CYOA Page 212
If you've learned anything from Joel about surviving Outside, it's kill or be killed -- and you're sure as fuck not going to die today! You fire. Three times, in rapid succession. A figure slumps to the ground.
Joel is at your side in a flash. He yanks you inside. "Ellie! Ellie, what happened?"
"I'm fine! I saw this guy with a gun and I just... shot him." It's always a little scary, in the moment... okay, more than a little scary... but in the end, taking a life in defense of your own (or Joel's) is really no big deal for you anymore.
"Stay here. I'm--"
"No, I'm going with you!"
He doesn't protest, which surprises you a little. But then, he didn't finish checking the place out, either...
You follow him all the way around the place, back to the front door. "All clear. I'll finish checkin' inside. If you wanna check him out... on second thought, I'll do that when I come--"
"I've got it, Joel. Go ahead." Looting corpses isn't exactly your favorite task, but you don't usually get squeamish anymore. You nudge the man onto his back and shine your light over his jacket, looking for pockets to--
Oh my God... NO... no! It can't be! OMIGOD--
"Joel!" you scream. "Joel!"
Again, he's at your side almost instantly... but since he assumes you're freaking out about some kind of danger, he looks around for a moment first... and then he notices.
"Oh shit."
"I killed him," you cry. "I killed Danny! I killed him! How could I do that?"
Joel crouches beside the body and checks for signs of life. Which you suppose you ought to have done, but... you know he's dead. You shot him three times in the torso.
He stands up, having come to the same conclusion, and pulls you into his arms. "You didn' know. We weren't expectin' to find him here."
"What was he doing here?" you wail, your eyes brimming with tears.
"He must've been on his way home... needin' shelter from the storm, just like us."
"Oh God... Joel, I can't go home! How can I face his wife, his kids--"
"Come on inside, now. Come on." He walks you inside and over to a couch, where he eases you down. "I'll make us a fire. There's enough wood in--"
"No, just sit with me. Please?" You tug on his arm.
"Of course." He starts shedding his gear quickly.
"I killed him," you remind Joel. ...in case he forgot?! "I killed a good man. A father... a husband... a son... is dead, because of me. I killed him."
He gathers you in his arms (and you realize he removed his wet jacket, so you're leaning into a nice dry shirt). "No. You didn't."
"Yes I did!"
He rocks you a little. "Listen: I killed him."
"What? You weren't even fucking near him, Joel -- you didn't even fire your gun!"
"Don' matter. We'll tell people I did it. On accident."
"...But... why would we do that? I did it..."
"I don't want you to... have to live with that. I can tell 'em--"
"But I do have to live with it!" you cry. "I fucking DID it!"
"Nope. It was me."
That just makes no sense. You know you did it! "It wasn't you! Stop saying that."
"Ellie, sometimes... when you tell yourself a lie for long enough? You start to believe it. Your reality... it's like it changes."
"What? But... but I know..."
"The man is dead. Nothin' we say is gonna change that. It was a terrible accident. That's all. People will understand."
The tears are flowing freely now. "If that's all, then why don't we tell them the truth? I don't think... I could never believe the lie, so..."
"Look, even if you don't, then at least... no one else would have to know. Just you'n'me. ...In fact, come to think of it... I don't see why anyone ever needs to know what happened here."
"What, we just... tell them we never found him?" you sniffle into his shirt.
"We tell 'em we found him here. Like this. It could just as easily've been someone else who shot him. Could've happened to anyone. It was dark, rainy--"
"That's an even worse lie!"
"How is it worse?"
"It's... even more wrong than saying you did it..."
"Why?"
"Because... cuz I should just own what I did. I killed a man, an innocent man--"
"Not so innocent. He had his gun drawn. Ellie, the truth is, he might've shot you if you hadn't shot him. If that's the case, it's a damn good thing you fired when you did."
...Leave it to Joel to spin it so that I was RIGHT to kill him! "He wouldn't've shot me. Maybe he didn't know it was me, but I wasn't like... threatening him... I was just hanging out in the doorway..."
"An' you saw him there. You were threatenin' him, 'cause you were scared of what you saw. It was self-defense."
You can't really argue with that. But you can go back to what he said earlier-- "It's a damn good thing I shot him? Either way, one of us shoots the other. It's not good. That's like saying... my life is worth more than his or something..."
"Because it is."
"No it's not! Only to you."
"Especially to me," he says, giving you a big squeeze and kissing the top of your head, "but not only to me. You're important to a lot of people back home. Besides that... you're so young. If there's a choice between an adult an' a kid, you save the kid. Every time."
You sit there quietly for a little while, not exactly sobbing, but letting the tears stream into poor Joel's shirt that used to be fairly dry... while he rubs your back and massages your head through your hair. You think about what he just said.
It doesn't really make sense to you. You're practically an adult, for one thing, but if the choice is like... between an adult -- a capable adult with a family and responsibilities, a productive member of a community -- and a five-year-old orphan that no one gives a shit about who can't do anything to help anyone, who in fact just drains resources -- how do you choose the kid?! The adult's death would be way more devastating.
...But Joel wouldn't see it that way. He would look at the child and see... innocence that needs to be protected.
"You can't protect me from this, Joel," you mumble into his shirt, so quietly that if it wasn't for his super-keen hearing, he probably wouldn't have heard you.
Now he's playing with your hair. "I can try, can't I?"
You scoot up a little and nuzzle his neck. "I love you for that, but... I have to tell the truth."
"You don't. Look, I know I said that people would understand... an' they will. In time. But they might not, at first. Especially... the ones who grieve the hardest. His family. Sometimes... people need to lash out, to get through it."
"Then they should fucking lash out at me. I'm the one who did it. I deserve it."
"No you don't. You didn't do it on purpose. You were defendin' yourself."
"Well, if it helps them to lash out, they should lash out."
"At me. Not you."
"But that's not fair."
"Sure it is. Hell, it's my fault anyhow -- I should've looked around more outside first an' brought you--"
"Don't you dare say this was your fault! God -- you always want to fucking do that! It was my fault."
"Regardless. I don't give a shit what people think of me. Half of 'em still don't trust me after all this time on account of my hunter days."
"And this would only make it worse!"
"No, baby girl. I'd much rather take the heat myself than let you take it."
"I know, but--"
"Or we can do what I said -- tell 'em we found him here, dead on the porch. No one would doubt it. We have no reason to want him dead."
"They would doubt it because I'm a horrible liar! You've told me that a hundred times."
Joel considers this. "Hmm. Well... I think we can say you feel... some guilt about what happened. Bein' the one who found him... if we'd only got here sooner... shit like that."
"Yeah. I feel guilty because I fucking shot him. And not just-- oh God, Joel, it's worse than that! I could've just shot him in the leg or something -- why did I have to--"
"Because that ain't how I taught you. You do that, there's a good chance you'll end up dead. If you're gonna shoot someone, you aim to kill, in most circumstances."
He's got an answer for everything. "You're just not going to let me own this, are you."
"Not if I can help it. No. 'Cause you did nothin' wrong."
Such a LIE! You struggle to withhold a fresh batch of tears, burying your face in his shirt.
"I really think we should let people believe some hunters killed him," he says softly. "There's no harm in it. They can't... go try to find who did it an' get revenge or somethin', 'cause there's no way to ever know. Even if they came to this spot, the rain's washed away all traces of... everythin'... even if it didn't, all they'd find is our tracks to an' from here. Nothin' to go on."
You barely hear what he says after the word 'revenge.' "Joel... what if they want to get revenge on us?"
"They won't. It's different -- they'll know it was an accident."
"But you just said they'll lash out! They'll be too angry to care!"
"It's still different than... knowin' your loved one was killed in cold blood. Trust me."
"Okay, well, there's still a chance, right? Maybe not the kids, but Layla -- if she's overcome with grief... fuck, Joel, if someone killed you, I wouldn't care if it was a fucking accident -- I'd kill them!"
"No you wouldn't. If the person was sorry... if they--"
"I wouldn't give a fuck if they're sorry! If they took you from me--" Your brain really doesn't even want to go there right now. Or ever. "Can you honestly say that... if this had been the other way around, and Danny shot me by accident, you wouldn't have killed him?"
"I wouldn't kill him. Shit happens. I would know that--"
"...'Shit happens'? You would not be like--"
"If I knew it was an accident, I'd understand," Joel stubbornly insists on lying.
You laugh mirthlessly. "No you wouldn't! Remember-- remember at that one party, when that guy Phil was trying to get by me, and it was all narrow there with the table--"
"He grabbed your ass," Joel growls.
"No he didn't! He was just walking--"
"You don't just accidentally grab someone's ass."
"He didn't grab me, though," you insist, even though you know Joel still won't believe you. "It just looked like that to you, and you beat the shit out of him." ...Yeah, it's no wonder Joel's not exactly the most popular guy in town...
"I know what I saw."
"You saw it wrong, and you know it. I can tell if my ass is being grabbed, thank you very much."
"You were coverin' for the asshole, for some reason I'll never--"
"Because he didn't do anything! My point is-- if that's what you do when someone doesn't even touch me, you can't tell me--"
"It's apples an' oranges. Two totally different situations. Innocent men don't react the way he did. He--"
"He was shitting his pants because he thought you were gonna kill him!" Joel very well may have killed the poor guy, if Tommy hadn't managed to intervene (you tried, but were ineffective). God, that was so embarrassing... not only the public humiliation factor, but afterward, when Joel was doing his dad thing, trying to tell you how it's not okay for people to touch you in your private areas and shit. You nearly died of embarrassment.
Kind of funny to think about now that he's the one touching your private areas...
"He's a goddamn pervert," Joel snarls. "At least now the whole town knows it."
It's true... after that, it didn't matter that poor Phil never actually touched you. A few people even said they witnessed it with their own eyes! (Maybe Joel has a point about lies altering the truth, because at one point, you did start to wonder if you were somehow wrong... when you know you weren't!) You tried to set the record straight, but other than a couple of close friends, no one believed you. All people knew was that Joel had kicked Phil's ass because the guy had fondled yours. Popular opinion does not always line up with reality.
People would easily believe Joel if he took the fall for you here. Maybe no one would ever send him out on another mission like this again. ...which might be a good thing? But... no. The truth matters. And if Joel tried to say that he killed Danny, you'd tell them he's just covering for you. Which is the truth. Some of them might not believe you, but everyone who matters to you, and to Joel, would.
"We don't have to decide this right now," Joel says, as if reading your mind. "Think about it on the way home. Think about what I said... no one needs to know what happened. If it's just a... random thing, it'll go away faster."
"Maybe it shouldn't go away," you reply quietly.
"It should, an' it will. It was an accident. I just wish to God it had been me that did it instead of you."
You do, too... which only adds a layer of shame to your guilt. You shouldn't wish this horrible feeling on anyone, let alone Joel, the man you love! But he just... handles shit like this SO WELL. It would probably roll right off of him. I'm such a selfish cunt for even thinking that. I don't deserve an honorable man like Joel. ...an honorable LIAR... huh, I don't know if there is such a thing, actually...
He's right about one thing: you don't have to decide right away. And you both agree that Danny's mother doesn't need to be told immediately; that can wait until the next trade run up there in a couple months or so, or the next time a Jacksonite needs to go to the hospital. By then, you'll have your story straight.
Your mission is over. It's time to go home.
If you decide to tell the truth, see below.
If you decide to let Joel cover for you because he truly would rather do that than let you tell the truth (and hey, you could always come clean if you find that you can't stand it), see below.
If you decide you might as well let everyone believe it was some randos who did it, see below.
If you'd like to start another adventure, return to page 1.