hbo © the last of us
season 1, episode 3

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
LATE JULY ✷ 2023

━━ THAT SUMMER WOULD have been much different than the others. Instead of a humid apartment and movie nights with DVDs that were too scratched for good usage, Lena planned to show her daughter the world. The good, the bad, and the ugly — all of it. Someone had once told the woman that acceptance only came with familiarity, and those words had remained stuck in her skull like the pebbles in the soles of her boots, even after twenty-something years.

          Chelsea needed to know the truth. Why she had come into a broken world, who the people whom she took her face and mind from really were. Lip and Lena, Philip and Helena.

          And in turn, Lena needed to talk about what had really happened. Make peace with what she had done and what she had become. Acceptance comes with familiarity. But once she would begin to wholly remember the slaughter and the horror of those cursed years; once the images of blood and guts would go back to being memories, not nightmares she dreamt during the lonely nights — would Lena ever learn to face her crooked reflection again?

          But now, it mattered not. She had no one to talk to. Cess was lost, Lip was gone. And Tess — the only person she'd started to consider a friend — served as a cruel reminder that no matter what, Lena could not attach herself to the living anymore.

          The only people that remained for her to speak to were the void shadows of all those she had lost. Mama and Dad, her sister Naomi and her brother Paul. All of them gone like birds that had flown off Lena's wire, leaving her alone.

          Them — and the teenager that talked too much and the man that talked too little.

          There wasn't a single word spoken between the three as they'd walked out of Boston. The sound of the explosion — Tess' body erupting into a million particles, a last selfless gesture that had warranted the infected out of their way — was enough to fill the silence between them.

          Enough to walk for ten miles, enough to eat what remained of Joel's meager dinner, enough to go to sleep.

          Rest didn't come easy to Lena that night. She lay on the hard ground, with her back turned to Joel and Ellie, breathing down the neck of her shirt to keep her chest warm. While the girl dozed off instantly after dinner, the man remained on watch the entire night, making rounds through the makeshift campsite every half an hour or so.

          It almost drove Lena mad. Every time she could feel sleep tugging her body, the rustle of leaves and the creak of leather boots awoke her.

          At some point in the night, Joel seemed to finally understand — from the way Lena's breath shuddered and her shoulders jolted every time he made a sudden movement — that he'd better leave. If he could not rest, then at least she should.

          As he began walking down the pathway that led to the river, (the Concord Tributary, if Lena's orientation had not yet betrayed her) the woman thought about turning around and calling him back to camp. But what did she care? How could she care about Joel when he'd been willing to leave Ellie and Lena to fend for themselves?

          Then again, maybe he needed to cry or scream into the void or kick rocks until his pain was eased. Lena couldn't know. Because she did not know Joel.

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          The next morning, Lena woke up with a cold emptiness inside her body. She opened her eyes, wishing that the previous night's events had been nothing more than a bad dream — but she closed them tight once she caught a glimpse of the same trees she'd fallen asleep next to.

          The woman rolled to the side, wishing to soothe the throbbing pain in her rib. She wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep and rest for another hour or two, but the itching of thirst in her throat and the ants moving up and down her left arm pulled her out of unconsciousness.

          Lena groaned as she sat up, using her right hand to massage the sore muscles of her neck. She looked to her right, to the girl sleeping by her side. With both Lena's and Joel's jackets covering her small body, the woman was sure that Ellie'd had a better night's sleep than she and the man combined.

          The rumbles in Lena's stomach reminded the woman of the hunger consuming her. She remembered Joel's dried snacks and how good those dehydrated FEDRA rations had tasted, but she figured that he'd either eaten them or left them for the girl.

          She wished nothing more than to have a proper meal, but there was no time for either her or Joel to hunt and fish. They needed to stay silent, be quick, and reach Bill and Frank's — whoever they were, Lena wondered — by nightfall.

          Groaning in tiredness, Lena drew her sickle out of its sheath and knelt by one of the pine trees, wedging the tip of the blade between the cracks of the bark.

          After a few moments, the rustle of the jackets reminded Lena of the girl sleeping behind her.

          Ellie straight up, rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hand as she discerned the shape of the woman, carving chunks out of the tree.

          "Wh— what are you doing?" she asked, groggily.

          "Cooking breakfast."

          The girl raised her eyebrows as she stood on her feet and walked closer to Lena. "Seriously?"

          "One hundred percent." Lena replied, managing a small smile between words. She tore out a strip of bark and lay it on top of the backpack, letting Ellie glance at it for a few seconds. "Have you ever eaten a tree?"

          "No, I'm normal." she deadpanned.

          "Between being normal and not starving, I'll take the second."

          Lena continued to cut for another half minute, all the while Ellie looked at her curiously. When the woman gathered enough pieces to start working, she put down the sickle and turned around to face the girl.

          "Take this." she said, instructing Ellie to grip the piece of bark just as she was doing. "And rip the outer part, okay? So you're left with . . . this."

          Lena lifted the thin strip toward Ellie. "This is called cambium. Most of the time it's edible, and you can have it raw depending on the tree."

          She gave it to the girl and waited for her first tasting.

          Ellie dug her teeth into the bark, chewing hard before she attempted to swallow. "It tastes . . . bittersweet." the woman knew, from the ravenous stare in the girl's eyes, that she wanted more — even if she did not like it. "This is really fucking good, Lena. Where'd you learn to do this, Firefly boot camp?"

          Lena spun to the other side, ready to continue carving after she answered. "No. Girl Scouts, when I was about your age."

          "Girl Scouts? What's that?" Ellie asked. Lena watched from the corner of her eye as the girl pulled the switchblade out of her back pocket and turned to a nearby tree, mirroring the former's actions just as she had taught her.

          "It used to be a girls' organization that did a lot of things for the community. We set up evens, went door-to-door selling stuff for fundraising, helped clean the public parks. And sometimes we went camping in the wilderness, too. That's where I know most of the emergency skills from."

          "So just a bunch of girls together, surviving in the wilderness?" Ellie queried. Not waiting for Lena's answer, she laughed through her nose and nodded her head in approval. "Coool. Sounds like a great time, man."

          When Ellie had finished cleaning and eating the pile of bark she'd carved, she sat with her back leaning against the tree as she began playing with her knife.

          "What is he doing?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

          Lena glanced at the man in the distance. He had stayed like that — crouching by the water, pretending to wash his face and his hands for the entire night and early morning.

          "Probably just wants some time alone, is all." she shrugged, eating the piece of bark she'd spent half a minute munching on.

          "You think he's ever gonna like us?"

          "What?"

          "I mean," Ellie explained. "You like me more than he likes me. And I like you more than he likes you. At least we got each other. But is he always gonna stay like that . . ."

          How could Lena even explain to a fourteen-year-old that Tess, Joel's best friend of what she assumed to be a long time, had just died — and that the two were a living reminder, ready to spit in the man's face, that they had made it, and she had not?

          "Ellie . . ." Lena sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. "What happened yesterday was terrible, but— I don't know. I've known Joel for as long as you have. Most men I know would've snapped for less. We're lucky he hasn't tried to strangle us in our sleep. Or worse."

          Ellie's eyes widened in terror. "He wouldn't, wouldn't he?"

          "People do crazy things when they're in pain, and I've known him for as long as you have. But no . . . he doesn't seem like the type to take out his anger on a fourteen-year-old kid."

          She opted for the easy answer, feigned ignorance, but the girl seemed satisfied — mostly because she didn't bombard Lena with more questions any longer.

          Almost as if he'd noticed them talk about him, Joel stood up and began making his way up the battered path.

          "You just keep your mouth shut around him, okay? Don't need to make this harder than it already is. For everyone involved." Lena muttered, her hands busy with gathering all of the few things she'd left strewn around camp.

          "Dude, that's like asking a dog to fire a bazooka. It's impossible!"

          "And yet I've seen it happen." the woman lied, earning herself an amused smile from Ellie.

          Lena set her backpack facing her and began emptying it of everything she didn't need. They had already walked ten miles, but something told her they'd be walking for much, much longer — and she knew she wouldn't be using any of the cocaine or pills she had brought from Connecticut to trade.

          "How do you even use that thing?" Ellie asked, trying to grip the transparent bag of white powder in her hands. Lena was quicker than her, swatting her attempts away with a slap on the girl's wrist.

          "I'm not teaching a kid how to use coke." she said. "You figure that out on your own after the Fireflies give you a lobotomy, or whatever."

          And with that, Lena raised the bag above her head and threw it as far as her arms allowed her to. The feeling in her chest made her want to smile. If any of her 'associates' from Hartford could see her at that moment, she would probably be dead within a minute. Their hard work, she thought, Just discarded away like that.

          But it did not matter anymore. In a week or two, they'd assume Lena was dead, find some new person that could put Lena's drug formulas to good use, and move on as if she had never even been there in the first place.

          Ellie raised an eyebrow. Just as she was about to say something, Joel's thuds drowned out the sound of her voice. He crossed the encampment, walking over to where he had left his backpack. He crouched and dove his hand in, fishing out a small paper bag filled with thin strips of beef jerky.

          He took a piece and shoved it in his mouth, then lifted the pack as if to ask Lena if she wanted some. When she declined his offer with a tight-lipped smile, he didn't waste time trying to convince her, throwing the beef in Ellie's direction.

          "I need to talk to you. Alone." he said, turning his head back to the woman.

          "You guys can talk about whatever you want in front of me, okay?" Ellie spoke up. "Look, I've been thinking about—"

          Joel threw his backpack over his shoulder. "I don't want your worries." he interrupted brutely.

          "I wasn't gonna say I'm sorry." Ellie lashed back. "I was gonna say that I've been thinking about what happened. Nobody made you or Tess, or Lena take me. Nobody made you go along with this plan. You needed a . . . truck battery, or whatever, and you made a choice. So don't blame me for something that isn't my fault."

          Lena shook her head disapprovingly. "What happened to just keeping your mouth shut?"

          Ellie glanced at the woman and remained silent, for once.

          "Wasn't anything important, either way. We should just go." Joel said, and Lena nodded.

          The man was making a habit of getting interrupted every time he wanted to say something to Lena — but she quickly found out she wasn't bothered by it. They had a long day of walking ahead of them. Surely, they'd have plenty of time to talk until they reached Bill and Frank's.

          The girl stood on her feet from where she was sitting and hurled Joel's jacket in his direction. She pursed her lips apologetically. "How much longer?"

          "Another fifteen miles. Maybe five hours, at the least." he replied.

          Lena shrugged, trying to convince herself that it wasn't that big of a deal. Her calves would soon be burning and her knees screaming, but she would rather do that than spend another night sleeping in the woods. "Just about what we did last night.

          "Yep." Ellie agreed. "We can manage that."

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          It was three or four in the afternoon when Lena, Joel, and the girl reached a sign that read "Lincoln Massachusetts — Ever the BEST!" underneath a photoshopped picture of a smiling squirrel that held its thumbs up to the camera.

          The hike took them nearly six hours and a half — more than Joel had expected — but Lena had tried to completely enjoy herself. The battered earth road was nothing special in itself; just an endless maze of pine trees that would've been cut down if the Urban Zoning Office were still a thing.

          Regardless, the woman tried to make out what she could out of the peaceful scenery. This way was quieter than she could've asked for — a much-needed pause from the unending hubbub of Hartford — and it helped her sort out her thoughts.

          When the summer heat had gone much above what Lena could bear, she unbuttoned the blue shirt she had been wearing for the past two days and tied it around her waist.

          Joel didn't seem fazed at first, but the words inked along her skin soon ignited his curiosity, which made it difficult for Lena to concentrate. It was harder to ignore his gaze than she thought it to be.

          "Sorry," he apologized, quietly. "Didn't mean to stare."

          "Oh, fine." Lena groaned, raising her arm to meet the man's eyes. "Just as I was getting giddy. Thought someone was checking me out."

          The faintest clue of a smile appeared on Joel's lips. "So you weren't lying when you said you were a hardcore Firefly."

          "Were— keyword." Lena added. "Why would I lie about that?"

          "Lot of folks I knew lied to get themselves on the good side of the people." he answered. "But it seems that Marlene trusts you. Do you trust her?"

          "About the whole cure business?" Lena asked. Joel nodded, and she continued. "Doesn't matter if I do or I don't. I made a promise, you made a promise. I'm taking this kid to wherever she needs to go."

          Joel looked skeptical. Lena's uncertainty fazed him. Now, it was his turn to wonder how she could keep herself so composed even in the face of such tragedy. Who was this woman, and how had he ended up stranded with her?

          "The sooner we do this, the sooner it's over." Lena said. "If we have a car, I give this two weeks. Tops."

          "Hope you're right." the man muttered under his breath before their peaceful conversation was interrupted by a cacophony of giggles coming from behind them.

          "Holy shit!" Ellie exclaimed. She picked up her pace, merrily skipping a few feet ahead.

          The girl stopped when she reached Joel and Lena, who had been waiting for her in the spot where the tree line ended — giving them a view of the fat green hills ahead where the remains of a fallen plane were scattered over.

          "You fly in one of those?" Ellie asked excitedly, a marvel shining in her eyes as she realized what the mount of metal had once been.

          "A couple of times." Lena answered.

          "So lucky." the girl added.

          "Didn't feel like it at the time." Joel said. "Get shoved into a middle seat, pay 12 bucks for a sandwich."

          "You both got to go up in the sky!" Ellie argued, smiling.

          "Yeah, well, so did they." the man retorted. Lena rolled her head to the side, shooting a playful glare in his direction as they continued walking. Ellie was so happy to finally see a plane; why did he need to ruin the moment by reminding her of the dead corpses?

          "Griiim." Ellie seemed unaffected by his comment, speaking in a sing-songy voice as she joined Joel and Lena after a few more moments of staring at the plane. "So everything came crashing down in one day?"

          "Where I'm from? Pretty much." Joel replied.

          "How? I mean, no one was infected with Cordyceps, everybody's fine, eating in restaurants and flying in planes. And then, all at once? How did it even start? If you have to get bit to get infected, then who bit the first person?" Ellie queried, only stopping to catch her breath. "Was it a monkey? I bet it was a monkey."

          Joel exhaled sarcastically."It wasn't a monkey. I thought you went to school."

          "FEDRA school. They don't teach us how their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic."

          "No one knows for sure, but, best guess, Cordyceps mutated. And some of it got into the food supply. Probably a basic ingredient like flour or sugar." Joel explained as they trudged along. "There were certain brands of food that were sold everywhere, all across the country, the world. Bread, cereal, pancake mix. You eat enough of it, it'll get you infected. So the tainted food all hits the store shelves around the same time, Thursday. People bought it, ate some Thursday night or Friday morning. Day goes on, they started to get sick. Afternoon, evening, they got worse. Then they started bitin'. Friday night, September 26th, 2003. And by Monday everything was gone."

          "That was the South and the West Coast, right?" Lena asked. "The East Coast, it was different. Especially New England. Just before the outbreak hit the States, connections with Asia and South America were starting to get glitchy. No one really knew why. But the National Guard somehow got word ahead of what happened in the other parts of the world, and they jammed everyone from the smaller areas into social housing in the big cities. That's why everything from Maine to Rhode Island ain't that bad. Because there weren't even that many people scattered through the territory when the outbreak hit us."

          "So it didn't just all come tumbling down in one day, everywhere?"

          Lena shook her head. "No. I remember the government officials fencing down Boston and the big suburbs, and telling people to go gluten-free. It was never hard for my family. My then-fiancé had celiac disease, so we almost never bought flour or bread."

          The woman smiled fondly at the memories that came to her mind. Of the few she still had from the beginning of the outbreak — before joining the Fireflies and meeting Lip, before her mind went completely blank — she liked to remember sitting around the fireplace with her family, drinking tea and listening to the small radio in those cold, uncertain first days of the outbreak.

          "For the first three weeks, it was amazing. The National Guard was just a bunch of untrained underdogs who were there for their paycheck. Helicopters from Virginia brought us supplies every couple of days, and we didn't have a curfew as long as we didn't walk out of the perimeter. But then the NG got replaced by these guys from Washington DC . . . FEDRA. And we got as fucked as fucked gets. Marlene was annoyed, stole some rifles, rounded up some of our neighbors, and told them to do their own justice. The rest is history, I guess."

          Ellie needed some seconds to understand the story. "That makes more sense than monkeys." she spoke, at last. "Thanks. For the story . . . and for not being humdrums."

          The group remained soundless for a few more feet, until Joel suddenly stopped walking and pulled his hand over Ellie's chest to bar her from going further.

          "What?" she asked.

          "We'll cut across the woods here." he replied, pointing a finger at the shrubs to their right.

          "Isn't the road easier?"

          "Yeah, it's just— there's stuff up there you shouldn't see." Joel advised.

          Ellie did a little pirouette, lightly scampering backward through the path Joel had just prohibited her from going to. "Well, now I have to see." she replied.

          Lena's best guess? Dead bodies. Murdered by FEDRA, left in the trenches of the once-running river so that they would never be found, never be put on the fed's list of crimes. With all of the internal migration in Massachusetts, many people had been forced out of their homes — ultimately wounding up in unburied mass graves for those whom FEDRA didn't have space in the quarantine zones for.

          Lena had seen sights like those more times than she could count, as had driven to and fro Connecticut and Massachusetts in the previous years.

          "Ellie, listen to Joel." she urged, too tired to actually start running to the girl.

          "Something tells me you're not gonna be saying that a lot, Lena." Ellie smirked provocatively. "Looks, if it's not alive and it's not infected, then it can't hurt me." she added. "Whatever it was, I think it's gone."

          Ellie stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes fell on the heap of forgotten skeletons that had been dumped over the riverbed. Lena's stomach whirled at the sight of women, men, children, the now fleshless small bones that had once belonged to babies.

          She was quick to reach the girl, pressing a hand on her shoulder and turning her around in an attempt to draw her away from the massacre. "You remember what I told you, about all of those people who were brought to Boston from the small towns?"

          Ellie nodded, even though she could not stop glancing over her shoulder. Morbid curiosity, Lena thought.

          "There came a time when the houses weren't enough for everyone anymore. So instead of just leaving everyone dispersed and increase the risk of a violent outbreak, FEDRA lured people in with the promise of comfy housing and good food in the big QZ. When they got to these old dirt roads, they lined everyone up and shot them in the head."

          "These people weren't sick?" Ellie asked.

          Joel joined them, hands pinned on his hip. "No, probably not." he answered.

          "Why kill them? Why not just leave 'em be?"

          "Don't— don't ever look too much at the dead, Ellie. Or you'll end up like them." Lena shook her head slowly, looking over at Joel with sadness in her eyes.

          The expression on his face was indecipherable as he pushed the girl and the woman forward. "Let's not waste time. Only half a mile left."

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          The streets of Lincoln were mostly empty, but for the lone birds that had made a home out of the electricity posts scattered around the neighborhood and that now sang welcoming songs for the three strangers.

          Lena didn't know what to expect from the town — after all, Joel's descriptive nature of the ones he called Bill and Frank didn't prompt her imagination — but the eerie quietness of the entire scene made a chill run through her bones.

          She had seen one too many ghost towns possessed by the infected to know that they all started like that; in neighborhoods that were seemingly intact until the creatures were lured out of hiding from the sound of voices and began pouring like ants out of cracks in the cement.

          As if reading her thoughts, Joel grunted and muttered something in a language Lena could not understand. Spanish, she quickly realized. She didn't know much more than the basic ¡hola! and ¿cómo estás? that she had picked up on during classes in high school — but on the rare occasions Lena heard it being spoken anymore, she easily recognized the pronunciation and diphthongs.

          Joel was the first to walk up the steps of the house, the hard soles of his boots raising a cloud of dust from the carpet that covered the entrance of the house.

          If anyone was living in such a small, lovely town that seemed to remain mainly intact, Lena wondered, wouldn't they bother with sweeping the dirt off their front porch?

          Joel pressed his hand on the handle, prying the door open.

          A moldy whiff hit him in the face, but it was not uncomfortable enough to make him glide away. He waited for a second, then another. When he made sure there was nothing but silence staring back at him, he turned to Lena and jutted his chin to the right, motioning at her to follow him inside.

          She walked into the house, not knowing what to expect.

          The entrance was a narrow, long hallway that split into a stairway and a bathroom to the left, and into what she could only assume was a living room at the other end.

          The walls were blue, meticulously painted from floor to ceiling, with carefully sculpted floral cornices adorning every inch that surrounded the ceiling. The furniture — minutely-chosen antiques that would've cost a fortune in the world before — was covered in thick layers of grime, but Lena could still make out the faces in the old family photos that were placed on top of the cabinets.

          "What the fuck?" Ellie swore, slowly walking into what was, most probably, the single most well-decorated house she'd seen in her entire life. Up until that point she had lived in a QZ, where most one and two stories had been demolished in the years since the outbreak, to allow FEDRA to build screeching apartment complexes on top of the ruins — so seeing a house like that must've been news for the girl.

          "Bill?" Joel called out into the void. "Frank?"

          He sighed, looking at Ellie and Lena. "You stay here. Ya see anything, you hear anything, yell."

          Ellie's voice came in a small trickle, materializing the thoughts both adults were too scared to speak about. "What if they're gone?"

          Joel was ready to say something, but the words didn't come out of him. Instead, he just spun around and pressed his hand over a doorknob, disappearing into what Lena thought was a kitchen or a pantry.

          The woman moved into the dining room, choosing the chair on the left head of the table to seat on. She looked down at the plate in front of her, at the flies that hovered over the stale fish skeleton. Whoever these two were — if they ate actual fish, (not shitty tuna that came in the monthly package of FEDRA rations) then it meant they lived well.

          After almost half a day of walking, Lena felt like her kneecaps would soon simply bust, and she would be forced to drag herself around like the legless Jelly Monster in the books Cess loved so much as a baby.

          "If they're gone—" Lena began, drawing the attention of Ellie, who had become entranced in pressing a few random notes on the piano placed in the middle of the dining room. "I want you to know that this isn't on you. Not everything is."

          "Not everything?" Ellie scrunched up her nose. "Because all of it before — Tess and Chelsea and the Fireflies; that was?"

          Lena drew in a long breath before she continued to speak. "I didn't— that's not what I meant."

          "I don't know who you think I am, but if you want to know . . . I can take in the hard truths."

          "No, you can't." Lena grinned sardonically. "You're fourteen years old. You could barely get yourself a box of tampons out of the storage room back at Cumberland Farms this morning without dying. Twice."

          The girl's cheeks acquired the same color as the half-empty wine bottle that rested unmoved at the end of the table.

          "You're a kid. If anyone had to bear what you have to bear, then it should've been someone like me or Joel. People who've done bad things. Not some little kid who isn't even old enough to survive on her own." Lena said, twisting the fringes of the white-and-gold tablecloth between her pointer finger and her thumb. "You have the weight of the world on your shoulders. This morning you asked me about what happened yesterday. Sweetheart, the truth is . . . that was only the first of many times when you feel like people dying is all on you."

          Ellie's shoulders dropped, and her gaze moved to the ground as if her sneakers were more interesting than whatever Lena was trying to tell her. "It— it wasn't the first time." she muttered.

          Lena managed to squeeze out the best sympathetic smile she could. "I was a Firefly general once. I was . . . always on missions with a squad following me." the woman tried to tell her story, omitting the part where those six years had been wiped from her memory because of the trauma. The last thing she wanted was for the girl to think her unstable, or worse. "A lot of my friends didn't make it, and those who did turned their back on me when I needed them. That's the thing about the guilt and the anger; they beg to stick around. And it doesn't get any easier. You just . . . get used to it after a few times."

          "Why are you telling me this?" Ellie asked.

          "I had a rocky relationship with my mother when I was a kid. We loved each other, but we also fought like hell. And you never had a mother, so I guess I know what it's like to feel alone."

          Ellie walked around the room, inspecting the objects displayed on the cabinets and the ones adorning the wall. When she approached the small shelf to the table's right, her face lit up with curiosity.

          She called to Lena, pointing at an envelope and a car key that the woman hadn't noticed before. "I think they're . . . really gone."

          Lena watched in silence as the girl sat down on the opposite end of the table, unfurling the paper and beginning to skim over the words that were written down in black ink.

          "Ellie? Lena?" Joel asked, returning to the dining room empty-handed just in time to listen to the contents of the letter.

          The girl raised her gaze to meet his. "It's from Bill." she grasped the envelope and raised it to her eye level, reading out the words. "To whomever, but probably Joel. I figured I fell under 'whomever'. Came with this."

          Ellie slid the car key in Joel's direction. The man dropped his heavy backpack on the floor and took the small object in his hand, turning it around a few times for closer inspection.

          "So they're dead?" he asked, coldly.

          Ellie nodded silently. She stuck out the paper in his direction. "You— you wanna?"

          "Go ahead, you do it." the man refused with a shrug.

          "July 15th, 2023. If you find this, please do not come into the bedroom. We left a window open so that the house wouldn't smell, but it will probably be a sight. I'm guess you found this, Joel, because anyone else would've been electrocuted or blown up by one of my traps heheheheh. Take anything you need. The bunker code is the same as the gate code but in reverse, do not make a mistake or you will also get blown to shit. I am not joking. Don't fuck that up heheheheh. Anyway, I never really liked you, but still, it's like we're friends. Almost. And I respect you. So I'm gonna tell you something because you're probably the only person who'll understand. I used to hate world, and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong because there was one person worth saving. And that's what I did. I saved him, and then I protected him. That's why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do, and God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way. I leave you all of my weapons and equipment. Use them to keep—"

          Ellie's voice faded into silence as her eyes crossed over that fateful name that she knew she could not read.

          Joel remained unmoved, silent for a mere moment. His hands were shaking, and his eyes glistened with moisture. He would never allow himself to show what he considered was weakness in front of a woman and a girl he barely knew — just as Lena had done, the previous day — but she could see between the cracks of the mask he was trying to maintain.

          He snatched the letter from Ellie's hand before she had time to react. He turned their back to them and read the remaining paragraph to himself, but Lena already knew what was written down.

          Tess, Tess, Tess. Her name poised between them like a faceless ghost.

          Joel cleared his voice. "Stay here." he said, already heading toward the exit.

          When he was gone, Lena got out of her seat and walked over to the window, watching him stop walking in the middle of the yard to crumple the paper and let it fall on the grass.

          He disappeared to the back of the property with quick steps, and before her mind realized what she was doing, her body had walked out into the lawn and grasped the fallen letter, hiding it in the back pocket of her jeans.

━━━━━━━━━━

          Joel came back into the house half an hour later to find Lena sitting in front of the piano, playing a 60s tune he vaguely recognized from his childhood.

          "I can't sing for shit." she complained to Ellie, who sat at the table, mesmerized by the music that came from the instrument. From the look on her face, it was also her first time hearing a piano being played live. "I used to, before—"

          Joel didn't mean to interrupt their moment, but he knew there was no time to be wasted. He coughed lightly, disrupting Lena's gaze from the keyboard.

          "Sorry. Didn't mean to make you wait." she murmured.

          "Show me your arm." Joel ordered Ellie, almost as if looking for another confirmation that what he was doing was real. The girl stepped toward him and rolled up her sleeve, revealing the scabs that had recently formed over her old scars.

          He glanced at Lena. What they were doing was real, right?

          "I just finished making a truck battery. It's charging right now." he announced.

          Ellie carefully covered her wound, standing in front of him as she waited for further instructions. "Okay."

          "And I have a brother out in Wyoming. He's in some kind of trouble, and I'm heading out there to find him. He used to be a Firefly." that information didn't surprise Lena. From the way Marlene had talked about Joel's brother when they had met at the old apartment complex, it didn't take much to put two and two together. "And my guess is he knows where some of them are out there. Maybe they can get you and Lena to wherever this lab is."

          "Listen, about Tess—" the girl began, only to be interrupted by a shake of Joel's hand.

          "There's hot water and a bathroom upstairs. It's the door at the end of the hallway. You take a shower while Lena and I restock our supplies." he spoke, in the same monotonously cold tone he always used with them.

          For a moment, Lena allowed herself to be like Ellie; to wonder if he'd ever warm up to them; if they'd ever have the chance to hear something more from him than grunts and half-muttered responses.

          Lena stood up from the piano stool, not waiting for another invitation to explore the house. She pressed a palm to Ellie's back, pushing the girl out of the dining room. "Let's go find you some clothes."

━━━━━━━━━━

          Lena cried so much in the shower that she thought all Ellie and Joel could hear through the house were the stifled sobs her throat produced as her hands were clasped over her mouth.

          In truth, she had needed that half an hour more than anything in the world. Between washing the dirt and grime out of her body and allowing her sore muscles to relax, Lena knew she wouldn't make it much further before she snapped.

          She wasn't a robot, and her poor old heart was not made out of stone.

          When she finally managed to walk out of the shower, Lena used olive oil to mend the split ends of her hair, and an old pasta strainer to diffuse her curls. She put on a pair of jeans and a Metallica t-shirt she'd found at the bottom of a box that read BILL — 2000s in black, bold letters over it, in one of the rooms on the upper floor.

          Lena walked into the dimly lit garage, her eyes wandering to the tarpaulin that had been pulled to the side to uncover a white-and-blue pickup truck. For all it mattered, it looked much better than any of the vehicles that were left on the roads out there.

          Joel was hunched over one of the workbenches, his eyes skimming over the pages of a car magazine.

          "It's me." Lena spoke to Joel, approaching softly so as not to disturb him. "You want any help?"

          She offered her aid just to be useful. In all honesty, there was nothing Lena hated more than spending hours and hours focused on cogs and gears, — mechanics and science had been Lip's thing when they were still together — and if she spent too much time doing something she couldn't figure out, the woman would start bawling out of frustration.

          "Kinda late for that." Joel replied, dryly. His expression was still hidden by the hunch of his shoulders, but Lena could see his profile much more clearly now that his wet hair had been slicked back. When he noticed her stare studying him, he rolled his eyes. "Don't say a word about it. The kid's enough."

          Lena smiled. "I didn't even say anything!"

          "You don't need to. You got the kind of judgy eyes."

          Lena pulled a chair from the corner of the room to the workbench, so that she could be closer to Joel. She looked around herself, taking in every detail of the well-decorated garage.

          "I like this place."

          "Yeah, Frank has— had a way with colors and decoration. I think that's what he worked in before." Joel answered. His conversation with Lena was slowly pulling him out of his own thoughts, so he was forced to put down the magazine and stare back at the woman.

          "But I don't like that cat. It's staring me straight into the soul." Lena muttered, pointing at the taxidermied animal that had been placed over the lockers, against the opposite wall.

          "Oh, well. That's Bill and Frank for you. They were packrats, mostly Bill." Joel sighed. "Not the most normal of couples."

          "But they did love each other, no? Committing suicide like that, together."

          "Frank was sick, he was slowly dying. And I guess Bill couldn't see a way of living without him."

          Must be beautiful, Lena thought. Loving someone like that.

          "You knew these people? Before the outbreak?" she asked, looking for a way to alleviate the heavy words between them.

          He shook his head. "Not even they knew each other until a few years in. We met them through the radio."

          We. Of course. Him and the woman that was no longer there.

          "Sorry if I'm being nosy," Joel excused himself. "But I wanted to ask you what you were before."

          "Hm. You're asking me something that isn't about the trip. Nice. You're starting to like me."

          "Never said I didn't." he shrugged nonchalantly.

          "I was a primary school teacher, but even before that, I had a failed attempt at going pro in volleyball. But you can't really do that with my kind of heart."

          Joel raised his eyebrows in surprise.

          "What?" Lena queried.

          "Nothing. It's just when I think about a woman fighting with a sickle, I don't think about a teacher. What did you teach kids? How to cut heads?"

          "Haha. You're funny, Joel." Lena deadpanned. "What did you do before?"

          "My brother and I worked as contractors in construction." the man answered.

          "Now, that's something I can wrap my head around." Lena stated. "You . . . kinda have the face for it."

          Joel smiled, just slightly. "And what's that face like?"

          "I don't know, it's not like I can explain it. You said I had the judgy eyes. I don't know what that means, either."

          The conversation seemed to regress to the initial state for a moment. As much as Lena had pulled Joel out of his shell, — after all, seeing a half-smile from a man like him must've meant something — he seemed to be dragged back in by his own thoughts in the blink of an eye.

          She coughed awkwardly, wondering if she'd said anything wrong. But she hadn't, or had she?

          "Lena, what are you doing here?" he asked her.

          The woman furrowed her brows. She didn't want to understand his question, but she did.

          Joel saw through her small talk and delicate smiles, and he knew she wouldn't have made her way to the garage if she didn't want to tell him something important.

         "Oh, well . . . Ellie's in the house." she simply began. Joel hadn't asked about the girl, but she felt the need to tell him about her now. "She found some booklet about animals in the living room. I figured I'd come here and talk to you— to figure things out."

          Joel pressed his lips together. "We already packed the supplies. What is there to figure out anymore?"

          Lena felt like they were back at square zero. He went back to his cold demeanor, — not rude, just cold — with an erect posture and a hardened jaw.

          "I understand . . ." Lena leaned over, sinking her face in her hands as she gave an exasperated sigh. She was losing her mind. Bit by bit, all of what she had spent fourteen years building — a normal life away from the Fireflies, a safer living for her daughter — was being taken away from her. "I understand why you might not like me. I understand why you blame me and Ellie for what happened to—"

          "Don't." Joel cut her words, raising his left palm to indicate the halt. "This has nothing—"

          "This has everything to do with what happened. All I'm asking is that you don't take it out on her." Lena interrupted in her turn. "You're a stranger to me, Joel. You're a stranger that saved my life when you didn't have to. But I don't know anything about you, except that until yesterday, you had Tess. She was your family, and you lost her because of a fucking stupid mistake." Lena blew out a breath. "I had a family once, too. All that's left of it is my daughter — and I don't even know if she's alive anymore. When I lost everything . . . I just needed someone to tell me how sorry they were for what happened to me. No one ever did."

          Joel wished she would shut up, but Lena cleared her throat and continued.

          "I'll never talk about her again if that's what you want me to do. But I can't forgive myself if I don't tell you I'm sorry that you lost your friend, Joel. And now Bill and Frank. No one deserves that."

          "I never said— I never thought that it was your fault. Or Ellie's." Joel spoke.

          "Thank you."

          "But don't ever talk about Tess again."

          "Done." she said, shaking her head nonchalantly. "Never again."

          "Good." he said, shallowly.

          Lena finally stood away from the workbench, moving toward an abandoned box filled with cassette tapes she hoped would work in the car. She took a few moments to inspect each, picking only the ones she liked the most.

          "I'll go find the girl." she said, not turning to look at Joel's face as she walked to the door of the garage. He was either crying, or he just didn't want to see Lena anymore as he turned back to his magazine. "I'll tell her it's time to go. We'll be back in five."

holy shit. i started writing this chapter last week and i rewrote the hell out of it before i came up with a draft i really liked. hope you guys enjoyed this as well <3

today (well, yesterday since it's past midnight here) was my 6-month anniversary on this account, and let me tell you, i have never been happier to be on a social media platform than here. everyone is so nice and supportive, and i feel like i have found a community that has the same interests as i do.

but special shoutout to and , since they are the only people i really talk to from here (i REALLY suck at making friends) and they are the people that have listened to me talk about this book. sorry if i bothered u, but thank you for being so nice lol 💐💓

hope everyone is having an amazing day/night. until next time, love livi 💌

ps: sorry for any dramatical errors encountered, i might revise this chapter in a couple of days lol

word count: 7585 words

date started: february twenty-second

date finished: march first

date published: march second