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“Now, I know you didn’t get the best welcome,” Marlene says, glancing at Joel, whose squinting eyes and pained expression show the beginnings of a concussion after taking the end of a rifle to the head (and he gives her a look that suggests he doesn’t appreciate the whole ‘getting attacked’ thing being downplayed like that), “but it’s wonderful to see you, Ellie.”
Marlene sits in a run-down old office in the equally run-down old hospital, with Ellie and Joel opposite her. About an hour ago, her men encountered two figures wandering dangerously close to the hospital; unfortunately, the idiots didn’t check first to see that the figures were clearly a man and a girl—and therefore exactly the guests the Fireflies had been waiting on for months—and ambushed Ellie and Joel. They originally had Ellie in the office, waiting for Marlene to talk to her, and Joel resting in a room on his own, the plan being for Joel to recover from his blow to the head enough to take his payment and leave. But Ellie demanded to see Joel, refusing to cooperate unless she confirmed he was okay, telling them that “there’s no way in hell he’s just gonna leave after he wakes up.” And Marlene at first thought that Ellie had simply gotten attached to Joel after all this time together, but Joel surely still viewed her as cargo and would leave regardless of Ellie’s opinion—either way, Marlene didn’t see the harm in letting Ellie see him. So, they allowed Ellie to sit with Joel until he woke up, at which point Joel confirmed what Ellie said: that he was not going anywhere.
Once Joel could stand without fainting, they relocated to the office, where Marlene now looks at the pair, ready to explain the plan to save the world.
Fidgeting awkwardly in the uncomfortable chair, Ellie stares down at her hands. “Uh… thanks,” she mumbles, clearly trying to be polite.
“Right, so… one of our doctors will be along to tell you the plan in detail, but we thought I should speak with you first,” Marlene says, a little unnerved by how intensely Joel stares her down, watching her every move like he expects her to do something to Ellie. When did Joel Miller become so protective of his cargo? “Basically, we’re going to start with a blood test to see if we can extract anything from your blood, and if that fails, we’ll move to more invasive procedures. We hope it won’t take too long to find what we’re looking for, but you might be here for several months. Is that okay with you?”
Ellie shrugs. “It’s fine. It’s to… to save the world, so…”
“You know you don’t have to do this, Ellie,” Joel says. “We could just leave—”
“Shut up, Joel,” Ellie mutters. “We’re staying. We’re doing this. I want their deaths—I mean, I want all this shit to mean something.”
As Joel grumbles, clearly unhappy with Ellie’s comment, Marlene smiles, glad that Ellie understood what Marlene told her about her immunity having a higher purpose. With Ellie here, they might finally be able to engineer a vaccine and reverse some of the damage caused by Cordyceps.
With Ellie’s help, they might be able to save the world.
---
The tests begin almost immediately.
“Fuck giving me a chance to settle in, I guess,” is what Ellie mutters to Joel when a nurse approaches them on the same day they arrived and announces that she needs the blood test Marlene told her about.
Joel chuckles, but he slips his arm around her when she leans into his side.
It soon becomes evident that Ellie has never had a blood test in her life, but thankfully she isn’t scared of needles. His girl is more curious than anything when the nurse (a woman, thankfully; Joel knows this would go differently if a man had walked into the room) wraps a tourniquet around her arm, daubs Ellie’s inner elbow with a smear of medical alcohol, and inserts the needle into Ellie’s vein. She doesn’t make a sound, but Joel notices the tension in her jaw, and puts a hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair. Once the nurse collects enough samples, she gives Ellie a snack (“We don’t want you fainting, now.”) and even manages to coax a smile out of Ellie.
Unfortunately, the next day doesn’t go so well. Turns out some dumbass fucked up the samples somehow (he doesn’t know how; he’s not a doctor), so Ellie needs yet another fucking blood test. And as Ellie sits in the reclining chair with her sleeve rolled up, waiting for another test (and Joel tries to ignore the small, dark purple bruise on her inner elbow from the needle the day before), the door opens and a male nurse walks into the room.
Ellie’s posture changes instantly, tense and guarded as she watches the friendly young man approach. And as his girl shrinks in her chair, obviously terrified but refusing to make a scene, Joel snaps into action.
He stands up, stepping forward to block Ellie’s view of the nurse, and says, “Get out.”
To Joel’s satisfaction, the nurse flinches. “Uh… excuse me?”
“Get a woman instead. You ain’t coming in.” He would never explain exactly why Ellie hates being around men she doesn’t know, but if you really think about it, there can only be a few reasons why a teenage girl’s guardian is insisting that only female nurses can come near the girl.
“O-Okay, I can do that,” the nurse says, and he hurries out of the room.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Ellie mutters. “I, I could’ve, like, just dealt with it.”
Joel holds back a sigh. He knows her desire to be tough and strong comes from growing up in the QZ, never having known a life when kids didn’t need to fight to survive, but it still hurts. Ellie was so obviously terrified with the male nurse in the room, yet her solution was just to… suffer in silence.
“I know you could,” he says, because if there’s one thing he knows about Ellie it’s that she’s a fighter (not many fourteen-year-olds could sew up a bleeding stomach wound and successfully locate antibiotics and survive the hell at Silver Lake just to keep Joel alive). “But… you shouldn’t have to. You feel better with women in the room, don’t you?”
Ellie groans, but she nods. “Yes, asshole. But I can’t avoid half the fucking population just because I…” She sighs.
“Baby, your fear is nothin’ to be ashamed of. This place is already stressful enough for you, so… let me help. Please.”
“Fine,” she says, spitting the word out. “You can be my fucking bodyguard if you want.”
She sounds as pissy as ever, but when Joel glances at her face, he swears that Ellie actually looks kind of… grateful.
---
The first time they put her in a machine called an MRI to scan her brain, Ellie has a panic attack. She doesn’t know why, just that the machine is so fucking small and she can’t move and she’s trapped by the plastic framework they put over her head to hold her steady… and then Joel is yelling at them to “turn the goddamn thing off” and the bed thingy slides Ellie back out of the machine, and Joel pulls the headgear off and helps her sit up, and Ellie slumps against him, unable to breathe.
When she calms down, Joel describes something called claustrophobia to her. Ellie didn’t even know she had that fear, but it makes sense from a childhood of solitary confinement for the slightest infractions (and being trapped in a fucking cage by that bastard).
Barely half an hour after Ellie panicked, a nurse asks if Ellie is ready to go back in the machine. She really fucking isn’t, but like she often does after a panic attack, Ellie struggles to find her words (just like the aftermath of Silver Lake, when she could barely say a word for days, just lost in her own head). Luckily, she has a Joel to speak for her when she cannot.
“Have you seen her?” Joel says, an edge to his voice that makes the nurse take a step backward. “She ain’t doing this right now. You want to wait till tomorrow, right, Ellie?” he says, tone softening as he looks down at her.
Ellie nods. The nurse sighs, realising the decision has been made. Ellie smiles weakly, leaning against Joel and grateful that he stood up for her.
---
Thanks to Joel’s intervention, they give her another scan the next day instead, this time allowing Joel to stay in the room with her. He holds her ankle the entire time she’s in the awful machine, stroking her leg soothingly, reminding Ellie that he’s here and she isn’t alone… and she manages to get through the entire scan without a panic attack. Once they let her out, Ellie lunges at Joel and gives him a hug, not caring that the Fireflies can see them through the window.
She would never say it, but Ellie quickly realises that she wouldn’t be able to do this without Joel. Ellie is strong, but anyone can only take so much stress before they crack, but Joel is always there to stop her completely falling apart.
---
After the MRI scan comes a spinal tap, a procedure that involves Ellie getting into a surgical gown and entering an operating room, which is somehow a more terrifying environment than the room where they shoved her into the MRI machine. She initially refuses to wear the gown, hating how it opens up and shows off her underpants, but the nurses explain that they need access to Ellie’s back to do the spinal tap—which makes sense, she supposes. But that doesn’t mean she’s happy about wearing the stupid thing.
But she does manage to put her foot down about another thing: she won’t go into the operating room without Joel. They try to refuse, but Joel backs her up, and they always give in when Joel is involved—probably because he still carries a gun and Marlene has told everyone how ruthless he can be. So, thankfully, she has Joel in the room when they do the procedure. Although they do make him wear scrubs and a face mask, the sight of which makes Ellie burst out laughing.
Her mood quickly drops when they sedate her (“to help you stay still,” a nurse explains, because apparently if she moves during the procedure, they might end up fucking paralysing her). She lays on her side, the hospital gown undone to expose her back, curled into an awkward ball with her knees tucked against her chest. Ellie hates having her back to people, but she puts up with the Fireflies standing behind her—if only because Joel stands in front of her, leaning down (in a way that will surely hurt his old man back) to hold her hand.
When the anaesthetic gets injected into her spine, the pain from the needle leaves Ellie gritting her jaw and squeezing Joel’s hand hard enough to make him wince. But he doesn’t shove her off, letting Ellie hold his hand with such force that he’ll have bruises later.
The anaesthetic clearly works, because when the big needle goes in, Ellie feels no pain—she only knows the needle is in her spine thanks to the weird, intense pressure it causes. She keeps squeezing Joel’s hand, her eyes screwed shut.
And when the procedure is finally over, she opens her eyes to find dark red marks on Joel’s hand, and a proud smile on his face.
---
With the constant procedures leaving Ellie exhausted, she spends most of her time in bed. Mostly because Joel insists on her resting, even when Ellie would rather go wandering. But sometimes she gets so fucking bored that she wants to scream, and Ellie sneaks out of her bed the moment Joel leaves the room to go have a shower. He’ll be gone for about fifteen minutes—plenty of time for her to stretch her legs and get back without him ever knowing she left the room.
Walking on wobbly legs, her hips and back still aching from a bone marrow harvest a few days earlier, Ellie pads down the hallway in sock-covered feet. She keeps her guard up, hoping to hear the doctors and nurses coming, and hide before they see her, because they’ll only tell her off for being on the move—and they’ll almost certainly tell Joel that she was walking around, and she doesn’t want him to know. He’s such a worrier. Just because Ellie fainted the other day (and would have cracked her head on the bedframe if Joel hadn’t been there to catch her) doesn’t mean it’ll happen again.
(Although from how lightheaded she gets all the time these days, it probably will.)
As she walks, Ellie soon locates a room with the door ajar and light spilling out through the tiny gap. The door says break room, and if Joel were with her, Ellie would probably nudge him and say, “So… can I break it?” and giggle when Joel sighs and hurriedly tells her to not wreck the hospital more than it already is. Jokes aside, she isn’t an idiot, and Ellie knows a break room is a place for people to spend their time off from work. Like most rooms in this shithole, the break room has an internal window that allows anyone to peer in from the hallway, but someone thought to shut the blinds, so Ellie won’t have to force herself to crouch to get past the window undetected (with her fucked up hips, she doesn’t know if she can crouch even if she wants to).
Ellie plans to walk straight past the break room, not wanting to be caught by any of the doctors and nurses inside (not just because they’ll give her shit, but because after all they’ve done to her with no goddamn bedside manner, Ellie fucking hates them), but a voice makes her freeze in place.
Doctor fucking Anderson, one of the Firefly doctors who puts Ellie through her constant tests, and also happens to be the only doctor Ellie managed to land a hit on (in her defence, she was off her head on painkillers, and a strange man touched her hand without asking—he was only trying to stop her yanking her IV out, but to Ellie, it felt like he was near her—and she lashed out and nearly broke the fucker’s nose) says, “…not getting the results we want. I think we need to change our plan.”
“And what do you have in mind?” asks Yvonne, one of the nicer nurses who was smart enough to recognise that Ellie feels way more uncomfortable around male doctors and nurses. “We’re already doing some pretty intense tests on the poor girl. Her dad thinks we should give her a few days off to get some rest.”
Too busy eavesdropping to pay attention to how warm she feels at a Firefly nurse calling Joel her dad, Ellie leans against the wall, already struggling to stand up for too long. She had no idea that Joel told Yvonne that everyone should take it easy on Ellie for a few days, but she appreciates it. She doesn’t want to quit this, but a break here and there without awful meds and painful tests would be fucking appreciated. You’d think these bastards would treat their guest—the only immune person they’ve ever fucking met—with more respect.
Anderson sighs. “I understand, I really do, but time is of the essence. Every day we waste is another day where countless people get infected. Putting the subject—” Ellie bristles, almost storming through the door to yell about the dehumanisation, “—through this is a necessary evil, I’m afraid.”
“I see your point,” Yvonne says, her tone suggesting that she doesn’t respect his point at all, but simply says that to be polite. “But I don’t know how we’d even change the plan. Everything we’re doing is already intensive.”
“I was thinking… that we go straight to the source. We’ll get the results we need far faster that way.”
As Ellie’s stomach churns, Yvonne voices the same thought that swirls around Ellie’s foggy mind.
“The source? Cordyceps grows in the brain. Are you suggesting… we cut her brain apart?”
“Yes, I—”
“You seriously want to kill her?” She sighs heavily. “Jesus, do you even hear yourself? You want to kill a little girl—a girl barely younger than your own daughter—because you’re too impatient to persevere with the perfectly good plan we’ve already got. What is…?”
As Yvonne continues to tear into Anderson for his suggestion, Ellie’s back twinges so badly that her legs nearly give way, and she reluctantly limps back to her room. She barely makes it back to bed before Joel comes into the room, his hair still damp from his shower. The doctor and nurse’s conversation still playing in her head, Ellie finds herself incredibly grateful that Yvonne had enough common sense to shut down Anderson’s stupid (and fucking cruel) idea.
Still, she decides not to tell Joel what she heard, if only because she’d rather Joel not end up going on a murder spree through the hospital.
(At least, not until they’ve already got the vaccine, she thinks. Then, if he wants to fuck up most of the people who work here, Ellie wouldn’t bother to stop him.)
---
Sometimes when she’s groggy after yet another surgery, Ellie asks for Joel to cuddle her. She wouldn’t say something so blatantly clingy if her brain wasn’t all fuzzy from the anaesthetic or sedative, so Joel doesn’t tease her, just climbing into her bed beside her. It’s a tight fit, and he makes sure not to hurt her, but Ellie never complains. She just snuggles against him and goes to sleep.
This exact scenario takes place after her second bone marrow biopsy; Ellie was sedated for the procedure, so she’s very drowsy for a couple of hours afterward, and of course she wants Joel near her. Ellie lies on her side facing him (they took the sample from the back of her hips, so she must feel too much pain laying in that position), her head on his chest, and snoozes. Joel runs his fingers through her hair, so relieved that the procedure went by without complications. Finally relaxing after spending all morning worrying about Ellie, Joel almost falls asleep too, but just when his eyelids begin to droop…
Marlene appears in the doorway.
She stares at him and Ellie, her expression unreadable. Joel stares back, keeping his mouth shut. He isn’t fond of Marlene (she’s a Firefly, which immediately makes him guarded, but she’s also the person who gave Ellie the idea that her immunity means she has a purpose more important than just being a teenager and living her life) and Joel knows she feels the same way about him, but they’ve at least attempted to be civil while working together. That, and if he yells at her, they might wake Ellie. And his girl needs to rest.
“What are you doing?” Marlene asks, breaking the awkward silence. She keeps her voice low, considerate of the sleeping girl in Joel’s arms.
“What’s it look like?” Joel mutters, continuing to stroke Ellie’s head.
Marlene looks at him, before glancing around the room. Eventually, she says, “I’m just… surprised.”
“About what?”
Sensing Joel’s hostility, Marlene raises her eyebrows. She sighs. “How close you both are. Wasn’t she just cargo back then?”
His guts twisting as he remembers how callously he used to view Ellie, Joel holds her closer. “Things have changed.”
“I can see that. I’m guessing… something happened to change things.”
“You could say that.”
Joel refuses to elaborate, not willing to admit to anyone what he and Ellie have been through. But Marlene is correct; after the struggles and trauma caused by their journey across the country, he and Ellie are closer than he ever imagined. The only good thing to come out of that trip (a trip that killed people who meant a lot to them, a trip that left Joel half dead from a stab wound and infection, a trip that left Ellie in the grip of a group of incredibly dangerous people—Joel doesn’t know all the details, but what he does know explains why poor Ellie wakes up screaming so often) was his bond with Ellie. After twenty years, he finally feels like he can love someone like he loved Sarah. He can be a father again.
And as he thinks about his bond with the girl in his arms, Joel knows what he must say next. “Listen to me. If anyone in this hospital hurts her, I will kill every single one of you. And I’ll make sure y’all suffer before you die. That includes you. Is that clear?”
To her credit, Marlene doesn’t flinch. Receiving death threats must come with the territory of running with the Fireflies. “Crystal. Anyway… I just wanted to see how Ellie was doing. But it’s obvious she’s fine. See you later.”
Joel’s only response is a curt nod, not even looking when Marlene leaves the room. Instead, he looks at Ellie, remembering how brutally he tortured those men from Silver Lake on his quest to find Ellie. He’d do that all over again.
He would let the entire fucking world burn to keep Ellie safe. And if that makes him a terrible person, he doesn’t care. Nothing matters unless Ellie is here.
---
Weeks become months, the days blurring together until she loses track of the date, and would have no clue how much time has passed without Joel there to remind her. The longer she stays there, the more oppressive the hospital feels; at first, it just creeped her out to spend time in a hospital that looks like shit after being abandoned for twenty years, but now she’s spent so much unpleasant time in this setting, her dislike of the hospital gets stronger.
Soon enough, the simplest thing becomes unpleasant to her, even if only by association. Like, she hates the needles because they cause her pain, but just the sight of scrubs reminds her that she has tests every single day and everyone here sees her as their test subject first, patient second. Even bright lights overhead start to fuck with her, because it reminds her too much of laying on the bed in the operating room, blinding lights above her head as they fix a mask over her face, knocking her out for yet another procedure.
(She hasn’t had the proper big lights on in her room for weeks. Joel didn’t question why she kept sitting in the dark, and when a lamp appeared in her room one day after she returned from a shower, Ellie knew exactly who fetched it for her.)
Ellie hates every moment she spends at this hospital, but she won’t give up now. She wants everything she’s gone through to have some sort of meaning, for this suffering to have an end result. And she doesn’t want all the people she lost to Cordyceps to have died for nothing.
If the vaccine had existed back then, Riley would have lived. And Tess. And Sam (and Henry too, because he wouldn’t have killed himself). Going back even further, her mom would have lived too.
And all that suffering can end if the Fireflies make this vaccine. Sure, it won’t stop people being torn apart by the Infected, or catching diseases that they can’t treat properly anymore, or being hurt by the endless amounts of evil (and completely human) people out there who take advantage of the world ending to do the most horrible shit for the fun of it (yes, David, I’m talking about you, she thinks, hating how that sick bastard haunts her dreams). A vaccine won’t make the world go back to how it was years before Ellie was even born, but it’ll be a start. Fewer people will die.
And that’s what keeps her in the hospital day after day, struggling through this hell. She wants to make a difference. She wants to stop people from losing their loved ones like she did.
---
Seeing his daughter suffer for months on end grates on Joel, frustrated by how slowly the Fireflies do everything, and feeling Ellie’s pain along with her.
Ellie withers before him, losing weight and becoming paler and weaker by the day. The drugs frequently make her sick, and her panic attacks increase the longer she spends in the hospital. Joel wants her to say she’s done with this so they can leave, but his baby girl is too stubborn to do that. She wants to see this through to the end. Joel, however, can only put up with these bastards torturing Ellie in the name of science for so long.
But just when Joel considers grabbing Ellie and fucking leaving this place in the middle of the night… Marlene and a doctor approach with some very important news.
They’ve done it.
They found a way to make a vaccine.
Ellie’s sacrifice has been worth it.
---
Once the Fireflies actually get around to synthesising the vaccine, one of their doctors gets the first shot. And once she confirms that the man didn’t turn into an Infected, Ellie suggests—well, more like demands—that Joel gets vaccinated next. She needs him to be immune too.
(Joel being immune means there is one less way for her to lose him. Not that she tells him this.)
Ellie sits right beside him when a Firefly gives Joel his shot, her gaze flickering between his face and the needle going into his arm. She knows he’ll be okay, but her anxiety still kicks in; what if he’s allergic to the vaccine, or it hurts him in some other way?
Once it’s done, Joel touches the piece of tape over his arm, and raises his head to smile at her. He looks so fucking proud that Ellie doesn’t know how to react, turning her head as her cheeks flush a humiliating shade of red. She gets the urge to snap something at him (after all, it’s not like she made the fucking thing herself), but… Ellie can’t bring herself to.
Instead, she looks back at him, offering Joel an awkward smile. He grins back like she’s the best thing in the world—and Ellie is far from the best thing in the world, but she knows that, to Joel, she really is that important.
---
The day they leave the hospital is high on Ellie’s list of best days of her fucking life. She feels like shit, exhausted and weak, but none of that matters as Joel helps her into a wheelchair (she can walk, but she gets so freaking tired that she can’t get very far before the fatigue overwhelms her) and takes her to the parking lot. They find Marlene waiting for them, standing beside a car.
“This is for you. You can keep the wheelchair too,” Marlene explains. “Just put it in the trunk. There’s some weapons and ammo on the backseat as payment—and also this,” she says, holding out a small box.
“What’s in there?” Ellie asks.
“Vaccines, I guess,” Joel says. He sounds pretty unimpressed, but it fits with Joel’s attitude toward this whole thing: he didn’t care about the vaccine being created, only focused on Ellie’s wellbeing, so no wonder Joel is too focused about getting Ellie out of here to care that the Fireflies are sending them home with vaccines.
“That’s right,” Marlene says. “We could only spare a few from the first batch, but more will be available soon. As you… still haven’t told me where you live, it’ll take some time for the rest of your community to be supplied.”
Ellie glances at Joel, who tenses his jaw when Marlene speaks. She had no idea that Joel has kept Jackson a secret from Marlene all this time, but it makes sense; Joel doesn’t trust anyone in this hospital, so of course he wouldn’t just tell the Fireflies where Ellie lives in case they ever ask more of her.
“There ain’t no community,” Joel lies, not wanting to give them the tiniest clue about Ellie’s location. (Also not wanting them to know where to track her down, Ellie keeps her mouth shut.) “So that’s fine.” Taking the box, he says, “We’ll just… give these to anyone we meet.” He’s a terrible liar; Ellie makes a mental note to tease him about it later. “Now we really need to get goin’. Ellie’s exhausted.”
While technically true, her fatigue isn’t so intense that Ellie needs to leave right now. But she wants to get out of here, so she doesn’t complain.
Once Joel has helped Ellie into the passenger seat, Marlene approaches the open door, leaning down to look at her. Smiling, she says, “Thank you for everything, Ellie. I know this was hard on you—” Behind them, Joel grumbles something, but Marlene ignores him, “—but you were so strong, and thanks to your strength, we’ve finally got a vaccine after all this time. Your mom would be so proud of you.”
Her face flushing, Ellie thinks of the knife safely stowed in her backpack. She never knew her mother, but Ellie hopes that her mom would be proud too. “Th-Thanks,” Ellie mumbles, not sure what else to say.
Before Marlene can continue the conversation, Joel gets into the driver’s seat. As he puts the key in the ignition, he stares at Marlene, who continues to lean through the open door. “Mind shutting that? We need to be making tracks.”
“Of course,” Marlene says. Ellie knows that Joel and Marlene don’t like each other, but this is probably the politest she’s ever seen them talk to the other. “Thanks again, Ellie.”
And the moment she shuts the door, Joel starts driving, pulling out of the underground parking lot and speeding them away from the hospital where she went through so much pain.
---
She barely remembers any of their journey from Utah to Wyoming, too exhausted by everything to keep her eyes open for more than a couple of hours at a time. Ellie sleeps her way through the trip back to Jackson, dozing in the car by day and somehow still sleeping like a log when they camp out at night. Of course, she still gets nightmares, but she hasn’t slept this deeply in years.
Ellie imagines that she’s a very boring travel companion on the way back to Jackson, but if that’s true, Joel never makes a comment.
She’ll make up for her lack of conversation later when she feels better.
---
One night when they camp beside the car, Ellie feels a little more with it. She glances at Joel’s backpack, where she knows the small box of vaccines is kept, wrapped in one of Joel’s shirts for extra protection.
“So… what are we gonna do with the shots?” she asks.
Joel looks up from his cup of shit water coffee, clearly surprised to hear Ellie’s voice (fair enough, given that she hasn’t been this quiet since the days after Silver Lake). “The vaccines? We’ve only three of ‘em, so… I thought… Tommy, Maria, and their baby.”
“Can you trust them to… not tell anyone? Where we got the vaccines from, I mean.”
“I trust Tommy with my life. And Tommy trusts Maria, so… yeah, I think it’s a good plan. What d’you wanna do?”
Ellie falters, internally so fucking happy to be given a choice (something the Fireflies weren’t keen on). But at the same time, getting to make choices is kind of overwhelming. So she just mumbles, “Yeah, let’s do that,” and changes the subject to something she always knows how to talk about:
Infuriating Joel with amazing puns.
---
The car makes it to about five miles from Jackson when the engine gives out. Ellie sits in the car as Joel pops the hood and looks at it, complaining the whole time about the Fireflies giving them a “piece of shit car,” as he tries and fails to fix the problem. Eventually, Joel slams the hood back down and opens the passenger side door.
“Looks like we’re doing the last stretch on foot, kiddo,” he says.
“Why? I thought you’re good at fixing things. Or was that a lie?” Ellie smirks.
Joel raises an eyebrow. “I was a contractor, brat, not a car mechanic. There ain’t anything I can do to fix this piece of shit. We’re walkin’ the rest of the way, I’m afraid.”
Ellie sighs, twisting in her seat to let her legs dangle out of the open door. Without waiting for Joel’s help, she eases herself out of the car, wobbling her way over to Joel, who stands by the trunk, setting the wheelchair on the ground and adjusting the seating cushion. He doesn’t look impressed when he finds Ellie standing near him, leaning against the car, but she just stares him down.
Soon enough, though, she ends up in the wheelchair, holding her and Joel’s backpacks on her lap as Joel pushes the chair. He tried to carry them himself, but his bag weighs a ton with the new handguns given to them by Marlene inside it, and Ellie wanted to be useful in some way. So Joel gives in and lets her hold them, and Ellie feels pathetically proud of her tiny victory.
---
They use the wheelchair until they have to go off the road, the wheels unable to travel on dirt and grass. It feels like a waste to abandon it on the side of the road, but they can’t drag a bulky hospital wheelchair with them. Especially considering how often Joel ends up carrying both their luggage and Ellie when her legs give out.
She hates needing to be carried so much, longing for her independence, but Ellie has no choice but to rely on Joel. After walking for only a few minutes, she becomes breathless and her legs wobble, her muscles so fucking weak (a nurse said something about ‘muscle atrophy’ back at the hospital, a consequence of Ellie spending so much time in bed), and she hates to admit it, but they actually move quicker with Joel carrying her than when Ellie tries to walk under her own power. So she lets him carry her bridal style, somehow managing to hold the combined weight of Ellie in his arms and both their bags slung against his back.
He may be old, but his strength obviously hasn’t left him. Ellie says as much to Joel, grinning when he raises his eyebrows.
“Thanks,” he mutters, but he smirks.
Even being carried by Joel drains her incredibly limited energy, and a couple of miles into the trek back to Jackson, her eyes begin to droop. It’s hardly comfortable being carried like this, but she’s so fucking tired, and Joel makes her feel safe enough for the fatigue to overwhelm her. And before long, Ellie falls asleep in Joel’s arms.
---
Ellie awakes in a familiar room, staring around a girl’s bedroom from Before that happens to be the site of the worst fight Ellie and Joel ever had. She has no memory of arriving at Jackson, so they must have got here when Ellie was being carried by Joel (great, so half of Jackson saw Ellie asleep in Joel’s arms like a baby). She still feels like shit, exhausted from head to toe and aching all over. But at least she’s no longer in the hospital.
She turns her head when she hears creaking hinges, and finds Joel easing open her door just far enough to peek inside. He’s probably checking if she’s still asleep. Joel’s expression changes when Ellie makes eye contact, and when she sticks her tongue out at him, he raises an eyebrow.
“Rise and shine, Sleepin’ Beauty,” Joel says. His smile teasing, he adds, “About time you woke up.”
“Well, forgive me for being fucking exhausted, man,” Ellie snaps back, but she smirks. “You coming in or what?”
Chuckling, Joel enters the room. He glances around the bedroom, his expression wavering for a second (does he remember their argument too?), before sitting on the edge of her bed. “So… we’re finally back here.”
“Sure are. Did everyone stare at me when we got here?”
“A few people, yeah. Maria and Tommy managed to get people to back off.”
Ellie smiles, imagining what it looked like for those two to tell everyone to mind their own business.
“Soooo…” Ellie says, ready to voice a thought that she often pondered during their time at the hospital. “What do we do now?”
“Well, you need to rest, eat well and get your strength up,” Joel says, always so good at fussing over her.
“Not that. I mean… what are we supposed to do? We originally set out on this fucking journey because you wanted to see if Tommy was okay, and the Fireflies wanted to take me somewhere to make the vaccine. We’ve done both of those things. So, what the fuck is our new… I dunno, our goal?”
“We don’t need a goal. We’re gonna stay in Jackson and just live our lives. After all you’ve been through, baby girl, you deserve to live somewhere safe. If… you wanna stay here, of course. If you ain’t comfortable, we can leave—”
“No!” she says, cutting him off. “We can stay.” Ellie stares at him, amazed that Joel is prepared to leave this place—leave his brother—just to make Ellie happy. “It’s a nice town. Just… I’ve never been somewhere like this before. It’s nothing like the QZ.”
“And thank God for that,” Joel says. “So, yeah, we’re just gonna live here. I’ll get a job doing contract work, you can go to school—”
“No, I’m fucking not,” Ellie says.
Without even flinching, Joel says, “We’ll talk about that when you’re feelin’ better.”
“We’ll talk about it never, motherfucker. I’m not going.” She had nothing against learning at her old school, but the structure of the place was fucking awful. And after David said he used to teach kids her age, she never wants to set foot in a school again.
Smartly deducing that Ellie won’t budge on this topic, Joel changes the subject. “Anyway… We just need to focus on helping you get your strength back. And then… we’ll just live our lives.”
Ellie doesn’t reply. She doesn’t know how to, just replaying Joel’s words in her mind.
It’ll be nice to live for once, rather than just survive.
---
A few days after they returned to Jackson, Ellie actually manages to walk down the stairs without Joel’s help. But the tiny amount of exercise leaves her legs trembling, panting with fatigue, and Ellie sighs, hating how weak she’s become.
“You’ll be okay once you’ve built your strength back up,” Joel says. “You’ll be back to driving me crazy in no time.”
He smirks. Ellie shoves him.
Just walking down the stairs is enough to wipe her out, so Ellie settles on the couch, slumping there with a book in her hand and a blanket over her legs. After a while, Joel comes into the room with a glass of juice for her, one arm tucked suspiciously behind his back.
“What are you hiding?” Ellie says, narrowing her eyes at him.
Joel chuckles. “Can’t get anythin’ past you, huh?”
“You sure can’t. So show me what the fuck you’ve got already.”
“Bossy little thing,” Joel mumbles under his breath, but he pulls his arm out from around his back, revealing a small box—a video. “Look what I got from Tommy.”
Ellie stares at the box, soon recognising the words and pictures on the front. And then she sits up as quickly as she can manage, her book falling to the floor, and cries, “Holy fuck, dude, I love that movie.”
Joel hands her the glass of juice, and walks over to the TV. “You’ve seen it before?” he asks, putting the copy of Jurassic Park into the player.
“Yeah. Like, super, super rarely, if a teacher at school was too sick to come teach us how to be soldiers, they’d just shove a movie on instead,” she explains.
“Some things never change,” Joel says, pressing a button to rewind the video back to the start.
“What?”
“When… Sarah’s teachers were off school, they did the same. Even when I was in high school, they’d just shove on any old shit to keep us busy.”
“Really?” Ellie smirks. “I didn’t know they had videos in the Stone Age.”
Joel shoots her a look, but he snorts, walking back over to sit on the couch with her. “Anyway, you like this one, yeah?”
“Oh yeah, it fucking rules. Thanks for borrowing it from Tommy.”
“Who says I borrowed it?” Joel says, grinning. “Now shush. It’s startin’.”
---
An hour later, deeply invested in the plot of Jurassic Park, Ellie’s eyes are glued to the screen. At some point, she slumped sideways until her head was resting on Joel’s lap, curled up under her blanket as she watches the movie. And now, Joel’s fingers comb through her hair, the action so fucking soothing that it almost sends Ellie to sleep.
She still can’t believe this, that she’s allowed to just stay home in the middle of the day and rest because she feels like shit. This whole style of life is so alien to her, but Ellie must admit to loving living in this house with Joel.
She could get used to this.
“It’s what you deserve, baby girl,” Joel says when she mentions that thought.
For once, Ellie doesn’t bicker with him, just turning his words over and over in her mind. She has never had an adult like Joel in her life, someone who just wants her to be happy, and it’s still a little overwhelming. But she has Joel to help her adjust to a life where she isn’t always on the run or avoiding pain and violence.
This is how it was Before, wasn’t it? Just teenagers getting to be safe and happy, with… family to look after them. Because that’s what Joel is to her. He’s family.
He keeps stroking her hair with a level of care that makes her yawn, but Ellie manages to keep her eyes open.
She wants things to stay like this forever.