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Ellie threw the front door wide open, its hinges creaking at the overextension as the door hit the pillar it was attached to. Cool wind accompanied her as she excitedly jumped onto the welcome mat and dragged her boots against the rough material.
His head hardly turned, recognizing the notable force with which she threw the door open, and the only one who could pull an action off so consistently. “Hey, kiddo.”
Without a word, her shoes flew off her feet as she approached the cabinet above his empty counter. Well, empty outside of his owl mug that was half full of his second round of coffee.
The front door closed gently, appropriately. He still didn’t have to turn his head to know who. “Hey… other kiddo.”
Dina smiled as she slipped off her coat and tossed it on the shoulders of the nearby chair. She opened her arms and approached Joel, the old man returning the embrace as Dina settled against his chest. “Hey… boss”
He chuckled above her. “I ain’t your boss, Dina.”
She pulled away, a suspicious glare in her eye. “Would you prefer ‘old man’?”
“Joel works just fine, last I checked.”
Ellie gave her wide-eyed signals as she caught her friend’s attention before Dina recentered her attention on Joel, punching his chest. “You got it, old man.”
Amused, Ellie laughed through a mouth full of crackers. Joel sighed, defeated as he was, once again, insulted, ganged up on, and poked fun at by the two girls who meant the world to him.
Whatever the world had to offer, they were it. They were everything.
“You two‘re up early—8AM. What’s the occasion?”
Mouth full of more crackers, she mumbled. “What are you, the fucking plan police?”
Dina stifled her laughter as Joel approached Ellie, a hand extended. “Yes,” he pressed his palm into her beanie-covered head and rubbed, “I am.”
“Get… off…” she writhed, swatting at Joel’s arm and trying to hit his face. He kept his hand placed firmly on her head as the beanie pulled further and further up her hair. “Dina!”
Pretending to hustle toward Joel, she approached him, arms ready, and lept on his back, her arms crossed over his chest. She playfully beat his chest with gentle punches and ruffled his mullet.
“Shit, girl.” He let go of Ellie’s head and fell to a knee as Dina screamed and fell with him, toppling over his shoulders and collapsing to the floor in laughter.
He breathed in deeply, trying to catch himself. A helpless grin formed on his face as Ellie collapsed beside Dina, both of their faces beet red as they held their ribs while their breaths faded in and out.
In and out.
In… and out.
“In and out, Joel,” Dina pleaded with quivering lips, her laughter now wretched tears streaming down her face as she stared at his blood-soaked face.
“Breathe!” Ellie’s scream lit up the room, directing the attention of every one of Abby’s crew. “Fucking breathe, Joel!”
He wasn’t. Or couldn’t. Or they were too shallow to even see.
A shot rang out. Or a crack. Or a fleshy pierce. Something in between… maybe none of the three. The girls could look, they saw, but the brain can be funny. In the immediate aftermath, they couldn’t be sure how it happened.
Something inhumane, or once believed to be. A normal, typical reaction of anyone in the new world now, and for any reason they deemed.
For ration cards. For disagreements. For bargains or betrayals or rivalries. To take one’s own life, or to avenge the loss of another.
A mix of cries filled the room. Cries that neither girl was unfamiliar with, but when combined created a horrible tension and a frequency nearly unbearable to their bare ears.
Ellie crawled to him, bit by bit. Centimeter by centimeter. Board by board, breath by breath, she’d reach him.
One last hold. One last touch. One last attempt to hear his breath or feel his chest rise.
An attempt to die right there beside him.
Dina watched on, unable to stand. “Joel,” she croaked, her body failing and her tears drying along her cheeks.
“Joel!”
Ellie grabbed Dina’s blanket-covered feet, shaking her awake. “Dina! Hey… it’s me, Ellie. It’s me.”
She woke with a start, heart pounding, eyes racing, face completely dry with clean clothes and body sunk into a soft mattress.
They shared a look. It wasn’t Dina’s first nightmare since that night. Ellie knew she was having them, whether it was from the words Dina mumbled, or in the morning when she couldn’t hold in what she experienced again… sometimes multiple times a night.
Ellie sat at the foot of the bed, her hand on Dina’s ankle. “Where’d you go?”
“There… again.” She swallowed, annoyed at the consistency of them, and to try and keep the emotion in her throat from building. “But it was different. We were having fun—all three of us—beforehand. He tried to give you a noogie and I jumped on his back…” she trailed off, a light smile on her face remembering his—whole, golden in the morning light, and soft. “Then it switched to…”
Being unconscious, she didn’t experience it like Ellie did. She didn’t see every moment and hear every cry, but hearing and reliving the moment from Ellie who, at times, couldn’t help but cry into her neck about the ways she saw him suffer creeped into Dina’s mind. It conjured things untrue and brought her somewhere in her mind she thought she could avoid.
Dina breathed for a moment to steady her racing heart. She threw the blanket off and snaked her leg out from Ellie’s gentle hold. On her bedside dresser, untouched since it was first given a home there, laid a dusty picture frame. She reached for it, smoothing her thumb over the the faces.
Ellie, Joel, and Dina. Their first ever patrol as a group when Ellie was 16. Tommy was still against it, but caved to his brother when he promised they’d be fine. He invited Dina to join them right before they departed. After their successful run, Maria had the three pose; to commemorate the memory of Ellie’s first patrol, she said.
Ellie let her keep the picture. She already had a handful with Joel, anyway. Dina deserved a family picture.
“I miss him.” She sniffled back tears as Joel’s smile seemed to pierce right through her chest. The feeling of her clinging to his chest as she jumped on his back in her dream felt real beneath her skin. His laughter that mixed with theirs like a perfect hymn.
Ellie settled next to Dina, her left hand, the one she fastened his watch to, laid on her forearm. “Me too.”