Chapter Text
“Look - I found it.”
Ellie, hair knotted from the autumn wind and armed with the world’s most absurdly large churro squints through the streaky lights of the evening carnival to spot Joel’s gem - the two of them had been looking for the game for so long that Maria and Tommy had stolen JJ and Laura and left them to their own devices about ten minutes ago.
But there it is, the booth punched out in large bulbs that streak in her line of vision: Shoot Out The Star! sparkles between a popcorn stand and something that involves several tiny multicolored rubber ducks.
She takes her katana-sized churro and tips it Joel’s way. “Help me eat this thing,” she swings it over both his shoulders, pretending to knight him, “So we can play and I can kick your ass.”
He reaches over and pulls off a piece of the churro. “Not happening. You couldn’t even find the damn booth before me.” He wipes excess cinnamon sugar on her sleeve. “I’ll be surprised if you can even see the star to shoot out.”
She fakes a scowl at him as he steals another piece of churro. “I’m gonna claim my victory one star at a time. Absolutely Super Mario this shit. A show so stellar that the US army will be begging for my enlistment.”
“You’d never pass the psych evaluation.”
“Low blow, Miller.”
There’s a cacophony of sounds as they head to the booth: the slapping of mallets in whack-a-mole, the ka-ching of imaginary money, a distant banjo from some western-themed carnival game. But it’s the far-off sounds of a spooky clown laugh from the haunted house and the screams of children as they get their scares that send a bothersome shiver down her spine.
The employee sets up their game as Joel sheds his jacket and holds it up for her to slip her arms through. He’s not sure if the shiver was the haunted house or the cold, but he isn’t taking any chances. Ellie knows better than to argue, wrapping herself in corduroy that smells like sawdust. Her eyes are a little distant as he adjusts the collar and rolls up the sleeves.“I’ll tell you what -” He smooths his palms up and down her biceps as if to make her warm, and she blinks a few times, coming to life like the first spark of a fire. “If you put up a good fight I might consider letting you pick my prize.”
She scowls. “First of all,” Ellie says, waving the churro around. She takes another bite before forcing the rest of it into Joel’s hands. “Fuck you. Second of all - Get fucked. Third of all -” She nods to the line of plush imprisoned by zip ties at the top of the booth. “If neither one of us chooses that dinosaur, we’re dumber than I thought.”
Joel folds up what’s left of the churro and finishes it, this time wiping the excess sugar on her nose. He fights hard not to laugh when she tries licking it off.
The game is simple enough. There are these cards hanging precariously by steel clothespins with these tiny little red stars in the middle. You get what’s basically a BB gun and a specific amount of ammo and you have to aim around the star to punch it out of the paper and win your prize.
But, because they’re Joel and Ellie, she’s already decided the task will be accomplished by them both - it’s just a matter of who can do it first. Now, he’ll give credit where credit is due: Ellie’s a fake it ‘til you make it kind of gal. She talks a big game and usually, with enough grit, she can get it done.
As it turns out, Ellie is no Annie Oakley.
But maybe he is.
“You dick,” Ellie pouts when Joel’s star falls out of the paper before she’s gotten halfway around hers, ammo depleted. She manages to turn her head to glare at him just in time to catch his little: what can I say? shrug.
Her son rounds the booth just in time to witness the tail end of her defeat. He’s about to heckle her on her loss - he can see the mischief sparkling in his eyes - but then Joel diffuses the situation when he selects the dinosaur plush and hands it off to a delighted JJ.
“Suck up,” Ellie scoffs.
He shrugs again, the same smug smile on his face.
JJ runs up to her then and instinctively, she holds out one arm straight as a board; he’s getting a little too tall for the game, much preferring Joel and Tommy these days, but he grabs onto her arm and she lifts at the same time he pulls up his legs so he can dangle, even if it’s a few inches off the ground. “Mom? Can I have some funnel cake?”
She nods to Tommy a bit in the distance, where he and Maria are trying to teach Laura about how to win one of the card scamming games someone has set up on a fold-up table by the Zoltar Fortune Teller. “Did Tommy already give you funnel cake?”
“No.”
She cocks an eyebrow.
“...It was a fried Oreo.”
“Damn.” She sets him down. “And you didn’t get me one?”
“You were busy losing a shootout with Joel.”
Moments like this make him wonder if Ellie thinks twice about raising her kid with such sass.
“Tell you what.” The words roll off her tongue slowly as she scans the carnival for another game.“You let me redeem myself?” She points down to the High Striker at the end of the lane. “And we can eat funnel cake and fried Oreos until we vomit .”
Joel comes up behind her and gently pokes a finger into the underneath side of her jaw. “Or your teeth fall out.”
She pretends to try and bite his finger. “Whichever God decides must come first.”
They all make it up to High Striker just in time to watch some twenty-year-old frat boy try and fail to reach the bell - it gets high, the colored light blinking out an 89 - but only 100s get a prize.
Tommy decides to be a heckler. “Ain’t no way, kiddo,” he tells Ellie. He slaps both his hands on her shoulders and the feeling is poorly timed with the evil laugh coming from the haunted house. She shivers, again, and now Joel is certain it’s the clown noise; but Tommy thinks she’s cold and fiddles with her borrowed jacket, buttoning the top one at her neck from his place behind her. “Don’t tell me you’re already shakin’ with nerves, girl.”
“Never,” she wiggles away from him and bumps into Joel. “I’m just harnessing all the mystical powers of Mjolnir before I absolutely Hulk out.”
Tommy tuts. “Hulk wasn’t worthy.”
“Okay, but I am. Don’t harsh the vibe, my guy.” She shoves the oversized sleeves of Joel’s jacket further up her arms when the carny beckons for her to come up for her turn. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a frat boy to humiliate.”
If Joel had a lot more hearing left, he’s pretty sure Tommy and JJ would obliterate it with how loud they cheer. Laura immediately covers her ears, as does Maria, and he watches as the two girls share fond, yet exasperated, looks.
Ellie’s given the hammer and she twirls it in her hands a few times before she sets it down. She holds up a finger and mouths one sec exaggeratedly toward them and then proceeds to spit on her hands and rub them together.
“Jesus,” Maria grumbles under her breath.
She rolls the knots out of her neck and does a few high steps before she picks up the hammer once more. Her face takes on something a little more serious as she sizes up both the black plate and the long multi-colored tower leading up to the bell. She heaves the hammer behind her and then, slam! Right in the center.
The bell goes up, up, up, and then -
DING!
Because of course. It’s Ellie.
Once Ellie’s done striking her Herculean poses to egg on an already loud and cheering crowd, she makes haste to choose a prize; he thinks she’s going to choose the enormously large bear if only to make him or Tommy carry it around but instead, she returns with something small - an elephant with velvet soft ears.
Before he can get a word in, it’s thrust under his nose, literally. She tries to tickle his upper lip with it before she reaches on her tiptoes and tries to balance it on the top of his head to no avail. It slides off and lands on his shoulder; he manages to grab it before it takes one last tumble to the ground.
He tries to hand it back, but she shakes her head, hands clasped behind her back. “Keep it,” she says, rocking back and forth on her feet. “I got it for you.”
Joel fights a smile before he holds it up to his face. For a moment he feels thrown back in time to when he was twenty-five with Sarah in her room having a tea party with her stuffed animals. “What’s its name?”
She wrinkles her nose, amused. “It’s Ellie the Elephant. It’s an Elliephant.”
“You never stop, do you?”
“Nope.”
He tweaks her nose, somehow still dusted in cinnamon sugar, and prays she truly never will.
“Mom,” JJ calls. “Time to make our teeth fall out!”
“Fuck yeah!”
Joel sees Tommy have a flashback of Laura losing her first tooth in the middle of a fair, powdered sugar dusting her face. “Now, hold on-“
Tommy’s alternatives are essentially vetoed as the bunch of them round the food cart again. JJ, despite his cries for more sugar, gets one whiff of a corn dog and is sold. He and Ellie end up huddled together, JJ ducking underneath the excess of Joel’s jacket as they share a corn dog smothered in mustard.
His niece has seemed to swindle her parents into sharing one of those giant churros. Despite it being split in three, it’s still too much for her; she approaches him with a shy smile and an offer of half her share. It’s an offer he can’t refuse despite him being full.
“Uncle Joel,” she says between nibbles. “Will you go to the haunted house with us?”
Joel tries to be discreet as he looks Ellie’s way, some fatherly instinct in him waiting to see her flinch or cower, but she’s too enraptured by something JJ’s said. “I think I’ll pass, honey,” he says as gently as he can. “That clown gives me the creeps. Think I’ll ask Miss Ellie if she wants to try and win that giant Clifford-lookin’ dog instead.”
That is a sentence that her supersonic ears pick up on. “Where?” she asks, head turning like a bloodhound.
“Mom,” JJ whines, gently tugging on her sleeve. “Come to the haunted house!”
“Sorry, spud. Go with Tommy and Maria if you’d like,” she says gently, carding her hand through his hair. “But now that I know there’s a couch-sized dog to be won in this godforsaken carnival, no vampire, witch, or grim reaper is going to stand in my way.”
To JJ’s credit, he doesn’t look too dejected - he seems more excited about the prospect of simply getting to go, no matter who takes him. Tommy gives them a thumbs up while Maria promises to keep the kids safe by physically pushing Tommy into all the scary stuff.
Once they slip away to the long line of the haunted house, something bleeds out of Ellie’s posture, her breath long and loud as her shoulders sag. “Thanks,” she ends up mumbling to the ground. “I hate haunted houses.”
“I had a feeling that was the case.”
She simply hums in return, staring at the yellowed grass beneath her sneakers. When she finally looks up, she asks, “...Is there really a Clifford dog here?”
“Sorta.” He had seen it when they walked in, but she was too busy being dazzled by shinier things. “But it ain’t red. It was purple.”
“Bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Gypped. Bilked -”
“But there is a carousel.”
It’s clearly the right suggestion if her expression is anything to go by. She pivots sharply, her grin Cheshire, and waggles her eyebrow. “Yeah? You gonna on it with me?”
“I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.”
She grabs his arm with both of hers and tugs. He plants his feet firmly on the ground and she nearly slips with the unanticipated resistance. Her laugh is short of a wheeze and she tugs a little harder and this time he slacks his posture; she yelps when he almost collides with him before she dissolves into a short fit of light laughter.
When Sarah was a kid, he took her to one of these fairs. He remembers the carousel being crowded, a main attraction set in the center like a nucleus, constantly surrounded by people with a line that seemingly spiraled forever.
But here and now, time has seemingly stripped away its enchantment. Parents and kids alike are a little more mystified by the big Ferris wheel, pop-up arcade games, and things doused in more modern technology - it’s abandoned in every sense of the word. Chipped paint on the horses, missing lights along the trim and crown, and dated music. It’s set up on the edge of the fairgrounds, only a scattering of people here to see it. Ellie and Joel are able to walk right up to it without having to wait in line. They pretty much have their choice of chipped horses; there are only four people - a father-daughter duo and two teenage girls, hands wrapped around one horse, whispering and giggling to one another.
For whatever reason, the girls catch Ellie’s attention. Her gaze lingers, something sad in her eyes, and Joel gently pats the seats of one of the horses to grab her attention. “Side Saddle or Western?”
She blinks, takes a deep breath, and tears her gaze away with a smile. “Well, I am a lady -”
“Debatable.”
She hops up on the horse to sit side saddle. “Again with the low blows, Miller.”
He thinks about standing next to her, hands wrapped around the pole above hers, but she’s not a little kid. She’s not Sarah. She’s Ellie, which means she’s gonna expect him to act as much like a kid as her. He looks at the horse beside him, lower than the one she’s chosen. “I think I’m a bit more of a cowboy,” he says, swinging one leg over the horse.
He stretches behind him, setting Ellie the Elephant on a horse of her own.
Ellie says nothing in return; she smiles softly, resting her temple against the side of the pole of her horse.
He mirrors her position, a million questions swirling around in his mind. She’s not normally so quiet. “Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout, kiddo?”
Her eyes shut, relaxed. It’s like she’s hearing the soft noises of a guitar rather than the old harsh distorted sounds of an organ. “Got my first kiss on a carousel,” she admits, She turns her face, mouth presses into the back of her hand wrapped around the pole.
“Good day, huh?”
“Yeah,” she says into her hand. “The best.” Her brow furrows then and she turns back to face him, head temple to the back of hand. “Also the worst.”
“Get your braces stuck or something?”
Her laugh startles them both; she throws her head back, arms stretching as they keep her balance wrapped around the pole. “Shit,” she says to the ceiling of the merry-go-round. “That actually happens?”
“Ask Tommy.”
She whips her head up, stray hairs dancing wildly on her face. “Oh, I will.”
With that kind of smile, Joel begins to think he may have pulled her out of a complicated memory, but her face falls soon after, like a windshield wiper to her smile. Her frown is barely there as she hops off the horse and grabs the Elliephant, holding him like she hasn’t seen it in years.
Joel clears his throat. “Why did the Elephant get kicked out of the pool?”
She blinks and then turns the plush around, pitching her voice like she’s speaking through it. “Why?”
“His trunks kept falling down.”
The smile creeps back, faint, but there. “That’s so dumb.” She leans back on her carousel horse, crossing her arms across her chest. Her eyes drift up in thought. “What…do you call… a horse with no saddle?” She moves to pat the seat a few times.
Joel shrugs.
“Neigh-kid.”
“...That one’s not bad.”
“Of course. When will you learn,” she says, placing the elephant on Joel’s head. Despite the slow spin of the ride, this time, it stays on. “That I’m always funny.”
He plucks the toy off his head and holds it in front of his face. “Debatable,” he says, no change in the inflection of his voice.
She grabs the toy with a little more force than necessary.
“You know what?” Joel says, slow to get off the horse. He exaggerates his groan, knowing Ellie will get a kick out of teasing him about his age - which she does. “We got time for one more thing.”
“Before Maria returns, reporting the untimely death of your brother due to her pushing him into the walking dead?”
“Exactly,” he says. “Follow me.”
They end up back in front of a mechanical fortune teller. Like the carousel, it’s seen some things, but the stories it has are compelling. People have stuck stickers of all kinds - mostly astrological - to the side. The Z is so faded the machine basically says Oltar which makes Ellie laugh.
“This is exactly what I need,” Ellie says, digging through the pockets of her - his - jacket for a few bucks. “I’m so goddamn tired of trying to figure out my own life. We should leave it to the divinely anointed animatronics.”
“As the universe intended,” Joel agrees.
The first dollar that Ellie digs out of his jacket is so crinkled she ends up slapping it up against the glass in a shit attempt to iron it out. Eventually, the machine accepts it and whirs to life with some mystical music. His enchanted crystal ball glows with all the power of a low-watt, muti-colored bulb, and his head moves about before he gives his fortune.
“Age is simply a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, then my friend, it doesn’t matter. Then go on, be carefree like a little baby. Go on, let Zoltar tell you more.”
Ellie’s quick to assign it to him. “See? Ain’t no shame in pushing 120. The creepy robot says you should ride carousels and eat candied apples until your teeth fall out.”
Joel snorts and fishes another dollar out of his wallet, shoving it into the machine. “By your logic, my teeth have already been replaced by dentures.”
The machine spits out a card, and Ellie is quick to nab it. “ You may be riding the winds of change, ” Ellie reads. “ Things may soon seem to be out of sorts. But be patient, as they will come down to a better order. Everything rises but to fall. Life has seasons. To make sense of it all, keep close the people you relate to. The bigger picture lies with them.” Her nostrils flare when she finishes, snorting out a breath. She gently flicks the card with two fingers. “Damn. Little ominous, don’t you think?”
“I dunno,” Joel drawls, tucking Elliephant under one of his arms as he grabs the card with the other. “Doesn’t say much of anything. I already know things change.”
Ellie hums her affirmation, and he can practically hear the unwanted memories of her past clawing to get to the forefront of her mind. She deflects. “I much preferred the part where he called you old.”
“That ain’t what it said.”
“Tomato, Tomahto.”
They stop by one more food cart for spiced cider just before the kids and Maria return from the haunted house - Tommy completely intact. Ellie doesn’t even have time to finish her joking dismay before JJ launches into a play-by-play of every single thing he saw in the haunted house. Ellie’s face gets a little green - he vaguely wonders how she handles Halloween, especially with it creeping up in a week or two. He subtly hands over the elephant toy for her to hold, and he’s pleased to see that it seems to visibly relax her.
When JJ takes notice that Clifford is MIA, he pouts. “You didn’t win it?”
“How dare you insinuate my defeat. There’s no Clifford because it wasn’t a big red dog. It was purple. Joel didn’t think that distinction important.”
“Oh,” JJ deflates. “Yeah, not worth it.”
They both shoot him a look that Joel figures he’ll never quite understand.
“The fair is open again next week,” JJ tells her once he’s finished telling them about the man in the wolf mask that chased them with an imaginary chainsaw at the end of the house. “Can we go?”
“Can’t,” Ellie says around loud and dramatic sips of her cider - it makes Laura giggle. “We have to go to the corn maze next week.” She leans in and whispers, “I think we can finally manage to ditch Tommy that way. Joel said I wasn’t allowed to leave him at the top of the Ferris wheel.”
“He’s afraid of heights,” Joel says, deadpan, priding himself on not cracking a smile when his little brother snorts out a laugh and slaps his arm.
“Well,” JJ’s voice is quieter than it has been in the last five minutes. “Can I sleep over at Laura’s tonight?”
“My dad said we could stay up and watch Hocus Pocus.” Laura adds, quick to make their plea appealing. The pleas of children who don't want a fun night to end.
“Ten bucks says you fall asleep in the Miller’s car,” JJ dodges Ellie’s hand when she goes to ruffle his hair. “But you’re welcome to give it your best shot.” This time when her hand reaches out for him, he clings to her, ducking under her arm for a hug. “Take notes. The Sanderson Sisters are American icons. We should all aspire to be so camp.”
JJ beams at her. “I have no idea what that means,” he says plainly before he goes in for another hug. “But thanks.”
“Have fun. And behave,” Ellie tells him, swaying them back and forth. “Perfect house guest behavior. Which means you do the cooking, the cleaning, and the lawn mowing. Whole nine yards. Pun intended.”
“I’d like a lobster bisque,” Maria says.
“Wouldn’t mind a filet mignon,” Tommy adds. “Hey, what’s your fish of the day? Blue Cod? ”
“You do handmade ravioli?”
JJ puffs out his chest. “My specialty is Lucky Charms.”
“The trick is the slow pour of soy milk after he’s picked out the rainbow marshmallows. Really gives the oats the right consistency.” She smacks a kiss on his head before she gives him a playful push toward Laura. “Night, buddy. Love you.”
“Love you!”
The repeated, theatrical screams from the haunted house flank them as they leave, making Ellie on edge for a few moments. She’s still got the Elliephant, as well as the fortune card, the latter she keeps repeatedly smacking against her arm as they diverge in the grassy parking lot.
“Want me to drive?” Joel asks.
Ellie sticks the fortune card between her teeth as she digs through her pockets for her keys. “Nah,” she says, unlocking the door and ripping the handle open with a little more force than necessary. “I got it.”
She sets the Elliephant in Joel’s lap and the fortune card on the dash like a parking ticket. Her fingers drum against the wheel a few times and she mumbles something like a short pep talk under her breath before she starts the car and pulls out into the country roads.
They settle into the normal routine. Joel fiddles with the radio, slowly passing by each station so Ellie can hear what’s on and decide if it’s worth listening to. The static all the way out in the boonies is almost unbearable, even for him, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. “No,” she says as he turns. “No, No, No -wait.” He stops on a country song, but he doesn’t recognize it. Three or so notes more, and she does, nose wrinkling in distaste. “No.”
Eventually, Joel gives up. He piddles through her glovebox for CDs while Ellie rolls her window down, resting her left arm out. He hears her fingers tapping against the metal of her door.
All of her CDs are burnt CDs. They’re in flimsy multicolored cases, names written on top in sloppy scrawl. Joel knows Ellie’s handwriting like the back of his hand and while there are a few written by her, a lot of them seem to be gifted.
One, in particular, catches his eye: “Finish These Songs, Not My Sentences <3”
“Heh,” Ellie smiles. “Uh, that one was from Dina. When we were dancing around each other, I apparently had a bad habit of cutting her off in all my nervousness to say something,” Her hand rolls around outside the window, catching in the wind. “Cool, I guess.”
Joel snorts. “You? A chatterbox? Unthinkable.”
She doesn’t rise to the bate. “There should be another one in there. Six. That one’s pretty good.”
He finds it and pops it in, but he’s suspicious when Ellie starts laughing before Track 1 even plays. When it does, though, he has to be honest: he does feel properly got.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down -”
He hits skip to Track 2.
“ Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down -”
Then Track 3.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down -”
Then Track 4.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down -”
Ellie is nearly crying with her laughter at this point. “I’m gonna save you some trouble,” she wheezes, “And tell you that yes - she Rick Rolled me six times.”
“Why six -”
“That one - well, you had to be there.”
He pops the disc out and puts in a different one that she says is from Jesse titled From: Mr. Handsome or Whatever. And he’s surprised to hear it’s just a collection of folky alternative songs from the last two decades or so.
As the soft sounds of a banjo fill the car, curiosity gets the best of him. Ellie doesn’t object to him snooping, so he digs through all of her CDs, reading the collection of inside jokes they had over the years. It’s a time capsule, a window into the full life with them she once had, however short it was and long it felt.
At the bottom is a CD unlike the others - it’s in a different case, scribbled with different handwriting.
“Let’s Lose Our Minds.”
He says it out loud and Ellie startles - she doesn’t slam on the brake, but she lets up on the gas a little. “That’s.” She blinks rapidly, eyes deliberately on the road. Her right hand white-knuckling the wheel. “Uh.”
“Dina or Jesse?”
She’s silent for a long, long time. “...Riley. That one’s from Riley.”
Joel hasn’t heard that name before. She has sprinkled in stories about Dina and Jesse on occasion, and he’s always marveled at how she basks in happy memories despite staring grief straight in the face. It’s something he’s struggled with when it comes to Sarah.
It’s something that Ellie struggles with here, with Riley.
The car comes to a rolling stop at a four-way intersection, surrounded by the edges of large acre properties at every corner. Telephone poles stand watch beside them. The light above them blinks red.
Suddenly, the CD feels like contraband. He wants to shove it back in the glove box, pretending he never saw it, but Ellie is staring at it too intently for him to do that. Instead, he pops open the case, and the tiniest end of a photo booth strip flutters down to the center console.
A much younger Ellie and a girl, presumably Riley, huddled together with wide and silly smiles.
She looks at the picture like it’s an obituary.
Ellie swallows thickly, grabbing it by its roughly torn edges. “Riley was my person when I didn’t have Dina and Jesse. She-” Ellie blows out a long, shaky breath before she leans over and tucks the photo back into the CD case. “She was my carousel girl.”
Her confession, heavy with both wonder and grief, leave him speechless. But he remembers the dreamy look in Ellie’s eyes when they were on that ride, and takes a note from her book - he smiles, despite it all.
And Ellie, her heart like a sunflower, chooses yet again to look at the bright wonder of it all and smiles right back.
The intersection is still empty. The light above them blinks red.
Ellie wipes her eyes with her sleeve before she lets her arm hang back out the window. “I want a drink. You want a drink?”
“I could have a drink.”
“It’s karaoke night at The Tipsy Bison.”
“....I could have a drink.”
“One day, Miller." She gently presses on the gas. "You’ll get up there and sing for me one day.”
Joel barely registers the headlights of the car speeding through the intersection before it slams into them on the passenger’s side, careening them across the road and pinning the driver’s side against the telephone pole.
His brain barely registers it all: the shattered glass, the warped metal, the smell of gasoline. He can still see the faint glow of the stop light blinking above. Ellie’s half out of her seat, her arm stuck between the door and the pole. He wants to reach for her but he can’t. His leg hurts. His head hurts. There's so much pain. He can’t do anything.
The last thing he sees is the fortune card still on the dash, covered in blood.
The last thing he hears is Ellie begging him to get up.