The Pedro Pascal Files

Pieces of Me // Joel Miller

(Joel Miller x F!Reader)

You were everything to him. His breath. His reason for living. His reason for staying alive. Without you, he had nothing. He became nothing.

Things had happened so quickly. Even if Joel could've gotten to you in time, it would've made little difference. The two of you had been together for only a short time. However, there was a lifetime of love and feelings that had been shared.

"You're thinking of something." Ellie commented. "Drop it. Mind your own business." He snapped. "Look, you can only hold shit in for so long. It might make it better to talk about it." She pushed. "I said no. Now mind your fucking manners." He snarled back at her. She scoffed. "Fine. Whatever."

Joel was thinking of you. To be truthful, he never stopped, not since that day. It had become such a harsh memory, burned into the back of Joel's mind. It had cost him many a good night's sleep since. "We should stop for the night." He announced. Ellie simply compiled. Their dynamic was not always a friendly one, but compliance could be quite useful at times. "Sounds fine. I'm tired anyways." Ellie said.

The building was run down, like everything else in this world. Making a fire was a risk, but the air was getting colder the further they pushed north. They'd take a risk to keep warm. While Ellie tried to find dry matter to use for the fire, Joel cleaned away the remnants of the debris that was scattered on the ground.

Later on, the two of them sat around the fire across from each other. Conversation was non-existent. Joel's fingers seemed to pick and twist around something he had pulled from his pocket. "What is that?" Ellie asked. "Why is it that you have to be so nosy? Is that just your nature?" He asked. "Why do you have to be such a prick?" She bit back. He sighed in annoyance. A bitte silence filled the room and the only noise that returned was the crackling of the kindling in the fire. "It belonged to someone who was very special to me at one point." He said. "You were married?" Ellie asked. He scoffed. "Nothing like that. Just someone I met out here, another survivor." For the first time, Joel had started to talk about it. He couldn't bear to finish it. Ellie didn't ask what happened. She assumed that this survivor had gone the way of all the others: dead.

"No more questions. I'm going to bed." And with that Joel moved to his bedding without another word. Ellie stayed awake by the fire for a few more hours. Long enough to catch Joel muttering to you in his sleep.

The following morning, as they walked together, Ellie asked another annoying question. "Who is Y/N?" The sound of your name echoed through Joel's eardrums. He hadn't said it out loud or even heard it since that day. "Why would you ask me that?" He questioned. "You talk in your sleep a lot, old man. Sometimes it wakes me up." Joel simply looked away. "She was just someone I knew a while back." He said.

"Joel..." your voice echoed the bedroom as the two of you laid together in bed "when things get better, I wanna have a house." He chuckled at the idea. "Is here not good enough for you?" He asked. "You know what I mean. I wanna be away from all of this, somewhere that's good. Somewhere that we can just...put our feet up and rest until we die." The thought was so perfect. "That sounds like something I could look forward to." He said.

"What was she like?" Ellie asked. "No more questions." Joel said, as he pushed forward. Ellie simply scoffed and followed his lead. Even despite all the time they had spent together recently, they remained distant. Not that Ellie was hankering for more adults to tell her what to do and how to do it, but one might've thought that their tempers would have cooled some by now. Joel was bent on being a man with many secrets and not sharing them. He was a typical "listen and don't question me" kind of man. Ellie got the feeling that something else was lurking under that angry demeanor. It was only a matter of time before it burst at the seams and spilled out.