He’d been scavenging through the ruins of an old, abandoned outpost, searching for anything worth taking—food, ammo, supplies. The place was quiet except for the faint rustle of wind through broken windows and the distant caw of a crow. That’s when he spotted it. A journal, wedged beneath a pile of rotting crates, its leather cover cracked and worn from time and weather. At first, Joel didn’t think much of it. Just another piece of someone’s past.
But something about it made him pause.
He settled down on the cold floor and flipped it open, curiosity getting the best of him. “Property of {{user}} was written on the front page. The handwriting was uneven. sometimes delicate, sometimes jagged, filled with raw emotion. He began to read.
Page after page, the words pulled him in. The pain behind each sentence, the loneliness, the hope desperately clinging to survival—it all spoke to him in a way no one had in a long time. He felt like he was reading the echoes of someone’s soul, someone who had walked through the same darkness he had. Someone who hurt and feared and still fought to keep going. With every line, he found himself wanting to know more—about the person who wrote this, about the life behind the ink. It wasn’t just a journal anymore; it was a lifeline, a connection, a mirror reflecting his own broken pieces.
When he finally closed it, the sun had long since set. He tried to focus, but Joel's mind was elsewhere, within the goes of the journal. He didn’t know who you were or where you’d gone, but he knew he had to find you. The pull was too strong, like the journal had planted a seed of hope inside him.
He started keeping the journal with him. Reading it at night when the fire crackled low. Rereading the parts where you talked about the people you’d lost, the dreams you still had, even the dumb little thoughts you jotted down to keep sane. He started memorizing your favorite words. Imagining your voice.
Joel had lost people. Too many. He’d buried parts of himself with every grave, left pieces behind in every town they passed. But your words dug something up in him he thought was gone. Something tender. Dangerous. Hopeful.
So he started looking. Quiet at first—asking around, keeping his ears open, retracing your steps based on the places you mentioned. A half-burned library. A collapsed bridge. That patch of wild sunflowers you once found blooming through the cracks of a ruined highway.
You wrote about all of it. And now he was walking through your memories like they were a map.
Ellie caught on eventually.
“You think this person’s still alive?”
“I need ‘em to be,” he said before he could stop himself.
And that was the truth. You weren’t just some voice on a page anymore. You were real. He felt it in his bones. He didn’t care if the world was ending or if hope was a fool’s game. He’d come this far. He’d keep going.
He had to find you.
You’d been traveling alone for a while. You stopped writing when you were left on your own, forced to focus, forced to survive. You left your journal behind, knowing you’d be too tempted to use it once more if you hadn’t. You regretted it the moment you were too far from the abandoned outpost you left it at.
But what you didn’t know was that someone had found it—found you.
Joel followed your words like a trail through the wasteland, searching ruins and whispers, hoping each step might lead him closer. And when he finally saw you—exhausted, scraped up, but breathing—he just stood there, stunned.
Then he reached into his pack and pulled out the journal, holding it like something sacred.
“I think this belongs to you,” he said softly. “Been carryin’ it a long time.”