The only thing that kept Ellie at all grounded was the memory of the Winter three years ago. Ellie had been alone and more terrified than she'd ever been. Joel was out of the game; fading in and out of delirious consciousness due to a festering puncture wound in his side. He was holed up in a shed only a few degrees warmer than the outside. Ellie had been expecting him to die days ago. Part of her couldn't believe it, that Joel was capable of death. He'd walked her through so many lethal situations in the past that he seemed more immune to the apocalypse than she was.
But it hadn't been a bite, or a scratch, it had been a rusty pole that ate its way through his muscles and flesh and bone. And people could still get infected, if not with the virus. And his skin smelled like rot.
She'd gone out hunting; her appetite never faded and she'd been keeping Joel sustained on rabbits. But that day she'd gotten lucky and caught a stag. But it had led her, with all of its dying strength, into a horror story. She met David, who seemed weak and friendly (which was all a convincing façade that Ellie hadn't fallen for, but that didn't matter regardless), and they ended up fighting off a horde of clickers and one very persistent bloater while his friend went back to camp to bring medicine. Ellie had decided that penicillin, an actual chance to save Joel, was worth her difficult catch. She'd only had time to deliver it though, before David caught up and revealed his true nature. And that nature was cannibalism.
She'd led him away from Joel, and fought of a dozen on David's stupid men who tried frying her with moltovs before he snuck up and choked her out. She'd woken up in a cold cell, to the lovely sight of David's friend chopping off a corpse's arm.
A few charming conversations later, she herself was on the chopping board. She revealed her old bite wound to his friend, and in their hesitation, she pulled a few panicked stunts and escaped. For the next horrifying hour, she evaded them in their maze of a camp, hiding in the blazing snow. The moment she snuck inside on old steakhouse, David found her. He seemed a little upset, because he caught the place on fire before searching for her. She must have stabbed him four times before he knocked her out, all the while the fire crept closer, thickening the air with smog and burning Ellie's frostbitten skin. It was the worst though when he ducked behind the bars as well, sneaking along like she thought only Joel could do. She was certain that he could hear her heart, beating more rapidly than the stag's.
She'd finally killed him. Just as the fire whorled around her little island of safety, she retrieved her knife from under a stool and stabbed him well into death. She wasn't going to stop though; she meant to turn his skull to pulp, but a firm hand grabbed her arm. She tried to stab it as well; maybe David's arm had detached and crept up behind her. She didn't stop struggling until the arms forced her to look. Joel, a little pale and scruffy from the lack of shaving, but it was him. She dropped the knife and broke into sobs that Joel soon quieted.
They left together and made their way to Utah.
Of course that had been a dead-end as well. Ellie woke up after drowning, in a sheer dress, in the backseat of a new car that Joel was driving. He promised her that the Firefly's had others like her and didn't need her now. They'd given up on trying to find a cure. Ellie was too tired for some reason to go into a debate, so she slept it off.
She persisted with the questions when she woke. They were returning to Tommy's.
It was so abrupt. Ellie hadn't even seen a Firefly, especially not gotten to talk to one. Joel disregarded the topic with the same starkness that he once avoided talk about his daughter. Ellie knew in her gut, even though she asked him to swear that he was telling the truth, that he was lying. About something.
But when she asked for him to be honest and he said yes, Ellie believed him.
He was lying about something, but he was telling the truth that they didn't need to, or couldn't, go to the Fireflies. She never stopped wondering what it was; didn't need to or couldn't.
But in return for his stubbornness in one topic, he became more open in others.
Some of the kids were kicking around a soccer ball in one of the fields, and Ellie joined in as a goalie. She was at least twice the size of any of the kids, since there were so few her own age, that everyone wanted her on their team. So she took turns and beat each little group of kids one after the next. But since it was in turns, no one cried.
She started getting hungry and realized she'd been playing for hours. The sun was setting behind the pines and tin roofs of the houses. She took a deep breath, smelling rain, and kicked the ball into her hands.
"You're not too bad." Joel said. Ellie spun around, twirling the ball between her fingers.
"Not too bad? Did you see me- I was demolishing those five-year-olds." She tossed him the ball and his arms jumped out to catch it. "Do you play?" She asked. He tapped the ball and shook his head, then tossed it back to her.
"I helped coach a little league team once." He said. "Sarah was the real star, makin' sense out of my coaching." Ellie nodded, thinking of a careful response. It had been twenty-five years since he'd lost his daughter, but he'd only started talking about her when Ellie had met him. And most of it had been threats for her to shut up. So it was still a pleasant surprise when he brought her up on his own. Ellie wanted to encourage him, not shut him down.
"You as a coach? Hmm, well you seemed to know your stuff when you taught me how to swim." She said. Joel nodded again.
"Well, you weren't too hopeless either."
"Did your team ever win anything?" Ellie asked, casually drawing the subject back to Sarah.
"She got second place in this tournament we used to hold." He said, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a photo. It was faded and scratched and there was a crack starting down the middle from all the times of folding it, but Ellie recognized Joel, younger and without so much of the beard, with a happy blond girl, Sarah. Ellie recognized the picture also, Marie had given it to her to give to Joel.
"I know this picture." Ellie said, nodding. Joel folded it up again.
"I bet you do. Now c'mon, Tommy's coming over for dinner, remember?" He said. Ellie glanced at her muddied jeans and Joel sighed. "You're seventeen now, but all I see is that scruffy fourteen-year old." He said, starting off. Ellie ran ahead of him, jogging backwards.
"Scruffy? I wasn't scruffy!"
"You were the scruffiest kid I'd ever laid eyes on." He said, pushing her out of his path. Ellie bounced the soccer ball off his back and he flinched.
"And you weren't? Come on, your beard." He turned around, hand on his chin.
"What about my beard?"
"That was the scruffy thing." She said, slipping past him into the house.
