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priest of nothing by marchflower for ayeleye
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
20 Nov 2025
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Summary
Silence falls, echoing, around them. Sarah cries quietly. Joel hesitates, then chucks the remainder of his slice over the wall into the river and scoots across the tailgate, gathers her up against him. Sarah tucks her face into the crook of his neck and shudders. Joel runs a hand up and down the delicate ladder of her spine, buries his face in the sweet bed of her curls. She’s paper thin in his arms, fever bright and sticky sweet, at once both the little girl he once knew and the woman she’s becoming. The world is moving too fast for him; Sarah keeps pace with it so easily, and he’s -
Well, he’s forever falling behind.
“I love you,” he says again. He closes his eyes, swallows. The things he’d do for her are innumerable and unchanging. She has to know. “I can’t - I can’t promise you that I’m always going to get it right, baby girl, but I promise you I’m always going to try. More than I did tonight. Okay?”
Sarah whispers, “Okay.”
*
Joel's metamorphosis, twenty years in the making: from a father to a man turned inside out by grief, and back again.
*
for the whumptober prompt “painful transformation”
Series
- Part 2 of Whumptober 2025
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
29 Dec 2025
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the privilege of being yours by two_birds_alone_together for Merakiae
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
01 Nov 2025
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Summary
Sarah dragged him stargazing a handful of times, but they never ventured far enough from Austin to escape the light pollution. After, when he and Tommy wandered the country with no real destination in mind, Joel couldn’t bear to look up. What was there to see but stars that outlived his daughter? Light that kept shining when Sarah didn’t?
Ellie, though… well, he hopes she never stops marveling at the night sky. She’s the one who tricked him into lifting his gaze for the first time in decades.
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joel and ellie mark september 26 with old and new traditions
Series
- Part 2 of explain the infinite
- Part 4 of whumptober 2025
- Part 6 of bad things happen bingo 2: electric boogaloo
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 11,397
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 2
- Comments:
- 10
- Kudos:
- 63
- Bookmarks:
- 18
- Hits:
- 1,052
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
29 Dec 2025
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beneath the weeping tree by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
31 Oct 2025
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Summary
She leans into the pain, gasping, till it centers her, till her mind clears, till the ghosts of her childhood - as brief and tempestuous as it was - are shuttered away.
Still though, their words echo dimly in the far corners of her mind. This is what happens when you get close to people, they say. This is what happens when you let your guard down.
She shudders, pushes off of the wall. The thermos tumbles from its perch and falls the long way to the ground, banging tinnily against a rock or a tree root or something. Ellie curses and wipes her hair out of her eyes, leans over to see where it landed-
-and freezes, her breath suddenly cold in her chest.
At the edge of the woods, cloaked in the sage lace dripping from the boughs of the sheltering cottonwoods, something is watching her, its eyes gleaming luridly in the electric light of the coming storm.
*
There is something in the woods outside of Jackson.
*
for the prompt "non-human whumper"
Series
- Part 1 of Whumptober 2025
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
29 Dec 2025
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I need my empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology by Fiachra
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV)
21 Sep 2025
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Summary
He looks up, when she gasps and tightens her grip on his hair, and it's like he sees right through her, past all the bullshit, and any other day or time or person she'd close up, recoil in horror and at the intensity of been seen like that.
But she looks back, because she sees in that look that he sees her, not who she used to be, not some fantasy, her. He's touching her, not using her as an alternative for anyone else.
It's in that moment, as she comes in his mouth and he doesn't pull away, that she realises she's undeniably, irreversibly, fucked.
Tess, before and after the end of the world
Series
- Part 4 of Watch Me Bleed
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
29 Dec 2025
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Fixed on Your Hand of Gold by ChildOfTheBarricade
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
29 Nov 2025
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Summary
'“It’s that bad, huh?” Joel said gruffly, self-consciously running his hand through his hair, his eyes fixed on the curls on Benji’s head. “I…” he cleared his throat and looked at Tommy for help.
“Tess cuts our hair,” Tommy blurted out, pushing a glass of whiskey into Joel’s hand as he came around the couch.
Maria blinked at them for a moment, thinking back to literally three days prior when she’d given Tommy a trim. And the dozen or so times before that.
“Used to,” Tommy clarified, sitting down. “She always cut our hair. It’s… her job.”
Joel took a swig of his drink and sighed, not quite able to look at Maria or Ellie yet.
“I’m so sorry, Joel,” Maria said quietly.'
A story about grief, and also how hard it is to get a good curly hair haircut.
Title from Would That I by Hozier- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 7,093
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 62
- Kudos:
- 74
- Bookmarks:
- 10
- Hits:
- 522
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
29 Dec 2025
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vanishing hours by 6hoursgirl
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV), Prospect (2018)
08 Nov 2025
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Summary
In the winter of 2025, Joel Miller hires Anna Williams to help as an office manager at his thriving construction business. An odd friendship blossoms between them, but Anna has secrets and a baby on the way, and Joel has a monkey on his back.
Series
- Part 1 of vanishing hours
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
20 Oct 2025
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Sweet Dreams by stumblingaway
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
19 Oct 2025
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Summary
“Woah.” Ellie’s face is inches away from her window when Tess looks back, her gaze fixed on the deer. “They’re so big.”
“There’s a whole lot of things bigger than them,” Tess snorts.
“The only animals I’ve seen are birds and dogs.”
Right.
Joel rolls down his window and she’s hit with a blast of cold air to the face. She’s thankful, actually, as the roar of the wind fills the car, drowning out any of the kid’s attempts at further conversations. He rolls it back up once the sun has started to set, the insects beginning their evening songs.
Tess, Joel, Ellie, and the rare occurrence of sleep. A Tess Lives story.
Written for Whumptober Day 18: Dystopia
Series
- Part 4 of Whumptober 2025
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
20 Oct 2025
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In the Pines by femmefacetious
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
11 Dec 2025
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Summary
This wasn’t going to be one of those long, emotional goodbyes.
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
02 Oct 2025
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i found you under an April sky by BarlowGirl
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
26 Sep 2025
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Summary
The first sign of things being incredibly strange is that Bill phones him. Joel and Bill don’t talk on the phone. Joel talks to Frank sometimes, because Frank still worries about him, but his communication history with Bill can be summed up in text messages shorter than ten words, and the occasional chain email about some kind of conspiracy Bill sends him that he deletes without opening.
Or: Another foster care au! With, uh, a twist?
Series
- Part 1 of under an april sky
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
02 Oct 2025
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Save Me a Place by Nandorluna for lkay09
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us
05 Feb 2026
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Summary
Tommy’s never been quiet about where he stands. He thinks that their best bet is to try to find a settlement, to walk in careful and earn a place and pray it isn’t filled with cultists. He knows that he and Joel can get on the way they’ve been living just fine – they’re used to scraping by. But Ellie...the kid needs more. She needs space to grow, to feel safe. She needs a home. Tommy clings to the idea that there are still good people left in this world – he has to believe that, or else what’s the point in continuing on?
But Joel wants no part of what he clearly thinks is Tommy’s delusion. He scoffs, calls him naive. He insists they’ll manage, because they’ve always managed. The idea of trusting strangers, of putting Ellie inside anyone else’s walls, under anyone else’s rules, it rubs Joel raw. He doesn’t say it out loud, but Tommy hears it anyway: no one can protect her like I do. And maybe that’s true. But maybe that’s not the point anymore.
--
Tommy Miller never left the Fireflies, but Joel and Ellie found him anyway. After the events of Salt Lake City, the three of them find themselves stranded in the wilds of Teton County, Wyoming.
Series
- Part 2 of Firefly Tommy Miller AU
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
13 Sep 2025
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safely, gathered in by RandomRuth
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
19 Aug 2025
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Summary
Then it’s the scythe’s turn, with its long, two-handled shaft and huge, curved blade attached at an angle. Beside him, Ellie straightens up in her chair from the slump she’d fallen into like someone’s dumped a bucket of ice water on her head.
“Oh, shit,” she whispers, near breathless.
Joel straightens too, glances around. “What?”
“I’ve never seen one in real life before,” she tells him, watching the scythe, her eyes practically sparkling. “That’s the Grim Reaper’s stick.”
Joel is frazzled, but he has been listening — it helps that he already knew what this one is called from Before. “It’s called a scythe.”
Ellie’s delighted grin is only getting bigger. “Sick.”
(Joel and Ellie attend a town meeting to discuss the upcoming barley harvest, Joel worries about the future, and Ellie picks up a new hobby.)
One-shot, set after season 1, and almost a year after "creatures, great and small".
Series
- Part 2 of all, who live
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
26 Aug 2025
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Tags
Summary
This might be a fluke. It could be stress and grief and age. It could be menopause. It might. He was never that regular to begin with, so that's no help. He'd just been stretching his T too thin and now everything it had been holding off for so many years was crashing down on him all at once.
But it might not be. It could be more.
It could be some part of Tess that he gets to keep.
Joel leaves Boston with Ellie and much more than he bargained for
Or:
The T4T Joel and Tess oops, right? fic
PSA: To be cringe is to be free, the tags are accurate, so you know exactly what you're getting into. Hoping to update weekly.
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
26 Aug 2025
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blueberry alley by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
23 Jul 2025
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Summary
Ellie slides into her place and picks up her spoon. “What’s this?”
“Porotos granados,” Tommy replies. He sits beside her, squeezing her shoulder as he passes. “Our mama used to make it. She was from-”
“Santiago,” Ellie volunteers. Tommy chuckles.
“Si, Santiago,” he agrees. He says it with a little lilt that’s so different from his normal drawl that it makes Ellie giggle. It’s still weird to her, how sometimes Tommy and Joel switch so easily from one dialect or language to the next. She doesn’t even mind when they talk Spanish around her to keep her from knowing their business. She likes the rapid fire cadence of their words, the way the vowels sound like sugar melting over hot coals on their tongues, the way Joel sucks his teeth and hisses, how Tommy’s voice goes higher when he’s joking. It’s weird sometimes to look around at all the ways her family doesn’t match each other and yet love each other so much. It shouldn’t make sense - they shouldn’t make sense - and still, they do.
*
Ellie's first year in Jackson, told through dinners and lunches and midnight snacks and egg sandwiches.
Or:
Food as a form of love.
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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Summary
Ellie’s not sleeping much.
Granted, they’ve only been in Jackson three weeks, hardly time to shake the habits of the road like sleeping in shifts for a couple hours at a time. But this is different, Joel can tell. She’s restless, deep shadows under her eyes, and when he wakes in the middle of the night he can usually hear her moving about the house somewhere.
But the house is quiet one night when he pokes his head into her room and finds her bed empty, and his heart damn near screeches to a stop in his chest. It’s almost three in the morning, so why in the hell isn’t she in her bed?
(4 times ellie can't sleep, and 1 time joel can't either)
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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the consequence of living by two_birds_alone_together
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
11 Jul 2025
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Summary
Ellie takes a few hesitant steps toward the door before Joel notices it: blood, soaking down her side.
Fuck. Fuck.
He yanks her back, frantic as he pulls up the hem of her shirt. Dark red seeps through the fabric as he searches for the source. “Jesus,” he breathes, spotting the wound. “Okay, you’re okay. Keep goin’.”
She stares at him in confusion, still trying to catch her breath from the terror of being attacked. “What?”
“Just keep movin’.” With his hand on her back, Joel forces her forward until bodies no longer surround them. He needs space to work, needs to get her away from the carnage before shock sets in. With one movement, he sweeps the cans off the large crate, then focuses on Ellie. “Up,” he says, voice low as he boosts her to sit.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. He can hear the fear creeping into her tone.
“I think you were shot.”
- -
(wherein henry's bullet doesn't just kill sam)
Series
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 13,900
- Chapters:
- 3/3
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 28
- Kudos:
- 206
- Bookmarks:
- 37
- Hits:
- 4,434
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow by BarlowGirl
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
18 Jul 2025
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Summary
There’s more blood than she expects, when she’s bit.
Riley tears up one of her spare t-shirts so Ellie can wrap her arm up, but they have to change it twice before it stops soaking through. Weirdly, Riley’s hand doesn’t bleed as much. There’s a bit of blood, because, well, in teeth versus skin, teeth win, but she just dabs it away with a scrap of cloth and some water and it stops pretty quick.
Worried about making it bleed again, Ellie leaves the wrapping on hers for so long that neither of them notice that the whorls of infection on her arm don’t match the infection creeping up Riley’s arm.
Or: The one where Ellie bleeds a lot.
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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All the missing crooked hearts by stardreamer25
Fandoms: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies), The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
06 Jan 2026
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Summary
Joel Miller had never stepped out of line.
He had listened and done exactly what Coriolanus Snow expected of a Victor. When he was told to smile, he smiled. When summoned for interviews or propaganda spots, he showed up clean-shaven and compliant. When his body was auctioned off to the highest bidder, he walked into hotel rooms and did what he was told. He had played the game.
So when Sarah Miller’s name was drawn for the 48th annual Hunger Games, Joel Miller nearly fell to his knees.
And 20 years later, the hardened man is drawn out of his shell when he mentors Ellie Williams in the 68th Annual Hunger Games.
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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Tags
Summary
“It ain’t your fault,” he said gruffly, tying off her bandage. He stayed squatted a moment more, searched her face. Cherubic, in a way. Glossy-soft, like paint. Cracked to a million fuckin’ pieces right in front of him.
Ellie shrugged, scoffed, rolled her eyes. Fourteen, he thought. Her tear ducts welled up, a couple of beads wobbling there. A twinkle in her eye, quivering stars. Too proud, in the midst of it all, to let them tip over. Not again.
A flash, then—her in the bar, scrubbing at her face. The squeeze in his chest. It wasn’t my first time.
The sun beams down on them now. Insects humming, running water somewhere close. Her silence, louder still. Her footsteps his only indication she is there at all.
There’s been an itch, something he’s longed to say, searching for the words. To another person, another child, another life—It’s not on you to save the world.
He aches, words limp in the cage around his heart, draped over ribs. Carcass-like, rotting. That tiny grave.
It’s kind of the whole fuckin’ point.
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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creatures, great and small by RandomRuth
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
21 Jun 2025
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Summary
“Ellie? That you?”
Joel’s home early.
Halfway between the front door and the stairs and in full view of the kitchen, Ellie freezes. “Fuck,” she mutters, low. “Yeah,” she says, loud enough to carry.
She has no choice but to stay hunched over herself like Quasimodo from that movie — it’s suspicious as fuck, but she manages to manoeuvre her arm to mostly obscure the squirming of the tell-tale bulge under her hoodie.
(Ellie and Joel have settled in Jackson. While Ellie goes to school and, Joel hopes, makes some friends her own age, he tries to keep their house from tumbling down around them. Ellie does befriend some Jackson locals, and tries to sneak them into her room — without Joel noticing that they’ve all got four legs.)
One-shot, set after season 1.
Series
- Part 1 of all, who live
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025
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Keep Going by stainedglasspanel
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
08 May 2023
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Summary
Joel sounds a thousand miles away. “Ellie? Are you listening? I said, don’t you *ever* do that again.”
Well, she thinks deliriously, that won’t be a problem after all.
“Ellie, what—?”
It feels like she has no control over her body anymore, like it’s someone else who is extending her arm, pulling back her sleeve, and exposing a ring of broken skin. She hears Joel stop breathing when he sees it too.
She's been bitten.
________AU where Ellie is already traveling across the country with Joel when she gets bitten.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 32,553
- Chapters:
- 6/6
- Comments:
- 170
- Kudos:
- 1,608
- Bookmarks:
- 456
- Hits:
- 23,834
Bookmarked by Hiding_Reader
30 Jul 2025