
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/11528946.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      The_Last_of_Us
  Relationship:
      Ellie/Joel_(The_Last_of_Us)
  Character:
      Joel_(The_Last_of_Us), Ellie_(The_Last_of_Us), OC_-_Character
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-07-17 Updated: 2018-01-01 Chapters: 4/? Words: 34061
****** Leading Up To This ******
by Forbidden_Stilinski
Summary
     You never truly know just how someone might change your life, whether
     it's for the better or for the worst, and you can never know right
     away which way a person is going to go. Ellie and Joel found each
     other through a mission that could have ended up killing them both -
     now without that being held over their heads, the only thing they
     have to think about is themselves and what they mean to each other.
     What could go wrong, right?
     (NOT COMPLETE! Archive just won't let me select that it has multiple
     chapters.)
     (If you cannot read, this will end up eventually being a Ellie/Joel
     fic. That means a relationship. Please do not read if you are not
     prepared for this.)
     (There will be OCs featured in this fanfiction to keep the story
     going with the dark plot ideas I have in my mind - please don't
     challenge me on canon, this is a fanfiction.)
***** Chapter 1 *****
                                  Chapter_One
                                        
                                      15
                                        

Sometimes you couldn’t predict the way people changed your lives. Ellie had
known that ever since she had left Boston with Joel. She had known all along
that there would be a change in her life, and that he would be the one to
change it - that fact was undeniable and the effect was inevitable. But, she
hadn’t known just how much her life had changed with him in it, until around
about the time that Sam had been shot dead as an infected and Henry had shot
himself dead not long after it.
She sat looking out the window now, and she heard the sound of whistling and
cleaning. When Joel wasn’t guarding the wall and doing his rounds with Tommy by
his side, he was determined to make the small amount of grounds they’d been
given into a home. Ellie had never really experience a home, the same way that
Joel had experienced one, and she was excited to see what Joel would create
with their small space.
Ellie herself spent most of the time at, what could easily be considered a
school. She sat with a bunch of other kids, learning a bunch of things, from
English and Math, to history which was more about the world they had lost to
the apocalypse than anything else that Ellie had read, and sometimes they’d
learn a few basic survival skills; all of which Ellie knew, but it did give her
the chance to perfect them, or come up with her own techniques. Because nobody
wanted to say it, but everyone knew that Ellie had had it a little bit harder
than the other kids in the classroom. The kids knew it too, and they either
liked to ask stories about the outside, or openly mock her for it.
Because of this, Ellie would often head back home feeling frustrated. Joel
would notice this, quite easily, and try to make it up to her, either making a
nice meal out of whatever food had been given to them, or by teaching her new
things, like new songs on the guitar, or more advanced survival techniques, or
something fun. Joel had taught her a bunch of old games that he used to play as
a kid, unfortunately she hadn’t exactly made a friend yet to play them with,
but she had Joel, who sometimes had the time and patience if the day hadn’t
been tiring.
She stopped looking out the window for the moment to pay attention to the fact
that the whistling had stopped and had been replaced by two people talking. She
could recognise Joel’s voice rather easily, but the other voice, a female one,
was a lot harder to recognise - in fact it didn’t even seem familiar. With a
minor frown on her face, she headed towards the hallway and walked out into the
kitchen.
Ellie didn’t say anything as she looked into the dining area - Joel was there
sitting with some woman, who looked a little cut up around the face and stuff,
but nothing that stifled the fact that she was attractive. Ellie continued to
stand there in silence as the two continued to talk. It took Ellie a while to
realise this woman was another teacher.
“I just think, personally, she might be better off with another class - the one
she’s in at the moment is a little…under-advanced for her,” Joel said slowly,
as if trying not to offend the woman in front of him, who just nodded lightly,
“I just think she could progress a lot better if she had more support, with
students around her who are a lot more like-minded. A class in which she’s
learning things that genuinely interest her, also.”
The woman bit her lip before saying, “the issue is Joel, the other class is
full of mostly older teenagers. Admittedly Ellie is older than everyone else in
her class by a solid year or two, she’s a bit too young for the other class.
They’re seventeen and eighteen years old Joel, and I don’t think she’ll be able
to feel any more comfortable in that environment than the one she’s currently
in.”
Joel sighed, “I would agree - but there’s the fact that she already knows the
stuff being taught to the kids in her class. She would feel more at ease, or at
least be too distracted to be uncomfortable, if you could just put her in a
class where she could actually learn a thing or two- stimulate her mind more.”
There was a moment of silence in which Ellie tried hard to not even breathe in
case they heard her.
“I’ll talk to some of the others, specifically Ellie’s current teacher, to see
where she’s at with her grades and such - but don’t get your hopes up,” the
woman stood up, brushing some of her own long blonde hair off of her shoulder,
“things like to be kept in order around here - people don’t like it when the
peace gets disturbed, even by the slightest oddity, even if that means a
slightly more-advanced child.”
There was a slight pink hue to the womans’ cheeks that Ellie chose to ignore as
she left the house, succeeding on not slamming the door that needed to have its
hinges fixed again - Ellie had tried numerous times without success, especially
seeing as she didn’t have all day to focus on it.
“I know you’re there Ellie, come ‘ere.”
Ellie hadn’t realised that she had subconsciously managed to hide herself
behind the corner wall, and took a step towards where Joel could see her.
“Why would you ask her to change my classes?” Ellie asked, sounding genuinely
curious as she moved over to sit where the other woman had been sitting, “I’m
doing fine in my own class.”
That was a lie. A long with the bullying she was already suffering from, she
was depressed about how boring her classes were. How dull everything was -
there was no competition left, no struggle, and that just wasn’t the lifestyle
Ellie was used to having.
“You’re no longer eager to go to school Ellie, if I don’t do something about it
now, you’ll take it into your own hands, and it’ll start getting messy.”
Ellie blew air out of her nose, “however do you mean, Joel.”
“You’ll stop going,” Joel said, “or you’ll start harassing the other children
yourself, paying them back for all the trouble they’ve been giving you.”
Ellie shrugged, “if you think about it hard enough, they kind of deserve it-.”
Joel shook his head, “I’m not saying they don’t deserve…something,” Joel
muttered, trailing off, “I just don’t want you getting in trouble for
disturbing the peace here, or whatever Rachel said,” Joel said. Ellie figured
for herself that Rachel must have been the blond.
Ellie looked sheepishly down at her shoes, which were just starting to get
holes in them. Joel would have to try and ask for new ones for her soon.
“Things will get better Ellie,” Joel said. He said this a lot, but this time he
sounded like he genuinely meant it, which was a shock, “you just gotta let me
work at it. I’ll make it happen for you.”
Ellie didn’t know what to do other than nod.
 
                                     (***)
 

Ellie didn’t like to admit that sometimes she still thought she could hear the
sound of clickers in the distance. She knew with everyone patrolling the wall
there was no way a clicker could get through, but no matter how many times she
told herself that, her mind would think up ways to contradict what she knew.
She had once explained her fears to Joel, after a particularly nasty nightmare
where she had screamed so loud it had seemed like a clicker had jumped through
her window and attacked her. Joel had said, with the life they had lead, they
had practically been trained to be uncertain with every move in life they made.
It hadn’t been a helpful answer, nor an answer that Ellie had wanted, but it
had managed to make her feel less embarrassed about her fears.
It didn’t stop them though.
There were a few times when Joel was working on the wall that Ellie had broken
curfew and sneaked out of the house just to make sure he was up there, hunting
rifle at the ready, looking relatively safe and sound. She would sometimes just
stand there for a bit, watch him, watch him talk to Tommy or Maria, or some
other person manning the wall, making sure that he seemed okay. There were a
few times where Ellie would make a sandwich or something and head over,
sneaking an extra sandwich in there for Joel before heading back home. Ellie
was sure Joel had noticed the extra food, but Ellie was also sure that Joel
knew exactly why Ellie was sneaking out in the first place.
Tonight wasn’t one of those nights. Tonight, Ellie lay in bed and she could
hear Joel lightly snoring away in the next room. He had been working hard
lately, trying to get food on the table and warmer clothes for them to wear as
the colder months started coming around. After all his shifts this week, they
were expecting some thicker blankets, and Joel wanted to trade something soon
as well.
Ellie wished she could go with him to the trade, but unfortunately there was
school tomorrow and Joel typically did any of the big stuff while she was out.
Either it was a coincidence or Joel was just worried she’d stir up some form of
trouble.
It made Ellie’s heart hurt thinking that she might possibly be some form of
problem child for Joel. Especially knowing the fact that he didn’t have to keep
her around and yet he continued to do so.
She didn’t like being a burden to someone who had saved her lives countless
times, but she found herself too selfish to leave.
 
                                     (***)

The next day when she got home from school, she was exhausted. Gym that day had
consisted of them doing what was essentially a boot-camp course. Running
around, going through obstacles, while holding an unloaded weapon. A lot of the
other girls either hadn’t cared, or couldn’t seem to get a hold of it. There
had been a few who managed, but they had come from harder lives, as Ellie had.
The boys had been stupid and used the unloaded guns as if they were swords in
between exercises, inflicting damage on each other where the gun couldn’t with
the bullets not being in it.
The whole class had gotten in trouble for it and lunch had been spent inside,
so Ellie didn’t have the chance to sit in her favourite spot, near a tree,
reading the latest comic she had found during a hiking trip with Joel. It had
been stuck to a tree and was only missing the first page, and it wasn’t that
hard to figure out the rest of the plot after that.
When she walked inside, she was surprised to see Joel sitting in the lounge
area, reading a book of his own. Joel, while he did enjoy reading, said he
wasn’t a very fast reader, and that it bothered him - also that he sometimes
got stuck on simple words, and you could tell he felt insecure when he had to
call Ellie over to help him read something. Probably didn’t help that the guy
probably needed reading glasses on top of all of that.
“How was school today?” Joel asked her without closing the book.
Ellie shrugged her bag off of her shoulder and put it near the front door, she
noticed that it had been fixed and felt a little shamed that she hadn’t been
the one to do it, “fine, got in trouble because of some stupid boys being
stupid people, but otherwise - it wasn’t as bad as usual.”
Joel sat up and marked his page before closing the book, “I tried to talk to
Rachel today. She’d like to try and get you into one of the older classes, she
says you’ve got the grades, the dedication and the smarts.”
Ellie’s eyes widened in shock, “r-really?”
Joel smiled warmly, “really - she’d like to take you to the other class
tomorrow, show you around, get you to meet your two teachers, maybe get you
someone to keep an eye out for you.”
Ellie rolled her eyes, but made sure to look like she was still grateful, “I
don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me or look out for me or whatever,” she
said stubbornly, “I can take care of myself.”
Joel gave Ellie a small smirk but decided against saying anything. Instead he
opened up his book again and bent back the little dog-eared page so it was back
to being flat, “just make sure you get enough sleep tonight,” he muttered.
Ellie watched his eyes scanning the lines on the page, “don’t want you to be
exhausted on your first day.”
 
                                     (***)
 
While Ellie had promised that she would go to bed early so she was ready for
tomorrow, it unfortunately didn’t end up working, because she spent majority of
the night tossing and turning. She hadn’t wanted to say anything to Joel,
because she was genuinely grateful for what he had done, but she was nervous
and secretly wished that Joel hadn’t bothered. It was nice to think that Joel
thought she had a future, or something along those lines, but it was
intimidating as all fuck if she was honest.
She could see herself getting bullied and mocked, and she wasn’t looking
forward to it. It was bad enough when some of the boys in her class laughed at
her for knowing things, that they obviously didn’t, or something like that - it
didn’t make sense as to why they would laugh at her, but Joel had said they
were insecure and it was their best defense.
Either way, she couldn’t sleep, some points during the night when she really
thought about it, she couldn’t even really breathe.
 
                                     (***)
 
When Ellie woke up in the morning she wasn’t even entirely sure she had
actually slept. There was a knock on her door, which at moment were just a few
planks of wood nailed together placed of an entrance, and Joel moved the
monstrosity and popped his head into the room.
“Time to get up Ellie,” Joel said in his warm Texas accent, sounding happy and
like he had slept well, “first day,” he said before leaving the plank against
the wall and walking towards the kitchen.
Ellie sighed and got out of the bed slowly. She made sure to put the cover back
on the bed properly because it bothered Joel if she didn’t - she didn’t see the
point of doing it considering she was only going to get back into the bed later
on, but she did it anyway. She headed over to some clothes that had been handed
to her when they had moved here, but ignored them all for Ellie’s favourite red
shirt. She’d been wearing it the first time she’d met Joel - she considered it
her lucky shirt now and right now she needed some luck.
It took her ages after she got dressed to actually manage to leave the room.
She kept telling herself that there were things she was leaving behind - books,
pens, her knife, her gun even though they weren’t permitted within the
classrooms. She eventually had to resign to the fact that she was ready and
that if she made herself late for her first day with the older students, it was
only going to make things worse on her.
When she got to the kitchen, Rachel was there, looking blond and confident and
in Ellie’s honest opinion, like a fucking annoyance.
“Ellie!” she said in an excited, energetic tone, which only seemed to irritate
Ellie’s ears, “good to see you’re up and ready. Have some breakfast and I’ll
take you around to the classrooms and show you how their timetables work and so
forth-.”
“I know how timetables work,” Ellie said with snark, “the only difference in my
old and new timetable is that I’m allowed breaks to study.”
There was a moment of silence where Rachel seemed to try and work her mind
around Ellie’s answer and find a way to respond while Joel looked like he was a
mix of amused and embarrassed at the situation. Ellie stood firmly though and
peered at the two adults, waiting for a response from either of them.
“Good,” Rachel concluded, nodding her head only once, firmly as if that made
her appear any less awkward, “good, good, I’m glad you’ve already got that
figured out,” she muttered, “I’m sure your teacher is going to love you.”
Joel laughed, “I hope not too much, I’d like her back.”
Rachel peered at Joel with a weird look and gave a small tiny laugh. Ellie
decided there and then she didn’t like this woman, and there was no way Rachel
was going to be able to redeem herself.
“Alright Ellie, ready to go?” Rachel asked, trying to sound upbeat again.
Ellie frowned and looked at Joel, “aren’t you coming with us?” she asked,
sounding nervous about the answer.
Joel sighed and ran a hand through his hair, looking apologetic, “unfortunately
I can’t - I have a shift this morning on the wall and I told Tommy I would
definitely be there. Two of their men have come down with an illness, which
thankfully isn’t a sign of them being infected but-.”
Rachel gave him a cutting look, “you shouldn’t share this information with the
child, it’s not for her ears.”
Ellie’s eyes widened and she waited for Joel to defend her right to know, but
he just looked sheepish and nodded.
“I’ll see you later Ellie,” he muttered, grabbing a bag from the floor that she
hadn’t seen earlier - his work bag, “enjoy your first day - I expect to hear
all about it when I get home.”
He grabbed the bag and headed out the door before Ellie couldn’t think of
anything else to say. She swallowed whatever words she had managed to come up
with and looked up at Rachel, who was twirling a bit of her hair around her
finger, almost mockingly.
“Time for school then kiddo,” Rachel said, smiling down at her. It was just a
smile, but Ellie found it condescending.
“Lead the way,” Ellie snapped, “and don’t call me kiddo.”
 

                                     (***)
 
Ellie tried to ignore the questioning stares she could feel coming from every
direction. She stared straight ahead, mostly this was because she had
originally wanted to ignore Rachel’s existence and Joel’s lack of existence,
but once they had entered one of the main halls it had become a game of
patience and trying to ignore all the other students around.
They were all older than her. They were all wondering what the hell she was
doing here.
She headed straight for the room down the hall where she knew Rachel was taking
her. She walked ahead, trying to get there faster, and was relieved when she
finally entered the room. The only person there was a short man, who looked to
be only a little older than Joel. He had round glasses and long hair and wore a
coat which almost seemed to hit the floor. It was tan in colour whereas
everything else he wore was black.
“Good morning, you must be Ellie,” the man said, giving her a small, warm, but
not overly warm smile. He moved and sat at the corner of his desk and peered at
her in a way that made Ellie feel a little uncomfortable, but not enough so to
make her mention it. It wasn’t in the same way that David had once gazed at
her. The man in front of her now was trying to determine her worth in a
different way, her survival rate in a different way. Either way - it still made
her shudder slightly.
“Y-yeah, I’m Ellie,” Ellie said with nervousness and a slight stutter. She
berated herself silently. She’d been telling herself she was going to act
confident, act as if she knew she could make it, and she had already managed to
somehow screw that up.
“The overly educated child,” the man said humourously, “I’ve heard a lot about
you from Rachel. She says she thinks you’re going to excel with the older
students - I hope that I will be finding myself agreeing with that statement,”
he gave Rachel a look then. She stood her ground and nodded and smiled
appropriately.
Bitch, Ellie thought to herself, looking back at the man in front of her.
“Of course, how rude of me,” he said suddenly, “my name is Carl Henderson. But,
you will be calling me Mr Henderson,” he said proudly, “I was a teacher before
the infected started ruining the world.”
Ellie nodded slowly but didn’t say a word.
“You’ll be starting today - the other students are getting marked off and
having their bags checked for concealed firearms. Normally you would be put
under the same conditions, but…” he trailed off, “you’re new. But tomorrow
you’ll have to go through the same thing.”
Ellie felt awkward and didn’t want to be here. She was already ready to tell
Rachel to shove it and that she would go back to her less awkward, under-
educated class, where the other kids picked on her, just so she wouldn’t have
to deal with all this. But she shut her mouth - she knew Joel wouldn’t be happy
if she threw away this opportunity so easily.
“Alright Ellie,” the man said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together in
typical teacher fashion, “take a seat, I hope you bought a book and pen because
you’re going to be doing a lot of writing today.”
 

                                     (***)
 
Ellie found out sooner rather than later that Henderson hadn’t been
exaggerating. Throughout the last hour she had been forced to write about three
pages of notes on a book she hadn’t read - but it seemed the others hadn’t read
it either, which made her feel a lot better about it - but she still didn’t
like feeling lost, because feeling lost in this classroom, she felt more lost
than everyone else around her. Her wrist was aching from all of the writing
that she had had to do, but she looked down at the three pages, feeling as if
for once that all of this school bullshit actually meant something.
After another hour of listening to other people discuss the notes they had been
given, and share around a copy of the book and read it aloud, they were free to
go have food. Everyone quickly filed out of the room, as if fearing that if
they didn’t leave quickly enough, they’d be forced to stay back. Ellie stayed
back on purpose, avoiding everyone else’s curious glances by acting extra
interested in the notes she had copied from the blackboard.
“Ellie, are you not going to break?” Henderson asked her from the front of the
room.
She looked up, Henderson had his feet up on his desk and was eating a tin of
apricots, while reading the book they had been assigned.
“You know, this book has always been in my top ten favourites?” he said.
Despite the fact that this was a question you would normally ask while talking
to another person, it didn’t feel like Henderson was talking to her, “even
after traveling this world, reading books in different languages, reading and
salvaging any books I can and bringing them here - this is still one of my
favourites. In fact, it might even be my favourite.”
The book he was holding was called Lord of the Flies. It looked boring from
what Ellie could see, because unfortunately she hadn’t really been paying
attention as the other students had been reading it, but she didn’t want to
challenge the mans’ opinion simply based on the cover, so she shut her mouth.
“It might be because I loved it right before the infection took over,” he said
absentmindedly while turning a page, “I think I’m clinging onto it so I can
feel some form of normality.”
After that, Henderson didn’t say anything, just continued to eat the apricots
and read his beloved book. Ellie looked down at her notes again, seeing if
there was maybe anything she could say about the book, anything to spark some
conversation, but all of this was jumbled and a mess - the notes were to help
them understand the book while reading it - it wasn’t a cheat sheet so they
could get out of reading it.
Ellie started doodling on her page, looking out the window. From here, she
could see people working along the wall - in fact she was sure she could see
Joel standing with Tommy, laughing at something that the younger had said. She
sighed - she wished she were out there instead of in here.
 

                                     (***)
 

The rest of the day had either gone really fast, or dragged on forever. Math
had been a total bust and she didn’t quite understand why they needed it -
considering they didn’t have to count anything like money, ration cards were
essentially the closest thing they currently had to a currency. But, she
reflected on what Henderson had said about normality and decided that’s what
everyone here was trying to aim for - a feeling of normality before the world
went to shit. Ellie wished she had known that world, that zombie-land wasn’t
everything she’d always known.
She got home and went straight to her room, put her bag in its usual corner,
and put her copy of the book and her notes on a crate which acted as a desk.
She looked down at the book - the cover was old and worn, with tears in it, and
some of the pages were yellowed - even dirty. This book had been to hell and
back and yet here she was holding it. It had survived. She felt an odd tingling
sensation looking down at the damaged pages, with text so small she was sure it
was only for ants.
“Ellie, you home?”
Ellie looked up just as Joel walked into her room. He had a small smile on his
face as he looked down at her, and she felt good again. She looked down at the
book and the notes again and nodded, “well, obviously.”
Joel laughed, “how was your firs’ day?” he asked. He sounded a little tired,
but he was definitely in a good mood and Ellie didn’t want to ruin that.
“Really good,” Ellie lied, “I learned a lot, stuff about English and Math and
stuff - stuff that seems important for once,” she knew she was probably talking
to the point where her enthusiasm sounded fake, but Joel seemed to take it,
because he smiled and nodded and then sat down on the floor next to her.
“And what you readin’?” he asked, grabbing the book gingerly from her hands.
His touch was gentle, like he didn’t want to damage it - Ellie was glad she
wasn’t the only one.
“Lord of the Flies,” Ellie said, “it’s the teachers favourite book - says it
reminds him of times before clickers and infected because he had read it just
before the world went crazy,” she said, “I didn’t want to say anything rude,
but the book looks boring.”
Joel laughed and shook his head, “well, there was always a saying - never judge
a book by its cover kiddo,” Joel handed Ellie the book back and looked down at
the notes briefly before saying, “you might find you like it just as much as
your teacher, so don’t knock it back just yet.”
Ellie shrugged, “don’t really have a choice anyway - I have to do an assignment
on it.”
 
                                     (***)

The next few days passed without anything special really happening. Joel went
to work or stayed home depending on whether or not he was rostered or specially
requested, and Ellie went to school. She was halfway through Lord of the Flies
and really enjoying it, despite the fact that she was trying to will herself to
hate it. She didn’t know why, but she was.
She was sitting inside for break again when a boy who looked about eighteen
walked back into the room with his bag on his back, holding a small bowl.
“Mind if I finish my lunch in here Henderson?”
Henderson shrugged and continued to read from a stack of papers, which Ellie
assumed were essays from previous assignments or a few people who had put
theirs in early.
Ellie looked back down at her sketchbook. She had started to take up drawing as
she sat inside. It gave her something to do on the days when she couldn’t be
bothered reading her notes for the billionth time and wanted to leave reading
for when she was back home in her bed.
She didn’t notice that the boy sat right behind her, despite the fact that his
seat was normally in front, until he tapped her on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he said as she turned around to look at him, “you’re Ellie, right?”
“Uh,” she nodded, “yeah, hi.”
“Hi,” he said, smiling. He seemed sincere enough, but Ellie did, admittedly,
have some big trust issues, and she wasn’t ready to just trust him because he
had a nice smile and he was in her class.
She went to turn back around when he stopped her.
“I was wondering if I could borrow your notes on Lord of the Flies?” he asked,
sounding a little sheepish, “I’ve lost mine somewhere, and knowing me, once I
find them they’re probably not going to be in the best condition, especially if
it turns out they’ve just been sitting at the bottom of my bag under a pile of
books the entire time.”
“Oh,” Ellie’s mouth formed a small, embarrassed ‘o’ shape. She nodded and
handed over her notes as the boy reached into his bag and grabbed a book and
pencil, “sure thing.”
He smiled a nice white smile at her, “thanks,” he said before placing Ellie’s
notebook and his notebook in a way so he could write in one while clearly
reading the other.
“I hate smalltalk, but it feels rude just blocking you out while I copy your
well written notes,” he said, “you have beautiful handwriting by the way,” he
added, sounding genuine.
Ellie didn’t know what to say other than, “oh, uh, thank you.”
“Do you do anything after school?” he asked suddenly, looking up, he definitely
wasn’t even close to finishing writing down Ellie’s notes, but he continued to
look at her, as if searching for her answer before she could even start to
talk.
“I uh, wait for my friend to get home. Might read or draw for a bit,” Ellie
said awkwardly.
“You don’t hang out with any of your friends from your old class?” he asked,
sounding surprised.
Ellie laughed then. It wasn’t exactly an appropriate laugh, though admittedly
it wasn’t a mean one - well, it wasn’t supposed to be.
“No, I uh, didn’t have friends in that class,” Ellie admittedly sheepishly,
after she finished laughing, “admittedly it’s one of the reasons why I was so
excited to move into these classes - I didn’t think I was going to make
friends, but at least I got away from those…immature assholes,” she said. She
knew she had over-shared slightly, but she tried to play it off cool.
Thankfully, the boy laughed nicely, “fair enough then,” he said, smiling and
giving a small shrug, “would you like to hang out? After school is over?”
“Uh…” Ellie bit her lip nervously. It had kind of been an unspoken rule that if
Ellie was to go out anywhere, she was to ask Joel first. Because Ellie didn’t
have friends to spontaneously visit, if she wanted to come home later than
usual she’d normally discuss it with Joel before going to school that morning,
just so he’d know. Normally Ellie would say no because of that unspoken rule,
and because of her trust issues, mostly with men, but technically, the rule was
unspoken, meaning she could play it off as the rule not even existing in the
first place, and if Joel got mad, she could say then maybe he should have said
something. As for her trust issues - it had been a while since the David
incident…it was time for her to get over it. Besides; this was Tommy and
Maria’s town. These were good people. No one would hurt her here other than
stupid kids who didn’t know better.
“Yeah,” Ellie said, feeling a little more confident and giving him a smile of
her own, “sure thing.”
 

                                     (***)
 

It was only ever with Joel that she went anywhere outside the wall, but she
went with the boy anyway, whose name was Koby. Koby was taller than her by a
foot or two, but shorter than Joel, so she couldn’t even calm herself by
pretending it was him. She started to feel calmer though when she could hear a
river nearby, and they started heading towards it.
“Are we, uh, meeting up with anyone else?” Ellie asked, hating the way her
voice shook.
“Hm?” Koby looked back at her. She swore she saw him look her up and down, but
ignored it, “no, just you and me - I asked my other friends during the
beginning of break and they said they were all busy with homework and all that
loser shit,” he shrugged.
They both headed over to a log, and Koby sat down before patting the spot
beside him with a nice, patient smile.
Ellie kept berating herself for looking for clues that Koby was a bad person,
rather than just enjoying her time with him, so she sighed and sat down beside
him, watching the river, how pretty it looked in comparison to some of the shit
she’d seen in the world.
“So, how old are you Ellie?” Koby asked. He was looking at her with interest,
and Ellie tried to keep herself calm by continuing to look at the water.
“Uh, well, younger than you guys,” Ellie admitted, “I assume you’re eighteen,
like everyone else, right?”
Koby nodded, “just turned eighteen last week.”
“Oh,” Ellie smiled, “belated happy birthday to you then.”
Koby gave a small smile and didn’t say anything. He started twiddling his
thumbs and humming. Ellie didn’t know if she was supposed to be saying
something, or if this was what their hanging out was supposed to be. ‘Hanging
out’ hadn’t been like this with Riley.
She felt something on her hand and she flinched. She hadn’t been concentrating
much and Koby had placed his hand on top of Ellie’s.
“You should totally give me a birthday present,” Koby said, grinning from ear
to ear. Back in the classroom, Ellie might have found it nice to see him
genuinely smile other than the awkward half smiles, but this unsettled her and
made her regret her decision to try and trust someone again immediately.
“I didn’t get you anything,” Ellie said honestly, pulling her hand away from
his and placing it back in her own lap.
Koby’s hand reached forward and grabbed at the top button of her jeans. Ellie
felt like she was going to be sick.
“You don’t have to, just be quiet…”
Ellie wanted to do the exact opposite, but as she was pushed off of the log and
pinned onto the ground, she couldn’t find her voice. She couldn’t even think to
scream.
She closed her eyes, screwed them up tight, and then-
She felt Koby disappear from on top of her and felt a thud beside her. She
didn’t dare to open her eyes yet, she didn’t want to feel too much hope.
“Ellie, Ellie, are you okay?”
She felt relief spread through her, she opened her eyes and there was Tommy
standing above her. He looked concerned and kept occasionally looking over to
her right. She turned her head then and saw Joel dragging a begging and
pleading Koby towards the entrance of the wall. Joel looked livid.
“I told him he wasn’t allowed to beat up your friend over there,” Tommy said,
looking awkward, “I’m sorry Ellie, I couldn’t stop him from-.”
Ellie held up a hand and caught her breath before saying, “not-not a friend
Tommy…”
There was something in Tommy’s eyes that seemed to die a little as he looked
down at Ellie with something that loosely resembled pity. He looked up at Joel
and sighed, “Joel?”
Joel’s head snapped up, “what?!”
“Not a friend.”
Joel looked back down at Koby, and with the butt of the hunters rifle he was
holding, hit Koby in the head with it.
 
                                     (***)
 
Joel was sitting across from Ellie at what could easily be considered their
dining table. It was just a bunch of tall wooden crates with a long board on
top, long enough that they could actually fit chairs underneath. Joel looked
unsure of what to say to Ellie, and Ellie was completely unsure of where this
conversation was going to go.
“Ellie…I…” Joel sighed, rubbing a hand over his wrinkled his face. In this
moment he looked a lot older than he usually did, that he’d aged a good solid
ten years just within the span of knocking out Koby and making sure Ellie got
back home safe.
“I’m sorry that I went out there without asking you first,” Ellie muttered, “I
would have asked but…”
Joel nodded, “I know, you would have been shooed away from the wall,” he
admitted, “I just wish…you’d given it an attempt…”
Ellie looked down into her lap. She had started pushing back the skin on her
cuticles anxiously. It was a bad habit.
“I should have known better than to trust him like that,” Ellie admitted
suddenly, “I was desperate Joel. We’re not trekking the world anymore, twenty-
four seven, side by side,” she started sounding a little hysterical and
mentally told herself to calm down.
Joel was looking at her with eyes that were asking her to go on, but afraid of
whatever she might say.
“I’m lonely Joel,” Ellie said, her voice filled with shame, “I…I don’t have any
friends here other than you, Tommy and Maria. Only adults, no one my age-.”
“I know,” Joel said, putting a hand up.She stopped speaking and continued to
keep her gaze on Joel, “I know,” he said again, “I’m sorry that I haven’t been
around as much as normal.”
Ellie felt bad that she had made Joel feel guilty. He was only trying to
provide for them, and Ellie was still being ungrateful.
She often wondered if maybe she was a burden on Joel. If maybe he would be
better off here without her.
“It’s fine,” Ellie eventually said, sounding tired and a little broken. She
didn’t know how to feel about what had happened Koby and she didn’t know how to
feel with her thoughts right now, on Joel being better off without her. So she
got up from the table and headed towards her room.
“You’re not in trouble Ellie-.”
“I know,” Ellie said, turning around, “just…I’m tired and going to bed. Night
Joel.”
Joel looked defeated but didn’t try to stop her, the only thing he said was,
“I’ll leave you some food in the fridge.”
 

                                     (***)
 
Ellie tried to sleep through the night but herself up and tossing and turning
at what appeared to be three in the morning. She could hear voices outside of
her room, they were talking quietly and it bugged Ellie - not because she could
hear them, but because she couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying. She
slowly got out of her bed and headed towards the doorway, the plank covering
her door was only just covering it, but she could see into the kitchen.
The moment she saw what was going on, she knew that she hadn’t heard talking,
and if she had, there had been a minimal amount. There was a woman sitting on
the bench, her face buried into Joel’s shoulder. Joel was slowly moving his
hips forwards and back and Ellie could occasionally hear him murmur something
and the woman moan. Ellie felt her cheeks heat up as she realised that the
woman was Rachel- and that the two of them were having sex on the kitchen
counter.
The worst part of all was the fact that despite every fibre of her being
telling her to go back to bed and forget what she saw, she kept watching. She
kept watching as Rachel’s hands ended up in Joel’s hair, and Joel’s pants ended
up falling around his ankles, exposing his lower half, she watched as Joel got
faster and Rachel got louder, and Joel was telling her to be quiet, she would
wake up Ellie, but what he didn’t know, of course, was that he was too late.
Rachel seemed to bite into Joel’s shoulder as her orgasm ripped through her.
She sighed happily and then pushed herself away before Joel could even
finished. Ellie purposely tried not to look down at that area.
“That was fun,” Rachel said, giving him a smirk, “make sure your little girl
behaves in school - then I won’t feel obliged to uh…mention that she’s infected
to anyone.”
Ellie gasped and hurried to cover her own mouth as Rachel got off of the bench,
pushed her skirt down, and headed out the door. Joel didn’t follow. He instead,
slowly and somewhat shamefully, pulled his pants back up and rubbed a tired
hand over his face.
He grabbed a bit of scrap material and wiped down the bench hurriedly and
chucked it back in the sink as if the material were now diseased.
 
 

                                     (***)
 
The next day, Ellie was supposed to go to her classes, but with Joel already on
the wall, she felt no obligation to leave the house. She couldn’t bring herself
to do it, after everything she had heard last night in the kitchen. It wasn’t
the sex that bothered her - people had sex all the time. During the time they
had traveled, they had walked past places called brothels where they
essentially traded ration stamps for sex and god knows what else. Ellie had
seen a lot of shit just walking through those streets surrounding the brothel.
What hit her hard was the fact that apparently Joel was sleeping with this
woman, just so she could attend the more mature, more challenging classes.
If she had known that was why she had been let in in the first place, she
wouldn’t have begged, pleaded, for something more educationally stimulating.
Unfortunately, because she didn’t go to her class, it gave her too much time to
think. She tried to distract herself by reading, but couldn’t focus on it,
tried to focus on homework but couldn’t because all it reminded her of was the
classes she was currently in - yann0, the one’s that Joel was literally kinda
selling his body for - she even tried napping but she couldn’t sleep, because
all she could remember were the words the woman said.
It wasn’t quite just about the school thing, Ellie remembered - the woman was
going to tell everyone that Ellie was infected.
 

                                     (***)

Joel was exhausted when he came home and as soon as he did, he jumped straight
into his bed and went to sleep. This was fine by Ellie, because they hadn’t
spoken all day and Ellie didn’t know if he could look Joel in the eye right
now. Not just because she had skipped school for the day, but she was a little
embarrassed by the fact that she had caught Joel having sex with someone.
As soon as she knew Joel was unconscious, due to the mans’ snores, she made
sure to be quiet and left the house. It was a little cold out tonight, but to
be fair Ellie was only wearing a tank top and some shorts. She looked around -
a lot of the main lights were still on, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t past
curfew - in fact, she could see some of the late shift people now heading out
getting ready to defend the wall.
Ellie tried hard to stay out of the light, she knew she was probably going to
get out of trouble anyway - but it would be best if she didn’t get caught
before she could actually do her plan.
She didn’t know exactly where Rachel lived, but she knew it was in the rich
district. It was a place she had only been to a handful of times, and that was
because a girl she had been friends with for a bit lived there. That girl ended
up exiting the safety of the wall and got attacked by a wild clicker.
She kept to the shadows, running or walking wherever it was appropriate until
she found herself near bigger houses with more rooms. Of course, she was sure
rich people had better stuff that showed their riches before the infection
started spreading - but for now, bigger houses and better access food was all
the rich had to show for it.
The house that Rachel lived in was two stories and had more rooms in it than
she actually needed - the only people who lived there, that Ellie knew of, was
Rachel herself, and a young girl named Serena who was apparently her young
niece - not old enough to tend classes yet. Ellie sighed and rolled her eyes,
of course Rachel would be a rich person, someone who was in a position of power
as well. In too many ways.
How did such shitty people find themselves in positions of power?
Ellie walked towards the front door and sighed, this house had been built way
before they had figured out how to make decent locks for the doors - something
that thankfully her and Joel’s house did have.
She got a shiv out of her back pocket and slipped it in the gap and worked at
it until the door opened with a small creak.
 

                                     (***)
 
Ellie woke up to the sound of wild birds and the sun pouring through her
window. It was a nice day and Ellie found herself smiling. She got out of bed
and cracked some of the bones in her back before standing up and heading
towards the kitchen. She had left the plank off of her doorway last night
because she had felt oddly safe and secure after what she had done.
Of course though, when she walked into the kitchen, there was Joel and there
was Rachel, with her hair massively shorter and uneven than usual.
She was shaking and her face was wet and red. She glared at Ellie as she walked
into the kitchen and Ellie feigned innocence.
“What’s wrong?” Ellie asked, sounding worried and cautious, “are you okay
Rachel?”
Rachel sighed “no,” she snapped, glaring at Joel who shrugged.
Ellie wasn’t worried, there was no way Rachel could know it was her.
“Ellie…I…need to talk to Rachel alone.”
Ellie tried hard to not roll her eyes and nodded slowly before turning around,
but Rachel’s voice stopped her.
“Forget about my dramas for a second Joel,” she snapped again - her voice was
starting to annoy Ellie, “Miss Ellie.”
Ellie turned back around on one foot and crossed her arms, “yo?”
“Where were you yesterday?” Rachel asked, sounding venomous. Ellie swallowed
harshly - she might not have gotten Ellie on destroying Rachel’s house, but
Rachel had gotten her on truancy.
“Uh,” Ellie glimpsed up at Joel who only looked disappointed. The look on his
face cut through Ellie like a knife.
Rachel smirked, and Ellie wished Joel saw what Ellie did right now, but he
wasn’t looking at either of them right now. Ellie was on her own, facing down a
pathetic grown ass woman.
Ellie didn’t know what to say, but she knew she needed to think quick.
“Ellie, go to your-.”
Ellie, unfortunately, knew how to play to Joel’s attention in this moment.
“I didn’t go to school because I was too afraid to run into you,” Ellie said,
her voice shaking slightly. She didn’t know whether it was dedication to her
performance, or because she was genuinely afraid of what Joel’s reaction was
going to be to what she had to say next, “I know what you’re doing. I know what
you’re doing to Joel.”
“Oh?” Rachel said. She was trying to look confident and in control, but there
was a hesitance in her expression that let Ellie know, that with her next
words, she would have the upper-hand.
Ellie could feel fire running through her veins - she was furious with the
situation when she really had to think about it all, “Joel asked you, out of
respect for me - something I really wanted, to add me to the more academically
challenging classes so I could actually learn something for once. But you had
to get something out of it as well, because you’re selfish and manipulative. So
you’ve been forcing him, you disgusting piece of shit-.”
“Ellie, that’s enough-.”
“Forcing him to have sex with you!”
“Ellie, you don’t need to-.”
“And then somewhere along the line, just so he would stick around after he got
what he wanted, you threw in a deep secret within our government about my
condition.”
“Ellie!” Joel yelled.
Ellie froze.
“Please, go to your room,” he said, his voice sounded dark and serious. He
looked at Rachel. Ellie was glad she couldn’t see his face right now, because
she was sure she would cower, maybe even cry - which it looked like Rachel was
about to, “while I show Rachel out.”
 
 
                                     (***)

Ellie had rushed back to her room so quickly, she hadn’t seen what had
happened, but there had been a bit of yelling and a bit of pleading before
there was the sound of someone being dragged and the door being slammed. Ellie
knew that Rachel hadn’t been hurt, as she ran past Ellie’s window as she ran
back to, presumably, her own, vandalized, house.
Obviously what Ellie had said in front of Joel had made Joel realise just how
fucked up the situation was.
Ellie didn’t know what to do. Was she in trouble? Or was she free to feel calm,
go out there, maybe get a snack or something, read a book out there or
something.
As she was thinking this over, the plank over her door was moved and Joel
entered the room.
“Are you okay?” Joel asked. Ellie was shocked to find the man actually sounded
somewhat shaken. Not his usual in control self. Ellie didn’t really know where
to go from here.
“Uh…” Ellie shrugged, “yeah, I think so. Is she gonna…?”
“No,” Joel said, “I’ll be talking to Tommy. If she even says word she’ll be
losing her position in the school system. If she keeps being ‘toxic to our
environment’, as Tommy says, she might end up getting evicted.”
Ellie’s eyes widened. There were some things that she agreed with when it came
to the laws here, but eviction wasn’t really one of them. She didn’t think it
was okay to throw anyone out there - but maybe that was only because she was
still fresh from her experiences outside of the wall.
“Okay,” Ellie muttered.
“I need to ask,” Joel said before sitting down on one of the crates in her
room. Ellie sat down on the bed, not even realizing that she had stood up when
Joel had entered the room.
“What did you see,” Joel asked. Ellie could tell it was paining him to look her
in the eye as he asked this, but she knew that Joel was a man who believed that
eye contact was the biggest sign of honesty and trust - she had been
reprimanded enough times for not keeping eye contact during conversations to
know this about the man.
“What do you mean?”Ellie asked, feeling a little bad for playing dumb. But she
was hoping that if she did, he would just shrug and walk out of the room and
everything would return back to normal. But this is what happened every time
Ellie saw Joel in a vulnerable state.
Every time he was scene in a vulnerable state Ellie and Joel would have a sit
down, they would talk about it and talk about how it’s perfectly normal. But
how it didn’t change that Joel was okay being strong for the both of them, that
he would always be there for her no matter what state he was in. It was
normally an awkward conversation on Ellie’s part, but she sat down and listened
anyway - because she knew it was helping Joel, and it felt good knowing that
she was helping him.
“You know what I mean Ellie,” Joel said, sounding noticeably pained. He rubbed
a hand over his face and looked down at the floor, “just…be honest with me.
There’s no need to be embarrassed.”
Ellie snorted despite herself, “speak for yourself, I’m fine - take a word of
your own advice because you seem to be the one that’s embarrassed.”
Joel at least felt good enough to look amused - he hoped that getting rid of
Rachel had helped him rather than hurt him even more.
“I saw uh. You two. Yanno,” Ellie looked away - so much for not being
embarrassed, “baby making without making babies,” Ellie frowned for a moment,
“are you even capable of making babies anymore, old man?”
Joel laughed, “not sure,” his face was red, but obviously jokes were making him
feel more comfortable.
“I also saw that you weren’t, uh, enjoying it as much as her,” Ellie said, “I
know I don’t know anything about relationships, or love, or…” she rolled her
eyes, “sex - but you didn’t seem to want it at all and that’s when I knew that
uh…”
Joel looked like he wanted her to go on.
“She was using you. Forcing you.”
“Do you think any less of me for that?” Joel asked.
Ellie thought about it - in the moment that she had seen it all, she hadn’t
thought anything negative about him. She’d only felt anger for him, not at him.
“No,” Ellie admitted with absolute certainty, “never did. Never will.”
 
 
                                     (***)
 
They ended up back to normal after that. The topic of Rachel was a topic they
both agreed, though the agreement was unspoken, to never talk about. Rachel
remained in her position with the school system but didn’t socialize whatsoever
with Ellie, which she was happy about - Rachel didn’t even have the audacity to
come up and pretend to be friendly with her for the sake of appearances - even
better in Ellie’s eyes.
Ellie ended up making a few small friends in her classes, even though they were
older and Ellie suspected it was mostly out of pity, that or because she got
good grades, but they passed the time and sat with her at lunch and kept her
away from Koby - until she was safely at home.
She wasn’t there for it, but she knew that Joel had spoken to his brother about
the situation with Rachel and warned him about her and everything the woman was
capable of. Every so often, Ellie could hear them talking about it, and while
Ellie was glad that Tommy was trying to make the effort to get closer with his
brother and make sure that Joel was okay, Ellie just wished that the man would
drop the conversation entirely, because what was done, was done.
Ellie was relieved when she got home. She went straight to her room and started
doing the homework she had been given that was due by Monday next week. She was
halfway through it when she heard the front door open and heard the familiar
sounds of Joel having returned home. She looked outside and noticed that it was
getting dark and that she would need to turn on the light soon.
“Ellie!”
Ellie looked towards the doorway, that was open. A few seconds after she did
it, Joel’s head popped into view.
“I brought back some food - your favourite cook made it for you.”
Ellie beamed, Joel was a good cook, granted, but Maria always cooked this
amazing meal made out of rabbit, vegetables, rice, butter and a small amount of
honey. Something that Joel was yet to master.
She got up and headed straight for their small table, where there was a plate
already waiting for her, Joel’s plate was sitting across from hers and Joel was
in the kitchen grabbing forks and salt and pepper.
He sat down across from her and started eating after he added the right amount
of salt and pepper for him.
“How was school?” he asked, looking at her with interest.
She smiled, filling her own mouth with food and enjoying the familiar taste of
one of her favourite meals, “it was good - I still think those girls are my
friends because they pity me though,” she said, “but I’ve got good grades and
I’m keeping up with everyone else, so that’s a bonus.”
She kept eating and for a moment, didn’t notice that Joel wasn’t moving or
saying a word. She looked up slowly and felt herself jump slightly when she
noticed that Joel was looking at her, a little strangely.
“Are you having a stroke?” Ellie asked, “I recently learned about those and
you’re exhibiting the symptoms.”
Joel laughed heartily and shook his head, putting his fork down in his food and
smiling at her.
“No, not a stroke - though it might make sense,” he said.
She waited for him to say something more.
“I’m just really proud of you baby girl,” he said. Ellie was a little taken
back and waited for Joel to make some kind of joke after, but he didn’t,
“you’ve been doing so well here, admittedly here and there you’ve gotten into
little bits of trouble - but they haven’t really been your fault,” he sighed,
“I was so scared you wouldn’t like it here, that we would have to leave-.”
“If I didn’t like it here, then I would leave. I would want you to stay,” Ellie
said.
“No,” Joel said, “I’ve said it from the beginning and I’m not going to change
my mind - I’m never leaving you behind Ellie. Not of my own choosin’ anyway.”
Ellie sighed and nodded, “okay.”
Joel gave her a warm smile, “I mean it. I’m really proud of you.”
Ellie could feel warmth spread through her. Whether it was from his smile or
his words or his stubbornness of never leaving her behind, she wasn’t entirely
sure. In this moment, in their little shitty poor people house, with the
lukewarm meal, she had never felt more at home, more comfortable within
herself, or more happy.
“Joel?”
“Hm?” Joel looked up from his meal, his mouth full with food, “yeh?”
“I’ve never told you this,” she admitted, “but I do like it here. So stress
less - I’m going to stay here. With you.”
Joel looked at her for a moment before nodding, he swallowed the food in his
mouth and sighed - it had been his last bite, “thank you.”
Ellie smiled, feeling good that she had put Joel at ease, “you’re welcome.”
 

                                     (***)
 
Joel had long gone to bed and Ellie could hear him snoring in his room. He
mostly only ever snored after a good meal and if he had a good day, and Ellie
liked to think that she had made his day a little better and that she had made
him feel a little less anxious about Ellie and her actions.
She knew she was a handful, she knew that she was fiery and all that - but she
couldn’t help it. It only ever came out when someone she cared about was
getting hurt.
And she definitely cared about Joel. There was no changing that.
She laid down in her bed, got comfortable and fell asleep almost instantly -
something that hadn’t happened to her in a while.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     Hello everyone,
     Girlfriend of (and beta for) the author here.
     My incredible writer of a girlfriend is currently passed out on my
     shoulder from a tiring few days of endless writing, so I'll post this
     chapter for her as I know she wanted it done tonight.
     Enjoy! x
                                  Chapter_Two


                                      16

Ellie woke up, breathing heavily with her heart beating rapidly. It was pouring
outside and she quickly rushed over to her open window to close it, the
curtains blowing into her face, making it difficult to not get frustrated
quickly. She sighed and looked down at the paper strewn everywhere. Her
assignment had been put together neatly to resemble something that wasn’t chaos
- and now it was exactly that, chaos.

Some of the pages were wet and already sticking to the floor. Some of them
ripping a bit as she picked them up. She sighed - it had been her stupid fault
for leaving the window open - but it had been hot and stuffy and the cool air
made her feel better - especially after nightmares, which was why she had woken
up in the first place.

In this nightmare, she had been trapped in a dark room, she had been locked in
by Joel of all people, and she was surrounded by clickers. They didn’t know she
was there, but the tiniest noise or movement would have set them off. They
didn’t walk anyway near her, which was impossible in such a small space, but
she didn’t dare question the logic in the nightmare. But she could feel panic
setting in as the room seemed to get smaller and clickers closer and louder,
and she could hear Joel laughing outside and taunting Ellie, then eventually
his voice ended up turning into David’s, and the small dark room ended up
turning into a large, light room, filled with fire.

She breathed in a deep breath and sat down on the edge of her bed. She put her
pants back on and her slippers and headed into the kitchen. She often came out
here during the nights she couldn’t sleep after her nightmares, or if she
couldn’t sleep in general. She didn’t know if Joel ever heard her out here or
not, but if he did he left her alone, which is what she needed.

She grabbed some food out of the fridge, a left over bit of fruit salad,
something she had recently become massively addicted to and Joel had started
making for her, and she sat down at the table and began picking at her
favourite bits, chucking the juicy pieces of fruit into her mouth and savouring
the taste.

She knew it wasn’t good for her to be up this late, and that she should really
try going back to sleep - but she enjoyed sitting out here.

She was just turning around to grab paper and a pen when she heard footsteps
coming down the hall. Her eyes widened and she looked up in shock as Joel came
around the corner. It was a hot night and Joel was in his typical pajamas which
was no shirt and loose pants. His excuse was that it saved him the trouble of
washing so much.

“You alright Joel?” Ellie asked, popping a blueberry into her mouth, putting
the tip of her pen onto paper - she had seven pages of assignment to make up
for that were due in the morning.

“Mmm,” Joel hummed, opening the fridge and looking into it before turning back
around and facing her. His eyes landed on the bowl of fruit and he headed over,
sitting across from her, and stealing a bit of cut apple.

“Can’t sleep?” Ellie asked.

Joel shrugged, “somethin’ like that,” he yawned and ran a hand through his
messy hair, only making it messier in the process, “you can’t sleep either?”

“Nope,” Ellie said, writing out the title for her assignment - Forbidden
Romance Through The Ages - Controversial or Romantic?

She looked up to see Joel frowning at her with concern, “if you were having
nightmares you would tell me, right?”

Ellie slowly nodded.

“So?” Joel was looking at her, silently begging for an honest answer, and for
once Ellie felt like she wasn’t going to hide the truth from him.

“I had a nightmare,” Ellie admitted, looking back down at her paper and
realising she wouldn’t be able to write the assignment without her original
notes, which she had left in her room. She got up and headed towards her room,
the paper was stacked beside her bed again, and the wet corners were already
starting to dry, though some of the writing was admittedly hard to make out.

She walked back out there and saw Joel sitting at the table, eating a bit of
banana and reading the heading of her work.

“English paper?” he asked, cocking up a brow. She couldn’t tell whether it was
out of curiosity or out of something akin to disgust.

“Yes,” Ellie grabbed the paper from him and smirked, “problem?”

“Not at all,” Joel said, “not a subject I was all that amazin’ at, but it was
always fun for me.”

Ellie raised her eyebrows in surprise but didn’t say much else.

“Forbidden romance, huh,” Joel sighed, “lemme guess - Romeo and Juliet?”

Ellie sighed and rolled her eyes, “yeah - admittedly I like the whole topic - I
think it’s a really flexible one full of so much potential and all, but they
had to pick the most stereotypical book for it, which makes me feel like the
rest of the class is missing out on so much more.”

It was Joel’s turn to raise his eyebrows.

“The topic of forbidden love in books has grown so much more, there’s so much
to be discovered other than just opposing sides,” Ellie knew she was ranting
now, but this is what English did to her - and ranting at Joel was a lot better
than getting detention for ranting at her English teacher, Miss Wittz, “there’s
sci-fi where the forbidden love is about a crossing of species and beliefs and
religions - hell, there’s incest and there’s race and so much more out there
than just families who hate each other,” she shrugged, “besides, I hated Romeo
and Juliet, I thought it sucked.”

Joel nodded slowly, “you’re real passionate about the subject, huh.”

Ellie shrugged, “I like to read.”

Joel got up then and headed over to the kitchen to make himself coffee -
something he thought had been wiped out due to the infection, but their little
civilization had managed to bring back, “maybe you should be a teacher when
you’re older.”

Ellie laughed, louder than she probably should have. The houses in the
neighbourhood were slowly improving as resources become less scarce - including
theirs, but that didn’t mean the walls still weren’t thin.

“Me?” Ellie said in disbelief, “an English teacher? I’d throw a copy of William
Shakespeare’s entire works at a students head if they pissed me off,” she
snorted.

“I’m just sayin’,” Joel said, “it wouldn’t be too bad of an idea - you have the
passion and intelligence for it - and you can finally beat your arch nemesis.”

Ellie laughed, “I beat Miss Wittz everyday with my wit. Something she doesn’t
have, despite her last name.”

Joel frowned for a moment, before sighing and drinking the last of his coffee,
“bad pun,” he muttered before turning around and heading back to his room,
listening to the sounds of Ellie writing fast and trying to stifle her laughter
for the sake of their neighbours.


                                     (***)


The next day Ellie found herself regretting her decision to stay up so late. It
was good because she was able to rectify what her stupid mistake of leaving the
window open had caused - but now she was exhausted, and the several drinks of
coffee she had chugged down before her classes weren’t helping.

She found herself getting easily distracted in class, looking out the window
and daydreaming about being at home and sleeping, or being out on the wall with
Joel instead of being stuck in class with the other students.

Quickly, her daydream went in the direction of the nightmare that had woken her
up early that morning. She swore she could hear clickers and she swore she
could feel the room around her getting smaller and smaller, the thing that
stirred her out of her reverie was the sound of a hunting rifle being shot.

She shook her head, startled, and looked out the window - Joel was aiming at
something and then suddenly the rifle jerked back. What she hadn’t noticed was
the sound of clicking, and by the time the final shot ran out - it had stopped.

“Pay attention everyone, please,” the teacher said, almost sounding bored. Miss
Wittz was a stern woman, a bitter woman definitely, and there were rumours that
the only reason she took the job of being an English teacher was because she
was too mentally unstable to wield a loaded weapon to protect the wall.

When it came to that rumour, nobody could actually explain why she was
supposedly so mentally unstable, but people pointed out nervous ticks, such as
her biting her nails randomly in the middle of class, and occasionally she
could be heard muttering something to herself. If these weren’t signs of mental
instability, then it was an awful coincidence that wasn’t helping at all.

Everyone eventually, after a few more stern warnings about not concentrating in
class and how it would lead to suspension, because there was no point in them
being here if they weren’t going to take the classes seriously, they all looked
at the board and listened to Miss Wittz lecture on the topics that they had
picked and that despite the differences in topic, they were expect to write
essays to the same standard, and that she hoped they had reached that standard.

Ellie couldn’t really speak for herself, while she was passionate about what
she was writing about, she couldn’t say if the argument was a decent one or
even if it was written out well. But she was just happy she had something to
turn in.


                                     (***)



During break one, Ellie sat alone, reading a book that she had gotten from the
shelves of her home. Something that Joel had dug up somewhere and thought Ellie
might be interested in reading it. It made Ellie feel good, thinking about the
fact that Joel thought of her while he was out and about, whether it was with
some of the other men, hunting for food, or searching the perimeter for
clickers after warnings of them being around.

“I don’t understand how they can ask us to be so calm after we hear zombies and
then see guys killing them,” some girl sitting in a spot near Ellie’s reading
spot said. She was sitting amongst two of her friends and both of them were
nodding in agreement at the words she said.

“We’re in a danger zone and they’re expecting us to remain calm,” a girl shook
her head in disapproval, “they could at least teach us how to protect
ourselves.”

The other girl rolled her eyes, “they are Sadie, you just refuse to participate
in the classes because it’s physical activity and you don’t want to get your
clothes dirty.”

Sadie gave her friend the finger, “these are cute clothes - I’ll never get them
again either cause my parents are dead.”

It was Ellie’s turn to roll her eyes. This girl, Sadie, always found a way to
mention her parents being dead - as if she were the only one with dead parents.
Admittedly, in this world, you didn’t have much time to mourn over things like
dead parents and siblings, but it was still a little annoying when you
continuously used it was a method to get attention, or pity. Sadie definitely
wasn’t getting it from Ellie.

“Though, admittedly, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands and clothes dirty if I
knew I’d end up working on the wall with hotties like him,” she said, turning
around, causing Ellie to almost give herself whiplash in an attempt to make it
look like she hadn’t been eavesdropping on their conversation. This also gave
Ellie a good opportunity to look at the supposed ‘hottie’ that Sadie would
destroy her clothing for.

Ellie was shocked to find that when she did turn around and looked, Sadie was
pointing at none other than Joel.

“He’s a bit old for you, don’t you think?” one of the girls said. Ellie noticed
that she was the most pessimistic out of the three.

Sadie made a sound that sounded a lot like ‘pshaw’, “old? No. A few grey hairs
and wrinkles don’t mean shit when you’re built like that.”

Ellie didn’t know what that meant, but apparently it impressed Sadie.

“Besides, I’m sure he’s good in bed.”

One of the girls giggled while the other went on to comment about how Sadie
didn’t stand a chance. Then, little miss giggly - whatever her name was,
noticed that Ellie was watching.

She glared at Ellie and whispered something to Sadie that sounded a lot like
‘that’s that weird young girl - she lives with your old hot guy.’

Sadie turned to look at her and gave her a glare of her own before getting up,
her cronies standing up a split second after her, and heading over to a
different spot. Sadie even had the audacity to look behind her quickly, just to
make sure Ellie wasn’t following her, and to also, seemingly, put Ellie in her
place.

Ellie just rolled her eyes and kept on reading.


                                     (***)


When the day was over, Ellie had never been more relieved to be home. She
headed straight to the lounge room, took her shoes off, and laid down on the
couch with the book she had been reading during her break. She hoped she would
be able to finish it that night and hopefully start a new book before going to
bed, that way if she ended up waking up from another nightmare, she’d have
something to keep her occupied until it was an acceptable time to get out of
bed.

Half an hour after she got home and laid back on the couch, the front door of
the house opened and Joel walked in, looking every bit as exhausted, but in a
nice way, as he did after every shift on the wall.

“How was school?” Joel asked automatically, sitting down next to Ellie and
taking off his own work boots, which Ellie knew from experience were heavy -
steel cap worked well when kicking runners in the face, either in an attempt to
kill or distract them.

“It was interesting,” Ellie said, sitting up slowly and pulling her knees close
to her chest, her default comfort position, “there was a girl who said you were
hot today.”

Joel cocked up an eyebrow and Ellie found herself amused as she saw his cheeks
turn a light shade of pink.

He cleared his throat and shook his head, Ellie deduced that Joel wasn’t used
to compliments.

“So, how did that English paper of yours go?” Joel asked, clearing his throat
again and pointedly not looking at Ellie.

Ellie wanted to laugh, but thought it would be cruel, even though the laugh
wouldn’t be intended to be cruel.

“I don’t get my results back until next week,” Ellie answered, deciding to keep
up the conversation, even if it was just small talk, “so I’ll tell you then.”



                                     (***)
 


Joel was in the kitchen cooking dinner and Ellie was sitting at the dining room
table watching him.

Ever since Sadie had made that comment about Joel, she had been trying to see
it. Trying to see how Joel might be considered attractive. It’s not that the
thought hadn’t crossed her mind before - it had, but there was a difference
between admitting that someone was attractive, and admitting that you find them
attractive, or sexy, or hot, or whatever Sadie had been saying.

Someone you might look at and wonder whether or not they’re good in bed.

Ellie watched as Joel cut vegetables and put them in a pan and moved the pan to
make sure everything was placed evenly. She had never really noticed it, but
there was quite an art to the way you had to cook things. Though, admittedly
Ellie was an awful fucking cook, and would think that.

She tried to be inconspicuous, quickly glancing every so often in his
direction. If he just so happened to be looking up at the time, she would give
him a quick smile and go back to writing. Joel thought she was working on
something for another class, which that was admittedly what Ellie had told him
so he wouldn’t be suspicious, but what the paper in front of her was actually
filled with, was a bunch of notes on the things that made Joel seemingly
attractive, and why people would be attracted to them. In a way, it was like
Ellie’s own little science experiment, she was learning how sexuality worked.

She watched his hands, they were big and strong looking and you could tell her
used them a lot. Between helping build houses around the community and working
to protect the wall, Joel’s build had become a lot more defined over the years
- something that simply running around and traveling to places hadn’t done to
him.

He turned around and grabbed something off of the other counter, giving Ellie a
good look at his back. Even though he was wearing a shirt you could tell that
he had back muscles, which she knew from some of the books she had read that
some women were really into.

When he turned back Ellie continued to write things down before stashing it all
behind some blank pieces of paper.


                                     (***)



Ellie went to bed that night feeling warm and tired. Dinner had been filling
and afterward she had had some tea, which had made her feel all comfortable and
sleepy. It took her a bit to find a place to put the papers she had written
somewhere safe, somewhere Joel wouldn’t accidentally read them - or
intentionally, because sometimes Joel found it interesting to read Ellie’s
assignments.

After doing so, she got into looser, more comfortable clothing, and climbed
into bed. She quickly looked up and made sure that the window was tightly shut,
she didn’t want another incident of water damaged stuff. She closed her eyes
and found herself going to sleep rather quickly.

                                     (***)



There were hands touching her thighs and she could feel hot breath at her neck,
tickling her and making the hairs on her neck rise up. She sighed, letting
herself seemingly let go of everything that was stopping her from enjoying the
moment. She found her hand in the other person’s hair, tugging slightly, making
them moan quietly. Within the moan, she detected a hint of a familiar Texan
accent-.

Ellie woke up with a start. She was sweating slightly and her breathing was
definitely heavy. She shook her head and closed her eyes, which only resulted
in her seeing flashes of the dream she had been having. There was a deep ache,
and she could feel that she was wet. Something she didn’t experience all that
often.

She sighed - this wasn’t how she wanted her little experiment to go.

She closed her eyes and focused on something else. Focused on one of the boys
or girls in her class - an image of Sadie flashed past and she cringed harshly.
She thought about kissing and touching one of her other classmates - admittedly
they were older, but so was…the other person she had dreamed about.

She put her hands down the front of her underwear and started rubbing the hard
little nub there, feeling exhilarated at the pleasure that ran through her body
as she touched it. She pushed her fingers lower and put them towards her
entrance, slowly pushing in a digit, making herself moan - louder than she had
anticipated.

She quickly pursed her lips together in an attempt to keep herself quiet as she
slowly fucked herself with her fingers, rubbing at her g-spot until she came.

She saw stars.


                                     (***)




The morning was an awkward one for Ellie, and she could tell that Joel could
sense it, but thankfully he didn’t bother, or was too scared, to ask why. Going
to school gave Ellie more of a moment to herself, which after last night she
was grateful for.

Sitting in class that day with all the other students, rather than being oddly
intimidating like usual, was a break, despite the fact that she kept
daydreaming about what her dream had been about.

It meant she ended up being terribly horny.

Just as first break was about to begin, she was pulled aside by her teacher,
who looked like she was afraid of what she was about to say next.

Ellie sighed, preparing herself for it.

“Ellie, you’ve been a wonderful contributor to this class in the past,” Miss
Wittz said with a grim look, “you’re intelligent, something I might not be able
to say about the rest of my students - but lately you’ve been out of it and
your grades have been slipping.”

“But, uh, what about my English essay?” Ellie asked. She could feel her body
shaking with nerves, something she hadn’t really experienced since after what
Koby had done to her. She may have been nervous sometimes - but she never
shook.

“Your English essay was definitely profound in it’s opinion - it was well
written and well posed. You got an A for it.”

Ellie frowned, “then what the hell is the problem?”

“They want you back in your old classes. With students your age,” Miss Wittz
sighed and sat down on one of the small desks - it looked like it was about to
break underneath her, but it was years old anyway, and the kid who sat in it
was always drumming on it, “they think it’s unfair to other students, students
who work just as hard, that they’re not in higher classes.”

“But I earned it-.”

“And they could have as well,” Miss Wittz said in a matter of fact tone, “there
are plenty of students just as smart as you, but you got in because…” Miss
Wittz, “I’ll be honest kid, I don’t know how you got in - but there was
obviously an unfair advantage.”

Ellie shrugged, I guess a man whoring himself out for her to get what she
wanted was definitely a form of unfair advantage.

“I love having you in my class Ellie,” Miss Wittz said, “I’ll be honest, you’ve
always been my favourite student - which is why I’m telling you this instead of
letting blonde bimbo barbie of the student board tell you about it instead - I
can tell you dislike her.”

Ellie snorted, dislike was a little weak of a term in that regard.

“Today’s your last day kid,” Miss Wittz said, sounding genuinely apologetic, “I
wont be disappointed if you don’t do much work for the rest of the day.”


                                     (***)


Ellie did the opposite. She paid a lot of attention and answered everything she
knew the answer to in class, for once she even raised her hand instead of
eventually just cutting in. She was sure Miss Wittz noticed this too, because
after a while she would normally stop letting Ellie answer everything and give
someone else a turn, but she kept letting Ellie answer it all, even though
Sadie, in the back looking quite annoyed, had raised her hands a lot faster
than Ellie on several occasions.

Ellie ignored everyone as she walked out of the classroom, trying hard to not
be the last person left in the room, which she often was. A few girls she was
friends with tried to stop her and ask if she wanted to study or something
along those lines later, but Ellie didn’t really see a point. Instead, she kept
walking, in fact she walked faster when she heard them calling her name, and
went straight home.

It took her maybe half an hour to get there instead of the typical hour. By the
time she opened the front door and got onto the couch, she was rather
breathless.

It was only a few minutes later that Joel got home, looking a lot better than
Ellie, at least, felt.

“How was your day?” Joel asked. Hanging his bag off of the hook near the front
door. Ellie didn’t know how to respond - she didn’t know whether or not she
should actually start the subject, because she knew she was only going to get
frustrated and she wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk about what had happened.

“It was a day,” Ellie sighed, turning her back away from Joel, which admittedly
wasn’t the least obvious sign that there was something wrong, but it felt
better than looking at Joel right now - she hadn’t forgotten about the dream
she had had earlier.

There was a deep sigh and Ellie couldn’t mentally picture Joel rubbing his face
and heading over to her, and predictably so, Ellie felt Joel sit down at the
end of the couch near her feet. He moved her legs onto her lap and rubbed her
legs in a reassuring way that let her know instantly what was about to come.

“Miss Wittz called me in after work and had a talk to me about what happened,”
Joel said. He sounded genuinely disappointed for Ellie, which made her feel
better about her own disappointment about it.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Joel sighed, “she told me that it was nothing personal and that it had
nothing to do with your grades. People just thought it wasn’t fair and that
they needed some form of continuity.”

Ellie frowned, even though she knew that Joel couldn’t see it from this angle,
“continuity?”

“Well,” Joel paused, “after you got let in, no other ‘gifted’ students were
allowed into the older classes. Only you, and people thought it was unfair.”

Ellie sat up, trying hard to not move her legs off of Joel’s lap, or yanno,
accidentally kick in the family jewels. She needed the comfort right now, and
his closeness was doing it for her perfectly.

“So why not let all the other students who were smart enough into the older
classes?” Ellie asked, sounding a little venomous.

“Because, there would be too many students in the classroom and not enough
teachers to split it up evenly into multiple classes,” Joel said, in a matter
of fact tone, “trust me, I asked your teacher, Miss Wittz, everything I could
to make sure you could stay in the class. But, there was nothing that could be
done - not with such short notice anyhow.”

Ellie let out a frustrated puff of air from her lungs, a bit of her hair that
had been hanging in her face flying upwards as she did so - she knew why it was
being done and realistically it was a good idea - she would have agreed with it
had it been any other student, but she couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed
and a little embarrassed to be being moved into a lower year group again.

“So, what do I do now Joel?” Ellie asked, her voice trembling slightly, “I
worked so hard in that class…”

Joel looked down at her and beamed - she could feel something in her warming up
again.

“You kick ass in that class and show them what you’re made of.”


                                     (***)




Ellie had had another restless night and had ended up crawling into Joel’s bed
for comfort.

It had been a decision made while Ellie hadn’t been at her most logical or her
most awake. She had walked down the hall to Joel’s room and climbed into his
bed without making a sound, or making herself known whatsoever.

When she had woken up early that morning, she had found her legs and arms
wrapped around Joel tightly, and apparently with Joel none the wiser about it.
 

For that, she had been thankful, but she had quickly untangled her limbs from
his body and gotten out of bed, telling herself mentally that it was only
because she needed a shower, not because she felt seedy because of the dreams
she had been having about the man.

Joel woke up not long after she had finished getting dressed for the day. He
looked well rested and he kept smiling at Ellie and telling her she was going
to do great - something that she admittedly appreciated, but made her feel like
he was going to psyche her out.

Eventually, she grabbed her bag off of the hook and headed towards the school
buildings, and instead of waiting outside her usual classroom, headed to the
one beside it. Her friends from the other class looked her confusedly and Sadie
looked at her with a vicious type of glee, Ellie turned her back and ignored
them all - she didn’t want to see them even enter the classroom.

Luckily, her class was let in first, so she walked in, ignoring the eyes she
could feel burning into her back, and headed towards the back of the class
towards the empty seat with her name, on a piece of paper, placed neatly on top
of it.

The teacher was a grumpy looking older obese woman who looked like she could
skip a few meals of rabbit and deer. But Ellie tried not to judge, she knew she
was just in a shitty mood.

“Alright everyone, shuddup,” the teacher, Ms Hubbs, snapped a long ruler on her
desk, the class immediately shut their mouths and simultaneously sat up
straighter in their chairs, in fact Ellie felt herself doing it too.

“Welcome the new kid,” she said, pointing the ruler in Ellie’s direction. Ellie
could feel her face heat up, but she didn’t have much time to be embarrassed at
all the eyes looking at her, because Ms Hubbs didn’t have the patience for
introductions and snapped the ruler on the desk again.

“Now, write the lines on the board and do it quickly. We have a lot to go
through today, and if you don’t get it done, you’re staying behind.”

Ellie gulped.


                                     (***)



After class that day, Ellie decided she hated Ms Hubbs and that entire
classroom could all go to Hell. She was mentally exhausted and her wrist was
killing her.

They had written a bunch of stuff on the board, that they had to do really fast
otherwise Ms Hubbs would get angry. The worst part was she would ask questions
about it afterward, but everyone had written it down too fast for any of it to
sink in, and Ms Hubbs didn’t allow them to look at their notes and liked to rub
everything off of the board so they couldn’t look there either.

She had sat alone at first break and she had hidden in her usual spot, nobody
came to talk to her and she had enjoyed the five minutes of reading time she
had had before Ms Hubbs had walked past and told her she should be reading and
memorising the class notes instead of absorbing ‘that utter rubbish.’

She had never been so thankful to be home.


                                     (***)



Joel didn’t get home until late, which meant it was Ellie’s turn to start
dinner. She was thankful for a valid distraction and excuse to not look over
her class notes as she put recently peeled potatoes into a pot and added them
to the stove.

It was just as she was about to put the deer in that Joel walked through the
front door, looking as bad as Ellie felt.

“Busy day?” Ellie asked with a sigh.

Joel shrugged and grunted and headed straight to the shower, which usually
meant that Joel was too pre-occupied to answer and he’d be back to normal after
a good hot shower. Ellie was fine with that, so she continued to cook.

She felt better when Joel came into the kitchen, looking a little like a
drowned, but satisfied, rat.

“Busy day?”

Joel nodded, “so many idiots on the work sites - sometimes I just can’t deal
with them.”

Ellie knew better than to ask. But she could predictably tell it was either
someone screwing something up with one of the houses, like flooding the place
with a terrible plumbing job, or someone had been stupid and injured themselves
on the site whilst being an idiot.

She was sure Joel would tell her an amusing version of the story later on.


                                     (***)


During dinner, what she had assumed was proved to be correct. Joel spoke about
this guy named Nick who had put too much pressure on one of the pipes and it
had exploded, flooding the new place the had started building. Joel rolled his
eyes at some bits and Ellie laughed at them. She knew the guy that Ellie was
talking about - a guy who had been in her class last year, but he had ended up
getting suspended and had decided to become one of the builders.

Then Joel spoke about his shift at the wall and how boring it had been in
comparison.

“There was about one runner, and Tommy wasn’t there today so I was stuck with a
bunch of young guys.”

“Feeling old?” Ellie jokingly asked.

Joel jokingly glared at her, also stopping his chewing of food in the process,
“shut up you.”

Ellie laughed.

Just sitting down with Joel and talking about his day made her feel a lot
better about hers.

                                     (***)



Ellie stayed up late that night, her and Joel ended up reading. Joel was
reading some crime book and Ellie was stuck in the book she had been reading
for her old class - she could have stopped, but she had found herself genuinely
enjoying the plot of the book, she didn’t want to put it down. But reading it
did provide a weird type of ache.

By the time she went to bed, Joel was unconscious on the couch, snoring his
life away with his book covering his face. Normally Ellie would wake him up and
tell him to go to bed, but he didn’t even have the heart to wake him up. So she
turned off the lamp above his head and headed to her room, got into her own
bed, and with burning, tired eyes, instantly went to sleep.


                                     (***)



The next few weeks of Ms Hubbs’ class were absolute torture.

Students didn’t seem to like her and she heard quite a few whispers about her
and about how she was apparently so much better than everyone else. Ms Hubbs
seemed to hear a lot of these whisperings, but did nothing about them, in fact,
she seemed to side with them and liked to give Ellie harder work than the rest
of the class, which ironically enough was harder than what she was accustomed
to in her old class, and treated her more cruelly.

By the end of every week she was absolutely exhausted and just wanted to drown
in her own self pity, but she didn’t have time for that, because she had shifts
on the wall she needed to do, and if she wasn’t taking shifts, she was tidying
up and getting food prepared for whenever Joel did his shifts.

She never really got a break.

It was on a Monday morning that one of the girls who sat in the far corner of
the class with a few friends actually walked up to her and gave her a warm
smile - something Ellie definitely wasn’t accustomed to in this class.

“Hi, I’m Angie,” she said, holding out a hand for Ellie to shake - she was
never really a big fan of handshakes, but she did it anyway.

“Ellie,” she said awkwardly.

“You’re new,” Angie said, stating the obvious in a way that bugged Ellie a
little, “and I noticed you haven’t really been getting along with anyone - so I
thought I might step up to the plate. This class isn’t exactly good with new
comers,” she quipped, “in fact, everyone used to despise Brodie.”

Ellie frowned, looking at said boy named Brodie - it was hard to believe he was
ever disliked, considering it was a known fact that he was Ms Hubbs’ favourite
student.

“What changed?” Ellie asked, curious as to whether or not Angie was full of
shit.

Angie shrugged, “one day someone sat down next to him, talked to him - kind of
like, adopted him, and then everyone was cool with him.”

To Ellie it was starting to sound more like a cult than it did a classroom.

“You’ll fit in eventually - you seem nice,” Angie said, giving Ellie a genuine
smile, “just give it some time - you’re cool enough.”

Ellie nodded slowly.

She had a strong feeling it was all bullshit, but she didn’t want to say
anything that could possibly ruin her chances of getting a break around here.

“Thanks.”



                                     (***)




The next few days within her class people were admittedly starting to treat her
a lot nicer.

It made her mood a lot better, and obviously it was showing, because Joel was
starting to notice the difference in her.

“Good day?” Joel asked once while cooking dinner. Ellie was sitting at the
table, a book in one hand, a notepad in front of her and a pencil in the other
hand. She was just reading casually and writing more notes about sexuality.

“Interesting day, but admittedly it’s leaning towards the good side,” Ellie
said, turning over a page in her book which was some shitty, steamy romance,
but she was starting to understand them more now.

“Interesting?” Joel asked.

Ellie noted that his tone sounded both curious and even a little concerned.

Ellie started to feel concerned too because of it.

“Everyone’s being nice to me,” Ellie admitted, “all because one girl named
Angie walked up to me and spoke to me. Now, I’m apparently, not that much of a
social pariah.”

Joel didn’t respond for a moment. She could tell he was trying to think of a
way to warn her to be careful, but in a way that would still allow her to be
hopeful that the bullshit was over, that she may be finally fitting in.

“Just, be careful baby girl.”

Ellie nodded.


                                     (***)



It was a month, just as Ellie had finally let her guard down, that something
bad happened.

Ellie stayed a little bit behind in class because she was hoping to get some
extra credit work so she could catch up to everyone else in the class, because
of how late she started and they refused to put her grades from the last class
into consideration, she was a little bit behind everyone else, despite the fact
that she knew her work was either of equal standard, or much better.

She was shocked when she felt someone tap on her shoulder, and she turned
around with a start.

“Hey!” Angie said, giving Ellie a soft smile.

“Uh,” Ellie bit her lip. She’d realised recently she had a bit of a crush on
Angie. It was only small, but the girl was pretty. She had tan skin and dark
hair, and her smile seemed to light up the room. It was minor in comparison to
a lot of other crushes she had had, but it was still there and in the moment,
obnoxiously so.

“Hi,” Ellie finally responded, letting go of her lip and trying hard to appear
natural.

Angie’s smile seemed to widen, “me and a few friends are heading towards the
lake to go ice skating - wanna come?”

Ellie’s eyes widened. Her immediate thought was that yes, she wanted to, but…

“I don’t have any skates,” she admitted, sounding a lot more disappointed than
she had wanted to let on.

“That’s fine,” Angie said, something in her expression flickering for a moment
before she perked right back up, “I have some spares.”


                                     (***)



That was how Ellie ended up agreeing to going ice-skating. The air was cold and
in her jacket she could feel herself shaking slightly, but she ignored it as
she tightened up the skates that Angie had given her, which were, funnily
enough, the perfect size.

“I’ve never gone skating before,” Ellie admitted in a sheepish tone, “is it
hard?”

Angie shrugged, “it’s something,” she muttered. Her mood had changed slightly
since they’d gotten to the lake, but Ellie had chosen to ignore it, “maybe you
should go onto the ice on your own at first, just so you can get a feel for
it.”

Ellie looked over at the ice covering the lake. She’d been in the lake in
summer, her and Joel had gone swimming it once during a time where Ellie hadn’t
been able to deal with the pressure of everything going on around her. The lake
was deep and refreshing in the summer, but in the Winter cold, looked nothing
short of absolutely terrifying.

“Um,” Ellie wanted to let her fear known, but didn’t want it to be the butt of
some joke, so she shook her head to rid herself of nerves - it didn’t work but
it was worth the attempt at least, “sure,” she finished lamely.

A lot of Angie’s buddies were laughing around the lake, talking amongst each
other. They would occasionally glance in Ellie and Angie’s direction, but they
didn’t speak to either of them.

Ellie was waiting for some form of sign that she was allowed out on the ice,
but nothing came. She was sitting in the cold with ice-skates on, and everyone
else seemed to be waiting.

“Ellie’s gonna go first!” Angie announced suddenly, “she’s new to skating - let
her get a feel for the ice.”

Someone snickered nearby but otherwise it was eerily quiet. Ellie felt herself
shaking but she tried to convince herself it was just from the cold.

She stood up slowly, struggling to walk confidently because of her nerves and
because of the skates. It was hard to walk in them, a lot harder than she had
imagined they would be.

She headed over to the edge of the ice and put her right skate on it first.
Slowly edging herself towards the middle, she managed to skate a bit and a few
times she felt like her stomach was falling out onto the ice in front of her.

Eventually she ended up in the middle and turned to look at Angie.

“I made it!” Ellie said, her voice shaking. She could feel the cold starting to
reach her bones, she was shaking horribly, more than she would care to admit.

Angie was looking at her with quite a blank expression, as was everyone else.
She turned slowly on the ice, looking around all the faces surrounding the
lake. None of them looked like they were having fun anymore.

None of them were pretending to have fun anymore.

Before Ellie could think to do anything, before she could even step once in an
attempt to skate closer to the edge, she heard the sound of a gun and then
something hard and fast impale the ice.

She turned around in time to notice the familiar shape of a bullet, before the
ice started cracking around her.


                                     (***)



Joel gasped and felt his heart beat instantly quicken at the sound of a
gunshot.

In a place like this, you eventually get used to them. People on the wall were
always shooting and killing stray runners and clickers - it was a part of
keeping the community safe. But this gunshot sounded nothing like the usual
rifles that he oft heard echoing around the place. Besides, this was a lot
closer and not in direction of the wall.

He looked at the time. Ellie should have been home an hour ago.

He opened the front door and ran.


                                     (***)



Ellie felt herself sinking. Sinking deeper and deeper into the cold water. She
 could feel the water chilling her to her bones, to her lungs, chilling every
  fibre of her being. For a second, she floated there, almost tempted to just
give up, breathe in the water, into her lungs, and let her just drown. It’d be
    so much easier than fighting the heavy water. What would happen if she
survived? Would they lure her into another dangerous area? No, she wouldn’t be
            dumb enough to fall for it, they’d have to kidnap her.

 She could feel her lungs burning now with something more than just cold; the
 need for air was becoming a more pressing fact in her brain, and every single
       part of her brain was screaming at her to breathe in, to get air.

She opened her eyes which immediately stung with the cold and started swimming
                     upwards where she could see the sun.


                                     (***)



Joel new where to go when he saw a bunch of teenagers running away from the
lake.

He stopped a boy who looked like a nervous wreck in their tracks, grabbing the
boy by the shoulders, and slammed him into the nearest tree. Several bits of
bark crumbled to the ground and he swore he saw the tree shudder slightly from
the force of it all.

“What’s happened?” Joel asked, sounding dangerous. His voice wasn’t shaking
whatsoever, but he could feel the hand that wasn’t pinning the boy against the
tree was.

“I-I.”

“Answer me!” Joel yelled in the young boys face.

“They lured a girl to the ice!” the boy responded, turning his face away from
Joel’s and screwing his eyes shut in fear, “they shot the ice and she’s fallen
in - she’s probably d-.”

Joel dropped the boy and he slid down the trunk of the tree. He looked relieved
to be let go and didn’t bother getting back up as Joel turned and started
running towards the lake.
 
                                     (***)



Ellie broke the surface of the water and immediately breathed in a big gulp of
fresh, cold air, that stung her lungs to the point where she almost didn’t want
to breathe in again. It burnt and it was painful, but she knew it was what was
best for her, so she kept gulping in lungfuls of air in an attempt to stay
conscious.

She looked around and tried to remain calm, she was thankful in this moment
that Joel had used all those summer lake times to teach her to swim.

She looked at the ice. The slippery, wet, weak looking ice.

Now she just had to figure out how to get out of here.

                                     (***)
 


Joel finally reached the lake, he took a minute to assess the situation in
front of him. He could see movement in the water in front of him and he could
see how weak the ice looked.

He gripped at his hair tightly, what the fuck was he going to do.

“I’m coming for you Ellie!” Joel shouted, his voice shaking - he was hoping
that Ellie didn’t hear just how much confidence he lacked in that statement,
“I’m comin’!”


                                     (***)



Ellie could hear Joel and tried to peer over the ice so she could see him, but
that proved a lot harder than she thought it would be. Her legs and arms were
starting to get tired and go a little rigid from the cold. Everything was
starting to hurt, she had to do something fast.

She swam closer to the edge and tried to move her arms on top of the ice. It
took a while, but she pushed and got onto the ice on her stomach. She heard
something and gasped and tried not to move as she felt the ice shudder
underneath her.

She looked up now that she was on the ice and saw Joel slowly heading over to
her. He was in the middle, between safety and danger.

“The ice is going to break again!” Ellie warned him. He just nodded and kept
edging closer to Ellie.

Ellie slowly started pulling herself along the ice. It was agonizing, her teeth
were chattering, her fingers stiffening. She finally pushed herself off the
dangerous part of the ice, just as a massive chunk broke off and started to
float around in the water.

Joel rushed over, making the ice shake slightly, and grabbed Ellie’s arms,
dragging her across the ice until they got to safety, where Ellie ended up on
her feet, shaking from head to toe.

Joel gripped her shoulders tight and pulled her into a hug.

Ellie broke down. The hot tears running down her cheeks, mixed with Joel’s arms
being wrapped around her, seemed to be the only thing keeping her warm.


                                     (***)



Joel rushed Ellie back inside the house and got her into the lounge room. Ellie
felt like she could finally breathe when she finally looked around her and
noticed that she was home. She felt ten times warmer, and definitely ten times
safer.

“You need to get these clothes off, now,” Joel muttered, taking off Ellie’s
jacket. Ellie, however, was in too much shock to really notice.

She was looking around the lounge room, trying to convince herself it was all
real, and only seemed to snap back into reality when Joel was holding a towel
in front of her, looking concerned.

“Here,” Joel said, kind of pushing the towel in her arms and looking her in the
eyes very pointedly, “take the towel, it’s warm.”

Ellie nodded slowly and took the towel and, just as slowly, wrapped it tightly
around her.

“I need you to sit down - you uh, have a deep cut on your upper thigh,” Joel
muttered.

Ellie looked down and noticed that there was blood slowly dripping down her
leg. She sighed and sat down on the couch.

“You saw me naked,” Ellie said with almost a childish giggle.

Joel rolled his eyes and got down in front of her with a first aid kit -
something they had created together for their house. It had everything you
could possibly need from things to heal burns, ammo, an extra gun, band-aids or
the appropriate stitching equipment needed for much deeper wounds.

“That doesn’t matter right now,” he muttered, moving the towel a little up her
thigh and wiping at her wound with a clean rag. It burnt - the familiar burn of
alcohol comforted Ellie, as did the smell of it rising to her nose.

He cleaned at the wound and Ellie could see that he was pointedly looking at
the gash and nowhere else. She tried to keep the towel down, for his sake and
hers.

Ellie zoned out during the stitching process. She looked at the walls, there
were a few things on it. A shelf holding a mixture of comics of Ellie’s, some
books that were a mix of Ellie’s and Joel’s, and a photo-frame that had a photo
of Joel and Sarah in it, something that Tommy had picked up from Joel’s old
house, before the world had turned upside down.

She came back down to Earth when Joel was starting to dress her in warmer
clothes. She had jeans and underwear back on, and now he was trying to pull the
towel away from her upper half.

“I’m not going to look Ellie,” Joel said, sounding sympathetic. Ellie almost
was amused - as if that were the problem, if anything she wouldn’t have minded
Joel looking at her - but those thoughts were still something she was yet to
come to terms with, so she repressed them once more.

“I just want to help,” Joel said in a soft voice that Ellie didn’t even know
Joel was capable of, “you’re in shock and unfortunately I need you to trust
me.”

Ellie didn’t know whether she responded at all - whether she said anything or
simply nodded her head. But she moved her arms slightly and let the towel drop
onto the floor, where it stayed around her feet, it was damp and cold and it
reminded her of everything she had just been through.

She felt Joel raise her arms and go behind her to put her bra on. Then raise
her arms above her head to put her shirt on for her. Then, she felt the soft
material of her robe on her arms, and she finally felt like she could breathe
again.

She was home.

She was with Joel.


                                     (***)



For dinner, soup was the option, which Ellie definitely had no arguments about.
She ate it slowly and enjoyed the feeling of steam rising towards and warming
her face. Even though she was definitely no longer freezing, she would
occasionally still shake from some form of chill, and every little flashback
she had definitely seemed to make the cold around her much more prominent.

“What were you doing out there today?” Joel asked. He was looking at her in a
way that meant that he was scared to find out. He pitied her, and hated hearing
about everything she went through, whether it was at school or on the wall - or
even just snippets from her past.

“I was invited to go ice-skating,” Ellie said in a monotonous voice, “turned
out they didn’t intend on me doing much skating.”

Joel looked at her as if waiting for more information, but Ellie simply
shrugged and slurped at the soup. It was rabbit and it was genuinely really
good. But it was almost like her taste-buds were broken. It was like they were
frozen.

“I need you to tell me the names of everyone who was there,” Joel said
suddenly. Ellie looked up with slight alarm.

But Joel looked serious, he looked absolutely furious and strangely enough - it
was scaring Ellie, even though she knew it wasn’t intended for her.

“Why?”

“Just,” Joel sighed, “trust me. I need to know their names. Their addresses if
you know them-.”

Ellie shook her head, “no.”

There was an awkward moment of silence where Joel looked at her with a mix of
worry and confusion, with a side of that anger that had shown earlier.

“Why,” Joel asked, sounding as confused as he looked.

Ellie shrugged, “just trust me,” she said, mimicking the words he had said just
a few seconds ago, “I’m alive. They’re going to fear me. They’re not going to
do anything else. Because if they do, they’re fucked.”

Joel didn’t know what to say.

Ellie had more of her soup.


                                     (***)


Joel had made sure Ellie had gone to bed in his bed that night. He didn’t care
if he walked in later and she had taken up all of the room, he would either
sleep in her bed or on the couch. The girl needed a warmer bed, and he felt as
if she were safer in there.

There was a knock on the door, and against the silence of the night and the
house, it seemed loud. Joel hissed and headed over to the door, opening it and
glaring at his younger brother.

“Could you be any louder?” Joel asked in a Texan sarcastic whisper.

Tommy flinched and looked sheepish, “I’m sorry.”

Joel rolled his eyes and opened the door wider, inviting Tommy in. Tommy walked
in and sniffed at the air before sitting down where Ellie had sat during
dinner.

“Soup?”

Joel didn’t respond.

“So, what happened today Joel?” Tommy asked, “one of the boys told his parents
you had harassed him-.”

“Ha,” Joel cut him off, “well that boy almost got Ellie killed, and if he
didn’t, he was a witness to what his shitty little friends did,” Joel snapped.

Tommy’s eyes widened, “I repeat my question,” he said stiffly, “what happened?”

Joel went into the story of how he had heard the gunshot and how he had known
it wasn’t coming from the wall. How he had left the house and noticed the
teenagers running away from the scene of the crime and how, yes, he had
randomly grabbed a young boy and pinned him against the tree, questioning him
on what had happened. He confessed that it hadn’t been the nicest method, but
definitely one of the most effective. He explained how he had ran to the lake
just in time to help Ellie get out of the water and he had gotten the two of
them home.

“So, what has Ellie said about the incident?” Tommy asked, looking a little
paler in the light coming from the kitchen, “you’re gonna need names if you
want anything to happen to the little assholes who did this - I’m sure Maria
will sort somethin’ out.”

Joel shook his head then, looking defeated, “she won’t tell me anything yet,”
he muttered, “she says that they’re going to be scared because she’s alive and
that’ll be punishment enough or something like that,” he sighed, “she’s
stubborn and, I think she might even be ashamed.”

“Ashamed?” Tommy asked, sounding confused, “what, she asked for this to happen
to her?”

Joel was sometimes astounded by just how dumb Tommy could be.

“No,” Joel was tempted to roll his eyes again, “she’s ashamed because she
couldn’t control the situation herself,” Joel looked towards his bedroom, where
he hoped Ellie was sleeping soundly, with no nightmares of what had occurred
that afternoon, “she’s ashamed she couldn’t get out of it by herself.”


                                     (***)
 


Ellie woke up that morning and immediately fell into a panic attack. She didn’t
want to go to school, she wasn’t ready after everything that had happened the
afternoon before - she didn’t think she could face them all right now when she
was still recovering. She swore she could feel cold creeping up her legs, up to
her hips, it was going through her lungs again, then through her throat. She
felt as if there was a block of ice lodged in there, freezing her windpipe shut
so she couldn’t breathe. Hot tears were coming out of her eyes and running down
her face but that wasn’t enough to melt what was suffocating her.

“Ellie, Ellie - you’re okay baby girl, you’re okay-.”

There was arms suddenly wrapped around her torso and she started to calm down.
Her eyes dried up and the warmth started to melt the imaginary ice block in her
throat - she felt herself starting to breathe with ease again.

“I’m…sorry…” Ellie choked out.

She started crying, she couldn’t stop her body from shaking, she couldn’t
repress her sobs,

She was crying into Joel’s chest. She couldn’t stop.

“We’ll fix this,” Joel said in a reassuring voice, “I’ll make sure of it.”

                                     (***)



It was two weeks before Ellie was allowed back at school again. When she walked
into the classroom, late, with Joel right behind her, even Ms Hubbs seemed to
look at her with sympathy. Of course Ms Hubbs had to be told about the
situation so she wouldn’t immediately fail Ellie and put her down as truanting.

She looked towards the class, but didn’t look directly at anyone. She ignored
the stares and the whispering towards the back of the class.

“Knock it off,” Joel snapped, and two girls who were gossiping at the back
immediately stopped and looked sheepishly around the room.

There was a knock on the door-frame and Ellie turned to look around. There
stood Maria and two men who were high up - they managed a lot of the shifts at
the wall and were the trainers for anyone who was interested in working shifts.

“Morning,” Maria said curtly to everyone, she gave Ms Hubbs and appreciative
nod and then turned back towards the class.

“Ellie,” she said. She said Ellie’s name in a way that sounded like they didn’t
know each other whatsoever before this moment. It was professional and
unfortunately for Ellie, that made this situation all the more scary for her.

“Who was at the lake that day?” Maria asked, her voice was chilling. She looked
at Angie who looked pale and definitely shaken.

She pointed at nine individual students and Maria looked at them with a dark
expression that Ellie was sure even terrified Joel.

“You lot, get up and follow me,” Maria said, “bring your bags with you.”


                                     (***)
 


Ellie spent the rest of the day at home but was told by Ms Hubbs that she
needed to be back in the class by tomorrow at the very least. Ellie was
starting to feel a lot better about the situation, knowing now that Maria was
handling it, and didn’t mind so much.

“How you feelin’?” Joel asked, looking at Ellie with a mix of worry but also
hopefulness.

They had come here, to where Tommy and Maria were, so they could start a
somewhat normal life. Yes the infected were still nearby but they were a lot
safer here than they had been out there. But what they hadn’t counted on was
the danger that people provided - and not necessarily bandits.

People who didn’t need to fight for their lives and were just nasty were just
as terrifying as the bandits and infected they had faced during their search
for the fireflies.

“I’m okay,” Ellie muttered. She looked out the window, out on a tree there was
a bird bouncing up and down on a twig, knocking down a few leaves onto the
ground below. She sighed deeply and turned to Joel again.

“I have to be okay.”
***** Chapter Three *****
Chapter Summary
     NaNo Word Count: 12,083.
Chapter Notes
     Sorry that this update took so long! I have been in a bit of a
     writing slump and my laptop screen is broken so I've had to set my
     laptop up through my TV so I have a clear screen. I guess you could
     say my laptop is more of a desktop now.
     I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and that it makes you want to
     read more.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
                                 Chapter Three

                                      17
 
A lot can happen in a year.
As if the previous years hadn’t been action-packed, because they definitely
had, but over the course of the last year, a lot had changed.
The biggest thing was that they’d had a break-in, the infected had managed to
get past the walls, they’d ended up, in the least graphic of terms, fucking up
the school building…and the students inside.
A lot of parents had lost their children that day, their adopted children,
their foster children, their own flesh and blood. The screams of youth losing
their lives to an evil they didn’t fully understand still haunted Ellie in a
way she could never describe, not to Joel, not to Maria or Tommy. She didn’t
have the words to describe her survivor's guilt - because she hadn’t been at
school that day, even though she should have been.
Joel had asked a few times where she had been, what she had been doing in order
to come out of nowhere with a gun strapped to her back, ready to blow some
infected heads off. Ellie had never answered the question, she felt a little
too ashamed, but she did wonder if eventually, the reason Joel had stopped
asking was that he had drawn his own conclusion. Because Ellie, while she had
run up to Joel, joining him fight the infected that had broken through, she
hadn’t run out alone.
Ellie was more than a little ashamed to admit she had skipped school in favour
of making out with a girl named Maddy. Maddy had asked Ellie for help with
shooting, it was one of the things Maddy could never properly grasp and Ellie
was notoriously known for being a good shot - so Ellie had agreed to tutor her.
One thing had led to another, hormones rushing through the both of them, and
then - they heard the screaming.
Remembering it now made Ellie want to throw up.

                                (**flashback**)
 
Ellie ran as fast as she could, her weapon strapped to her back, ready to be
pulled out once she got there - it was one of the things she hated about her
rifle, she couldn’t exactly run with it like Joel easily could. Speaking of the
man, she could recognise the back of his head in the distance. She ran faster,
could see he had his own rifle, and a pistol tucked into a holster on his hip,
ready if needed.
When Ellie finally caught up with him, she noticed Joel looked pale and even a
little shaky.
“Joel-Joel, what’s going on?”
Joel looked down at Ellie and there was an instant look of relief, followed by
guilt, “w-we need to move, the screams are coming from the school.”
Ellie felt the blood drain from her face but started running with Joel
nonetheless.
Thoughts of Maddy completely left her mind when they made it to the building.
They could hear the screeches and clicks of the infected, and the screams of
fear and pain from the students. People that Ellie had known for years now.
Tommy was on the other side, shooting a few of the infected that were starting
to leave the building, probably attempting to attack people in the rest of the
settlement now. Maria was there with him, shooting at anything that Tommy
wasn’t aiming for.
Ellie hated the silence that came after they had supposedly shot all of the
infected. Tommy glanced at Joel, a look that said that they were going in,
Ellie wanted to go in too, but she knew it would be better if she stayed back.
She knew how serious this situation was and her rash decisions weren’t going to
help the cause, especially if she somehow got herself hurt. She could still
remember the look of fear on Joel’s face, which she now realised why he had
been so terrified in the first place - Joel had thought Ellie had been at
school.
“Maria, it’s clear,” she heard Tommy say.
Maria moved into the building and Ellie started to follow. She heard Joel make
a sound.
“Ellie, don’t come in here-.”
But it was too late. She had already entered the building.
The part of the building she entered was the classroom she had been in for the
majority of this year, though occasionally they would change the rooms up. The
generator had either been damaged or died at just the right time because no
power was in the room, it was dark, desks were strewn everywhere, as well as
textbook and notebook pages. Pens, pencils, things that had been scavenged and
re-made in their time at the settlement.
There were people, students her age and older, in the room, growing. It seemed
that some of the older students, her classmates, had made their way into this
room in order to protect the younger ones. There were a few guns in the room,
in places where they had obviously been dropped when their owners had been
attacked. It reminded Ellie of something Joel had once said to her during
shooting practice, something Ellie had repeated moments earlier to Maddy - who
had followed her into the building and was looking at all the wounded students,
horrified. These were her classmates too.
A gun isn’t much good if you don’t know how to use it
The saying was pretty standard, but the example was right in front of her right
now.
Joel gave her a look that told her that he definitely hadn’t wanted her to come
in because of this exact reason. There was also a flash of anger in his eyes
and she wondered whether it was directed at her, or the situation. She hoped it
was the situation because she couldn’t handle being yelled at right now.
Joel, Tommy and Maria went separate ways, occasionally she could hear one of
them say to the other ‘clear,’ ‘this room is clear.’
Occasionally she’d hear a gunshot and then an eerie silence. She knew that
these gunshots were mercy killings and it made her stomach turn.
She heard a groan behind her and she jumped. At first in the darkness, she
could only see a toppled over filing cabinet.
She looked down and there was Sadie - Sadie had been in the year above her and
had been a classmate of Ellie’s when they had been in the same year group. She
had been a bitchy ‘it’ girl back then and Ellie had resented her but had also
found her really attractive, because everyone found Sadie attractive, but Sadie
didn’t look as beautiful as she typically was right now.
Her hair was covered in blood as was most of her face, her body was twisted in
an uncomfortable position that Ellie was sure meant broken bones. There was a
bite and a chunk of flesh taken out of her right arm.
“Ellie…” Sadie looked up at Ellie with pleading eyes, “please…I…I don’t want to
be like them…”
It was undeniable, Sadie had been bitten in the altercation, she would probably
be one of the infected by tomorrow - she wasn’t immune.
Ellie had admittedly never met another immune, another person like her.
“I…I can’t,” Ellie stuttered. Maddy was avoiding Sadie’s gaze, she didn’t want
to do it either, even though they both knew it was the best thing for the
settlement, and for Sadie.
“Please,” Sadie begged.
Ellie slowly brought her rifle around.
“C-close your eyes,” Ellie whispered. Her voice was shaking, even though Ellie
had no reason to be afraid, she wasn’t the one who was about to die.
Sadie did as she was told. She closed her eyes, grimaced in pain and grabbed at
the dusty floor as if that would help somehow.
Ellie directed the gun at Sadie’s head, that way there would be no chance of
her missing and putting Sadie in more pain than was necessary.
“Y-you did great Sadie,” Ellie said - she felt too awkward to let the girl go
in silence, “your parents would be proud - they’re…they’re gonna be happy to
see you.”
Tears were streaming down her face, tears were streaming down Sadie’s face too,
she was nodding, knocking Ellie’s aim off slightly, but not enough.
Ellie pulled the trigger.
The large bang echoed around the room. It made Ellie shudder as she pulled her
weapon back. She tried not to look at the mess that was the remains of Sadie’s
head, there were brains all over the filing cabinet, the floor and the wall
behind it. It made Ellie’s stomach turned - she had to keep telling herself
that she had done the right thing.
Shakily, she stood straight, put her rifle back where it had been on her back,
and sighed.
“Clear.”
 
                                     (***)

Ellie sat on the couch in the lounge room of her home. They’d moved from their
last house, this one was a lot bigger, a lot better built, though admittedly
she sometimes missed the older, improperly built one. This house was a bit
closer to the richer side of the settlement, and Ellie often found herself
wondering just how Joel had managed to nab a place like this.
The couch was comfortable enough that she was able to lie down but too open for
her to go to sleep. She could hear Tommy and Joel talking in the kitchen about
what had happened at the school and what was going to happen now. They were
talking about what had gone wrong, how had five infected and two clickers
managed to get past the wall and into the settlement?
There had only been three survivors. A girl named Lisa who had run from the
school to go and get help, a boy named Maverick who had done nothing but simply
run home, and another boy named Alexander, who had the brains to hide in a
storage cupboard and keep his mouth shut.
No teachers had survived and the rest of the students had either not been
there, or had died.
“What do we do now that there…” she heard Tommy sigh and she could imagine him
running a hand through his hair, like he usually did in stressful situations,
“damn it Joel, what do we do now that there isn’t enough children or a decent
enough building for a school?”
“I don’t know Tommy-.”
“There’s no point in putting in the time and resources for a new school
building with no teachers and no students, and nobody is going to want to go
back into the building all those children were slaughtered in.”
Ellie cringed at that word. The word slaughtered held such a big impact on her
right now. She tried to remind herself once again that her shooting and killing
Sadie had been a mercy killing, not just her outright killing someone for no
reason. She wasn’t a murderer.
But how many times in the schoolyard had she wished that Sadie would just shut
up? How many times had she wished that the girl would stop talking about her
cute clothes, her dead parents, the guys she found hot that were decades older
than her and way out of her league? Ellie closed her eyes tightly. She saw
herself shooting Sadie in the head, her brains splattering across the wall,
except this time she wasn’t threatened with becoming an infected, this time she
was just talking and Ellie shot her.
Ellie opened her eyes, she didn’t really need to see that shit right now.
She looked over towards where the dining room and kitchen started. She couldn’t
see much more than someone’s jean covered leg as Tommy and Joel spoke in the
kitchen. She was sure she wasn’t meant to be hearing any of this.
“Where was Ellie?” Tommy asked suddenly, “I know she’s immune and she wouldn’t
have been harmed like that…”
“She wasn’t at school today,” Joel muttered, there was a moment of silence
where Ellie assumed was reserved for a quick sip of coffee, “I haven’t asked
her why yet, I didn’t think it was an appropriate time to mention it.”
“You need to talk to her about it at some point Joel.”
Ellie dreaded that moment.
“Don’t you find it a little suspicious that…I don’t know…Ellie happened to not
be there…”
Ellie felt the room grow colder.
“Are you trying to suggest something Tommy?” Joel’s voice had gotten lower,
dangerously so.
Ellie wanted to feel even a little offended but she couldn’t say she wouldn’t
suspect the same thing of someone else. She knew she was going to be questioned
about her whereabouts, and she was lucky enough that she was with Maddy at the
time because Maddy would solidify her alibi. She was just going to say that she
was trying to teach Maddy how to use a weapon - they didn’t need to know about
the other stuff and she hoped Maddy thought the same way because she hadn’t
exactly told Joel anything about the fact that she thought she might be
bisexual.
She laid back and tried to block out the sound of the two men talking. She
could hear birds outside which felt odd considering how dark the day had
quickly become. It was a nice spring day, flowers were blooming, colourful and
pretty, she was even sure she’d seen a bee today which were supposedly extinct,
she didn’t really know, she’d never focused much on her environmental studies.
You didn’t expect such tragedies to happen on days like this. You expected
things like this to happen when it was thundering and storming and it felt like
it was never going to end.
 
                              (**end flashback**)

Ellie curled up in her bed, she wasn’t feeling good about everything today. She
had promised Maddy yesterday that they would hang-out today, especially
considering that Maddy had said, in a very serious tone, that they had to talk.
Dread filled her stomach and she curled up tighter and pulled the cover over
her head.
Ellie and Maddy had started dating not long after the incident. Nobody knew
about it, Maddy didn’t know how her parents would take it, and Ellie had no
idea if she even owed it to Joel to tell him - it wasn’t like Joel was her
father, it technically wasn’t any of his business.
Yet she still cared what he thought so…she was lost to be perfectly honest.
She poked her head out from under the covers when she heard the familiar sound
of Joel making his way to the kitchen for his morning coffee. Oh how that man
had missed his coffee, and now it was practically a part of his bloodstream.
Ellie had tried it once and found she had liked it, but she needed more sugar
in it while Joel could have it both sweet and bitter depending on the mood he
was in. Ellie had no idea how he did it.
She slowly got up - days didn’t feel so impossible if she at least had
breakfast with Joel. Even though there were still some things that she hid from
Joel, such as her sexuality, it felt good to have someone to talk to about a
bunch of other things, like her fears - which oddly she found a lot less
personal.
She put on a pair of shorts and headed into the kitchen. Joel was standing with
his back to her, looking down at a piece of paper that was on the bench -
probably a letter that had been left on their doorstep, Joel tended to get a
lot of those.
“Morning,” Ellie muttered, noticing her voice shook slightly. She’d been like
this for a while now, too scared to make a sound.
Joel turned around hastily, he looked her up and down and frowned.
“You alright, kiddo?”
Ellie shrugged, “dunno,” she looked anywhere but at Joel and busied herself
with making herself her own hot beverage for the morning.
She heard Joel sigh.
“You know, we used to have these things called therapists.”
She frowned, now she faced Joel. She noticed that his face looked tired - he
looked older than usual.
“You been working hard lately?” Ellie asked, completely ignoring what Joel had
said.
“What?” he asked, he rubbed his face, “uh, yeah, sure.”
Ellie frowned. He was lying. Joel was always a hard person to read when it came
to some things, and usually, he was a good liar, but this time there was
something off. It was like he wanted Ellie to catch him out, to ask questions.
He hadn’t been working lately, at least not in construction, and Tommy, true to
his word, hadn’t bothered requesting another building for educational purposes.
Ellie wondered if he was having nightmares like she was.
“Anyway, what’s a therapist?” Ellie asked, remembering what Joel had said
before she had rudely interrupted him.
Joel moved around the countertop and over towards the stools - Ellie noticed
that he took the letter with him. He sat down and took a sip of his coffee.
“A therapist is someone who listens to your problems, your thoughts, your
deepest secrets - they don’t tell anyone or judge you unless they think you’re
going to be a harm to yourself-.”
“Have you ever spoken to one?” Ellie asked, her curiosity killing her.
Joel nodded slowly, “I did when I was younger when I was a teenager I had a lot
of issues. A lot of fears.”
Ellie scoffed, “they must seem pretty small when you consider the fact that you
survived the apocalypse.”
Joel smiled, amused, “quite.”
Ellie finished making herself a drink, she took a sip burning her tongue
slightly, but hey - that’s the way she liked it.
“So, what’s the difference between a therapist and just a friend you tell
everything to?” Ellie asked, “why the fancy title?”
“Therapists are certified to take care of your problems and they often give
advice that isn’t biased.”
“Huh…” Ellie put a finger to her lips in a fake thoughtful expression, “so
every time you gave me advice without caring about my feelings you were
actually just being my therapist?”
Joel rolled his eyes, “shut up.”
 
                                (**flashback**)
 

“Everything is going to be different now, isn’t it?” Maddy said, looking at the
abandoned and almost haunted looking old school building. It had been a few
days since the attack. All the bodies had been removed, funerals had been held
all over the place and then there had been one massive memorial service just
yesterday.
“Yeah,” Ellie said. She didn’t tell Maddy about the fact that there wasn’t
going to be a new school building. That there were no teachers left, not enough
students to bother with, and basically all the leftover students would have to
go to work for the settlement, whether it be farming, or training for the wall,
which Ellie personally thought wouldn’t happen for many considering it meant
facing clickers and infected on a regular basis.
It was a sad reality but Ellie was sure the survivors who had actually been in
the school building at the time mostly suffered from post-traumatic stress
disorder and hadn’t left their homes since the incident. Especially Maverick,
who in the event had actually lost his twin sister, Gwen.
“Are you going to go funny on me too, Ellie?” Maddy asked suddenly. Ellie
turned to look at her, Ellie hadn’t realised she had been staring out towards
the abandoned building.
“What do you mean?” Ellie asked, only half concentrating on the conversation.
“Everyone has been treating me weirdly ever since it happened,” Maddy admitted,
looking glum.
Ellie cocked up an eyebrow.
“They treat me like I should have been there,” Maddy said, “even my
parents…they act as if they wish I had been in there most days.”
Ellie sighed, “I’m sure they don’t genuinely think that Maddy. They’re probably
just wondering why you skipped school in the first place.”
Ellie still hadn’t been asked why she hadn’t been there that day, but she had
been waiting for it, especially after hearing Tommy’s tone, the way he
suspected her of helping bring the infected in. Thinking about it again hurt.
It hurt more than words could ever express. She felt like she had been turned
on by a friend.
Joel, however, remained loyal. He hadn’t asked - but she knew he would soon.
Because Tommy would keep asking and eventually Joel would realise it would be
better for Ellie if he asked her about the truth instead of Tommy asking.
“It doesn’t seem like it,” Maddy said. She kicked her shoe in the grass,
causing dirt to swirl in the air, “it’s like they’re jealous of the amount of
sympathy stock a lot of the other parents are getting for losing their
children.”
“Sympathy stock?”
“Yanno,” Maddy shrugged, “Maverick’s family got a bunch of food because of
Gwen’s death, Sadie’s carer’s got a bunch of food but that might have been
because they donated the remainder of Sadie’s clothing - the stuff she wasn’t
wearing, anyway.”
Ellie had recently gotten a clothing delivery. She hoped none of it had once
belonged to Sadie. She made a mental note to try and donate it back and hope
none of it found its way back on her doorstep.
“If they’re jealous of that, then your parents are fucked up.”

                                     (***)
 
“Ellie, could I uh - talk to you for a moment?”
Ellie looked up from the book she was only partially reading. She had been
thinking about Maddy, how soft her skin and kisses were. Joel looked down at
her, looking awkward.
Now was the time, Ellie knew it by the tone of his voice. He was going to
question her about her whereabouts on the day of the attack.
“Sure,” she said. She put her bookmark in to mark her place. She had made it
herself with the bark of the tree that had been outside her window of her old
place - something to remember it by, as she was certain by now a young couple
lived in their old house.
They moved into the dining room. There was a piece of paper and a pen sitting
there. Tommy had obviously requested that Joel write everything down.
For some reason knowing this stung even more.
She sat down across from Joel, who looked like he would rather be anywhere than
sitting across from Ellie at that very moment.
“I need you to know that it’s really important that you tell me the truth,”
Joel said, his voice was a little shaky, “because if you don’t…you could end up
in a lot of trouble. Understand?”
Ellie nodded once, “understood.”
Joel sighed. He rubbed his face tiredly, the man seemed to age by ten years in
the few seconds that passed before he said, “Ellie, where were you the day of
the attack? Why weren’t you in school?”
Even though Ellie had known this is what the whole conversation was about, she
still felt a jump as her heart started to beat a little bit faster than normal.
Weird.
“I…” Ellie sighed, “I knew you were going to question me soon and I’ve been
practising my answer this entire time because it’s the truth, the honest to
whatever truth, but holy shit I can’t say shit right now,” she said. This was
all muttered in a slightly crazed tone. It made Ellie feel like she sounded
guilty.
“Take your time baby girl,” Joel said in a comforting tone. That was all Ellie
needed to hear to know that Joel knew, for a fact, that Ellie was innocent.
She sat back in her seat, sitting up straight, she put her hands on the table.
She could do this.
“I have a friend named Maddy, we’re in the same class and she’s always helped
me out with majority of my school work,” she noticed Joel frown slightly, “I
said help out - my grades are genuinely, I haven’t been cheating off of her,”
Ellie found it amusing that Joel still found the time to make sure Ellie’s old
school work was entirely her own, “while she’s always been good with textbook
stuff, especially math, I’ve always been good at the physical stuff. Training.”
“What part of the training?” Joel asked, sounding suspicious. He feared the
worst and unfortunately, it was the worst.
“Shooting,” Ellie admittedly sheepishly.
“Ellie, you know it’s illegal-.”
“It is illegal to use your gun outside of training and outside of shifts at the
wall-.”
“And it’s also illegal to teach other’s how to use a weapon without a permit.”
Ellie nodded, again, sheepishly.
“So instead of-.”
“Instead of letting clickers into the settlement and allowing them to attack my
classmates, I was instead pursuing other illegal, admittedly less illegal,
activities,” Ellie cut him off, “yes.”
He sighed and put his head in his hands. Once again he looked tired, “oh Ellie,
what am I going to do with you?”

                              (**end flashback**)

Admittedly, nothing had happened. She hadn’t been punished for the crimes she
had technically committed, only because she had had to see what had happened at
the school. If it had been anyone else, Ellie would have thought the special
treatment was unfair. But to this day, she was still rather grateful for it -
but she was sure it was written down on some form of record somewhere, and if
she continued to do unlawful things, it would be used against her in order to
get her kicked out of the settlement.
She was sitting next to Joel, eating breakfast. She looked at the watch on
Joel’s wrist, the one she knew now had been given to him by Sarah, his
daughter, for his birthday some twenty-odd years ago. It was almost 12 pm. She
was going to have to meet up with Maddy soon.
She quickly finished up her breakfast and made sure to say goodbye to Joel
before she left the house, heading for the same hill they had once sat at, days
after the attack had occurred. It wasn’t a special spot, it wasn’t a favourite
spot, it was just an easy one to find considering most spots in the settlement
didn’t really have any particular landmarks in order to indicate what was what.
When she made her way towards the hill and she was halfway up it, she could see
that Maddy was already sitting up there patiently, perching on a rock that
poked out of the side slightly.
“Maddy,” Ellie said once she got up there, “hi.”
Maddy gave her a small sheepish smile and a wave, “hi.”
She didn’t get off of her rock and give Ellie a kiss of greeting like she
usually did, which immediately set off alarm bells in Ellie’s head. Something
was wrong, something big was about to happen.
“I need to talk to you about something, it’s pretty serious,” Maddy said with a
small sigh.
Ellie sat down and crossed her legs exactly where she had just stood.
“You know how I always used to say that one day I would love to venture outside
of the wall, just for a little bit, just, yanno. For some adventure?”
Ellie already didn’t like where this was going.
“Yeah…”
Maddy squirmed in her seat slightly, “and how I always used to say it was
because this place was boring as hell and you never got to do anything real
unless you were working on the wall. The place where all the action is.”
Ellie didn’t say anything, she didn’t even nod.
“My parents want to go outside the wall,” Maddy said, “they think it’s too
dangerous being locked up in here. Beyond the wall, if the infected find you,
you have your weapons constantly on you. There is no ‘locking them up for the
night’ type of bullshit, yanno?”
“It’s safer that way,” Ellie muttered, feeling a little defensive. That had
been a rule Maria had put into place, and she adored Maria, “gun control is
necessary.”
“If you didn’t have to lock up your weapons all the time, then so many people
wouldn’t have died,” Maddy said. Ellie knew instantly that this was a line the
poor girl had been fed by her parents, “besides, when you’re in the wild and
getting hunted down, you can just run and hide. When you’re in here, you’re
stuck-.”
“With several hundred people who all have weapons and can take a clicker down
in seconds. Hell, they can even take down a bloater in seconds.”
Maddy frowned, “what’s a bloater?”
Ellie laughed, an almost cruel type of laugh that she felt partially ashamed
about, “you expect to be able to go out there and fend for yourselves when you
don’t even know what a bloater is? You don’t even know what you’re truly facing
out there! Besides, it isn’t just the infected you have to worry about, you
have to worry about humans in large groups too-.”
“Just because you’ve been out there in the rough of it all doesn’t mean you
know everything about it either, Ellie,” Maddy said, sounding irritated, “I
thought of all people you would understand why my parents want to get out of
here so badly. Why they want to get away.”
Ellie shook her head, frustrated tears burning her eyes, “no, I honestly don’t
understand, I think your parents are being stupid - but if they want to go
ahead and die, then that’s their fucking problem.”
Maddy’s jaw dropped, and Ellie felt herself feeling a sick amount of
satisfaction.
“You know what? Fuck you,” Maddy got up, “I came here to talk to you calmly and
tell you that obviously, we weren’t going to work out because of my moving
away, but to be honest - I’m fucking glad we’re done, because you’re obviously
not as good of a person as you make yourself out to be, little miss immune.”
Ellie stood up as well, “really, we’re-.”
“I wish I’d taken the day off,” Maddy said, “I wish I’d stayed at home for the
day and that you’d gone to school.”
Ellie closed her mouth. She was shaking violently.
“You’re an abomination,” Maddy said, “a freak - and you shouldn’t be alive.”
Maddy ran down the side of the hill before she or Ellie could say anything
else. It was the fastest she’d ever seen Maddy run, even faster than the day of
the attack.
Ellie sunk back down to the dirt, she couldn’t stop shaking and couldn’t
support her weight on her legs any longer.
Fuck everything.
 
 
                                     (***)

Heading home, Ellie somehow sensed that her day was magically going to get even
worse. She tried to convince herself for a moment that maybe she was just being
a little pessimistic but something at the back of her mind told her to trust
her gut instincts and prepare for something horrible and world-altering.
She let herself into the house, she was sometimes still struck by the size of
it and sometimes found herself heading in the complete opposite direction to
her old house. Maybe when she was old enough to live on her own and wanted the
privacy of living on her own, she would try and convince the other people to
move out of it so she could have it back. She would give up the master bedroom
for her old room with the tree outside the window.
On the counter in the kitchen, she noticed that they’d gotten a new delivery of
food. A lot of nice food, stuff that typically only their engineers would get.
Like Sadie’s carers. Ellie knew Sadie’s carers got a lot of good food for the
amount of time they put into bettering the settlement. She’d always been pissed
that she and Joel didn’t get better food because construction also counted as
bettering the settlement, but they had been left with barely enough food to
cover them for the week.
She wondered for a second how Joel had managed to get that food without having
done any construction work for the settlement for about a week.
She headed towards her room, she just wanted to pick up a book and escape the
world for a little bit, but she froze when she heard moans and bed springs.
Ellie could feel her face go red. She knew what the combination of those two
things meant. She looked out of her bedroom door towards the kitchen and saw
the corner of the counter that held all of the food. She frowned.
Was Joel…? No….he wouldn’t.
Ellie sprung into action. She grabbed the pistol from underneath her pillow and
headed towards Joel’s room, not even sparing a moment to think about the
consequences.
She kicked open the bedroom door, a man that was behind Joel let out a high
pitched scream, Joel yelled out something but Ellie wasn’t listening as she
aimed the pistol at the other man's head.
“Get out!” she screamed loudly, so loudly she was sure the whole rich part of
the settlement could hear it, “get the fuck out of here!”
The man didn’t need to be asked twice as he leapt off of the bed, rushing to
grab his clothes, Ellie ignored his obvious nudity as he rushed out the bedroom
door, he had the smarts to quickly put on a shirt and a pair of pants before
exiting the house, running as if he had seen a ghost.
Ellie turned back round to face Joel, who was covering himself with a pillow
and looking like, in that moment, he’d be quite happy if Ellie shot him right
in the middle of the forehead with the pistol.
“I want an explanation,” Ellie said. Her pistol was back at her side, the hand
holding it shaking slightly, with anger, fear, sadness, anxiety - she wasn’t
entirely certain, but she knew that the emotion she was feeling right now was
quite strong.
Joel didn’t say a word but simply nodded.
 

                                     (***)

Ellie had left the room long enough to give Joel time to get decent, she sat at
the dining room table refusing to look at the food on the counter, hell, if she
didn’t need food so badly she’d refuse to eat it. But she was only willing to
protest so far.
Now they were sitting across from one another, Joel at one head of the table
and Ellie at the other.
They sat in silence and looked as if they were measuring up the other person.
Joel was a good head taller than Ellie, but even without the gun, Ellie managed
to look a whole lot more intimidating.
“So are you going to explain what happened, or…?” Ellie said slowly, both
warily because she was scared of pushing him but also in a way that showed her
patience for the situation was starting to wear thin.
“I wasn’t getting much work because lately there haven’t been many requests for
buildings,” Joel said slowly, “I was hoping they’d want to build a new building
for the education department but with limited teachers and resources, they
didn’t see a point in wasting their workers’ efforts. Including mine,” he
sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He looked sweaty, tired and nervous.
Ellie felt a little bad.
“So you moved to prostitution?” Ellie asked, she hadn’t tried to sound
accusatory but that is how it came out, “because that’s what it looks like.”
Joel nodded slowly, “that’s what it is.”
Ellie felt herself loosen up slightly. She slumped, almost in defeat. She had
hoped her shifts on the wall were helping pick up the slack, but they couldn’t
both live on the small amount they got.
“Why Joel,” Ellie said, sadly, “why did you feel the need to go to such an
extent? Without school, I could have picked up double the amount of shifts on
the wall-.”
“I don’t like you working on the wall,” Joel admitted, he looked behind Ellie
just over her shoulder. A part of her told her to turn around to make sure
nothing was behind her, another part told her Joel was only doing this so he
didn’t have to look directly into Ellie’s eyes, “I don’t like the thought of an
infected getting that close to you - hurting you.”
“I don’t like you working on the wall either,” Ellie said in the same tone Joel
had said it, dull admittance of the fact, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t
appreciate the work you put in, that doesn’t mean I unrealistically expect
myself to go into prostitution to save both of our asses from starvation.”
“If you ever did that to yourself I would kick your ass-.”
“Why?” Ellie asked, “because I’m a female and my virginity is golden?” she
rolled her eyes, “that’s sexist.”
Joel’s cheeks went red, “good to know you’re still a virgin.”
“Why?!”
“I was being sarcastic Ellie, I don’t care about your sex life.”
Ellie smirked, “then why can’t I be the prostitute?”
Joel groaned, “this isn’t the argument we’re having Ellie, this isn’t the way
this topic was supposed to go.”
Ellie sighed, “I don’t want you to do this anymore. I will stop eating three
meals a day if it means you no longer have to do this to yourself because I
know it’s not as if you actually enjoy it-.”
“We need food-.”
“Well then I’m never eating again, simple,” Ellie said, “every meal you prepare
for me, I will personally throw out, I don’t fucking want it.”
There was silence. Ellie knew that her threat was a genuine one to be feared
and so did Joel, because Ellie was notorious for being stubborn, to a fault.
“I’m going to bed,” Ellie said, getting up suddenly, the chair skidding
backwards on the floor and almost tumbling over, “I want to know your decision
when I wake up.”
She didn’t wait for an answer as she stormed to her room and slammed the door.
 
                                     (***)

For the next few days, the only time Joel and Ellie only seemed to talk is when
they were working the same time on the wall, which in itself was rather rare.
Ellie didn’t eat as much as she typically would, both as a sign of protest, but
also so Joel wouldn’t feel the need to somehow secretly whore himself out in
order to get more food. They needed to figure this out.
One day, Joel answered the door to a delivery of food that Ellie had earned for
her shifts on the wall. It was a lot, Ellie had been requesting every shift she
possibly could. Joel put it on the counter and sighed.
“I won’t do it anymore, okay?”
Ellie looked at Joel, with an honestly pleasant smile on her face, “that’s all
I needed to hear.”
“You trust me?” he asked, sounding sceptical, to say the least.
“Of course,” Ellie said, “I know you wouldn’t lie to me - I know where you
sleep.”
 
                                     (***)

It was one of Ellie’s days off.
Typically she would have gone outside and hung out with Maddy or maybe finished
up some school work, but Maddy and her parents had officially left the
settlement, and well, the school wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
So instead, she went back to her old science experiment - why did people find
Joel attractive?
She compared the attributes people described him to be and compared them to
some of her favourite book characters and realised she found the book
characters attractive, which once again made her realise that she found Joel
attractive.
Now, she had kind of seen Joel partially naked (she knew he had that weird V-
shaped hip thing going on that women went crazy over) and so her imagination
now ran a little wilder than what she was used to.
She found herself staring into the distance for half an hour, imagining
different scenarios. His hands on her hips, him kissing her lightly, then
roughly, then somewhere in between. Ellie often tried to ignore these fantasies
because there was still a part of her that felt like all of these thoughts were
wrong and dirty, and not just because they were of Joel - but because she just
felt uncomfortable acknowledging them.
Before she knew it, she was heading to the bathroom for an ice cold shower she
felt she deserved.
 
                                     (***)

The next few weeks went reasonably well. Ellie and Joel were getting along
fine, work was going well and they had enough food to last them without any
extracurricular income earning activities being necessary. Ellie was starting
to feel good about herself again, despite still having those fantasies about
Joel. Sometimes they got a little out of hand, to the point where she caught
herself before moaning his name in her sleep. A talent that she didn’t know she
had had, but a talent she was certainly grateful for.
So when Maddy’s parents returned to the settlement without their daughter
following them, Ellie was certainly caught off guard.
Ellie was sitting in a room, waiting for Joel and Tommy to stop talking to
Maddy’s parents. Their names were Veronica and Martin. They were both in their
thirties as far as Ellie knew, Martin was intimidated by Joel because it was
quite obvious that Veronica had a crush on him. Thankfully Joel had never once
been tempted by Veronica and her middle-aged stress wrinkles.
“What exactly happened,” she could hear Tommy say.
“And where?” she heard Joel add-on, “we need to know how close to the
settlement this happened, we need to prepare for an attack.”
We can’t have another one that kills half of our population, Ellie thought
silently to herself. She would never dare say that aloud though.
“We don’t know where we were, it’s taken us days-months to find the settlement
again, and it was entirely by accident!” this was Martin who was talking, who
always sounded annoyingly high pitched and nasally. Joel had once described the
way Martin spoke as a car salesman overly anxious to make a sale on a car whose
mileage was a lot more than the car actually said it was. Ellie had no idea
what Joel was talking about, which was usual for her.
“Okay, then can you at least tell us what happened?” Tommy repeated his
question from earlier. To the untrained ear, Tommy would sound patient but
Ellie knew he was either suspecting Veronica and Martin of something, or he was
just downright losing his patience.
“We were travelling, and we heard a bunch of screaming,” Veronica said, her
voice shaking, “Maddy was concerned, she thought it was someone who needed
help, so she ran ahead of us - there was no way we could stop her - all she
wanted to do was help…” Ellie heard Veronica start sobbing, loudly. Ellie felt
her guts turn.
“She ran into a pack…a horde…of infected,” Martin said, sounding as if he was
struggling to stay strong throughout the conversation, “we didn’t catch up
until they…they were already tearing her apart.”
Maddy was dead.
Ellie got out of her seat and left the other room, heading outside into the hot
sun. The door slammed behind her roughly as she headed towards the hill that
she and Maddy would often sit together. Seeing the school buildings’ ruins was
probably the last good thing for her right now, but she didn’t really care.
She only took a little bit of notice when she heard the door slam behind her a
second time, but she was already heading towards the edge of the start of the
hill by that point. She could hear heavy footsteps behind her but she didn’t
turn around to see who was following her, but admittedly she was already pretty
sure she knew who it was. She headed to the top of the hill, feeling tears
begin to form and sting at her eyes when she saw the familiar rock that poked
from the side of the hill. She’d always loved sitting there because it felt
like a tiny cliff-side. Maddy had stolen the seat from her but Ellie hadn’t
minded all that much.
She finally reached the rock and sat down on it, watching as Joel took the last
few steps in order to catch up with her. He sat down beside her, on the grass,
though he was sitting more besides rock than her, because she was sitting on
the very edge, dangling her feet in the air, her feet only a few inches too
short to touch the ground properly.
“Are you okay?” Joel asked stupidly, in a low, caring voice that almost made
Ellie want to break down.
There were still times in her life where Ellie never quite understood why Joel,
or anyone, truly even gave a fuck about her. The reality was she found herself
a trouble-maker and unbearable, she wasn’t worth anybody's time or pain. But
for some reason, Joel had found something in her that was worthwhile.
“No,” Ellie said, she realised now that tears had started to stream down her
face, she wiped them away angrily with the back of her wrist.
“I know you and Maddy were close…it must be hard to overhear all of that…” Joel
muttered. He sighed, “I had a feeling when her parents walked back into the
settlement without her that something like that had happened…I shouldn’t have
let you sit in the other rooms-.”
“It’s not just that we were close Joel,” Ellie scoffed, cutting him off in the
process, “sometimes, you really are blind.”
Joel was silent for a few moments while Ellie tried to manage her breathing,
trying to make it more stable and sound less crazed. Truly, it only half
worked.
“You two were together,” Joel said, he said it as a matter-of-fact, “I know.”
Ellie frowned and turned towards Joel, who had nothing but a supportive look on
his face.
“How did you know?” Ellie asked, sounding shocked and a little amused, “I tried
so hard to keep it hidden from you.”
Joel snorted, “maybe next time don’t make out with her on top of a hill.”
Ellie had to laugh at that, despite the situation. It felt awfully sardonic,
laughing and making jokes about Maddy and Ellie when Ellie had just found out
that Maddy was dead.
Ellie frowned for a moment, recalling a conversation that she and Maddy had
once had.
“Joel, I think there’s something fishy about Maddy’s death,” Ellie said. She
knew she sounded crazy, just a little bit at least because there was no reason
to suspect Maddy’s parents of anything but being honest about their daughters’
death.
“What’s that?” Joel asked. Despite the fact that Ellie thought she sounded
crazy, Joel took what she said completely seriously. It was one of the things
Ellie loved about him.
“I think she was murdered,” Ellie said, “by her parents.”
Joel urged her to go on.
“She once told me…after the attack at the school,” Ellie said this, her voice
going darker, those days still haunted her, “that her parents were seemingly
jealous of the attention the parents of dead children got. The extra, free food
from neighbours, the…sympathy stock.”
She turned to look at Joel again - the older man was frowning, looking a little
pale even.
“What happened after she told you that?”
“She got me to meet up with her a while later, told me her parents wanted to
leave because they didn’t trust the safety of the settlement anymore,” she
said, “they left and took Maddy with them.”
Joel got up, “you gonna be okay kiddo?” he asked, placing a supportive hand on
her shoulder.
Ellie nodded slowly, giving him a weirdly suspicious look, “yeah, why?”
“Because I gotta go,” Joel said, looking almost regretful that he had to leave,
“I have to tell Tommy your suspicions. I need to tell him that I think they’re
fairly logical suspicions too.”
Ellie watched as Joel made his way down the hill. Ellie told herself to remind
herself later to let Joel know just how grateful she was for his existence.
 
                                     (***)

Ellie went home not long after Joel made his way back to Tommy to tell him
Ellie’s suspicions. Joel didn’t get home until after dark where he told her the
news that Veronica and Martin had been unable to show them the place where they
had buried Maddy’s body, or where she had been attacked, even after the four of
them, and five extra people who typically worked shifts on the wall, all took a
little bit of a ‘road trip.’
Ellie was relieved that she had remembered what Maddy had said, but now she
thought about how she wished she had begged and pleaded for Maddy to stay. To
ignore her parent's wishes and to stay in the settlement. Ellie wished she had
swallowed her pride and apologised. But she had let Maddy leave, for good.
Ellie cried herself to sleep that night, she couldn’t stop thinking about poor
Maddy’s last moments, the moment she realised she had made a mistake, the
moment she realised what her parents were doing to her, the moment she realised
that she was never going to go back to the settlement. Ellie wondered to
herself, did Maddy think of Ellie at all in her last moments? Or was she too
busy thinking about how she wouldn’t be around for the next day? How her
parents would probably get away with her murder because there were certainly no
witnesses, and in this day in age, you could always just blame a random zombie.
Ellie didn’t even realise when she had gone to sleep. The only reason she knew
she’d eventually fallen asleep was when she was shaken awake by a tired and
concerned looking Joel.
“You’re crying in your sleep baby girl,” he murmured tiredly. His Texan accent
was thicker when he was sleep deprived, which many women had assumed and
claimed they would love to hear. Ellie was starting to realise she hated a lot
of the other women in the settlement. Without saying much else, Joel nudged her
over to one side of the bed, and without asking, Joel got into Ellie’s bed with
her.
Ellie didn’t complain though. She needed to be held, she needed to feel less
alone, less scared that someone or something was going to hurt her.
“I’m gonna explain to Tommy tomorrow that you can’t work your shift,” Joel
said, half asleep and yawning somewhere in the middle, “I refuse to let you go
to work tomorrow.”
Ellie refused to argue, and before she could even realise what was happening,
she had stopped crying and was slowly going to sleep.
 

                                     (***)
 
When Ellie woke up in the morning it was the most well-rested she had been in
several months. She hadn’t realised just how heavily things had been weighing
down on her, and just how much it was affecting her sleep. When she shifted a
little in her sleep though, she realised just exactly why she had slept so well
the night before.
She could feel Joel pressed behind her back, one of his big arms wrapped
loosely around her waist, if fact, she thought, you could probably say it was
mostly just thrown on top of her. Either way, it was a comforting feeling and
she appreciated it.
What she hadn’t been expecting though, was shifting slightly and feeling Joel’s
penis.
He wasn’t hard, no, unfortunately, Ellie knew what that already felt like, but
it was definitely distinctive in the mess of hard limbs laying behind her. She
tried to ignore it, telling her to just shut up and go back to sleep. But she
could feel her face going red, and now her biggest fear was that Joel would
sense that she was awake and would speak to her about her crying last night.
She closed her eyes and tried counting sheep, even though she hadn’t seen one
in several months, so instead, she took the time to imagine what sheep looked
like. By the time she was done she was just annoyed because she didn’t know
whether she wanted her sheep to be black or white. Then she wondered if there
had been such a thing as grey or brown sheep.
She sighed in frustration and opened her eyes. She wasn’t getting back to sleep
anytime soon so she may as well just get up and get a drink. She pulled away
from Joel and climbed over him in order to get to the kitchen, the only thing
Joel did was mutter something in his sleep about getting up in a minute and
turned over so that he was facing the doorway Ellie had just exited through.
Her face still felt hot by the time she had gotten into the kitchen, so she got
a little bit of cool water from the tap and wiped her face with it. She felt
like an honest to god overly horny mess, because there was definitely some sort
of reaction happening in her pants, but she wasn’t exactly in the mood for it.
Because not only had her best friend and ex, been declared dead yesterday, and
a memorial was to be held in a few more days, this was Joel. She was not
supposed to be attracted to Joel in any way shape or form. It just…was not
okay.
She leaned against the bench with a glass in hand, wondering how the fuck she’d
done this to herself in the first place.
Then she remembered; her stupid science experiment.
 
                                     (***)

It didn’t take long for her to find it in her room. It was stuffed in the top
drawer of her desk, hiding underneath several old English textbooks and pencils
she had yet to sharpen; but Joel was still hesitant to let her have knives for
some weird reason. The toughest part was trying to get these pages without
waking Joel up with the sounds of the drawer opening and closing and pages
being moved.
She moved it all into the dining room. The difference between this house and
the old one was the fact that when she said dining room, she was now actually
entering a room that was separate to the kitchen. She sat down at the end
furthest from her bedroom and went through the papers until she finally found
the stupid list she had made.
She had been so naive. How did she not think about the fact that she would
probably fuck herself over with this list? Admittedly, she thought her will and
perception of Joel being nothing but a friend was a lot stronger, but
apparently not.
Apparently, she was just as bad as the other women in the settlement. Except
she actually had to live with Joel.
She knew all of Joel’s stupid traits that women would definitely find
unattractive in him. How Joel always left wet towels on the floor in the
bathroom. How if he got too comfortable he would pass out anywhere and snore so
loud Ellie swore she could feel the house shake. He wasn’t exactly the most
polite eater but Ellie couldn’t really pin that against him considering she
herself was a messy eater - but she was sure the other women in the settlement
would find it a turn off.
Ellie looked at the list one more time with an angry expression. Fuck this
piece of paper in particular. It was a burden.
“What you readin’, kiddo?”
Ellie jumped and slammed the piece of paper down on the hardwood table. She
quickly, but certainly not stealthily by any means, moved the papers underneath
papers that had no relation to Joel whatsoever. Her pile wasn’t as organised
now, but what did that matter? Joel wasn’t allowed to see this.
“Would it be a waste to say, ‘nothing’?” Ellie asked, sounding nervous as she
said it.
Joel frowned and sat down across from her. He leaned over and grabbed the edge
of the stack. Ellie mentally screamed, but her hands didn’t seem to want to
work, and before she could do anything about it, she was painfully watching as
the stack was placed in front of Joel and being sorted through.
Joel ignored all of Ellie’s old assignments, assignments that Ellie had kept
because she had been proud of their results, especially when she had first
started school and realised she was actually good at it. Joel knew that wasn’t
the thing that had Ellie so shaken. When Joel eventually found the page,
ironically the first page out of the entire list, Ellie awkwardly excused
herself to get another glass of water. As if that was going to help her now.
She went into the kitchen and made a lot of noise in getting a glass and
getting water and walking around the kitchen. She didn’t want to hear the pages
shift, the laughter, she especially didn’t want to hear the laughter. Because
she was a stupid dumb fucking idiot and was starting to think she might
actually have a bit of a crush on Joel. Joel of all people.
Eventually, she could hear the sound of Joel clearing his throat and his chair
being pushed out from the table. Ellie felt her hands shake slightly, she put
the glass down on the counter-top so she didn’t break it. She had enough messes
to clean up right now.
Joel entered the kitchen, looking every bit as awkward as Ellie felt.
“Look, I uh,” Ellie sighed, “I can actually explain, with a genuine yet odd
explanation.”
Joel nodded slowly and cleared his throat again, running a hand through his
hair he said, “alright - let's hear it.”
It was Ellie’s turn to slowly nod, but eventually, she dove into an
explanation. She spoke about the experiment, how her curiosity had gotten the
best of her and she wanted to understand what all the women were on about when
they were talking about Joel behind his bag. She tried to make it sound less
awkward by saying that they spoke about Tommy too, just not as often because he
was a married man. She explained that for once she had just wanted to feel like
she understood something, other than school work, that maybe after everything
that had happened to her, she could actually connect things like a normal human
being was supposed to.
It was a lot of words, and scattered thoughts, but Ellie hoped that she was
making sense.
When she was done, she hadn’t realised that she had started to look down at the
floor, like a child that was being scolded. She looked up slowly, expecting to
see something akin to anger or disappointment on Joel’s face.
Surprisingly though, it was neither.
“I know you’ve been unlucky in love and all that,” Joel said, sounding awkward,
but also like he was genuinely trying to be supportive, “I didn’t realise this
whole time you thought there was something wrong with you, and not just
something wrong with the people you were hanging out with.”
Ellie chose not to comment on the fact that one of those people were now dead
and having a memorial in a few days. It seemed like bringing that fact up would
only make things worse.
“If you need to talk about it, any of it, then you can talk to me you know?”
Joel said. He sounded less awkward now - this seemed to be more of a plea than
him trying to state the obvious, “you don’t have to go through all of this
stuff alone.”
Ellie looked him in the eyes. He looked so genuine. He looked like he cared so
much about her, and thinking about everything they had been through together,
all the running and hiding, the infected, the clickers, the stupid emotions -
the fireflies. Every time she looked at him she could remember all the powerful
emotions he had once struggled to show that he was more than happy to show now.
It was all too much.
She pushed herself away from the bench and wrapped her arms around him.
She kissed him.
Chapter End Notes
     So, I know I don't need to explain this to anyone, but I'm going to
     anyway before I melt in flames.
     The point of Maddy is so that Ellie still has a part of her
     sexuality. I wanted to make her bisexual because I didn't want to
     erase the gay despite the fact that I totally ship Ellie (legal-aged)
     and Joel. As a part of the LGBT community, I don't want to commit any
     erasure. So while Maddy is definitely just a plot point in this fic,
     she's kinda important?
     R.I.P Maddy, you were a fun bitch to write.
     You guys have a big surprise coming up next chapter. Let's just hope
     I can stick with the 10K each chapter like I've been doing.
***** Joel *****
Chapter Notes
     Happy New Year everyone! I've been working on this chapter for a
     while but between preparing for Christmas and work, it's been a bit
     of a struggle to finish it and get it up. This chapter was always
     meant to be a short one compared to the others, and I'm sure you'll
     see why x
                                 Chapter Four

                                     Joel
 
The world outside his house was windy and dark. It was one of those times when
the weather decided to surprise them, considering it was supposed to be mostly
sunny. He heard a sound of something small hitting the window and realised it
had started to rain. He didn’t know how heavy it was going to get, but in this
house he didn’t have to worry about it so much - unlike the last place. That
place was now getting fixed up and prepared for the next poor sons of bitches
that actually lived long enough to get to the county.
Joel sighed and looked towards Ellie’s door. It was closed, which was unusual
for Ellie. She liked to leave it open - Ellie always claimed it was so her room
would stay cool but Joel knew it was because Ellie didn’t like being alone. She
liked knowing that all she had to do was pop her head outside of her room and
she would see Joel sitting on the couch reading or hear him cooking in the
kitchen. It was comforting and gave her a feeling of safety that not even the
biggest and most precise of weapons could provide.
So it was alarming that the door was shut. It made Joel sad.
He knew why it was shut, he would be stupid to not know why. She was sad,
embarrassed, maybe even disappointed, but what had happened earlier had ended
up with Ellie going red in the face and running straight for her room, slamming
the door behind her.
She wouldn’t have been able to do that with the last place - though with the
last place she might have just run away in order to avoid Joel.
There was a loud clap of thunder and the raining suddenly started to get a lot
heavier. It made Joel sigh. He rubbed a hand with tiny cuts and marks all over
it over his tired wrinkled face.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
 
                                     (***)
 
It was midnight when Joel finally decided to go and lie down for the night. He
quickly checked in on Ellie - he opened the door just enough to peek into the
room. She was asleep in the room. Her eyes were screwed up tightly as if she
was having a nightmare. Joel didn’t know what to do. The pillow behind her head
looked wet, which broke Joel’s heart.
She had been crying all night and he couldn’t do anything to help with it, at
least not yet, because he had been the one who, indirectly, had caused it all.
He headed to his room. The bed was unmade from a restless night before - he
hadn’t been sleeping well since the clickers had broken in and killed all of
those kids. He didn’t sleep well because all he could think of was how Ellie
could have been one of them. How dangerous it still was out there; and like
always, in times of death or fear, he thought about Sarah.
Despite the rain that was happening outside it was still hot in his room. He
took his shirt off and laid back on the sheets on his bed which were the only
things that felt cool in the room.
There was another loud clap of thunder, one that was much louder than the one
earlier and it ended up shaking the house a little bit. Joel had never been all
that great with thunder storms, but that was because after the outbreak of the
infection he had spent a lot of time trying to avoid getting hit by lightening
and avoid getting attacked by infected. So now, every clap of thunder gave him
a slight feeling of anxiety and dread that never used to occur back in the days
where he could enjoy a thunder storm while sitting on the couch and watching TV
in the lounge room.
There was a soft knock on his bedroom door that was almost drowned out by
another clap of thunder. It sounded like the storm was starting to move away
from the county, but didn’t make Joel feel any better, especially with the
sound of the knock sitting in the air, because it could only mean one thing.
“You alrigh’ Ellie?” Joel asked, trying to sound the opposite of awkward - but
it didn’t quite work.
The door opened and Ellie stood there in a tank top and pants that had been
given to Joel for Ellie two weeks back for one of his shifts on the wall. They
had been pajama pants of some sort that had obviously once belonged to a set.
Ellie had fallen for them instantly - they had patterns of books all over them.
She was rubbing her arms as if she was cold, but Joel knew that couldn’t be the
case.
“I’m a little freaked out,” Ellie mumbled. The rain got heavier again, beating
against the window almost aggressively. She sighed and rolled her eyes,
seemingly irritated that she was competing for loudness against a storm, “I’ve
never done well with storms, not even in the orphanage.”
There was a plea in her eyes that said ‘I know we’re going through something
weird right now, but can we just ignore it for this moment?’ and Joel didn’t
have the heart to turn her away.
“I can sleep on the chair,” Ellie said, “but-.”
“If you’re that uncomfortable being next to me, I’ll sleep on the chair,” Joel
stood up, kicking the bed sheets off of his legs that he had subconsciously
been moving, he grabbed his shirt and put it back on and moved towards the
chair.
It didn’t take long for Ellie to move into the room and take up the space on
the bed where he had been laying. She turned to face him, turning away from the
window just as a flash of lightning shone across the window - it made the
little drops of rain water look like glitter.

Joel looked out the window and listened to Ellie’s breathing and the rain that
was hitting the window. Despite Ellie’s little panicked breaths that were
starting to slow, gradually, it was actually quite a comforting sound. Joel
could feel his eyes growing heavier as the minutes went by.
“Joel?”
Joel startled awake. His eyes opening quickly. Ellie was looking at him from
the bed, a slightly apprehensive look on her face.
“Yeah Ellie?”
Ellie sucked in a deep breath between her teeth and shifted position until she
was on her back, her hands resting slightly on her belly.
“I’m sorry about before,” Ellie muttered, Joel could barely hear her over the
sound of the rain and the thunder, but he wasn’t about to ask her to speak up -
he was just happy she was trying to talk to him, “I acted out of line and my
reaction to all of it afterward wasn’t exactly mature.”
Joel wasn’t too sure what to say. He didn’t want to accidentally insult her,
and he knew if he said something along the lines of ‘you’re a kid, you’re not
supposed to be too mature when it comes to these things’ then he was sure that
would piss her off.
“You’re allowed to make mistakes Ellie,” Joel settled with, “you’re human.”
Ellie made a harsh scoffing noise, “I don’t feel like it half the time,” she
muttered darkly before turning back and facing Joel, “half the time around here
I either feel like an enigma or a pest…though I’m sure in context they both
mean the same thing…but besides that - I feel like a freak around here, the
complete opposite of human, and the fact that I keep getting into trouble, or
keep having to do things kids my age shouldn’t have to do - such as shooting an
ex classmate in the head so she doesn’t turn into an infected - I just…” she
sighed, bit her lip, and looked down at the dirty carpeted floor. There was an
odd stain on the floor, something that had been there since the day they had
both moved in - Joel didn’t want to know what that stain was, “I don’t belong
here. I don’t feel human because I think, to people, it would make more sense
if I wasn’t human.”
Joel looked at Ellie, who was still refusing to look at him and was looking at
the stain on the floor as if she was trying to figure out what it possibly
could have been from.
“You belong here more than you know,” Joel said, “I know it’s hard to believe
that. But you belong here, with me, with Tommy and Maria-.”
“Sometimes I feel like they’d be better off without me too,” Ellie cut him off,
“this is their settlement or county or whatever - it’s pretty much their baby.
They’ve worked so hard to create this, a happy place for people who want to
start over, for people to remember a life they once had before the infection
spread. I’m just a constant reminder that there are things out there who are
more than ready to attach whatever they can get their hands on.”
“I understand what you’re trying to say,” Joel sat up straighter in his seat,
pulling at his shirt slightly as to cool him down, “but you’re not reminding
anyone of anything. You’re not a trigger for the real world out there kiddo.”
Ellie remained silent.
“Besides,” Joel shifted in his seat, worried he had said something offensive,
“it would be stupid of us to forget where we stood in the world. It would be
stupid of us to forget about the infected. Forgetting about the world outside
this county is what leads to people getting hurt. School children getting
turned into infected when they’re supposed to be learning.”
He heard Ellie stir. He didn’t realise he had been looking down at the same
stain that had caught Ellie’s forced attention before.
Ellie was looking up at him, tears in her eyes. She nodded her head and settled
her head back down onto Joel’s pillow.
“You’re right,” Ellie muttered, “I just wish the world wasn’t like this.”
“Me too…me too.”
 
                                     (***)
 
“We’re thinking of giving her a more rigorous training schedule.”
Joel stopped eating from the bowl in front of him. Maria had made one of her
famous stews - rabbit - and he and Ellie had been invited over for lunch. Ellie
was currently in another room with Maria talking about God knows what, whereas
Joel had been cornered by his brother, Tommy.
“What do you mean?” Joel asked, though he was certain he knew what Tommy meant.
“The girls immune Joel,” Tommy said, sitting back in his seat calmly, “she
could be a great asset with the proper trainin’, you know that!”
“You make it sound like you wanna fatten her up before sending her to the
slaughterhouse-.”
“She hasn’t got school anymore Joel,” Tommy cut him off. Joel was starting to
get sick of people cutting him off, “she hasn’t got school, she hasn’t got any
friends - she could make friends during training-.”
“Yeah, but-.”
“But nothin’ Joel,” Tommy gave him a sad look, “I think she could be a good
thing for the wall. With more trainin’ she could protect the settlement better.
I don’t want another mass killing.”
Tommy looked at him with pleading eyes, and while they irritated Joel they let
him know one thing for certain - he had power here. He could either make
Tommy’s day or disappoint him, and the latter was looking a lot better in
Joel’s eyes. Yes he understood that Ellie came with capabilities and immunities
one could only dream of having, and controlling - and personally Joel didn’t
want to see that happen.
“I’m sick of people using that girl for their experiments and their own greed,”
Joel said, surprised by just how angry he sounded, “first it was Marlene, and
now it’s you - and Ellie trusts and respects you so much more than she ever did
Marlene.”
That seemed to strike a cord in Tommy. There was guilt on his face. Tommy knew
about everything that had happened with Marlene. He had been the first to know
that Marlene was dead, and that it was because of Joel.
“I didn’t mean to make it like tha’,” he rubbed a hand over his face, “I know
she’s your girl Joel, but I still think she herself could greatly benefit from
this - ever since being here she’s gotten into a lot of trouble with people -
boys mostly-.”
Joel stood up, knocking his chair back. The chatting in the other room stopped,
and he could hear Ellie mutter something quickly to Maria.
“Well that’s not on her,” Joel said, nostrils flaring, “that’s on the boys
here, the shitty ones who need to be taught a thing or two about consent and
respect,” he snarled, “instead of sending innocent people to fight battles
against creatures that you can’t control, maybe focus on fixing or eliminating
the people that you can’t control.”
Ellie walked into the room, looking worried.
“Evvverything okayyyy?” she asked awkwardly, looking like she knew that
everything was the opposite of ‘okay.’
“Yes Ellie,” Joel said, he cleared his throat, “we’ve got to go now though.”
Ellie didn’t try to argue. Instead she looked at Tommy and gave the politest
smile she was capable of.
“It was nice of you to invite us over. Tell Maria that her stew was delicious.”
Tommy nodded.
Joel stormed out of the house, Ellie on his heels, looking confused as hell but
loyal to a fault.
 
                                     (***)

Ellie was in the shower, Joel was sitting on the couch, trying to push through
a book, but his mind kept going to a billion different places.
He was angry at his brother, and how for him, it was so easy just to throw
other people’s lives away, in the hope that they MAY survive and be of some use
at the same time. He was angry that Tommy was so ready to throw away Ellie,
just because she was different. Just because, in his eyes, it didn’t seem
wrong, because she had slightly more chance of survival than the rest of them
did. Including Joel himself.
He sat back and tried to get invested in the book again, but it was boring, he
didn’t know why he kept reading it. Probably because it reminded him of back
before everything went to shit. He would lay on the couch after a long day of
work and if he wasn’t too tired or if Sarah wasn’t too demanding of attention,
he would make himself a coffee and read for a few hours until he had to make
dinner.
He heard the shower in the bathroom turn off. He sighed and put a bookmark
between the pages and set the book down back on the coffee table beside the
couch. He had no idea if he should talk to Ellie about this - about what Tommy
wanted to do. He felt like he should warn her in case Tommy went behind his
back and tried to manipulate her into it without him finding out, until it was
too late, but the thought of talking to Ellie, and then Ellie agreeing to do it
anyway, scared him even more.
Before he had time to figure out whether or not he wanted to tell her and
prepare a speech of some sort convincing her not to do it, she came out of the
bathroom. He noticed that she was wrapped in a towel, one of their cleaner
ones, and that her hair was a lot shorter than usual.
“You cut your hair,” Joel said.
Ellie turned around and faced Joel, almost looking confused. She gave him a
small smile, “yeah, decided it was time for a change, besides - the length was
starting to annoy me. So many split ends.”
She headed into her room, her feet leaving puddles on the tiles, which Joel
would probably have to clean up later.
Ellie didn’t come back out for another ten minutes, but when she did, she
headed straight to the kitchen and started making herself a hot drink. Joel was
trying to focus on the book once again but he couldn’t. He was too worried
about Ellie and still trying to figure out if he should say anything.
“You okay Joel?”
Joel looked up. He’d obviously disappeared into his own thoughts, because Ellie
was now standing in front of him, coffee mug in one of her hands and a book,
her finger placed in between the pages she was on, in the other.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, giving her a small, unconvincing, smile. He could
tell Ellie didn’t believe it for a second. She sat down beside him, putting her
mug on the coffee table on the other side of the couch, almost knocking over
the lamp in the process.
“You know,” Ellie sighed, “I turned down Tommy’s offer.”
Joel frowned, turning to look at Ellie, “what offer from Tommy?”
Ellie bit her lip. She looked nervous now.
“What offer Ellie?”
Ellie jumped a little as Joel’s voice had gotten louder, “look, there’s nothing
to be mad about, but he spoke to me before he said anything to you-.”
“Ugh,” Joel shook his head, “of course he did.”
“I said no,” Ellie said, “he was going to pay me generously for my services or
whatnot - but I have so much more to live for than to just sit on a wall all
day and night and hope clickers don’t come by.”
Joel waited.
“I told him if the going ever gets tough, then I want the position to still be
available for me, I don’t want it to be a one time offer. I just…I’m not
ready,” Ellie looked sad, “I’ve been fighting ever since I was fourteen. I
wouldn’t mind a bit of a rest.”
Joel nodded and wrapped an arm around Ellie, giving her a one armed hug of
encouragement, “I think you did the right thing.”
Ellie sighed, “I hope I did.”
 
                                     (***)

Joel had weird dreams that night.
Whispering’s in his ear.
Touching someone’s leg, his hand traveling up to their thigh.
Heavy breathing.
The sound of his name being uttered in a breathy moan by an all too familiar
voice.
He woke up hard.
 
                                     (***)

It was difficult avoiding Ellie that morning. It seemed every time he shook her
off she would come and talk to him about something, whether it was the deal
with Tommy that she had rejected, the book she was currently reading, or asking
why Joel was acting so goddamn weird - something Joel certainly couldn’t
answer.
He knew that Ellie had an interest in him, whether it was because he was the
only male she had been around with a long period of time or because she was
hormonal, he didn’t know - but he wasn’t going to act on his own confusing
feelings, because, simply put, it just wasn’t right.
He was too old for her, he knew that, he was old enough to be her father, or,
her grandfather considering how young he had been when he had become a parent.
Ellie continued to ask questions and he continued to find weak excuses.
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“I’m just thirsty.”
“The book I’m reading is boring and infuriating.”
“I’m tired.”
“I’m just not looking forward to work today.”
While all of them were excuses that genuinely put Joel in a bad mood, they just
weren’t cutting it for Ellie today. She knew there was something else wrong.
Joel had no idea how long he was going to be able to hide it for.

                                     (***)

Joel was right to fake-dread work that day. It had gone awfully.
There had been a few infected to shoot, one of the women on the wall had a
mental breakdown because she turned out to be the mother of one of the kids who
hadn’t made the attack. Tommy had had to drag her away from the wall and write
down that she wasn’t to work for several more weeks. Joel had been partnered up
with that woman for the shift and so he had been forced to work alone for the
remainder of it. And while he understood what the woman was going through, she
shouldn’t have been made to work whatsoever, and so Joel had snapped at Tommy
which had resulted on him quitting his shift early, with the words ‘go fuck
yourself’ thrown at his brother angrily.
The last three hours of his shift had been spent sitting at a pub getting
drunk. Because that’s just what he felt like doing.
When he finally remembered that he didn’t live in the tiny little house anymore
near the very edge of the wall, and he stopped terrorizing the family that
lived there now, telling them to get out of his house, and made his way to his
actual house, staggering all over the place, he sat on the couch and went for a
brief nap.
When he woke up, it was to cold water being thrown in his face from a slightly
amused looking Ellie.
“Good to see you made it home safe,” she said, sounding a little irritated, but
mostly amused.
“What do you mean?” Joel said lamely, “it was just work. I’m not that old.”
“Nice try old man,” she responded, “Tommy told me you lost your shit and then
went to the pub.”
Joel didn’t know what to say to that, so he did the smart thing and kept his
mouth shut.
“I know he’s your brother, but he’s also like, the leader or founder or
whatever of this place,” Ellie shrugged, “don’t start too much shit with him,
he might chuck us out.”
Joel rolled his eyes, “he might seem like a tight ass, but he wouldn’t throw us
out to deal with the infected. He’s a dick, but he’s not a total cu-.”
“Classy,” Ellie rolled her eyes, cutting him off.
She sat down on the couch beside him, purposely avoiding the wet spots on the
couch left over from the glass of water.
“So,” Ellie started off, lamely, “are you going to tell me about the rod jammed
up your ass this morning and how it got there?”
A part of Joel was screaming at him to keep his mouth shut, but a couple of
drinks always made his jaw a little looser.
“I had an inappropriate dream about someone close to me,” Joel said with a
small shrug, “no big deal.”
Ellie laughed, “oh God, was it Maria?”
Joel gave her a weird look.
“Because if you start hitting on her I’m pretty sure Tommy will actually feed
you to the infected himself for that one.”
Joel laughed, “no no not Maria someone I’m a little closer with.”
“Just hit on them then man,” Ellie said, sitting up, “if they’re not dumb and
blind they’ll date you.”
She turned around and headed for her room.
Before Joel could think much else, he fell asleep.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
