A/N: 'Everyone I have cared for has either died – or left me. Everyone – fucking except for you! So, don't tell me that I would be safer with someone else because the truth is I'd just be more scared,' - Ellie

With Joel back at home and well on the road to recovery, they're both making efforts to repair what's been damaged between them. But with Joel's stitches almost ready to come out, Ellie's uncomfortably aware that, if they want to have a shot at surviving the journey, there's a few things they still need to hash out before they hit the road to Seattle

Rated T: For obvious reason - Ellie swears like a sailor

Disclaimer: I own nothing (except my muse)

Warning: Vague spoilers for TLOU II (also sorry Abby fans, if you're out there? It was humane, I promise!)

Footnote: Okay! So, turns out the story could do with another chapter, I think? I'm going to leave the status as "complete" as it was originally meant to be a one shot and I don't honestly know how many chapters will be forthcoming but all the while the muse is there…then there will be chapters 😊

Additional Footnote: Now that I'm thinking more long term regarding this story, I'm starting to think Ellie popped Abby a smidge too early. Maybe? That being said, I regret nothing – I'll happily go down with this ship.

Additional, Additional Footnote (last one!): Thank you again to everyone who's reviewed, favoured, followed etc and to anyone out there who is just quietly enjoying this story – it was initially a crazy ramble post completing the game but I'm really touched that other people are finding merit in it.

Wash This Memory Clean

"Doc said you should be taking it easy," Ellie greets Joel pointedly as she makes her way into the kitchen, scuffing her snow-caked boots on the bristled mat by the doorway. Joel's rifle is dismantled on the table in front of him, oil can, rags and ammo laid out neatly as he takes stock. The photographs Ellie had retrieved from Abby's pack clearly visible next to the clip.

Abby's photograph, the one where she's pictured smiling with Owen is pushed off to the left, along with another image of a man with dark brown hair, a warm face and steady eyes, Nick. It's the three that had been wiped out in the showdown at the lodge – who's bodies have long since been buried in an unmarked grave at the edge of the town cemetery.

There are four photographs clustered together on the right, a woman, who from her casual stance and flippant peace sign reminds Ellie a little of Marlene, Nora. Another of a couple, both young and smiling brightly, Leah & Jordan. One of a man with a fucking man-bun and a heavy beard, Manny. And one of a pleasant looking woman; dressed in a medic's vest with cropped black hair and light features, Mel.

"Eh, you know me, kiddo."

She did know him, she honestly isn't surprised to find that he's trying to get back on his feet. She'd expected it after his discharge from the clinic, with Doc and a flurry of medical interns keeping tabs on him in there for over a week, it makes sense he'd be up to his old tricks now that he's back in his own home and away from prying eyes.

"Doc's not going to be happy if you end up back there because you busted your fucking stitches open."

Joel makes a vague, dismissive gesture with his hand before going back to wiping off the rifle stock.

"Yeah, well…what Doc don't know."

Ellie huffs out an irritated breath, but she lets it go because Joel was going to do his own thing just like he'd always done regardless of what anyone else thought. Stubborn old bastard.

"Maria sent you some stew," Ellie mentions instead, motioning to the heavy casserole dish in her hands before setting it down on the counter by the sink, crouching down and wrenching open the cupboards below to pull out a couple of bowls and spoons.

Joel had been home going on three days now and Ellie had all but moved in with him, taking over his woodwork room, with little protest from him.

It felt odd being back in Joel's home, when they'd first come to Jackson, despite having her own cabin, she'd spent a lot of time at Joel's. After spending over a year together on the outside, relying on each other every day just to survive it, she'd found that not being near him had made her nervous.

If she peeled back the layers on that a little further, she'd actually been afraid.

It had taken a long time before she was able to stay in her cabin for more than a couple of nights in a row but she'd eventually gotten to a point where she didn't immediately go into survival mode the second Joel wasn't in her line of sight.

If Joel had minded, he hadn't said anything to her about it and on some level, Ellie thinks he'd felt it too and they'd both just needed time to adjust. He'd complained occasionally, joking he'd taken enough of her shit in the year they'd been travelling but he'd always ruffled her hair to soften the blow and she'd called him an asshole with a smile on her face.

But that had been years ago, and she hadn't set foot in Joel's home since Salt Lake City. Hell, she'd actively gone out of her way to avoid him at every opportunity.

"Which one is it?"

"Venison," Ellie answers, divvying out the lukewarm stew into the bowls. "She's fucking spoiling you."

Maria had been as much of a help as she was able to be, sending food and dropping by to check in whenever she could spare the time.

Thankfully it wasn't often, Ellie doesn't think she could handle her being around more. She was grateful for the support, particularly with the cooking, but there was still a small part of her that resented Maria for her suggestion at the church.

She hadn't brought it up, she'd promise Dina she wouldn't, she'd promised to just let it pass because things weren't easy for Maria and she was struggling in her own way in the wake of Tommy's death.

But when she happened to catch bits of the whispered conversations between Joel and Maria of an evening…she just knew Maria was trying to nudge Joel over the edge, to feed into the fire just enough to convince him they were losing time and that something needed to be done now.

Joel had agreed they wouldn't do shit until his stitches were out and Ellie was trying her best to trust him enough to believe it…but it still would've been nice to hear Joel tell Maria to leave it alone.

She drops the empty casserole dish in the sink before bringing the bowls over to the table, using her elbow to nudge his rifle barrel out of the way before setting them down. She slouches into the chair opposite Joel, dropping her spoon into her bowl with a clank.

"So," Ellie tells him lazily, flicking her hand in the direction of the photos. "You think this is all of them?"

Joel glances briefly at the pictures before pushing them to the other end of the table and Ellie knows he's trying to downplay just how much time he's spent analysing them. She'd given them to Joel whilst he'd still been in the clinic, along with Abby's pendant, when he'd stopped sleeping as much during the day and was starting to get some colour back.

He'd wanted to do more and Ellie figured the photos would give him something to do whilst still keeping him in bed for enough of the day to keep him out of trouble…and hopefully distract him from bothering Doc about going home. She'd frequently caught him studying the photos after that, each time she'd stopped in to see him – he must know those eight faces better than his own at this point.

"Based on what those friends of yours saw and the amount of gear reclaimed from the lodge. Yeah, I'd say this was all of them."

"Okay, so three down. Five to go."

"Five to go," Joel repeats heavily. "Abe might have more on them. Help give us an idea where to start looking. Only so far we can get with a couple of pictures."

He hadn't been very forthcoming with information about his ex-WLF guy and sometimes Ellie wonders if it's because he's planning to shake her and leave for Seattle late one night without her. If she didn't know where he was heading, then it would be pretty fucking difficult for her to follow.

Not impossible, she'd be able to track him down eventually, but it would certainly complicate things.

If she's being truthful that's also part of the reason she hasn't been home…on one hand she'd wanted to keep an eye on him, make sure his recovery was coming along as well as could be expected and pitch in whenever he'd needed a hand but on the flip side she'd also been worried that he might try to leave and at least if she was there he wouldn't be able to pull a fast one on her and up sticks in the middle of the night.

"So…this buddy of yours," she attempts casually, although the forced inflection sounds suspicious even to her own ears. She cringes but she's in too deep now so she might as well go for broke. "Where is he nowadays?"

Joel looks up at her briefly and Ellie can almost see the thoughts as they pass over his face. She isn't sure what internal debate he's currently struggling with, isn't sure whether she'd been right before and he was attempting to keep the details from her or if there was some other reason for his hesitance...but she's suddenly abandoned all pre-tense of casualness and she finds she's staring at him.

Her gaze seems to shake Joel from wherever it is he'd gone off to in his head and with a quick swat at his brow, careful of his still healing stitches, he answers.

"Last I heard he was in Idaho, sitting pretty in Salmon-Challis somewhere."

Ellie's heard of it before, in passing from some of the other people in town, but she doesn't know where it is in relation to Jackson.

"Is that far?"

"It's a lot closer than Seattle. Shouldn't take us more than week once we set off. Now finding him…that might take a little longer, but I got a rough idea of where he's hauled up."

It's not much but he's given her a name and map reference. It's a small gesture of trust, something they've both been working harder to try to repair between them.

They lapse into an awkward silence after that, even with things steadily improving, they still aren't used to being in each other's company…undoing two years' worth of distance isn't going to happen overnight, regardless of how hard either of them are trying. Ellie distracts herself with her stew, pushing chunks of vegetable around the bowl and fishing out the meat.

Joel's reassembled his rifle with a practiced ease that comes from years of having to maintain a firearm and propped it up against the table leg, his pistol replaces the rifle on the table and he works to take it apart in between mouthfuls.

It's not a completely unfamiliar scene, Ellie can recall several nights from their time on the road, when they'd called it a day and found somewhere to hunker down for the night, where Joel would take first watch and she'd drift off to the sound of one of his guns clicking apart.

She remembers one night, when Joel had been mid-way through cleaning out his rifle barrel and a clicker had wandered into the building through the partly collapsed wall. They'd quietly shuffled around the kitchen counter, sat with their backs pressed against the wood and listened as the creature had stumbled around the room, clicking intermittently into the darkness.

They'd almost managed to ride it out, when the rifle clip had tipped over and the shells had come sprawling out, scattering noisily across the floor. She remembers the noise the clicker had let out even after all these years as it had turned on them, facial folds screeching open as it came barrelling towards the sound.

Joel had reacted quicker than she had, rising up and smashing the barrel of his rifle heavily across the clicker's skull. It chittered, staggering and as Joel had raised his arms to take another swing at it, Ellie had finally managed to get her feet to work and she'd jammed her switchblade into it's neck.

It had gone down, unmoving, after that and Joel had been quick to gather the pieces of his rifle and slot them back together before hurriedly packing up their gear and ushering Ellie out of the house. Clickers might not travel in herds the way runners did but with the racket they'd kicked up they couldn't afford to risk more coming their way.

That had been just before they'd reached Salt Lake City, just before they'd hit the flooded underpass and she'd almost drowned trying to save Joel from a sinking fucking bus. Back when she'd been naïve and still believed the Fireflies had all the answers and that, once they'd found them, everything would work out from there.

Fucking stupid.

If she's honest, brutally honest in the way people rarely are, she can admit to herself now that, on some level, she'd known it would all end with the Fireflies one way or another. It was partly why she'd been careful never to make any plans beyond that because, instinctively, the hospital had felt like the end of the line.

It had been, in a sense, though the story had ended differently to what she'd expected…what she'd been hoping for. She wonders sometimes what things would be like now if things had happened differently, whether the Fireflies would've managed to engineer a vaccine or whether she'd have died in pursuit of a cure that would never be possible.

'This was three weeks. I was bitten an hour ago and it's already worse. This is fucking real, Joel!'

In her darkest moments, when her fingers sketch shadows of Tess, Sam and…Riley, she thinks that even if her immunity had ended up meaning nothing, the fact that she'd died for the possibility that it might…would've meant something.

But it hadn't happened like that and there wasn't a damn thing she could do to change it. No amount of regret would bring back Marlene and no amount of anger would resurrect the hope she'd lost when she'd come round, at fourteen, in the backseat of a beat-up car driving away from Salt Lake City.

'We found the Fireflies. Turns out, there's a whole lot more like you, Ellie. People that are immune. It's dozens actually. Ain't done a damn bit of good neither. They've actually st- They've stopped looking for a cure.'

"Would you ever have told me?"

Even though the question is out of place, Joel doesn't query it, he knows exactly what she means.

"Probably not."

The words are gruff and genuine and her eyes burn just a little at the corners because not only had he lied to her, there was a pretty good chance he'd have kept the charade going for the rest of his fucking life.

As it stood, he hadn't gotten the chance and they'd both eventually suffocated under the weight of it.

It's not surprising but it's still difficult to hear.

Ellie blinks roughly against the sting of tears, conscious that Joel has stopped fiddling with his stew and is watching her now. They're here because Joel had brought them here (however noble or selfish his intentions had been) and if she crumbles now, the things she desperately wants to say will crumble with her and she might not get another shot at this…

…She's uncomfortably aware that anything could happen if this is left open when they finally do hit the road to Seattle.

"Is that all you've got for me?" Ellie snorts, though much of the heat trickles out of the accusation. "After all we've been through?"

'After all we've been through. Everything that I've done. It can't be for nothing.'

Joel's been more open recently about Salt Lake City, but the Fireflies had always been a touchy subject for them, even before she'd discovered the truth, and any mention of them always seemed to rattle Joel in a way not much else ever could.

Conversations or questions about the Fireflies tended to throw him off his game but it never took him long to get his footing back and when he speaks, Ellie isn't sure whether it's an invitation or a challenge.

"Is there somethin' you want me to say, Ellie?"

'Or is there somethin' else you'd like to rehash?'

There's so many things Ellie wants to hear from him right now that it's hard to make out any of the jumbled words which are all tripping over each other to get out first. In the end, there's a lot she can get by not knowing so she settles on the one thought that still sits darkly in the back of her head, even two years on.

"I just want to know why."

Several emotions flicker across Joel's face in the few seconds which follow but they're gone before Ellie really has a chance to make them out, and his expression is left solemn but convicted.

'I struggled a long time with survivin'. And you – No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.'

"You know why, kiddo," Joel says lightly, when the words are anything but, fingers hovering absently over his watch. "You can hate me all you want. Lord knows I deserve it," he continues gruffly, eyes clouded and voice thick with several years' worth of emotion. "But there ain't shit in this world worth your life."

She's staggered by how vehemently he means it and even if she had suspected as much, she'd never imagined it would feel like this.

She's never meant as much to anyone as she clearly does to Joel and whilst the limits he would go to for her terrify her, it's that same conviction, that same deep care he has for her that's kept her safe all these years. It's kept her alive.

"Fuck, you really are an asshole," she chokes out in a watery voice, quickly rubbing at her eyes with her shirt sleeve. It leaves them red and irritated but thankfully dry.

It's not quite forgiveness, not quite acceptance… but it is understanding, something she'd been bordering on the edge of ever since she'd pulled him from that fucking lodge all battered and bruised, terrified that he wouldn't survive the ride back to Jackson, and with that Ellie's finally ready to acknowledge that even though mistakes had been made, it was time to look forward.

"I'm too long in the tooth to change now," Joel replies, although there's the beginnings of a smile on his face before his mouth downturns into a frown and his brow crinkles heavily in thought. "Look Ellie…about Seattle-"

'How many close calls have we had?'

"Don't even got there, Joel," Ellie cuts him off viciously, scowl painted across her face.

"These people ain't your run of the mill hunters," Joel warns tightly, and despite being well on the road to recovery, he still looks tired.

'Now this winter has been especially cruel. I ah…sent a group of men out – nearby town to look for food. Only a few came back. They said the others had been ah, slaughtered by a crazy man. And get this, he's a crazy man travelling with a little girl.'

"Neither are we," Ellie reminds him abruptly, unwillingly to go over this again when they'd already hashed out the details back at the clinic…as far as she's concerned this conversation was long over. "You need someone to watch your back. Who better than me?"

To his credit, he doesn't contradict her because he knows, just as well as she does, that she's got a point.

"You're gonna need to shake that girl of yours," Joel pitches instead and Ellie knows he's trying a different angle in a bid to get round her. It's obvious he's referring to Dina. The sly fucker. "This ain't some kind of field trip."

"Dina's not my..." Ellie comes back habitually before trailing off unsurely, she doesn't really know what's going on with Dina, whether Dina's looking at this as something serious or if she's still just messing around. With everything that's happened recently, Tommy's murder, Joel's recovery...she hasn't really had much time to sit down and talk things out with Dina. "Dina isn't part of this, she'll understand."

Joel gives her a wry look which Ellie doesn't know how to interrupt. Dina's been nothing short of an angel throughout this entire ordeal and even though Ellie hasn't spoken to her about it, she knows the girl is still running interference with Maria to help give Joel and Ellie time.

She hasn't spoken to Dina much yet about Seattle, given that plans had been parked until Joel got his stitches out, it had felt like there'd be time after Joel had been discharged and Tommy had been buried, for the two of them to talk.

Now Joel's set to get his stitches out in just over a week...

Ellie shakes that thought away for now, she'll talk to Dina soon and get things sorted but in the meantime, she isn't going to let Joel use it against her. She's pissed that he'd try but, on some level, she knows that he does it because he's genuinely worried about what will happen to her in Seattle. Joel knows, all too well, that however much he tries, he won't always be able to keep her safe.

Ellie will show him that he doesn't need to.

"Come on, Joel. It'll be just like old times," she continues as brightly as she can manage, and even though they both know it isn't quite true, she's making an effort and she hopes Joel can see that. "I could even dig out the ol' joke book?"

For a second Ellie thinks he'll ignore it, this strange olive branch she's trying to offer…that he'll continue trying to pick holes in their plans for Seattle in an attempt to get her to stay put, but after a beat he seems to realise how fruitless that particular conversation would be and she almost spits her stew across the table at the playfully pinched expression that takes over his face.

"Haven't I suffered enough of that damn book all these years?"

"There's some classic gags in there," Ellie tells him, in mock seriousness, flicking a chunk of potato into Joel's bowl. Skill. "They never get old."

"Do you even get most of 'em?"

It's a valid point, a lot of the jokes poked fun at things that existed before the outbreak.

"Yes," a bald-faced lie.

"Some," more of the truth in that.

"Fuck you, dude."

There was nothing in sight
But memories left abandoned
There was nothing to hide
The ashes fell like snow

And the ground caved in
Between where we were standing
And your voice was all I heard
That I get what I deserve

So give me reason
To prove me wrong
To wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes

Give me reason
To fill this hole
Connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies
Across this new divide

Lyrics courtesy of Linkin Park

A/N: Review? If you feel like it? x