'WAS THIS A FEDRA THING?' Ellie asked, wandering through the middle of a bunch of decaying stalls with tarps over the tops of them, the fabric torn and grey and dirty.

'No, army.' Joel informed her, looking around. 'They put these places up all around, the first few days after the outbreak. Emergency medical camps. They obviously didn't last, but they had me in one just like this. What are you doing?'

'With Sarah?' Ellie asked, ignoring Joel's question to Ralph as the shorter of the two began to duck behind a stall and rummage around behind it.

'No, she was gone already.' He added sombrely, stopping after a few feet to look at Ralph again. 'Al, what are you doing?'

'Getting medical shit, dummy.' Ralph called, crouched down behind the counter and out of sight, rustling out of sight and grabbing everything he saw until something caught his eye.

Abruptly, a tin box thumped onto the surface above his head, followed by him springing to his feet and fidgeting with the tiny, coded padlock on the front of it. 'Give me four digits.'

'Uh... Try twenty-thirty-two.' Joel proposed. Useless. He looked at Ellie.

'Three thousand.' Again, nothing happened.

'One two three four.' Lou said confidently.

The lock clicked open with a bit of force needed. Ralph tossed it to the ground and flipped the box open, excited to see what was inside. Then, it clattered to the ground when his hand shot out and smacked it away from him, shuddering as he stepped back and shoving a hand over his mouth, terrified.

In the middle of the box, the one that Ralph had just dented, was a plethora of supplies and a spider, wrapped up in cobwebs for God knew how long. It didn't seem to be alive, and how it even got in there in the first place was a mystery, but it was enough to scare the shit of out Ralph and make Joel take a tiny step away from the box.

'Okay,' Ralph shook his head, walking out from behind the counter and staring at the ground. 'No more medical shit.'

'Wuss.' Joel taunted, patting him on the arm regardless. In return, Ralph gave him a fully charged shove and made him stumble out of the way of their path.

'What was wrong with you?' Lou pestered him, ignoring them and their strange ways of flirting.

'Oh, it was, uh... It was for this.' Joel leaned down towards her, pressing a finger to his temple to highlight a small chunk of missing skin with a white scar on top of it, practically unnoticeable. Ralph had noticed it their first night in the city, and Joel had brought it up to Ellie during passing conversation, leaving Lou to be the only one in the dark about it due to their lack of conversations.

He had never explained how it happened.

'The guy who shot and missed.' Ellie nodded, the memory coming back to her when she added to her sentence. 'I figured that would've happened later.'

'Nope.' Joel's voice grew quieter as he went on, heavy with caution. 'Second day.'

Ralph took a sudden detour, hiking his foot up on a wall of cinderblock to tie the laces of his right shoe. Joel decided to wait on him, taking a seat next to his combat boot and tapping his foot on the ground anxiously.

'Well, I gotta hand it to the army people.' Ellie laughed, continuing to trek ahead of them and not giving any consideration to the fact that her main sources of protection were ten or fifteen steps away and that Lou was beginning to slow down as well. 'They were way better at stitching you up than we were. Am I right, Zhenyas?'

'Speak for yourself.' Ralph scoffed at her, raising his other legs and untying the loose, left knot to retie it. 'I was the one babysitting that whole week, you two barely pulled any weight.'

'You wouldn't let us pull any weight.'

'Yeah, 'cause you two suuuuuuck.'

Ellie turned on her heel to combat that. 'Do you ever wonder what would've happened if that knife broke skin? I think you would be much handsomer.'

'You know what did break? Your vocal cords after I punched 'em.'

'Yeah, well, I'm talking now, aren't I?'

'Not if I have anything to say about-'

'It was me.' Joel said randomly, loudly. As if he was spitting them out of his mouth, untasteful on his tongue. Ralph set both of his feet on the ground again, shifting his weight to them and looking at the man in front of him. With one look, Ralph could tell that Joel wasn't enjoying his and Ellie's comedy show.

Joel looked sad and regretful, almost disappointed. He was frightened by what he had just said, the words hanging in the air around them and forcing him to follow them up. 'I was the guy who shot and missed.'

Ralph had no idea what to say.

The complete shock of that one sentence was splayed right across his face, which led Joel to provide some sort of closure. He reached forward, held Ralph's hand loosely, and led him to sit at his right. He didn't release his grip, not even when Lou and Ellie sat themselves on his far side.

'There's no story.' He looked down, watching his thumb drag over the back of Ralph's then looking past their hands to the floor. 'Sarah died and I couldn't see the point anymore. Simple as that.'

He looked up, turning to the girls. Seeing their confused, shocked expressions made this sting a lot more. He was regretting even opening his mouth. 'And I wasn't scared either, I was ready. I couldn't have been more ready. And when I...'

He looked back down again, allowing himself to be pulled against Ralph's side. That made the words come to his mind a whole lot easier. 'When I went to pull the trigger, I-I flinched. Still don't know why. Anyway, the reason why I'm telling you all this-'

'Yeah, we know why you're telling us this.' Lou interrupted with a small smile, an appreciated attempt to lighten the mood.

'Yeah, I reckon you do.' Joel nodded finally, not speaking until someone else did first.

There was a small moment of silence, of peace, where he just leaned his head on Ralph's shoulder and stayed there, unafraid of the world for a while as the four of them sat together in solitude. Lou swung her feet, Ellie stared at the trees, Joel frowned, Ralph held him.

'I guess time heals all wounds, then.' Ellie said softly.

'...It wasn't time that did it.' Joel replied.

Shortly after that, they began to disband. Ellie was the first to stand, nodding her head at Lou to follow as they ventured off to go and hunt for goobledy-gops, and her friend followed after her very quickly. Next was Joel, reaching for the rifle he had propped up whilst trying his best to not break the hug he was savouring the shit out of.

Eventually, Ralph decided enough was enough and let him go before the kids got themselves killed. Not before pressing a small kiss to Joel's temple, the one with the scar on it.

...

'YOU KNOW WHAT I'M IN THE MOOD FOR?' Joel looked around the group only a handful of minutes after their previous conversation, his hand never leaving Ralph's throughout the whole ordeal. He looked down at Ellie and grinned. 'Shitty puns.'

'Oh-ho-ho!' She chuckled excitedly, tossing her backpack at Lou so the older could hold it as she dug through it eagerly. She returned with the book in her hands, beaming with excitement, and twirled around for Lou to wrap the straps around her shoulders again. She flipped it open eagerly, reading aloud the first one she saw.

'"People are making apocalypse jokes like there's no tomorrow."'

'Yikes.' Ralph whistled at the same time Joel tsked. Meanwhile, Lou scowled.

'Too soon?' She tilted her head.

'No, it's topical.' Joel assured. 'Another.'

'Oh, I love this one!' She laughed before she even read it. '"Moon rocks taste better than Earth rocks, why? 'Cause they're meteor!"'

'Oh, that was...' Ralph hissed, shaking his head left and right in avid disapproval. Ellie thwacked him with the spine of the cover, making him laugh harder than he ever had at a joke out of that sinful book.

'Fuck you, that was a good one!' She insisted, going onto the next one and glancing up at him during the gap between punchline and delivery. '"What did the green grape say to the purple grape? Breathe, you idiot."'

'Pffft.' He snorted, shaking his head again. Next to him, Lou giggled. 'What, you think that's funny?'

'Funnier than anything you've ever come up with.' She shrugged, her brutal, sudden honesty prompting Joel and Ellie to burst into laughter beside them. Ralph gave her a mocking shove against the back of the head, light and playful, only for her to turn around and swing at him.

'Yeaaah, fuck him up, Lou!' Ellie cheered jokingly as the two of them messed around like a pair of kids, resorting to a grin when Ralph captured his daughter's wrists in his fist and halted her attacks. Deciding to continue, Ellie cleared her throat. '"What's the difference between a plum and a rabbit? They're both purple except for the rabbit." ...Wait, what?'

'...That's not even a joke.' Joel squinted, shaking his head just as Ralph had been beforehand. 'That's a zero. Actually, that's a negative- Can I do negatives?'

Ralph gave him a nod and grin, Lou still held against his side, and Joel did the math in his brain. '...Negative three.'

That mundane ranking was the final sentence Ralph heard before the world went white.

...

NOTES!
i am lion hear my roar