Author's Note: I do not own the rights to the Last of Us. Dedicated to my husband, who didn't agree with Joel's decisions at the end of the game. Perhaps this helps.
It Can't Have Been For Nothing
They were almost out.
Joel, ex-husband, father, smuggler, took deep breaths, preparing himself for the final run. The elevator descended quietly and smoothly, giving him time to pause and think. At the same time, he didn't want to think. All he wanted to do was get the young girl in his arms to his brother's where she could live.
He looked down at Ellie, breathing slowly in and out in that ridiculous blue hospital dress. Her long brown hair was in its normal pigtail but her usual snarky expression gone in sleep. Medicated sleep. They wanted to take her brain. Weren't only the old school zombies supposed to want people's brains, he wondered wryly.
The elevator came to a stop, the doors opening to a garage filled with old, dirty cars. As long as they worked, it didn't matter. He could see an assortment of brands he once would've had a preference for, along with many he would never have dreamed he'd ever drive back in the day. Now he'd settle for anything with a working engine. He slammed the red stop button and rushed out.
"You can't save her," a female voice said to his right. In his rush to escape Joel hadn't looked outside the elevator. But now his full attention was on the woman, and her gun pointed at him. Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies.
She stood in the shadows between two lights, her ebony skin and dark clothes helping her blend in. Maybe that's why he hadn't noticed her. Or heard her. Damn it, he didn't have time for this. He took a step back and she followed him with her gun.
Her brown eyes stared into his, beseechingly. "Even if you get her out of here, then what?"
Then what? Well then they'd go to Tommy's, live a normal live, just like he'd told Ellie they'd do. He had promised her he'd teach her how to play the guitar. And he had avoided singing for her. He promised himself then and there he would sing for Ellie as soon as he got the chance.
"How long before she's torn to pieces by a pack of clickers?" Marlene interrupted.
They'd made it this far, they would make it home. Even Marlene had been surprised they had made it. She'd barely made it herself, so she'd told him.
He glanced back down at Ellie.
"That is if she hasn't been raped and murdered first."
Joel scoffed. That had almost happened, with that David guy, but Ellie was strong. She had shown that fucker, even if it had traumatized her for a while. "That ain't for you to decide."
"It's what she'd want," Marlene said, exasperated, as if explaining to a child that two plus two equals four because that's how the world worked.
He frowned, thinking about what Ellie had said to him after they had found the giraffe herd. "It can't be for nothing," she had said.
"And you know it," Marlene almost sounded surprised, herself.
Joel shifted the unconscious child in his arms and glared at Marlene. Ellie was just a child, dammit, and she deserved the chance to live.
"Look," Marlene started, taking her gun off him and spreading her arms out in a placating gesture, "You can still do the right thing here." Marlene shook her head, holding back her own tears, her voice thick. "She won't feel anything."
"Look, I know you mean well… but there's no half-way with this," Ellie had told him.
Joel looked down, then looked at Ellie, remembering what she had said next. "Once we're done, we'll go where ever you want. Okay?"
Ellie hadn't consented to be killed for this cause. They had drugged her as soon as they had found her. Would she still have consented even knowing the price? Would she?
Yeah, probably.
A part from that surgeon's recorder floated through his mind. "We must find a way to replicate this state under laboratory conditions." They didn't have a goddamned clue what they were doing. There was every bit a chance that it would all be for nothing. That they would cut up his baby girl and get nothing. No cure, no salvation.
Before the world had gone to shit, Sara, his first baby girl, had been reading some book series about a bunch of kids locked in a maze to find some cure for a brain disease. She'd told him all about it a week before… before…
The parallels had stuck in his mind then. More so now. They could test and test and test and test and still come up with nothing.
Marlene took a step closer.
Or they'd find the cure and save all of humanity. Like penicillin, that surgeon had said. But weren't some people immune to penicillin? And how would they get it to everyone? "I lost most of my crew crossing the country. I pretty much lost everything." Marlene had said that, hadn't she?
Then another.
How did they expect to get this cure to everyone? They'd have to travel all over the country and who knew if it would even work. Maybe it could make some immune, or maybe it wouldn't work at all.
"Hey maybe you can teach me how to swim."
And another.
There was no way these dumbasses could do this. These were the same people who had infected monkeys and not shot them immediately when finished with them.
"It can't have been for nothing."
Joel looked down, and around, and suddenly he glared at Marlene. He turned toward her and shot her in the stomach with the gun he'd been slowly pulling out the entire time. She stared at her stomach and Joel released the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
He looked around at the cars, a mix of jeeps, trucks, and cars, and went for the closest one. He opened the door and quickly lay Ellie on the smooth leather backseat. He slammed the door shut with a grunt and stared at the front door, reaching out for it and waiting. He looked back, behind him, at Marlene, crumpled on the floor, gasping and breathing heavily.
It wasn't over.
He walked over to her, his gun out, his breathing even.
"Wait," Marlene pleaded, shooting her hand out toward him. She paused, wincing as new waves of pain shot out. More blood poured out of the bullet wound in her stomach. Blood swipes surrounded her from where she had tried to lift herself up and slid on her own blood. Likely she'd bleed out before anyone found her. Hell, who knew when anyone would find her, considering how many he had killed on his way down.
But still, how had she gotten down here so quickly? She must've had a walky or some way of communicating with people. She was the leader of the Fireflies, afterall, a VIP. Someone would come looking for her.
"Let me go," she begged, staring him straight in the eyes. "Please," she whispered.
Why, so she could rally the troops? So they could hunt them everywhere? The first place they'd look would be Tommy's and they'd slaughter everyone there, just to get back at him, even if they weren't there. They would never be safe anywhere. That was no way to grow up. She deserved a normal childhood. But since he couldn't give her that, he could at least give her the safest one he could. And that meant no one could know where he was going.
"You'd just come after her," Joel said, and shot.
"It can't have been for nothing."
It wouldn't be. He'd see to it that Ellie lived a long, happy life, safe from anyone and anything that meant her harm.