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There’s only so far you can separate yourself from someone while still living in their backyard. Ellie has learned this the hard way. It’s all fun and games until your surrogate father lies to you about something you’ve dedicated every waking moment to, and then to make matters worse, your surrogate aunt and uncle refuse to take you in. Those bastards.
“We have a baby, Ellie.” They say.
“We don’t have a spare room.” They say.
“You’re working on forgiving him, aren’t you?” They say.
With a groan, Ellie flips over in bed, bunching her comforter up against her eyes. The fading sun peeking through her beige curtains blinds her as she flips again, opting to lay face down, her hair falling in a curtain around her face. She’s only able to hold the position for a minute or so until she needs to breathe in cool air, turning just her head to the side, her body remaining sprawled in a star shape. She reaches up to brush her hair out of her face, her eyes meeting the door.
Autumn was quickly approaching Jackson, the night air tinged with a bitter cold instead of its usual humidity that caused Ellie’s hair to puff up.
“You look like you’ve just been electrocuted, girl.” Joel had laughed a few summers ago, licking his fingers before running them over her hair in a desperate attempt to smooth the rats nest atop Ellie’s scowling face. She remembers smacking his hands away and muttering something close to, “Yeah, keep laughing. You’re just jealous I have this much hair. Surprised you aren’t bald by now, being 80 years old and all.” to which he bumped her with his hip, sending her staggering and laughing.
It seems like forever ago, now.
Ellie wipes a hand under her eye, rubbing the slickness that came away with it on her pillow. You cannot seriously be crying right now. You are nineteen goddamn years old. ACT LIKE IT.
Tommy and Maria were right, the bastards that they are. She was working on forgiveness. That, and they really did only have two bedrooms.
She thought back to their conversation on the porch the night of the dance. She had been so angry. She can still hear the sound of him leaving the barn, the smell of his coffee, the catch in his voice when she told him she wanted to try and forgive him. She can feel the weight of her feet as she trudged back to the garage, despite her heart pulling her back to her old bedroom in the house, across the hall from his, their doors always ajar in case she needed him. She can feel the cold of the snow the next morning, and hears herself telling her plans to Dina.
Remembers herself chickening out.
Tears rapidly falling now, Ellie pushes herself out of bed and throws a flannel over her tank top. Likely one of Joel’s, the green and black plaid reminiscent of their days on the road, reminding her of when she announced, “Well don’t you look pretty!”
Her chest clenches up when she recalls Joel telling her the same thing, only a year or so later across the dinner table. She had been fresh out of the shower, wearing an oversized t-shirt and a pair of leggings. Her wet hair dripped onto her legs as she began shoveling potatoes and carrots into her mouth.
“You look pretty,” He commented, taking a bite of his own potatoes.
“Shut the fuck up,” She replied through a mouthfull of food, rolling her eyes at his sarcasm.
“I’m serious.”
Glancing up through her eyelashes, she caught his eyes for a moment before he looked back down at his plate. Dinner was silent after that. She tried to fight the feeling that rose in her chest. She was pretty. Had she been pretty to anyone else before?
Back on Earth, Ellie pulls her boots on, lacing them up quickly before pushing through her front door, staring down the backside of Joel’s house. She has an open invitation, she knows that. But something about the house chills her to her bones. It quickly becomes the most threatening thing she’s ever seen.
She doesn’t bother knocking, just pushes the door open and calls out his name. An eerie silence fills the house, and Ellie nearly turns around immediately. She glances around the empty living room before slowly approaching the kitchen, pulling a notepad and pen out of the top drawer next to the fridge. She jots down,
‘Need to talk. Nothing urgent. Miss you. El’
Glancing down at the note, she shakes her head before tearing the top layer off and stuffing it into her pocket. Ellie tries again.
‘Need to talk. Shimmer walked into a tripwire. Dunno how to cook horse meat. El’
Deciding that humor doesn’t come across well on paper, she rips the top layer off again and groans loudly, shoving the notepad and pen back in the drawer. This is so stupid Jesus Christ why am I so dumb.
Ellie turns on her heels to leave, walking through the living room once more when she spots Joel’s guitar propped against a chair, a leather-bound book sitting open on the table in front of it. Weird of Joel to leave a book open.
Then again, he probably didn’t expect a fucking mental horse murderer in his house. What is wrong with you, Ellie?
She glances down at the book, expecting to see measurements for some construction gig Joel’s working on, or maybe a scribbled down recipe that Maria had recited for him. She missed the days of waking up from an afternoon nap to the sound of movement in the kitchen, the house filled with savory smells and southern twang as Joel and Tommy bickered over something minuscule. Trudging down the stairs in sock-clad feet, she would approach them with a yawn and be greeted with the sweetest, “Hey, babygirl.” you’ve ever heard. A kiss on the head while she wrapped her arms around Joel’s middle, a barstool seat open next to Tommy, swinging her feet because they couldn’t quite touch the ground yet. Their worries were small. Their stomachs were full. They had each other. And that was enough.
Ellie places her right hand on the page, leaning down slightly to read the words that were etched into it.
Been pulling this line rope, been trying to define you. Who did you hurt? And baby, who hurt you?
Ellie lets out a soft gasp and pulls her hand away quickly, as if the pages had come alive with fire and burned her touch. She was back in the snow, flames licking at the building behind her as Joel wrapped his arm around her, forcing her to walk forward when all she wanted was to collapse. She doesn’t remember approaching the cabin. She doesn’t remember walking inside, couldn’t tell you anything about the interior. What she does remember is Joel’s soft voice. His hands cupped her face as he cleared away the dried blood from her nose and lip. She recalls the scratchy feeling on the palms of her hands as he got to work cleaning them, an angry expression resting on his face. She doesn’t remember how it started, but she can feel her throat rubbed raw from the screaming, her back pushed against the couch and her knees brought up to her chest, forgetting momentarily about the pain in her side. She can hear sniffling, and she doesn’t know if it’s coming from her or the man seated on the floor in disbelief. She looked up and saw Joel sitting with arms laid limply at his sides, the bowl of melted snow tinged red beside him.
“Baby, who hurt you?” He whispered, thickness in his throat permeating through his words.
Ellie brings her hand back to the book, gently caressing the page. Those words were the only ones written, along with a chord progression towards the top right corner. She was being nosey. She should leave.
She flips the pages back a few times, passing scribbled out lyric attempts and blank pages. Ellie stops on a page full of lyrics. She calls out Joel’s name again, just to be sure. The last thing she needs is to get caught snooping through Joel’s things. With one last look over her shoulder towards the front door, she leans back down to the book.
The fire in the rear view is smaller, the further we get. The second hand surgeon’s afraid that it never grows back. He’s knee-deep in algebra, pacing a panic attack.
Waking up in the backseat of a car, wearing nothing but a paper sack. Her head hurt. She felt like she was going to be sick.
“What?” Ellie asked, trying to push herself up until she heard his voice from the front seat and met his eyes in the rearview mirror. They had met the Fireflies, they had run some tests, and they had been deemed worthless. There was no cure. There would never be a cure. Joel told her that raiders had attacked the hospital and they had barely made it out alive.
It would be years until she learned that Joel had attacked the hospital, leaving dozens of Fireflies dead in his wake. That he had killed the one doctor that may have been able to produce a vaccine. That he had carried her out in his arms. That he had saved her, according to him. All she wanted was to be worth something. Her life was supposed to mean something. Anything.
What Ellie didn’t yet know was that the doctor was a fraud. He was prepared to perform a surgery on Ellie without her consent, without any knowledge of how to ‘reverse engineer a vaccine’. He had completed two years of med school prior to Outbreak Day, and was fully prepared to murder a fourteen year old girl in the name of science. Joel was not going to let that happen. Ellie had been led to believe the Fireflies were qualified, but Joel knew they were full of shit.
You were born in a bathtub on Deer Lake, and the cradle collapsed. And I promised I’d give you a mansion, I’m afraid this is it.
“I don’t know much about my mom,” Ellie had mentioned out of the blue one day. Joel was seated in a chair on the front porch, one leg crossed over the other while his guitar sat in his lap. He had been plucking a tune before stopping abruptly. “Marlene told me about how I was born, but… I don’t know.”
“You can tell me about her, if you’d like.” Joel offered, returning to strumming his guitar to fill the silence. He watched as Ellie pushed herself onto the railing of the porch, facing him. If she swung her legs hard enough, she could kick him in the knee. Which she did. Multiple times.
“Well, Marlene said she found my mom right after I was born. Mom had to fight off an infected by herself and she got bit. She said she cut the cord before she was bit, but I don’t know!” She spilled, raising her voice towards the end of her sentence and shrugging her shoulders. “Based on what we know now, I think mom was a liar.”
“I think she did what she had to do to protect you,” Joel replied, meeting her eyes. Ellie could only hold the stare for a few seconds before looking down at her intertwined hands, wringing them.
“Maybe. Anyways, she forced Marlene to take me back to Boston, and that’s where I grew up. Obviously. Because that’s where I met you.” She swung her foot again, knocking into his knee. “I always wonder what happened to her. I feel like I know, because it makes sense, but I always think maybe she survived. Like, maybe if I’m immune then she’s immune too in some round-about way, y’know? Like, maybe she’s still out there.”
Joel looked at the girl intently, watching as she craned her neck up towards the sky, bracing herself with hands clutching the railing.
“If she’s still out there, I want to find her.” Ellie muttered. “But, then I would miss you.”
Joel bit back the smile that threatened to take over his face, clearing his throat as he glanced down at his guitar. “I would miss you, too, kiddo.”
“And this house is so much cooler than anything I’d find on the outside. Look, we have wind chimes!” Ellie smiled, dragging her fingers through the chimes that hung from the roof. “The only thing that would be better is a big, big, big house with a bunch of rooms so you can have a place to build and I could have an art studio and a pool outside with a big, big, big slide and a firepit in the backyard.”
“You want a mansion.” Joel explained, letting out a short chuckle. “I’ll try my best to get you a mansion.”
Still, you’re the reason I’m breathing, the soul in my step. I’ve been running out of excuses, but nobody checks.
The first night Ellie moved into the garage, Joel was borderline heartbroken. He knocked on her door close to 10 times that night, bringing her things that he thought she needed. It started out practical, like a box of clothes that she had forgotten to grab, and a stack of books that she had let him borrow that he never returned. It quickly turned into deliveries of singular socks that she had never seen before, an old note from Maria that he thought she might “want in the future, y’know, in case you have kids or something”, and a sandwich, if you can even call it that, with a singular piece of cheese in between the pieces of bread. By the seventh knock of the night, Ellie met him at the door with an annoyed look on her face.
“Can I help you, Joel?” She asked, bitterness apparent in her tone.
“I- I just wanted to-” He tried explaining, holding up a socket wrench and a flathead screwdriver. “I’m sorry, it’s not important. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ellie watched as he walked away, trying to ignore the pang of guilt that grasped her heart. She was a big girl. He was a big boy. They can live apart.
The next morning, Ellie awoke to the sound of knocking on her front door. Throwing the covers off of herself and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she opened the door to find Joel standing with a spatula and plate of pancakes in his hands.
“I don’t have an excuse. I was just wondering if you wanted to come over for breakfast.” Ellie smiled and nodded, not bothering to put on shoes as she pulled the door closed behind her.
“Why’d you bring the spatula if you were planning on inviting me to your house?”
Ellie smiles to herself, coming out of her haze. She carefully moves her hand out of the way, uncovering a few more lines that were previously shielded. There are thick grey scratchings on the page, Joel having reworked them multiple times. Her eyes try to read past the lines, but she gives up and glances down.
Scream when you need me, in fact, you can scream when you don’t. I’d rather sit here with you screaming than sit here alone.
She doesn’t feel the tears right away. Reading and rereading the lines, Ellie sits down in an open chair and covers her mouth slightly. A teardrop falls on the page.
“Shit!” Ellie desperately tries to blot the water droplet, determined not to warp the page in any way.
And all this time, I thought I was right.
A choked sob leaves her chest as she covers her face in her hands, tears rapidly falling down her face and wrists. She feels her chest heave as she struggles to catch her breath, a sleeve coming up to wipe her nose. How long had she spent encompassed in her own bitterness? How many memories did she miss out on due to her own anger? She had a right to be angry, but to what extent? Was it worth the broken relationships? Was it worth the delay in unification?
Ellie doesn’t hear the front door open. The sound of it closing makes her jump out of the chair, whipping her head around to meet Joel’s eyes. She quickly rubs a hand under her eyes and plasters a smile on her face, leaning as casually as possible against the table. “Oh! Hey, Joel. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“In my own house?” He asks with a huff, kicking off his work boots and laying his rifle against the wall beside the door. He must’ve been outside the walls today. Possibly on a supply run. He doesn’t do much patrolling anymore, opting instead to repair some of the older buildings in town. He doesn’t leave his spot by the front door, even after he’s placed everything on the ground. He almost seems scared to approach her. “Everything okay? Your face looks red.”
“Oh, yeah, um… Shimmer died.” Ellie blurts, immediately closing her eyes and slapping a hand over them. Are you actually fucking stupid.
“What? Are you okay? What happened? Does Tommy kn-”
Ellie begins smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand, wishing she had said LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE. “No, sorry, I don’t know why I even said that. Shimmer’s fine. I’m fine. No dead horses.”
“Are you sure? It’s okay if it happened, kiddo. Circle of life.” Joel slowly steps closer to the girl while still keeping distance between them. Ellie shuffles and fixes her lean against the table, and that’s when Joel sees it. The book, sitting wide open, on a page he certainly did not leave it on. Following his eyes, Ellie begins apologizing.
“JoelI’msosorryIwasnoseyIwascomingoverheretotellyouthatI’msorryforbeingsobitchyallthetimeandyoudeserveitalittlebitbutnotthatmuchandIjustwantthingstobenormalandthenIsawthebookandIdon’tknowwhatcameovermebutI’mstillashitheadlittlekidandIreadwhatyouwroteandIjustmissyousomuchpleasedon’tbemadatme.”
Joel extends one arm and Ellie wraps her arms around him, continuing to apologize into his neck. He sighs in response and cradles her head, the same way he did all those years ago. “I mean every word, my girl. And you have every reason to be upset with me. I deserve it all.”
Ellie pulls away slightly, looking up at the old man’s face. “I could never hate you, though.” He smiles back and plants a kiss on her forehead. She places her head back against him, whispering, “Do you want to watch a movie tonight? I meant to ask ages ago but I got scared.”
Joel hums in response, rubbing his hand up and down her back. “Of course. As long as Shimmer can come.”
Ellie groans so loud it rattles the house.