Chapter Text
Ellie woke up around the time the sun was starting to rise. She didn’t really want to. Everything Joel had said the night before… None of it was even untrue. Everything he said was right. But… She thought… She didn’t even know what she thought. She thought he gave at least a tiny shit about her, and maybe he did. Clearly not enough of a shit.
There was a knock on the door. She didn’t know how long it had been. She made herself get up and walk to the door. Tommy was standing there, obviously. Some part of her wished it would be Joel. She didn’t even want an apology, exactly — what had he done wrong? — but she wanted to go with him. She didn’t want to go with Tommy.
“You all ready to go?” he asked.
She nodded. It was enough of the truth.
He started walking. So, she followed him. She grabbed her bag on the way out. She glanced in the rooms one last time as they left. Joel wasn’t in any of them. He must’ve already left. Where was he planning to go? Back to Boston? Maybe.
They walked the entire way to the stables in silence. They didn’t have anything to talk about. If it were Joel, she’d be teasing him or telling him shitty puns. There wasn’t anything fun to do with Tommy.
When they got to the stables, Ellie thought she was hallucinating. Joel was standing there, saddling a horse. She was pretty sure she was hallucinating, but then Joel waved at Tommy, and he waved back, so she wasn’t going crazy.
“What’re you doin’ here?” Tommy asked.
Joel glanced at the horse, then back at his brother. “Stealin’ a horse.”
“I would’ve just given one to you. What’re you still doin’ here, in Jackson.”
He looked over at Ellie. “Ya deserve a choice. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but if ya want, ya don’t have to go with Tommy. Ya can come with me.”
She picked up her bag so she could shove it into his chest then flip him off. Because, seriously, he did kinda deserve it for making her think he was abandoning her. He caught her bag, and handed it back to her before she had the chance to flip him off.
“Don’t be too hasty,” he said. “Ya don’t have to go with Tommy if ya don’t wanna, but I ain’t goin’ to that Firefly hospital.”
“What?” she asked. “Why not?”
“‘Cause the Fireflies are full of shit. I don’t care that you’re immune, most doctors died on outbreak day ‘cause they were at the hospitals with the infected.”
She just stared at him. The whole reason they even came this far was because of the Fireflies. And, Tommy, she guessed. But, if he was leaving Tommy again, what was the point? Was there even one? Was their journey just a fun little road trip? (It had been very far from fun.)
“I’m goin’ back to Bill and Frank’s,” he said when he noticed the confusion on her face. “They have… Had a bunch of stuff. Runnin’ water, food. Do ya… Do ya wanna come with?”
She continued to stare at him. “But… What about a cure? What if they really could make one?”
He shrugged. She understood. He didn’t care.
She handed him her backpack again. “Yeah,” she said. “I want to come with you.”
-
He told her to hold onto him while they were riding so she wouldn’t fall off of the horse. She thought he was full of shit until she actually almost fell off the horse. Then she held onto him without complaining.
“Did Bill and Frank live together?” Ellie asked sometime during the first day of their ride. She didn’t know how long it would take, but she thought she could probably convince him to answer at least a few of her questions.
He nodded. “Yeah. They, uh… They lived together.”
“Didn’t Bill hate people? I thought he said that in the letter. Why would he want to live with someone?”
“I don’t really know,” he said. “I guess Frank was the only person he liked.”
“Didn’t he like you?” she asked. “‘Cause, you were, like… Something. Friends or whatever?”
He shook his head. “Frank liked Tess. He liked Bill, and she liked me. That’s all it was. But, they… They were, like… Together, so.”
“Together?” Ellie repeated. “Like, they were gay?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
“Cool.” Her tone made it sound like she really thought it was cool, not just a casual cool. “What are we doing once we get to Bill and Frank’s?”
He shrugged. “Well, I am plannin’ to live there. You can do whatever you want.”
-
They had to stop once it got dark. It got dark faster than at the start of their journey. Winter did some really weird things. Ellie didn’t know why it was like that, and no one would explain it to her. She kinda doubted Joel knew, either, so she didn’t bother asking.
“So, Ellie…” Joel said once they were in a cave with a fire started. Fires were always nice. “‘Bout what happened in Jackson…”
Ah. There it was. She was wondering if they were just going to pretend none of it had ever happened. Based on the look on his face, she decided she would prefer pretending it had never happened.
She stood up. “I’m going to go… Do something,” she said. “I won’t go too far.” And then she walked away.
It was dumb. She didn’t know why she didn’t want to talk about it. It was just…. She knew he was right. She wasn’t his daughter, and he wasn’t her dad. And she was just cargo to him. But, he was the first adult who was ever really nice to her. (And, he was letting her go back to Bill and Frank’s with him.) She didn’t want to have to hear it again.
“You ‘right?” he asked when she got back.
She nodded.
“Ellie, I–”
“I’m going to go to sleep. I’m pretty tired. I can take second watch if you need.”
“You’re not takin’ second watch.”
She shrugged. “Well, then, go on being sleep deprived.”
She got her sleeping bag out and laid it down on the ground. Joel tried talking to her once more that evening, when she was half asleep, so she just pretended that she really was asleep. He didn’t try talking to her for the rest of the evening, which was probably good.
But, that left her with her thoughts. Most of the time, when she got to thinking about stuff she didn’t like thinking about, she was thinking about Riley. Or sometimes Sam. But, it was mostly Riley. It wasn’t Riley that night, though. It was kinda weird because she was thinking about Joel, and he was maybe about ten feet away from her. He wasn’t dead or anything. But, she was thinking about their fight in Jackson. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure why he changed his mind about ditching her, but she wasn’t going to bring it up in case he changed his mind back. She didn’t want him to leave her. It was kinda stupid, she thought, since she’d only known him a few months. They weren’t really anything to each other. Well, she was supposed to be cargo to him, but he gave up on delivering her to the Fireflies.
-
Joel watched Ellie as she slept. Not in a creepy way, of course. In a ‘I need to watch you to make sure no infected come and try to kill you’ way. Also, in a ‘I feel like I need to talk to you about something, but you kept blowing me off’ kind of way.
But, it was fine. He had been an asshole for trying to leave her, and she… Well, she had brought up Sarah and then he… Had he been an asshole after that? He felt like he had. But, he was just being truthful, wasn’t he? This arrangement was forced by Marlene and her stupid Fireflies. They weren’t really anything to each other.
Why did he feel like he was lying when he thought that?
She wasn’t his daughter. He wasn’t her father. Even she said so, when Henry had assumed otherwise. They weren’t friends, they weren’t family. They were barely anything to each other. They were just… He was just a broken man who couldn’t help but try to save everyone he got to know. Especially teenage girls. As if he’d ever make up for it.
He tried to think about Tommy before he start spiraling. It didn’t help much, but it helped a little, and that was enough. He had found him, and then he was leaving him again. It was safer at Bill and Frank’s. Besides, maybe he could find a way to communicate with Tommy there. If he tried really hard. He didn’t really know how a lot of the technology worked.
-
Ellie woke up about twenty minutes before Joel did. Surprise, surprise, he had fallen asleep. He did most nights. And, he never woke her up when he got tired. She told him to, multiple times, and he just wouldn’t listen. She didn’t even sleep some nights, but he refused to let her take watch. If she woke up and he was sleeping, she would take the gun and do it anyways.
“You fell asleep,” she said when he opened his eyes.
He groaned. “Ya gotta wake me up,” he muttered.
She shrugged. “If you fell asleep, you probably needed it. It was morning anyway.”
He thought she was doing what he told her not to just for the sake of it. If he were her, he’d probably do the same thing.
“How long will it take to get there?” she asked.
“Same amount it took to get from there to here,” he said. Even though her education was shitty, she should at least be able to figure that out.
She groaned. “That was fucking months, man.”
“Well, we have a horse this time.” That should be at least half the time. But, who knows? Maybe the snow will slow them down. Probably not by that much, though.
-
They talked a bit as they rode along the road. Not about what happened at Jackson. He tried to bring it up a few times, but he stopped himself and changed the subject before it actually got there. If she didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to make her.
Joel spotted a cabin in the distance. It looked abandoned, and when they got closer, it definitely was abandoned. He got off of the horse, and Ellie did the same without him having to tell her to. He probably would’ve told her to stay on the horse. Stay where she was safer.
“Be quiet,” he told her. “Looks abandoned enough, but–”
She nodded. “Got it.”
And, she was able to be quiet. She wasn’t usually, but when it mattered… He had to give her credit. She could do stuff when she actually wanted to.
“What are we looking for?” she asked quietly.
Nevermind.
“Anything,” he told her, considerably quieter than she did.
Hopefully they could find food. Tommy had given him a little bit, but it wasn’t enough to get them all the way to Bill and Frank’s. Or water. Water was easier to find because of the snow, and they could always just boil water from lakes, streams, ponds or rivers or whatever.
He checked the whole cabin twice – Ellie checked it one and a half times – and then sent Ellie back to the horse and checked again. Nothing. Literally nothing. Not even a spare blanket.
He was about to leave, but then he heard a sound. Like, a human sound. He knew he should leave it. Ignore it. It was probably an infected, anyway. But, he moved slowly towards where the noise was coming from. He opened the door to what looked like a bedroom. There was an infected tied to the bed. Huh. How had he missed it the first three times?
-
Ellie watched the house until Joel came out of it. Finally. Took the old man long enough.
Then… She noticed something behind him.
A person. With a knife.
“Joel!” she yelled, trying to be loud enough to get his attention.
He stopped walking and shot her a confused look. The person was still walking towards him.
“Behind you!”
He turned around and grabbed the person by the neck. She grabbed her gun out of her waistband and ran towards him. She got there just as he snapped the guy’s neck. She’d seen – and heard – him kill people before, but those were mostly infected, and she had never been this close. And…
The ‘knife’ the attacker had been holding was actually a half of a baseball bat, which was now stuck in Joel’s side.
He noticed it a second after she did. He pulled it out and tossed it on the ground.
“Joel…”
“Get back on the horse,” he said, walking towards said horse like he hadn’t just been stabbed.
She jogged to catch up with him. “Joel…” She glanced back at the baseball bat. It was bloodied. “I don’t think you’re supposed to take it out.” Out of all the things that was taught at FEDRA, she was pretty sure they mentioned not pulling stuff out of wounds.
“It’s fine.”
She caught up to him, grabbing his arm to stop him. “Joel…”
“It’s fine.” He shrugged out of her grip.
“We should go back to Jackson. Just for a bit. Get that checked out. That’s not good.”
“Ellie, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s not deep.”
-
He was fine. That what he kept telling himself until he fell of the horse.
Ellie jumped off the horse. What…. What was she supposed to do? Stop the bleeding? How was she supposed to stop the bleeding? She didn’t know how to stop the bleeding.
“Joel? Fuck, Joel, what do I do? Joel!? What the fuck do I do? You have to tell me!”
He didn’t answer her.