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Ellie doesn’t know how long it’s been. She’s not counting.
Time keeps going between every second feeling like hours, and every hour feeling like seconds. The sound of the snow crunching beneath their shoes is starting to feel like torture. And Ellie is zoning out.
Not just right now — constantly. Since they left Silver Lake, she’s been like this. Joel has made an attempt to speak several times, and she hasn’t heard him.
All Ellie knows about their surroundings is that they’re approaching some fancy neighborhood. The houses seem to be void of any people — infected or not. Some windows are boarded up, others entirely shattered. The porch railings are all littered with cobwebs and dust. And obviously, snow. She could almost find the sight aesthetically pleasing, if it weren’t for the fact that this place was abandoned because infected had either ran everyone out or killed them. Sooner or later, it’s always the latter.
She flicks her knife out reflexively, not because she’s fully aware of what’s actually happening. Joel places a gentle hand on her shoulder, a warning before he speaks. So he doesn’t spook her, and so she knows he’s talking.
“We can look through this place for food,” he starts, and Ellie’s eyes are quick to look up at him. “Maybe take shelter for the night. That alright with you?”
The thought of food — specifically meat or soup — sounds unappetizing right now, but she knows she’ll have to eat to keep up her energy. The other thing is, she is nowhere near as far from Silver Lake as she wants to be; despite the fact that she has no idea how far they really are.
Ellie gives a small nod. Joel gives one in agreement.
”…Maybe a change of clothes, for you.”
*
The first house they go in is the one at the end of the cul-de-sac. The front door creaks when it opens, the floor completely covered in dust. The good thing is, there’s no prints in it, meaning nobody has been here for a while. That, and there’s no tells of infection. Spores, or freaky mushrooms. Ellie turns around while Joel steps in, keeping an eye out for anything that might pop out. Keeping watch helps keep her calm more than it helps Joel.
Whoever was here before put up a fight; there’s blood on the porch rails. Ellie has to turn her head away to keep from looking at it, which makes her nearly trip over the door sill, because she’s not paying enough attention to her six.
Ellie turns around and places a hand on the open door. She needs to get it together.
She takes one more step inside, another look outside, and finally shuts the door. Locks it. It leaves a prominent quadrant shape in the dust on the floor. Joel is already in the kitchen, looking through cabinets — the unintentional slam of the first one he opens is what makes her realize that.
Ellie takes a few slow steps down the foyer, savoring the way every step is a light thud, instead of headache-inducing snow crunching.
“…You find anything, yet?” Ellie asks, her voice quiet; but loud enough for Joel to hear. She hasn’t spoken much since they started walking, and it’s very clear Joel noticed that, because she thinks her voice almost scared him when she spoke up.
“Uh, no. Not much.” Joel shuts the cabinet he was looking in, because the only thing it was full of was cobwebs and dust. Just like the rest of this place. “Canned stuff, but just about enough to tie us over ‘til morning.”
Ellie hums. She was partially listening, but she gets the gist of it. She was too busy using the toe of her shoe to draw squiggles in the dust, one hand on the wall to balance herself. Joel glances over at her, and he could almost believe she was a completely normal, happy fourteen year old if it weren’t for the blood on her shirt (that probably isn’t hers — the blood or the shirt), the dried blood above her top lip, or literally any of the physical injuries she has. He plans to tend to those, if he finds some first aid stuff in one of these houses; even if it’s just alcohol and paper towels.
”…Why don’t you go upstairs, see if there’s some clothes up there?” Joel offers, turning his attention back to searching the kitchen. When he doesn’t get a reply, and he turns back around to see her staring at him like he’d just told her to climb to the roof and jump off, he realizes… maybe telling her to go off on her own isn’t the best idea right now, even if it’s just another floor of the house.
”…Or I’ll come with you. Just give me a minute,” Joel says, moving to the next cabinet. Ellie visibly relaxes.
*
The second floor is not much different. It is just as empty, just as in need of a vacuum as the first floor. It’s clear this house belonged to a family with children — there’s clothes in the floor of the hall, toddler toys. Broken glass, along with a cliché, rich family portrait. Parents and children in front of a dark gray backdrop; the mother in a boring black dress, the father in a suit. The son and daughter are in similar outfits.
Since Ellie assumes a little girl’s clothes will not fit her or look good on her, she heads for what she assumes is the son’s room, first.
”I’m gon’ look through the bathrooms. Be right down the hall. That okay with you?” Joel asks, and Ellie appreciates the fact that he’s checking in with her. She nods gently, turning the knob to the bedroom.
A few minutes pass, and Ellie is struggling like hell. She’s about to just say fuck it, and throw her shoes out the window. This fucking pain in her stomach is pissing her off more than it’s hurting her, because she can’t manage to get into a position to tie her shoes back without jabbing her knee into her own stomach.
”…Joel?” Ellie calls out, giving up on the laces and going with the only option she’s got. It’s not like she likes asking for his help. She prefers when he sort of… reads her mind and does it himself.
He’s quick to rush to the bedroom like he’s heard gunfire. In fact, he literally has his hand on the revolver tucked into his waistband when he nudges the door open.
“What’s wrong?” Joel glances around the room. No one has a gun to her head, so his hand lowers from his revolver. She’s got different clothes on — some flannel over a graphic tee, and a different pair of jeans. Her old clothes are peeking out from the open closet. She’d thrown them in there, because she didn’t want to look at them.
“…I can’t tie my shoes,” Ellie murmurs defeatedly. Her shoulders slump slightly after speaking, and while he’s actively walking over to help her with zero judgement, it’s still a little embarrassing.
Joel kneels with a slight grunt. Maybe she would poke fun about him being old if she weren’t in her current state. Fucked up to all hell, and in several different kinds of pain. He doesn’t miss the wince when he tightens the laces.
“Too tight?” He asks as he looks up at her, his hands completely freezing on the laces like he was defusing a bomb and grabbed the wrong wire.
“…No. My feet just hurt,” Ellie replies, her hands quick to fidget like they had been for most of the last few hours. He ties up the right shoe quickly, and she tries not to wince when he tightens the laces on the left. He makes quick work of tying them, standing up and patting her shoulder gently, silently thanking her for actually asking for his help.
”Thanks.”
Joel just nods. He steps out of the room to return to looting the bathrooms, leaving Ellie to her own devices.
*
Joel’s not sure where Ellie heads after that. He didn’t have enough loot from the bathrooms to need to put it in a bag so instead, he’s got a bottle of alcohol in his hand, and a bag of cotton balls.
The door to the bedroom was wide open, and Ellie wasn’t inside. She didn’t seem to be in much of a mood to look for anything — and he certainly wasn’t going to force her — so she was most likely downstairs.
Joel was not all that surprised to see her leaning on the kitchen island, digging her fingers into an open can of tomatoes. She’s got her back to him, so she doesn’t know he’s there until the stairs creak under his weight. Her head whips around like a mass murder is approaching her; her ponytail nearly hitting her in the face. The tension in her doesn’t last long when she realizes that a mass murderer in the house is unlikely, and it’s just Joel.
Ellie sets the can down, and Joel approaches. He keeps his distance; because he’s noticed she’s been trying to do that. Physically, emotionally. She still hasn’t told him what happened, why she was covered in blood after leaving that burning building. Why it was even on fire in the first place. Who those people were. He could assume someone was trying to kill her or use the fact that she’s immune, but how would they even find that out?
He doesn’t press the matter, because he’s already given her an opportunity to open up, and she didn’t take it. That doesn’t mean he’s not listening if she wants to talk — it just means he’s aware of the fact that she’s absolutely not interested in discussing Silver Lake right now.
”You get anything?” Ellie asks, wiping her tomato juice-covered fingers off on her jeans. Doesn’t matter. They’ll be out tomorrow, she’ll get dirt all over them, or something other than tomato juice.
”For you, yeah.” Joel sets the things down on the island. For her… now that catches her attention. “Think you can let me clean up those cuts?”
Ellie’s eyes move from the supplies to Joel, like a deer in headlights. Can she? Physically, it feels like she can’t. But she knows she will, that she has to clean them, and avoiding that will only cause bigger issues for her. It’s only Joel, anyway. Not some cannibalistic, religious psycho. Ellie gives a sigh, deciding to ignore the fact that it’s taken her several seconds to answer. “…Okay. That’s all you found up there?”
“All I found that’ll help us,” He replies, gesturing her over. She’s like a skittish cat right now, and you don’t tend to skittish cats by approaching first. “C’mere.”
Ellie steps closer, standing beside him and waiting as patiently as her brain will let her. Joel opens the alcohol with a click, partially soaking a cotton ball in it. The smell is potent, filling the vicinity and lingering.
Ellie nearly steps away when Joel’s hand moves to the back of her neck to keep her face still. It’s easy to forget that he’s not going to hurt her, especially when he reaches towards her throat like that. He’s slow with it, though. And though his touch is firm — it’s also tender, which is enough of a reminder that she’s fine.
Ellie decides the ceiling is the most interesting place to look at, her eyes tracing the design instead of making uncomfortable eye contact.
It’s cold. The alcohol. And the smell is stronger, since he’s cleaning the blood away that’s right below her nose. David didn’t break it, but it definitely bled. She has bruises on her cheekbone, but no open cuts — except for the one on the bridge of her nose. After he cleans the blood away, he heads for that next, just to sterilize it.
It burns, because the cut had not yet scabbed over. Ellie makes that obvious with the way her face scrunches up and her shoulders raise slightly.
“Sorry,” Joel murmurs, his own nose scrunching just a little like it’s stinging him as it does her. She’s already hurt enough. He’s trying to fix some of it, not add to it. “Trying to make it quick. It just burns like hell.”
”Yeah, no shit…” Ellie swallows, doing her best to not actually show that it burns. He knows it does, no matter how much she hides it.
Joel pulls away after a few excruciatingly long seconds. He takes a step or two back — assuming she needs the personal space for a minute. Ellie sighs.
”Anything else?” Joel asks, his eyes glancing over her to check for other injuries. He’s trying — and failing — to mask his worry for her. It’s not a sight Ellie is used to from him.
From cargo, to constantly checking on her, keeping up with her injuries and making sure she’s alright. Exerting himself to find her, even after he’s been impaled and lying on the floor of a dusty basement for …
No, actually, neither of them were counting the days. Joel was asleep for most of that time, and it all started to blend together for Ellie. Go out, hunt, return, cook food, eat, sleep. Repeat. Sprinkle in some nightmares that leave her waking up clammy and anxious, and a lot of time spent awake worrying about if Joel is going to make it through the next day — let alone hour — and that was how Ellie spent her time.
Ellie sighs, shaking her head. “…Nothing big.”
“Okay,” Joel mumbles, like a mother about to try and reason with a child. “I meant anymore cuts. Big or small.”
”Yeah,” Ellie responds, practically in role — by sounding like a petulant child. “Just… bruises. Scraped my knees a little. Probably my arms. But no more cuts.” She holds her hands up, like she’s surrendering.
Joel settles for that, clicking the alcohol closed and setting the partially bloody cotton ball next to the metal lid to Ellie’s open can of tomatoes. He’ll find somewhere to put the trash in a minute.
”You done?” Ellie asks. Joel nods. She steps away to return to her… five-star meal.
*
Joel doesn’t bother with the rest of the houses. Both of them are exhausted; Ellie in more ways than Joel, probably. It’s smarter to wait until morning for that, after they’ve gotten sleep. Ellie’s complained about being cold several times already anyway, which means Joel needs to get a fire going in the fireplace. Thank God rich people stockpiled before the Outbreak — if he’s lucky, this firewood will light, and he can use it to keep them warm.
Ellie is curled up on the couch, leaning on the arm. She’s kept herself occupied by zoning out and fidgeting with the cuffs of her jeans, or the laces of her shoes, the buttons of her flannel. The list goes on. Sometimes she’ll come back to the present for a second, just to watch Joel search closets for blankets (she stole one once he found them), or look through drawers and cabinets for a lighter. He manages to find one in the master bedroom — the thudding of him coming back downstairs is what snaps Ellie out of it, this time. He holds up a shiny silver Zippo lighter for her to see; some fancy design engraved on it that Ellie can’t make out from this far away, and maybe she’ll steal it after he lights the fire, because it looks kinda cool as shit.
Ellie would usually get nosy in some way. Talkative. Ask him if he found what he needed when she knows the answer, or maybe she would’ve followed him around like a lost dog the entire time he was looking for stuff, bombarding him with questions and talking his ear off. She’s not in the mood for any of that. She’s not in the mood for much of anything. It’s quiet, again. There’s nothing to busy herself with, which means she gets to sit here with her thoughts and… think.
”Got what I need to start a fire. You wanna come over and warm up?” Joel asks, kneeling in front of the fireplace and tossing the fashion magazines in his hand on the floor. It was the best he could find to help him with the fire.
Ellie doesn’t respond verbally, but she comes over, anyway. The couch creaks when she shifts, letting Joel know she’s standing up.
She plops down beside him, settling for criss-cross apple sauce. He glances over at her just to gauge how she’s feeling — he doesn’t look long enough to bother her. However she’s feeling, it’s not entirely positive. He knows asking what’s wrong will not help anything here. Ellie’s not interested in opening up. Which is why Joel goes for silent, close proximity.
Ellie doesn’t mind it. She keeps wavering between wanting to be several feet away from anybody — not just Joel, but he’s the only person she’s with right now, so he’s the only one affected — and wanting to sit right next to him. She’s trying to keep from doing either and maintaining an ordinary distance. Whatever makes her look normal and unaffected.
She’s been zoning out too much. He’s already throwing it lit pages of the magazines onto the firewood. It takes a second for the fire to grow, but Ellie relaxes a little once it does. The warmth makes some of her tension unwind. Joel stands up, which confuses Ellie. She soon realizes he’s just grabbing a blanket off the couch. She thinks he does it for himself, until he drapes it over her shoulders instead of around himself. Ellie wraps it around her body a little tighter, hands clinging to the seam of the blanket. She hasn’t held something so tight since the meat cleaver. Ellie’s hands fall from the blanket at the thought, clasping them together and resting them in her lap.
Ellie’s not sure when she does it, but she finds her head on Joel’s shoulder by the next time she’s conscious of her own whereabouts. Joel has his hand on her shoulder, not keeping her in place; but holding her. Testing the waters, sort of. Seeing what she’ll allow when it comes to physical touch. The blanket is still around her — Joel is fixing it, draping it more over her shoulder instead of around her arm. She’s colder than she realizes, and he’s trying to fix that.
Ellie is too exhausted to care at this point and Joel is unbothered, so she takes it upon herself to lean down enough to rest her head on his thigh. Joel’s hand is hesitant to come down at first, but it finds home on her hair. His thumb moves over her hair gently, which evolves into his fingers combing through her ponytail. She’s got tangles in her hair, and if she waits until morning to get them out, it’ll get worse. She tenses up the first time he accidentally tugs, but learns to deal with it by the second time. Joel would murmur an apology for pulling, but he thinks she wants the silence for now.
While he’s right, the fact that he knows how to work through the tangles puts a thought in her head, one that she speaks without thinking.
”…Did you used to do this with Sarah?” Ellie asks. Joel’s hand freezes.
“…Sorry.” Ellie is quick to apologize, her voice quiet. It’s clear she hadn’t meant to say it, but she had been thinking it.
”No, it’s— uh,” Joel mumbles. He clears his throat. “…Yeah. Every now and then.”
Ellie bites the inside of her lip, entirely still. She didn’t know if he was going to elaborate or not. She wanted him to. Hearing him talk was like reading to a child to get them to fall asleep. Not because it was boring, but because it was calming. Joel was very closed off when it came to feelings, and he was never one to ramble unless it came to very few specific things. Ellie had found out that Sarah was one of them… once Joel had actually learned how to talk about her.
”…I’d, uh… come home after work. Sometimes she’d be up, watching cartoons on the couch,” Joel says, nostalgia poorly concealed in his voice. “…granted, her hair was a whole lot more curlier.”
”I was pretty bad at taking care of hair like hers, when she was real little. Spent most of my time figuring out how t’do hairstyles for her when she started school.” His voice is slightly distant. His mind was somewhere else, too busy thinking about the times he had done Sarah’s hair.
Sarah would’ve been too little to remember any of it, but Joel remembers the first few weeks of kindergarten, where he’d pick her up and she’d be complaining about the hair ties pulling her hair. He’d quickly learned not to use the elastic ones. They were a nightmare to get out of her head, anyway, and he always had to cut them out. A waste of money, if you ask him.
The thought makes Joel wonder if he’d be any good at doing things like that on Ellie’s hair. Half of him imagines it would be easier, since her hair is entirely straight and nothing like Sarah’s. The other half imagines he would be slightly lost, considering he had never done fancy hairstyles on straight hair. The smarter part of his brain considers the fact that Ellie is nowhere near as girly as Sarah ever was, and she would probably have no interest in double buns or french braids.
Joel clears his throat again. He was reminiscing too much about a time he’d never see again. He needs to be here, with Ellie. Ellie is who needs him right now.
“…Like what?” Ellie prompts, wanting to hear more. Not only was she curious and slightly nosy about Joel’s life before, but it was helping. Ellie could imagine Joel’s hands in his daughter’s hair like he has them in hers now, instead of anything that’s happened in the past few weeks — let alone the past few day.
Joel swallows, recalling various early mornings he’d spent wrestling his daughter’s hair with a comb and hair ties. “…Buns, mostly. Sometimes braids. She got old enough to do stuff like that herself before I managed to be any good at it. Got compliments from her teachers though, and she came home happy.”
Ellie hums. At first glance, when she first met him, she would never imagine such a… rough, violent man would spend his mornings pre-outbreak doing girly hairstyles for his girly daughter. Part of her still can’t see it, now.
*
Ellie doesn’t remember falling asleep, and she doesn’t like how she wakes up.
She jolts awake, fear sending her to sit up quicker than she’s ever moved when she’s this half-awake. Her clammy hands are snaking into her own slightly greasy bangs. Memories of Silver Lake plaguing her mind enough to claw their way into her dreams. And she cannot breathe.
It’s torture, really, when all she can think about is being in that restaurant. She’s pretty sure Joel isn’t even awake to divert her mind away from it — his thigh had been replaced by a throw pillow in the middle of the night. Her mind is too hazy to even think about turning around to look for him, clouded with sleep and blinded by anxiety. The fireplace isn’t helping, because it’s just so much heat. It makes her think of the building in flames; of other heats, heats far more uncomfortable and much more disturbing than a large flame. All she can feel is David. Pinning her down, choking her enough to where she could hear her heartbeat in her ears. If he had tried harder — if she had tried less, what would’ve been?
There’s a hand on her shoulder. Her body struggles to choose between fight or flight, and inevitably ends up freezing.
Joel’s voice is quiet, at first. It struggles to get to Ellie’s ears, because it’s so gentle and he’s trying not to set her off into something worse than this.
“—llie, Ellie. Breathe, baby,” Joel murmurs calmly. She turns her head to look at him, eyes widened and lips parted. She’s not even noticed how bad she’s hyperventilating, but she’s noticed the worry in his expression. He had settled down onto a pallet of blankets in the floor, a pillow purposefully placed to make it uncomfortable to lie if he rolled over on the side he could hardly hear on. Ellie doesn’t process any of this, really, because she’s just now processing his words. Breathe, right. She knows how to do that.
”C’mon, with me, babygirl,” he says, followed by him breathing in and out evenly, trying to set an example. Ellie struggles to follow at first, and it takes several seconds to stop her nails from digging into her scalp. A couple more tries, and she’s breathing with him. His right hand cradles the back of her head, and his left is on her right shoulder.
Ellie’s quick to bury her face in her hands, like it’s the magic cure to the fact that she’s acting like this. This time, she’s less aggressive towards herself. She does it as a form of hiding and Joel catches onto that quickly, moving his hands away to give her space. Space she doesn’t want.
Ellie takes in about half a sigh before she speaks up. “…Sorry,” she mumbles. Her voice is muffled by her own hands, but he can make out the grogginess and exhaustion in it just fine.
“…Don’t be.”
They both fall silent. Ellie can’t find a response that sounds good enough to that, and Joel’s got nothing else to help her other than to be there. It’s helping enough. Ellie’s hands slide up, fingers brushing her bangs out of her face when her forehead rests on her propped up knees. She’s tired — but she feels like it’s going to be a while before she can fall back asleep.
”…C’mere. Let’s get you away from the fireplace,” Joel says under his breath, placing his arm around her shoulder to help her up. He’d felt her burning up and sweaty when he came over to help her. The fire can’t be helping, but he does grab her blanket. Just in case.
Ellie follows, settling on the couch next to him. It’s in front of a window, and since it’s freezing outside — snowing hard enough for Ellie to hear the splatter of it hitting the dirty window from the outside — it helps cool her down. She curls up against the arm of the couch the most she can without disturbing the bruise on her torso. Joel settles next to her, arm on the cushions behind him like he’s silently offering up his arms to her. Ellie doesn’t budge because she doesn’t feel like moving; and after a few moments of Joel studying her appearance, trying to deduce if she’s doing better now, his hand comes to rest on her mid-back. A reminder that he’s there. As it’s been recently, his touch is tender enough to not bother her. She’s not tensing up anymore when he initiates things like this. That’s progress.
Joel’s not sure how long it takes her to fall asleep after that, just that it’s quicker than he would’ve presumed. He breaks the contact, only long enough to drape her blanket back over her once he’s noticed she’s cooled down, then it’s right back to where it was before. Joel tilts his head back against the couch cushions, following suit.
He only sleeps well this time, because he knows she’s doing the same.
They’ll get out of here tomorrow; Joel silently promises that to Ellie. They’ll get out, get to Salt Lake City, and Joel will take this girl wherever her heart desires after they leave. Whether it’s back to Jackson, back to Boston, or all the way to Europe.