despitethenora | Expiation IC inbox

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Expiation IC inbox

[Forgive her for sounding exasperated, but she's answering with a brief:]

What do you need?

[Marlene. Putting a kid "with" someone has shades of the Nora matriarchs giving Aloy to Rost. And that worked in its own way, but she wouldn't want that for someone else.]

If you had to fight that much, it must not have been that safe.

...Glad you are stronger for it, though.

FEDRA guarantees rations and a bed, until you're 15. They don't guarantee keeping other kids from stealing your food. Doesn't matter now, 'cause I got Joel.

Joel?

Is that someone you found here?

Nah. After I was bit, Marlene needed help getting me out of the QZ. Said there were doctors somewhere out west still working on a cure, and I might be the clue. Joel was one of the smugglers she turned to. We've been travelling together for almost a year.

So he's helping you...that's a start.

He was kind of an asshole when we first met, but things change after the kind of shit we've gone through together. I'd be done for outside the walls if I didn't have him.

And he's teaching you to handle it out there, too?

[She does hope so.]

Yeah. I earned my gun from him, actually. He was such an asshole about it at first.

"Earned" your gun? Does he have some process you have to go through for a weapon?

[Does Joel have Ellie doing some kind of hunting ground challenges for marks?]

No, he's just a stubborn asshole who didn't want [ the air quotes are audible ] "some kid shooting his damn head off". 'Cept then I had to save his ass when some Hunter dickhead ambushed him and almost drown him. Then cover said ass from above from more of the Hunters. It was the first time he was willing to trust me with a gun. I did so well, I got my own after fucking weeks.

[ it's why she'd reacted negatively to Kuwabara's concern about her having a gun. getting the gun entrusted to her from Joel had been her own Proving, and the pride is clear in her voice. ]

Joel's not just a smuggler, you know? He survived 20 years after Outbreak Day. Not a lot of people did.

[ so earning his trust meant something. ]

[She breaths a laugh. "Some kid shooting his damn head off." Eloquent man, that Joel. But imagine...actually living through the end of the world, instead of dying in it.]

He's not wrong to take some time first. And - I guess he has some experience with survival.