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thebigsl33p · 1 year

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Can The Killer In Me, Tame The Fire In You, Or Is There Nothing Left To Do For Us?

A/N: this one goes out to all my maladaptive daydreaming girls who have to create the most intricate canon divergent storylines in their heads to fall asleep.

Warnings: Shit writing, mention of death, infected, canon divergence like absolute rewrite so it fits my little brain storyline. Joel Miller. I kinda picked out bits and pieces from the game and TV series, sorry ANGST, ALL I WANTED WAS SOME DEAD DAUGHTER FANFIC INSTEAD ITS ALL SMUT not complaining BUT

Y/N dreams the same thing every night.

It starts on a beach. It's an average day, the sea is a moderate shade of dark blue and the sun is occasionally shining, peeking out intermittently from behind clouds, lighting up the sand like a thousand shiny gems. Music begins to play, an old rock song from the Eighties or Nineties that Y/N can't quite place. And then it stops abruptly with the sound of a needle scratching a record, screaming and gunshots that reverberate around the dreamscape. Mist and fog roll into the beach, and out onto the sea, turning the sand into a dull yellow and the water black and obscuring Y/N's sight.

And then two figures appear. One is short and thin with afro hair, the other tall and muscular with short hair, and they walk hand in hand. They are merely silhouettes but Y/N is struck with a feeling of familiarity as they get closer and closer and closer to her. She realises too late who they are - Joel and Sarah - and she realises even later what's wrong with them. How they shambled their way over to her should've been enough of a clue, but for some reason, she just didn't pick up. But then Joel starts to twitch and shake and Sarah groans, and both of them have glossy eyes and pale, clammy skin. Their jaws move desperately around nothing, trying to clamp down, but also trying to form words, "Help me" and "I'm sorry" slurred from their lips.

Without knowing why, or with any notion of cognitive thought, she raises her arms and splays her hands to welcome them into her embrace. She cries as she does it, as they stumble into her and wrap themselves around her neck and waist. They are both covered in bite marks, blood and grime, and they bite down on her at the same time.

The imagined pain is what wakes her up, like an alarm clock, and sends her into another day's work in the quarantine zone.

Throughout it all, she thinks of the last time she saw Sarah and Joel, in that car crash where only Tommy had been left to pull her out. And they had run without ever looking back.

The night of the outbreak, Y/N was separated from everyone she loved and knew. She had lost Tommy soon after in the crowds of people, frantically calling his name as she pushed through it, but to no avail. She grabbed people with red jackets and short hair until someone grabbed her in return. Hours later she found herselff in one of her first FEDRA lockups.

Now, just over twenty years later, she lived in a Qurantine zone. More people were getting infected by the day, just getting better at hiding it, and FEDRA was the very definition of the abuse of power, shooting people down no matter how much you screamed, "I'm not a Firefly! I'm not a fucking Firefly!" Fireflies…a group of Rebels, armed and smart, doing their hardest to restore normalcy and to take down FEDRA. Things had been getting pretty bad recently, curfew was brought down hard, at night all she could hear were sirens and screaming, gunshots and bombs. She tried her best to sleep, tossing and turning under her thick woolen blanket and government ordered, thin, sheetless mattress. In the morning, she would get up and drink a glass of whisky, tie up her hair and get to work throwing Infected into plague pits.

"To Y/N L/N." Was scribbled on the front, in familiarly unfamiliar handwriting. She flipped open to read the message, "Dear Y/N, through many contacts I've finally managed to discover you're alive, and your address. I want to invite you to Jackson. We have a stronghold here, a community. You could have a true and proper home. Joel and such are here too, alive and well, old bastard, he sends his love and luck. Love, Tommy. XX"

It was hard, gruelling and emotionally unavailable work. More often than not, she was throwing little kids into the flames, or young men and women who had obviously put up a fight. And in the evening, she went home, had another glass of some vague alcohol, whatever shitty food rations she could find and then went to bed, to repeat the day.

That was until she received a message. It was sunday, which meant the man down the street, Mr. Grant, who passed messages across America with his radio, was open for business. She had been approached by a regular customer of his during work, who slipped her a piece of paper, "From Mr. Grant." She had said, and then she was gone. That evening, Y/N settled down at her kitchen table/desk/counter and unfolded the piece of paper she had shoved into her pocket.

She sat at her table, desk, counter, and held the paper limp in her hands. She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe that after all this time, Sarah, Joel and Tommy were still alive. And they were well. And- well, she had to leave straight away. She had flipped over the paper and found co-ordinates, from which she instantly pulled out her one and only map, and marked them down, and found it to be just off centre from the middle of Jackson. Then, she packed away some basic necessities in a bag, and slipped away into the dead of night.

Jackson was everything she had imagined and more. It was a perfect, little safe haven. She was greeted at the gate with guns and Tommy's interruption, running to her, embracing her, sniffling into her shoulder. True, as his brother's wife they had never been that close, but good God, she was just so enthralled to see someone she knew and loved and was connected to. She wasn't sure she had ever hugged anyone as tightly as she'd hugged Tommy, and then Maria came along and introduced herself, a beautiful woman whom Tommy was lucky enough to call his wife. Y/N had shaken her hand and she had grinned a perfect smile, "Joel's spoken about you loads."

"Oh, God, Joel." Her head swivelled to Tommy to Maria to her surroundings, "He's here, right?" Her words were sitting on desperate.

Tommy placed a hand on her shoulder, "Calm down, calm down. They're out at the moment to find supplies, food, extra bits and pieces. He knows you're coming, yeah, we just didn't think you'd get here so…soon." He shrugged, before beginning to walk her through the town, "C'mon, Maria and I will find you a place to stay, alright?"

And then finally, Tommy walked her to a small-ish home, one floor and squat, "This is where we put visitors or guests," He explained, "We have to find a suitable home for you, but this has all the right supplies." Then he pointed to the home next to it, "Joel lives just there."

"Alright." She swallowed her nerves and guilt, and followed the two through the town.

The entire walk Tommy and Maria pointed out households to her, lived in and happy homes - and told her what certain meeting points, bars, restaurants or club spaces, used to be. The Lower school was once an corner store, the high school, a doctor's. And the actual doctor's used to be a record store, which Joel had apparently raided and helped set up.

"Thank you Tommy, Maria. Thank you for everything." She hugged them both, once again, and then they pressed a key into her hand.

"We're gonna be just fine." Maria said, rubbed her shoulder and then she was alone.

Y/N'd been living in Jackson for a week when Joel returned. She'd been the first person Maria had told, apparently Joel had radioed in from outside the boundary, telling everyone they were finishing up and should be home by sunrise. She'd been woken up by Tommy knocking on her door with a loud, "They're back!" And she had practically hurtled outside, throwing a jacket over her pyjamas and slipping on her boots, nervous adrenaline filling her veins and causing her heart to beat out of her chest.

Twenty years. How much damage could Twenty Years have done? Yes, she had done unspeakable things, murdered innocents and stolen from the starving, injured, sick, but everyone had. When she looked around Jackson she saw a group of people who had all done what they had needed to to survive. She was no different. But what if's and maybe's lurked at the back of her mind as she followed Tommy up to the green gates.

Three horses come striding into Jackson, two with a stranger atop and one carrying her husband. He's joking bitterly and sarcastically with another rider, a little girl with brown hair who couldn't have been older than fourteen, and then he greets Tommy with a slight, two fingered wave, and Tommy's eyes direct him to Y/N standing in old pyjamas, old boots and an old jacket. But she's not looking at him, no her eyes are scanning frantically for a fourth horse, desperate for that familiar laugh, though she knows she'd be thirty-five by now. But where the fuck is Sarah?

The sun was just coming up, lighting half of the sky in a light blue and the other half remained dark, but she could still see the stars. And the moon. The wonders of a "zombie" apocalypse.

The sound of the gates moving was enough to have Y/N rocking on her feet because finally - finally - she would see her husband and daughter again, after twenty something years of just allowing herself to believe they were dead and done for, she finally knew better and-

Maria is standing behind her, "You alright, girl?" She asks.

"Where's Sarah?" Her head snaps towards Maria, and she watches like a hawk as the woman's eyes widen and she swallows, hard.

"Uh, just one second," She's pretending to look at something behind Y/N, as if distracted, before she runs off, "Tommy! Tommy!" Bellowing from her lips.

From a distance she sees Tommy and Maria conspiring, casting worried glances her way. And so she storms through the crowd, ignoring her initial purpose for being there, and instead she pushes the two apart and points her finger at them, "Tell me where my daughter is." Tommy plays with his hand, turning the ring on his finger, looking down, not meeting her gaze, "Sarah is-" He prepares himself "Sarah's-"

Confusion clouds Y/N's mind. How hard could it be to answer a simple question?

It hits her like a fucking train. How stupid could she have been, how presumptious and ignorant that "They" meant Joel and Sarah, not Joel and that little girl by his side. Who was she? Was she his daughter - had he moved on? Perhaps she should go, perhaps he didn't want a reminder of his old life hanging around.

"Dead." The voice is gruff and old, and familiar. Y/N practically spins in place to get a look at the man who it belongs too, those dark brown eyes, his beard and hair with dashes of grey, those soft cheeks, his lips, nose, eyelashes. Joel Miller. Joel, fucking, Miller, he speaks again, "Sarah's dead."

She doesn't know what to do - what to say - so she tries for something, she's reaching and trying desperately to hold on to anything she can, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Joel."

"No. I know. I know." He's nodding softly, stroking her hair in return, gently. He won't cry now, not where everyone can see, but he'll cry later, when he's at home with Ellie and… Y/N. The family he'd dreamt of.

"Me too." His words are soft and small, so unlike the man in front of her. Maria and Tommy are gone by now, having siddled of discuss the exchange, the shock, the horror of Y/N not knowing about her daughter's death.

Joel pulls her in, close and tight for a long hug, and Y/N begins to cry, "I never thought I'd see you again." she's gripping him so tightly, hand pulling his hair, the other around his shoulder, "I just-"

She pulls away to get a good look at him, "Look at you," She's smiling through the tears streaming down her cheeks, "Look at my old man." She runs a hand through his hair, the front now instead of the back.

And then suddenly, she drops it, smile fading, eyes casted downwards, "Sarah… was she infected?"

"No." he answers. The way he speaks about it, it's as if finally, within the last year, he's finally come to terms with it all, "She died after the car crash. On Outbreak Day. She was in my arms, we were running and there was an early FEDRA guard and we told him we weren't infected but…"

"He shot anyways."

"Yeah." He spoke so simply about it, "She died in my arms and I'm just sorry you never knew how much she loved you. She called out for you y'know."

The idea brought tears to her eyes. A beat. "I dreamt about the two of you for the past twenty years." She opened up, "I dreamt you were infected, you and Sarah, and every single time I would just open my arms and hug you both and let you take me, infect me." She sighed, "The only thing that kept me going was the idea, the prospect, that maybe someday, I'd get to see you again and all I can say is that I'm sorry. I'm sorry wasn't there these twenty years and I'm sorry I wasn't there when Sarah died and I love you." Every single thought that echoed around her head for what had felt like forever was spewed out in front of him.

And all he could do was soften his eyes, and say, "It's alright,", "I love you too."

"There's someone I'd like for you to meet."

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