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It is unbelievably fucking cold. Colder than when they first set out however many hours ago, before the supermarket and the runners and the clickers that got blood on Ellie's good boots and the god damn storm and the weed and kissing Dina and Jesse telling them Joel and Tommy didn't make it to the lookout and -- fuck.
"Calm the fuck down," Ellie mutters. "Fuck me." Her heart pumps loudly in her ears and her jaw is starting to ache from how hard she's clenching her teeth. Her high is nowhere to be found. It would be a real shit stick to add weed to the "Something Really Bad Happened and Now This Memory Is Tainted Forever" list. She'll just squeeze it between Halloween and malls and universities and fucking... snow.
Shimmer snorts.
"Yeah, yeah." Ellie pats the horse's neck and tries to take a deep breath. It does not work, the icy air getting stuck in her chest and stuttering in her lungs like a generator out of fuel. "Please be okay. Fuck, please be okay."
She leads Shimmer up the last ridge before the old ski lodge Tommy calls the Baldwin place and the horse snorts again, but this time it's sharper, almost panicked. Ellie stops her with a twitch of the reigns and listens as hard as she can. The wind is howling less than it was, but under it she can hear...screaming? The fear that shoots through her is worse than anything she's ever felt in years -- not since Joel was bleeding out in her hands, not since the restaurant was in flames around her, not since the water was closing in and she tried desperately to find the surface.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," Ellie pants. The moans and groans of Infected are mixed with very fucking human screams of terror and she's about to snap Shimmer's reigns when two horses bound over the hill and head straight for her. She tries to shoulder her rifle blindly, knees pressing into the saddle so she can gallop without her hands when one of the riders whistles a Jackson greeting and she blinks because it's Joel and Tommy.
"Ellie," Joel bellows. "Ellie, turn around!" Everything is happening so fast and they're only about ten yards from her and they look a little worse for wear and there's blood on both of their faces and then she sees a Clicker crest the hill and then another and she manages to turn Shimmer around just as Tommy and Joel gallop past her and she follows.
"What the fuck is going on?" she screams. "What happened? Why are you fucking covered in blood?" Her voice gets higher and more desperate with each question and she's not even sure they can hear her over the pounding of the hooves, the wind, the screaming.
Tommy keeps looking behind them as they speed through the deep snow. Where are Jesse and Dina? They had planned to meet back at the library in two hours, but Ellie has no sense of how much time has passed. She hasn't quite caught up -- half of her brain is still screaming where are Tommy and Joel and the other half is desperately chanting right in front of you, dipshit.
Usually in high-stress moments, Ellie channels her fear into something that keeps her alive. She got real good at that a long, long time ago, and all things considered galloping away from Infected on horseback is a pretty good place to be. But right now that fear is probably going to cause her to lead Shimmer into a tree because she thought...well, she thought the worst. Because she's never been that fucking lucky, and last night felt like luck on so many fucking counts, so it had to run out somehow. And once you think the worst it's hard to shake.
The storm has pretty much passed and Shimmer has no problem following Tommy as he leads them through the snowy woods. Ellie realizes that Joel has dropped behind her, probably to put himself between her and the Infected chasing them. Selfless fucker.
"Hello?" she yells back at him. "Is anyone going to tell me what's happening?"
He probably wouldn't be able to hear her with two good ears over the hoofbeats and his own adrenaline, never mind his one mostly functional one, so he just shakes his head. "Keep going," he shouts. "Don't stop!"
They ride so hard that Ellie starts to worry about Shimmer. If they exhaust their horses they'll have to walk back to Jackson and she'd really rather not end what has evolved into a really fucking eventful day with her feet freezing in her boots. But just when she considers yelling at Tommy to stop before someone goes lame, he looks behind them and comes out of his gallop. Ellie realizes she's panting like she's just done all the work, her breath loud in the now-quiet woods. She looks around and sort of recognizes the clearing they're in -- it's close to the trail that will take them back to Jackson.
Tommy doesn't dismount but he pats the neck of his horse and then rubs his face, smearing the blood on his cheek. "Think we're alright, but be ready."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Ellie says. Tommy ignores her.
"Joel," he calls. "You clean?" Her neck cracks audibly as she turns to look at Joel. Were they on the ground with that herd? What if some of this blood isn't from kills, what if it's theirs, what if one of them is bit --
"Clean," Joel says. "You?"
Tommy probably nods but Ellie isn't looking at him. Her breath is coming a little too fast and she thinks she might start swinging if someone doesn't tell her what the fuck is happening right now.
She doesn't realize she's said that out loud until Tommy finally answers. "We'll have to tell everyone when we get back," Tommy says, "so might as well wait --"
She whirls around as best she can in her saddle. Fuck, she's going to be so sore tomorrow. "But you tell me right now, Tommy Miller, or so help me I will...I'll...cut off your fucking ponytail in your sleep!"
It's not her best work. But he looks over her shoulder at Joel and nods, looking vaguely amused in that annoying as fuck way of his. "You sound like Maria," he says. Ellie opens her mouth to say something that, four years ago, would have gotten her on farming duty for a month, when Joel cuts her off.
"You okay, Ellie?" he says. It softens something in her, melts some of the fear. But it does nothing for her exasperation. A dusty memory surfaces of him opening a very scary door and giving her a fucking heart attack. Some things never fucking change.
"No!" she screeches. "No, I'm not fucking okay, because I feel like I just almost fucking found you two dead in the snow, or something!"
"It was a near thing," Tommy says, looking at the blood on his hands like he just noticed it and grimacing.
"Tommy," Joel snaps.
"It's true," he counters. Ellie's neck snaps back and forth like she's watching a hockey match. Or, wait, fuck, is it tennis? Or fencing? Whatever, she's getting whiplash and she still doesn't know what's going on.
Joel gently guides his horse so that he's next to her. "We ran into the herd at the ski lodge. You know, where we went a few years ago? When we didn't get strings?" She nods. "We...found a girl." He clears his throat. "Got her out of a tight spot and she helped us get out of there, told us she had friends at the Baldwin place. So we rode there."
Woah, hold the fuck up. They saved someone and that's why they got into this mess? Or they were in it and happened to find a random fucking girl in the middle of it? There haven't been groups of people this way that don't stopped in Jackson in ages. To be this close and not stop there means that they were avoiding it. Haven't either of these knuckleheads thought of that? How dangerous the world can be, still?
Tommy jumps in. "We got there but the herd was hot on our heels and we got through the gate okay. Girl hopped off and her friends threw a couple Molotovs."
"You were just going to hole up with some strangers? Two of you against however many there were?" So many things about this are setting off her alarm bells. What was the girl doing on the ridge, anyway? She'd have seen the town. And why wasn't she with her group? And if they had Molotovs they were clearly prepared to fight. And to come out here in such numbers?
"Don't matter," Joel says gruffly. "Because almost right away the gate gave. Couldn't have been more than ten Infected but it was probably old and the fire didn't help it none."
"It was fast after that," Tommy continues. "This idiot was going to waste all of his bullets helpin' but there was no chance. We lost track of the girl and once I saw more Infected coming out of the woods from the lodge we got the fuck out of there and found you."
"I...fuck," she exhales. "There are so many fucking things wrong with this," she says. She has a million questions but her breath has finally come back to her and she feels her hands starts to shake from the adrenaline comedown. "But you're okay? Both of you?"
"We're fine, kiddo," Joel says. He looks like he wants to reach for her and she kind of wants him to but if he does she might start crying and that would be embarrassing for everyone.
"Why do you think they were he--" Before Ellie can finish, they hear hoofbeats. All three of them draw their guns until a familiar voice calls out.
"Ellie? Tommy! Joel!"
"It's Dina and Jesse," she says. Sure enough, her friends gallop into the clearing, both panting.
"Holy shit," Dina says. "Holy shit, did you see that herd?"
"Are they comin' this way?" Tommy asks, rifle only half lowered.
Jesse shakes his head. "Nah," he says. "We road around them, followed your tracks. But we'll want to send a crew this week to clean up this region."
"Can we get the fuck home, please?" Ellie says. She turns to Tommy, giving him what everyone calls her 'shark-smile. "Dude, Maria is going to be so pissed at you."
___
The ride back is mostly Dina and Jesse recounting their search and their "epic sneaking around some clickers," as the latter puts it. When they finally get back to Jackson, Tommy waves the right flag and the gates open for them and Ellie dismounts onto shaking legs as soon as she can. Joel comes off his horse next to her and his knee almost buckles.
Though he's never told her directly, she knows it has bothered him since a fall off a roof on patrol last year. When it happened, she had begged Tommy for details and spent the entire day that he was still unconscious at his bedside before retreating to her shed without breathing a word of it to anyone. She sketched him as he slept and remembered the cold cement floor of a basement hundreds of miles away and his feverish skin underneath her palms. The sketch is folded into the pages of a book on her shelf.
"You okay?" she asks. She is reminded all at once that he's older than he was, and she missed two whole years of him.
"Hurts from runnin'," he says without looking at her. She sucks on her teeth, fists clenched at her sides and his eyes flick up to her face. His jaw softens. Her entire chest hurts. "I'm fine, kiddo."
He starts to untack his horse and Ellie realizes her hands are shaking again when she starts on her own buckles. She wasn't even the one in danger and she feels like she's been hit by a truck, but that's adrenaline for you. She wants to crawl into bed and pretend that today never happened. She wants to be 14 again listening to Hank Williams and laughing over puns on the side of the road. She wants everyone she has ever loved to be alive and safe and she wants to stop feeling like anything good is going to slip through her fingers.
"Do you need help?" Dina's voice startles her. She realizes Shimmer's bridle is wound in her fingers and she's just standing there with it.
"No," Ellie says reflexively. She looks away from her white-knuckle grip and at Dina. Dark eyebrows raise and her gaze travels pointedly in Joel's direction. Are you going to ask him? her eyes say.
What the fuck are you talking about? Ellie tries to say back. How is it possible that they were having such a fucking good day a few hours ago? The basement of the library was...great, but even just being on patrol, talking about music and movies and --
Oh. The movie. Dina pulls the bridle from Ellie's hands gently, fingers lingering on hers. "Don't worry about the sledding. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Ellie nods and her cheeks feel hot which is just fucking embarrassing. Dina leads Shimmer back to her stall with a wink that she very much ignores.
Ellie was serious when she told Dina the plan to hang out with Joel and watch a movie. Yeah, so maybe they spoke cordially for the first time in almost two years last night and yeah, maybe something really fucking bad almost happened today, but the best way to survive in this fucked up world is to just keep going. Joel has shown her that hundreds of times.
So, fuck it. Forgiveness, if she really wants to figure out where to find some, isn't going to come from her being a god damn coward. And honestly, she could use a nice night in.
"Joel?" Ellie says, turning towards where he's handing his own horse off. "Hey, listen."
"I'm listening," he replies. Jesus, his hair is long. Did he stop cutting it when she wasn't around to do it for him? That's a sad fucking thought.
"Do you want to watch a movie tonight?"
Elle makes herself look at him as she says it and she's glad she does because his face does something so complicated that she almost wants to laugh. It's shock to disbelief to joy to hope to something softer than the rest and then back to Joel's usual resting asshole face, but even that has mellowed over the last few years.
"Sure," he says. She can tell, even still, that he's fighting to keep his voice even. "You're not just askin' because we had a bit of a scare, are you? Because I really am fine, Ellie--"
"Ouch, man," she says, but she huffs it and hopes he hears the joke. "Would you believe me if I said I planned to ask you before whatever the fuck just happened? Dina is a witness, you can ask her --"
Joel raises a hand and rolls his eyes, seriousness gone, swept away be his endless default of pretending to be annoyed. "I believe you." For a second it seems impossible that 12 hours ago they weren't speaking. "What are we watching?"
She rubs the back of her neck and almost jumps at how cold her own hands are. Did she leave her gloves in Eugene's weed den? Joel starts to walk down the main street. She's pretty sure he and Tommy have to report what happened at the Baldwin place, coordinate a clean-up crew for the hoard, but right now he seems like he's...walking her home?
"I, uh," she stutters. He's looking at her with soft, patient eyes. God, this asshole. Why does he have to be so nice to her? "I found a copy of Curtis and Viper 2. Directors cut?"
It comes out like a question. Joel whistles through his teeth and clicks his tongue. "Damn, girl," he says. "Good find. Don't think we've seen that version, have we?" She knows that they both know they have not. They've watched probably a hundred bad action movies -- she's got a journal somewhere with a list of them and their individual ratings. Joel always rates stuff a B or higher, while Ellie doles out Cs and Ds just to rile him up.
"No," she says. "We haven't." Joel looks at her, really looks at her in a way he hasn't in years -- not while she's watching, anyway. It's like he's trying to see all the way back to a grimy building in Boston, before the blood and death and terror and jokes and laughing and fighting and...all of it. "So," she says slowly. He blinks. "You want to?"
"Sure," Joel says. "Do I have to sit on that shitty futon of yours?"
She snorts. "You just hate it because you fucked up your back lugging it in."
"Not like you were helpin' me." They turn the corner onto their street.
"Whatever. No, you don't have to sit on my shitty futon. I'll come over. If that's okay?" Part of her hates this, the hesitation. Joel would have her anytime, anywhere, as long as she was there. She's not stupid, she's just...it's complicated, okay? Ellie doesn't know how to return to a place she left behind any more than she knew how to belong there in the first place.
"That's okay," Joel says. He clears his throat. "Bring popcorn, though."
He walks her to the garden gate. "You're cooking it," she says. He huffs.
"No shit," he says. "My house is not smelling like burnt popcorn for a week."
"That was one time!" He waves her off, not quite laughing but his mouth is curled into a soft grin.
"Come over after sundown. Tommy and I should be done by then." He looks at her for another moment before nodding, almost to himself, and turning on his heel to walk slowly down the street. She watches until he turns the corner.
____
Ellie waits a little too long to leave the garage. It's not nerves, exactly. It's more that she doesn't know how to feel. Is this annoying fucking weight in her chest guilt? Still? Guilt that she gets this life and all of its safety and security?
No, not really, not any more. Maybe it's guilt for not feeling guilty, which is a mindfuck. Especially after today -- the bitter taste of fear that started when Jesse told her and Dina that Tommy and Joel hadn't showed up to the lookout hasn't quite faded yet, even after laying on the couch for like, three hours.
It's complicated, she decides. She loves Joel and she's mad at him, and she might be mad at him forever, but she misses him. She's tired.
These stupid thoughts take her all the way around his house to the front door, which is kind of stupid. Just last night they'd spoken on the back porch -- which, now that she thinks about it, is kind of strange in the first place. He doesn't usually sit out there if she's home. Maybe he thought she was already back, or was spending the night at Dina's or something. He's given her space the last few years, space she thought she'd have to fight much harder for. Did that make her more angry? That he was willing to let her push him away?
"Jesus," she mutters. "Get it together." She hovers the hand not holding the DVD and bag of popcorn over the door for a few seconds because she realizes what she's doing. "That's so stupid." She tries the handle and it's unlocked, so she just barges in.
She lived here for a week before Joel took her skittishness for something it maybe wasn't, but neither of them knew how to talk about how she kind of wanted a hug and to paint her bedroom. So he offered to fix up the garage for her, to make it a project for them, and that was that. He taught her how to measure shit and use some power tools and cut insulation and they traded for furniture and he found her posters on patrol until she was old enough to find them herself. He made her a home of her own and she loves it, she really does, but sometimes she wonders what would have happened if she had figured out how to explain to him that it wasn't living with him that made her skittish. It was the possibility of life uninterrupted, the threat of peace, the promise of safety. It was just the fact that she didn't know how to be someone's kid, even though she had decided she wanted to be.
Anyway, she's always been welcome here, but it's been...over a year, almost two since she was actually inside.
"Joel," she calls, kicking off her shoes. "I'm here." She didn't wear a coat since it's like, 30 seconds to get here, but she looks for the small wooden figurines on the coat rack out of some old reflex. She remembers these -- he made them on the road. He'd whittle on nights they had a small fire, work on tiny animals while she told jokes or tried to annoy the fuck out of him by telling him his bear looked like a dog.
She shakes off the memory and keeps going. The living room is a little different than the last time she was here. He's got a new recliner and it looks like the couch has been moved from facing the window to facing the TV. There's a stupid lump in her throat when she realizes that he must have moved it for tonight.
The DVD goes on the coffee table and she hears Joel upstairs but takes the opportunity to snoop. He's got a that shitty drawing she did of him like, three years ago, on the mantle. "Ugh," she says, picking it up for a second. There is no shading at all and he's basically expressionless. And the eyes are just awful. She's much better now -- maybe it's time to do a new one.
Joel's bookshelf is full of books that came with the house, plus a few additions. The action movies they watched that first year when neither of them slept much. Books she read and kept here, the pamphlet from the museum they went to on her birthday.
"That was a good day," she sighs. Even though she never really lived here, she feels the apprehension melting away. This is a space she has spend countless hours in, with and without Joel. Sleeping on his couch when he was on patrol, watching movies with Tommy, reading when she was sick. It kind of feels like she's coming home.
Joel's slightly uneven gait is loud down the stairs. "You snoopin'?" he calls. He's in socks, just like her, long hair a little damp and curling at the ends. Yeah, she really needs to get him to let her cut it.
She shoves the dinosaur book back on the shelf and picks up the closest thing -- a wooden carving of a fawn. "You do these?" She gestures to the other full-size ones she can see -- a fish, a bear, the stag near the front door.
Ellie knows very well he did them and based on the bemused look on Joel's face, he knows that too. But he humors her. "Yes ma'am," he says. "Got more upstairs. Guitars too."
That's almost a surprise. She knew he carved for himself but also as a trade based on what she's heard about it in town, but she's never seen his guitars. As far as she knows, he only started doing that after she went back to Salt Lake City. Did he make the one he was playing last night? Her fingers itch for a second to hold the one he gave her.
"Show me sometime?" she asks. He inhales sharply and nods. She shoves the bag of popcorn kernels in her hand at him before he can say anything mushy. Dina gave them to her because she has fuck all in her kitchen. Winter still kind of sucks, okay? "DVD's on the table."
Joel nods again and turns to the kitchen. She follows him instinctually, the way she used to everywhere they went. Falling into line slightly to his right, ready to watch his flank even in the safety of his own home. He pulls out a pan and starts to make the popcorn and she boosts herself up onto the counter. He eyes her but doesn't tell her to get off. His breakfast dishes are still on the table by the window, his owl coffee mug by the sink. He must have gone to the council after they parted ways and been there all day, getting back with hardly any time to pick up before she arrived.
There are signs of life all over this house, a life he's been living without her. She wonders, for a brief and painful moment, what this house would be like without him.
The kernels start to pop. "So," she says. "Did you guys meet with the council?"
Joel turns and leans on the counter opposite her, crossing his arms. "We did." He offers no more.
"And...?" she prompts.
He sighs. "Figured out a clean-up crew goin' out this weekend. Tommy and Jesse will go with 'em. Bet you could tag along if you wanted."
Honestly, Ellie never wants to see the fucking Baldwin place again, but she just shrugs. "Weird that there was a group camped out there."
Joel's jaw does that thing he used to do on the road, chewing on his words because he doesn't want them to escape.
"Is all this--" she flicks her wrist at him -- "about today? About patrol?" His pout turns to a genuine scowl.
"All what?"
"Well, I'd say you look like you want to punch something, but you kind of always look like that," she replies. Joel glares at her, but some of the tension melts from his brow. Now he just looks...sad.
He thinks about lying to her for just a second, she can tell, but he taps his fingers on his knee and sighs. The popcorn continues to pop next to him. "We got caught in the hoard because there was a girl," he tells her. "'Bout your age."
Right, the girl. "You saved her, right?" They're stepping into territory she's not sure either of them are ready for.
He nods.
"Why?"
Because you taught me how to save people. Because she's someone's daughter, because she could be you, because I'd want someone to save you if I wasn't there.
She imagines him saying all of those things, but he just looks at her, and it's kind of the same thing.
"Don't know if she got out," he sighs. "It was pretty messy."
Something that feels like jealousy rises in her chest. What the fuck? Why is she jealous that he saved some girl when all Joel has ever done is save her, too? She just stopped letting him.
"You tried," she offers. He grunts. And you did it with me, you asshole. I'm still here.
Joel pours the finished popcorn into a bowl and she pops the movie into the DVD player before settling somewhere between the opposite end and the middle. He stretches out his bad leg and props it on the table, eyes tight at the corners. Tommy probably banned him from the clean-up crew because of it.
Well, that's won't do. Before he can press play, she hops up and ventures back into the kitchen. Joel says nothing but she feels his eyes on her. Everything is where she remembers it being: the ice pack in the freezer, the kitchen towels in the drawer. She wraps the pack and returns to the couch, balancing it on his knee before he can say a word and snatching the remote and starting the movie.
Joel's gaze is still on her, she can feel it, but she ignores him. "Watch the movie, Joel," she mutters.
It's one of their quieter movie nights. She only pokes fun at the shitty special effects a few times and Joel even admits that the decapitation in the big fight scene is pretty bad. When Curtis tells Viper that he's done a good job and he's proud of him, but to never pull a fucking stunt like that again because his life isn't worth the risk, Ellie hugs her knees to her chest.
Joel would have been okay if she never forgave him. He'd have taken it on the chin, shouldered it like everything else. The distance, her silence, her rejection. Because that's not what mattered most and she thinks she'll always hate him for it, just a little bit. Because she knows -- has always known, but especially after today -- that to her, nothing is worth his life.
Loving someone is such a fucking drag, but she's okay with continuing to figure it out. She peaks at Joel and he's already looking at her.
If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again.
I don't think I can ever forgive you for that. But I'd like to try.
This is what it looks like to try.
The credits roll and neither of them get up. Ellie turns so that she's fully facing him, extends her legs so that her socked toes almost touch his thigh.
"Joel," she says. He closes his eyes for a long moment and she watches the rise and fall of his shoulders. He looks old. This morning, for a few terrifying minutes, she thought he was dead. She knows that someday he will be. Loving someone means losing them. But right now, he's here.
"Hmm?"
"Can you teach me the song you were playing last night?" Don't leave me.
Ellie spent months learning his expressions when she was 14. She knows when the twitch of his cheek means they're outnumbered, when the flare of his nostrils means he's trying not to laugh, when his smile is telling her things he doesn't always know how to say.
This one is new. It's so soft, so loving, and it looks so natural on him. He must have looked at Sarah like this a thousand times. Hell, he's probably been looking at Ellie this way for years and she never noticed. Or maybe she never wanted to see.
"Sure, kiddo," he says. "How's tomorrow night?"
"Good for me," she says. Tomorrow. She has no idea what could have happened this morning -- what that group was doing here, whether or not any of them survived, if the whole thing is going to come back to bite them in the ass. But they do have tomorrow.
Ellie knows she's not a lucky person, but this feels pretty fucking lucky, so she'll take it.