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katsheadinclouds · 1 year ago

Text

chapter 6

Joel Miller x gn!/f! reader

series masterlist - part 2, prologue

summary: After the events at the garage, you’re getting the help you need. Joel notices he might need some healing of his own.

rating: mature

chapter warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, grief, soft!Joel, child birth (nothing graphic, just a happy event that happens at one point), insomnia, nightmares, infected, some violence typical to the TLOU world, therapy talk, Joel thinks about Sarah a lot, no use of y/n

word count: 18.2k

notes: We’re back to the main story! Enjoy this extra long chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

divider by cafekitsune

Joel is sitting by himself in the dining hall, his foot tapping against the floor. It’s quiet at this time of day, just a few people sitting here and there without giving much attention to others. He thought maybe he should get something to eat, but he’s not hungry. Especially not now. The door opens and once again his focus shifts to whoever is walking through it. But it’s not who he’s expecting.

He crosses his fingers on the table, massaging the space between his thumb and index finger, feeling the small, tense muscle under his skin. He takes a deep breath, then another, deliberately calming himself down. He has everything memorised, like a script, in his mind.

The door opens again and he looks up, his back straightening and he stands up, his whole body stiff with nerves. Diana walks towards him calmly, a gentle smile on her face. Her curls are in a neat ponytail on the back of her head and she fixes her glasses on the top of her nose.

“Joel,” her warm voice greets him and when she pulls a chair from underneath the table and sits down, so does he.

“Thank you for meeting me.” She relaxes in her seat, leaning her forearms against the table. He hums and nods, waiting for her to start asking question. But she only looks at him, her head slightly tilted. He fixes his posture, pulling his shoulders back and he clears his throat as quietly as he can.

Someone walks by the table and he fully expects the man to see his discomfort but he’s not even looking at Joel or Diana. He squirms in his seat and tries to find comfort in sitting still. But it seems impossible. Especially with Diana sitting in front of him, her eyes narrowing the longer he seems to fidget.

“So, what do you want me to start with? What they told me at the garage? Or how I know them?” He presses his hands into fists, opens them, then puts them under the table against his thighs. He forces himself to be still, but he can’t stop his foot from shaking. Diana breathes out a chuckle and her voice is even lower when she opens her mouth again.

“Do you know why I asked you to meet me?”

“I assume you want to know what happened that day at the garage?” Joel bites his teeth together.

“Yes, you’re correct. But I want to know how you’re holding up. I haven’t had the chance to talk to you yet and I’ve been a bit worried.” Her expression melts into compassionate tenderness, something that shows him she’s is open and ready to hear him out. He hates it. He can only see pity in her eyes.

“What they went through that day had nothing to do with you—”

“Yes I know that,” Joel spits out, keeping his voice low.

“But,” she raises her brows, “your reaction to seeing your friend having a breakdown wasn’t why you were upset.” Her words slash through him.

“We’re barely friends and I wasn’t upset.” He can feel the walls building up around him. He doesn’t know Diana and the way she’s talking to him is making him feel like he’s losing all control in this situation. She sees what he rarely wants to admit.

“Joel, it’s okay to be upset.” She reaches her hand towards him but doesn’t touch him. A peace offering.

“I know that.” Joel squeezes his hand against his thigh and the back of his neck aches from the tension in his shoulders.

“Good,” she answers back quickly, almost like in a challenge. Her face turns melancholic, there’s real grief in her eyes, and she pulls her hand back. She looks away and takes a deep breath.

“Can I be honest with you?” She asks with a sigh, facing Joel and his hardened expression. He nods reluctantly. His anxiety is tight in his chest and he’s doing everything he can to not let her through. He can’t handle someone probing into his head. He wants to keep her at a distance, even when he sees the gentle look in her eye and hears the warmth in her tone.

“I don’t think you’re a stranger to suffering. And let me tell you, I’ve met a lot of people who have gone through horrible things. I’m not here to ask you what you’ve been through. I’m not forcing you to tell me something you’re not comfortable with. I’m not asking you to tell me anything because you need to be the one who wants to talk.” He swallows hard and he can’t face her anymore. He turns his eyes towards the windows, but he can’t shut her or her voice out as long as he’s sitting at the same table as she is.

“I’ve helped a lot of people in my time, Lord knows how much people need it. But I will tell you this,” she inhales deep and the pause forces him to glance at her. “I can tell you’ve gone through your fair share of trauma and I think your friend’s breakdown has brought up yours as well, in a big way. If you ever want to or would feel comfortable with talking to someone, I can help you.” He shakes his head and smirks. He lets out a humourless laugh and opens his mouth to say something, but he can’t. So he ends up looking at her, seeing her undisguised worry. He takes a deep breath, his mood matching hers.

“I…” He starts, his palm slamming gently against the table. “I promised Ellie I’d help her paint the rest of the garage.” He stands abruptly, the chair scraping against the wooden floor. Diana follows him, slowly standing up on her feet, watching Joel’s frantic movements and urge to escape.

“Okay, I understand. But Joel,” her voice forces him to stop. “They’re going to be okay, they’ve just had a really rough few months. You can and have a right to heal as well.” She nods and the promise hangs in the air. Joel can’t do anything else but turn away and walk out the dining hall doors. The warm early summer air hits against his face and his fast pace makes sweat trickle down the back of his neck. It’s a shame he doesn’t have patrol today, he’d need to do anything that could take his mind off meeting Diana.

He wishes he could sleep. He wishes he could forget everything and be dead to the world at least for a few hours. But he can’t. He hasn’t slept properly for a couple of weeks. Just an hour or two every night. He hasn’t been able to sleep since he last saw you. Since his own memories were blown wide open.

That’s how he finished renovating Ellie’s garage one night last week, distracting himself with the physical work. And the promise of making the place completely different from the time when you were there, crying after your dead siblings.

Joel stares at the clock on his bedside table. 3.47. He watches time ticking by. 3.48. He rubs his hand over his face and breathes through his mouth. He can feel the fatigue in his body, the heaviness in his head. He wants to sleep, but when he lays down, he either can’t fall asleep or he wakes up from nightmares that keep him awake for the rest of the night. His arm stings where he cut it, the bandages keeping the shallow wound together.

It was his fault. He was out on patrol with Jade and everything was going well, it seemed like nothing remarkable or special could happen. The normal routes were extended a few weeks ago after they had come across that hoard of infected at the suburbs. This time they rode through an old town centre a few hours away and it looked quiet.

Until they heard the unmistakable sound of a clicker in one of the stores. They hid the horses and snuck into the shop, not realising what kind of shit they had put themselves into. They thought it would be just a couple of clickers, nothing to be worried about, but quickly realised they were in over their heads.

The shop looked quiet and they made their way to the other side of it. One turn and a clicker was right in front of them, seemingly sleeping, slowly swaying from side to side, making slow clicking noises. They backed up, right to another, which was also sleeping standing up. The whole store was full of them. The best way for them to survive it was to leave the same way they had gotten in.

Jade was sharp with her hand signals, telling Joel to follow her while they were grouched on the floor behind some shelves. She moved quickly and precisely, making sure to keep Joel in her line of sight while they made their way out through the same window where they got in.

Joel’s heart was beating out of his chest, barely being able to handle the adrenaline pumping through his veins. His hands were shaking and his mind was alert but working in the state of overwhelm. He was on edge, and not in the best way. His whole body felt like it could collapse. From the fatigue, from the stress. From the fear. He moved right behind Jade, breathing through his mouth to keep the sound silent.

One of the clickers moved, groaning as it walked to a new spot. It dragged its feet against the floor, its body twisting and bending as it found a spot away from the window where the sunlight was blasting through the shattered glass. They stood still while they waited for the creature to stop walking, but then another woke up from its slumber and started to trudge to a new spot. Right behind them.

Joel turned slowly to look at it, taking small, quiet steps to back away from it. He squeezed his revolver in his hand, ready to shoot. What he didn’t take into account was the rifle on his back, and how it hit an empty medicine jar on the shelf next to him. He heard it. The quiet rattle and then the silence before the bottle clattered against the floor.

The clicker right in front of them came alive the second the bottle hit the dirty ground. Joel shot it straight in the face, while Jade pulled at his arm, shooting her way through the shop towards the open window. It was pure chaos and Joel felt like his body wasn’t his at that moment. He was working on autopilot, shooting and running while Jade cleared the way for them.

He was panting erratically, sweat pouring down his temples and back when they finally got to the window and scrambled out. They ran as fast as they could, hearing the clickers right at their heels. Jade managed to get the pre-prepared molotov cocktail from her backpack, the cork holding everything together right as it should.

He doesn’t know how he got on Old Beardy so fast, but suddenly he was riding his horse and Jade threw the bottle behind them. He knew she hit the clickers from the screeches they made. They rode as fast as they could for a few miles before they deemed their surroundings safe.

Joel didn’t realise it at first, but when the sweat on his arms started to settle and the adrenaline started to wear off, he felt the burn on his arm. A wound from the broken window. He looked at it and the blood that trickled down onto his jeans.

“You clean?” He asked Jade, who looked back with such fury it surprised him. She breathed through her mouth, barely able to open it to tell him she’s clean. She didn’t say a word the whole time they rode back into town, staying ahead of him, keeping a steady, quick pace. Joel knew she was angry at him and he doesn’t blame her. He would’ve been angry too. He should’ve taken better care of the rifle on his shoulder, make sure it wasn’t too loose. Make sure it wouldn’t hit anything.

When the gates to Jackson opened, she rode in and right when she dismounted her horse, she started to pace back and forth. Someone from the stables came out right when Joel dismounted Beardy and he gave the reins to the man before he was left alone with Jade.

“You!” She yelled, pointing her finger at him, not stopping her pacing.

“I’m sorry, it was an accident,” he lifted his hands up and tried to keep his voice down as to not draw any attention to them. But Jade didn’t seem to care about it.

“An accident that almost got us killed!” She wasn’t ready to lower her voice. He had never seen her like this before. She’s always so calm and keeps her thoughts to herself. He has come to trust her. That’s why they’re patrol partners and he likes that she doesn’t swallow bullshit. She talks when there’s something to talk about and she’s not one to gossip. She’s a great shot and with her they’re always on time. But this? This is a new side of her.

“I don’t know what has gotten to you Joel, but you gotta fucking get your shit together!” She took a step forward and her index fingers came to poke at his chest. Joel saw Tommy walking out of the stables, a worried look on his face.

“For the past few weeks you’ve been in your own little head but I didn’t want to bring it up because it’s none of my business, but I’m done with this fucking moodiness.” She jabs her finger into his chest and her voice reminded him of a snarl. “I won’t put my life in danger because of someone else’s mistakes.” She stepped back and walked away, anger in her steps.

Tommy came to stand next to his older brother, his hand clapping on Joel’s shoulder. He shook Joel, to get him to relax his muscles. Joel sighed and his chin dropped against his chest.

“What was that about?” Tommy was still watching Jade, who was already far away.

“Something happened during patrol…” Tommy listened to Joel recount the events, worry settling onto his forehead. He saw the exhaustion on Joel’s face, the dark circles under his eyes and the way they seemed to be only half open. He looked like he was drunk off his ass.

“When was the last time you slept?” Tommy asks suddenly, in the middle of Joel suggesting getting a group together to check the abandoned town.

“What?”

“You look like you haven’t slept in ages,” Tommy raises his brows and the unimpressed look on his face makes the back of Joel’s neck prickle.

“I know you wouldn’t do such a mistake, especially around clickers. I know you, Joel. And I know when you haven’t slept.” Of course Tommy knows when he hasn’t slept or something’s up with him. He was there to witness it 20 years ago. Joel just can’t deal with this right now.

“I sleep just fine,” Joel told him and turned his back on his own brother. He heard Tommy call after him, but he didn’t stay to listen what he would’ve still wanted to say. Joel felt guilty for not being honest with him. He feels guilty still, now in the middle of the night.

He knows he can’t go on like this when his own insomnia is putting others in danger. Jade was right. He has to get his shit together, especially if he wants to keep on patrolling. But he doesn’t know where to start, or how to start. He has no clue what the next steps could be. The thought frustrates him to no end. He can’t deal with others telling him to work on his problems and then he can’t deal with himself because he has no solution for the things that swim in his head day and night.

He keeps on sitting on the edge of the bed, his back aching from the hunched posture. He keeps staring at the same spot on the floor, his vision getting blurry. He feels his brain turning off, his breathing running through his lungs slower and slower. He’s almost grateful.

It starts the way it always starts. It’s quiet at first, her breathing. It gets louder and more alive, something that he could be hearing right now. He feels the weight of her on his arms, and the way her body was shuddering from the pain of the gunshot to her chest. Her breathing is now in his ears, unrelenting, telling him he’s going to lose her again. She screams in his arms when he tries to lift her, to save her. He tries so hard but he can feel her slipping away like sand.

“Joel,” Tommy’s voice echoes from somewhere far away, such sorrow in his tone that Joel is shocked out of his sleep. He tries to catch his breath, his fingers coming to rub the scar on his temple. He feels the wetness on his cheeks and he quickly wipes the tears away and straightens his back.

The old wound in his stomach protests again and he winces from the tightness. But he forgets it right away, when he can still feel the heaviness of Sarah’s body on his arms. The fresh cut aches and with trembling legs he stands up and walks down the stairs in search of some pain relief. He knows the old pills have nowhere near enough power to knock out the pain he’s wishing to go away or would deserve to not feel.

The house is quiet, almost infuriatingly quiet. He’s leaning against the kitchen island, looking into the dark void that is the mudroom. He knows what’s still hanging on those hangers. The clothes he washed, your clothes, have been dry for weeks now. They’ve been waiting in the same place where he hung them when they were soaking wet, dripping water on the floor. He has been avoiding touching them, even looking at them lately. But every time he does look at them, or he accidentally touches them, he can still see you panicked. He can hear your voice, what you told him. It makes his skin crawl.

Slowly he walks towards the mudroom and turns the light on. The clothes are lifeless, frozen in time. There’s nothing threatening about them, they just are. But he can’t control the hate he feels when he looks at them.

It starts in his throat. He’s breathing harder, his airways constricting and tightening. The feeling spreads to his chest, the pressure inside his ribcage getting more and more intense. His arms feel heavy and his fingers start to sting. He breathes through his nose and tries to keep his jaw relaxed, but it tenses on its own. He’s grinding his teeth together as the intense anger bubbles in his mind.

Why the hell did you come here with Ellie that day? Why did you even want to come here, to Jackson? Why did you follow him and Ellie in the first place? Why didn’t you just suck it up and leave them alone?

He rips the clothes from the hangers, dropping them forcefully on the floor. His mind is restless while his body works until there’s only a crumbled pile of your clothes on the dusty floor. He feels lightheaded from breathing so hard. He stands still and the longer he stares at the clothes, the worse he feels.

His anger isn’t anger at all. The hatred he thought he felt is replaced by the deep sorrow that he carries around him everywhere he goes. Very slowly he leans down and picks the clothes up one by one, shaking them until they’re clean again. He folds them carefully and piles them neatly. He puts them on the top shelf so they won’t be in the way. He watches them, almost like making sure they won’t fall even though there’s nothing that could rip them down.

How on earth did you survive it all? How did you manage to keep yourself from totally breaking apart? Joel shakes his head and takes a deep breath. He has no idea how he’s keeping himself from breaking apart. How he’s surviving.

He will never admit it out loud, but Diana was right. You did bring up his own nightmares and now he can’t shut them out like he used to. He just knows that the way he’s operating and getting through his days can’t go on anymore. He has to get some sleep, but he has nothing that could knock him out.

He still walks up the stairs and goes back into his bedroom, lays on his bed and waits. He wants to fall asleep, but his head isn’t letting him. His whole body is tired and craving for sleep. At one point he realises he hasn’t closed his eyes at all. He watches the sun come up on the other side of the window, the gentle pastel yellow streaming in. Another day and he finally knows what he has to do.

He leaves before Ellie. He doesn’t stay to wait for her to wake up or for her to leave for school, he just wants to get out of the house. He has no idea what he should get Diana as an apology gift but also as a payment for her to listen to him if he’ll be able to say a word.

After walking aimlessly around the town, he ends up at the gardens, some people already at work. He asks for fruit but because it’s still early summer, not a lot has grown. The woman who works there brings him a few stalks of bright, red rhubarb, ripping the leaves off before handing them to him. He looks at them doubtfully, not really knowing if it’s a good gift at all. But it’s all he’s getting so he has to be satisfied with what he’s got.

Diana and her wife live a few houses across from Tommy’s. He has seen them walking there from time to time when he has visited his brother. He’s nervous. He knows it from the way he’s trying to put going to Diana’s off. He walks slower than usual, he keeps thinking about other things he has to do today, how maybe he should’ve waited for Ellie to leave for school. Suddenly Diana’s house is right in front of him and he can’t back away anymore.

His knuckles rest against the door for a moment before he knocks, the sound coming off as unsure and tentative, just like he feels. He steps back and waits behind the wooden door, clearing his throat and holding the rhubarb stalks like they are flowers.

He hears the footsteps first, then the scratching of the lock and when the door opens, he’s met with a woman he has never spoken with. She tilts her head in question and for a moment they just stare at each other. Her dressing gown is loosely tied around her plump waist and the cotton pyjamas look soft and worn. Her greying curls are a mess around her head and her green eyes and the crinkles around them tell Joel she does not fit together with cordyceps and violence. She looks too kind, too caring, and it makes him instantly uncomfortable.

“Yes?” She finally asks when Joel has shifted his weight from one foot to the other twice.

“Is Diana home?” He asks breathlessly and squeezes the stalks in his hands. She notices them right away when the fibrous vegetables grit in his grasp.

“Are those for her?” Suddenly her face lights up and a smile brings out dimples on her cheeks.

“Uh, yes, but is…”

“Diana, someone’s here to see you!” She yells and reaches for the rhubarb stalks. He lets her take them and she inspects them while they wait for Diana to come to the door.

“Thanks,” she tells him, right when the door opens more and Diana is standing next to her.

“Joel?” Her voice is once again laced with worry. Diana’s wife’s smile melts into a gentler one and she mouths a quiet “bye,” before she leaves the two alone.

“Have a seat, would you like anything? We were just having breakfast.” She reaches her hand out and points at the two chairs on the porch around a small table. He backs away and sits down. The chair wobbles under his weight.

“No thank you, I…” But he can’t get the words out. He’s not sure how he’s even supposed to begin.

“I wasn’t expecting you, but I’m also not surprised to see you,” Diana offers when Joel hasn’t been able to put his thoughts into words. He sighs out a laugh and lets himself relax against the back of the chair. Her words stick into his consciousness.

“I can’t sleep,” he shakes his head and saying it, even though it’s just one part of the problem, makes him feel relieved.

“How long have you had trouble sleeping?” Her question is a simple one, but it holds so much weight.

“How can anyone sleep when the world has ended,” the sarcastic answer is quick to come out. He knows she sees right through it, how it’s not just a quick joke but his reality. His world ended when Sarah died, his life stopped that night. But time has still ticked away like it always has and that one single, life altering moment has faded into memories, making room for other life altering moments that are more recent. Diana hums at that but she’s not letting go. Her question is still hanging in the air.

“I haven’t slept properly in weeks,” he exhales, his voice lowering and his walls coming down just a fraction to let her see what she’s dealing with. In a way he feels like he’s giving up, letting that armour come off and let someone see that he’s not surviving at all, even though that’s what he has called it all these years. “It’s starting to affect my work and how I treat people.” He looks at Diana, who once again has her head tilted, her eyes deciphering him.

“How come you’re not surprised to see me?” He asks back, genuinely wanting to know the answer.

She smiles and visibly relaxes at that, both of them now leaning against their chairs, taking in the morning that’s promising a warm day. There are some people walking towards town, probably on their way to work or to get some fresh produce. A kid is rushing to school, holding a football under his arm. Joel’s hand squeezes the arm rest of the chair.

“You just seem like a person who doesn’t want to admit they have a problem but when they do have it, they want to get it over with as soon as possible. I think this is pretty soon since our last meeting.” Her voice is like honey, coating his nerves with softness and warmth. He notices the gentle joke—they met a couple of weeks ago.

“What keeps you up at night?” She asks and the walls come back up. He turns his face from her, he’d want to run away, forget he ever came here. He’d want to hide from the feeling he has on his arms, the one he felt last night in his sleep, the one he feels so often in his sleep, the one that once was real. It’s so real it threatens to take his breath away.

It’s like Sarah is right there, in his embrace, her weight getting heavier and heavier. The worse the grief is, the more it feels like someone is adding weight to the feeling of having her pressed to him in her last moments.

He can feel her body against his chest, how it turned cold and stiff when he had to carry her to the emergency triage they had set up on a field in Austin. Her sticky blood dried on his skin, like a tattoo that he can’t wash off. He can feel her hair against his cheek, when he held her for the last time, not ready to let her go.

It felt like a nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from. It still feels like that. He can still hear her pained gasps, the look in her eyes, the way she was trying to grasp onto him, trying to survive, trying to be brave even she was so incredibly scared. That’s the worst part. Knowing she was scared and he wasn’t able to do anything about it. He could just hold her, hug her to his chest, and he couldn’t save her.

He squeezes his eyes shut, his hand massaging his arm, trying to remind himself he’s here now, far away from the horrors of that night. He tries to squeeze the memory out of his head, make it go away, but it doesn’t. It coexists with something that he rarely lets himself remember. Her laugh. The crinkle of her eyes. Her plump cheeks and freckles. Her smart mind and quick comebacks.

“I… Lost something, a long time ago,” he says through the thickness in his throat. He can’t look at Diana, he can only imagine how she’s analysing him at this moment. And he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want to be feeling like this in front of someone who he considers to be a stranger. And in a weird way, she is easy to be around with, even though he finds himself feeling uncomfortable most of the time.

He also knows why. she is disarming, she sees through him, she sees him and she sees his struggle. The quiet after his words stretches into a long silence. He dares to look at her from the corner of his eye and she’s not looking at him as he thought she was. She has a sorrowful look on her face, that of understanding. She’s watching life pass by them on the street, people doing their daily chores and having their own histories. He doesn’t feel pressured by her to say anything else and after a while the quiet seems to soothe his confession and the emotions that thunder through him.

“I’m sorry.” She turns her attention back to him, her compassion being the end for his nerves. He knows she’s not going to pry. She’s not trying to get inside his head. She knows enough just from what he’s ready to tell her.

“I’m quite fond of different herbs and plants,” she suddenly says and stands up. He sits still, looking up at her. She touches the hanging planters, her fingers gently nipping one of the flowers off from the root. She keeps the flower in her hand, smells it and smiles.

“Since it’s sometimes hard to get medications these days, I’ve become interested in using plants to treat different ailments.” She offers the flower to him, who takes it tentatively between his fingers. The small, violet petals seem fragile in his large hand. He brings it closer to his nose, inhaling the sweet, floral scent, that reminds him of the woods. Lavender.

“Don’t get me wrong, sometimes real medication is necessary, but I think I might have something that could help you sleep.” She leaves him on the porch, telling him to wait. He sits still, smelling the flower. He finds it to be calming, surprisingly so.

He closes his eyes and he’s taken right to a moment with Sarah, when she found lavender growing in a community garden that she wanted to explore. Her wide smile made him buy her a lavender plant the next day, which she planted in the backyard. It bloomed wildly, thriving from the way she was taking care of it. She took cuttings of it, making it spread until the whole flowerbed was filled with it. They were right under his bedroom window and when it was open, he could smell it in the night. The delicate, herbal scent that he can now smell on his fingers.

The door opens and Diana steps out, a small pouch in her hand.

“This is a mix of herbs I’ve made just for sleeping. It’s nothing strong, but when you make tea out of it, try it with just a teaspoon of the herbs. Some people need more, some less, but try a smaller amount at first.”

“Doctors orders?” He asks, reaching for the pouch as she gives it to him.

“Doctors orders,” she repeats and smiles. But then suddenly her eyes turn solemn and she takes a deep breath, like she’s calculating her words very carefully.

“I’ve been around people who deal with tremendous amount of trauma. And loss.” She watches him, waits for him to react. He can’t look at her in the eyes anymore, giving her the answer she needs.

“If you have any other… Symptoms… Anxiety, panic, anything,” he looks up and she knows she has his full attention. “If you feel anxious, I want you to try grounding yourself. Find things around you that you can sense with all your senses and list them. And I want you to breathe. Focus on it, count to five when you breathe in and out as gently as you can.”

“Joel?” She asks, when he feels his cheeks tingling with heat. He hums, the pouch in his hand smelling of flowers and herbs.

“It’s okay to admit you need help with these things, be it from me or someone else. It’s okay.”

“It’s that simple, just to admit it all?” He asks and the doubt is clear in his voice.

“Yes, sometimes that can help the most.” The simplicity of her words takes him off guard. He knows he’s not good with words. He knows he wants to shut everything in, shutting everyone out in the process. It’s hard for him to admit if he needs help or that he’s in any way struggling. He’s so used to it all that it’s hard to change his ways.

“And even if you only admit it to yourself too, that’s enough as well,” she adds, before her attention is back on the street in front of them. A bird sits on the street lamp, watching the town quietly move through its paces.

“I better get going,” he stands up, his body still as tired as before, but his mind not as heavy as it was.

“I’ll see you around, I hope the tea helps,” she tells him, standing with him and letting him move past her. He says a quiet bye before he’s on his way, walking towards the mailbox that’s barely standing tall. He rounds the corner towards the street and bumps to the bushy hedge, the twigs hitting his face.

He looks back, seeing Diana opening the door and stepping inside. And just as she’s closing the door, he sees a familiar looking face, but it seems like his brain can’t put your face and the realisation together. Just like he would’ve seen a stranger. The door closes before he can get a clearer look, see if you’re feeling better than the last time he saw you.

Even the quick glance he got of you shakes him off his broken roots. Something clicks in him, twists just right, putting some things into place. He steps away from the hedge, stops and smells the lavender again. He looks around, makes sure no one’s around, and he dares to close his eyes.

“I miss Sarah,” he whispers to himself. Words he hasn’t admitted in a long, long time. Maybe never. Because he never lets himself miss her. He inhales the lavender and opens his eyes. He’s not suddenly fixed, but he feels a sense of relief.

He has the lavender in a glass full of water on the kitchen counter and he glances at it from time to time while he’s cooking. Nothing fancy, a simple dinner of stew from veggies and some deer meat. He’s waiting to hear Ellie’s footsteps at the front porch, the familiar sound of the door opening and closing. He’s trying to distract himself from the nerves that are bubbling in his stomach.

He hasn’t been good to her lately. He has left her to her own devices. He has been too tired and burdened to take care of her. No movie nights or evenings in the living room, her drawing in her notebook or doing her homework while he’d read a book from the bookshelf.

They’ve mostly had dinner together at Tommy and Maria’s but other than that, they’ve been eating the food he has prepared separately. He has seen her sitting by the dining room table alone, reading a comic book or leaning her cheek against her hand. But he hasn’t been able to go and join her, not when he has felt so raw and torn open by his memories of Sarah. She has tried to approach him, but he has been shutting her out as well. So she’s been careful with him, not stepping on his toes or made too much conversation other than if he’s going to be out when she’s home.

And sometimes, when he has been at home, the house has been so quiet he hasn’t known if she’s under the same roof at all or spending time with her friends. He has just wanted to be out the door, patrolling or working on something else around town, not letting himself stand still for too long. It’s time he makes up for it.

Like clockwork she opens the door just when the stew is done. He knew she was with her friends after school, there was a note on the fridge door. He takes the pot off the stove and carries it into the dining room, passing Ellie who looks taken aback by his actions.

“Hi?” She asks, dropping her backpack on the floor and toeing her sneaker off.

“I hope you haven’t had dinner yet?” He asks, standing behind his usual chair. She shakes her head and comes to sit opposite him, smelling the food. He fills her plate, then serves himself before he sits down. She sits still and the confused look on her face makes Joel place his spoon on his plateful of stew and not start eating.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he starts, but doesn’t know how to continue.

“About what?” Her voice has an edge that he doesn’t want to hear. He knows he deserves it. He looks at her straight in the eyes and sees the question in them. She’s talking about something else entirely. But he’s not going to breach that topic. If he can, he will never talk about it.

I swear.

“I’ve been having some problems and I haven’t been fair to you, I haven’t given you the care and attention you deserve,” he tells her sincerely, his voice low and slow. She turns her eyes towards the plate in front of her, her arms coming to rest on the table.

“You deserve better.” She wipes away a tear from her cheek quickly, trying to hide where his words are hitting. She nods and takes a sip of water from her glass.

“Thank you,” her voice betrays her, the broken note in her tone revealing how the apology was what she has to hear. He knows he fucked up by not being there for her, only caring about himself. He sniffles as tears threaten to spill from his eyes as well and he clears his throat. He fixes his posture and takes a spoonful of stew. Not bad, if he says so himself. Ellie also takes a bite and nods as she chews her mouth empty.

“What did you end up doing at school?” He asks and the mood changes instantly.

Ellie looks up amused, her brows raised. But she talks, grateful to have his attention. She tells him about their school day which didn’t really feel like one since they only have a few days left and they could do almost anything they wanted at this point. They just had to stay in the school grounds which aren’t big to begin with. They had a fun day nonetheless. She drew and hung out with friends. And afterwards she went to Jesse’s with Dina, where they tried to play some odd boardgame but they didn’t really understand the rules.

He soaks in her stories as she goes on and on about what she’s been up to. How she’s been decorating the garage with items she’s found around town or gotten from Maria. She digs up her notebook and shows him her drawings and he can see the pride on her face when he very slowly goes through the pages and takes in her talent. She had also found a new joke book from the town library, making him groan as he has to listen to her recite her favourite ones so far while he’s cleaning the table. He’ll never admit it to her, but he enjoys the bad jokes.

They sit on the couch in the living room and he puts on a movie from the nineties, a really bad action comedy, that makes them both laugh and comment on the silliness. She asks questions if things really were like that before the cordyceps and he tells her whatever she wants to know.

If people were chasing each other on the streets: no. If people were calling each other on the phone every day: sometimes, yes, possibly. If everyone wore one brand of clothes: no, that was just marketing. Were all accountants secretly trained in fighting like the protagonist: definitely no. What are those guys doing in the background? Dancing, I can’t remember what it was called. Did people used to dance on the street? Sometimes. Did you ever go to a music festival? Yes, when I was younger. Concerts? Yes. What was the last concert you saw? Uhh, it was this band Sarah liked. The questions keep on coming, and she absorbs everything like a sponge.

The movie ends and Ellie stays sitting on the couch, scribbling something into her notebook. Joel washes the dishes, a calm filling him from the relaxed evening. He doesn’t bother Ellie when she looks to be so in thought while writing something down, but he sits next to her and takes one of the books from the bookshelf. He opens the first page but can’t get past it. He reads the sentences over and over again, nothing sticking to his memory. He can’t stop thinking about the tea he’s about to make. He’s nervous, what if it doesn’t help?

Ellie is the first to go to sleep. He waits for her to wash her teeth and shut herself into her room before he goes back into the kitchen and starts boiling water. He opens the pouch and a strong, herbal smell fills his nostrils. He might’ve been worried about it not being able to help him sleep but he didn’t come to think if he could even drink it.

He takes a teaspoon of the ground up leaves and petals into a mug and pours the gently bubbling water over them, mixing it with the spoon. The water turns to a tint of green and he realises he should’ve strained the herbs out of the water. He tries to be as graceful as he can, but the water dribbles all over the counter and even on the floor when he pours it through a sieve back into the same pot, where he boiled the water, then back into his mug. He can’t help himself when he mutters curse words under his breath until the tea is safely back in the mug, only a few small specks of green leaves swirling through the water.

He tastes it, grimacing from the strong, earthy flavour. He braces himself, before he gulps it all down, damned be the roof of his mouth as it burns from the hot drink. He’s too stubborn to wait for it to cool down and the taste sticks to his mouth. He washes the mug and sieve and hopes for the best, though the flavour is something he has to get used to if it does help.

When he’s brushing his teeth, he feels himself getting sleepier. When he undresses, his eyes feel heavy. When he lays down in bed, he doesn’t remember anything else after that. He goes out like a light, sleeping without nightmares for the first time in years.

When he opens his eyes, he can’t believe it’s the next morning. He slept through the whole night without waking once.

Maria is cutting up vegetables in the kitchen when Tommy opens the door for Joel and Ellie. She rushes in, excited to see the pile of DVD’s Tommy had found while out on patrol with his partner. Joel smirks at her enthusiasm and the brothers exchange a look before Tommy is after her, ready to give her details about all of them.

“Joel, could you give me a hand?” Maria calls from the kitchen. He steps in, seeing her scrunched up face and her hands reaching back to massage her lower back. Without thinking he rushes to her side, pushing the cutting board and knife back from the edge of the counter, giving her his arm and walking her towards the dining table. She lets him pull a chair out for her before he helps her sit down.

“Thank you,” she smiles. Even though they have been having regular dinners every Saturday for weeks now and Joel and Maria have been friendly to each other, there still seems to be a hurdle they need to go over. He has come to enjoy her company even though he doesn’t know how to make conversation with her that often.

It’s always her who initiates conversation and Tommy and Ellie are always there to be the bumpers, a safety net for any quiet or awkward moments. But when it’s just the two of them, he doesn’t seem to know how to approach her. Her negative attitude towards him made sense in the beginning, there was a lot of things that she knew about him through what Tommy had told her and they haven’t resolved those thoughts. She might have a lighter mental image of him these days, but there’s still that small detail that is being left unsaid.

“What should I do?” He asks and picks up the knife, looking at the different vegetables on the table.

“I was going to make a soup,” she tells him while he looks into the fridge, seeing fish on a platter.

“Tommy went fishing?” He is surprised when he turns around. Tommy was never a fisher and even the thought of him going out to fish seems unnatural. He was always more into hunting.

“No,” she snickers, as she shifts in her chair and finds a more comfortable position. “The neighbour sometimes goes out hunting with a group, they had been fishing this morning. I gave him some of the strawberries from our garden to get it.” The pride in her voice is understandable. You have to be quick to get fish in Jackson, usually the whole catch is already reserved even before they come back into town.

Joel keeps on cutting the planned ingredients, asking Maria here and there how she wants them to be cut and if the size is what she had in mind. He can hear Tommy explaining the plot of Alien to Ellie, who sounds like she wants to watch the movie immediately. She’s awfully interested to see guts and horror, which makes Joel shake his head.

“She’s really finding her footing here,” Maria comments, apparently after carefully listening to the same chat from the other room as well.

“Yeah, she deserves a life in a place like this.” The melancholy in his voice is apparent.

“So do you,” she fills in, making Joel huff out a laugh.

“You think so?”

“Yes. You’ve become a good addition to the patrol team, you help around town and I’ve heard good things from other residents. I think you’ve become an important member of this community.” She is trying to get his attention. Tonight is the night when she wants to cross that hurdle that she knows they haven’t been able to resolve before. Tonight seems right.

Joel feels grateful Jade didn’t tell anyone about what happened in the abandoned town a few weeks ago. They talked it out, he apologised, so did she even though he didn’t think she had anything to apologise for. She insisted she should’ve been more considerate in the moment, even though she wasn’t sorry about telling him how he messed up.

She was the first person who he told he has been dealing with something lately and he’ll try to do better. He can’t believe he even said it out loud, but since he has been admitting things to himself lately, it’s also been easier to tell others that he needs a little time or that some days just aren’t going well. Others being Jade and Ellie, who once caught him standing in the kitchen doorway, anxiety making his skin itch.

But it also seems like Tommy didn’t tell Maria what he witnessed. She hasn’t brought it up even though she has every right to do so since she’s one of the people who plans the patrols. She has every right to know about what happened.

“I heard about what happened during one of your patrols,” she begins and Joel freezes right away. There it is. He has been dreading this moment. He knows he fucked up. He doesn’t want to get that same talk from her either, even when he deserves it.

“I just want to make sure you’ve been doing better? Nothing like that hasn’t happened since?” Not what he was expecting. He looks at her and she doesn’t seem to be angry or disappointed. Why was he even nervous about that, like a little boy scared to be chewed out by his own mother.

“That was just an off day, hasn’t happened and will not happen again,” he tells her, lowering his voice. He doesn’t want Ellie to hear what they’re talking about, since the conversation between her and Tommy has quieted down.

“Good,” she smiles and smooths her hand over her large baby bump. It’s almost time, just a few weeks left until the due date. Joel follows her hand movement with his eyes and turns away, washing carrots in the sink.

Not now, please not now, he repeats to himself, closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing. He can feel the water where he has dunked his hands, the carrots still tightly in his hold. He leans his body against the sink, feels it digging into his pelvis. He opens his eyes and looks out the window right in front of him, seeing darker clouds rolling in, a strong wind blowing through the green trees.

The town is lit up with street lights and there’s an odd sense of normalcy that is only broken when he encounters infected outside the walls during patrols. This seems like a simulation, a test, a dream where he’s trying to find a way to wake himself up.

“Tommy has told me about…” Her voice breaks him out of his head, bringing back to the kitchen, to washing the carrots in the still water in the sink. She has seen the way Joel looks at her stomach, the dread in his eyes when Tommy has brought up the baby.

This is the hurdle. The small detail. She knows there’ll probably always be some tension between them, she can’t help it. She got a first impression through stories and it will always make Joel be just slightly less gentle and warm in her eyes. The stories only told her about one side of him, of the actions that he did years and years ago before he settled down in Boston.

She can’t blame him, even though she doesn’t approve of everything. She’s also not in a place to deliver approval or judgement, not when she has done things in the past that she regrets or others would find cruel. She would’ve probably done the same things if she was in the same position as Joel and Tommy were back in the day, hurting, desperate, trying to cope with everything that was going on around them. No one stays clean in this world, no one stays innocent. It would be foolish to be that naïve.

“I’m sure he did,” he tells her, turning back towards her. He doesn’t face her and she knows why. This is not an easy subject for either of them, even less for him. She has never heard him talk about Sarah.

“This is my second child. Kevin was very young when he…” Her voice quiets down when she sees his discomfort. His shoulders are stiff as rock and he works with slow, rigid movements. He avoids looking at her as he feels like his thoughts are going to strangle him.

“I just want to say that I understand if it’s hard for you to be a part of this child’s life.” Joel visibly stops and puts the knife down from his hand. He takes a deep breath and even though the anxiety is holding him tightly in its grasp, he faces her openly, dropping the pretence of a strong man. For the first time she sees a truly broken person in front of her, someone who is still struggling to admit his own daughter has died.

“Do you really?” He asks, really hoping Tommy will pick up the discussion with Ellie again. He wouldn’t want to have this conversation right now, but it also seems like this is the only right moment for it. He looks towards the living room, grinding his teeth and squeezing the edge of the counter in his hands.

He hears Tommy clearing his voice, mentioning music he thinks Ellie could be interested in. Maria turns to look towards the living room with a concerned look on her face and relaxes when music starts to flow into the kitchen. She shifts in her chair again, giving Joel her full attention.

“Yes, I do.” She lowers her voice, just for Joel to hear. “You should’ve seen how I reacted when I first found out I was pregnant. I still don’t know how I’m going to cope with this fear that is ever present. Kevin… He died from pneumonia. It should’ve been treatable, but in a quarantine zone that was still in such chaos, it wasn’t possible. It seemed like nothing was treated then. People were just trying to stay alive. It sometimes feels like he never existed.” She holds her bump and gives it comforting strokes.

“So yes, I understand you. And I also hope they’ll have an uncle they can talk to and lean on no matter what the issue is, even on things that they don’t want to talk to me or Tommy about. They deserve you in their life.”

Joel doesn’t know what to say. He lifts his face towards the ceiling, feeling tears rolling down the sides of his cheeks. He blows air out of his mouth excruciatingly slowly until he feels like he can breathe normally again. He counts to ten and barely shakes his head from side to side. His head is so full and empty at the same time, different feelings, thoughts and memories jumbling together.

He wipes the tears with his hand before he leans them both against the counter. He can imagine Sarah’s laughter once again, her bright eyes gleaming and her small frame shaking with joy. He smiles thinking about it, his head finally calming down.

“What can you remember of him, of Kevin?” He asks quietly, settling into the moment of desolation.

“There are so many different things…” He can hear the distance in her voice, like she’s also overtaken by memories. He looks up and finds her smiling, but also tears under her eyes.

“He was interested in everything. He investigated everything and he was always marveling at something. When we survived the outbreak day and he was scared the whole time while we were trying to get to a safe place, I’ll never forget the moment we got to a QZ. He laughed when he saw a squirrel in a tree. We watched it as long as it stayed sitting on a branch and he kept pointing at it, babbling, and trying to interact with it.” Her smile gets wider, and the tears stream down heavier. Joel walks to her and sits down next to her.

“His voice was like a melody. He got it from his dad. I don’t know where he is, we weren’t in contact anymore when Kevin was born. But he gave me a gift I’ll never forget.” Her words start a heavy silence which he’s anticipated to end. He knows what she’s going to ask next.

“What about Sarah, what do you remember of her?” The question is like a gun that goes off, the bullet ripping through him and opening the wounds that he has tried to keep together with band aids. But when the question is out there, hanging over him, waiting for him to answer it, he doesn’t feel the unbearable pain it usually holds. Just the weight of her. His Sarah. He draws circles on the dining room table with his finger, trying to get a clear image of her in his head. But the memories flow so fast he can’t grasp them, he can’t grasp her. She’s always out of his reach yet still there, he just has to hold his hand out.

“She was… Everything to me. Her laughter made everyone else laugh as well. She was witty and incredibly smart. She always corrected us if we didn’t know something or got something wrong. She would’ve gone to some expensive college. I started to save up for it since the day she was born, if…” He taps the table with his finger and his throat closes up. He gasps out a breath to get his airways to open again.

“She showed me the world in a way that I never knew was possible. She taught me things that I wouldn’t have learnt otherwise. She took care of me, woke me up in the mornings when I didn’t wake up to the alarm, made me drink juice, planned trips to different museums and hikes and she took me to the movies and concerts. I just had to be there. She knew I worked hard and I knew it hurt her when I broke a promise or forgot something she had asked.” He can’t believe he’s telling Maria all this, but at the same time he can’t hold back anymore. He wants to share her with someone else who might understand him.

“Even though she was the one who always had the energy to make plans, I couldn’t resist surprising her. She loved surprises. It was a year before…” He swallows thickly and he has to catch his breath for a moment before he continues. “She wanted to make a trip to see the Grand Canyon on her summer holiday and we planned a road trip for it. She was prepared for the drive, making a list of everything we’d need, snacks we had to have and the music she wanted to listen to while we were driving. What she didn’t know was that I took the whole week off from work and I drove us to California, to see the Redwood National Park. We slept in a tent and then we drove to San Francisco and from there to Arizona, to the Grand Canyon, and back to Austin. I remember how tired I was because I drove day and night. But it was all worth it when I saw her reaction. She was shining from the astonishment and excitement. She was in awe the whole time. It was all worth it with her.”

He dares to look up and Maria is fully crying. He can feel his eyes stinging, the tightness in his throat getting worse the longer the moment stretches, but he smiles because it’s all true. It was worth it with her. He tries to smile, to soothe Maria somehow, but it feels impossible with the weight of grief on his shoulders.

“Sometimes it might be hard, but I’d want to be part of the kid’s life. I’d like to try, at least.” Maria nods and touches his hand on the table.

“Maybe Tommy is the one who needs support the most though, he can be a mess sometimes. And he keeps panicking about the baby, if he’s going to drop them or doesn’t know how to hold them right.” Joel chuckles and shakes his head. He looks over Maria’s shoulder, seeing Tommy showing some LP records to Ellie. He’s reading something out to her from a back cover, pointing at the people who are posing in an artistic photograph.

“Tommy is going to be a good dad,” he says, seeing it clearly for the first time. It hits him like a ton of bricks, sobering him from his own memories.

“How do you know?” Maria’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Because he was the best uncle I could’ve imagined for Sarah.” Maria doesn’t say anything to him and when he looks back at her, focuses his sight on her face, Maria is crying again. The tears on her face are streaming uncontrollably and she’s trying to wipe them away with her free hand, the other still holding his. He closes his hand over hers, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Don’t ever tell that to him,” Joel reminds her, making her laugh. In a way he feels himself lighter, just a bit, after being able to talk about Sarah without any pressure. He can see her smiling in his memories and even though he can feel it as a painful longing to have her be real again, to have her be alive, it doesn’t tear his insides into pieces.

He stands up and gives Maria a clean hand towel. She wipes at her cheeks while he keeps on chopping the vegetables. The music stops in the living room and the cheerful conversation between Ellie and Tommy drifts closer.

“How’s my wife?” Tommy asks, dropping his hands on her shoulders and presses a kiss on the top of her head. Ellie has a DVD in her hands, the familiar cover of Alien making Joel smile.

“I see you’ve put Joel to work,” Tommy laughs. Ellie takes a piece of carrot and pops it in her mouth.

“Yeah, I couldn’t resist when I have such a good excuse.” Maria rubs at her bump with both her hands, making a show of it. Tommy gives her one more kiss before he starts to help Joel. They both have to protect the vegetables from Ellie, who keeps complaining about being hungry and asking how long it’s still going to take.

When they’re sitting around the dining table, eating and sharing stories, Joel realizes he hasn’t felt himself this happy in a long time. The laughter fills him with ease, company gives him comfort and he forgets about the constant pain he has to carry for the rest of his life. This is his family.

The evening is nearing night, when they’re finally leaving to go back home. Ellie is clearly tired, even though she tries to seem perky. The teenage stubbornness in her is shining through, when Maria says it might be her time to go to sleep after she keeps laughing at things that aren’t funny. Ellie is already opening the door when Maria asks Joel to wait. Tommy is hugging him goodbye when Maria comes back. Tommy gives him a sorrowful look and takes Maria under his arm.

“We went back home, to Austin, a few years ago. I wanted to see what it’d look like out there. You should’ve seen your house. It was like a hurricane had hit it. Most of the stuff was gone, but some were still there.” Joel looks at the couple in confusion. He hasn’t thought about that house in forever, it didn’t even feel real to think that he had a house in Austin.

“These belong to you,” Maria offers him an envelope and he takes it tentatively. He looks at it and starts to open it.

“Are you coming, I’m tired!” Ellie sticks her head back in, making them all look at her.

“Yeah yeah, I’m coming,” he says under his breath, tucking the envelope into his jeans back pocket. Tommy gives him a sad smile while Maria wishes them a goodnight.

Ellie drags her feet against the ground and blows air through her mouth, making herself whistle. Joel matches his steps to hers, but it seems to only slow her down.

“Isn’t it funny that just fifteen minutes ago you wanted us to believe you weren’t tired but now you can’t even lift your feet?” Joel asks her, making her roll her eyes.

“Very funny. I’m not even tired. My legs are just—”

“Tired?” She gives him an unpleased look, while he laughs quietly.

“You could just carry me,” she suggests with her kindest tone. The question makes him stop and turn towards her.

“You’re turning fifteen, I think you can walk,” he tells her before he turns and keeps on making his way home.

“I know,” she whines, sighing dramatically. He shakes his head and stops again.

“Hop on then,” he tells her, squatting down.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to carry you, take it or leave it,” he tells her and in no time he feels her small hands on his shoulders, as she hops on his back. He tries to act as if it’s frustrating to carry her, but her enthusiasm makes him smile. He bounces her on his back and she giggles.

“Has anyone ever given you a piggyback ride?”

“Nope, this is the first time,” her joyful voice seems to echo around the street.

“First time for everything,” he says and makes her bounce on his back again. The look on her face when they get home and she slides down his back is something of satisfaction and childhood joy. Joel opens the door while stretching his back, letting her in first. He prepares himself the tea, which he now takes with just the smallest amount of honey. It brings the floral notes out just right.

He waits for Ellie to be done brushing her teeth. When he hears her quiet goodnight wish, he climbs up the stairs and goes to his room, the steaming cup of herbal tea in his hand.

He digs the envelope from his pocket and sits on the edge of his bed, in the dim light from the lamp on his bedside table. He opens it. There are two polaroid pictures inside, yellowed and faded, and his whole body seizes. Sarah’s smile from his memories was just a shadow from the one he sees in the pictures.

He looks at the polaroids, stares at them, until they seem to come alive. He can hear her voice, see her move. He touches the picture with the brush of his fingertips. They take him back to the moment when he took them.

Sarah got the polaroid camera as a birthday present. They bought the film for it together and when they got home, she wanted to play with the camera the moment she stepped out of the truck. She took pictures in the house of different items. His favourite picture was of the remote control that was right on the edge of the coffee table.

She went outside, where she took pictures of the massive tree that grew in their garden, of the lavenders that were blooming, and of butterflies that flapped their wings in slow motion. He followed her for a while, emptying and refilling the dishwasher and wiping down the table from bread crumbs. He stepped out when she was shaking a picture in her hand, of a bird that sat on a branch.

“Will you take my picture?” He asked her and she made him pose for it. She took the picture and together they waited for it to develop right in front of their eyes. Somehow she had managed to hold her finger in front of the lens and you could only see his feet. Joel remembers laughing heartily, taking the picture, and putting it into his pocket, before he took the camera in his own hands.

“Let me show you how you actually use this thing,” he sighed, getting familiar with the camera in his hands.

“Yeah right old man, I forgot you probably used a similar one back in the 1800’s,” she joked back.

Joel wrapped his arm over her shoulder and managed to cover her eyes with his hand. Sarah laughed sweetly into his ear, her hair tickling his neck, when the camera clicked. He let her go and she took the picture, pecking him on the cheek with a dramatic smooch. He scrunched his face and took another picture. The camera printed it out and Sarah took it immediately, shaking it in the air.

She looked at the photos, while Joel tinkered with the camera and then aimed it at the same bird Sarah had taken a picture of earlier. The bird was still sitting on the branch, the dark figure looking like an omen. The camera gave him the photo and he waited for it to develop. It was overexposed, the sun making the picture look white with a grey blob in the middle.

“These are going on my wall,” Sarah announced and showed their photos to him. She took fast steps inside, while he stayed out with a warm smile on his face, similar to the sun that was burning against his skin. The bird on the branch croaked, before it spread its wings and flew off.

He puts the pictures back into the envelope and closes them in the bedside drawer. He has to remind himself to breathe. He rubs his fingers against his palms, bringing himself back into this moment. Into this bedroom, that sometimes doesn’t feel like his. To this house that sometimes feels like he’s just visiting. To this town that seems too calm and too idyllic. He feels like he’s supposed to be somewhere else, like those pictures were the reality where he’s supposed to be in.

But it’s not. Those are the past. He brushes his teeth in the bathroom and stares at his own face in the mirror. The same that was also in the pictures, but so different in so many ways. He recognises the man in the reflection, and at the same time he doesn’t know who the man is at all.

He drinks his tea and lets it take effect. He falls asleep silently, replaying that happy moment with his daughter over and over in his dreams.

Joel closes the front door, grateful for the soft draft inside the house from the opened windows. His t-shirt is sticking to his shoulders and back after patrol, his skin clammy with sweat after being in the sweltering heat for hours. The sun is turning towards the front of the house, leaving the bedrooms to cool down for the night.

He washes his hands and ends up washing his face as well, the cold water bringing welcomed freshness. He really should have a shower as well but he wants to eat first. There should be some leftovers from yesterday. Ellie ate at Dina’s he thinks? Either way, she didn’t eat dinner at home and he made food for them both. She’s not going to eat at home tonight either, she’s going to Jesse’s house with her friends to play that same boardgame they had first struggled with. Apparently they had figured the rules out.

Tomorrow is Ellie and Joel’s night though. They still need to pick up the movie they’re going to watch and decide what they’re going to eat. She’s been spending a lot of time with her friends as they’re on summer holiday. He’s happy for her and she should enjoy this time. Soon it’s going to be her last year in school and she’s going to have to say goodbye to her childhood as her patrol training starts properly.

He takes a glass and fills it with the water that’s been sitting in a jug in the fridge since he filled it this morning. The cold feels good in his throat, clearing his mind and bringing a bit of alertness after a long day outside in the sun. He stares at the windows, the glass looking a bit grey and dirty. He should wash them, maybe later today.

He’s shaken from his thoughts by a loud banging at the front door.

“Joel!” He hears Tommy’s frantic voice booming through it, before he’s hitting his fist against the door again. Joel finishes the glass in one mouthful, the gulp too big and it burns in his throat.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Joel reassures Tommy, taking fast steps towards the door. Behind it stands Tommy, his face covered in droplets of sweat, his cheeks red and he’s panting like he just ran in a competition. Joel knows immediately what’s happening when his eyes land on his younger brother.

“The baby’s coming,” Tommy only needs to say, when Joel is already pulling his boots back on his feet and rushing out the door following Tommy towards their home.

“It’s about damn time, you’ve been waiting all week,” Joel huffs as they keep on walking fast, their feet wanting to jog every few steps.

“I know. Now that it’s happening it feels like everything’s moving too fast,” Tommy answers him through his panting. Joel can hear the fear in his voice.

Sweat is pouring out of their pores when they reach the front door and Tommy pushes it open. They can hear the midwife talking to Maria with a calming tone.

“Tommy?” Maria’s painfilled voice echoes down the stairs. Joel squeezes his shoulder while pushing him to go be with his wife. Tommy looks back, his brown eyes wide with dread. Joel nods at him to go on, patting him on the back before Tommy is climbing up the stairs two at a time.

“I’m here,” Tommy sighs and the bedroom door closes behind him.

Joel stands at the bottom of the stairs. The excitement and anxiety compete inside his head, the anxious part of his brain taking the lead and making him feel like he’s not in control. Maria had her due date last week and since then they’ve all been waiting for this moment. When she’s not seeing her friends, Ellie has been spending a few hours here and there with Maria while Tommy has been out on patrol or running some errands around town.

Joel has been making food for them all, simple dishes that have been easy to warm up afterwards if it was left uneaten. Now that the baby was about to born, the moment isn’t about dinners or who is out running errands or who is with whom. There’s going to be a baby, who is no doubt about it going to change everything.

Joel’s hands flex against his thighs. He stands idly, looking around, when Maria yells. He can’t stay in. He has to go out. He steps on the front porch, shields his eyes from the glaring sun and sits slowly on the porch stairs. His knees pop and he massages them, listening to Maria’s faint voice from inside.

People in town keep on living their normal lives. It seems like no one even knows Maria has gone into labour, maybe they don’t. It’s just another day in Jackson, except it’s never going to be just another day for the people inside this house.

A couple of older teenagers walk on the other side of the street, when Maria’s voice echoes out louder, her agonising yells making the teens look at Joel in horror. Tommy must’ve opened the window. The other teen says something to his friend, clearly understanding what’s going on.

“Hi Joel,” they say almost in unison and he nods his head hello to them, forcing his mouth into a smile.

His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s a lot of noise coming from the town centre. He didn’t realise it was Saturday already, a day when he’s usually not out for patrol. And it’s movie night. People are doing all their chores before the evening arrives, for them to enjoy their off night and time getting drunk.

Joel presses his chin against his chest. The sun is beating up against his bare skin, his dark t-shirt making him feel even hotter now that the sun is warming it up. His skin is beading with sweat and there’s no relief. No clouds to shield him from the sun for a moment or trees reaching the porch on their front yard to bring a little shade. He listens to Maria’s wails and moans, a few curse words peppered in. He closes his eyes, trying to calm himself down.

He’s taken right back to the moment when Sarah was born. He was in the operating room with his girlfriend, Sarah’s mom, sitting right next to her head when Sarah was born by c-section. He held her hand and kept massaging her palm with his thumb while listening to the doctor explain what was happening.

Suddenly Sarah was in front of them and she was handed to him, into his arms. He showed Sarah to his girlfriend who couldn’t stop crying. They were definitely too young, too immature to think they’d have a family together, but when he got to hold Sarah, it felt right. He just had to grow up quickly, they both had to.

“Are you alright?” A familiar voice asks and when Joel lifts his head up, Diana and her wife are standing by the mailbox side by side. Joel fills his lungs with air, his chest puffing and his shoulders drawing back. He stands up and walks up to them, giving them a friendly smile and a quiet “yes”. He knows from the look in Diana’s eyes that she’s observing him and not completely believing his answer.

“Just this morning we were wondering when the new arrival would come. Maria had her due date last week didn’t she?” Diana makes kind conversation, trying to ease the tension in Joel’s shoulders.

“Almost a week,” he tells them, crossing his arms across his chest. He feels like his shirt is sticking to his skin now even worse.

“You remember my wife, Brenda,” Diana introduces, her hand swaying from Brenda to Joel.

“Yes, with the rhubarbs,” he chuckles and extends his arm out, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you ma’am.” She smiles at him, her grip strong and confident.

“You’re going to the movies later?” He tries to drown out the agonising wailing that comes out of the house.

“Probably, your friend was interested to see the movie they’re playing tonight.” The strained look on his face that he’s trying to disguise with an easy-going smile drops immediately. He doesn’t know how to react.

This is the first time he has heard anything of you in such a long time and knowing that you’re interested in seeing a movie and actually wanting to go out to the town during one of the busiest evenings makes his thoughts jumble and fall into a pile of disbelief in his head. He swallows thickly and his tongue feels like sandpaper in his mouth.

“How are they doing?” He asks, trying to keep his tone even. But his voice breaks on the last syllable.

“Better, we’re taking it one day at a time,” Diana assures him with a gentle smile, while watching him collect his thoughts.

“Good, that’s good,” his raspy voice manages to put together. “Maybe I could—” He realises he has no idea what he’s trying to say, he has no idea what he’s even thinking. What could he do when there’s nothing he could do. It’s just him, someone insignificant in your life, someone who just happened to be there when you were falling apart. He probably has no right to even know how you’re doing or to take your time.

The softer side in him starts to babble in his head, coming up with something for him to say. He’d like to say so much, but not to Diana and Brenda. He could suggest coming over, bringing your clothes that are still collecting dust on the shelf in the mudroom. He could come and help with something if they need help with anything, like fixing the wobbly garden chair on their porch. He knows it doesn’t make any sense to them, or to him for that matter. He’d just like to see that you’re actually okay, that you’re on the mend.

“Maybe some other time, I think someone else needs you more at this moment,” Diana breaks his thoughts with her warm and soft voice, like she was reading his mind. She nods towards the door, making Joel turn around. Tommy steps out, tears streaming down his cheeks and the most blissful look on his face.

“It’s a girl,” he gasps and crashes into Joel, hugging his brother so tight that Joel feels like Tommy could take his breath away and crush him.

“Congratulations!” Brenda has the widest of smiles on her face, Diana’s own smile matching hers while giving her own well wishes. Tommy cries from happiness against his older brother, his body weight making Joel grab him tight against him to keep them both upright.

The women bid their goodbyes with gentle waves, Diana giving Joel a knowing nod as they start to walk away towards the town. Joel follows them with his eyes when Tommy finally manages to stand up and find some strength in his own legs again.

“Come meet your niece,” Tommy pats him on the chest and wraps his arm around Joel’s shoulder.

“Wait till you see her,” Tommy gushes, reluctance slowing Joel down. He separates from Tommy and follows him up the stairs, unease settling in his stomach. He can only imagine the moment he first saw Sarah and the way he clung to Tommy when he couldn’t comprehend becoming a dad just a few hours after her birth.

His life that he knew had exploded into smithereens and Sarah had taken her place deep in his mind and heart. Now he’s here, living through Tommy’s most joyous moment with heaviness and grief in his heart. He could’ve never imagined he’d be seeing his niece without his own daughter by his side.

The bedroom door is ajar and Joel stays to stand outside. He can see Maria on the bed, sweat and tears on her skin, and a small bundle against her chest. The look on her face tells everything Joel needs to know what she’s going through. The complete, disbelieving joy is what you could see first. But then you see her eyes and the soft sadness in them. The midwife writes something down into her notepad and chuckles when Tommy reaches for the baby and coos praising words to her.

“One of the calmest babies I’ve ever seen,” the midwife remarks. Maria sees Joel standing outside the door and she smiles with tears flowing out of her sorrowful eyes, relaxing against the pillows behind her back.

“Let out the loudest cry and then just quiet coos,” Tommy says and steps out on the landing with his daughter in his arms.

“Joel, this is Matilda Miller,” Tommy tells him and gives the baby to him. Joel’s breath catches in his throat and his arms reach out instinctively, making sure he’s as gentle as he can be when he feels the baby’s weight settling onto his arms.

“Matilda, meet your Uncle Joel,” Tommy whispers and lets go of his daughter. Joel cradles her against his chest, his palm securing her small head. Joel watches her like she’s not supposed to be here, like she’s someone who isn’t real. He can’t see or hear anything else around him.

Her light brown skin is soft against the pad of his finger when he brushes it against her cheek and her long, dark lashes flutter when she opens her eyes and blinks them slowly. Her small hands gravitate to close into small fists and Joel offers her his finger. She grabs it like she’s unsure if her hand is supposed to wrap around it, leisurely grasping onto it before she squeezes it. She makes the most delicate humming sound as she makes herself heard.

The front door opens and closes and there’s banging in the stairs when Ellie runs them up as fast as she can.

“Ellie, meet Matilda,” Tommy tells her quietly, watching his brother with careful eyes. He doesn’t want to leave Joel alone with the baby, not yet, when he knows Joel is going through a whirlwind of emotions.

“Hey Matilda,” Ellie whispers and leans against Joel’s side, her fingers brushing against her swaddled knee. Joel doesn’t say a word to her, doesn’t even acknowledge her next to him. He sees only Matilda. She has gotten her nose from Tommy, same with the curve of her mouth. She’s so small and at the moment she’s holding the whole world in her grasp without knowing anything about it. Joel feels like she doesn’t fit into this cruel world, this is not the right place for her. She’s so much more remarkable than anyone could imagine.

“Would you get the horses?” Jade calls out over her shoulder when she leaves him to get their rifles.

He walks towards the stables and sees Dan outside, sweeping sawdust off the ground. He hears Joel’s heavy boots and raises his hand in hello, leaning the broom against the wall. Joel makes easy small talk, asks if something had happened for the sawdust to end up outside the stables. Apparently a wheelbarrow had tipped a little and spilled some on the ground, nothing concerning.

“You want Beardy and Aries?” He asks from Joel and gets a deep nod as an answer. Joel stands outside, taking in the late morning warmth. It’s going to be a hot day by noon, no doubt about it, just like every other day in the past couple of weeks.

The sun is unrelenting already and the slight breeze is barely giving any relief. The sky is stripped of any clouds and a pair of swallows circle in the air, swirling around each other, their trilling songs reminding him of summer days with Tommy when they were just young boys. He shields his eyes and watches the birds’ playful dance, stretching his shoulders back at the same time. No doubt about it Tommy is going to be showing these wonders to Matilda as well. Who knows, maybe they’re already out in the garden enjoying the fresh day.

A clatter of a hay fork makes him look out towards the field where some of the horses are leisurely feasting on fresh grass. He freezes in his place. He hasn’t seen you in a long time, since that glimpse through Diana's door, but he recognises you immediately. Your hair and your clothes, how you stand and work, focusing on the task at hand. He wonders if you went to the movies the day Matilda was born. Not that he would’ve seen you. He spent the rest of the day at Tommy and Maria’s with Ellie, only to go have a shower at home and change his clothes before he went back for dinner at theirs which he cooked. Ellie helped, even though she was far more interested in spending her time watching Matilda.

His palms break in gentle sweat and he rubs them against his thighs, nervously looking around before he has his attention back on you. He takes slow steps, he doesn’t want to scare you, and when he reaches you he coughs under his breath.

“Hi,” he says quietly, a calm, relieved smile spreading on his face. He’s been looking forward to this moment, to seeing you again, just to say hi. When he’s at home, deep in thought or alone while Ellie is somewhere with friends, he has imagined how this would go. He’d say his hello, hi, hey, maybe a howdy. No, that would be too weird, it would probably make you laugh. Though he wouldn’t mind seeing you break into a real smile, he saw you too many times in despair. It would fit the setting though, being at the stables and all that.

And he’d ask you how you’ve been, if you’re doing better. And you’d tell him and he could see it as well, that you’re much better. He has been thinking about this moment for a while, and the longer he has been planning how to greet you again, the more nervous it has made him. At least it seems like the nerves aren’t as present now as they always have been in his head.

When you turn, it’s not you at all. It’s Sandy, the teenager living down the street from him and Ellie. Her wide eyes look at him in surprise and no wonder. They’ve never spoken, other than a courteous hello if he has passed her and her dad on the street. He doesn’t know them at all, rarely ending up in the same circles.

What Joel does know is that Sandy’s dad works at the woodworking shop and she is a few years older than Ellie. How does he know this? Ellie talked about her once or twice, how she had seen Sandy at the stables and how she had inquired about Sandy’s love of horses. Ellie has always been clear that she wants to become a patroller and the first chance she got, she signed her name up for the training starting next spring.

Sandy wasn’t sure what she wanted to do now that she was finished with school and she has been rotating between different places to find a good match for herself to work at. Ellie was confused by this. For her patrolling seems like the most natural choice. They had had a good talk about it, how some people just need to try different things out while others might know what they want to do immediately.

And of course Ellie was interested to know more about how he ended up as a contractor and how he didn’t go to college. Now he feels a little self-conscious about knowing these details about Sandy when he doesn’t know her at all.

“Hi?” It comes out as a question from her mouth, her confusion getting more prominent the longer Joel stands in front of her without saying a word.

“Sorry, thought you were someone else,” he mumbles and takes a few steps back, before he turns his back to her and walks away, embarrassed about his mistake. She stands still for a while longer, distracted by the weird encounter, but when he hears the hay fork clattering against the fence again, he lets out a long breath.

His hand flexes and he taps his fingers against his thigh, trying to get his mind back to the route he’s going to take with Jade during patrol and mentally going through what he packed into his backpack. He’s trying to focus his thoughts back into today’s agenda so hard that it becomes impossible.

He looks over his shoulder and realises Sandy looks nothing like you. How on earth did he think he saw you when the two of you couldn’t be more different. His nerves get the best of him and the last time he saw you come crashing back into his mind. Your panicked cries and revelation of your siblings get him on edge, uneasiness settling in his stomach. He has to count his breaths and calm himself down once again.

He hears the horse hooves hitting the ground and sees Dan leading trusted Beardy and Jade’s Aries out of the stable doors. Joel takes both of their reins and pets them but leans closer to Old Beardy. Slowly he leans his head against the large animal, his left ear against its large frame. He breathes in, and out, listening to the slow beating of Beardy’s heart.

“I’m home,” Joel says into the empty looking house, closing the door after himself. He’s carrying a crate full of ingredients from the town and toes his shoes off, trying to balance with the heaviness of the crate in his arms. The beautiful summer day is casting everything in a golden hue and the light that streams in through the windows looks ethereal.

Tess walks out of the kitchen, a tea towel in her hands and a smile on her face. The unsettling view in front of him stops him and he feels his hands going numb. Tess rushes to get the crate from him, touching his fingers with her own.

“Did you remember the eggs?” She asks and waits for him to answer.

“What?” He looks at her, seeing her smile spread even wider. He can’t believe she’s here in his home. Tess is dead and now she’s looking as domestic as ever, something he never saw her as.

“The eggs I asked you to bring?” Tess looks younger, her brown hair glinting in the glimmering sunlight. Tess leaves him by the front door, walking softly into the kitchen. He follows her, afraid that if he won’t, he won’t see her again. All the pots and pans they have sit on the counters, all the cupboard doors are open.

“Joel, eggs? Did you bring them?” She asks again and sets the crate down. She turns towards him, but she’s not looking younger anymore, no. She looks like when he last saw her, just moments before she saved him and Ellie. With the addition of cordyceps growing out of her forehead and cheek, mycelium tendrils reaching out of her mouth. She smiles and the tendrils are moving towards him. He hears her laugh, the deep sound that he was blessed to hear rarely.

“Earth to Joel? Did you bring what I asked you to?” She takes slow steps towards him and takes him by the hand. He can’t move, he can’t even talk, even though he’s trying hard to get away. His whole body is frozen in place. He’s fighting against himself. He wants to get away from her. He needs to get away.

He can feel a yell being suffocated in his throat and his limbs feel like they’re filled with rocks. Her smile horrifies him, the mycelium getting closer and closer. She closes her green eyes and he can feel the tendrils spreading against his neck, before her lips touch him. Her teeth follow and finally Joel gets his voice back.

He wakes up to his own shout. His hand flies to his neck, touching it all over to make sure there’s nothing on his skin. His heart is hammering in his chest and he’s trying to catch his breath, his head swimming with images of Tess that are getting swept behind a curtain between wake and sleep.

He sits up and leans forward, his body hunching over his knees. His skin is sticky with sweat, his hands tingling from the nightmare. His throat burns from the tension in his muscles, and his body feels awfully light after not being able to move it in his nightmare. With careful feet he stands up and opens the window, the warm night bringing little comfort for his troubled mind. He counts his breaths, leaning against the open window and watches the trees in the backyard against the dark cobalt blue sky.

He can distinguish the light tint in the horizon, the sun attempting to bring light to end the night. There’s a soft songbird singing somewhere close by, the gentle, sorrowful sound calming him down. He combs his fingers through his wavy hair. He should get a haircut, he thinks, his attempts at distracting himself coming up short. He’s trying to shake the dream from his head, but the image of Tess has burned through into his waking thoughts.

He walks slowly out of his bedroom, wiping the crumbs of sleep from his eyes. Maybe a glass of water would clear his mind just a little more. He reaches the stairs when he hears soft weeping from Ellie’s bedroom. He presses his left ear against her door before he knocks on it with the knuckle on his index finger. She doesn’t answer.

“Ellie?” He asks with a low, thick voice. He opens her door and sees her small frame in the middle of her bed. He gets closer and sees her shuddering with the silent cries.

“Ellie, are you awake?” He asks gently, tiptoeing to see her face. It’s half hidden under her duvet, tears streaming from her closed eyes. He sits on her bed, his hand hovering inches off her shoulder, her body trembling in her sleep.

“Ellie,” he says softly, resting his hand finally on her shoulder and he shakes her lightly, trying not to scare her out of her sleep. Her eyes open slowly and it takes a while for her to realise that she’s in her room and Joel is sitting next to her. She stares at him, the tear streaks across her face getting wet once more when a fresh wave of salty water leaves her eyes.

“Everything’s okay, you’re safe, you’ve nothing to worry about,” he tries to calm her down, but her face scrunches up with sadness washing through her. He strokes her arm and she wipes her face with her pillow. She fixes her gaze back on him, a desperate look in her eyes. Gently he brushes the waves of her hair that have fallen over her forehead behind her ear.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks carefully. She stares at him and Joel can barely see the little shake of her head.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to,” he tells her. The room feels warm, a bit too warm. He stands up and opens her window as well. The two open windows make air run through the upstairs with more ease and there’s a calm breeze making her curtains sway.

“You’d never lie to me, right?” Her voice is barely audible, but Joel hears the question. The muscles in his upper back strain with anxiety immediately, but he turns towards her and sits back on her bed. His hand finds her shoulder once more and with slow caresses he soothes her racing thoughts.

“No,” he shakes his head and looks her in the eyes. She swallows visibly, but she’s not letting him look away.

“Would you want me to stay here for a moment?” His voice is still thick with sleep as he watches her emotions slowly even out after her upsetting dream. She just nods, her fingers finding the corner of her pillow. She fiddles with the pillow case and she keeps glancing at him, her mouth opening and then closing.

He waits for her to say something, nerves building visibly in her. He can feel the uneasy energy trembling out of her. But then it suddenly crumbles and she relaxes against his hand, her shoulders softening and her body melting back against her mattress.

“Just for a moment, until I fall back asleep,” she tells him with a resigned sigh. He nods, but he can’t help when the line between his brows becomes deeper with confusion. He has no idea what she dreamt about, but something clearly bothered her about it.

She closes her eyes and her face mushes back against her pillow. For a moment he just looks at her, softness spreading into the room. She exhales deep and turns to her other side, making him lift his hand. Her back rounds once again as she pulls her knees closer to her chest. His hand lands back onto her shoulder, but it feels like she doesn’t want him to continue.

“Is this okay?” He whispers and she looks over her shoulder.

“Mmhmm,” she hums and her mouth curves into a small smile. She closes herself back up and he keeps on stroking her shoulder, very gently hovering his hand just against her clothed skin.

He ends up staring out the window, watching how the sky gets lighter and Ellie’s room gets cooler. Ellie’s breathing starts to slow down and deepen, and the steady rhythm of her sleep lulls him into thinking of Tess.

He hasn’t thought about her in a long time. Not because he doesn’t miss her or he doesn’t want to think about her, but because losing her was like a breaking point. Nothing was keeping him in Boston at that point anymore, only her. And thinking about her would only bring him more pain, he has convinced himself.

Now that she’s on his mind, the pain isn’t as strong as he thought. There’s the dull constant of a sadness, the grief of losing her, the realisation what she was to him. She was incredibly important to him, even more, which he never wanted to admit to himself. Even less to her. Her loss meant also losing part of himself. She kept him together and he had to get comfortable being alone with himself after she was gone. Or, as alone as Ellie would let him.

Tess would’ve loved Jackson. He can imagine her in the kitchen, fixing them something to eat, before she’d go out into the backyard, sit on the porch and enjoy the quiet. She would’ve gotten to know the other residents around town, probably even made friends with some of the people who are so similar to her that they always remind Joel of her.

He can picture Tess and Ellie being joined at the hip and Tess would’ve taught her new things. The three of them would’ve been like a small, odd family with different backgrounds and shared trauma. Joel and Tess would’ve gone out horseback riding, maybe they would’ve even been patrol partners. Tess would’ve loved riding horses out here.

The life he imagines for Tess, the one that she never got to live, makes him sad. She would’ve deserved it.

When he met Tess, she wasn’t sugar coating anything. She was fierce and cold, fearless, and she didn’t doubt anything she did. She knew what she was doing.

And she was hurting.

She never fully talked about what had happened to her, but she sometimes let some things slip. A mention of a family. Knowing firsthand how the infection took over a person. A memory of going to an amusement park when they passed through one.

He knew she had had a family, but she didn’t talk about them. And he didn’t tell her about Sarah. But Tommy did. Joel was so angry at him for telling her because he didn’t want to be known as the man who had lost a daughter. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. Especially in a group of raiders. That’s why she never talked her past either.

But she didn’t tell anyone and she didn’t treat him differently. She never brought it up, she just understood him better.

Of course it was her, who kissed him first. And that was the first and only time he saw her being nervous. They had known each other and been friends for a couple of years by that point, yet she surprised him when she took his chin between her fingers and kissed him.

There was no romance or sweet moment, no buildup, or stolen glances. It just happened. And it felt good. So he didn’t stop her and she didn’t pull away. After the first time they slept together, when she was getting up from the mattress on the floor, looking for her clothes, throwing his clothes on the bed next to him, she looked at him with a concerned look in her eyes.

Later he found out that she was afraid he would cut her off, not talk to her or keep her in the loop, and she had ruined something between them. A friendship or mutual trust. He just didn’t know how to act around her. He felt embarrassed after not sleeping with anyone for a few years at that point. If he had been too rough or too eager, if she hadn’t liked it like he had.

But when she cornered him and demanded he tell her if he was going to pull away completely, he was the one to kiss her. And that’s how they got together. She never demanded him to tell her what they were, even though they were always like a package deal after that.

They never left each other’s side and they could trust each other completely. They went everywhere together, worked together and fell asleep in the same bed together. She helped to keep him grounded, she knew how to calm him down. She knew him.

And he knew her and he knew what she wanted. He understood her like they would’ve known each other since they were young. And she didn’t hide from him. He would’ve done anything she asked him to. He would’ve followed her anywhere.

He tried to protect her, but he failed. The grief that follows his memories about Tess come to his mind and it makes him angry. And in no time it’s replaced by the sound of her voice. How she’d tell him to not wallow in losing her but be there for them who are still alive. That it was just her time and she did what was right.

He wonders how things could’ve been different if Tess was with them when they made their way to Jackson. Would she have done the same decision as he did when he saved Ellie? Would she have brought you along when him and Ellie found you in the wilderness? He saved who he could save, he did what she told him to do.

He realises that Ellie wasn’t the only one he saved. He saved you as well, even though it’s hard for him to admit. He’s not some knight in shining armour, being good and kind to others. He knows that, he’s become too hardened in his lifetime. Once again his thoughts drift to you, how the thought of you haunts him. Lately he hasn’t thought about the time in the garage, but what Diana said. How you wanted to see a movie. Something so simple and insignificant has built up to become something meaningful in his mind.

It's not because he thinks you’re weak or unfit for this reality. He recognises your pain and the way you wanted to run from it. Of course he knows. Some people are just more successful hiding it than others, succumbing to their own demons at some point. He wonders if he’s going to see you sometime soon around town, walking on the street, minding your own business. Maybe even going back to work, finding comfort in this town. Afterall, that must’ve been the reason why you came looking for Jackson in the first place. To find a place, where you can live a meaningful life.

His hand has stilled on Ellie’s shoulder. Sleep is still slowing his thoughts down. He looks at her and sees that she’s deep in sleep with no sign of bad dreams. He stands slowly from her bed and leaves her door ajar, just to make sure he can comfort her if her sleep gets disturbed again. He presses his head against his pillow, his eyes falling shut. The early morning sun reaches its shiny rays through the window, making him cover his head with his arm. The damage is done already though.

He listens to the songbirds’ concert outside intensifying, sleep abandoning him and leaving him to lay in his bed with heavy limbs. Maybe he should just get up, make some breakfast, and get today started.

He wonders if you’re awake already as well, if you’re enjoying the early sun, if you’re planning what you could do today. He shakes his head and gets out of bed before his mind starts to ask more questions.

#the last of us fan fiction #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x gn reader #joel miller x f!reader #pedro pascal character fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #katsheadincloudswrites #fractured fic

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starstruckunknown-princess · 2 years ago

Text

This Must Be the Place

Summary: Emma McDonough was at her brother's wedding in Minneapolis when the world ended. Twenty years later, the boyfriend she left behind shows up in Lincoln, MA just after she gets her feet back under her. Follow Emma on her journey from Austin to Minneapolis to Lincoln to the Boston QZ to...wherever else Joel Miller may lead her.

Pairings: Joel Miller/OFC, Bill/Frank, hints of Joel/Tess

Warnings: Angst, canon-typical violence, fainting, former lovers reunion, mentions of dead pet (dog), if I missed any let me know!

Word Count: 3023

A/N: First time writing for TLOU -- I've never played the game but I'm head over heels in love with the show, so this series will follow that. Somewhat established relationship between Joel and OFC, Emma, but they haven't seen each other in twenty years which complicates things a bit!

Looking forward to your feedback! There will be at least a Part 2, but hoping this will be a series so let me know what you think!

Read on AO3 | Masterlist

April 16, 2023

When Joel flicked on the radio, “Cecelia” by Simon and Garfunkel started playing on the radio. Followed by “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. Then “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross. Joel glanced at Tess where she was sitting at the shitty little table in the kitchen. All she did was nod.

“Tomorrow night?” he asked.

Again, Tess nodded. Joel got to his feet and started packing for the trip to Bill and Frank’s. Seventies hits meant “new stock” and since his normal oxy dealer had stood him up last week they were hurting for supplies.

From under the floorboards he unfurled his pack and reached inside, feeling for the collar that he kept in the bottom of it. His fingers brushed against smooth leather, and relief spread up his arm and across his chest.

The collar meant almost as much to Joel as his watch did. It served as a reminder of those he had lost, but unlike the watch that was entirely Sarah, the collar held a double meaning. First, of the dog who had worn it. Secondly, of the woman who had picked it out.

Bash, a shaggy black border collie/lab mix. Emma, the lost love of his life.

Blue leather, dirtied brown with age, and a metal clip that jangled every time the dog shook himself out. Since Emma hated the constant clicking of his tags, she’d found a one that clipped onto the band of the collar rather than dangling off the d-ring.

Once upon a time, the tag was engraved with ‘Bash’ and had her phone number beneath. Nearly half of it had been scraped away due to age and the car accident they’d been in on Outbreak Day.

Somehow the dog had escaped the accident unscathed, had followed Joel while he carried Sarah through the wreckage of their Austin suburb. Had laid down and whined next to Sarah’s body. Like Joel, Tommy had to drag the dog away from the girl’s body and get them moving again. Joel had buried his face in the dog’s thick fur to sop up his tears. For the next six years, Bash didn’t leave Joel’s side.

Until he got bit.

Joel couldn’t think about what happened next, just like he didn’t let himself think about what happened to Sarah.

It was better, easier, to shove those memories into the back of his mind so he could get on with the business of daily survival.

By now, fourteen years later, the dog would’ve been long gone anyway. Still, Joel shoved the collar into the bottom of every bag he packed. Every time he and Tess left on a smuggling mission, he couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind, hidden under the floorboards with his weapons and whiskey. If he believed in that sort of thing, he would think bringing the collar was akin to bringing the dog himself. With you in spirit, or some shit like that.

But he didn’t believe that. The dog was dead. Most likely, his owner was too. If the world was kind, she had been dead since the beginning.

But this world was far from kind.

It was only habit that made him stash the strap of blue leather in the front pocket of his pack. Like checking over his shoulder while walking through the QZ after sundown or tapping the bottom of his whiskey glass on the table after a ‘cheers’.

Not the unhinged glimmer of hope that one day he would be able to present the collar to its original owner. That one day he would see her face again. That one day he would know for sure if she had survived or not.

Joel shook the thoughts out of his mind, clenching his jaw at his own foolishness. He packed the rest of his supplies quickly, then put the pack by the door so it would be ready to grab and go after his shift at the ash pit tomorrow. Tess had a street sweeping rotation, so they’d get done around the same time.

The sound of the spring rain against the windows helped usher him into sleep that night despite the ache in his knees and back. Joel dreamt of her for the first time in ages and awoke feeling emptier than usual.

Emma enjoyed going up and down the stairs without a cast and crutches so much that when she reached the bottom, she turned around on her heel and climbed them again before descending once more.

“Someone doesn’t miss her cast at all,” Frank commented, wheeling himself into the foyer from the parlor. A wide smile cracked her face in half.

“Not even a little bit,” she replied. “Where’s Bill?”

The gruffer of the two gentlemen was usually right behind his partner, wheeling him from room to room even though Frank insisted he could do that himself — “It’s my legs that are useless, Bill, my arms are fine!”

“Making sure the seedlings survived the storm,” Frank explained, gesturing out the back door with one hand. “His elbow is still bugging him though, so we’re in for more rain.” He let Emma redirect him back to the parlor and she sat on the piano bench in front of him.

“He could’ve asked me to do that,” she said as she held up two fingers of each of her hands out to him and Frank reached forward, squeezing them as tightly as he could. His grip was a little weaker than yesterday, but she didn’t mention that out loud.

Now that her right leg was out of the cast, she knew her time in this well-equipped domestic paradise was coming to an end. Bill had always insisted that once she was healed she would continue on her way to the Boston QZ and never mention Lincoln to anyone. He’d even made her sign a contract to that effect in her own blood.

Even though Frank insisted that Bill softened over time and had come to enjoy Emma’s company, a pit in her stomach told her that sooner or later she would have to call the Boston QZ home.

“You know him, so used to doing everything his own way. If he had asked you he would’ve redone it anyway,” Frank said as she led him through the physical therapy exercises she knew for dexterity.

Tapping each fingertip to the thumb (the middle finger of his left hand didn’t cooperate), flexion/extension (mostly good), and the wrist deviations (again, the left hand was less than cooperative). Then they did their regular arm stretches together.

“That’s fair. I still feel like I should pull more weight around here,” she lamented.

The couple had taken her in, fed her from their garden and supplies, and for the first two weeks she wasn’t able to do much more than entertain Frank until Bill found her a pair of crutches in one of the various places in town he’d squirreled things away.

Frank put a hand on her knee. “You’re doing all you can. The cast only came off a week ago, you need to take it easy or you’ll re-break your leg.”

“Hey, who’s the doctor here?” Emma joked, smiling at Frank. He smiled back at her and tugged at the end of the braid that lay on her shoulder, fondness crinkling his eyes. She was going to miss him dearly.

They’d spent hours talking about their lives in the pre-outbreak days and the years since. She told him about how she was at her little brother’s rehearsal dinner when the shit hit the fan, running for her life in a cocktail dress. He’d shared the horrors of the Baltimore QZ falling and his journey north. She let him know the heartbreaking reason she was traveling to Boston.

Emma hadn’t thought she would ever tell anyone that secret, but Frank was so easy to trust, to befriend, to adore. His big blue eyes never showed the slightest hint of judgment or disgust at the things she had done to survive. He was an incredible listener and he gave the best hugs, even in the wheelchair. She understood why Bill fell for him.

Bill, on the other hand, was more reluctant to open up to her. He listened to her stories like he was looking for weaknesses or trying to catch her in a lie. Once he saw that Frank was comfortable around her, however, his answers to her questions became less monosyllabic. They talked about wines and gardening and radio broadcasting and he even let her start seeds in the seedling trays.

“Oh yeah, Doc?” Frank teased, “Where’s your degree?”

“University of Shitty FEDRA Med School, class of ‘05,” she joked. This was a common back and forth between them.

They laughed as she wheeled him to the back porch in front of his easel. Once she got him a clean rag for his brushes, she retreated to her room and picked up the book she had started the previous day, Jane Eyre. One of her favorites.

Her reading was interrupted an hour and a half later by Frank shouting at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Em! Come down and meet our friends from the QZ!”

She’d heard tell of the smugglers, Tess and Joel from the Boston QZ. They brought building materials and seeds and, most importantly, Frank’s pain meds. She’d pointedly ignored the flash of excitement the name ‘Joel’ gave her — the chances of this Joel being her Joel were slim to none.

Emma made herself presentable in the dusty hall mirror, then descended the staircase — only once this time — and went out the open front door. Outside smelled like wet earth and petrichor and ozone. She stepped onto the porch with a ‘creak’ and two people who stood midway down the front walk whipped around to face her. From the other side of them, Frank was smiling and waving her closer.

A tall woman with graying brown hair and intense hazel eyes straightened as Emma approached. Her face told Emma the story of hard-won survival, of a fierceness that Emma recognized.

The second person, the man reaching for his gun, made her heart thud to a complete stop. His dark brown eyes widened and his hand fell away from the gun tucked in his holster.

Joel.

His hair and beard were grayer, his face lined deeper in what she figured was a permanent frown, but it was him. Same firm jaw, same powerful frame. Joel, it was Joel — her Joel!

Emma couldn’t draw a breath. Instead, she felt all her blood rush downward and her vision blackened around the edges. Her shoulder slammed into the door jamb, but she barely felt it and her knees crashed to the wood porch.

She came to almost immediately, multiple pairs of hands helping her up and ushering her into the parlor.

“Head between your knees, hun,” a woman’s voice reached her as they placed her in a plush chair. “Deep breaths, in and out. There you go.”

Emma followed the instructions and felt oxygen beginning to circulate in her body again. Bill’s rough hand passed her a glass of water, and she took small sips as she sat back up. The woman — Tess, she assumed — had a look of concern on her features, Bill’s mustache twitched.

“Can you tell me your name? Do you know where you are?” Tess demanded.

“Emma McDonough, I’m in Lincoln Massachusetts,” Emma answered. She could hear Frank yelling from outside and Bill ducked out, returning momentarily. Frank’s eyes were as wide as saucers and he all but lunged for Emma, his hands fluttering around her like a mother hen.

“Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“I’m fine, I swear, I was just…surprised, is all.”

“Surprised by what?” Frank asked, dropping his hands.

Bill answered, “You know Joel. There’s history there?”

Emma nodded, “Yeah.”

“Oh, shit,” Tess said, “You’re her, aren’t you? The girlfriend who was out of town when it all happened?”

Emma nodded. The room went silent. She looked between the three others in the room, not seeing the cause of her embarrassingly Austen-like swoon. Tess looked out the window, then crossed to the front door. Bill and Frank shared one of their looks and Frank’s hand came to rest on her knee. They all turned their heads at the sound of approaching boots. A few seconds later, Joel’s broadness blocked most of the door frame.

“Can-” he paused, clearing his throat, “Can y’all give us a moment?”

“Of course,” Frank said, squeezing Emma’s knee. “We’ll be just outside if you need us.”

Bill gave her a look that said, ‘I’ll shoot him if you want me to,’ as he wheeled Frank out the door to join Tess on the porch.

Joel closed the pocket doors next to her, then leaned his forehead against them. Emma got to her feet, slowly so as not to faint again. Her mind buzzed with questions, so many of them she had no idea where to begin.

“I-I don’t even know where to start,” she offered. “What-? How-? I…I…”

Joel turned to face her. His eyes darted over her figure, an unreadable expression on his hardened face. All of a sudden, Emma felt self-conscious.

Twenty years had gone by and she knew she didn’t look the same as she used to. Like Joel, the years had hardened her face. Her body was softer in places that were once firm, thicker around the middle but still svelte. She wasn’t the sexy thirty-year-old she’d been when they’d started dating. Then again, he’d softened around the middle too but it hadn’t detracted from the strength and power he radiated.

It didn’t detract from how drop-dead sexy he was. If anything, the years of survival had given his rugged good looks sharper edges that she was more than willing to dash herself against.

She moved first, taking a half-step toward him like he was a timber wolf she had managed to corner. He instinctively stepped back and held up a hand to stop her. She stopped. The air between them thickened.

Slowly, Joel shrugged off the pack on his back, holding it with one arm and digging into it with the other. Emma’s brow furrowed and her head tilted. Once he had retrieved what he was searching for, he let the pack drop to the ground and stepped toward her, offering her what was in his hand.

A beat up scrap of leather that might’ve once been blue. The clip-on tag was all scratched to shit, but she knew it had once read ‘Bash’. Joel was careful to not let their hands touch as she let him place the collar in her hand. Her fingers closed around it, tears springing into her eyes. She noticed Joel’s shoulders tighten, his hand scrubbing down his face.

Memories of the smiling, happy dog flooded her mind and she pressed the collar to her chest. Her eyes slid shut.

Picking out Bash at the shelter, just a little shaggy floppy-eared puppy. All the training that had convinced her she would never be ready for a baby. The fights that realization caused with her ex-husband. Bash putting himself between them during those fights, growling at her ex-husband.

She heard wood tracks rattling and opened her eyes just in time to see Joel exiting the front door of the house.

Emma jogged after him, “Hey! Wait!”

Joel was halfway down the front walk again, heading toward where Bill, Frank, and Tess were chatting. He paused but didn’t turn back toward her.

“What? Were you expecting some tearful joyous reunion?” he asked from over his shoulder, voice dangerously low.

Emma stopped her approach at the bottom of the stairs, mouth agape as if he’d just slapped her. Rage swelled within her. What the fuck did he have to be so defensive — so dismissive — about? “After twenty years, maybe I expect a little more than you handing me my dead dog’s collar and leaving, yeah!”

Joel turned to her, “I’m not the same, Emma. It’s been twenty years, I’ve been through a lot-”

How dare he! She whipped the collar at him and raised her voice, “Fuck you! You don’t think I have too?” He caught the leather and tucked it into his back pocket. Tess, Bill, and Frank all turned toward them when they heard her shouting. She ignored them, keeping her focus on Joel.

“I didn’t say that,” he argued, his hands going to his hips in a way she remembered all too well. “Just trying to temper expectations.”

“Temper expectations? If you’re not happy to see me just fucking say so,” Emma spat. Her volume had returned to normal, but the three other adults were heading their way.

“It ain’t that. I’m glad to see you alive, Emma, I am, but it’s not like we have the time to fall into each other’s arms and sob it out right now.”

She threw her arms up in frustration. “You were the one who asked for a minute!”

“Cuz you fuckin’ fainted!”

He may as well have slapped her. All at once, she understood why he’d given her the collar after carrying around for so long. The hard look he was giving her and how he was carefully maintaining his distance —

He thought she was weak. Vulnerable. A damsel in need of protection. And, if this world had taught her anything, it was no place for damsels.

Good thing she wasn’t one.

She closed the distance between them and slapped him across the face, making sure she made it hurt. Tess shouted and slotted herself between the former couple and Bill grabbed Emma around the waist, dragging her back. Turning, Tess guided Joel back a few steps and spoke to him in a low tone.

Emma shook Bill off of her and headed back into the house. She glanced over her shoulder, catching Joel’s gaze on her for a moment. He rubbed his jaw with a big hand and brushed Tess’s hands away from himself, dark brown eyes following her into the house and up the stairs.

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