Alright! This is my first fic, and I'm proud, if I do say so myself. Because wow. I actually wrote something. I'll try to update this as frequently as I can, too.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Last of Us, or it's characters [even though I want to, so I can make them, y'know, not die]

The first thing that Ellie notices when she wakes up is that it is so damn hot. Summer had started a few weeks ago, and it felt like the temperature was rising up and never stopping. Joel had told her that it was just humid, and it was typically likely this. She's not stupid, she knows what humid is - she's dealt with her fair share of summers through her sixteen years - but none this hot. It was probably because they were getting further south. At the military boarding school, they had just told them that it's cold sometimes during the year, and hot at other times, and hotter if you got further south, they never explained why.

"It's the equator," Joel had said, when she asked him, like she had any idea what that word meant. "It's a line. Kinda splits the world in half. It gets warmer if you're closer to it."

She had spent a lot of time arguing with Maria about attending a school they had started up a few months after she and Joel had gotten there. Maria said it would be good for her, for her to meet other kids in the town, and to learn more about the world; Ellie said that all she had to know in this world was how to fire a gun and how to communicate with other people.

She yawned, sitting up, looking around her, trying to see if Joel was still asleep. He usually never was when she woke up, he had said that she needed her sleep better than he did, so he never woke her. Ellie was a light sleeper, so if she heard the rustling sound of him moving blankets - which, no, in this weather - or the sound of him going through his backpack, she woke up. Strangely, she didn't see him. He probably went out to gather whatever he could find before she woke up. He's done that a few times before, just grabbing his bag and going, hoping not to wake her in the process.

She stood up, getting her bag, slinging it across her shoulders. She looked at their mini campsite, seeing if there was anything that they would need to take with them, since once she found Joel, they would most likely just go ahead and move on. She grabbed the canteen, and her switchblade, lying on the ground where her backpack just was, since she used the backpack as a pillow.

It was a weird transition going from trying to survive in vast weather conditions, infected attacks, and hunters, to living in Tommy and Maria's town, and then back to the former again. They had given them a home, and told them to call it their own, which they eventually did, but obviously not at first. Ellie had never had a steady home, just having the bottom bunk in all the rooms she resided in, and Joel only considered his house back in Texas to be his home, but they worked it out.

When they got used to living in the same bed multiple nights in a row, Joel started working shifts at a guard post with some people he never talked about till one night he said that Isaac fell asleep in the tower, and Joel and Rachel couldn't wake him up until they had to shoot a clicker. Ellie had told Tommy she could work shifts, too, but he had told her that there was a eighteen age limit to it - she still thinks it's the stupidest thing she had ever heard. She had groaned, and said that that's stupid, and that she can shoot better than all their men combined. Joel had snorted.

After two years, Joel had sat her down, and said he needed to talk to her.

"I'm goin' go back," he had said after a moment of silence, "back to Texas."

"Joel..." she had started, looking at him, knowing that there were too many skeletons in that closet that he might not want to go back to. She also knew that once Joel sets his mind to something he carries it out, no matter what. "How-How long are you going to be gone?"

"Not long," he said, tapping his finger on the table to a rhythm that she didn't know. "I'll go there, stay probably a few days, then be back about late fall. Maybe early winter. Don't know for sure."

"Are you taking Tommy with you?" she had asked, watching his mouth change to a flat line.

"No," he said, "Tommy said being there once was enough for him, but he'd go if I wanted him to, but I know Maria'd just kick my ass if I tried to drag him out across the great US terrain, again."

Ellie smiled.

"You're just gonna go alone? I mean, you shouldn't. You shouldn't have to do that alone, Joel." She bit her lip, hoping that it was the right thing to say. "The trip is long, y'know. And you have to go through cities full of infected and hunters, and we barely made it with the two of us."

"I've gone longer alone, Ellie, you know that."

"Yeah, but it's your home from before the outbreak. It's where - " she hesitated, knowing that she could say it, because they've talked about it before, but they've only gone so far with it. They've never actually said the words 'Sarah' and 'died' together before. He's told her things about Sarah, and how he's said them told her enough. The problem needed to be said, though, because from what it sounded like, he wanted to face it alone. For all she cared, he could go with Isaac, the sleeping guard, as long as he was with someone. " - where Sarah died."

Joel drew in a breath, pulling his lips together, slowing his tapping finger down, "I know, Ellie," he said, "that's why I wanted to ask if you'd come with me."

"Hey, kiddo," Joel said when Ellie found him, he was currently looking at a trap they had set the night before, just in case they didn't miss any food that scurried by.

"Find anything, yet?" She asked, already noting that no animals were hanging from his pack, and none in his hands.

He sighed, shaking his head, "No, nothin', but maybe that's a good thing. You don't know how long it'd last till we found a good place to cook it. I don't intend on staying here too long, either. It's best we keep goin' so we get back to Tommy's before winter."

Ellie nodded, pulling at the straps on her backpack, "Alright."

"C'mon, we can probably make Denver by nightfall."

"Denver?" Ellie asked, knowing that it was one of the few Quarantine Zones still up. Marlene had told her of the ones still running, when she had asked. The only reason she had asked was because she heard some of the military talking about the Omaha QZ getting overrun by the infected, and was left abandoned. "No way, Joel! We can't do that! If we make it in, we aren't even certain we could get out! You know what happened in Boston when we - "

"Ellie," Joel starts, his voice stern, cutting her off, mid-sentence, "We'll be fine. Promise. I don't know if you know this but a lot of the Zone's have smugglin' routes. We can get through them, and through the city without much hassle." He started to walk, shaking his head and glanced back, "I thought I told you what the plan was back at the dam?"

Ellie crossed her arms, walking after him, making a small huffing sound, "I guess I didn't hear correctly."

"Or you weren't listenin' at all."

"I was, actually."

"Uh-huh."

"I was!"

"Alright."

"How do you know about them anyway?" Ellie paused. "The smuggling routes, I mean. You never mentioned you'd lived in Denver."

"I haven't. Had a friend. Said he was movin' out to Denver a few months before you showed up. I don't remember why, though. I think some guys with bigger guns and more men had somethin' 'gainst him."

"So you just think he's going to help us? Like Bill did? 'Cause to be perfectly honest, I don't want to go through being handcuffed to a fucking pole again."

"I did warn you," Joel said, a slight 'I told you' tone to his voice, "it wasn't like he took too kindly to you, too. You did almost break his shootin' arm."

"Oh, ha ha. Funny."

Joel let out a sigh, which somehow managed to form into a cough. "Wayne's a good guy, so don't worry. He'll help us. He got me out of a few sticky situations back in Boston, and never held me to repayin' him. You never meet those people in this world anymore."

Ellie nodded, jogging up to meet Joel's strides. "After two years...how do you know he's still smuggling? If that's what caused the mess in Boston?"

"Smugglin' is the best way to get around, and to get fed. You can do some jobs to earn ration cards, but too many people get put outside the wall, and never come back."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Joel adjusted his backpack. "Wayne just picked the wrong guys to be hired by. He's probably bein' more cautious now."

"Probably," Ellie mumbled under her breath.

"Hush," Joel said, as they reached an actual cement road. He pointed towards the right, "If we keep headin' this direction, we can make it to highway. We can figure out which way from there."

"Lead the way."

Whoop! There it is! I have an idea where I want to go with this, but sigh, I am the simple writer of the story, and the story cannot control me. In my idea someone dies, so let us pray that it doesn't play out.
As I said in the header, I will try to update this as frequently as I can, but I am a simple human being. I cannot write a chapter everyday (though I very well can try). I have school which sucks, and friends who need my undying attention, and family who I see every so often.
But who needs sleep?