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Joel could only lay on the floor hoody and broken as his fuzzy vision picking up on red hair and a green jacket. Ellie. He can’t really make out what she’s saying, the vague muffled sounds of her begging him to get up. He thinks she begs the blond woman to stop beating on him with that golf club. Abby…Joel can vaguely remember that’s what she said her name was, he’s sure he did something to wrong her to do this. He just hopes Tommy doesn’t blame himself too much when he comes too, that he doesn’t blame himself for giving their names.
He had no way of knowing this woman was hunting him even though they’d usually lie about their names. Especially with all the bad shit they had done in their lives, but Abby had been spooked and he just wanted to calm her. So no, he does not blame his younger brother for what is happening at the moment. His hazel eyes flicker to stare at the blurry figure that is Tommy in the corner, knocked out. It’s another reason he’s convinced Abby just came here for him Otherwise she and her friends would have killed both Tommy and Ellie.
It’s the only relief he has is that they aren’t going to hurt or kill his family like they have to him. His eyes flicker back over to Ellie and he can see her body shaking softly even with the fuzziness of his vision. He wishes he was able to crawl over to her, to hold her, to tell her everything would be okay. That she would find a way to be okay without him, that she would have Dina, and Tommy, and Jesse, and the rest of Jackson. That her life isn’t over just because he is about to leave it.
”Ellie.” Is all he is able to say…he doesn’t even know if he spoke to be honest. His lips feel like they barely moved and his ears are ringing so heavily from all the blows to the head.
He can see Abby raise the golf club again and prep to swing and he has a feeling this swing will be the one that splatters his brains on the wall behind him. So he closes his eyes and holds his breath as he prepares himself for the final blow. The crushing pain only last for a second…and then he knows no more. Just blank, dark, oblivion.
At least…he does for a little while because after god knows how long he feels a throbbing pain in his head. He feels super goddamn warm like his entire body is under a thick blanket. The prickles of…grass under his skin…grass? Why would he be lying on grass? He remembers he was lying on the cold wooden floor of the Baldwin Manor basement. Unless he somehow did survive and now he is lying on the ground while they dig his grave in Jackson….but with the blizzard he would have expected to feel snow and not grass under his skin.
Joel also knows there is no way he survived that last blow Abby dealt to his head.
He forces his hazel eyes open and scrambles when he sees…paws. Big black furry paws that belong to a wolf and not a human. Joel feels his chest expand with heavy and large breathes like he has bigger lungs.Nope, nope, no. His momma may have mentioned reincarnation but that didn’t mean he believed it was actually true. Guess being jaded by the apocalypse makes it like that, hard to believe. But seriously? A wolf? A goddamn wolf? That’s what he comes back as?!
Joel tries to stand on his four paws and stumbles like a newborn baby as he tries to adjust from being bipedal to being quadrupedal. He can feel his tail, yes his goddamn tail, dragging behind him. He tries to pick the new appendage up a little so it doesn’t drag on the dirt. Instead he just ends up wagging it and he, not that he’ll admit it under death, flinches a bit when his attempt at a grunty sigh comes out as more of a growl.
He manages to stumble his way to a pond in the forest he woke up in and stare at his reflection which makes it even more real. He lifts a hand-paw to his face and just to rub it down his face. He more or less just ends batting at his own face and snout…he’s already struggling with the fact that he has a tail and is a wolf in general…he doesn’t want to think about the snout.
The loud snap of a branch alerts him to something behind him and he whips around, growling again. It’s just a deer and because of his sharp reaction he clearly spooked the other animal as it runs off. He shakes his head and his ears…and he suddenly has a feeling that it wasn’t as loud as it really was. His ears feel so much more sensitive to everything around him. He can hear every bird chirping, the river flowing he knows miles is away if he’s in the part of the Wyoming forest he thinks he’s in.
He lets his ears twitch and he can hear the sounds of footsteps and muffled voices to the North. Jackson. He couldn’t even go back there…to Tommy, to Maria, to Ellie. They’d have no way of knowing he was Joel, they’d just think he was a stray wolf or something and shoot him. Again, he jumps at the sound of a whimper escaping him.
But then he sniffs around some more and he picks a very familiar scent and his head and ears perk up. He sniffs the air more and sprints East for a few moments before sniffing the air again and carrying on. He’s never run so fast in his life and he swears, makes sense since he is a wolf now after all which is still a mindfuck, he’s going to run his ass into a tree. He keeps sprinting though until he bursts out of the forest and sprints down a trail until a fence off ranch comes into his view.
When he gets up to the fence he leaps over the fence and he pants as the smell he picked up gets stronger and stronger. When he finally sees the person giving off the sent, his Ellie standing by Dina and he doesn’t even process the baby in Ellie’s arms. He just gives out a howl as he stops a few feet away from them and he watched Ellie and Dina turn to look his way.