Author's Notes/Brand New Start B Preview: I promised the story would be back, so here it is! Instead of talking about this chapter I'd like to give you all an idea of what to expect in the second part of the story and some changes that will be made.

The first and probably biggest change is the focus of the story. I feel like Joel and Ellie's relationship is pretty well established, so I'm shifting to focus more on Ellie and Hannah's relationship. Joel and Ellie's relationship will still be covered, but I'm focusing a little less on that and a little more on Ellie and Hannah. It will be like 50/50 whereas earlier it was almost all about Ellie and Joel.

Another change is that there will be fewer story arcs spread out over multiple chapters. There will be one split chapter, but for the most part each chapter will be its own plot.

No plot points from the first part of the story will be brought back. There will be some things that I will bring back, but I won't revisit, for example, the Connie story.

At some point in the second part, I will incorporate an original song lyric written by me.

Lastly, I will admit and confess that, until the final chapter, I don't really have any compelling plot arcs like the first part did. The finale though will more than make up for it. So the second half may be a let down compared to the first until the finale.

There will be a total of nine chapters in the second part, with a shocking ending that will leave you heartbroken, but also happy.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Last Of Us or the characters, except the ones I introduce. All credit goes to Naughty Dog.

Brand New Start

CH. 11: Snowfall

The chill of late fall created a nip in the air in Jackson. For once in her life, Ellie had the luxury of a heating source in the colder months of the year. She had traded her tattered and blood stained pink, white, and brown jacket for a warm, comfortable hoodie. Joel was comfortable in his blue flannel shirt that he picked up from Paul; it seemed to Ellie like he never wore anything other than flannel.

It had been just over five months since Hannah and Jeffrey moved in with Joel and Ellie after their house was destroyed in a massive fire. It was on that day when Jeffrey nearly lost everything he loved. His daughter had gotten trapped in her room, and nearly asphyxiated from the smoke. When Jeffrey found her, her heart was not beating. He had lost hope that his daughter would survive, when all of a sudden she started breathing again. Jeffrey credited Hannah's survival entirely to Ellie, who he believed was the only reason she did not perish. He had always thought highly of Ellie, and after that day, he only thought of her even higher.

Ellie sat in a chair alone on the back porch watching the season's first snowfall. The delicate flakes fluttered their ways down from the sky. The stunning backdrop of the mountains added to the beauty of the snowfall. The scene was peaceful and serene, but those feelings changed quickly when memories of the winter before crept back into her mind.

**She's chasing a wounded deer through the forest. She finds it in an abandoned mining town, having succumbed to the injury she inflicted with her bow.**

No, why am I thinking about this now?

**Two men reveal themselves to her. The older one introduces himself as David and offers to trade supplies for the deer meat.**

Stop it, stop thinking about that. Think about something else, anything else, please.

**She and David are in the complex fighting off hordes on infected. They kill them all and David reveals that he knows who Ellie is, and that he had sent men to kill her and Joel weeks prior.**

Get out of my fucking head!

**She gets the medicine and rides back to Joel, still recovering from his wounds. The next day, men show up to hunt her down and kill her. She rides off to draw them away from Joel.**

Her heart rate increased as the memories of that experience flooded back and assaulted her.

**She attempts to get back to Joel when David chokes her unconscious. She wakes up in a cell, watching his friend hacking up a human body in a kitchen. They're cannibals.**

Oh, God. I'm gonna have to relive this whole fucking thing aren't I?

**She's pinned down on a table with a cleaver ready to lop her head off. She breaks free and runs out into the blizzard. She fights her way through the town to the steakhouse in which she becomes trapped with David.**

Please make it stop. Please, God, make it stop!

**David is sitting on top of Ellie, ready to violate and then kill her.**

Nooooo!

**She grabs David's machete and slashes his arm to throw him off. She jumps on top of him and hacks his face into pieces. She feels a grab on her shoulder. She swings her fist in a wild backhand, striking the unknown adversary in the face.**

"Ow, balls!" Hannah's scream snapped Ellie back to the present.

"Shit! Sorry, Hannah!" She quickly stood up and saw Hannah covering her face; blood was running between her fingers.

She took her hand away from her face to yell at Ellie. "What's wrong with you, Ellie?! You broke my nose!"

Ellie felt horrible about striking her friend. She couldn't defend her actions, at least not at the moment. "I know. I'm sorry; I thought you were someone else."

Hannah didn't buy it for a second. It was only her, Joel and Jeffrey at the house. "Someone else? Would you have done that to Joel or my dad? Huh?!"

"No, it's just… you scared me." Hannah covered her face again. Ellie had caught her with a hard shot, and she was bleeding profusely. "Come on. Let's go inside and get you cleaned up." She stood behind Hannah with her hands on her shoulders, guiding her. She opened the door and immediately called out to Joel and Jeffrey. "Hey, get a rag, quick. Hannah's bleeding bad."

Jeffrey saw the immense amount of blood running down his daughter's face and quickly got up and ran over to her. "Jesus, what happened?"

"She surprised me and I hit her out of instinct. I'm really, really sorry."

"Get away from her," he snapped at Ellie as he pulled his daughter away from her. He was understandably very upset at Ellie, but he had no idea what she'd been through. Last winter had traumatized her, and the effects were still very strong. Jeffrey pulled a rag out from a drawer in the kitchen and put it up to Hannah's nose.

"Ellie come with me," Joel told her as he motioned for her to follow him up the stairs. She did as he instructed and followed him up the stairs and into their bedroom. Joel closed the door after they were both in the room. "Now, why the hell would you hit Hannah like that?"

Ellie didn't know how she could defend herself. The psychological damage from last winter was so severe, she didn't even know if she could tell Joel the details. It wasn't anything to do with him; she just couldn't bring herself to retell the horrible events. "You know that I went through some traumatic shit last winter."

"Yeah, you never did tell me about that." Ellie knew he was trying to get her to open up about it, but she just couldn't.

"Well, the snow triggered the memories to come back. I was in the middle of an awful flashback when Hannah grabbed my shoulder. I thought she was..." She couldn't talk about it any more than that.

Joel was concerned. He didn't know what happened, but it had clearly taken a severe toll. He sat down on the bed and invited her to sit next to him. She accepted his invitation. "Why don't we talk about it?" She hung her head and remained silent. She was silent for several seconds before Joel heard the sound of soft crying coming from her. "Ellie, is everythin' okay?"

"No," she said as she shook her head, still keeping it low. "I can't tell you what happened, Joel. And don't be offended, it doesn't have anything to do with you. You know you're the first person I'd talk to whenever something's bothering me. It's just… what happened was so traumatic it hurts whenever I even think about it. Talking about it would just be too much."

Joel sighed and put an arm around her. He hated seeing her in distress; it hurt him almost as much as it hurt her. "Ellie, sooner or later you're gonna have to talk about it. You can't keep this bottled up or you'll have a complete breakdown. Talking about it will make you feel better. It may not at first, but in the long run, I guarantee you'll feel better."

Ellie wiped tears from her eyes and nodded in agreement with Joel. "I know. It's killing me, it really is. But I just can't talk about it. At least not right now."

Joel wanted to get her to open up, but if she was insisting that it would cause too much pain for her, he wasn't going to argue. "Well I'm not gonna force it outta ya. But eventually you need to tell me. I'll let you wait until you're comfortable talkin' about it."

She put her arms around his torso. "Thank you Joel."

"Why don't you stay up here a while and cool down?"

"That's probably a good idea," she said as she nodded.

"I'll go explain this to Jeffrey so he doesn't think you just sucker-punched his daughter for no reason."

She let out a short chuckle. "Yeah, that's also probably a good idea."

She had been up in the room for about an hour reading her comics. She had already read through all the books before, so she started back at the beginning. It wasn't as good the second time around. Hannah opened the door and came into the room. Her nose had been set, most likely by Brenda, and there were black half-circles under both of her eyes. "Hey, Hannah," Ellie said. "Look, I'm really sorry I hit you."

She slowly walked over to the bed. "It's okay. I guess I can't really stay mad at you after all the good things you've done for me."

"Thank you for understanding. And, hey, I think the black eyes make you look tougher," she told Hannah as she smiled.

Hannah laughed at that. "Yeah, I guess they kinda do." Her demeanor changed when she thought of something Ellie said after she hit her. "When you said you thought I was someone else, what'd you mean?"

Ellie's demeanor changed as well. Please don't make me have to go through all that again. "What do you mean?"

"The only other people in the house were Joel and my dad. And I know you wouldn't have hit any of them, so you must've been talking about someone else. Who was it?"

Even though Hannah was very close to Ellie, and she trusted her completely, she still couldn't bring herself to tell her what happened. There was no use in not saying anything though. "Someone from a nightmare," is all she said. She wasn't lying, she was just not telling the entire truth.

Hannah sat down on the bed next to Ellie. "I've got a sneaking suspicion it's more than just a bad dream."

Ellie scoffed slightly. "Trust me; it's a lot worse than the kind of nightmare you're thinking of. Picture all the bad things your mind can come up with, and imagine they're all coming after you. That's what you imagine when you think of the word nightmare, except in my case I couldn't get out of it by waking up. I was living out the worst nightmare my brain could produce, and I couldn't escape. The word nightmare has a whole new definition for me now; anything less is just a bad dream."

Hannah wasn't sure how to respond. Nothing she had ever been through could compare to that. She had no reference point to what Ellie just told her, and she couldn't offer any support if she had no understanding of what she'd been through. "I... don't know what to say other than I'm sorry you had to go through that." God, that's a crappy thing to say.

Though it may have been crappy, Ellie did not take it the wrong way like Hannah feared she might. "I don't expect you to be able to say anything else, Hannah."

"Thank you," she said. The girls hugged each other on the bed, and Ellie felt a little better having at least gotten a little bit off her chest.

It was the middle of the night, and Ellie and Joel were both fast asleep. The two lay in bed facing each other, sleeping quietly and peacefully. All of a sudden, the quietness was broken when Ellie awoke with a shriek and punched Joel in his face. "Ow! Goddammit!"

Fuck, not again. "Holy shit! Joel-"

"What the hell, Ellie?" He got out of bed and turned the lamp on. He was shocked at the force with which Ellie punched him. He looked in the mirror to inspect the state of his face. "You blacked my goddamn eye."

Ellie was trying frantically to apologize. "Joel, I am so fucking sorry. It was just... a bad dream."

Joel knew immediately what she meant. "I see." She had kept the memory bottled up for too long. It was time she spit it out. He sat in the bed and spoke to her sternly. "Alright. I know this is about last winter. Now you're gonna talk about it. I ain't askin' you this time."

Ellie sat up and readied herself for what she was about to say. She wasn't ready to talk about it yet, but Joel wasn't going to take no for an answer. She began tearing up before she even started speaking. "Okay, I'll tell you." She took a long pause; this was going to be difficult. "I was out hunting for food one day. I found a deer and began tracking it through the woods. I got it with an arrow, but it took a long time to bleed out, and it led me into this old abandoned town. There were these two guys there; their names were David (just saying the name put a bitter taste in her mouth) and James. David offered to trade me supplies for the meat, and knowing you were hurt, I asked him for antibiotics. He sent James to get the medicine and we took shelter and built a fire in an old building. That's where we got swarmed by infected." She was keeping a hold of herself well so far, but she was still on the easy part. "We fought off what seemed like hundreds of infected. Runners, Clickers, Bloaters, almost non-stop. I still don't know how it's possible, but we both made it with only a couple bruises. We went back to make sure the deer was still there, and... that's when David revealed who he actually was." Ellie found herself unable to continue speaking.

Joel was listening intently to her story, and he tried to get her to keep talking. "Who was he?"

She gathered herself and continued with the story. "He knew who I was. He was the one who sent the men to the University... the ones that tried to kill us."

Joel was shocked at the revelation, just as Ellie was at the time. "What happened next?" he asked.

"Up until that point I had actually began to trust him. Once he said that, I knew I had to get out of there. James got back with the medicine, but I could tell he wanted to kill me. He would've if David hadn't told him to let me go. I took the medicine and hauled ass back to the house where I was keeping you. When I woke up the next morning, I heard voices outside. I looked out the window and saw that they followed me. At that point, all I cared about was making sure you were safe. I rode out on Callus to lead them away from you, but they started shooting at me. They killed Callus, and I fell off a cliff into the resort. I fought through there and almost got out..." she became choked up at the memory of what happened next. "But David caught me. He choked me out, and I woke up in a cell in a kitchen."

She was beginning to lose her grip on her emotions. She was still not at the most difficult part yet. "Ellie, it's okay," Joel reassured her. "Once you get it out, you'll feel better."

She nodded, and continued. "I saw James hacking up a dead body... a human body. The savages were fucking cannibals. David came into the kitchen and tried talking nice to me, but I knew he was full of shit. He told me he thought I could come around. He told me I was... special... and then the fucking sicko grabbed my hand." She wiped the tears away from her eyes. "I broke his finger and tried to grab the keys on his belt, but he grabbed onto my arm and slammed me into the door. I fell asleep, then James woke me up and he and David threw me onto the fucking butcher table, but not before I bit David. David was about to cut off my head, but then I thought of something that turned out to save my life. I told him I was infected, and since I bit him, he was too. He rolled up my sleeve and saw the bite, and he actually bought it. I grabbed the knife and killed James and got my ass out of there. I fought my way through the town in the middle of a blizzard, and ended up in an old restaurant." She felt a knot form in her chest, and she began crying harder. She did not think she could continue. "I can't... I can't..."

Joel put an arm around her shoulders. "You can, Ellie. I'm here for you."

She sniffled, and tried to gather herself. "I became trapped in there with David. I managed to jump on his back and stab him, but he grabbed me and slammed me down on the ground, and I blacked out. When I came to, I was in a lot of pain. I saw David's machete was close and I started crawling to it." The more she talked, the more she cried. "David kicked me in the ribs, and I couldn't move after that. He got on top of me..." Ellie was reduced to a blubbering wreck. She tried to keep talking, but she was difficult to understand through her sobbing. "Joel... he was gonna..." she lowered her voice to a whisper, "...he was gonna rape me."

She doubled over in tears, and Joel wrapped his arms around her tightly. "It's okay, baby girl, it's okay." She wrapped her arms around him just as tight, and savored the warmth and comfort the embrace provided.

"Joel... I've never been the same since then. I don't think those wounds will ever heal."

"Yes they will, Ellie. You just have to give it time." Seeing Ellie in such emotional disarray was pushing him to the verge of tears. He managed to keep them contained though. "I'll always be here for you, just remember that."

Her crying stopped as she hugged Joel just a little bit tighter. "Thank you, Joel."

Joel felt a change of topic was necessary. "You know, you hit real hard for a scrawny little girl," he said as he let go.

Ellie chuckled and blushed a little bit. "Yeah. Back in Boston I kinda had a reputation of being a... scrapper."

Joel raised an eyebrow. "You were a scrapper, huh?"

"Yeah. I got into a lot of fights. That's how I got this," she said as she gestured to the scar that cut through her right eyebrow. "I was instigating someone bigger than me and he smashed my head on a desk."

Joel laughed under his breath. "You know, now that you mention it, I can't say I'm surprised."

"I was also kinda a bully. I'd pick on a lot of kids that were smaller than me... I was a dick."

Joel patted her on the head. "We all go through phases."

She went into deep thought, and realized that Joel was right. "Joel, I'm glad we talked. I do feel better now."

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close to him. "See. What'd I tell ya? It's good to get that stuff out."

"From now on, I won't keep anything from you.

That concludes chapter 11 of Brand New Start. In the next chapter: The community of Jackson revives an old American tradition.