Nights in the Watchtower
Ellie glanced over with vague amusement as a thermos and a rusted lunchbox flew up from the hatch in the floor, accompanied by a muffled grunt from below. She couldn't hold back a disturbingly genuine smile as they were followed by a straw-blonde head.
"Dude, I get room service now? Fuckin' sweet."
"Yeah, yeah, yuk it up," the girl sighed, fidgeting to tug her sweatshirt down over the stretch of skin Ellie still felt guilty for noticing. After settling herself on the floor, she leaned over and snagged the thermos.
"And how would we like our coffee this evening, madame?" she said in the worst attempt at a snooty accent Ellie had ever heard. The girl grinned when Ellie doubled over with laughter, jostling the rifle out of position in the window. "Does it come any way but weak as piss?" she accepted a cap of the steaming liquid as she recovered.
"Well the house does have an exciting variety of high proof liquors that the management was too lame to let me bring along," the girl grumbled, taking a long swallow of coffee straight from the thermos. She grabbed hold of the lunchbox and popped the latch open with a little effort, withdrawing a small cake wrapped in plastic. "But I did manage to get a hold of a few of these babies."
"Twinkies!" Ellie almost squealed with delight. "Holy shit, Nat! Where the hell did these come from?"
"A magician never reveals her secrets," Natalie smirked. "Although it should be noted that this particular magician will be working KP at the commissary for a few weeks." Ellie felt an undeniable rush of affection deep in her chest, and she leaned over and nudged her shoulder against Natalie's. "You're the best, blondie."
Natalie blushed fiercely, glancing over at Ellie with an uncharacteristically shy smile before ripping into one of the packages. On any other night Ellie would have delighted in that smile, let the memory of it put a little swagger in her step the next morning, but not tonight. Tonight it pulled at memories that she worked hard to keep scabbed over. Tonight, it hurt.
"Why'd you come up here, anyway?" she asked, wincing slightly at how gruff the question came out. Natalie's eyes flashed with hurt as she looked out towards the wilderness. "I, um, I ran into Joel at dinner. He said you were in for a rough night and I thought maybe you'd...like someone to talk to?"
Ellie scoffed. Took the man fucking years to open up about his family, but six months after sharing what happened in Boston and he was ready to get her sharing shit? Nice.
"I just...I," Natalie struggled, crumpling up an empty wrapper between her hands. "You know what? This was a shitty idea, I shouldn't have bothered you. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
"Fuck," Ellie sighed to herself, leaning over to grab a handful of Natalie's sweatshirt as she started edging towards the hatch. "Nat, hold up. I'm sorry; I'm being a bitch. I didn't mean to snap at you, ok?" Natalie's smile was tight and didn't reach her eyes.
"Don't worry about it," she replied, squeezing the hand fisted in her shirt. Ellie relinquished her grip, trying not to flinch at the comfortable warmth that clung to her skin after Natalie released her. "I'm sure you weren't expecting company."
Ellie swallowed hard as Natalie turned back towards the ladder. "No, wait. Please? I want you to stay." Natalie seemed torn, looking between Ellie and the hatch with barely-hidden longing etched in her expression. Ellie had found herself on the receiving end of that look more than once in the three years since Natalie stumbled into Jackson half-dead and scared out of her mind. They'd been each other's first real friends in the insular settlement, a point of relation and stability neither had ever known for so long. It was familiar enough to terrify Ellie right down to her bones.
"Look, we've known each other for a while now, right?" she started nervously, avoiding Natalie's eyes and pushing on without waiting for an answer. "And shit happens to everyone, it's just...hard to share, y'know?" She risked a glance up at Natalie before continuing. "I don't want to scare you away. Especially now that you come with Twinkies." Natalie snorted at the joke.
"Ellie, c'mon. It's me. You could tell me you used to be a serial murderer from the moon and I'd still think you were best damn thing since..." she trailed off, embarrassed. "Just tell me. I want to help."
Ellie couldn't help but smile. This girl really was more than she deserved. The old wound throbbed with phantom pain.
"Alright. Just don't say I didn't warn you," she acquiesced, beginning the story. "You know Joel and I came from the Boston QZ, right?" Natalie nodded, scooting away from the hatch and leaning against the dank wood of the back wall. "My mom died way before I could even remember her, so I bounced around between orphanages in the city. The last one I was at was a military prep school, where they trained us up to be guards on the cheap. It sucked pretty hard; on my first day there these snotty little bastards thought it'd be fun to beat me up and steal all my shit. This girl jumped in and saved my ass at the last second, but then she stole my walkman."
Ellie grinned weakly at the memory of that day. "Her name was Riley, and she ended up being my best friend there. We raised all sorts of hell together. She was a couple years older than me, and she was damn close to aging out by the time we met. Less than a year later we got in this huge, stupid fight and she disappeared for like six weeks. I honestly thought she died. Then, six years ago tonight she came back, broke into my room, and scared the ever-loving shit out of me."
"Where'd she go?" Natalie asked.
"Ran off and joined the Fireflies, just like she always wanted to," Ellie sighed in reply, tracing absent patterns on the forgotten rifle's stock as the memory began to turn. "But she came back and dragged me out of the school in the middle of the night to go run around this old mall we used to hang out in. Best fucking time I've ever had. We even managed to get the power back on. Eventually she let it slip that the Fireflies were relocating her to another city, and the whole night was just supposed to be one last goodbye. I was mad at her, really, really fucking mad at her. Basically told her goodbye and good riddance."
"She turned it around, though. Bought me off with water guns and my favorite song on the loudspeaker. We were up on this display case, dancing around like idiots, and I looked over at her and realized that she was the only person in my life who had ever come back for me. It made me love her even more than I already knew I did, to the point where the thought of a life without her in it was just..." Ellie swallowed as it all came rushing back.
"So I looked her in the eye and I asked her not to go, in spite of everything I'd already said. And she just looked at me for a minute, then yanked off her dog tags and threw 'em on the ground. Christ, I don't think I've ever been happier than I was in that moment. I rushed her and kissed her square on the mouth. It was perfect, just about as fucking perfect as something can be. And that's when I heard the runners."
"Oh my god," Natalie covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes watery. "She got bit?"
Ellie put down the rifle and gripped her own sleeve, steeling herself for the hardest part. "Not just her," she answered quietly, revealing the evidence of her greatest luck and deepest shame for the first time since that nightmarish night at the lodge. The wound hadn't healed well, leaving her forearm riddled with ropey scar tissue in the unmistakable impression of a human bite.
At first Natalie was confused, looking blankly from Ellie's arm to her face. When the realization hit it visibly coursed through her body. "Fuck," she almost yelled, scrambling as far away from Ellie as the cramped tower would allow. "Jesus fucking Christ, Ellie! You're infected? I mean, how...why aren't you..."
"I don't know. No one's figured it out, not even the scientists the Fireflies had in Utah. I'm immune. Not that it's done anyone any good." Ellie hung her head under the weight of her failure. She didn't look up when she heard the scraping of fabric on the wood floor, figuring Natalie was making a break for it. It was hard to blame her. She did look up sharply when she felt fingers brush against the scar.
Natalie's body language still screamed fearful, muscles tensed to bolt at any provocation, but her hands were gentle on Ellie's skin. Warm.
"Fuck," she said again, this time with breathy disbelief. She traced the bite with her fingertips. "This is...you're...wow."
Ellie stayed quiet, scared to break the contact. The silence seemed to stretch for hours.
"I knew you were awesome, but you coulda told me you were a fucking superhero," Natalie said with a shaky smile, eyes wide with fear and awe. Ellie scoffed.
"That's me, Indestructo Girl; able to leap creepy-ass mushrooms in a single bound."
Natalie laughed a little at that, short and high and uneasy. She had stopped feeling the scar, but had yet to take her hands off Ellie's arm. She stared down at it for a long time.
"I'm so glad you're alive," she whispered. Five little words that set Ellie to shaking all over, the one sentiment no one had ever expressed in words before. She felt like laughing, like crying, like the crushing, acidic guilt churning underneath her skin would finally eat her from the inside out. In the end, she settled for raising her free hand and brushing it against Natalie's hair.
God, that smile made her feel like she could fly.
Natalie wordlessly pulled Ellie's sleeve back down over the scar. The plea for discretion was unspoken, the answering promise of secrecy needless. They spent the rest of the night sitting close together, carrying on a spirited debate about comic book characters.
When Natalie left, she kissed Ellie on the cheek.
"You look as antsy as a cat on a hot tin roof, girl," a deep, broadly accented voice said behind her, startling Ellie right out of the trench she was wearing into the ground under the watchtower. "Jesus, Joel!" she hissed, running a hand through her hair again, frowning when she snagged her hair tie for the thousandth time that night. Joel was leaning up against a pole in the inner fence, smirking at her with that look of smug amusement that had always driven her fucking nuts.
"Your girl on guard duty tonight?" he asked too casually. Ellie scowled. "She's not 'my girl'," she started, kicking a muddied chunk of concrete with the toe of her boot. "She's her own damn person. And even if she is on duty tonight, what the hell is it to you? Can't I take just take a walk? I'm twenty-fucking-one; I can handle my own shit!"
"Right. 'Cause that wasn't defensive at all," Joel rolled his eyes, waving her over before sitting heavily on the damp ground by the fence. The joints of his legs cracked audibly, and a look of muted pain flashed over his weathered face. For a long, painful second Ellie was overwhelmed by the fear of loss, unable to see anything but the dull grey of his hair shining starkly in the glare of the floodlight. She swallowed hard and shoved it down deep.
"I don't know no problem a little bug juice didn't help solve," Joel said as she sat down next to him, showing her the squarish bottle of dark brown liquid in his off hand. She grabbed the bottle and took a long pull, barely managing not to spit it out and cough. Joel just chuckled, taking the bottle back with one hand and patting her back with the other. She wanted to be pissed, she really did, but after the oily burn of the alcohol died all she felt was safe.
"Thanks," she sighed. "I know you don't understand my whole..."
"Hell, Ellie, if we didn't talk about stuff of yours I didn't understand we wouldn't say five words to each other," Joel snorted, taking a drink from the bottle. "Don't mean I don't care."
"I know, I know," she groused, starting to pick at a loose thread in her jeans. She sighed again, struggling to put her anxiety into words. "I'm fucking terrified, man. She wants more. She doesn't push, but I can tell. And it not even that I don't, I mean c'mon, who wouldn't? She's smart and gorgeous and so fucking funny I just want to..." she trailed off when she noticed Joel's severe expression. "Stop talking and crawl into a dark fucking hole."
Joel handed her the bottle again. "Sip, don't chug," he advised, frowning slightly as he looked back towards the lights from the town. "This...this ain't somethin' I ever had the chance to do." The quiet after the words was heavy, full of the aching sorrow for a life he never got to see to this point. It wasn't the first time Ellie hurt for Joel, for Sarah.
"I don't really see what the problem is," he concluded. "You like her, she likes you, she...knows." Ellie tensed as she swallowed, unconsciously pulling the arm defensively against her chest. "That's just it. I haven't been with anyone since it happened, you know that. I don't even know how close I can get to her without giving her the fucking infection. I mean...Christ, can I even kiss her?"
There was no stopping it now, the panicked tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. "I can barely live with myself now; if I kill her, too, I don't know what I –"
"You stop that this instant, girl," Joel cut her off in a low, serious voice, his eyes like steel. "The infection took her. You know that, and you know there wasn't a damn thing you coulda done different. You gotta let her go. What do we do?"
"Joel," Ellie sighed, scrubbing a hand over her face.
"What. Do. We. Do." Joel wrapped a wide hand firmly around her shoulder, looking her square in the eye as he waited for the answer.
"Endure and survive," she mumbled.
"Endure and survive," he repeated, squeezing her shoulder before releasing it. "You've done the first part. Time to start the second."
They passed the bottle back and forth in silence. By the time the whiskey had blurred the edge of tension pounding in Ellie's arms, she spotted gangly young man was walking towards them. He grinned and waved before heading up the ladder to the tower.
"You're up, kiddo," Joel grunted as he hauled himself back to his feet. "You be sure to talk to Maria before you two get up to much of anything. She'll walk you through how to be safe. Blood-borne disease ain't nothin' new." He grimaced in pain before limping off in the direction of town, grumbling under his breath. "I'm too damn old for this."
Ellie stood and leaned against the fence. When he was almost out of earshot she called out. "Hey!" Joel looked back over his shoulder.
"Thanks, pops."
He scoffed and continued on, but Ellie could see from the set of his shoulder that he stood a little taller as he went.
"Ellie?" a voice yawned to her left. Natalie looked tired and rumpled, but her eyes lit up when they met Ellie's.
"Whatchya doin' out so late?" She wandered up to Ellie with a small, sleepy smile playing at the corners of her mouth. When Ellie didn't respond the smile faded she cocked her head to the side.
"Are you ok?"
Ellie nodded and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Natalie's shoulders. She smelled like sweat and wet wood and that sharp, astringent soap she fucking swore by. Ellie could feel the nervous laugh in her own chest.
"Well, now I know you're not ok, so what's up?" She felt Natalie's arms come around her, saw the timid concern in her eyes, and acted before she could convince herself otherwise
When they pulled apart long moments later, Natalie looked dazed.
"Wow," she whispered, and leaned in to kiss Ellie again.
"Come on, you sneaky motherfucker," Ellie muttered, training the rifle's scope on the last place she saw movement. The raider eased his head above the brush, and she took her shot. When his head snapped backward and his body crumpled to the ground, she crowed with delight. "Take that, fuckin' bastards."
She pulled her head back to reload and the screeching proximity alarms came roaring back into her awareness. Backup was on the way, but she knew it better get there fucking soon or the whole town was going to be in some deep shit. She'd already put down eight guys with more than half the ammo in stock. The outer fence was live and holding, but Ellie couldn't shake the dread churning in her gut.
"C'mon, fuckers," she peered back down the scope, searching the edge of the floodlights for movement. She founded it in the night beyond, shift shadows of black on black that she couldn't make out. "What the fuck are you..." she trailed off as the glaring light reflected off the edge of something metal. Something bulky. Something that launched off the raider's shoulder with enough force to kick him back into the shifting darkness.
The grenade seemed to fly towards her in slow motion, arcing low over the fences. She barely managed to draw the breath to swear before the world burst into sound and fire. Everything began to whip around her in flashes of splintering and burning and falling before it cut to black silence.
"Fuck," Ellie groaned as soon as she clawed her way back to consciousness. Her own voice sounded far away, muffled by the painful ringing in her ears. Everything around her was blurred and jagged, twisted metal and charred wood. It took her a few minutes to piece together the last few moments of her memory.
"Oh, fuck," she said again, instantly regretting the reflex to jerk herself to a sitting position. Through the haze of pain she noticed that the action had almost no effect on her surroundings. "Ok, Ellie. Keep your shit together. You got this," she coached herself, beginning to take stock of what she could move. Fingers, hands, forearms, shoulders – shit! She hissed and tried to breathe through the pain, adding dislocated shoulder to the list of liabilities.
When it burned down to a manageable level of intensity, she shifted her attention to her legs. She wiggled her toes in her boots, rolled her ankles, tensed her knees. Everything seemed to work, but tingled like her legs were falling asleep. On a whim she reached out her good arm, her fingertips brushing over rough, corroded metal. Yep. That was the i-beam pinning her hips to the rubble.
"Shit," she sighed, letting her head fall back. God knows how long she'd been out or what the fuck was happening in town. Or if Joel and Tommy managed to keep everyone safe. If Natalie was...
"Fuck!" she snarled in frustration, bringing her fist down on the i-beam. "Shit! Son of a motherfucking bitch!" The effort of screaming rubbed her throat raw, set her stinging lungs to coughing uncontrollably. When she stopped she tasted blood.
"This is it, isn't it?" she asked the rubble in a dry wheeze.
"I don't know if you're up there. Or if there even is an up there. God, I really hope there is. At least for you and Sam and Henry. Pretty sure I'm going the other way." She swallowed and closed her eyes.
"It's ten years next week. I almost made it ten fucking years without you, can you believe that? I didn't think I'd last more than a few hours after you turned. Only you could manage to make something the best and worst day of my life at the same time."
She opened one eye, grinning up at the jagged wood above her head. "Have you been watching? Bet you have been, fuckin' creeper. I didn't want to fight anymore after you left, but I did. First for Joel. Now for Nat."
"I miss you every fucking minute of every fucking day, Riley, but I'm not ready to go yet," Ellie coughed, wiping bloody spittle from her chin. "They're worth fighting for, so I have to try. I love her; I love her like I could have loved you if we just had fucking time. So if you have any kind of pull up there, give me a fucking hand already. This isn't my turn. Not yet."
As if in response to her delusional half-prayer, Ellie could swear she heard her name at the edge of her damaged hearing. She held her breath, waiting to see if her mind was playing tricks on her in its final moments. In a moment she heard her name again, in Joel's panicked voice.
"Ellie! Ellie! Say something if you can hear me!"
"Something," Ellie called out as loud as she could manage.
"Oh, Christ," Joel rasped as the scraping of wood on metal began to drown out all else. "Natalie, she's alive; get in here now!"
Ellie squinted against the light the flooded in, bright and gray like a morning after rain. Shadows hovered over her, voices crackled in her ear. A flash of straw-blonde hair slid slowly into focus.
"Hey," Ellie grinned up at Natalie.
"Hey yourself, dive-bomber," Natalie replied, brushing the hair out of Ellie's eyes. "What hurts?"
"Aside from everything? My shoulder's on fire."
"Can you feel your legs?" Ellie nodded and tried not to scream when Natalie pulled her to sitting, bracing Ellie's back against her front. "Good. When I tell you to, push as hard as you can. You guys ready?"
Ellie briefly caught sight of Joel and Tommy crouched at either end of the fractured beam before the wreckage exploded into the sound of screeching metal and straining men. The persistent pressure on her hips began to slowly ease, and when the prickling pain flooded down her legs she pushed backwards with all her might.
"That's it, just a little more," Natalie prodded, tightening her hold on Ellie's waist as they scrambled back. They stopped when Ellie felt soft, wet dirt under her boots. "She's clear; drop it!" Ellie felt Natalie slump behind her. Felt something hot and wet drip through the soot and blood caked on the skin of her neck.
"I swear to God; if you die I will fucking kill you," Natalie whispered into Ellie's hair. Ellie let her head flop back on Natalie's shoulder.
"Hey," she said again, grinning again when Natalie met her eyes. "Marry me?"
Natalie laughed at that, short and wet just a little amazed. "Ask me again when you're not concussed, idiot," she replied, pressing her lips to Ellie's temple. Ellie sighed, leaning back into Natalie and smirking up and Joel as he limped over to them. She let them help her up, let them worry over her for hours after the doctor sent her home to heal.
And that night, with Joel snoring on her couch and Natalie mumbling nonsense into her good shoulder, Ellie drifted into the soundest sleep she had ever known.