Chapter Text
One
Tess knows he’d had one of these evenings the moment she enters the apartment.
Joel is a man of contradictions. One of them has him hiding his stash of pills and booze like some kind of dirty secret, only to leave it all on the table for her to see, too drugged up to put it away. She would usually do it for him, conceal it all underneath the flooring so that when morning comes, they can keep on pretending self-medication isn't the only way he can get through most nights.
She doesn’t bother hiding anything tonight, tired down to her bones, with half her face still throbbing in time with her heartbeats. The temptation to swallow some of his pills to dull the pain is real, but it’s late, and one of them has to be sharp and alert in the morning to deal with Robert’s bullshit. She does take a long swig from his bottle, though, the way it burns going down her throat briefly distracting her from the pulsing where her right eye used to be.
As expected, Joel’s sprawled on the bed over the sheets, shoes still on. She could simply have crawled up behind him, but there’s no way she can rest on the swollen side of her face.
He’s not as passed out as he usually is on nights like these, when he does what needs to be done to drown the voices in his head. He reacts to her touch the moment she presses and pushes, wordlessly asking him to roll over. With her arm soon wrapped around him, he goes as far as taking her hand in his, loosely intertwining their fingers and bringing them close to his chest as she snuggles up to him, burying her nose in his shirt.
That alone is proof that he’s pretty out of it, rarely if ever letting himself be soft or tender with her when he’s sober. In the harsh light of day, he pretends he doesn’t care, and she tries to pretend, too.
For now, they don’t pretend at all, his fingers locked through hers while she breathes him in, his thumb brushing her skin until they fall asleep.
…
“Man’s unhinged. He’s kept most of us alive so far, but just two days ago he beat someone to death with his bare hands for saying the wrong thing to his brother. Best to stay the fuck out of his line of sight, if you know what I mean.”
This was the first thing Tess was ever told about Joel Miller, on the day their groups of survivors collided, and they somehow all agreed to move forth together without any bloodshed.
The memory pops into her head as she watches him smash Lee’s face in with nothing but his fist. Not the first time she sees him doing it, probably not the last either. He’s nowhere near as violent or ‘unhinged’ as he used to be a couple of decades ago, time having done what time does and loosened the noose on some of his traumas, but he’s still a force to be reckoned with.
Especially when it comes to military personnel pointing their guns at young girls, apparently.
That’s a trigger Tess recognizes, aware from the moment she made him agree to take on this job that they’d be treading on thin ice, with him forced to interact with a kid barely older than his daughter was. He’s proving it right now, beating the life out of a FEDRA agent who until now had been a pretty useful part of their smuggling trade, barely five hundred feet away from their departure point.
She knows better than to intervene, though. Tried that a couple of times, early on, only to find herself on the receiving end of a punch he never meant for her. And really, as useful as Lee had been, he was turning out to be a nuisance tonight.
Tess’s gaze eventually moves away from the man’s smashed face, spotting unusual light from the corner of her eye. In all the commotion, she’d failed to notice that Lee had actually scanned Ellie before the girl stabbed him, the result flashing red in the night.
“Joel.”
The panic in her voice is enough to pull him out of his post-beating trance, his focus razor sharp as Tess shows him the device.
Ellie defends herself as best she can. She’s only been with them a few hours, but she’s clearly bright enough to know she’s seconds away from Joel putting a bullet through her head. Tess sees the bitemark on her arm, like she’s seen countless others through the years, yet she’s never seen one like this.
It looks…healed.
The next fifteen minutes are a blur, moving as fast as they can through the rain, trying to avoid getting caught by FEDRA, all the while eager not to alert any infected. They can’t see shit, can’t hear any better through the storm, which makes them a lot more vulnerable than they ought to be, especially with a bitten girl in their midst.
Tess doesn’t give them much of a choice, quickly asking Joel to help her free the entrance to one of the boarded up buildings, so they can take shelter in there until the rain stops—or at least until the sun comes up. If anything else, they’ll always have that.
No matter how shitty their world gets, it somehow keeps on spinning, the sun rising and setting day after day after day.
They’re barely inside that Tess shines her flashlight into Ellie’s face, Joel adopting a similar stance next to her, except it’s his rifle he’s pointing at the kid.
“Show us again,” Tess orders her.
Visibly shaking, probably from an equal amount of fear and cold, Ellie pulls up her soaked sleeve.
The skin on her forearm is raised, marked and bumpy where teeth clearly pierced through her flesh. It is scar tissue, though, not festering tendrils of fungus slowly taking over the girl’s body.
“It’s three weeks old,” Ellie repeats.
“The hell it is,” Joel growls, tightening his grip on his weapon hard enough for the plastic to creak.
“I’m not lying!” When both adults remain stiff and on high alert, staring at her without as much as a blink, her shoulders slump. “Look, I get why everyone’s so paranoid about this, I’m not stupid.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Joel’s next comment is as friendly as ever, Ellie scowling in response. “Marlene told you we weren’t the kind of people you should mess around with, and you lied to us.”
“She asked me not to tell you!” Ellie defends herself. “And she didn’t tell you either.”
“’Cause she knew we would never have taken you on if she did,” Tess counters. “No deal’s worth that kind of crap.”
She didn’t think it was possible for Joel to become more stiff, yet she senses him tensing at her words, his way of disagreeing with her, reminding her that all he cares about right now is getting to his brother.
“Just wait a few hours, then,” Ellie continues, almost bravely, although the tremors in her voice betray her. “I’ve already been with you, what, four hours? Wait ‘til morning. You’ll see I’m not lying.”
Tess finally looks at Joel. It takes him a couple more seconds, but he eventually meets her eyes. She knows at once he’s thinking what she’s thinking.
The kid’s reasoning is sound.
Any other deal, and they would have backed out of it already. But Tommy’s name hangs in the air, as unspoken as everything else between them.
Worst case scenario, the girl turns and they deal with it. Best case scenario, she doesn’t, and they keep on moving, take her where she needs to go, so that they can get their battery and get the hell out of Boston.
Tess tries not to think about the greater implications in what they’re witnessing, about Ellie not turning. It’s been a long, long time since she’s had any kind of hope for her species, so ruthlessly decimated by cordyceps—and each other.
And yet…that bitemark is real.
Healed.
…
“You need to stop talking about this kid like she’s got some kind of life in front of her.”
After nearly two decades spent alongside this man, Tess is intimately familiar with Joel’s rather bleak outlook on…well, everything.
Still. She sometimes has to resist the urge to punch him in the face.
More than once, she’s envied the way he’s managed to detach himself so completely, whenever she’s failed at it herself, and experienced quite a bit of pain because of it. Hell, she’s been harboring feelings for years that have mostly gone unrequited, except for these rare moments when he’s let his guard down—something that has happened a lot less often than sex, for sure.
And it’s not like she’s delusional. She knows he’s got a point. That it’s dangerous to hope, ever.
But that kid is real. She’s bitten and she’s fine.
The key to finding a vaccine.
Wasn’t there a time when the thought of that vaccine was the only thing that got her moving, away from that door and the thumps that shook its wood?
Tess cannot detach herself the way Joel does. She never could. Twelve hours with the damn kid, and she’s already feeling invested, in a way that goes beyond ‘cargo duty.’
You’re too soft, Theresa, her mother used to say, in another life. The world will chew you up and spit you out, you’ll see.
She sure hasn’t been soft, these past twenty years. All it took was the world chewing up and spitting out fungus that killed everyone she loved within twenty-four hours for her to succumb to her own form of madness, like most survivors. Whatever sanity she had left after the initial horrors, each passing day, week, month and year finished the job.
“D’you think we’re gonna see cats?”
For what feels like the tenth time today—which is saying a lot considering it’s not even noon, judging by the sun in the sky—Tess is taken aback by Ellie’s question.
One of many.
They’re slowly making their way toward the hotel, she and Ellie leading while Joel stays back. Part of it is him playing the tough lookout, but she knows he’s mostly avoiding having to talk to their reluctant companion.
Tess finds herself suppressing a small smile, not her first one today either. “Why do you want to see cats?”
“I’ve never seen one,” Ellie says, almost dreamily. “Read all about them, though. They seem so…fluffy, and cute.”
Tess snorts, shaking her head a little, unable not to think about the few cats she’d had, before. “They are also a pain in the ass. Cute, but deadly, always on the lookout for new ways to break the rules, or anything fragile, really.”
“Aww, sounds just like me!”
Despite her better judgment, Tess inwardly agrees that this statement is probably true. Actually, the adjective that comes to mind when she thinks of Ellie is endearing, which also applies to most cats, no matter how much of a menace they were.
She has no business thinking of anyone as ‘endearing’, though, especially not about a kid they’re being paid to escort.
“Not many cats left for us to see, I’m afraid,” Tess finally answers, and she keeps it at that.
She doesn’t really feel like telling Ellie that cats had also become infected with cordyceps in ’03, except that in their case, their metabolism couldn’t handle the growths, so they virtually all died out within six months.
“What about dogs?”
Dogs are another story altogether, one she doesn’t really want to think about either.
Tess briefly looks over her shoulder. Joel is a lot closer than she thought, their eyes locking. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, brow furrowed in disapproval.
She looks back at Ellie, who’s staring up at her with genuine curiosity.
Tess sighs, and tells her about the dogs.
…
They make a pit stop on the third floor of the hotel before heading back out, to eat some food—and rest their knees after one too many flights of stairs.
“You gotta stop that.”
These are the first words Joel speaks to her all day that aren’t related to their mission, said quietly as soon as Ellie goes to use the bathroom. From the look in his eyes when Tess meets his gaze, she doesn’t have to ask him what he means by ‘that’. He means exactly what he meant hours ago when he first warned her not to hope.
He’d nothing short of glared at her upstairs, when she gave Ellie a lesson on cordyceps, telling her she was trying to keep her alive.
That’s another familiar dynamic between them. Tess getting swept up in the moment, allowing herself to forget for a minute or two that they’re all doomed, Joel always swiftly bringing her back to earth. And most days, she wouldn’t fight him.
She’s in charge regarding most things in their partnership, or relationship, or whatever label works for them, but she’s always been mindful when it comes to this, unwilling to force whatever’s left of her optimism on him, on the rare occasions it flares up.
But they’ve been with Ellie for almost a full day, now, and she’s still showing no sign of the infection taking over.
If this morning, Tess’s main motivation was still to get the girl to the Fireflies so she and Joel could get their battery, something’s been shifting in her. She’s starting to feel like she’s part of something bigger, something more…selfless.
She can’t remember the last time she got any opportunity to be good.
“Not this time, Texas,” she eventually replies, her voice low and quiet, but her tone is adamant, Joel clenching his jaw at her words. “We haven’t had a win in a while. Not asking you to join me in the fun parade, but please. Let me have this one.”
An emotion flashes in his eyes, going as far as crossing his face, something she sees so rarely with him. Before he can try voicing it out, Ellie reappears.
“These were, I kid you not, the fanciest toilets I’ve ever peed in.”
…
Tess considers herself to be a tough gal.
Nothing scares her like Clickers, though. And it’s not just plain fear either.
It’s gut-twisting, cold-sweat-inducing terror.
Part of it is basic human instincts, every inch of her body aware that these creatures are apex predators, and she’s their prey. While other infected seek to spread cordyceps, to the point of being gentle, Clickers are so violent that most humans they attack are too damaged to turn.
And then, there is that voice in her head, the one she hears whenever she’s in the presence of a Clicker, telling her to look. Look at what happens to infected after years and years of being left to rot.
Look at what must have become of your son, now.
She’s too busy trying to stay alive to focus on that voice, today, almost a blessing in disguise. She’s been separated from both Ellie and Joel, chased by one of the Clickers. It’s still going, despite the few bullets she’s managed to sink into its distorted flesh.
Spotting a brick, she doesn’t hesitate. She grabs it and throws it into a glass case across the room. The moment the Clicker turns its split head toward the noise, she pulls the small axe from her belt and swings. The blade cuts deep into the creature’s neck, warm blood splashing all over her hands. As it stumbles and falls, she scrambles for her gun, shooting at its head until it stops moving.
She’s barely done firing when she hears the loud commotion coming from the adjacent room, along with Ellie’s shrieks. Tess rushes back, in time to see the other Clicker pinning both of them to the ground, Joel taking the brunt of it in a clear attempt to protect the girl.
Tess spots his discarded rifle and immediately goes for it. She reloads, aims, and shoots. Again, and again, and again, until this one too goes limp.
Her ears ring as a result from shooting so many times in an enclosed space, her nose filled with the smell of gunpowder and burned flesh. She’s miraculously unharmed, if not for what might be a sprained ankle.
There are a few more grunts and noises as Joel rolls the Clicker off them, their breathing labored and obnoxiously loud, after being forced to be so silent.
“You fucking kidding me?”
Tess looks at Ellie, who’s rolled up her sleeve to reveal a brand new bitemark, right next to the old one. “I mean, if it was gonna happen to one of us…”
That’s when Joel swears under his breath, and Tess refocuses on him. Her gaze stops on his forearm, and the even more impressive gash across his flesh.
Not teeth marks, though. Can’t be. It has to be a cut from all that broken glass they fell into.
“We should stitch this up,” she says, and Joel looks away from his wound to stare at her. “I know you don’t like needles, but it could get infected.”
Ellie’s staring at her, too, her face even paler than Joel’s.
“Tess.” She’s never heard him say her name like this before, and she immediately despises it.
“Let’s get outside,” she presses them, annoyed. “Sun’s gonna set in an hour.”
She’s the first one out through the window and onto the roof. Good thing, too, as she was starting to have some difficulty breathing inside the musky room.
“Get across that plank and wait for us there,” she hears Joel instruct Ellie.
“Listen, I—”
“Just do it.”
Tess doesn’t even look to see if Ellie crosses over safely. Whatever coping mechanism her brain briefly came up with a couple minutes ago in an attempt to protect her, it’s already crumbling, replaced by her good old rational thinking, truly perfected over the last twenty years.
She turns to face Joel, her gaze going straight to his arm again, zeroing in on the bloody bitemark.
Not a cut.
“Fuck,” she breathes out, bending over as she struggles to draw air into her lungs, her limbs suddenly heavy, and tingly, wondering if she’s about to pass out.
She cannot afford to pass out. She needs to get her shit together. She’s not the one bitten, here, and it’s not like they have a lot of time.
Unfortunately, despite all her experiences and tough acts, she doesn’t have a clue how the fuck she’s supposed to react to Joel getting infected.
There are drastic actions that can be taken to try and save people bit on their hands, or arms, or lower on their bodies. If the limb’s cut off quickly enough, the cordyceps doesn’t have time to reach the brain. It’s not an exact science, and it’s not like they have a bone saw in their backpacks, but maybe…maybe in one of the nearby buildings?
“I’ll escort you the rest of the way. They’ll take the girl off your hands, and I’ll ask one of them to…do it, so you don’t have to. I want you to get to Bill and Frank, after. I know you’re capable, but I also know how many enemies we’ve got in the city. The moment they hear I’m gone…”
Tess feels like she might puke, hearing what he’s saying, yet not hearing it at all.
There she is, panicking, trying to think of ways to cut off his fucking arm, while he calmly plans out the next logical steps, having already accepted his fate.
When she manages to refocus on him, he doesn’t look calm.
He looks resigned.
She shakes her head. “No.”
One of them has to be the emotional one; it’s always been her role.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” he insists, just as calmly as before. “A few hours, maybe, but I don’t want to risk it. Your ankle’s hurt, it’s gonna take us a while to get there, and I really don’t want you to have to do it.”
Of course he would have noticed that she’d hurt herself in there, when she’s been completely numbed to the pain. Joel is a man of contradictions.
Not caring about anything at all, except in all these ways he cares a lot.
“Tess,” he insists, his tone more firm and urgent, now, and she snaps out of it.
She stares at him, unwilling to appear weaker than she’s already been so far, fighting against the lump in her throat and the prickles in her eyes.
“We had a deal,” she finally manages to say, her voice much too thick.
Joel shakes his head. “If we were alone in the wild, sure. But if you don’t have to, I’m not gonna let you.”
If she’d been bitten, she wouldn’t want him to shoot her either, not if she could help it, although once again, she suspects it would have been easier the other way around.
She’s still in shock despite her best efforts, making it so hard for her to think, struggling to process what’s happening, what it all means.
“Do you want me to patch up your ankle before we go?”
He’s not even being sarcastic. He genuinely wants to help her, and she truly might punch him in the face.
She’s running out of time to do it.
“Fuck that,” she chokes out, now walking to the plank—or limping towards it, really.
She focuses on that pain, sharp and tangible every time she puts weight on her leg, needing it to keep that other pain from taking over. She doesn’t even slow down as she nears Ellie.
“Let’s go,” she orders her.
They’ll see this mission through, no matter what. They’ll get Ellie where she’s supposed to go. Her one chance to do something good.
It better be fucking worth it.
Tess is being irrational, not even attempting to cool down as she trudges along, Ellie and Joel following. Just like the pain in her ankle keeping her distress at bay, anger is safer.
She can hear them talking, although she can’t make out words, her ears still ringing from all the shooting, not to mention the way her heart is thumping against her eardrums. Still, just knowing they’re having a chat is pissing her off. The man barely said two words to the kid all day, but now that he knows he’s got an hour left to live, he’s allowing himself to open up a little.
That’s part of why she’s limping ahead, too. Nearly twenty years, she spent with that man, so closed off and guarded that she can count on one hand the number of times she’s heard him laugh. And yet, she’s loved that man, despite it all and through it all.
She cannot deal with a version of him that’s letting his guard down in any way, not when she’s about to lose him.
As they near the building, Joel wordlessly takes the lead again, gun at the ready, while Ellie comes closer to Tess.
“Wait here,” he instructs them as he goes to inspect what looks like a very empty truck.
Tess does not wait here, much too worked up to remain still.
“They went inside,” Ellie says, pointing at the blood splatters that cover the steps.
The sight that greets them is not unexpected, but it is disheartening. There goes her hope that this mission might at least mean something.
As Joel explains to Ellie what probably happened here, Tess knows she should start checking the bodies for a radio or some kind of map, any indication of where this group was supposed to take the girl.
She doesn’t move, back to feeling oddly disconnected from her body.
“Tess.”
She’s not sure how much time has passed when he says her name again. Probably not that long, considering he doesn’t have much of it left.
When she looks at him, she looks at his arm, first. The tendrils are already stretching under his skin, spreading upward, making their way to his brain.
Before long, the fungus will reach it. Take over.
Turn him into a hollow shell.
She looks into his eyes, really looks, and her throat clenches painfully.
“I’ll do it,” she whispers, forcing the words past the lump.
He gives her the smallest of nods, so small it’s barely noticeable, but after all these years, they have become quite good at communicating—as long as it doesn’t go too deep.
“I know.”
He’s coming closer to her, then, almost carefully, as if he’s expecting her to back away from him, but she’s rooted to the spot.
How could she walk away from him, when the truth is, she’s already considering blowing her own brains out after she’s done with his.
Twenty years of this hell. Save for these first few months before their paths crossed, she’s never had to live through any of it without him.
“Get to Bill and Frank,” he tells her quietly, standing so close she has to look up. “Use their radio to contact the Fireflies back in the QZ. She’s clearly too important for them not to follow up and get her back. And you’ll be safe with them.”
Tess blinks, briefly looking down and away, having forgotten that they are not alone.
Ellie stands to the side, head low, curled into herself. Miserable.
“Show me your arm.” Tess barely recognizes her own voice, so much lower than usual.
Ellie obeys, pulling at her sleeve again. The fresh mark is as clean and unremarkable as it was an hour ago; healthy, even, compared to Joel’s bite, which is red and swollen.
Festering.
The thought of using a bullet on herself scatters away, replaced by the reality of this young girl, this child, needing to be protected.
A child who’s been bitten twice and still doesn’t show any sign of turning.
We haven’t had a win in a while.
Joel is shaking his head, drawing Tess’s gaze back to him, the look in his eyes making it clear he knows what she’s thinking about. “It’s too dangerous. You don’t even know where they are.”
“Tommy might know,” she replies, with more conviction than she has at any point since the museum, and Joel swallows hard, shaking his head again. “I know you think I won’t survive out there without you, and you’re right. I probably won’t. But you know me well enough to realize there’s no way in hell I’m gonna hide away at Bill and Frank’s, when the last thing that mattered to you was making sure your brother was safe.”
She reaches for his hand, his skin hot from the infection, feeling the tremors running through his fingers as she gives them a squeeze.
“I’ll get to him,” she promises him in a breath. “Or I’ll die trying.”
He’s raised his other hand to her face, his fingertips pressed to her jaw, none of them daring to do more than tentative touches, not with this poison spreading through his veins.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more,” he says, thickly.
She shakes her head, ignoring the tears trickling down her face. “You kept me alive,” she whispers, because he had. In so many more ways than merely keeping her safe from infected and crazed humans, and he knows it.
There’s an emotion in his eyes mirroring her own, one he cannot voice, not even now; she doesn’t need him to.
They are, after all, quite good at this.
Ellie’s sudden shriek puts an end to their moment, reacting to one of the Fireflies now writhing and rasping on the floor, the infection having cheated death itself.
Not for long.
Joel shoots, and the room goes quiet again…until they notice the tendrils crawling all over its hand.
“Shit.”
Tess rushes to the door, staring at the horde of infected in the distance, stirred into action by one single shot. “We’ve got a minute, tops.”
Joel is already moving, knocking over fuel barrels, and within seconds, she feels lightheaded again, from the fumes filling the room.
“Go,” he orders them, throwing a handful of grenades across the ground. “I’m gonna make sure they don’t follow you out.”
He’s walking to Ellie, then, pulling off his backpack and thrusting it in her arms.
“Stay alive,” he instructs her while she looks up at him, wide eyes, petrified.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean for this.”
“Just stay alive, kid. Heard you might be the key to finding a vaccine.”
When he turns to Tess, he opens up his hand to reveal another grenade, his thumb already locked through its metal ring.
“You get somewhere safe. I’ve got your back, one last time.”
She cannot move, not even when the horde gets close enough for them to hear their rattling moans.
“It’s gonna be alright, Tess.” He says it quietly, and he means it. “I’m ready.”
He’s not resigned, she realizes then. He’s relieved.
I’ve been ready for twenty years, he doesn’t add, but she hears it anyway.
With her heart lodged in her throat, Tess turns away from him, forcing her legs to work. She grabs Ellie and pulls her toward the other end of the building. Ellie doesn’t struggle against her grip, but she’s more stumbling than walking, letting Tess hurry them away from the horde and the man already pulling on a safety pin.
They’ve barely made it out when the whole world explodes behind them, the heat wave from the blast propelling them through the air, before sending them to the ground.
They’re singed, and bruised, but alive.
It will be a while before Tess gets up again.