Every moment, she's certain he's going to die.

And every goddamn moment, he doesn't.

It's like grasping the edge of a cliff, fingers cramping, raging waters below. That breathless moment where she's not sure whether it's smarter to haul herself up, face the pain and agony of another day… or just let go.

But Joel never lets go. Endure and survive, right? That's their motto. She took it from that stupid comic all those months ago, and now it's true every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

He keeps breathing.

So she keeps fighting.

The mall is too familiar. Except this time, nothing is shiny. Nothing exhilarating, nothing playful. Endure and survive. Ellie creeps through the hallways, finds the dead pharmacist, the empty first-aid box, the notes of soldiers long-since murdered. Their hope, their desperation, echoes in her soul.

She moves on.

The helicopter shifts when she leaps inside, and for a brief, horrifying second, she thinks this might be it. That Joel might bleed out in that god-forsaken store, that Callus might be trapped and die of cold or starvation… or that those men will slice their throats before that ever happens.

And she'll be trapped in a wretched pile of metal, pinned or crushed or dead. Or all three.

Alone.

She grips the pilot's chair and clenches her eyes shut and prays to a god she's not sure exists. But someone's looking out for her, because the metal carcass steadies and the first-aid kit has something inside worth dying for.

She only takes a second to catch her breath. And it's one second too long, because then the mall is swarming with things that want to kill her. Infected, she can handle, but those men.

Those thugs.

They're the ones who did this to Joel. They're the reason she's almost alone. The reason she's back in a fucking mall after she swore she'd never step foot in one again.

They made one vital mistake. The first-aid kit seems heavier than a brick in her worn backpack, but it's nothing compared to the weight of her fury. They made one mistake. And as she massacres them on the way back to Joel, she feels no regret.

Because no one—no one—messes with her friends.

Callus proves himself over and over. He's her best friend. Not a great conversationalist, but as the days drag into nights drag into days, he's steady as her own heartbeat. Together, they creep around the outskirts of the city, dodging crazed thugs and Infected alike. And when they reach the front range, she swears he sighs in relief.

It snows as they climb.

Joel fades in and out of consciousness. Ellie can barely hear his moans over the soft swoosh of the sled gliding through snow, a steady background to the rhythmic beat of a horse's hooves. When she's sure they're safe again (ha, what a joke), she lets Callus lead in favor of walking alongside Joel's half-frozen form.

Or, she tries to. Turns out, a horse is a terrible leader.

As Callus stamps the frozen ground and huffs hot air, decidedly not moving, Ellie glares at the city they've left behind. In the setting sun, it'd be lovely… but she can see the growing shadows, the fading light. With little decorum, she spits on the ground.

Normally, she'd scream. Normally, she'd curse and cry and press her palms to her eyes to stop the tears. Normally, she'd turn to Joel, grab his steady arm for strength, look to him to lead.

Callus isn't moving. Joel isn't moving.

Ellie is the leader now.

It gets too dark to travel, and she definitely hears howling in the distance. Her eyelids weigh with sleep, but she just can't be sure if those are wolves or more goddamn Infected. Why Clickers or Runners or even a Bloater would be this far into the wilderness, she can't guess.

But she also can't take the chance.

She tugs Callus' reigns, stumbles along with just her flashlight to guide them. It's risky; if the horse trips and breaks a leg, they're screwed. No way she can haul Joel to safety on her own.

Stop for the wolves to find them… or keep going and risk both her friends.

What would Joel call that? A catch-22? He described that book to her, somewhere in the plains of South Dakota. It sounds like a damn depressing read… but maybe there's something to that.

Ellie glances over her shoulder at Joel. He hasn't moved in hours, not even his eyelids flickering in a fevered dream. He's so pale. So still.

A sudden fear mangles her breath, and then she's on her knees on the cold, wet ground, brushing snow off his scraggly man-beard. Trembling fingers press violently against his neck, and seconds tick by.

One.

Two.

Three.

And finally, something thrums under her touch. A pulse. Relief hits Ellie like a brick in the head, and she sags over his chest, clenching her eyes against the howling of the wolves-Infected-things.

"Please, Joel. I need your help."

But her small words are swallowed by the wind, and her tears are cold as ice. Joel doesn't move. Maybe he'll never move again.

With nothing else to do, she retrieves her knife and glances in the direction of the howls. They don't sound far off. Either they're wolves—in which case she'd rather meet them sooner than later—or they're Infected, and they're congregating around a house.

Shelter.

Callus huffs again, eyes wide, and she grips his reigns far too tightly.

"I know, bud." Her words trail off, and she draws a shaky breath, turning her flashlight towards the danger. "I know."

It's a ranch. Wide open fields offering little cover, back-dropped by the looming Rocky Mountains. The snow has started again, fiercer now. Her teeth chatter, and she wraps her arms tighter around herself. Callus must be freezing.

Joel must be in such pain.

Ellie grits her teeth and leaves her friends far, far away from the ranch. She can't risk an Infected hearing Callus, finding Joel, tearing them both to shre—

Stop.

Focus.

She channels Joel, which isn't hard to do. His firm survival commands have been the soundtrack of her life for months now. She even thinks in his Texas twang, maybe going a little overboard with the accent.

He used to roll his eyes. Tell her she'd never be a Southern girl.

Sometimes, she wonders if Sarah sounded like him.

Focus.

Ellie creeps to the house. There's no cover, but Clickers can't see anyway. Her nerves thrum in her chest, tightening her breaths and seizing her throat. It's just another hunt. Routine, right? There can't be many in this tiny ranch house. A Runner, maybe a Clicker or two. Joel would clear them out in minutes.

But Joel isn't here. And without him, nothing is routine.

Ellie clenches the knife tight enough her fingers can't tremble, and hops through a broken window.

It isn't much warmer inside the ranch. She tugs Joel's sled past the oozing corpses of the Clickers, the mangled mess of a Runner who nearly ran her into the ground. Her breath comes in pants, dissipating in panicked puffs of white.

There's a dining room with boarded windows. Two exits, so not very defendable, but she's tired and scared and there's not a chance of her hauling Joel up the stairs to the bedrooms. So she leaves him behind the upturned dining table with a soft, "One second, Joel."

Coaxing Callus up the three front steps takes a little more effort, but she's not leaving him outside. He's her friend, her last conscious friend. He'll stay with her. No matter what, he'll stay.

She finds a lamp with a little bit of oil and risks a light. With the doors closed and the windows barricaded, she almost feels safe. She can almost forget the corpses taking root in the next room. They'll be long gone before any spores hit the air.

In the flickering light, she dares to look at Joel's wound.

The bandages are drenched in blood. After the crimson waterfall he left staggering through the science lab, considering the stiff fabric of his jacket, his jeans, the matted mess rusting Callus' brown coat, Ellie's not sure how Joel has any left.

She's suddenly much, much colder.

Ellie peels back the bandages to check the stitches. The skin around them is puffy and red, warm to touch. The first-aid kit won't last long, but she sets aside fresh bandages anyway. Her mind whispers this is important, here in the early stages of a fatal injury.

Near-fatal, she corrects herself. Near.

Swallowing hard, she leaves her sanctuary to retrieve a bucket from the kitchen, then fills it with snow outside. Already, the storm is covering their tracks… so there's one thing to be grateful for.

Inside, Callus watches with curious brown eyes as she cleans the used bandages best she can, then dabs the blood from Joel's skin with the snow-soaked bundle. He doesn't flinch as she gets closer and closer to the wound. Not a good sign, considering when she stitched him up, she had to gag him to muffle the screams.

But the wound doesn't seem to be bleeding much anymore. Small blessings, like the snow outside. Ellie counts every one.

When he's bandaged and tucked in for the night, she sets her backpack right beside his face. His forehead is warm to the touch, so she scoots closer, close as the sled allows. (She doesn't dare take him off it. They might have to leave in a hurry.)

The wind howls outside, and Ellie grips her rifle in one hand and Joel's shirt in the other.

She doesn't sleep.

They travel another day through the wilderness. Ellie drifts on Callus' back during the quiet moments, only to jolt awake when his hooves crunch a fallen branch or a tree smacks her face.

Every chance she gets, she checks Joel. Every time, he's still breathing. And so she continues on, scouring the unforgiving forest for refuge.

The second night, they sleep outside. Joel gets the blankets, so she and Callus huddle together for warmth. In the still of the night, she reads their horse puns from Riley's book. Whenever there's a particularly groan-worthy one, she glances at Joel to see if he's grimacing.

His face is still.

The darkness closes in, and Ellie hides in Callus' mane.

They run out of food on day three.

It would have happened much sooner, except that Joel isn't eating much. He seems paler every day, more waxen, more dead than alive. Callus grazes on frost-bitten weeds while Ellie arms herself with Joel's bow. It's big, tougher to draw than she expected.

But she won't let starvation be what kills her. Not after everything else.

Turns out, she's not great at hunting anything smaller than a human. She manages to take down a squirrel, only to realize just how little meat those things have. And considering the phrase "multiplied like rabbits," she expected more of them. After two hours, she trudges back to her friends, frustration coiling like a spring in her stomach.

But on the way back, sneakers kicking the frozen earth, she finds it.

A town.

Well, more like a resort. It looks like one of those fancy places rich people might have visited before the cordyceps fucked everything up. She watches, holding her breath, but nothing in the town moves. No moaning. No howling. No clicking.

Silence.

It really is golden.

She runs with little abandon, all the way back to the tiny alcove where she'd hidden Joel. Callus is munching on the frozen leaves of a slightly-less-depressing tree, but he perks up when she slides to her knees beside the sled.

"Aww, man, Joel, you won't believe what I found," she says, feeling his forehead. He's warm, warmer than he should be considering the temperature. "This town, just—just abandoned! I mean, no one in sight. I know, I know. I'll still canvass the place. But we're far enough from the university that we can take a few days and rest, you think?"

He doesn't respond.

Her heart crumples like a leaf under her shoe. Slowly, tiredly, she climbs to her feet and ties the cords of his sled to Callus' saddle.

"Well," she breathes softly, "I'm excited."

In golden silence, they trudge along.

She decides on a house at the far end of town. It's closest to the perimeter of the place, within reach of the forest if they need to flee. The house shows no symptoms of the apocalypse—aside from the boarded windows, the place is untouched. No blood smears. No rotting bodies. No spores.

Just a husk of a building, wasting away.

Ellie guides Callus into the garage and closes the door. There's not much chance of getting the horse to her chosen stronghold—a cozy basement room with itty bitty windows—so she leaves him behind. Although the basement makes tactical sense, a pang of regret hits her as she closes the door on her horse.

With just Joel, unconscious as always, it feels like she really is alone.

Easing his sled down the stairs is a challenge. If he were awake, he'd be grumbling about the ride. But she can barely feel his breath on her cheek as she grips the sled's edges and fights gravity all the way down.

She picked this place with escape in mind, but… the finality of this decision echoes as she surveys her handiwork. She's not getting Joel out of here.

No matter what happens next, this is where they make a stand.

She sets about bolstering their defenses instead.

On the fifth day, he wakes. She's tapping a spoon against two empty cans, pretending they're a drum set and she's in an old rock band. Belting on stage, fighting off adoring fans, surrounded by people who love her music and can't get enough.

She barely hears his rasping voice over their screams.

"El…"

"Joel?" She scrambles over the cans in her haste, and their clatter bounces off the concrete walls. "Joel! Oh, thank god. Listen to me, are you okay? Please be okay. You have to tell me what to do, okay, Joel?"

But it quickly becomes apparent that he's not awake. Not really. His eyes are hazy with fever, and even though she's hovering right over his face, he can't focus on her.

Tears pool in her eyes, and she sits back on her heels. "You can't—you're not—"

Then his dark eyes lock on her for one heart-stopping second. She holds her breath, and he stares like he's seen a ghost.

And a second later, she knows why.

"S-Sarah? Baby—that you?"

Ellie's heart shatters into a million pieces.

Alone. She's always alone.

But she holds his face and a presses kiss to his forehead and whispers, "Y-Yeah. Yeah, Daddy. It's me."

The alone-ness might be what kills her.

In this town, she scavenges.

When she leaves Joel and Callus, she's careful. She hides her tracks with a broom. It takes some practice, but soon it blends with the rest of the freshly-fallen snow. She systematically scours every single building in this tiny town. It takes hours, and sometimes she finds enough that she has to make several trips.

Ammo. Fresh clothes. Food. Almost enough that Ellie wonders if there really is a god up there.

But if there is, he's a cruel motherfucker. Joel slips in and out of fevered dreams. Twice, she's awoken by his screams for Tess. Once, it's for Tommy.

He never mentions her.

It becomes apparent on day eight that he needs medication. She's pretty sure he's survived this long because he's too goddamn stubborn to die, but not even Joel can face this kind of trauma without proper medical care.

Medical care she simply can't give. But she tries. Jesus, she tries. She uses the basic first-aid she's learned on the road with someone as rugged as Joel, but that's not enough.

Maybe he's already a lost cause. Maybe he's dying on the inside, blood poisoning or something, and she'd have no fucking clue until he croaks.

Every day, she whispers comforting words to him, shoulders her backpack, and promises she'll be back.

And every day, she wonders if she'll return to a corpse.

He barely eats. Even Ellie knows that's not good. Callus has swallowed enough dog food to, well, to feed a horse. Ellie rations her food more carefully, and sets half aside for Joel. At first. When his food starts spoiling, she eats more, until she's finishing nearly every can while he withers away.

Crying does no one any good. But that doesn't stop her tears when night falls.

On day ten, she leaves him gasping for breath. She takes Callus and rides and rides and rides, until she finds another mountain town. This one's moaning with Infected, but her hands no longer shake.

And inside the home-grown clinic, she finds aspirin, two bottles of antibiotics, and a new first-aid kit. It's the first victory in a long, long time. Heart in her throat, she and Callus race back to Joel.

And when she tears down the stairs with her prize, he's not breathing.

"No," she stops on the last step, and the sack with the medicine smashes to the ground. She's pretty sure a bottle shatters, but she can't move to retrieve it. Can't move at all.

Her whole world spins. She feels sick.

But she just… she has to be sure. His face is pale, still, and she takes slow, tentative steps. Every movement is a struggle. Inside, she's screaming, screeching to turn around, rewind time, fix this.

Inside, she's dying.

The concrete floor kisses her knees. His body is sturdy under her palms, deceptively warm. It—it must have just happened.

If she'd gotten here sooner, he might be alive. If she'd found that medicine days ago, he might be alive. If she'd shot that goddamn thug before they crashed through the railing, he might be alive.

Tears burn Ellie's eyes. Her mouth is dry as bone, and yet she tastes copper. Her hair falls in strands past her face. His features blur as her vision swims.

He's left her. Just like everyone else. Sam, Tess, Marlene, Riley. Fucking Riley, all poetic and shit, losing their minds together—except, oh yeah, one of them never lost her mind. One of them had to shoot her best friend, had to sob over her still-warm body, waiting for a frenzied haze that never, ever came.

One of them was alone. Always, always alone.

"You goddamn bastard," Ellie screams, slamming her fists on Joel's unmoving chest. His wound doesn't matter now. He always proved he can take a hit. Well. Now he can have lots of them. She shrieks and wails, unleashing a world of fury and terror, hope lost and darkness found.

"You—were—supposed—to—stick—around!" Her words dissolve into sobs.

And then he groans.

And it's like God cast the world in warmth.

Ellie stares at Joel's sleeping form, watches the steady rise and fall of his chest. The medicine is working. His fever's receded, at least for now. One more crisis averted. One more day to tick off her fractured list.

"I'm not—" her voice breaks, and she clears her throat, "I'm not doing this alone, you hear me? Joel? You'd better be listening." She draws her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. "I'm serious. I'm not like you. I'm not a—a survivor."

The words hang between them, the writing on the wall.

And then Joel chuckles, a soft, breathy sound.

"Coulda fooled me."

A/N: I wanted a winter fic that didn't include David, because screw that guy.

Hope you enjoyed! :)