Ellie sat in shocked silence for a long moment, her mouth slightly agape. At last she recovered her powers of speech, and the first word she uttered made Joel wince. The second word she uttered was, "No."
"What do you mean 'no'?" Joel asked. "I didn't ask you a question, I just told you a fact."
"Well, my answer is no," she retorted, getting to her feet. "I can't get married. I don't want to have kids!"
"Now, Ellie, settle down," Joel said, standing, and lifting a hand in a calming gesture. "Nobody's askin' you to do a darn thing right now."
"Oh, yeah?" Her voice rose. "But in the future, what then?"
"You can't make a decision like that now, you don't know what might happen,. You're only sixteen."
"Only sixteen?" She stared at him in disbelief. "I'm not hearing that right. There's no only. I'm sixteen. Six – whole – teen! And I can make a decision like that for myself!"
"I need you to lower your voice," Joel said in a measured tone. "I don't bet you want Tommy comin' up here askin' if everything's alright."
Ellie closed her mouth at this, and tossed herself prone onto the windowseat, clamping the single ancient pillow over her head, only to sit up in a coughing fit. Joel watched, resisting the urge to smile, and when she had finally gotten her breath again, after a drink of water from the amazing marvel of the running tap in the bathroom, he met her eyes.
"Alright?"
"Fine," she mumbled, her voice a little husky. "That's a heck of a thing to try and spring on someone, though."
The rain had intensified, filling the room with the sound of the droplets hitting the patched roof and sliding topsy-turvy over each other to cascade from the eaves into the collection barrels. Joel heaved a sigh.
"So. That's what we've been talkin' about."
"And it only just now crossed your mind to tell me?" Ellie could hardly believe her ears. She stared at the ceiling, and traced the pattern with her finger in the air, the parallel lines of a double crack that joined a corrugated patch. The one that she thought looked like how she imagined a teleportation device to look, like in Savage Starlight. Maria had given her some paper and encouraged her to write what she thought should happen in the next installment of the series, and she'd done her best. She didn't have many ideas for the story, but a lot of ideas for pictures, so the sequel was a bit hard to follow. Only Ellie really knew how it was supposed to go, and one time she had sat Joel down and explained all the drawings to him. Apparently she needed to work a little more on making her art stand on its own.
"It was a hard talk to have. Everyone had different opinions," Joel murmured, running a hand over his beard.
"Hm," Ellie responded, her voice far-away. "Which was yours?"
Joel sighed. "I told them we shouldn't make you do somethin' you don't want to."
"Heck, yeah."
"Tommy thinks I was an idiot to do what I did. Maria disagrees, and said that I was right, but that we have to think about the repercussions – the... consequences. And that I should talk to you about, you know – fixing it."
"Tell me this." Ellie swung her legs back down and squinted, hugging the derelict pillow to her stomach. "Why am I supposed to be fixing the consequences of your choice?"
Joel's brows drew together. "I saved your life, Ellie. Is it too much to ask that you work with me here?"
"What do you mean?" Her face seemed to lose a shade or two of color. Joel shut his eyes.
"I mean, of course, that you think about cooperatin'. Just for a little while, entertain the idea that this might work."
"How." She didn't phrase it like a question. Joel was unsure of what exactly she meant, and decided to err on the side of caution.
"I mean... cooperate. Realize this could work and let us –" he gestured helplessly. "Let us help you find someone you could like, and someday have a family with."
Ellie's face still bore traces of her earlier horror. "No," she murmured. "I'm sorry, Joel. I can't do that."
"Why not, baby girl?" Joel asked in a quiet voice, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. "Why not?"
She looked at the floor. "I don't really want to talk about it."
Joel inhaled. "I know that this... this is a mighty sensitive topic. And you probably never thought about it much."
Ellie let out a small laugh, but it was mirthless. "No kidding. It freaks me out."
"And I know that after... what that son of a –"
Ellie shook her head. "Don't. It's fine. I'm just... not crazy about the idea. One, I'm a kid. Two, it freaks me out. Three, I don't think I'll ever fall in love, and then there's no point. And four, I kinda just want to live life for a while and not worry about all this immunity business." She shrugged. "Selfish, I know."
"Yeah. You hear yourself?" Joel's voice was still pitched low, and Ellie had leaned forward, so that the room seemed to shrink around them, and the whole world now consisted of the small patch of floor between their shoes on which both their eyes were focused, and the sounds of each others voices in their ears.
"You're thinkin' like I was, and like I still do. Selfish. Now, I'm not askin' you to do something that I couldn't, that ain't fair. I'm only askin' that you try. You better try to be a better person than I am, or the whole world's goin' to be pretty screwed up. 'Cause I've messed up big time."
"Like when?"
"Lots," Joel replied simply. "So, think about it." He got to his feet, and put a hand on Ellie's head for a brief moment. "We all care about you, here."
"I know." Her voice was small. "Thanks."
Joel knew he should leave about now, but somehow his feet didn't budge. He stood there for a long moment, and finally asked, "What're you thinkin'?"
His patience did not go unrewarded.
"So, say I decide to do what you want." Ellie looked up. "Say this is all going to work, and we decide, oh, in ten or twenty years, yeah, I'll fall in love."
"Ten or twenty years? Kid, you gotta make a decision before then, or I'll be long gone. I want to see this, and I ain't as young as I look."
"Okay, fine, so ten or fifteen." Ellie held out her hands. "I'm doing the best I can."
Joel nodded. "Alright. So?"
"So..." Ellie pursed her lips. "What if I fall in love with a girl?"
Joel did his best not to let his face reflect his thoughts. "Honey," he sat back down. "You're a smart kid, and I ain't goin' to go into detail, but if the point in this is to pass on your immunity, I'll bet you can work the answer to that one out."
"But what if I do? I can't just marry somebody I don't like, right? I mean like Maria and Tommy." Ellie waved a hand. "They fell in love, so they got married. It has to go in that order, doesn't it?"
"It doesn't have to," Joel began, but seeing her face, decided to stop there. "But for you I wouldn't want it to be in any other order."
Ellie shook her head. "Why can't the world be simpler..." she groaned, pulling her hairtie from her hair and intertwining her fingers close to her scalp in a classic gesture of agony.
"Believe me, I wonder the same thing," Joel murmured in sympathy.
"You going to tell Tommy what I said?"
Joel hesitated. "He's goin' to ask."
"I know."
"What should I tell him?"
Ellie looked up. "Tell him I'm going to try not to be selfish."