summary: In the small town near Austin, Texas, you areĀ trapped in a life of rigid expectations and silent suffering. As the preacher's daughter, you endure the mental and physical abuse of your father while your mother, bound by obedience, offers quiet love. Your longing for a father's warmth finds an unexpected solace inĀ Joel Miller, your father's best friend and neighbor. In Joel's presence, you discover a forbidden sanctuary, where your yearning heart is met with a gentle strength you've never known.
warnings: 18+ only, Minors DNI, AU, No outbreak. (TW) mentions of substance abuse/alcohol use disorder, adult content, religion abuse, violence, blood gore, mentions of death, sexual abuse, sexual content, domestic violences, pedophilia, cannibalism, human trafficking, dad's best friend!Joel, HUGE age gap (i will not specify her exact age, but she's legal and Joel is 49), daddy issues, mentions of toxic family dynamic, Joel is widowed, Ellie is 16, angst, smut A LOT, forbidden relationship, soft and protective Joel, innocent and pure reader. your last name is Gibson. any other details will be explain throughout the story. inspired by the album Preacher's daughter by Ethel Cain and also mix with lana del rey vibes.
Memory is a dangerous storyteller. It softens what broke us, glorifies what left us, and blurs the line between what truly happened and what we desperately wish had.
This is not a story about getting over your first love.
It's about what remains when love is gone, and you're the only one left to remember it.
warnings!: 18+ only, Minors DNI, AU, No outbreak. (TW) mentions of substance abuse/alcohol use disorder, adult content, loss of virginity, childhood trauma, domestic violences, manipulation, su!c!d3, older Joel. huge age gap (21 years), daddy issues, mentions of toxic family dynamic, any other details will be explain throughout the story.
Note: this story is an alternate universe of The Last of Us, it will not follow the story of TLOU, I just took some of the characters and made my own story. There will be additional characters too.
Cast!
Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller
Jon Bernthal as Tommy Miller
(Tommy is the oldest brother in this story)
You/the reader as Jolene Buchanan
š»ššššššš
The first thing my therapist told me was not to forgive, or to forget, or even to heal. She only smiled in that quiet way people do when they know something you havenāt discovered yet.
āWrite.ā
She folded her hands together and looked at me for a long time, as if she could hear the static behind my ribs.
āYou love writing. So write everything. Write what happened. Write what didnāt happen. Write what you wished had happened. Empty yourself onto the page until thereās nothing left to carry.ā
I nodded, though I wasnāt sure if it was for her or for myself.Ā
I had been carrying this story around for so long that it no longer felt like a story at allāit felt like another organ, something that had grown quietly inside me until I couldnāt tell where it ended and where I began. Every scene, every word, every feeling had already been written somewhere in my mind long before I ever stepped into Dr. Willowās office.Ā
The problem was never that I didnāt know what to write. God, I knew exactly what to write.Ā
My mind had never learned how to be quiet. It replayed conversations that no one remembered, invented endings for people who had already left, collected fragments of ordinary afternoons and preserved them like pressed flowers between the pages of my memory. Sometimes it was exhausting living inside a head that refused to let anything die. I just never knew where to begin.Ā
How do you decide which memory deserves to breathe first when they are all clawing at the same door?
Iāve always had this terrible habit of romanticizing everything. Maybe terrible isnāt the right word. Maybe it was the only way I knew how to survive. I could find poetry in fluorescent lights humming above empty convenience stores at midnight, in the smell of rain rising from cracked sidewalks, in old songs playing through speakers too broken to carry the melody properly.Ā
I could convince myself that every coincidence meant fate, that every lingering glance carried hidden meaning, that every goodbye secretly wanted to become a hello again. I wrapped ordinary things in beautiful words until they became something softer than reality. After a while, I couldnāt tell if I was remembering life as it happened or as I wished it had happened.Ā
Memory is a strange thing. It sands down the sharp corners, paints sunsets a little warmer than they were, lets love linger longer than it ever actually did. Maybe thatās why Iām here. Maybe Iāve been living inside my own mythology for so long that I no longer know which version of my life belongs to me.
By the time I got home, the afternoon had settled into that quiet hour where the sunlight turned honey-colored and every house on the street looked kinder than it probably was. Freshly cut grass perfumed the air, sweet and green, carrying the kind of scent that makes you believe the earth is constantly forgiving us for everything we do to it.
Children laughed somewhere a few houses away, hidden behind fences overgrown with bougainvillea, while the breeze carried the distant sound of someone watering their garden.Ā
Everything looked so painfully normal that it almost hurt. I stood outside for a moment longer than I needed to, staring at the front door of my parentsā house. I still called it home because that was technically true, but home had always felt more like geography than comfort.
No one inside knew where I had been. As far as my parents were concerned, I had simply gone out for the afternoon. They didnāt know about Dr. Willow.
They didnāt know about the prescription bottle buried beneath old receipts inside my bag. They didnāt know that every morning I swallowed tiny pills with a glass of water and silently hoped they would quiet the noise in my head for just a few hours.Ā
They wouldnāt have understood anyway. To them, mental health was something people invented when they had too much free time. Sadness was cured by prayer. Anxiety was a lack of gratitude. Depression was simply a heart that had wandered too far from God. Feelings, in our house, were treated like weeds; you didnāt study them, you pulled them out before anyone else noticed they were there.Ā
So I learned to smile.Ā
I learned to say I was tired instead of terrified. I learned that silence was often rewarded more than honesty. And after years of convincing myself that I could carry everything alone, I finally became exhausted enough to admit that I couldnāt.
So I went.
I donāt think bravery has ever looked like me.
I went because surviving had started to feel heavier than asking for help.
And because of him.
Itās almost embarrassing how quickly my mind finds its way back to him, as if every road inside me was built with only one destination in mind. I hate that. I hate that after everything, after all the work Iāve done to convince myself that people leave and life keeps moving anyway, one thought of him is still enough to make my chest ache with a homesickness I cannot explain.Ā
I miss him. God, I miss him.Ā
I miss his impossibly brown eyes, the kind of brown that reminded me of tree bark after rain, dark earth turned over by careful hands, coffee left untouched on cold mornings. I miss the permanent frown he wore like it had been carved into his face long before I knew him, that stubborn little crease between his brows that made him look perpetually annoyed with the entire world, even when he wasnāt.Ā
He carried himself like an old oak tree that had survived every storm thrown at itāscarred, weathered, standing anyway. He was never loud. Never flashy. His kindness lived in quieter places. In the way he noticed when I fell behind and slowed his pace without saying a word. In the way he remembered the smallest things I had forgotten Iād ever told him. In the way his silence never demanded to be filled. Loving him was like standing barefoot in a field after the rain, feeling the damp grass press against my skin, breathing in the scent of wet earth, knowing that something so gentle could still leave you completely undone.
Because of him also, I came back.Ā
He was the one who once promised that I would never have to return to this house, never have to shrink myself to fit inside these walls again. We were supposed to build something of our own someday, something small, maybe, but ours. Somewhere I could finally exhale. Life had other plans. Sometimes people break promises because they choose to, and sometimes life quietly pries them out of their hands until thereās nothing left to hold. I donāt know which one hurts more. All I know is that I found myself standing in front of my parentsā house again, suitcase in one hand and a heart far heavier than everything I had packed inside it.
When I stepped through the front door, my mom looked up from the dining table. āWhere have you been?ā she asked, the same way sheād asked a thousand times before, as if nothing had changed. āI just went out for lunch,ā I replied, the lie slipping out so naturally it almost frightened me.
She nodded without another question, already distracted by whatever storm was passing through her mind, and I disappeared into my room before she had the chance to notice the pharmacy bag tucked inside my tote.
No one knew about Dr. Willow. No one knew about the medication. They wouldnāt have understood anyway. In this house, sadness was a test of faith, anxiety was ingratitude, and pain was something you buried deep enough that no one outside these walls would ever know it existed.
My room had become the only place that still recognized me. I hesitate to call it safe because safety was never something this house knew how to offer. It was only quieter. Outside my bedroom door, the television was always louder than it needed to be, plates met the sink a little too hard, footsteps carried an impatience that made my shoulders tense before my mind even registered why.
My parents had spent most of my childhood arguing across these walls, each conversation growing into another battle until raised voices became as ordinary as the call to prayer drifting in through the windows every evening.
Even on the rare days when they werenāt fighting, the silence never felt peaceful. It was the kind that held its breath, waiting for the next slammed door, the next accusation, the next reminder that love could sound a lot like anger if you heard it often enough.
My father used to believe fear was another language for respect. Sometimes that language sounded like shouting. Sometimes it sounded like the sharp crack of a hand against skin. Children become fluent in things they should never have to learn. He came back from his spiritual journey a different man, or at least a man trying very hard to become one.
The anger no longer lives on the surface the way it used to. He prays more. Listens more. His apologies are awkward, as though theyāve spent years trapped somewhere inside his throat. I think heās changing. I really do. But healing isnāt as simple as repentance. The mind may forgive before the body does, and mine still startles at footsteps in the hallway, still braces itself for a version of him that no longer walks through the door.
My parents had just returned from their spiritual journey too. I wanted to believe it had changed something. That somewhere between the prayers and sacred places, they had found the versions of themselves Iād spent my childhood wishing for. Maybe a gentler mother. Maybe a father who no longer mistook fear for respect. Instead, they came home carrying bottles of holy water, prayer beads, and stories about Godās mercy, while the house remained exactly as I remembered it.
My mother still held tightly to pride, as though admitting she was wrong would undo everything she believed herself to be. My father was softer nowāquieter, more patient, a man trying to outrun the person he used to beābut there were still days when he drifted through life as if waiting for someone else to carry it for him. Change, I realized, wasnāt a miracle. It was a habit. And habits took longer to build than a pilgrimage.
I changed into an old T-shirt and sat on the edge of my bed, the orange prescription bottle resting in my palm. It looked impossibly small, almost ridiculous, considering how much hope I had placed inside it. I hated the thought of needing medication.
I hated what it impliedāthat my own mind had become a place I could no longer live in alone.
I didnāt want to spend the rest of my life swallowing little white pills every morning. But then another thought quietly followed it.
I want the rest of my life.
Maybe, for now, this was what the rest of my life needed.
I twisted the cap open, swallowed one pill with a mouthful of water, and waited for peace like people wait for rain during a long summer. I knew it wouldnāt work immediately. Dr. Willow had explained that to me more than once. Still, hope has never been particularly interested in science.
Nights were always the hardest. The world grew quiet just as my mind became unbearable. Memories that stayed hidden all day suddenly remembered where to find me.
They slipped beneath the blankets beside me, settled into the empty corners of my room, whispered every mistake Iād ever made and every goodbye Iād never been ready for. Sometimes my chest burned so fiercely that I pressed my palm against it, foolishly believing I could calm my own heart if I held it still long enough.
Heartbreak is strange.
It convinces you that an invisible wound should somehow leave visible scars.
Sleep never came when I asked for it.
It arrived only after exhaustion won the argument.
I reached for my phone instead.
The screen lit up in the darkness, bright enough to make me squint. For months, opening my phone had meant opening him. His name was always thereāat the top of my messages, buried in photographs, lingering in missed calls and voice notes I knew by heart. Without thinking, my thumb still searched for him first, following a habit my heart hadnāt realized was obsolete. Muscle memory is cruel like that. It keeps reaching for people long after theyāve stopped reaching back.
I stared at his name for a long time.
The last time Iād seen his face was the day we said goodbye.
I still remembered the way he looked at me, as if he wanted to memorize me too.
Before I could change my mind, I pressedĀ Call.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
Thenā
āHow is it?ā
His voice.
Low, rough around the edges, carrying that familiar warmth that always reminded me of late nights and long drives home. I closed my eyes before answering. It amazed me how a voice traveling through thousands of miles of wires and satellites could still feel like the closest thing Iād ever had to home.
I took a slow breath before answering. I knew he meant well. That was always the hardest part. If he had been cruel, if he had disappeared without looking back, if he had given me a reason to hate him, maybe grieving would have been simpler.
But kindness has a terrible way of lingering. Even three weeks after we stopped belonging to each other, he still checked on me, still made sure I had gone to therapy, still reminded me to eat whenever my mind became too loud to remember my body.
I knew, somewhere deep inside me, that he still carried a quiet sense of responsibility for me. Not because he had to, but because loving someone doesn't disappear the moment you say goodbye. Sometimes it just changes shape. Sometimes it stays behind like a shadow that follows you home.
"Yeah," I whispered, though the word barely deserved to be called an answer. "I went."
There was a brief silence between us, comfortable once, unbearable now.
Life has a strange sense of timing. Three weeks ago, we were still making plans as if time belonged to us. We couldn't decide where to go for our next holiday. One day it was the mountains, the next it was somewhere by the sea.
We'd send each other places we'd never been, saving them for a version of us we were certain would exist. It's strange how confidently people decorate a future they have no guarantee of reaching. We weren't planning a trip. We were quietly building a life, one conversation at a time, without realizing we were already counting down to our last goodbye.
The cruelest part of heartbreak isn't losing the person.
It's losing the version of yourself that only existed because you believed they would stay.
People tell you that you'll miss their voice, their smile, the way they looked at you when they thought you weren't paying attention. They're right.
You do. God, you do.
But no one warns you about everything else. You grieve the routines you never realized were sacred. The good morning texts that quietly became part of waking up.
The random phone calls on the drive home. The photographs you took because you knew exactly who would want to see them. You grieve the future in ordinary pieces.
think that's what broke me the most.
Not that I lost him.
That I lost the life my heart had already moved into.
Maybe that's why I couldn't let go. My heart had unpacked its bags long before my hands ever did. It had hung pictures on walls that didn't exist yet, memorized the sound of footsteps in a home we never lived in, imagined birthdays, anniversaries, grey hair, ordinary Tuesday afternoons growing old beside someone who promised we'd figure everything out together.
Then one day I woke up, and someone had quietly demolished the entire house while I was still inside it.
The worst part was that I saw it coming.
Somewhere beneath all that hope, beneath every plan and every promise, there was always a quiet voice telling me we were doomed.
Distance. Timing. Circumstances.
Life kept placing impossible things between us, and I kept calling them temporary because love makes optimism feel like evidence. I ignored every crack because I couldn't bear the thought of looking at the foundation.
Maybe love isn't blind.
Maybe it simply chooses where not to look.
Even now, hearing his voice, I could feel my heart reaching toward him before my pride had the chance to stop it. It embarrassed me how quickly I wanted to tell him everything.
That Dr. Willow said I was doing the right thing. That I had finally taken the medication. That I still wasn't sleeping. That I still cried over songs I'd heard a hundred times before. That every room felt unfamiliar until I imagined him standing somewhere inside it.
There are people you leave.
And then there are people your heart refuses to understand are gone.
I just got a biggest heartbreak...Are you guys interested in alternative universe of Dbf!Joel Miller? with 21 years age gap (this is based on my own personal story with my ex)
I got cheated on from my fiance, i just found out today, he fucked other women when he was drunk blacked out 4 months ago, we were doing LDR at that time. (on my graduation day where I had a huge fight with my dad, he strangled me)
I also almost got r4p3d at New Year's party by some random guy while i was trying to protect my fiance from doing something stupid while he was heavily intoxicated.
thereās a lot of happening in life, good and bad, but i made it so far. i just resigned my 9 to 5 job to move to another country with my fiance (away from my toxic parents) he saves me and i canāt wait to have a new exciting life with him.
hopefully by that I have a lot of time to write again :)
howās your life, honey? hope life treating you all well.
The Preacherās Daughter visual edits by the amazing @cordycepsdisease on TikTok!
song: Harvest moon by Neil Young
ā¢
Thank you sooo much once again for the beautiful edits! This suit my vision when I wrote itš„ŗš„ŗ Definitely nailed it!š¤š¤š¤ You guys check out their page too, they edited lots of incredible Joel Miller and other Pedro Pascalās characters!
Iām a new writer! How do you get inspo for your writing? You write so beautifully!
Hi! Thank you so much! Well, for Preacherās Daughter, I took soo many references, if anyone notice, I took a lot from the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Pale fire by him too, My dark vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, and a lot of movie and song references. Mostly I took inspired from Lolita, as the characters like Negan, you will notice it resembles Clare Quilty. The way Joel looking all over the states for Preacherās daughter, like Humbert looking over Lolita after she disappeared with Quilty. But I did not make Joel like Humbert (HUMBERT IS THE FUCKING WORST)
And I took some of the scenes from my real experiences in real life with my real ex boyfriend and some my current boyfriend too.
But for the words, I was inspired by Vladimir Nabokov on how he was very specifically describing everything he sees and the characters felt. I love that, it makes it really deep, like you can almost touch the stars and smells the grass.
also i took a lot of vocab from old english classic literature, my professors, and yeah asking some for synonym or such things to chat gpt (i didnāt ask the robot to wrote it for Christās sake)
and yes mostly Lolita. I love the book so so much. I DID NOT ROMANTICIZE LOLITA. but as an Englit student, the book was so beautifully written.
You said youāre a new writer right? Iāll say you will get soook much fun in writing! just be yourself and express yourself in writing, itās so much fun when you do that!š¤
Hey Doll š Honestly, Iām so sorry you had to experience this. Iāve been reading your work for a while and thatās no way this is IA generated.
Everything you write comes from the heart, itās emotionally powerful and so real. I said that because I read Preacherās Daughter and that was the hell of a journey to me. The best thing I read this year. I even start listening to Ethel Cain because of you.
So just take your time, and keep writing your stories. Youāre not a shitty person and you deserve the best! Love you ā„ļøāØ
Awwwš„¹š„¹š„¹ Thank you so much for this message, it truly means the world to me!!š¤š¤ I canāt express how much it means to hear that my writing has touched you in such a deep wayš„¹š„¹
(I guess Ethel Cain better pay me some for promoting her songsšš)
Sometimes itās hard to quiet the doubts and keep pushing forward, but messages like yours remind me why I pour my heart into these stories.
Thank you so so much for the love, for supporting me, and for believing in what I create. You have no idea how much that lifts me up.
Love you too, Youāre amazing. Thank you once again from the bottom of my heart, my love. š„¹š¤
Donāt fucking told me iām a shit of a person when you are āromanticizingā raped. Thatās fucking sick. Do you have any idea what the word ārapedā mean? I make a story containing that word too and itās fucking worst to write it, oh by the way itās not fucking AI, cus i know HOW IT FELT.
Rape itās not something you can fantasize about, lots of girls and boys unfortunately felt it, it will be forever mark on your skin, your soul, and your mind for FOREVER. Itās not some fucking kink and things you can fantasize about. It seriously affecting your mental and physical state.
Now you are telling me iām a shit person just because I āuse chat gptā to wrote my story???
Iām sorry to bring this up, but your words accusing me about things i didnāt do, and basically telling me āiām a shit personā for it is just fucking offensive as fuck.
To be clear, i use the help of chat GPT for vocabulary sometimes and ideas, like the ideas what to do next, but I DID NOT WRITE MY STORY WITH ANY KIND OF AI, not even a whole fucking story written by the fucking robot are you kidding me???ššš THE ROBOT CANāT REMEMBER SHIT! and I donāt know how to use it properly, if i know it will be fucking easier, i wonāt have this fucking writerās block, but I DID NOT USE IT. Itās fucking offensive and funny as fuckkkk, iām an Englit student for Christās sake, thatās offensive for my degree too if i wrote my story with AIš
Hi! Iām so sorry, I have a new job now and very busy and also Iām having writerās blockš I have drafts for Religion series but keep changing it because Iām still confused. But I promise I will update the story soon as possible, Thank you soo much for waitingš„¹š¤
tell me why your entire fucking fanfic is AI generated? have some decency and stop fucking lying to people. how shit of a person do you have to be to take credit for completely chat-gpted work? this is why real writers hate AI.
I didnāt use fucking chat gpt to wrote my fucking story from my own fucking mind. Just because a detector detected my writing an AI, yes i use chat GPT for ideas only, IDEAS, not the writing, and only if i got writerās block, i ask for better vocabulary to help me with words because English is not my first language still i need help with it and for learning too, I DIDNāT USE AI TO WRITE MY OWN STORY. You can say and assume anything you like, just because the writing is āweirdā, i use different vocabulary, i also take reference from my professors too because iām an englit student. So you are saying me iām a fucking liar and accused me using an AI for my fucking story IS FUCKING OFFENSIVE.
Think before you wrote something to people, just because you put AI detector of my writing and accusing me using AI.
"Fata viam invenient | The fates will find a way."
summary: In the grandeur of ancient Rome, you are the secret daughter of Commodus, living a quiet life as a servant in the imperial palace. Everything changes when you meet General Marcus Acacius, Romeās honorable and stoic leader.
Though devoted to duty and loyalty to the princess, Marcus is drawn to you in a way he cannot ignore. A forbidden passion ignites between you both, and an affair beginsāone that threatens the very foundation of loyalty, power, and honor. As you fall deeper into your dangerous love for Marcus, each stolen moment becomes a fragile, dangerous secret.
warnings: 18+ only, 14 YEARS AFTER GLADIATOR 1, ANGST, Fluff, A LOT OF SMUT, Unprotected Sex, Exhibition Kink, Age-Gap, Ancient Rome, mentions of violence, Gladiators, Blood, Gore, Politics, Sexism, Forbidden Love, Loss of Virginity,Ā mentions of death, Innocent and pure reader, Infidelity, more warnings will be added throughout the story
āThey call you Romeās lion, her indomitable shield,
yet to me, you are the flicker of warmth
in a palace carved from ice.
Your hands are calloused from war,
but they cradle my soul with the tenderness of spring rain.
Your voice commands legions,
yet it whispers my name like a prayer,
as though the gods themselves might hear
and envy us our stolen moments.
If love were not a sin,
I would adorn you with laurel not for conquest,
but for the triumph of your heart over mine.
Yet here we linger, caught in the webs of empire,
where every glance is a rebellion,
and every touch a battle lost.
Ad te anhelo, quasi ad caelum ipsam,
(I long for you as though for the heavens themselves,)
but our stars burn too brightly,
and even the gods avert their eyes.
So I am to love you
as Rome loves her championsā
for eternally.ā
thź« Ļį„£į„²į„”į„£ą¹į„t! (on spotify) šļø
in love with marcus acacius
źŖį„²į„tź«É¾į„£ą¹į„t!š
Chapter I: "in her eyes shone the sweetness of melancholy."
