Silver ||Joel Miller||

epilogue

ELLIE

*five years later*

Every memory of importance flashed before Ellie's eyes as she stared at Joel. He was beaten so severely he couldn't move, and Ellie had just been pinned to the ground by two of these fuckers. They were going to kill him. They were going to kill Joel... and she didn't even want to think about Tommy being unconscious with them either.

So instead she thought about the memories.

She remembered Joel taking her to a museum for her fifteenth birthday. He'd put her in an astronaut suit and played a recording of the moon landing for her so she could pretend she'd made it off this hellscape of a planet.

She remembered him teaching her how to play a guitar—him and Laura singing together and dragging her into doing it with them.

She remembered their Christmases with their handmade gifts and their birthdays when Laura made small cakes with whatever she could get her hands on.

She remembered the little things too, like the way that Joel would kiss Laura’s head while she was reading or the way they looked at each other with perfect love in their eyes. It was something she'd always wanted for herself, that complete and utter serenity, the ability to trust someone so entirely.

She remembered the way Laura cried when Ellie asked for the truth about the hospital two years ago. She remembered the pain on both of her parents faces when she left due to her anger. The way that Joel held Laura as she walked away was burned behind her eyes.

It was the only reason that she'd decided to speak to them the night before. Joel and Laura had been on the porch of thirty-eight, Joel strumming his guitar as Laura read a book. They'd both looked up in shock as she reached them, and the hope in Laura’s eyes was something she'd never forget. She'd told them that she was still angry at them for taking away a meaningful death for her. But when they told her that if they had a chance to redo it, that they wouldn't change a thing, she couldn't explain the feeling that coursed through her. All she knew was that after two years of not speaking to them, they still loved her... just as she still loved them. And when she said she wasn't sure if she could forgive them, it was the pain in Laura's eyes that prompted her to say that she could try.

She hadn't had any time to learn who they were again, to even start down that path of forgiveness...

And now Joel was going to be taken from her. The only father figure she'd ever known, one of the only two people who were willing to condemn an entire world just to save her...

"Joel..." she whispered, and Joel shook his head. She didn't know what to do—there wasn't anything she could do. All she could think of was to pray to a God she didn't believe in, and hope that Laura had a plan that would get them all out before Joel was beaten to death. He was already too weak to move—had already been beaten within an inch of his life.

Laura had been just behind her, so where the fuck was she?

"Let him go!" Ellie shouted, and she saw Joel's eyes open just wide enough to take in the room around him one last time. But his eyes stayed still, not looking back at Ellie as she'd expected, but at the door behind her.

Ellie looked as far back as she could and saw an arrowhead poking around the doorframe.

"Do as she says," she heard Laura’s voice as the woman crept into the room.

"Or what?" One of them asked, and all Ellie could do was watch in horror as Laura smiled.

"I'll kill all of us," she replied. That was when Ellie noticed the vial on the end of the arrow.