Still obsessing over a graying, 30-something Ellie—but I’ve also just finished Mare of Easttown and I wouldn’t be mad if there was DLC about an adult Ellie trying to track down a missing Jackson kid because she’s basically the closest they’re gonna get to a detective. So here’s a drawing and a snippet of what that story would look like in my brain.
“Mrs. Neal came by again today.”
Dina stiffens up in the bed next to her, practically stops breathing for a second. Even in the dark, Ellie can feel the tension, the low beat of fear and dread.
“What’d she want?” Dina asks it in a low voice. Casual, and yet not casual at all.
“Same thing she’s wanted every day for three weeks.”
Ellie can almost feel Dina bristling defensively.
“She needs to leave you alone.”
It’s a statement made in that way only Dina can manage. Maybe just a suggestion—but maybe an immutable fact, a command, a decree. Maybe a threat, under the right circumstances.
“Dina…” Ellie breathes it softly into the darkness of their room. “She just wants to find her kid.”
“Youdid find her kid,” Dina reminds her fiercely. “You went all the way to Montana looking for her kid. You found the backpack. There were infected around. It’s easy enough for everyone else to accept what happened—why can’t she?”
Ellie gets quiet. Lets the words soak into the dark.
“Wasn’t much in that backpack,” she finally says. “I told you—“
“—that you don’t think Rachel meant to go very far, I remember,” Dina interjects with impatience.
“She planned to come back, Dina,” Ellie says, not for the first time. “She wasn’t a runaway.”
“We don’t know that—“
“We don’t not know it—“
“Ellie, you know she didn’t make it—“
“But there’s a chance she did—“
“Achance isn’t enough, Ellie!” Dina’s voice finally snaps into outright frustration. “That’s not enough to justify the risk. You can’t save them all, Ellie. We need you here. With us.”
Ellie goes quiet again, subdued by the outburst. Dina wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t wrong at all. She wasn’t wrong and yet it didn’t do anything at all to stop the slow, steady scratching of this, the dull itching inside her brain that wouldn’t stop. Something happened to Rachel Neal, and it was eating Ellie alive.
The silence seems to stretch the very space between them, a tangle of blunt feeling caught at an insurmountable impasse.
Dina sighs, and Ellie can feel some of the tension leaving her. Or maybe the tension never really leaves—just becomes something different.
“She’s probably not sleeping,” Dina says, voice suddenly soft with sympathy. “She’s here every morning at seven o’clock. She can’t be sleeping at all.”
“I’d never sleep again if it were JJ,” Ellie tells her quietly.
Dina reaches through the dark, pushes past the maze of cotton sheets to find Ellie’s hand.
More silence. But softer now. The kind of silence that follows an argument where both parties are objectively right—and yet no one wins or feels any better for it.
HAD to do a lil doodle of @heygaymayday‘s older ellie. she’s so handsome :,)
Life has been super busy for me at the moment—all in good ways, so I can’t complain—but I can’t believe I missed this! I love it so much! My day has been made and it’s not even seven in the morning yet.
Four versions, slight differences! This one was in the works for a couple days ~ based off of Ellie’s tattoo design in The Last of Us Part 2. I’ll be adding these prints to my Redbubble store shortly!
![gameframing:The Last of Us Photomode [11/∞]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7b1e285d243f49bdcf02391e4a6b9aab/tumblr_pkwwwfCtJm1y3k5d3o1_1280.png "gameframing:The Last of Us Photomode [11/∞]")
![gameframing:The Last of Us Photomode [11/∞]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/55ba8c195fcecb156b219ceafec03178/tumblr_pkwwwfCtJm1y3k5d3o2_1280.png "gameframing:The Last of Us Photomode [11/∞]")
