Chapter Text
Once they get to Jackson, Ellie tries to be excited about having her own bedroom. It’s a luxury she’d never experienced before. Joel doesn't say anything, but she sees how excited he is to make the room hers.
Joel had stripped down the hideous wallpaper and painted the walls a night-sky dark blue. He came home one day brimming with excitement at the discovery of what he called “glow stars.” They didn’t actually glow, but he explained that they used to. He’d put them on the kitchen table next to a beginners guide to constellations he’d found in the library. Joel asked her to pick which ones she wanted to put in her room and she saw that he had fucking marked the pages with the ones he thought she’d like. Ellie picked her favorites and Joel went full on contractor measuring out the correct distances between them with some bendy ruler.
Ellie had joked a few times about how ridiculous it was that the girl here before had enough clothes for two fucking closets. (“I mean, seriously? How many clothes did these people have? It’s such a waste of space.”) One day, Ellie came home from school to Joel putting the finishing touches on shelves inside one of them.
“Built-in bookcase. People used to go crazy over these. Now you can put something useful in here, like comic books.” Joel had scoured all of Jackson and found exactly one Savage Starlight (Volume 6: Ascension). Ellie was touched, but she had yet to open it. That one brought back memories she’d rather not dwell on.
In the daylight, Ellie loves her room. She loves that she can feel how much of himself Joel put into it. When the sun shines through the windows, Ellie feels surrounded by Joel. But at night, when she can’t see the stars that don’t glow and she can’t hear Joel breathing next to her, Ellie can’t sleep.
The only two nights she’d spent more than fifteen feet away from Joel in the past year had not been good nights.
Their first night in Jackson, after the fight. She’d tossed and turned, knowing he was abandoning her. She’d gotten up well before dawn, unable to sleep. She’d waited on the window seat until her worst fears were confirmed: Tommy had come, and Joel had fucking left her. Like everyone.
At Silver Lake, after she’d drawn the hunters away. She hadn’t slept there at all. She’d been trussed like a lamb for slaughter; she’d been pinned down and nearly violated; she’d hacked a man’s face until it was mush and she was coated in blood and brain matter. But she hadn’t slept.
So Ellie crawls into Joel’s bed every night. Joel’s door is always open and he sleeps entirely on one side of the bed. She'd gotten up once to get water in the middle of the night, and every night since there’s been a cup of water on the table next to her side of the bed, waiting to welcome her.
She’s glad Joel doesn’t make a big thing about it. He just murmurs “night, baby” and rolls onto his back so she can use him as a pillow if she wants to. She does want to.
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie is just starting to feel settled in Jackson when a cough shatters her world.
She’s in the canteen with a group of kids she might label “friends” if that were a label she knew how to apply. But it isn’t, so she calls them the other kids. Dina’s teasing her about the way Joel’s eyes track her across the room whenever she moves.
“He’s like a homing pigeon. Doesn’t it get annoying?”
Neither Ellie nor Joel had explained their relationship to anyone in Jackson other than Tommy and Maria. Most people assume he’s her father, and Ellie feels a little ember glow inside her every time Joel doesn't correct them. She can sense the curiosity from the other kids. Questions like this are probing to find out what the hell they are to one another. Which is honestly a fair fucking question, and she’s not entirely sure herself.
“What the fuck is a homing pigeon?” Ellie asks instead.
“No idea. Just something my mom says. It means he’s, like, always watching you,” Dina explains.
“Yeah, he does that.” She does that too. Every time her eyes scan the room (which—now that she's settled in Jackson—only happens once every three seconds), she automatically looks for Joel the same way she looks for the closest exits to make sure there’s nothing between her back and the wall (unless it’s Joel between her back and the wall).
Ellie takes a sip of water that goes down the wrong pipe and she starts coughing violently. Joel is out of his seat the same second and looks ready to plow directly through all the tables in between them. Dina pats Ellie’s back hard until she stops coughing. Ellie, eyes on Joel, still can’t speak but signals automatically: Safe—hold position.
“Jesus, he’d destroy the world for you,” Jesse says with a laugh. The others join in. A small part of Ellie’s mind is surprised, as it often is, that it doesn’t feel like kids laughing at FEDRA school. They’re laughing with her, not at her. But Ellie isn’t really paying attention.
Jesse’s joke hits Ellie like a gut punch from an angry drill instructor. She can’t breathe for a second, but then a weight she didn’t realize she was carrying lifts off of her chest. Oh shit. Fucking shit. Joel had destroyed the world for her. And she thinks she might have known this whole time.
“I have to go.” Ellie says, standing up abruptly. She leaves her tray on the table and darts out the closest exit, ignoring the others' questioning calls.
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
Ellie doesn’t come home by the time the lights come on.
Joel thought a curfew was kind of ridiculous in the apocalypse until the first time Ellie had stayed out late at one of her new friend’s houses. By the time she practically skipped in, eager to tell Joel about her new issue of Savage Starlight, Joel was three seconds away from calling a search party. Joel had pulled her into a bear hug and squeezed until he heard a muffled “need to breathe, Joel.” Ellie looked intensely guilty and hastily started in on apologies, prompting Joel to apologize for making her feel guilty when she hadn’t realized she’d done anything wrong. When they were all apologized out, they’d agreed she would be home by the time the outdoor lights came on unless she told him otherwise.
Tonight, Ellie had not told him otherwise. Once the lights come on, Joel gives it fifteen minutes before he starts scouring the town for her. After an hour, he decides to check home one more time before getting Tommy and starting a search.
When Joel walks in, he sees Ellie sitting at the kitchen table with a thousand-yard stare.
“Where the hell have you been, young lady?” Joel doesn’t wait to take off his boots and coat to start in on her. He’s forcing his voice to be calm, but can’t help that it comes out tight with worry. Ellie doesn’t so much as look up.
“Godamnit, Ellie. Look at me, please. If you’re going to be late, you need to tell me. You know that. Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Ellie doesn’t respond, and Joel registers that she’s running her index finger around the rim of a glass of whiskey.
“Are you drinking?”
“I have to ask you a question.” Ellie says quietly, now staring determinedly at the glass in front of her. “And I need you to tell me the truth.”
“I asked first, young lady.” He layers a note of sternness over his concern. “Where have you been, and what the hell are you doing drinking?” She pushes the mostly full glass towards the middle of the table.
“I think it’s called ‘liquid courage.’ But that stuff’s still gross.”
“What’s going on, Ellie?”
“The truth, Joel: what happened in Salt Lake City?” Ellie looks at him, finally, and he tries to keep a neutral expression but can feel his jaw tense.
“Jesus, Ellie. Do we have to rehash this again?”
“Joel, stop.” Ellie squeezes her eyes shut. “Seriously. I can’t handle it if you lie to me one more time. I can’t – I need you not to lie to me now. Please. No matter what it is. Just say it, Joel. What the fuck happened in Salt Lake City?”
Joel sighs. He takes his coat and boots off then lines them up next to Ellie’s. He pulls out the chair across from her and sits down heavily. He tries to start speaking a few times, but settles on swiping the glass from the middle of the table and downing it in one.
“Making a vaccine... would have killed you. So I stopped them.”
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
And there it is.
I stopped them. Joel doesn’t have to say anything else for Ellie to know exactly what he did, because Ellie knows what Joel does to the people who try to hurt her. Even back outside the Boston QZ—when she was still just cargo—he’d beat a man to death with his bare hands for pointing a gun at her.
Joel doesn’t let people hurt her. This truth is as fundamental as gravity. When they were cornered in Pittsburgh and she jumped off the bridge, she knew two things to be true: (1) She’d fall into the water, because gravity and (2) Joel would keep her alive, because Joel. You’ll keep me afloat.
The truth settles in like it fits, because of course it fucking does. Ellie realizes that the weight so recently lifted had started in the car when she’d asked Joel what happened. And gotten heavier when she’d asked him to swear it was true, and he fucking had.
Ellie was supposed to save the world. That was her only use. She was immune, and therefore valuable. Her life would have mattered if she’d made the vaccine.
“So... I was supposed to die in that hospital?”
“No, Ellie.” Joel leans forward and moves to take her hands in his, but she snatches them away. “You’re supposed to live. You’re supposed to live and grow up and be happy.”
Ellie hears none of this because her head is filled with static. The vaccine would have killed her. The vaccine would have saved the world.
“My life would’ve fucking mattered. But you took that from me.”
“You, as a person, Ellie, you matter. Ellie matters. Not your brain in a jar. You.”
Ellie hears this over the static, but shakes her head at the lie. Ellie doesn’t matter. Ellie’s never mattered. She pictures the big scale in the FEDRA “science lab” (a room with some folding tables covered in scavenged crap that could be vaguely categorized as scientific). Her brain in a jar is on one side, and the globe (which also lived in the “lab”) is on the other.
Her brain shouldn’t win. The world should win.
She had one purpose: she was the cure. She’d save humanity. People would return to the stars. Her purpose was her forward momentum and Joel’s protection was gravity. But now… fucking now what? The forces of her universe had taken up arms against each other while she was fucking passed out.
“You – you… How fucking dare you?!” She grabs the empty glass and throws it against the far wall, with a spectacular shower resulting. (What does the glass say when the useless bitch who shouldn’t be alive throws it against the wall? I’m shattered!) It’s satisfying, but not satisfying enough. There’s a jar of fresh flowers she’d picked yesterday on the table, so she throws that too. It shatters like what she thinks fireworks might look like.
Then dishes. Followed by books she was supposed to put away in her beautiful bookshelf. Some broken what’s-it Joel had laid out to fix. All of them fly as Ellie tears around the room tossing and smashing and flinging.
Joel watches in silence (after assuring himself she’s wearing thick socks), occasionally ducking when something gets too near. He lets out a sharp grunt when a boot finally nails him in the temple. Ellie looks at him with concern without meaning to.
“I’m fine, kiddo.” This is rewarded with a glare.
“You’re such an asshole!” Ellie looks around for something else to throw, but there isn’t anything breakable left. Instead she sits back at the table in a huff. She briefly considers knocking the table over, but settles for kicking it.
“You took my choice from me, Joel. My entire life, people have been telling me what to do and expecting me to blindly fall in line. This was the first time in my entire fucking life that I got a say in what happened to me. And you took it away.” She meant for it to come out in a fury of righteous indignation, but it ends up as more of a sob.
“But they didn’t give you a say, honey.” Joel sits down across from her. “They knocked you out and were going to take out your brain without so much as letting you know. You said it yourself: everyone tells you what to do and expects you to blindly fall in line. FEDRA wanted you to be a good soldier with no questions. And we agree they were deeply fucked up, right? The Fireflies wanted you to be a vaccine with no questions, and I promise they were so much more deeply fucked up, baby girl.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yeah, well. I made the call with the information I had. And we got out.”
She glares at him, and he’s looking at her steadily with this expression he gets that she can never place. It’s very Joel, but she doesn’t recognize it from anywhere else. She redoubles her glare.
“What gives you the fucking right?”
“You’re my kid.” Yesterday, hearing Joel say it flat out like that would have meant everything to her. She’d been the one who stopped him the first time, at the medical relief camp, but since they’d arrived in Jackson she’d craved reassurance. She usually wanted him to feed the little ember that glowed everytime someone called him her dad. Not so much right now.
“Oh, fuck off,” Ellie says. “I’m cargo, remember? I’m not your daughter, and you sure as hell ain’t my dad? Ringing any bells?”
“Which fight are we having, kid? The one where you’re pissed because I love you more than the entire world, or the one where I was a fucking asshole and lied to us both about not loving you?”
Ellie’s heart skips a beat, because they’re having the first fight, but when he puts it like that it's hard to maintain her rage.
“If you’re offering options," says Joel, "I'd rather have the second one. Then I could explain that I was scared of losing you, and was worried I’d do something like get fucking stabbed and not be able to protect you. But I was a damn fool. Because you protected me. We protect each other.”
Ellie really likes not being cargo. She feels the little ember flame up and burn bright, warming her completely from within.
Then she remembers the fate of mankind.
“It’s the first fight," she says. "The one where you destroyed my chance at saving everyone. I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that.”
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie decides to leave Jackson. She knows how to sneak out.
In their earliest days here, before Ellie was comfortable talking to others, Joel took her on endless walks along the fence, inside and out. Assessing the security calmed her. Together, they’d cataloged the weak spots. First, he pointed them out to her. He showed her what to look for, which weaknesses could be exploited. Later on, he let her take the lead. Sometimes he’d linger a bit but not say anything. Ellie knew that meant there was something she was supposed to find, so she’d stop then and really focus until she found it: a tree with a hanging branch a little too close to the fence, just strong enough to support a slightly malnourished fourteen year old, or a plank with a tiny warp which left just enough room for a crowbar.
Most of these they reported to Maria and offered to patch or fix. The hanging branch was the first to go, and Joel spent the entire time he was sawing it off none-too-subtly telling stories about some of Sarah’s friends who had climbed trees they were told not to and broke their arms or legs or ankles.
“It’s funny how when you want me not to do something lately, one of Sarah’s friends got horribly injured doing that exact same thing,” Ellie observed. Joel just grunted.
They did not, however, report all the weak spots. The three most well-concealed—evenly spaced around the wall—Joel insisted they leave as escape routes. None of them could be breached from the outside, but Joel showed her exactly how to manipulate them if she needed an escape. Joel always has a Plan B.
Ellie does not have a Plan B. Ever since she’d met the Fireflies in Boston, she’d had a singular goal in mind. There were steps along the way, but there was no question of the end goal: get to the Firefly hospital. Save the world. She’d fought through a thousand obstacles, faced horrors and nightmares, all to achieve that glorious purpose. She would save the world. She would make all this stop. Riley, Tess, Sam.
But Joel robbed her of that. Joel took away the only thing she can remember ever wanting. Well… the only thing she ever wanted that was possible, anyway. Of course when she was younger, she wanted her family to come out of nowhere and rescue her. She’d wanted Riley to confess her love for her and run away together. Stupid kid stuff.
Using her immunity to make a cure? That was an achievable goal. All Joel had to do was fucking let them.
Joel had taught her the importance of redundancy. He insists that “never keep your stash all in one place” isn’t just a rule for smuggling. On the road, the food was always evenly distributed between them (not by weight—Joel always carried most of the cans—but roughly by calorie so they each had enough if they were separated). They have multiple exit points in the wall.
And, of course, multiple go-bags. They each have one at home and one at their rendezvous point a few miles away. Their third bags are stashed in an abandoned rabbit warren covered by underbrush by the wall. They had dug it out enough to fit both packs, and covered it as well as Joel always covers their tracks.
It’s to this bolthole Ellie finds herself heading. She’s about halfway there when she hears giggling. Ellie sort of recognizes it, and allows herself to drift in that direction, keeping to the shadows. Soon she sees a few kids from school lounging on blankets on the ground, including Dina, Jesse, and Cat. Ellie steps out of the shadows and lets herself be seen.
“Ellie!” Dina calls excitedly. She’s immediately hushed. “Oops. Ellie!” Dina repeats in a dramatic whisper. “We looked for you earlier but couldn’t find you.”
Ellie reaches them and sits between Cat and Dina. There’s a bottle of something labeled Peach Schnapps being passed around, and the other kids are taking swigs of it.
“Want some?” Cat passes it to her.
Why the fuck not? It reminds her of licking the inside of a peach can to get the last remnants of flavor: sickly sweet, but also metallic.
“Better than Joel’s shitty whiskey,” Ellie says, passing the bottle on. The others laugh.
“You okay?” Dina asks her quietly. “You looked spooked when you ran off earlier.”
Ellie is very much not okay, but she’s not sure how to say that without inviting follow-up questions. No one in Jackson other than Tommy and Maria know the truth about her immunity, and they have to keep it that way. Safety first.
“I can’t – It’s not something I can talk about.” Ellie wishes she could talk about it. She desperately wants to share this burden with someone. Even surrounded by people (friends?), she feels incredibly alone. But the truth is a weapon, not to be given out to near-strangers. Mad as she is at Joel, she thrums with the need to follow his advice to never tell.
“Not something you can talk about? Color us intrigued,” a girl from across the circle purrs.
“Are we telling secrets?” Jesse perks up. “What can’t you talk about?”
“Shut up, Jesse.” Dina throws a pinecone at him, and Jesse dodges it. “Ignore him,” she says to Ellie.
“I was planning to,” Ellie forces herself to laugh. She doesn’t need to drag everyone into her darkness.
“How’d you manage to get past your guard dog?” Jesse asks. Ellie winces.
“For fuck’s sake, Jesse, leave her alone.” Dina snaps at Jesse. “Come on, Ellie, let’s take a walk and leave these losers to it.”
Ellie is happy to get away. She and Dina walk in silence for a bit, staying to the shadows. Kids technically weren’t supposed to be out this late, but it was mostly left to parents to enforce.
“I’m not going to pry,” Dina says quietly after a moment. “But tell me one thing: he didn’t hurt you, did he?” This shocks a laugh out of Ellie. Ellie knows the other kids (and many adults) are a little scared of Joel, even though the only Joel they’d ever known is a pretty affable guy, in Ellie’s opinion. Rumors had spread about some of his more violent deeds, and some people were still wary even as more and more started to come by trading goods and favors for Joel’s help fixing things.
“No. God, no. Never. Joel doesn’t let me get hurt.” The words come out harsh and bitter, like Ellie is accusing him of something awful. (Which she fucking is.)
“What a complete asshole,” Dina says a little sarcastically. Ellie feels a burst of annoyance at that.
“What gives him the fucking right? He just makes these huge fucking decisions and doesn’t even ask and I’m fucking what – just supposed to be okay with it? Even though it’s not what I fucking wanted?” Dina chuckles despite Ellie’s seriousness.
“He’s your dad or… whatever. That’s what parents do. They’re overprotective and they make us eat vegetables and shit.”
And gunning down people who were trying to save the world in cold blood? Was that a standard parenting thing?
“He’s not my dad.” Ellie kicks up a spray of dirt.
“You know what I mean.” Ellie does. You’re my kid.
“I have to go,” Ellie says again. She melts into the shadows before Dina can respond.
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
Joel’s been sitting in the living room, staring at the door for an unknown time when Ellie walks in. He had desperately wanted to go after her, but used every thread of his limited patience to give her space. She has her go-bag over one shoulder—the one they’d stashed by the wall at a reasonable distance from the best egress point. He ignores his instinct to tell her to use both straps.
“Ellie, no.” He jumps up. For the sheer fun of torturing himself, Joel had spent the time Ellie was gone picturing a series of horrible things that could befall her. Her leaving Jackson was at the top of the list. “Please, Ellie. It’s not safe to leave Jackson.” He can hear the pleading in his voice, so he decides to own it. “I’m begging you to stay.” He’s holding out his hands in a placating gesture, like she might bolt at any second. Ellie just glares.
“If – if you can’t stay with me, that’s okay.“ His voice breaks on the last word. It was far from okay, but the only thing that was less okay than Ellie leaving him was Ellie in danger. “But I’ll go. I’ll move to the other side of town, or leave – I – whatever you need. You can stay with Tommy – he’ll watch out for you. Please, Ellie.” It’s only when Joel wipes his eyes that he realizes he’s crying.
“Where the fuck would I go, Joel?” First his voice, now his heart. It’s not even the words, it’s the way she says them. She’s angry, sure, but he expects that. Betrayed too. It’s the sheer hopelessness in her voice that breaks him. “I assume you were thorough, as always. You made sure I didn’t have any other options.”
Oof. That was a kick to the gut. But she’s right. He had made damn sure that not a single person was alive to track Ellie down.
“Ellie…” Joel has no idea what he’s going to say, but Ellie doesn’t give him a chance anyway.
“Fuck off. I’m going to bed.” She drops the go-bag to the floor, kicks it a little, and storms up the stairs.
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie is determined to sleep in her own bed.
She’d come back because as soon as she’d slipped her go-bag over one shoulder, the Joel in her head said: “Damnit, Ellie, use both straps. You gotta distribute the weight evenly, kid.”
She knows how to hunt and trap now; she can hold her own against Infected. But Joel knows about muscle strains and trench foot and other important shit. He made sure her pack was balanced in ways she didn’t get, but felt better. He knew when they needed to do stretches (which he fucking hated) to make the next day easier.
The only time she’d been away from Joel since she met him, she’d ended up at Silver Lake. She knew the horrors lying on the other side of the wall, and she didn’t want to face them alone. So, weak and useless, Ellie crawled back.
But she has to be able to do something on her own, even if it’s just sleeping. So she tosses and turns alone. She tries the deep breathing exercises Joel taught her after Silver Lake, which usually help but do fuck all at the moment. She hears a creak in the hall that she knows means Joel is outside her door. She usually leaves it open a bit, but had slammed it dramatically tonight.
“Ellie? Is everything okay?” Joel’s voice is painfully sweet and gentle—the same one he uses to pull her out of nightmares and panic attacks.
“Fuck off,” Ellie mutters without bite.
“Can I come in?”
Ellie ignores this, because she wants nothing more than for him to come in and scoop her up, but she can’t bring herself to admit that.
“I’m coming in, honey.” Joel waits a moment before opening the door.
“I can see that,” she says, because she wants to say something mean and that’s the best she can do. Joel sits on her bed and runs his hand through her hair. She absolutely hates that she leans into the gesture.
“Can’t sleep?” Ellie buries her head under her pillow to deprive herself of his touch. “Want to sleep in my room?”
“I’m mad at you,” Ellie whimpers from under the pillow. She hates being this weak, but she really fucking does want to sleep in his room.
“That’s okay, baby.” Deprived of her head, Joel starts rubbing her back in the way she absolutely loves. Bastard. “You can be mad at me for as long as you need to. I promise I won’t think you coming into my room means you forgive me.”
Ellie thinks about this. She’s so mad at Joel that she doesn’t know what to do with herself (or him), but she’s exhausted and his knuckles rubbing up and down her spine feels so relaxing. She lifts her head out from under the pillow and glares at him.
“I don’t forgive you. I hate you.”
“Okay, baby girl.” He’s looking at her with such tenderness that she questions the efficacy of her usually piercing glare. “Want me to carry you?”
Fucking bastard.
“Yes,” Ellie grinds out through gritted teeth. Joel scoops her up, and Ellie buries her face in the crook of his neck as he carries her to his bed.
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
And so begins the cold war.
During the day, Ellie makes it clear in every word and gesture that she’s furious with him. Not that there are many words. Ellie will answer direct questions about half the time, but not much else. The only words she speaks unprompted are to remind him—not infrequently—that she hates him and doesn’t forgive him.
But he takes everything she can throw at him. At night, he gets to hold her and rub her back and whisper that he loves her once he’s sure she’s asleep.
Joel comes home to a note on the kitchen table, one of Ellie’s new cold war communication methods. The last one had been next to her broken walkman. I won’t forgive you even if you fix this. He’d fixed it just the same. He knows it’s deeply pathetic, but he keeps every note.
This note is next to a math test with a fat red F on it. My teacher says you have to sign this because I failed. He picks up the test, and pockets the note. Joel knows fuck all about math, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that leaving most of the answers blank is problematic. Joel sighs. A cowardly part of him wants to sign the test and leave it be. Ellie’s anger is like a knife in his side, and he doesn’t want to upset her more when just the sight of him seems to do the trick nicely.
Ignoring that part, Joel takes the test upstairs and knocks on Ellie’s door. Predictably, she doesn’t answer.
“Can I come in?” He waits a beat. “I’m coming in, honey.” Another beat. This is one of his new cold war communication methods.
When Ellie doesn’t object, Joel enters her room. Ellie is sitting on her window seat, pretending to read an upside-down comic. Joel sits on the side of Ellie’s bed, facing her.
“Can we talk about this?” Joel holds out her test. Ellie shrugs.
“Are you having trouble understanding the material?” Joel offers. Ellie shakes her head. Joel knows she’s whip smart, but who the fuck knows what FEDRA math is like?
“You didn’t answer most of these,” Joel observes neutrally. Ellie nods.
“Can you tell me why?” Joel isn’t holding out much hope she’ll respond, so he’s surprised when she does.
“David was a math teacher.”
Surprised, and then furious. Not at Ellie—and he can’t stand the idea of her thinking he is, so he keeps his expression carefully blank. Ellie hadn’t spelled it out for him, after Silver Lake. But when he’d cleaned her up—her almost catatonic in his arms—he’d seen the state of her jeans. The button was undone and the zipper was out of alignment, like someone had violently torn at the fastening. He clung to the fact that they were still on and the zipper wasn’t torn completely. It was a weak lifeline, but he hadn’t wanted to push.
“Did he – ” Joel begins.
“No,” Ellie cuts him off, sitting up. She makes eye contact for the first time. “Mr. Spencer never touched me. He doesn’t even look at me weird. He’s normal. Don’t hurt him.”
“I’m not going to hurt him, kiddo.” Joel is using every effort to keep his voice calm because she’s starting to panic. Does she think he’ll kill anyone who looks at her wrong?
Yeah, fair, he supposes he would.
“Okay,” Ellie rests her back against the wall again, looking away.
Joel lets the silence play out, hoping she’ll open up. It takes a long time for him to be rewarded.
“Sometimes in math, it just – it feels like he’s there.” There is a visceral fear in that he, and Joel knows she doesn’t mean Brian Spencer. Joel feels the urge to raze the earth to the ground just to destroy him. Then Joel remembers that he cleaned brain matter out of Ellie’s hair; he is taken care of.
“It’s so stupid. It’s no different than any other class. Mr. Spencer doesn’t even do anything, but then suddenly he’ll just turn into Da– into him.”
“That’s not stupid at all, baby girl. I reckon that’s a pretty normal reaction. Do you think you’d be more comfortable with a female math teacher?”
“What?” Ellie looks at him in surprise, tilting her head slightly.
It breaks Joel’s heart a little that she’s still shocked by the notion that someone would take care of her.
“We’ll get you a female math teacher, if you think that’ll help. Or tutoring? Would you rather have a tutor?”
“You can’t just – what? You can’t just change teachers, Joel.” Her voice is dripping with so much teenage disdain that there isn’t room for anger. It’s a nice break. “He’s the fucking math teacher for my age group.”
“We can just change teachers, kiddo,” says Joel. He’s thrilled to be able to actually do something to help her. He’s not sorry for what he did in Salt Lake City, but he fucking misses her. “I’ll go in and talk to Mrs. Adams tomorrow.” Joel had recently helped the school principal, Grace Adams, with a plumbing emergency. She seemed nice enough.
“If there is a class at your level with a female teacher, do you think that would be okay? Or should I ask for a tutor?”
“What the fuck is a tutor?”
“It’s someone who works with you one-on-one. You wouldn’t have to be with other kids.” Ellie doesn’t speak for a bit, and Joel lets her think.
“I guess I’d rather have a class if there is one. I don’t mind the other kids.”
“Okay, kiddo. I’ll see what I can do.” Ellie looks at him without anger, and doesn’t tell him she hates him. Joel decides to push his luck.
“What do you want for dinner?”
Ellie looks away.
“I don’t care. And I don’t – ”
“Forgive me, I know, kiddo.” He takes it as a victory that she lets him finish the sentence. He decides to make some of the Chef Boyardee he’d been saving for something special.
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Joel walks to school with Ellie the next day, much to her chagrin. He makes one attempt to tuck her against his side, the way they used to walk around Jackson, but says nothing when she rebuffs him. She kind of wishes he would. But also how fucking dare he? It’s one of those. She isn’t sure which.
“Have a good day, hon,” Joel says when they get to the school. He tries to kiss her forehead, but she violently pushes him off. He doesn’t try again. Asshole.
Ellie storms into her class ten minutes early and throws her bag on the ground. When she carried her entire life on her back, the bag made a much more satisfying thud. She decides that’s Joel’s fault too.
“What are you guys?” Jesse had slipped into the classroom after her and was leaning against the door. “I can’t figure it out. I’m usually pretty good at this.”
“That’s a skill?” Ellie asks sarcastically.
“Not my shining glory, but sure. It comes in useful.”
“He’s a smuggler,” Ellie decides to go with the truth. “He was hired to smuggle me.”
“Fine,” Jesse says, coming to sit at the desk next to her. “Don’t tell me. A bunch of us are going to hang out after school. You should come.”
It’s a half day, and Ellie had planned to eavesdrop on Joel and Tommy at the house they’re fixing up. Years at FEDRA had made her an excellent sneaker, and she learned all sorts of good stuff when they didn’t think she was around. (She still hasn’t figured out what a “cold war” is, though.) She’s about to shrug Jesse off when Cat walks in.
“You should totally come, Ellie.” Cat’s smile is welcoming and Ellie suddenly finds the invitation much more appealing. Ellie feels her cheeks warm and takes out her notebook for something to do.
“Sure,” Ellie tries for a casual tone. She opens to a half-finished sketch and absentmindedly continues it.
“Is that a dead deer?” Jesse is looking over her shoulder. That boy is constitutionally incapable of shutting up. Ellie starts to tell him so and then really looks at her sketch for the first time.
He’s not wrong.
It’s the deer she shot in Colorado, before Silver Lake. (When did her life become measured in before and after Silver Lake? After Silver Lake, she supposes.) The deer is splayed out on the snow, exactly the way it was when she’d approached it. She smudges her finger over the drops of blood that she’d used to track the deer to where he –
“Why wait?” Ellie stands up, shoving her notebook in her bag and swinging it on her back (both straps, she internally rolls her eyes at Joel). “Let’s go now.”
“Because it’s school now, and there are teachers and people around,” Jesse says dismissively. “We’re off this afternoon, and we can do whatever. Sammy might’ve swiped some whiskey from his dad. He said he was going to try.” Ellie fucking hates whiskey.
“Gross. I’m going now.” Ellie opens the window and looks out. It’s a ground floor classroom facing the back of the school. There’s a field and a mostly scavenged playground for the younger kids, but no one is out there now. “Coming?”
“Nope,” says Jesse, at the same time as Cat says: “Let’s do it!”
Ellie climbs out the window and ducks against the wall. Cat follows soon after.
“What are we doing?” Cat sounds game for an adventure.
“I don’t know,” Ellie says honestly. “I just… need to not be here right now.”
“Okay.” Cat nods as though that settles it. “Come with me.”
Cat gets up and offers her a hand. Ellie takes it and lets Cat guide her past the playground and north along the wall. Cat doesn’t let her hand go, and Ellie feels a warm glow even as she’s sure her palm is sweating.
They sneak along the wall until they reach a small copse of trees that Ellie remembers from her inspections with Joel. One branch hangs over the wall and Joel had clocked it as a security risk. The only reason he let it slide was because the lowermost branch is super high up and he didn’t think it was reachable.
The teenagers of Jackson are a step ahead of him. Cat pulls at what looks like a fallen branch but the movement somehow results in a rope ladder appearing before her.
“The fuck?”
Cat winks. “Come see.” Cat climbs up the ladder with ease, and Ellie follows once Cat is sitting on the lowest (still pretty fucking high) branch.
“So fucking cool,” Ellie breathes out, taking in the view over the wall.
“Help me pull up the ladder,” Cat gestures to what seems to be a reel of fishing line. Ellie hands it to her and sees the line is woven through the bark, completely invisible. They reel the ladder up, and Cat shows her how to roll it so it’s ready to deploy next time.
“Awesome, right?” Cat asks proudly.
“Very awesome,” Ellie agrees. She likes being in on secrets, but Joel is pretty much the only one she has to have secrets with, or from. Which meant it was kind of the same thing. Or the opposite? She doesn’t fucking know anything with Joel these days. Her head hurts.
“Where now?”
“Now, we go over.” Cat’s beaming and Ellie can’t help but get caught up in her good mood, despite Ellie’s unquiet mind.
Cat starts shuffling along down the branch until she’s nearly at the end. She reaches out and triggers another hidden rope ladder, and they climb down. Cat leaves the ladder down, but hooks it to a peg on the outside of the wall. It’s less concealed than the one on the inside—it must have always been up when she and Joel passed this way.
“Come on,” Cat pulls Ellie away, sort of in the direction of her rendezvous point with Joel.
“Where’re we heading?”
“You’ll see.” There isn’t a clear path, but Ellie can see the signs of a trail now that she’s looking for them. “Okay, close your eyes for a second,” Cat says. Ellie agrees because Cat’s smile is infectious. Cat pulls Ellie along for a bit and then says “Ta da!”
Ellie opens her eyes and lets out a laugh of surprise. It’s a fucking apple tree.
“How?”
“It was here Before. Jackson tried to plant an orchard out here at the beginning, hoping it was the soil. Turns out, apocalyptic Wyoming isn’t an ideal area for fruit trees. This guy just endures and survives.” Ellie shoots her a surprised look and Cat winks.
“Can we pick them?” Ellie’s never picked apples. She’s eaten them, of course—endless mealy apples in FEDRA school, and scavenged apples of vastly varying quality on the road—but never ones that looked like they were out of a fucking picture book. Cat smiles at her.
“Yup. Not, like, a bushel. A group is coming out to harvest them tomorrow. But they won’t notice a few,” Cat says impishly. Ellie approaches the tree trunk, and eyes the tree.
“Gimme a boost?” Cat isn’t nearly as good at boosting as Joel, but she gets the job done. Ellie pulls herself up on the lowest branch.
“You coming?” Ellie straddles the branch for leverage, and reaches down an arm to help Cat up.
“Come on,” says Cat, once she's scampering past Ellie’s perch. Ellie pokes her head up, and finds a Y-shaped branch perfect for two people resting against the trunk.
“Well, look at that.” Ellie settles in next to Cat. She plucks an apple and takes a huge bite, groaning. “Fuck, that’s good.” Ellie instinctively holds out the apple for… well, for Joel to grab it and take a bite and pass it back. Cat looks confused, and Ellie pulls it back. She takes a bite to cover the awkward moment but ends up choking a little. Great. Cat just chuckles.
“You’re adorable,” Cat laughs. Ellie stiffens at that, because she’s a fucking mess and apparently that's how she reacts to a compliment from a pretty girl. Ellie is trying desperately to think of a response that’s clever and cool (or even just words—she’s not picky) when she hears a low growl.
“Cat,” Ellie whispers sharply, putting a finger over her mouth. Cat looks confused so she must not recognize the sound, but stays mercifully silent. Ellie pulls herself away from the trunk and perches on the branch for a better view. A Runner is approaching from the opposite direction of Jackson. Ellie reaches for her gun, but finds it missing. Fuck. She hadn’t planned on going outside, so she only has her switchblade.
“Is that—” Cat starts. Ellie makes a fucking shut up motion, but the Runner has already pinpointed their location.
“You said they’re going to harvest tomorrow—do they usually clear it before that?” Ellie’s voice is barely audible (even though the damage is done at this point).
“Yeah, my mom said they were out early this morning.”
The Runner starts batting at the trunk, unable to climb. Ellie debates between taking it out quickly and running for the fence or waiting to see if there are more. In her experience Outside, Runners tend to move in packs. Ellie can take down one with her knife, easy. But if there are more, they’re better off waiting in the tree. She can’t pick off a horde from up here without a gun, but they can wait it out until fucking Joel comes to rescue them. She briefly debates which fate is preferable: Joel’s disappointed look or being torn apart by Infected. It’s a toss-up.
“If patrol cleared the area this morning, we’re probably looking at just one and not a horde,” Ellie says quietly. Cat’s panic is calming her. She’s the Joel now. “I’m going to jump down and take this one out. As soon as I say ‘run,’ I need you to jump down after me and go straight for the ladder.”
“I’m not leaving—”
“Do as I say,” Joel’s words come out of Ellie’s mouth. “We can’t climb the ladder at the same time, anyway. You run ahead while I’m handling this one, then by the time I get there you’ll already be at the top and I can climb up.” Cat is hesitant but agrees.
“Here goes nothing,” Ellie murmurs. Ellie positions herself so she drops directly on the Runner, and is ready with her knife before it registers her. “RUN!” Ellie sees Cat drop and head for the fence as Ellie stabs the Runner through the eye and follows quickly.
By the time they’re back on the ground in Jackson and the ladder is safely stowed, Ellie and Cat are ready to congratulate themselves on their close escape. Their excitement is abruptly caught off by a call of “I see them!”
“Fuck,” Ellie mutters.
Tommy is the first person Ellie registers, and she’s trying to come up with an excuse—any excuse—when she feels someone grab her from behind. Fresh off her recent encounter, Ellie does what she does best: she gives a spectacular backwards kick to what she hopes is the groin area of whoever grabbed her, frees herself, and draws her knife. She hears shouting from all around and her focus narrows.
Shouting means danger; danger means fighting; fighting means surviving at all costs.
Ellie stabs and swipes with her knife—fighting anything and everything in a haze—until she can’t sense any more threats.
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
Ellie has a few different brands of panic attacks. This is the worst: She’s back at Silver Lake. She’s wielding her knife like a goddamn Valkyrie. It’s equal parts terrifying and impressive. People are backing away in shock and alarm, and Joel hurries them along.
“Everyone keep back. Don’t go near her.” They don’t need much convincing. Joel sees Tommy herd the others aside.
The panic attacks have been a regular visitor since Colorado. At first, they were all like this one: Ellie is fighting like hell to stay alive, surrounded by enemies intent on unleashing horrors upon her. She wields an invisible cleaver (currently, a real fucking knife, but often an empty fist) and fights for her life until he can bring her back.
The further they’d gotten from the resort, the more older fears started to appear in her attacks. Joel was introduced to the horrors of her past by watching her relive them in a panicked haze. The Hole. FEDRA beatings. Loved ones dying in front of her. Sometimes, it’s safe to approach her when she’s still in the haze. His touch helps her calm down faster.
It is decidedly not safe to approach during a Silver Lake panic attack when she’s armed. He satisfies himself that no one is in swinging distance and slowly approaches, staying out of reach. He starts to talk to her in his softest, sweetest voice.
“Ellie, it’s me, baby girl. It’s Joel. You’re with me. We’re together. You’re safe. I’m safe. Joel’s here. We’re safe. We’re together. It’s me, baby girl. It’s Joel. We’re together. We’re safe.”
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
A voice that feels like honey starts creeping through the haze. Words trickle in: Joel. Together. Safe. The honey voice is like a low hum in the background. She can’t make out all the words, but it doesn’t really matter. She hears enough.
“Safe,” Ellie repeats the honey words. “Baby girl.”
After what could be forever, or no time at all, Joel comes into focus. She blinks at him, and sees his eyes register her alertness.
“Hey there, baby girl. How’re we feeling?” She feels exposed, honestly, but she doesn’t know why. Joel isn’t touching her, but he’s hovering and she easily leans into his embrace. Joel takes this as permission to wrap his arms tightly around her.
“Where are we?” Ellie asks into his chest. Things that aren’t Joel haven’t come into focus yet. That’s how it usually goes when this happens. Once she can register Joel, it takes a few minutes for the rest of the world to resolve around them.
“We’ll be home in a tick,” Joel evades. This causes Ellie to tense. Were there people around? “Are you good for me to move you? One ticket home, on the Joel express.”
He’s being cagey, which probably isn’t good. She imagines the entire town circled around her, mocking her like the circus freak she is. (She doesn’t know what a circus freak is, but she’d overheard some kids calling her that.)
“All aboard,” Ellie murmurs, feeling groggy in the way she often does after a panic attack. Joel scoops her up and she rests her head on his shoulder as she drifts off.
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie wakes on the couch. Her head is on Joel’s lap, and she feels him brushing his fingers through her hair. It takes Ellie a moment to remember what happened. She’d had a panic attack after… oh, fuck. After she and Cat had snuck out, fought an Infected, and snuck back in only to find themselves very caught. But she had no idea if they’d found the ladder or if Cat had confessed they’d gone Outside. Ellie lets out a groan.
“Ellie? You okay?” Joel is immediately alert and starts checking her over.
“Yeah,” Ellie says, burying her head more into Joel. She really doesn’t want to see his disappointed face, or have the conversation they’re definitely about to have.
“Are you hungry?”
Ellie shakes her head.
“Need anything to drink?”
Another shake.
Joel leans down to kiss her forehead, and then gently guides her to a sitting position next to him. “Then I reckon we should have a talk.”
Ellie’s half tempted to say she’s not talking to him. But she really doesn’t like the nervous, unsettled feeling churning in her gut. So she nods, still not looking at him.
“What happened today, kiddo?”
“Cat and I left school early,” Ellie explains quietly to the loose thread she’s playing with on her (lately Joel’s) shirt.
“Believe it or not, I figured that part out already,” Joel says lightly. “Can you tell me why you left?”
Ellie genuinely couldn’t. She’d been mad at Joel, both because he’d tried to hug her and because he hadn’t tried hard enough. She’d been mad at Jesse, for the unforgivable sin of asking whether a deer was a deer when she didn’t want to think about that deer. She’s mad at herself, because she can’t think straight.
“I was…” Ellie trails off and Joel doesn’t push her. “I don’t even know. I was so mad, and I couldn’t really think, and there was this deer, then I was outside the window and Cat was with me.” The words rush out of her. It’s not exactly a crack defense, but she doesn’t have much to work with.
“A deer?” Joel sounds confused.
“Not a real one.”
“Ah. Okay.” Joel apparently decides to leave that. “Where did you go when you left school?”
Ellie hates how disappointed he sounds, and she dreads looking up into his stupid disappointed face. It’s so much worse than his mad face. Annoyed Joel is fun. Mad Joel can be pretty funny, unless he’s Ellie-did-something-dangerous mad. But Disappointed Joel? He’s the worst, because Joel’s disappointment is more concern than anything else. It’s so parental that it’s painful and confusing.
She wants to tell him everything and let him fix things like he always does. But the other kids will be mad if she tells him about their escape route. She’s not a fucking snitch. And Joel’s a liar, anyway. Why should he get the truth?
“We just wandered; stayed out of sight.” Ellie wraps the loose thread around her finger so tightly it starts to lose circulation.
Joel doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Ellie eventually peeks up at him. He’s looking at her steadily. It’s Disappointed Joel in all his glory, but there’s still something heavier too.
“Ellie.” It’s not a question or a rebuke. Just her name, soft and calm. She tries to maintain eye contact but can’t manage it.
“Yeah?” she asks his shoes.
“Where did you go?”
Ellie flushes.
“Do we have to rehash this again?” Ellie snaps mockingly, throwing his words from their earlier fight in the general direction of his shoes.
“Ellie.” His voice is still soft and calm, but now has the slightest edge of warning. She crosses her arms and looks pointedly in the opposite direction.
“I appreciate the irony here, kiddo. If you want to talk about what happened at the hospital, and the fact that I lied to you, we can have that conversation. Whenever you’re ready. But right now we’re having the conversation about how you skipped school and took off. A lot of people were worried and looking for you, kid.”
Ellie shuffles a little guiltily at that.
“You can lash out at me all you want, baby girl. I’ll take it. We can keep doing the thing where you hate me and don’t forgive me until the end of time. But it is still my job—my privilege—to protect you and keep you safe. That means I need to know where you are. So you lying to me about where you went ain't something we can do.”
“I am safe,” Ellie says sullenly. “I’m in the living room, on the couch.” Joel tries to muffle his laugh, but doesn’t entirely succeed. It’s followed by a heavy sigh.
“Ellie.” This time it’s pleading, almost apologetic. He puts his hand to his forehead and starts rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger. He’s been doing that a lot since the cold war started.
“Why’re you so sure I’m lying?” Ellie asks curiously.
“Aren’t you?” She is, but it would be helpful to know his methods.
“I – ” She wants to tell him. “I want to tell you.” Well, fuck. “But I’m not gonna snitch.”
“Alright,” says Joel. “What can you tell me without breaking their trust?”
Ellie thinks about this. If she admits they went over the wall, he’ll want to know how. He’ll want to stop it, because Joel stops anything that could harm her. (That’s the whole fucking thing between them, isn’t it?).
But he’s also very pro-Ellie-socializing, and he’s not against bending the rules. Her secret guns are testament to the fact that he lets her stretch the Jackson rules as long as she stays within the Joel rules. And he knows she can handle herself. Maybe he’d allow this to help her fit in? And he seems to know she went Outside already.
“We went Outside.” Ellie looks at him surreptitiously, and he looks neither mad nor surprised. He’s just got that Joel look that she can never quite understand. “We – there’s an apple tree? Sort of on the way to our rendezvous point. We climbed it.” Joel hums in acknowledgement, and Ellie doesn’t continue.
“Is that all?” Joel has this way of asking questions when he already knows the answer. His voice still goes up at the end, but there’s a certainty in his words that reminds Ellie of a brick wall. Ellie really wants to say yes. She wants the answer to be yes. She doesn’t want Joel worried that she was fighting Infected. But she can’t fucking stand the idea of more lies between them.
“There was a Runner.” Joel tenses, but only barely.
“Yeah?” It’s the honey voice again, so she keeps going.
“We were in the apple tree and I heard it. Cat said patrol had probably cleared the area that day because they were harvesting tomorrow, so I thought we had a good chance of it being alone. I jumped on it and told Cat to run. I took it out and followed her. We had just gotten back when – I don’t really remember after that.” Joel nods, knowing through his Joel powers that she’s revealed everything but the way out.
“Thank you for telling me, sweetheart.” It sounds a little like forgiveness.
“Are you going to tell Maria?”
“That y’all figured out a way up that tree?”
Ellie squeaks but doesn’t deny it.
“I don’t know, kiddo. Probably not, unless someone is missing.” Ellie would probably tell too if someone were missing.
“Are you mad at me?” Ellie can’t help the question, as pathetic as it is. Why does she even care? She is mad at him. She doesn’t care. But her traitorous heart is pounding in anticipation anyway.
“Nope,” Joel says easily. He opens one of his arms invitingly.
“Really?” Ellie can’t help herself.
“Come here,” he gestures in with his open arm. Ellie decides the prospect of comfort outweighs the importance of reminding Joel she still hates him, so she crawls into his embrace. He brushes her hair back and kisses her forehead.
“I’m not happy with your behavior,” Joel says gently. Ellie shrinks in on herself and Joel rubs her back. “But I’m not mad at you. You’re a teenager, kiddo. You’re going to act like a teenager. Sometimes that means you’re going to break the rules. So sometimes I’m going to tell you I’m not happy with your behavior. It doesn’t mean I’m not happy with you.” Ellie relaxes a little.
“But I'm in trouble?” Ellie’s not sure if she succeeds in keeping the nervousness out of her voice. She is, obviously. But she and Joel have never actually done the punishment thing. She doesn’t even think they have a Hole in Jackson.
“I think some consequences are in order,” Joel’s tone is light but immovable; he might be saying he thinks they should clean out a cut before bandaging it. Ellie freezes up, which does not go unnoticed by Joel. “What do you think would be fair?”
“What?” Ellie pulls away and looks at him in shock. “Why are you asking me?”
“Thought you might have an opinion on it,” Joel says mildly.
“Yeah, but it’s – I mean – what?” Ellie is genuinely flummoxed. Adults don’t ask kids how they should be punished. But then, Joel isn’t like any other adults she’d known. He waits patiently for her response.
“I don’t know,” she says honestly. She flops back down against him. She doesn’t have a lot of experience with non-FEDRA punishments, and Joel seems to find those horrifying when they slip out.
“Well, I was thinking of grounding you for a week. Do you think that’s fair?”
Grounding. Does that mean electricity or burial? Joel doesn’t have an electrostaff, and he’d never use one on her anyway. But a week underground? Fuck.
“Um… do you, like, bury me?” Joel stiffens and pulls Ellie away a little so he can cup her face between his hands.
“No, Ellie. Jesus,” Joel says under his breath. He looks so distraught that she puts one of her hands over his and pats it somewhat awkwardly.
“Sorry?” she offers.
“Nothing to be sorry about, baby,” Joel kisses Ellie’s forehead and pulls her back against his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain. It means you have to be at home unless you’re at school, a work rotation, or with me.” That doesn’t really sound that different from her regular life, though she supposes it means no hanging out with the other kids. Is that the punishment? Joel isn’t very good at this.
“Oh.” Ellie feels the tension drain out of her. Joel seems expectant and Ellie realizes she hasn’t answered the question. “Yeah, that seems fair.” Ellie rearranges herself (and Joel) into a more comfortable position. “Can we still watch movies?”
“As long as it’s not Star Wars,” Joel teases.
“Got it, only Star Wars. Grounding is weird.” Joel laughs. Ellie loves that sound.
It’s not until Ellie is almost asleep in Joel’s bed that night that she remembers she hates him. Probably.
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
At first, Ellie doesn’t seem any worse for the wear because of her restriction. She’s regular cold war mad, if a bit extra sulky. As the week continues, however, Joel starts to miss the silent treatment. She’s sketching a lot more than usual, and seems to blame him for any picture that doesn’t come out perfectly. He finds drawings torn into tiny shreds in every trash can. She tells him she hates him every time she scribbles angrily over something she’s just drawn, which averages about every 10 minutes. It’s a good time all around.
Joel doesn’t dare ask Ellie what she’s working on. She’s intensely secretive about her drawing at the best of times, and this is far from that.
By the time Friday rolls around, Joel is braced for extra resentment. They had planned a hunting trip that Saturday, and Ellie hadn’t been pleased that her grounding included its postponement. Ellie does not disappoint.
She storms in after school and tosses her bag at random. She pulls off her boots like they’ve personally attacked her, and throws them against the wall.
“What?” she snaps at Joel, before he so much as breathes in the room.
“Hello to you too, darling,” Joel says. “How was school?”
“Fuck off.”
“How’s the new math class?” This takes the edge off of Ellie for about half a second. Classes are somewhat nebulous in Jackson given the number of students and varied educational backgrounds. They use age groups as general guidelines, but it isn’t unheard of for kids to take classes with more than one group. Joel hadn’t explained everything to Grace, but he’d painted enough of a picture. She’d agreed to move Ellie to the more advanced class, which had a female teacher, as a trial. Joel didn’t think Ellie would appreciate being moved with younger kids.
“It’s better,” Ellie says begrudgingly before storming off upstairs and slamming the door.
On the morning of their aborted hunting trip, Ellie is in rare form.
The mess hall workers dote on Ellie and are constantly trying to fatten her up, including saving extra servings of her favorites. Today, they ran out of hash browns and none had been set aside. Clara, usually one of Ellie’s favorite people, bears the brunt of the attack.
Ellie always curses like a sailor, but today she weaponizes it with surprising viciousness. She uses every curse word she knows, several Joel suspects she made up, and suggests Clara’s mother is engaged in feats Joel doesn’t think are physically possible. Clara is slack-jawed, and silence descends around them.
“I’m so sorry, Clara,” Joel says politely. “We’ll come by later to apologize. Please excuse us.”
Joel bodily removes Ellie from the building. He doesn’t put her down until they’re home despite Ellie twisting and scratching to try to get away. But Joel is used to herding his little hellcat, and he knows the drill.
“What the hell, Ellie?” Joel asks once he’s put her down in the living room. He forgets to inject his voice with calm before speaking, and it shows. Ellie takes it as an attack and responds in kind.
“Fuck you! You can’t just drag me around anywhere you want. I’m my own fucking person, Joel. I know how to walk.”
“Well you certainly don’t know how to behave in company, young lady.” The calm is back, with a touch of sternness. “What’d Clara do to deserve that, kid? She goes out of her way to save your favorites, but it’s not always possible. She’s always doing you favors. You should be thanking her, not attacking her.”
That takes some of the wind out of Ellie’s sails.
“I – ” Ellie starts, but doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go with it.
“I’ll take you to Clara’s house later on to apologize.” Joel’s voice is uncharacteristically stern.
“Okay,” Ellie agrees quietly.
“Go to your room, please. I’ll bring up breakfast in a bit.”
“Why can’t I eat down here?” Ellie seems genuinely confused, and Joel remembers that timeouts and grounding weren’t in the FEDRA playbook.
“It’s a punishment, Ellie,” Joel says tiredly.
“Aren’t I already grounded?”
“Yeah, you fucking are,” Joel snaps. Ellie looks like she’s been slapped. No matter what she throws at him, he’s never thrown it back. Until now, apparently. He takes a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Ellie.” He makes eye contact and some of Ellie’s shock wears off. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. What I meant to say is… yes, you’re still grounded for taking off last week. I know you’re not thrilled about that, but we agreed it was fair. But being grounded, or having a bad day, does not give you the right to lash out at people like that. So I’d like you to go to your room and take some time to think about how Clara might feel about what you said. How would you feel if she said those things to you? Or one of your friends did?”
“Why do I have to do that in my room?” She’s more curious than challenging. Ellie has a way of questioning things that he takes for granted, and asking him to explain until he’s not entirely sure he understands the point either.
“It’s traditional.”
“But I still get breakfast?” A little less hostility.
“Always, kiddo. Any preferences?”
“No. I guess I’ll – okay.” Ellie heads upstairs and only slams the door a little.
Joel sighs; he’s killing the whole post-apocalyptic parenting thing.
A little while later, Joel knocks on her door with some scrambled eggs and juice. “Can I come in?” Beat. “I’m coming in, honey.” Another beat, and he goes in.
Ellie is sitting on her window seat and he hands her the plate, putting the glass on the floor next to her and taking a seat on her bed.
“Eggs okay?” Ellie nods and starts shoveling them into her mouth with her usual gusto. Joel lingers somewhat awkwardly.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“You killed everyone who I wanted to help and destroyed the world,” Ellie shoots back. Joel sighs.
“That I did,” Joel says resignedly. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Alright,” Joel says evenly. “Then I’d like to talk about this morning. Did you think about how you made Clara feel?”
“What if I don’t want to talk about this morning?”
Ellie’s hackles are up, but he thinks he recognizes it as the over-defensiveness she gets when she’s in the wrong and she knows it.
“Then I’ll leave you to think about it a little more and come check on you in a bit.”
“So you’re locking me in until I’m sorry?”
“Door ain’t locked, Ellie. Not ever, unless you lock it. I’m not… I’m not leaving you here until you’re sorry. I just want you to think about whether or not you’re sorry. If you’re sure you’re not, then we can talk about why you think it’s okay to talk to people like that. But I think that you already know it’s not okay.”
“I talk to you like that, asshole,” Ellie snaps.
“And I’ll take it as long as you want to give it. Do you see a difference between being mad at me for something I did and lashing out at Clara when she didn’t do anything?” Ellie pushes the empty plate away and grabs the juice. She stares at it like it might hold the answer.
“... yeah,” she says quietly. “I was… pretty mean.” Joel hums in agreement and Ellie drains the glass to avoid looking at him.
“She probably felt bad when I yelled at her,” Ellie adds.
“Especially because she goes out of her way to save you things you like?” Joel suggests, causing Ellie to wince.
“Yeah. She’s really fucking nice to me. I guess… I guess I’d be pretty upset if she said that shit to me. Though you probably would have already killed her if she did.” Joel doesn’t take the bait.
“Thank you for thinking that over. Do you think you can try to remember that next time you get upset with someone?”
“Even you?” Ellie glares.
“Other than me, kiddo. People like Clara.” Ellie nods a little guiltily.
“Yeah, okay.” Ellie did feel bad about laying into Clara. And not just for her potato prospects. “You’ll come with me to say sorry later?” Joel nods. “We’ll go together?” she confirms.
“We’ll go together. Promise.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Ellie sets the empty juice glass down. “Am I, like, double grounded?”
“Doesn’t seem like that would benefit Clara much,” Joel says lightly. “I’d like you to think of something nice that you, or we, could do for her.”
“Okay…” Ellie draws out, thinking. “Like… we could make her cookies and bring them over when I apologize?” Ellie suggests.
“I think that’s a great idea, kiddo,” Joel smiles at her, and she seems unable to stifle an answering smile. (She manages pretty quickly.)
“Does that mean I can leave my room?” Ellie asks uncertainly and Joel nods.
“Go turn on the oven, kiddo.” Ellie doesn’t slam the door when she runs downstairs.
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
Joel has a meeting with Grace Adams to check in on Ellie’s new math class the following week. Joel has a sneaking suspicion that him walking her to school may have played a part in her vanishing act, so he waits until after she leaves to head over.
“Well,” Grace is beaming when Joel sits down across from her. “Ellie is thriving in the new class. Ms. Grant says Ellie is a bit behind the others, but is taking to it like a duck to water.” Joel sighs in relief.
“I’m glad,” he says genuinely.
“I did want to raise one other point with you.” Grace days delicately. Oh, boy. Joel hopes Ellie hasn’t been lashing out at more Claras. “The school is doing a Family Day project. Jackson has a lot of non-traditional families, so we do Family Day instead of Mother’s or Father’s Day. This year, we’re doing a school project to celebrate the found families so many of us have. We’ve asked the children to do a creative project showing what family means to them.”
“I see,” Joel says neutrally. Joel’s shitty at the feelings stuff. Until their blow-out fight, Joel and Ellie had never spelled out their relationship. He’s specifically told her she wasn't family a bunch of times, but only once that she is. And she’s steadfastly hated him ever since.
“Ellie has been… resistant,” Grace continues. “We’ve been asking the students to work on it at home and giving them time in class. It’s a creative project, so it can be an essay, a poster, whatever. Ellie has been working on drawings in class. And I want to be clear: that’s absolutely welcome! But her teacher brought me a few and was concerned they weren’t really… family-based.”
“When did she get the assignment?” Joel asks.
“Last Wednesday,” Grace says, handing over two pages that he recognizes as torn out of Ellie’s sketchbook. That timing checked out—Wednesday was when the cold war boiled over.
It’s been a while since Joel got to see any of Ellie’s drawings and he’s struck anew by how good she is. But he also sees why there might be some raised eyebrows.
The first is a pencil sketch of a FEDRA guard with a bloody mess where his face used to be. He’s lying on the ground in a pool of blood. The background is indistinct, but Joel feels himself transported outside the Boston QZ and can almost see the blood on his hands. The guard looks exactly the same. She’s so fucking talented. But Ellie apparently doesn’t agree, because there is an angry X over the picture.
The next one is also a pencil sketch, but she had started to add color before rejecting it. He recognizes the burning building and the snowy landscape. There is a trail of deep red blood on the snow between the door and an Ellie-sized scribble that’s been scratched over so many times there’s a hole in the page.
“Oh,” is all Joel is able to manage. Joel can’t take his eyes off the angry mark that isn’t Ellie.
“Again, any form of expression is fine,” Grace says kindly. “But these, and some others Ms. Branch has seen, are quite… violent.”
“She’s – ” Joel isn’t sure how to begin. “She’s not being resistant.” He brings his hand to his head and starts rubbing his temples. Ellie’s past isn’t his to share, but he also doesn’t want the school to think she’s blowing it off.
“This one,” Joel runs his fingers over the X across the first one, “I think this means family protects you.” Joel reflexively tightens his fist and can’t help but look at the knuckles he used to bash the guard’s head in. Grace’s face pales.
“And this one…” Joel’s voice catches and he doesn’t finish the thought. “These moments have meaning for her. She’s not blowing it off.”
“I see,” says Grace.
“Are they not allowed to be violent?” Joel asks. “I can ask her to, um, tone it down,” Joel offers, but it doesn’t sit quite right. “She’s had a pretty violent life, though. I don’t want to tell her not to feel that.”
“Well, it’s early yet. We won’t be presenting them for a few weeks. I’d appreciate it if you would check in, though. The goal is to have the parents involved, but I’m getting the sense she didn’t tell you.” She sensed correctly.
“I will, I promise.”
✧┈┈┈┈┈┈✧
If Joel is sure of anything, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s that looking through Ellie’s sketchbook would completely shatter any sliver of trust left between them. But not looking is one of the hardest things he’s ever done. It’s sitting on her window seat next to a box of colored pencils he’d found for her. He stares at it from her doorway for a while, but fails to uncover powers of x-ray vision.
Joel digs into the secret stash of Chef Boyardee he keeps for bribery purposes and puts two cans on the counter.
Ellie returns from school in her usual huff, but Joel notes that she hangs up her coat and sets her boots next to his on the floor. Not a throwing day.
“I talked to Mrs. Adams today,” Joel starts.
“Good for you. I talk to her all the time. You’re not special,” Ellie snipes.
Super. This was going to be fun.
“I found some Chef Boyardee,” Joel offers. “I was thinking we could eat here tonight.”
“I’m eating with my friends,” Ellie says in her standard cold war tone.
“Okay,” Joel sighs a little but doesn’t stop Ellie as she heads upstairs. By the time she’d normally leave to meet her friends for dinner, Ellie hasn’t reappeared. Joel takes a chance and heats up the ravioli. The smell draws her out, and she doesn’t point out that she told him she wasn’t eating here. Small miracles.
“What’d you talk to Mrs. Adams about?” Ellie asks from the doorway.
“Can you set the table, kiddo?” Ellie rolls her eyes but grabs plates and utensils. “She says you’re doing great in math.” Joel looks at Ellie and is rewarded with a smile she can’t quite keep off her face.
“I like Ms. Grant,” Ellie says. “Um, thanks. For doing that.”
“That’s what I’m here for, kiddo. Whenever you need help, all you have to do is ask. How’re things going at school otherwise?”
Joel sets out two bowls of decades-old Chef Boyardee. Ellie digs in, ignoring the question.
“Any big projects?”
Ellie’s eyes narrow. Maybe not as subtle as he’d been hoping.
“Why?”
“Well,” Joel starts to hedge, not sure how to broach the topic.
“Don’t lie.” The last word is a growl.
“Mrs. Adams said you had a family project?” Joel keeps his tone entirely neutral. Ellie huffs.
“Yeah, well. I don’t have a family, so I don’t see why I need to do it.” Joel winces. Time to double down on the feeling stuff he’s so bad at. Maybe if he’d been saying this shit from the start things wouldn’t be quite so broken between them.
“You have a family, baby girl. We’re a family. So is Tommy, Maria, and your cousin.”
Ellie pokes her ravioli aggressively and doesn’t look up. “I hate you.”
Joel is in no way surprised to hear this. But it isn’t quite as sharp as it has been.
“Sometimes we hate our family, kiddo. It’s pretty normal. Sarah hated me too sometimes. Doesn’t mean I’ll ever love either of you any less.”
“Whatever.” Joel thinks Ellie might be tearing up, but she looks away when she slams her fork down and storms out so he can’t tell for sure.
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie flips open her sketchbook to the beginning of the pictures she’s been working on for the stupid fucking project.
Riley, dancing in a clown mask on the counter of a Halloween store. They’re about to kiss, and then Ellie is going to kill her best friend.
The FEDRA guard, a bloody pulp outside the Boston QZ. She’s thrown out more than one version of this sketch. Every time she looks at it, it seems so violent. But she’s trying to show safety. She doesn’t think it works, and considers ripping it out again.
Tess in the State House, showing them her bite. Her face is determined with an edge of hope. The sketch doesn’t show the explosion that follows, but Ellie thinks it shows in Tess’s eyes.
Joel leaning against a shovel over a shallow grave. Ellie’s note of apology isn’t legible, but it’s there.
Joel’s face, ravaged in pain. His chest is bare and her shaking hands are trying to stitch him up.
Joel’s face again, just coming into focus after Silver Lake. His features are all that can be made out in the haze, and then only barely.
Joel, Joel, Joel.
She flips the page angrily. This one is entirely from her imagination, but she thinks about it a lot. Joel is holding a passed-out Ellie in a hospital gown. They’re surrounded by broken and bleeding bodies dressed in scrubs. She’d drawn a frame of sorts; they’re ringed in cordyceps. Sometimes these same creeping vines feel like chains around her.
The next is an image that pops into her mind at odd moments, and she really wishes wouldn’t. The scale from the FEDRA science lab with her brain in a jar on one side, and the world on the other. The side with the world—high in the air—is dripping blood.
No wonder Mrs. Adams complained to Joel. They told her to “create an expression of her loved ones” and she has pages of corpses and almost-corpses. The others had drawn happy families, or recorded passed-down recipes; one kid wrote a fucking poem. And all she had to show was devastation. People this broken don’t have families.
But… Joel’s broken too.
Their teacher had asked them to work with their parents on the project. Ellie had dismissed this because she hates Joel, and she’s an orphan anyway. But maybe… maybe she could ask Joel? He wasn’t her dad (he’d fucking made that clear, however much he tried to walk it back), but he was her… parent? Isn’t that what you call the person who loves you more than the entire world? She stares at the bleeding scale.
She’s tired of being so fucking mad at him. She doesn’t want to have to remember to glare at him every time she walks in a room. She wants to tell him the awesome puns she’s been saving up and hear him laugh. She wants Joel back. She wants to be a family of broken things, even if that means the world bleeds.
She grabs the sketchbook and creeps downstairs. Joel has done the dishes (her job), and he’s sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee. He only breaks out the coffee at night when he’s had a really shitty day. Another thing to feel bad about. Ellie clears her throat and clutches the sketchbook to her chest.
“Mine isn’t like the other kids’,” Ellie says quietly. Joel sets down his coffee and looks up at her.
“That’s okay, kiddo. Mrs. Adams said it was supposed to be creative. I’m pretty sure you can do whatever you want.” Joel seems hesitant to approach her so she sits down on the other side of the couch and puts the sketchbook between them.
“I mean… The others’ are, like, normal. Mine’s all…” Ellie doesn’t have the words for it, so she opens her book up to the picture of Riley and hands it to Joel.
“Are you sure?” Joel asks steadily. He doesn’t so much as look down until he’s sure he has her permission. Ellie nods. Joel takes the book like it’s an ancient treasure, and looks at each page with something like awe.
Riley. Guard. Tess. Grave. Stitches. After.
She doesn’t notice that her hands are reaching out to stop him from turning the page until she’s already done it.
“Oh. I – ” Ellie pulls her hand back.
“Do you want it back?” Joel’s voice is exceedingly gentle. She shakes her head.
“Just… don’t be mad at me?” Ellie hadn’t even realized she was worried about that.
“Never, baby.” Joel flips the page carefully and she searches his expression. He looks at the sketch of the hospital for a long time, and hovers his finger over the fungal frame.
“This is beautiful, Ellie. You’re really talented, kiddo.”
Joel looks so proud and Ellie needs him to fucking finish it.
“Keep going,” she whispers, and he does.
The bleeding scale. It looks to Ellie like an accusation, but Joel doesn’t seem to take it that way. He starts to flip the page but sees he’s at the end.
“Ellie, these are incredible.”
Joel sounds so genuine that Ellie actually believes him. The man clearly has terrible taste.
“They’re so… I mean,” she grabs the book back and uses none of the care Joel had. “Dead person,” she flips past Riley. “Dead person, dead person, dead people, you almost die, I almost die, you destroy the world, and the world is destroyed. This isn’t fucking normal, dude.”
“That’s not what I see,” Joel says gently. “May I?” He reaches out his hand for the sketchbook, and Ellie hands it to him.
“I see your first family,” Joel says looking at the Riley page. “Someone you loved dearly and who loved you back.” Ellie feels a lump in her throat.
He turns to the FEDRA guard. “I see me keeping you safe.” Safety. Joel saw it. Joel always sees. He turns the page.
“I see someone who…” Joel chokes up a little. “Who would’ve been your family, if we had time. She made sure we stayed together. Tess would’ve loved you almost as much as I do.”
“Almost?”
“It ain’t possible to love you more than I do, kid.” Ellie feels herself relax a little. He’s getting better at this feelings shit.
He turns back to the book. “I see us losing friends, but carrying on.” The grave. “I see you saving me.” Stitches. “I see me finding you.” After.
“I see…” Joel hesitates on the next one, probably because what happened at the hospital is the whole fucking wall of thorns that’s grown between them. This is where he slams the book shut and says that if she can’t deal with his decision, she can get out because he’s sick of her bullshit.
“I think I see you feel trapped,” Joel gently touches the cordyceps frame. “You feel like the thing with the world in a stranglehold is your problem to fix. But I see… I see the most important fucking thing in the universe in my arms. I see me saving you from a bad situation.” He turns the page, and she thinks he sees the accusation this time. “And I see that you don’t agree. You don’t want the world to bleed for you. But cordyceps existed before you were ever thought of, Ellie. This ain’t yours to fix.”
Tears prickle in Ellie’s eyes. “There’s so much blood,” Ellie looks at the sketchbook sadly. “So much death.”
“You’ve lived through a lot, kiddo. You’re a survivor.”
There’s silence for a while as Ellie builds up the courage to voice the worry that’s been kicking around in the back of her head.
“Do you think I have a violent heart?” Ellie barely whispers the question.
“A violent—no, baby girl,” he looks into her desolate eyes. “You’ve done things to survive, because you had to.” He knew where the words had come from even if she hadn’t said it outright. “He had a violent heart.” He wipes a tear away with the pad of his thumb. “You just want to help people.”
“You stopped me,” Ellie’s tears spill over and Joel cups her face, looking broken.
“I did. I stopped you because we’re a family. I will protect you until my dying breath. I’m not sorry I did it. If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again. But I am sorry—I am really fucking sorry—that I lied to you about it.”
That’s the first time Joel has apologized. Not ever—he apologizes all the time for dumb shit. But he’s never apologized for this, his great betrayal. Ellie wonders if she ever gave him the chance.
She says, “I want you to promise you’ll never lie to me again.”
“I promise I will never lie to you again,” Joel answers immediately, like the words have been on the tip of his tongue for weeks. “I might not always be able to tell you everything, but I won’t lie.” Ellie holds out her pinky and Joel solemnly wraps his around hers. “Pinky promise.”
“Okay.” And for the first time since he told her the truth, she thinks it really might be okay. She’s not sure if she can forgive him, but she wants to try. Ellie brushes the rest of her tears away. “What if all the blood and stuff makes people think I have a violent heart?”
“Fuck what people think,” Joel says easily. Ellie snorts a laugh.
“Jesse said something about me drawing a dead deer. I think people think it’s weird.”
“Want me to kill Jesse?”
“Way too soon, man,” she raises an eyebrow.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound that sorry, but his voice is gentle as he continues. “Would people thinking it’s weird bother you?”
“Yeah,” Ellie says honestly. The kids are more welcoming than she gives them credit for, but the whole town is going to see these. She doesn’t want them to think she’s a feral circus freak. (She must remember to ask Joel what a circus freak is now that they’re talking again. She thinks they’re talking again? Either way, now doesn’t seem like the time.)
“Which ones are you worried about?” She grabs the sketchbook and opens to the guard, laying it between them.
“Why does this one make you think of family?” Joel asks.
“You protected me. I felt safe. But in a kind of terrifying way?” Joel hums in acknowledgment. “I’d never seen someone move that fast. I’d barely registered the gun before he was dead on the ground.”
“Families protect each other,” Joel agrees. Joel’s protection was her gravity.
“The bridge,” Ellie says excitedly. “I felt the same way when we jumped off the bridge in Pittsburgh. I knew you’d keep me afloat. Bonus points for it also being completely terrifying.”
“When we jumped off the bridge?” Joel asks incredulously. “The terrifying jump was your idea, m’dear. Still not thrilled with that decision.” Ellie laughs more freely than she can remember doing in a while.
“We survived, old man.”
“That we did,” Joel agrees. Ellie can practically hear Joel making a mental note to start swimming lessons again.
Ellie flips through the book until she finds the next one that makes her cringe. She looks at it a little uneasily, and decides Joel would be most useful now as a backrest. She turns and flops back against him.
She smiles at the familiar groan she hasn’t heard in awhile and wonders if Joel will miss having personal space.
“Are you going to miss having personal space?” Ellie feels more than hears his chuckle.
“Can’t say as I recall having much since I met you.”
“You know,” Ellie pulls at his shirt, tucking herself into his flannel. “During the cold war.” She says it in the same tone she says The Contractor, and Joel can’t help but laugh.
“No, baby girl. My personal space has been lonely as fuck. I like having you in it.” Ellie hums happily. “You even know what the Cold War is?”
“Course not,” Ellie answers easily.
“Been eavesdropping?” Obviously.
“Obviously.” Joel’s chuckle rumbles in his chest again.
“I’m worried about the last two,” Ellie finally admits. “I don’t want anyone to see them. I – ” Oh shit, is she going all in? When has she ever been able to stop? “I don’t even want to see them. But I do. All the time.” She pulls at his shirt and he maneuvers slightly to make it easier for her to tuck further in.
“Does it help to draw it?” Joel runs his hands through her hair, and Ellie leans into it like a cat.
“Yes. No.” Good answer, Ellie. Clear as mud. “Sort of? Putting it on the page kind of pulls it out of me. But if I throw them out, then it’s back in me again. They, like, live behind my eyelids. I can’t throw my eyelids out.” Ellie expects him to reasonably point out that that makes no sense, but he doesn’t.
“Would it be okay if I hang onto them?”
“My eyelids?” She wields her sarcasm like a sword.
“Sure, if you want,” Joel parries. “Or I could hang on to the pictures.”
“You want them?”
“Your eyelids?”
“Joel.”
“Ellie, I would frame your scrap paper if you would let me.”
“Don’t frame them,” Ellie groans. “But you can… keep them, I guess. Yeah. That’d be okay.”
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie gets into the spirit of the Family Day project after what she dubs the Truce of the Pinky Promise.
The pictures flow more easily now that Ellie stops ripping up every other one. At school on Monday, when her social studies teacher gives them time to work on their projects, Ellie draws the bridge in Pittsburgh. She hadn’t actually seen Joel jump in after her; he was already in the water by the time she got her head above the waves. But the picture pours out as soon as she sets pencil to paper. The river is dark and choppy and Joel is flying off the bridge, backlit by the lights of the searching guards. He looks like an avenging angel. You’ll keep me afloat. She draws some peaceful moments too, like her and Joel on the porch swing.
Joel’s exercise with the guard picture gives her an idea of how to present them. She explains her idea to Joel, and they spend a dusty afternoon digging through one the Warehouses of Broken Things. She’s initially resistant to some of his suggestions (“It’s not a fucking museum, Joel. We’re not looking for picture frames.”), but when he mysteriously discovers a neat stack of frames in the exact right size, she rolls her eyes and doesn’t object.
Joel teaches her how to burn words into wood, which is fucking awesome. He burns “Family is…” into a wavy bit of wood Ellie likes.
Once she masters(ish) the technique, Ellie burns a word into each of the frames. She tries to be secretive about how she’s going to label the pictures, but Joel won’t let her use the burny thing without him there.
Riley in the Halloween store: Love.
Tess about to blow the State House: Sacrifice.
Joel jumping off the bridge: Protection.
Sam and Henry’s shallow grave: Grief.
Ellie’s shaking hands stitching Joel up: Vulnerability.
After Silver Lake: Safety.
She places the frames on the ground in chronological order surrounding the picture of her and Joel on the porch. She doesn’t have a label for that one yet.
They use spare bits from Joel’s construction projects to put the frames together into what she calls a “tangle of broken things” and he calls “a masterpiece of engineering.”
It grows on itself after that as Ellie thinks of extras to add. New pictures are pasted onto random spare wood bits and tacked on. Scenes of Tommy, Maria and the baby crop up. Joel, always, filling the gaps: laughing, comforting, even raising an eyebrow like he’s about to scold her.
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie’s been sleeping in her own bed more since she overheard some of the younger kids teasing someone for sleeping in bed with his mommy.
“Is that weird?” Ellie had asked absently, and was met with looks running the gambit from shock to disgust to pity. She backpedaled immediately. “I mean, for that age. Remember, y’all, I was raised in a FEDRA cage,” Ellie had slipped into her nothing-to-see-here voice and was rewarded with the expected laugh.
“I still sleep in my parents' bed during thunderstorms,” Jesse’d said lightly. “That shit’s scary.” The other kids had laughed like he was clearly joking, but Ellie was pretty sure he winked at her.
So Joel isn’t there when she wakes up in a cold sweat two days before Family Day realizing she’d fucked it all up. (He is there, seconds later, when she crawls into his bed. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t imagine him mumbling “took you long enough” before crushing her against him.)
She corners Tommy the next morning at breakfast and asks (one might argue she demands) his help. He agrees, but it’s not a smooth process. Tommy is a shitty sketch artist, which doesn’t give her a lot of source material. Eventually, his incredibly rough work gives her (barely) enough to start her own attempts. She brings him countless drafts, asking increasingly specific questions about bone structure, skin tone, and freckle patterns. It’s only the night before that he finally looks at one and says, “That’s her. That’s Sarah.”
So she has one fucking night, and Joel is not helping the situation by constantly banging on her door reminding her that it’s way past her bedtime. (Which is ridiculous, because she’s fucking fourteen.)
“Ellie!” This knock is particularly sharp and Ellie feels a pang of guilt because it might be the fourth or fifth she’s vaguely registered.
“Yeah?” He opens the door immediately and scans her up and down upon entering. “Did you hear me calling for you?”
“No,” she says at once. Then: “Sort of. Sorry. I was drawing.” He sighs.
“It’s bedtime, kiddo. I know you're too old for that shit,” he anticipates her objection. “But I’m way too old to be up late worrying about you.”
“Well,” Ellie says magnanimously, “if it’s a matter of getting your old man rest, it’s my civic duty to assist.”
“Help an old man to bed?”
“Fine. I don't want you to break a hip.”
✧∘⢑∘∙∘✧∘⢌∘∙✧
Ellie is a little nervous that there hadn’t been time to show Joel the final picture. She doesn’t usually feel the need to clear her art with Joel—she barely lets him see it—but she’s taking a pretty big step here and isn’t thrilled it will be in front of the whole town. But it feels right, so fuck what people think. (She also sort of remembers that she wasn’t supposed to burn the last word in without him supervising, but whatever.)
A lot of the pictures are stuck on, but not the one she needs to replace. This one is in the center frame: Her and Joel on the porch. It’s one of her favorites, but it's not enough. She takes it out gently, because Joel said he loves it. And then replaces it with her new drawing.
Joel, one arm wrapped around each of his daughters, beaming like the world never ended. Ellie and Sarah are sharing a mischievous look. They’re planning a prank, and Joel doesn’t know. It’s not a great prank—it’s no easy feat scheming with a sister who was dead years before you were born. They’re about to push him over, and he doesn’t see it coming. Or maybe he does. Joel usually does.
She’d been working on the glint in Sarah’s eye until the last second, and she hopes she got it right. It feels right.
She senses Joel enter the room, because he’s still her magnetic north. She’d told him he didn’t need to leave work early to help set up, but she’s not surprised he did.
She moves to head him off before he sees the picture. He pulls her in as soon as she’s in his orbit for a hug and a forehead kiss. She nudges him for a second one, and he throws in a third.
“Don’t be mad?” She surprises herself with the question. Joel makes it an even four forehead kisses.
“Never, baby girl.” He looks at her curiously and she nods him over. He turns to the project and takes in the new picture. He moves forward like a moth to a flame, entranced.
Joel approaches it and reaches out tentatively, fingers hovering over the frame the way they hover over her in those rare moments that she comes out of a panic attack half a second before he notices. He lightly brushes the word burned into the frame: Forever.
“Baby girl,” he whispers as he turns to Ellie. He reaches out his hand, seemingly not wanting to leave the picture, but wanting Ellie close. She puts her hand in his and he pulls her in. He puts her squarely in front of him and wraps his arms tightly around her chest. She melts back into him. Joel holds her tightly and she leans into him as they look at their family.
“You like it?” Ellie asks.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Joel says, his voice thick with very un-Joel-like emotion. She searches his face like she always does, and it’s filled with that expression she can never place. But then she sees it’s the same face she’s drawn—pulled right out of her imagination as the way he’d look at his two little girls. Oh shit. It’s love.
He looks at her like she’s his daughter. Because she fucking is.