vaccination | (no subject)

(no subject)

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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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.

"Tess. If..." Saying the words makes her want to vomit what little she's forced down. "If he's got something to do with things not working out, for there not being a cure... how can I look at him? Look at anyone?"

“By remembering you’re not responsible for anything,” Tess says. “That’s on the Fireflies, and Joel, and me. All the fucking adults. You were just a kid.”

A pause.

“Still are.”

Ellie looks at Tess, frowning.

"I'm not a kid. I haven't been a kid for a long fucking time."

Hacking a man to death does that to you.

Tess has a thousand arguments for that — lived experience, hormones, independence, rational decision making, age, perception, community standing, any of it. But what’s the point? She feels how she feels and Ellie will feel how she wants to. No sense in trying to convince her of anything.

“You were a kid then regardless,” she replies. End of argument. “But only a kid runs away from home without another word.”

So be a kid if you want.

Ouch. It stings. Rightfully so.

"Oh, yeah? So what would you do, if Joel'd been lying to you all these years?"

“Joel’s not my dad,” Tess says. “And honesty works different because of it.”

She’d walk, truthfully, but it is different. She also can’t imagine what kind of betrayal could occur on that level; a perk of loving a man with Joel’s kind of mistrust and stoicism is that he’s not likely to sleep around. They’re partners in all respects, they rely on each other in equal measure.

That deeply bitter, angry part of Ellie that can suss out the truth without setting foot out of Jackson wants to spit back that he's not her dad. But the part that so desperately wants to be wrong and remembers every birthday and holiday and guitar lesson and struggle they've endured can't even utter the words.

"Fine. So if your dad pulled this shit?"

"I might hate him," she replies, honestly. "And I lived through the early years of the outbreak with him, and those were the worst days of my life. Never got over some of it, actually, but I knew loved me. He tried to do right by me in ways I didn't understand until he was already gone."

She ruminates on her own words for a beat; there's something a little odd about mentioning her parents, which she's scarcely even shared with Joel, but there it is.

"You don't have to stay in his life. But you can't replace that, either."

Ellie immediately doesn't like the thought of Joel gone. It's crossed her mind, of course. He's slowed down a touch over the years. More lines, more grays. She takes a deep, unsteady breath.

"Yeah. I know."

He's been the only constant in her life for this long of a time. That, she can't ignore.

Tess nods. Of course she knows.

"Just... take your time. You don't have to rush into shit."

Rich, coming from her, but it's true.

It is ironic, but Ellie gets it.

"I'll have time to think." Not that she hasn't been thinking ever since that conversation with Joel. Maybe doing it on horseback will help.

"Does it count as finishing my breakfast if I have you box this up so I can take it with me?"

Maybe she's more likely to come back if she has tupperware to return.

Tess isn't sure that she's ever sighed so hard in her life, but there it is. She gets up and picks up Ellie's plate.

"If you solemnly swear to me that you will not dump it in the bushes a hundred yards out, and that you actually eat it," she says, holding the plate above Ellie's head like she's ready to put it right back down.

"Cross my heart," she says, doing just that. "I'm sure you'll sense it if I toss it and come after me faster than Joel."

"Damn right," she replies, and the passes her free hand fondly over Ellie's hair before she walks off to pack breakfast up.

Where she'd usually huff, she simply accepts the touch. She doesn't want to leave. She'd miss Tess. Miss Joel. Miss Dina and Jesse and Tommy and Maria.

But right now, she's sore, and she knows it'll only get worse once she reaches the hospital.

She rubs her face with both hands as she waits for Tess to be done.

Tess packs it up, reassembling the eggs and cheese and bacon between slices of bread; easier to eat on the road. She wraps it all in waxed cloth, sealing it with a strip of twine, and she brings it back to Ellie with a very terse smile.

"Anything you want me to know before you head out?"

Ellie stands, taking the food.

"I dunno. If I say anything, it's going to sound like a goodbye, won't it?"

"It does with that attitude," she says, firmly. Under no circumstances is this goodbye. The rest comes out softer: "Listen, be careful out there. If anything happens to you... you'll devastate a lot of people. Alright? You get back in one piece."

Not just Joel.