#sorry for tlou post dumping getting all my thoughts out now

[lmanburs]

I think what makes TLOU show both enjoyable for the new and old fans is that they've kept the main story beats the same but the ways we actually get to these points are extremely different and take full advantage of the transition between mediums. We get a lot more time with the actual characters rather than on exploration and I'm really digging the pre-outbreak exposition we're getting before every episode

[gracieheartspedro]

i bet on losing dogs

pairing: ellie williams x reader

post about palestine - please be aware and know who your content comes from. this post informs you about the tlou writers and creators, as well as how to help the Palestinian people.

description: a slow progression of how you lost ellie.

word count: 3.7k words

warnings: 18+ MDNI, reader is in a relationship with ellie, only angst, small mentions of intimacy, descriptions of violence, mentions of blood, ellie is grieving big time, ellie trauma dumps, ellie gets hurt, reader is described to be scarred and disfigured after seattle, reader is scared of ellie, dark themes in general.

author’s note: just know this was sitting in my docs for a while cause I had a hard time sticking with the grief I felt writing it. I finished it a couple weeks ago and just kept rereading it. I can't keep looking at it anymore. have it. i'm sorry in advance.

Her bed was made. 

That’s the first thing you noticed when you crept into her space. The snow had been piled in front of the door, indicating that no one had come or left. Your boots dusted snow across her old oriental-looking rug. Her back was turned to you.

She looks so small. Her hair is greasy, tousled up in a small bun at the base of her head. She was wearing the same clothes you left her in the day before. 

“Els?”

She turns to you, not stunned, just a bit disoriented. Her eyebrows are furrowed the second her eyes meet yours.

“I thought I told you that I want to be alone.”

The statement crushes you. You inhale deeply, trying to relieve the heaviness on your chest. 

You shake your head, “I’m sorry, I can’t watch you rot in this room anymore.”

She's quick with her rebuttal. “If you would have listened, you wouldn’t have to watch. Just leave me alone.”

But you physically cannot. You have spent days pacing your house, thinking about her withering away in her detached garage. You try to sleep, but you know she’s not, so how could you? 

And you had this bitterness in your mouth all the time now. After walking into that room in the ski lodge and seeing her and Joel bloodied and battered, you cannot get the metallic taste to go away. Everything you ate tasted like it. 

“Ellie-“

“Please, I don’t want to talk.”

Her voice is shaky. You notice she’s picking at her cuticles again, they are red and irritated. She finally changed out of the socks that were partially soaked with blood. 

It had been three days since Joel was taken from her. 

You try to hold your ground, blinking back some tears that slip when she approaches you and takes your arm. She’s guiding you to the door, grabbing the handle. When the door creaks open, you snatch your arm away. You are trying to be patient, but this was the second time she was trying to throw you out. She had done the same to Maria and Tommy the day after Joel died.

“I thought you were fuckin’ dead, Ellie.”

You promised yourself you would not burden her with your emotions. But you could not help it anymore. 

“What?”

She shuts the door, letting more cold air seep into the frigid room. She shifts onto her other heel, crossing her arms. It’s a physical way of blocking out your emotions, a gesture that is so subtle and probably absent of intention. 

“I can’t lose you, too, okay?”

Her eyes finally find yours, “You’re not gonna-”

You reach out to her, pulling her hand out of the crook of her arm. “I am here, okay? I am right here.”

She uses the leverage of you grabbing her hand to reel you into a hug. As soon as your chin rests on her shoulder, she’s dead weight in your arms. It’s like a release that you have been waiting for. She starts to cry, the air escaping her lungs as she heaves to let out another sob. You just hold her, the anxiety of leaving her alone for the last three days now escaping you. You finally felt like you were doing something for her. 

She grips onto you like you're the axis to keep her world spinning. Her whole life depended on the feeling of your body around her. 

You sat with her for a whole day in silence. Not saying anything; just waiting for her to say the word. You knew what was next for Ellie.

She was going to get revenge. 

-

Your shirt was stained with blood and sweat. You told yourself the next department store you saw, you would hunt down a 20-year-old shirt to replace it. 

You were exhausted. You could hardly keep up with Ellie the last mile back to the theater. It was only the second day of trying to hunt down this crew Ellie was hell-bent on destroying. Two days in Seattle and you two have discovered a lot without having any initial leads when you arrived. 

And you did not fault her for being so aggressive, but after the things you saw today, you’re starting to wonder if this was really what she needs. Her malicious and unhinged behavior was beginning to frighten you a bit. 

It started when you entered an abandoned hotel. A couple of infected got taken down by your bullets, but when other non-infected people came running your way, you hesitated. You saw the looks of confusion on their faces when they saw you and Ellie. While you stood and held their gazes, Ellie raised her rifle and executed each one of them without even flinching. The shots were louder than you remember, echoing off the walls peeling of wallpaper. 

Then today, you both arrived at an old elementary school. You were caught up with holding off a couple of people in a long hallway. You yelled for Ellie to wait it out, wanting the people to charge you so you could take them out, but instead, she lit up the entire hallway. When the last person came running at her with a baseball bat, she dodged them and shoved her blade right into their necks. You watched her twist it and rip it out the side, their blood splattering all over the wall. When the man collapsed, she simply tucked her weapon into her sheath and kept moving. It was so brutal and unnecessary, but she kept telling you they deserved it. 

She found who she had been looking for. A girl named Nora. You were in charge of keeping watch while she got intel from her. You heard most of the conversation, but when you heard the sounds of metal clinging, you stepped away from the door. You had to resist the urge not to run in there and stop the torture, but your feet were stuck to the concrete. You did not move, you did not dare. 

She is now digging dirt and blood out of her fingernails with her blade, trying not to accidentally knick herself. Her auburn fringe covers her forehead, greasy from sweat. She is still covered in blood, but you two have not said much since you arrived back. 

She went too far and she knows it scared you. But frankly, she did not care. This was necessary. 

“Els?” You snap her out of her trance-like daze. She has not said anything in about an hour. Your voice is soft and so is your touch on her shoulder. You want to try to pick her brain, something you have been unsuccessful at doing the last couple of weeks.

She winces. 

“Yeah?” She utters. A bit of phlegm in the back of her throat makes her sound hoarse. 

“Can you please let me check on you? Just take off your coat.”

Your hand is still on her shoulder. She does not respond or move, so you take it as she’s submitting to your request. You grab the collar of her rain jacket and slowly start to drag it down her shoulder. She’s still not saying anything. 

You wished you could read her mind. It would make your relationship with her way easier. After two years, you would think she would be better about sharing her feelings, but she mostly left you to interpret her body language. You got good at reading it for a while. But then Joel died. And now she is a silent and bitter ball of rage. Anything you thought you knew about her has fallen to the wayside. 

You slowly take off her layers of clothing, being sure to avoid touching the wounds that have made her skin their new home. 

The one on her shoulder was pretty bad, you think to yourself, she better let me stitch her up. 

“I think we need to surprise them at night,” She states, her voice a bit robotic. You just bite the inside of your lip and nod. She was making all the plans, you just had to go along with it.

“Okay,” You whisper, grabbing a medical kit nearby. You made sure to pack it back in Jackson and it came in handy more than once already.

“Do you even want to know what happened earlier?”

Your heart sinks. You do not want to know what happened. You knew she got what she needed from the girl, but you truly did not know if you wanted to hear the details. The idea that Ellie did more than just beat her makes you physically sick. If she could do that to a stranger, what was she going to do when she got her hands on her? You were not innocent in the chase. But your heart always skipped when you had to pull your trigger at another human being. It was not easy to watch life leave someone’s eyes. But for Ellie it was different. She acted like they were just things. Inanimate objects that needed to be pushed out of the way. You never saw her eyes change when she took a life. 

You grab the needle from the med kit and a nearby lighter before settling on the couch beside Ellie. Her shoulder blade is covered by all the blood creating new dark maroon freckles. 

You tilt her shoulder back to better look at it before finally responding. 

“Didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.”

You know that’s not the answer she wanted. Her shoulders fall forward and she places her face in her hands. She lets out a long sigh, disregarding you as you try to patch her up. She quickly turns around to look at you. 

Her eyes are dark, her lips pursed. 

“I got her to talk. She paid with her life.”

You want to see your Ellie, but whoever sits before you is a stranger. 

You did not want to think about Ellie killing a girl by violently beating her. It seemed so personal and evil. You decide there’s no answer worth saying to her confession, so you just turn her back around and begin your slow, tedious stitching.

Once you finish off the last suture, you stand and bring over a bowl filled with rainwater the night before. You were going to use it for drinking, but you decide it’s better to use it to clean around Ellie’s battered body.

You grab a rag from your pack and dip it in the chilled water. You ring it out and bring it to your stitch work. She is shaking now, but you are so scared to hold her in your arms. 

“The night before Joel… we got into that big fight. I was so fuckin’ mad at him. I went to his house to confront him again.”

She heaves and you know tears are spilling from those beautiful green eyes. “Ellie-“

“I told him I was going to try to forgive him for all the shit he did. I should’ve…” 

You drop the red-stained cloth into the bowl and pull her back into your chest. She’s sobbing, her entire body shaking as you finally accept her into your space. 

Before you knew Ellie, you knew Joel. You did not understand their relationship, but you knew it was fractured. Joel never talked badly about her, only reminding everyone around him how proud he was of her. Whenever he caught you around the stables, he would ask if you were still hanging out with her. You would always blush and reply quickly, “Yes, of course”. He would smile and tell you how grateful he was to see she had a friend like you. 

You loved Ellie. You loved her with every fiber of your being. She helped you through a lot of your grief when you arrived in Jackson. She held you through countless nights when you cried about losing your dad. You never thought you would have to do the same for her. Everyone, including you, thought Joel Miller was indestructible. 

“Ellie, how were you supposed to know?” You ask softly before gently pressing a kiss in the middle of her back. You had never kissed her there before.

“How am I supposed to live with that?”

She was hurting so badly. Her violent heart has finally had enough. 

“You learn how to manage it.”

It was the only way you pulled through. Grief is love expressing itself through other means. When you lost your dad, it was not violent. He was sick and his body was so beaten down, he had no chance of surviving the disease taking over his body. Your grief was managed by reminding yourself that you had to keep living for him because if not, you would be disappointing him. You did not know if heaven was real, but you did believe in energy, and you felt him sometimes especially when you needed him the most. 

Ellie’s grief was different. It was forceful and unyielding. She could not let the hatred go and you did not particularly blame her. She watched Joel get beaten so badly that his face was almost unrecognizable. She had to watch a random woman take him away from her, forever. You could not compare your grief, but you did know that with time, she would know how to better manage it. She just could not get over the contempt for others who wronged her. It was embedded within her to seek out retribution. 

She cried a bit, letting out a long sigh. “The only way I see it is if I give those people an ounce of violence they showed Joel in his final moments, I will be at peace.”

You knew the truth. There was no peace in situations like this. But were you going to tell Ellie that? No, you were not. You traveled hundreds of miles for her to do what she felt was necessary. And while you did not agree with all of her actions, you had been complacent. You were no better than any other person with a violent and impulsive lover. You enabled this journey to come to fruition, so you had to take accountability. 

You stand up so you can face her. Her gaze has softened now and she almost looks like the same girl who confessed her feelings to you at the Harvest Festival two years ago. A little bit older, aged with the falling away of time, but still beautiful and vulnerable. Her green eyes sparkled differently, but your Ellie was still there somewhere. 

“Okay, baby.” That is all you could say. “We will finish it.”

-

When you come back to consciousness, your vision is fuzzy. You are completely disoriented, but you know you are face down on the concrete. You start to feel around for something familiar, not sure if your gun or knife is nearby. You felt defenseless.

“Ellie?” You croak out. As soon as you talk, you can feel blood dribbling down your throat. You hear stirring beside you and your blood runs cold. Is that her?

You lift your hand to rub whatever is in your eyes out. Dirt? Mud? When you look at your hands, you get confirmation that it’s blood. You’re covered in it. 

The movement gets closer and you look to your right and see Ellie’s battered body slowly stumbling towards you. Panic rises within you, unsure if she was mortally wounded or not. She collapses beside you, sitting up partially. She reaches for your hand and you realize that you can hardly move your foot to try to push yourself upwards. Everything hurt. 

“Baby, I’m here.” She finally says. Your worry subsides for a moment as you try to sit up. 

“Are you hurt?” You cry out as you press yourself upwards, the pain in your foot shooting up your leg. It’s almost the worst pain you’ve ever been in. You can hardly breathe once contort yourself to settle next to Ellie’s practically limp body. 

“Yeah, but I can walk.”

You finally remember why you’re in this room. You try to scan the room, but the dimmed lighting and blood in your eyes isn’t helping. “Is Abby dead?” 

The silence tells you the answer but you just look over at Ellie. She has blood pouring out of her nose and it trickles down her neck. 

“She got away.”

-

Every day after Abby got away was completely different. When you arrive at the farmhouse on the hill, you hope to see your old Ellie again, and sometimes you do. 

When the golden light trickled between the leaves in the forest and you two bask in the rays as you forage for berries, you tell a stupid joke and her laugh is guttural. She belly laughs and tells you that you’re so “dumb” before she wraps her arms around your waist and presses a kiss into your temple. 

But then there was nighttime. When she finally fell asleep and you would stay up with a candle burning to read, she was ravaged by nightmares. She usually couldn’t escape them, so you would throw your book on the side table and hold her tightly so she could come back to reality. 

The day would break and she would bring you up some breakfast in bed. She was terrible at cooking, but no one can really mess up scrambled eggs. She would serve them to you with a big goofy grin and long kisses. 

Intimacy was few and far between, but you knew not to press it too much. Every time she would touch you in that way, she was meticulous and very generous. You would try to return the favor and she would shrivel up and tell you that she was okay. It made you feel some type of way, but after the fifth time it happened, you realized it was because she did not feel in tune with herself in that way. 

You told her that she was beautiful every day. No matter what she was doing, or how she looked, whenever the thought entered your mind, you would say it out loud. Her response was always, “No, you.”

After a year of domesticity, you woke up one night to the sound of rustling downstairs and an empty bed. When Ellie did have a bad nightmare, she would occasionally go downstairs and sit on the front porch. But it was a chilly night and you knew better. 

The day before Tommy made an unexpected visit and made an already awkward interaction absolutely deplorable. He had to bring up her and blame Ellie for the outcome of the Seattle event. The entire situation led to you forcing him off the property and telling him to never come back with that bullshit. 

It was a subject you and Ellie never discussed after leaving those city limits. She told you she was done, that it was all over. You would never fight her on it, especially because you knew it was really over. There was no way you would be going after someone who almost killed you and disfigured you. Every time you looked in a mirror, you were forced to see the scars that littered your cheeks and forehead. A sick reminder of the bitter fight between you two. 

You slowly walk downstairs, seeing Ellie’s figure in the kitchen. She has her backpack on the floor, loading a gun into the side pocket. 

“What are you doing?” You ask bluntly. She turns around and you take note of her outfit. A couple of layers. A large brown jacket, jeans, and her Converse. She was going somewhere.

She looks at you, tears already welling in her eyes. 

“Babe…”

You can hear your heartbeat in your ears. “Where are you going?”

You creep up to her slowly, your bare feet creaking across the hardwood. 

She’s a foot away when she finally puts her hands out to stop you from coming closer. 

“I… I think Tommy is right.”

If it was possible for someone to rip out your heart without opening up your chest, it was happening to you right now. This would be the worst pain. 

“Right about what?” You manage as a whisper. 

She takes in a long breath, “About Abby. About going after her.”

“No… Ellie, he’s not right.” 

You try to move closer, but she takes a step back. She’s treating you like you are infected. But even that would not matter, she’s Ellie. 

It makes you feel every negative emotion when she says the words, “I need to finish this. I told you… I told you I wouldn’t be at peace until I-”

“So why did we even come back, Ellie? How is this fucking fair to me?”

“You wanted to. We… we were fucked up. We didn’t have a chance.”

“And you think you do now?!”

She shakes her head, almost appalled by your statement. “I wasn’t broken like you were.”

You close your lids tightly, unsure how you could even look her in the eyes. Your fingernails are digging into your palms. You had this feeling for a while. An unsettled force that would occasionally bloom in the pit of your stomach when you watched Ellie. You would remind yourself that it’s over. The plot for revenge was buried deep in the ground. 

So when she stands in front of you, ready to take off, you feel like you can’t breathe.

“Ellie, if you go, I will never forgive you. I will not wait for you.”

She’s silent, contemplating even for a moment. She has this look of determination. She has already made up her mind. “That’s your choice.”

She starts to pick up the bag, but you make one more silent plea before watching your life walk out the back door. You grab her hand quickly, stopping her from taking any steps. 

“I thought you fuckin’ loved me, Ellie. I thought you said we were done.” You sob out,  “You think Joel would want this for you? Do you really think he would want you to walk out that door?”

Deep down, you know that Joel would have gone to the ends of the earth for Ellie, especially if the roles were reversed. But he would also want her to have a life after him. And you were more sure of that than the latter.

She pulls her wrist away from your grasp. A look of pure betrayal playing across her features. You had not spoken his name in months. It sounds like a curse word to her coming from you. “You don’t know what he would want.”

“And you do?” 

“He would have done the same for me.”

And she leaves. You think back to the first words she said to you when you entered her room over a year ago. 

“I thought I told you that I want to be alone.”

And now she would be.

-

[seethesunny]

Fic writing meme

Doing this again, this time tagged by the one and only @hypnotisedfireflies, thank you soooo much Chica! 💗

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

45! Forty-five! Mind you, it's been only a year since I came back to the gig lol

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

A very humble 260, 213 amount of words I've offered y'all 🤲🏼

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Again, I have to be in the right mindset (aka brainrot) to write for something, and The Last Of Us already got that space occupied for now 🫡

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

It is late now, I'm a bit tired; the sky is irritated by stars. (And I love you, I love you, I love you.) — first installment in my Jackson series, Tess lives au, and a sick fic all in one, TLOU.

hoax — that one rapple fic about them coming to term with non expressed feelings, EAH.

it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world — the second installment in my Jackson series, 10k words being a Tess’s character study, TLOU.

I was lost within the darkness (until I found you) — family prompts fic collection, TLOU.

two slow dancers (last ones out) — ficlet collection centered around Joel and Tess with a variety of ratings, genres, and universes; aka my dumping ground, mind the warning. TLOU.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Always do and always will. They’re precious and important 🥹

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Whumptober is the outright answer. However, any of my canon compliant fic (joel misses his apocalypse wife) can fill that spot. Some of the ones in the ficlet collection are pretty tragic and grim, so angst is adjacent to it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Those would be the ones where I'm delusional correct and Tess is alive and thriving 🫡

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I rarely get the normal type, so no. Luckily, no one is hating on my fics and if they do, I'm not aware 😝

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Uhhhhh yes, actually embarrassing the amount of pwp that has been posted bc I don't have self-control 🧍🏽‍♀️The kind ranges from very sad poetic introspective work to reallyyyy kinky nasty stuff. Idk what that says about me, and neither I care.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don't vibe with them, sorry.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Again, no, as far as I can remember. But that's never cool, so don't even think about it. I vibe with so many things but not that :/

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope! I had the idea to translate my own stuff to Spanish, but there wasn't an audience for that.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Tap into tlou time loop madness co-written by @tessaservopoulos and yours truly <3 we have more stuff coming up next, so stay tuned.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Nice try, I don't have favorites

I say, as I shove a picture of Tess and Joel into my front pocket.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Staring at my graveyard of multichapter fics that are on creative hell: for starters-

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm very good at conceptual/poetic stuff. I'm a control freak (complimentary). I would die if I didn't nail characterization. AUs. Uhhhh babyfic. Compelling ambience.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Pursuing multichapter storytelling. I'm a control freak (derogatory). Dialogue. I can get too much inside my head. Not writing in my mother tongue, so not the best vocabulary. Writing when I'm sleepy (a sin).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

For the love of God, do not use Google translate and take the time to consult the language you're gonna use if it's gonna be a recurring thing 🫶🏼 all my respect and love to writers who get to do their research, y'all are doing amazing sweetie.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I used to (terribly) write anything I could get my hands on, so no idea? Could've been anime to a very niche flash game from the 2010s.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

I'm never ever toping this tribute to flutterings. If I ever leave, I hope my legacy is this work, and it continues to haunt readers forever and ever and ever 🫶🏼

Tagging fellow talented peeps: @tessaservopoulos @beerandyarn @wardenannie @vaelyrians @ammotraguslervia @electricbluebutterflies