𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐤 | 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐎𝐟 𝐔𝐬

30. Pee-pee Pants City.

T H I R T Y
Pee-pee Pants City.

THIRD PERSON POV.

The air in the dingy basement was thick as Ellie tried desperately to rouse the older man, needing to fulfil the promise she made to Bobbie. The woman had made it abundantly clear that if Ellie couldn't do her part, Bobbie wouldn't be safe to do hers.

Ellie had the seemingly easier part: get Joel to wake up and get them both as far away as possible. But first, she'd have to wake him up, which was proving difficult. "Joel, you have to wake up." She tapped his cheek as Bobbie tapped hers to get her to focus. The warmth of Joel's face concerned the teenager, it wasn't a good sign. He was still sick, getting better, but still sick. The antibiotics Bobbie had put her life on the line for were doing the job, but at what cost, that was to be seen.

A pained groan is the only response Joel gave Ellie, the pain still clutching him tightly. He couldn't focus, no matter how hard he tried. His eyes struggled to stay open for more than a few moments and the sound his brain managed to process wasn't enough to put together what Eliie was saying. If Joel knew what was happening while he lay knocked out, he'd be pissed, sending out Bobbie on a suicide mission—lying to Ellie that it wasn't a suicide mission. That wouldn't ever happen if he was lucid, but he wasn't, so Bobbie was free to decide what to do, and this was all her anxiety-riddled, desperation-driven plan. The teenager didn't know how to wake him up because nothing seemed to be working and if he wasn't awake she couldn't get him on a horse. She couldn't do what Bobbie asked of her, and she needed to do that.

Her obliviousness to what Bobbie was doing was partly due to her näivety to how things in the real world unfolded, Joel and Bobbie had made all the executive decisions. When one was down the other filled their place, Bobbie was stepping up to the plate, trusting Ellie to do her part. And, another part was her assumption that what Bobbie was saying was the full truth and not a warped version of it. Carefully worded so as to not be a bald-faced lie, so many hedged statements that flew over Ellie's head as she needed to hear that everything would be okay.

"I've had worse odds", "This is our best shot", "You're going to be okay". Those comforting phrases were what Ellie clung to so that she could keep her head above water; her brain, to save itself, ignored the phrases that eluded to Bobbie not being sure they'd all walk away. It was "You're going to be okay", not "We're going to be okay". Bobbie had asked Ellie to tell Joel that she was thankful for all he'd done. She'd given over everything but what she'd need that very second. The sign for them to leave was a scream, so, if she actually screamed Ellie wouldn't panic and run after her, ditching the plan in its entirety.

Ellie wanted to prove herself to be a worthy asset to the trio, not just the cargo, so she needed Joel to wake up so they could go and do her part. With increasing intensity she shook Joel's shoulders, wanting to scream to wake him up, but she couldn't risk David's creepy cult hearing her and finding them both.

When his eyes opened he made sense of Ellie's face, then checked where Bobbie always stood, realising she wasn't there. Even being open only a matter of seconds he was struggling to keep them open a second more. "Where's Bobbie?" He mumbled, hardly able to process the absence and question, it was more an instinct than a thought, in the second of silence it took for Ellie to answer, he fell back into the clutches of unconsciousness.

"She's gone to buy us time, we need to leave. So wake the fuck up, get with the program," Ellie tried to channel Joel and Bobbie, wanting to do what they would. Being stern when needed, that's what they both could be, that's what she needed to be right now.

Joel was obviously strong and put together, he tended to think through choices and make well-informed choices. They mostly worked out for him, he was, after all, still alive after twenty years. He was someone you could visually identify as someone to not mess with.