Chapter Text
Tess practically kicks the door open, a gun in one hand and the back of Ellie’s hoodie as she practically shoves her into the capitol building, immediately scanning for threats. Once they’re in, Tess is striding fast across the floor, letting go of Ellie as Joel pushes the door open after them.
Upon going into the main area, Ellie freezes up, and apparently, so does Tess going by how she looks around, almost in shock.
There are dead bodies everywhere. Blood. The supplies are unmanned, every single person on the floor.
“Holy shit,” Ellie gasps despite herself.
“Jesus.” Joel mutters as he sees from behind Ellie. She can’t help but stare at how they’re sprawled, how their wounds are distributed, how-
Tess’s breathing turns shaky, and Joel grabs Ellie’s arm, pulling her closer to him as Tess looks around almost-frantically, putting her gun away.
“Okay. I mean, there’s- there’s gotta be a fuckin’ radio or something, right?” Tess says, practically running for the supplies and immediately starting to rifle through the boxes.
“Who killed them? FEDRA?” Ellie asks, heart pounding.
“No.” Joel says, pointing to one body with a pool of blood beneath his head. He kicks it over, and the guy’s brains squelch out in a pool of crimson. “One of them got bit, the healthy ones fought the sick one, everyone lost. Tess! What’re you doin’?”
Tess is frantic now, digging through with shaking hands before whipping towards Ellie and moving towards her. “Where did Marlene say she was taking you? Ellie!”
Ellie’s brain shorts out for a minute. “Uh, I- I don’t know. Just west.”
“Just west. Fuck. Okay. Well, I mean, one of them’s gotta have a map on him, right? Joel! Can you help me?”
Tess is digging through the pockets, and Joel doesn’t move. “No! Tess! It’s over! We are going home!”
“THAT’S NOT MY FUCKING HOME!” Tess all but screams, whipping around on Joel with her teeth bared.
She looks like an Infected in that moment, ready to strike.
…she is an Infected.
Joel straightens, expression going slack, and Tess huffs and stares at the wall over the body she’s searching for a minute before straightening and turning back to look.
“I’m staying.” she says. “I mean, our luck had to run out sooner or later.”
Oh, shit. Ellie’s right.
“Fuck.” Ellie breathes, drawing both grown-up’s eyes to her. “She’s infected.”
Joel’s face changes to pure shock as he slowly turns back around to Tess.
Tess smiles bitterly and huffs. “Smart kid.”
“Show me.” Joel practically orders, not taking his eyes off her.
Tess steps towards him with a ‘Joel,’ only for him to step backwards.
She freezes, breath shuddering, before she reaches up and yanks her jacket and shirt to the side, showing a bi-
Wait.
Joel stares at her, and Ellie assumes it’s the same confusion she’s feeling.
She’s seen Infected before. She’s seen how they look, she’s seen the diagrams of how the tendrils spread - hell, watched the bite on Riley’s hand spread - and if Tess got bit in the museum several hours ago-
It definitely doesn’t look how it should.
The skin is angry and red instead of black and weeping, and there are tendrils around it, but they’re mostly inside the bite instead of spreading outward. The teeth marks aren’t widening like Riley’s did, instead looking like normal teeth marks.
“Oops, right?” Tess says, not looking at it. “My luck’s out here, Joel. So you take her to Bill and Frank’s, they’ll handle it from here-”
“Tessa.” Joel interrupts. “It don’t look right.”
Thank God he noticed it too.
“Joel, I was fucking bit. I’m going to turn. It happens to everyone sooner or later.”
“Tessa, it don’t look-”
“I never ask you for anything. Not to feel the way I felt-”
“Tessa-”
“Shut the fuck up because I don’t have time!” she snaps. “This is your chance. You get her there. You keep her alive. And you set everything right. All the shit we did… please say yes, Joel.”
One of the bodies starts moving, starts snarling, and without so much as flinching, Joel pulls his gun and shoots it, but that’s when he freezes, staring at it.
“More comin’.” he says. “It’s got-”
He runs to the door, opening it fast, looking out before running back.
“How many?” Tess asks, voice shaking.
“All of ‘em. We got maybe a minute.”
Tess grabs a gun off the floor and uses it to knock over a barrel of gasoline.
“What are you doing?” Ellie asks, hating how young she sounds.
“Making sure they can’t follow you.” Tess snaps. She knocks over a thing of grenades into the gas.
Ellie can’t breathe.
“Tessa, you ain’t sick.” Joel snarls. “We need to go now before they catch up.”
“I’m gonna turn. Least I can do is keep you alive.” Tess says, coming back to stand in front of Joel. She gives a small smile, tears in her eyes.
It’s silent for a second, just heavy breathing and screeching in the background and them practically having a conversation telepathically.
“Save who you can save.” Tess finally whispers.
Ellie looks over at Joel, waiting nervously for his reaction - he’s not really gonna leave her here, is he, her bite looks like Ellie’s, she’s not gonna turn, he can’t-
Joel grabs Ellie’s hand, and the world stops.
He really is gonna make them leave her.
But then he all but lunges at Tess, grabbing around her thighs and hauling her up onto his shoulder like a bag of flour even though she starts shouting and kicking, and he starts to fucking run.
-
Joel doesn’t stop until they’re in the woods, the Infected abandoned far behind them and his chest heaving like he’s dying, Ellie’s feet starting to ache and Tess finally done fighting to be put down.
When he stops, he barely lets Ellie go and sets Tess down on her feet before falling back against a tree, hunched over and gasping for breath. Ellie can’t blame him - she’s out of air herself, and she wasn’t carrying a big-ass backpack and a grown woman on her shoulder.
Tess sits down too, but her reaction is different.
She stares at Ellie like she’s an alien, hands folded in front of her mouth as she looks over them at her.
“Tess.” Joel pants. “Tessa, let me see it again.”
Tess takes a minute to react, continuing to stare at Ellie, before she finally unfolds her hands and moves one over to her shoulder, barely pushing her shirt to the side to show the bite again.
The bite looks different than half an hour ago. The angry red swelling is starting to calm down, and while the deep puncture marks where teeth broke skin are still there, they’re smaller now, the edges already starting to knit back together. The tendrils of infection have come to a standstill.
Ellie rolls up her sleeve and shows them the bite again. The teeth marks look like what Tess’s are healing into, and the tendrils under her skin look the same.
She looks at Ellie’s arm, then down at her own shoulder, then Tess returns to staring at her.
“Tess.” Joel says, and she doesn’t react.
“Tess.” Nothing.
“Tess.”
And just like that, she’s up like a shot, striding over to Ellie so fast that she jumps when Tess grabs her face, cheeks squished between her hands. Ellie almost expects her to dig her nails in, but she doesn’t, grip strong yet not intentionally harmful.
Tess crouches slightly to look at her, eyes darting all over her face like she’s trying to memorize it before settling on looking at Ellie’s eyes.
It freaks her out after a minute, and she tries to move backwards, but Tess doesn’t budge.
“Tess?” Joel repeats.
She finally releases her face, straightening up with an absolutely shattered expression on her own features before stumbling back over to where she was sitting, practically falling back onto the ground.
“What’s wrong?” Ellie asks, voice cracking a little bit. “I- I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Tess?” Joel says.
She looks up at him, hands pressed over her mouth, and Ellie sees tears in her eyes.
“I had cancer.” Tess says, and between her quiet, shaking voice and her hands muffling it, Ellie has to strain to hear. “Before the outbreak. Thyroid, stage two. Before they cut it out and I went into remission, they gave me microdoses of fungus to shrink the tumor. I had just finished the treatment when the outbreak happened. The fungus was supposed to continue living in my thyroid and in my blood permanently, even once the tumor was gone, but it was harmless.”
She stares into nothingness for a minute, a tear or two slipping out of her eyes.
“They gave me Cordyceps. The plain one, the- the kind insects have. It must have-”
Tess presses her hand to her eyes. “It must have made me immune to the new kind.”
Ellie stares at her in shifting shades of horror and confusion, and a glance to Joel shows a similar ‘what the fuck’ vibe.
“So then I- I’m immune too?” Tess waves her hand in Ellie’s general direction. “Fuck. Fuck.”
And that’s when it clicks.
Two immune people?
Tess’s first name starts with a T.
Ellie’s hand flies to her pocket, immediately rooting around for her knife. “What’s your name? Your full name?”
Tess doesn’t say anything, dead still.
“Theresa Anna Servopolous.” Joel says instead, voice low and quiet. “Why?”
Ellie pulls out the knife that Marlene said was her mom’s.
‘TAS’ is on the handle.
“Was this yours?” Ellie chokes out, holding it out. “Marlene said it was from my mom.”
Joel looks at it, and his eyes widen as he looks over at Tess. His voice is low and dangerous when he speaks. “Tess.”
Tess’s shoulders start shaking ever-so-slightly.
“I’m your fucking kid?” Ellie asks, voice warbling and reaching a higher pitch than she means it to.
Joel stares at Tess like she’s grown a second head. “Tessa?”
“I thought you were dead, Ellie.” Tess chokes out. “I fucking thought you were gone. Fuck!”
“I need you to explain right now.” Joel says, voice dangerously quiet and level. “Right now.”
“I- I was pregnant.” Tess chokes out. “Fourteen years ago.”
Joel takes a step back, breathing shallow. Ellie’s brain is still loading. “She mine?”
Tess nods into her hands, and he stops breathing entirely, just staring at her, jaw clenched.
And then chaos erupts.
When Ellie was little, she imagined meeting her parents. Imagined they were lovely people who’d been looking nonstop since losing her and who loved her more than anything, that she was greeted with hugs and tears and whispers of how loved she was before going home with them, where she was safe and there was food and she wasn’t alone.
She did not imagine two fifty-year-old smugglers shouting fuck at each other.
“The doctor fuckin’ told me she was stillborn, Joel, the fuck did you-”
“I didn’t know you were pregnant, Tess!”
“What, were you expecting me to sit down and tell you-”
“Yes! You should’ve fuckin’ told me! That ain’t one of those things that you get an expectation of privacy! You an’ me were gonna have a kid! You didn’t think-”
“Shut the fuck up!” Ellie shouts, yanking on a handful of her hair with the hand not holding the knife. “You’re my fucking mom and dad?!”
“I thought you didn’t make it past being born and Joel didn’t know, kid! This isn’t fucking on us!” Tess snaps.
Joel looks like someone just told him they shot his dog, Ellie wants to have a panic attack, Tess looks like she’s actively having one, and all they need now to complete the picture is something to catch on fire.
When Ellie looks back at Joel - her fucking dad - he’s looking at her like she’s an alien.
“Ellie,” he says, and he sounds shattered, “I didn’t know.”
Tess’s hands are over her face. “They told me you were dead. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t know.”
“So you’re only just now realizing you have an alive kid?” Ellie asks, and she hates that her voice cracks.
Tess doesn’t move. “Yeah.”
Joel presses his knuckles against his forehead. “Fuck.”
Ellie doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
“I wouldn’t have left you if I knew.” Tess mumbles. “I was thirty-three, the world had ended, I hadn’t taken any of the supplements and shit, I went into labor at eight months, I was really fucking stressed, so I didn’t question you’d died-”
“And you never told me you were pregnant?!” Joel snaps.
“Like I said, I was stressed!”
“So you were just gon’ come home with a baby an’ be like ‘hey, we have a kid’-”
“Yes!”
“Tessa!”
Ellie wants to cry. She settles for shoving her - Tess’s? - knife in her pocket and smacking her hands against her head as hard as she can to rattle her brain enough to make it stop.
They keep shouting. Ellie resorts to punching like she used to when she was little. It sounds like gunshots in her skull and makes her ears ring.
“Hey!”
Hands are on her wrists, yanking her hands away from her head. “No!”
Joel’s hands are big, swallowing her wrists as he wrestles them away from her. Her hands don’t look like his, finer and less sturdy. She realizes her hands look like Tess’s. She tries to yank her hands away to hit herself again. He won’t let him.
“Hey! Look at me!” Joel snaps, crouching slightly.
When she obeys and looks up at him, he looks pissed, but also like she’s about to shatter.
“We don’t hit ourselves. Understand?” Joel says firmly. “You can be pissed, but it ain’t okay to hit yourself.”
And what the actual fuck is happening? Did Joel - Mr. Smartass-Fuck-You-No-Gun-I-Want-To-Shoot-You - just fucking-?
“Fuck you, asshole!” Ellie shouts, wrenching her hands away from him after much effort before wildly swinging her fists in his general direction. “You- don’t- tell- me- what- to- do- when- you- fucking- abandoned- me!”
“Ellie- hey! Hey! Calm down!” Joel says, catching her hands again, but he doesn’t snap like he has constantly since they met, angry but steady. “Listen to me, girl, I wouldn’t’a let ‘em take you if I had any idea you existed, y’hear me? I ain’t your enemy. Take a deep breath.”
Ellie refuses, continuing to try to hit him, even as hot, angry, useless tears that she hates well in her eyes. “You fucking left me!”
“Ellie, listen to me- listen to me.” Joel drops her hands and grabs the sides of her face, holding her still even as she starts to cry. He ignores her fists colliding with his chest even though it must hurt even a little. “Ellie, if I’d known I had a little girl, I would’ve searched til the end of the goddamn earth, y’hear me? I didn’t know you existed. I didn’t know.”
Ellie shakes her head, gnawing on the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t sob. “You’re lying.”
“I ain’t, I swear.” Joel says, thumbs rubbing her cheekbones. “I ain’t. I didn’t know.”
And he has to be lying, because she gave up, she understands that she’s not loved now, she’s not six anymore-
“Ellie, if I’d known I woulda burned down the world to get to you, alright?” Joel says, rubbing her cheeks again and catching some of the tears, and Ellie forces herself to stay angry.
“Oh, yeah? You would’ve just- somehow stopped smuggling and read me fucking bedtime stories and shit?” Ellie forces out, but it sounds wobbly and teary instead of angry.
Joel doesn’t fucking flinch, doesn’t even pause. “Yeah. I woulda taken care of you. Woulda figured somethin’ out. I wouldn’t have left you.”
Ellie stares at him, chest heaving, throat so thick she might be having an allergic reaction.
“Cariña, no te habría dejado por nada del mundo. Por favor, tienes que creerme.” Joel whispers, and she sees the tears in his eyes.
Ellie doesn’t understand what he said, but-
Joel didn’t know Tess was pregnant.
He couldn’t have abandoned her.
He might not have left her.
Ellie focuses her eyes back on Joel. He looks exhausted, brown eyes wide and soft and sad, and he has old-man wrinkles and graying hair and he looks like her. He has brown eyes and brown hair that looks like hers. His skin is a little bit darker than a tan, and Ellie’s skin is a tiny bit lighter, but looking-
Joel looks like her.
She fucking looks like him.
The anger drains out of Ellie - anger towards Joel, at least.
He’s her dad. He didn’t leave her.
He might not hate her.
“Do you hate me?” she asks, voice too young and cracking, and his face crumples.
“No, no, of course I don’t hate you.”
Ellie’s lungs stop working, and then her body decides to be shitty, because she starts crying harder and her knees give out. Joel catches her. He hugs her.
He has warm hugs.