Before you read, know these things:

1) Parts of the The Last of Us: American Dreams comics will be in written form called flashbacks. There will be parts in the flashbacks that might contain content not shown in the comics.

2) There are POVs in The Alternative, the main ones are Ellie and Riley's. The side ones are Third Person POVs from Joel's standpoint or during Flashbacks. Don't worry, I'll tell you beforehand when POVs switch.

3) This story is an AU where only Ellie gets bitten and Riley lives. She's still prone to the infection, but hasn't been bitten yet.

4) The pairing involves Ellie and Riley. Romance and fluff and all those other stuff are involved, if you feel uncomfortable reading such things, then I suggest you not to read.

5) This is pretty long for my first work. Please enjoy, and take a break in between. Feedback is highly appreciated, and I hope you'll have fun.

6) The cover of this fanfic belongs to Janice Chu aka Churon on Tumblr. Please give her credits for an impeccable fanart.

And another warning in case you haven't noticed, the story is full of spoilers. I highly suggest you to finish the game on the PS3/PS4 (including Left Behind) before you read this story. It's also recommended to read their comic, The Last of Us: American Dreams to make sense with flashbacks. You've been cautiously informed.

4/4/2015: Being reedited. Sorry for the inconvenience.

-PROLOGUE-

She realizes that being a Firefly isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The Boston base she's resided in is home to herself and dozens of 'Fly faces that frequently give her the looks, not adjusting well enough to process the fact that Marlene had recruited an adolescent into their cause.

It's a strange thing to get used to, but no one questions it. Not even when Marlene orders one of them to press Riley's name onto the back of a pre-made Firefly pendant; not even when she's wielding a pocket knife and aims for the head of a restrained infected, stabs, and passes the initiation.

The second the creature's head gets pronged, Riley's gifted with pats on the backs and nods of approval as she stands before her kill, masking revulsion as a pool of red starts circling the dead infected. She can hardly steady her weapon, which is coated with infectious blood.

The sight of it reminds her of something, but it's ominous and bleak and the last thing she would want is to remember anything from the past.

Riley shakes her head, I should be grateful. she thinks. Of course, she's gotten what she wanted, after all. She's become one of them.

Well—in a way, at least.

It's slightly disappointing when the following days consist of simple drills that have already been taught to her long before her initiation. The first few weeks hold tests of stamina and agility which Riley passes with ease. The next week consists of firearm training where a gun finally lands on her anticipating palms. Melanie, one of the Fireflies, has tutored her through the whole thing, explaining with patience regarding the basics of aiming and shooting with a pistol. It's not a struggle for Riley either, and the entertainment for a good challenge diminishes each passing day.

At times, she forgets where she is, and finds herself wondering why the corridors don't lead to the mess hall.

It doesn't surprise her when Marlene confesses that she's too young to be placed in the front lines, or to be sent out with an armed posse to scavenge for items left strewn about in Boston. Instead, she's assigned as a medic, nursing wounded Fireflies and attending meetings despite the lack of participation. If anything, she's relieved. Sewing up somebody's wound is better than sewing her own. The higher the chance of her life probability, the more she hopes to see her again.

Of course. Her.

Ellie.

One thing that distracts her from her Firefly duties, is that green-eyed girl that peeks out out of every gaping hole in her mind. She misses her (it's not that hard to admit), and she's left to count the days since her departure from the school. The sour regret that coils in her stomach doesn't go away. It's a persistent itch that scratches her soul and berates her conscience, she wakes up every day with the same message playing over and over in her head that won't leave her no matter how hard she tries.

You left her there without saying a word.

The guilt is almost unbearable. Almost. Riley's found techniques at coping with it, at least, and she's discovered that sewing wounds is a sufficient suppressor. It earns her double points when the stitching is done well enough that the good deed passes around until it reaches Marlene. She's satisfied with the credit she's been given, but the itch is still there.

Even when days turn to weeks and those weeks turn to a month, it's been there ever since.

She remembers the words that she's assaulted Ellie with, and the poison seems to damage them both. She knows the scene verbatim, recalling how thorny her unintentional hatred was at the moment. It rings in her ears every now and then, and she's left sitting at the edge of her cot during the late night, curling up her toes, wondering if Ellie's going through the same experience she's forced to endure each night.

One excerpt in particular doesn't leave her head:
"Get your own goddamn life, Ellie!" she remembered herself say. "Quit interfering with mine and fuck off!"

...

It's as venomous as it gets.

She sees the scene again. And it's moments after her yelling, where they both stood in silence; with Ellie looking at her with pained eyes and Riley with her urge to take everything she had said back. But it was too late for apologies, and she left Ellie's room without uttering another word, only to disappear the following day.

It's not a memory she likes to reminisce, it's one of those sour tapes that play in her brain unintentionally. It's a horrible remembrance, right next to the fact that she left her best friend to join the Fireflies like she's always dreamed of. She hasn't even said goodbye, not even bothering to leave a note that would've told Ellie that she was sorry for the things she'd said, and that she had to leave the school to pursue her foolish dreams of becoming a Firefly.

And then there are those feelings she has for her.
She wants to tell her so bad that it hurts.

It hurts because she's not going to. It hurts because she's gone too far to ever get back to what she and Ellie once were. There will be no more late-night conversations, no more meetups to go stargazing on the precipice of abandoned buildings. There won't be anything left. Ellie and Riley's friendship was nothing more but an old memory, like looking at a foggy mirror that was once shining in its golden age.

She can't get Ellie out of her head. No matter what.
She can't get her stupid green eyes out of her visions.

Fuck, she doesn't even know if she loves he—

"Abel." interrupts Marlene.

And then Riley's world falls apart and decimates into nothing.

...

"Riley. Did you get that?"

...

"I—" she sighs, shaking her head. "Sorry, what was it?"

Marlene's back straightens as Riley sits across from her on a chair, a desk with confidential files separating the two of them. The dim light above flickers from time to time, the Firefly leader links her fingers together and presents her palms onto the desk.

"As I've said, you're all set for Rhode Island. The group I've assigned you with's about to leave in two days. As early as now, prepare yo—"

"What?" she blurts out. Prepare? For Rhode Island? Something rumbles in her stomach and she's sure that it's not the bread rations. How on earth did she miss this?

Marlene's lips thin by each fleeting moment. It's not uncommon for Riley Abel to break out in fits of surprise, but it's grown rather tiring for the older woman. She presses two fingers against her forehead, feels the sensation of her moist skin, and takes a mute breath. Riley concludes that the whole process makes her look a decade older.

"Is there a problem?"

"Yes." she would've wanted to say. "There is."

But she doesn't, she takes the safer route instead.

"I . . . I don't see how shipping me off to Rhode Island's an advantage for us. Isn't it more reliable to stick to the stronghold?"

Marlene leans back to the spine of her chair and begins counting fingers. "Let's see. The advantages are basic. Few military personnel, few Infected, more rations, more recruits, and a better chance for improved isolation." It tallies five, and she presents her palm with all the numbers on her fingers, outstretched. "Our Boston stronghold's not going to last very long, I'll give you that. Give it three months or less, this whole base is going to collapse. We're sending off our people as early as now. Lest we turn out as dog chow, I expect you to comply."

There's a silence, Riley gulps and stares down at her lap. The light flickers on and off again, the grim scent of the peeling walls emancipates around the room, suffocating them. She knows there's no runaround to this, if you're given orders by Marlene herself, you don't get much choice in which way you'd have your cake eaten.

"Ellie. . ?" she queries, making the older woman scowl slightly.

She shakes her head.

"You can't meet her."

...

The chances of seeing Ellie immediately gets obliterated until it transforms into a pile of black ash.

"But—"

"Riley, we've talked about this. You know that."

...

"Yeah." she manages to bite out, "I know."

Marlene doesn't want to do this, despite her knowledge of how lackadaisical the two girls are when together and up to mischief. The stakes are higher when one of them's a Firefly. It always is. You take sacrifices and you eat them up and you don't complain if things don't go both ways. Indubitably, Marlene can't risk getting either of them hurt. Riley's one of the youngest recruits they've had, and there's a reason for it. Ellie, on the other hand, is a whole different story that consists of promises.

Marlene pushes herself out of the chair and stands up, closing in to the door and attempting to exit. She lingers with her hand on the doorknob, before turning back to the young girl who seems too stubborn to budge out of her seat.

"Two days, and I'll get back to you." she reminds her. "Remember our protocol, Abel. Our rules."

The door closes with an unsettling calmness.

...

Usually, Riley doesn't think twice when doing things under the cause; always willing, and never reluctant. This, although, seems to question her decisions. Sure, she breaks protocol every now and then, sometimes sneaking out of the base and ending up caught on the rooftops watching the stars and moon set. Nothing major. Some of the 'Flies find it entertaining and cover for her when Marlene is around. But this, this is different. She's going to get transported out of Boston. Away from the quarantine zone, away from her origins.

Away from Ellie.

The guilt and regret sears through her heart almost immediately.

She's never going to see her again, her best friend, or what could have been more than that. She's never going to apologize or ask for forgiveness or confess about whatever feelings she had to her. Ellie probably assumes that she's dead anyway, so why would she care? Right? After the fight, she might've forgotten about her by now, it's been so long . . . forty-four days? She's adapted well enough in this shit of a world to move on, so why couldn't Riley do the same?

She looks out of the office's window, seeing the moon wink back at her with its pale face. Immediately, she remembers the times where she and Ellie would sneak out of the school for the sole purpose of stargazing. It'd been the best thing to pass the time or to escape from the nightmares that pricked at their backs, it reminded Riley too much of her.

She tears her gaze from the heavenly body.

She's never going to see her. Ellie, the whirlpool-of-emotions Ellie. With her dark reddish hair, her sea of freckles, her bright green eyes, her scarred brow, her contagious laugh, her everything. It's more than Riley can handle, she shuts her eyes tight and bangs the desk with a fist, cursing under her breath as she slumps into her chair in admittance of reality.

...

Maybe she'll understand.
Maybe, one day, she can forgive her.

THE ALTERNATIVE
by TacoSwimmer

-ELLIE-
TWO DAYS LATER

I didn't know what to say.

I didn't know what I could have said, now that I think about it.

There were three things that I remember:

A room in a military school.
Two girls, one on the floor, one standing up.

One of them was supposed to be dead.

There was a switchblade in my hand, a ghostly imprint on the side of my neck, and over there—just by the bed—was Riley.

Riley fucking Abel.

Seeing her with that shuck smile felt indescribable. Seeing her chuckling like it was an everyday thing felt indescribable. Hell, seeing her right in front of me felt indescribable.

Riley Abel had been sitting on the ground, her legs were sprawled out, and she was laughing.

Laughing!

I hadn't heard that kind of chuckle in centuries.

It did not help, by the way, that Riley thought the best way to rouse me up from my sleep was to link her goddamned teeth on my goddamned neck.

And it was all in a nice, peaceful, goddamned sleep in the goddamned school which she goddamned left.

I didn't want to know how she had managed to snake her way up to my floor, or how she had practically gone incognito and went Hattori Hanzo on the soldiers. All that I practically cared at the moment, was the fact that she was standing there. In one piece.

Alive.

She was alive.

"You're not gonna kill me, are you?"

I couldn't answer her.

I had been too busy leaving my mouth open and gawking at her because my brain had evolved into a vegetable.

Particularly a potato.

She had those eyes of hers. The brown ones with their darker shades that splintered across her lens, leaving a spoke of coffee-related colors. Looking at them reminded me of a varnished wooden floor with highlights. At times, they would shine, and this was one of those times. They were shining and light and dark and awful and great and bad and good.

And then perhaps I would have killed her. Because she didn't have the right to look that pretty.

I placed the switchblade under my pillow.

"I haven't seen you . . . in I don't even know how long."

I knew, actually, I'd been counting ever since. It'd been, what, forty-fiv—

"Forty-five days." She cut me off. "Well, forty-six, technically . . . "

I looked at her incredulously.
She knew too. She counted.

There was something that shook inside of me and I couldn't understand what it was.

"Wanna know what I've been up to?"

Riley's hands were in her pockets. Her expression yielded nervousness, which was understandable considering that it wasn't an everyday thing to have your best friend who'd been missing for weeks wake you in the most horrible way ever.

"All this time, I thought you were dead."

And all that time, I'd been sulking.
All that time, I'd been frustrated and angry and sad and depressed and alone.

Because she left me there. In her room. After a fight that hurt me more than she could have ever thought. She left me and she didn't come back, and I thought that it was just me again. Just Ellie. Just the girl whose friends had all left her behind in the dust.

All that time, I thought she was dead. And I could never let that go.

"Yeah . . . " she said.

That was all she could say.

She didn't give out any apologies for her scornful words during our fight. There weren't any explanations regarding her disappearance. All she could do was look at me with eyes that spoke more than her mouth, and the only thing she could pathetically muster out was a goddamned "Yeah."

I felt beguiled. Betrayed. Because, all this time, I thought she and I had something. A friendship that we could never give up. A relationship that I stupidly thought would bloom into something greater.

But it died.

It died when the fight came about and destroyed our friendship and chances into ashes. The disappearance was what swept up all those ashes, blowing them away into complete and utter nothingness.

But then, unexpectedly, she returned.

And at the moment, she was handing something to me.

A pendant.

She was handing a pendant to me.

"Here," she spoke, "look."

The reflection from the window shone on the chain, and I could see the setting moon on the metal. I traced my fingers on the outlines of the symbol, a symbol that I'd seen too many times that it felt as common as seeing clouds.

"No way."

The Firefly insignia smiled back at me in solemnity. I flipped the chain to its side and read the next text.

Riley Abel - 000129

Unbelievable.

"You're a Firefly." I turned to face her, and Riley Abel gave out her all-too-familiar smug smirk, as if confident about her own petty little achievement.

I should be happy for her, because this was her dream. Her goal. It was what she'd been striving for ever since I popped into her life. She became the person she wanted to be, a Firefly.

But I couldn't feel the joy. There was no smile creeping on to my face.

All I could feel was resentment.

Riley handing her Firefly pendant over to me was a subtle way of saying that she left me for the Fireflies.

I wanted to scream at her.

Had she not realized the insurmountable amount of shit she put me through? Had she forgotten about our fight? Our broken relationship? All those hardships she had placed on me so that she could join that stupid fucking militia group?

I clenched the pendant as hard as I could, wishing that it could just melt in my hands.

"You still have it up,"

I looked up and viewed her stance.

It was in her hand, a delicate artifact.

A photograph.

I darted my eyes to the picture, two girls stood to pose in the photo. One pale-skinned, one dark-skinned. Their frozen smiles were staring at me, calling for me.

I hadn't seen those two girls in decades.

FLASHBACK

"Come on!" she moaned, dragging out the word.

The girl whom Ellie was assaulting seemed to think differently, since she scoffed and shrugged her away, making Ellie land quite comically onto the floor.

Unscathed, she stood back up, huffing this time. "Let me see!" and she tackled Riley's back, snickering like a child.

"Ellie—!"

Gritting her teeth, Ellie tried to look over her shoulder, her arms were swishing wildly at the covered item that Riley had in her hands.

"Later!" she laughed, pushing the redhead away.

A little back story for this memory, set some time after their first trip to the mall. Ellie had hardly noticed that her inevitable birthday was coming up, and for some reason, Riley had sneaked into the Corporal's office to check her records, the girl's day of birth was obviously a part of that document.

Riley was pretty terrible at hiding materialistic objects, and evidence of her shooing Ellie away for almost the whole day and trapping herself in her dorm gave Ellie subtle but easy hints that she was preparing for the 'special' occasion.

"Riley, I already know it's for my birthday." she called to her, Riley turned around and for a split-second, Ellie could see the item, it was concealed with a fabric.

Crap, so close.

"Oh, shit. That's today?" she gasped, her eyes widening.

The younger girl glared at her.

"I'm just fucking with you, El."

"Let me see!" bellowed the redhead, charging at her with full force. They both tumbled to the ground with the younger girl on top. Riley had relinquished the grip, and midst the limbs and profanities, Ellie spotted the wrapped gift topple under Riley's bed.

"A-ha," she exclaimed, extending her arm that was previously headlock-ing her friend's neck. Riley, being as intuitive as ever, knew what she was going to do, and she grabbed Ellie's wrists from under as to restrict her arms from reaching the mysterious object.

"Ellie, can't you wait?" she snickered, ignoring Ellie's hands that were playfully clawing her arms. The redhead shook her head, pushing Riley forcefully to the side ("Uuf!").

When Riley rolled away, it gave Ellie the opportunity that she had wanted. Like a thief, she snatched the object and stood up quickly, unwrapping the cloth that was tied with a ponytail.

When the process was finished, she couldn't believe her eyes.

A strange little rectangular thing, it was. Its dark color had already faded from several years of misuse, but it had the looks that demanded attention. The appearance was unmistakable, it was a Polaroid camera. A camera.

Ellie looked over at Riley, her eyebrows were furrowed at her as she stood up, dusting her cargo pants from the previous tussle.

Breathing out in awe, Ellie's green eyes were enlarged.

"Holy shit, dude."

"Happy birthday, you dick." she grumbled, the bitterness quickly faded. "Give it here,"

She fumbled around with the camera, putting the lens to her eye and opening up some kind of compartment from behind it. Ellie raised an eyebrow at her, mildly impressed with her tech savvy.

"Where the hell did you manage to get a working camera?" asked the redhead.

Riley shrugged as she fiddled around with it. "I have my ways."

"Oh?" she scoffed. "For a second, I thought you borrowed again from Winston." Laughing, she air-quoted at her.

"No, I didn't borrow again from Winston." Riley mimicked the girl with one hand. "That was like, one time, by the way."

She snapped the compartment shut, smirking triumphantly at her handiwork.

"There." Riley exclaimed, beaming at the gift. "Ellie, c'mere!"

"What're you gonna do?"

"Obviously, I'm checking to see if it can serve me complimentary dishes." she answered back. "Jesus, Ellie, we're taking a picture with it, you fuckwit."

She tried to open her mouth to protest, but then realized that there wasn't really much to object about. For reasons she couldn't understand, Ellie had felt a couple of butterflies in her stomach the moment the both of them stood to pose. Riley held the camera slightly upwards as its front faced them. She handled its position carefully until they could see their reflections on the lens.

Ellie realized from the lens that she'd been staring at Riley.

A blush crept up to her cheeks as the older girl told her to smile. For a millisecond, time froze, and the world stopped rotating.

What was just important at that moment, was them.

She and Riley. Together. Smiling. Happy. Like how it was supposed to be. How it always should be.

Ellie, unaware, smiled even brighter.

The flash blinded them for a split second, and the photograph slid out shortly after.

She handed her the photo, and Ellie gawked at it, treasuring the picture more than the camera itself. It didn't have much use now that the film was gone, anyway. The redhead smiled stupidly, until Riley had decided to interrupt.

"Well?" she questioned, as if waiting for a well-deserved thank-you. "Do you like it?"

Ellie knew that a thank-you wasn't enough.

Without her own consent, she wrapped both her arms around Riley's neck, her head buried on her shoulder. The older girl stiffened, but eased to rest.

"It's amazing," she whispered. "Thank you."

They seldom did anything like this, but she didn't object. Riley eventually did the same as she welcomed the embrace, her arms and hands subconsciously caressing the redhead. They said no words during the duration, but the embrace remained for the longest amount of time.

And although they would break away soon, both wished that it had never ended.

-ELLIE-

They were just memories.

We couldn't be like that again.

I brushed past Riley and opened the door, looking at both hallways to ensure myself that there were no soldiers monitoring the soon-to-end curfew.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I closed the door, careful to not make too much of a noise.

"I'm making sure I don't get caught with a Firefly in my room."

A sigh of mellowed frustration escaped her lips.

"Relax. There are no soldiers on the entire floor."

Because, of course, a military school would definitely not have any of its personnel walking around the campus, especially in the wee hours of the morning.

If she assumed that I was going to forgive her that easily for the things she said to me before, then I wasn't buying it.

I clenched the Firefly pendant and handed it over to her with spite.

"Here, congrats."

But Riley gripped my hand tightly before I could yank it back.

"Hey—"

And then we were frozen.
Neither of us couldn't let go.

I was focusing on her profile again. And the way her brown-shaded eyes were gazing at me.

I felt so sheepishly stupid.

"Are we cool?" she asked, uncouthly letting go of the grip.

I looked at her in disbelief.

"Are we cool?"

Riley closed her eyes and let out a breath.

"I disappeared and you're mad—"

I interrupted her with a scoff.

"—and I owe you an explanation." She walked towards the chair and grabbed my jeans that rested on it. "Look, let's get outta here and I'll tell you all about it."

She woke me up in the most incredulous ways possible, she basically shrugged off the fact that I wasn't reacting the way she expected, and now, she wanted me to frolic along with her in the early hours of the day?

I began to question why I had easily complied to her orders before.

"It's almost morning—and I have military drills. You know, where we learn how to kill Fireflies?" I said, half-joking, half-probably-meaning-it. Riley rolled her eyes and tossed me the jeans.

"Put some pants on and let's go."

I gave out an exasperated sigh and walked over to the bedside, unwillingly doing what was told, just like old times.

Resisting was futile, and I knew that too damn well.

"I'm so dumb,"

"Now come on," Riley said, opening the door.

"When have we ever gotten into trouble?"

We were outside again.

The city of Boston greeted me with its foul-smelling exhaust from the factory, along with the bazillion other scents of gunpowder, oppression, death, infected, et cetera, et cetera. That fact that I didn't have lung cancer yet was a wondrous miracle.

Oh, you know what else was a miracle?

That Riley was alive, and that she was actually goading me to go with her outside of the fucking school like we had always done many, many lifetimes ago.

I wasn't smiling, though.

"What're we doing, Riley?" I asked curtly, we climbed a ladder that leaned on a wall of an abandoned building, reaching a lower cutoff of an outer staircase. This was our usual route, and I had some notion in knowing what place we were going to.

"It's a surprise." she grunted, clambering to get on top of the roof. Of course, I thought, because the mall definitely isn't the place you're taking me to. I climbed up without ease, looking at her confidently with smug.

"Someone's been working out, huh?" She smirked, that anarchic, illegal smirk. Exhaustion was plastered on her face, beads of sweat trickled down her forehead in that really, really photogenic type of way.

This was getting ridiculous. Over-the-top ridiculous. But I gawked open-mouthed at her anyway.

Eventually, after eyeing her, I decided to give the good ol' silent treatment, telepathically telling her that that smirk of hers wasn't going to work on me and that she could just jump off of the rooftop that we were in and never come back.

Unfortunately, Riley's telepathic skill was insufficient.
"Alright, just gonna leave me hanging?" she queried playfully.

The only response she received were the raindrops' pelting sounds.

"Okay, Ellie, I get it." she sighed, disappointed at my quietness.

I walked ahead and surveyed the environment around us. You could see nothing but bundles of decimated buildings and black puffs of smoke arising from the ground. The air smelled of burnt rubber, but I had grown use of such despised scents that I couldn't be bothered to complain about it. If 'beautiful' couldn't match the view, then 'breathtaking' would. (No, it was literally breathtaking. Jesus, have you smelled the damn city?).

Suddenly, I heard Riley's footsteps behind me, going faster and louder by the second. By the time I could look back, her shoulder collided with mine. Boom. I saw my mind explode into colors.

"Hey—!"

I spun around, stunned by the impact. Riley, who was ahead of me, was using that goddamn smirk as compensation for my bruised shoulder.

"Thought that you could go faster than me?" She was laughing now. God, help me. "Williams, you never fail to disappoint."

And before I could be given the chance to speak my mind, Riley Abel raised her hand and lifted her forefinger, as if saying, Come a little closer in the most cloying type of crooning. But no, she wasn't trying to seduce me, as much as I wanted but not wanted to at the back of my head.

She was holding my ponytail using her forefinger.

"You should let your hair down more, by the way."
And then she was winking.

...

Aside from focusing way too much on her wink and her everything, I started to analyze the black little circle that hung tightly to Riley's finger. Oh.

It was my ponytail.

Suddenly, my dark reddish locks freaking flew and scattered across my face since apparently, the whole world—and the wind—had decided to fuck me over just on this particular day. Having my hair down was not common, hell, even in sleep I practically had it tied. It was one of my little idiosyncrasies, plus, it kept the back of my neck from getting hot.

So, when I had realized that my hair was down, and that Riley was seeing me with my hair down, I blushed.

I freaking blushed.

Riley must've saw it, because she was laughing even harder.

"What the fuck?!" I yelled, taken aback by the force of the impact—and the realization. On that day, I had convinced myself of being the world's most embarrassing human being on the planet, not even Fraser Huntington could beat my reputation. No one could.

I groped my untied hair frantically, holding it back to a ponytail position with one hand.
That fucking asshole.

"Riley, give it back!" I yelped, anger and coyness filling my insides.

"If you could outrun me," She winked, jumping onto the roof of another building, "I think I'll consider it!" And then she sped off, with her breezy laughs following suit and flying in the air as it whipped my locks around mercilessly.

Okay, that's how she wanted to play it.

So I pursued, determinate anger filling my insides.

"Oh, I'm going to outrun you, all right." I muttered, my fists pumping as each sprint strode by. "And then you'll be fucking wishing that you should've stayed missing."

My hair was desperately trying to get itself into my mouth; but I ignored, focusing more on our speed as we jumped from roof to roof. Maybe I had been too focused, because as soon as the fourth jump to another rooftop came along, my foot slipped, causing my momentum to stagger and fail tremendously.

Unfortunately for me, I was about to jump at that moment.

I couldn't stop my propulsion, it was sort of like a train that couldn't slow down fast enough. My speedy-as-fuck feet had led me to the air, where it seemed that I had lifted off as soon as I touched the edge of the roof.

I was flailing, screaming, and gliding mid-air, all at the same time. Everything became a blur, and the next thing I knew, I had felt this cement-ish pain hit my sides as I found myself clinging to the edge of the roof. Whoa, didn't really see this coming. I took a deep breath, trying to process what was happening.

I was dangling off of the edge of a building's roof.

Okay, okay, don't panic. I thought, don't look down, Ellie. Don't look down.

But I did the exact fucking opposite anyway, because I was apparently a rebel and no matter how hard I tried, I would always do things that seemed to be a hundred times more dissimilar than what I had intended to do. The fact that my life was literally hanging on a thread—more like a building—wasn't helping.

I hated to admit it back then, but I needed Riley more than ever.

"Riley!" I would've shouted, only she had arrived four times quicker than I could ever expected. She sprinted as soon as my fingers clenched onto the roof, holding for dear life. Her brown eyes were a rush and alert, even her dark skin seemed to glow pale from the anxiety. I gritted my teeth, my feet swimming around the air and occasionally colliding with the building's wall.

"Shit," hissed my rescuer, "Ellie, hold up, hold up. I'll uh—. . . shit. Just, stay calm—"

I was being rebellious again, for I was yelling.
It was the embarrassing kind of yelling. Not high-pitched, fortunately.

"—Ellie, Ellie!" Riley was reaching down now, her arm extended toward me. "Grab on, and I'll— I'll pull, okay?"

I gripped her arm, firm and lean, but I supposed that it wasn't the time to be examining and drooling over physically attractive arms. There were more important things.

Like my life, for instance, and the fact that I was hanging off of a fucking building.

Riley had pulled me back onto the roof, and we ended up doubling over, with our breaths panting and tired. My heartbeat—which had hammered a billion times per millisecond the moment I slipped—started to slow down. Riley huffed, coughing and wiping the sweat off her forehead with her physically gifted bionic arm that had managed to pull up a probably 90-100 pound girl.

"You're welcome." she said, half-grinning, half-panting.

"Yeah, okay." I collected my senses and walked ahead of her, descending the nearest flight of stairs that led to the ground below. Riley followed suit, her expression mirroring one that telepathically said that she was disappointed at my ungratefulness.

"Oh, sure. Definitely don't need to thank me, especially since I've just saved your life like, five minutes ago. Nope, no thanks needed at all." she spoke up, after minutes of silence.

Of course, because she—the girl who I believed had deserted me without a moment's notice, leaving me emotionally devastated, angry, and worried about her well-being, only to come back more than a month later and acting as if nothing had ever happened between us—needed my thanks.

What a fucking cad. A lousy fucking cad, rebel, miscreant, hooligan, ne'er do well, juvenile delinquent, good-for-nothing teenage girl whom I had unfortunately developed feelings for. Yeah, that's right. I actually developed feelings for her, as if I was developing a goddamn disease. And until now, it's the most horrible, frustrating, anger-provoking thing that I have ever felt, right next to the fact that I hated her guts at the same time.

Riley Abel was like a fucking thunderstorm. A signal for darker days, a catastrophically inevitable asshat that tended to mow over your morning.

Though even so, I kept coming right back at her.

Thank you all for reaching the end of the first chapter! I will you see in the next :)
-Taco