This place sets Joel on edge.

He hasn't slept in three days save for twenty minutes here and there whenever he gets too tired to resist and his eyes slip closed against his will. Luckily, he's been somewhere bordering on safe each time, mostly in the apartment he's supposed to be living in, twice curled up against a wall in a secluded and abandoned building. There were other squatters when he arrived, but Joel had gotten rid of them.

It's early morning now and his eyes feel like they're filled with sand, dry and aching. He blinks and swipes his forearm across his face as he stares out at the ocean, wondering what the fuck he's supposed to do now.

Twenty years. Twenty goddamn years in the QZ, trying to just keep Tommy from doing anything too fucking stupid, and now he's here. Trying to save his brother's stupid ass had gotten him roped into smuggling a kid, a kid, and when that had taken a turn and mostly gone bad, he'd found himself here instead.

He keeps thinking about Tess. Being here in this normal place, he thinks about all the shit he never said to her because he couldn't. She'd never asked him to, she was right about that, and now he's left with nothing.

Just a broken watch. Easier to think about Tess than that broken watch.

Joel leans his forearms against the edge of the boardwalk's railing and before he realizes, his eyelids are dropping, closing against the rough, itchy feeling that's been chasing him for weeks now. He's almost asleep on his feet when something behind him rattles and he whirls, grabbing for a gun that's no longer there, only to find himself face to face with a girl just opening the security gate of a little souvenir shop.

"Shit," he says with a rough exhale.