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melethwi · 2 years

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before i go home

read it on ao3

word count: 3.2k

summary: Before Ellie makes the trek back to the farmhouse, she has a stop to make in Jackson.

notes: this is the first one of my fics i’ve posted here on tumblr since restarting my account! this is my (probably cheesy, probably been done before, but hopefully still good) take on the ellie-goes-back-to-jackson-to-beg-for-dina-to-take-her-back trope lol. i hope you enjoy :)

Ellie sucked a breath in, taking in the massive perimeter walls of Jackson.

Home. She was home.

Well. She wasn’t really home. It wasn’t the sunny, wallpapered farmhouse she would’ve preferred. But that would have to wait. She had a stop to make before she ventured past Jackson. Besides, her back was absolutely killing her, and she suspected sores riddled her feet.

She tightened her backpack straps a little further, providing some more support, and stepped out of the tree line. She’d be spotted any second.

Fresh faces dotted the guideposts above the gate. The sign to her left where it had always been, reading: Stop. Identify yourself before approaching gate. She didn’t know if she still had a working voice to do it. Along with her laundry list of other ailments, she’s pretty sure she contracted a nasty throat infection about a week ago.

One foot in front of the other. That’s how she got to Santa Barbara, that’s how she’d gotten back, and that’s how she intended on making it the last few steps into Jackson.

“Stop!” Ah. She’d been seen.

Looking up into the blaring sun, she tried to reach a hand to shield her eyes. She kept walking, one foot in front of the other, at a trudging pace toward the gate.

“I said stop!” The voice repeated, wavering. A guard that had just been posted, she thought. Never had to deal with someone they didn’t recognize showing up. And she was truly unrecognizable.

She had no intention of stopping until the gate was open and she was through, but one of her feet stuck in the mud. Ellie fell to her knees, hands slapping against the wet ground- she grit her teeth as dirt seeped into the cuts between her fingers. A ringing pierced through her ears, the voice telling her to identify herself. She sunk deeper into the earth, coughing.

When she finally stopped, she mustered the very last drop of energy she had in her to look up. Her eyes burned in the bright afternoon sun directly overhead.

The voice again. “Holy shit.” A small smile from Ellie. “Someone get Tommy!”

The world went black as she fell unceremoniously back into the mud. Tommy. She was safe.

She awoke sometime later in a bed. Eyes blinking the fog away, she didn’t recognize where she was, but she knew the unforgettable smell of gunpowder and whiskey- Tommy’s house. Or at least it probably was. She didn’t know where he was after taking some time apart from Maria.

A heavy wooden clock ticked on the wall, threatening to fall off and smash to bits on the ground. In her daze, Ellie thought to herself how stupid it looked.

Everything hurt. As she began to come to consciousness more and more, she surveyed herself in the shimmering morning light coming in from the window at her side.

Bandages everywhere- hands, arms, legs. There was a steady pounding in her head, rhythmic and in time with the ticking of the clock.

“Heya, kid.”

Her eyes shot over to the door at a speed that actually made them hurt. Tommy stood in the doorframe, tall and brooding and holding a mug of something steaming. For the first time in her adventurous youth, she hoped it was just water. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had reliable access to clean water.

“Hey,” she managed to squeak out. She hadn’t had to talk to anyone in months.

“It’s good to see you awake,” Tommy said, taking a step into the room. A step closer to Ellie having water. “It’s good to see you alive,” he emphasized, walking further in.

“You’re telling me,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Took a real nasty spell out there, I hear. Just about scared the gate crew to death,” Tommy chuckled.

“Sorry. I’ll be sure and think of them next time.” They quietly laughed together.

A moment of silence passed by. “So how are you feeling?” Tommy asked.

Ellie took a moment to think it over. “In general? Not great. Terrible. I feel like I could sleep for days.”

“You did sleep for days,” Tommy pointed out.

“What?” She craned her neck to look at him as he grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and moved it to sit by the bedside.

“Yes ma’am. When they pulled you inside, you were out like a light the whole time they were fixin’ you up until just now. Two days later.”

“Wow,” Ellie said. “I guess your mattress was just that comfy.”

“I bandaged that hand up for you,” Tommy said solemnly, ignoring her jibe. “Think I got to it before anyone saw it if you were worried. Shouldn’t be a problem with the folks here. ”

Ellie’s smile fell. She didn’t even think about what would’ve happened if that secret had gotten out, especially by accident. Her head throbbed once again. The scar was mostly healed over, some cysts and lesions scattered around the edge. It looked remarkably similar to the one she’d suffered on her arm, on a slightly smaller scale. Running her finger against the rigid skin, it felt cold to the touch.

She didn’t even want to think about the missing fingers. She could still feel them when she closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Tommy nodded and a moment passed in silence. A poignant question hung in the air. Tommy didn’t know how to ask it, and Ellie wasn’t sure how she was going to answer it.

If she told Tommy the truth about what happened in Santa Barbara, he might never forgive her. He might turn his back on her forever this time, shun her for letting the girl go in peace.

She knew he could understand why she did it, but she didn’t know if he was ready yet. She’d spent weeks weighing the odds of ever seeing the girl and the little boy again- Ellie didn’t even know where they’d gone, and she’d be starting from scratch if she ever wanted to go looking again.

Ellie sunk somehow further into the mass of pillows propped behind her head, and shut her eyes until Tommy finally asked. Two simple words, but her answer could change their relationship forever.

“What happened?”

What happened… What didn’t happen? She thought to herself. Over the months she was gone she lost herself, found herself, and lost herself again. She’d hoped that she’d be able to find herself again in Jackson. She’d seen the scum of the Earth, some of the worst people she’d ever seen since leaving the Boston QZ as a child. She’d faced death and walked away. She’d been death and let someone walk away.

How could she ever begin to tell him all that?

“I took care of it,” she eventually said. “It’s over now.”

Tommy leaned forward in his seat, interested.

“You killed her?”

Ellie bit her lip. She realized that she couldn’t answer that question honestly in the way that he wanted her to.

But she couldn’t lose Tommy. Not after losing Joel. Not after pushing Dina away.

Dina.

Ellie turned to face him.

“She won’t be hurting anyone ever again.”

Ellie believed it with every fiber of her being. She had to.

Tommy seemed satisfied. He relaxed back into his seat, accepting her answer. They both released a breath.

By the time Ellie felt up to walking around, she’d already been hounded by Maria five times. She didn’t have all that many visitors- She asked Tommy and Maria to keep people away. She didn’t know if the news of her arrival back in Jackson had made it through the population.

Ellie felt one absence harder than all the rest, though.

Finding Dina was the one thing that kept her fighting to get out of bed. From her second-floor window, she watched people walking to their shifts in the gardens and the stables. She didn’t see Dina, though she looked vigilantly. Could she still be at the farm?

Through the time that she was gone, she had to fight to imagine Dina staying at the farmhouse. At her core, she knew Dina must have left. It would be too much for her to upkeep all the animals, the house, and the garden all while being a single mother.

The idea of getting back to her family fueled her further to shove food in her mouth. She finished every meal that was put in front of her, forced herself to sleep every night. She knew she needed to heal. She needed to get back to her family. After not eating in any sort of way that could be considered ‘stable’ for months, it was a chore to even keep the food down. The meats and vegetables they gave her were rich, and the milk they gave her fresh from the cows was thick in her throat.

Her first steps out of Tommy’s house were hard. She didn’t know how she had made it out of her bed, let alone down the stairs and to the front porch. The fresh Wyoming air hit her very suddenly, filling her lungs for the first time in a week. It was fall now, and the air was cold and beginning to bite against the skin of her cheeks. She had to go back inside to get another layer.

It took another two days before Ellie felt steady enough to walk past Tommy and Maria’s front gate. Though she lamented and begged to be allowed back to her garage behind Joel’s old house, the couple insisted she stayed right under their noses where they could watch her recovery personally.

Ellie just figured that they didn’t want to walk past Joel’s house multiple times a day to bring her food and check on her.

She found that to be a fair request.

Once she finally cleared the gate, she made it to the street. She marveled at how weak she was now. This was the same body she dragged half alive back to Wyoming from California. She didn’t know it at the time, but now she realized that she had been running on pure determination. Now, swaying on the dirt road, she was paying for it.

Maria took her for a short, supervised walk. They didn’t go into the more heavily populated ‘downtown’ part of the Jackson encampment, just taking a stroll down the road the house was situated on. After a couple days of this, she was finally allowed to take walks on her own.

She didn’t know if this meant that she was allowed to go back to her garage. That wasn’t her first priority.

Maria hadn’t brought up whether she was to report for duty once she had recovered, and the silence was deafening.

Ellie had one question she wanted to ask more than anything. Something she knew Maria would know the answer to, as she kept track of practically everyone coming in or going out of Jackson.

Where was Dina?

Ellie didn’t fault her for not visiting.

She decided her first outing would be to the graveyard to see Joel. To tell him what she had done, and to ask for his help.

It was a Sunday afternoon when she finally worked up the strength to head out in the direction. The sun was out, but autumn was in full force, and she was bundled in one of her jackets that someone had fetched for her from the garage.

She didn’t feel ready to head into town. For months, she hadn’t talked to anyone but the occasional traveler- and herself. She wasn’t ready to be surrounded by people just yet, especially not happy people who would want to talk to her. Ask questions about where she had been. What she had been doing. How she was feeling.

The walk to the graveyard wasn’t extremely long, but she still felt winded by the time she made it there mid-afternoon.

She rolled her eyes and almost turned around when she saw a figure kneeling in the center of the cemetery. Ellie had come here specifically so she could be left alone. She wished silently that whoever it was would leave her alone, would honor the sanctity of the area and just keep their mouth shut.

Until she got closer.

It took her a second to identify the figure, but she almost fell over when she did.

“Dina?”

The dark-haired girl whipped around, not believing her ears. She jumped a bit in surprise and stood up.

“Ellie?”

Ellie took a beat before responding. She didn’t know how to respond. She hadn’t planned on seeing Dina yet and thought she would be able to see her on her own terms. Not in this way, getting hit out of nowhere with it.

She’d spent months writing a script in her head about what to say in this situation, but it suddenly flew away in the autumn breeze.

“You’re holding flowers,” Ellie said with an air of curiosity. It occurred to Ellie that Dina had been kneeling right in front of-

“I bring him flowers every week,” Dina explained, scratching the back of her neck. She turned around and placed the small bouquet down in a little vase that had been placed in the ground next to the headstone reading Joel Miller. “I do it when I come to see Jesse.”

The two girls stared at each other for a few more seconds, neither knowing what to say.

“Come on, let’s go somewhere better than this to talk.”

Somehow Ellie knew that they were going to be okay.

Dina wanted to take Ellie to a nice place on the North gate where they could get a nice view, but quickly realized Ellie wouldn’t have the strength to climb up the ladder.

Almost poetically, they ended up sitting on the front porch steps of Joel’s former house. Ellie was glad that they still hadn’t given it to anyone.

“I missed you,” Ellie said, breaking the awkward silence that kept manifesting between them.

“Oh, Ellie,” Dina said sadly, putting her face in her hands. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Ellie winced, hurt but expecting that sort of response.

“Do what?” she asked.

“This,” Dina emphasized, waving one of her hands in Ellie’s general direction, running the other one through her hair. Ellie noticed that she was wearing it down for once. “I can’t sit here and act like I haven’t been dying every day that you were out there hunting for Abby.”

Ellie winced again, not wanting to hear that name.

“If it makes you feel any better, I can’t act like I wasn’t dying either.” She rubbed her left hand thoughtfully, the fingers no longer bandaged.

“Oh, Ellie,” Dina repeated. Ellie looked over and Dina was staring directly at her hurt hand. Reflexively, Ellie wiggled the remaining fingers and looked down. “Are you… okay?”

“Physically? I’ll recover. Mentally? I’m fucking drowning, Dina.”

Dina looked away from Ellie’s hand, slumping over.

“Me too.”

The script suddenly came back to her.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I never should have left you. I never should’ve left Wyoming. It was a fool’s errand. I’m sorry.”

Dina stared up at the sky, contemplating. Anger laced her voice when she spoke again.

“So you didn’t even find her?” Dina asked.

“No, I did find her.”

“So you killed her.” Dina practically spat.

“No, I didn’t kill her.”

Dina froze.

“So you left me here, alone with a baby, and you didn’t even kill her?” Dina asked, the words flying out at a mile a minute. It was like a switch had flipped. “I thought that was the whole point, Ellie!”

Ellie bit her lip to avoid matching Dina’s anger.

“It was the point, Dina,” Ellie answered, feeling the heat grow in her face anyway.

The two of them stared at each other, neither saying a word.

“I let her go,” Ellie whispered, turning away from Dina, and hugging her knees up to her chest. “I had her. I let her go.”

“What?” Dina asked incredulously.

“When I got to her,” Ellie started. “She was half alive. I tried- I tried to make her fight me. And she did. But then-“ She paused, tears beginning to well in her eyes. Her chest felt tight, her mind putting up resistance against reliving the moment she was trying to describe.

Ellie felt a hand rest on her shoulder. She knew it had to be Dina’s, but it still shocked her. She had felt the resent radiating out of Dina’s skin like heat from the sun. How had it changed so fast?

Did Dina think she had done the right thing?

Could it be that easy?

“What happened, Ellie?” Dina said gently. Looking over at her, Ellie saw her arm fully extended to reach her. She looked like a spooked deer, like she was going to run away at any second.

Hot tears escaped Ellie’s eyes. Fuck. She didn’t know what to do.

“I couldn’t do it. I- I know I left you and I know that makes me the worst person in the world and the biggest jackass ever, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let her turn me any further into a monster.”

She bent further over her legs, burying her face in her knees. Breathe. She needed to breathe.

A chest pressed into her side. Arms wrapped around her shoulders.

“When you left, I swore to myself I would never take you back.”

Ellie’s heart took off running in her chest.

“I told myself I would treat you how you had treated me. That if you somehow managed to survive getting there, fighting her, and coming back, I would just turn my nose up at you.”

What was the purpose of telling her this? Ellie longed for a simple rejection. A ‘no’ would suffice.

“But now I don’t think that was fair to you. I think you needed to go, as much as I’ll hate it every day for the rest of my life that you left. I’ll never let you forget it, no matter what you do,” she snorted. “I also don’t think it was fair to me.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie asked. She sat up a bit, leaning into Dina. The contact had to mean something, the way Dina was supporting her. Dina had always supported her. Was this time going to be different?

“We live in a world where everything you love can be taken from you in the blink of an eye. You know that.” Joel’s small smile flashed in Ellie’s mind, fading into Dina’s dark eyes.

“Yeah,” Ellie said dumbly.

“I swore to myself I would never take you back,” Dina repeated. “But every second I’ve been in your presence today has outweighed every second you’ve been gone. So I have a question for you.” Ellie raised her eyebrows, asking what is it? “Is it done?”

The air rushed out of Ellie’s lungs. Somehow, she smiled. “I promise, I swear to you. It’s done.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Let’s go home,” Dina said with finality.

Ellie bounded down the front stairs of the farmhouse, treading back into the woods where Dina waited, a small child at her side. Dina smiled up at her. A wagon with the first load of their things waited just outside the tree line away from the house.

“I’m ready.”

#elliedina #ellie x dina #ellie williams x dina #ellie tlou #ellie williams tlou #tlou #tlou 2 #tlou2 #elliedina fanfic #tlou2 spoilers

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