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The sun hasn't been up for an hour before the daylight sees Ellie pounding her fist on Joel and Tess' door. She knows it'll only be Tess in. She saw Jesse speaking to Tommy and Joel by the stables. They'll be out for hours, and Ellie imagines this conversation will only take minutes.

When the door doesn't immediately open, Ellie knocks louder and calls up towards the upstairs windows.

"Tess! Tess, get up!"

She doesn't give a fuck if it sounds like something's wrong because something is wrong. She's known it since they returned to Jackson. It's been eating at her, always in the back of her mind, and that last outing with Joel has lit a fire. She hasn't been sleeping. Last night, she couldn't manage more than a few minutes at a time before the conversation would replay in her mind, over and over and over.

Not so much the words, but the look in his eyes as he said them.

She's always been able to tell when Joel is lying to her even before she realized it.

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He will. Tess's mild frustration immediately blossoms into something deeper, more frustrated. She is about to be in a world of trouble with Joel herself, to say nothing of Tommy and Maria, who take the security of Jackson's walls with a seriousness Tess will never understand. Once a smuggler, always a smuggler, maybe. There are some lines you can't uncross.

She walks over to Ellie, and she puts a finger in her face, sternly.

"You are going to eat a good breakfast, and then you will go to your place and pack up what you need. While you do that, I am going to put together some supplies for the road," she says, sternly. "From there, you have two options. Either we get him and tell him that you're going with or without him, or you just go on your own and I hold him off as long as I can."

She is angry about this. It's been a few long years of slowly building tension, and steadily cracking trust. Maybe if it just breaks cleanly, they'll be able to fix this mess well before it completely shatters.

What needs to be done will be done.

She hates having a finger wagged at her, but Tess' words are oddly encouraging. She supports this. She must get it, to some degree, even if Ellie can't find the words to explain exactly why she needs to know the truth, even if destroys every good thing that's happened since. It has to be better than living in a lie. It has to be better than looking at Joel and wondering. The older she gets, the harder it is to ignore.

If she's going to hate him, she wants to be able to say exactly why.

"I need to go alone."

Tess nods.

"I figured," she says, walking away again. "You two have been on the outs for a long time now."

She sets about breakfast. Eggs, toast, a bit of cheese, a bit of salted pork. Enough to fill Ellie's belly for a hard trip. She ponders that this all falls on Joel. His relationship with Ellie is deeper, sure, but Tess can't help but think Ellie knows all the answers anyway; otherwise she'd be just as furious with her.

"How pissed off at me are you?"

(Look at what a cross-country trip and Jackson has made her: the kind of woman who cares if people are mad at her.)

Ellie is pretty sure she'll vomit if she actually eats. She doesn't refuse the food, but she's not eager to touch it.

"I'm not pissed at you." And maybe not even at Joel. Hurt. Disappointed. The emotions are so intense that maybe it translated into anger. She doesn't know. She sighs, frustrated. "Annoyed, I guess. But I know you'd never sell him out. No matter what he did."

Tess sits down with her. If Ellie doesn't eat, she doesn't go. It's a matter of survival, and also a matter of Tess not having learned how to cook at her age just to watch food go to waste.

"Hmm," she hums. She doesn't quite believe it, but then again, there's no telling what will spit up once Ellie actually knows. Tess mulls it over a moment and then remarks: "He went out on a limb for me in even starting this whole thing, in taking you at all. He trusted my judgement. Only fair that I have trust in my partner's judgement, too."

"What are you going to tell him when he comes back?"

He won't actually notice she's missing until a significant amount of radio silence is had. He checks in, now and then. Finds reasons to come and chat, and she's never minded. Sometimes he brings over music or books or shows her a new song if he happens to remember it or figure it out.

It makes her feel sick, imagining the absence of that. And then it makes her angry because that's not what she should be torn up about.

Tess exhales, long and slow.

“I don’t know, kiddo. Probably the truth, just what he needs to know. He and I will sort it out with each other later.”

"He's had so many fucking chances to tell me the truth," she says, eyes stinging as she thinks back to every quiet, comfortable moment. Every spat. That fucking couple they found, and how he refused to give her answers. He has to know how obvious he was.

"He did this."

"The Fireflies fucked up too," Tess says. She has –– had –– a complicated relationship with them, and though she still wishes things were different sometimes, she's had a lot of truths to accept, too.

It will be difficult for Ellie to every understand that, though. She never experienced the worst of them, just the Fireflies at their most romantic, their most idealistic. It's hard to know how deep the problems went without first-hand experience.

"Not that it changes anything about Joel, but they made a fuckton of mistakes. Now eat up."

"The Fireflies were trying, at least. That has to count for something."

Marlene believed. Riley, too.

Ellie looks down at the food and shakes her head.

"If you want me to barf all over this table, I'll eat."

Tess disagrees on some visceral level, even if she wishes she didn't. It's been too many long years, mulling over her own culpabilities. Her own experience watching the Fireflies go from promising to little more than a chain of abandoned dog-tags, corpses and dreams all across the country has made it difficult to accept otherwise anymore. It's gone. Her meaning is now wrapped up with her people, not the greater world.

But she doesn't say it. It's not worth it, not right now.

"You're not going to make that whole trip and back on an empty stomach, if you're not fed," she says. And then, with a pointed look: "If you're starving and have to stop earlier than you need to, then you're going to lose your head start. You know how many times I suffered on drops that went on longer than expected because I didn't feel like choking down some shitty MRE before heading out?"

Don't insult her cooking, Ellie.

Tess is choosing her fight, and for this one, at least Ellie can relent. She picks up her fork and sighs, picking at the eggs.

"Maybe you can slow him down by shoving food down his throat, too."

Or at least let him have a meal before he figures out she's gone.

"Yeah, I got that recipe for beef wellington out of Maria, the one that takes two fucking hours to make," she replies. "You're welcome."

There's a sound in the back of Ellie's throat that almost sounds like a laugh.

"If it was Maria making it, I'd have to stay."

Ha! Funny kid.

"Yeah, instead maybe Joel will end up with stomach cramps and won't be able to get on his horse," she replies.

"I could be back before he could even leave."

Distantly, she wonders if she'll want to come back at all.

"Could be," she replies, but she doubts that'll be true. "Be back in three days tops, Ellie. I can pack enough food for you for that much, that way you don't have to stop to hunt."

"I don't think I'm going to have a lot of reasons to linger around once I get there."

A sweep of the place, and then she'll decide. Maybe she'll wait for Joel to meet up with her there, or maybe he'll be that quick.

"... for what it's worth, thanks."

Joel's going to be pissed.

Tess nods. It’s far from her ideal situation, but it’ll have to do.

“You know I’d do anything for you, kid,” she says.

She hopes Ellie knows that. Understands that.

It's not fair, saying that shit. Ellie's eyes sting a bit more, and she sniffs, rubbing her nose and busying herself by forcing down a bite of her breakfast.

"Are you going to come with him?"

“We’ll see,” she replies, noting the sniffles but choosing to say nothing. She wonders idly if Ellie’s too pissed to hug her goodbye, and then she feels like a sap for thinking about that. “He might think I’ll slow him down.”

She’s a decent rider, but not in that kind of long, rushed ride.

"Well, he's going to freak out Tommy, and that'll freak out Maria. You should at least... try to calm them down."

She can't be sure how much they know, but they don't deserve that, thinking Joel and Ellie both disappeared.

"Doubt he's gonna stop long enough to leave a note."

“I’ll handle all that,” she says, firmly. “You just... do what you need to. Be careful. Get back here in one piece.”

Might as well say it if she's laying so much out here on the table.

"And if I don't come back? Maybe I don't like what I find."

Or she finds nothing and is left what she knows.

Tess raises an eyebrow. It’s not entirely surprising, but...

“You have friends here, and a community,” she replies, curtly. “Don’t throw away everything else because of what he did.”

It’s a big town, and it gets bigger every year. Not a lot of places anywhere like it. Plenty of space to avoid one man, much as it’ll devastate him.