Chapter Text
This was supposed to be an easy job. In and out, deliver the product to the client, nothing to it. The only reason the whole crew was on this run was because of the sheer quantity of product that needed to be moved from point A to point B.
So why the hell is Joel now having to navigate the fucking sewer with a sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and a pissed-off teenager.
He can thank the mob of angry QZ residents, furious that FEDRA had cut rations for the fourth time in as many months for this set of circumstances.
In the general chaos, Joel and Ellie had been separated from the rest of the crew. In trying to protect Ellie from being crushed by the crowd, Joel had earned his shoulder injury. The sprained ankle had come when they had made their way down into the sewer and encountered a rare group of infected within the QZ. Ellie and he had managed to take care of them, but he’d hurt his ankle, and she’d broken her wrist.
“Ellie, can you please hang back? I know you want to find them. I want to as well, but I can’t keep up,” Joel calls to her, leaning heavily against the wall, wincing at the pain that radiates through his shoulder.
“Well, if you’d let me fucking set your shoulder, we could move faster,” Ellie spits out, pacing angrily in front of him.
Joel takes a deep breath. He’s trying to be patient. He understands she’s just worried about Tess, Riley, and Tommy, but she’s starting to wear on his last nerve.
“And how do you plan on doing that with your broken wrist, Hmmm? It takes two hands to set a shoulder, Ellie. I could do it myself, but with my ankle the way it is, I can’t trust that I can get the leverage I need.” He puts his head against the wall and closes his eyes momentarily, trying to push down the pain. He’s gotta be strong for her, she’s a capable kid, but she’s still a fucking kid. “It’s gonna be ok, kiddo. We’ll get to the backup meetin’ point, and you’ll see everyone will be fine.”
“I don’t have time for this, Joel. We have to keep moving, we have to get to them, we have….” Her voice breaks, and something about her tone has his head shooting up and his eyes snapping to her face.
She’s pale, and tears are coursing down her cheeks. That should be enough of an indicator to Joel that something is up because Ellie seldom cries. When she does, on rare occasions, let herself show that kind of vulnerability, her tears are almost always immediately dashed away by a shirt sleeve. But she’s not doing that. She’s just letting them trek down her face.
His second clue that something more is up with her is that she is absentmindedly rubbing and twisting the wrist that she had said was broken. After finishing off the infected, he had been in so much pain he had just taken her word that she had broken her wrist. Usually, he would have wanted to look at it immediately so he could assess the damage, but because the job had been within the QZ and they needed as much storage space in their packs for the product as possible, they had only taken one first aid kit, and Tommy had it. So Joel wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it even if he had wanted to. So he had let it go, thinking they would be able to deal with it as soon as they met up with the rest of their crew. A warning siren is now screaming in the back of his head when he looks at her manhandling her wrist without showing the pain one should have if it were broken.
“Ellie…… Honey. Can ya show me your wrist? I wanna make sure it’s doin’ ok.” Joel asks as he carefully pushes himself away from the wall, keeping his tone even and calm. Ellie immediately pulls her arm to her chest and looks to him with lost, shining eyes.
“Joel…” She keens his name, and he can feel the world drop out from underneath him.
“Show me,” He begs, his voice cracking with the strain, praying he’s wrong, that it really is just a break. But when she pulls up her sleeve to show him the bite, he can’t control the “No, No, No” that just keeps echoing from his lips.
🥜
Ellie can’t stand to look at his face.
She wants to scream so loud that her voice breaks. She wants to pound her fists against the wall until her bones crack. She’s so fucking mad it feels like she could crawl out of her skin.
She can’t stand to see the pain on his face. It will break her, and she doesn’t have time.
She is going to die for fucking peanuts, literal peanuts. This is all happening because some FEDRA uppity-up wanted to live a fucking memory from the before times. When Joel had explained the job, she and Riley had looked at him like he was insane.
“Peanuts?” Ellie said, her eyes wandering to Riley’s, and then they laughed.
“I know, kiddo, it’s pretty ridiculous,” Joel said, trying to hold it together as the girls laughed.
“You’d go to these big steakhouses, and they’d have peanuts in a little bucket at your table,” Tommy said, turning his chair around and sitting astride with his arms resting along the back. “You’d crack them open, eat the nut, and then just drop the shell on the floor. By the night's end, the whole place would smell like peanuts, and the shells would be crunchin’ wherever you walked.”
“Some of the stuff that you guys did in the before times make no sense,” Riley said, twisting her lip in confusion.
“I won't argue with ya kid. But this guy wants to remember the good times, and he’s paying us a pretty penny to live this particular memory. It’s a fairly easy job for a big payday, so we’re taken it.” Joel responded while massaging a stubborn knot out of Tess’s shoulder.
“I set up the meet with the supplier for tomorrow night. We’ll need to all go to get it all in one go. Tommy, I’d like it if you covered from the rooftops.” Tess looked to Tommy, and he nodded in agreement. “Girls, I need you to keep a lookout from the alleys.”
Ellie and Riley had each given a sharp salute and broken into giggles again. Tommy huffed a laugh, and soon Joel and Tess joined in.
It had been such a great fucking day. Now, 24 hours later, she’s going to die because of some fucking nut!
They need to get back to the group. She needs to see Riley.
Joel can’t be the one to shoot her.
She stares at the bite on her arm and wonders when she will start to lose it. What does it even feel like? She knows the symptoms, and so far, all she has is the telltale tendrils of Mycelium creeping under her skin and the redness around the teeth marks.
She yanks her sleeve down, holding back a sob.
“Ellie, baby…” His voice is so soft, so broken.
“Joel, stop. Please just stop. I-I can’t right now. I just can’t,” She says, using her elbow to wipe away her tears.
“We can make it back before I turn okay. It’s only been an hour. It could be anywhere between 2-6 hours. We have to keep moving. I don’t have time to deal with …. this.” She waves between the two of them, still not looking at him. “I don't.”
“Can ya please just look at me, kiddo?” His voice is so…..so just Joel that she finally looks up.
He’s moved, so he is standing right in front of her, and though she can see that his eyes are red, he seems to be holding it together.
He softly touches her shoulder with his good arm and gives it a little squeeze. His touch sends a wave of calm through her, and she lets herself lean into him. She’s not going to cry, she’s not going to fucking cry. He wraps his arm around her, and she can’t fucking do it. Standing in the sewer, smelling like sweat, blood, and fucking peanuts, she clings to Joel and sobs.