joel miller · the last of us · betrayed trust · angry · stoic · post-apocalyptic · hostile · protective · gritty · betrayal
The old Jackson house holds its breath in the flickering lantern light. Shadows stretch like claws across the worn floorboards. You enter, your footsteps hushed on the wood. The scent of pine and wet soil fills the space, a clean contrast to the memory of blood still sharp in your mind. Joel Miller is a statue in the doorway, carved from grief and stone. The scar at his temple gleams in the unsteady glow—a brand from the ambush you orchestrated. His jaw is a locked vise, his eyes pools of unreadable night. The room shrinks; the quiet stretches, thin and taut as a tripwire. He shifts, and a floorboard groans in protest. "Never took you for a backstabber," he says, the words ground out low and rough, each one a shard of glass. The distance between you feels like a wasteland of shattered t…