I: Northern Lights

February 22, 2034

Silver Lake, Colorado

Even with the fire so close, she was still shivering. Joel was asleep a few inches away from her, the low sound of snoring the only sign that he was still alive.

She couldn't take her eyes off of the mantle. As the flames crackled, the onyx eyes of the stuffed elk head glittered with an almost demonic gleam, glaring back at her unflinchingly.

Ellie shuddered, breaking the one-sided staring match, and pulled her jacket tighter around her bruised ribcage, gritting her teeth at the sharp stab of heat in her side. She wanted to groan, but with Joel's wound still healing (albeit at a rapid rate as it finished mending), she didn't want to risk waking him up and aggravating it.

She let out a small, quiet sigh, and pushed off of the floor slowly, clenching her teeth against the pain. When she was finally standing, Ellie cautiously walked around the metal folding chair she had been sitting on and tiptoed out of the lodge's front door.

As she stepped outside, the door creaked shut, and she froze. Fuck.

She glanced around for Infected, then behind her; letting out a sigh of relief as Joel merely shifted on the makeshift bedding they'd constructed from clothing they'd scavenged off of dead hunters and other sources of cloth, Ellie moved onto the snow-covered driveway.

Glancing up at the clear ebony winter sky dotted with stars and the moon, she closed her eyes and gave another sigh, louder and full of contentment. When she opened them again, Ellie nearly squealed with joyful shock at the sudden bands of rose, crimson, and turquoise light in the sky.

"Holy shit," she whispered in awe. The aurora borealis, the northern lights. She'd read about them in the books Winston had smuggled into the Boston military boarding school, and despite the whole scientific "electrons impacting the magnetosphere" stuff, she was still entranced by the notion of them. What I wouldn't give for a camera right now, she half-lamented. However that's supposed to work...

Still, it was pretty fucking cool.

Ellie took a few steps back, then sat down on the lowest porch step when her boots bumped into it.

"How come it just showed up all of a sudden, though?" she wondered aloud. According to the books, there was supposed to be about an 11-year time span between when the auroras appeared, and since the last one happened back when she was a little kid with Marlene, the timing was a bit off. Add to that the sudden appearance, and-

The hairs on Ellie's neck suddenly stood up, and she gasped as a massive bolt of electricity appeared in the lights. What the hell is going on? she wondered as the bolts continued to blaze across the sky. Something was terribly wrong.

She quickly got to her feet, and was about to run back inside when her vision went white.

↣γ~

Her brain was trying to break through her skull.

Ellie sat up, groaning. She held her head for a moment, trying to will the pounding away, before cracking open an eye. A white light greeted her, and for just a moment, she wondered if she was in heaven.

All too soon, the light faded, color bleeding into the picture as she opened both eyes. The headache still didn't let up.

"Fuck," Ellie said as she took in the smashed cars and asphalt (neither of which had plants growing out of them, weirdly), the pine trees, and the small fires dotting the road. "What the hell happened?"

"Hey, we need to go."

Ellie jerked back with a cry, hand flying to her- what?! She swept her head back and forth, frantically searching for her mother's switchblade, barely noticing the young blonde-haired man giving her odd looks.

She couldn't find it. Rounding on the blonde, she lunged at him, grabbing him by his orange shirt collar, and yanked him towards her. Their faces were nearly touching.

"Where the fuck is it?!" Ellie yelled at the frightened man. "What did you do with it?"

"Wha- Abigail, I have no-"

"Who the fuck is Abigail?" Spittle splattered the guy's cracked glasses as Ellie continued to rant, oblivious to the flames licking at their heels.

"Hey! Anyone still in there?"

Ellie whirled round, the blonde's collar gripped tightly in her hand. Through the smoky air filling the chamber, she could see a flash of red; a tan-faced guy poked his head through the opening, eyes squinting and dark..

"Help!" The blonde was alternately coughing and screaming at the guy, and Ellie grimaced at the noise coming from such a small throat. "She-"

She slapped the sniveling blonde, pressing her forearm against his throat. "Shut it!" she hissed, shooting a glance towards the open doorway. Seeing that the way was clear, she hauled her butt out of there, maintaining her death-grip on Blondie, and hissing as the flames singed through her clothes to the flesh.

Grunting in pain, Ellie pulled Blondie to his feet. "Where is it, Blondie?"

"The- wha-"

"My knife!" She shook him, violently. "Where's my fucking knife?"

His confused expression morphed into one of panic. "Behind-"

She felt a sharp pain at the back of her head, and only managed to whimper, "No…" before unconsciousness took her.

A/N: "Another TLoU/inFAMOUS crossover, Nate?" you say to yourself. "After the last one vanished last year?"

Uh, yeah. So: Ellie and Fetch have swapped bodies. Repercussions will follow.

To brendazacian: Long overdue, I know.

-Nate