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Too many drinks at the Tipsy Bison is how it started…Joel only meant to have one but one turned into two and two turned into three and three turned into four. Usually he’s much better with controlling his drinking and knowing when to cut himself off. But…today was not a good day, a younger patrol member got bit, it’s getting closer and closer to his 57th birthday…which means the anniversary of the Outbreak and Sarah’s death anniversary.
So…he drank a little more than he should have and he’s definitely feeling it. Everything is spinning and he’s sure he’d fall face first onto the ground if he tried to walk himself. His tongue feels like a big block of lead in his mouth and he lays his head down on the bar counter. He swears he hears the bartender…whatever his name is try and say something to him but he but it just sounds muddled to him.
He grunts when he feels a tug on his arm and is hoisted out the bar stool he was sitting on. He feels like he’s gonna fall flat on his face but a pair of arms catch him and stop that from happening. He is dragged out of the bar and he shivers as the cold Wyoming air hits him and the snowflakes gently fall from the sky.
He attempts to make out who dragged him out of his brooding place for the night. He can make out fiery red hair that was styled in the same way…the same way Tess styled her hair and freckles along her cheeks and nose. Annoyed, angry but worried green eyes to match and he blinks when it finally clicks into place who is dragging him around Jackson.
”E-Elllllllliiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee.”
He slurs out. Adding far more syllables to her name than necessary as he tries to make out her facial expression. It’s not….pleasant to say the least and she folds her lips into a thin line before dragging him off again without a word.
”You’re such a dumbass…”
She says to him and she drags him in the direction of his cabin and Joel lets her as his drunken brain tries to process that Ellie is currently around him. Talking to him. Willingly. He stumbles around as she drags him around and home. They go inside the cabin and Joel grunts as she drops him on the couch inside.
”E-Ellllliie-“
“Don’t Joel, just…fucking don’t.”
Ellie runs a hand through her red hair as she looks at Joel on the couch and turns away. She doesn’t know what to say to the drunken man on the couch. She doesn’t even know why he got this drunk in the first place to why she felt the need to make sure he got home safely.
”A-Are you still maaad at me?”
He slurs out and Ellie closes her eyes and wants to curse the older man out so badly. Yes, she’s still mad at him for the Fireflies, why wouldn’t she be? He lied to her and took away her chance to be part of something bigger, he took away her life’s purpose.
“Course I am, you asshole.”
She snarls and regrets how harsh that sounded when she sees how Joel’s face falls. He’s gotten softer here in Jackson the past five years, and it seems while drunk he gets even softer. Still…she hates how much it hurts to cut him off like this, she hates how much it hurts him. But this is the way to be no matter how many times Joel tries to make things right or gives her space…she just can’t forgive him.
“You’re such an asshole…”
She whispers and sits down on the couch a few spaces away from him. How dare he. How dare he make her feel all these things and still make her care about him when she’s trying to be mad at him. How dare him just want to make her say ‘Fuck it’ and go back to having their father-daughter but not father-daughter relationship. But she can’t…he doomed the world just so she could live…Joel seems to realize what they’re talking about even though he’s drunker than a skunk at the moment.
“I d-did whaaaaat I had to do.”
”No you didn’t!”
Ellie snaps as she hears what he said if he did what he had to do then she wouldn’t be alive. What he had to do was let her go and let the Fireflies use her for a vaccine to the Cordyceps. That was her purpose in life and for whatever reason he decided it was pointless and killed everyone.
She closes her eyes as she thinks about the time and effort it took to get to the Fireflies hospital. How they struggled and how they got hurt or butted heads. Then there was the whole Silver Lake event that happened that somehow brought them closer together.
He lied to her about the Fireflies and that just…just stayed hidden for three years. She beamed whenever the people of Jackson referred to Joel as her dad. She adored when Joel took her to the abandoned Wyoming Dinosaur museum, that was her best birthday of her life.
But now…it’s just a sad memory to look back on and it makes her think about the fact that Joel lied to her. That he chose to stop the cure and now that she knows…she just feels too betrayed and too angry to stay in the room with him.
But looking at him now sitting on this goddamn couch with that sad drunk expression…she doesn’t know what to think. As much as she tried to hate him she just can’t bring herself to fully stop caring about him. This is the man who saved her more times than she can count, this is the man who showed her what it’s like to be loved.
This is the man who showed her what it means to have a parent, a father.
And despite all the angry parts of her mind telling her she should hate him until the day he dies she dies a part of her doesn’t want to stay angry at him. She misses him and their shotty movie nights and guitar lessons and just random talks. But she doesn’t know how to travel to a future she just…can’t see anymore.
“I-I’m sorrrrry…I-I just..they couuuldn’t…I co’ldn’t let th’m-“
“I can’t forgive you…”
She says and she means it.
She doesn’t. She’d never mean those words.
”Just fucking sleep it off, Joel.”
She mumbles and before the drunk man can say anything she gets up and bails out of his house. Missing the tears that cling to his eyelashes at her words. Ellie leans against the outer wall of Joel’s house as she tries to claim her racing heart. She shouldn’t be here, she should be fucking dead, her corpse rotting god-knows-where in exchange for a vaccine of the rest of the world.
But she isn’t. She’s alive and nineteen years old and living in Jackson. She has her friends Cat, Jesse, and Dina all her with her…she’s got what little kid her always wanted. And yet she just…can’t forgive the man who gave it all to her. She doesn’t know how to forgive Joel, not just for the huge mistake he made…at least stopping the Fireflies is a mistake in her eyes. But also lying to her about it and not just telling her the truth up front. She just…doesn’t think she can forgive him for that…ever.
But she wants to try….