[Drawing up her legs, she wraps her arms around them and deliberately opens up that Winter in her mind. Tries to go with the current of memories and not drown in them. It's easier this time. Gets easier every time she does it. She wonders if that's a good thing, going numb to this shit.]

... in autumn, Joel got really hurt. He fell, and this piece of rebar went through him. Here. It was pretty fucking scary for a while. I was on my own, taking care of him, and he came down with this infection. I didn't really know what to do.

I had him holed up in the basement of this house, and I went hunting. I actually bagged a deer. ... so these two guys found me.

[Ellie goes on, explaining her first meeting with David and James, how she'd traded the deer for medicine. How David had fought at her back against the wave of Infected while James went off to get the supplies. How David recognized her from a secondhand account -- that she and Joel had killed quite a few of his men.

How David had her followed, and she woke up in time to jump on Callus and make a run for it to lead them away from Joel. How they'd shot Callus out from under her, how she'd fought her way through more and more of them until they'd managed to take her.

Her voice doesn't falter until the end.]

... when I woke up, I was. Locked up. In a cell. In some kind of slaughterhouse. David was outside, and he was- butchering something.

And then I realized it was a person.