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Joel sees Ellie sitting with her friends at lunch and reminds himself to be happy about it. It’s good that she’s spending time with other kids. He’d been worried when she wouldn't stray more than a foot from him. He’s happy about this, goddamn it.
Tommy, retrieving his tray just behind Joel, gives a knowing smirk.
“Let her play with her friends, Joel.”
“I am,” he growls, shoving his brother.
Tommy laughs then overbalances. Joel tries to steady him and is rewarded by a shirtful of chili when Tommy slips and loses his grip on his tray. It’s worth it, because the tray nails Tommy in the foot.
Joel barks a laugh. “Nice one.”
There’s a crash across the canteen and Joel knows with his sixth sense that it’s Ellie.
He looks up and sees her urgently barreling towards him.
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Ellie is sitting with her friends at lunch, ignoring her probably-not-human chili. She’s getting better at eating in the canteen during more crowded times, but the din of noise and sticky warmth from so many bodies still puts her on edge. Ellie’s finished both her cornbread and Dina’s. She’s eyeing Jesse’s when she hears a bark of laughter that’s decidedly Joel’s.
She looks up, a smile half-formed on her face—and sees Joel’s abdomen stained red.
The chatter of conversation and the clatter of cutlery are snuffed out. Cold bites at her ears and nose. She hears faint bird sounds and the distant screech of a monkey.
Joel is bleeding out on the other side of the university courtyard. Hadn’t he been right next to her? She can’t hear the raiders, but they can’t be far.
Ellie vaults over the sandbag barriers left by the Fireflies and barrels towards him.
“Ellie?” Joel asks, alarmed, when she reaches him.
“Shut up,” she hisses quietly. “They’re coming. We have to move.” She moves his hands over the wound and presses hers on top of them.
Ellie looks around at the deserted courtyard. Good news and bad news: the raiders haven’t caught up to them yet, but she can’t see Callus anywhere. Another monkey screeches somewhere nearby; the icy wind stings her cheeks.
“Where the fuck did we leave him?” Ellie says more to herself than Joel. He’s hanging on for now, but she knows he’s fading fast.
She feels Joel try to move his hands and glares at him sharply.
“Put pressure on the wound, dipshit,” Ellie barks at him. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
He puts his hands back over the wound but isn’t putting much strength into it. Has he lost that much blood already?
She sees someone move behind Joel and darts between them, knife out. She feels her knife pierce flesh and the raider stumbles back with a cry. Ellie uses this distraction to grab Joel and drag him to the horse. She still can’t see Callus but figures away-from-the-raiders is a good direction. She reaches for her gun to lay cover fire behind them, but she must have dropped it.
Joel’s letting her pull him but doesn’t seem to sense the urgency of his fucking gut bleeding out.
“Baby girl, we’re okay,” Joel says soothingly.
What in the actual fuck? Does he think she’s... Sarah?
“It’s me, Joel. It’s Ellie,” she says frantically. “Did they get you in the head?”
“No, honey, I’m fine,” Joel says. “We’re fine.”
He’s bleeding to death in front of her and hallucinating his dead daughter, which Ellie doesn’t consider “fine.”
“Stay with me, Joel,” Ellie whispers. “I can’t fucking do this without you.”
✧┈┈┈┈┈✧
Joel has no fucking idea how to pull her out of this. He’s never been in one of her flashbacks before. He only knows how to bring her back to herself from the outside. His voice, his touch—the things that ground her—are all inside with her now.
She’s clearly back at the University of Eastern Colorado. He’s just been stabbed and she needs to get him to safety.
And he needs to get her out of the canteen. She’s already given Tommy a slash to the arm, and he doesn’t think others will be as accommodating if she stabs them.
“I’m with you, Ellie,” Joel says. “Callus is this way. We have a good lead.”
Ellie looks relieved. She puts herself under his right arm and puts pressure on his scar to staunch the flow of blood that’s very real to her. They exit the canteen and take a few steps down the main road.
Should he take her to the stables? Was playing it out the right move?
“Where’s Callus?” Ellie looks up at him.
Dina—the girl he’s pretty sure Ellie has a crush on—calls out from across the square and starts towards them.
Ellie’s in motion immediately, pulling one of her weighted throwing knives out of her boot. (These were a find on patrol that he carefully kept hidden from the others. Jackson frowns on arming kids. Joel frowns on leaving his kid unable to defend herself. Also, she’s really fucking good at throwing knives.)
Ellie whips around towards Dina—a raider, to Ellie—and aims. Joel forgets to tend his fake injury and moves between them in the blink of an eye. He grabs Ellie’s wrist and twists until she makes a pained sound; she drops the knife and his heart breaks.
Not letting Ellie get hurt is Joel’s prime directive—a bruised wrist will hurt a lot fucking less than finding out she killed her friend. He still really fucking hates that he’s the one bruising it.
“What are you doing?!” Ellie demands.
“She got bit, remember?” Joel invents wildly, pocketing the knife. They hadn’t faced any infected at the university, but he’s not sure if she knows that right now. “No point wasting a knife. We’ll leave her to delay the raiders. Let’s move.”
Ellie looks a little confused but blinks it off. “Right,” she agrees.
“Come on,” Joel says, urging her in the direction of home. He shoots what he hopes is an apologetic look towards Dina and her older sister. Dina looks confused and Talia looks affronted.
Ellie seems to be trying to support his weight; he doesn’t actually put any weight on her, but she struggles under the memory of it.
“There!” Ellie says. She pulls him towards a yellow house. “We must have left him here.”
The house he’d woken in the basement of was yellow. He has no idea who lives there, but Ellie looks determined. Here's hoping they’re friendly.
Ellie opens the (blessedly unlocked) front door. The bottom floor is a shop, as many in the main square are. His heart sinks when he sees the shelves of herbs and tinctures lining the walls. This must be the apothecary, which means it’s where Dina lives. Dina, who Ellie just tried to attack in front of the older sister who raised her. Super.
“Here,” Ellie says, pushing him into a small side room with a cot. Ellie hangs out at Dina’s a lot—he hopes the fact that she remembers the layout means Jackson memories are close to the surface.
She nudges him down on the cot and kneels next to him, carefully pulling up his chili-stained shirt. Her face pales. She presses her hand down over his scar as her breath hitches.
Joel’s heart constricts when Ellie starts shouldering off her light flannel, presumably to better staunch the blood flow. She’s only wearing a tank top underneath it—he can’t let her expose her bite scar.
“Ellie, wait—” Joel starts.
Then the fucking front door opens and they both freeze.
“I don’t know, Talia,” Joel hears Dina say as they walk in. “But, like, sometimes she… goes somewhere else. It seemed like that.”
“What does that even mean?” Talia asks, frustration clear in her tone.
Ellie’s head twitches, as though she’s heard something but can’t place it. She shakes it off and focuses on his stomach again. Both hands put pressure on the wound like she’s trying to hold him together.
“Don’t you dare fucking try to make me leave, motherfucker,” Ellie says determinedly.
“I won’t,” Joel promises at the same time Talia says: “Hello?”
Joel debates calling out to say it’s safe. What’s worse: the people who just threatened your kid lurking silently in your house or them announcing they broke in? Ellie reads his thoughts and shoves her hand over his mouth, shaking her head. She keeps one hand firmly on his scar.
“Ellie,” Joel says in the softest whisper against her hand. “I know them. They’re here to help.”
Ellie looks at him in alarm.
“You’re concussed, Joel,” Ellie whispers back. “You don’t know people here. We’re in Colorado, remember? The university?”
Footsteps quickly approach and the door swings open. Ellie is on her feet with her mother’s switchblade out before Joel can blink.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” Talia demands. “After what you just pulled you’ve got some nerve—”
“Back off, motherfucker,” Ellie says dangerously. “One more step and I’ll kill you.”
Ellie stands between him and Talia like a lioness protecting her cub: claws out and body tensed to spring at a moment's notice.
“Talia,” Joel says beseechingly from his prone position on the cot. He doesn’t dare move in case Ellie does something desperate to protect him.
“Shut. Up,” Ellie hisses back at him.
“Talia,” Dina says from just outside the door, out of sight. “She’s—this is what I’m saying: she’s not here.”
“She’s not,” Joel whispers urgently. “She’s having a flashback. Please.”
He’s not entirely sure what he’s begging for, but Ellie’s feral glare, Joel’s panic, or Dina’s pleading must convince Talia. Her face shifts from protective sister to gentle town healer.
“I’m here to help, Ellie,” she says very carefully. “Is Joel hurt?”
“I know what your help looks like, you sick fuck,” Ellie says viciously. Joel’s stomach drops out.
Ellie spits in Talia’s—David’s—face, but it falls short. She steps back so her legs are pressed against the cot.
“Just leave the meds and take the deer,” Ellie growls. “It’s a fair trade. You leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.”
“Okay,” Talia agrees, hands up in a placating gesture. “Fair’s fair. We’ll take the deer and leave you alone.”
“You know what happens if you don’t,” Ellie says in a voice that shatters Joel to his core. It’s the worst version of him speaking through her lips, the version that doesn’t stop swinging until skulls have caved in: heartless, brutal, and (God help him) effective. “Tiny little pieces.”
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
“Okay,” David agrees, hands up in a placating gesture. His face is deceptively open and kind. “Fair’s fair. We’ll take the deer and leave you alone.”
It’s hard to trust strangers. I know. But I honestly mean you no harm.
She won’t fall for it this time. She’s all that stands between Joel and David, between Joel’s survival and his bleeding out, between her having Joel and her being horribly alone. She needs to channel Joel to save him, to save them both.
“You know what happens if you don’t,” Ellie says in the weird fuckin’ tone that had scared Henry. “Tiny little pieces.”
“I—I remember,” David says. “I’ll just go.”
Ellie’s eyes narrow as he slowly backs away. Then she sees a girl behind him, about her age. A girl for David to teach.
Over Ellie’s dead fucking body.
Ellie springs with her arm already in motion to slash David’s throat. Then everything is moving at once.
The girl throws herself at David, pushing him out of the way. Joel isn’t lying down anymore—he’s standing behind her, holding her against him in an iron grip.
“Let him go, Ellie,” Joel insists.
“I’m not going to let him hurt her!” Ellie is fighting against his grip as hard as she can. “He will never touch another kid.”
How is he fighting her? How is he even fucking standing?
Joel tries to take the knife from her hands, but she clings to it, still swinging. When Joel can’t get Ellie to release the handle, he grabs the blade and forces it still with a low gunt of pain. She keeps fighting until she sees the blood trickling through his white-knuckled fingers.
“Joel!” she says, dropping the knife in shock. Joel lets it fall and kicks it in the opposite direction of David. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Joel loosens his hold and turns her around so she’s facing him, grasping her arm firmly with the hand that isn’t bleeding.
“Look at the blood, Ellie,” Joel says in the soft, calm voice that pulls her out of nightmares. He kneels and looks up at her, holding out his right hand. There are two sharp cuts where he gripped the blade; blood seeps slowly out of them and pools in the creases of his hand. “Do you see it?”
“Of course I fucking see it,” Ellie says in frustrated alarm. David is right there. Ellie tries to look over her shoulder, but Joel moves the hand holding her arm and cups the back of her head, turning her back to face him.
“Touch it, Ellie,” Joel says softly but urgently. “Please. For me.”
“For me” is something neither of them can refuse the other, so she takes the palm he’s holding out in her hands and gently wipes away a trickle of blood.
“Can you feel it, Ellie?” Joel asks in his honey voice.
“Of course I can feel it,” Ellie says, blinking rapidly. Her heartbeat isn’t pounding quite so loudly in her ears anymore. His soothing voice and gentle touch are dulling the edges of her panic.
Joel takes the hand that’s holding her head and lifts his shirt.
“Is this bleeding too?” Joel asks.
Ellie’s breath hitches.
The deep wounds gushing dark, purplish blood are gone, healed over into raised white scars. Ellie’s eyes dart between the bright red blood pooling on Joel’s palm and the messy, puckered scars on his abdomen.
Then she collapses like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
Joel catches her before she falls like he always does. He gathers her in his arms and sits back on the cot, cradling her against his chest.
“You’re safe, baby girl. You’re with me. We’re in Jackson,” Joel murmurs steadily. “You’re safe. We’re safe. We’re together.”
He rubs his knuckles up and down her back, grounding her in the present moment.
Ellie wraps her arms around him and buries her head in the crook of his neck.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie whispers, exhausted and ashamed.
“None of that, now,” Joel says, kissing the crown of her head. “Ain’t anything for you to be sorry about, baby.”
“You’re bleeding,” Ellie points out. She’s also pretty sure she stabbed someone.
Her eyes are closed so she has the dual protection of darkness and Joel’s steady strength between her and whatever havoc she just wreaked.
“I did that to myself,” Joel says. “Forgot which side you’re supposed to hold it. I’m getting senile.” Ellie snorts.
“Where are we?” she asks tentatively.
Ellie hates that she loses herself like this. The last thing she can clearly remember is lunch. Then she was in the university courtyard in Colorado. She can only access snatches of what happened: fighting raiders, getting Joel to safety, then David (always fucking David) but he had a girl this time—a girl who looked like—
Ellie jerks her head up and opens her eyes. She shifts and Joel sits her up on his lap as she looks around. They’re in the side room of Talia’s apothecary, where she sees people privately. The door is closed and it’s empty but for her and Joel.
“We’re at Dina’s,” Ellie says in dread.
“We’re at Dina’s,” Joel says calmly, rubbing his knuckle up and down her spine. “We’re okay.”
“Did I hurt her?” Ellie asks in horror. “Did she see?”
“You didn’t hurt anyone, Elles,” Joel says bracingly.
“I didn’t stab anyone?” Ellie asks, brow creased. It definitely felt like she had—her knife piercing flesh had been especially vivid—but she’s never sure what’s real or not after these episodes.
“Well, you nicked Tommy,” Joel says dismissively. “But he was being a shit, so he had it coming.”
Ellie gives him a half smile.
“How much did Dina see?” she asks, wincing in embarrassment already.
“A little bit,” Joel says gently. “But she understands.”
Ellie shoots him a look; that’s parental look-on-the-brightside Grade A bullshit. She doesn’t want any of her friends to see her fall apart, but especially not Dina. Dina has a boyfriend, so he’s both taken and likes dudes. But Ellie can’t help the way she desperately wants Dina to think she’s cool.
“I can’t be sure,” Joel concedes to her glare. “But she explained to Talia what was happening. She didn’t act like it was weird or bad or whatever you’ve got bouncing around your head.”
Ellie makes a face. That seems too good to be true.
“You think so?” she asks.
“I do,” Joel says seriously. “Will you help me wrap my hand up?” Joel nods to a shelf with first aid materials.
“Oh shit,” Ellie says. “I forgot about your hand.” She stands up and retrieves supplies.
Joel holds out his hand, which is barely bleeding anymore. Ellie knows he’s trying to make her feel useful, but it feels good so she doesn’t call him on it.
Talia uses this room to treat minor injuries that don’t require the clinic’s attention, so it’s not a bad place to be minorly injured.
Ellie washes the cuts out with water from a squeeze bottle and pats them dry. She repeats the process until they're are clean. Ellie wets a small cloth and wipes the rest of the blood off his hand. She flushes the cuts one more time before pressing a small pad over them.
“Hold it there,” Ellie says. She takes a rolled bandage and wraps the pad in place, going around his hand three times before she ties it off.
“Thank you, baby,” Joel says. “I’ll clean up.”
Ellie takes his place on the cot and watches him tidy up.
“Did I hurt anyone besides you and Tommy?” Ellie asks.
“You didn’t hurt me, I did,” Joel says. “And no. Tommy’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”
He holds his uninjured hand out to pull her up. She takes it and lets herself be pulled. Joel cups her face and looks at her steadily.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “No one is mad at you.”
Ellie tilts her head, leaning into his palm.
“Okay,” she says. She 99% believes him. She believes he believes it, at least, which is basically the same as it being true. “Let’s go home.”