Title: Tribe 3: Wonderwall

Chunk 18: Sections 86 thru 90

Fandom: The Tribe

Author: PinkTribeChick

Summary: I said maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me . . . Life goes on for the Mall Rats after the Chosen take over the city.

Extended Summary: Essentially, this is an Alternate Universe story for Series 3 and beyond of the Tribe. I won't say anything more than that, because I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who have never read this before

Rating: Teen

Pairing: Too many to name! But Bray-Amber, Lex-Zandra, Ryan-Salene, and Jack-Ellie, for starters. There will also be some Tribe-character with original character pairings.

Author's Notes: Again many thanks as always go to Brett The Mole, as he was the one who talked me into sharing this story with others when I first started writing it, and he was the one who kept bugging me to complete it. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you, Brett! And major thanks to Ariannya, Whit, and all the others who at various times read and proofed sections for me and gave me their invaluable feedback.

Enjoy, and please review! Feedback is much appreciated!

Disclaimer: All characters, situations, and song lyrics remain the property of their respective owners. Troy Wisneski belongs to the author Paula Boock, from her Tribe novel "Power and Chaos." Any original characters are sole property of me, PinkTribeChick. The lyrics used in this chunk are from "Smoke" by Natalie Imbruglia.

Tribe 3: Wonderwall

Sections 86 thru 90

A couple of weeks passed uneventfully, as the Mall Rats and Tribe Dorkus worked together on the clinic, trying to fix the hospital up. The boys spent the majority of the day at the hospital working, while the girls stayed behind at the mall with the little ones. Cloe helped Amber with Michael, since most mornings she spent her time down in the sewer being sick to her stomach. Michael was starting to say words, mostly little ones, like Mama and Dada. Brady was starting to walk, which overjoyed Trudy and Martin, and she was finally calling Martin "Daddy."

Alice, Ellie, and the farm girls had brought food to the mall twice since the initial visit. With each subsequent visit, it became harder for Ellie and Jack to see each other, and their hope of ever being together again diminished slowly. Ellie's cutting became worse as their relationship started to crumble.

Ellie sat quietly in her usual spot in the bathroom on the edge of the bathtub as she cleaned off the razor blade. Her hands didn't even shake as she pressed the metal against her skin, drawing blood. She let out of a sigh of partial relief, cleaning off the wound. Sitting there for a few moments, thoughts of Jack once again filled her head, and she started to cry. She cleaned the blade off, about to cut herself again, when someone knocked on the bathroom door, startling her. She slid the blade hard across her wrist, making a deep cut.

"Ellie? Are you okay? You've been in there for almost 10 minutes! Alice wanted me to check on you!" she heard Todd say through the door. Tears streamed down Ellie's face as she threw the blade in the toilet. She looked down at her arm. It was bleeding badly, blood gushing out each time her heart beat. She couldn't hide it anymore. She was severely injured, and she knew she needed to get help and fast. She grabbed a towel, putting it on the laceration and pressing. It was quickly soaked in blood. Ellie turned white, frightened.

"Todd, help!" she cried, sobbing harder. She heard him turn the doorknob.

"It's locked, Ellie! You have to unlock it before I can come in! What's wrong, Ellie?" he shouted. She turned the lock before collapsing on the floor. Todd threw the door open, to find Ellie unconscious on the floor, bleeding profusely. He grabbed a fresh towel and knelt down beside her, tying the towel tightly around the wound.

"Oh, my god! Ellie! We'll get you help!" he said frantically. He picked her up and ran out to the barn where the others were.

Alice paced back and forth nervously outside of the hospital room. Todd had come rushing out to the barn with Ellie in his arms. She had slashed one of her wrists, and they'd taken her over to the hospital where Dal and some of the others were. Luckily, Jack hadn't been there, and Dal and TaiRon were able to take care of her quietly. She'd lost a great deal of blood on the trip there. She'd looked so pale when they wheeled her off into the OR.

"Well, I think she's out of the woods," Dal said, coming out of the room, with a blood splattered apron on. "We stitched the wound up. But she's lost a lot of blood, so she could still go either way. We're going to keep her here for a few days, just to make sure she's going to be okay. TaiRon's bandaging her up, then you can go see her." He hugged Alice then walked off down the hall.

"Thank god!" Alice exclaimed, sinking down into a chair beside Todd. Todd put an arm around her as she sobbed in relief. "What in the world could have possessed her to do something like this? To try to take her own life?"

"I don't think that's what she was trying to do, Alice," Todd said quietly.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, looking at him in bewilderment.

"The past few days, I've noticed a change in her attitude. She's not really depressed, just grouchy. And yesterday, one of her sleeves got yanked up when she was milking Marta. There were cuts all up and down her arm," Todd replied. He ran a hand through his short, sandy blond hair. "Alice, I think Ellie may be cutting herself." Alice laughed in disbelief.

"What? On purpose? You must be joking. Ellie would never do that," she said.

"The Ellie you and I know might not. But the Ellie of late, she might. I mean, for the first several days she was at the farm again she locked herself in her room, crying nonstop. She barely speaks to you, and when she speaks to the others, she snaps at them. Every time she's gone to the mall, you've practically had to drag her back home, and once she's home, she's about twice as grouchy as before," he responded with concern. "It's just so obvious."

"But why would she do something like that?" Alice inquired. "It just makes no sense."

"It might not make sense to you and I, but it does to her," Todd said. "I had a friend that had the same problem. It's a control issue. Ellie feels like she has no control over her life, and she's miserable because she misses Jack. She transfers her emotional pain into physical pain by cutting herself, thus relieving her pain for just a little while."

"So you're saying this is my fault? Because I'm the one who took her away from Jack, and I know I can be a little controlling sometimes . . . ," Alice trailed off.

"No, it's not your fault at all. You're just being a good sister to her, the best one you know how to be. A large part of it is in Ellie's head. She just thinks things are much worse than they really are," he consoled Alice.

"Is there anything we can do to help her?" she asked.

"All we can really do is keep a close eye on her, be supportive of her decisions, and mostly, just let her make her own decisions," he answered.

"Do you want to do that? I mean, look after her until she gets better?" Alice suggested. "Because she's already angry enough at me as it is. I'm afraid I'll just make it worse."

"Sure, I don't mind," Todd said, shrugging his shoulders. TaiRon came out of the room, and Alice and Todd both stood up. "You go see her first. I'll be in there in a few minutes. I think you two need some time alone." Alice nodded, hugging him, and walked hesitantly into the room, closing the door behind her.

"Hi, Tai-San," Lysette said as the girl walked into the café. "How are you today?" Tai-San looked up from the book she was reading.

"Oh, I'm fine. You?" Tai-San responded.

"I'm okay. Still getting used to things around here," Lysette said. "What are you reading?"

"Anna Karenina. Have you ever read it?" Tai-San inquired, sitting down beside Lysette at one of the tables.

"No, I've never read it. I love to read, but thick books just scare me. They're like a neverending nightmare, and I always feel as though I'll never finish them. I do know what Anna Karenina is about, though," Lysette replied. "Married woman falls in love with a soldier, has an affair with him, becomes pregnant with his child, is forced to tell her husband, and eventually commits suicide by throwing herself under a train, only after the child is born and she runs off with the soldier. Correct?"

"Yeah, that's about it in a nutshell," Tai-San said. "It must be hard for you, living here after being out in the country on a farm for so long."

"Not entirely. I grew up in a city to start with. Actually, I'm American," Lysette said.

"Really? Wow. That would explain the accent," Tai-San said.

"Yeah. I'm from the southern US," Lysette responded.

"Is Todd American, too?" Tai-San asked. Lysette shook her head as she sipped her hot chocolate.

"He's British. From a little town outside of London," she answered. "We met online, through this online pen pal service. We just clicked. We're exactly alike for the most part, which is a good thing, but it has turned out to be a pretty bad thing, too."

"I bet," Tai-San said, getting up to make herself some tea. "So how did you guys actually meet in person, if you started out as pen pals?"

"We wrote back and forth for several months, talked online. We became best friends, then we just sort of fell in love. Our parents weren't too happy about it, but we wanted to be together. So we planned to run off together and get married. Had the money all saved up and everything. Then the virus hit. His parents were some of the first to die over in Europe," Lysette explained.

"What happened after that?" Tai-San asked.

"Well, Todd has a few younger sisters, and he couldn't leave them behind to fend for themselves. So he packed them and himself up, and they got on a plane to the States. By that point, my parents had realized that we weren't going to give up. We really wanted to be together. And when he and his sisters showed up on our front doorstep, my parents relented, and they allowed Todd and his sisters to live with us. I was an only child anyway, so it wasn't that much of a strain. My parents had always wanted more kids, but never had any, and they took instantly to Todd's sisters. So, for a few months before things got bad in the US, we became a happy little family. Then my parents fell ill with the virus. They were gone within days," Lysette recalled, her eyes filling with tears.

"It devastated all of us, especially the girls. They had grown so attached to my parents. My dad left all his money to me in his will. I realized things weren't going to get any better where we were, and there was nowhere to run, really. So I started do a little research and found out that there was still lots of open countryside down here and that the virus hadn't was very widespread down here yet. I booked a flight for all of us, and we left. We found the farm the first day we were here and made a deal with Alice and Ellie's parents, room and food in exchange for us working for them." By now tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Why did you and Todd break up, then?" Tai-San said, still not understanding.

"Do you realize how hard it is to suddenly be a parent to three little girls when you're barely an adult yourself?" Lysette said, wiping her eyes with a napkin. "It's hard. And Todd and I don't exactly agree when it comes to child-rearing. It just started to take a toll on our relationship after a while. We were constantly arguing, and there were a lot of times when we just wouldn't speak for days on end. It's just better off this way. I like it here." Lysette's voice wavered, and she buried her head in her arms on the table, sobbing. "The girls probably think I abandoned them! I'm a horrible mother! No matter how bad things get, I have to stick around for their sake! I should, right?"

"Things will be okay," Tai-San said, putting her arm around the girl. "I'm sure your little girls don't think you've abandoned them. And I don't think Todd would allow them to think that, if he's a decent parent at all."

"Stacy and Claire will understand, because they're old enough to. But Sydney won't. She's only three, Tai-San," Lysette said. "Todd and I have tried so hard to give all three of them some sort of a normal life in spite of the virus. This just destroys that completely."

"There is no such thing as normal, Lysette," Tai-San said, patting her on the back. "Each of us has our own perception of what is normal. Your leaving may not faze Sydney the slightest bit. You can never be sure." Lysette wiped her eyes, trying to calm down a bit.

"Well . . . how is Ellie doing? Is she any better?" Lysette asked, changing the subject.

"The last I heard she still hadn't woken up. Dal and TaiRon are afraid that if she doesn't wake up soon, that might mean there's an infection or something else is wrong," Tai-San replied.

"Poor Jack . . . I know he must be worried sick right now," Lysette said.

"Dal gave him a sedative earlier to make him sleep for a little while. He still won't eat, though. He blames himself for her illness," Tai-San responded. "He's upstairs. I'm supposed to go check on him, but you can go if you want."

"I think I will. At least it will give me something to do," Lysette said. "I'll see you later, Tai." She got up and walked out of the room quietly.

"Ellie, please, you've got to wake up," Ellie could hear Alice saying. Ellie tried to move her mouth to speak or just open her eyes, but she could. Her entire body felt as though it were weighted down by tons of lead. She couldn't move a muscle. She had no way of letting Alice know that she was awake and okay. Her mind frantically tried to think of something, some way to make a noise or movement, but it was useless. She was too weak. She finally drifted back off to sleep, still hearing Alice pleading to her in the distance.

Suddenly, Ellie opened her eyes and looked around. She was on a darkened stage with only one light, a spotlight pointed on her. She was wearing a soft pink leotard and ballet slippers. She could see her parents out in the audience. She realized that she was at her ballet audition for the New Zealand Royal Ballet. An audition that had taken place a few weeks before the virus hit.

"Please begin, Miss Taylor," she heard a hidden person say. She nodded and walked over to the stereo, putting her tape in and pushing play. She walked to center stage and put her feet in third position, her arms in bras bas. The music began.

My lullaby, hung out to dry . . . what's up with that . . . it's over . . . where are you Dad . . . Mum's looking sad . . . what's up with that . . . it's dark in here . . .

Ellie pirouetted across the stage, into an arabesque penchee, followed by a grand plie. She did several sautes ending in a demi-plie. She began to pirouette again.

Why, bleeding is breathing . . . you're hiding, underneath the smoke in the room . . . try, bleeding is believing . . . I used to . . . I used to . . .

Ellie found that she couldn't stop pirouetting. As the room spun around and around, she realized that she was standing completely still, and in fact, the room itself was spinning. She could hear her mother calling out to her.

"Ellie, go back! It's not time for you to leave Alice and the others yet! It is not time for you to be with your father and me yet! Go back home!" she heard her mother call.

"I can't! I don't want to go back! I want to be with you and Pa!" Ellie responded. "I want to stay here! It's safe here!"

"You must go back, Ellie!" her father pleaded. "Your sister needs you! Your friends need you! Go back!"

"No!" Ellie exclaimed loudly, her eyes flying open as she sat up in bed. Alice looked at her, startled. Ellie looked around. She was in the hospital room again. Alice sat beside her on a stool, while Todd stood leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

"Ellie?"

Lysette stepped carefully into Jack's room. He was fast asleep in his bed, lying on his back with his mouth wide open. She laughed silently as he breathed in, making a soft popping noise. She crept over to his computer and sat down, about to play solitaire when she heard a voice.

"Touch the computer and you die," Jack murmured.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," she said, smiling.

"With all the things on my mind, you honestly thought a little sleeping pill was going to knock me out?" he responded. "I was only pretending to sleep, in case you were Dal or Tai-San. I didn't feel like getting fussed at."

"Oh, and was the popping noise part of the act?" she asked, turning to face him as he sat up in bed. He gave her an astonished look.

"I was not making a popping noise, Lys," he said defensively, turning red.

"Yes, you were," she said, giggling.

"Whatever," he said, looking annoyed and embarrassed.

"What-ever!" she exclaimed in a valley girl voice, putting her fingers in the shape of a 'W'. Jack gave her a pleading look. "Come on, Jack. You can't keep blaming yourself for Ellie's illness. It's not your fault."

"Why are you so determined to cheer me up?" he asked.

"Because you cheered me up when I first came here after Todd and I broke up. I want to return the favor," she answered. "Besides, you're my best friend, and best friends are supposed to cheer each other up when they're down."

"Well, thanks, Lysette. But I don't think it's going to work," he said.

"I hate seeing you like this, Jack," she said.

"Don't you think I hate feeling like this?" Jack retorted, pulling his t-shirt on. "I can't sleep, I can't eat. All I can think about is Ellie, and how she wouldn't have resorted to cutting herself if I hadn't broken up with her and we hadn't gotten into that stupid food fight at the wedding. I'm so stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" He banged his head against the wall three times, hitting it pretty hard the third time. "Ow!" he yelped, rubbing his forehead. Lysette ran over to him.

"Are you alright?" she said, looking at his forehead. A large knot was forming. "Ooo . . . you're going to have a nasty bruise. Wait here a second. I'll go see if I can find anything to stop the swelling." She ran out of the room, and returned a few minutes later with a compress. "Here, put this on it." Jack sniffed at it. It smelled like old gym socks.

"I'm not putting this on my head. It smells!" he exclaimed, trying to hand it back to her. She shoved it back to him.

"It's some herbs Tai-San gave me. They'll keep it from swelling so much. Just do it, okay?" she insisted. Jack rolled his eyes, reluctantly putting the compress on his head. "Are you always this difficult?"

"No," he replied. He scooted back on his bed, leaning against the wall. He closed his eyes, sighing loudly.

"Alright, you. I've had enough of your moping. Get your shoes on. We're going to get out of this place for a little while, and maybe get your mind off Ellie for a bit," Lysette ordered.

"And if I refuse?" he said.

"I will drag you out of here kicking and screaming if I have to. I'm stronger than I look," she said.

"I'll believe than when I see it," he said sarcastically. She smacked him playfully on the arm.

"Don't make me have to hurt you, Jack," she said, grinning. "Come on. It'll be fun. I think you need to give your mind a rest for a little while. Please?" She looked at him with puppy dog eyes.

"Oh, alright. But only because I don't want to get beaten up by a girl," he said teasingly.

"Great! Meet me in the café!" she said happily, scurrying out of the room. Jack smiled for the first time in the past couple of days as he pulled his boots on and laced them up.

That's all for now, folks! Thanks again for reading, now please go and tell me what you thought of what you read! I love reviews – they keep me going! Toodles until later . . .