- Joel’s voice, rough but soft: "C’mon, kiddo… ain’t nothin’ to cry over." (He lied. She heard the rattle in his chest.)
- Her own hands, sticky with his blood (why couldn't it have been hers instead?)
- The last thing he ever said to her: "You keep going… no matter what." (Cruel irony: Now she can barely move.)
Ellie at Joel’s Grave – Raining
(The storm rolls in as Ellie trudges through the mud, her boots sinking with every step. Thunder growls like the world itself is mourning. The graveyard fence rattles in the wind, but nothing feels as unstable as her breathing.)
The Flashback – Worse Because It Rained That Day Too
(Memory hits like a punch—sudden, brutal.)
Present – Drowning in Rain & Regret
Ellie collapses onto the grave—no words left, just fists full of wet dirt and a scream that gets swallowed by thunder. Her hood falls back; rain soaks through her shirt until she shakes with cold (or is it grief? Hard to tell anymore).
Then—she sees it: A single moth carved into the wood. (His idea. A dumb inside joke about "flying free" or whatever crap he used to say.) And suddenly she's so mad—at him for leaving, at herself for surviving—that she rips open her backpack and hurls his old mixtape into the mud. (Track #3 still playing faintly from broken headphones.)
That's when she hears footsteps squishing towards her. Someone else is here, approaching despite the storm.
(You see Ellie on her knees looking down at Joe’s Tombstone crying. What would you do?)