Sorry for no update last night, the episode wrecked me. I'm moving to weekly updates now that the season is over (and now that I'm sliding into a Mandalorian hyperfixation).

I'll be there for you - I'll be there for you - The Rembrandts, 1995

I wake up uncomfortably hot. And it feels like I'm pinned in place.

"Told you so," Joel says beside me. His voice is rough with sleep and I feel my cheeks heat up. "Oh that's too easy."

"Shut up, you're still in the dog house," I whisper back. He grins at me as he nods down at my chest. I look down and see the top of Ellie and Sam's heads. Sam is sprawled across me and Joel while Ellie is sprawled across me and Henry.

Wait-

I look over and he shoots me a sheepish smile.

"I got cold."

"Of course," I smile over at him. I reach up and start to run my hands through both Sam and Ellie's hair.

"So what are we gonna do now?" Henry asks and I look to Joel.

"Probably want to get to movin'," Joel says. "You can tell us everything while we're walkin'. I don't think we'll be running into anyone around here if we move out soon enough." I wince at the reminder. I hear Henry shift and then I feel his head rest on my shoulder.

I reach down and kiss the top of his head like I had with both Ellie and Sam last night.

I don't say anything when I feel my shirt start to get wet.

"Thank you," he says quietly. "You don't have to take us but-"

"Don't start that," Joel says in his normal grumpy voice. "You heard what Ellie said last night."

"What'd Ellie say last night?" I ask lightly as I look at him. He glares at me. "C'mon Cowboy, you know you want to say it," I elbow him and he pinches my side, making me twitch.

"Hey!" Ellie says, her voice filled with sleep.

"It's okay kiddo," I say as I pull both her and Sam back to my chest. "Joel just tickled me."

"Not cool, you're supposed to be a pillow right now Joel."

"I ain't a pillow."

"You're mom's." Ellie says as she tilts her head up to look at him. I feel my heart jump at the name. Joel rolls his eyes but he doesn't argue. Sam moves out of my arms to lay across Joel's chest. Nuzzling against his chest like Ellie has done with me so many times now.

He's already asleep again.

"Can we have a lazy day?" Ellie asks.

"Not today, kiddo," I say as gently as I can.

"But moooooom," Ellie whines as she looks up at me.

"I want us as far away from Kansas City as we can get in the next few days." Ellie grimaces at the reminder of the last few days.

"No offense, but KC fucking sucked," she says as she looks over at Henry.

"No shit," he says. Ellie grins.

"Oh you two together is going to be dangerous," I say as I throw my head back against Joel's arm. He snorts and I look over at him as he and Ellie start trading jabs back and forth. His free hand runs up and down Sam's back as he sleeps.

"Are you gonna tell us everything now?" Ellie asks, turning from Joel to look up at me.

"While we're walking," I say and she groans as she forces herself to sit up.

"Fine, fine, I'll go get ready to go," she says, teenage angst practically oozing from her.

"I'll go use the bathroom down the hall," Henry says as he rolls out of bed. He grabs his backpack and walks towards the door.

"I can help-" Joel says, but Henry waves him off.

"I've got it," he says as he moves the heavy dresser easily. He opens the door and steps out before I call out to him.

"You've got your gun?"

"Yes mom," he calls over his shoulder. It's sarcastic. But it doesn't stop my heart from doing the same flip it's been doing whenever Ellie calls me that name. Once he's around the corner and out of sight, Joel leans over and kisses my temple.

"You okay?" He asks quietly.

"Yeah," I turn on my side and lean closer to him and Sam. I reach a hand out and start running it through Sam's hair again. He makes a muffled noise as he turns his head to face me. His eyes blink open slowly and I smile.

"Good morning," I sign to him. He waves at me before dropping his hand back on Joel's chest. "Grumpy is a good pillow?" He gives me a small grin as he nods.

"We need to get up kiddo," I say after we rest for a few minutes. I hear Ellie's brush clang against the counter and I know it's a sign for her almost being ready. She always brushes her hair last. Sam shifts on Joel's chest to lay on his side facing me.

"Do we have to? Can't we have a lazy day?"

"Ellie already asked earlier, unfortunately we can't." Sam pouts as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He shifts closer to me and wraps his arms around my neck in a hug. I pat his back a few times before I pull his hands away.

He pouts up at me as I sit up.

"Come on," I sign. "Henry and Ellie are almost done getting ready." He reluctantly sits up with Joel.

"You got him up that quick?" Henry asks as he leans against the door again. "It's like pulling teeth getting him up when he doesn't want to."

"He already asked for a lazy day, too," I grin up at him. I hear Joel huff out a laugh and look to see Sam with his face resting against Joel's chest and his arms wrapped around his neck.

"Maybe you could carry our pack and I can carry him for a bit?"

"Our pack?" Joel asks and I roll my eyes.

"It's ours now that you've lost yours."

"Yeah, no way we're goin' back for any supplies," Joel sighs as the door of the bathroom bangs open.

"Why does he still get to sleep?" Ellie's shoulders are slumped. She won't even look up at us.

"He's not asleep," Joel says as he taps Sam's shoulder. Sam looks up at Joel who points over at Ellie. His brown eyes immediately light up when he sees her and he clamber's out of Joel's lap to run over to her.

"He tried to pitch your lazy day idea to us while you were in the bathroom," I smile at her as she struggles to stay standing after Sam tackles her in a hug.

"So can we?"

"No, kiddo," Joel says as he stands up from the bed. "We need to get away from the city, the faster the better."

"Fine," Ellie pouts as she rests her head on top of Sam's. "But we're gonna have a lazy day as soon as it's safe."

"We are," I agree with her as I force myself out of bed. I slip my holster on my left hip instead of behind me.

"I'm gonna take him to the bathroom before we head out," Henry says. I look over to see him with his hand on Sam's shoulder.

"Okay," I smile at the boys as I walk over to my shared bag with Joel. I hook one holster around my ankle before putting the other on my other hip. I search in one of the outside pockets until I find an old scrunchie. I throw my hair up in a bun before I turn back to Ellie.

She stands by herself near the door, shuffling her feet. I look around and Joel isn't in the room with us anymore.

"Come here, baby girl," I say gently. She follows my instructions without saying anything. And with Ellie, that's always a bad sign. As soon as she's in arm reach, I pull her into a tight hug.

"I love you, Ellie," I say in her hair.

"I love you too," she says.

"Can you look at me?" I ask when I pull away slightly. She slowly turns her head up and I pull one hand from around her to move her hair out of her face. "Do you love me any less now that Sam and Henry are with us?"

"No, of course not!" She sounds angry at the question.

"So why would I love you any less?"

"I just, I just got you and Joel and-and-"

"And our time together has been filled with scary stuff, huh?" She nods her head before she drops it on my chest.

"S-Sam almost got infected because I wasn't there fast enough-"

"No." I cut her off. "Don't go there, Ellie."

"He's so little! He shouldn't have to worry about getting infected."

"He shouldn't."

"I'm the cure, right? If we get a vaccine, he can be safe? Be a normal kid?"

"Honey, there is no real normal anymore," I say quietly. "And the vaccine, well, we'll talk about it once we start walking, okay?"

She looks up at me again, her eyes searching my own. I see fear in hers, and I hate that more than anything in this world I'm going to have to be the one to break her heart like this.

But she deserves to know.

She needs to know.

I just hope Marlene wasn't able to get too much into her head in the times I wasn't around.

Both Joel and Henry say no to letting me carry Sam or Ellie. Joel ends up with Ellie on his back instead of our bag and Henry walks with his bag across his front and his brother on his back.

The thought to carry Sam was mainly to save time. But now that Joel is carrying Ellie, we're slowing down a bit. But it's worth it to see the matching smiles on the kid's faces.

Especially Henry's.

"Hey," I say as I bump his shoulder. "How old are you?"

"I turn twenty next week I think," he says.

"Your birthday is next week?" Ellie screeches.

"Jesus, Ellie!" Joel says as he rubs his left ear.

"What do you want for your birthday?" Ellie asks, ignoring Joel. Henry looks at her and Joel, then at me.

"A lazy day?"

"We'll keep an eye out for a secure place for the next few days," Joel says. "Gonna need to hit up a few small towns to look for supplies." He looks down at the maps we managed to grab on the outskirts of the city.

"Which way are we going?" Ellie asks.

"West," Joel says.

She lets out an explosive sigh.

"Either through Kansas and Colorado or Kansas and Nebraska."

"Kansas and Nebraska," I say immediately. Joel looks up from the map over at me.

"Why?"

"I helped Tommy out with comms sometimes. A lot of people didn't make it out of Colorado."

"Why?" Henry asks.

"We don't know," I say as I look at the ground in front of me. "All we knew was that people didn't make it to the next tower."

"Wait, you knew Joel's brother?" Ellie asks.

"He was a Firefly-"

"Yeah, yeah, but you didn't say you knew him."

"He was Aiden's godfather," I shrug my shoulders.

"Who's Aiden?" Henry asks.

"He was mom's son," Ellie says quietly.

"From before?" Henry asks and I shake my head. The silence that follows is awkward.

"Alright, well," I say as I look up. "Might as well get started with the Fireflies stuff, yeah?"

"We've got about five hours left until we get to Lansing," Joel says.

"Down," Ellie says as she pats Joel's arm. He stops to let her down and she walks over to me, bumping her shoulder against my arm.

"I'll take our pack," Joel says as he starts pulling it off of me.

"I'm fine-"

"You're fine when Joel says you're fine," Ellie cuts in. "And he hasn't said you're fine yet. So you're not fine." I fight a smile as we start walking again.

"Where do I even start?"

"Marlene said my blood is medicine," Ellie says.

"I think it's a lot more complicated than that, kiddo," Joel says from her other side.

"How are they going to develop the vaccine?" Ellie asks him.

"I reckon they'll start with taking your blood, that's how they did it in the movies," Joel says. "Then maybe do some sorta surgery." He wraps his arm around her shoulders and she seems to fall into him.

"Is that it?" Ellie asks as she turns to me.

"The procedure doesn't involve your blood," I say and sign when I realize Sam is watching.

"Marlene lied."

"She did lie," I whisper.

"You basically told me she was a liar the first time we met," Ellie says. "But I still believed she was at least telling the truth about this."

I never want the little girl beside me to sound this bitter ever again.

"It's not your fault," I say before I lean down and press a kiss against the top of her head. "You wanted to believe her because you want to help people. That's not a bad thing, kiddo."

"I know," Ellie says quietly.

"The procedure," I say after she doesn't say anything else. "It's a surgery. Dr. Anderson would make an incision in your skull and pull the small part of the infection from your brain." I see Joel's hand grab onto the fabric of Ellie's jacket briefly before he releases it.

"Okay," Ellie says quietly. "So there's a bit of infection in my brain, that's why I'm immune?"

"It is."

"How-how did it get there?"

"You've been scanned before you got bitten, right?" Ellie nods her head slightly.

"You might have had immunity before, maybe the infection was dormant when you were younger, but it most likely fully developed when you were bitten the first time-"

"But how, how would I be immune if it wasn't there in the first place?"

"Have you learned about evolution?" I ask her and she nods. "The fungi evolved with the rising temperatures of the Earth. It's how they were able to infect humans." She doesn't speak, so I continue.

"It's most likely that children born after the outbreak experienced rapid evolution, that's evolution that happens really quickly as a response to outside factors. There was something in your brain that changed, that didn't allow the fungus to spread. It could have been the tiniest bit of infection."

"And if they get the infection in my brain, they-they can make a vaccine?"

"Honey, it's more complicated than that."

"What is it, then?"

"Let me finish telling you about the procedure first, okay?"

"Fine," she mumbles and I smile down at her.

"They won't just be removing the infection from your brain, they'll be removing that portion of your brain."

"Okay."

"Ellie, it will kill you."

"But it can be the cure-"

"Ellie there is no cure." She freezes. Her entire body locks up. Her breathing picks up and I know she's close to a panic attack.

"B-but there has to be!" She finally says. "If there isn't that-that means all of this is for nothing."

"Don't say that," Joel says. He leans forward and grabs her chin before he makes her look up at him. "If FEDRA got ahold of you in the QZ and scanned you, you would be dead. Getting you away from that makes this worth it."

"But why me?" Ellie asks. "Why me and not Tess or Ri-" she sobs before finishing Riley's name.

"Look at me," Joel whispers. "I ask that of myself all the time, baby girl." It's the first time he's called her that. Ellie's bottom lip wobbles. "I struggled with survivin' for a long time. I ask why I lived and not Tess. I ask why I lived when my daughter didn't. She deserved to live, not me." There's silence. Joel has never even mentioned having a daughter.

I understand why he hasn't, why he reacted the way he did when Henry said he was someone's father. I open my mouth to say something, anything. But Ellie beats me to it.

"Don't say that," Ellie hits his chest. "You both deserved to live!"

"And now you know how we feel when you question why you're here. Why you're important," Joel whispers harshly. "Everyone deserves to live. But all we can do is save who we can save, baby girl. And you can't save everyone. Hell, you couldn't save everyone before everything went to shit."

"But-but why, how, how do you know there's no cure?" She turns to me. Her cheeks are shining from her tears and I gently wipe some away.

"Because you're not the only one," I whisper.

"What?"

"Honey, there were others before you, there were others in the QZ."

"Then-then why me?"

"Because you were alone, you didn't have a family or a guardian to protect you."

"Marlene was supposed to protect me, she promised my mom!"

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

"How-how did you know, does Marlene know you know?"

"No," I shake my head. "She doesn't know. She locked me in a room with a bunch of files and I found the one hidden one she didn't want me to find."

"And that, it told you all of that?" Henry asks from my other side. I feel his arm brush up against mine and look up to Sam. His eyes are wide, filled with unshed tears. He taps the side of Henry's arm before he slides down his back.

He immediately runs to Ellie and wraps his arms around her.

"It did," I whisper. "It had pictures, names. Details of where everything went."

"Where everything went?" Ellie asks. Sam looks up and I start to sign again.

"There's apparently a vial of something they're injecting into people. They think it might be a cure-"

"So there is a cure?" Ellie asks.

"Honey, no."

"But-"

"For each child they kill-" Ellie and Joel flinch. "They get enough for ten vials. That's it."

"Fuck." Ellie says under her breath. She tucks her head back into my shoulder as she wraps her arms around Sam.

"Where do they go?" Joel asks in my ear. I lean closer to his warmth. Closer to him.

"It changed each time. The first time six of them went to testing for a widespread cure."

"Is there a chance?" Ellie asks, her voice raw.

"No, baby girl. The doctor Marlene talked about, Dr. Anderson, he wrote in the first case that there would never be enough for a widespread cure."

"The others?" Joel asks.

"One went to Dr. Anderson, another to his head nurse."

"Of course," Ellie says, her voice sounding bitter once more.

"The other two were given to donors."

"Donors?" Ellie asks, looking up at me.

"Donors to the fireflies. With each case after the first, the number going to donors increased and the number going towards further testing decreased."

"Do you know," Ellie's voice cracks. "What did they plan to do with mine?"

"Five would be for donors."

Ellie scoffs.

"Two would go to new medical staff."

"Do you think one would be for you?" Ellie asks.

"There were only two of us going out there with medical experience."

"So I could save you?"

"Ellie, I've already lost one of my babies. I can't lose any of you. They might've planned it for me but I wouldn't survive after you died."

"No," she shakes her head roughly. Sam mimics her.

"You keep goin' for family, baby girl. Don't base your decision off of the thought of protecting me from the infection."

"Okay."

"Ellie," Joel says lowly and she nods.

"Where would the others go?" She asks.

"One would go to the head of the hunters to give them safe passage through the city. Which city and group of hunters, I don't know."

"Would any go towards looking for a more widespread cure?" Ellie asks.

"One."

We start walking after a few minutes of silence. Sam holds onto one of my arms while Ellie holds onto the other.

"That's nine," Joel says. "The tenth?"

"Would go to the leader of the Fireflies." I struggle to sign with both of the kids holding onto me.

"That bitch." Ellie whispers. "How many kids have they done this to?"

"Too many," I tell her honestly.

"Will she go back to Boston if I don't do this? Go to the other kids?"

"She might try to. I don't know if she'll be successful."

"Why?" Joel asks.

"Because a friend of mine dropped off anonymous letters to each of the families after we left the QZ. It told them everything they needed to know to get out."

"And they won't tell?" Joel asks.

"They won't."

"So what are we going to do if I decide not to go to the Fireflies?"

"I was thinking we keep goin' where we're goin'. Go to Tommy and then figure things out there."

"But they'll look for us, won't they?"

"I've got a plan to go to Colorado, there's a radio tower there that the Fireflies used to use. I can go, broadcast a message to the Fireflies, tell them that you both died along the way."

"But what about you?" Ellie asks.

"Pretend there's an infected. Shoot off my gun, cut off the broadcast-"

"There's a lotta room for somethin' to go wrong," Joel says. I look up and only see worry in his eyes. "We'll talk it through with Tommy. Maybe he can give a message a few days later, that he went down to find you and couldn't."

"That sounds better," Ellie says. "I don't want them to hurt you or anyone else."

"I know, baby girl. But can you promise me somethin'?" I ask her.

"Hm?" She looks up at me, she looks like she's fighting sleep.

"Promise me you'll focus on takin' care of yourself."

"But-"

"Ellie, this is the only thing I've asked from you or will ask from you."

"I promise," she says, moving her arm from around me to hold up her pinkie finger. I wrap mine around hers and she smiles. Sam reaches his pinkie finger out too and Ellie wraps hers around his.

"How do I sign it?" Ellie asks. I show her and after a few tries, she gets it. Sam nods slowly before he grabs onto her hand. We walk like that for the next few hours. There's some conversations, small things, mainly Sam and Ellie asking about different sights along the way.

But we stay in our small huddle of our patchwork family.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.