Bright Stars, Long Shadows
After years of travelling on foot from Coast to Coast, you stumble into Jackson, Wyoming. Surprisingly, a community with strong walls and one that offers safety. Haunted by loss and fiercely independent, you intend to keep your head down and leave before anyone can get too close.
But Jackson has a way of holding on to people. You find friendship, a place to belong, and you grudgingly keep crossing paths with Joel: the guarded man who met you under fire and still hasn’t figured you out.
Uneasy Connections Form - built on reluctant trust, shared survival, and moments that feel like desperate peace. Yet, danger is never far and old wounds with long shadows still linger, even under the brightest stars.
The Last of Us: Canon Universe, Post-Outbreak, Post Jackson Takes Place between TLOU Part I + TLOU Part II: Mostly Inspired by the Game, with slight Elements from the Show Joel x Reader with Eventual Sex/Smut/Romance Multiple POVs Multiple Chapters Author Will Add More Tags As This Progresses. . .
https://archiveofourown.org/works/69143591/chapters/179201611
Prequel: Salt and Static
Ellie’s POV
Early September 2034
Ellie thought coming to Jackson would be the end of her worries. A community that had promised safety, food, beds, and showers. . . She would like to let the water run down her hair right now. Yet, she was so far out and had been for days, that she didn’t know how long it would be until she got to enjoy hot water again. She was just getting used to settling in the community, something that Ellie thought would never be possible. After overhearing Tommy and Joel talk about what had happened in Salt Lake City, the hospital, and the Fireflies – she took her pistol and her blade, leaving without hearing Joel’s side of the story.
When she had stumbled upon Joel and Tommy, it was late and the town was quiet. Ellie was supposed to be in bed, not out on the streets, but the idea of a walk at night with the safety of the fenced community allured her. She was walking past the stables, taking a shortcut home, when she heard voices and she stopped when she heard her name. Joel’s voice was low and hoarse, “I never told Ellie, about the Fireflies. About what they were gonna do to her.”
Tommy cursed under his breath before responding. “You serious? She doesn’t know?”
“No,” Joel said in dread. “And she can’t. They were gonna kill her in a fail-attempt to make a cure. Slice her open. I couldn’t let ‘em.”
Ellie’s blood had gone cold. She stumbled back, thankful for the barn to catch her, she could feel her heart hammering through her chest, bile rising in her throat. ‘There's no way they would've killed me,’ she thought to herself. ‘He didn’t let me choose.’
She took off running, her feet slamming against the asphalt of the road, her brunette ponytail swaying in the rhythm. Ellie no longer admired the surrounding buildings that were brought back to life, the mountains in the distance, or how clear and calm the dark sky was above her. She ran to the edge of town, moisture in her eyes, and slamming open the door of the two-story house that was built facing the gardens.
By the time Joel had walked through the door, he had found her packing in her room - shoving supplies into her bag, rage radiating off her. “Where the hell do you think you’re goin’?” he had demanded.
“Out.”
“You’re not –”
“You lied to me,” she hissed. “You looked me in the face and told me they’d stopped lookin’. That I wasn’t needed. That there was nothing left for me to do.”
Joel had stepped forward, regret in every line of his face. “I was tryin’ to protect you.”
“From what? From being what I was born to be? From making a difference?!” Ellie’s voice cracked as she yelled back at him. She turned her head to lock eyes with him. Yet, her stare was unmet – he was standing in the corner, his hands hiding in the pockets of his jeans. With his head hung low, he was at a loss for words... it was the first time she had seen Joel like that.
He let out a sigh, breaking the momentarily silence in the heated moment. "Now, that's Marlene talkin'-"
"You don't mention her!" Ellie shouted out. Marlene was her friend and the leader of the Fireflies, she wouldn't hurt Ellie. Marlene wouldn't betray her or lie to her. The woman had promised so back in the Boston QZ. Ellie took a breath, locking eyes with him, before lowering her voice. “I thought I mattered to you.”
“You do.”
“Then why didn’t you let me choose?” Tears were now running down her cheeks. “You ever think maybe I deserved the truth?”
His silence after that had said everything.
Ellie had stormed past him, swinging her pack on her back. She left the house, went down the street, and out the gates. Joel didn’t follow. Maybe he had thought that she would come back. Maybe he had thought that she had needed some space. Or maybe. . . just maybe, he knew that she wouldn’t and didn’t know how to convince her otherwise. . .
She went alone, her blade and her pistol with her, and a fury so bright it kept her warm through the snow.
It took six days to get to Salt Lake City. She had taken a few wrong turns and took a long detour, avoiding infected and raiders. The hospital was still there: dead, rotting, burned through with time. But the story remained in bloodstains and broken stretchers.
She found a dust-covered file, her name inked at the top.
Subject: Female, Approximately 14 Years Old, IMMUNE!!! Procedure: Craniotomy with Total Extraction of Cerebral Tissue. Outcome: Fatal.
Her legs gave out beneath her and she screamed until her throat bled. She had felt betrayed. Marlene had told Ellie that she could provide a cure - to end the infection. A cure to return the world to ‘normal’, whatever that had meant. Yet, for someone that was supposed to be her friend, Marlene had never told her that to provide a cure to the world that she would cease to exist. Her death would have been the price for life to relish again.
Ellie sank into the gritty, dirt-covered floor. Dust had floated in the air near her. She didn’t care - all she could feel was the rage that ran through her veins. Rage against the fact that her and Riley had been bitten. Anger that the infection had taken over Riley, where she was controlled by the cordyceps, her mind gone and her body a hollow shell for the evil to host that haunted her world. Rage against Marlene for lying to her: for giving Ellie hope that she could help people and save the world, lying to her about the price that she would have to pay to be able to do so. Rage against Joel for twisting the truth. He said that there were more like her, that the Fireflies had quit looking for a cure, and that he had taken the choice away from her. The opportunity for her life to mean something, other than just filling her lungs with air and bypassing the cordyceps instead of becoming it.
She placed the file in her pack, walking through the hospital halls again. Rust-colored splatters had lined the halls and the decaying linoleum. The walls were full of Firefly graffiti - ‘When there is Darkness, Look for the Light.’ Ellie had entered a room, where there was a desk littered with books, binders, and notes. On top of the notepad, there was a tape recorder. She rewound it, sitting down in the chair and propping her feet up on the edge of the desk. It clicked in her ear, she quickly grabbed the notepad and pressed play.
“April 28th. Marlene was right. The girl’s infection is like nothing I’ve ever seen. The cause of her immunity is uncertain. As we’ve seen in all past cases, the antigenic titers of the patient’s cordyceps remain high in both the serum and the cerebrospinal fluid. Blood cultures from the patient rapidly grow cordyceps in a fungal-media in the lab . . . however white blood cell lines, including percentages and absolute-counts, are completely normal. There is no elevation of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and an MRI of the brain shows no evidence of fungal-growth in the limbic regions, which would normally accompany the prodrome of aggression in infected patients.” “We must find a way to replicate this state under laboratory conditions. We’re about to hit a milestone in human history equal to the discovery of penicillin. After years of wandering in circles, we’re about to come home, make a difference, and bring the human race back into control of its own destiny. All of our sacrifice and the hundred of men and women who’ve bled for this cause, or worse, will not be in vain.”
The notepad was filled with notes. Filled with handwriting of another language - medical jargon that she didn't understand, it was all bullshit. She swiped the desk bare with her arms in anger, loud crashes had filled the hallway. Ellie’s eyes had blurred with tears, but the recorder was still encased in her palm. With a grunt, she wiped her eyes, looking up to see a lab attached to the room. She went in, lights flashing on and off as if she were at a rave. Black and white images of a head were hanging from the wall. She could make out the faint silhouette of a facial profile, she recognized the shape of the nose after giving it careful concentration - it was her. Ellie had ripped them down, holding them close to look at her brain. She was frustrated, unable to make out anything that seemed out of the ordinary. She crumbled the edges of the plastic film in her hand, crushing a fist against a desk. A box had clattered against the table top. Ellie had reached for it, realizing it was another recording device. She pressed play.
“It’s 5:30 PM on . . . April 28th. I just finished speaking . . . More like yelling at our head surgeon. Apparently there’s no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host. Fancy way of saying we gotta kill the fucking kid. And now they’re asking for my go ahead. The tests just keep getting harder and harder, don’t they? I’m so tired. I’m exhausted and I just want this to end. . . So be it.”
Ellie had recognized the voice - Marlene's. There was a blank static on the device, making the pain in her chest grow. Joel had been right all along, Ellie was just cargo to the Fireflies. She was only a package to deliver. . . not a person. Not Ellie. She was just a walking cure, something they could use to fix the world that they had broken. Her eyes watered, her vision becoming blurry as she held the device to her ear. The static stopped, beginning to play a quiet breath before it began to speak.
“Hey Anna. . . It’s been awhile since we spoke. I uh… I just gave the go ahead to proceed with the surgery. I really doubt I had much of a choice, asking me was more of a formality. I need you to know that I’ve kept my promise all these years… despite everything that I was in charge of, I looked after her. I would’ve done anything for her, and at times… Here’s a chance to save us… all of us. This is what we were after… what you were after. They asked me to kill the smuggler. I’m not about to kill the one man in this facility that might understand the weight of this choice. Maybe he can forgive me. Oh, I miss you, Anna. Your daughter will be with you soon.”
The recorder stopped. Ellie’s mouth was gaped.
Marlene had known her mother.
Marlene had known her mother and still wanted to do this to her.
Correction - Marlene had known her mother and Ellie and still wanted to do this to her. To let them cut open her skull and extract her brain.
Ellie struck her fist into the table top, smashing the tape recorder into pieces that littered the surface and the ground. The ‘pings’ and ‘clatters’ of little pieces had filled the hollow space. Tears were running down her face, she had been used to cruelty - sure. Yet, this had torn a new hole in her heart. She went towards the door, the surgeon’s recorder now in her pocket and the MRI images in her hand. Ellie went down a few halls and staircases, exploring the forgotten building, before finding a locker room. On a bench, there was a duffle bag still packed. Ellie had rummaged through it, finding another recorder. She took a deep breath and expelled it, wiping tears on the back of her jacket sleeve before pressing play.
“Most people have left already. I don’t know which group I’m going to join. I was one of the ones that wanted to go after the smuggler and the girl. They said… Even if we found her, or by some miracle found someone else that’s immune, it’d make no difference. ‘Cause the only person who could develop a vaccine is dead.”
Ellie had rewound it, playing it over and over as she walked out of the building. The sun had warmed her cheeks, but her eyes were red from dust and tears. The message stuck in her mind: “‘Cause the only person who could develop a vaccine is dead.”
She didn’t know how far she was from Jackson, but she felt like she had been running for weeks. Perhaps, she had – she just never stopped to rest or take a break for a long period of time. She also didn't keep track of time. Bein out in the open didn't give her that luxury. Ellie wasn’t supposed to be this far out. She knew it. Joel would know it, too - especially when he realized she’d taken her pistol and her blade, leaving town without a word. The fight was still ringing in her ears, loud and messy and cruel. The information she had found at the hospital had made her chest feel heavy. Her head and shoulders ached, but her pack now weighing more than it had before she left may have had something to do with that. Mud caked her boots, her breath in gasps, and she was too far gone to care. She just needed space, time - anything to stop thinking about Salt Lake City, the hospital, the Fireflies. . . But then the barking started.
It was sharp, purposeful, not the frantic yapping of wild dogs. These were barks of dogs that were trained, focused, and coming fast. Ellie spun, hand already on her blade. Two black dogs - sleek, muscular, and deadly - emerged in the near distance, gaining speed upon seeing her. She quickly ran in between two deteriorated buildings, not realizing it was a dead end. “Shit–”. The dogs were there, flanking her in the corner that she had mistakenly put herself in. One barked, low and guttural. The other growled, advancing a step. Ellie’s heart thundered in her ears. She raised her knife, but didn’t move
“I don’t wanna hurt you,” she warned, voice shaking despite herself. “Back off.”
She truly didn’t want to hurt the dogs. From being born to the carnage of what was left of the Earth, it was rare to see animals. Plus, she loved dogs. She hoped that they would back down and leave her be. The growls and the gleam of the light on their canines told her otherwise.
“Shoo!”
The dogs had stayed stationed in front of her, not moving, just staring at her.
“Echo. Rock.” A woman’s sharp voice cut through the crumbling brick of the alley. She barely glanced at Ellie - just a flick of her eyes - as if her demon dogs weren’t a threat. “Down.” The dogs took a step back, but refused to take their eyes off Ellie. Their ears pulled back and their tails still in the air. Alert.
Then the woman – you – appeared in front of her. You were tall, a rifle slung across your back like it belonged there. Your pack was patched with faded National Park patches and pins, the kind Ellie had seen in tourist centers that were now moldy graves. You wore a canvas jacket and jeans, faded but sturdy, and the glint of a blade flashed in your boot as you shifted your weight on your heels. Your hair was long, wavy at the ends as it curled out of habit, not vanity. You looked like you’d walked out of a hiking guide and into the apocalypse with tired eyes and steady hands.
You whistled low, crossing your arms in front of your chest. You were summoning the canines that were in front of her to do something, but the girl didn't know what and it terrified her.
Ellie’s grip had tightened around her blade, white knuckled. The woman was calm, but the dogs weren’t – neither was Ellie.