"Okay."

Okay...what?

She doesn't know.

Okay, I know you're lying to me. Okay, some small recess of my mind wants to believe that what you did was right. Okay, I think you're deluded for wasting everything that we've been through for the last year on some selfish...surrogate-daughter complex that you've formed in that unstable, fucked up brain of yours!

No. It's none of those.

It's just...okay.

You're right...you're not my daughter...and I sure as hell ain't your daddy.

What happened to that Joel? That man who wasn't attached to anything except the clothes on his back, who wasn't afraid to put his foot down or put his interests first or speak his mind. He had been replaced with a crumbling shell, a fool who'd sooner crawl on his hands and knees than tread on this seemingly delicate flower standing before him. Whatever delicacy that remained had been washed away by events that still left a lump in her throat, and her fingers twitching towards her knife.

Her eyes had glazed over, as if mesmerised by a raindrop trickling down through a stampede of its brothers on some imaginary window pane in the distance. There was something moving amongst the shrubs in the background, a rabbit or a fox. Some blissfully ignorant creature spared this cruel existence.

"Ellie..."

Rabbits can't talk. This isn't Alice in Wonderland. She'd always hated that fucker with the giant watch, always rushing around, getting in people's faces.

"Ellie!," Fingers tap her cheek, and the peaceful chamber she'd been lounging in for the past 2 minutes is harshly illuminated with reality, like some energetic mother pulling the curtains on a Summer's morning.

"Let's get movin'. Alright, kiddo?" he mutters, sympathetic but not condescending.

Their eyes lock for a moment and everything is not what it once was. A wall of tension has formed between them, slowly widening, pushing each one further away from the other. Words seem irrelevant, like small talk with someone running past you on the street, so she simply moves by, wordless and brooding. It could be the wind moving the trees, but their shirts seem to crackle with electricity as she brushes off him, and the wall turns on its axis, forcing him to step aside.

The perimeters of the dam extend deep into the surrounding forests, covered in vines and nettles that crawl up and over into the community beyond. How fitting that nature should begin to reclaim the land it rightfully owns, after it had been oppressed for so long. Joel shivers as he looks down over the harsh drop into the woods below, the breeze deceitfully cool for such a sunny day. The trees were shivering too, or being shaken by some unseen entity. He hoped it was the former, but expected it to be the latter. It reminded him of that Jurassic Park movie he'd seen years before "it all went to shit", as Ellie...God, I hope she doesn't hate me...had so elegantly put it. But who was he to talk about elegance. The dense shrubs hugging the wall were all too reminiscent of the thick layer of hair clinging to his neck and jaw.

The thought of a warm shower almost makes him go weak at the knees, but shaving is something else. It had taken him a full year to get used to shaving with a knife, walking around like a fucking mummy, bandages hanging sporadically from his face on a near daily basis. It had earned him the blisteringly original nickname "Scarface" for a while back in Boston. Tess had started that one. His heart skips a beat. There was a distinct lack of razors, or anything sharp for that matter, in the country, most of them having been turned into weapons to use against the Infected or, unfortunately more likely, fellow humans. That Darwin guy was right, he reflects inwardly, we're all fuckin' animals after all.

The silence is heavy, weighing down on his chest and his mind. "Hey!" he calls to the thin frame ahead of him...an uncomfortable, unfamiliar distance ahead of him. Her head doesn't turn around, but he sees her shoulders and neck tense from the sound. "Hey, how's about me n' you see if we can fix up that Walkman of yours later," The tears well up in her eyes. "I've seen you messin' around with that thing ever since Colorado!" Come on Ellie, grow some balls you wimp. Stop cryin' like a little bitch. "I bet we could find some old CDs around the place-"

Fuck it.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?!"

Joel is immediately taken aback by the tear-streaked image of Ellie's face coming around to meet his, contorted with such rage and hatred as to give her the appearance of a girl much older and tormented than she.

"Why don't you calm do-"

"Why don't you shut the fuck up!" she screams, her voice cutting through his easily, despite her slight stature.

"We worked so hard, Joel...SO hard, and you thought you could just take that fucking choice away from me like that?" Her sobs sound like the barking of angry Rottweilers.

"Look, I know you think what I did was selfish," his hands instinctively rise upwards in an apologetic surrender as he cautiously moves towards her. The girl had made him soft. "But I swear to you-"

"Selfish?!" she lets out a sharp, rueful laugh that rings off into the distant hillsides. The birds would have shot out of the trees, if there were any birds left.

"Selfish doesn't even begin to describe it, you fucking asshole! I had a chance to take back all the shit I ever caused, all the people I-" her voice falters, Riley's face flashing through her mind's eye. We can be all poetic and just lose our minds together..."All the people I ever lost, but YOU..." the venom in her voice is almost solid, running through his veins, polluting his very being. "You had to fuck everything up just because you can't let go of your STUPID FUCKING DAUGHTE-"

He slaps her.

The smack is thick and dull, like a butcher's cleaver slamming into the chopping board. Her head snaps to the side, eyes widening with fear more so than disbelief and she collapses back onto her behind, teeth chattering from the impact. Her hands fall back, awkwardly propping her up on the lush, warm grass.

The wind dies down. It feels like the entire forest, the entire world, is holding its breath.

"Wha-..." she only manages to utter a pathetic, breathy sound.

Joel towers over her, his six foot frame blocking out the bleak Spring sun. The mechanical churning of the Dam's turbines provide a steady beat, their song drowned out by the deafening thud of Joel's heart ringing in his ears. His hand rapidly wrings the watch on his wrist, unbeknownst to him, his arms rising and falling in accordance with his quick, shallow breathing.

"Now you fuckin' listen to me," Ellie quivers at the tone. "If you ever...if you ever disrespect my daughter like that again, so help me god I'll put you out with those fuckin' monsters so quick, you won't know whether to shit or go blind." His voice was shaking with anger. He'd forgotten what this felt like. "I saved your ass because I don't think some sassy little fuckin' 14 year old girl is capable of sacrificing herself for some goddamn vaccine that she doesn't even know will work, just because she's lost a few people along the way." Salty sweat and tears were running down onto his lips, stinging the wasteland of cuts on his cheeks. "Now I don't know if you reckon yourself to be some sorta hero or somethin', or whether you're just too much of a pussy to admit that the world...this sick, twisted fuckin' world, ain't worth savin', but I'll be damned if you're gonna go waste your life after I watched my daughter get hers taken away from her."

The last words left him in a harsh, rattling string, spit falling onto his chin, matting his facial hair together, his eyes bulging protrusively from their sockets. The breeze had picked back up, informing him of his emotional discharge by chilling the lines of saltwater on his face. His vision zooms out from Ellie's pupils, huge, shimmering pools of black sitting in the middle of irises so green they outshine the brilliance of the surrounding woodlands. He feels no pity in his heart. He feels no affection clouding his sight or that evolutionary need to protect something so fragile or that regret that hits you after harsh blows have been traded with a loved one.

He feels nothing.

Ellie cowers at him, lost for words. Her face sends him back to that bedroom in the ranch house, the last time she had gone too far and pushed him over the edge. He could swear he feels her hands pushing violently against his chest, her desperation giving her strength to move his muscular stature:

Everyone I ever cared for has either died or left me. Everyone – fucking except for you!

At the time it had almost wrenched his heart out of his chest, but now, in his current state, he sees it as nothing but a feeble cry for attention, fuel for the fire.

His legs begin walking before his brain has time to register what's happening. He steps over the girl's outstretched legs and sees her pulling her feet back in towards herself, as if the fire inside him was somehow radiating heat from his body.

"Joel..." she whimpers, but it falls on deaf and damaged ears.

He needs isolation, a dark room, silence and peace. I used to nag at Sarah for doing stupid shit like that, sittin' in her room all the time, sulking, he remembers, I miss you so much baby girl. He tramples a dandelion underfoot; its stalk cracking in half beneath his plodding Doc Martens, then gives the Dam's looming metal gate a swift kick. A balaclava-clad head appears beside the right-hand watch tower, rifle in hand and trained at Joel's chest. The constant attacks had left the security tightly-wound and constantly vigilant, suspicious of everything with a heartbeat, Infected or otherwise. Upon recognising the newcomer, the guard pushes an unseen button. The gate's mechanism groans and squeals into life, slowly swinging the steel frame outwards.

"Come on in, Joel," the guard calls, "we could use some help gettin' those fuckin' generators back to life!"

The guard, Larry, Joel thinks, judging by that ridiculous fuckin' Jersey accent, never gets a reply. It seemed the work was never over with this fucking dam. Ain't no rest for the wicked, he concludes. Before entering, he shoots a glance back at Ellie, watching as she rises from the grass unsteadily, her face still masked in sorrow. Joel snorts, his lips curling into a sneer, teeth bared unwillingly, and continues into the camp, into the shanty town of hope, coated in damp dust brought on by the mixture of the generators usually constant activity and the spray from the Portage River. Now, an eerie silence had fallen on the small community, a calm soundlessness that permitted noises usually overpowered by the generator's din to leak in over the mountains and into the ears and minds of the inhabitants, barely audible cracks that could be the trunk of a fragile tree finally giving up its struggle, or gunfire from a group of Hunters out for blood and shelter, depending on the person.

His shack sits huddling the railings beside the river. Most nights, the river's roaring movement provides a soothing lullaby, its power dimmed slightly by the thin wooden walls of the hut. Tonight, however, the water lay placid and still, interminably waiting to once again be released from its temporary reservoir. The one night I could fuckin' use it, too...figures. He pulls back the tarpaulin-cum-door hanging from the front of the shack, and steps inside, his eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness. That was one thing he was thankful for after spending the last year stumbling through sewers, basements and a badly lit university with...Ellie. It hurt to say her name. It couldn't be guilt, but it was too strong for anger and too weak to be utter hatred. The moonlight falls upon a small, glistening rectangle on the wall, a Polaroid of him and his daughter, trophy raised high above her head, occupying one hand, the other reaching for the sky, where her dreams about a future surely would have resided. Something inside him snaps. He draws his fist back and drives it into the wooden wall close to the photo, his knuckles cracking from the blow. He strikes it again. The knuckles split. And again. The blood smears the wall. And again. The shack shuddering from the blows, his screams cracking and quavering in the murky blackness. And again...and again...and again...and-

Something's hanging out of his arm, a weight that makes it impossible for him to swing again. The scream fades, leaving his throat dry and stinging. He's light-headed and a subtle nausea builds inside the lining of his stomach, threatening to make him vomit. The weight speaks his name:

"Joel...please stop..."

He turns his head, eyes grey and empty, the life drained from them by the events of today, yesterday, and every day for as long back as he could remember. He was always taught to live in the present, in the now, and that holding onto yesterday and the past would bring nothing but pain, sadness, regret and the rest of the emotional horsemen of the apocalypse. The truth is, in this world, yesterday remains ingrained in your mind, and the apocalypse brought about things a lot worse than fuckin' horsemen. The face that put a stop to his assault of the wooden wall seems to be floating, suspended in the dark like a ghost, its eyes highlighted by the rings of tears collecting around them, sharing the moonlight with Sarah's photo.

"You're hurting yourself..." Ellie observes, her voice heavy with sadness, an audible gasp indicating that she'd seen his damaged hand. "I have some bandages in my backp-"

"I'm not sorry for one damn second for taking you from that hospital, Ellie. You're..." he sobs loudly, clearing his throat to hide it, "you're the thing that I have to keep fighting for now." Ellie faces away towards the window of the shack and her face crumples, angry and hurt and sad and overwhelmed all at once. "And I know you can't replace Sarah, and it's not your fault that she died, but-"

Ellie latches onto him, burying her face into his shirt, her tears wetting his chest. It feels like they're permeating through into his heart. He kisses the top of her head. Her hair smells of disinfectant and anaesthetic gas.

So don't tell me I'd be safer with someone else, because the truth is I'd just be more scared.