AN: *GASP* What's this!? A quick update!? It is indeed. Well, enjoy. Cheers!
A crisp winter wind blew through the Napa compound while Joel and Ellie strolled down the street towards the local medical center. The clinic was at the southern entrance and at least a ten minute walk from their home. It had been a full week since they had to separate at the request of Lare, so Joel could join him on watch duty. Since diving into his arms when she met him at the gate early in the morning, Ellie of course had yet to leave his side. She even sat against the wall outside the bathroom when he showered, half worried that somehow, in the most nonsensical way possible, the claw-foot tub would consume him and transport him to some nether space where he would remain trapped forever. And each time he opened the door, with his hair still damp from the water and steam clouding the mirror, he would look down to see her gleefully staring up at him from her cross-legged position with unrestrained joy. Just being separated by a thin wall for ten minutes at most was difficult. Though, he would never, ever, call attention to the massive smile that carved into her face when she saw him come out. His silent appreciation of her, and frankly his, co-dependent and clingy selves would never wane. Each other, that was all they knew.
A particularly brisk gust of wind blew by, causing Ellie to zip up her trusty hoodie. The cold never bothered Joel, he simply found it refreshing and actually enjoyed it. If anything, he was more agitated by where they were currently headed than anything else.
"Can't believe you convinced my sorry ass to do this dammit," he mumbled in irritation.
Ellie, with a hand firmly gripped around his, swung his arm to and fro as she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
"Really? You can't believe it huh?"
"Nope," he spat back with a shake of the head.
"Pssht - whatever... I can get you to do anything these days," she retorted with a cheeky grin.
He bristled at the statement from the little sprite beside him and snorted as he shot her a glance.
"Oh really now?" he responded.
And oh how correct she was. The confident, borderline arrogant claim was undoubtedly true, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
"Hell yeah dude! As you would say, uhh... reckon it's been that way for a while now," she said, attempting to mock his deep, southern accent with one of her own.
She could never get her voice to go that deep. It was terrible and lacked all characteristics that typified an accent of a person who hailed from the southern states. But he laughed regardless at the feeble attempt.
"Tssht - nice try there missy - but I reckon you've got a long way to go on that front."
She blew a raspberry and kicked a small rock across the asphalt that stood inches from her feet.
"Pfft - someday I'm gonna get it... you just wait," she said.
"Uh-huh," he simply responded, returning his gaze to the health center that was getting closer and closer.
He heaved a sigh and wiped his eyes.
"You ain't gonna change your mind on this one huh?"
"Nope," she responded with a shake of the head.
"Besides, you dragged me to the doc when we were in Jackson, now it's my turn."
"But I ain't even sick."
"Well, I fucking see that Joel but... back in Idaho I thought you were gonna drop dead on me or something. So you're gonna get your ass in that doctor's office whether you like it or not," she austerely said.
Though he wouldn't entirely accept it, she was right. The sickness that plagued him on their journey was nothing to scoff at and at the very least, if seeing a doctor for a quick checkup brought her peace of mind, he absolutely would do it.
"Jesus - feisty today," he said with a subtle eye roll.
She lightly punched his arm. That eye roll of his, she always found it to be so sarcastic and maddening. But in the weirdest of ways, she found some strange form of enjoyment out of it. It meant she was annoying him. Which, of course, was all the more entertaining on its own. Despite the contrast in their age and size, she had just as much control over him as he did of her. They were equals. They were one.
"It's just... it's my turn to worry, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah - alright - you got it," he reluctantly responded as he messed with her hair.
She smiled and got a light bounce in her step.
"Good."
A few seconds of silence fell between them as they approached the steps to the medical center.
"Joel," she said with that all too familiar, terse and curiosity-filled intonation.
He was reminded of holding her in his arms and warming her up when they crossed the Sierras during the blizzard, or even the day they walked down interstate eighty through the desert in Nevada. He remembered how much he loved that nettlesome, yet lovable tone of hers when something of intrigue snagged on her never ending desire to understand and question all things. It was childlike wonder in its purest form.
And he loved it.
"Yes darlin'," he responded with smile.
"Remember when we first got here? Lare said something about... earth... earthquakes? What are those?"
He scratched his beard and snickered to himself, realizing that he'd yet to ever experience one during his fifty years of existence.
"Well - I ain't ever been in one personally but... basically the ground beneath you... just moves, shifts an' shakes... or something like that. Hell - I dunno really, I ain't a geologist."
"So... like, the ground, this right here, under my feet, will fucking move and shake and stuff?"
"Yeah - pretty much."
"Wow, that sounds kinda fucking awesome actually," she said with a light, humored laugh.
"Well, when your house an' everything you know gets destroyed an' crumbles to the ground it ain't that awesome."
That caused a string of thoughts to run through her mind. Even before the outbreak, the primary and most recent cause for robbing people of everything they knew, there were uncontrollable events that achieved exactly the same thing. The world, like he'd tried to tell her, wasn't all sunshine and rainbows all the time before it was crawling with Infected, Bandits and Hunters. Cruel fate had many forms, the Cordyceps Virus simply being its latest.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. How do they happen though?"
"Pssht - hell if I know, somethin' to do with the tectonic plates or some crap. But like I said, I ain't a damn geologist so don't take my word for it."
She made a face and slowly nodded, like one does when accepting and agreeing with an unexpected explanation.
"Huh, alright - sounds right enough to me," she said with a shrug.
"Yep - Lare had a good point too, they really are a lot like Bandit raids. There's always gonna be the next one, you just never know when or how bad."
"Anyway, ready to do this?" he continued as he opened the door of the clinic and motioned for Ellie to go inside.
"You're the one who's doing the whole shebang, not me dude! Soooo... yep!" she said, proudly lifting her chin.
An hour passed while they sat in the waiting room of the health center. The place was empty, the only signs of life being the doctors on staff and one other person who was also waiting when they arrived.
When they first sat down, Ellie was sitting upright in one of the many cushioned chairs in the room. But as seconds turned into minutes and minutes into a full hour, her posture drooped more and more. Eventually, she became completely slumped in her chair, sliding further and further down until the the back of her head rested against the rear cushion and her waist was off of the seat entirely. Of course, once that inevitably became too uncomfortable to endure, she rotated ninety-degrees, crossed both legs at the ankles and propped the underside of her knees atop the armrest, flopping the back of her head onto Joel's thigh.
He fondly remembered Sarah performing the same antics when she was bored and restless while mindlessly waiting for something. Since there was nothing else to do, he simply sat there, regardless of how numb his leg got due to the weight of Ellie's little head, and happily watched her fiddle with his sleeve.
She blew a raspberry then groaned.
"Oh my god - there's like no one here, why the fuck is this taking so long?" she asked.
He laughed.
"Hey, you're the one who wanted to do this kiddo, not me."
He was right and there was no backing out now. She wouldn't dare give in after they'd waited this long. He was seeing the doctor no matter what, she was sure of it.
"Yeah but I mean... it's only us and one other guy that's here."
"Well, sure, but... how many damn qualified doctors you think they got in this place?"
She bit her lip, darted both eyes upwards and started counting on her fingers as she tried to remember each person they saw since arriving that looked like a medical professional.
"Okay, well... there was that one dude. Then the other dude, then the lady with the brown hair... and... I think that other lady with the blonde hair."
He rolled his eyes and chuckled, mindlessly stroking her hair with his knuckles in the process.
"Wow, reckon you're dead on, very descriptive there... I'm sure you nailed it," he sportively taunted.
Suddenly, they heard a very loud but muffled bang and thud from outside, beyond the walls of the medical center. It startled her, but didn't seem to phase him in the slightest. He tilted his head back, rested it on the back of the chair, then closed both eyes and let loose a deep, boredom-filled breath while doing so.
"Uhh... what the hell was that?" she asked, lifting her head from his leg.
"I dunno - probably nothin' - Lare said they were workin' on the southern gate today, reckon it's just that," he softly mumbled with his eyes still closed.
Like hers did to his sleeve, his fingers continued to absentmindedly fiddle with her hair. She'd gotten so used to feeling his rough, callused fingers toying with it that if he suddenly stopped, it would in the weirdest of ways, hurt. As if he would be distancing himself from her.
"Hmph - didn't sound like nothing," she said as she scrunched her face.
She plopped her head back down and wiggled in her spot, adjusting herself to her liking and resumed toying with the fabric of his sleeve. For some reason, unbeknownst to both of them, she found the act far too entertaining. Though really it had become a subconscious habit and nothing more. Half of the time she didn't even know she was doing it. At the very least it kept her fingers occupied, thus preventing her from picking at her fingernails. Something she so often did while bored.
She started to giggle to herself.
"The hell's so funny?"
"Are they gonna use that... oh man, what the hell was it called... that... sphyg-mamo-mamo thing on your arm?" she asked through her laughs.
The ridiculous and silly terms she came up with always humored him and he let loose a light laugh as well.
"Reckon they probably will," he responded through his chuckling.
"What does it do again?"
"It checks your - "
Out of nowhere, an ear shattering boom thundered from the entrance at the far end of the hallway, interrupting his explanation immediately. She shot straight up and gulped as she glanced around the room, her eyes finally settling on his as he looked back at her. Instinctively, he wrapped an arm around her, pulled her close then wiped his brow. Right away, they felt their sharply tuned senses refocusing. They hadn't been off of the road long enough to let their survival instincts rot away.
"What the fuck was that!?" she frantically asked, though in the back of her mind she sure had an idea.
He pulled her even closer and leaned to the right in the chair to peer around the corner and down the hallway. An obscuring cloud of smoke and dust crept its way towards them, masking anything beyond a ten foot range. They heard loud voices, shrieks, yells and shouts from outside and the far end of the hall.
"I dunno baby, hang on - stay back," he paternally said as he held her in his lap, concern and care palpable behind every word.
Suddenly, a series of gunshots echoed from outside, the cackling sounds rippling through the air towards them. Before either could even blink, when the sounds hit their eardrums, they knew exactly what was going on. As they were warned, the next raid was due any moment.
"We just had to fucking mention it didn't we!?" she quietly spat through a whisper.
"Yep, Bandits - goddammit!"
More voices, this time louder, echoed from the hallway. None of which sounded friendly and they looked at each other, both swallowing hard upon realizing that their supplies, everything they utilized to survive on the road, was sitting at home. They were naked, vulnerable as could be and the only thing they had was her switchblade and each other.
The sound of boots against linoleum and more voices roped them out of their thoughts. It was fight or flight, there was no time to ponder.
"Fuck! Hide, hide, hide!" he spat, dragging her along by the hand as they knelt down behind a desk, which sat in the waiting room.
The once calm and serene room was now rife with tension, so much so that one could make the place violently explode if they were to just poke it with a needle.
Their breaths were quick, shallow and panicked. Sweat was already bubbling across their skin and dampening their shirts. They looked at each other, their faces mere inches apart, and gazed into one another's eyes. His dark browns and her greenish-blues said more than any words could. Neither was going let anything happen to the other. Neither was going to let anything rob them of their purpose.
A Bandit crept into the room, pistol trained and all, ready to shoot on sight. They heard his footsteps gradually approach as the man's boots clunked against the floor. Joel lifted a finger to his lips, in a hushing motion, and looked Ellie in the eyes.
She simply nodded and gulped. Killing to survive was nothing new and something that was forever engraved into their brains. An ironic and sad fact that was.
The Bandit rounded the corner of the desk and his eyes went large. But before his finger could pull the trigger, Joel was already lunging forward and wrapping an arm around his neck.
He planted his other hand over the Bandit's mouth, preventing him from screaming for help. He pulled him down and dragged him behind the cover the desk, tightening his grip around the bastard's neck. The veins in his forearm enlarged and his muscles tensed as he squeezed as hard as he could to strangle the man to death, grunting, snarling and growling as he fought the Bandit's strength with his own. Within seconds, the man's hands dropped his pistol then made countless, feeble and anemic attempts to break free as they grasped at Joel's death grip.
It was no use and before long his body went limp as he breathed his last breath.
"Holy shit," Ellie muttered in an exasperated hush, round eyed and all.
Her switchblade was already drawn, and had the Bandit made any attempt to harm Joel, she would've stabbed the bastard dozens of times until a pool of blood soaked the carpet beneath them.
Joel reached for the pistol and peered over the surface of the desk, only to immediately drop his head back down and grimace.
"Shhhiiiit," he quietly growled.
"What!?"
"Three more comin' in."
"We're fucking trapped in here aren't we!?"
"I dunno - probably but just... just get ready honey."
"Uh-huh, okay," she said with a nod and another gulp.
Their breaths were heavy and strained. Their stomachs churned. Their insides twisted into painful knots. Both of them felt that tingle in their bladders, the tingle one gets when in the midst of adrenaline-filled circumstances that posed grave, or at the very least, serious repercussions depending on their outcome. They focused their hearing, painstakingly listening to each footstep that drew closer. Every sound was magnified and for a second they thought they could even hear the beat of the other's heart. That sound, that precious thump, needed to persist under any and all circumstances.
Just as the next Bandit came into vision, Joel sprung to his knees and rapidly fired multiple rounds into him. He unloaded whatever bullets remained in the pistol's chamber into the man's body, seeing the spurts of blood spouting from the newly formed wounds.
Pop-pop-pop-pop!
"Oh fuck! You hear that!?" a loud voice boomed from down the hallway.
Joel was still pulling the trigger, hearing the weapon give way to empty clicks after the last bullet left the chamber. The Bandit in question was already dead. His torso was littered with bullet holes, the evidence of Joel's handiwork emitting small puffs of smoke into the air around the wounds.
More footsteps, this time at a quicker pace, echoed throughout the room. Before the next Bandit could even register what transpired, Joel pounced from his kneeling posture behind the desk and tackled the man to the floor. A series of gunshots went off as the Bandit tried to defend himself. Each bullet just barely whizzed past Joel's head and instead of hitting pay-dirt, they punctured a series of holes into the ceiling.
He pinned the bastard to the floor, pressed a knee onto the man's wrist and pinned it to the floor to keep him from freely firing away, then furiously swung at his face. His callused and scarred fists of stone thudded into the man's cheeks, nose and mouth, breaking and shattering bone with every rage-induced swing. Blood spurted from the Bandit's disfigured and bludgeoned head and within seconds Joel's jeans were densely spotted in the life-giving liquid.
Ellie peaked her head up from the desk and saw another one round the corner. She watched the man raise his gun, heard him pull the hammer back and watched him ready himself to unload a collection of rounds into the only thing that she was living for. Her eyes widened, their pupils dilating to the size of full moons. With no regard for her own life, she threw all caution to the wind and without a second thought leaped from behind the desk and charged the man at a full sprint.
"No, no, no! Joel! Look out!" she screamed as she pounced through the air, landing atop the man's back.
She drove the knife repeatedly into his shoulders and neck. Again and again she stabbed, until his body collapsed to the floor and ceased to twitch in its final moments of life. Gobs and spurts of blood shot from the half-dozen or so stab wounds, coating her hands and hoodie in a thick layer of blood. The garment was now more red than its normal combination of black and red plaid.
Her heart hammered away in her chest and she wiped the sweat from her brow, meeting Joel's eyes with hers. He was still kneeling above the brutally beaten body he so savagely destroyed seconds ago. But she saved his life, again. They were starting to lose track of how many times she rescued him from the angel of death, this must have been the umpteenth time she did so. And even in this moment, with corpses bleeding out and lying on the floor around them, she smiled. A streak of blood and sweat marred her cheek, veiling the collection of freckles that he always thought were so endearing. It was as if he saw her delicate and fragile angel wings pop up from her shoulders only to be complemented by the sprouting of devilish horns atop her forehead. So unique, so strange and special the adorable little girl was.
He watched her push aside a sweaty bang and heave a deep breath while she knelt atop her latest victim. He smiled back, as if to thank her for saving his life yet again, and of course she knew exactly what it meant when he coupled it with a nod.
But as the obscuring cloud of smoke parted from the hallway behind her, a figure holding a handgun became visible. He observed it slowly materialize from the cloud, then in slow motion, watched it raise its weapon and take aim at his little girl that sat in clear sight.
His eyes widened to their maximum size and panic filled his every nerve. If his body would've let him, he would've thrown up right then and there but it wouldn't. For the one thing that kept him fighting, the one thing that kept him going was about to be horrifically ripped away after everything they'd been through and built between them if he didn't act right this moment. The paternal alarms in his head went wild and the primitive instinct to protect his child at all costs kicked into high gear.
Immediately, he shot straight up from his kneeling posture and sprinted forward, his feet kicking and nearly tripping over themselves as he bolted across the room like a flash of lightning.
"Oh god! No! No! No! Ellie! Noooo!" he screamed as he dove behind her, sprawling completely horizontally with arms and legs extended as he flew through the air.
The deep, bellow and painful cry in his voice was heartbreaking. She'd never heard a human being sound anything like that before and only thought it must have been what he sounded like when he lost Sarah. Before she even had a chance to react, she felt him wrap himself around her. He encased her little self in his arms and pulled her tightly into his chest as he enveloped every inch of her body with his much larger frame.
He held her. He clutched her. He squeezed her so close that all she could do was let loose tiny, fragile, shallow sips of air as her lungs attempted to breathe in his almost-crushing but protective grasp.
Then it happened.
Two gunshots sliced through the air from behind them. She wanted to scream his name, to shout for help but couldn't. She wanted to rewind the current day and go back to the morning, when they were sitting at the table eating breakfast, just so they could start it all over and never come here. Time seemed to slow. The earth stopped spinning and everything in her mind came to a screeching halt. The seconds between the cackle of the gun and ensuing bullets that would follow felt like an eternity. She thought that just maybe, this was all a dream. That perhaps the small cylinders of metal would never actually arrive and instead she would wake up in bed, snugly and safely wrapped in her favorite place.
If only.
The inevitable happened. The bullets landed. Both of the rounds thudded into his back and she felt him twitch and wince as he grunted and shrieked in pain. The tone behind his howls was torturous. It would haunt her forever. It mercilessly tore at her heart. The organ skipped not just one, two, or even three, but a multitude of beats and she could hardly catch her breath. It was as if she could feel just as much of the pain as he could, experiencing the entire thing in the same fashion.
She twitched in his arms and was only able let out a whimper; a painful, desperate and airy cry.
"Oh... fuck!"
One last gunshot rang from further down the hallway. It was Lare putting a bullet into the skull of the last Bandit who was about to riddle Joel's back with more.
"Oh shit - oh no - Joel!" he shouted as he sprinted towards them.
Disregarding everything else, she wiggled free out of Joel's arms, not even knowing if more Bandits lurked nearby. She spun around and watched him collapse to the floor onto his back. His limbs shook and his breathing was already rapid and heavy.
"Oh god! No! No! No! Oh my fucking god! Help! Somebody fucking do something! Please! Help!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, her gaze never breaking from his face.
In a matter of seconds tears were dripping from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Pain like this was foreign, unexplored territory and the synapses in her brain were rapidly firing like military-grade artillery as it tried to rewire itself to cope, to understand and endure what was transpiring. The sensation that raged within her heart was alien, even scary. She'd only felt this way a small handful of times before. It was pounding, fluttering, aching, sputtering, choking, sporadically beating and hardly able to keep itself going.
She knelt down next to him, her limbs shaking just as much as his, and immediately reached for his hand then intertwined their fingers.
"Oh-okay Joel - stay with me, stay with me - c'mon you're okay - we're gonna get through this like we always do - we've done this before - stay with me, you have to be okay," she stammered, her frantic assurances rolling across her tongue like lightning.
He was shaking. His skin was turning a dark, purplish blue and a pool of blood was forming beneath him. His breathing was chaotic. Some breaths were deep, others quick and shallow and he gripped her hand tighter. Their eyes met and she gazed into his. They gave her that look, that look that said he knew it was all over, that he knew everything they'd built between them was about to come to a horrific end, that his death would leave her all alone and abandoned.
She'd seen that look in the eyes of so many Hunters and Bandits they killed on their journeys, even in the one he just strangled to death minutes before. She knew exactly what it meant. It meant goodbye. It meant giving up. It meant losing the will to fight. It meant she was losing him, that the cold hand of death was slowly dragging him away. His expression, that look in his eyes yanked out of her a scared, terrified and painful, little squeal. It was a sound she only made once before, when she thought she was going to lose him the last time. Her heart went haywire. It sputtered and heavily thumped behind the prison of her rib cage. Was it dying? It sure felt like it.
"Oh no, no, no, no! Don't do that! C'mon Joel please don't do that! Please, please, please! C'mon, don't do that!" she shouted as she fervently pat him the shoulder before giving way to a painful sob.
She was like a little kid crying, sobbing and wailing because it lost something its infantile brain cherished so illogically, yet so dearly.
Lare finally arrived at their side and knelt aside Joel opposite her. He watched the tears that dripped from her eyes fall and splatter onto Joel's shirt and jeans. He shook his head and took a deep breath, struggling to keep his composure.
"Need a fucking doctor out here right goddamn now!" he shouted down the hallway as he lifted his head.
Ellie's hands were shaking, her whole body vibrated in fear. Her eyes were still big and round, pupils dilated to the size of the sun. She sniffled, let out another whimper and watched as Joel struggled to move his lips. His voice was hoarse, slow and pained.
"B-baby girl -" He gulped. "I think - "
She gently placed a palm across his forehead and kissed the back of his hand that she held so tightly, so dearly, that she thought the harder she squeezed, the better chance he had of surviving. She was willing to try anything to keep her purpose alive.
"Shh, shh - d-don't say it - it's okay - we're gonna get through this - we have to," she stuttered through her sobs that were quickly becoming uncontrollable.
His stare never once broke away from that cute and precious freckled face of hers. If he was going to die, if he was going to perish right here, the image of her sure as hell was going to be the last thing he saw.
She lifted her head and darted both eyes around the hallway, relieved to see the four doctors she saw earlier, running towards them with a stretcher.
"Come on! Come on! Hurry! He's fucking dying!" she screamed through her tears.
"El-Ellie... listen to me -" he tried to speak.
His dying voice pulled her attention back to him. She squeezed both eyes shut, more tears leaving wet stains down her cheeks as she pressed her lips to his forehead.
"Shh, shh - don't say it, please don't - we're okay, we're okay... we're okay - you're gonna be fine - I'm not losing you. I'm not gonna fucking lose you," she whispered, her voice turning into a pained, soft yell as she finished.
"Okay - step aside, we gotta get him to the operating room right now or he's not gonna make it," one of the doctors frantically said.
Lare moved aside, but Ellie refused to let go of Joel's hand. He wouldn't let her do so anyway even if she tried.
"I'm not letting him go!" she snapped, only to follow the the angry shout with another sob.
"Okay, okay fine - just slide him on here," the doctor commanded as the four of them wiggled and shifted Joel onto the stretcher.
"On three we lift... one, two, three!" he said, his voice straining as he and the three other doctors lifted Joel off of the ground.
As they carried him down the hallway, his stare never once broke from Ellie's. Their eyes remained locked and focused on one another's, refusing to acknowledge anything else. His skin was turning darker, more deathly and the blood in his veins had an even more purple and blue tinge to them as opposed to their normal, faded gray. The blood from his wounds left a dense trail of droplets on the linoleum floor and his breathing was becoming more and more labored. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on.
A cruel thing, fate was. After becoming a hardened, soulless killer, he always thought he would be ready for death. On occasion he imagined how he would die and what would be ultimately responsible for finally snipping the rope that tied his last life to his physical being. Long he thought he would accept the happening, that he somehow deserved it as punishment for all of his sins since the outbreak. Eventually the thought of death didn't seem so bad. That he would even welcome it with open arms knowing it would take him away from a world that tortuously robbed him of everything he held dear. But now, feeling his life circling the drain with each passing second, he couldn't just accept it. For he had something to live for, something worth fighting for.
Was this fate's final and ultimate punishment for him? To kill him in front of his little girl who he just knew needed him in order to continue living? To make him watch the tears drip from her eyes as he breathed his last breath to not only kill him, but also shatter his heart into millions of tiny pieces just before dying?
Hah.
In that case, fuck fate. Fuck. That.
He wasn't about to let a feeble attempt such as two, small pistol rounds rip him away from his Ellie. He'd survived much worse. The cruel world - even god - would have to try way harder than that.
He had to hold on. He had to do it for her.
He gritted his teeth then uncorked an angry, painful yell as he forced his brain to hang on. He shook his head then returned his stare to Ellie's. In the smallest and faintest of ways, her frown lessened. Seeing him fight tooth and nail, for her, seemed to slightly ease away a scant amount of her emotional pain.
"El-Ellie - " he tried to call out to her.
Another cloud of blackness hit his mind. Despite his strong resistance and no matter how hard he fought, he was slowly losing the battle between consciousness and unconsciousness due to the blood flowing out of his back. His eyelids fluttered and his head went limp, the dark-haired thing rolling to and fro from the light bounce of the stretcher. Seeing the life behind his eyes flicker and hiccup ripped out of her another, scared little squeal as her lips trembled.
"No, no, no! Don't do that! Please no! Oh god - don't fucking do that!" she pleaded, holding his hand every step of the way.
They busted into the operating room and the doctors quickly flopped him onto an elevated bed that sat in the middle of the room. It wasn't your typical, cold, steel operating table. It was merely an old mattress covered in white sheets and nothing more. It was all they had.
They turned him on his side, tore open his shirt and prepared to dig out the two bullets that remained lodged in his back.
A cold sweat percolated on the surface of his skin, his hands felt clammy and wet to the touch. That feeling, that deathly touch was something she'd never felt from his palm before. It shook her to the core. It increased the size of the lump in her throat and she swallowed hard, the act almost painful. She began to think that her worst fear was seconds away from coming to fruition.
She gently stroked his forehead with the back of her little hand, her lips trembling and tears rolling down her cheeks as they looked each other in the eyes.
"Stay with me Joel - come on stay with me. You promised you'd never leave me. You promised," she soothed, barely able to push the words across her tongue and through her quavering voice.
He struggled to swallow and his body continued to shake ever so slightly. When the touch of the scalpel hit his flesh, he cringed and cried out. He nearly crushed the delicate, small hand he held with his, but she didn't care. She only squeezed his even harder and let out a cry of her own, as if she was feeling every ounce of pain he was.
"Shh, shh - I know, I know, I know... we're almost through this, c'mon pops," she said as her throat clenched.
The lead surgeon reached out a hand and demanded for the next instrument.
"Tweezers - now, now, now - do it."
A man to her left obeyed and handed her the tweezers. There was nothing more the rest of them could do. They simply watched the gruesome sight of the surgeon pulling the bullets out of Joel's torso. Witnessing the winces and grimaces of pain that him and Ellie were giving off was crushing all on its own.
Minutes went by as she constantly looked into his eyes, praying that their color wouldn't fade. Seeing a person's final moments of life, watching their soul lift through their eyes as they breathed their last breath was all too familiar. Every fiber of her being prayed to god, or some benevolent thing she wasn't even sure was real, that she wouldn't become privy to that sight once again, right here and now.
"Scissors," the lead surgeon barked.
Her voice was commanding and confident, and gave Ellie a sliver of hope that the woman would somehow save her Joel, her protector, purpose and most important thing in the universe.
The woman snipped the final thread then gently rolled him onto his back, careful not to aggravate the two, stitched up wounds. The cardiac monitor was still beeping, albeit infrequently and no where near the rate at which a healthy, living heart beats. But he was still here. He was hanging on. He was clinging to life, to her.
Barely.
He let out a pained groan and grimaced as he felt the raw, bloodied skin come in contact with the sheet beneath him. The cry yanked on Ellie's heart and she shuffled closer into the mattress, until her waist was practically lying on the thing. She held his hand and clung to it like it was the last thing on earth.
And to her, it was.
"Shh, shh - it's over - it's over. You're okay - we're okay... we're... we're gonna... we're gonna make it. Please hang on. You have to hang on. Please don't... don't leave me. You know I can't live without you. You have to hang on, please," she pleaded through a series of sniffles and whimpers.
She wiped her nose and took a deep breath. She felt his arm twitch and watched his eyelids flutter once again as his head tilted back. And thus, she felt another tug and painfully crushing blow to her heart as it sputtered and hiccuped.
It was breaking. Literally.
AN: Next update to come soon. I promise!