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priest of nothing by marchflower for ayeleye
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
19 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
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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.
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for the prompt "non-human whumper"
Series
- Part 1 of Whumptober 2025
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Summary
“I mean-” Ellie licks her lips, swishes a bunch of pieces aside with the flat of her hand. “I mean, do you think, like, old women think Joel is attractive?”
A pregnant pause swells to fill the garage. Then Dina snorts and claws upright on the couch. She sways dizzily. “Oh, for sure.” Ellie squeaks, and Dina goes on, voice sing-songing, “And not just the old ones.”
Jesse says, slowly, bravely, “If we’re being honest, I think Joel’s attractive.”
Ellie falls backwards onto her ass, grunting at the impact. “Oh my God-”
“Tommy too,” Jesses adds, and Ellie throws a handful of puzzle pieces at him, shrieks:
“What?!”
*
Ellie discovers that Joel might be Jackson's most eligible bachelor. Shenanigans ensue.
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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.
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planets of the universe by marchflower for Nandorluna
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
09 Jul 2025
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Summary
Mateo loved his dad. He loved more him than he’d ever loved someone else before. It was sort of strange, because he didn’t always know Dad or Mom, and sometimes he still looked at his family and wondered if there was really a place for him in it, after all. But the one thing he’d never doubted, not from the first night that Dad had tucked him in - before he was even Dad, when he was still just a stranger- was how safe Mateo felt with him, and how much he felt like he could love someone who made him feel that way.
*
In a continuation of the story Nandorluna told us in her saga, Go Your Own Way, Mateo Miller grapples with growing up, fitting in, and figuring out what it means to be part of a family.
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blackbird, blackbird, what do you see? by marchflower for historian_in_pearls
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
22 May 2025
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Summary
“I think I - fucked up my ankle.” She points to her left foot. “When I fell.”
Her remorse lies thick and rank between them. Joel imagines he can see it rotting there, in between shafts of honeyed sunlight. Shame, he thinks, fits her so poorly. He’s reminded of Kansas City, of her sitting her with her back to the newspaper lined window, chin on her knees, a single tear on her cheek as she tells him:
It wasn’t my first time.
Little girls, he thinks, have no business carrying that sort of regret. He has no business reading into it this way - thinking about all the tender spots Ellie’s got lying in ruin inside of her, all of the ways this world has failed her. All of the ways he’s failed her, all of the ways he might still. She’s only a job, he tells himself sternly. She’s cargo.
*
Joel patches Ellie up again, and again, and again.
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ten mile stilts by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
10 Jan 2025
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Summary
For a long minute, she stands in the hallway with her blanket wrapped around her and takes in the stillness of the house: the shadows pooling beneath the table and counters in the kitchen, the muted thumping of the wind against the siding, the low crackling of the logs in the woodstove. The open staircase in front of her yawns like the mouthpiece of some humongous beast. Joel’s breath is raspy, labored; the chill creeping in under the front door sinks its teeth into her feet. She could close her eyes, she thinks, and she’d be there-
She shakes herself till her vision spins. She’s not there. Colorado and all the horrors she endured there are a thing of the past. She’s here, and she’s now. She’s in her home in Jackson and she’s safe, and Joel-
He’ll be alright, she thinks. Her teeth are chattering. He’ll be okay. He has to be.
*
A blizzard hits Jackson, and Joel is sick.
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still life: flowers in the hands of a girl by marchflower for mirananananan
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
23 Dec 2024
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Summary
Their fragrance lingers on: weak and tepid, drained and subdued, but there.
There: the Rockies on their right and miles of wheatgrass to their left, the sun overhead a pulsing, livid thing. The Nebraskan prairie, its clover that high summer yellow, so tall that it’d tickled the underside of Ellie’s chin when she’d ran through it. That first snowfall in Wyoming, the flakes delicate and wispy, fairy like as they sifted down through the pale pink haze of sunrise. All those nights around the fire, all those days with her feet aching and her nose running and her heart taking flight around her chest. Those first months, before Jackson and Joel’s betrayal, before the university and Silver Lake. Before she was a victim; before she was a broken child, a broken promise.
Before the lie.
*
Ellie and Joel's journey, told one flower at a time.
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sparrows at dawn, ravens at dusk by marchflower for lkay09
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
12 Nov 2024
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Summary
Don’t even need to be big, he’d told Sarah once. He tells Ellie that now, watches her face fold and unfold, a flower in bloom. Don’t even need to be big - because what a fucking privilege it is, he thinks, to be twenty years past the end of the world and still holding that dubious honor of cradling all the small parts of a little girl in his hand.
*
Two different girls. One dad.
Because even after the end of the world, parenting doesn't change all that much.
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enough of dying species by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
30 Oct 2024
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Summary
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “He - he’s mine.”
Gil scrutinizes her for a long minute; she tries not to squirm beneath his attention, beneath the heat of his appraisal. She knows what he sees: an impetuous child, a runaway with muddy boots, another girl awash in the great violence of their world. She squares her shoulders, sticks out her chin, and he softens.
“He’s very lucky to have you,” Gil says, and that’s that, but his words stick with Ellie long after he’s gone, after the nursing staff has turned them out for the night. Ellie follows Maria and Tommy home and thinks over and over again how luck has nothing to do with it; luck is so scarce in this world, rarer even than love. Ellie hasn’t seen the likes of it in years. No, it was never luck that drew her and Joel together, once upon a time. It was something greater entirely.
*
Joel survives Abby's attack. In the aftermath, Ellie struggles to heal.
*
Fulfills the prompt: recovery
Series
- Part 9 of Whumptober 2024
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leafmold paradise by marchflower for captainredspade (CodenameArtemis)
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
25 Oct 2024
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Summary
But then Joel starts patrol. And he’s gone - outside the walls, without her there to watch his six, to stand on his bad side and hold his rifle for him when he needs to look for something in his bag. He’s got partners, sure, but they aren’t her. They don’t know him like she does: they don’t know the gait of his steps, the hitching whine of his left knee, the beat of his heart. Knowing Joel - the good and the bad and the funny and the painful and the sad- has been her job for a year. It was what she did. But now they’re in Jackson, and things are different. They have to be different.
So she goes to school, and Joel goes on patrol.
And Joel gets hurt.
*
After Joel is injured on patrol, Ellie spirals.
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Fulfills the prompt: nightmares
Series
- Part 8 of Whumptober 2024
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the death of myth-making by marchflower for nicoli_boli
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
20 Oct 2024
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Summary
She’s basically ruined everything: Joel and her are off the patrol roster, and everyone in town’s treating her like she’s diseased, and all their neighbors and friends except for Dina are mad at them, or scared of her. She’s never been a popular kid - she’s too loud and too crass and a little too feral for that - but she’s always been moderately well liked here in Jackson, and to have that stripped away so suddenly and for something she can’t control hurts.
And it hurts even more to watch Joel bear the brunt of the repercussions for her mistakes. Joel takes a lot of pride in being a good neighbor and being active in their town. She knows he thinks that this whole thing - her and Jackson, their family and their life - is a second chance for him, and he’s always been so careful not to fuck it up.
And now it’s all gone to shit, and it’s all her fault.
*
Companion piece to "lady lazarus"
In the aftermath of the unveiling of her immunity, Ellie struggles to feel safe and accepted in Jackson.
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Fulfills the prompt: Emotional Angst
Series
- Part 7 of Whumptober 2024
- Part 2 of like sticky pearls
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a quartz contentment by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
15 Oct 2024
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Summary
“I’m fine,” she says stiffly, and he sighs, rubs the back of his neck, peers up at her.
“It’s alright-”
“I’m fine.”
Her voice is too loud in the icy darkness of their kitchen. Joel stares at her a second longer, throat bobbing, lips pressed thin. “Alright,” he says at last. “But you - if you aren’t, you can tell me. Okay?”
*
During a hard week of winter, black outs roll across Jackson, and one of Ellie's childhood fears rears its head.
Luckily - she has Joel.
*
Fulfills the prompt: childhood trauma
Series
- Part 6 of Whumptober 2024
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starved in desert wild by marchflower for lkay09
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
11 Oct 2024
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Summary
It reminds her of that winter on the road, after Silver Lake, when they were both so beaten down that they could barely hunt or walk or scavenge for weeks. They’d sat holed up in that old gas station and ate cold beans and frozen berries and once or twice, some squirrels, some little rabbits. The meat was always stringy and tough; Ellie remembers the way it’d felt going down, greasy and slick, the way it pooled like rancid oil in her stomach. Some nights she’d have to sit propped up all night against Joel’s shoulder and breathe with her mouth open to keep from puking. She never, not once since they’d come back to Jackson, thought that she’d ever feel like that here.
*
After the horde settles in around Jackson, the town faces dire consequences as their food supply starts to run out.
*
Fulfills the prompt: Starvation
Series
- Part 5 of Whumptober 2024
- Part 2 of little girl found
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some unimaginable bird by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
08 Oct 2024
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Summary
Maria moans, shakes. She asks for Tommy, then Rafa, then Tommy again, tears glittering darkly on her cheeks in the guttering light of the rocket stove, and Ellie crawls to her side, wedges her aunt’s head beneath her arm, crushes her hand in her’s.
“We’re okay,” she tells her. She’s going for calm, for collected and soothing, but the words keep getting tangled up behind her teeth and the hole up around her keeps going blurry and then sharply prismatic as her tears spill, salty and fast, down her cheeks. “We’re okay,” she says. “We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay-”
The wailing of the storm drowns out her lies.
*
While on a trail ride, Ellie and Maria are ambushed by hunters and injured. Ellie gets them both to safety, but she’s forced to stay alert as a snowstorm rolls in and her aunt’s life rests in her hands.
*
Fulfills the prompt: sleep deprivation
Series
- Part 4 of Whumptober 2024
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Summary
“This stuff happens. It’s part of the learning process, Ellie.”
Ellie swallows a mouthful of water and sets her teeth against the ache in her jaw, against the argument she wants to make: that she should be done learning, that she’s been scrapping and surviving and training for years now. She shouldn’t have missed that Infected. She shouldn’t have holstered her gun. She thinks about what it’s going to feel like to have to make that report to Tommy, the way his eyes are going to darken in disappointment. The way Joel’s gonna fuss over her stupid fucking head and press his lips together in that way he does when he’s trying not to say what’s on his mind, which is gonna be “you aren’t ready for this” or “I told you so.”
*
Ellie is excited to go on her first paired patrol- right up until she’s bitten.
And she doesn’t realize it until someone else spots it.
*
Fulfills the prompt “not realizing they’re injured”
Series
- Part 3 of Whumptober 2024
- Part 1 of like sticky pearls
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dust before the dream’s gone cold by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
05 Oct 2024
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Summary
Ellie’s crying again, quieter, the sound muffled by her arm or her backpack or her exhaustion. He sits there on his heels, thighs burning with the prolonged hold, fingertips braced against the cold floor of the cave for balance, and wonders what he should say, what he should do. He’s not good at this. Ellie knows this; she’s not expecting him to do anything, and he pretends like this makes it easier for him to lie back down and listen to her cry in the damp darkness of the cave. She’s only cargo, he tells himself. Cargo doesn’t need comfort.
*
Ellie gets a sunburn. Joel takes care of her.
Rinse, and repeat.
*
Fulfills the prompt: Sunburn
Series
- Part 2 of Whumptober 2024
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pale through pathless ways by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
01 Oct 2024
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Summary
At the top of the next hill she looks back. The flat top of the butte is a lonely sight, set against the porcelain blue of the sky, and for a minute, Ellie allows herself to relax, to take a deep breath in, to wipe at the blood on her lips-
And then an undulating cry echoes across the valley, and from around the butte, clinging like barnacles to the sides of a boat, the Infected come.
*
Ellie runs away after a fight with Joel, eager to prove that she doesn’t need his help and can make it on her own. She runs abreast a horde coming into the Teton Valley, and must race against the clock to warn Jackson in time.
Fulfills the Prompt: Race Against the Clock
Series
- Part 1 of Whumptober 2024
- Part 1 of little girl found
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swing low, sweet chariot by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
01 Sep 2024
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Summary
“How do you feel?”
Ellie thinks, sucks on her lower lip. “I guess- mostly just really sad.”
It’s an understatement if there ever was one. Sometimes the sadness feels so big that she’s not sure how she’d ever manage to escape it, to exist outside of it. It feels like a balloon, constantly growing bigger and bigger and never once popping. Ellie’s terrified of what it’s going to feel like when it finally breaks.
“Sometimes,” Maria says, “Sometimes, sad and stuck are the same thing. And that’s okay. You can be sad every day for the rest of your life, Ellie, and you can still live a rich, full, exciting life. Okay?”
*
Ellie Williams at the intersection of grief, faith, and love.
Series
- Part 4 of out of the mouths of babes
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the sun’s probably shining in wyoming by marchflower for Arien
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
27 Aug 2024
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Summary
“I think I fucked this one up today,” she admits, and Joel sighs, tips his head back. Shame unspools like a ribbon of clotted silk in his stomach.
“Reckon neither of us are winnin’ any awards for today,” he says. Tess’s hand tightens over his. His throat feels sharp and hot, clogged up with all the shame from all the things he can’t fix, all the things he’s gotta to sit back and watch his girls shoulder on their own: injuries and heartbreak and the unmitigated woes of growing up, the fierce and terrible pain of motherhood.
*
Tess lives. She and Joel build a life in Jackson. A day in each season over the course of a year.
Inspired by this prompt, submitted by Arien: “Tess lives, and they all make it to Jackson together.”
Fulfills the prompt “Changing Seasons” for the Good Things Happen Bingo Challenge.
Series
- Part 2 of Good Things Happen Bingo