A/N: Here we go, chapter 11. The story takes us to a familiar location as Joel and Ellie try to work things out. The intensity is tangible! Things get pretty heated, and the full truth might finally be revealed. BUM-BUM-BUUUUMMMM. Yeah, I don't really have much more to say about the chapter. Sorry about the cliffhangers I keep pulling. Ehhhh, what am I saying, I'm not sorry at all hahahaha.
DISCLAIMER/LEGAL MUMBO-JUMBO: I do not own The Last of Us, it is Naughty Dog's property.
CHAPTER 11
RETURN
The woods were a green blur. Tall trunks of trees flew past like telephone poles while riding a train. All Joel could hear over the rhythmic thumping of galloping hooves was the pounding of his own heart in his ears. He urged the horse to run faster, and it complained with an irritated whinny as Joel dug his heels into its sides.
"C'mon… c'mon…" he urged into the horse's ear.
Tommy was falling behind, but Joel didn't care. He had to reach her. She had a ten or fifteen minute head start. The sun was most of the way over the eastern horizon, but still hidden behind a mountain, giving a soft light to the blurred surroundings as he rode.
He thought back to the previous fall, when Ellie had run off to the ranch house not far from the dam. To his memory, it had been a long ride from the ranch house to Jackson, and he doubted that she would head back there. But then again, she didn't have many other landmarks to head towards, so it was feasible.
The path through the woods broke open to the clearing beside the wide part of Flat Creek where they would practice swimming. There was no sign of her anywhere. The horse tracks brought them near the water's edge and then took off into the woods again.
He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Ellie!" There was no response other than the sound of morning bird calls. He tried again feebly, "Ellie!" Nothing.
Tommy had caught up with him and looked down at the tracks. "She went this way," he said, pointing into the woods, "c'mon, she can't be that far ahead."
They rode off into the trees. As they rode, Joel talked to God for the first time in a long time, with little expectation, begging for her to be alright.
Ellie hopped off of the horse and tied it up to the hitching post. She stretched and twisted her shoulders to crack her back. She had been riding hard and angry for what felt like hours, and desperately needed a quick break. She looked up at the ranch house. It hadn't changed drastically in the months since she had last been here. The place evoked sour memories, but she didn't mind. She welcomed them. She felt betrayed, and this place seemed to reinforce that feeling.
She scaled the steps and moved slowly toward the front door. She peered in through the windows next to the door. The bodies Joel had left last fall hadn't moved from their positions, though they were significantly more deflated looking, even at this distance. She removed her pistol from her waistband, cautiously turned the handle, and stuck her head inside. She half-expected the place to stink to high heavens, but apparently enough time had passed for the decomposition process to have run its course. Sure enough, not much remained clinging to the bones of the bandits that lie crumpled on the floor.
She remembered the girl's room and, succumbing to curiosity, headed upstairs. Her sneakers shuffled up the creaking steps. She rounded the banister and walked over the dusty carpet into the room. She almost felt a bit of a connection with this mysterious girl. Her journal entries identified her only as "Danni," with a small heart replacing the dot over the letter i. The journal was still sitting on the window seat where she left it. She sauntered over and assumed the position she had months before.
She looked through the clouded window pane out into the ranch grounds. She could see the path to the front gate, lined by a wooden fence. If anyone were to approach from that direction, she had pretty good view of it and would have time to act. She looked down past her feet at the audience of stuffed animals and smiled fondly at the faded yellow giraffe that towered over the rest. She picked up the journal and turned it over in her hands before opening it and starting to read.
The world that Danni wrote about seemed completely foreign, and Ellie found herself reading lines of the curly script over and over again, trying to make sense of it. She rambled on about that Dawn of the Wolf movie that Ellie had seen posters for. Sure enough, one hung right here in Danni's room, with a big heart scrawled in black marker around the werewolf's face.
Ellie flipped back a few pages and read a few words, then a few more pages and a few more words. Danni had written plenty of content about the various boys in her middle school. Which ones were cute, which ones were good kissers, which ones she wanted to find out whether or not they were good kissers. There was a lot of dramatic babbling, if you can babble through writing, about how she had seen Scott talking to Amanda and how he was supposed to be with Danni. A couple pages later, she whined about how Brock had stood her up when they were supposed to rendezvous under the bleachers.
Ellie scoffed aloud. This was all so ridiculous. So trivial. Danni knew nothing. She took everything for granted and wouldn't have lasted a day in this hellhole. Ellie figured she was probably dead by now, but she didn't feel much remorse. She felt the pit of anger reopen within her, and as it opened, thoughts of Joel escaped from it and seeped into her mind. She threw the journal at the wall.
She dwelt on the prior conversation they had here, giving herself over to it, meditating on Joel's words. You're right… you're not my daughter. And I sure as hell ain't your dad. She replayed the memory over and over and over, trying to convince herself that he meant what he said. She looked over to the empty space where he had stood. She could nearly see him gritting his teeth, glaring at her. I sure as hell ain't your dad. No matter how many times the words echoed in her mind, no matter how many times she promised herself they were true, she couldn't force herself to believe them, even after all the lies that bastard had told.
Her ruminations were interrupted by a loud whinny from outside. She looked out to the front gate, but saw no movement. A moment later, her lazily-tied knot broke free and she saw her horse bolting down the path toward the front gate.
"Fuck," she said to herself, standing up to head downstairs.
She reached the top of the stairs when a strange sound hit her ears. She recognized it instantly, though she hadn't heard it for months, and immediately froze in place.
Click-click-click.
"How far, Tommy?" Joel said, raising his voice over the hoofbeats.
"Should be just on the other side of this glade. We're just minutes away," he replied.
Without warning, a horse came sprinting around the bend ahead of them, its reigns flapping loosely from its bridle. It was saddled, but there was no rider. Neither Joel nor Tommy had time to respond before it ran past between them, not hesitating or slowing down. Joel gave Tommy a look of dread, and they rode harder.
The forest thinned out, and the ranch house came into view. Joel heeled the horse again and whipped the reigns, spurring it on. He leaned into the turn as he guided the horse around the corner into the front entrance of the ranch, leaping over the obstruction that blocked the path, and up to the front of the house. He thought he caught a hint of movement in the windows and gestured back to Tommy to keep quiet. Men didn't make horses tear off like the one they had seen, but Infected sure did.
He crept onto the porch, pulling the revolver from its holster, and glanced in through the windows. The source of the movement was nowhere in sight, but the front door hung open. He entered slowly, pleading with the floorboards to keep quiet under his weight. He noticed the remains of the bandits, signs of his handiwork, left in place from before, but there were no other signs of life within the house.
The living room was clear. Dining room, too. Kitchen, empty. He suspected that if Ellie was in here, she had gone back to the girl's room upstairs. He placed his boot on the first step when he jumped from the sound. A gunshot, from above him. Another loud pop, and he found himself scrambling up the steps to get to the source of the noise.
He rounded the corner to find Ellie standing over the twitching body of a clicker, two bullet holes piercing through the fungal plates in its face. She flicked open her switchblade and plunged it through the creature's eye socket, just to be safe.
"Fucker," she spat, then looked up at Joel as she wrenched the knife free with a sickening sound. "Don't worry, I got it handled."
Tommy had wisely begun retreating to the first floor. Ellie looked at Joel for a moment, shook her head in disgust, and turned and walked back into the girl's room. Joel followed, closing the door behind him. He crossed his arms and stared at her silently as she made her way back to the window. She sat down and refused to look at him, electing to stare vacantly out of the window instead.
After an agonizing amount of silence, he spoke. "Ellie-"
"Take me back."
Joel hesitated, confused. "What? Back home?"
"Salt Lake City. Take me back to the Fireflies. I want to finish this," she replied, eyes still fixed on something outside.
"Ellie, there's nothin' to go back to. Let's just go back to Jackson and we ca-"
"I'm not going back to Jackson with you. The only place I'll allow you to take me is back to St. Mary's. There's gotta be some Fireflies left there, you couldn't have slaughtered all of them."
Joel scrunched his face. "Well…"
Finally, Ellie turned away from the window and rose to her feet. "Bullshit, Joel. Take me back. If there's no one in Salt Lake City then we'll keep looking. We'll keep going west. There has to be some Fireflies left out there somewhere. If you won't take me, I'll go by myself. I don't need you anymore," she said, and paused in thought. "I wonder if Marlene ever made it out of Boston… I can find her, she'll know what to do and where to go."
"Ellie… we… she's not…"
Her eyes narrowed. "'She's not' what?"
"Marlene's dead," he said, bracing for the backlash.
Her eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped in shock at the realization of what he meant. "Joel, what the fuck!? So it's not enough to slaughter all of the Fireflies, you had to kill the only person I ever considered family? Fuck you."
She had said 'fuck you' to him a couple times before when they first met, but that one cut particularly deep, especially due to the sentence that preceded it. He knew she couldn't have meant that, not after all they'd been through, but she was angrier than he had ever seen her, so he let it go.
"Ellie, listen to me-"
"Why the fuck should I listen to you? Who are you? Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie-"
"You know that ain't true, El-"
"-and I feel like I don't even know you anymore. What else have you been lying to me about? Huh?" she asked, not giving him enough time to respond before continuing. "You're a monster, killing all those people. Killing Marlene… you're a fucking monster. You're no better than any of those hunters we killed. Worse, even."
"Ellie that's enou-"
"Fuck, you're no better than Da-"
"I said that's enough!" Joel shouted, his booming voice startling her into silence. She stood before him, breathing hard as she had gotten rather worked up over the whole ordeal. Her face was flushed, stern, and motionless, her eyes scouring his face.
"Why?" she asked simply. "Why did you kill them?"
"Because…"
"Why?!" she snapped.
"Because they were gonna kill you!" he yelled, regretting it immediately. He wished he could reach out and snatch the words out of the air before they reached her ears. By speaking those words he had moved the burden of guilt that he had borne since Salt Lake City onto her shoulders, which were already bearing the weight of survivor's guilt. He watched the words register in her brain and her expression transitioned from anger to confusion.
She blinked numbly. "What? What do you mean?"
Joel drew in a deep sigh. "In order to find a cure, they were… they were gonna have to cut out your brain," he said, holding out his arms in her direction, palms up and open as if he were pleading for her to believe him.
She searched his eyes for any trace of dishonesty, but found none. "That doesn't make any sense. I thought they were just gonna draw some blood," she said. "What happened while I was unconscious? And don't leave out any details, I want the full story."
He reached up and scratched the back of his head, giving the impression he was recalling the memories, though he knew he'd always remember them as if they were yesterday. "After you fell into the water in the tunnel, I escaped the bus and swam to you as fast as I could. By the time I got you to the surface, you had stopped breathin'. I tried to resuscitate you, but some Firefly asshole knocked me out before I could. Next thing I knew, I woke up on a hospital bed with a splittin' headache.
"Marlene was there, at the bedside. I told her I needed to see you, she told me I couldn't. She said that the doctors discovered that… that the cordyceps in your brain was... mutated and that in order to reve-" he hesitated, then corrected himself, "in order to have a chance to reverse-engineer a vaccine, they'd have to remove it. You wouldn't survive." Ellie looked at him, following his labored words expectantly. "I… I couldn't let them do that, so... I stopped them."
"That doesn't explain why you killed Mar-"
"Marlene gave the go-ahead," he cut her off, "and threatened to shoot me if I tried to stop them killin' you."
That last detail caught Ellie off-guard. Sure, she had never been all that close with Marlene, but her mother vouched for her in her letter. Her stony gaze, which she had kept stubbornly fixed on Joel, began to falter against the tide of doubt. Her eyes fell from his face and searched the dark carpet, suddenly without bearing. She absently moved over to the window and sat down again, trying to take in this new information.
"Go back to Jackson," she said after a long moment of silence.
Joel took a step toward her. "Ellie, I'm not leavin' here witho-"
"I need some time to think. Alone. Just… just go back. Tell Tommy he can wait for me downstairs, if that'll make you feel better. I'll ride with him back to town when I'm ready, but right now…" her voice faltered as he saw a glint of a tear in her eye, "right now, I need you to leave…"
Joel's heart leapt within him at her admission she'd return to town, but he kept it restrained. "Alright. Take your time. I'll be waiting for you at home."
"Okay."
AFTERMATH: PART II CONTINUES
WITH CHAPTER 12