8 Works by Merakiae
Listing Works
-
The Stars Incline Us by Merakiae
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
30 Nov 2025
Tags
Summary
astra inclinant, sed non obligant (the stars incline us, they do not bind us)
. . .
Of all the fights Joel has dragged his brother into, none of them have ever been worthy of Tommy’s loyalty, until this one.
“You don’t know what she’s been through, Tommy. She’s just a kid. She needs—“
To be held.
To know that she deserves to live.
To know that she’s setting the world right just by existing, just by breathing.
Tommy finds the words he can’t. “She needs people to love her, a safe place to grow up and do some healin’. I reckon you, me, and Maria can give her that.”
Or: the Part II where Ellie gets her chance at saving the world (or at least her little corner of it) and finds out just how loved she is along the way.
-
The Reaping Song by Merakiae for JudithWilde
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
27 Feb 2025
Tags
Summary
Maria holds Tommy’s hand in hers, running her thumb over the calluses of his palm and back along the lineaments of his wrist. They sit in the half-light of a fire burned low, side-by-side on one of the logs in the middle of the atrium, which is notably and mercifully empty in the early hours before the dawn. Outside, the sky is dark and featureless, the stars blotted out by a uniform cloud bank that flows on the wind, rippling out endlessly to the horizon. There’s a damp chill in the air, and Tommy coughs, shivers.
***
The Tommy PTSD fic I've always wanted to write, with a heavy dose of found family cuddles and Maria being his port in the storm (I am absolutely inconsolable over these two honestly, do not send help)
-
Collateral Wounds by Merakiae for PaigeGoneRogue
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
26 Feb 2025
Tags
Summary
It’s late to be having this conversation. She’s tired; he’s tired, can’t get his thoughts lined up, can’t work out this ache— He realizes he’s got a track playing in his head, the one he’d thought he’d managed to shake for good: the low static of a radio, cut by Sarah’s agonal gasps— eventually giving way to the cry of the wind over the desert, the patter of blood from Rico’s neck as it paints the inner wall of the humvee—
Tommy draws a breath so sharp it stings.
“Joel asked me to take Ellie. To Colorado.”
***
A Tommy/Maria fic exploring the aftermath of Joel and Tommy’s conversation in the workshop.
-
Nascence by Merakiae for Bumblepony
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
24 Feb 2025
Tags
Summary
He knows the horses, knows Adam and Rueben and a few others— good men, kind men. He knows patrol, the rotation of the routes, the rhythms of keeping the stables up, feeding and working the animals. He knows how the storms roll in and how they leave, knows the way the gloaming comes over the valley when the sun slips behind the peaks and sets the clouds ablaze. He’s getting to know the feeling of having a house all to himself, sharing meals, casting votes in town halls, asking and receiving and being able to go out and get for himself what he needs without having to steal it. And he’s beginning to know he’s got something going with Maria, something that turns his heart soft every time he dares to think of it. But there are still plenty of days he wonders if he even knows up from down around Jackson, really.
That ain’t gonna cut it much longer. Cause he’s gotta know. He’s gotta know what it means, to have found all of this, and he’s gotta know whether he gets to keep it, and what he’s meant to do with it.
***
A Tommy/Maria fic, exploring the nascence of their relationship amidst Tommy finding his footing in Jackson and the loss of Maria’s father.
-
Tags
Summary
Arthur tugs the brim of his hat a little lower as the wind picks up and sweeps over the prairie, quiescent from long drought and encroaching winter. There’s a chill in the air, but it don’t bother him. The light is silver and clear, the grass grey-green and shimmering like water, russet tips bent over in the breeze. The sky above opens up in a great sweeping arc from horizon to horizon, tall clouds so stark against the deep azure that it mimics a cyanotype.
___
An ill-fated hunting trip leaves Arthur fighting to make it home alive.
-
a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking by Merakiae for eedsknees
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
13 Dec 2023
Tags
Summary
She scrambles down off the breakwater into the shallows, feeling the lap of the frigid sea through the thick rubber of her waders. Trawling a dented wire basket through the tide, she lets the saltwater cleanse the bruises on her wrists, the blood beneath her fingernails.
***
An ode to New England, to Ellie and Joel, and to the relentless tide of love and loss that brings them together in every universe <3
-
caught against the tide by Merakiae for mariatesstruther (JenniReals)
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
23 Nov 2023
Tags
Summary
“I don’t know about you, Maria, but I dunno if I can keep running like this,” he sighs, exhaustion permeating his dark eyes. “I feel like we’re just tapping the brakes for these people on their way off a cliff. Is it even worth it?”
She flinches, feeling the cynicism so unlike Tommy rise up in his words. There’s a quiet desperation there, a searching for a lifeline, a counterargument to keep him afloat
. . .
AU in which Maria and Tommy meet in the same medical residency program
-
walking in lonely places by Merakiae
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
05 Jun 2023
Tags
Summary
Somewhere on the road to Wyoming, Joel has a shitty day and Ellie's got his back.
Short, sweet, and fluffy. Sorry for any canon non-compliance, I wasn't really keeping track of timelines/order-of-events.