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macfrog · 2 months ago

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the jellyfish | one shot

today marks one year since i posted the fic i’m proudest of, san angelo. i loved this joel and this girl so much that even after i posted their story, i couldn’t shake them. i wrote a little extra for my own heart, never intending to share — but now feels as good a time as any. enjoy.

pairing: joel miller x fem!reader summary: they just drift, jellyfish. they go wherever the current takes ‘em. i think you and i were a little like that. i think the universe delivered me straight to you. warnings: story is inserted into canon, so all the expected major character deaths. star-crossed lovers who transcend universes to be together and all that good shit. word count: 5k

psst. you might wanna read this post before you jump into this fic. x

She comes through on the heels of a sunbeam.

You don’t know how long it’s been. Ten seconds or ten minutes or ten days, maybe – but she’s still a kid with rosy cheeks and plaid pajama pants, so you figure it can’t have been long.

No, it can’t have been long at all.

“Sarah?”

You push through the ghostly glow of a thousand other people. It’s iridescent chaos, wherever this place is. A flurry of panicked strangers – their forms hazy and only half-here.

They sweep from your path like silk. The screaming is deafening. Some are on their knees, sobbing into the nothingness. Others are searching every face, calling names you don’t recognize, crying out to a god or a universe you know is no longer listening.

All you know is this is it. Whatever you had, whatever you knew – it’s over now. All that’s left is here. Some kind of dreamscape, an astral plane.

If you didn’t know better, you’d call it heaven.

She looks just like the photographs he’d shown you. First day of school, he said – and he grinned wider than you’d been able to make him the entire night. Shoot, this one’s a little blurry, but – you see that trophy in her hand? Fifth-grade science fair. Smartest kid in her class.

“Sarah,” again.

She turns.

Her eyes meet yours, crystal blue and streaming. And as if she, too, knows your favorite superhero and the way you like your mac and cheese – she holds her arms out.

You pull her in, feeling her little hands lock around your waist. Your cheek falls to the crown of her head. She smells like bitter iron. It makes your teeth hurt.

She’s crying. Wetting the front of your shirt, pushing her face so hard into your tummy that she can barely even breathe.

“What happened?” you ask, cupping the back of her head.

Her hair is linen soft, fair and cropped at the top of her neck. Sweet like bubblegum pink shampoo, she smells just like strawberries.

“Tell me, honey – what happened?”

The smallest voice you’ve ever heard. She speaks between thick sniffles. “I don’t –” gasp, “– I don’t know.”

You kneel in front of her, cupping her cheeks. Your thumbs catch her tears as they come. “Where’s your dad?”

“I don’t know,” she sobs, and wraps herself around you again.

She asks who you are on the third day.

By now, you’re wandering around hand in hand. Things have settled, the pale fog has cleared. Your world is one of bursting greens and rolling blues; flowers which lift with the sun and sprawling hills which cushion her fall at the end of each day.

Gently, one by one, the others disappeared. Into the night, into the sun – into their own little corners of this world. You and Sarah are the only two left, settled in a snug valley populated by wildflowers and families of deer.

It’s better this way. It’s calmer. You can listen to the sway of the long grass, can pluck out the different types of bird just from their song.

You hush Sarah to sleep every night. You’ve managed to quieten her crying, had done by the second sunset. She has no reason to trust you, but she does – and you figure you owe it to him to watch over her, anyway.

At least until he gets here.

“I knew your daddy once,” you tell her, taking in the dusky pink sky. The sun is lowering. She’ll grow tired soon. He wouldn’t want her up past her bedtime. “We met a long time ago.”

“Did he like you?” she asks, earnestly – but you pause.

It rises from your chest like painful little bubbles, each one shattering more violently than the last. Tears spring along your waterline. You swallow the tremble in your voice.

“I hope so,” you whisper. “I liked him very much.”

She hums to herself, walking on. Her arms wrap tighter around the firewood she’s holding. “I bet he liked you just as much,” she says. “You musta been pretty special.”

It lingers for a moment. The beauty and the pain of it; the flood of violet that designs a fresh bruise. The memory swirls around you in the breeze.

In the next life.

Promise.

Sarah strolls off in the evening light. The clouds tint her hair a peachy rose. She’s already out of your reach.

The blood jumps in your veins. You gather your skirt and hurry back to her side, masking your nerves with a smile. “Well, I feel it,” you nudge her, “being in your company.”

She giggles for the first time since you found each other. This sweet little melody. It blends in with the birdsong.

The kid goes everywhere on your back.

Closer than your own shadow, hanging from your arm, watching everything you do with a filial affection. Becoming someone’s person wasn’t exactly something you meant to do, but then – neither was meeting her dad in a dive bar.

You’ve been dealt worse hands.

You braid her hair while you sit in the valley. Knots of gold threaded with daisies and dandelions. She names the deer and nods hello to each of them. She stands on your toes and walks backwards, squeals when you trip over one another and tumble across the bed of grass.

It’s not hard to see why he loved her so much. This little dove of a girl. Soft around the edges, a springtime sweetness to her like cherry blossom or fresh snowdrops. Something you want to cradle, tend to with careful hands and shield from the rest of the world.

She wraps her arms like twigs around your shoulders. She chatters in your ear about soccer and movies; asks to hear your favorite everything so she can compare it to hers.

She talks about him every day. Talks about him the same way he’d talked about her: laughter splitting her words, each one rounded by the toothy grin on her face.

When she sleeps, her head in your lap, your fingers sifting through her hair – you look for him. You try to find him.

It’s a gift and a curse that you always do.

Boston, at least at first. Gruesome and unforgiving. Dingy streets and dirty deals; a woman with a mind as sharp as her tongue. He trusts her. He feels safe around her. She relieves some of the ache in his chest and that relieves some of the ache in yours.

You walk in stride with them at night. You watch him break bone and break his own heart, over and over. He looks nothing like he did in San Angelo. His brother can’t look him in the eye anymore.

He’s an open wound. Agony from the inside out. A heart split like the skin over his knuckles.

You follow him back to his apartment and try to whisper words through the dark. Can you feel me? I’m here. I’m right here.

He only ever rolls over and scoops the bare pillow, wrapping his huge arm around it. He’s lonely, drowning in it, though he’d never admit it. He’d never admit any of it: he’s not hurting, he’s not grieving. He doesn’t remember her smile or the weight of her on his back.

That’s the thing. He remembers all of it. He can’t shake her from his shoulders. He can’t stop answering when he hears echoes of her voice. Crying only seems to pain him all the more, the burn of salt on his skin.

You curl up behind him, hoping he might feel your heartbeat through worlds. Hoping he might feel your arms around him and know, somehow, that he’s carrying his kid, too.

Sarah asks in the morning why your eyes are so red.

“No reason,” you reply, tucking a forget-me-not behind her ear. “Let’s go pick some apples.”

She slings herself over your back, an empty string bag dangling from her wrist. She kicks her legs as you wander from shade to shade, dodging the blazing sunlight.

Sarah’s no idiot. She’s her father’s daughter. She can feel the effort in every step, sense the burden heavy on your shoulders. She jokes that your shadows look like some kind of giant cockroach wearing a summer dress, and it makes you laugh.

In the orchard, she climbs up onto your shoulders. She reaches above, clawing for the shiniest ones. Deep reds with freckles just like hers.

“Be careful,” you mutter, feeling her rock with the branches to pick the best fruit. Your grip tightens around her ankles.

The fear sets like a pebble, heavy in your stomach. The same fear that sinks anytime she leaves your reach, the same fear that plummets when she’s shoulder-deep in the river and you think the current might sweep her off at any moment.

She’s not your kid. She’s not. But she’s his – and he was as much yours as anyone.

The sun flashes between the leaves, becoming too hot to stay out much longer. You must be in the thick of summer by now. It’s scorching.

“Sarah,” you plead, squinting up at her swaying silhouette. “Please be careful.”

“You got it,” she calls, voice strained. She plucks and plucks, a satisfied sigh with each apple she rolls into the bag.

Back home, you stand by the sink. The cool shade of the cottage, fruit bobbing in the water. Sarah wants to slice some of them, sit outside and watch the bees pollinate the flowers.

You flick your blade up, fishing the biggest apple. As you line the silver against the swollen skin, you feel her eyes on you.

“You okay, honey?”

She smiles. Her eyes flit to the blade in your hands, the droplet of juice dribbling between your knuckles. “Can I do it?”

“Chop the –?”

Sarah nods.

You look back down at your hands, hesitating. The blade winks back. Heat begins to creep up your spine. “I…I guess.”

She swaps positions, spreading her fingers over the fruit. Her small hands curve around the handle of the knife. The sight of it makes your stomach turn.

“Like this?” She positions it between her first and middle fingers.

You wince, laying your hands on her wrist. “Yeah,” you gulp, “but just be –”

“– careful?” she says, smirking. “Daddy lets me help him with the cookin’ all the time.”

Yeah, you think, that’s ‘cause Daddy can’t do it by himself.

The knife plunges down with a wet crunch. The halves roll apart. The air punches from your lungs.

Sarah looks up, bright eyes twinkling.

With a sickly anxiety, you realize she wants to do it again.

“Good job,” you say, voice wobbly, fists balling on the counter. Your nails dig into your palms. “Now, uh – now half ‘em again, and make sure you cut the seeds out. You eat the seeds, an apple tree grows in your belly.”

She snorts. “I know that ain’t true.”

The dragonflies hover politely near the river, metallic wings fluttering.

You lay a blanket down in the shade of a willow, fringed from the rest of the valley by its drooping curtain of leaves. You suckle on the shards of fruit, lips lined with a sticky sweet.

Sarah picks the best apples. You know this by now.

She sucks her fingers clean, staring at the sparkling river as it trickles by. You’ve been here longer than you could guess – longer than you care to – but still, she asks, “What if you’re lying?”

You dig between your teeth for apple skin. “Huh?”

“You said you knew my dad,” she says, turning back. She rubs one eye with her knuckle. “What if that’s not true?”

“Then I’d be pretty damn good at bluffing.”

She snickers. “I believe you,” she says, “I always did. There has to be some reason you found me.”

You sit back, leaning on the heels of your palms. Your chest swells with emotion, the lonely pain of waking up to an empty bed and an empty apartment.

“You like soccer,” you tell her. “You play for the…the Defenders, right? Number fourteen. You won your fifth-grade science fair with a project on jellyfish.”

Sarah looks down at the grass, cheeks lifting. She picks a daisy and twirls it between two fingers. “You remembered all that?”

“Like I said,” you sigh, “I liked your dad a lot.”

You keep looking for him every night.

He’s been out of Boston for a while, and you’re glad of it. He found himself a shadow of his own right before he left – a little girl with freckles and a light like sunshine.

Just like yours.

She’s spunky, she has heart, and she can kick ass. Every second word is a curse, feels like. She tells stupid jokes and she pulls on all the right threads. She’s unwinding him, and you’re sure neither one of them knows it yet.

She’s saving him.

You took to her the day they met. He took a little more convincing. You knew he’d come around eventually, and you spent weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It didn’t happen so suddenly. Day by day, hour by hour, he mellowed. His bark quietened, the blaze in his chest tamed. Soon, he let her close enough to warm her hands.

And he was aglow all over again. He looked the way he had two decades before.

It must be years now – the way he’s grayed and she’s sprouted. You can’t keep up with the passing of seasons, the way their conversations change. Change and change and wither away.

And – just as you’ve adopted all the other scars and bruises and fractures in his soul – their distance hurts you just as much as it hurts him. It feels hollow, like his bones are protecting nothing. Ghostly. Barren.

The worst of his pain comes during a blizzard.

It’s a fucking mess, the entire thing. You can’t hear anything over the kid’s screaming. Faces keep bleeding in and out of view; grunts and gasps and terrible, terrible groans.

He’s on the floor – that’s what drew you in. He’s on the floor, broken in two. A mammoth captured in a snowstorm, slain in the basement of a mansion.

You wait for him to notice you. He’s come close before – scuffles in backstreets, on horseback with a puncture in his stomach – but he’s never looked at you before.

You stumble around the edge of the room, stifling your screaming as the girl’s arms lift again. The bite of metal is nauseating. The blood is spattered up the windows behind him.

A shell of himself – this man who once held you, whispered sweet nothings and silly jokes in your ear. Who held his palm open and let you trace over it, score secrets into the skin forever.

He’s done some shit, sure – but hasn’t everyone?

She brings the club down on his skull. His body bends in on itself, breaks in a way you never knew it could. He’s past able to make any sound. The size of him gives one final shudder, and just then –

He looks.

He looks you square in the eye.

Joel?

He blinks. A wet gurgle leaks from his lips.

Joel, can you –? Shit, can you see me right now?

It’s dribbling from his chin like tar. Thick and black. It runs quicker when his lips try to move.

You can, can’t you? You can see me.

His brother and kid are out cold. You step between them, whispering apologies as you pass, and kneel at Joel’s side.

I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay, baby, you’re okay.

Your eyes screw shut. He’s in your bed, his shitty Motorola in one hand and your fingers in the other. He smiles. He smiles and he laughs and he kisses you again.

God, Joel, you sob, I love you. I love you so much. Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to fucking do here.

Please. I need you to get up. Can you get up for me?

Can you – can you move? Can you hear me?

Joel?

Sarah brings you tea and sets it down on the table.

She sits beside you, tucking her knees right under her chin. She warns about the flies, says you’ll be drinking bug soup if you don’t get to it quick.

You force your lips into a smile and thank her, ruffling her sun-bleached hair. One tiny sip – only to please her – and your head rolls back, face skyward.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks, laying a hand over yours.

When she finally managed to wake you, you were both crying. She said your scream almost deafened her. She thought something terrible had happened, until she lit the lamp and saw you clutching your bedsheets, sobbing into the cotton in your sleep.

You squeeze her fingers. “Yes,” you lie. “I’m sorry I scared you. It was just a bad dream.”

“I used to have those sometimes,” she says, sniffing. She rubs her nose with the back of her hand. “Not since I came here.”

“You know what it is?” You turn to look at her, one eye closed in the sunlight. “I ate cheese before bed. Cheese gives you funny dreams.”

Her head tips back with a giggle. “No, it doesn’t. That’s so silly.”

You lift your eyebrows. “I blame the cheese, Sarah Miller.”

She nudges the mug an inch closer, and you take another sip.

It’s good – the tea. She knows exactly how long to brew it for, exactly how much sugar you like. It’s as if she counts the granules by hand – and, if you know Sarah, you wouldn’t put it past her.

You balance the warm mug on your breastbone. “Wanna help me hang the sheets up?”

She nods. Always eager to help, eager to do everything and anything. She disappears back into the cottage and you listen for the sloshing of water, the wet slap of the sheets being flung into a basket.

Nothing has come of it. Your dream. No knock at the door, no calls of either of your names echoing through the valley. After you convinced Sarah to go back to sleep, you stood outside and listened to the wind for forty-five minutes.

He is not here.

It’s the first time you’ve ever wondered where here really is, anyway. For this long, it’s been yours and Sarah’s. A secret kingdom in some dusty shelf in the universe; pixies and sunshine and splitting apples by the river.

You don’t want any of it, if he’s not here.

You’ll pack a bag, pull Sarah over your back. Find somewhere else. Somewhere with room for him, too. She needs her dad, and you need your – well.

Sarah meets you by the clothesline. She drops the basket with a sigh, then twirls around the pole as you untangle the sheets. She spirals until she’s sat on the grass, legs crossed, passing you clothespins as you work.

“I was thinking we could stay up late tonight,” you say, slotting a pin over the sheet. Forcing a casual air through your voice, trying to keep it steady. “Watch the sky for a little while, maybe hunt for shooting stars.”

You’re only trying to wring out the hours you’ll be without him. You don’t want to spend the night staring at the ceiling, slowly forgetting what he looks like.

Sarah says nothing. She knows you’re full of it. She leans forward and picks a ladybug from your skirt, rotates her hand to count its spots.

The sheets lift in the breeze, billowing and twisting around one another. The clouds turn over – rolling from perfectly white to an afternoon blush. The world is preparing to turn in already.

And that’s when she says it.

“Daddy?”

Your back is turned. You’re sipping at your tea. “What, honey?”

She pulls herself up and steps forward. She walks through the sheets, ducking her head to miss their brilliant flashes. Staring straight ahead at something you can’t see yet.

“Dad…”

In one swipe of the linen, she’s gone.

With a gasp, she sprints off downhill. She screams as she goes, footsteps thundering through the valley.

“Sarah!” you yelp, swatting the laundry out of the way. It swirls around your arms, waving across your vision in a white smirk. “Sarah, come back –”

The fabric spills over your arm when you lift it. Your heart stops short in your throat.

He’s knelt in the grass, arms wide open. Same jeans, same wintery boots. He flicks his fingers and his little girl collides with him, her tiny body crashing into his.

They roll back into the soft grass and for a few seconds, they disappear. But as quickly as your heart stops, it starts again. He rises from the flora, Sarah in his arms.

He nuzzles his face into her shoulder. He’s sobbing, you can hear it from way up here. Sobbing, then roaring with laughter, then gasping for air – though he won’t pull away from his little girl long enough to breathe.

They have the same laugh. The exact same. It echoes between them, this delighted string of sound. That hearty, giddy laugh.

She stands straight, still holding tightly onto him. Like she’s scared if she lets go, she’ll lose him again. Planted between his knees, fixing threads of silver hair from his eyes. Talking to him, yapping and giggling, her head bobbing all over the place.

He talks straight back – bass voice even deeper than you remember. The only words you can make out are baby girl. He can’t stop stroking her hair, can’t stop bursting into euphoric laughter.

After a minute, he stands. One hand locked in hers, arms swinging. He scopes the valley, murmuring something to his daughter while shaking his head in disbelief.

She points everything out to him. The hills and their peaks. The spot where the sun rises and the spot where it sets. The willow by the riverside, the knolls where the rabbits burrow. And then – she spins around and points to you.

Your hands knot at your stomach.

Shielding his eyes with his arm, he looks up and spots you. He pauses for a few seconds, just stares and stares. He doesn’t move until Sarah tugs on his wrist.

She drags him the whole way back to the cottage. “It’s…it’s…” she pants, squirming with joy as she hauls both of them uphill. She takes your outstretched hand and shakes it. “It’s my dad!”

“Sure is,” you whisper. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to think. It hurts to be so close to him and still nowhere near enough.

Joel mirrors your expression, loose with shock. He reaches the yard and sighs. His shoulders rise and fall with the effort of his breath, sweat lining his brow.

He’s older. Of course he is, it’s been twenty-five years. Salt and pepper, just like your dreams. More wrinkles, more scars – though, in the sunlight, he looks just like the man you knew. Those same embers of light in his eyes, smirk unconcealable even behind his thicker beard.

He looks the exact same. He never changed a day.

“She said she knew you from long ago, Dad,” says Sarah, beaming up at him. She won’t let go of either of your hands, a little chain link between this world and the last. She blinks back and forth between you.

“Yeah, baby girl,” he finally says, and you hear that familiar sandpaper rasp, smoothed over by a lacquer drawl. “We knew each other pretty well.”

The girl squints in the sun. “She taught me how to make tea. You want some tea?”

He finally drops your gaze. He looks down to Sarah and smiles tenderly. “I would love some tea.”

She squeezes your hand, then turns on her heel and skips back to the house.

Joel watches as she disappears into the kitchen, then turns his attention back to you.

His hairline is rusted with dry blood, eyes still a little bleary. His blood-soaked jacket is gone – and, if you know him half as well as you think you do, you know he rid himself of it sometime before his daughter noticed him.

He hooks a thumb through his belt loop and smiles, perplexed. He drags a heel through the terrain, stones scuffing under his boot. He lifts a finger and points in your direction.

“Mind’s still a little hazy,” he says. “Have we met?”

It floods through your body. That same twenty-something-year-old feeling. A kiddish glee, a teenage flush. You bite right into it.

“I was wondering the same thing. You look familiar. Did you do something with your hair?”

His head tips. He runs his hand through the flicks of hair by his neck. “That oughta be it. I grew it out,” he drags his fingers down his jaw, “Grew out my beard, too.”

“Mm. Yeah, I see that. Looks good.”

Your voice is breaking. It’d be embarrassing if you were paying attention to it.

His arms cross. “You look good. You look beautiful.”

Another little hm. Then –

“If you don’t touch me right now, I’m going to scream.”

And he jumps.

His arms wrap around you, pulling you suddenly and heavily against his chest. He’s so solid and yet so soft; so weathered and still the safest thing you’ve ever known. He feels just like he did all those years ago.

“Joel,” you sob into his shirt, and he kisses your head.

“Hi, baby,” he whispers into your hair, sniffling. He kisses down your neck and across your shoulder.

“Hi,” you weep. You pull back, cradled in his arms, blinking through your tears.

His cheeks are glistening, eyes streaming all over again. He laughs with you, shaking his head. “Jesus,” he chuckles, “look at us.”

You nuzzle into his palm, closing your eyes. “I missed you so much,” you whisper.

“Oh, darlin’,” Joel strokes your cheek, “I missed you, too. I thought about you every day. Every –”

“– damn day,” you echo. “Me, too.”

“I wish I’d gone back for you,” he admits. “I should’ve found you, I –”

“Hey,” you lift his jaw and press your forehead to his, “You found me. I’m right here, see? Feel me? You ain’t gotta worry anymore. You found us.”

He pulls you into the same bear hug again. He squeezes tight and breathes in your hair.

“This is where you’ve been?” he asks, still drinking in the expanse of the valley.

“Yep,” you mumble into his chest.

He kisses your forehead. “And you looked after my little girl?”

“She looked after me, too.”

He laughs, tears slipping though his beard into your hair. “How? I mean – how?”

“She just – appeared. Right in front of me. Like it was meant to be.”

“That night?”

You nod, welling up. “I was already gone, Joel.”

He turns away for a second, pain twisting across his face. He holds you protectively. “Baby,” his voice breaks, “I’m so sorry.”

You press your fingers to his lips.

It needn’t matter now. None of it. Not here, where the sun drowns the valley each morning and the flowers dance in the breeze. Not here, where you and Sarah played handclaps and you taught her how to make daisy chains.

Not here – where the universe finally gave him back to you.

“It happened,” you shrug, “Look where I wound up.”

He nods, but you know it’s a bruise. You know it matters to him. Matters more than any of the rest of it. You can feel his heart throbbing in his chest.

“The next life,” Joel whispers. “Is this the one I get to keep you in?”

You smile. “Yup.”

He hums, playing with your hands. His head drops and he takes a deep, painful breath.

“There are some things you should know about,” he says – and for the first time, it’s like he’s uncomfortable. “Things that probably got a lot to do with why I’m here.”

“I already know,” you say. “I was with you the whole time.”

“You were?”

Your eyes close. “Mhm.”

“Shit,” Joel winces, “I never wanted you to see –”

“Shh.”

You take his hand and open his palm. It feels like velvet against your lips; as warm as the day you met. You kiss each mount, each plain of skin. When you pull away, you run your fingers over the same lines you read all that time ago.

“See? Still the same,” you reassure him, smiling. “You’re still my Joel.”

“Your Joel,” he teases. He tightens around you again, nuzzling your nose with his own. “That who I am, huh?”

“Uhuh,” you giggle, squirming when he tickles your waist.

His lips find yours in a crash of a kiss – a hungry, messy thing. His hands on your jaw, yours in his hair. Vanilla and pine, the scent of home you’ve been searching for ever since that very first night.

You tug gently and Joel groans into your mouth, his tongue rolling against yours. He tastes like beer and second-hand smoke, like the pinch of lime and the sting of love. He tastes like you, like twenty years too long apart.

He tastes like forever still to come.

The wind picks up and swirls around you both. The sun washes over your skin. The sheets snap back and forth, drumming over the kettle’s whistle inside.

“C’mon,” you whisper, leading him to the door. “Your daughter makes the best tea in the world.”

“Hey,” he says, reeling you back in against his body. He smooths your skin with his thumb. The same honey glow in his eyes, the same hidden magic.

“I love you,” he says. “I loved you the minute I saw you at that bar. Loved you no matter how many miles or worlds were between us. It’s the one thing that never changed.”

You smile, bringing his hand to your lips.

“It’s over now, Joel. You can come home.”

#joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #the last of us #tlou #tlou fic #fic: the jellyfish

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