Chapter Text
Joel didn’t know how long they’d been walking by the time they found the cabin. Probably not long enough, but his vision had started to blur and even if Ellie would leave him and keep going if he passed out, Joel wasn’t sure she’d be capable of it right now. They’d stumbled through the snow since Silver Lake leaning on each other more out of physical necessity than emotional comfort. Joel’s adrenaline rush was wearing off, leaving him cold, stiff, and praying the searing pain he felt in his side was from his wound itself and not popping a stitch. If Ellie was hurt she clearly wasn’t feeling it, or much of anything, he thought as he watched her stare blankly down at the snow. She had been like this since she realized who he was, and the uncharacteristic quiet was scaring him more than he liked to admit.
“Come on sweetheart, let’s get out of the cold” He spoke softly so as not to startle her, but she didn’t even seem to notice he had spoken.
He lead her into the house, glad there weren’t stairs up to the doorstep. He wasn’t sure either of them could have made it up them if there had.
“You stay right here, I’m gonna check the place. I’ll come get you in just a minute, okay baby?” Desperation was seeping into his voice as her gaze continued to rest unseeing on the ground in front of her.
The minute he stepped through the doorway she started screaming. The kind of screaming he heard from that burning building, the kind of screaming he knew he would hear in all his nightmares from now on. Pure fear and despair. He ran back outside, gun raised, expecting to find a survivor from Silver Lake that had caught up to them, maybe even infected. But no, Ellie was completely alone, and seemingly aware and moving intentionally for the first time since he found her, frantically looking around for something. Her eyes locked on him and she froze for just a second before clumsily running the few steps into his arms. Despite the wave of pain that nearly stopped him breathing when she made contact, he wrapped his arms around her immediately. She was babbling again, he realized, talking without any real words like a baby trying to communicate with only meaningless sounds. In a moment a dam he’d had in his mind since Sarah’s death broke, and comforting words and terms of endearment flowed from his mouth like water.
He supposed being a dad was like riding a bike, you never really forget how. He paused at the thought. She was his daughter. And he had picked the worst possible time to realize it. He’d done what he’d told Tommy he would. He’d failed her, completely and utterly. But for some reason she seemed to want him around, and he knew by now that he would burn down the world to give her anything she wanted.
Tucked back under his arm, they entered the cabin together. It was small, one floor and barely two rooms. He kept his gun up and Ellie firmly towards the door anyway until he was sure he’d seen every inch of the place a person could hide.
Walking through the kitchen area he took a moment to look through the drawers until he found a rag. The sooner Ellie’s face wasn’t covered in blood the better, though Joel had a feeling her face would always be covered in blood in his dreams from now on.
Joel guided Ellie to the couch and sat her down. When they first started walking he gave her a quick once over, enough to realize with a sigh of relief that most of the blood wasn’t hers. Now that shelter was taken care of, however, he found himself needing to know exactly how they had hurt his baby girl. Exactly how much he’d failed.
He kneeled on the floor in front of her like he was begging forgiveness from a higher power, eyes trying to meet hers that had gone blank again.
“I’m gonna go get some snow so we can clean you up, but I’m just gonna get it from the porch, you’ll be able to see me the whole time, I promise.”
She did respond this time, if only by a little hitch in her breath, but her head moved to watch him as he walked to the door and scooped some snow into the rag. He figured that was what counted as progress right now. She relaxed slightly as he walked back, seemingly reassured he wasn’t just going to walk out the door and leave her there. He took up his place again kneeling in front of her and started melting the snow in his hands to wet the rag.
Joel took a moment to study the spray of blood on her. He knew from the amount that she’d likely killed the owner of the blood, at close range no doubt. Who had hurt his baby, scared her so much that she had to kill him?
She seemed to come back a little while he wiped the blood from her face. Her eyes looking at his face and actually seeing it, tracking his movements a bit. The action reminded him of cleaning Sarah’s face after meals when she was a toddler, and he wished, not for the first time, that Ellie had been born into the world before. He wished he was just wiping food or dirt from her face after a meal or playing outside. That she got the chance to just be a kid. His kid.
He had gotten most of it off of her hands and face, working on her nose last in case it was broken. Sure enough as he got to the cut on the bridge, she winced.
“I gotta make sure your nose isn’t broken, baby girl. Can I touch it to see? I promise I’ll be gentle.”
Ellie gave a tiny nod. He relaxed a little at the first reaction he’d gotten other than catatonia and blind panic. He checked her nose as carefully as possible. Once when Sarah was a baby, Tommy had found him sobbing in the bathroom trying to cut her nails. He’d cut her on accident, big clippers on tiny fingers, and though Sarah had stopped crying after a few moments, he kept on until Tommy got there from sheer guilt. Joel didn’t cry much anymore, but the little whimper that Ellie gave as he felt her nose made him feel the exact same way.
“It is broken but not bad, you might have a bit of a bump but I don’t have to reset it, I won’t have to touch it again. Can you tell me where else you hurt?” He asked, soft but firm. He didn’t want to know the answer but he needed to with everything in him.
She looked in his eyes for a few seconds before pointing at her head. This was just what they needed, Joel thought, head trauma. It did ease his fears about her catatonic state a bit though, realizing at least a small part of her behavior was likely a concussion. Between the low light in the cabin and Ellie’s dark eyes, he couldn’t see her pupils enough to properly check them. He began to run his fingers through her hair, trying to feel for bumps with a feather light touch. He found a huge one at the side of her head.
“Can you tell me how you got this, baby?” Joel asked, meeting her eyes.
He was surprised when she spoke, voice gravely and soft, and his heart soared for a second before he processed her words. “I was leading them away and… Fell. Off Callus. They shot him I think.”
Jesus. Joel had seen Callus in the freezer, but assumed they took him from the house, he never thought she was riding when they shot him. She could have been crushed under Callus’ weight, or thrown hard enough to splatter her brain on the pavement or - Ellie’s hand on his brought him back to reality. She had a nasty concussion, but she was alive. The fall from the horse was hours ago, he didn’t even need to worry about keeping her awake. Which was good, he didn’t know if he had the heart.
“You’re doing so good, sweetheart. Anywhere else?”
She paused, looking suddenly not only aware, but calculating, before coming to some sort of decision.
“Ribs. Don’t feel broken though.”
Joel was quickly realizing every sentence of this conversation was going to give him a heart attack. No 14 year old should know what broken ribs feel like.
“Can I lift up your shirt? I need to make sure. It’ll be quick, I promise.”
A few tears fell onto her cheeks, but she nodded.
He lifted up her sweatshirt and cursed. Her whole stomach and lower chest were in the early stages of what looked to be bad bruises.
“Alright baby, i need to feel your ribs to make sure, is that alright?”
Ellie looked scared out of her mind, but she slowly nodded again. Wishing he could just let it go, he decided to take it at face value. Feeling her ribs, trying to ignore the hitch in her breath as he touched her, he could tell she was right. She’d be in a lot of pain for a while, but nothing was broken. Joel gave her one more once over before lowering the sweatshirt and-
Fuck.
Joel was going to walk two hours back through the snow and finish the job. He was going to burn down the whole compound. Murder every man, woman, and child who had failed his baby girl. He had failed his baby girl. The button of her jeans was ripped off. Her fly was down. Someone had touched his Ellie and whatever she had done to them wasn’t near enough. Nothing could ever be enough.
Ellie saw his eyes change and followed his gaze to her own jeans. The tear tracks on her face filled with water again like riverbeds after the snow melt. Joel was shocked out of his violent musings by the sudden weight of her launching herself at him. He was knocked to the floor, unable to breathe with the pain of the impact, but his arms made their way around her instinctively.
As soon as he got breath back in his lungs he was talking to her, that same stream of ‘it’s ok’ and ‘baby girl’ and ‘I know’ that was almost as meaningless as her own babbling earlier. Anything to drown out the awful sound of true, unabashed sobbing coming from Ellie. A sound of terror and pain and rage.
It took a while this time, for her to calm back down. Joel got the feeling it really wasn’t so much calming down as it was just a sheer adrenaline crash. As much as his mind was racing with all the questions he didn’t want answers to, but needed answered nonetheless, he knew nothing good would come of prying tonight. Even if she were up for it, his own adrenaline crash was hitting just as hard.
Usually Joel would make up the couch for her and sleep on the floor, trying to give her what little comfort he could. Tonight though, he knew neither of them were getting any sleep on their own. Joel placed a now limp Ellie leaning against the couch before grabbing the moth eaten blanket off the back of it. Laying it over himself, he lifted it, inviting her in. After a moment she hesitantly moved closer, and he guided her to a position familiar from nights Joel couldn’t quite remember in that basement.
Ellie fell asleep listening to his heartbeat.
——————————
Joel wakes first in the morning, thankful that Ellie seems to have been too exhausted to dream. He knows from experience she probably won’t always be so lucky.
Joel stayed where he was, not wanting to disturb Ellie’s hard earned rest. He went through what he knew, trying to find all the gaps that need filling in.
One. He had been out of commission for a while. He didn’t know how long, but his wound, while infected, looks anything but new. His memories are hazy, but he remembers seeing Ellie asleep multiple times. Now that he’s conscious and not scared out of his mind for Ellie, he’s also starving, and he knows from experience it’s not the kind of hunger brought on by a day or two without eating.
Two. Ellie had been taken while leading the attackers away from him. She had fallen off Callus trying to get away. He didn’t know when this happened. He remembers her begging him to stay awake, to kill anyone who reached him, but he couldn’t. He awoke next to the first man coming in the house. It took probably an hour to take down the three men, and another hour to reach Silver Lake. Even if he’d only been asleep a few minutes, that still meant Ellie was alone in the hands of those men for two hours.
Three. The men who’d taken Ellie were cannibals. He’d seen the bodies strung up in the freezer, and been around too long to have any doubts about why. It wasn’t uncommon, for raiders or groups outside the QZ. While lots still balked at it, himself included, rigid morals were a luxury in the wild. He only hoped Ellie didn’t know what they were doing. He really hoped she hadn’t eaten any meat from them.
Four. Ellie had killed at least one of them. The only way you get that much blood on you is doing the deed yourself. Likely not with a gun either, if the amount on her hands was anything to go by. If he had to guess, he’d say Ellie had killed someone with a knife. And she didn’t stop after one hit either. He supposed he should be feeling more about this revelation, but all he could bring himself to feel was pride. Though he wished she didn’t have to be, his girl was tough. Joel thought Ellie deserved to kill any bastard that made her want to.
Five. Someone had touched his Ellie in a way no one her age should be touched. He could barely even hold the words ‘rape’ and ‘Ellie’ in the same space in his mind without a blinding string of emotions starting with rage and ending with grief filling his head. He tried to tell himself that maybe her button had just gotten caught on something in her escape, maybe those pants had been missing a button for weeks. But he remembered the words of the man who gave him Ellie’s location. ‘David’s newest pet’. And god didn’t those words make him want to throw up, the idea of someone taking his strong willed, pain in the ass little girl and trying to make her into a pet. Trying to tame her. So no, he couldn’t hope her button had gotten ripped in the escape. Instead he just hoped this ‘David’ was the poor fucker whose blood he had washed off her face.
Joel had reached the end of his knowledge, finding it to be a painfully short list, even padded with guesswork.
He didn’t have to lay there much longer before Ellie stirred, moving a little as her eyes opened.
“I’m starving, you wanna see if this cabin has any food?” Joel asked.
Ellie nodded, sitting up. She was uncharacteristically quiet as he moved through the cabin kitchen, looking for anything edible. It wasn’t the vacant quiet from yesterday, she tracked him with her eyes and seemed to be taking in her surroundings just fine, but from a girl who spends most of their mornings complaining about getting up, making stupid puns, or asking incessant questions, the silence was unnerving nonetheless.
Joel found a few cans of beans and corn and opened one of each, putting the rest in his bag after checking for dents. The cabin didn’t have any wood to build a fire, but cold beans were certainly not the worst thing either of them have eaten.
Ellie looked a little nauseous at the prospect of food, looking at Joel with intense scrutiny as he started to eat. Shit, Joel thought. There go my ‘Ellie doesn’t know about cannibalism’ hopes. She was usually a voracious eater, always eating like food will be taken away from her at any second. Joel always wondered how fucked up those FEDRA schools must be to teach a kid to eat like that.
Despite her trepidation though, once Joel took a few bites Ellie seemed satisfied enough to try the food. She ate slower than usual, and he saw her gag once, but by the time she was finished at least a quarter of each can was gone, and Joel counted that as a win for today.
As Joel finished off the cans Ellie spoke, with a waver in her voice Joel couldn’t quite name.
“So, back to finding the fireflies, right?”
In that moment Joel knew two things. Call it a fathers intuition, call it skilled at reading faces, call it a lucky guess, but he knew as surely as he knew Ellie’s hair was brown that she didn’t want to go to Salt Lake City. And he also knew that she’d never admit it. He didn’t even think about the cure before starting to plan their way back to Jackson. As far as he was concerned, the world doesn’t deserve this precious little girl saving it.
How to broach the idea to the most stubborn kid he’s ever met would be the hardest part of this plan. Thoughts of her laying next to him when he was stabbed, refusing to leave his side, saying she’d lead them away flew through his head as he had an idea.
“You know Ellie, my side still isn’t really healed-“ Ellie moved faster than Joel thought she had since the University, grabbing at his shirt to lift it up.
“Oh fuck!” Ellie yelled, suddenly coming back to a reality where she’d just cared for Joel dying in a basement all week. “Where’s my pack, I still have some medicine. Joel what the fuck were you thinking, you probably ripped your stitches-“ Ellie was frantic until Joel cut her off.
“Baby I’m ok, that’s not what I mean. You did such a good job, alright? I promise I’m not gonna leave you again. I’m okay,” He held her hands and looked into her eyes as he talked, willing her to hear him. Joel thought briefly about the ‘medicine’ comment, wondering where on earth she’d gotten medicine from, before filing it into his growing mental folder titled ‘things to talk to Ellie about’.
After a minute, Joel started again.
“What I mean is, I’m not in a fit state for another months long journey. On foot, no less, since…” he trailed off, not wanting to mention Callus. “Anyway, I have a proposition, alright?”
Ellie eyed him warily but nodded.
“Let’s go back to Jackson. It’s only about a week away, and we’ll be able to rest up a bit. Lay low until I heal, eat until we both get fat. Then if you still wanna go save the world we can take a horse, stock up on rations, set out proper. World’s waited twenty years, it can wait a little more.” There was so much hope in his voice, that she wouldn’t see through his attempt to be her excuse, that she would have a chance to be a kid.
“We’re not giving up though right?” She asked, sounding equal parts guilty and hopeful. “We’ll still go and I can make the cure?”
“Not giving up, just resting. I promise you baby girl, we will do whatever you want once we’re all healed up.” And he meant it. Looking at her eyes, full of trust he knew he didn’t deserve, Joel knew he would follow her to hell and back. He basically had already.
Ellie nodded. “Ok.”
Joel breathed a sigh of relief. He could take his baby home.