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Her slender frame was shaking, no matter how much he pushed her against his side, her trembling reverbering through his own fingers as he gripped her shoulder. The icy wind burned in his lungs and stabbed his face, forcing Joel to inhale full breaths of snowy air.
Ellie’s cheeks were striped with tears and blood - he didn’t have it in him to look at her without feeling every inch of his insides burn. Keep pushing forward , that was the only immediate thought, the only possible escape route. She was dragging her feet in the snow beside him, sobbing quietly. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to stop in his tracks, cradle her face within his calloused fingers, wipe the tears and dust and shame off her cheeks and her eyes and her soul, but the hunters were still shouting behind the thick curtain of the snowstorm, followin their tracks with the same fierce hunger of a pack of wolves hunting for its prey.
The stitching on the wound at Joel's side kept itching and pulling, each single step igniting a flash of scorching pain. But they couldn’t stop yet - ever, he thought, they couldn’t ever stop. It would take years of running to put enough distance between them and the skeleton of that burning pub, between Ellie and that shadow of a man that tried to-
He stopped right there, just a strand of thought before the picture of what the hunter was going to put Ellie through could fully form and explode, splinters of it piercing behind his eyes and burning like tears.
The thing was, the world didn’t equip you with a lot of tools to handle emotional damage anymore. The world they were forced to live in only provided you with enough terror, hunger and anger to propel a step after the other, and hope to move forward.
And Ellie was still shaking, eyes trained on the frozen ground, shallow breaths escaping her chapped lips in shorter and shorter intervals - as much he would have liked to, he couldn’t let the fury take him back to pick that body apart, making sure nothing of it could survive. He had to keep her safe, first and foremost, now more than ever, because he hadn't been there to protect her when she needed to. He had to let the flames finish the job for him.
He gently placed his frozen lips to the crown of her head, a soft string of words, drowned by the whistling wind, pouring out of his mouth, I’m never leaving your side again I’m never leaving you again I’m never
They made camp in a garden shed that night, far away just enough to let the last of the snowstorm cover their tracks. Golden, Colorado, was anything but: it was covered in a thick, blinding layer of white. It wasn't the optimal hideout, but the windows of the adjacent house’s were too broken up to provide a good shelter, and the garden shed was the next best thing. He lit up a small fire inside to keep them warm, rolled out their sleeping bags and tried to make the four rotting walls feel a little less like a casket and more like a haven.
Ellie was quiet, her face motionless as he cleansed the cold skin around her eyes with a piece of cloth. She didn’t protest, even though she did flinch when he took her hand to scrub at her fingers. That imperceptible twitch of her mouth, as if his touch was suddenly unwelcome, it broke his heart. Her breath hitched ever so softly - but when he put his own hand over hers, cautious and gentle, she let him, her welling eyes fixated on the wall behind him. He wanted to make her look at him, he wanted to shake her and yell It’s me, you never have to be afraid again, not while I still breathe .
He kept his mouth shut and made sure to wash away every single remaining speck of blood, and if he could also scrub her memory away, he would have.
He didn’t sleep much. His side hurt, and Ellie was restless. She woke up in a flurry of limbs and broken screams of Don’t fucking touch me , and she fought him, hard, when he surrounded her with his arms and didn’t let go.
She sobbed, the full force of what happened and could have happened hitting her again, and again. She clutched his coat in her fingers, and buried her face in his chest, and he let her scream, her voice scratching her throat and his lungs, as if he was screaming too.
He hadn't been there. She was alone, and he hadn't been there, and she must have been so scared.
If he cried too, he didn’t hide it.
They didn’t speak the next morning, when Ellie woke up with dark circles hollowing her eyes and a downward curve to her lips. She helped him pack their things and quickly got out of the shed, the whiteness of the surroundings highlighting the redness in her eyes.
He reached for her hand, but she clenched her fists and started walking fast, her frame looking smaller, heavier, older.
She didn’t eat. She didn’t do much of anything, aside from walking and sleeping and walking again. He understood it - the tearing need to put as much physical space between her and Lakeside. He understood the distance she put, but it still hurt to see her pushing him away as well.
But she needed to heal, and if healing meant silence, anger, and avoiding him like the plague, so be it.
He didn’t question.
Joel didn’t really resent the silence - he had grown used to it in twenty years of conserving his words, letting his action speak louder than any conversation he could ever have. He'd never been much of a talker - he’d rather listen and carefully place his remarks and responses. That earned him the reputation of a somber and concise man, and in a world of shouts and screams, his quietness often stemmed respect.
Yet he last few weeks had been so packed with bad jokes, half-hassed whistling and ever-growing fond small talk that having Ellie walk a few steps behind him in complete, utter silence, was unnerving.
Ellie was cheerful, loud, questioning and curious, annoying at times, but never quiet. He didn’t know how to fill the gap.
They ate their scavenged, canned meal without so much as a word, the camping tent Joel found in the back of the garden shed in Golden set in a small clearing in the middle of Colorado’s woods. They were nearing the border with Utah, but that didn’t feel like a victory at all.
The end of their journey was closing in, and Joel was scared.
He didn’t know how to fix it - to fix her. The clinking of their spoons hitting the cans was the only sound beside the quiet humming of the forest. The trail they had been following had been clear of hunters and infected - maybe a stroke of luck - but he still strained his ears trying to catch any suspicious movements.
He almost jolted when Ellie’s voice rang loud and clear in the thick silence.
“His name was David”.
Joel felt his skin crawl, his gut burning as if a block of hot coal had just slotted itself down the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t asked her about the hours that led to the slaughter at Lakeside- he reckoned that, when she would’ve been ready, she would’ve just talked. He was still blindsided by those four words - he didn’t expect to put a name on the bloody remains of the bastard's face.
He lowered his half-empty can on the ground, simply leaning forward just enough to signal his attention. She still wasn’t looking at him: her eyes were trained on the small fire he put together to warm them for the night. The flames danced on her features, her cheeks flushed by the warmth of the air around the fire, and her eyes - a little less bright, a bit more faded - glimmered with the fire.
Her hands were clutching the can, white-knuckled and slightly trembling.
“His name was David and he was a fucking animal”, she breathed through gritted teeth. She inhaled hard through her nose, closing her eyes, her shoulders tense and still. “He tried to-”, a pained breath, her voice breaking up just enough to make Joel’s chest clench painfully, “He tried to rape me, and kill me. I bashed his head like a watermelon, and I thought I could never stop”.
He didn’t notice he had stopped breathing, nor that his hands had started clenching up mimicking hers, the sheer need to wrap them around David’s neck overwhelming him, crushing on him like waves.
Joel couldn’t talk. A lump, firm and suffocating, had placed itself in his throat, uncomfortable and nauseating. When she opened her eyes again, they were dry, but her lips were quivering softly.
“I never want to talk about it again. It’s over. Things happen, and we move on”.
His own words in her mouth sounded so detached, so- wrong. He wanted her to talk about it - he wanted to eviscerate what happened, take it out of her and throw it on the ground and kick it with all the force he had left.
He wanted to honor her wish, and he wanted her to be okay. He stood up, walking over to the log she was sitting on and crouched in front of her. Joel searched for her eyes, and when she finally let her eyes on him, he felt the burden in her gaze, crashing on his core. I want to keep you safe, I’m never stepping away. I’m here you’re okay we’re okay I’m never leaving your side again you’re so important you’re so loved
He didn’t speak. His hand reached her cheek, fingertips fluttering over her skin, a breadth of space - just enough to let her move away, but also an invitation to lean in. He used to be an affectionate father. He used to cradle Sarah to his side when she slept on the couch with him, he used to ruffle her hair and hold her hand and drown his face in the crown of her head, smelling her hair, he used to- be a father. This should have been easy, caring for a child, yet it was heart-wrenching, it was angry, it was scary, it was difficult.
He felt like he could break when she slowly leaned into his touch, her cheek soft and warm in his palm.
It should have been easy pulling her into an embrace, his arms shielding her, trying to mend her broken pieces back together, but it wasn’t. It opened up a gaping hole inside his chest, wide enough to let him slip and fall into the void. Still her arms closed around him too, and she was keeping him whole as well, and she was breathing, she was here and he was too.
If he cried, again, soft sobs muffled by her hair, she didn’t mention later, when they were lying side by side, shoulders touching and hands clasped tight.
She didn’t wake up screaming that night. When Joel opened his eyes the next day, the faded lining of the tent draped above him filtering the dim morning light, her arm was a welcome weight on his stomach, and her regular breathing was the best sound in the world.
They were broken - they were together. They were alright.