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Chapter Text

She’s so high on the adrenaline of her first Infected kill—at close range! With her switchblade!—and the rush of a close call that she barely registers Riley’s voice the first three times her name is called.

“Ellie!” Finally, Ellie turns to look at Riley, to really look at her and… something is wrong. Something is very wrong. She does not share Ellie’s excitement, is instead leaning heavily against the metal shelf, tears in her eyes, holding her left hand up, shaking, palm out so that Ellie could see—

Oh. No. 

“No,” Ellie whispers, blinking furiously as if it might change what’s in front of her. “No. No! Riley! Come on, no, that’s… tell me that’s a cut Riley, please?” Her voice grows louder as she speaks, and when Riley shakes her head sadly in response, she loses it completely. 

She breaks everything in sight. It only makes her angrier that Riley doesn’t seem angry, just sad and resigned and so fucking Not Riley. Finally, Ellie drops to the ground next to her, sweating and panting. She opens her mouth to speak, but has nothing to say.

Riley gives her a wan smile. “I’m glad it’s just me,” she says. “I’m glad I didn’t get you killed too.”

Star-crossed lovers are supposed to go out together, Ellie thinks. But instead she says, “It was one hell of a date.” 

Riley leans forward so that their foreheads are touching. She places something in Ellie’s lap. “Riley, I can’t,” Ellie moans when she realizes it’s the gun.

“Please,” Riley begs. “It doesn’t have to be right now. We can… whatever time we have left. But you have to promise me—you have to keep yourself safe.” 

After all that screaming, Ellie can’t seem to find her voice anymore. Finally, she hiccups, “promise.” Riley lets out a sigh, relieved, and wraps her arms more fully around Ellie. 

They cry in each others’ arms for some time. Eventually, Riley sniffs and says, “What do we do now?”

Ellie lets out a shuttering sigh and runs her hand down her face. Her head hurts from crying so hard, but she needs to pull it together, for Riley, make this time count. “Is it too soon for a second date?”

She hadn’t stood far enough away to avoid adding more blood spray to her shirt. 

She has no memory of what she does with the gun afterwards, doesn’t know how long she’s been in this godforsaken mall, or exactly how she manages to wander back to the little service room where Riley had been camping. But she’s sitting numbly atop the sleeping bag when a deep voice and a bright light in her face break her reverie. 

“Don’t fucking move. Identify yourself.” 

Ellie blinks sluggishly up at the—FEDRA soldier, apparently, pistol trained directly on her. He squints at her, a flash of recognition in his eyes.

“Wait—fuck… you’re a recruit, aren’t you?” He looks a little familiar, now that she thinks about it. It all clicks into place when he says, “Ellie. Um…Williams, right?”

It’s fucking Spencer Thompson’s older brother, newly minted patrolman and probably beyond eager to impress his higher ups. Spencer has always hated Ellie, except for a one month period last year when he decided he was in love with Ellie and well… he didn’t take the rejection too kindly. 

By the way his brother is looking at her, she can tell that he doesn’t know her name for good reasons. 

Doubly unfortunately, he’s just caught sight of the bombs on the shelf. His eyes narrow. “This Firefly shit?” He asks harshly, gesturing with his gun. 

She still can’t make herself do anything but stare back. 

“You’re fucking screwed kid,” he mutters, pulling his radio out of his belt. “Yeah, this is Badge 609. I got a runaway from FEDRA school here in the old mall. Found her with Firefly contraband.” He’s pitched his voice down, as if to sound more manly. It sounds absurd, Ellie observes impassively. 

The radio crackles as the response comes through. “Identify?” 

He gives her a cruel smile before answering, “Ellie Williams. She’s from Class 9. How do you want me to—“

A bullet explodes out of his forehead before he can finish. Ellie yelps and skitters back against the wall. 

There’s a new figure standing over her, this time a woman. She is very clearly not FEDRA: she’s got no uniform, and more importantly, she actually manages to be genuinely imposing in a way FEDRA grunts aspire to but never are. 

She lowers her gun and sighs. 

“Goddammit Ellie, what the hell are you doing here?”

The woman, Marlene, knew her mother, apparently. Ellie isn’t quite sure she believes her, but it would certainly be a weird thing to lie about, and how else would she have known Ellie’s name?

It doesn’t seem relevant though, because Ellie thinks she’s still fucked either way. “That guy gave my name to dispatch. They know I’m AWOL, they know there’s Firefly stuff going on, and now they’re going to think I killed him.” I’m going to hang, she thinks. She doesn’t bother saying it out loud—if Marlene has half a brain, she’s put that together too. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?”

“We’re certainly not sending you back to the dorms, if that’s what you’re asking,” Marlene replies. Ellie relaxes, but only a little. She’s not exactly eager to live out the rest of her days in this dilapidated building they’ve brought her to, apparently one of the Firefly hideouts.

Marlene gives her a strange look, then seems to make a decision. “Look, we were going to pull you out of that school sooner or later, so now’s as good a time as any.” 

Okay. She wasn’t exactly expecting that. And then Marlene tells her some other things she definitely wasn’t expecting, most importantly that Ellie’s mom was fucking bit while giving birth to her. “We don’t know what it means, if anything,” Marlene concedes. “But we’ve never heard of this happening with anyone else, and we’d like to have our people look at you. We have scientists, doctors, looking for a cure. You could help.”

It’s unbelievable—literally, Ellie doesn’t believe it—but the idea that maybe she could be part of making sure no more Rileys have to die is tempting. She can’t help but feel a faint murmur of hope.

Plus it’s not like she has a choice. There is no life for her in the QZ anymore.

“Okay,” Ellie says. “I’ll go with you.”

Things go a little sideways, and she’s still going, but not with Marlene’s crew. Nope, she gets foisted off onto two random-ass smugglers, and she’d be pissed if she weren’t starting to feel a bit antsy about all the  FEDRA soldiers crawling the city. The few hours she has to wait in the guy’s apartment feel like an eternity. Even though she’s barely slept since Riley crawled through her dorm however many days ago, she can’t relax enough to do anything other than stare blankly out the window.

An onlooker might think her vigilant, but really she’s just staving off the mounting wave of grief and fear, trying instead to train herself to feel nothing.

“You some Firefly bigwig’s kid, or something like that?” The man—Joel—asks her. She just grunts in reply. Let him draw whatever conclusions he wants to. She doesn’t care. He and Tess need a battery; she needs an escort to the other Fireflies. End of story.

She’s dutifully quiet as they make their way out of the walls. It’s honestly impressive, how confidently the two of them navigate the dark landscape. They’re a well-oiled machine, clearly have worked together for years and years. Though she suspects they’re not just co-workers. 

Her chest clenches with jealousy. She and Riley had an understanding like that. They worked; right before the end, even in the way Ellie had only ever dreamed that they might.

As always, it’s smooth sailing right up until it isn’t. 

“What’d I tell you, man?” The FEDRA guard spits out, directed to Joel. Ellie can barely breathe, starts inching behind Tess, but it’s no use. “Who the fuck is the kid?” He swings his light—which, of course, is attached to his gun—so that it’s shining in her face. And then she just knows: he’s made her. 

Joel steps between them, hands up. “Let’s just talk this through—“

The guard shakes the gun in his face. “I thought you were more careful than this. Both of you.” He shoots a glance at Tess. “This kid is a fugitive. Capital offense. Can’t believe you decided to risk it all just to keep some dumb kid from hanging.”

“Unfortunately, my hands are tied,” the guard continues with a smirk that speaks of everything but grudging duty. He trains the gun back on Ellie. “On your knees, no sudden—“

Joel tackles him so suddenly that for a second Ellie thinks they both disappeared into thin air. She’s seen people get beat up before—has been on both ends of it—but this is… 

She keeps expecting Joel to stop, but he doesn’t. She’s young, not naive: the guard is dead. Probably was after the first few hits. It is literal overkill. But it’s not until Tess barks out Joel’s name that he finally pauses, fist still raised and ready to strike. “We need to go, Joel. He’s done.”

Joel blinks a bunch like he’s waking up, clutches his hand to his chest, and then nods. 

As they set back off, Ellie spares one last glance at the guard—she can’t see his face in the shadows, doesn’t think she’d want to anyway. “Thanks,” she whispers toward the back of Joel’s head, so quietly that she can barely hear herself.

Of all the terrifying things Ellie has been through recently, the Clickers in the museum easily rocket up to first place. As Joel shuffles her between the glass cases, shoves her behind him, pulls her out of the way, all she can think is This is it. Those other times were bad, but THIS is it. I’m done. But then somehow she isn’t. 

By some goddamn miracle they all make it through. The city even manages to look beautiful as she views it from the top of the roof after. “You can’t deny that view,” she admits, trying her best to be chill about it. The distance from the QZ is starting to make her feel a little optimistic even.

The capital building immediately puts an end to that. They didn’t all make it through, she realizes a half-second before Joel does. “She’s infected,” Ellie breathes out, horrified. Not again, she thinks.

“Our luck had to run out eventually.” Tess’s voice is tight with emotion, and if Ellie had any way to give them privacy she would. She doesn’t, so she hears it all.

“Listen to me, Joel. You take her… you take her to Bill and Frank. They’ll know what to do, they’ll know how to get you a battery, okay?”

“Tess, I—“ 

Tess barrels through Joel’s objections. “Stop it. I know what you’re going to try to do, but you cannot run from this. Look!” Now Ellie has no choice but to be drawn into the conversation, as Tess grabs her roughly by the shoulders and shoves her at Joel. “If you do not get her to Bill and Frank, she will die, you hear me? You and I both know—“

She chokes up for a second. “You and I both know this world has taken too many kids, okay?” Joel actually growls in response to this, something dangerous in his eyes that Ellie cannot read. “No more, Joel. Not this one at least. Save who you can save. You owe me this much.”

She raises her hand, clearly wants to touch him, but it’s already trembling (so much faster than Riley, Ellie marvels). She shoves it into her pocket instead. “Then you go rescue Tommy. Give him hell for me. And then you stick together. Don’t you dare fucking try to be alone, okay?” 

Joel stares at her, face inscrutable, for a long moment, before relenting. “Okay,” he says softly. “I promise. I’ll get her somewhere safe. I’ll find Tommy.” 

Then the infected are coming, and Tess offers to buy them time.

This breaks Ellie out of her stupor. “Wait, no!” She can’t bear the thought of leaving Tess behind, to die alone. And she doesn’t want to be stuck with Joel. Tess is a badass, but he’s just an asshole. Sure, an asshole that kept her safe back there, at the gate and in the museum. But an asshole nonetheless.

Case in point: he bodily drags her out of the building and down the hill, until they’re interrupted by a monstrous blast. She watches a few fiery figures stumble and fall by the door, and when she turns back to Joel, he’s already ten paces ahead of her.

At least Bill and Frank have the courtesy to die before she has a chance to meet them. Like yeah, it’s sad, but only in a really vague, abstract way. And it’s some poetic shit, from what she reads in Bill’s note. They grew old and died together. Not a lot of people get that anymore.

She can practically hear Joel’s brain spinning, after he snatches the letter away from her and storms into the next room. Don’t hurt yourself thinking so hard, she wants to tell him, but she doesn’t know him like that. He’s been nicer though. Even tried to stop her from seeing that skeleton pile, as if he could somehow keep her from realizing how deeply fucked up the world is. Has tolerated… well, some of her question-asking. 

Still, she’s not sure where exactly she stands now. She snoops around while she waits, and is almost immediately rewarded with a gun. She shoves it into her pack before Joel can tell her not to, feeling a bit more relaxed now that she knows she can hold her own in a pinch. 

The bag is barely closed when Joel reappears in the entryway. “Okay, before I tell you what’s gonna happen, we need to lay down some rules.”

“Well I’d rather hear the other part first,” she retorts, never one for rules.

“There’s only two, I think you can handle it. Number one: we don’t talk about Tess.” Ellie drops her gaze to her toes, trying and failing to hold back the guilt that knifes through her at Tess’s name. “Matter of fact, let’s just keep our pasts to ourselves,” Joel adds. “And number two: you do what I say, when I say it. Got it? Repeat it back for me.”

She scowls, and grits out, “What you say goes.” He nods, apparently satisfied with this response.

“Look, so I’ve got the battery and Bill’s truck—“

“Are you leaving me here?” Ellie interrupts. It’s not lost on her that those are the two things he’d set out for, rendering any obligation toward her basically nonexistence. She’d rather he just rip off the bandaid than beat around the bush, if that’s where this is going.

He frowns, and scoffs. “What? No I ain’t leaving you here. Christ. If you’d let me finish… I was gonna say that I think our best option is to find my brother. He used to be a Firefly. He might know where these people are that you’re supposed to get to.”

Ellie has a hard time picturing the brother of this man joining the Fireflies. Joel clearly does not think highly of them, or their mission. She’s impressed he’s even entertaining the idea of getting her to them, especially since he’s shown little interest in figuring out why they’d go to such lengths to get some kid out of the QZ.

The information Marlene shared with her was obviously need-to-know, and Ellie doesn’t think Joel needs to know. He’d probably laugh at her, certainly wouldn’t believe it. He doesn’t seem like the hopeful type.

If he truly has decided not to leave her, then it doesn’t matter. He knows that the only place she’s ever lived holds a death sentence for her. Hopefully that’s enough, or that plus his promise to Tess.

“That sound okay?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her. She realizes she’s been silent for too long. 

“Where is he, exactly? Your brother?” 

He shrugs. “Wyoming, last I’ve heard, but can’t say for sure. That’s why it’s a good thing we got the truck. Might take some lookin’.”

“And the Fireflies are also…?”

“That I’m even less sure about. But Tommy went out there because of them.” He pauses, then adds a confidence-inspiring, “I think.”

“There’s supposed to be scientists, somewhere?” She prompts, as if that might somehow change what he knows.

His face scrunches in confusion. “Scientists? What are you some sort of… science prodigy or something? Is that what this is?” 

Ah, so he is at least a little curious.

“I’m the brightest mind of my generation, yes,” she replies flatly. He snorts, almost a laugh, which pleases her. “No, dipshit, FEDRA school barely teaches us how to count.” 

Probably stupid to bring up scientists anyway, so she redirects as they start packing up for the road. “I know a fuck ton about space though. Which is science-y.” 

He indulges her cosmic babbling so long that she worries she’s pressing her luck. As they load the truck, she can’t help but feel a little excited—she’s never been on a road trip. 

It’s so old world, as she and Riley used to say. 

She doesn’t get a chance to feel sad about this reminiscence, because the moment she hops in the passenger seat Joel is reaching across her to buckle her seatbelt. “Safety first,” he grunts, lost in some memory of his own; but all that matters to Ellie is the unfamiliar but thrilling feeling that sparks at this gesture.

They’re through the gate before she realizes that Joel has already named this nascent feeling. It’s safety.

Road trips are a little boring, it turns out. Digging around the backseat for hidden treasures doesn’t take up nearly as much time as she’d hoped, though it’s fun to fuck with Joel when she finds that magazine (so truly, deeply not her thing). 

Introducing him to Will Livingston goes… fine. Ellie knows his comedic stylings are not everyone’s jam (though she doesn’t really get why), but she’s nothing if not persistent. Wyoming is pretty fucking far, so she’s got time to wear him down. Plus, the second half of the book has some real gems. 

It’s easier to get Mr. “We Don’t Talk About Our Pasts” to answer questions about his past than she’d expect, as long as she’s careful about it. She learns to avoid watch-talk, but is pretty pleased with all the scoop she gets on his brother. 

The guy sounds like a real sheep in her opinion. 

She’s less pleased when he calls her cargo. Maybe she should appreciate the honesty. It just sucks, the reminder that she’s going to have to rebuild her entire life when she gets to the Fireflies. Because right now? She’s got a ride and a chaperone, and that’s it. 

Joel’s failed attempt at skirting the blockade outside of Kansas City, and the subsequent ambush, are not ideal, to put it lightly. Neither is the fact that Ellie has to shoot someone. She’s grateful she stole the gun back at Bill and Frank’s, is even proud of being able to help Joel. But the vague idea of “protecting yourself” feels very different than the reality of “shooting a kid only a few years your senior in the spine.”

She’s relieved when she’s back through the hole in the wall and Joel makes him go quiet.

Later, he shows her how to hold a gun properly, and then actually, genuinely laughs at one of her puns. She finds herself unable to care too much about the knowledge that he’s done shit like ambush other people. Is it great? Not really. But he’s a survivor. Just like her. They both do what needs to get done, she thinks. Maybe they’re even a little bit alike.

This doesn’t keep both her and Joel from immediately and loudly objecting to Henry’s assumption that Joel is her dad when they’re making their way into the tunnels. 

Ellie worries that she sounds more… defensive than she intends to. She doesn’t care what Henry thinks, but she doesn’t want Joel to get the impression she misunderstood him back in the truck. Because she didn’t. She heard him loud and clear.

She doesn’t dwell on it, soon caught up in playing with Sam while they kill time. She’s trying her best to be chill about it, to play the cool older kid (Sam doesn’t need to know how much of a dork she is, how wildly unpopular she was at FEDRA school). But she is so fucking thrilled to have a new friend. 

After she slips the soccer ball past Sam a third time, she whips around and grins at Joel, unable to contain herself. He gives her a thoughtful look, still listening to whatever Henry is saying next to him, but after a moment it resolves into a small, soft smile. 

Her mind starts formulating plans as they emerge into the dark cul-de-sac. It sounds like Henry and Sam need a place to go. And it sounds like the Fireflies might be their best option. And so it sounds like maybe they should join—

Sniper fire pierces the quiet night, and Joel shoves her down behind a car before she even realizes what’s happening. 

They’re pinned down. She objects to Joel’s plan of attack—she doesn’t care how terrible a shot the sniper is, all it takes is one bullet finding its mark—and he asks, “Do you trust me?” She honestly doesn’t know, is a little distracted by the deja vu of cowering behind a vehicle with bullets whizzing around them. The last time had turned out okay—with “okay” meaning they’d both lived—so she nods, tries to ignore the way her heart feels like it’s in her throat. 

Then the latest in the ever-escalating series of “terrible and terrifying situations that spell certain death for Ellie” involves a fiery hole in the ground, and Infected swarming out like someone kicked a nightmarish anthill. It’s like the universe is trying to one-up itself. Oh, you thought that was scary?! Try this on for size. 

This time, Joel is not by her side, and she doesn’t much care for that. But he is in the tower, with the rifle. He makes almost every shot, and he makes them count. She somehow gets through unscathed. 

The kid Clicker that tried to get her in the car reappears with a vengeance at the perfect moment for them to all get away from that Kathleen lady. It’s brutal, her death, but she made her choice, Ellie thinks, by choosing to go after them instead of getting somewhere safe. 

She gets a blissful couple of hours laughing and joking and reading comics in the motel room with Sam before the stupid world reasserts itself. He shows her the bite on his leg. It feels both impossible and horribly obvious, that someone so beautiful and young would be the one to draw the short straw this time. 

But…

For the first time, Ellie thinks that maybe, just maybe, the information Marlene told her might mean something. Ellie is different, right? Because of something that happened while she was being born. The Fireflies wouldn’t go to all the trouble of getting Ellie away from the QZ for no reason. They’re not known for loving kids, aren’t just sentimentally helping out some dumbass teenager who got unlucky and found herself on the wrong side of FEDRA.

So it has to mean something.

She tells Sam her blood is magic. The line she opens up on her palm is delicate, but stings like a bitch. The pain is almost good, though; she takes it as a sign, because nothing that matters is free. She squeezes a few drops onto Sam’s bite, helps him use a piece of a pillowcase to wrap it all up. 

He asks her to stay awake with him, and she promises. Is so proud to use one of the signs she’s learned already, even more proud to have found a way to help. She can hardly wait for the morning, to see the fear leave Sam’s eyes, to finally tell Joel why everything he’s done the past few weeks—everything they’ve both done—might be worth it. 

Never mind.

Marlene is full of shit. Ellie probably is too, for having bought into the fairytale, that something about her could make a difference.

She’s definitely a bad friend. First she lies to Sam (though she doesn’t know she’s lying at the time), and then she falls asleep on him, leaves him to turn alone. 

It surprises her, how automatically Joel’s name slips from her mouth in the ensuing panic. How in the moment, she doesn’t just cry for help, she cries for him. She’s not sure why, and she doesn’t have time to give it much thought, because it’s not Joel, but Henry who spares her from sharing Sam’s fate. And then Henry is gone too.

After, Joel kneels in front of her, blocking her view of Henry’s broken skull. “Are you—are you bit?” he chokes out, fumbling for her arms, turning them over, pushing her sleeves back to find nothing but unbroken skin. Then he cups her face and tilts her head this way and that to look over her neck and the tops of her shoulders. 

His hands on her cheeks are trembling, and this finally pulls her attention enough that she’s looking at and not through him. He’s white-faced, eyes wild and wide, something fragile in their depths. She thinks that maybe her expression mirrors his own. “Ellie,” he insists, or begs.

All that screaming has exhausted her voice, so she just shakes her head. I’m fine, she thinks, even though she feels anything but.

Chapter Text

They head west. 

Progress is much slower on foot, and the first few days are genuinely miserable. Ellie is too upset to talk, and it pisses her off that Joel can’t seem to decide if he wants to leave her alone or draw her out with conversation. She keeps catching him staring at her, sometimes opening his mouth, only to let it snap shut,  other times mumbling a couple of words that she can’t even make out before shaking his head and giving up.

They take few breaks, with little idle chatter. When they stop to eat, she scarfs down her food as quickly as possible, often packed up and back on her feet before Joel is even halfway done with his. He never objects, just starts walking after her, finishing his meal on the move.

They cover a lot of ground this way. But eventually Ellie is too tired of him being weird and tentative, and just too tired in general, and she snaps at him.

“Fucking stop it dude.”

His physically reels back at her outburst. He’d been lost in thought—pretty clearly trying to come up with something to say. For once, she seems to have caught him genuinely off guard.

He raises his hands placatingly, but that only irritates her more. “I’ll go back to acting normal, if you stop acting all…” She can’t think of the right word, so just waves her hands around until she thinks he gets the point. 

He’s still making that thinking face, mouth twitching in his pursuit for the right words. 

“Jesus, man,” she huffs out.

“I’m not…” He sighs. “I’ve told you already, I ain’t good at this stuff. I just… I’m so sorry about how all that went down, okay?” 

“Well it’s not like you could’ve done anything,” Ellie mumbles, swiping at a traitorous tear falling down her cheek.

“That ain’t true. I should’ve done more to… If I’d… the gun…” He groans loudly, and drags a hand down his face. He stares toward the gloomy sky. Flat, hazy clouds have washed the landscape with shades of grey and silver: a monochrome world fitting for two miserable travelers.

It’s like the lack of eye contact gives him the strength, because finally, he strings together a coherent thought. “I was really scared back there. It’s okay if you were too. And I’m sorry about Sam and Henry.”

“I really liked them,” she says. She’d had them for such a short period of time, and it fucking sucks.

He looks back at her. “Me too,” he replies, then does something a little surprising: he reaches out, grabs her upper arm, and gives it a firm, comforting squeeze. 

Joel’s not really touchy-feely, and it’s not a thing she needs anyway. FEDRA school adults were far from cuddly. Their touches, when they came, were not kind, but disciplinary (at best). It had been in Ellie’s best interests to protect her personal space (by force, if necessary) with basically everyone who wasn’t Riley.

But this… she doesn’t mind it at all.

After that, they fall into more of a rhythm, picking their way slowly across the Midwest, somewhere between ten to twenty miles a day. She learns to make a fire, to help Joel identify good places to camp outside, to clear buildings if they’re lucky enough to sleep with something other than stars over their heads. Learns what old food to look for when they’re scavenging. Learns to deal with sore-ass feet. 

She does not learn how to read the map, never has any fucking clue where they are. She leaves that to Joel.

“Gonna suck for you, to have to walk all this back in the other direction,” Ellie observes one day, displeased by how the muddy ground keeps trying to suck her shoes off her feet. At least it’s stopped raining though.

“Eh,” Joel replies. “Not sure I’m gonna.” 

“But you left stuff…” She thinks about her posters, her comics, a hat Riley had found for her birthday once. It wasn’t much, but it had stung to leave everything behind.

Joel just shrugs. “Nothing important back there, really.” Not without Tess, Ellie thinks she hears behind his words. 

“What about Bill and Frank’s town? That seemed like a cool setup.” 

A flailing attempt to remove her foot from a particularly sticky patch of mud results in both a freed limb and a splatter of mud across Joel’s back. “Watch it,” he grumbles, swiping it off as best he can with the awkward angle. “That town… more trouble than it’s worth to keep all that up.”

She feels a swell of kinship, a little enchanted by the idea that they’re both wanderers with no home, blazing a path across the country. Except. Joel has a person somewhere, a family member. At best, she has an organization that probably won’t be interested in her once they learn she’s not the miracle they’d hoped for. 

Maybe she can guard some pipe bombs for them. Or become a wandering bandit…

She spends the next few days after that conversation getting Joel to tell her everything he knows about cowboys and westerns. She decides she’d go by Yellow Bellied Ellie. She has no earthly idea what it means,  just likes how it sounds. Though judging by the way Joel laughs at her, it might be a self-own. She pays him back by ruthlessly mocking his southern drawl.

Eventually Will Livingston makes his triumphal return. Joel groans and carries on about how awful the puns are. But then… he’s the one who institutes the rating system, who makes a game out of it.

She knows he likes it. He’s a shit liar, and she catches him smiling when he thinks she isn’t looking. That becomes her own, private game: make the grumpy asshole smile.

He calls her “kiddo” sometimes, though mostly when he feels bad about something. Socks wet from a full day of walking in the rain? “Sorry, kiddo.” Extra miles to avoid an area crawling with infected? “Sorry, kiddo.” Deep splinter in Ellie’s palm from trying to climb a tree? That one is her fault, but she still gets a “sorry, kiddo” out of it as he carefully digs the sliver of wood out.

It’s practically part of their bedtime routine at this point, Joel’s sigh of “sorry, kiddo” when her stomach growls loudly mere minutes after they’ve said goodnight. 

The food they find is not always enough. She doesn’t blame him, but he clearly doesn’t give himself the same leeway, judging by how he’s constantly trying to give her more than half of what they have.

She thinks it’s kind of stupid—he’s bigger than her, and pulls more weight than her in every possible sense—but she doesn’t fight it. It’s nice to feel like someone is looking out for her. 

Plus most of the time she is hungry. No point in denying it.

It’s a fuckton of walking, and weeks slip past with little to mark progress other than a slowly-evolving landscape and a growing sense of ease with Joel. 

She never thinks about the Fireflies anymore. Can barely even remember most of the time why all of this started. She’s traveling with Joel because that’s just what she does now. No beginning or end to that story—a perfect circular logic. 

But there might be an end, someday. Wyoming looms darkly on the horizon, the concept more so than the actual place. What happens, when they find Tommy? The possibilities feel like vapor, never substantial enough to actually grab onto, to really consider. 

She wants… 

She can’t admit to herself what she wants. All she knows is what she doesn’t want: to be dragged into some stupid cause that killed the person she loved the most. To be left behind, or passed off. To be forced to wake up to the fact that what they’ve built on the road is at best temporary, and at worst, just a dumb kid’s delusion.

“Do you think it’s Christmas yet?” Ellie asks the second time it snows. It sticks more this time, a solid couple of inches coating the ground, crunching under their steps, turning to slush in the sun. She imagines she’ll grow sick of it soon, as she did every winter back in the QZ. For now, though, it’s kind of pretty. It more than makes up for the drudgery of barren trees, the last of the colorful leaves having dropped a few weeks back.

Joel ponders for a moment, then shakes his head. “I reckon it’s something more like the beginning of December. Still ain’t that cold yet.”

Ellie swears she spends half her time these days taking off and putting back on layers. They’re in that awkward transitional period: cold in the mornings and evenings, cold when they’re still for too long, but warm enough midday, or in the sun, or after walking for a while that they have to drop layers to avoid getting hot. Joel warns her repeatedly that getting sweaty is dangerous, that she needs to stay on top of things. She listens, mostly. It’s a real pain in the ass, so she compensates by flinging her beanie at his face when it starts feeling a little damp. 

Her aim is getting pretty good. “Ellie! Goddammit, my mouth was open that time,” Joel complains, swiping at his face dramatically. She cackles maniacally. A few minutes later, Joel exacts his revenge by tugging at a branch just beyond her reach so that it dumps snow on her head.

“Feels kinda good, thanks dude,” she retorts, accepting his peace offering of her returned hat. It’s extra damp once she wipes all the snow off, but she behaves for once and shoves it in the side pocket of her backpack.

“Lookit,” Joel says suddenly. It’s not his danger voice, but Ellie’s hand flies to the knife at her waist, just in case. 

“What?” Whatever he’s seen, she doesn’t have an angle on it from her height, no matter how she cranes about. Nothing but trees in every direction.

He comes up behind her. “Here, jump when I tell you to,” he says, and it’s a testament to how much she trusts him at this point that she doesn’t think, doesn’t ask why, just gives a little hop when he declares, “Now!”

His hands are under her armpits, boosting her up in the air, and right at the apex of her assisted jump, she catches sight of their target. “A house!” She exclaims when she’s back on the ground. It’s been over a week since they last got to sleep inside any sort of structure. Joel’s old man back must be killing him if Ellie is this sore. This could be a major win for them, especially if they find supplies too.

“Shall we?” Joel asks, tilting his head in the appropriate direction. Ellie is already on the move. “We should do that more often, by the way,” she calls back to him, an extra spring in her step. “Felt like moonwalking.” 

Joel chuckles, hurries after her. “And what exactly would I get out of that? Other than more joint problems.”

“Ah, so you are admitting that you’re a rusty old man now.”

Another branch’s worth of snow comes down on her head.

“Structure looks good,” Joel comments approvingly once they’re closer. It’s the only building in the area, and the road leading to it doesn’t look like it was ever even paved. “Probably people who wanted to be a bit off the grid. Look.” He kicks at the snowy ground until a patch of dirt is revealed, along with knobby, dead-looking roots. “They were growing crops here at some point. Potatoes, probably.” 

Ellie trails him obediently as he circles the perimeter. She doesn’t know about structures but it’s probably the best looking house she’s seen on the road, outside of Bill and Frank’s town. It’s not a big place, and of course the siding needed repainting about a decade and a half ago. But all the windows are in tact, and the brick chimney that still juts proudly from the roof promises a cozy night and warm food.

“Okay,” Joel declares, apparently satisfied with what he’s seen. He nods toward the side of the house they’d started on. “There’s a root cellar we should check out over there, but let’s do the house first, see if it’s even worth it.” 

Ellie doesn’t reply, distracted trying to wrestle off a few of her layers. The approach to the house was hilly enough that she’s hot again. “Ellie,” Joel admonishes. “Come on, you can do that after.”

She groans, but relents. Clearing buildings is serious, important stuff. She knows when not to fuck around.

She pulls out her gun, switches off the safety, then nods.

Between the size of the house and their well-honed efficiency, the sweep takes little time. “Dibs on the couch!” Ellie calls as she thunders back down the stairs, leaving Joel to shop the closets. Couches are almost always more comfortable than beds, cushions faring better than box-springs over time. Plus, they’re going to end up sleeping in the living room anyway—the roof has caved in over the main bedroom upstairs, plus there’s the fire place, plus it’s easier to get out quickly from the ground floor, if it ever comes to it. Joel will have to deal with dragging a mattress down if he wants it.

She further claims her space by dropping all of her outerwear on one end of the couch, breathing a sigh of relief once she’s down to her baseball tee and jeans. She should probably lay them out so that they can air out before the next wear. That would certainly be the responsible move...

She leaves them crumpled in a pile and starts rummaging about in the kitchen instead.

Heavy steps announce Joel’s return from closet-land. “Anything good?” They ask simultaneously. Ellie pops her head out from behind the pantry door and snorts. “Jinx, dude.”

He peers over her shoulder, and she shows him some of the cans she’d been examining. “Not bad,” he mutters. “Lots of clothes upstairs if you feel like a change in wardrobe. Actually, I’m gonna insist you pick some of it—I don’t think what you have now is gonna be enough for long.”

“Okay,” Ellie replies, moving to glance out the window over the sink. The view was probably nice, once; the remains of a bird feeder sway delicately in the breeze. Maybe they’d had a garden out back, flowers in the summer, a patio to sit on and drink coffee in the mornings. “Man, I guess we didn’t make it very far today, huh?” The sun is only just noticeably tilting toward the horizon; with how short the days have gotten, it’s probably no later than two or three.

Joel doesn’t look up from his can inventory. “Eh, I think we’ve earned a lighter day. Little bit of extra rest will do us some good.”

“Fuck yeah,” Ellie breathes out, clapping her hands. “Sounds like it’s nap time then.”

“Not so fast.”

“Ugh, but you just said…”

He casts her a “stop whining” look and she rolls her eyes pointedly. “Firewood, before it gets dark. And let’s deal with that root cellar first. Then that musty old couch is all yours, kiddo. Come on.”

She drags her feet as she follows him back out the door and around the side of the house. “Why are we doing this?” She groans. There’s not even a door from the cellar into the interior of the house, at least not that she saw. 

“Area’s not clear til we check all these places. We don’t know what could get out of where, when.” It’s a marvelously nonsense Joel sentence, and she squints at him until he adds, “I’d feel safer knowing we’re not sitting on top of something bad.” He crouches down and raps a knuckle on the wooden door.

He gets a muffled screech in response. “Clicker,” he mumbles with the shake of his head. He does it a few more times, then stands back up. “Think I only hear one in there.” He runs a hand across his beard. “You got your gun, right?”

She pulls it out of her back pocket, and he sighs. “Gonna blow your asscheek off someday, I’m telling you.” 

She ignores this, as she always does. “Just tell me the play, man.”

The play is this: Joel opens the doors. Ellie throws loud object (a yellowed glass bottle they find half-buried around the back) against the side of the house, to lure the clicker in the opposite direction of Joel. Ellie gets out of the way and watches Joel’s six. Joel finishes the clicker before it even hears them.

It’s a familiar dance—Ellie distracts, Joel strikes. They’ve done it innumerable times. They’ve got it down to a science.

This time is no different. Open, shatter, back away, three shots to the back of the clicker’s head: bang, bang, bang.  

Except. 

Joel is right that it’s only the one clicker, but wrong in thinking it’s alone down there. In the split second after he takes the last shot, as he leans forward to double check that the job is done, a stalker emerges from the cellar, running full-tilt toward the sound of his gun. 

Ellie sees it from where she has dutifully fallen back into position, but Joel does not. 

He won’t, until it’s too late; it’s coming from the side of his bad ear. 

Ellie doesn’t think, just acts. Or: her acting is her thinking, all wrapped together. She lunges with a cry, propelled by the full force of her grief, for those she couldn’t save—for Riley, for Tess, for Sam and Henry. She tackles it to the ground with strength borne from the “no more” that echoes from the depths of her soul. Not this time. Not Joel.

She has the advantage of momentum: she successfully redirects the stalker’s course away from Joel. But the stalker has her beat in both size and pure, animalistic rage, and after a few rolls across the slush-covered ground, it ends up on top, her gun several feet out of reach.

For a brief second, it’s Kansas City again, and she’s helpless under a monster that used to be her friend. 

Then the spell is broken: she wedges a foot under its ribs, pushes up with all her might, and in one fluid motion, frees her switchblade from its place on her waistband and stabs it through the throat. 

A gurgling sound, a spray of black-red blood, and the stalker falls limp. 

“Holy shit,” she exclaims, wiggling back and forth to get out from under the deadweight pinning her legs. 

Suddenly, Joel is looming above her, looking horribly, horribly displeased, and not in the least like he’s about to do anything approximating thanking her for having his back. Figures.

“Fuck. Jesus Christ, Ellie,” he growls at her, shoving the stalker more fully off of her and yanking her up by the arm. He practically throws her back into the house, then slams the door behind them both. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“It was coming at you! I had to—“ 

Joel cuts off her protests. “No. You do not do that shit. Not for me.”

She has never seen Joel this mad. His anger is incandescent. For a brief moment, Joel-her-protector and Joel-the-killer are superimposed. It scares her.

But so does the thought of him getting hurt. She has so little to hold onto. She doubts any amount of scolding can stop her from making the choice she just made, should the situation ever arise again. 

His face is red, eyes dark. “I protect you. Not the other way around. Don’t you dare put yourself in danger like that again.”

She curls in on herself a little, tucks her arms tightly across her body, not sure whether she should defend herself (she did save his ass) or tell him that she’d be fucked without him anyway. 

The movement causes a stinging sensation near her right elbow, and suddenly she’s aware that her whole forearm is throbbing. Her fingers probe the area, find damp little ridges of flesh, and her stomach drops. 

Joel sounds a thousand miles away. “Ellie? Are you listening? I said, don’t you ever do that again.”

Well, she thinks deliriously, that won’t be a problem after all. 

“Ellie, what—?”

It feels like she has no control over her body anymore, like it’s someone else who is extending her arm, pulling back her sleeve, and exposing a ring of broken skin. She hears Joel stop breathing when he sees it too.

She’s been bitten.

Chapter Text

“No, no, no, no, no!”

Ellie wipes furiously at her arm, as if the bite is some perverse trick of the light, something that she can rub off. All this does is smear blood around. She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but continue her hushed litany of “no’s,” her futile swipes. More blood wells up after each pass of her hand, taunting her.

Dead. She’s dead. A walking corpse, already; on her way to becoming a real, walking corpse. Should’ve just laid down and given up back in that Halloween store, stayed with Riley—really stayed, not just waited for her to disappear into her own, infected mind. 

A sharp intake of breath pulls her attention, and she locks eyes with Joel. His face is horrifyingly blank, like he’s not even there. Like he’s disappeared too.

He’s still as a statue, but somehow vibrating with… something.

No, not still. Poised. Ready.

He doesn’t move, but she can’t help herself: she flinches, throws her hands in front of her face, turns her head away. Closes her eyes. Waits.

“Please,” she says. She doesn’t even know what she’s asking for. 

A rustle. When she looks up, he’s gone. 

It’s no vanishing act. She can hear him turning the kitchen inside out. There are other sounds too, wounded sounds that she wants believe are coming from some animal, some alien thing, but that she knows, she knows, are coming from Joel. 

It’s too much. Static takes over, a reprieve. Everything is a blur. Everything is underwater, on a delay, buffered. 

A thump brings her back, after however long. Thump. Thump. She’s sitting now, where she’d once been standing. Her hands rest in her lap, wrapped loosely around the cool metal of her gun.

She can hear Joel again from the kitchen, quieter now. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” he repeats, a new pattern of breath. 

She should…

Just as it has a hundred other times, for a hundred other reasons, his name spills from her lips. “Joel,” she cries out, softly. 

Immediately, he appears, panting, in the door frame. His hand is bloody, knuckles torn, just like when he’d beaten that guard to death for her. (Stupid. A waste.)

“I can’t,” she says, his perfect echo. She holds her gun out to him, then lets it tumble out of her hand onto the floor. The clatter is shockingly loud. Joel’s flinch is even more outsized.

“But I don’t…” she hastily adds, tripping over her own words. “You—I don’t want…I’m too…” Too scared. Too much of a coward, even to ask of him what she should handle herself. 

“I… If you…” Joel croaks, cutting her off with his own fragments of speech. He crouches down in front of her, slides the gun away. “Okay,” he finally whispers. “I’ll take care of it for you. When you… whenever you want me too.”

She nods, grateful. How long do you think I have, she wants to ask. Will I be fast like Tess, or hang on for a day like Riley? It would be a stoic, practical question. She really means to ask it. 

Instead, what comes out is a defeated wail: “I’m fourteen, Joel!” And what a stupid thing that is to say, as if age makes any difference in this messed up world, as if Riley hadn’t been barely older than her, Sam even younger. As if every single person taken at all weren’t taken too soon, too young, whether by a year or fifty.

Joel’s face crumples, and then he’s scooping her into his arms. She can hear the thundering of his heart from where he holds her head to his chest; it sounds as frantic as hers feels. “I’m sorry,” he says as she cries. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Dried sweat, fading adrenaline, fear. When all her tears are gone, she’s left shivering. Even wrapped in Joel’s embrace, Ellie is chilled to the bone. 

He notices. He tries to hold her tighter, for a time, but eventually he shifts, ignores her whining protestations in favor of pulling her up and depositing her on the edge of the couch. “Wait here,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” 

As he disappears up the staircase, she fixates on her trembling hands. Is this just the cold, she wonders, or is it starting so soon? She wills her hands to still, and they do, as long as she stays focused. Perhaps she’s won a few more hours, a longer life sentence, after all.

Joel returns with a pile of clothes in tow. “Put these on,” he instructs, presenting her with a thick maroon sweater and a pair of heathered grey sweatpants. “I’ll get a fire going while you do, okay?” 

She retreats into the kitchen to change, leaving Joel working on the fireplace. She steps gingerly around the broken dishes littering the floor. Joel has made a real mess of the place, she observes; the wall next to the patio door features three new, fist-sized holes. His hand is almost certainly fractured again—if it had even healed in the first place.

She leaves her old clothes in the sink, and indulges in the view out the window once more—one last time. The sun is barely brushing the horizon, scattering shades of red-orange across the snow-mottled ground. She marvels at how the glow makes a cold thing seem warm.

The wood Joel has found is sparking and crackling in the fireplace when she returns to her spot on the couch. Joel has changed too, or at least replaced his flannel with a sweater than looks hand-knitted. Whoever lived here before apparently kept well-prepared for the cold.

As if in confirmation of this theory, Joel produces a woolen blanket, and tucks it around her legs. “There, better,” he declares. It’s not much, in the grand scheme of impending death, but he’s not wrong. She’ll take whatever warmth she can get.

She automatically accepts her water bottle when he hands it to her. “You should drink something,” he says. 

Her head hurts from crying so hard. Or maybe from spores taking root in her brain. One of these will be helped with water; it won’t make any difference for the other. 

She takes a few sips, until Joel seems pleased. He settles on the couch next to her.

“Have you, ah…”

His eyebrows fly up, expectant.

“Have you done this before?” She finishes, fisting the extra material of her sleeves so that her hands disappear fully.

“Done…?” 

“This. Waited.”

His eye twitches a little. She knows he doesn’t want to answer her question, doesn’t really want to talk about it, but things have changed. He has to tell her what she wants to know now. It’s dead-person’s prerogative. 

“Not, ah, not really no.”

She finds that a little hard to believe, two decades into Cordyceps, and her face must reflect this, because he adds, “Some people I travelled with, early on, asked me to pull the trigger for them. But there was no waiting, really, no chance to wait. Tess and I had agreed to…” He trails off; they both know how that ended.

“I have,” she admits. Joel clearly isn’t expecting this.

“Shit,” he breathes out. 

“Yeah, shit,” she repeats sadly. “Right before I met you.” If she’s not going to be around anymore, she wants there to be at least one person in the world who knows who Riley was, and that she mattered. So she tells him the whole damn story, tells him about how carefully Riley planned the evening just for her, how things went wrong, what they did while they waited. Even tells him about the kiss, not caring at all what he might think, just that he hears exactly how much Riley meant to her. 

“Dammit, kiddo, I’m so sorry,” Joel sighs in response. 

The circumstances suck, but it feels good, finally saying all of this out loud. “I thought it would be hard, and it was, but it also stopped being her right at the end. She wouldn’t want to be like that.” 

Sam’s question pings around her head: If you turn into a monster, is it still you inside? She can’t decide if that’s scarier than just being gone. 

At least she trusts Joel to take care of it, just like she took care of it for Riley. And she takes comfort in knowing that she’s too small to ever hurt him, even turned. She’s heard the stories, of people flinching, pulling shots, going down too because they can’t be decisive enough. Not Joel, she thinks. Not the man who dragged her away from Tess, who handled the kid she shot, who would’ve dealt with Sam if Henry had let him have the gun.

“We could’ve lost our minds together,” she adds eventually. “Riley didn’t want that, said she was glad it was just her. Fat lot of good it did though, huh?”

Joel sags next to her, drops his head into his hands. “This is all my fault. I was supposed to keep you safe…Protect you.” He sounds heartbroken.

“No,” Ellie protests. Seeing him upset makes her feel even more upset. There are tears in his eyes again, and she hates it, more than just about anything. “You kept me safe a lot, Joel.”

“Doesn’t matter,” comes his gruff reply. “I failed. I always fail.” I was dead in the QZ, she wants to tell him. You bought me three months I wouldn’t have had. It wouldn’t convince him, though, doesn’t even really convince her. She doesn’t want to die now, just like she didn’t then. But the moment that stalker charged at them, one of them was dead. Seeing as there isn’t really an Ellie without Joel now, not realistically, this was maybe the better outcome.

That’s what she’s trying to tell herself at least.

They sit in miserable silence for a while. Ellie pretends not to hear Joel’s sniffles, just like Joel pretends not to notice when Ellie squirms around a bit and winds up pressed up against him. The fire roars in earnest, now, and between that, the blanket, her stolen clothes, and the couch, it’s the most comfortable she’s been in a while, the whole “waiting to die” thing notwithstanding. 

The heat is making her drowsy, and her eyes drift shut a few times, only to snap back open the moment her brain catches up with the rest of her body. She hadn’t been kidding about wanting to take a nap earlier (before) but now it feels like the wrong thing to do, like a poor use of precious time. She tries to think of something to say to Joel, to focus on instead of her heavy limbs. She can’t seem to hold onto any thread long enough to…

She wakes up with a gasp. “Shit!” She nearly pitches off the edge of the couch, but strong hands steady her and then retreat. 

She turns to find Joel peering at her intensely. Sitting, again, dangerously still. His voice is tentative. “You… you okay?” 

She tries to get her breathing under control. “Mmhm. Yeah. Didn’t mean to fall asleep. How long…?”

He shakes his head. “Half hour or so. No more.”

She flops back against the cushions, rubs her eyes until spots appear in her vision. “Why’d you let me do that?”

“Do…?”

“I can literally sleep when I’m dead,” she bites back. It’s a little mean, the joke, and not even a bit funny. She’s irritated. And fucking freaked out. That could’ve been it, just then. When she woke, for a brief second, her whole mind felt fuzzy, and she’d thought… 

It’s clearer now, thank god.

As if anticipating her line of thought, Joel asks, “how’re you feeling?” He sounds scared to hear the answer.

“Dunno,” she shrugs. She takes inventory of her body. Nothing too amiss yet. “Fine, I think.”

“Can I…?” He gestures towards her bitten arm, and she allows him to take it, roll back her sleeve. 

The teeth marks are in the very beginning stages of scabbing over. The whole area has taken on an angry red color; little raised lines have started to radiate out from the center. They’re still pale, just short, scraggly signs of the Cordyceps tendrils burrowing under her skin. 

“Okay,” Joel says, voice careful and measured. “Not, ah, not bad so far.”

“Comforting,” she mutters, unable to look away from the deadly pattern on her arm. No denying it’s happening. “Slow death for Ellie, then.”

Joel gives her such a wrecked look that she hurries to cover the bite back up, as if that fixes anything.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she reiterates, trying for firm but achieving fearful. 

He reaches across his body to grab her hand with his unbroken one. “What do you want to do then?”

She interlaces her fingers with his. “Can we just… can you tell me some things? About before? Nice things?”

He does. He tells her about his favorite movies, about how much trouble he used to get into in high school, about his failed track career. He tells her about him and Tommy as kids, about his aspirations to be a musician, about his grandmother’s quilts. 

He talks so much that his voice gives out a little. He chugs water, then starts again. It’s more than Ellie’s ever heard him say at once, probably more than she’s heard him say over the last month in total. 

He’s a really good storyteller. There are even moments where she forgets why he’s talking, what they’re waiting for, however briefly.

“I wish I had that,” she sighs wistfully, as he tells her about his mom’s famous biscuits. The sky is just beginning to soften from black to blue-grey, the first rays of dawn not far off.

“Yeah, they were delicious.” 

“No,” Ellie replies, sheepishly. “Family. People who care about me like that. I think Riley was the only one to really ever…” She immediately wishes she could take it back. She sounds fucking pathetic, judging by Joel’s stricken expression.

“Ellie, I ca—“

“Stop.” As much as she wants to hear it, she can’t handle his pity right now. “You don’t have to say that just because I’m dying, okay?” 

Joel tugs at the front of his sweater, as if it’s suddenly too tight. “No, kiddo, I…” He looks to be in physical pain, sounds a bit wheezy. 

Great, I broke Joel, Ellie thinks numbly. She holds his water bottle out, but he just shakes his head, face drawn tight.

It’s like after Kansas City all over again, watching him flail about internally and freeze up on the outside. She waits it out. 

“I do care about you. How could I not?” He sounds… almost hurt, by the idea that she would think otherwise. This more than anything else catches her by surprise. She’d have thought the answer to that question—how could I not?—was pretty straightforward. Answer: she’s supposed to be cargo. 

Apparently something changed, somehow, somewhere. “I know it ain’t really what you mean, with family and stuff but… you got me, okay? I’m sorry I made you feel otherwise.”

It’s so painfully sincere. 

Somehow, she finds herself believing him.

Later in the morning, she realizes that this new development scares the shit out of her.

“What are you gonna do, after?” She blurts out, cutting Joel off mid-sentence. He’s partway through a story about Tommy setting fire to the middle school principal’s office, a slight smile lingering at the corner of his lips.

“Huh?”

“After you leave here.”

“Oh.” He’s not smiling anymore. She’d feel bad about killing the mood, but she’s preoccupied.

“You’re going to go find Tommy, right?” He doesn’t answer immediately. “Joel. You said you’d find Tommy. You promised Tess.” 

Memories of Henry’s face, after Sam. And then Henry’s face, after what he did.

She doesn’t presume that Joel cares about her like Henry did about Sam. But Tess really didn’t seem to like the idea of Joel being alone, and Ellie finds herself in retrospective agreement. 

“I also promised her I’d keep you safe,” he growls.

“You tried—“

“It wasn’t enough!” He’s shouting now. Not at her, not really, but it’s still startling. 

“He might need you, Joel—“

He waves the thought away. “I hope to god he doesn’t because if he does, I’m probably gon’ just end up getting him killed too.”

The self-loathing in his response is alarming, and only confirms her fears that Tess was right. It’s her concern for him, above all else, that makes her snap. “Listen, asshole,” she yells. “You can feel sorry for yourself later, but right now I’m the one dying, I’m the one who is fucking terrified, and I need you to…”

She chokes up before she can finish, the last few words coming out all squeaky and wrong. The anger drains out of Joel; what’s left is just despair.

“Say it,” she hisses. He may be stubborn but she has no possible reason to budge on this. No chance to budge on it. She cannot lose, and he knows it.

“I’ll find Tommy.” He sounds like a child, won’t meet her eye. She leans over the arm of the couch, rummages through her pack until she finds the familiar shape of Will Livingston’s book, and then whips it straight at Joel’s chest.

“Hey!” he cries, fumbling to catch it with his good hand. “What—“ Then he sees what it is. His voice cracks as he says, “Ellie…”

“I am ordering you to take that to Tommy,” she says, punctuating her sentence with a poke of the book. “It’s my most prized possession, so you have to do it.”

He looks like he might be about to say something—yes or no or something else, she can’t tell—until finally he sets his jaw and places the book carefully in his own pack. Then he holds his arms out, and she goes right to him, no longer angry. Just scared. He kisses her forehead, and she knows it’s a promise, that he’ll do his best.

She hopes it’ll be enough.

The bite itself doesn’t look much worse, but the lines continue their slow crawl along her arm.

They pass the twenty four hour mark. Ellie knows it when the sun starts to set. Joel knows it, too, judging by how frequently he’s shooting her furtive, concerned glances. If he’s trying for subtlety, he misses the mark by about a mile.

Ellie’s stomach is also aware of the passage of time, something it makes known with increasingly loud grumbles. 

“Ellie,” Joel says, after the fifth or sixth time. “If you think I ain’t hearing that…” She’s under no such delusion: it sounds like some large, roaring creature is trying to claw its way out of her stomach. Feels a little like it too.

“And?” She tosses back at him. 

Instead of responding, he gets up and retreats into the kitchen. When he returns, it’s with an armful of cans in tow.

“Here,” he says, spreading them out on the floor in front of the couch. Ellie sits up straighter, intrigued by some unfamiliar looking labels. Then she hesitates.

“It’s a waste, Joel. Come on.” A waste of provisions, on someone who doesn’t really need them, who won’t get any lasting benefit from them. Joel can make it twice as long with what’s here if she doesn’t take any of it.

But Joel is emphatic. “Not a waste. You’re hungry. You should be comfortable.” He picks out two of the cans from the lineup. “Now: pears, or mandarin orange slices? Actually, you know what. Fuck it. We’re doing both.”

It’s gotten very late. And Ellie has gotten very tired.

While the sun was up, she still found some solace, some relief each time she remembered what they were waiting for and realized not yet. There have been moments where panic, dread, terror, have seized her, and she can do nothing but hold onto Joel, trembling, until it passes. There have also been stretches of—if not acceptance—numbness, maybe even resignation.

But almost no one makes it to the two day mark, even though that’s the standard time limit everyone is told. It has to start happening soon, really start happening. Any minute now.

It’s no wonder she’s tired. She’s been up for almost forty-eight hours. Tired means not quite thinking straight. Tired means feeling a little disconnected from her body. Tired means jumbling words up a bit.

At the very end, right before, Riley was still trying to talk to Ellie, but couldn’t. Couldn’t even wrap her lips around the two simple syllables of Ellie’s name, every attempted utterance coming out broken, slurred. Pure nonsense that communicated nothing but the terror Ellie could still see in Riley’s eyes.

The later it gets, the more tired Ellie gets, the more Riley’s babbling runs through her head. This must be it, must be what the beginning of the end feels like, like unfocused thoughts and heavy limbs and—

“Ellie?” Joel’s face suddenly fills her field of vision, brow furrowed and eyes sharp. Alert. 

There’s a strange, periodic whooshing sound. It takes her far too long to realize it’s her breathing. Probably because it makes no sense how her breaths can be this fucking loud when none of the air is making it to her lungs, when her chest burns like she’s underwater.

Joel is grabbing her shoulders now. “Ellie?! Is this—shit, no, look at me, kiddo. You’re gonna hyperventilate.”

“Joel? Wha—?” She can barely get the words out between wheezes.

“S’okay, just try to relax,” he soothes, rubbing up and down her arms. She grabs handfuls of his sweater, trying to anchor herself. 

It’s not working.

“Am I… turning…?” She cries. Spots are dancing in the center of her vision. She screws her eyes shut, then opens them just as quickly. No sleeping. 

“I don’t know, I don’t know! I think you’re just panicking.” So is Joel, by the sound of it. “You’re tired, okay?”

“No!” Ellie shoves him hard in the chest, scampers to the far end of the couch. “If I sleep… I can’t sleep Joel!” The room spins around her. Her fucking lungs still haven’t gotten the message that there’s plenty of oxygen to be had. 

Joel’s voice is all distorted, but the anguish on his face is clear, even filtered through the glaze of her teary eyes. “Please, Ellie. Come ‘ere.” Arms out and wide, he’s approaching her like a cornered animal; for all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what she is. 

“I won’t wake up,” she wails, weakly batting his arms away. He pulls her into his arms all the same. “Please don’t make me, I don’t want… don’t want to not wake up. Please.” 

“It’s okay, babygirl, I got you. I ain’t leaving you.” He rocks her back and forth as he speaks, runs a hand across her head. No one has held her like this before. She wants to want to fight him, but can’t muster the resistance. She presses her face into his sweater and screams and sobs until she can’t. The whole time, Joel continues a steady stream of desperate words. “I’m right here. It’s okay, babygirl. You’re okay. I’m sorry, I got you, it’s okay.”

Lies. Lies, lies, nothing but beautiful lies. It isn’t okay, won’t be okay. 

As her energy wanes, her only solace, the only thing she has to cling onto, is the one part she knows to be true: I’m right here.

In the hazy space between consciousness and sleep, she hears a low voice singing to her.

Chapter Text

Ellie’s eyes snap open, and land immediately on Joel.

He’s sitting on the floor across the room, backlit by dim rays filtering through the window. He watches herwith red rimmed eyes. His arms are wrapped tightly around his knees, but his gun—on the floor by his hip—is in easy reach.

“Mmmph,” Ellie grumbles. She realizes that she’s still on the couch, wrapped tightly in the blanket, head resting on a pile of flattened, old pillows.

Joel’s fingers dig into the fabric of his pants, and he leans forward slightly. “…Ellie?” His voice grates, sounds painful. Or pained.

“Hm?” She rubs her hands up and down her face, tries to clear some of the lingering haze. Her right arm throbs when the fabric of her sweater moves against it. Oh shit, oh yeah. That’s why Joel looks like that. “Joel, I—“

A tickle in her throat. She coughs, tries to clear it. 

Joel’s hand flies toward his gun, pauses, hovering a few inches above it. He’s shaking, she notices.

“I’m… thirsty?” She finishes, tentative.

Joel sags, but instead of looking relieved, he just looks… confused. “Are you… how’re you…”

“I’m not about to bite you, if that’s what your asking.” A memory, of falling asleep in his arms. She didn’t even notice when he moved. “Is that why you’re over there now?”

The confusion deepens. “Huh?”

Ellie props herself up on one elbow, and frowns. “So that I couldn’t bite you. You thought I was gonna turn while I was asleep.”

Joel makes a choked noise in his throat. She doesn’t think she’s entirely wrong, but something else is going on. Something she hasn’t quite put together yet. 

Finally, he shakes his head. “Had to get more firewood, little while ago. ‘Round noon or so.”

Now it’s her turn to say, “huh?” 

Joel glances over his shoulder. “That’s dusk, out there. Sun’s setting.”

Ellie blinks, brain struggling with this new information: that would mean she’d slept all night and through the whole day. That would mean it’s past six or so already. And that would mean that—

She leaps out of her blanket cocoon, and runs over to the window. Doesn’t know why she even bothers, but double checks all the same: the sun is disappearing into the direction they were walking. Into the west.

“How?” She breathes out, turning back to Joel. She’s never seen him this bewildered, this caught off guard. He doesn’t have a handle on this. Neither does she; she should be dead already.

“I kept waiting…” He’s been crying, Ellie realizes dimly. That’s why his eyes look like that, all red and raw and glassy. The longer she slept, the more he must’ve thought…

And of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? He’d sat there and watched as the last of her forty-eight hours ticked by, as they ran out. 

She shoves her sleeve over her elbow, and holds her arm out to the catch the last beams of the missed day’s fading light.

“What the fuck?” She mutters. Because the bite is still there, the swirling pattern of tendrils still there too. But nothing has changed: no more redness, no discoloration, no progression of where the lines had reached last they’d checked.

The teeth marks might even look a little better than before, less irritated.

Joel catches her arm—the other one—from his spot on the floor, and tugs her over to get a look. She plops down next to him, and lets him inspect the bite.

“This looks… the same,” he marvels. He cradles her arm in his hands like it’s something precious, runs a thumb gently along the outer edge of the lines. “I’ve never…”

“Is there like… a slow strain or something?” It’s not like she’s hoping the answer is yes, that there is some obvious reason that she hasn’t died yet but remains just as doomed as she initially thought. She has no clue how to feel about this development, or the lack thereof. Judging by Joel’s helpless shrug, he doesn’t either.

Joel finds an old inkwell in the writing desk upstairs, some toothpicks in the wreckage of an upended kitchen junk drawer. He carefully places little dots of ink at the end of each of the lines. “That way we know, if it’s moving too slow for us to really notice,” Joel explains. 

It reminds Ellie of the connect-the-dots coloring sheets she’d been given as a kid. She wonders what picture would emerge if she drew the lines it.

Then, he makes her do all the standard FEDRA tests, which he seems sorta apologetic about—“I know they treated you terrible, just humor me”—but she doesn’t mind, especially when she passes them all with flying colors. No issues counting, no hand tremors, no slurred speech.

Tess had tremors less than an hour after she got bit. Ellie is at fifty-something and counting.

A faint tickle, at the back of her memory: Marlene’s bullshit about her mother, and the circumstances of her birth.

Ellie shuts that door before it can open. The false hope might kill her sooner than the Cordyceps. It would certainly kill Joel.

Joel, who is definitely acting a little…weird.

Not without reason, of course. He’d just sat there for more than half a day, thinking that any second might be the one he has to put a bullet through her head. 

Part of her feels bad, for dragging this out for so long. He must just want to get it over with—especially since he cares for her, and she’s asked him to do something pretty awful. 

They talk less than they did the first night and day, in part because Joel can’t seem to keep a thread as well. A few times, he just stops mid-sentence, mid-word even, staring at nothing for a few seconds before jerking and continuing like nothing happened. He’s spaced out before—Ellie’s observant, sees more than Joel thinks she does—but not like this. Not this often.

She really, really hopes he’ll be okay.

Morning comes, and the dots remain the outer limit of each raised track of skin. After spending much of the night staring at the stars through the grimy window, Ellie has revised her initial impression: not a connect-the-dots, but a constellation. She imagines the lines as paths traced by starships, exploring new worlds, seeking new life. A whole galaxy on her arm.

It’s not that she’d prefer dying on a neat schedule but… neither of them knows what to do at this point. Ellie is still scared shitless, pretty sure that any moment will be the moment when her luck runs out and it all catches up with her.  Joel clearly thinks it’s coming, too caught in a loop of guilt and his own fear to mask the grief that is transparent in every look he gives her. 

I’m still here, she wants to tell him, but the words get stuck in her throat.

Still no symptoms, though Ellie is unusually tired. Granted, her schedule is all off, and maybe some of it can be chalked up to stress. Still, she’s exhausted again by mid-afternoon, despite basically doing nothing all day but sitting around and snacking on canned corn and jerky. Like, can’t keep her eyes open, body pulled into sleep despite her conscious efforts. That sort of exhaustion. 

And when she gets tired again, she panics again.

FEDRA school was shit, but not so shit that she doesn’t know that outliers are a thing. Surely her stay of execution is going to run out soon. It’s almost a perfect repeat of the previous time. The terror that she won’t wake up takes her breath away and Joel is left desperately scrambling to comfort her. Except this time there’s an extra layer of grief: not only is she dying, but she didn’t manage to do so quickly enough to spare Joel all this pain.

Something lightly brushes the tip of Ellie’s nose. Her face twitches, an automatic response; whatever it is, is still there, and she peels one eye open, just a crack, to find…

Joel, leaning over her, a finger held shakily under her nose. 

Her first instinct is to lick it, just to fuck with him. Like she used to do all the time when Riley would wake her up for some nighttime adventure with a hand over her mouth. Riley always pulled the most dramatic, grossed out face and Ellie would laugh and laugh and laugh until Riley tried to wipe her hand off on Ellie’s forehead.

Then she remembers where she is, who she’s with, and the current circumstances, and thinks better of it. 

So she stays very, very still instead. 

“Uh…. Joel?”

He twitches away, looking shocked and a little crazed.

After it becomes clear that this was the entirety of his response, she tries again. “Joel?”

“Hm? What?” It’s his hair, she decides, that’s making him look so insane. Hairstyling has never been a priority for them, but she’s never seen it standing straight out at the sides like this before.

Actually: it’s not just the hair. It’s a look in his eyes too. She frowns up at him. “What do you mean ‘what’? I just woke up with your finger under my nose.” 

“Mmhm.” 

She stares at him, until he belatedly realizes that he’s missed a question.

“You were really… still. I was just checkin’.”

The fire has died down to a smolder, but the room is brightly lit from the windows alone. “What’s it… morning?” He nods tensely. Jeez. She slept over twelve hours again.

This puts her total at… eighty-something hours?

Which is truly, genuinely unbelievable, and apparently long enough that Joel has decided it’s worth checking to make sure she hasn’t just dropped dead in her sleep.

The dots are still heroically holding the perimeter of the Cordyceps tendrils when they check her bite. That’s how Ellie has started to feel about her constellation, in any case: like Joel cast some sort of protection spell when he applied that ink.

“Good lord,” Joel exhales, dropping back onto his heels when she holds her arm out to him. “You’re still okay?”

She shrugs. “Are you okay, Joel?” He keeps blinking and squinting, as if expecting it to change what he’s seeing in front of him. Or maybe even like he’s having trouble focusing his eyes on her arm.

He has the gall to scowl at her. “Don’t worry about me, kiddo.” 

She wishes it were that simple.

Ellie is supposed to be the one losing her mind, but Joel beats her to the punch.

She’s laying on the ground, legs propped up on the couch, thumbing through Will Livingston’s book half-heartedly. It’s more mechanical than anything, eyes scanning but not reading the words. By her estimation, she’s just about reached the ninety-six hour mark—a full double the amount of time she was supposed to have left. So what she’s really doing is trying to figure out if it’s worth telling Joel about Marlene. About her mom. About the possibility—which still seems too good to be true—that she might be immune.

Joel has been quiet for most of the afternoon, checking in with her occasionally but mostly staring off into space. He’s still weird and twitchy, and she’s even caught him mumbling under his breath a few times, like he does when he sleeps. When she tries to ask him what he’s saying, he looks at her like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

I’ll bring it up in the morning, she decides. If I’m still here. She has no clue how, exactly, she’ll have that conversation, and tries to run possible scenarios in her head. Hey Joel, remember how I should be dead by now? Remember how everyone else who gets bit is super fungus-y at this point? Remember how this thing on my arm is actually starting to look kinda healed?

She must doze off at some point, because she’s suddenly jerking awake with a sharp inhale.

“Shit,” she mumbles, dropping the book onto her stomach. It’s too risky, she decides, being in a reclined position like this. She’s not ready to face the horrors of falling asleep again. So she sits up. Looks around. And realizes that Joel is not on his end of the couch anymore.

“Joel?” She calls out. Maybe he’s in the kitchen, or getting something from upstairs. 

Nothing but silence. Which means Joel isn’t in the house. He’d have responded if he heard her. He always comes when she calls his name.

She twiddles her thumbs for a few minutes, perturbed. She’s got a bad feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach. She tries to tell herself she’s being paranoid. That he’s just… getting more firewood. That’s plausible. 

Except then she notices his shoes are still sitting by the door.

This warrants some investigation, so she cracks the door open enough to peer outside. Joel’s not anywhere in sight, but sure enough, there’s a trail of footprints leading around the house—actual foot prints, not boot prints. 

Her stomach drops at the sight. Something weird is going on. She’s quick to tug on her own boots before hurrying out the door, not bothering with the laces. It’s snowed several inches since they got here, enough that it’s well past her ankles now. Cold seeps through the hem of her sweatpants as her feet sink down with each step.

She rounds the corner to find him standing in front of the still-open root cellar. Or. Standing is maybe generous: he’s swaying back and forth, on his very bare feet, holding his pistol with a grip that could not be farther from the form he’d taught her back in KC. He’s also mumbling again, voice hushed and agitated. She can only catch snippets.

“For what… only person… Tommy…”

He’s staring so intently into the dark space of the cellar that he doesn’t even notice her. She bounces anxiously on her toes, trying to decide how to alert Joel to her presence without startling him. It’s not lost on her that she’s coming from the direction of his bad ear. He already seems so distressed and, as much as she trusts him, she doesn’t really like that hold he has on his gun. 

She creeps closer, tries to angle her approach so that she appears from in front rather than from behind. She’s almost within arm’s reach before something beneath the snow crunches under her foot.

Joel whips around toward her, eyes wild. She takes a half-step back, but doesn’t get far before he’s dropping his gun and grabbing for her.

“What are you—“ His eyes cut toward the cellar, back to her. “S’not safe, it’s… are you hurt?” His hands fumble at her, grabbing at the bottom of her sweater, at her waist. His voice is pure panic.

“Hey! Joel, what..?” She pushes his hands away, but he doesn’t stop, just keeps trying to check her over for… something.

“Are you… are you…?”

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” She protests, definitely not looking at the long, lumpy mound of snow off to the side that she’s pretty sure is the stalker that got her. “I actually think I might be okay, Joel, please. Just come inside. Your feet…”

His movements only becomes more frantic, until he latches onto her collar and grits out, “You have to get out of here!” He gives her a little shove, and the movement unbalances them both. She ends up on her ass in the snow, and he ends up on his hands and knees. He immediately pops up into a crouch, staring past her into the cellar again.

Ellie waves her hand in front of his face, but it’s like he’s forgotten she’s there already. “My punishment,” he’s mumbling. “Punishment.”

Her heart sinks. “Punishment? Joel, no one’s—“

“For failing,” he moans. “I fail. Day one, immediately, Sarah… I failed her, before… everything.” He’s pulling at the sides of his hair, so hard she’s surprised there’s any left on his scalp. She wants so badly for him to stop—stop the pulling, stop talking, stop doing whatever it is this is. But he just keeps going. “I kept… Tommy… couldn’t be right for him, so he left. Then Tess and…it’s for nothing. All for nothing. Survived for nothing.”

“Joel stop,” she pleads. He needs to shut the fuck up. Needs to snap out of it.

“Can’t protect…I’m paying for it all over again, but it’s not me paying, it’s—“

Ellie scoops up as much snow as she can gather in her hands and shoves it straight into his face.

He sputters, and coughs out, “what the… Ellie?” He tries to wipe his face off, but she leaps up, catches his hands, and pulls with all her might, throwing her full—if not substantial—weight into it. Joel stumbles after her, feet skidding a little in the snow.

Thanks to some combination of keeping Joel off balance and momentum, she manages to drag him back to the house, biting out “you aren’t wearing fucking shoes, asshole” when he weakly protests. When they’re finally inside once more, she flops into an armchair, breathing hard and leaving Joel to blink down at his feet—now bright red from the cold—as if he’s just now realizing the problem. Actually, judging by the perturbed face he’s pulling, and the way he looks a bit like he just woke up, she thinks that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Ellie? What just…” he asks tentatively, eyes wide and, she notices once again, bloodshot to hell. The bags under them are so prominent, so dark, that he probably would look better if someone just went ahead and punched him in the face. Snow is still dripping from his beard. 

He looks a right mess.

She throws her hands up. “I don’t know, dude, you tell me!”

Joel shakes his head slowly. “I’m all… confused, I don’t…”

“You need to sit down, Joel,” she sighs. He’s still swaying on his feet, like he’s about to fall over any second.   Surprisingly, he doesn’t fight her on this, trudging the few steps over to the couch and more or less collapsing right on top of the blanket pile that’s accumulated from her using it as a bed. 

A thought occurs to her.

“Do you need to, like, take a nap or something?” He doesn’t meet her eye. “Joellllllll,” she whines, “give me something.”

“Don’t need a damn nap,” he grumbles. But he sounds suspiciously bashful about it. So much so that everything finally clicks into place.

“Holy shit, man, have you slept at all since we’ve been here?” His silence is all the response she needs, and she nearly leaps out of the chair. “It’s been over four days!”

She certainly hasn’t seen him sleeping, but she’d just assumed she’d missed it while she was asleep. There’d been more than enough time for him to doze while she’d been out. Instead, he must’ve been…

She remembers the look on his face when she’d woken up on that second day. “Oh, I got it,” she mutters, guilt clawing at her stomach. She’s really put him through the ringer. “It’s so that I wouldn’t get you, if I turned while you slept, right?”

“What?! No, I…”

This is fixable, though. This of all things, she can figure out. She cuts him off. “We can like… lock me in a room or something, so that you can sleep some. Or tie me up, I really don’t care, Joel. But you gotta sleep.”

Joel looks horrified by these suggestions. “No, Ellie, it’s not like that it’s because… it’s so you wouldn’t be alone. Even if there’s nothing I can do about it, I don’t want you to be alone when—oof!” He’s cut off by the weight of Ellie launching herself bodily into his arms.

No one has cared about her like this before: enough to automatically wrap her in his arms, enough to hold her when she’s scared and sad, enough to feed her before he even thinks of eating. Enough to drive himself almost mad trying to make sure she doesn’t feel alone. 

She’s pretty sure she loves him.

“You have to sleep, Joel. You can sleep. I promise it’ll be okay.”

“I can’t, babygirl,” he groans, brushing a few stray strands of hair out of her face. He sounds so exhausted, so sad.

She nuzzles into his chest, and it muffles her reply. In part because she’s a little scared to say it out loud.

“What’s that, kiddo?”

She shifts, exhales, closes her eyes, as if that might make this easier. “I said, yes you can.”

“No, I—“

“I think I’m immune!” She blurts out.

She feels Joel stiffen, grow so still she wonders if he’s still breathing. When she finally cracks an eye open, he’s regarding her with a mix of disbelief, sympathy, and… pity, it seems. Fuck you, man, she thinks. I’m not the delusional one. I’m not the one who was out in the cold without shoes on, talking to myself.

“Ellie,” he begins carefully. 

She doesn’t have time for whatever it is he’s about to say. “Listen, I will explain, I promise.”

“No one is—“

“It’s why the Fireflies were interested in me, okay?” 

Judging by Joel’s surprise, he had forgotten about that part of why they’re traveling together. It’s not like they ever talk about it. He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to put it all together. “It was because… FEDRA wanted to…” 

He may be half-crazy, but Ellie also can’t fault him for having trouble wrapping his head around it, this unbelievable thing that may be happening. Still, there are more important things at the moment, namely, the Joel-being-half-crazy thing.

“We can talk about it later, okay? After you sleep.”

“No, I’d rather…”

She grabs his face, forces him to look her right in the eye. “You’re scaring me, Joel, please.” It’s a little bit of a low blow, but as expected, it’s what’s needed to finally get through to him. “Please,” she adds once more, as he begins to melt back into the couch. He must want to sleep, must feel miserably exhausted. If she can just get him to relax…

He clears his throat, blinking at her slowly. “Okay, but if you feel anything at all…”

“I’ll wake you up,” she promises. “Immediately.”

“And if the bite…”

“I’ll check it every hour. No, half hour? Half hour. It hasn’t moved since we marked it though.” She slides out of his lap, and starts yanking the blankets out from under him. “Now lay down, we’re putting these blankets on you and your cold-ass feet.”

Joel scowls. “I don’t need you to tuck me in.”

“Fuck you, I’m tucking you in.” He’s too tired to put up a proper fight, and she gets her way, carefully arranging the blankets until she judges him adequately cozy. He even gives her a small smile of thanks when she pats his head. “Sleep tight, dickhead.”

He’s asleep less than a minute later.

Joel seemed to be under the impression that he’d just be taking a quick nap, but Ellie isn’t surprised when the evening starts slipping by. He barely moves, barely twitches, for once doesn’t even mumble at all. Joel never sleeps this deeply, and after several hours pass with no change, Ellie starts to understand his impulse to check on her. Now she’s the one hovering a finger under his nose to make sure he’s still breathing.

She feels a little foolish doing it, but what he doesn’t know can’t… give him a chance to make fun of her, or whatever. She’s more careful about it than he was, hands much steadier. He doesn’t even stir.

Ellie busies herself as best she can in the meantime: tending the fire, checking the perimeter from the windows, playing with her knife. Nosing through Joel’s pack. Staring at her arm.

She helps herself to two whole cans of pineapple rings, which is delicious in the moment and a little regrettable about an hour later when all that sugar has her feeling jittery and a little nauseated. She takes to pacing, first to deal with the extra energy and then to keep herself awake. She owes it to Joel to keep an eye on him like he did for her. Plus, even though she is feeling decently confident about the immunity thing at this point, she feels safer when she’s awake. That way she can keep an eye on the bite, keep track of how she’s feeling. If she happens to be feeling a little sleepy right now… the pacing should take care of that.

She spends a lot of this time thinking. About Marlene and the Firefly cure. About her mother, whoever she was. About Riley and Sam and Tess, who didn’t share her incredible luck. And of course, about Joel. Much of his rant outside had sounded like nonsense, but his despair had been understandable enough. It scared her, seeing him like that. If someone—or something—bad had snuck up him while he was…

She doesn’t want to think about it.

She winds up perched on the arm of the couch, right next to Joel’s head, watching the sunrise through the window. Between the sound of Joel’s steady breathing, and the light pink glow coming off the snow, she’s pretty content. At some point, they’re going to have to figure out what to do. It’s starting to seem like she really might make it past their time at this house. Sure, they only got here a few days ago, but given that she’d had every reason to believe that she was gonna end up buried outside it? 

It’s weird.

She’s still sitting there, staring down at Joel’s face, when his eyes are suddenly staring back. He sucks in a breath, and she holds hers, and when they finally speak, it’s at exactly the same time.

“You’re immune?”

“Who’s Sarah?”

Chapter Text

Joel makes her go first, of course. Patiently as she can, she recounts everything Marlene told her back in the QZ, trying to get the details right even though that interaction was eons ago. Joel is uncannily still the whole time she talks, poised on the edge of the couch with his hands braced on his knees. 

If he’s blinked since she started talking, she’s missed it.

Standing in front of him as she is, with him staring so intently, Ellie feels bizarrely like she’s giving one of the oral presentations they had to do in FEDRA school, whenever the teachers felt like pretending they cared about learning. Like the time she had to give a five minute talk on the food pyramid. Except the topic this time is “how I managed not to die.”

She trails off awkwardly at the end. “That’s about it. I think maybe they were supposed to tell me more on the road but… well.” She doesn’t need to fill him in on what happened at that point.

Heavy silence reigns while Joel comes to grips with what she’s told him. “Okay…” he says finally. “Let me make sure I got all this. The thing with your mom—that’s why the Fireflies were interested in tryin’ to get you out of the QZ?”

“I mean… FEDRA was definitely going to execute me if they got the chance”— Joel’s nose wrinkles at this unpleasant reminder—“but yeah pretty much.”

“And the Fireflies know… that your thing is something they could use for whatever harebrained cure scheme they got cooking out west?” 

It’s pretty clear what Joel thinks about their whole operation. It also comes as no surprise. She doesn’t want him to think she’s some naive kid though. “I don’t know. Maybe. They said something about… tests? But they were right about me. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Maybe,” he grumbles. “They’ve been saying that shit for years though. Finding cures and such.”

“You don’t believe they can do it?”

He clearly wants to say no, but his face softens when he sees how expectant she is, rocking back and forth on her heels. “I don’t know anymore, kiddo. I mean…” He waves a hand vaguely at the healing bite on her arm.

“But do you think it’s true? That I’m immune.” She wants to hear him say yes. Actually, she needs to hear him say it. 

“I’ll be feelin’ a lot more confident about it three months from now,” he admits, toying absentmindedly with the broken watch on his wrist. “But yeah. Can’t be a coincidence, Marlene telling you all that and then you not getting sick.”

“Cool.” She nods, very casual. Just a very casual confirmation from an adult she trusts that she’s probably not imminently approaching her untimely death. “Very cool.”

For the first time since this conversation started, Joel abandons his whole pensive and surly thing in exchange for a warm smile. “C’mere,” he beckons, hands reached out towards her. She takes them, lets him draw her closer so that her legs brush his knees. His thumbs rub lightly along the knuckles of both hands. “Whatever it is that your mama did, I…” He swallows heavily and—Jesus, is he tearing up? She shoots her gaze down to their intertwined hands, suddenly strangely embarrassed, but, nope, that makes her start tearing up. 

They’re a fucking mess

“I’m just so grateful to her,” he continues gruffly, “I wish I could thank her.” He raises her hands to his lips, plants a kiss on each; the hair of his mustache tickles a little.

She huffs out a delirious giggle, relieved and overwhelmed at once, then throws her arms around him. He’s laughing too, also delirious, almost certainly still sleep-deprived, as he hugs her back with a mighty squeeze. 

They stay that way for a while; if Joel seems loath to let her go again, Ellie certainly isn’t going to complain.

Then there’s the matter of Sarah. 

When she reminds him it’s his turn now, Joel is so hesitant, so restrained, in response that she almost backs off, almost decides to let it go. Her dead person’s prerogative probably doesn’t apply anymore. In any case, she doesn’t think it’d be fair to push him on it, to make him feel obligated after he’s already done so much for her.

Hell, he might not even remember saying the name while he was out there all barefooted and crazy in the snow. 

But after some characteristic verbal flailing about, he sets his jaw firmly. “Sarah’s my daughter,” he says, each word effortful and pained.

And of course. She’d all but figured it out while Joel was asleep, had wondered—if not quite suspected—for a while. Enough that if you’d held a gun to her head and asked her to wager her life on whether or not Joel’d had a kid before, she would probably live to tell the tale.

It’s still a shock to finally hear it. It still makes things make sense in a way they didn’t before.

“When…”

“Outbreak day,” he quickly supplies. Also not a surprise, given what she’s gathered about his past, his violent early days. “That first night."

She worries the end of her ponytail between her thumb and her forefinger. They’re still sitting on the couch, now with Ellie leaning against one end, legs thrown across Joel’s lap. He’s got one of her ankles in his hand, and while it’s not a hard grip, she gets the impression that it’s his way of holding on for dear life, of staying attached to something.

It’s maybe an overstep, but she has to ask. “Did you have to…”

“She wasn’t infected.” 

Oh. Ellie isn’t expecting that, and gapes at him long enough that he assumes it’s a question. “Soldier shot her.”

She feels like the air has been punched out of her chest. 

“It was chaos, that first night. Soldiers saw everything as a threat,” he says with a shake of his head. His tone is controlled, level, but the haunted look in his eyes, the tremble of his hand on her ankle, betray him. “She wasn’t a threat though. Just a kid. ‘Bout your age. I was holding her, but. Didn’t matter. The guy shot and I wasn’t fast enough and Sarah got hit and…” He chokes on the end of that sentence, presses the back of his hand to his lips and struggles for breath, not bothering to do anything about the tears rolling down his cheeks. 

“Jesus,” she exhales. She hates this, so, so much. Hates that someone did this to Joel. Hates that it’s not even all that surprising. Hates that she can’t do anything to make it better for him now.

“World went to shit and a few hours later my baby girl was gone,” he finishes miserably. He must’ve really loved her, Ellie thinks, for his pain to be this raw twenty years later. Or maybe that’s how all parents would feel in his shoes. She’s a kid who’s never had a parent; what does she know about parents who no longer have their kids?

She can’t think of a single thing to say that isn’t stupid or useless. “I bet…” She almost stops herself, then thinks fuck it. “I bet you were a great dad.” Because that’s why this all makes horrible, terrible sense. The things Joel does, the things he has done, to keep her safe and to make her feel safe—they’ve always felt practiced. Like the care he’s capable of wasn’t coming from nowhere. 

Now she knows it’s Sarah she has to thank for it all.

She fully expects Joel’s response to be denial or guilt or more of his trademark self-loathing… but instead he tilts his head a little to the side, regards her with his teary gaze. “You two… you aren’t really that alike, but I think you woulda liked each other. You’d’ve made her laugh.” He chuckles, and it sounds a little like a sob. “She liked callin’ me old too.”

The comparison feels weighty. Not unwelcome, but perhaps more momentous than Joel’s words let on, if taken solely at face value. 

He’d called Sarah his baby girl.

He’s called Ellie “babygirl.” Admittedly, not his baby girl. 

But still.

Important conversations out of the way, Joel declares that they’ll be staying at the house a while longer. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, or think something bad’s gonna happen,” he clarifies. “Just want to keep an eye on things. Let you rest up real good, make sure you’re set before we make any moves.” 

She’s pretty sure he’s not lying, that he isn’t secretly going to be sitting there keeping vigil, expecting her to turn. No, for her sanity, she does her best to believe in his belief that she’s immune.

Plus, it’s not like Joel couldn’t still use more rest—one good night’s sleep can’t exactly make up for four or five days without it. Frankly, he still looks like shit.

Not that Ellie is under any impression that he’s weighing his own well-being into these calculations at all. But if she’s a little more obliging toward his plan because she thinks it’ll be good for him… well, two can play at this “watching each others’ backs” game.

What really feels like a step in the right direction is when Joel drags a mattress down from the bedroom and sets it up edge to edge with the couch. This means he’s actually entertaining the idea of not being a voluntary insomniac. 

“This way you can keep your couch,” he tells her. Never mind that he’s also conveniently set things up so that they can sleep within arm’s reach of each other.

Which, as it turns out, is kind of necessary for sleep to happen at all. At this point, Ellie feels something like ninety percent certain she’s immune and ten percent convinced it’s a horrible fluke that is going to fail any second. This ten percent weighs on her heavily, as does the fear that lingers with it. During the daytime, when she’s well rested and awake, chatting with Joel or gathering wood or working on the puzzle they found on the bookshelf—this fear is certainly present, but it’s manageable. 

But when it gets late, when she closes her eyes and tries to relax into sleep, the fear because something much more insistent, something far more oppressive.

The first night after their talk, she tries to manage on her own, only a few feet away from Joel, the outline of his form visible in the dim firelight. The thought of sleeping and never waking up again catches hold of her. Had Sam fallen asleep before he turned? Was that how it happened for him? She has no way of knowing, because unlike Joel she hadn’t stayed up with him. Even though she promised…

She doesn’t realize how heavily she’s breathing until Joel pops up from his mattress, voice rough with sleep but gentle. “What’s wrong, babygirl?”

She just shakes her head, mouth glued shut by panic. Her hands work, so she grabs for Joel. That’s all he needs, and soon she’s wrapped in his arms. It’s only like this, with the low hum of some unfamiliar tune rumbling in his chest, that she calms enough to sleep.

After a few nights, she graduates to getting by with holding his hand as she nods off. It means leaving one arm draped off the side of the couch. The comfort is worth the risk of waking with a dead arm, but this never happens. Joel must be taking care of it for her once she’s asleep: every time she wakes, she finds herself with both arms tucked comfortably to her body, blankets arranged so that her neck is covered but her feet peek out, just as she likes it.

For his part, Joel gets to sleep just fine, as far as she knows. His is a different problem, she discovers when she’s awakened by his trembling hands pulling at her.

“What the… Joel?” Her sleep-logged brain is slow to catch up. She clumsily pushes herself into a half-seated position, and that, apparently, gives Joel the opportunity to do what he wants—crush her against his chest in an almost painful hug.

“Okay, okay, okay,” he pants. Ellie is just getting her wits about her enough to worry he’s lost his mind again when he pulls back and examines her face. His eyes are shining, even in the dark, but he’s fully present, thank god.

“Sorry,” he whispers, as if trying not to disturb her too much. A total moot point, and she barely suppresses a giggle, the absurdity of the whole thing inexplicably hilarious in her half-conscious state. She won’t laugh at him, though, not when he’s so vulnerable. “Had to make sure…”

She nods. The rude awakening is maybe not ideal, but she gets it. She really does. He needed that, for some reason. She could probably guess why but doesn’t bother, instead touching her forehead to his and then relishing how he tucks her back in.

In the morning, she is as quick to brush off his apologies as he is to (repeatedly) offer them. He’s acting all stupid and embarrassed about it. “I really don’t care, dude.”

“Won’t happen again,” he assures her for the fourth time. 

Which is sorta, kinda true—the next time he feels the overpowering need to check on her, chased awake by some horrible vision of her demise (she assumes), it’s just his knuckles brushing gently across her cheek. Or after that, it’s a hand resting on her shoulder. Or a kiss pressed to the crown of her head.

She doesn’t mind, these little touches, Joel’s reminders to himself that she’s still there. They barely wake her—feel more dreamlike than real most of the time—and she more than welcomes how they remind her that he’s still there too.

The plan is still to get to Tommy first. “And then the Fireflies?” Ellie asks hesitantly. Now more than ever, she has a sense that maybe there’s a purpose to all of this, beyond just getting her out of the QZ. Because that could’ve been achieved if someone had just found her a tent and a nice patch of woods somewhere—no deadly trek to Wyoming necessary. 

Then again—now more than ever she doesn’t want to have to leave Joel. Or for Joel to leave. She wants to help, wants to be part of the cure, of course. But she isn’t keen on the possibility that this would mean parting ways. With the one person who currently stands between her and being utterly alone in the world.

Joel proves reluctant as well. “We gotta read the situation first,” he hedges, prying the lid off a can of pears with his knife. He rolls his eyes when she makes grabby motions toward it, but hands it over without complaint. Fuck yeah, pear time. Joel’s been making them focus on eating the game he’s catching, to preserve canned food. Nutritionally, it’s probably better this way. But rabbit gets a little old after a while.

“This was always why I was being sent to them,” she reminds him, fishing a slice out with her fingers.

Joel frowns. “Yeah well…I didn’t know that before.”

She pauses mid-chew. “So before you knew what the reason was, you were okay with handing me over to them?”

This sends him sputtering. “Well that ain’t… truth be told, I wasn’t ever sure…”

She spares him from whatever spiral that’s about to be. “Now we know there’s a good reason for me to go there, okay?”

He rubs a hand along his beard, brow furrowed. “Yeah, that’s what I’m ‘fraid of.”

“Of me being helpful?”

“Of them treating you like some sort of experiment.” 

She hadn’t thought of that. What a fun new thing to worry about. “I’m sure it’s just like…a blood draw or something?” Even as she says this, Sam’s face dances through her mind. Her blood didn’t do shit then. Though maybe it hadn’t been… activated yet?

“Yeah well I ain’t leaving you with them,” Joel grumbles, snatching the pears away from her before she has a chance to kill the whole can. He pokes at them with his fork. “Even if you’re always hogging all the good food.” 

She feigns outrage at his theft and accusation, but her cheeks burn so hot with the acknowledgment that Joel is going to stick with her that he must notice. 

If he does, he doesn’t mention it, simply adding, “don’t trust those Firefly assholes as far as I can throw ‘em.” He shoves the can back into her hand. 

He’s left her the last slice. It tastes like a promise.

The night before they plan to set off again, Joel declares that they need to have A Talk.

“Okay…” She puts Will Livingston over the back of the couch so that her page is held, then turns to face him, arms tucked under her pillow to prop her head up.

Joel is fighting with a loose thread on his blanket. Cool, so whatever this is about, it’s going to fall into the territory of “things Joel ain’t so good at talkin’ ‘bout.” 

She waits patiently until he takes a loud, deliberate breath. “I just… when we’re back on the road. I want you to be careful.”

She pulls a face. “When have I not been careful?” She mostly means it: she goofs around, and generally relies on Joel to do the heavy lifting safety-wise. But she’s not reckless. And she’s not stupid. 

“Well, uh…” He raises his eyebrows, and makes a little circular motion with his head. It reminds her of the infantilizing way her teachers used to talk to them, which causes a spark of annoyance in some petty part of her. And then she realizes that he’s not just indicating the house, but the whole situation they’re in and…

Oh. Well. That’s a little insulting actually. “Fuck you, asshole,” she spits out. “That wasn’t me not being careful. That was me saving your fucking life.”

“Well that ain’t you job,” Joel bites back. It’s a short fuse day for him, judging by how tightly he’s gripping the blanket in his lap. There’s something else too: he looks about ready to crawl out of his own skin.

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah well… it worked out. And now we know I’m immune! So who cares whose job it is?”

“Me,” he snaps, hitting his chest as he does, for emphasis. “I care, okay? You may be immune to Cordyceps, but you’re not immune from being ripped apart by fucking clickers.” 

She scoffs, irritated by him making a good point. It seems to further incense him. “I need you to hear me, loud and clear.” He leans forward until their faces are only a foot apart, expression hard and serious, eyes flinty and unyielding. With the way the firelight casts shadows on his face, she finds herself glad, not for the first time, that he isn’t her enemy, that he’s on her side. He would be a truly frightening foe.

His voice is tight and sharp, made all the more imposing by how softly he speaks. “Don’t you ever, ever risk yourself for me again. Ever. You hear me?”

She wants to fight him on it, feels the intensity of her own anger rising to meet his. He must judge her silence too long, too resistant, because he reaches out and hooks a finger under her chin, forces her to look him straight on. 

“Promise me, Ellie.” There it is again, that fragile something in his gaze that she first saw in that motel outside KC. She wants it to go away. So she relents.

“Fine. I promise.” Then she flips over, pissed, so that she’s facing the back of the couch and not Joel’s stupid face anymore. “Didn’t even say thank you,” she mumbles into the cushion.

A heavy sigh, rustling fabric, then a hand comes to rest gently between her shoulder blades. “Hey, c’mon kiddo. I’m sorry for getting mad. I just—I just want you safe. S’all.” And isn’t that just the wildest thing about all of this, that he is completely sincere and she knows it. That she matters to him. “Don’t want you getting hurt,” he adds, tapping her spine softly with one finger.

She glances over her shoulder, shifts a little so that she’s not quite as closed off to him. “Yeah well I could say the same to you. Not sure how much more keeping me safe that hand can take.”

At this point the bruises on his knuckles have started to yellow and fade, but she’s seen how he favors it, how some actions make him hiss with pain. He should probably not punch so many hard things. It’s his shooting hand, after all. 

He chuckles wryly, reaches over to brush the hair out of her face. “Probably true, kiddo. It’s healing up just fine.”

“So is this,” she offers back, waving her arm at him. A reminder that, no matter his fear, his regret over what happened, she’s still here. 

“Hm,” he muses. “That it is.” The bite is mostly an imprint at this point, the teeth marks a little pinker where new skin has grown; otherwise, what’s left is just the swirling lines of raised skin interrupting the flat plane of her forearm. “Shouldn’t be a problem with long sleeves and jackets right now but we gotta be careful with that too. Someone else sees that bite…”

He doesn’t bother finishing that sentence. They both know how it ends—and how things would end for her.

“Maybe it’ll go away eventually?” Somehow she doesn’t think this is going to happen, but hope springs eternal and all that.

Joel clearly shares these doubts. “We’ll figure it out,” he reassures her all the same. “I still can’t believe that—I mean…” He watches as she traces a finger mindlessly along the path of one of the tendrils. “Most important thing is that it never gets any worse. That you’re not going to turn,” he tacks on, emphatic. As if he could make it so by his words alone.

“Yeah well… having to wait so long… the anticipation was killing me.” She flops back around so that they’re face to face, raising her eyebrows as she waits to see how the joke lands.

For a split second she thinks she’s made a horrible misstep. The he rolls his eyes and lets go a dramatic breath, puffing out his cheeks. “Really, really terrible.” He gives her a look of mock betrayal. “Seriously, less than zero. Negative a thousand out of ten. Here—“ He snatches her pun book from above her, lays it, pages still opened, over her face. “Don’t talk to me again until you find something to make up for that.” 

She kicks out blindly toward him as he retakes his spot on the mattress. He blocks it without so much as a glance her way. “Seriously, study up.” She laughs, and picks up reading where she left off.

The next morning, just as the pale winter sun crests the horizon, they let the fire die completely for the first time since they arrived, and gather all their stuff. They step out into a crisp, clear day, put the house to their backs, and start walking. At the last possible moment, Ellie spares a glance back, torn about leaving it behind. First they’d thought they’d be spending just a night there; then she thought she’d die there. Terrible things had happened, but it also was the place where she started to figure things out with Joel. Where she found out that he cares about her. After those initial, harrowing days, their time in that house was, bizarrely, the safest she’s ever felt.

A few steps later, the chimney disappears among the trees, and she hustles to catch up with Joel.

About a week after their return to the road, Ellie fails to mention aloud how one of their cans of veggies tastes a little sketchy. Very little old food tastes good—Chef Boyardee being the main exception—so she just writes it off. That is, until she wakes up in the middle of the night and promptly vomits all over her sleeping bag.

The terror in Joel’s eyes is apparent. If she could talk between all the retching, she’d remind him that she’s never heard of anyone puking in the process of turning. Then again, she’s never heard of anyone making it this long after getting bit. It’s all new territory these days.

In the end, Joel’s fears are only assuaged an hour or so later, when he abruptly takes a break from rubbing Ellie’s back to empty his own stomach, blessedly not on a sleeping bag this time.

“Thank god,” he groans once he catches his breath, wiping his mouth with the back of a shaky hand. Tears have leaked from his eyes, and Ellie is certain at least some of them are from relief.

She pats his head sympathetically, attempting to imitate the comfort he’d given her. “Fuck mixed veggies, man.” 

Whether it finally is or already was Christmas, there’s no denying that it is absolutely, properly cold now. Ellie’s got on at least three layers of everything, yet it never seems to be enough. The wind burns her exposed cheeks, and she takes to walking with her gloved hands cupped over her mouth, trying to steal back some of the warmth from her own breath. Even her fucking teeth are cold.

Each time they come close to a city or settlement, it’s the same story: nothing but infected, moaning and stumbling about like the world’s most macabre snowmen. “Tommy’s not there,” Joel grumbles as they trudge away from Laramie. One way or another he has to be right: Tommy was never there, Tommy was there but left, Tommy was there and what’s left is no longer really Tommy. 

He pushes their path ever wider around these areas, eventually takes them away from seemingly all civilization.

Ellie is hungry all the time. Joel must be too, the way he sighs every time he takes stock of their meager provisions. They don’t seem to be doing any worse off than they were before their detour—the highly sanitized name she’s given to the time they spent waiting to see if she was going to die—yet her body aches with hunger in a way she’s never felt. “It’s the cold,” Joel explains. “Takes a lot of energy for your body to stay the right temperature in this weather.”

“And what happens,” she pants, struggling with her footing on the snowy hill they’re climbing, “if I want that food to do other things? Like maybe fill the fucking pit of my stomach for once?”

He doesn’t answer, just gives her a remorseful stare as he grabs the handle of her backpack to keep her upright. He more or less drags her up the rest of the hill, brooding the whole way.

Her servings get a little bigger after that. Joel’s are proportionally smaller.

Then comes the blizzard. 

It starts off like a normal snow: soft and quiet and probably very lovely to enjoy from the comfort of a heated home. But of course, there’s no roof over their heads, they’re in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and the snow, it turns out, has not intention of staying soft or quiet. As the morning progresses, the wind kicks up, and more and more snow is blown into their faces, whips around their feet, howls past their ears. The landscapes goes fuzzy, then fades out entirely. There’s nothing but grey-white all around. The visibility gets so bad that Joel makes Ellie loop her arm through the bottom strap of his pack and keep it there; given that she can only see about four feet in any direction, she does not object.

If they get separated, there’s no guarantee they’d find each other again.

Though the days are short this time of year, it still feels like an eternity passes by the time the grey-white begins to dim to smudgy black. Yet the weather shows no signs of letting up. They trudge on, hopeful for a place to take shelter. But fate is against them: no buildings, no caves, nor even any particularly sturdy trees materialize out of the icy tundra.

Ellie doesn’t even bother opening her eyes anymore, relying solely on her icy grip on Joel. It’s not like she’d be able to see anything anyway. 

Then the toe of her boot catches on something under the snow—a rock, a root maybe. Her legs are too leaden to react adequately, her mind too tired, her hands too cold. She loses her hold on Joel and finds herself face down in a snowdrift. Snow presses in from every direction, filling her mouth and nose and eyes; she’s drowning in it. She frantically thrashes about until she finds the air, the space, to cry out Joel’s name.

Immediately, strong hands are looping under her arms, pulling her up, setting her back upright. She sputters as Joel wipes globs of snow off her face. “There you go,” he mutters. “S’fine. You’re fine.”

She grabs onto the front of his jacket, to keep herself steady, to calm herself. At this angle, he’s blocking most of the wind from her face, and it’s a welcome reprieve. “When’s it gonna stop?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“I want it to stop.” She sounds like a baby, and doesn’t care. Is too tired to care.

“I know, I’m sorry”

The landscape around them is so dark, completely uniform. There’s just the two of them, and then total nothingness everywhere else. A void. Like outer space, in an “empty vacuum where no one can hear you scream,” existentially terrifying way. 

At least space has the light of stars. “Joel, what do we do?” She asks finally, unable to squash down the panic any longer.

“I’m sorry, babygirl. We can’t stop, not until we find a place to shelter or the snow quits.”

The little of her body that isn’t totally numb from cold hurts. She genuinely doesn’t know if she can keep going, mentally, much less physically. “I’m tired.”

She’d feel better if Joel didn’t sound quite so frantic himself. “I know, I know, but we cannot sleep, okay? Not when it’s like this. If we sleep, we’ll…”

Never wake up. Succumb to hypothermia. Die. 

A lack of will power doesn’t mean much when there’s no real choice. They keep moving. 

An eternity later, they stumble upon a rock formation that is just shy of properly qualifying as a cave; it’s a wedge-shaped area defined by two walls converging. If they squeeze far enough in, most of the wind is block. Since the rock faces almost meet as they rise into the air, it’s a near perfect mix of coverage and ventilation.

Ellie stays glued to Joel while he gathers wood as hastily as possible, terrifying visions of him disappearing into the white haze preventing her from resting until they’re both tucked away in their little refuge.

The rocks hold and reflect the heat of the flames; it’s not warm, per se, but it’s enough to take care of the immediate threat of freezing to death.

They eat in exhausted silence, both far more enthusiastic about the melted snow they’ve brought to a boil than their actual food. It’s Joel who has the brilliant idea to toss some jerky into the hot water. Jerky tea is a shitty substitution for real soup, but Ellie thinks it may be the most wonderful thing she’s ever consumed. 

Eventually, Joel lets loose a heavy groan, and nudges her bag with his knee. “Alright kiddo. Shoes off, switch socks. Anything you got on that feels damp too.”

She huffs in annoyance—de-socking to re-sock sounds cold—but starts the process of working her laces free regardless. It takes much longer that it should, her fingers numb and indelicate. Right as she gets her second foot free, she’s distracted by a pained hiss from across the fire.

“Dude,” she gasps as she catches sight of the cause. He’s literally peeling off one of his own boots, the tattered sole sticking to the bloody mess of his foot, the remains of his sock nothing but a giant hole.

“Yikes, man.” She cranes to get a better look, then wrinkles her face in disgusted sympathy. “That looks like ground meat.”

“Gee, thanks for the really constructive input,” he chokes out, teeth gritted as he finally works his foot free. “Fuck.”

She’s already digging through his bag, and unearths their precious roll of gauze. “Thanks,” he says, regarding the foot like he’s scared of it.

Which is fair. Because damn does it look painful—rubbed raw, mottled bruising visible under the less heavy smear of blood on his heel. She can’t believe he even managed to walk, let alone hide that he was injured this whole time.

Joel cusses his way through the process of getting the area wrapped. As he pulls on another pair of socks, his eyes land on her own feet. “Ellie,” he admonishes. “Change them.”

Oh. She’d honestly forgotten in her concern for him. It’s not like her feet are the ones they need to worry about anyway.

She switches out her base layer shirt too—Joel’s right, that asshole, about the sweat-dampened fabric making her chilly. How precisely she’s managed to sweat while freezing her ass off for all twenty or whatever hours of their blizzard hike, she’s not sure. Her replacement top feels absolutely luxurious in comparison.

Joel stops her before she can pull her jacket back on. “Keep that off,” he tells her, patting the space where he’s laid out their sleeping bags, side by side with the openings facing. “I can keep you warmer this way.” 

She slips into her sleeping bag, happy to oblige but a little confused, until Joel does the same, overlapping the tops of their bags tightly. They’re closed in, burrito-like, and he seals them in by laying their coats carefully across the seam.

“Okay?” He asks once he gets his arms tucked in. Only the space between their noses and foreheads remains uncovered.

“Mmhm.” Joel is a fucking furnace, and Ellie burrows closer to his chest. He drapes an arm across her and they sigh in unison, relieved to be warm and at rest.

Neither of them even pretends to care about keeping watching.

“Who’s this little psycho?”

Ellie will never admit it, but she can’t help but respect this dude and his wife. Like, yeah, they’re so old that they make Joel look like a spring chicken. Yet as much as Joel has the upper hand right now—has a gun trained on them, is kinda holding them hostage in their own house—they seem remarkably unbothered by it all. 

It makes her wonder what they’re capable of, really. 

Doesn’t seem like things should come to that though. The woman giving them soup had been a pretty good omen. 

This is definitely for the best. Because as well as Joel is playing his tough guy role right now, he’s not exactly in prime condition. If the pair are half as smart as they seem, they’ve noticed how he’s standing with all his weight on one foot.

The other one is undeniably, well and truly fucked. Joel can’t even feign a normal gait anymore, and no amount of duct tape—on the boot or around his foot—can fix it. When they get some momentum going, he manages okay. But, ever since the blizzard, the start and end of each day have been soundtracked by stifled groans and pained hisses.

He tells her not to worry about it, as if that’s possible. She’s not sure how much longer they can keep going like this, half-starved with only three good feet between them. They need to find Tommy, like, yesterday.

The woman is less than reassuring. “If your brother’s west of the river, he’s gone.” 

“You’re not gonna scare us,” Ellie scoffs. Please. River of Death. That’s just crazy old people bullshit.

She raises her eyebrows, expression otherwise impassive. “Scared him.” And—shit, this stranger has read Joel like a fucking book. He looks panicked, on the verge of freezing up like he did back at the house. 

“Joel,” she hisses, trying to snap him out of it. Not a good time for him to go all weird.

His eyes shift between her and the old lady a few times before he speaks. “Where else? What else is out here?” He demands. 

The couple exchange a significant look, a silent conversation that reaches some accord when they both nod. The man kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, clasps his hands across his middle, and clears his throat. “Twenty miles northwest. There’s a couple of old cabins. Still in pretty good shape. I hunt around there sometimes, never seen another soul. Should be an okay place to hunker down through the cold.” 

Maybe it shouldn’t surprise Ellie that Joel is exploring their options, but it pisses her off a little that he seems to be making a decision unilaterally. “Where?” He shoves the map in front of the man’s face again. 

He barely even looks, just points, and then Joel turns to the woman. “You too—“

“Yeah, yeah,” she drones, rolling her eyes. Joel nods in satisfaction as she marks the same point.

“Thanks,” he grumbles, earning him a snort from the old guy.

“Hm. Manners.”

Given the circumstances, the couple is remarkably decent as they leave. Or maybe they’re just happy to see Joel and Ellie gone. Either way, the man slips Ellie a small package of jerky, and the woman calls out a dry “good luck out there” as the door slams shut behind them.

“Okay, you’re not seriously gonna give up searching for Tommy are you?” Ellie asks as they head toward the property line. Joel is hobbling away with an urgency she doesn’t understand; she has to hustle to keep up.

“Not giving up,” he retorts, holding their map up and scanning the landscape. 

She has no clue what he’s looking for. It’s all just white out there: endless white. She hates snow, she’s decided. It is the stupidest, shittiest, more horrible form of water ever to exist—and that’s saying something, from someone who can’t even swim.

If the water were warm enough, she’d take the possibility of drowning over this any day.

“Yeah, well, I can’t believe you’re gonna let some old fucks scare you enough to—hey, are you listening to me?” He’s halted at the fence, doubled over with one hand bracing against the cross beam. The other has gone to his chest. “Joel? Are you okay? Joel?”

“Shut up,” he grunts, chest heaving. His breaths form tiny puffs of steam, appearing and dispersing entirely too quickly.

“Holy shit, are you dying?” It’s never been this bad before, these moments where he gets all still and shaky. This seems more… physical. She doesn’t like how he’s clutching at his heart, doesn’t know if she should get ready to like… catch him or something, or if she’d just get squished. Or maybe she should go back and get the old people—

“I’m okay.” He’s speaking mostly to himself, she thinks. “Okay.”

“Are you? Okay?” She doesn’t really believe him, doesn’t buy the half-assed nod he gives her. He stands a bit more upright, no longer relying solely on the fence.

“It’s just… the cold air all of a sudden…”

She frowns at this lie. They’ve been in the cold for weeks now. 

“We gotta lay low for a while,” he says, as if he didn’t just nearly pass away in the middle of their conversation. “At least til the cold is less harsh.”

She doesn’t know why she’s arguing; it’s not like she’s enjoying this frozen wasteland. But it feels like they’d be conceding too much by stopping. Like this is their one chance, and it’s now or never. “That’ll be months!”

“Ain’t up for debate,” he snaps, and sets off once more. “I’m the adult, and we do what I say. So get to walkin’.” 

He really must be scared, Ellie realizes. It doesn’t do much to soothe the sting of his anger though, and she leaves more distance than usual between them as she follows.

This time it’s a squall, a total whiteout that blows up out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly, a raging fit that leaves behind an extra six inches of snow and surreally clear skies.

They’re lucky that they’re already at the bridge—the one crossing the river of not death—so they take shelter in the space under one abutment while it passes. Joel angles himself so that his back blocks any wind that whips under the bridge. Ellie keeps her face to his chest the whole time, a small pocket of warmth for her to focus on as she does her best to stave off her fear of another endless blizzard.

“See,” Joel tells her with a clap on the back when the landscape settles once more. The only sound now is the steady roar of the icy rivers. “Those ones that come up fast leave fast.”

“That’s good,” she replies absently, grimacing as she takes in the damage. Great. More snow to plow through with her tired legs. For both of them to plow through: if Joel thinks he’s even remotely hiding his limp at this point, he’s delusional.

But it’s not in his nature to let his own pain limit them. This she knows well by now. “C’mon,” he says, “across the bridge we go.”

When he points out the hydroelectric dam, he’s trying his best to be chipper and sound positive. So she cracks a joke, as is her obligation. They do their little ritual of bickering over the rating, even though they’re both too exhausted to really put their hearts into it. Something else is niggling at the back of her mind, just out of reach, and she stares blankly at the river trying to—

Wait. Wasn’t there only one river to cross on the way to the cabins? Was this river on the map?

“Hey, Joel…” Ellie begins, dread pooling in her stomach. “What if this is—“

The riders are on them almost as soon as they hear them, snow muffling the thundering of hooves until the last possible moment.

Joel has her by the hand in a flash, pulling her after him; not two steps into their attempted flight, something goes wrong with his bad foot and he winds up on the ground with a strangled cry. She tries to yank him back up, but it’s too late. They never even had a chance. The riders have closed ranks around them. 

Joel manhandles her behind him until she’s crouched at his back, one of his arms thrown awkwardly backwards, pinning her against him. Like he’s attempting to turn himself inside out just to shield her.

The riders look well-armed, well-insulated, well-fed. Everything they currently are not. Two of them—a man and a woman—share a meaningful look, and the woman lets loose a whistle, clear and pitched and ringing across the plateau. When another whistle echoes in response, from the direction of the dam, that’s when Ellie realizes they’re truly fucked. 

It’s a signal. As if they weren’t already outnumbered badly enough, there are even more nearby. Probably heading this way right now.

The man, apparently their spokesperson, leads his horse a few steps forward and halts, gun trained firmly on Joel. All of them are pointing their guns at them, which feels a tad excessive. “Stand up,” he orders.

Joel hesitates. The sound of multiple weapons cocking puts a fire under his ass and he struggles to his feet with a groan, still clutching Ellie behind him. She tries to leverage her weight, to take some of the pressure off his leg, but the way he’s holding her is too weird for her to be of any real use.

He tries talking the people down, tells them he’s just looking for his brother, just passing through. That they want no trouble.

The man is unmoved. “You girl,” he barks out, making Joel flinch and grip her even tighter. “Take five steps back. Do it. Now.”

She doesn’t think he’s gonna take no for an answer. Joel has completely frozen in place, and it takes no small effort for her to pry his arm away from her enough for her to comply.

Five steps feels like a mile. Like a chasm has opened up between them. She feels exposed. Worse, she catches sight of more riders approaching from the direction of the dam—and fuck, what a terrible time to be one hundred percent correct.

When she refocuses on the action in front of her, there’s a vicious looking dog being urged toward Joel. The leader guy’s words—“if you’ve been infected, he will smell it, and he will rip you up”—don’t fully sink in until the dog has already judged Joel clean. Thoughts sluggish from the fear coursing through her veins, she’s only just piecing together what this might mean for her when the man declares, “Now her.”

Oh fuck. Oh shit. Can a dog smell infection really? These people seem to think yes. But does whatever she has going on count for what the dog is smelling for? 

Her forearm throbs traitorously, a threat.

The dog is mere feet away. Joel is talking now, voice strained and catching in his throat. “We’re not sick. Please. She’s not… not sick. Don’t.”

She can’t quite see his face from where she stands, but his posture alone tells her he’s gone right now, zoned out, somewhere else, snared by terror.

She’s about there too. Things are blurring and buzzing. The other riders arriving. The noise of hoof falls. A commotion from the back, someone shouting, “holy shit!” The low growl of an animal with razor sharp teeth—

When the dog noses her hand, she thinks it’s the beginning of the end. Then his tail starts wagging furiously, and he jumps up, all paws and floppy tongue, trying desperately to lick at her face.

Surprised, she giggles, and the dog only gets more excited, more exuberant. Thank god you’re a fluffy idiot, she thinks, relief so powerful that she drops to her knees and kisses his warm head. 

She turns to reassure Joel everything is okay. Her smile drops immediately: he’s still frozen in place. And now the main guy has noticed, is narrowing his eyes at Joel.

That’s not great.

She pushes the dog away, makes to stand back up. Before anything else can happen, though, another man comes bursting through the perimeter, breathless. There’s something familiar about his wide eyes that clicks into place when the asshole man exclaims, “Tommy, what—?” 

“That’s my fucking brother, Carl,” replies the new arrival, before flinging his arms around Joel.

Ellie is not the only one present whose jaw drops at this revelation.

Joel, however, barely twitches in response. Tommy pulls away, just enough to search Joel’s expression, hands still firmly on his shoulders.

A look of recognition crosses Tommy’s face. Ellie takes a faltering step forward, enough to see that, yes, Joel is still in panic mode, blinking irregularly, lips quivering around unformed words.

“It’s me, big brother,” Tommy croons, ducking his head a little to catch Joel’s gaze.

Ellie feels a perverse stab of jealousy. It’s unbidden and a little silly. But still. She’s the one who helps Joel when he’s freaking out.

“T-tommy,” Joel finally whispers, one hand gripping his brother’s jacket lapel. “We—We’re not sick. Not sick. She…” And for the first time, Tommy’s eyes land on her. The confusion in them is understandable; the sadness and grief less so.

She drags the toe of her boot through the snow, a nervous little motion, suddenly feeling really fucking awkward.

“S’okay,” Tommy says, resting a hand over Joel’s. He smiles, and it’s such a caring, genuine smile, that Ellie immediately feels remorse for her jealousy. This man loves Joel. “She’s okay. Look.” He throws a little head motion her way, clearly beckoning her over; while she does not take orders from this guy, she doesn’t need to be told twice. She’s reattached to Joel’s side in an instant. 

It’s only when his arm is around her shoulders once more that Joel remembers how to breathe normally.“The girl is just fine,” Tommy reassures him. “Aren’t you, uh…”

“Ellie,” she supplies.

“Ellie. Aren’t you Ellie? 

“Mmhm.” She squeezes impossibly closer against Joel, imagines herself like a barnacle. No one’s scraping me off again. 

“Ellie…” Joel finally says, voice still shaky but far less constricted. “This is my… this is Tommy.”

Tommy gives her a faux salute. “How’dya do, little lady?” She snorts. All this way for another corny old cowboy.

“Just having an absolute blast being harassed by your asshole buddies out here in the fucking arctic tundra,” she retorts, earning her a scandalized “Ellie!” from Joel and an amused twitch of Tommy’s mustache. 

The younger Miller makes an appeasing gesture to his brother, then waves at the riders around them. “S’all good! I’ll vouch for ‘em. Can we get a horse?”

There’s idle chatter and fussing about as Tommy’s people break ranks, and he takes the opportunity to murmur to Joel, “What the fuck you doin’ here?” His eyes cut to Ellie once more, clearly the main but unspoken subject of his curiosity.

Joel claps Tommy on the shoulder with a chuckle. “I came here to save you.” 

Chapter Text

Once they reach Jackson—a whole, goddamn community out here in the middle of nowhere, who the hell knew?—Tommy wins points with Ellie by shuffling them straight off their horse and into the “community hall” with promises of a warm meal. It’s mid-afternoon, so there aren’t many people inside—a relief after the shock of seeing so many milling about, just living their lives as if that’s a thing people do these days. The contrast with the tense public spaces Ellie knows from the QZ is weird enough. Add to that the fact that she can count on one hand the number of strangers she’s seen since KC…

Joel leans heavily on Tommy as they make their way over to one of the tables, where someone has deposited two steaming trays of food. He’s putting on a brave face, but now that they’re safe and not in constant motion, he seems less interested in suppressing the grimaces and groans that accompany his movements.

Or maybe just less capable. Not long after Tommy had helped them up onto their horse, Joel had started flagging—that much was obvious by the way he kept listing forward in the saddle. Ellie had spent the whole ride with a vice grip around his torso, taking it upon herself to keep him upright as much as possible. Like an Ellie-brace. Her arms were sore now, but they made it without incident at least.

Tommy winces as Joel takes another pained step. “Something really did a number on you out there, huh?”

“These damn boots,” Joel hisses in response. 

Tommy regards the offending shoe, its duct tape reinforcement well in the process of peeling off. “Not sure that one can even qualify as a boot anymore.”

“Yeah well, what’s in it definitely doesn’t qualify as a foot anymore,” Ellie observes, plopping onto the bench and wasting no time in shoveling food into her mouth.

Tommy chuckles as he gets Joel similarly settled, cutting himself off with a little cough when Joel jostles his foot against the table leg and nearly yelps. “We, uh, we got a clinic,” he says hastily. “We can stop by once you’ve eaten. Maria can take Ellie to get cleaned up while we do that, if that’s alright with y’all.” 

Ellie turns to Joel—he’s never mentioned a Maria before. Judging by the way he’s squinting at his brother, he’s not sure who this Maria character is either.

Tommy must be expecting this response, and rubs a hand along the back of his neck. He’s blushing. “Maria is my… she’s my wife.” 

Oh damn. Twist. Joel chokes on his stew, and Ellie gives him a good hard thump on the back. His eyes are bugging out a little, which may have more to do with this revelation than the broth he accidentally inhaled.

Tommy is trying desperately hard to play casual, but it’s fooling no one, not even Ellie, who met him two hours ago. “You’re not the only one with surprises, brother”—it takes her a solid second to realize he means her—“But she’s… Maria’s your family now, and I hope you two can… oh, here she is.”

A woman is making her way over, still wrapped in a long, heavy coat. She greets Tommy with a kiss on the cheek. “Hey babe.”

She regards Ellie with clear confusion and curiosity, just as Tommy had. Unlike Tommy, however, her eyes narrow intensely at Joel. “You must be Joel,” she says, and her voice is miles from friendly. Icy even.

“Uh…” Joel gives Tommy a helpless look, receiving an encouraging nod in return. “Yes ma’am. This here’s Ellie.”

Ellie grunts out a greeting around her mouthful of food. If this woman is going to be cold to Joel for no reason, she feels no need for pleasantries. Two can play at this game.

Tommy stands to help Maria out of her coat, and any intention Ellie has of giving this woman the silent treatment abandons her immediately.

“Holy shit, she’s pregnant!”

There goes Joel sputtering into his stew again. “Jesus, Ellie, you don’t—“ Then he too catches sigh of Maria’s rounded stomach and he stops, stares mouth agape at her and Tommy.

“That’s okay,” Maria offers with a quick smile. “It’s obvious enough at this point. Yes, we’re having a baby.”

“Well fuck, congrats you two.” Joel still hasn’t stopped gawking, so Ellie elbows him in the ribs. “Say congrats, Uncle Joel.”

Joel clears his throat. “I…” His eyes soften when they lock on his brother’s expectant face. “Congrats Tommy. Both of you. That’s wonderful news.”

It’s a little tepid, as far as responses go, but Tommy is radiant with his brother’s approval. 

Ellie only half pays attention to the conversation that follows, intent on getting as much food in her as possible. When Joel tells her to slow down, she refocuses enough to notice that Maria is still staring absolute daggers at him, no matter how carefully she’s schooling her voice to sound pleasant and polite. 

Then Maria’s eyes flick over to Ellie, and she finds herself in the hot seat.

“So, Ellie, where’d you come from?”

“Boston.” No need to be forthcoming. May as well make her work for it.

“Sure, but how—“

“How what?” Ellie interrupts, slamming her fork down. “You clearly don’t need me to tell you how babies are made.”

Joel is mortified. “Ellie! What’s wrong with you? Where are your manners, kiddo?”

Her face twitches with disbelief. “Manners?! Since when have you cared about manners?” 

She’s not in the mood for pearl clutching by Mr. I Used to Ambush Innocent People, especially with his idiot brother across the table trying not to laugh and failing miserably. She’d be pleased when Maria thwacks him with a napkin if she hadn’t already decided that she hates the woman’s guts.

She has no right to treat Joel the way she is.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Joel offers with a grimace, eyeing Ellie meaningfully as if to say work with me here. 

And goddammit. She does feel a little bad for making whatever this is harder for him. Because as shitty and cold and worn down as she’s been feeling, it must be ten times worse for Joel. Who never fucking complains, but has clearly seen better days, between the foot and the dark circles under his eyes and the way his cheekbones have grown more prominent recently. All of that because he’s been taking care of her. 

Hence why she finds Maria’s apparent one-sided beef with Joel so intolerable. 

“Sorry,” she relents, and Maria purses her lips but nods all the same, tentative peace re-established. 

That’s the end of Maria’s attempt at mealtime information extraction, thank god. 

Ellie is not, however, thrilled when Tommy suggests next steps. Which include a house for her and Joel to sleep in (great!) with heat (super great!), a shower and new clothes for Ellie (fair enough), and a trip to the clinic for Joel. This last one has Ellie frowning, because it means not only separation from Joel (she’d rather not) but also that she’s being sent off with Maria (she’d rather have all her teeth pulled).

Honest to god, it’s like her body has forgotten how to let go of him—Joel has to physically pry her fingers away from the sleeve of his jacket as they get up from the table. “S’okay, babygirl,” he reassures her, “we’ll be quick, right Tommy?”

Tommy is blinking hard at Joel, like he’s just caught sight of him for the first time again. Joel lets out a low whistle, waves a hand in front of his face. “Tom?”

“Huh?” He replies with a funny little jolt, voice thick with some unreadable emotion. “What—oh. Yeah. Real quick, don’t worry, sweetheart.” When he smiles at her, she really sees the Joel in him. 

Terrible choice in spouse notwithstanding, she has to admit that he may be more than a dumb sheep after all.

If there is one thing Ellie took from her time at FEDRA school, it’s a whole playbook of tactics that she developed in order to be as obstinate and insubordinate as possible. She lost count of the number of times she got behavior reports back with something like “uncooperative” written in red across the top. It was a badge she wore proudly, this ability to resist the adults around her who always assumed they had the upper hand by default. 

So it doesn’t matter if Maria used to be some sort of fancy lawyer. She’s not getting shit out of Ellie.

So yeah, she does what the note Maria leaves on the bed (her bed?) says and shuffles across the street once she’s cleaned and changed. And she accepts the haircut. (She really does need it—it’s been bugging the hell out of her, but having Joel do something about it seemed like a last resort. She’s not that desperate.) 

She tells Maria she’s sorry about her kid (Ellie is stubborn, not a monster). 

Other than that, she is locked down, full defenses up, combative as hell. Refuses to answer Maria’s questions directly. Won’t tell her anything about how she ended up with Joel. Certainly is not about to tell her about her immunity.

She fights back when Maria talks shit about Joel, just like Ellie knew she would. Insults Tommy in the process—she kinda likes him, to be honest, but she’s not going to sit here and let his asshole wife act like he’s all innocent just because he let Joel boss him around. If he’d had a spine, maybe he wouldn’t have blood on his hands. That’s hardly Joel’s problem.

“Be careful who you put your faith in,” Maria tells her, when it finally seems to sink in that the interrogation tactics aren’t going to work. “The only people who can betray us are the ones we trust.”

Ellie glowers back. She knows Joel. The actual Joel, not the supervillain Maria has in her mind. Or… okay so maybe some of that was the real Joel, but it’s not him now. Now he does things to protect her, to keep her safe. She’s perfectly aware of what putting her faith in Joel means. It means having an adult who cares for her, just her, for literally the first—and only—time in her life. 

She takes too long to respond, and Maria presses her. “You understand?” 

“Mmhm,” Ellie grunts, then leaps out of her chair. She’s about had enough of this. “We finished? Cool.”

She flat out refuses when Maria tries to suggest she go watch some movies with a bunch of dumb sheltered kids. That’s a hard pass for a thousand reasons, not least of all that Ellie has no intention of being anywhere but wherever Joel is once he’s done at the clinic. 

Maria sighs, but doesn’t push it. “That house is all yours. So is this one. Find me if you need anything, okay?”

It’s a strangely generous and sincere offer, but Ellie doesn’t dwell on it. She blurts out a hasty “Okay, thanks, bye!” and makes a beeline back to the other house.

Ellie is curled up in the window seat, reading through the diary of the room’s former teenage occupant. Does it really count as being nosy if the person is probably long dead? It’s just getting good—apparently she and her best friend both had a crush on some boy with the unfortunate name of Clint, who was most likely a loser—when the sound of the front door announces Joel’s long-awaited return.

In reality, it’s been less than two hours, probably; it’s felt much longer.

“Ellie?”

“Upstairs!” She hollers back, tossing the diary away. Clint can wait. 

There’s an awful lot of ruckus coming from the stairs, and she’s starting to wonder whether she shouldn’t just go down and meet him when Joel appears at the doorway, Tommy not far being. He’s got a crutch now, doing a funny little hobble-hop with each step. He’s managing on his own, but Tommy’s hands keep shooting up like he’s about to grab Joel’s elbow. 

Joel drops onto the edge of the bed with a groan. “Okay, you can stop hovering now,” he grouses at Tommy, who rolls his eyes in return.

“Yeah well… let’s just see what happens when you stop movin’ around and get all stiff. Then you’ll be begging me to help you again.”

Joel shrugs. “Shower helped.” He must’ve showered at Tommy’s, because his hair is damp, and he’s dressed in an unfamiliar pair of sweatpants and a previously unseen plaid flannel—though they all kinda look the same, so maybe it’s one of his own. He turns to Ellie, gives her a once over. “You good?” 

She hums in assent, making her way over to sit on the mattress beside him, legs criss-crossed so that one knee just barely brushes his thigh. “You?” She nods toward his foot, which is now thoroughly wrapped in one of those stretchy bandages.

Joel waves his hand dismissively. “Ah, it’s fine. It’ll heal up.”

Having taken it upon himself to prop Joel’s crutch by the headboard, Tommy is now leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. He clears his throat. “By ‘it’s fine’ he means that the clinician is pretty sure he has a stress fracture, and by ‘it’ll heal up’ he means he’s not supposed to put any weight on it for at least a month.”

“Joel!” Ellie admonishes. She had no clue it was that bad. She’d assumed it was just like… the world’s gnarliest blister. 

Joel stops glaring at his brother long enough to give her knee a reassuring pat. “It will heal up. I’ve had worse, I promise.” 

Kind of a cold comfort, since at minimum “worse” here means “that time someone shot him in the head.” Plus, how the hell are they supposed to find the Fireflies if he can’t walk?

She’s not sure how much he’s told Tommy, so she tucks this away for a private conversation later. 

“Well,” she drawls, “Maria cut my hair. I can’t believe you didn’t notice. Or do you think it doesn’t look good?”

Joel’s face drains of color, eyes widening with panic. “Oh. I… it looks…”

“I’m just fucking with you,” she laughs, punching him in the shoulder. “It was like… half an inch. I know your eyes aren’t that good.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy cackles from his perch by the door. “Where’d you find this kid?” 

Maybe Joel hasn’t told Tommy shit yet.

“Yeah she’s a real hoot,” Joel deadpans, giving her a hard shove so that she falls back into the pillows. 

Tommy excuses himself soon after, though not before shooting Joel a meaningful look. “We’ll talk more later?”

Joel grunts in assent, already shifting back so that he’s leaned up against the headboard, next to Ellie.

“Prop that foot up,” Tommy calls over his shoulder as he disappears down the stairs. 

When they hear the sound of the front door closing, Ellie turns to Joel and raises her eyebrows, expectant.

“Didn’t really have a chance for a heart to heart with other people around,” he explains, taking one of the pillows from behind him and stuffing it under his wrapped foot. “S’fine, we can catch up later. I’m tired. Figured you’d be too. Tommy said he or Maria’d bring dinner by in a little bit, so that we can just lay low.”

He’s right. Her eyes are starting to get a little droopy, and she lets her head fall against his shoulder.

“Maria fucking hates you, dude,” she tells him.

Joel sighs. “Yeah, I got eyes.”

“Well I defended you, don’t worry.” The last part of this is lost to a yawn. It’s so nice to be in a warm house, to be able to relax without having to wrap up in a thousand blankets. She feels like she’s sinking into the bed.

“Thanks kiddo,” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head. If he says anything after that, she misses it, because she’s asleep not a minute later.

Ellie wakes to low voices floating up from the living room. She’s alone, wrapped in a blanket that hadn’t been there earlier. She must’ve really been sleeping hard for Joel to have gotten away without disturbing her. He’s not exactly lithe and soft-footed at the moment. 

“—s’fine, Tommy. Sit back down and listen to me okay? I promise. It’s real.”

It’s dark outside, but it doesn’t feel that late—plus she doubts Tommy would’ve come back over in the actual middle of the night. She sits up, scrubs at her face as she strains to hear. 

Joel is speaking again. “I was there. When she got… it’s been weeks, okay?”

“How?”

“My fault. She saved my life, threw herself in front of an Infected. Fourteen years old. Because I was too slow, and too fuckin’ deaf, to hear it comin’.” 

Her brief moment of pride at hearing him finally admit out loud that she’d saved him immediately sours when she clocks the rawness in his voice as he blames himself, yet again.

“And then… we waited and waited and nothing happened. Turns out that’s what the Fireflies wanted her for all along.”

“Jesus…” Tommy’s response is hushed and awed. Ellie finds that she can hear a bit better when she presses her ear to the wall.

“And I don’t know… I don’t know how to do this. How to do right by her. I’m not who I was. I’m weak. Out there today… I thought that dog was gonna tear her apart because it smelled somethin’ on her. And all I did was stand there. I couldn’t… move. Couldn’t think. I just… I was so afraid.”

“I saw. You were…”

“Keeps happening lately… sometimes the fear comes up outta nowhere and my heart… feel’s like it’s stopped.”

“Seemed like there were some… memories happening out there too?” Tommy’s voice is unbearably gentle.

Sarah. He must be talking about Sarah.

There’s a sniffle, and the sound of a throat being cleared.

She must’ve missed the part of the conversation where Tommy told Joel exactly where the Fireflies are, because Joel then asks, “This ride to the University… is it a suicide mission?”

“No. It’s dangerous, but it’s nothin’ you can’t normally handle. But…”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Not with this foot. It just means a lot to her, the possibility of this cure. I gotta figure out what I’m gonna tell her.”

“I… I guess I could take her.”

Ellie almost leaps to her feet, ready to run downstairs, protest, pitch a fit. She’s not about to get foisted off on some stranger, no matter if he’s Joel’s brother. 

He said they were going to stick together, that he wasn’t going to leave her—

Judging by Joel’s immediate and emphatic “No!” she has nothing to worry about.

“Okay, brother.” Tommy says, tone appeasing. 

“I appreciate the offer, I really do… I just… don’t know how long things would take and I can’t bear the thought of leaving her alone with them… and you have the baby coming. No. We have to wait.”

Heavy silence falls over the house, and drags on so long that Ellie begins to wonder if they’ve both fallen asleep or something.

When Joel speaks again, his words are so quiet she has to hold her breath in order to hear them. “I’m so fucking scared, Tommy. I can’t fail again. I won’t be able to…” 

“Hey, you’re not gonna—”

“I got her killed once already…”

“She’s upstairs sleeping, she’s fine.”

“No thanks to me.”

“C’mon, you got her here.”

“Barely.”

“Well she’s safe here, right now. Focus on that. I promise you, this place is safe.”

“Maybe…You can’t tell anyone about this, not even Maria.” 

“Joel…”

“No, you’re the only one I trust. Anyone else sees those bites on her, sees what’s under her skin… they’ll shoot her.” 

Ellie shivers at the reminder. Not for the first time she thinks about how if she’d done what she was supposed to do after getting bit—if Joel had done what he was supposed to do—they never would’ve known she was immune. She would just be dead.

“—figure it out,” Tommy is saying when she refocuses. “Jackson is a good place.”

“Seems like you got something real here.”

“I know lots of things are up in the air, and I don’t know if y’all have talked about what to do, you know, after, but… there’s a place for you here. Both of you.”

A pause. “I think maybe we’d like that.”

Tommy is chuckling now, and Joel seems displeased. “What?”

“Nothing, just… Tess sure did always know exactly what the fuck she was doing, that’s all.”

A sigh. “I miss her.”

Shuffling footsteps and the clicking of Joel’s crutch against the wood floors indicate that the conversation is coming to a close. “I think she’d be pretty pleased with herself if she saw you.” 

Joel just groans. “Get the fuck out of here. Go back to that wife of yours. Try to convince her not to hate me so much. Even the kid can tell.”

Tommy laughs, loudly. Ellie smiles to herself when Joel shushes him, clearly thinking her still asleep. 

“It’s really good to have you back, brother,” Tommy says, and she can hear him smiling too.

Joel works his way slowly back up the stairs—it must be painstaking, trying to be quiet, and she feels a little bad not telling him he doesn’t have to worry about it. But she doesn’t want him to know she heard their conversation, wants to keep it to herself until she has a chance to mull it over and decide how she feels about waiting before finding the Fireflies. 

When he finally eases his way back into the room, she’s laying down again, back to the door and breath as even as she can manage to imitate sleep. The mattress dips as he lowers himself down next to her. She tries her best to keep her face slack, in case he’s looking, but allows herself the indulgence of shifting a little bit closer, as if unconsciously. She’s rewarded with a contented sigh.

She falls back asleep contemplating the idea of an after in Jackson, with Joel. 

The next day, over a plate of leftovers dropped off by Tommy, Ellie listens patiently as Joel fills her in on details from the conversation she eavesdropped on and they agree to re-evaluate their Firefly plans once his foot is healed. She doesn’t like having to wait, per se, but given that she’d slept sixteen hours before Joel had decided to wake her… maybe she needs the break as much as he does.

So it’s small town living for them, at least for the immediate future.

They mostly keep to the house—Joel can’t navigate the snowy ground all that well, and Ellie doesn’t really feel the need to be a social butterfly. She’s more than content to spend most, if not all, of her time at the house with Joel, especially once Tommy finds them an old TV and VCR player. 

After the first week or so, Ellie starts to help Tommy out at the stables whenever he asks her to. She loves the horses. Their noses feel like velvet, and if tolerating a slightly smelly barn is the price she has to pay to nuzzle with the newest horse, Shimmer, then so be it. 

Once, Maria makes passing mention of enrolling Ellie in the school, and it is only respect for the baby growing inside her that prevents Ellie from punching her right then and there. Joel, thank god, takes care of it, responding appropriately and politely by suggesting that Ellie might start up the following fall instead.

Jackson is nice but weird. Seeing Joel in Jackson is also nice but weird. On the one hand, he’s more relaxed than she’s ever seen him. On the other… all of a sudden he seems to care about bullshit like manners and inside voices and pitching in. It’s super fucking annoying, and she’s worried she’s gonna give herself vision problems with all the eye-rolling she’s doing.

Sometimes, when he’s being fussy about her language at the dinner table with Tommy and Maria, she misses survival-mode Joel, who didn’t give a shit about her roughness. But then there is always some reminder that this whole thing—Jackson, the cure, her being with Joel—is about more than survival. Like when Maria produces a plate of gooey cookies and Joel grabs two for her and two for him. They’re so delicious, and for once her having enough, having a treat, doesn’t have to come at the expense of Joel also having enough or having something he deserves. 

The problem is that, as time goes on, Joel becomes mighty keen on avoiding any and all attempts at raising the topic of their trip to the Fireflies.

She doesn’t want to not trust him. He’s certainly never outright lied to her before, as far as she knows—and she’s pretty sure she’d know. 

It’s just that she’s starting to feel a little suspicious that he might be dragging his feet on purpose. Like yeah, he literally does still have trouble getting around with his broken foot—she calls it his “stressed out” foot sometimes—and even though she’s caught him trying to make do without the crutch on multiple occasions, it’s only been three weeks since they got to Jackson. But he won’t even talk to her about planning for when it’s better. Miraculously, something else important and subject-changing always seems to come up when she tries to broach the topic.

So she’s already starting to feel antsy and impatient about it. And then one morning Joel starts lecturing her about “getting to know people her age.”

She freezes like a rabbit, hand still on the jug of milk she’d been returning to the fridge. “What? Why would I do that?”

He takes a long drag of his nasty hot morning juice, and she wrinkles her nose. It’s a performance mostly—she actually kinda likes the smell now, by its association with him. Though the last time she tried a sip it was no less disgusting.

“I don’t know… could be good for you. Don’t you want friends?”

“I have you,” she points out. In all honesty, the idea of new friends scares her to death. Her last two friends—who, come to think of it, had been pretty much her only really friends ever—had both died horribly in front of her. She’s not looking to go through that again.

“Well, that’s awful sweet kiddo”—Joel reaches across her to shut the refrigerator door, which she’s always forgetting to close—“but you need friends your age. How else are you going to get through you moody teenage years?”

The strain on her eyes from all this rolling is really gonna be a problem. “Plenty of teenage years left for that,” she grumbles, turning on the sink to wash her breakfast dishes. 

“Why not start now?”

“No,” she counters. “Why start now? I can get to know other kids after we get back from Colorado. No point doing it before then.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Joel’s face do something strange—god help them both, it’s his we’re about to have a conversation face—and then he says, ever so calmly, “we need to reconsider our plans for the Fireflies.”

“What?!” She drops her half-washed oatmeal bowl with a clatter, whipping around to stare him down directly.

“I think we should wait out the rest of the winter here.”

Unfortunately the weather is not on her side at the moment, given that Jackson woke up to a bright new foot of snow this morning, topped off with gale force winds. She tries anyway. “We’re in Wyoming, Joel, it’s like always winter here!” 

He purses his lips at her exaggeration. “Spring will come soon enough. Ain’t no reason to go off now when it’s more dangerous than it has to be.”

“But… but what if they need me there now.” It occurs to her that they might’ve assumed she died on the road at this point. Though surely if they were working on a cure already, that’ll still be the case when she gets there.

“Baby, we don’t even know what they’ll want from you or how it’ll work."

“Well I know it’s more than just putting my blood on other peoples’ bites, because I tried that with Sam and it did not work,” she retorts bitterly, turning the faucet off with more force than is strictly necessary. The dishes can wait.

It’s clear exactly when he processes what she’s just said, because he braces himself against the counter, gripping hard, like he’s trying not to fall over. “What? You…”

She glares back at him. “Does it matter at this point?” Now is not the time for a scolding about something that happened months and months ago.

Joel lets his head hang, leaning over so far his forehead almost touches the countertop. “Guess not,” he grunts, reluctant to let it go.

She doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand. “I can’t help Sam anymore. Or… or Riley. Or Tess. But there are other people… maybe people here…” Maybe Joel, or Tommy, or Maria (who she’s starting to figure out, maybe even like, a little). Or their baby one day.

His posture softens. “I know you want to help people…I really admire that, I do.” 

Ellie crosses her arms, and leans back against the fridge, sick of his cautious adult shit. There’s a “but” coming, she just knows it.

Sure enough—

“But it’s been twenty years already. A few months here or there… I just don’t want us to rush out there if we don’t know it’s going to be safe for you.”

Unbelievable.

She waves her scar in his face, a wild motion that sends him reeling back a little. “This could save someone!” she yells, inside voice be damned.

“It has, babygirl, okay? It saved you.” 

“That doesn’t count,” she spits back. 

“Like hell it does.” He pulls her into his chest, and her arms wrap around him, as natural as breathing. “It means everything.” His words are a low rumble, which she feels more than hears through her ear pressed against his shirt pocket. 

His hand cups the back of her head, and she feels him sigh. “Saved me too.” She stiffens a little, caught off-guard by this comment. She remembers how he was, when it happened, so furious that she’d put herself in harm’s way for him. And then after, in no uncertain terms. Don’t you ever, ever risk yourself for me again. Ever. You hear me? 

Joel must take her shift in posture as assent, or something positive, because he pats her on the back,  pleased with the point he’s made. “See, that’s two people saved. Not half bad.” She just hums and holds on a few minutes longer, unsure of what else to say.

Days later, she’s still struggling to reconcile “don’t risk yourself for me” Joel with “your immunity is good because you saved me” Joel. Because she only saved Joel by taking that bite for him. By sheer dumb luck,  it just happened to work out that she didn’t die like he certainly would have. 

She supposes she’s glad that it went down that way, that she was able to protect Joel. Actually, no, she knows that she’s proud of this. 

It’s just that she’s also confused, because it’s kind of a cold comfort when she thinks about the long term, or about all the people in the world she can’t physically throw herself in front of. Hell, she doesn’t even know for sure that she’d be able to keep Joel safe a second time, much less, say, other people in Jackson.  

She says as much to Tommy when he makes a similar comment. “You saved him, you know.” They’ve been working in the barn, shooting the shit, but the conversation managed to wind its way to something more serious, as conversations sometimes do around here. 

She scowls, and chucks the horse poop out of her shovel with a bit too much force. It splatters against the side of the barn. “How much difference does that really make though?”

His brow furrows, and he strokes his mustache in a way Ellie has learned means he’s thinking. “Pretty big difference to me. He’s my big brother.”

She kicks at a root sticking out of the frozen mud; it doesn’t budge. “Yeah, but I can only human shield so many people,” she objects, frustrated that Tommy isn’t getting it either. Her immunity should mean something, but no one else around her seems to care.

“Oh,” he replies, little more than an exhale. “Ellie, look at me, please.” She does, and is shocked by how sad he looks. “That’s not what I meant, okay?”

“Huh?”

“No one is calling you a… a ‘human shield’ kiddo.” Ellie likes that Tommy does the “kiddo” thing too; it’s part of why she’s grown pretty fond of him, despite generally wanting to distrust basically all adults that aren’t Joel. 

The other day, she’d arrived at the stables a little late, and one of the ladies checking on the chickens had called out, “Your uncle’s already inside, dear!” She’d nodded blankly in response and hurried off, head buzzing with the implications of that statement. If Tommy were… then that would mean… but Joel isn’t actually… 

It might seem rude if she corrects people, she eventually decided. Tommy would probably understand, wouldn’t mind it.

Whatever he is to her, exactly, he’s not just some other adult. Hence whey she’s allowing this conversation to happen at all.

Tommy plops down on one of the hay bales, and pats the space next to him. “Here, sit.” Once she does, toes barely brushing the ground, he continues, choosing his words with great care. “When I say that you saved him—when he says that, and I know he has—we don’t mean because you took a bite for him. That’s the last thing we mean, actually.”

“He’s told you about Sarah, right?” His eyes are sad when he says her name, and Ellie remembers, once again, that Joel isn’t the only one messed up by her death. He was her uncle—her real uncle. 

She fidgets with the scarf around her neck. “Yeah, he told me what happened.”

“What about after?”

“You mean… all the bad stuff that both of you did? Ambushing and whatever?”

He grimaces. “Yeah, well there was all of that. But, I mean… I’m talking more about the why of that I guess.”

“Oh?”

“For the longest time, I felt like… like I lost both of them in that field. He was still here, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t my big brother anymore.”

He’s staring resolutely at his hands, and his voice has grown rough. “My brother, he doesn’t do well without a purpose, and he’s never been any good at finding that inside himself. When it was Sarah… he was the best version of himself. But then all he had was survival… protecting me, protecting Tess.” He gives her a wry smile. “S’not always a good thing that he’ll do anything for the people he cares about. Believe me, I know too.”

She squints at him, and he scoffs. “Come on, kid. You know how much he cares about you, right?” 

“Yes.” She does. Part of her still wonders whether the caring came before or after she was bit, before or after those four days she waited to die and Joel went sorta insane. Probably doesn’t make a difference. The end result is the same. 

“Not your immunity. You.” He bumps her with her shoulder to punctuate this point, and a smile tugs at her lips. “I guess that’s what I’m tryin’ to say. Your immunity saved him because it saved you. You got to keep livin’. Which also means he got to keep his purpose.”

It’s still cold as hell out, but her face is growing hot. Hopefully Tommy will think the pinkness of her cheeks is windburn. 

He seems a little busy being sentimental anyway. “I guess I owe you too… you brought me my brother back.”

She rubs at her face, unable to hide her smile anymore. Jesus, Williams, you’ve gone soft, she thinks to herself. “Okay…” She breathes out. “So I’m his… purpose, or whatever. But what about my purpose?” 

She checks to make sure the area is clear of other people, then shoves back her sleeve so that she can shake the scar in his face. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

He catches her arm, and carefully pulls her sleeve back down. “We can figure that out, okay? But also… you’re what… fourteen?”

“Fifteen this summer.” She draws herself up a little straighter. It doesn’t have the intended effect; the soles of her feet still don’t touch the ground.

“Alright, almost fifteen,” he grants, hands up in mock appeasement. “Point is, you’re a teenager. Your purpose is the same as all teenagers. Keep getting to know the world, give the adults around you hell, and learn what sort of person you are.” 

He drapes an arm across her shoulders, uses the other to gesture around them. “Trust me, in this world? That’s more than enough to focus on.”

Tommy’s message doesn’t fully sink in until Ellie sees a cute girl and nearly ends up with a concussion.

Joel has started picking up odd handyman jobs for Jackson residents—he’s not recovered enough to go back to full on contracting or whatever, or to go on patrol, but he’s unofficially been put on call for when a door comes off its hinges or a pipe bursts. 

It’s the latter of these small disasters that has Ellie tagging along with Joel and Tommy one clear Friday morning. The resident, Mrs. Harrison, isn’t home, which is great for Ellie—prime snooping opportunities, if she’s careful about it. There’s not much she can help with anyway: she mostly runs messages or tools back and forth between Joel, who has his torso wedged under the sink, and Tommy, who is outside fiddling around with the waterline. As long as she keeps an ear open for when they need her, she can do as much poking about as she wants.

This place happens to be a goldmine. This lady—whom Ellie has never even seen, as far as she knows, but now kinda wants to meet—has about fifty of those weird wooden dolls that you can open up and put other, smaller dolls in. She’s being what Tommy would call a “little scamp,” mixing up the inside dolls so that there’s a rabbit one inside the ballerina one, a nutcracker inside the old lady doll. That particular one was probably her favorite so far: the old lady had originally held progressively younger versions of herself, all the way down to a baby not much bigger than a peanut shell. 

She’s working down the line—they’re all out on the mantle, like a creepy miniature audience for whoever is on the couch—trying to think of the funniest possible place to hide the peanut baby when Joel calls out to her again.

“Can you stick your head out the door and tell Tommy to turn the water back on? I think I finally got it.”

“Yep!” She hollers back, carefully placing peanut baby where she won’t lose it before hustling off to pass the message along.

What happens next is really her own damn fault, as Joel would say. As she rounds the corner into the front hall, the heavy wooden door is open already, snowy street in full view. She’s rushing, not paying much attention to anything, and for this reason it doesn’t even occur to her that there is no cold air, no breeze, leaking through the doorway. And then she’s really not paying attention to what she’s doing, because her eyes are drawn past where Tommy is loitering in the front lawn, to a girl walking past who is about her age and, more importantly, has the longest, shiniest dark hair she’s ever seen and thick curled eyelashes and—

Her face collides with something, head bouncing back with a dull thwonk, and she finds herself suddenly on her ass. 

Startled, she instinctively cries out, “Joel!” Then she looks up and puts two and two together and oh god, she just walked headfirst into the glass door. Tommy is on the other side of it, looking about as stunned as she feels, as he too works out what just happened. Briefly, his eyes cut from Ellie to the receding figure of the girl and then back again. 

Ellie kinda wants to disappear. 

Joel comes barreling around the corner, nearly wiping out in his haste to get to her when he puts too much weight on his bad foot. “What?! What is it?” And oops, she seems to have freaked him out by calling his name all panicked like that, because he’s definitely on full alert, scanning everything around him for a threat that doesn’t exist.

Unless the glass door counts. 

A blast of cold air and a creak of the offending door announces Tommy’s arrival. He’s making a face that could be read as concern, but that she’s ninety-nine percent sure is actually just him trying very, very hard not to laugh. 

Fucking bastard.

Joel has taken a knee in front of her, hands fluttering about, looking for something he can fix. “I…” She sighs. “I ran into the door.”

Joel’s expression does a funny little twitch. God, not him too. But then he cups her face in his hands, and his voice is so wonderfully gentle when he says, “I’m sorry, babygirl. You okay?”

She nods, but her eyes sting with tears and there’s no way to hide it. It’s embarrassing, especially since she’s pretty sure she only tearing up because she’s embarrassed in the first place. Nothing really hurts. She bit her lip, but it doesn’t seem too bad and she wipes the blood off with the back of her hand.

“Bit of a shock, I imagine,” Tommy offers. “Hard to see ‘em with the light coming off the snow.” Joel nods in agreement, and she sniffles, appreciative of the bone Tommy’s throwing her.

He’s not wrong. Plus this is really fucking Mrs. Harrison’s fault for keeping her door so clean. 

“Sure you didn’t hit your head too hard?” Joel asks, waving a hand in front of her eyes as if that’s supposed to tell him something.

“Stop that”—she catches his hand before he can come up with any more creative concussion tests—“yeah it’s fine. Like Tommy said. Just surprised me.”

“You got a big ol’ red mark on your forehead,” Tommy points out, unhelpfully. His amusement at the situation is starting to win out, now that it’s clear she’s fine. 

She rubs her forehead, as if that could make the mark go away. “Yeah, yeah…”

“I’ll get you an icepack,” Joel says, hurrying off before she can protest. Because Joel is going to Joel. He loves with his actions, above all else, and that means being way too protective and cautious when it comes to her. 

He’s trying, she knows he is; she thinks maybe he had his own “come to Jesus” talk with Tommy. Because suddenly he’s talking about teaching her to hunt once his foot is better, to shoot the rifle and dress kills and all that stuff that she’s been begging to learn. He even got a map of Colorado that now lives on their mostly unused dining room table. He’s been studying the route to the university, coaching her through what he’s figured out already. 

It still sucks to have to wait, but these baby steps make it feel manageable, make it feel like they’re still working toward it even while they’re in Jackson.

“She didn’t see,” Tommy whispers with a wink while Joel is gone. She can’t help how her shoulders slump with relief at this information. Thank fucking god. 

“Let me know if you want me to introduce you two,” Tommy adds, shit eating grin plastered all over his face.

Then Joel is crouching in front of her once more, handing her the icepack. “Introduce who?” His eyes flit back and forth between them, confused, when he’s met with nothing but silence. 

Finally, Ellie clears her throat. “Uh… just another girl my age who Tommy thinks I could be friends with…” Tommy nods solemnly. 

That must satisfy Joel, because he says, “Oh. Great!” and doesn’t press any further.

Doesn’t mean Ellie isn’t still considering kicking Tommy’s shins. 

“Look at me?” Joel grabs her chin again, tilts it so her face catches the light. “Hold on. You smudged a little blood on your cheek.” 

Then he does something unexpected: he wets the pad of his thumb with his mouth and uses it to rub at the offending spot on her face.

She ducks back, slaps his hand away. “Ugh! What the fuck, dude? Did you just lick me?”

“I did not just lick you. I licked my finger and then used it to clean your face.” He says it like it’s a totally normal thing to do, like she’s the crazy one here.

“That’s licking! By like… the transitive property or something. What?!” He’s pinching the bridge of his nose, doing his this kid’ll be the death of me act. “I took math at FEDRA school.”

Joel scoffs. “How is it you know about the transitive property but not how to crack a goddamn egg?” 

One time. It was one time that Ellie had tried to crack an egg and had basically slapped it straight into the countertop, the full force of her palm sending raw egg and shell fragments all over the kitchen. Joel had found shell in his hair the next day, and since then it has been one of his favorite things to hold against her. 

Really, how the hell was she supposed to know what the proper technique was? 

“Sorry I didn’t grow up with eggs lying all over the place like you did during fucking pilgrim times.”

Tommy is doubled over so far with laughter than he looks like he’s trying to touch his toes.

Ellie presses the ice pack to her head, then turns to the man that, she admits to herself, is probably a little bit her uncle. “You don’t have an old folks home here, do you?”

He immediately rises to the bait. “Hmm? No, not yet, but maybe we should. Joel, you lookin’ to be a founding member?”

“Ugh…” Joel groans, though he too is laughing. “I can’t do this with both of you, Jesus. Turn the goddamn water back on, Tom.” He stands up, probably intending to stalk away dramatically, but he’s entirely undermined when both of his knees crack audibly.

Tommy’s and Ellie’s eyes meet. “Sooner rather than later,” Tommy says, voice serious, while Ellie nods along. 

“Yeah, we’re really worried for you, Joel,” she calls after him.

“I’m not the one who just walked into a door,” he throws right back.

By the time Mrs. Harrison’s sink is fixed, the mark on Ellie’s forehead has mostly faded, but her smile has not. As she follows Joel and Tommy back to their respective houses, stomping in the bootprints left by Joel’s steps, it strikes her that she might actually, finally, have a home. Again, and also kind of for the first time. 

There’s still Colorado and the Fireflies and the cure. It still matters to her, almost more than anything else. It would mean safety, for everyone, but most importantly the people she loves. Because she’s starting to have those again. 

But she’s realizing that’s a stop on the road to life in Jackson, not the other way around. 

Or actually, that’s not quite it: as great as Jackson is, it’s life with Joel that she cares about most.

She’s his purpose; he’s her home. Wherever he is, that’s where she intends to be. 

For now, there’s plenty to focus on, some of which will happen before then, some after. She’d like to learn to canter, and to be a part of training Shimmer when she’s grown enough. She’d like to teach Maria and Tommy’s baby all sorts of bad words. She’d like to finally convince Joel to sing for her.

And yes, she’d like to meet the girl with the dark hair and dark lashes.