Joel sat on the balcony, starring out over the skyline of a ruined Boston.
Behind him, he could hear Tess and Ellie checking their ammunition and supplies. "Ellie, pass me your bullets." "I'm out, Tess." "Shit, I'm almost out. Go ask Joel if he has some." "He looks kinda out of it, Tess. Maybe we should give him some space."
Joel heard every word, but he wasn't really listening. Instead, he was thinking over the journey they had made thus far, how every circumstance had lined up perfectly to bring them to this moment.
No less than 24 hours prior, he and Tess were just another pair of smugglers trying to survive in a shitty time and an even shittier place. Demand for smuggled goods, especially guns, was high, but the risk kept getting greater. Guards wanted more bribes to look the other way, random searches of suspected hideouts and tunnels were increasing, and the availability of dealers willing to sell their wares was falling, either through illness, or desertion, or worse, simply up and disappearing without a trace.
Joel knew he and Tess had endured more than their fair share of setbacks. But it seemed that their days as the best smugglers in the Boston Safe Zone were ending. And he didn't know what the hell they were going to do after. Become just another homeless couple begging for food from the ration officer? Try to escape and get shot by FDRA troops? Or just get bitten and die?
Then Marlene had shown up. Joel knew she was with the Fireflies, and that worried him. The Fireflies were the kind of people who lacked any instinct for survival. They just wanted to die, and they sure as hell didn't care who they took with them. When Marlene asked them to smuggle something for her, Joel was convinced that it had to be some new weapon they'd cooked up for an ambush or whatnot. He had been rehearsing his "We ain't gonna help you on your goddamn suicide mission" speech the entire way to the drop point.
But then he'd met Ellie. Just a little teenage girl.
Marlene had told him and Tess that Ellie was meant for some greater purpose. That the Fireflies had sacrificed a great deal of their men and resources to keep her safe. That they needed her brought to Beacon Hill to be transported to some secret facility where this "purpose" would be achieved. Joel didn't care about the finer details and so he didn't ask for them. All that mattered was that he and Tess would get back their last stash of guns, worth more than enough to get them through the next year.
His mind snapped out of it when he heard Ellie popping down next to him. "Are we there yet, Joel?", she teased.
Joel was too tired to be annoyed. But out in the distance, he could see the golden dome of what had once been the state capitol.
They were almost there. And then he and Tess could go back to the way things had always been.