightly, increasing the pressure on Ellie’s arm so that it was a firm, but not painful, hold.

“I won’t…” Ellie started quietly.

“I know that ‘you go, I go’ are my words,” Dina continued, insistent, “but ‘belonging’ is one of yours. And it has to be more than just a word, Ellie. You...you belong here.”

Dina paused to look down at their hands. Ellie followed her gaze, watching as Dina brushed her thumb against her bracelet. When Dina looked up again, her eyes were wet with tears. “You’re my home. Swear to me that you won’t go...please.”

Ellie shifted her gaze away from Dina and towards the southern cliffs over her shoulder. She took a deep breath, releasing it slowly as she looked back at Dina.

“I swear.”

Dina’s wide eyes darted around her girlfriend’s face. Ellie had no idea what, if anything, Dina saw there. But after the intense scrutiny, Dina gave a tiny nod.

“Okay.”