the whumps of march
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Wyoming is full of raiders, they’d been told. They’d been warned.
Series
- Part 1 of the whumps of march
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exit wounds by tessaservopoulos
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
05 Mar 2023
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Ellie can’t stop pacing.
Tess has been in what constitutes as the surgical suite for nearly four hours now, and Joel hasn’t moved from his seat, elbows dug into his knees, whereas Ellie can’t stay still.
Series
- Part 2 of the whumps of march
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behind bars by tessaservopoulos
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
05 Mar 2023
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It was almost ironic to be in jail at the end of the world.
Joel stares at a watermark on the ceiling, listening to the tick of the ancient clock in the corner. It’s been hours, and he still hasn’t been sprung. He’s waiting for Tess, but he knows she’ll let him cook in here for as long as humanly possible before she gets him.
Series
- Part 3 of the whumps of march
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It’s like it happens in slow motion.
One minute, Tess is fighting off the man before her in the lab- and the next, another is tearing through her, knife in hand, and she watches in terror as the knife stabs forward, and plunges into Ellie’s upper chest.
Series
- Part 4 of the whumps of march
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late night talking by tessaservopoulos
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
05 Mar 2023
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Summary
None of them are good sleepers, not anymore.
Even in Jackson, where they are safe and relatively unharmed, sleep does not come for the small family of three. If one of them is awake, usually all of them are awake, and would find the three of them gathered in their living room, the television on low.
Series
- Part 5 of the whumps of march
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Joel keeps going over it in his head- how they got captured. It gnaws at him, picking at a stubborn wound, but it doesn’t change that they’d blindsided him and gotten his gun, and gotten a knife under Ellie’s chin before he could throw a punch.
And now they’re bound, and bloody, and outnumbered.
Series
- Part 6 of the whumps of march
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The bite is inflamed and red, and he can tell that the snake was at least slightly venomous, given how woozy he feels.
Series
- Part 7 of the whumps of march
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in my dreams you're touching my face by tessaservopoulos
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
11 Mar 2023
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With the fever comes dreams. And in the dreams, Tess is alive- that is the one reason Joel knows they are dreams; the only tether to unreality.
Series
- Part 8 of the whumps of march
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It’s got to be in the negatives.
They’re in the heart of Wyoming, and haven’t seen a house for days. They’ve been sheltering in caves, but the temperature was steadily dropping as a snowstorm approached.
Series
- Part 9 of the whumps of march
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Tess is quiet one day- quieter than usual- and Ellie finds her in the garden, just sitting by the flowerbeds.
Series
- Part 10 of the whumps of march
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never let me go by tessaservopoulos
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
17 Mar 2023
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The sickness sweeps Jackson in their first full winter.
Ellie gets sick first, but heals quickly; it’s Tess that gets sick the worst, bedridden after only three days, shivering in fever. Joel does everything to tend to her; pressing cool clothes to her forehead and neck, pressing water to her cracked and dry lips, slipping medicine into her mouth and down her throat.
It’s on day five that Tess starts to mumble.
Series
- Part 11 of the whumps of march
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Tess presses her hand against her side, and winces when it comes away bloody. It isn’t a serious wound, but enough that it causes her discomfort, and she wishes she had something to wrap it with.
But they have to keep moving, keep putting distance between themselves and what’s left of their attackers. So they press forward, Joel with a bit of a limp after a blow to the hip.
It isn’t until Ellie stumbles, nearly taking Tess out with her, that they stop.
Series
- Part 12 of the whumps of march
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Tess watches helplessly as Ellie falls from the horse and hits the ground with a sickening crunch as the horse is spooked by a slithering snake.
Series
- Part 13 of the whumps of march
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It’s a shit day. Tess is dead, and Joel is surly, and Ellie’s exhausted. They stop in the forest to rest, and Joel keeps watch as Ellie settles against a tree, finally succumbing to sleep against her will when her eyelids simply won’t stay open any longer.
The only thing is- when she wakes, Tess and Joel are staring at her as she sits up on the grassy ground, sunlight pouring in through the broken ceiling, and she blinks, taken aback. She shifts, and Joel’s gun follows her, and déjà vu flows over her like rainwater, soaking her from head to toe.
Series
- Part 14 of the whumps of march
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Tess mops away the blood that pools on Joel’s lower torso, grimacing at the gaping wound left behind.
“Should’a seen the other guy,” Joel winces, and Tess arches an eyebrow.
Series
- Part 15 of the whumps of march
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i lost a part of me out there by tessaservopoulos for raffinit
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
31 Jul 2023
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Tess doesn’t understand how it happens. One moment she is laying on the cold, dirt-ridden floor of the Capitol building in Boston, bleeding and freezing and blacking out- and the next, she is panicking awake miles away, years away, in a plush bed in a teenaged room with sunlight streaming through the window. She recognizes it instantly, despite the decades; the track and field medals hung on the walls, the blue and gray duvet covering her, the Eric Northman poster still tacked to the back of her door.
She takes stock of her body; gone are the aches and pains of growing older- she is in the body of a nineteen year old, solid and sturdy and healthy. There are no scars from bullets or knives or shivs; no molting and healing bruises covering her skin, no wounds half-sealed shut with superglue they’d treated like gold or stitched with unsteady hands.
Series
- Part 16 of the whumps of march
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when she holds me (it holds me together) by tessaservopoulos
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
07 Nov 2023
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The nightmares only get worse the farther they get from Boston.
Series
- Part 17 of the whumps of march
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“I didn’t mean it, you know,” Tess’s voice is soft, but Joel’s shoulders remain tense.
Series
- Part 18 of the whumps of march
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The raid goes poorly, as Tess had said it would- but Ellie had insisted on coming, and Joel hadn’t put his foot down.
Series
- Part 19 of the whumps of march
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This was never supposed to happen; they were never supposed to be here. But Joel needed medicine, and Tess hadn’t trusted David as far as she could throw him- and for good reason, based on the cage they were currently locked in. And now the baby was coming, and Ellie looked like she was going to be sick every time Tess let a whimper escape.
Series
- Part 20 of the whumps of march