Cafunè

JOEL

Joel, get up.

The last thing Joel remembered was the whistle of something slicing through the air and the crack that followed it, and then, just final blank. He feels like his bone meeting metal and the sound of something ending.

He's die.

He remembered Ellie’s voice tearing itself open above him.

get up, joel---

Get up.

Joel, get the fuck up.

fucking get up.

He remembered wanting to answer her. Trying to get up just for her, and only her. Wanting to say her name back. Get his head up from the damn floor. Wanting to promise something he wasn’t sure he could keep, 'cause he already broke all his promise for her. But, there’s nothing, just a dense, not quite it was a silence for suffocating pressure that erased the edges of himself until there was no border left between thought and dark.

When he came back, it was violent.

It’s like air punched into his lungs and his chest convulsed and make his body jerked against something soft, and feels wrong under him. Too soft. There should have been cold concrete and smell of dust. Blood thick in the back of his throat.

Instead there was light above him. Something too white and flat to his eyes, almost hurt his eyes. also, He caught a faint smell of chemicals, something sharp and sterile, that pulled at an old memory of hospitals from back in the day.

He blinked, and the world did not shift into nightmare. It stayed clean and then he felt it.

Something that warmth. Warm from other person that live, not like fever or pain. But a hand? Like the hand hold his. Feel like live and soft? Wrapped around his own like it had been there for a long time.

His fingers twitched and brushed skin that did not belong to him. He move his finger again, it’s his index. He felt the curve of a cheek resting near his knuckles. A faint, even breath against his wrist.

He lay still, listening to the mechanical beeping near his ear and the hammering of his own heart, trying to reconcile the impossible fact of being alive.

He should not be alive.

He remembered the certainty of it. The way the world had tilted. The way he had accepted the end without ceremony. He had outlived enough people to know when his number had been called.

This did not feel like heaven.

Heaven, he thought, would be softer than this. It would not carry the faint, sterile sting of antiseptic in the air, sharp enough to settle at the back of his throat. It would not be this quiet in a way that felt watched rather than peaceful. And it would not, under any circumstance, feel gentle toward a man like him. He had never known what heaven was supposed to look like, never even tried to imagine it.

So the thought of this being heaven felt strange, almost absurd, like his mind had reached too far for something it didn’t understand. no, if this were heaven, it had made a mistake, but it wasn’t hell either.

Hell would have greeted him properly, maybe. It would have been loud, unbearable, honest in its cruelty. Fire, or something close to it. Pain that didn’t leave room for doubt. In hell, at least, he would understand where he was. There would be no confusion, no slow unraveling of thought.

And he would have accepted it, because that, at least, would make sense to him. He wasn’t a good man, after all.

He had done too much for anything else to fit. Too many faces that never left him, no matter how hard he tried not to remember. Too many moments where the line between survival and something darker blurred until it didn’t matter anymore which side he stood on.

So this? this quiet, more silence with something live behind the door, this almost-kindness, felt wrong in a way he couldn’t name it.

Like standing somewhere he hadn’t earned.

He tried to move but pain hit him fast, sharp enough to knock the air out of his chest before he could brace for it. It tore up his side and settled there, heavy and throbbing, like something inside him had been pulled apart and stitched back wrong. A rough sound slipped out of him, low and broken, before he could swallow it down.

The air smelled clean more like chemicals and something bitter sitting at the back of his throat. His mouth felt dry, tongue thick, like he hadn’t used it in days or months. There was a weight on his chest, or maybe just the feeling of it, pressure that made each breath slow and careful.

Something moved near his hand. Warm.

The weight shifted. A chair scraped lightly against the floor, the sound sharp in the quiet.

Joel’s vision dragged downward, slow and unsteady, like it didn’t want to cooperate. The light hurt his eyes, somehow. Everything looked washed out, edges blurred, shapes not quite holding still. He forced his eyes to focus anyway.

There was someone there.

A figure at his side, close enough that he could see the outline before the details came in. Hair. Shoulders. A face that felt familiar before he could place it.

Ellie?

His throat worked, tried to say her name, tried to push it past the dryness, past the weight sitting in his chest. But nothing came out, just air.

A low hiss escaped him before he could stop it as he tried to lift his arm, wanting nothing more than to brush the hair from your face. The pain flared hot through his chest, pulling a rough groan from deep in his throat. He hadn’t meant to wake you. In that half-second, a quiet sorrow settled over him, heavy and tender; he was sorry to pull you from whatever fragile rest you had found, sorry that even now, broken and useless, he still managed to disturb the one person who had stayed.

You stirred at the sound.

Your body tensed, shoulders lifting as if surfacing from deep water, and your eyes snapped open with the wide, startled clarity of someone who had trained herself to wake at the smallest sign of him. For a breathless moment you simply looked at him, hair tousled and falling loose around your face, the faint crease from the mattress still pressed into your cheek like a secret the night had left behind. The dim light caught in your eyes, turning them soft and luminous, and something in Joel’s chest tightened at the sight of you, impossibly alive in a world that had forgotten how to be gentle.

The slight flush still lingering on your skin. The way your lips parted, trembling just enough to betray the storm behind them. Everything about you felt etched with care, with sleepless hours and he drank it in without a word, letting the feeling settle somewhere deep where words could not reach.

"Joel?” you breathed. oh god, escaped from your lips.

The sound of his name in your voice slid through him like honey, low and trembling, almost fracturing on the second syllable. “J-Joel…”

It tasted fragile on the air between you, sweet and aching. He stared, the fog in his mind thinning slowly, and realized with a deep, visceral pull that you were not Ellie.

He didn’t know who you were.

You moved toward him without hesitation. Your hand rose, and when it found his face, the touch was so unbearably soft it made his chest tighten. Your palm carried the faint roughness of calluses, yet the skin was velvet-warm, alive with the pulse of your blood. Your thumb traced his cheekbone slowly, deliberately, sending small sparks of sensation racing across his jaw and down his neck. He could smell you clearly now, something faintly sweet, like crushed herbs or the inside of your wrist after a long summer night. You leaned in closer. Your breath brushed his lips first, warm and humid, carrying the ghost of water and exhaustion. Then your mouth pressed to his forehead, soft and lingering, the heat of it blooming across his skin like sunlight soaking into dry earth. He felt the gentle pressure of your lips, the faint tremble in them, the way your hair fell forward and tickled his temple.

His eyes closed on instinct. His body remembered everything his mind had not yet reclaimed, the quiet thunder of your heartbeat so close to his. A slow shiver moved through him, deep and involuntary, like the first touch of skin after years of winter.

Joel’s mouth opened, the words already forming somewhere deep in his chest. Who the hell are you? Where’s Ellie? What is this place? but nothing came. His throat was a dry riverbed, cracked and empty, the kind of desert silence that had swallowed whole towns back when the world still made sense.

He pushed again, harder, air scraping uselessly against raw tissue, and his brow pulled tight in that uneasy frown she knew too well, the one that carved lines between his eyes like he was bracing for a fight he couldn’t even start.

he saw that you noticed right away.

“Hey,” you said softly, thumb still moving in slow, steady circles over his knuckles like muscle memory. “It’s okay. The doctor just took the tube out. They said your voice is coming back, it just needs a little time. Just take it easy, okay?”

Tube.

The word hit him sideways. A tube? In his throat? The confusion sharpened, pressing in behind his ribs until it felt like something alive trying to get out. None of this lined up, He stared at you, eyes narrowed, trying to force the questions through the dryness anyway, but his lips only twitched uselessly.

you didn’t wait for him to try again. you reached for the plastic cup on the side table, the condensation cool against your fingers, and slid your other arm behind his shoulders with the careful ease of someone who had done this exact thing more times than she could count. She lifted him just enough, no rush, no fuss, and brought the straw to his lips.

“Here,” she murmured, voice low and close. “Drink some.”

The water touched his tongue, and slid down his throat like forgiveness he hadn’t asked for. He took small sips, eyes never leaving your face, the desert in his mouth easing just a fraction while everything else inside him stayed cracked wide open. you watched him the whole time, patient and steady and a little scared, like you were afraid the next thing he tried to say might break whatever was left of them both.

“where's Ellie?” he rasped. The word scraped out, dry and uncertain, barely more than breath.

Your expression faltered, just a small, exquisite fracture across your face. “She’s fine,” you whispered, the words warm against his skin, heavy with relief and unspoken nights.

The answer didn’t sit right. He doesn't know why? Just the word fine didn’t belong anywhere near the world he remembered.

He frowned, pain tightening behind his eyes, and the idea unsettled him more than the pain.

He closed his eyes for a second, overwhelmed by the quiet intensity of your presence. The warmth of your skin. The steady brush of your thumb over his knuckles. The way your body leaned toward his without calculation.

He hadn’t been touched like that in a long time. Not with softness that wasn’t earned through blood or apology. Not with care that didn’t feel conditional.

your forehead dipped gently against his temple, careful of whatever bandage lay hidden there.

“You scared me,” you whispered. There was no anger in it, just exhaustion. your fingers tightened more securely around his, like you were anchoring him to something solid. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake,” you said, he can hear the way your voice barely holding together. “You can’t do this to me. I… I can’t do it without you.”

He felt like a man standing in a house that used to belong to him, but the furniture had been rearranged and he no longer knew where the doors were. and not knowing what to do.

He opened his eyes this time, when he feel you pull away from him. you were watching him with your doe- alike eyes like he might disappear if you blinked.

Joel studied you. The soft press of your hands lingered on his shoulders as you eased back, just far enough to study him. Your gaze moved over his face with careful, practiced intensity, as though you were reading symptoms written in the lines of his brow and the tension around his mouth.

“Is anything hurt?” you asked, your voice low and steady. “Any pain I can’t see?”

He guessed you were a doctor, but the thought didn’t quite fit. A nurse, maybe? No, that didn’t sit right either. You wore a simple white fitted tee and jeans, nothing clinical about you. Still, there was something in the way you looked at him that made him wonder exactly who you were. He couldn’t put a name or title to it, only that you felt like someone who knew how to look for what wasn’t being said.

"Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah… there’s pain.” His voice carried the heaviness of someone unused to admitting weakness aloud. Like the confession itself sat wrong in his mouth. He didn’t even know why he was telling you this. Maybe because your hands had stayed still the whole time. Maybe because you looked at him like he was something breakable and not just a man stitched together by old violence and stubbornness.

Or maybe because, somehow, it felt right. Joel swallowed hard, eyes fixed somewhere past your shoulder, toward nothing at all. “Side,” he added after a moment, the word catching slightly in his throat. His hand drifted unconsciously toward his ribs before stopping midway, fingers curling into his palm instead. “Right side… feels like it’s been torn open.”

The room settled around the silence between you. The low hum of the light overhead. The faint smell of antiseptic and rain clinging to his jacket. His breathing had gone uneven now, careful, measured, like every inhale needed permission first. “Head too,” he murmured quieter this time, jaw tightening. “Keeps poundin’.”

And when he finally looked at you, it wasn’t with embarrassment. Not exactly. It was something softer than that. Something almost boyish beneath all the exhaustion. Like he hated that you were seeing him like this.

“okay, okay. You’ll be okay,” you said. “And I’ll tell the doctor after this.” you sound somehow a little too excited for what Joel is about to see.

Joel stared at you for a second too long, and in that second he became suddenly aware of everything at once: the faint crease between your brows whenever you worried, the careful way your fingers hovered near him without forcing contact, the scent of soap and cold air lingering in your sweater. Small things. Forgettable things, maybe. Yet they reached him with startling precision, lodging somewhere beneath the ache in his ribs.

“You said…” His thumb brushed unconsciously against the edge of the blanket draped over him, fingers tense, uncertain. “You’ve been waiting. For me?”

And God, the way he said it, almost hesitant, made the question feel larger than it was. As if he already feared the answer before hearing it. As if some part of him couldn’t quite believe anybody would wait for him at all.

She nodded once, and the small gesture seemed to carry more weight than it should have. Two months, she said, and the number landed in him like a quiet shock, something too large to hold all at once. He looked at her as if the space between them had changed shape, as if her patience had been sitting there in the room all along, waiting with her. Her hand stayed around his, steady and unshowy, but it made him feel suddenly aware of his own pulse, the fragility of being touched with such care. He had the strange sense that he was being looked after in a way he did not know how to ask for, and maybe had never once expected. It unsettled him, and softened him at the same time. He wanted to understand why she had waited, why she had stayed, but all he could do was stand there inside the quiet of it, feeling the tenderness of her concern like something almost unbearable.

He was trying to summon something, a memory of her voice, her face, the way her thumb traced his skin like she had mapped it a thousand times.

“Where… what hospital is this?” he asked.

“You’re at St. David’s Medical Center,” you said

The thought flickered, distant and half-formed. His eyes shifted past you, taking in the room again. the steady light, and quiet, the way everything felt… intact.

“what? no, no, no…” he started, then stopped. its just came out as a disbelife and whisper to himself.

His hand shifted against the sheets, slow, like even that took effort. He looked back at you, really looked this time, like maybe the answer was in your face instead of the room.

“…How?” he asked finally, quieter now. “Is it still in Jackson?”

joel could see it in the way your breath caught, like something fragile inside you had been nudged out of place. your eyes searched his face, not for an answer—but for how much he meant by that.

“No,” you said after a beat, her voice gentler now. “It’s not in Jackson.”

Joel frowned.

The word no didn’t settle right. It only made things worse. His gaze drifted again, slower this time, like he was trying to force the room to make sense if he looked at it long enough.

"Then where the hell am i—” he muttered, the curse fraying at the edges before it could even finish, stolen by the sudden weight of exhaustion that pressed down on him like wet concrete.

He swallowed, the motion pulling a faint wince across his face as fresh pain bloomed raw along his throat. His chest rose and fell unevenly, each inhale a careful negotiation, like his body was still learning the rules of this impossible place.

“you're in Austin, Texas, joel....” you added.

That made him freeze.

This was not the quiet, measured stillness Joel had learned to carry — the kind a man develops after twenty years of surviving, when every decision could mean life or death. No, this was something altogether different. Sharper. Colder. It seized him completely, freezing the blood in his veins as though winter had come from inside his own body.

Austin. Texas.

The words echoed strangely in his mind, hollow and unnatural, like hearing someone speak your childhood language in a dream. Austin no longer existed. Not like this. Not clean and bright and humming with life, with machines that worked and lights that stayed on and warm hands holding his as if love were still a simple thing.

"...are you okay?"

In the world he remembered, Austin had burned. It had died screaming along with everything else — swallowed by infection and fire and the long, merciless collapse of civilization. It had taken his daughter with it. Sarah. To hear that name spoken so easily now, in this bright, impossible room, felt like a kind of blasphemy. As if someone had quietly dug up her grave and expected him to be grateful that the earth had given her back.

His eyes lifted back to yours, sharper now despite the haze still clouding the edges of his vision, the confusion hardening into something edged and dangerous.

“…What do you mean?” he said under his breath, the question low and rough, barely more than gravel dragged across concrete. Then the suspicion broke loose, raw and unfiltered, the old instincts clawing their way up before he could stop them. “Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice cracked on the words, still hoarse from the tube they’d pulled, but the accusation burned through anyway. “Are you a one of FEDRA? Is the girl that shot me one of your people... or your leader?”

The questions hung between you, heavy and trembling, carrying every nightmare he’d lived through: the blue uniforms, the quarantine zones, the cold efficiency of people who called slaughter order. His fingers tightened in your grasp without meaning to, not pulling away but holding on like the contact itself might keep the floor from dropping out beneath him.

“Joel…” Your voice came out small at first, cracked and uncertain. “What… what are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer right away. The anger was already sharpening, turning his jaw to stone. He could feel it in the way his fingers flexed inside yours, but pressing harder, almost accusing.

"just tell me?" his voice getting angrier somehow

Because if this was some new game, if you were part of it, if the clean white room, the way you looked at him like he was yours were all just another way to break him—then he’d rather the club had finished its swing.

Your breath hitched, the sound soft and unsteady. You leaned in closer without thinking, “I’m not with anyone like that. I'm willow, and I’m yours. I’ve been yours for years.” Your voice cracked, confusion and hurt braiding together until it was impossible to tell which was winning. " y-you even give me this ring, remember?" the ring on your finger catching the light like a taunt.

willow

It started low, a slow burn behind his ribs, the kind that had kept him alive for twenty years. He watched the way your shoulders tensed, the way your free hand hovered halfway to his cheek before dropping, trembling. That look, wide-eyed and lost, like he’d just spoken in a language you didn’t understand, only fed the fire. Because if this was real, if you really didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, then either the world had gone completely insane… or you were lying to him. And the thought that you, of all people, this woman who kissed his forehead like it was a promise, might be lying made something ugly twist tight in his gut.

“Joel, babe. There’s no... there’s no one who shot you. It was a car accident. On the highway. You swerved to avoid a truck and… and you don’t remember any of that?” you went on, words tumbling faster now, laced with a panic that only made his chest burn hotter. Your free hand rose again, hovering near his face like you wanted to touch him and didn’t dare.

A car accident. The words sounded so clean, so ordinary, they made his stomach turn.

He let out a short, bitter breath that scraped raw against his ruined throat. “A car accident,” he echoed, voice low and edged with disbelief. The anger was fully awake now, crawling higher, licking at the base of his throat. “You expect me to believe that? After everything? After the way the world ended? You’re telling me I’ve been lying here two months and the whole damn thing was just some fucking fender-bender in Austin, Texas?”

“what?… please, tell me what’s going on in your head. I don’t understand any of this. We... we can get through this. Us. you, me, the girls—” The plea only stoked the anger higher.

He could see it in your eyes—the genuine bewilderment, the way you looked at him like he was the one breaking something precious—and it made him want to shove the words back at you, make you feel the same fracture splitting open inside him.

“Yeah, well I don’t understand a goddamn thing either,” he rasped, the roughness in his voice turning sharp, ugly. His fingers tightened around yours, not gentle anymore, the grip almost bruising. “One minute I’m on the floor in Jackson with Ellie screaming my name, the next I wake up in some fairy-tale hospital with a woman I’ve never seen before telling me we’ve got daughters and a life in a city that shouldn’t even be standing. So forgive me if I’m having a hard time buying the ‘car accident’ story while you sit there looking at me like I’ve lost my mind and throwing around some bullshit about us—”

You flinched this time, but you didn’t pull away. And that, more than anything, unsettled him.

Are you out of your goddamn mind, kid? he thought. If this body weren’t already half-dead on me, I could put you down easy. But you stayed there anyway, close enough for him to feel the warmth coming off your skin, close enough that your hand still rested against him like you had forgotten it was there. Joel watched the confusion in your eyes shift slowly into hurt, quiet and unguarded, and the sight of it only made something uglier coil tighter inside his chest.

Because part of him had already begun to believe you.

“Joel,” you whispered again, voice trembling now, “I’m not lying to you. I swear I’m not. I don’t know what have you been through to this, or Jackson, or any of it. I just know I’ve been sitting here every day waiting for you to wake up and come back to me. To us.”

The room felt smaller suddenly, the beeping monitors too loud, the space between your faces charged with everything neither of you could quite name. His anger simmered there, hot and restless, while your confusion pressed back like a mirror, reflecting every fracture until it felt like the beginning of an argument neither of you had the strength for—but both of you were already stepping into.

The word us hit him like a gut punch.

His face twisted into something ugly, something mean and disbelieving, the kind of look he used to give raiders right before he pulled the trigger. Who the fuck is us? The thought roared through him, hot and vicious. There is no us between you and me. There never was. He didn’t know you. He didn’t want to know you. This soft, pleading stranger with her ring and her tears and her gentle hands had no right to that word.

“No,” he said suddenly, his voice rough and low. “No. No, that’s not what happened.”

you turned to look at him. Joel’s breathing had grown sharper, the anxiety clawing its way back up his throat. He pushed himself up slightly against the pillows, ignoring the burn in his side.

“Someone… a girl,” he continued, the words tumbling out faster, more urgent. “She shot me in the knee. Point blank. Then she beat the shit out of me. She had this goddamn club and she—” His voice cracked, but he forced the rest out. “She swung it at my head. That’s what happened. I’m not crazy. I didn’t get hurt in some fucking car accident. I know what I felt. I know what I saw.”

The room went completely still.

“Joel… hey, what are you talking about? There was no girl. It was a car crash on I-35. You swerved, hit the guardrail hard. They had to cut you out of the truck.”

Joel shook his head, jaw tight, eyes wild with frustration. “No. You’re wrong. All of it is wrong.” His gaze flicked toward you by the window, then back to you. “I was in Jackson. Ellie was there. She was screaming at me to get up. This wasn’t some accident on a highway that doesn’t even exist anymore. This was real. The blood, the pain, the way my leg gave out .... that was real.”

His chest was heaving now, the panic rising again, hot and suffocating. He looked between the two of you like you were both part of some elaborate lie meant to break him.

“I’m telling you,” he rasped, voice cracking with exhaustion and anger, “a girl beat me half to death with a golf club. She wanted me to suffer. That’s the last thing I remember. Not some fucking truck. Not Austin. Not any of this.”

The silence that followed felt suffocating. you glanced at him helplessly, clearly at a loss.

Joel’s hands were shaking where they gripped the sheets. He didn’t know who to trust anymore. Everything he said sounded insane even to his own ears, but it was the only truth he had left.

You cut him off mid-sentence, voice desperate, trying to reach the man you thought you still knew. “Joel, please—just breathe. tommy, ellie, and sarah are all waiting for you to wake up, okay. all of them is fine, there's no such a things like that, ”

"Sarah." the name landed like a blade between his ribs. "she so worried about ya,"

His eyes snapped to yours, the kind of look that had once made grown men step back. Anger surged through him in a white-hot flood, pure and blinding, drowning everything else. How dare you say her name? How dare you speak it so casually, like it was just another word, like you had any right to it? It felt like mockery. Like you were twisting the knife in the oldest wound he had, the one that had never healed, the one that still bled every time he closed his eyes. Sarah—his Sarah, his little girl, gone in a spray of bullets and screams—was not yours to claim. Not like this.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he snarled, voice low and trembling with fury, the words scraping out like broken glass. “You don’t get to say her name. You don’t get to stand there and mock me with it. My daughter is dead. She’s been dead for twenty goddamn years. And you’re using her name like—like it’s some fucking game to you?”

You blinked, confusion crashing over your face like cold water, eyes wide and glistening. “Who?" you asks. "Ellie? Sarah?” The names tumbled out of you in helpless bewilderment, soft and uncertain, as if testing them might make any of this real. his eyes snapped at you. “Joel, I—I don’t understand. Sarah’s our-" joel see when you corrected yourself. "....your daughter. she is at school right now with Ellie and Tommy waiting for the doctor to say you're awake. She’s been so scared—”

His eyes snapped again at the second mention of Sarah, harder this time, the rage and raw grief colliding until his vision blurred at the edges. The anger was everywhere now, choking him, making his chest heave with the effort not to shout.

Part of him wanted to tear his hand from yours, wanted to shove you back hard enough to wipe that look from your face, to split the hurt between you so he wouldn’t have to carry it alone. The instinct came fast, ugly, familiar. Like anger was easier to survive than fear ever was.

But the other part of him: the worn-down, splintering part that had been holding itself together by habit alone, couldn’t stop looking at you.

At the tears beginning to gather in your eyes, shining stubbornly even as you tried to blink them away. At the way your voice cracked around his name, soft and trembling, as though it meant something sacred to you. As though he meant something.

It was unbearable.

Not because you were weak. Not because you pitied him.

But because you looked at him like you still believed there was something left in him worth reaching for.

And God, that was crueler than anything. Crueler than the pain in his body.

The room seemed to draw inward around the two of you, walls bending closer with every sharp pulse of the monitors. The sound filled the silence too loudly, too steadily, until even the air between your faces felt alive with it, thin and electric and breaking apart by inches.

Joel kept staring at you with that same ugly look—suspicion tangled with anger, exhaustion sitting underneath it all like something ancient and incurable. His hands trembled inside yours despite himself, not with weakness alone but with the effort of holding everything in. And your expression only undid him further: the confusion there, the hurt slowly opening across your face like light through cracked glass.

You looked at him as though you could not understand how someone already half-destroyed could still keep choosing to wound himself further.

The feeling hit him again before he could outrun it.

Anxiety came down hard and sudden, vicious as a storm breaking through rotten wood. His chest seized violently, breath catching halfway in as though invisible hands had wrapped around his ribs and begun tightening, until even the smallest inhale hurt. A sharp pain bloomed beneath his sternum, hot and blinding, spreading with every frantic beat of his heart.

"you okay?"

For one terrible second, he thought his body might simply split apart from it.

Old grief rose first. Then fear. Then something worse than both.

Because beneath the panic, beneath the confusion and fury and pain, there was the unbearable feeling that he was losing something again before he had even remembered what it was.

And you were still there, holding his shaking hands like they belonged to someone worth saving. but then, “I don’t know who the fuck you are, okay?” The words tore out of him, raw and cruel, each one aimed to wound. “I don’t know you. I don’t remember your face, your voice, that goddamn ring on your finger—none of it. You keep talking about us and daughters and some perfect little life like I’m supposed to just nod and play along. But I don’t feel any of that. You’re a stranger to me. You’re a fucking stranger holding my hand like you own it, saying my dead daughter’s name like it’s nothing, and I can’t—”

He stopped, breath ragged, the anxiety clawing higher, tighter, making his voice shake with something ugly.

“I wake up and everything’s gone. Jackson. Ellie. Tommy. My Sarah. And instead I get you. Some woman I’ve never seen before telling me I’ve got a whole family I don’t remember. How the hell do you think that feels? Like I’m losing my goddamn mind. Or maybe I already lost it and this is the joke.”

The words landed like stones. He saw them hit you — watched the way your shoulders curved inward, the way your lips pressed together to trap whatever sound wanted to escape. He saw the fresh hurt bloom in your eyes, bright and devastating, and still he couldn’t stop the poison spilling out.

“You want me to believe you’re mine? That I chose this? That I gave you that ring and built some goddamn white-picket life in a city that shouldn’t exist anymore?” His laugh was bitter, broken. “I don’t even know if I could love someone like that anymore. Not after everything. Certainly not someone I can’t remember.”

But even as the venom left him, even as the anger tried to keep its grip, something inside his chest fractured wider.

He looked at your eyes: They were the saddest eyes he had ever seen in his life. for one brief second, felt something close to shame crawl beneath his skin.

Not just guilt but the terrible understanding that he was hurting someone who did not deserve to be hurt.

A tear slipped from your eye before you could stop it. Joel watched it trace a slow path down your cheek, catching the pale hospital light as it fell. And then came the flush blooming beneath your skin, delicate and sudden, spreading across your face like your body itself was embarrassed by the honesty of your grief.

You looked away for half a second, as if ashamed to be seen hurting in front of him.

That nearly undid him. Because beneath the exhaustion and the confusion and the anger twisting inside his chest, you suddenly looked unbearably young to him. Young in the way bruised things are open and exposed. Still foolish enough to care. And God, he did not know what to do with that.

Something tightened low in his stomach, sharp and uncomfortable, almost like grief but not quite. The sight of your tears made him feel clumsy inside his own skin, like his hands had become dangerous things without him noticing. Like every hard word he threw at you landed somewhere tender he hadn’t meant to touch. For the first time since waking up, Joel looked at you not like a threat, not like a stranger hovering too close to his bed—

but like someone he might already have ruined.

Joel watched as you lifted your hand and wiped the tear away roughly, almost angrily, like you were punishing yourself for letting it fall in front of him. The motion was jerky, ungraceful, nothing like the gentle way you had touched him earlier. It hurt more than he expected it to.

Then something buzzed in your pocket.

You pulled out a slim, sleek rectangle, a phone? but not like any phone or even radio they usually use, he remembered from before the outbreak. those thick and got keyboard on it. but now It look too thin as the screen glowing bright and alive with color. Just a perfectly functioning piece of the old world, as if the last twenty years had never happened. Joel stared at it, a fresh wave of unease crawling over his skin. Phones didn’t work anymore. Not like that. Seeing it in your hand felt wrong. Unnatural. Like proof that none of this was real.

you glanced at the screen, hesitated, then answered.

“Hey… no need, can you just come here, please” you said, your voice quieter now, trying to steady itself.

You turned slightly away from him, but not enough to hide anything. Joel could still see the shine of tears in your eyes, the way your free hand gripped the edge of the bed until your knuckles paled. “No, he’s awake. He just woke up a little while ago.” someone on other side say something, and you says. "yeah, he talking, i mean we are,"

He watched you the whole time.

His eyes didn’t leave your face, not even for a second. There was a tight, animal caution in his chest, the old instinct still working even though his body felt half-broken. Part of him kept waiting for the shift — for your hand to move suddenly, for something sharp to appear, for the gentleness to crack open and reveal what was really underneath. He wouldn’t have been surprised if you pulled a gun. In his experience, that was how these things usually ended.

While you were still on the phone, he turned his head slowly to the side, jaw clenched against the pain that flared down his neck. Through the gap in the thin curtain, the window showed him the city. They were high up. Very high. Buildings stood straight and whole, lights moving along the streets below, everything clean and ordinary in a way that made his stomach feel hollow. It didn’t look like a world that had ended. It looked like one that had simply kept going without him.

“Okay,” you said into the phone, voice quiet and tired. “Can you tell the doctor on the way here? Yeah… okay.”

You hung up and slipped the phone back into your pocket. For a moment you stood completely still, looking down at the floor like you needed the extra second to collect yourself. Then you lifted your head and met his eyes again.

Joel didn’t say anything. He just watched you. The flush was still on your cheeks, faint now, and your eyes were red at the edges. You had wiped the tear away so roughly it was like you were annoyed at yourself for crying. He noticed the small things how your fingers kept gripping the edge of the bed rail, even after everything he had said, the way your shoulders carried a weight that wasn’t just physical.

“Tommy’s downstairs,” you said quietly, without looking at him. “He’s going to come up in a minute.”

The squeaking sound of the chair cut through the silence like a small wound.

You dragged it back toward the wall with a slow, tired scrape, the rubber legs protesting against the linoleum. Joel tensed instantly, every muscle in his battered body pulling tight. His pulse spiked. For one sharp, instinctive second he was certain you were going to lift it — swing it hard across the room and bring it down on his head, finishing what the world had started. He braced for it, breath shallow, eyes never leaving you.

But you didn’t.

You simply collapsed into the chair, throwing your body down as if all the strength had suddenly left your legs. The movement was heavy, defeated. You curled forward, back rounding like a question mark, elbows digging into your knees, and buried your face in your palms. The posture was so raw, so private, that Joel felt he shouldn’t be watching. For a moment he was sure you were going to cry, really cry! the kind of crying that tore itself out of the chest and refused to be quiet.

He waited for the sound of it.

Instead, you stiffened, as though reminding yourself you were still in the room with him. You straightened your back just enough to look composed, though your shoulders stayed heavy and your head remained low. Your gaze fixed on the floor between your feet. Then, almost absentmindedly, your fingers began to move — tracing the band of the ring on your left hand, turning it slowly, nervously, around and around your finger like it was the only real thing left in the world.

Joel watched the small motion with a strange ache blooming behind his ribs. The way the light caught on the simple silver band as you twisted it. The way your thumb kept brushing over it, again and again, as if checking it was still there. As if checking he was still there.

There was something unbearably intimate about it. Something that made the air feel thick and warm between you, even with all the distance and silence and cruel words he had thrown at you earlier. He could see the exhaustion in every line of your body, the quiet war you were fighting just to keep yourself from falling apart in front of him.

And still, those eyes, when they eventually lifted again, held that same devastating softness.

He didn’t know what to do with any of it. The fear, the suspicion, the strange pull in his chest. So he simply kept watching you, silent and unsettled, as the fluorescent light hummed above you both and the city glowed indifferently beyond the window.

The silence stretched between you for a long moment, heavy and alive.

Then you lifted your head slightly, eyes still fixed somewhere near the floor, and asked in a voice so soft it barely disturbed the air:

“You don’t really remember me at all, do you?”

The question came out small and fragile, almost apologetic for existing. With it, a sad smile touched your lips — weak, trembling at the edges, the kind of smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. It was more like surrender. A small, tired curve that knew it wouldn’t reach your eyes and didn’t even try. It made something inside Joel tighten painfully.

He stared at you, chest still aching from the earlier surge of anxiety, his body heavy against the hospital bed. The question hung there, simple and devastating. He could see the way your fingers kept turning the ring around and around, slower now, as though the motion could steady you.

For a second he didn’t answer. He just looked at that weak, sorrowful smile and felt the strange weight of it settle deep in his stomach. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. You were looking at him like he had once meant everything, while all he could offer back was confusion and suspicion and the cold certainty that he had never seen your face before today.

“No,” he said finally, his voice low and rough, scraped raw from disuse. “I don’t.”

Your sad little smile faltered but didn’t disappear completely. It only became sadder, thinner, as if you had already known the answer but still needed to hear it out loud. Your eyes shimmered again, that unbearable softness returning full force, and Joel felt the now-familiar twist in his chest — guilt and something else he didn’t want to name it.

You nodded once, barely perceptible, still playing with the ring like it was a lifeline.

“okay... ” you whispered, almost to yourself. “at least you didn't forgot your family.”

You simply sat there in the chair, back slightly curved, wearing that small, broken smile like armor, while the city lights glowed quietly beyond the window and the distance between you felt wider than ever.

Joel kept watching you, unable to look away, the image of that weak smile burning itself into him long after you lowered your gaze again.

His eyes were fixed on you as you shook your head, then you let out a small, broken sound, almost like a chuckle in disbelief at what had happened.

“I don’t know what’s worse, Joel. That you don’t remember me… or that some part of me still believes if I just wait long enough, you’ll come back to me anyway. Even though I can see in your eyes that you already left.”

Joel felt the words sink into him like hooks.

Something heavy and painful lodged itself in his throat. He stared at you, at that small, devastated smile still clinging to your lips, at the way your shoulders curved like the weight of loving him was slowly crushing you. The anxiety in his chest tightened again, but this time it was mixed with a guilt so sharp it almost made him flinch.

Jesus Christ, he thought. How do you say something like that to a man who doesn’t even know your name? How do you sit there and bleed like this for someone who looks at you like a threat?

He hated it. He hated how your sadness made him feel small. He hated that some broken part of him wanted to reach out and touch your hand anyway. Most of all, he hated that he had nothing real to give you.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he rasped finally, his voice low and rough, almost angry at how unsteady it sounded. “I can’t lie to you. I look at you and… I feel nothing. Not the way you want me to. There’s just this blank space where you say my life used to be.”

He swallowed hard, eyes dropping to your hands, to that ring you kept touching like a wound.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, the words feeling foreign and insufficient on his tongue. “I’m sorry you’re hurting like this. But I didn’t ask for any of it. I didn’t ask for you to wait two months by my bed. I didn’t ask for daughters I don’t remember. I woke up and everything I know is gone… and you’re looking at me like I’m supposed to fix that. Like I’m supposed to love you when I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

He met your eyes again, his own gaze tired and conflicted.

“I’m not him,” he said quietly, almost gently this time. “Whoever the man was who looked at you like you were his whole world… I ain’t him. Not anymore. Maybe I never will be again.”

Joel looked away toward the window, jaw tight, the city lights blurring slightly in his vision. Inside his chest, the guilt twisted deeper. Because even as he said the words, even as he tried to push you away, a small, terrified part of him wondered if he was making the biggest mistake of his life by letting someone who loved him this much slip through his fingers.

You looked at him for a long moment with those blank eyes, eyes so full of sadness they seemed emptied of everything else. There was no anger left in them, no fight. Just a vast, quiet exhaustion that made the room feel colder.

Then a sudden scoff from you that broke the silence, almost a sneer, like you were disgusted with yourself for still caring.

“i hope you do a little better and put a effort when you see the girls,” you said, your voice low and flat. “They’re your daughters. You’re their only hope right now.”

He stared at you as you said them. There was no longer any plea in them, only a weary resignation that somehow hurt more than any accusation. Joel watched as you pushed yourself up from the chair. Your movements were slow, heavy, like your body had grown too heavy to carry. You walked over to the large window he had been glancing at earlier and pulled the thin curtain open with one sharp tug. afternoon light flooded the room, softer and warmer than the harsh fluorescent glow. The city stretched out beneath you... alive, glowing, impossibly intact.

Joel stared past you at the view, his chest tightening again at the sight of a world that refused to match his memories. You stood there with your back to him, arms wrapped around yourself, silhouetted against the glass. The light caught in your hair and made the ring on your finger glint faintly. You didn’t turn around. You didn’t say anything else. You just stood there, looking out at the city like it might give you answers he couldn’t.

Joel felt something shift uncomfortably inside him. Those blank, sorrow-filled eyes stayed burned into his mind even now that you weren’t facing him. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. The silence between you felt thicker than before — full of everything you hadn’t said, and everything he didn’t know how to feel.

He stayed quiet, watching the gentle rise and fall of your shoulders, wondering how much longer you could keep holding yourself together when he kept breaking you apart.

The door burst open.

Both of you turned at the sound, your body pivoting fully from the window in one fluid, instinctive motion, no longer offering him your back. The golden sunlight that had been outlining your silhouette now spilled across your front, catching in your eyes and illuminating the quiet exhaustion etched into your features. Joel felt the shift like a current passing through the room. Your gaze landed on him first before moving to Tommy.

Tommy came in fast, boots loud against the floor, breathing hard like he had run the whole way from wherever bad news lived in this too-bright city. The rush of air that followed him carried the scent of outside—dust, engine oil, and the faint metallic tang of evening settling over concrete. His hair was disheveled, jacket half-buttoned, eyes wide with that familiar mix of panic and fierce love Joel almost recognized.

“Joel—Jesus Christ, willow said you were awake,” Tommy’s voice cracked as he crossed the room in long strides, stopping short when he saw you standing by the window, rigid and silent. "Jesus, you scared the hell out of us." His gaze flicked between the two of you, reading the thick air, the way your arms hugged your ribs like armor. Something in Tommy’s face softened with understanding, then tightened again with worry.

Tommy obviously knew you. There had been no hesitation in his brother when he looked at you, none of that suspicion Joel had first clung to because suspicion was easier than the alternative. Easier than believing you were exactly what you said you were.

Because if Tommy knew you, really knew you, then you hadn’t lied to him.

Which meant the look on your face earlier had been real too. The silence after his cruel words. The way your mouth parted slightly, as if you had almost said something back before deciding against it. He remembered it now with painful clarity. That quiet kind of hurt people try to hide because they don’t think they’re allowed to feel it in the first place.

And God, he had done that to you.

he’d rather die than speak to you now, knowing he was the one who hurt you.

...

YOU (WILLOW)

You sat in the parking lot with the food balanced on your lap, the paper bag already going translucent with grease. The Coke beside you had started sweating down the cup, dampening the fabric of your coat where it rested against your thigh. You could hear children somewhere outside laughing too loudly, backpacks slamming against lockers, car doors opening and closing in quick succession. Life continuing with this terrible ease.

when the doctor spoke, somehow made it worse.

Like if he had sounded alarmed, or uncertain, or visibly disturbed by any of this, maybe you could have matched his emotion properly. But he spoke in that careful, measured tone doctors used when they had already accepted the situation long before you had.

You sat across from him in the consultation room with your hands clasped so tightly together your knuckles hurt. There was a coffee stain on the sleeve of your sweater from two days ago. Or maybe three. You couldn’t really remember anymore. Time had begun collapsing strangely since the accident. Nights folding into mornings without edges between them.

“He remembers his brother,” you said. “his daughters.”

The doctor nodded once. “Yes.”

You stared at him. The fluorescent light above buzzed softly. Somewhere outside the room a phone rang twice and stopped. “But not me.”

Another pause.

You hated the pauses most. The pauses were where reality entered the room.

“Memory retrieval after brain trauma can be selective,” he explained. “Sometimes emotionally significant memories remain accessible. Sometimes certain relationships become… disconnected temporarily.”

Disconnected. The word made something sharp twist low in your stomach.

“He knew me before,” you said.

“Yes.”

“He loved me.” you murmur.

The doctor lowered his eyes briefly then. Not avoiding the question exactly. Just moving carefully around it, like somebody stepping over broken glass.

“I understand that.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Your voice sounded strange suddenly. “Because if he remembers Ellie, and Tommy, and Sarah, then why not me?”

The question stayed there between you.

Why not me.

You realized then that you had been thinking it over and over since Joel opened his eyes.

Not: Will he recover?

Not: Will things go back to normal?

Just: Why not me.

The doctor folded his hands together on the desk. “The brain doesn’t organize memory according to fairness,” he said gently.

You almost laughed at that, not because it was funny, because the sentence felt obscene somehow. Fairness. As though this had anything to do with fairness anymore.

“He looked at me,” you said after a moment. “Like I frightened him.”

The doctor didn’t answer immediately. You kept speaking anyway because stopping felt impossible now.

“He kept asking for Ellie. He remembered Sarah immediately. Tommy too. He remembered things that apparently don’t even exist anymore inside his head. But when he looked at me,” your throat tightened suddenly. “Nothing. There was just nothing.”

Your voice cracked slightly on the last word and you looked down immediately, embarrassed by it. The doctor waited. You hated that too. The patience. The gentleness. As though your grief had become medically predictable.

“But he did know me,” you insisted again, quieter this time. “You understand that, right? We've been together like... almost five years. seeing him every single day, and we-we going to married, and-and i don't know have another kid. He used to…” You stopped.

'Used to' is the saddest phrases you could ever say. The phrase hollowed something inside your chest.

The doctor leaned back slightly in his chair.“Miss Grant,” he said carefully, “people often assume memory is purely factual. But autobiographical attachment is extremely complicated. Sometimes after trauma the brain preserves certain identities while suppressing others associated with emotional intensity, stress, or disorientation.”

You blinked at him. Suppressing others. The words sounded almost violent.

“So I’m stressful?” you asked.

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

He hesitated.

And again you thought: there it is. That terrible little hesitation before somebody says something that changes your life permanently.

“What I mean,” he said slowly, “is that memory loss is not always random. Sometimes the mind protects itself in ways we don’t fully understand.”

You stared at him for a long moment. Then shook your head immediately. “No.”

He stayed silent.

“No,” you repeated. “Because that makes it sound intentional.”

“I’m not suggesting he chose this.”

“But why me?” you asked again, suddenly unable to stop. “Why am I the missing part? Why does he remember everyone except me?”

Your voice had gone thin now. Almost shaking.

You pressed your palms hard against your eyes for a second, breathing carefully.

“He remembered his daughters,” you whispered. “Do you understand how strange that is? He remembers being a father. Just not being my.....”

The doctor’s expression softened almost imperceptibly.

And somehow that softness finally broke something in you.

“He used to know me better than anyone,” you said quietly. “He used to look at me and…” You swallowed hard. “God. He used to look at me like I was home to him.”

The room stayed silent after that.

Then finally, very softly, the doctor said:

“I know this is painful.”

And the strange thing was, hearing him say painful almost made you angry. Because painful sounded far too small a word for what this actually was.

Painful was a migraine. A broken wrist. Bad news over the phone.

Because if Joel truly felt nothing, this would actually be simpler. Cleaner. You could grieve properly then. People survived rejection every day. Survived divorce. Survived widowhood.

But this was something stranger.

He looked at you like there was something inside him trying unsuccessfully to reach toward you through locked glass.

And maybe that was the cruelest possibility of all. To still exist somewhere inside another person without them being able to find you.

...

You took another bite of the burger because your body needed something, even if your mind rejected the idea of eating entirely. The meat tasted too salty now. Or maybe that was just the tears reaching the corners of your mouth. You wiped your face with the heel of your hand and stared through the windshield at nothing in particular.

It’s strange, you thought. How quickly a person can become lonely inside their own life.

Not even this morning, Joel had still known your name. Maybe not speaking it, because he was unconscious and machines had been breathing for him and the doctors kept using words like pressure and swelling and wait. But somewhere underneath all that, he had still belonged to you in the ordinary way husbands belong to their wives. His toothbrush still sat beside yours at home. His coffee mug still waited in the sink. The flannel he wore most often was still hanging over the chair in your bedroom because you hadn’t washed it yet. It smelled too much like him.

And now suddenly you were somebody standing at the edge of his bed introducing yourself like a stranger.

The thought made your stomach turn violently. You laughed a little under your breath then, though there was nothing funny in it. What are you supposed to do with a relationship after only one person remembers it?

You kept thinking maybe there was a correct way to behave. Some proper version of yourself that would make this easier for him. Less frightening. Maybe if you had not cried. Maybe if you had touched him less. Maybe if you had not looked so devastated every time he stared at you blankly.

But then another thought came immediately after. No, because even if you had done everything perfectly, he still would not remember you.

That was the unbearable thing. You rested your forehead briefly against the steering wheel. You still had to pick up the girls.

Your eyes burned from crying.

You took another bite of the burger and forced yourself to eat half because otherwise Tommy would notice later. Tommy noticed things. Not in the way Joel did, quietly and immediately, but eventually. Like a storm warning arriving a little after the rain had already started.

The burger had gone lukewarm.

You chewed anyway.

People always say grief steals your appetite. This had never been true for you. Grief did not make you less hungry. It simply made eating feel absurd. The body continuing with its ordinary needs while the heart behaved like something mortally wounded.

You chewed slowly.

A girl crossed the parking lot holding hands with her father. She was laughing at something he said, head tilted back completely without caution, the way children laugh when they trust somebody absolutely.

You had loved Joel for years before you realized the frightening part of it wasn’t losing him.

It was building an entire life around somebody until your memories no longer made sense without them inside it.

You thought about the hospital room again. Joel looking at you with suspicion first. Then anger. Then something worse afterward. Guilt.

That part stayed with you.

Because underneath all his fear, he had looked ashamed after making you cry. As though some instinct inside him still recoiled from hurting you even when his mind no longer understood why.

The thought settled into your chest strangely warm and painful at once. Maybe memory lived somewhere deeper than the brain. Somewhere inside the body itself. Or maybe you were becoming pathetic now. The kind of woman who searched for signs of love in tiny meaningless gestures because the larger thing had already disappeared.

You swallowed hard.

You rested your forehead briefly against the steering wheel. Your chest tightened until breathing hurt.

if you hold back on the emotions, if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them, you can never get to being detached. You stay afraid of them.

You wondered if that was true.

Because lately you felt like all you had done was feel.

Fear.

Hope.

Relief.

Then grief.

Then hope again.

Then grief again.

An endless cycle.

The doctor had told you memory loss was complicated. That emotional pathways could survive even when memories disappeared. That Joel might still feel connected to you in ways he couldn't explain.

Might. Such a terrible word and hope lives inside words like might. So does suffering, You took another bite, chewed slowly.

The truth was, you had spent two months preparing yourself for almost every outcome imaginable.

For a second you honestly considered driving somewhere else entirely. Just continuing down the highway without stopping. Leaving the city. Leaving the hospital. Leaving the terrible ache of being looked at by your husband like you were some woman who wandered accidentally into his room.

But the thought vanished almost immediately because there was nowhere you could go where your life would not follow you.

You closed your eyes briefly. For one absurd moment, you think it might be easier to choke on the burger and die right here in the school parking lot. Not because you want to die—you don't. That's the strange thing. You want tomorrow. You want coffee in the morning. You want Sarah yelling from upstairs that she can't find her shoes even though they're exactly where she left them. You want Ellie stealing fries and denying it with complete sincerity. You want Joel. More specifically, you want the version of Joel who knows you. But grief has a way of making death seem less frightening than absence. Because death, at least, is honest. Death closes the door and leaves you outside it. This is different. This is being invited inside and discovering nobody recognizes your face.

You imagine the burger catching in your throat, imagine the panic of it, the desperate search for air, and think how ridiculous it would be for your life to end over fast food and heartbreak. Then again, heartbreak itself feels ridiculous. You spend years building a life with someone. You memorize the way they take their coffee, the shape of their silences, the exact look they get when they're trying not to laugh. They become woven into your days so completely that you stop noticing where they end and you begin. And then one morning they wake up and look at you like a stranger.

You swallow hard and feel the food move painfully down your throat. No, you don't want to die. What you want is far more impossible than that. You want to walk back into that hospital room and have Joel look at you the way he did yesterday. You want him to remember why he loved you. You want, just for five minutes, to stop feeling like you're mourning someone who is still alive.

Then you heard knock on the car window and Ellie’s voice outside the car.

“Willy?”

You looked up too fast, wiping your face immediately with both hands, still chewing the last bite of burger like an idiot. Ellie stood a few feet away outside the passenger window, backpack hanging off one shoulder, staring at you with that sharp, observant expression that always made you feel transparently human.

For one horrible second neither of you said anything. Then Ellie frowned slightly.

“…you okay?”

am i okay?