'Swear to me,' Ellie said. 'Swear to me that everything you said about the fireflies is true.'

Ellie had been dissatisfied with Joel's cheeriness since he had pulled her out of St. Mary's Hospital. He had lied so unreservedly and didn't seem guilty at all. Rather, he was happier than she had ever seen him. In the car on the road back to Tommy's, he had been talkative, and once the anesthesia had completely run off Ellie, Joel had begun planning how their days ahead would run. We're finally goin' to teach you to how to swim, he had said. Have you ever learned an instrument? he had asked her.

What Joel didn't talk about was why Ellie was wearing a surgical gown if the fireflies had no intention of performing surgery. He didn't explain why they had left the hospital, without letting Ellie reunite with Marlene, without the guns Joel was promised, and without most of Joel's ammo, explosives, and alcohol. In fact, Joel would talk about anything except the things that Ellie needed to discuss. Even when she had brought up Riley—when she had finally decided to tell Joel what was haunting her—why finding a cure was important to her—he changed the subject. As always, her thoughts weren't important because they didn't fit the grand narrative of Joel and Ellie enduring and surviving together.

She was giving him one last chance to acknowledge her. He had one last chance to treat her as an equal.

Joel hesitated. She couldn't tell if he was surprised by the question or readying himself to lie again.

'I swear,' Joel said.

He was too good at lying. He didn't explain himself further. He didn't even blink.

Ellie couldn't help but look down. She felt the possibility of tears. It never occurred to her that she could lose him in the space of only two words.

But that was it. Not only he had robbed her of the most important moment of her life—of what was perhaps the meaning of her life—but he couldn't face her and try to make it better. Suddenly, when she looked at Joel, her friend, he wasn't there. Instead, a defiant escort stood in his place. The man standing there murdered innocent people and let the rest of the world die.

'Okay.'

Joel's shoulders relaxed.

Then Ellie said, 'I'm going now.'

'Excuse me?' he asked he innocently, probably sure that he misheard her.

'I'm sorry. But I can't listen to you anymore. I can't trust you. Not after everything.'

'Ellie, what are you talking about?'

'I saw another road a mile back. I figure that there have to be more around here, and I can find—'

Joel waved his hands between their bodies. He shook his head and leaned in. 'Slow down. What are you saying? You want us to turn around?'

'Me. I'm turning around. I—'

'You're not going anywhere on—'

'Dammnit, Joel! Listen to me!' Ellie yelled.

He was still for a moment, but eventually put his hands on his hips and listened.

Ellie expected that she would want to touch her hair nervously or pick at her nails. She surprised herself with her conviction as she looked him in the eye.

'Now, I'm sorry. I am. But this isn't going to end any other way. I'm not going with you to your brother's; I'm not going anywhere with you.'

Joel's body kept completely still, though his face had softened. For the first time, he hadn't stolen control of the conversation.

Ellie continued, 'You don't want to tell me truth… that's how it is—'

'I didn't lie to you—'

'Just don't. Don't worry about it. You're not my father anyway. You don't owe me anything.' Ellie stopped because she didn't want to cry. She ground her teeth together and drew a breath. As she was looking down, she noticed that mud had begun to seep into her sneaker. She stood back onto firmer ground. When she looked back up, Joel was leaning slightly in her direction, but he didn't dare step closer. For a second, his lip quivered.

'But,' he began, 'I saved you.' His face kept making movements as if he were tossing between things to say, but his words escaped on his breath. Consequently, his lips moved without sound.

Ellie pitied him but it wasn't enough for her to love him again.

'We saved each other, right?' she said.

This time Joel looked down. His shoulders buckled.

'What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?' His tone wasn't judgmental. Rather, he sounded genuinely worried for her. Ellie would remember that.

'I've got a plan.'

Joel's bottom lip rolled forward, and then, to pull himself together, he pressed his two lips together. Modestly, his fist covered his mouth as he shook the emotion out of him. That a boy, Joel, Ellie thought.

'Here,' Joel said as he took the car keys out of his pocket.

Ellie was shocked. His large, callused hand shook as he held it open for her. The metal almost seemed to glow against Joel's brown skin and black hair.

When Ellie said, 'Thank-you,' she wasn't only thanking him for the keys, but for his co-operation. Her throat constricted.

Joel pulled off his backpack and kneeled on the ground. He unhooked his shotgun, his rifle, and his bow, then gestured for Ellie to turn around. Using Caribbean clamps and the straps hanging from Ellie's bag, he fastened the weapons to her back. Ellie stood still as she felt him shift the bag while he worked. Her eyes watered. When he stepped back for her to turn around again, she pretended to brush her fringe away so that she could remove her tears.

'That's great,' she said, not meaning to sound so upbeat. Her tone made Joel flinch and look down again. Really, she was already beginning to feel lonely.

Ellie held her arms out and moved closer. Awkwardly, Joel jerked forward and let her hug him. His arms barely touched her back, but his warmth made Ellie feel close to him in what, to her, could be their last moment together. She pressed her face against his hard chest. A button on his shirt dug into her cheek, but she didn't move, because she could hear his pulse in that spot. It was slower than she expected.

Pulling away, Ellie pushed hair out of her eyes so that she didn't have to look at Joel's face. Stepping backwards, she raised an arm stiltedly in a weak indication that she was leaving. Joel stayed where he was. She had never seen him like this before. Even when he was holding onto life on the icy floor of a garage, he still had an air of strength about him, as though he wouldn't ever give up.

Ellie wanted to say goodbye, but she couldn't. She left him standing perfectly still in the woods, turned around, and walked away.

xxxxx

Joel was in shock. He still wasn't sure what had happened. His mouth was dry and his eyes were wet and Ellie wasn't in his sight. He waited for her to come back. He could still feel the warmth of her body against his. If it were possible, he had no thoughts, or rather, no sentences were strung together in his head. There was only a series of feelings. Confusion. Shame. Pain. Fear.

Joel heard the engine start and the car rev away.

Fear.

Oh God.

'Ellie!' he called.

Joel jumped off the rock and down into the creek below. He ran toward the fence, stepped onto a paling and lifted himself right over the wire. He found himself standing in the dust left behind the car. He started running down the road. The car wasn't in sight.

'Ellie, oh God, Ellie,' he repeated to himself as he ran.

He noticed a track in the woods to his right, so he ran through it, hoping that it might lead around the bend where the road continued. He ran through the woods, dodging trees, and avoiding puddles. He regretted turning off the path because he couldn't tell how close he was getting. His arms were shields against the odd branch in his way. The slender twigs cut his forearms.

'Ellie!' he yelled.

When he caught up with her car, Joel was going to pull her out, wrap his arms as tightly around her as he could, squeeze her waist in his hands, and kiss her so hard on the lips that his whole mouth covered her. Fuck. Fuck. Joel hadn't thought about kissing her like that before, but now that she was leaving it seemed so obvious. He had to kiss her. She couldn't leave without him telling her that he loved her and that he would throw himself on a landmine for her. It wasn't even that he was afraid of being alone. He'd been alone before; he could handle that. He wasn't afraid of anything but being without her.

Joel remembered the night they had spent in the radio tower. He hadn't recalled this scene before, because the next morning, both Sam and Henry had died, and with them, any happy moments around them had died too. But Joel remembered now.

After swapping car stories, Joel had fallen asleep on the floor near Henry and the stove. Ellie had come out of her room and dropped a blanket over each of them. Joel, who woke up, lightly grabbed her wrist and suggested that she lay next to him, as he guessed that she'd just given away the only blankets in the house. He could hardly see her face, but her hair was untied, and it fell messily around her shoulders.

In his half-asleep state, he hadn't considered that the bed in Ellie's room would be much more comfortable, but for whatever reason, she laid next to him under the blanket. Her shoulder nudged his arm and her naked foot brushed against his jeans. In a movement that felt completely natural to him, his hand grabbed Ellie's. He hadn't meant it as a romantic gesture, but did so out of need to be closer to her. She had held his hand in return and let him warm her smooth skin. As comfortable as he was with her little hand in his, the slightest movement of her fingers sent light shocks over his palm and up his arm. They both rolled to face each other, and, perhaps, due to chance, Joel's forehead touched the top of Ellie's head. He had felt a pull, not like a magnet, but like gravity, as though he were hanging in the air above her, drawing him closer to her, though he kept himself still. Resisting this pull kept him awake for a while, but eventually, his face rested into Ellie's knotted hair. They spent the whole night inhaling each other's breath.

When he woke up, Ellie was on the other side of the room. Her hair and shoes were tied, as if no time had passed between when he first fell asleep and that morning. Soon after, Ellie opened the door to check on Sam, and so the night before really did disappear.

Joel kept running through the woods. Although he would keep running until his feet wore down to the bone, his body was shutting down without his consent. His legs shook and his stomach cramped so badly that his shoulders spasmed too. Hobbling forward, leaning against each new tree, Joel gasped for breath. When he found a thicker tree, he finally stopped and pressed his forehead into the bark.

She's gone.

Somehow, Joel had managed to walk back to Tommy's compound. Some men at the gate directed Joel to the demountable Tommy was currently in, as they now recognised Joel as Tommy's brother.

Joel found Tommy in a small office that wasn't as well held together as some of the other buildings. The walls hard warped, leaving gaps between the wall and the ceiling, and between the wall and the floor. Joel expected Tommy to be working in some way, but he was drinking at his desk. Next to an unmarked bottle, a candle was already lit, though the sun hadn't quite set.

'Little Brother?' Joel said from the door.

Before any other words were exchanged, Tommy asked, 'Where's the girl?'

Joel was prepared for this, though not with words. He had sealed himself shut in advance.

'She, uh… She's gone.'

Tommy's bottom lip lowered and his eyebrows titled. 'She…?' Tommy began to ask.

'Oh—no. She's fine,' Joel corrected. 'She just…' Joel cleared his throat. 'She just left.'

Tommy's expression immediately knotted and his head angled to the side. He wasn't quite drunk, but he was definitely tipsy.

'I don't understand,' Tommy said. 'I thought you two were partners or family or somethin'.'

'No.'

Tommy's hands dropped on the desk loudly, perhaps louder than Tommy had meant. 'Where is she?' he asked. 'Is she with some people?'

'I don't know,' Joel said as he sat down onto one of two foldout chairs beside the desk.

Tommy stood up and moved in front of the desk. He was leaning over Joel when he asked, 'You don't know?' Tommy wasn't aggressive, but sincerely confused and annoyed.

'Give me a break, okay? Just leave it.'

Joel leaned forward onto his elbows. His hands hung off the edges of his knees. Tommy, in an act of empathy, sat down too, and copied Joel's posture. Inadvertently, they leaned toward each other now, as if they were sharing secrets.

'You've gone through this before…' Tommy gently reminded him.

Joel lowered his head into his hands. He pushed his palms hard into his forehead. His fingers gripped his hair and pulled tightly until he felt his scalp tug away from his skull. Joel didn't want to hear the end of that sentence, because that sentence ended with you can get through it again. And that implied that Joel had once before gotten through it. What the fuck does he think? Joel thought. That at some point I was just healed—that at some point I stopped waiting for Sarah's eyes to open again?

'Maybe—'

Tommy had changed his tactic, but before Joel had a chance to realise this he had groaned over the top of Tommy. In the next beat, Joel was up and walking to the other side of the room. He had a head spin, so had walked into toward the back wall, cornering himself.

He hadn't noticed from further away, but the pattern on the wallpaper was a small series of bouquets. That people would not only cover their walls with images of flowers—but with images of cut and bundled flowers—struck him as strange. The arm of moss that reached up the wall from a wet spot on the carpet seemed to be nature's way of correcting the irony. This building must have always been here, Joel guessed.

The distraction had helped Joel steady his breath. With the back of his hand touching his own mouth, slowly, Joel faced Tommy.

It couldn't have been later than five in the afternoon, but the room was grey. Despite the thin shadows over Tommy, Joel could see that Tommy's eyes and cheeks were red. He wasn't crying, Joel decided, but he still could.

Joel must have been staring, because Tommy shrugged and looked his feet. '

I miss her too,' Tommy said.

Joel was sure that Tommy meant Sarah, but in that instant, he wished that Tommy had meant Ellie. He needed someone to understand how the needles tore at his chest every time he moved. I've been so stupid, Joel thought. I didn't just love her. I depended on her, I made her a part of me, like an arm or… Joel realised that there wasn't a word for the kind of surgery that had both stitched him and Ellie together and torn them apart. He wished that the word love wasn't so inadequate. Anyone could love. People loved their cars. Joel didn't just love Ellie. Even though he was sure that he and Ellie were bonded, he wasn't so arrogant to think that Ellie truly loved him. Somehow, to Joel, that invalidated his right to feel how he did. Forget her. And move on, he forced himself to think. Yeah, he mentally scoffed. Move on to where? Here? Be one of Tommy's construction workers and forget that I had the cure to humanity sleeping beside me?

One of Tommy's offsiders, John, came in exclaiming about a room full of infected that might have antibiotics and other medicine. Apparently, some survivors out there had been trading with John, but no-one had seen them in weeks.

'And you're sure there's medicine?' Tommy asked.

'I'm telling you, there were a bunch of people held up in there for months. I know that they had drugs, because I was going to trade for them. They must've only just left, and they can't have taken everything. Maybe they made a run for the next town.'

'Or turned,' Tommy corrected him. 'I don't know. I don't want to send people out there for something that might not exist.'

Joel began, 'Don't you have people here who need that stuff bad?'

'Yeah,' John said.

'I'll go,' Joel said.

'What? No,' Tommy said authoritatively, despite the alcohol.

'You need it and I can get it. If what you need isn't there, I'll come back.'

John was smiling but Tommy kept his arms folded.

Joel kept a firm tone. 'You know it's not a problem for me,' he said to Tommy.

Joel didn't break eye contact even though John was moving around in his periphery.

'Okay.'

That night, Joel didn't slept. He laid on his side, in the room that was empty but for his mattress, and he stared out the window. He kept imagining Ellie sleeping in a tree, or in a cave. She wasn't safe out there. She should have been sleeping on his mattress, and he should have been sleeping on the floor beside her. Although Joel knew that Ellie was strong and smart, and more than capable of survival, the world had a way of sneaking around that. In a way, he had pushed Ellie into fulfilling Marlene's prophecy. Torn apart by a pack of clickers. Rape and murdered. Joel whimpered. His short, dirty nails dug into his arm.

There was nothing that he could do for her now. If he searched long enough he could find her. He would search forever. But once he laid eyes on her again, what could he do? He couldn't tie her up and drag her home. At fourteen, she was already a woman. She had as much a right to make her own decisions as Joel did. And soon, she'd be turning sixteen.

But maybe he could have just kept searching for her. Maybe he didn't have to drag her home. Maybe, when Ellie left, if he hadn't been so hurt, he would have had the sense to keep following her. She'd hate him, but at least then he could keep her safe… no matter how much it hurt.

Joel laid his arms over his own chest, holding himself, imagining Ellie. Out of self-punishment, then, he made himself keep his arms by his side and list all the ways he had failed her. By the time the sun rose, he had decided that there was nothing and no-one left for him anymore. That night, he dreamt that he carried Ellie in his arms. She was wearing the hospital gown. When he lifted her closer to him he saw that her unconscious face was covered in blood. The blood ran through her hair an smeared his arms. Don't do this to me, baby girl, he whispered over and over. Don't do this.

The one-street town was a four-hour walk out of the woods. Joel had been travelling since sunrise so that he would have time to look for food… or check for teenage-sized footprints. He hadn't found anything but a couple of rabbits, which he decided not to bother chasing.

Since Joel had given Ellie his rifle, his shotgun, and his bow, the weight of his backpack was unfamiliar, and he had yet to adjust to the new equilibrium. As he walked into the broken street, he limped. He wondered if he looked like a cowboy strolling into main walk of town. Not a bad set for a finale, he darkly mused.

He found the building—an old post office—with the tall wooden door. A dumpster had been rolled in front of it, just how Tommy described.

The afternoon sun cut across the left side of his face and left a dark shadow to his right. The whole street was striped in gold and grey, though the stark contrast didn't at all reflect the consistent blandness that bled through his veins.

Joel stood outside the door. He wasn't sure if he could hear clicks coming from inside or whether those sounds were coming from his own imagination. A shiv was in his hand. Going through the motions, he went to grip it harder, but his hand was too stiff. Then both his hands started to shake.

Joel knew that he wasn't going to be fast enough with the shiv when the infected inevitably appeared at his side. He'd try to make a move, sure. He'd probably knock a few of them down, too. But at some point, maybe only a minute into a fight, his arms would start to thrash in slow motion and the infected would keep running at full speed. Like Tess and Sam and so many others before and after them, he would finally know what the jaws of a monster felt like as they broke through his skin.

For the sake of it, Joel gave himself a chance to change his mind. He tried to imagine how Tommy would feel when he didn't return the next day. He tried to imagine how whoever found his body, bloody, among stalks of clicker legs would react. Where he expected a cold stream of guilt to run down his throat into his chest and stomach, there was only numbness.

Although he didn't believe in heaven, he hoped that his life would flash before his eyes. Maybe then he'd see Sarah as clearly as he once could when she fell asleep with her head on his lap.

A sense of peace coloured the anesthesia in his gut.

He took a breath and opened the door.

The room was surprisingly empty. There was a counter, but no cash register. A bench and a chair to left, but no boxes or cabinets that Joel found would typically hold bandages and tools. The windows were boarded, and the splintered wood broke up the sunlight so that room was a soft yellow. Hesitantly, Joel stepped onto the floorboards. They creaked, but not enough to draw attention.

There was a doorway on the other side of the room, which, he guessed, led behind the counter and to a storage room. There must have been a small apartment upstairs too. Joel moved so that both feet were in the room. With his eyes still on the doorway, Joel returned the shiv to his side and pulled out his revolver. He rested a bottle of alcohol and a lighter by his feet. Then he let the door slam behind him.

The footsteps moved quickly and soon an infected was standing in the doorway. Joel lit and threw the Molotov. What turned out to be a runner burst into flames and his body became a burning wall between Joel and the other room. Two—or three—runners hurled themselves at the fire and Joel shot the first two in the head twice, but the third managed to fly less than two arm spans away from Joel before he shot him the neck. As the runner fell to his feet, two clickers appeared in the doorway above the crackling embers of the first runner's body. They both shook forward.

Here we go, Joel thought. This is it.

As the two clickers moved closer, a third and fourth clicker hurled themselves over the counter. It took Joel three shots to kill one clicker, and then his revolver was empty.

He took out his shiv and sliced the throat of the second clicker. The third and fourth neared. Joel, to his own surprise, grabbed the neck of the third to hold him away, then stabbed the fourth in the eyes, then the chin, until, finally, the shiv swiped its neck. The last clicker pushed Joel back into the door. Joel swiftly pulled out another shiv and let it go as the clicker dropped to his feet.

Heart racing, Joel pulled out his last shiv. He looked around the room and waited for the sound of more footsteps. Again, he looked around. Again, he listened. He waved the shiv in front of him, too smart to slow down. But then, as he looked at the bodies strewn across the floor, and noticed that he hadn't even stepped into the centre of the room, he realised that he had already killed them all.

There wasn't a sound. He couldn't even hear his own breath anymore.

He waited. He felt the desperation of an atheist praying to God. He needed to hear something. Footsteps. Screams. His own scream.

And then he was screaming.

Joel dropped on to his hands and knees and wailed. He sat up and held out his hands, looking for something to attack or strangle or throw, but he held nothing but the air. Still, he thrashed as though were monsters all around him.

Why couldn't it just be over?

After the yellow room turned sour and Joel noticed the smell more than the ache in his jaw, he stood up. His jeans were wet with infected blood, but his face had been dry for a while now. When he blinked, it felt as though he were rubbing two sheets of paper together.

He stumbled through the rooms and found some sheets with only little mould. He tore the clean parts free and used them as a sack to gather supplies. He didn't find antibiotics, but there were a lot of pill bottles with names he didn't recognise. Apart from those, there wasn't anything worth taking.

Joel walked back out onto the street. The sun was well under the horizon and the last chills of spring clung to the breeze.

For maybe an hour, Joel had been drifting back toward the woods. He ran pictures of Sarah through his mind: her cackle when he joked about finding her in a cabbage patch; the grey strands in her blonde hair; how her hair actually felt like silk. He used her as an anchor to keep him from wandering back to Ellie. God, he begged, Why couldn't I have died with Tess?

The sky was an ash blue. He had to keep moving if he was going to track back through the woods the way he came. Usually, Joel would carve notches in the trees he walked by, but he hadn't this time, as he didn't expect to be coming back.

The bridge Joel walked on was cracked. He had to keep his eyes to the ground so that he didn't trip in the deep crevices. He was out in the open, but the only other way to travel was to cross the river beneath him, and then he'd have to climb up the side of a steep hill. Besides, the area had seemed completely deserted. That's why Joel was surprised when he heard a woman scream.

Joel gripped his pistol and looked around. Where is she? Then pain shot up Joel's arm and into his shoulder. He checked. An arrow stuck into his arm, just above his elbow. Definitely hit a tendon.

Joel turned and saw three men running up to him. They were maybe 30 seconds away. There wasn't anywhere to duck on the bridge. Holding his arm with the same hand he held his gun in, Joel shuffled to the scaffold. Metal beams stretched over his head, but they weren't as wide as Joel's body. He looked over the edge. The water was too shallow: the jump would break his legs. The men were now close enough that he could their faces. Neither of them could be older than 30. Joel squeezed the trigger. One of the men reacted with a jump, but he hadn't been hit. Fuck. Joel looked at the water again. Maybe if he landed headfirst…

Joel released his grip on the gun and let himself fall backwards. The last thing he saw before he dropped off the edge was each of the three men engulfed in flames.