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Ellie doesn’t know what happened. One moment, she’s eating in the dining hall, and the next, the memories come flooding back.
There’s blood in the broth and a severed ear swirling lazily in the bowl, and suddenly the chicken noodle soup in her mouth isn’t soup, it’s people.
People, people, people, people.
The sour taste of bile graces her tongue.
“I’ll be back,” she’s able to choke out. Then she’s darting out the front, breath coming in short gasps. Ellie leans against the banisters of the porch.
She can still feel the carving block against her back, still see his rings and the cleaver and the blood.
What are they going to make me into? She remembers thinking. Stew? Steak? Bacon?
She thinks of everything she’s eaten and wonders if it was people too, and she didn’t know. What if Jackson was doing that too? What if she just ate people? What if that broth really was blood?
Oh god, she’s gonna be sick—
“Ellie?”
She whirls around so fast, a few strands fly out of her ponytail and fall in front of her face.
“Joel,” she remarks, not a statement or a question, or anything really. Just something to fill the silence and distract him from the shake in her hands. She straightens so she’s not quite as hunched as before.
Almost immediately, he’s at her side.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t… I…”
She shakes herself.
“I’m s-sorry,” she says, voice heavy. “Can we… can—”
Jesus Christ , she can’t even speak. Blood is still in her mouth, warmth spilling past her lips and soaking her shirt. She looks down to wipe the crimson off the fabric — it’s one of Joel’s flannels, she doesn’t want his blood on it, but there’s nothing there. A millisecond passes, and she’s still studying her shirt, waiting, feeling the crimson drip but seeing there’s still nothing there, and her gaze is stuck to the button second to the top with a frayed string and she’s so confused because why is she staring at her shirt?
Ellie looks up suddenly. She can speak. She can speak.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps before she loses this ability. “Can we go home? Please.”
Immediately, Joel nods. Dinner be damned.
“Of course, kiddo,” he says softly.
Ellie doesn’t remember the walk home. Her consciousness is fading in and out of her body, but the heavy fog clears a little when the front door clicks shut behind her.
Joel leads her up the stairs and starts to steer her towards her room, but she stops him.
“What?” He asks, confused but gentler than she’s seen before.
“Yours,” she manages to croak out. “Your room.”
“Okay,” Joel says without hesitation, all soft and quiet, and Ellie feels her legs weaken. She isn’t sure why that affects her so much, maybe it’s the utmost care he has for her, and that freaks her out a little.
Ellie’s thoughts are surprisingly peaceful as Joel guides her into his room.
Of course, that can’t last, and the feeling of hands slick with blood reenters her mind.
She manages to make it all the way to the far wall of his room before she collapses. Her knees buckle and her hands shoot out to grab the edge of the nightstand. The cold wood doesn’t support her, just brushes the clammy skin of her palms on her way down.
Ellie tries to play it off. Like she meant to fall over or something.
Joel’s looking at her with that look, that look that made her feel like she was being dissected under a microscope as Joel tries to figure out how to help, how to fix, how to hold her in his steady hands and piece together her scrambled mind.
“Are you okay?”
Ellie averts her eyes from the doorway where Joel stands, stance unsure.
“Hey, Joel. What’d the windmill say to the other windmill?” She asks, pointedly avoiding the question.
“Ellie—”
“Joel. Stop.”
She clenches her jaw, knowing full well if she looks over and sees the concern on his face and hears the words are you okay one more fucking time she’s going to smash her face into the floor and have a breakdown right then and there.
“I’m fine,” she pushes through her teeth, more for herself than for Joel. “I’m okay.”
Her throat closes up with how utterly false the words she just uttered were.
“You’re okay,” Joel echoes, walking over. He gestures to the space on the floor next to her.
“Can I?”
Ellie forces a breath.
“…Yes,” she says, more curtly than she intended. “Yeah.”
He sits with an old man groan that she’d normally make fun of, but she was too busy trying not to pass out. There’s this strange sort of silence as Ellie struggles to regain her composure.
“What happened?” Joel finally says.
“I don’t know.”
“No, Ellie.” His gaze softened. “At… at Silver Lake.”
At the mention of Silver Lake, Ellie visibly tenses, her breath hitching.
Joel immediately backtracks.
“No, I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”
Ellie shakes her head.
“I have to tell someone, Joel. It’s… it’s killing me.”
“It doesn’t have to be me, Ellie, I need you to know that. I don’t mind—”
“It’s you,” Ellie interrupts. “It’ll be you. I don’t have anyone else.”
“You do! You have Maria—”
“I don’t give a damn about Maria,” she says, voice harsher than she meant it to be. “And I don’t have her. Not in the way I have you.”
Joel knows he should he chiding her about not speaking that way about family, about he’s still stuck on the not in the way I have you .
He couldn’t help that he had begun to think of her as his. He wasn’t sure if it was mutual.
But those words, spoken in a tear-thick frenzy, told Joel all he needed to know. And if the situation was a bit more forgiving, he would’ve smiled.
He holds out his arms, an invitation.
Ellie takes it.
“I don’t… I don’t want to talk about it today, though,” Ellie whispers into his chest, voice hoarse.
“That’s alright, baby girl. Whenever you’re ready, okay? I’ll be here.”
Ellie pulls him closer.
“Promise?”
“I ain’t going nowhere. I swear it.”
“Good,” she hiccups.
Joel cards his hands through her hair.
“Hey, Ellie.”
“Hm?”
“You never did tell me what the windmill said to the other windmill.”
“Oh,” Ellie pulls away, wiping her face with the heel of her palm. “He said, ‘I’m a big metal fan.’”
Joel snorts.
“That was awful.”
That earns a small giggle from the girl curled up to him.
“I know,” she says. “That’s why it’s awesome.”
They lapse back into silence.
“Joel.”
He hums in acknowledgement.
“I love you.”
Something in his heart stops for a moment. It had been so long since he heard those words. So, so long.
“I love you too,” he says to the top of her head because Ellie’s buried her face back into his chest.
“Always?”
“And forever.”
“Sap,” Ellie says with a light thwack of her sleeve.
“I know,” Joel murmurs, letting her melt into him. “I know.”