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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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"Thought you wouldn't complain about an extra pair of hands to help."

And Ellie knows if Joel is being particularly stubborn, she can get him to bend easier than Tess. Ellie looks over to her, letting go of Joel's hand as she leans back in her seat.

"You should go sleep. I'll stay with him."

“I’m not complaining,” she replies, waving off the offer of sleep. It’d be nice, but she wants to be here for a bit, too. “In fact, I’m glad. Not for the help, just because he’ll be glad to have you there. Give him a reason to really lick this thing.”

"Do you really think so?"

She hopes it's true.

Tess lets out a long breath.

“I don’t know what exactly you said to him that night, but I have some idea,” she remarks. “Can’t remember the last time I saw him so relaxed.”

Ellie presses her lips together, arms crossing over her chest. She can't believe that could be their last fucking conversation. It can't be. The world can't be that cruel.

"I called him an asshole."

Part of it.

"And... I told him I didn't think I could forgive him for what happened at the hospital. But I'd like to try. So he better fucking wake up."

“Sure sounds like it,” Tess nods.

God, it’s been such a long few years. It was strange, watching this man positively bloom into fatherhood, thrilled with every bit of it, even the tedious parts, like twenty years of good times got dropped on his doorstep after a long, dark night. It was excruciating to watch him realize he’d lost it. Watch him linger at the ends of conversations, learn to be happy with scraps of attention.

Watch him devastated when she cut him out almost entirely.

“He’s stubborn, almost as much as you. He’ll pull through for you.”

He'll pull through for her even when she's been the asshole. Fuck the Fireflies. Fuck the cure. None of that would matter much if Joel wasn't here, would it? She knows why Joel did what he did. She was just too stubborn to say as much that night.

Ellie squeezes her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry, and then just bends over to rest her forehead on top of Joel's forearm.

"He'd be freaked out to hear you so optimistic," she says, voice thick.

“Yeah, well, when I bust out the optimism, good things happen,” she replies. “We wouldn’t have taken you this far if I didn’t decide that for us — and now I’m deciding he’s going to pull through.”

He has to, truly. Tess isn’t sure she has it in her to lose him, not not. Five years ago she might have pushed it down and moved on, but not now. Now there’s stakes.

"I hope he can hear that. Might just pull through to say shit about it."

Now that his sense of humor has come home from the war.

“Me too.”

Tess snorts a little.

“Joel,” she calls. “I’m gonna trade our house below market value if you don’t pull through!”

"That might sent him to the grave quicker," Ellie mutters. "Then he'll just haunt you."

“You said it yourself, he loves that house,” she replies. “Sticking around for you and I is a sure thing, but the house will clinch it. Call it insurance.”

"He's always talking about all this stuff we wants to do to it. Kept saying he just didn't have the time to start a big project."

Now, he'll have a lot more time. Assuming he wakes up.

“Give it a couple months,” Tess replies. “He’s going to be so fucking bored with recovery you’ll be prying the hammer out of his hand.”

"I'll leave that task up to you."

Ellie's never really felt any ownership over this house--her garage, sure--so that's entirely Tess' problem. She'd happily let Joel do whatever he'd like as long as he wasn't in danger of hurting himself.

Tess knows she has an extremely busy few months ahead of her, at the very least. Every meal, every bedtime, every clothing change, every stair, every bathroom trip. She’s let that reality in solely so she can focus on planning instead of freaking out.

“If you’re moving in, what tasks are falling to you?” she asks.

She sits up, taking a breath. She imagines Joel isn't going to like having to be helped to do basic things, but he especially won't want her doing it.

"What can I do? I mean, what would you like me to do? I don't really care."

Not for lack of care, but because she'll do what needs to be done without complaint.

“I’m gonna need you to take point on running house,” she replies. “Groceries, cleaning, errands — that frees me up to do the nursing.”

Joel isn’t exactly going to be thrilled about Tess doing that stuff either, but someone will have to. And Tess isn’t thrilled about relinquishing any control over the running of their household, but she’ll see how it goes.

"Easy. I can do that." She's been taking good care of her own space. That military school instilled some good habits into her.

"I'm sure Maria is gonna see that we don't have to worry about meals for a while."

She'd already been by, trying to get Ellie to eat. And Joel had more than a handful of women in Jackson that had at one time or another stopped by with containers of food even when he wasn't missing a leg. She has a feeling they're going to have almost too much to eat.

Tess lets out a huff of laughter, just a ghost on her breath.

“Maria?” she repeats. “Joel’s entire legion of doe-eyed fangirls are going to be lining up casseroles on the porch.”

Bitches. Helpful ones, in times like these, but Tess isn’t so sure her opinion will change.

"See? He's still useful." It's said as dryly as possible. She's already worrying about how Joel will cope with not being able to contribute as he once did.

“This isn’t the end of the world, Ellie,” Tess says. She’s not sure if it’s for Ellie’s benefit or her own. She feels like she’s going to have a meltdown in six hours or when someone interrupts her, whichever comes first. For now: “He lost a leg, definitely has a concussion. He’s not paralyzed from the neck down.”

"That we know of. He could still be fucked up. It was a golf club, Tess. A goddamn fucking..." Gold club, and Ellie wishes she hadn't been pinned so she could tear that fucking monster apart with her bare hands.

She thinks she's always is going to wish that. Have this urge to hurt someone now, because she's so fucking mad this happened. It's why a part of her hopes one of those dumbasses tries to come back to Jackson.

She’s considered that. She’s had many hours to consider that. The darker part of her that still misses the security of Boston, where she could keep her feelings locked away in the name of efficiency and survival, knows how to handle that situation. If he’s braindead, or damaged enough to be completely unaware of the world around him, or trapped in his own skull with a frozen body...

Well, Tess knows what she’ll have to do about that.

And unless it comes to it, it isn’t something she feels compelled to bring up with Ellie.

“Doc said his pupils look fine, and he hasn’t had seizures,” Tess replies, firmly. “If it gets worse, we deal with it.”

Ellie hates that response, but she nods.

"I'll still be here."