Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2021-01-19 10:22 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2021-01-19 10:22 pm
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Fanfiction: Harbouring (The Last of Us/Uncharted)
Here is a sequel to Eden Ablaze, my Last of Us/Uncharted crossover, because sometimes you're suddenly hit with the need to write a sequel to a fic you posted seven years ago.
Title: Harbouring
Fandom: The Last of Us, Part II/Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,000
Summary: Six years after they last saw each other, Ellie meets Nathan Drake again.
The farmhouse is empty. Ellie doesn’t know what she expected.
The door was open when she reached it, and for a moment she was terrified that something might have happened to Dina and JJ. But the furniture hasn’t been broken up for firewood, even if everything else is gone; the whole place says moved rather than looted.
She knows it for certain when she reaches her studio and sees that her stuff is still there. Dina is still alive. Or she was alive when she left, at least.
That’s something. It’s not like Dina will ever want to see Ellie again, but it’s something.
There’s a creak from outside the room.
Ellie whips around. “Dina?”
No response.
She can’t see out to the landing from this angle. The creak was quiet in a way that’s much scarier than a louder noise would be, because it means someone’s trying not to be heard.
Ellie presses herself against the wall, by the doorframe.
She still grabs for her knife, every time. It’s gone. She has to remember that.
She unholsters her pistol instead.
Anyone wants to get her, they have to come through this door.
“I’m not planning to stay,” she calls. She hadn’t realised it before she said it, but she can’t live here, not any more. “You don’t kill me, I don’t kill you.”
Pause.
“Sounds like a good deal to me.” It’s a man’s voice.
Ellie lets out half the breath she’s been holding. It’s not a guarantee of safety. But it’s a good sign that he’s prepared to talk.
How does she get out of the house? He’s right outside the door of the studio.
“I could leave now, if you don’t wanna go past me,” the guy suggests, like he’s reading her mind.
If he leaves the house first, he could take up a sniping position and wait for her to come out.
Ellie swallows. “No. You get in here. I’ll leave.”
There’s another pause.
“I’m not planning anything, y’know.” The guy doesn’t sound thrilled by her suggestion. Makes sense; if he goes into the room she’s already holed herself up in, he’s making it way easier for her to jump him.
“Hey, I’m not either,” Ellie says. “I’m tired of killing. But I will still kill the shit out of you if you try something.”
“Reassuring,” the guy says. “All right, I’m coming in. No murders, okay?”
Huh. Ellie wasn’t expecting him to actually agree. It’s not like she could’ve stopped him just running down the stairs and out the door.
The guy shuffles into the room, hands up. Ellie has her gun trained on the back of his head the second she can see it.
He’s looking around the room, sensibly slowly, and at last he turns and spots her. He’s young, maybe around her age, and—
“Wait,” he says, and the suddenness of it almost startles her into squeezing the trigger. “Ellie?”
What?
Someone from Jackson? She thought she knew everyone in her generation. This guy’s a stranger, she’s never—
“You still have it,” he says, sounding touched and relieved, and she looks down at the ring around her neck and then sharply back up at him.
“Nate?”
He’s older, obviously. His hair’s gone darker, he’s taller, he’s built up more muscle. But it’s him.
“Holy shit,” Ellie says.
“Tell me about it,” Nate says. “Wow. That’s really you? How’ve you been?”
That is a very big question. She’s not sure she can answer it on short notice.
Nate coughs, awkwardly. “Also, uh, you gonna lower that gun?”
“Oh, whoa, right, sorry.” She checks the safety, holsters it. It feels strange, being around anyone other than Dina without a gun in her hand.
Nate’s watching her, cautiously. “Rough day?”
“More like a rough...” She makes a vague gesture. Rough something. Rough... some unit of time.
“You think you might freak out if I come in for a hug?”
“Maybe,” Ellie says.
But she takes the implied invitation there, edges toward him. Slowly; you don’t make quick movements around anyone who’s not an enemy.
He pulls her into his arms, and it feels... solid, it feels good. It feels like it’s been way too long since she was last touched by someone who wasn’t trying to get their hands around her neck.
It reminds her a little of Jesse.
She can feel herself almost on the edge of tears, and it pisses her off.
-
They head out into the fields, at Ellie’s request. Probably safer indoors, but being in that stripped-down house just makes her think of everything she left behind. From the outside, she can almost pretend that nothing has changed, that Dina’s going to call her in for food any minute.
She doesn’t tell Nate any of that. Just says she needs some fresh air.
He climbs up to sit on the abandoned tractor. Ellie leans against it, trying not to miss JJ.
“What’ve you been doing since we last saw each other?” Nate asks.
They last saw each other before she’d reached Salt Lake City, before she’d even seen Jackson, before she’d met Tommy or Jesse or Dina. Years before Abby. It feels like another life. “Uh, mostly fucking up.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Nate says. It sends a quiet spark of anger through her; there’s no way he knows the feeling. “We can trade stories.”
Ellie hesitates. “I don’t know if my stories are up for trade yet.”
She really hopes he doesn’t press the issue. She doesn’t want to have to walk away from this conversation; she doesn’t have anywhere to walk to.
“Got it,” Nate says. “All my questions are strictly optional. I’m guessing the vaccine thing didn’t work out.”
Good guess. She doesn’t bother saying it. If it had worked out, he’d know.
“So what’re you doing here?” Nate asks.
Ellie stretches, tilting her head back to look up at the sky. Lightly overcast, the clouds bright with muffled sunlight. “I don’t know. Just ended up here, I guess.”
She pauses. This question is going to invite a return question from Nate, she knows, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready to face it. But she wants to know.
“How’s Sully?” she asks.
“Complaining about not getting laid,” Nate says. “You know Sully.” He cocks his head. “Well, actually, I guess you might’ve been too young to hear that particular complaint when we met you.”
Ellie hadn’t realised before she heard the answer, but she wanted him to be dead. It makes her feel kind of sick; she doesn’t want to think like that. But it doesn’t seem fair that Nate gets to keep his father figure, and hers is gone.
“Anyway, we found a car; he’s probably still napping in it.” Nate waves vaguely over the fields. “He’ll want to see you. How about Joel?”
Ellie shrugs. “Got fucked.”
It’s the least emotional way she can phrase it. It still chokes her up.
“Shit,” Nate says. “I’m sorry. Are you doing okay?”
Ellie stares straight at the horizon. Her eyes are stinging. “I’m fine.”
She can feel Nate looking at her.
“Does Sully know where you are?” she asks.
“Oh.” Nate draws a breath in through his teeth. “Yeah, should probably get back to him before he wakes up and freaks out.”
-
The route down to the road is so familiar: the woods, the little stream. It feels wrong to be back here when the house is empty and dead.
“How’s your personal life been?” Nate asks.
He might as well have just stabbed her in the gut. She gives him a look that says so.
“Wow, okay,” Nate says. “Really not up for talking about anything, huh?”
Ellie lets out a sigh, hard and flat. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be unfriendly.”
Nate shakes his head. “No, I get it. Screwed-up things happen. I just—”
He kind of stumbles over whatever he’s trying to say.
They’ve stopped walking. She moves to put a tree at her back, almost without thinking about it. She and Dina never met many infected around here, but you don’t just stand out in the open, even when there’s someone else to keep watch.
“I missed you, you know?” Nate asks. “If you’ve got anything you’re up for saying, I’d like to hear it.”
She’s been missing so many people, so intensely; it’s like each of them is a piece that’s been ripped out of her chest. Hearing that someone else has been missing her...
It hits her harder than she’d have expected, and she has to bite down on her tongue not to let it show. She’s not going to cry; she’s not going to embarrass herself here.
“I, uh.” She hunts for something neutral to say, safe. I learnt to play the guitar?
Not a safe subject.
“I’ve been kind of teaching myself to draw,” she says instead.
Nate breaks into a grin. “Hey, me too!” He pulls a tattered leather journal out of the tattered leather bag he’s been carrying with him. “We should have a sketching competition.”
Ellie grabs the journal out of his hand; his ‘Hey!’ is so half-hearted that it’s clear he was about to pass it to her anyway. She starts leafing through.
“Definitely no sketching competitions,” she says. “These are way too good.”
“Do I get to see yours?” Nate asks.
The idea makes her feel suddenly sick. Everything in her journal is way too personal. “Nope. You’re the only one getting judged here.”
She pauses on a full-length illustration of Sully, drawn in profile. He’s leaning against a wall, eyes closed, smoking. A quiet, intimate moment, and the ache of Joel rises up in her like it’s trying to talk to the Sully on the page.
She threw away all that time she could have had with Joel, wasted nearly two years not talking to him. And meanwhile Nate and Sully were out there together, having moments like this.
She turns the page. “Oh, who’s this?”
“Okay, that’s enough looking.” Nate reaches for the journal.
She jerks it back away from him, raising her eyebrows.
Nate groans. “She’s just someone we trade with sometimes, okay?”
“Elena,” Ellie reads from the page.
“That is absolutely not how you pronounce it.”
“You get everyone you trade with to model for you?”
“I didn’t draw this while she was there,” Nate protests.
Ellie looks from Nate to the journal and back again, playing up her incredulity. “You drew someone you ‘just trade with’ this detailed from memory? I think that’s actually weirder.”
“Shut up. She’s a friend.”
“I guess your personal life hasn’t been much more successful than mine, huh?”
It stings a little to say it. She thought maybe she’d be able to talk about it if she turned it into a joke, if she was just teasing Nate. But it’s still too raw for that.
Nate winces. “I mean, it’s been eventful. There have been definite events. I just kind of... keep falling for girls who don’t take any of my shit, and then there’s shit, and they don’t take it.”
Something about the turn this is taking feels weird, puts Ellie on her guard.
Nate hesitates. “Which, I mean, I guess it makes sense. There’s this kind of formative crush I had.” He scratches his neck. “A girl we travelled with for a while. I was fifteen, she was fourteen, she saved me from a pack of Runners when a ceiling fell on my head.”
Okay, there’s the source of the weird feeling.
Huh.
The thought of that day still makes Ellie’s throat tighten with fear. She guesses it must make Nate’s throat tighten in a different way.
“Must’ve been a pretty cool kid,” she says, after taking a moment to process this. “Probably a good thing you never went for it; it sounds to me like she was super gay.”
“Wait, really?” Nate asks. “Stamp on my teenage dreams, why don’t you?”
“Ugh. I don’t want to hear about your teenage dreams.”
Nate starts to laugh, and Ellie finds herself almost smiling. Human laughter feels like such an alien sound to her, now.
She used to wonder sometimes, back when he was alive, whether Jesse was ever into her. She doesn’t think he was. But Joel had put the idea in her head, and it never totally left, it bothered her sometimes.
She guesses it’s good to know for certain with Nate. If she knows where they stand, she knows where she has to set boundaries.
-
“I’ll be damned,” Sully says, clambering out of the car. He stretches, wincing. “Look who it is.”
“If you hit on her, we’re leaving,” Nate says.
“Hey, at least give me a chance to be inappropriate before you slate me for it, kid,” Sully says. “How’ve you been?”
Nate sends Ellie a quick glance.
Ellie shrugs. “Still alive.” It’s about as far into her stuff-I-don’t-want-to-talk-about explanation as she still has the energy to go.
“Best any of us can hope for,” Sully says. He looks over at Nate. “Don’t think this gets you off the hook for wandering off on your own.”
-
“There was a bed right here?” Sully demands. “And I spent all that time sleeping in the car? What a goddamn waste.”
It’s surreal, Sully and Nate standing in the bedroom she used to share with Dina. A fragment of her life from six years ago, here in the ruins of the life she threw away so recently.
“If it makes you feel any better, you can keep watch while I nap here,” Nate says. “Then at least someone gets to enjoy the bed.”
“You know, I’m not sure that actually makes me feel any better.” Sully glances around the room. “This is a nice place. Seems like a shame to loot it.”
Nate looks sharply over at him. “You want to try to set something up here?”
How does Ellie feel about this?
“I don’t know,” Sully says. “Might be nice to have a base. Plus we’re not too far from a certain young lady’s area of operations.”
Nate coughs.
“You mean Elena?” Ellie asks, as innocently as she can manage.
Nate breaks into a full-on coughing fit and knocks into the door hard enough to ricochet it off the wall. Ellie finds herself laughing and, wow, that’s been a while.
“Wait,” Nate says. “Ellie, you were here, right? You know anything about this house? Are we gonna have to fight off anyone else’s claims?”
That puts a stop to her laughter pretty quickly.
“I actually...” She tries to swallow. Her mouth feels dry. “I actually lived here. For a while.”
“Oh, right,” Sully says. “Didn’t realise this was your place. Sorry.”
“No, I’m not – I’m not saying you can’t stay.” She pauses. “It’s not really mine any more. I don’t think it belongs to anyone.”
Sully and Nate exchange a quick series of meaningful looks.
“How about we take it up together?” Nate asks. “The three of us? Like, we appreciate the offer, but we’re not just gonna yank your home out from under you.”
The idea – of having people to live here with, friends, even if Dina and JJ are gone – is kind of tempting, and also kind of makes Ellie want to throw up. “It’s all yours.”
Nate pauses. “You got someplace to go, or are you just passing on Sully’s snoring?”
Maybe she should lie.
“Nowhere to go,” she says. “Just... not here.”
Nate and Sully look at each other again.
“Can we talk outside?” Nate asks Ellie.
“Don’t be surprised if I’m asleep on the bed when you get back,” Sully says. “And don’t let anything eat me.”
-
“You sure you don’t want to stay?” Nate asks. “Are we driving you out?”
Ellie shakes her head, kicks at the wheat. “I’d have left even if you hadn’t shown up.”
She guesses she should probably give him his ring back. She reaches up to lift the cord over her head.
Nate catches her wrist to stop her, lets go so quickly it makes it kind of awkward. “Keep it. You’re giving us a house.”
She’s not going to argue. It’ll be nice to have a souvenir of the last person who was willing to talk to her.
Nate seems like he’s hesitating. “Uh, if this is a factor in you saying no, I don’t have any, y’know... expectations.”
“Wow,” Ellie says. “Say that again, but creepier.”
“How is that creepy? I’m just trying to – I’m letting you know I’m not creepy!”
“You know saying that just makes it creepier, right?”
“Fine,” Nate says. “You’re uninvited. Sully and I are going to have incredible Ellie’s Not Here parties in our sweet farmhouse every night.”
Ellie glances away, so he won’t see her smiling. She wasn’t prepared for this, for how good it would feel just to be around a friendly presence. She’s been burning all her bridges, but it turns out there are still at least two people who are still alive and don’t seem to hate her.
For now.
She’d probably get used to it, right? Living here without Dina. If she had company, she’d get used to it.
It’s just...
Is she going to kill Nate?
It feels like she’s going to kill him, sooner or later. She’s destroyed everything else in her life.
So maybe she just has to get out of here before it can happen.
“I really shouldn’t stay,” she says.
Nate is frowning slightly when she looks back at him. “You sure?”
No. “I’m sure. I’ve got to...”
There is absolutely nothing she needs to do. There’s nothing she can do. She makes a gesture that doesn’t mean a thing.
“Okay,” Nate says. “Well, just so you know, it’d be good to have you around. You can come back any time.”
It tightens up her throat. How is she supposed to believe that? All she does is screw things up; why would anyone want her around?
Maybe she’s in the process of fucking things up all over again right now. Someone’s holding out a hand to her, and she’s deciding she’d prefer to drown.
“You could stay the night, at least,” Nate suggests. “Give yourself some time to think about the offer.”
Ellie draws breath to refuse. She hesitates.
She thinks about Jackson, about the people and the streets, about leaving it behind. She doubts she’d be welcomed if she ever made it back there.
She thinks about Dina, pleading with her not to go after Abby.
“One night,” she says.
Title: Harbouring
Fandom: The Last of Us, Part II/Uncharted
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,000
Summary: Six years after they last saw each other, Ellie meets Nathan Drake again.
The farmhouse is empty. Ellie doesn’t know what she expected.
The door was open when she reached it, and for a moment she was terrified that something might have happened to Dina and JJ. But the furniture hasn’t been broken up for firewood, even if everything else is gone; the whole place says moved rather than looted.
She knows it for certain when she reaches her studio and sees that her stuff is still there. Dina is still alive. Or she was alive when she left, at least.
That’s something. It’s not like Dina will ever want to see Ellie again, but it’s something.
There’s a creak from outside the room.
Ellie whips around. “Dina?”
No response.
She can’t see out to the landing from this angle. The creak was quiet in a way that’s much scarier than a louder noise would be, because it means someone’s trying not to be heard.
Ellie presses herself against the wall, by the doorframe.
She still grabs for her knife, every time. It’s gone. She has to remember that.
She unholsters her pistol instead.
Anyone wants to get her, they have to come through this door.
“I’m not planning to stay,” she calls. She hadn’t realised it before she said it, but she can’t live here, not any more. “You don’t kill me, I don’t kill you.”
Pause.
“Sounds like a good deal to me.” It’s a man’s voice.
Ellie lets out half the breath she’s been holding. It’s not a guarantee of safety. But it’s a good sign that he’s prepared to talk.
How does she get out of the house? He’s right outside the door of the studio.
“I could leave now, if you don’t wanna go past me,” the guy suggests, like he’s reading her mind.
If he leaves the house first, he could take up a sniping position and wait for her to come out.
Ellie swallows. “No. You get in here. I’ll leave.”
There’s another pause.
“I’m not planning anything, y’know.” The guy doesn’t sound thrilled by her suggestion. Makes sense; if he goes into the room she’s already holed herself up in, he’s making it way easier for her to jump him.
“Hey, I’m not either,” Ellie says. “I’m tired of killing. But I will still kill the shit out of you if you try something.”
“Reassuring,” the guy says. “All right, I’m coming in. No murders, okay?”
Huh. Ellie wasn’t expecting him to actually agree. It’s not like she could’ve stopped him just running down the stairs and out the door.
The guy shuffles into the room, hands up. Ellie has her gun trained on the back of his head the second she can see it.
He’s looking around the room, sensibly slowly, and at last he turns and spots her. He’s young, maybe around her age, and—
“Wait,” he says, and the suddenness of it almost startles her into squeezing the trigger. “Ellie?”
What?
Someone from Jackson? She thought she knew everyone in her generation. This guy’s a stranger, she’s never—
“You still have it,” he says, sounding touched and relieved, and she looks down at the ring around her neck and then sharply back up at him.
“Nate?”
He’s older, obviously. His hair’s gone darker, he’s taller, he’s built up more muscle. But it’s him.
“Holy shit,” Ellie says.
“Tell me about it,” Nate says. “Wow. That’s really you? How’ve you been?”
That is a very big question. She’s not sure she can answer it on short notice.
Nate coughs, awkwardly. “Also, uh, you gonna lower that gun?”
“Oh, whoa, right, sorry.” She checks the safety, holsters it. It feels strange, being around anyone other than Dina without a gun in her hand.
Nate’s watching her, cautiously. “Rough day?”
“More like a rough...” She makes a vague gesture. Rough something. Rough... some unit of time.
“You think you might freak out if I come in for a hug?”
“Maybe,” Ellie says.
But she takes the implied invitation there, edges toward him. Slowly; you don’t make quick movements around anyone who’s not an enemy.
He pulls her into his arms, and it feels... solid, it feels good. It feels like it’s been way too long since she was last touched by someone who wasn’t trying to get their hands around her neck.
It reminds her a little of Jesse.
She can feel herself almost on the edge of tears, and it pisses her off.
They head out into the fields, at Ellie’s request. Probably safer indoors, but being in that stripped-down house just makes her think of everything she left behind. From the outside, she can almost pretend that nothing has changed, that Dina’s going to call her in for food any minute.
She doesn’t tell Nate any of that. Just says she needs some fresh air.
He climbs up to sit on the abandoned tractor. Ellie leans against it, trying not to miss JJ.
“What’ve you been doing since we last saw each other?” Nate asks.
They last saw each other before she’d reached Salt Lake City, before she’d even seen Jackson, before she’d met Tommy or Jesse or Dina. Years before Abby. It feels like another life. “Uh, mostly fucking up.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Nate says. It sends a quiet spark of anger through her; there’s no way he knows the feeling. “We can trade stories.”
Ellie hesitates. “I don’t know if my stories are up for trade yet.”
She really hopes he doesn’t press the issue. She doesn’t want to have to walk away from this conversation; she doesn’t have anywhere to walk to.
“Got it,” Nate says. “All my questions are strictly optional. I’m guessing the vaccine thing didn’t work out.”
Good guess. She doesn’t bother saying it. If it had worked out, he’d know.
“So what’re you doing here?” Nate asks.
Ellie stretches, tilting her head back to look up at the sky. Lightly overcast, the clouds bright with muffled sunlight. “I don’t know. Just ended up here, I guess.”
She pauses. This question is going to invite a return question from Nate, she knows, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready to face it. But she wants to know.
“How’s Sully?” she asks.
“Complaining about not getting laid,” Nate says. “You know Sully.” He cocks his head. “Well, actually, I guess you might’ve been too young to hear that particular complaint when we met you.”
Ellie hadn’t realised before she heard the answer, but she wanted him to be dead. It makes her feel kind of sick; she doesn’t want to think like that. But it doesn’t seem fair that Nate gets to keep his father figure, and hers is gone.
“Anyway, we found a car; he’s probably still napping in it.” Nate waves vaguely over the fields. “He’ll want to see you. How about Joel?”
Ellie shrugs. “Got fucked.”
It’s the least emotional way she can phrase it. It still chokes her up.
“Shit,” Nate says. “I’m sorry. Are you doing okay?”
Ellie stares straight at the horizon. Her eyes are stinging. “I’m fine.”
She can feel Nate looking at her.
“Does Sully know where you are?” she asks.
“Oh.” Nate draws a breath in through his teeth. “Yeah, should probably get back to him before he wakes up and freaks out.”
The route down to the road is so familiar: the woods, the little stream. It feels wrong to be back here when the house is empty and dead.
“How’s your personal life been?” Nate asks.
He might as well have just stabbed her in the gut. She gives him a look that says so.
“Wow, okay,” Nate says. “Really not up for talking about anything, huh?”
Ellie lets out a sigh, hard and flat. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be unfriendly.”
Nate shakes his head. “No, I get it. Screwed-up things happen. I just—”
He kind of stumbles over whatever he’s trying to say.
They’ve stopped walking. She moves to put a tree at her back, almost without thinking about it. She and Dina never met many infected around here, but you don’t just stand out in the open, even when there’s someone else to keep watch.
“I missed you, you know?” Nate asks. “If you’ve got anything you’re up for saying, I’d like to hear it.”
She’s been missing so many people, so intensely; it’s like each of them is a piece that’s been ripped out of her chest. Hearing that someone else has been missing her...
It hits her harder than she’d have expected, and she has to bite down on her tongue not to let it show. She’s not going to cry; she’s not going to embarrass herself here.
“I, uh.” She hunts for something neutral to say, safe. I learnt to play the guitar?
Not a safe subject.
“I’ve been kind of teaching myself to draw,” she says instead.
Nate breaks into a grin. “Hey, me too!” He pulls a tattered leather journal out of the tattered leather bag he’s been carrying with him. “We should have a sketching competition.”
Ellie grabs the journal out of his hand; his ‘Hey!’ is so half-hearted that it’s clear he was about to pass it to her anyway. She starts leafing through.
“Definitely no sketching competitions,” she says. “These are way too good.”
“Do I get to see yours?” Nate asks.
The idea makes her feel suddenly sick. Everything in her journal is way too personal. “Nope. You’re the only one getting judged here.”
She pauses on a full-length illustration of Sully, drawn in profile. He’s leaning against a wall, eyes closed, smoking. A quiet, intimate moment, and the ache of Joel rises up in her like it’s trying to talk to the Sully on the page.
She threw away all that time she could have had with Joel, wasted nearly two years not talking to him. And meanwhile Nate and Sully were out there together, having moments like this.
She turns the page. “Oh, who’s this?”
“Okay, that’s enough looking.” Nate reaches for the journal.
She jerks it back away from him, raising her eyebrows.
Nate groans. “She’s just someone we trade with sometimes, okay?”
“Elena,” Ellie reads from the page.
“That is absolutely not how you pronounce it.”
“You get everyone you trade with to model for you?”
“I didn’t draw this while she was there,” Nate protests.
Ellie looks from Nate to the journal and back again, playing up her incredulity. “You drew someone you ‘just trade with’ this detailed from memory? I think that’s actually weirder.”
“Shut up. She’s a friend.”
“I guess your personal life hasn’t been much more successful than mine, huh?”
It stings a little to say it. She thought maybe she’d be able to talk about it if she turned it into a joke, if she was just teasing Nate. But it’s still too raw for that.
Nate winces. “I mean, it’s been eventful. There have been definite events. I just kind of... keep falling for girls who don’t take any of my shit, and then there’s shit, and they don’t take it.”
Something about the turn this is taking feels weird, puts Ellie on her guard.
Nate hesitates. “Which, I mean, I guess it makes sense. There’s this kind of formative crush I had.” He scratches his neck. “A girl we travelled with for a while. I was fifteen, she was fourteen, she saved me from a pack of Runners when a ceiling fell on my head.”
Okay, there’s the source of the weird feeling.
Huh.
The thought of that day still makes Ellie’s throat tighten with fear. She guesses it must make Nate’s throat tighten in a different way.
“Must’ve been a pretty cool kid,” she says, after taking a moment to process this. “Probably a good thing you never went for it; it sounds to me like she was super gay.”
“Wait, really?” Nate asks. “Stamp on my teenage dreams, why don’t you?”
“Ugh. I don’t want to hear about your teenage dreams.”
Nate starts to laugh, and Ellie finds herself almost smiling. Human laughter feels like such an alien sound to her, now.
She used to wonder sometimes, back when he was alive, whether Jesse was ever into her. She doesn’t think he was. But Joel had put the idea in her head, and it never totally left, it bothered her sometimes.
She guesses it’s good to know for certain with Nate. If she knows where they stand, she knows where she has to set boundaries.
“I’ll be damned,” Sully says, clambering out of the car. He stretches, wincing. “Look who it is.”
“If you hit on her, we’re leaving,” Nate says.
“Hey, at least give me a chance to be inappropriate before you slate me for it, kid,” Sully says. “How’ve you been?”
Nate sends Ellie a quick glance.
Ellie shrugs. “Still alive.” It’s about as far into her stuff-I-don’t-want-to-talk-about explanation as she still has the energy to go.
“Best any of us can hope for,” Sully says. He looks over at Nate. “Don’t think this gets you off the hook for wandering off on your own.”
“There was a bed right here?” Sully demands. “And I spent all that time sleeping in the car? What a goddamn waste.”
It’s surreal, Sully and Nate standing in the bedroom she used to share with Dina. A fragment of her life from six years ago, here in the ruins of the life she threw away so recently.
“If it makes you feel any better, you can keep watch while I nap here,” Nate says. “Then at least someone gets to enjoy the bed.”
“You know, I’m not sure that actually makes me feel any better.” Sully glances around the room. “This is a nice place. Seems like a shame to loot it.”
Nate looks sharply over at him. “You want to try to set something up here?”
How does Ellie feel about this?
“I don’t know,” Sully says. “Might be nice to have a base. Plus we’re not too far from a certain young lady’s area of operations.”
Nate coughs.
“You mean Elena?” Ellie asks, as innocently as she can manage.
Nate breaks into a full-on coughing fit and knocks into the door hard enough to ricochet it off the wall. Ellie finds herself laughing and, wow, that’s been a while.
“Wait,” Nate says. “Ellie, you were here, right? You know anything about this house? Are we gonna have to fight off anyone else’s claims?”
That puts a stop to her laughter pretty quickly.
“I actually...” She tries to swallow. Her mouth feels dry. “I actually lived here. For a while.”
“Oh, right,” Sully says. “Didn’t realise this was your place. Sorry.”
“No, I’m not – I’m not saying you can’t stay.” She pauses. “It’s not really mine any more. I don’t think it belongs to anyone.”
Sully and Nate exchange a quick series of meaningful looks.
“How about we take it up together?” Nate asks. “The three of us? Like, we appreciate the offer, but we’re not just gonna yank your home out from under you.”
The idea – of having people to live here with, friends, even if Dina and JJ are gone – is kind of tempting, and also kind of makes Ellie want to throw up. “It’s all yours.”
Nate pauses. “You got someplace to go, or are you just passing on Sully’s snoring?”
Maybe she should lie.
“Nowhere to go,” she says. “Just... not here.”
Nate and Sully look at each other again.
“Can we talk outside?” Nate asks Ellie.
“Don’t be surprised if I’m asleep on the bed when you get back,” Sully says. “And don’t let anything eat me.”
“You sure you don’t want to stay?” Nate asks. “Are we driving you out?”
Ellie shakes her head, kicks at the wheat. “I’d have left even if you hadn’t shown up.”
She guesses she should probably give him his ring back. She reaches up to lift the cord over her head.
Nate catches her wrist to stop her, lets go so quickly it makes it kind of awkward. “Keep it. You’re giving us a house.”
She’s not going to argue. It’ll be nice to have a souvenir of the last person who was willing to talk to her.
Nate seems like he’s hesitating. “Uh, if this is a factor in you saying no, I don’t have any, y’know... expectations.”
“Wow,” Ellie says. “Say that again, but creepier.”
“How is that creepy? I’m just trying to – I’m letting you know I’m not creepy!”
“You know saying that just makes it creepier, right?”
“Fine,” Nate says. “You’re uninvited. Sully and I are going to have incredible Ellie’s Not Here parties in our sweet farmhouse every night.”
Ellie glances away, so he won’t see her smiling. She wasn’t prepared for this, for how good it would feel just to be around a friendly presence. She’s been burning all her bridges, but it turns out there are still at least two people who are still alive and don’t seem to hate her.
For now.
She’d probably get used to it, right? Living here without Dina. If she had company, she’d get used to it.
It’s just...
Is she going to kill Nate?
It feels like she’s going to kill him, sooner or later. She’s destroyed everything else in her life.
So maybe she just has to get out of here before it can happen.
“I really shouldn’t stay,” she says.
Nate is frowning slightly when she looks back at him. “You sure?”
No. “I’m sure. I’ve got to...”
There is absolutely nothing she needs to do. There’s nothing she can do. She makes a gesture that doesn’t mean a thing.
“Okay,” Nate says. “Well, just so you know, it’d be good to have you around. You can come back any time.”
It tightens up her throat. How is she supposed to believe that? All she does is screw things up; why would anyone want her around?
Maybe she’s in the process of fucking things up all over again right now. Someone’s holding out a hand to her, and she’s deciding she’d prefer to drown.
“You could stay the night, at least,” Nate suggests. “Give yourself some time to think about the offer.”
Ellie draws breath to refuse. She hesitates.
She thinks about Jackson, about the people and the streets, about leaving it behind. She doubts she’d be welcomed if she ever made it back there.
She thinks about Dina, pleading with her not to go after Abby.
“One night,” she says.