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Placed after Winter, but before they reach the Firefly hospital.
Ellie and Joel walked along, silently for now. They weren’t always silent. They’d grown closer to each other, though Joel was still occasionally distant. They were in some woods at the moment, and Ellie still found it mesmerizing. The squirrels running around, birds chirping, spiderwebs clinging across small pathways between trees. The vegetation thrived, and the world here was mostly uninhibited. Alive.
They reached another deserted town. They’d went through countless abandoned towns and homes on their journey. It was just the way of it. Bits of memories left by people that probably weren’t alive anymore. Sometimes, there would be very old, dried blood splattered on walls in houses. Furniture and décor would often be littering pathways and be ruined and ragged. They hadn’t seen any infected here yet, but they saw remnants of a firepit on the side of the road, outside a house, that was too fresh for comfort.
Ellie walked just a bit behind Joel, on his right side. She had her gun tucked into the back of her waistband, and she was a bit proud of carrying it. Joel was, of course, packed to the brim with weapons.
They were walking on the main road, or at least what used to be the main road. It was mostly quiet, and Joel was still scanning his surroundings as always. There was a noise on Ellie’s right, coming from a house. There were two windows there that were thoroughly broken.
She looked over towards the windows. “Joel?” she said quietly. They were quite close to the house, just feet away. Two men jumped out of the windows at them, then two more after the first set had jumped through, and Joel turned his head to the windows just as the first two came through them.
Joel quickly pulled his gun, and so did Ellie, and they made short work of the first two. Ellie’s gun misfired, and it seemed the two behind them had been low on or out of bullets, as the last two men had knives out instead. The man coming at Ellie sliced her right arm, a bit above her elbow, and she cried out. She dropped her gun and quickly got her switchblade, slicing and stabbing at the man relentlessly. Joel’s gun was operational, and he quickly shot the man coming at him in a single headshot and then came up right beside the man Ellie was tearing at, pointed the gun against his head, and fired. The man fell with a thud, and blood splattered on Joel’s face and right hand. Ellie’s cheek had a bit of blood speckling it, and her clothes were a little bloody from slicing at the man, as well as blood running down her arm from her injury.
Ellie’s chest was heaving. Her arm was beginning to pain her now, adrenaline from the fight subsiding and she was noticing her injury. She muttered a quiet “Fuck,” and Joel was noticing her injury as well.
“Ellie? Shit, you’re bleeding,” he said. He was clearly worried, and it showed in his voice, whether he wanted it to or not. His face was coated with the dead’s man blood, and Ellie noticed it now.
“Go sit down on that stump, Ellie… please.” He added, somewhat unlike him, but a comforting addition for Ellie to hear, and he knew it.
She obeyed, and went to sit on the stump, groaning a bit as she plopped down on it. She surveyed her arm a bit more. The cut was moderately deep, and bleeding steadily down her sleeve, staining it with blood.
Joel kneeled in front of her, and sat his backpack down on the ground, unzipping it. He pulled out a metal box, and opening it revealed a needle and thread, a few bandages that were sealed but fairly dirty on the wrappings that encased them, gauze in an outwardly dirty package, and some white cloth that looked like it could be from a scarf that was more clean compared to the rest. Ellie assumed this box was full of things he’d gathered, and not a sterile, fully-packed first aid kit.
He sat the opened metal box down on the ground, near his right leg, and then dug around in the backpack. He pulled out a white t-shirt, albeit a somewhat stained and slightly dirty one. He handed it to her.
“For your face,” he said quietly. She looked at him puzzled for a moment, then realized she had a bit of blood on her cheek. She took the shirt from him. “I think you need this more than me, Joel,” She mentioned, a bit of pain tinging her voice. He smiled, just a bit. “After you, I will.”
After she had wiped the spot of blood from her cheek, she handed the shirt back to Joel. He took it, then wiped his face off quickly, then the blood that remained on his right hand. It wasn’t an entirely clean job, streaks of blood remaining on his face and hand, but less blood than before. Her cheek had a very small streak remaining as well.
He laid the shirt down on the ground, next to the metal box. She knew she’d have to take her pullover off, so she decided to do that now. She started to pull it over her head, causing some pain to her arm. She groaned a bit, then felt the pullover going the rest of the way over her head, as Joel helped her remove it. He laid it on the ground beside the stump, and she said a quick ‘thank you.’ She was left in a long sleeve shirt, useful for the weather, but she needed to wear one anyway to conceal the bite mark.
He tore on the cut section of her shirt, getting more room to work on the wound. After that, he took out a navy blue t-shirt, and from what Ellie could tell, it was a bit cleaner than the white shirt.
She flinched as he took the shirt and held it to her arm, holding it there tightly. He put her left hand over the shirt. “Hold pressure on it for a minute,” he said, then grabbed the needle and thread.
Ellie gulped. She had seen brutal injuries, inflicted them on others, even, and she’d been cut before, but the stitching was still something she was dreading. She remembered having to stitch up Joel, how shaky she was… that Winter was brutal, for both of them. But he had pulled through, and for that she was grateful.
He took her own hand gently off her arm, then removed the shirt from over the slice. It began leaking blood again, though slower than before. He set the bloodied blue shirt down beside the also bloody white shirt on the ground.
“Deep breath, Ellie,” and then he pierced the needle through her skin, beginning his stitching.
She did take a deep breath, and she kept trying to keep her breathing steady as he worked through the cut with the thread. Ellie noticed his hand was steady. This was the first time he’d had to stitch her up. She hadn’t been injured bad enough for stitches in their time together until now. He was soon finished, and tied the stitch off. He left the needle on top of the blue shirt he’d set on the ground.
He took the white colored scarf from within the box, and tied it tightly around the stitched cut. She took another breath, reacting to it, and then he’d finished tying it off around her arm.
“Good as new.” He smiled a little, then got up from his kneeling position. She smiled back at him. He offered his hand for her to get off the stump. She put her left hand in his palm, and he pulled her gently upwards.
“Thank you, ‘Doctor Joel,’” she said, teasingly. He chuckled a little. She grabbed her gun off the ground with her left hand, racked it back, then tucked it into her waistband. They resumed walking on, Ellie right at Joel’s side this time and not behind him.
She wondered if Sarah had ever gotten deep slices or cuts… even though he wouldn’t have had to stitch Sarah up, and would’ve taken her to a doctor, Ellie knew Joel would have been worried sick about his daughter. She knew better than to ask right now, though. That it would still be opening an old wound.
Now that Riley was gone, and she wasn’t with Marlene… Joel was who she had. And she was who Joel had.
He would stitch me up again, she thought. And I would do the same for him.