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Published:
2025-05-07
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2025-05-19
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2/?
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Purple Fall

Summary:

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.

Or

What if Ellie had been with Joel?

EVERYONE LIVES, No Jackson battle, no fatal golfing.

Notes:

Special thanks to my betas two_birds_alone_together and keeshya6 🥰 ENJOY!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1

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. 

 

Chapter 2

Summary:

The trip back to Jackson is no fun. Ellie and Joel finally get to talk.

Shout out to @two_birds_alone_together and @keeshya6 for editing! 💞

Notes:

Ellie Gets Drugged Against Her Will 2: Electric Boogaloo. At least this time is medically necessary.

Ft. Tommy being aggressively southern.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“Jackson, come in.” 

Ellie could just make out Jesse’s voice over the sound of whipping snow, testing the radio once again. They must finally be in range because the radio crackled to life. She could faintly hear Amy’s reply. 

“This is Jackson, go ahead.”

“This is Cottonwood and Copper Mine patrol. We’re coming back with two injured who need immediate medical assistance at the gate.”

Jesse sounded even more ‘Captain Wyoming’ than usual, which was not very reassuring. 

“Cottonwood and Copper Mine, returning with two wounded, copy that. Calling medical now.”

Jesse hesitated for a moment before adding:

“Get Tommy and Maria.”

“On it.”

 

Once they were close enough to the gate, she could feel one of Dina’s arms leave her briefly to wave their bandana. 

“Almost there, Ellie,” Dina told her, “then you can crash hard, ‘kay?”

Ellie just murmured a sound in acknowledgment. 

The gates peeled open and Jesse led them through. 

Tommy was the first to rush over. “Joel?!” 

“Ellie,” Joel answered simply, nodding his head back towards her and Dina. 

Maria and a group of men were already helping Joel down from his horse as Tommy appeared beneath Ellie. 

“Hey sweetheart,” he greeted her. His voice was practiced and calm, betrayed only by his breathlessness. “Let’s get you on down here.” He carefully started to help her down with Dina assisting from the saddle. 

Her body felt floppy, her limbs numb and uncoordinated. The numbness was all too easily punctured by her arm sliding down the saddle unsupported. She screamed, her knees buckling and vision going dark. 

“Whoa, okay,” Tommy murmured as he took on her weight. 

Something moved in her arm and she went slack in his hold. She may or may not have thrown up at his feet. 

“‘S alright, I got ya.” He leaned down and scooped her up into his arms. “C’mere little lady.”

Little lady? Who the fuck was he calling ‘little lady’? Apparently a crisis allowed Tommy to unlock a new level of Texan, which she honestly hadn’t thought possible.  

“Joel—” she murmured, looking around as her vision focused. 

“Right in front of us, sugar,” he nodded to the stretcher carrying Joel. “Y’all earned a nice trip to the clinic together.”

She absolutely loathed the clinic, but thank fuck—the phantom sound of Joel’s pained screams still echoed in the breeze. The clinic could help him.  

“His leg,” she told him. His knee was just… well, it wasn’t a knee anymore. 

“Yep, they're gonna patch him right up,” he agreed quickly. “How about you, sweetheart? Where’re you hurtin’?”

Ellie opened her mouth to reply that she was fine when Tommy interrupted,  “And if you say you’re fine, I’m puttin’ you on diaper duty at the nursery for a year,” he amended. 

Fair enough. 

“My arm,” she admitted. 

“Yeah? What else?”

She didn’t want to catalog it. She didn’t want to feel it. Her eyes filled with tears again. God, why was she so damn weepy?

“I don’t know,” she squeaked out. 

Apparently Tommy’s ability to school his features ended where her tears began. Poor guy looked horrified.  

“Alright honey, we’ll get you all fixed up,” he rushed to comfort her. “Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours.”

When they arrived at the clinic, Tommy placed her on the gurney as gently as he could. She held her breath until the jarring of her bones had ended.  A couple of nurses began to help her out of her coat. “Careful of her arm, there,” Tommy instructed quietly as he assisted. 

Neil, one of the town’s doctors, swept into the room. Ellie would much rather have all these people helping Joel. 

“Where’s—is Joel—fuck!” The sleeve of her coat tugged on her bad arm, making her good hand white knuckle the rail of the bed. 

“Joel’s right next door,” Neil assured her, taking out a penlight. “Let’s focus on you right now, okay?”

No, not okay. She’d live with a broken arm. Joel bleeding out down the hall seemed like a much more important place to spend their resources. 

“I’m fine—” Ellie tried to sit up.  

“Diaper duty,” Tommy replied, a strong hand on her shoulder easily pinning her down. 

“I have’ta…” Ellie trailed off, a twist of confusion stealing the thought right out of her head. “Joel…”

“Maria’s with him, sweetheart,” Tommy said, stroking her shoulder. “Just let Neil take care of ya, then you can go see him.”

“Do you remember what happened?” Neil asked, shining a blinding beam of light into her eyes. 

Oh, just got captured by some Fireflies trying to kill my d-Joel because I’m immune and he wouldn’t let them take my brain. The usual.

“Got my shit rocked,” she replied instead.

“I see that,” he said, letting a flicker of a smile show. “How’s your head, any loss of consciousness?”

It made her vision all funny when Manny hit her head, but she was pretty sure she didn’t black out. 

Oh! But she was unconscious before that though—there was that not-lethal lethal stuff. 

“They knocked me out with a…” she replied, trying to remember what it was called. All her words felt too far away, too fleeting to grab. 

“They hit you with something?” Neil offered. 

She shook her head, trying to find a way to explain. The pointy metal thing on the end of the plastic tube? She looked around the room, searching for something to jog her memory—surely they had them here. 

A SHOT, right right right. Like the pipe dream of a vaccine that got them into this whole mess. 

“No, a—a shot,” she gestured loosely with a hand, “a needle.”

“They drugged you?” Tommy asked, more than a little alarmed. 

“Do you know what they gave you?” Neil asked. 

“Dunno,” she shrugged. “It was white stuff. Made me fall asleep.”

“Propofol,” Neil said to one of the nurses. 

“Purple fall,” Ellie echoed with a nod.

She strained her ears, trying to hear anything from Joel’s room down the hall. She supposed it was a good thing that there was no commotion, no screaming, no blaring alarms. The silence beyond the distant din of talking and the flipping paper of patient charts still left her unnerved. 

“What else hurts, Ellie?” Neil inquired, placing his stethoscope on her chest to listen. 

Now that her body was thawing, she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that a lot of places hurt. 

He moved his stethoscope lower on her chest and oh fuck, there’s one of them. 

She cried out, instinctively starting to swing at him. Tommy caught her slow wrist and returned it to the bed as Neil apologized.

The doctor continued to poke and prod, finding a couple of broken ribs and various bruises. Judging by the way Tommy’s face passed through all five stages of grief as he looked on, she imagined it wasn’t pretty. 

No one should be seeing her like this, all raw and exposed. Like a dog would hide a limp from its pack, she wished she could tuck all of these battered parts of her away where no one would ever know they existed. Now they were laid bare, stark and demanding to be seen. It all started to feel like too much and she squirmed, using her functioning arm to pull her shirt down.

“Is Joel okay?” she asked.

“Dr. Helen’s with him, honey,” one of the nurses replied. “You can check on him when you’re done.”

She wanted to check on him now, so it looked like it was time to be done here.

“I think I’m… it’zokay,” Ellie decided, starting to sit up again, “I just need some ice.”

Tommy’s single hand kept her in the bed. “Soon as you can talk without slurring your words, I’ll believe you.”

She was totally not at all slurring her words. She was the polster child of diction right now.  

They seemed to have saved her arm for the grand finale of this shit show. It was so swollen that they had to cut the sleeve of her shirt just to get to it. Against her better judgement, she decided to look.  

Instant regret. 

It was so viscerally wrong, like it couldn’t even belong to any human being, let alone her. Not with the way it bent and bruised and bled... 

She threw up over the side of the bed, probably onto Tommy again. Her stomach seemed to think he was an ideal target or something. A bucket was placed under her chin. 

“‘m good,” she rasped as she laid her head back, the very portrait of not good. 

“How did this happen?” Neil asked as he examined closely, too hesitant to touch. ”Was it a fall, or crushed, or…?”

“Golf club,” Ellie said simply. 

“Christ,” Tommy muttered under his breath. 

“Okay, this needs to be set and splinted,” Neil explained. “We’re going to give you something to put you to sleep—”

We’re going to put her to sleep for a little while. 

“No!” 

“Trust me, this is the best way to do it,” Neil replied. 

Trust me, it’s for the best. 

A nurse appeared with a syringe. 

“NO!” Ellie started to fight wildly on the bed, screaming in pain as she fought with no regard for her injuries. 

She was not about to let this happen again. She needed to stay awake and save Joel and kill these sick fucks. 

“Ellie—” 

Hands were all over her, trying to keep her still. Manny’s arm was around her neck with his gun at her head.  

“JOEL!” she cried, searching for him.

She felt the needle bury itself into her shoulder. “No, no, no…” She tried to keep struggling but her body began to fill with wet sand. 

“Shh, you’re safe, you’re safe, Ellie, you’re alright,” she heard Tommy’s voice speaking against her temple and felt his hand steadily petting over her hair. His voice was traded for a faint buzz that swallowed her whole. 

 

——-

She woke to a nagging ache in her arm. She tried to move it but her elbow wouldn’t bend. Peeling one eye open, she found her arm in a cast from her shoulder down to her fingers. She gave her fingers a wiggle and they hardly moved, sending a hot twinge shooting through her wrist. 

She started to gasp at the pain, only to be shocked by a stronger wave as her ribs protested the movement. She let out a whine, flinching hard.  

Chairs scraped against the linoleum floor in reply. 

“Ellie?” 

Her eyes dragged over to the sound of a female voice. 

Maria, with Tommy beside her.

And no Joel. 

“Jo—”

“He’s right here, look,” Tommy said. 

She turned her head and saw Joel on the gurney beside her. 

“Joel?” she croaked, but didn’t get so much as a twitch in response. His face was swollen, uneven and discolored with angry welts. There was a white sheet pulled up to his shoulders.  He looked so… still. 

“Iz he—“  her breath caught in her chest, eyes filling with tears, “he’s dead?” 

“No, no!” Tommy rushed to assure her, “Just asleep, sweetheart.”

“Joel?!”

There was no answer. She couldn’t breathe without him.

“He’s okay—”

“‘ee’s—he’s dead!” she sobbed. 

“Ellie, Ellie, he’s alive, honey,” Maria said as Tommy slid her gurney against his. 

“Look, Ellie.” Tommy took her good hand and placed it on the center of Joel’s chest. “Feel that?”

Joel’s heart thudded steadily beneath her palm. 

The panic drained from her body. 

“Joel,” she sighed. 

“That’s right, he’s here with you,” Tommy nodded. “The doctor gave him some medicine to help him rest, that’s all. He’s alright.”

She must be in a basement in Colorado, making sure the sepsis hadn’t stopped his heart.  No, Tommy and Maria were here. She took in the sterile white walls around her and the railings on their bed. She was… in the clinic. In Jackson. She wasn’t sure of why she was there or what had happened, but that didn’t matter. 

They were both safe and that’s all she really needed to know. 

The next time Ellie stirred, she saw Joel’s hand on top of hers, warm and steadying. She easily drifted back off.

 

——————-


Ellie floated back to consciousness in what seemed like a blink of an eye later. The light in the room was low now, the sun no longer peering through the blinds and painting stripes across the walls. 

She noticed there was no pain. Actually, there was no… anything. She just floated, with no body to speak of. 

Cool. 

Her mouth was unbearably dry and she whined at the nasty taste on her tongue. 

“Ellie?”

She turned her head and found Joel, sitting in a gurney right against hers. It was nice that they put them both in the same room, sorta like a bonded pair of feral cats that needed to be adopted together. The clinic staff knew that claws would fly otherwise. Joel’s face was all fucked up, but it was definitely him. He had that stupid Worried Face™—his brows all furrowed and pinched. It was impressive that he could manage it with his face so swollen. 

“Holy shit, you’re alive?” she croaked,  squinting at him. “I thought Tommy was lying!”

“Nope,” he replied, expression transitioning to Nostalgia Face™—a small but loaded smile with teary eyes. “Still kickin’.”

“Even at your advanced age,” she added. 

“You only been conscious five seconds and you’re already bullying me,” he shook his head with a chuckle. 

Her smile dropped Into something solemn, thinking for a moment before replying. 

“I bully you,” she agreed quietly.

“‘S fine by me,” Joel said softly. 

And god, wasn’t that the most infuriating part of all—the softness. She would push and shove in every way she could think of to drive him away. But he just silently stayed, a steady sea wall, unmoving against her raging, crashing waves. She bruised her own knuckles until they broke and bled, punching away at the concrete. It didn’t matter. He stayed. 

It had always been easy for her to scare people away. She usually didn’t even have to try, but when she did, all it had taken was one little snap. 

She was fluent in anger and punishments. FEDRA certainly had never met her outbursts with anything but matching fury. She didn’t know how to speak the language of Joel’s unyielding forgiveness, his merciless warmth. 

She was desperately clinging to the last of her anger. She sought out another place to tie it down.  

“Did you know?” she asked, “that it wasn’t gonna work?”

“No.”

She waited for the anger to come. Maybe it was the drugs, but only a distant flame fanned to life. 

“You did it thinking that there was a cure?”

“I did it thinking that any cure wasn’t worth the life of my kid,” he replied. “…Just extra smug ’bout it now.”

“Smug bastard,” she murmured. 

“That’s me,” he nodded. 

Any cure wasn’t worth the life of my kid.  

“I'm not your kid,” she stated plainly. 

“You sure about that?”

She thought about the steadfast sea wall.  “No.”

“You’re my kid, Ellie,” he said firmly. 

She looked down at her hands, scratching her nail against the plaster on her broken arm. 

“But not your daughter,” she added the unspoken part. 

You’re not my daughter. And I sure as hell ain’t your dad. 

She wasn’t Sarah. It was a hole she could never fill. That was fine. She was never anyone’s daughter, really, so she wasn’t expecting to start now. She wasn’t allowed to want that. 

“You’re my daughter.”

Well that’s a puzzling update. 

“No I’m not,” she contradicted him. Ellie wasn’t anyone’s daughter. That kinda came with the whole orphan territory.

“Why not?” he asked. 

She gave a sidelong look, eyeing him suspiciously. 

“Sarah’s your daughter,” she insisted, like maybe that head injury had fucked with him more than she’d originally thought. 

“People can have more than one daughter, you know,” he said, holding her gaze. 

Oh. Yeah. True. 

“There’s this thing,” he started, “called ‘sisters’...”

If she could throw something at him, she would. 

“Shut up,” she murmured, pressing down a smirk. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sat back stiffly, hoping for sleep to take her back under.  ”I’m still mad,” she muttered.  

“I know.”

“This doesn’t change anything.”

“Okay.”

She abandoned her attempt at sleep, shoulders falling in defeat with a sigh as she opened her eyes. 

“Being mad at you sucks,” she groused. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! Because I’m not mad at before-Joel, I’m only mad at now-Joel,” she explained with emphatic, one handed gestures. ”And I miss before-Joel so much. And you’re him, but you’re not, and I hate it.”

“I know.”

Okay, now that she got that out of her system, she could sleep. She closed her eyes. 

“You still lied,” she said quietly. 

“I did.”

She stayed quiet only for a few seconds. 

“Maybe… maybe I can be less mad,” she considered. “Like, mad-adjacent. Diet mad.”

“Diet mad?” he asked. 

“Diet mad,” she repeated. 

“Diet mad,” he agreed with a nod. 

Silence lapsed for a few moments. Okay, one more thing. Then sleep for real this time. 

“You know how… when people drink, they say what they really mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you… Do you think drugs, like the stuff they gave me at the lodge, do the same thing?”

Dad?

“I sure hope so, kiddo.”

Notes:

Only took them 5 years 🙄

Let me know what your favorite lines/moments were 🥰

I should end it here, but I have more ideas and can’t shut up, so… there’s more on the way

Notes:

Do you have any favorite lines/moments/things from this fic? Let me know, it makes my day 🥰