The Last Of Us: Part I - Darker Days (Male Reader)

Chapter 22 - University of Eastern Colorado

A/N: We're back! Enjoy this Christmas gift!

The state of Colorado. Famous for it's beautiful landscapes, it's plentiful hiking trails and ski resorts, untamed and unmatched wildlife, and above all, the Rocky Mountains to the west.

All in all, Y/N couldn't complain.

Looking over the vast landscape like a painter eyed a canvas, he began to draw in his journal once again, sat atop his proud steed of a horse that had provided him with the much need of transportation.

That, and a really sore ass...

It had been a few months since their stop at Jackson, Wyoming. Meeting Joel's brother, seeing a hydroelectric dam for the first time. And Ellie's downward spiral of a angst teenager's post rebellion.

Running off like that, he'd admit that it had scared him.

But nothing had scared him more than himself. Even now, as he looked up from the pages of his journal, pencil stopped and halted, he recalled his own fear. Fear of moving on, fear of getting close. He still felt it, no matter what Ellie said to plaster a frown and grudging smile on his face.

Placing away his journal into his bag, he eyed the buildings in the distance, as his horse neighed below him.

Y/N reckoned he would always feel afraid of getting close to people. Fear of death and loneliness would always cripple him. But in the end, he just had to keep moving forward no matter what.

Always forward, in one direction or another.

Never backwards. The past was back there, and he wasn't going there. The future, however uncertain, was all he had. What they all had. And they had the chance to make something of it, with Ellie's cure, and a part of Y/N thought about the change it would bring...

No matter how much it would scare him—

"Ow! The fuck was that for?" Y/N exclaimed, flinching back hard as he kept the reins in his hands steady.

A small pebble had hit him right in the shoulder. Rubbing at the target area, Y/N turned to his right to glare at Ellie, who was sat behind Joel on their horse, and smiling wide at him with that bashful, illuminating smile.

"There was a bug on your shoulder." Ellie said coyly, crossing her arms as Y/N's glare went and lit her up.

"Yeah?" Y/N's hand reached down to grab a similar ordinance. "Well stay still, I think I see a bug on your face." He had been prepared to throw it, finding a sense of smug satisfaction in the surprise and squirming look that soon appeared on Ellie's face.

"Enough."

But before he did, Joel's exhausted and down right tired voice — not from the lack of sleep, but of two, mainly the one rebel, that had caused havoc these past months — penetrated through the barrier of their own little world.

Soon enough their eyes settled on the brick walls, usual streets and abandoned cars ahead of them. But nothing had them more mesmerised than the university itself that stood before them.

It was a giant campus. Buildings upon buildings situated in rows. Excellently built and placed to be a feast upon one's eye.

Marvelled and structured, what a place it was.

Suddenly, the pebble in Y/N's hand was soon forgotten.

Passing the brick walls, Y/N brought his horse to a stop as he noticed Joel dropping down from his own. Ellie taking the reins as the older man searched among the wrecked cars for any and all supplies.