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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“Yeah, yeah. Best behavior,” Joel relents. Just like that.

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?”

Even doped up, he can see it. Ellie wishes she was better at hiding it, or they gave him more pain killers. Both, preferably. It's hard to look at him, but she can manage it--until she nods, and she keeps her head bowed.

"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.

That was a foolish thing to do, he wants to chide. Jackson’s made them soft, trusting – or maybe he’s just freshly paranoid – but the idea of Ellie walking into that fucking vipers nest alone? He watches her stare at the linoleum as she talks, taking in her bruises all over again, but after a second Joel looks away, too. Stares at her hand curled up on the blankets.

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.

She wishes he didn't remember any of it. It'd be a kindness if those violent strikes took that from him. Because of that, here he is, trying to comfort her when he's the one looking like a mummy and missing a leg. It's enough to get some of the emotion over the dam. There's a fight in her chin against the slight tremble as everything just wants to come out all at once.

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.

“Hey,” he says, drawing the word out. Joel squeezes her hand, stronger now than when he’d first woken up, but still not all the way there. “It didn’t happen like that.”

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.

He looks like hell. Hurt, and probably twenty years older than he was that night of the dance. It makes her heart ache so much she consistently feels out of breath.

"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.

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