Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s impossible until it isn’t.

Joel is not with her.

He can’t bark at her on what to do, lying still as death in a field of snow. Growing colder and colder. Dark blood pumps sluggishly like oil from the gaping hole in his belly.

Ellie’s brain doesn’t have time to process before it snaps into action. Joel wouldn’t be the first dying man she’d encountered in her life but she’ll be damned if he blues up on her watch.

She’s got to get something beneath him. Then she’ll be able to drag his weight.

She only prays that move won’t kill him.

Savagely the abandoned tarp flapping in the wind is ripped from its anchor, any flat material she can slide beneath him and secure to the horse. It's not great work but it's what she's got. The train yard they'd stopped in is stripped and doesn’t offer much but she’s blessed to find cables, a canvas sign, something to lay him out on. 

She takes Callus by the bit, amazed when the horse actually lets her. If Callus decides he doesn't want to cooperate, they're both fucked. But she speaks to him gently, checks the heat of her tone as she guides him along the barren tracks.  Turns out, her makeshift litter actually works. Joel wrapped up like a mummy or a cocoon—dragging slow as midnight behind the steady hooves.

Trembling with every step, she leads them out. She’s seen enough abandoned train yards on this journey to know that a town can't be far. People existed once where the steel tracks crossed and twined. 

It isn’t long before she finds salvation—a silent row of empty houses.

“Joel, we’re here! We made it!” She tells his unconscious body. Callus is unimpressed, shaking his mane with a snort. She yanks him to a halt to check on Joel, make sure the wound is still plugged up like she’d left it. It was the best she could do with what she'd had which wasn’t much and the journey had its share of jostles and bumps. The loose binds easily come undone, letting his blood trickle freely onto his clothes, saturating his undershirt into the waistline of his jeans.  Her fingers dip past his collar and press down—searching out his heartbeat. It’s thready and weak but she’s not about to pass judgment out here in the frozen open. His stillness terrifies her. She is so cold her belly aches from it. She wishes he would shiver, show some sign of life, even a cry of pain would be fucking more preferable. 

Better than this stillness. 

He’s shockingly white, frost forming on his bluish lips. She doesn’t have strength to think let alone act quickly but that isn’t an available option now. The sooner she gets him under any roof, the better. But they are unable to make haste, not with his insides threatening to bulge out. 

The canvas litter leaves a rusty streak of red in its wake, soaked through to the snow beneath him, painting an uneven sanguine trail.

She pretends his voice is at her back, whipping past the storm of ice and snow blowing in her eyes.

“Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

She does stop. Only to make sure he’s still there.

Chapter Text

Ellie struggles up the driveway of the first semi-stable house she sees. Windows shuttered by wood slats. Broken glass. Shattered door frame.  Raiders have been here. Or Infected. 

The garage is mostly intact. Beautiful. She'll take it. Leading Callus into the shelter of the adjoining garage, she secures Joel on the dry floor while she does a quick look around. Once out of the stark white punishment outside, she can finally take stock and immediately comes to several conclusions.

There is no earthly way for her to get him up the stairs where she knows beds will be. So the bed will have to come to him.  She shoves the largest mattress off its rotting wood frame and thrusts it down the failing staircase, shattering the banister with a satisfying crack.  It crashes with a thunderous flop onto the basement floor.

Ok, that's done. She brings Joel in through the garage. He won’t survive the stairs, she’s guessing.

The sheer amount of blood she sees pooled in the folds of the canvas she’d dragged him on makes her numb. So much outside of his body where it should not be. How much can he even lose? How much does he have left?

She blots out these thoughts, presses her ear to his chest and closes her eyes. The beat of his heart responds. 

It’s not reassuring—the racing beat stutters unevenly which she does expect nor can she make sense of it. Whether the faulty rhythm is a good sign or bad she cannot discern. All she knows is heartbeat good; silence bad.

In her earnestness not to aggravate his wound, she fails. It’s not a gash but a gaping hole. A gouge where his flesh should be. The smell of his congealing blood when she unwraps it makes her gag hard enough to choke down an involuntary rush of bile. 

“Ah fuck, Joel!” She covers her mouth and steels herself as she frees him from his canvas transport with her other hand. It doesn’t take much work, it was a shitty job in the first place. 

She grits her teeth hard enough to crack as she  tugs him onto the stained mattress. It’s an exercise in absurdity, he’s so damn big and she's damn puny.  What she is attempting now is a sheer mockery of worldly physics.

But she gets it done.

Up the stairs. Down the stairs. Supplies. Absorbent material. Anything at all. Molten tears threaten to sting her frozen cheeks when she finds actual towels in a hallway closet—folded evenly as though trapped in a time capsule. She pulls one out to appraise it. Not like Fedra offered much in the way of variety, but the patterns on these blankets are so ugly, they must be worthless even on the apocalypse black market. Raiders trying to survive Winter had left them behind.

But they work for her. All she wants is to keep him warm.

When she returns Joel’s eyes are wide open, staring up at the ugly wet spot growing on the ceiling. He’s breathing in shallow pants, trying to cope—doesn’t blink when she crashes to her knees beside him.

“Joel! Holy shit!” She’d meant to sound elated though a part of her knows Joel would have sensed the fear behind it. 

Truth is truth, he’s not able to sense much of  anything right now. 

She rolls up one of the towels and tries in all intended clumsy gentleness to place it under his head. Right away she can tell that moving of any kind is agonizing for him. Even the involuntary shift of his ribs against his diaphragm as he draws breath. Her aim is to make that easier. Supposed to help support his airway —that’s what she’d read somewhere.

Beyond  exhausted, muscles shuddering with fatigue. But she’s not done with him yet. There are things that must be done for him.  Countless important things  that—if she fails to notice—will have him blue up and stiff by morning.

She doesn’t think, she just does. Fighting to  to keep her voice steady, she speaks to him firmly. 

“I’m just gonna take a look, ok?” Not that he hears; he can’t  even look at her. His open eyes are useless pinpoints, unable to register anything beyond the pain.  The moment her trembling fingers lift his jacket away, he screams at the top of his lungs. It’s a sound she never thought possible  from him. 

A curtain of old dust from the wooden rafters showers down, sprinkling her shoulders.

She coughs, he doesn’t. 

The sound only startles her, it doesn’t prevent her. His wound is still wet—an open scarlet well. Ellie acts on instinct, frantically clutching the towel.  Ripping the aged material is surprisingly easy. Holding it against his body is unexpectedly hard.  It hurts him. But that doesn’t matter. Screaming, yelling, writhing as though she’d just set him on fire—he’s allowed to do all that. 

With both hands she clamps down on the wound, her slight weight no match for his struggle. She has no choice—Joel is fighting too much to give her clear access.

“Joel, stop!” She pleads or orders--she isn't sure which.  “I’m trying!”

But his face is ashen when she forces her gaze on it. Brown eyes bulging out of his head. Convulsively his hand grips down on her forearm, crushing her fragile bones.  The sudden brunt force makes her gasp, breaks the flimsy hold on her bloody task.

Aw shit, it hurts! 

A man of his size and strength could break her even in this state. He doesn’t understand where he is. He doesn’t understand he is poised to snap her radius like a dried twig. 

All he knows is pain. 

Pain she can’t conceive. Pain that drowns out every other living sense, pain far worse than the one his grip is inflicting on her. His body vibrates beneath her hands. Shivering uncontrollably. She coldly recognizes the signs of shock. 

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” She can’t shake him loose. But his grip on her arm is making her eyes blur. All she can do is ignore his suffering— try to stop the gushing bleed. Push through.

It’s good that he is moving, her mind tells her through his grip. Though she must admit if he were to pass out and go limp, this process would go much smoother on them both.  It’s bad from what she is able to see. He’s ripped open. Like one of the rabbits he’d gutted for dinner. The red shiny mass of his muscle layer peeks through the jagged flesh. 

Ellie holds on. Dizzy. Desperate. One thought dominates—make the blood stop, make it stop make it—

“Leave.”  His words make no sense. She must not have heard him right. 

“Shut up, Joel.” She snarls, focused on the wound. 

“Leave!” She hears the command again, stronger now. 

Without warning, he grabs her with a strength that shocks her to stillness. Pulls her close to his face so she can better hear his shuddering wheeze.

“Tommy. Go north” His speech is rapid; choppy. He must speak quickly for the effort it costs him, before the agony pulls him under again. 

“You take the gun and you go.”

She can’t react. She’s still trying to process what he’s saying. Rage, useless and hot, floods her chest. 

“Go,” the last ditch effort, voice etched with pain, struggling to be not just heard but felt. 

“You go.” The force of his breath is final when he uses the last ounce of his strength to shove her away.

She falls back on her clumsy knees, skidding against the hard floor. It smarts. 

For a beat all she can do is stare at him.

So that’s it?

On shaky feet she rises, watching his chest move up and down. Up and down. The movement of his breath sends fine tremors of pain throughout his body. He’s done talking. The puncture is close to the diaphragm. Every minute movement causes a ripple of sheer agony.

What had he said from the start?

What you say goes. 

Words she thought they’d both live by. 

But now pain is making him stupid. Stupid and blind. 

Hatefully, she seizes his discarded leather jacket and spreads it over his chest, a lame show of compliance. She can't argue with him--not with a man on the brink.

It’s what he’d want, right? 

She can’t look at his eyes. 

He’s trying to be brave but his vacant gaze is glassy. He’s slipping into acceptance. She recognizes that look and wants to vomit.

Forcing her to make another impossible choice. 

His eyes are wet. Unlike her, his tears flow unchecked. She tells herself it’s only a response to the finality, and that he isn’t sad. He’s only readying himself. 

He doesn’t know about her. 

He doesn’t know there isn’t a chance in Hell she’d ever leave him like this. The madness throbs hot behind her eyeballs.

Stupid Joel. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

There’s a lot Joel doesn’t know. 

Standing numb and useless before the basement door while he struggles to breathe on the dirty mattress below.  Sharp, shallow gasps prick the back of her brain like white hot needle points. A body preparing for its end. 

She’s felt those pricks before—the way Riley had fought so hard to keep her brain from teetering off that deadly slope, from giving in to the chokehold  of that fungus. 

To stay with her as long as she physically could.  It was the last sound she’d ever made on this Earth—no longer able to speak words of consent—before that merciful trigger. 

All she hears is a wall of white noise, mingling with the rapid crescendo of his breathing. 

She wants to throw up. She wants to break things. She wants to let her own tears fall.

But you can’t sew a man up with blurred vision. 

This time the pinpricks do not defeat her—this time they propel her.

She takes one cold look over her shoulder—at Joel’s broken, surrendered body—and decides for him. 

Not today motherfucker. Not today.

Chapter Text

The work gets done much faster once he passes out.

She remembers the sharp hitch of his breath when she’d pushed his jacket off him, exposing him to the cold. She’d taken his hand in here, entwined their fingers. Her mind buzzed—she should think of something to say. Something to tell him. She should say everything will be fine. That he'll be okay. But she can't promise that. Not with words--only touch. The curl of his leaded fingers in her hand give her hope.

I’m not leaving.

Neither are you.

But the way his uneven breathing settles and slows at her touch moves her, erases every word from her brain. The way he acquiesces to her—even through the blinding haze of his suffering—that he understands what she must do. 

It’s the last thing she wants and the only option she has. 

She doesn’t really know what she’s doing. But that’s no excuse.

Hardened as she knows him to be, a sharp needle through the flesh should make any man fight.  Were he like any other, he’d be bucking and kicking until he bled out. Joel does groan as the first stitch enters the dermis layer, bracing himself for this new exquisite agony, arching his neck as though he could fend off her touch. His skin is pliant as she holds the frayed ends together as tightly as she dares. 

That first stitch is the hardest. 

By the second, he resigns to her—concentrating every ounce of strength he has left not to scream or fight. 

Ellie quickly learns the problem—every time the needle goes in, his entire body tenses and it’s harder to draw up the thread through the muscle. When he exhales, however, he loosens up and that slides the point through clean and easy. 

In all her time in Fedra, she has never witnessed torture. She imagines this is what it must be like. Excruciating pain with no outlet or reprieve. His heart pounds beneath her hand. She can do nothing to calm him. She must train her eyes on her fingers, not him and his suffering. 

It’s not as easy as it looks—reducing Joel to an object. A torn pair of jeans. A ripped leather jacket. She tries again and again to train her mind and detach—anything to make this easier.

On her.

Joel is fresh out of groans. Instead he lets out something between a gasp and a whimper. 

Shut up, Joel. 

It’s delicate work—she knows she mustn’t jar him, mustn’t slip, mustn’t let that needlepoint sink too deeply into vital places she has no clue about.  With one hand she presses down on the skin to keep it stable, with the other she pushes the needle in and through. 

She must make sure the stitches hold tight; aligning to a strict pattern her fixated brain has no reference for. Blood stains her fingers again and again and she wipes them clean before starting again.

The blood she wipes away is warm, at least. 

Midway done she lets the both of them breathe—pausing to wipe her fingers, swipe the sweat from her brow. Checks his pulse to find it thinning and weak. She closes her eyes to re-center herself, check how much she has left.

Just a few more and she can tie him off.   

“Okay,” she tells him urgently. “Okay.”

Only one thing matters: keeping him in. Keeping him closed. Keeping him together.

He is too weak to lift his head off the towel to try and view her handiwork. So hell bent, she never even notices him slipping away, the tension leaving his body. She never sees his eyes slipped close as his head kills to the side, at last going lax.

When at last it is over she is trembling almost as hard as he had been.

Ellie collapses back onto her heels, closes her eyes and releases a long shuddering breath. It feels cleansing, entering her lungs through the musty basement air. It feels accomplished. She wants to think, even triumphant. If Riley were here, she’d have given her a pat between the shoulders and called her a badass bitch. 

How foolish. 

His skin is clammy, cold and pale by the time she knots the final stitch with numb fingers. Sweat shines on his brow. She cleans him up as best she can before going through the house in search of blankets. She can’t think anymore today. She can only do.

The checkered green flannel coverlet she finds will do a better job at keeping him warm than just his leather coat. She spreads it across his body,  tucking the edges closely around his sides to insulate to prevent body heat from escaping. He is asleep so she will let him sleep, counting the deep, even pattern of his breathing. Exact numbers won’t align in her head when she tries to multiple 15 by 4. The wristwatch on his left hand is cracked and dead. She gives up.

The wind outside is howling but it’s warmer down here below. The ancient asbestos insulation concealed in the walls holds up.

Joel lies so utterly still. It irks her.

With baited breath, she presses her ear against his chest, careful not to jostle him. There's movement there at least. The sluggish, traumatized thud of his heart answers her silent demand. Swells like the sea inside him, pumping constantly. A promise in this swirl of deafening chaos.

Still here, it says. 

“Still here,” she responds.

Even as it stutters and skips, loses its way, speeds to catch up or forgets where it started—the logical part of her knows that his heartbeat is beyond his control—but it’s the only communication she has now.

She doesn’t remember closing her eyes. She’s drowning in his heartbeat like soft black velvet. 

God it feels so good. 

Sorry Joel, she apologizes, knowing he needs much more than her exhaustion can allow right now. She needs to get up. Check the house for food, medicine, blankets, things he will need.

But she can’t move anymore today.

Chapter Text

Sunlight creeps in through the cracked window, filtering dust and debris.

She can see her breath in the cold morning air inside the basement. Thoughts tug at her sleep-blurred mind. The horse will need food. Joel will need…well, fucking everything. She can start a fire. Get them both warmer.

Sleep has done her good. Sharpened her thoughts. Reclaimed her body enough that she can coordinate her movements without stumbling. 

First, she inspects his wound, kneeling at his side and gingerly uncovering the bloodstained cloth from where it covers her needlework. She knows not to bind a stitched laceration in some feeble attempt to reduce infection.

Not that it makes much of a difference. 

The good news is he is no longer bleeding out, his life no longer pumping unchecked out onto the frozen cement floor. 

Swell.

She touches his brow. He feels warmer. Is that a good sign? She has no idea.

Ellie sleeps on it. Spends the morning staring absently out into space, tracing idle patterns on his chest with her fingertips, cheek smushed against his sternum. His arms lay useless at his sides, incapable of comforting her. Incapable of assuring her.

But his heart is still beating.

“Hi.” She mouths the word into his chest. 

Kthud Kthud Kthud.... Joel’s heart says back.

“Please wake up?” 

She can feel his pulse against her cheek and tries not to let the uneven cadence scare her. It’s beating even if it’s forgotten exactly how to, stumbling like a drunk that’s lost his way.

He’s breathing slower. She can feel that too.

Ha! She smiles bitterly. I must be doing something right. 

Chapter Text

Ellie looks for the smaller victories.

She knows even in her complete ignorance that it’s too early to hope for such things. Fuck knows she doesn't believe in miracles. But at this point, she's willing to convert.

By daylight, Joel is just the same as he was at dusk.  In some aspects, one might say that her hours are filled with watching Joel suffer. She can’t do much else for him.  She does for herself first and tries to do what's right when it comes to him.

He won’t stop shivering. 

Ellie’s bone tired mind flits with possibilities, groping feebly for a cause. Cold? Blood loss? Fever? All three? 

There's just too many blanks.

Is he getting worse? When his teeth click in his mouth and his head tosses sharply to one side, is that supposed to mean something? The final rattle before the end? Whatever he is enduring right now, all she knows is that it is uncomfortable.

When in doubt she checks his pulse. Finds it anywhere she can reach that won’t disturb him. His throat, his wrist, his ankle.

The stubborn beat taps on.

The blanket isn’t doing enough, she decides. Granted it’s almost as cold in here as it is out there. She doesn’t know how to make the cold stop. Her eyes search his gray face forlornly, pleading. 

Joel, what do you need?

Then it hits her.

What does she have? 

Grasping his icy fingers in hers she rubs them between her palms, lifts them to her lips and applies the heat of her own breath to his fingertips.

It’s pathetic.

Gently she presses the chilled digits between her palms, trying to encourage his blood to flow, to warm his fingers at least. Even that small part of him. She squeezes and presses, imagines she sees swirls of faint pink swirling beneath the pads of his finger tips.  He doesn’t respond to her ministrations and that doesn’t surprise her at all. Look at her, she mocks herself in her head, trying to coax precious blood into his useless extremities while his heart struggles and strains even to pump it. His blood is sorely needed elsewhere—to vainly attempt the mending process caused by the grievous anomaly to his body, to keep his lungs inflating and his vital organs working.

And here she is trying to warm his goddam fingers. 

Stupid

Sighing, she lowers his cold hand to rest against his chest. He’s still shaking, lips trembling, breath visible in the frigid air. Her brain won’t work, drained as she is. Tasked with finding a solution that doesn’t exist, she lifts one corner of the flannel blanket and curls up against his side, draping the material around them both. 

She presses her nose into his shoulder and breathes him in—basking in his familiar scent, feeling the uneasy rise and fall of his chest, muttering an empty apology for her inadequacy.

Her lashes flutter closed. Another wasted day. 

She is quietly astounded to find that his convulsive shivering has tapered off. When she wakes to a warming patch of drool on the fabric of his shirt, he is notably calmer. His breathing is slower if not exactly even. He looks like he’s actually resting, eyeballs shifting gently beneath his lids. Her fingers reach up to touch the scratchiness along his jaw..

Not like she’s done anything. 

Chapter Text

Fever. He is rife with it. 

At some point during midday his skin goes from being wax like and cold to burning to the touch.  At first Ellie is relieved. But as the stench from the wound is now unbearable—sharper and fouler—she realizes what this is.  Sweat dampens his scalp, stands out in beads along his hairline. His face is flushed dark pink, glowing with the sheen of moisture.  He starts to reek— a heavy stale scent mingling with the suppuration. 

And mysteriously enough, he is shaking all over again.

She’d been half hoping he’d stir, the chilled shivers racking him to even partial wakefulness.

But he’s in deep. 

She has no guess how high his temperature might be and obviously there’s no way for her to check. She feels his forehead, bites her lip when she feels how terribly hot he is. His skin is ablaze so why is he shivering? It’s confusing. 

His breathing, she notes with growing alarm, is becoming a problem. Too fast and shallow, lost in endless dreaming. His pulse, when she finds it against his inner wrist, is racing. 

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

She tries to make him drink—he needs water to cool down. Stay hydrated before the stark lack of it decides to step in and finish him off. But he’s too weak to swallow. What she manages to force past his lips he starts coughing up so she halts that idea fast. Aspiration is nobody's friend. Thanks, Ellie.

His fingers are hot, lips cracked and parched.

Half by instinct and half by guess, she dips her fingers into the tin cup of melted snow and dampens his lips, patting gently, hoping to at least prevent them from chapping and bleeding. She moistens his forehead too, brushes her damp fingers across his flushed cheeks, the hollow of his throat. Anywhere he is burning, she seeks to cool.

It’s better than nothing.

Chapter Text

Mornings are always the same.

Like ritual, she checks his breathing and heartbeat as soon as she’s awake enough to count. She tries to count them and keep track though she barely knows what to do with that data. Doing so despite its futility keeps her calm, helps her quantify what she imagines to be progress, prevents her from thinking too much about how still he is.

She misses his voice so bad it aches in her chest.

Yesterday his heartbeat had sounded uneven; a concerning patina of quickened, chaotic beats. Like shoes in a dryer.

This morning the beat feels stronger against her face; steadier and confident. She splurges on a full minute listening to it thrum inside his chest. She imagines it says “Hello” back when she whispers “Morning asshole” into his shirt collar.

Joel–he isn’t meant to lie here silent as a tomb. He’s so motionless apart from the involuntary motion of his belly as it rises with his breath.

But there’s work to be done. Slowly, she drags herself up into a sit, body smarting.

She’s sore most of the time. Sleeping on a cold hard floor with no fire whatsoever is agonizing. Her elbows are letting her know they exist in the worst way.

But it’s not like she has anyone to complain to.

Sore elbows. Side like a bruise. What a joke. Crawling to the bucket of snow she’d left there overnight, she dampens her fingers and washes her face with the chilled liquid.

Then it’s his turn.

She does her best to keep him as clean as possible. The cracked plastic container of melted snow has many uses. She pats his face clean and it seems to comfort him the most. Swipes away the old sweat from the hollow of his throat, cleans the dried blood caked beneath his fingernails, the tacky brownish stains on his palms.

There are moments—not many—where he resurfaces. The first time it had happened, her heart nearly froze. She’d begged him to stay awake, to stay with her. But it was in vain.

Even now he may flinch himself to wakefulness briefly, eyes glazed and not all there, only to sink back into dreaming when he finds that she is no longer pressed against him.

False hope. He is full of it.

She regretfully eats the last of their food. A dried piece of rabbit jerky. Joel can’t eat. She isn’t even sure how she’d make him with the extent of his wound and the unknown state of his insides. The last thing either of them need is to choke or vomit or possibly give more to leak from his gut.

But his body will only get weaker if she doesn’t find food for it sooner or later.

Her eyes light on the gun.

If she can find a rabbit out there. Cook the meat up somehow and boil it down into (a broth?) something he might be able to digest…? A soup or something. That's if he even rouses enough to swallow which she doubts will happen. His bouts of lucidity have been few and far between.

She has to try.

“I’ll be right back.” She tells him. He tosses his head, emits a sound between a wheeze and a groan.

“Joel?”

Joel’s head turns slightly in her direction, hair clinging to his forehead, skin burning against his pillow. She’d had to change out his head roll last night, he’d been so feverish.

She can’t be sure he’d heard but who knows?

Chapter Text

The mission to find food had been a failure.

But she’d found worse—men. Men with penicillin.  She cuts her losses for the hard won deer and races back to him, her prize clutched to her chest.

Half by instinct, half by guess she injects him with the dose. Directly into the wound. She doesn’t know any better. Once the medicine vanishes beneath his skin, she checks his forehead once more, hoping like an idiot it would have an  immediate effect. Make him cooler. Knit the damaged muscle. Bring down his soaring temperature. 

No. He still burns. 

Just existing. She can’t demand much more of him. She needs her rest too.

She checks his pulse before she curls up beside him, ignoring the gnawing whine from her empty belly. 

Her touch does something to him. When he lays down beside him, settling her head beneath his chin, honed in on the familiar thud of his heartbeat, she knows it will beat fast until her weight melts into his side, little by little slowing to an even pace. His restless body relaxes where it was once tense with pain. 

This night, however, feels different. 

He’s quiet for once, if not entirely peaceful. He’s so far away he isn’t murmuring in his sleep like he normally does. She hopes wherever he is, it is peaceful and far far away from pain. She hopes wherever he is, it smells better. He hopes wherever he is, he is warmer and not shivering with no one but a little fool for company. She hopes wherever he is, he can maybe see his daughter. For a visit. Way back on the outskirts of his mind where she probably lives. He hopes he is smiling. 

She hopes that unknown presence is giving him comfort. The way she is failing miserably.

So Ellie sleeps and listens to his heart pound in time with hers: 

“ I’m not letting you go.”