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❝ Yeah? ❞ His tone carries genuine interest, albeit teamed with concern over what happened to make the arrangement so short-lived. Handing her one of his bottled waters and sitting beside her, brown hues study his long-lost friend. He's been doing that a lot since their paths had crossed again. Any moment, he's expecting to blink and see that she's gone - to discover this has all been some kind of hallucination on his part due to being alone all this time. After all, that's a hell of a lot more likely than the odds of this being a reality. Still, if it is, it's more than he could've ever hoped for in a world as void and devoid of hope as this. ❝ . . . Me too. Sort of. Back when it happened - in the fallout shelter. Didn't take long for people to get desperate. Then dangerous. ❞ Slowly he extends a hand, wrapping an arm around her shoulder comfortingly. Wow. She really is real. Really is here. ❝ What happened? ❞
The water bottle is taken, and it's a few greedy pulls before Ellie lowers it to catch her breath again. She felt like she'd been running, hiding for weeks. The reality was likely less than a couple of days, and more unlikely that anyone was still looking for her. Why would they, when the elements were like this?
She offered the bottle back to him, the back of her other hand pressing to her lips. "Same thing that always seems to happen," Ellie began softly, "Someone's in charge, someone else wants to be in charge, and then..." Her head shakes as she leans into him, and it's like a piece of her falls back into place.
Ellie's gaze is drawn back to his face. Had he not held her, had she not felt his warmth, she might've thought this a hallucination. And things weren't precisely the same as when he left, of course not, but those eyes. Maybe they'd grown up, but those eyes were just the same. "I thought you'd died." She whispered after a moment. "Why'd you leave?"













