Pedro Pascal/Character

Joel 4

Requested by Ghost_Guard_13 . My new favourite :D 

[ What if Reader was in the military and not only has PTSD from THAT but also from the infection as well. One day you're resting by a river, contemplating life, fiddling with the knife in your hand, and you see some people across the river, so you hide, listening to their conversations before accidentally snapping a twig, and panic fills your mind, remembering what happened to those in the army who had been caught. It all goes downhill from there (with a step up?) ]

Decided it's pre-Ellie, and the people are raiders, Joel appears behind the reader to help them. :D 

~

You were a soldier. It was the only thing you focused on. Thinking of anything else brought waves of pain and fear crashing over you, and you couldn't resurface for days. Last time that happened, you had people to protect you, your squad. Your friends. Family. All that was gone, and more. Yours was not the only life torn to pieces by war. Nor was the infection the worst thing you had seen. 

The worst thing you'd seen. That was something. It wasn't blood. It wasn't death. It was bearing witness to the pain of families as they saw the monster the fungus turned someone they thought they knew into a monster. The pain was raw, primal, and tore your heart from your chest, discarding it on the floor as you were forced to kill to survive. Killing was easy. It was living with the overbearing guilt that destroyed people. 

You'd seen one of your longest friends be destroyed by that guilt. The pain was fresh, the wound being reopened every time you fired your weapon. The fear, the guilt, everything, piling on, trying to drag you under. 

A man you once called a brother had been infected. You were the one to end him. That's when you decided that feelings only caused pain, and you didn't want to acknowledge them anymore. With the last of your squad dead, you drifted from town to town, replenishing your supplies when you could, your eyes as cold and dead as those you had killed. 

For the past few days, you'd been camping next to a large river, finding the sound of the water rushing over the rocks calming to your racing thoughts. It was peaceful, and you'd granted yourself the luxury of a fire, warming your fingers for the first time in months. You still didn't relax, you weren't that safe, and your eyes looked everywhere, thinking every shadow cast by the cheerful flames was an infected, or a hunter, with a gun, both ready to kill you in a heartbeat. 

You were glad of your preparedness. Paranoia, a small voice whispered. You silenced it, kicking the fire into submission, shoving everything into your pack, your sniper steady in your hands as you melted into the friendly shadows, fading from view. 

The figures soon became clearer. Three men, all armed, with bullet-proof vests, and what looked like a pair of thermal imaging binoculars around one of their necks. You cursed under your breath, your pistol already in your hand, a knife in the other, moving silently through the trees. Far enough from the bank that you couldn't be seen, but close enough you could hear them.

A coarse grunt. "They've moved." 

"Ashes are still hot." 

"Still close then." 

You held your breath as you hid behind the comforting solidity of a tree. The best bullet defence you had. Your pack dug into your shoulders. Sliding to the floor, you crawled along, silence was your best friend. As long as you made no noise, you'd be-

Crack.

Fuck.

There was a shout, then another. They were closing in on you, and you discarded secrecy in favour of distance, getting to your feet and tearing through the forest. Your internal compass was going haywire, nothing looked familiar as you hurtled past, muscles burning. You'd been slow and silent for so long, it felt criminal to be this noisy. It felt alien to be this fast.