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“You’re not just cargo anymore, Ellie. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” she says, and his gaze is soft—she’s not sure she would call it uncharacteristically soft, really. Sometimes he’s a big softy, and she knows it, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He’s a protector and a kindhearted dude, and even if he doesn’t think he can be both at the same time, she knows it.
“Yeah, I know,” she says, nodding at him, and he looks like he needs her to know it. Like he needs her to know that she is not just cargo anymore, but he can’t or won’t actually say, I think of you sort of like a daughter, kid, just thought you should know.
She knows it. She does.
“And you’re, um—” she starts, then lets out a little chuckle. “You’re not just an old fuckin’ man hauling me around anymore, either, so. Guess we’re even then, huh?”
Joel smiles, an almost innocently happy thing. He looks away from her and down at the ground, and it’s obvious he doesn’t want her to see the tears starting to bead up in his eyes, but she does anyways.
“Yeah,” he says, a light chuckle that is almost a scoff coming out of his mouth. He looks into her eyes for a split second, then diverts his gaze down to the ground again. “Yeah, I know, Ellie. I know.”
She loves him, she thinks, even though she never expected to. She loves him like the father she never had.
She was close to Riley—hell, she loved Riley, in a romantic way and a friend way—but she’s never had a father. She’s never had anything close to a father figure and friend that is a father figure, and it feels amazing and endearing and fucking weird all at the same time, but she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Wouldn’t trade it for Savage Starlight comic books or an astronaut helmet or book, or maybe not even for the Infected being gone.
“Good,” she says, and a slight, playful smile tinges her lips—something to lighten up the moment without making it less sincere.
“Yep,” he says, like he’s trying to shrug all this off like it’s just casual. He looks at the ground again, and Ellie smiles.
“Yeah,” she says, and the love in her heart surges.