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agentmmayy · 1 year ago

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He didn’t know what to say when he felt like this. + tess/joel

He didn’t know what to say when he felt like this. When his limbs locked, his chest tightened, his vision swam, and his breath refused to leave him.

The first time it happens, it’s after Sarah, always after her. In a house Joel and Tess are scavenging, eager to get away from the rest of the group. They’re somewhere in the Kentucky bend, trying to wait out the harshest parts of winter before continuing to head north to Boston. Raiding isn’t going well at the moment, since others are having the same ideas to hunker down, so they try to hit up rural, abandoned areas where fungus won’t be and survivors are few and far between.

Neighborhoods, or loosely grouped homes when you’re out this far, work the best. There are normally clothes, canned food, and beds- all things people left behind in the rush to get out or were forced to leave- along with a slew of personal items. Photos on the walls. Magnets on the fridge. Calendars frozen on September that have scribbled soccer game at 11!! or Dad’s birthday.

It feels like grave robbing. It makes Joel wonder if someone’s been in his house like this. If they went through every room and took what they needed or didn’t need.

The bedroom he’s standing in is nothing like Sarah’s; a deep red faded and speckled over time with black borders and grungy rock posters stripped and falling. It couldn’t be more different. But the clutter on the dresser is the same, precariously arranged, and when Joel reaches for a lighter on the surface, he knocks a perfume bottle down.

He and Tess already cleared the neighborhood before the house, so there’s no Infected to alert with the sound. It’s not very loud anyway, just plastic hitting hardwood. But it cracks upon impact, brittle from age and weathered by the open window, and some perfume seeps out.

The smell hits Joel full force.

He staggers back, catching himself on the doorframe, feeling like he’s the one that’s been shot as the breath gets punched out of his chest. Tess’ running stream of commentary from down the hallway about the decor fades out and Joel’s world narrows into the cheap Bath and Bodyworks shit Sarah always dragged him to the mall for when he denied her the department store perfume because you’re thirteen, baby, you don’t need to be wearing that yet. No, I'm not being stupid I'm being a parent.

His throat closes for a different reason this time. Not under the barrage of fragrance but of memory. Or lack thereof. When was the last time he smelled that perfume? It wasn’t the last time he held her. Sarah’s death smelt like tears and sweat and blood and dirt. Salty and metallic. Nothing like the sweet, almost saccharine vanilla she doused her clothes in.

Was it when she left for school that morning? Or when she fell asleep on the couch, head pillowed against his thigh, so trusting and safe?

Now, something brushes his thigh and he startles. Looks down. It’s his gun, still held in his hand but so tight his knuckles are white. Joel drops it like a hot iron. His fingers scrabble at his chest as if he can reach inside and massage his heart into beating again or curl around it to stop.

He’s retraced every detail about that night but there are still memories that slip through his fingers. It’s only been half a year. The split on his temple is just starting to scar, a harsh streak of red he wears like a brand. Like his watch. Another physical reminder that she’s not there. That he’s weak. That he failed. That he couldn’t protect her.

Joel is unaware of Tess calling his name until she’s at his side, gun drawn as she peeks around him and into the room, before ducking under his arm to stand in front of him. He sees the toes of her scuffed boots and wide, worried eyes before his vision swims again.

“Joel?” Her voice sounds like it’s coming from far away, which doesn’t make sense. But it’s steady and familiar and he latches onto it. “Joel. Take a breath.” She draws one in and he copies her, almost unconsciously. The rush of cold air leaves him shaken and sweaty and he droops against the doorframe, feeling like he’s run a marathon.

“Okay.” She shifts to copy his stance but very carefully does not reach out to touch him. “You okay?”

And then embarrassment settles in. Followed closely by disgust with himself. How can he keep Tess safe if he’s off having a panic attack over perfume?

“‘M fine,” he says, harsher than intended, but Tess doesn’t flinch. Joel clears his throat, looks her in the eye. Makes himself softer though he doesn't need to. “Fine, Tess.”

Joel doesn’t know what he expects to find as they stand there, but it isn’t pity. Instead, Tess studies him with the same intensity she brings to everything else as she says, “Tell me.”

He shakes his head, picks up his gun, brushes past her down the hallway out the front door, and off the porch where a butterfly wind chime swings in the breeze. It’s not possible- he shut the door and the bedroom is on the opposite side of the house- but it carries a faint hint of the perfume. Coupled with the sight of the plastic butterfly idly spinning, nausea builds in his stomach, makes his mouth fill. His still-fast heartbeat quickens. Joel stalks over to the next house, intent on putting as much distance between himself and the house as possible before it happens again.

He tries to ignore the panic attack as best he can but it's also the apocalypse and there ain't much else to do, especially when a late winter storm hits and snows them in, except drink, sleep, and think. Joel expends the first two as much as he can before reaching the last one.

Why now? Of all times? Why not right after when he and Tommy were surrounded by screaming and crying kids in the emergency medical tent? Or parents wailing for their child? Or the small bodies they passed on the road?

Shock, probably. The intense base instinct to keep moving and stay alive when panic broke out from someone coming in with a bite mark and the military rolling in.

It’s because of Tess, he thinks. Knows. He feels safe with her. Even if she’s more than ten years his junior and near scrawny from scarce food. She’s the smartest out of all of them in the group. But it’s more than that.

There’s no requirement to explain himself to her and Tess doesn’t bring it up again. He didn’t expect her to. Even with her penchant for filling the silence with whatever possible. But he and Tess don’t keep secrets from each other. They can’t afford to. However, that doesn’t mean everything comes out all at once.

Joel closes his eyes, pretends to be asleep when the door creaks open, and Tess slips in, joining him on the bed after her watch shift, settling in behind him with an arm around his waist and a sigh he can feel bone deep. He stares at the door. Opens his mouth. Tries to tell her. To say something. But nothing.

Tess understands anyway. Her arm tightens around him, a chilly hand coming up to clutch his. “I know, Joel.”

She already knows about Sarah, told by Tommy early on when she joined the group. But she also knows loss in the same acute way Joel does that his brother doesn’t. Tess had a son. A husband. And she can’t talk about them either.

Tess saw his watch and he saw the photos tucked inside her bra. Before that, they somehow knew and somewhere formed an unspoken agreement to grieve silently, but together.

So Joel clutches her hand in his, over his heart, and closes his eyes where he knows the last memory of his daughter will be waiting for him.

He trains himself to recognize the signs. To do his best to breathe his way through the attacks so as to not get caught off guard again. He tries to take care of himself, but being alone in the apocalypse, in any aspect of it, is akin to death. It doesn’t work.

Tess is always there. Sometimes she clocks them before he does and guides him through with her steady voice saying his name and reminding him to take a breath. After, when he’s still wrung out, she doesn’t ask again. She already knows.

He avoids things that remind him of Sarah the best he can but even with all his effort, they crop up when he least expects it.

Like when they're up in Ohio to try and skirt around DC and come across a killing field where there's a scrap of purple fabric waving in the wind. That one, however, is accompanied by Joel holding a gun on one of the group members who tries to approach him with Tess diffusing the situation before anyone can fire. And when they're in the QZ setting up their smuggling operation and score a radio FEDRA somehow didn’t confiscate and Wannabe comes on while he’s fiddling with it.

After a while, Joel stops thinking about Sarah at all. When he realizes this, after almost a year has gone by without an attack, he has to stop brushing his teeth to turn and puke in the toilet beside him.

It works, though. He can focus on smuggling runs. On whatever shift he signs up for. On making sure Tommy’s alright now that he’s moved out of their place. On the sign language book Tess manages to scrounge up from somewhere when his ear gets worse. On scrolling through the radio channels without fear of hearing a song that’ll end up making him drink whatever stash they have. He can keep Tommy and Tess and himself safe.

But it makes him bitter. Makes him more of a shell of himself than that second night of the outbreak did where he sat in front of Sarah’s freshly dug grave with a gun to his temple.

Not thinking about her at all is more of a punishment than thinking about his failure.

Maybe this is what he deserves.

Time stopped near to the minute Sarah died, as his watch reminds him every day. It started up again when he met Tess but it moves differently- an invisible timer counting down the minutes until he loses her.

Joel can’t afford to think about Sarah. Not when life in the QZ is only slightly better than outside of it. They hear about the Kansas City QZ and fear the Boston one might end up that way too. It’s getting a little easier, now that he and Tess have built up a solid reputation and multiple contingencies if everything does end up going south.

But something’s still holding him back. It isn’t until Tommy’s offhanded Sarah’d get a kick outta that about a few people singing and dancing on the rooftop of the apartment across the street lands like a coin in a broken vending machine, bouncing around before settling hollowly with an echo that Joel knows something has to change. That echo frightens him. It sounds too much like a gun firing too close to his temple.

He can’t let himself go to that place again. You go on for family, Joel told Tess when she asked why he flinched and he was at first too cowardly to tell her he just wanted to live, echoing the words Tommy screamed at him in that emergency medical tent. His family didn’t end off the interstate though he buried a part of it with him.

He realized he wanted to live. But all he’s doing now is surviving.

So Joel digs up memories of Sarah no matter how much it fucking hurts because then at least he’ll feel something in this godforsaken world.

One afternoon at Bill and Frank’s, after lunch, since Bill was an asshole but always insisted on feeding them first, Joel sits on the swing on the back porch and selfishly wishes he had a guitar in his lap. It’s a beautiful spring day. The sun is out, lighting up the garden and he can hear Tess’ laughter lighting up the kitchen.

Then a butterfly appears and his breath catches.

Joel has seen butterflies after, but this is an Eastern Tailed-Blue. Everes comyntas he can almost hear Sarah saying. Can almost see her rolling her eyes at his Everes com-whatas?

The butterfly, oblivious to his current, wheezing state, bounces along the tentatively blooming strawberry plants. Joel watches, one hand clenched on the wood of the swing and the other in a tight fist on his thigh, helpless.

He isn’t sure how long it’s been when the porch door opens. Tess steps out, glass of wine in hand with a “Joel?”

He can’t look at her. Can’t tear his eyes away from the butterfly even when Tess fills his field of vision, leaning in front of him where she’s sat next to him, long, clean hair draped over one shoulder and nose shining faintly from sunscreen. “Joel. Take a breath.”

It takes him one try. Then two. But he’s breathing again. The butterfly is closer now, landed on a single white blossom.

Tess follows his gaze. “Oh, how pretty.”

“Butterflies,” he says. Gasps, more like it. He hardly recognizes his own voice. “Butterflies were her favorite.”

It’s the first time he’s offered up information on his own and it surprises him as much as it does Tess. It might be because they’re out of the QZ and in a place that reminds them of the old world, even if their worlds aren’t there. Their guards get let down more with each visit, loose-limbed from their friends, and the meal and the wine. But, simply? It’s a good day. For once, a memory of Sarah doesn’t sour it.

Tess clearly wants to know more, carefully studying him. What she finds has her testing the waters, asking, “Any particular kind?”

He manages to force out a “Blue.”

Before the outbreak, Joel didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Or anywhere in between. Once someone was gone, they were gone. That didn’t change even once Sarah died.

Joel can’t hope. Tess does that for him. She curls up under his arm resting on the swing, drops her temple against his shoulder, and greets the butterfly with a gentle, almost reverential, “Hi, Sarah.”

It’s too much.

He grits his teeth against the knee-jerk reaction of standing up and stalking off and instead closes his eyes and keeps the image of the butterfly against the back of his eyelids. Invites a memory, unbidden, of a chubby toddler running around the backyard with open fists and a beaming smile. An eight-year-old with loose teeth and a library book. The distant sounds of Bill and Frank bickering in the kitchen are replaced by squealed giggles and Dad! Dad! Did you know that butterflies can see colors? Yeah! Red, green, and yellow!

Sarah isn’t here with them, no matter how touching the sentiment is. So Joel keeps his eyes closed and indulges. Stays where she’s still alive and gasping at a butterfly crawling up her finger instead of bullets embedded in her belly.

He very carefully does not allow himself to think about Sarah, crouched in front of the strawberry plants, marveling over the butterfly. Or her tucked between him and Tess on the porch swing.

Joel lets his head tip back, fingers of his left hand, pried from the wood, idly brushing Tess’ upper arm as she stays curled against him, watching the butterfly until it flits away and Frank comes out to collect them for dessert.

The guilt, kept at bay with their friends, slams right back into him at full force alongside reality once they’re back in the QZ in their apartment.

The sweet strawberry jam Joel can still taste on the back of his tongue threatens to make a reappearance. What was he doing thinking of Sarah like that? He doesn’t deserve those memories of her. Doesn’t deserve to indulge in them or in a fantasy where she’s with him because it’s his fault she isn’t. Joel crushes any remaining happiness beneath his heel as they unpack their haul, mindful of Tess’ gaze that says she knows exactly what he’s doing. But he won’t let her do anything to stop him.

He punishes himself even more, following this. Increases drops. Bribes more guards. Finally takes care of the skeleton crew that tried to steal their previous haul. Makes himself and Tess untouchable, from both citizens and soldiers. Joel doesn’t like it, doesn’t enjoy it, but he does what he has to do to survive. Does a little more than that, too, so they have extra painkillers when Tess’ cramps get bad and enough ration cards stocked up that they can take a day or two off.

If Sarah was alive, what would she think of him? He remembers her quiet horror at him killing their neighbor, at his refusal to stop for that family by the side of the road. He’s done much worse than that now but still can’t bring himself to feel guilty over it. He did what he had to do to survive.

Joel quietly reconciles. He hasn’t changed. He’s always been this way. And Sarah always knew this part of him. The apocalypse just brought it out.

A few weeks later, a stained glass butterfly appears hung up on the window in their living room, sunlight caught in its wings casting shapes of blue and purple light on the floor.

The only reason Joel doesn't toss it out or shove it somewhere he won't see it is because he’s tired. He’s tired of suffering even though he knows well that he deserves it. He also knows that in a few hours, he’ll slide right back into the self-destructive cycle. But for now, it makes him think of that laughing, fascinated baby beneath all the roiling guilt. Makes him think of Sarah and how she should be remembered. But he can’t do that yet.

It also makes him think of the butterfly above the sink back in Texas. How similar life now feels sometimes to the old world- the nostalgia dredged up with every visit to Bill and Frank's- the same mundane routines of folding laundry on the couch or counting pills instead of bills at the kitchen table. Makes him think of living that life with Tess.

It’s easier, to imagine a time just for them because of how impossible it would be. Tess was halfway across the country with a husband, a kid, and a cushy job with both lab and fieldwork. Living a life that would have never collided with Joel’s until it fell apart.

She told him how she got out of Detroit, what she did to survive, and how easy it was to do, followed with a tremulous whispered I don’t know who I am anymore.

You’re the same person, Joel told her, You were always like this. So was I.

When Tess gets home from helping a neighbor he turns the radio off and slow dances with her in the kitchen to no music. Just her gentle breathing against his neck and his low singing to whatever snatches of songs come to mind before she prods him into singing Iris again, butterfly watching over them.

As usual, just when he thinks everything is okay, or has a happy moment, it comes crashing down as the years pass, yanked out from right under his feet. Gradually. Then suddenly. Happiness comes in waves, they say, but it feels like the tide is never coming in.

Tommy joins the Fireflies. Then he leaves. Then he quits. Then he stops calling in. One week he’s on the radio and the next he’s not. Joel nearly breaks his and Tess’ self-imposed break from leaving the walls, grabbing their guns and packs, as if they’ll get to him across the country in the middle of fucktown, Wyoming, on foot, until she calms him down and tells him to think through it, Joel, use your goddamn brain. They can’t get to Tommy like this. Not with what they have and more so with what they don’t have.

So he and Tess start making plans to get out for good.

It doesn’t help that FEDRA gets stricter enforcing enough rules and checkpoints that even they can’t skirt around like they used to, even with bribes. So they spend more time in the zone, working any shifts to collect enough ration cards to barely cushion their stock.

Joel’s on maintenance after a storm blows through and the power drops out when he hears it. For certain jobs involving electrical and plumbing, FEDRA brought in kids from their school since they could get to the tight places adults couldn’t. Joel watched them lead a slip of a girl between two walls to connect the wiring and now he’s listening to her pained cries, not unlike Sarah’s, as something goes wrong, and she gets electrocuted.

Not here. He keeps it together until he gets home where Tess waits for him, the last bottle of their smuggled whiskey already poured out.

He doesn’t have to tell her. Word gets around fast in the zone. Tess is clearly already a chipped McDonald’s mug in like she normally is when the neighbor’s toddler is up crying for his mother, and pushes a plastic Pizza Hut cup over to him without a sound.

Only then, does Joel allow it to overtake him. He never thought he’d hear those cries again outside of his dreams. He gasps, breathes, drinks, and doesn’t protest when Tess slides a few halved pills over to him. He greedily swallows them down and leans into Tess who holds him as he shakes and fucks him when he nudges at her to roll on top of him.

They redouble their efforts to leave.

Then Robert screws them over, which actually ends up being the best thing that could have happened even if Joel still wants to beat his face in.

The panic shifts after they leave the zone with Ellie.

Right after, before they’ve even cleared the fence- before then, really, when she looked at him with cast light from the butterfly on her cheek- and the soldier in front of him remains while the bleak landscape fades into the field and suddenly, Joel has another little girl to protect.

Then he learns she’s Infected. Immune, she explains, but the bite mark on her arm is a death sentence either way.

But she’s still a kid with stupid puns and a giant goofy grin and she reminds him of everything but nothing about Sarah. He feels the threads of attachment sneaking out and stomps on them until they recede. Even so, they curl around his heart, spread through his chest, and climb up his throat, threatening to choke him. Joel does his best to ignore them.

Tess doesn’t. He can tell she gets attached almost immediately after Ellie’s immunity is revealed. But it isn’t to Ellie, at least, not yet. It’s to the hope embedded in the whorling scars that call her attention like a moth to a flame. The hope Tess has never been able to let go of even after all these years. Joel understands why. He just doesn’t want it to be the thing that gets them killed.

He has nightmares about that happening, sure, but never attacks. Things change after the museum and the capitol building where Tess barely gets out alive- they reached the woods and Joel took her aside, held her so close he couldn't differentiate between their heartbeats and still it wasn’t enough to reassure him even with her hand against his back, her lips on his, and her I'm alright, Tex. I'm okay- then when they get to Bill and Frank’s and all that’s waiting for them is a letter that says keep Tess safe- after they go through the hellscape that’s Kansas City and meet Henry and Sam and lose them within a day- and months later when they’re lost on the Wyoming plains and he hears his brother is most likely dead.

If Tommy’s- if Tommy’s dead then Joel has failed another member of his family and another two if they came out all this way only to be killed by whatever’s on the other side of that river. A few steps outside the cabin and he’s leaned up against a fence post.

Ellie’s freaking out, asking Is he having a heart attack!?

No, Tess says, but he hears the concern. Joel, take a breath.

The cold air is as much of a shock as the next attack that happens a day later when he’s standing with his hands up and no way to defend himself or the girls. This time they’re outnumbered and there’s a dog instead of a tester gun. His heartbeat fills his ears and the horses in front of him blur when the dog is led, snapping and snarling, over to Ellie.

It’s gonna rip her apart. It’s gonna rip her apart or she’ll be gunned down on the spot and he’ll be helpless to stop it all over again and- and then Ellie laughs and the danger passes. Then one of the riders says she knows Tommy and that he’s alive and Joel is on a horse between one moment and the next with Tess tucked in close behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist with an exultant squeeze that kicks his heart back into rhythm.

Knowing they’re on their way to see Tommy lifts some of the weight off his shoulders, and, to Joel’s surprise, sends happiness sweeping over him. It’s followed by another happy thought: his panic attack wasn’t about Sarah for once. Then guilt crashes down on him just like it had in the apartment those years ago. This time, however, it’s followed closely by oh no. Oh no, Joel thinks as he glances at Ellie riding beside them before forcing his gaze away and up to the approaching valley, the steady beat of horse hooves against frozen ground echoing in his chest like a pendulum in a clock tower. Oh no.

The guilt doesn’t let up once he has Tommy in his arms and they’re being fed and led around the little utopia by the woman his brother abandoned contact with him for. It gets worse while he stands there, listening to Maria list out all the things he can’t provide Tess and Ellie with. Can’t provide himself with.

That guilt makes a home right next to the guilt that he can't protect them either. Instead of panicking, Joel just feels bitter resignation. These attacks of this, his age, his deafness- he's a liability.

So Joel leaves the girls with Maria and follows Tommy to the bar that he storms out of moments later, fuming and hurt, and makes a hard left straight into the town center where he sees her.

And she’s there, wrapped in a puffer jacket even though it doesn’t get cold enough for one in Austin, hair fanned out around the collar. A little taller than he remembers but kids grow like hell when they reach their teens. Joel had to replace nearly her entire wardrobe a month earlier during back-to-school shopping. Shirts, shoes, jeans and all.

His heart trips over itself. Why wouldn’t it? She’s here. Then it happens again. And again until he’s staggering against a metal pole so cold his fingers almost stick to it, breath sticking in his lungs like he’s choking, but desperately keeps his eyes on her even as his vision swims. She’s laughing. It’s been so long since he heard that sound except it’s different and he doesn’t know why until it’s cut with Tess’ voice.

“Joel. Joel. Take a breath.”

Everything snaps back into focus suddenly. Joel takes in the frigid air. Takes in Tess standing beside him, bundled in a new coat with freshly-washed hair draped over it and watching him with the same calculating gaze. Confusion swiftly follows the relief. He didn’t have Tess when he had Sarah. He’s not- this isn’t a dream. Joel looks back. Is about to call out and then she turns, and the illusion shatters. It isn’t Sarah. It never was. How could it be when Joel carried her lifeless body long after she grew stiff and cold? Sarah never had the chance to outgrow the new clothes he bought her. Now she’s just bones and cloth and a ghost behind the broken watch on his wrist.

Tess watches the woman go. "Is that what she looked like?"

It takes him a moment, but Joel nods. He’d forgotten the exact curve of her nose, the slant of her eyes, but he never forgot her hair. Or her smile. But this woman doesn’t have that. No one else could.

Tess takes him by the hand and leads him away, concern this time even more palpable. Three times in two days, she says. It’s never been this bad.

He hasn’t had so much to lose. The empty space where the woman stood serves as a swift reminder. Sarah is gone all because he couldn’t protect her and the same thing is going to happen to Tess and Ellie.

Joel hasn't lied to Tess in twenty years but he says he has to go fix his boot, feels her gaze on his back as he walks off. It’s shitty, going behind Tess’ back like this, but he has to keep her safe. It was nice to live in the fantasy while it lasted.

So Joel tries to convince Tommy and himself that the girls are better off without him. He comes back to the house they’ve been put up in to Tess waiting for him, clearly already knowing what he’s planning, and the fight that ensues is the worst one they’ve ever had.

Bill told you to keep me safe.

I am!

By sending us off with Tommy?!

He’s capable enough. The words fall flat before they even leave his mouth. You saw what happened in the museum. In Kansas City. You’re better off.

You don’t believe that. Joel- The way she says his name nearly makes him fold right there and then - if we go with him, we’ll be dead within fucking days. Don’t- I know him. And you do too. When it comes down to it, Tommy can’t make hard decisions. You can. That’s why I- Tess shakes her head. I thought we were partners.

The conversation with Ellie leaves him smarting in a different way than Tess did.

She isn’t his daughter. He’s not her father. He keeps repeating it, as if he says it enough he’ll believe it.

Joel doesn’t sleep the entire night. He tried to take the couch but Tess called him in with You’ll fuck up your back even more on that and he joined her in bed, staring at the ceiling instead of her back where she pointedly curled away from him.

The distance feels like miles rather than a few measly inches. They’ve separated before, but only for a few hours, a day at the most, never anything longer. This will be the first time they leave each other.

Tess is awake when he’s all packed and ready to go, but her eyes remain closed, even during the goodbye kiss he presses to her cheek. He can’t bring himself to check on Ellie.

He gets to the stables and stalls. And tries not to think about Ellie laughing at that coincidental pun. The fuck is he doing? Half an hour later they’re there and Joel offers up his paltry explanation and apology and says You should have a choice.

Ellie looks to Tess who tells her I’m going with you no matter what.

She chooses him. Shoves her bag against his chest and tells him to help her up on the horse while Tommy looks on with a smug smile that makes Joel want to hit him upside the head. Tess, however, doesn’t come around as easily. She even takes her own horse though she doesn’t know how to ride and stays resolutely quiet, answering only Ellie’s prompts for conversation.

It’s fine. And, quite frankly, the cold shoulder is what he deserves.

It lasts until he gets stabbed and tries to get them to go back, shoves Ellie away like he can shove her out of his heart and Tess is leaning over him doing his stitches all while muttering Don’t you fucking dare try and fucking leave me- us- again you goddamn asshole and Ellie’s tentatively curled up at his other side, one hand on his chest like she’s solidifying her place right beneath it.

It shifts after that. He still has his attacks, but now they’re solely about Ellie. Not Sarah.

The first one out of Jackson comes after Silver Lake. After they find Ellie wandering around outside that burning restaurant and clean her up in her catatonic state. She’s finally asleep, tucked in tight between him and Tess who looks as shaken as he feels, clutching the back of his shirt with her other arm still around Ellie, Joel’s arms around both of them, as if he holds them close enough he can put them back together. Next is in the weeks after when Ellie refuses to eat, tosses up everything she manages to keep down, and passes out when they're walking. She’s fine, but Joel shakes for hours after seeing her body crumple and being unable to wake her.

Then they get to Salt Lake where Joel wakes up in a dingy hospital room after getting knocked out, to Tess yelling somewhere and a frightened, but very much alive and conscious Ellie sitting on the bed, one hand gripping his shirt and her knife in the other, with armed guards standing at the door.

They were going to kill her Tess tells him, which is enough to have him standing and reaching for a gun that isn’t there even with Ellie’s protests, but then she adds without even knowing it would work.

Everything sort of devolves from there. There’s a lot of shouting on Ellie and Joel’s parts. If the walls were striped pink and blue, Joel would swear they were back in the bedroom in Jackson arguing about who exactly is going to get her killed and if he should leave her.

It ain’t worth it. No damn cure or vaccine’s worth your life, Ellie!

It’s not going to kill me! Tess talked to the doctors and Marlene and came up with a different plan!

At that, Joel looks to Tess, a thread of betrayal snaking up his neck and stretching between them. It snaps as soon as he realizes it’s there and shame coils in his gut. He trusts Tess to make the right decision to keep her safe.

But it didn’t break soon enough and Joel sees Tess’ hurt at what she finds and it widens the rift between them that opened up after their fight in Jackson and refused to close. The hurt’s gone as soon as he clocks it, replaced by Tess continuing to wait, as usual, for them to let it out before settling the score.

We’re staying, she says as they fume, as long as it takes to get a vaccine. To Ellie, But the second they step out of line, or you wanna fucking leave, to Joel, we kill everyone in here and take her back to Jackson.

That settles it. He doesn’t like it, but, ultimately, it’s Ellie’s choice. So Joel spends the next few weeks comforting Ellie through the process as she shakes and pukes and cries and goes through everything they put her through with brave determination. Since he can’t strangle the doctors, he advocates, standing at Tess’ shoulder as she talks with them and they stay up late at night together reviewing the exact plan she hammered out with the medical staff and her undergraduate biology degree. Even if they knew killing Ellie would work, Joel knows he and Tess would have killed everyone in that hospital to get her out, choice or not. They can’t lose another kid.

Ellie isn’t just his. She’s theirs. Joel’s long since accepted it by now. Speedran it somewhere between Jackson and Silver Lake. Before then, really, in that motel outside Kansas City. He cared about her, resisted it, but when she fell into his arms, babbling like a baby, his purpose in her life shifted sharply from smuggler to dad and he spoke the first baby girl he had in twenty years.

The watch isn't as heavy on his wrist anymore. It's still there, a constant reminder Joel isn't yet ready to put aside. That's what's going to get them out of this hospital. You keep them safe it reminds him so you don't flinch next time.

It wasn't time that did it he told Ellie while Tess looked on; her gaze knowing, proud, and sad. Joel didn’t have the time to acknowledge it before the flash bomb, or even after, with the whirlwind of starting the process toward a vaccine.

But he notices Tess pulling away from him the way she’s been doing for the past few months.

It was subtle at first, but they’ve been together for twenty years. But they’ve also only been together for twenty years. Joel never met the Tess before the world ended just like she never met that version of him either. She never saw him, laughing so freely on the couch with his kid, just like he never saw her cradling her baby before he got bit. Tess, who accepted falling back into the parent role sooner than he had. Tess, who hasn't breathed a word about her son while Joel is telling Ellie all about his daughter.

It’s easier to think and talk about Sarah now. Joel just hates that the first time he does, both girls look at him like he's a ticking time bomb.

The hospital was updated right before the outbreak, so there are TVs in nearly every remaining room, including Ellie’s. It doesn’t take much to get it working and when he’s on his way back from looting supply closets for scrubs for Ellie since she can’t stand the thin paper gowns, Joel finds an untouched stack of VHS tapes, still in their brightly colored bubbled cases. They’re on a different wing- most of the pediatric ward didn’t survive the bombings- and stacked loosely on a side table next to an empty bed. Whoever was in the room last must have had their child with them. They’re mostly Disney movies and Ellie, whenever she’s in the mood and sans a migraine from a procedure or medication, loves watching them.

Mulan is playing when it happens. This was one’a Sarah’s favorite movies hangs in the air.

Ellie's the first to recover, glancing at a quiet Tess before back to Joel and tentatively asking, which one was her favorite?

This time he doesn’t drag the words out. Beauty and the Beast.

After that, Ellie takes it as the go-ahead to ask about her without prompting. Was Sarah ever in the hospital? Did she like giraffes? What about Jello?

Just twice. Once when she was born and once when she hurt her elbow during soccer. Dislocated it. She was playing central midfield and collided with an opposing team member who should have been red-carded two holds prior but they didn't ask me to ref. No, she was more of a butterfly girl. Yeah, the orange- hey don’t eat that; it’s twenty years old. Jesus Christ, are they trying to poison you?

I’ve eaten twenty-year-old Chef Boyardee and turned out fine.

That’s debatable.

It’s sporadic, nowhere near as common as her asking for stories about the old world, but Sarah sneaks into those too, when Ellie is curled up on his lap in the ratty rocking recliner after a long day of being poked and prodded and Tess watches them with the same look as before.

She doesn’t distance herself from them physically, but the emotional cavern deepens and there’s an absence in her gaze when Sarah comes up and even in the times where she doesn’t and it’s just him and Ellie.

It’s just him and Ellie. He misses Tess even when she’s in the same room.

In between everything, Joel tries to bring it up but Tess always shoots him down with save it for when we’re in Jackson. All their attention is on Ellie and her health and getting her out alive, as it should be, but he can’t wait until they get back to Jackson where he tried to leave Tess to suture this wound shut.

What Joel doesn’t expect is for Tess to have the same attacks he did.

It happens the night of Ellie flatlining on the operating table before a procedure can even start, body jerking under the paddles, deaf to Tess and Joel pleading on the other side of the glass. Tess got to the door first, trying the handle, throwing her weight against it in time with the shocks and the clear that somehow seemed crystal clear even muffled through the window. Joel was busy watching, frozen, thinking don’t do this to us, baby, but glanced back just in time to see the awful, stricken look on his partner’s face as she realized the door wasn’t budging before she pulled out her gun and blew the locked handle clean off.

Ellie’s heart restarted the moment they entered the room. That was the only reason, Joel thought, why Tess didn’t continue shooting, though she came very close when a doctor tried to insist on continuing with the procedure anyway.

She’s going to wake up, Tess threatened, voice empty in a way Joel’s only heard a few times, and you’re going to tell me what you gave her.

It turned out one of the doctors tried a new anesthetic without consulting either of them first. Not like they have any extensive medical history on Ellie that they would know it would cause an allergic reaction, but there’s been enough trial and error already with different medications that it would seem practical.

Ellie wakes up, groggy, confused, and sore, and spends the rest of the day weaning off the anesthesia in bed, only content with the two of them on either side of her quietly arguing over Boggle- gluon ain’t a real word, Tess- sure it is, cowboy, now quit being a sore loser- just to hear her huffed giggles.

She finally manages to fall asleep when the sky’s still dark. Joel takes the opportunity to step out and grab a cup of coffee, albeit shitty coffee, but still coffee. He won’t need it to stay awake. If he sleeps, his dreams will be about Ellie unresponsive on the operating table with a bloody middle. He grabs another cup before heading back to the room, one hand on his pistol the entire way there. Just because the doctors and the Fireflies acquiesced to their demands, it doesn’t mean he trusts them.

The only way Joel’s comfortable leaving Ellie now is with Tess by her side. She hasn’t moved when he returns, but the second he’s at the threshold, he knows something is wrong.

Tess is hardly breathing, eerily still, sitting in the chair facing the door with hands curled in loose fists on her thighs.

“Tess?”

She looks up, eyes sliding from Ellie to him, wide and vacant. Her mouth opens and closes around nothing until she manages a thready and scared “Joel?”

He sets the coffee down so quickly that some of it sloshes over the rim, and crosses the room in two strides that lead him right to her feet, crouched in front of her even as his knees click in protest. Joel doesn’t hesitate to put his hands on her, sliding his fingers beneath hers to hold them. Instead of shrugging him away, Tess grips him tight.

“C’mon, Tessa,” he says. Tries to do what she does for him. Stays calm. Breathes in and out. “Take a breath. She’s alright. They brought her back. We got to her. Just breathe.”

Tess nods, mouth wobbling as she shuts her eyes tight, chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath.

Joel’s hardly ever seen Tess lose her composure. Can count on one hand the times he has in the past twenty years. It happened, sure, but not like this. She usually calmed herself down before Joel could even process it.

The first, when Joel got separated from the group early on and Tess was the one to find him, the only one to go back for him, fighting her way through Infected and other raiders, collapsing against his chest in a fit of sobs when she did, and now.

There have been in-betweens. Ones that fit with the rest. Like at Bill and Franks, when she ran down the hallway to their room and he followed, found her gripping the handle and calling out their names. His Tess was the only thing that pulled her away from the locked door. She’d turned around with the same vacant stare before it was gone in a blink.

Joel pulls her up again, this time guiding her over to the moth-bitten and stained pull-out couch they moved in there when the bed got too crowded. He tucks her to his left where he can still hear her shuddery, too-loud breathing, feel her unusually tense against him when she usually melted into him. Joel glances at Ellie to make sure she’s still asleep, that they haven’t woken her up, before he turns back to Tess, pulling their joined hands up to rest over his heart that’s beating just shy of slower than hers.

The other was when they met Sam and Henry. Sam, who was just a few years older than her son, and Henry, who was the same age her son would have been had he lived.

It wasn't an immediate reaction. Survival mode kicked in before anything. But Joel saw Tess’ face when Ellie and Sam burst into the motel room, Sam on top of Ellie thrashing and growling. Heard the hitch in her breath when they finished packing down the boy's graves. Didn't have time to acknowledge it before Ellie was calling back for them to leave.

After Joel had his first panic attack back in that bedroom, he and Tess fought something fierce. He was still embarrassed and guilty and angry at himself but also at Tess who didn’t carry the pain of losing her child the same way he did.

He didn’t understand why she wasn’t hurting like him. Why she wasn’t reacting the same way. The circumstances in which they lost their children were polar opposites, but it was the same loss. Joel, in a moment that was not one of his finest, accused her of not loving her son as much as he loved Sarah.

Tess went frighteningly blank before her usually controlled features twisted in so much rage that Joel feared she’d leave him, not taken by death, but of her own accord.

I locked my son in the basement, she told him, and stayed there until he stopped calling out for me. So don’t you fucking dare tell me how to mourn him.

Tess doesn’t move when he can tell she’s caught her breath and her pulse isn’t racing against his fingertips anymore, but she stiffens ever so slightly. Cuts off his low, steady stream of you’re alright she’s alright just breathe with "Don’t-" feel sorry for me isn’t included, but Joel hears it anyway.

She never pitied him, so Joel isn’t about to start with her.

"I'm not. I don’t," he says. "You know I wouldn't.” She does, but hearing it makes her loosen up. Joel clears his throat, shifts, and holds her hand closer in case she pulls away. “I’ve been selfish, Tess.”

“Joel-”

“No.” He cuts her off swiftly, shaking his head. “This ain’t an apology. It’s an explanation. And it’s long overdue.” The look she gives him tells him she sees right through him, but allows him to continue.

“With Ellie-" Joel begins. Can’t resist a glance at her at her name. She’s still asleep, heart monitor steadily beeping, mouth popped open and Boggle loosely held across her lap. “She’s not Sarah,” he says. He watches Tess watch Ellie and thinks about how erratically she broke the door down earlier. And she’s not Ben. “She won’t ever be. But I can still be her dad.”

Some ways Tess mourned her child, however, were the same. Like the photo tucked in her bra. Like the time she confessed, after he told her about his scar, that she thought about killing herself too.

It was around three weeks after the outbreak, she told him over a shared bottle of stolen whiskey and whatever remaining battery in their lamps a year in, The entire time I was running on instinct then and I guess it finally ran out and I thought the fuck am I doing?

It’s easy to forget without a physical reminder. No scar looked back at him every time he saw her face, just like the photo hidden behind her clothes.

When he did remember, however, it hit him like a brick. Like when he heard Tess trying to talk down Henry while he collected Ellie up off the floor.

Henry. Henry put down the gun. Listen to me. You couldn’t save him. I know- I know how it feels but you don’t have to- No!

Joel might not have killed Sarah, but Tess killed her husband. Swiftly and instinctually when he came running at her. The horror didn’t set in until after, she said, when she had to drag his body out of the house and into the backyard. The guilt and shame she felt for picking herself over her family followed three weeks later. I was alone, Tess said. And I didn’t see the point in living after losing them either. But then I got attacked and nearly killed and realized I wanted to live. Even if it was just for me.

Joel nearly could have collapsed with relief. Me too.

But there isn’t just a him or a her anymore. They’re living for each other- they have been for a very long time- but now they’re living for Ellie too. They’re a family. They’re not just a partner unit now- they’re a parental unit. Something Joel’s never been a part of but Tess has.

And it makes him feel like the world’s biggest asshole for not realizing that’s why she’s been pulling away sooner.

“Bein’ a dad-” Joel says. “‘s all I knew when I had Sarah. It was just me and her. It ain’t like that with Ellie and I’ve- I’ve gotta get used to that.” He didn’t know how to be a dad and a partner. He never was one. Sarah's mother signed all her rights over to him before the ink on their daughter's birth certificate even dried and the ring Joel got from his mom stayed in his sock drawer.

Tess had a son and a partner. A partner that wasn’t him. A husband she still grieves. Joel isn’t her husband- maybe one day and that’s an entire other thing- but he loves her. He’s always loved her, just never allowed himself to confront or say it. Besides, Tess won’t hear it. Not yet. He also doesn’t know how to tell her. But Tess knows. Knowing her, she probably always has. He can tell from the catch in her breath. At how her chin trembles until he places his thumb on it. She looks at him, eyes wide and earnest. “Me too.” Then, with a shaky breath, asks, "You gonna leave me again?”

He deserves that. Joel uses their clasped hands resting on his chest to tug her closer and this time, Tess relaxes against him. “Never,” he says, soft, but heavy with promise. “So don’t you think about leavin’ me.” He lifts his fingers from her chin to brush against her cheek, watching how the glint of his watch in the dim lighting mirrors her unshed tears. “We’ll figure this out together, Tessa. We always do. We’re partners.”

Tess studies him, just like she did back in that bedroom. Waiting, he realizes, for him to back down or leave like he did then, but he doesn’t. He just said he wouldn’t. The hesitancy would rankle him, usually, but Joel knows how Tess works. So he steadily meets her gaze until she quietly agrees, “Yeah.” Keeping her eyes on him, she shifts closer and leans her temple on his collarbone. “Okay, Joel.”

Everything that comes after this- that- can wait for Jackson.

Joel kisses her forehead, then her lips when Tess tilts her chin up. Brings their still-joined hands up to cup under her jaw and keep her there for a few more kisses, before wrapping her up in his arms, cheek resting on her hairline. Tess twines their fingers together and slides her other arm around his middle with a sigh so content it makes his eyes prickle. Makes the room around them blur as he presses a kiss to the top of her head. Joel feels that sigh rattle around in his chest, the contentment settling dangerously close to the tightly held twins of guilt and fear guarding his heart. They haven’t been doing the best job he thinks begrudgingly as he holds Tess against him and follows her gaze to Ellie.

The coffee cools. Neither of them moves. Both of them stay awake and watch Ellie sleep.

After a while, Joel's gaze drifts to the wall above the door where a Firefly symbol sits sprayed onto the crumbling drywall, just like in every other damn corner of the hospital. Only this one is different.

One day, when Ellie needed a break but was too weak to leave her room, she demanded Joel hold her up there since she was a shrimp and still couldn't reach even standing on a chair and, using a few fingerpaints Tess revived with tap water and some sharpies that somehow weren't dried up, she turned the tag into a butterfly that actually looked pretty decent.

I remember the one you guys had in your apartment Ellie said after the big reveal since she forbade them from looking until she was done and Joel had more paint in his hair than ended up on the wall. I know it's not the same but… I thought it'd make this shitty room feel more like a home. And I was getting really fucking tired of seeing that. Her confidence wavered when neither of them spoke. I don't- never mind. It's stupid. I can-

Looks like a Morpho menelaus, Joel managed around the thickness lodged in his throat. 'S nice.

Brightens up the place just right, Tess added with a glance to him then back to Ellie. You got any ideas for the rest of this dump, Banksy?

I don't even know who that is, Ellie complained while grinning and uncapping a marker. They better be good.

Taste is subjective, Tess replied dryly. But I liked it.

The butterfly is large and blue and black, colored in heavily to hide the spray paint and completely different from the delicate ones hung up on the windows of his two former homes, but when the sun hit just right, it gave the wings the same iridescent glow Sarah always marveled over. In a few hours, based on the light creeping in outside the window rather than his frozen watch, Joel will get to see it happen again. And he doesn't dread it.

#asks and answers #prompts #the last of us #joel miller #ellie williams #tess servopoulos #joel/tess #joel x tess #the last of us fic #my fic #152glasslippers #i started this draft in march lmao help #this is also on ao3!

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