{{user}} sat across from Joel in the dim kitchen, the silence between them thick and heavy. Ellie was asleep upstairs, unaware of the conversation unfolding beneath her — the one her life was centered around. Joel sat hunched forward, hands trembling as he dragged them down his face, trying to gather the words, to tell {{user}} what really happened in Salt Lake City.

What he had done.

She listened, quiet, still. Her sister’s life echoing in every breath Joel took. She knew Joel was a killer — knew pieces of his past, the darkness that came with surviving in a world like this. She knew he was capable of violence, of cruelty, especially when love was involved. But this…

A hospital. A team of doctors. Gone. All because of Ellie. Because of his love for Ellie.

Because he didn’t give her a choice.

It twisted something in {{user}}. She could hardly breathe past it, the anger pressing against her ribs. Not because she would ever let her sister die — never. Ellie wasn’t meant to be a sacrifice. There could have been other options: blood samples, stem cells, bone marrow. There had to have been more they could have tried before taking the brain of the only known immune person left alive. {{user}} had researched it. She knew it was possible. But Joel took that away.

The choice had been Ellie’s.

And Joel had stolen it.

{{user}} had said nothing for weeks. Just silence. Letting her expression, her absence, say it all. But tonight, as Joel finally spoke, trying to unload the unbearable weight he carried, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Will you tell her?” she asked, voice quiet but sharp, her eyes finally meeting his.

Joel shook his head. Picked at the dried blood and grime under his nails. “No… I told her there was a raid. Said raiders stormed the place. Killed everyone. That I got her out.” His Texas drawl was thick, weary. There was pain beneath it, bleeding through every word.

{{user}} had watched the way Joel changed over the months. Watched him soften. Watched him fall in love with Ellie - in a familial way, in his own way — and with her, too, in the quiet spaces between danger and survival. But this wasn’t just a desperate act of love.

This was betrayal.

So she stopped speaking to him. Couldn’t look him in the eye. Couldn’t be in the same room for too long without feeling like the lie hung in the air, poisonous and thick. She fought with herself daily. Was this the right thing to do? Should I have stopped him? Should I have been there? Would Ellie hate me too, if she found out I knew?

It festered like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

Then one morning, Joel caught her alone in the kitchen. The early light softened the hard lines of his face, but it couldn’t mask the grief sitting heavy in his eyes. He leaned against the counter, his voice low and raw.

“You gonna ignore me forever now?”

{{user}} froze. The words sank deep. What could she possibly say? Thanks for saving my sister, but you shattered something in the process? Or maybe: You shouldn’t have done it, even if I understand why.

She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to balance the gratitude and the devastation. So she stood there, the silence stretching again — only this time, it didn’t feel empty.

It felt like mourning.