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Safe as Houses

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Summary:

Joel can't undo what happened, but he can help her heal.

When he suggests they head back to Jackson, she agrees.

The cycle repeats ten times. Her silence. His rambling. More silence, when he runs out of things to say and his stitches rub his skin raw. Encouraging her to eat food she can't even look at. Sleeping within arm's reach. Waking up a few hours later to screams caused by a nightmare she won't breathe a word about.

He doesn't tell her he's getting weaker. He blames his stumbles on invisible branches and his pained grunts on his aching knees and the snow.

He stops asking why she's so quiet, and she never mentions his side. They return to the same stilted, one-sided conversations from when they first met, their roles reversed.

When he hears the hooves five miles outside Jackson, he nearly collapses on the spot.

By some miracle, he makes it all the way to the fence before he does.

OR

Making it back to Jackson doesn't promise Joel and Ellie safety. But it does offer them one thing the open road didn't: a home.

Notes:

Hi everyone!! This fandom has absolutely taken over my brain, so when I was thinking about doing some writing practice to improve on some areas I struggle with, I figured why shouldn't I make it Joel and Ellie themed?

This fic is all the same universe, but each chapter will be sort of it's own story. There's a couple of different things I wanted to try writing, and this chapter is about switching POVs without accidentally headhopping! If there's anything you want me to include, let me know and I'll be sure to try and squeeze it in.

I hope you enjoy reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it!

TLOU Episode 8

I unpacked my feelings about Ellie & Joel

Sunny Side of Heaven

Nobody mind me, I'm just over here happy-sobbing about this piece of fanart that @march-flowerr commissioned from @mote-of-star-dust, based on a scene from my GTHB fic, Sunny Side of Heaven.

🦋🦋🦋

As they watch, more and more of the swarm are coming loose from the tree – and then they erupt, like floating lava. All at once, an entire branch of them breaks free, and they begin falling through the air as a spiral, a chain reaction that unleashes the swarm from the trees in a cascade of orange and black. In just seconds they’re completely enveloped – and she gasps, instinctively takes a step toward him, and it’s second nature for him to wrap his arm around her shoulders, steadying her.

Everything about this is overwhelming to the senses; the air is full of orange and black, his good ear is hearing nothing but the rustling of wings that drowns out the rest of the world, and he can feel them, their delicate touch a constant whisper across his skin. Ellie’s shoulders tense against him, and for a breathless moment he’s blinded – by flashes of color, and a love so fierce that it all borders on unbearable – and he wishes that it was all easier, that this girl standing next to him, leaning into him can just know that the tangle of love and grief, for him, is sometimes indistinguishable, but that it’s also not her burden –

– and then it ends, the cloud lifts, the vibrant azure of the sky and the bright sun begin to shine through once again, and they’re left to stand together on that blanket, stunned and smiling and overwhelmed. They watch as the swarm ascends, and soon there are only flecks of orange left – including a single monarch that clings to Joel’s hair, wings bending slowly, blinking down at Ellie as she snorts back a laugh.

“Here –” she says, and he bends without question so she can reach, her fingers sweeping lightly at the butterfly until it finally flutters away, a zigzag of warm color against the clear sky that joins the few dozen other stragglers still circling through the trees. He watches it fly away, and he doesn't say it out loud, but he thinks it: Hi, baby girl. Behind them, their horses stir restlessly, and Shimmer whinnies softly, both horses pawning nervously at the earth, dark eyes following the cloud as it slowly winds its way south, low against the ground.

Thank you, my friends. 😭