Chapter Text
The drive from Salt Lake is silent. Ellie’s in the passenger seat. Joel has his free arm wrapped around her shoulders, rubbing in slow constant circles. She can’t stop shaking.
She’d woken up on a table. It felt like it happened both a year ago and was still happening now. A man looming over her wearing a mask and wielding a knife. His eyes bore down into her with the full weighty attention of hunger. She wasn’t wearing her normal clothes - barely wearing anything . The cold of the table seeped through the open back of the strange gown they had her in. Half of her body was exposed, her hair loose and tickling the back of her neck like spider legs.
The man moved closer, blocking out the beam of antiseptic white light overhead. He was right on top of her.
Panic overtook everything. She’d screamed. Adrenaline drove her hand up, seizing his knife out of rubber covered hands. The blade cut into her own palm, blood spattering down onto her body - hot through the thin gown, but she managed to drive the knife into the man’s eye before he could fight her off.
The man collapsed, bleeding.
Only then did Ellie take in her surroundings. The whole place looked…medical. A machine cheerfully beeped in time with her ragged breathing. The knife in her hand was a scalpel.
Oh shit. They’d found the Fireflies.
The man bleeding out on the ground seized, nurses hovering over him. He gurgled, then fell ominously still.
Oh shit . She’d just killed a Firefly.
A doctor.
One of the nurses radioed for help. Marlene came running into the room, Joel hot on her tail. Apparently he’d just woken up when Ellie went stab happy.
Joel had dust in his hair from the Firefly’s flash grenade and a crazed look in his eye. He looked out for blood and ready to start shooting if someone didn’t clear a path to Ellie right fucking now. Still half naked and now covered in a mix of her and the doctor’s blood, Ellie had never been happier to see him.
He scooped her up like she weighed nothing. The feeling of his hairy arm on her naked back made her flinch with a little animal sound. She cringed at her own weakness.
Joel’s eyes widened as he took in the state of her. The blood cooled in her hair. Her stupid fingers shook where they grasped at Joel’s shoulder for purchase.
“I’m sorry,” she babbled. “I didn’t mean to- I thought- he was-”
Joel shushed her, rocking back and forth. He presses her face into his shoulder. She can’t see his expression anymore.
“It’s ok. Doesn’t matter. You’re ok,” he soothed.
Marlene looked down at the rapidly cooling corpse on the floor with disbelief.
“He was the only one who could do it,” she said. “He was going to save the world.”
Ellie, loopy, barely recognized her own voice: childish and hysterical.
“Well he fucking sucked at it!”
Her recollection got hazy after that. She thought she passed out for a little while, but everything was patchy.
With no doctor, the Fireflies had no reason to stay in Salt Lake. Apparently they were already thinking of packing up and retreating to the west coast since they seemed perpetually one raider attack away from running out of supplies, but Ellie’s thrust of a scalpel was the last straw.
It took less than an hour before the hospital expelled people into the broken city streets - like parasites off orphan children in a FEDRA flea bath.
Marlene had offered to take Ellie with them. She suggested they might find another doctor. Maybe the Fireflies in Seattle could help. Marlene said all of this to Joel because he refused to set Ellie down even when she weakly hit at his shoulder, leaving a bloody handprint on his shirt.
Asshole.
She was secretly grateful. She was still shaking. Still probably couldn’t stand. At least with Joel holding her she could blame her lack of control on him.
Ellie told Marlene no.
She’d dragged her body, and Joel’s, thousands of miles to get here only to be attacked. Her ass is exposed in the gown they put her in when they drugged her. She’s covered in a dead man’s blood and eye goo: a man who was going to cut into her without explaining anything. She needed it to be over.
Marlene insisted Ellie go with them.
Joel tensed in that dangerous way where he became a coiled spring, one second away from extreme violence.
At that point Ellie lost track of the conversation. Whatever Joel said was hushed and harsh. Somehow it got them a car and got them the fuck out of there. They didn’t pause long enough to find Ellie’s bag. Joel acted as Ellie’s bodyguard all the way to the parking garage when he finally set her down so he could better hold the rifle at the rear. Her bare feet slapped against the concrete, holding her gown closed with one hand, her mom’s knife in the other. Her hair was still down, now probably a snarled matt. She hated it.
Joel trained his gun on Marlene until Ellie started the car for him. Then he said something final. Something about what he’d do if they’re followed. Probably it was important. It sounded like radio static to Ellie - like flipping channels and thinking you’d get a snatch of a song dead song, only for it to fade into the slow woosh of empty air where hope goes to fucking die. Ellie faded in and out, marveling at the sheer idiotic mess their lives were.
They left the clusterfuck that was the Fireflies behind.
It takes a few hours into the drive for Ellie to gather the brainpower to pick through what just happened and watch the trees whizz by the window at speeds that still seem novel.
One miscalculated dose of anesthesia and months of planning, the grand cure goes to shit. Ellie can’t even bring herself to feel ashamed at ruining everything. It wasn’t her fault the Fireflies knocked them both out and were going to operate on her without even saying anything.
She picks at the makeshift bandage on her hand, made up of a ripped handkerchief. The seat is still bloody - Joel only noticed the wound when she wouldn’t stop poking at the edges, watching blood ooze out. He glances over again and she tucks her hand under her leg to see if it eases his expression.
As they drive Joel keeps up a steady stream of reassurances. His hand stays on her shoulder, over the thin fabric of the surgical gown. The one time he shifts his hand to feel her pulse and touches bare skin she flinches hard enough he loses control of the car.
“We’re going to get you some clothes,” he promises. “Then we’re going to get back to Tommy’s. Everything will be alright then.”
They keep driving.
At a gas station parking lot they find clothes in an abandoned suitcase: a men’s medium sweater that she’s swimming in and exposes at least one shoulder with a boy’s tank top underneath because she couldn’t find a sports bra. The shorts fit her. Still, her bare legs feel vulnerable. At least they find shoes. No socks. She wiggles her dirty toes inside to see if she can run in them. They grip better than some of the pairs they’ve found in the past.
They keep driving. As the final remnants of whatever drug they had her on fades she lets out these stupid little hiccup sounds she can’t control.
“I failed.” The words come out in hitched sobs. “I doomed the world. It’s all over.”
“Hey, hey.” Joel jostles her as he rolls the car to a stop along the shoulder of the road. He takes a look back, still seeming nervous of anyone following them, even hours into their getaway, before gathering Ellie up in his arms. She fits under his shoulder easily.
“You did everything you could, baby. You tried so hard.” His beard is bristly on Ellie’s forehead when he moves his face closer to hers. “You’re so tough.”
He holds her until her sobs turn to hiccups. They start driving again - the engine reassuringly smooth. They’re both disoriented from the adrenaline and attack earlier that day but she knows that Joel is too paranoid to stop until they get back to safety and leave behind the Fireflies forever.
Ellie looks at him as the trees whizz by. She’s selfishly so glad she’s here with him in the cozy confines of the car instead of cargo again, for the Fireflies this time. The way they looked at her, the nurses talking over her inert body as Marlene argued with Joel. She never wants that again.
Maybe…maybe she did ok. She saved Joel after all.
(“Wasn’t time that did it,” he said, eyes full of unnamed emotion.)
As long as the two of them can stay together, maybe it will all be ok.
—
They arrive at the gates of Jackson on foot right before the sun is about to set. Joel holds up a raggedy green handkerchief he’d scavenged a few miles back. Apparently Tommy told him some of Jackson’s security measures before they’d left for the university so they could get back ok. The makeshift green flag keeps the gate guards from shooting them as one comes down to meet them.
It’s a big guy: early 40s, bald and wearing a biker jacket. He takes one look at Joel’s holstered open carry guns and sneers as if trying to intimidate him. Joel seems unphased. Once you’ve taken down a bloater, any human pales in comparison. Then the guard takes one look at Ellie and does a double take before hustling over, closing the final distance between them.
Joel pushes Ellie behind him. That only seems to make the guy move faster.
“Keep your hands away from the girl,” the man booms.
“You keep your fucking everything away from us!” Ellie yells from behind the safe bulk of Joel.
“Ellie,” Joel hisses.
Still, her yelling did something (take that Joel). The man slows, expression morphing into something weirdly soft when he looks at Ellie.
Joel puts on his reasonable “bargaining” voice that Ellie isn’t fully convinced ever really worked for him when he was dealing drugs back in the QZ.
“I know we don’t know each other but my brother Tommy-”
“Oh I know who you are Joel Miller,” the man says.
Joel and Ellie both pause at that.
“Uh, alright then.” Joel shifts as if trying to find footing in the conversation. “I told Tommy I’d be coming back to Jackson, with Ellie.”
The man crossed his arms.
“The two of you didn’t go through the proper channels the last time you came in. Councilwoman Miller has been reprimanded for that. You’re welcome to enter Jackson but you have to follow our rules.”
Joel pauses as if mentally debating what the right move is before nodding. What follows reminds Ellie vividly of a FEDRA checkpoint, which older adults scathingly used to compare to a “TSA screening on steroids” whatever the hell that was. Joel has to take off his jacket. He has to take off his shoes for no fucking reason. He gets patted down. All weapons were confiscated although the guard grudgingly allowed him back one handgun.
They both get sniffed by a dog. Ellie spends the solid ten minute screening process petting the bestest boy while Joel gets thoroughly poked by the guard. Then the man turns to her.
Joel immediately goes from affable nice guy with nothing to hide to full blown killer. Ellie puffs up, ready to pull her knife. She’s wearing actual clothes now but the sense memory of the hospital gown still lingers on her skin.
The man doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t make a single step towards her to subject her to the same screening. Instead, he crouches down and calls for the dog. He fucking smiles at Ellie and lets them through without even checking her for guns.
Huh.
“I’d be such a great drug mule,” Ellie whispers as they’re led to the clinic for part two of their screening. Jackson needs to make sure they don’t have lice or whatever before letting them into their sacred halls.
Joel shoots her a look that says now isn’t the time. Whatever. It’s true.
Word apparently got ahead they would be coming. Maybe that’s why the screening took so long: so they could prepare.
Tommy meets them along with a friendly nurse named Dan. Tommy looks skittish as fuck, shifting from foot to foot, but Ellie doesn’t know him well enough to really judge and Joel’s body language says he still thinks are ok, so Ellie withholds judgement.
For now.
The clinic is a humble little building that feels less medical and more like a makeshift community space separated with curtains and wheeled-in cots. It reminds Ellie of the outdoor triage place from just this morning (...yesterday? It’s been the longest fucking day in the world) where Joel confessed how he shot and missed. It looks like Jackson repurposed cots and grabbed supplies. Honestly it’s a plus it looks less like a hospital considering… well, everything.
Only Dan and Tommy are there so it’s mostly a big empty space with good sight lines. Ellie lets herself relax.
Tommy and Joel hug just as tight as before. It still makes Ellie’s inside’s writhe in jealousy which is dumb. She’s not a baby. Joel can like more than one person. She just needs to keep telling herself that…another hundred or so times.
Joel pulls away first. “Not exactly the welcome I was expecting.”
Tommy plays with his hat in his hands. Ellie wonders if he’s like Joel and thinks it’s bad manners to wear a hat indoors.
“Yeah, sorry about this. This is the last stop of the night though, promise. The doc here just has to do some basics. Everyone in Jackson gets a six month check up and some blood work done.” He tries to smile. “An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure we don’t got anymore.”
Joel isn’t amused but Ellie silently gives Tommy’s attempt at humor 2 out of 10 with an extra bonus pity point.
Ellie goes first, mostly so she can’t build it up in her mind. It’s not too bad. The doctor (“Just call me Dan. I’m more of a med tech than an actual PhD. We have a real doctor but I get night shift.”) doesn’t make Ellie take off any clothes and looks uncomfortable at the suggestion. He does make her take off her new shoes when she’s weighed. He recoils, first at her feet blackened with dirt and blood. She’s missing her little toenail which does look pretty gnarly - her calluses on the pads of her feet have gotten all wonky and blistered over the months, with every shoe breaking in her foot a different way. Then he recoils at her weight.
“You’re-”
“Supermodel ready, I know,” she quips. No one’s laughing, just staring grimly at the double digit number on the scale that should probably be way fucking higher. She clambors down.
Dan pats his pockets. “I know I had a protein bar somewhere.”
Ellie wants to snark that one protein bar wouldn’t fix her. She also wants to say something about not taking candy from strangers. The weird vibe in the room has her clamming up for once and saying nothing until Dan refocuses.
“Any injuries outside your feet?”
“Uh.” She actually has to pause and think about it. She had an IV in her arm. It came out bloody and tore the skin, but that’s the arm with her bite scar.
Her bite scar.
As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Dan prattles on. “Tommy Miller told us any preliminary information he knew about both of you to make the process more streamlined. Age, gender. I also want a record of old injuries so we can track them over time. Tommy told me you have a bite scar? Ellie?”
She freezes. Any fucking second now she’s going to rotate through fight and then flight, as long as Joel can keep up with her. Meanwhile Joel’s hand inches ever closer to his gun.
“Yeah, from a bad fight with a FEDRA officer,” Tommy says pointedly. “My brother said it was a worry. People see a bite these days and shoot first, ask questions later. We spread the word that you had trouble with people making assumptions about an infected bite in the past. Now that people know it’s not from an infected, no one will bother you about it. After all, you had it months ago and you’re here now.”
Joel shoots Tommy a disgusted look at the simplicity of the lie. Ellie shares the sentiment. No way is this gonna fucking fly.
“Do you mind if I see?” Dan asks.
With bated breath Ellie pushes her oversized sleeve up past her elbow. Dan looks at the scar, eyebrows raised.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you. Yes, I can see how people made the assumption it was infected, but then, scar tissue does some strange things. It looks like a hypertrophic scar, or keloid…” He smiles down at her in a way that she would bristle at for being patronizing if things weren’t so tense.
“You don’t have to worry about people assuming things here, honey. My father had MS, which meant muscle spasms, slurred speech. I’m sure you know what those are also symptoms of, and can guess what FEDRA did to him.”
Ellie nods. It’s weird to find people this open, this honest, but it’s strangely comforting.
“People built Jackson so we won’t make those kinds of assumptions again, especially when it comes to the people we need to protect,” Dan says firmly. He turns her arm a few more times in the light, then notices the scab around the IV scar and bustles around a first aid kit.
That’s it? It feels anticlimactic that the issue of her scar is fixed just like that. Tommy looks stupidly smug.
“Occam’s razor,” Tommy murmurs under his breath, still acting all friendly, as if Joel isn’t staring daggers into him. “The simplest explanation is usually true. Ellie has a scar but hasn’t turned, so obviously the scar isn’t an infected bite.”
“Tommy if you weren’t my brother…” Joel trails off. Dan tenses at the insinuation of a threat, though Ellie knows from Joel’s tone it’s more just his “overwhelmed Southern” voice which usually means he just needed a fifteen minute break from puns or five minutes to “rest his eyes.”
Tommy notices Dan’s tension and is back to looking like a guilty kicked dog. Something’s going on here that Ellie isn’t understanding, which just makes her feel even more uncomfortable in her newly scavenged clothes.
Dan finally finishes up with the rest of the tally of everything wrong with Ellie before turning to Joel.
“Is there anything I need to know about you? Besides the incident where you were rendered unconscious earlier today by,” he checks his notes, “raiders.”
“No,” Joel says, deadpan. “Perfectly fine.”
“Seriously?” Ellie groans. “Yes he has something wrong with him, besides the obvious issues with his personality. Joel take your fucking shirt off.”
She tugs at him and he bats her away.
“It’s fine,” he says, mostly to reassure Tommy who’s eyeing both of them nervously.
Ellie sighs before pulling out the big eyes. She doesn’t do it often, mostly because she tried it in a mirror once and thought she looked really fucking stupid, but for some reason it makes Joel cave in five seconds or less.
Joel caves in two.
“It’s healed over fine,” he says even as Ellie’s already tugging at his five layers of flannel to get to his actual shirt. Dan’s looking at them like he doesn’t know if he should intervene. It’s definitely weird of her to do this, but she literally helped Joel do everything from feeding him snow to cleaning up piss for a solid week in a dank basement while he got sepsis and almost died. Even after everything that came next, that she’s not going to think about right now, he needed help. They were a sorry sight for a good month of his fingers being sore from bruised knuckles and shaking from starvation, his still puffy abdomen and her, well, everything.
She knows he doesn’t want to have both hands busy with clothing. His right hand has been hovering near where he’s got his gun hidden - the one the guard didn’t find even after all that searching. It’s easier for her to step in.
He bats her away to hold up his shirt, revealing the scar. Tommy hisses at the sight. Dan leans forward.
It’s not a pretty sight. Constant movement meant no time for it to heal right, even months later. It's not like the minimal food and sleep they’d managed to get has been enough for their bodies to save up enough energy to actually heal or maintain itself. Hell, Ellie hasn’t gotten a period in months and Joel’s hair looks grayer than ever.
“I did the stitches,” Ellie babbles. “Joel was bleeding real bad and passed out, like, halfway through so it was a rushed job. I forgot to sanitize the needle so I dumped a bunch of vodka on it an hour or two later. Then I injected penicillin seven days later into the wound, which Joel said was the wrong place to do it.”
The longer Ellie talks the wider Dan and Tommy’s eyes get.
“I also said you did a great job,” Joel reassures. She waves him off. Now is not the time for him to get all gushy.
“ You did stitches?” Dan asks, voice verging on hysterical. “All on your own?” Ellie pauses and eyes him up again. He seems pretty sheltered for being a medical guy.
“Don’t worry it wasn’t my first time,” she reassures. “My friend and I got into trouble at an abandoned gas station one time and I busted my face open and she got her leg hurt. We…borrowed…a suture kit. She did my eyebrow and I did her calf.”
Everyone’s looking at her like she’s crazy. Even Joel’s got a serious “this child grew up in the apocalypse” face going on which is such a lame old person expression to have. She sighs.
“So Joel’s scar, is it ok?”
Dan pokes at it for a minute or two before declaring it fully healed if he gets decent food and sleep. He hands over a tin of aloe and a couple of other things Ellie isn’t paying enough attention to catch.
After the check-up Dan doesn’t want them to leave. More accurately he doesn’t seem to want Ellie to leave, suggesting she stay and eat there while Joel catches up with his brother. Only Tommy’s hand on Joel’s shoulder keeps everything from turning violent.
Ellie doesn’t know why the dude cares so much. It’s as weird as the odd behavior from the guard. The whole town is acting off, including Tommy whose mustache is still twitching from a nervous smile.
Her stomach rumbles - somehow still complaining after years of training it to expect not to be filled - and she decides she doesn’t care about whatever the fuck is going on. In less than a day her life purpose has shifted and she killed the savior of mankind. She needs food so she can feel sad about that tomorrow.
She basically pushes them all out the door. The sun fully set while they were inside. It’s eerie walking through the town at night. The only sounds are the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel road before it switches fully over to asphalt. A patroller meanders by on horseback, but even that seems muffled. Tommy takes them past rows of seemingly identical houses before entering his own.
It’s decorated the same. Ellie avoids looking at the chalkboard. Joel talks about Sarah now, but somehow if she looks at the thing that started their fight it will jinx them.
Maria walks through the doorway and holy shit she’s pregnant.
Then Ellie smells food. Not just meat burning over a fireplace, or spices pickled in 20 year old grease and preserving chemicals.
No.
Actual motherfucking food: bread and butter, crispy chicken, a thing of carrots (tureen? She makes a mental note to ask Joel later). All thoughts other than food go flying out the window.
The next hour is hazy. She eats. Joel also eats. No one is hurting them. Life is good.
Life being good lasts two minutes after dinner when Tommy shifts awkwardly in his chair as Maria clears her throat pointedly.
“Joel.”
Tommy says tentatively. Joel tenses like his brother just threw a live grenade in the room.
“What did you do?”
Maria draws up. “Now why are you saying my husband did something?”
Joel looks unimpressed and gestures to Tommy whose face is almost comically forlorn.
“You think I don’t know what Tommy sounds like when he’s guilty and knows it?”
“Yeah ok,” Maria sighs. “We’re doing this now then. Ellie, want to come upstairs? I can get you some clean clothes.”
“No way!” she protests.
“Ellie,” Joel says warningly.
“No, I’m not leaving the room so all the adult conversation can happen without me. Or are we all forgetting what the two of you talked about last time?”
Joel softens at that. “I’m not going to try and leave you again baby. Not ever.”
Tommy’s eyes widen at the exchange. He looks even guilter. And sweatier.
Still none of the adults in the room budge.
“Maria, are you really going to let these men tell us what to do?” Ellie wheedles. Maria looks amused.
“Good try at manipulation, but it’s not going to work today.”
Ellie narrows her eyes but finally stomps loudly up the stairs and lets Maria show her the bathroom. Then as soon as Maria leaves to grab clothes Ellie turns on the shower (feeling only a twinge at the waste of all the fresh drinking water) and uses the sound to disguise her creeping back over to the stairwell to listen to the voices filtering up from down below.
“...what’s this all about?” Joel says.
Tommy’s slow to answer. He better get his ass into gear because Ellie has maybe another minute or two before Maria notices her on the stairs.
“When I first came here I struggled with what we’d done, before. And when I fully joined this community, I wanted a clean slate, I wanted everything I’d done to be on the table. So I was honest. Maybe a little too honest.” He laughs. It isn’t a happy sound. “When did we last have good whiskey? You know how I get - remember Randall’s vigil? After the funeral? How chatty I got?”
Joel sighs. “Get to the point Tommy.”
“Ok, alright. The thing is Joel, you didn’t make a great impression the first time you were here. You showed up with a little girl. You left the next day. Normally there's a procedure, especially when kids are involved to make sure everything’s on the up and up. Now you’re back and it looks like Ellie’s got track marks on her arm. She’s skin and bones, which both Dan and Steve reported…Can you not look at me like that?”
“Quit the bullshit Tommy. You’re leading up to something. Just get there.”
“Right.” There’s another pause. Tommy sounds wrecked. “The thing is most people in town think you’re a murdering, torturing drug-dealer. And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault Joel. I shared my history with people here, and your history just got tangled up in it.”
“So you blamed everything on me?” Joel’s voice is soft, but not kind.
“No!” Tommy pauses. “I don’t know. Maybe. They asked about things and I couldn’t answer. Like I talked all about the Johanson meth deal one night. When they asked who organized the whole thing, for details, I said I didn’t do it.”
“So they assumed it was me? Tess did the Johanson deal!”
“I also told them about the Kingston fight. Lotta people died that night.”
“...Yeah. Yeah that was me.” Joel groans. Ellie just knows he’s got his hands on his hips or he’s doing that thing where he rubs his eyes like he’s going blind. “Christ Tommy, that’s not the first impression I want to make in a place I want Ellie to live.”
“What do you want me to say Joel? I know I fucked up. I-I never thought I’d see you again and I was tired of fighting to defend you.”
There’s an awful silence.
“This is about more than just public opinion,” Joel says, voice deadly flat. “Isn’t it?”
Another pause.
“Jackson’s real big on protecting kids Joel. It’s one of the things that they built the community on, bringing hope to the next generation, raising families in peace. The council wants to settle Ellie in a different home.”
“Jesus!” There’s the sound of Joel pacing, loud and fast, like he’s working off energy. He keeps moving, loud shit-kicker boots heavy on the wooden floor. “Jesus, I hate you so much right now Tommy. My kid? They want to take away my kid?”
“I know!” Tommy rushes to say. “I know what it sounds like but I convinced Maria to argue for you to stay in Jackson too. You’ll be in the same town while we work something out. Get you visitation, make them see what a good dad you are and they’ll have to fix it. I’ve got a plan.”
“Christ Tommy, what the fuck?” Joel mutters as he paces.
Ellie’s stomach roils. The first good meal she’s had in months and it’s going to come up on the raggedy carpeting of the landing. They’re discussing her like she doesn’t get a say at all.
Before she can think too hard about it she’s moving.
“You can’t take him away from me!” Ellie yells, bounding down the stairs and leaping into the room. Tommy and Joel are a ghastly tableau in the dim light, both sallow, Joel wearing a thunderous frown.
Despite everything, Joel looks exasperated at seeing her. “Jesus kid, do you eavesdrop on every single conversation?”
Ellie refuses to be distracted.
“We’ll leave Jackson.” Ellie says. She’s already pushing them towards the door. Or, she would be, but Joel’s not budging. “You’re not separating us. We can make it fine on our own.”
“Ellie.” Joel’s voice is too quiet. Why isn’t he angry? She looks up at him.
“Don’t you want me?” She hates how desperate it sounds. “After all this you’re gonna fucking ditch me again?”
He melts.
“Of course I want you.” He pulls her into a hug. It’s suffocatingly tight but still not enough. Ellie squeezes back with all her strength even though Joel doesn’t budge at all in her grip. Meanwhile he’s cradling her with none of his strength. “I want you.”
“Then let’s just leave. Fuck everyone else! You’re a good-” She falters. She doesn’t know what to call him. He’s not her dad. “Joel,” she ends lamely. “You’re my…Joel.”
He tucks her under his chin.
“You can still see each other,” Tommy says weakly. Ellie hates the reminder that other people exist outside of the safe cocoon of Joel’s arms. “It’s not forever.”
“He’s right. It’s not forever, baby. I’ll jump through whatever hoop gets thrown at me. We’ll both be safe. We’ll be together before you know it.”
Joel’s voice rumbles through Ellie’s body while he’s talking and holding her. It’s unimaginably soothing. It gives her the confidence to say what she says next.
“Do you want to stay because Tommy’s here? Is that why we can’t leave?”
She feels him sigh.
“Ellie, I didn’t realize how bad things were for us health-wise.”
She flushes angrily. “For us” really means “for you.” Stupid piece of shit scale showing how thin she is.
“Sure we could leave, we could survive, but I don’t know how long we could keep going just the two of us and be safe long-term,” Joel says.
Ellie angrily thinks of the tour Maria took them on all those months ago. Jackson’s many farms, the school, the hospital, the fucking movie theater. It’s a pretty solid set-up.
“We could go back to Bill and Frank’s,” she grumbles mutinously. “They survived just fine. Bet most of their stuff is still there.”
She already knows the answer is no. She honestly doesn’t know if she could go back all that way on foot. As loath as she was to admit it, she’d been slowing down on the road. She got out of breath running more than a block. Her strength, even grip strength, is going to shit. All these months they’d both been pulling from reserves they just don’t have anymore. Plus Bill’s compound is so close to the Boston QZ which looms so high in her memory.
Jackson has medical supplies to keep Joel healthy. He can’t get bit if he’s inside the walls.
She finally breaks free from Joel’s hug, regretting it as soon as she does. Maria snuck into the room when Ellie wasn’t looking. She stands at Tommy’s side. So much for female solidarity.
“I’m not a little fucking kid,” Ellie says eventually. “You don’t get to decide everything for me.”
All the adults are silent. She hates what they’re all thinking. She hates that if she mentions all the things she’s done that make her an adult they’d just be horrified and maybe blame Joel even more. She leans back onto Joel. He supports her weight without bracing at all. She can’t tell if that’s a testament to how little she can make an impact or to how strong he is. He hugs her again.
“Ok,” she eventually says as Joel slowly rocks her back and forth. He doesn’t even pause, like he’d happily do it all night.
Eventually the hug ends. Tommy tries to say something which Ellie refuses to acknowledge. He’s a fucking traitor and if Joel won’t be mad at his brother then Ellie will have to do it for him. Maria also tries to say something. She’s even fucking worse. She never gave Joel a chance.
With Ellie actively ignoring two thirds of the adults in the room and Joel subtly interrogating Maria about what he may expect from the council tomorrow in terms of things he’ll have to do to prove he’s a fit guardian it’s a tense evening. Ellie eventually gets the promised shower. It’s amazing, but marred by how tense she is. She turns the water off while scrubbing to see if she can hear anyone opening a door in the house (Joel sneaking out? Someone else sneaking in?). She leaves the bathroom to find Joel standing guard on the other side of the door. Tommy watches from down the hall. He’s got big wet cow eyes that look extremely punchable.
Joel doesn’t look his brother’s way. Instead he switches places with Ellie: him in the shower, her standing guard.
At least she’s wearing clothes that fit her, although Ellie adds Joel’s flannel over the top. Maria crinkles her nose at the smell. It stinks. Ellie knows it stinks. It’s part of the appeal. It smells like BO and woodsmoke and consistency. Maria and her homemade lemon zest lavender petal laundry detergent could fuck right off.
Finally it’s time for bed.
Joel heads towards the pile of blankets on the couch.
“Ellie, we made up a bed for you upstairs,” Maria says kindly. Ellie kind of wants her to disappear forever.
“No thanks. I’m good.” She grips at Joel tighter.
Maria frowns, eyeing the two of them as if she wants to pull them apart. Ellie knows she wants Joel to fail whatever test the council gives him. “Are you-”
“I’m. Good.” Ellie says through gritted teeth.
She glares until Tommy pulls Maria up the stairs.
They stay like that, holding each other on the couch. It’s dim and cozy, with lights flickering outside from windows of other houses. If Ellie doesn’t let herself think, it feels nice: the two of them are fed and cleaner than they’d been in months. It’s a moment of quiet to process the day.
“Guess we’ll have to get used to not keeping watch,” she eventually says. “We’ll get the full eight hours for once.”
They both silently contemplate that. No more keeping watch and sleeping in shifts, grip tight on the gun, one eye on each other.
It’s been months since they’ve been far so apart they won’t hear the other sleeping. Ellie likes Joel’s quiet snoring that means he’s actually asleep and resting. She knows he likes seeing her wrapped in multiple blankets - something in the set of his shoulders when he looks at her, plus the fact she always wakes up more covered than when she went to sleep.. She’s woken more times than she can count blanketed with his jacket, kinda sweaty but also warm in a way that a thin FEDRA blanket never fully managed.
Joel holds out his hand. Ellie takes it. They lean together silently, Ellie thinking muzzily about the whole situation.
The thing Jackson didn’t understand is that Ellie and Joel were a fucking unit. They hadn’t been more than 30 feet away from each other in months. They both treated each other like an extension of their own body.
“We’re tall enough to reach that,” Joel would say pointing at something 10 feet in the air that Ellie could grab on his shoulders.
Or:
“We’re strong enough to lift that,” Ellie would say, when she got some sort of lever system going and Joel put his shoulder to it.
Or even more common:
“We can manage that.” In regards to walking five hours in the rain to their next destination.
They shared body heat, cans of peaches, clothes, weapons.
It’s like they were cutting off her arm.
“It’s going to be ok,” she says, both to reassure him and herself. “You’ll pass whatever bullshit test the fucking council gives you and we’ll be together be we know it.”
Joel’s face does something. It’s a kind of despairing frown that makes Ellie feel like she’s in freefall. The silent worry lives unspoken between them, ruining the comfort of the moment.
“Man. What a fucking day,” Ellie sighs. Joel chuckles. It’s a tired, desiccated sound, but it’s there.
They sit together, propped up against each other, watching the windows until morning.