She tried to count the seconds between the flashes on the horizon and the rumbles of thunder chasing each other toward the settlement, but something wasn't adding up. Every time, something just... The girl cursed under her breath.

"I wonder if one-one-thousand is better than one-Missisippi," she murmured. "One-Missisippi seems longer, for some reason."

A voice startled her from her musings.

"Ellie, who're you talkin' to?" She looked up to see Joel standing in the doorway, leaning his arm on the frame, a strange look on his face.

"Nobody. Myself." She swung her legs down from the windowseat, and faced him, bracing her hands backwards on her knees. "Is everything okay?"

Joel took in a deep breath through his nose, and ran a hand over his mouth, but didn't reply. The girl listed her head to one side.

"Sooo, everything's not okay?"

"Everything's fine," he returned. "Tommy and Maria and me were just talkin'."

"I know. I could hear you all the way up here."

Joel's brow furrowed. "Did you hear what we were sayin'?"

Ellie lifted her brows. "I could hear it, but I couldn't understand it. Why? Some... big secret something you don't want me to know about?"

Joel hesitated for a minute, before pulling out the chair that was facing the wall, and moving Ellie's backpack to the floor. The little monster regarded him balefully with its one mud-splattered eye until Joel nudged it over with the toe of his boot, and looked up to see Ellie fixing him with a stare. He took another deep breath.

"I know," Ellie began. "I know you think that I 'don't need to be worried' by all the stuff that you and Tommy are trying to figure out, and that's okay." She bobbed her head. "None of my business."

"Ellie –" Joel interjected, lifting a hand.

"It's not that, that's fine. I mean, I'm not a kid, and it's okay for you to tell me stuff, and I think it's really stupid to go pretending –"
"Ellie –" Joel tried again, and she paused. "Just listen for a second, and you'd –"

"It's that I heard my name, Joel," she said, leaning forward, punctuating her words with an emphatic gesture. "I kept hearing my name – and so I know you're talking about me but you won't tell me." She subsided into the window and pulled her knees up to her chest, her voice dropping. "Which is fine, I guess, just getting old."

He leaned back. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you've been doing this always, haven't you? First with Tess, then with -"

"Ellie, what is goin' on with you? You know I've –" Joel broke off and shook his head. "I know I didn't start out real friendly with you, but that was a long time ago, and since then –"

"I just want to have a say, that's all," she murmured. "I'm tired of being talked about and passed around like some sort of..." She groped for the word, but stopped short, shaking her head. "Never mind. Just – never mind."

"It's been a long time since anybody's treated you as anything more than a person – a regular person."

"A kid," she snorted. "I'm sixteen."

"Well, alright, but still. Tommy, me, Maria – we all have your best interests at heart."

"What are you, my royal advisers? My presidential cupboard, my – "

"Cabinet," Joel managed, suppressing a smile.

"Whatever." Ellie waved a hand. "Can I be on this decision-making committee? Since I'm the one we're talking about here, anyway?"

The ache that had long been threatening his well-being, beginning someplace behind his heart, came to once again and nudged Joel with the sense of how great his responsibility was toward this being, this valuable key to the future wrapped up in a little girl – young woman's – body. He had made the decision, he had lied to her to try and preserve a sense of normalcy – whatever that was – so that she could live like she should, and not be experimented on like a lab rat. He had fought this for a long time; the idea that what Tommy and Maria and he had been discussing was really only a different version of the same story. Without the driving-off-into-the-sunset ending.

"I'm not goin' to do this right now," Joel muttered, standing to his feet. He caught sight of the guitar propped in the corner and gestured to it. "Heard you earlier. You're getting' good. Keep workin' on that F chord –"

"My hands aren't big enough," she shrugged. "Can I come down and talk with Maria?"

"She's on duty." Joel crossed the room and grasped the guitar by its neck. "Come on then, show me what you're doin' with that third –"

"Joel." Ellie's eyes were wide, and the room grew silent except for the spitting of rain against the windowpane and the low hum of the generator across the power plant. "Why'd you come up here?"

Joel stood still for a moment, seeming to find the floor infinitely more interesting than Ellie's face. He replaced the guitar in the corner, hearing it thump with a quiet echo. He had nearly gotten out of this one.

"You're supposed to be talking about whatever it was you decided. And I'm supposed to be listening," Ellie explained, her uncanny perception giving Joel a slight shiver.

"You don't know that," he murmured.

"Wanna bet? Tommy and Maria sent you up here, 'cause you know me better than they do."

Joel felt his head nodding in spite of himself. "Alright. Yeah. But this ain't goin' to be something you want to hear, so don't be expectin' a surprise birthday party or nothin'."

Ellie snickered. "No party? Man."

Joel felt his heart rate speed up, and wondered why suddenly his pulse was hammering in his ears like when he was fighting the infected, when all he was doing was talking to Ellie about their plan. His subconscious berated him. All he was doing...

"Right, so, you know what we talked about on our way back here?" Joel began, clearing his throat. Ellie nodded.

"Yeah. About the Fireflies, and the vaccination, and all that – " Ellie hesitated, and supplemented the gap with one of Joel's own choice words.

"Yeah. All that," he echoed her. "We're trying to make up for lost time. And I want to make it up to you for what I said."

"For lying," she corrected.

"For lyin' to you." Joel looked her in the eye. "And we've gone over this. But the fact is..." He lowered his eyelids in a blink, and somehow, before the darkness, he seemed to see Ellie as the freckled kid he'd known as they traveled across the United States. After he opened them again, she was still there, but not as freckled. A little taller, more formed. He'd tried to ignore the things he'd noticed over the past year of life falling into a routine at Tommy's, but here they were, staring him in the face with a pair of big green eyes.

"You didn't deserve that. You deserve to make all your own choices, and not have people pick and choose what they think you should know."

Ellie let out a whistle. "Listen to you. Is this was Tommy wanted you to say?"

"No," Joel replied firmly. "Now, Ellie, you're maintainin' you're an adult and all, and I've seen you act like someone twice your age on more occasions that one. I hope this can be one of those times again, because what I have to say to you ain't goin' to be easy to hear."

Ellie nodded her head, brushing her hair from her eyes. "Alright. Go for it."

There was a long silence.

"So, you know you're immune."

Ellie stared at him. "Psh. Really? Thanks for telling me! I'd never have figured it out."

"Cute," Joel murmured. "So, there's no vaccine. We talked about that."

"Yup."

"I've struggled with what's the right thing to do, and I know I acted selfishly. I didn't want nothin' to happen to you, so that whole idea went down the drain. No vaccine, no more immunity. When you die, that'll be it."

"Smooth," Ellie added, nodding her head. "Real smooth."

"Can you be serious for once?" Joel burst out. "This ain't one of your jokes."

"'Kay." She thumped her heels against the wall beneath her. "I'm serious."

"What'd I say?"

"When I die, my immunity dies with me."

"Exactly." Joel fixed her with a stare. "So, you get it?"

Ellie looked at her lap for a long moment, and then looked up. "I get it. The world is going down the toilet because of what you did."

Joel sat in stunned silence for a few seconds. "Ellie, that's not it," he said at last.

"Well, it's true."

"Maybe. But there ain't no law anywhere that says anybody's blood has to die with them."

"What, you mean like donate it? I thought nobody did that anymore."

Joel shut his eyes. "I mean, Ellie, you can't die without havin' kids. If you have kids, your immunity would be passed on."