Swear To Me

by BirdbyBird

This is set after the final scene of The Last of Us and is inspired by Neil Druckmann's interpretation of the game's ending. Here, Joel has to stop controlling and manipulating Ellie before they can be together. Rated for sex and language.

2. Alive

'Are you hungry?' Ellie asked the boy.

He nodded his head and his brown feathery hair fell over his forehead. His mother protectively laid her bony hand on his shoulder as Ellie held an arrow against her bow.

'Don't worry. We're going to find something together, okay?'

The mother answered for him: 'Thank-you,' she said.

Ellie kneeled by the bank and looked over the shallow creek. The water was clean except for rusted scrap metal catching in the current as the water passed broken cars and debris from a nearly-collapsed bridge upstream. The man with the hurt back stumbled on a rock as he inched down the steep hillside to meet up with Ellie. Instead of shushing him, she arched her shoulders and studied the water. The grey sky intermittently turned the surface into a mirror, so Ellie had to wait until her reflection was disturbed before she could see anything. Fish, smaller than her thumbnail, scooted around her muddy jeans. So there has to be something bigger around, she thought.

'I'm Karla,' the mother said. 'My son's name is Thomas.'

Ellie didn't respond as she was trying to keep her balance while she held her weight over the stream. She had shared her name earlier, though. Back when she had found the three of them, she'd introduced herself so that she could coach them into the car with her. It's not safe out here, Ellie had added. And he doesn't look like he can run.

'This is Ethan,' Karla said, probably gesturing to the man. 'He helped us out of the Quarantine Zone.'

She must be nervous, Ellie guessed.

A silver fish with a green shimmer sauntered toward Ellie. It was fat enough for at least three servings. Ellie reeled back her bow and released. Then she heard a woman's scream. For a second, she thought that the fish had screamed, but quickly realized that the sound had come from immediately behind her.

Karla covered her mouth with one hand and pointed to the top of the hill where three men in thick jackets were running. Her scream continued as an echo through the valley.

'Don't!' Ellie stage-whispered to her aggressively as she pulled Karla and down, out of sight. She gestured with her other arm for Thomas and Ethan to do the same.

Ellie loaded her shotgun and waited for the men to chase her. They were taking a while.

'I think I know those guys,' Ethan whispered. 'They attacked us in Orlando.'

Then Ellie, moving away from the hill, saw the three men head toward the bridge upstream. Where are they going? Why would they ignore us? Ellie followed their direction and saw a man halfway down the bridge. A man with a brown backpack. A man with dark hair and a green button-up. Joel.

'Karla, I need you,' Ellie urged. She took out a bottle of alcohol and a rag. 'See those three guys?'

'They're going to kill us,' she cried.

'No, they're not,' Ellie assured. 'See this?' Ellie held up the bottle and a pack of matches. 'I need you to follow me. When you're close enough, light this and throw it.'

'What?' Karla said as she exhaled.

'Have you done anything like this before?'

Karla's bottom lip rolled forward and her eyebrows fell. 'Yes,' she confessed.

'Okay. Come with me.'

Karla's face scrunched and wrung out tears.

'Hey, hey,' Ellie hushed. 'We're going to get these motherfuckers, okay?'

Karla nodded unconvincingly. Ethan huddled up to Thomas in agreement.

Ellie, with her head down, scampered toward the bridge. She could hear Karla disturb the water and mud behind her. When they were next to the bridge, Ellie took out the hunting rifle and began to adjust the scope. She heard a gunshot. She looked up. The men were closer to Joel. But behind a support, Joel was still standing.

Realizing she had no time, Ellie started to climb the hillside, and she screamed out, 'Over here!'

She was hand-deep in mud, and kept slipping down. She wasn't going to make it.

'Throw it, Karla.'

Karla was shaking.

Dammit.

Ellie grabbed the Molotov out of her hands, lit the rag and tossed it toward the men. She didn't think that she had aimed accurately enough, but the bottle exploded against the scaffold and sprayed flames over the men's jackets.

'Oh my god!' Karla yelled.

Ellie turned to see what Karla was looking at when she saw a figure crash into the water a couple of car-lengths away. The splash obscured her view.

'Joel!' Ellie ran to him. In the deepest trench of the water, which was only waist-deep, Ellie found Joel bobbing to the top. He coughed and groaned.

'Joel!' she repeated as she lifted his head out of the water. His eyes stayed closed.

Karla sloshed over to them. Her long black skirt billowed around Joel's floating hair, which swayed like soft reeds.

Ellie pulled his torso out of the water and to her chest, and his hair flattened against his head. She began to drag him to the bank. Karla supported his waist. When they laid him in the mud, Ethan and Thomas were walking toward them suspiciously. Karla, too, stayed standing back as Ellie kneeled by Joel and checked that he was breathing. He was.

'I don't know if we can get him up the hill,' Ellie explained.

'Who is this?' Ethan asked.

'We were travelling together,' Ellie said. 'Maybe we can find another way out of this ditch.'

'Sorry, who is he?' Ethan repeated, unsatisfied with Ellie's vagueness.

'Joel. My friend, Joel,' she replied impatiently. 'Ethan, could you drive the car around and see if you can find a spot to get down here?'

Ethan seemed confused. He looked at Karla, asking her silent questions, then looked back at Ellie. 'Sure,' he said.

Ellie threw him the keys from her pocket. She knew that she shouldn't trust him with the car, but she was desperate, and she didn't think that Karla would just run off without Ellie. But then again, Ellie thought, She only told me her name ten minutes ago…

Ethan gave Ellie one last second for her to change her mind. When she said nothing, Ethan hobbled back to the gentler incline where they'd climbed down.

'Come on, Joel,' she said to him while stroking the hair away from his face, choosing to ignore the mother and child standing behind her awkwardly.

Joel's face seemed rougher than it did yesterday. The skin around his eyes was swollen and pink. 'What were you doing, Joel?' she talked to herself. 'Jeez…' she whined. Ellie wasn't sure if she was grateful to have him in her arms or frustrated that he found a way to become the most important part of her life again, and so quickly. She hadn't even made it a one hour drive away from him, yet Ellie felt like she was holding a ghost.

His body was cool. She wasn't accustomed to being the one to warm him.

'Can I… can I do anything?' Karla asked.

'No. Thank-you,' Ellie said.

She smelled fish. Ellie pivoted and Thomas was holding Ellie's arrow, which had the large fish hanging off the end. The fish hung over the pointed tip and its skin was breaking up as it slid over the tip. The boy's small hand held the opposite end of the arrow, struggling to hold the weight with such a narrow grip. He couldn't have been eight years old.

'That's going to break up,' Ellie said. 'Here.' She pulled the fish straight off the arrow, and held it flat across both hands. 'It won't bleed if it's dead.' Thomas held his palms out for Ellie to give him the fish to carry. Maybe she should have held it for him, but he had to learn. Karla looked on indifferently. The dark hair that clung to her face and frayed around her waist made the whites of her eyes seem wider.

Ellie climbed off her knees and sat in the mud by Joel's arms. She hunched over so that Karla couldn't see Ellie's fingers brush the hair and veins along his arms. When the air crept under her skin, Ellie heard a rumble and saw headlights beam from downstream. She stood up when Ethan parked the SUV.

Ethan's silhouette stepped out of the car and asked if everyone was okay. He helped Thomas into the front seat while Ellie and Karla carried Joel into the back, trudging through the shallow water. After Karla climbed in the front with Thomas and buckled them in with the same seatbelt, Ellie nudged herself under Joel so that his head rested on her lap. He groaned.

'Sarah,' she thought she heard Joel say.

Ellie rested one hand on Joel's forehead and the other on his arm. She looked out the window, into the dark, as Ethan drove them back to the road.

It had begun to rain when Ethan and Karla found the building they had been sleeping in. The headlights shimmered off the road and photographed each raindrop that fell in front of the car. Ellie waited for the others to organise themselves before she bothered to disturb Joel. She was tired in every way.

The three of them had disappeared inside and left the car doors open. Ellie was about to move when Joel said her name.

'Where are we Ellie?' he asked. Although his voice was heavy with pain, he didn't seem confused. It was as though he were simply asking her if she knew the name of the town they had wandered into.

'It's okay, Joel,' she said, unable to control the light in her voice. 'I'm right here. We're going to fix you.'

His neck and shoulders slumped back into Ellie's lap. A soft smile rested on her face.

Karla came to Ellie's door and helped her out. Together, they pulled Joel off the back seat, accidentally letting his feet hit the ground hard. Karla carried Joel's legs while Ellie wrapped her arms under his shoulders and around his chest. His head was fixed in the groove of her breasts.

Inside, there were nests of rags on the floor, and a tin bucket in the centre of the room. Unlike most buildings, the windows weren't smashed or boarded. Ellie hadn't seen much of this room this morning, when she brought the three strangers to their makeshift home. She had left them and gone to scavenge around the rest of the flat street. She hadn't noticed that in the back of the room there were wooden benches with metal clamps fixed to the sides of them. She also hadn't noticed that there was no lock on the door.

'Is this place safe?' she asked Karla. Together, they laid Joel onto a pile of rags. Ellie began moving the cloths around so that Joel's head was supported. He moaned.

'It was never meant to be a permanent place to stay,' Ethan said. He was arranging something inside the bucket: most likely, logs. 'But then those men showed up and we were kinda stranded.' A warm light scratched to life inside the bucket. Ethan shook his wet hair beside it. 'It'll do for now,' he said. Ellie wasn't sure if he meant the fire or the house.

'Do you know how to handle that fish?' Ellie asked the room.

Ethan assured her that he could gut and cook it for them all. Karla opened a window to let the smoke out.

'But there won't be so much for us now,' he said, looking at Joel.

'Too bad I didn't have some help catching it,' Ellie said, reminding Ethan that it was she who was sharing with them. 'But don't worry. I'm not hungry. Joel can have my share.'

Ethan seemed torn. His blue eyes winced against the fire. He must have wanted to object, but his hunger didn't let him. Ellie understood.

The three strangers ate on the opposite side of the fire to Joel and Ellie. When Ellie realised that Joel wasn't going to wake up anytime soon, she offered his piece of fish to Thomas. To be polite, and also, to distance the smell of the food from Ellie, the three strangers shuffled away from the fire, giving Ellie some space with Joel. They were wary of him, and now, of her.

Joel's clothes were still wet and he hadn't warmed much. Ellie unbuttoned his green shirt, which sucked against his skin as she peeled it away from his body. The firelight flickered in the wet sheen of his chest and highlighted his black chest hair. The orange sheen coated most of Joel's scar; Ellie could only see the purple and red pulp along his stomach when she squinted, though the change in texture was obvious. She let herself stare, as the bucket hid her face from the others. Joel's nipples were hard against the alternating currents of warm and cold air. Her eyes drifted along the curves of his body and down to his hipbones, which formed an arrow pointing toward his belt.

She gently gripped Joel's collar and began pushing his shirt off his shoulders. She wasn't sure how to remove his arms from the shirt without waking or hurting him. His back would have hit the creek bed with a lot of force.

'Joel,' she whispered to him. If he didn't wake up she would want to sleep against him, and she couldn't do that now. He didn't belong to her anymore. He was a guard she escaped. Did she escape? Was he following her to bring her home?

'Joel,' she whispered louder. She pushed on his shoulder to wake him.

'Ellie,' he said without opening his eyes, as though it were an answer to a question.

'What were you doing out here?' she asked.

He lifted his arm that was closest to Ellie and touched her hand, then his arm flopped back beside him. 'Ellie,' he said again.

Ellie rolled her eyes. 'What are you doing? Why were you on the bridge?'

'I got you, baby girl.'

Ellie wanted to cry. Here he was again, rewriting Ellie's story so that she was his daughter. She was more than a replacement. Why wouldn't he let her get away from him and be more than that? She had once thought that maybe she could be something more to Joel—that after they had left the Fireflies Joel might let Ellie be closer to him. Sometimes she'd catch him giving her a distant smile, which made him look perfectly content. Other times, he'd leave his hand on her back a little bit longer than he needed to. Maybe that didn't mean anything, but to Ellie, those moments promised intimacy.

After Joel told her that the Fireflies were failing their experiments and that they'd been unable to revive other immune people, he had been friendlier with Ellie, but she knew that it wasn't real. He'd pulled her closer so she couldn't see his lies. He probably assumed that she'd be so grateful for his attention she wouldn't question him.

'Is he alive?' Thomas asked loudly.

'Of course he's alive,' Karla assured him. Ellie, Ethan, and Karla tightened awkwardly, imagining how scared the poor kid must have been thinking that Ellie was tending to a corpse.

'He's hurt,' Ellie said. 'People heal when they're asleep, so he'll probably be out for a while.' She continued, 'He seems exhausted more than anything.' Her hand touched his arm.

Ethan and Karla were sorting through their backpacks. Ellie couldn't tell if they were a couple or not. She guessed that it didn't matter. They were what they were. Ellie watched them take inventory and listened to Ethan tell Karla about his back. They were smiling when she heard Joel again.

'Ellie,' he said.

'Yes,' she scoffed, not in the mood to indulge his dreamy ramblings. She looked down and his eyes were open.

'You're here,' he said.

'Joel!' she exclaimed loud enough to catch the others' attention. 'I'm here. You fell off a bridge.'

'Was that you screaming?'

'No.' Ellie had to think. 'That was Karla.'

'Oh,' he said. 'I didn't think that was you.' He smiled and closed his eyes again. Ellie thought that he would fall asleep again, but instead, he pulled his arms behind him and began to sit up.

'You're going to hurt yourself.'

'I'm okay.'

He hunched forward and looked around. Then he spotted Karla, Ethan, and Thomas.

'Hello,' he said. Joel was stiff, but casual.

'Hello,' Karla said emotionlessly.

'This is Ethan, Karla, and her kid, Thomas,' Ellie explained. 'They helped me pull you out of the creek and bring you here.'

He nodded at them.

Under his breath, he asked, 'How do you know these people?' He seemed aggravated now. One of his hands pressed on his back.

'I don't,' Ellie admitted. 'I was driving and one of them collapsed on the road.'

'And you stopped? What have I told you?'

'I know what you told me,' Ellie snapped. 'I stopped anyway.'

Joel screwed his face up and sighed in disappointment.

'Don't,' Ellie warned. 'I'm not okay with leaving people to die.'

Ellie huffed. Good to see you too, Joel. She wished that she weren't sitting so close to him.

He look at her curiously, squinting around her face.

'What?' she asked.

'You cut your hair.'

'Oh. Yeah.'

After trying to wash a bird's-nest-sized knot from the back of her head, Ellie decided that long hair was too impractical if she were to make it on her own. She sawed off her whole ponytail with her knife, so her hair was shorter at the back than the front. The longest strips of hair curled under her chin.

'I like it,' Joel said.

'I just needed a change.'

Joel fell quiet and didn't seem to be looking at anything, but rather, he stared at the space in front of Ellie's stomach. He was distant and slow. Brooding. Defeated. Old. Usually, he'd start a fight and find a way to silence Ellie without explaining anything.

Joel stood up and Karla flinched. He looked down and saw that his shirt was open. As he pulled the rest of it off and moved to the fire, Karla smiled, so he must have done something to reassure her that he wasn't a threat. Ellie noticed two large bruises cover the muscles of Joel's back. He held his hands over the flames.

'What can I do?' he asked.

Karla began to shake her head, but Ethan said, 'Nothing right now. But we've been trying to build some tools and supplies to set us on our way. We're looking for somewhere permanent to stay. Maybe fine a community or something.'

'Are you now?' Joel turned and looked at Ellie questioningly. 'And, uh,' he continued, 'Do you know of anything?'

Ellie widened her eyes to let him know that she hadn't told them about Tommy's, but Joel had turned back to the fire.

'Only rumours,' Ethan said. 'Some guys would come around trading supplies. We think there might be more of them around. Either way, we couldn't have stayed where we were. Place was surrounded by infected.' Ethan laughed. 'Not sure how we ended up in a post office in the first place.'

Ellie noticed Joel's back muscles tighten. Joel either scoffed or chuckled: she couldn't tell which.

'Where are you from?' he asked.

'Quarantine Zone in Orlando,' Ethan said.

'Ethan saved us,' Karla interjected. She fiddled with her skirt. 'He snuck us out of the zone when we were starving.'

'How'd he manage that?' Joel asked, unsuccessfully masking his bitterness.

Karla began, 'Ethan is—was—a soldier—'

'—He's heard enough about us,' Ethan cut in. 'What about you? How did you end up falling off a bridge?'

Joel crossed his arms. He looked down at the wet shirt on the floor behind him then picked it up. He held the shirt over the fire.

'Out lookin' for supplies,' Joel said. 'Nothin' special. Ellie and I had gone our separate ways… Guess that didn't stick.'

'You'll be hanging around?' Karla asked.

Joel stood up straight. 'Oh, I'm not going anywhere.'

Ellie shivered. She looked down at her nails, which had mud under them.

There was a strange tension in the room. Because Ellie couldn't see Joel's face, she couldn't tell if he were pushing Ethan. Thomas seemed calm; he played with a newspaper ship when he lost interest in the conversation.

Joel looked to the wooden benches in the back of the room.

'You got tools here?' he asked.

'A saw and a chisel,' Ethan answered. 'I was hoping I could use some of the scrap wood to make some weapons and cutlery and things.'

'I don't know about cutlery, but I could file down a stake for you.'

'Not now,' Karla said.

'I'm not doing anything.'

'Okay,' she said. 'I'll show you what we have.'

Karla led Joel to the other side of the room. Ethan went back to his inventory, but watched Joel intermittently. Ellie did the same. As Joel ran the chisel over the wood his shoulder blades seemed to breathe on his back. They rose and fell in a steady rhythm. His arm muscles became more prominent. Karla was smiling. Ellie couldn't hear too well but Joel's accent was thicker than usual as he said, 'It's not hard.'

Ethan stood up and walked over to Joel.

'Why do you hate soldiers, Joel?' Ethan asked. He tilted his head back.

'I didn't say I did,' Joel said.

'It's obvious.' Ellie wasn't sure what Ethan was referring to; she hadn't seen Joel's face during their conversation.

'You don't wanna hear it,' Joel said in a low, scratched voice. He hadn't looked up from the plank.

Ellie had stopped trying to be discrete. She sat forward and watched as Ethan moved to the table. He was directly opposite Joel now and he wouldn't take his eyes off the top of Joel's head. Joel shook his shoulders, obviously aware of Ethan's power play.

'You're just human,' Joel said. He rested the chisel on the bench and looked up at Ethan. Both of his palms stayed flat on the table. 'You're just people who took what they were given, who think that a uniform means you know something we don't. You think you have the right...' Joel's cheeks hardened. 'You're just taking orders from someone you don't know, whose taking orders from someone he don't know.'

'Well.' Ethan raised an eyebrow but was otherwise unchanged.

Karla said, 'He's not a solider now.'

Joel looked back to his chisel, but stopped when Ethan started again.

'I thought that you'd been around long enough to remember the days when soldiers were heroes.'

'That was a long time ago.'

Ethan was opening his mouth to talk again when Karla said, 'Help me with the buckets. We should get them outside while it's still raining.'

Ethan ambiguously half-smiled at Joel, turned and left the room with Karla, Thomas, and a stack of plastic buckets. Ellie and Joel were alone.

For the first time, Joel glanced at Ellie, which made her self-conscious, and a little guilty. What hurt, though, was when Joel simply went back to his work without saying anything to her. Ellie stood up.

'Why do you have to wave your dick around, Joel?'

'Excuse me?' He turned to her.

'They're nice people. They just need some help.'

'Ellie, I don't even know where I am. I ain't gonna roll over for some strangers, who could be anybody.' He walked toward Ellie and his arms moved in front of his chest as he spoke. 'You were supposed to be home. With me. At Tommy's. How am I supposed to behave? And where are we?'

He'd talked her into a corner, like always.

'We're an hour's drive away from Tommy's. And I didn't tell them about Jacksonville.'

'They already know about Jacksonville.'

'No, they don't.'

'They were trading with Tommy's guys. They just don't want you to know where they're headed.'

'Well…' Ellie began. She didn't expect them to tell her everything. 'That makes sense,' she said.

'Come home,' Joel said more than asked. His brown eyes held the firelight and his grey hair was gold.

'I don't trust you,' she admitted.

Joel turned his head away quickly as if he'd been punched.

'Wait,' Ellie corrected. 'That's not right. I do trust you.'

Joel's chest swelled as he inhaled.

'But I don't believe you when you say that you're protecting me. You're not. You're protecting you. I'm not your toy.'

'Is that what you think?' Joel continued in a mumble, 'my toy?'

'Yes.'

'Can we talk? Can we get out of this room?' He sounded desperate and claustrophobic.

Ellie nodded. Joel reached into his bag and pulled out a plaid shirt. As his arms wriggled into it, his chest strained forward. He buttoned it up in a huff and followed Ellie out the door.

Through the dark, they jogged to a bus stop with a shade cover. The moonlight had turned the thin water on the road into crystals. Because the seat was covered in something black and sticky, they sat on the ground among plastic bottles and broken glass from the shop front behind them. Their arms rested on their knees and Ellie's fingers caught rain spatter from the shelter. Joel rubbed his hands together. For the first time since she'd seen him again, Ellie could feel his warmth radiate away from his body. She couldn't help wanting to move closer; she was conditioned to work as a part of him.

'What did you want to say?' Ellie encouraged.

'Uh…'

Ellie's hips and stomach warmed and tingled. She wanted to press her pelvis against Joel's. She was still mad at him, but she needed him. She wanted to hurt him and bite him as she kissed him. Lack of experience meant that her daydreams didn't take her much further than pressing her whole body against him while she kissed the salt off his neck, but she knew what happened next.

Because most kids in military school were orphans, they were taught discipline and focus before anything else, and everything else was secondary. Out of necessity, all the kids became everyone became everyone else's teacher, swapping any information about sex that found its way into the school, through books and word of mouth. Since Ellie was six years old she had other kids, both older and younger, sharing ideas about what sex was and the different ways it could happen. When Ellie was twelve, starting her period and learning a bit about biology, she put the pieces together, realising what was myth and what was truth.

She also learned about diseases and contagions. Not long after Riley turned without Ellie did Ellie realise that she was probably never going to have sex.

And that didn't bother her. Not at first, anyway. She was so torn without Riley: both lost and alone, but also empowered as her immunity endowed her with a sense of purpose. Ellie was probably too naïve to know what love really was, but she cared about Riley. She imagined fighting by Riley's side as a Firefly, and imagined knotting her fingers in Riley's spongy hair as she kissed her wet lips. After losing Riley, romance and sex seemed trivial compared with the idea that her body might be able to fix the world.

But now that Ellie wasn't going to save the world—now that she was going to live her life after all—her empowering immunity had simply become a crippling poison in her blood that would keep her a few breaths away from everyone else. And Joel had done this to her.

Joel, by keeping her away from the Fireflies, had made her strength a weakness. He put her in a situation where physical intimacy was to be an important part of her life—an important part that she was never going to have. He put Ellie in a part of the world where she didn't belong.

Ellie crossed her arms in front of her tightly. She couldn't hate and love Joel at the same time. She needed to just hate him and try to get back to a place in time where her life was useful. She wished that he could have been a part of that with her, but he couldn't let her do what she needed to do.

She wondered if he and Tess had ever been as co-dependent as she and Joel were. They were obviously involved, but Tess seemed to have an identity independent of Joel. Then Ellie remembered overhearing Joel say that Tess brushed him off whenever he suggested settling down. He must have been waiting to settle for a long time. He's been restless for too long. Ellie wanted to sympathize, but she couldn't let go of that feeling that her life could still achieve something meaningful; there had to be more to her than 'settling down' to a life she could only half live.

Ellie figured that Joel didn't have much left to lose. He was probably going to be honest with her now he knew she was serious. When Joel was hesitant to begin talking, Ellie asked, 'What happened after we were caught in the water? I remember being sucked under.'

'Umm…' Joel scratched the back of his head. His words were slow, as if he had just woken up. 'You, uh… you were unconscious. I pulled you out and a Firefly found us.'

'They helped us?'

'No, uhh… You wouldn't, uh… And he knocked me out.' Joel rubbed his eyes. Ellie expected him to yawn next. 'Then,' he began. 'I woke up in the hospital. You weren't there. Marlene,' he said her name with distance, 'she said you were being prepped for surgery. She didn't think you were going to live through it.'

Ellie was suspicious, but Joel's emphasis on her not being by his side helped her to empathize. He must have been furious and scared.

'And then you killed her?'

'No. She left. I killed the guard she left with me. Then a lot of other people.'

His choice to say 'people' rather than something less humanizing, such as 'guys' or 'Fireflies' was refreshing.

'Did you kill Marlene?'

Joel swallowed. 'Yes.'

Ellie leant back against the shelter and let her hands fall into the wet dust by her side. She didn't feel the need to comfort Joel and tell him what she was feeling. She'd let him wait. Ellie, of course, had already guessed that he had killed Marlene. Knowing for sure, though, was a knife in her stomach. Ellie felt even more alone than she had before, and the night felt colder. Marlene was the last person alive who knew Ellie's mother. Being in touch with Marlene made Ellie feel somewhat closer to Anna, as though Marlene was a part of her origin story. And that gave her a home, however abstract.

And now that Marlene and her Fireflies were gone, did that mean that no one else was working on a cure? All of Ellie's planned washed away, mixed with the rainwater in the gutters. She wanted to go and sit in the dirty stream on the road so that her outsides reflected her insides. She needed to be as dirty as she felt.

Ellie asked Joel, 'Had they really been failing with other people who were immune?'

'I got that impression.'

'You got that impression,' Ellie mumbled to herself.

She was too tired and too dried out to cry. Instead, Ellie thought, I can let the rain be sad for me. I don't have enough emotions left to waste on Joel.

Moving to her knees, Ellie looked straight ahead out at the rain. She stood up to walk those couple of steps, then stepped out from under the cover.

'What are you doing?' Joel asked.

Ellie sat down on the gutter and crossed her legs. The stream of cold rainwater soaked her jeans. She imagined that the rush tickling her leg hairs was all over her body, and again, she was falling off the back of the bus and into the white water. As the bus crashed deeper, it created a vacuum that sucked her down with it. She was thrown in a tornado of water until the dark figure above her encompassed her entire line of vision. There was pain. And then there was Joel, driving her toward Jackson.

She opened her eyes and Joel was sitting in the gutter next to her, looking at her with pouted lips and furrowed eyebrows.

'I didn't mean to hurt you,' he said. 'I know it's what you wanted. I know that.'

Ellie turned to him briefly. His brown eyes caught the light reflecting off the wet road. The silver flecks of his hair cut through the dark blue air.

'But I—', he stammered, 'I couldn't let them take your life. I couldn't let anyone take that away from you. Not for the good of Tess or Sam or your friend, or for the good of the whole damn world. You're meant to be who you are. You don't have to die for that.'

The green of his shirt was a slick black that clung to his arms as they shook. He held them in front of him, illustrating how he felt, touching the shoulder of an invisible Ellie who sat a foot closer to him.

His voice, like his arms, was unsteady. He breathed his words: 'I'm so sorry. I am so sorry, Ellie.'

The tone of his voice had changed. Without thinking, Ellie turned her body toward him. Joel pressed both of his palms to his forehead, as if wiping blood from his face.

'I did it for me,' he said. 'I couldn't have gone home without you. There was no home without you.'

Again, he hung his head and continued to shake away his memories. Instinctively, but still staying steady, Ellie placed her left hand on his right shoulder. He looked up at her with a sad smile, which quickly dropped.

'I can't do it,' he said. The rain had soaked his hair, but only sat on his beard. 'Not without you. I could once before, but I can't now.'

Ellie let her hands do what they wanted. She didn't know if she forgave Joel, but she could understand him. Poor, flawed, wrong, selfish, ignorant, Joel, she thought. Her body was so heavy. She needed to feel light again in Joel's strong arms. She needed to not think and do one thing that would make her happy before she was crushed under her own weight.

Gently, Ellie put her other hand on Joel's left cheek. Her palm moulded to his cheekbones. Joel kept his head down. Ellie used her other hand, the one on his shoulder, to lift his chin. He still wouldn't look at her. She increased the pressure in both her hands: not enough to hurt him, but enough to make sure he kept still. She leaned in and put her lips on his.

Some sharp strands of beard caught between their lips, but maybe that was how it was meant to be: rough, sharp threads keeping her from experiencing his wet, doughy lips. As she kissed him, her body followed the direction of her body, and soon, she was on her knees, inching her hips closer to his stomach. When her hands moved to the sides of Joel's head and gripped his dripping hair, her fingers dug and found dry patches underneath. She kept her fingers warm here. She re-pursed her lips to push herself onto him harder. Her nipples tingled. She wanted Joel to take them in his mouth. Thinking about taking off her shirt, Ellie realised that she hadn't been paying attention to Joel at all.

His hands hovered over her hips, slowly moving over her jeans, occasionally brushing the bare skin between her jeans and her shirt when she moved around. When his fingers finally held her hips, Ellie's back shivered.

He still hadn't opened his mouth for her, though. She kissed him lighter than she had been and parted her lips for him, licking her own so that he could feel her tongue. Joel didn't respond.

When she leaned away from Joel, he wouldn't look her in the eyes.

'I thought this was what you wanted,' Ellie said. She tried to be cruel and seductive, because that's how she felt, but her voice was too breathy, too unsure. 'All of me? Here, for you, only you.'

'This isn't right. No. Ellie…' he talked to himself. 'You're fifteen.'

'Do you really think I'm too young to know what I want?'

Joel's face softened but he still wouldn't look at her. Although he wasn't speaking, the subtle changes in his facial expressions showed that she was still talking to himself.

Ellie continued, 'You've been waiting for this. When your thumb rubs my hand you're thinking about rubbing something else. You take your shirt off when we bathe so I can look at you, even though you can't look at me.'

Joel looked ashamed, so Ellie changed direction: 'You make me crazy so that as soon as I'm alone I have to do something about it.' His face lit up for a second. 'I have to run a wet finger up and down…'

'Your friends are coming,' he said, as if giving her time to readjust herself and not be embarrassed for kissing him.

'So?' she asked. She turned and saw torchlight beaming from around the bend.

She stood and pulled on his forearm, gesturing for him to stand up. He followed her to an open window at the end of the street. She quickly explained that the room was clear and that she'd been meaning to finish searching the second floor. The others didn't know about it.

They climbed through and stumbled on the carpet inside. It was dark; the moonlight didn't reach them here. Before Ellie could regain her balance, Joel grabbed and spun her around. One of his arms crashed her waist to him and the other cupped the back of her head. His mouth met hers quickly and his lips guided hers open. His tongue rubbed over the tip of hers before moving deeper and faster. Ellie fought with him, holding his head in hers and pushing her mouth harder onto his, but it just gave him more momentum as he shifted his arms even closer to her, so his shoulders almost sat under hers. He used the pressure of his arms under hers to lift her onto her toes, while both his hands squeezed her ass. Both of them forgot to breathe.

'What changed your mind?' Ellie gasped.

'I didn't,' he grumbled against her neck. His lips moved up her jawline and onto her temple. 'I didn't know you wanted me.'

Ellie felt her vagina ache, as though it were contracting each time her clit brushed the crutch of Joel's jeans. His hard bulge dug into bladder. Fuck. She needed to be taller. Ellie didn't know how to move next. Her nipples threw electric shocks all over her body, but she needed to angle her clit onto Joel's bulge. Her thoughts were cut short as Joel pulled the neck of grey shirt down and kissed the soft flesh above her breast. A delayed moan escaped Ellie's throat. As his lips moved around her clavicle, one of Joel's hands groped her right breast, squishing it so that she could feel her cleavage rise out of her bra.

'Joel…' she whimpered.

He began to fall to his knees but held Ellie so that she would follow without hitting the ground too hard. His face was so warm on hers. She felt safe and light. The two of them alone together was so natural. They were both on their knees, grabbing whatever they could from each other. Ellie moved her hands over his back, memorizing the grooves of muscles that she'd been waiting for so long to touch. She remembered wading in a lake with Joel that spring. He stood in the water waist-deep and shirtless, so that Ellie could imagine that he was completely naked. He had modestly faced away from her, but his wide, ripped shoulders, and his small, tight waist drove her crazy. She wanted to get her hands under his shirt so she could feel his scars.

'I've wanted you for so long,' Joel growled as he began to lift his shirt over his head.

Ellie realised what he was readying them for.

'No, Joel!'

Ellie jumped back and her butt thudded on the carpet.

'What?' he asked. He froze with his shirt held up around his chest.

'I'm not going to fuck you!'

'Oh…' Joel looked to the side of the room in thought. Then he dropped his head and pulled his shirt back down. He sat down and bent his knees; he blinked at his knees hard. 'I didn't… I'm sorry…' His breathing was so loud it filled the room.

Ellie, still sitting on the ground, shuffled further away from him. There wasn't a safe place in the room to look. She didn't know if she Joel was an idiot or suicidal.

'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even done anything.' He pulled his legs up to his chest, laid his forehead on his knees, and hung his arms over his head, keeping himself locked up in his own Pandora's box.

Ellie wasn't sure if they should head back to the group or not. Either way, she needed Joel to do something. He'd been so passive since she saw him again, and she was worried that he was slipping back into apathy.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I shouldn't have kissed you. That was dangerous…' as the words came out of Ellie's mouth she saw how true they were. She hadn't been thinking clearly before because she was so mad at him. It almost seemed right that he should take the risk of kissing her, him being the one who left her alive and weak. Oh my god. I could have just killed Joel.

'I—I'm really sorry. Shit. Fuck. Are you okay?'

'Am I okay?' Joel looked up.

'I'm so sorry, Joel. Oh my god. If anything happened to you…' Ellie felt dizzy. She shuffled further away from Joel, thinking that she could somehow un-infect him by creating distance. She couldn't help it. She imagined Joel turning. Shaking. Whimpering.

As Riley began to turn, she had said that she could feel her nerves dulling, but she couldn't keep herself from twitching, as though the wind were knocked out of her. When Riley had finally lost control, Ellie mistook her moans for crying and went to hold her. Then Riley threw Ellie onto the floor. And Ellie stuck her knife into Riley's cheek. And her mouth. And her neck.

If Joel turned… Ellie couldn't breathe. Despite the chills all over her body, she was sweating. Both of her palms hit the floor as Ellie realized she was falling forward. A hand gripped each of her arms and pulled her up.

'Ellie! Ellie, look at me,' Joel urged.

'Stay away from me!' Ellie pushed his chest to hurl herself further back.

Joel held his hands in front of him, surrendering. 'I'm sorry. Tell me what to do.'

The wrinkles on Joel's forehead were more pronounced as concern dominated his face.

'Just stay back. Don't get infected.'

'What? Infected? Why would I—oh, baby.'

Joel reached for Ellie and pulled her up to him. He held her head against his chest and curled his other arm around her back.

'Don't,' Ellie said. She tried to wriggle away, but she was so tired and Joel was so strong. The water in Joel's shirt mixed with the water in her hair.

'It's okay, baby girl. I'm not going to get infected. I'm fine.' His hand rubbed her spine. When she didn't respond, he kept going: 'We've shared food and water before. If I was gonna get sick, I probably would've by now.'

'I'm so sorry, Joel. I don't know why I did that to you. I love you. Fuck. What's wrong with me?'

Joel stiffened around Ellie and his hands stopped moving.

'You love me?' he asked.

Ellie retraced her thoughts. As she re-heard what she said she tightened too. Slowly, she placed a hand on Joel's chest and lifted her chin so he could hear her better.

'Of course I do,' she said nervously. Then more bitterly, she said, 'Why else would I hate you so much?' She looked up even though she knew that she wouldn't be able to see his face. She, instead, rested her eyes on Joel's arm, watching the bulge twitch under his wet shirt as he tightened his grip.

Joel hugged her closer. 'I love you too,' he said.

'I know.'

They both trembled lightly in each other's arms. Although they both stayed on their knees, Ellie had slumped onto his chest. Joel stayed straight and hard, supporting her weight, keeping her light.

'Should we go back?' Joel offered.

Ellie could feel the cold now that the adrenaline had left her body.

'Not yet.'

Ellie lay on the floor with her knees still bent, forming a 'Z' on the ground. Joel mirrored her. They lay just as they had in the radio tower, before Joel had closed up again. Gingerly, she swept her hand up Joel's bicep, over his shoulders, and up to his cheek, tracing his silhouette. For a long time, they closed their eyes without sleeping, just appreciating each other's touch, trying desperately to move back in time.