The Way It Is - Chapter 4

Ellie ducked under a low hanging branch, the saddle bouncing beneath her in time to the horse's steps as they took a modest pace down the trail. She'd come this way a few times over the years, usually on the long assignments to guard the dam, but the trail itself was easy enough to follow, it used to be a highway in the old world. Now it was overgrown, with a thick canopy of trees growing through the right side of the road.

She focused on the wildflowers growing through the cracks in the ruined concrete, trying to shut out the sounds of another set of hooves just behind her. It was as awkward as the workshop, if not even more after a week of silence. There was a distance between them now, a barrier.

Ellie thought she had opened the door, but..

There was a clatter of hooves against loose rocks as Dina trotted up alongside her. "You slept in."

"Yeah..?" Did she look like she slept in?

"Did you have a late night?

"Not really." Ellie kept her answers short, glancing over at this strange break in the space between them, trying to figure out where Dina was going with this.

"So you're sleeping better?"

Oh.

"Trying to."

Dina made a noise to acknowledge it, and the whole conversation was had with her eyes looking everywhere but Ellie, who was ready to drop it all together as simply a fluke when she spoke up again. "Have you been assigned back on patrol yet?"

This time, when Ellie looked over and almost directly into the sunlight casting through the leaves above them, she squinted and found deep brown eyes staring back at her.

She wished her heart didn't beat faster so easily.

"No, Maria wants me to do guard duty on the walls for a while. 'Take it easy', as she puts it."

Dina flashed a smile at her obvious exasperation. "So you're going stir crazy?"

"A little bit, yeah?" Ellie couldn't help but chuckle as she finally looked away for a moment, blinking the sun from her eyes before glancing back over. "And you're working on.. A radio?"

The awkwardness seemed to have evaporated between them as Dina leaned back in her saddle and became very animated. "Maria has had one in her office for years, but there's nowhere else to talk to. After seeing how the Wolves kept in touch, I thought maybe we could get a similar set up."

"Oh, that's smart."

Ellie hadn't meant for it to sound so muted.

"What?"

"You seem like you like this stuff." She sighed and ran a hand back through her hair, slicking it with sweat. It was running down her face in beads, and she could feel the way her tanktop was stuck to her back. "Did you ever fix that stupid stereo at the farm?"

There was a sour look that crossed Dina's expression for a moment. "I'm still missing a few parts, I actually brought it back when I.."

That look returned.

Ellie looked down at the reins in her hand and nodded, before focusing back on the road ahead, and lightly tapping her heels on the flanks of her horse to urge it to continue on a bit faster. Minutes passed in that same uncomfortable quiet as before, and all she could think about is how she had brought up the farm.

"Stupid."

She muttered the word under her breath, the sound getting lost in the clatter of their travel as the road opened up to a wider trail. The swaths of trees gave way a bit, and the blaze of the sun beat down on her back without any of the shade to stop what little heat it could. Ellie flexed her fingers, which seemed to ache a little bit more now that she focused on them to stop her mind from wandering.

Ellie was halfway through a drink from the canteen she had slung over her shoulder when the other woman's voice came again. "You know, JJ has been happier since you've been back." She nearly choked, forcing herself to swallow as she spilled a few drops down the front of her shirt.

Twisting the cap back on as she coughed, she dropped the canteen to her side and took in a deep breath of the hot, dry air. After a long moment where she tried to guess what Dina was getting at, she pulled on the reins a bit to stop her horse. It did help to hear that. She had tried to see him at least once every day, and it was quickly on the way to becoming the best part of each day for her.

But still the question lingered. "Are you? ..Happier, I mean."

The other horse stopped as well, a few feet ahead. It's occupant looked back at her, and Ellie could not read the expression there. "I just need to know-"

A whinny cut her off, drawing both of their gazes down the road. There was a horse standing a few feet off the route, on the other side of the guardrail. It was grazing through the taller underbrush, not paying any attention to them.

Ellie swung her leg over the saddle and dismounted, pulling the pistol from her holster as she quietly spoke. "I'll see if its one of ours."

"Careful."

"Always."

There was a scoff behind her that almost made her smile.

She approached the guardrail slowly, both hands on the grip of her weapon as she scanned the trees for any sign of movement. Nothing came out as she neared, and no sounds reached her that seemed out of place from the various insects and birdsongs. When she peered over the side, it was obvious that the horse wasn't from Jackson. The saddle was ornate and embroidered, and the blanket under it seemed like an entirely different design than any she had seen in the stables.

More importantly, there was corpse being drug with its foot tangled in a mess of reins and other leather straps.

"Just a dead straggler!" Ellie sighed and returned her pistol to the holster, turning around to march back towards Dina. "Can I use your knife to cut him loose?"

"Uh, sure. What'd you do with your switchblade? You've taken that thing to bed before." Reaching out with her left hand towards the offered blade as she neared, Ellie had started to respond that it was a long story when the other woman's eyes fell to her fingers. "Oh my god, Ellie."

Taking the knife from the shocked grip, she looked down at the hand. She flexed her fingers, the stubs still reddened and looking as raw as they had for the past few weeks. At least they weren't the dark and angry purple they had been as she had rested on the borders of California, recovering from being impaled. "I thought Robin or June would have told you.."

"No, they.. What happened?"

With a sigh, she refused to look up at Dina, and turned around to not acknowledge the welling of shame that filled her. "Let's just get on with this."

Hopping the guardrail with a soft grunt, she moved over and patted the horse's shoulder as it looked up at her, running her fingers through its mane to keep it calm.

What did she do with her switchblade?

"I can't let you leave."

She open the blade, and pointed it at the throat of the boy Abby had freed and brought down to the beach with her.

"You made him a part of this."

She grit her teeth and sobbed through the pain as she frantically dragged her hands through the sands beneath the water. Eventually she gave up, sitting back down and holding her bleeding and ruined hand. The water around her was murky with all that she had kicked up in her search, and slowly turning red as she felt her side ache with a new ripping sensation.

"Ellie."

She clutched her bandaged hand to her chest that night, crying into the emptiness of the house she had barricaded on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. The blade had been one of the last links to her mother, aside from a letter a thousand miles away, back at home.

"Ellie!"

Home.

Ellie blinked and looked back to find Dina had dismounted, looking towards her with concern. She wasn't back in Santa Barbara, she wasn't struggling to find sleep because everything hurt, her heart most of all. She was standing in front of a horse, tears on her cheeks as she sniffled and shook her head. "Sorry. Lost myself for a sec."

She couldn't look at Dina any more, turning to move around the horse and bring the knife to the tangled mess of leather wrapped around the corpse's foot as she quickly used her other hand to wipe at her cheeks. She was almost too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice the simple garb the dead man wore, the handmade quiver.

The foot dropped as it was freed, revealing a hole in the back of his brown coat and the bloodstained white shirt beneath it. The coat is what finally shook her out of her thoughts. She pulled him onto his back, sucking in a breath as she saw it. Two scars on either side of his face.

"Oh fuck."

She turned to scan the treeline once more, squinting to try and make sure there was nothing that stood out, nothing that shouldn't have been there.

"What's wrong?"

There weren't any shrill whistles, none of the sounds that had haunted the edges of her hearing for months after they left Seattle. No arrows came from the trees. Ellie took a deep a breath, steadying herself before turning back to look around the horse at Dina. "He's a fucking Scar!"

"What?!"

Grabbing the body, she pulled it up and then threw it over the saddle. With a bit of guidance, the horse hopped over the guardrail back onto the broken highway, and Ellie walked it over so that Dina could see. "Why the hell would a Scar be all the way out here?"

"I don't know." When she finished tying the stray horse's reins to her own saddle, Ellie turned and offered the knife back to the other girl. "But this guy was shot."

"You think it was our people?"

Hauling herself up into her saddle, Ellie ignored that pinch of pain in her right side and took up the reins. "I'm hoping not, lets go."

She kicked her heels into the horse's flanks beneath her, breaking into a gallop.

Author's Note: Honored to be headcanon'd by someone! 3 Had to split this chapter up because the second half just is not ready, hope to have that out in the next couple days. Enjoy! -Fox

Disclaimer: Please do not inject story into veins.