whoever this beloved anon was I am so touched by your kindness! You definitely didn’t have to do this but I am so happy you enjoy this idea and I will happily expand upon it for you!
this is just a collection of word vomit bullet points for the time being but I will happily answer any and all questions about this pair!!
warnings: violence, angst, child death (Sarah Miller), foul language, the same warnings that apply to tlou, reader is Sarah's mom and described as having similar features to her.
So the general Idea is that you and Joel are happily married before the outbreak.
You had been Sarah's mother, his high school sweetheart he got pregnant when neither of you were old enough to have any reaction to the pregnancy test other than a fucking panic attack in one another’s arms. but you made it work
you both worked but made time for one another and your sweet girl, going to museums every other weekend and joel insisting on swooping you off for a date every now and then
nothing special. He knows you’re more of a diner gal than anything too fancy that makes you both feel out of place.
On his birthday in 2003, you had planned to tell him that you were pregnant again. But the memories of your own fears of motherhood from all those years ago begin to swirl through your head again and you get cold feel. deciding to tell him the morning after
it is his birthday afterall, you want to focus on him.
but when you’re woken up in the middle of the night because tommy needs to get bailed out, Joel kisses you sweetly one last time before promising he’ll be back and you can’t shake the feeling that something bad is happening.
its you that shakes sarah awake that night. shouting at her to put on her shoes when she’s still rubbing the sleep from her eyes because you’ve been listening to the radio for the past two hours, calling joel again and again and again praying for him to fucking pick up but to no avail.
Sarah, bless your little girl’s bleeding heart is the one who insists you check on the adler’s against your better suspicions and when you find the eldest looming over her daughter, blood and sinew dripping from her mouth, you grab your daughter hand and burst into a full sprint until something slams into your back and sends you tumbling onto their front lawn
its how joel finds you, struggling to keep the once sweet old woman, whose now nothing more than dead eyes and gnashing teeth straining to snap at your pulse point as you push against her while sarah shrieks before your husband runs forward and cracks her skull with a wrench.
there’s hardly a moment of pause, just enough for him to pull you up and into his arms before he’s ushering you both into the car with an urgency.
when the truck crashes, you get separated from them. Perhaps at Tommy’s side when the flames rise and create a wall, separating you from your husband, or maybe pulled into the mob of chaos when trying to escape from those already infected-
all joel knows is that you promise you’ll find him: just get sarah to safety and you’ll meet him at the river
Poor thing is already so frightened, held in her father’s arms with tears streaming down her face insisting they can’t leave you they just can’t but her father kisses her forehead and reassures her its going to be okay
“we just need to be brave, okay babygirl? Your mama’s real tough, she’s gonna be alright.”
he isn’t sure if he’s saying it to his daughter or himself.
but when he comes to the river you aren’t there. Only a soldier who points a gun at the scared little girl in his arms and then he loses everything
its when the light is gone from his daughter’s eyes that he realizes. His voice cracked and raw from sobbing that he looks around to see his brother with drawn in shoulders and tears in his eyes but his wife is nowhere to be found.
Tommy says you got lost in the chaos. Everything was so loud, so sudden that he turned around and suddenly you weren’t there.
Joel wants to go back but its Tommy that stops him, that dulls the red in his vision to a sad faded pink because his brother points at the orange horizon not too far from them, so much of the city is already in flames.
“We’re gonna find her, but not there.”
So Joel searches. for the first year spent in the world post-outbreak its all he did.
He became a smuggler because of it.
Information came at a price and he needed to be able to fucking pay it, whether it be in blood or ration cards. He was willing to do anything to find you or any thin thread that lead your way.
But it’s Tommy that asks him to give up. Not in those words of course.
The youngest Miller knows better than to say something so cruel that would make his brother, the only person he has in this world turn on him.
But his voice is worried when he asks him one night in Boston when he hasn’t even had the chance to wash the blood from his knuckles
“You think she would have wanted this for you?”
the fight that followed his words was brutal. Vicious insults and scarred fists slamming against each brother until they're both too tired and bloody to continue. Each leaning against a wall for support and Tommy’s wavering voice breaking the silence.
“I don’t know where she is, Joel. But I do know you're gonna get yourself killed if you keep lookin’ for her.”
All he can do is nod.
It’s a few days later when he meets Tess. Who has heard plenty of stories about the elder miller’s brutality and wants him to put that muscle to good use for some extra profit.
It begins his new life. One that empty and cold but one he can live.
Until of course, Ellie comes along. The sweet and incredibly opinionated girl that makes him become something akin to the man he thought died twenty years ago.
its when he’s traveling with Ellie, that it happens. When a warm familiarity has settled between the two because so much blood and pain has been shared he can’t help but see her as something close, something bright even though all he can force himself to utter in her reference is “cargo”
when theyre traveling through the woods as Ellie chatters away, probing his memory about a movie that may or may not have existed thirty years ago because her descriptions of the plot are incredibly odd he hears a voice shout for them to stop and finds himself staring at a man- no, a boy- pointing a gun at them.
Ellie stills, but Joel can see enough to know that from the lanky figure and dimpled face that he’s young. Maybe twenty, twenty-two at the oldest, but his eyes dart from Joel to Ellie with a pinprick of fear that allows Joel the time to charge forward and slam him to the ground before wrestling the gun from his hands.
He has enough to time to tuck it under the stranger’s chin before he hears the sound of the safety being turned off and finds himself looking up and seeing a gun just inches from his face.
Joel’s head whips around when Ellie’s voice calls out his name in fear, he turns to see another stranger holding her a gun point, shoulders drawn back and a shadow cast over their face by the had obstructing their identity.
“You hurt one of mine, I hurt one of yours. That a fair deal?”
Its takes him a moment to recognize you. It’s been so long since he’s heard your voice, the sweet tease when you would poke at him each time he woke up late despite the fact that you reminded him to set his alarm the night before, the times you’d chide him with a harsh “Joel Miller!” whispered in public anytime he was able to grab you a bit too passionately to be appropriate in public but the laughter in your voice let him know you were never truly mad at him. You didn’t know how to be.
But that sweetness is buried under a cold rasp that cuts through the air as you point a rifle at the scared little girl in front of you.
“You think I won’t?” You’re older now, skin covered in scars from a life he didn’t know you got the chance to live and your eyes are cold as they regard your husband. “Put the gun down and get the fuck off of him, I won’t repeat myself.”
Joel mumbles your name in awe. The woman he loved, the woman he mourned the one he fought so hard to find stands before him like some sort of hallucination and suddenly the world feels like its spinning until you bark orders at him again.
“You’ve got five seconds Joel, make a fucking choice before I make it for you.”
He looks down and realizes the boy under him, the one with the bleeding nose and snarling face has your eyes and his dimples.
“One.”
The one above him has Sarah’s hair. Soft brown curls that shine under the sun.
“Two”
Wait. No, they both do.
“Three.”
Twins. Jesus fucking Christ you had twins.
“Four.”
Joel holds the rifle up above his head and the one boy standing snatches it from his grasp, tossing it to the ground and kicking it far from his reach. He slowly stands, allowing your son- dear god your son- to scramble to his feet.
Your voice softens just for a moment. “You okay, Duke?”
Blood stains the bottom half of his face from where Joel slammed his fist into the boy’s nose just moments before, but he nods nonetheless.
Now, they both stand on one side of you and he can see the resemblance clear as day the same way he would whenever Sarah was by your side.
When you order him to hand over his bag, he does so without question before telling Ellie to do the same.
She watches him with wide eyes, her hands still up in the air but gaping at her companion as if he had grown a second head.
“Joel!” “Just do it, alright?”
He doesn’t miss the way you watch their interaction with narrowed eyes until she tosses her bag to you and you slowly lower your gun.
“Now, you want to tell me what the fuck you think you’re doin’ at my home?”
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killer in these few wano/ onigashima raid chapters is very funny to watch - dealing with luffy and kid's competitiveness, as well as witnessing luffy and zoro's insane shenanigans
and laughing about the chaos around askjds
"This crew'a a joke!" ashfjf he's right, to some extent
((love that luffy only had to say what the kaido pirates did - wasting the oshiruko soup, and zoro was on the same side immediately - this could be a great parallel to whiskey peak actually - when at that time luffy was angry for thinking zoro would hurt the people that helped them and gave them food, instead of getting his side of the story (that they were bounty hunters after them). and in this case it was zoro being angry (more like annoyed) for their cover being blown - which he made more difficult to keep with slicing a building in half). but once zoro realized it was about the food and luffy's anger was more important, they went into the fight together.))
(subtletly could never be luffy and zoro's thing, especially when those pirates spilled and wasted food. i like both of these version - in anime with zoro asking luffy if he's happy now after they caused more havoc and needed to run, as well as in the manga, if luffy's satisfied with the chaos.)
back to my previous point about killer:
yeah, tel them killer, at least your captain knows how to operate under cover during an important mission and doesn't make a scen- OH
and for the luffy & kid immediate competitiveness - it's always funny to see him so worked up with kid and law to be the best out of them
yep, idiots, all of them (affectionate) <3
"whuzzat?" "!!!" thank god killer has that mask so it can't be shown how much he's done with them, right?
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Respawn is Phantom
When Danny was electrocuted in the portal, he died, it's true, but it wasn't just his soul that came out. You could call it a case of bad luck, but a ghost was looking to return to the world of the living and saw an opportunity.
So the reason Phantom has that appearance is because the ghost that got mixed into Danny's DNA is Respawn. Slade and Talia's clone who had recently passed away.
Danny is unaware of this at first, but after confronting Dan he began to wonder: why separating his ghost from his human side would make him aggressive? Why does he sometimes feel things that he swears don't make sense? And if Phantom was just a manifestation of his ghost powers, how could he be separated into his own being?
He'd been split up before but it created two versions of Danny, not Danny and Phantom. How could his powers grow a personality of their own without him?
Each of those questions has its own explanation: His ghost side is actually Respawn, which is slowly being absorbed by Danny. Respawn knows exactly who he is (or was) but as long as he's attached to Danny he is Danny, to an extent. Or at least, Phantom, who's a part of Danny more than he is Respawn.
He can remember everything but he can't make Danny remember any of it, because it's not his memories. And Danny both as Fenton and Phantom takes priority in their mind. The reason Dan was like this was because of the influence of Plasmius and Respawn. After all, the serum in Slade's blood often drives teenagers crazy.
Respawn lived all his life questioning his status as a person due to the fact that he was a clone. Living with Slade and seeing their differences made the process easier, but now? Now he can only influence the person who has him trapped, even if it is accidentally. Not knowing if one day he will disappear into Danny's consciousness.
Respawn can't make Danny remember his life, not out of any moral or emotional reason, he is locked behind a mental block, an entire person deep in Danny's subconscious that he doesn't know about and doesn't get to come out pretty much ever.
There are decisions in which Respawn positively influenced Danny. As the way of taking Dani's existence, because he knew exactly how she felt at that time, and Dani reminded him too much of his sister Rose. His influence has also extended to Phantom's way of acting: More fearless and risk-taking than when he's just Danny, he's also more easily swayed by anger (something that was very present in Respawn when he was alive).
Basically, he can affect small things like the aforementioned confidence and anger, emotions and stray thoughts mostly, especially intrusive ones, but he's not in control of anything.
The moment Slade shows up at Amity Park and sees Phantom is when things start to get complicated for Danny and Respawn.
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