Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He thinks, briefly, of something about a trolley problem. He can't remember where it came from - a movie or a show or a high school class. All he remembers is the general concept. You have the lever to move the train from the tracks - on one is one person, on the other is many. The train is barrelling over the tracks in seconds, leaving you with a choice over who gets killed. It's headed towards the many. The right choice is pulling the lever so it hits the one.

Joel thinks of Sarah, not for the first time today or any day. The soldier listening to his radio - Joel is sure he thought they were infected, it was for the greater good, and he doesn't give a single shit because he still pictures killing him slowly and painfully because he remembers the life leaving the body of his little girl, remembers that she will never wake up. 

He thinks of the bodies in the ditch on the way to Lincoln he'd tried to stop Ellie from seeing. The baby blankets, the lies he's sure they were told of safety before their execution. Joel knows the message the soldiers told themselves to sleep at night so they'd drown out the screaming in their heads - it was to save the many .

Joel also knows he's the one who sold those fuckers Oxy when their eyes got haunted. He knows the lie didn't work.

He was no stranger to haunts, to regrets, to blood on his hands. Doesn't think anyone could call him a good person, whatever the hell that even means these days. But for every kill he's had, every loose end tied up, he doesn't carry the regret from the bodies at the hospital that wanted to kill Ellie for the sake of their science experiment. 

Joel idly notices a fleck of blood in his hair in the rearview mirror.

Ah, well. 

Maybe he should feel remorse for the failed philosophy test. Joel looks over at Ellie - sleeping and alive in the backseat, her chest rising and falling with her breathing. 

He never was a star student anyways.

-

Ellie wakes up later.

Joel lies about the hospital, tells her there wasn't a cure and they'd tried before and failed. The lie feels worse than what happened at the hospital, but there's no turning back from it now.

She's quiet until they cross the border to Idaho.

-

"Dude, this sucks," are the first words that leave her. Ellie is still in the backseat, her head thumping against the rear cushion.

"What, Idaho?"

"No," Ellie emphasizes, throwing her feet on the center console. "All of this was for nothing."

Joel inhales deeply, face contorted. "Now I wouldn't say that."

"Oh? So Sam, Henry, Tess, and everyone else who died - that wasn't for nothing?" and he can hear the tears in her voice, hates the weight of the world on fourteen years old shoulders. Hates the memories they both carry. He's used to it, she shouldn't have to be 

Joel pauses.

"You learn every death is for nothing."

In the rearview he can see the tears streaming down her face. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to say. But unlike what he'd said to her before, this one was true.

-

The next time Ellie speaks is when Joel is siphoning out the gas from an abandoned car on the highway. 

She closes the door behind her, stepping out over to where Joel is concentrating on blowing out the gas on the shoulder. 

“Are there any Infected around?”

“Way out here?” Joel asks between huffs. This is one of few cars he’s seen for miles. Car is doing alright on gas, but a quarter of a tank of mostly water ain’t good for too much. “Mm, I doubt many. Why?”

Ellie just nods, and steps over the bars on the edge of the interstate on the grass. “Good.”

And then she lets out a primal scream that scares Joel shitless for about ten seconds straight. 

“Jesus Christ, Ellie,” he damn near spills out all the gas in the can rushing over to her, hands on her shoulders. “What the hell’s the matter?”

Ellie shrugs. “I think it’s helping. You should try it.”

He doesn’t, but when Ellie starts up again he just goes back to the car he was eeking gas out of. It’s bloodcurdling and scary, but screaming after the past few days, weeks, months…

Joel can understand it.

“Should head out before you attract any of ‘em in a five mile radius,” is all he says after the next round. She nods, and walks over to the passenger seat.

When Joel gets in the driver’s seat, their seatbelts clicking and the motor starting, she offers, “That felt good.’

“Good,” is all he can really offer in response.

-

“Where are we going?” Ellie asks, looking up from the comic in her hand. “Feel like I should have asked that sooner.”

“Jackson,” Joel answers. Then he wonders if it’s the right thing to say. “That is, if you want to.”

“Food, shelter, and free from infected? Sign me up. Communism rocks.”

Joel lets out the first laugh he’s had all trip. “Tommy’s probably having a riot and a half with that. Goes from fighting in Desert Storm and voting for both Bushes to living on a commune.”

Ellie quickly jumps to - “Was he in like, a real storm in the desert?”

“Um,’ Joel thinks for a moment. “I think storm in the other sense. Like, stormin in somewhere. America did a lot of that. Don’t suppose FEDRA school went over any of that, presidents and wars and stuff?”

Ellie folds her comic into her backpack as she answers. “Just that America rocks and everyone else is dead and there was a big picture of Ronald Reagan in the hallway.”

“Sounds about right.”

“What ever happened to the presidents and stuff? Like, the ones that were alive?”

“Probably dead or in hiding.”

“So President Bush isn’t like, living on a commune right now?”

Joel considers this for a moment. “I don’t think they’d let him in.”

“Huh,” is all Ellie says before jumping to the next topic. “So, Jackson, right? They’ll let us back in? Could we go back to the old house? I know we were only in it for like, a second, but it was pretty nice.”

Joel feels a pang in his chest. It’s not like the ones he’s used to, the panic that feels something like a heart attack with ringing in his ears and the breath gone from his lungs. It’s quieter. Kinder. 

“‘Course we can. Could fix up the house in Jackson, if you want,” he says, trying to sound blithe. He stares straight at the road, squinting at the sun and shifting in his seat. “Do up your bedroom however you want it, I don’t know what kinda supplies they got but I’m sure we can figure out somethin.”

Ellie seems to take a beat, lips pursing together in what’s become her universal gesture for an idea that doesn’t sound terrible. He tells himself he isn’t holding his breath for her response. “Get rid of the boy band posters, that’s for sure.”

Joel tries for levity. “I always did think that Justin Timberlake was a little shit.”

“Who’s Justin Timberlake?”

Joel curses the knowledge being a parent of a teenager in 2003 has brought him. “Better if you don’t know. What you want when the posters are gone?”

“Hm…” Ellie seems to let herself marinate in the thought. “Definitely shelves. You know like, the floor to ceiling ones? With the ladder?”

Joel lets out a low whistle. “Faith in craftsmanship, right there. What the hell you gonna put in all that? Your pun books? Picture books?”

“Comic books,” she corrects him, and though he’s not looking right at her Joel can see her eyes roll. “And, I don’t know, stuff. It’s not like you get to keep that much stuff in a backpack walking from Boston to Utah, old man. Or FEDRA school.”

Joel thinks of Sarah, of all the trinkets she’d collected over the years. The phase with the ponies and stuffed animals before declaring she was too old for that stuff anymore, the CDs and wristbands, all of the stuff kids used to be able to give a shit about. 

“Fair enough. What kinda stuff you want on the shelves? Gotta know so we know how big to make em.”

Ellie ponders this for a moment. “I want…a lava lamp.”

Joel’s eyebrows raise, a half smile on his lips. “I don’t know how the hell you make a lava lamp.”

“Maybe we could find one. It could double as a weapon,” Ellie offers thoughtfully. “Just think of it, Infected intruder taking the lava lamp to the mushroom face. Buys time.”

Joel hates that idea. “I sure as hell hope you don’t get Infected intruders in your damn bedroom. I think we’ve been on the road for too long if that’s your first thought.”

“Second thought,” Ellie corrects him, “but, you really think it’s that safe?”

Joel lets himself turn his head to her for the first time since he started the conversation. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

There’s another long, still pause with no sound but the wheels of the car hitting the pavement and the motor running. 

Ellie breaks the silence like she breaks most of them. “I used to have a Walkman, y’know. That was like, my favorite thing.”

“The little CD players?”

“Tape players,” she corrects. “Most CDs are shit these days ‘cause they’re all scratched and fucked up, and the tape one is the one Riley found.”

Joel wants to ask who Riley is. He doesn’t. “Doesn’t take up space on a shelf, really. Unless you get a good tape collection going.”

“Well, I want a good tape collection. And a Walkman again.”

He isn’t sure they’ll be able to find tape players with working headphones on trees these days. But he makes a note to himself all the same.

“We’ll find you a Walkman, then.”

“And a lava lamp?”

“That might be askin’ too much.”

-

They make a run into an exurb, both to fuel up on the cars in the residential and to take supplies from the houses. Once Joel siphons the car until it hits full - a rare advantage from the trucks parked in long driveways - he tells Ellie they can start checking houses for rations and anything they can bring back to Jackson. A supply run would likely be welcome, and Joel is imagining staying in Jackson for a while.

Ellie stacks cans of beans and fruit up to her chin, running to dump them in the truck from the first house he’s already checked for any raiders or Infected. 

When he’s checking the second house on the block - a spacious two story with a two car garage - he finds treasure in one of the bedrooms. 

A Sony Walkman with a tape cassette still inside. He checks the tape - Pearl Jam. A classic. Maybe not for a teenage girl, but a classic nonetheless. It’s a good omen.

When Ellie opens the front door, Joel calls for her from upstairs. “Got a good surprise for you, kid.”

He hears her take the steps two at a time, out of breath and wide-eyed by the time she makes it to the doorway. “A lava lamp?”

“Better,” Joel says, holding the Walkman up.

“No fucking way!” she nearly leaps to take it out of his hands, childlike joy and excitement on her face. She checks the tape, same as he did. “And Pearl Jam? Hell fucking yeah.”

Joel can’t help but chortle at that.

“What, you don’t like Pearl Jam?”

“I like ‘em, just wonderin’ why you do.”

“Listen, when your options are dad rock or no music at all, you choose the dad rock.”

Joel tilts his head back in mock offense. “Dad rock?”

“That’s what Riley called it, but it’s good so fuck it,” and she’s already moving onto the cassettes on the shelf behind him. “Nirvana? The Cure? Dude, we have to take like - all of this. Man, this fucking rocks.”

“Take The Beatles and The Stones, too. Dad rock, my ass,” is all he says before moving onto the next room. It’s not likely they’re getting any luckier, but the walls of the next room are a bright teal. Telltale sign of teen girl, if the broken fairy lights and canopy bed weren’t. 

Lucky for him, this is a room with the bookshelf of a teen girl, too. Not the floor to ceiling, ladder, Beauty and the Beast kind, but shelves with tapes and books and stuff nonetheless. Joel spots some familiar tapes - Britney Spears, Destiny's Child, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera - with a slight twinge. Sarah loved the bubblegum pop of the aughts, played CDs until they scratched and he'd threaten to snap em so she'd stop playing them in the car (he never did, she always laughed). Joel pockets them, figuring a teenage girl should get to be a teenage girl. 

-

Ellie is thrilled with her haul, switching out the tapes in the car and insisting that road trip music was essential. His fault for explaining the concept of road trips when it was Linda Ronstandt on the radio in Bill’s truck. They’ve been listening to Pearl Jam’s Ten for the past hour, then Nirvana before that. She nods her head along and mouths the words to herself, and it’s a kind of high to see a kid so happy after all the shit she’s been through.

Once the tape ends, with a sigh, he pulls out one of the tapes in his pocket and loads it in. The tell-tale synth comes over the speakers, and Ellie looks at him with nothing but confusion on her face. 

“What the hell is this, Joel?” she asks, eyes wide.

“Britney Spears,” he answers, just as the ‘oh, baby, baby’s ’ start. Joel hasn’t heard the damn song in twenty years but it’s still etched into his brain from how many times Sarah played it over and over.  “Teenage girl music. You should try it, being a teen girl and all.”

Ellie laughs, snorting. “I think you like the teen girl music, dude.”

“You should appreciate it more, the teenage girl shit,” he offers instead. Now that the song is kicking in, he’s suddenly remembering what used to make Sarah keel over in laughter. She swore it was the most embarrassing part of school pick up, but every time she’d laugh until she cried. And, well, he still knows the song by heart.

Accessing an upper-register, valley girl impersonation he hasn’t tried since he was thirty-five, Joel opens up the next verse, “Oh baby, baby, the reason I breathe is you. Boy, you got me blinded -”

“Ho-ly shit,” Ellie nearly screeches, her hands covering her face. “Oh my god.”

‘Oh, pretty baby, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do -”

“I’m seriously going to piss my fucking pants Joel, what the fuck .”

“Don’t you dare,” he says, in between the verse and the chorus. “We’re not going to make this car smell like piss.”

And then he’s back to the Britney impersonation, and Ellie laughs until she cries. 

-

By the time they get to E-Mail My Heart and Ellie is asking what the hell an email is, they’re almost to Jackson. Something comes over her face that’s more somber than it was before.

“You’re telling me the truth, right?”

Joel glances over to her. “About what?”

“The Fireflies.”

He swallows. Resists the urge to pick the blood out of his hair. “Promise.”

-

They’re peeling the wallpaper off of her bedroom. The posters are long gone, at Ellie’s insistence, and the wallpaper left is peeling and unsightly. Joel has the night off patrol and a long expired contractor license, and Ellie is just eager to help.

What she isn’t as eager about is the color underneath.

“Still yellow, seriously?”

“We can paint it,” Joel offers. “Think Julia over at the supply store has some colors, dunno how many but if you hate the yellow.”

Ellie considers this for a moment, pausing with her putty knife. “Do they have like, that blue-green color?”

“Teal?” he asks, almost laughing to himself. Sarah’s walls were purple, at her insistence, but he remembers the stark teal of damn near every teenage girl’s walls of the houses he worked on. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Cool,” she pauses, “Then shelves? We can make them match?”

“Yeah,” Joel confirms, sliding the putty knife down on the next slip of wallpaper. “Then I’ll do the shelves.”

“Then we’ll do the shelves.”

Joel laughs, shaking his head a little. “I remember the downstairs floor incident.”

“Jesus, I hammered your thumb one time.”

-

Joel knows he’s back to parenting a teenager when he hears the words ‘detention’ and ‘Ellie broke a boy’s arm and made him get fifteen stitches’.

“Jesus Christ, kid,” he huffs, hands on his hips as he finds Ellie in the hallway. She doesn’t look the slightest bit contrite. 

“He deserved it,” is her immediate response. Her nose is bleeding, but there isn’t another scratch on her. A fucked up part of him feels proud. “He said some nasty shit to Dina.”

“So you sent him to the hospital?”

“Like I said,” Ellie shrugs, slinking in her chair and putting her sleeve to her nose. “Totally deserved.”

“I think his parents disagree,” Joel rolls his eyes, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and moving it to her nose. 

“Do you?” Ellie asks, her eyes looking up at him. Her question is muffled a bit by the pressure on her nose.

“Hmph,” Joel shifts. “What’d he say?”

“Made a fucked up joke about Jewish people,” she supplies. “And something about playing both teams.”

Joel considers that, for a moment.

“I don’t know if you had to hospitalize him, but I get the first punch.”

And maybe that isn’t the appropriate parent thing to say, but he popped off the kneecap of a guy who had information on Ellie a few months ago. So. He was never going to be the right judge for this.

“He wouldn’t be hospitalized if he could learn to take a hit. Anyway, kid was totally soft. Talked shit but couldn’t take anything,” Ellie continues, not a trace of remorse in her voice. “So many of these kids are so fucking soft.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Joel frowns, pausing as he holds the cloth against the blood of her nose. “Way it’s ‘sposed to be, most kids shouldn’t have to be know what it’s like to-.”

“Yeah,” Ellie scoffs, cutting him off. “Trust me, I know. Probably the only one there that had to cut a cannibal in little fucking pieces, I’m well aware I’m the fucked up one.”

Joel’s frown deepens. He lowers onto his haunches, one hand still on her nose and the other one firm on her shoulder. “You did what you had to do to survive. Is all. It’s my fault I wasn’t there every time to stop you from havin’ to.”

Ellie’s eyes become a little more glossy. “Even if you had been, I’d still be the only one who had to kill their best friend.”

He never got the full story there. He knows well enough not to ask. Joel doesn’t know what to say to that, other than, “Like I said. Did what you had to do to survive.”

They’re still in the hallway, outside of the principal’s office. He sighs. “Wanna go home? We’ll say you’re suspended for a day. Was gonna make chili today.”

Ellie nods. “It’s still movie night, right?”

Joel considers this for a second. A normal parent would insist that his kid, after hospitalizing another kid, should probably have some sort of punishment. Instead, he says,

“There’s a bad Britney Spears movie, found the VHS during a supply run. Last time I watched it was 2002 when Sarah made me see it with her at the movies.”

Ellie laughs.

“You and Britney Spears, man.”

She should at least get to be some kind of teenage girl, even if one that’s more feral cat than pop music and lip gloss or whatever.

-

Speaking of feral cats, he catches her taking the chicken bones to the backyard one too many times. The third time, Joel finds Ellie tossing them to a small black cat that’s more matted than not six feet away from her. It runs away as soon as it sees him.

“Damn,” Ellie groans, head between her legs on the back stairs. “I was just making progress with him.”

“The cat?” Joel asks, sitting next to her. “It’s feral. Don’t want shit to do with humans.”

“Sure, now,” Ellie acknowledges, head rolling back upwards. “But, like, we’re totally making progress. He doesn’t even run away when he sees me anymore.”

“How long you been feeding this cat perfectly good stock material?” 

“Three weeks,” she acknowledges, shrugging. “He looked hungry.”

“They all do. Don’t mean they want to be a pet.”

“I named him Ron,” Ellie says, as if that explains it.

And maybe that does explain it. 

“Just don’t let it bite you, don’t exactly have rabies vaccines out here.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “He’s not rabid.”

-

The next time he sees her with the cat, it’s in her damn lap purring up a storm.

Joel just got home from patrol, and it’s more dark outside than not. Ellie is sitting on the front porch stoop looking awfully proud of herself.

“See? Ron likes me. We built trust,” she says cheerfully, petting the cat as it leans into her hand.

“Uh huh,” Joel says, walking up beside her. The cat doesn’t run away. “You drug it or somethin?”

“No,” Ellie replies, sounding more annoyed. “No drugs. Just hard won trust. Me and Ron are friends now.”

“Damn thing might give you fleas,” Joel looks down at the two of them, “wouldn’t trust it.”

“I already gave him a flea bath with the stuff from the stables, and see,” Ellie holds the cat up. It’s remarkably tolerant, all things considered. “No more mats. Even pried out its ticks, which was super gross by the way but Ron is feeling good now.”

Joel sighs.

“You’re going to want to bring it inside, huh.”

“I was thinking we could build him like a bed or something.”

Of course she does.

-

By the next movie night, Ellie is passed out on his shoulder and the cat is sprawled out in his lap.

Ellie won, as if there was any other way.

-

Ellie comes home crying one day, and he gets the urge to hospitalize a teenage boy in a way she’s already done a month ago.

She tries to hide it, but Joel hears the sniffles in her room. 

“Go away,” is all she says when he knocks on her door.

“Kid,” he says, considering opening the door anyways. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, go away.”

Joel opens the door anyway, and Ellie is just sitting on her bed wiping the tears off her face with her sleeve. This dad shit really is like a muscle he has to relearn, sometimes it was easier to bludgeon someone with a goddamn pipe than it was to figure out how to console a teenager.

“You gotta tell me what’s up, kid,” he says, sitting next to her. “What’s wrong?”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t get it.”

Sometimes he feels grateful for the moments of Ellie showing how much of a teenager she is - not one that’s had to watch countless die and some at her hands. Not one that knows how many people he’s killed. “Try me,” Joel says, bumping her smaller shoulders with his. “Kids being dicks again? I didn’t hear about anyone in the hospital this time.”

Ellie hurriedly wipes another tear. “I should’ve, trust me.”

“Ellie,” Joel says, tone laced with concern. “C’mon. This is normal. After everything, normal kid shit is kids being dicks. Now tell me whose mom I need to yell at.”

“It’s not worth it and I’m not normal.”

Joel’s frown deepens. He pulls his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve been through a lot. Doesn’t mean you can’t feel normal if you want to.”

“Not just because of that, Joel, Jesus Christ,” and after that the words come tumbling out, “even before the whole killing people in the apocalypse thing I wouldn’t be fucking normal and I’d still get fucking guys like Jared calling me a fucking d- you know what, I’m not doing this right now. Fuck it.”

Joel just pulls her in tighter. “The Jared kid again? Jesus Christ, what’d he call you?”

Ellie just shakes her head.

And it finally clicks for Joel. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know the right thing to say from here. But then he feels Ellie pulling away and he gets worried she’ll interpret his silence for something else.

“Ellie, Ellie,” he starts, enveloping her again. “Listen to me. Nothin’ about who you like or whatever, any of that shit, makes you not normal. What’s not normal is being as big of an asshole as that Jared kid.”

She freezes up, and he panics a bit more before continuing.

“Babygirl, you know I’m going to love you and have your back no matter what. Even if you give that fucking kid another few stitches, I’m happy when you’re happy.” 

And it occurs to him it’s the first time he’s said it, but he’s always meant it.

Ellie cries a little harder and he’s terrified he’s said the wrong thing, said something to make her feel worse or other or -

“I love you too, Joel.”

And the muscle gets easier to work with, being a father again. He knows he’d do it all again to get back here, doesn’t give a shit about the Fireflies or a trolley problem or any of it.

This is the world worth saving.

-

When they finish the shelves in Ellie’s room, she’s - in her words - ‘pretty fucking stoked’ . 

Joel made a big show of it for her birthday, the finishing touches of the ladder and the neatly stacked cassettes with their own custom notches in the shelves. He still hasn’t figured out where the fuck to find a lava lamp, but he has that on his list for next year and even hooked up the electrical to run lights throughout it. There’s a stack of comics, notches for the damn cat to climb it and sleep up top, and it’s painted the same color as the teal walls.

“You know, I never had this before,” Ellie says with a grin sliding the ladder back and forth. The cat at her feet watches with interest.

“A custom made, hand-crafted work of art like this?” Joel hums, looking proud of his handiwork. The rail was a bitch to figure out, but worth it. With enough WD-40, that ladder slides like butter. “I bet you haven’t.”

“No,” Ellie shakes her head, looking over at him. “Someone who cared this much.”

And a part of his heart breaks and feels whole at the same time.

“Well,” Joel says gruffly, crossing his arms in the doorway. “That’s what dad’s are s’posed to do.”

It’s the first time he says it.

It's not the last.

Chapter Text

When Ellie finds out the truth, she’s furious.

A Firefly shows up one day at the camp, and Joel and Tommy try to deal with it alone. Privately. They’re mad and Joel looks pissed when Tommy rushes in to tell him they need to talk about the Firefly that’s asking for him, which doesn’t make any sense. 

Because the Fireflies let her and Joel go, and there were other attempts at cures, and it just failed and it wasn’t her fault or Joel’s fault.

That’s the story she was told and that’s the story she wants to believe. 

So when Joel comes back later that night with a haunted look in his eyes and sits her down on the couch and tells her that they need to talk, it’s ice to the system.

-

Joel tells her that they needed her brain and that they needed her dead. He tells her that was never up for discussion, so he did what he had to and took her with him.

He lied to her.

Joel finishes with “I thought you needed to hear it from me before it was anybody else, alright?”

There’s a buzzing in her ears, white hot light flashing before her eyes, and she fucking stands up and shoves him just to feel something. She’s been silent, stiff the whole conversation and now there’s blood pumping through her entire system. “Oh, you thought? So not when I asked you? Not when you fucking promised?”

“Only thing I’m sorry for is lyin,” he says, stiff against the shoving. He doesn’t do anything, just fucking stands there and takes it like she’s a wild animal lashing out and not someone who could have saved the world if he hadn’t slaughtered an entire squadron to prove something to himself. His back is against the dining table now after taking steps back, and she just gets angrier.

“You’re not sorry for killing all the Fireflies and stopping them from saving the whole fucking world?”

“Fifty-fifty were the odds they gave me.”

“A hell of a lot better than our current odds. My death would have meant something.”

“And you don’t think you livin’ means something?” Joel asks, a trap in his voice. 

“Compared to the everyone in the world? Are you fucking joking?” Ellie spits out, body practically vibrating with anger. “After everything-”

“After everything,” Joel emphasizes, fist rocking on the dining table. The dining table he built, over the floors they’d fixed together. “I wasn’t going to let them kill you, Ellie. Not in any universe.”

“You should have,” Ellie says, her voice bitter.

“Well that’s tough fucking luck.”

Ellie takes a deep breath in. “Where are they now, the Firefly?”

Joel doesn’t answer her.

And maybe that’s the answer.

Dead just like all of the rest of the people he’s killed. And she’s the idiot that stuck with the guy more likely to kill a problem than fix it. 

-

She slams the door shut to her room behind her, vibrating every fucking thing in the room with it. Ellie knows, she knows, she should have known all this shit was too good to be true. 

Something unhinges in her and she throws fucking everything she can lay her eyes on. Cassettes, books, dumb fucking lights and random shit that doesn’t mean anything. None of it actually means anything, just like her now.

-

Ellie dreams of the hospital, of the procedure being successful. She’s not in her body, that’s long gone by now, just watching the doctors from a disembodied perspective as they pick at bits of her brain. Then her brain goes in a syringe, ready for use, ready to cure everyone. An Infected with Cordyceps spanning from his brain to shoulders gets a syringe and wakes up good as new the next morning, takes a pack of syringes and says he’ll find his kids and cure them too. Everyone is happy. Everyone is better off.

Then the scene cuts to Joel, somewhere cold. Alone. Haunted. 

She wakes up sweating.

-

Ellie hates Joel.

She swears she actually, physically hates him, a knot in her stomach. 

Ellie brushes past him and the breakfast on the table the next morning, slams the door shut behind her on the way to school. She would normally hate to see the look on his face, but she doesn’t care right now. All she thinks of is Tess and Sam and Henry and Riley and every other stupid, meaningless death of everyone who has ever cared about her.

He’s the idiot if he expects anything different.

-

Ellie starts staying over with her friend from school, at Dina’s. She comes back to the house to change, to check on Ron the cat (and notices the bowls of food left out for him by Joel), but she times it so every time she does Joel is gone - the shift calendar for patrols is regular, and she’s had time to memorize it.

Tommy asks after her the first time this happens, tells her that she scared the shit out of Joel when she never came home that night.

Ellie just tells him that isn’t her fucking problem.

-

Ellie scares the shit out of Dina one night when she wakes up screaming.

She’s made a nice nest on Dina’s floor and her mom is chill about everything, all things considered, even if she insists she’s keeping Joel in the loop of her whereabouts while they have their fight , or whatever. As if this is a petty teenage squabble a girl is having with her dad about growing up and shit when it’s actually about how he killed a hospital full of people so they couldn’t make a cure from her and lied to her about it.

But Dina’s mom probably won’t be chill about her screaming in the middle of the night, so when Dina rushes over to the nest of blankets Ellie just keeps telling her she’s sorry.

“Shit, Ellie,” Dina gasps, kneeling next to her. “You scared me. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Ellie insists quickly. It snowed for the first time outside and she’s a fucking baby, is the answer, because she keeps dreaming about a cannibal colony and David and a zipper and a meat cleaver and Joel just outside holding her and telling her she was going to be okay and he was here.

Bullshit.

When she had these nightmares at home, at Joel’s, he’d sleep on the floor until she went back to sleep and told her that he was right here, that nothing was going to happen to her.

She’s such a fucking baby.

“Just a bad dream.”

-

Ellie, to her dismay, can’t avoid Joel forever.

He was supposed to be gone from four to eight on Tuesdays, and she was supposed to have missed him by hours while she grabbed a change of clothes and hung out with Ron the cat in her room again until seven-thirty, when she’d go back to Dina’s or the stables with time to spare.

But Joel isn’t gone today, there’s dinner on the stove and he catches her eye when she walks through the door.

“Shit,” she mutters, just as Joel places a placating hand in the air. He’s got a kitchen towel over his shoulder, more domestic than killer, and she’s pissed he has the nerve to do this.

“Ellie, I just wanted to check in and see if you’re alright,” and his tone is pleading and all she finds his stupid whiny tone right now is annoying.

“Well, I’m not,” Ellie says, a scoff in her voice. “And neither is the world, thanks.”

“Ellie,” and it’s the pleading tone again and she’s so tired of this already.

“I killed someone to save the world, Joel, I killed Riley. She got bit and she turned and I didn’t and I was the one that had to kill my first fucking love, so I don’t want to hear that you couldn’t.”

Joel sighs, frowning.“It was too late for her. It wasn’t for you.”

Ellie lets out a caustic laugh. “We both got bit. Same fucking thing.”

“No,” Joel shakes his head. “It’s not. But I’m not here to convince you. There’s nothin’ that can be done about it now.”

“You made sure of that.”

“Yeah,” Joel admits, and she hates that she can’t even see remorse in his face. “I did. You can be as pissed at me as you want, Ellie. Can for the rest of your life. But that means you get a rest of your life.”

She slams the door behind her again.

And she makes sure the stake the fucking place out before going inside again.

-

That night, she has another nightmare. It’s not about David, just the hospital but this time she isn’t the one on the table. Ellie is dressed in scrubs, scalpel in hand, and it’s Joel on the operating table. He sleeps peacefully, unaware of what’s going on above him.

“You have to do it, Ellie,” Marlene says, almost looming over her shoulder. “We need the cure.”

Ellie’s hands are shaking. “I-”

She wakes up.

At least she didn’t scream this time.

-

It doesn’t get easier.

It actually just gets harder, especially when Tommy rushes into the town dining room looking panicked. She’s having dinner with Dina and a couple of others from class, as she has since this mess exploded. But she forgets all of it when she sees Tommy looking for her.

“Ellie,” he calls out, and she practically trips over herself rushing over to him. She knows. She knows it’s Joel.

“Where is he?” she asks, and she knows she must look wild right now. The silverware around her is silent, and she doesn’t give a shit about the audience right now. “Is he okay?”

“Ellie,” Tommy says, sounding both relieved and as his hands come up to her shoulders, she realizes how scared he is and how scared it makes her. “C’mon, we gotta go.”

-

Ellie finds Joel laid out in a hospital bed, monitors around him. He hasn’t looked this small since Colorado. She feels like throwing up.

Her eyes are wide and scared when they meet Tommy’s. “Is he gonna be okay?”

At least Tommy knows better than to lie to her anymore. “I don’t know. He wasn’t bitten, but they got him by surprise.”

She practically goes feral in the hospital room, hitting walls and resisting the urge to scream like she did on the side of the road in Idaho.

-

Ellie doesn’t leave the hospital room. Tommy is in and out, and she half remembers asking him to feed the cat and sometimes he brings in the baby and she just wants to crawl into a hole and never come out of it.

Ellie remembers the vigil she kept over him like this, before. Without the doctors and nurses in a hospital in a commune, on a dirty mattress in a basement in Colorado watching infection spread despite shittily done stitches and feeling helpless when Joel can only manage grunts and won’t eat.

At least then Joel didn’t think she hated him. At least she hadn’t tried to convince herself she did. It’s been days and he still hasn’t fucking woken up.

“Joel,” she keeps picking her nails to the quick, brushing the blood away with the flat of her thumb. “Please wake up. I don’t want to do this shit again.”

Her hands are still shaking when she lets them fold around his. Still too small in his bigger ones. Ellie puts both of their hands to her cheek and wants a time machine more than anything. She wouldn’t hold this fucking grudge for so long, she’d stop him from going on this run, they’d go back to movie nights and dinners and he’d ruffle her hair on her way out the door to school and pass out snoring next to her on the couch.

But Joel still isn’t waking up and there isn’t a miracle shot of penicillin for whatever injury recovery he has to do.

-

She’s back in the hospital room and Joel is on the table, Marlene over her shoulder.

Ellie is a fucking coward because she can’t do it. The world is at stake but all she sees is Joel on the hospital bed. The Joel that saved her goddamn life too many times to count, the Joel that laughed at her shitty puns and sang Britney Spears to make her laugh and slept on her bedroom floor whenever she had a nightmare and insisted Ellie eat her goddamn vegetables and performed first aid on her too many times to count.  It’s the Joel that called himself her dad and meant it.

She drops the scalpel and when the crowd comes for her she can’t bring herself to care.

-

She passes out with her cheek against the rail of the hospital bed, and wakes up when she feels a squeeze on her hand.

“Ellie?” and the voice sounds so raspy and unreal and Joel.

She’s instantly alert, jerking upwards and gasping in sharply. “Holy shit, Joel?”

He looks like shit, but he’s alive.

Ellie doesn’t realize she’s said that part alive until he’s laughing at her.

“You too, kid. When’s the last time you showered?”

Ellie never did let go of his hand. She gives it another squeeze. “Bet it was sooner than you, old man.”

And while he’s looking at her with a smile on his lips, bandaged stomach and hospital gown, her face crumples up into a sob. Heaving out of her, raw and rough and buried in a bizarre hiccup. 

“Oh, Ellie,” Joel says, his voice soft. As if she hasn’t been ignoring him for months, as if she hasn’t been trying so hard to forget he even existed. 

“You,” and it starts off accusatory and ends in another fucking hiccup. “You almost-”

“C’mere,” he says with a warm tug of his hand, and she folds instantly with her arms wrapped around him in a bed that was already too small for him. “I’m not going anywhere, babygirl.”

They stay still like that, for a moment. 

“Do you hate me?” she asks, her voice small.

“No,” he fingers a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Never hated you. Never will.”

There’s another long pause.

“Do you hate me?” 

This time it’s Joel that asks the question.

Ellie sniffs. “I wanted to.”

She feels Joel nod in what seems like understanding. 

-

“I bet you got yourself stabbed just to get me back in the house,” Ellie says as they both walk into the house for the first time together in months. Ron the cat chirps as they enter in what seems like affirmation and Joel laughs. 

“If I knew it would’ve worked, I would’ve gotten stabbed on day one.”

He’s being sarcastic, and she rolls her eyes all the same.

“Dude, you’re such a fucking disaster.”

Joel shrugs, and ruffles her hair in a familiar gesture. 

-

Despite the initial jokes, it’s awkward.

Ellie makes the return trip to Dina’s, blushing on her way out as Dina says she’s welcome back anytime. She takes all of her shit and brings it back home, and when she gets home again Joel is making dinner.

She jerks her head upwards as she’s taking her coat off, as if she’s wordlessly ‘sup’ -ing a guy at school and trying to exude toughness. Joel offers her a nod in return, attention going back to whatever’s on the stovetop.

Ellie exhales, more nervous than she’d expected to be. She rifles through the drawers of the kitchen, just looking for something to pay attention to. Joel at least had dinner. She didn’t have anything to keep her similarly, awkwardly preoccupied. 

And Ellie doesn’t realize what she’s looking for until she’s found it.

She puts the tape in the cassette player in the kitchen. A peace offering.

He doesn’t make it past the first line without cracking a smile.

“I thought you hated Baby, One More Time.”

Ellie smiles, relieved it worked. “I wanted to. I think it’s growing on me.”

And they’re both so fucking stupid, sometimes.

-

When Ellie gets home from school a few weeks later, Joel has a spring in his step. He’s waiting for her by the front door, and before she can ask what the hell he’s doing and puts his hands over her eyes and says he won’t let her ruin the surprise.

“Dude, what the fuck are you on about.”

“Just trust me on this one, Ellie.”

She makes a show of a long-suffering sigh, slinging off her backpack with some difficulty with the hands over her goddamn eyes. “Did you, like, bomb the kitchen or some shit?”

She doesn’t see Joel roll his eyes, but she knows it happened.

“Shut up, kid. It’s a good surprise.”

And by the time they awkwardly tumble up the stairs to her room, it is. 

“No fucking way .”

The lights are off but he somehow managed to find not one, not two, but three fucking lava lamps. There are those dumb but perfect glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, and she could be on the moon for all she knows or cares. 

“Where did you even find this shit?” she asks, turning around to face him. He’s got that same look on his face in the dim backlight as he did when he finished the shelf, all proud and leaned against the doorframe. 

“A lot of people owed me favors,” he says. “Turns out you don’t need to make ‘em if you can find ‘em. Just don’t bludgeon me to death with one of the lamps.” 

“Pretty fucking cool,” she says, looking up at the ceiling again. “Gotta hand it to you, Joel, you say you’ll do something and you do it.”

“I never promised the lava lamps.”

“And yet.”

-

They fall back into almost-normal. There’s movie nights and dinner with Tommy and Maria and the baby, and Ellie does a great job not getting into fights for once. Not that anyone is handing out awards for that, but maybe they really fucking should given the circumstances of everything all of the time.

Joel is idly plucking away at his guitar, Landslide by Fleetwood Mac on the tape deck filtering into the living room from the kitchen. Seventies, he’d told her, but a classic. Ellie has her nose buried in the book, and it’s a normal Tuesday night for the two of them when she’s not at the stables or at the dining hall with Dina and the rest of them.

Which is why it’s so annoying when he breaks the silence between them with - 

“I don’t expect you to ever forgive me, not really,” Joel starts, and she’s already shaking her head. Her book flops against her chest as she drops it in exasperation.

“Dude, you really want to do this?”

“I’m just sayin’,” his strumming stops. “I get it. Do what you gotta do. I’ll still be here. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anythin’ you don’t want to because I got skewered.”

Ellie’s head thumps up against the back of the chair. “I’m not here because you got stabbed, Joel.”

There’s a pause.

“Okay.”

“I’m here because my life would really fucking suck without my dad.”

It wouldn’t be the first time he said it, but it’s the first time she has. 

Judging by the look on his face, he realizes the significance of that. She pretends she doesn’t see him get a little glass-eyed so long as he pretends the same for her.

“My life would really fucking suck without you, too, kid.”

Ellie picks up her book again as if nothing ever happened. “Cool.”

“Cool.”

-

It’s Ellie’s first Christmas a couple of weeks later.

I mean, Christmas existed during FEDRA but it was more like, here is your celebratory extra roll without mold and a Twinkie with a best by date of 2004. Riley and her sometimes would trade whatever they stole and call it a gift exchange, laughing the whole time when Riley brought her Teresa’s comic books and Ellie gave Riley Rachel’s most coveted bracelet.

Yeah, they were dicks. But so were the other kids.

But she’s never done the whole affair of a tree and lights and pot roast and she was at Dina’s for Hannakuh but this one Joel seems weirdly determined to make work.

When he drags in an evergreen tree in the middle of the living room, looking proud of himself, all Ellie does is give him a quizzical look.

“What?” Joel asks, sounding defensive. He’s still panting from dragging the tree. “This is the best one they had, trust me.”

“People do this with real trees?”

“Best way to do it,” Joel affirms. Of course he already made the base and it’s already filled with water - Ron just thought it was a weird cat water dish. “They do the plastic shit at FEDRA?”

“One year,” Ellie affirms. “Then one of the girls lit it on fire and we never did it again for some reason.”

“Ah,” Joel acknowledges. The tree is already screwed in place, close enough to the fireplace but not close enough to be a fire hazard. This isn’t the first time he’s done this. “Well, the tree - real tree - is the whole point. Haven’t done one in twenty years, myself, but-”

He trails off. Ellie gets the picture. “So do we have to water it?”

“Once a day or so, just so it doesn’t get dried out,” Joel affirms. “Gotta decorate it, too. Ornaments, star on top, lights, all that. And a gift, for under.”

Ellie feels her face warm. It’s all very picturesque, Christmas in a house with a tree and gifts with a parent who gives a shit. Or whatever. 

“You’re good with all that, right?” 

“Duh,” is Ellie’s response.

So yeah, his gifts might be slightly more ethically sourced this year than hers were with Riley. But maybe not by that much.

-

Christmas morning, she finds him making coffee and flipping pancakes. 

Ellie makes an exaggerated gag at the coffee, but happily accepts the pancakes on her plate. “So what’s the drill?”

“The drill?”

“With, y’know, the whole Christmas thing. You gotta cut me some slack, Christmas morning wasn’t a FEDRA thing.”

“Oh,” he acknowledges, flipping another pancake with a faraway look on his face. “Right. Well, it’s whatever you want really.”

“But gifts?” Ellie says, mouth already full.

“I got you a gift, you don’t have to -”

“Too late, old man,” she’s already rushing to grab the box from under the tree. It’s her first time wrapping something, so the paper is trying its best and more lumpy than smooth, but it’s a wrapped Christmas gift goddamn it. Ellie sets it right on the table. “Got yours.”

Joel has a bemused look on his face. “Another feral cat?”

“You love Ron,” she emphasizes. “But no. Open it.”

“Not ‘til you open yours. And it’s not another damn feral. Go get it from under the tree.”

It’s a large, unwieldy box, but she plops it on the dining table all the same.

“Careful with that,” Joel cautions, bringing his plate to the table and setting his coffee down. “You’re gonna break it if you toss it around too hard.”

His wrapping is a lot neater than hers. More practiced with the same ‘measure twice, cut once’ philosophy of a contractor. And when she opens it, another pancake bite shoved into her cheeks, she groans.

“This is so fucked up,” Ellie bemoans.

Joel’s brow furrows, and he almost sounds nervous. “You don’t like it? I said I’d teach you, but if you don’t-”

Of course it’s a perfectly made guitar, what the fuck else would it be. She annoyed Joel while playing enough times that she wanted to learn how to do it, and he finally broke. And it’s exactly the kind of Christmas gift that totally -

“Beats mine, it’s so fucked up. How did you beat me so easily?”

Joel relaxes, laughing. “I told you I’d teach you. Easier with another one.”

“How did you even make this?”

“That one I’m keepin’ to myself,” he says, brushing dirt off his knee. He grabs the box on the table, shitty wrapping paper and all. “Can I open this?”

Not over her defeat, Ellie nods with an exaggerated sigh.

“Right then,” he nods, and opens the box to pull out the cassettes one by one. “Ah, I see you got more Pearl Jam. Also got Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Creedence Clearwater, the classics…”

He holds up the last one with a confused look on his face.

“Oops, I Did It Again?”

Ellie barely muffles her laugh, instead opting to nod sagely. “Yep. Wouldn’t believe how hard that thing is to find on cassette, by the way. I know how you feel about Britney Spears.”

“You little shit,” but he says it with affection. “You won’t be happy when I know the words to this one, too. Where did you even get these?”

“Called in a few favors,” she grins into her fork, echoing his own words.

“Mhm.”

Joel ruffles her hair again, presses a kiss to her hair when he picks up their plates, and says thank you.

-

He snores before they even finish It’s a Wonderful Life. The cat is sprawled behind him on the back of the couch, and she can’t help but grin a bit at the picture.

Sometimes she lets herself imagine that this is as normal as it looks. It’s Christmas with a girl and her dad in their house and neither of them have killed anyone and there was no fungi-pandemic that needed a cure. And right now her biggest concerns are getting her chores done and whether Dina can tell she has a crush and what she wants to do when she’s older.

Ellie lets her head rest against Joel’s shoulder and lets herself believe it.