tushanshu_logs | open to all!

Entry tags:

open to all!

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Positive." No comic book she'd read had ever been quite this surreal. She flashes a grin at him, she had every intention of introducing him to her friends, even if she figured he'd be grumpy throughout it. But she also had every intention of not letting him out of her sight any more than she had to for the next couple of weeks.

He wasn't vanishing again.

"No comic book ever went that much in detail, believe me." All the planets and space.. "So, maybe that dream of being an astronaut isn't such a crazy thing now, right?" She could tell him all about it, but she instead turned down one of the main roads, and the scenery started to change, more... earthy.

She looked around, trying to remember which direction the housing was in. "This way!"

"I s'pose we all gotta dream about something," comes Joel's vague reply.

None of what Ellie has said about space explorers and damn superheroes has in any way sunk in, and why would it? To him, it just sounds like the girl's found some way of getting herself lost in imagination, in fantasies, in order to cope; and maybe that ain't such a bad thing. It's what kids do, right? It's better than Ellie seeming to get lost in… nothingness. In brooding, distant silence, where she seems so far away in dark thoughts that she don't even hear him calling her name.

Her talking about this weird space explorer stuff is better than that… right?

Okay, stay focused, he tells himself. Deal with how Ellie really is once they're somewhere safe and away from all these untrustworthy assholes milling about the place.

As Ellie points out the direction to head in, he silently tags along after her, glancing all around him at the changing hues of this new sector, the earthy vibe, the earthy scents. It certainly calmer than that industrial bottleneck terror he'd found himself in back there. Still, his paranoia is still on red alert, and every now and again, he throws a paranoid glance over his shoulder to make sure they ain't being followed.

They're now approaching a bunch of sandstone buildings. A neighbourhood, Joel realises. The guy who'd given him the direction to the Earth sector had mentioned his suite would be in a sandstone building; this must be it.

"EA-2B," Joel says to Ellie. "Got any idea where that is?"

She looks at all the buildings, doing a slow turn around. She could figure out where they were, all she had to do was remember the last foreigner she saw coming from a building. This was easy peasy stuff, no problem what-so-ever. So of course she'd take a little bit longer to survey the buildings, to make sure she was right.

"Uh-huh." After a minute. "I think it's over there," said with a point. She just saw some random foreigner leave, and that was as good a guess as any. She needed to find his place, though, to make sure she checked up on him as often as she could. While she wasn't nearly as paranoid as he was, there was still paranoia there.

And then, there'd be Tess and Sarah. She'd totally forgotten to talk about Sarah at all...

Wait. Place of residence first, Ellie. That was some heavy shit, and she knew how heavy it would be. So much of the conflict they'd had before... Well. She glances back at him. "C'mon!"

With a quiet sigh, Joel nods and follows Ellie. It's not sitting well with him that his is, apparently, where he's going to live. What he wanted to do, where he wanted to take Ellie, was back to Tommy's settlement.

Maybe he should've fought with her harder about that, he thinks with a sinking feeling as he approaches the building. When he'd seen how much she'd lit up at those giraffes wandering wild through the streets, the awe in her eyes, the childlike wonder that had broken through the silent prison he'd watched her sink into, it made him truly realise how much he didn't want her to suffer anymore. He wanted to just… scoop the girl up in his arms and tell her it was all gonna be okay, that they could just go back to Tommy's settlement. Have a halfway decent life. Fuck the Fireflies. Fuck trying to save humanity when it don't even deserve to be saved. Ellie deserved to be saved. Shit, it had hit him real damn hard how terrified he was of losing her.

But she'd insisted she wanted to go through with it, and… Well, he should've fought harder with her about that. Then he wouldn't have had to pull her out of the water, he wouldn't have had to--

Fuck. Stop thinking about it.

EA-2B. He spots the number on the door. "Well, I guess this must be it," he says, reaching for the door handle.

He turns it, pushes the door open - and stops in the doorway to survey the inside. "Shit," Joel says softly as he takes a few careful steps inside. "This ain't somethin' you see every day."

Talk about weird. Not just how unusual it is inside, but just the fact that it's a home that isn't overrun with rot and urban decay. Just the fact that it isn't frozen in time, with the final moments of families lives abandoned and forgotten and caked over in layers of filth and dust.

It looks lived in. Like someone else already lives here.

"The, uh," Joel continues, taken aback by how… civilised and normal it all looks, "the guy musta made a mistake. Looks like somebody already lives here."

She shakes her head, and takes a step inside, casually inspecting it. "Isn't a mistake! We all get people that live with us. Most of the time, I never even see the people that live with me." Because she's usually out hunting, or something. She was even trying to learn the language, just so she could start reading again. The things she missed from home, where everything was easy to understand.

But she turns to face him, realizing that this might be a lot, though she doesn't know how to make it any easier. It was just something she got used to with time, or something like that... She exhales, and then points at the couch. "Soo... I can crash there, right?"

She still wasn't getting to the point about Sarah, or Tess, and she hadn't started talking about all her friends there. But she was sure Joel didn't want to hear about the people she'd lost. Especially when she couldn't say they actually left for anything worse. Some people were actually resentful about being in Keeliai, but not Ellie. This place was by far better than the hell she'd left behind.

Without being able to save it. Everything was for nothing.

And the only person that could understand her feelings had already left once, and come back. She wasn't planning on letting him go again easily.

Joel reels around quickly to look at Ellie at that. He's gotta share this place? With people he doesn't know? Even in the zone, he had his own space. It was a shitty, awful place, smelled of mildew and decrepit age, but at least he could be there on his own.

Not that he hasn't had to share living quarters with people before. When the infection first broke out, he was piled into overcrowded triages in military tents with families and elderly people and children, hardly any space to lie down, much less any privacy to even take a shit. He'd been stuck in that quarantined triage for days, weeks even, numb with grief and shock and surrounded by grieving and shocked and terrified people. Riots broke out. Food was stringently rationed. The smell of sweat and people not being able to properly wash for days on end started to permeate the air. Military had seized control and shot whoever caused trouble. Sickness started to spread from stress and from being trapped in such confined spaces with so many people; and those who got sick from cold or flu were shot, too. Survival of the fittest.

This suite sure isn't that. But still. Joel likes to be alone.

He follows with his eyes to where Ellie is pointing, to the couch. "I said I don't want you outta my sight, didn't I? Don't like the idea of you sleepin' out here on your own, though. Not if there are gonna be people I don't know livin' here."

As a pointed end to that response, she kicks back on the couch. So, that was a yes. And being out of the crowds, and apparently alone, allowed for them both to relax. She knew, knew she had things to tell him, but she didn't know where to start. Talking about space had made her feel better, but it didn't actually tackle anything serious.

Anything difficult.

Poor Sarah, she was going to have to go through this again, and Ellie felt bad. She liked the other girl, had tried to take her under her wing and show her how to shoot because it seemed like a necessary life skill, even in Keeliai. But she also knew that Joel wasn't going to take it well and she cast her face downward as she tried to think about how to tell him.

"Joel... I gotta tell you a few things. And I don't think you're gonna like them."

As Ellie takes a seat on the couch, Joel eyes everything around him warily. He slowly walks further into the room, eyes landing here and there on furniture that isn't his, personal effects that aren't his, a sense of lived-in-ness that certainly isn't his.

Well, fuck it. At least, it's safe. For now, anyway. Better than being outside, hell of a lot better than being caught up in crowds and noise and potential danger, which is more or less imminent danger as far as Joel is concerned. He turns, shuts the door behind him, locks it, turns the deadbolt, puts on the chain. He shrugs off his backpack with a low sigh and sets it on the floor by the couch. Damn, his shoulders are aching.

The windows. He gives his shoulders a quick roll and then he's making his way over to the windows; he looks out first, gauging for escape routes in case they'll need them, then snaps the curtains shut. He does the same on the other. He turns back around and does another quick sweeping glance over the room; he quickly calculates what furniture can be used to barricade themselves in if need be. Bookshelf. Chairs. A table. Okay. Good.

And then he's starting through the living room to check the rest of the house out, to find out other escape routes, lock up any other doors, secure the place.

He comes to a short stop at the door leading to the kitchen at Ellie's words. He turns and quickly looks at her. His brows knit in a flicker of a worried frown. He takes in the way Ellie is sitting there on the couch, all liveliness and excitement she'd just been exhibiting now replaced with a pensiveness that makes Joel's stomach do a nervous clench.

She's gotta tell him things he's not going to like? That don't sound good. He shifts on the spot, hands balling into subtle but nervous fists at his sides. "What is it?"

Watching him pace the room, and the changes he'd made to shut out any prying eyes, Ellie was reminded of home, and everything that they'd left behind. It was so strange to think of it now, and yet she knew Joel was right. She'd seen what people were capable of when pushed to the edge, the same hadn't happened there. But it could.

When he turned to face her, she knew she had to go through with it. She had to tell him about Tess and Sarah. What if he ran into Sarah, or Tess, before she told him? Ellie never was very good at probability, and this being a city of thousands wasn't something to dissuade her that it could happen.

She'd managed to find him, after all. What's to say he couldn't find anyone else? And Sarah--

She steeled herself. If she needed proof, she could show him the network. She'd had a few conversations with Sarah there. And she could show him he'd been there before. She just needed to work her way up to talking. She unpursed her lips after a beat, and just blurted out the truth. "Tess and Sarah are here."

She'd never been very good with subtlety, and she braced herself for what she figured Joel's reaction would be.

The words rebound off his ears at first. Tess and Sarah are here. It's such a ridiculous, wildly impossible thing to hear Ellie say that all Joel does for a moment or two is just stare at her blankly.

Again, he shifts on the spot; he shifts his weight from his right foot to his left foot. Tess. And Sarah. The mere thought of their names conjures up things he don't want to think about. Tess shoving him hard, telling him to go, fucking go, terror written all over her hard expression. Him ordering Ellie to get a move on while walking slowly backwards, staring at Tess, grief starting to claw its way up his chest.

And Sarah, oh Jesus, Sarah. Her empty, lifeless eyes staring up at him while she lay in his arms. The cold, numb shock that had sliced into him at realising why she was staring up at him like that. How suddenly heavy and limp her body was as he pulled her to him, despairing grief rising up his throat like bile while he rocked back and forth, sobbing, holding her.

As quick as those thoughts appear in his mind, he just as quickly squashes back down on them. He sets his jaw, clenches it tight. Takes a half-step back, his eyes hardening.

"The hell do you mean by that?" he answers, his tone suddenly low, almost dangerous.

Why the fuck would Ellie say something like that?

She had braced herself for it, and yet Joel's reaction still caused a sting. There was no possible way he could take it well, but it was as if she'd never really thought about it, even though she had realized that. But she knew that there were times where she had to jut out her chin and just take one on it. This was one of those times.

She inhaled, and then said more firmly, "I mean exactly what I said. Tess and Sarah are here."

She can't imagine that would get any better of a reaction out of him, and part of her just wanted to yell at him to fucking believe her. After all of the shit they'd been through together, all the things that she'd done, Ellie wanted to believe that Joel knew she wouldn't fucking lie about this.

She swore. She knew she had to have a damn good reason to break that promise, and this was it.

"You just--" A step forward this time, his hand extended and pointed at Ellie like he's moments from losing his shit with her. His voice is still low, growing harder against her insistence that Tess and Sarah are-- "You better fuckin' stop. Stop right there."

His finger curls in, hand balling into a fist. And then, he turns away sharply and goes to pace off, his hand now rubbing anxiously across his prickly beard. He only makes it a few paces away; he turns back to Ellie and begins heading back towards her.

"D'you have," he continues, hand held out again as though to tell her not to damn well interrupt him while he's speaking, "any god damn idea what I've been through? Wakin' up in whatever the god damn hell this place is s'posed to be, thinkin' that you were dead? And you wanna go and pull shit on me like that?"

That wasn't what she was expecting, and she quickly shakes her head, spreading out her arms. "It's the exact same fucking thing I went through when I got here! You were gone and suddenly I had no clue where the hell I was, after we got trapped in that fucking tunnel." She swallowed and declined to explain that she was pretty sure she was dead.

She didn't want to throw that out there.

"And it's the same fucking thing Tess and Sarah went through, and they're gonna want to see you." She stands suddenly, and marches towards the console. "Let me... Just let me fucking show you. I've talked to Sarah and Tess on this thing before."

She was flipping through conversations, expertly, her side to him. If she couldn't get him to believe her, she'd show him. The audio rings out soon after.

Oh come on, Tess! Don't be like Joel! 'Sides, I already saw stuff like that in some magazines I stole from Bill. Read the articles and everything.

Sometimes Joel is right, y'know. And seein' some stuff in a magazine doesn't make you an expert. Trust me, that shit's not... realistic.

She stops it abruptly, and then plays a video recording next.

"... They're here."

Yeah, that tunnel. That fucking tunnel. Fucking Christ--

"Ellie," Joel cuts in sharply over the top of her saying Tess and Sarah will want to see him. And suddenly, he don't feel too good. Suddenly, between the flooding relief of knowing that Ellie is alive and hearing the unsettling conviction in Ellie's voice about Tess and Sarah, Joel don't feel good at all.

"Ellie, you need to stop--" he begins, his voice suddenly rough, as she's marching her way over to the console.

And suddenly, he's hearing Ellie's voice over the console. Saying Tess' name. And then-- Tess' voice. Joel goes stock still. He goes stock fucking still. Feels a twist of something sharp and terrifying coiling inside him.

"Ellie--"

And then--

Sarah's voice. The glow of an image on the screen has Joel staring at it and he can see, even from all the way over the other side of the room, that it's Sarah. Her voice. Her face. Alive. He starts slowly walking towards it, his face draining of colour, the hardness in his eyes draining into something unreadable.

"Yeah, okay I-- Wait," he's hearing Sarah say, and it's suddenly like he's in a long tunnel, like nothing around him is real, "You found ice cream in this place?" And Ellie replying that, yeah, this place has ice cream, best way to start the day! "Oh maaan, it's been forever since I had ice cream."

He stops. Begins walking slowly backwards, like he can't handle it. His foot connects with the leg of a chair he doesn't realise is behind him; he stumbles, the chair legs scape across the floor, he grabs hold of the chair with a fumble of hands. Eyes still staring at the screen. At Sarah. His little girl.

"Oh, god," he hears his mouth saying in a hitched whisper.

"They. Are. Here," Ellie says, pointing at the screen for emphasis. There was no misunderstanding it, there was no faking any of those conversations. She shuts off the console, but stayed next to it. She knew she'd possibly done something cruel. But part of her thinks, Better me than Sarah. Better Joel get the worst of it out with her, than to put Sarah through that again.

But she couldn't make herself move forward, in part because she knew she'd been cruel, just throwing that at him. She knew that Joel had erected barrier after barrier up, she'd had to claw through every single one of them, and there was no getting around that she'd just tried to viciously dispatch them.

For her own ease.

She swallowed, and rocked from one foot to the other. "Joel, I--" a pause while she tried to think of how she could even start. And the only start that was coming was, "I'm sorry. I didn't... know what else to do. To make you believe me." She felt horrible. Not even vindicated, just horrible.

Hand still gripping the back of the chair, Joel numbly, slowly sits down.

This is like those dreams he sometimes has - those dreams where Sarah is alive and everything feels disjointed and like everything is a lie. Those dreams where his grief is confused with the bewildering elation of her being alive. Those dreams where the part of him left hollow by her death is filled whole again. Those dreams where she's looking up at him with those blue eyes and telling him, Why didn't you come to find me? I've been waiting for you to find me, daddy. Or those dreams where she's saying, Why did you leave me, daddy?

Dreams he always wakes up from feeling disoriented and filled with terrifying hope that Sarah is alive, only for reality to come crashing down on him seconds later and the gaping hole of loss to tear open all over again.

He feels like he's simultaneously trapped in one of those dreams and only just woken up from one at the same time. The gaping hole of loss in his chest feels like it's been ripped wide open and bleeding.

He feels sick. He feels... fuck, he doesn't know. Like nothing around him is real. Derealised. Depersonalised from everything.

"Ellie," is all he says, soft, vacant but commanding. An unspoken command for her to stop speaking. Just stop.

Elbows propping on his knees, he drops his head into his hands. It's on the tip of his tongue to tell her to leave. To tell her to get the hell out of his sight. But somewhere within the fog of shock in his head, he knows he can't send her back out there, not after having almost fucking lost her, too.

Edited (SENTENCE FAIL kdjgfdf) 2014-04-17 04:44 (UTC)

Ellie shuts her mouth, recognizing the tone. She was right. She'd went too far, but she had to remind herself that anything would have been too far. There was no way this could have been painless and easy. So, she takes a step towards him, before detouring to the couch, sitting there.

She probably should leave, but even if he wanted her to, she wasn't going anywhere. He was back, and there was a part of her that worried she'd have to do this all over again if she let him out of her sight. He'd go away again, and even this would have been for nothing.

So she sits there, looking at him, and then looking away. What did she do? Part of her wondered if raiding the fridge, food for both of them... if that was a good response. But the more sensible part of her realizes, no, no it isn't. Joel was probably still recovering, and all she'd done was make things worse. But I'm glad you're back, she thinks, as she fidgets with her sleeves.

Joel barely hears Ellie's footfalls retreat from the room. He remains seated like he is, head in his hands, staring numbly at the floor. It feels like ages that he just sits there like that. Maybe it's only a couple of minutes. Maybe it's a lot longer than that.

Eventually, he lifts his head, drops his hands to dangle between his knees, eyes cutting over to the console. Slowly, very slowly, he rises from the chair and almost starts to make his way over to the console - but stops before he makes it not more than a step away from the chair. There's a strong pull in him to go over to the console, find that video, watch it again but--

No. No, he can't handle this. This is too… This is too fucking much. This has gotta be some kind of… some kind of cruel fucking joke. Some kind of disgusting, cruel prank. He squashes down hard, as hard as he can, on the sudden desperate rush of wanting, needing to see for himself that Sarah is alive. To find her, look at her, hold her. Hell no. No. Doesn't matter how much Ellie insists this is real, that Sarah is alive, there's no way he's going to risk going through having hope crushed.

He lifts his hand and rubs it over his mouth, over his beard, throws a glance towards where Ellie is on the couch. And then, he's heading for the living room, and he stops in the doorway, his eyes hard.

He opens his mouth. And suddenly, he's horrified to feel a lump forming in the back of his throat. He snaps his mouth shut again, jaw clenched tight.

"We're leavin'." He moves into the room, heading straight for his backpack. "We're gonna get outta here, find our way back to Tommy's settlement, just like I shoulda done ages ago."

She watches him pace for a minute, and she thinks he might go to the console. But he doesn't, and her head falls again. You done fucked up, Ellie. She keeps her silence, in part because she doesn't know what to say, and in part because she knows he wants it right them.

If she knew what he was thinking... if only. But when he speaks, she immediately stands up. "We can't!" But logic isn't good enough here. "Where would we fucking go?! We're on the back of a god damn turtle!" She gestures around her, as though the apartment would reveal that.

"We're trapped here, for better or worse, and I thought you'd be glad to be away from the fucking infection!"

Joel ignores Ellie as she jumps off the couch, protests, argues that they can't leave, that they're on the back of a turtle. Yeah, right. A fucking turtle. A fucking turtle, where his daughter is alive and Tess is alive, and--

Nope. He hefts one strap of his backpack onto his shoulder, slips his arm through the other. Shrugs the back onto his shoulders. They're leaving. His mind is all made up. They're leaving. End of fucking story.

As Ellie argues that they're trapped here, that she thought he'd be glad to be away from the infection, Joel reels around on her, eyes flashing angrily.

"We are leaving!" He slashes his hand through the air; a sharp, terse motion to tell her to quit arguing with him. "End of story. Now, get movin'. We're gettin' your stuff and gettin' the hell outta here."

A stare. He couldn't be serious-- that couldn't be his answer to everything, not after all of that. She couldn't let him go do something as stupid as jump out into the ocean, even if the barrier would probably stop him before he got far. But she's shocked, and not in a good way.

"We can't. And if we could-- what happened to finding the Fireflies?!" She draws herself up, standing tall. "We can't just run away from here, or from that. I told you, I don't want everything we went through to be for nothing. Besides that--" she bites back her words. She's pushing it, she's pushing it way too hard, and she doesn't want to deal with the disappointment that she was dead.

The cure wasn't going anywhere. And neither were they. Her hands clench into fists, and she just wants him to stop for a moment. "At least wait, we have a place to stay and there's food here. And you just fucking got here." He was probably still weak from that.

If he could even find a fucking pallet for her to rest on, what made him think he could kick it like he did back home?

"Yeah? You don't want it to be for nothin'?" he fires back.

Jesus, he feels so weak, but anger and some kind of confused terror is making his adrenalin pump hard through his body. He lifts an arm, points his finger with a hard stab as if pointing back at that fucking tunnel they'd both been in.

"I had to drag your god damn lifeless body outta that water. If you weren't standin' here," a pointing stab to the floor now as he takes a half step closer to Ellie, "right now, alive, then all of that would've been for nothin'. Fuck the Fireflies." Another slash of his hand across the air, indicating that that is final. "We are leaving."

She pauses, and then the word rings out clear. "No."

No, she wasn't leaving. No, they couldn't actually leave. The look on her face said she wasn't going to be cowed that easily on this. She'd gotten far too used to life on the turtle-- and it was better than what she left behind. While she wanted nothing more than to help find the cure for humanity, to give everyone a chance to stop being shitheads... That time was gone. Impossible, even.

"No, we are not leaving. Did you even listen when they brought you here? This is the land between dreaming and death." She emphasizes her last sentence, with strong pauses between the words 'dreaming and death'. He needed to accept it. "This isn't some-- ship that's only a couple miles away from the coast. People come here when they're dreaming... or they are dead."

Her own hands were balled into frustrated fists, confident enough in her place with Joel that she could even begin to say all of that to him. "Just fucking listen to me!"

No. No. He is not going to listen to this. He is not going to--

Joel abruptly turns away from Ellie, starts stalking off with a furious shake of his head - but then he's turning on his heel again, pacing right back towards her. Pacing, almost like a wild animal trapped in a cage. He doesn't know what to do with himself, where to put himself, how to even stand still, not while his head is reeling with things he doesn't know how to handle.

"Did you even listen to what I just told you?" Joel fires back, eyes blazing with anger. "Huh? I had to drag your god damn body outta the water. I woke up in this place, convinced," a hand now levelled out at Ellie like she better damn well listen to him and had better not fucking interrupt him, "that I'd been kidnapped and that you--"

Shit, his voice suddenly wavers, thick and rough. "You do what I damn well say, when I damn well say it," he continues, his voice so tight with something fierce and indescribable that it's close to breaking. "And I am sayin' that we are leavin'. I am not gonna risk losin'--"

--losing you again the way I lost Sarah, but he can't bring himself to finish the sentence because Sarah, Christ, Sarah - her face on that video comes slamming back into his head, and suddenly Joel turns away from Ellie again, starts pacing away from her, then paces back a few steps, paces away, paces back, eyes no longer furious and fixed on her but lost somewhere in some unspoken, locked in panic while he's anxiously rubbing his hand over his beard.

Edited 2014-04-19 01:21 (UTC)

She doesn't recognize that look, and it's strange because she's seen a lot of different looks from him. But this one is bordering on... panic? Joel didn't panic. It was a weird thing to behold, and she didn't quite know how to respond. So, she went off her gut, which... Well, it had led her wrong before. But it was all she had. Thinking rationally hadn't worked very well for her so far. So, she responds again. "No."

She steps forward, breaking her position. Her gut was telling her she needed to be firm in this, if only because he was asking her to leave behind six months of friends and good memories. But she knew they couldn't leave, and he was just trying to run away from a possibility he'd never considered in his life. She'd thought it was fucking weird to see Sarah, the girl she knew only from a photograph, the first time too.

But she liked her, and she wanted her and Joel to meet. She wanted Joel to see what this place was like.

"I'm sorry you put all that behind you as best as you could, and that this place changes all of that, but I am not leaving. And neither should you."

She inhales. "I got people I hope to fuck don't show up here too, and people I do. And... either way, I'm not going."

open to all!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)