You know how easy it is to kill someone, Louis? The twist of a knife, the pull of a trigger. You want to know the deadliest weapon though? Words. They can cut thicker than any knife, burn someone more than fire. The thing is… what weapon will you use to kill your first man, Louis? Louis's 'conscience' could be okay sometimes, other times it was just a complete asshole.

"Turn right here," Ellie commanded him, her chin resting on his right shoulder. He veered the horse right, passing and old furniture shop, looted long ago by some no good bandit. This part of the mall was almost flooded, probably a couple of feet deep. As they passed novelty stores and pawn shops, he heard Ellie start to hum a song he didn't know, one that most kids these days probably wouldn't recognize. He felt compelled to tell Ellie how he felt, right here and now. "Goddamnit!" He snapped out of his trance like state to Ellie cussing.

"What is it?" He asked as Ellie got off the horse and walked towards the end of the narrow path and stopped at a puddle that looked suspiciously deeper than the others.

"It's too deep. Whelp, I guess we have to go around," she told him disappointingly as they walked back to the horse.

"Can't we just swim? I mean it's only a dozen or so meters long! We can easily sw…" Ellie was looking towards the ground now, trying to avoid eye contact with Louis. "Unless… unless you can't swim." He got a wide grin on his face. "You can't swim, can you?" Ellie looked back up.

"Well, there may be some maneuverability in water knowledge I don't have…" She saw the grin on his face and gave him a shove. "Not everybody knows how to swim, okay!" she said defensively.

"Well we sure as hell ain't wasting time going around it, that's for sure." He waded down into the cold water and froze up. He decided to wade further until he had to start keeping himself afloat. The water was much deeper than it looked, but it was no problem to cross. "Tie up the horse to a pole."

"How are we going to get across though?" Ellie asked, obediently tying the horse up to a nearby post.

"You don't look like you weigh much. I could carry you on my back across," he said as he tried to see how deep it was.

"What? There's no way you can carry me across!" She told him, looking uneasy at the subject of possibly drowning.

"I ain't going to drop you, that's a promise." He was looking up to her, a small smile on his face. "And I keep my promises." Ellie looked towards him and gave out a long sigh and a weak smile.

"Fine. But if you let me drown, I'm coming back to haunt your ass." It wouldn't change anything though, would it? Huh Louis?

"Shut the fuck up," Louis whispered. He managed to control certain… urgencies… that his 'conscience' tended to have, but it was a struggling process, as it seemed to take more and more of his energy to keep it at bay.

"What was that?" Ellie asked.

"Uh… nothing Ellie."

"You sure seem to say a whole lot of nothing," Ellie complained. Louis decided not to acknowledge the statement, which left Ellie a bit pissed off. But she got over it and waded in chest deep. She gave one last sigh and hopped on Louise's back. She put her arms around his shoulders where her hands connected on his chest. She was actually lighter than he first thought. He started to slowly make his way across. "If you don't mind me asking, what happened to your father? He must've been with you for most of your life if he taught you all these things."

"My mom died when I was one, so he had to take care of me alone. He managed to survive with a bandit group." He got to the other side of the body of water and let Ellie climb up onto a ledge before she hauled him up. "I honestly was disappointed in my dad. But he was my dad, and he did teach me a lot of cool stuff. It must have been three years this year that he died." Louis suddenly felt down now, and honestly wanted to cry. It was obvious Ellie was feeling down too now.

"Consider yourself lucky. I never knew my parents, so all I can really remember is being in a military school." She held back on telling him about how she knew Marlene, leader of the Fireflies. They both were very depressed now. "You know what? I've got something that'll cheer us up." She took off her backpack, unzipped it and took out something. A book, it looked like.

"What? A Book? How's that going to help?"

"Just hang on," She told him, flipping through the pages of the book. She got a goofy grin on her face. "You ready for this?" Louis stopped walking as Ellie began to read. "Ahem. Did you hear about the guy that had his whole left side cut off?"

"What the hell is that?" Louis asked, not sure what was happening.

"It's okay, he's all right now!" Louis let out a small laugh along with Ellie.

"That was fucking stupid. What is that?"

"It's a pun book. It's so cool! I've read it a few times already. These things never get old." She flipped through a few more pages. "I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me." Louis thought this was stupid, yet one of the best moments of his life so far. He didn't like Ellie any more than he did now. "The other day I opened the door for a clown. It was a nice Jester." Louis couldn't hold himself. He burst out laughing, not at how funny it was, but how dumb it was. And he loved it.

"I got to admit, that is gold." Louis looked at Ellie to see her put the book back in her backpack and stand up, looking down as if she was trying to avoid eye contact with him. Go on, Louis. You fucked up the first time, you can't do it again. But then again, you're you, right? Louis took a step forward, almost as if his 'conscience' had control over him. Ellie hadn't noticed it yet, so, under his control now, he took a couple of steps, and almost closed the gap until he stood a couple of feet away. Ellie had looked up now, and gave him a smile. Go on Louis. If you're in such control of yourself, then admit your feelings to her. Or better yet show her. Before I do it for you. He liked his 'conscience' when it was like this. When it wasn't giving him bad thoughts or hallucinations, it genuinely cared for what he wanted. "Ellie, there's something I got to admit." He guessed Ellie already knew what he was going to say, but it didn't look like she was deterred in any way.

BANG! A door burst open behind Ellie. They both turned to see what was at the door to a small grocery store to the right of them, expecting an infected to run through that door and kill them both. There wasn't an infected though, but there was a lot of scurrying.

"Fucking rats. But they did open the door to where we needed to go. C'mon!" Ellie jogged to the door, flinging her backpack over her back. Can't seem to catch a break, can you Louis? He jogged into the grocery store after Ellie. He saw her run down one on of the 8 aisles, towards what used to be the deli section of the store, and then through a sliding door to the storage room in the back of the store.

"Ellie, where are we going?" He asked, passing many boxes opened long ago by survivors or military.

"It's not far now. Trust me." It's not that Louis didn't trust her, it was just he was wondering what it was he was getting into. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon." They finally stopped at a dead end where he saw a high ledge on top of the wall leading into a vent.

"So, what now?" Louis asked, as Ellie walked over to the wall and stood beside it.

"You give me a lift up. C'mon. You carried me on your back across water you can lift me up into a vent."

"What about me?"

"I can pull you up into it after I'm up there." Now Louis was the one who wasn't sure about Ellie's strength. But that was part of the reason why he liked her. She was unpredictable. Walked over and got into position beneath the vent. Ellie put one foot on Louise's cupped hands, and he hauled her up. She grabbed and pulled herself up into the vent. "Alright, your turn." She held her hand out. Louis took a few steps back, and got a running start. He got a couple steps up the wall and manage to grab hold of her hand. With a little bit of a struggle, he managed to get up there. The vent was hot, but at least it was dry. He began to follow Ellie through it, wondering what was about to happen.

"Now listen son, the only person that should know about your condition is the head of the military orphanage, alright?"

"But why can't the other kids know?"

"Because we don't want another situation we had with the bandits happening again, do we? It's for your own safety."

"But what if I can't keep it in? The hallucinations, the voice. What if it just becomes too much?"

"Listen, you have to keep it inside. You let it control you, you let this condition control your mind, then you could potentially harm someone you care about."

"What was it you called it dad? This thing I have?"

"I think I read that it was… schizophrenia. Now I've got to leave you here, okay? I don't know whether I'll be back. But I love you Louis. Don't you forget about that."

Louis and Ellie finally made their way out of the vents into a small room with a single door in front of them. Ellie opened the door to what reminded Louis of the meat storage room the bandits he lived with had.

"Ellie, what are we doing here?" he asked, leaning on a counter in the corner of the room to rest his tired legs.

"There." She opened the double doors leading out of the room, and pointed across the butcher shop they were in to a shop across the walkway that looked like some sort of… electronic store he guessed. They walked through the butcher shop and across the walkway to the electronic store. "So here's the thing. Winston needs this store open to set up some defenses or some crap. But, more importantly, there's something I want from in there. Come look." They both looked through the glass. "The displays stand near the front. You see it?" Louis looked through the dirty glass towards the displays stand she was talking about, where a cassette tape sat upon it. "I've been trying to get into this store for ages, but I can't seem to get through the glass. You get into the store and grab me the tape, and find a way to open these doors; I'll consider your friendship." Louis stepped away and studied the glass doors.

"Why can't you just break the glass? It can't be that hard." He winded back his hand and formed a fist, and swung it forward. He wasn't prepared for the pain that came after that. He fell onto his knees holding his hand, where there was a big red mark from where he punched the glass.

"You really are a dipshit, aren't you?" She asked him, a smile on her face and hands on her hips.

"Never underestimate my ingenuity, Ellie," he replied standing up. "Alright. Stay here. I'm going to scour the area for another way in."

"I wouldn't plan on it!" She called out to him as he turned a corner to the right of the store. You ever going to tell her about your little secret, Louis? You want her, you're going to have to be honest with her.

"I promised my dad I wouldn't, so no." He tore down a metal sheet on the side of the store. Nothing. Come on. You can't even trust her? Because I thought you did. "Just tell me something. One moment it's like you're genuinely caring for my well being. The next moment you're putting dark thoughts in my head. Why is that?" I don't know. You probably know more about that than I do. I am just a hallucination, aren't I? A figment of your imagination. "Of course. That's your fucking answer to that question every time." He found no way in on the right side, so he turned back to check the left side of the store. Well it's going to come up sometime. You talk to yourself, don't you? You can either say that you were talking to yourself, and drive her off with how crazy you are. Or, you can admit to your condition and still drive her off, only this time you'll be telling the truth. "I don't have to admit anything. I've kept it secret for three years, I can keep it longer."

"You okay Louis?" Ellie asked, sitting on a bench outside the store. She was listening to her Walkman, one ear bud out to be able to hear Louis.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Hey, tell me why you're not doing this."

"Because I've got you here to do it for me."

"Are you usually this lazy?"

"There's a difference between getting someone else to do it for you, and being lazy Louis."

"Bullshit there is! They're practically the same thing!"

"You wouldn't understand. It's a smart person thing." Louis smiled and shook his head.

"Oh whatever you say Miss Ellie." He bowed to her and got back to what he was doing. You keep your promises, don't you? If you're so confident about yourself, make a promise to never tell another living person about your condition. He turned a corner to the left side of the store, where he could see a couple of bathrooms on the side of it. "I'm not able to make that promise. Especially to myself." He opened the boy's bathroom, checking each stall and found no way into the store. He exited and moved into the girl's bathroom. What was it you said Louis? You'd rather keep the pain inside and destroy yourself, than let it out and destroy everyone else? Tell me, at what point does it go from your choice… to mine? The truth was, Louis didn't know. It could be never; then again it could be five minutes from now. But he didn't want to admit this to his 'conscience'. There was a door in the girls bathroom that read 'staff only', and its lock was broken and the door was open. He entered the small janitor supply room and searched around the closet sized space. He pulled away a stand holding a range of cleaning equipment and revealed a small hole that could easily fit a crawling adult.

He crawled under the hole, where he found himself behind the counter of the store, where he could see different electronic gizmos and gadgets. He jumped over the counter and walked through the aisles up to the displays stand where the cassette stood. He grabbed it and went up to the glass door and saw the problem. Some asshole had put a pipe between the handles of the door. He pulled out the pipe and opened the doors to see Ellie slowly clapping.

"Well, aren't you my hero!" she exclaimed with a sarcastic voice.

"Well, if you're going to be like that, I guess you don't want the cassette then…"

"Hardy-Har," Ellie took the cassette from his hand. She put the tape in her backpack and stood back up. "Thanks. I guess." One more try Louis. Otherwise you'll never have the courage to do it.

"Ellie, I've got to say somet…" He was cut off when Ellie jumped forward. And… and… kissed him. He didn't need to make a move. She managed to make the first one. He was too surprised to do anything at first, but he finally understood what was happening. He held her, and felt like never letting go. It lasted 8 seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime. They finished, and they stood there, Louis holding Ellie tightly. Suddenly, Ellie got out of his hold.

"I… I need to go." And she ran off down the walkway.

"ELLIE!" he called after her, confused about what had just happened. Looks like you did it Louis. You drove her off. Like I said. "I'm sure it wasn't me. I just need to find out what's wrong with her." Louis ran after her at a running pace. He felt tired for some reason. Just really tired. And his head hurt. He fell to the ground on his hands and knees and felt like… like… he was on fire. Burning. He looked up, his body still burning, and saw that everything around him was on fire. The mall was on FIRE! He got up, feeling weak at the knees, and stumbled the way Ellie had run. There was smoke everywhere, and he felt like he was choking. He managed to stumble around the corner, barely keeping himself up, and saw Ellie standing there with her back turned to him. "Ellie, what's happening? Are you alright? This fire is everywhere! We need to go now!" She didn't reply, keeping her back turned. "Ellie?" was the last thing he said before he was engulfed in flames.

Louis awoke with a snap, gasping for his breath. He stood up, all the pain suddenly gone along with the fire. He got his balance and waited for his vision to focus. You can't escape from your condition Louis. Strong emotions just strengthen it. There'll be more of that to come, trust me. He realized he was outside an arcade, where he could see Ellie inside.

"Fuck it. It's worth it if I'm with her." He walked into the arcade, where Ellie was sitting on the ground with her head in her hands. "Ellie? What's wrong?" She looked up, and had looked like she'd been crying.

"I don't know what came over me. I can't get attached to someone."

"Why not?"

"Because they always leave me. I always end up alone. Plenty of people have done it before, who's to say you won't?" Louis sat down beside her.

"I'm not going to do that Ellie."

"Are you able to promise me that?"

"I ain't able to make that promise. I can't keep that promise."

"Of course."

"But, I promise I can try my damn hardest to stick with you as long as I can. Why are you scared about being alone?"

"I don't know. It's just something I can't explain. Do you have any fears?"

"A fear? There's one fear I have. Firstly, can you keep a secret?"

"I guess."

"I have a medical condition. It causes me to… hallucinate. Only I'm not able to tell the difference between a hallucination and reality. And I have this voice in my head causing me to either contradict myself or make me inspired to do shit. It's called schizophrenia. I do my best to keep it back but… I don't know if I can keep it up. I fear that if I let it out, I'll harm someone I really like. Like you." Ellie was speechless. But she did something Louis didn't expect. She hugged him.

"I'm so sorry. My problems must seem pathetic compared to yours."

"It doesn't matter. Let's go get the horse back to Winston. We can hang out some more tomorrow and talk about us." They got up and were about to leave when they heard footsteps from the floor below them.

"You find the boy and you bring him to me. We've waited three years for this, so don't fuck up."

"Oh no," Louis said, a shocked expression on his face.

"Do you know those guys Louis?"

"They're old enemies. We need to leave." And with that, they sneaked out of the arcade, Ellie's hand in Louis's.