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Who| R/Venus, then R/Joel/Ellie
What| R is “killed” by Venus in the elevator by garroting. He discovers he’s not as human as he thought: he revives after being found by Joel/Ellie, as he wasn’t killed by direct head-trauma.
Where| Elevator for R’s death, a different floor for Joel/Ellie
When| Very early Week 2
Warnings/Notes| Strangulation, death; mentions of zombie stuff

The day he’s killed, he forgets Howard Bassem Rule #1: Don’t Turn Your Back on Doors.

After showing Julie his new pulse and cuddling in her sleeping bag, R gets careless. He’s not sure if it’s a zombie thing or he’s just always been a morning kind of guy – all he knows is he wakes up first pressed up against Julie, so close to her that his new heart skips. Her breathing is that shallow, even kind that tells him she’s still asleep. For a few minutes he’s content to watch her, the way her eyelashes flutter, her lips parted slightly as she snuggles closer for warmth. Perry used to do this in his stolen memories. There was a point he’d stopped, too. R tries not to think about that as he yawns lazily and rubs at his eyes, still lying facing her.

He cups Julie’s cheek, thumb caressing her skin and surprised that it’s so soft. He’d noticed in that vague zombie-way before, but now that he’s Living just like her, even stuff like this was…different. More real. Less foggy at the edges. She shifts against his hand, pressing her cheek into his palm and sighing. Smiling, R decides to be impulsive. If he’s quiet, he could sneak out and find supplies, maybe show her that snowglobe Howard found. Something to surprise her.

So R makes his first dumb move of the day: he slips out, forgets his crowbar and only brings his flashlight. He goes by himself when there’s safety in numbers.

R’s so focused on the spring in his step and the general feeling of it’ll all somehow work out that he doesn’t check every corner, doesn’t keep to the shadows. He creeps down the hall and past the shadows cast by the bones on display, the flashlight’s beam dancing across ribcages and finger-bones stretched out to form a seal’s flippers, a cougar’s claws frozen in mid-strike.

At the elevator he makes his second mistake. R hits the button, waits, and turns his back on the doors. His back’s still to the doors when they open…

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That familiar ding sounds faintly, putting Joel on high alert. He's quickly acclimatized to the sound, his body tensing up in anticipation. Despite the number of friends Ellie appears to have, he still assumes most people will be hostile on sight, and heading off any possible attack is the best strategy.

He creeps up, peering around the corner at the elevator bank as the doors open, and there's a thud like the sound of a - well, a body hitting the floor. And sure enough, that's what it looks like. A body, prone and still, lying there, keeping the doors from closing again. No one else seems to be nearby, however, and focusing his hearing doesn't give him any more information.

Joel knows very well it could be a trap, so he holds out a hand to tell Ellie to hold back, keep a lookout, while he cautiously creeps forward to investigate.

She doesn't get a good look at the body at first, and in truth doesn't really want to, so when Joel motions for her to hold back, she does. She does a quick scan of the area, but doesn't see or hear anyone. After a few seconds she begins to get antsy, and quietly pads back over toward Joel.

"Hurry up," She whispers as she comes up next to him. "They don't leave the bodies. They come and colle--" She stops as she finally makes out the body below her, and her face falls.

"Oh, fuck. R..." She crouched down, reaching out to touch his wound. "He was doing so fucking well, those bastards--"

Edited 2014-01-26 21:22 (UTC)

His skin's still slightly warm to the touch and cooling - whoever killed him had done it recently. R lies crumpled on his side with one arm pinned under him. The ugly wound twisting around his neck is still scrapped raw from the wire that had strangled him to death, red and weeping blood from where it'd dug into his skin. Aside from that, he doesn't look as corpse-like as he used to when he was a zombie. In fact, he would've said he looked fantastic for a dead guy if he wasn't, you know, dead.

Surprisingly someone's also closed his eyes. At least he's not giving that vacant, accusing stare of the dead, right? There might be something useful on him, from the flashlight he'd dropped at his feet to the batteries in his pockets.

It's not any worse than Joel's used to, and aware he probably has very limited time before someone else comes along to clean up the body, he quickly and efficiently starts rifling through the guy's pockets for anything useful.

It's only at Ellie's words that he pauses, very briefly. "Another friend of yours?" he asks, carefully, shooting her a sympathetic grimace. It sucks, he knows, but she knows that supplies are supplies, and dead people don't need them.

A flashlight. Jackpot!

"... Yeah," She said, sitting back on her heels and looking miserable, but she didn't stop him. If R was dead, he didn't need them anymore. She'd make it up to him later.

"He uh... He was infected. Before. They cured him, Joel. He gave me a can of beans, in the last arena, missing half his jaw..." She trailed off, her expression heavy.

"He was infected, but he could still think, and talk, and he begged for a cure and they gave him one."

Joel's hands still on the corpse, and he turns to look at her, brows furrowing.

"He what? That..." That ain't possible, he's about to say, but jesus, they bring people back from the dead here. So why the fuck not, right? Why the fuck not be able to be infected and still think and talk?

Joel shudders a little at the thought, and picks up his pace, checking one last pocket. He's ready to get away from this thing.

It seems like a cut-and-dry Loot the Dead Guy deal, up until the dead guy suddenly convulses under Joel's hands.

R wheezes as he twitches back to life, the croaking sound tortured as he sucks in a breath, his eyes fluttering open as he tries to figure out where he is. How'd he get here? What's going on? What happened? Everything's blurry, the edges of his vision still grayed out as he struggles to breathe. He remembers - he remembers walking to the elevator and that's it, basically. Throat hurts. Head's pounding. His lips glisten with fresh saliva.

Something about getting away. R reacts to that instinct, unaware that Venus is long gone by now and he could get himself killed all over again Joel-style. His hand clumsily flops out as if he's trying to flail away from something, his fingers brushing against Joel. He can see two people-shaped blurs but with the way his head feels, it's impossible to register faces or names.

"Gguhhh..." R moans intelligently.

Ellie starts, visibly. "Holy shit," She says, gripping Joel's arm and pulling it back.

"R? R!" If he's still alive, then she needs to keep that wound at his throat from bleeding, and she has to do it now. She shuffles forward and presses both hands to his neck.

"R, can you hear me? It's Ellie! Stay with us, okay?"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Joel hissed, his automatic reaction to pull Ellie away as quickly as possible - a trap, an ambush maybe - but...

"How is he alive? Ellie, don't - be careful..." Infected. He was infected. But cured? But that wouldn't explain this. Even infected would die from wounds like that. Even a clicker - and he is no clicker.

There's voices above him. R tries to focus on those like a lifeline, grabbing onto them. He's liked words, sentences; how they always felt like a last connection to things. A man and a girl. He groans again as Ellie applies pressure to his throat. It reminds him of, of the gap of time he can't remember. He didn't like that feeling, something that must be fear suddenly spiking through him.

In his head R pushes whoever it is away and bolts for the hills. The reality is he just flops there like a big fish trying to make the world's most uncoordinated getaway. All he accomplishes is to roll over onto his face, gasping into the tile, unhappy with the way his face is smashed into the marble. Now it's just pathetic. So far the ex-dead boy doesn't look like he'll be lunging for jugulars anytime soon, if that's any consolation. Even Runners look more coordinated.

The blood that's on Ellie's hand is definitely red now instead of the usual zombie tar.

"I don't fucking know, but he's obviously alive," Ellie said a little too fast, obviously a little more freaked out than she was trying to let on. She raised her hands up as R flopped under her, rolling onto this face, her hands covered in blood.

"We need to get him out of here, Joel. We're just sitting fucking ducks. Help me--"

"Goddammit," he says with feeling, but she's right, no matter what, they need to get the hell away from the elevators, and soon, before something much worse comes along. She's clearly distressed, and not in a mood to just leave the guy where he is, which would be Joel's choice, so, reluctantly, he grabs the guy around the middle and slings an arm around his shoulders.

"Get around to his other side, see if you can keep a hand on that neck," he says to Ellie, grunting with effort.

He really hopes he doesn't regret this later.

It doesn't help that R's a big guy pushing past six feet. Add in rubbery arms and legs and he's the very definition of dead weight as he practically hangs off the other Tribute. His head lolls toward Joel as he blinks owlishly at him; he seems to be both looking at him and past, gaping a little.

"What's...going - " R slurs and then gives up. Screw it, it's too much work to think right now, much less talk. Hurts too much. He'll wait for the headache to go away.

R settles for just looking at his feet. Trying to get them to stay flat on the floor instead of rolling out from under him is going to take all his concentration.

"Got it," Ellie said immediately, squeezing past R into the elevator and getting his other side as well as she could - but she was no where near either R or Joel's height.

"We're getting you out of here," She said immediately, leaning up so that R could hear her better as she tried to keep a hand to his throat. "Someone tried to fucking kill you, but you'll be alright, R, we got you."

It's a good thing Joel is so used to heavy lifting, though R is definitely awkward and clumsy to be half-carrying through a museum hallway.

"Back to camp," he grunts faintly, telling Ellie where he's heading so she can not only keep her hand on the wound, if possible, but also keep her ears open and if necessary, double check the path back is clear. Both of Joel's hands are busy, so if someone tries to attack them like this, it's on her. He trusts her, trusts her to know what to do if that happens, and also that if he needs to, he will drop this guy like the useless bag of bones he is in order to make sure she stays alive and in one piece.

"Don't try to talk," he mutters to R gruffly. "You'll just make it worse." How it could be worse, he's not quite sure. He should be dead.

He doesn't help things along by stumbling every couple of feet. By now he's given up trying to struggle-flop his way to freedom, resigned to letting someone he doesn't think he knows take him...wherever they're going.

"Uh huh," R grunts at Ellie. Murder attempt. Got it. It's his first one as a human and Jesus it hurts a lot more than he thought it would.

He's quiet for most of the trip, letting Joel do the majority of the work. He thinks he drifts in and out a few times, his feet feeling like they're attached to someone else. Joel's voice brings him out of that fog as he tries to focus. Don't talk? That's some damn good advice, R not even sure who this guy is but already liking him. Sure, he can do that. Now if he tells him to sit down and sleep it off, they'll totally be best friends. The Texan drawl to his voice lulls him back into that gray state.

The elevator doors ding close. R starts to twitch his arm up to Julie's floor and misses the button entirely, mashing against the plating.

She grabs R's hand and tucks it in over her shoulder to keep him from flailing around as she helps Joel get him back to camp. She's silent for most of the trip save for the occasional curse as she nearly stumbles over R's ankles, and she's all too thankful when they reach their makeshift barricade.

"Here," She says, gently putting R to lean on Joel as she goes to move the mass of south pacific artifacts that they had assembled to block the entrance. Her hands were slick with blood and she left trails of it across the ancient wood as she worked, but soon she had moved enough of it for R and Joel to slide through.

Joel is huffing and puffing his way through this, the guy getting heavier by the moment, but he doesn't usually have to nudge Ellie along, verbally or otherwise. She knows to hurry.

He's sweating, too, which, along with the blood, makes his grip somewhat treacherous, but then he hauls the guy through the barricade and into their little campsite, dumping him somewhat unceremoniously on the floor so he can get a better look at the guy's wounds - with that flashlight he just picked up.

"I still don't know how the hell this guy's alive," he points out, reluctantly digging around for the first aid kit he received the other day in one of those canisters.

R only makes a little grunt as he slides off of Joel's shoulder. He hits the floor and seems perfectly happy to lie there slumped against a display's base. Feels heavenly. Wooden shields and statues peer down at them. His breath comes out in ragged gasps, quiet and rasping and just loud enough to get annoying if it continues into the night. He cracks open his eyes to check wherever everyone's gone to, some part of him irrationally worried they'll leave him here because he can't seem to walk right. Ellie's still there. So is her new buddy. Whew.

His eyes drift shut again. When they open, Ellie's looking at him - did she ask him a question? - and her friend has a first aid kit open. He digs around it like he knows his way around one.

R feels like he should be part of this conversation. He's always been bad about keeping his mouth shut. "Maybe I...got lucky," R says, hoping he seriously didn't just die and come back to life. It's a little too zombie. "Like...new look, Ellie?"

Better late than never to ask?

"Save the kit, I've seen weirder shit," Ellie murmured to Joel as she smashed a display case with her elbow to get at some fabric. Careful not to cut herself, she grabbed the cloth and came back over to wrap it around R's neck and keep everything inside. Or so she hoped.

She had her own suspicions about R's survival, but there was no way in hell she was voicing them aloud right now.

"Yeah, you look super hot, R," Ellie said with a slight smirk as she tried to put him back together. "Massive neck wounds are totally my thing," She adds sarcastically.

Joel sat back on his heels, taking a deep breath and wiping his forearm across his brow. Watching Ellie work, he couldn't help but feel a slight pang - she was good at this, he knew, in part because she'd been the one to take care of him those weeks when he'd been injured so bad.

"Talkin'll just make it worse," he said ominously. Seriously, the kid needed to shut up, he had a throat injury.

R tries to prop himself up more so Ellie can get a better angle at his neck. He believes Ellie at first until he sees that quirk to her smile and then remembers oh, yeah. His throat's all mangled. He coughs out something that wanted to be a chuckle but just sounds painful.

The cloth wrapping around his neck and absorbing the blood feels like it's too tight even though he knows it's not choking off his air supply. He grits his teeth, eyes darting away from Ellie to fix on Joel. He's sitting there, the shadows casting haggard lines on his face. Staring.

R can't help himself. He wants to know. "How...? Back there."

They probably didn't actually see him get jumped but they can try filling in the blanks. R's willing to risk that staring if it means he'll get some answers. Was he really dead or just...unconscious? Maybe it was just surface cuts, no big deal.

She shook her head as she tied it off, sitting back to get a good look at him, patting him down carefully to find any other wounds.

"I don't know, R. Sorry. We heard the elevator open and you just... fell out of it." She glanced nervously back at Joel before forcing her gaze back to R.

"He's right, though," She murmured under her breath, hoping it was low enough for Joel to miss it. "This wound would kill a normal person."

If anything, their whispered conversation just made Joel scowl more deeply. What exactly was so important that it needed to be kept from him, huh?

"Are you sayin' that you don't remember how this happened?" he asked, almost incredulously.

JOEL/ELLIE

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