Intro
Ellie split from Joel the moment they stepped through the gate and even till then she had been walking well ahead of him, ignoring his mere existence, her steps quick and frustrated, her shoulders slumped. She had said no word and he really believed she wouldn't, ever again.
He walked back to his house, the warm afternoon doing nothing to warm his insides. Some people should have waved to him but he completely ignored them. He didn't care. They respected him but that didn't mean that they actually liked him, anyway.
He got to the cheap whisky he had found during a patrol and kept. He downed two glasses one after the other. He hadn't done that since he had left Boston QZ four years ago, since he had something to live for. He drank occasionally but moderately. He had a daughter. He had a partner. He had all the reasons not to be the alcoholic, drug user he used to be. He had to be reliable and dependable for that young girl he once took as his own, for the woman who was sharing that house and his life with.
Now Ellie was lost to him. She probably hated him. She would probably never forgive him. But she could do all that because she was still alive. The world had lost. But fuck the world! Fuck a world who had fired a gun to a father holding his injured daughter in a effort to retain a plague that it could not understand! Fuck a world who had demanded the sacrifice of a girl over a possibility! Fuck a world who always put someone's life over another's! Fuck a world who had dissolved into a choice between killing or letting someone die! The world was fucked already, even before the damn Apocalypse fell upon it. But so was he… He himself had put a life over others. He had chosen to kill so as not to let Ellie die.
His blood was boiling. Anger, loneliness, hopelessness… He felt like he would explode within those walls. He was downing the third glass, when he heard footsteps on the porch, the door opened casually. She wasn't supposed to be home yet. Maybe she felt it, some shift in the air, some call in the silence. Maybe it was that pull between burnt souls to the same fire...