#dynamic. . .⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝙹𝙾𝙴𝙻 𝙼𝙸𝙻𝙻𝙴𝚁⠀:⠀tommy miller

[enslaughts]

thinking about tommy and joel mirrors. how they're both survivors to the bone, but while joel is gritted bite and blood and skin of his teeth scrabble to keep his loved ones breathing as long as he does, tommy is water and dandelions through cement and shape - shifting into whatever shape he needs to keep going. how tommy takes on joel's shape the moment he's gone, going gray and angry after watching his family die in front of him, an understanding like the first dawn after a storm. he gets gray and angry and bitter, something tommy never was. it was a core strain of he and joel's differences, this inability to let go of things like redemption and healing and hope in the face of an indifferent world. if joel lost that when sarah was killed in his arms, tommy loses his with joel, because he was right there. he was there. not maria, not ellie, joel wasn't even toughing it alone, at the beginning of the end. just tommy. useless, unconscious tommy, and joel's would - be killers, and his would - be daughter.

and finally tommy finds it, followed in his brother's footsteps. to honor him, in its own, terrible way. or just to grieve. he finally finds the one thing he can't heal from. and ellie turns those eyes on him and all he can see is sarah, dead, both of them, dead, and ellie too if he doesn't do this for her, for joel, for himself. if it were you or me, joel would be halfway to seattle already. ellie asks this of him when he still has it in him to say no, and almost a year later, he'll do the same to her. because he's alive. he's alive because of joel, even if he thinks it wasn't worth it, and so is ellie. they're in it together, until tommy isn't, can't, and it's the lowest point of his life ; to come to ellie with it. limping and half - blind, he'd rather do it himself, but he can't, and he's so ashamed. that after everything joel ever did for him, he can't do this for joel. after being one of the very last reasons joel did the things tommy resented him for, for him, to keep them both alive. after years of bearing that, and then setting it down. letting it go, in favor of worrying it's because tommy split that joel will finally reach the end of his luck. alone, from infected, a stray bullet, eating his own. but he finds a reason to keep going again and it's not tommy this time, it's this girl. and only then does he die, and tommy has to ask her to avenge him.

tommy doesn't know if joel would do that for him. a part of him imagines, even after waking to his broken, mortal body, that joel would always be able to do it himself. that if it were tommy dead and joel alive, he wouldn't get himself shot in the leg and then in the head, confined to the limits of his own body. that it wouldn't matter if he did ; he'd somehow drag himself to the ends of the earth for the people he cares about. but in his mind, tommy's his brother's keeper, try as he did to let it go, now more than ever that he's lost him. too little, too late. but he's old, and joel was a part of him. and he sees this life that ellie's built despite all of it, this little slice of heaven despite the hell she's been through, alive even though joel is dead, life going on, growing through the cement, what joel killed and died for ellie to have, and tommy doesn't have it anymore. the script has flipped, somehow, and tommy can't do anything about it with a body that's already reaped what this path he can't even walk to the end has sowed. in trying to avenge joel, he's destroying the very thing he died for : ellie's peace. because tommy has none. because it's his fault that he has to even ask her, that he can't do it himself, that joel is dead. and he can't live with it, he just can't, even if it means asking this of his daughter. because tommy can't die either. not after everything joel sacrificed to keep him alive. there's no way out for tommy, and right on cue, the exception, of course, is ellie. ellie, who already has the weight of the world on her shoulders. ellie, who tommy asks to bear the weight of his too, brother like brother, right on cue. one last ode to joel.

love is just so heavy. it didn't used to be.