Work Text:
It happens so fast that Ellie isn't even sure what she's seeing. One moment they're rummaging in the back office of some old warehouse, looking for anything still usable and the next Joel is opening an inconspicuous looking door and disappearing from her sight. Ellie's standing right behind him when it happens and it takes her a second to process Joel falling and getting bodily yanked across the floor, the thud of his mass, the shout of a curse and the crash of something heavy and metal lingers in her ears as he's pulled into the air by one leg.
"Joel!" She doesn't hesitate to run forward and reach out to him as he swings upside down about four feet off the ground, "Here," her arms outstretched, she grasps at his shoulders as he swings in her direction, pushing and pulling against him to halt the momentum, "I got you."
When he's relatively still she releases him and his arms drop to hang around his head, "God damn it." He curses gruffly and Ellie's gaze travels quickly up his body to the rope cinched tight in a loop around his right ankle, from there she follows the rope up another thirty feet where it snakes over a beam high near the factory's yawning ceilings.
"What just happened?" Her eyes continue to follow the rope across the ceiling to another beam where it then hangs down attaching itself to a big boxy refrigerator seated up on top of a long wooden work table across the room.
"Somebody must have set a trap." Joel's eyes are mapping the same path as hers because then he's gesturing to the fridge behind her, "That must be the counterweight, can you cut me down?"
"On it." She replies and pulls out her knife as she jogs the distance. Ellie clambers up onto the table before briefly wondering if she's even tall enough to climb up onto the fridge, too. There's a chain around the length of it and the rope holding Joel is tied taught right above the freezer that sits at the top.
She sticks her knife sideways between her teeth and spares one glance at Joel hanging helpless across the warehouse before she jumps and hoists herself up on top of the refrigerator where she balances precariously on her knees.
Grabbing hold of the rope, Ellie takes her knife and begins sawing at the thick material, her eyes anxiously glancing through the room for the first time in search of whoever may have been the mastermind behind such a trap.
There's banks of windows going up the side of the cavernous room almost three stories high and the setting sun is streaming into the open space, creating pools of warm light and contrasting dark shadows around them.
"You don't think…" She starts, trying to tamp down her fears before they can be voiced. They'd been searching buildings in the area for the last hour or so, the back offices of this building, too, the place was empty. Quiet. Whoever set this trap was most likely long dead or gone.
She hears Joel's inquiring grunt before he follows up with, "Don't think what?"
"They're not still here? Whoever set this?" She tries to keep the worry from her voice, the fear that somebody could come running in right now, could attack them while Joel's strung up like a useless pinata, while she's teetering twelve feet in the air busy sawing away. Her fingers itch to retrieve the gun tucked away in her jacket pocket. She wonders if she'd even be fast enough, accurate enough.
For a minute Joel doesn't answer her and it makes her saw faster, her muscles beginning to burn as she pushes the blade against the thick rope harder.
"I don't think so." He says eventually and the hesitancy in his answer is not exactly the reassurance she was looking for. A second later the sound of a cocking gun makes her damn near jump out of her skin before she realizes it's Joel who's doing it and that has her sawing even faster.
"How we lookin', Ellie?"
The rope's about halfway cut, the damn thing is so thick and she's not exactly working with a serrated edge here. She finds her eyes sweeping over the room again, gauging the growing shadows in the corners of the warehouse until she catches Joel's eyes watching her and returns quickly to her task.
"Almost got it," She says and yanks the rope in her direction, hoping she can help rip the last half free somehow through brute force alone. Instead, Ellie feels her weight unbalance the fridge as it jerks precariously on the table beneath and she has a split second to think oh shit as her heart jumps to her throat and the world falls out from under her.
She manages to kick herself off and away before everything comes crashing to the ground and it only just keeps her from being squished by the damn thing. She's on the ground, the bright pain of impact radiating through her elbow and hip and the crashing metal of the refrigerator echoes around her as Joel yells out.
Ellie throws a glance his way to see the collapse of the fridge has managed to yank Joel another good ten feet or so into the air. He swings precariously above the concrete floor and Ellie worries the rope will break after all.
"Shit! Sorry!"
"You okay?" He's quick to ask, her safety always his first concern and she wonders how long it will be before she's used to those constant check-ins, those words of worry he never seems to run out of for her.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she says without allowing herself to think of the new bruises she's sure to be sporting, "What about you ?"
"It's okay," he replies when clearly, it isn't, "Keep cuttin' me down."
"Cut you down?" She balks, "You're too high up now, you'll crack your head open!"
And before he can reply to that a shriek echoes somewhere outside the building. It carries through the air around them like an arrow, piercing the warm shafts of sunlight and burrowing into the stillness that has suddenly fallen between them.
"Ellie-" Joel grounds out and she's pivoting on her heels, the rubber in her worn shoes squeaking as she searches for something soft, anything softer than fucking concrete for Joel to land on, "Cut the rope." His voice is steady but urgent and she watches him point his gun out toward the broken windows near the floor of the building. Ellie spots a lump of crumpled tarp and mildewy cardboard boxes just behind the door they'd come through and it's better than nothing so she runs over and drags the pile beneath where Joel is hanging.
" Ellie, " he says sharply and she jogs back over to the refrigerator, to where her knife clattered to the ground when she'd fallen.
She's back to sawing at the rope when another inhuman screech rings out and it's accompanied by a second one and then a third and Ellie feels the hairs on her neck prickle because this time they're much closer. Her fingers are tight on her knife, her heart jackhammering in her throat and her bicep is burning as she yanks her knife back and forth ripping fiber after fiber of the rope and not daring to look up when she hears the gait of the infected scraping against the asphalt outside.
Ellie flinches at the crack of Joel's gun going off and the glass of a window shatters and strikes the ground. She keeps her eyes on her task though, her head bent over the rope as she saws and saws, bullets continuing to ring out around her.
There's only a few stringy remnants of the rope left and Ellie is left wondering how the hell it hasn't snapped yet, why the fuck isn't it breaking when she sees movement in the corner of her eye, clambering through the broken window to her left. It screams and a noise runs up its throat like marbles bounce-rattling too close to the ground.
Clicker.
Ellie's breath freezes in her chest and she hears Joel's gun go off just before the thing is rocked backwards on its heels, a bullet driving into its left shoulder.
An empty casing rings out as it hits the concrete and Joel spits out a curse as the clicker continues its stilted run towards her and Ellie is a second away from turning to run herself, she's a second away from abandoning the rope, just to put some distance between her and the infected when the gun goes off again and this time the bullet hits its target. Bits of fungi and blood and bone explode from the thing's head and it collapses in a dead heap right before her.
The factory is blissfully silent in the wake of shrieking and gunfire and Ellie takes a minute to breathe her heart back into her chest, exhaling her shaky nerves into the fading light of the quiet warehouse.
"You alright, kiddo?" Joel asks from above and the question rides on a tremor she doesn't let herself think about.
"Yeah…" she hears herself answer, "That was too fucking close though if you ask-"
The rope snaps under her hands and there's a crash as Joel hits the ground, the tarp and boxes beneath providing not nearly enough cushioning, she knows.
"Joel!" Ellie rushes to him and he's rolling onto his back with a groan so she knows he's at least alive, his skull intact. " Fuck, you okay?" She drops to her knees beside him, her hands hovering and Joel's face is pinched in pain, his right hand moving to cradle his left shoulder.
"I think it's dislocated," he grits out as his head thumps back against the floor, brown eyes opening to gaze up at the high ceiling.
"Okay," her hands flutter uselessly over his form, unsure and afraid, "What do I do?"
His eyes flick over to meet hers and she thinks she reads something like surprise in them, as if he hadn't expected her to ask that. She wonders briefly just what that means, if she should be insulted by being underestimated, if Joel is just as unused to offers of help as she is, if he thought that at this point in their journey together she didn't care about him.
"Grab my hand," his voice is rougher than usual and Ellie takes his left hand in both of hers, his skin warm and dry where hers feels cold and damp, "'Kay, now on the count of three I want you to pull my arm toward you as hard as you can. Got it?"
She readjusts her grip and swallows once before giving him a nod, "Okay."
His eyes slide away from hers as he nods in return, "Okay," he echoes, "One." Ellie prepares herself, muscles coiling, "Two." He says and his eyes pinch shut, " Three !"
Ellie yanks his arm toward her as hard as she can, leaning her whole body back in the effort and it scares her when it rips a strangled scream out of Joel.
She drops his hand immediately and is back to fluttering her hands uselessly over him, "Joel?" Her heart is back in her throat, racing as she wonders what she did wrong, had she pulled too hard? Not hard enough?
He groans and his face stays screwed up in pain for a moment longer before he opens his eyes to look at her.
"I'm sorry, I don't know-"
"You did good, kiddo." His voice is tight, strained and his right hand is probing at his shoulder.
Ellie breathes out a long shaky breath, "Jesus, Joel, I thought I made it worse."
His head rolls back and forth once on the concrete, eyes sliding shut again, "You did just fine."
She runs her hands over her face and blows out another breath before spotting the rope still snug around Joel's ankle in the dimming light.
Ellie reaches forward and loosens it gently before she starts lifting his foot to slide it around his boot. She feels him lift it for her and tugs the rope free, tossing it away as he lowers his heel back to the floor, "Your ankle okay?"
He struggles a little to sit up and Ellie stands before offering her hand to him.
"Yeah, I think it's fine." He accepts her offer with his good arm and Ellie leans her whole body back to help him rise.
"I'm ready to get the hell out of this town," she picks up her knife where she'd dropped it again and her eyes linger on the dead clicker for a moment, the reddish orange fauna of fungi sprouting from it's forehead lays in the last patch of dying sunlight.
Joel grunts as he bends to pick up his gun from where it'd fallen on the ground with him and he hums in agreement. She turns to watch him test his ankle, and breathes a breath when all seems fine, their luck still holding out.
She lets Joel lead, knowing if she's the one to race ahead he'll only give her a hard time for it. He insists on being the first one to climb through a window, jump a fence, open a door… Ellie spares the refrigerator trap a glance and understands why.
He holds his left arm tight to his side as he cautiously peers out one of the broken windows before hefting himself through and turning back to motion for her to follow.
"All clear."
They walk down a few side streets, Joel's gun cocked and ready as he more carefully turns them around fences and through back lots until they're hiking through a wooded area, the town falling away behind them.
Ellie follows, her eyes on her feet so she's less likely to trip on any tree roots or tangle of weeds, and she thinks about the fear that had gripped her as she knelt on top of the fridge, the worry that if she had to pull her gun to save them both her aim would have been shit. She thinks of the steady crack of gunfire above her then, empty shell cases tinkling against concrete as Joel's bullets found their marks from outside of the building.
"Hey Joel?" she snags a skinny branch off a small tree as she walks, snapping it free to twist between her fingers.
Joel offers a noise like a grunt and half turns his head to show he's listening.
"You think you could show me how to shoot like that?" She jerks her shoulder back in reference to the town even though she knows Joel isn't looking.
He pauses on the trail ahead and turns to look at her and Ellie bites at the inside of her cheek, waiting for him to grumble out an impatient 'no' in his usual manner. But he must see something in her face, maybe remnants of the helplessness she had let herself feel kneeling on that fridge, maybe the worry that fills her eyes as they land on his damaged shoulder and the way he's still holding his arm snug against his torso and his eyes seem to clear and soften. She doesn't ever want to find herself in that situation again, Joel helpless and her unable to protect him with nothing more than a knife and some hope. He allowed her the gun for a reason, she wants to know she can wield it with some confidence.
"Sure thing, kiddo." He says instead and Ellie allows herself a smile.
He resumes walking and Ellie, feeling in higher spirits at the prospect of learning how to be a crack shot, drops one strap of her backpack from her shoulder so she can swing it around and dig inside for something. She figures now is as good a time as any for Will Livingston to make an appearance.
She flips to a random page and smiles as she reads a few lines, "Hey Joel?" She's fighting a giggle before she can even get the next words out.