Chapter Text
Joel doesn’t leave her, and she can’t help the little sob that escapes her when he appears in the doorway again.
He’s across the room and sitting on the bed beside her in the space of a breath, taking over holding the towel over her wrist, and when she looks back to where he’s looking, she sees Josie, one of the nurses who actually looks her in the eye and talks to her like she’s not just furniture.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Josie says when she pulls the towel back, and she’s so undone by the sympathy in her voice that she tucks her head against Joel’s shoulder to hide her face. Joel brings one hand up to hold her head there, the other arm around her, rubbing her arm gently.
“You’re okay, baby,” he says, holding her tighter when she flinches as Josie starts fixing her wrist. She numbs it with some local anesthetic, but she can still feel the stitches, and it makes her skin crawl. “I know, baby, almost done,” Joel says softly, still holding her. When her wrist is stitched and bandaged, Josie steps back, cleaning up her supplies.
“Wait until we’re gone,” Joel tells her. “And then tell them that she’s done.”
Josie’s face clearly says she doubts they’ll take that at face value, and Ellie’s stomach drops. She won’t be getting out. They won’t let her. She’s going to die here, just a lab monkey for-
“And let them know that coming after her is a death sentence,” he says, voice nearly a growl. “She’s done her part. She’s finished.”
“Joel,” Josie starts tentatively, but Joel’s face is dark and dangerous, even with this nurse he actually got along with until today.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie whispers, needing to say it. She barely keeps herself from repeating it in a babble, so desperate to make up for what she’s done, for what she almost put Joel through.
“Sh,” he says, all gentleness again.
Josie convinces Joel to wait until she gets the most sympathetic of the doctors–which isn’t saying much, considering how the rest of them act–and he gives her until he finishes packing to return.
She doesn’t miss how he packs faster than he’s ever seen him do before.
She’s uncomfortable with her scrubs currently sticking to her belly from the blood, and she can feel fuzziness coming for her, the same way it did when it was David’s blood and not hers sticking her clothes to her. She hears noise, and then Joel is in front of her, holding her face in his hands.
“Ellie?” He says, and she can tell it’s not the first time he’s said it. “Ellie, can you stay focused for me? You can go fuzzy later, I promise, but I just need you to stay with me a little longer.”
“Going fuzzy” is their term for her moments when she spaces out. It’s a cutesy phrase for something that scares her sometimes with how little control she has over it, but it makes it seem more manageable, calling it something kind of silly. It’s easier to say “Sorry, went fuzzy” than to say “That sound made me think I was back in a burning building hacking a man apart, and my brain stopped working so I wouldn’t grab a knife and start swinging.”
Saves a lot of time, “going fuzzy.”
“‘Kay,” she whispers, and he pulls her forward to kiss her forehead.
“Thank you,” he says, and he sounds so genuinely grateful that she nearly shatters.
*
Joel curses when the doctor returns before they’re gone, and he puts himself between her and the two of them at once.
She’s putting so much focus into not going fuzzy that she ends up missing most of the tense conversation. When she does tune in, she realizes that the doctor is trying to argue for more access to her, blood samples apparently.
“She is not coming here again,” Joel says, and there’s a dangerous sort of promise in his voice. “You provide the needles and whatever else you need with each round of the vaccine. A group will be here to pick it up, and then we’ll send back the blood if she chooses.”
“But we-”
“It’s that or nothing,” Joel says, and the finality in his voice is clear.
“And if we withhold the vaccine from this group you send?” The doctor challenges.
Joel gives him a smile, a mean sort of smile she’s never seen on him before, dangerous and daring.
“Believe me when I tell you you’ll regret it. The only reason you’re still alive is so that everything she’s been through means a cure gets made. You don’t distribute it?” He asks, tapping the gun at his hip with one finger. “Well…not really a reason to leave you alive, is there?”
That seems to be a hell of a bargaining chip from how rapidly the doctor starts nodding along after that.
*
Joel lays her gently in the backseat of a car in the garage below the hospital and covers her with a blanket, stroking her cheek before he stands upright again. He’s ready to go and jumpy about being stopped, she can tell, and something about the fact that he would still stop to touch her so gently makes her cry. He’s conflicted when she does, she can tell, so she waves him off.
A Joel hug is what she wants right now, but more than that she wants to be gone.
*
She catches him looking back at her repeatedly in the rearview mirror, even though they don’t talk. She still hasn’t changed out of her scrubs, and she pulls the blanket up around her chest when she sees how the blood still on her stomach makes him flinch each time he sees it again.
They stop that night, and Joel barely lets her lift a finger while he sets up camp. He turns his back and lets her change into her clothes, but that’s about as much as she does. They’re deep in a forest again, and she thinks, with a little niggle of nostalgia, of the early days, when she didn’t yet know what obtaining a cure would cost them.
The difference this time, though, is that she gets to sit on Joel’s lap, propped against his chest. She’d been disbelieving when he first pulled her over, pausing to let her wiggle away if she wanted, but she’d gone easily enough, taking her plate of Chef Boyardee with her. She’s so overwhelmed by the way he’s being so kind to her after she almost made him live his worst fear that it’s all she can not to cry into her ravioli. When it’s gone, she sets her plate aside and pulls Joel’s arms around her, the same way she did in the aftermath of David, when she wanted to feel surrounded by someone else’s strength for a little while. It makes her feel safe, the same way it did then, and she feels herself relaxing.
“Joel, I-”
‘No,” he says, but gently, softening the rejection further with a kiss to her temple. “Not now, baby girl. We can talk about it later.”
And she’s so tired, so overwhelmed that she’s finally free of being a medical experiment, that she listens. She curls up against him and lets him stroke her hair and tell her stories.
Before she even realizes it’s happening, she’s asleep, and for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t wake up from nightmares.
*
He lets her sleep in the next morning, and she blinks blearily into the mid-morning light. She goes to push herself up and hisses when it pulls at the stitches in her wrist. He’s at her side at once, helping her up, and if she were a touch less pathetic, she might protest.
As it is, she’s still feeling shaky, and his steady hands are a relief.
He cleans her wrist and rebandages it, and she smiles, just a little, when he presses a kiss to it when he’s done. He’d told her a while ago, how people used to kiss things better, and as weird as it still is to her, she can’t deny it helps the pain with some kind of weird parent magic she hasn’t figured out yet.
And then she remembers that that’s not the only injury she should probably tend to.
She looks down at once, biting the inside of her cheek. It’s tempting, to keep it to herself, but more tempting than that is the idea of not passing out when she’s burning up of infection later because she didn’t tend to the other wounds she made on herself.
“I-” She starts and then stops. Her hands are shaking, and she clenches them hard. She jumps when Joel’s hands wrap around them, and she can feel his eyes on her, wanting her to look up.
She can’t do it, though.
Not if she’s going to tell him what she’s done.
“There…I need to-”
“Hey,” he says, and she looks up to him just briefly. “Just tell me, kiddo. Rip the bandaid off. It’s just me.”
It is him, and that’s kind of the problem.
“I cut my legs,” she says, the words all a rush, and then she freezes while waiting for the reaction.
It takes him a moment to work it out, and she sees him frown and look down to her legs automatically.
Then he puts the context clues together.
“Oh, baby girl,” he says, and then she’s in his arms.
It isn’t until he’s shushing her that she realizes she’s crying, but it comes out of her in a rush, all of the emotion she’s bottled up for so long. She clings to him like someone is going to pull her away, soaking his shirt with tears and snot and just generally being so fucking gross she can’t even believe he isn’t pushing her away.
But he doesn’t. He just holds her tighter.
“I’m sorry,” she says, desperate for him to believe her. “I’m so fucking sorry, Joel. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he tells her, not letting her go, but she can’t stop talking.
“I couldn’t stop, and the doctor said she’d tell if I didn’t stay, and-”
It’s out of her mouth before she thinks about it, and she can feel him tense. Still, he doesn’t let her go.
“What do you mean?” He asks, and she can hear the effort he’s putting into keeping his voice calm.
“I’m sorry, I tried to stop, I swear, but-”
“No, baby,” he says. “The other part.”
Oh.
She finally pulls back, sniffling, and she scrubs at her face with her sleeve. Across from her, Joel just waits.
“One of…one of the nurses found out,” she says, looking down at her lap. When she licks her lips, she tastes salt. “And then she told the doctor. And she said…she said she’d tell you. If I didn’t stay. And I swear, I didn’t mean to keep it from you, but I…I didn’t want you to know.”
She’s so ashamed she wishes the world would just swallow her whole, but a gentle hand at her cheek has her looking to Joel again.
“They knew?” He asks, and the rage in his voice is clear.
It settles something in her, that rage so clear in his voice while the hand on her face is still so gentle.
She nods.
He looks back the way they’ve come, and for a moment, she thinks he’s going to turn them around and go back.
“I’m sorry,” she says, voice small, and then he’s looking at her again, the anger melting away, replaced by concern.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he says. “An adult should have done something. Them blackmailing you isn’t your fault.”
“But I’m the one who did it,” she says. She still can’t believe he hasn’t just packed up the car and left, can’t believe he hasn’t reached his last straw with her, this final thing on top of everything else she’s put him through.
“Yes, and we’re going to have to talk about that,” he must see the alarm in her face, because he rushes to finish the sentence, “but we can do that later, when you’re feeling better. But Ellie, someone should have done something. I’m not angry at you, baby. I’m angry at those fuckers,” he puts a near-growl on the word, “who knew what you were doing and used it against you.”
She doesn’t have anything to say to that, but she reaches for a hug again, and he meets her halfway, and for a little bit, they don’t need words.
*
She sleeps for most of the drive, tired and still suffering from blood loss, and she keeps waking up to Joel singing along under his breath to the CD in the car, which always makes her smile before she dozes off again.
The car dies when they’re about a three hour hike away from Jackson, and they have a brief little fight over pack distribution. She tries to argue that she should get to carry her own backpack, and Joel just shoulders it and moves to usher her on. When she still tries to take it from him, he holds it above her head, and she jumps for it.
“I’m not a baby!” She says, fingers brushing it when she really gives it her all. She’s tired, though, and she wears herself out quickly. “I can carry my own pack, Joel.”
“And so can I,” he says, gesturing again for her to move ahead.
“But I-”
“Hey, hardhead, just let me carry it, alright?”
A look at him suggests that he’s doing it as much to feel useful as to spare her the weight, and it occurs to her that he’s feeling a little out of control right now. He’d been the same way after David, trying to find any little way to do something for her. He’s a do-er, she knows, and he doesn’t do well when he’s at loose ends.
And after everything she’s put him through, letting him carry her backpack is really the least she can offer.
“Fine, bossy,” she grumbles just to keep up appearances, but she still sticks close to his side, so close their arms brush. It’s a relief, really, which she discovers more and more as they walk. Her body is still achy from spinal taps and bone marrow harvests and experimental drugs, tired from sleepless nights and blood loss, and while she’ll never admit it under pain of death, she actually doesn’t know if she would have been able to do it if she had to carry her backpack in addition to moving her increasingly heavy body.
She resolves that Joel must never, ever know.
It would go right to his head.
*
They get to Jackson a couple hours before sunset, and she feels the same unhappy little surge of jealousy she did before when Joel steps forward to hug his brother, stronger this time, in fact. It’s selfish, she knows, and she hates herself a little bit for it, especially when Joel’s touchy with her now, too, but she can’t help the way it pricks at something within her, the knowledge that she’s going to have to share Joel now. She’s had his complete attention for so long that losing it scares her.
What if it reminds him how many other people are more worthy of his attention than her?
When they let go, though, they both turn towards her, and Joel extends an arm, waving his hand to indicate her to duck under it. She hesitates a moment before she does, but she feels more settled already when he tucks her close to his side. She flicks her eyes to Tommy, looking under her lashes to try and see how he’s taking this interruption of their reunion.
To her surprise, though, he just smiles at her and looks to Joel and then back to her. His smile looks a bit like Joel’s, she realizes, the same crinkling by the eyes, the same shape of the mouth. She flinches back automatically when he reaches for her head–similar to Joel or not, she doesn’t really know him, and the response is kneejerk–and she expects him to be offended, expects him to turn to Joel and ask why he brought such a jumpy kid with him. Instead he just offers another smile with a little tilt of his head.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he says, and she finds she likes it, being called ma’am, especially because she can tell he’s being teasing about it. He extends a hand, and with a look to Joel first, who just gives her a little nod of his head, she takes it, hesitantly at first but then firmer, responding to his pressure. “Welcome back, Ellie.”
She smiles then, pressing against Joel out of relief this time.
“Thanks,” she says, and she means it.
*
Something about knowing she’s close to a bed seems to make her body feel heavy and tired, and they’re only halfway back to the house they stayed in last time when Joel stops and scoops her up like she weighs nothing, barely missing a step before he’s in motion again. She tucks her face against his neck, a little embarrassed to be carried like a baby in front of other people, but it’s nice, his strong arms around her.
And she is really fucking tired.
Tommy opens the door for them when they get there, and Joel steps through carefully, cautious about hitting her head on the frame, which is an appreciated consideration. He and Tommy talk to each other about something, but all she registers is the rumble of Joel’s voice without bothering to parse any of the words.
Finally, the door shuts, and it’s just her and Joel in this house that’s going to be theirs, an impossibility she can barely fathom, even after long nights of him telling her all about it when he was trying to give her something nice to think about after Silver Lake.
“Sleepy?” He asks softly, and she shakes her head, even as she yawns. He chuckles. “Yeah, okay.”
He carries her upstairs and lays her down on the bed gently.
She’s asleep almost before he’s finished taking her boots off for her.
*
Their first few days in Jackson are quiet.
This is due in large part to the fact that she spends most of them asleep.
She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was, not really, until she had a bed to sleep in that doesn’t smell of antiseptic and isn’t woken up a dozen times a night being poked and prodded by nurses. She sleeps on the first day for 17 hours straight, to the point that Joel wakes her up to make her drink some water. She’s groggy as hell, and she can feel that her ponytail has migrated halfway around her head. She fumbles the glass of water when she first takes it, and Joel snorts and holds it for her, with her directing it with her hand. He tries to offer some food with his free hand, but she whines through her nose until he sets it down, exhausted at the very thought of chewing. She yawns and flops back down when the water is drained, and it makes Joel smile as he brushes her hair out of her face.
“Need to clean your cuts,” he tells her, and she stiffens, nervous suddenly. He reads the tension in her body and rests a warm hand on her head. “I can get your wrist and leave you the stuff for your legs,” he tells her, and the understanding in it, the care, makes her roll onto her side to tuck her face against his thigh, hand on his knee, needling just a few moments to breathe. He doesn’t say anything, just strokes her hair gently until she’s recovered.
He cleans her wrist with careful hands, and she waves it at him when it’s bandaged because he forgot to get with the fucking program until he rolls his eyes and kisses it, and then he sets disinfectant and bandages on her bedside table.
“Need anything else?” He asks, and she shakes her head, yawning already. “Clean your legs and then pass out again,” he instructs her, and she gives him a little salute before she yawns again.
Fuck, but she’s sleepy.
Still, orders are orders, and she does as she’s been told. There are some clothes in a stack on the dresser that weren’t there earlier, and she picks out a pair of soft, fleece sleep pants. She wipes down the cuts on her thighs, hissing a bit at the sting. Hesitating a moment, she takes a look at herself in the mirror, and something about the sight of the long cuts on her thighs in the context of this girly room, a horror show against a setting meant for someone so much softer, makes her lower lip wobble a bit and her breath go shaky.
Before she goes back to sleep, she tosses one of the blankets over the mirror to cover it.
*
By day four, she’s not so bone tired, and she expects Joel to finally have what he’d probably call a come to Jesus meeting about her stupid stunt.
And she waits.
And she waits.
And she waits.
It feels almost like a trick, but she knows Joel wouldn’t play that game with her. He’s not one for mindgames, never has been, even when they didn’t really like each other yet. His directness is one of the best and worst things about him, and she’s surprised when he doesn’t cut to the chase and hash it out with her. It wouldn’t have made sense when she could barely keep her eyes open, but now that she’s relatively recovered?
His silence makes her a little edgy, even with the soft focus of the painkillers he gives her when walking down the stairs the first day makes her wince so badly she has to sit down and take a break halfway down, every ache in her body seeming to intensify with the rest.
Turns out hiking right out of a hospital? Not a great idea.
With time, she realizes Joel is waiting her out, letting her take the lead. She appreciates it, even as she wishes a bit that he would just force her to talk. They haven’t been given work assignments yet–apparently having a nearly comatose kid and some vials of the cure to the thing that ended the world when you return means people give you some allowances–and so they spend a lot of time together, either taking short walks around Jackson or watching movies or playing games.
(As it turns out, Joel is a greedy fucking bastard while playing Monopoly.)
One morning she comes down and finds Joel strumming at a guitar in the kitchen. She pauses in the doorway.
“Well shit,” she says, making him look up. “I thought you were making it up to sound cooler.”
He laughs and then picks out a little tune in a way that feels very much like he’s showing off, and he looks more than a little smug when he’s done, sitting back. He looks cool, she has to admit, but she’ll lick sandpaper before she ever admits it.
*
She tries to act casual about the guitar, but she can’t stop looking at it. There’s something about it that draws her attention, and she wants to touch it so badly, but she can’t quite bring herself to ask. When Joel’s in the bathroom one day, she sneaks into the livingroom where it’s on a stand, and she feels very sneaky when she strums it softly, sending sound ringing out quietly. She bounces once on her knees with excitement and then does it again, and she’s so busy picking away at it that she doesn’t notice when Joel comes back.
Not until he clears his throat and startles her so badly she headbutts the side table in her haste to back away from the guitar, caught red-handed. Joel’s face is amused when he kneels down in front of her, but his hand is gentle when he pushes hers aside to check for a goose egg on her head.
“The fuck, man?” She complains. “Since when are you a fucking ninja?”
“Since you were so busy being sneaky you didn’t remember to pay attention?” He responds, pulling her to her feet. “C’mon, double O 14,” he says, grabbing the guitar and leading the way out of the room.
“Double O fucking what?” She asks, as she follows.
*
They settle on the swing on the back porch together, Joel handing over the guitar and showing her how to hold it. She likes the way it feels, like she’s a real musician, and she can’t help but smile and fidget a little. Joel patiently walks her through some basic finger placements, big hands guiding hers, pressing her fingers down where needed, but with her smaller hands and injured wrist, it’s harder for her to actually manage to reach enough for the chords. When he sees her getting frustrated, he takes the guitar from her, and for a moment, she’s afraid she’s fucked it up and he’s changed his mind about teaching her. She opens her mouth to apologize, but Joel just pulls her closer and puts an arm around her, resting the guitar across both of them.
“Just strum for now,” he tells her, pressing the strings for her. “Get a feel for it.”
She does, and together, they turn out some mean Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and even a bitching rendition of “Brown-Eyed Girl” when Joel takes a little more control over her strumming in addition to playing all of the chords. By the end of it, her fingers are stinging a little bit, but Joel assures her that she’ll get callouses with time, and she’s feeling incredibly achieved and proud of herself, even though she knows she was more prop than co-contributor.
Still, Joel would never risk her getting hurt, and he sets aside the guitar when he’s decided her fingertips are a concerning shade of red, propping it against the house and then settling back in the swing with her.
They sit together for a while like that, and she slowly leans more and more against him. He brushed the bandage on her wrist when they were playing guitar, and she knows he’s thinking about it. After the third time she catches him looking at it, she decides she’s delayed long enough.
Time for a little come to Jesus.
“It…it wasn’t…like you said. For you,” she starts. She closes her eyes, wincing at how awkward she sounds. For his part, Joel just loosely circles her bandaged wrist in his hand, slowly stroking his thumb on the skin just above the bandage. She relaxes into the sensation and lets her head fall back against his shoulder, turning it until her forehead presses against the warm skin of his neck. “It wasn’t that there wasn’t a point. It’s why I freaked the fuck out after. I-we- you are my point. Well, a point. A big point.”
The smallest little exhale of a laugh through his nose, but he doesn’t say anything as he tilts his head to rest on hers. It can’t be comfortable for his neck, this angle, but he doesn’t complain, still keeping up the same slow, soothing strokes at her wrist. She knows he’s still letting her choose if she wants to talk or not, to decide on her own if she’s ready.
And she is, she thinks. She’s ready to say it, to get the ugly words out so they won’t just twist themselves together in her head.
“I didn’t want it to be over. Y’know. Living?” God, she sounds so stupid, but she doesn’t know if Joel can handle hearing her say the words I didn’t want to die, doesn’t know if he can stand to hear the d word in relation to her. “But I…” She trails off, and her hand twitches to her thigh, wanting to press against the cuts, wanting a way to center herself against how vulnerable she feels in confessing this.
Instead, she grabs Joel’s free hand and links their fingers together. He brings their hands up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles before letting them rest on his thigh, and she feels so fucking loved in the moment that it feels like she’s going to wake up from a dream. Joel has his feet on the ground and is rocking them slowly, and for a moment she lets herself soak it all up.
I almost didn’t have this, she thinks. I almost died before I got to live this.
She squeezes her eyes tight and captures every sensation in her mind, wanting to make sure she never forgets it, not a single bit of it.
When she’s sure she’s got it down so well it’ll never leave her again, she opens her eyes.
“I thought it was never going to be over. That’s why I did it,” she says. Her instinct is to speak softly, to say these shameful words as quietly as she can.
But she also doesn’t want to have to repeat them if Joel doesn’t hear her.
“The doctor pinched my hip and was just-just talking about me like you would a pig or something. I don’t know. But she didn’t even talk to me, just turned to the nurse and talked about body fat percentages or something like that. And it just.” She swallows, and he squeezes her hand. He hates this, she knows, hates hearing about it.
But, with how gently he’s touching her, how carefully he’s listening, she knows it’s because he hates it for her, not that he hates her for it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice rough, and she frowns, tilting her head up enough to dislodge his so she can look at him.
“Why are you sorry?” She asks, confused. He saved her fucking life, for like the hundredth time. It hurt, sure, but he was-
“I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me. Ellie, I-” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. He’s not even looking at her, staring out into their yard with a lack of focus that tells her he’s not seeing it. “It’s not fair to you, I know, me putting so much on you, but it’s true. Ellie, you-you are my purpose. That’s more than you asked for, I know, but I just want you to know, baby girl, there’s nothing you can’t tell me. I don’t care how bad you think it is. You kill a whole city full of people, you still tell me, and I’ll help you hide the bodies.”
She snorts, but it comes out a bit choked-sounding with the way her eyes are watering.
“And I’m sorry I didn’t make sure you knew you could talk to me.”
There’s so much genuine apology in his voice that she aches for him. Figures he’d find a way to make her dumb decision his fault. Typical Joel.
“It wasn’t that,” she says, tucking her legs up and pulling Joel’s arm around her knees, keeping her in her little ball. She likes the way it feels, to be so surrounded by him. “I just…I was embarrassed. Of being so weak. It’s why I didn’t want you to know. It wasn’t you. It was me.” She smiles a little, reflexively, at the phrasing, and when he sees it, he smiles at her back, soft and clearly more of a response to hers than anything to do with her words. She presses back a little more, and he moves to accommodate her, tucking himself back in the corner and bringing one leg up, squishing her against the back of the swing in a way that makes her feel secure and not trapped. He’s still rocking them gently, and she thinks if their conversation wasn’t about such a hard topic, it might be a good time for a nap.
But first. Horrible conversation that’s overdue.
“You’re not weak,” he says. With the way they’re sitting now, he says it mostly into her hair, but she doesn’t miss it. “You’re the strongest goddamn person I know, Ellie.” She can’t help the way she feels herself puff up a bit with the compliment, especially coming from the strongest person she knows. “But no one’s an island, kiddo. You don’t have to shoulder everything yourself. That’s how you get hurt.”
“Hey pot, I’m kettle,” she says dryly, and he snorts.
“We’re talking about you right now, little lady. Don’t try and turn this on me. I’m an old man. I’m already set in my ways.”
“Gonna be raising hell in the nursing home soon,” she teases. She doesn’t know what a nursing home is, really, but she heard Tommy say it to Joel when he was making fun of him for being old, so she feels pretty confident that she’s using it right. She squeaks when he lets go of her hand to squeeze her side, where he knows she’s ticklish. She uses both hands to fend him off, laughing.
“You sending me to a home?” He playfully growls, bringing his other hand up to join the fight. “After all we’ve gone through?”
“Enjoy your mashed potatoes with your peers, grandpa!” She says breathlessly, giggling while she tries and fails to push his hands away. With anyone else, this reminder of how much stronger he is than her would make her afraid, would make her want to get her knife in hand.
But this is Joel.
And Joel would never hurt her.
*
Their playfight ends when she gets revenge by trying to go for the backs of his knees, and they call a truce, both breathing hard and twitching at the slightest movement from the other person, on edge about a round 2.
As the sun sets, though, they both relax, and Ellie lays against Joel like he’s her personal recliner, pulling one of his arms across her like a seatbelt, enjoying the grounding heaviness of it. He’s pliant in her hands and lets her do what she wants with him, and then he brings one hand up to her hair, playing with the ends and twisting a strand around one finger idly.
“Can you make me a promise?” He asks softly after a while, and she blinks awake from her half-doze.
“Mm?” She asks, trying not to yawn.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” she goes tense, and he squeezes the arm around her a little tighter, “and I would rather you get me when you feel like that. But if you don’t, can you promise me you’ll get me after?”
She thinks about it for a while, thinks about going to Joel while she’s still bleeding from her own actions.
But then she thinks of Joel’s face in the hospital after she slit her wrist, and she knows that above anything else, he just wants to know she’s alright.
“Okay,” she says softly. “I promise.”
*
The one place they’ve ventured to pretty regularly since arriving in Jackson is Tommy and Maria’s. She knows Joel’s missed his brother, and with time, she finds that she actually likes Tommy.
And Maria, when she isn’t shit talking Joel.
She especially likes their baby, Oliver.
He’s one of the cutest babies she’s ever seen, tight little curls and big brown eyes. He came almost a month early, apparently, but he seems energetic enough, kicking and grabbing hair with impressive force. People say he looks a lot like Tommy, but his round features are pretty indistinct to her. He’s adorable, for sure, with his chubby cheeks and pudgy arms and legs, but she doesn’t think he’s finished cooking enough to look like anyone just yet.
She just looks at first, at close range when Joel’s holding him and farther away when he’s not, but one day Joel turns to her and asks if she wants a turn.
“Me?” She asks, wide-eyed, and Joel smiles a little bit.
“Yeah, you.”
She looks to Tommy and Maria quickly, but both of them are busy looking over a map for a patrol based on something Joel told them about their hike back, and Tommy just gives her a small smile when he sees her looking to them.
“Go ahead,” he says, and Maria looks up then and gives her a nod and a little smile.
Permission acquired, she turns back, almost shaking with nerves and excitement both, and Joel carefully shifts the baby into her arms. The baby squeals loudly and kicks his feet, and she looks to Joel, terrified that she’s fucking it up, but he just smiles at her and reaches to pull a strand of hair out of the way when the baby grabs for it.
“He’s just happy to see ya,” he says, offering his finger for the baby to grab in a little fist as a substitute for her hair. She knows it hurts Joel, sometimes, looking at the baby, and she thinks it’s because the baby must look a little like Sarah when she was young. Now, though, he just puts an arm around her, like he’s holding both of them at the same time.
“Hey Olly,” she says softly, the nickname she’s heard Tommy use. “I’m Ellie.”
Olly gives her a big gummy grin and squeals, like he’s saying he’s glad to meet her.
Slowly, she tilts her head down to kiss his little forehead, the way Joel does to her.
She’s glad to meet him, too.
*
With their lazy days, she doesn’t feel as much of an urge to cut, so she doesn’t have to test her commitment to keeping her word.
And then she has a nightmare so bad she wakes up stabbing the pillow that had ended up on top of her, even with nothing in her hand.
She feels sweaty and shaky and out of control, and she can barely catch her breath.
She’s down the stairs and in the kitchen without fully knowing how she managed it, and she’s clumsy as she rummages through the silverware drawer, grabbing the first knife she sees, a little paring knife barely bigger than her hand.
She scrabbles for the hem of her sleep shorts and has the blade pressed to a blank spot in a mere moment. The first prick of the knife is relief so intense she exhales, bowing over a little bit, and hot blood drips down her leg in little trails, streaking all the way down her skin to the floor. She gets halfway up the usual length she cuts.
And then she hears noise from upstairs, the creak of a floorboard.
It’s like a cold rush of water dumped over her head, and she freezes, knife still pressed to her skin.
Part of her wants to keep going, wants to complete the cut. It’s been days now since she’s had the focus of it, this softer life not making her quite so desperate.
But then she thinks of Joel’s gentle hands on her wrist each time he changes the bandage, the way he hates when she hurts.
Hand shaking a little, she sets the knife down.
She wipes up her leg as best she can so she won’t track bloody footprints upstairs, and then she tugs her hem back down, pressing the material against the cut to catch the blood. The shorts are dark navy, so she’s not worried about staining, and she’d rather get blood on her sleep shorts than on the wood flooring.
Slowly, she creeps up the stairs.
She hesitates at Joel’s door, hand half-raised to knock. It’s already cracked open, and she can see Joel is asleep, curled loosely on his side like he always is. He looks so peaceful she feels guilty at even thinking about waking him up.
But then she feels a warm trickle of blood down her shin, and she remembers her promise.
“Joel?” She calls, too soft at first. He’s laying on his left side, so she has to be extra loud. “Joel!” She calls louder, poking her head through the door, and his head lifts as he squints into the room.
“Ellie?” He calls back, voice rough from sleep.
“I-” She hesitates. She could still lie. She could turn around, say she just thought she heard something. Joel isn’t always all there when he first wakes up. He’d probably believe her, do a quick sweep of the house to reassure her, and then tuck her back into bed. If she hid the sticky blood still on her leg, he would never have to know.
But then she thinks of the bloody knife in the sink.
And she thinks of how it would feel to break her promise.
“I cut my leg,” she says, the words squishing together a bit with how fast she says them.
It takes him a moment because he’s still groggy, but she sees the moment he realizes what she means, and then he’s in motion, tossing his covers off and moving to her in the doorway. In the scant light of the hallway, she sees his lips press together at the blood smeared over her leg from her clean-up efforts, but he doesn’t say anything about it.
“C’mon,” he says softly. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He uses an arm around her shoulders to guide her to the bathroom, and he sits her down on the edge of the tub, digging out a first aid kit from below the sink. When he has it in his hands, he pauses when he reaches for the hem of her sleep shorts.
“May I?” He asks, looking to her.
Her instinct is to say no, to say she can take care of herself.
But he would worry, would imagine the worst, and she doesn’t want that.
Hand trembling a little, she pulls her shorts leg up, revealing the bloody mess of her thigh.
He tries hard to keep his face controlled, but she’s attuned to him by now, and she sees the horror on his face, the sadness, the pain. It’s the first time he’s seen the scars and scabbed lines, and she has to admit it all looks even more gruesome with the fresh blood smearing over it.
She’s so ashamed she tilts her head forward, letting her hair hide her face, and her fingers tingle for want of the knife again. So stupid, to do this. She’s hurt him, and she didn’t even need to. She could have just-
“You didn’t cut all the way,” he says quietly, warm hand resting on the side of her thigh, tilting it to see the cut better.
“I stopped,” she says. It’s a dumb thing to be proud about when she still did it halfway, but he smiles at her and leans up to kiss her forehead.
“I’m proud of you,” he tells her. “That must have been hard.”
She looks down again, this time to hide the way her eyes are watering. From anyone else, it might sound sarcastic or belittling, but from Joel, she can tell it’s genuine. He is proud of her, even though she partially failed to start with.
“Hey,” he says, repeating it until she looks up at him. “I mean it, Ellie.” He squeezes her leg gently.
“Thanks,” she mouths more than she says, throat tight, but he just bonks her head gently with his before he gets to work.
*
When she goes downstairs the next morning, she notes that the knives in the block on the counter are all gone.
When she opens the silverware drawer, she finds they’re gone there as well, even the spiky spoon thing Joel said was for grapefruit when she asked about it.
She stares at the gaps in the forks and spoon organizer until she hears Joel come in.
“I’m sorry,” she says, so fucking ashamed that she’s now the reason they can’t even cut an apple in their house.
She shouldn’t have told. So stupid to tell.
“Hey,” he says, and he walks up behind her, dragging his feet to make sure she can track him by the sound. She leans back when he’s close, and she steadies herself against him. “It’s just for now, baby.”
“Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t go back in the kitchen for the rest of the day.
*
The day after the great knife migration of the Miller household on the left side of the street, she decides she needs some Olly time to make herself feel better and heads over to the Miller household on the right side of the street. She’s gotten more confident in holding the baby, and she especially likes holding him in a sling against her chest, likes his warm little body against hers and his kicky feet and shrill baby squeals. She likes the way it makes her feel trusted and responsible, carrying him around, and she usually beelines right towards him now, eager to be Ellie and Olly: partners in crime.
(Well, partners in crime one day, when he’s not in diapers and can stand under his own power.)
When she gets to the house, though, she finds that her little buddy isn’t available.
“He’s down for a nap,” Maria says apologetically, and she tries to hide her disappointment.
She was really looking forward to some Olly time.
“C’mon,” Maria says, pulling her inside with a gentle hand on her back. “You can come help me in the kitchen until he wakes up.”
She follows and finds some vegetables spread out on the counter. Maria explains that there’s another new mom down the road, and that she’s planning to take some chopped up vegetables down for her and her little kids. She waves her over to some celery and asks her to chop, and she’s so diligent at her task that she doesn’t notice the knife she’s using at first.
And then she sees the little chip in the handle from where she banged it against the kitchen sink by accident when she was cutting up an apple for her and Joel to share after guitar practice three days ago.
She freezes, ears ringing, horrified by the idea that Tommy and Maria now know exactly how fucked up she is. God, was this a test? Was Maria doing this on purpose?
She doesn’t want me around Olly, she realizes, and she feels her chest get tight. He’s probably not even asleep. She just doesn’t want me around her baby because she thinks I’m dangerous.
So caught up in her own head, so close to going full fuzzy, it takes Maria a few calls of her name before she looks up.
“What?” Her voice is nearly a rasp, and she’s clutching the knife so hard her knuckles are white.
“Shit,” Maria says when she sees which knife she has. “Ellie, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think-”
“He told you?” She asks, and she’s angry, suddenly, at the betrayal. This is what happens when you trust someone.
(And how much it fucking aches, that it was Joel.)
“Joel didn’t say anything to us,” Maria says. “Just asked us to keep the knives for a little bit. Didn’t explain anything beyond that.”
That makes her feel better, a little.
Maria studies her for a long moment before she seems to come to some kind of decision. Ellie raises her eyebrows when Maria reaches for the hem of her shirt and lifts it, and then her jaw drops a little when she looks at the exposed skin.
Scattered among the wiggly stretch marks from her pregnancy are tidy little lines, straight and even with each other.
Ellie knows those scars.
She looks back up to Maria’s face. There’s sympathy in her dark eyes, but Ellie doesn’t feel pitied or babied.
She feels seen.
“But you’re…” She doesn’t know exactly what she wants to say. Strong, maybe? A tough ass bitch?
Even without the finished sentence, though, Maria just smiles as she crosses the kitchen to stand next to her, and after a brief pause, ready to pull her hand back, she rests a hand on her shoulder and squeezes, gently.
“So are you, Ellie.”
And for the first time, looking at someone else who’s been where she is and still made it through, she actually feels like she might be.
*
Ellie gets her Olly time, as it turns out.
She just gets it while sitting cross-legged on the couch with Maria, having a talk she didn’t think she ever would.
“I started when I was a teenager, too,” Maria says, hands cupped around her mug of tea. Ellie has one, too, but it’s steaming still, and she doesn’t want it close to Olly, who’s kicking up a storm on her lap while he gums on a toy.
She cries while they talk, so fucking relieved to find someone else like her, to know that she’s not just the single freak in the world who would do such a thing. She doesn’t want a hug, isn’t practiced yet at accepting them from adults who aren’t Joel, but Maria holds her hand and Olly tries to reach up enough to pull her hair.
And somehow, it makes her feel better.
*
Maria talks her through some other options for when she gets the urge, and she even offers to talk to Joel for her.
It’s tempting, the option of not having to have another hard conversation with him, but no matter the peace treaty between Mari and Joel, made primarily because Joel’s a goddamn cranky baby whisperer and Maria is a deeply exhausted mom who needs sleep, she’d rather not risk them talking about sensitive topics, and she doesn’t think it would be fair to make Maria share her own hurts for her, even if she’s no longer quite so mistrustful of Joel.
Besides, Joel’s said before he wants her to know she can tell him anything.
Time to put it to the test.
*
She tries an elastic on her wrist first, popping it for the focusing pain of it. It works, not quite as well as cutting, but it works, but she ends up doing it so much that she bruises her wrist, and she can’t stand the way she sees Joel’s eyes track the dark mark on her skin even if he doesn’t say anything.
A bruise is better than a cut, but she knows he hates seeing her in pain at all.
Ice cubes end up working, too, and she keeps a little bin of them in the freezer, ready for her when she needs them. The cold of them is steadying, sharp without drawing blood, and on bad nights, she slumps against the refrigerator and breathes, pressing the ice cubes to her thighs and wrists until she feels herself back in her body.
Joel joins her sometimes, when her descent has been too noisy, but he doesn’t say anything. She’s tense the first time he comes downstairs, ashamed to be doing something so weird in front of him, but he doesn’t say anything.
He just kisses her head as he drops down beside her, stretching his legs out beside hers and waiting with her, silent and steady.
And with her, always with her.
*
Her really bad days get better with time and space from the hospital, but she still goes to Maria for the really bad urges. She knows Joel loves her and will always listen, but he doesn’t get it, not like the way Maria does. She’d felt like she was betraying him at first and had said as much once, but he had just shaken his head.
“Whatever you need, kiddo,” he’d said, tapping her chin gently. “Always.”
Today, she opens the door immediately after knocking like she’s begun doing, but when she enters, it’s not Tommy or Maria she finds.
It’s two girls about her age.
She freezes.
Hey,” one of them says, eyes widening with what seems to be recognition. “You’re the Miller girl, right? Tommy’s brother’s kid?”
Tommy enters towards the end of the sentence, and she looks to him, a little stunned by the inclusion of her in relation to him. She’s not sure he wants to be connected to her like that, especially when he has to know by now that she’s messed up. Tommy’s friendly, and from lingering at doorways, she’s heard him tell Joel he’s glad he has her, but there’s a difference between being glad that Joel’s happy and being glad that Joel’s brought along a damaged kid and slotted her into the family without asking first.
But Tommy just smiles and ruffles her hair when he passes her, holding out a folder to the girls.
“Yeah,” he tells them. “She’s Joel’s troublemaker.”
Troublemaker sounds different from him than it always did from FEDRA staff, less like an insult and more like…affection.
So pleased by it, she forgets, for a moment, what she even came over for.
*
She leaves when the girls do because Tommy says Maria has a migraine and she doesn’t want to bother her. The girls have both introduced themselves–Samira and June–but being on the porch at the same time is a little awkward. Her urge is to dart back across the street to the safety of her and Joel’s house, but even she knows that would be fucking rude, and she’d rather not get a reputation for herself just yet, especially since they’re going to be here for the foreseeable future.
The girls, though, don’t seem to feel as awkward as her.
“A few of us are going to skate,” June says. “You wanna come?”
She knows about skating, has seen pictures of it. She’s never done it, though.
“I don’t know how to skate,” she says, blushing a little. “I don’t know if I’d be good at it.” Is it something she should know? Is that something 14 year olds who aren’t raised in FEDRA school know how to do?
Did Sarah know how to skate?
“Eh,” Samira says with a shrug. “So you bust your ass a little and get up again. It’s just like life.”
Ellie smiles at that, surprised and pleased to find someone else her age who swears and who also doesn’t seem to find it strange that she doesn’t know what they do.
“Well,” she says, falling into step behind them, “guess I can try.”
*
As it turns out, Ellie is goddamn fucking awful at skating.
She doesn’t even manage to get on her feet without assistance on the stretch of concrete the kids are using because the skates seem determined to go in opposite directions. After the third time she falls, she’s ready to yank them off and bolt. She’s humiliated herself enough for one day, surely. With any luck, no one else will ever find out about this, and this memory can die here on this concrete.
And then Samira holds her hands out, smiling.
“C’mon,” she says, making grabby hands. “I’ll help you. It just takes a little practice.”
She hesitates for just a moment, but then she takes Samira’s hands in hers. The skates still try to dump her, but Samira pulls her along slowly, and that makes it easier to practice keeping them straight. After a few circles, she even manages to get some momentum on her own, and Samira cheers when she makes it between one painted line and the next without falling, even though her hands are out like she’s on a balance beam just to stay on her feet.
When she makes it back to Samira’s side, she’s grinning so wide her face hurts a little.
There aren’t enough skates for everyone, and she passes them off after a few more circles with Samira and June and another girl named Gloria. She expects to be told to go home then. She came out and did the activity they invited her for, after all. They’re probably done with her now.
And then June holds up a skateboard.
*
She’s not any better at skateboarding than she is at skating, but the benefit of skateboarding is that you can sit on your ass on it instead of just falling on your ass off of it. There’s a little hill at one end of the concrete lot they’re using, and she laughs when she goes down, the wind blowing her hair back.
June has the idea to see how many they can fit on it to make it go faster, and she squeezes onto the very edge with her and Gloria. Samira gives them a push to get them even faster, and she screams with the other two when they shoot all the way across the lot and crash land into the dirt, tumbling over each other.
By the time the day is over, she’s absolutely filthy from being dumped in the dirt a few more times, and she’s probably going to have some bruises, but when the girls ask if they’ll see her again tomorrow, she doesn’t hesitate whens he says yes.
She smiles all the way home.
*
She does go back the next day, and with enough days of doing it, she’s even able to skate without being towed around or busting her ass.
(Mostly.)
She likes hanging out with the kids, likes laughing and doing stupid stuff adults would probably disapprove of. She’s never experienced this kind of thing, except with Riley on the limited occasions they had the freedom to do it, and she finds that she likes it. She stays out with them for a couple of hours, usually in the afternoon, and then she walks back to the neighborhood with them when it’s almost dinner time.
She likes being in the crowd. She enjoys feeling included as part of a pack as they peel off to their own homes, some of them shoving her companionably before they go.
One of the best parts, though, is seeing Joel waiting for her, always smiling when she runs up to him after shouting goodbye to what he and Tommy call the Hooligan Herd.
“Have fun?” He always asks, and she links her arm with his and pulls him towards the dining hall, even when he makes a face when she comes back filthy.
“The most fun,” she says, and after a few weeks, she realizes she’s telling the truth.
*
She’s dubious about one of Maria’s ideas until she tries it, and then she finds it’s one of the best ways to feel powerful and in control.
The fact that chopping wood is helpful is just a bonus.
“Hi-yah!” She cries, in her best imitation of a ninja from old movies. It makes Joel laugh and shake his head at her, and she does it with every log just to keep it going, to keep him smiling in a way that makes him look a good decade younger.
When she’s done, she always feels centered in her body. Her arms ache a little, but it’s a good ache, a getting stronger ache.
One family only needs so much wood, however, and after a few days, she finds she has to outsource her coping mechanism.
The street they’re on has a few older families, people without kids in the house or younger relatives, and it’s Tommy who suggests they might also need some wood chopped for their piles. She’s shy, at first, but with time, she gets more comfortable, showing up at their doors with her ax when she’s feeling on edge and chop chop chopping her heart out until it all feels a little more bearable.
One of the people she chops for is an older woman named Mrs. Rose Mira, but she’s told to call her Rose under pain of death.
“Mrs. makes me feel like a matron,” Rose tells her the first day she chops for her, hands on her hips. “And I ain’t a fucking matron.”
She likes Rose a lot.
Rose is a widow, and she gets the sense that she gets lonely sometimes. She doesn’t have any kids, and she came to Jackson alone, so sometimes when Ellie’s done chopping, she accepts the invitation to go inside. Rose isn’t a great baker, but she trades with someone who is, so she always has some kind of something to offer.
She also has some of the coolest shit Ellie’s ever seen in her house.
Rose does textiles and what she calls “fiber arts,” and her house has a bunch of things Ellie’s never seen before. On her third visit, Rose sees her eyeing a crochet hook and ball of yarn and offers to teach her.
“Might be helpful when it’s too cold to get that energy out choppin’,” she says, tossing the yarn to Ellie, who fumbles the catch but manages to keep hold.
In her defense, she gives it her best shot, primarily because Rose is part of a group she says gets together for “stitchin’ and bitchin’,” and she desperately wants to get in on that action.
Tragically, though, crochet is the devil’s work and seems set against her.
After the third time she sends a project flying across Rose’s livingroom because she loses her stitches, Rose confiscates the crochet hook.
“Alright,” she says, patting Ellie on the head. “So that’s not for you.”
What is for her, it turns out, is something called felting. Well, the books about it call it felting.
Rose calls it “creative stabbing.”
Ellie highly enjoys creative stabbing.
She’s absolutely God-awful at it, but the process is so much fun she doesn’t mind that the only recognizable thing she can make is a worm. There’s something really nice about sitting next to Rose, sometimes at her house and sometimes at her little group of crafters, and working on something for no other reason than to make something. There’s no pressure, no need.
There’s just creative stabbing.
She knows it makes Joel nervous, her having sharp things. At first, he asks her not to use them alone and keeps them in his room when she isn’t using them, but with every shitty animal that goes up on a shelf around their house and every line that doesn’t appear on her thighs, she can see him slowly relaxing, to the point that she just yells out that she’s felting and retrieves the tools from his side table without him needing to actively watch her.
And then comes the day she walks into her room after helping out at the stables to find a carved box on her desk, with little sections inside for all of her felting tools. When she shuts the lid, she finds her name carved on the top.
It’s an extension of trust, this gift, and she picks up the box and squeezes it to her chest in gratitude.
*
She almost tackles Joel when he comes in that evening, and he grunts and staggers back a half-step before he recovers.
“Hey, you alright?” He asks, clearly concerned by the enthusiasm, so she tilts her face up so he can see how wide she’s smiling.
“I love my new stabby tool box,” she says in answer, and he snorts, brushing a bit of hair out of her eyes.
“You’re gonna get in trouble one day, you keep calling ‘em stabby tools.”
“It’s descriptive!” She protests. “They’re tools and they’re stabby. I’m just being accurate.”
“Mmhm,” he says, amused and willing to let it go, and then he grins when she doesn’t let go of him and makes him drag her with him across the floor. He pulls her off of him when they reach the stairs, unwilling to risk hurting her, but she laughs when he slings her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, carrying her up with him. “You’re a mess,” he tells her, and she can hear the affection in his voice.
“Yeah, but I’m your mess,” she says brightly, going limp and floppy to make carrying her harder.
“That you are,” he says, his voice so warm it sounds almost like an I love you.
*
The tools stay in her room, and she’s allowed to creatively stab without anyone watching at all. She feels the urge, sometimes, to use them on herself.
But that’s when she gets a ball of wool and goes to town, excited to show Joel her next shitty animal.
She always knows he’s still going to put them up on a shelf, no matter how absolutely terrible they are.
*
Even with the way she’s better, these days, there are still some nights it’s not enough, even the ice cubes, and on those nights she strips down and steps under the cold spray of the shower until her fingertips are numb, letting the shock of it pull her back into her body.
“Ellie?” Joel’s voice calls one night with a soft knock at the door. “Kiddo, you okay?”
She’s been in so long she thinks her lips might be a little blue, so she shuts off the water and pulls on her robe, staggering to the doorway.
Joel’s lips press together when he gets a look at her, goosebumps and all, but he doesn’t say anything, just opening his arms for her.
“Went fuzzy,” she mumbles against his chest, and she hears him sigh as he threads his fingers through her soaking wet hair.
He gets a towel and dries her hair for her so she won’t drip everywhere, and then he carries her to his bed, tucking her down into the sheets where his body heat still lingers. She shudders, a little, at the relief, and flexes her toes, enjoying the warmth as Joel climbs in next to her. He throws heat like a furnace, and it’s a relief to soak it up now.
“You wanna talk about it?” He offers softly.
She shakes her head.
He doesn’t fuss at her, just goes easily when she arranges him how she wants him, curling up against him and letting his strength lull her to sleep.
*
After that, she always finds Joel sitting in the hall when she takes her late showers.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask, doesn’t scold, just opens up his arms and lets her curl up against him, shivering. He dries her hair for her and then carries her to his bed and tucks her in.
“You wanna talk?” He always asks.
And one night, she says yes.
*
She keeps saying yes, after that, and with time, the monsters that live in her head get more manageable, like saying them out loud makes them easier to defeat. She still gets nightmares and sometimes goes fuzzy, but it gets easier, with time, to share the things that haunt her with Joel.
Her cold showers get less frequent, and eventually she starts skipping the shower step entirely and just curling up against Joel. She’s hesitant the first few times she appears at his door, and she sees his fear when he wakes up that she’s hurt herself, but with enough repetitions, he soon does nothing more than lift up the edge of his quilt to let her climb in beside him.
It’s during these nights that she learns that she likes the firm press of his arm against her, pushing her lightly into the mattress. It’s not helpful for some of the David dreams, but when the hospital haunts her, and she wakes up from phantom hands putting a mask over her face to send her to a sleep she just knows she won’t wake up from, the weight of Joel pushing on her back makes her calm enough to stop trembling.
It’s also subtle enough that she can do it in public, tucking herself under Joel’s arm. They work out a system for it, and two little taps to his wrist means “squeeze please.” They don’t make a big deal out of it, but Rose apparently notices that she tucks herself against Joel in crowds, because one day when she’s over for a round of creative stabbing, Rose hauls out a bundle of cloth, grunting a bit under the weight.
“Now, I’m not making any assumptions,” she says, “but I had a brother who used to have what we called ‘bad brain days.’ He was a veteran, and there are some wars that just don’t leave you.” She pauses, after that, and it’s an invitation to speak if she wants to. When she remains silent, though, Rose doesn’t hold it against her. “We found out weight would help him, and I had some old stuff laying around, so I thought you might give this a spin, see if it might save your dad a sore arm now and then.”
“This” turns out to be a quilt sort of thing with marbles inside to make it heavy.
When she lays down on the floor and Rose heaves it over her, she inhales at the relief of it, like she’s being squished back into herself. It’s no Joel, of course not, but it’s a hell of a substitute.
After she promises Rose her firstborn in exchange (“Don’t you fucking dare, missy. I ain’t looking to change diapers.”), she takes it home, staggering a bit under the weight. Rose even made a soft cover for it, and she strokes her fingers over the soft cotton covetously.
Joel seems dubious about it when she first brings it home, but when she falls asleep that night under it before he even comes up to say goodnight, Rose suddenly has him in her house almost constantly doing whatever projects she thinks up.
“Well now,” Rose tells Ellie conspiratorially, “if I’d known I’d finally have a man to order about by doing it, I would have started making those blankets years ago.”
Ellie snorts and then returns to supervising Joel, a very important task she’s taken on despite being told to stop.
“That shelf is crooked,” she calls, and then she laughs, ducking when her incredibly essential contribution gets her a ball of yarn tossed at her head.
*
Her blanket makes her feel more independent, able to calm down and center herself on her own without Joel right there to squish her back to normal. It makes her feel a little more in control, a little bit less pathetic, a little bit less like the frantic girl who chopped a man to pieces in a panic or the helpless girl who thought she’d never get out of that hospital.
And on her really bad nights, when it isn’t enough to fight off her really bad demons on her own, she curls up under her heavy blanket next to Joel in his bed and just breathes until she’s back.
*
“I’m sorry I can’t be Sarah,” she whispers into the dark of his room one night. She’s only just curled against him, too touch-averse before after waking up from a nightmare about David. She’d been desperate to have Joel beside her, but it’s only in the last few minutes that she’s actually been able to snuggle up tight against him.
“Ellie-” He starts, and she can tell he’s startled, but it’s something that’s weighed on her since she first heard the other girl’s name, and she’s tired of carrying it around.
“I know you miss her,” she confesses, head tucked tight to his shoulder so she won’t have to see his face. “And I know-I know I’m not like her. We like different things, and she wasn’t all fucked up like me.” She could go on, could list every single way she knows she falls short, has made a catalog in her head that’s ready to go.
But with that overture out in the open, her nerve fails her.
Joel is quiet for a long, long moment, and she would be terrified if she couldn’t tell from the way he’s tracing patterns on her back that he’s just deep in thought, not necessarily angry or horrified.
“I don’t need you to be Sarah,” he finally says, and she feels her heart speed up a bit. He shifts them until he’s looking down at her, and he cups her face with one hand, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. “I just need you to be Ellie. She’s a pretty great kid. I’ve gotten pretty fond of her, even if she eats like a raccoon in a dumpster.”
She slaps his chest at that, lightly, but it’s hard to put force behind it after the rest of the words before it. She tucks her head against him again, and she feels him kiss her hair, which gives her the little bit of nerve to say the words she’s been thinking for months now.
“I love you,” she says against his chest before she chickens out.
He freezes, for the briefest moment, and she has a quick internal meltdown that she’s pushed too much, that she’s gone too far, that he doesn’t-
And then he’s pulling her up to rest on his chest, kissing her forehead, and squeezing her face gently, and she can see his eyes are shiny in the low light from the bit of moon peeking in through the curtain.
“I love you, too,” he says, voice rough. “More than you could ever know, kiddo.”
Smiling, she curls up against him under her heavy blanket and falls asleep.
She wakes the next morning and wiggles out from under her blanket and Joel’s arm, feeling lighter than she has in ages.
*
Before she knows it, it’s late fall, and there’s discussion about the doses to be collected from the Fireflies.
It’s only then that she remembers the deal the doctor tried to make when they left.
Joel hasn’t even brought it up, and she knows he won’t. If it were up to him, they’d never hear from the Fireflies again, and from eavesdropping, she knows he won’t even be going with this group. Tommy had tried to convince him on the grounds that it would be helpful to have someone who’d been there before and dealt with the Fireflies.
“If I deal with them like they deserve, there won’t be anyone left to make the goddamn cure,” Joel had said darkly.
That had been the end of Tommy’s efforts at convincing Joel to play diplomat.
The Fireflies are probably counting on more blood, she knows, and automatically, she wants to say no just because she can. There’s no one here to force her into it, no one waiting to guilt her with her responsibility to humanity.
She could say no, and there’s not one damn thing they could do about it. Joel would kill them if they even tried.
And it’s this that makes her want to say yes.
*
“Absolutely not,” Joel says when she brings it up to him. They’re back on the porch swing, which has become their go-to spot for guitar practice, even with the weather getting colder. They had been relaxed and happy.
Joel is now significantly less relaxed and happy.
“Joel-” She starts, turning to look at him, but he’s wound up now.
“Ellie,” he says, setting the guitar aside so carelessly that she has to catch the neck of it on her toes before it clatters down, lowering it gently with her foot while Joel grabs her shoulders. “Baby, you have given enough, done enough, sacrificed enough. They took more than they ever should have, and I let them. I’m not putting you through that again.”
Ah, so it’s a combination of worried Joel and guilty Joel. Classic.
“Joel,” she says, putting her hands over his. “I’m not saying let’s go back to the hospital,” even the idea makes her nauseous, “but this is on our terms. My terms.”
“You do not owe them a single goddamn thing,” he says fiercely, and she feels so much gratitude for how much he loves her that she scrunches her face to one side to press her cheek to his hand. The corner of his lip quirks up. “Being cute isn’t going to distract me,” he still says firmly.
“Can’t help it,” she says teasingly. “I’m just naturally adorable.”
He rolls his eyes, and she presses her cheek a little harder before she raises her head.
“This is my choice,” she says, pulling his hands off her shoulders by the wrist so she can hold them in hers. She squeezes, wanting to emphasize her point. “No one’s making me. No one’s forcing me.”
“I would never let them,” Joel says, and she can’t help but smile. So protective.
“I know,” she says, squeezing his hands again. “But this is me choosing to do it because I want to. Because it could help people. Because absolutely no one can make me.”
“You’ve done enough for the cure,” he maintains, stubborn in how much he wants to keep her safe, and she pushes herself up on her knees to pull his head down so she can kiss his temple, right over his scar. She holds his face the same he always does to her, and she can tell he’s amused by the reversal.
“I know I’ve done enough,” she says, and it’s true. She’s given everything she had to give and then some. “But I can do more, and this time, I want to.”
She can tell he’s still not totally happy, so she squishes his cheeks to break the tension, and he pulls his head back, trying to scowl so he won’t smile, and then he grabs her with an arm around her waist and dangles her over the porch to make her squeal and laugh and try to fight her way free.
“You gonna learn some manners if I let you back up?” He asks, and she can hear his smile.
“Never!” She cries, fighting even harder to get loose.
She doesn’t win the playfight, but when she admits defeat, he lets her slump against his shoulder while he sings her “Brown-Eyed Girl” and plays the guitar, so it still feels like a form of victory.
*
The Fireflies gave Joel a bundle of needles and blood vials when they left, and miracle of miracles, he didn’t throw them out of the window of the car as soon as they left.
She knows from her chopping that Mr. Tanaka–the husband of Mr. Evans, who is a fellow creative stabber who finally showed her how to make a horse that looks less like a dragon–was a phlebotomist before the world ended, and so it’s to his house that she and Joel go when it’s time to get the blood to send. Joel carries a little cooler the blood will be put in for the vaccine party, and even though she knows he still isn’t entirely happy about this, he still keeps his arm around her.
She’s tense when they’re inside the house and the needles come out, and she grabs for Joel’s hand. She knows it’s her choice, knows that she could about-face right now and never do this, and that makes her feel better, but as Mr. Tanaka swabs her arm with a bit of cotton soaked in alcohol, she still can’t help but fear the needle. She’d been told she had difficult veins by more than one nurse, and she’s ready to feel like a pin cushion again, ready to breathe through-
And then the needle is in, slipped in with such a light touch that it barely stings.
“Well fuck,” she says, blinking as the first little tube fills. “You’re good at that.”
“He has his uses,” Mr. Evans says with a wink, laughing when his husband throws the bottle of alcohol at him.
She sits back and waits while they get their samples, studying the house. She likes how colorful their house is, and at first she’d thought all the rainbows were just because they’re pretty, until the day Mr. Tanaka said that there’s a rainbow flag, meant for people who like the same gender. She’d asked Mr. Evans more about it during their next craft session, and he’d seen enough in her face that he gave her a little rainbow flag of her own the next time he saw her.
It’s on her wall right now, in place of pride against the blue paint she and Joel put up as part of their settling in.
She still marvels, a bit, that people like her have their own flag. She looks at the rainbows sometimes and thinks about how many others there are, how many there’s always been of them.
I’m not alone, she thinks, as she takes a plate of cookies from Mr. Evans to get her blood sugar back up once the blood draw is over, and she smiles, watching them bicker about Mr. Tanaka’s handwriting on the labels. She leans back against Joel, who puts an arm around her and kisses her forehead, and she finishes off her cookies.
*
Joel keeps an arm around her when they leave, protective as ever. She is grateful for it, a little tired even though the blood draw wasn’t nearly as much as the Fireflies used to take. She leans against him and toys with the idea of lifting her arms to be picked up and carried, weighing it against trying to protect her street cred.
She waves to Samira when she passes by, but she calls back a no to the invitation to skate, not sure she’d be able to stay on her feet just now.
Besides, they’ll be going to dinner later with Tommy and Maria, and she doesn’t want to show up too sweaty because then she won’t be able to carry Olly around in his sling. And she also wants to start planning a thank you stabby craft for Mr. Tanaka for doing the blood draw, maybe a unicorn or something so she can incorporate some rainbows into it.
So many people, she thinks. So many people to consider, so many more than she ever dreamed of having.
It feels like belonging to something, being here, in a way she never really thought she’d ever get.
I’m not alone, she thinks, leaning against Joel just to feel the solid strength of him. Not anymore.
And God, isn’t that a thought?
When she does finally ask Joel to pick her up just to feel spoiled, he does it immediately, and with her head against his shoulder, she smiles all the way home.