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Does anyone have advice on writing epilogues? I’ve never actually written one before

!!!

my fic is officially done!!!!!!!!!!

getting so close to finally starting to post chapters for my fic !!! i made the draft on ao3 and it self deletes in late august so that's gonna be my deadline to post ch1 !!

Not Strong Enough by auburnstargazer

In the aftermath of a failed revenge quest, Ellie condemns herself to a life of solitude. But when she gets word from Jackson that Tommy is dying, she knows she must make the long trek across the country to say her final goodbyes. Returning home proves more difficult than she anticipated. The people of Jackson revile her. Dina, Ellie’s lost love, cannot meet her in the eyes. Joel haunts every street corner, plaguing Ellie's every thought. She is a stranger in the only place she ever called home. In order to rekindle her relationship with Dina and rebuild her family, Ellie must learn to face her grief head on or risk losing everything for good.

Chapter 7/14 posted now on AO3!

Blood Runs Red

a tommy miller fic where he's the more broken miller brother

Tomás Alejandro Casillas Miller had grown up well acquainted with blood: his own, Joel's, his mother's. The apocalypse hadn't changed much in that regard.

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Rating: T

Warnings: references to Joel's suicide attempt and child loss

Relationships: Tommy / Maria, Tommy & Joel, Tommy & Sarah, Tommy & Ellie

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51550372

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Full fic under the cut if you'd rather read things here

Tomás Alejandro Casillas Miller had grown up well acquainted with blood.

His grandfather's blood soaking the living room floor, making his parents flee their home to the USA when he was a toddler, moving to a different continent, to a country where they didn't speak the language, all to try and protect him and Joel. Tommy had never told his mother the way the blood seeping into their couch back in Chile had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember, that it was his only memory of the home they'd left behind.

His mother's blood, loosened from her body by his father's fist when he'd had too much to drink, which had turned into his and Joel's blood by the time he was eight. He still had the scar on his arm from when the bone had gone clear through his skin when he was ten. He'd told Maria he'd been skateboarding when she'd first run her fingers over the raised mark, reminding her that 'scars are sexy, darlin',' not wanting to think too hard about how it had actually come about.

And then his father's blood, ripped from his body by a car a few short months after the broken arm (he'd often thought of the irony of his father killed by a drunk driver whilst almost definitely drink driving at the same time in a particularly nihilistic period he'd had as a teenager).

All of Joel's blood spilt trying to protect Tommy from bullies who made fun of his accent, his hair, the way he dressed. He'd switched to using Tommy then, deciding it wasn't worth Joel's blood to continue insisting that others called him Tomás. Deciding it wasn't worth more blood, even if it made him feel like a part of him was quietly dying, shedding the skin he'd grown up in.

Julia's blood, dripping down her face when she'd shown up at the Miller house when Tommy was 13, barely able to mutter the words 'I'm pregnant' to Joel before collapsing in a heap on their porch. It'd be another week until his mother had asked when Julia was going home before Julia managed to explain that she wasn't welcome at her parents' house anymore, to which his mother had pulled her into a tight hug and said she'd always wanted a daughter anyway. He'd thought it was odd then, seeing the tears drip down Joel's face as he realised he'd be a father before his nineteenth birthday, that his girlfriend (and that was a generous description of their relationship) would be living with them for the foreseeable future, that the liquid dripping down Joel's cheeks was clear and not the scarlet he had come to know so well.

The blood in the hospital room the first time he met his niece, fourteen and awkward with too long limbs, suddenly realising just how different it was going to be going forward. He'd cried then, too, realising his whole world had just realigned itself to orbit this little girl's life, and swore into her hair (already darker than his and Joel's, the curl pattern tighter) that the colour she would grow most used to wouldn't be the red he saw whenever he shut his eyes. It was a surprise to Tommy when Julia left without blood two years later, leaving behind only already signed divorce papers, an orange post note with the words 'I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry' scribbled in purple pen. It had been easier to help Joel with his bloodied knuckles than it had been to hold Sarah, sobbing her eyes out because her mother hadn't come to tuck her in at bedtime.

His own blood, then, was all he saw for the next three and a half years, getting into dumb fights at school, Joel's sighs ringing loud in his ears as he sat in the Principal's office and assured him that yes, he was Tommy's guardian (despite not being old enough to buy a beer, but it was better Joel went in to school to get him than their mother, who'd never quite managed to wrap her tongue around English), and yes, he would make sure that it didn't happen again. (It happened again). (And again). (And again).

And then the desert, the yellow sand turning a dirty rust colour from all the blood soaking into it. Tommy Miller was well accustomed to blood, yes, but he was used to it belonging to those he knew. Now everyone's blood mixed together, impossible to tell who it came from. Not that it mattered, he came to realise. The other American soldiers, those they were fighting, they all bled the same. And bleed they did. By the time Tommy came back to the US, nineteen, a veteran of Desert Storm and having seen the world in a way he had begun to think may have not been the best manner in which to do so, his hands were stained blood red whenever he looked at them. It took Sarah (four, almost almost five, so tiny and perfect and sweet, nothing like him or her grandfather or Julia, all Joel) twenty minutes to talk him down from scrubbing his hands raw when he babysat her while Joel was working late one evening, before he admitted to himself that he couldn't go on the way he was. He went back home to his tiny apartment, poured himself two fingers of the shitty whiskey he'd stolen from Joel's cupboard as payment for babysitting, and then called the therapist an army friend had given him.

The therapist never quite understood that the flashbacks and the nightmares and the dread sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach weren't from the blood, but from the fact he couldn't tell who's blood it was.

And then, again, his mother's blood. Cancer was never pretty, but Dios, was it awful. Isabella Casillas (she'd never taken her husband's name, her one act of rebellion against a husband who'd taken everything else from her) got the news from the doctor on a Tuesday, two weeks after Tommy had seen the blood she coughed into a handkerchief and she had told him it'd been happening for a while already. 'No quieres que os preocupéis' and 'necesitáis enfocar en mi nieta, estoy bien' were her repeated refrains as he and Joel hovered around the hospital bed, a six year old Sarah not fully understanding why all her free time was suddenly being spent in the hospital, but understanding the look on her father and uncle's faces. She didn't go quietly in the end, choking on the red until she slipped away. The red roses a neighbour brought over for him and Joel with a quiet 'I'm sorry for your loss' only reminded him of everything he'd lost, the colour matching the blood seeping from his palm after he'd dropped a glass and cut himself trying to pick up the pieces.

Tommy's next few years were spent working too long hours and helping Joel raise his daughter, and god, it terrified him, realising how much he could fuck her up. For all Joel's panic about not knowing what he was doing, Tommy knew he'd be fine. Joel had practically raised him, after all. He knew how to look after a child. Tommy, on the other hand, had no idea what he was doing. So he settled down (mostly), spending his free time with his niece, cleaning grazed knees from astroburn, a cut on her hand from when she tried to cook and the knife slipped. He always handled Sarah getting hurt better than Joel, too used to the way blood stained carpet and clung on under fingernails. Joel just panicked whenever his daughter was in a less than perfect state.

By the time Sarah was fourteen, Tommy had got his life mostly sorted. He still drank slightly too much, still had a tendency to go for women who he shouldn't (in his defence, she'd taken the wedding ring off before going to the bar), still tended to solve problems with his fists rather than his words. But he also had a stable job, the contracting firm he and Joel ran finally up and running mostly functionally, his own flat (not that he spent much time there), friends, and his niece. He and Sarah had always blurred the lines between being uncle and niece and siblings, Joel having raised them both in all the ways that mattered.

And then, the end of the world.

The blood flooding the jail cell as one of the other people in lockup suddenly went crazy, snarling and biting, before one of the cops finally stepped in with a bullet to the head.

The blood painting the road red as he and Joel tried desperately to get back home to Sarah, to make sure she wasn't the next person to spill their blood that night.

Sarah's blood, gushing over Joel, who was still clutching his daughter to his chest, as Tommy lifted the rifle a fraction of a second too slow to save his niece.

And Tommy saw, then, the moment Joel shattered, holding his daughter, suddenly unable to do anything. Tommy realised, in that moment, that while he'd always known the sight and smell of blood, Joel hadn't. Joel had somehow not become used to it, and had avoided the subtle comfort it gave Tommy. So Tommy watched his brother shatter in pieces, and could only stand there and think how he was a moment too slow in getting the soldiers blood to spill. A moment too slow to save his niece, the girl he'd helped Joel raise since he was still a kid himself. A moment too slow in stopping his brother becoming like him.

And then, two days later, after he'd finally persuaded Joel to bury Sarah under an old oak tree, Joel's blood, leaking from the head wound as Tommy found his brother, pistol still clutched in his hand, begging Joel to stay with him. Tommy realised, looking at Joel in that moment, that Joel had got used to blood, and decided to add his own to the river. And god, if that didn't hurt Tommy, who had watched blood spilt and never wanted more, but who had never purposely added his own to any serious degree.

In the years that followed, Tommy watched his brother become well acquainted with blood. Watched as his brother went from being kind, being patient to someone else, to someone who lived for the violence that the end of the world had brought. Tommy watched as he failed to stop Joel from turning into what he'd been since a child, since the first time he watched someone's life fade from their eyes as their life seeped out with their blood.

Soon, though, the blood stopped coming from Joel, from Tommy, became everyone else's. The Miller brothers gained a reputation as people who would do what was necessary to survive, to spill blood even when there was probably another way. It wasn't until later, much later, that Tommy looked back and realised Joel had done what he did to try and protect Tommy as best he could, to stop Tommy shattering the way he had the night he lost Sarah. What he'd missed was that Tommy had broken a long time before the end of the world.

It wasn't a surprise, really, that Tess entered their life in a flurry of red. Tommy and Joel had joined up with a larger group a year into the end of the world. They'd been heading vaguely north, following rumours that the infected were less active where it was colder, that the slowly appearing QZs were easier to slip in and out of then the QZs further south. Tommy and Joel had discovered that smuggling was an easy way to make ends meet, enough things still in houses that they didn't need to use threats of or actual violence too often. They met Tess by selling to her group - mainly ammo, some spices, some medication. She was the one to suggest they join up with their group, make use of the strength that came in numbers. Tommy had tripped over himself saying yes, dragging Joel along with him, seeing in Tess' eyes the same look that his won often had: not the haunted, emptiness of Joel's, but the resignation of someone who knew the world may have ended, but it wasn't that much worse than the world before. It was a disappointment but not a surprise to him when Tess called things off a few weeks into whatever was blossoming between them, the mirror they held up to each other showing something that neither of them wanted to look too close at. He knew he'd have called it off soon enough if she hadn't. It was even less of a surprise when he saw her slipping out of Joel's bed a few weeks later, because while Joel might make her his new purpose, his new reason for living (and Tommy tried not to be hurt by that, that he wasn't reason enough), at least Joel was the kind of broken that would hold Tess up rather than pulling her down to the ground with him as Tommy knew he would've done. And if Tommy had to clean blood off his knuckles several times over the next few weeks, if he was a little more willing to take the jobs that would inevitably end up in a hand to hand fight, well that wasn't anybody's business but his own.

By the time they got to Boston, four years later, the plans for Tess to get a flat and Tommy and Joel to share a second had morphed, quietly, into a 1 bed for Joel and Tess and a room in a shared flat for Tommy with a few of the other people they'd arrived with. They'd offered for him to share a flat with them, but he'd turned down the offer claiming he wanted independence (well, Joel had asked him to share, to which Tess had rolled her eyes and told him that if he wanted his brother involved in their sex life, then Joel should just invite Tommy into the bedroom and get on with it. Joel had frozen, not knowing how to respond, Tommy had mimed throwing up, and Tess had rolled her eyes as though her and Joel hadn't been fucking where Tommy could hear, and sometimes see, them for the last four years).

It became clear to Tommy in Boston that he and Joel had dealt with shattering very differently. Tommy was used to blood, it had always taken up a large portion of his life, but he had learnt to survive and to live despite it. He might be broken into a million shards of himself, each reflecting back a different facet of his life, but he could still function. He could pick up enough shards at once to deal with life in the apocalypse. He could smuggle with Joel and Tess and deal with the blood and also try to help people. He smuggled a lot of medicine at low prices to those who needed it in Boston, and made sure information got to the right people. He roughed up or quietly took care of FEDRA soldiers who'd gotten a little too fond of power. If there was going to be blood, he'd at least make sure it belonged to people who deserved it.

Joel however, had no idea how to handle all his shattered parts, had no idea how to function. Since losing Sarah he'd been completely adrift, smuggling only because it was a significantly easier (for some sense of the word) existence than staying in a QZ, or at least an existence with easy access to the drugs and alcohol Joel seemingly needed to function. He worked with Tess and Tommy by being the muscle, by letting Tess direct him with what to do, who's blood to spill, when and where. Joel had long since given up on the world, on trying to hold it together. It had taken his daughter from him, and for Joel, Sarah had always been his entire world. Tommy wandered sometimes if Joel even noticed the end of the world, so caught up with his grief.

Six months into Boston, Tommy met Marlene when she hired the Miller brothers and Tess to smuggle in ammunition for her fireflies. Marlene, with her whip smart mouth and her plans to try to make something good out of the end of the world. Marlene who'd definitely known Tess before (in the biblical sense of known), though neither of them had ever said anything aloud. Tommy knew what looking at an ex looked like though, he could read between the lines. Marlene with her belief that they could start fixing what FEDRA had ruined. Boston was a relatively good QZ, as they went, but FEDRA had started public executions shortly after Tommy had arrived in Boston, and it was always going to be downhill from there. Marlene had looked in Tommy's eyes, seen something just as broken as the world, and offered him a way to try and make it better. And sure, maybe Tommy didn't agree with all her methods, but when had anything ever been achieved without the loss of blood.

Six months after that, two days after a screaming match with Joel that still left him reeling, Tommy left Boston for the final time. He made sure to leave a note for Tess with details of how to get a message to him, hoping he hadn't wrecked whatever was between her and his brother by bringing up Sarah in front of Tess for the first time. Joel may have lost a daughter, but Tommy had lost the centre of his world too, and then had to watch as his brother slipped away too. Joel had never been the same after Tommy found him with blood running down his temple, had stopped being the brother Tommy had grown up with, who'd take hits so Tommy didn't. Stopped being the brother Tommy had watched pull double shifts to make sure he could cover the rent who'd go home to Sarah and help with homework even when what Joel really wanted was a whiskey and to fall straight into bed.

And so, six years after the world ended, Tommy left his brother, the only reminder of Joel the blood drying on his knuckles.

The next five years were a blur for Tommy when he looked back, a string of memories of camping in shitty, burnt out buildings, skirmishes with FEDRA, getting back into being a sniper. He'd always been good with a rifle, had some experience before Desert Storm and had come back even more comfortable with one, but over his years with the fireflies he became one of their best snipers, and saw a lot of the US he hadn't managed before. By the end of it, however, he was actively seeking a way out, somewhere to go that wasn't another QZ. Somewhere that he could do something other than cause more blood to be spilled, whether it was infected or FEDRAs or civilians who got caught in the way.

Tommy wandered, and in time, he wandered back to Austin. Back to the grave he'd somehow managed to find again, where he'd buried his niece and his brother. Back to Joel's house, mostly picked through by raiders, but who'd left the photo albums mostly intact. He took his favourites, and a leather jacket he'd spent too much money on in his twenties, and he kept wandering, heading vaguely north.

And then, Maria.

Maria, with her bright eyes and wary smile, cautious as to what he wanted (peace, to be able to sit down at a table to eat, to be able to breathe), but nevertheless willing to let him enter Jackson on probation.

Maria, with her hair piled atop her head as she laughed in the Tipsy Bison, hand curled loosely around a beer, who Tommy knew had lost a child of her own, but who still knelt down to talk to the children of Jackson when they wanted to ask questions about chickens and school lunches and what it was like before the world ended, while he flinched when one of the children walked too close to him on their way to school.

Maria, with her gentle questions as they sat on her porch swing in the evenings throughout the year, even when it was definitely too cold to be doing so, who never looked at him differently even when he confessed to everything he'd done, who simply asked him if he wanted to be taken off the patrol rota so he could focus on building things, who understood his choked ‘no’, who accepted that he needed to fight to feel like he was still breathing, still alive.

Maria, radiant in a pale yellow dress borrowed from one of the other women in Jackson, a bouquet of wildflowers in her hands, wearing a gold ring on her left hand that he'd placed there with shaking hands. Maria, his wife, who he couldn't imagine life without, who he'd never thought would consider him anything more than someone to warm her bed. Maria, laughing and smiling as he taught her to line dance how he used to do in Texas, shuddering as he whispered what he wanted to do to her in her ear in quiet, whispered Spanish until she dragged him out of their own wedding party and back to their house.

Maria, lying languid and naked in their bed, running her fingers over each and every one of his scars, kissing them each in turn as Tommy explained where he'd gotten them, before turning paler than he'd ever seen her and running into their bathroom to throw up her dinner, Tommy following close behind to pull her hair out of her face and rub her back. By three weeks later of her throwing up without anyone else getting sick, and her period not making its regularly scheduled appearance, she quietly whispered ‘I'm pregnant’ into his neck one night, and Tommy just held her tightly as she sobbed herself to sleep, tears dripping down his face as thought of the little girl he'd help raise when he was just a kid himself. It's not that they'd been trying to avoid this outcome, they just also weren't trying specifically for it, not sure how feasible it was given Maria was already in her late forties. It just turned out there was a huge difference between ‘I like the idea of having a child with you’ and ‘I’m having another child and that feels like a betrayal to their older siblings they'd never know’.

The following day, he found a large piece of slate and carefully wrote out Sarah and Kevin's names, the day they had entered their families’ lives, and the day they left them. When Maria saw it on the mantelpiece, arriving home from a council meeting, exhausted and dizzy from a complete inability to hold any food down, she had let one lone tear track down her cheek before looking her husband in the eye, stepping into his waiting arms, and saying, quiet and hesitant, less confident than Tommy had ever seen her, ‘I can't wait to be a mother again with you’.

Tommy kissed her forehead, and then her lips, and then down her neck, before scooping her up in his arms and carrying her through to the bedroom. When they were done, panting and sated, he'd kissed her stomach, traced each stretch mark with his fingers, and confessed he couldn't wait to be a parent either. Thankfully the nausea passed soon enough (long enough to freak Tommy out, Julia having only thrown up a few times in her whole pregnancy, but not long enough to slow Maria down, having spent her first pregnancy throwing up at all hours of the day and night until she was seven months pregnant), and she could go back to work, back to what made her happy.

Four months later, Joel and Ellie arrived in Jackson.

Maria had always known that Tommy was contacting Joel, and had actively found ways for him to get messages back to Boston. Had handled the situation with more delicacy and diplomacy than Tommy thought he ever could have, torn as he was between desperately missing his brother, and not thinking he could handle one more minute in this new Joel's presence. She'd encouraged Tommy to keep in contact, quietly changing his patrol shifts to go past the radio tower if he hadn't managed to get there recently enough. Since the wedding though, she'd stopped checking that Tommy was still talking to Joel. And Tommy had used that to leave longer and longer periods between his messages, terrified that one day their would be a response, a message saying ‘I need you here. Come back to Boston’, that he might have to leave the sanctuary he'd found. He'd never revealed anything about Jackson, had followed the town’s rules carefully (if you want family or friends to join you here, they agree to leave where they are before they get told anything at all, and even then, riders from Jackson would meet them at the Colorado border before they got full details of Jackson's existence), but he'd also never told Joel he was somewhere good, somewhere safe, somewhere that the broken prices of him seemed to fit back together in a way they never had before.

As it turned out, however, Maria was under the impression that Joel wasn't already with them in Jackson because he or Tess didn't want to leave Boston, not because he didn't know about Jackson. Not because Joel didn't know about her, his sister in law, the family they could've had. Tommy watched Maria as she and Tommy walked to the dining hall to get some food for Joel and Ellie, confused at her coldness when Ellie revealed herself as a QZ kid through and through, so different from the children that had grown up in the safety of Jackson. It wasn't until Tommy got back from the bar with Joel and saw Maria standing on the porch waiting for him that he understood the gravity of what was happening: he had accidentally made his wife and brother hate each other.

Tommy hadn't understood Maria's distrust of Joel, not until she explained that she had trusted his decision on Joel, and while she was irritated he hadn't told her he was barely calling back to Boston, she could handle that. What she couldn't handle, though, was that Tommy brought someone dangerous into their home. If Tommy had cut his own brother off, when family was all Tommy lived and breathed for, then she had assumed there was a good reason. A reason that it wasn't safe for her, for Jackson, to meet Joel; that Tommy had made a call based on what was best for everyone. Tommy had frozen, a lump thick in his throat, before he pulled his wife into his arms and explained that Joel wasn’t a threat any more than he was. Capable of violence, yes, but not without reason.

It wasn't until he spoke to Joel later, in the cobblers, that he realised why Joel thought Maria hated him, why he disliked the woman who made Tommy feel closer to a whole person than he ever remembered being before. Namely, Joel thought that Maria hated him for what he made Tommy do all those years, as though violence hadn't been a language Tommy had known for far longer than Joel had. Tommy’s problem with Joel had never been his methods, or the ease with which he used his body to hurt others, or the unflinching loyalty to him and Tess that had made Joel put them above everyone else left in the world. Tommy had done all the same things, made the decision to keep on like that even when they could've avoided it. Hell, Tommy had joined the fireflies, and they weren't exactly bastions of peace and limiting civilian casualties. Tommy had left Joel because he couldn't watch it all be for nothing, couldn't watch his brother die a little more each day, only Tess propping him up.

It was watching Joel have a panic attack over not being able to protect Ellie that made Tommy realise his brother was back again, the brother he'd buried with Sarah. The brother who'd cleaned his knuckles with a wet rag, called him Tomás, helped him sneak back into their home drunk and high so their mother didn't panic, waiting until she was out to yell at him. The brother he thought he'd lost, back thanks to Ellie.

Ellie, who swore and palmed her switchblade in her pocket and demanded her gun back, who was all broken pieces too, desperate to make something of her life, desperate for all the death and pain and loss not to be for nothing.

Ellie, who might be the cure to everything.

Ellie, who, if Tommy knew one thing about the Fireflies, would be dead within a month at best if they got hold of her.

Ellie, who was well on her way to becoming his niece.

Ellie, who Joel wanted him to take to the base in Colorado (not that they were still there, a small voice in the back of his head said, reminding him the scientists were moving out to Salt Lake City).

Ellie, who he was absolutely not taking to Colorado, or Salt Lake, or anywhere other than to the house across the road from his and to a warm bed and clothes that fit properly and the best damn childhood anyone could have given they were living through the end of the world.

Ellie, who had helped Joel pick up his broken pieces, and maybe, finally learn to live with them, to hold enough at once to live life despite them.

The reality was, Tommy thought, that blood was full of everyone's lives now. He'd just had a head start on seeing the crimson every time he shut his eyes, a preview of what the world would be. What that meant, though, was that he'd also had a head start on learning how to pick himself up again, to learn to live again.

And in Jackson, with his wife, and child, and brother, and niece, maybe everyone else could try catching up to him for once. Maybe he could teach them. Maybe, he could make it all worth it. (Maybe, one day, he could make Ellie see it could be worth living for too).

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End author notes!

and now Tommy gets to be an uncle again and make Joel go insane about the shit he and Ellie pull. Also Ellie definitely doesn't end up with the fireflies because genuinely why the fuck would you take the one immune person in the world and immediately try and kill them I may not be a biologist but that I am a scientist and that feels like bad practice to me. Fuck Jerry Anderson. In this universe he magically gets shot by someone and the firefly hospital mysteriously gets burnt to the ground (miller family road trip to Utah for some light recon (stealing everything the fireflies know about immunity) and a little bit of arson for a treat (burning the hospital to the ground)).

Other random things that didn't make it into the fic:

- Tommy and Marlene definitely fucked like twice and then mutually agreed to just never mention it again

- Tess did propose a threesome at one point to Tommy who laughed and told her he was down if Joel was, knowing full well that Joel was completely gone on Tess and wouldn't share her for the world

- bi Tess because I say so and I'm bi so I sensed the vibe (Anna torvs is hot)

- they tell Ellie about what they did to the fireflies, and then tell her that if they find anyone who actually has a hope in hell of making a vaccine they'll take her themselves

- Ellie still gives herself a chemical burn, but she goes to Tommy for help with the tattoo because Joel told her he had tattoos, failing to mention that Tommy's tattoo was a drink mistake that he never shows to anyone. He finds someone good who can tattoo safely and sterilely and helps pick the design and sits with Ellie the whole time

dude it's wild how I can write 11 pages of fic and not even blink an eye and then I go to write a six page lab report and it feels.... insurmountable

and to be fair to me the lab report is in my second language but still the relative amounts of emotional energy do not add up here

anyway the lab report is getting done four hours before it's due and there is more Tommy X Maria fic coming lmao

Oathbreaker is now live on AO3!

You can find it here: Oathbreaker - elizabethpickett - The Last of Us (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Rating: T

Relationships: Tommy / Maria, background Joel / Tess and Joel / his ex-wife

Word Count: 12987

Summary:

Tommy had never foreseen himself getting married. In his defence, he hadn't exactly grown up with many good examples of what marriage could look like. His parent's marriage was effectively over before he was born, and Joel's marriage to his ex-wife hadn't been great either. After meeting Maria, however, his mind began to change, picturing her wearing his ring.

This is my Tommy x Maria backstory, it's loosely set in the same universe as Blood Runs Red (which you can find here: Blood Runs Red - elizabethpickett - The Last of Us (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own])

Full story below the cut if you'd rather read it on Tumblr.

Tommy had never foreseen himself getting married. In his defence, he hadn't exactly grown up with many good examples of what marriage could look like. 

His parents were already well past falling out of love by the time he was already born, to the point he'd always harboured the suspicion he'd been a last ditch attempt at pulling their marriage back together. It would be an understatement to say it didn't work. By the time he was a toddler, he was well used to the yelling, the fights getting louder and more frequent, the Spanish and Mapuche bleeding together as his parents disagreed about everything they could think of. Joel had tried his best to shield Tommy from the worst of it, but the small two bed flat didn't give them anywhere to go, so under a hastily made pillow fort it was. Joel tried to distract Tommy by making him practise the maths Joel had learnt in school that week, never mind Tommy was four years younger than him, desperate to distract his younger brother. Tommy’s only experience of his mother's first language was through those fights, the only thoughts he could frame those of hatred and disagreement. Joel spoke a little more than him, but still not enough to converse with their grandparents in it. 

After everything happened with his grandfather, his parents had decided to leave Chile behind, head to America, the only thing Tommy could remember them ever agreeing on. He'd clung tight to Joel the whole flight, terrified of how high they were, terrified of leaving everything he'd known behind. 

Unfortunately for Tommy and Joel, four and eight, speaking a half dozen words of English between them (and one of them was football, which apparently did not mean the same as fútbol for some reason), his parents' marriage didn't get any better after they settled on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. 

Joel and Tommy picked up English fairly quickly, both bright and in a school well used to children only speaking Spanish, even if their variety of Spanish wasn't the one the ESL teachers were most familiar with. They played football (soccer, the other kids insisted), they did just enough homework to stay off their teachers radar, they spent as long as possible walking home and left as early as they could in the morning. Three years after they first arrived in Texas, they started showing up to school with bruises. The teachers didn't even raise an eyebrow, just shook their heads when Joel started picking fights with the kids who gave Tommy a hard time seeing the ring of blue around his wrist. 

Their parent's marriage only splintered further the longer they stayed in their little two bed flat above some distant relatives garage. Their father stayed out later and later, returning angry and his breath stinking of vodka. Their mother retreated further and further into herself, trying to make not enough money go far enough for herself and two growing boys. 

Joel let slip when Tommy was 11 that part of the issue was their father coming home with lipstick on his collar, having successfully hid that facet of their parents' marriage from Tommy for three years. 

And then, after the broken arm, after their father was killed (passed, the other ladies from church saying, as though that made it any better, as though they hadn't already seen death much worse than a drunken car crash), he watched his mother bloom again. Tommy saw her get more involved in church when she had time around the two jobs she worked, saw her eyes get brighter and her jokes become more frequent, the hair ruffling and cakes baked following Tommy's abuelas recipes appearing more often. Tommy saw how much happier she was, no longer married, her rings neatly tucked away in a box at the bottom of her dresser, looking younger than she had in years. 

And so Tommy, alongside the lessons of how to take a hit, how to read a room better than anyone else in it (except Joel, but he didn't count), learnt that marriage was a thing that made you miserable. 

Joel's marriage to Julia didn't exactly change that lesson in his mind, older though he was as he watched it end almost before it had begun. 

He was vaguely aware Joel had been seeing someone, mutterings making it across to his middle school from the high school next door, that one of the choir kids was dating some cheerleader. He hadn't thought anything more of it until he wandered over to the high school to see where Joel had got to as he wasn't waiting by the gate for Tommy as usual, where he found his brother with his tongue down said cheerleader's throat. (And oh, thought Tommy, I can hold this one over him forever). After extracting a promise from Joel that he'd get Joel's dessert the next three nights in return for not telling their mother about Joel's new girlfriend (not girlfriend, Joel muttered, which made Tommy burst out laughing because that would be so much worse according to their mother). 

Six months later, Tommy had managed to extract the girls name (‘Julia’), how Joel had met her (‘we sit next to each other in chemistry class’), the nature of their relationship (‘friends who made out sometimes but also weren't seeing other people’), and why Tommy hadn't been officially introduced to her (‘which bit of not girlfriend is hard for you to understand, Tomás, honestly’). Joel never had been good at saying no to Tommy, even when it was clearly information he would clearly have rather not shared with his fourteen year old brother who was altogether too invested in his love life. 

Three months after that, Julia appeared on their doorstep, blood dripping down her face, just as Joel was heading out to take her to a football game at school. Her belongings were moved into Joel's room two weeks later after a brief standoff between Joel and her father, his mother shaking her head and commenting that normally she'd make them sleep apart but it was a bit too late now wasn't it.

Julia and Joel got married on a quiet Saturday afternoon two months after they graduated, with Isabella and Tommy as their witnesses, in a small ceremony at the church Isabella helped organise. Julia wore a white dress her mother had brought over one day without a word to anyone except Isabella. She was holding a bouquet of daisies, Joel in one of their fathers tuxes that didn't fit quite right around the shoulders, as they put on a matching set of gold rings (the cheapest they could find).  Joel had gone straight from the ceremony to a job site, desperately trying to bring in enough money to cover all the costs being a new parent would bring. 

Within three months of Sarah being born, Tommy could tell it was a matter of time until Julia left. Joel had thrown himself fully into being a father, happiest with his daughter in his arms, throwing her up in the air and catching her, reading to her whenever he could, even as exhausted as he was with the long hours he was working. Julia, on the other hand, seemed to want nothing to do with Sarah, hating the time she had to spend with her daughter instead of her friends. Tommy knew she had planned to go to college, but her father had made it clear she'd get no more support from them so it wasn't an option anymore. In hindsight Tommy knew Julia was suffering from postpartum depression and the inevitable after effects of having her entire life turned upside down at 18, but to 15 year old him he just watched Sarah struggle as she got no more attention from her mother than absolutely necessary. Tommy had started going straight to their flat after school to play with Sarah while he did his homework, leaving Julia to her own devices while he entertained his niece and tried to remember how to balance a chemistry equation. 

Julia and Joel had never been properly together before Sarah was born, something Tommy had always thought was fairly mutual given the very different directions of their lives. After Sarah, though, Joel had tried his best to make it work with Julia - date nights (with Tommy babysitting, sometimes accompanied by their mother and sometimes not), bringing things back from work to try and make her smile. Julia had just retreated into herself, rarely showing any affection at all to her husband or daughter. 

Tommy had sworn to himself at that moment that if this is what a better marriage than his parents’ looked like, he never wanted to get married. Never wanted to watch himself or his partner fade, living separate lives in the same house, passing without speaking like ships passing at night. 

Julia left shortly after Sarah’s third birthday, divorce papers on the kitchen table, her belongings packed and gone. Joel had panicked at first, not knowing where she was, worried about her spiralling yet again and showing up drunk or high or hurt, so Tommy got handed Sarah and an overnight bag while Joel went to go and try to find his wife. He eventually got word through a chain of people that Tommy had never quite got his head around that she was in Washington with a cousin, at which point Joel rushed straight home to Sarah. It took three days for Joel to manage to explain to Sarah that her mother wasn't coming back this time, unlike the other times where she'd disappeared overnight with no proper warning. Sarah had started sobbing, too young to fully understand what was happening, inconsolable despite Tommy's best efforts to get her to bed. Once he eventually got settled, he'd called his mother and asked her to try and get Julia to give up custody of Sarah. He'd never fully understood the extent to which Isabella and Julia's mother were in contact, but a week after the divorce papers were finalised, a set of custody documents arrived at Joel's flat, Julia giving up all parental rights.

A month later, Tommy graduated high school and shipped out to the army two weeks after that, Sarah clinging to his leg as needed to leave for basic, sobbing that she didn't want him to leave too. Tommy eventually managed to explain that he wasn't going away forever, just to work for a bit, and he'd visit her soon and call her lots. Then he ended up in Kuwait, out of bad luck with when he'd enlisted rather than a particular desire to be there, and he didn't see his niece for eight months. When he got back, PTSD already reading its ugly head, Joel had told him that he was moving in with him and Sarah. A few months after he got back, still waking up with nightmares of blood soaking his hands, he started working on the same construction sites as Joel and helping as much as he could raising his niece, teaching her letters and how to kick a football and learning to how to braid her hair from one of their neighbour's. 

When Sarah was eight, looking more like Isabella every day and capable of making herself a sandwich, Tommy moved into his own flat, keen to try to be an adult for once without Joel there to pick up the pieces. As it turned out, Joel managed to do that fairly effectively even if they were no longer living together, sending Sarah in to wake him up when he was hungover and due at a job site, knowing full well Tommy would rather die than snap at his niece. 

Tommy had a few girlfriends on and off in the years before the apocalypse began, always ending when they started asking questions about long term life goals and settling down. One of them had got mad at him at one point, yelling at him from across the room that 

‘Would it kill you to commit, Tommy? What's so scary about considering what our lives could be like together?’ Tommy had frozen, rooted to the spot, his mother with a black eye and Julia's dead expression and Joel's desperation to make it work when it clearly wouldn't all flashing through his mind, unable to speak as his now ex-girlfriend stormed past him, never to be in his living room again. He hadn't known how to explain to her that he liked how they were in that moment, that taking it further would end up with them both sad and miserable and wishing they hadn't. Tommy wasn't about to make the same mistakes his mother and brother had. 

And then after the apocalypse, after he lost Sarah, it took him years to even consider anything more than the odd one night stand, relationships just making him think of his niece and who his brother had been broken first by Julia leaving him and then by losing his daughter. 

He'd seen someone on and off in Boston while he was there, a smuggling contact who Tess had referred to, on several occasions, as ‘the most inept drug dealer I've ever met Tommy, Jesus fucking Christ I am begging you to have better taste in women’. Eventually deciding to heed her advice and call it off (he'd long since realised that Tess was the smartest of the three of them, could read people and get what she wanted from them better than anyone he'd ever met), he'd then ended up in Marlene's bed, to which Tess had raised an eyebrow and asked why he was so keen to remake her mistakes. This subsequently led to them both getting drunk off some truly horrific tequila and bonding over shitty ex girlfriends, confusing the hell out of Joel who arrived back at his flat to find his brother and partner drunk out of their minds on his living room floor, both bursting out laughing as he got in from a drop. Tommy had never quite understood the nature of Tess and Joel's relationship, whether she was his girlfriend, partner in all senses of the word, soulmate, or wife in all but filling out the paperwork. To be fair to his brother, Tommy was also aware that Joel probably was terrified to label it the same way he was, too scared of messing up a good thing. 

And then, he met Maria. 

The first time he met her, he was bleeding profusely out of a knife wound in his arm courtesy of a group of raiders when he suddenly had two guns pointed at him. The man he'd written off immediately as someone he could overpower without much effort, an itchy trigger finger and the lack of a proper beard showing his youth. The woman, however, wrapped in a navy coat and a red bandanna covering most of her face, holding a rifle that Tommy could only describe as beautiful, had kept the gun levelled at his face and told him to kneel. Tommy had done so instantly, not even really realising what he was doing until he felt his knees begin to go numb, the snow soaking through his jeans and thermals. The woman had raised a singular eyebrow, and then promptly knocked him out with the butt of her gun. He decided not to hold it against her.  

He woke up in what was quickly identifiable as a doctor's office, even 12 years after he'd last been in a medical centre (and he desperately tried not to focus on that, on the feeling of Joel's blood coating his hands, under his fingernails, begging the doctors to do something, anything). There was the strong smell of antiseptic, and looking down he saw an IV in his arm hooked up to a blood bag and the wound on his arm was neatly dressed. Looking around, Tommy's gaze settled on the two people sitting next to his bed: the woman from the woods, who now she wasn't wearing the bandanna appeared to be about his age, and an older gentleman, deep wrinkles carved into his face revealing a life spent in the sun, his cheekbones the mirror image of the woman's sat next to him - his daughter, Tommy realised. 

‘Well, you've certainly done well to make it this far north with such terrible winter gear,’ the man said wryly, his accent revealing himself to be from somewhere near the where Tommy had found himself. ‘I’m George, one of the council members of this here town. And who might you be?’

‘Tommy Miller, sir,’ Tommy replied, his voice cracking from disuse. The woman reached over to the table beside the bed and handed Tommy a glass of water which he took gratefully, nodding his thanks to the woman. He may not have been Texan originally, but his mother had drilled southern manners into him and Joel within a few years of their arrival to Austin. ‘If you don't mind me asking, exactly how far north have I got? I know I crossed the state line into Wyoming, but I lost track of exactly where I was soon after.’

‘This is Jackson. You made it near enough two thirds of the way up to Montana. You heading somewhere in particular?’ the man questioned, and Tommy sensed a different undercurrent to this question. They may have taken him in and patched him up, but they were now trying to figure out what to do with him now, and judging by the tension between George and his daughter, he got the sense that bringing him in may have not been a decision made by whatever sort of council ran this place. 

‘Just wandering, taking the opportunity to see some more of the country. Was trying to avoid Denver and Salt Lake City, and heard mutterings of a settlement up this way, figured I'd come see if I could find it. At this point, I'd mainly just like to find somewhere with a roof and food for the winter. If I can't find that here I'm happy to get out of your hair as soon as someone unhooks me from all this,’ Tommy said, gesturing with his injured arm to the tubes coming out of his arm. 

‘Avoiding FEDRA and the Fireflies then I see. A man after my own heart. What'd you do for a living before the end of the world?’ George queried, the woman looking closely at Tommy, and he felt her stare down into his very soul, stripping him bare before her. 

‘Military and then contracting, sir. Owned a construction firm with my brother down in Austin,’ Tommy explained, a slight frown on his face as George ignored his comment about leaving and then recognised exactly what those two cities meant. 

‘Well, if you're looking for somewhere to spend the winter, we always need more hands here, and someone who knows how to build would be most appreciated as our electrician keeps threatening to turn off my hot water if I make him frame another house. You'd be on probation for three months before you get to vote on the council members and in any town wide votes, and there's a strict no firearms rule unless you're on guard duty or on patrol. We also request no weapons of any other kind, but given my daughter has at least three knives on her person right now, that rule does have some more flexibility providing they don't get used on other people.’ George offered. In that moment, Tommy realised what else felt wrong at the whole situation - his fireflies dog tags weren't sitting on his chest. He'd kept wearing them even after he left out of a vague hope that word would get back to Joel if anything did happen to him, but given George's implication that leaving Jackson wasn't an option, he began to question whether that had been a smart move. The fireflies had made a lot of enemies over the last five years, and Tommy had helped make some of those enemies personally. 

‘I’d be happy to help with building here. It's been a while since I framed out a house but I'm sure I can contribute,’ Tommy said slowly, trying to keep his voice even. 

‘Wonderful. In that case, I'll leave you in Maria's capable hands to show you around the town and get you settled down in one of the open houses. I do hope you settle in well here,’ George said, carefully pushing himself up from the chair he was sitting in, his creaking joints audible to Tommy, who suddenly realised this man looked to be in his eighties, had entered the apocalypse most likely already a retiree and had somehow not only survived but helped set up a town. He glanced at his daughter, Maria, he'd said her name was, on the way out, quietly murmuring something to her, her only response being an eye roll that made Tommy's heart clench in his chest as he remembered Sarah doing the same thing when Joel asked her to help out at home. 

‘Well that went better than expected,’ Maria said, grinning at Tommy after her father left the room, before standing up herself, ‘let me go find one of the nurses and see if you have enough blood in you now to be able to have a tour’. 

Ten minutes later, Tommy was walking down the main street of Jackson, wrapped up in a stranger's clothes, as Maria pointed out the walls they were trying to build, the schoolyard, the cafeteria, before leading him over to one of the residential streets and nodding at a pale yellow house. 

‘This one is yours for the time being, it's where we put all the new arrivals so they can get their heads around Jackson before they pick where they want to live,’ Maria explained, stepping up onto the porch and leaning against the railings, looking down at Tommy beneath her. ‘I do have to ask, though, are you still running with the fireflies? Because you said you were avoiding Denver, but you were wearing fireflies dog tags when I found you,’ she queried, surprising Tommy with the bluntness of her question. 

‘Uh, no ma’am, ain't been runnin’ with them for near enough a year now. Kept them in the hope word would get back to my brother if anything happened. Got no love lost for ‘em now,’ Tommy explained, catching a glimpse of the second knife (one on her hip, one in her boot, and a mystery third one somewhere), ‘and I meant what I said about leaving if y'all don't want me here. I ain't trying to impose.’

Maria looked at him then, her eyes locking onto his as she searched for an answer in his, clearly weighing him up. Tommy kept his expression neutral, staring back at her, taking in her dark eyes and sharp cheekbones. 

‘I’ve worked damn hard getting this town up and running without you fucking it up by bringing the outside world here, alright? I brought you in because despite actively bleeding out you'd still managed to kill that whole group of raiders, and frankly we need more manpower on patrols and wall duty, or more specifically, we need people with combat experience. And you held yourself like a soldier. So do me a favour and don't fuck up while you're here, it'll make me look bad’, Maria said, appraising his face, his hands, one holding the banister and the other with a thumb tucked into a belt loop. 

‘I’ll try my best not to fuck up then, ma’am, I wouldn't want to risk your good reputation,’ Tommy replied, toeing the line between respectful and flirtatious, to which she laughed, before telling him to go wash up and take a shower before heading to the cafeteria for dinner.

Over the next few weeks, Tommy began to settle into Jackson, taking his meals in the cafeteria, Maria making him sit with different groups of people (but normally staying with him too), and helping out with various jobs. It turned out contracting came back easily, and soon people were coming up to him on the street to ask him to fix steps, kitchen cupboards, and a leaky roof. Jackson had a hardware store that was still mostly intact so he didn't struggle for supplies. He'd asked Maria if it was okay he wasn't actually working on getting the new buildings up as he kept ending up fixing various things in the older houses, to which she’d said that if he was helping people build things it didn't really matter the order. He'd asked about patrol shifts or guard duty, but had been told it'd be at least two months after his arrival before he got hold of a firearm. He carefully didn't mention the pistol and ammo he'd found when inspecting a potential building for the new community co-op, now safely tucked away in his bedroom drawer. And wasn't that a luxury, getting his own bedroom, with a bed, and a thick duvet, and space to put things. He reached the point of knowing people's names and socialising without Maria, heading to the Tipsy Bison after finishing up work for the day with whoever ended up on the ‘help Tommy fix shit’ shift that day. 

By the time spring finally arrived, the snow dissipating and early bulbs beginning to show themselves in the grass, Tommy knew he would stay in Jackson. He'd started working on the walls more, making them stronger, had almost finished plans for redoing the main town buildings and making sure they were strong enough to stand for a long while yet. It was quieter there than anywhere he'd found after the end of the world, made of people who just wanted to live as best they could, who didn't ask questions about each other's pasts unless information was freely given first. He moved out of the yellow house and into a small townhouse a few roads over (nearer Maria, a small voice in the back of his head said), and had gotten into the habit of sitting on his porch in the evenings with a cup of herbal tea that one patrol woman made. Soon enough, Maria began to join him, first standing on the steps to ask him what he'd been fixing that day, but soon it had progressed to them sitting on the pair of chairs and both sipping from mugs of tea.

Maria had always felt easy, to Tommy, in a way he hadn't really ever felt before. Her only expectation of him was that he'd do his fair share of the work of Jackson, but beyond that, she didn't want anything from him. He could be himself around her, joke, recollect stories of before the world ended. He learnt she'd been a lawyer, same as her father, which made sense given she could read people better than anyone he'd met other than Tess. He learnt she used to visit Louisiana every summer to visit her grandparents, and had gone to college in New York on a full scholarship. In return, he told her about growing up with Joel and their mother, of playing football at school, desperate to spend as little time inside as possible. Told her about his love for peppermint sweets, and the first record he remembered ever hearing. 

Six months after Tommy first met Maria, they were sitting on his porch enjoying the warm summer evening, both distinctly tipsy from a night at the bar with friends that had somehow involved multiple tequila shots and several bottles of wine. He wasn't entirely sure where the tequila had even come from if he was being honest. He'd looked up to see a moth sitting on the railing across from him, and said, quietly, 

‘Sarah always did love butterflies. Used to insist that moths were just sleepy butterflies, that the wing shape was different because they were too tired to hold their wings up. Took until she was six to convince her they were different animals, though I think she was fucking with me on purpose by the end of it’. 

Maria stilled at his words, turning to look at him, seeing the grief writ large on his face. 

‘How old was she? When you lost her?’ she asked, her voice settling into something softer than usual, a tone he was quickly realising only seemed to appear around him. 

‘She was 14, final year of middle school. Already had her high school picked out, some science specific one. It was going to be a nightmare for Joel and I to get her there it was so far away, but it was academically selective and she was so smart, always wanted to learn more about everythin’,’ he said, finding the lump in his throat beginning to get smaller as the words started coming out. 

‘Was she yours or Joel's?’

‘She was Joel's daughter. But Julia took off pretty early, and Joel had been keeping a pretty close eye on me for years because our dad wasn't around, so it was me and him raising her mainly. Our mum helped as well, but we lost her when Sarah was six, so then it was only us two. Lived with them for a while as well to make it easier when I for back from the army.’

‘So she was yours, then, as well,’  Maria stated quietly, meeting Tommy's eyes as he looked up, a tear glistening on his cheek. 

‘Yeah. She was mine. Felt like I buried half my heart when we had to bury her,’ he managed to choke out, realising how little he'd actually grieved her in the twelve years since her death, realising that Joel's insistence of shoving the feelings down had left him without any closure, any sense of being able to lay his niece to rest in his mind. 

Maria got up, then, moving to sit next to him, and just held his hand as he sobbed silently, waiting for him to be done before helping him inside and up to his bedroom, squeezing his hand as she grabbed an extra blanket for him out of his cupboard (and he wondered then, how she knew where it was. She was in his house a lot, often chatting over lunch or planning new stages of development for Jackson, but he hadn't realised her familiarity with his home had reached knowing where the spare bed linen was). 

‘Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about Sarah,’ Maria whispered from his bedroom door, just loud enough for Tommy to hear it even as he slipped towards sleep. 

‘Trust you with everythin’, darlin’,’ he replied, drifting quickly off. 

It was easier, after that, to talk to Maria about Sarah, to be able to remember her life and all she had done with it, to finally come to terms with what had happened. 

Maria, then, slowly started sharing stories of Kevin too. Less, as he was so much younger when he died, but stories of ever taller building block towers, of wanting to ‘help’ his mother with work which resulted in a separate firm branded notebook for him after he'd scribbled over her case notes when drawing a picture in her normal notebook. Stories of long nights with a colicky baby, giving way to longer days as she balanced being a DA with being a parent and being married to a surgeon. It had taken Tommy by surprise, a bit, hearing she had been married, which she was confused by. 

‘I was in my thirties with a kid and a career and everything, why's it so surprising I was married?’ she asked, undoing a chain around her neck to show Tommy the three rings threaded onto it, her engagement ring sparkling in the lantern light. 

‘Just never pictured you that way, I guess,’ he'd replied, twisting the rings back and forth between his fingers. 

‘Not something you were ever interested in?’ Maria had asked, reclasping the necklace before sipping her tea as it steamed gently. 

‘Saw what it did to my parents, and then to Joel and his ex-wife. Figured it was something I was probably better without’, he said, shrugging.

‘That’s, that’s not what marriage is supposed to be like,’ Maria said, reaching over to turn his face towards her so she was sure he heard her.  ‘Marriage is supposed to make you happy. It's about finding someone you are so happy to spend the rest of your life around, and then promising each other to try and make that happen.’

Tommy had just given her a cocky grin, one she recognised now as the face he made when thinking over new information, before smiling up at her, her fingers still on his jaw. 

‘I'm glad you were happy. That your husband made you happy,’ he'd said quietly before going back to drinking his tea. 

By the time the next winter came, when Tommy reached a year in Jackson, he realised that Maria probably knew more about him than anyone other than maybe Joel. She knew his life before, knew some of his life afterwards (she knew about the Fireflies, the smuggling. He still hadn't managed to vocalise the details about him and Joel being hunters for a while, though she knew that's what they'd done. He just couldn't share exactly what happened, and she didn't push) and had taken it all into her stride. Had looked at him with her dark brown eyes glinting in the sun and seen him, all of him. 

In return, he'd got to know her pretty well too. Knew how college had been, so desperate to do as well in law as her father, about the realities of living so far from home as an eighteen year old. Knew she'd met Michael on a blind date set up by a mutual friend from her law school, that it had ended with red wine on his shirt, his hands on her arms as he kissed her goodnight, and them trading numbers to meet up again somewhere less stuffy and more them. He knew how much she'd wanted a child, and how worried she’d been about what it would do to her career if she took a year off, only to have got bored out of her mind within two months, Michael and her adjusting plans so she could go back to work full time while he took a step back to look after Kevin more. He knew how terrified she'd been to vocalise what she wanted to her husband, how terrified she'd been that he would say looking after Kevin was her job, only for him to hand her a new job contract from the hospital for reduced hours that would let him do the bulk of childcare, him smiling and telling her he didn't marry her to make her miserable, and that if he hadn't wanted to split childcare in a way that might include him being the one to take a step back career wise he wouldn't have married a woman with a career more impressive than his. 

It still had taken him by surprise when she’d sat down next to him one evening and told him she wanted to tell him how she lost Michael and Kevin, not even waiting for him to make their tea first. He'd offered to go and make it but she'd just shook her head, said it needed to be now, so he just held her hand and sat next to her as she got the words out in fits and starts, tears shining bright on her face. 

Maria told him that her husband had been the one to go and get George when they realised something was wrong on outbreak day, while she stayed at home with Kevin, frantically packing bags so they could leave town and get somewhere quieter. She told him Michael had arrived at George's house to find him being attacked by an infected, that he had got bit getting George to safety. How he'd kept quiet about the bite on his ankle until George was safely with Maria and Kevin, then had pulled her aside and told her what happened, touching foreheads with her before taking his father in laws pistol and going to put a bullet in his head, refusing to let anyone else do it. She told him, voicing catching on the words, how much she regretted not even being able to kiss him goodbye, unsure as they were of how the infection spread. 

He pulled her close at that point, letting her head burrow into his neck, his arms falling around her as she clung to him. 

She managed to explain that Kevin had been bit three days later in an army camp, the quarantine protocols proving insufficient, and that after that she and George had stayed far away from anything government run. 

She’d explained, then, that it would have been his sixteenth birthday that day, and Tommy, who'd spent the nights that would've been Sarah's 18th and 21st drunk and high out of his mind, understood suddenly why she needed to say it then. To make her son real and tangible in the world, to make sure he didn't live on just in her head but in someone else's too. 

He’d offered, then, to go and fill their mugs with whiskey instead of tea, if that was more what she’d wanted, getting a laugh out of her with that joke. 

‘I think I just want to sleep. Walk me home?’ she asked quietly, lifting her face to look up at his. Tommy nodded and unwrapped her arms from around him, keeping hold of her hand as they slowly walked (the extremely short distance) to her house. 

Seeing her face tighten as they reached her door, Tommy squeezed her hand, 

‘Want me to stay until you fall asleep?’ he offered, quickly seeing it was the right thing to say as Maria’s shoulders dropped several inches in relief. And so he took her upstairs, awkwardly hovering as she got changed and got into bed, an odd mirror of what she'd done for him when he'd told her about Sarah. Maria curled up into Tommy’s chest, his hand settling on her hair as she slowly drifted off to sleep. He’d meant to slip out as soon as she was fully asleep, but instead he woke up to the sun coming in through her window, Maria’s face still buried in his chest, his back aching and reminding him that the apocalypse hadn’t been kind to his joints. Maria stirred against his chest rolling over so she was fully on top of him, and Tommy froze, not entirely sure what to do now, lying trapped under his best friend who’d given him a home and helped piece his broken parts back together. Thankfully, Maria awoke fairly soon into his small existential crisis, looking up at him, hair messy and neck cracking, a quiet ‘hey’ leaving her lips as she got up and headed for the bathroom. Tommy took the opportunity to stretch his back and readjust his clothes, still not sure what to say. 

‘You want coffee?’ Maria’s voice broke through the fog coating his brain, emerging from the bathroom with water dripping down her neck from where she’d splashed her face.

‘That would be great. Look, I’m sorry about stayin’, I’d meant to go once you were settled-’

‘It’s fine, Tommy. Really. You were a surprisingly good pillow. Eggs for breakfast okay? She said, seemingly confused why it was such a big deal, as though he hadn’t just spent the night in her bed.

‘Uh, yeah, eggs work. Any chance ya got any of that hot sauce Lauren made?’ he said, shrugging and following her lead as she headed through to her kitchen, filling the kettle.

That afternoon, while working on fixing the roof, Tommy almost fell off said roof when Jon, one of the only other men with any sort of construction experience, suddenly spoke,

‘So you and Maria have finally decided to stop sneaking around huh?’ he asked, smirking and sitting to look over at Tommy.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Tommy asked, confused as to why anyone thought he and Maria were hiding being friends when they regularly sat on his porch together in full view of anyone who walked past. 

‘Denise saw you doing the walk of shame this morning leaving Maria's house,’ Jon told him, clearly delighted at the efficiency of Jackson's gossip network. 

Tommy blinked several times, ‘Wait, what? That wasn't a walk of shame. Firstly, because it's not like that between us, I just fell asleep. Secondly, a walk of shame implies I'd feel shame, which is yet to be something I’ve ever experienced.’

‘Wait what do you mean it's not like that? You're not together?’

‘No? Wait, did you think we were?’

‘Alongside everyone else in Jackson, dude, yeah I did. Are you seriously telling me that you spend all your free time together, and you're not sleeping together?’ Jon asked him, beginning to look as confused as Tommy felt. 

‘Yeah, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Can we get back to finishing this roof now? I'm meant to be meeting the woman I'm in no way sleeping with for lunch in an hour’. 

Turning away from Jon and getting back to laying shingles, Tommy thought about what he'd said, the assumption that he and Maria were together. To be fair, men had stopped asking her to dance at the Tipsy Bison pretty soon after they'd started spending more time together, and he had quit flirting with women in front of Maria, and given he was basically always with her, that meant he'd stopped flirting completely with the other women of Jackson. 

Two hours later, and God, Tommy missed competent coworkers who knew what to do and could be trusted not to fuck everything up the minute he looked away, he fell into a chair opposite Maria in her kitchen with a loud thump, her raising an eyebrow at the interruption from her work. 

‘So Jon asked me about that fact I supposedly did the walk of shame this morning, apparently Denise saw me leave yours,’ he said, reaching over the table to grab her sandwich and start eating it. 

‘That would imply shame is something you'd feel after sleeping with somebody,’ she said, not even looking up from the large stack of papers in front of her. 

‘That’s what I said!’ Tommy replied, gesturing to her with her own sandwich, which she plucked out his hand to grab a bite of herself. ‘But also, apparently the whole town thinks we are together.’

‘I mean to be fair we spend all our free time together and neither of us have been seeing anyone else, it's not a wild conclusion for them to draw,’ Maria replied, somehow managing to hold a conversation, eat a sandwich, and continuing working on what looked like a patrol schedule all at once. 

‘That doesn't bother ya’?’ Tommy asked, confused by how nonplussed she seemed.  

‘Tommy I'm 44 and we are living through the apocalypse, I'm rather a long way beyond caring what anyone else thinks about my sex life,’ she said, pushing the patrol schedule away and setting down the sandwich. ‘Does it bother you that other people think we are together in that way?’ she asked, staring at him with what he had long ago termed her ‘lawyer face’ where he knew he couldn't hide anything from her even if he wanted to. 

‘No? Maybe? I don’t know, Maria, just feels a little weird that they'd think a guy like me had a chance with a woman like ya’ is all.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, her voice sharper than he remembered it being while directed at him for months.

‘What do ya’ think it means? You were a fuckin’ DA with a surgeon for a husband and a kid and a life and everythin’ before, and now you've helped set up one of the only non FEDRA settlements in the whole US and despite what ya’ tell people about the council everyone knows that people will vote for what you and ya’ daddy decide is best. I barely graduated high school and spent my life before the end of the world pickin’ dumb fights at bars and having to get bailed out by my brother with my niece in tow, and after the outbreak I've done a whole lotta awful things. You managed to build somethin’, I just hurt a lot of people who didn't do anythin’ but get in my way. You never woulda looked at a guy like me before even if ya’ weren't happily married, and god knows you'd never look at me like that with everything I've done since.’

‘Is that seriously what you think? That you wouldn't be good enough for me?’ she asked him, her voice keeping the hard edge even as she reached over and took his hands. 

‘Ya’ know what I've done, darlin’. Don't think I'm good enough for anyone, don't think I was before the world ended, let alone now,’ Tommy said quietly, looking her in the eye to show he wasn't hiding anything. 

Maria picked up his hands and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, hands holding tight to his. 

‘You listen to me, Tomás Miller. You are worth loving. I know what you did and who you are, and I haven't turned away from you yet. If I didn't think you were good enough for me, I wouldn't be spending all my time with you and letting you steal my sandwiches, okay?’ she said, staring deep into his eyes to make her point. 

‘Yeah but that's different, we’re friends. It's not the same.’

‘Am I seriously going to have to explain to you how platonic relationships are just as important and fulfilling as romantic ones? It doesn't matter exactly what our relationship is, it wouldn't change how I looked at you. How much I love you.’

Tommy blinked, ‘you love me?’ 

‘Of course I do, you moron. Now help me with the patrol schedules,’ she said, squeezing his hands before pushing half the schedule over to his side of the table. He just sat there, trying to process the fact that a woman as wonderful as Maria apparently loved him. 

About two minutes later, the room having been silent until then, he broke it by asking,

‘We can start fucking with people if they all think we are sleeping together, right? This could be hilarious.’ 

‘Oh definitely. They want to make dumb assumptions instead of asking questions, we get to fuck with them,’ Maria answered instantly. ‘Now, thoughts on sending Silas and Eugene out on the northern route?’

‘Absolutely not, the levels of common sense on that patrol would be so low as to be nonexistent. Also, I love ya’ too, darlin’. I hope you know that.’ 

Maria smiled over at him, squeezed his hand, and went back to work. 

Things changed after that. They'd been close for a while, spending a lot of time together, but after naming what was between them they lived practically on top of each other, constantly in each other's houses, every so often both falling asleep while watching a movie or working late and moving, groaning at aching joints, towards whichever bed was closest and curling up in it. Tommy hadn't thought much of it, Maria not being one to snore or steal the covers, until George cornered him after a patrol shift one day after he'd finally been cleared to handle a gun and head out. 

‘So what exactly is going on between you and my daughter?’ George said, standing just outside the stables and waiting for Tommy to walk out, making him jump out of his own skin as he quickly looked around for George. 

‘I… I feel like that's somethin’ you'd need to ask her, sir,’ he said, feeling like he was fifteen and had been caught sneaking around with his girlfriend again (Isabella, having had one grandchild from a child barely out of high school, had no interest in there being a second and had been extremely strict with doors open and rules like that. Tommy, having acquired a niece from a high school relationship, had no interest in giving her a second grandchild, so this caused significantly less issues than everyone seemed to expect given his reputation as a womaniser). 

‘I did. She said to ask you,’ George responded, his eyes narrowing. 

‘I… She's the best thing in my life, sir. I like havin’ her around.’

‘Hmm. Break her heart and we will have a problem,’ George responded, his voice taking on the same edge that Maria's did when she was serious. 

‘That feels fair, sir,’ Tommy said, very aware that Maria had learnt most of her lawyering at his feet, including the ability to read people. 

When he mentioned the conversation to Maria that evening over dinner she laughed, apologising for not giving him advance warning of the impending shovel talk as George had asked her the same thing that morning. 

‘What did ya’ tell him? About us?’ Tommy asked.

‘That I was a forty four year old woman and thus rather beyond having to justify my relationships to him,’ she replied dryly. ‘No, I told him you were important to me and I love you and if you break my heart I can kick your ass myself.’

‘That’s my girl.’

Three months later, Tommy and Maria were frantically shovelling down breakfast after sleeping in late, one of them having turned the alarm clock off and rolled back over without thinking. When Maria stood up to leave, grabbing her bag and coat, she dropped a kiss on Tommy's lips as she ran out the door to a council meeting seemingly without thinking about it. 

Tommy blinked several times, decided he quite liked that, and finished eating his toast before heading out to his patrol shift. 

That lunch time, when Maria didn't come to his house like usual, he walked over to her house to find her having a panic attack in her kitchen. He filled her up a glass of water and sat next to her, hand palm side up in an offer to hold hers if she wanted. Maria didn't often have panic attacks, certainly had them less than he did, but she had a tendency to freak out if she was touched unexpectedly, so he waited until she made the first move towards him before pulling her onto his lap and wrapping his arms around her. 

‘I'm sorry,’ she choked out, face buried in his chest as her breathing slowly evened out. 

‘For what exactly?’ Tommy asked gently, not entirely sure what had set this off, and not wanting to guess wrong. 

‘Missing lunch, kissing you, freaking out? Some combination of all the above?’ she said, still not looking up at him. 

‘Okay, addressing those one by one. Firstly, ya’ don't ever gotta apologise for having a bad day. Panic attacks are shit but they happen, we didn't get through more than a decade of the apocalypse without a fuckton of trauma. Secondly, I don't care if you missed lunch, I just wanted to check ya’ were okay as ya’ don't normally bail on me without letting me know something has come up. And thirdly, you do not in any way need to apologise for kissin’ me, okay?’ he said, arms still wrapped tight around her. They'd worked out months ago firm pressure grounded her faster than anything else when she panicked. 

‘It was… okay?’ 

Tommy huffed out a laugh and pressed a kiss to her hairline. ‘Yeah, darlin’, it was okay. Though I certainly wouldn't mind you doin’ it again to be sure. But also if you wanna just forget it ever happened, that's all fine with me too. Whatever you want.’

‘I think I'd like to try again,’ Maria answered, shifting so she was looking up at him, her hands coming up to either side of his face as she kissed him again, gently, giving him enough time to respond this time. His hands shifted to her waist as she looked down at him, the light shining in through the window giving her a soft halo, and Tommy thought, in that moment, that she'd never looked more beautiful. 

She didn't make her afternoon meeting. 

The hickey she had accidentally left on Tommy's neck, right above where his collar could cover, made it pretty clear to everyone what they'd been doing. She wasn't quite sure whether it was better or worse for a hickey to be on him rather than her, but she quickly came to the conclusion she didn't really care. It's not like anyone was going to say anything to her, one of the advantages of good social standing and an ability to set her face in such a way that people tended to decide it wasn't worth crossing her. 

Two years after Tommy arrived in Jackson, almost fifteen years after his world ended as his niece bled out in front of him, a second too slow to save her, Maria moved her things into his house. It hadn't really made sense for them to keep separate houses before they'd got together given how much time they spent together in on or the other, but after George had seen the mark she'd sucked into his collarbone and rolled his eyes, muttering something about her always being possessive about what was hers, he'd told them they needed to pick which house they wanted and move out the other so new people could move in, the increasing flow of people into Jackson putting pressure on the housing situation. 

Neither of them had particularly cared which house they kept, so they ended up in Tommy's as it had better water pressure and one fewer bedrooms to keep clean and dusted (he and Maria were good at most parts of running a house, between them, but keeping on top of dusting was definitely something they needed to work on). She brought over the stuff she cared about most, keeping the better bits of furniture and leaving the rest for whoever moved in after her. 

They still had plenty of bad days between them - what should have been Maria's twentieth wedding anniversary, the day Sarah was officially gone longer than she'd been alive. But they got through them, together, holing up in their bedroom on the days it was too much to go outside. 

But they also had a lot of good days. Patrols together outside the walls, getting to enjoy a picnic in meadows full of wildflowers, evenings spent dancing in the Tipsy Bison as Tommy attempted to teach the townspeople how to line dance. Evenings spent with him trying to recreate his mother's recipes with whatever the gardeners had managed to grow in the greenhouses, Maria laughing as his attempts to make corn tortillas ended in crumbly messes until she stepped in and helped, explaining she'd had a Puerto Rican roommate in grad school who taught her to make proper tortillas. Lazy days when they didn't have shifts or meetings spent laying in bed, kissing and dozing and not worrying about what was outside Jackson's walls. 

That summer, after a family dinner with George at his house, because that's something they did now, family dinners, he'd pulled Tommy aside to help with dishes. 

‘I want you to have this,’ he said, handing a small redvelvet box over to Tommy. Inside was a gold ring with a green stone flanked by two small diamonds. ‘It was my wife's, before she passed. We offered it to Maria last time but Michael had a family ring she fell in love with. You don't need to use it if you don't want to, but I wanted to give it to you so you could consider it.’ 

Tommy ran his fingers over the gold band, catching sight of an engraving on the inside. 

‘It’s the coordinates of where I first met my wife, and where Maria was born. Caleb’ll replace it if you ask him nicely, especially if you have a rabbit to trade with him.’

‘Thank you. For giving this to me. I feel I should say though that we haven't even talked about marriage, so maybe don't expect her to be walking around in the ring next week,’ Tommy said, an image of Maria in nothing but his ring flashing through his mind. 

‘It’s there for when you want it, Tommy. You're a good man, and you're good for my daughter. She laughs more with you than I've seen since she lost Kevin, and what more could a parent want than a happy child.’ 

‘I appreciate it, sir. And for what it's worth, I’m grateful you think I'm good for her.’

When Tommy and Maria got home that night, he slipped the box into his bedside table beside the picture of Sarah from her final birthday party, and if he clung a little tighter to Maria that night then she just tucked her face into his chest and let him hold her as she drifted to sleep. 

He'd sworn, on multiple occasions, that getting married wasn't something he ever wanted. But he'd also been so afraid of getting anywhere near that point with anyone before, and here he was living with Maria and spending all their time together. The only thing that's be different if they got married was that he'd wear her ring, make it visible to other people just how much he loved her. 

But even if it was something he wanted, there was still the question of whether it was even something she'd be interested in. Tommy knew she mourned the life she could've had if cordyceps hadn't happened, knew that there wasn't a day she didn't wear her rings on a chain around her neck. 

He still hadn't worked out what to do about the ring, how to even bring it up, when a few months later she’d asked if he cared that she still wore Michael's rings when they were lying in bed together one evening.  

‘Why would I care that you want to remember someone you loved? Someone who loved ya’? I love ya’, darlin’, and I'm glad other people did too before I got to meet you,’ he'd said, touching their foreheads together lightly. 

‘Someone said something in town today, that it was weird I wore wedding rings to another man while I lived with you.’ 

‘Well, they can go fuck ‘emself.’ Tommy replied, having very little patience for other people's expectations of his jealousy, especially when it was over things like his partner's dead husband. Getting jealous of a trader who decided to flirt with Maria right in front of him despite his arm around her waist? Reasonable, not that he'd ever do anything, knowing full well the man was one more suggestive comment away from getting kicked out of Jackson with a broken nose courtesy of his partner. Getting jealous over the man Maria had expected to spend her life with, who's child she'd carried, who was gone years before he even met Maria? Dumb as hell. 

‘Then they asked me if I planned to keep wearing them if we got married,’ she continued, pausing as Tommy choked on the water he was drinking. ‘You okay?’

‘Maybe don't bring up marriage for the first time when I'm in the middle of drinking something?’ he requested, sipping his water and trying not to think of the ring still sitting beside his bed. 

‘That feels like a fair request. Anyway, at that point I told them to go fuck themself,’ Tommy smirked at that, amused with the image of Maria putting someone in their place. ‘Made me think, though, that we hadn't talked about whether that was something we wanted. Getting married.’

‘Bored of living in sin with me?’ Tommy said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, earning himself a roll of her eyes. 

‘Bored of my father telling me he wants to see me married again before he dies,’ she said, her tone of voice suggesting that this was a conversation she was having with George fairly frequently. 

‘For the sake of honesty I feel I should tell you I have your ma’s engagement ring sitting in a box in my bedside table. George gave it to me, said I should use it if we got married,’ Tommy said, wanting all the cards on the table if they were going to have this conversation. 

‘He’s really been playing both sides here then. Sometimes I forget how many years he spent as a lawyer and getting people to do what he wants. I’m just amused he's decided that what he wants us to do is get married,’ said Maria, glad her father had found something to sink effort into, even if it was her love life. He had slowed down a lot even since Tommy had arrived, his mind as sharp as ever but his body struggling to keep up any more. 

‘Is that… is that something you'd want? Getting married again?’ Tommy asked, reaching out for her hand, squeezing it gently. 

‘What happened to you swearing to never get married?’ she asked him quietly. 

‘I met you,’ he said simply, tilting up her chin so he could see her face, ‘until you, every experience I had with marriage was bad. Hearin’ you talk about Michael made me realise it wasn't always shit, that it could be somethin’ worth doing. I love ya’, Maria, with my whole heart, and I fully intend to spend the rest of my life with ya’. If I had the opportunity to do so as your husband I'd be honoured, but if that's not something you want then I'll give your daddy back the ring and tell him it won't happen. I'm happy with us now, I'd rather have us like this than you unhappy.’

‘The way they said it in town, it sounded like they expected to just replace his rings with yours. Replace him with you, trade one husband out for another,’ Maria said, leaning her cheek into his hand. 

‘You know you could wear both, right? Wearin’ my ring on your finger wouldn't stop ya’ wearing Michael's rings around your neck. I don't expect you to just give them up for me,’ he offered. 

‘You'd be okay with that?’

‘I would be honoured if ya’ loved me enough to wear my ring, Maria, but I’d never expect you to stop wearing his.’

‘Tommy?’

‘Yeah, darlin’?’

‘I expect a proper proposal. This doesn't count, alright?’ Maria said, smiling at him, laughing as he leant over to press their lips together, pulling her back against him to enjoy the feel of their skin pressed together. 

‘I love ya’, Maria’, he said, pulling just far enough away from her to speak, their lips still brushing as he tried to pour everything he was feeling into his words. 

‘I love you too, Tommy,’ she replied, pressing their lips back together. 

Three weeks later, more nervous than Tommy ever remembered being before, he and Maria rode out north of Jackson on a patrol shift together. They didn't often go out together, more because Maria's council work and his contracting tended to happen on opposite shifts, so it'd taken some doing (he now owed several people unspecified building favours) to get them on a two person shift together, especially given he wanted a specific route that went past the lake. 

They'd gone on a date to the lake fairly early on in being romantically together (rather than just attached at the hip as they had been before), as it froze deep enough to skate and Jackson had a surprising number of ice skates. Tommy, having never had the opportunity to skate before, protested 

‘Of course I can't fucking skate, Maria, Texas doesn't get this cold!’

‘Boston does though.’

‘Yeah and in Boston I was busy trying not to get shot by FEDRA for smuggling, we didn't exactly have time for family outings to find a pond to skate on!’, he complained, falling over again. He fell over a lot that day, laughing until his chest his hurt as he clung to Maria's hands and tried to stay upright. And then, once he managed to learn to go places, Maria quickly realised she'd forgotten to teach him to stop when he went careening into a snowbank. His head had popped back up, snowflakes clinging to his mustache, an indignant look on his face that Maria had laughed at until his arm reached out to pull her down on top of him. He rolled them over so he was hovering above her, arms braced on either side of her head. 

‘Now, I'm begin to sense this was all a plot to get me on my ass repeatedly,’ he said, his voice dropping lowing, teasing, eyes darkening as he looked down at her. 

‘Can’t have you getting too cocky sweetheart, and besides, you look so delightful underneath me,’ she'd replied, her eyes glinting bright and her cheeks flushed from the cold. 

‘I think we have well established that you only have to ask if that's what you want,’ he said, kissing along her jaw before moving down to her neck where it wasn't hidden behind a thick scarf. 

‘Does it help if I promise to kiss all the bruises better?’ she'd asked, smiling up at him. 

‘That does help, yes. Now what say you we start heading back so you can started on that?’ he'd said, standing up and pulling her with him and towards the horses. 

As they rode up the same path a year later, the weight of the ring box in Tommy's pocket seemed to grow the closer they got to the lake. It felt odd to be this nervous, given she knew the question was coming, and he what her answer would be. They settled for lunch, eating some sandwiches that they'd made from the cafeteria, and passing a flask of tea back and forth, coffee being too rare a treat to take on a standard patrol. 

The day was cold but bright, frost sparkling on the trees and lots of wildlife around, suggesting they likely wouldn't find too many infected on patrols. The animals were a pretty good indicator of how bad things were llikey to be, though not foolproof. 

Tommy waited until Maria was turned around, packing their lunch back into his saddlebags as he pretended to retie his shoelaves, and instead got out the ring from the box in his pocket, kneeling down so she'd see him when he turned back around.  

She turned around, clapping her hands together and ready to get going, before freezing as she took in the sight of Tommy kneeling before her in the snow, a perfect parallel to how they'd met, albeit with her gun slung over her back instead of pointed at him this time around. 

‘Maria, darlin', I love ya’, and I'd be honoured to spend the rest of my life loving ya’ as my wife. Will you-’ Tommy began, getting cut off as Maria dropped to her knees to get them at the same height, and pressed her lips to his. 

‘Yes. Yes, I will marry you, Tommy Miller,’ she said, eyes bright and a huge smile on her face as he slipped the ring onto her left hand, bringing her hand up to kiss it. 

They finished up the patrol (thankfully uneventful), and then headed straight to George's house to tell him. 

Five months later, on a warm afternoon in May, (between a flood of new arrivals meaning more council work for Maria and new houses needing to be built by Tommy, their plans of a quick, small wedding had been shoved on the back burner for a while), they got married. 

Tommy was in a dark blue suit he’d borrowed from one of the other patrollers, the same one that got brought out for anyone who had big events. He had opted to skip a tie, but had a daisy tucked into his suit jacket as he stood in the yard of his and Maria's house. Given the legal framework behind marriage had disappeared along with the rest of civilisation, weddings in Jackson were more for the couple themselves, with whoever they wanted acting as the officiant, and the after parties often held in the Tipsy Bison so the whole town could celebrate. 

He stood next to George, who'd started using a wheelchair that spring, who’d had teary eyes all day at the idea of his daughter marrying again. They'd asked George to officiate the first night they'd told him, and he'd said he'd be happy to say a few words, but given Tommy's family were catholic and his and Maria's was baptist he would be making it as ecumenical as possible. Tommy had laughed and pointed out he’d stopped going to church as soon as he moved out of his mother's house, after which Maria had looked at George and reminded him that they hadn't gone to church since she was a child and Michael’s family were Jewish, so they'd just followed those traditions the last time she was married. George had thrown up his hands and asked what they wanted, and they'd just asked for something short, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. 

A few of he and Maria's friends were there too, on a hodgepodge of chairs taken from various neighbours houses - Eugene, another patroller, Jon, who Tommy had worked with for a while and continued to claim partial responsibility for Tommy and Maria getting together, and Edith, a friend of Maria's who'd helped set up Jackson, who was responsible for somehow making a wedding cake in the apocalypse. It was amazing to Tommy how many people had pitched in for the wedding - his clothes were borrowed, he knew Maria's dress was from the school teacher though he hadn't seen it, there were bouquets of ox eye daisies everywhere that a patrol group had picked. They had a cake, and there was some sort of food buffet planned for the Tipsy Bison, Caleb had used his blacksmithing abilities to make a pair of gold wedding bands, pressed into Tommy's hands and the rabbit he'd brought in payment refused. A friend of George's, another council member, had found a guitar and was going to play it when Maria walked down their version of an aisle. Jackson worked as a settlement because everyone contributed, and the inhabitants loved nothing more than contributing to a party. 

Tommy was pulled out of his thoughts of how lucky he was to have found Jackson when the guitar began playing, and Maria began walking through the garden towards him. She was wearing a knee length yellow dress (she'd asked if he cared if she didn't wear white, but Tommy didn't care. If it meant he got to marry her, he'd be happy if she showed up in dirty jeans and one of his old shirts), buttons in a line up the front up to a gentle v-neck that showed her collarbones. The sleeves came down to her elbows, cuffed at the ends with the same white ribbon that adorned the hem and neck of the dress. Maria was holding a bouquet of the same daisies they'd used for decor with ferns mixed in, her dreads in an updo that seemed to have small crystals in as well as flowers. She’d even found lipstick for the occasion, darkening her lips to a deep red. Tommy, looking at her, was dumbstruck at how beautiful she was. He'd known she was gorgeous even since they first met, even if all he could see were her eyes and all he could hear was the barked order to kneel. He remembered waking up in the clinic, his eyes tracing over her cheeks and noses. In hindsight, he'd been in love with her for months before they'd said it to each other, and now, he got to marry her. 

Maria walked herself up the makeshift aisle, taking Tommy's hands as she reached the front and pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. 

‘Pretty sure you're meant to do that after I marry you both,’ George said dryly, Tommy breaking away from Maria's lips to flush up to his ears. 

‘Well then you'd better get on with it, because I would like to kiss my husband now,’ Maria snarked back, resting her forehead against Tommy's. 

‘Do you, Maria, take Tommy to be your husband?’ George asked, smiling up at his daughter and soon to be son in law. 

‘I do.’

‘Do you, Tommy, take Maria to be your wife?’

‘I do.’

‘Then by the power invested in me by myself, I pronounce you husband and wife,’ George finished, smiling as Maria and Tommy looked at each and then to him, surprised at the brevity. 

‘What? I told you, it needed to be ecumenical, and you said you wanted short! Besides, you seem to have the love and care for each other down already, and my daughter seems to be in a hurry.’

Tommy huffed a quick laugh before grabbing Maria's waist in one hand, the other coming up to touch her cheek as he pulled her towards him, pressing their lips together hungrily as their friends cheered behind them. He even heard a click, the type from a camera, but ignored working out where someone had got a camera to keep kissing his wife. They only stopped when George tapped them both on the thigh with a book and reminded them they had a wedding party to attend. 

As everyone began to return the chairs to their rightful places (a challenge, as no one had thought to label them, and it wasn't as though people had matching sets to begin with), people slowly started heading towards the Tipsy Bison to celebrate. Before he left, Jon handed over a small piece of paper to Maria, grinned, and then ran off to follow Eugene to the bar. Looking down, Maria and Tommy saw a polaroid photo of them - they hadn't even known anyone had managed to find a working camera, and had assumed they wouldn't be able to have wedding photos. They headed inside to put the photo on the mantelpiece, Tommy scooping Maria up into his arms to carry her over the doorway. 

‘What? I get to do some traditional things!’ he protested at Maria's squeak at being suddenly picked up, before she silenced him with a kiss. 

‘Ready to go see how fast we can sneak out of our own wedding party and come home?’ Maria asked, smoothing her dress with her hands, trying and failing to get the wrinkles out of the linen. She hadn't realised how thankful she was they'd finally got the dam up and running until she was ironing the dress, so thankful she didn't have to try and discover how people ironed clothes before electric irons. 

‘We could just skip it entirely,’ offered Tommy, stepping close to his wife, arms coming up around her waist, lips dipping to brush along her cheekbone. 

‘Tommy, darling, we have to show up for a little bit. First dance and all that jazz,’ she said, gently pushing his chest until he let her go.

‘Wait we are actually doin’ the first dance? I thought you were fuckin’ with me. Maria, darlin’, you know damn well the only dance I can do is line dancing,’ Tommy said, slightly freaking out. 

‘Tommy we just sway together for thirty seconds, you can manage that,’ Maria reasoned, soothing her husband. He sighed, grabbed their jackets in case they stayed longer than expected and the temperature dropped, and they headed to the Tipsy Bison. As well as the people who'd been there for the actual ceremony, most of the rest of the town seemed to be there. The alcohol was flowing, with glasses of champagne pressed into both of their hands, and there was a huge spread of food as well as the wedding cake. 

In the end, it took them an hour and a half to make their escape, Maria being the one to break first, grabbing Tommy's hand where he was chatting to a few of the patrol team, and bodily pulling him out the door, to the cheers and whistles of their fellow partygoers. Tommy, pressing Maria into their front door and kissing her deeply, commented smugly,

‘I win the bet on who breaks first then,’ he laughed, referencing his promise on the way to the Tipsy Bison that he could persuade her to make them leave before she persuaded him. 

‘You started telling me what you wanted to do to me in Spanish, that's cheating,’ Maria said, breathless and unbuttoning Tommy's shirt as she pushed him in the direction of the stairs. 

‘No, it's making use of what you have. And I have a wife who thinks it's sexy when I speak Spanish,’ he responded, picking her up to carry her up the stairs, before pausing for a moment,

‘I love ya’ so much, Maria.’

‘I love you too, Tommy.’

Tommy had always tried to keep his promises, but laying next to his wife, a gentle sheen of sweat on both of their skins, matching rings on their left hands, he didn't regret breaking the promise to his younger self to never marry for a moment. It was an oath sworn on incomplete information, but now he knew what he was missing, how wonderful it could be. And having finally got married himself, he decided that marriage was actually a pretty good idea. 

it begins....

Sense Her is out on AO3!

The first (and last) times Joel sees, hears, smells, touches, and tastes Tess.

This is the prequel of sorts to my new Tess Lives series, I wanted to explore Tess and Joel a bit more before I let them be happy and back together. It focuses on how they met and the very early part of the outbreak.

Rating: M

Words: 3k

Warnings: Major character death (does it count if she's not actually dead?), standard violence levels for TLOU.

Full fic below the cut if you'd rather read it here!

Joel Miller's first sight of Theresa Servopoulos was through a rifle scope, watching her dig a knife behind a man's knee cap until he began to speak. He and Tommy had been tailing her group of eight for a few days now, trying to work out where they were headed. In their experience, a group of that size moving purposefully meant some sort of settlement, and they desperately needed to trade for ammo that would actually fit their guns.

This, though, was a surprise. Tommy had clocked pretty fast that the group was divided into two or possibly three smaller groups, the tension rising steadily as time went on. They'd been expecting some shouting and the group splitting, not the only woman of the group, long auburn hair tied back with a bandanna, to stab someone in a way designed to maximise pain and avoid killing them. Joel should probably have found it less attractive than he did.

He turned to Tommy, who was still watching the scene through his rifle scope.

‘Any idea what's happening?’ he asked his brother, lifting the binoculars back up to his face.

‘Think one of the men made the mistake of coming onto her,’ Tommy answered, ‘definitely put hands on her at least, she didn't start it.’

‘As long as they still head towards the settlement,’ Joel responded, dropping the binoculars and picking up his rifle and heading back to the edge of the woods, ‘you keep watch, I'll sort dinner.’

~~~~~~~

The first time Joel heard Tess speak was three days later, when he was sitting on watch beside his and Tommy's stuff, rifle loose in his hands as his brother slept next to him. She slipped through the trees, silent as a ghost, gun loose at her side, and sat opposite him on the other side of the fire, ignoring the gun pointed at her chest entirely.

‘I’ll tell you where the nearest settlement is if you take me with you. I know you've been tailing the people I'm with, and the amount of firearms you have on you suggests you probably need ammo, as food doesn't seem to be an issue,’ she said, nodding towards the deer carcass hanging across the clearing. Her accent wasn’t local, Joel may have lost track of exactly where they were - Tennessee he thought, but he couldn’t be sure - but she was from significantly further north than whenever they were, most likely Midwestern.

‘How’d you know we were here?’ Joel responded brusquely, gun not wavering at all.

‘The rifle scope is reflective. First couple times I wrote it off, but by the third day it was clear someone was tailing us,’ she said, pulling a water bottle out of her pack.

‘Why wouldn't ya’ just go with your group?’

‘They aren't my group. I've been temporarily travelling with them, and that temporary period is now over, given I stabbed one of them. I'd really rather not travel alone, and since you and your brother haven't tried to kill us, rape me, or steal all our shit yet, you're my best option.’

‘We’re a shitty option.’

‘And that would be why I said best, not good. Try anything, I'll stab you too,’ she said, before picking a pinecone from beside her foot and lightly throwing it at Tommy, who sat up, gun loaded and pointed at her before he was fully awake. ‘Impressive,’ she mused, not reacting to the now pair of guns pointed at her.

‘Oh, it's you,’ Tommy said, blinking sleep from his eyes. ‘Wait, why are you here?’

‘We’re travelling to the next settlement together. I know where it is, you don't, and I would like not to go alone. I'm meeting the rest of my group there,’ Tess said coolly.

‘’Kay. D’ya have to wake me up early for that, though? I was hopin’ for more sleep,’ Tommy said, putting the gun down and going to roll over.

‘Tommy!’ Joel hissed, still holding the gun.

‘What? She knew we were followin’ her and she found us here so she's clearly competent, and besides if she wanted us dead she would have shot ya’ before I woke up. She's goin’ where we want to go and is willin’ to take us there. Plus this way we can split watches three ways, this is a win for all of us. Now pipe the fuck down, I'm sleepin’. We can leave at dawn,’ Tommy said, gesturing vaguely with the hand not holding a gun. Tess may not have had much experience with firearms (she hadn't learnt to use one before the outbreak, and hadn't found someone to teach her properly since. The one she carried was more for show than anything else, her words normally enough to keep her safe and a pair of daggers filling in when words weren't enough), but she knew just enough to be impressed by the younger man's trigger discipline even when half asleep.

‘Works for me,’ Tess said, shrugging and pulling a sleeping bag out her rucksack - a warm one, Joel noted, much thicker than his and Tommy's. She crawled inside (clothes and shoes still on, pack neatly fastened and ready to grab to leave at a moments notice, gun loaded and tucked next to her, same as Tommy's), rolled her eyes at the sight of Joel still staring at her, and rolled away from him.

~~~~~~~

The following morning, Joel learnt what she smelled like. He’d kept his gun on her the rest of the night, splitting his attention between her and the woods in case it was a trap. She’d woken with dawn by herself, slipping out of her sleeping bag and going to relieve herself (taking the gun, but leaving her gear, Joel noted), and had arrived back as Joel began prodding Tommy to wake up. Tommy hadn’t been good with mornings and getting up on time since he was teenager, and despite Joel's hopes time in the army had made that habit worse rather than better. She had pulled a granola bar out of her bag, and set up a pan of water over a small camping stove before heating water up, and pulling out a sachet of instant coffee. As Joel moved past her to get to the rest of their water supply to put out the remainder of the fire, he realised her gear apparently stretched to perfume, the scent of woodsmoke and coffee mixing with lavender and jasmine.

‘Ya’ got a good setup there,’ Tommy said, looking on jealously as she made up a large mug of coffee, adding several packets of sugar to it, as well as what looked rather a lot like long life milk.

‘Lots of stuff around if you know where to look,’ she shrugged, going to sip her drink before realising her coffee was definitely still too hot to not burn her mouth, putting it back down as she rolled up the sleeping bag and tucked it away. By the time her coffee was almost cool enough to drink and poured into a thermos to take with her, she had not only packed up but messed with the leaves and branches so you couldn’t tell anyone had been sleeping there.

They set off soon after, Tess pulling out a compass and a paper map (the same one Joel and Tommy had, not that it seemed to be doing them much good) and striding off past Joel to begin a long day of hiking, leaving nothing but the scent of jasmine in the air.

~~~~~~~

The first time Joel touched Tess beyond shoulders brushing as they walked or made dinner together (they had shared rations in Tess’ group so the food tasted better, plus it was much easier to justify having a decent selection of spices if everyone only had to carry the equivalent to one spice jar) was three weeks into knowing each other, when he ended up holding the skin of her stomach together as someone else stitched up a stab wound. This was certainly not how he wanted to first touch her skin and find out if it was as soft as it looked.

He was careful not to touch anything more than necessary or even look too closely at her mostly naked upper torso, to the point Tess would have thought the blood was making his queasy if she didn't know how little blood bothered him, or her, or Tommy, or the rest of their group. She thought it was funny, in a way, how respectful he was being while she was bleeding out. The group medic, an EMT before cordyceps, had cut her shirt down the front to get to her abdomen as fast as possible, then barked at Joel (the nearest person) to hold her still while he stitched her up, so Joel ended up with one hand on her hip bone, fingers brushing what he recognised as a C section scar, and the other spanning her entire rib cage, covering the pair of tattoos there and holding her still as she tried not to scream, the medic suturing as fast as could before tipping rubbing alcohol on the wound to try to sterilise it.

Tommy, still attempting to cover the four of them from the hunters firing at the them while the rest of their group picked them off one by one, glanced back in panic as Tess’ blood made its way across the floor in a river of blood towards him, soaking his trouser leg as he knelt. Joel, still trying to hold Tess still as she got stitched up, didn't move as her hand clung on to his arm hard enough to bruise, her eyes screwed shut with the pain. Even after the medic sat back on his heels, after Tommy and the others had dealt with the other group, Tess and Joel stayed as they were, his hands on her torso, her fingers digging into his elbow as her forehead moved to rest on his bicep as she breathed through the pain.

~~~~~~~

The first time he tasted Tess came a few weeks after she got stabbed, when the group found a liquor store. After drawing straws on who got to stay sober and on guard, everyone else had started drinking, enjoying spirits that most of them would never have been able to afford before cordyceps. Tommy was gleefully partaking in the drinking games (truth or dare, never have I ever, spin the bottle, and a bunch of other juvenile shit Joel was pretty sure people only did in college), whilst Joel and Tess passed a bottle of fancy gin between them, sitting next to each other a little further back from the bonfire.

‘God, I remember being young enough to think that was a good idea,’ Tess said, looking at the others playing games and swigging deeply before passing the bottle back to Joel.

‘Ya’ say that like it was a long time ago,’ Joel said, looking at her. She looked younger than him and Tommy, but he couldn't tell anything beyond late twenties.

‘Certainly feels like it, honestly felt like it before cordyceps too. Think I was done after I ended up getting a tattoo on a dare, then just started skipping straight to the drinking or drugs,’ she shrugged. ‘And besides, it's rude to ask a lady's age, Texas, didn't your Ma ever teach you manners?’

‘She did, hence why I didn't ask. Any information ya’ offer up in response to my statement is on you,’ he said, blushing slightly at being caught, his accent thickening.

Tess laughed, deep and full bodied, limbs heavy and loose from the alcohol.

‘I’m 27. Was born in ‘77. You?’

‘Thirty four,’ Joel responded, ‘Tommy turned 30 last month.’

‘Oh, so he's old now!’ Tess grinned.

‘The fuck does that make me?’

‘Distinguished. A silver fox. Han-’

‘I’m ain't going grey!’ Joel protested, cutting Tess off.

‘Oh?’ she said, rolling her eyes and carefully placing the gin bottle down, then twisting to straddle his lap, all her weight on top of him. He froze, before his arms quickly came up to hold her waist as she listed to one side, steadying her as best he could.

‘Then what, pray tell, is this?’ she said, hands finding a lock of hair and gently tugging, ‘because I hate to break it to you, Texas, but this ain't brown any more.’

Joel's breath caught in his throat as her hands gently combed through his her, their bodies pressed together, his mouth at the same height as her collarbone. He had a sudden impulse to lean forward and press his lips to it, and was halfway there before Tess tugged on his hair again, tilting his head up to look at her.

‘And what do you think you're doing?’ she asked, a twinkle in her eye that Joel was coming to realise meant she was fucking with someone (usually him).

‘I - nothing,’ he said, swallowing as one of her hands came down to his neck, her thumb pressing lightly on the side of his neck.

‘Well that won't do at all,’ Tess murmured, looking down at him, ‘if you aren’t doing anything you might have to think for once, and we can't have that.’ She bowed her head so their foreheads were touching, lips almost brushing his as she spoke.

‘Can I kiss ya’ now, darlin’?’ Joel asked, hands tightening slightly on her waist, carefully avoiding any pressure on the still healing knife wound. Tess smiled at him, a different smile to her usual fake one, and pressed their lips together softly for a few moments.

She tasted of the gin they'd been drinking for the last few hours, the stew they'd had for dinner, the spearmint gum she chewed while they walked. Her hand tangled in his hair as she pulled him back towards her, licking into his mouth as her other hand settled along his jaw, thumb brushing his cheek. And while their lips were pressed together, bodies tangling, laughing as they tried and failed to make it to where Tess was sleeping without falling over, Joel felt his world narrow until it contained only the woman in front of him, freckles barely visible and hair redder than normal in the firelight, Tess turned into flames set to burn him up in her wake. He welcomed it.

~~~~~~~

He realised, after he got Ellie to Lincoln, that he could barely remember all the last good times, not wanting those memories to belong to the ending they'd been dealt.

The last time her saw her remained in his head, the image on repeat of her begging him to take Ellie (as though he wouldn't, as though either of them would ever abandon a child, no matter how much it might hurt them to care for someone who wasn't the one child they wanted with them), arm shaking, the bite on her neck angry and fungus tendrils already snaking out from the wound. The scent of blood and dirt covering her jasmine lotion (the one luxury she afforded herself, always keeping it for herself if they found it or traded it), the shake in her voice as she spoke. She'd always had a way with words, a way of telling people what they wanted to hear and making them think her ideas were their own, so it killed him to hear her weakness, hear her losing what made him love her. The salt from the sweat on her forehead as he kissed her there, not wanting to risk pressing a kiss to her lips in goodbye. The feeling of her hand squeezing his as she told him to run.

Instead, he tried to focus on the good memories.

The last time he'd tasted her, a few days before they'd met Ellie, falling into bed together after a successful run, his head between her thighs as her hands tangled in his hair, holding him there until she was sated, kissing the taste of her off his lips.

The smell of her after she'd showered, making use of a rare period of hot water, the scent of her shampoo (rose scented, this time, a gift from Frank from last time they were in Lincoln) and lotion drifting into his nose as she curled around him in bed, her hair falling onto his chest.

The sight of her the morning before Robert’s men had beaten her up, perched on the kitchen counter and laughing at a joke, hair falling loose in waves around her shoulders in a way she never let it when they were working, wearing one of his shirts and a pair of long socks to combat the cold. He was attempting to cook eggs for breakfast, out of practice after so many years.

The sound of her talking to Ellie as they worked their way through Boston, trying to settle the girl (and him, Joel knew) and distract from the corpses littered around. Her voice as she spoke to Marlene, getting exactly what she wanted while Marlene thought she was getting a good deal. Her quiet words as they went to sleep the first night outside the walls, promises that they’d be okay, that the fireflies would take Ellie, that they’d go and find Tommy wherever he’d ended up.

The feel of her head on his thigh, using him as a pillow as he kept watch over her and Ellie, one of her hands curled around his leg as though to keep him close as one of his hands carded through her hair, gently working out the tangles as she slept, the skin on the back of her neck soft and smooth.

~~~~~~~

He clung to those memories later, sitting by the river, recounting them with each stone he added to her cairn - one for each sense, first and last, until ten stones sat neatly, one atop each other, the best grave he could give the woman he'd loved for so long. He briefly wished he would’ve been able to bury her properly, before remembering a long rant she’d gone on at one point about funerals being dumb and pointless. It made him feel better, at least, to know that she wouldn’t have wanted him to make a big deal of it. The way he mourned her was the same way he’d loved her: quiet, understanded, but always present, and always there.

a hint of what I'm working on...

this is for the new Tess Lives / fungus fuckery fic I'm working on. I wanted the first chapter to be up but the fic as a whole is requiring more planning than I expected (read: my science education kicked in and I've had to come up with full fungal evolution plans which has required a shit ton of show research because my brain kept picking wholes in what I had. this is the result of a STEM degree apparently)

the current plan is alongside our favourite characters that each chapter will contain some sort of FEDRA / fireflies notes and or propaganda about what they know about cordyceps, so have the first one now!

A formal announcement of the changes to Quarantine Procedure 48.1.3, 48.2.3, 48.6.2, and 48.6.4, authorised by FEDRA Director for the Denver QZ, Andrew Wirral, 19th January 2024. The new Quarantine Procedures read as follows, with changes in bold, followed by the previous rules in italics: 48.1.3 Testing positive for cordyceps is thus defined as meeting any of the following criteria: - A positive test using a FEDRA regulation scanner. - A visibly infected bite (defined as tendrils further than 3mm (extending) from the teeth marks). - At least two (any of) the below symptoms: Severe and continuous muscle spasms Slurred speech Increased aggression Coughing combined with yellowing eyes 48.2.3 On arriving at a Quarantine Zone, anyone testing positive for cordyceps will be subject to humane euthanasia. If the arrival tests negative for cordyceps, they will be held in a quarantine cell for no less than 72 hours (a maximum of 36 hours), at which point they will be retested. If they test negative again at this time, they will be allowed into the Quarantine Zone for a probationary period of three months, after which they will be recognised as full citizens of the Quarantine Zone. AND 48.6.2 In the event of a suspected outbreak within the rules, FEDRA is explicitly permitted to (may) ignore the normal rights of the residents (detailed in FEDRA Regulations 48.9) until the outbreak is under control and there is no further risk to the integrity of the Quarantine Zone. AND 48.6.4 After suspected contact with an infected in the event of an outbreak, FEDRA retains the right to place the resident into a quarantine cell for no less than 72 hours (a maximum of 36 hours) to ensure no further transmission.

Sunny Side of Heaven

Hi, ya'll! I've finished my first prompt for Good Things Happen BINGO! This was a prompt from the wonderful @march-flowerr, who requested "Butterflies: Sarah & Joel, butterfly garden. 20 Years later, he takes Ellie to see the monarch migration and talks about Sarah." I know this is Good Things Happen BINGO, but you all know I love some angst, so there is more of that than I probably originally intended, my bad. I don't usually write in present-tense, and to be honest, I don't know that I will again - it was a challenge for me, and I don't know that I quite hit the mark. But I still had fun writing this, and it felt nice to take a break from my other WIP.

My Work

Hi, this is my Tumblr. My name is Zee, and the TLoU brainrot is real. Currently working on the series: People Still Listen to Fleetwood Mac in the Apocalypse, featuring these two:

(Art by @mote-of-star-dust) 🎸 First Fic: Go Your Own Way 🎸 233,277 words / 31 chapters Joel Miller / Benny Cooper (Original Female Character) In the winter of 2025, two strangers are found in the wilderness outside of Jackson, and are brought back to the settlement. One is a doctor with infallible optimism, the other is just trying to find a life worth living. (@toointojoelmiller featured this fic as part of her Saturday Story Spotlight series, including a review from @march-flowerr that still makes me weep.)

★ Second Fic: As Long as You Follow (WIP) ★ Currently 197,202 words / 14 out of 17 chapters Joel Miller / Benny Cooper (OFC) | Ellie Williams / General Badassery Three years after the events of Go Your Own Way, Ellie is given another chance to save the world.

🔥 Bonus Fic: Warm Ways 🔥 6,290 words / one-shot Joel Miller / Benny Cooper (OFC) It's smut. That's it. That's the fic.

Good Things Happen Bingo Fics:

🦋 Sunny Side of Heaven 🦋 5,845 words / one-shot Joel Miller & Ellie Williams | Joel Miller & Sarah Miller Joel Miller, his daughters, and a whole lot of butterflies.

Other Fics:

🐈 Winds of Change 🐈 5,472 words / one-shot Joel Miller & Ellie Williams | Ellie Williams & Fuzz Aldrin the Cat Ellie wants a cat. Joel...does not want a cat. So they compromise, and Ellie gets a cat.

🩹 What Makes You Think You're the One 🩹 2,498 words / one-shot Joel Miller / Tess Servopoulos Small one-shot about Tess and Joel going from smuggling partners, to...maybe something a little more. Maybe.

WIP Title Ask Meme

Prompt: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Thanks for the tag, @adhdprincess!

(these are all TLOU fics)

Definitely Happening:

Scars

AbelCode

Support Group (not the final name)

Ghosts

Maybe Happening:

A Dungeon Master’s Guide to Trauma

Orange Juice

Turnaround

September (not the final name)

Criminal (not the final name)

Tagging: @mildredellie @captainredspade @wordspinning @logan178 @freetobeyouandmichi-me and anyone else who wants! (Sorry if I tagged you and you already did one, I tried not to tag anyone who already went but I probably failed lol)

Just reblogging again because it makes me happy. 🥹

Benny & Joel

I am absolutely dying over this piece of art that the wonderful @bumblepony surprised me with, commissioned from the amazingly talented @miranhas-art (who has made some of my favorite Pedro character art on Tumblr). Based on a scene from chapter 15 of As Long as You Follow:

Sometimes these evenings were a little different. Sometimes wine flowed a little more generously (for her) while familiar music played from Alexei’s CD player. He danced with her now whenever she asked him to, without protest, because he didn’t have it left in him to ever again deny her anything that he had the power to give. She was at her happiest when he twirled her slowly around the living room, and there was something nostalgic about these steps – something familiar that pulsed under his skin when she laughed as he lifted her arm and carefully spun her, something so free about how she always danced barefoot, her hair swaying back and forth against her back, something special about the way she always kissed him first, because even when he led their steps, she led everything else –

– something exciting about the afternoon where Ellie left a little earlier than usual, sunlight still spearing through the tall living room windows while Lindsey Buckingham crooned through the stereo speakers and Benny twirled through the motes of dust lazily, a glass of wine in one hand, her hair glittering in the light. She and Ellie had gone to the beach earlier in the day when he’d been occupied with fixing the balcony door, and she’d donned another donated dress for the occasion; a cascade of white with splashes of emerald leaves and blossoms, the skirt loose and flowing, and when she danced, a bittersweet thought struck Joel: that this was probably the closest he would ever get to seeing her in anything that even remotely resembled a wedding gown.

Sunburn kissed her shoulders with a rosy glow, a blush mirroring the flush on her cheeks, and when she beckoned for him to join her, curling two fingers in and out as she swayed, he did so with no hesitation, drawn to her like a moth to a flame – though he took her hand, first, spun her around slowly, and then wrapped her up against him from behind, all the better to trail his lips down her neck and over her shoulder, leaving fleeting white marks against her heated and red skin. And there was just something about this that felt different even when it was achingly familiar; there was a rawness to it, an uninhibited surrender in the way she tilted her head back with a longing sigh, finding rest against his shoulder, the way she tipped the wine to her lips and drank long sips, then held it up so he could do the same.

I put these two through so much - and I love that when the opportunity arises, people choose to show them in their better, happier moments. ♥️

Bleed to Love Her

Posted something new, and a little...different...earlier today, on AO3. Title: Bleed to Love Her Chapters: 1 / ?

Warnings: +18, mildly suggestive scenes, trauma, gun violence.

Summary: He doesn’t know how he does it, he just knows that it happens with frightening quickness; that suddenly he’s howling like a wounded animal, he and his brother tumbling against the side of a dumpster in a tangle of limbs and fists, and it’s only his slight edge in speed that gives him the upper hand, that lets him straddle Joel’s legs and rain punches to his ribs, his jaw – and he barely feels the retaliatory hits to his own ribs, his stomach – but he feels the arms around his neck, choking him, pulling him back –

The world is swimming, the tops of the buildings blurring into the wispy gray sky. The taste of copper floods his mouth. He's flat on his back, the rough, wet pavement biting into his skin through his shirt, and Tess looms over him, grinding her boot into his chest, pinning him in place.

“ – are not fucking doing this –”

--

Slight AU: Tommy never leaves the Fireflies. He still heads west, assigned to help establish their newest base and protect their most essential asset - a scientist who thinks he can develop a "cure." Even without his help, Joel and Ellie manage to find their way to Salt Lake City.

Some things change, while others stay exactly the same.

does anybody have tlou game Joel Miller fic recs? don’t get me wrong i love the pedro ones but i want some of game joel💔

Pretty angel

{You can’t hide your insecurities from Tommy, not when he’s so attentive with you}

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It starts off with small things, as it always does with this kind of stuff, it happens before you even subconsciously notice and by the time that happens you’re too far gone in your own self-sabotage.

But Tommy notices, he notices how your eyes never linger on the mirror, he haphazardly hung up, almost as if you do everything in your power to not look at it, and when you do he notices the grimace that stains your face, the disgust that tarnishes your eyes and he can’t imagine the words that scratch heedlessly at your mind.

It hurts him more than you know, his heart aches at the thought of you thinking that you’re anything but a downright angel sent from the heavens above, and there’s an odd sense of guilt that squeezes him because maybe he’s not telling you enough?

He watches you intently as you walk into the living room a certain sadness casts over your beautiful face, and he smiles so brightly as he pats the empty seat beside him, and it’s hard not to smile back.

“Hey love bug” he beams like a lovesick puppy pressing a kiss to your cheek and he doesn’t miss the way you almost wince away from his touch, and his heart near enough breaks.

There’s an odd silence that wedges between the two of you, “So, what we watching tonight?” You try and be as chirpy as possible pushing all the negative feelings you have about yourself down and covering them with fake happiness.

But he notices, of course, he does. You’re Tommy’s absolute world, “Your pick baby” he reminds you gently

You nod with a small smile before getting up to where he keeps all the DVD’s and you flick through them before finally settling on the cheesiest romance movie you can find, and you giggle when he lets out a groan, “I know it’s your guilty pleasure, just admit it sweetheart” you laugh and Tommy’s heart blooms at the sweet noise.

“Yeah yeah, you got me, baby, it’s a real guilty pleasure of mine” he chuckles as you excitedly put it on.

However his smile soon falters when you decide to sit away from him, and his chest feels heavy when you slightly shift away as he inches closer.

There’s a silence that stifles the air with tension, and it’s enough to make you feel nauseous. Tommy knows he needs to talk to you he can't let you keep isolating yourself.

His hands take yours carefully, “You gotta talk to me honey— it just feels like you’re tryin' to distance yourself from me, what’s going on sweet thing?” he suddenly asks and your eyes widen in shock as panic seeps into your bones, and there’s a horrible blocky feeling that wedges itself in the back of your throat as tears sting the back of your eyes.

You don’t know what to say you completely freeze up and you look down at your shaky hands determined not to meet his soft gaze.

“I— I just— I don’t—“ you huff out in frustration when you can’t find the words to describe what you’re feeling, and he gives you an encouraging look, squeezing your hand in reassurance, “I don’t feel very pretty” you mumble feeling a little silly.

But it’s true nonetheless, there’s a loud voice in the back of your head that reminds you constantly of all your flaws it repeats in your mind like a mantra and it curses you until you start believing the horrible words to be true leaving you exhausted.

“Oh, Darlin come here” he whispers his brows knit together in sadness, you rest your head against the crook of his shoulder as his arms engulf you in a loving hug.

He doesn’t really know what to say and he’s completely freaking out on the inside. Tommy doesn’t understand, he thinks you’re an absolute angel, the prettiest person to walk planet earth, and his heart shatters at your words.

“I’m sorry it’s silly— I’m being silly” you sniffle wiping away your tears, and you watch the worry pour into his eyes, how his face is full of concern and it makes you feel guilty.

Tommy shakes his head, “It’s not silly baby, it’s not” he promises his tone is so soft and caring, and he presses a kiss to your forehead, his rough hands gently cupping your warm face.

“Tell me what can I do, how do I help?” He asks, “Anything you name it I’ll do, absolutely anything sweetheart” there’s almost a desperation in his tone and it weaves through his face.

And your heart jumps at his words, and you realize that he cares, of course, he cares it was silly of you to think otherwise, but you know there isn’t anything he can do to stop the horrid thoughts that scratch at the back of your mind, “You just being here is enough for me” you smile wiping the tears that fall from your eyelashes.

He nods softly with a somewhat bashful smile, “You’re beautiful you know? I mean absolutely gorgeous, sweetheart” he smiles with a genuine look in his eyes, as he presses a gentle kiss to the corner of your mouth, and you relax into his side his arm hooking around your shoulders bringing you closer to him, and you feel so loved.

His words bring another wave of tears to your eyes, and you can’t stifle the sob that pushes its way out your mouth, “Hey, don’t cry sweet thing” he mumbles against your head, and he can feel the dampness on his shoulder, his hand rubbing the expanse of your back.

“I’m sorry, I just love you, Tommy, so much” you sniffle and his heart melts at your words.

“I love you too, my pretty angel” he smiles as you let out a breathy giggle, and he wipes your tears away with his thumb before placing gentle kisses all over your face, and you go warm under his soft touch, heart full with happiness.

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☾⋆AN this has been in my notes for a hot minute, enjoy my lovelies!! <33

Hi! just wanted to say that i absolutely love your writing and wanted to know if you could do a Tommy Miller x reader, where Tommy has had too much to drink and Joel takes him home to you but Tommy cannot stop talking about how much he loves you and how pretty you are as you take care of him. Like just super fluffy. Thanks so much if you decide to do this! :D

Drunken love sick fool

{Tommy has had one too many, luckily for him he has you}

This is too cute!! Hope you enjoy lovely 💕

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“Don’t let him overdo it, please for love of god Joel.” Is what you had told Joel before the pair of them left for a ‘well-deserved drink or two’ you don’t mind really, in fact, you’re glad they get along so well, but goodness are they bad influences to each other, and before they know it they’ve both drank their own body weight in whiskey.

Joel only chuckled at you, saying something about how he ‘can’t promise anything’ which in turn made you sigh, knowing that tonight you might have to nurse a very drunk Tommy.

“Honey! I’ve missed you!” you hear him before you see him, shouting your name with a thick southern accent that seemed ten times stronger than usual.

You can’t help but smile when you hear Joel trying to shush him, scolding him about how he’s ‘gonna wake up the whole street with his yapping’ as you grab the front door keys from the small bowl.

You wish you could be mad at him, mad at both of them but you completely melt when Tommy’s eyes meet your own, so full of love and joy as he smiles brightly at you and you feel your frustration crumble away.

“Sorry, he just-” Joel tries his hardest to come up with a good excuse as to why he’s returned your boyfriend back home to you as drunk as a skunk, but yet all that comes out is a guilty chuckle as he scratches the back of his neck with a smile.

“It’s alright Joel, but you owe me” You tell him as Tommy wraps his arms around you, nuzzling his nose against your neck as he mumbles something about how you smell like heaven.

He bites back his laughter as you try to keep his brother on both feet, “Well good luck to you, he’s been er- asking for ya” and you can tell by the teasing look that flashes through his eyes that there’s something you're not getting, and you dread to think what exactly he’s said.

You bid him your last goodbyes with Tommy still practically hanging off you before closing the door with a heavy sigh knowing you were in for a long night.

“Mm, honey- I’ve missed you” he whispers against your shoulder, hands soothing against your lower back as they slip underneath your shirt, splaying against your bare skin.

The feeling makes your skin tingle as you pull back slightly, brushing his hair behind his ear, “Missed you too baby” you whisper, breaking out into a fit of giggles as he peppers sloppy kisses all over your face.

“God, you’re so pretty, do y’know that? My lovely girl” he gasps looking at you with soft eyes as he studies your face. His hands come to rest against your hips, squeezing them softly as he continues to admire you.

“Come on let’s go get you some water” you tell him, dragging him to the kitchen. You help him to take a seat at the table before pouring him a glass of cold water.

Although he doesn’t stay seated for long at all, immediately standing back up to lean behind you, his strong arms warped around your midsection.

“Tommy I-” You can’t finish your sentence as peppers more kisses along your shoulder, his rough hands going back underneath your shirt as they rest against your belly.

“I love you” he whispers, voice laced with exhaustion as he goes on, “So, so, so much” he presses kisses between the words.

“I love you too Tommy” you giggle as you try to pry yourself away from him as he lets out a huff of dismay. He doesn't have any of it, taking no interest in your offer of some ice-cold water. No, he's adamant that the only thing he needs is you to cure his drunkness.

Time ticks by and it nears twelve am when you finally get him to drink some water as you go and get him a change of clothes and by some miracle, you’ve finally got him into bed, even if his shirt is inside out.

You sigh as you finally lay down pulling the sheets over the pair of you. Tommy's arms wrap around you as he inches himself closer to you, his head nuzzling against your shoulder as he rambles on and on about how ‘lucky he is to have such a beautiful girlfriend’ as his hands soothe against your stomach and you cant wait to tease him about it in the morning.

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Misc (miscellaneous)

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Mortal Kombat-

A Soft Moment - Liu Kang

Mornings - Bi-Han

The last of us-

Apple of my eye - Tommy Miller

Pretty angel - Tommy Miller

Drunken lovesick fool - Tommy Miller

Saltburn-

Terrible cold - Felix Catton

I just finished reading the "Shut Up" "Make Me" Ellie x Reader fic and it was good. Will there be a part two?

I actually didn't think of writing a part two but guess I'll think about it since I have requests and drafts to write. Glad you liked it btw 😍