Twenty Years Later: Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter One
Chapter One: Reunited
Plot: People who once loved each other didn’t end up in a bloodstained hall, guns pointed at one another.
But Joel and Y/n weren’t people.
Word Count: 2.2k
Warnings: tlou ep.1 spoilers, language, canon-typical violence, blood, guns
A/N: For a fandom I had no intention of writing for, I’m writing a lot loo. I’m half considering turning this into a series, depending on what y’all think, so don’t be shy…UPDATE: we’re a series now! See more on my masterlist ☺️
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Joel exhaled as he and Tess crept through the guts of the building. The things he was going to do to Robert…screwing them over with the battery and beating on Tess. Joel would make sure the punishment was slow and agonizing.
It was an understatement of gargantuan proportion to say that Joel Miller was a different man than he’d been twenty years ago. He’d always been quiet, reserving his words only for the people he truly cared to have hear them. He was rough around the edges then too, but his edges hadn’t been razor sharp. More like a dull pencil. Prickly, but it couldn’t draw blood.
But his heart? That had been the most severe of the changes. He’d held his heart in his arms and watched it, felt it, die. He had no use for the organ anymore. There was nothing worth feeling, let alone loving, in the world that refused to let him die too.
Joel and Tess moved out of the frame of the building, guns pointed. Joel was the first to spot the dead bodies, but Tess was the one who found the battery. And Robert. There was a part of Joel that was angry he didn’t get to take the fucker out himself.
Pained grunts and groans drew their attention, the pair moved down the hall carefully. Joel went ahead with his gun drawn, his nerves used to fry upon walking into a fight. He might have missed that innocence if he allowed himself to look back.
As he turned the corner of the hall, he connected the voices to the bodies in front of him, one helping the other one up. They were injured, but that didn’t mean they weren’t infected or the attackers themselves. Joel kept his gun raised, slowly approaching until-
A small, but powerful, scream sounded off, a little body charging out of the nearest room and heading straight for Joel. He used her momentum to slam her into the wall, switching the aim of his gun to the girl at his feet.
The two who were injured turned around, pointing their weapons at Joel as soon as they saw the position he’d put the girl in.
“Fuck,” the girl panted.
“Joel?”
Joel focused on the woman’s face, “Marlene?”
Marlene looked to the girl, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she responded, eyes still on the man with the gun pointed at her. She reached for her knife, the one currently under his boot.
“Ellie,” Marlene warned, “Ellie!”
Ellie listened, her mind going to scarier places than what was in front of her. “Where’s Y/n?”
Joel’s eyes flicked to Ellie, a quick shot of adrenaline running through his chest. “What’d you say?”
The words couldn’t have left his lips and had more perfect timing. Down the hall, a female voice called, “Ellie! Ellie!”
And then she was there.
Never before in twenty years had Joel been so easily transported back to the past as he had in that moment. Seeing her face for the first time in two decades took away all the pain in his knees, exchanged his salt and pepper hair for deep chocolate brown, and threw on five pounds of weight given by eating enough food. He was 35 again, staring into the eyes of the woman he had once loved.
Who looked back at him with nothing but hatred.
“Oh, honey,” she bit out, “Thank goodness you’re home.”
Y/n’s eyes looked past the man she’d been spending twenty years trying to erase from her mind and down to where his gun was pointed. She immediately raised hers, aiming it at his head.
“You drop the gun now,” she warned.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Joel asked, dumbfounded for the first time in a long time.
“Sight seeing,” Y/n replied sarcastically, “Drop the fucking gun, or I swear, I’ll do the world a favor.”
“Y/n,” Marlene said with so much force, it made Ellie sit up straighter, “Now is not the time.”
More consumed by her duty to Ellie than her fury with Joel, she lowered her gun and looked to the girl. “Are you okay?”
Ellie nodded, concern all over her face, “You’re hurt.”
Y/n looked down at her exposed arm, the first few layers of skin painted with blood that was beginning to dry. “Just a graze,” she assured her.
Tess finally announced her presence, “So this is who Robert screws us over with? The Che Guevara of Boston? I mean, war must be going pretty shitty to be buying from scumbags like him.”
“Yeah, it kind of has been,” Marlene exhaustedly replied, “The merch was bad and he obviously didn’t take “fuck off” for an answer.”
Joel and Y/n barely heard any of the conversation that was going on around them. Their eyes were locked in a stare that neither one of them could have broken if they’d tried.
“Give me my knife,” Ellie demanded of Joel.
That snapped him back to reality, “What do you need a car battery for?”
As Ellie reached for the knife, Joel pivoted his torso to point the gun right back at her. “Don’t.”
Y/n and Marlene moved just as fast, aiming their weapons at Joel once more. “Not at her,” Marlene warned, “Point it at me.”
Ellie trembled, her hands raised in0 surrender as Joel hesitated to move his position. That infuriated Y/n to the point that she took a step forward, Joel’s instincts took over and he turned the gun on her.
It was the last place either of them had ever thought they’d be.
“And to answer your question,” Marlene continued, having lowered her own gun, “I need it for a better reason than you do. No offense, but Tommy’s just one man.”
Y/n watched Joel’s face change, the worry lines in his face became even more prominent. Had something happened to Tommy?
“It’s our business to know things,” Marlene explained, though it didn’t explain why she hadn’t felt the need to tell Y/n. As if Tommy was just another survivor…
“‘To know things,’” Joel repeated, the venom practically dripping from his lips, “You’re the cause of it. You turned my own brother against me.”
“Okay, Joel…”
“That was a lot of gunfire,” Kim finally spoke up, “FEDRA’s gonna be on the way.”
Marlene sighed, “I know.”
Ellie rubbed at the shoulder that had slammed into the drywall, her eyes darting up to Y/n as if to ask if they were okay. Y/n removed her glare off of Joel for a few seconds to soften and give Ellie a nod. They would both make it out of this moment.
“We were gonna move Ellie out of the zone tonight,” Marlene stated, “But we won’t make it anywhere like this. Not for a while anyway. So now I’m thinkin’…” she paused, “You’re gonna do it.”
“The hell we are!” Joel exclaimed.
“I’m not goin’ with them,” Ellie said at the same time.
Y/n bitterly chuckled, “No way am I letting you make that call.”
Kim volunteered, “Let me take her.”
“Tess,” Joel turned to his partner, “We don’t have time for this.”
“Oh, you don’t have time?” Marlene sarcastically asked.
“Who is she?” Tess asked.
“To you, she’s cargo,” Marlene replied.
“We don’t smuggle people,” Joel firmly stated, his eyes flicking to Y/n, “Sorry.”
“I can do it,” Kim insisted.
“Kim, you don’t have a fucking ear on your fucking head,” Marlene gritted out, “Could you please?”
“I’ll take her,” Y/n raised her voice, “That was the plan anyway.”
“No, the plan was for us to do it,” Marlene replied, “You can’t do it on your own.”
Y/n was losing patience with the Fireflies leader, “And why the fuck not?”
“I’m not having this conversation,” Marlene snapped, “You’re not ready.”
If they’d have been in any other situation, Y/n would have let the comment hurt.
“I’m not leaving without Y/n,” Ellie stated, drawing all the attention of the room to her, “She takes me.”
Joel’s eyes went back to Y/n, his mind flashing to every possibility of why the girl was so attached. Was she her daughter?
Marlene sighed, looking to Y/n, “You go with them.”
Y/n was ready to punch, scream, gnash and kick her way out of the situation. She wanted nothing to do with Joel Miller or anyone who worked with him, hadn’t for twenty years. But her loyalty to Ellie, and Ellie’s earned trust, in turn, could force her to do a lot.
Joel’s head was spinning enough just from being in the same room as her again. Now they were working together? He didn’t want that any more than he suspected she did.
In the uncomfortable silence, it was decided.
“There’s a team of Fireflies waiting for her at the old State House.”
Joel scoffed, Y/n internally grimaced.
“I know what’s out there,” Marlene addressed both of their reactions, “We were going with an entire squadron for that very reason. But now, I don’t have a truck, I don’t have a squadron. FEDRA’s five minutes away. What I do have is you. And I know what you’re both capable of. For better of worse.”
Y/n kept repeating the mantra in her head, Ellie comes first, Ellie comes first…Before anything else. Her purpose in life was to ensure the girl’s safety, and she’d continue fulfilling it until her last breath.
“What are they capable of?” Ellie asked, innocently.
Joel was capable of reaching into someone’s chest, ripping out their soul, their heart, their reason to live, and discarding it like trash in the street. That much, Y/n knew for sure.
“You get her there safely, and they’ll give you what you need,” Marlene sweetened the deal a little, “Not just a battery, the whole thing. Fueled up truck, guns, supplies, all of it. I swear.”
Joel’s face hardened, he either didn’t believe her or didn’t care. It unsettled Y/n and made her keep the pistol aimed directly at his head.
Marlene insisted, “I swear.”
Joel glanced back to Tess, who nodded for him to come have a private discussion. She wasn’t the difficult one to read. He turned back to Y/n, his gun still pointed at her shoulder. He’d once known what the slightest change in her expression meant, now it felt like looking at a blank canvas. He had nothing to go off of from the look in her eye other than the fact that there was one.
Before Joel went to Tess, he slid Ellie’s knife away with him. “Asshole,” she exclaimed. It was the first almost-smile Y/n had cracked all day.
When Joel and Tess began to converse, Marlene came and stood at Y/n’s side.
“Look, I don’t know the details of what happened with you two and quite frankly, I don’t give a shit. But she,” Marlene pointed her gun downwards while she gestured to Ellie, “She needs you. You’re the only one that she’s opened up the slightest bit to. Don’t throw away that girl’s trust just because you two are fucked up.”
Ellie’s eyes were already on Y/n when she looked over. She was concerned, scared, angry, and way too young for any of this. Now wasn’t the time to get sensitive about a broken heart and especially over Joel Miller.
“Y’all talk it through, but please remember,” Marlene said to Joel and Tess impatiently, “That I’m bleeding out.”
Joel looked over Tess’ shoulder at Y/n, the two of them stared each other down. Y/n slowly lowered her gun but her eyes retained their fire. Joel didn’t feel the need to soften his glare either. Shock had passed and reality had sunk in, they were about to reenter each other’s lives.
“Okay,” Tess stepped forward, taking the role of grown-up from both of them, “Here’s the deal. We’ll get her to your crew at the State House. But before we hand her over, they give us everything that we want. If not, we kill here then and there.”
“That’ll be hard to do with my hands wrapped around your throat,” Y/n said, her voice like sweet steel.
“Y/n,” Marlene ground out, “Deal.”
“Really?” Ellie almost laughed, “That fast?”
“You are all that matters,” Marlene’s voice lowered, “My team will not jeopardize that. Remember what I told you? Now, go get your backpack.”
Ellie didn’t move, instead she looked up at Y/n. Agreeing with Marlene, she gestured to the room they’d been keeping her in and Ellie obeyed.
The first steps in anything were always the hardest to take. Fear had to be overcome and bravery needed to take the wheel. Y/n had fought for her survival relentlessly for twenty years, she’d seen the worst humanity had to offer and still found it in her to sleep at night. There was very little she was afraid of. But the idea of walking alongside Joel again sent a cold strand of fear through her spine. He was the scariest thing she could face.
Ellie came out of her room with two backpacks, handing the second one to Y/n. Maybe she was afraid, but faking courage for Ellie made it easier to leave Marlene and Kim’s side. Tess led Ellie off, leaving just Joel and Y/n in the hall. Y/n didn’t hesitate to bump her shoulder against his, pausing upon impact.
“You even think about hurting that girl,” she lowered her voice till it was sharp like a dagger, “I’ll break your legs.”
Joel’s smirk acted as a barrier between him and his true emotions. ”I’d like to see you try,” he rasped.
“Hey,” Marlene interrupted them, “Don’t fuck this up.”
The two ex-lovers looked back to one another, their final glare setting the stage for what was to be a horrendous journey. All was fair in love and war, but there was nothing fair about what had become of them…
