#nectarot

fine hairs on his neck prickle up on the defensive. takes all of his self control not to whip around like a moron. she's smug in his ear, crackling through the phone receiver, the gotcha, bitch tone he keeps tight on reserve. he has to remember that's the whole point, an illusion of exposure. christ knows there's no other way to catch her without delivering on the upper hand.

maybe ellie would like to eat their makeshift breakfast there. these fantasies bloom briefly, delicate and treacherous, and are crushed just as quickly beneath the barely-audible sound of her stirring awake behind him.

of course. when he glances back over his shoulder, ellie is stirred and sitting up in diluted darkness, hair a disordered halo. hopper turns back toward the open doorway. “ what're you doin' up? ” this verbal equivalent of setting something back where it belongs. and it belongs in that sleeping bag .. sleeping. he taps his cigarette free of ash and lifts it back up to his mouth with one hand, the other folded comfortably across his knees.

“ bad habit a'yours, ignorin' good advice. ” half-chiding, half-humored. maybe it is, instead, his bad habit that leads this night. because he tells her every night they'll take turns on watch and he never does. lies can be pretty useful when they're relatable things. “ sleep. i got it covered. ” the cadence of a promise not to be negotiated but rather, kept. i will watch the dark. time in all its indulgence stretches and allows them this moment. this is not peace, truthfully. as peace usually implies permanence. but it is reprieve and reprieve is sometimes the closest thing to grace that this version of the world allows.

⋆　　 ˚　　 ࿔ i thought you would like this.

nancy's voice forces him back into reality, and he blinks a few times as he stares at her hands. it's a sketchbook, possibly one that she found amongst the chaos of her family's old things, and will's eyes immediately light up with excitement. ❛ oh, thank you! ❜ will takes it, checking it out with careful movements. ❛ this is great! i mean— we didn't really get to bring a lot of stuff from lenora. we had to pack quickly. ❜ he was unsure if either jonathan or mike had filled her in about their journey, but he guessed she knew enough to piece things together. ❛ are you sure you don't want to put it up for donation? ❜ he hesitates, because even if he really wants to keep it, they're supposed to be helping the other people in town that were affected by the so-called earthquake.

Of course Mike knows how Lucas must be feeling. Everything has been so damn messy since Vecna came back. Of course El managed to fight him, but he's not gone for good. He will come back eventually. SInce they learned about the Upside Down, a lot of troubles has found them. But it has gotten worse than ever lately. Max has been in coma for four months already. The doctors don't even seem to know if she will ever wake up, but Mike refuses to believe she won't. He's the leader of the party, he's the paladin. He has to remain optimistic. He hopes it can allow his friends to remain optimistic too. El restarted her heart, but Mike knows his girlfriend, he knows she's blaming herself for not doing more. But Mike also believes in her and knows she saved Max. Soon she will open her eyes. That's what he keeps repeating himself.

sometimes he wonders if it bothers her when he joins beyond the fence. (he's not blind to the lack of game when they return. or the subtle sigh he assumes she tries to mask whenever a shot of an arrow misses its target.) walking around with a metal leg has been an adjustment, for sure. but it hasn't dimmed his outlook in life. if one could call this living. not a day goes by that the memories of what they survived, of what they endured, don't haunt him. he's just learned to grin and bear it. and eventually grinning became natural again. eventually those nightmares became more of a dull ache.

he sits with her awhile in silence. while she lays and basks in the sun, peeta overlooks the adjacent direction. if it didn't feel like they were merely in a cage, if they weren't pawns in the grand scheme of things, hope could be possible. (how could he not dare to when he sees the flock of birds fly together down one direction, or hear their chirps?) he'd just been about to break the silence between them when he turned his head and caught a glimpse of a bug in her hair. yet another beauty, another sign of hope, entangled within the hair of the one who keeps him going and makes him feel a little more whole when his body is no longer. (even if what happened in the games had all been fake, a means of survival.)

@nectarot. joel miller & maggie greene-rhee.

it isn't like him to sleep in like this, perhaps the result of a hundred taut muscles finally relaxing their hold in the lapse of concentration for just one night. and while it takes him a few drowsy seconds to remember — the drinks shared, the laughter bubbling until the early hours of the morning, both unwilling to let the night end — he is pretty quick to catch up to the events of the evening before. there is no embarrassment in it : they're both adults, more than capable of treating this as the isolated instance that it is, but still he can admire the tone of her arms, the arch of her back as she gets dressed, up bright and early unlike himself. he's rubbing his eyes clear of buildup, mid - stretch when she speaks and his gut plummets.

this alone isn't new information, but the concern as to what may have slipped from his mouth is. he remembers an awkward conversation with tess, who had teased with mischievous mirth : who's sarah ? he didn't know what was worse, the dreaded explanation of his long since dead daughter or the concomitant apologies, profuse and suffocating, that have followed in consequence. the horrid shroud of pity diaphanous as a veil of mourning over her face.

@nectarot. joel miller & ellie williams.

the look he gives her is one of skepticism, brow quirked skyward and doubt prevalent in his gaze. she's pulling his leg. has to be. after all, he has more or less adjusted to the notion that she's going to curse and cuss more than any fourteen year old girl should, that in essence she is aged beyond her years by the world she has been born into. that the bite has taken more from her than he'll ever know. it is this bitter pill to swallow that makes her request an ever strange utterance from hardened lungs, but he supposes it can't be too out of character when she spends her spare time nose deep into comic books filled with tales of yore, remnants of a time that no longer exists. the difference is she has never involved him in such perusals at this hour, typically quite happy to busy herself and leave him to less interesting activities — cleaning guns, workshopping parts, restocking on makeshift molotovs.

he finally sees the request for what it is. a plea for a distraction, the late night ghosts that haunt her at the forefront of an already burdened brain. he knows because he has lived it too, the sunken - eyed look of someone stolen of sleep because of the images you can't unsee weighing heavy on your mind. and while he's certainly put on the spot ( for joel has not been a storyteller for two decades, and truth be told he was never much of one anyway ) he would be amiss to not provide some comfort at her behest.

❛ hmm. well, don't you go expectin' shakespeare. ❜

" who? " she chirps.

right. he has to keep reminding himself of these referential gaps in her knowledge, which she never hesitates to prod at him for, with comments like " lemme guess, that's something from the ancient times. " to which he will of course grumble and roll his eyes as he has been known to do.

he tells his story. the subject matter isn't actually all that important, some threads of old fairy tale classics that he has meshed together into one inconsistency, and needless to say ellie must not be all that interested either, because he soon hears the sounds of a faint snore cutting through his spiel. an abrupt pause to affirm his suspicions, her breathing heavy, shoulders rising and falling rhythmically as her dreams whisk her away. joel silences as his own fondness for the girl surprises him, a sympathy swooping over his emotions for her turmoil. she's too young to be going through this. a hefty sigh releases, and when he speaks it is so quiet it could be purely to himself.

dust, and the way it hangs there in air. JOEL MILLER: he stands there with the weight of a thousand years lodged somewhere behind his eyes, posture stiffened, RIFLE PRESENT. [ this is how survival looks. ] those kind of years cling to him in layers, sedimentary and unmoving. “ these days? hard to tell. ” words come war-roughened, scoured down to the BONES. you see, faces blur together after a while: raiders, wanderers, saints & sinners. they all bleed red. his gaze skims the way A MAN WOULD CHECK THE WEATHER. measuring clouds and lightning in daylight. he has seen too many that didn't look their part. they wear it like borrowed coats. “ i don't got nothin' for you or your people. ” there's heat in it, a boundary line drawn here in the dirt. it's not personal. it's how the world works. it's the girl he's got hiding in the closet.