#snippie

Thank you for the tag, @messitydepressity! Let's see... looping in @lauronk, @bumblepony, and @midnight-society-tlou if you're up to sharing anything!

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the one i will still call yours part of my series explain the infinite.

previous snip 1

previous snip 2

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Ellie returns to the living room and flops onto the sofa, tipping to the side until Joel’s leg serves as a pillow. “What’s with the…” She gestures at the half-empty bottle sitting a few feet away, flanked by two squat glasses.  “Were you double-fisting?”

“Nah, Tommy brought it over.”  A hand skims over her hair once, twice, before settling on the crown of her head.  “Wanted to make sure he was startin’ Benji on the good stuff.”

She shoves his leg a little for that, but he doesn’t budge.  “How come the baby can drink, but I can’t?  You’re, like, a super-duper hypocrite today.”

All she gets is a grunt.

“Lame,” she moans, sitting up.  “So? Is it the good stuff?  Can I have some? I’m gonna have some.”

Joel rolls his eyes, but he snags the glasses and hands one to her. “Get yourself a clean one.  And a separate cup of ice.  You won’t like it straight.”

She almost says she’s never liked anything straight, but manages to swallow that back before it becomes a thing.  “You won’t like it straight.”

“If you don’t want—”

“Clean glass and a cup of ice coming right up!” she chirps, making a point to collide with Joel’s legs as she climbs over them.  “Would your majesty like anything else?”

“Some respect would be nice.”

“Just a little bit?”

Wrapping up the next chappy of ellie in a tree, so obviously I'm sharing a snip from the third installment of explain the infinite (entitled the one i will still call yours).

@messitydepressity , thank you for the tag!!

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The quiet is turning awkward for them both; she can feel Joel tensing even though he hasn’t moved. She should say something, but what? I don’t know if we’d have this if Tess hadn’t died?  That sounds like she’s jealous of a dead woman, and she’s not.  She just… there’s no imagining a life where she doesn’t have a Joel.

A heart-stopping shriek from the kitchen cuts her musing short and sends them both about ten feet in the air. Joel shoves her behind him, pressing her into the cushion and scrambling for a pistol that isn’t there, before she’s registered the source.  

“Dinner,” she breathes, wiggling out of her Joel prison.  He’s wearing his danger face now, even though they’re home and there isn’t any danger. “I don’t remember the timer being that loud.  It’s worse than a hungry Benji.”

Joel blinks a few times, overprotective-danger face settling into his usual asshole face, with a side of confusion.  “That’s the point, kid.”

“It’s my first time shitting my pants thanks to a plastic pepper,” she complains, glancing into her glass. Somehow, she didn’t spill a drop.   “Gimme a break.” 

Joel shifts, immediately winces, and reaches for his knee.  Shit, that's right — she could hear it earlier, when he first got home. It's worse than usual today.  

“I got it, marshmallow man,” she teases, patting his shoulder. “Can’t have you breaking a hip.”

“Funny,” Joel grumbles, settling back into the couch. “Careful; it’ll be hot.”

“Wait, what? An oven makes things hot?” She rolls her eyes for good measure and makes a show of stepping over his legs.  When she accidentally catches Joel’s calf, he just sighs. “God, I have so much to learn here in Jackson.  What’s next? The refrigerator makes things cold?”

Her next step is interrupted by Joel’s toe catching the back of her shoe so she steps right out of it.  “Asshole!”

“Little shit,” he retorts, kicking her sneaker across the room and jerking his chin toward the kitchen. He sounds normal again. Good. They’ve shared a lot of emotions or whatever.  The chance to decompress is more than welcome. “Throw that bread in the oven while you’re dishin’ up dinner.”

thank you @barlowstreet, for the tag!

from what i am (is an illusion) -- five times joel was something he's not, + one time he was something he's always been

an excavator

Relief floods through him, replaced by utter confusion when he spots her about thirty yards away. She’s sunk to her waist in what looks like solid ground.  A sinkhole? No, she’d either have fallen to the bottom or climbed out on her own.

“What the fuck?” he mutters to himself, scanning the ground for answers it doesn’t reveal.  “Ellie, what the hell happened?”

“I don’t fucking know!” she yells, panic and relief mingling in her voice.  “I was following a set of rabbit tracks until the ground fucking swallowed me! It sucked in my foot and when I tried to pull it out, my other foot got stuck, and then I kept sinking. And now, I can’t get out, and I’m still sinking, and you didn’t come when I shouted, so I had to use my gun and then I realized I probably just summoned all the infected around here, and I’m still sinking and—”

“Ellie.”  Giving her the chance to spiral into further panic is only going to worsen the situation. “You ain’t gettin’ pulled nowhere but next to the damn fire when we get you out. Take a breath.”

Joel studies the mud surrounding Ellie, trying to come up with an explanation and — more importantly — a solution, when years of Saturday mornings in front of the television flash through his mind.  Shit.  

'cause why not

--

“Can I ask you something?”

“Just did.”

“Dick,” she huffs. “Were you, like…” Shit, how does she phrase this? “I dunno, violent? Before the outbreak, I mean.”

Joel takes a slow sip from his glass, but doesn’t respond. Did she cross some unknown boundary? Usually, he tells her when a question is too much. He’s never denied the things he’s done — and she knows damn well that he’ll do them again in a heartbeat if necessary — she’s not sure he will this time. 

“I threw a punch or two.” Joel looks over, and the raw expression on his face catches her off guard. “But that ain’t what you’re askin’.”

The atmosphere shifts in a heartbeat, suddenly heavy and suffocating. “I guess not,” she agrees quietly. 

Joel says nothing for a long moment.  “No,” he grunts. “I…” He clears his throat and looks away. “No. All the fights I’d been in had a reason. Cleanin’ up one of Tommy’s messes, usually.” He turns the glass in his hands, fingers sliding over the condensation. “The first person I ever killed was on Outbreak Day. Our neighbor was infected, Sarah was in danger, and I had to keep her safe. It was… easy. “But, after—” 

His voice cracks. His eyes are wet. And Ellie can’t take it. “You don’t—”

“I needed to keep Tommy alive.” She stays slient; he looks away. “Then we met Tess, and I had ‘em both…”

It’s hard to imagine a Joel who isn’t the man she knows. Her Joel is a dangerous man. Her Joel is a crack shot with a rifle, can kill another person without a weapon, and defaults to torture for his primary interrogation technique.

Last winter, after... after, she’d asked how many he killed, how many they might still have left, how likely they were to search for Joel and Ellie.

Joel killed a lot of people to find her.  

“Tell me,” she’d begged, pressing closer to his chest. 

He had hummed, running a hand up and down her arm. “Shot most of ‘em,” he murmured. “Knifed a few. Caught two, got one to talk.”

Knowing they were dead wasn’t enough, so she’d whispered, “How?”

She learned a lot about muscles and ligaments that night. 

It helped, knowing just how far he would go to protect her. It helped more to realize that maybe Joel has a violent heart, too, but that doesn’t make him evil. No matter how many people he kills, or how, She refuses to believe he’s evil. David was evil. But Joel?

Well, evil wouldn’t go three days without sleep to help her feel safe. Evil wouldn’t zip two sleeping bags together and let her huddle close while she ripped apart. Evil wouldn’t pull out Will Livingston and read pun after pun until he got a reaction. Evil doesn’t get misty-eyed at the sight of a chalkboard.

Joel might not be a good person, but he’s not an evil person. He can’t be.

Isn't writing the best? I love how well I can express myself and my ideas in beautifully flowing prose.

In other news, Ch. 9 of a redwood among mere sprouts is going swimmingly.

two-birds remembering to share a snip without being tagged? Unheard of.

Anyway, here's a lil bit of Chapter 11 of a redwood among mere sprouts that contains three words that made me cry a lot Wonderwall.

- - -

From the corner of her eye, she can see Joel hovering in the doorway, his hands curling and uncurling into fists. He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t stop her, so she carefully replaces the turkey and peers into the crate. Photo albums, mostly, and a few folders. She picks the first folder she sees — Certificates — expecting all those dumb awards kids get at school for things like being a good helper or not shitting on the floor or whatever.

What she finds instead is a birth certificate on one side and a death certificate on the other. Biting the inside of her cheek does nothing to stop the growing lump in her throat. Sarah Miller, born July 20th to Rebecca Miller and Joel Miller in Austin, Texas. Ellie’s eyes skate to the other document, lingering on the date of death. Twenty years and two months ago, fourteen-year-old Sarah Miller died in Austin, Texas.

Joel still hasn’t said anything. Or moved. Or… anything. If he really didn’t want her looking at this stuff, he’d stop her. Slowly, she tucks the folder away and extracts the top album. The pages are thick, with plastic protecting the photos from damage. 

A young man with familiar eyes and a wholly unfamiliar smile beams up at her, chin tilted down as if he couldn’t look away from the tiny human in his arms. The newborn’s attention is on the camera as well, eyes wide with curiosity. She looks nothing and everything like Joel all at once.

The first few pages feature the baby, Joel, and a dark-skinned woman she assumes is Rebecca. She’s only in a few pictures of a still-very-little baby. The baby becomes a toddler covered in dirt and food and wide smiles. Joel is in a lot of the photos — younger, of course, and in every one of them…

a redwood among mere sprouts

bonus points to anyone who can tell me where the title is from 🤓

Chapter 1 preview below the cut, and playlist here!