"Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true..."
Ellie kept her eyes locked on the man front of her... The man she had grown so close to, the man she had looked to for everything... Everything until now. Her heart was racing, hoping that maybe the sinking feeling she had in her gut was wrong. That the man she loved as a father was not lying to her. She searched his eyes for an answer, those very eyes momentarily avoiding her. It was when he looked back to her that she felt her heart fall to her stomach.
"I swear."
Anger swelled through her system, a figment in her mind shattering like mirror. Her anger was quickly buried under a wave of saddened disappointment, hot tears starting to prick at the rims of her eyes. She blinked them away, swallowing and taking a short breath with a slight nod of her head.
"... Okay..."
And that's when she ran. She slowly turned away from Joel, tears finally falling down her face before she bolted back down the little hill they were once standing on, doing her best to ignore the startled yells from Joel. She kept running, leaping over the barbed wire fence and continuing her dash away from the man she had crossed the country with. Dashing along the side of the fence, she ran herself through the forest edge, finally snaking her way through the trees as she approached them, hoping to lose her pursuer between the trunks of bark.
She kept running, even long after Joel's calls had stopped and long after she could no longer hear her name. Her lungs were on fire and her legs felt they were going to break, but she continued on until her foot hit an uncovered root, sending her tumbling to the forest floor in a pained heap. Had she the breath to scream, she would had, but the air in her lungs only escaped her in short gasps, the action racking her ribs. She didn't know how long she lay there, her mind too flooded with thoughts, her heart too broken. Her ears barely registered the clap of thunder that erode through the floor, a few earlier drops of rain splashing down around her.
The rain slowly began to fall, the pitter-patter of the drops filling the silence of the forest. Ellie blinked, puffy eyes starting to sting as she forced herself to sit up, clothes now muddy and nicked with little twigs and briars. Looking to the sky, she allowed the water droplets to run down her face, her own tears now dried up. Then she screamed. Pent up anger and agony finally left her lips as she let the shout lose, yelling profanities at the sky at whatever celestial being that resided overhead. The wail began to die down, her voice cracking, but her anger didn't waver.
"You could've just killed me!" she hissed at the sky, fists balling up tightly. "You could have just fucking killed me, but no! You send the infection after me, fucking cannibals... And Joel! You..." Her rant at the sky fell short as she spoke the name, her heart clenching painfully in her chest as if it couldn't take it's body cursing the man. She sniffled, feeling the familiar burn of tears in her eyes. "After everything we went through, everything we lost... And you just-"
Click
"Hey, loud mouth... You done yet?"