open to all!

[shittybirthday]

Characters: Joel and open!
Date: Mid-April through to... whenever??
Location: All sectors.
Situation: Joel has arrived in Keeliai and is searching for Ellie.
Warnings/Rating: PG. Will edit to a higher rating if necessary!

If you want to do anything specific with Joel, feel free to hit me up at spongebong!

Joel has been wandering lost through the city for what feels like hours.

Ellie. That's all he can think about amid the mess of bewilderment racing through his mind about where he is: Ellie. Finding Ellie. From the moment he woke up in that damn tub of water, groggy and feeling like he'd been heavily drugged and finding himself staring up at a severe looking man staring right back down at him, Ellie is all he's been able to think about. His immediate thought had been that he'd been kidnapped and that Ellie had been-- Shit, he didn't want to think about what had happened to Ellie, what they'd done to her. He just wanted to find her.

And so, with the stagnant taste of water from the tunnel still in his mouth, in his throat, with the mental image of frantically applying compressions to Ellie's chest while she lay lifeless on the wet, water-logged ground, as his strength slowly began to return to him and the heavy fog began lifting from his mind, he started to fight. He weren't gonna listen to any bullshit about some great evil or some asshole called Malicant. He needed to find Ellie, god damn it.

Where is she? The girl? he'd managed to demand, his voice weak and croaky as he was lifted out of the water. When none of the strange people around him were willing to answer his questions, he began wrestling against them with all his might. He threw clumsy punches, tried grabbing them and slamming them into the wall, tried throwing them to the ground to stamp as hard as he could on their faces. Where is she? WHERE IS SHE? All to no avail: he'd been too damn weak to do much more than grope and grab and listlessly shove at anyone who tried to come near him. He was easily overpowered. Soon, he was shoved outside, left to fend for himself with no answers to any of his questions.

And now, here he is: navigating his way through a bewildering maze of streets and crowds. He's dressed in ratty jeans and a dirty, threadbare blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up his muscular forearms; his skin is weathered and nicked with scars, scabs and bruises. On his left wrist is a wristwatch, the glass face cracked, the hour and minute hands frozen in time. Strapped to his back is a dirty brown backpack, laden with various weapons: a bow, six arrows, a metal pipe with scissor blades crudely affixed to the end of it with duct tape, a shotgun, a hunting rifle, a flamethrower and a military torch clipped to his backpack shoulder strap. His face is tired, world-weary, the wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead deep and heavy-set. His dark hair is greying and there are flecks of grey in his dark beard. Not a shred of mirth can be seen in his expression; but there's a look of something resembling barely contained worry, if not panic, in his hard eyes.

It's the first time in twenty years that he's seen or been in urban civilisation. Civilisation, that is, that isn't overrun by martial law, isn't secured into quarantine zones, isn't surrounded by militia, by the constant threat of Hunters, by decayed ruin and despair. By Infected.

He doesn't trust any of it. As he walks through the streets, he keeps glancing over his shoulder in paranoia. It's all too much. Too overwhelming. Too much noise, too many smells, too much stimulation. He's grown so used to the dead, dank silence of a world torn apart by chaos and sickness and terror that a thriving civilisation is completely foreign to him now; much less a civilisation as strange and almost otherworldly as this. Sudden noises make him tense; sudden movements make him defensive; people approaching him or getting in way makes him itch to whip out his pistol from where it's tucked in his waistband and aim it point-blank at their faces.

Comments

[shittybirthday]

Joel is getting mighty damn sick of this place already.

The constant throng of people. The endless activity. The overwhelming sights and smells and noise. The way people keep getting into his damn personal space with things they're trying to sell and haggle. Joel has spent twenty years wishing for civilisation the way he knew it - an organised society, predictability, the mundane life of people simply going about their business without the fear of Infected or of the military exterminating people in order to meet ration demands - and now that he's back in some semblance of an organised society--

Well, it don't help that he doesn't recognise anything. It sure as hell don't help that every nerve ending is on edge, waiting for something to happen. Something bad. Twenty years of surviving in terror and fear and martial law has taught him to expect little else.

Pushing a hand through his hair and wiping away sweat beading along his hairline, he pushes his way through the crowd, his other hand ready to reach behind him for his pistol at any sign of danger. Earth sector. He's trying to find his way back to the Earth sector but damn it, these streets are like a maze, and the endless confusion of people bustling everywhere doesn't help.

There, he suddenly realises, craning his head to peer over the tops of people's heads. He can see what looks like the beginnings of the Earth sector just ahead in the distance, if the sandstone buildings are any indicator. Jesus, about fucking time.

He pushes through another unnerving bottleneck of people and makes himself let out a steady, even breath to calm his nerves as he walks as quickly as his tired, blistered feet will take him. His eyes cut here and there, watching for any danger, his gaze skimming across different people's faces - and his eyes land on a woman staring back at home. Someone who looks a dead ringer of--

He stops in his tracks. And as the woman (Tess?!) approaches him, comes to a stop before him, hands on her hips, admonishing him with a familiar brusque tone, Joel takes a hasty step backwards, his usually hard and steely eyes wildly looking her up and down.

"Jesus," comes an absent, bewildered utterance from his lips, "what the hell--"

[nowthatsfunny]

The first thing that she realizes when he looks at her is - he doesn't remember.

Tess knows that people come and go from the turtle sometimes. She's heard people talk about it, knows that sometimes they remember being here, and sometimes they don't, and that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. But somehow, she was expecting - or maybe just hoping - that he'd remember.

He clearly doesn't.

The second thing she becomes aware of, in light of his apparent memory loss - or reset, whatever - is how very different she must look from when he last saw her. She wasn't exactly a fan of mirrors back in Boston, but she knows she's gained weight, at least five pounds, since showing up here - just enough that she's got a little more meat on her bones, a little more curve to her hips instead of the sharp angles she was. Her clothes are new and clean. Her skin has a healthy glow. Her hair, apart from the bright splash of blue in it, is shinier and healthier. Hell, she even smells better than she ever did in Boston - a fruity scented soap and lotion she's been using today has her smelling faintly of something citrus.

So not only is she alive when she should be dead, but she's changed, too. She can't imagine how disoriented Joel must be. She almost feels guilty, as though she needs to explain herself. Her look softens in sympathy, her arms drop to her sides, and she motions him forward.

"C'mon, Texas, you look like you could use a drink." Only she ever calls him Texas, it's like she's saying yeah, it's me, it's really me. "Have you seen Ellie yet?"

[shittybirthday]

Joel swallows and takes another half-step back from her; a slow, wary move, like he doesn't trust what his eyes are seeing or who's standing right there in front of him. She sure as hell doesn't look like the Tess he knows. The Tess he remembers.

Christ, the last thing he remembers of Tess is… her shoving him hard, telling him to go, just fucking go. Soldiers outside the door. Joel trying to steel himself against the sudden helplessness warring within him as he'd stared at her, started walking backwards, something resembling ugly, terrified grief trying to claw its way up his chest before he'd forced himself to feel nothing. Just turned and ran.

Ellie exclaiming in shaky horror about what they'd done, about leaving Tess to die. Joel ordering her to stop, just stop. Keep pushing forward. The sound of Tess fighting. Soldiers in the other room ordering Tess to drop her weapon. The sickening, gut-wrenching horror of gunfire. Don't look back, he'd told himself silently, don't fucking look back.

And now--

As the woman motions him to her (his mind can't grasp that this is Tess, doesn't even want to put a name to her just yet in case this is some horrible, sick joke), Joel is about ready to take another few steps backwards and run for his life.

That name, though. Texas. That's what gives him pause. Tess is the only person to have ever called him that.

"Oh, Christ," he hears himself saying, hitched and soft with a sudden realisation that this really is her. And suddenly, he wants to step right in and grab her to him, hug her tight--

He doesn't, though. He swallows again, pushing away the hard lump forming in his throat, draws in a deep breath, tries to squash down on the raging swell of confused emotions surging in him. His hands ball into fists at his sides, tense and nervous and uncertain.

"Ellie?" he echoes, and that's enough to make him break through the bewildered fog in his head. It's enough to bring him back to the present; the sounds and smells and sights all around him come back into focus full-force, like an overwhelming flurry of chaos.

His eyes dart around him, hard and on edge. First things first before he discusses anything with Tess, especially anything that has to do with Ellie. He takes a step forward, throwing a paranoid glance over his shoulder. "C'mon, let's get the hell outta here."

[nowthatsfunny]

She half expects him to just bolt on the spot - she braces herself for it as he takes a couple steps back, the way he looks at her like she's a stranger wearing a familiar face threatening to make her sick to her stomach. Joel, of all people, should never, ever look at her like that. She hates it.

But her words clearly snapped him out of it, somehow, and she lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and nods. "My place is just a couple of streets over," she says - they absolutely need to talk privately, here, they need to get out of the street and away from people. She knows he's probably jumpy as a cat on the Fourth of July - even she still gets that way from time to time when she's out in the city, even after months here.

And she has to find some way to broach the topic of Sarah, to boot. Jesus, she does not want to do this again.

But she leads the way, just a few blocks to her Earth Sector suite, she won't say another word until she has him alone, inside, away from prying eyes and ears. This is going to be a long, difficult conversation and it's nobody's goddamn business but theirs.

Her place is still pretty sparsely decorated, but there are splashes of color in the furnishings and decor that she never had back in Boston. Bright, lively colors. Nothing dirty or dingy. "Have you seen Ellie?" she repeats first thing, once the door is closed. Ellie, for one thing, will be pissed if she thinks Tess kept Joel from her, even on accident.

[shittybirthday]

Joel follows close behind, eyes looking this way and that, tense, mistrusting, hyper-vigilant, in between staring at the woman. At Tess. It's Tess, he has to keep repeating to himself over and over. It's Tess. It's Tess. It's fucking Tess. It makes no fucking sense, but it's Tess.

He recognises the sector she leads him into and the building, at the very least - it's the very same sector he was taken to earlier by the driver who'd escorted him here. Showed him his living quarters. Told him this is where he's going to be living now. Yeah, not fucking likely. Joel had come close to pulling a gun on the asshole and telling him to get the fuck out of his face when the guy had insisted on showing him how to use the weird console secured into the wall.

If he is going to end up staying here, well, at least Tess is in the same sector. That's gotta be something, right?

He's a little taken aback when she leads him inside. Colour and vibrancy everywhere. Neat, tidy, not falling apart with rot or years of disuse. No rank, mouldy, mildew smells of decay, no mustiness, no cracks creeping up the walls or water stains spread across the floor. Just a normal home, something that, after over twenty years of living in post-apocalyptic ruin, Joel had long since come to believe would only ever be a distant memory; a dream, even. Jesus, this place is going to take some getting used to.

But now they're safely away from the crowds, from the noise, from the unnerving bustle of people, Joel lets his mind return to the topic of Ellie. And now that it is, he realises there's a deep shakiness in his chest. A deep, nervous worry about Ellie that he's been carrying around with him ever since he pulled her out of that stagnant water in the tunnel, realised she weren't breathing--

"Where is she?" he's quick, almost urgent to ask. "Been lookin' for her. Been lookin' for her everywhere."

There's a heaviness to his tone here, weighted with unspoken fear and worry.

But then-- Now he's away from the unsettling calamity of people and noise and activity outside, he's able to take a better look at Tess. His eyes sweep over her body again, her face, as he takes a step back, trying to process that she's really real.

"Wait a minute," he continues. A hand comes up, silently telling Tess to stop right there, don't move, he needs to take stock of the situation here. "What… what does this mean?" His eyes cut briefly to the side of her neck. A flicker of something crosses his face, like a brief flash of pain at the memory of seeing that bite mark when he'd demanded Tess show it to him. His gaze returns to her face. "That you're not--?"

Infected? But that's fucking impossible. Isn't it?

[nowthatsfunny]

Tess watches him carefully, and after a moment moves to the kitchen to get a bottle of booze - something like bourbon, though not an exact match - pours two drinks, one for each of them.

If he doesn't want his, she'll drink it. She'll probably need it.

"Ellie's fine. She's here, lives in Wood Sector. The one with the treehouses," she starts off with that - she's been here long enough, talked to Ellie enough times, to know that the girl has become very important to him. That, after she - well, died, they developed a connection of some kind.

She doesn't miss the look on his face, the way his eyes track to her neck, and after she takes a sip of her drink, she pulls her shirt back, showing him the unblemished skin where a nasty bite used to be. No scars, nothing to indicate she was ever bitten. "There's no infection here, Joel. I don't know how, or why." Another drink. "I remember - all of it." Dying. "Then I woke up here. I've been here a few months, now. Ellie's been here longer. It's some crazy shit, but I don't think it's the afterlife. It's too good to be hell and not perfect enough for heaven. Besides, they'd never let me in that place."

[shittybirthday]

Tess wouldn't lie to him. Even if Joel is trying to wrap his head around the fact that she's alive, he knows she wouldn't lie to him. And yet--

Ellie lives here? That don't make any sense. He'd been with her only hours ago in that tunnel. They'd been talking about - Christ, they'd been talking about teaching her to swim once all that shit was over and done with, and then--

No, that don't make any sense. Even if there's an undeniable surge of relief at hearing that Ellie's fine, that don't make any god damn sense.

Joel is taking a few paces towards Tess, about to angrily argue that very point when she pulls her collar aside. He stops in his tracks. He stares at the spot where the bloodied, gnarled bite had been, then cuts his eyes up to Tess' face, an unreadable expression on his own. And when she mentions remembering it, remembering all of it… He looks away with a hard swallow. Yeah, something he sure doesn't want to be reminded of.

And he could argue that that doesn't make any sense, either, that there's no infection, that this place is some kind… what, purgatory? Was he killed when he was knocked unconscious? Did whoever those assholes were - Hunters, perhaps? Fireflies? - stand over his unconscious body and shoot him point-blank in the face?

A hand comes up and wipes slowly over his face, rubs down with an anxious contemplation over his beard before he's making a lunge for the drink. He swipes it up, vaguely aware that his hand is shaking slightly, takes a sip, and the searing burn that immediately lights a fire in his mouth, down his throat - it's strangely grounding.

"So, does that mean…?" He sets the glass back down on the counter and looks back to Tess. "What about Ellie? This mean Ellie's no longer infected neither?"

[nowthatsfunny]

It's like she can see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to process everything. She wishes she could give him a better explanation - after a while, she's just stopped trying to make it all add up in her head because it just never will and it's easier not to think about it.

Tess is good at avoiding things. They both are, when it comes to that.

"I don't know, you'd have to ask her that," she says eventually with a shrug. It's not something she talks about with Ellie - they talk about other things, mostly not serious. Anything but serious. "She's here, she's healthy, far as I can tell she's happy enough too. We've got roofs over our heads, food on our tables, clothes on our backs, no infected - I have a job. With a boss. I get paid money." She waves her hand around the room as though to illustrate the point. "Once you get past the weird shit that doesn't add up, it's good here, Joel."

Somehow, she feels like she needs to tell him that - now. Before she brings up Sarah. How in the hell is she going to bring up Sarah? Shit.

[shittybirthday]

Well, that really doesn't tell him shit, but as Tess goes on to explain about this life she's apparently got here, about having a job - that last part has him looking at her a little incredulously. Tess? Working for someone? Working under a boss? Tess?

In all the years Joel has known Tess, he's only ever known her to be the boss. The one who calls the shots, who doesn't take shit or orders from anyone.

He shifts his weight on the spot, drops a hand to the counter as he continues to study her with mild dubiousness. His eyes drift up to the blue in her hair. If there's something he hasn't seen in twenty years, it's simple stuff people took for granted back before the world turned to shit. Simple, self-indulgent stuff like dyeing hair.

"You're gonna have to forgive me when I say I don't have a damn clue what you're talkin' about, 'cause I don't. I have just been through hell. Crossin' the country with Ellie. Tryin' to get her to the Fireflies. And that girl…" A hand comes up, points with a stabbing jab at nothing in particular, as though Ellie is standing right there in the room with them. "That girl has been through hell, too. The last thing I remember before wakin' up in this place is Ellie--"

He draws in a sudden sharp breath. Shit. He can't even bring himself to talk about it.

[nowthatsfunny]

Well, technically she works for Kirk, but he pretty much lets her do what she wants as long as she keeps the books in order. It's the only way she gets along with having a boss, really.

"You don't have to tell me," she says, holding up a hand. "I know some of it. I know enough." She doesn't ask, doesn't pry, but Ellie's told her a little, she's figured some things out, and she's seen others - in that bottle, she saw things that chilled her to the bone. A man Ellie calls David and talks about like he's a monster.

She finds herself glancing away from him, for a moment, like she can't quite look at him all of a sudden. He's so achingly familiar, and there's so much unsaid. Things she wants to say, things she doesn't want to say, things she probably never could say.

She's glad he's here, it's like a burden lifted from her shoulders in some way, but it also makes things more complicated than ever.

"I'm sorry," she hears herself say quietly. Sorry... for what? For leaving him behind, maybe. Leaving him behind to go through that. For extracting that promise from him. Mostly for leaving him though. For dying.

[shittybirthday]

And again, Joel is thrown for a loop. Not just at her saying she knows some of what happened (how?, comes the thought rattling through his head), but at her apologising.

He watches her for a moment, uncertain what to say, how to react, what to even think, and looks down at the counter he's still standing next to.

Maybe if… Maybe if Tess hadn't gotten bitten, maybe they would've been able to-- Fuck, he doesn't know. The memory of her ripping aside her collar with an almost defiant tug, showing him the gruesome, gnarled bite mark on the side of her neck flashes through his mind, the sick surreal horror that had suddenly ripped through him at seeing it, the immediate realisation that nothing could be done, nothing - and then Tess telling him to leave, telling him with an almost frantic anger that she was not going to turn into one of those clickers.

He clamps down on the memory as quickly as it surfaces in his mind. With his lips pressed together into a thin line, he glances back up to Tess with just hard eyes.

"Don't," he replies quietly, "just don't."

Don't bring it up. Don't talk about it.

[nowthatsfunny]

For a moment, she wants to lash out - verbally, physically, whatever. She's done it before - Tess doesn't pull her punches, ever, not even with the people she cares about most. Maybe especially not with them. With him.

But what else can she do? Except what she's been doing this whole time, which is shoving away the guilt she feels - into other things, into her work, into shopping and eating and building up a new set of contacts. And into looking after Ellie - and Sarah. Even when he's not here, Tess feels obligated to him, feels responsible. Ellie and Sarah are his, and so by extension she has come to think of them as hers.

And now she has to tell him that his long-dead daughter is alive, and here. And will be wanting a hug from her dad, very soon. Forget her own issues. He's not going to even believe her. He's going to throw his glass across the room, maybe hit her, definitely walk out on her. The minute the words Sarah is here come out of her mouth - there is literally no way she can say it that won't end badly.

Tess has a brief moment of wondering why me? Why is this on her? Why is he so special that she's in this position now? Part of her knows, but she can't admit it even to herself.

"I'm gonna be sorry. And you're gonna want to sit down," she finally says, carefully, pouring more liquor into her glass. He really should have more time to process, but Sarah needs her dad, too. And how do you explain that to a twelve-year-old girl, anyway?

[shittybirthday]

"I'm fine right where I am," he mutters into his glass as he lifts it for another pull. A longer one this time; by the time he lowers the glass again, he's downed most of the liquor.

His lips pull back over his teeth in a grimace at the fumes and he draws in a sharp breath as it burns down his throat. Fuck. Just… fuck. Jesus, he's exhausted. He's terrified and exhausted, and both are knotted up into a cold ball deep in the pit of his stomach that the alcohol is now setting alight to.

"Just…" He sets the glass down; he sets it down hard, the glass striking the counter with a loud clack. A nervous anger is starting to push through his veins - at Tess, at losing Ellie, at having no fucking clue what's going on. At frantically worrying about where Ellie is.

"Just tell me where the hell Ellie is. I need to see her."

[nowthatsfunny]

She can't tell him like this, she realizes. There's no way she can do it. He's already agitated enough - he clearly does need to see Ellie - Tess gets it, she does, though a small part of her is annoyed, maybe even hurt, that he can't just take her at her word.

But blurting out hey your dead daughter is here too when he's like this? All worked up, that worry deep in his eyes, the exhaustion and weight of god-knows-what shit etched into his face - that'd be like throwing gasoline on a fire.

For once, Tess really doesn't want to do that.

She sighs, runs a hand over her face. She wants to tell him to sit the fuck down, to rest, he's not back home anymore, hasn't he been listening? Ellie will be around in a bit - if she can get him off his feet, make a couple calls on her console, she can have both girls here in a matter of minutes. But telling him that won't help, either. He'll have to see all this for himself. Tess knows this man, knows how fucking stubborn he can be. Infuriatingly so.

"Fine," she says finally. "I don't know if she's home right now, but I can take you to her suite, at least."

Maybe taking him there will give her the chance to work out a game plan for Sarah, anyway.

[shittybirthday]

"Works for me," Joel replies, and though there's a curt gruffness to his tone, a sudden coil of relief starts winding its way through his chest at Tess' acquiescence. Relief, and nervousness. With how damn strange this place is, with what Tess has been telling him about Ellie living here, Joel has no idea what to expect. There have been a lot of times he's felt mighty out of his depth, but this whole situation takes the fucking cake.

Leaving the last of his drink untouched, he takes a few steps away from the counter to start for the door, and then comes to a hesitant stop. He turns his head to look at Tess. Once again, his eyes move up to the blue in her hair, glance over her face, which has filled out and has a healthy glow to it that he's never before seen, sweeps his gaze with quick regard down her body.

He's trying to process in his head that she's really here. It's not sinking in. He's positive that maybe… maybe this is all some fucked up, cruel dream that he's trapped in, and he's going to wake up with a killer headache, trapped in some fucking cell or handcuffed to a metal pipe, or wherever the hell that guy who told him put his hands in the air before knocking him unconscious has taken him.

"Tess," he finds himself saying. It's real good to see you, is on the tip of his tongue. He works his jaw, stares at her for a long and searching moment.

"Go the least crowded route," he settles on saying instead.

[nowthatsfunny]

She can see him struggling with something, probably disbelief at her presence, and god, but part of her just wants to scream tell me, asshole! But that's not fair - even the most well-adjusted person from their world would be thrown by all this - hell, she remembers how disoriented she was when she first got here. He's got to be feeling about a thousand times that.

Doesn't stop the pang in her chest, though, at the way he looks at her, at the way he so pointedly doesn't say anything about what he's feeling or thinking. Give him time, she says to herself. He needs time.

"Sure thing, big guy," she says flippantly, waving him out the door. "I know all the quiet back alleys to Ellie's place, don't worry. You know I'll always keep an eye on her for you."