Archive of Our Own ^beta

It doesn’t exactly take long for Joel to realize Ellie’s a little weird.

Maybe more than a little.

The thing is, he hasn’t been around kids in two decades. That was a hard limit for both him and Tess. No kids, ever, even though other smugglers used them to move product.

He remembers, enough, though, to know that when she goofs off in the hotel and he calls her a weird kid, she’s not actually being weird. She’s alarmingly normal, in fact. And it feels wrong. Kids shouldn’t be normal anymore. They broke the world. She shouldn’t be playing pretend in a flooded hotel.

He’s almost glad when the skeleton pops out and scares her. At least she stops fooling around.

But he keeps seeing it, just how much she’s a kid. She wanders around in the woods with a stick banging tree trunks because of course a kid finds a stick the moment you take them outside. The puns －of course the puns. She’s constantly sniffing things.

After Kansas City, she’s quieter for a while. And, despite himself, he worries. So when she starts being her normal little weirdo self again, he’s relieved. Then, for months, it’s just the two of them and isolation makes people weird. So, she’s weird sometimes. She’d probably say the same about him.

It’s in Jackson that he first realizes that Ellie is not great at… people. He wasn’t really expecting her to be a social butterfly, but she’d warmed up to Henry and Sam so fast. He’d thought she’d be lonely, after spending so much time with just him for company. It’s strange to see her snap at another kid her age instead of wanting to make friends.

Silver Lake happens and Ellie not wanting to make friends is the last thing on his mind.

When they reach Jackson the second time, he really gets to see Ellie in a somewhat-normal environment.

And he realizes… there are parts of her that are weird because, well, she’s Ellie. She likes space and puns and dinosaurs. She does goofy voices and curses too much and she asks so many questions. He’s pretty sure that if she’d grown up before the outbreak, she would have been screened for ADD or something. And some of her weirdness is being a kid growing up in the apocalypse, like not knowing what a seatbelt is.

But parts of her weirdness?

FEDRA did that.

And he hates it.

* * *

Ellie has reached a tentative truce with Maria. The first night they got here, Ellie passed out on their couch and Tommy and Maria and Joel had some kind of adult conversation and the next morning, things were different. Ellie doesn’t know what they talked about, but she could see the change between Maria and Joel, so she decided to try to be nice.

Tommy had promised them a place in Jackson, but they still had to meet with the council as a formality. There’s a whole process but apparently it’s not uncommon for it to be kinda skipped over for family members of Jackson residents since it’s so rare for people to still have family in the first place.

So after a couple questions about what Joel’s job used to be, it was agreed he could stay.

Then they looked at her. And Ellie realized that they didn’t see the two of them as a package deal. Didn’t see her as family.

Cargo, she thought without meaning to.

She got asked questions, too, about how old she was, the last grade she finished, about her parents. It made her stomach twist and her palms sweat. She didn’t want them to know anything about her. She just wanted to stay with Joel. He said it was her choice and she chose him.

“And what brought you out here anyways?” one of the council members asked. He was old, and it didn’t exactly sound nice.

“None of your fucking business,” she snapped.

They really didn’t like that.

One of the other members, a woman probably in her thirties, held her hand up. “I think we’re just wondering if you were here looking for family nearby or something along those lines. But of course you’re welcome to stay in Jackson. There are lots of families in town who would be willing to take you in.”

Ellie’s breath caught in her chest. “No fucking way.”

She could tell Joel had been very much holding back how annoying he found this whole thing, but apparently that was his limit, because he grabbed her hand. She squeezed so hard her fingers ached, grateful for the support.

“That’s not happening,” Joel said, and he was doing that thing where he pulled her behind him.

She resisted enough to make him realize what he was doing. They weren’t actually in danger yet. The room was just… tense.

“I don’t think there’ll be any problem with that,” Maria interrupted. She was using what Tommy calls her Lawyer Voice, and it made everyone else be quiet. “You’ve been acting as Ellie’s guardian for…?”

“Be a year in the fall,” Joel said. His grip on Ellie’s hand eased a little, but his thumb was rubbing up and down the length of hers. It was prety much the only thing keeping her together.

Maria nodded. “And that was after her previous guardian asked you to take custody of her?”

“I… yeah,” Joel agreed, though he sounded a little confused.

Ellie was too. She knew Tommy used to know Marlene so it would make sense they talked about her. But calling Marlene her guardian seemed like a stretch. Marlene put her in a FEDRA school and then technically kidnapped her.

“Then I personally see no reason to discontinue that arrangement.” Maria laughed and it wasn’t particularly warm. “After all, Jackson isn’t exactly in the business of taking kids away from people just because we can, are we? We’re not FEDRA here. Or ice.”

Ellie wasn’t sure what that meant, but a couple of the council members laughed awkwardly.

“All agreed, then?” Maria said. “And we can all go and enjoy this lovely spring day?”

And that was it. Ellie was officially staying in Jackson and officially staying with Joel.

She did not let go of him until they were outside.

Maria pulled them off to the side, away from the sidewalk. “Wait a moment.”

“Ice, really?” Joel said.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Why do you two keep talking about ice?” Ellie asked, frustrated.

“No, sorry, Ellie.” Maria glanced past her. “Not ice like that. I-C-E. It stood for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It used to be part of the government. A really awful part of it.”

Ellie frowned. She still didn’t really understand. FEDRA never really told them about the government before they took over. “That took away people’s kids?”

“Sometimes, yes,” Maria said. “I’ll tell you about it later, alright? Anything you want to know. Just… please pretend we’re having a very important conversation so that Harriet doesn’t come over here and talk at me for the next hour.”

To Ellie’s surprise, Joel snorted. “Is that what we’re doin’ right now?”

“That woman cannot take a hint,” Maria said, looking a little desperate. “I damn near peed myself last week because she wouldn’t stop talking to me about this year’s celery crop.”

“Who fucking cares about celery that much?” Ellie asked.

“Exactly.”

“And why don’t we just leave before she sees you?” she asked.

Joel looked down and actually chuckled. It was low, not quite the same as when she makes him laugh, but it was still real. “You can’t tie that boot, can you?”

Ellie followed his gaze. Sure enough, Maria’s boot laces had come loose.

Maria sighed. “Tommy had to put them on for me this morning. You know, I remember having some dignity last time.”

“Everything’s easier in your twenties,” Joel said, surprisingly sympathetic. “Ellie, help Maria out, will you?”

“Oh, sure.”

She crouched down and tied Maria’s boot quickly, making sure it’s tight enough to last.

“At least no one will take them away,” she said, looking up at Maria. “Holy shit, can you see your feet at all?”

“Ellie,” Joel hissed.

“What?”

Maria’s belly was just really big from this angle.

“Not really,” Maria said, reaching down to help Ellie up. “What do you mean, take them away?”

Ellie mostly pulled herself up because, seriously, she wasn’t entirely sure how it worked that Maria wasn’t losing her balance constantly already. She wasn’t gonna be the one to knock her down. “It’s what they do at school if you don’t keep them tied. Can we get lunch now? I’m starving.”

Maria and Joel agreed, after a moment.

So, after that, things were different between the two of them, and Maria and Ellie had a truce. It was hard to dislike her when she made sure that Ellie could stay with Joel.

And then Violet is born.

And Violet is really fucking cool.

She’s beautiful and tiny and perfect and Ellie is in love. Her tentative truce with Maria becomes more than that as she spends time at their place. Tommy and Maria both take a few weeks off after she’s born, but after a while, Maria starts getting antsy about things not being done right in town and starts sending Tommy out to do things for her.

Ellie finds it funny until Tommy starts stealing Joel to help out. It isn’t fair. He had like forty years with Joel. She’s had less than one. He’s a fucking Joel hog. It makes her seethe inside.

The only thing close to revenge she can get is hogging Tommy’s kid. Except when she holds Violet, Tommy won’t stop smiling in her direction so it doesn’t really work.

She keeps doing it anyways. Partly because when she spends a couple hours at their house helping Maria out, Joel always says he’s proud of her. She didn’t realize how much she loved hearing him say that, so even when she ends up doing laundry or washing dishes or whatever, it feels good.

Violet likes her, though. And the older she gets, the cooler she gets. Like when she starts smiling? That’s so fucking cool. And Ellie won’t deny that she gloats a little whenever she picks Violet up and Vi stops crying for her.

Except then she goes over to their house for her normal afternoon and instead of Maria being there, Tommy is.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. It’s rude, but Joel’s not here to tell her off.

Tommy just grins, because fucking of course he does. “Maria had a last minute council meeting. C’mon in. Violet and I just finished lunch.”

Ellie considers turning on her heel and leaving. It’s been a while now that they’ve been in Jackson and she’s never been alone in a house with Tommy. Most of her doesn’t think he would do anything to her. He’s Joel’s brother, and she doesn’t believe any part of Joel would ever hurt her. But then… well, every bad person out there is somebody’s brother or son or something, aren’t they? And no one sees that coming.

Some little part of her, the part of her that’s still pinned to a dirty restaurant floor, thinks that someone like Tommy, who everyone likes and trusts, would be exactly the kind of person who could get away with hurting people. After all, he was friendly and nice at first. People trusted him. People followed him. So what exactly makes Tommy different?

Most of her doesn’t believe that.

But she has her knife in her pocket for the part of her that does. And she wants to see Violet.

And that’s how Tommy tricks her, the bastard.

Violet is sleepy and smells like milk, and she falls asleep in Ellie’s arms almost immediately after Ellie settles them on the couch.

“Alright,” Tommy says, sitting in the armchair. “I’ve actually been wantin’ to talk to you.”

Bastard.

For the last couple weeks, Violet’s been doing this thing Maria calls contact naps, which basically just means she won’t nap unless someone is holding her. So if Ellie puts her down to escape, Vi will probably start crying and then she’ll feel bad.

“Good for you,” she says. Again, rude. Again, no Joel to tell her off.

“Yeah, about that,” Tommy agrees. “When you came here last winter, you didn’t seem to hate me quite this much. Is there a particular reason you’ve decided I’m your worst enemy?”

“My worst enemy is dead,” Ellie says mildly. “I smashed his face in with a meat cleaver.”

It kinda makes her sick to say it. And, worse, Tommy doesn’t even react the way he’s supposed to. It’s supposed to shock him. Disgust him, even. She wants him to know exactly what he’s dealing with when it comes to her.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says instead. “That must have been hard.”

She shrugs, looking at Vi instead of him.

“So why am I in second place, then?” Tommy asks a moment later.

She just shrugs again.

“Well, you don’t have to tell me,” he says. “But I’m not goin’ anywhere. I’m gonna be around for a long time. And I would like it if you were around for a long time, too. So are you going to hate me for the next, what, forty years?”

“How old do you think you’re going to get?” she counters.

Tommy just waits.

She squirms a little, but she can’t fidget like she normally would when she’s holding Violet. “I don’t trust you.”

“I got that.” He looks concerned, though she can tell he’s trying to hide it. “That’s okay, you know.”

Considering she just told him she once smashed someone’s head in, she knows what he means. And she hates it. It mostly isn’t even that.

“You aren’t fair,” she says.

That confuses him. “I’m not?”

“No. When you told Maria about Joel, you only told her about the bad stuff. You made it sound like everything that ever happened to you was because he made you do it. Like you were only following him.”

Tommy nods slowly. “What’d Joel tell you about me?”

“Huh?”

He snorts lightly. “I know you probably asked a million questions when you found out about me. What’d he say?”

Ellie frowns. What is he getting at? “He said you were a… joiner? That you joined the military and then you joined the smuggling people and then the Fireflies.”

There was more, but it’s weird saying it to his face.

“Yeah.” Tommy sits forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. “You know, we hadn’t seen each other in years. Barely talked. Once a month, Joel would ask if I was still alive, I’d ask how Tess was, he’d say she was fine, and that was it. And you’re right. It’s easier to blame someone who’s not there for your mistakes.”

“Joel didn’t do that,” she says, because it’s true and because he’s not here to defend himself.

“Joel and I are different people,” is all Tommy says. “My point is, we didn’t know each other for years. Not really. I told Maria about the person I thought he was and he told you about the person he thought I was. I’d like to think we were both wrong.”

Joel said that Tommy didn’t commit to things. But she’s holding proof that Tommy has committed very firmly to something. When he says he’s going to be around for a long time, she believes him. It makes her a little envious, honestly, because Violet’s going to grow up with him around for her entire life.

She would have liked to have Joel around sooner.

“So we’re gettin’ to know each other again,” Tommy says. “Do you think you and I could attempt to do the same?”

She wants to say no.

“I’ll be fair if you are,” he says, holding his hand out towards her. “Pinky promise.”

Very carefully, because she does have Tommy’s kid sleeping in her arms, Ellie leans forward enough to link her pinky around his. “Okay.”

* * *

Most of the kids in Jackson were either born there or have lived there so long they might as well have been born there. Joel really tries not to be an asshole about it, but when he compares Ellie to them, they come up lacking. Ellie’s smarter than all of them combined, as far as he figures, and a hell of a lot more capable. Funnier, too.

Joel honestly doesn’t give a damn that she’s different from them.

He just wishes it didn’t bother her so badly.

Ellie throws herself down on the couch and pulls the blanket off the back over her head. “I’m not going back.”

Joel puts the piece of gun he’s been cleaning down on the living room desk and goes over to sit on the other end of the couch. “Okay.”

After a moment, without actually coming out from under the blanket, Ellie inchworms herself around on the couch until the top of her head is pressed against his leg.

“I hate it.”

“Mhm,” Joel says, letting his hand settle onto her back.

She’s calmed down a bit by the time he’s managed to coax the blanket off her head, leaving her hair all staticky, but she won’t look at him. Her cheeks are red and he doesn’t think it’s just from the blanket over her head.

“I said something stupid at school,” she says quietly. “People laughed.”

“You say stupid shit all the time.”

“They laughed at me.” She scrubs her palm across her eyes and he pretends not to see, because she would hate it if he noticed. “There’s a difference.”

He sighs, but keeps rubbing her back the way she likes. “I know. Well, go pack your things and we’ll get out of here. Where are you thinking this time? Somewhere warmer than Boston, I hope.”

Ellie shoves herself up on her elbow and twists to look at him. “Are you serious?”

“No,” he admits, grinning a little. “But I had you goin’ for a moment, didn’t I?”

“You dick.” She flops back down, but she isn’t crying anymore, so he takes it as a win. “I didn’t say I wanted to leave Jackson. I’m just not going back to school.”

Joel gives her a minute to simmer while deciding what direction to take this. She struggled to go in the first place. The reason why came out in little pieces, mostly at night in the dark where she feels safe. But this doesn’t feel like that, so he thinks he can get away with teasing her.

“Not sure that’s an option, kiddo,” he says, smoothing her hair down. “Those are the rules here. Kids go to school.”

He immediately realizes he’s miscalculated when she bolts upright, staring at him.

“What － what would they do? What would happen to you?”

Goddamnit. He feels like an ass. Ellie is naturally so funny. He doesn’t tell her that, because it’d go to her head instantly, and, besides, he knows his part in the game. If he didn’t tell her that her puns and stupid jokes are awful, she wouldn’t have nearly as much fun with them. He meant it to be a light-hearted remark, something that would make her groan and complain.

But she doesn’t like the council. The only one she trusts is Maria. As far as she’s concerned, they tried to take her away from him. She doesn’t get that they were just trying to make sure she was safe.

“Nothing,” he says hastily. “No, honey, I was just teasin’.”

She presses closer. “But something has to happen. Like back in Boston, if we skipped class, we wouldn’t get dinner.”

“No,” Joel says, harsher than he means, and regrets it when she flinches. He makes himself soften his voice. “It’s not like that. I’m the one who decides if you go to school or not. If you want to homeschool, I’ll figure out how to homeschool you.”

“Homeschool?”

“It means I’d teach you.”

Slowly, she smiles. “You don’t even know how siphons work.”

“I’d figure it out.”

It’s a damn bold claim from someone who stopped understanding Sarah’s science homework after the fourth grade.

Ellie tucks her head down against his shoulder. “Thanks. Even though you’d suck.”

“You’re welcome, you little shit.” He shifts slightly to give her more room to lean on him. “How about we go on a trip for a couple days, just you and me?”

She agrees immediately, as he expected she would. They haven’t left town yet, but she misses the woods. He thought it’d made him more nervous, taking her out of town, but the area around town is patrolled heavily and other teens go out to hunt or scavenge with their — their adults. It’ll be nice, he thinks. He’ll let her blow off school for a couple days and see if it helps.

* * *

Ellie isn’t allowed to go on patrol yet. She’s officially too young, and unofficially she’s not convinced Joel will be ready to let her go until she’s forty. It’s like the one thing she hasn’t been able to talk him into, and it makes him grumpy when she presses at it.

Grumpy in that way he gets when he doesn’t sleep because he’s worried about her not being safe.

So she’s not gonna push at that just yet.

When they first got here, she could tell Joel expected to be on patrol all the time. Ellie’s been in too many half-collapsed buildings to be surprised that his Contractor Skills are far more in demand. There’s so many things to repair or improve or make safer. She’s never told Joel, but she thinks that’s really fucking cool. Anyone can do patrol. It’s just walking or riding around with a gun. Not everyone can fix a building the way Joel can.

That means he normally only does a couple patrols a week. They usually line up for when she’s at school, so that they can still have breakfast and dinner together. She knows he did that on purpose, even though he pretends he didn’t.

But then someone goes and breaks a fucking leg and Joel agrees to take one of his night shifts a week until it’s healed. Ellie does not like it at all. She’s keeping her mouth shut, though, because she’s not a total asshole. Besides, if Joel didn’t take it, Tommy would have and Tommy’s still sleep-deprived enough from the baby. She might not like it, but she wouldn’t expect anything less from Joel.

The thing is just… she doesn’t sleep great sometimes. And it’s fucking embarrassing. She never used to have a problem. But then… well. It started after the mall, when the Fireflies were still keeping her locked up. It made sense then. They woke her up constantly for checks to see if she was turning yet for days, and even when they backed down to two a day, it wasn’t like it was a comfortable place to sleep.

The first time she’d slept well in over three weeks was in the woods, because Joel was there and she trusted him, even then, to keep her safe.

Then Silver Lake happened and sleep started to be… bad. Sleep meant nightmares and waking up smelling smoke and feeling hands holding her down.

These days, it’s better as long as she knows where Joel is. When she knows he’s just down the hall and she can go to him whenever she wants. Or when she falls asleep with his hand rubbing her back or stroking through her hair. Sleeping completely alone… she’s not so good at that right now.

And that’s why she’s staying at Tommy and Maria’s for a night. Again, embarrassing. She’s fifteen. She can stay alone. But Joel’s worried about leaving her. And she wants to help. She’s trying so hard to be helpful here. This is what she can do, no matter how much it chafes.

She can be good enough.

But the whole sleep thing means she’s just kind of… not. The guest room is nice and all. It was Tommy’s idea, weirdly, getting it set up. It was just storage before. She thought at first it was for Joel, like if they stayed up late drinking and he didn’t want to walk home even though it was just across the street. Tommy called her a dumbass and said it was for her. She’s even used it, a couple times, when Joel and Tommy had one of their nights where they talk and drink for hours.

There’s a lot of stories untold between them, in all those years apart. It doesn’t happen that often, especially not with Violet here now and Ellie used to just end up passing out on the couch. Joel always said she could go home if she wanted, but she knows he’d get worried and leave early and she liked the way Joel is on those nights, relaxed and more open than usual, quicker to smile or laugh with Tommy.

The last one, the night of Tommy’s birthday, she fell asleep in the guest room, door cracked so she could still hear the low murmur of their voices from downstairs, the occasional soft laughter. She woke up just once when Joel came in to check on her, a little louder than usual even though he was obviously trying to be quiet, smelling of whiskey when he fixed the blanket that had slipped off her shoulder.

It’s not the room. It’s just her.

Apparently she’s not the only one not sleeping, though. The third time Violet starts crying, Ellie slips across the hall into the nursery.

“Hey, sweetie,” she whispers, reaching into the crib to pat Vi on the stomach. “Hey, now, it’s okay.”

Vi makes a noise that makes it clear she does not agree it’s okay.

“Did she wake you up, too?”

At the sound of Maria’s voice, Ellie starts and takes a step back from the crib. “I wasn’t picking her up.”

Maria yawns and shuffles across the room, scooping Violet up. The baby quiets slightly. “That’s okay, honey. Not your job.”

“No, I mean…” She’s confused though. Maybe she miscounted? Though she’s normally not quite that bad at counting, that she can’t get from two to three. “I know it isn’t allowed.”

“You’re certainly allowed to pick her up,” Maria says, sitting down in the rocking chair. She shifts Vi in her arms, and Ellie glances away. Breastfeeding is normal and all but it’s also a little weird seeing peoples’ boobs. “I just don’t want you to think you have to take care of her.”

“But you’re not supposed to pick them up more than twice.”

Maria goes quiet in that way that means Ellie’s said something weird. “Okay,” she says. “How about you come sit with me and you tell me what you mean by that?”

She pushes the footstool of the rocking chair out a bit with her foot. It’s like a set, so you can rock with your legs up on it. They traded for it, but it was still kind of broken and Joel fixed it before Vi was born.

Ellie sits on it. The rocking, at least, disguises her usual fidgeting. They used to have a chair with a short leg in the kitchen, but she kept tipping it back and forth when she sat in it until Joel repaired it, saying he was worried it would break under her. She wasn’t exactly concerned about falling off a chair, compared to everything else she’s had happen to her, but it was still sweet.

“Did you help out with the babies at school in Boston?” Maria asks. “You’re so good with Vi.”

Ellie shrugs. “It’s all nursery until you’re four so you kinda have to help out, I guess? After that, not really. But I still remember the rules. I know you’re not allowed to pick them up more than two times in a row at night.”

“Why not?”

“So they… learn?”

Maria frowns, but she tries to hide it. “She’s hungry. She’s too small yet to sleep all the way through the night without eating. The only way she has to tell me she’s hungry or that something’s wrong is to cry. I wouldn’t want her to learn not to do that.”

Ellie’s never thought about it like that before. No one’s ever made it sound like crying has a point.

She learned how to cry quietly at night so no one would hear and she learned it young. The minders in nursery would yell at them, and then with roommates, there was usually a silent agreement to not say anything, but there was always the risk of getting a dick for a roommate who used it against you.

But Joel is always there when she wakes up from a nightmare crying. He’s there before she even has time to think about making herself be quiet.

She nods. “I think that’s better.”

Maria smiles. “Me too.”

There’s a soft knock on the door.

“Well, will you look at that?” Tommy says, his voice low. “My three favourite ladies in one place.”

It’s a lame line, but the way Maria rolls her eyes makes Ellie giggle.

“You want me to settle her down when she’s done?” he asks.

“That would be just lovely. Also, you’re putting the crib back in our room tomorrow,” Maria says. “I told you she wasn’t ready to be on her own yet.”

Ellie hides a grin. It’s not the first time Tommy’s moved the crib. Or the second.

When the baby’s finished eating, they swap and Tommy goes over to the changing table to change Vi’s diaper.

Maria stands up and stretches. “Do you need anything else, Ellie?”

“I’m okay,” Ellie says.

“Alright.” Maria touches the top of her head, yawning at the same time. It’s soft, just a brush of her palm over her hair. “Try not to stay up too late.”

Ellie nods. It bothered her at first, the way Maria will touch her head or shoulder. It stopped bothering her when Violet was born and she started paying more attention.

Maria’s got this thing. When Ellie’s at their house and Maria passes through a room, she’ll usually touch them all. Tommy, Violet, Ellie, even Joel. Joel’s not a big fan of it, but he pretends not to notice instead of saying anything, and only Ellie really can tell. Maria’s not doing on purpose, Ellie’s pretty sure. Sometimes she sees Maria mouthing something as she does it － numbers, she eventually realized.

She doesn’t mind so much now, if Maria needs to count her sometimes.

Tommy sits in the rocking chair with Violet against his shoulder. She looks sleepy, making soft little baby noises as he pats her back.

“How come you get up too?” Ellie asks curiously. “Maria’s the one with the…”

She starts to make a gesture towards her own chest, abruptly realizes how awkward that would actually be to do, and sort of just twitches her hands in the air.

“Milk?” Tommy supplies and graciously ignores the rest of it. “Yeah, can’t really do that part. But she’s as much my kid as she is Maria’s. If I get up and get her changed and settled back down, then Maria can actually get some sleep, too.”

“But then you’re both tired.”

“I’m a little more tired, and she’s a little less tired,” Tommy corrects. “And my wife doesn’t lose it and shave my head in my sleep.”

Ellie muffles a giggle in her sleeve so she won’t wake Vi. “That a big concern?”

“’Course it is,” he says, standing up and stepping towards the crib. “Where would I be without my hair? I’d look like goddamn Joel.”

“His hair’s not that bad,” Ellie says, only because he’s not here to defend himself. “He cuts it himself.”

“I can tell,” Tommy says quietly, easing Violet down into her crib. He stays there for a moment, then carefully steps back. “C’mon.”

She follows him out of the room, waiting while he eases the door shut.

“Alright,” Tommy says. “You want a snack before you go back to bed?”

Ellie raises her eyebrows. “I’m old enough to sleep through the night without waking up to eat.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s leftover lasagna in the fridge.” He grins at her. “I’ll even let you eat it on the couch if you don’t tell Maria.”

She’s sold. Not only is not eating on the couch one of the very few things Joel and Maria agree on, but since coming to Jackson she’s discovered how fucking amazing cheese is. Turns out milk itself is pretty good when it’s not already sour or that thin, watery stuff made from dried milk powder like they used to get at school. Joel kept making her drink it when they got here, something about her bones.

But cheese. Cheese is amazing. Especially when you put it on something and then cook that thing and it melts and gets that brown bubbly crust. She has had lasagna and pizza since they got here and those would probably be her new favourite foods if not for the fact that Joel has apparently known how to make tortillas the whole time she’s known him and was just keeping that information from her and she eventually pestered him into making tacos for her.

She was right. Tacos are awesome. They make her a little sad, because she wishes she could share them with Riley, but they’re still pretty fucking awesome.

Tommy warms up a big plate of lasagna for her, scooping it out of the smaller pan that he made specifically for her. It doesn’t have any ground beef, just vegetables. Vegetarian, he called it, casually.

Tommy’s pretty good at that, being casual about that stuff.

“Now,” he says when she’s sitting on the couch, waiting for the plate on the coffee table to cool down enough to touch. “Are we thinkin’ mindless cartoons or somethin’ that’ll give you nightmares and get Joel pissed at me?”

She looks at him for a moment, then wordlessly pulls up her sleeve. Nightmares are not a thing she’s new to.

“Oh, you think that makes you too tough to be scared of ghosts?” Tommy says. He grabs a movie off the shelf next to the TV. “Challenge accepted.”

He sits on the couch, not too close because he’s noticed she doesn’t like being touched much by many people who aren’t Joel.

If it was Joel, she’d already be curled up against his side, head on his shoulder. She likes when they do stuff like that. She likes tucking herself tight against his side when they watch movies, and his arm around her shoulders. They always sit next to each other in the dining hall and when it’s loud and busy and there’s too many people, she presses her knee against his under the table until she feels more settled.

The movie’s good. Or, well, it’s kind of stupid. But it’s fun and Tommy’s not a bad person to watch it with, even though she falls asleep in the middle of it.

The sound of the door opening wakes her up, the soft click of the lock turning. She’s not really sure why people still lock doors. Not like someone in Jackson is gonna come around in the middle of the night and murder them. But Joel and Tommy both lock the doors at night.

Joel doesn’t realize she’s awake － and she barely is － and it means she gets to see him smile without knowing anyone’s looking at him. She’s glad she has a moment before he knows she’s awake. Sometimes the way Joel looks at her is so soft that she can’t handle it. It makes her feel like something precious.

He comes over to the couch, crouching down.

She stirs, yawning.

“Hey, honey,” he says, touching her head softly. “You don’t have to wake up yet.”

There’s a blanket on her that wasn’t there when she fell asleep and her feet are surprisingly warm. She shifts enough to see Tommy passed out on the other end of the couch, snoring softly. Her feet are pressed against his leg, and she doesn’t move them yet.

“Tommy,” Joel says, a little louder.

Tommy jolts awake. “I’m up.”

Joel chuckles. “Go to bed. Your wife’s probably wonderin’ where you are.”

“Right.” He rubs his hand over his face. He looks like Joel when he does that. It’s weird to her, sometimes, how they don’t look alike until they do. “Night, big brother. Goodnight, Ellie.”

“Night,” she echoes, even though it’s almost morning.

Joel stays where he is as Tommy wanders up the stairs, stroking her hair. “How ‘bout you? Could I convince you to head upstairs to that perfectly nice bed I know is up there?”

“Can we go home?”

A woman in town once said Joel spoils her. She’s kind of a bitch, but she also isn’t exactly wrong. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but Joel’s a lot less strict than any teacher Ellie’s ever had. So she’s not exactly surprised when he nods.

“Get your shoes and jacket on while I write those two a note so they don’t think you just up and disappeared,” Joel says. “You can get your things tomorrow, alright?”

“Okay.”

There’s really nothing wrong with the bedroom here. But after she yawns her way across the yard, Joel’s arm over her shoulders, after he locks the door behind them, she’s basically asleep by the time she faceplants onto Joel’s bed.

“Can I help you?” Joel asks, amused.

She lifts one hand and flips him off.

He snorts, putting a hand on her back. “I’m gonna shower. Go back to sleep if you can.”

She hears him moving around, the soft tap of his watch against the dresser. He only takes it off to shower, but sometimes after, he’ll leave it off til morning. When they were on the road and they’d have to get cleaned up at a lake or whatever, he’d put it in his bag and then be really paranoid about it. After a while, she offered to watch his bag. She pretended it wasn’t about the watch, making a joke about not letting anyone steal his shit.

It’s safe now, though, for him to take it off. Nothing will happen to it in their house, and he doesn’t have to worry about the water getting into it.

It’s nice, having a safe place.

* * *

By the official rules, Ellie should have gone for a physical when they first got to Jackson. She refused, though. They offered him one, too, but he passed. Ellie wanted him to get the scar on his stomach checked out, but it’s healed fine. Aches a little now and then, but there wouldn’t be anything they could do about it anyways.

Ellie, though… he worries about her bite. He doesn’t trust anyone besides Tommy and Maria to know about it.

And she’s okay. Now. He made her rest while her ribs healed, even though she hated it. He was terrified of her puncturing a damn lung from pushing herself too hard. Her concussion lasted longer than he liked, and she had lingering headaches for weeks, but those have gotten better.

He doesn’t love it. When she was hurt, all he wanted was to take her to a doctor. But, well, the last doctor who got near her tried to cut her brain out.

On top of that, Ellie doesn’t exactly seem eager to go either. Maria mentioned it once, that she probably needed a check-up soon, and Ellie almost snarled. And normally he’d tell her off for being rude, but she looked… off, so they all just sort of ignored it. He figures he’ll have time to figure it out.

Time to figure out why she sounded scared.

He’s on patrol one day, a completely normal day. Ellie is technically supposed to be in school but she slept badly and when he wakes her up, she looks like shit. He takes her to Tommy and Maria’s, and as soon as she’s eaten something, he lets her curl up on their couch and nap. She needs that sometimes more than she needs to go to school.

He knows it’s Maria’s day to be home with the baby, so he expects Ellie to spend the day with her.

What he’s not counting on is his idiot brother. He should have known.

When he’s done his patrol shift, he heads home. Ellie’s usually wandered home by the time he gets home. She could stay, but she likes being there when he gets home. He’s usually finished with it before she’s done school, but sometimes he’s out late fixing a window or a sink so someone’s kitchen doesn’t flood. Actual emergencies, not just someone wanting the job done as fast as possible because some things never change.

He came home once at almost midnight to find her asleep on their couch and his chest hurt so much he couldn’t breathe for a few minutes.

It’s the only thing he’s ever asked Maria for, in her official position on the council. Unless someone’s house is about to flood or burn down, he wants to be home by dinner at the absolute latest. Things can wait. There’s enough time in Jackson. He’s not missing time with Ellie if he can help it. It’s the thing he regrets most about Sarah’s childhood. It wasn’t a choice, but he wishes he’d been there for more dinners, more bedtimes. He doesn’t want Ellie spending her nights waiting for him to come home. The idea hurts too much.

It’s not that late, so Joel sits on the bench in the kitchen to take his boots off. He’ll let Ellie talk him into something before dinner, a movie or a game or －

There’s blood on the floor.

He stands, pulling out the pistol he’s not technically supposed to have. “Ellie?” he calls.

There’s a crash from upstairs and then faint cursing.

Definitely Ellie. It doesn’t help him be less worried.

He heads towards the stairs, automatically clearing the bottom of the house before heading upstairs.

“Ellie?”

“I’m fine!” she shouts.

He’s only slightly relieved by that, and the low, muffled sound of Tommy’s voice. The trail of blood he’s following upstairs keeps him from being fully relieved.

Finally, he finds them in his bathroom. Ellie’s sitting on the bathroom counter as Tommy wraps a bandage around her arm.

“Hi,” she says innocently.

“Finally,” Tommy says.

He shoves his brother aside, not as roughly as he could. “What did you do?”

There’s a wad of gauze on her arm, and there’s a growing patch of dark blood soaking through it. Joel doesn’t lift it, not wanting to disturb it, instead taking over wrapping bandages around her arm. The sink is bloody, so he’s assuming Tommy cleaned it.

“Someone decided to crawl through a broken window and sliced her arm clean open,” Tommy says, standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips.

“Oh, really?” Joel turns to look at her.

She shrugs. “It’s not like it’s the first window I’ve gone through. Ow.”

“Yeah, so you should know to be more careful.” He finishes wrapping her arm. “How bad it is it?”

“She needs stitches,” Tommy says. “But she’s refusing to go. So tell your kid she either walks to the clinic or I’m gonna drag her there myself.”

Ellie’s eyes flash. “I’d like to see you try.”

That is… strange. Usually the two of them are ganging up on him to cause trouble. And they banter and pretend to argue, but that was actual anger. Tommy, he gets. He always turned into a worrywart when Sarah was sick. But Ellie isn’t usually that snappy with him, not anymore.

“I don’t need to go to the fucking clinic,” Ellie protests. “I can take care of it.”

It’s not the arm with the bite, his first thought.

Joel cups one hand around the back of her neck, keeping pressure on her arm with the other. “It’ll only take a few minutes. C’mon, it’ll be better to have an actual doctor take care of it.”

She stares at her knees, but leans into him. “We can just… glue it.”

“Ellie,” Tommy says behind them. “Honey, they’ll numb it at the clinic so it don’t hurt. And they’ll make sure it won’t get infected.”

“I don’t like the medicine they give you,” Ellie says in a small voice.

Joel frowns. “The － the lidocaine? I know it burns a little…”

“Is that the stuff that knocks you out?”

“No…” Joel glances at his brother. “What do you mean, baby?”

She waves her uninjured hand at the scar on her eyebrow. “They didn’t give me anything, like, when I busted my face up, but when I broke my wrist they put me under to reset it. It makes me puke a bunch and hurts my head.”

He remembers that from after the hospital, having to pull over for Ellie to dry heave on the side of the road.

“Glue is faster,” she says. She looks down. “It’s kind of… big.”

“Why would you need to go under?” Tommy asks.

Ellie frowns, clearly confused. “Doctors don’t like dealing with stupid kids. It’s faster.”

Jesus Christ.

“I’ll give you a minute,” Tommy says quietly.

Joel closes his eyes for a second, inhaling slowly.

“Joel?”

“They don’t need to knock you out for stitches,” he says, opening his eyes. “And even if you needed surgery or somethin’, I wouldn’t let them do it without you knowin’. They’ll give you a shot to make your skin numb and I’ll stay the whole time, if you want.”

“Okay,” she says after a long moment.

And thank God, because spots of blood are starting to leak through the bandage on her arm, and he really didn’t want to actually have to drag her into the clinic.

The clinic is nicer than he expected. It’s clean and well-maintained, bright without being glaring. They’ve clearly put work into keeping it from getting too run down. It’s nothing like the one in the QZ. He and Tess had avoided that as much as possible, though, preferring to handle as much as they could between the two of them. The last time he’d been there was to haul Tess’ ass in for antibiotics after she’d been walking around with pneumonia for a month.

Ellie’s about as skittish as a cat at the vet, though.

A bell chimes over the door when they walk in, and the doctor comes out a moment later. Joel’s seen her around town, but for the life of him he can’t remember her name. She’s older, though, old enough to be trained before the outbreak, and that helps his worry. He’s never trusted FEDRA doctors.

“Hello there,” she says. “What do we have going on today?”

Tommy, who insisted on coming with them, nudges Ellie forward a step. “Someone here got a little too friendly with a broken window.”

The doctor winces sympathetically. “Ouch. You think I could take a look at that?”

Ellie hesitates, looking back at Joel. “Can, um… can you come with me?”

“Sure,” he says, without waiting to see if the doctor says anything. It doesn’t matter anyways. Ellie wants him there, he’ll be there. “You can go,” he adds to his brother.

Tommy goes over and sits in one of the chairs, picking up a twenty year old magazine. Or, knowing doctor’s offices, probably thirty years old. “Nah, I’m still watchin’ her. I’m not returnin’ her until she’s back in one piece.”

“Fuck you,” Ellie says with a grin and follows the doctor towards one of the exam rooms.

He has to boost her up onto the exam table. She tries, stubborn thing, but it hurts and he hates watching her in pain.

“I’m Kara, by the way,” the doctor says, washing her hands. “And you can call me that, since you’ll probably see me trying to not to fall asleep in my oatmeal tomorrow. I don’t think I’ve officially met you two before.”

“I’m Ellie.” She nudges him.

“Joel,” he says.

Watching Ellie get stitches is awful. They do numb it, and she doesn’t fuss about it, and that’s probably worse than if she did. He holds her hand and she stares at the other side of the room, biting her bottom lip.

“You’re doing great, Ellie,” the doctor － Kara says. There’s a bit of a lilt to her voice, fainter than his own accent. She looks Indian, with warm brown skin and black hair without a hint of grey.

Ellie nods.

Thankfully, it’s only a few stitches, and in minutes, Ellie’s arm is wrapped up again in clean white gauze.

Dr. Kara cleans up and sits at the desk in the exam room. “Alright, I assume you two know the drill with stitches. Keep them dry for the next two days, and then I want you to come back and see me and we’ll see how they look. Come in right away if you have any trouble.”

“Yeah, I’ve had them before,” Ellie says, gesturing at her face.

They don’t talk about the ones she gave him. They saved his life, but she hates talking about it. Tommy saw the scar once when his shirt rode up and asked about it, and Ellie disappeared from the room. She had the worst nightmare she’d had in months that night.

“I figured. So, paracetamol for any pain and you can ice it if you want.” Dr. Kara writes something on the paper she’s been filling out. “Now, Ellie, I don’t have a file for you. Would you mind me starting one?”

“Uh, okay.”

Joel likes the way the doctor asks Ellie permission for things.

“Good. It’s just to help keep track of things to keep you healthy. So that’s Ellie Miller and do you have a middle name?”

Ellie looks between him and the doctor. “Um. Williams.”

“Ellie Williams Miller? That’s lovely.”

Joel’s chest aches. It does have a nice ring to it.

Ellie fidgets. “No. No, just － just Williams.”

“It’s her mom’s name,” Joel says, trying to take the pressure off her. “Ellie’s only been with me since last year.”

Ellie stares at her fingers and he can’t read the expression on her face. She’s normally an open book and he wishes he knew what she was thinking.

“Well, I’m very happy for you two,” Dr. Kara says warmly. “I adopted my own son when he was three. Just a few questions now, alright?”

She’s tactful with them. She doesn’t push too much about Ellie’s mother when trying to get a medical history, mostly asking about her vaccinations at school and her own medical history. Obviously there are some things they don’t say about that. And Ellie’s reluctant to talk about the last winter, so things are glossed over there.

The only thing that’s really related is the doctor asks to weigh Ellie. As soon as she sees the number, Ellie brags about being close to triple digits again and flexes at him with her good arm. Personally, he’d like that to be a little higher, but any weight gain on her is good as far as he’s concerned.

All in all, they leave the clinic with Ellie in higher spirits than when she went in.

“She lives!” Tommy declares, throwing the magazine down.

Ellie flips him off, then grabs Joel’s arm. “I’m hungry and I want pie.”

His own stomach growls. He hasn’t eaten since lunch and now that he’s not panicking, he’s actually feeling it.

Tommy opens the clinic door. “Joel, do you remember that time Sarah broke her arm?”

“God, yeah. Six hours in the ER. What time was it when we finally got out?”

“Two in the morning, I think? Maybe later.”

“And you promised her French fries for being brave.”

“I was starving! McDonalds was all I could think about.”

Joel smiles, even though the memory aches a little. It’s easier, now. “She fell asleep still holdin’ the container.”

“You gotta learn how to work those bribes,” Tommy says to Ellie. “You didn’t even get a toy out of this.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding. Then she looks at Joel.

“No,” he says immediately.

“Come on.” She holds up her bandaged arm and makes puppy eyes at him. “I lost a lot of blood. I think I’m feeling faint. I don’t think I can walk.”

“Ask Tommy.”

Thirty seconds later, he’s grabbing her good arm to help pull her up for a piggyback. She giggles right in his ear, wrapping her arms around him and holding tight.

“Take me to the pie!” she declares.

* * *

They finished eating dinner at least twenty minutes ago. Adults are weird, though, and sometimes spend almost as long as it takes to eat just sitting around and talking. Ellie doesn’t fully get it, but she likes listening to the stories and sometimes it means she gets extra dessert because the ladies in the dining hall kitchen like her and sneak her an extra plate.

Not that it’s really restricted in Jackson the way it was back in school. Just most people only take one serving and she doesn’t want to look weird so she only takes one.

Her plate is empty and she’s wondering if she got another bowl of cobbler, if she could sneak the baby some before anyone noticed. Vi only started solids a little bit ago, but she loves blueberries and Ellie loves her, so it’d be fun.

Violet makes a loud baby noise and smacks her hand down on Ellie’s empty plate, sending it smashing onto the floor and shattering it.

Oh, shit.

Ellie’s on her feet instantly, her chair clattering to the floor behind her as she puts herself behind Joel, using him as a shield.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts.

Fuck, fuck.

“It was my fault,” she says. “I should have moved it away. It wasn’t her fault.”

“Hey.” Joel turns towards her, reaching up to put his hand on her shoulder. She flinches and he goes very still. “Ellie, you still here with me?”

She looks between him and Tommy and Maria. Nobody looks mad. They all look very concerned, though. She’s starting to get the feeling she’s miscalculated but she doesn’t understand how.

“Yes,” she says, because she is still here. This is shorthand they’ve come up with, for the moments where she goes fuzzy.

Joel holds his hands out. “Can I take the baby?”

It’s Joel, so even though she’s reluctant to let her go, she lets him take Vi. The traitor immediately hands him over to Tommy.

“Hey－”

“C’mere,” Joel says, and this time when he touches her arm she doesn’t react. He pulls, gently, until she sits on the arm of his chair. It isn’t exactly comfortable but she likes being close to him, so she can feel the warmth of him against her side. He starts rubbing her back. “Deep breaths.”

“It’s was my fault,” she repeats.

“It’s no one’s fault,” he says, too gently. “No one’s in trouble.”

Maria leans forward, her eyes sharp. “Ellie, it’s just a plate. It was an accident. What are you worried is going to happen? Can you tell us that?”

The more no one is yelling at her and the more Joel rubs her back, the slower her heart gets… and the more embarrassed she’s starting to get. “No one makes dishes anymore. You can’t make more.”

“What happened when you broke a dish at school?” Maria asks. She doesn’t sound mad, just curious.

“It’s just like. One for every year old you are. But Vi’s not even a year old yet and I don’t remember what they did for the babies.”

“One what?” Maria presses.

Ellie fidgets with her fingers. “Most of my teachers used rulers? But when I was in nursery, it was just hands.”

Joel makes a noise.

She twists to look at him. “What?”

Tommy stands up, chair scraping, and passes the baby over to Maria. “I’m gonna go grab a broom for that.”

He sounded weird. He sounded weirdly like Joel for a moment.

“Hey,” Joel says, tucking the loose hair that’s escaped from Ellie’s ponytail back from her face. “Look at me. No one hits you. Anythin’ like that ever happens, even once, and you tell me right away. Do you understand?”

Not really, but she nods. “It wasn’t that bad. But Vi’s so little and it wasn’t her fault.”

“Ellie.” Marie reaches across the table and takes her hand. “You tell me, too. Or you tell Joel and he tells me. Teachers do not hit kids here. Not ever.”

Tommy comes back a moment later with a broom and dustpan, and Ellie starts to get up to take it from him. Joel’s arm tightens around her, almost knocking her off her perch on the arm of his chair, and she has to catch herself on his shoulder.

This is weird. She’s glad Violet’s not in trouble, but she should be. It was her fault. She had Vi in her lap, and it was her plate, and she didn’t move it. If she’s not gonna get shit for it, she should at least be cleaning it up, shouldn’t she?

But then Tommy has it swept up and before she knows it, he’s gotten rid of the pieces and come back to sit at the table.

“Now when are you gonna let me take you out to try out that power scope?” he asks.

Ellie is immediately distracted trying to convince Joel. He’s still a little nervous about her leaving Jackson, but they’ve gone on a couple hunting trips and she’s pretty sure between the two of them, they’ll be able to talk him into it.

* * *

For someone who talks as much as she does, Joel’s learned it’s sometimes almost impossible to get Ellie to talk about things that are bothering her.

She doesn’t like school. Joel doesn’t try to convince her to, knowing that’ll only make her hate it more. He shamelessly blames Maria that she has to go at all, silently apologizing to his sister-in-law for making her the bad guy. She’d understand, as a parent.

Once Ellie settles in a little, she hates it less. She skips school more than she probably should, but she’s smart as hell and works hard, and the teachers are still going a bit easier on her to let her adjust. Joel doesn’t know much about the FEDRA schools, but he knows Jackson is about as far as you can get from them and they’re all expecting Ellie to need some time.

Which is why it takes everyone so long to realize she has some major gaps in her education.

When she comes home with a stack of books from the library, he assumes she’s just on some new kick. It happens often enough. He thinks sometimes having access to a library, even a small one, might just be her favourite thing about Jackson. When he finds her asleep on said stack of books on her desk, he doesn’t think too much of it at first. That also happens. Like he normally does, he just gets her up and into bed.

The third time it happens in a week, he gets worried.

When he asks about her homework, she tends to laugh him off. So he has to be more subtle about it. She always does her homework after dinner on school days, so she doesn’t have to touch it on the off days, since Jackson’s school is only three days a week. And even with a full dinner in her, Ellie can usually be tempted by a snack while she works.

So he brings her snacks and he glances casually at her homework while they talk.

The books are definitely homework related.

Two days later, when Ellie’s off at the stables helping Tommy out, Joel takes himself over to the school before it starts to have a little talk about the amount of homework being assigned.

And promptly finds himself being firmly corrected.

He has to recalibrate, and explains, with some confusion, how much time she’s been spending on her homework, all the books.

Her teacher, Christine, sighs. “Your daughter is incredibly stubborn,” she says.

He thinks for a second about correcting her. Ellie usually does, with quick glances at him. But… well, it’s true, as far as he’s concerned.

Both parts of it.

“Oh, I am aware.”

“Please don’t take that negatively,” she adds quickly. “She’s a great kid and I love having her in my class. But getting her to ask for help is like pulling teeth.”

He’s pulled teeth easier. Not his own, but still.

“Now, there’s nothing wrong. All the kids are at different levels, even the ones the same age. Most of them have started school at different ages. Some of them did some form of homeschooling, some went to other schools before coming here, and some are even starting from scratch when they get here.”

“Ellie went to a FEDRA school back in Boston,” he says.

“She’s mentioned it a couple times,” Christine says. He immediately likes her a little more. If Ellie’s opening up to her like that, she must like her. “And it’s fine if she doesn’t know things. I know those schools are basically just propaganda machines. But she’s so clever.”

Well, she’s right about that.

“And she’s so good at bullshitting,” she says.

He snorts. That’s also true.

“She’s very good at hiding the places where she’s weak,” Christine says seriously. “So thank you for letting me know. I don’t want her to work herself to death with homework. I’ll have a talk with her after school today, so she might be a little late.”

Joel leaves the school before any of the kids show up and goes about his day feeling quite pleased with himself.

Ellie comes home fuming.

She slams the back door.

“Hey－”

“You ratted me out!”

Ah. Shit.

“She told you?”

“No.” Ellie kicks her shoes off and flings her backpack onto the floor. “But I know you talked to her. I was doing fine!”

“Yeah, you are.” He goes over and sits at the kitchen table. She moves closer, though she crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re doin’ great.”

“So what the hell?”

“Y’know, it’s not a race. You’re there to learn. You don’t have to already know everythin’.”

She looks so skeptical that he almost laughs, but he knows she’d take it the wrong way.

He reaches out and touches her arm, and she doesn’t pull away. “Do you wanna talk about it right now?”

“No.”

He’s not surprised. He embarrassed her, no matter how unintentionally, and she’s smarting. He doesn’t regret saying something, but he should have talked to her first.

Late that night, when she sneaks into his room, he tells her that.

Joel turns onto his side as Ellie slips under the covers, turning his good ear towards her. She likes to sleep on his right. He likes to sleep between her and the door. Same reasons for both of them, really, to keep the other safe. He’ll forever be trying to convince her that’s not her job,but he doesn’t think it’ll ever sink in.

“I want to fix things for you,” he says once she’s settled in. “And make ‘em easy for you. I’m sorry I blindsided you.”

“S’okay.” Her fingers find his wrist and she starts playing with the cuff of his sleeve, rolling the hem of it between them. She does that during the day sometimes, fiddling with the buttons on his cuffs, but he’s sleeping just in a long-sleeved t-shirt tonight. “I’m not stupid.”

“I know that.” He tries to look at her, but it’s too dark. “Of course you’re not. Did someone say that to you?”

He’s never once said anything like that to her. He’s called her annoying, clumsy, a pest, but she doesn’t care about any of those. Frankly, she thinks annoying him is fun and is proud of herself for doing so. He wouldn’t say something he thought had a chance of actually hurting her feelings.

“Sometimes,” she says, soft, and it takes him a second to realize she’s talking about Boston. “There isn’t time for anyone to wait for me to learn shit. So I needed to do it on my own. I had some trouble with math when I was little. Fucking fractions. But I figured it out.”

“Hm.”

He reaches over and strokes his fingers through her hair. It’s still a little damp from her shower earlier, and soft from the hair stuff Maria gives her.

He’ll never, ever say this to her, but sometimes she reminds him of a skittish cat. Not just because he fed her once and then could never get rid of her again. No, what makes him think of it is the way she wants affection so badly, but she’s shy about asking for it. She invades his personal space like it’s hers, but she acts like he’ll push her away if she tries to hug him first.

So he lets her use him as furniture and demand piggyback rides and she’s gotten more comfortable but it’s been slow.

She lets out of a small sigh. “That’s not fair,” she says, already sounding half-asleep. “I was yelling at you…”

She also hides her pain the same way cats do.

“I already know you’re not stupid,” he says. “I could throw you in the woods right now and you would be able to take care of yourself. You know who couldn’t? That kid down the street who keeps finding webcap mushrooms and askin’ if they’re chanterelles.”

“They don’t even look anything alike,” Ellie agrees. “I had to help him put his saddle on last week, too.”

“Yeah, you helped him.” He waits a moment, letting her settle a little more. “You can let people help you, too.”

“I guess,” she mutters, and he’d laugh at how begrudging her tone is if she wasn’t almost asleep.

She’ll get there.

* * *

It’s weird, sometimes, the things that people notice that she thought were normal.

Once right after they got here, after a big dinner at Tommy and Maria, Tommy groaned about how full he was and made a joke about having to unbuckle his belt.

When he reached for it, she flinched and made up a reason to get to the other side of the room. She thought she was subtle about it. Nobody said anything. But she caught Joel looking at her. And she knows his face. He thought it was a… a David thing.

It wasn’t, but she didn’t want to talk about that.

She kind of expected it to come up before then.

The thing is, she has a whole infected bite on her arm. Two, technically, though they sort of blend together now. So she’s kinda been wearing long sleeves for the last year. It’s only here in Jackson where that looks weird that they’ve had to come up with a solution. Weirdly, the window she put her left arm through helps. She wraps both up for a couple weeks and lies that she cut them both. Then she switches to an elastic bandage and claims it didn’t heal right and the scar aches without it. She’s had to listen to a lot of stories about peoples’ weird scars, but overall it’s working.

That means, though, this is the first time Joel’s ever really seen her in short sleeves for more than a couple seconds. She hasn’t worn a tank top as anything but an under-layer for over a year.

“I told you to stay out of the sun,” he scolds mildly.

“But everyone else was swimming,” she whines. It’s late September, but they’ve been having an unexpected heat wave and this was probably the last time they’d be able to swim before it gets too cold.

He sits on the edge of her mattress. “Everyone else being all your friends who aren’t white?”

“It’s not fair.”

“Mhm.” Joel touches her shoulder and she expects it to hurt, but there’s something cool on his fingers.

“Whassat?” she mumbles.

“Aloe. Maria sent it over when she saw you in the lake looking like a lobster. It helps.”

She sighs. It is soothing the burn across her back and shoulders. Her face is okay, because Joel makes her wear hats, even though she looks like a fucking dork in them, and the other kids tease her about getting in trouble if she takes them off until she rolls her eyes and puts them back on.

They’re so weird sometimes. At school, she would have been eaten alive for being told to wear a hat by an adult.

Joel spreads it across her back, nudging her shirt down a bit to reach the bit it’s covering. Then he stops.

“Hey,” she protests.

His fingers touch a spot on her back. “What’s this from?”

She has to think about it for a moment. “Uh… belt buckle caught me, I think?”

Joel is quiet for a long moment. “Who the hell used a belt on you?”

His voice is tight, but he’s doing that thing where he tries to sound calm.

She shrugs. “One of my teachers in Boston? It’s not a big deal. They weren’t really supposed to use them. And I think the boys got it more.”

“Because you weigh ninety fucking pounds.”

“Over a hundred!” she says defensively, pushing up on her elbows so she can shoot a glare back at him. She’s fully in triple digits now. The doctor said she’s not even technically underweight anymore at her last check-up.

“That’s not － that’s not the point.” Joel frowns at her. “You know that… it ain’t okay for someone to do that to a kid. You know that, right?”

“I mean, I had a teacher who threatened to get us put on the wall,” she says, and oops, maybe that isn’t helping. “It wasn’t that bad. I told you, it’s mostly rulers. Can you keep putting that stuff on my shoulder?”

“I － alright,” Joel agrees.

She lies back down on her stomach, arms folded under her head. Her thoughts are unsettled, though. “So did you… when Sarah was little, you didn’t…”

“No, never,” Joel says. “Never seemed right, hittin’ a little kid. Then when she got bigger, I just… talked to her. Or grounded her or took away her TV time or somethin’.”

“FEDRA kids are harder, I guess,” she muses.

He scoffs. “Or FEDRA adults are incompetent. Have I ever had to hit you?”

“No, but I don’t listen to you.”

To her surprise, Joel actually laughs at that. She smiles to herself. She’s not really sure what was so funny, but Joel’s laughter is still not common and it’s her favourite thing, making him laugh.

“You’re gettin’ older, so I’m gonna let you in on a secret,” he says. “And don’t let it go to your head. But you’re not really supposed to listen to me all the time. Kids are supposed to do stupid things like spend too much time in the sun and get sunburned or sneak out or eat way too much ice cream and throw up all night.”

Ellie winces. Ice cream is also good. Five bowls of ice cream is not a good time.

“Doin’ stupid shit is how you learn to be a person,” he says. He rubs his hand over the non-burned part of her back. “Just ask Tommy.”

“Hm. I will,” she says, her eyes closing. “Can you keep doing that for a bit?”

“Sure can, kiddo,” Joel says.

* * *

Ellie’s a little mean sometimes and it’s one of Joel’s favourite things about her. She’s mean to Tommy especially and Joel keeps an eye on it, but it seems like some sort of game they’re playing. When they first got here and she so clearly did not trust him, she mostly just avoided him. And she’s not mean to Maria.

So, as long as she’s okay, Joel’s not getting involved.

It’s funny, anyways.

“What’s with the hat?” she asks, squinting at Tommy.

“It’s cold.”

“Yeah, and the little ear flaps are just adorable.”

“You’re one to talk. You look like a highlighter.”

Ellie is currently wearing a wool hat with a pompom on the top, knit by their neighbour down the street after Ellie helped winterize her garden. It’s neon green. It makes it real hard to lose her in a crowd. And for some reason, she loves it like crazy.

So, naturally, in response she immediately trips Tommy.

He barely manages to catch himself. “I’m gonna hang you in a tree and leave you there,” he threatens.

Ellie doesn’t look impressed. “You know, Maria said you were looking like you needed a haircut. Bzzz,” she says and Joel seriously doesn’t get why she’s buzzing threateningly at his brother, but it seems to be some inside joke they have.

Tommy gasps. “Ellie － wait a moment, is it just Ellie?”

“Hm?” she responds, seeming a little thrown by Tommy’s shift in tone.

“Your name. Like mine, it’s actually Thomas, but no one calls me that.”

Joel grins at the look on her face. She doesn’t always know what nicknames are short for. She called him Joelseph once for two days and he’s still not sure if she was fucking with him.

“Thomas?” she repeats. “Why did I not know that?”

“’Cause I hate it?” Tommy says, chuckling. “So, yours. Is it just Ellie or is it actually Eleanor or Elizabeth or somethin’?”

She makes a face. “Ugh, can you imagine me being a fucking Eleanor? That’s almost as bad as Thomas. No, um, Marlene said Ellie was what my mom wanted to call me.”

Tommy nods and doesn’t press about her mother.

Joel sometimes wonders if they might have met, Tommy and her mother. Tommy started talking to Marlene almost as soon as they got to Boston, and… well, it would line up that he might have known her. He’s afraid to ask, though. He doesn’t want to know if the answer is no. It’s too final — another way for Ellie to be disappointed.

“You got a middle name?” Tommy asks.

“Nope.”

“Hm.” Tommy’s quiet for a moment, the only sound leaves crunching under their feet. “How about Louise then?”

She laughs out loud. “What?”

“Every kid needs a middle name.” Tommy glances back at Joel, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He looks so much like their grandfather when he smiles like that, a kind man who passed away when Tommy was only five. “You need three names to yell when they’re in trouble.”

“Oh, sure.” She raises her eyebrows. “What are you, Thomas Wendell Miller?”

“That’s Joel’s middle name, actually.”

Just for that, Joel shoves his brother into a pile of leaves.

“His middle name’s Geraldo,” he says eventually to Ellie, when she’s done sitting on Tommy’s back and rubbing leaves in his hair.

She reaches up and he pulls her to her feet. They both leave Tommy on the forest floor.

He’s fine.

“What’s yours?” she asks, curiously.

“Manuel.”

After the same grandfather that Tommy looks like when he smiles.

“Cool,” Ellie says. She glances back. They’re a bit ahead of Tommy now, but she drops her voice. “What was Sarah’s?”

“Poppy. Her mom really liked flowers.”

“Like Violet.”

He nods.

He doesn’t know if Tommy did that on purpose or if it’s connected at all. But it’s like a connection between them, his niece and the cousin she didn’t get to know.

Tommy catches up to them a moment later. He still has leaves in his hair. “Louise,” he says to Ellie.

“Wendell,” she replies.

Joel tries not to wince. This is going to be a thing, isn’t it?

* * *

The one thing anyone could say about her is that Ellie knows how to adapt. It’s probably the thing she’s really proud of herself for. She catches on fast and she’s good at figuring things out. At least most of the time.

Some people are just. Really good at hiding who they really are. That’s not her fault.

It’s not.

She caught on fast that school in Jackson wasn’t like FEDRA school. Fast enough that none of the other kids think she’s too weird. She also realized pretty quick she should absolutely not talk about her old school with them if she wants them to keep thinking she’s normal. Almost everyone in Jackson either was born there or has spent most of their life there. They have no idea what a QZ is like. When they ask her questions, she has to limit her responses.

If she told them the truth, none of them would be able to understand.

It’s sorta funny talking about FEDRA school at home, though. Not funny like a joke － funny like strange. Joel is always quiet at first. There’s always a moment where anger lives in his silence. It’s the same kind of anger that would beat a man to death to save her life.

Weirder, though, is how Tommy reacts when something comes up about school. Maria always gently prods for more details and then calms and firmly explains that whatever she’s talking about wasn’t okay. She’s blunt with it, and if she feels bad for Ellie, she doesn’t let it show. Ellie prefers it that way. Tommy, though, is kind of weird about it.

The thing is not a lot rattles him. Or maybe it does, but he doesn’t let it show. Ellie’s tried, too. The things she’s done, that she’s killed people, the bite on her arm, none of it rattles him in a way he lets show. He’s an easy person. Easy to get along with, easy to trust.

Joel and Ellie have dinner with Tommy and Maria every Sunday. They don’t always eat in the dining hall, but Tommy and Maria usually do, even for breakfast. It’s a community thing. But on Sundays, they all eat together at home, alternating between their two houses. It’s a Tommy and Maria’s place week.

They’ve just finished dinner and Ellie is helping clean up.

“You’re a mess,” she tells Vi frankly, attempting to wipe her face clean with a cloth.

Vi immediately bursts into tears at the betrayal of a damp cloth touching her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m so mean,” Ellie agrees, getting her clean as possible before unsnapping her bib. “It’s not my fault you smeared applesauce in your hair.”

Joel swoops in and scoops Violet up, who glares balefully at Ellie. “Well, that’s ‘cause she’s just the sweetest.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. He’s such a sucker for Vi.

“Ellie, honey, can you hand me Violet’s plate?” Tommy asks from where he’s doing dishes.

She picks it up and makes a face. “Gross.”

“What’s gross?” Tommy asks absently.

“It’s all mushed together now,” she explains, scraping the leftovers into the compost bin before passing it over to him. “Looks like fucking Nutraloaf.”

Tommy frowns. “Like what?”

“You know.” She boosts herself up onto the counter next to him. Joel hates it when she does that, but Tommy lets her get away with it. “Like when you get in trouble for throwing a fork or something so they blend up all your food and bake it into a loaf. Then you don’t need utensils.”

It’s not until a moment later that she realizes she’s said one of those things. The room goes quiet, besides for the grumpy sounds Vi’s still making.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothin’, sweetheart, nothin’.” Tommy dries his hands on the dish towel, then, out of the blue, cups his hand over the back of her head. He doesn’t usually touch her much, letting her take the lead on that, but she’s gotten more used to him and she doesn’t mind.

She’s still surprised when Tommy kisses the top of her head. Joel does that sometimes, mostly when he thinks she’s asleep. She isn’t used to it. She likes it a lot. She’s also seen Tommy’s do that to Vi, all the time. But not her. His mustache tickles.

“Sorry,” Tommy says, and moves away from her, because he knows she’s not big on being touched by non-Joel people. “Sorry, I just－”

He doesn’t say anything else, just slams out the back door.

Violet immediately starts sobbing again.

“Shit,” Joel mutters, passing her over to Maria. “You take this one. I’ve got that one.”

He follows Tommy out the back door.

Ellie looks at Maria. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” Maria says, settling Vi against her shoulder. “He just needs a minute. Why don’t you go pick out a movie for us all to watch while I go up and give Violet her bath?”

“Okay,” she agrees, but she’s lying.

As soon as Maria’s upstairs, she slips over to the door, which Joel didn’t fully close behind him. She doesn’t peek through the crack, even though she’s tempted. It’s enough of a risk to eavesdrop. If she can see them, they’d be able to see her, and Joel has like a sixth sense for her sometimes. He’d definitely catch her.

“They used to do that in prison,” Tommy says. “I had buddies who did time and they did that to punish them.”

“Yeah,” Joel says. His voice is tight, but a lot calmer than Tommy’s. “Think they used a lot of old prison tactics. Solitary, turning off their hot water, runnin’ them half to death.”

“Jesus,” Tommy breathes.

Ellie flushes hot. She gets those things aren’t normal. Or at least aren’t normal in Jackson and weren’t normal before the outbreak. But she doesn’t like people talking about her like they feel sorry for her.

“So I need you to toughen up,” Joel says.

She’s not sure who’s more confused, her or Tommy.

“What?”

Joel shifts, his boots making noise on the porch. “You run off every time she says somethin’ about school. You need to cut it out. I’m not gonna have her thinkin’ she can’t talk about it around you.”

“I don’t want that either,” Tommy snaps － actually snaps. Ellie’s never actually heard him sound that angry. She knows they still fight now and then, but they’re both very careful not to do it in front of her. “It’s just － goddamnit, Joel, it ain’t right.”

“I know.”

The porch floorboards squeak. Tommy must be pacing. “When she talks about school and I look at her, I might as well be lookin’ at Violet. Or Sarah.”

Ellie almost gives herself away from that, inhaling sharply before she catches herself.

“I’ve thought about goin’ back to Boston and knockin’ a few FEDRA instructors’ heads in,” Joel says, a certain darkness in his voice.

Ellie doesn’t mind darkness. Darkness is safe.

“It’s not what she needs, though,” Joel says. “Alright?”

“Yeah,” Tommy agrees, sighing. The floorboard squeaks again. “Yeah, I’ll pull it together. Sorry.”

She sneaks away after that so she doesn’t get caught, and has a movie picked out by the time everyone is back in the living room, minus a now-sleeping Violet.

It’s a sports movie that Joel really likes for some reason. She could have picked out one of the space movies she prefers, but if she pretends to fall asleep halfway through this or zones out, he won’t think she’s being weird.

She just needs to think a little bit and not to have anyone pay too much attention to her while she does.

* * *

Some things are… well, bittersweet, really. Joel wishes Ellie had grown up in a softer place. He’d do anything to go back and take her out of that fucking school when she was little. It works into his dreams some nights, him somehow back in Boston hearing a baby crying and looking for her.

But he tries to focus on the parts that are good now. She loves learning about everything, and he loves her curiosity, even when it’s making him feel stupid.

The first thing Tommy ever did that made Ellie trust him even a little was show her the town library. It’s old fashioned, obviously, with the little pockets and cards that Ellie carefully prints her name on, not at all like the fancy modern library he used to take Sarah to where everything had gone digital. Ellie doesn’t care, though.

It isn’t even a very big library, but it’s better stocked than anything in a QZ. FEDRA had a nasty habit of sweeping through libraries and censoring anything that they didn’t approve of. One of the only times he ever saw Tess cry was at the first book burning they saw in Boston. That was how he found out her mother had been a librarian.

Ellie goes to the library multiple times a week. There’s a teen group there one afternoon a week, with snacks and drinks, in an attempt to keep them out of trouble. It doesn’t work, because teenagers, but they have fun. Ellie goes sometimes. He encourages it every week, but sometimes she’s not up for it and he doesn’t push.

At least once a week, though, she drags him there on one of the days they both have off and makes him carry a bag of books home for her.

It always makes him remember the first time on the road that they passed through a bookstore on the road. It was half-ruined and picked over, but Ellie found a shelf of books that were still okay and spend almost an hour carefully looking through them.

He should have pushed her to get moving sooner. They had needed food and camping supplies, better gear, not books. But it was only a few days after Kansas City and it was the first time the light had come back to her eyes.

She still had Sam’s blood on her shirt.

When she’d narrowed it down to six, she packed them into her bag and then put it on and her face fell immediately. Without him needing to say anything, she’d sighed and taken three out again, setting them carefully on the shelf. An apocalypse kid through and through — too practical to push something like that.

He’d put them in his bag instead and she’d smiled for the first time since she’d watched her friends die in front of her.

He complains about how many she takes now, but she knows he doesn’t mean it.

“Didn’t you read this one already?” he asks, holding up a thick hardcover.

“Yeah, so?” Ellie asks, passing over a stack of cards to the librarian.

“I’m gonna find you a wagon,” he threatens.

“That’d be fun for Violet,” Ellie replies, grinning like the little brat she is.

“Just like Matilda,” the librarian says. She’s older than Ellie, but young. Joel’s shit at guessing ages on anyone under thirty these days, though. They all just look like kids to him. “Oh, Williams? I thought you two were the Millers. Sorry, I’m still new.”

Ellie’s face falls just slightly.

“I am. Tommy’s my brother,” Joel says, knowing his brother has introduced himself to every newcomer to Jackson.

“Williams is my mom’s name,” Ellie says. It’s the same thing he’s said a few times now, at school and at the doctor.

“Oh, cool. My moms hyphenated, Chavez-Park.”

He likes this girl immediately. She says it casually, putting Ellie at ease.

Ellie shoves her books on him, as usual, though she’s a little quieter than usual as they leave the library. He wants to ask what’s wrong, but she’ll pull away if he pushes too hard before she’s ready.

“Joel?”

“Hm?”

“Did people do that a lot?”

“Do what, kiddo?”

She fiddles with her sleeve. “That hyphenate thing?”

“Yeah, it was startin’ to be more common. Or some people didn’t change their own names, but they’d give their kids a hyphenated one. Some people still do, too, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, uh.” He fumbles for the names. “Shannon and Cooper? They’ve only been married a couple months and they wanna both be Wilson-Dell. No reason not to be, if that’s what they want.”

It’s more that they don’t use last names as often anymore. He knows a few people have stopped using one altogether, suspects a whole lot of people have adopted entirely new names. It’s not like it matters anymore, especially not here. He left his FEDRA identification card in Bill and Frank’s house when he unpacked and repacked his bag. After that, he could have used any name he wanted introducing himself or filling out forms for Ellie and himself.

She nods, but doesn’t say much else. He lets her be until she’s ready. They have dinner to make, anyways, and he’s got a new recipe.

Ellie trying new food is another of those things he enjoys. There are things she’ll never get to be able to try, but there are plenty she can and a lot of them are a good sight better than anything she ever ate in that school. It’s good cooking for her. He used to like cooking, especially when Sarah got big enough to help out in the kitchen and it was something to do together, but he didn’t care about food for twenty years.

Ellie can’t cook, not really. She wouldn’t starve if she had to fend for herself, but she’s impatient and easily distracted. He tries to teach her, and she doesn’t mind prepping vegetables or doing tasks for him, but she’d rather just bother him while he cooks. He pretends to be annoyed, but making dinner while Ellie sits on the counter no matter how many times he says not to and steals ingredients to snack on is one of the best parts of his day.

It’s one of those bittersweet moments. Bitter, when she’s surprised by the taste of raw vegetables because she’s never had them or in the way he’s still trying to get her to believe no one is going to take the food away if she doesn’t eat fast enough. Sweet, when she’s so pleased by almost anything he makes. He’s never met anyone so impressed by his borderline pathetic excuse for tortillas.

Far more sweet than bitter, though, like so many things with her.

* * *

The stupid thing is that it’s not even her idea. She’s had quite enough of crawling through dirty old buildings looking for shit, enough to last her whole life. But the others talk her into it, and she does have a thing she’s kind of been looking for. When she leaves Jackson, she mostly only goes hunting with Joel or Tommy so it’s hard to look for things. The abandoned building they’re exploring is still technically in Jackson… but it’s also technically kind of outside of the wall. It’s in the area they’ve been working on expanding into, which means the new part of the wall is only half built.

It may or may not be easy to sneak through that part if you bribe the person watching there. Who’s freshly eighteen, because it’s supposed to be a nothing patrol. Nothing happens, nothing to see. Baby’s first patrol and all that.

In what should have been predictable, being in an empty building sort of outside of town means the others look around for like ten minutes and then start drinking.

Ellie gets annoyed of it almost immediately. Joel doesn’t want her to really drink yet. Every now and then she’ll steal a sip from whatever he’s drinking but she doesn’t push it much. He’d smell it on her and then he’d just be disappointed and she hates that idea. Besides, she’s not stupid enough to drink the slightly horrifying combination of alcohol the others have stolen from their parents and mixed in a giant bowl. That’s just asking to get way too fucked up.

She wanders off to check out the building next door. She’s careful, sticking to the edges of the room the way Joel taught her… until she sees exactly what she’s looking for. And then, like an idiot, she crosses right across the floor.

In the split second after the floor creaks ominously, she has the thought that Joel is going to be so annoying when he says he told her.

After that she doesn’t really think much of anything at all, except that everything really fucking hurts.

Ellie groans. Fuck. She needs to get up, but her head is spinning. She needs to get up though. She needs to keep going, keep running, to keep the men chasing her away from Joel. She has to keep him safe.

Wait. No.

No, Joel’s fine.

This isn’t Silver Lake. This isn’t Silver Lake. This isn’t Silver Lake.

God, her head hurts so much. It hurts the same way it did then, and she fights not to slip back into that fuzzy, empty place she went after. No one knows where she is. She wandered off from the others －no wanderin’, Joel’s voice says in her head, a little late － and it was supposed to be a surprise, so she didn’t tell Joel exactly where she was going to be.

She needs to get herself out of here.

Joel’s going to be so worried.

One step at a time.

Ellie moves her arms, because they seem like they’d hurt the least. It still hurts, but she can bring them up to her head.

Touching her head is a mistake.

When her fingertips touch the back of her skull, her vision goes white and she almost throws up. They come away bloody and she exhales. Definitely concussed again, then. Great.

The rest of her isn’t ready to move, so she looks around as much as she can without moving her head. She’s in a basement, she’s pretty sure. She was on the first floor when she fell through so she must be. There’s so much dust in the air that she can barely breathe. Half the fucking floor must have caved in.

Then something else groans on the other side of the room.

Oh, god no.

No, no, no.

She needs to move. She needs to get the fuck out of here.

Slowly, she pushes herself up on her elbows, but she can’t help the gasp that escapes her.

It’s in the corner, behind a pile of debris, but it’s looking right at her.

Or… not looking. Because it doesn’t have eyes anymore. It’s a fucking clicker.

Okay. Okay, she has time. It’s pinned under some debris from the floor, one of those big support beams. Infected are strong, but those things are heavy.

Except… except it’s not the only thing pinned. Now that she’s sitting up, she realizes the reason her foot hurts so much is that her leg is pinned under a chunk of floor.

“No,” she says helplessly and the clicker screams at her.

No. No, this isn’t how she’s going out. She’s not going to get ripped apart by a clicker in a basement in Jackson. This isn’t happening.

She takes her knife out, flicks it open, and puts it on the floor next to her. Damn it, she wishes she had her gun, but she wasn’t supposed to need it, and it bothers Joel when she’s anxious enough to want to carry it in town.

“Stay there,” she says to the clicker, ignoring it screeching at her. “Just stay there.”

She takes a breath, vaguely noting that her ribs hurt, and starts to push against the chunk with her free foot.

The clicker starts to thrash at the debris pinning it. If it gets out before she does, the others are next door, making noise and probably drunk by now. It’ll be a fucking massacre.

Her leg comes free right as something crashes across the room. She doesn’t even have time to look, just a second to grab her knife in one hand and a hunk of wood with the other, and then it’s on top of her.

She screams and jams the wood under its chin, using as much leverage as she can to shove it away from her. For a second, she’s in a mall in Boston and she wishes, desperately, that she wasn’t alone this time.

She shoves her knife into its throat and tears as hard as she can, hot, rancid blood spraying across her face. It stinks, the way infected blood always does, and she fights not to gag.

Then, finally, it goes still and she shoves it off of her.

She hurts too much to move, but it’s dead. It’s dead and she’s probably dead, but at least the idiots who convinced her this was a good idea won’t be torn to shreds.

She presses her hands over her eyes and lets herself cry hot, angry tears.

And that’s how Tommy finds her.

“Ellie?” he calls. “You in there?”

It’s dark, she realizes, and he can’t see her. And she doesn’t think she can yell without her head exploding. She has her penlight, though. Joel doesn’t let her leave the house without a flashlight, her knife, and a keychain sized flint. He says if she has those, she can survive anything long enough for them to find her.

She takes it out and turns it on. “Here,” she tries to croak, not sure how audible it is.

“Stay put,” he shouts.

She’d make fun of him for that － where the fuck would she go － but she’s just so grateful not to be dying alone right now.

He has to shove a bunch of stuff out of the way to get to her.

“Oh, shit,” he says when he sees the dead clicker, and he sounds like Joel. When he drops to his knees next to her, though, he smiles almost convincingly. “Jeez, Louise. You don’t do things halfway, do you?”

“Is Joel mad?” she blurts.

“No, of course not. Can you sit up or do we need to get the doc to come here?”

“I’m fine,” she lies, then, “My back’s fine. I had to get that thing off me already. Are you sure Joel’s not mad? I did － I was so fucking stupid, I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I know better.”

“He’s just worried, Ellie.” Something creaks and Tommy looks anxiously over his shoulder. “What do you say we get out of here? Think it’d be okay if I picked you up?”

She kind of hates that she’s so easy to pick up. It happened in Silver Lake, after she was thrown off Callus and knocked out, and someone moved her while she was passed out. She’s pretty sure she knows who did it, but she doesn’t like thinking about it, about him being alone with her body while she wasn’t there.

But if it was Joel, she’d be okay with it. And Tommy isn’t Joel, but he’s closer than anyone else.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

He’s careful, trying not to hurt her. She leans her head against his shoulder. Holding it up hurts and if she closes her eyes she can pretend he’s Joel.

It’s way brighter outside than she expects, and it makes her remember.

“Wait, wait.”

“What?”

She tries to look behind her, but her vision swims. “There was a guitar. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to give it to Joel.”

“You’re not goin’ back in there.”

That’s the last straw.

“No, but he wants to － but I －” And then she’s sobbing into Tommy’s shoulder.

She loses time. Things go fuzzy and she doesn’t come back until she feels Tommy shifting her arm from around his neck.

“Ellie,” a voice says.

Joel.

She’s on the ground and she doesn’t remember getting there, but Joel is pulling her carefully into his arms. He lift her off the ground, pulling her right into his lap. It hurts and it’s a little weird because they don’t normally do that, but she doesn’t care.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Oh, baby girl, it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” she blurts. “I’m so sorry. What’s gonna happen?”

“I’m gonna take you to the doctor,” Joel says. “It’s gonna be okay, baby.”

“No, after that.” She grabs his shoulder and clenches her fingers in his shirt, like if she presses close enough she could disappear. “Please just tell me what they’re going to do to me. Because I snuck out.”

“Hey, hey.” That’s Tommy. “Ellie, can you look at me?”

It takes her a moment to take her face out of Joel’s neck and things swim a little when she does.

Carefully, slowly, Tommy touches her face. He’s a little awkward doing it, but she gets the idea. “You’re all grounded,” he says, his voice soft. “And when your brain is a little less scrambled, I’ll probably give you KP duty for a week. Okay?”

That doesn’t make any fucking sense. “If I’d snuck out of the QZ, FEDRA would have killed me.”

Joel’s breath catches.

“We’re not FEDRA,” Tommy says. “Now can we get you to the goddamn doctor already?”

The goddamn doctor pronounces her very concussed, which is not exactly a big surprise. But Kara also gives her some painkillers and wraps up her sprained ankle so it stops throbbing in time to her heartbeat.

Joel helps clean the blood off her, because when she sees it she keeps forgetting where she is, but he won’t let her leave the clinic which she thinks is total bullshit.

But they turn the lights off except for the bathroom and make her lie very still.

It takes a few hours of that before being very, very concussed stops making her freak out and just makes her head hurt like a bitch.

“How much trouble am I in?”

Joel squeezes her hand. “For the fourth time… you’re not in trouble until you get better.”

She raises her hands to scrub at her face, dragging his with them unintentionally. “Did anyone else get hurt?”

“No, baby. They just got drunk and stupid.”

“They would have been if it got out,” she says. “They’re all so fucking stupid, Joel. That clicker would have torn through them like － like － something that tears easy.”

“I know. You did so good.” He wipes her damp cheeks with a much gentler touch than her own was. “What do I gotta do to get you to get some rest?”

Tommy called her brain scrambled, she remembers. Like eggs. It feels like her head has been cracked like one. But Joel asked her a question and she has a solution to that, which seems important.

Ellie pushes herself up on one elbow. Belatedly, she realizes she’s been lying on her side. She’s always preferred to sleep that way, but she can’t really lie on her back anymore. If she rolls onto her back in her sleep, she wakes up feeling a body on top of hers. Sometimes it’s the infected that bit her in Boston, sometimes it’s Sam. Usually it’s not either of them.

Her memory is a little spotty, but she thinks she remembers Joel helping her roll over.

“Ellie, what are you－”

“Here,” she says, easing herself over to one side of the hospital bed until she almost bumps into the bar thing, which she’d be insulted by if she wasn’t so wobbly. “This.”

“There ain’t nearly enough room in that thing,” Joel says, but he’s already moving, and squishing onto it with her.

She sighs and drops her head onto his shoulder, curling up against his side.

Much better.

* * *

Joel realizes he’s probably driving the doctor nuts. Both of them are, frankly. She wants Ellie to stay in the clinic overnight just to keep an eye on her. Two concussions in less than a year aren’t great for a growing brain. Meanwhile, after a couple hours of rest and not being in the middle of a panic attack anymore, Ellie becomes much more alert again.

Which means she complains about everything.

They won’t let her read and she hates it, even though her head hurts so much she can’t stand the light being on. She desperately wants to go home, so much so that he doesn’t trust her enough to leave her alone while he goes to the bathroom in case she makes an escape attempt.

She complains about her clothes. She complains more when Maria brings by a bundle of clean clothes for her, though she waits until Maria leaves. Maria brought sweats and a soft t-shirt and apparently Ellie was planning on going immediately into battle because she complains about not having jeans and the lack of pockets, even when he puts her knife on the table next to her bed. She complains when they try to get her to eat something.

He’s probably worse, with how often he keeps asking the doctor to check on her, especially when she isn’t exactly pleasant in response. He just… he needs her to be okay.

She falls asleep after barely touching dinner, much earlier than usual.

Not long after, Tommy peeks around the edge of the door, gesturing at the hallway. Joel eases Ellie off his shoulder, pulling the blanket up over her as he slips off the bed. She makes an unhappy noise, and he rests his hand on her back until she settles again.

He slips out into the hallway, leaving Ellie’s door cracked so he can hear her if she wakes up.

“How’s she doin’?” Tommy asks.

“Better. Exhausted. Doc just wants to keep her for observation as a precaution, but she should be okay.”

“Thank God,” Tommy says.

Joel stopped believing in one a long time ago, but he agrees with the sentiment anyways.

Tommy holds up a tote bag. “Maria came home and told me I was an idiot.”

“Smart woman. What for?”

Tommy hesitates. “Head wounds bleed like a bitch, you know? So, uh. Clean clothes. For you.”

Oh, hell. Joel hadn’t even noticed. He’d been so focused on Ellie that he didn’t realize he’s covered in her blood.

He’s kept it together all day, since she didn’t come home when she was supposed to, since two of her friends found him and tearfully － and no small amount, drunkenly －confessed she’d disappeared and they couldn’t find her, since he saw her in covered in blood in Tommy’s arms and the only way he could tell she was alive was her sobs.

That’s what you do when your kid gets hurt. You keep it together for their sake until they’re safe.

Joel stops being able to keep it together. He also stops being able to breathe.

Distantly, he’s aware of Tommy grabbing his arms and pulling him over to one of the chairs in the hall, pushing him down into it. It barely registers past the ringing in his ears.

It could have been so much worse. It could have been Ellie bleeding out in his arms.

“－she’s okay. Joel, she’s fine. Joel.”

“Yeah,” he manages, rubbing his chest where it aches. “I know.”

Tommy sits in the chair across from him. The hallway is tight and neither of them are exactly short, so their knees brush. It’s not the first time they’ve been in a hallway like this. Their mother died of a brief, brutal bout of cancer when Joel was twenty-seven and Tommy was a freshly-turned twenty-one. He bought Tommy his first legal beer the same week they buried her.

“That’s still happenin’?” Tommy asks, not unkindly.

“Not as often as it used to,” he says reluctantly.

“Good.” Tommy glances behind him at the hospital door. “How long do you think we have til your kid wakes up and starts eavesdroppin’?”

Joel exhales a rough laugh. “Ten more minutes, maybe. Why?”

Tommy leans forward, rubbing his hands over his face. “She was already all upset so I didn’t want to say much, but you need to make sure she knows I would never let anyone hurt her, alright? Maria neither.”

“She knows,” Joel says, confused.

“Joel, she asked me if we were gonna execute her because she snuck out. And I know she was confused, but you better damn well make sure she knows we wouldn’t let that happen to her.”

He doesn’t argue. He knows Ellie scared the shit out of Tommy today. Tommy wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he had to bring her lifeless body back to Joel. It would have been signing his death sentence, and they both know it.

“Alright.” Tommy slaps his hands on his thighs and stands up. “Go get yourself cleaned up before your troublemaker wakes up. I’ll check on you two in the morning when you get home, alright?”

They hug before he leaves, something they still don’t do as often as they should. Twenty years of history doesn’t go away in an instant, but family emergencies make it disappear at least temporarily.

He slips back into Ellie’s room and ducks into the bathroom while she’s still asleep. He doesn’t look in the mirror while he strips off his bloody shirt and washes his hands and arms off. He’s seen this before and he needs to stay in the moment where Ellie needs him, not drift off into the what-ifs. The only thing he does is make sure there’s no blood on his face when he’s done.

He pulls on a clean T-shirt and shoves his bloody clothes in the trash in the corner.

Ellie’s awake again when he comes out of the bathroom, squinting at the light spilling out. He closes the door most of the way so it won’t hurt her head.

“Did you leave?” she asks, confused.

“No, Tommy brought some clothes for me.” He sits on the edge of her bed, not even bothering with the chair. “Do you want anything, kiddo? Doctor Kara told me they’ve got some juice and snacks.”

“Juice,” she decides. “But not the stuff with the bits.”

Joel smiles. Jackson has a very small crop of orange trees. They mostly get eaten fresh, but an unexpectedly large crop means the dining hall made a couple batches of fresh orange juice for breakfast. Ellie had tried apple juice by then and liked it, but pulp made her look at the glass like it’d betrayed her.

“No bits,” he reassures her.

She’s an apocalypse kid through and through. She doesn’t say no to food, besides her inability to eat certain kinds of meat. That’s not a choice, though. Pulp in orange juice is the first thing she’s ever been allowed to simply dislike.

He gets her a glass of apple juice and resists the urge to ask the doctor to check on Ellie again. It’s only been an hour since the last time.

Ellie is asleep again by the time he’s back.

And she’s stolen the plaid shirt he was planning on putting on over his t-shirt.

Little shit.

He eases onto the bed next to her, careful not to jostle her. It’s not a particularly large bed for two people, but when one of those people is using the other as a pillow, it’s manageable.

It’s stupid, but it makes him feel a little better having Ellie’s head on his chest where he can keep an eye on it. Not like he could see if her brain was bleeding or something, but he’s also found her napping on the couch with her head hanging off the side almost on the floor. He doesn’t entirely trust her not to brain herself on the bedrail. At least if she’s trying to move into his ribcage, she’s contained.

Ellie sighs in her sleep and he presses a kiss against her concussed head. Normally he’d be stroking her hair right now, but there’s a goose egg on the back of her head and he doesn’t want to hurt her. He traces the line of her arm instead, from her shoulder to her hand.

No more concussions, he’s decided. It’ll be a new house rule.

* * *

This concussion thing has gotten fucking old.

Ellie’s not stuck in bed all day or anything, but she’s not allowed on a horse or to do any of her normal chores. She’s allowed to go to school, but she wears out faster than usual and she’s gone home after lunch most days. Too much reading gives her a headache. TV isn’t much better.

She’s so. Fucking. Bored.

Tommy opens their front door, knocking as he walks through. “Hey, Louise.”

She glares at him from the couch. “Where’s the baby?”

He pauses. “Hello to you, too.”

She flips him off.

He turns around and walks out, leaving the door standing open.

“Hey!” she protests.

Two minutes later, tops, he’s back and he deposits a slightly confused-looking Violet on her stomach.

“Did you just fucking go and take her?” Ellie asks and she can’t help grinning. She grabs Violet’s hands and wiggles them, getting a gummy smile in response. “Did your dad just abscond with you? Are you like so confused right now?”

“Nice vocabulary word,” Tommy says. “Where’s your － where’s Joel?”

“Workshop,” Ellie tells him, making a face at Vi. “He’s pretending he’s cleaning.”

“You throw somethin’ at him?”

“No, I threatened to bite him.” She pauses. “In a… friendly, respectful… way.”

Tommy snorts. “You want me to get him out of your hair?”

“No.” She wants to be out of her own hair, but she’d like if Tommy stuck around for a while. He’s actually not half-bad company sometimes. Plus, he brought Violet. “Hey, uh… can I talk to you about something?”

He drops into the armchair he always steals. It’s also Ellie’s favourite chair, which is probably why. “Sure.”

“Don’t tell Joel.”

He hesitates. “Not if it’s somethin’ that would hurt you. That－”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s just, um. Something I’m thinking about?”

“Well, that’s only sometimes dangerous,” Tommy says.

She rolls her eyes. Vi’s found an apparently fascinating button on her shirt and is trying to pull it off. “So, uh. People think my name is Miller a lot.”

“How do you feel ‘bout that?”

Ellie inhales. “My mom only gave me a couple things, you know? My knife and my jacket and my name. But I also… I don’t mind when people think that.”

Tommy nods. “You know, Maria didn’t change her name when we got married.”

She glances at him. “For real?”

“Nope. People assume she did, but she didn’t want to. Officially, Vi’s got both our names. That sort of thing just don’t come up as much anymore.”

“Joel said that once.” Ellie holds her hand out and Vi pats her palm. She’s been trying to teach Vi how to high five. She’s recently learned how to clap, so Ellie thinks they’ll get it soon. “So what’s her whole name?”

“Violet Benson-Miller. Her middle name’s Wendell, obviously.”

“Gotta pass it down,” Ellie agrees. “Wendell Junior.”

Tommy laughs. “Don’t ever call her that in front of Maria.”

Ellie files it away to make sure to call her that in front of Maria at some point. It’ll definitely be funny and probably get Tommy in trouble.

She inhales slowly. She’d probably be freaking out more without the comforting weight of Vi on her stomach. If she freaks out, Violet will freak out too. Apparently babies can, like, sense your emotions. It’s totally weird. “I was thinking maybe I could use Williams and Miller, like that. Do you think Joel would be okay with that? If I started using your name?”

There’s a crash from the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

Ellie’s on her feet in a heartbeat, automatically shifting Violet away from the source of the sound － but it’s just Joel. He’s dropped something, and he curses and bends down to grab it, setting it on the hallway table.

How much did he hear?

“Yes,” Joel says, a little hoarse, and Ellie doesn’t understand for a moment.

When she does, she can’t breathe. She feels Tommy take Violet from her, but she’s rooted in place as Joel crosses to her.

“I’d be okay with that,” Joel says. “I would － I would like that very much, in fact.”

“Both,” she says because it’s important that he understands. “I still want my mom’s name.”

“I’ll put it on the damned mailbox if you want,” he says.

She takes a breath. “People are gonna think I’m like your kid or something.”

The look on Joel’s face is… a lot. Not in a bad way. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

“Well… that’s good,” she says. She never knows what to say in moments like this. She really isn’t used to people telling her how they feel about her. Not when it’s a good way.

“Are you two always this bad at this?” Tommy asks.

Ellie almost jumps out of her skin. She completely forgot he was there.

“Go to hell,” Joel says without looking at him.

“Joel,” Tommy says, exasperated. “Tell her you want people to think she’s your kid because you want her to be your kid, dumbass.”

“I’m telling Maria you cursed in front of the baby,” Ellie says, ignoring that she curses in front of Violet all the time.

“Tell her or I’m gonna put in an application with the council to adopt her myself.”

“Hey!” Ellie shoots a glare at him.

“Out,” Joel says sharply, taking a threatening step towards Tommy.

Nonplussed, Tommy wanders into the kitchen, muttering to Violet about them.

Dick.

“I don’t want to live with Tommy,” Ellie says. She didn’t know that was a thing that could happen and it makes her hands go cold.

They wanted to take her away from him once.

“No, you belong here,” Joel says immediately. “This is your home, here. With me. Tommy’s just bein’ an ass.”

“I heard that,” Tommy calls from the kitchen.

“Good,” Joel shouts back. Then he looks back at Ellie. “I － he ain’t completely wrong, though. I would － I would be so damned proud if…”

He trails off, clearly fumbling for words, and sighs.

He really is stupendously bad at this type of thing, Ellie thinks fondly.

“Me too,” she says, letting him off the hook. “I’d like… that… too.”

Okay, so maybe sometimes she’s not much better. It’s not her fault. He’s clearly rubbed off on her.

“Do we need to do paperwork now or something?” Ellie says, trying to joke.

“I don’t know. Knowin’ this place, probably,” Joel says, and she can tell he’s fighting not to roll his eyes. He doesn’t make as many comments about things as she knows he could, trying to keep the peace, but he does still call Tommy a communist when they’re annoying each other. “Hey, you look at me for a moment.”

He closes the distance between them and cups her face in both his hands. His touch is gentle, light enough she could pull away easily. She leans into it instead.

“I’ll do the paperwork,” he says. “I’ll make a sign for the mailbox. We can －hell, I don’t know, change your library card. Whatever you want. Do you understand?”

Mostly, she thinks she does. Mostly, she thinks she has since the scar on Joel’s stomach and the arms around her holding her until she stopped feeling like she was going to float away and it wasn’t time that did it and… well, everything.

“I kinda gotta hug you now, man,” she warns him a second before she flings herself at him. She doesn’t say anything else, just buries her nose in Joel’s shoulder.

They might be bad at saying it, but she understands.

* * *

Having a kid pretty young made things different for them, especially with Sarah’s mom leaving when she was so little. He spent a lot of time in spaces that were predominantly women and he knew a lot of them judged him. He was younger than almost all of Sarah’s friends’ parents and half of them assumed he had no clue what he was doing. He spent a lot of those early years dodging offers of home-cooked meals and ignoring the subtext of said offers.

They were closer, too, than a lot of people with kids her age. Someone told him once Sarah was too sassy, but he never liked that. Seemed too much like they just didn’t like his kid having a voice and using it. Her white friends never got that particular criticism.

He liked her sass, anyways. She did her homework and her chores with minimal complaining. She didn’t do drink or sneak out like her uncle had in his teenage years. She was kind and helpful and the best thing in his life.

The first time it snows, Ellie hides in his bed all day crying.

The second time it snows, she declares war on the kid down the street. They’re friends, Joel thinks, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the way Ellie is viciously hunting him down. He’s seen her track deer with less intense focus.

They were out for a walk down Main Street, but he’s glad to be abandoned. He’s pretty sure the teenagers are supposed to be helping clear the street, but it’s devolved into a snowball fight. No one minds much. The joy is better to see than a clear street.

Tommy waves at him from next to the dining hall. Joel joins him next to a fire barrel, somewhat blocked from the wind, and takes the thermos Tommy passes over. It’s not coffee, but it’s hot and passable.

“What’s Violet think of the snow?” Joel asks. Sarah only saw snow once, when she was four. It wasn’t much, compared to this, but she’d loved it. He remembers her talking about it for weeks, hoping there’d be more.

“Absolutely hates it,” Tommy says, surprising a laugh out of him. “Poor kid’s in for a rough haul livin’ in Wyoming.”

“Ellie told me yesterday she wasn’t coming outside again until spring,” Joel says. “I had to threaten to take the DVD player away to get her out today.”

“That’s promising,” Tommy says as Ellie smashes snow into the neighbour kid’s face. She may also be kneeling on his chest to do it.

She stands up, planting her foot on his chest to make him stay down. She throws her arms in the air. “Motherfucking snowball champion!” she yells at the top of her lungs.

Joel sips his not-coffee. Damn right she is.

“The mouth on that girl,” someone says nearby.

Tommy raises an eyebrow at him.

Joel gestures for him to stay quiet. He wants to hear this.

“I can’t believe he lets her get away with that language,” another voice agrees.

“Well, he lets her get away with everything,” the first voice says. “I think she could kill someone and he wouldn’t care.”

“She’s constantly crawling on him,” the second voice says, clearly enjoying the gossiping. “Really, she’s too old for that sort of thing. It’s just a little weird, if you ask me.”

Tommy stares at him, about to say something until Joel holds a hand up. It’s fine. He’ll handle it.

He pushes off from the wall he’s been leaning against and deliberately passes by the two women who have been talking about him. He recognizes them from Ellie’s school, but doesn’t care to remember their names. They’re the kind of people still trying to live in the old world.

“Ladies,” he says, in the same tone he’s threatened to gut people with.

They at least have the decency to look embarrassed to have been caught running their mouths.

“Joel,” one of them says.

He keeps walking, over to where Ellie’s stacking snowballs on a picnic table. She’s got a plan here, and he hates to interrupt, but he waits until she turns to see him.

Then he scoops her up in the biggest hug he can, lifting her right off her feet and spinning her around.

She laughs so loud it echoes off the walls, clearly surprised. He doesn’t do a lot of big gestures like that in public. Doesn’t need to, really. Ellie’s settled comfortably into having him, and she’s picked up some things from her friends, like being a little embarrassed by him sometimes.

It’s good. He remembers that with Sarah. It’s good seeing Ellie just being a teenager.

More than big gestures, she just needs him to be there. She needs to be able to hide with him when she’s overwhelmed by a crowd, to be able to sit on the arm of his chair or hang on his shoulders. She still wants to see him across a room before she oh-so-stealthily sneaks away to make trouble with her friends and to have him there to take her home at the end.

It’s not dramatic. It’s just constant.

But he’s not beyond a little drama for the sake of shutting up some busybodies. Or for Ellie’s laughter.

She’s still giggling when he sets her back down on the ground. “What was that about?”

“Nothin’,” he says, because it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need her day ruined over people who don’t matter.

She eyes his arms. “You know, you’re not a half-bad shot.”

He waits for the catch.

“Do you think we could make Tommy cry if we hit him with enough snowballs?”

He grins. “For sure.”

She bounces on the balls of her feet and cups her hands around her mouth. “Tommy!” she bellows. “Get your chickenshit ass over here so I can kick it!”

Well, he probably would have gone with some kind of stealth attack, but that works too.

She pulls him down behind the table, crouching in against his side. He reaches up to brace himself on the picnic table, and she fits easily under his arm.

Her cheeks are pink with cold and her eyes are bright with excitement.

“For the record, I will use you as a human shield,” Ellie says, reaching up to grab a snowball.

“I figured,” he says, resigned to it already.

Those women were out of line, but they weren’t completely wrong. He would let her get away with almost anything, if it made her happy. Especially in moments like this, where she’s getting to be a kid. She’s been expected to handle too much. Even now, she’s too quick to put herself to work, too eager to take shifts at the stables or help fix something around town.

FEDRA spent fourteen years trying to beat the childhood out of her. If she gets even a little bit of it back now, Joel will do anything to protect that because Ellie is more than a little weird, but she’s kind and helpful and so incredibly sweet.

And she’s the best thing in his life.