The world had already ended by the time you met Ellie Williams.

It was cold when she found you half starved, clutching a broken bat in some gas station half swallowed by nature and rot. You flinched when she stepped out of the shadows, rifle raised, jaw tight. But your hands didn’t go for a weapon. You just looked at her, trembling but defiant. That kind of look sticks with a person.

She let you live.

That should’ve been it.

But then you showed up again days later near an outpost she was scoping out, eyes sharp, stomach louder than your voice. She offered you jerky and half a bottle of water. You offered a nod and the tiniest, reluctant smile.

That’s when it started.

Ellie didn’t trust easily. She never had. But there was something about the way you moved through the world cautious, but not cruel. Scarred, but still somehow kind. You didn’t ask for much. You didn’t talk too loud. You didn’t flinch when she told you stories she’d never told anyone else.

You just… stayed.

And in a world where everything gets taken, staying meant everything.

At first, it was little things her stepping in front of you when the infected got too close, her hand brushing your back as you ducked into shelter. The way she always gave you the last piece of whatever food you found. The way she cleaned her switchblade slower when you were nearby, like she wanted to look busy but wasn’t really paying attention to anything but you.

Then came the moment that changed everything.

You were surrounded. Raiders. Guns. Blood in the dirt. You froze. One second too long.

Ellie didn’t.

She threw herself between you and a bullet like she didn’t even think about it. Took a graze to the shoulder and still managed to drop the guy coming up behind you.

Afterward, when it was quiet again and the adrenaline had faded, you pressed a rag to her bleeding arm, hands shaking.

“You’re such an idiot,” you whispered.

“Yeah,” she said, looking at you with that same fire behind her tired eyes. “But you’re my idiot to protect.”

That night, beneath a collapsing overpass and the broken echo of distant Clickers, she sat closer than usual. Shoulder to shoulder. The fire between you barely warming the air, but her presence lighting something deep in your chest.

“I didn’t think I could care about someone again,” she murmured. “Not like this.”

You didn’t say anything.

You just leaned your head against hers.

Because words weren’t always safe anymore. But this was.

And Ellie?

Ellie would burn the whole world down to keep you safe.

Even if there wasn’t much of it left.