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Tommy.
It stung. The sensation rising up through her stomach and into her throat, like a swarm of poison tipped butterfly wings fighting their way out.
In all the months they’d spent trekking across the country, Ellie had never once expected them to actually find Joel’s brother alive. Those were just the odds. But there he was, hugging Joel with an ear to ear grin on his face. And Joel was hugging him back.
She didn’t even think Joel knew how to hug. Hauling her up, pulling her down, grabbing her wrist to run? Sure. But that was direction, instruction - affectionate physical contact? Joel just didn’t do that. Because if he did, surely at some point over the past four months he would have offered her something . But he hadn’t, because he wasn’t programmed that way. At least, that’s what she thought before today.
But now she saw stone-cold, barely-let’s-himself-crack-a-smile, you’re-just-cargo Joel embracing his brother without an ounce of reservation. He was laughing and smiling so genuinely that it almost felt wrong to watch. She was the outsider again, eavesdropping on this private moment.
She fidgeted with the reins and patted her leg absently. Less than a minute, that’s how long it took for her to become an afterthought.
~
Let’s mind our manners.
The correction felt foreign and disorienting and only made her want to chew louder. Joel didn’t care about manners. She knew he wasn’t as much of an asshole as he pretended to be. That all his hard edges, heavy steps, and cold shoulders were shaped by years of survival. But he was practical and efficient and things like manners wouldn’t help with survival.
She didn’t recognize this hugging-laughing-smiling, mind-your-manners, soft-spoken version of Joel. Drawing out the occasional sincere laugh had been a challenge she’d gladly taken on. She had worked for those rare moments for months, and it had been work . Joel’s amusement or approval were not easily given. But when one of her lame puns landed just right and he couldn’t quite stifle his laugh, or when she managed to find something useful while scavenging through the remains of Before and he gave one of those small nods, a warm sense of satisfaction spread throughout body, tingling across her skin. Worth it. Always worth it.
It occurred to her that maybe his amusement and approval were just not easily given to her . All this time she thought she had been seeing parts of him that he refused to share with anyone but she was only getting glimpses of who he was with those he trusted. She thought he trusted her, at least a little. But something had shifted with Tommy. This must be the real Joel, the Joel from Before. All she got was the After.
Just for family.
She knew his words were to dismiss Maria. It was obvious he didn’t trust her, at least not the way he trusted his brother. But the word drew a boundary around Joel and Tommy and, even though he made no explicit indication of it, Ellie was outside that boundary as well. Family. It was a word that would never describe them - never describe her .
She knew this. It wasn’t a new development. Ellie was cargo, not family - cargo .
Still, they’d been some kind of team these months, hadn’t they? Time had tied them together with a messy tether that at the very least, resembled something like belonging. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe she was so lonely and so desperate that she’d made something out of nothing. The inevitable consequence of the blind trust and wishful thinking of a naïve teenager who didn’t know any better.
~
Joel?
Something pressed up in her lungs when he stepped away. Her feet were already, instinctively, poised to follow him. This town was foreign and unfamiliar. And for the last four months she could probably count on one hand the number of minutes they’d spent out of each others’ line of sight. He had been warmer all around since entering Jackson, but something of that stiffness and distance from their first few weeks on the road had returned between them. Set aside like the cargo she was, until their journey resumed.
He assured her it was okay to go with Maria and she trusted his judgment. But he didn’t meet her gaze when he said it and she couldn’t shake the feeling of being left as she watched him walk away.
He matched his brother’s stride; a synchronicity that she had thought only existed between the two of them. A reminder that no matter how close the seemingly endless weeks of travel had made them feel, they were still two separate people. Joel was her protector, tasked with her transport, but he was never hers .
She knew that - had reminded herself of it many, many times. So why did it feel like she was losing him?
~
Sarah - Joel’s daughter.
Oh .
It felt like missing a step up the stairs.
That explained… a lot, actually. It explained the cavernous hole within him - the devastation that hung over him like a heavy coat. His insistence that Ellie was just cargo and they keep their histories to themselves. She was confident she knew Joel better than Maria did but maybe not as well as she thought.
He had a daughter. Her stomach twisted into a smoldering ember of something she didn’t recognize and couldn’t describe. She wished she could reach down her throat and pull it out. Did he think of her when he looked at Ellie? She hoped he never did; she couldn’t compete with a ghost. She hoped he always did; it was the closest to a daughter she would ever be.
She defended him and silently hoped he wouldn’t make her look like the fool she already felt she was.
~
I have to leave her.
There it was. Confirmation of the suspicion that had been festering in her gut since they first set foot in Jackson. Joel was going to leave her - had already stepped away.
She should have known. Some part of her had, considering how he had barely managed to look at her since they arrived. She was so fucking stupid to think that for once in her shitty life, someone would actually stick around. The worst part was knowing that while she had been defending him, he had been arranging the hand off. Too much of a coward to tell her first.
Fuck him.
~
I'm not her.
She sure as hell wasn't. She was a job that he’d finished and nothing more. She wasn’t his responsibility, she wasn’t his. And it was about damn time they stopped acting like the truth was anything different.
They were always going to go their separate ways eventually and doing it now just made sense. Tommy was the better choice. Whether she believed him or not, Tommy was the safer choice. He would make sure she got to the fireflies. That was what mattered. That was the only thing that mattered.
But the tension in his chest that had been building for months did not ease.
~
You ain’t my daughter and I sure as hell ain’t your dad. Tomorrow we’ll go our separate ways.
She hadn’t slept much that night. Her brain wouldn’t stop replaying Joel’s words over and over again. Like she was some kind of pathetic idiot. She knew she wasn’t his daughter. She didn’t belong to anyone; never had and never would.
She wanted to peel her skin off, inch by mortifying inch. To rid herself of the embarrassment that must have been so painfully transparent. Of course he didn’t want her, of course he didn’t care. She was angry and broken and wrong. More trouble than she was worth. The only good thing she had was her damn immunity. A fluke.
But she still couldn’t strangle the hope in her chest that the boots coming up the stairs belonged to Joel. If she knew him as well as she thought, it would be him. She hated herself for how much she wanted it to be him and even more for how she still managed to be disappointed when it wasn’t.
~
He didn’t know if she would care that he came back and the regret burned at the back of his throat and down into his lungs. After two decades of surviving it was no wonder the words he’d shot out last night had been aimed to kill. He’d laid awake chewing on the bitter aftertaste for hours and now wished he could collect them and shove each one back down his throat. He knew it was selfish, a last ditch attempt to cleave the bond that had grown between the two of them in the name of self preservation. But he couldn’t help it, he was, first and foremost, a survivor.
Let’s go.
The abruptness cut off the tail end of the sentence he’d been building up for the last thirty minutes. He shouldn’t have been surprised, really, she had made her preference clear last night.
The tension in his chest eased if only a fraction.
~
Okay.
Joel gave her a choice and she didn’t hesitate before shoving the bag into his arms and turning to the horse. She wanted to ask what changed or crack a joke about knowing he would cave. But she didn’t care and didn’t want to risk saying the wrong thing again. She knew he didn’t see her as a daughter and she knew he never would. And she was okay with that; she didn’t want to be a replacement for the one he’d lost.
She got him back. He would be her escort again, her protector. And if that was the most she ever got, it would be enough. It would have to be enough.
She knew it wouldn’t be. But she could pretend for a while longer.