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At first, Ellie hadn’t thought the injury was too bad.
Sure, there was blood dripping down her side, and sure, there was a sharp pain that spasmed whenever she breathed a little too deeply, but she was used to it now. Used to the grime that covered her skin. Used to biting her lip until it bled. Used to the pain.
But now, nearly six miles past the skirmish that had grazed a dagger past her ribcage, she was beginning to get the sense that this was not an injury that would heal on its own.
Cautiously, Ellie glances up at the man beside her. Joel. His jaw is clenched as he walks, and his fingers rarely leave the handle of the gun he keeps looped into his belt. There’s blood dried into his beard.
His soft breathing as they walk is an unfamiliar company, though a welcome one. Ellie sucks in another sharp breath as she stumbles over a tree branch, and watches as Joel instinctively tightens his grip around the gun. Ellie’s not sure if it’s out of protectiveness, or some kind of twisted paranoia. She’s not sure of a lot about Joel: they’d only left the QZ about a week ago, and until recently, she’d had Tess to fill in the awkward gaps between the two of them.
Ellie breathes slowly, and wipes the quickly drying blood off her hand. She tries not to think about Tess. Tries not to think about how just like everyone else, she had left her, in one way or another. Just like Joel will.
They walk in silence for another mile or so. The pain in her side is beginning to burn in its intensity, and Ellie makes another misstep, blood beading on her tongue as she bites down a yelp.
Joel watches her out of the side of his eye. “You okay?”
“I’m great,” Ellie bites out, tucking her jacket around her even tighter. She walks just a little bit faster, if only to prove that she can. “Just fucking great.”
She can feel Joel’s gaze on the back of her head as she stomps away. She knows that it’s childish, but she can’t help but feel that she is being treated as someone less than. As if when he looks at her, he only sees someone weak; only sees a child.
Well, Ellie isn’t a child. Not anymore. She’s been treated like an adult for far too long to receive that sort of pity now.
“You don’t sound fine,” Joel says, voice flat of all inflection.
Ellie throws him the finger and keeps walking. Joel doesn’t yell after her, but he follows, footsteps muffled by the mossy ground. It’s quiet here. Only Ellie’s purposeful stomping and Joel’s even breathing. The silence is almost uncanny: suffocating in its isolation.
Joel catches up with her eventually. He doesn’t say anything. Neither does Ellie. The gash on her side is company enough.
Despite what Joel seems to think, she’s not stupid. She knows that she should tell him. It’s just that she knows how Joel treats her. Like she’s no more important than that battery he’s after. As if she’s just another piece of cargo. As if she hasn’t been raised her entire life without a purpose until now, walking across what is left of the world for a chance of its salvation.
She may act like it, but she’s not a child. She’s not. She doesn’t need someone to look at her with pity or annoyance, and she doesn’t need someone else to swoop in and try and solve all her problems. She knows she’s fucked up, and she’s okay with it. She’s fine. She’s gotten this far on her own, and she’ll continue that way, without needing to rely on all of the people who only end up leaving her.
Still, even as the blood on her side dries, she cannot swallow the dread in her throat.
They walk. They make camp. They sleep. Ellie pretends she does not hear Joel’s nightmares. Joel pretends he does not see the way Ellie sleeps with a hand cupping her own cheek, an unstable apparition of her mother that’s just strong enough to leave salt drying on her face in the morning. They wake. They walk.
Ellie bleeds.
She knows it’s getting infected. She knows that she should tell Joel. But she’s gone this far, and she pretends that the stubbornness that runs through her blood is strong enough to be a salve against her wound, and marches on.
It gets worse slowly.
Where she was keeping up with Joel, she begins to lag behind. She sees the way he keeps stopping to wait for her, and tries to ignore the embarrassment flushing her cheeks. Or maybe it’s the fever. Either way, she’s off balance, batting away dizziness with a tired arm.
Joel keeps asking her if she’s okay. If she tries hard enough, she can pretend the tone in his voice is something other than annoyance. If she tries hard enough, she can pretend his steadying hand is the calloused palm of a woman she hardly remembers. If she tries hard enough, she can pretend she is wanted.
She blinks for a moment too long. When she opens her eyes, Joel is in front of her. His mouth is moving, but it’s as if the words are lagging behind, distorted and garbled.
“Ellie,” Joel says again. Or maybe it’s the first time. Ellie doesn’t know. She just knows that his hand is cool against her forehead, and the gruffness in his voice is softened by something she can pretend is concern. “What’s wrong?”
Ellie shakes her head. She’s fine. It’s fine. She just…rest. She just needs to rest for a minute.
“Ellie.” Joel seems farther away now, but his hand is still on her forehead. She hums.
“I’m fine,” Ellie mumbles, and she closes her eyes, the stubbornness draining out of her with a whispered phrase. “Fine.”
“Oh, kiddo,” Joel whispers, the words drowned in a melancholy Ellie doesn’t understand.
It’s the last thing she hears before she passes out.
–
When Ellie wakes up, Joel is by her side.
She blinks. Joel doesn’t fade away. Carefully, Ellie makes to sit up, but freezes when Joel levels her a glare.
“What?” she says defensively, laying back down.
Joel is silent.
“You can say something, you know.” Ellie fiddles with her fingers. She notices, suddenly, that her wound has been bandaged. When Joel doesn’t respond, Ellie huffs out a breath. “I messed up, okay? I know I should’ve been faster, and not gotten hit, but we’re not all fuckin’ cowboys in training like you, and I—”
Joel cuts her off. “I’m not angry about you getting hurt.”
Ellie raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
Ellie bites the inside of her cheek. She can taste blood. She wonders what Joel had done when she had gone unconscious. If he had let her crash to the ground, unwilling to sully his hands with the burden of carrying her. How long it had taken him to find the wound festering under thin clothing. If he had thought about how much this cargo would bring him if he brought it in dead.
“Ellie,” Joel says. There is something soft in his voice when he talks to her, and it makes something painful well up behind Ellie’s closed eyes. “You should have told me.”
“I know,” Ellie whispers. “I know. And now you’re mad, and we’re behind schedule, and you had to fix me up and I know you didn’t want to, and—”
“Ellie,” Joel interrupts. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I don’t have to!” Ellie shouts, sitting up despite the pain. “You’re not my dad, and I don’t owe anything to you. I know you hate me. That’s fine. But don’t fucking treat me as a kid.”
With those words, it’s as if all the fight drains out of her. She lays back down, and Joel sits next to her, groaning exaggeratedly as his knees crack. “I don’t hate you,” he says. “And you are a kid.”
“Am not,” she says, horribly aware of the irony in her whining, and watches a ghost of a smile make its way onto Joel’s face.
“You are,” Joel says. “That’s not—that’s not a bad thing.” He coughs. “I just—you should have told me. I would’ve helped.”
“I know you would have,” Ellie whispers. “But I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can,” Joel says, and it almost surprises Ellie in its sincerity. “Wouldn’t’ve gotten this far if you can’t. Still,” he says, letting that smile twitch over his lips, “tell me next time.”
Ellie smiles to match him, a slow realization coming over her. “You were worried.”
Joe coughs. “I was not.”
“Don’t lie, motherfucker,” Ellie says, and she’s laughing despite the way it hurts her side. “You were worried.”
Joel shakes his head, getting up from his spot on the ground. “Fucking kids. Can’t do one nice thing for them.”
“You like me,” Ellie says, sing-song from behind him.
Joel flips her off, and though he walks away from her, some part of Ellie knows that he’ll come back.