Chapter Text
Ellie eventually fell still and silent against Joel’s chest, and her tears dried into dusty streaks across her face, but no one in the room moved. Without looking around at their faces, she knew that Joel did not want to break the moment, as if holding her there could prevent the pain that was coming.
She was familiar with all the steps that followed death, having been hardened to it long ago, thanks to FEDRA, and of course, Riley. She had navigated grief as a stranger once before, now she was a familiar visitor.
Tommy still stood there, a stalwart soldier of a man, his large hands still cradling the small scrap of flannel. Maria stood next to him, now leaning against his shoulder, a hand rubbing up and down his back in a soft, comforting motion.
Ellie wondered why she had hated her so much before.
Now, as much as she was loath to move, she knew that if she didn’t, she would never move again. She would simply fall still and silent until the ache of loss took her away on its black wings of death to be with her little pink bundle. And maybe Riley would be there. And Tess. And Bill and Frank.
And her mom.
She sucked in breath with a choking sound as the bitter tears threatened to fall all over again. But she refused to give in to them any more today and she pulled away from Joel, holding out her hands. Tommy nodded once, and gingerly stepped forward, placing the small bundle in her upturned palms. Instinctively, she cradled it on her chest, hoping that somewhere in time and space perhaps it could feel her heartbeat, and maybe, just maybe would remember her in the hereafter.
She wanted to talk to it, tell it stories, tell it about snow and Cordyceps, and its brave grandmother. She wanted to tell it about a cranky old man with a backpack that had without any thought or reservation punched in the face of a soldier to save her life, and a motherly lady named Tess who believed in her from the start and died as brave as one could be. She wanted to tell it about two men named Bill and Frank who thought they were the only humans left in the world, and found their peace in that solitude, and she wanted to tell it about snow and blood and horses and wolves and Silver Lake and fire.
Instead, she leaned back until her cold shoulders touched the headboard of the bed and swallowed her tears, turning a pale, emotionless face to those in the room.
“Uncle Tommy,” she said, her voice cracking slightly before she regained control.
“Yes, honey?” he asked softly, placing both broad hands on his hips after they had fluttered mindlessly in the air a moment. Now that his hands were empty, it was as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
“If it’s alright with you, I’d rather not have a funeral. I – I know people in Jackson does those, and that’s cool n’all, but I-I’d rather not.”
“If that’s what you want,” he replied softly, nodding. “That’s what we will do.”
He glanced at Maria, who nodded her approval.
“Joel,” she continued, turning to look at the man that had become her father. “I – I’d like it if you and I could build a kinda box together? Wouldn’t take too long, with it being small and all that. Didn't do that in the QZ, I know.”
Joel realized with a bitterness in his throat that she had never really known about a real funeral. Real funerals were a thing of the past. Goodness knows Riley never got one and neither did Ellie’s mom. And her approach to the whole procedure was foreign and confined to anything she had read in school, but he could tell she could not bear the idea of tossing her precious bundle onto a QZ fire.
“You need to rest first,” Maria chided, earning her an angry look from both Ellie and Joel. “I – I know you don’t like that, Ellie, but you...” She glanced at Joel, who looked as if he agreed, but was not happy for her input. “You lost a lot of blood, Ellie. Your insides are really shaken up and you need to give them time to rest and recover.”
Ellie opened her mouth and closed it, her face reddening in frustration and her strongest attempts not to burst into tears again. Joel laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Ellie, baby, I will cut the wood at the sawmill and bring it in here so you can help me assemble. Funerals happened all the time, before the infection. We will make a little one for it and bury it somewhere pretty. I will bring you some paint as well, and you can paint it all nice if you want to, alright?”
She considered for a moment, glancing down at the silent bundle and her shoulders sagged in defeat. She nodded once, and leaned back against the headboard again, indicating she was done talking.
With a look from Joel, the little group stepped out of the room, leaving Ellie alone with her child and the silence.
“She’s broken,” Joel muttered more to himself than anyone else, leaning against the closed door, rubbing a rough hand across his tanned face. “She’s completely fucking shattered, and I can’t help her.”
“Comes with being a dad,” Tommy smiled softly, but wanly, at his brother. “That’s your kid in there Joel and she’s going to hurt for a long time. But she’s strong. You’ll be there for her, and that’s so much better than what would be happening if you had never found her.”
“Shouldn’t have happened,” Joel muttered, his voice cracking, shoving himself away from the door with one broad hand and heading toward the kitchen where his coat had been hastily discarded that morning.
“Joel,” Tommy drawled warningly, following his brother. “Don’t you go there. Don’t you fucking go there.”
“And why not , Tommy,” Joel grunted, pulling on his coat and buttoning it. “Why the hell not? Because it’s uncomfortable to think about? Because you think I’m blaming you? I ain’t doing no such thing. I’m fucking outraged that my kid is sitting in there, devastated, in pain, suffering, over a child that should never have happened. Yes, I am gutted for her, absolutely fucking gutted because the child died. There’s been too much loss in this world, and way too much in this family alone, and definitely too much for a kid like that to bear. But that man should never have touched her, and it all happened because I was too fucking deaf to hear anyone approaching until it was too late. And I was too fucking deaf to do shit to prevent it because I was a fool coward and tried to blow my brains out way back then because I lost my first kid! So cut me some fucking slack, Tommy.”
With that off his chest, he strode out of the kitchen, letting the heavy door close loudly behind him.
“Joel?” A soft voice interrupted Joel’s rage hammering in the shed where he was mindlessly driving nail after nail through a board for no apparent reason, but inwardly pretending it was David’s head.
“Whadda you want?” Joel grunted, turning, his face twisted into an angry grimace. Hannah stood in the doorway, her coat wrapped tightly around her, her face pale and eyes rimmed in red from crying. Instantly, he tossed down the hammer at the fear in her eyes at his actions and the expression that had to have been on his face. “You good, kid?” His concerned tone snapped Hannah out of her shock at his earlier fury and she nodded quickly.
“I- I’m okay, but I just heard about Ellie. Joel, I - I’m really, really sorry.” Her voice was small in the space between them and he looked away as her own tears threatened to fall again. He wasn’t good at comforting.
“Nothin’ to be sorry about,” he replied flatly, shoving a few random wood pieces into a pile. He picked up his measuring tape and stretched it across one of the board ends, then wrote a number down on the side with a pencil he pulled out from behind his ear.
“Well, I – I am,” she replied again, twisting her hands uncomfortably. “Just - sorry. Sorry doesn’t seem like enough.”
Joel tucked the pencil behind his ear again and grunted, eyeing the slight bend in the board with a critical eye. “Not your fault.”
“It kinda is,” she whispered, but Joel did not hear her as he tossed more scraps of wood into the pile after inspecting them. With a sigh, she turned and walked away.
The spring sunshine was warm as she made her way to Tommy and Maria’s house. The ground was soft from the thawing, and it should have been a comforting sight. Small yellow daffodils were coming to life along the way, and she picked a few to take to Ellie.
By the time Joel had picked out the right pieces and built the little coffin, he had expended all of his energy and hatred into each nail. Several bent nails and split boards later, the small coffin rested on the workbench, sanded as smooth as skin with many different grades of sandpaper. He tossed some small bottles of paint into his coat pocket and carried the little coffin into Tommy’s house.
Ellie was alone now, a small vase of daffodils at her side. Her head was turned toward the sun, low in the sky, humming a faint tune to the small bundle still cradled on her chest.
Joel knocked on the doorframe with a knuckle before he entered. “Hey, kid.”
She turned her head slowly to look at him, then glanced at the open door. “Close it,” she said softly, nodding her head toward the door.
He shut it carefully behind him, then made his way to the chair at her side. “Here,” he muttered, holding out the little box. Ellie sat up carefully, cradling the bundle in her hands.
“Typically, once a coffin closes, it doesn’t open again,” Joel rumbled, forcing himself to talk through the heaviness in his chest. “The funeral is usually all the friends and family, then the family has the last viewing, and then they close the casket and take it to be laid to rest in the ground.”
“We’re family,” Ellie said softly, laying the small bundle in the box and tucking in the cloth. “So - so I guess we got to close it now.” Her voice faded, and her chin quivered, but there was something stalwart and yet broken in her eyes as she stared at the small box.
Joel found he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take that moment from her. “Ellie,” he started to say, but she laid a small hand over his. “It’s okay, Joel. We will do it together.” There was an odd comforting tone in her voice, as if she was comforting him. Heaven knows he should be comforting her.
“Together,” she said softly, and together, they shut the lid on the little box, and Joel threaded a small lock into the latch he had made and clicked it shut.
A vague sense of relief flowed over him, although it was tempered with grief. It was as if all the pain and blackness of Silver Lake had just been closed up, Pandora’s Box, if you will, and it couldn’t be opened again.
He didn’t blame the child. It wasn’t its fault. But the level of pain they had endured since the infection was well over the limit of a normal person, and to avoid becoming who he had become before Tess, he needed to let Silver Lake go.
As he looked up at Ellie, he saw the same thing in her eyes. “You okay, baby?”
“I just want to move on,” she replied, twisting her hands in her lap. “Like it was. Camping and riding and exploring and doing badass things. I – if I don’t, I’m gonna crumble and I don’t think I can put myself back together again if I do.” Her breath caught a few times as she tried not to collapse entirely into sobs, and Joel patted her knee, unsure of what to even say to her, because he felt the same way.
Fuck David.