[ Stubbornly, she wishes that she could claim that nobody wanted to be friends with her, but it isn't true. Adults and kids alike have been kind and welcoming, so the guilt there in refusing their efforts compounds everything else, and... it sort of all comes out at Joel, because she's only ever open and honest with and around Joel.

Much less than she'd been, once, but... still. ]

Yeah, I like it. [ She mutters, unable to deny that. ] It's not like I want to holed up alone in some frozen basement without any food.

[ She casts her eyes his way and feels another unwanted pang. It's a very specific frozen basement that she'd been referencing, one he probably barely remembers, considering he'd spent most of the winter teetering on the brink of death. ]

... It's like I said. [ Once, not too long ago. As she explains (albeit grudgingly), Ellie backs up to settle cross-legged on the sand. ] Everything we both did and went through - for all of it to have just been totally wasted -

[ She groans in an anguished frustration sticking her head between her knees, twining her fingers and pressing them to the back of her neck. Ellie isn't sure if it'd be worse to have what Joel said be the truth, in that there had been no hope for a cure all along, or to have what he said be a lie, and there still be a team of desperate Fireflies looking for answers out there. If he'd lied, though, wouldn't they have come looking for me? Marlene knows Tommy, she's gotta know where he is.

Some days, for a crazy moment, she considers running away back to the hospital to find answers herself. Luckily for everyone, even Ellie isn't that reckless. ]

I just don't know what to do with myself. [ She admits finally, looking almost helplessly up. ] I've never really lived a life like this. I don't know how to do it without acting like a fucking psycho.

[ Ellie's still a teenager, though, and prone to teenage hyperbole. ]