Hiii!
This is a The Last of Us AU! If you're not familiar with TLOU, it's basically a post-apocalyptic game that follows the story of a father and young girl crossing the country to find a cure for the infection that caused a pandemic. Really shitty summary, but that's the gist of it. This doesn't follow the exact same story as Joel and Ellie, it just takes place in the same world. However, there will be some plot points taken from the game! If you're a fan of the game, there will be easter eggs and scenes you may recognize :)
You don't have to have any knowledge about The Last of Us to read this! Everything in-universe is explained.
If you don't know, I give all of my reader-inserts a nickname. They are never real, government names, so you can enjoy being a reader-insert without breaking immersion! For this fic, the reader's nickname is Cinder.
Check out the short trailer I made for this fic! (ignore that it says nightskyhoseok that is my YouTube channel handle and my old Wattpad handle lol)
Warning: this story contains blood, death, major character death, graphic depictions of violence, suicide, angst, and mentions of sexual violence. Reader discretion is advised.
This is cross posted to Tumblr and AO3!
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A pandemic.
The word itself felt archaic to you, something ripped from a history book rather than reality. The last pandemic had been over a century ago—influenza, to be precise. At first, people thought it was nothing but an overblown cold. Then one-third of the world was infected, and fifty million were left dead. And then it ended, and the world moved on.
If only it were the same this time.
Ten years ago, you would have laughed if someone told you the world would end because of food tainted by a fungus, that humanity would be undone by rabid spore-expunging humans that tore into other people like wild dogs. But the night the cordyceps broke, the world fell and the infected gained control. You heard voices dissolving into screams, sobs bleeding through the air, people crying out for help, for God—every God anyone had ever believed in. You told yourself it had to be a dream. When that lie failed, you told yourself it was the end.
God, you wish it had been.
It felt unreal, like an author's fictitious invention. A parasite that hijacks an ant's body, turning it into a host while the creature remains conscious through every moment. Days of being eaten alive from the inside out, organs consumed, until all that remains is a moving shell designed for one purpose: to spread the infection and repeat the cycle endlessly.
It was never meant to infect humans. They said it couldn't. The warnings were buried under scoffs when scientists spoke about rising temperatures and unforeseen circumstances, about nature adapting faster than humanity ever could. No one wanted to hear it. And now here you were, living in a world—if it could even be called such anymore—where the walking dead were the dominant beings. And the only thing left for you to do was to endure and survive.
After all, nothing else existed. Certainly not love.
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"You gonna take forever to give me my shit?" The armed soldier before you asks as his head twists, eyes sweeping the alley and the wall behind you.
You slip the cigarette box from your pocket and pop it open just enough to reveal the small plastic bag tucked inside. The pills tap against the cardboard. As he reaches for it, you flick your wrist up and out of his grasp, shaking your head once.
YOU ARE READING
Exist For Love | Levi Ackerman x Reader
FanfictionThe pandemic ended the world, but the infected made sure it stayed dead. You learned to survive by trusting nothing and no one, least of all a stranger with a voice filled with venom and soldier's eyes. You don't want a partner. You don't want a wi...
