Archive of Our Own

One of the first things Ellie notices about Joel is that he’s exceptionally shitty at taking care of himself.

It’s not like she cares. As soon as they get to the state house, she’s never going to see him again. They’re not going to be friends or something. But she’s curious about their apartment and she has nothing to do besides reading a dry ass book of song titles.

She’s pretty sure he’ll get pissed if she actually touches anything, but she has to pee after a while. When she goes to find the bathroom, she lets herself take her time and look around. It’s not snooping that way. It’s just… looking. On her way by.

It’s worn out, the way most places are, but it’s not super gross or anything. There’s freshly washed dishes in the kitchen waiting to be put away and laundry drying on lines across it.

Also the bathroom is exceptionally clean. Ellie’s not sure if she’s ever been in a bathroom this clean. It is fucking nice.

She kinda snoops through their bathroom. Not like a lot. She doesn’t open any of the cupboards or anything. That seems like a step too far to be able to deny her snooping. But she pokes around a little. Most of the stuff is the same shit they get at school, military issue shampoo and bars of soap, but there’s some different things, too.

The shower has something called conditioner and actual body wash instead of just bar soap. She stole a half-bottle of body wash once from an officer and it made her skin smell like fruit. It was weird but she kinda liked it. The body wash in the shower smells way different. It’s sort of spicy.

The other thing she notices is the little notes all over the apartment. Colourful scraps of paper tucked all over it.

Joel, there’s antacids in the medicine cabinet if that chilli gives you heartburn, is pinned under a cup in the bathroom. Joel, got you new laces for your boots, is on the dresser by the bathroom door. Got those cookies you like in the kitchen and I’ll be late don’t forget to eat dinner is on the nightstand next to the bed.

It starts to get annoying when she keeps noticing it because, seriously, he’s such a fucking asshole. She doesn’t care if he needs stupid little notes to remind him to be an adult or whatever.

But then he stands between her and soldier with a gun and refuses to move.

And beats his knuckles bloody killing the guy.

Watching him with Tess is interesting. They won’t get close to her all night, just sitting and watching her until she curls up and falls asleep out of self-defence and exhaustion. In the morning, when Tess stands up and moves closer, he starts to protest like he’s afraid Ellie’s about to attack her. Like they aren’t the dangerous ones here. It’s funny. Tess doesn’t seem like she needs protecting. Ellie’s pretty sure Tess would kill her without thinking much about it.

She likes Tess.

She likes the way Tess talks to her like she’s an adult. She’s not nice, exactly, but she’s honest and that’s better. There’s no bullshit with her. She also doesn’t act like Ellie’s a fucking idiot because she was raised in a stupid FEDRA school and doesn’t know everything they do.

Joel does.

Which is why it’s annoying when the body in the hotel scares the shit out of her and he reaches out to give her a hand off the piano. It’s just a skeleton. She’s seen bodies before. She didn’t need him to save her from it.

Or from the body in the museum.

Then she almost gets them all killed by those blind ones and she does need him to save her from them. She even manages to get herself bit again. She's seen three infected in her life and two have bitten her. Great odds, there, truly. 

He gives her a bandage for her arm, even though it’s really not that bad, and she looks back from the other roof to see him help Tess tape up her ankle. He’s got a gash across his cheek and his hand still looks all fucked up, and he seems to be ignoring both.

She refuses to talk to him after he makes her leave Tess alone.

They could have helped her. She had time left. Ellie knows.

So she’s pissed and she’s not talking to him. But when it gets too dark to go any further and she finds herself a patch of ground to curl up on, he tosses his jacket onto the ground next to her.

She takes it because she’s freezing. He’s probably freezing now, too, but that’s not her problem. If he wants to be a dick to himself, he can be a dick to himself.

* * *

The first time Joel hears Ellie laugh is at her own awful puns.

She’s a funny kid and he’s trying not to notice. She’s sarcastic and quick with the retorts, especially at him. He’s meaner in response than he should be. Meaner than he used to be. He remembers that shift into the teenage years and he remembers how much he liked it, watching her get closer to adulthood. He was so proud of how smart she was, even when she was making him feel like an idiot.

Ellie seems to have figured that bit out fast. She asks him how the siphon works, immediately clocks that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and giggles about it. Worse, when he tells her not to wander, she pulls that stupid pun book out.

They’re terrible and she laughs at them like they’re the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

“Feel free to wait in the truck,” he says and he’s trying hard not to smile.

Don’t, he thinks. I’m not getting used to you.

She gets nervous that night about sleeping the woods, and it’s his fault for putting the idea of people trying to hurt them in her mind. Someone has to tell her this kind of thing, though, and there’s no one else around to do that. It’s important. I’m trying to keep you alive, Tess’ voice says in his head.

The last thing she asked was for him to keep the kid alive. So she needs to know these kinds of things, as much as the idea of trying to scare a kid grates at him. She needs to know how the infected work － and how is FEDRA not teaching them about it? She’s only a few years out from being forced into the military. But she also needs to think about things like people, especially out in the middle of nowhere like this.

He tries to remember it’s not his problem. They’ll be in Wyoming in a day or so. She won’t be his problem anymore. It’ll be up to the Fireflies to keep her alive.

But he thinks about the way she laughed when she called him a dick for knowing the punchline to her joke. Just pure joy and excitement.

And he gets up to keep watch.

* * *

Joel’s really bad at taking care of himself. Back at Bill and Frank’s, she told him to shower, mostly to make fun of him, but he looked like he hadn’t even thought about it.

Which is why it’s weird he keeps taking care of her. Like when he looked at her and said they were going to stop for the night. They probably could have driven longer, but she realized he was stopping because she was worn out.

He made her dinner, too, and he was a bit of a dick when she asked about making a fire, but he was honest and that’s better than being nice. Historically, people have not been honest with her. Kwong acted like he was levelling with her, treating her like an adult, but maybe he was full of shit, or maybe he just believed the shit FEDRA fed him, but not everything he said was true. She’s seen enough to know that now.

And the Fireflies made Riley lie to her.

She’s still kinda pissed about that.

But Joel makes her food and tells her to sleep and when she shoots that guy, he asks if she’s okay and teaches her how to hold a gun properly. When she asks if it gets easier to hurt people, he’s honest when he says no.

Honest is better than nice.

Then she watches Henry shoot himself in front of her and something breaks inside her.

This is all her fault.

“Oh, God,” Joel says so softly she barely hears him.

A moment － maybe longer, she isn’t sure － he gets between her and… and what’s left of Henry.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, crouching in front of her. “Ellie, I need to know if you’re hurt.”

“No,” she manages. She isn’t actually sure. She can’t feel anything.

“Alright. You wait outside while I get our stuff.”

“No!” she blurts. She looks at his face for the first time, realizing abruptly she’s been staring at his shirt and nothing else. He looks worried. “No, I want － I wanna bury them.”

“Ellie…”

“I want to bury them,” she repeats. “Please, Joel. I’ll dig it. You don’t even have to do anything.”

She’s not sure what convinces him. She’s trying to say more, to argue more so he’ll listen but she’s still crying like a fucking baby and her hands won’t stop shaking. She can still feel Sam’s body when it stopped moving. When he died.

“Alright,” he says. “C’mon.”

He catches her arm and pulls her to her feet, holding on even after she’s steady.

“This way,” Joel says and tugs on her.

She doesn’t really get what he wants, but she goes anyways. Just for a minute. She’ll argue in a minute.

Then she realizes he’s pulling her into the other room, past Sam’s body, and she starts to turn towards him without thinking.

“No, don’t look,” Joel says, blocking her line of sight so all she can see is his shirt. “You don’t need to be lookin’ at that.”

He nudges her until she moves again and when they’re in the other room, he makes her sit in the other chair by the little table in the corner next to the window. She can’t really see through the door from here.

“What are you doing?” she finally gets it together enough to ask.

He looks up from where he’s pulling the blanket off the bed. “I’m gonna wrap them up.”

“Oh. I can…”

Joel picks her jacket and bag up off the other bed and brings them over to her. “You sit there and wait. And then you can help me find something to dig with. You shouldn’t…” He sighs. “You shouldn’t have to see any more of that.”

She takes her stuff from him. When he turns away to grab the other blanket, she shoves her face into her jacket. She should argue about it. She should try and convince him she's not a kid and she can handle it. He doesn't need to take care of her. But...

There are pieces of her friends on the walls. She doesn’t want to look anymore.

She doesn’t want to remember them like this.

* * *

Joel’s starting to worry he won’t ever hear Ellie laugh again.

She’s been quiet for days, walking in the direction he points out and pushing to go further when he says they need to stop.

“It’s not a race,” he says eventually. “You have to pace yourself or you’re gonna get hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“Then I will remind you I’m fifty-six goddamn years old and if you want me to make it to Wyoming, you’re gonna have to pace yourself.”

That finally makes her crack a smile. It’s the first he’s seen in far too long.

She’s been crying at night when she thinks he’s asleep and can’t hear her.

He ends that day a little early. They’re next to a small lake, which gives them both a chance to clean up a bit. He found her a new shirt as soon as possible － her T-shirt had blood on it and it wasn’t hers, and he could tell how much it was upsetting her － but she’s been complaining about smelling bad for a couple days now. Well. About him smelling bad, mostly.

Besides, if they stop early enough, she’ll have time to get bored.

Ellie gets bored really easily. She finds the walking boring, he knows, and the vast stretches of nothing, but physically moving at least keeps her busy enough. When she’s not moving, it becomes a problem. She’s a little too prone to wandering off and getting into trouble.

He’s trying to ignore how much he sees how much she just wants to be a kid. In the tunnels, she was so excited about the things in that school room. Most of it was too young for her, really, but she basically never gets to play with stuff like that.

“Is that safe?” she asks, squeezing water from her hair as she comes closer to the fire he made.

“Not much of a choice,” he says. “We need to eat and you’re gonna catch pneumonia if you walk around with that wet hair. It’s fine. I’ll keep watch tonight.”

“We could take turns.”

“No. Stay by the fire till your hair’s dry.”

He goes off to get himself cleaned up and leaves her alone long enough to get restless. It’s not particularly long, but she’s fidgety by the time he gets back and starts getting dinner ready.

“Here,” he says, handing her a plate of food. “It’s hot. Be careful.”

It feels weird saying that. She’s old enough to know how to eat, but she scarfs down food like she’s afraid someone’s going to take it away and she's burned herself more than once. He doesn't think she's used to hot food. 

“Okay. Hey, Joel?”

“Hm?”

“What did one plate says to the other?”

He sighs. “What.”

“Dinner is on me.”

He turns away so she can’t see him grinning as he dishes his own food up. “That one’s weak.”

“It was not,” she says defensively and giggles.

That’s more like it.

* * *

Ellie didn’t realize how much she could hate rain until this trip. Joel found her this coat that’s like some weird slippery material that the rain doesn’t go through so her clothes aren’t constantly soaked, at least, but she feels incredibly stupid wearing it. It’s yellow. Bright fucking yellow.

It also doesn’t do much for her shoes.

“Ugh, my socks are still wet,” she groans. She was hoping at least one pair would dry out overnight.

“Yeah, you need boots,” Joel says. “We’ll find you some.”

The other thing about rainy days, the really bad ones, is that they bother Joel.

She’s pretty sure he has a harder time hearing over the sound, which makes him extra grumpy and paranoid. She tries to stay on his bad side, to watch his back, but that means he has a harder time hearing her and he doesn’t like that much, either.

But more than that, his knee really bothers him when it rains.

“Can we stay here for the day?” she asks.

She expects him to say no, at least the first time.

Joel runs his hand through his hair. “Hm. Come over here.”

Ellie fumbles her way to her feet, shuffling over still in her sleeping bag. She still doesn’t have socks or shoes on. Her feet got so wet last night that she didn’t have a choice but to take them off.

They’re staying in this weird building out in the middle of the woods. Joel said it used to be a fire watch tower. It’s one room and there’s a lot of windows － probably to watch for fires － but it’s super high up and they can see for ages. No one’s sneaking up on them up here.

It’s not as busted up as some places, but floor’s gross enough she doesn’t want her bare feet on it.

She kind of collapses down next to Joel, letting her limbs fold under her until she’s on the ground. It’s not graceful and she knows it. She’s been the same height since she was twelve, but sometimes she still feels like she doesn’t know exactly where her arms and legs are supposed to be.

Also she refuses to get out of her sleeping bag. It’s fucking cold.

“What?”

He spreads the map out in front of him. “Show me where we are.”

She nods, leaning over and peering at it. “Uh… here.”

“Close.” He moves her hand over until she’s pointing at the right spot. “We went a little further yesterday than I thought we would.”

“Nice.”

“How much food and water do we have?”

“Um… I have a few apples in my bag and some of those noodle things you add the water to. You have some cans, right?” When he nods, she leans over and picks up the big water bottle he usually has strapped to his bag. “This is like half full. So’s mine. I dunno how much you have.”

He shakes his canteen enough that she can hear it.

“So that plus whatever is in the pots outside.” They left them out to collect rainwater since it was coming down so hard.

“So what am I gonna tell you?”

She sighs. “Okay, okay, I’ll go get my fucking shoes on.”

“I was actually gonna say it sounded like we had enough supplies to stay put for a day,” Joel says. “But if you’re so eager to leave－”

“No!”

He’s teasing her, she realizes a moment later, and that’s fucking weird to realize. Joel’s always so serious. It takes a lot to make him grin, let alone laugh. She’s only heard him laugh a couple times, when he’s been awake way too long and he’s a bit punch drunk and one of her stupider puns sets him off. She tries not to overdo it. She doesn’t want to ruin it and make him tell her to stop.

But he basically never makes jokes. She thinks maybe he worries too much to think about that kind of thing. And the very rare time it happens, it’s usually so deadpan. He’ll say something and she’ll realize － usually a while later － that he was teasing her about it. Plus it’s usually in the morning when she’s still half asleep. Like with the coffee he took from Bill and Frank’s.

It’s nice, even if it is at her expense.

Ellie shuffles around, pulling her sleeping bag up around her shoulders. “Fuck that. I’m going back to sleep.”

She flops over onto the floor dramatically. This isn’t actually where she was sleeping last night, since she’s moved so much closer to where Joel was to see the map, and she doesn’t realize how close she is to him until her legs bump into his.

He pulls away immediately and hides it by standing up. “That’s fine. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Sixes?” she asks. He won't let her keep watch, but he's been teaching her how to check her surroundings.

“Mhm.”

His knee must really be bugging him today. She knows it hurts when he stands in one place too long, and sometimes he limps a bit and tries not to show it first thing in the morning, especially after a long day of walking when it gets stiff overnight.

He never says anything, though. She’s just noticed it in the way he moves.

By the time he’s back inside, Ellie’s got her sleeping bag rolled up and hooked onto her backpack. The cabin thing is pretty small and she doesn’t actually think she’s going to fall back asleep so there’s no point leaving it out.

“Here,” he says a moment later, tossing her a balled up pair of socks. “And yes, they’re clean.”

“Thanks.”

She’ll take it. Her socks are still wet and her feet were starting to freeze wearing them.

They’re kind of huge and she’s probably going to be pulling them up all day as they fall down, but they’re dry and warm.

It’s strange how much you get used to sharing stuff with people. She’s always had roommates, and the first new shirt she ever owned came from Bill and Frank’s house, so she’s used to sharing. With Riley especially, there wasn’t much space between their stuff after a while. She shamelessly stole Riley’s shirts when hers were dirty.

When Riley ran away, she left the shirt she’d slept in the night before balled up at the foot of her bed. Ellie slept in it for weeks until it didn’t smell like her anymore.

Wearing someone’s socks should probably be weirder, but she’s just glad for warm feet.

“So someone lived up here?” she asks.

There’s like a camping cot － the mattress smelled disgusting, though － and an old stove and stuff. It’s almost like a tiny version of an apartment.

“Sometimes,” Joel says, sitting in the chair at the table. “Mostly just during fire season. They’d watch for fires and help hikers who got lost and all that.”

“Huh.” She goes over and boosts herself onto the table. It bothers Joel a little when she sits on tables, though she really doesn’t get why, but he never says anything. “You do it or something?”

“No, Tommy. He spent a summer in one of these things. Came out to make sure he was still alive and camped nearby for a week, though.”

“For fun?”

He does that thing where he’s trying to pretend he’s not smiling. “For fun.”

“You guys were weird.”

“If that’s how you feel, maybe I’ll keep this then,” Joel says and grabs something off one of the shelves.

She sits up straight. “Is that a Savage Starlight comic?”

“Number three, that’s one of the ones you’re lookin’ for, right?”

“Uh huh.” She has Sam’s copies in her bag. She felt weird about taking them, but he left them on the bed and she didn’t want to just leave them there in the hotel room. The people who leave her already leave her so little to remember them by. Her mom’s knife, her pun book, the photo of Riley in her bag. It’s not much. The comics are the only thing she has of Sam.

She can’t believe Joel remembers what comics she has.

He passes the comic over and she flips it over to read the back.

“Oh, shit, this is the one that explains when the Travelers first showed up.” She looks up at him. “Thanks.”

He nods.

She flips to the first page. “Hey, if I do Daniela’s voice, will you do Captain Ryan’s?”

“Think I’ll pass.”

“C’mon, I bet you can do it way better than me.”

She doesn’t figure she’ll actually be able to convince him to do it, but it is distracting him to argue about it, and she can see some of the tension in his shoulders slipping away.

* * *

Joel would feel bad about laughing at her if she didn’t look so offended.

“Shut the fuck up, Joel,” she says.

“I told you to knock it off.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She wiggles in place, then looks a lot more concerned. “I think I’m fucking stuck.”

He steps carefully onto the rock Ellie just fell off and grabs the straps of her backpack to pull her to her feet. He’s not touching her hands, which are just as coated in mud as the rest of her. There’s probably a solid four or five inches of nothing but mud and he did warn her away from it. She didn’t listen, of course, too busy climbing rocks.

“Eurgh,” she mutters. “I think it went down my pants.”

A laugh bursts out of him, hard enough that it surprises him and he drops her. She lands with a squelch and a surprised gasp.

“Joel!” Ellie stares at him, mouth open. “You dick! You did that on purpose!”

“No, I didn’t. Shit, sorry.” He grabs her backpack straps again and doesn’t let go this time until she’s on her feet.

“Ugh,” she groans, and starts to climb back onto the rock. Then she freezes.

“Ellie?”

“...my boot is stuck.”

“How stuck?”

“My foot is no longer in my boot and I can’t reach it anymore.” She frowns at him. “I think I might be stuck here forever.”

He can’t help chuckling.

He does get her boot unstuck eventually and back on her foot, and gets her away from the mud. She’s soaked in it and about as pissed as a wet cat.

It’s a warm day, at least, probably the last one they’ll see before the snow falls, so he’s not worried about her freezing to death.

“I think this is your fault,” she announces a few minutes later.

“How the hell do you figure that? I told you to cut it out.”

“Yeah, but you tell me to do a lot of stuff and I don’t listen.”

“I think that means it’s entirely your own fault, actually.”

“I disagree.”

There’s not a lot of point in him getting angry about it, Joel figures. Ellie’s already pissed enough for the both of them and walking around covered in mud until they can find her some new clothes will be enough of a consequence for her to learn not do it again.

He’s honestly been expecting something like this. She’s only fourteen, and the longer they spend together, the more he suspects she has not been fourteen for very long, either. It’s been about a month since he met her and he’d be surprised if her birthday was earlier than summer or maybe late spring. She’s had to grow up too fast, but she’s still a kid under the sarcasm and tough act.

And she grew up in a city. She’s not used to things like this, muddy fields and trees and rivers. FEDRA tore down things like actual playgrounds － with no one to maintain them, it all rusted in disrepair. Her playgrounds were dusty lots and broken concrete. She wants to explore and play.

He honestly wishes she could more. It isn’t fair.

She’s walking incredibly stiffly by the time they find a house.

“Are you okay?” he asks, concerned.

“Yeah,” she says tightly.

“You sure?”

“Lot of chafing going on right now,” she admits.

“Let’s see what we can find.”

It was probably a family house. Joel doesn’t look at the pictures on the walls. He’s gotten better at that over the years. It’s easier if you don’t think about it.

What matters are the jackets in the mudroom.

Joel grabs the first warm-looking thing he sees. “This might fit you.”

She takes it, but looks unhappy. “Can we find something else? Fucking anything else?”

“Too big?” That’s the problem most of the time with her. Jeans especially are always too long, but she’s small all over and if something is falling off of her, it’s not exactly doing much to keep her warm.

“Joel.” She holds the jacket up. “This looks like that stuff they give you when you keep puking.”

He realizes for the first time how violently pink it is. She’s not wrong about it being Pepto Bismal coloured. It reminds him of Sarah’s intense Barbie phase and the eye-burning pink that came with all that. He didn’t mind the dolls themselves － though it pissed him off how hard it was to find ones that actually looked like Sarah － but that particular shade of pink is a lot.

“Yeah, okay, that’s awful,” he admits.

She gives it a shake. “We wouldn’t even have to make it to Wyoming because they’d be able to fucking see me from there in this.”

“So I’m guessin’ pink isn’t your favourite colour.”

“No,” she agrees and laughs. “I like red.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He looks over at her. “Let’s just see if we can find you something clean to start.”

They split up once he’s sure the place is clear. There’s four bedrooms upstairs. Master, guest room, and two rooms decorated for kids. One is purple, the shade he used to jokingly call “teen girl purple” and he avoids it. Ellie can look through it.

He checks briefly in the other room. It’s blue, pretty clearly for a boy. He checks the clothes anyways. Ellie can pretty much handle finding her own clothes, but the sizes confuse her sometimes. He found himself trying to explain the difference between adult sizes and kids’ sizes and those weird teen sizes that he frankly barely understood himself and he doesn’t think he did a particularly good job of it.

He once caught himself holding a shirt up to her and looking to see if the side seams reached far enough to her sides, the way his mother used to do. She looked at him like he was insane until he explained the trick.

“I’m taking my pants off,” Ellie calls from the other room.

…he’s going to assume she found new jeans and hasn’t just decided become an apocalypse nudist.

“There’s mud in my fucking underwear,” she yells.

“Serves you right,” he shouts back.

She comes into the room he’s in a few minutes later, wearing new jeans and a long sleeved shirt.

“What about this?” He holds up a sweatshirt. It’s just grey, with blue and green stripes below the neck and the outline of trees.

“Yeah, that’s cool.” She takes it and pulls it on over her shirt. “Thanks.”

She’ll need a jacket, too, and sooner than later, but he’s not going to force that pink one on her.

He leans closer. “Do － do you have mud in your ear?”

“Huh?” She touches her ear and sure enough, her fingers come away muddy. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Jesus, alright.” He grabs a T-shirt out of the closet and splashes some water from his canteen onto it. “C’mere.”

He grabs her by the hood and lightly tugs until she turns, then scrubs the mud out of her ear with the cloth.

“Oh, gross,” she protests, trying to twist away.

“Least I didn’t spit on it.”

Ellie shoots him a horrified look. “Fucking what?”

“When I was a kid, if I had somethin’ on my face, my mother would lick her finger and wipe it off.” He gets one last good swipe in before she wiggles away. “Is the other one okay?”

She covers her ear protectively. “I don’t think I want to answer that.”

“Ellie.”

“I’m feeling very threatened right now, Joel.”

He tosses the shirt at her. “Stay away from the mud next time.”

He goes to search the rest of the house, and pretends not to hear Ellie snickering behind him.

* * *

Since it got cold, when they sleep outside, Ellie keeps waking up with Joel’s sleeping bag spread over her. It happens whenever he gets up to keep watch. He’s paranoid about someone sneaking up on them. She complains a lot about sleeping outside. She doesn’t actually mind, but if he lets them sleep inside because she bitches enough about it, he usually actually sleeps as long as they barricade themselves in somewhere.

She won’t admit it, but she worries about him. Not just because she’d be fucked without him, like she says when he gets that weird dizzy thing outside the old couple’s house. She just worries about him.

She didn’t mean to like him.

“Dream about sheep ranches on the moon,” he says, and she smiles to herself.

“I will.”

It’s a nice idea. Not the moon part specifically because as cool as that would be, she doesn’t really think that could happen. Not even with the cure. But… well, she could get used to sheep.

Joel’s crashed on the ground next to the fire when she wakes up. She puts another log onto it and eases the rifle away from him. He doesn't move. He’s barely been sleeping the last few days.

She’ll keep watch while he sleeps. He keeps taking care of her. She can return the favour for a bit.

* * *

Joel can’t sleep after he yells at Ellie. He lies in the dark, in the silence of the house, and he hates himself. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but this house feels haunted with possibilities and his own memories. He’s never seen Ellie in a house this normal. The ones they’ve been sleeping in are run down and looted. They always sleep in the same room, a few feet apart, usually with furniture shoved against the door to keep any threats out.

He knocked on the door like it was actually her bedroom, because Sarah hated when he walked in without knocking. Her backpack was in the closet and she looked like she belonged sitting on that windowseat. It was warm and the lights were on and he could see the snow falling outside the window and if he closed his eyes, he could have believed it was a home.

He could picture staying. He could picture Ellie here, in this house, in this life she never had the chance to live.

When he closes his eyes, he can’t stop seeing her dying in his arms.

He sneaks out of the house before the sun rises, like the coward he is.

And then he can’t leave. It’s selfish. Tommy would keep her safer. It would be the right thing, even if she hated him, to make her go with Tommy.

But she chooses him. She chooses him, and she looks happy again.

He wishes he could say he wasn’t happy. He shouldn’t be. He’s terrified.

But Ellie chatting behind him on the horse and he’s so glad to still have her with him.

“Joel?”

“Yeah?”

“Why kind of medicine do you give a sick horse?”

“Well, that depends on what the horse is sick with. Antibiotics for infections, dewormers for parasites, that kind of thing. Why?”

Ellie is quiet for a second. “Cough stirrup. I was just gonna say cough stirrup.”

He should have known.

She drops her head against his shoulder and laughs so hard he worries she’s going to fall off the horse.

* * *

Joel looks like fucking shit when she runs back into the basement with the thread. He looks half dead already and she’s terrified she’s already too late, that he’s already given up on her.

She grabs his hand and squeezes as hard as she can. Stay with me, she thinks, too scared to speak. Please let her have this. The world has taken away every single person she’s ever cared about besides Joel. She refuses to let it take Joel away too, and the only thing that could stand in her way is Joel himself.

He squeezes her hand back.

When she split her eyebrow open, the school nurse gave her something in a needle that made it numb before sewing it up.

She wishes she had that now.

He passes out before she finishes and it’s honestly a relief. Scary － she stops stitching and presses her ear against his chest to make sure he’s still breathing － but a relief when she realizes he isn’t awake to feel it so bad.

“It’ll be okay,” she promises when she’s done, gently tucking his shirt back down over the wound. “I’ll take care of you. We’ll be okay.”

* * *

Joel finds Ellie stumbling through the snow and his heart almost stops. Something isn’t right.

“Ellie?”

She doesn’t hear him. He reaches out and grabs her arm.

And she screams, terrified. “No! Get off of me!”

She lashes out as he turns her towards him, collapsing to the ground and still screaming.

He drops to his knees with her, as she punches weakly at his chest, and she doesn’t see him until he holds her face in his hands. “It’s me. It’s me.”

Jesus Christ she’s covered in blood.

“Hey. Look,” he says, more softly than he thought he remembered how to be. “It’s me. It’s me.”

When she realizes it’s him, she stares at him like she’s seen a ghost. “He － but I－”

“It’s okay,” he soothes.

She shoves her face into his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her, rocking her back and forth. She’s shaking so hard. She’s still sobbing － babbling, like she’s trying to make words but nothing’s coming out.

“It’s okay,” he promises as she whimpers into his jacket, closing his eyes in relief. “It’s okay, baby girl. I got you.”

She’s not okay. She’s deeply not okay. But she’s alive and whole and in his arms.

He wraps his jacket around her － God, what happened to hers? － and picks her backpack up off the ground.

“Can you carry this?” he asks, and waits until she wraps her arms around it.

He tucks her in against his side, making sure his jacket is wrapped tight around her. He’s leaning on her more than he’d like, but he doesn’t want to let her go. He wants to stay right there holding her until some of that haunted look leaves her eyes, but it’s freezing and they need to get somewhere safe.

She’s silent the entire time they’re walking. The only sound he hears from her is her breathing and the occasional time it goes sharp and fast and panicked and he tightens his arm around her and whispers soothing nonsense into her hair.

He shows her the map, once, to try and show her where they’re going, but she just stares at him until he puts it away. It doesn’t matter anyways. All that matters is getting her away from this fucked up town.

When she stumbles for the second time and nearly falls, he knows she can’t go much further. Thankfully, maybe ten minutes later, they find a small cabin. From the snow on the roof and around the place, there hasn't been anyone there in a long time.

He has to let go of Ellie to break the door down.

When he looks back at her, she looks lost.

“Come in, but you hang back while I check the place out, okay?”

She stares at him blankly.

He takes a step closer, cupping her face in his hand. “Just for a moment.”

When she doesn’t move, he reaches down and unzips the front pocket of her backpack. He takes her knife out and presses it into her hand, curling her fingers around it.

Her hands have so much blood on them. He wants to promise she won’t have to add more to it. But she sleeps with that knife every night, clinging to it like it’s a teddy bear. He hopes, desperately, it’ll offer some comfort for the moments he has to let go of her.

“Stand inside the door,” he says, taking his pistol out.

He wants to say more, to reassure her it’s going to be okay, but she’s gone somewhere in her head and he’s not getting through enough to ask her to handle more than one thing at a time. She's barely managing that.

He has to pull her into the house after him, but she plants her back against the wall next to the door. She’s hugging her backpack against her chest and her bloody hand is clenched around her knife so hard her knuckles are white.

The cabin is empty, thank god. No infected, not even any old bodies. It’s in surprisingly good shape. It looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. There’s even a petrified pile of wood next to the fireplace in the living room.

Ellie has not moved an inch from where he left her.

“We’re okay,” he says, closing the door. It doesn’t close quite right, but it’ll be enough to keep some of the cold out. “Come over here so I can block this door off with the couch. Over here.”

He has to move her with a hand on her shoulder.

Shoving the couch in front of the door hurts like hell, but it’s worth it if Ellie feels safe.

“Okay,” he says, out of breath. “What do you say we start a fire and get you warmed up?”

She jolts. “No,” she says, the first thing she’s said in hours. “The smoke. They’ll see. No.”

“No, no, no one will see.” He reaches for her without realizing what he’s doing and she tucks herself back in against his side. They've never touched this much before, but letting go of her feels like his heart breaking in his chest. “It’s too windy and snowing too hard for anyone to see the smoke. No one is gonna find us.”

“No one’s gonna find us,” she repeats shakily.

“So let’s get you warm.”

She moves only because he moves. He crouches down in front of the fireplace, getting a fire built up as fast as he can. The whole time, she presses against his back.

“Alright,” he says, standing with a groan. His wound is throbbing low and dull in time with his heartbeat, and, annoyingly, his bad knee is bothering him almost as much. “Why don’t you stay here while I go look for supplies?”

He desperately wants her to warm up, but when he moves towards the kitchen, she’s there, pressed against his arm.

“Okay,” he says and directs her into one of the kitchen chairs. “Sit here. I’m gonna get some snow for water.”

She stares at him. She's been crying. He's not sure when. On and off since he found her, he suspects, and probably before that. There are tear tracks through the blood on her face.

“Just outside the door, I promise.”

He grabs one of the big pots that’s hanging over the stove and unlocks the back door. He glances back and Ellie’s curling into herself, arms around her stomach. She dropped her backpack by the fire, but her knife is still in her hand.

Joel steps out into the backyard, making sure he doesn’t go so far that she can’t see him.

And then he stops.

There’s no way they could be this lucky.

He goes back inside, dropping the pot on a counter and crossing to the kitchen sink. He turns the tap on. There’s a hiss, a sputter, and then water rushes out of the faucet.

“How?” Ellie asks.

It’s not much of a question, and definitely not the multiple she’d usually be asking, but it’s something. A flicker of life.

He turns it off. “Water tank. Must have been a pain to run pipes this far out, so they set up a filtration system. It’s just been chuggin’ along doin’ its thing this whole time.”

“Oh.”

He goes over to her and gently pulls her to her feet. “It’ll be cold since there’s no power, but we can get you cleaned up, yeah? There’s a bathroom off the bedroom. Might still be soap, even.”

As long as he’s touching her, she moves when he moves.

The fireplace in the living room also opens into the bedroom. Clever design choice, Joel thinks absently, but he’s mostly just grateful the place is warming up. One good thing about old wood is it burns well.

He checks the closet for literally anything that might fit Ellie. She’s going to notice all the blood soon and it’s going to upset her. There’s not a ton that will probably fit her, but he pulls out a thick cardigan and hooks it onto the bathroom doorknob.

Ellie’s follows him, but he leaves the door open and tries not to get between her and the door. He doesn’t want to scare her again. He doesn’t know what happened exactly, but the way she screamed… he’s never heard her sound like that. He never wants her to be afraid of him like that again.

“Can I take this off?” he asks, and waits a moment before slipping his jacket off her shoulders. He drops it to the side.

She looks down at herself and seems to realize how soaked in blood she is. “Oh. Oh. No. No. No.”

“Ellie－”

She grabs the bottom of her sweatshirt and starts to yank it off, but she gasps and freezes, pain flashing across her face.

“Okay, okay,” he says, moving her hands away. Words have slipped away from her again, leaving her with just mumbles, almost whimpers. “Shh, it’s alright. Let me help.”

He waits until she nods to catch the hem. Then he lifts it and the thin shirt she has on underneath it at the same time. He’s pretty sure the cuffs of that are soaked, too, and he thinks it would upset her to keep it on when she realized.

It should feel strange. He’s never had to do anything like this for her. But it’s like undressing a toddler. She’s floppy, almost limp, and gooseflesh immediately breaks out on her bare arms where her tank top reveals them.

Her jeans are unbuttoned.

She looks down when he can’t look away and sees it herself. Her breath catches and she backs away until she bumps into the sink, dropping her knife on the floor to fumble at the button. Her hands are shaking so hard it takes a long minute until she can get it closed.

“Oh, Jesus,” he exhales. “Ellie－”

“I don’t want to talk about it!”

He holds both hands up. “Okay. You don’t have to.”

She turns away, slamming the faucet on. She shoves her hands under the water as soon as it starts running and starts scrubbing at them, so hard it looks like it hurt.

“Hey, hey.” Joel approaches her from the side, reaching under the water and catching her hands in his. “Easy.”

A tear spills down her cheek, streaking through the blood. “There’s so much…”

“I know. It’s okay.” He picks the bar of soap up off the side of the sink and turns the water off. He lathers it up, then rubs her hands between his, trying to warm them a little as he works the dried blood off. “Close your eyes for a minute and it’ll be all done.”

She’s breathing slower, but she keeps staring at him instead. That’s fine, if that’s what makes her feel better.

He’s having a hard time taking his eyes off her himself.

He rinses her hands off, then grabs a towel and dries them. “There.”

Taking off her sweatshirt has almost completely pulled the elastic from her hair. Joel reaches over and tugs it out before it goes flying. New ones are hard to find and she’s already using two broken ones tied together. She’ll be upset if it gets lost.

He tucks her hair back behind her ears, smoothing the little stray pieces out of her face. “Let’s get your face clean.”

She starts to look at the mirror and he just knows it’s not going to end well.

He touches her cheek and turns her face back towards him. “Keep your eyes on me.”

There’s so much blood on her face. Almost as much as on her hands. He knows all too well what splatter like that means, and he’s worried about what that means in combination with her unbuttoned jeans and how hysterical she was when he found her.

But the more he cleans the blood off her face, the more of it he discovers is hers. There’s a cut on her cheek and a nasty one across her nose. More blood under it, down her chin. Her nose is broken, he realizes sickly.

He has to reset it. He walks her through it, telling her what’s going to happen, but the pain still surprises her and she cries out, grabbing his arm.

“I know, baby, I know. I’m sorry.”

Her nose starts bleeding again, and he holds the towel against her face until it stops. She won’t hold it herself.

“It’ll feel better now.”

He looks her over. There are bruises forming all over her arms. Finger-shaped, like someone － maybe more than one someone － grabbed her and held her down so hard it bruised. Her jeans were undone. Her jeans were undone, and she was held down and hurt, and he tries not to let her see the rage boiling in his stomach.

“Is there anythin’ else I should know about?”

She inhales, stares off to the side. Then she takes his hand and presses it against her side. “Hurts here,” she says.

“Might be broken.” He presses gently, trying to feel for a fracture, but it’s hurting her and she’s shaking so hard. “Not much you can do for ‘em anyways. Just try and take it easy for a couple days, alright?”

He takes his hand away and she looks relieved.

Joel has never hated anything more.

Carefully, he touches his thumb to her forehead. She’s all scraped up there and her other eyebrow has a cut across it. It looks like her face got slammed into something. “Did you get hit in the head?”

“Couple times.”

Christ. That explains some of this, at least. He’s pretty sure she’s at least mildly concussed.

“Anything else?”

She shakes her head.

Joel’s pretty sure she’s lying. But he’s not going to push her. If she’s not ready to talk about it, it won’t help.

He gets her tucked into the cardigan, buttoning it for her when she looks lost. Then he leads her into the bedroom － she’s got her fingers twisted in his sleeve － and pulls the quilt off the bed, giving it a good shake while he checks under it. It’s dusty, but otherwise things look good. No bugs, no mice.

“Alright, how about you lie down? You don’t have to sleep,” he adds, before she argues about it. He wants to believe she'd argue about it. “But you should get some rest.”

She sits on the side of the bed after he puts the quilt back on. He has to help her to get her boots off and to put dry socks on.

She lies down, curling up on her side. She's holding her knife again. He picked it up off the floor before they left the bathroom, and she grabbed it from him almost before he stood up, clutching it like a lifeline.

“Okay.” He smooths her hair back from her face. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

She grabs his wrist before he can move away. “No.”

“I’m just gonna grab the cushions off the couch.”

She pushes herself up on her elbow and eases herself over, still holding his arm. “Don’t leave.”

It’s the first thing she’s asked from him since he found her. He’s already pretty much lost the ability to say no to her. Months ago, if he’s being honest with himself.

“Alright,” he says, sitting down and unlacing his own boots. He probably should leave them on, but they’re wet and the idea of trying to keep them off the bed so they won’t soak into the mattress sounds godawful. His stomach protests when he stretches out, but lying down gives some relief.

The bed’s in the corner of the small room, too, which puts him between Ellie and the door. He thinks it might help her knowing no one can sneak up behind her. He’s wary about boxing her in, but she’s been clinging so tight to him.

“I’m not tired,” Ellie insists grumpily, burrowing into the pillow.

She sounds like the ghost of herself. It's weak. But it's the first time she's sounded anything remotely close to normal. 

“Of course not,” he agrees. He gives in and reaches over to stroke his thumb over her eyebrow, the one with the scar in it. “Does this one have a good story?”

He doesn’t ask her questions about her life before he met her, not usually, but he wants to pull her back from that place in her head that’s made her quiet and empty.

The ghost of a smile flickers across her face. It’s the first he’s seen in far too long, and it almost hurts to see. “Yeah.”

“You should tell it to me some day.”

Joel keeps talking, not saying much of anything, until her eyes slip close and her breathing gets slow.

He doesn’t sleep. He’s not entirely sure he’s ever going to sleep again. He can’t stop seeing her face, how scared she was and all the blood. He’ll never be able to forget the way she screamed. And he keeps trying, desperately, not to think about her jeans being unbuttoned when he found her, but he can’t.

He gets up only once to put more wood on the fire. He tries not to wake her when he comes back into the bedroom, but the mattress moves when he lays back down and Ellie jerks awake.

She shoves herself up on her hands, hair falling in her face. “Where’m I?”

“You’re with me. Look, look.” He reaches up, tucking her hair back. “We’re in a cabin. We’re safe.”

“I thought…” She shudders and shoves her face into his shoulder. She’s shaking like a leaf. “Joel…”

He pulls the blankets up over her as she curls up against him. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Her hair smells like smoke and his throat tightens. He should have done this the whole time. He should have been holding her all along. He’s been terrified of scaring her, but he didn’t think about her waking up and the only light being the fire.

“With you,” she mumbles.

He breathes slowly until he’s sure his voice won’t give him away. “That’s right, baby girl. You’re safe with me.”

* * *

Ellie is having a hard time breathing. She was feeling… okay… kind of, when she woke up. She woke up with her head on Joel’s shoulder and she could hear him mumbling in his sleep and that helped because she knew where she was this time.

There was still blood under her nails when she washed them after she peed. She scrubbed them with a towel until they were almost raw, until Joel knocked on the bathroom door to see if she was okay because the water had been running for so long.

That maybe wasn’t her most okay moment.

But he was there and that made it okay. They even found some food. Canned beans and peaches, thank god, because Ellie isn’t sure she could eat meat right now.

Then she went to put her hair back up and she realized how sticky it was. There was blood in her hair, and kind of a lot of it. But she couldn’t bend over the fucking sink to wash it herself without her ribs hurting so much she felt like she was about to pass out and the water’s too cold to shower in. She’s had her share of cold showers, but Joel said it was colder than that, cold enough to make her sick.

So now she’s lying on the kitchen counter with a towel rolled up under her neck and her head hanging over the sink.

And breathing is getting hard.

She doesn’t like lying on her back. All she can see is the ceiling and the exposed wooden beams and when she blinks there are flames eating their way across them. If she closes her eyes, there are hands on her wrists pinning them down and fingers against her stomach.

“Stay with me,” Joel says and she jumps.

She takes a deep breath. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Sure do. This is gonna be cold.”

It’s fucking freezing, but the shock of it pulls her back a little.

“Sarah had real curly hair,” he says. She feels him touch her scalp, near the back of her head. It stings and she tries not to wince. “Ellie… I think this is your blood.”

“Oh.”

She’s not sure if that’s better or worse.

“Tell me if it hurts.” Joel turns the water off. She hears a click, and then he starts to work shampoo into her hair. She doesn’t tell him when it hurts. He might stop and she doesn’t want him to. “She got it from her mom. So I learned to take care of it.”

“Did her mom die in the outbreak too?”

“Oh, well.” He sighs. “Probably, but I don’t actually know. She left when Sarah was six months old.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Joel cups his hand over her forehead. “Close your eyes for a moment. I don’t wanna get soap in ‘em.”

Fuck, she was hoping to avoid that.

She squeezes her eyes shut. She’s still breathing. “Do you know how to do braids and stuff then?”

Riley used to do stuff like that. Some of the girls at school would trade stuff for wigs or whatever, but Riley mostly wore her hair in braids or twists to keep it from getting really tangled. She tried to teach Ellie a couple times, but she was hopeless.

“I doubt it. I wasn’t great at it to start with, and it’s been twenty years,” Joel says with a low laugh. “Conditioner now.”

“What’s that?”

She remembers seeing a bottle with that on it in Tess and Joel’s apartment back in Boston, but she still doesn’t know what it is.

“Makes the knots comes out easier.”

“Oh. Neat.”

She can feel him working through her hair with his fingers, working out the worst tangles. He’s definitely done this before. He might be a little rusty, but that’s okay. Ellie barely remembers being young enough to have an adult take care of her hair for her. She knows they wouldn’t have been gentle like this.

“One more rinse,” he says.

It only takes a few seconds and then she can open her eyes again.

Joel wraps a towel around her hair. “Sit up slowly and watch your head.”

He helps her sit up with a hand under her back, and she swings her legs down off the counter. She’s a little light-headed, and she stays on sitting on the counter.

“Thanks.”

Joel nods and starts cleaning up, packing the bottles into his bag, which will be nice later. Actual shampoo is pretty great. She’s been using bar soap on her hair for months, and it kind of sucks. Even the shitty military shampoo was better.

It’s more to carry, and not strictly necessary. There’s a lot of stuff they carry that isn’t strictly necessary for survival. Her books especially. She could carry more gear, more food, if Joel made her leave them behind. He never has, not even once. He carries more so she doesn’t have to.

“He said I needed a father.”

The words come out without her meaning to say them. They feel like ripping a scab off. She’s just not sure if it’s the kind of scab with fresh new skin under it, or the kind that leaves an open wound.

Joel’s back goes stiff.

“But then he tried to...” She can’t make herself say it. She can still feel it. “Fathers don’t do that.”

Joel turns towards her. “No,” he says, low and tight. “They don’t.”

She doesn’t know a lot about parents. She’s never had one, or at least not that she can remember. But she knows Joel, and Joel is a father. His kid might not be here anymore, but he’s still a dad. And Joel would never do something like that.

Joel leans against the counter. “Are you… alright?”

She shrugs. She doesn’t know.

His hand is on the counter and she notices again how bruised his knuckles are.

“Did you hurt people to find me?” she asks.

“Yes,” Joel says without hesitating. “Yes, I did.”

Good, she thinks, and she’s not sorry.

“Did you break it again?”

He laughs, low, and she can tell it surprises him. “Probably. It’s fine.”

Joel’s got this thing where he’s convinced if she walks around with wet hair, she’s going to get sick. Ellie’s pretty sure that’s not how it works, but she listens anyways. It’s nice right now, sitting in front of the fire. He’s pulled an armchair up closer to it, and she’s sitting on the floor in front of it on one of the couch cushions, totally not leaning against his legs.

She’s also totally not dozing off a bit.

It’s the middle of the day and she hasn’t napped since she was a little kid, but it’s warm and she can see the snow falling thick through the window and Joel is touching her hair as it dries, kinda running his fingers through it.

Eventually, he starts doing something to her hair. His fingertips graze her scalp lightly, and her hair starts to be pulled away from her face.

Oh, she realizes. She asked if he knew how to braid hair.

He pauses at one point, and she hears him exhale slowly, like he’s trying not to say something. Probably the spot where the blood in her hair came from. He doesn’t say anything, though, just keeps braiding after a moment.

When it’s done, he ties it off with one of her elastics. “Don’t blame me if it looks like crap.”

“Oh, I bet it sucks,” she agrees immediately.

“Ungrateful little shit,” Joel says, a grin in his voice.

Ellie rests her head against his leg again. It helps being close to him. It’s easier to remember where she is. And as long as she’s leaning on him, he’s going to stay here, with her. She’s pretty sure he’s worried about food and probably her ribs and all that stuff, but she’s worried about his wound and him hurting himself again.

He acts like he doesn’t need anyone to take care of him. She gets it. She used to feel the same way. But maybe that was just because there was no one there to take care of her. Then she met Joel and he started doing it whether she liked it or not. Maybe even a little whether he liked it or not.

Neither of them are alone now. They can take care of each other. They’re like a team now. Or － or something like that. Something better, maybe. She’s not sure about the words, but that’s alright. They’re together now. That’s what matters.

“We’re gonna be okay,” she says sleepily and she believes it.

* * *

Ellie’s having a bad day. She has more good days than bad, thank God, but these days happen more than Joel wishes they did. Some days she’s fine, asking endless questions and making jokes and acting like herself. Some days, though, she gets… lost. It’s like there’s too much noise in her head and not enough room for her.

It reminds him too much of those days after he found her outside that burning restaurant, the quiet days where she spent more time staring at nothing than speaking.

He offers her food she likes and a new game. They played a lot of them, in the house they eventually settled into while they waited for the winter to end and their wounds to heal. She wanted to learn chess and he’s been, poorly, trying to teach her. She’d never played most of the games they found, even things like Monopoly. She likes that kind of thing, and puzzles, too. She’s so damn smart. It makes him so proud how smart she is, even when she’s making him feel like an idiot.

Both of those get a small smile, but she’s still spacy and he’s still worried.

When she almost drops a goddamn ladder on his head, it doesn’t help his worry.

“You gotta see this!” she calls. “C’mon!”

She looks at the giraffe like it’s a miracle.

And then, as it eats leaves out of her hands, she giggles. It’s a sound he’s sorely missed.

“So fucking cool,” she says, grinning at him. She looks alive and like all the ghosts in her head have disappeared for a moment. He knows it won't last, but here, in this moment, maybe it is a kind of miracle. He'd thought he'd stopped believing in those until one forced her way into his heart.

No matter what, he thinks, he’s going to keep trying to make her happy. Whatever it takes, he’s going to help Ellie laugh as much as she can. This is why he’s still here, after all these years, after everything that’s happened.

She deserves this. She deserves to be happy.