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They’ve been in Jackson for two and a half months when Joel suggests she learn to swim. Ellie doesn’t… hate the idea, but, like most things now, she just can’t bring herself to care about it.
Is swimming easy or hard?
It deep-ends.
“Sure,” she agrees, trying to sound like herself. Her voice never sounds quite right anymore, and the smile she’s forcing feels wrong. But Joel’s nodding, telling her what to pack for when they go to the river in the morning, and she’s trying so hard to be normal.
Nearly every night, she wakes with a scream trapped in the back of her throat, swallowing it down and laying in her bed trying to stop shaking until long after the sun rises. She goes to school because Joel says it’ll be good for her, because it’s the one thing he and Maria can agree on and Ellie doesn’t have it in her to argue anymore. She helps out at farm rotation or at the stables and does her homework, chokes down the food Joel puts in front of her.
She goes through the motions of life, doing just enough to get by, but never fully present. Joel looks at her like the old Ellie is still there, like she didn’t burn to death on her back in a steakhouse in Colorado. He packs her lunch for school and holds her when she can’t stifle her screams fast enough, when the nightmares leave her sobbing so hard she thinks her chest might crack open with the weight of it all. He tries to teach her guitar, but she tells him she’s tired, or she has homework, or maybe later, Joel, and the boggle game and DVDs he saves to watch with her collect dust on the coffee table as she feels herself slip away.
I told you I’d fail her, Tommy, she hears him say as the two of them share a bottle of whiskey late one night on the front porch. I just- She’s fadin’ away right in front of me and there’s nothin’ I can do.
So Ellie agrees to the swimming lessons. She takes a pair of boys’ swim trunks patterned with tiny blue fish and a tank top she’s only ever worn underneath another shirt, and she follows Joel outside the walls on an hour hike along the river until they arrive at their destination.
The waterfall is beautiful, picturesque, the sun casting rainbows in the mist. At the bottom is a pool of water that empties back into the river. It's shallow, clear enough that she can see the glint of scales from the fish a few feet below.
The mid June afternoon is hot, but the nights are rarely ever more than fifty degrees, so the water never really fully warms up. Ellie stands with just her feet engulfed, watching Joel stride right in until it’s up just past his waist. He pretends not to notice the way her eyes zero in on the ugly, uneven scarring on his stomach.
“C’mere, kiddo,” he says after a minute of her kicking her feet and stalling at the riverbank.
She sighs, wading into the water, hissing dramatically as the cold makes contact with her toes, her legs, her stomach.
“This is terrible.”
“You’ll get used to the temperature,” he says. “Just gotta give it a minute.”
He’s right. After the initial adjustment, the water feels nice, a respite from the sun that’s been scorching them for the better part of the morning. Joel guides her until the water’s up to her mid-chest.
“You should probably learn how to float first,” he demonstrates lying flat on his back on the surface of the water. For a minute, he looks weightless. “Like this. It’s easier than swimming.” He gets back to his feet and looks at her.
“Okay.”
“Alright,” he says. “You’re gonna want to lift your feet up so they’re not touching the ground, and while you do that, I’ll lean ya back so you’re layin’ on top of the water like I was.”
Ellie takes a deep breath, steeling herself.
“I’m right here, okay? Won’t let anythin’ happen to ya.”
Ellie nods and lets him move her, ignoring the way her stomach flips when her feet are no longer touching the ground.
“Keep your legs straight,” he tells her. “And put your arms out.” She follows his instruction and finds that he’s right, floating like this is easy.
“Don’t let go,” she warns him.
“I won’t.”
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Ellie finds she actually kind of likes swimming. Well… not swimming just yet, but she likes the floating around in the water. After a little while, she’s confident enough that Joel can let go of her where he'd had an arm beneath her waist and head to make sure she doesn't sink. Busy grinning and turning to Joel to celebrate her success, she nearly goes under, but he’s close enough to reach out, keeping her afloat.
She stays like that for a while, weightless in the water, looking up at the sun filtering through the leaves above, listening to the rush of water from the waterfall. It’s the most alive she’s felt in weeks, fully present in her body the way she struggles to nowadays.
“When can we come back here?” Ellie asks as they start the hike back, wringing out her ponytail. Joel looks at her, surprised. It takes her a minute to realize why“ In the time they’ve lived here, Ellie hasn’t really asked for anything, just doing what Joel tells her or what she’s expected to do without complaint, the same way she had back in military school.
“Next weekend?” he suggests, offering a hand to help her over a fallen log, trying not to look too hopeful.
She takes his hand. “Okay.”
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By the end of their third swimming lesson two weeks later, Ellie’s learned how to tread water, to float on her stomach, and has the basics of swimming down.
She thinks she might actually be getting better, and not just at swimming; it’s summer break, so she doesn’t have school, but a couple of the kids talk to her now when she’s helping out at the stables, and she actually laughs at a joke one boy makes, something stupid she can’t even remember now, but still—things seem to be looking up. Maria’s hushed conversations with Joel about socialization and post-traumatic stress are at an all time low.
“You know,” Joel says that night as they’re eating dinner, “You’re lucky I didn’t teach you to swim the way I taught Sarah.”
“Yeah?” he doesn’t talk about Sarah too often, but Ellie likes when he does.
“I threw her into the pool,” he says, smiling softly when Ellie huffs a surprised laugh. “She was… four or five, I think? We had a pool in the backyard in the house in Austin. She always- she loved the water. Lot like you, I guess, in that regard.”
Ellie smiles back. She likes having things in common with Sarah. It’s obvious how much Joel loved her, how much he still loves her, nearly twenty-one years gone. Something about it makes Ellie love her too, the sort-of-sister she never got to meet.
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In her dreams, she leaps from a bridge, and Joel follows. The water’s freezing, the current carrying her away, and Joel doesn’t keep her afloat this time. She’s sinking down, dragged by the current and by the bruising grip of hands on her wrists, the same hands that pinned her down on a restaurant floor, only this time it’s the icy river water, not the smoke, that steals the air from her lungs.
“Ellie! Ellie!” She wakes up and Joel’s there, hands gentle on her shoulders to shake her awake. She’s shoving him away to puke on the floor next to her bed. “It’s okay,” he holding her hair back while she vomits, rubbing comforting circles on her back as the bile burns in her throat and her nose. “You’re alright,” he says, but she’s not, she’s not, she’s awake but can't stop drowning, no matter how hard Joel tries to pull her to the surface.
“Ellie,” Joel’s cradling her face in his hands, gently but firm enough to get her to look at him, his calloused thumbs wiping the tear tracks under her eyes. “Ellie, baby, look at me, it’s okay, you’re here in Jackson.”
They stay like that for a while: Joel sitting on the side of her bed holding her, Ellie clinging to him like she’ll break without him there to hold her together.
When she can finally breathe again, he helps her to the bathroom on shaky legs. She brushes her teeth roughly, until her gums bleed, trying to get that bitter stomach-acid taste out of her mouth, and then goes back to her room, the puddle of vomit gone, Joel pulling the fresh sheets back for her and offering a glass of water that Ellie wrinkles her nose at but takes regardless, handing it back when it's a little less than half full.
“Do you want to… talk about it?” His voice is hesitant as he sits on the edge of her bed. Joel’s been talking to Maria, she knows, about how to help her. How to talk about the difficult things instead of trying to ignore them. He’s trying, Ellie knows, and she appreciates it, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. Sometimes, it makes her wish Joel acted the way he used to, all rough edges and sullen silences.
Ellie shakes her head, and his face falls. “I’m sorry,” she says, and he shakes his head.
“It’s okay,” he says, smoothing the blankets over her, tucking her in. No one else has ever done that for her before, and even though she’ll never admit it, she likes it, the way it makes her feel like a little kid. “I know it’s hard to talk, and maybe- maybe ain't the best person to talk to, but I’ll be here when you’re ready. And you can talk to me about anything. But if- it doesn’t have to be me either. You’ve got Tommy, and Maria, too. We all just want you to be okay. Okay?” He gives her a sad sort of smile and leans down to kiss the top of her head, smoothing back some of the more errant front pieces of hair with one large palm.
“Okay,” she says, yawning. “Can you- can you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
“Of course.”
“You’re wrong, though,” she says as he keeps stroking back her hair, lulling her into a dreamless sleep.
“About what, baby?”
“You-” Ellie yawns again, and she’s asleep before she can finish her sentence. You’re the only person I can talk to. He’s the only person who's got the answers about the fireflies she so desperately needs, the only person she somehow trusts, even knowing he's lied to her.
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Ellie turns fifteen on July fifteenth. She spends the afternoon at the small lake inside Jackson’s walls. Tommy splashes the hell out of her and Joel looks ready to chew him out until he gets a look at Ellie’s grin and joins her in getting revenge on him.
There’s a cake with strawberries and honey and honest-to-god actual birthday candles, and when she blows them out she doesn't even think to make a wish. She gets a new walkman from Joel and a book about space from Tommy and a pair of black converse, still brand new in the box, from Maria. It’s the best day she’s had in a long time, maybe really ever, and when as it ends she knows it’ll be the last for a while.
Early the next morning, she sits at the table with Joel for breakfast and demands the truth.
“Ellie-” he starts, in that guarded, careful way, like he's talking to a skittish horse. Like he tried to with Henry, trying to talk him away from the gun, Sam's blood still wet where it splattered across the wall.
“I know you lied. I knew you were lying as soon as you fucking said it. And then you swore that you were telling the truth. You fucking promised, Joel. I’ve let you lie to me this whole time, and I just- I need to know, okay?”
Joel sighs, looking down at his untouched breakfast for a second, hands tensing in his lap the way she knows he does when he’s nervous.
“Makin’ a vaccine—it would’a killed you. They thought there was cordyceps growin’ in your brain, makin’ you immune, so they were going to…” he pauses, thinking through his words. “Biopsy your brain.”
Ellie sucks in a harsh breath and just stares at him for a moment. “So you- What, you just... killed them all?” He looks away, jaw going tight. It’s all the confirmation she needs. Anger floods through her, an icy sort of rage she doesn’t think she’s ever felt before, and she’s not even really aware of the words leaving her mouth, just that she's yelling at him, shoving her dishes off the table and leaving the space between them a mess of broken glass and spilled juice and the ugly words she spits at him while Joel just sits there and takes it, lets her get it all out of her system. She loses steam after a few minutes, falling back into her chair and breathing hard, anger giving way to grief.
“You fucked over the whole world so we can sit here and… fucking play house while people die every day from something I could’ve prevented.” Her voice is hoarse, half gone. “If I was supposed to die in that hospital, then you-"
"No," Joel’s shaking his head, boots crunching on the shards of porcelain as he moves to crouch next to her chair, trying to get her to look at him. “Ellie, we don’t even know if it would’ve even worked-”
“I guess we’ll never fucking find out now, huh? If I was supposed to die in that hospital,” she repeats. “I wish you had let me.”
“Ellie,” she thinks the only time she’s ever heard him sound this stricken was after Silver Lake, when he’d lifted her sweatshirt to check her broken ribs and found the buttonhole of her jeans torn open. Had taken a shaky breath, jaw clenched so hard she'd distantly worried he might crack a tooth. His voice cracked, sadder and older than she'd ever heard him when he'd asked Ellie, honey, did he… did someone hurt you?
She’s out of her chair and halfway up the stairs before he can say anything else, his horrified expression stuck in her head as she slams the bedroom door behind her.
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Ignoring Joel is easier than she thought it’d be. After his first two times trying to talk to her are met with a stony silence, he takes the hint, not speaking, just glancing warily at her like a kicked dog even as he leaves her paper-bagged lunches on the counter and trinkets found on his patrols on her desk.
A week of silence is broken when he threatens to break down her locked door after she wakes up screaming, still feeling hands on her skin and blood on her face and the way the cleaver had slipped from her fingers when she finally managed to stop stabbing.
She’s barely able to breathe long enough to manage a fuck off, Joel, that sounds strangled and pathetic even to her own ears, but he stops his frantic pounding on the door. He’s silent, but she sees his shadow in the gap at the bottom of the door for a long while as she sits shivering in her bed, knees pulled up to her chin.
Finally, he sighs, and she hears his footsteps retreat. She doesn’t go back to sleep.
A few nights later, she wakes silently. She doesn’t really remember the nightmare this time, memories slipping through her fingers like blood from an open wound, shivers wracking her body, teeth chattering like it’s winter in Colorado and not July safe in her bed in Jackson.
It hurts. And there’s only one thing she can do, her body moving before her brain, still fuzzy from sleep, can catch up: find Joel. He’s asleep when she enters his room, but his good ear’s facing up, and he jolts awake when she slams the door open, a sob bursting through her lips as she falls onto the mattress next to him. He looks at her unsurely for a second, and Ellie almost thinks he’s going to just sit there, but then he’s gathering her up in his arms, cradling her to his chest. One hand around her back, one hand cupping the base of her skull to his chest, same way he always does when he's held her like this. She’s fully crying now, in a way she knows must look god-awful, gasping, pitiful sobs that leave her snotty and breathless.
Joel just holds her there, humming softly, some slow, sweet song she’s heard bits and pieces of him playing on the guitar as she listens to that and the steady beating of his heart. They stay that way until long after her cries have turned to sniffles, to silence, and he slowly lays back down, letting her move him around a bit until she’s comfortable, curled up in the space between him and the wall.
“I’m still mad at you,” she says, when he’s gone quiet for long enough that she’d think he might be asleep if not for the hand still steadily stroking her hair back.
“S’alright,” he says. It's quiet for a moment.
“I don’t get it. Why are– I’m mad at you. Why would you... ?”
“Just ‘cause you’re mad at me, doesn't mean I gotta be mad at you. You can be angry with me as long as you need to be, long as you’re alive to do it.”
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The day after Joel told her the truth, she’d noticed all of the empty spaces in the silverware drawer, his razor missing from the bathroom, her knife no longer in its usual spot on her nightstand when she gets home from school.
Ellie wants to yell at him again, to say she’s not like him, not like Henry, she’s not gonna shoot herself in the head, she’s not going to slit her wrists with the goddamn potato peeler, but she can’t. Not honestly, at least. Not when, in the mall, Riley’s blood still drying on her skin, she’d thought she was dying anyways, she'd been just about to raise the gun to her temple when the fireflies had shown up. Not when, in those long, hard nights after Silver Lake, she’d thought about it, looking at the way the dying firelight had glinted off the edge of her knife.
Joel had known, had recognized something in her the same way he had in Henry. Had to have known that, still reeling from everything David put her through, that if the fireflies gave her a choice, she would’ve chosen to die. But he saved her anyways. Ellie wishes he hadn’t, that he can understand she’s not worth it. She knows she’ll probably always feel that way, but she can’t go back and change anything, and she can't stay mad at him forever. There's really only one way to go: forward.
Joel had removed his razor and the painkillers from the bathroom cabinet, but he missed the drain cleaner.
She takes one look at the bright red warning label on the side of the bottle and knows exactly what she's going to do. She locks the door, kneeling on the floor with her arm over the bathtub and pours. It takes a minute for the pain to kick in. It’s like nothing she’s felt before, and the only tangible thought running through her head is how much she deserves it. The mottled skin of the bite marks on her arm melt into a minefield of blisters and raw, vibrantly red burnt skin, and she keeps pouring until the bottle is empty, clattering to the bottom of the tub. She goes to stand, to wash it at the sink, but she’s dizzy from the pain, from the fumes, and she can’t make herself get up. She curls up in the corner next to the bathtub, holding her arm to her chest.
She’s not sure how long she stays there. Only knows that suddenly, Joel’s there, that the door's is broken off its hinges, and the strangled, pained cry he makes when he sees her motionless on the floor is something she’ll never forget, cutting straight through the haze and scarring itself on the inside of her skull.
“Ellie, baby, my baby girl,” he says. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” he’s saying it over and over again, a plea, like saying it will make it true. He pulls her to her feet and holds her still as he shoves her arm under the sink. It hurts, somehow even worse than when she first poured the drain cleaner, and she’s whining, trying to pull away from him, but he holds her firmly in place, only moving her arm to ensure the whole burn gets rinsed.
When Ellie meets his eyes in the mirror, she's shocked to find tears in them. Somehow, she realizes, when he's telling her I know it hurts, baby, I know, I’m sorry, he really does know.
That, impossibly, he cares about her so much that her hurting makes something in him hurt too.
Later, laying in Joel’s bed, arm wrapped in bandages, drowsy from pain medication, she apologizes. He looks terrible, sitting at the side of the bed: hair a mess, eyes bloodshot and rimmed with red. She knows she has to look worse.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and reaches for him with her good hand. He hesitates for half a second, but takes it, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand soothingly.
“I’m not– I ain’t mad,” he begins, squeezing her hand lightly. “But I gotta know why. Please, Ellie, just talk to me.”
“I just… I want it to be over,” she says, tongue loosened by the pain medication. He looks agonized. “I don’t mean- not like, dead over,” she revises, “I mean the stupid fucking bite mark. We can move on now. I’m not- I don’t want to die anymore, I think. Not if it’s for no reason. I would have died for a cure but you took that from me and I guess I have to live with it now, but if I can’t make the vaccine then I can’t even fucking look at my own arm, so I needed it to just be gone.”
Joel sighs shakily, lets her tug him into the bed. He holds her, careful of the bandaged arm, tucking the blankets over her the way she likes. Cups her face in his free hand, wipes away the dampness beneath her eyes. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.
“I think I understand,” he says. “But you can’t- you… Please, Ellie- you talk to me if you’re ever feelin’ like hurtin’ yourself again. Or if you’re- just talk to me, okay?” He pulls her face away from his chest slightly so she can meet his eyes. “I’m right here. Ain’t goin’ anywhere. Doesn’t matter how mad you are or how bad you’re hurtin’, I’m here. You understand?”
Ellie doesn’t say anything, just nods, tucking her head back into his chest, tired and in pain and unable to do much else, but still somehow feeling better than she has in weeks.
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They go swimming twice more that summer. Joel’s adamant that she can’t go in the water until her arm’s fully healed, something about infection risks and bacteria and Ellie doesn’t really listen to the rest, just thinks wistfully of the peace and tranquility of their hidden little spot in the forest, of the water and the sun and the sense of calm it brings.
It’s late August by the time they get to go back, and it starts to get cold in Wyoming in early September. Ellie has a feeling the coming months are going to be hard for her, the cold a reminder of things she’d rather forget, so she’s glad to have a few more happy memories to look back on when things are rough.
Ellie perfects her breaststroke, and dives off a high-up rock, scaring the shit out of Joel in the process. It’s on the deeper side of the water, and when she sinks to the bottom, she stays there for a second, until her lungs start to burn, and then she pushes herself up, swimming to the surface, taking in a deep, gasping breath of air. It feels like letting go.
“Ellie?” Joel calls, face pinched with worry.
“I’m good,” she calls, grinning, swimming towards him where he sits at the edge. “I’ll be cliff diving in no time, old man!"
“Jesus,” he says, kicking water at her, and she cackles, the way she always does when she wants to annoy the shit out of him.
“It sucks that we won’t be able to come here anymore once it gets cold,” she says when they're getting ready to leave, frowning as she wrings out her hair.
“There’s always next year,” Joel says, gently bumping her shoulder with his.
She sighs. “Yeah.” Next year. For the first time in a while, she’s not mad about it.