marchflower
Fandoms
Recent works
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icarus, spread your wings by marchflower for lkay09
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
06 Jul 2026
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Summary
“This,” he interrupts firmly, “is what I want to do.”
His hand settles over hers, tugs it free from his shirt. He threads his fingers through hers, fixing their palms flush against each other. All the rough parts of him scrape all the wounded parts of her, and it rubs her raw, but she finds that that flaying - the slow and painful shedding of her shell- feels more like a rebirth than a burial. He doesn’t expect her to be anyone other than who she is, flaws and all. He doesn’t need to be anyone other than who he is. She’s seen him in some of his worst moments and in most of his best, and she’s found herself in both sides of him. Two and half years since he kicked her knife away from her in that leaking hallway in the Boston QZ and she’s harder pressed than ever to find the murky line where he ends and she begins. She stopped looking for it a long time ago.
“Okay,” she whispers. She rests her head against his shoulder, turns her face sideways into the collar of his shirt. He hums, low and throaty, and rubs his free hand up and down her arm.
*
Seven times that Ellie held Joel's hand, and one time she let go.
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Summary
“I mean-” Ellie licks her lips, swishes a bunch of pieces aside with the flat of her hand. “I mean, do you think, like, old women think Joel is attractive?”
A pregnant pause swells to fill the garage. Then Dina snorts and claws upright on the couch. She sways dizzily. “Oh, for sure.” Ellie squeaks, and Dina goes on, voice sing-songing, “And not just the old ones.”
Jesse says, slowly, bravely, “If we’re being honest, I think Joel’s attractive.”
Ellie falls backwards onto her ass, grunting at the impact. “Oh my God-”
“Tommy too,” Jesses adds, and Ellie throws a handful of puzzle pieces at him, shrieks:
“What?!”
*
Ellie discovers that Joel might be Jackson's most eligible bachelor. Complications ensue.
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priest of nothing by marchflower for ayeleye
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
20 Nov 2025
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Summary
Silence falls, echoing, around them. Sarah cries quietly. Joel hesitates, then chucks the remainder of his slice over the wall into the river and scoots across the tailgate, gathers her up against him. Sarah tucks her face into the crook of his neck and shudders. Joel runs a hand up and down the delicate ladder of her spine, buries his face in the sweet bed of her curls. She’s paper thin in his arms, fever bright and sticky sweet, at once both the little girl he once knew and the woman she’s becoming. The world is moving too fast for him; Sarah keeps pace with it so easily, and he’s -
Well, he’s forever falling behind.
“I love you,” he says again. He closes his eyes, swallows. The things he’d do for her are innumerable and unchanging. She has to know. “I can’t - I can’t promise you that I’m always going to get it right, baby girl, but I promise you I’m always going to try. More than I did tonight. Okay?”
Sarah whispers, “Okay.”
*
Joel's metamorphosis, twenty years in the making: from a father to a man turned inside out by grief, and back again.
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for the whumptober prompt “painful transformation”
Series
- Part 2 of Whumptober 2025
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beneath the weeping tree by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
31 Oct 2025
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Summary
She leans into the pain, gasping, till it centers her, till her mind clears, till the ghosts of her childhood - as brief and tempestuous as it was - are shuttered away.
Still though, their words echo dimly in the far corners of her mind. This is what happens when you get close to people, they say. This is what happens when you let your guard down.
She shudders, pushes off of the wall. The thermos tumbles from its perch and falls the long way to the ground, banging tinnily against a rock or a tree root or something. Ellie curses and wipes her hair out of her eyes, leans over to see where it landed-
-and freezes, her breath suddenly cold in her chest.
At the edge of the woods, cloaked in the sage lace dripping from the boughs of the sheltering cottonwoods, something is watching her, its eyes gleaming luridly in the electric light of the coming storm.
*
There is something in the woods outside of Jackson.
*
for the prompt "non-human whumper"
Series
- Part 1 of Whumptober 2025
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blueberry alley by marchflower
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
23 Jul 2025
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Summary
Ellie slides into her place and picks up her spoon. “What’s this?”
“Porotos granados,” Tommy replies. He sits beside her, squeezing her shoulder as he passes. “Our mama used to make it. She was from-”
“Santiago,” Ellie volunteers. Tommy chuckles.
“Si, Santiago,” he agrees. He says it with a little lilt that’s so different from his normal drawl that it makes Ellie giggle. It’s still weird to her, how sometimes Tommy and Joel switch so easily from one dialect or language to the next. She doesn’t even mind when they talk Spanish around her to keep her from knowing their business. She likes the rapid fire cadence of their words, the way the vowels sound like sugar melting over hot coals on their tongues, the way Joel sucks his teeth and hisses, how Tommy’s voice goes higher when he’s joking. It’s weird sometimes to look around at all the ways her family doesn’t match each other and yet love each other so much. It shouldn’t make sense - they shouldn’t make sense - and still, they do.
*
Ellie's first year in Jackson, told through dinners and lunches and midnight snacks and egg sandwiches.
Or:
Food as a form of love.
Recent series
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something about december (giftcember 2023) by marchflower
Fandom The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
10 Dec 2023
- Words:
- 16,347
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 8
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- Words:
- 36,092
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 2
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Summary
Whumptober 2024 fics & prompts in order:
pale through pathless ways - race against the clock
dust before the dreams gone cold - sunburn
lady lazarus - not realizing they’re injured
some unimaginable bird - sleep deprivation
starved in desert wild - starvation
a quartz contentment - childhood trauma
the death of myth-making - emotional angst
leafmold paradise - nightmares
enough of dying species - recovery
- Words:
- 93,600
- Works:
- 9
- Bookmarks:
- 11
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like sticky pearls by marchflower
Fandom The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
20 Oct 2024
- Words:
- 25,420
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 25
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little girl found by marchflower
Fandom The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
11 Oct 2024
- Words:
- 23,054
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 13
Recent bookmarks
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every bird, gone unheard by BarlowGirl
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
22 May 2026
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Summary
“She’s cold, Joel.” It’s the first thing Tess says about the kid that isn’t practical, isn’t about the job. It’s quiet, too quiet for the kid to hear since she’s wandered a bit away and found herself a spot to sit down, out of the rain still dripping from the roof. “She’s just a fucking little girl and she’s cold.”
He stops trying to argue they should keep moving.
Or: Joel doesn't like Ellie being cold.
Bookmarked by marchflower
08 May 2026
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Summary
When Javier Peña rides into Jackson, Joel feels something shift in the pit of his stomach.
Takes place after TLOU s1 and long after Narcos s3, with some timeline fudging to make them the same age.
highlights: slutty bi javi. grouchy bi joel (he's sort of comphet coded?). joel pov. jealous-but-in-denial joel. extreme competence. flirting via extreme competence. pedro pascal's voice kink. joel is down baaaad. tension. javi's tight pants. gun use. if smoking bad why hot? joel-typical angst. javi-typical angst. canon-typical violence. eventual smut.
Bookmarked by marchflower
12 Apr 2026
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Learn You Slowly by Shh_be_quiet
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
09 May 2026
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Summary
Ellie doesn't entirely understand why the things that happened to her were wrong — she just knows she was hungry and scared and that the dark in that particular closet had a specific texture she's been trying to forget.
The Millers are different. She can see that. She's just not sure yet if different means safe, or if safe means permanent, or if permanent is something that actually exists for someone like her.
Joel builds things with his hands and shows love the same way — through presence, through action, through sliding Sally across the floor without being asked. Tess knows what it is to be a case number in a system that doesn't see you, because she was one once. Sarah is fourteen and has made a highlighted document and has decided, quietly and completely, that this is her sister.
Ellie is six years old. She is trying very hard not to need them.
She is not succeeding. -
all or none by guts (verucabat)
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
21 Mar 2026
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Summary
“Ellie,” Marlene breathes, tightening her grip. Ellie whips her head around to look at her, heart lodged in her throat. “You have to get to the hospital, nothing is more important than that.”
Ellie nods jerkily. Marlene squeezes her knee with an intense expression.
“You get there, and you make it happen. No matter the cost.”
“Okay,” Ellie agrees wetly.
“You do not let anything stop you,” Marlene stresses.
“Make it right,” she tells Ellie.
OR: Marlene gets Ellie out of Boston without Joel. They find each other in Kansas City anyway.
Bookmarked by marchflower
05 Mar 2026
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All the Ways I Want You by LittleWeirdNinja
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
16 May 2026
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Summary
Starting over at Jackson High is the last thing Ellie wants. Taken in by Joel and still carrying scars she doesn’t talk about, she joins the girls’ soccer team and immediately clashes with Dina, the confident and frustratingly magnetic team captain. What begins as rivalry slowly turns into something far more dangerous: feelings.
Will they be able to stay teammates when falling in love was never part of the game plan?⚔️❤️ Enemies to Friends to Lovers
📚 High School AU
⚽ Soccer Team
🔥 Slow Burn