cardigains
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it's a long way back (but a short road home) by cardigains
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
18 Aug 2025
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Summary
“It’s okay. I know a guy.” Ellie likes talking about Joel like he’s her mob lackey or something. Makes everything feel a little less looming and leering and lethal. She called Joel "a guy" when it came to getting an extra slice of pie or getting outside of Jackson's walls when she needed a day off of school, when she couldn’t fucking stomach it anymore. He told her to cut it out whenever she called him that. It was a bit. She liked all of their bits these days. “He’ll get you out too.”
“I’m Ellie," she volunteers though she doesn't want to. This woman isn’t an enemy. She’s as caged in as Ellie, worn down to the point that she barely had her wits left about her. There was a look in people’s eyes when they got that way, when they’d started giving up hope. Ellie would fucking know.
The woman shakes something loose from her bones, digs her teeth against her lip before she answers, “I’m Sarah.”
Ellie snorts. “Yeah,” she says with only the edges of humor clinging on. “He’ll definitely fucking save you.”
or: On Outbreak Night Joel and Tommy are separated from Sarah. They spend the next twenty-one years assuming each other is dead. Until Ellie and Sarah find each other in the same awful circumstances.
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'Cause Stitches Don't Work On a Cut This Deep by cardigains
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
14 May 2025
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Summary
“Nothing’s different,” Ellie tries to talk Joel off the ledge the best way she knows how. “Except that fucking…thing. It was different. It was smart. And I just thought…What if, ya know?”
Joel’s right in front of her. He sinks to his knees, which is honestly for the best before he passes out and knocks his head against the hardwood floors. “What are you asking me here, kiddo?”
The nickname tugs at years old memories, tussles with months old anger. Settles in her hours old desire to be held by him again. The desire she’s brushing off and shoving down. Even if she is going to die, it doesn’t mean Joel gets to be off the hook. All it means is that he’d ruined everything all so she could die in the name of fucking nothing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming instead.
Ellie squares her shoulders as she tilts up her chin. She holds him hostage with her gaze and implores him with the earnesty of her expression. “I need you to wait with me to see if I turn. And if I do,” she pauses, swallows, wishes she could look anywhere besides right into his eyes, “I need you to put a bullet in my head.”
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they say killing time ain't a homicide (just a prayer for a leap year) by cardigains for captainredspade (CodenameArtemis)
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
30 Dec 2024
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Summary
She doesn’t want to be read for the truth of what she is, what she’s become. Lonely, isolated, a girl who watches TV with the old dude who dragged her ass across the country and then doubled back when there wasn’t anything left for them to find. She’s not meant to be here. Not in Jackson, not in this house, not beside this version of Joel.
She’s a fucking orphan from Boston who’s got the weight of humanity slipped beneath the skin of her forearm, a couple calluses on the tips of her fingers, and a brain that still goes fuzzy at the slightest prodding of any of the pieces of her past that have delivered her to where she is today.
Joel’s shoulder is not for her to lean against. Those kids in her classroom are not for her to bond with. This is a fake life that she’s begun to settle around herself and the only thing that’s less real are the movies that play out on the screen in front of her, filled with animatronic dinosaurs and intricately painted backgrounds of spaceships.
or: Ellie doesn't quite know how to settle into Jackson, friendships, or a family.
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to clasp gold, fading glow by cardigains
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
01 Oct 2024
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Summary
Another grunt. “How you livin’ out here on your own?” he asks again. As if he hadn’t eaten the freshly slaughtered rabbit, drank from the routinely boiled water, slept beneath the gathered and plentiful blankets.
As if the efforts of survival have not been inscribed along her very skin.
“I’m not a kid.”
They stare at a fire which burns without ceasing—at skeleton fragments and glass shards and a spoon, warped and curled in on itself. There are flames in Ellie’s throat. There is poison in her body. The pages of a Bible have long since burned away—like they were never intended to be permanent. Not like loss. Not like grief. Not like loneliness.
Or: Ellie and Joel don't find each other until after she's already burned Silver Lake, and all of its residents, to the ground.
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like a shelter from the storm (a fireplace that keeps me warm) by cardigains for probsdeleteltr
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
25 Sep 2024
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Summary
He checks on her pretty often, says it’s only going to slow them down if she gets sick or injured, so she needs to tell him the truth and not try and hide anything.
Being cold doesn’t count, though. Being cold isn’t the same as a rolled ankle that could hold them up for days on end or a bronchitis that she needs to sleep off. There aren’t blisters he can help bandage so that they don’t detract from the amount of miles they can cover in a day or a cut he needs to clean to prevent infection.
She’s just cold. Who the fuck cares?
or: On the road between Kansas City and Jackson, the weather changes. Ellie isn't prepared for it.
Recent series
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Next Door Neighbors by cardigains
Fandom The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
15 Feb 2024
- Words:
- 65,242
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 65
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the garden as our home (a place where we can grow) by cardigains
Fandom The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
02 Aug 2023
- Words:
- 124,153
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 74