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thesweetnessofspring · 4 months ago

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Writing this because @lasthaysileeshipper brought up that there is a connection with how fandom views of Mrs. Everdeen and her mental illness coincide with misogyny and I have thoughts.

First I want to say that this is a topic that often gets personalized. Many people experienced their own childhood neglect/abuse and as we carry ourselves into fiction, that leads to intense feelings when seeing it played out. However, there is also a lot that gets said about Mrs. Everdeen (even by well-intentioned people who don't hate her) that carries an implicit bias against women, mothers, and those with mental illness. I hope that this leads to reflection rather than blame, and if you have anything to say I'm open to respectful discussion.

Katniss's Mother: The One the Fandom Made into Medea

You've heard about the Madonna/Whore complex, now I propose Mary/Medea: a fictional mother must be an absolute perfect selfless saint whose identity revolves solely around her children, or else be a selfish abusive demon with no redeeming qualities whatsoever

tumblr post by @gingerpolyglot

If you've been in the Hunger Games fandom for a minute, you've seen the hate and criticism directed at Mrs. Everdeen. She's been called a bad mother, weak, neglectful, incapable, the "worst" character in the series, and more. If you've read the series then you know why: after the death of her husband, Mrs. Everdeen "didn't do anything but sit propped up in a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes fixed on some point in the distance." And while she did "slowly" return to a state where she was able to complete activities of daily living, it was "months" of "neglect," where Katniss was feeding her family; foraging and hunting in the woods; and trading at the Hob. Anyone can see how this, following the death of their father, is incredibly traumatizing for Katniss and Prim. It's a position that no child should be in, which is why we have families, communities, and social services to protect children when their parent is unable to care for them and hopefully, get help for the parent, too. For the Everdeens in Panem, however, none of these existed. At least none that would truly help them, as Katniss fears going to The Home where children are physically abused. All of this left a deep wound on Katniss and we can assume Prim as well.

But, rather than critiquing Panem for dangerous work conditions that killed Mr. Everdeen, or the scarcity of food, or the social divides which isolated Mrs. Everdeen after her marriage to Mr. Everdeen, or the lack of social services, the blame has often been laid directly at the feet of Mrs. Everdeen who exhibits symptoms of catatonia. This is a feature that can be part of other disorders (rather than a diagnosis itself) and can be found in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, brief psychotic disorder, and depression (and though not in the DSM-5, there's also some evidence of it also appearing in those with PTSD). From the DSM-5, Mrs. Everdeen meets criteria to have catatonia specified with another disorder (likely depression) by having three of the following symptoms:

Stupor: "she didn't do anything but sit propped up in a chair, more often, huddled under the blankets of her bed, eyes fixed on some point in the distance."

Mutism-same quote as above: she didn't do anything. No speech and Katniss doesn't report her making any noise. While not the books, the movies portrayed this as Katniss begging her mother to "say something" while she does not.

Negativism ("opposition or no response to instructions or external stimuli"). "No amount of pleading from Prim seemed to affect her."

Catatonia is a serious condition that requires hospitalization, psycho-pharmaceuticals, and once the catatonia is passed, therapy, to prevent a relapse. If left untreated, catatonia can lead to death or injury.

Here is the first point where misogyny comes into play of how the fandom responds to Mrs. Everdeen. I have seen her condition described as "grief" or "depression" but not what the text indicates it is: depression with catatonic features. The list above has links to the URMC's Department of Psychology with training videos on catatonia symptoms. I'd encourage you to watch it, because that is the level of mental illness Mrs. Everdeen was stuck in. It was not regular grief or a moderate depression. Katniss, who has no diagnostic language, says her mother was "locked in some dark world" during this time.

Women's symptoms are downplayed in the medical field because they're "emotional," "dramatic," and "hysterical." Here, we often see the fandom do the same. Even those who don't express outright hatred for her character will soften the truth of what she was facing with her catatonia. Again, it's "when her husband died" and "grief" and "depression." All of those are certainly hard, but they often retain some amount of functioning when given enough motivation and coping skills. But Mrs. Everdeen did not have any functioning. It was literally impossible for her to do anything in that period of time because of her catatonia. She says "I couldn't help...I was ill" and a large portion of the fandom simply doesn't believe her.

And on the more hostile side, I have seen people say they "don't care" about Mrs. Everdeen's mental illness. Apparently, being a mother means that Mrs. Everdeen should have fought through this catatonic depression. That the power of love or the innate protectiveness that all good mothers have would make Mrs. Everdeen's brain chemicals start working and snap her out of this catatonia. However, despite what you see in the movies, that's not how serious mental illness works, especially without support. It's not a matter of love or will power. Mothers can and do experience serious mental illness that make them unable, for various periods of time, to care for their children. Sometimes, motherhood even causes this or exacerbates it. Motherhood does not give anyone the ability to turn off mental illness.

This was (as far as we know) Mrs. Everdeen's first experience with serious mental illness in a place where there are no social services, no therapists, no psychiatrists, no spiritual leaders. Additionally, no family, friends, or neighbors came to support the family, either. No one thought to check in on them or cared about any signs of their condition. Doing anything for the first time leads to mistakes and this first experience was by all definition a crisis of which she hadn't been prepared nor given any support beyond what her two children could offer. A position that Katniss and Prim shouldn't have had to deal with.

This also leads into the other time that people look at and say, "I can forgive Mrs. Everdeen when her husband died, but when she didn't go back to Twelve with Katniss, that was it. She became unforgivable."

Let's back up: Mrs. Everdeen has lost her husband, seen her oldest daughter enter two Hunger Games, watched her home be bombed and burned, survived another bombing, was a nurse during a war, and then her youngest daughter was blown up at the age of 13. Rather than going into a catatonic depression, she "buries her grief in her work." When Katniss is taken back to District 12, she's given a letter from her mother, which she doesn't read initially and never says what was in. Haymitch says, "You know why she can't come back" to which Katniss's narration says "Because between my father and Prim and the ashes, the place is too painful to bear."

Mrs. Everdeen has a history of catatonic depression. This means that she is at a higher risk of relapsing. She knows that her husband's death triggered this mental illness and that she is once again experiencing the loss of one of the people she loves most, her young daughter. She also knows that when she was in a catatonic depression, she traumatized her surviving daughter. Additionally, Panem has just finished a war. Therapists are rare in Panem, even more to find a surviving one and let's be honest—how many of them are good? Katniss and Peeta are prioritized for treatment due to their fame and their history of violence toward others. While Mrs. Everdeen has connections, it's unlikely she would be prioritized for treatment and additionally, there are likely many people with acute mental health needs after the war.

If Mrs. Everdeen returned to District 12, she would be likely to do extremely poorly mentally and emotionally, perhaps to the point of becoming catatonic again. People will blame her, calling her weak and neglectful again. But I think what we have to consider is: did Mrs. Everdeen think that staying away would help Katniss? That she identified what would trigger her, and so rather than Katniss having to see her mother in that state again and traumatizing her again, she made the choice to stay away, in hopes that her absence would be the better choice for them.

In the end, we don't know for sure all of her reasoning. This is my hypothesis that this is why she stayed away. But I find that most people don't take Mrs. Everdeen's assessment of herself seriously. They again downplay just how terrible her mental health could become, and by extension, further traumatize Katniss. And maybe you think that her presence, no matter the state, is better than her absence. But you have to admit, Mrs. Everdeen is stuck with no good answer. Either way, she loses.

And so, Mrs. Everdeen is "a bad mother."

Perhaps because Katniss does it herself in CF, people will compare Gale's mother to Katniss's. Hazelle lost her husband in the same mining accident and was pregnant at the time. Yet she went to work as a laundress, she pulled her family together, she is a strong one. And, though the book is not out yet, there have already been many comparisons to how Haymitch's Ma is another one of the "good" mothers after her husband died, because she went to work, not like Mrs. Everdeen. Isn't it tragic that Mrs. Abernathy, one of the good mothers, will be dead by the end of the book she appears in?

And so, the fandom has given its crowns to Hazelle and Mrs. Abernathy. They are "The Good" mothers who have done no wrong toward their children. They are Marys. But Mrs. Everdeen, dirty with mental illness, is "The Bad" mother. She is Medea, the source and cause of Katniss's trauma. Nevermind that Hazelle is such a minor character she only appears in three scenes of the books and that she relied on Gale as much as or more than Mrs. Everdeen relied on Katniss, or that everything we know so far about Mrs. Abernathy is from one released excerpt and one sentence from Haymitch in the original trilogy. But from what we do know, she also relies on her sons to keep their family from starvation, not unlike Mrs. Everdeen with Katniss.

And nevermind that this take also actively negates many good things we do know about Mrs. Everdeen. Like the fact that she did work and earn money/items: she was a healer (and possibly did this even before Mr. Everdeen died). And, by all accounts, that she was an excellent healer, knowing how to treat all kinds of injuries and illnesses and kept a cool head while doing it. And that nearly all interactions we see between herself and Katniss, she is caring for her daughter: drawing and heating her bath, braiding her hair, giving her an excuse to be less affectionate with Peeta, treating her foot, putting her on a diet to build muscle before the Quell, treating her whenever she was in the hospital. Mrs. Everdeen is also the one that Prim wanted to sleep with the night before her first reaping, showing that her younger daughter still saw her as a protective figure. Also, after an entire nation has come to know Katniss and her circle has expanded, Mrs. Everdeen is one of three people Katniss believes truly loves her at that point in time.

And yet, how often is any of this discussed about her? Hardly ever. What is mostly discussed is her neglect, the places she failed and stumbled, pointing the finger and laying the blame, while rarely providing any context around the fact that at the time, she was mentally ill to the point that today she would have been hospitalized. The adjectives given to her are things like weak, frail, useless, and neglectful which are completely based on the worst episode of her life. I wonder how all of us would like the same treatment, for our most shameful period of time to be how people describe us.

Mrs. Everdeen is far from the only character in the series with mental illness. This mostly comes in the form of PTSD and substance use disorder. Characters with the most prominent symptoms include: Katniss, Haymitch, Finnick, Johanna, and Annie (the latter also having some kind of diagnosis that would fall under or feature psychosis). Peeta also has PTSD and his hijacking to contend with, and Coriolanus Snow has traits that align with narcissistic personality disorder.

And yet...why is Mrs. Everdeen's mental illness the most maligned out of all of these characters? Some may say because hers almost lead to Katniss and Prim dying. But President Snow is responsible for the deaths of thousands of children, and Haymitch was also willing to gamble with Katniss's and Peeta's life for the rebellion, two kids who became his family. All of these other characters have actually killed somebody, and Peeta's hijacking also directly led to him strangling Katniss and trying again to kill her in the Capitol.

So why is it that Mrs. Everdeen is the most hated? Possibly Snow is the exception, but since TBOSAS, he has equal number of admirers both in terms of his looks and general interest of his character, while Mrs. Everdeen is dismissed at best and hated at worst.

I think this also links back to an implicit bias against the feminine. Haymitch, Finnick, Peeta, Snow—they're all men. Even Peeta, the most feminine of these four, is masculine. Katniss has both masculine and feminine traits, but oftentimes, people see her masculine traits more. Johanna is the same: her brash attitude is more masculine than feminine. Annie is presented as feminine, with Finnick's insistence on protecting her and her fragility and youth and long wavy dark hair. She is presented as the "good" feminine, the kind that must be guarded and coddled. The "good" kind of weakness (this, too, is misogyny).

Mrs. Everdeen, however, is the "bad" feminine. Blond, middle-aged, polite, and entirely lacking power. She is the opposite of Katniss's wild hunter side as the quiet healer, working with plants and seemingly not doing the "dirty" work outdoors, even though she's probably come in contact with every type of bodily fluid as a result of her work. And of course, she's been blemished by the label of "bad mother" nor is she young to garner sympathy and protection.

Mrs. Everdeen's trauma that kickstarted her depression is different than the others. Snow was traumatized by war. The rest are all victors, who had to see and do horrible things to survive. Mrs. Everdeen.....lost her husband. The fact that this is what kicked off her mental illness makes it feminine and flimsy compared to those that came from the Games. It wasn't a metaphor for a soldier that caused her mental illness, but weakening at the loss of a man. Surely a strong woman, another "good" feminine, wouldn't have gotten mentally ill at the loss of her husband (look at Hazelle and Mrs. Abernathy).

Everyone else, even feminine Annie, has masculine trauma. Mrs. Everdeen has feminine trauma. What a crime. How pathetic. She shouldn't have even been mentally ill in the first place.

And so she's been stuck in fandom discussion for fifteen years. The bad mother, the Medea, who not only wasn't strong enough to fight against her mental illness, she did it as a weak, pathetic woman.

I'm going against this call and I will say that I consider Mrs. Everdeen a good mother. Her story is laced with tragedy that challenged her and brought great strain in her relationship with Katniss. But we know that she loved her daughters and always cared for them at the greatest capacity she was able to at any time. She was calm, level-headed, and even rebellious, which was eventually challenged because she became a mother and wanted to protect her children. Even those who sympathize with her rarely say it, so I'll end this with my final conclusion:

Mrs. Everdeen was a good mother. Not a Mary, and not a Medea, but simply a good mother.

More discussion from me because I know it will come up:

Katniss, as the victim of her mother's neglect, is allowed to feel any type of way she wants about what happened to her. However we see through the series that she is able to sympathize with her mother and even forgives her and becomes closer to her through the three books. Katniss's relationship with her mother is complicated (as it should be). There is also a lot of room for growth and healing that I hope happened after the war.

#the hunger games #mrs. everdeen #katniss everdeen #primrose everdeen #thg meta

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aliyahwritings · 7 months ago

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TCH!READER ON THE INTERNET.

MASTERLIST | Basketball Player & Model!Female Reader

*This is during the two weeks that Rafe ignored her, here is the chapter.*

ynmodelz

liked by sarahcameron, topper and others

ynmodelz dump from the last 2 wks

view all comments ...

username01 perfect as always queen

username02 you play the sims wth???

ynmodelz @/username02 i have BEEN playing the sims are u kidding??

cleoanderson im obsessed with you 😘

ynmodelz @/cleoanderson i haven't stopped thinking about you baby

jjmaybank @/ynmodelz this is gay as fuck

username03 no rafe pic.............

username04 @/username03 I thought the same thing and she hasn't been posting him on her story too so idk what's going on

username05 are you still with rafe

aishapatel SHE IS OUT OF THE PSYCH WARD DOCTOR ‼️‼️

ynmodelz @/aishapatel my fingers are slowing approaching the block button.

username06 GUYS SHE POSTED DONT SMILE BY SAB ON HER STORY

username07 @/username06 THEY DEF BROKE UP 😭😭😭😭😭

username08 @/username06 JUST FELL TO MY KNEES IN THE MIDDLE OF TARGET

username09 @/username06 they are now my roman empire

kiecarrera I need that cup. NOW.

ynmodelz @/kiecarrera omg omg let me send u the link so u can buy it and we can match

username10 @/ynmodelz notice how she didn't gatekeep. very cutesy very mindful very demure

username11 are you alright baby?

ynmodelz @/username11 yes why

username11 @/ynmodelz cause ur posting really sad shit on ur story

ynmodelz @/username11 can't a girl be depressed once in a while 😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣😣

johnbrledge I like the song you picked

ynmodelz @/johnbrledge donatella VERSACE 💜

username02 @/ynmodelz YN PLS 💀

username12 @/ynmodelz not a single nonchalant bone in her that's fs

username07 @/ynmodelz lets stay serious yn i beg of u 😭 i love her sm

yn_updates

liked by rafesquerie and others

yn_updates YN posted these two stories (edit: she deleted the second one)

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username01 i didn't believe it at first but i think she broke up with rafe

username02 pls don't tell me she broke up rafe

username03 she has been posting so many sad stuff on her story

username04 @/username03 ik im so worried

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username06 @/username05 exactly!!! like rafe was seen w her just right before he left nyc. they're probably fine

username07 @/username06 that's what i'm thinking and also the pics of them at kelce's party THEY ARE FINE!!! you r all such dramatics 🙄

username08 what if she relapsed yall.......

username09 @/username08 STOP BC WHY WOULD SHE PUT THOSE NESSA LYRICS

username10 @/username08 She def relapsed. She looked skinnier in her last post

username11 @/username08 i am so worried about her

username12 did anyone notice how no paparazzi pictures of her have been out for two weeks?

username13 she's so real 😂

username14 if rafe was my man id be having withdrawals too

username15 I don't like her 🤮

yn_updates @/username15 flop 🫵

username16 everyone on twt talking abt her relapse did she really?

username17 @/username16 Yes

username18 @/username16 not sure it's all js theories bc she looks skinnier, has been posting and deleting a lot of things about the way she looks and weight

username16 @/username18 omg no 😢 poor her i hope she gets better

ynmodelz guys i'm fine 🤍 im just being dramatic i promise

rafecameron

liked kelce and others

rafecameron 🌳

view all comments ...

username01 I LOVE YOU RAFE

username02 gimme a piece of dat 😵‍💫

kelce man is tweaking out fr

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username04 @/popeheyward lemme syd pls

username05 did you and yn break up?

username06 where even are you

username07 BRO CHECK ON UR GIRL SHES CRASHING OUT ‼️‼️‼️‼️

sarahcameron i hope the ground swallows you

rafecameron @/sarahcameron I wish you had a twin that ate you in the womb

username08 did yn relapse?

username09 i heard that u broke up w the model

chiararoro Handsome

username10 @/chiararoro MY ENDGAME

username11 @/chiararoro you should be w him instead of that fugly model

username12 mf hasn't seen his girl in two weeks and started reconnecting with nature 😭😭

rafecameron's are comment's unavailable

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sweatervest-obsessed · 1 year ago

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okay so i'm thinking post!prison reid and reader break up bc he's not ready to be in a relationship after everything that happened in prison. they just don't get back together bc when spence is finally ready it's been a while and they both think it's too late and no one makes a move and they remain as friends UNTIL jj's love confession brings some feelings back onto the surface - reader finds out about it and (cue jeid and their weird, longing glances🥲) has a whole it's all really over moment and then there's distance between her and spencer until there's a confrontation about it and BAM a love confession and second chances😁😁

THIS IS SUCH A MESS but i hope you get my point</33

Um yeah so, absolutely. Some angst for you indeed. I love a convoluted and angsty fight, especially whenever someone is arguing in circles with someone else because they're both just so passionate but angry, anyways, heheh, enjoy!!

WC: 1.5k

TW: Arguing, mentions of violence, mentions of prison, mentions of guns, honestly if you watched CM then that is your TW.

“I just want to know why you’ve been so distant lately. I mean, this is the first time I’m speaking with you one on one in over a week, and it’s because I manage to catch you in the office at nine fucking pm Y/n.”

"So what do you want me to say, Spence? What could I possibly have to say to you? I'm pretty sure Jennifer said everything there is to say."

This caused Spencer to lose all of the oxygen in his body. It froze up. You weren’t supposed to know what JJ had said, no one was supposed to know what JJ had said.

You and Spencer were in the bullpen of the BAU. Luckily for both of you, since it was so late, no one else was there. Neither of you were extremely public when it came to your relationship, which meant neither of you would have chosen to have this conversation fight in a public place, but no one else was around.

I want you to say something you're afraid to say. Something you'd never tell anybody. And you better make it good. Cause if it's not, it's going to be the last thing you ever say. What's it gonna be?

“How did you know about that?” He whispered.

“JJ asked Garcia to go through the footage, apparently she wanted to make sure no one could ever access the audio from it.”

"Y/n I--" Spencer closed his eyes, his jaw set. He didn’t even know what to say at this point. You had both clearly made up your minds about this, yet neither of you wanted to see the carnage, the outcome of it all. So, instead, you chose to stand in the middle of the bullpen, fighting against one another.

Fighting for one another.

"I just don't understand why you're so upset about this."

“Spencer–you didn’t even tell me about it, I had to find out about it from Penelope, and who knows who else she told. You were afraid to tell me, yet that giant genius brain of yours can’t, oh I don't know, comprehend just a teeny tiny little bit why this makes me upset?" For the millionth time this evening, you scoffed.

Something you would never say aloud, not even to your partner. Your deepest, darkest secret. Impress me, or I'll kill him.

"Y/n--"

Spence, I've always loved you. I was just too scared to say it before, and now things are really just too complicated to say it now. I'm sorry, but you should know.

"Fuck Spencer I have been in love with you since I first fucking joined this team." You gasped out. The air around your head got thinner and felt dizzying like you were floating through the air now that this was off your chest. "And I loved you when you asked me on a date. I loved you through Emily's death. I loved you when you asked me to move in with you. I loved you through when Morgan left the team. I loved you through Hotch leaving. I loved you through fucking Cat Adams. I loved you even after I came home one night and you were making out with her against our fucking door. I loved you through every single case and every single flaw. I loved you when you fucking relapsed a few years ago. I even loved you when you went MIA for weeks and then found out you were in a fucking Prison. And I still fucking love you now. But, instead of being together, you asked for a break."

"That's not fair..." He whispered.

"What? Respecting you and your boundaries? Knowing that you needed time to readjust after you had been released, and believing in your promise that once you felt ready to try a relationship again you'd come to me and talk to me about it? And then watching as you fall for JJ all fucking over again? With your stupid fucking glances. This isn't a goddamn tv show Reid, I can see when you both stare at one another across the room, I can see it."

"We don't.."

"You do. You both do. And then, you tell me that Jennifer fucking Jareau is willing to make her last words the fact that she has always loved you and has always been in love with you, and you---" Your voice froze, the sound cutting out. You looked straight at Spencer, not caring about the tears running down your cheeks. You watched as his hand twitched up. When the two of you were dating, Spencer used to wipe away every single of your tears. But now he wouldn't even lift his hand.

"I--what."

You took another breath, trying to calm down, and really think through your words. "This woman who has been your best friend for over a decade just fucking confessed her love for you, in a life-or-death situation, and you're telling me, that she just fucking made it up, pulled it out of her ass, or at least is telling you that she did and now the two of you are going to act like everything is normal and okay?"

"Y/n..."

"You were in love with her for years Spencer. And now, all of a sudden she confesses her love to you, and that changes nothing?"

"No, Y/n, it doesn't. It changes nothing. Does it hurt a bit? Yes. Does it change the fact that I love you? No." Spencer was trying to keep his voice level, hoping you'll continue to match his volume since he didn't want anyone to potentially stumble by and hear your argument. His hand reached for your wrist, but you couldn't bear to feel his skin against yours.

This caused you to let out a water laugh, tears sliding into your mouth, ugly but pouring down your cheeks. A waterfall of grief in all of its rawest forms.

"You still love me."

"Why-Why is that funny."

"I have been waiting to hear those words since you walked out of that fucking prison and the first time I hear it in years, it's because you're trying to justify loving someone else."

"That's not true."

Make it a million and one, you scoffed.

"I have loved you since the moment you first walked through those doors. You were in a pale blue pair of pants, and a black sweater--I remember it because Emily complimented the pants. I spend my whole life loving you and manage to never fully give you every single piece of love I have because there's simply not enough time in the world. I would kill for you. I would go to prison all over again if it meant you would be okay in this world." Spencer ran a hand through his hair, his voice strained. But his eyes never left yours. "Last week, when that unsub had his gun against your head, I fired before he even spoke, not because I assessed it was the right time or whatever fucking excuse I gave to Emily. I fired that bullet because if you died in front of me, I'd......The only thing I was thinking about the entire fucking time JJ and I were stuck in that room was how the fuck I was going to be able to tell you I love you one last time because I wasn't fucking smart enough to take my chance and say it to you every single day."

Your chest was heaving, but you didn't move towards him. It didn't feel right, it didn't feel real.

Spencer was able to take your hand in his, enclosing it between both of his, trying to get you to look at him. "I should have told you the moment I was ready to try a relationship again, but I thought you...I thought you had moved on because I wasn't worth waiting for."

This caused you to laugh again, eyes red from crying. "Don't fucking start with that shit Spencer.''

"I'm telling the god's honest truth."

"I waited for you throughout all of Prison. I waited for you through Maeve. I am still pathetically standing right fucking in front of you, waiting for you to hopefully realize that you still love me."

He kissed your hand. "And I don't deserve you at all for it."

"Do you still love her?"

"Y/n."

"Answer the question, Spencer. Or I'm done. I-I can't do this any longer, watching you....the way she looks at you just--"

Spencer pulled you into his arms, enclosing your body in his arms and kissing the side of your head. "I have always, and will always, love you Y/n Y/l/n. And I want to spend the rest of our lives proving to you that I would choose you, I want you, over and over again."

“That’s not an answer Spencer.” You whispered, rigid in his arms.

“I-I.” He closed his eyes. “I did. And I still do love her, but not like that. I haven’t been i-in love with her since the moment you walked through those doors.”

Spencer felt the weight of your head against his shoulder as you finally conceded and hugged him back, tightly. “Let's go home.” He muttered into your head, waiting patiently for you to hum in agreement.

Neither of you moved though. You both stood there, locked eternally in the other’s embrace, enjoying the peace you felt for the moment, even though tomorrow was a new day, where you would have to sort through how you really felt about all of this.

But tonight, you stood with your arms around your love, forever.

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san8ny · 1 year ago

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STILL GOT IT !

?: While you continue reign over your niche internet kingdom, Ellie finds herself consumed with thoughts of you, you and you! So much so, her fans are staring to notice. Joining your livestream, which she’s been trying to abstain from, you quickly remind her on why you’re so addictive in the first place! / E.W / 18+

!: too lazy to write all warnings but pretty tame when it comes to smut. s

Her heart initially falls to her ass when she sees the plethora of comments underneath her latest video, usual adornment of little heart emojis which now turned into discussions of twitter threads. How had a clipping of her rubbing herself inside a public bathroom stall, the usual shtick before she clocks into a boring 9-5– garner this much negativity? What changed?

“Eh, you don’t seem as passionate after the collab tbhhh”

“lost her touch lmfao”

“does this mean we get another video with you and—

She shuts the laptop closed, unable to further stomach her unsatisfied audience with thoughts running rampant in her mind.

Lost..her touch?

Surely these comments were satirical and just baiting her for another video with you, right? I mean, it’s not like she hasn’t gotten hate comments before, though rare for a small homemade creator like herself, but that was besides the point!

it irked her.

Since when has Ellie ever needed anyone for a platform she grew and built, huh? So what if you had given her the best fucking of her life? Genuinely, what about it? It’s not like she goes to sleep with you on her mind, just to awaken the next morning with her pajama bottoms absolutely drenched because she had the most delicious wet dream about you! That’d be crazy..

She rubs her temples a bit to soothe the pounding of her head, she needed a quick fix to this issue and fast! Opening the device back up, she seeks answers.

⌕ [“How do I get horny again without looking at the hot girl who had sex with me’s page?”]

Holding her breath, she types into the search bar. They do say google holds all the answers.

aaaand..nothing.

God, maybe she was dealing with an original experience? 8 Billion people and all useless.

What if you’ve ruined her to the brink of no-return? She can’t even orgasm anymore on her page without watching you, which makes the climaxes lackluster. She can never go back after you’ve given her a taste of the real thing.

That night, she props her laptop up with you pulled up on the screen. You’re wearing a pretty lingerie set, too pretty of one Ellie thinks. It’s the little fancy-pancy one’s you had in your closet that night you graciously let her stay over. Post-nut delirium, but Ellie could still see you liked lace alot, it being the main choice of material inhabiting your wardrobe.

Hot.

Her eyes scower the screen as donations roll in and as per usual, you thank the viewers with a pristine smile, like you didn’t turn Ellie back into a fuckin’ virgin.

She hasn’t been on one of your streams in a while actually, too caught up with work but now, she really remembers why she use to.

You were a guilty pleasure. Addictive, and Ellie didn’t even have a knack for sweets; you just always managed to pollute her head with the most vile of scenarios she could envision recreating with you and fuck, did she hate herself for it— hated herself for becoming so obsessed with someone who only saw her as a collaborater, a co-worker.

She couldn’t complain however, not with the way you manage to talk everyone through it in your streams in a low shaky voice, and especially, not with the way you capture everyones attention with your movements.

and, like a moth to a flame, Ellie finds herself, unaware, cupping her breasts..kneading the flesh like soft dough through her bleach-stained band tee, relapsing back into a place she thought she wouldn’t want to return to; she can’t help the moans that steadily escape her when you let one of your own out, and God, Ellie might really be the worst person because she hasn’t had this good of a masturbation sesh in forever. It’s been feeling so cold and robotic lately with her trying to appease her few followers, but we know how that turned out.

“Ellie’s in the stream?” You whimper out, reading the explosive chat when you slap the silicone toy messily against your puffy clit, swollen under it’s hood but sitting so pretty like an pearl would on its’s oyster, glistening in both your own liquids. “Hi Els..” Your whiney voice calls her out.

Oh God.

Ellie’s eyes roll back abit when she sees your crinkled eyes, lip pulled in between teeth and your flushed cheeks. She practically punches the ‘Co-Host’ request button with her camera off so only her pathetic pants of your name are heard, “H-hi doll..” She hisses out softly, “You l-look so pretty r’now, ah!..’m sorry haven’t been o-on your—mmh!— streams..”

You giggle at this, and the viewer count doubles in amount. Somehow, the stream becomes what seems like a steamy facetime call between two creators, with the rest of the viewers witnessing and prying in on the salacious moment, “‘s okay..just w-wanna hear your noises, Ellie.” It’s like you knew she couldn’t speak to you without a hand busying itself down there..

The girl groans, dropping her camera inbetween her legs to the echoing sounds of squelching and heaven. Though you couldn’t see her in the dark, 2:30 AM lighting of her bedroom she lounges in, you could feel it. She doesn’t even remember the last time she’d secrete this much arousal without the assistance of lube.

“A-ah, me baby? Gosh, ‘jus wanna watch you f’ a sec. Hear me well?”

You nod, eyebrows furrowing and your eyes growing more heavy when you prop your legs up on the gaming chair, displaying your drenched pelvic area— all so messy and for everyone to see. Mainly the broad on the other end of the stream..

You squeal when you curl your fingers into a specifically spongy spot, lips parting and your head thrown back a bit— you’d long ditched the dildo for something a bit more efficient, something to really capture the moment between you. Strands of hair stick to your forehead when an orgasm arises, and you seem a bit upset for cumming too quickly, not when Ellie has just got here!

Prolonging it a bit, you heave and retreat from your digits, rubbing your thighs imaptiently with your sighs stuttering, all while the other girl slaps at her cunt from what you can hear. Painslut

Ellie looks up back at you when she, herself, feels a tight coil in her stomach beginning to loosen, “B-boutta’ cum, dollface. Cmon..put them back on ‘er. Need my girl to do it with me.”

You nod ever so slightly to her voice, though you cannot see her, the raspiness of her voice takes you to a whole other level, “Ellie..” you cry out when your fingers make contact, it seems to be hitting you harder than usual, hypersensitivity of edging yourself all stream. Is it so wrong her green-eyed gaze trains on you intently while you whine and bitch for her?

The muscles in her abdomen tighten when she particularly notices a dumbed out look on you, saliva seeping past your glossy lips and dribbling to the lacy outfit you had on, rubbing her clit as fast as she can, she eggs you on, “Ah! Ah! J-just there w’you..wanna do it ‘wif you.”

Ellie gasps when your legs twitch uncontrollably, and on-cue, as promised, she meets the point with you— biting her knuckle when she spasms through the waves of orgasmic pleasure.

A few moments go past when Ellie picks her phone camera up to see you’d already went past your donation threshold. She can hear your hiccups, hair all messed up and covering your face— sweet baby..

She quickly ends the live-stream for you, a co-host accessible option you’d enabled incase you couldn’t end it from your own screen.

just to run to her bathroom to clean herself up before heading to your place.

Was she invited? No. Was she likely pushing a boundary? Yes, but, was she going to start a ‘no-aftecare’ streak in her entirety of 23 years? Fuck no.

Whether you liked it or not, she was on her way.

@san8ny: “alr she still got it ig”

#havent posted a fic inna while #heres sum slightly touch depraved ellie for yall #i usually post at night since it gets more interactions then #but im busy 2nite so i gotta post in the morning #ellie williams x f!reader #ellie williams x reader #tlou 2 smut

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randomnessunlimitedblog · 1 month ago

Note

D'ya really think Ken and Okazaki are comparable in terms of evil-ness?

Tetro spoilers under the cut

Okay honestly I don't think anyone in Tetro is 100% good or evil, however I will discuss Okazaki and Hasegawa in this post

Okazaki:

Beat up Wada, horribly injuring him

Made Wada have panic attacks by locking him up in small spaces

Pickpocketed stuff

Killed two innocent people, one of whom was slowly and painfully tortured to death

Ken:

Used the investigation into Watari's murder as a pretext for finding out his classmates' medical issues and personal traumas

Switched Yanagi's painkiller medicine with emetics

Stole Wada's food (which he knows is traumatic for Wada)

Swapped Hiroaki's milk with soy milk (which he's allergic to)

Gave Hiroaki back his drugs so he'd relapse

Lied to Ojima that Ojima attacked him while dissociating

Force-fed Ojima alcohol while he was dissociating to make him drunk

Repeatedly chose dare in the Loyalty Game and passed his penalties on to Mai, causing her to get brutally injured

Wrote death threats to Tamba

Dumped pool chlorine on Mai

Placed several traps around the school, which injured people

Trapped Yanagi in a dark room with nine rotting corpses for several hours

Killed Mai, an innocent person who wanted to help everyone

Tried to get the entire class killed. As if this wasn't bad enough, he'd been planning this since before Watari died, meaning that Watari and Hama (who actively reached out to him and tried to comfort him after Kamimura died) were going to be killed too

Claimed that nobody in the killing game knew what losing a loved one felt like after killing the girl Yanagi wanted to marry (and ignoring the pain of people like Wada, who lost four friends in the game)

I feel like you can argue that on one hand Okazaki was already "evil" when she came into the game and Ken was slowly driven insane, but on the other hand Ken did a lot more things and hurt a lot more people than Okazaki

Again, I think morality is hard to evaluate in Tetro because these are kids stuck in a life or death situation, but anyway those are my thoughts

#tetro danganronpa #tetro danganronpa pink #okazaki hanano #hasegawa ken #tetro danganronpa spoilers #tetro danganronpa pink spoilers

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mysticasrandomhorde · 2 months ago

Text

Got Warden Ingo on my brain.

....

Time to share some headcanons I thought about.

(keep in mind, I have never played the game, I may get some things wrong. . Be kind)

In Hisui:

Was there for 4 years, was "missing" For 2 years in Unova (Space time distortions are WEIRD)

-Has CONSTANT migraines due to his memory loss and head injury. Tended to night terrors when he had a memory return to him, depending on how small or large the memory was. Once was out for commission for a WEEK due to spotting a Steelix zooming by and it reminded him of the subways and Gear Station.

-He considers Iscan, Gaeric and Palina as his friends, and Calaba as his "Nana". He and Melli are on good terms and get along well, despite Melli's constantly denying he's "friends" with that weird man on the other side of the Highlands. He knows he's lying.

-COVERED in scars, mostly some handling baby Sneasels or rock climbing. His main ones are on his right eye (attack from a Luxray, thankfully just a flesh wound and didn't lose his eye), his left arm and shoulder (saving Rei from a Zoroark attack) and his side (Got into a fight with some poachers.)

-Became a bit feral while there (Autism be darned, this train boi can fist- fight a Garchomp and win). He once fought a rogue male Sneasler that got WAYY too close to his Noble's den. Forgot his pokeballs, only had his dagger on him.

-Lady Sneasler is the pokemon he's CLOSEST with. He feels indebted to her since she saved him and chose him to be a canidate to become her warden. Plus for him, its easier to talk to a pokemon than people about his problems. She's his emotional support pokemon, and Lady Sneasler considers him her FAVORITE warden she's had. Platonic Soulmates, fite meh.

-I subscribe to Dad! Ingo adopting the protag. Its too precious not to happen. Plus it would make sense for the ONLY other Skyfaller to bond with the protag. (I subcribe to the Au that the protag NOT being Dawn/Lucas, more like they have a similar appearance) I especailly enjoy the fics where he has adopted both of them. (A twin adopting a pair of twins, love it)

Post Hisui (Back in Nimbasa, Unova)"

-Still has Migraines, but they had lessened now he's back with family. Developed a habit of rubbing his hands together when he's nervous.

-REFUSED to leave Emmet's side when they reunited. He felt so guilty of forgetting his own twin he clung to him like a Slowpoke. Emmet didn't complain, he was the same.

-Took him 6-8 months to finally return to his normal life and his Subway boss duties. Repeating weeks of therapy, meds, and constant stress from the public that he considered the WORST weeks of his life. PTSD, anxiety, and

-Still has memory relapses, sometimes due to stress. It's gotten better over time, but sometimes he ends up wandering down a random street disassociating. Agreed with Emmet to get a tracker on his phone in case he has one when separated so he could find him.

-He takes Lady Sneasler back with him (He's her odd human and ain't leaving his side, and already chosen a successor since she was getting older) along with his Hisui team. It's always a shock to the trainers battling him when he switches up the team. Lady Sneasler is useful when scaring unwanted Plasma grunts hiding in the subways.

-Still has days when he's a bit feral. First week of him back, he REFUSED to sleep on his bed. Instead slept on the floor with his sheets and blankets pulled off and formed into a nest. Emmet now takes Ingo camping or hiking whenever Ingo gets overwhelmed at work and need to let loose a bit becomes a bit too much.

-His newfound reflexes always surprises his family (comes when being constantly being in danger of wild pokemon). He once flips his Uncle Drayden onto his back when he accidentally bumps against his arm when getting a cup of water. Ingo spent a whole HOUR apologizing, when Drayden was actually quite impressed.

-makes Hisuian recipes for his brother and Elesa. He's pretty good at it. Emmet got him a cookbook for their birthday. Ingo made him a carved Joltick in return.

#subway boss ingo #warden ingo #submas #pokemon #subway bosses #random headcanons #pokemon headcanons

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https-milo · 10 months ago

Note

DABI INSTA PLLSSS

yeah ok guys I hear you

DATING DABI INSTAGRAM !!

details!

instagram posts w/ comments while dating dabi!

a/n OBVIOUSLY these are just pictures off of interest, reader can be however you imagine !

(guys im going to be so honest, I haven't really watched MHA past like season four so ermmmm yeah!) (this one was actually kinda cute, like I wanna make a spinoff oneshot :(( )

main m. list / instagram m. list

blah.blah.y/n · 71w

33 likes

liked by: himiko.v4mp, tomura.shig, twicenottwice

blah.blah.y/n he said "I can do this without a lighter" but I didn't want our apartment to burn down <3

dabi wow you have no faith in me. kinda thought you loved me.

blah.blah.y/n dabi yapper, yapper. you know I love you, I just don't love paying for repairs xo

himiko.v4mp good call!! :33

blah.blah.y/n himiko.v4mp thank youuu!! <333

tomura.shig euh you two make me sick.

dabi tomura.shig watch it.

dabi · 67w

7 likes

liked by: himiko.v4mp, twicenottwice, stainismyidol, compressed.marbles

dabi look what her psycho ass got me

tagged: blah.blah.y/n

blah.blah.y/n literally be quiet. you love that shirt and mug.

dabi blah.blah.y/n doesn't change the fact you're crazy.

blah.blah.y/n dabi crazy about you 😽😽😽

tomura.shig kay why ess

blah.blah.y/n tomura.shig someones a little jellyyyyy

blah.blah.y/n · 65w

29 likes

liked by: tomura.shig, himiko.v4mp, big.sis.magne, twicenottwice

blah.blah.y/n my sister trusted us with watching my nephew. safe so say she picked the right people :,) <3

tagged: dabi

dabi i've never been caught lacking like this.

blah.blah.y/n dabi yap yap yap. you look so cute

offical.hawks blah.blah.y/n yeah dabi, you look soooo cute

dabi offical.hawks actually kys, birdbrain

offical.hawks dabi only if you'll help me

blah.blah.y/n offical.hawks GET YOUR OWN MAN YOU BITCH.

himiko.v4mp you guys should have one ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

dabi himiko.v4mp dont give her ideas.

blah.blah.y/n dabi rude. but as much as I would want one, neither of us are home enough to take care of a baby + ur job would make it dangerous

dabi · 60w

8 likes

liked by himiko.v4mp, tomura.shig, twicenottwice, big.sis.magne, compressed.marbles

dabi after a really long, long talk with y/n and shig, I've decided to leave the LoV. It's been fun and, even if I hate to say it, I'll miss you guys. In other news, my girl is pregnant so yay

tagged: blah.blah.y/n

blah.blah.y/n :( ilysm you dont know how much I appreciate you

tomura.shig whatever. be safe and let me see the baby when it's born.

blah.blah.y/n tomura.shig AWWWW I ALWAYS KNEW YOU CARED!

tomura.shig blah.blah.y/n shut up.

himiko.v4mp we're gonna miss you patchwork :((( I wish you and y/n well!! (I better be the godmother)

dabi himiko.v4mp ill miss you too shit head

blah.blah.y/n himiko.v4mp obviously youre the godmother!! my fave future auntie <33

big.sis.magne take care of yourself. don't let y/n do too much work, you brat.

dabi big.sis.magne yeah, yeah. I hear you.

s.todoroki um????

blah.blah.y/n s.todoroki unc shoto 🙏🙏

fuyumi.todo how is touya the first to have kids.

dabi fuyumi.todo tf is that supposed to mean.

n.todoroki IM GOING TO BE AN UNCLEEEE you better be treating y/n well 😤😤😤

blah.blah.y/n n.todoroki dw natsuo, i keep my man in check !!

blah.blah.y/n · 2w

28 likes

liked by: himiko.v4mp, tomura.shig, fuyumi.todo, s.todoroki, n.todoroki

blah.blah.y/n its been a while!! me, touya, and our precious boy are doing better than ever <3 thank you guys so much for all the support this past year and so. Even if he won't say it, touya is grateful. (p.s. you guys don't always need to spoil our son)

tagged: touya.todo

touya.todo sappy on main

blah.blah.y/n touya.todo 🤩 shut the fuck up 🤩

himiko.v4mp anything for our angels!! (+ touya)

touya.todo himiko.v4mp everytime we interact, i get the urge to relapse my killing sobriety

fuyumi.todo ahhh im so glad you guys are doing well!! i love you three 💕💕

s.todoroki did you guys get the packages I sent?

blah.blah.y/n s.todoroki yes sho, all 5 of them

tomura.shig good to see you guys alive and well.

blah.blah.y/n tomura.shig stfu, come visit your nephew

tomura.shig blah.blah.y/n ...coming

rei.himura my beautiful son with my amazing daughter-in-law and my adorable grandson... i hope you guys will visit me someday

touya.todo rei.himura of course ma

blah.blah.y/n rei.himura we'd love to! Our baby would love to meet his grandma <333

Thank you so much for reading <3

384 notes · View notes

ilovegeorgie · 22 days ago

Text

let me into your heart

george harrison x reader

genre: fluff & comfort

warnings: sh ! pls don’t read if youre not comfortable with the topic or struggling, remember that you’re not alone <3

summary: ⤦ having a hard time, but he makes it better

a/n: hii, this one is a little more personal (srry for that). i've been struggling with my mental health for a few years now, and because i didn't know how to deal with all, i used to sh. things haven't been that great lately, so i relapsed a while back. that's the main reason i haven't been able to post that much lately, which i'm sorry for. if you're going through a rough time, remember that you're not alone, and don't be afraid to reach for some help <33

the rain had been tapping against the window for some hours now, soft and steady. the room was dim, the curtains drawn, silence on every corner. she hadn’t left her bed all day, not feeling like doing much of anything really, her thoughts distant.

there was a knock at the door, it was soft.

she didn’t answer.

there was a little pause before the door slowly creaked open.

“love?,” george’s voice asked. she hadn’t seen him in a few days. he’d called and even left some flowers outside her door one night, which she found the next morning, with a small note: “thought this one might make you smile. please call me when you're ready. i love you.”

“i’m coming in,” he said gently, peeking his head through the doorway.

she didn’t move, still curled up in bed and buried in blankets, face pressed to a pillow she hadn’t changed in days.

george stepped in quietly. he didn’t say anything at first, just walked over, slow and soft, and sat on the floor beside her bed like he always used to when she’d study or read.

“i was worried,” he murmured, fingers nervously fidgeting. “did i do something wrong?”

her heart cracked a little at the sound of that.

“you didn’t,” she whispered, voice hoarse from disuse. “it’s not you.”

he nodded, trying to understand and, in a way, he did. he didn’t press her, just stayed there, hands resting in his lap. he looked up at her, eyes warm and full of concern.

“i miss you,” he said after a long moment. “even when you’re right here.”

tears pricked her eyes before she could stop them. she hated that she’d been pushing him away. not on purpose, but it was like her body was protecting itself by keeping everyone else out.

“i’m sorry,” she croaked, throat tight. “i don’t know why i’ve been like this. i don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

george shifted closer, “there’s nothing wrong with you,” he said firmly, “you’re just hurting. and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s okay.”

when she finally sat up, slowly because of the pain in her limbs, george reached for her immediately. not rushed, not forceful, just open arms. like an invitation.

she let herrself fold into him.

he held her close, her head tucked under his chin, his fingers gently brushing up and down her back. she could feel his heartbeat steady, grounding.

“you don’t have to explain it,” he whispered. “you don’t even have to fix it all today. just let me be here with you, please?”

she nodded against his chest, silent tears slipping down her cheek.

“i’ll stay,” he added. “all night, all week if you want. we don’t have to talk, let me hold you. i can play you something later if you feel up to it. or just sit, whatever you need.”

she pulled back just enough to look up at him, his brown eyes soft and sincere, his thumb brushing gently under her eye to catch a tear.

“i love you,” he said simply, “even on your bad days, especially on your bad days.”

george stayed close. he helped her shift the blankets, tucking them around her legs and gently sitting beside her, as if she was made of porcelain. he didn’t ask questions, didn’t make her speak. he just held her hand loosely, his thumb brushing the back of it.

the rain kept tapping softly at the windows.

then, with a small hop, a little blur of fur appeared at the end of the bed.

“is that your cat?” george asked softly, smiling as the feline trotted over with confidence only cats could have. she gave a small nod.

“she’s lovely,” he murmured, letting the cat sniff his fingers before she promptly settled herself between them, purring loudly like a small engine.

george chuckled. “she’s a fan already.”

she smiled for the first time in what felt like days. a real, tired, soft little smile. and that was enough to make george’s whole chest ache.

“you wanna lie down?” he asked after a while, voice gentle.

she hesitated, but then nodded.

he helped her, carefully easing down beside her on the bed, her cat curling herself into a donut shape at their feet.

george propped himself up on one elbow, his other hand still in yours. she shifted a bit under the covers, the fabric brushing against her arm. she flinched slightly, that’s when george noticed.

he didn’t say anything right away, just shifted his hand slowly, gently tracing over her wrist with the lightest touch. his eyes flicked down, seeing the scars. faded, some newer, some long past. his breath caught just a little, but not in fear. not in judgment.

he brought her hand to his lips and kissed her wrist, so soft it almost didn’t feel real.

then he leaned in close, forehead brushing hers.

“you don’t have to be okay all the time, but please don’t do this,” he continued. “not for me. not for anyone. but i want you to remember something, alright?”

she nodded, tears slipping silently down your cheek.

“you are loved,” george whispered. “you are loved on the hard days, on the quiet days, even when you feel like you don’t deserve it. and i’m not going anywhere.”

she couldn’t stop the tears then, but george didn’t mind. he just gathered her close, wrapping his arms around her and letting her cry quietly into his chest, his hand cradling the back of her head.

“i’m here,” he kept murmuring. “you don’t have to carry it all on your own. i’ve got you.”

eventually, she started to drift, worn out, but warmer somehow, her body relaxing into the softness of the bed, into the steady rhythm of george’s breathing.

george pressed one last kiss to her temple and whispered:

“you are my heart, love. just as you are.”

...

the room was quiet again, not in that heavy kind of way. the world outside could knock and knock but wouldn’t be let in.

george hadn’t let go of her hand once. even as the rain ticked on outside. even as her cat curled tighter at the foot of the bed.

when he saw the scars, he didn’t say anything at first. just saw. just noticed.

then, softly, so gently: “can i hold you properly now?”

she hesitated, but george just gathered her into his arms. not urgently, not pitifully. just full of care.

she buried her face into his chest, and for a while, neither of them spoke.

then she whispered, just barely: “i don’t know how to make it stop. i don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”

george’s arms tightened slightly around her.

“there’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, and there was steel under the softness this time. “you’re hurting, it doesn’t make you broken. it makes you human.”

her fingers clutched at his shirt. her body started to tremble, the weight of everything, the numbness, the shame, the guilt, the exhaustion, everything rushing out of her all at once. she couldn’t stop it. the sobs were thick and hot in her throat, and the tears came harder than she meant to let them.

“i’m so tired, george,” she choked out, “i’m so tired.”

he cupped the back of her head and tucked her closer. “i know, love. i know. let it out, you don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”

her tears soaked through the fabric of his shirt, but he didn’t move. he just kept whispering, over and over: “you’re safe now, i’ve got you.”

when her sobs quieted, not fully gone, but gentled to sniffles and hiccups, george pulled back just enough to see her face. his thumbs brushed her cheeks. his eyes were glistening too.

“you don’t have to hide this from me,” he said. “not your pain, or your scars, not even your sadness. i don’t love some perfect version of you. i love you. and this is part of you.”

he brought her arm up gently, and ran his fingers along the faded lines there.

“these,” he said, voice thick, “are proof that you’ve survived every day you didn’t think you could. you’re still here. and i’m so proud of you for that.”

a fresh wave of emotion hit her chest. but this time, it wasn’t from the loneliness, it came from the impossible weight of being seen, truly seen, and not being abandoned for it.

george leaned in and kissed her forehead, then her temple, then her hand.

“promise me something?” he asked quietly.

she nodded.

“if it ever gets too much again… will you tell me? before you hurt yourself? let me help you?”

“i don’t want to be a burden,” she whispered.

george frowned, “you’re not, you never will be, i want to be here. i’m not here out of pity but because i love you. you matter to me more than anything.”

she didn’t say anything, just leaned into his chest again, her arms around his waist this time, holding him.

the cat stretched at her feet and curled up against her legs. the room smelled like rain and worn cotton and that faint trace of george’s cigarettes, warm, safe and steady.

after a while, he shifted a little to pull the blanket further over both of them. his voice was softer now, sleepy.

“i was thinking… maybe tomorrow, if i could play something for you. or we can just sit by the window, talk about nothing. or maybe i’ll read something to you, what do you think? we’ll take it slow. one soft day at a time.”

she nodded into his chest. “that sounds nice.”

his hand found hers again under the blankets, lacing their fingers together and pressing a final kiss to her head.

#george harrison #the beatles #george harrison x reader #beatles #the beatles x reader #john lennon #paul mccartney #ringo starr

49 notes · View notes

peachglazewrites · 4 months ago

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𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚖𝚎 𝚞𝚜 ⸙ 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚗𝚎

𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙵𝚞𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝙳𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚋𝚢 𝙿𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚕 𝙹𝚊𝚖

𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐: ellie/f!reader 𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜: tlou typical violence, blood & gore, PTSD, poor coping mechanisms, suicidal ideation 𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚜: angst, first meetings, ellie has PTSD, strangers to friends to lovers, SLOW burn 𝚊𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘: post tlou part II, no use of y/n or physical descriptions, dual POV, reader has (had) an older brother 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝: 8840k

𝚜𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: After the events of TLOU Part II, Ellie packs up her life in Austin, Texas to head to Boston with a single goal- finally giving Tess the burial she deserves.

You cross her path (she crosses yours, rescuing you) along the way, and you find that you're headed the same direction.

The rest is history.

a/n: hello!!! welcome to the fic! this was a request by a lovely anon, and what was meant to be a one shot has quickly devolved into a nine part story. please mind the tags with this one, as we hop into some pretty rough themes/mindsets! I'm so excited to begin posting this, and I hope that you all enjoy ♡

link to the original request : ̗̀➛ master post

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ save/read this on ao3 . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

Chapter One

APRIL

Ellie doesn’t realise it’s been a year until she’s sitting down on the porch of her little house in Austin, rifle spread out in front of her, disassembled.

The call of a bird in the trees above her, so close to a baby’s cry, makes her heart race as she looks into the yard, searching for JJ; searching for the danger.

But he’s not there. He’s in Jackson, with Dina.

It doesn’t happen often anymore, relapsing back and forgetting where she is, but sometimes when she’s calm and her brain is blessedly empty, sick and cruel memories will sink their feral teeth back into her—dragging her down and making her spiral all over again.

The barrel of the rifle tumbles from her trembling hand, the one two digits down that she swears she can still feel. It clatters to the floor, rolling and threatening to bounce down the steps.

“Fuck—” Her hands come up, gripping and pulling on the hair at the back of her head as she curls up on the porch, knees pressed to her chest, eyes wide and staring down at the swirls and knots of the wood beneath her.

A year. A whole year since the screen door of the farmhouse creaked and snapped closed behind her.

April. Spring. Welcoming the new lambs in, spending the days helping Dina with the garden, nights on the porch just like this, music drifting through the open window as she plays with JJ, shirt covered in drool as he teethes. Doing everything she can to forget—

To forget this time two years ago, when she was in Seattle. Forget Jesse, Abby, Joel.

And as she sits there, thinking and mourning and spiralling with her head in her hands, she realises that the hospital all those years ago was April too, wasn’t it?

April.

Why is it always fucking April? Ellie would give anything in the entire world to never live through another April ever again.

And she’s thought about it—what she would do. What she’d be willing to give up. It’s not like she has much left, like she has anyone waiting for her in this house so far away from where she dared call home. Anyone missing her or thinking about her while she’s gone--

But she can’t. Because too many people have died for her to be where she is now; and the guilt of that lies the heaviest, heavier than the one of existing in the first place.

So instead, she uses the heels of her palms to scrub roughly at her face, rubbing the tracks of silent tears off her scarred and freckled skin, telling herself to “get it together, Ellie.”

Ellie let’s herself have thirty more seconds. Half a minute to feel and mourn and crave what she’s lost before she straightens her back, picks up the rifle barrel and gets back to work.

Pushing the thoughts from her mind how she’s learned to.

⸙

They stick around this time, thoughts thick and dark and oozing along the back of her mind. Just like they used to before she figured out how to stop caring. To repress and forget, march forwards and never look back.

Like father like daughter, she supposes.

She blames it on the time of year, this cursed month that has haunted her for seven years, the majority of her teenage life and those of her twenties. It’s clinging to her back, and she just can’t stop thinking.

She thinks about people who she’s pushed so far down, it hurts to rip them back up again. People like her mom.

Her mom who she didn’t even know yet haunts her every day—in the way she looks through the window into the backyard of the house she’s claimed as her own, reflection ghosting back at her and making her think ‘Do I look like you? The way JJ looks like Jesse?’

Ellie sighs, hands gripping the edge of the kitchen counter as she forces herself to look away, into the worn and weathered dining room beyond.

She’s been here since December, a tiny house in some part of Austin, Texas; a ghost town that’s long been abandoned. She came here after everything, after Santa Barbara, having no other direction in her head than Texas.

It’s where Joel used to live-- before. She knew that from the times he spoke about it, the promises of showing her one day that he never kept.

She used to feel stupid coming here, like she didn’t have any reason to. She wasn’t part of his life back then, didn’t know him when he was Joel Miller, father and contractor.

But she knew him when he was Joel, the man who walked a country for her. Someone she could have called dad if she wanted to but never found the courage until after he died in front of her-- and this, Texas, is the closest she’ll be to him ever again.

She walked for five months, including a temporary stop in Salt Lake City. She didn’t know exactly where Joel lived, any details he might have divulged forgotten with time or thrown away when she barely held interest for him, so she finds somewhere quiet and stays.

Ellie’s barely done anything with it. She boarded up the worst of the damage and did her best to insulate during winter, but a majority of the house she’s left closed off and unused. She’s been camping out in the living room, having dragged furniture and mattresses into the space to make it her own.

She stopped when she found the bones under one of the beds, curled up and forgotten.

Ellie lets her eyes drift back to the window, forcing past her reflection and to the lawn of the backyard, the wild reclaiming it years ago. She doesn’t tend to it, not really, though she keeps that back corner somewhat clear. Out of respect, or a semblance of it.

Three crudely made crosses-- something she made when she couldn’t sleep one night during winter-- stick out of the ground there. Only one of them has a mound in front of it, the blank cross for the bones she found.

The other two are clustered together, rough carvings of names marking the wood.

Riley and Anna.

She would have made more, a memorial of all the people she’s forsaken, but it didn’t feel right to drag them here when they already have resting places of their own.

Jesse and Joel have beautiful graves out in Jackson, headstones she’ll probably never get to sit at ever again.

Sam and Henry are out in Pittsburgh, under a maple tree where her and Joel buried them all those years ago.

Marlene has a grave in Salt Lake City. Ellie saw it when she went back to the hospital, finding a whole bunch of them out in a courtyard she’d never seen before. (She spent a long time there, sitting next to Marlene. Afterwards she searched, not stopping until she found the grave for ‘Gerald ‘Jerry’ Anderson— Devoted father and our best hope’, and she spent a long time there too.)

And Tess…

Tess is still in Boston, in that building where they left her.

It makes her skin crawl thinking about it, and god does she think about it. Tess’s bones sprawled across the tiles where she lay after she was riddled with bullets.

Was she even still there? Did they get rid of her, take her and those Fireflies that were dead when they arrived out the back and burn them in a terrible heap? Did FEDRA care enough to bother?

Ellie’s regretted so many things in her life, has had so many people die because of her and what she used to represent—but at least they’ve been put to rest, even though they’re still so impossibly loud in her mind.

And she knows she can’t get to Riley, trapped in that fucking mall in the arcade where Ellie, sobbing and bleeding from the arm, dragged her best friend she killed twice— knowing she would have liked it a whole lot better in here than in that stupid Halloween store. She doesn’t know what happened to her mom or where she could possibly be, but Ellie knows enough to realise there’s nothing she can do about it.

It's why she made the crosses, giving them a place to rest knowing it’s impossible to do anything more.

But Tess—

Ellie hangs her head, fingernails splintering as she grips the counter tighter, eyes closed as she thinks of that domed building—Tess’s mausoleum.

She needs to go to Boston.

⸙

It doesn’t take Ellie long to pack her life up into the backpack she’s had since she was thirteen. She truly doesn’t have much, mostly just her clothes and weapons. She indulges herself and keeps a few items that aren’t tied to her survival; things she hasn’t been able to let go that sit in the bottom of her bag. Joel’s watch, Dina’s bracelet, a stack of trading cards, and her journal. They take up hardly any space, so she doesn’t feel bad about the room that could have been used for more important things, like food and ammunition.

She puts the house back the way she found it-- out of respect or something, she’s not too sure. The only thing she leaves behind are the locks of hair she cuts from her head, the ends choppy but now barely brushing the collar of Joel’s flannel.

It makes her a little emotional, leaving this place. A small tug in her heart, something pulling and pleading for her to just stay. This is the most she has, a place she can call her own. Something stable.

God, does she want stable, but she also needs to do this. This is one of the only things she has left that she can fix. The others feel far beyond her.

Ellie planned her route the night before, laying out a map on the wooden floor of the living room, pencil in hand and journal in her lap. She knew she wasn’t close to Boston, but being nearly two thousand miles away shocked her a little bit. That was the optimistic number too, assuming that roads would be clear, and she didn’t run into any detours. Knowing Ellie’s luck, she’d be lucky if she got there before winter, a good eight months away.

She writes down her plan in her journal, taking over one of the empty back pages. It’d be much more convenient to take her notes on the map itself, but she refuses to make that mistake twice.

Ellie hitches her backpack onto her back, freshly cleaned rifle strapped and sitting against her left shoulder, bow slung over the same one. Joel’s revolver, also recently cleaned, sits snug in a holster clinging to her thigh, switchblade in her back pocket.

She hasn’t fully kitted up like this in weeks, not needing to after finding that person’s bunker the next town over. She almost felt bad taking as much as she did, stuffing her bag and an old duffel with as many tins and cans as she could take. She doubted anyone had been there in years—but if they had?

Well, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, out here.

Ellie takes a breath, holds it until her lungs burn and her eyes water and savours the that moment of light-headedness then let’s go, stepping off the porch and letting the door shut behind her as she leaves; an all too familiar feeling.

She heads north, cutting up across the country.

First stop, Dallas.

⸙

It takes just over a week on the road before something inevitably goes wrong.

Ellie had been doing fine. She always does. She’s not new to this kind of travel-- hunting and scavenging, camping out under the stars or cramped into corners with her rifle in her hands. As much as she misses Jackson, the farm, and sometimes even her dorm in that shitty FEDRA school, there’s something about being out here that feels right to her.

It reminds her of that year with Joel. When she was fourteen and trusting this man who wanted nothing to do with her with her life, and then somewhere along the way he had taken her in as his own. It reminded her of learning how to shoot, of a thousand games of I Spy, serious nods as she explains the volume of Savage Starlight she just read and what she thinks happens in the gaps of the volumes she doesn’t own.

She realises that no amount of safety and security, high walls and locked doors, would ever make her feel as welcomed or soothed as these open roads.

It makes her sick to think about it.

Ellie was only a couple of days out of Dallas, standing in the last city she’d hit before then. The roads ahead of her were littered with traffic, hundreds of cars left abandoned to rust for the rest of eternity. Rubble from collapsed buildings block alleys and side streets, creating craters in the pavement below where they’ve fallen. Bodies, gaunt and skeletal, decorate the footpaths beneath her feet, tattered clothes bleached by the sun and fluttering in the wind.

The sun above her was low, sliding behind towering buildings and painting the sky in reds, pinks, and purples. Ellie would have to get inside before it gets too dark to see, her flashlight only making her a sitting duck in the middle of this unfamiliar road.

She can be reckless, but she’s not stupid.

So, she sticks to buildings, climbing through open windows and sneaking through propped open doors. There’s infected about, because when is there not, but they’re just stragglers—not worth the time or risk. Ellie is slippery, sneaky, her weathered converse that are worse for her feet than boots but infinitely quieter making no noise as she crawls.

The office building is where it all goes to shit.

To be fair, she didn’t realise what kind of building it was when she snuck in, stepping through the door to the fire escape and creeping up the stairwell. She only wanted to reach the top floor, make her way to the roof so she can get a better view of the city from above, but the top stairwell was blocked with desks, cabinets, and even part of the ceiling before she could get there.

Ellie retreats inside, through the door closest to her, pausing when she sees the rows of office cubicles moulding away in front of her.

“Oh, come on,” she curses, turning on her heels, trying to backtrack and leave the way she came, but the door slams shut before she can slip through, vibrations rattling the doorframe.

A low, metallic groaning muffles through the wood, Ellie cautiously stepping back. The groaning gets louder, reaching its peak before making a series of loud thuds, ending in one final crash against the door.

Ellie blinks, staring at the fire escape, her way out.

“No fucking way, dude…”

She tries the handle, and while it turns, it barely budges as she pushes on it. She tries over and over, shouldering the wood to try and get the thing open even just a little bit, enough for her slip through.

No luck.

“Shit,” she groans, pitching her head forward to hit against the wood a few times.

Ellie hates offices. Too many floors, too many places for things to hide. It’s practically a death sentence walking into one. She’s never had a good experience in one of these buildings, and she has a sneaking suspicion that her luck isn’t about to change.

Ellie pushes herself from the door, leaning down to unclip her revolver from the holster on her thigh. “Okay,” she breathes, turning around and assessing the room. “You’re good. Just gotta find a way out of here…”

Adjusting her grip on the gun, she begins a careful sweep of the room, watching every step she takes as she walks across the office floor with a precision that has been drilled into her.

There’s row after row of cubicles in the centre floor, private offices and meeting rooms shooting off to the side. She doesn’t bother with any of these, wanting to just get the fuck out of here before it gets too dark.

Thankfully, on the other side of the room is a stairwell, one for public use that is blessedly free from doors that will slam shut behind her and trap her inside.

Ellie sighs with relief, pressing onwards with her revolver held out in front of her, sticking close to the wall as she approaches the stairwell. She does a quick sweep before she enters, checking the floor above and below for anything before continuing.

She takes the steps one at a time, watching her feet. She barely makes it down the first flight when she hears it.

It’s faint, muffled, but echoes up through the empty stairwell. A thump, thumpthump, thump—like something hitting a wall, maybe a door. Ellie curses, a quiet “Fuck,” under her breath as she pauses to listen.

The sooner she can get out of here, the better.

The further down Ellie gets, the louder the noise becomes. The thumping is soon joined by low croaking, the familiar screeches and clicks of a clicker on high alert.

She holds her breath as she gets closer, clinging close to the wall, hoping to god that she can just keep going down these steps and—

“You’re kidding me,” she groans under her breath.

The stairway ahead of her, just as she rounds the corner, is blocked. Desks, chairs, cabinets, half the goddamn office. It’d almost be impressive if it wasn’t ruining her life right now.

The only way forwards is through the doorway to Ellie’s right which leads into another office, but it’s in here that the noises are the loudest; the banging, the clicking, the croaking cry of something else.

Ellie retreats until her back is pressed into the corner, crouching over her backpack to breathe and take stock of what she has. She’s not doing too bad on ammunition, both guns fully loaded for the time being. She’s also got a handful of arrows left—six to be exact—thanks to a resupply a few towns over.

From the noises alone she knows there’s two, maybe three infected in there. Most likely all clickers.

She can do this, if she’s careful.

Swinging her pack over her shoulders, she sticks low to the ground, creeping back to the doorway. Her fingertips graze the ground as she leans forward, peeking into the room.

The first thing she notices is how empty it is, the first row or so of cubicles missing their desks and chairs. Deep ridges rip the carpet, a series of drag marks marking the path of each piece of furniture as it was pushed down the stairs.

This was done recently, Ellie notes, the carpet where the desks once stood pristine and free of thirty years of dirt and grime.

The next thing she notices is the body.

It’s mildly fresh, a couple of days old at most, sprawled out on the carpet, a deep brown puddle of festering blood soaking beneath him. It’s a man, mouth agape and eyes open, foggy irises staring right at Ellie.

She stops breathing, throat closing as she stares back at him, his face swollen and horrifically bloodied, the side of his skull caved in, his greying hair plastered to his face, thick with blood and brain and—

She splutters, gulping in air as she retreats, pressing her back to the wall once more. Her eyes are wet yet impossibly dry, so she blinks and scrubs hard with her palm heels until she can’t see anymore, black spots blurring her vision.

“It’s not him. It’s not him,” she murmurs, hands shaking as she pulls them away from her face.

Ellie swallows, waiting for it to feel like she’s not going to throw up before she crawls back to the entryway, forcing herself to peer back inside.

The man on the carpet is young, older than her but not by much. The bullet hole in his cheek tears the skin open, a gnarly flap of it hanging down his face. The skin is mottled with blues and green, spidery veins that creep up from his neck and eyes, broken capillaries typical with the freshly turned.

He was barely infected before he was shot.

Question is, who the fuck shot him?

Ellie’s eyes flick up, desperately ignoring the way her breaths are still uneven, hitching softly in her throat. A remnant of her moment of weakness.

Across the room and right up the back, not one, but two clickers throw themselves at a door, some sort of supply closet. They’re agitated by something on the other side, screeching and snapping at the wood. Whatever it is has their full attention; they’re not stopping any time soon.

Opposite this door, settled on the other wall is the fire escape, a single desk piled high with chairs and wastebaskets and who knows what else barricading it to all hell.

What is going on?

Ellie holsters her revolver, reaching a trembling hand up to unhook the bow from her shoulder. She fumbles with it in her left hand, adjusting her grip a few times as she raises to stand to her full height, stepping slowly into the doorway.

She had to completely relearn how to handle the bow after she amputated her fingers. She had to relearn a lot, actually, more than she was expecting. She’s forever grateful that it was her left hand, and that it wasn’t any of the more important fingers like her index or thumb—but it impacted her life in ways she never even thought about.

She’s still figuring out the guitar.

Ellie takes a step closer, pulling an arrow from her pack and notching it on the bowstring. She pulls it back with one fluid movement, holding her hand up to her cheek as she aims, focusing on the back of one of the agitated clickers.

She knew that this was risky, that this would most likely alert the other, and that she’d need to act fast. Drop the bow, take out her revolver, and run. But there’s the smallest chance that whatever is in that closet is distracting enough that it won’t care, and she can take both down no problem.

She draws in a breath, letting it all out slow through barely parted lips as her fingers twitch around the notch of the arrow.

Multiple things happen at once.

Ellie let’s go, the arrow sailing smoothly through the air and burying in the back of the clicker’s head with a sickening crunch of fungus and cartilage. A strangled croak leaves the creatures throat as it falls, crumbling to its knees and slumping against the door. The arrow sticks right out the back of its skull, a perfect shot. She’ll be able to grab that, later.

The clicker next to it pauses, just for a fraction of a second before whatever the hell is on the other side of that door brings it attention back, continuing to gnash and slam against the wood.

At the same time, a gnarled croak and rapid footsteps from behind make Ellie spin on her heels, turning around just in time to hold her arms up to block the strike of a stalker that lunges right for her.

She falls back, dropping her bow and taking the stalker with her as she lands on her back, head knocking to the side as she grapples. The dead guy is next to her, and his cloudy eyes meet hers for just a moment before she has to pull herself away, bracing against the creature atop of her. It’s sat up enough to swipe at her, swinging it’s arms down to claw at her raised arms.

“Fucking—Get off me!”

Ellie grunts with effort, planting her feet on the ground and using the leverage from her pack to push, rolling both the stalker and her over. It’s still crying out, teeth gnashing as she straddles it, one hand pressing down on its concave chest as she fumbles around her thigh for her revolver. She has to keep ducking and shifting away from it’s gnarled hands, jagged nails split and yellow swiping up at her face and arms.

A screech, sharp and piercing from the other side of the room raises the hairs on the back of Ellie’s neck, eyes widening as she whips her head up. Her scuffle has alerted the clicker by the closet, and she can do nothing but watch as it twitches and lurches to face her.

“Oh fuck—”

Ellie finally gets a grip on her revolver, cocking the hammer and pressing the barrel right between the stalker’s eyes, firing. The sound is deafening up close, a high-pitched whine muffling her hearing. The creature under her shudders with a dying croak, and Ellie can’t get away from it quicker, pushing herself up until she falls back on her ass. Legs scramble in front of her, pushing and crawling until she backs up into the wall behind her.

The clicker is rapidly approaching, arms winding madly and head twitching from side to side.

The wooden handle of the revolver creaks under Ellie’s grip, hand clenched tight as she cocks the hammer and aims, shooting up at it. It misses the head, hitting it right in the middle of the throat in a spray of black and brown. The creature gasps, faltering just enough for Ellie to push herself up off the floor and run, sprinting to the other side of the room to give her space to breathe and think.

She can do this. She’s done this for years. She just needs to focus.

Focus, Ellie. Focus.

She unlatches the cylinder, taking note of how many shots she has left. Four. She could pull out the rifle if she needs, but the room is far too small and the clicker is far too close for it to be safe.

Better make each of these shots count, then.

The creature is persistent, having gotten over the shock of the bullet through its throat. It charges towards Ellie as she fires once more, breaths heaving her chest, a spray of chitinous fungus exploding from the side of its head.

She has no time to celebrate, pulling back the hammer once more as she stumbles back, putting a desk between her and the clicker. She aims, doesn’t hesitant for a second as she fires, hitter the fucker square between what used to be its eyes.

It screams, a chittering, croaking wail, and Ellie winces as she watches it spin, stumbling and falling to the ground in a heap.

“Yeah,” Ellie breathes out, chest rising and falling with her panting breaths. “That’s right.”

She collapses against the desk, pressing her hands to the surface, hanging her head down so her chin meets her chest. Her whole body hurts— the back of her head aches from where she knocked it, blood flows down her arms from the stalker scratches.

Too close.

A noise, a soft thump from nearby has Ellie tensing, grip tightening on the revolver as she whips her head up, scanning the room.

Nothing. Well, nothing alive at least. She’s the only breathing thing left in here, and with the stairs and fire escape blocked she doesn’t know where else—

She hears it again, a soft thump followed by a long, low sound, muffled and interrupting her thoughts. It sounds like it’s coming from nearby, through the wall.

Like the closet.

Shit, Ellie thinks, eyes dragging towards the door, dead clicker still slumped against the wood. Was this what was setting those clickers off?

She pushes herself off the desk, wrapping her other palm around the revolver as she drifts to the wall closest to her, covering her back. She only has two bullets left in the cylinder, so she takes the couple of seconds of approach to reload.

The closer she gets, the clearer the sound starts to become. It’s a low cry… human. Like a sob.

With a foot to the back, Ellie grabs the arrow from the back of the dead clickers head, the one keeled over against the door, and pulls. It dislodges with a sickening crunch and sucking noise, and she uses the momentum of her foot to shove the body out of the way of the door. It slumps, thudding to the ground and rolling over on itself.

The rhythmic heaving of choked sobs drifts through the wood, making Ellie’s gut twist uncomfortably.

She could just go. She’s dealt with the issue, done whoever was on the other side of this door a major solid. She doesn’t need to involve herself more, throw herself into danger. Infected are unpredictable and fast, bodies strong and jaws stronger.

Humans can plan, deceit and lie. Hold weapons. Shoot.

She cocks her revolver.

“Hey,” Ellie calls out. Shit, she’s rusty, voice crackling around the edges from disuse. She hasn’t spoken properly in weeks, speaking only in murmurs or yells and nowhere in between. She swallows, wetting her throat. “You can come out, now.”

The sobs on the other side cut off with a sharp gasp, replaces with the shuddering pants of someone in a panic. A hiccup.

“I-I don’t…”

The sobs begin again, clawing their way out of the person’s raw throat.

Ellie sighs, chewing the inside of her cheek as she glances at the clicker on the ground, black blood and remnant brain matter leaking from the hole in its head.

“They’re dead. I took care of it.”

Nothing. Just more crying.

She seriously should just leave. The fire escape is right there; all she needs to do is move the desk out of the way, then she’ll be free.

Her gaze flicks to the side, to her freedom, then back down to the handle of the door.

“Are you trapped in there? Is this thing locked?” A hesitant hand rests on the handle but doesn’t turn it.

Those shuddering breaths, the wracking sobs from within continue. Why is she still even here? This isn’t any of her business.

The noises stop.

Ellie pauses, a frown twitching the edge of her lips, scar tugging uncomfortably at the skin. Unease curdles in her twisting gut; she presses her ear against the wood.

Sharp inhales, a shuffling of feet against carpet, ragged wheezing as they try desperately to suck in air.

Fuck.

Ellie steps back, fingers of the clicker on the floor crunching under the heel of her converse. Her lip is pulled between her teeth, chewing on the already torn skin as she looks between the closet and her escape.

“Shit, okay.” Dragging a hand through her hair, pushing the greasy strands out from her face as she thinks. “Uh, I’m coming in,” she calls to the person inside, pressing down on the handle.

It’s unlocked. She can feel the way her heart thunders behind her ribs, the way it vibrates through her veins and makes her hand tremble. As much as she wants to believe it’s from the rush of the kill, the adrenaline, she can’t ignore the chill of fear that settles like a block of ice in the bottom of her stomach.

Ellie pushes the door open, revolver at the ready.

A shot rings out in the small space and Ellie ducks, covering her head with her bloodied arms. It goes wide, missing her by at least a foot as plaster from the ceiling rains down on her. She swears, pushing her back against the wall next to the doorway, quickly swiping debris from her eyes.

Ellie’s trembling hand clasps around the other over the handle of her revolver, arms extended and pointing at the floor. She can feel her breathing getting sharper, shallower, and forces herself to get it together, breathing in deep through her nose to be rid of her light-headedness.

The fire escape taunts her, lopsided barricade making it impossible for her to retreat. She should have just left. Why didn’t she just fucking leave?

She waits for just a few more seconds, waiting for whoever was inside to act first. Nothing. Nothing except for those choked, wheezing gasps that she’s more familiar with than she’d ever like to be.

Revolver out in front of her, Ellie turns round the doorway. Her finger ghosts the trigger, ready to fire at whatever she finds inside.

Fire at you.

“I-I’m sorry—” you wheeze, chest heaving and shuddering as Ellie blocks the light flooding into the closet, silhouetting her from behind. A pistol, black and sleek, trembles in your hand that lays fallen against the floor by your thigh. The other is clawing at your throat, where you’ve started to turn red from the strain of not breathing.

Ellie sweeps the closet from top to bottom, eyes flicking over shelves of copy paper and boxes of pencil before focusing back on you, trembling on the ground.

“Put the gun down,” she barks, her own unwavering of its aim at your head.

You listen, hand letting go of the pistol to come up to your shirt, gun clattering to the floor as you tug and pull at the fabric that feels too tight around your throat.

“I can’t—I had to, I-I’m so fucking sorry—”

Ellie knows this. She’s lived this. She can practically feel it as she watches you, clinging and clawing and begging. Maybe that’s why she does what she does next-- a weak moment of sympathy she’ll tell herself later.

She lowers her revolver and steps into the room.

“Breathe. You need to breathe.”

Okay, Captain Obvious. As if you didn’t already know that.

“Can’t—” you gasp, eyes red with the strain, glassy and looking so far into the distance, further than the walls of this room would allow.

“You have to.” She changes her grip on the gun, holding her left hand out, what’s left of her pinkie and ring finger twitching. “Just take a deep breath, as deep as you can, and hold it.”

She waits for you to do as she says, eyes focused on the hitching of your chest as you try so desperately. Your eyes flutter closed, fists clenched tight as you draw in an admittedly weak breath, but it’s the deepest one you’ve had in a while.

“Good. Slowly breathe out-- nice and easy.” Ellie steps closer, revolver pointed to the ground, hand out like she’s approaching a wounded animal.

Nodding, you hiss out the air in your lungs in one, long, stuttering breath. Your whole body is wound tight, and tears still stream down your dirty cheeks, but your sobs quiet as you breathe.

Ellie approaches as close as she dares, sticking a foot out to kick the pistol away from you, the gun clattering as it skids across the closet floor. With it out of the way, she slowly lowers to a crouch, forearms resting on her knees as she looks at you.

Frankly, you look like shit. Everyone these days does, but you especially so. Your clothes are caked in brown blood and dirt, the sleeve of your shirt ripped and dangling onto your shoulder by a thread.

Your cheeks have that sunken look to them, the one people get when they haven’t eaten in days, and your quivering lips are chapped and cracking, blood oozing from where it splits open.

A spray of blood has dried on your face, your silent tears running muddy tracks through the gore.

Ellie’s eyes linger on the deep red mark at your temple. A perfect circle, likely to bruise. She flicks a quick glance to the discarded gun, then back to you.

“What’s your name?” She asks when she thinks you can handle it, breaths evening out.

You don’t look up at her, haven’t since she’s walked in, focused too hard on something else, somewhere else. Your name tumbles from your lips, and Ellie nods.

“Ellie,” she offers, barely willing to give it up.

Hesitantly, she holsters the gun back on her thigh, fingers twitching. She’s careful not to take her eyes off you, watching those hands that have loosened around your shirt and throat.

Ellie carefully shoulders off her bag, unzipping and reaching for her canteen. Undoing the cap, she holds it out to you.

“Drink.”

You swallow, mouth thick with dehydration, looking up for the first time. Your eyes flick to the canteen, then drag slowly up to Ellie. The shadows of your face are deep, and there’s a broken blood vessel in the corner of your right eye.

She gestures out again, water sloshing in the container.

You look back down, trembling hands hesitantly reaching out and taking it, pressing the plastic to your bloodied lips. The moment a drop of water touches your tongue you start guzzling the whole thing, drinking quick.

“Hey—whoa!” Ellie reaches for you, grabbing your arm to pull it back. You flinch and stare at her with frightened eyes, gasping as you take a fresh breath, a trickle of water running down the corner of your mouth.

Ellie removes her hand.

“You’ll throw up if you’re not careful.”

You blink, looking back down at the canteen, pulling it up for another sip, this time a lot more careful.

You both sit there as you get your fill, drinking all her water. Ellie doesn’t mind. She’ll fill it again once she leaves.

“Your arms are bleeding.”

It startles her a bit, your voice clearer, yet still croaked through the strain, louder than she’s heard it yet.

She shrugs, dismissing you. “I’ll deal with it later.”

She watches as you polish off the canteen, tilting you head back as you wait for the last drops to coat your tongue.

“Were you the one who barricaded the stairs?” Ellie reaches for the canteen when you offer it, gripping onto the container until the last second as if you’ll never have another opportunity to drink after this. She buries it back in her pack.

“My brother.” You tone is flat—tired. The exhaustion has crept up on you, sapping all of your emotions away.

Ellie thinks to the man on the floor.

“Is he…” she trails off, not knowing how to ask, eyes falling to the doorway.

“Dead.”

Ellie nods. “Infected?”

Your head drops, gaze focused on the dirty nails of your hands cradled in your lap. “We were getting chased. He barricaded us in so we could hide, but we were so focused we didn’t realise—” your voice cracks, coming out quieter when you continue. “I shot him. In the head. I didn’t want to, I promise, but he started shaking and this stuff was coming out of his mouth and his eyes were all weird and he just started running towards me and I couldn’t—”

“Hey.” Your eyes snap up to hers, your panicked rambles dying on your tongue. Ellie swallows, thick and unsure as you hold contact, looking into your eyes. Eyes she’s seen so many times in herself, caught in flashes as she passes her reflection.

She can’t bring herself to tell you that what happened isn’t your fault, because if she’s being honest, she doesn’t know. She has no idea who you are or how you came to be here, and at the end of the day you pulled that trigger and your brother is rotting into the carpet just a few feet away. That guilt will haunt you forever, no matter how much you try to come to terms with it. So, she doesn’t say that.

“You did what you had to.”

You look away, back down to your hands, blood marring the skin.

Sympathy twinges within her like a plucked guitar string, vibrating along her skin. She tries to shove it away, to not let herself feel too much for a stranger who was about to end it all in a supply closet.

But she can’t help it, and she finds herself unzipping the largest pocket of her pack, taking out a protein bar and a tin of beans and placing them on the floor next to her.

There. She’ll leave these here, and that’ll be it. Guilt cured.

She stands, hauling her pack over her shoulders once more. Your eyes follow the action, the movement of her hands, but you make no move to say or do anything.

Ellie steps back, looking to the doorway then back to you, alone in the middle of the floor.

“I’m gonna unlock the fire escape. You’ll be able to get out that way, but I’d wait until sunup.”

She waits for a response, a nod or a murmur, and when she doesn’t get one she steps out, leaving you behind in the closet.

Your brother did a pretty decent job with the barricade. Ellie really has to push for the desk to move, legs catching on the carpet, everything stacked on top rattling as she pushes and shoves. She doesn’t bother with moving it completely out of the way, forearms stinging too much for her to try, so she does just enough for her and her pack to wriggle through.

“Ellie.”

Her body freezes, caught between the door as she’s stepping through the gap. Hearing her name spoken by another person for the first time in weeks… She doesn’t like how it makes her feel. That trickle of warmth, the intimacy that comes with knowing a name. It’s enough to make her stop and listen and she wants nothing more than to leave.

She turns her head, looking back at you.

You stand just past the doorway of the closet, crumbs stuck to your bottom lip and down the front of your shirt from the protein bar, tin of beans clutched tight to your chest. You cradle it as if it were your child, something precious. Your eyes meet Ellie’s, guilty and apprehensive and so fucking tired.

You swallow, tongue wetting your lips.

“ I can’t… I don’t have a can opener.”

𖧧

You can barely taste the beans with the way you’re shovelling them in your mouth, already scooping up the next spoonful before you swallow the first. You should feel ashamed or self-conscious for the way you’re eating, no doubt making some kind of mess, but you’re much too hungry to care.

The woman in front of you— Ellie— says nothing about your lack of manners, tending to the fire between you, instead.

Ellie has hardly said a word to since leading you out from the office building you were trapped in, telling you to keep quiet and follow her lead before exiting back out onto the road. The setting sun was blinding after so long in the dark, and you had to take a second and make her wait for you to adjust before you could continue on.

She’s quick on her feet, battered converse barely making a noise as she leads you out across the city, ducking in and out of side streets and over fences in backyards. She’s difficult to keep up with, though there’s some part of you that makes you think that this was her trying to be slow, giving you a chance to match pace.

You should maybe care more about being led away by a stranger into the dark, but at this point you can’t really find it within you to care. Besides, if she wanted to kill you, she would have done it there and then back in the closet, revolver in hand and pointed at your skull.

You end up settling in a park, deep within a crop of trees. Ellie works silently and independently, leaving you to stand and watch along the sidelines as she builds a small fire. She’s quick, practiced, and you find yourself sitting against a tree with an open tin of beans warming your tingling hands before you can let the doubts of being out here with her get to you.

“When was the last time you ate?”

The spoon hangs out of your mouth when she asks, low voice making you pause. You suck the sauce off the utensil and lick your lips, swallowing your mouthful. It’s the first proper thing she’s said to you since the office.

You should feel embarrassed, but you don’t care.

“A few days ago.” You dig back in, scraping the side of the tin to make sure you’re not missing a single drop.

Ellie makes a noise, something noncommittal in the back of her throat. She sits back on her knees with a sigh, dusting off her hands, brushing dirt from the bandages she’d applied after she’d given you something to eat.

“Is that how long you were stuck there?”

The food sours on your tongue, thick and fermenting. Your hand begins to tremble as you watch the red drip from your spoon, soaking and seeping into the ground below you, the clumps that decorate the carpet as he falls and—

“Yeah.” You swallow hard, throat clicking. You drop the spoon back in the tin, placing it shakily on the ground beside you. “The… The gunshot it—” You can’t find it within you to finish the sentence, to say out loud how you had to leave your brother there, twitching on the floor as those things tumbled down the steps, forcing you to lock yourself inside that room in the pitch black. You tried to keep track of the day/night cycles through the crack under the door, but all it did was confuse and upset you.

Ellie nods, planting her feet on the ground, resting her forearms on her knees. Her rifle sits across her lap, ready.

“I’m uh…” she starts, not looking at you. Her throat clears, easing some of the tension from her tone. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

It’s nice; a kind gesture. And you’re sure that under different circumstances that you would appreciate it more, thank her and let the sentiment comfort you… but you’re finding it difficult to.

“Me too.”

It’s silent for a while after that, the two of you sitting by the fire. She offers you another canteen of water, boiling and cooling down river water in the night air. You take it gladly, sipping at it much slower this time around, allowing yourself to savour it.

You spend this time observing Ellie, watching her scan her surroundings.

She’s littered in freckles and scars, not an inch of her skin untouched. There’s a noticeable silver scar slicing the tail off her right eyebrow, a similar one splitting her upper lip. It tugs at the skin when she talks, pulling it taught whenever she widens her mouth.

Blue-grey ink bleeds from underneath her bandaged arm, the tips of ferns peeking out as they curl around the back of her hand. You’ve seen people with tattoos before, but never anyone with something so delicate.

Her green eyes are constantly scanning the area around you, flicking from tree to tree, keeping watch like a dutiful soldier. She sniffs as she raises a hand, pushing back strands of her auburn hair from where they hang in her face.

“Where are you headed?”

The question has her snapping her eyes to you, calculating. Her lips twitch, jaw tensing as she thinks. She looks back down to her rifle.

“As far as I can get.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She says nothing, shuffling her converse into the dirt.

You draw your legs up to your chest, mimicking her body language as your hand fiddles with the sticks and leaves of the dirt beneath you.

“We’re headed to Massachusetts.” You pause, frowning. “I mean—We were heading there. I don’t uh… I don’t know what I’m doing now.” Your throat feels tight, eyes burning.

Ellie says nothing, watching you play in the dirt, picking up a stick and dragging it through the soil.

“Tom, my brother, he was taking me home to Grafton. I’ve never been there, but it’s where he was born. Where our parent’s lived, before everything.”

You don’t know why you’re telling her all this. Telling a stranger your life story. Maybe it just feels good to talk, to have someone breathing and alive acknowledge your presence. Not that this Ellie is much of a talker, just sitting there and listening.

You spear the stick in the ground. “He said he knew where the house was. That we could live there, like before.” The stick snaps, splintering in your hands; 35 Sinclair Street written into the dirt.

The wind picks up as the fire goes down, and you shiver, drawing your arms around your knees. Your shirt, ripped from where an infected had grabbed you, does barely anything to keep out the cold.

You don’t have anything but the clothes on your back. Your brother had the bag, the duffel full of your shared belongings, but he had to cut the strap off and dump it when he got caught by the infected that ambushed you, it tangling itself with him and the bag. That’s most likely when he got bit, that dreaded mark in the webbing between his thumb and pointer of his right hand.

You shiver again, but not from the cold.

You know you shouldn’t have, but you looked at him when Ellie led you out of that building. You’d felt him laying there the whole time you were trapped, festering and rotting into the carpet on the other side of the room, behind a wall of wood and monsters.

Was there any part of him left when you killed him? Was he stuck behind the haze of the infection, watching as you put that gun to his head and killed him? Did he forgive you? Know why you had to?

You’d begged for him to do the same for you, when things got bad and you were sure that it was going to be you who would leave him behind, not the other way around.

“Here.”

A bundle of fabric is thrown at you from across the fire, a grey plaid falling to the dirt by your feet.

She makes eye contact with you when you don’t pick it up, face impassive.

“You’re cold. Take it.”

You blink, looking down at the cloth and picking it up, shaking out the bundle. It’s a flannel, big enough for a man much taller and wider than yourself. A ‘J’ is messily stitched into the inside of the collar in white thread, where the tag should be.

“… Thanks.”

You tug it on, the thick material already making the cool night much more bearable. You have to roll the sleeves up slightly over your hands, but otherwise you button it up and curl right into it. It smells nice, the specific way flannels do when they’re worn in and loved. There’s something else, a faint trace of gunpowder and something spicy, hard to place.

The events of the day, of the past week catch up to you as you curl into the borrowed shirt. You so tired. Exhausted. It feels like you’re using all of your strength to keep your head up, your eyes open, your brain from shutting off.

You shift, lowering yourself to the ground, moving an arm to cushion your head in the dirt. It’s not unfamiliar to you, roughing it like this. You’re used to having your brother with you, the two of you taking turns in keeping watch. And though he’s not here now and never will be again, Ellie’s intense gaze on the trees around you makes you feel a similar way.

Your eyes are half lidded, watching the dwindling flames of the fire, light and shadows flickering on the ground beside it. It’s soothing, and you try your hardest to focus on it and not the thoughts clawing away at the back of your head, the ones that will no doubt make themselves known the second you fall asleep.

Ellie shifts, crossing her legs under her, hands still settled on the rifle. They twitch as she curls around it.

“I’m headed to Massachusetts, too.” You hear, quiet in the night. “Boston.”

You don’t pick your head up, but your eyes flick to hers, opening slightly wider. She’s staring out in the trees.

“I’ll be leaving at dawn.” She looks at you, just for a moment, then back to her post.

You don’t know this woman. You’ve barely spoken, yet you can tell there’s a whole lot going on in those eyes of hers, so incredibly sad and haunted.

But that look is familiar, and you see yourself in it when she looks at you, and you know, despite it all, that what she’s offered is an invitation.

You close your eyes, nodding into your arm.

“Dawn.”

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