Work Text:
Five months ago, Joel would’ve probably given an arm and a leg to make the kid stop talking. Definitely a couple of toes. Not that it would’ve mattered. The kid just talked a lot. It seemed to be an immutable fact of the universe. The sky was blue. Triangles had three sides. The kid talked a lot. Every time he tried to get her to shut up, every time he set a hard boundary about what topics she couldn’t ask about, she would just find something else to babble about. Most of it was nonsense. Most of it he tuned out. He had long since lost any patience for wonder or amazement. Especially not at something as stupid as a fucking flowering tree. Which, yes, the kid somehow talked about for half a mile.
That was five months and three thousand miles ago. That was before she got him to crack a smile at her stupid puns. Before she saved his ass, more than once. Before she looked at him with those earnest eyes and begged him to not leave her. Before he failed her yet again and let her wind up in the clutches of some sicko cannibal.
She hasn’t said a word since they trudged away from Silver Lake, broken in more ways than one. The sound of her strangled sob haunts him. She didn’t have to explain. He didn’t need to know. Knowing would just make him turn around and burn the rest of that goddamn resort down, and that’s not what she needs right now. If he’s really being honest with himself—which he seldom is, it’s easier to lie to yourself than you’d think—he doesn’t know if he’s capable of being what she needs right now. Ellie needs someone soft. She needs someone good. She needs caring words and careful touches and all the things Joel lost the capacity for twenty years and one suicide attempt ago.
He isn’t delusional. There’s never been a world where Ellie needs him, not like she thinks she does, but if there ever was a Joel that she needed, it’s the one who ate eggshells and tucked his kid in and acted like a good sport when pranked. She doesn’t need the man he is now. The one with broken knuckles and blood splattered on his jacket and a fierce violence in his veins. All that Joel can do is watch her helplessly as she slips further away. Shit. He can barely keep himself together. How is he supposed to hold her together too?
It isn’t for lack of wanting either. Five months ago, he would’ve loved to have this problem. Now, he just wants her to say something. Anything. He would rip out his stitches and let himself bleed out right now if it meant she would forget about whatever the fuck just happened. He wouldn’t even have to think twice about that. The instinct sort of scares him. This intense grip of love and protection and regret isn’t something he ever thought he would feel again. This is something he spent twenty years running away from. It feels kind of like the stab wound still throbbing in his side. Except he’s so much better at managing that pain. He has no idea what to do with this. He just knows he failed her. He failed her, and there’s nothing he can do to fix it.
Ellie sits in front of the crackling fire, and he sits five feet to the right, unmoving and at a complete loss. They shouldn’t have a fire going. They’re not far enough from Silver Lake. He knows that, and he knows how fucking stupid it is to have one right now. Except Ellie’s teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. She wouldn’t stop whimpering and shivering and it seems to be only half from the cold because it hasn’t abated much since he got it going. Fuck the Silver Lake guys anyway. Joel will happily kill anyone else who stumbles their way.
The dim light of the fire makes her look a bit like a ghost. It dances across her expressionless face. The shadows surrounding her make her look even smaller than she is. She’s curled into this tight little ball, knees hugged up to her chest, his coat still draped over her shoulders. It hits him now just how small she is. Too small for this. Too small to be filled with so much hurt and pain. Too small to be covered in blood the way she is.
The blood on her has long since dried, and he wants nothing more than to wipe it off. He wants to wipe the blood off her hands and face and hold her until they both stop shaking. Until he forgets the fear of almost losing her. Until she forgets whatever the fuck went down in Silver Lake. Until she’s ready to cuss at him or tell him a joke or ask a question or whatever the fuck she wants to do.
Instead, he sits on his hands. She hasn’t let him out of her line of sight since they found each other again, but she also hasn’t let him touch her since they hobbled into this decrepit house. He saw the look in her eyes when he moved behind her to shut the curtains. He saw the flinch. Ellie isn’t just processing or whatever the fuck. She’s scared. She’s fucking terrified. Of him.
That shatters whatever is left of his stony, bloody, heart. So he moves slowly as he starts the fire. He sits dutifully in her line of sight. He doesn’t say anything.
“Ellie, I—“ Joel starts, voice hoarse and bone weary.
He isn’t sure where he’s going with this. Isn’t sure what he wants to say. Some part of him wants to be the soft, good, person she needs. The person he hasn’t been in so, so, long. Oh, who the fuck is he kidding? All of him wants to be that. Wants to be it so fucking bad it hurts. Wants it so bad it makes forming words hard because he doesn’t trust himself to not just explode with how much he fucking cares about her.
“We need to clean you up,” he manages to say finally. Fucking finally. After what feels like eons of staring at her blood covered face and trying to will it away. This is the first problem he hasn’t been able to stubborn his way out of.
Ellie just continues to stare listlessly at the fire.
“C’mon, baby,” Joel urges, voice soft and pleading and desperate, “Just need to get the blood off your face. It’ll help make you feel better.”
He knows it won’t. He knows probably nothing will. The lie is acrid and sour in his mouth, but it’s a necessary one. They really do need to clean her up. He’s reminded of all the stupid little white lies he fed to Sarah.
No, baby, this isn’t medicine, it’s bubblegum flavored candy. Your invitation to the sleepover was just lost in the mail, but it’s okay, because we’re going to have our own party tonight. Band Aids do make you feel better. Your mom didn’t forget your birthday, she’s just in a different time zone that’s a day later, she’ll call any minute.
Still, whether or not she believes him, some part of Ellie must hear him because she nods her head. It’s a slow movement. Imperceptible.
“Is that a yes?”
He can’t help but ask for further confirmation after the way she reacted to him earlier. The flinching and wide unblinking stare was enough to break his heart. He doesn’t know what he would do if it happened again.
Ellie nods with a bit more vigor this time. Then she nods again, and again, and again. It reminds him too much of the frantic way she shook when he first found her.
“Okay, okay,” Joel tries to soothe her, “It’s okay. I’ll be back in a minute. It’ll be just a minute.”
He gets up slowly and telegraphs every movement. She doesn’t seem to be watching him, but he just knows she is. There’s a feral edge to her right now. One that he needs to scrub off her immediately. Honestly, cleaning the blood off her is more for his sake than hers. He doesn’t know how much longer he can look at her like this.
Joel doesn’t even attempt to turn on the sink, instead, he grabs a dusty metal bowl left in the cabinet and takes it to the backyard to fill with snow. He swears he hears Ellie gasp when the screen door slams shut, but it’s probably just his imagination. It’s definitely just his imagination. He’s half fucking deaf. There’s no chance in hell he heard her gasp. It’s just his overactive imagination and worry rolling through his stomach. Or maybe it’s just his brain filling in the very plausible blanks. He shouldn’t have let the door slam like that.
They got lucky with the popcorn bowl, but they don’t get so lucky when it comes to rags. There isn’t anything fabric left in the house except the curtains, and those are a thin gauzy material that won’t do shit except scratch up her soft skin. No chance in hell he’s letting that happen. He’s already failed her too often. Let too much shit happen to her. The least he can do is find a soft rag to clean her off with.
He puts the bowl of snow close enough to the fire to melt it. Ellie doesn’t flinch this time. But she doesn’t look like she even registered his presence. “It will be just a few minutes, okay? Just a few more minutes.”
It isn’t just cleaning the blood. Everything he’s doing right now feels like more of a comfort for himself because as much as he wants to be soft and good for her, he still has no idea what that means.
Joel grabs his backpack and excuses himself to the other room. His pack is scarily empty, and the only thing in there is an old long sleeved undershirt that hasn’t seen soap and water in weeks. The thing is soaked with blood and pus and sweat and it’s disgusting. But it’s also a soft cotton, and it’s got to be a hundred time better than those fucking drapes. He pulls at the left sleeve, because it’s the cleanest one, and sniffs it. Smells good enough. He shivers a bit as the cold air gets to him, but he doesn’t really give much of a fuck about the cold right now. A rusty knife sits in the kitchen sink, and he grabs it. It isn’t very sharp, but it will do the job. His knife is still coated in blood and guts and all that shit Ellie doesn’t need right now. He cuts a chunk out of the sleeve off his undershirt, then he cuts it one more time so it’s an open rectangle of fabric.
When he returns to the living room, he half expects Ellie to be lounging in the moth-eaten recliner, maybe reading one of her comic books, something closer to normal. It’s a stupid expectation, a stupid wish, and he knows it. She’s just as still as she was when he left. Practically catatonic. Bereft.
“Alright, kiddo,” he groans a bit as he kneels down in front of her. Not close to her, of course, there’s still about five feet between them. “I’m going to come closer, okay?”
She shakes her head no.
“Just a little closer,” Joel promises, “Just enough to clean you up.”
She shakes her head again.
“Please?” his voice cracks again, “C’mon, babygirl, we’ve got to clean you. We’ve got to.”
He failed her. That’s all he’s ever done. Failed her in Kansas City. Failed her at the University. Failed her in Silver Lake. Failing her right fucking now as he sits in front of her like a lost soul. How can this kid keep following him around when he can’t even take care of himself?
“You’ve been taking care of me for too long,” Joel says, “Let me take care of you.”
This triggers something in Ellie. A memory, maybe. Whatever it is, it takes the shattered pieces of Joel’s heart and grinds them into dust. She is all too alert right now, eyes wide, searching, terrified. The tremors pick up again as she shakes her head.
“No.”
It’s a single word, the finality of it echoes through the empty house like a gunshot.
Joel’s jaw drops open a little bit, at a complete loss for words. He won’t push her on this, of course. Not when it already feels like he’s been stabbed in the gut. Again. That word cut deeper than the baseball bat. Or whatever it was that got him.
“Oh-okay,” he answers, voice shaking, “I am just going to leave this right here, okay?”
He sets the rag down and slowly moves across the room. Very slowly, he settled back into the spot he sat in earlier, the one where he sat leaned against the recliner across the room from her. Being in the same room as him clearly scared her, but she told him to stay when they first got here. Not with words, but he stood to leave to check the house, and she clutched onto his sleeves so tight. So fucking tight.
Ellie doesn’t move until Joel is settled against the chair. Then, she snatches up the rag and begins to scrub at her face with such ferocity, he’s thankful he cut his own shirt up instead of the curtains. It’s like she’s trying to rub the top layer of her skin off. Like she thinks she can erase everything that happened if she just rubs hard enough. Maybe she’s right. Ellie’s strong. Stronger than he ever has been. Maybe she will be able to make this go away with sheer force of will. Then he hears her little sobs as she scrubs, and he has to curl his hands into fists and clench his jaw to stop himself from going to her. His teeth and knuckles ache. At least his teeth aren’t broken. Yet. His knuckles definitely are.
When she’s done with the rag, she tosses it in the bowl. She rubs at her face with her hands before curling them into matching fists and hugging her knees back up to her chest.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Joel asks.
There’s nothing but silence from her end. He knows she’s got to be hurt. She practically carried him to this house, the pain setting in as the adrenaline rushed out of him like the tide, and he didn’t miss the way she winced and hissed in pain whenever they stepped wrong. It can’t be too bad, though. She ain’t bleeding anywhere, at least there’s that.
“Ellie,” he tries again, “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I don’t need a father,” Ellie says, voice low and cold and broken in a way that makes his chest go tight.
Joel shakes his head. “I’m not…”
“I don’t need a fucking father!” Ellie just shouts again.
The same way she shouted at him to get off her earlier. The same way she sounded when she was kicking and screaming and thrashing because she didn’t realize it was him. This time, she does know it’s him. She knows it’s him, and she sounds so terrified anyway.
It all hits him like a ton of bricks. What must’ve gone down at Silver Lake, while he was fucking unconscious because he got stabbed like a dumbass. They didn’t just take her. This was a problem before the apocalypse. It’s only gotten worse since. So much worse. It makes Joel sick to his stomach. It makes the blood roil in his veins and his head pound and his fingers ache for the trigger of a gun.
He hasn’t ever really been a good man. Before Sarah, he was something of a drunk, and he spent more weekends than not getting into bar fights and ending up in lock-up. Then he got custody of Sarah, and he only spent one night in lock-up after that. When one of the scumbags at the jobsite made a joke about one of the neighborhood girls. He knocked the guy out before he even had a chance to get to the punchline. Joel remembers a burning twisting anger in his stomach when he drove his fist into that guy’s face, and he thought it was going to burn him from the inside out then. It was the kind of anger that choked you. The kind that felt so goddamn good to release by beating someone’s face in. This anger? The one poisoned by guilt twisting in his gut? This is a hundred times worse than that day.
Anyways, the guy ended up not pressing charges, mostly because Joel threatened to have Tommy break his kneecaps if he did, and he was released the next morning. Sarah asked questions when he finally got out—thank god Tommy wasn’t in lock-up for once and was able to watch her for the night—she asked about the bruised and broken knuckles. He lied, of course. Said there was an accident on the job, and he was held for observation overnight. Sarah didn’t really believe, and he could tell. He’s always been kind of a shit liar.
Maybe Joel wasn’t ever soft and good. Maybe he’s always been pretending.
“Did you kill him?” Joel asks. His tone wavers on the edge of fury. It’s a little too detached and cold. Ellie responds to it better than she has anything else he’s said all night.
“Caved his skull in with a fucking cleaver,” she says darkly.
Maybe Ellie doesn’t need soft and good. Maybe she just needs someone who understands. Someone who understands the rage and fear he knows she feels, the kind of rage that sits deep in your gut.
“Good,” he nods, “How—How far—”
“Nowhere,” Ellie cuts him off, “Nowhere. Joel, I caved his fucking skull in with a fucking cleaver.”
This he’s a little more familiar with. Ellie has always been all rough edges. The first time they met, she came at him with her knife, spitting and snarling and cussing him out like a wild animal. Still, the more time they spent together, the more comfortable she got with him. The snarls turned to smiles, and she kept cussing, but not at him. Well, not like that. This is too familiar and too strange all at once.
“I won’t ever—” his voice breaks, “I won’t ever hurt you, not like—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, I know,” she says quickly, “Fuck. That’s—Joel—I know. I know.”
“Baby girl, I—“ Joel starts.
Ellie cuts him off almost immediately. “Don’t fucking call me baby girl. I’m not your baby girl. That isn’t…that isn’t meant for me.”
Joel wants to tell her that she’s wrong. He wants to tell her that it is meant for her. He isn’t just looking at her and seeing Sarah. He’s looking at Ellie and she’s his fucking babygirl and she’s lodged right there in his heart next to Sarah and watching her hurt is killing him because there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. Baby girl is meant for her. Everything soft and good and kind and loving is meant for her, even if Joel can’t be the one to give it to her. He desperately wants to be the one to give it to her, and he’s going to try his damndest to.
But he doesn’t tell her any of that. He’s got a feeling that if he does, she’ll just bite his head off and then feel even worse about it when she comes back to herself later on. So Joel stays silent. He bites his tongue and keeps his goddamn mouth shut as he watches her and fights every instinct he has to just gather her up in his arms and not let go.
“I’ll take both watches,” Joel says instead of everything he actually wants to say, “You just get some sleep.”
“Fat fucking chance,” she scoffs.
“Ellie,” he warns.
She shakes her head and looks up at him. “Joel. You’re barely able to stand. You’re not taking both watches.”
“I’m taking both watches, and that’s final,” he says firmly.
He expects her to bite back some kind of retort, or maybe argue a little bit further. She doesn’t do either of those things. She just falls eerily silent and watches the flames with that empty unblinking gaze of hers. Whatever’s going on in her head right now, she doesn’t seem all the way here. There’s been brief moments where she seems to surface, seems to come back to him at least a little bit, but he thinks she’s mostly just stuck in whatever fresh hell she just escaped.
Joel can’t remember the last time he’s ever felt this helpless. It might’ve been twenty fucking years ago when he desperately applied pressure to Sarah’s wound and begged her to stay with him, when he clutched onto her limp body and didn’t let go until Tommy dug a shallow grave to lay her in. It wasn’t until after the fact that Joel realized stupid that was. Digging the grave must’ve taken at least an hour, and they didn’t have any time to waste back then. But Tommy did that for him. Did it for her too. He used his hands to dig into the loose Texas soil and create a peaceful resting place for her. Somewhere in a field outside the city, under a small willow tree, there’s his babygirl. He supposes the willow tree might not be so small anymore.
That’s not how this story is going to end. Joel ain’t burying another fucking kid. Ellie isn’t in danger of dying—not more than anyone usually is—but he’s losing her all the same. Losing her to whatever is going on in her head. She’s losing too. Except Joel isn’t sure how to fight this fight.
“Ellie,” Joel says, fighting to keep his voice level.
No response.
“Ellie,” he tries once more, then there’s no response still, and he tries something else. “Baby—“
Works like a goddamn charm. Ellie flinches like he’s burned her and makes eye contact with him. Something scared and yearning sits in those deep brown eyes of hers.
“I’m not…” she starts, but her voice cracks and she trails off.
“It’s meant for you,” he assures her with a little nod, “It is meant for you. And you need sleep.”
There’s a moment where she just stares at him, the fear and yearning and apprehension and care mixing together into something lethal. It’s the kind of shit that’ll kill him in the end.
He doesn’t know how, and he doesn’t know when, but loving this girl will kill him. Until then, he’s going to fight tooth and nail to give her everything he’s got. He’ll be whatever she wants from him. Soft. Good. Quiet. Understanding. Violent. Rough. Bloody. Whatever she fucking wants.
Ellie breaks eye contact after a moment, and she moves so slowly as she shuffles towards him. When she gets in front of him, there’s another moment of quiet where he can see her mulling over her options. He’s quiet as a goddamn mouse while she thinks. Partly because he doesn’t want to push her boundaries. Mostly because his heart’s just about stopped in his chest at the prospect of her falling asleep leaning against him the way Sarah would. The same way Ellie did this past week. He was delirious, but he remembers that much. Mostly, he just remembers the warm care seeping into his bones.
“Don’t move,” Ellie says, voice soft and rough and a little terrified in a way that makes Joel ache something fierce.
“Okay,” he whispers back.
She watches him for a moment longer before pulling his coat tight around her shoulders and laying down on the floor next to him. She doesn’t learn against him the way Sarah would, thin arms wrapped around his middle and cheek pressed against his chest. Instead, she lays on the ground, curled up in this tight little ball under his jacket, and she’s got her forehead pressed against his thigh with a tight fist gripping his jeans. For a second, she’s stiff, but she relaxes slowly as she takes these big deep breaths. Her grip still doesn’t loosen on his jeans.
“Sweet dreams, baby girl,” Joel says softly after a few minutes, resisting the urge to card his hands through her hair, “Dream of sheep ranches on the moon.”
Ellie relaxes just a little bit more.