Joel was a hard man who learned to love and care again, all because of a girl. As the years passed since he lost his daughter twenty years ago, his life had become rough, violent, brutal and uncaring. That was, until he met Ellie. It was so simple.He remembered. We just take the girl to the Fireflies, get our guns and go on about our business of surviving.That didn't seem to change once Tess was killed. His partner in smuggling's last request was to continue the mission. He'd honor her memory of all of the runs they'd done together, and finish this job.
Somewhere, it changed. Little cut scenes from their journey played through his head. She saved his life when he was being drowned. When the ladder broke as they were running from the armored jeep, she could have left him. Henry was a capable fighter and he could have taken her to the Fireflies. Instead, when Henry and Sam broke and ran, leaving Joel behind, she left them and jumped down. "We stick together," she said. The way her face lit up when, the first time in Jackson, Joel changed his mind and said he would go with her to the lab. The way he hugged her tight, and she hugged him tighter, after she killed David, sobbing into his chest. She was crying so hard she didn't notice Joel crying, too. He remembered the anticipation in her voice when she said "you can teach me how to swim".
When Marlene of the Fireflies said matter-of-factly that Ellie would have to die to research the vaccine, it was an end he could not allow. This hard man, this survivor, realized he loved Ellie more than anything. He could not let her die.
And so, the vaccine didn't get made. He killed Marlene and escaped with Ellie. When she awoke, he lied to her. He said the Fireflies didn't need her and stopped looking for a cure. Why did I lie? I didn't want her to be troubled by what happened at the hospital. Maybe, deep down, I had a horrible thought that if I told her the truth she'd jump out and start running back to Salt Lake City. So, I lied. Later, I swore to her it was true. But it wasn't. She knew it wasn't either. I know now she deserves to hear the truth. Dammit. If she wants to go back to what was left of the lab, so be it. At least she'd have the choice Marlene didn't give her.
The sun was starting to go down in Jackson. Joel and Ellie were inside their small house. "Ellie," Joel said, walking over to sit across from her. "I need to talk to you." Ellie just looked back. Joel swallowed and paused for a minute. "I didn't tell you the truth about what happened in the hospital with the Fireflies. After you were swept away, I pulled you out of the water. You weren't breathing. I started to try to get you to breathe, and two Fireflies came up. One told me to get away. I told him I was trying to save you. He knocked me out with a rifle butt. When I woke up, I was in a hospital room with Marlene."
"Marlene? Where is she?"
"I'll get to that. I told Marlene I needed to see you. She said no, that you were being prepped for surgery. Marlene told me the doctors said that to make the vaccine, they would have to k-" Joel paused, visibly shaken. He swallowed and, his voice straining, continued. "-Kill you and extract the fungus from your brain. I asked Marlene why they couldn't use blood, or tissue or something like that. She just said no, it has to be that way. I told her no way would they do it without me seeing you first. She had a guard take me out and told him to kill me if I resisted at all. Well, I resisted. I made my way up to you and carried you out. You woke up about an hour after we left."
"Wha – what happened to Marlene?"
"She met me in the garage. She had a gun on me and was going to take you back. I had to shoot her. I'm sorry."
"You, you killed her? She was - the Fireflies were making the vaccine! That's what we wanted, Joel! That's what we fucking wanted all along! We did this for nothing," Ellie hissed. "No vaccine, no cure, because of YOU!"
"Ellie, I couldn't bear – they were going to kill you."
"Didn't you hear me when I told you about Riley? She died for NOTHING! I could have died and saved us all and you DIDN'T LET THEM?" She screamed through her teeth.
"They didn't give you a choice. Marlene wouldn't let me see you. They kept you sedated until I found you."
Ellie looked at Joel as he paused.
"You said you'd give yourself for a cure, but they didn't let you make that decision." Joel continued, his voice cracking. "Do you remember, in the ranch house, you said 'everyone I have ever cared about has either died or left me. Except for you.' I wasn't going to leave you, Ellie. Either I was going to hear from you that you wanted to do this, or I was going to take you away. I needed to hear from you that this was what you wanted. If it was, I would hug you tight, give you a kiss and tell you how proud I was of you. But, I was not - I was not – going – to leav-" and Joel, the hard man that had been broken by a girl, put his face down in his hands and sobbed. "I needed to tell you the truth. I couldn't lose you," He said through the tears, "I couldn't. I'm sorry."
Several seconds of silence. "I have to go," Ellie said. "Don't follow me." With that, she left.
He fucking lied. I knew it. I didn't call him on it when he swore. Why? Did he know I thought he was lying? After what I told him about Riley, and how I felt – was that the reason he lied?So many thoughts swirled in her head. She headed for the mess hall. The room was deserted and dark. She sat at a table and thought about what happened.
"Ellie." a quiet voice said.
She looked - it was Tommy, holding a cup of coffee.
"Hi, Tommy."
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, I just needed to think."
"I'll leave, then. Do you need anything?"
"Don't go." Ellie said. "Can I ask you about when you were with the Fireflies?"
He sat down across from her and brought over a lit hurricane lamp. "What do you want to know?"
"Why did you leave them? What kind of people were they?"
"Joel said you knew Marlene."
"Yeah, she was with me after my Mom died. She made sure I went to school, but I didn't really know a lot about them - the Fireflies. Marlene told me that they were going to make it like it was, without the army, where we could live free. I met a couple of the Fireflies that came back with her, but she wouldn't let me do anything with them. She said I wasn't old enough."
"The Fireflies." Tommy's voice took on a somber tone. "They started out good, with a good cause. When the army took over in all of the quarantine zones, not just Boston, the solders started shooting and killing people on the off chance they might be infected, or if they might cause them trouble. We - the Fireflies - started to tell the people of what the army was doing. We'd take pictures to show the people and let people who'd been beaten and tortured by the army tell their story. We hoped the people would rise up and not take it anymore."
Tommy continued. "That was when the infection was at its worst and people were scared. Most of 'em didn't want to fight. They were fed and relatively safe. Then Marlene took over the Fireflies, oh, probably about five years ago. She told us if the people weren't going to join our cause we have to do it ourselves. That was when the Fireflies started sneak attacks on the army. She had us fire-bomb soldiers' barracks and booby-trap their vehicles. The army started coming after us, then. This wasn't my fight anymore. I thought we were just going to tell the people about what the army was doing – not start an all-out war. So I left."
"So the Fireflies started it?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I was at the meeting when Marlene planned the first firebomb attack. My engineer buddy and me, we made up a lot of incendiary devices – firebombs. We made them up to use against the infected when we went outside of the wall. Marlene took them and said we'd use them on the troops. Burn their barracks to the ground with the troops in them. Me, my engineer buddy - Jim, and our friend Mike, said we weren't going to let her use our bombs for that. We started to leave. Marlene and two of her goons drew down and she said she'd kill us if we left. I heard a couple of more tried to leave and word was Marlene shot them in the back. After a few weeks, we realized Marlene had abandoned everything we thought the Fireflies stood for. So, we took as many of our devices as we could get and sneaked out, over the wall. We left the zone and came here."
"Jim and Mike are here, aren't they? I think I've met them."
"You have. It wasn't an easy trip, but we couldn't stay with the Fireflies anymore."
"The Fireflies and the army are still at it. I think the army's winning." Ellie said. Marlene told me the army attacked them first – she said the army shot and killed a bunch of us when they were meeting. She said she was the only one to escape.
"Well, that's not my war now. Marlene, when I first knew her, I admired her passion and bravery. Then she got obsessed with her war with the military. I couldn't go with what she was doing. Right before I left, she was really going places I didn't want to. For instance, the Fireflies had a couple of doctors. Marlene was talking about them making a flu strain or some other such disease and infecting the troops. She said we could make the cure and use that to make the army surrender."
Ellie felt her heart skip. She swallowed.
"Tommy, how did you know about the lab?"
"By the time we got here, we had maybe a dozen men and women. I met Maria on the trip. Once we figured out we could make a home here, some of us went back to Boston to tell others about this place and that they could come live with us. It wouldn't be easy, but Boston was turning into a war zone."
"Still is."
"Well, they put out the word and we've had a few others break from the Fireflies and come here. One told me about the lab in Eastern Colorado."
"It isn't there anymore. They moved to a hospital in Salt Lake City."
"St. Mary's. Joel told me."
"Did he tell you what happened?"
"He said they stopped looking for a cure."
So. Joel lied to him, too.
"Did you believe him?"
"Ellie, if you had a brother or sister and grew up with them, you know when they are lying. No, I didn't believe him, but he must have had a good reason to tell me that. I figure he'll tell me the truth when he's good and ready."
"I know why he lied."
"Oh," She could see Tommy's eyes get big in the glow of the lantern.
"He told me the same story. Then swore to it. And now he just told me the truth."
"What did he tell you?"
"Do you want me to tell? I mean, if you are waiting for Joel to tell you, well, I don't want to cause you trouble."
"If it makes any difference, what you tell me I'll keep it a secret until Joel decides he wants to talk." Tommy paused. "Ellie, I can tell something's wrong. I'm guessing you and Joel talked right before I found you here. Right?"
"We did talk. This is what he told me. Right before we got to the hospital, we almost drowned. I passed out. Joel said he almost drowned, too, but pulled me out and was trying to get me breathing again. Two Fireflies found us and knocked Joel out. He said when he came to, Marlene was there. Marlene told Joel that I was in surgery and the doctors needed to take the fungus out of my brain and that it would –" Ellie's breath hitched and she swallowed. Tommy came around and sat down next to her and put his arm around her.
"It's okay. You don't have to go on."
"No, I will. I'm okay. To make the vaccine, Joel said Marlene told him the doctors would have to kill me to remove the fungus. Joel said he wouldn't let that happen. He fought his way past the guards to where I was and carried me out. The first thing I remember after passing out in the water was waking up in the back of the car Joel was driving." She paused a long time. "That was when he told me that there were other immune people like me and nothing they tried worked. So, he told me they gave up looking for a cure."
"They never let Joel see you?"
"He said Marlene told the guard to kill him if he tried to see me."
"And they never woke you up to tell you what was going to happen? I mean, to you?"
"No!" She turned towards Tommy, with tears in her eyes. "This was to save the world! Marlene knows me! She knew I would have gone through with it." Ellie was sobbing now.
"Ellie, if Marlene knew that, why didn't she wake you up to ask you? Or, if she knew you would have gone through with it, why didn't she wake you up to let you know how grateful she was to you for being mankind's savior? I'm no doctor or scientist, but if we haven't found a cure after twenty years, there's no guarantee they would now. You very well could have died for nothing." Tommy paused, thinking carefully. "If they did find a cure, that could be just what Marlene was looking for. She could hold the vaccine and use it as a bargaining chip against the army. You might have saved the world, or you might have only saved just the Fireflies."
Ellie was leaning against Tommy. He hugged her close. She started crying again.
"J-J-Joel said they never woke me up, never asked me what I wanted. He said that if they asked me and I wanted to go through with it, he would hug me and give me a kiss and tell me how proud he was of me. He needed to tell me the truth, and he did."
"I do know this, Ellie. My brother loves you and cares about you more than anything. I can see it in his eyes. You are his world. If Marlene woke you up and let Joel see you, and you told him that you wanted to do this, he would have given you a hug and kiss and told you how proud he was of you. But Marlene didn't think or care about what you wanted and what Joel needed."
Ellie wiped her eyes. They sat in silence for several minutes. "Thank you, Tommy. I'll be okay."
"Are you sure? I can walk you back."
"I'm okay." She hugged him tight. "Good night."
"Good night, Ellie."
Ellie left the mess hall and turned to a small ravine. She sat down and dangled her legs over the side. The night sky always took her breath away. The stars were out by the thousands. She laid back and took in the majesty of the night sky and the thick white band crossing the sky that Joel said was called the "milky way". Joel. He never left me. He's the only one that never left me.
She got up and walked back to their small house. Slowly opening the door, she saw Joel on the couch, sitting up but looking like he was sleeping. She went over and sat down close to him. She leaned her head against his shoulder and held his arm. Joel stirred.
"Ellie?"
"It's me."
"Ellie. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His eyes filled with tears again. He started to put his arm around her. She pulled it around so he held her tight, and buried her head in his chest, embracing him in a deep hug. She never loved anyone like she loved Joel, and she knew he loved her back.
"I'm all right." She teared up, too. "Stay with me, Joel. Don't ever leave."
"I won't, Ellie. I'll never leave you."
Ellie had never felt so safe and loved. I am his world.I am his world and he is mine.
"I love you, Ellie."
"I love you, Joel."