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Chapter Text

It was fucking cold in the desert. Of course it was. Why wouldn't it be in the middle of January? It's funny the things you notice when you're stuck in one position, unmoving though. It's funny how much the cold soaks into your bones when you're out in the middle of nowhere.

Tommy felt like he was stupid to join up suddenly. Joel had told him he was stupid to join up fresh out of high school, but he hadn't believed him then. Joel had called his feelings of patriotism a "pointless hero complex" and a "desire to prove himself to be a man." Joel had called it nationalism. Joel had said he had a skewed sense of identity. Really, in summary, Joel was pissed and had said a lot of things. Then he said nothing for several hours, and Tommy had sworn he heard him sobbing in the room over.

Joel had hugged Tommy really tight when he headed off to basic. When he finished, they were immediately shipping him off to Desert Storm, but it made no point to think about that now. It was fucking cold in the desert, and Tommy was freezing his dick off waiting for movement in the sand. He felt like he might shoot a lizard if it looked at him wrong, like he would even see signs of natural life at this time of day in this time of year.

Tommy couldn't even remember what he was supposed to be guarding anymore. His head was thick with sand, and the hard winds whipping around his cover blew in thoughts about how he had just recently graduated. He wasn't ever going to college, he knew that now, but it might be because he fucking died out here. Next to him, his buddy Alex was posted. Alex had become his spotter, and it had bonded them only closer. That's what made this all so terrifying. Tommy hoped there would be no scuffle, and no forgotten gunshots in the desert today, but hope wouldn't stop anything when it came down to it. Tommy knew that hope meant nothing out here.

He licked his chapped lips and allowed himself to dip his head for a moment. There wasn't enough moisture in his body left to cry any real tears, but he didn't want to spare himself water from his rations until he knew this bout of emotion had passed. Even feeling like he was freezing, even though the desert was cold today, it still drained all the moisture from his body with ease. No point in drinking just to cry it all out though, but he wished he could cry, nonetheless. He was homesick something fierce right about now, knowing he was lucky enough to get a letter and picture before he was shipped off to his mission but wishing he hadn't been. His brother was shit at expressing feelings, and it was clear his wife had made him try to be sappy in the letter, but that made it feel more like home with Joel begrudgingly admitting that he missed him but spending most of his time talking about Sarah. The picture was Sarah and Joel outside, bundled up in winter gear, laughing in the sleet like it was snow. Goddammit Tommy missed being in a family.

In his minor moment of anguish, he suddenly remembered that he was guarding oil wells. The smell of it must have made him think of the western half of his beloved state, and he suddenly shook right out of it. In the silence of the dusk, confident no one was approaching, he whispered "it's too fucking quiet." All Alex did in response was make a quiet, displeased sound

Alex. Tommy and Alex had met in their sophomore year of high school, on their shitty baseball team. Joel had made Tommy join an extracurricular to try and force him to keep his grades up after he nearly failing his freshman year, and Tommy hadn't been big enough for football. He was terrified of wrestling. The only other sport he had known about enough to try out for was baseball, and it turned out he was a decent catcher. It was a good thing too, because Tommy did not care about anything related to the arts or leadership or what-fucking-ever. He hadn't even joined JROTC until his junior year. Alex had actually been good at baseball prior, had been playing for most of his life apparently. He was a damn good pitcher, on the team since the year prior, and together they made one hell of a team. With a few okay batters thrown into the mix, they managed to actually win a few games every season. Alex became his best friend pretty fucking quickly.

But Tommy never expected them to enlist together. Hell, Alex was going to actually go to college on a baseball scholarship. He had said he wanted to major in physical education. He said he wanted to be baseball coach. But even with as good as he was, the scholarship just wasn't enough. He said that he would enlist with Tommy and get the GI Bill when he got out. Something about the hope in Alex's eyes had put a pit in Tommy's stomach then, but he hadn't known why. He didn't have a reason to feel the dread yet.

The two best baseball boys became two damn good sharpshoots.

Tonight, Tommy felt like he had a reason to dread suddenly. His eyes darted around in the low light as Alex suddenly froze up. There was movement in the desert tonight, and it did not belong to a friendly face. They knew it was time to get serious.

"Target is the moving figure, facial covering. 10 yards and slightly east from the first oil well." comes Alex voice, low and suddenly deadly.

"On." is Tommy's response, peering through his scope to follow the movement.

"Distance is 400 yards. Wind is 5 from 9:00."

Tommy quickly made all the adjustments necessary. When he needed to use his gun, time seemed to stop. It was in this moment where he truly felt smart, quickly working through the calculations and making every minor adjustment. He very rarely missed the target and had more confirmed kills than one would expect for a boy his age.

"Gun up," comes Tommy's call. Suddenly the target is stopped, and he is prepared, ready for further command. Ready to get this kill over with, and really not knowing why that absolutely terrifies him.

"Spotter up. Wind is steady."

"Ready." Tommy said on the back of his breath, exhaling all the air out of his body.

"Send it," came Alex's command almost immediately after, and suddenly Tommy was taking the force from the gun's recoil in his shoulder before he had even realized he pulled the trigger. But there was no time to call his shot. No time to get corrections or debrief or to confirm his fucking kill. At the same time Tommy had pulled the trigger, the target had launched a grenade straight at that first oil well. He had no idea how much time they had before this place blew.

He hauled Alex to his feet, screaming grenade at the top of his fucking lungs and took off at a dead sprint. He had grabbed his rifle but had no idea if he had ammo for it. Somehow his mind was racing faster than he could keep up with, and in all the chaos all he could think was that the target, under any different circumstance, would have been a hell of a pitcher. Tommy was holding onto Alex when they got up, but as the world was slowing down in his panic, he lost his grip. He could hear Alex's boots thundering behind him as they were running, running, running. Tommy was trying to count the seconds, knowing it didn't take this long for grenades to detonate. Maybe the damn thing was a dud. Maybe he called it wrong. But he wasn't going to stop running.

He did though, because suddenly he was flying through the air. Tommy felt a blast of hot air at his back, and he was suddenly hurtling through the air, gun leaving his hands, absolutely screaming in horror. Even as he was screaming though, his mind seemed disconnected, nonchalantly recalling learning about blast radiuses and shockwaves in basic, and that motherfucker blew up an oil field. That was one massive blast radius. Tommy had no idea if, as he was tumbling through the air, careening for the goddamn ground, he should thank God he wasn't in the actual explosion because that in itself was a fucking miracle.

Tommy's body worked faster than his mind, arms curling over his head as his left side suddenly impacted with the ground. He heard his own bones crunch, and he slipped under faster than he could think about it.

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Tommy woke up choking.

The desert ground was hard and cold as he tried to rouse himself, and he thought that if he slept any longer, he would have died hypothermic. As he started to become more conscious, saliva pooling in his mouth, he saw stars and felt pain shooting through his left side and his head. It was so intense that he turned to the side and vomited, spitting out two teeth in the process before he could realize what he was doing.

All that came up was bile. He had no idea how long he was out, but it was long enough to not have anything left in his system. He tried sitting up, and everything in his left side protested. He knew he had cracked ribs, but whatever other damage was done he didn't have the skills to assess. He pushed through the pain enough to sit up, but could not stand. His knee was not where it was supposed to be, shifted to the left side. Further down, he thought he saw his shin peeking out from a deep cut in his leg. He had to turn his head away from his injuries, feeling as though he was going to be sick again.

His body felt wrong as he sat, and his head was thick with pain. He tried to work through the events of the night, and suddenly he remembered Alex. His baseball buddy. His best friend.

"Alex?" Tommy slurred, wincing at the effort and the pain speaking caused. He possibly had jaw damage, but it didn't feel broken. Maybe it was from getting teeth forcibly knocked from his head. There was no response to his call. "Alex?" he forced himself to say, louder this time. He paused, waiting for a whistle or a weak response. After all, if he survived this hell, then Alex had to have survived too, right? But there was no response, and Tommy was starting to get frantic.

"ALEX?" Tommy practically screamed, speech still sloppy and slurred. Only when he raised his voice to this level did he get a very weak, "T-Tommy?" from a good few feet away, and Tommy felt relief and horror flood his senses at once. Relief for Alex surviving, but horror at him sounding worse off than Tommy.

Tommy immediately rolled onto his belly, adrenaline suddenly flooding his body and making him forget his pain almost instantaneously. He hadn't registered his dislocated shoulder and likely fractured humerus yet, and his boy wasn't going to let him now.. His friend was alive, and he needed to get to him immediately. He army crawled through the cold dust to his friend laying quite a way away, having to use so much upper body strength overcompensating for his injuries. He dragged his broken leg inch after painful inch, foot after agonizing foot, until Alex was in sight. He seemed to have a lot of the same injuries as Tommy, just on the opposite side, but he had been just behind Tommy when they were running, and when Tommy scanned him over, his eyes landed on the empty area where Alex's right leg up to his knee used to be. For a moment, all he could do was stare and think about how Alex wanted to be a coach, but he shook himself out of that quick. After all, Alex needed him to be right there, and goddammit Tommy didn't crawl all this way to give up in sadness right here.

When Tommy made it to Alex he collapsed, arms suddenly giving out. His head landed on Alex's stomach harder than he wanted, and it caused both boys to cry out weakly. Tommy, in his returning painful haze, remembered when they laid like this on the baseball pitch after their first winning game. They had become really close, and they were too happy to leave the pitch, but too exhausted to dick around. Tommy had never been close to another boy like that before. He wanted to flip over and see the sky like last time, but his body hurt too much.

"I .. mh,, managed to radio in a rough coordinate for our location. Th... they're lookin' for us, Tommy." came Alex's voice weakly as he was moving his hand to rest in Tommy's close-cropped hair. Tommy didn't object when he did, thinking they both needed the comfort. "They'll find us, Alex. They will."

Tommy knew that exhaustion was coming for the both of them. Alex already seemed to be slipping, breath evening out. Tommy prayed under his breath that someone would rescue them. Someone had to, after all. Alex and Tommy needed to get home. They were just boys. Just kids with whole lives ahead of them. Like so many others in this war.

Tommy prayed that someone was coming.

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Tommy woke with a start in a tent.

The first thing he noticed is that he wasn't cold anymore. He also wasn't in his uniform, and his boots were off. His head was swimming with that nauseating feeling of strong painkillers; painkillers with the kind of strength the military can prescribe. It felt like he was lying in a cot, and he was possibly in Camp Doha. There was no way he was getting shipped overseas in his condition.

Blinking blearily, he turned his head to the side and tried to mill over the thoughts in his head. How was he found? He was in the middle of the desert and he never radio- Alex.

Tommy opened his mouth, croaking out a sound when he tried to speak a word. He was trying to call out to his friend, searching for the other boy who had made it out with him miraculously. He knew that Alex had to be around here somewhere. He absolutely had to be. He was supposed to be a coach. Alex loved baseball, and even with the missing leg he would learn to play it again. He needed to play again. He wanted his friend to be happy again.

Instead, a nurse walking by saw him trying to find the energy to talk, and her face fell. Something in her eyes said recognition, and the look that followed was pure guilt. Tommy's stomach dropped. He had seen that look on the face of medics who had come back from the field. When they couldn't save people, and when that still haunted them, it followed them everywhere. It changed their physicality, and it twisted in their face.

She hesitated for a second, and from her pocked pulled a necklace. Tommy's stomach twisted with nausea as she came over and pressed dog tags into his hand, which he immediately gripped. He held onto them like it would bring Alex back.

"I am ... so sorry about your friend. He ... he had lost a lot more blood than you. It says on file he doesn't have any family to give these to. You ought to have them, you two seemed very close. We notified your brother of your injuries. You'll be sent to Fort Hood in a few days, but we wanted to give you a few days for you to recover from surgery."

The nurse then sighed and shook her head, clearly sadder than she could express to him. Tommy wanted to vomit, scream, and cry all at once. He wasn't fast enough to save his friend. If only he had held onto him while they were running. Maybe then they would have both lived. Or maybe they would have both died, but either way Tommy wouldn't friendless. Alex still had his whole goddamn life ahead of him. Shit, he had plans to go to college, and what did that amount to in the end? This pointless fucking oil war, killing innocent people, what did it amount to? So many bones in his body were broken, he could feel that now. Even under the weight of the pain meds, he could feel the fractures as if they spiraled up to his brain, that felt like it was falling apart.

For the first time in his life, Tommy truly wanted to die.

His friend was gone, and it was his fault. Alex was gone. He was never coming back, and Tommy wished he could. He wanted to embrace him, apologize for everything. He couldn't live and do that.

Tommy fell back asleep sobbing, the weight of this knowledge pressing down on him. When Tommy dreamed, he dreamed of dying.

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Tommy spent some more time in the hospital when he got back to the states.

The first thing he did in the military hospital when he was given back his things was search them to find his knife, which for some reason had not been taken away. A nurse a few minutes later found him with bloody slashes on his exposed, unbroken thigh, and it was confiscated then.

Joel had been called, informed of his brother's suicidality. They had wanted to speak to him about further care Tommy was going to be provided, but he had apparently hung up after saying he was on his way according to a nurse. "Your brother seems to care a great deal about you," she had said with a soft, sad smile. Tommy did not like that people were becoming accustomed to looking at him in that way. It felt nauseating to see so much pity on their faces when they looked at the broken boy with broken bones. In the hour he waited for Joel, all he could think of was how much he wanted to go home.

When Joel finally got to him, the room was silent for longer than he wanted while Joel carefully settled into the chair next to the bed. Tommy wished he would have brought Sarah, but he knew that she was at home with her mom. That way, Tommy couldn't scare her with his bruises, recently stitch-less surgical wounds and too dilated pupils. He knew he did not look like Uncle Tommy laying in this hospital bed. He probably didn't even look like Joel's little brother.

"Tommy," Joel started, sounding exhausted already. Tommy just wished he would yell or something, but Joel never raised his voice. Joel tried to stay a painfully gentle man, even when something was clearly destroying him. In that moment, it seemed like Tommy was the one who was destroying him, and he wasn't sure that he could handle that. After all, Tommy had tried to do his best for Joel. He had been living with Joel since his freshman year of high school, since their mother died, and the last thing he wanted to do was make his brother's life harder.

"Tommy, you know that they're gonna discharge you for this, right? If you were just injured, you could probably stay on but, you..." Joel's voice trailed off like he couldn't bring himself to finish his thought, so Tommy did it for him. "I hurt myself," he said quietly. "I'm not fit to be trusted with a weapon, I know. I ... I didn't do it because I wanted to come home- I mean I didn't do it to get discharged but ... Joel. Alex ... he ..."

Tommy reached up to touch the dog tags now hanging around his throat, and Joel sighed and shook his head. He knew what Tommy was trying to say, and he wasn't going to ask for anything more than that. For that, Tommy was grateful. Joel was not going to force Tommy into any admissions of guilt or suicidality. Joel wasn't going to ask Tommy if he killed people. Tommy thought that he already knew the answer.

"You're gonna come home, Tommy. And I'm gonna watch you like a fuckin' hawk. They want to hold you for another day though, and I'm not goin' anywhere. I don't want you in this hospital all alone, little brother." Joel said, reaching out to set a hand on Tommy's face for a moment. For a split second, Joel looked like their mother fondly looking on her sons. Shed would do it even when she was sad. She did it even when she was dying. Joel almost looked like he was dying now, anguish in his eyes, just barely contained from spilling over.

"You can go back to Sarah, Joel. I know you don't like bein' away from her." Tommy said quietly, looking down at his hands. "I can be here for a day alone." At that, Joel made a kind of offended sound, sounding like he had been wounded. Tommy looked up, unable to imagine why.

"You're right," Joel said. "I don't like being away from her ... when I'm worried about her. But she's safe with her mama. You aren't safe with anyone if I ain't here, Tommy. I am gonna be here."

Joel kept his promise. He stayed the whole second day, sleeping in the hospital room and keeping Tommy entertained. When he was deemed safe to go home Joel helped him hobble out on crutches. He let Tommy pick the music, surprisingly, and didn't complain when Tommy didn't play country. These were the same kinds of privileges Joel gives Sarah. Joel used to do this for Tommy when he was 12. Tommy realized he was being treated like one of Joel's kids, and for once he wasn't upset about it.

When Tommy got home, he noticed that all the knives were hidden away. So was anything else that could have been dangerously sharp. In the back of his mind, he didn't understand why they cared so much about preserving his life, but he would never say that out loud. It would tear Joel to shreds to hear his brother talk like that. Even if it was a thought that wouldn't stop coming to his brain.

He got to see Sarah, and even though she was a little afraid at first, she then was happy to spend time with her uncle. They ate dinner as a family. Tommy talked a little bot about his job, but not too much. Him and Joel watched something stupid, avoiding the action movies on TV, and then he retired to bed. He was exhausted, and happy to be in his own bed.

But laying in it didn't feel right. He had never been able to describe something as too comfortable. It was agonizing after a while, knowing where he was and trying to adjust. All he had wanted to do this whole time was come home and be comfortable again, but it was clear he wasn't yet ready to be comfortable. His only solution was to sleep on the floor, and it took quite sometime to get down there, but once he did it was easy to drift off. When he did, he dreamt of oil rigs exploding and missing limbs.

When Joel found him the next morning, he knew that the Tommy that left for war had never come home again.

Chapter Text

Ellie was excited about Infected hunting.

Tommy had promised to take her out to a ridge and let her help him pick off Infected from a distance. To her it always sounded like fun, to be able to maybe use a new weapon. Ellie had always liked guns, and well, why not learn how to use a new one on the monsters of the world? After all, if anyone deserved to do this, it was her, right? The fucking things had taken so much from her.

The only downside was, Tommy wasn't letting her use his rifle.

"Listen kid, you ain't old enough yet," he was saying as the trekked down the beaten path. "This gun just ain't your size yet. Plus, Joel'ld have my head if I so much as let ya stand near it. 'S why I had you bring a bow."

That made Ellie laugh. Joel was entirely too overprotective of her. She was recently sixteen, and she felt like she could take on the world with this new age. Sometimes it felt like a wonder that she had made it this far. The world had put all its odds against her, and somehow, she was still here. Ellie tried not to think about that too much though, because it filled her with a sense of dread more often than not. She really didn't understand how she made it this far.

Ellie tried to shove all those thoughts down as they walked and spared a glance at Tommy. Normally, he would be just as excited as Ellie. Tommy was a problem-causer, see. He and Ellie were alike in that regard. She was convinced it was why they got along so well, because they could both give Joel heart attacks without trying. But when she looked over, he didn't quite look like, well, Tommy. His eyes were a little colder, his back was a little straighter, and worst of all, he wasn't weaning his rifle. He was holding it. Not just holding it either, he was almost marching with it.

Something about that put a pit in Ellie's stomach. She didn't think she'd ever seen him like this. He was such a happy-go-lucky guy that it was kind of obnoxious, honestly, but he was nothing like that today. He was silent, jaw set and eyes set straight forward.

"...Hey Tommy?" she asked tentatively, afraid to break the silence.

"Hm?" was all she got back in response.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm just fine," he said, although his tone was flat. He sounded like Joel in a way that was frightening and uncanny. "We're almost there, so just keep a lookout for the ridge, yeah?"

"Sure thing," Ellie replied back uneasily. Somehow in between her pestering him about using his rifle and now, he had changed. She didn't think she'd ever seen Tommy like this. It was disturbing. He looked like he belonged in FEDRA, which she guessed made sense since she remembered Joel mentioning something about Tommy being in the military before the world fell apart.

The rest of the walk to the ridge was silent. Tommy seemed to sink more into himself, and Ellie found herself halfway imagining him still in the military. It was a miserable thought, thinking of her uncle with close-cropped hair and dead eyes. It was even more miserable, however, that it wasn't hard to imagine at all.

Ellie was shaken out of those thoughts when they made it to the ridge.

Tommy's demeanor didn't change, and his voice sounded a little choked when he spoke. "Here we are kid. Post up. Should ... be easy pickin's."

To avoid thinking too hard about his pause, Ellie scampered up to the railing and pulled out her bow. She make quick work of peering through her scope and moving to draw an arrow. Tommy was slower, however. He moved with quiet calculation in near silence, and when he posted up she swore she heard him mutter some strange numbers.

She swore she heard the name Alex in there too.

"Hopefully there's lots of Infected today," Ellie said excitedly. "I could use the target practice."

Tommy just made a sound in reply and then fired a shot into a truck across the way to lure them out. He mumbled some more numbers, made some adjustments, and then waited. He waited long enough that Ellie didn't hear a gunshot after her third arrow. She lowered her weapon a little bit to glance over at Tommy and she didn't like what she saw.

Tommy's eyes were darting back and forth, a little glassy and tear filled. His breath suddenly shuddered out of him and he fired a shot, but it was accompanied with this kind of animal wail. His hands were shaking and his breath was shuddering still. It was coming out too fast, and he kept glancing around and mumbling.

"Tommy?" Ellie asked tentatively, and Tomym about screamed, stumbling away from her. The tears brimming in his eyes were spilling over in fat drops, and he didn't even seem to notice. His knees were slowly giving out, and he was just letting it happen.

"S-sorry ... kid today ... isn't a great day." Tommt said through gasping wheezes. All Ellie had to say was "no fucking shit."

She was already sliding down to her knees in front of him by the time his hit the ground. His gun was tumbling out of his hands so they could grasp and pull at his chest, like he was trying to rip his still beating heart out.

Ellie had no idea what to do.

"Oh fuck! Uh- Tommy it's ... it's gonna be fine! We're in the woods outside of Jackson and we came here together. You call it 'bonding' or whatever. We were both excited."

"Uh,,, uhuh-" was all Tommy could get out before he was starting to sob. Until he was starting to almost wail. His panic looked a whole lot different than Joel's.

Joel.

Suddenly Ellie was trying to haul Tommy to his feet.

"Come on Tommy. We have to go see Joel. We have to get back to Jackson right now."

Chapter Text

Ellie stumbled back into Jackson with Tommy leaning so heavily on her she was amazed she was still standing. His gun was slung over her shoulder, weighing her down further. Thankfully, the guards at the gate expected them, and there was no need to flag them down.

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Tommy's breathing calmed when they were back in town, and he suddenly stopped cooperating with being dragged along and shoved off of her. He still looked dazed, but he seemed to be walking in the direction of a shed.

"Tommy, where are you going?" Ellie called after him, unsure if she should follow or not. When he just waved a hand in her direction, she knew that something was really wrong. He would have snapped something at her if he was really coming out of it. He was full of snide remarks, claiming it was part of an uncle's job.

Instead of going after Tommy, Ellie turned on her heel and sprinted towards Joel's house.

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"Joel!" Ellie bellowed, slamming the front door open and crashing into the entry way of the house. She threw the gun off, breathing hard. "Get your ass up! There's something really fucking wrong with Tommy."

She rushed into the living room, where Joel was already scrambling to get his boots on and making a right fool of himself. "I should have known," he said as he finally tugged on both boots. "It's February 2nd, of course I shouldn't've let him go out there with ya."

As Joel flung on his coat, Ellie blinked at him in shocked silence. Tommy was perhaps the happiest guy she knew. It was kind of disturbing, honestly, how easily he could bounce back from things. Now here Joel was, acting like this panic and depression was routine. How come Ellie had never seen it?

"C'mon kid, we gotta go. Show me where he went." Joel said expectantly, practically verbally tapping his foot at her.

Ellie, still blinking, dazed and in shock, pointed behind herself in aa general direction. "He went towards the tool shed, Joel." She said, and then shook herself enough to turn on heel and take off at a jog down the road. Joel was close behind her, looking scarily panicked in a way he very rarely does. He only looked so terrified when something was wrong with her.

As they moved through town, Ellie managed to breathlessly ask "Joel, what's up with today and Tommy?"

"Tommy's buddy died in Desert Storm on February second, Ellie. He's around tools. He .. he ... he ain't the only one who tried to do stupid shit between the two of us," was the response she got, and Ellie knew exactly what he meant. Memories of Joel's confession of suicidality flashed in her mind, but that was with a gun. If Joel was unwilling to leave Tommy with tools, Ellie was afraid to know what Tommy had tried to do.

It did not take them long to skid to a stop in front of the tool shed. They could see the light on through the opaque glass window in the door, and Joel tried the handle. It turned fully, indicating its status as unlocked. Joel half breathed a sigh of relief before turning to Ellie.

"You can come in, but he may kick y'out, you know that, right?" Joel said quietly, and Ellie simply nodded. She knew that this likely was something she was not meant to see, but she hoped should get some context before she was likely banished from a very important conversation. She just wanted to know what was wrong.

Joel turned the handle and stepped inside the shed, calling out Tommy's name softly as he did. Ellie entered close on his heels, turning to close the door quietly. She peeked out from around Joel and saw Tommy fiddling with sandpaper and a piece of wood. She saw a brief flash of raw skin on his palms as he adjusted the piece of wood. His knuckles were bruised on his left hand and it was shaking no matter ehat he did with it. It looked like it was broken.

"I'm fine, Joel." Tommy snapped, despite his sagging shoulders and the shake in his voice. How did he immediately know it was Joel? He hadn't even turned around to check. "I don't need you fuckin' ... checkin' on me. Also Ellie needs to go."

Ellie made a somewhat surprised, slightly hurt sound and threw her hands in the air. However, she just huffed out a "fine" and turned on heel, stomping out but being careful to not slam the door.

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Joel waited until her footsteps faded away from the door before turning back to his brother. He knew that it was better than to get close so he just made his way to a bench and sat down.

"She about knocked the hinges off the front door for you. She's real scared, Tommy." Joel said, voice barely above a whisper. He found that this tone worked the best.

"Well I'm fine. I just needed ... I needed something to do." Tommy replied back, finally dropping the sandpaper and turning towards Joel. His gazed was tipped to the floor in shame, eyebrows furrowed and hands held out painfully. The blood from the abrasions was a thin layer on both hands, and it had dried and cracked. His left hand was trembling something fierce and his fingers were starting to get a mottled purple bruising.

"It ... looks like you took a hammer to your hand or picked a fight with a wall and lost, little brother." Joel said, trying not to let the sadness creep into his voice. "And it looks like you sanded your hands more than the wood. Why would you go about doin' that?"

Tommy's lip quivered as he took a deep inhale. "I just ... hit the wall a few times and maybe got ... a little extreme with the sandpaper. I just-" he paused, taking another deep breath. "I don't know how to handle it anymore, Joel. It's fuckin' killing me."

Joel just nodded. "What is, Tommy?"

"Don't you fuckin' dare do that." Tommy suddenly said, angry and accusatory. He pointed at Joel with his good hand, but didn't get any closer. "You know good and goddamn well what happened today. You know it just as good as I do." Tommy's shoulders drooped as the anger left his body, the last of the adrenaline finally gone. He sighed out half a sob, shoulders quaking. "I am so used to death and destruction, sometimes I feel like it means nothing. And then I remember Alex, or Sarah. Then I remembered what I did in that fuckin' war, and suddenly my body just can't take it. I want to hurt, Joel. The explosion blew his fuckin' leg off, did I ever tell you that?"

Tommy sucked in a harsh breath and looked away, pressing the side of his right hand to his mouth for a moment while Joel looked on, bewildered. Tommy had never spoken this much about Desert Storm before, or anything really. He didn't want him to stop, because maybe if he said everything, Tommy would stop trying to hurt himself.

"You ... you have to understand this, Joel. I think about Alex, and I think about the life he could have had, even though I know it wouldn't be fuckin' possible now! He wanted to use his GI Bill to go to college. He wanted to coach baseball and instead he died pointlessly in the fucking desert because an oil rig we were guarding blew up. That war was so useless and even though it's not possible for him to have lived the life he wanted now, maybe he could have gotten it. At least for a bit, you know? He could have been a baseball coach for a few years at least!" Tommy's voice was breaking, and the tears were streaming down his face now. This was still destroying him decades later, and Joel knew it. He wished they didn't have that in common, but there was no fixing that now.

"Tommy, I ... I didn't know all that." Joel said quietly after a moment. "But you gotta stop ... takin' it out on yourself."

Tommy looked grossly offended, even with tears running down his face and his chest heaving with the struggle to regulate hit breathing. "You tried ... tried to shoot yourself and you are tellin' me I gotta stop takin' this out on myself?" Joel flinched at that, but did not dare to try and make Tommy stop talking. "This is all I have left of him, Joel. I left his- his ... dog tags back in T-Texas. All I've got is hurt. Hurt like I didn't think I could still feel after living through literal world ending hell. I wouldn't have wanted him to live through this, but everything still feels so ... so ... so unfair somehow!"

Joel nodded, quiet as he took it in. It was so awful, how familiar that feeling was to him too. He would have never in a million years wanted Sarah to live in a world like this, but the fact that she was gone felt like a great disservice to the whole goddamned planet, but he had started to get through it. He had started to move on. "You ... you gotta let other people in, little brother. That's the only way you are ever gonna get better."

As Tommy tried to take that in, he started crying harder. He looked like such a scared little kid then, like he had all those years ago when they lost their mom. Joel couldn't help himself any longer. He stood up and walked over to Tommy, and embraced him tight, careful of his injured hands. "It's gonna be okay Tommy, you're gonna get through this. You just ... you gotta let your buddy rest. That ain't easy, but you'll figure it out. You ain't alone with it anymore."

Tommy nodded and found himself hugging back. His grip was weak, clearly in pain because of his broken hand, and the crying took quite some time to slow down, so they just stood there like that. Joel was not always the most comfortable with affection, but if that is what his little brother needed than goddammit, he was going to get it. But eventually Joel spoke up.

"We gotta get you to a medic, Tommy. Your hand is fractured." He said quietly, like he was trying to gently break the news to a small child. Tommy nodded and pulled away from the hug, taking a look at the dark bruising that had spread across his left hand. He winced at the injury, a look of terror and memory flashing in his eyes briefly as he let his hand rest at his side.

"Lead the way, big brother."

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Ellie practically jumped back as the door swung open. Tommy stepped out first, and then Joel, who pulled Tommy under his arm close to him like he had done for her a million times over. They looked oddly like a father and son for a moment, and Ellie slowly put together the idea that maybe Joel had raised more people than Sarah before her. She watched them walk toward the clinic, and she hoped that everything would be okay.