treadlightlymydarling
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With dawn of redeeming grace by treadlightlymydarling
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
05 Mar 2024
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Summary
“Didn’t have trees at Christmas in school?” He asks.
Ellie snorts. “Didn’t have Christmas. Some years we had a free day, no chores, no school, no drills. But nothing else.”
(Joel and Ellie’s first Christmas together sucks, Joel vows their second one will be better)
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A woman is a changeling by treadlightlymydarling
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
23 Jul 2023
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Tess never intended to become a mother.
Some of the women she comes across in the QZ still call themselves that, mother, the first descriptor they’ll use for themselves, even though their children have been dead three or four times longer than they were ever alive.
The word they use for her is dangerous.
But now it comes down this, the woman who never wanted a kid and the man who has never gotten over losing one. A kid who has never known what it is to have a parent.
The woman who can’t even find the courage to ask Joel to love her, a man who can’t even refer to Tess as anything other than a business partner. A kid who doesn’t even understand what love is.
They’re an emotionally stunted trio who only have each other and it feels like a recipe for disaster.
(Tess lives).
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And it is built in droplets, lost in floods by treadlightlymydarling
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
26 Jun 2023
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Joel knows, that he’s going to fuck this up. There’s no way he’s going to get her to where she needs to be unscathed. He can feel it, deep in his gut, right in his bones.
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Time ticks around you by treadlightlymydarling
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
07 May 2023
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Jackson ends up fitting them like a glove, in the end, and it takes Joel completely by surprise.
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I kept hold of everything, just in case by treadlightlymydarling
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
24 Apr 2023
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He’s not surprised, really, to find that Ellie processes her trauma just like she processes pretty much anything else, by asking a shit ton of questions.
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“What the hell are you doing?” He asks, voice sharp in his surprise. He’d expected—well. He hadn’t expected this. The girl in front of him is careful to keep her hands up, only nodding at the pack now on the ground. He’d thrown her pretty hard against the wall when she’d stepped out from the shadowed corner, but nothing he can see looks bleeding or broken, at least.
“I’m here from Leroy. He didn’t want to come. Said you might, like, cut off his fingers or something. So he sent me.”
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Sans Firefly-rescue. Ellie stays in Boston as a smuggler, or something similar.
Bookmarked by treadlightlymydarling
02 Jul 2023
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“Yeah but they don’t have the fucking balls to come in here after me, especially not if you’re here.”
“And what if I’m not, one day? I don’t live here you know, kid.”
“Ellie,” she corrects him, unaware that Joel already knows her name from the first night those kids were after her, “my name is Ellie.”
He waves her words away. “My point still stands.”
(modern AU where Ellie keeps finding her way to Joel's worksite)
Series
- Part 1 of alterations
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 56,826
- Chapters:
- 8/8
- Comments:
- 268
- Kudos:
- 1,818
- Bookmarks:
- 523
- Hits:
- 30,063
Bookmarked by treadlightlymydarling
02 Jul 2023
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of wounded minds and wounded souls (we are coming home) by cardigains
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV)
11 Jun 2023
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“Are you in trouble? Back home?”
The ends of her sweatshirt are grasped in her fists, wrapped around her hands. He half expects her to pull the hood up, tie the strings over her face, and completely tuck herself away. It makes him think of the other night with that nasty motel bedspread pulled right up beneath her chin, asking about locks on the door. It makes him think of a scared kid.
“What difference does it make?” Ellie mumbles out while avoiding his gaze. “I’m out of there now.” She turns a steely gaze towards him. “And I’m not going back.”
“Wasn’t planning on makin’ ya,” Joel whispers in the late night air. The stars are coming out. If it’s a clear enough night, maybe he can point out Mars to her.
or:
Ellie's a foster kid who helps herself to the bed of Joel's truck to get where she needs to go. Joel is a sucker who just can't turn her away.
Series
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 93,379
- Chapters:
- 12/12
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 1,325
- Kudos:
- 2,168
- Bookmarks:
- 588
- Hits:
- 48,625
Bookmarked by treadlightlymydarling
02 Jul 2023
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i felt it from the start (it grew inside my heart) by cardigains
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
02 Aug 2023
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“You don’t have to give me an answer right away, Ellie.” The words are said like they’re meant to be comforting, but Ellie knows it’s really just marking the end of the conversation. Which is annoying because Ellie has a lot more to say without really knowing how to say it and no answer to offer, just a tingling in the back of her nose and a gnawing in the pit of her stomach. “Think about it. No pressure.”
“Right,” she shoots back, tone dry. No pressure, just make this decision that could alter the entire course of your very newly stable lifestyle. Just decide if you want to enter into the hazy, uncertain territory of some man who might just be your biological father.
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The hard part’s over. Now they’re just supposed to figure out how to live. It’s harder than expected.
One-shots of Ellie and Joel’s life. A sequel to ‘of wounded minds and wounded souls (we are coming home)’
Series
Bookmarked by treadlightlymydarling
23 Jun 2023
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suffer not the little children by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
29 May 2023
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So far he’s known Ellie at fourteen and Ellie at fifteen, and the gaps in his knowledge of her are so vast they seem to fill every spare inch of conscience he has. There’s so much unaccounted for time, times where people did things to her he couldn’t protect her from, times where people hurt her or bullied her or made her feel small, undeserving, useless, unloved.
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Ellie grows up, a little. It sort of breaks Joel’s heart, a lot.
Series
- Part 2 of out of the mouths of babes
Bookmarked by treadlightlymydarling
31 May 2023