There are the men who patrol the area, and there are dogs who watch the men and there are soldiers who carry guns and there are snippers and watchmen and (you try to calculate a route to safety only there is no safety and your arm is stinging, aching, bleeding).
You wonder what will happen if you sprint. The dogs may catch you. The guards may shoot you. Your legs may betray you or they might not, but the outcome is inevitable. (Run or hide, slip through doors or jump over fences, make a sound or be quite – the outcome is inevitable).
You have to get the fuck out of here if you ever want to see Dina's face again and (oh god. Your heart sends painful jabs to your chest at the thought of Dina's dark sinful eyes and your stomach rolls).
Three men patrol the area. Each one inspects his perimeter. They aren't lazy by any means but they are sure of their numbers and they are distracted, talking and laughing and spitting, too comfortable in a big city like Seattle.
(You are not comfortable. You are alert and scared and everything alive and fast).
You watch them kick the dust another thirty second and you feel the panic rise in you. (Your head hurts). There is a pounding quality to the world around you. Something pulses in your temples and your chest.
It changes nothing. You have to get the fuck away from there.
You take a deep breath of cold air and jump out of your hiding place. You run, dodging holes in the ground and small rocks. Your feet are shushing along the grass. You swing open heavy doors, fly through empty rooms (where armor is loaded and wheeled and stored). You run down a steep hill, stumbling like a drunk, opening old wounds and winning new ones from sharp branches and thorns.
The air smashes into your face is blinding you but you keep running.
You run unnoticed, heart hammering in your chest, blood roaring in your ears, your vision blurred with tears of pain and tears of fear, and tears of relief.
You don't so much as glance around you. You run like crazy, breath heavy and painful, throat raw, nose burning.
You run. First straight and then right, making choices based on half-thoughts and missing information, not knowing which way is the right way, just hoping to get some distance between you and the heavily armed soldiers.
The world is dark and in the distance, you see the theater sign beam like a beacon, neon sign of happiness and good fortune, red letters announcing how close you are to home.
(You don't give a fuck about the theater. The residence of the old building is what important. The flashing lights and the red frame and the old letter mean nothing to you. Only Dina. Only Dina).
//
Darkness roars and you are out of breath like a motherfucking asshole.
You run and slip and fall and get up and run again. there is no time for you to stay sprawled out on the ground, you have to run and you have to get out of there and you have to find your way back to Dina.
You run in an open plain like place, the buildings are far and wide and you think you are running in the wrong direction but there is nothing nothing nothing you can do about it now because you cannot turn back. Turning back means dogs and bullets and fists and what must be a certain death.
You don't want an unmarked grave in Seattle (damned hateful stinky Seattle). You want Dina and Dina's arms around you and you want to see her eyes (dark proud eyes) and you want to be angry at her for keeping secrets and you want her mouth on yours.
(You also want to see Maria and Tommy and Jesse and you want to be able to breathe in your small place's scent and you want to go back home, safe and alive and well).
(You want to sit on Joel's couch one more time).
Lightning flickers, illuminating the landscape from horizon to horizon for a brief moment. Thunder rolls about the sky, somewhere far away. It sounds like an angry growl of a huge beast but nothing is scarier than biting dogs and rouge bullets and you think that you would gladly hug the thunder monster if it means you will never have to see the fucking WLF people ever again.
You climb unsafe fences and old ladders and make stupid dangerous jumps above street level. You cut your palms and your fingers on broken glass and you land badly on your knees and scratch your face and you don't care (you don't you don't you don't) you just want to make sure you are not detected by the sniffing dogs.
You pull yourself up, muscles burning, hurting like hell. You continue to climb, ascend, shattered glass and rotten iron crunching and crushing under your stupidly thin converse.
Something sharp cuts at your palm and you swear like a drunken sailor because you are scared but the pain is as strong and as distracting as your fear.
More glass and something that resembles old bones pop under your feet. The wind tugs at you and you press yourself to the outer wall of the building, steadying yourself and breathing slowly.
(Relax, you tell yourself. Fuckin breathe).
When you make it to the street again, you find out ball like bones, by the dozens. For a moment you think it must be some kind of a dried out birds remains or some other animal, but then you accidentally kick one of the egg-shell-like things and realize they have holes for eyes and teeth that grin at you without humor and you are flying again, running and running and running away from the human remains (away from whatever thing might be lingering about, ready to make you one of the grinning skulls).
//
Rain spattering your face. You are rounding a corner and then there are strong hands around you face, a huge palm covering your mouth and a familiar familiar (familiar) voice whispering in your ear.
Your body tenses. You take a deep breath, (through your nose), and for a blissful moment you think Joel must have tracked you down and he is here (he is here and nothing bad is going to happen to you, because Joel is here he is alive and safe and he always knows the answer and thank god he is here).
But Joel is dead and it's Jesse that pushes you against a wall, one eye swollen and face streaked with mud and he smiles at you a wide goofy smile.
(For a long long moment you look at him without recognizing him, and then it down on you and you feel revulsion and terror and awe).
You hit his shoulder, hard enough to bruise, and you shout at him, throat clogged and nerves shaken. He's alone and almost out of bullets and he limps, his right leg a mess of blood and bone.
"Give me shit about this later". He says and then asks a million questions (he fires them at you without waiting for you to answer) and when you reassure him Dina is fine, he hugs you tight.
"We have to get out of here." He says, easy and matter-of-factly.
"That's your plan?" you can feel the panic rising in your chest. It's hot and scary and it burns you from the inside.
"That's our only option".
"No," you say. "It isn't".
Jesse starts to say something but you shush him and tug him after you. You realize that his presence has the same calming effect Joel's presence would have had were he here and it brings tears to your eyes.
(He limps and he's hurt, bleeding worse than you thought, and when you ask if he's okay he just smiles his big stupid smile).
Your anger has died down (he's an idiot, but he's a loyal friend and you are not angry you are scared). You feel the sobs building in you, insistent and low and heart-breaking, but you do not cry because you have to find the theater first.
//
Dina's smile when she sees Jesse pierces your heart and you have to make some space between you and them because you can't stand her happy face, her melty smile, her liquid eyes. (You know you're being foolish, and you can't stop you can't stop you can't stop).
She hugs him tight, clings to him in a sort of way you imagine couples do when they meet after a long time apart. (Your thought are a bitter stew of wreck and hate and you don't think about how Dina breathed relief into your ear just a moment ago. You don't think about the way her whole face changed when she saw you. You don't think about the way her body fits right into you when you hug, like two pieces of the same puzzle).
Outside, the sky of midday is as dark as night and white with flames and with lightning and the world is too loud and too scary, and (Dina is tending to Jesse, no doubt happy to have him near her, familiar and solid and everything like home).
The though hurts you so you think it louder. You think it harder. You think it until you deafen yourself and you can think no more. The thunder that's rolling closer and closer with every boom has nothing on how loud your bitter bitter thoughts are.
The storm is hard enough to drown any sound from the outside and you can't hear what Dina and Jesse are talking about downstairs.
You are sad and angry and the afternoon stretches out, unfruitful and depressing and lonely. The wind blows cold enough to burn the skin, slip through the cracks in the glass, through holes in the walls. The light flicker and die and it's too dark in the room to continue and sit there.
You can't let it touch you, you decide, all determination and flaring anger, as you make your way to a room with working light. This is all details. You have to find Tommy and then hunt down Abby and make her pay for what she did to Joel. Dina has nothing to do with your plans and if she wants, she can go back to Jesse, like you figured she would, and you'll find a small solace in her being safe and out of trouble back in Jackson.
This all is just detail. You have to focus on the bigger picture.
Find Tommy. Bring him back. Fuck Abby up. Make her pay. Forget about the rest.
You have to keep moving. You have to find something to hold onto. You cannot allow yourself to feel too deeply (too personal and too fucking much). You must build a wall around your heart, shell-like protection to keep Dina and her stupid stupid (beautiful) smile away from you. You need to coat your feelings with smooth layers and cope with the emptiness Joel left behind and with the fact that no matter what you do, you will never be enough.
(You need to do it to keep functioning. You need to be immune to this pain and this anger and this hell, just like you're immune to the infection).
You're too close to Dina and it hurts (it hurts it hurts it hurts) when she directs all her affections on Jesse.
This is bullshit. You have to focus on the bigger picture. You have to let all your feelings go.
You have to find Tommy and ring him back. You have to find Abby and make her pay.
Fuck the rest.
//
Your tale isn’t unique and isn't tragic and you've heard a thousand similar stories throughout your whole life.
Someone dies. Someone kills. Someone has to pay.
Only this time it's Joel who died and you've taken it upon yourself to make someone pay. Blood for blood, as if it ever gonna make a difference.
It's a well-known story, nothing unique or tragic about it. Someone dies, someone kills and someone has to pay.
Next time, you figure, it could be your life that being avenged.
(You tell yourself you don't give a fuck).
(You do).
//
You have never felt something like this in your chest before (like sting and like pain and like fire).
You swallow down the new emotion, hot and sudden like you've swallowed alcohol too fast and your eyes burn (you are worried you're going to cry).
Dina stands in the door, her skin shines with sweat and her eyes shine with emotion and her smile shines with all the light in the world. It's a small and careful and a little worried smile that you know all too well.
"Hey," you say in a quiet tone. "How's Jesse?"
"He'll be fine," her voice is soft and quiet. "He just has to sleep it off".
You nod. You look at her and you think ('you're beautiful' you want to tell her over and over and over).
It burns your eyes to look at her and you don't know what to say so you tell her Jesse's a good guy. You don't think she knows what's going on in your head because she looks at you strange and a little hurt and cocks her head to the side. You can see she's biting off a remark and fighting off tears and you kinda want to kick yourself.
You want to tell her about the knot in your chest (it's still there) and how warm her voice is and that you don't want (you can't) look away from her mouth. You sit and look at her, standing there, and your whole body aches.
(You don't say anything).
Dina motions to your bleeding arm. "Let me do it." She says and kneels before you with a small needle and a sewing kit and having her kneeling between your legs (with Jesse on the ground floor and her dark scary secret) is a kind of torture you can barely bare.
(You have never wanted to touch her more than you want to touch her now, in this moment).
Her hands are soft and lovely and her palms are smooth and clean compared to how rough your callouses are. You try to talk but all you want is to hug her, so you end up saying nothing.
The silence stretches while she works and you watch her and you think she's going to be a good mom. You hope you'll be around to see her with her baby in her arms.
Eventually, she leaves, after she sews your arm and gives you a hug and kisses your wound. Her lips linger on your skin, gentle and loving and comforting, and she's so close that you can smell her perfume and her sweat and the softness of her skin, but you refuse to touch her.
Tears press against the back of your eyeballs. Your chest shakes with silent sobs.
Everything hurts, the open wounds being the least of your aches.
//
The crowd is made of women and men, old and young, scars on their faces, uniforms on their bodies, leashes in hands (or spears or guns) and they all want you dead.
There is a constant blur of people who (if they catch you) will have you killed, and you don't really know how to tell them apart. Some will strip you naked and hang you from a tree. Some will pierce your body with knives and arrows and bullets and (they don't know your name and they don't know your face and they don't know your story but they'll kill you anyway).
It's you or them, it's what you tell yourself. It's that simple. Have mercy, and you're dead. Leave them alive and it's your doom.
You don't know their stories and tragedies. You don't look at their faces. You don't want to remember their shocked frozen death stares. You don't think of them as humans with tiny joys and continued lives and hopes and dreams and demons.
Without their stories all you see are enemies. You see numbers and stupid bags of blood and bones who chose the wrong side. It's a lie, but it's a comfortable lie so you don't fret too much over it.
(You're a fucking monster. You're a coward. You're the worst kind of predator and you can't believe in the lame excuses you make up for yourself, but oh you do you do you do).
You focus on the cause and it's also a lie because there are not numbers and they are not statistics and the people you kill are a perfect human beings and they are not lost to infection. They are individuals and the bile rises in your throat and you puke in some random bushes, your mouth sore and your belly empty.
You fight a meaningless war. You circle dead bodies with skeletal limbs and no faces and open bellies and flies that crawl in the corner of their eyes.
Your war is meaningless, but a war nonetheless. And you need to win it.
//
She could be anybody, but she's Nora and you tell yourself it's enough.
You don't feel anything. Not fear not anger not even pain. The feelings that once were so raw and heavy, so overwhelming, are no more.
The hospital stinks, though somebody scrubbed it for the WLF. It stinks of blood and bile and shit and fear. The smell sticks to the tiles, to the walls, to the ceiling. The corridors smell of death and fever and madness and hate. And on top of that, it smells with human sweat and human piss and human cruelty.
Nora is just one human girl and she tries to run and to save herself but Dina's lucky bracelet does its job and you tumble into a spores filled basement and she's done.
"Tell me where I can find Abby, and I'll make sure your death is easy and fast." You have no idea where you came up with that, but you know the truth of that statement and you hate yourself so much you almost push the knife into your own chest.
(Only you don't).
It’s a maddening, bloody struggle (and not a struggle at all) and
You are chocking, Nora's limbs are flailing and you are so far gone you're practically lost.
(You discover that unleashing your violence doesn't make Joel's dead body to disappear from your mind. Instead, now you have Nora's horrified screams and cries and bubbles to top the violent image of Joel's crushed skull. You have buzzing muscles under your skin and you know exactly what it feels like to have the weapon that pierced a body of someone who once was alive).
You harden your heart but hurting Nora is not like smashing the big soft skulls of the infected. Nora is a human girl who made different choices than you and who you have beaten to death, not before making her talk and
(Who the hell are you?)
You kneel on the floor and you open your mouth (to say something?) and you vomit.
//
Your vision smears and blurs with tears (fucked up, crocodile tears) and you wail. Not because you feel sorry for Nora. You cry and gasp and choke because your hands are smeared with blood and you've killed so many people that you don't think you could ever touch Dina (lovely, beautiful Dina) again without remembering them and if you can't infect her with the disease, you think you could infect her with this violence and this hate and this murderous urge.
Your way back from the hospital is high and your legs slip and twist beneath you. You are soaked to the skin, your clothes stick to you, wet and painful where they rub against your wounds and cuts.
You have no power left and you cover your head with both hands when a fork of lightning burn greenly across the sky. You lose your footing and slide a couple of feet, skinning your leg and elbow. It's tough to get back up, almost impossible, but you have to keep moving so you get up, brush your wet pants, hand you head low and cry and cry and cry as you make your way back to the theater.
Back to Dina.
Back to safety.
//
The girl has reddish skin and what appears to be mixed blood. Her hair is dark, very dark, almost black, and gleaming. Her eyes are brown and deep and proud and haughty and it takes you five whole minutes of pulling and hugging and feeling for broken bones to realize that it's Dina (touching you, concerned and wide-eyed) and the handsome tall man that's standing behind her shoulder, his hair a mess of raven-colored curls and his eyes squinted, is Jesse.
"Let's get you cleaned up." She says gently and guides you inside. Solid and real and unafraid.
She doesn't know what you've done and you let her clean your wounds and cuts, to kiss you soft little kisses that bloom on your back, like the sun in the morning (like flowers in spring) and you don't know how to tell her that everything is changing and that you don't know how to name it (your chest feels heavy and your hands sting). You want to tell her what a fucking coward you are and you're so in love with her you can't find the words.
How do you tell someone you love about the things that you've done?
(You realize that you don’t).
//
You don't know what to tell her (how to tell her) and you don't know how to name the heaviness that settles in your chest (hot and painful and foreign). Your hands sting and you need to be brave but you can't.
You look at Dina and you're so in love with her, with this girl who doesn't know about all the horrible things you've done and (she has pretty eyes and easy smile and hot fire inside her that makes you giddy and glad you're on her side).
You will yourself not to cry.
The cloth presses to your back and you flinch, Dina wiped the blood from your skin. She doesn't push and doesn't talk and doesn't ask and you can't (you can't) bring yourself to talk about all the horrible things that you've done.
She hugs you, light and loving, and experimental and it hurts less (maybe) when she has her arms around you.
"I don't want to lose you." You say.
She says, "good." And press herself closer to you, and she doesn't know what kind of things you're capable of doing. She doesn't know she oughtn't to hug you. She doesn’t know what kind of a monster you are.
When she kisses your shoulder (and then your neck, the line of your hair, the back of your ear) you feel the ache rise between your legs (ache that rises in your shoulders and your heart and everywhere everywhere everywhere).
Dina's hands are bold and unafraid. She slides her hand to your chest, along your stomach. Down into your underwear. You press your eyes shut and try not to think about Jesse on the first floor, or Joel (and his dead dead eyes), or Nora or Abby.
"I'm here," Dina says and it feels like a punch. "I'm here. I'm here".
You take her hand out of your underwear before you come and turn to her. She looks at you with wet eyes and attempts a small smile.
"I made her talk." You say and wish Dina would understand what you're trying to tell her.
Her eyes don't change their expression. She told you once about her own demons, about her own violent urges and she isn't an angel (she's just as angry as you and you know that if she ever found her sister's killers, she would do exactly the same thing) but you're ashamed and you don't want her to stop touching you.
Her eyes are darkness and comfort and you sit before her, on the edge of the small couch, and watch the tides of understanding going out in her eyes. You shift and sink in her gaze when the information processed and disappears beneath her feelings for you and you realize how happy she makes you feel.
(How safe).
You want to hold her but you're scared she'll disappear while you're not paying attention so you just grasp her arms above her elbows and stare at her.
(You don't know how to love someone this special. You don't know how to hold on to something so brave and so vibrant and so beautiful without running away, without it slipping through your fingers, so you wrap your fingers tighter around her arms and close your eyes).
"Hey," she whispers. "Hey. I'm here. I'm right here. I am not going anywhere".
You kiss her then, deep and possessive and like you can't get enough of her. she makes a small sound, like a laugh, and you kiss down her body. She tries to push you, panicked but laughing, and you say "please" like begging, like crying, like breathing and she closes her eyes and nods.
You take her like you've been hungry your entire life. She tastes like all the things you love.
//
You're crying and Dina is looking at you, eyes big and scared. You don't really know why you're crying but you do know that you want forever with her. it's too big and too heavy and too suffocating and you can't say it to her, so you just put your arms around her and lay back and just breathe.
You are crying and Dina starts crying too. You're so in love the tears press at your eyes and you don't understand what the hell is going on, it's too big for you to understand and you are not sober enough for everything to make sense.
Dina turns to you, close and heavy and hot. She breathes into your mouth.
"When we get back to Jackson," she says and her lips are brushing yours. "I want to find a place. Just for you and me".
"I'd like that".
You love her and you want her but you've never been good at wanting gentle things and you're so damn scared to fuck this all up.
"Yeah?" there is a wonderful kind of happiness in Dina's voice.
"yeah." You answer quietly and she kisses you softly like you're the first fruit of sin. Your anger and your loss and your pain fades and she's fucking you deeply and tenderly like you're the most precious thing and you almost cry out when you hear her words.
You are angry and you're hurt and you think that this brilliant woman who works her fingers inside of you deserves better. You clutch her hair with desperate fingers when she moves down your body, worshiping all sorts of holy in you.
When you come, quiet and spasming and wonderful, you hug her tight. Her nipples are hard and you can feel them on your chest when she presses into you.
"I'm sorry." You sigh into her mouth.
"You have nothing to apologize for." She answers and there is nothing you want more than to taste her. you wonder if the hunger (for bodies and for softness and for love) will last forever if it's Dina who awakens it in you and (you hope she is and you hope you knew how to want her, but you don't).
You've opened yourself to her, cracked yourself open, and she saw what lays inside of you and decided to kiss you, instead of running away.
Everything stings. Dina is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, solid and dark and whole and yours.
//
You run through the double doors. You notice a scarlet blur and duck behind a dense wooden bar. Jesse is pulling his gunshot up, ready to engage, eyes searching for a split second.
It happens too fast. Way too fast. He doesn't notice the red glitter-blur slipping on his cheek. He doesn't notice the red laser pointer dot. Then it edges up his face and the side of his head explodes in a cloud of blood and his body tumbles sideways.
There is a yellow sickening light, brighter than lightning, brighter than daylight, a burst of pure pain and terror and it covers your vision and your world and you scream a bad scream, a full-throated scream, a terrible terrible gut-wrenching scream that sounds hysterical and crazed and out of this world.
Abby's voice is everything angry and everything hateful and everything murderous. She tells you to get out behind the bar and Tommy, bleeding and on his knees, tells you to stay hidden.
You are in a daze, shaking and crying. You get out, you drop your weapon, you lift your hands above your head. you do it all on autopilot. You don't think and you don't talk and you don't do anything you aren't told to.
You step forward, face white and tears running down your cheeks. You don't look at Jesse's body. You don't look at the pool of blood or the scattered brains. You look at Abby and savor every little detail about her face. She's young and stout and muscular. Her eyes are bright and gleam with pure hate.
(You know the feeling).
Tommy screams and surges forward but Abby is faster. The roar Tommy lets out interrupts whatever Abby was saying and the gun is loud, so loud you think your ears might bleed. You hear nothing for some time, temporarily blind and deaf but alive and when your vision brightens again, you see Tommy on the floor and you go wild.
In a moment of clarity, in the pain and the madness, you feel yourself surface. Every single bone in your body hurts. Your fingers are slick and sticky with blood. You are punching Abby, hard, across the face but you have no more power left in you and Abby is huge, much bigger than you and her fists knock you down on the floor.
Your world is pain and darkness. Your world is blood and madness. Your world is nothing but complete and utter violence and you scream through gritted teeth but it comes out as sobs.
Dina is on the floor, unconscious. An arrow sticks through her shoulder. Abby holds her head, lifting her from the floor by the hair, pressing a knife to her throat and you cough, shaking, raking painful cough that stabs your chest and throat and lips.
"She's pregnant." You whisper and someone you didn't notice before, somewhere in the shadows, whispers Abby's name.
Abby looks down and lets Dina's limp body roll away from her.
"Don't ever let me see you again," she says as she steps over you.
A crashing and pounding in your head is beyond any pain you ever experienced. Everything dissolves into tiny spots of light in a great darkness.
You roll your head, searching for an unconscious Dina. The smell in the back room of the theater is sickening. A stink of rotten meat and sickness and decay.
"Dina…" you croak. It's almost impossible to breathe. Your chest feels heavy and your head is swaying.
You close your eyes, only for a moment. When you open them again, there is a wooden ceiling above you and it's Maria's face staring at you and you're home.
//
Winter is over and the snows erase, slowly, but they are completely gone by the end of the following week. The air smells fresh, like spring is on its way, and Dina makes you work so hard you are barely able to put JJ to sleep, before you're crashing on your bed, spent and dirty and aching.
It's a good ache. A hard work ache. You moan and complain but perform your duties anyway and Dina beams at you from her sit in the living room, one breast bared, JJ heavy in her arms.
Time is a flexible construct on the farm. There is endless work to be done. You set traps and other safety nets around the huge ground the farm is sitting on. You build a fence and make sure the power supply works fine. You scrub and clean and make food bottles for JJ and kiss Dina goodnight.
The days go fast and slow at the same time. When you're busy you're not thinking about anything much. You focus on the work and try not to cut any limbs while you do it. The sheep are cute and loud, the animals are easy enough to handle and the other works are making you sweat but you like the smile Dina sends you every so often so you keep your lips pursed and keep on working.
The nights are rough. You dream bloody dreams. Most of the dreams make sense. They are pure terror and horror, they are all your mistakes and shortcomings. Joel and Jesse visit you in your dreams, they miss parts of their heads and they speak with deformed mouths and you scream and moan and wake up to Dina shaking your shoulder.
"Bad dream." You gasp as an explanation and make sure JJ is still asleep between you. He sleeps on, small and content, and perfectly safe.
Some dreams are strange. They are birds and animals at the side of abandoned roads. They eat roadkill and fly across dark skies and you wake from horrible sounds that you discover are coming from you.
You hate the dreams and Dina hates the dreams because every day you become sadder and sadder, more and more tired, more and more angry and irritated and flinchy. You try to hide it but Dina's sharp eyes will not be deceived and so she sits next to you and rubs your back in comforting circular motions.
You never know how it starts. Your mouth's seeking Dina's and her lips are soft against yours. Your hands are cupping her breasts, firm and soft and hot. Dina's hands run across your skin, her palms rough but her skin is smooth, silky, and she slides her fingers into your hair and she pushes you down and you open your legs to her bold exploring touches and let her fuck the fear and the worry and the ugly dreams away.
Sometimes you have to be the one who's doing all the touching and Dina purres into your mouth ecstatically and her hand is moving between your legs, so you can come as well. You enjoy this kind of night when you are hot and wet and panting and the sleep and the dreams are long forgotten.
Dina guides your hand between her legs and wraps you in a hug, tight and warm, and possessive. She clamps her legs to hold you tight and she kisses you a million soft kisses.
More often than not you are riding her fingers and she insinuates against you in smooth waves, each more powerful than the other, and she strokes you and beats a steady crazy rhythm and you push yourself higher, nails digging painfully in her skin and you feel no pain and no anger and no fear. You ride the needle-sharp, utter pleasure and it's hard to find yourself when the fog in your head clears and you never ever want to let her go.
Dina makes you come, spasming and dissolving and the back of your mind is liquefying and slow and all you can do is clutch at her and cry out, voice throaty and guttural and slow.
(You're a liar and a coward and you're such an idiot).
(Dina is holding on to you. She says one word and it pierces you through the heart. Her eyes are sad and distant and searching and you cannot oblige).
(When she turn her back you fear you have lost her and after a month of wandering, you can barely remember the exact smell of the farm but you can remember with sharp vivid colors her touch and her smell and her eyes).
("She doesn't get to be more important than that," Dina had told you and you couldn't explain to her that she's right).
(You're a coward and a fraud and it takes you too long to realize you've lost the most important thing in the world).
//
It feels good to hold a knife to her throat. You have dreamt of this moment (you prefer dreams about killing Abby over the dreams you have of rotting bodies, of screams, of how you couldn't move under the weight of the men pressing you to the ground when Joel's skull was smashed in).
It feels good to press your body roughly again Abby and it feels good to look at her (scared and trembling, coughing seawater, crying), it feels good to hear her screams and you want to stab the knife in her throat. You want to jab it in her eye. You want to break her jaws, her teeth, to empty the marrow from her bones and you tremble and shake and you are not ready.
You want her cut open and flayed out and you want to be back home, with Dina (you want Dina more than anything. You want to taste her and you want to kiss her hard and you want her soft hands and good-natured smiles and you don't want to be so lost anymore).
"Do it!" Abby says. It's a command and a prayer and a plea and it's rough and strong and the bob of her throat hits the knife just right and the sharp metal draws a thin line of blood in her dirty skin.
"Do it!"
You press harder for a moment and then push yourself away from her and land in the shallow water. Your body hurts, up in your chest and down in your arms and in the roots of your angry bleeding heart. Your left arm burns up to your chest and you shake it, muscles tense.
"Go. Take him and go".
Abby doesn't need to be told twice. She vanishes like she's made of wind. She doesn't look at you. All she cares about lies in a boat, limp body, small and fragile, and beaten half to death.
And just like that, she's gone.
//
Your whole body trembles. Your heart gives a leap. You feel like there are roots from your heart that are spreading out to your nerves and your tattoo burns (your two missing fingers hurt like hell).
"Fuck you," Dina tells you and you nod, your skin keeps burning in all the places you want her to touch you. Her eyes stare at you, dark and dangerous and shining. She looks so young and so eternal and so much yours (her hair is messy and falls out of her bun, and she is so so beautiful your eyes sting with tears like smoke).
The small place Dina lives in with JJ is remote but still under Jackson's protection, within the huge walls. It's a homey space, a little rough but not deprived of comfort. JJ is nowhere to be seen (asleep or at his grandparent's house for the day) and you find yourself kneeling on the front porch because Dina is so young and so small and so sad your heart is breaking.
She steps aside and you drag yourself into the house that isn't yours. She still has her small decorations on the walls. The charms and the Hamsa and the small house-blessing that is framed in a beautiful wooden frame.
She looks at you with sadness and with anger and with forgiveness you don't deserve. She looks at you steady and silent and everything like hate, but you know it's not hate she's spiting, but something else entirely.
You stand there, without a sound and look at her. her skin is profoundly soft, littered with pink shining scars. She smells like clean sweat and flowers and something forbidden. (you smell like too many days without a shower and like blood and dirt and dust and misery).
"Fuck you." She says again and you still don't say anything. You can't find the words. She is the first and last woman and her body is a creation of your destruction and your salvation and you need her. it's something all the way between and you need her you need her you need her.
"It was a perfectly normal day," she tells you. "You can't just come here like that. You can't just come into my life whenever you please," and then she says; "You left!" and it's an accusation and a question and a verdict.
The morning sun shines through the windows and the clouds thin out and evaporate. The hot sun in the blue sky glares and hits your skin. The sun hits Dina and makes her look beautiful. By her horrified gasp you know you look nothing like beautiful and everything like horror.
"Oh, Ellie…" she sighs.
She steps closer and you will yourself not to run. She touches your chest with light fingers. She feels your hammering heartbeat and hangs her head low. She sighs again, stepping closer this time. She breathes into your face, a gentle in and out, and you can't help but step closer.
The breath becomes a kiss. She kisses you gently and it tastes like rain and like meadow flowers and like her. your wounds begin to throb. Your arm twists and your missing fingers twitch painfully, ghost-like and hurting.
Dina kisses your cheek and your forehead. She kisses your fluttering eyes, your burned nose. you wince when she touches your sides and looks at you puzzled.
"I'm sorry." You say.
She puts her arms around you. "Ellie…" she says as if it's the only word she has left and you hug her back.
"You're really here?" she asks.
"Yeah," you say and you move your lips down hers for your very first kiss.