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probssomethingorother · 7 months

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🚨NEW CHAPTER! 🚨

Derail the mind of me: a tlou fanfic

I made you all wait an incredibly long time for this update, so you get an incredibly long chapter. Hope you all enjoy :)

Winter after Silver Lake, Drug Abuse/Misuse, canon compliant-ish

Ellie, Joel, David (Mentioned)

Rating: Teen

“You feelin’ alright?” “-ffeelnnn,” she breathed, only to trail off. He was moving towards her in an instant, practically sliding into a crouch in front of her. Inches apart, he could now tell she was much paler than he realized, and a thin veil of sweat visibly coated her skin. His heart rate quickened as his eyes met her pinpoint pupils, before trailing down to her lips, edges just turning a hint of purple. Something was clearly not right. ----- Joel promised Ellie things would get better come spring. They haven't. Ellie goes looking for the solution at the bottom of a little orange bottle.

Chapter 2/5 --- Words: 14,322 -- UPDATED TODAY 2/15/23

Live laugh love, comment subscribe reblog - that's how it goes right??

Read chapter 2 on AO3 here or down below ⤵️

She thumps her feet heavy into the moist ground, shifting her weight from left to right, trying to match Joel’s big stride. She clunkily places her boots exactly where his were and it produces an audible squelch when her foot pushes further into the now puddly prints he leaves behind. The light of her flashlight hanging from her shoulder strap dances through the trees, bobbing around high and low as her body sways back and forth with each exaggerated step.

Months and months ago, he would have told her to knock it off - “this ain’t a disco, stop with the light show” - but he lets her get away with certain things more often now, corrects her less and less.

She knows it’s rooted in the same reason why he’s gotten more chatty when she goes quiet, scrounges around for cassette tapes and colored pencils when they should be looking for supplies, and hasn’t won a game of gin rummy in over a month - but, she doesn’t like to think too much about all that.

“How much longer?”

The words come crackly out her throat, dry from disuse, and it sounds much more sad then she actually feels - which surprisingly is tired but not bad - not like most of her other days.

Joel quickly glances over his shoulder at her, but doesn’t break his pace. “Don’t know exactly,” he mulls as he turns his head fully back around, “maybe forty? ‘nother two mile or so.”

She nods in acknowledgment with a low hum to match.

He’s having them walk well past dark which is a rare occurrence, but over dinner he said he could feel a storm “brewin’ in his bones” and wanted to reach the park cabins before they turned in for the night - if she could manage it.

The ask had been hesitant at best, apprehensive at worst.

That was two hours ago, or at least that’s what it feels based on the dull ache in her feet. She doesn’t want to complain - only asks the question to manage her expectations and stamina because she’s tired of always slowing them down.

So she does her best to keep her energy up, maintain pace with his alert yet increasingly weary gait. Dragging behind a couple of steps she can’t see his face, but she can still see his head moving just a hair from side to side, eyes scanning the shadowed underbrush with open ears to the rustle of leaves and distant animal cries that blend in with their footsteps. She occupies herself by counting the times he goes to crack his knuckles - sometimes against his thigh, sometimes folding his hands together and bending them back. She tries to mimic him once, but where he continuously gets big pops, she gets nothing.

They pause for a quick stop, Joel finding a sturdy looking tree and bracing one outstretched arm against it.

“What’s those things people used to use to find water?” she asks curiously, keenly watching him flex his knee back and forth like the stretching is suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.

“What things?” He counters, voice a little muffled as he bends and reaches his hand to wiggle around his knee cap through his jeans.

“It was like a stick or something?”

He straightens with a bemused huff and looks to her. “Divining rod,” he supplies with a small shake of his head and an eye roll, dropping his hand away from the tree.

“Yeah. That…,” she puffs out as she steps back and settles in next to him shoulder to shoulder, “...are you like a human one of those?”

With one final shake out of his leg, he starts walking again and simultaneously throws her a hard smirk, although unmistakably warm. “Those things ain’t real.”

“So -” “-It’s the air pressure..when you get -” he starts only to trail off.

Ellie’s face begins to light up, a smile slowly crawling up the sides of her face with anticipation. She knows she’s got him. “Say it,” she teases, her voice a mix of challenge and amusement as she bumps playfully into his shoulder.

“That’s not-” “- nope! finish your sentence!”

Joel drags in a long breath, his gaze momentarily lifting to the starry sky. With another small shake of his head, he relents, and Ellie’s smile grows even bigger, eyebrows raising up and down as she waits for the words to come out his mouth.

“When you get old…you can feel these things in your joints.” “Ha - see! You are an old hag.”

An honest giggle slips out of her mouth. It sounds foreign to even her own ears. Joel tries to hide his grin from her, ducking his head and smiling at the ground, but she sees it anyway. Pleasantly content and feeling suddenly more energized, she hustles a few paces past him.

She hasn’t caught him up in a good joke in a while - it wasn’t a pun or anything, but she used to be able to walk him into lame jokes like this all the time.

“Ole’ man Joel,” she continues to tease, turning around to face him as she walks backwards. Her flashlight hits his form, and his raised brows and goofy grin just adds more fuel to the sudden bubbliness in her chest. As she bumbles backwards with a pep in her step, she continues to push the joke amongst soft laughs:

“Or should I say elderly?” “Ellie -” “That’s like.. less offensive, right?” “Don’t be walkin’-” “- Oh come’on can’t tak- ”

She’s cut off by the sound of snapping wood and dirt shifting.

It’s a stupid misstep. Dumb, really.

He was trying to warn her.

She knows what’s happening right when her foot makes contact, heel hitting air when it should be hitting solid ground. The wet loose earth under the tip of her boot shifts, the edge of the obscured embankment breaking off from under her.

Her eyes go wide in disbelief and wth a hitched breath, she lurches backwards and falls down.

The world spins—a blur of dark tree tops and specks of starry sky peeking through the gaps in their branches. Her backpack digs into her spine as she collides with the sloping side hard, head quickly following suit and bouncing off the ground. Her feet are over her head before she can even try to stop it, and rolls and rolls like a ball down the incline.

Her arms flail about, trying to get ahold of something, but her hands come up empty - dirt just digging under her nails as she scratches at the ground. She fights to keep her eyes open - track which way is up - but it really matters little. It’s basically pitch black, moonlight obscured by the side of the hill and flashlight snuffed out as she and it gets beaten into the dirt. Her face scrapes against roots and rocks as she rolls and rolls.

A sharp crack against something solid halts her descent.

Her eyes shoot open, as the pain splinters through her. Her jaw goes slack as she struggles to blink the abrupt and agonizing sensation. She lies there, gasping, the forest spinning above, head still feeling as if it’s tumbling down. Her hand brushes against rough bark when she reaches out to see what she's nailed against.

Slowly, she peels herself away from the tree with a throaty rough groan, settling on her back, supine to the sky. She sinks into the cold wet ground, and it’s only then that she realizes she has lost her backpack sometime on the way down. When she looks up, little flecks of stars are filling her vision; she screws them shut for a long moment, hoping they will disappear, but of course they are painted on her inner eyelids just the same.

She tries to take a breath in, but it feels like someone has replaced the air with shards of glass.

Distantly, she hears her name, but it's muddled behind a much more prominent ringing in her ears. Her ponytail scrapes roughly against the ground as she moves her head in the direction it's coming from, and pries her eyes back open. The light of Joel’s flashlight catches her and she squints against its onslaught. It’s far away, dimmer than it could be, but it's still quite the contrast against the inky black where she landed.

"Talk to me, kiddo,” he calls, as he hastily makes his way the last few feet down from higher up on the hill. “Ellie?” Hitting a slick patch of dirt - her name comes out choppy from his mouth and she sees his feet slide, knees awkwardly bending, almost falling down on his butt with the misstep, but he recovers quickly.

She blinks - perhaps longer than normal - and when her eyes come open he’s at her side.

"I'm... okay," she lies, the words barely a whisper, more a strangled puff of air, laced with the effort it took to push them out.

For a quick moment, she catches his face passing through vision as he hovers above - a complex tapestry of concern, discontent, and relief - as he quickly sheds his rifle and backpack and sets aside the flashlight, before settling into a kneel at her side.

When she attempts to suck in another breath through her nose, and then her mouth, it doesn't get anywhere past her throat. Her chest rattles as she tries again, only slightly more successful this time. "Can’t... breathe..." she manages to hiccup, the words punctuated by her struggle for air.

“Okay..okay, don’t worry, got the wind knocked out of ya’ is all,” he tells her as one of his hands comes gently to the top of her head.

A weird sort of grunt takes the place of any words when she attempts to explain that she knows why, but was really more just thinking out loud. After Silver Lake he taught her about “ABC”s - airway, breathing, circulation. He muttered the letters to himself as he rushed through checking her when they finally had put a safe distance between them and the town. Days later, after a prolonged stint of quietness she sheepishly asked, “what was with the alphabet?” He explained and she cataloged it firmly in her brain. Minus the breathing she hadn’t done any of those checks after he was stabbed and wanted to be prepared for next time. She didn’t think this would be the next time, but “ABC” was still jingling through her head nonetheless. B - breathing, can’t breathe.

"Don't try to talk if it hurts," Joel instructs, his voice steadier than his hands - they betray a slight tremble as he reaches out to gently examine her. "Just... just nod or shake your head for me, alright?"

Her chest spasms with another failed breath. She nods and squishes her eyes closed. His dry fingers sneak behind her neck and then move down, anxiously giving little squeezes as he works from her shoulders to her hands. Ellie knew it was coming, yet still the primal part of her brain starts to take over; goosebumps wash over her skin while a voice in her head screams for her to get him off. Logically, she knows his hands can’t possibly stay on her forever, but her brain is intrusively telling her it's just the beginning.

She thought this was behind her - it hasn’t happened in a couple of weeks, and even longer because of him. The burgeoning panic mixes with a sharp twang of frustration. She clenches her jaw tight, focuses on the sound that fills her head when she scrapes her molars against each other and attempts to blink away the panic.

When his eyes flick to hers after coming to an end at her wrists, they dilate wide, and he immediately recalls his hands sharply, as if touching something hot. He whispers a series of soft “sorry”s as he shakes his head and snatches up his flashlight instead. He sucks in a breath through his teeth as he resumes appraising her legs with the light - one bent up at the knee the other splayed out straight - relatively unscathed minus a small tear in her jeans.

The air that seemed to be sucked out of her is starting to return and Ellie wiggles in her spot, trying to get some sort of traction to sit up. She lifts her head weakly, but it’s all a lame effort.

Joel's voice cuts through the heavy silence, firm yet laced with an underlying concern that's become all too familiar - borderline patronizing. "Just stay put for a second, alright?"

His tone brooks no argument, but it's the worry etched in the lines of his face that makes her drop her head back into the ground, more than the command itself. She hates when he has that look - like he’s handling glass.

He leans in closer and points the flashlight just past her so it doesn’t burn directly into her eyes. It illuminates the mud and dirt smeared across her cheek, and highlights a fresh scrape that's begun to weep a little. "You hit your head?" The question feels more like a formality; they both know the answer - he can see it, she can feel it.

Yet, she also knows what he’s really asking - “concussion?”

Ellie would rather eat rocks for dinner than have another. The last one slowed them down for so long, wore both their patience thin, and made her absolutely fucking miserable.

She shakes her head no - maybe in denial, maybe in fear of living that reality again. His eyes narrow, and she doubles down, voice still rough around the edges, “no, no - just scraped it I think.” She lightly brings her hand to the spot on her cheek that stings and wipes at it, like somehow that would also brush away his worry.

His gaze shifts, and so does she, propping herself up onto her elbows with a wince.

"Same ribs as before?" The question hangs between them, loaded and heavy.

The same ribs that were cracked by a steel-toe boot to the stomach. Ribs that caused ample bouts of tears, sleepless nights, and so much trouble. At least one had been broken, several others deeply bruised down to the bone , and even when her concussion started fading the ache from her ribs remained strong. Joel worried they weren’t healing up because she wasn’t eating as much - calcium deficiency or something. When they spotted a mountain goat one day, he even barrelled after it - thought if he could catch it, he could milk it, and get her the nutrients she needed. For many reasons, that didn’t work; and it took longer than either of them wanted, but finally her ribs had started to feel truly back to normal two weeks ago.

Short lived now.

With a weak nod, she can't help the roll of her eyes, annoyance flickering through. Better one moment, broken the next. Same story of the last couple of months.

Guilt worms its way through her as Joel solemnly shakes his head and drags in another deep breath that he releases through hollowed out cheeks.

“ ‘m good though,” she pushes out as she braces her arm around her midsection and propels herself into a sitting position. Joel’s hands immediately fly to her back in support, but she nudges him off with a roll of her shoulders.

“Not in any rush,” he tells her gently as he leans back on his haunches.

A distant clap of thunder says otherwise. It echoes not a breath after his sentence leaves his lips and his heels hit his butt. Comically timed, perfect really.

They exchange glances with the sky and each other, and then Joel is back to all work and no play in an instant. His old man joints squeak as he gets up from the ground, retrieves his pack and rifle, and slugs them over his back.

“We’ll walk back to that entrance area with the parkin’ hut. Wasn’t no more than twenty minutes,” he tells her as he walks around to her back and gently slips his hands under her armpits to hoist her up.

It irks her how he already has a plan. The way he deploys it - quick without a second thought- feels like it's been in his back pocket, ready to be pulled out the minute she gave up walking, like he knew this was an inevitable outcome.

A little unsteady, her feet scrape across the ground as she tries to rise quicker than Joel’s help allows - beat him at his own game - prove she is more capable than he thinks.

“I can keep going,” she tells him sternly, anger brewing in her chest like how the temperature climbs in Boston in July - hot and thick as the sun peaks high and humidity rolls in.

"We ain’t goin’ to outrun that rain.” He swiftly tells her as if he already practiced this whole conversation in his head. It dawns on her quickly that he probably did.

His hand brushes dirt off her back, a scratchy sort of sound filling the space between them as his rough skin skids along the plasticky polyester of her jacket. He adds, “sounds like it’s comin from ahead," before she can even pull a sentence together in rebuttal.

Her hair is tugged gently as he plucks a twig out from the back of her head. She wishes it was more of a rough sensation, then it would at least fulfill the want in her gut to pry out her own hair from his genuine kindness.

He should be frustrated - like she is. It’s always two steps forward, one step back. He should be mad about that, but he’s not.

He persists in holding the one sided conversation as he breaks away to locate her backpack. She unfurls her arm from around her side and squeezes her irritation into tightly clenched fists, anger mounting.

“You know… I think… you’ve been doin’ better lately,” he calls over his shoulder while casting his light around the hill.

She wants to scream back at him, but her head is torn between yelling that “she hasn’t been” and “of course she has been.”

Her heart skips a beat, a sudden worry superseding all irritation.

Her hand launches into her coat pocket, hoping her secret is still safe and not laying in the path of his flashlight somewhere on the hill. As his light lands on her backpack, her fingers enclose around the small plastic bottle.

The sigh she heaves pulls at her ribs, but the relief washing through her body basically makes up for it, and also bandaids over the festering anger cutting up her insides.

Still, it’s not lost on her the catastrophe that could have just been. She’s good at lying, but she knows in her gut that Joel would have seen right through anything she came up with. He would pluck it from the ground, inspect it with the light, and shake his head with disappointment as she tried to talk her way out of it. Or worse - he could have found it in her pocket when she was stuck on the ground, gasping for air, unable to move his prying eyes and hands away. Had her coat been zipped up, he certainly would have seen the bulge of it in her pocket, fabric tight against her body. That would have been the end.

A long temperamental zipper really is the only thing that has her listening to Joel’s encouraging affirmations rather than an endless lecture would have made her ears bleed.

“Just don’t want you to feel like you gotta prove yourself…” he says sweetly as he plucks her bag from its wedged spot under a bush at the base of the embankment, like this is something he does all the time.

He sort of does.

Thunder booms in the distance again as he crosses back over with it - already opening the straps for her to slip her arms through.

She squeezes the bottle firmly before reluctantly letting it go and withdrawing her hands from her pockets.

The corners of her mouth twitch in pain and a tight whimper scratches her throat as she carefully tries to slip her arms through.

He holds the straps open even wider for her.

“It’s tactical…it’s not ab- it’s good this way, ain’t a big deal - okay?”

The words come out more clumsily than the last several and it's such a stark contrast that she knows he was going off some self-composed script before. And, to only make things worse, the words are said now with the same tone that carried “better by spring” and “it just takes time.”

So she knows he’s lying. Yet, she nods anyway.

----------------

“Hut” is perhaps a generous description of it before.

It’s small - an eight by eight booth at max - with a large L-shaped desk that lines two of the walls accompanied by a set of rolling chairs that really no longer roll, and a tall rusty filing cabinet. The metal yells with a long coarse screech when Joel drags it across the tile, displacing it from the only spot it's known in probably two decades. He braces it tightly against the door to keep the old door from slamming back open under the onslaught of rain- hinges almost torn clean by a rather rough donkey-kick.

They've certainly had better accommodations, but at least it boasts a stable roof that shields them from the now torrential downpour outside, and a raised floor that keeps them from bedding down on sloshy wet ground.

“Coat n’ boots,” Joel gruffs, propping up the rifle carefully on a wall and slipping off his pack with equal care.

She’s shivering, teeth clacking against each other from the force, and she knows her coat has to come off - “wet is dead” he reminds her everytime it rains - but she can’t think of anything she would rather do less in the moment. Despite its damp exterior, the inside is still keeping her warm - or at least that’s what she tells herself- certainly has nothing to do with the almost brutal ache in her ribs after their short and wet backtrack.

In one fluid motion, Joel’s hand comes to her hood and pushes it back while moving past to drape his coat over one of the chairs. The metal creaks back to life with the sudden addition of weight. “Off and in,” he tells her as he leans over the desk with a soft groan, jiggling the window latches to make sure they are tightly closed. He says his stab wound doesn’t bother him anymore, but Ellie catches his hand snake to his side when he straightens – maybe it’s more of his blind optimism or maybe just straight denial, or some combo of the two.

“Don’t need eyes in the back of my head to see you ain’t moving.” His words are interspersed by rough smacking sounds, the heel of his hand driving hard into the frame of one of the windows open just a fraction of an inch.

With a glare Joel can’t see she gets moving.

Her body is stiff as she slips off her backpack - dipping one shoulder and wiggling the strap down with the help of gravity before doing the same with the other, albeit much more slowly and awkwardly. She lets it plop to the ground with a thump, not even trying to catch it; and Joel sweeps it up not a second later, and then promptly unhooks her sleeping bag from the outside and holds it out to her.

She is much more preoccupied with squirming out of her coat, then reaching out for her pack, so she dismisses his gesture with a fleeting glance before returning her focus to her struggle. When she tries to move the layer away, pushing at the fabric on her shoulders, it sends a jarring ache through her ribs. A grimace paints her features despite her best efforts to conceal it and although she hoped the scant light would be on her side, Joel of course sees it anyway.

“Here, let me -” he interjects, tossing the rolled sleeping bag on top of the desktop and moving back around her. His hands laces behind her collar, pulls the fabric up and away, and then holds it open and steady so she can slip out of it without twisting and turning.

She lets him do it, but she also doesn’t want his help. Stillness overtakes her for a moment as a weird feeling sinks into her gut, body unsure how to proceed with the conflicting signals.

She shakes away the confusion and slips out of it much easier than she was managing on her own - his help bringing a relief that is undeniable. Yet, still, her pride bristles at the assistance and kneads that weird feeling in her gut into something more concrete - embarrassment.

Joel takes the coat from her and plops it over the back of the other chair, retrieves the discarded sleeping bag, and holds it out to her again with a wiggle. “In.”

Or maybe that feeling in her stomach is annoyance - hard to tell.

She bites back a “You get in,” - a lame quip her brain supplies immediately. She knows there is no reason for her to be mad at him right now, she’s just cold and wet and tired and in fucking pain. She wonders if he can sense that too because he doesn’t bat an eye when she roughly takes the sleeping bag from his hand.

It’s not like he hasn’t experienced this with her before. She has some semblance of self awareness to know that her fuse is much shorter than it used to be.

Now, she is always angry. It’s a quiet sort of thing that lingers just below the surface, but it’s there. It’s not just about what happened with him, but she can’t help but wonder if a small piece of the rage she unleashed then is still stuck inside her, festering. She’s always angry at herself, and when she's tired of that self depreciation, she gets angry at Joel. And when she gets tired of being angry at Joel - well, now there is something to help with that.

Her hand drifts to her hip, slipping down into a coat pocket no longer there. It's autonomic, and only recognizes she’s done it when her fingers graze the fabric of her jeans rather than the plastic of the bottle - not finding the sensation her body was craving. She pauses, her eyes flicker wide and then dart to her coat- the coat Joel had in his grasp just minutes ago.

That’s almost twice in the last hour.

She whips the sleeping bag out of its tight bundle with a snap.

Need to be more careful.

Water droplets and earthy debris speckle the air before sprinkling to the ground.

It’s a big old sac, winter rated even though they are at the start of spring and an adult size when she really probably could fit into a child’s. She doesn’t have the height to properly do that airy turnout Joel always manages, so when she tries again with another whip the fabric just bunches up on the ground instead of lying flat.

A whimper, soft and involuntary, escapes as she bends forward to adjust its placement. Clearing her throat, she tries to cover it with a cough, but Joel’s ears are tuned to those sounds, and immediately, it draws his attention towards her again- flashlight slicing through the darkness and spotlighting her. She tries to ignore it, but the longer the beam lingers on her the more accusatory it feels - pins her under an unspoken interrogation as she continues to smooth out the sleeping bag and wedge it into a good spot under the overhang of the desk.

Joel's light doesn't falter, and his stare becomes more like a warm breath down her neck then some concerned glance - that anger and irritation just below the surface begins to roil more acutely. Just as she's about to snap a retort, "Dude -” Joel’s voice cuts through the tense air, "Let's see 'em."

The sleeping bag is now fully lying flat, but she continues to pat it into place. Joel presses gently again: "Come'on."

She goes on all fours to reach for the zipper and she can’t help her face from twitching up. The unconcealable grimace has him crossing the foot or so over to her, stepping over his sleeping bag in one long stride. His flashlight hits her dead in the eyes and she squints and pulls back, resting on her heels.

Dick move.

He drags the light down toward her stomach and motions with it up and down, "Lemme see what we're workin’ with."

"I can handle it," she asserts, though exhaustion tinges her defiance. They are feeling just as bad as they were after Silver Lake and they looked like shit then. If he sees them he’ll worry, and she doesn't want to give him another reason to worry over her.

"Fine. Can I see how much you're 'handlin' then?" His tone softens, a blend of jest and concern.

Ellie shakes her head, and rises up and out of the harsh beam of light. When she turns to retrieve her backpack, Joel gently pokes her side with the tip of the flashlight.

It truly is gentle, but jesus fuck did it hurt.

“Ass,” she snaps as her arm shoots protectively over her ribs and head spins to glare at Joel. When her eyes meet his, they are pushed wide by raised bushy brows. His forehead is crinkling into several rolls, and he’s giving her that look - like he is silently screaming “don’t lie to me.”

The glare turns into a stare - off - neither blinking for a solid moment, until Joel ends the war with a shake of his head. He reaches for the desk chair and tries to swivel it around for her, but it's far less smooth than he probably anticipated - grody wheels clogged in place and metal rusted together. A high pitch metallic screech echoes loud in the room reminiscent of when they used to have to drag the FEDRA lunch tables off to the side to clean the floors on chore day.

“Sit, will ya’? Take no more than half a minute.”

She relents with a roll of her eyes and lowers herself into the chair, hand still protectively braced over the tender spot. He motions again with a flashlight, urging her to lift her shirt as he crouches down in front of her. Her arm slides from her ribs to the base of her shirt and lifts the hem.

Deep bruises are already starting to form across her left side, red skin turning a blotchy maroon. The light lingers there as both of them take in the sight. It doesn’t look great, but Ellie is glad it doesn’t look any worse.

“Can I?” he asks, jutting his chin forward in time with the question.

He almost got a switchblade to the face the second after Silver Lake. She wasn’t quite with it - exhaustion and the adrenaline dump he said - and he had gone to check her injuries, raising her shirt without thinking. Neither of them even realized she had been holding her blade until it was almost too late. Now he usually always asks.

Ellie agrees with a nod.

The flashlight casts strange shadows up on the ceiling as he precariously keeps hold of it while cupping both his hands together and puffing warm into them in one long breathy blow. He transfers the right to his left, and then gently reaches out to inspect her side with the right.

His fingers aren’t cold, but Ellie flinches at the contact all the same - skin against skin still a strange sensation.

“Deep breath in.” They’ve done this before. The air tickles the inside of her nose. Joel’s fingers gently dance across her ribs. She wonders if he will say anything about how her bones are more pronounced since the last time they did this - he’s always trying to get her to eat more. “And out.” She releases in one long huff as Joel’s hand goes still. "Think this one might be cracked,” he murmurs, "- pretty sure it's one of those ones from before, probably wasn’t quite done healin’ up.” Before - he always is dancing around Silver Lake - not that he has all the details to go back to - she never told him the whole story. Ellie bites at her lip, almost pouting as she pulls her shirt back down.

“No more walking into holes, okay?” leveraging himself up with help from the desk and a groan deep in the back of his throat. “We’ll take it easy tomorrow so they can settle.” His hand trails through the top of her head as he turns back to his own sleeping bag. "I can keep up," she finds herself instantly retorting.

"It's gonna be mush out there, couldn't hustle through the mud even if we wanted to,” he explains, tossing the flashlight on his sleeping bag. “No need to push yourself,” he adds, cracking his knuckles, “ourselves,” he amends - quickly- joints not even done popping. His attempt to soften the blow is clumsy but well-intentioned. Ellie sighs - she is tired of taking things slow - she wants to just get to Utah and be done with it all.

He shakes out his leg again, repeatedly bending it at the knee before dropping down to the floor. "Try to sleep on your back," his voice mirrors in action, dropping low. "If you can," he clarifies, glancing back toward her as he unzips his sleeping bag.

She hates sleeping on her back.

She picks her thumb into the edge of the desk counter as she watches him slide into bed before begrudgingly sliding herself off the chair and into her own sleeping bag. He throws a soft “ g’night,” as he flicks off his flashlight the moment she finishes zipping herself in.

But sleep doesn’t come easy - nothing seems comfortable and everything hurts - the pain becomes even less tolerable as she tries to relax. And for some reason her fucking sleeping bag makes every little twitch sound like she is fully wrestling against the fabric. She tries to restrain her movements, but then her discomfort just gets broadcasted by groans and sighs that she's trying to stifle, but can’t. The minutes wear on and on and she truly begins to wonder if somehow putting her sleeping bag partly under the desk was like placing into an echo chamber.

The flashlight flicks back on with a sharp and loud click.

He doesn’t say a word, but the slow way he unzips his sleeping bag is more communication than necessary.

Propping himself up on his elbows, he reaches out to his backpack and drags it close. He rummages inside one of the smaller pockets and withdraws a small crinkled plastic sandwich bag, four big pills floating inside. They had found them a month or so ago in an overturned FEDRA supply truck that had basically been picked dry sans these few pills loose in the corner. Then, he had made a joke saying there must be a God cause he had been praying for days to find some Advil. She had figured he had used them already - apparently he hadn’t even touched them.

When he takes a pill from the bag and brings it up to his mouth, she thinks she misread the situation - his joints were hurting - but then he sticks the pill between his two front teeth and bites down, breaking it in half at the middle crease. He catches one piece in his hand and then promptly spits out the other end to match. He unconsciously rattles it in the palm of his hand as he leans toward the sleeping bag, offering it out to her: “Take it.” Ellie's nose wrinkles, her mouth barely suppressing a smirk. It’s sometimes jarring how comfortable they have gotten with each other. "Seriously? That was just in your mouth." He sighs, a mix of impatience and concern in his voice. “Your rustlin around like a rattler in a sack.” She hasn’t the faintest idea what that actually is, but she gets the message loud and clear- too noisy, too restless, you need to go to sleep. She props herself up and leans toward his hand. “It'll help." “Half?” She questions. The pill was big, and divided is now about the size of what she has been sneaking, but she’s also been knocking back two at a time. She’s not an expert on these sorta things by any stretch of the imagination, but two her smalls theoretically should equal one of his. So she has doubts that half of whatever this is, will do anything - she just can’t actually tell him that. "You're all ten pounds wet," Joel retorts. "Trust me, you don't need more." “I’m not that small.” “This ain’t some expired salvaged shit, it’s FEDRA - has a punch. Hydro.” Ellie’s eyes dart between the halved pill in Joel’s outstretched hand and his expectant gaze.

Part of her wonders how he knows exactly what is - didn’t come in a bottle- she was there, but a bigger part couldn't care less. Has a punch. If that’s true, it could be ‘smydro frydro’ for all she’s concerned.

She reaches out, hesitating for a fraction of a second feigning nerves, before her fingers brush against his palm, taking the pill. "Thanks," she mutters, not quite meeting his eyes as he leans back, grabs his water bottle, and then extends it out to her. She brings her palm to her mouth and throws the minuscule pill back, swallowing it with practiced ease. Joel's eyebrows meet his hairline, a mixture of astonishment and a hint of begrudging respect coloring his expression, as he awkwardly continues to extend his water bottle towards her, now redundant in its offering. “FEDRA,” she explains softly with a shrug - not wholly untrue. “Alright then,” he replies with a click of tongue, retracting the now awkwardly hanging water bottle. He puts the other half of the pill in the bag, tosses it into his backpack, and slides it away before settling back into bed.

He clicks off the flashlight again and turns on his side.

As she worried, it doesn’t do all that much for the pain - certainly isn’t putting her to sleep.

She attempts to convince herself that it just needs time to work, so she anxiously puts her focus on the rhythm of the rain pounding relentlessly against the brittle windows, hoping it will just suddenly kick in.

Her eyes constantly wander over to where her own pills hide - tucked safely in the pocket of her coat draped over the chair.

At the hour or so mark - she doesn’t have a watch, but Joel is snoring now - she really begins to contemplate giving herself a second dose.

Just one would probably do it. And it’s right there. A couple feet away. And it really would just be one. But it is only a couple feet away.

She would have probably dove into a while ago if it all wasn’t such a gamble with their close proximity. Her sleeping bag gives her away every move, and although she had stuffed some cloth into the bottle the other week to muffle the rattle of the pills as they walk, she’s not totally convinced that will make the endeavor completely silent.

But then again, maybe he wouldn't be able to catch the rattle of the bottle and the swish of the fabric amongst the echo of the rain and his own light sleepy snores.

She just has to be careful. Make it just a foot over. That’s it.

Cautiously, she shifts, attempting to sit up in the sleeping bag, not wanting to chance the opening of the zipper. She has to bite down hard to keep the pain away, abs tensing and pulling at her torso as she moves slowly and silently to a sitting position.

But Joel, even in his state of half-sleep, seems attuned to her every movement. His hand unconsciously stretches out toward her. His sleepy hum, halts her in her tracks, heart thumping wildly against her chest. She waits a moment, eyes him intensely, and then holding her gaze on him, scoots an inch forward in her sleeping bag toward the chair.

He mutters something indistinguishable and her heart truly skips a beat when his eyelashes flutter.

shit.

He sucks in a long breath and lets it out with a gargled snort.

With a resigned huff, Ellie flops back down onto her back, forgetting all about her ribs for a moment. The movement instantly stings and she sucks in a hitched breath through her teeth.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Joel’s hand twitch, petting the ground.

For someone half deaf he sure does catch a lot.

----------------

She wakes to the sound of birds chirping, the sun in her eyes, and the smell of something sweet in the air. Blinking to focus, she finds Joel, silhouetted against the morning light, scraping a metal spoon against a pot, the sound oddly harmonious amongst everything else.

She’s buried deep in the sleeping bag, the edge of it ending at the middle of her nose so just the top of her head is poking out from the cushy material. No matter where she starts the night before, she always wiggles down deeper in her sleep, sometimes sliding down so much that her head fully goes under and her eyes still meet darkness when they open to the plaid inner lining of the bag.

This morning, she wasn’t cocooned deep inside, but she surprisingly is still laying on her back. It doesn’t take her long to figure out why. Unsurprisingly, at some point in the night, Joel rolled and wedged his coat up next to her side so she wouldn’t turn over in her sleep.

“Really?” she murmurs, unearthing her left arm, and pushing the makeshift bumper away with a stretch that pulls at her sore muscles. The coat unravels as she lifts it, a hint of a smile touching her lips despite the discomfort. She gently tosses it away onto his empty sleeping bag - which is closer than she remembered it being last night.

“You were gonna roll,” he says pointedly, turning in the desk chair at the sound of her voice. He gives her a curt nod before turning back around and continuing to mix up whatever he had going on in their janky camp pot. “You always roll,” he reiterates - this time a touch lighter.

He’s not wrong, but it’s too early for him to already be in the right. “Cause I’m not some fricken mummy,” she mumbles back.

She rubs the remainder of sleep out of her eyes with the heel of her hands and then takes down her ponytail - already partly loose - and reties it. Raising her arms highlights just how much her ribs still hurt, but she also can tell it's not just her ribs. She’s sore everywhere, limber muscles feeling more like rigid bone, heavy and stiff.

“How ya’ feelin’?” he asks. “Fine,” she lies.

Tussling with the sleeping bag, she unzips it, rises slowly, and takes the seat next to Joel, sliding her hands across the dusty desk counter as she does, leaving a visible handprint on the surface.

“Stopped rain’.” She hums in agreement. Through grimey windows speckled with rain droplets, the forest looks dewy. The sun peeks through the trees, golden beams coming through not all that high over the horizon -not early dawn, but not late morning either.

She knows he likes to watch the rain - wonders how long he has been awake without her. He lets her sleep in more now, but sometimes it makes her uneasy. She used to beg him for ten more minutes, but now it just feels better to be up when he’s up. Dishing up breakfast, he seems to catch her thoughts - "woke up as it was endin’, half hour ago or so. Figured I'd wake you when everythin’ was ready."

It’s almost startling how quick the mental image appears in her head: Joel waking, watching the rain, and then doing all the normal morning chores. He pats at her coat, checking the dampness and finds the bottle in her pocket.

A low hum escapes her again, more timid this time. It could have happened so easily. Still could happen, really. Her heart beats quicker in her chest - maybe it did happen, and he’s choosing to ignore it.

She eyes him apprehensively as he slides breakfast her way. His lips twitch with a smile, but it does nothing to abate the nerves gradually developing in her core.

The breakfast is a simple affair: two packs of decades old Quaker instant oats - a concoction of “peaches & cream” and “cinnamon spice.”

Ellie's spoon scrapes against the bottom of her bowl, a satisfied smile playing on her lips as she pushes out her worries in favor of getting every last bit of mushy rehydrated fruit - he’s a sucker for anything sweet. Joel leaves a few heaping spoonfuls in his own bowl and slides it over to her, hand ruffling the back of her head as he gets up. Her spoon moves from her bowl to his in one fluid motion.

“You rushin’ through that for a reason?” he jokes in her periphery. Her front teeth loudly scrape against the metal spoon as she shovels a bite of oatmeal in. She slows at the call out - reeling in the ravenous - nervous- energy. She doesn’t have to see him to know he’s doing that little Joel headshake. “Got nowhere to be,” he drawls softly.

Her palm tightens around the spoon as she withdraws it from the bowl, digesting his last remark. Nowhere to be. The end the spoon knocks into the table top as she fists it like a pitchfork. Fuck that.

She’s not going to stay in a tiny space like this all day where one wrong brush of her jacket means the end of weeks of hard work - secret out.

Ellie speaks around her last bite, feigned curiosity lacing her muffled words. "How far were those cabins?" “Hm?” She swallows and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand while spinning in her chair to face him. “Like what, three miles or something?” “Yeah ‘bout, but -” “ - but wouldn’t you rather be there than stuck in here?” “I would rather we be in a whole host of places but -” “Bbuuttt,” she whines, even longer. “Bbuuttt,” he counters, equally as exaggerated, “ you walkin’ with those ribs is trouble.” Her shoulders drop, as she pushes out a deflated, “Dude.” “Ellie.” “They're fine, and I’m going to have to walk with them eventually.” Joel rakes his hand down his face and scratches at his beard. Ellie doubles down - “It’s nice out.” His hands travel to his hips as his eyes trail the scenery out the window. She twists the seat of the chair as much as its old joints will allow - his body language is saying he’s still mulling it over, but his face says otherwise.

She’s got him.

With a long inhale, and little shake of his head - again - his gaze does a final sweep over the small booth, then to her, and then to outside and back.

“Fine. But you ain’t carrying your backpack.”

No gripes there - she throws a smile with a brisk nod.

He can take whatever he wants as long as it’s not her coat.

----------------

“You’re shitting me.”

The cabins are a bust.

A heap of splintered and decaying wood under a massive uprooted pine. It fell directly atop their roofs, slicing them clean up in a line.

There is one cabin that the tree spared, but it's also not in great condition – wood charred black and burned to a crisp by a wanton fire that clearly originated in the front corner of the cabin - a massive gaping hole staring them in the face, mocking their hope for any good shelter.

Ellie knows God doesn’t exist, but it’s things like this that make her question if there is something bigger at play out there, some malevolent force delighting in their constant misery.

Between the sharp ache in her ribs and the mud sucking at their ankles, the walk had been a grueling sort of slow - a torturous tortoise pace. It was a short, sure, but every step had her wishing she was already here. And now here fucking sucks. She hadn’t complained one bit, held her tongue because this is what she asked for - and certainly didn’t need Joel knowing that he was maybe just a little right - but now disgruntled yell is sitting on the top of her tongue.

He- she- whatever is out there - is fucking with them. Has to be.

She hadn't even realized how deeply she had been hoping for this to pan out until the pain of the shattered promise settles heavy in her gut as Joel drops their stuff with a resigned thud. He marches away to pick at the remnants of the shelters, appraising their seemingly limited options with a pragmatism that she finds infuriating.

Nothing can ever just go as planned for them.

A pressure builds behind in her sinuses, water surging toward her eyes, heavy and ready to leak out. It’s just some fucking cabins - it shouldn’t feel like this - whatever this is. The reaction is unwarranted - her brain knows that, but for some reason her body isn’t quite getting the message.

The tips of her fingers dig into her eyes, trying to push away one type of pressure with another more in her control. With a shaky exhaled breath, she drags her hands from her lids down her face, tugging at her skin. Her hands slap down at her sides and then she moves them to steal a glance at her ribs, pushing the side of her coat behind her back and gently lifting her shirt up.

For all his efforts last night keeping her off her side, a massive purple patch has bloomed across her torso, blood pooling deep under her otherwise pale skin. It looks about as gnarly as feels- and it really does hurt like motherfucker.

“They bad?” Joel calls out, crossing back over to her, his voice laced with a concern that he tries to mask with a veneer of nonchalance. He closes the distance between them just as she finishes trailing her fingers lightly across the one that’s probably broken. “No. Just checking,” she tells him, pulling down her shirt, a lie so transparent she wonders if it's more for her benefit than his. “Can I check?” He asks gently, hand already extending toward her with anticipation, but not going further.

She’s not sure why she says yes, but she does.

It’s a quick glance, but the sight clearly bothers him. He lowers her shirt with a dejected shake of his head, his expression a mix of concern and frustration - like always. His head doesn’t stop wagging as he crouches down to their bags at their feet.

It's a fleeting thought, but she makes a mental note to one day craft a joke about his neck hurting from all his little head shakes.

He delves into the depths of his rugged backpack and quickly emerges with the crinkled plastic bag, standing back up right to face her. He fishes out the remaining half pill from last night and holds it out to her in an open palm.

As she plucks the white little drug from his hand it’s immediate déjà vu, but she can’t help herself - “Half?” Ellie questions,, voice laced with skepticism, eyebrows arching in disbelief. She leans into it, hoping that maybe this will end with a different outcome this time.

“Half,” he responds, his voice terse, leaving no room for negotiation as he squats back down and tucks the baggie away.

The eye roll is involuntary, the sigh she heaves is not.

"Half," he states firmly once more, the sound of the leather flap of his pack snapping shut punctuating his decision. "Half now, half later."

Her lips purse together as she taps her two front teeth to the pair on her bottom, trying to think of a retort that would secure her the remainder. It did basically nothing last night, she knows she can handle more, she just can’t make that overly obvious.

But, nothing comes to mind quick enough, and he’s already off the topic entirely.

Joel motions with his head towards their only real option now, “burnt one,” he murmurs.

Resignedly, she slips the pill in her mouth and swallows.

“Nature’s callin', but start checkin’ it out.”

She takes a glance at the cabin, as the pill works its way down. It leaves a bitter taste lingering on her tongue as it skids down her throat, dry and scratchy. It feels much bigger there than it did in her hand. She gulps down again and moves to retrieve their stuff.

“I’ll grab ‘em after, you just head in,” he interjects, his hand gently connecting with her elbow. Her brow furrows. “Ribs.” He supplies - explanation simple. He’s trying to be nice, but it comes across more patronizing than anything. Amidst all the other icky feelings dancing around in her at the moment, resentment steps forward into the spotlight - settling high and hot in her chest.

She clenches her jaw tight to not put it on full display, but the way she marches off toward the cabin doesn’t exactly conceal her emotions either. His hands shoot into her coat pockets and press down; her feet stomp heavily into the soggy ground.

“Ribs,” she mockingly parrots in her head as she pushes the door open with her shoulder. Inside carries the heavy scent of ash that also mixes with a musty dampness, walls singed and wet. Minus the rather large hole in the corner, and the char marks branching out from it, the majority of the structure has been spared from the burn of the fire.

With a half-hearted kick, she brushes at the dirt on the floor, moving more out of habit than hope, as she gives the place a once over. Her actions are automatic, mind preoccupied.

At this rate she’s never going to get back to normal, never going to be his equal, never be just some kid that he has to look out for all the time.

Her right hand fingers the plastic bottle residing in the safety of her pocket as she approaches a small kitchenette. When she stretches out her left arm to open an upper cabinet, a sharp pain shoots through her side and she winces - underscoring what she already knows.

It’s spring and she’s basically back to square one - damaged goods.

Half now and half later….

Or…

On the outside, she goes still as the thought forms fully in her head, but on the inside, her heart speeds up, bumping feverishly into her sore ribs.

She knows she’s alone, but she finds herself glancing over her shoulder nonetheless. Slowly, she pulls the bottle from the confines of her pocket. She keeps it close to her body - concealed between her stomach and the edge of the counter - as she takes a moment to listen, to make sure she really is alone.

The silence confirms Joel's absence and she breaks it - thumbing open the white lid with a pop.

She doesn’t have to wait until later, if she doesn’t want to.

With a swift motion, she plucks out the cloth that’s been keeping the rattle at bay and liberates one pill.

Half now, one now, half later.

She knocks it back.

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