Chapter Text
“Get to the horses!”
The last patrol had said that the Copper Mine route was all clear.
Fuck that last patrol, dude.
A small horde had apparently found their way in since then, and now Ellie was running for her stupid, useless life while Joel was telling her what to do. So… not much had changed there, she supposed. Their best bonding always took place over some good old-fashioned mortal peril anyway.
Ellie sprinted for the horses, mounting up to the soundtrack of Joel’s gunshots. He appeared in the opposite doorway, dragging a girl by the hand behind him.
The man had a serious affinity for collecting daughters.
Ellie didn’t even question it as they both hopped up into the saddle.
“Which direction?” Ellie yelled over the snarling infected outside.
“Back to Jackson,” Joel replied.
“We’ll freeze before we get halfway!” she retorted.
“The lodge,” the girl behind him suddenly spoke. “It’s five minutes up the mountain. My friends are there.”
Joel and Ellie shared a look and a shrug.
“‘S the best we got,” Joel decided. “Which way?”
True to the stranger’s word, it took five minutes before a large cabin at the edge of the ridge appeared. They were greeted by a small group of travelers with a fire blazing in the hearth.
The rush of comfort made Ellie’s heart seize with the realization that Dina and Jesse were still out there. They hadn’t radioed that they’d found cover and they wouldn’t last much longer in the cold.
“Do you see Jesse and Dina?” Ellie asked quickly, scanning the panoramic view of the valley through the large windows as one of the girls approached and placed a blanket over her shoulders.
“They’ll be alright,” Joel commented with lackluster confidence, taking his binoculars over to the window and panning across the landscape. “It’s just a squall, should stop soon.”
“Sorry, I’m Abby,” the girl started, introducing the four others around her. “This is Owen, Nora, Manny, and Mel.“ Abby turned to Mel as an aside. “Her name’s Ellie.”
“And this–is Joel.”
Mel’s careful hands disappeared and a man’s arm wrenched its way under Ellie’s chin.
“Joel, Joel!” Ellie gasped. The cold barrel of a gun was already pressed to her temple by the time Joel turned around.
Fuck, more mortal peril?
Joel instinctively reached for her and his holster until every other gun in the room was pointed at him. Both he and Ellie slowly put their hands up as Nora unarmed them—Ellie letting out a small noise as she watched her mother’s knife clatter across the hardwood.
“We don’t want any trouble here,” Joel said slowly. “We’ll go on our way and you can go on yours.”
Abby laughed in the dead silence of the cabin, honest to god laughed, bending at the hip from the force of it.
Great, they’d been captured by a bunch of lunatics. It always had to be lunatics. They‘d better not be cannibals. She’d have to dock points for lack of creativity.
Joel glanced at Ellie and she wondered if maybe he was having the same absurd thought.
Nah, probably not.
Abby finally gathered her composure enough to speak.
“You won’t be going anywhere,” she said as she gave a nod to Mel who appeared with a syringe and a vial. “We’re going to put her to sleep for a little while,” Abby began.
Ellie started to fight against the arm around her. “Oh fuck no—” she spat as she watched Mel draw a white liquid up into the syringe.
“Trust me, it’s for the best,” Abby smiled.
“No, no—” Ellie started to resist, overlapping with the sound of Joel pleading.
“It’ll just put you out for an hour, I promise,” Mel explained as she approached, tears in her own eyes as she looked back to Joel. “I promise.”
Yeah, and David promised to trade a deer for medicine.
As the needle came closer she bucked in the man’s hold, gunpoint be damned.
“Get the fuck—off of me!“ she yelled as she tried to throw an elbow back into him but was only met with another pair of arms pinning her into position. She looked at Joel who was staring back at her, shouting something she couldn’t hear over the thundering adrenaline in her ears, Owen’s gun now pressed to his chest.
Joel couldn’t do anything. Ellie couldn’t do anything.
“No, no, no!” She screamed and kicked as the needle pierced her hand.
Her limbs stopped listening to her commands to fight. Her head felt heavy. She looked at Joel. His mouth hadn’t stopped moving, but his voice still wasn’t reaching her. She let herself hope that, just maybe, he was calling her baby girl one last time.
She’d wasted years hating him, just the sight of him filling her with rage. Now every ounce of her was screaming for one last look at him, savoring every second she could possibly glimpse.
There were glimpses of giraffes and dinosaur skeletons and Chef Boyardees and guitars in there too.
Joel is at her side in every single one of them.
As her eyes fell shut, she decided that Joel’s face was the best final image she could ask for.
———
She awoke to a distant voice, muffled and echoing, followed by a man’s guttural scream.
She tried to focus her eyes, finding stained oak boards beneath her cheek. The talking started again, the tone so bitter she could practically taste it. She tried to move, groaning as her mind tugged on useless limbs.
The voice immediately stopped.
She tried moving the hand laying by her face and got it to slide a few inches. The voice started again, now clear enough to understand.
“Mel, what the fuck?”
Another voice, softer and shaking responded.
“The propofol is ten years old, it degrades—”
“Then give her fucking more!”
Ellie made another attempt at moving, lifting her head to survey her surroundings.
“That’s all we had.”
“Jesus Christ.”
And that’s when Ellie’s vision focused enough to spot him, laying on the ground, half of his face swollen and a hole blown through his knee.
“Dad?” Her voice came out all wavy and small.
She hadn’t given a single thought to the word. Some people had a dad as their dad. She had a Joel as her dad. There wasn’t anything complicated about that.
The room fell eerily still and she thought of the VHS player in Joel’s living room, how he’d hit the pause button and a silver streak would pass over the frozen frame.
She noticed that there was also a girl standing over her now. Ellie tilted her head back further to see the butt of her rifle poised to come down hard, but the girl appeared frozen.
“S-S’okay, baby girl,” Joel rasped, stealing Ellie’s attention back. His voice sounded all wrong—weak and trembling and watery. “You just—just go back to sleep for me,” he said with a nod and a twitch of a feigned smile pulling at the corner of his functioning cheek.
After Silver Lake, she’d always startle awake just as she was drifting off and his voice would always be there, steady and sure: S’okay, baby girl. Go back to sleep for me. And she would. She would do anything for him.
Right now it only forced a messy sob from her mouth.
“Abby…” a wary male voice sounded behind her.
“Shut up, Owen,” Abby hissed, stepping back and letting the rifle fall to her side.
Reality came tearing back into Ellie.
Joel. Abby.
And holy shit, she didn’t die from the lethal injection thing. Cool–she could still save Joel and get the fuck out of here.
She picked her head up again and looked at the six armed people surrounding them, Joel‘s injury, and her own inability to even see straight.
Shit. Okay. Less cool.
Owen glanced around at his group and then down at Ellie and Joel before hesitantly deciding to speak again.
“Maybe this—”
“I said shut up, Owen!” Abby snapped, spinning away from them all and wiping her forehead, “This-this doesn’t change anything.”
She strode over to a discarded golf club, picking it up and turning back to Joel.
“No, no—” Ellie murmured until she found her voice, raising it despite the way it cracked. “No, please don’t hurt him—”
“Ellie, baby, close your eyes,” Joel told her, the words rushed. “Please, close your eyes.”
“No! No!” Ellie mustered a fraction of her strength and coordination, managing to get to her hands and knees.
“Manny, hold her down,” Abby ordered.
A knee in her back slammed her onto her stomach, and a hand grabbed her by the ponytail, smashing her face to the floor.
She kicked and struggled, tears starting to stream down her face. “No, no, no!”
Ellie watched helplessly as the golf club came down on Joel’s wound. She’s not sure which one of them screamed louder.
“Please, please, don’t—” Ellie sobbed, flailing against Manny’s hold, “Please don’t hurt him!”
“Abby,” Owen spoke again.
“What, Owen?!” she shouted at him. “He murdered my father! Mowed down the whole damn hospital! You think he shouldn’t pay for that?!”
The hospital? That’s what this is about?
“Fireflies?” Ellie breathed, picking up her head.
She felt Abby’s gaze flicker down to her.
“Ellie,” Joel said in stern warning.
She ignored him. As usual.
“It was me,” she said, locking eyes with Abby before amending, “it was for me. He was saving me.”
“Ellie, stop,” Joel commanded.
“I’m immune,” Ellie started.
“Ellie!”
“No one’s immune,” Abby scoffed.
“I am. I’m immune,” she persisted, seeing the doubt on Abby’s face. “And the Fireflies—they wanted to make a vaccine—”
“Ellie Williams,” Mel whispered, “the last patient.”
“Yes! Yes, that was me!” Ellie nodded frantically.
“His research files—Abby…” Mel’s eyes were wide with realization. “The last notes, they were about Ellie Williams. They thought she died trying to get to Salt Lake.”
“But I got there! And they were going to take my fucking brain out, so, so Joel stopped them! It was my fault!”
“Ellie, enough!” Joel begged.
Abby’s voice went slow and deathly quiet. “You? Could have been the cure?”
She stalked over, idly adjusting her grip on the club.
Oh fuck fuck fuck—fuck every adult who told her that honesty is the best policy.
“Hey. HEY!” Joel bellowed, trying in vain to redirect Abby.
“You could have been the CURE!”
The golf club swung down and she watched as it collided with her arm outstretched in front of her.
She broke her arm once. She was eleven at the time—fell off one of the half walls that lined the FEDRA schoolyard.
It did not feel like this.
The pain split her in two, like an atom exploding into a nuclear bomb, poisoning every inch of her. Her vision strained until it went black. She was screaming, but it was hard to tell over the suffocating sound of her heartbeat swirling through her ears.
She came back gasping, struggling to fill her lungs.
“—not what we agreed on!” Owen’s voice eventually filtered through. He stood in front of Abby now, gripping her wrist as she clutched the club.
Joel was still on the floor behind them, a little closer, lying askew in an effort to reach her. His voice quietly murmured a stream of comfort. “It’s okay, Ellie, you’re okay—”
“He would be alive!” Abby cried. “We would have had a cure!”
“Abby, please—” Owen began.
“There was no cure!” Mel blurted out.
“He could have tried—” Abby insisted.
“He did try, Abby!” Mel cracked, “Nine times!”
Nine?
The room fell back into that eerie silence, demanding an explanation.
“After the fifth person, he knew,” Mel said, tears rolling down her cheeks, “He knew what he was doing wasn’t working. This theory he had about using the cordyceps in their brain—it wasn’t working and he just… he lost it, Abby.”
“No,” Abby breathed, shaking her head.
“He was obsessed. He wouldn’t stop,” Mel continued. “And he kept telling Marlene that he was close, that he was onto something, and they were so desperate to believe him. The last four after that were just… slaughtered. For nothing.”
Ellie would have been slaughtered, like a healthy sheep at the hands of a sick shepherd. David’s cobwebbed voice slithered through her mind. Little pieces.
Her eyes found Joel’s.
You were right, Fuck, you were so right—
“There was no cure, Abby,” Mel finished quietly. “He was killing innocent people.”
Abby just shook her head, her eyes wild and chest heaving. Her fingers flexed around the golf club.
Ellie tried to seize the moment of doubt.
“Please,” Ellie quietly begged.
“No!” Abby erupted, rushing back to Joel. “No, you—you killed him!”
“Joel saved me!” Ellie screamed. “He saved me like your dad would have saved you!”
Abby froze.
“Your dad would have saved you too,” Ellie whispered.
And then the room exploded, gunfire bursting and echoing off of the soaring walls.
Dina and Jesse.
Fuck yeah.
Nora and Manny were already dead on the ground when Dina kicked a pistol in her direction.
Ellie grabbed it and rolled onto her back to aim at Owen and her finger pulled the trigger before the impact of Abby tackling her arms. The gun was launched from her hands as Abby got in a few good punches. Ellie fought like hell underneath her, surrounded by gunfire and screams. Abby grabbed the knife from her belt.
And that was the last thing Abby would ever do.
One final gunshot sounded and Abby’s body dropped limp beside her. Ellie turned her head and found Abby’s blank eyes staring back. She watched blood run from her temple and lace into her braid.
The room was finally silent again until Joel’s voice quietly broke through. “Ellie?”
She pried her eyes away from Abby’s body to look at him. The pistol was still in his hand, aim drifting to the floor as smoke curled from its barrel.
Joel saves her. Again and Again. All he does is save her, because that’s just what dads do.
“Ya alright?” he panted, his panicked eyes searching her.
All at once, Ellie was clambering across the floor to him.
“Joel.” Her left hand scrambled to grip his jacket while her right hand stayed limp. His hands found her face, gently cupping her cheeks. She eyed a place on his shoulder where she wanted to bury herself, in the crook of his neck and collarbone.
“Baby girl–” His arms wrapped around her, drawing her in as she tucked her head under his. “I got you, baby,” he hummed, “I got you.”
She wanted to burrow under the blanket of his voice and hide there. “Joel.”
“Shh, Let’s go home, okay?” he said. “Let’s get you home.” He shifted, sitting her back. “Just gotta get you up, baby, go ahead.”
“Ellie,” Dina’s soft voice chimed behind her. Ellie felt her gentle hand land on her shoulder as she slowly detached herself from Joel.
Her body wasn’t really her own, just a bunch of appendages that happened to be attached to her. They wouldn’t work the way she wanted as Dina helped her up. Pain bolted from her elbow down to her fingertips and she whimpered as her other hand rushed to support it. It made her vision tilt, forcing her sideways into Dina.
Jesse appeared at her other side to finish lifting her with strong arms. “Easy,” he murmured, placing her on her feet. “Take it slow.”
The kaleidoscope twisting in her head caused the walls around her to fracture and spin. Ellie didn’t care to guess whether it was the drugs, adrenaline, pain, or obvious concussion sending her crooked. Feel free to spin the wheel of shitty—any of them would be a fair place to land.
She was grateful that Dina and Jesse patiently waited for a moment until her body finally decided to stay vertical. It was that or face plant, and she much preferred waiting.
She watched Jesse move to approach Joel once she was steady enough.
“Get her outside first,” Joel murmured quietly, shooting Jesse a meaningful look that he returned with a knowing nod.
“Alright,” Dina prompted Ellie gently as Jesse guided them towards the door, heavily supporting her with each of them wrapping an arm behind her.
“Joel—” Ellie hesitated, trying to look back over her shoulder to him.
“Go ‘head,” he replied, gesturing to his leg in an attempt at levity, “Not goin’ nowhere.”
The three of them toddled outside to the horses. Dina tied the reins of her horse to Shimmer’s before mounting. She and Jesse helped Ellie up after her and her memory definitely shorted out for a minute. There was screaming and blinding pain involved, but she found herself atop the horse with Dina’s arms secured around her waist, Jesse already gone.
Ellie could feel her eyes begging to shut.
“’m tired,” Ellie muttered.
“I know,” Dina replied. “You have to stay awake though.”
Joel’s scream echoed from inside the house.
Someone was hurting him—Abby, and the golf club, and his blood—
“Joel!” Ellie tried, struggling against Dina.
She had to help him.
“Ellie, Ellie,” Dina’s grip grew tighter. “Jesse’s just getting him out, remember? Jesse’s helping him.”
Right. Ellie felt weakness drop through her bones. The kaleidoscope started to twist again.
“Hey!” Dina’s voice was suddenly sharp in her ear. “Stay awake.”
She heard Joel again, his tormenting scream easily carrying from the cabin and across the snow.
Ellie’s eyes filled with tears.
“I was a bitch to him,” Ellie admitted in a whisper.
“You’re a bitch to everyone, Ellie,” Dina replied sweetly.
Ellie laughed out a sniffle despite herself.
“We’ll get back to Jackson and you guys can smooth it over,” she assured her.
Ellie watched Joel hop alongside Jesse as they descended the front porch and arrived at the horses. A trail of blood spotted their footprints in the snow. Joel waved a dismissing hand at Dina, completely out of breath.
“Y’all—y’all go first,” he panted.
“Joel,” Ellie started.
They were not leaving here without Joel (and to quote her second favorite asshole: god help any motherfucker that stood in the way of that).
“We’re just mounting up,” Jesse reassured her.
“Can wait around the—round the corner there,” Joel nodded, bracing himself against the horse’s strong shoulder, “Be there in a minute.”
Before Ellie could protest any further, Dina was already nudging Shimmer into motion. As soon as they were around the corner, there were more gut-wrenching screams.
Joel and Jesse emerged a minute later on horseback, Joel looking closer to dead than alive.
Still alive, though. He was alive. She was alive.
Go team.
“Let’s head out,” Jesse said as the four of them started the journey back to Jackson.