Chapter Text
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
Her legs are pumping before her brain catches up, her heart hammering against her ribs like it’s trying to break free. The image of Joel crumpled on the floor, that awful wheeze when he couldn’t breathe, is seared into her memory, right along with Sam’s snarling face and Riley’s dead body.
The farmstand door slams behind her, the sound echoing through the moonlit field. Callus comes into view and she’s already reaching to unhitch him, movements automatic. Her fingers fumble with the knots — when did her hands start shaking this bad? It doesn’t matter; she’s going back to the university with or without him. Actually, without him might be better — Joel would just slow her down anyway with that fucked-up leg. She’ll find the Fireflies herself. She can make this right.
How dare Joel give up like this? After all these months, everything they’ve been through, he’s going to abandon the only thing that matters. The only thing that makes her matter.
Even as her temper flares, it feels hollow. Mocking. Like she’s trying to convince herself she has the right to be pissed when she’s the one who—
She didn’t mean to knock him down. She didn’t.
Did she?
The question makes her feel like puking. Her stomach churns at the memory of satisfaction — of pleasure — flitting through her when he hit the ground, at the split second of triumph before the horror set in.
The tremor in her fingers betrays her as she swings into the saddle and spurs Callus into motion. He snorts, startled by her rough handling, but obeys. She points him toward the university and urges him into a gallop. Tears hit without warning, the poison she’d hurled at Joel burning through her chest. She doesn’t even believe the shit that came out of her mouth. He has done nothing but protect her from the very beginning. He risks his life all day, every day, for her.
For her.
She’s never mattered to anyone before Joel. Not like this. Not in a way that meant someone would die to keep her safe.
And his face when she mentioned Sarah — god, she watched something break inside him. The same way she broke when Riley showed her the bite. The same way everyone around her breaks. It’s like she’s cursed.
Joel wasn’t supposed to look at her like that. He wasn’t supposed to be the one who got hurt.
The wind whips through her jacket and stings her cheeks and makes her eyes water. She hardly notices it through the searing shame. All those months of Joel protecting her, when he should have been protecting himself. From her.
“Faster,” she urges, leaning low over Callus’s neck. The moon hangs almost full overhead, providing enough light to see the horse’s breath steaming clouds as they streak toward the university. She’ll find something that might give her a clue, and then Joel will understand.
Who is she kidding? That’s not why she’s flying down the road. Not really. She’s running from her shame like a fucking coward.
When the house they stayed in the night Joel got bit comes into view, relief floods through her; she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find it. Ah, fuck. Callus has been running since the farmstand — that’s not good for him. His chest heaves beneath the saddle, foam flecking his mouth, and she guides him to a stop. At least she knows this place is safe, or as safe as it can be when she’s around.
With Callus secured in the garage, she approaches the door on unsteady legs. The living room is as they left it, laden with the melancholy that tried to suffocate them a couple of nights ago. The Giver sits on the side table where Joel placed it, their footprints visible in the scuffed dirt on the floor. Nothing’s different, except everything is.
“Fuck,” she mutters, sinking onto the couch. The rage burning behind her breastbone has died out, cooled by the winter wind and distance. The vitriol she spewed… she went for the jugular. Telling him he can’t keep her safe. Throwing Sarah in his face — the one thing guaranteed to eviscerate him.
Accusing him of wanting her dead.
The memory makes her gag. She wants to shove the words back into her mouth and swallow them whole. But she can’t.
And then her wrath exploded through her body, through her hands, and she attacked Joel. Joel, who taught her about seatbelts and the proper way to hold a gun and how to tell when it’s safe to drink water from a stream. Who gave her a choice and got bitten because of it. Who should be dead and gone, but is pacing a groove in the farmstand she abandoned him at.
If he can even do that. If his leg isn’t too fucked up from falling.
God, what is wrong with her? She pushed Joel, and he fell, and he landed so hard he couldn’t breathe. She hurt him with her words, and she hurt him with her hands. And…
And she wanted to hurt him.
It felt good to hurt him.
The admission makes her sick. She gags again, body trembling as she tugs on her hair. How is she supposed to live with this realization? How is she supposed to tackle this ugly truth about herself? It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing a monster — a hunter — staring back.
Is this who she is? Someone who enjoys hurting other people? Has she been unaware of this darkness until now, when she unleashed it on the least deserving person she has ever known?
“This is fucked up,” she mutters into the empty room. “I’m fucked up.”
The silence is a condemnation; the walls, a prison. She’s been alone before — plenty of times — but this is different because she hasn’t been left behind. This time, she is doing the leaving. She is choosing to be the monster. All the dark, deplorable parts of her are laid bare now. There’s nothing else she can hide.
This is what she meant when she told Sam she fears ending up alone. It isn’t alone that terrifies her — it’s winding up alone because she deserves to be.
And the worst part is, she can’t stop now. Can’t go back and face him. Can’t look him in the eye knowing that she wanted to hurt him — enjoyed hurting him. Can’t stand there and watch him see what she really is before dismissing her once and for all.
She stands and paces the room, stirring up dust with each step. It gives her something to do with the stinging, restless energy crawling under her skin. She stops short in front of the hole she’d punched in the wall. Did Joel notice it that night? When he cleaned her busted knuckles, was he trying to wipe away the violence he’d witnessed? Her eyes land on spots of dried blood, brown and stark around the broken drywall.
But… he wants to give up. He doesn’t care about a cure; he doesn’t care about what she wants, what she needs. All he cares about is himself, about going back to Jackson, and his brother, and his purpose.
What about her life? What about her purpose?
You’re full of shit, she thinks. Joel cares. Joel cares so much that it scares him, and that’s why he wants to go back to the safety of Jackson. If she’s being honest — and there’s no point in lying to herself now — it scares her too.
Her fingers trace over the jagged edges of the drywall as she spirals. She yelled at him then, too. And why? Because he wanted to spare her the sight of his brains splattered across the ground?
I’m not fucking leaving you, she’d said. I’m staying with you until the end and longer.
What a fucking joke. She just… left him. Joel got bit and spent all his remaining time comforting her, and she left him. Worse — she stranded him. He can barely walk ten feet unless he uses that stupid stick, and she took off on the horse without a thought.
Basically: Joel got bit and worried about her instead of himself. In return, she hurt him, abandoned him, and left him in danger — the three things Joel would never, ever do.
What if he was right, and the weird progression of symptoms was just a delayed reaction? What if he’s alone and scared and turning into one of those things, and the last memory he has of her is violent? What if he doesn’t shoot himself in time because he’s holding out hope she’ll see how fucking selfish and stupid and awful she is? What if he’s clinging to her promise that she will be with him until the end and longer?
She should go back, swallow her shame, face whatever he has to say, and should apologize until her voice gives out. Then he can take Callus. And if Joel… if he… then she’ll shoot him like he’d want and bring him to Jackson.
Yeah. That’s… that’s what she’ll do. First, she’ll get the sleds from downstairs for his body if it comes to that, then go back for him.
The basement steps creak beneath her weight, echoing off the cinderblocks as she descends into the darkness. Dust motes drift through her flashlight beam, creating an eerie, ephemeral atmosphere. The toboggans are where she’d found them during her initial search of the house.
She drags the toboggans into an open area, grunting with the effort. They’re heavier than she expected. Her hands shake as she digs through a crate for anything that’ll bind the sleds together. A loud bang from upstairs makes her freeze.
“Ellie!”
Joel. Alive, not-turned, pissed-off Joel. Her head swims with relief. He’s alive. He followed her.
Guilt slams into her anew. He walked all this way on a fucked-up leg because of her. Because she ran.
The silence of Ellie’s escape is deafening. For several moments, Joel can only lie there, each breath hindered until the spasm abates. When the muscles finally unclench and air comes without struggle, he gasps and rolls onto his good side, pushing himself up on trembling arms.
“Goddamnit,” he mutters, scanning the empty farmstand. He fumbles with the stick, using it to lever himself upright. His muscles protest, but he grits his teeth and forces himself to rise. The pain is nothing compared to Ellie’s vitriol.
It’s a defense mechanism and he knows it, but the knowledge can soften her accusations. This little girl tore through the impenetrable walls around his heart like they were tissue paper. That for a second she could think he wants harm to come to her, that he wishes she died… it’s unthinkable. Unbearable.
Sarah flashes through his mind — spirited and vibrant as she rolled her eyes at his shitty jokes, her bright smile spurring him to do more. To do better. He’ll never stop missing his daughter. But that doesn’t mean he wants Ellie gone. Christ, the opposite is true.
At some point, Ellie wormed her way into his heart and took a place next to Sarah. He never expected to spend his days looking after a kid again. Hell, he never expected to experience this… this… again.
He’d damn the world for his girls — both of them — if it came to that.
A gust of wind rattles a loose board by a window, drawing him out of his thoughts. Turning the corner, he sees Callus is no longer tethered; the horse is nowhere to be found.
Fuck.
“Ellie!” he bellows, voice carrying across the empty field. The stupidity of his call registers a second later; he’s practically begging infected to swarm, but he doesn’t care. Let them come. Ellie’s out there alone, hurting and terrified, and that’s what matters.
Panic rises in his throat as he scans the horizon, then turns to examine the ground. She took the horse and headed toward the university. She’s alone out there in the dark with god knows what lurking in the shadows. Probably thinks he’s mad at her, probably furious at herself…
It doesn’t matter. She’s not thinking straight and in these conditions… He shoves the thought aside, unable to think about all the ways she could get hurt. There’s no use in panicking now, not when he has a girl to find.
It takes precious minutes to smother the fire and rid his pack of extraneous weight, hands shaking as he sorts through their supplies. He stores the items in a hidden space behind the counter. They’ll be passing by this place again; he can salvage whatever’s left on the way back. Because they will be back.
He shoulders his bag, tightens the bandage on his leg, and tests his weight against the walking stick. Pain shoots from his ankle to his hip, but his knee holds. It will have to do.
The night air bites at his face as he plods forward, spurring him to move faster. Somewhere out there, Ellie is alone in this cold.
Moonlight illuminates the road enough to follow, and he sets a grueling pace despite his injury. Each step sends fire up his leg, but he pushes through it, counting steps instead of miles.
Hours pass. His body screams for rest; his knee buckles and his lungs squeeze with something other than panic, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t.
The sky is taking on an orange-pink hue when the house they’d stayed in after the bite comes into view. He slows, eyes narrowing. Would Ellie have stopped here? If she rode Callus hard, this is the outer limit of his endurance. Sure enough, the garage door is open a few feet, and as he approaches, a disgruntled neigh reaches his ears.
Thank the lord.
Joel can taste the relief as Callus stamps impatiently when he appears, tossing his head toward the door as if to say took you long enough.
“You try walkin’ ten miles on a busted leg,” he mutters under his breath as he pats the horse on the neck. Then he hesitates at the door, unsure. What if she doesn’t want to see him? The things she said… they were out of anger. They had to be.
But what if they weren’t?
With a deep breath, he steps inside, heart racing.
“Ellie!”
The house is quiet, but he can tell it’s not empty. “Ellie!” he calls again, swinging his light around the room. His beam illuminates their footprints in the dust and the book he’d read to her. It feels like a dream.
A shuffle from below draws his attention — the basement. He makes his way toward the stairs, biting back a grimace; he’ll be paying for that punishing pace for a while. “Ellie, I need you to answer me,” he calls, shifting the walking stick to his other hand so he can grip the banister. “Right now.”
“Yeah.” She sounds so defeated, like she’s been wrung dry. “I’m here.”
He descends with care, walking stick thumping against each step as he eases his way to her. The basement comes into view: Ellie sits facing away from him, surrounded by skis and old sleds.
“I was coming back,” she mumbles to the ground. “I was just…”
He pauses at the bottom, struck by how young she looks with her shoulders hunched and head hung low. A bone-deep relief that she’s safe, sitting in front of him without a scratch, settles deep in his gut. That’s what matters.
“You took the horse.”
She slumps forward, trying to make herself smaller. “Yeah. That was… that was really fucked up. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She fidgets with a length of rope, fingers moving nonstop. “How’d you even get here? Your leg…”
As selfish as it is, he allows the concern in her voice to quiet the insecurity that’s plagued him since their fight. “Followed your tracks; thought maybe you’d stop to rest here.”
An uncomfortable silence takes hold of the room. He lowers himself to sit on the second-to-last step, his leg protesting without mercy. He studies the back of Ellie’s head; her ponytail is loose, hair spilling over her shoulders.
“I forgot these when we left the first time,” she says after a while, her voice emotionless. “I was going to use them to bring your body to Jackson.”
Christ. The image of Ellie dragging his body across hundreds of miles makes him sick. “Kiddo—”
“I didn’t mean it,” she cuts him off. “Any of it.”
He sighs, the knot of fear in his lungs easing slightly. “I know.”
“Do you?” She turns, blinking against the harsh flashlight beam. Dark bags sit beneath red-rimmed eyes, her cheeks flushed and streaked with tears she hasn’t bothered to wipe away. “‘Cause I said some fucked up shit back there.”
“Yeah,” he agrees softly. “You did.”
Silence falls again, cloying and troubled. After a moment she looks down, wrapping her arms around herself, a posture he’s come to recognize as insecurity.
He needs to fix this. “All the times I’ve… lashed out,” he starts, the words clumsy. “It… I-I mean, it’s… goddamn it,” he mutters. Why is this so hard? He can negotiate with the worst of humanity, but one little girl turns him into a stammering mess. “S’usually ‘cause I’m… scared. And, uh… I ain’t real - good - at that.”
Ellie lifts her head, bottom lip trapped between her teeth. “Yeah,” she whispers, chin wobbling. “Me either.”
He watches her fidget with the rope, twisting it around her fingers until they turn white. It hurts to see her like this, withdrawn and small when she should be the stubborn, impossible kid who whips out a joke book when she deems the situation too tense.
“Ellie…” With a deep sigh, he hauls himself up to bridge the distance between them. His body protests when he settles on the concrete beside her, but he shoves away the sharp ache in his joints. Cold seeps through his jeans, but he needs to be close to her. “I know you ain’t… her.” He presses a finger to her knee, focused on her reaction — he’s not sure if she wants to be touched right now. “And I don’t want you to be.”
She sniffs, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve.
“I’d rather die than see you hurt or worse,” he continues after an uncomfortable, silent moment. It’s been true for a while, even if he’s only been willing to acknowledge the depth of his affection in the last week. “Been like that since…” He pauses, considering. She’d stood in front of him, frightened and near tears until he told her they’d travel west together. “…Day three. Bill’s town.”
One corner of her mouth quirks up as she glances over. “You literally threw yourself in front of a clicker for me like six hours after we met.”
“Yeah, well…” He nudges her with his elbow, matching her quasi-smile. “Tess would’a killed me if you were ripped to shreds.”
She huffs, shaking her head as she continues to worry the rope. “I can’t picture you scared,” Ellie murmurs after a while. “You’re… you. You’re not afraid of anything.”
He lets out a hollow laugh. If only she knew. “I’m afraid of plenty.” He shifts his weight, trying to find a position that eases the pain shooting through his right side. “Just good at keepin’ a straight face is all.”
For a moment, she just studies him, her brow furrowing at whatever she sees. “What are you afraid of?”
He looks away, focusing on a cobweb hanging between two joists. “Losin’ the people I care about,” he says slowly. “It’s a pretty short list these days.”
“Tommy?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out rough, hoarse. “And you,” he confesses after a long pause. “Mostly, uh… mostly you.”
Losing Tommy would hurt, but losing Ellie would finish what Sarah’s death started.
Ellie’s breath catches, then shudders. From the corner of his eye, he sees her mouth open, then close as she tries to understand what he’s telling her.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
The atmosphere shifts and stretches, the silence growing less oppressive. It’s like the very air knows what’s at stake.
“I… didn’t mean it.”
At that, he forces himself to look over. All the anger and bravado are gone, revealing the truth: she’s a vulnerable, scared kid. “You weren’t wrong about one thing.”
Her breath hitches again, her words tentative. “I wasn’t?”
“No,” he murmurs, tracing figure eights on her knee. “I don’t care about the vaccine.”
“But—”
“Even if they manage it,” he barrels on before he loses his nerve, “it ain’t a cure. There’s no way to bring those people back. Not when their body’s been taken over.” Their eyes meet. “A vaccine might protect some folks who get bit, but there ain’t no guarantee.”
“Joel—”
“Just… just listen, okay?” He tilts his head, waiting for her to meet his eye. “Before the outbreak, vaccines… they took a lot of research to make. Years. Decades, sometimes.” A flicker of doubt crosses her expression as he searches for the right words. He’s never been good at explaining things gently — even Sarah suffered through his bumbled attempts to soften hard truths. “And they didn’t last forever. We got a new flu shot every year, but you could still get sick. It’d just be… less bad.”
With a deep sigh, he turns to her fully, watching as his words hit home. “Look, if you’re dead-set on goin’ to the university, on findin’ them Fireflies… we’ll go. But kiddo, I ain’t takin’ you on some wild goose chase from there.” He hesitates for a moment before reaching out to tip her chin up. “I meant it when I said we need to be smart about this. Whatever we find… we take it back to Jackson with us.”
She’s quiet for a moment, eyes searching his for answers. If only he had some. “What if we can find them? What if… what if we discover where they are? I can’t just give that up, Joel. It’s my purpose.”
Purpose. She’s fourteen years old and convinced her only worth lies in the fungus beneath her skin. He studies her, taking in the defeat and desperation there. She looks exhausted, and it ain’t just the physical type. It’s an emotion he’s all too acquainted with, one he hoped Ellie would never experience.
“Your purpose,” he repeats slowly. “Kiddo, your purpose is to grow up, to… to find somethin’ worth livin’ for.”
“What if I don’t?” Ellie shifts away, attention back on the rope. “What if I never find it?”
The question gives him pause — he’s had a purpose for as long as he can remember. An older brother, a father… in the hours after Sarah, it was simply to join her. But he flinched, and he lived, and the world narrowed to two words: protect and survive.
He opens his mouth, then closes it. Everything in his heart screams to comfort, to reassure, but it feels disingenuous. Would he have preferred to spend a lifetime searching for his purpose rather than to lose it in a second? To seek meaning instead of knowing the hour, the minute, the very fucking heartbeat when his purpose was ripped from his soul? For twenty years, he knew — he knew — the only reason he survived was guilt. Failure.
Punishment for letting his baby die.
Then a little girl ran at him with a knife, and she needed an escort outside the QZ, and when everything went to shit, he had a new purpose, if only for a while: deliver the kid to the Fireflies. As they neared Jackson, the thought of delivering the cargo and walking away began to pull and chafe. Despite his best attempts to keep Ellie at arm’s length, he couldn’t bring himself to desert her.
Along the way, somewhere between Boston and Jackson, everything shifted. When had she stopped being cargo and started being his responsibility? His… what? His kid?
Maybe it was watching her laugh at her own terrible jokes, or seeing her excitement over a new comic book. Could have been a night illuminated by a colorful sky and a silly comment about sheep ranches on the moon. No… no, it was a million small moments that added up to something wholly unexpected.
It all came to a head in a pink-striped bedroom where he spewed vicious words out of fear. Hours later, as he strode toward the Jackson stables, the betrayal and disbelief on Ellie’s face registered. He was never one to believe in fate, but in that moment, he realized: maybe this is why he survived. Maybe the reward for twenty years of barely existing is Ellie.
Maybe Tess looked at him and saw that Ellie wasn’t the only one in need of saving.
“Well…” She watches as Joel’s mouth moves soundlessly, the thought stuck between his brain and his tongue. There’s a certain comfort in the way he stumbles over his words, how he always seems to know what he wants to say but not how to express it.
“Reckon that’s the point. The searchin’.” He exhales, eyes squeezing shut for a moment before meeting hers. “As you grow up… it changes. Mine did.”
You keep goin’ for family, he’d said months ago. That’s about it.
It’s her turn to look away, twisting the rope around her hand until the skin goes white. The fibers have frayed, poking into her palm. She wishes it hurt more. “I don’t have family to keep going for.”
Joel inhales, the sound jarring. She can imagine his face, brows drawn together and eyes soft with concern she doesn’t deserve. A second later, his finger touches her chin, gently urging her to look at him. “You have me.”
Ellie freezes. How? How can she have him? After everything she said, everything she did… how could he still want her?
“I thought—”
“I was wrong,” he murmurs, cupping her cheek, the rough calluses on his thumb sliding over it with something like reverence. No one ever did that before. “I was… scared.”
The weight of his palm against her skin anchors her, its warmth more real and solid than she’s ever felt. It gives her courage. It gives her hope.
“Of what?”
Joel’s thumb traces a gentle path along her cheekbone. There’s a tremor to the motion — he’s nervous too. His forehead wrinkles as he draws his bottom lip between his teeth. “Of…” He huffs, looking down without breaking their connection. “Carin’ too much. Gettin’ attached.” When his hand drops away, cold air rushes in where Joel’s warmth was. She misses the contact immediately. “Reckon you’re the first teenage girl I’ve talked to since…” He swallows, the noise echoing through the basement despite how quiet his voice has become. “Since Sarah.”
Sarah. She almost startles at the sound of it. All she knows about Sarah is that she was afraid of horses and she was fourteen when she died. That Joel was her father and Tommy was her uncle. That her death made Joel want to die. That she was so very, deeply, loved.
How can she ever measure up to a ghost?
She wants to say something — anything, really — but she doesn’t know what or how. What can she say? Tears burn their way through her sinuses, welling in her eyes. Her earlier apology was so insignificant, so incomplete, that she’s compelled to repeat it. “I’m sorry. For…”
For what? For reminding Joel of Sarah? Using his daughter as a weapon? Making him care? Being alive when his daughter is dead?
“For not knowing how to do this,” she chokes finally, gesturing between the two of them. “For fucking it up.”
“You didn’t fuck nothin’ up.” The words are firm, like he means it. “Nothin’.”
She sniffs, swiping at her eyes with her sleeve. The sincerity in Joel’s voice makes her believe him, even when she doesn’t want to.
“You didn’t,” Joel repeats, softer this time. His hand hovers between them, uncertain, before landing on her knee. “You can’t.”
Part of her wants to snap, “Watch me.” She’s spent her entire life learning the lesson that nothing good lasts long.
That one day in Jackson changed him, somehow. Before that, he was all grumpy and reserved, keeping her at arm’s length even when they huddled together for warmth. They spent three months glued to each other’s side, and it’s only in the past four days that he’s shared anything personal. She can count the number of times Joel has been this open with her. It makes her ache in a way she doesn’t understand. Like she’s longing for something she’ll never have; like she’s longing for something she already has.
“What do you say we find somethin’ better’n concrete to sit on?” he says after a long silence. “Get some rest, talk ‘bout what to do when we reach the university. I found a map in one of the buildings; reckon we can use it for plannin’.”
“Okay,” she nods, wiping her nose on her sleeve. The fabric is already gross from her earlier tears and snot, but she can’t bring herself to care. She’s drained, like she’s got nothing left in her body, but somehow lighter, too.
When she looks at Joel’s face — really looks — she can see exhaustion etched into every line. Dark shadows have taken up residence under his eyes, and there’s a greyish tint to his skin that makes her stomach turn. His eyes are heavy-lidded and swollen, his shoulders slumped forward. She’s seen him tired before — hell, she’s seen him after three straight days of not sleeping — but this is the kind of exhaustion that comes from too much emotional and physical pain.
He walked all that way because of her. Because she ran.
“Here,” she says, scrambling to her feet and offering her hand. “Let me help.”
Joel hesitates, pride warring with necessity before he accepts her hand. His fingers wrap around her forearm, squeezing once. Despite everything, his firm grip settles a little of the worry. Even with her support, getting up is a struggle. His leg buckles and he grimaces, balancing himself on her shoulder. For a moment, she’s supporting most of his weight, and it hits her: Joel — solid, invincible Joel — needs her help. It terrifies her.
“You go up first.” He gestures to the staircase, holding up a hand to stave off her protest. “If I fall backward, I’ll crush you.”
“Or I’ll catch you. You’ll break a hip if you fall down the stairs, old man.”
He glares. She manages a smile. He glares more. It’s almost normal.
“Ugh, fine,” she harrumphs after a brief stare-off. “But you better not fucking fall.”
“Ain’t plannin’ on it,” he mutters, gripping the banister with white knuckles.
She earns another glare when she goes up the stairs backward, hands half-raised like she’s spotting a gymnast. Each step he takes is laborious, the walking stick thudding dully against the wooden steps. When they reach the living room, she lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
“Couch?”
“S’fine,” he mutters, hobbling after her. Joel eases himself down with a groan, tipping his head back and closing his eyes as soon as he’s settled.
They exist in quiet, Joel taking measured breaths that gradually slow and deepen. She lets it sit, filling the gap between them, until she can’t take it anymore. “You shouldn’t have walked all this way.”
He doesn’t move and for a moment, she thinks he didn’t hear her. “And what?” Joel’s eyes crack open, fixing her with a tired, offended stare. “Leave you out here alone and upset? Not a chance in hell, kiddo.”
The finality in his voice cuts off any response she might have come up with. She’s learned to read his tone and knows when he’ll cave to her badgering versus when there’s no point in arguing. She sits at the opposite end of the sofa, tucking her legs beneath. As she watches, Joel’s eyes drift close and the tension leaves his shoulders. She wonders if he’s falling asleep. Probably; he fucking walked all night to get here. He traveled miles and miles on a leg that hurts way more than he’s willing to let on, just to make sure she was okay.
Minutes pass in silence, broken only by Joel’s deep, even breathing. Ellie shifts on the couch, careful not to disturb him. She has seen him sleep plenty of times before, but this is different. Vulnerable. Sadder.
He looks old like this. The lines around his eyes are deeper, the bags underneath swollen like she’s never seen on him. There’s more grey in his beard than she remembers. When did that happen?
“I can feel you starin’,” he murmurs without moving.
Heat floods her cheeks at being caught. “Sorry,” she whispers, fixing her gaze on a water stain across the room. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Just restin’ my eyes.” Joel sighs, wincing as he adjusts his leg. When his lips thin, she realizes that even small movements cause him pain. He reaches into his pack and pulls out a folded paper. “Here’s that map I mentioned.”
Ellie scoots closer as he unfolds it on the cushion between them. Wear and crinkles mark the paper; its creases softened from repeated folding and unfolding. Someone — the Fireflies — marked it up. Red ink marks locations and warnings about infected.
“…this says there are infected in the building you got bitten in.”
“Yeah.” Joel sounds fed up. There’s a bitter edge to his voice that wasn’t there before. “Would’a been nice to know before traipsin’ around with a bloater.”
“Dude.” Joel did not tell her about that. A bloater? And he just casually mentions it now? “You fought a fucking bloater and didn’t think to mention it?”
“Well, I’m here, ain’t I?” He shifts, uncomfortable under her stare. “Besides, we had bigger things to worry about.”
“But—”
“We ain’t goin’ in circles over this, kid,” he mutters as he traces a finger over the map, following routes marked in smudged pencil. “Point is, we know what we’re dealin’ with and where we’re goin’. We’ll be better prepared this time.”
With a nod, Ellie studies the paper as Joel rambles on about perimeters and contingencies and all the safety stuff she should be listening to, but her brain refuses to process it. Something about entry points and fallback positions, but all she can think about is Joel fighting a bloater alone while she was none the wiser. Her eyelids grow heavy as the letters on the map blur together.
“Ellie.”
“Huh?” She jerks her head up, blinking to focus.
A hand lands on her knee; she flinches, startled. “Fuck,” she mumbles, catching Joel’s eye for a second before looking away. He looks so worried, and that makes her feel worse. “Sorry, I just—”
“—wasn’t payin’ attention,” he says softly. “I noticed.”
She sits forward and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands, exhaustion hitting hard. She wasn’t this tired before. Sitting down was a mistake. Everything feels worse now, somehow tangled and laid bare all at once. “I’m listening.”
“No, you ain’t.” Joel’s tone is gentle; concerned. Sometimes, she wonders if he spoke to Sarah like this. “Stretch out.”
“But we need to—”
“We need to be functional,” he interrupts, settling back against the cushions. “Which means we need to rest.”
They consider each other before Ellie gives in. She’s too tired to argue, and honestly, lying down sounds amazing.
“C’mere,” he murmurs as he pats his good leg like they’ve done this a hundred times before. “I’m more comfortable sittin’ up.”
A few days ago, she’d have been surprised at the offer to act as her pillow. Now that they’ve spent the past few days cuddled together, she’s learned just how comforting it is to be close. How safe it is to have someone steady and warm to lean against. But deep down, she knows that after the things she did and said, she doesn’t deserve it.
“Stop it,” Joel chides like he can read her thoughts. “Whatever you’re tellin’ yourself, stop it.”
Ugh, how is he always aware of what’s going on in her head? He’s like a fucking mind reader sometimes.
She might not deserve it, but Joel does. So, she crawls across the worn cushions and settles with her cheek pressed to his thigh. The denim is soft and worn, Joel’s warmth seeping right through it. His hand comes to rest on her shoulder, absently tracing patterns through her jacket.
Sometimes, when she was little, she’d imagine what it would be like to have a dad. This is what she imagined.
“I hurt you,” she confesses into the silence. “I wanted to.”
“Yeah, well… I’ve wanted to hurt plenty of people over the years. Even the ones I, uh, l-love. Did it, too.” He pauses, hand stilling against her shoulder. “Not Sarah, though. I couldn’t… I’d never…”
Ellie twists to see his face, a half-grin playing on her lips. Despite everything, the image of a toddler bossing Joel around makes her want to smile. “She totally made you her bitch, didn’t she?”
“I wanted to hurt you too,” he blurts suddenly. “In… Jackson. I thought…”
“Joel—”
“I thought it’d be better if you were - mad - at me. I-I… I didn’t…” He trails off, cursing under his breath. Beneath her cheek, his muscles tense. “I wanted it to be easy for you to… to leave, I guess. Without me.”
Oh. That’s what it was about. The cruel words, the horrible fight, the derision in his eyes… he was trying to push her away on purpose. She should have seen it; she does the same thing.
“Sometimes, you’re really fucking stupid,” she decides. “You’re… you. And we’ve been through more shit in three months than I’ve been in, like… ever. And you always made it okay. How could it be easy to leave safe behind?”
Joel stills. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” She shifts against his leg, getting more comfortable. “When those psycho hunters were after us, you knew exactly what to do. And that basement with all the clickers? We didn’t even have to kill one because you got us out. And—”
“Alright, alright,” he murmurs in a more gravelly than usual voice, smoothing his hand up and down her arm. “I get it.”
“I don’t think you do.” She props herself up on one elbow, surprised at the flush creeping up his neck, highlighting how red his ears have turned. “No one gave a shit before I got bit, except Riley.” She studies his face even after he looks away. “But… but you put yourself between me and danger as soon as we met, even though you didn’t want me around. And you stay awake so I can sleep, and you give me your food when there isn’t enough and you’re hungry, and you… listen. Even when I’m being dumb.”
Moments together flash through her head like a slideshow. Joel sitting ramrod straight in the middle of the night, a rifle in his lap; Joel saying he isn’t hungry and giving her his rations even though she can hear his stomach growling; Joel half-listening when she rambles about things he doesn’t care about. He’s just… he’s there. And he sees her. And she wishes he understood how fucking much that means to her.
His jaw twitches as he processes what she’s said, but he still doesn’t look at her. “That ain’t… I don’t do nothin’ special.”
She snorts, settling down again with her cheek against his leg. “You make me feel like I matter. Not ‘cause of the bite or whatever. Just, like, me.”
Silence stretches between them, heavy with something she can’t name. It isn’t uncomfortable, just… important. And heavy. Did she say heavy? Because it’s heavy.
“Ellie…” Gentle pressure on her shoulder has her turning to look up at his face again. “You matter. More than…” He clears his throat. “More than you know.”
It’s strange how the same man who can hardly talk about anything emotional can say something so simple and so fucking important. She searches for something to say, to acknowledge whatever’s happening right now, but the words stick in her throat.
His hand moves from her shoulder to her hair, hesitant at first, then more confident as he brushes a strand behind her ear. “Get some rest,” he murmurs, stroking her temple with the backs of his fingers.
She wants to protest, to keep this weird and awkward and perfect moment going, but her body is heavy with exhaustion and… well, being this close to Joel makes it a lot easier to close her eyes. The gentle weight of Joel’s hand on her head lulls her into a trance.
This is what she’s been wanting — been missing — her whole life. Being cared for. Protected.
Wanted.
“Don’t leave,” she mumbles, tangling her fingers in the hem of his shirt.
“Where am I goin’ without you?” comes his soft reply. “Sleep, baby girl. I got you.”
She drifts off with two words on endless repeat like a weird spoken lullaby. Baby girl.
Afternoon sun reflects off the mirrored facade of the science building almost like a beacon as Joel shifts his weight against the walking stick, jaw tight as another spasm ripples through his body. It’s damn tall; he’s not sure how he’ll be able to clear the place with this new handicap.
But Ellie needs to see for herself that there’s nothing here worth chasing. He just needs to keep her safe while she does.
“Same as we practiced,” he murmurs, scanning the area with practiced awareness. “Room by room. I’m your—”
“—back, you’re mine.” Ellie grins up at him, her eyes sparkling. “I know, Joel. We’ve only done this, like, half a million times.”
Joel sighs heavily, resting his hand on her shoulder to prevent her from moving.“I know you’re hopin’ to find somethin’ here, but right now, I need you on high alert. You hear anything, you see anything I don’t, you speak up.”
“Yes, sir,” Ellie salutes, a seriousness in her expression that eases a bit of his apprehension. She positions herself to catch him if he stumbles, leaving enough distance to not suffocate. “What if we find something?”
“Then we find somethin’.” As much as he doesn’t want to see Ellie disappointed, he hopes they don’t find anything. It’s selfish, but he wants to go back to Jackson. To start something like a life again. “But we ain’t chasin’ ghosts. Science building, then Jackson, no matter what we find.”
He senses her eyes on him as his breath hitches, the muscles contracting hard enough to steal the air from his lungs. When it passes, he’s left dizzy and nauseous. Christ, he hates being weak in front of her.
“You good?” she asks, her voice carefully neutral.
“Yeah.” He pats her shoulder, half-smiling in an attempt to assuage her concern. “Whaddya say?”
“I say let’s fuck this shit up.”
Christ, the mouth on this kid. Maria’s going to have a field day trying to civilize this child; if she thought Ellie didn’t speak like the other kids after knowing her an hour, she’ll be thrilled the cussing isn’t limited to defensive, angry Ellie.
She checks her pistol one more time, her movements sure. It irks him how good she is — she shouldn’t have to carry a weapon for her own safety. He shifts his grip on the walking stick. They move forward in sync, heads on swivels as they approach the entrance.
“Looks clear,” she whispers. “And silent. Told you those raider dudes left.”
Stubborn, naive girl. Sometimes her optimistic hope scares him more than pessimism. “We don’t know that for sure. Can’t let your guard down.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, but her focus sharpens when they walk through the shattered doors.
Inside, sunlight illuminates floating dust motes that highlight the hastily abandoned mess of papers and containers strewn about the atrium. The balconies leave them too exposed to human threats concealed on the upper floors. Joel’s neck prickles with the sensation of being watched, even though he can’t identify any danger. The sooner they’re out of here, the better.
Medical equipment lies scattered about — overturned carts obscure manilla folders spilling their contents across the tiled floor. A hospital gurney sits abandoned against the far wall. The Fireflies fled in such a rush that they left supplies and notes behind.
The alternative is that none of this was worth taking.
Ellie makes a beeline for the only upright cart as Joel examines the space. New footsteps mar the dust that settled long ago.
“There were definitely doctors here,” she says, running her fingers over empty vials. “Why would they leave all this behind? Because of those raiders? Or hunters, whatever.”
“Don’t think so.” Joel limps toward her, stumbling when another spasm hits. He leans on the stick until it passes, heat flooding his face when he catches Ellie staring at him with poorly concealed worry. He hates it. “I’m fine. What’d you find?”
“There’s just… science shit.” Disappointment already colors her tone, but she continues rifling through the debris. “Like, for a lab.” She holds up a clipboard with yellowed pages still attached. “Do you understand any of this?”
Joel moves closer, squinting at the handwritten notes. “Looks like my chemistry homework.” At her exasperated look, he shrugs. “I failed that class.”
“Of course you did,” she grumbles. “How are we supposed to decode this shit?”
It’s a good question, one he doesn’t have an answer for. Any indication of what the Fireflies research entails — and whether any of it could lead to a vaccine — would be invaluable to them both. After a short time, he says, “Hold on to it. Someone in Jackson might be able to decode it.”
Ellie looks between him and the paper, frowning. “Won’t they be suspicious about how we found this?”
“They knew we was lookin’ here for the Fireflies. I don’t think anyone’d be surprised we came across papers they’d left behind.” He holds her eye for a moment, then jerks his head toward the corridor. “Let’s go.”
They work their way through the ground floor, moving from ransacked room to ransacked room. Skeletal remains lay in a pile against what looks like a break room wall. Ellie crouches next to it, gingerly retrieving a Firefly pendant. “I guess they have been gone a while.”
“Months, at least,” he agrees. “C’mon, let’s keep goin’.”
They clear three more rooms before Joel spots the stairwell. He pauses at the base, inwardly groaning at the flights spiraling upward. His leg throbs just thinking about the climb.
He turns to Ellie with raised eyebrows. “Did you see a directory? Anything that says what floor the labs are on?”
“No.” She looks around, then takes off down the hall toward a bank of elevators. “One sec!”
“Keep your damn voice down,” he grumbles, shoving away the irrational fear of danger when they’ve already cleared the floor, he has a gun, and Ellie hasn’t left his sight.
She comes jogging back, a satisfied grin stretched across her features. “Laboratories, third floor.”
Three flights up, however many rooms to clear, then three flights down. With his leg the way it is, and these spasms hitting without warning…
“Okay,” he says finally. “But we take it slow. And if I say we’re done, we’re done.”
“Deal.” Ellie looks between him and the stairs, smile dimming. “Can you—”
“Just… go ahead of me,” he grumbles, pride warring with practicality. If he stumbles backward, he’ll take them both down. “But stay close.”
The climb is slow going. Joel has to stop on each landing, breathing hard while Ellie pretends to check the stairs for threats. By the time they reach the third floor, sweat beads on his forehead despite the cool air. He stumbles to the nearest stack of crates, bracing himself against them as he catches his breath.
“There are a bunch of labs,” Ellie reports when she returns from a brief exploration of the closest hallway. “I bet it’s one of those.”
When he catches his breath, they trek through the floor, collecting a few pieces of random detritus — rags, mostly, but they find some bullets and other useful items the raiders missed. Someone recently disturbed the dust on the counters; handprints and smudges are visible from yards away.
“There are no bodies,” Ellie says after they’ve listened to a voice recording about infected attacks taking out two guards. “That’s good, right?”
He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the infected he encountered in the dorm were Fireflies. “Could be. Depends on what we find.”
They continue the search, passing through a tarped section that leads to more labs. The labyrinth ends in an office that contains a smashed voice recorder and a skeleton propped in a chair. The counters are empty except for dark rectangles on the surfaces where equipment once sat. Papers and debris litter the floor.
“Fuck,” Ellie mutters, stepping into the room. “They took everything important.”
Joel limps between the workstations, noting what’s missing versus what remains. “Not everything. They left all this science mumbo-jumbo behind,” he says, holding up an x-ray of an infected’s head.
Ellie takes the x-ray from him, raising it to catch the light. “Weird. It’s eyes are, like… gone.”
A thought suddenly occurs to him: what if the infected in the dorm were test subjects, exposed to cordyceps in the name of science?
They spend another hour combing through the remaining labs, but it’s more of the same — empty equipment stands, scattered papers with indecipherable jargon, and the occasional dead Firefly slumped in a corner. They both collect the folders that appear to be intact, but Ellie grows quieter with each barren room, her initial excitement giving way to obvious disappointment.
“This is bullshit,” she mutters, kicking at a scattered pile of papers in what appears to be the final lab. “There’s nothing here. Like, not even clues about where they went.”
Joel watches her pace the room, arms crossed tight over her chest. The disappointment radiates off her in waves, and it cuts deeper than he expected. “This was always a possibility, kiddo,” he consoles. “We tried.”
“Did we though?” She whirls to face him, eyes blazing. “We spent an afternoon looking through empty rooms and dead people. This isn’t trying, this is just… wasting time.”
“Ellie—”
“What?” Her voice cracks with frustration. “They aren’t fucking here, and there’s nothing to tell us where they went or what they were doing or… or anything about the vaccine.”
He slumps against a lab bench, fighting another spasm that threatens to buckle his knee. “We don’t know that yet. All these papers—”
“—Are useless!” She swipes at a pile of documents, sending them careening to the floor. “They cleared out anything that matters.”
He watches her pace, each step more agitated than the last. And as much as he wants to get back to Jackson, he wants Ellie to want it, too.
“We could’ve missed something” he offers, though he doesn’t believe it himself. “The upper floors—”
“No.” Ellie stops, shoulders slumping as she bows her head. She avoids looking at him. “You can barely stand, and there’s probably infected around. We should…” A deep, tired sigh, then, “We should leave.”
Something in her tone doesn’t match her words — like she’s resigned rather than accepting.
“You sure?” he asks quietly.
She doesn’t answer immediately, just stares at the floor. When she turns to face him, a single tear tracks down her cheek. “What choice do we have? We came, we looked, and there’s nothing here.”
“We got those papers,” he offers, moving toward her. “Might be somethin’ in there.”
“Yeah.” He studies her, trying to read the set of her shoulders as she passes him on her way to the hall. “I guess.”
Wishing he had the words to fix a disappointment that can’t be talked away, he limps after her.
Ellie lingers at the top of the staircase, allowing him to take point. The descent is harder than the climb. Each step is more painful than the last, agony slicing through his thigh without mercy. Joel’s leg gives out twice, and by the time they reach the atrium, he’s breathing hard and gripping both the walking stick and Ellie’s shoulder. She doesn’t comment or complain, but listlessness radiates from her.
“You okay?” she asks, but there’s no emotion in her voice; she’s just going through the motions.
“I’m fine.” He isn’t, and they both know it, but that’s not the point. The point is the way Ellie’s already retreating into herself, shutting down in the face of what she perceives as failure. “Hey.”
She stops, her gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder, distant and unfocused.
“This don’t mean it’s over,” he tries. “Tommy might have more information. And we got all them papers to go through.”
“Sure,” she scoffs. “I bet there’s a fucking treasure map in there somewhere.”
He steers them toward the reception desk, sighing with relief when the weight is off his injured leg. The edge of the counter digs into his back, but it’s better than trying to stand unsupported. “Y’know what I’m thinkin’?”
“That you were right, this was a giant waste of time, and we should leave before dark?” Her words carry defensive barbs, like she expects him to rub her nose in her naivety.
“I’m thinkin’ we head back to Jackson and show their doctors what we found. All them papers, those x-rays. See if they can make sense of it.” He pauses, considering how to approach his next words. They’ve been circling his mind relentlessly for days, but this is delicate territory — he can’t alienate her, not now. “And I’m thinkin’… it’s time you stop chasin’ someone else’s idea of what your life should be.”
That gets her attention. She turns, frowning as their eyes meet. “What do you mean?”
Joel clears his throat, afraid to push her too hard. “We — you — have been through so much in the last few months. It’s… it’s okay to slow down. To… let everything sink in. Growin’ up, findin’ what makes you happy... That’s what you should be doin’. And maybe it ain’t—”
“Easy for you to say,” Ellie mutters, kicking at an overturned gurney. The metal clangs against the floor, echoing off the empty atrium. “You already know who you are.”
“Do I?” He dips his head, waiting until she meets his eye to continue, “Reckon I’ve been a lot of things. Brother, father…” His lips quirk up at the corners as he tries to lighten the mood. “Contractor.”
Ellie smirks. It’s not much, but it’s progress, and he’ll take it.
“No one finds themselves all at once, kiddo. You gotta… do more than exist. You gotta live.”
She leans against the desk beside him, close enough that their arms touch. Silence settles between them — not uncomfortable, but serious. Weighted.
“I just…” Ellie says finally, her voice small. “I thought there’d be something. Anything.”
He reaches for her, tangling their fingers together, running his thumb across her icy knuckles. Some things are easier said without eye contact. “Things don’t always work out the way we hope. And maybe it feels like y’don’t know what to do next, but… you’ll find it.”
It sounds trite, coming from him, but he knows she will. She’s stronger and braver than she knows. She’ll find her way.
“What if I’m not good at it?” Ellie’s chin wobbles and his chest hurts in a manner that has nothing to do with physical pain.
“Then you learn. Same as you learn anything else. One day at a time.”
She chews on her lip for a few seconds before nodding. “One day at a time.”
He’s always been aware of her youth, but these past few days have only reinforced his desire to protect her from every danger he can. He turns to face her, tipping her chin up with his free hand. Her eyes are still red and puffy, but there’s understanding there. That’s enough for now. “And, hey — whatever comes next, we’ll figure it out together.”
A tear escapes her lashes, trailing down her cheek until Joel wipes it away with his thumb. “So…” he murmurs, tapping the tip of Ellie’s nose with his knuckle. “Whaddya say?”
She stares at their intertwined fingers for a long moment, like she’s memorizing the sight.
“I say…” Ellie clears her throat and takes a deep breath before meeting his eyes. A soft, sad smile materializes. “I say, let’s go home.”