Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Absolutely not.”

“Ellie –”

“No.” Ellie plants her hands on her hips, glaring. “Put me with someone else.”

Tommy sighs, looking a fair amount pissed off himself. “There ain’t anyone else. Either take the schedule as is or don’t fuckin’ patrol at all.”

They both know that’s not an option.

Ellie’s gaze drops down to the wrinkled paper with the updated patrol schedule that had been stuck in her door this morning. Stuck in all patroller’s doors, if she had to guess, but Ellie was the only one who had all but beat down Tommy’s door to complain about it this morning.

Tuesday mornings - Miller, J./Williams, E. - northeast quadrant to Farmhouse 3

Her name was on there a few more times, twice more with his and once with Jesse, and just the sight of it this morning had set her blood to boiling. Once she’d read it over twice more with her heart in her throat, Ellie had balled the paper up and stomped across the street to Tommy’s house.

There’d been no surprise on his face when he’d opened the door to let her in, only resignation.

“You’re telling me,” Ellie begins again heatedly, “that you managed to avoid putting me on patrol with him for nearly two years, and yet now suddenly there’s no other options? It’s bullshit, Tommy, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here, but –”

“What I’m tryin’ to accomplish,” Tommy cuts in, his own anger ticking up noticeably, “is keepin’ the damn town safe. Tim is sick, Rocky took a fall from her horse and Doc benched her for two months. Javi’s wife just had a baby, and Ashley and Ezra still haven’t come back from their trip to the west. We’re short as hell on qualified patrollers without pullin’ too many people from other duties in town.”

Ellie just scoffs. “And putting him with me just happened to work out?”

Tommy’s eyes narrow. “Come with me.”

Ellie rolls her own eyes but follows him through his living room and down the hall. He and Maria keep an office here, she knows, splitting their time between it and the ones they have in the council building. 

There’s a desk for each of them on either side, a long table in the middle strewn with papers. Maps dot the walls, marked with pins and string. Ellie sees one of the entire state of Wyoming as well as some on a smaller scale, marked up with what she can only guess are the patrol routes.

Tommy makes his way around the table, picking up some papers and shifting them around in an order Ellie can’t quite make sense of. He spreads out one map across the surface and beckons her over to him.

“Here’s the area that needs coverin’,” he tells her, gesturing with one large hand. “About a hundred square miles coverin’ the town, the dam, the area in between, and a decent radius. Here,” he picks up another piece of paper and sets it on top of the map, “is our current list of available, fully-trained patrollers. And this,” another paper comes to rest next to the first, “is their schedule of other rotations in town, farming, cooking, greenhouses, and so on.”

Ellie looks between him and the pages uncertainly.

Tommy takes a step back, gesturing towards what he’s laid out in front of her. “You figure out a way to have you or Joel patrol with someone else those days.”

Warily, Ellie turns back to the papers he’s laid out in front of her, running her finger down the list of patrollers. For good measure she smoothes out the schedule she was given, looking over the list of names and the rotation schedule.

After two minutes, she turns to Tommy with a smirk. “Switch him with Ben on Tuesdays, and me with Rae on Fridays.”

Tommy doesn’t bother looking at any of the papers to see if her suggestions would work. He just maintains a neutral expression and says, “Look at it again.”

She bites back the retort she wants to make, about how he’s just annoyed she solved the problem he couldn’t, but she turns back obligingly. Runs her fingertip down the patrol schedule again and pauses, chewing her lower lip. “Oh. That puts Ben on three days in a row. Okay so switch him and Rae, although –” she glances again at the rotation schedule “– then Rae’s on patrol when she should be in the kitchens. Okay, so keep Rae on Fridays with him and then –”

Ellie swallows the frustrated noise she wants to make as she continues parsing the options. Every switch means having to shift someone somewhere else, or having people do consecutive patrols, something they do their best to avoid.

Ten minutes elapse in silence as Ellie glares down at the pages in front of her.

“Fine,” she admits bitterly, not turning back to look at Tommy. “I can’t find a solution.”

To his credit, Tommy doesn’t gloat, just steps back next to her and folds up the map, stacking the schedules on top of it. “At the end of the day,” he says slowly, “the safety of Jackson and its people will always be my top priority. I would not jeopardize that just to make you talk to Joel. And I expect you,” he levels her with a piercing look, “to patrol with him same as you would any other partner. You don’t have to make idle chitchat or anything, but you will watch his back out there, Ellie Williams. You understand me?”

Ellie recoils, crossing her arms over her stomach. “What, you think I’m so pissed at him that I’d leave him to die or something?”

The fierceness of Tommy’s expression lessens, just a bit. “If I thought that, I’d upend the entirety of Jackson’s systems to keep you from patrollin’ with him. I just mean,” he reaches forward to squeeze her bicep gently, “that I don’t want you ignorin’ his warnings or not payin’ as much attention as you usually would, just because it’s Joel with you. Don’t get all in your head about it.”

Ellie nods, her throat tight. Tommy watches her carefully for a second, seemingly searching for any crack, but she just stares back at him. Finally, he nods too.

“See you at dinner.”

It’s a dismissal, his attention already back on the stack of papers in front of him. He looks exhausted, Ellie realizes, the lines around his eyes deeper, the shadows of his face more pronounced. Guilt snarls in her gut for the way she reacted, showing up on his doorstep first thing in the morning when he’s clearly already got a lot on his plate.

The apology sits heavy in her chest, unspoken.

Ellie lets herself out of the house and walks back across the street, more slowly than she had just half an hour earlier. The temperature is already rising, the July sun peeking over the Tetons and making sweat bead along the back of her neck. She’s even more grateful that she’d burnt her scars off a couple years back, covering them with a tattoo. No more time spent sweating uncomfortably in long sleeves, wondering if this was gonna be the time she expired from heatstroke.

There’s movement from the corner of her eye as she starts to walk around the side of the house, and Ellie’s head turns to catch sight of the front door opening, shaggy gray hair and broad shoulders emerging out onto the porch. He doesn’t seem to notice her, intent on shutting the door behind him and making his way down the porch steps, paper in hand.

If Ellie had to guess, he’s on his way over to his brother’s to raise his own issue with the patrol schedule.

“Joel.” His name slips from her without thought, just the utterance of it stinging her chest.

He jerks to a stop, turning to look at her in surprise. Ellie can’t blame him, she’s barely said a word to him in almost two years.

Ellie tilts her head towards Tommy’s house, blowing out a breath. “Don’t bother.”

He looks between her and the house across the street, hands fidgeting with the paper he holds. “There oughta be another option. You shouldn’t –” He cuts himself off, but Ellie knows what he was gonna say. Years of distance don’t mean that she doesn’t still know him as well as she used to.

You shouldn’t have to be around me if you don’t want to.

And as much as it pains her - physically, at times - Ellie can give him credit for that, at least. She’d told him they were done, whatever pseudo-familial relationship they’d established at an end, and he had honored that. He hadn’t pushed, hadn’t tried to get her to forgive him.

His easy acceptance had hurt as much as it had relieved her.

Ellie shakes her head, dropping her gaze to his boots. “It’s fine. There’s no other options, and Tommy’s stressed enough. Plus,” she laughs without humor, “Jackson comes first. Communism, or whatever, right?”

He huffs out what almost sounds like a laugh, tinged with disbelief. “Yeah, somethin’ like that. If you’re sure then.”

Ellie forces her eyes up to meet his, steels herself just a little. “I’m sure.” She’s proud of the way it comes out without wavering.

“Alright.” He folds the paper up again, tucks it in his back pocket, and gives her a hesitant nod. “See you tomorrow then.”

She swallows, nods back. “See you tomorrow.”

Her feet start to move again, taking her around the side of his house and to her own home. She’s painfully aware of the way he stands there and watches her until she’s out of sight.

–-

Ellie doesn’t sleep well that night, laying back on her bed with her gaze fixed on the ceiling. Every time she tries to shut her eyes, her traitorous mind provides her with flash after flash of him.

Delirious laughter in Kansas City, the smug look on his face when teaching her how to shoot. The entire trip to the museum plays in her head like a movie, the soft rumble of his laughter following her from exhibit to exhibit up to the space capsule.

Ellie squeezes her eyes shut, fighting back the press of tears. Fucking stupid, really, to be getting any kind of emotional over something that’s happened years ago at this point, something she’s better off forgetting.

It’s just hard to forget the best day of your life.

She opens her eyes again, scrubbing at them hastily and rolling onto her side. She’s gotta get to sleep, she can’t show up for patrol tomorrow any less than completely ready to go. Dark circles under her eyes will only invite questions, and that’s the last goddamn thing she wants.

Well, the last thing she wants is to be going on patrol with him, but getting interrogated about her sleeping habits isn’t far behind.

Ellie shuts her eyes again, inhaling and exhaling slowly through her nose. This time, when a memory from years ago threatens to surface, Ellie forces it back and replaces it with an image of the look on his face up on that hill. When she’d asked him what happened, and he had lied right to her face.

“I swear.”

The sentence still feels like a bruise, one she pokes at far more often than she would ever admit to. And it echoes in her ears as she finally drifts off to an uneasy sleep.

–-

He’s already at the stables when Ellie gets there the next morning, rifle on her back and pistol on her hip. Old Beardy is hooked up to the crossties, and Ellie pats his nose as she walks past towards Shimmer’s stall. She doesn’t say anything to the man on the other side of the horse, and he doesn’t greet her either.

“Hey girl,” Ellie says gently, letting herself into Shimmer’s stall. The horse whickers gently, butting her nose against Ellie’s shoulder as she grabs the halter from the hook on the wall and loops it over Shimmer’s head.

The tack - including Ellie’s preferred saddle and blanket - are waiting on another stall door when she leads Shimmer out, and she shoots a look over towards Old Beardy. Neither horse nor rider are looking in her direction, and Ellie decides to just swallow down the I don’t need your help that had been bubbling at the back of her throat. Better to not start them off with a fight before they’ve even left the town.

Old Beardy gets led out into the sunlight, leaving Ellie alone to finish tacking up Shimmer. She does it quickly, settling the blanket and saddle in place, checking and adjusting the girth strap and the stirrups. Once the bridle’s on, Ellie loops the reins forward and clicks her tongue. Shimmer follows her outside easily, hoofbeats ringing on the stable floor.

Tommy’s already out there when Ellie emerges and leads her horse over to the mounting block by the side of the building. Both men’s gazes land on her, their conversation cutting off almost immediately - and that makes nausea prickle in Ellie’s gut - before Tommy reaches up to clap a hand on his brother’s arm and then stride over to her.

“Mornin’,” he says warily, eyes roaming over her as though to make sure she’s properly outfitted. Like she hasn’t done this nearly a hundred times before.

Ellie keeps her voice level as she replies, “Morning.”

“All set?”

“All set,” Ellie confirms. She pointedly keeps her gaze on Tommy even as she sees the other horse start to move, Old Beardy pawing lightly at the ground.

Tommy looks back over his shoulder briefly, sharing some moment of wordless communication with his brother, before he turns back to her. “Remember what I said, alright?”

Ellie’s eyes flick automatically over to her patrol partner. He’s not looking at them, instead occupied with running a hand over the neck of his horse, and Ellie looks back to Tommy.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Tommy just gives a little shake of his head - one Ellie knows means he’s gonna do nothing but worry about it till they’re back in four or so hours - but he doesn’t say anything else on the matter, just pats her knee gently.

“Safe patrol then.”

Ellie tips her head in response, nudging Shimmer with her heels until she shifts into motion. Her rolling gait is as familiar to Ellie as anything in Jackson, and the sensation of it soothes some of the tension that had lodged itself between her shoulder blades when she’d walked into the stables.

Old Beardy follows suit, some final murmured words passing between Tommy and his brother before silence falls.

Ellie lets him go in front as they head out the East Gate, keeping her gaze focused on the swishing tail of the horse in front of her as they begin a familiar path away from Jackson.

He doesn’t try to talk to her, which Ellie appreciates, even once they’re a mile or so out from Jackson and the path widens enough to allow Shimmer to draw alongside Old Beardy. He doesn’t even really try to look at her, other than when he is scanning the area around them and checks back to make sure she’s still there. Rifle strapped to his back, pistol on his waist, head on a swivel.

Just like he was when Ellie met him.

Rifle slung over his shoulder, revolver on his hip, an uneven stride when he walked that spoke to some sort of problem with one of his knees. Not meeting her gaze, barely answering her questions, seemingly unbothered by the death of his…whatever Tess had been to him. Ellie hadn’t really slept well in the woods, on edge with just a grown ass man around her. But he barely spoke to her, did his best not to acknowledge her presence until she pestered him with questions.

“You know, seeing as it’s just the two of us, I was thinking I should pro–”

“No.”

She blinks the memory away, refocuses on the area around them instead. They’re about a quarter of the way into their route, the trees surrounding Jackson proper thinning a bit and giving way to fields. This area’s been quiet for some time - most of their trouble seems to come from the south recently - but Ellie doesn’t relax. She keeps her attention on the area around them, checking for any signs of anything out of the ordinary.

There’s nothing though, just a few bird calls echoing down to them, the muffled sounds of the horses’ hooves. It’s a silence Ellie isn’t used to on patrol. Her and Jesse talk each other’s ears off, probably more than they should, and while she’s not as close to the others she’s patrolled with except Dina, she’s used to there being something in the way of conversation.

But he’s not talking, probably because he’s still stewing in the guilt of his presence being forced on her even if it wasn’t his doing. And if he’s not, Ellie’s not going to either.

Even if the quiet is making her a little crazy.

They reach the outpost about two hours after leaving Jackson, more or less on schedule. The sun has started beating down on them, no clouds in the sky to give them respite, and Ellie finds herself already wishing for the cooling air of fall.

They slide off their horses in unison, drawing their pistols in almost synchronous moves that simultaneously makes Ellie want to laugh and throw up. She holsters hers again, opting instead to pull her rifle from her back and brace it against her shoulder.

“Wide right. You’re flinching.”

“The target’s too small.”

“I’ll go in first.” His voice in the present pulls Ellie from the past, and she blinks up at him. He looks down at her, brow furrowed in confusion.

“Sounds good,” she manages, clearing her throat and gesturing for him to lead the way. She keeps her ears peeled for anything she thinks he might not hear, keeping herself to his right out of habit.

The outpost is clear, undisturbed but for the partly dusted-over footprints of the last patrollers to come through. Ellie leaves him to fill out the log while she keeps an eye on their surroundings. She’s itching to be back on Shimmer, to be heading back to Jackson, to be locked in her garage apartment, alone.

It’s been a handful of hours on patrol with him, and already Ellie wants to crawl out of her skin. She doesn’t know how in the fuck she’s gonna get through the next couple months like this.

“All set.”

Ellie glances back at him, catches sight of him tucking the log book back under the loose floorboard. Something uncertain flickers over his face when he stands and catches her still watching him, there and gone before Ellie can put a name to it.

“Ready to get goin’?” It’s in his voice too, whatever that unfamiliar, unsure edge is, and Ellie just gives him a tight nod in response. She can’t dwell on it - his feelings and issues are none of her concern anymore - so she just steps out of the small house, his footsteps following her after a pause.

They mount their horses in silence, both keeping watch for any shift in the landscape around them. Heat notwithstanding, it’s really a beautiful day, and if it weren’t for the fact that she’s got enough memories of him fighting their way to the front of her mind, Ellie would go for a swim when they got back to Jackson.

But she doesn’t think she can handle that after these hours spent in close proximity to the person who taught her how.

He lets her take the lead this time, the two of them following the well-worn trail away from the rundown house and back towards the shade of the woods. It’s another two hours or so back to Jackson from here, following a meandering path through the woods, stopping at another outpost about an hour away and checking at the overlook for any signs of Infected in the valley below.

It’s easier, without him right in front of her, to pretend like she’s on any other patrol with any other person, to pretend like the hoofbeats behind her belong to any horse other than Old Beardy. The tension bleeds from her shoulders as she sucks in one breath, then another, every step taking them closer to home.

–-

The second half of patrol passes the same as the first - quietly - and before Ellie knows it she’s waving the all clear signal flag over her head as they approach Jackson’s walls again.

She’s not the least bit surprised to see Tommy just inside the gates, waiting for them with the air of one who’s been pacing a hole in the dirt the whole time they were gone.

Ellie doesn’t dismount, more than ready to take Shimmer to the stables and get her put away so that she’s one step closer to a hot shower and some desperately needed alone time. But Tommy hooks his fingers through the side of Shimmer’s bridle and walks alongside, peering up at her before glancing back at his brother.

“Everythin’ go alright?”

“Yup,” Ellie tells him. “No signs of anything this time, people or Infected.”

“Good,” Tommy replies, looking over his shoulder again, “that’s…good.”

“It is,” Ellie agrees. She doesn’t say anything else, chewing the inside of her cheek as she watches Tommy. He keeps walking, gaze flicking back and forth between her and the rider behind her, and she can tell he’s just bursting with the desire to ask how it went between them .

He may not have deliberately designed the patrol roster to put them together, but Ellie knows that Tommy wouldn’t be the least bit upset if it still wound up helping to patch things over between them. It makes the smallest flicker of anger spark to life in her stomach, knowing how badly Tommy wants her to make up with his brother, how badly Maria probably wants it too. It probably has more to do with him than with her, but it still feels like they’re refusing to accept her decision, refusing to recognize why she cut him off to begin with.

Feels like another choice another Miller is ready and willing to make for her, whether she wants it or not.

Tommy lets go of Shimmer’s bridle, turning to wait for his brother, and Ellie nudges the horse with her heels to make her move faster, putting some space between her and the Millers.

Untacking and brushing Shimmer is a blur - she finishes even before Old Beardy is brought in - and Ellie practically jogs back home, regardless of the grumble in her stomach and the knowledge that lunch is being served in the hall. She just feels like she’s not gonna be able to breathe until she’s in her own place, alone, and washes patrol off of her.

There’s no sign of movement from his house as Ellie walks around the side of it and exhales in relief at the sight of her own. A hot shower, maybe some time drawing, and she’ll feel set to rights again.

Or so she hopes.

–-

It shouldn’t be bothering her this much, right?

Ellie’s in a familiar position, laying on her back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Fingers lacing and unlacing across her stomach in a nervous habit she doesn’t know how to break. It’s dark out - well past midnight at this point - but she’d woken from a fitful sleep nearly an hour ago and found herself unable to drift off again, the same question rebounding in her mind over and over again.

It shouldn’t be bothering her this much, right?

It’s been just under two years since she found out the truth and walked away from him, and since then they’ve had almost no contact. They alternate time spent with Tommy and Maria and TJ - which Tommy had once said made him feel like a kid in the middle of a divorce - and their duties around Jackson almost never line up with each other.

But it’s a small commune, so they were still bound to run into each other here and there - and they did - or be at the same events. Ellie had thought that, given the amount of time that had passed, she’d put it all behind her. At least enough to manage patrol with him.

Which means that it shouldn’t be bothering her this much, right?

Except, as she still finds herself unable to sleep, Ellie’s forced to acknowledge that it is bothering her. She doesn’t want to look too much into what it is that keeps nudging at her - she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be ready for that - but she knows that being forced to go on patrol with him is stirring up things she had thought long buried.

Ellie sighs, closing her eyes and breathing through her nose to try to force her mind to calm down. She needs to sleep, she needs to get herself to rest even if she’s wound tight. She’s facing at least a couple more months of patrol with him, she can’t fall to pieces three or four times a week because of it.

It’s no use - Ellie sits up with a groan of frustration, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“Fuck.”

She’s not going to think about it. She’s not going to deal with it. Not now, anyways.

What she’s going to do is crack the window for some fresh air, make some tea, and hope it lulls her back to sleep.

The moonlight’s bright enough, even through the trees and her curtains, that Ellie doesn’t bother turning on her lamp before crawling to the other side of her bed and pushing the window open just a bit. The night air is cool against her skin, and she breathes it in for a moment before padding over to her little kitchenette.

Maria had gifted her a good teakettle and large assortment of tea - courtesy of their greenhouses and some finds on patrol - for her last birthday, and Ellie sets the kettle on her hotplate before sifting through her options.

She settles on one with a bear in a nightcap on the box, the words Sleepytime Mint in fading letters. Maybe this’ll do the trick. Hopefully.

The kettle is whistling in no time, and Ellie pours the hot water before shutting off the hotplate. She’d gotten entirely too many lectures about leaving it on and burning the place down when she’d first moved in here, entirely too many times that Joel –

Ellie clears her throat, shoving back yet another useless memory, and dumps a liberal helping of honey into her tea before carrying it back across to her bed. It’s too hot to drink right away, so she props herself against the headboard, blanket draped over her legs, and just holds it.

The moon has shifted behind the trees, leaving her place shrouded in darkness other than the faint illumination of someone's porch light. Her gaze drifts out the window, the night air still brushing lazy fingers over her, resting unfocused on the stillness outside, the shadows cast by the trees, the –

The outline of someone sitting on the back porch that faces her window.

It’s a silhouette that Ellie knows all too well, even in darkness, and she goes still, not even daring to lift her tea to her lips in case he can spot the movement and realize she’s awake too. Who knows, maybe the fact that they made it through patrol today would make him bold enough to come try to talk to her.

Maybe she would let him.

Ellie chases the thought away with a sip of still-too-hot tea that scalds her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and burns all the way down her chest.

Her movement doesn’t elicit any type of response or reaction, and Ellie can only assume that in the dark, without the back porch light on, and him being somewhere north of sixty, he can’t see her.

And, Ellie realizes, he’s focused on something else entirely.

His head is bent down, an arm outstretched - Ellie squints, trying to make out more than just a dark shape in the shadows. His other arm moves, and the echoes of guitar strings float through her window and slap her in the face. The tea shakes in her hands, hot liquid threatening to spill over the rim of the cup, and Ellie hastily sets it on the nightstand next to her.

More soft strumming reaches her - her hands ball into fists on top of her comforter - but she makes no move to close the window and shut the sound out. It’s not any tune Ellie recognizes, though that doesn’t really mean much considering how much more music he knows about than her. But it sounds - Ellie strains her ears a little - like he’s not really playing so much as tuning it, the sound starting and stopping regularly, the shadow of him fidgeting with the neck of the guitar.

She wonders if it’s one of the ones he’s taken to making - some days it seems like she can’t go more than a block without seeing someone on their front porch strumming on a Joel Miller-made guitar.

Her eyes slip from the window to the corner of her room, her own guitar resting there on its stand. It’s not one he’d made, it’s one he’d found and cleaned up for her, but for the way it ached when she played it sometimes he may as well have crafted it with his own hands.

The tuning sounds come to a stop, gradually being replaced with more regular strumming, something more melodic. Still nothing she recognizes, but the rhythm is nice, soothing, and Ellie reaches over with steadier hands to pick up her mug and sip from it.

It feels weird to be sitting here in the dark, listening to him play guitar on his back porch like he can’t sleep either. Ellie swallows the rest of her tea, replacing the mug on the nightstand. She keeps her eyes focused inside, refusing to let them drift out the window again, as she sits in the cloaked darkness of her home.

Some combination of things - maybe the tea, maybe the fresh air, maybe the long day catching up to her - is finally working on Ellie, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier. She gives in and slips down so she’s lying flat again, curled on her side towards the open window. The soft chords are still floating in, brushing across her skin and making her shiver.

A flicker of movement catches her attention just before her eyes can fall fully shut, and Ellie pries them open again, trying to track it in the gloom.

There - on one of the panes of her window. Ellie squints, tilting her head and trying to focus against the sleep finally tugging at her.

A moth has made it in through her open window, settling itself against the glass with the occasional gentle flap of its wings.

Ellie blinks, contemplating for a brief second getting up and chasing it outside, closing the window so no others can come in either.

She slips into slumber before the thought is complete.

–-

Summer bleeds into fall, the temperatures during the day finally starting to taper off to something more cool and bearable. The trees shift from green to shades of orange and gold, something Ellie’s still not quite used to even after years. There hadn’t been a whole lot of trees left in the QZ, and none close enough to the perimeter for Ellie to see them from her shitty military school window.

So the way the sunlight flickers through color-changed leaves now, as Shimmer follows Old Beardy back towards Jackson’s walls, still brings a faint smile to her lips.

Ellie leaves her patrol partner to handle the signal flags, her arms still aching - today’s patrol had involved a tussle with a man who’d tried to sneak up on them near their second outpost. He’d gotten the drop on her - though Ellie had still gotten in one good hit to his stomach - and twisted her arm nearly out of its socket in an effort to get her to drop her gun. She’d yelled - Joel had come running from the back of the barn - and he’d kicked the guy in the ribs to knock him off her before putting a bullet through his skull.

Ellie hadn’t missed the way his face had been sheet-white as he’d helped her to her feet, the way his hands had fluttered uselessly at his side like he’d been fighting the urge to check her over. It had - like so many other things over the months of patrolling together - brought back another round of flashes from their time traveling across the country together. Ellie was almost used to the memories resurfacing even at the most inopportune times, they rarely caught her off guard anymore.

But that didn’t mean she enjoyed them. Some of them - the silly conversations around fires, his snapping at her for taking watch when he fell asleep, him ranking her puns - made it really goddamn hard to be mad at him. She could stare at the back of his head and call up all the anger of finding out he’d killed the Fireflies and taken her from the hospital, and then that anger would be eroded - just a bit - as soon as she had a flash of him bandaging her hand or passing her the bigger piece of rabbit despite his stomach audibly growling.

The gates in front of them yawn open, Tommy waiting at the front as Ellie knew he would be. He still waited, every time, as if he was hoping he’d be greeted with the sight of them returning with laughter and words flowing between them instead of the usual silence.

Today, though, Ellie knows he’s waiting because they’re more than an hour late coming back.

Unlike previous times, they both stop and slide off their horses in front of him, Ellie doing so with a wince. Her ribs are aching something fierce too, and her upper back, from the way that lunatic had tackled her to the ground.

Both men see the grimace, both of them turned towards her in concern. Tommy steps a little closer than his brother does, the other man opting to hang back with his hands in his pockets.

“Y’alright?”

Ellie keeps a loose hold on Shimmer’s reins, breathing through the discomfort. “Yeah, I’m fine. There was a man, in the barn by Cache Creek, and he got the drop on me. Tackled me, twisted my arm. Joel shot him, so he’s dead.”

Tommy’s gaze darts back and forth between the two of them anxiously. “Was he alone?”

“Far as we could tell,” his brother answers, still watching the way Ellie’s moving. “Nobody came when I shot him, and we waited a bit, checked the area pretty thoroughly but didn’t see signs of anyone else.”

Tommy nods, rubbing a hand over his chin. “Alright well, I’ll make sure Maria and the council are aware, and we might see about upping patrols for that area for a couple weeks.” He exhales, reaching over to clap a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You two oughta head home, rest up. I’ll have someone take care of your horses.”

“That’s not –”

“I can –”

He speaks at the same time as her, shooting her an apologetic glance. “I can take care of the horses. Ellie oughta get to the clinic.”

She waves off his words, ignoring the way it makes her shoulder twinge. “I’m fine, I’m just gonna have some bruises.”

“Your ribs though, you oughta get those checked, just in case.”

“It’s fine,” Ellie bites out, the anger bubbling to the surface again easily. It’s not his place to be worried about her and her ribs, not anymore, and a few months on patrol together don’t fucking change that. “I know what broken and cracked ribs feel like, and these are just bruised.”

She sees the effect her words have on him, the way his mind probably goes straight to the same place hers did.

A boot, connecting with her torso, knocking the air out of her as the flames nearby grow higher.

Calloused hands, feeling gently along her ribs, pressing, a whispered “I know, I’m sorry,” when the pain makes her cry out.

Snow packed in a dirty flannel, held against her side as she stares unseeing, watching him build them a fire and warm up canned vegetables that she can barely eat.

Her head resting on his thigh, fingertips running carefully through her hair and avoiding the lump there.

Ellie blinks, and Joel and Tommy are standing in front of her again, both of them watching her worriedly.

“I’m gonna go get dinner,” she says brusquely, thrusting the reins in her hands into Tommy’s chest. She leaves them without another word, can feel both of their stares following her as she marches down the street towards the hall, hands clenched in fists in her jacket pockets.

Dina’s at the table with Jesse when Ellie walks in, both of them waving her over. She slumps into the chair in relief, gratefully accepting the plate pushed towards her that’s loaded with chicken and potatoes.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

“You were supposed to be back awhile ago,” Dina says, watching as Ellie shovels half the food into her mouth. She can practically hear him in her head - slow down before you choke, it ain’t goin’ anywhere - and she sucks in a breath, trying to will it away.

Ellie swallows, chasing the food with a big gulp of water. “Got held up at the barn.” When Dina and Jesse’s eyes go wide, she elaborates around a much smaller bite of potato. “Guy came out of nowhere, snuck up on me. Joel took care of him though, and I’m fine, just a little banged up.”

Something like awe sparks to life in Jesse’s eyes, an expression not unfamiliar when his idol is mentioned. He’s got something of a hero worship thing going on for Joel, something Ellie’s tried to disabuse him of repeatedly over the years without luck. “I wish I got to patrol with him,” he says reverently, and briefly Ellie contemplates kicking him in the shin under the table.

“Take my slot with him,” she says bitterly in response. She knows he can’t though, she’s looked over Tommy’s patrol schedule enough times to know that for sure. It had helped since Javi had been added back to the rotation again, and now Ellie only patrolled with Joel twice a week instead of three times, but it still wasn’t enough wiggle room to set her free of him altogether.

Dina and Jess share a loaded look between the two of them, one Ellie knows doesn’t bode well for her, and she sighs, chewing on her last bite of chicken. There’s apple pie tonight, she notes absently, eyeing the slices still waiting to be claimed over on the counter. Maybe she ought to go grab one now, before her two best friends start in on whatever it is they’re gearing up to talk to her about.

“Ellie,” Dina says slowly, and Ellie sighs. Missed her chance.

“Dina,” she replies flatly, sitting back and crossing her arms.

She glances over at Jesse again before turning to face Ellie more fully. Her knee presses into the outside of Ellie’s thigh, and she does her absolute best to ignore the reaction this elicits in her stomach, that stupid swooping feeling she’s constantly getting around Dina these days. She never can tell if she and Jesse are together or not, and even if they aren’t now , it’s not like they won’t be again soon.

Plus Ellie knows Dina would never look at her that way so…better to just stuff those feelings down along with all the rest of them.

“We’ve been wondering how things have been going with you and Joel,” Dina says carefully, her entire body tensed ever so slightly like she’s bracing for impact. “You haven’t really said how the patrols have been, one way or the other, and we just didn’t know…” she trails off, looking over at Jesse pleadingly.

“We didn’t know if you’d given any more thought to forgiving him for whatever it was he did,” Jesse finishes, flinching a little at the glare Ellie aims his way. “Look, you never really told us what it was he did, you just cut off contact with him, and –”

“I told you,” Ellie interrupts, her face feeling hot. She has to fight to keep her voice down, not wanting the entire rest of the town to know about this discussion. She and Joel had already been the topic of a lot of gossip, first when they’d arrived, and then when they’d noticeably become estranged. “I told you, he made an important choice for me, one he had no right to make and one he knew I wouldn’t have wanted, and then he lied to me about it for years.”

“Ellie,” Jesse says patiently. “You know that’s a vague as fuck explanation, I know you do. You never told us what the choice was or why he made it. So…sue us for being curious and hoping that maybe the two of you are mending things.”

“There’s no –” Ellie cuts herself off, annoyed by the way it feels like a sob is winding its way up her throat “– there’s no mending things with him. There’s no moving past what he did. That’s all you fucking need to know.”

She moves to stand, stopping only when Dina reaches over and grabs her wrist gently. “Ellie, we’re on your side here, I swear.”

“Doesn’t fucking feel like it,” Ellie mutters resentfully.

“It’s just…” Another look passes between Dina and Jesse, and Ellie wishes they would just stop doing that . “You’ve been struggling since you and Joel started patrolling together, we can tell. Maybe you don’t want to admit it, but…you’re tired, you look like you’re barely sleeping, you’re a lot quicker to snap. Just…maybe if you tried actually letting go of this shit with Joel instead of just stuffing it down, you’d be able to actually move on with your life.”

Ellie sits there, stunned, staring between her two best friends. She knows they mean well, knows they’re just trying to do what they think is best for her, but it still feels too much like betrayal, too much like they’re trying to get her to forgive someone she told them she could never forgive.

But they’re sitting there with their dumb hopeful faces staring back at her, and Ellie swallows the resentful words.

“I can’t,” is all she manages instead. “I don’t expect you guys to understand, but I can’t. There’s not…I don’t see a way where I can ever move past what he did.”

Their faces fall, which Ellie had anticipated, and she pushes to her feet again. Doesn’t let Dina stop her this time, even as the other girl tries.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Ellie mumbles, stepping around the table. The apple pie catches her eye again but her remaining appetite has vanished, nausea curdling in her gut, and Ellie opts to just leave instead.

Tommy and his brother are coming inside just as she’s leaving, and Ellie skates past them without a word, even as she sees Tommy reaching for her. She thinks she hears a gentle leave her from the other man, which only serves to amp up her anger a bit. No right, he’s got no fucking right, Ellie thinks as she stomps back towards home. No right to be concerned about her, no right to tell others to leave her be, no right to have any place in her life anymore.

And yet she seems to be fucking stuck with him.

Ellie slams her door behind her, sinking down onto her futon with her head in her hands. She’s real tired of this, real tired of all of this.

She just doesn’t want to have to look Joel Miller in the face every goddamn day anymore.

–-

“Elllieee…”

She gasps, the air hot and dry, the flames crackling around her.

He can’t see her, but she can’t move anyways, sprawled on the floor, her chest feeling like an anvil is pressing down on it.

“Elllieee…”

Her brain is screaming at her to run, to pick up the knife and run, to get to the cleaver before he does, and to run.

Her body won’t listen and then he rounds a corner, lips tilting up in a maniacal grin that doesn’t reach his eyes as he spots her, and then he’s on her, kneeling, hands pressed around her throat, the heat of the room overpowering, his face looming closer and closer –

Ellie bolts upright in bed, chest heaving. Sweat drenches her chest and back, coats her legs, even in the relative coolness of her apartment, and she tosses the blankets off her, frustrated when they tangle around her legs.

The room feels too small, the air still too warm, and Ellie stumbles from the bed and bolts for the front door, throwing it open and stepping out next to her small wood pile. The cold slaps at her, steals the air from her lungs and immediately bites at her toes, but she sucks in a deep breath of it anyways.

It chases off the last of the heat, the last of the ghost weight pressing down on her abdomen, and Ellie presses a trembling hand to her stomach.

“Fuck.” She whispers, tilting her head back to the sky.

“Ellie?” The back porch light flicks on, startling her, and she turns her head to see him standing there, guitar in hand.

Goddamnit.

“Sorry,” she mutters, already turning to go back inside.

“You okay?”

The question is hesitant, offered to the night air like he knows she’s not gonna answer it. Ellie turns her head to look at him. He’s an outline, the porch light behind him casting his face into shadow, but he hasn’t moved. The guitar hangs, almost forgotten, at his side, and Ellie wonders distantly if he had been coming out to play just then, or if he’d already been out for awhile.

It wouldn’t be the first time - or even the fifth time - that he would have spent part of his night out on his porch, tuning and playing a guitar in the dark.

Ellie would know, she’s spent all those nights wide awake and listening, almost paralyzed in her bed until the strumming sends her off to sleep.

Joel’s still watching her - and while she can’t see his face, Ellie knows the exact expression of watchfulness and worry that’s probably gracing it right now - and she sighs. She doesn’t have to answer him, knows he’s probably just expecting her to turn and walk back into her apartment without another word to him.

So it surprises her - and him, if the way he moves like a startled animal is any indicator - when she turns back to face the house, both arms wrapped around her stomach.

“Nightmare.”

He shifts his weight a little, like he’s debating walking to the porch railing. He stays where he is though, by the door and the light. “Sorry to hear that.” The words are awkward on his tongue, and Ellie can tell it’s because he wasn’t expecting her to speak to him, doesn’t know what he can say to her in response without pushing her back inside.

She hates how well she still knows him.

Ellie waves a hand, taking a step backward. “It’s fine, just needed the fresh air. Didn’t mean to interrupt you.” Another step backward, her heart still pounding in her chest. “Good night,” she adds lamely.

She barely hears his answering good night across the yard before she’s shutting the door behind her, stumbling over to her bathroom to splash some water on her face.

Her room is dark when she comes back out, the back porch light extinguished, and Ellie can’t help peering out the window into the darkness.

The silhouette of him is gone, the back porch still and silent, and Ellie hates the way something about this disappoints her. She cracks the window anyways, hoping that the cold night air will keep any further dreams of a room on fire at bay, and then burrows back under her covers.

She’s just drifting off when she hears the door open and close again, and the lulling sounds of guitar strings float through her window.

–-

Ellie doesn’t see him until their next patrol, which relieves her. She’d been a little afraid that that one nighttime interaction would make him think he could approach her, talk to her, try to bridge the chasm between them.

Instead it seems to have made him vanish altogether, which lifts a weight from her shoulders even as it makes her chest ache.

Ellie spends her day off tucked away inside her home, curled up on her couch with a sketchbook. Her pencil traces the lines and ridges of the Tetons, the shadows that fall under Shimmer’s head, the way Dina looks when she’s laughing.

In a moment of weakness, Ellie lets herself flip to the back of her book, to where the half-finished sketch of a giraffe in the middle of a city awaits her. Two hands stretch up towards its nose, one small and faintly shaded in, the other attached to a wrist adorned with a broken watch. She’d started the sketch over a year ago, had worked on it in fits and starts since.

She wasn’t sure if having a memory of that day on paper was helping her or hurting her, but now she just absently sketched a few more lines into it, traced the band of Joel’s watch and emphasized one of the cracks in the glass face without thought.

Her mind floats back to Dina and Jesse’s words from the day before. Wanting her to try to forgive him, wanting her to try to be less mad at him.

Ellie scoffs, the sound echoing through her home. Forgive him, for saving her life when she hadn’t asked for it to be saved. Forgive him, for keeping the world the screwed up mess that it was instead of letting her immunity be put to good use.

Forgive him, for letting the world burn so that Ellie could live.

She didn’t know how to do that. The anger at him was all she had anymore, all she could ever have.

The pencil slips from her fingers, her hand cramping, and Ellie closes the sketchbook with a sigh. Her head lolls back to rest on the back of the couch, eyes slipping shut.

Forgive him.

Ellie doesn’t know if she ever could, or if she would ever want to try.

For now though, she just needs their time as patrol partners to come to an end.

–-

He’s in the stables before her two days later, Shimmer’s tack already set out and waiting, Old Beardy almost ready to go. He gives her a nod in greeting when she comes in but doesn’t otherwise try to speak to her.

Ellie hates how that part of it bothers her, the way he just went along with her edict. She’d kind of always thought, in the back of her head, that one day he’d get up the nerve to approach her. That he would take the initiative in trying to mend things. He was the one who had fucked up, after all, this was all his mess.

But he had just stayed at the distance she requested, and Ellie had always despised how it made her feel a little…bereft. Like she hadn’t mattered to him enough to bother trying to make up for his colossal mistake.

Ellie brushes the thoughts away, leading Shimmer out and hooking her to the cross ties. She’s got the blanket and saddle on her, bridle in hand, when Tommy comes jogging in.

They both stop moving, watching Tommy nervously. Sure, he’s tried to make sure to be the one to see them off on their patrols more often than not, just like he’s usually at the gate waiting for them. But he doesn’t normally come running in with his hair in disarray, doesn’t usually look anxious as fuck, and he doesn’t eye them with the air of someone about to drop really shitty news in their laps.

“Spit it out,” the older Miller says impatiently, stepping away from his horse. Ellie follows slowly, tucking her hands in her back pockets.

“Overnight patrol with Javi and Maddy just got back,” Tommy says, taking in a deep breath. His chest is heaving, face tinted with red like he must have run all the way from the front gates to the stables to catch them before they left. “And they’re reporting some movement, people out to the east. Maybe headed our way, maybe not, was hard to tell. Looked like four or five of them at least.”

Ellie glances over at Joel, slightly confused. They’re supposed to be going out to the west side today, following the path to Spring Creek and down over to Snow King Mountain and looping back around. It’s one of the longer routes, a nearly all day patrol, but it wouldn’t take them anywhere near where Tommy’s saying the overnight patrol was.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “So what’s the plan?”

Tommy looks between them apologetically. “The plan is that y’all are being reassigned, and Javi is coming back out with you. Y’all are gonna go out and try to get eyes on this group in the daylight, from a distance,” he adds emphatically. “And you’re gonna see if you can tell for sure how many there are and how well-equipped they are. If they look like trouble or if they’re just a group that might be passin’ through.” He stops talking, reaching up to rub his thumb and index finger over his mustache.

“What else?” His brother asks abruptly. “Somethin’ you ain’t tellin’ us, isn’t there?”

Tommy’s gaze flicks between the two of them, the silence an oppressive weight between them. “Javi said they weren’t far from the museum,” he finishes reluctantly, and Ellie automatically takes a step back. Tommy watches her go with that wounded puppy look he’s so fucking good at.

“I do okay?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Ellie blinks, spins around to face the horses and strides back over to Shimmer to finish tacking her up. She checks and double checks the girth strap, readjust the stirrups again, loops the bridle over the horse’s head.

The conversation between the two men fades into a white noise under the dull roar in Ellie’s ears, their words indistinct until one of them loudly says “Send someone else!”

She wants to snarl at him, tell him to fuck off and stop trying to baby her. She can handle going near the fucking museum again. Unlike a lot of other places, it had only good memories for her. Good, happy, unforgettable memories. It wasn’t like Tommy was asking them to go check out Silver Lake or anything, just a fucking museum. And they might not have to even get close to it, not if the group was still moving. They might already be past it.

“Let’s get going,” Ellie calls, interrupting their increasingly heated conversation as she unhooks Shimmer and wraps a hand around the reins.

He plants himself in her path, hands outstretched like he’s approaching a wounded animal, and she wants to snap at him like one. “They can send someone else,” he says firmly, and Ellie just rolls her eyes. This anger at him is sharp and familiar, a refreshing change, and Ellie latches on to it. If nothing else, it’ll help her bury all the other feelings constantly threatening to surface.

“We’re going,” she tells him flatly. “You stay if you want, but I’m going.”

They both know there’s no chance he stays if she doesn’t.

I’ll follow you anywhere you go.

That flash of memory hurts more than all the others, sends a searing ache through Ellie’s chest as she remembers saying it to him. Flaying herself open for once, telling him how much he mattered to her after all they’d been through. Feeling like she mattered to him on some significant level as well after their conversation in the Army camp. It had helped assuage her nerves at nearing the finish line of their journey, knowing that no matter the outcome she’d have him with her.

Only for him to fucking destroy it within hours.

Ellie brushes past him, leading Shimmer along, the two of them following Tommy as he leads Old Beardy out for his brother. She mounts, adjusting her seat, and nudges Shimmer into motion before her partner is even astride his horse.

There’s more hushed, hurried words between the two men behind her as they try to keep up, and then Old Beardy is pulling alongside her as they make their way up Jackson’s main road to the front gates.

“Ellie –”

“Don’t.”

The gates ease open ahead of them and they’re waved through rapidly. Javi’s sitting astride his own horse just outside, offering them a nod in greeting. He’s a nice man, about two decades older than Ellie, with a thick mustache to rival Tommy’s and a pair of aviators he’s rarely without. Like the Millers, he’s from Texas, though further south than Austin, and his accent is markedly less thick than theirs.

None of them speak as they make their way out of Jackson and head off to the east, taking one of the less used patrol routes that’ll let them loop around to the backside of the museum without having to hike and swim like Joel and Ellie had a couple years prior.

When the ground levels out, by unspoken agreement all three nudge their horses into canters, trying to cover as much ground as possible while the need for stealth is still relatively low. After just under an hour, maybe ten or so miles from Jackson, Javi holds up a hand, gesturing for them to slow. He wheels his own horse - a large bay mare named, rather originally, Sandy - around to face them.

“Was about a mile or so from here that we saw them,” he says without preamble, and Ellie takes in for the first time the dark shadows ringing his eyes. Poor man had been out all night and then immediately come back out for another patrol, not to mention the infant at home.

“Reckon we oughta get a little closer on horseback and then go on foot from there.” Joel rubs a hand over his chin, glancing between the two of them as if expecting arguments. Neither of them bother - he’s one of the more experienced patrol leaders, one they’re all used to deferring to, even Ellie.

“Sounds good.” Javi reaches forward to pat his horse’s neck as she dances under him, circling her around.

Ellie sucks in a breath, trying to prepare herself. This part of the area is unfamiliar, completely different than the route they had taken just over two years ago. It had taken a lot longer then - they’d been on foot - but it had been reminiscent of their hike across the country in many ways.

It had been fun.

She feels a phantom press on the side of her face that she knows is him watching her, but Ellie ignores him and inhales again, trying to keep her heart rate steady. They’re heading into what is likely a dangerous situation, and the last thing she’s about to fucking do is freak out in front of Joel and Javi.

“Lead the way,” she says impatiently when both men look to her. Joel looks like he’d like to say something to her - what, she can only begin to imagine - but Ellie guides Shimmer past him without another word.

They ride on in silence, Javi in the front and Joel bringing up the rear. The trees close in on them, narrowing the path momentarily until it widens again to a small clearing.

“We’ll stop here,” Javi calls over his shoulder quietly, “and leave the horses. One of us should stay with them.” He dismounts smoothly, looping Sandy’s reins forward and tying them loosely to a low branch.

Ellie dismounts as well, already preparing her argument against being the one that has to stay. She knows that both men will say she should - she’s the youngest, the most inexperienced - and she’s not fucking having it.

But Javi beats her to it. “I’ll stay with them,” he says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “I haven’t slept since sometime yesterday and I wouldn’t be any good to you.”

Next to her, Joel opens his mouth, no doubt to argue, but Ellie cuts him off. “Sounds good.” She shoulders her rifle, glaring over at him and daring him to insist she stay.

He doesn’t, simply hoists his own rifle and gives her a tight nod. Ellie feels the annoying beginnings of something like gratitude unfurl in her chest, and she shoves it back down, gesturing for him to lead the way. He knows where the museum is after all, better than she does.

They leave Javi behind, revolver in hand and shadows under his eyes, with instructions to head back to Jackson with his horse and one of theirs if they’re not back with a report in two hours. He doesn’t look happy about it, but he agrees.

Neither of them speaks as they pick their way through the woods, both of them peering around nervously. There’s a line of tension between his shoulders, hands gripping the barrel of his gun so tightly Ellie’s surprised he doesn’t snap it. She can’t help but wonder if he’s this tense because of the situation they might be walking into, or because he’s walking into it with her.

It’s on the tip of her tongue to ask. Ellie swallows it.

There’s no sound as they come up on the backside of the museum, the shape of it looming out of the trees. It’s just as overgrown as it had been two and a half years prior, vine and leaves gripping every possible orifice. She’s glad - really fucking glad - they’re not approaching it from the front.

She doesn’t think she could handle the onslaught of memories that would cause.

He holds up a hand for her to stop, gesturing for her to step behind a tree. She obeys without thought - whatever their fucked up situation, Ellie trusts Joel to keep them safe, to keep her safe.

He steps behind a tree opposite her. His gaze moves over her and then back down the way they came, and Ellie can practically see the thoughts running through his head about her needing to go back and wait with Javi. When he looks back to her, Ellie just arches an eyebrow at him.

I fucking dare you, man.

She hates how well he seems to read the message there, how easily they still communicate, and the way she knows exactly what he means when he jerks his chin down in agreement and then gestures toward the museum.

Ellie points two fingers at her eyes and then gestures with them to the museum. Did you see anything?

He shakes his head, reaches up to tap his ear and then point at her. Did you hear anything?

Ellie shakes her own head, gesturing for him to go. She’d rather be the one in front - better ears and eyes, quicker reflexes and all that - but she also knows there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of him letting her.

He moves more silently than a man his age should be able to, the two of them creeping closer and closer to the museum.

It’s silent around them, almost eerily so - even the birds aren’t chirping. It makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and Ellie’s got half a mind to wheel them around and go back to the horses. She doesn’t know what they’re walking into here, but it’s not good. Something is…something is off.

They reach the wall of the museum without incident, no movement in the broken windows above, no sound emanating from anywhere around them.

He leads them over to the door, keeping as close to the building as possible and ducking under the occasional window.

They pause, both peering around, trying to see if there’s anything - anything - that can give them an indicator of what might be inside. He looks back at her, unease written in every line of his face.

Ellie just shakes her head silently. I don’t like this.

Slowly, he shakes his head in response. Me neither.

But she doesn’t stop him when he reaches forward and slowly twists the door knob, pulling on the door. The hinges squeal something awful, and Joel immediately whips around it with his gun drawn and pointed inside.

It makes Ellie’s breath freeze in her chest - all it would take would be one person on the other side of that door, ready and waiting, and Joel’s a goner. Nothing to stop a bullet to his chest - to his head - and that would be the end of him.

She thinks briefly that she might be sick.

But Joel’s turning to face her and gesturing her into the building, the image of him on the ground with a bullet wound fading as quickly as it had come. Her hand is slippery with sweat on the stock of her rifle, and as soon as they’re inside she wipes it on her jeans.

Fuck what was wrong with her right now? This wasn’t the time for her to be panicking about Joel getting hurt, not the time for her to be afraid of what might happen to him out here. She’s not even supposed to care one way or the other what happens to him.

So why does the thought of him dead in front of her threaten to take her out at the knees?

“Ellie,” he hisses, snapping her from her wave of panic. “Let’s go.”

“We’re supposed to be getting eyes from a distance,” she whispers back angrily. “Not clearing an entire fucking building by ourselves.”

He just glares at her. “We don’t gotta do the whole building. Just get up to the top level so we can get an eye on the area around us and see if we see anything.”

Right. The top level. The one with the space capsule.

Ellie sucks in a breath through her nose, trying to keep those memories at bay. “There’s not windows up there, if I remember correctly.”

There’s a loaded look that passes between them at that oblique reference to the last time they were here. It’s too shadowed in here for her to get a proper look at his face, but she knows his mind has gone the same way hers did.

“Oh wait…one of the dinosaurs is here.” A hand over the speaker of a long-dead phone. “Joel, it’s for you.”

A wry “very funny” before he pushes off the door and turns away from the office, leaving Ellie to giggle to herself.

“There’s not,” and Ellie doesn’t think he means for his voice to come out as soft as it does. “But I know where the roof access is, and if we can get up there we can see what we’re dealin’ with.”

She clears her throat. “Lead the way then.”

He gives her a tight nod and turns, padding carefully out of the back room they’re in and into the slightly brighter lights of the museum.

The structure of it has collapsed some, Ellie realizes with a pang of grief. Where there were dinosaur skulls there’s now a sagging roof and fallen tree branches. The entrance they came in two and a half years ago is mostly hidden by debris now, and they have to pick their way carefully over it to get to the steps leading up to the second level.

Ellie very carefully doesn’t look to the left where the brachiosaurus skeletons ought to be.

It’s like the world’s worst deja vu, creeping through the museum. Like reliving the memories of their trip here while being outside of it, outside of her own body. The stairs feel the same, the air smells the same, the way the light is striking them hits Ellie’s eyes the same. She wants to crawl out of her skin, wants to turn tail and run all the way back to Javi and the horses, wants no more part of being here with him .

But she swallows, does her best to inhale without choking, and follows him up the stairs.

She’s so preoccupied with checking around and behind them that she runs right into him when he comes to an abrupt halt.

“What the –?” There’s a moment of panic where she thinks they’ve been spotted, that he’s seen something or someone ahead of them, and she steps around him, preparing to raise her rifle.

Only to come to a sudden halt as well, as she sees what he sees.

“Looks like a giraffe.”

“Yeah it does, doesn’t it.”

A light toss, a carefully timed flick of his wrist, and the hat lands neatly on top of the dinosaur. He turns to her, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “I see the appeal.”

But there’s no skeleton, no hat. Just a big, gaping hole in the middle of the museum. There’s nothing left, and Ellie feels like a piece of her shrivels up and dies at the realization.

“‘S gone,” Joel says from next to her, and the near-anguish in his voice nearly makes her crumple to the ground.

It makes sense, Ellie tells herself, that the skeleton and the hat would have fallen victim to whatever natural disasters had been wrought upon the museum. Unlikely even in the best conditions that it would still have been there, undisturbed after two and a half years. But for there to be nothing left, like they were never even here at all –

It feels like the memory has been carved out of her and replaced by this emptiness that threatens to swallow her whole. The mental image she had of that day - this one, near-perfect, shining day in her life - shrivels at the edges, the image of the skeleton and hat eroding until Ellie feels like she can barely grasp it anymore.

“Nothing lasts forever I guess.”

“Ellie –”

She can’t help it - she bolts. Slings the rifle over her shoulder and turns and all but sprints down the stairs. She’s not being as quiet as she should be, she damn near trips over the debris at the bottom of the steps as she hooks a hand around the railing and practically flings herself under the stairs, stumbling and tripping over the lip of the small round platform she’d forgotten about. The dinosaurs that used to reside there have partially collapsed, their bones scattering when Ellie’s boot makes contact with them.

“Jesus fucking –”

Ellie tries to suck in a breath, tries to talk herself down, tries to remind herself that this is the way things happen - things fall apart, life moves on, the world keeps turning.

But she was always supposed to have the museum. This was always supposed to be here, preserved in her memory just the way it was, and she was never supposed to come back.

She’s still cursing herself, frantically trying to steady her breathing, doing her absolute damnedest to ignore the bench next to her where she’d found her hat. She doesn’t even hear the footsteps until a hand is landing uncertainly between her shoulder blades.

“Kid–”

“No,” Ellie spits, whirling around, all but smacking his hand away. “Fucking don’t.”

She hates everything about the way she’s reacting to this right now, hates the fucking fact that Joel was right and they should have found someone else to do this. It just wasn’t supposed to be this painful, coming back here. Not after the years that had passed, not after she’d so thoroughly exorcized Joel from her life.

He retreats a few steps until his calves bump against the concrete barrier holding the dinosaurs. “I won’t,” he says, his gaze resting on the wall behind her rather than her face. “But we gotta…we gotta get back up there and finish what we came here to do. We can fall apart later, when we’re home, but not…we can’t do it here.”

Ellie doesn’t miss his use of we , sees the way his hands are trembling at his sides and his own breathing isn’t very steady. And she wants to be angry at him for it - what fucking right does he have to be upset when everything that’s come to pass is his fault? - but he’s right. They can’t do this here.

Her own hands aren’t very steady, but Ellie grips her rifle again anyways. The sooner they get through this, the sooner they can get the fuck out of here. It grounds her a little to remind herself of that, helps her pull the frayed edges of herself back together just a bit.

She can get through this. And then, come hell or fucking high water, she’s never setting foot on patrol with Joel Miller again.

Ellie’s barely taken two steps past him when she hears it.

Footsteps – coming from the front of the museum.

She jerks her head at Joel, tapping her ear and pointing, and he turns unsteadily, drawing his revolver as he does. His hand is still trembling slightly, making unease stir in Ellie’s gut.

One creeping step forward has his hand reaching out to snag her sleeve, his head shaking frantically. Concern flares in her chest at the way he’s gone pale, his eyes wide and panicked. The calm, skilled patroller she’d been alongside for months - the man she knew him to be - is nowhere in sight. Chased off, it would seem, but the absence of a brachiosaurus in a hat.

Ellie brushes his hand off, lifting a finger to her lips and then pointing at the ground. You stay right here.

His jaw tightens, eyes narrowing, and he shakes his head abruptly. Ellie rolls her eyes - she can hear the footsteps getting closer and they’ve got no fucking time to be arguing about this. She points more insistently at the ground before turning and walking silently forward, watching the main atrium for signs of movement.

It’s hard to tell, with the way the sound is echoing faintly around them, how many sets of footsteps it is, and Ellie takes a careful step closer.

“– further,” someone whispers faintly. “Almost there.”

Ellie glances back over at Joel, finding him in the same spot she’d left him, and she tilts her head towards the wall. Move out of sight.

He does, all but falling against the wall, and Ellie turns back to peer around the edge of the entrance.

Two shapes are moving towards them, one supporting the other heavily. There’s no weapons that Ellie can see as they pass through a shaft of light, no rifles or pistols. Doesn’t mean they’re unarmed, but the way one of them is more focused on dragging the other along without even checking that they’re alone tells Ellie that these are people just barely hanging on.

“Here, sit here.” A woman’s voice speaks, tinged with an accent Ellie can’t quite place. “Let me see your leg.”

The other person sits, their frame noticeably smaller, and they let out a pitiful it hurts when the woman kneels in front of them and presumably begins prodding at the leg.

Ellie glances back at Joel, taking stock of the way he’s still trembling ever so slightly. The nod he gives her is firm though, and she loops her rifle strap over her head to secure it to her back. She slips her pistol from its holster on her hip and steps forward, careful to keep her steps as quiet as possible. Faintly, she hears him following behind her.

Neither of them notice their approach until Ellie’s less than twenty feet away, raising her pistol and uttering a quiet, authoritative “Hey.”

The older woman jumps up immediately, carefully placing herself in front of the girl. She lifts her hands carefully, eyes darting between the two of them with visible fear. The palms of her hands are scraped, bruises dotting her wrists and her right eye.

“We don’t want any trouble,” she says, her voice measured and calm. “Just trying to find a place to hide out for a second, that’s all.”

“Mom –?”

“It’s okay, baby.” The woman turns slightly to glance at her daughter, and Ellie tries to peer around her. “We’re safe.” She turns back and catches Ellie trying to look. Her face hardens ever so slightly, a familiar glint entering her eyes - it’s one Ellie’s seen in Joel’s expression more times than she could count.

Pointedly, the woman takes a slight step to the right, cutting off Ellie’s limited view of her daughter.

“Just let us go,” she says firmly, “we don’t want any trouble.”

Ellie lowers her weapon just a bit. From the corner of her eye she sees Joel doing the same.

His hand is still shaking.

“We don’t either,” Ellie replies. “We’re just checking the area for signs of trouble. Here.” Slowly, she reholsters her weapon and lifts her own hands up. “What’s your name?”

The woman watches the two of them suspiciously for a moment before something in her face relaxes and her hands lower. “Marla.”

“Marla,” Ellie repeats. “I’m Ellie.”

Joel doesn’t offer his name, not that she expected him to. He’s lowered his revolver fully but not holstered it, keeping it pointed carefully at the ground.

Ellie tries again to look around Marla to the girl behind her. “And her?”

“My daughter,” Marla says. “She’s hurt - her ankle.”

Next to Ellie, Joel twitches and inhales sharply. His gaze is locked on what he can see of the girl behind her mother, and Ellie’s unease grows.

“And you?” Ellie asks instead, looking Marla over again. “You hurt?”

“No.” Marla shakes her head, finally dropping her guard enough to turn her back on them and crouch down in front of her daughter. “Just her. We were…” her head drops briefly as if in shame, and Ellie dares to take another step closer. “We were in the Boise QZ until it fell about six months ago, and then we escaped with a few family members. Been on the move since, and we started hearing about a settlement out in Wyoming so we thought we’d try for that. But we got separated from the others –”

“Uncle Shawn,” the girl cuts in, her eyes brimming with tears. “We lost Uncle Shawn.”

“I know baby,” Marla says softly, reaching up to push a piece of dark hair behind the girl’s ear. “But we’re gonna get you somewhere safe and then I’ll go back for him, okay?”

Joel shifts back a step, just out of Ellie’s eyeline, and turns so she can no longer see his face. She doesn’t know what the fuck is going on with him, but she needs him to pull out of it, and fast .

Ellie takes another step closer to Marla and her daughter, crouching down in front of them. Already she can see the girl’s ankle is swollen and turning purple. Definitely sprained, if not broken. Nothing else seems to be wrong with her that Ellie can see, but her face is worryingly pale, her hands gripping the ledge she’s perched on as if that’s all that’s keeping her upright.

“Can you walk?” she asks the girl, and gets a tearful headshake in response. The movement sets her to wobbling unsteadily, and Marla reaches out with both hands.

“I’ve been helping her,” Marla says, “but it’s been slow going. She tripped over a root when we were running from some people.”

A chill erupts down Ellie’s spine, and she could curse the woman for not mentioning this sooner. “Where?” she asks sharply. “And how long ago?”

Her tone of voice has Joel turning back to face her, his gaze darting carefully between the two of them.

“I don’t know,” Marla admits, also rising to her feet. “Not that long ago, we lost them somewhere out in the woods. We were just trying to get away so I kept pulling her along until we saw this place. Thought we could hide out here for awhile and hope they pass us by.”

Ellie looks between Marla and the girl for a moment, weighing her options in her mind. Ideally they’d take them back to Jackson - assuming enough time hasn’t elapsed that Javi has already left - and get the girl’s ankle taken care of. But that’s not really her call, to bring people back to town.

Other option is for one of them to stay while the other retrieves Javi or heads back to Jackson for reinforcements. But then they’re practically sitting ducks here if whoever’s out in the woods tracks them down.

Ellie glances over at Joel, but he’s looking down at the girl, eyes unfocused. His revolver is held loosely in his hand now, dangling at his side like he doesn’t even realize it’s there.

“One sec,” she tells them, walking away to step over to Joel. It’s not until she plants herself directly in front of him that he seems to register her presence. He blinks, like he’s not quite sure what he’s looking at, and Ellie’s heart rate kicks up another notch.

“You good?” She asks him, brow pulling together.

His eyes skate slowly over her features, the hand not holding the revolver coming up to touch her arm gently. His fingertips are gone before Ellie can really register what’s happened, and she takes a step back.

Joel clears his throat, nodding. “‘M fine.”

Ellie doesn’t believe him in the slightest, but now’s not the time to press - right now she just needs to get everyone back to Jackson in one piece, and then she can pass him off to Tommy. Let him sort out whatever’s wrong - it doesn’t involve her once they’re out of this.

“We’re gonna get them back to the horses and take them with us.” She half expects him to argue but he doesn’t, just looks over her shoulder at the girl again briefly. “She can’t walk, you’ll have to carry her.”

Joel’s eyes snap back to hers, widening with something akin to panic. “No.”

“You have to,” Ellie presses. “It’s too risky to go slow with her, we need to get back to Javi and the horses as quickly as possible. You have to, Joel.”

He’s backing away, shaking his head furiously. “No, I –”

“Ana? Ana!”

Both of their heads whip around at Marla’s panicked cries. She’s got a hand on either side of her daughter’s face, shaking her gently. The girl isn’t responding, her body limp.

“We gotta go,” Ellie says, striding across the atrium to Marla, “we gotta go now.”

Marla shoves her away half-heartedly, all her attention on reviving her unconscious daughter, and Ellie spins back to Joel. He’s staring blankly at the scene in front of him, eyes unfocused again, and she seized with a desire to slap him, to knock him out of whatever the fuck is going on in his head right now. She can’t deal with this, she needs him to step up and be the fucking person she knows he is. When push comes to shove, Joel always knows what the fuck to do.

But he’s not fucking moving.

“Joel,” she snaps. “Get over here. Give Marla your revolver and you carry Ana. We have to go .” As soon as she sees him take an unsteady step towards her she turns back to Marla, who has tears streaming down her face as she continues to shake her daughter. “Marla, look at me. We’re from that settlement you heard about. We have horses not far from here, we can take you and Ana with us.”

Joel steps up behind her and quietly passes her his revolver. Ana’s slumped forward against her mother now, so still that only the expansion of her ribs shows she’s still breathing.

“I got her,” he tells Marla softly, shifting closer and carefully winding a hand between them. “You take the gun, I got her. I got you,” he says to the unconscious girl, carefully looping an arm around her back and another under her knees. “It’s alright,” he says quietly, voice soft and low. “We’re gonna be alright.”

It’s been so long since Ellie’s heard that voice - the one he’d use when she came to him sweat-soaked after a nightmare, or when she got hurt. Or when he got hurt and was trying to soothe her panic. It yanks at that stupid fucking tether behind her heart that she’s been trying so hard to sever.

Fuck. She doesn’t want to want that anymore. Not from him. Not after what he’s done; not after the kind of man he proved to be. It’s what she told Dina and Jesse, what she’s told Tommy and Maria, what she’s told herself over and over. No more. This is why she can’t keep patrolling with him.

Ana’s head lolls back against Joel’s shoulder, and Ellie can only watch as he shifts carefully to adjust it, murmuring something under his breath to her that neither she nor Marla can hear.

Ellie tears her gaze away, feeling like she’s intruding on something even though that makes no goddamn sense considering they met these people barely thirty minutes ago. It just…that look on his face, the careful way he was holding her.

It was – it didn’t make any sense.

She presses his revolver into Marla’s hand. “You ever used a gun before?”

The woman just gives her a wry look, fingers closing around the barrel. “It’s the apocalypse, sweetheart. Who hasn’t.”

Against her better judgment, Ellie finds herself smiling a bit. “Just making sure. I’ll go in front, Joel and Ana in the middle, you in the back. The horses are about a fifteen minute walk away, so we gotta go as quick and quiet as possible. We’ll get you guys back with us, we have a clinic, they can try to help Ana. Okay?”

Marla nods abruptly, not completely able to hide the fear in her eyes. But her gaze lands on her daughter, carefully cradled in Joel’s arms, and something in her seems to strengthen. “Let’s go.”

Ellie slips past Joel, leading them carefully back through the museum the way they came. There’s tension coiling at the base of her neck, an uncertainty sitting in her chest. Sure she’s patrolled a lot over the last couple of years, but she’s never been in charge. She’s never been the one having to make the decisions about where they go and when, what risks they do and do not take. That’s supposed to be for Joel to do right now but he’s…something’s not right with him.

So she glances back over her shoulder at him as they approach the door, waiting for a nod from both him and Marla before she pushes it open. The hinges scream again, and Ellie peers outside, aiming her pistol in every possible direction before setting a foot over the threshold.

They proceed in silence, a careful single-file line. Ellie’s heart is a drumbeat inside her chest, rapid and erratic, and she sucks in a slow breath, forcing the air back out between her lips. She can do this, she can handle this, there’s no reason to think that whoever was chasing Marla and Ana found them out here.

She picks up the pace a little, nearly to the treeline, and hears two sets of footsteps do the same behind her. In the trees there’s more cover, less of a chance of being spotted and –

“Fuck!”

Ellie whirls around just as a shot rings out, Marla with the revolver leveled in the distance. She can make out the shape of someone on the ground, twitching, and Ellie scans the area around them.

“Let’s go,” she calls, not bothering to keep her voice down. If there was anyone else, they heard the shot and will be headed their way.

She’s barely taken a step though, before another shot rings out, this one closer than the last, and Ellie ducks instinctively. She turns, keeping her pistol raised, relieved to see Joel still standing, Ana cradled against his chest - he’s hunched over her as if he’s trying to shield her with his own body. His eyes are wide, frantic as he looks around, and before Ellie can say anything, he fucking bolts . Takes off toward the treeline, running awkwardly with the girl in his arms, and ducks into the undergrowth.

“Fuck –”

Ellie turns back to find Marla, trying to regain some semblance of control over this, trying to figure out where that shot came from but –

“Jesus Christ,” Ellie breathes.

Marla’s on the ground, the revolver fallen from her hand as blood spurts from the side of her neck. It’s pouring from her mouth, even as Ellie kneels next to her and frantically pushes a hand against the wound, and she knows there’s nothing she can do for her. She’d be gone before they even got to the horses.

Marla’s eyes are wide, terrified, chest heaving in panic. She looks frantically past Ellie to the trees, trying to turn her head to see more. Her blood is warm on Ellie’s fingers, coating her hand and soaking the ground below them.

She tries to say something but can only manage a hacking cough, droplets of blood landing on Ellie’s cheeks, and she wants to fucking scream. This is so fucking unfair, this is so - Ellie’s tired of watching people bleed to death, tired of seeing life snuffed out, tired of looking at her hands and seeing nothing but dark red. All it takes is a blink, and Marla’s blood becomes Joel’s, gushing out over Ellie’s hands in that cold and empty basement.

Marla’s hand flails, seeking purchase on Ellie’s sleeve, her eyes still darting around. And Ellie realizes what she’s looking for - who she’s looking for.

“Joel’s got her,” Ellie says hurriedly. “He’s got her, she’s gonna be fine. We’ll get her back to Jackson, we’ll keep her safe. She’s gonna be fine, I promise you Marla, I fucking swear. We won’t let anything happen to her.”

Marla blinks at her sluggishly, gaze finally resting on Ellie’s face instead of their surroundings. Ellie’s got no idea if she’s understanding what she’s being told, if any of the words are registering, but Ellie keeps them up anyways. Making promises she doesn’t know if she can keep, whatever it takes to reassure this woman who’s about to die.

Another slow blink, and then her hand falls limp, landing on the ground softly next to Ellie’s knee.

“Fuck,” Ellie chokes out, falling back onto her ass and staring. She puts a hand to her forehead before realizing it’s coated in blood and she swears again, dragging her sleeve over the skin to try to wipe it away.

Is there ever any getting used to that? One second someone’s there with you, the next they’re just – gone?

Joel’s used to it, she’s sure. He’d have to be, given how many people he –

Ellie takes a deep breath. The horses aren’t far. They just have to get Ana to them, get back to Jackson, and then this is…this time patrolling with Joel is over, the time living in his backyard is over. She can’t keep doing this, she needs more goddamn distance from him.

But first…first she has to fucking find him. He ran off with Ana but without his revolver, his rifle strapped uselessly to his back. He’s as good as unarmed if the other person out here comes across them.

And that’s under the razor-thin hope that there’s only one more person out here with them and not a fucking pack.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie whispers, reaching forward to slip Marla’s eyelids closed. She pushes herself to her feet, hating that there’s nothing else she can do for her. She has to leave her out here, exposed to the elements and the potential savagery of people. It’s not fair, but then, none of this is.

She bends to pick up the revolver, tucking it in the waistband of her jeans. She can practically hear Joel in her mind, telling her that ain’t the place to keep it, but she’s got no other option right now.

One hand is still coated in blood and she scrubs it against her jeans, trying to dry it off just a bit. It’ll be caked under her nails, Ellie knows that without looking. Dug into the groove of her palm, etched into her knuckles. When she showers later the water will run pink for a long time, and even then she still won’t feel clean.

Ellie exhales and turns, putting her back to Marla’s body. She has to find Joel and Ana. She has to find them and get them back to Jackson. That’s it.

She can manage that. She fucking has to manage that.

Ellie picks her way through the brush, trying to track the direction Joel had run in without making any noise. There was at least one more person in these woods with them, whoever it was that had shot Marla, and Ellie needed to get a weapon in Joel’s hands before they found him.

A branch cracks off to her right, and Ellie’s head whips in that direction, hand tightening on her gun.

Please be Joel. Please be Joel.

It occurs to her, far too late, that while she was wasting her time trying to reassure Marla, any number of things could have happened to him without her hearing. She could be steps away from stumbling upon his body, from finding him bleeding out or even fucking bitten.

Ellie blinks and he’s there in front of her, unconscious. The basement. A dirty, blood-soaked mattress. The smell of sweat and blood and piss and mold and fear, the sound of Joel’s ragged breaths in the damp silence. Watching him slip away in front of her and feeling helpless as fuck because she was going to lose him.

Another branch breaks, snapping Ellie out of whatever fucking trance or flashback she’d been stuck in, and she swipes a hand under her eyes. She can’t do this right now, not when Marla’s dead and Ana’s unconscious and Joel’s fucking missing.

One step. Then another. Leaves crunching under foot, sounding entirely too loud in the quiet around her.

“Joel,” she hisses. “Joel.”

No response other than a shifting of the branches around her with the breeze, and Ellie takes another cautious step forward. “Joel?”

Fuck, if he ran off in a haze there’s no telling where he might have got to.

She keeps moving, keeping an eye out for any sign of him - broken branches, footprints in the dirt, any indication whatsoever. This isn’t the way to the horses, Ellie knows that, and by this point she’s pretty damn sure Javi would have headed back to Jackson without them.

There’s a shuffling off to her right, the sound of breathing, and Ellie tries to quell the panic crawling up her throat. It’s Joel, she tells herself. It’s just Joel.

She presses forward, knocking a branch out of her face when another breeze sets it to bouncing, trying desperately to get a glimpse through the undergrowth –

There - the dark green of Joel’s flannel, the grey and brown of his hair. It’s more grey now than anything else, Ellie realizes, and the thought winds her a bit. 

He’s standing stock still, Ana still held in his arms and his back to Ellie. She takes two steps forward, her lips already forming the shape of his name before it dies in her mouth at the sight of the lanky man standing in front of them. Grizzled hair, stringy beard, mean fucking look in his eyes.

And a rifle, pointed right at Joel and Ana.

Shit.

Ellie lifts her own gun, trying to level it at him without the movement drawing his attention, but there’s too many branches in the way for her to get a good shot tucked partially behind Joel as she is.

More twigs poke at her as she scoots carefully to the right, shuffling her feet so she doesn’t accidentally step on a crunchy leaf or a fallen branch. She just needs to get a little further over, a little more to the side where she can get a clean shot.

She really doesn’t like the way the man’s finger is twitching around the trigger guard.

“You alone out here?” He barks at Joel. “Heard shots and now I can’t find my brother. You shoot him?”

Joel doesn’t answer, just stares around wide-eyed, like he doesn’t even register the presence of the man or his gun.

“Hey!”

Ellie flinches, thinking he’s spotted her trying to shift around a tree, but his attention is still on Joel. There’s a flutter of movement from Ana’s legs, and it takes Ellie a moment to realize Joel’s hand is twitching. Clenching, as if around the barrel of a gun that he doesn’t have, a gun resting in Ellie’s waistband.

“Answer me or I blow your fucking head off.” The barrel of the rifle twitches, lowering briefly towards Ana. “Your daughter’s too.”

Joel shifts back automatically, arms tightening on Ana’s body. His lips move but Ellie can’t make out what he’s saying - neither, it seems, can the man aiming at them.

“What? Fucking speak up, I’m this close to fucking killing you, man.”

It feels like an eternity before Ellie’s all the way around the tree, bark scratching at her skin, finally able to get a clear vantage point. She can still only see Joel in profile, can see the way his lips are moving without sound, the way his arms are trembling from Ana’s weight and she –

Her fingers go numb, the gun nearly slipping from her hand.

Tommy’d told her, years ago when he’d had just a little too much to drink at the Tipsy Bison that night. Ellie had used that to her advantage, asking him about Sarah the way she couldn’t ask Joel, and Tommy had spilled more than she could have hoped for. About Outbreak Night and their frantic drive back from the jail; about trying to get out of Austin and getting separated; about Sarah, getting shot in Joel’s arms –

And it clicks for her, what the fuck is running through his mind right now. He’s got a young girl in his arms and is standing in front of a man with a gun pointed at them.

This is bad, this is so bad.

She tightens her grip on the pistol, focuses on the feel of the metal in her hand to ground her. They’re gonna get out of this, they –

“Fuck this,” the man snarls, readjusting his rifle. His finger curls inward, past the trigger guard, and Ellie doesn’t think, she just fires, her hand jerking with the slight recoil.

Two shots ring out, and the man hits the ground. Ellie doesn’t know where she hit him, doesn’t really care as she practically sprints forward because Joel went down too, he fucking went down too, still holding Ana, and he’s on the ground –

The other man twitches and Ellie fires again. She thinks she hit his chest this time - he goes still and doesn’t move again - but she kicks the rifle away when she gets the chance, just in case.

“Joel –” Ellie crumples on the ground next to him, hands already reaching, “Joel, are you okay?”

A pained noise escapes him, and Ellie’s heart sinks to her chest, her vision going spotty as she struggles to bring in air. There’s blood , there’s blood on his hands, dark red and clinging, and he’s got Ana pressed so tightly against him that she can’t tell where it’s coming from, can’t tell which of them has been hit .

And then he shifts with a low moan and Ellie sees – his hand, pressed to Ana’s side, trying desperately to cover the wound.

“Oh fuck,” Ellie whispers. It’s not his blood; it’s Ana’s. Not even thirty minutes after promising her mother that she’d take care of her…it’s too much blood, Ellie already knows that. It’s too much blood, even if they did get her back to Jackson.

It’s too much, and Ellie wants to scream with the unfairness of it.

But there’s no time for that, not when Ellie’s not sure if they’re safe, if there’s more people out here following the sound of gunfire.

“Joel,” she chokes out. He doesn’t look at her, his entire being zeroed in on the girl in his arms, a steady stream of no, no, no escaping his lips. “Joel,” she tries again. “Are you hurt? Did the bullet –”

Ellie can’t quite bring herself to say go through her. Fuck, if he hadn’t been clutching her to his chest –

And how fucked up is Ellie that the realization comes with a sick sense of relief? Shouldn’t the death of an innocent child - and her mother - weigh more heavily than the death of a man who puts himself above the good of the entire planet?

“Are you hurt?” She demands. Joel shakes his head, still bent over Ana, still trying fruitlessly to stem the flow of blood coming from her side.

Ellie reaches forward with her own bloodstained hand, feeling gently for the girl’s neck. She knew there wouldn’t be anything there, could tell already, but the lack of pulse makes her chest want to concave.

“Joel…” Her voice cracks. “We gotta go. There’s nothing we can do for her, we need to go.”

Joel doesn’t move. Her hand flutters at his shoulder, unsure of what to do. He’s in shock, she assumes, though she’s never seen him…freeze quite like this.

“We need to leave .” Her hand wraps around his bicep and she tugs, trying uselessly to get him to stand. He doesn’t budge, just hunches further over Ana. His face is buried in her hair, a muffled I’m sorry slipping from his lips. “Joel, we can’t stay here, it’s not safe. We need to get back to Jackson.”

“No,” he snarls, glaring at her. “I’m not leavin’ her.”

Ellie stares at him, at a loss. “Joel you can’t…we need to go.”

“You go then.” He turns his face away from her, absently brushing a strand of Ana’s hair off her face. “I ain’t leavin’.” His voice drops, softens. “I’m so sorry baby, this is my fault. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here, I should’ve protected you. This is all my fault. All my fault.” His words trail off into a whisper, each one wedging a thorn into Ellie’s chest.

God, as if this wasn’t fucked up enough, he’s…Joel thinks he’s holding his dead daughter. Ellie doesn’t know how it happened or why it happened, but… fuck. She’s gotta get them back to Jackson now.

She tugs again on his arm. “She’s dead, Joel. You need to put her down, we need to keep moving.” 

“No.” He starts rocking back and forth gently, tugging the sleeve of his flannel over his hand to wipe gently at the drying blood on Ana’s face. “We’ll get you all cleaned up, baby, you’ll be just fine.”

“Joel, that’s not Sarah,” Ellie whispers. “Sarah’s in Texas, remember? She’s…she’s dead, Joel.”

His head snaps up at her, the anger in his eyes something Ellie’s never seen before. It almost makes her afraid of him, this version of Joel that’s not in his right mind, cradling a dead girl in his arms and smeared in her blood.

“I know that.” Every syllable is laced with venom, hatred glaring out from his face. “D’you think I don’t remember buryin’ my own fuckin’ daughter? What kind of father do you think I am?”

Ellie’s mouth snaps shut. If he doesn’t think he’s holding Sarah –

It’s like her brain has stopped moving, the entire world frozen around her. It’s there, poking at her, who Joel thinks he’s holding if it’s not Sarah, but she slams that door shut, doesn’t let the thought fully take form. She can’t…he’s not…

It’s okay, baby girl. I got you.

Joel’s turned away from her again, still rocking back and forth with Ana in his arms. Ellie sinks to her knees, placing a hand over his forearm. He tenses but doesn’t look at her.

“Let her go,” she tries. “She’s gone Joel, you need to let her go.”

Joel curves over the body, still shaking his head.

Tommy. They need Tommy, she needs to get him back to his brother. Tommy would know what to do. Ellie’s barely spoken to Joel in the last two years - how in the fuck is she supposed to talk him down from this? She doesn’t even know what’s going on, if he’s in shock, if he’s hallucinating, if he’s just lost his goddamn mind.

And it’s not like she can leave him here like this. There could be more people in the woods, and he would be a sitting duck. What if he wandered off?

No. She has to be the one to figure it out.

“Joel,” Ellie says sternly, shifting so she’s directly in front of him. He flinches when she cups a hand on either side of his face and forces him to look up at her. “Look at me. Let her go .” He immediately starts to shake his head. She tries again, her voice hard. “Put the body down –”

Joel rears back, reaching forward with one hand to shove her away from him and she falls to her ass, stunned. He’s never…put his hands on her.

“Don’t you dare,” he snaps, “call her that. The body , like she ain’t anything important, like this ain’t my – my –” His breath stutters, chest heaving, and tears start to slip down his cheeks. The first falls from his chin, landing softly on Ana’s cheek.

“This isn’t your daughter –”

Joel squeezes her tighter, shaking his head furiously. “I didn’t mean that. She knows I didn’t mean it.” He buries his face in Ana’s hair again. “I didn’t mean it, baby girl, I’m so sorry.”

It’s like ice cracking under Ellie’s feet, frozen water filling her lungs. She can’t breathe, can’t speak. Slowly, she shifts forward until she’s closer to him again, cautiously reaching a hand forward to touch his forearm. He’s solid under her fingers; warm, alive. Hurting.

“Look at me.” When he makes no move to pull away from Ana, she tries again, her voice breaking. “ Please , Joel, look at me.”

Brown eyes meet hers, and the depths of despair she can see in them burns her from the inside out. “She trusted me to keep her safe,” he whispers, raw and ragged. “She trusted me and I led her like a lamb to the slaughter. I brought her here because she wanted to save the world, and now she’s gone. And it’s m-my fault.”

Oh.

Ellie has imagined that day in the hospital a lot. The bodies littering the floor, the doctor begging Joel to let him save the world, the look in Marlene’s eyes as she realizes she should have just killed Joel on sight.

She’s imagined it all - prayed for the ability to turn back the clock, to tell Marlene’s people not to trust Joel, to tell them to drug him or lock him up somewhere or anything that would’ve saved all those lives that day - but she never really imagined this.

She’s never really, truly put herself in his shoes: waking to the news that not only was Ellie going to die but Joel had been the one to deliver her to it. Mere moments after sitting on a concrete barrier and telling her it wasn’t time that did it . Barely an hour since she looked him in the eye and said I’ll follow you anywhere you go . Not even half a day since he tried to cheer her up with ravioli and a board game.

It’s not Sarah he thinks he’s holding, and fuck if that’s not a bitter pill for Ellie to swallow. Sitting here, watching Joel mourn her. Watching him think that they’re in the hospital and he didn’t save her, watching him curl over her body and begin to sob.

I didn’t mean it, baby girl, I’m so sorry.

It’s a chore to force the air out right now, a chore to keep herself from collapsing into the grass. She can feel it, at the edges of herself, the beginning of what would become a full fucking meltdown if she gave more life to it. Her thoughts are turning into a spiral, a never ending thread of memories, one after the other of them walking across the country and him guessing her favorite astronaut and the day in Salt Lake and the day here at this same fucking museum –

And then it turns into anything else you wanna hash out and him galloping up frantically on a horse and pulling her into a hug and confessing what he’d done and she can see, with painful clarity, every time she caught him glancing her way across a room or turning away when he caught sight of her like seeing her pained him –

“Oh my god.” It tears from her throat and Ellie lurches forward, clamping her hands over Joel’s cheeks and forcing him to look up at her. “Look at me, look at me .” His gaze floats over her momentarily, distant and unfocused. “I’m right here, Joel. Me, Ellie, I’m right here. I’m alive, I’m fine, I –” the words spill from her lips before she can really think it through “– you saved me. I’m here, you saved me.”

For a split second, Ellie thinks she’s broken through. Something seems to register in Joel’s eyes as he looks at her again - a flicker of recognition in his eyes, maybe - and he whispers faintly, “Saved you.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, “you saved me, I’m here, I’m fine.”

But then his gaze falls to the girl in his arms and his face crumples again. “Should’ve saved you,” he murmurs.

“No,” Ellie says desperately, dropping her hands to his shoulders and shaking until he looks at her again. “Look at me – who am I? What’s my name?”

Joel stares at her blankly for a long moment. “Chandra,” he says finally. “How did you get here?”

He had to have hit his head at some point, Ellie thinks frantically. That’s the only explanation here, the only thing that makes this make sense. Because Chandra – Joel’s patrol partner when they first got to Jackson and someone Ellie had teased him about having a crush on even though she was married – had been thrown from her horse into a ravine almost four years ago, and she hadn’t survived.

Ellie scrambles to her feet, tearing a hand through her hair. This is…she doesn’t even have words for how fucked this is.

She paces back and forth in front of him, keeping her pistol held loosely in her hand and one ear out for anything that could be approaching footsteps. It’s well past when they should have met up with Javi, well past when the three of them should have been returning with a report. Would they be sending out a party to find them? Should she wait, just try to keep Joel calm and wait for someone else to come find them? 

Joel’s voice pulls her from her thoughts. “You oughta head back.”

She whirls on him. “What?”

He’s not looking at her, his whole being focused on Ana. He’s still rocking her back and forth, seemingly unaware and uncaring of anything else, and it gives Ellie a brief flash of what he must have looked like carrying her out of the hospital. In all her late night thoughts about what happened in the hospital, she’s only ever pictured Joel mowing down Firefly after Firefly, pictured him putting a bullet in Marlene.

She’s never thought about how he must have carried her out, cradled in his arms just like Ana is now, how he probably carefully adjusted her the same way she saw him do earlier. How he probably held her as if she was the most important thing in the world to him.

“You oughta head back,” he says again, still not looking at her. “Get back to Jackson and your wife. I – you should go.”

Nausea coils in Ellie’s stomach. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“You have to,” Joel says simply, “because I ain’t leavin’ her.”

“Joel –” She cuts herself off because what even is there to say? She can’t force Joel to move, and she can’t seem to snap him out of whatever the fuck this is. He thought they were in the hospital at first, thought Ellie had died there, but now he’s talking to Chandra and about Jackson.

But they can’t stay here, not out in the open. If nothing else they should try to get back to the museum, where they can hide. Shelter is key, Joel taught her that early on. Somewhere you can make as secure as possible, somewhere you can keep yourself protected.

She opens her mouth to suggest it, but Joel beats her to it. “Would you…” he clears his throat, readjusting his hold on Ana. “Before you go home, would you help me bury her?”

The world blurs around her, tears turning the nearby trees to green smears before tracking down her cheeks. “Yeah. Yeah we can…let’s go bury her.”

–-

Joel leads her through the trees and around to the front of the museum, the sureness with which he picks his path telling Ellie that something in his mind is still as it should be. It’s just…scrambled, mixed up, and she doesn’t know how to undo it. She’d thought he would snap out of it after a bit, or that looking at her enough would get through to him, make him see her.

It hadn’t worked, and now she was trailing him back towards the dinosaur statue at the front, watching the rigid line of his shoulders as he walked. Ana was still held tightly to his chest, and occasionally Ellie could hear him murmuring. Talking to her , but she had no idea what he was saying.

Joel comes to an abrupt halt, staring up at the T-rex. “Here,” he says quietly, not looking over at her. “She’d like it here, this…this is where I can – we can –” A choked noise leaves him, his head slumping forward.

Ellie swallows, the urge to turn and throw up nearly overwhelming. Joel wanting to bury her near the dinosaur statue, it’s too much, it’s all too much.

“Pick a spot,” she manages, turning her back on him. “I’ll find something to dig with.”

–-

There’s too many rocks to bury Ana as close to the statue as Joel would like, but when Ellie returns with a rusty shovel and the remains of a plastic tub, he’s picked a spot in the treeline where the ground is soft enough to dig.

“Can see the statue from here,” he murmurs almost absently, squatting down so he can lay Ana carefully on the ground. Joel still doesn’t look over at Ellie, holding a hand out for the shovel. He keeps talking as he starts to dig, leaving Ellie to pick up the tub and join in, ineffective though it is to use. “Brought her here for her birthday, and she about gave me a damn heart attack climbin’ on top of it and jumpin’ into the water. She was always doin’ shit like that. Climbin’, takin’ risks. She was wild, damn near reckless.”

A tear splashes on the back of her hand, and Ellie does her best to blink them away, digging further into the ground. She cut Joel out of her life nearly two years ago, and yet…he’s talking about her with such affection still. With admiration and fondness and a whole host of things lacing his words that Ellie would have thought would have dulled with time.

“Because she knew you’d catch her.” The words fall from her mouth, finding their way around the knot in her throat. “She knew you’d keep her safe no matter what, so she could be reckless.”

In the corner of her eye, Joel pauses his digging, hands tightening on the handle of the shovel. “I tried.” He resumes digging, tossing the dirt aside with more force. “I fuckin’ tried so many times to protect her. All I wanted was for her to have a life, wanted her to be safe and happy. But I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t –”

Words seem to fail him, and they continue digging in silence.

–-

Ellie stands to the side, wiping a dirty hand under her nose as she watches Joel lay Ana in the hole they’ve dug. She’s caked in dirt now, still covered in the remnants of Marla and Ana’s blood. Every part of her aches, her arms, shoulders, legs. Her fucking heart.

“There you go, baby,” Joel says tenderly, arranging Ana’s hands on top of her stomach, brushing a stray piece of hair off her face. “There you go.”

The whole thing is twisted - Ellie feels like she shouldn’t be watching this, should give Joel a moment alone even though he thinks the person he’s burying is her. It feels like the worst kind of intrusion, this glimpse into his grief at her imagined loss.

A pained noise emanates from Joel, and Ellie blinks back to awareness to find him hunched over Ana’s form, his shoulders shaking with the force of his sobs. He’s coated in a thicker layer of dirt than she is, patches of his skin and clothing barely visible under it. They hadn’t been able to dig very far down - the grave is only a few feet deep - and Joel’s kneeling in it now.

She has to take a step back, and then another, when he starts murmuring I’m sorry again, the words broken by the sobs still coming from him. He says more, a stream of words erupting from him, but Ellie backs away even further. She’s got no right to hear anything he’s saying, even if it’s technically to her .

Ellie walks away until she’s far enough to not be able to hear but still close enough to see. His revolver is like a brand against her lower back, the weight of it heavy and uncomfortable, and she’s so fucking glad now that she’d given it to Marla. Because if it was still in his possession –

Joel stands, hoisting himself out of the grave. Parts of his face are visible again, the dirt and blood eroded by the force of his tears, and he bends over to pick up the shovel once more. There’s a mound of dirt next to him and he digs the tip of the shovel in before freezing.

Ellie approaches again carefully, watching his hands flex on the handle as his gaze floats back over to Ana. And she knows what’s holding him back.

“I’ll do it,” Ellie tells him gently, placing a hand on his arm when she’s close enough. It takes a moment before his hands relax on the shovel and he passes it to her. “I’ll…I’ll cover her. You don’t have to.” She knows all too well how Tommy had had to be the one to do it for Sarah, how Joel hadn’t been able to scatter dirt over his daughter’s face.

And now he can’t do it when he thinks it’s her.

The lines are all there, connecting dots Ellie has never let herself see because it means things she can’t let herself acknowledge - about what she is in relation to Joel, how he sees her, why he’s done what he has.

And those connections are threatening to knock out every remaining brick in the wall she’s built between them.

Joel watches her as she carefully lifts the first load of dirt, sprinkling it almost delicately over Ana. His gaze never leaves the grave as Ellie painstakingly fills it back in, his breathing heavy and unsteady, but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t so much as twitch until the last scoop of dirt has been spread over the top.

“We need to head back,” Ellie says hoarsely, setting down the shovel. The sun is well past its high point, and she thinks they might have just a couple more hours before it really starts to set and the temperature begins to drop. “We can –”

“‘M not goin’ back.” Joel’s gaze rests on the small mound in front of him, his hand twitching at his side. “Can’t do it.”

“Joel, you –”

“No,” he says harshly. “I ain’t goin’ back. You go, you get home safe. But I ain’t. I’ve already –” the anger disappears from his voice as fast as it had come “– I’ve already buried one daughter and then left her behind. Can’t do it again.”

He turns towards her, hand held out. “Give me back my gun.”

Ellie stumbles back several steps. “Fuck no.”

“Chandra,” Joel says impatiently, hand still outstretched, “I know what you’re tryin’ to do, and I don’t blame you. But with all due respect, you ain’t had to bury two kids. You don’t know. Give me my gun.”

“What about Tommy?” Ellie bursts out desperately. “What about your brother? And his wife, and your nephew. What about them?”

Something twitches in Joel’s face. “They’ll be fine. Won’t even miss me. And Tommy’ll understand.” He takes a step forward and Ellie shuffles back again.

“You need to tell him,” she pleads. “You have to be the one to tell Tommy about – about Ellie. Don’t make me go back there and tell him about her and you.” Don’t make me tell him that I couldn’t pull you from this, that you died for nothing.

Joel stares at her for a long moment, long enough that it makes Ellie hope that he’s starting to come out of this hallucination or whatever the fuck it was. But then he opens his mouth and just says

“Fine.”

–-

Ellie rides behind him on the way back, more to keep him from easily accessing the revolver still tucked in the back of her pants than anything. She’s got the injured party flag in her hand already, arm tensed and prepared to start waving it frantically as soon as the walls are in sight. They’ll be looking for them by now, possibly have already sent out another group to find them, and Ellie just needs to get Joel to the clinic right away. Maybe someone there will know what to do.

It’s a slower trip back with two of them on one horse - and utterly silent, despite Ellie’s best efforts to make Joel talk. He’s slumped in front of her, barely bothering to guide Old Beardy, and he turns back to look the way they came more than once. Ellie can tell he’s contemplating jumping from the horse and going back, that the further away they get from where Joel thinks he buried her, the more it eats at him.

She still can’t comprehend all this - that Joel should be so fucking destroyed by the thought that she’s dead, despite the fact that they’ve had virtually no contact for years . She knew he cared about her - the massacre at the hospital was a pretty clear indicator - but she’d always thought that with enough time and distance he’d let go of that.

And if he had always cared so goddamn much, then why didn’t he try to fix things between them? Why did he just let her say they were done and then walk away, without putting in any effort towards repairing the bridge between them? Maybe Ellie wouldn’t have been willing to hear him out, maybe she still would have told him to get fucked but – if she had mattered to him so fucking much, why did he just give up?

–-

The sun’s nearly set by the time the walls come into view, and Ellie immediately whips her arm into the air, flag waving back and forth. She’s relieved to see the gates begin to yawn open almost immediately, relieved to be that much closer to getting Joel to the clinic and to his brother, to people who can actually do something about this, because she as shit hasn’t been able to.

Ellie swings down from the horse as soon as Joel pulls it to a stop, ignoring the gawking looks they’re getting from the people close by. She can only imagine what they look like, both caked in dirt, covered in a fair amount of blood. Joel’s got that distant look in his eyes again, and he turns to stare at the gates shutting behind them with such sorrow in his eyes that it makes Ellie’s chest ache.

Javi’s there, Ellie sees with relief, staring at them wide-eyed for a moment before approaching.

“Where’s Tommy?” She asks as soon as he gets close enough. She keeps one eye on Joel at all times, watching to make sure he doesn’t try to leave, doesn’t slip away from her. Someone’s already grabbed Old Beardy’s reins and started leading him away, presumably to the stables.

“Putting together a small group to come out after you,” Javi says, his brow crinkling in confusion as soon as it lands on Joel.

“Get him and tell him to meet us at the clinic,” Ellie says quietly. “As fast as he fucking can.”

“Got it.” Javi practically sprints off without asking any more questions, which Ellie is grateful for, and she turns back to Joel. He hasn’t moved, his entire being fixated on the gates.

“We gotta get to the clinic,” she tells him. His head turns ever so slightly, his blank expression still utterly unnerving her. “Tommy’s there.”

Joel doesn’t move, anger creeping into his features as he looks at her more fully. “I shouldn’t have come back,” he growls. “I shouldn’t have let you make me, I shoulda stayed out there with her.”

“You can go back,” Ellie says desperately, trying to keep her own voice low. They’ll be the topic of enough gossip as it is, she doesn’t need them adding to it. “You can go back, you just gotta talk to Tommy first, and he’s at the clinic. Please, Joel, let’s go there and then I’ll take you back to her.”

Another long, quiet moment - the anger in his eyes sharpening to something akin to a hatred that makes Ellie’s skin crawl - and then he whirls around and strides down the street towards the clinic.

Allie’s at the front desk when they walk in, and she gapes as Joel strides in and makes his way down the hall without a word. Ellie pauses by her long enough to tell her to send Tommy straight to them when he gets there, and then she hastens to follow.

Joel’s standing in the middle of an empty room at the end of the hall when Ellie walks in, head bowed and shoulders shaking. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to pull his attention to herself when he thinks she’s someone else, so she tucks herself into a chair and waits.

It’s only a few minutes before Ellie hears the door to the clinic practically slam open, hears the thud of bootsteps, and she bolts for the hallway.

She’s never been so relieved to see Tommy, standing at the desk talking to Allie, one of his arms waving frantically. “In here,” Ellie calls, and Tommy immediately makes for them.

She’s surprised by the vigor with which he hugs her, the way he squeezes her and cups the back of her head before pulling back to look her over. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he breathes. “The hell happened to y’all? Where’s Joel?”

Ellie glances over her shoulder to the room. “He’s in there. We’re fine physically - this isn’t our blood - but something…something happened to Joel out there, he snapped or something, because he’s –”

“Snapped?” Tommy’s brows pull together. “What d’you mean, snapped?”

Ellie shakes her head, unsure of how to explain. “It’s - it’s like a hallucination or something, I don’t know, I just –”

Tommy doesn’t let her explain any further, just shifts past her into the room. “Joel?”

Ellie follows carefully, reentering just in time to see Joel turn to face his brother, and his expression crumples.

“Tommy.” Joel staggers forward, almost collapsing into Tommy’s arms, and the younger Miller struggles to keep them upright.

“Hey, whoa,” Tommy sputters, easing them towards the bed and nudging Joel to sit. “You’re alright, ‘s alright.”

Joel shakes his head frantically, curving forward. “No it’s – they killed her, Tommy. They killed her.”

“Killed –?” Tommy looks up at Ellie, wide-eyed, and she can only press her lips together in a futile attempt to keep her own tears inside. “Who did they kill, Joel?”

A sob tears from Joel’s throat, his hands curling into fists. “Ellie, they killed Ellie. They killed my little girl, those fuckin’ Fireflies killed her.” His voice rises to a roar at the end, but just as fast he’s slumping forward again, head in his hands.

Tommy sends Ellie a panicked look and crouches in front of his brother. “Joel, the Fireflies didn’t –”

“I was holdin’ her,” Joel pulls his hands away from his face to stare down at them. “Was holdin’ her just like I did Sarah, and they shot her in my arms just like they did Sarah. And she - I couldn’t –” His gaze floats upward a little, that heartbreakingly distant look that’s grown entirely too familiar to Ellie returning.

“Joel –” Tommy sounds just as at a loss as she feels, looking over his shoulder at Ellie and then back at his brother.

“Chandra helped me bury her,” Joel sniffs, his eyes looking over Ellie briefly before he turns away again, “by the dinosaur at the museum. Told you how much she loved that statue, climbin’ on it and everything. Thought she’d like to be left there.”

“That was…” Ellie sees Tommy struggle for a moment, “I’m sure she loved that.”

“Chandra said I had to be the one to come tell you, wasn’t fair to make her do it.” His eyes skate over again, the anger returning to them briefly. “But I’m goin’ back out there to be with her. Can’t stay here.”

“Joel, no –”

“I left Sarah behind,” Joel says quietly, his hand coming up almost absently to rub at the scar on the side of his head. “Can’t do it with Ellie too.”

None of them speak for a long moment, Tommy’s panicked gaze darting between Joel and Ellie, and Ellie blinking rapidly against the increasing threat of tears. They made it back safe, she delivered Joel to Tommy, she can leave . But she also feels glued to the floor, torn between staying and fleeing, neither of them feeling like the right option.

“Tommy,” Joel’s voice is barely more than a whisper, his head lifting slightly so he can look at his little brother, “why can’t I keep my kids alive?”

It’s too much, entirely too much, everything he’s saying is too fucking much, and Ellie can’t stay there anymore - she bolts.

She makes it as far as the bathroom two doors down, slamming the door shut behind her, before her knees give out and she collapses.

There’s no air in here, not nearly enough air, and Ellie’s gasping, trying so goddamn hard to pull herself back together, but there’s just an endless loop of Joel’s words playing in her head.

They killed my little girl.

I’ve already buried one daughter and then left her behind.

Why can’t I keep my kids alive?

Ellie’s stomach rolls, her chest heaving, and she barely has time to lift the lid on the toilet before she’s hunched over and vomiting. Her stomach constricts again and again, seemingly determined to purge her body of everything in it, and Ellie only wishes that she could get rid of the images in her mind so easily. Joel carrying Ana, Marla’s lifeless eyes, the man with the rifle.

The fucking empty space where there should’ve been a dinosaur wearing a hat.

A hand comes to rest gently on her back between her shoulder, and in between heaves Ellie catches fragments of Tommy’s voice.

“You’re alright, darlin’. ‘S alright.”

“No,” she gasps, falling backwards. Tommy reaches forward to shut the toilet lid and flush it before handing her a damp towel. Ellie drags it across her mouth and nose, her whole body trembling. “It’s not alright , Tommy. Joel’s – he’s fucking lost it or something, and it’s a fucking miracle I was able to get him back here. He was gonna – gonna fucking shoot himself right there on top of the girl’s grave, right in front of me, I was standing right in front of him and he couldn’t see me. This is not –”

“Ellie.” Tommy’s voice is gentle but commanding, and he reaches forward to take the towel from her. “Take a deep breath.” She inhales unsteadily, feeling like her lungs won’t expand properly. “Good,” he says, grabbing another small towel and dampening it. “Another.”

He talks her quietly through five more breaths like that, diligently wiping her hands and face clean of blood and dirt and spit and vomit and tears.

“You left Joel alone,” Ellie says suddenly, her hand reaching up to latch around Tommy’s wrist and still his movements. “You left him alone, what if he’s gone –”

“Hey.” Tommy cups a hand on either side of her face, forcing her to look at him. “I had Em sedate him before I came after you. He’s knocked out, he ain’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon.”

“Oh.” Ellie slumps back against the wall, letting her eyes drift shut momentarily. “Good. That’s good.”

“Why don’t you go home and change –” Tommy starts, but Ellie shakes her head.

“I’m not leaving till he wakes up.” The vehemence with which she says it surprises even her, but she pushes herself to her feet. “You can go get me clothes or something, I’ll wipe down in here, but I’m not going anywhere, Tommy.”

She glares at him, daring him to try to make her leave. This is all so fucked, Ellie feels like she doesn’t know which way is up right now, but she knows with a complete certainty that she’s not budging from this clinic till Joel opens his eyes.

Tommy, to his credit, doesn’t try to argue it with her. He just guides her down the hall back to Joel’s room and nudges her to sit in the chair next to his bed. His flannel is off, a small bandage taped to his arm where she assumes the sedative was injected. The cleanliness of his arms just serves to emphasize how dirty his hands and face and jeans are, and Ellie has a moment of regret that she didn’t grab more towels from the bathroom to wipe him down a bit like Tommy had done for her.

She zones out a little, watching the steady movement of his chest, and then she blinks and Maria is crouched in front of her.

“Ellie?”

“Hi.” The word comes out small and rough, tears still clinging to the edge of it.

Maria reaches forward and rests a hand on her knee. “Brought you some clothes. I’ll sit with Joel for a few minutes while you go get changed.”

Ellie’s attention floats back over to the unconscious man on the bed briefly before she nods. “Yeah, okay.”

The bathroom looks unchanged from earlier other than the dirty towels in the basket, but Ellie feels like she’s seeing it for the first time, feels like she’s seeing everything for the first time again. She doesn’t know what happens next, where any of them go from here, but…she needs to talk to Joel. Whenever he wakes up, whenever he is back in his right mind again. She needs to talk to him.

–-

Tommy returns after about half an hour, pressing a kiss to Maria’s lips before ushering her out the door and shutting it behind her. Joel hasn’t moved, still passed out on the bed, and Tommy pulls a chair up next to Ellie.

“I need you to walk me through everything that happened.”

Ellie looks over at him, takes in the encouraging look on his face, and then shifts her focus back to Joel.

It spills out of her more easily than she had expected it to, a surprisingly detailed accounting of everything that had happened since they left the gates that morning. Leaving Javi with the horses, entering the museum. The missing dinosaur - Tommy reaches over to squeeze her wrist at that - and then Marla and Ana and the two raiders. The deaths that Ellie hadn’t been able to prevent, and then the way Joel had unraveled before her very eyes. It’s so much, so very much to unload, that it takes Ellie a moment to realize that it had all happened in the space of a day. She feels like a lifetime has passed between her and the girl that left Jackson this morning.

Tommy doesn’t say anything for a long moment after she finishes, just turns to look at his brother resting on the bed.

He looks… old, Ellie realizes with a pang. She knows he’s sixty-one or so, an age that’s a miracle to reach in this world, but while she was so busy icing him out…he’s got new wrinkles, new scars on his arms. There’s next to no brown left to be seen in his hair, which Ellie knew , but it was all hitting her a little differently now, coming at her sideways and shaking her to the core.

He might not be around much longer, her mind whispers, and Ellie’s hands tighten on the arms of the chair. It makes sense - nobody lives forever - but she’d just…never contemplated that with Joel. He was just always supposed to be there. In the periphery of her life, yes, but close enough for her to reach out and grab him if she chose to.

“He was so upset,” she finds herself whispering. “When he thought I had died. Even though he kept sort of…flipping between the hospital and Jackson, he was so fucked up by thinking that he was burying me.”

Tommy looks at her, visibly confused. “Well…yeah. It would destroy him if anythin’ happened to you, darlin’.”

“It’s not supposed to.” Her thumb comes up to her lips, teeth chewing at the nail without thought. “It’s not…we haven’t talked in years, even after we started on patrol together. So it doesn’t make sense.”

“Well,” Tommy says slowly, leaning back in his chair and crossing one leg over the other, “you don’t have kids, so maybe it doesn’t make sense to you. But TJ could decide he ain’t speakin’ to me now until he’s thirty and it wouldn’t make him any less my son, wouldn’t make me love him or worry about him any less.”

“I guess I thought it would fade.” She ignores Tommy’s not-so-subtle comparison, ignores the way the words set off competing images in her mind. Joel’s face as he spat you’re not my daughter fading away under the weight of his face as he handed her a cassette tape with a launch recording on it.

“Love like that don’t fade, Ellie.”

No, she’s starting to realize, it doesn’t.

–-

Tommy heads home after a couple hours after he has a cot brought in for her, promising to come back early in the morning to check on them.

And then it’s just Ellie and Joel and her ever-spinning thoughts.

There’s a lot of them, as she sits there in the quiet and watches Joel breathe. A lot of what ifs and so very many questions, things she’s finally acknowledging to herself she wants to address with him. A deep, burning hope that he wakes up and knows where he is and who she is and no longer is fighting to go off into the woods and put a bullet in his brain.

Because this can’t be how it ends.

–-

Ellie doesn’t climb into the cot, only moves from the chair long enough to get a couple washcloths from the bathroom and wet them. She sets to cleaning his hands, diligently wiping every possible trace of Ana’s blood and the dirt from her grave from his skin before moving to his face and neck.

It’s strange, being so close to him after so much time. It’s a lot like when they’d been in Colorado and he’d been out of it on that mattress, shitty stitches and expired penicillin being the only things keeping him from dying on her. She’d had to clean him up then too, with dirty rags and melted snow. It makes this feel like muscle memory, and for the first time it doesn’t make her want to tear the memories out at the root.

When she’s satisfied with how clean he is - though there’s nothing she can do about the state of his clothes at the moment - Ellie tosses the cloths into a basket and settles into the chair again. She should have told Tommy not to bother with the cot - it feels too far away, and she’s afraid of Joel waking up still thinking she’s dead. If she’s on the cot she could sleep through him making a break for it. Chair it is.

Her eyes have just drifted shut, the beginnings of sleep finally tugging at her, when a rustling pulls her attention and she pries her eyes open again.

Joel’s stirring on the bed, legs shifting, and after a moment his eyelids flutter and then he’s looking at her blearily.

Ellie sits forward, her hand reaching for his before she stops and rests it on the bed next to him instead. “Joel?”

“Ellie?” His voice is rough, and he’s squinting like he can’t quite believe he’s seeing her, but just him uttering her name has Ellie slumping forward in relief. Already she feels like she could burst into tears again.

“Yeah.” She sniffs, and Joel’s brow furrows. “How do you feel? Do you know where you are?”

He looks past her, around the room, and then gazes at her again. “Clinic in Jackson,” he says gruffly. His hand twitches next to hers. “Don’t know how I got here though.” He looks her over as though checking her for injuries, for any clue. “You alright?”

Two words shouldn’t really have the power to knock her on her ass, but Ellie struggles for a moment to respond before settling on a nod and a “Yeah, I’m fine.” Joel doesn’t look like he believes her but he doesn’t press. Already his blinks are growing longer and more frequent, and Ellie can tell he’s fighting to stay awake.

“What happened?”

“Go to sleep,” she tells him quietly, sitting back in her chair and curling her knees up. “I’ll tell you all about it when you wake up. I won’t go anywhere.”

Joel just blinks at her for a moment, and Ellie can tell that even in his exhaustion and confusion a million thoughts are fighting behind his eyes.

But he doesn’t argue any further, just lets his eyes drift shut until he’s snoring gently, and after a few more minutes of watching him, Ellie lets herself follow suit.

–-

She doesn't tell him about it when he wakes up. Doesn’t tell him about it as she walks home next to him, both of them in the clean clothes Tommy and Maria had brought. Doesn’t tell him anything as she walks up the porch with him and into his house for the first time in ages, shifting her weight uneasily as he putters around a bit. Clearly at a loss as to why she’s there and what the fuck happened, but unwilling to say anything that might chase her out.

Joel offers her tea and Ellie finds herself agreeing, letting herself out onto the back porch to sink into a chair. Her whole body aches, her head is pounding, and even if Joel sat next to her and demanded to know what the fuck had happened, she doesn’t know that she’d be able to drag the words out of herself yet.

But he doesn’t demand anything, just brings her tea out when it’s ready and sets it next to her and then sinks into his own seat with a groan. And they stay silently like that until the tea is gone, and then Ellie sets her empty mug down, offers him a small smile, and leaves to shut herself into her own home.

It’s not until Ellie’s standing in her shower, using every drop of scalding hot water she can, that she lets the tightly wound coil inside herself unwind the smallest bit. She fractures, losing track of what’s tears and what’s shower water on her face, and she sobs until her throat burns and her ribs ache and her heart hurts just a little bit less.

And then she dries herself off and puts on her pajamas and collapses into her bed, slipping into blissful unconsciousness.

–-

“You know Maria’s gonna bench you from patrol?”

Joel looks over at her briefly before returning to the small block of wood he’d been whittling away at. “Yeah, I know. She came to talk to me about it yesterday when you were at the stables.” He shrugs, but Ellie can see the tightness in his jaw. “Ain’t a surprise, but ain’t what I want either.”

Ellie just nods, turning her attention back out to the backyard, watching the tree branches dance lightly in the wind.

It’s been a week since they’ve come back from the museum, and most days have been like this: spent on Joel’s back porch in the increasingly cold fall air, talking about the most insignificant things they can manage while he carves something from wood and she stares off into space or sketches. The drawing of their hands petting the giraffe was finished and framed, sitting on Ellie’s desk.

They still haven’t talked about what happened - Ellie gets the feeling that neither of them want to burst this fragile bubble they’ve found themselves in. Talking about Joel being permanently removed from the patrol rosters is the closest they’ve gotten to the subject.

It wasn’t unexpected, not after a comment Maria had made when the four of them had been gathered on the back porch. The council had been concerned, she said, and worried that it could happen again and possibly endanger others. Joel had looked then more or less the same way he did now - unhappy but accepting, knowing there was nothing he could do to change anyone’s mind even if he still didn’t know what had happened to his own.

For her part, Ellie wasn’t complaining. She didn’t know what would become of this shaky peace between her and Joel, but just the thought of him going out of the walls again had her body locking up in an unfamiliar terror.

“Ellie.”

“Hm?” She looks over to find that he’s set his wood and knife down and is looking at her intently.

“What happened?”

Ellie blows out a breath, uncurling her legs from the chair and pushing herself to stand, heart rate already ticking up at the question. There’s a frenetic energy that burns through her veins right now, setting her to pacing for a brief second before she makes herself stop and lean her back against the railing.

“What do you remember?”

Joel sits back in his chair, rubbing his hand across his chin. “We left on patrol with Javi,” he begins, “tryin’ to see about a possible group of people out in the area near the museum.” Another group had been sent out the next day, and they’d found three more raiders near the museum. All three had been eliminated, and Tommy had made sure that Marla’s body was buried near her daughter’s.

Ellie nods, not interrupting.

“Got there, you and I went into the museum and we –” Joel clears his throat, shooting an unsure look at her. “We, uh, both seemed to be strugglin’ to be there.” It’s a polite way to put it, if not a heavy understatement. “We ran into that woman and her daughter, and that’s where everything gets fuzzy. Remember a little about runnin’ through the trees, maybe diggin’. Ridin’ the horse back here. Then I woke up in the clinic and you were there.” He searches her face, leaning forward again. “Tommy wouldn’t tell me what happened other than that I needed to be sedated when we got back. Said I needed to talk to you about it.”

“Yeah.” Ellie inhales, turning just a little so she’s not facing him directly. The words come easier, she finds, when she’s not looking at Joel. “We found Marla and her daughter Ana. And Ana was injured so you had to carry her, and we were gonna bring them back here. But we got out of the museum, and Marla got shot, and you took off with Ana.”

Joel swears under his breath, and Ellie chances a glance at him to see him watching her with wet eyes. “‘M sorry.”

She waves off his apology. “I found you, but there was a raider with you and I didn’t shoot him in time. He fired, and he hit Ana while you were carrying her.”

A pained noise slips from Joel, and Ellie doesn’t have to look at him to know he’s caught in a flashback of Sarah. She keeps talking, afraid that if she stops she won’t be able to get everything out.

“You were like…rambling, kind of. Talking to Ana but not really to her. I thought that you thought she was Sarah,” Ellie winces as she says the name even though it’s hardly the first time. “But you, uh…you thought she was me, actually.”

From the corner of her eye she sees Joel’s head whip up in surprise.

“You kind of kept going back and forth on what had happened.” Ellie talks faster now, trying desperately to get to the end of this. “You thought the Fireflies had killed me in the - the hospital,” she stumbles a little but presses on, “but you remembered bringing me to the museum for my birthday. And you wanted to bury me by the statue out front so we buried Ana there.”

Joel clears his throat, but Ellie doesn’t turn to look at him. She’s barely holding it together as it is, and she knows whatever the fuck she sees on Joel’s face will be the thing that breaks her apart.

“How’d you get me back here?” It sounds like Joel’s swallowed gravel, and Ellie hears him sniff briefly before she answers.

“You thought I was your old patrol partner, Chandra. And you didn’t…you didn’t want to come back.” Ellie can’t quite find it in herself to repeat the words he’d said to her then, the number of ways he’d referred to her as his daughter. That feels like something just for her right now - something they can maybe address in the future when they’ve waded through all this other shit between them.

Joel’s hand moves, and Ellie doesn’t have to look over at him to know he’s rubbing the scar on the side of his head again. “No, I can’t imagine I would,” he says softly.

“I told you that you needed to come back to tell Tommy about me, that it wasn’t fair to make me have to do it. And I already had your gun, so you kinda didn’t have a choice. And then we got back here, Tommy got you sedated and now…here we are,” she finishes lamely.

“Here we are,” Joel breathes.

Neither of them says anything for a long moment, the only sound the chirp of the occasional bird and the murmur of conversation from the street.

“Thank you,” Joel says into the quiet. “For managin’ to get me back here. I know none of that woulda been easy for you to deal with, especially with the way things are or, uh, have been, between us.”

Ellie shrugs, turning all the way so her back is to him and her forearms are braced against the railing. “Wasn’t gonna let you die out there.”

There’s a creak - heavy bootsteps across the wood - and then Joel’s next to her, leaning against the railing in the same pose as her. “‘M grateful for that, even if I don’t deserve it.”

They both fall silent again, until Ellie opens her mouth and gives voice to one of the many things that’s been nagging at her for a week.

“You were really upset. When you, uh –” she wipes a hand under her eyes “– when you thought I had died.”

When Ellie chances a glance at Joel, he’s just staring at her, confused. “Yeah…”

She looks away again. “I dunno, I guess I just hadn’t expected it. After I cut you out and you stayed out, I would’ve thought that you…wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. But you…you wanted your gun, and I know what you meant to do with it, and it just…I wasn’t expecting it, is all.”

“Ellie,” Joel says gently, leaning over briefly to brush her shoulder with his, “I know…I know things between us ain’t been good. Hell, you talkin’ to me now is more than I would’ve ever thought to get again. And I know we never talked about it even when things were good, never put a name on it. But you oughta know, kiddo, that I have always seen you as my own. Even if you never spoke to me again, that would never change.”

Ellie nods, the movement jerky, and tears she didn’t even know were falling land with a soft splash on the back of her hand. Tommy’s voice echoes in her ears.

Love like that don’t fade.

Turns out the stupid asshole was right.

She shifts, leaning over until her head is resting on Joel’s shoulder and, after a moment, she feels him reciprocate the motion, his cheek pressing to the crown of her head. “Then why did you just let me go?”

It’s been sitting deep inside her all these years, this worry, this fear that she’d buried under her anger. Joel had just released her when she’d said she was done, and Ellie had spent too many hours staring at her ceiling wondering if he had been glad to do so. If she’d just been a burden to him, taking up his time and space, just cargo that had latched onto him.

Nobody had ever bothered to stick around for her, to fight to keep her in their lives - Joel’s name being added to that list had hurt just as much as his betrayal and lies had.

Joel exhales, his breath rustling strands of her hair. “‘S what you wanted,” he says simply. “And there wasn’t anything else I could give you, nothin’ I could do for you, ‘cept what you asked me to. Was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but…” his head turns, and she feels the phantom press of his lips against her temple, “you’d always been dragged along your whole life, never gettin’ a say in what was happenin’ to you. And a lot of that was because of me, so I thought…” his head turns again, his cheek returning to its spot. “I thought that this was somethin’ I could give you control over.”

It makes sense, in a way, and Ellie thinks she appreciates the sentiment behind it. But it’ll probably be some time before she stops worrying about it, stops wondering when he’ll get tired of her.

“I still don’t know how I feel about the hospital,” Ellie whispers. “About what you did and how everything happened. I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive you.”

“I know.”

Ellie exhales, the breath shaky and uneven, and she unclasps her hands so that she can wrap one around his wrist.

“But I’d like to try.”

Something wet lands on the back of her hand, and Ellie doesn’t know if it’s one of her tears or one of his.

Joel just nods. “I’d like that.”

There’s probably so much more that needs to be said, so much more to do to try to actually fix everything wrong between them. But not today - not at this moment. For now…

For now Ellie can be content with this, leaning against Joel and staring at the Tetons in the distance, his pulse strong and reassuring under her fingertips.