A/N: Thanks for all of the continuing support for the story, everybody! As I'm sure plenty of you know, it's incredibly encouraging to see that people actually like what you're putting out. At this point, I'm going to say that updates will probably occur about once a week; that seems to be the shortest amount of time in which I can figure out exactly how I want the chapter to go, write it, and make sure that the tone is satisfactory. After all, with something like The Last of Us, tone is almost everything. This is especially tricky since I've added Sammy, who has to fit into a world that is so expertly and carefully crafted by Naught Dog that it's kind of baffling. I appreciate the patience! As always, drop a review if you can, and have a great weekend.
"I sell hardcore drugs." - Sarah
Chapter 7: Wishing on a Falling Star
"How many times, Dad?" Sarah sits in the passenger seat, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes narrowed at the road like it's what's ruined her night. Her cleat taps furiously against the floor, and she shivers, pulls the jacket tighter around her shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Baby. The job ran late."
"But practice ended three hours ago, and it's freezing outside. Did that occur to you?"
"I tried to call Tommy."
"Did he pick up?"
"No."
"Then why didn't you come get me?"
"Because I left him a message and I assumed he'd get it."
She sighs, hops out the door as soon as he pulls the truck into the driveway, grabs her bag from the backseat and hurries inside.
He allows the engine to sit idle for a few minutes before turning it off and leaning back in his chair. His fingers are numb from gripping a cold steering wheel without gloves, deep circles appear like bruises beneath his eyes, and he gets the feeling that he'll be ignored until tomorrow. Or the next day, depending on how long it takes for her to calm down.
Chuckling bitterly, he opens the front door, hears the shower running upstairs, throws together a quick dinner with the salad greens and tofu. He hates salad, but Sarah's turning into a health nut, just like her mother. Hopefully not just like her mother.
It's not like she's in the wrong; the temperature dropped as soon as the sun went down, and she got over a cold less than a week ago.
"Stupid," he whispers, sits down on the couch, turns on the TV and pretends to watch the news.
She bounds downstairs, dressed in slippers, a sweater, and baggy pajama pants. Her hair is still dripping wet, but he decides not to start another argument. The big grey eyes are a little softer when she looks at him, and a ghost of a smile tickles her lips. "Sorry, Dad."
He gapes at her. "You're sorry? For what?"
"Snappin at ya." Her slippers thud against the carpet as she grabs her salad from the kitchen and sits down beside him.
They sit in silence, and he taps his fingers against his brow, trying to figure her out. As sweet as she is, she never admits she's wrong because she only ever snaps when she's confident she's in the right.
It clicks, and he doesn't know how he's missed it. "Why didn't one of your friends give ya a ride home?"
Sarah tenses, spears a piece of tofu and slams it against the side of the bowl. "Don' worry 'bout it."
"Honey," he presses, squeezing her hand.
"Because nobody on my team likes me." She stares blankly at the floor, drops her fork, runs a hand through her hair. It's getting long again.
Joel shakes his head. "That's ridiculous. Everyone likes you."
"Not anymore."
"Why?"
The girl rises, goes into the kitchen, rummages around in the cabinet for a bag of chips. She pulls one out, leans against the wall, pops one into her mouth before checking the expiration date, which is more than a little out of the ordinary. "Cause I'm a jerk."
"No, you ain't."
"That's what Cindy said." She saunters back over to him, holds out the bag.
He shakes his head. "Who cares what Cindy says? She's never been nice to ya because she's jealous."
"Jealous of what?"
"The fact that you're better than her. Baby, I promise ya, you haven't lost any friends." He wraps an arm around her waist, pulls her into his lap, kisses her forehead.
She snickers, tries to push him away. "Daddy, stop. I'm too old for this."
"You'll always be my baby girl. 'Sides, this cheers ya up, and you know it."
Sarah tosses the chips onto the coffee table, wraps her arms around his neck, rests her head against his chest. "Then you can carry me up to bed and tuck me in and do whatever else I want."
He kisses her again, pulls his head back as she squeals in his ear. "I promise, nobody on your team has anythin against ya. Except for Cindy, and that don't really count. Ignore her."
"I thought ignoring people was rude," she says, smiling and finally crawling out of his lap.
"Well, the last thing you need is somebody chipping away at your self-esteem."
"Excuse me!" a soft voice calls through the door. "Hello? Tommy's brother?"
Joel shakes his head, glances down at the broken face of his watch, rubs his thumb over it.
As soon as he pulls the door open, a short blonde girl nearly falls into his arms. Her brow is coated in sweat, and she keeps fumbling with the hem of her shirt. "I'm sorry to intrude, Tommy's brother, but I need your help. Geez, what is your name? Not to be direct, but I feel like a bit of an idiot calling you that."
He puts his hands on her shoulders. "Hey, calm down. Use your words."
She takes a deep breath. "It's your daughter."
He tightens his grip without meaning to, and she winces. "Ellie?"
"She's been bitten."
"I'm not infected!" Ellie calls again, putting the pendant in the palm of her hand and tilting it from side to side to catch the grey light coming in through the window of the barn.
There's no response, as always. Sammy's father has got to have the thickest skull on the face of the earth. But he has the keys.
The redhead flops down on her back, closes her eyes. She wishes, for the briefest second, that she was still outside the walls. Maybe she could find a clicker to kill, to punish, to blame. But that's a foolish wish, and she pounds her fist lightly against her head to knock it away.
"Daddy!" Sammy says in tandem with approaching footsteps. "Let her out."
"What are you talking about? She's gonna turn into one of them."
"No, she's not."
Ellie sits up, picks a few pieces of hay out of her hair. "Come on, Blondie," she whispers.
"You," a deep voice growls. Joel. "Where's Ellie?"
"What the Hell is happening?" Sammy's father exclaims.
Footsteps draw closer, and then the other girl yelps.
"Dad, let go of me."
"You can't go in there. Either of you."
"But she's okay. I need to talk to her."
"Samantha, you are only fifteen. I am not losing you."
"Oh, stop it."
The door finally opens, and Joel is standing in the doorway, holding up a hand to the father, whose face is beat red. "Get up," he snarls
Ellie looks from side to side. She points at herself. "Are you talking at me?"
"Who the fuck else would I be talkin to?"
"Jesus, Joel, calm down then." She doesn't know why she's being so defensive, not really, but she doesn't care. If he's going to lie to her, then she can be angry with him whenever she wants.
He walks in, grabs her arm, hoists her to her feet, pulls her after him. "Thank you kindly," he says to the stunned onlookers.
"Joel, stop," she commands, plants her feet in the mud beside the road, pries herself free of his grasp.
Spinning around on his heels, he gets so close to her that they're breathing the same air. "Do you have any idea how stupid that was? Ya almost got yaself killed."
"But I didn't."
"Do you even care?" he whispers.
She blinks up at him, chews on the inside of her cheek, mind going a million miles a second.
He scoffs. "Come on. We're goin home, and then we're gonna have a talk about how to keep your goddamn secrets."
"No," she blurts out.
"What?"
"No, I don't care." Her lower lip trembles again, but she refuses to cry anymore.
Joel slouches slightly, closes his eyes, whispers something incomprehensible.
She glances down the road, can make out the barn in the distance and the two figures still standing beside it. They're embracing.
"Ellie," he finally mumbles. "What happened to you?"
"Nothing."
"Oh, really?"
An iron ball settles in the pit of her stomach, and she looks down at the ground instead of meeting his gaze. Her cheeks burn. "I forgot to pull my sleeve down. That's all."
"That's all," he mutters to himself, continuing up the street.
She throws another glance at the barn over her shoulder, narrows her eyes at the two hugging silhouettes, wants more than anything to be like them.
Happy.
Peaceful.
Alive.
Ellie doesn't have dinner. She locks herself in her room, sits on the bed, stares at the scar on her arm. There haven't been anymore nosebleeds, but her head is killing her, and she feels faintly ill every time she lies down. When she needs a change of scenery, she stands and returns to the window, stares out at the street.
Sammy is back at her spot beneath the street lamp. She waves frantically when she sees Ellie, makes a motion that looks like opening a door.
"This isn't a fucking door," the redhead says to herself, opening the window and sitting down on the sill, her legs dangling over the edge.
Putting her book to the side, the blonde runs over, stands in front of Tommy's house. "You alright?"
"I'm fucking great."
"Look, I'm sorry that my dad and I freaked on you. We didn't know."
A sigh escapes Ellie's lips, and she tries to give her maybe-friend a smile. "It's alright. I would have done the same thing."
Clasping her hands behind her back, Sammy scuffs up little clouds of dirt and dust with her sneakers. "Your secret is safe with me, and my dad won't say a word either. He's a good guy, as hard as it may be for you to believe. Him and Tommy go way back."
"Cool." The redhead fingers the pendant she's wearing around her neck, presses her free hand to her temple, bares her teeth as a spike of pain shoots through her brain.
"So," the other girl drawls out, "in all seriousness, are you okay? You kinda scared me."
Ellie laughs bitterly. "Sure I did. Being trapped in the barn with a runner probably wasn't on your to-do list."
"No, I'm not talking about that."
She kicks the warm night air, watches her blistered feet slip in and out of shadow. "Don't worry about me."
"You didn't answer my question."
"That's all you're gonna get."
Sammy puts her hands in her pockets. "Can we hang out? I know you think you're dangerous or something, but I don't care. You're a good person, and I want you to have a friend."
"You're signing your death warrant."
"Then consider me dead. I'll see you around, Ellie." The blonde walks across the street, grabs her book, holds it to her chest, vanishes down an alleyway.
"How are you feeling?" Riley takes a sip from her water bottle, wipes the sweat from her brow, closes her eyes.
"Fine, I guess. You should go to sleep; I'll take watch." Ellie scratches her side, stands, cracks her back, tries to ignore the pain in her spine and hip, heavily bruised in the fall from the rafters that were so close, so close, so far.
The other girl chuckles, kicks her shoes off. "Not a chance. I got you into this, and I'm not taking a nap while you do all the work."
"Stop," Ellie commands, running her fingertips over the bandage on her forearm. "We both came, we both made the choice to stay, we both fucked up."
"I never said it was a fuck up."
She walks back over to the brightly lit carousel, kicks off her own shoes, wiggles her blistered toes.
"It would only have been a fuck up if you hadn't come with me. That sounds terrible, but it's true." Riley smiles, coughs, spits into the grass.
The redhead smiles, feels the butterflies fill her empty stomach. "I'm starving."
"I don't have any food, but I do have this, thanks to Winston." Reaching into the backpack she recovered after the infected scurried back to their holes, the older girl pulls out a bottle of whiskey.
"You took that?" Ellie asks, laughing for no real reason.
"Of course I did. Now, do you want some?"
"Hell yeah." The younger girl sits back down, takes the bottle by the neck, gulps down as much as she can before she has to stop to catch her breath.
Riley rolls her eyes. "Slow down, El. I got it for us, okay? Us? As in me and you?"
"Right," her friend says, wincing as the whiskey burns her throat. "You and me."
"'Sides, you're tiny, and you can't hold your liquor."
Ellie laughs again, claps her hands, stretches her legs out in front of her and waits for her turn with the bottle. "I can too. Size doesn't matter."
As she hands it back, Riley coughs again, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Right."
Another drink makes her head spin, and the younger girl remembers that, well, maybe she is a bit of a lightweight. But it isn't like she'll be waking up to a hangover. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out the joke book.
They read. They laugh. They're on top of the world, then they're crying their eyes out, then they're on top of the world again. Maybe there's another kiss, maybe that's all in Ellie's head. She's having a hard time standing, she's dancing around while Riley lies down to get rid of the pain in her head.
"You know what?" the redhead asks as she climbs onto a carousel horse.
"What?"
"I think you're right. Option two is so much fucking better than option one." She giggles, hiccups, nearly falls off of her steed.
"What was option three?"
"Huh?"
"You asked what option three was. What did I say? Oh, damn, we're all out."
She purses her lips in thought, hiccups again. "Whatever. This is why I don't drink; I hate having the hiccups."
Riley rolls onto her back, stares up at the stars through the hole in the mall ceiling. "What should I wish for?"
"Food. Wish for, like, oh, man, what would be good right now? I don't even care, just ask for a lot of it."
"No, really, what should I wish for?"
"Dude, what are you talkin about?"
"Shooting star. Gotta make a wish."
Ellie feels the heat rise to her cheeks again, and she leans forwards in her saddle. "You-"
Before she realizes what's happening, she's falling to the side, banging her head against the floor, seeing nothing but darkness. Maybe she's dead. Maybe the virus takes you that quick, rips out your humanity and replaces it with pure, unadulterated anger and hatred.
But she's not dead.
She can hear labored breathing, and at first she thinks it's hers. But then her eyes flutter open, she remembers where she is, she picks herself off of the ground, she cradles her head in her hands, and she returns to Riley.
Kind of.
It's not really Riley. Riley didn't have such grey skin. Riley didn't have what look like vines crawling around beneath her skin. Riley didn't growl, didn't moan, didn't make those all-too familiar sounds.
Ellie clamps her hands over her mouth, feels the truth land on top of her, feels her heart clench so painfully that it knocks her to her knees, makes her think she's going into cardiac arrest. If she wakes that thing – Riley – up, then it'll attack her. She doesn't get to say goodbye. No, no, she doesn't get to say goodbye.
Why? How is that fair? Why isn't she turning? Why is she still alive? Why? Why? Why?
"Don't go," she whispers without meaning to.
The runner's eyes shoot open, land on her. Not friend; prey.
There's no memory of how they met. There's no memory of how they met the Fireflies. There's no memory of the first night they slept in the same bed, wrapped up in each other's arms because it felt so much safer, so much warmer, so much happier. There's no memory of how they sat together in the cafeteria, making quiet jokes about the buffoons marching between the tables with machine guns and permanent scowls. There's no memory of the fight, of the words that almost tore them apart forever. There's no memory of last night, of their reunion, of their trip, of their escape. There's no memory of anything.
Riley lunges forwards, screeches at the top of her lungs.
Ellie falls backwards, scurries away on her elbows, starts crying and screaming at the same time. "Stop!"
Another lunge, fingernails dig into her ankle.
"Please, Riley, stop!"
Teeth glimmer in the sunshine pouring through the hole in the roof, and Ellie acts on instinct, kicks the runner in the face, crawls away, feels like she's going to throw up and pass out. Her hand is wrapped around something, and she looks down without the slightest clue of what it is.
It's a gun. Riley's gun.
"No!" Ellie begs, not to the runner, not to God, not to anyone but herself. She's lifting the gun, she's trying not to, she's fingering the trigger, she's trying not to, she's aiming at the runner's head, Riley's head, and she's trying so desperately to throw the weapon to the side and let whatever will happen happen, but she can't.
Boom.
Riley is blown onto her back. A small pool of blood begins to form around her head, soaking her clothes and tinting her grey skin a dull shade of red.
The gun falls to the ground. Ellie stares at the body, her mouth hanging open, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, cutting paths through the dirt and grime and red. A single cry escapes her lips, she curls into a ball, squeezes her eyes shut and bangs her head against the ground until she's dizzy and bruised and in so much pain that she can barely see straight. She looks up, crawls towards the corpse, holds its hand and intertwines its limp fingers with her own. As if a link has been established, the memories flash through her mind, make her feel worse.
The memory of how they met. The memory of how they met the Fireflies. The memory of the first night they slept in the same bed, wrapped up in each other's arms because it felt so much safer, so much warmer, so much happier. The memory of how they sat together in the cafeteria, making quiet jokes about the bafoons marching between the tables with machine guns and permanent scowls. The memory of the fight, of the words that could never have torn them apart forever. The memory of last night, of their reunion, of their trip, of their failed escape. The memory of the only thing that could have torn them apart and now has.
She takes the pendant from around the runner's neck, holds it to her chest and rocks back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
"I love you.
"Please.
"Don't go."
Whatever sound comes out next is caught between a cry and an inappropriately timed chuckle; she woke up with a hangover after all.
