Chapter 4:

Joel swallowed thickly; he kept eye contact with Ellie, all the while trying to figure out what it was he was going to say. Come on, think! Joel's mind whispered.

Joel put his hands on his hips and sighed. "Ellie, I have no idea what you're talkin' about," he said. He guessed he should just play it the way he always did and just stick to his story.

"Oh come on Joel," she said. "You and I both know what you told me was bullshit." Joel cursed himself. He could not believe he had gotten himself into this.

"Ellie," he said in a stern voice that would hopefully put this argument to rest for now. "I already said I don't know what yer' talkin' about. Now-"

"You did something to them, didn't you?" Ellie asked suddenly. The look in her eye told Joel that she thought she had pieced the puzzle together. And based on what she had just said, it was apparent that she had. Joel looked at the floor and took one deep breath.

"When I got ya' out of the water, you weren't breathing," he said finally. He would have to speak quickly, just let the whole story spill out before he lost his nerve and conjured up more lies.

"I tried to get ya' breathing again, but some of the fireflies spotted us and assumed we weren't friendly. Knocked me out cold." Joel swallowed. "When I woke up, Marlene told me they were...preppin' you for surgery. Said I couldn't see you, sort of a 'we don't need you anymore' kinda thing." He trailed off and waited a second, trying to figure out some way to tell Ellie what happened next.

"What did you do Joel?" Ellie asked impatiently. Her voice held a mix of anxiousness and unease. She knew what he was going to tell her wouldn't be easy to hear.

"I killed 'em," Joel suddenly spat out. There. He'd said it, and now there was no going back. "I killed 'em all-any firefly who got in my way died in there." Ellie stared at him with wide eyes. Her shock at how blunt he'd been about it was apparent.

When she asked her next question, she spoke slowly and hesitantly. She wasn't sure if she wanted to hear his answer. "...And Marlene?"

Joel pinched the bridge of his nose. "Her too. I put a bullet in her head." Didn't even think twice about it either. It was Marlene or Ellie; a horribly easy decision to make.

Joel waited quietly for the shouts that Ellie would direct at him, the cussing she would do, he prepared himself to be hit, he prepared for Ellie to run off, he would have to chase after her if she did.

But she did none of these things. She only stood and shoved past Joel hard, muttering, "You son of a bitch." She went through the door to the garage and slammed it shut. Joel listened intently. From where he stood, he heard Ellie pound up the stairs and stop somewhere above him.

But surprisingly, to Joel, this reaction seemed to hurt him more than anything else she could have done. Joel hung his head and sat on the leather seat where Ellie had been only moments before, and tried to figure out a way he would be able to fix things between himself and his babygirl.

They were walking again. It had stopped raining, the sky was clear and the weather was warm. This did not make Joel feel any better. Instead, only seemed to add to the depression, frustration and anger that he currently felt. He was angry at himself, angry and frustrated with his own constant stubbornness and the way he always seemed to he able to get anybody angry of upset at him.

They walked all that day, stopping only three times for rests, but that was it. Many times Joel found that he was well aware of the distance between Ellie and himself. He was well aware of how she would not look even in his direction. He couldn't believe that he had fucked this up so bad.

They came into Idaho just before sundown. The town they came into was a rather small one-Idaho Falls. Joel remembered the place from the one time he and Tommy had been there, it had probably been the worst family vacation they'd been on, and it had been the last one Joel had partook in before Sarah had been conceived.

Tommy my seemed to remember that vacation as well. "You remember that car wreck we were in Joel?"

Joel nodded. "How could I forget? He asked.

Tommy my flashed a small smile. "Remember mom flyin' out the window? It was a good thing that truck didn't roll a fifth time, or she woulda' been a pancake." Joel gave Tommy a small smirk, but said nothing else.

"You were in a wreck that bad?" Ellie asked. Joel had opened his mouth to answer before he realized that her question had been directed at Tommy. And his little brother was already answering her question. Suppressing an aggravated growl, Joel jammed his fists into his pockets and stared at the cracked, overgrown asphalt he was treading on. He squeezed his eyes closed and let out a loud sigh, shutting out the sound of Tommy's voice, talking about the car wreck they'd been in as teenagers.

"Hey," a voice said with the tone of someone who had tried several times to gain someone's attention. Joel looked to his right at Maria.

"What?" He asked, pulling his hands out of his pockets and adjusting one of the straps on his pack.

"You look like you're about to rip someone's head off. What's wrong?" Despite the way he felt, Joel couldn't help the grin that graced his features. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothin' I'm fine," he replied. "Just thinkin' is all."

"About?" Joel huffed. He wasn't getting out of this one; Maria was nothing if not persistent.

"Ellie. She ain't exactly been doin' great since we found out Jackson had been wiped out." He said. And it wasn't a complete lie; Joel knew that had been one of the things bothering Ellie before she got the truth out of him about the fireflies.

"Hey," Tommy said, stopping suddenly. "This might be a good place to stop for the night." He pointed to their right, towards the dilapidated remains of an old train bridge, stretching across the rapid water of the Snake River. Joel gave a small nod and carefully picked his way across the grassy earth beside the river, to the bridge. Jutting out from underneath the metal that had been build into the land was an outcropping of earth. Joel looked up; the bridge overhead gave them a halfway decent shelter.

Joel sat down on the grass, shrugged off his pack and leaned back against the metal. Ellie, Tommy and Maria settled into their temporary camp. Tommy insisted on taking watch; when Joel had been convinced that Tommy wouldn't give in, he settled down on his back and stared up at the underneath of the bridge, and the expanse of darkening sky above them.

It took only a few moments for him to drift off into a fitful and uneasy sleep.

AN: Well that is that. Sorry the chapter is shorter than the last one, I'm exhausted. My husband and I, our band played a concert at a bar last night, and then like, a half an hour after we got home this lady came knocking on our door. Turns out she's my husband's twin sister that his mother always told him died in childbirth. She said she needed a place to stay, cause she wanted to move to Vegas to be close to her brother, so she basically moved in last night. So Exangellion probably won't be uploading any chapters to any of his current stories, he and his twin sister have a lot of catching up to do.

Also, a little fun fact about this chapter. A year after my husband and I met, he went on a vacation with us to Idaho, and we were in a horrible car wreck. My parent's car flipped like, six times. My mom flew out the window, and if the car wouldn't have stopped when it did, my mom would have been a pancake. I just thought that would have been a fun little experience Ellie could have learned about Joel and Tommy. But anyway, I think I'v rambled on enough. I hope you liked what you read and I hope you'll stick around to see more. Peace out.