Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“We could…watch a movie?” Joel makes the suggestion about roughly thirty-six hours after their arrival in Jackson. 

There was still dirt beneath his fingernails. Dirt which Ellie was fairly certain was mixed with blood. His or others was the part she wasn’t entirely clear on. 

The headache throbbing in the confines of her skull was lingering, had been ever since she woke up in the back of that rocking, humming car. The seat had been smooth beneath her cheek. The bumps gentler than they’d felt in Bill’s old truck. It was disconcerting, along with her clothes that were missing and her Joel who was lying, that a sensation she thought she’d come to know was once again unfamiliar. 

When they’d hit a particularly bad pothole, Joel swore the same as he always did, but the vehicle didn’t send her ricocheting forward as she’d come to expect. 

Then there was the bullshit story that was still roaring in Ellie’s ears like the waves of the ocean, constant yet varying in intensity. Maybe her thoughts had something to do with the moon’s phase as well, how would she fucking know. But sometimes it’s like she was still listening to his “I swear.” As if it was happening in this very moment where his eyes bore into hers and she could feel them begging her to accept what he was going to say next. The desperation slithered beneath her skin and attempted to take root in the roiling of her gut. 

Joel wasn’t a begging sort of guy. Ellie had never really thought of him as desperate, either. Except for when he had been. Except for when he’d held her face between the cracking, dried palms of his hands and asked her to come back to him, to eat and to drink and to sleep and to talk. To live. 

Which she did. She did all of those things. Mechanically at first, then urgently. Her throat had been lined with needles and her tongue filed down with sandpaper. Her hands were sloppy and uncoordinated the first time they shot out to grasp the canteen from Joel. Some of the water had sloshed onto the floor, more of it rained down her chin and dribbled onto her shirt as she was gulping. 

Joel had been totally dumbstruck silent then. He’d watched the bottle finally fall away from her mouth, watched her panting to catch her breath after slurping down more water than she’d drunk in ages. It wasn’t until her stomach began to revolt that he’d spurred back into action, hair gathered away from her face and hand trailing along her back as her body rejected the first bit of sustenance she’d been conscious enough to seek out on her own.

Her head had hurt then, too. 

The car stopped working. Clothes were back on Ellie’s body. This false cheeriness from Joel had yet to fade as he prompted her to just keep going, only a five hour hike. A call back to who they were, what had been. All of the pieces of herself that Ellie had left behind, littered along their route like breadcrumbs in the forest. Here is how you return. Here is the way out. 

The gates of Jackson had swung open before they’d even finished approaching. A part of Ellie was almost hoping they wouldn’t, that they’d remain resolutely shut and refuse them admittance. She imagined it when they were still up on the hill, cutting along switchbacks to meander back to where they came—what it would be like to find some other place to hold up.

What if Tommy said he didn’t want Joel around after all? What if Maria got in his ear about what a no good piece of shit his brother is and wore him down until he really, truly believed her? 

Then it would just be Joel and Ellie, same as it’d been for a long time now. They’d have to find somewhere else to go. If she had to guess, it wouldn’t be toward any Fireflies. But maybe they could go make their own place to live. A ranch, if he wanted. Ellie didn’t know shit about sheep, but she could learn. She’d already learned so much.

Except the doors had opened. They’d opened before anyone could even bother to knock.

Tommy had been the one standing on the other side. Like he was just waiting around for them this whole fucking time. He and Joel hugged with the same sort of life-squeezing vigor as last time and yet quieter, more somber. 

Just like that, they were escorted back to the same house. Ellie was in that same fucking room. 

Nothing had changed.

Except her. Who she was. What she’d done. Why she’d done it. 

The shower still spurted out a steady stream of hot, soothing water. The bathrobe hanging on the door was an unfortunate shade of pink. Even the journal still laid on the window seat, the same page she’d been reading all those months before still marked, anticipating her return. 

They all sat in the living room to “talk” that first evening. Ellie had picked at the plate of mashed potatoes, bitter greens, and roast beef that she’d been served before finally pushing it aside and drawing her knees up into her chest. 

“You tired?” Joel asked, more or less cutting Maria off in the middle of her sentence. 

Ellie had shrugged, and that’d been that. Tommy and Maria were gone. The door was locked, lights turned out, and the same creaking of the stairs filled her ears as she and Joel filed upstairs.

She didn’t sleep much at all that first night. Screamed awake less than an hour after she’d first laid down and never managed to drift back off.

It had been a while since she’d slept through the night, if she really thought about it. Maybe that first night when they still had the fancy car and the drugs were weighing like boulders on her eyelids and everything felt good and bad and wrong and right all at once. 

So when she wakes up from another nightmare that second night, this one she hadn’t even yelled during, to the battering of her heart and Joel already standing in her doorway. He suggests a movie.

Ellie had seen a few movies of course. The QZ didn’t have much, but there were a couple of old reels they would put up on the projector for holidays or when the spirits shipment came in and the guards all wanted a little more time to drink and less time needing to bother with keeping a bunch of orphaned kids in line.

So she’d seen a collection of the same movies more or less a few dozen times over. The Sound of Music? Yeah, she knows those hills are fucking alive. Willy Wonka? Safe to say you won’t catch her looking too affectionately at a goose any time soon. There were a few Mickey Mouse cartoons as well. A couple were even in black and white. All of the kids knew when Pluto was going to fall into the water and turn into a block of ice or Chip and Dale would trick each other with their overflowing tree of acorns. After one with Donald Duck at the barber’s was shown, the whole place quoted, “Your hat, sir!”   in a distinct accent for the next three weeks, getting on the guard’s nerves bad enough they never showed it again.

But it’d been a long ass time since Ellie had seen a movie. The last one being whatever boring shit they’d had here back in December when she’d gotten ditched by Joel and deposited in a random chair by Maria and expected to just stay like some damn dog. 

“Sure,” she says to Joel after what was probably too much time.

What she doesn’t fucking expect is for Joel to reach into the little cabinet thing that the TV sat on and start pulling out boxes and asking, “Which one?”

He’s in a pair of sweats, still a flannel except for when it got too hot in the middle of the day when he stripped it in favor of his T-shirt. It’s weird seeing Joel like this. No boots on his feet ready to run, no rifle constantly in reach. He’s in his bare feet for fuck’s sake. Ellie never anticipated seeing his bare fucking feet. 

Despite how weird it is, she moves past it to drop to her hands and knees and crawl over to the pile that was accumulating on the floor around him. 

“What the fuck is all this?” she asks, selecting one of the top boxes and flipping it over in her hands. “Back to the Future,” she reads aloud while scanning the photos. “Never heard of it.”

Joel’s eyebrows briefly rise but settle back down just as fast. “It ain’t bad,” he comments. 

And though there’s a dozen other boxes to look at and parse through, Ellie shoves the first one she grabbed at him and demands, “Hurry the fuck up and make it work then!”

She sprints over to the couch, another luxury she was quickly growing accustomed to. A big, fluffy thing to curl up on and just…relax. Joel had said the word first, Ellie was trying to get the hang of it. And sure, she’s obviously sat on couches before, too, but this one felt different. It felt…comfortable. Like she wasn’t afraid to really sink into it.

The house is colder when it’s the middle of the night, and Joel goes upstairs and gathers the blankets from their bed, making sure Ellie’s warm enough before he actually puts the tape into the box and hits the round, red button on the remote. 

Joel presses play, and like a lot of times since Silver Lake, Ellie is completely silent. Except this time, she doesn’t fade away for a single second.

//

The movie is barely over before she’s looking at Joel and declaring, “You didn’t say how fucking weird it was, man.”

Joel laughs. It’s the deep one he does, the one that comes from within his chest like he really means it, and Ellie tries not to be fucking weird about it even though it does make her smile. “Can’t say I remember a movie I saw thirty damn years ago all that well, kid.”

Her eyes grow wide as she turns to stare at him, one eyebrow shooting up as she asks, “You forgot that the mom tries to fuck her kid?” It’s comical, how quickly he goes red before settling for a look of disapproval in her direction. Ellie holds her hands up in defense, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t write the fucking movie.”

The sun’s starting to rise, the sky turning a dusky sort of purple as the stars begin winking out one by one. For once, Ellie’s a little sad to see the night fade.

“Think you could try and sleep a little?” Joel asks instead of talking anymore about the mom-fucking movie. 

She licks her lips, digging her teeth into the bottom one and offering a half-committed shrug. “Not tired,” she lies.

It’s one of those things Joel doesn’t buy. He’s pretty good now at telling when she’s lying. When it’s bullshit that she’s “not hungry” or “not tired” or “fine.” 

Funny, Ellie was pretty good at catching Joel in his lies, too, it would seem.

“Can we…watch another?”

In twenty seconds he’s passing her the box for the sequel, one where they actually go to the fucking future, another discussion they need to have about this movie later because this guy was never going back to the future. He went back to the fucking present. 

So yes, she would like to watch a movie that might actually deliver on what the title promises. 

This time Joel brings her pillow from upstairs for her to lay against. He makes them each a cup of tea. He closes the blinds on the windows and cuts off the slants of pink light that have begun to appear on the horizon of dawn. She burrows deep within the covers and watches Marty McFly start a fight he’s got no business being in.

//

The mess hall is always busy. Even in the middle of the day when the offerings are few and far between, tables will be covered with old puzzles being put together frame-first, people dropping off ingredients for the evening meals, and the sorry suckers who are slumming it in the back washing dishes galore. 

In one corner they offer light aerobics every other day, yoga on the opposites run by Ms. Martina. On Fridays some of the older people come together to knit or crochet, Ellie still didn’t know the fucking difference, and Tuesdays was when all the bread was baked fresh, laid out beneath various windows as it awaits for the yeast to rise it up. 

She and Joel have come to an early dinner a couple of weeks after moving in. Last week they came with Tommy and Maria who showed them where to sit and where to get in line. Ellie pushed her food around her plate enough to garner Joel’s attention. She told him she didn’t like eating in front of other people, which earned her a momentary funny look because that sure hadn’t ever been a problem before. But eventually he just says, “Okay,” and that’s that. They come to the dining hall alone.

It’s still busy, though, even with evening barely having announced itself. Young kids and families and patrollers back from their recently covered miles, dirt still traced on the denim of their jeans. 

“Nice to see you, Ms. Ellie,” Mr. Shumaker nods in her direction.

Ellie offers a grunt in response, sounding pretty impressively similar to Joel if you asked her.

But Joel jumps into a formal greeting, even shaking hands with the dude. And when Mr. Shumaker walks away with a parting nod to Ellie, Joel turns to and asks in a hushed, angry whisper, “What is the matter with you?”

“With me?” she balks, taking a step away to make sure it’s still Joel Miller next to her. “What’s wrong with you? What ever happened to, ‘ We travel alone,’” she imitates his gruffest voice from when they’d sat in the flashlight circle and exchanged trivial snacks with Sam and Henry. 

Joel shakes his head for a second before saying, “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we ain’t travelin’ anymore.”

It’s said like a joke but it feels more like a slap. Ellie’s shoulders snag tight as she swallows her retort down. There’s the hum of conversation that won’t die down, some baby off crying in the corner, dishes clanging and the hiss of food hitting a hot pan coming through the swinging kitchen doors each time they open and close. 

“These people are our neighbors. We ‘ought to act like it.”

Ellie can feel heat rising to her face, either from the shame of being lectured or the anger from it. A part of her wants to lash out, that’s what she does after all; it’s who she is. But she doesn’t have anything to say back, doesn’t know where to begin to argue that won’t leave her sounding like a petty child. 

“I…I don’t…” She shakes her head, unsure how to communicate that she doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing or what he fucking wants from her. “I already pick his horse’s hooves after patrol rides,” she mutters, knowing her argument is piss poor, “don’t see why I have to say hi to him, too.”

There’s obviously more Joel has to say, but Ellie turns toward the dinner options before he can say it. She grabs a plate and resolutely does not look his way for the rest of the meal, little of it that she can eat. 

When she goes to bed before it’s even eight o’ clock, she curls beneath her covers and finds herself missing the desolate, frozen tundra of the world they’d left behind. The one they’d sacrificed for this, for Jackson. 

//

Ellie hadn’t always cared for reading very much. She wasn’t a super smart kid, not in the way her teachers wanted her to be. She was bad at learning the same way all the other kids seemed to get it, to the point that she was the last kid in her class to figure out how to read. She could tell you what each letter sounded like, but when it came time to combining them together, they were separate entities that could not connect. 

It earned her a lot of backhands from people who thought she was being intentionally dense. To the point that sometimes she was, just to make herself feel better about it all. 

And then she’d found Savage Starlight. 

Sure, there was reading involved, but there was also page after page of glossy, detailed art. To the point that the text boxes just added to the story, never over-explaining or dredging the plot down with unnecessary, convoluted description. It was all right there for her eyes to witness for themselves.

Of course, it didn’t help her love of it any less when she found out her new, slightly older and undoubtedly cooler roommate Riley was also a huge fan. 

Sometimes Ellie stills wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about reaching for her illegally smuggled flashlight and tiptoeing the distance to Riley’s bed with the comic clutched between her fingers. They used to sit around and theorize about what happens next, eyes alight as they made connections to possible clues hidden throughout the various volumes they shared between them. 

It made Savage Starlight, something Ellie had already loved and enjoyed, become something she wanted to consume even more of. It made Riley go from roommate to best friend. It made those long, painful nights a ritual she came to look forward to.

Then there was Sam. Sam who had been as excited as she was when they’d found the discarded copy on the ground of that kiddie bunker, who had shown her the sign language for “Endure and survive,” who had giggled and pointed at each page she’d turned with increasing excitement. 

Sam who’d never gotten to finish that issue. Not before he’d turned. Not before he’d died.

So, Ellie has a bit of a complicated relationship with the thing she’d once loved most in the world. It was something she’d once thought she would never be able to touch again, but then somewhere between Kansas and Nebraska Joel had found issue number six, practically threw it in her direction with a gruff, “Here,” and she hadn’t been able to just not read it. 

Over dinner that evening, Ellie used the dim light of her flashlight to show Joel the scene that she’d always wondered about, how Daniela Star ended up with that cool as fuck robotic arm by issue nine. He’d grunted when she shoved the thing in his face, but pulled it back to a distance where he could read the words with his old man eyes regardless.

They were in some corner of Colorado when Joel had found the next one. This time saying, “You read this one yet?” and passing it over for her to take with the new gloves encasing her hands. 

Then one more somewhere in Utah when it had still been cold. This time he couldn’t quite tuck away a smile as he said, “This is the newest in your collection, I think.” At that point he knew. He knew because he read them to her, over and over again, taking the time to point out elements of the art that stood out, or remarking about how he did not like Dr. McCallister. 

On days Ellie was particularly far, Joel would ask questions. What does this mean? Why would the character do this? Does she like this part or think it's over the top?

Sometimes she wouldn’t say much in response. Others, it would be the beginning of a long, detailed conversation. The sort she hadn’t had since the final fateful night she and Riley had discussed it over the lingering nightmares that had dredged them back towards the land of consciousness before the sun had bothered to make an appearance. 

It’s sometime mid-summer when Joel knocks a knuckle against the frame of her bedroom door. 

Ellie’s in bed even though the day’s halfway through. Her blankets are kicked to the floor because it’s too hot for anything besides the sleep shirt and shorts to dare touch her skin. The sheet beneath her is just shy from being sweat-soaked and the sun’s arc from midway back down to the horizon only promised direct light soon to be hitting her window. 

Joel says, “I heard some of the kids in the mess talking ‘bout those comics you like.”

As someone who’s social skills had been honed in the presence of one particularly cranky old man, Ellie grunts in response.

“Might be worth keepin’ in mind was all I was thinking.” 

Except it must not be all he’s thinking, considering he’s still waiting in her doorway. 

They’d lived here a little over three months now. The skin around Ellie’s scar itched daily, and she scratched at it with blunt, uneven fingernails until the flesh broke and fresh blood poked free. It had to stay covered, of course, so she blamed the sweat for it each time Joel furrowed his brow at her brown speckled shirt sleeves. “Mushroom venom doesn't mix with sweat, I guess.” 

Settling in hadn’t gotten any easier, not really. She tried, no one could dare say she hadn’t fucking tried. Ellie helped fix Mrs. Piker’s fence and hand-delivered Mr. Fink’s cucumbers once they began sprouting in the gardens. She picked hooves and mucked stalls and hoed fields. There were cords of muscle tangling themselves along her back, a curve of a bicep pronouncing itself on each of her arms. 

Sometimes, Ellie looked in the mirror and didn’t quite recognize who was staring back. 

Right now, she stares at Joel in her doorway and wonders if she even recognizes him. The parts of him that weren’t so much new but had been reborn in the middle of nowhere during the dead of winter and had yet to decide they’d stayed their welcome long enough. The furrow of his brow and the tilt of his one knee when he was really analyzing her. The pad of his thumb running along a watch face. The widening of his eyes until they looked like they were begging to pool with tears and flow over. 

It was all…gross. Made her want to climb out of her own skin and become someone who didn’t get all those same sort of looks. Become someone who did not need kid gloves or soft tones or bedtime stories.

“Been awhile since we read one of ‘em.”

“Joel…” The sigh is already slipping past her lips because she knows what the fuck he’s trying to do here. Same thing as he’s done a few dozen other nights since arriving in Jackson. He was worried about her. How much food she ate, how many hours she slept, how many other people she talked to. He was worried about the scarred skin of her forearm and the darkness of the circles under her eyes and the fit of the waist on her pants. He was worried. Just all the fucking time.

And Ellie…wasn’t. She didn’t give a shit about any of it because all of her worries and fears and hopes and dreams were still gathered together on a stretcher back in Salt Lake City. The hospital gown was shoved in the back of her closet. Joel probably expected it to be rotting away on some stretch of desert highway not far out from Salt Lake City, but she’d buried it into the bottom of her bag and sometimes along the way she reached her hand into the depths of her belongings and rolled the strings around her fingers tight enough for her nail bed to turn white. 

He holds his hands up in surrender. “I know. I know,” he says even though it’s Ellie’s guess what the fuck he thinks he knows. “How ‘bout a movie instead?”

There’s a brief squeezing in her chest, a loss of something. Because Savage Starlight had been the thing she had shared and loved for years, had talked about and gushed over with the people in her life who she cared about. Maybe it was what brought them closer together in the first place, maybe Riley never would’ve become her nearest and dearest friend without this commonality. Maybe Sam would have always stayed some kid who was tagging along for a little while. Maybe Joel would not have filled the role of the sort of person that does the voices in order to make her laugh until her eyes grew heavy enough that she could drift off to sleep. 

But it doesn’t feel like something she can touch right now, isn’t the sort of thing she can allow to move her, so she lets her socked feet thud dully against the hardwood floors of her bedroom and shrugs in response. Says, “Sure,” even if she doesn’t know if it’s what she really wants right now, but it’s something. 

They’ve made their way through the Jurassic Parks, a Mission Impossible or two, a few animated movies, and had started on the Star Wars trilogy as of recent. They’re halfway through episode five, paused from when she’d dozed off the other evening.

The tape’s still in the same spot they’d left it, and Joel switches on the television, gets her a glass of iced tea and sits a half a cushion away. Before pressing play he says, “You might like them,” and Ellie’s confused at first because they already know she likes Star Wars, that’s not news. “None of them are as funny as you, could use someone with a bit of a sense of humor in the group.”

Ellie glares, perfectly aware of when he’s trying to sell her on something that she’s already determined not to buy. “Why would I want boring friends?”

He sighs. She thinks that will be the end of it.

“Try, Ellie,” and it doesn’t sound like a request or a suggestion or anything of the like. 

Her knees curl to her chest and her arms wind around them, hating the splayed open sensation that’s currently running through her. She doesn’t want to be read for the truth of what she is, what she’s become. Lonely, isolated, a girl who watches TV with the old dude who dragged her ass across the country and then doubled back when there wasn’t anything left for them to find. She’s not meant to be here. Not in Jackson, not in this house, not beside this version of Joel. 

She’s a fucking orphan from Boston who’s got the weight of humanity slipped beneath the skin of her forearm, a couple calluses on the tips of her fingers, and a brain that still goes fuzzy at the slightest prodding of any of the pieces of her past that have delivered her to where she is today. 

Joel’s shoulder is not for her to lean against. Those kids in her classroom are not for her to bond with. This is a fake life that she’s begun to settle around herself and the only thing that’s less real are the movies that play out on the screen in front of her, filled with animatronic dinosaurs and intricately painted backgrounds of spaceships. 

The words that fight to free themselves from her mouth are I don’t know how. 

The one she lets slip past is simply, “Okay.”

//

“So how did they do it?” Ellie demands for the third time as she, Joel, and Tommy scarf down a breakfast in the mess hall. The four week summer break is officially over, school is back in session until the harvest begins when they’ll break again. Ellie’s got a backpack filled with scraps of paper, an English essay she had to write on the symbolism of Great Gatsby bullshit, and an itemized list of apprenticeship preferences.

Last night the three of them had been splayed out in Tommy and Maria’s living room, Leo fast asleep on Tommy’s chest, and Maria happily asleep in bed upstairs as the rest of them are watching Terminator 2. Some of the shit that happened was so far from reality, but it looked so real. Ellie had been demanding to know the how surrounding it all ever since. 

“Special effects,” was Joel’s helpful response with a wave of his hand. “Same way they showed all that stuff explodin’ in Star Wars.”

“But this is different,” she groans at the invalidity of being misunderstood. Just like the imagery of the boat sinking in Titanic. Sure, the movie was really long and kind of boring and way too mushy-gushy with the ending including a slab of wood that was definitely big enough for two people, but watching that boat snap in two and sink beneath the water was fucking wild. Enough so that she made Joel rewind it three times over before they watched any further in the movie.

Tommy stabs at a potato and waves it around as he says, “You’re asking the wrong people, darlin’.” 

To which she rolls her eyes, both at the unhelpful response and the unasked for nickname. 

Tommy was…fine. He existed. Had a fucking baby. Talked to Joel a lot but generally stayed out of their way when Ellie was busy talking to Joel instead. She didn’t need him to exist, but she wasn’t kicking him out of the commune yet. Maria was still an occasional thorn in their side, but Joel made pleasantries with her and kicked Ellie’s chair everytime she mumbled the truth (what according to Joel was just plain rude) under her breath. So…she tried sometimes.

“Well, who the fuck can I ask?” She’d eaten her whole breakfast, even snagged half of the blueberry muffin from Joel’s plate. As the summer pressed on, the fruit had only grown sweeter, and Ellie didn’t think it was possible to tire of the sugary, tart pop of fresh blueberries on her tongue.

Tommy shrugs. “The day Speilberg shows up at the gates I’ll point him your way.”

To which Ellie mumbles about in a way to make sure he knows she is not content with that response. Really, she’s trying to distract herself from the day ahead. After arriving in mid-April, Ellie had gone to school for a total of three and a half days before it was decided that she needed more “time.” The time concept had been Joel’s idea, and who knew what evidence he’d used to state her case to Maria, but it must have been pitiful enough to grant her a bye until this upcoming year.

Now she was going to be slotted in with the other herd of children even though she’d already made herself plenty useful without wasting anymore of her life behind a desk and waiting for the smack of a ruler across her knuckles for not paying attention.

Joel keeps talking about her making friends. She asks him where all of his friends are if he’s so concerned about their social lives around here?

“Come on,” he says with his eyes glancing at the big clock hanging up on the wall here. Ellie can’t really read it, not that she’d admit it because that would just add more fuel to the going to school fire which was the last thing any of them fucking needed. “You’re gonna be late.”

“Will school know how movies made special features?” she grumbles while gathering together her shit and carrying her dishes to the wash up bin. 

Joel shrugs, answers her question like it was legitimate, and walks her all the way to the front door. “You gonna be okay?” he asks with the sun rising right behind his head so that Ellie has to squint to avoid being blinded. 

It’s hard to say if she likes that he asks or not, she just knows that these long sleeves are too hot and her skin is itchy and her bottom lip is about four seconds away from starting to bleed, and she doesn’t care about the stupid Great Gatsby or what the hands on a clock mean. She cares about how they made that guy’s head split in two on camera and whether or not the Fireflies were going to ever get back to trying to make a cure with their perfectly good healing specimen just rotting away in middle-of-nowhere Wyoming. 

“I’m fucking fine,” she spits back, arms crossing over her chest.

Joel doesn’t really react to her more volatile moments anymore, pretty used to dodging the attacks and letting them lie useless and necrotic in the space surrounding him. 

Of course, Ellie knows how to hit him where it really hurts if she needs to. She knows what she can lob at him and watch make direct impact, but she’s not really interested in doing that to him, not when she still doesn’t know what the fuck she’s supposed to be doing with her life here. 

“Alright. I’ll see you after.”

“You aren’t going to pick me up, are you?” From her very brief delve into Jackson schooling last year, it was pretty obvious that only the littlest kids had parents or guardians waiting outside the doors for them. Anyone over the age of fucking six got themselves home just fine.

Joel puts a hand on her shoulder, doesn’t kiss the top of her head or hug her or do anything else that would make her want to sink into the earth. Just says, “I’ll be here and we’ll go home and watch Terminator 2 three times over until you think you’ve figured it out.”

“I’ll never figure it out!” Ellie’s arms fly outwards, her voice climbing, and her smile bit away just before it can make an appearance.

“Have a good day, Ellie.” Something about his voice almost sounds like it’s begging her. 

“Unlikely,” she sighs back, but gives him a parting grin and hikes her backpack just a little higher on her shoulders before she turns to go. She walks backwards a few steps and offers a two fingered salute, caught somewhere between irritated and relieved when he watches her until the open doors swallow her up.

//

Fall starts with a sloughing of skin thanks to a mixture of chemical compounds. Maybe school could be good for something after all. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time, less so when she’s laid up on the couch during the first week of the harvest with Joel more or less refusing to let her do more than pee alone. 

The television’s been on almost constantly. They’ve become the library’s biggest customers with their rotating collection of VHS tapes to work through. The watch The Land Before Time which is definitely for little kids, but it’s the one Ellie puts on late at night when she’s supposed to be in bed asleep, and even though she’d wrinkled her nose at it the first time Joel put it on, he doesn’t once tell her “I told you so” when he comes downstairs and finds her watching it. 

They also watch Bambi and Little Mermaid until Ellie demands to know why the mom is always fucking dead in these movies, and Joel stops getting anything animated for a little bit.

The Breakfast Club is more fun than she expected and Risky Business leaves her eyes wide on views of New York City and what it had once been. It makes her think of Boston, of the crumbling skyscrapers and decaying office buildings. There was still a Macy’s sign on one side of the old mall. The red is sun-bleached and the letters off center, but they’re all up there. Tommy mentions the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade one day, and Ellie demands to know more. She still has questions about the reasoning behind the giant balloon characters.

As she rambled on about New York City, Joel came home with Breakfast at Tiffany’s which at first seemed like the most boring movie ever made, but the allure caught up to her soon enough. 

They watch corny movies like Annie, and she definitely doesn’t tear up when Shadow comes cresting over the hill in Homeward Bound. One day Joel brings home Braveheart and the next it’s Schindler’s List. Princess Bride then Old Yeller. Most of the movies Ellie and Joel watch alone, sometimes Tommy joins. 

Together, the two of them stare at the screen and never at each other. They both laugh at the funny parts, wince at the action sequences that look particularly painful, and Ellie can’t even pretend like she’s not crying when it comes to endings where the dog is fucking dead. Joel tries to, but she calls him out on it as he’s wiping his eyes on the collar of his flannel.

There’s no way she needs to be out of school for as long as she is, but Joel’s paranoid as hell about infection, so she’s pretty much locked inside. When he has to leave her, Tommy or Maria take a shift. Maria’s the one who puts on Anastasia, humming along to all of the songs. 

“Wait, this shit was real?” Ellie asks when Maria makes a remark about the real life Romanovs.

And from there, she’s stumbled into a Russian history lesson that she absorbs with insatiable need for every last detail. She hangs onto each of Maria’s words, asking questions that are mostly answered with, “I’m not sure, actually.”  There aren’t any other movies about it, but Maria brings Ellie books from the library instead. It’s kind of cool as fuck, the idea of being some long lost princess with a whole country to command at your fingertips. It’s also kind of sad as fuck, but Ellie doesn’t really dwell on that part.

It’s part way through Lord of the Rings nine days after the incident that Joel pauses the movie and turns to look at Ellie really, really intently. 

Instinctually, she squirms beneath his gaze. 

“I’m, uh…I’m a little rusty at all this,” is how he opens even though Ellie’s not really clear on what “this” is. “Been a long time since I’ve…” He stops, runs a hand down his face and sighs.

“It’s fine,” Ellie volunteers from where she’d been contently curled up on the couch settling into the movie. Sometimes she wonders if this is just where she’ll stay forever, playing at this life that refuses to become anything real around her and living within the fake worlds that play out on her television screen. Never meant to become more of anything, dead or alive. Just a useless scrap of life who knows how to work a goddamn VCR. 

Joel clears his throat and eases himself further off the cushion so he’s really turned to face her. “No, it ain’t, kiddo.”

The burn beneath her arm hurts now more than it has in days. Ellie wants to scratch beneath the bandages, want to dig her nails within her desecrated, destroyed flesh and let them sink against the lines of muscles, poke around at exposed bone, drag through thin, fragile blood vessels.

Which, in hindsight, is why Joel doesn’t take his eyes off of her for very long. Not that she’s shared these thoughts with him. Not that she thinks they’re something she’d ever do. But, still, the thought of plucking her tendons like she plucks at the strings of a guitar enters her head and doesn't really leave, so she kind of gets it. 

The talking, though? That’s just wholly unnecessary. 

“What in the goddamn hell were you thinkin’?” It’s not the first brush of his frustration that she’s felt since Tommy had discovered her on the bathroom floor more unconscious than not a handful of days ago. 

There was the set of Joel’s jaw as the doctor asked why she’d done it. There’d been the line of his shoulders when she’d asked if she could be left the fuck alone. There was the tensing of his hands into fists as she’d tried to force her way out the door of the clinic. 

He was pissed, and Ellie couldn’t entirely blame him.

Tilting her chin upward and refusing to fold beneath his rising anger, Ellie answers, “I was thinking I needed to do something before I got my head shot clean-off.”

A response which earns her little more than a glare. “I wouldn’t let-”

“You can’t be at my side every second of every day for the rest of my fucking life, Joel.” And that was part of this whole settling into Jackson bullshit, wasn’t it? Becoming their own people, finding their own ways to slot within the community. It was the part Ellie struggled with the most. Not just being an orphan or a child soldier or a cure, but a piece of something bigger, something that didn’t have an easily defined one-word explanation of how and who she should be. A fucking person, all the aspects of one. “And one day, something was going to happen. An accident or a mistake or a wrong-place wrong-time scenario and it was going to get me killed.”

He flinches.

“And what then, man?” She’d stand from the couch and splay her arms in demonstration, but the pain medicine makes her a little dizzy and the movie’s still on pause, and she doesn’t really want to go anywhere; she doesn’t really have anywhere to go. So she stays put, tries to make her point while simply sitting beside Joel and hoping it could stand a chance to sink through his thick skull. “I die for nothing and then what?”

The hum of the waiting tape is the only sound between them for long, heavy seconds. When Ellie finally allows herself to look towards Joel’s face, there’s nothing but pain present. “Ellie…”

“You already took it from me.”

“Took what?” he asks, not allowing the accusation to ruminate before following headlong beside it.

Ellie swallows. “The right to die for a reason,” she says to the exposed patch of coffee table where she fixes her gaze.

It was the crux of everything, what kept her from settling, from becoming. A little part of her was still stuck in that rickety old hospital bed (not to mention the other parts of herself that had been scattered all along this country), Marlene hovering in her field of vision, a needle poke digging around the supple flesh at the crook of her elbow being the thing to draw her from the tenuous bout of unconsciousness she’d succumbed to. 

They were just going to do a test. Marlene would explain more once she woke up. Joel was okay, just sleeping. He was fine, really. He would be there after the test, just let them do this one test and then everything would finally begin. The saving of the world was going to start, then and there. Ellie was going to be the one to start it.

The needle must’ve found where it was supposed to be, because the next thing Ellie knew, her eyes refused to stay open even as she kept mumbling for Joel, her hand reaching in the dark to try and grab ahold of him.

She’d found him. Or, more accurately, he had found her. 

“It’s me,” he’d said when she’d stirred in the backseat. The first, immediate reassurance. It offered no explanation, but her heartbeat had momentarily settled regardless. Because Joel was there. Joel would fix it. Joel always fixed it.

“Ain’t no reason worth you dyin’ over,” he states now, neither of them actually talking about what it means. What Ellie knows.

And that was always going to be a point of contention between them, but maybe it was one Ellie could live with. Especially when it helped prove her point.

“Well,” she sniffs, reaching for the remote, “then it’s a good thing I had the common sense to get that goddamn scar off my arm.”

There’s the click of Joel’s jaw and then the return of voices on the screen. Neither of them speaks again.

//

It’s Tommy who takes her out for the first time after her stint of burning off her own flesh.

He’s been tasked with watching her, a fact which she resents far beyond any stipulation that Joel’s otherwise put in place. Partially because she’s fifteen fucking years old and does not need a babysitter, and partially because she especially does not need Tommy fucking Miller as one.

Alas, he’s the one who tells her to get her jacket as the sun’s already slipped below the horizon, vanishing early even though autumn has barely begun. 

They go to the mess hall for dinner, Tommy waves a hand in the direction of the line and says he’ll save them a seat. 

There’s something of a spotlight on her as she makes her way to the front of the room, falling to the one side of the serving dishes and holding her plate with two hands, eyes fixed on the scalloped potatoes awaiting her in the first tray. 

“Ellie!”

At the sound of her name, she instinctively looks up only to find a couple of her classmates making their way over to her.

“We haven’t seen you in over a week!” Jesse declares as he comes to stand beside her. He’s a couple years older, only in school for half the day as he does patrols in the second half to prepare him for graduation. He’s a full head and a half taller than Ellie but never made her feel small. If someone was getting the class laughing, it was probably Jesse, and if someone was getting them all in trouble, it was also probably Jesse.

Ellie wasn’t really in the business of making friends in this place, but if Joel had been hard-pressed for her to name somebody, it would have been Jesse.

Dina’s beside him, a couple inches taller than Ellie but several shorter than her boyfriend. She smiles easily and laughs the same. When she does look at Ellie, sometimes there’s this hint of sadness to it, a fact that Ellie can’t really stand. 

“Jesse was starting to take bets on if you’d finally talked your dad into letting you dropout or were patient zero of the next plague.”

Ellie pretends to cough right at the both of them and can’t help but smirk when they jump back. “I’m fine,” she offers half-heartedly. 

It wasn’t really something she cared about, making friends. She cared about building fences and picking hooves and learning to man a patrol. She cared about doing exactly what she needed to contribute to this community in a way that was satisfactory but never above, good enough that they’d let Joel stay, that she wouldn’t get the both of them kicked out on their own and go back to living in the woods. Even if that was how she kind of preferred it. Although, she had grown pretty accustomed to a slice of pie after every other meal these days.

“Are you coming to movie night tomorrow?” Dina asks, head tilting to the side as she seems to assess Ellie to determine if her “fine” claim was true or not.

“Uh…”

“You have to!” Dina presses on, dropping Jesse’s hand to take a step closer to Ellie. “It’s Spiderman. A classic.”

Considering that Ellie had spent the last few months truly watching the classics, she had a hard time believing that a subpar comic turned movie could be all that great. The fact that they went for Spiderman when Savage Starlight was out in the world right there? Pretty embarrassing, if you asked Ellie. 

“I don’t know if I’m allowed.” Looking over her shoulder, she spots Tommy and sure enough finds his eyes fixated on her. “Kinda on house arrest over here.”

Dina and Jesse exchange something of an impressed glance with one another. “What’d you do to get put on lockdown for over a week?”

The press of the tied off gauze beneath her jacket is tempting to show off, but Ellie still hasn’t really figured out a way to explain to people that yes, she’d hurt herself on purpose, but she wasn’t hurting herself on purpose. So she shrugs and simply says, “Stealing.”

Another raised eyebrow exchange as Jesse lets out a low whistle. “Gotta steal something pretty big to get in this much trouble in a fucking commune.”

Dina whacks him. Ellie laughs as she scoops potatoes onto her plate. 

“If you end up being allowed to come,” Dina says with a hand on Ellie’s shoulder as she passes by, “find us! We’ll save you a seat.”

They leave, and Ellie’s left to ponder how she’s managed to make more friends staying home from school than she ever did actually showing up.

//

When she asks, Joel says yes almost immediately. He goes too, of course, but stands in the back and nurses a whiskey while muttering with Tommy and Maria through half of the movie. 

Dina and Jesse both smile when Ellie slides into the open seat they’d actually bothered to save for her.

Before now, most of the movies she’s seen have been with Joel and maybe Tommy. She’s used to how they watch, to the exhaled through the nose laugh Joel does when things are almost funny enough to get him going but not quite and the incessant question asking Tommy does at the start of a film instead of shutting the fuck up and seeing what happens. Even Maria’s little peeks to watch Ellie watch the movie aren’t as distracting as they’d once been. 

But sitting beside Dina and Jesse, Ellie has to adjust to the way Dina pokes her before any “good parts” and at how much louder Jesse laughs even when the jokes are kind of shitty. She has to get used to being nudged to pass the popcorn bucket and the sensation of an elbow digging against her ribs when Dina’s shifting in her seat.

It’s a little weird, a bit awkward, but also nice.

When the movie’s over, the three of them keep sitting there for a little while, exclaiming over the best scenes and segments. Dina’s caught up in the romance of the upside down kiss while Ellie and Jesse are talking through the logistics of it. 

“That’s it,” Ellie declares after several more minutes of debate. “Get some rope. We’re hanging Dina from the roof of the stables.”

Dina rolls her eyes. “Very funny. If you steal anything else your dad’s going to put you in solitary.”

The “He’s not my dad,” is on the tip of Ellie’s tongue, but it gets pushed aside by Jesse volunteering to do the thieving before she can get it out. 

“You ready, kiddo?” 

Ellie’s head whips around, finding Joel standing there with his hands in his pockets and the rest of the crowd having vanished. It’s Mr. Mulligan and Mrs. Piker stacking up chairs and holding conversation that seems a little too close for merely friendly. 

She nods, fiddling with tightening her ponytail as she turns to say goodbye. Dina wraps her in a hug before Ellie can even clock that her arms are reaching outwards. She’s stiff as a board the whole time, but manages a tight-lipped smile when Dina pulls away.

“This was fun, Miller,” Jesse says, and Ellie’s pretty sure her whole face lights up like a fucking bonfire at the name being said with Joel in ear-shot. “Maybe when you’re off house-arrest we can do it again just the three of us.”

Making some vague noise of agreement, Ellie slides out of the quickly vanishing row of chairs and even beats Joel to the front door. 

“You tell people I’m lockin’ you up?” is what he goes for instead of commenting about the name thing. Which, thank fuck. 

The wind slices by and Ellie winds her arms around her middle to hold her jacket closed. The summer had been so relentlessly hot, the whole village set to bake in the valley of the mountains, it didn’t seem possible that winter could come so damn fast. But sure enough the peaks were once again snow-capped and the grass began each day with a frosted white glow. Winter doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that should really make all that big of a difference, not here where they had storage sheds and greenhouses, and if worse came to worst, a barn full of livestock. 

They had running hot water and a fireplace and comforters and blankets and thick wool socks that didn’t need to be taken off and laid out by the fire every night as feet were inspected for any signs of wear or tear. 

Winter wasn’t going to make a difference in a place like Jackson, Ellie had already determined that fact.

But still, something about the brief flash of icey air causes her to shiver and when the wind relents, the sensation does not.

“Gotta tell people something about why I’ve been MIA for a week and a half now.”

Joel hums but doesn’t add any additional comment. 

Back at home, because that’s what it is, a home, they kick their shoes off by the front door. Ellie sheds her jacket and hooks the hood over the doorknob in favor of actually hanging it up just to hear Joel grumble about it.

He makes the tea they both have taken to drinking at night to help them sleep, meanwhile she runs the water in the sink as hot as it can go and shoves her hands beneath, wincing when it starts to burn.

“The hell you doin’?” Joel shuts the water off.

“I’m cold,” Ellie bristles, wanting to pick a fight but not really having the energy to see anything through. “That okay with you?”

He waves her off and grabs two mugs from the drying rack. 

“You should invite them over,” he says without looking at her.

Ellie kind of wants to shrink in on herself, partially from the cold, from the almost fight, from the mere suggestion. Instead she props herself up on one of the countertops and waits for Joel to see and bat her off. “Why?”

Sure enough a dish towel swings at her left arm. “Git, girl.”

She cracks a smile despite herself and slides her feet back down to the kitchen floor. “Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s good to have friends.”

“Where are all of your goddamn friends then?” The words come out harsher than she means, really, spit on the floor like acid just waiting to find something to eat away at. 

The kettle whistles. Joel pours boiling water into each mug but holds Ellie’s hostage for now. “Well, there’s my brother who I see just ‘bout every day.” He ticks off a singular finger. “Ron and Larry that I meet for drinks every other Thursday and patrol with on Tuesdays. Lindsey who makes those real good cookies you scarf down and Trina that’s fixin’ up my toolbelt while I work on patching that leaky roof. Chappy and I are goin’ out hunting in a week or two when the deer come down from the mountain and-”

“Jesus, man. I get it.” And fuck, she really does. No better way to rub it in her face just how fucking lame she is that the old guy she lives with has a thriving social life while her most riveting plans include a not yet toilet trained infant.

Just another reminder of how much Ellie does not fit here, won’t ever really belong in a place like Jackson. It didn’t matter if she fried off the marks on her arm, wouldn’t make a difference if she swallowed down all of the unsavory aspects of her personality, forced herself to be more palatable. Because she would still be her. The kid who threw punches first and asked questions later. The kid who had seen a Bloater in the flesh and watched an army be ravaged by a hoard of Infected, who had dug a child-sized grave before she’d ever dug a hole for a seed to grow within. 

She would always be the girl who set a building on fire and screamed the rage of her indignities as a blade thwacked through bony fragments and meaty brain mass, and it still wasn’t enough. 

“Wait, Ellie.”

Joel follows her as she darts from the kitchen, stupid mug of tea forgotten. 

Recently they’d been sleeping in the living room again. Her on the couch and Joel on the floor. He insisted it was better for his back; she knew it was the only way he’d sleep at all, if she was in sight. 

But right now what she needs is distance. She needs to sulk in her room and try to reconcile the girl she’d been on the road to the teenager she’s meant to be in this town with the purpose of her life as a whole. She needs to figure out what the fuck she is besides someone who knows how to operate a VCR and quote lines at any mildly appropriate time.

“I ain’t trying to upset you.”

Which doesn’t shit-all for the tears springing to her eyes and the emotions clogging up her throat. 

“My arm hurts,” she says by means of an explanation that they both know is bullshit. 

Joel’s eyes are sad. His face tired. His body heavy. “Let me redress it,” he says with a palm opened towards her, beckoning her.

There’s little less that Ellie wants right now than for him to play Nurse Joel, but she takes two tentative steps in his direction and can’t deny the rightness that comes with the hug he moves to wrap her in. 

It’s not their style, not now, but it’s what she kind of needed, so she lets it happen for long enough that it is definitely getting embarrassing. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into the wisps of her hair as Ellie presses her face against his chest. 

“It’s hard,” she admits against her better judgment, immediately in fear of him demanding follow-ups from her of what and why and how.

But instead all there is is the palm of his hand rubbing up and down her back and the gentle rocking motion of him swaying them back and forth. There’s a simple, stuttering, “I know, kid,” and a rustling of the leaves just outside the walls of their home. It’s another big fat nothing in the grand scheme of everything, but it’s enough to let Ellie sink a little bit further against him, to let the tension from her muscles go and forget about the constant throb of her arm and the ache behind her eyes and the cramping in the line of her shoulders. 

“Can we watch a movie?” she asks, afraid that he’ll pull away and see the tears that have been pressed against his shirt.

A kiss pressed to the top of her head. “I’d love nothing more.”

It’s not really enough, but it’s what she’s got. A stack of comics collecting dust, a VCR running warm from use, and one person who bothers to find her over and over again and doesn’t turn away no matter how ugly the version that’s been discovered and plucked back to the land of the living may be. Just keeps on finding her. Just keeps on staying.

It’s not enough—not what any of this is supposed to be. But it’s what they’ve got. So she sits beneath the blanket, watches the television fuzz to life, and waits for the world to fade away to some place she could almost envision belonging. A world that never needed a savior to begin with. One that she could not have entirely failed.

Joel's hand lands on her ankle. Ellie's face tucks against the blanket, breath hot and eyes stinging. And then she wipes her cheeks, sets her gaze upon the television, and tries to forget everything else besides the story that plays out in front of her and the steadfast weight beside her. It almost works. It's almost enough. She doesn't let herself think about all the ways it isn't.