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📻 — CHAPTER THREE ..
' when she's gone '
"WHERE THE HECK ARE you going?"
They barely survived getting swept by the tornado. Had it not been for some truly lucky grips and strongly desperate holds on slippery surfaces, both Pete and Ellie would have long gone for a flight to the eye of the storm, now further and further away.
The noise was dying out to a mere drizzle backed by drops of humidity dripping from the ceiling of the sewer tunnel. The slow flow of the river murmured behind them. Below, deep into the hole that Ellie still stood besides, another stream hummed menacingly distant.
Thunder grew obscure in the movement of the storm, yet still, it matched Pete's hard steps through the sewer opening, back towards the river.
His ears were buzzing.
His body was hyper-aware of the cold nipping at his skin from within as from above.
Though he's taken several blinks, his eyes refused to focus and to even recall what had happened since Wendy was no longer in his line of sight required accepting the retrieval of mere blurs of memories. It hadn't dawned on him just yet that his survival through those agonizing moments was but a faint luck.
The tremble of his hands was deliberately hidden in holding onto the belt of his rifle, concentrating on feeling it against him; the presence of a weapon reassured him in its metallic chill that there was still a whole lot of things he could do to help Winnie, that ultimately he had not been rendered completely useless by the cruelty of a world which clearly no longer belonged to humans.
He's been feeling estranged to this Earth for a decade now. Feeling the years pass him by in a torturous tempo inadequate to any passage of time recorded by frozen clocks, his only consolation tucking his soul away from the madness and the chaos was Winnie. His Winnie. The same Winnie whose smile didn't die with humanity, whose hope burned brighter than any fire ever made and whose very presence, ultimately, was a reminder of a vow he's took to a certain degree of pious seriousness.
His Winnie was special and unfortunately, not only to him. Her hands created miracles and unfortunately, she was kind enough to want to share them with everyone.
While he hasn't exactly been a good Christian boy his whole life, Pete was forced to Sunday masses by his parents, as any child in that area really. Thanks to them, he was haunted now by an universal truth hidden between Bible verses: people destroy their saviors.
Winnie could convince him all she wanted that there was still good worth fighting for in this world, but at the end of the day, he had the proof of the Judas sin embedded into the bitter memory of the only other time when he almost lost her forever. Ironically, that moment also marked the last time Pete trusted a group of humans.
Fuck those Fireflies, some thought of his echoed in his mind, otherwise but a scattered mess, trying to make sense of a wave of rage clashing into a shore of worry.
Amidst that mess where a gun was supposed to calm him down there was no room for any coherent thought though, far less to hear and consider the questions of a child he didn't know, nor care about in the slightest.
YOU ARE READING
𝐀𝐈𝐍'𝐓 𝐍𝐎 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄 ( tlou.. )
Fanfiction𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐔𝐒.. In which Dr. Wendy Larsen goes to spend her holiday in America with her long-distance boyfriend, Pete Russell, but her birthday celebration turns into a quest of survival with unexpectedly long-term commitmen...
