maskormenacelogs | closed | a joke in the way that we rust

Sleep never comes easily to Joel. Even in the seeming safety of Heropa, with no Infected, no martial law, no hunters, no having to sleep in freezing basements or hard garage floors and hidden in thick shrubs, Joel hasn't managed to really restfully sleep. Or at least, when he does manage to sleep soundly, he wakes up exhausted.

At least he has Ellie close, though. Through everything he's been trying to come to terms with here in Heropa, Ellie being by his side has helped. The kid has become everything to him. His whole world, in fact.

He's sure goddamn glad Ellie doesn't remember anything about the Fireflies. It had bewildered him at first, worried him even, but once it became clear that she truly had no recollection... well, it's a huge relief. He never wants to be put on the spot like that again, asked to swear to her that everything he said about the Fireflies was true. It's something Ellie doesn't need to know.

Long after Ellie fell asleep on her mattress shoved up next to his bed, Joel lay awake staring at the ceiling, until he finally drifted off into a deep but restless sleep. His dreams are obscure, nightmarish, filled with distorted places and distorted faces of people he once knew. He doesn't know at first what jolts him out of sleep but he blinks his eyes open with a startled jerk and looks around him in a moment of confusion before coming to senses with his surroundings.

And then notices the whimpering, choked noises coming from down on the mattress next to his bed.

Without hesitation, Joel pushes himself up quickly and peers over the edge of the mattress to see Ellie sprawled on her mattress, restless, murmuring, mumbling, like she's fighting against something in her sleep. A nightmare.

Wiping a hand over his face, he scoots across to the edge of his bed and rolls over onto his side to stretch an arm down to her. "Ellie," he murmurs, lightly touching her shoulder. He gives it a careful shake. "Ellie. C'mon, wake up, babygirl--"

Ellie jolts awake with a gasp, heart pounding so hard in her chest she feels like she could puke. It takes her a second to remember where she is. She's on a soft mattress. Clean sheets. Air conditioned room, though the baggy t-shirt she has on is sticking to her skin. Soft pillow. Her eyes dart around uselessly before she pushes herself up, rolling onto her back and keeping herself up on her elbows. No chaos... good.

"Joel? What's wrong?"

If something was trying to bust in he'd be in a panic. Maybe she was snoring or something. She's had to give him a nudge once or twice over the past year for that. He definitely wasn't waking her up from a nightmare, because that would be embarrassing.

But as she brushes damp hair off her forehead, she knows.

The way Ellie startles out of sleep immediately has Joel hefting himself up onto his elbow and he briefly pushes her hair back from her face as she's glancing around the room like a scared cornered rabbit.

Oh Jesus, he's tired. Tired and yet wide awake, especially now. "You were havin' a nightmare," he tells her, his voice scratchy and weary with sleep.

Nightmares are nothing new but Joel noticed that since winter... Ellie's nightmares seemed to have taken a turn for the worst. There were times he had to wake up her in the dead of night, whispering to her, Hey, you okay, kiddo? or sometimes, C'mon, kiddo, c'mere, while tugging her close to him. She's never told him about her nightmares and he's never asked.

He does wonder, though. He wonders what haunts her dreams, what that man whom he'd found her hacking to pieces had done to her. He has a feeling he knows - but again, he's never asked. Always easier to keep bad things that happen in the past where they belong.

And since she demanded he swear to her about the Fireflies, after rescuing her from that hospital, after almost damn well losing her for good, well. It's hard not to worry. It's hard not to want to keep her close, just in case.

As she rolls onto her back, he pushes himself to sit up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, and he eases himself down onto her mattress with his back resting against his bed. He sits with one leg tucked underneath him, his other leg drawn up at the knee against his chest, and he stretches out to her to push her hair back from her face again. She's sweaty.

"You alright, kiddo?"

"Ah, fuck--sorry," she says quickly, both embarrassed and annoyed at herself. It's not like she and Joel talked about this stuff. He'd established the rules: no talking about the past, no dwelling on things that can't be fixed. They'd become loser with that as they grew more comfortable with each other, sharing bits and pieces of themselves, but neither of them spoke about what plagued their fitful sleep. That was the unspoken rule. Never ask about the nightmares. She wouldn't say a thing about his talking in his sleep, just as she never volunteered to talk about her nightmares.

It works until he has to wake her up. It feels like she should talk about it, but... fuck, she's fourteen. She's not a little kid that needs coddling after a bad dream. Joel has his own shit to deal with and doesn't need hers in addition.

"I didn't mean to wake you up." She wants to tell him to go back asleep, because she can tell he's been tired. It's understandable. She didn't sleep well until he arrived, excluding tonight. But he's already sitting on her mattress by the time she finds the rest of her voice. "I'm fine."

"S'alright," is all he says. He doesn't care that he was woken up, not if Ellie needs him.

He pushes her hair back a couple more times, then drops his hand away, resting a forearm propped on his knee as he studies her through the darkness of the room. This past week, it's been strangely hard not to look at Ellie and-- see her unconscious body on that operating table. He's been trying his damnedest to push it out of his head because it doesn't matter anymore, and yet--

He looks away from her and wipes a hand over his face again. If only he could permanently wipe those thoughts away with it.

When she says she's fine, Joel looks back at her. He can see that she isn't. Part of him wants to say, yeah, alright, and leave it at that. If she says she's fine, then she's fine, no need to say anything more about it. And part of him wants to ask her, press her: you sure, kiddo?

Lifting his arm again, he holds it out to her with a brief beckoning of his fingers. "C'mere."

She can count the number of people who have offered her physical comfort on one hand. Still, she accepts the touch from him, smiling in the dark despite the pit in her stomach. Who would have guessed that a guy like Joel would be the most gentle? It's that fatherly side of him, she knows, that side that he probably thought was twenty years dead and buried. Maybe stuff like that never goes away no matter what else you lose.

It's nice and makes her miss something she never had to lose in the first place.

The question is clear in what Ellie can see of his face. She can guess how all the lines are contorting, though. With a sigh, she sits up all the way and scoots over next to him. Back against his bed, side against his, she shrugs.

"I haven't had to kill anything in weeks. No attacks, no running, no hiding. Nothing. It's so stupid. I... I keep having these nightmares about--" David, her mind supplies, but she wets her lips instead of letting that name out, "--about struggling to stay alive. I'm always pinned down or trapped. Stuff like that. This is the safest I've ever been and it's like my mind has to make up for it somehow. You know?"

He keeps his arm held out to her and the moment Ellie is pressed up against his side, solid and small and warm, the mattress shifting and dipping under her weight as she gets comfortable next to him, he settles his arm around her shoulders and gently grips her against him.

He stares ahead of him at nothing in particular, his hand absently rubbing her arm a couple of times as he listens to her starting to talk. And this is the problem when she does start to talk: he doesn't know what to say. What to tell her. How to help her. It's not like there's anything he can say that will make things any better. And dwelling on things that can't be changed and that hurt somewhere deep inside - well, it's always easier to just try to push that kinda stuff out of your mind.

"Yeah," he replies quietly. "Yeah, I know."

He gets it. It's like his own mind has been playing the same kinds of tricks on him. Everything is safe here and yet-- his mind is constantly awaiting danger, even in his sleep. Things he's seen, things he's done, they play over and over in his dreams, mangled and distorted with macabre and strange details that make no sense, yet make perfect sense inside the dream.

He turns his head, looks down at her. "It's not stupid. I get it."

He would get it. As much shit as Ellie's done and been through, she knows Joel has twenty years of that. She's lived a comparatively sheltered life. Christ, it's hard to imagine, but it scares her that she can paint a pretty good picture in her mind. Nightmares about what happened to Riley make her want to scream, but he must have nightmares about Sarah and those first days of infection. Everyone from that time does.

It's a wonder he's as intact as he is. Joel's strong, if anything. But he's human, too, and Ellie knows him well enough by now to know his mood within moments. There's not much he can hide from her anymore.

"You haven't been sleeping well either, huh."

There's no fight in her to push away his arm, so she lets herself sink into his side. Stuff like this isn't easy for him. He's clumsy when it comes to feelings because he doesn't really process his own--Ellie never tries to psychoanalyze Joel, but it's not hard to see what makes him tick. She gets it, too. It all ties back to Sarah. But the invitation to sit so close is him trying. Trying for her. And she appreciates it. She hasn't had many people that would push themselves out of their comfort zone for her sake.

Joel is silent for a moment or two. Again, he takes to staring at nothing in particular ahead of him in the dark room. He lifts his free hand and rubs it over his face, pushing his fingers against his tired eyes.

"Yeah," he admits gruffly. Yeah, he hasn't been sleeping well. Nothing new there, though.

"This place, I guess," he goes on to say after a short pause, dropping his hand away to rest on his knee. "It's, uh. It's quiet, y'know?"

And quiet is supposed to be good, but back home quietness was little more than the calm before the storm. When he and Ellie were trekking across country to get her to the Fireflies, moments of quietness were always a welcome reprieve - a damn welcome reprieve - but Joel always knew it would never last. He was always on edge, waiting for the next Infected to come swarming in, or hunters to ambush when they would approach an abandoned zone or city.

And the quietness here, well, it's a permanent quietness. No Infected. No hunters. No having to run for his life. Yet he can't relax.

"Sometimes too damn quiet. Keep waitin' for something bad to happen."

"Yeah, me too." Someone had asked her when she first arrived if the infection followed her. It hadn't, she said, though she hadn't known for sure. Weeks later, almost a month, and no one was dying a terrible death due to Cordyceps. No panic in the streets. No chaos as people scrambled to find safety. Loud noises and sudden movements still get Ellie to jump and she's pretty certain she's going to "accidentally" stab the next fucker to leap into her personal space without warning, but she's getting to the point where... well, if it hasn't happened yet, maybe it won't happen at all.

She finds herself more afraid of the people the porter can bring in. The dead. Tess. If Tess could be here, what stops them from accidentally bringing in one of the people they've killed?

Ellie didn't know how to handle Tess. What if Riley came here? What the fuck would she do then? The thought feels like a boot on her chest. God, she's give anything to see her again, but in her dreams Riley is always upset with her.

I thought we were supposed to lose our minds together. The fuck happened?

"Think we'll get used to it?"

Will they get used to it? Will he get used to the strange people here? The weird claims of werewolves and people being messiahs, of Norse gods and titans and magic spells? Jesus, just thinking about those things in any serious capacity makes him feel like he's going insane.

And then there's that damn 'superpower' of his: turning into a goddamn bear.

And Tess...

It's been niggling somewhere in the back of his mind, too, that if Tess can be brought here when she's long gone back and likely little more than rotten bones on the Capitol building floor (he's quick to push down on that thought before it manifests into memories of what had gone down that day in Boston)... who else could end up here? Why Tess and not Sar--

He stops that thought quickly in its tracks. He's got Ellie. He's got Ellie with him. His arm tightens around her slightly as if to reassure himself of that fact.

"Don't know, kiddo. Maybe. Guess it's just gonna take time." He glances down at her again. "You sure you're alright? Seemed like a pretty bad dream you were havin'."

"I'm fine. Just sweaty," she replies with a sigh, rubbing at her upper lip where sweat has pooled. No, she's not fine, but she doubts Joel wants to hear about her nightmares in detail. They don't talk about that. They don't talk about winter. They don't talk about Riley, Tess, Henry, or Sam.

Not talking is fine. She gets why. He's here and being comforting in his own way. The arm around her shoulders help, and the longer it's there, the more she relaxes.

"Do you want a glass of water or anything? I think I could use one."

Joel doesn't believe she's fine but he doesn't want to press it, either. Better to just move on than to constantly look back. If Ellie says she's fine, then he'll take her word for it. He doesn't really know how else to deal with it.

"I'll get it," he says of the glass of water, and he lifts his arm away from her shoulders and pushes himself up from the mattress. His knees creak with fatigue and his legs feel tired as he climbs to his feet. Damn, he's feeling his age. He flips on a lamp to see where he's going and he squints against the sudden glare of light.

He opens the bedroom door and peers out, listening for a moment for the other people who live in the house with them (and Christ, Joel can't stand that fact) before stepping out into the hall. He heads to the kitchen, barefoot and dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and fills two glasses of water from the tap. He's been here a week and he still don't know what to think of having functioning amenities that he once took for granted.

"Here you go," he says when he returns to the bedroom, holding a glass down for Ellie to take. He quickly returns to the door, closes it and takes a sip of water as he crosses the room back to his bed.

He sinks down on the edge of it, gazing briefly around the room. "Know what this room needs? A television. I used to have one in my room, back in Texas. Would lie in bed and watch TV if I couldn't sleep."

While Joel is out of the room, she uses her sleeves to wipe her face. Even with Florida's climate, she keeps her arms covered. The tattoo on her wrist she doesn't care about, but the bubbly scar on her arm isn't a thing she wants anyone to ask about. Her powers don't seem to work on old scars. Of course.

"Thanks," she says when he returns, and wastes no time in tilting her head back and draining the glass. Clean, cold water is the best. She swears she can feel it go all the way down to her belly.

She'll have to piss like a racehorse soon.

"Are televisions expensive?" She scoots around to face him, sitting at his feet.

"Uh," he replies before pausing to take another quick sip of his water. He rests the glass on his thigh. "Don't know about here. But back home, before the outbreak, yeah, they could be expensive. A real good TV could set you back a few grand. Or, you know, a few thousand dollars."

Not that Ellie would have any concept of that, Joel thinks. Not that it even matters.

"A lotta things were pretty expensive back then, I guess. Pretty stupid in hindsight. Most of it is all just junk, anyways."

"Explains all the shit everywhere at home," Elle shrugs. Everything loses value in face of the world going to hell. "They had TVs at the mall. We should go look. Maybe we can find one that won't take eons to save up for, if you want."

Thousands of dollars is a lot--she isn't exactly sure how long it would take with them both saving, though.

"And how about a car? We could get one, right? Not like Jesse's, obviously."

Joel would need a car he could actually fit in comfortably.

"Yeah." Yeah, explains all the shit everywhere at home. America, like the rest of the Western world, was a goddamn culture of consumption until the outbreak hit.

Lifting the glass again, he drains half the contents, sets it back down on his thigh. "Hm. Yeah, guess we could. Don't know 'bout a car, though. Those're a hell of a lot more expensive than TVs."

Unless he finds a second-hand rust bucket for a few grand. Still, that would require having a few grand at his disposal, something Joel doesn't have.

"Guess I'm gonna have to do somethin' about this job I apparently have."

"Like... actually go?" Ellie scoffs. He's just as bad as her skipping school. But at least she's been going to her job--money is a great incentive.

She shifts around to sit on her feet. "You know, the government pays for this place. Not everyone shacks up here, though. The whole roommate thing. If we had enough money, we could get our own place. Like, it's alright her, but I'm just saying. Sounds like we have options."

Joel snorts. Actually go. Yeah, right. And be a PR adviser to the goddamn FDA? The FDA can kiss his ass.

But he's going to have to do something to make ends meet. Ellie has been working at that ice cream place (and, Christ, has it worried Joel, letting her go off to her job - every day so far, Joel has ended up loitering around outside her workplace when he knows her shift is almost over to wait for her) but he knows it pays only a junior wage, something he and Ellie can't survive on. Not that he'd in any way expect Ellie to be bringing in the money.

Yeah, he's going to have to do something about this job situation. He just doesn't know what yet. It has actually crossed his mind to go to the job he's been assigned only until he finds something else, so he at least has some kind of wage coming in.

Jesus, the thought of being back in actual employment again, though, after all these years, after the life he's had. The thought frankly scares the shit out of him.

"Hm," he muses to what Ellie suggests. He drains the rest of his water and leans down to put the glass on the floor. "Yeah, ain't too keen on sharing this place with people I don't know. We'll figure somethin' out. We always do."

Ellie hasn't grown up in a world where having your guardian walk you home from work is embarrassing, so she doesn't find anything weird about it. How he doesn't get bored, she doesn't know, but Ellie thinks she makes it worth his while by smuggling him out an ice cream cone with whatever she thinks the management won't notice missing.

As for figuring something out, Ellie has a few things in mind. Where the hell did Jesse get his money? A few people have offered to help her, but Jesse's the one she'd go to first--he's never outright said "come to me for help," but she has a feeling he wouldn't mind. She'll have to ask him some questions. How the hell did he make so much bank?

"Yeah. Until then, at least we've got a roof over our heads. And food. And beds. And... a whole ton of shit. Oh! And clean clothes. I love clean clothes."

"Yeah. Gotta admit, clean clothes are good."

Being able to buy clean clothes has been really something, instead of salvaging careworn, moth-eaten clothes from wardrobes in old, abandoned houses, or from the army disposal rations in the zone. Being able to wash them in an actual working washing machine instead of dunking them in cold, gritty water and hoping for the best has been a luxury Joel never believed he'd ever truly have again.

He looks at Ellie, studies her. The corner of his mouth quirks in a brief almost smile accompanied with an equally brief but fond huff. Not quite a chuckle but something that almost could be.

"Must be real weird for you, bein' surrounded by all this stuff, huh?"

Joel gets a small smile in return. This is all jarring and crazy as hell, but it has to be good for him. It's how his life must have been like before... kinda. Florida instead of Texas, her instead of Sarah, powers instead of normalcy. Close enough, right?

"It's like I'm on an alien planet," she replies easily, sounding more relaxed, and even a little amused. "I mean, it's weird, but it's so cool. There's so much food, and it all tastes good. Everything's clean, new, and... I don't know. Brighter, I guess. I don't know how else to describe it."

She studies him for a few moments in return.

"How about you? This has to be like a blast from the past. You can have coffee at a coffee shop, do... whatever it is you did before for fun. I bet they have football games on TV," she entices. Okay, so she's pretty sold on the TV idea.

As Ellie tells him how all of this seems like an alien planet to her, how weird and cool everything is, Joel braces his hands on the edge of the mattress and eases himself down from his bed to sit on her mattress. He resumes much the same position he'd been sitting in before: one leg tucked in, the other drawn up at the knee near his chest with his forearm resting on his knee as he leans back against his bed. Ain't like he'll be getting back to sleep any time soon.

"Comfortable," he says as a suggestion for how to describe this place. It's definitely comfortable, a hell of a lot more comfortable than back home. Comfortable and foreign as hell.

"Heh, well," he goes on to say when she mentions football on TV, "reckon that's a good reason to get a TV right there. No better way to unwind than to kick back with a beer, some junk food and a game of football."

Yeah, he's missed being able to do things like that. He's missed it a lot. Used to be something he'd do with Sarah. He goes silent, pensive, for a moment or so, peering down at his hand dangling off his knee. Eventually, he nods slightly. "Yeah, kinda has been a blast from the past. Literally."

Being it's the year 2014 here, instead of 2033 like it is back home. Christ, Joel is still trying to wrap his head around that. But 2014... Sarah hadn't been dead even a year this time in the 2014 Joel remembers.

Seeing what Joel is doing, she scoots back to give him enough room. Though she won't admit it, she likes sitting around in the middle of the night talking like this. The nightmares can fuck off, of course. Her favorite moments with Joel have been the ones where they just talk. Or, more specifically, when he talks.

"We can get beer and junk food. Just missing the TV," she says, smile a bit bigger this time. There's really no rush, though. "Until then, we've got time to burn. You're my official tour guide of life without Cordyceps. What have I been missing out on, huh?"

Her tone may be playful, but she's serious.

"You won't be gettin' any beer," Joel is quick to correct her, throwing her almost fatherly reprimanding glance.

Alright, maybe he'd let her have a taste of beer if she asked, but... Yeah, no alcohol for Ellie. There are some things Joel is strict about and Ellie having access to alcohol is one of them. If he ever caught her drinking the stuff, he'd be pretty pissed off.

As for things she's been missing out on, life without the cordyceps infection... "Official tour guide, huh?"

He goes silent again, thinking over that. Christ, what has she missed out on? Everything. She says it so easily, almost playfully, like it doesn't bother her that she's missed out on things all these years. And maybe, there's a shred of truth to that - after all, Joel knows that life back home is all Ellie has known.

But he also knows it bothers her. He's seen it in the small moments, in the unassuming moments, the moments when the teenager in her comes out. When she and Sam were kicking that soccer ball around. When she and Sam were squabbling over darts. When they were joking with each other while tossing blueberries in the air. That comment she'd made when they were in a rotting, dilapidated bar with the video game, about wishing she could play it. Little things. Every day things back before the outbreak.

"Well, I guess that depends on the kinda things you wanna do. I mean, there's..."

A brief pause, as well as a heavy sigh, like he doesn't know where to begin, and he really doesn't. Even though he knows life in a civilised society before the outbreak, it's been twenty goddamn years. He feels, well... pretty damn lost. It's like he's been in prison for twenty years and has suddenly found himself back on the outside again with no direction, no purpose, no clue how to integrate himself back into what he once took for granted.

"Hell, I dunno, kiddo. It's one thing to wish for life the way it used to be. Another thing entirely to actually find yourself livin' it again."

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