Silver ||Joel Miller||

you have people who care about you

LAURA

Well. They'd done it again. They'd left pure destruction in their wake... but this time Laura didn't feel an ounce of guilt. When she woke up that morning, Haven was already being cleaned up. The bodies were being thrown into the still burning dormitory as the quickest method of disposal, Laura had told them where to find the others in the forest, and then they had been on their way.

"What actually happened back there?" Joel asked, and she stopped her body from tensing at the words.

"What do you mean?" Laura asked as she trudged through the snow.

"What was actually happening in Haven? Katarina said something about a fucking breeding program and-"

"I don't want to tell you," she cut him off. She didn't, but not for the reasons he probably thought.

"Look, I get you're fucking angry at me. That's fine. But I think I deserve to know what was going on back there." She shook her head. Yes. She was fucking angry, but that wasn't her reasoning.

"You do, but if you know then you'll have to carry the weight of it like me. I don't want that for you." Laura kept walking as she spoke the truth. She knew what the outcome would be if she carried this secret to her fucking grave. And while the chance for an immune population might equate out to some people like it did to Sean and the men that preceded him in Haven; to Laura, it had never felt right to sacrifice the few to save the many.

She had never been fun when arguing that train track exercise in school.

"Please, tell me." She looked over her shoulder at him, because she could have sworn he'd started to say her name before he corrected himself. Maybe she'd been a little too harsh the night before... wait, no. She wasn't. She was putting her foot down. She was making boundaries, and she wasn't doing anything to help others feel comfortable anymore.

"I don't owe you anything and you don't get a say in my decision making anymore," she argued, and she saw that her words were having the right effect. "I said no."

It was better this way. She could take the secret of immunity to the grave and he wouldn't have to worry about it. There was silence as they began walking again, at least until Joel took a deep breath.

"Those kids, they're all immune, aren't they?" Fuck. She halted and tightened her grip on her bag's straps.

"Joel-"

"They were, right?" Damn it. She tilted her head back to look at the grey sky.

"Yes," she answered as she closed her eyes. He knew, so there was no point in hiding it anymore. So she explained it to him, explained that even though she now knew, she didn't want to share that information. The way that women would be easily turned to livestock to then all be killed in one of the most terrifying ways she could imagine...

"So that must be how Ellie is immune." Joel pointed out the obvious, and Laura nodded.

"I think so too, her mother was killed by an infected. She must have lied about when she was bitten or Marlene wouldn't be going through this to make a cure." Laura replied, her shoulders hunched. "We can't tell anyone." She added, looking up at him through the corner of her eye.

There were a few moments of silence, where she wasn't sure what he was actually going to say. And she shuffled in the snow, waiting for whatever his response would be.

Of all the things she thought would be the reason behind Ellie's immunity, this hadn't even been on her radar. And she wished she could say she was shocked at what had happened in Haven once they found out, but she wasn't. The entire world would be fucking screwed if anyone else found out... so, she would do her best to make sure it never became common knowledge.