Chapter Text
They have their own system for showering, developed early and kept to militantly. It’s one of the only times they’re uncuffed out of their cell, but even that only lends so much safety. They only go during the least busy times, always pick the stall against the wall, and he stands right in front of it facing out while she showers, and then she stands facing the wall while he showers as well. It was awkward as hell to develop, and he’d had to split open a few heads from creeps who didn’t get the fucking message that it wasn’t a peep show, but word’s gone around enough now that their corner of the shower room is best avoided for anyone who wants to make it out of the shower room alive.
And stupidly, with enough time, he falls prey to thinking it’s a system unlikely to fail them.
He normally keeps an eye on her, checking every few seconds to make sure she’s still alright and unbothered in her place in the corner, but today, in the one goddamn minute it takes him to fix the showerhead enough to stop sputtering, he looks over the stall to find her gone.
And feels his heart drop.
He doesn’t even bother rinsing the last of the soap off as he tugs on his clothes and begins looking around wildly, begging her to just be doing something stupid like fucking around in the mirrors making faces the way she likes doing. It’s stupid, and he’ll be giving her an earful about it later, but it’s the best option in a large plethora of terrifying ones. When he gets to the mirrors, though, there’s no 14 year old making faces.
There’s no 14 year old, period.
He feels the same panic he did the one time he lost Sarah in a grocery store, the same frantic, mind-spiraling anxiety of his child being out of his sight and in a world that does terrible things to children, especially girls.
Losing Ellie here, though, is significantly more dangerous than a 6 year old wandering off in H-E-B.
He tears through the halls, finding them empty of the guards who should be on watch.
It only serves to terrify him further. His fear is a primal, wrathful thing. His kid did not wander off. Someone took her.
And someone’s going to die for that.
*
With his shit hearing, it’s a fucking miracle he hears one strangled cry that he knows in a second is her, and he’s off headlong in that direction, barreling down the hallways faster than he’s moved in years. He’s at loose ends when he emerges into an empty corridor, but a shadow beneath a door clues him in, and within a second, he slams the door open, walks in, nearly snarling with rage-
-and finds three guards surrounding a beaten and blindfolded Ellie, trying to get a noose around her throat.
His mind, in one rush, goes very, very calm.
*
When it’s all settled and he’s used a shiv he found knocked to the ground to cut her hands free, Ellie, wild with fear, tries to take a swing at him, her eyes still covered.
“Hey,” he says, catching her wrists in one hand while she struggles, growling and spitting like a wild animal, “Ellie, baby, it’s me.” He pulls the blindfold off of her eyes, but even with no covering, she’s blind in her terror. He’s equally mindless as he speaks, just trying to soothe her. “Hey, look, look! It’s me.”
“Joel?” She says, panting, as fear starts to clear from her face, the cessation of panic letting her actually register him.
“Yeah,” he says, voice soft as he can manage. It’s a skill he hasn’t used in fucking decades, calming a child, but he finds it’s not an effort to remember how. “I’m here, baby girl, I gotcha. You’re okay.”
“They-” She starts. She goes to look at the bodies on the ground, but he catches her chin, forcing her to stay looking at him.
“Ah ah,” he says, “eyes on me. You’re okay.”
He knows she’s probably seen worse than a body with no eyes, another with a neck at the wrong angle, and a third with its jaw half torn off, but in the moment, she’s a kid, and he can’t let her look at something she shouldn’t have to. She makes a small, whimpering sort of noise, and then she collapses against him like a little puppet with her strings cut, shaking and boneless.
“You’re okay,” he says, closing his eyes and rocking her gently side to side. He bends his knees enough to scoop her up higher, holding her close to his chest, her toes barely brushing the ground. “I’ve gotcha, baby girl. I’m here.”
*
He takes her back to their cell. Technically, they’re supposed to wait for guards, but given that he’s pretty sure he just killed the fuckers who would have been responsible for that, he thinks they might be on their own with getting where they need to go. He’ll keep the key to their cell this time, planning to hide it behind the loose brick behind the bed. The other keys he removed from the ring and tossed around the room, making Ellie flinch with the noise from where she was pressed against him. With any luck, the guards won’t be able to keep track of which keys are and are not accounted for.
In the moment, though, he has higher concerns than keys.
Ellie, used enough to keeping up a good game face in public, gives it her best shot as they walk back to their cell, but she keeps so close she almost trips him as they go. She tenses when they turn corners, clearly expecting an ambush, and he sets aside his better judgment and puts an arm around her.
“Almost there, baby,” he tells her softly.
She gives him one terse nod in response.
He ushers her over to his bunk before he goes back and locks the door.
“Hey,” he calls quietly, and it takes two more times before he catches her attention. He holds up the key. “Hide this behind the bed brick for me, alright? And grab our stuff out.” It’s the place they hide their little hoard of first aid supplies stolen from sorting duty, with her pads hidden behind another brick across the room when she’s not using them. One thing that’s important to learn in prison: never assume everything won’t be stolen given half a chance.
She fumbles the catch when he tosses the key to her, but she crawls under the bed to hide it quickly enough, even as she winces. With her occupied with that–and he hopes it helps somewhat, her having a task–he wets a cloth in the sink, cursing that they only have cold water. She looks a mess, but after tonight, he certainly can’t risk taking her back to the showers.
He almost jumps when he turns back around to find Ellie already back on the mattress, staring at him in silence. Her quietness is deeply unnerving when she’s normally such a chatterbox.
“Your face is a little messy,” he says, sitting beside her, careful not to jolt her. He doesn’t have a full idea of her injuries yet, but he imagines the guards weren’t gentle with her. “Okay if I get it for you?”
“I-I can…” She starts, but she stops and then nods. “Yes, please.”
He’s never liked hearing a please less. Manners just don’t suit her.
“Sorry,” he says when she winces at the first touch of the cloth to her nose, “I know that’s gotta hurt.” He dabs at the blood gently, starting at her nose and moving down the trail that’s gone over her chin. A gentle investigation shows it isn’t broken, but he knows it still has to hurt like a bitch. Tipping her chin up gently to get at the blood, he finds abrasions around her throat from the rope, and he breathes through a swell of rage. Those fuckers deserved so much worse than they got.
“I got it off the first time,” she says, voice rough.
“What, baby?” He asks, dabbing gently at her throat.
“I, um,” she fidgets just slightly, and he realizes not looking at him while he’s touching her is making her nervous. He finishes up quickly so she can lower her chin, and she settles a bit as he moves to her hands, her nails bloody and broken from where she clearly tried to claw the hell out of her attackers. “I-when they had it around my throat. I got it off the first time.”
“Good job,” he says, and she sees her shoulders go the slightest bit looser. “Looks like you fought like hell.” It’s a guess, thinking she might like acknowledgement that she gave them a hell of a struggle.
“Not enough,” she says, looking away. “So fucking pathetic,” she mumbles, almost under her breath.
“Hey,” he says, repeating it and touching her cheek to guide her back to look at him. “It was 3 on 1, kiddo. Those were shit odds for anyone.”
“You did it.”
He did. With the wrath roiling in his chest, he could have probably killed 30 if he’d had to.
“I surprised them,” he says with a shrug, finishing up with her right arm and moving to her left. There are nail marks down her arm where one of the guards must have returned the favor from the claw marks he saw across one of their faces.
“I’m sorry you had to save me,” she says quietly. “I tried…” She bites her cheek. “I tried,” she says again, quieter.
He brushes a hand over her hair, the strands falling out of her ponytail in a messy cloud, and cups the back of her head gently.
“You kept yourself alive,” he says. “That’s all you needed to do.”
“I-”
“Hey,” he says, ducking his head a bit to make sure he has her attention. “We’re buddies, alright? We stick together.”
Her lip wobbles, and she leans forward, resting her forehead against his chest. He slides his hand down from her head to rub slow strokes up and down her back.
They sit that way for a long, long time.
*
He offered Ellie his bed, but she refused. He had gently boosted her up, and she’d curled into as much of a ball as she can manage when she’s hurting–and fuck, if it doesn’t make him feel useless, having nothing to offer her for the pain she shouldn’t be feeling in the first place–and settled down. She’s not asleep, though. He can feel her shake occasionally in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature, the motion shivering through the entire bunk bed frame.
“Hey,” he calls up after the situation gets too painful to leave it be.
She pokes the top of her head over the edge of the top bunk, and he can tell from her eyes that she cried not so long ago, no matter that she’s wiped all the tears away now. It decides him the rest of the way on what he’d gotten her attention to offer.
“C’mere,” he says, patting the bed beside him.
Her brows lower in what he imagines is part of a frown of confusion.
“Come sit with me,” he says, patting the bed again. She pokes her head over farther, and he sees the first hint of bruising around her slender throat, making him flex his hands briefly in the urge for more violence. “Come on before I change my mind.”
She jumps down then, stumbling a bit on the ankle she wrenched in the struggle even with its wrapping, but she pauses when she’s down, just for a moment. He shifts over in the narrow cot, leaving a scant strip of bed between him and the wall. It’s not much, but it should be enough for a skinny 14 year old. She climbs over his legs hesitantly, like this is a trick, but she turns to him easily enough when she’s sitting, and he slowly guides her head to his shoulder. She’s a bit stiff at first, but he lowers his hand to stroke over her back again, and she slowly seems to deflate.
“You’re safe,” he tells her quietly. “I’m here. I’ve gotcha.”
They sit that way for a long time in silence, and he half thinks she’s fallen asleep when she finally speaks.
“I killed a FEDRA agent,” she almost whispers. He only catches it because she’s so close and on his left side.
He doesn’t respond. The tone of her voice says she doesn’t intend for this to be a conversation.
“That’s why I’m here, why they want me dead so bad. I killed one of their buddies.” He hears her swallow hard. “He, uh, he wanted-he tried…” He doesn’t need her to finish that thought. She seems to sense it. “It was in a storage closet. He shoved me in and tried-y’know-and I was scared and I just grabbed for anything. He had me on my stomach and he was kneeling on my back, so I couldn’t shove him, but I-I wanted… It was dark and I couldn’t see, but I felt something metal, and I grabbed it, and then I started swinging.” Her breath has gone shallow, and he presses against her side, a futile attempt at soothing her against her own memories. “I didn’t stop,” she says hoarsely. “Not until another agent found me there and pulled me off. What was left-it wasn’t-it wasn’t a person anymore. They uh.” A soft laugh devoid of any humor at all. “They didn’t like that very much.”
“He deserved it,” he says, something he hopes she already knows but needs to say anyway. “He deserved worse.” The words make her turn her face in towards him, and for a moment, she just gets herself back together. He realizes after a moment that she’s trying to match his breathing, and he deliberately makes it deeper and slower, setting an example for her to follow. When she’s recovered, she lifts her head again a bit, enough to speak.
“His dad was some high-up fucker. I didn’t get a trial, really. The FEDRA orphans usually don’t. FEDRA’s in charge of us, so it just makes decisions. He said if I thought I was so tough, I could see how I did against men I hadn’t ‘ambushed.’” That same mirthless exhalation of a laugh. “That was the story that got around. That I had a fucking crush or something, and he told me no, and I attacked him. They-they didn’t even ask me what happened.”
He might be damaging the enamel on his teeth, his jaw is clenched so tight.
“They told me a bunch of shit about you,” she nearly whispers. “All the way here and when I was getting led to the cell. You-I-It was. A lot. They said you were gonna rip me apart. It’s why they wanted me here. You were supposed to let them get even.”
“I will never hurt you,” he says fiercely. Before he even thinks about it, he presses a kiss to her head. “I swear on my life, Ellie. I will never, ever hurt you.”
She tilts her face up. There are fresh tears on her cheeks, but there’s the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.
“I know.”
*
The shower kidnapping is what finally galvanizes him into planning an escape. He’s played with the idea before, but staying has always seemed safer than trying for an escape there’s almost no chance of succeeding at. Prison is hard labor under sadistic bastards, but the food–if tasteless–comes regularly and there’s a relatively secure place to sleep. He misses Tess and worries about her, but she’s tough and she’s ruthless, and he knows she can take care of herself. She probably went to seek shelter with Frank and Bill, he told himself. She’d make it just fine without him.
After the attempt on Ellie’s life, however, he knows it’s no longer something he can just think about.
It’s something he needs to make happen.
*
He’s ready for a fight in an instant when he sees a shadow on the floor when someone stops in front of their cell two days later, but when he looks up sharply, muscles already tensed for a fight, it’s just Johan and Miguel. It’s rec hour right now, but he and Ellie have remained in their cell under the excuse of her being sick so she’ll have some time to recover.
He rises carefully so he won’t jostle the bed, but when he’s standing, he finds it wasn’t necessary. Ellie hasn’t been sleeping as well at night, so she’s out cold now, curled into a loose C, a small fist resting beside her face. He tugs her blanket up over her shoulders and then brushes a gentle hand over her hair before he steps to the front of the cell. She’d woken with a nightmare last night; he’s hoping this nap will remain undisturbed.
“How is she feeling?” Johan says quietly when he approaches.
“Fine,” he says. “She’ll be better soon.” She’ll be much better when they’re out of here.
Miguel signs something, but he only catches “eating.” Through sheer proximity to Ellie, he’s picked up bits and pieces, but he’s certainly not as quick as her in learning it. He takes a guess.
“They’ve been feeding us,” he confirms, and Miguel’s nod says he was correct. It had been something he was worried about as well. For the sake of disease prevention, sick inmates get food brought to them, and he’d considered that it was a potential avenue for exacting more revenge on Ellie, but so far it appears starvation isn’t amusing enough for them.
“How badly is she hurt?” Johan asks.
He makes his face perfectly neutral.
“She’s sick,” he says flatly. “She caught-”
“Three guards were found dead in a room, and they had a noose with them. Now Ellie has not left the cell, and you stand like a man who wants a fight.” Johan smiles, just faintly. “They have hurt your child. I do not blame you. I would want the same.”
It crosses his mind briefly to remind him that Ellie isn’t his, but it’s a fight he’s too tired to handle right now.
“She’ll be alright,” he says, looking over his shoulder. Ellie stirs slightly in her sleep, brow creasing, and he holds his breath for a moment to see which way her dreams will turn. Thankfully she just sighs and then settles, face smoothing. He looks back to Johan to find the man looking to Miguel instead, both of them seemingly involved in an intense silent conversation. After a moment, Johan nods and turns back to him.
“We would like to help you get her out of here.”
His heart speeds up slightly.
“What are you talking about?” He asks, forcing himself to not react at all. There’s no way they know what he’s already begun planning. They’re not goddamn mind readers.
“We are fathers, too,” Johan says calmly. “If it were our daughter? She would not be remaining here. I cannot imagine that you will be allowing it, either.”
“What you’re implying is dangerous,” he says, stepping closer and looking around, making sure there are no eavesdroppers. This is the kind of conversation that gets people killed. For his own part, he doesn’t care, but he has a child to consider now.
“As is allowing Ellie to remain.” Johan looks around as well, and then he and Miguel step closer. “We would like to help you.”
“You wanna escape, too?” He asks, a little dubious. He doesn’t imagine this is a pleasant place to die, but Johan and Miguel can’t actually think of escaping. If their families are truly gone, there’s no one to help them on the outside. He certainly can’t take responsibility for them. He’s grateful for what Johan’s done for Ellie, but he has enough on his plate just worrying about the two of them.
“No,” Johan says. “We want to buy time for the two of you to escape.” At his side, Miguel nods.
“I don’t believe you,” he says plainly. “They could kill you for even planning it. You’re gonna take the risk with no reward?”
“We are old,” Johan says, extending his hands like a supplicant. “Our families, if they survived, are lost to us. What is there for us out of here?” He shakes his head. “No, you take that girl, and you keep her safe, you hear me? This a promise bound with a life now. We will stay, and we will buy you what time we can. And you will get Ellie out of here.”
As bargains go, it’s one of the easiest ones he’s ever made.
*
He doesn’t know exactly what rumor Johan managed to spin that causes a riot that sweeps through the prison like a wildfire three evenings later, but he doesn’t waste the chance as soon as he hears the sounds of the fight. He reaches up to help Ellie down, already fully dressed and in her shoes. She winces a bit when she lands, sore still from the attack, but she doesn’t complain.
She’s too tough a kid for that.
The first explosion from the bombs Miguel’s set up throughout the prison–turns out a history as a chemical engineer has all sorts of applications–is their signal to move, and he pulls the key from his pocket. Ellie stays close at his heels as they move, and he pushes her in front of him to take point. A stream of prisoners moves past them, angry men eager for a release, and with them all drunk on group mentality, he moves Ellie to keep her between him and the wall until they’re out of the thick of it.
“Left?” She asks, and he nods. They’d both memorized the layout of the prison, and it comes in handy now as they take the less crowded corridors.
“What are you doing?” He asks, as she nearly skids to a halt at the room where inmate belongings are kept.
“I was going to run on the day they passed the sentence,” she calls breathlessly over her shoulder as she ducks through the door, left open from a guard bolting towards the riot. “They took my backpack. I want it back.”
They do not have time for this, but based on the desperation Ellie’s tossing shit out of her way with, they’re apparently just going to have to make time. He rolls his eyes at his own weakness and starts grabbing bags. She’s described it to him before, in covetous detail, the backpack that was taken from her with all of its trinkets. There’s no guarantee it’s even in here, but the one promise of a possibility is that a FEDRA guard won’t have much interest in what a 14 year old girl would find important enough to be this worried about.
It’s the fuzzy little pompom that catches his eye first, and he reaches over an entire pile of looted personal effects to grab it, scrambling blindly with his fingers to secure a better grip on something less likely to snap. He gets hold of what feels like a strap and tugs, using more force than he’d expected to need to to get it loose.
“Hey!” He calls, catching her attention. “Is this-”
He grunts and feels like he got knocked over by a fucking car, she slams into him so hard. Sharp corners poke him in the stomach from the backpack as she hugs him around it, but in a moment, she’s on her knees, unzipping it.
“Ellie, we gotta g-”
She tugs at what’s apparently a secret pocket, ripping stitches as she tugs it far wider than it was before. She almost curls over with the force of her exhale as she fishes out a knife, holding it with the same desperation other kids hold stuffed animals with. The way she shuts her eyes and shakes slightly says this was her most important prize, but the way she touches a small book in the main compartment says she had other treasures, too. He gives her a few seconds to enjoy the return of her personal effects.
And then he tugs her up.
“Time to go,” he says, and she nods, shrugging into her backpack.
“Lead the way.”
*
He tries to get them out without Ellie being involved in any fighting, but she’s a ferocious little thing, and she gets a hit in with that knife of hers to a guard’s knee before he can stop her. He finishes the man by breaking his neck and looks to Ellie, partially worried she’ll freeze at all the blood on her hands.
Instead, she wipes the blade of her knife off on the corpse’s uniform and looks to him.
“What?” She asks.
He just shakes his head and leads her on, wondering if this particular brand of bloodthirst is unique to post-outbreak kids or if he just got the single pint-sized terror in the whole litter.
*
The number of guards drastically decreases when an explosion loud enough that it knocks him and Ellie into a wall with concussive force rocks through the prison, sending off wailing alarms that makes even him wince. Ellie covers her ears automatically, squinting with pain. He spares a brief glance backwards, a little stunned at the wall of black smoke rising into the sky that he can see through the window.
Well, apparently Miguel knows what he’s about.
Taking down a guard yields a key and a passcard, and he tugs the corpse and Ellie into a room. He’d killed the man as bloodlessly as possible on purpose, and he has Ellie turn around briefly so he can switch clothes with him. He redresses the man without care, but hopefully anyone poking around won’t be able to make the connection immediately. Just in case, he batters the face in with the man’s baton, trying as best he can to avoid getting blood splatters on himself. When he’s done, he grabs Ellie by the shoulder and leads her back out, trying to block her from seeing the corpse.
Taking out a female guard yields a uniform that could almost fit Ellie, but they end up just using the jacket. Most people will hopefully be looking to him anyway, and this late at night a large jacket over clothes that fit her will draw less looks than her in a full ill-fitting FEDRA uniform.
Hopefully.
For all of the chaos of the prison, the streets are almost eerily silent as he and Ellie dart out onto them, both of them looking over their shoulders, barely able to see through the downpour that starts almost as soon as they’re out. He almost trips over Ellie when he tries to keep her on his left, her trying to stay on his right. It takes him until she goes behind him in order to stay on her chosen side that he makes the connection that she’s keeping an ear out for him. He considers telling her that’s not something she needs to worry about.
At the end of the day, though, he can’t deny it’s probably a good idea.
*
His first look at Tess in almost seven months is a bat swung at his face the moment he gets the door open with a key left hidden behind a loose sign three blocks over. He curses and ducks, shoving Ellie back and behind him. He catches the weapon on the backswing and jerks it forward, narrowly avoiding a right hook only because Tess recognizes him at the last possible moment and pulls back enough that she only clips his chin.
“Hi honey, I’m home,” he says dryly, rubbing at the spot. It’s not as hard as he knows she can hit, but it still certainly wasn’t a love tap.
“Jesus,” Tess says, dropping the bat and moving at once to embrace him. “Thought you were fucking dead by now.”
He gives himself the briefest moment to enjoy it, Tess back in his arms, being back in hers. He knows he’s been unfair to her, hasn’t really ever given her what he knows she wants, but God has he missed her. He pulls back when she does and gives her a quick once-over. Thinner than he last saw her, a little more careworn, but still whole and well.
It loosens a knot in his chest he hadn’t known was there until it’s gone.
“Thought you might have been in the compound by now,” he says, reaching back to tug Ellie forward, her giving both of them curious looks.
“You gonna explain the kid?” Tess says instead of answering, but she doesn’t resist when he herds her and Ellie inside and shuts the door. He doesn’t know what the neighbors know about him or not, but he’d rather word didn’t get around just in case.
“My name is Ellie,” she says, clearly a little aggrieved at not being addressed directly.
Tess looks faintly amused.
“Hi, Ellie,” she says deliberately. She looks back to him. “You gonna explain her?”
Ellie sucks her teeth, and he nudges her gently towards the bedroom.
“Go find something dry,” he says. “You look like a drowned rat.”
“You look like a drowned rat,” she says, batting at him without true force and then doing as she’s been told. He’s a little wary of leaving her nosy ass alone in their room with no supervision, but better she go snooping than she end up getting sick because she’s cold and wet. Tess waits until the bedroom shuts and then pulls him to the kitchen, turning on the faucet to drown out any would-be teenaged eavesdroppers.
From the look of the shadow under the door that appears to almost stomp with irritation before moving away, it was a good call.
“Where in the fuck did you get a child, and why the fuck would you get a child? What is she? A souvenir?” She asks in a low voice, leaning towards his left to make sure he can still hear her. It’s an easy consideration that sends a throb of fondness through him, how easily she fits with him, how easily she lets him fit with her.
He hadn’t let himself remember how much he’d missed her, not until she was right in front of him again.
“The prison pairs off inmates. She was assigned to me.”
Tess shoots a quick look to the door, brow furrowed.
“They put a fucking 12 year old girl-”
“She’s 14.”
“-in a men’s prison?”
He hesitates for a moment. Ellie’s pain isn’t his to tell, but he doesn’t know if it’s better to assuage Tess’s curiosity now so Ellie won’t have to explain or risk Tess asking her later. Tess’s face clearly says she’s not in the mood for guessing games, though, so he decides to save himself and Ellie the trouble of lying for no reason when Tess’ll get the truth anyway if she wants it.
“Some FEDRA fucker attacked her,” he sees from the way Tess’s face goes hard and cold that she knows exactly what kind of attack he means, “and she defended herself. Killed the bastard, but his father was some high up something. He arranged it to send her to the prison to try and get her murdered.” Something he’s still angry about and wishes he could exact revenge for, impossible as it is.
“Poor kid,” Tess says absently, looking to the door again, face a little distant in thought. “They gave her to you?”
“I may have gotten a bit of a reputation,” he says, and she looks to him, lips curving into a slightly wry little smile.
“Playing king of the hill in the rec yard?” She asks dryly.
“Something like that,” he says, just as dryly. “They thought I’d hurt her good enough to teach her a lesson.”
“Sadistic fuckers,” she says, and he’s mildly reassured about what he’s going to need to ask her next.
“I have to get her out of Boston,” he says, and Tess looks away from the door and to him sharply. He braces himself. Tess has mentioned leaving before, and he’s always been the veto. He feels a little shitty that he’s about to do what she’s wanted for years for the sake of a kid he’s only known a few months.
But not enough to not do it.
He’d had a girlfriend when Sarah was about 8 tell him he was a great dad and a subpar boyfriend as a result. It’s not the same situation now, but he also can’t shake the thought.
“And I need to go with her,” he says, wishing he didn’t see the briefest flash of pain in Tess’s eyes before she shuts it down, every inch his stone cold partner ready for a negotiation. “She doesn't have anybody else, Tess, and she’s just a kid.”
“And she needs you,” Tess fills in. There is no inflection to her voice at all. He reaches out to her and takes a little reassurance from the fact that she doesn’t move away, holding perfectly still as he rests a hand on the curve of her neck and shoulder.
“Come with me,” he says softly. “You don’t have to, and I’ll understand if you-”
“And where the fuck else would I go?” She asks, sounding a little tired. “It’s you and me, Tex. You got your ass locked up for a while,” this with the faintest hint of amusement, “but playing jailbird doesn’t get you out of this deal.” She punches him on the shoulder. “Besides, I’m tired of doing my own grunt work. I might break a nail.”
It’s an intimacy they don’t usually exchange outside of sex, really, but he dares to press his forehead to hers, just briefly.
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“Yeah yeah,” she says, but she doesn’t move away for a long moment. When she does, she shuts off the water, stretches, and sighs like he’s asking the world of her. “Alright, so hit me: where are we going with your contraband?”
“What contraband?”
They both jump slightly and find Ellie sitting on the couch watching them intently, having padded into the room cat-quiet without alerting them at all. Little shit.
“Don’t do that,” he says, moving to the bathroom to grab a towel and throwing it to her. “And dry your hair off. You’re dripping everywhere.”
“Like you’re one to fucking talk,” she says. “You’re the one still leaving a puddle on the ground, man.”
Looking down, he finds he can’t actually tell her she’s wrong.
God, she’s fucking annoying.
*
He wishes they had real time to rest or find better clothes for Ellie, but the prison riot will mean FEDRA forces will be out even thicker by tomorrow night, especially if they manage a head count quick enough to realize they’re missing at least two inmates. Ellie borrows some clothes from Tess with the legs and sleeves rolled up, and he ignores her pulling a face about it.
“Say shit about my clothes being huge,” Tess warns her, handing over a belt, “and I’ll kick your ass.”
“Sure you can find it?” Ellie says with a small, sly grin that says she’s having fun trying to cause problems on purpose. “Seems like it’s a lot smaller than yours.”
He resists the urge to groan. As first impressions go, Ellie’s not really giving her best effort with Tess.
To his surprise, though, Tess just snorts.
“Wait til you grow up a little, stringbean,” she says, tossing Ellie a jacket, too. “You’ll wish you had an ass like mine.”
“Doubt it,” Ellie shoots back, but she smiles in response to Tess’s.
He doesn’t bother getting involved after that as they work out whatever dynamic they’re establishing here. Clearly they’ll work things out with each other just fine with no help from him.
(Thank God.)
*
Their next order of business for the night is deciding where they’ll be going. He doesn’t know how interconnected the QZs are, but if the man Ellie killed had a father high enough up in the food chain, it’s possible word’s already going out. They might have a little time with the chaos of the prison riot and the inevitable casualties, but the single girl in the prison going missing isn’t going to go unnoticed. Tommy’s an option–he’d already been planning to try and find him before he was arrested, after all–but he doesn’t have details much more concrete beyond “Wyoming,” and with winter coming, he can’t just drag a kid around hoping to stumble into him.
“I…might have an idea,” Ellie says slowly, with a fidgetiness that has him on high alert at once.
“Is this similar to your rob the commissary idea? Or is it real?”
She scowls at him.
“Okay, the plan to rob the-”
“Not to interrupt,” Tess says, “but maybe we table past grievances for now until we’re out of a city that wants you dead. Just a thought.”
Ellie still gives him a look that says she’ll be un-tabling that argument as soon as possible, but she does refocus.
“Okay, first of all, no guns. Or blades. Or, I don’t fucking know, anything stabby?”
“What are-” He starts, but she shakes her head.
“Nuh uh. No more talking until you put the weapons across the room.” She folds her arms across her chest to demonstrate how very serious she is on this point.
He and Tess exchange a look, but they finally just do it. He doubts whatever this is will be helpful, but Ellie’s a smart kid. There’s a chance this is a real plan. He’ll play along.
“Okay,” she says when they’re both unarmed, pockets turned out to prove it. “Now remember how I’ve been with you for months?” She says to him.
He raises his eyebrows.
“Little hard to forget when we’ve spent a good chunk of it chained together.”
Ellie, though, doesn’t look up to some lighthearted bickering at present. Her nervousness makes him a little nervous, too, honestly. For all she’s been through, she’s a pretty confident kid, and he’s a little edgy about what could make her anxious in the relative safety of the apartment with just him and Tess when she’s spent months in a prison full of people wanting to hurt her.
“A month and half before-y’know,” a vague wave of her hand, clearly meant to indicate what landed her in prison. He nods, and Tess does the same. “I snuck out of the dorms with my friend, Riley. We, uh, it was a whole surprise thing. For me. It was in a mall-”
“One of the malls closed off because they’re full of infected?” Tess interrupts.
“Yeah,” Ellie says flatly. “One of those. We thought it was clear and it was fine for hours, but one of them woke up and attacked. Riley, um…” She trails off, looking down to her lap, clearly trying to get herself together.
He slides off of his stool and moves to join her, throwing an arm around her in silent support. She gives him the briefest look of gratitude, even as she angles herself so she can still stay facing him and Tess to talk. Tess just watches him with an expression he can’t read. It doesn’t look angry or sad, but he doesn’t know what else it could be.
“Riley got bitten,” Ellie says, a little hoarsely. He squeezes the arm he has around her. “So…so did I.”
It’s like the very air in the room freezes at that moment.
“What do you mean so did you?” He demands, frowning. He pulls his arm back and reaches out to turn her more to face him, and he doesn’t miss the quick flinch she doesn’t hide in time when his hands come up. He drops them at once. “What do you mean so did you?” He asks again, gentler. “You’re not infected,” he tells her, as if this could be something she missed.
“You’ve been with me for months,” she says, looking right at him with a clear desperation to be believed.
“Yeah, I have, what-”
And then she pulls up the side of her shirt.
And shows an unmistakable bite mark with branches of infection spiraling out in whorls.
His first instinct from 20 years of it is to retreat at once, to get distance, to get a gun in hand.
But instincts he had for the 14 years before that just has him reaching out, needing to understand. The muscles of her stomach jump slightly when he touches the scarring, and he says an absent apology entirely on reflex.
He distantly notes Tess moving to get closer, too, but his eyes are only for the impossibility of infection marks on someone who isn’t infected.
On someone who hasn’t been infected for months, which he knows first hand.
The scarring of the bite itself is smooth, the new skin pink and shiny, but the branches of infection are rough to the touch, branching out into smaller and smaller offshoots. It rings the bite like a circle, the longest branches just reaching her ribs and above her hip. When he looks up to her, not even sure what to say, she swallows hard, clearly nervous.
“I’m not sick,” she says, an assertion and a plea in one. “I’m not-I’m not dangerous, I promise-”
“I believe you,” he says, cutting her off before she works herself up any more. “I-I believe you.”
She exhales a breath that seems to loosen her entire body.
*
She tells them the whole story, the infected, her deal with Riley, being found by the Fireflies, escaping the Fireflies, which is impressive for her and embarrassing for them. He’s fucked up in his life, but he’s never “outsmarted by a 14 year old who climbed out through a ventilation shaft because he didn’t bother to make sure the radiator she was chained to couldn’t be unbolted with time and determination” fucked up.
“And you went back to FEDRA?” Tess asks. “What, they don’t do infection checks? I’m surprised you weren’t shot as soon as you got there.”
Ellie shrugs.
“That’s just for agents in the field. None of the kids in the orphanage go on assignment. I figured I had until I was 18 to figure it out and make a plan.” She shrugs. “Where the fuck else was I supposed to go?”
It’s a fair point.
“Do you know what the Fireflies had planned?” He asks. She’s slowly tipped over to lean against him while they’ve talked, and he feels her shrug.
“They mentioned a hospital in Colorado and some tests, but no one would tell me shit. I didn’t know any of them, and they chained me to a fucking radiator and made me leave my best friend’s body behind to rot-” She stops at this for a moment, and he lowers his hand to squeeze her arm gently. “I didn’t trust them, and if they weren’t going to act like I was a fucking person then, I didn’t want them to do it when they had scalpels and shit.”
“Good call,” he tells her, and he sees her smile slightly as she turns her face in to press her cheek to his shoulder for a moment.
“Bet you anything they’re working on a cure,” Tess says, and there’s a sharp interest in her eyes that tells him she has a plan he isn’t going to like.
“There are no cures,” he reminds her flatly. “We’ve heard about them for-”
“For years, yeah, I know. But this is also the first time there’s ever been an immune person. You don’t think there’s a chance of learning something from that?” She sees him about to disagree and leans forward. “We need to get the kid out of Boston, and there’s a whole group of Fireflies with a vested interest in keeping her alive. You don’t think we can use that?”
“She’s not a bargaining chip,” he says, voice harder than it usually is with Tess.
“And when did I say she was?” Tess says, an edge to her voice in return. “You’re not the only one who’s ever had a child, Joel. I’m saying we can get them to give us the supplies to get her out that way. I’m not saying we hand her over for profit.”
His defensiveness leaves him at once, and he nods once, in apology. They don’t talk about them, their dead kids, so it’s easy sometimes to forget that his partner carries a burden like his. Tess nods back, acceptance and forgiveness given.
Not for the first time, he’s aware he doesn’t really deserve her. He should probably work on that.
“We should do it,” Ellie puts in, and he looks back to her.
“What, you suddenly trust them now?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
“I trust you,” Ellie says with a shrug. “And you’ll be there with me. You’re my buddy.”
Such easy, total confidence in him. Like it’s just that simple, like he’s enough to keep her safe against a pack of terrorists interested in her as a test subject.
It’s more than slightly humbling, that kind of faith.
*
The rain has decreased to a drizzle when they leave in the early hours of the morning, everything worth taking packed away into backpacks. It’s the best time for sneaking around, between shift changes, and the prison riot continues to bear fruit with fewer FEDRA guards on the street than usual, most of the forces apparently redirected to the chaos. He has a silent moment of gratitude for Johan and Miguel.
And then he pulls Ellie’s hood up over her head and falls into step behind her and Tess.