T H E S I L E N C E

Daisy Jo Servopoulos had been burdened by ghosts her entire life. She wondered often about what it would've been like to know her older siblings Sarah and Jackson and experience their parents from before. Before guilt and grief became something stitched into every quiet moment.

Every time she let herself imagine it for too long, she stopped. There wasn't much point. She was the child born because civilization collapsed and life found a way to continue in the ruins anyway. No birthday parties. No first days of school. No family vacations. No photographs hanging on walls from a world that would've had room for her.

The only person who had ever made Daisy feel like she belonged anywhere was her mom. And now Tess was gone too, probably somewhere in whatever came next, content to rest with the family she had loved and lost long before Daisy was born. Somewhere she couldn't follow.

That left Joel.
Absent. Quiet. Careless Joel. The man who happened to be her father.

Daisy had spent years imagining the version of him Sarah must've known. The father who rest bedtime stories, planned camping trips, and carried his little girl on his shoulders. She was certain that man had existed once.

But she wasn't Sarah. Instead she was the reminder of everything that came after. The child born by accident into a world that had already ended.

So when mom died and Joel became the only family she had left, Daisy couldn't imagine anything crueler than being forced across the country beside the man who had never really wanted her in the first place. All while escorting an immune girl she didn't trust and couldn't forgive.

As far as Daisy was concerned, hope had died with her mother.

But the world had a stubborn habit of proving her wrong. Somewhere in between abandoned cities, endless highways, infected, and impossible choices, tiny moments began slipping through the cracks. The sort of moments that started to look like family.

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The Last Of Us Fanfiction