"Look - there's the Capitol Building!"
Eager, hopeful faces turn up in the mid-morning light - has it really been only a day of this madness? Less than twenty four hours ago, he was tending to Tess's bruises and contemplating how many men he has to kill in recompense, and now he's about waist deep in murky water, wading towards the abandoned Capitol building with what could possibly be the cure to this madness...if there're people waiting to meet them.
Heavy, wet shoes slosh uncomfortably up the building stairs, and Joel frowns dubiously up where Tess leads them to the grand doors, glancing at the way Ellie seems both relieved and disappointed at the prospect of leaving them. "You sure there's someone waitin' for us?" he demands from the girl, but really he can't blame her for not knowing when Ellie gives him a hopeful but helpless shrug.
There are no guarantees in their world anymore. Anything goes.
"We'll be fine." Tess's stern reply has Joel turning back to her - only because he doesn't like the way she seems a lot more winded than she should be. Her stubborn face is paler in the light, her cheeks a little more hollow than he remembers, and he wonders when's the last time he saw her eat something in the past twenty four hours.
He reaches for her before he can help himself, grazing the skin of her elbow gently. "Tess, y'alright?" he murmurs, peering into her face with perhaps a little more worry than he'd like to admit. Being separated in that damn building and then finding her nearly mauled to death by that damn runner - Joel isn't sure if he's more upset with himself or at Ellie for being the reason for all this.
Tess nods her head, but Joel wonders if it's a little more like a shake as she brushes him off, grasping the doorknobs instead. "I'm fine, Tex. Just - tired." She spares them both a crooked smile when even Ellie looks up at her guiltily. "Let's get you to the Fireflies, huh kid."
He doesn't think it's appropriate to point out that he was right all along...but he was right.
There are people waiting for them at the Capitol building, alright - dead people. Each and every one of the so-called Fireflies waiting for them are all lying in pools of their own blood, long dead, by the looks of it. Joel sighs, stepping back as he watches Tess rummage through their pockets for some kind of hint at what the fuck they're supposed to do now.
"What now?" Ellie asks them, and Joel wonders vaguely if Tess will make them keep her with them, or worst yet - make them take her to the Fireflies themselves.
Tess sighs heavily, pulling herself to her feet when her search finds nothing but a Firefly pendant and more blood on her hands. She glances from Ellie to Joel, gnawing the corner of her lip as she weighs in their options. She blows out a breath, gesturing to her partner about as helplessly as she'll allow herself, open-palmed. "Well, we can't just leave her on her own, Joel."
But the man is already shaking his head, waving his hand between them as if he can physically ward off Tess's suggestion. "No, no, no, hell no, Tess - we are not takin' her nowhere else -."
"What other choice do we have?" she counters incredulously, eyes darting sharply to where Ellie's doing her best to make herself invisible in this lovers spat. "Where is this lab they were talking about? Did they tell you?" she demands.
Ellie shakes her head, grasping at her own memories for something that can help them all. "Ah - uh I don't know," she admits, flushing at the way Joel grumbles under his breath. "They just said it was somewhere out West."
"Perfect." Joel scowls, folding his arms stubbornly as Tess begins to round in on him. Cold green eyes bear down on Tess's stubborn hazel eyes; she can see the set of his jaw under all the scruff, and the way he seems to be intent on grinding in what's left of his molars. "I s'pose you wanna take her out all the way out West just for a bunch of guns?"
Tess shrugs a shoulder, arching a brow in challenge at the man. "They're our guns, Joel. I want them back." He growls again, and Tess's brow only goes higher on her forehead. Joel isn't sure if it's infuriating or arousing when she breaks into a crooked smirk. "We were talkin' about laying low for a while, didn't we? What's better than layin' low while visiting family?"
The bearded man's brows pull low on his forehead. "Wha - family?" Joel blinks, hard. "You wanna go find Tommy?" he scoffs incredulously.
"He used to run with these guys, he'll know where to go," Tess insists, and as much of an argument Joel might have when he's stepping into her personal space and opening his mouth, he can't say, because Ellie's frantic alert of more guards has them on high alert again.
He feels Tess breathe a swear, and Joel takes a moment to watch as she's grabbing the girl away from the windows and shoving her towards the back hallway. "What's it gonna be, Tex?" she calls, and he feels her hand slipping over his arm in an iron grip.
Her eyes blaze into his; something unreadable there, as always. "Because I'm not leaving this place without you."
Joel sighs audibly, sparing the woman a mildly irritable look before nudging her forward, covering the back just as the guards try their way for the door. "You're gonna owe me a million backrubs for this," he mumbles, as they're racing each other up the stairs.
Tess laughs quietly, ducking under a broken banister. "I'll make it up to you when we get to Tommy's."
"Ah, shit."
Joel stumbles down the pipeway, grunting when his knees take to the landing with a little more than just a polite protest, and the man turns to where Tess is landing just off to his side, her hand on his arm - for her support and his. "You alright, old man?" she's asking him, and Joel brushes off her gentle teasing for a nudge in the direction they need to be headed instead - the guards are still on their ass.
"You really think she's gonna fix this mess, huh?" he gusts, as they jog up along the overgrown weeds of what used to be the sidewalk, where Ellie seems mesmerized by the growing flora around them. They get to somewhere familiar - a little broken down garage somewhere downtown, and Joel hauls the broken boards up for them to slip by, Ellie first.
Tess brushes by him, patting his chest with a little breathless kind of smile on her face that's maybe a little more unsure of herself than she's aware. "Can't hurt to try," she says, and then she's off keeping pace with Ellie to keep the girl on track when she looks close to wandering off into a very deep drop off the edge of a broken down highway.
"C'mere, you." She grabs the back of Ellie's backpack, hauling the girl in the direction they need to be, much to Joel's amusement. "We can't have you fallin' head first into a pile of Clickers, now can we?"
Ellie smiles sheepishly, jogging to keep in stride with the pair as Joel and Tess weave in and out of overgrown shrubbery and overturned vehicles. "So where are we going now?" she asks them, as Joel pauses to boost Tess over a scaffolding. She takes a running jump at the woman's proffered hand, grunting with effort as she clambers awkwardly up the side of the building, huffing as she waits and watches with a continuous awe at the way Tess pulls Joel up too.
"Are we going back to Marlene?" she wonders, and watches the way Joel and Tess share a look; the kind she's come to recognize as a 'speaking look' where they talk without needing to say a thing to each other. It's pretty infuriating. She wonders if she should ask them if it's a couple thing.
"Well, a deal's a deal," Tess is saying, even as Joel is sulking while he's scavenging around for extra supplies. "We told Marlene we were gonna take you to the Fireflies, so we're gonna take you to them." Something collapses somewhere off the other side of the room, and Tess is immediately on the source, gun at the ready and voice low and sharp.
Joel emerges, grumbling under his breath, but otherwise unharmed. "'s my bad," he mumbles, and accepts the smack on his arm from a scowling Tess. "Found this though." He produces a bar of chocolate, surprisingly fresh-looking, although Tess continues to eye it dubiously even when Joel shoves it into her hand impatiently. "Y'gonna need to eat somehtin' 'fore you pass out on us, alright?"
Tess huffs, murmuring her thanks as she's breaking the bar three ways, passing the first third to Ellie, who accepts the treat somewhat bashfully, even if she's been eyeing the bar since Joel had produced it. The woman smiles at her from the corner of her mouth, and turns to the Joel with a resolute smirk, holding the second third of the bar impatiently near his face when the man shakes his head at her.
"Open your damn mouth and swallow the thing before I put it somewhere you'd appreciate it less," she threatens him, and with a tortured sigh, Joel snatches the bar from her grip, crunching down on the chocolate and grumbling even as his ears burn at the way Ellie giggles at him.
So he eats his third of the bar, watching closely to be sure that Tess does so too, and once they're all sated for the moment (or at least, now that they're all not jumping at the sound of their own stomachs), they're back out on their way back to the QZ.
"For supplies," Tess says, as Joel's watching her ass climb over the chainlink fence. "And I need to settle some business - make sure everything's nice and dealt with while we're on vacation."
Joel scoffs, clambering up after Ellie. "Vacation, huh? What, you want me to pack somethin' nice for the summer? Bet if you asked nicely, Johnny'd get you a dress," he teases her, and chuckles when Tess elbows him hard. The sound of his low baritone laugh surprises Ellie - she hadn't thought it was possible for the man to even crack a smile, let alone laugh.
It's only for a moment though, and then the man's as serious and surly as he's always been. "Seriously Tess - why the hell are we headin' back when we oughta be startin' west?"
Tess sighs, rolling the tense muscles of her neck as she props her hands on her hips, suddenly painfully aware of the way her body throbs and aches from the god awful things she's put it through. She's starting to feel her age, and she doesn't like it. She blows out a breath. "Well, we sure as hell can't travel across the country with a handful of ammo and barely enough kits to patch ourselves up," she states, glancing pointedly at where Joel's arm still bleeds from beneath the haphazard binding he'd placed there after an unfortunate and sloppy encounter with a stray bullet.
Joel palms the injury somewhat indignantly, but he finds himself sighing in defeat; he never really does say no to Tess anyway. "We stop for one night," he tells her firmly, and Tess nods her assent readily even as Ellie's groaning to herself about returning to the zone. "We just took out a whole damn team of soldiers, Tess; odds are they've got the whole damn place on lockdown 'cause of us."
The woman merely shrugs. "Wouldn't be the first time."