ellie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vaccination) wrote2020-06-24 06:22 pm
vaccination) wrote2020-06-24 06:22 pm
(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.
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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She doesn't know what to say, and apparently what she thinks will help--trying to give him something to look forward to--doesn't. Maybe being here isn't a help, either. She doesn't even hear what Joel says as the blood rushes between her ears.
There's an easy out. Someone needs to tell Tommy that Joel is awake. But she wants to be selfish and stay, just this once. Stay and not walk away like she did at the hospital, like she did the night of the dance.
She decides to sit in silence, eyes resting on her knees as she tells herself to just keep quiet.
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"No, the sound system won't make the leg worse. Moving from the clinic to home might not be good for your head, though, especially if there are complications."
Tess just purses her lips, and though she's not particularly happy to be quiet, she's had enough conversations with the doctor that she has a good idea of the risks.
"It'll take a few more days to run tests, and figure out how to manage your pain and prepare you to be on your feet again, then we can reassess."
Well, Tess figures, that gives them time to figure out the house.
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And complications isn’t a particularly welcome thought, either.
“Alright.” He relents, but it’s so obviously reluctant.
Finishing details are quick. It’s plain to see how he’s begun to sag, to crumple in a bit, even propped up as he is. Dr. Nyugen imparts a few more reassurances – and Joel has an uneasy feeling that there may have been question if he’d wake up at all when she says for the third time how glad everyone will be to hear he’s awake. He’s polite enough to thank her on her way out, but it’s… listless. Tired.
“It’s late, ain’t it?” Gearing up to kick them out – if they’ll let him.
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She's hardly left his side since the attack, and she's not planning to now that he's alive. So she says to herself, over the part that wants to escape this room. Her tongue presses to the cuts in her mouth and she shifts in her seat, getting more comfortable, though it's the last thing she's felt of late.
"Sleep. I'll be right here, in case you need something." She looks to Tess, waiting to see if she'll argue with her on it.
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She squeezes Joel's shoulder and then moves to the head of the bed to lay it down again.
"If you want some time alone, big guy, I'll drag this one home," she says to Joel, but her eyes flick over his head to Ellie. "Be back first thing in the morning, bring you a fresh shirt. We're both settled here otherwise."
If he's sleeping, he won't know the difference if either of them stay.
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Joel feels the bed lay back with more of that nausea, and he closes his eyes through it. He’s pretty sure his pride won’t survive being sick in front of them on top of everything else.
It abates again, and when Joel opens his eyes again, he feels the overhead light bore more bright pain into his brain. Fuck, he does want to sleep. He's hurt and tired, his face is still all fucked up and he's down a damn limb, but he’s… fine. Alive and awake, apparently two things that hadn’t been a sure thing until about an hour ago.
“Nah.” He speaks quietly enough not to carry. She’s right there, in easy reach, and Joel lifts his hand up to brush his knuckles against Tess’ bicep. “Thanks, babe.”
Tess can pretend he means for the fresh shirt, if she’s got to.
“I’ll send her home in a bit. You both look beat as I feel.” That, he says loudly enough to be heard.
But first... Joel turns his head to look at Ellie all sprawled out in her uncomfortable looking chair, the stubborn way she's set herself in it. He squints and frowns, then points to the pitcher of water and glass waiting on the side table. “Wouldja mind, Ellie?”
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Which is why she practically jumps to her feet. Her bruised ribs don't appreciate her eagerness to be helpful but she ignores them as she has been.
"Couldn't have asked when you were upright, huh?"
It's a gentle tease. It's about all she can muster. She only opens her mouth at all to distract from the way her hands shake as she carefully pours water into the glass. Luckily, there's a bendy straw to go with it. Good thing those things take hundreds of years to decompose.
"Here," she says, standing beside the bed and holding the glass so that he can easily drink from the straw. No way did he think she was not going to do that, right? "Not too fast."
feel free to skip tess for a bit! getcha daddy-daughter time
It's easy to shrugs off Ellie's look; none of them are running on perfect judgement, and with the way things have been between the kid and Joel the past few years, she doesn't trust that Ellie's not going to go off half-cocked. Almost anyone would, given the circumstances, but Ellie's got fire even on a good day.
"I'll see you soon, then," she says. Give these two some time. "I'll leave the porch light on, Ellie."
She'll be up anyway, still be getting things done for her family.
thanks ma <3
No way he would have done it any other way.
“’S not my fault. These damn drugs make me feel like I’ve got mush for brains.”
Tess retreats while Joel is being all but taunted by the dumb little crooked straw, and he gives Ellie a grumpy look over it. His hand feels unsteady as hell even trying to lift it above his shoulder, so he relents. It’s worth it – four days of dry, sticky mouth washed away. He only coughs a little after draining half the glass, waves Ellie off before she can fuss.
“How you doin’? You takin’ anything for all of –” he sort of lifts his hand off the blankets, gestures vaguely at Ellie, but his eyes are on her busted cheek and other visible scrapes, “that?”
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She frowns--more at the comment about mush for brains than the coughing, because in the dark of that room she thought she was looking at his brains splattered on the floor--and gingerly sits on the edge of the bed, facing him. No fussing. She leans over to put the glass down within reach on the bedside table, and lies even as her ribs protest again.
"I'm fine." She didn't want anything for the pain. She didn't want anything to make her drowsy, in case something happened. It's why she's been afraid to sleep or even rest her eyes for long.
"All that matters now is that you get better, okay? So we can go home."
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“You are goin’ home. And don’t give me any crap about it, kiddo. It’s a big house to wake up in alone, and Tess needs you there. Think all this might have knocked her off her game.” Joel sighed. “Do it myself, but apparently I am stayin’ here until the doc relents… or you help me stage a breakout.”
His eyebrows lift, and he gives her one of those familiar looks – half joke, half double-dog-dare-ya, but fond all the way through.
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It's there in her voice when she speaks, that struggle not to cry.
"I'll go when you get to sleep," Ellie relents. Just like that. "But I'll be back first thing in the morning. You've gotta at least try to be a good patient. I'll break you out when the doctor says I can."
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He means it, just like Ellie… And like Ellie, it might also end up a lie. His reputation as stubborn has been hard-earned, after all.
He can hear those bitten back tears in her agreement. If he weren’t so tired, so stoned, he’d be weepy too. Joel’s smile flickers away, and he’s back to frowning, trying to read her clearly when all his thoughts feel like they’ve been wrapped in gauze.
“You were there, weren’t you?”
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"Yeah." Sometimes she feels like she's still in that room. It's all so vivid and fresh behind her eyelids. "Dina and I had to take shelter during our patrol because of the storm. Jesse found us, said you and Tommy hadn't come back. So we went looking for you. Split up."
Ellie had the misfortune of finding them first. Had Tess not shown up, they'd probably all be dead.
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It’s almost as hard to see her in this state as it is to be seen in his own state.
“I remember… some of it.” Joel shrugs, or tries to. Hard to do much of anything but lay there and listen to her choke back tears. “Enough to know I wish you hadn’t seen any of it. I’m okay, Ellie.”
His hand rolls over, nudging against hers.
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Ellie reminds herself he's drugged to high heaven and probably won't even remember this exchange, tomorrow.
"I've never been so fucking scared. I don't know what I'd do if--"
She feels like she's about to hyperventilate. It feels selfish. If he had died, before they even got a chance to fix things... there would be no coming back from that. It makes her overeager, wanting to say she forgives him for it all, even if she doesn't. It all seems so fucking stupid now. All that wasted time, all the shit she's put him through just by shutting him out.
Ellie shakes her head before taking Joel's hand. The warmth of it is a reminder that he's here and alive and she doesn't need to freak out over what could have happened. It's just more time lost if she does, right? She manages to look at him.
"I promise. I'm not gonna go anywhere. I'm gonna be here. For you, and for Tess." No running off.
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And if it had… best not to think about. He feels an ugly sort of helplessness to hear her breathing start to quicken and catch. It reminds him so much of how she had cried at St. Mary’s. That had been the last real conversation they’d had until the other night: he’d thought about it a lot.
And now she was holding his hand. Making promises.
“Ellie… I’m real glad you’re here, but you don’t…” you don’t owe me, he thinks to say. Joel forces himself to meet her eyes, but it’s hard. He’s so tired. “You don’t gotta worry. Like the doc said: couple tests and I’ll be home in a few days, drivin’ Tess up the walls.”
That had not at all been what the doctor had said, and he couldn’t even really blame the chemical fog for that particular lie. Even when he wasn’t high, Joel had always drawn pretty deeply from his well of denial.
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"No," she says, shaking her head again. It's not going to be that simple. He's going to hate everything about the healing process, and he's going to get frustrated, and maybe he'll go to some unpleasant places. She can't sit back, knowing that. "We're done with that shit, Joel. Okay? Just... you've gotta let me help you."
She sighs, looking at their hands.
"Please."
It's not a word she uses often.