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In the aftermath of David, Ellie struggles.
Her skin feels stretched thin, like it isn’t hers, like it’s something painted on to hide her broken bones. It doesn’t belong to her, it itches, all over everywhere. She can feel the palm of her hand, how dry it is, feel every cell as they split and crack in the cold.
At least, she figures, it’s a great distraction from the ache in her hips.
Joel is walking on eggshells beside her, calling her sweet names and holding her hand like a lifeline, and it feels like a betrayal. Ellie is so weak. She is so weak. If she’d been faster or smarter or bigger, Joel might not have ever gotten fucking stabbed in the first place. FEDRA used to say, every action has a consequence; every bad choice has a bad outcome. Ellie wonders if this is her cosmic punishment, that she failed Joel so the world failed her.
(Privately, she thinks Joel failed her. She doesn’t hold it against him, she just kind of wishes Joel had killed David instead. Wishes she didn’t have his blood on her hands; his brain matter under her fingernails; his flesh between her teeth. Wishes David wouldn’t live on forever in her stomach.
Her violent heart still beats, though, and David’s was slashed into tiny pieces and then set on fire. She hopes he’s jealous. She hopes they’ll see each other in hell so she can do it all over again. She regrets it, and yet, regrets absolutely fucking nothing. David’s dead, and Ellie’s alive.)
When they finally get to where they’re going - a cabin, Ellie figures out, because her eyes have been glazed over for the better part of forty-five minutes - Joel lets go of her for the first time since they saw each other again. Her heart jolts and she looks over, eyes wide despite her attempt to hide her fear. “Don’t worry, mija ,” he says, low and soft like she’s a feral creature to be cowed, a street dog baring her teeth at him. “Just gonna clear out the place. Can I leave you out here with our things?” The thought of being alone, of Joel leaving her, is terrifying. Her knees give out, like everything finally has caught up to her, and she cries when Joel’s arms come around her and keep her from hitting the ground. “I’ve got you,” he says, and she cries only harder.
Through mangled sobs, words like don’t leave me and don’t go and Joel, please are stuttered, her voice burning like bile in her throat. It hurts to talk, just like it hurts to stand and just like it hurts to breathe, but she hasn’t had the energy to mention any of it to Joel quite yet. Instead of leaving her behind, Joel cracks open the front door with his gun cocked and points it in every direction. The entryway of the cabin leads to a living room with a great big fireplace and tiny kitchen space, with a long hallway and a number of doors, plus a staircase that Ellie suspects is to a loft or attic-like room. “Ellie,” he says, and puts one of his big hands on her shoulder with such gentleness it seems nothing like Joel, and yet, exactly like him. “We’ll go upstairs first, but I want you to follow me slowly, alright? Not into any rooms, you just stay on the steps.”
Ellie nods. She’ll stand there and stare at Joel and pretend she can’t see him withering away in front of her and he’ll pretend she’s not a complete pain in the ass. Seems easy enough.
They walk up quietly, each shuffle forward slow enough that on a clean spot it’s completely silent, and on the step near the top with rotting wood and a hollow center, it creaks so loud Ellie wonders if they could have heard it all the way back in Silver Lake. Joel freezes, foot completely still, and when nothing happens - no Infected making a break for it, chasing Joel down and eating him alive, like the way they do in Ellie’s nightmares - he steps forward again and gestures for her to avoid the spot. Ellie keeps tight to the wall from thereon, figuring it’d creak less anyways. At the top, Joel has her stay back while he opens the only door. There’s nothing in the room, not that Ellie can see, but a bed with a pile of dead bodies. They must have been there for a very long time, long enough even that Ellie wonders if their deaths had nothing to do with the apocalypse at all. Joel’s shoulders loosen and he sighs, stepping into the room and looking around a little further. His gun is still ready, hand on the trigger like he’ll shoot at the first sign of movement, but he manages to look relaxed anyways.
“Joel,” Ellie whispers, quietly so she doesn’t disturb him and risk a stray bullet. “Can I come in?”
He turns to look at her and pauses. “Yeah,” he said. “But - I think it’ll make you sad, El.”
El. That’s one of the new names she’s heard today - so far, only El and babygirl and some Spanish word she doesn’t know the meaning of have been directed at her. He hasn’t called her an asshole once today, and it feels a little weird, like uncharted territory for them, but she hates to admit she kind of likes it. Likes the tenderness. Regardless, El isn’t enough to convince her to agree with him, so she steps forward anyways and peers into what must have been the master bedroom.
There are three bodies, she counts, and two of them are small enough she thinks this was a family. Complete skeletons, they are, but in the dim light from the shadowed window, Ellie imagines happy faces, maybe two little boys and their mother, curling up together one last time. They look peaceful in death, unlike the other bodies Ellie has encountered in her life.
“Think they had the right idea?” Ellie asks, a little morose. “That maybe - I don’t know - getting out before everything went to shit was a good call?”
Joel shakes his head. “Nah, Ellie,” he says, but doesn’t look her in the eyes. “I don’t think so.”
Joel is a man of many, many words. Ellie is pretty sure he just keeps them all to himself. And, anyways, today is the most she’s probably ever heard him speak in one go, even if half of it was nonsense.
“Alright,” she says, though desperately wants to push, because there’s something in his breathing that makes her figure he has something to hide and something in her DNA that makes her love poking and prodding at an exposed underbelly. Instead, she nods, and beelines for the bookshelf in the far corner. “Oh, sick - old books!”
Joel huffs a laugh. “Now, how many of them aren’t a load a’ crap?”
“Well, this one is called The Official Gun Digest Book of Guns 2002, so I think we’re off to a great start.” The next one she pulls out is something about airplanes, and another about politics that mean nothing anymore. A part of her wishes they had the space to take some of these along, but she figures she’ll choose one good one to make worth her while. She grabs the airplane book and hopes it’s near enough to a spaceship that she’ll like it.
For a second, she forgets it all. She’s excited enough about stupid airplanes that don’t exist anymore that she forgets, for just a tenth of a second, just one moment, about Silver Lake. And then, sees a name written down the binding of another book - David, of course it is, and it’s about Christianity too - and everything comes flooding back.
“Ellie,” a voice says, and she knows it’s Joel, knows that voice better than her tongue knows the back of her teeth, but for some reason, it sounds garbled and - well, it sounds like she’s still playing hide and seek with a cannibal cult leader.
She flinches like she’s never done before, never with Joel, and the world moves in slow motion when he puts a hand on her shoulder and her whole body swivels and spins and the knife from her pocket is somehow white-knuckled in her hand, pointed at Joel who is looking as startled as she feels. “Don’t touch me,” she says, like it isn’t Joel, just Joel, who would never hurt her, not even when he hated her, because for all his violence his heart is mushy and soft. Unlike hers.
Ellie has a violent heart. (This violent heart still beats.)
“I won’t, baby,” Joel’s voice cuts through the tension, “but loosen your grip, right? You’re hurtin’ yourself.” Her pointer finger is on the blade, unfurled from the rest of her hand and pressed up to sharp metal firmly enough that a droplet of blood pools at the tip. She can’t even feel it, she realizes in a haze, and drops the knife all at once. The clattering is enough to blink her out of whatever had come over her and Ellie steps forward, more of a stumble, into Joel’s open arms.
“I don’t - I don’t know what happened,” she says, and doesn’t even notice she’s crying until Joel’s big hand comes to wipe tears off her cheek.
“It’s alright, mija, I shouldn’t’ve scared ya’. I’m sorry.” He’s whispering to her, that same quiet type of tone he’d been using outside, like she’s to be subdued, and she shakes in his hold, willing her heartbeat to slow. “I got you, baby, you’re alright,” he says, still quiet, and Ellie can only just barely hear him over the sound of her own cries.
As it turns out, the rest of the house is completely empty. Joel sweeps the place with the same vigilant effort as before, but Ellie knows from the skeletons that they’ve left no one behind. Any infected would have been a stray who broke in, and though not unheard of, the eerie quiet of the creaky old cabin is enough to settle their nerves about the whole thing. She stays behind him the whole time, just barely more conscious than catatonic, and when he needles her into sitting on the couch of the front room, she collapses, the pain in her ribs finally catching up with her.
“Joel,” she whines, ashamed. “It hurts.”
“Let me see it, baby,” he replies easily. His brows are furrowed with concern, but Ellie is relieved to see he isn’t making light of her very real pain. Not that Joel ever would. But others might. He pushes at her sweatshirt which she very quickly notices is not her sweatshirt and, in a hurry to free herself from the confines of DavidDavidDavid, Ellie elbows Joel square in his jaw with the ferocity of a wild animal. He doesn’t yell at her, doesn’t even react at all, just helps her peel away the fabric and lets her chuck it as far as she can. It bangs against the closed window and drops to the floor in a hollow, lazy thump . “I’m checkin’ your ribs first, El, to feel for any breaks.”
She allows him, even if she’s a little worried about letting him touch her bare skin. It’s embarrassing, despite the fact she doesn’t and likely will never admit it aloud, that his name - a mantra in her own mind, Joel, it says, in reply to every David, like a correction - brings more comfort to her than what she sees with her own eyes. She knows Joel would never hurt her, but with the hand-shaped bruises on her neck (which she sees Joel deliberately look away from) plus what he said to her in Jackson (you are not my daughter, on repeat, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad, a never-ending kick to the gut) still aching like an open wound, Ellie feels a little distrustful. She closes her eyes, and hopes that the feeling of Joel’s hand on her ribs is recognizable enough to her subconscious mind that she doesn’t try to beat the shit out of him.
Dutifully, Joel prods at her skin, and pulls away to give her the all-clear. “Nothin’ broken,” he says. “That’s good.” He lifts his hands to her chin and raises it just slightly to look at the bruising there. “We’ll try to ice all a’ this, alright?”
He stands, and Ellie watches in real time as Joel notices her unbuttoned pants, the blood on her jeans, the hem of her stretched-out too-old underwear, the tear in the strap of her sports bra that was, god, already on its last legs but now seemingly hanging by a literal thread. She sees it in his eyes as he takes it all in and does the math on what David did, more than trying to eat her but trying to eat her, trying to rip her heart out of its cage and claim it as his own, and Joel drops to his knees in front of the couch and slowly, like his bones are rotting in tune with the beating of his heart, takes his jacket off and lays it across her. “Ellie,” Joel asks, no longer the patient type of quiet but now a fearful whisper, hissing it out like he’s afraid of what happens once he says it. “Did David-”
“No,” she answers, voice steel-sharp. She doesn’t budge, doesn’t throw him a bone, doesn’t even attempt to comfort him and promise that he’s so far off from the truth he might as well be on Mars. Ellie can only manage no, because the fact is, that’s all she has. Did David want to? Yes, so badly, he did, so badly that she can see his eyes every time she blinks, heated with something evil she doesn’t have the name of. Did he try to? Yes, and the metal zipper of her jeans that’s halfway torn from the denim is only the first clue of how close he got, the only evidence Joel sees, because Joel can’t see the shape of David’s palm around her breast or the trail he left behind on her thighs, hidden by the blood. Joel can’t see his ugly face looking down on her, and he never will because Ellie chopped that ugly face into tiny ugly pieces.
(David’s dead, and Ellie’s alive.)
He pauses. Ellie knows this look. Joel is calculating what to say to her. In the end, all he says is, “Alright, baby.” Even as he stands once more, he looks perfectly still, face unmoving and body stiff like a statue. “We won’t talk about it yet.”
Ellie takes that yet and spins it to never. Most likely, Joel won’t want to bring it up anyway. It’s weird and gross and probably makes him sad or uncomfortable, both of which are things he adamantly avoids, and Ellie prefers it that way anyways. They’ll keep their distance, just like Joel said.
A few hours pass, Joel bandaging her injuries and collecting snow for Ellie to press against her bruises. The sun’s coming down soon, so he has her continue resting while he starts to cook the canned food he finds, far past their expiration date but likely still completely safe. While he meanders about the kitchen, Ellie closes her eyes, pretending to sleep but really just listening to the sounds of something so domestic and otherworldly she never had the chance to imagine it. He’s humming under his breath, too, a song she doesn’t recognize and knows he wouldn’t tell her the name of anyway, but she memorizes the tune, like a folded note she sticks in her back pocket and holds onto. It’s cute and kind of happy and makes her think, just barely, of Sarah: wonders if he sang this song to her, once.
“Green beans and Chef Boyardee,” he says, placing a dish in front of her. “That’s what I call fine dinin’, mija.”
Three bites in, her cheeks stuffed full like a squirrel hoarding nuts, she remembers to ask: “What’s that word mean? Mee-ha?”
Joel blinks. “Oh,” he says, and shuffles a little awkwardly. He pokes at his green beans timidly and Ellie thinks, for a second, he might be blushing. “Uh, it’s Spanish. You know, I’m from Chile. Wait, do you know where Chile is?”
She glares at him. “I’m not a drop-out, asshole, I’ve seen a map before. You’re, like - Spanish, then?”
“Chilean,” Joel corrects. “You’d call it latino, I guess. Spanish people are from Spain. Latino people are from Latin America. But we speak Spanish.”
“Fluently?”
Joel nods and agrees around a mouthful. “Mhm. Was born there.”
Ellie grins. “Cool,” she says, feeling her eyes go wide. She can’t be as excited as she thinks she’d be otherwise. Joel rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too, looking at her with that dumb shine in his eyes. “But, what’s the word mean?” she asks, and watches as his face does something strange before he brings his eyes back to his plate.
“My daughter,” he says, forced out like someone clapped him on his back. “Mi hija, or - just mija.” Ellie sits in silence, cold and frozen over by the winter outside and wonders what has changed between them for Joel to be calling her my daughter. After only a few seconds, Joel continues, voice a little less rough. “What I said, back in Jackson - I shouldn’t have. And I didn’t mean it. And I’m sorry. I - I feel like I keep screwin’ you up, Ellie.”
Ellie nods, slow, thinking it all over. “I meant what I said,” she tells him. “Without you, I wouldn’t be any better off. Just more scared. You - I know you’ve got my back.”
Joel pauses, humming and huffing through his nose like a dog. “Well. If you don’t like the nicknames, you better speak up soon. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, or somethin’.”
Joel smiles when Ellie laughs, and she eats the rest of her canned dinner feeling a little bit lighter.
At first, sleeping was easy. Her body is tired enough that she barely closes her eyes before she starts to snore. For some time, it’s dreamless, just her and the void as time passes peacefully.
Quickly, things go awry.
She doesn’t remember how it starts. Something-something, Joel’s hurt, like he was before - like he is now - but this time, he’s in the cage with her, and David has dirty hands prying at Joel’s clothes and a finger slides into the wound and presses and Joel cries out, the worst noise Ellie’s ever heard, and David starts talking about how Joel’s no good, calls him tainted meat , says he’s unclean but Ellie isn’t, that Ellie is still pure, and when he puts his palms on Ellie’s face and brings her in for a kiss, his thumb keeping her jaw propped open so she can’t bite his tongue, Joel’s blood stains her skin. It burns like acid. Leaves a handprint shaped scar on her cheek. David’s a snake and Joel is quickly becoming poison-apple shaped.
She wakes up screaming. Joel is already beside her, kneeling, face over hers and shadowed so she can only make out the whites of his eyes and his mouth is moving, saying something, but Ellie can’t hear. She just keeps screaming.
She sits up quicker than is safe for her bruised ribs and scrambles backwards until she hits the armrest of the couch she fell asleep on. The sound of her fear trickles off when she blinks and realizes the building is not on fire around her. The only yellow light is from the fireplace just beyond Joel’s shoulders, crackling distantly. She’s free. David’s dead, and Ellie’s alive.
“Ellie,” Joel says, voice torn up like he’s choking back tears, face all twisted up in pain. “Ellie, honey, talk to me. Let me help you.”
Just a beat of silence passes, nothing more than Ellie’s heavy breathing and Joel’s quiet whimpering, before she bursts into sobs so uncontrollable she worries her heart will stop. Joel falters and Ellie bends over the couch and throws up. He rushes to sit behind her on the armrest, avoiding the remnants of her dinner on the floor to rub her back gently. “Ellie,” he whispers, equal parts confused and devastated. “I got you.”
“He was gonna eat me,” Ellie says through dry-heaving and wailing. “But first, he said he was gonna make me his wife.”
“Shit,” Joel hisses.
“His hands,” she whines. “I feel them everywhere. I killed him. But - he’s still here.”
“He’s gone, Ellie.” Joel’s voice is loud enough when he presses his face close to her ear that she manages to hear him over her thumping heart. The hand rubbing her back doesn’t falter, a perfect repetitive motion that has her breaths stuttering and slowing. “He’s dead. You’re alive.”
She’s quiet, just wiping tears and sniffling as she glares at the mess on the floor like it’s to blame for everything. “He said I was made for him,” Ellie admits. “That we were made for each other.”
Joel scoffs. “You weren’t made for anything but bein’ Ellie. All you’re made for is yourself.”
“Made for the Fireflies,” she says. “The cure. To save the world.”
“Nah, Ellie,” he whispers. “Weren’t made for nobody else. Certainly not creeps or terrorists or nun’.”
She looks up and studies him carefully. Here, in this room, it’s like Joel and Ellie are cut from the same cloth, two violent hearts beating in the space of just one. She sees a look in his eyes she’s only ever seen in the mirror staring back at her. There’s something inside of them, some fundamental ingredient in their make-up that leaves them inherently unlucky. They’re not made for luck, or for happiness, or for easy mornings with pancakes and hot chocolate. They’re made for nightmares and infections and breaking down and falling apart, made for the rug to be pulled out from under them and for hitting their heads on the way down.
Or. They’re made for something greater than that. Because Ellie sees it in Joel’s eyes, sees the reflection of herself in the brown that nearly matches her own, and she realizes she likes this cloth they’re cut from. Because if Joel can love her violent heart, and she can love his, maybe that’s what they’re made for. Loving and being loved.
Her eyes glance over at the stairs. “You - you said, earlier, you didn’t think it was right. What the family upstairs did. Why?”
Joel is just looking at her, face unreadable as always. She’s gotten better at his moods, but she’s pretty sure this is one she’s never seen before. Something like bittersweet. He’s crying, she realizes, and his hand touches her knee when he says, quietly, “The scar on my forehead. From the night Sarah died. I - I’m the guy who shot and missed. I flinched.”
Ellie blinks. This is something she deeply did not expect. “What?” she whispers.
He sighs, gesturing her to scoot over and sitting more fully on the couch. Ellie puts her hand over his. “I don’t know why I flinched. I thought, really, that I was ready to go. But - here I am.”
“So,” she says, a little snarky despite her best efforts, “time heals all wounds? That what you’re saying?”
“Wasn’t time that did it,” he answers. Joel looks at her - looks right at her - and holds her eye contact as long as he can. He’s still there, vision trained on her like a sniper, when he says, “It was you, Ellie. That’s why it’s wrong, what they did. Now, I can’t fault them for wanting to. Can’t even fault them for trying. But if I could have had one more day with Sarah - or just one more day with you - I’d keep on going. For family.”
Earlier, he called her mija. Here, in this moment, it clicks. Mija . My daughter. Mi hija. Ellie is Joel’s and Joel is Ellie’s and she gets it now, gets why she is so curious about Sarah and why she stands behind Joel when they meet new people and why he takes the first watch and sometimes doesn’t even wake her up for the second. She gets why she dragged him all the way out of the university and why she killed a deer for his medicine and why she fought like hell when David was trying to eat her, even when she thought she was already dead. Because she wanted just one more day with Joel.
“Will you teach me Spanish? When we get back to Jackson?”
Joel smiles when he says, “Sure, mija. Anything you want.”
Joel would give her anything she wanted, she knows. He’d build a time machine and take her back to the dinosaurs if she asked nicely enough. He’ll clean up the mess on the floor so she doesn’t have to, and put her head on his thigh for a pillow and hum a song she doesn’t know until she falls back asleep, because he does those things for Ellie. Because he loves her.
Before unconsciousness takes her once again, Ellie’s dry mouth shapes out, “Thanks.” She’ll say it for real, one day. For now, she just sleeps.
In the quiet of the early morning, Ellie hears Joel open-mouth singing through the window. As she stirs, Ellie hears the rhythmic slice and thump of an axe chopping wood, and her head turns towards the soft light of the winter sun. It’s cozy, and Ellie imagines the hot light of a heat-lamp warming up her reptilian skin. A boy in the FEDRA dorms, three doors down, had a pet snake. The officers let him keep it because oftentimes, the giant thing, a boa-something, would eat rats. Ellie was so damn jealous of his cool ass, big fucking snake.
Her eyes peel open, fighting against the crusted sleep between her lashes, and she yawns so wide her jaw pops. When she looks, all that’s left in the firepit is smoldering embers, still red from a recent flame, which explains why Joel is getting firewood at the crack of fucking dawn. She’s still warm though, the heat leftover close enough to her skin to prickle it comfortably, and she bundles down a little further under Joel’s flannel, tucking her socked feet between the cushions and smiling a little. It feels good to be alive, in this moment.
Joel comes in quietly, like he thinks Ellie’s still asleep. He barely glances at her, just confirms she’s alive by the expansion of her breathing chest, and meticulously arranges the logs with the expertise of a man who has been doing this for decades. Ellie wonders if he did this Before, too, and wonders why he would’ve ever needed to. She watches him, silent and still, as the muscles in his back stretch and strain and relax. His knees pop as he stands up and when he turns, his eyes meet Ellie’s, and he jumps. “Jesus,” he says. “Scared the shit outta me. Morning, kiddo.”
“Hi,” she replies, embarrassed to have been caught staring so blatantly. It’s just nice to watch Joel be so alive. A reminder of how wrong her nightmares are. That does make her think, though: “How’s your stomach? I think I gave you too much medicine. But I didn’t know how to measure it.”
“All good,” he says, and raises his shirt to show her the gnarly wound that’s healed but still not scarred over. Ellie’s stitches are uneven, but clean, and it’s shiny like he’s done something more to it. “You did real good, kid. You saved my life.”
He doesn’t look properly happy about it, but in his defense, he doesn’t often look properly happy about most anything. Part of Ellie’s mission in life is to drive him so crazy, he’ll laugh. That comes second only to the cure, she supposes.
“Hey.” Joel’s voice is sharp and soft all at once, low in a gentle sort of whisper Ellie doesn’t seem to recognize. “Can I make you breakfast? You hungry?”
She isn’t, but food is necessary despite the twist in her stomach, so she just shrugs. “Shouldn’t we be leaving soon?”
Joel shakes his head and ruffles her hair as he passes by the couch to the kitchen. “We’ll give it a few more days,” he explains. “Wait ‘till you n’ I are both right as rain.” His accent is more Southern than Ellie’s remembered it being. She wonders why. Maybe she just never noticed it before, in this way.
Making breakfast is a quiet thing, like this whole morning is baked in some kind of sugary shell that both of them are too afraid to crack open. They don’t speak, just exist in each other’s presence like it’s enough to fix everything. Maybe, Ellie thinks, it is enough. Maybe Joel’s more saving the world than she is. A little delirious at the thought of him a superhero, like his flannel is armor - he’d look ridiculous in a costume like Dr. Daniela Star’s, clad in skin-tight spandex - Ellie bites back a giggle and rests her head on the back of the couch, letting her neck go limp as it rolls to watch Joel cook. To bask in his nearness. They’ve been together for more than a few months, and by now, and especially after Silver Lake, Ellie knows he cares about her, but it’s nice to see this physical representation of it. That he’ll wake up early to chop wood so she’s warm, let her rest on the couch while he makes breakfast. That he’ll care for her like he did the night before. Like maybe he’ll do forever.
There’s a sheep ranch waiting for them in Jackson. They’re going to meet the Fireflies, and they’ll get the cure, and Ellie will save the world with her blood, and then, when Joel is safe - when he’s immune, like her - they’ll go back to Jackson and call it home. They’ll have a pretty yellow house and Ellie will get a pet snake or something gross and Joel will hate it but he’ll love her all the same.
It’s a pipe dream. Ellie knows, like a quiet voice reminding her in the farthest corner of her mind, that nothing is guaranteed. She might not make it back to Jackson, nor might Joel. But if she’s learned nothing else about herself over the last couple of months, it’s that Ellie is unstoppable despite everyone’s best efforts, and she will get one more day with Joel - and another, and another, for the rest of her stupid life - through sheer force of will alone.