Archive of Our Own

When Eva runs up to Tommy in the dining hall at supper and says, “Your niece is back,” there’s a split second in which the only name that occurs to him is Sarah. It’s a dizzying, confusing moment, and the dissonance of it means he almost misses the rest of the sentence. 

“-looks really rough, and there’s no sight of your brother. We tried to get her to put her gun down, but she’s demanding to speak to you.” 

It’s the mention of a gun that snaps him back to awareness. Sarah’s been in the ground 20 long years, and confident and secure in herself as she was, she certainly wouldn’t be holding anyone at gunpoint. 

Ellie. It’s Ellie Eva’s talking about. 

“Take me to her,” he says, standing and tossing his napkin to one side. He turns to Lily, their neighbor. “I told Maria I’d bring her some food back. Do you mind?” He’s already in motion, ready to be gone, but he senses that whatever has brought Ellie to the gates without Joel is about to consume his evening. It’s also a distraction he needs against encroaching dread, making plans to care for Maria. He can’t make his brother appear where he should be. He can make sure his heavily pregnant wife is fed. 

The second he gets a nod from Lily, he’s off before she even finishes opening her mouth. 

*

He finds Ellie right at the gate, back pressed to it and gun held out. 

The sight of her makes him falter for just a moment. There’s no other word for her but wrecked. She’s far too thin, her cheekbones and the single collarbone he can see from where her shirt has slipped a bit under the strap of her backpack sharp, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She’s wearing a flannel that has to be Joel’s, though it’s rolled up to her elbows. On one forearm is a thick wad of dirty-looking bandaging. 

On both arms are dark, splotchy bruises. 

“-down. We’re not trying to hurt you,” George says. He’s a grandfatherly man, kind, even-tempered. He’s gotten tapped in to solve disputes and settle conflicts more than once. 

He is also, at a glance, winding Ellie up like a spring. 

“And I will hurt you,” Ellie says. “So get Tommy and-” 

“I’m here,” he calls, jogging up. There’s a quick tremor of something across Ellie’s face, but he doesn’t know her well enough to read it in time before it's gone. His approach slows as he nears. Her hold of the gun–her finger not on the trigger, even clearly spooked and edgy–speaks of Joel’s influence, but she’s still a clearly not-okay teenager with a weapon. He’d rather not push his luck. “Everything’s alright, Ellie. Put the gun down, and we can talk. You’re safe here.” 

“Where’s Joel?” She asks, the words nearly desperate. 

The question makes his stomach tighten. 

“Is he here?” She demands, clearly a kid at the very edge of her patience. 

“No,” he says, forcing his voice even. Ellie has enough emotion in the moment for both of them. 

The answer makes her face crumble for the quickest moment before she gets control over herself again with admirable alacrity. 

“Okay,” she says, nodding once. “Then open the gate.” 

It’s dusk now, night quickly falling. They wouldn’t be letting a solo adult out right now. 

He certainly won’t be letting a kid who’s clearly been through hell out by herself, especially not this particular kid. His brother might actually show up just to kick his ass if he even considered it. Joel may not have been willing to claim Ellie just yet, but he’d seen his brother interact with her, heard the desperation in his voice at the thought of losing her. 

Whatever happened to Joel, he absolutely cannot let Ellie go out after him. 

“It’s dark, and there’s a new moon tonight,” he says, daring to edge a little closer. Ellie’s clearly tired, and this close, he can see her tremble faintly in the way of someone who’s far overtaxed their body. He half thinks she might actually just faint and save him this argument if it lasts a few more minutes. “You won’t help anyone wandering around out there. You’re more likely to wander off a cliff than you are to find anybody.” 

“Joel’s out there,” she says, tilting her chin up. “Now let me out.” 

“The gates are closed for the night,” George says, and despite how kindly he says it, the look Ellie shoots him pierces with far more precision than any bullet. 

“Let’s go back to my house and talk,” he cuts in before Ellie can decide to vent some of her wrath on poor George. He sees her about to speak and continues. “Get a shower, see if you’re hurt, get some food in you, and then we can plan from there. You look exhausted. Joel would want you to take care of yourself and then start looking for him.” 

He can see from the way her lips purse briefly that she knows he’s right. There’s a long, tense moment where she weighs her options, and then she sighs, body folding in on itself with the force of her exhale. 

“Fine,” she says, and she starts marching off before he can even respond. 

*

She only makes it just out of the sight of the others still gathered around the gate before she sways slightly and sits down heavily, reaching blindly for a low fence and dropping, head bowed. He extends a hand on reflex but retracts it. She’s edgy and still in possession of a gun. He’d rather not test how well Joel’s drilled trigger discipline into her. 

“Hey,” he says, crouching in front of her. “What’s up? Talk to me.” He meant what’s going on with her, but Ellie doesn’t seem to realize that. 

“We got separated at an old bridge over part of a river,” she says, looking up. “Me and Joel. The water was really high, and the bridge kept dipping as I was walking on it. He waited until I was across before he started so he wouldn’t add weight, but he must have been too heavy. It made the bridge dip down until the water caught on it, and he barely got off before the river ripped it away.” She sits up slightly straighter. “He asked if I remembered how to get to Jackson and then told me to keep going that way and he’d catch up when he found a place to cross.”

He’s more than a little surprised at this given how sick Ellie looks, but he supposes getting her to head in the same direction would have been the best of the shitty options. The alternatives would have involved Joel either risking fjording a dangerous river or Ellie sitting in the open as easy prey for anyone wandering by while she waited on him. 

“We gotta go,” Ellie says, pushing herself up, but she sways slightly on her feet, and he sees one of her knees try to give out on her. He reaches forward to steady her entirely on reflex, and she slaps his hand away, eyes going wild and fearful for a moment in a way they absolutely did not when she and Joel were here before. 

“Easy,” he says at once, lifting his hands to show he means no harm. “Sorry, kiddo, didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“I’m not scared,” she snaps at once, but he can tell from her pallor and the way she’s holding onto the fence that she’s too dizzy to hiss at him more. “Just don’t fucking touch me.” 

The fear in the words–even with her clear attempt at suppressing it–raises alarm bells in his head. He didn’t spend much time with her before they left, but he knows from Maria that at least with her, Ellie hadn’t protested getting her hair done. She hadn’t been overly touchy, but she hadn’t seemed to mind. 

“Okay,” he says. “Sure thing, darlin’.” He gets a quick, suspicious look at the endearment and resists the urge to make a face in regret. Right. If she’s not cool with a steadying hand, southern-isms probably aren’t in her wheelhouse either. Noted. “You just look like you’re a little unsteady on your feet-” 

“I’m fine,” she says, and he can see her try to pull herself more upright to prove it. 

He has the absurd thought of how much she’s acting like Sarah did in her “I can do it myself” stage at 5, when any attempt at help would end in a hissy fit. 

“Alright,” he says evenly, as soothingly as he can. “I believe you. Just between you and me, though, you look a little rough around the edges. How about we go to the clinic and-” 

“No,” Ellie snaps, that same near-feral fear in her eyes. “I’m not going to a fucking clinic.” 

The ferocity is surprising. He wouldn’t be shocked by her being hesitant to go without Joel–Sarah had broken her arm during a soccer game he’d taken her to when Joel had had a last minute job, and she’d refused to cooperate with the hospital staff until her dad was there with her–but this goes beyond a kid’s reticence to be without a guardian in a medical setting. 

This is terror, plain and simple. 

“Okay,” he says, because she looks like she might bolt if he doesn’t. “No clinic. I promise.” 

The doubt in her eyes clearly says what his promises are worth to her, but he thinks her exhaustion might be working in his favor here. She’s just too tired to try and bolt right now. He decides to try and press his advantage while he can. 

“Tell you what,” he offers. “We’ll go home, I’ll dig out the first aid kit, and we can get you patched up there. How’s that sound?” 

Her eyes narrow ever so slightly in mistrust. 

“Sounds like you’re tricking me,” she says frankly. “What, I go there and you send someone to grab a doctor to ambush me?” 

The idea did occur to him, honestly, but that sounds like a one way ticket to this kid never trusting anything he says again. Given how tentative any cooperation is right now, it’s not a risk he can take. 

“No tricks,” he says. “If it looks too bad, we can discuss it, alright?” He’s desperately hoping he won’t have to pull rank here. He remembers how she heeded Joel telling her what to do, and he very highly doubts he’ll be getting even a shadow of that (opinionated) obedience. “I just wanna make sure you’re okay, kiddo. That’s all.” 

She’s quiet for a long moment, and he can tell she isn’t pleased about it. 

Unfortunately for her stubbornness, she’s also an exhausted kid. 

“Fine,” she says, standing up as straight as she can. “But if you try to pull something, I’ll stab you. I don’t give a fuck if you’re Joel’s brother.” 

Of that he has no doubts. 

*

To her credit, Maria’s surprised pause lasts only a second before she’s recovered, moving closer at the slow waddle he knows better than to mention, no matter how cute he finds it. 

(He had a full night of being banished to the couch to learn that lesson.) 

“Well damn,” she says with a smile, “look who’s back.” 

“Hi,” Ellie says shortly, nothing about her body language encouraging proximity or any attempt at physical affection. 

Maria clearly reads it and stops at once. She turns to him, craning her head like she’s looking for Joel behind him. He shakes his head once and then glances up to their room in a signal that he’ll explain later. He grits his teeth against the way her expression goes sympathetic before she nods. He doesn’t need sympathy. Joel’ll be fine. He’s survived worse than a river. He’ll be fine. 

He has to be fine. 

Maria’s presence seems to help some, and Ellie consents to sitting down on the couch. Maria takes a seat next to her, and no matter how carefully she lowers herself, she ends up bouncing her when she sits. Ellie smiles faintly. 

Her smile fades when he takes a seat on the coffee table in front of her, lips thinning. 

“How badly are you hurt?” Maria asks, and Ellie looks away from him only reluctantly. 

“I’m not hurt,” she says, but Maria raising one of her eyebrows and giving her a slow up and down makes her duck her head slightly. “It’s nothing bad,” she corrects. 

“Mhm,” Maria says before she pushes herself to her feet. “I’ll get the first aid kit.” 

“Alright,” he says, careful not to trip Maria as she edges past. He’d usually get the first aid kit himself and leave Ellie to it, but he gets the feeling that she’s the type to hide injuries, and he wants to return her to Joel in better than he found her condition if possible. “What first?” 

“I can get it,” she says, and he nods. 

“I’m sure you can,” he agrees. “But you look pretty fucking tired right now. Might not be a bad idea to have a second set of eyes on things.” 

She’s clearly not happy about it, but she must sense this is one thing he won’t budge about. Maria returns then and hands over the first aid kit. 

“The neighbors are about to break their necks being nosy,” she says, pressing a hand to his shoulder briefly. “I’ll go take care of it.” 

He has a moment of sympathy for the neighbors before he refocuses. 

“Alright,” he says, flicking open the first aid kit. “What should we handle first?” 

“I think my arm’s the worst,” she says grudgingly, and that’s the only warning he gets before she peels off the bandage, grimacing, and he gets his first look at her arm. 

It’s not a good look. The skin is blistered and red and angry-looking, and he’s shocked she managed to keep the bandage on it like she did with no kind of pain killer. It takes him a moment to even work out what the fuck could cause this, and it’s only a couple of spots that look like splatters that clues him in. 

“Chemical burns?” He asks, grabbing her wrist gently without thinking to get a better look only to have her snatch it away at once. She makes a muffled, whining noise when it makes her hit her chest with it, and she goes impossibly paler, eyes clenched shut. His instinct is to reach out, to tend, to soothe, but he can make a pretty good guess that that would make everything significantly worse. When she’s recovered, she exhales shakily and opens her eyes. “Sorry,” he says when she’s looking at him again, offering his hand, palm-up, but not moving to grab her. “I was just trying to get a better look. Can I do that?” 

The way she looks down to his hand briefly says she wants to say no, but self-preservation must win out. 

“Whatever,” she says, but she puts her hand in his.

“Thanks,” he says, looking up to her face briefly to make sure she’s alright before he looks back to her arm, turning it to get a better idea of the extent of the damage, careful not to make the skin pull. He hisses in sympathy when he sees the epicenter of it where the chemicals were in contact with her skin the longest. His arm tingles in phantom sympathy, it looks so painful. “What caused this?” 

“Me,” she says simply, and he looks up to her sharply. She snorts derisively at his surprise. “What? Don’t think I’m tough enough?” 

No. That isn’t his primary concern here. 

“This looks like it hurts like a bitch,” he offers. “You wanna talk about why you’d do it?” He’s no counselor, but he needs to know if this is something he needs to be on watch for. 

She rolls her eyes. 

“Because I had bite scars there that would make people shoot me in the head if they saw them?” She says dryly, one eyebrow raised like she can’t believe she has to point this out. Given that he never saw her scars, he thinks this is a bit unfair, but he won’t argue the point. 

He doesn’t think he stands a good chance of winning, anyway. 

“What’d you even use?” He asks, letting her go and digging through the first aid kit to try and decide what to even start with. 

“Drain cleaner, per Joel,” she says. “I just picked the bottle that smelled the most skin-melty, but he said it was drain cleaner.” A slight wince. “He said a lot of other stuff, too, but me using drain cleaner was the big thing. He was pretty pissed.” 

Given his brother’s usual overprotectiveness and how especially vulnerable Ellie looks at present, he imagines that’s a wild understatement of his brother’s reaction.

“Alright, well,” he says, sitting back on his heels. “I think the move is gonna be you taking a shower, and we can work from there.” 

Ellie shifts her weight slightly. 

“I don’t have any clean clothes,” she admits, clearly grudgingly. 

“I’m sure we can find you something,” he says, standing and offering her a hand she ignores. 

She trails him to his room and waits outside of the door while he goes through drawers. Maria comes back in then and after speaking to Ellie for a moment, she enters and crowds him out of the way, pulling out some lounge pants and a shirt she hasn’t been able to fit in for a good five months. 

“These’ll swim on you,” she calls to Ellie, still hovering at the doorway. “But they’re clean. We can find you some other things later.” 

“My things are fine,” Ellie says with a bit of heat, even as she takes the clothes with a thank you. “They just need to get washed.” 

Maria doesn’t comment, and he leaves his wife to show Ellie to the guest bath. 

*

He waits downstairs with Maria until Ellie eventually emerges, hair still dripping slightly and pants rolled up several times. She has a soft cotton button-down of Maria’s in hand, but she’s only got on a tank top for the moment, and he can tell from her body language that it makes her feel exposed. 

Eyeing the bruising up and down her arms, he thinks it also might be uncomfortable to look at how much damage she’s taken during whatever the hell happened between Jackson and the university. 

He leaves Maria to tend Ellie while he goes to get some food. The kitchen has already shut down for the night, but with overnight guard duty, there’s almost always something left for anyone to grab when they’re hungry. Tonight it’s a thick beef stew, and he mentally cheers at his good fortune. Ellie could use something hearty to get some meat on those too-prominent bones of hers. He rounds it out with a chunk of bread and a bowl of strawberries and returns home, feeling like a victorious gatherer. 

Stepping in through the door, however, means walking into a room full of tension he could almost cut with a knife. 

Maria’s still sitting on the coffee table, but Ellie’s pacing the edge of the living room like a caged thing, bandages trailing from her arm like a banner. Clearly Maria didn’t get very far in first aid before whatever happened to have Ellie looking a few seconds away from throwing punches. Slowly, he sets the food down on the entryway table and ventures into the standoff. 

“Y’all alright in here?” He asks carefully. 

“Your wife,” Ellie spits the word in a way that makes it sound almost like an insult, “is being fucking stupid.” 

“Hey now,” he says, “let’s calm down a little here. I’m sure y’all-” 

“She thinks Joel hurt me,” Ellie says, eyes flashing. 

“That’s not what I said,” Maria says calmly. “I didn’t-” 

“You asked if Joel got angry with me on the road or if he got rough sometimes,” Ellie snaps. “I’m not stupid. I know what the fuck you’re asking.” 

Tommy also knows what she’s asking, and he can’t fight the loyalty that makes him prickle at once. It’s his own fault for how much he was willing to let Joel take the fall in his conversations with Maria to make himself look better, but it stings now, seeing and hearing his wife mistrust Joel so completely. 

Especially when it makes her prone to accusations like this. 

“Joel would never hurt me,” Ellie spits like an angry cat. “He’s the only reason I’m even still alive, so shut the fuck up about him.” 

He feels wildly conflicted in the moment, torn between loyalty to his wife and the reflexive urge to chorus Ellie’s defense of his brother. 

Cowardly as it is, he wishes he would have taken a little longer on food retrieval duty. 

“Joel would never hurt her,” he tells Maria, a little sharper than he means to. Joel’s been a silent weight between them since the first time he visited Jackson, and he’s not looking forward to finding their way around it. 

“Then tell us what happened,” Maria says, turning to Ellie. “You look like someone beat the shit out of you. If it wasn’t Joel, who was it?” 

Ellie pulls into herself slightly, and he doesn’t miss the quick glance she shoots towards the front door. He edges slightly to be in the way, just enough to hopefully slow her down. He’d rather not either go chasing after her or see her collapse in the attempt. She narrows her eyes at him slightly, but she doesn’t try to bolt. After a moment, she exhales an irritated breath and drops down onto the ottoman, head bowed for a moment before she rolls it back up. 

“The fucking Fireflies,” she says, looking down again and touching the edge of a bruise at the inside of her elbow gently. 

He grabs a fresh roll of bandages from the first aid kit and moves to the ottoman she’s sitting on, kneeling in front of her. After a moment, she extends her arm, and he starts unraveling the half-done bandaging already on it, carefully peeling it away from tender flesh, slightly sticky with some kind of salve. 

“Start from the beginning,” he says softly, catching the little tin Maria tosses him. 

Taking a deep breath, she does. 

*

He gets the sense that Ellie’s version of events is heavily edited, but it’s enough to get the gist, even having to read between the lines: the Fireflies are as fucked as he remembers. 

And they managed to find a cure. 

The shock of it makes him freeze midway through dabbing at what looks like the wound left behind from an IV being yanked out, and it’s only Ellie twitching slightly, uncomfortable at the hold, that makes him snap back into awareness. He shakes his head slightly, focusing, and goes back to carefully dabbing salve on the wound before wrapping it up. 

“Joel has the doses they gave us,” Ellie says. “We’ve got about thirty to start, and we have a map of where to meet in the fall for more. Marlene said they’d probably have about two hundred ready by then.” 

Two hundred and thirty doses. 

Two hundred and thirty lives saved. 

A glance down to the state of Ellie tempers the giddy disbelief of it. Those lives aren’t coming  without a cost, one a 14 year old had to pay. In the grand scheme of things, he knows the moral arithmetic more than balances out, but it’s a bit hard to keep that in mind when looking at a small body beat to hell in the pursuit of a miracle. Ellie must see it on his face because she speaks, voice hard. 

“It was worth it,” she says, tone brooking no argument. “I’d do it again.” 

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” he says with a small smile, dabbing bruise salve on the last of the marks on her arms. 

The moment she can, she shrugs into the shirt, and he can see her relax slightly when it’s buttoned up, though she tugs at it in a way that says she’s used to wearing baggier things. Given that she came to town in something of Joel’s, he imagines his brother’s faced his fair share of closet raiding. 

He heats the now-tepid food up in the microwave and brings it to her, and he pretends not to notice when she looks a little awkward at the tending. She eats the bread first with clear hunger, but when she picks up the spoon for the stew, she pauses, going just a little green. Before he can say anything, she all but stabs the spoon in and shoves a bite in her mouth, chewing with purpose. 

She’s barely made it six chews before she presses a hand to her mouth and sets the food down, darting at once to the bathroom and slamming the door.

“Maybe she hasn’t had anything that heavy in her stomach in a while?” Maria asks in a low voice. 

Given how thin she is, that seems like a good guess, and he winces at the sound of retching the filters through the door. 

When she comes back out, she looks shaky and still nauseous, so he doesn’t push more food on her. Maria offers some candied ginger she’s used for her morning sickness, and he makes sure she goes to bed with a bottle of water after a cup of willow bark tea. He feels horrifically like a failure for sending her to bed hungry, but she looks so exhausted, he has to hope it’s the right call. 

“Night,” he says softly when he peeks in her door before he goes to bed, finding her curled up in a little ball against the wall the bed’s against. 

“Night,” she says, before she turns her back to him and doesn’t say anything else. 

As beginnings go, it’s not the most promising. 

*

The next morning, he gets to try round 2 of feeding the kid.

"Morning," he greets her as soon as she appears on the stairs, wincing when his enthusiasm makes her jump. "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

She takes a quick glance around like she's expecting an ambush.

"I'm not really feeling dining hall breakfast," he says as casually as he can manage. 

"...okay?"

"Thought we might have something here, if you're amenable. You like eggs?"

"Eggs are…fine," she says, tilting her head slightly like she's looking for a trick. "You always this fucking peppy in the morning?"

"Used to a grouch, huh?" He says with a grin. "Our mama used to deploy me to get Joel up all the time when we were kids. He's always been a morning grump."

The mention of Joel was a miscalculation. There's a quick flicker of longing and anxiety across her face before she's back to being an indecipherable wall. Right. She's a kid who is currently without her grownup. Probably best not to remind her of that. 

He cubes up some ham, and he's about to dump it in when Ellie speaks up, startling him slightly.

"Can you not?" She says in a rush, and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees she's half-risen from her chair at the kitchen table. The moment she sees him looking at her, she drops down at once, pale cheeks going slightly pink. "I, um, I don't really like ham."

Given that he watched her devour a ham biscuit as an appetizer the last time they were here, he's pretty sure that's a lie, but it's also about the only direct thing she's said to him.

"Sure thing," he says with a smile. "Eggs, hold the ham, coming up. You like cheese?"

She studies him like she's looking for a trick, as if he's making fun of her and she just can't work out how. Finally, though, she nods. 

"Yeah," she says. "Cheese fucks."

He's startled into a laugh, and there's a quick flicker of satisfaction in her expression before she's back to her pokerface. 

Still, it feels like a starting point. 

*

She devours the eggs like a starving thing. Given that she hasn't had a proper meal since she arrived, it's probably not far off. She freezes when he slides his half-full plate towards her.

"Here," he says, rising to start the dishes. "I'm full. Finish that for me."

"You sure?" She asks, already eyeing the potatoes.

"Mhm," he says, grabbing her glass of milk and refilling it. "Go on," he encourages when she keeps hesitating. "Eat up."

With one last wary look, she obeys. 

Well big brother, he thinks, at least I got her fed.

He's willing to count it as a victory. 

*

His victory lasts up until Ellie demands to go looking for Joel. 

She’s not taking his attempt at being a rational, reasonable temporary guardian well. 

“He would go looking for you,” Ellie throws like a punch. “He did before, you know. When you fucking left him.” 

She’s simmering with rage, and he’s partially appreciative of the loyalty to his brother and partially trepidatious about what this means for keeping Ellie safe long enough for his brother to get here. He doesn’t imagine Ellie’s the type of kid to listen to a grown up telling her no on a good day, and full of righteous indignation for Joel isn’t her on a good day. 

“You’re in no shape to go looking for him,” he says, trying to be gentle with it. 

He fails. 

“I’m fine,” she says, tilting her chin up defiantly. “If you’re a little bitch who’s too afraid to go outside the fence, then just say that.” 

Couldn’t get one a little less eager to push buttons? He thinks at Joel. He anticipates many enjoyable years of watching this energy get turned against his brother, but he’s not enjoying being the target of it right now. 

“Joel sent you here to keep you safe,” he points out, trying to borrow his brother’s authority here. 

The way her lips press together tells him he’s made a good point she doesn’t like. He decides to push his advantage. 

“Just give him some time to get here,” he says with a small smile. “He’s just taking his sweet ass time because he’s old as shit.” 

It doesn’t get him the amusement he was aiming for as a peace offering. He sobers. 

“I promise, Ellie,” he says. “He doesn’t get here soon, I’ll be the first one out of the gates after him. For now, just focus on resting up, alright? That’s all you gotta worry about, kiddo.” 

It takes a long moment, but finally she nods, albeit it reluctantly. 

“Fine,” she says, standing and leaving the room in one motion. 

Sighing, he sits back down in his chair and scrubs a hand over his face. 

Trying to be a good uncle is significantly less easy than he remembers. 

*

He experiments with their breakfast success with a sandwich test at lunch: he makes two each of fried egg and leftover roast chicken and puts them in front of her. 

"Grab whatever you want," he says before he grabs some celery from the fridge to make some ants on a log. It had always been a hit with Sarah, so he figures it's a safe bet. When he turns back, she's taken an egg sandwich and started devouring it like she did breakfast. 

He notes that the chicken sandwiches have been pushed farther away on the plate. Interesting. 

He makes her a third egg sandwich without comment. 

*

"Take another scoop," he tells her while they go through the line at supper, nodding at the mac and cheese. Predictably, based on his observations, she skipped over the pulled pork, so her tray is looking a little skimpy for his tastes. 

She stares at him for a moment before she looks behind him at the rest of the line.

"Everyone else took one," she says in a low voice, like he's missed it.

"You can take more," he says, and her eyes narrow slightly.

"And be the one asshole who takes more than anyone else?" She challenges. “What if they run out? People’ll blame me.” 

"You can have mine then," he says. "If you're that worried about it."

She’s clearly still suspicious, but she does it, primarily because she seems reticent to hold up the line arguing with him. 

“Thanks,” she says under her breath as they exit the line before she falls back to follow him to a table. 

“Don’t mention it,” he says easily. “Not the biggest mac and cheese fan anyway. You’re doing me a favor.” This is a lie Joel or Maria could call him on, but it makes Ellie’s shoulders go just a little less tense, as he’d thought it would. She doesn’t seem like someone used to kindness. For now, feeling like they’ve traded something in this exchange will work. 

(And if he happens to duck into the kitchen after the meal is over to grab a square of the leftover mac to eat at his leisure late at night when there’s no teenager around to see, well, Ellie doesn’t need to know.) 

(He’d watched Joel eat enough brownie batter while telling Sarah not to to understand that little perk of parenting.) 

*

He wakes that night to knocking at the door at what feels like 4 in the morning, although checking the bedside table says it’s only 1. 

“I’ve got it,” he says to Maria around a yawn, rubbing a hand affectionately against her side before he rises. “I’m coming!” He calls, a little annoyed, when the knocking starts again. He can only hope it hasn’t woken Ellie up. God knows she needs the rest. 

He opens the door to find Joe and Krista, two of the gate guards. 

Standing between them is Ellie. 

He frowns at her for a long moment, confused as to what the fuck she’s doing outside–fully dressed and muddy–when he’d just checked on her and seen her asleep in the guest room two hours ago. For a moment, he thinks he must be dreaming. 

Ellie’s embarrassed scowl, though, doesn’t seem like something he’d come up with. 

“Found her trying to dig her way out under the fence,” Krista says, sounding almost amused. 

In the faint illumination of the streetlights, he thinks he sees Ellie’s cheeks flush as she ducks her head. 

“Don’t know exactly where she thought she was going,” Joe says, a little more sternly but still not harsh, “given that the fence goes down three feet into the ground with concrete.” 

Ellie doesn’t offer a comment. 

“You got it from here?” Krista asks, and that jolts him fully to awareness. Right. He’s responsible for this kid. 

“I got it,” he says. “Thank y’all for bringing her back.” 

Ellie grumbles something too low for any of them to hear, and he moves to one side as she marches past him through the door. He resists the urge to sigh. 

“Teenagers,” Joe offers sympathetically, and now he doesn’t bother to hide a small “what can you do?” smile. 

“Teenagers,” he agrees, thinking of his many exploits and how often his brother ended up getting him out of trouble. 

He swears he can almost hear Joel laughing at him as he shuts the door. 

*

He waits while Ellie showers, sitting in the hall, and she jumps about a foot in the air when she emerges to find him. 

“Thought we had a deal, you and me,” he says mildly. 

He sees Ellie considering her options. He’s between her and the guest room, his legs stretched out across the hall. She could step over them, but he doubts she’ll do it. Her options right now are stay and talk to him or retreat to the bathroom. Apparently a night in the tub doesn’t appeal to her, though, because she huffs out a breath, squeezing at her hair with her towel in a gesture that seems to be more about having something to do with her hands than anything else. 

“He could be hurt,” she says. 

“He injured the last time you saw him?” He asks. 

The resentful silence is enough of an answer. 

“Look,” he says, pulling his legs up and resting his arms on his knees, “I’m not trying to be a hardass prison warden here.” Really he’d rather be helping brainstorm mischief with her, a much more natural role for him. “I know you’re worried about Joel, and I know you wanna go find him. I do, too-” 

“Then why aren’t you?” She asks, clearly frustrated. “Joel’s out there alone, and you’re sitting on your ass doing fucking nothing.” 

“I’m making sure his kid is okay,” he says evenly, not commenting on the quick flicker of surprise that crosses her face, “and trust me. Joel would much rather I do that than drag you around in the woods looking for him.” 

Ellie looks down and kicks at the carpet, scrubbing the ball of her foot over it. He has a sudden memory of watching an 8 year old Sarah when Joel was in a car accident and had to go to the hospital to get checked out. It had been flu season, so he’d had strict orders to keep her home. She’d been the same way then, frustrated and worried and acting out with him as a result. Back with Sarah, though, he’d been able to hug her and curl up with her on the couch and bribe her with the promise of ice cream for supper and a call with her daddy to reassure her that he was fine. He has none of that now. 

“Hey,” he says, and she looks up to him, wary. “Joel’s a tough old fucker. You’ve seen him in action.” 

Ellie studies him for a long moment. 

“Tough old fuckers can still die,” she says quietly, and the fear in it is more honesty than he’s had from her yet. 

He nods. 

“True,” he allows. “But other tough old fuckers don’t have a kid like you waiting on ‘em. Trust me. Joel’s hauling ass to get back to you just as quick as he can.” He knows it the same way he knows water is wet. Joel’ll probably show up gross and sweaty and demanding to see his kid any minute now. He just has to make sure she’s here when he does. “No more late night breakout attempts, alright?” He asks. “Give it a week, and we can ride out together, see if he’s just wandering in circles because he’s getting senile.” 

“Fine,” Ellie says before she skirts around him and retreats to the guest room. 

He sits in the dark hallway for a long while before he rises, making sure he isn’t being faked out. 

“C’mon, big brother,” he says under his breath. “Your girl’s waiting on you.” 

*

It doesn’t occur to him until Ellie almost gets trampled trying to sneak out of the gate with a patrol the next day that he needed to add specific details to his agreement with Ellie. He’d thought she would take the “No more late night break out attempts, alright?” as the umbrella of “Stop trying to run away until I can return you to Joel in one piece” it was meant to be. 

Alas. 

No such luck. 

“Really?” He asks Ellie today, eyebrow raised as she glares at him from where she’s been handcuffed to a radiator for safekeeping after her latest escape attempt. 

“Fucking Joe,” she grumbles, rattling at the cuff. The red, raw quality of her wrist says she gave working her hand loose a good shot. 

“From what I hear, you gave him plenty of reason,” he says lightly, kneeling and unlocking the cuff attached to the radiator first, which proves a good call because she tries to dart off the moment he does, and it’s only the hold he has on the cuff that prevents her from making another run for the gate. 

“Let go,” she demands, pulling with enough force to tug him forward slightly. 

“I will,” he says, “just as soon as-” 

They both hear the sound of the gate shutting and the lock sliding into place, the whole thing heavy enough that there’s no way a single man is getting it open, let alone a petite 14 year old. 

Ellie drops to the ground in defeat, head bowed. 

She looks so pathetic that he’s halfway to reaching out before he catches himself. She’s not being a pain on purpose, he knows. She’s just a kid who wants her adult and is deeply unhappy with the substitute she has in the meantime. More than that, she’s a FEDRA kid who’s used to doing things for herself. Being treated like a young teenager and not a soldier-to-be must be hard to adjust to after that. 

“C’mon, kiddo,” he says softly, offering a hand up that’s ignored. 

She follows him home in complete silence. 

*

Tommy at the age of nine “helped” Joel catch a raccoon that kept sneaking into their grandmother’s garden and eating her tomatoes. His help involved mostly pestering his big brother with questions and asking if they got to keep the raccoon when they caught it, but Joel always had patience with children, even when he still was one, and hadn’t made him leave. Joel had borrowed a snaptrap from a neighbor and gone to their grandmother’s house to set it, and he still remembers the day they caught the raccoon, how she glared at them from the cage and scrabbled around looking for a way out in a wild, frantic circle. 

Joel hadn’t let him keep the raccoon, but living with Ellie now means he gets to experience what he imagines that would have felt like. 

He wakes at 3 in the morning to the sound of an alarm and groans in sync with Maria. They'd put a baby alarm on the outside of the door as a precaution, and he'd been hoping against hope that they wouldn't need it. When the alarm shuts off with the sound of a door slamming, he forces himself up. 

“You got it?” Maria asks, already half-asleep again. This late in her pregnancy, it’s hard for her to get comfortable again, so she’s stopped moving when she wakes up until she’s sure she has to. He doesn’t blame her. Given that he got the far more fun part of making a baby, he takes on whatever he can to make her life easier. 

“Teenager bounty hunter, reporting for duty,” he says, kissing her quickly before standing and pulling on some jeans. Ellie’s far too tricky a target to risk going out in sweats. 

“Happy hunting,” Maria teases sleepily before she yawns and closes her eyes. 

He presses a kiss to her head and then to her belly before he leaves to find out how his niece has planned to escape this time. 

*

If nothing else, he has to give Ellie credit for both creativity and persistence. 

Trying to carefully wiggle her down a franken-rope at 4 in the morning while she hisses insults and swears at him detracts from her score a bit, but it’s possible that’s more about his state of mind and desire to be in a warm bed and not out here playing animal control for his brother’s kid talking. 

“C’mon,” he coaches, pulling the rope a little ways further out from the wall. He’s not trying to shake her loose and make her fall, but having it at an angle and not resting against a solid surface means she’s having a harder time. She’s flipped around to hang like a sloth, and he can see her muscles shaking with the effort. She hasn’t really had time to recover at all, and he’s mildly incredulous that she managed to get as far as she did with how sick she still won’t admit to being. 

“Fuck off,” she spits at him, but he can see the tremble of her muscles intensifying. 

“Seriously, kiddo,” he says, starting to really worry. To get a rope long enough, she had to tie a few pieces together, and combined with her weakness, this entire thing seems like a death trap. 

“Just-” Ellie starts, but at that moment, something in her rope gives way, and she falls with a surprised scream as he darts forward to catch her, both of them going down hard. He managed to get a hand under her head and his other arm around her waist to slow the fall, but that means that during their landing, he ended up over her, thankfully able to move his knees to either side of her so he didn’t crush her. 

He barely has time to even process what happened when Ellie’s breathing goes thin and labored. 

“Off,” she says through gritted teeth, and he hasn’t even lifted his head before she’s working her legs up to try and kick at him like a cat. “Get the fuck off of me!” 

There’s a certain quality to the terror and rage in her voice that immediately makes a horrible suspicion click into place in his mind. 

He immediately moves away to one side, slipping his hand from under head gently despite the forearm against his chest shoving with all of her (at present, limited) strength. She goes to dart away the second he’s off, but he’s barely started to reach out to try and stop her before her legs give out, dumping her back down, too tired after her attempt at a climb. The fall means she’s facing away, and he moves at once to be in her field of view from the side. 

He knows how dangerous the world is for a girl, especially one as small as Ellie. He has no idea how such a thing would have happened to her with Joel around, so he imagines it must have happened after they separated. 

Which explains why she’d be so desperate to get back to someone who makes her feel safe. 

Jesus, kid, he thinks sympathetically. She looks pathetic on the ground, muscles trembling slightly, skin pale as milk in the moonlight. Her eyes are squeezed shut tight and her fists are clenched, and her breath is shallow and labored in a way that suggests she might not be here with him right now. 

He’s a veteran. He’s seen trauma. Hell, his second 4th of July had involved Joel making up a reason to go to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere because his first had involved his brother having to gently negotiate a gun away from him, the explosions convincing him that he was back in deployment, not crashing in his big brother’s guestroom after having one too many while grilling out. 

“Easy, little brother,” Joel had coaxed, pushing his face into the crook of his neck in a way he hadn’t since Tommy was a kid and wrapping his arms around him like they weren’t two grown men. 

It hadn’t mattered that he was grown, though. He had still clung to his brother like a fucking toddler. Joel had dug out some earplugs he’d bought for Sarah’s use at a fireworks show the week before, and he’d spent the night with his niece and brother on the couch, not even listening to the movie playing on the TV. 

The next year had started a tradition of going out of town to the cabin of a friend out in the middle of nowhere each 4th. Joel would take Sarah to see fireworks shows before the day, and he’d bring sparklers for the night itself for her to enjoy. With time, she’d even started to look forward to it, a special trip of having her uncle and dad all to herself, swimming in the lake and eating far too many marshmallows with him while her dad pretended he didn’t know that Tommy always snuck about four extra bags into the truck. Joel had never mentioned any of it, had never brought up that it was all for his sake. 

He’d just fixed it, the same way Joel used to try and fix everything. 

It’s one of the things that had made him being broken hit harder. 

“Hey,” he calls softly, making her flinch. “Can you look at me, kiddo?” 

It takes a moment and a harsh exhale before she does, cutting her eyes to him mistrustfully. 

“Yeah, there you go,” he says, trying for soothing and not patronizing. “You’re alright. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just didn’t want you to get hurt.” 

“I’m not scared,” she spits. “Just don’t fucking touch me.” 

“Alright,” he agrees easily. “Sure thing.” He shuffles back on his knees slightly, trying to give her more space. He tries to think like Joel, tries to imagine what he would offer here. Joel’s a natural at caring for people, always has been, and he has a feeling he’s a goddamn master at caring for this specific girl. 

Now if he could just tap into a Miller brother hivemind to work out how to be a slightly less shitty substitute. 

She seems to be getting herself under control, and she looks over to her rope, studying it. Before she can get any ideas of giving it a round 2, he speaks. 

“If we could avoid any more Stooges activities, I’d appreciate it. We’re missing our third.” 

She looks at him like he’s lost his goddamn mind. Teasing cordy kids with Before references they don’t understand: never gets old. 

“Staying at my house really sucks that bad?” He asks, keeping his tone light. “You gotta try and climb to freedom?” 

She mumbles a response, glowering at the ground as she pushes herself up. 

“Come again?” 

“I said,” she says with a slight huff, “that it wasn’t me trying to climb to freedom. I’m trying to go get Joel.” 

“I figured,” he says, daring to move slightly closer. “But he wouldn’t want you to do that, and I’m trying to avoid getting my ass kicked when he makes it here. He finds out I let you go rogue on my watch? I’m a dead man. You gonna do that my baby?” 

It’s a joke–mostly–but there’s a thread of truth to it. The last time Joel was counting on him to save his kid, he failed. 

He doesn’t know if he could look at his brother again if he let something happen to this one, too. 

(Now if she’d just play along with keeping her alive.)

“I want Joel,” she says, such a young thing to say that his heart aches for her. She’s clearly a girl who’s had to take on far too much at her age, but she’s still a kid. Joel, for all intents and purposes, is currently filling the role of “dad,” whatever that means for the two of them. It’s not shocking she wants him and only him. Sarah had been the same way when she was sick or hurt. Fuck Uncle Tommy. It was always dad or bust. 

Unfortunately, dad is still currently MIA. 

“I know,” he says gently, but that just makes her give him a sharp look. 

“Keep making fun of me, and I’ll punch you in the fucking face,” she says. It doesn’t even come out a threat, really. As far as she’s concerned, she’s stating a fact. 

“I can promise you, kiddo, I’m not picking on you,” he says, wishing she hadn’t lived a life where he had to say something like that. “I grew up with Joel. He’s good at making people feel safe. God knows I invaded his room enough as a kid because something in my closet seemed shifty. I don’t blame you for wanting him here.” 

She looks at him like she’s searching for a punchline he’s working towards. 

“I’m not just trying to be a dick and keep you captive for no reason,” he says, pushing himself to his feet and walking towards her slowly, keeping all of his movements slow and predictable. “Until he gets here, he’d expect me to be responsible for you, and he’d want you safe inside the walls.” 

“You don’t know that,” she says, lifting her chin defiantly. “He could be out there right now, shot or stabbed or bleeding to death, and he could need me to go find him.” 

“He could also just be taking his sweet time so he can keep an out for you,” he suggests gently. “Trust me, Ellie, the absolute best thing you can do for him is stay safe. He’ll come back to you, kiddo, but you gotta wait and trust that he will.” He extends his hands to help her up. “Now c’mon. Time for all good teenaged escape artists to catch some more z’s.” 

She doesn’t take his hands, but she does follow him home without another escape attempt. He’ll take it. 

*

She doesn’t make another attempt that night (though technically it’s the morning), but his suspicions do mean that he now has the unenviable task of trying to work out how the hell he’s going to get Ellie to agree to go to the clinic when she won’t even walk by the building. He doesn’t want to push, but he’s painfully aware that she could be hurt in a way that he has no way to fix with rubbing alcohol and salve. He’s equally painfully aware that Joel would expect him to make sure his kid is looked after to his standards until he’s here to take over. Even still stunted, he’d read their dynamic. Joel may not have admitted to himself yet that Ellie is his, but she is. 

He still hasn’t come up with a solution by the time Maria’s woken up for the day around two hours after he laid back down, and he’s more than happy to tap her in on problem solving after giving her a good thirty minutes to actually wake up. She’s on the Jackson equivalent of maternity leave at this point, but she’s not a morning person. He’d normally have already brought her breakfast to help jumpstart her brain into being fully operational, but he’d rather not let Ellie know they’re up until they have a plan of attack. 

“She might be more comfortable talking about it with a woman,” he reasons, resting a hand over her belly and feeling the slow movements of their child within. Despite the serious conversation, it always makes him want to smile, this evidence that their child takes after their mother when it comes to mornings. 

“I don’t know that she’ll be any happier about it coming from me,” Maria says carefully, wincing slightly when their kid lodges a foot against her ribs. He rubs at the spot gently, trying to convince the baby to stop harassing their mother. “She’s not exactly my biggest fan.” 

“I know, but the other option is a random guy she only kind of tolerates who also triggered her trauma last night.” 

“Hm,” Maria hums thoughtfully, wriggling a bit with great effort to be a bit more on her back. “I still think she might at least be more willing to go to the clinic with you. She might not be happy with either of us, but she says more than hello and goodbye to you.” 

“Yeah,” he says dryly. “I even get ‘fuck off.’” 

Maria huffs a laugh. 

“True.” She’s thoughtful for a moment, and he leaves her to it. He has no pretensions about who makes the plans in this marriage. He passes the time tracking the movement of the baby, yet again playing a game of guessing what limb is pressing at him. He’s guessed hand for the third time near Maria’s belly button when she speaks. “Ask if she wants to go to the clinic this afternoon and let her know it’ll be all female staff if that makes her more comfortable. If she doesn’t react well, I can give it a shot, but she’ll just think I’m trying to tell her what to do.” 

“And she’ll be fine with me because I’m a pushover?” He asks a little wryly, and he pulls a face at the look his wife gives him that clearly says yes. 

“Just give it a shot,” she says, running a hand through his hair when he leans down to kiss her and then her stomach before getting up. “She needs to see a doctor for sure. However that needs to happen is how it happens.” 

“Could get one of them to come here,” he suggests, helping to gently pull her to her feet, help that Maria’s only begun accepting within the last couple of weeks. “Might make her more comfortable.” 

“Yeah,” Maria says, pausing for a moment to get her breath back once she’s upright. He waits for her, supporting her while she does. She’s big enough that he’d been suspicious there might be multiples in there, but the find of an ultrasound machine a few months ago by a patrol means they’ve been reassured they’re just getting a single. He’d wanted to know the gender, too, but Maria had insisted on keeping it a surprise for reasons she hasn’t shared with him. “Do that,” she says, pulling away after an affectionate squeeze to his arm. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he says with a salute as he leaves her to get ready for the day. 

*

He waits until after lunch to bring it up with Ellie. She’s still too skinny, and he doesn’t imagine the topic will leave her with much of an appetite. He’d rather make sure she gets at least two meals in. 

Based on how the conversation is going, it was a smart call. 

He’d found Ellie in the backyard on a bench under the wild arch of what used to be a rosebush that really needs some TLC. Little as she is, she fits inside the protection of thorny branches just fine, but anyone larger than her is in for a world of pain if they try to squeeze any closer. As retreats go, it’s not a bad call. 

Unfortunately, it also means he can see that she feels a little trapped, which wasn’t his intention. 

“Whatever happened,” he says, as gently as he possibly can, “it wasn’t your fault, kiddo.” 

“Shut. Up.” Ellie grits out, and he desperately wishes he could. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation, but he doesn’t know how to avoid it. Not if he’s going to be sure she’s okay. 

“I’m sorry,” he says genuinely. “I promise, I’ll never mention it again in my life if that’s what you want, but if something happened out there on the road, you should see a doctor. Just to make sure you’re okay, that’s all. Joel would want to know that if something happened after you guys got separated, that you had someone make-” 

“It wasn’t after Joel,” Ellie snaps, not even looking at him, hands clenched around the bench’s seat so tightly that he can see her knuckles go white. “It-it wasn’t after. It was before we even got to the hospital. And I’m fine.”  

That makes even less sense than the alternative, but a cowardly part of him is glad to know that at least there would have been time for his brother to tend to Ellie, to work out how she needed help. He can trust that Joel was thorough about making sure she was as okay as she could be. He knows by now from context clues that the hospital was hell for her, but he can trust that she would have been seen to there, that Joel would have gotten a doctor to make sure she’s okay. It’s one less thing for him to worry about during his period of having custody over her. 

It just leaves about a thousand other things. 

“Okay,” he says softly, and then he doesn’t know where to go after that. 

“He didn’t-” Ellie starts, a muscle her jaw jumping. “He didn’t do it. The fucker who…” She trails off, glaring at the ground. “He tried. I killed him. So it’s fine.” 

He doesn’t even know what to offer after that. 

“So shut the fuck up about it, alright?” She says, looking right at him. Her expression is fierce. He has a memory of looking at a tiger in the zoo once, the same quiet, self-assured promise of violence. He gets the feeling that this will be the only time he’ll be getting this kind of warning. 

He can’t really blame her. 

“You got it,” he says with a nod. “And I am sorry, kiddo. I know it’s a hard topic, and I wasn’t trying to make you upset, I promise. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay until Joel’s back to do it.” 

He can see that her first instinct is to snap at him again. He doesn’t imagine that FEDRA creates the space for a lot of vulnerability around relative strangers, and he knows this is about as vulnerable as it gets. 

“I am,” she says, voice respectably measured. “You did it. Congrats. Now we can never talk about this again.” 

Sounds good to him. 

*

When he knocks on Ellie’s door that evening and opens it to find the room completely empty, his first instinct is to drop his face into a hand and groan. No one’s come to get him about her trying to tunnel under the wall (again), but she’s had a few rounds of trial and error now. It’s possible she’s refined her technique. He sighs and turns, ready to grab his boots and go looking. That new gelding should still be fresh since he doesn’t go on patrol routes just yet. He can grab him and-

So busy making a plan for going to look for her, he almost kicks Ellie when he marches onto the porch and finds her sitting right in front of the stairs. She looks equally surprised, one hand already moving to her pocket where he knows she keeps her knife as he looms over her, having only caught himself at the last minute with a hand against the railing. 

“Jesus, man,” she says, moving her hand back to her thigh and leaning against the porch post to get some distance. “Just walk outside like a normal person.” 

He pushes himself upright and wisely bites back that his mildly dramatic entrance was out of exasperation for the manhunt he was about to start for her. If she’s only running as far as the porch, he’d rather not discourage her. When he doesn’t respond, she looks away, twirling a loose thread from her shirt around one finger. Though, he notes, it’s not really her shirt. It’s the flannel he knows is Joel’s based on the size, the one she hasn’t let out of her sight. Given that Maria threw out her clothes the last time she was here, he can’t blame her. It’s something he’s teased his wife about, coming from money Before the way she did: being a little too toss-happy even in an apocalypse. 

“Mind if I sit?” He asks, gesturing to the spot next to her. 

“It’s your house, dude,” she says with a shrug, though he sees her go tense until he’s settled with distance between them, and then her shoulders lose a bit of their tension. 

They sit in silence for a while. Ellie doesn’t offer anything, and he doesn’t try. He’d feel like a dick for leaving her alone in the growing darkness, but if she wanted conversation, she wouldn’t have come out here. She stares at the street like she’s waiting for Joel to appear, like she can manifest him if she just tries hard enough. She tucks her hands into the too-large sleeves and balls them up into flannel mittens, and he wonders if it’s an attempt at replicating them getting held. He dares to stretch his legs out slightly, his foot coming within a foot of her, but though she watches him from the corner of her eye, she doesn’t react or respond. After a while, he dares to speak. 

“You wanna be alone?” He asks softly. She doesn’t strike him as the type to not tell him to fuck off if she wants to, but he’s not unaware of the power dynamic of her staying in his house. 

She bites the inside of her cheek, inhaling twice like she’s going to respond before she actually does. 

“No,” she says, almost a whisper. 

He nods. 

They don’t speak after that, not even as the first few stars they can see with the lights in town start popping up. 

They just sit in what he hopes is companionable silence until Ellie decides to go back inside. 

*

They repeat the routine after that. The first couple of times, he trails after her after a while and sits with her. The third time, she comes to the edge of the living room and waits, looking to the door and then back to him. He nods and rises, kissing Maria’s cheek before he moves to follow Ellie out. 

They never speak during this time, but the fourth night they do it, Ellie says a quiet “thanks” before she darts inside, leaving him surprised into silence behind her. 

*

“What if he doesn’t come back?” Ellie asks out of nowhere one day during their now-daily Silent Porch Time. 

He blinks, a little startled by the break in routine, and it takes him a moment to get himself together enough to respond. 

“He’ll be fine, kiddo,” he says. “He’s a tough ba-” 

“No,” she says, flicking her eyes to him only briefly before she looks away again. It’s raining today, coming down so heavy it feels like there’s a bubble around them in this moment. It’s probably why they’re having this conversation at all, Ellie lulled by the sense of privacy. “What if…” She pauses, swallows, and then pulls herself a little straighter and looks right at him. “What if he got rid of me on purpose? What’s your move then?” 

For a flicker of an instant, he thinks she’s joking or that this is a test. He’d like to think he’s earning her trust, but it’s not impossible that she’d want to see what he does with the idea. 

Her jaw’s too tight, though, her posture too stiff. This isn’t a “what if” game she’s playing just to play it. She’s worried, afraid she’s been left with him the way Joel tried to do before. 

“He wouldn’t do that,” he says. Her energy tells him she doesn’t want comfort, so he tries to go for factual instead of soothing, foreign as it feels. “Trust me. He’s on his way, probably about half out of his mind with worry about you.” 

And ain’t that putting it mildly. 

“But what if he did?” She persists. “What if he just wanted to ditch me? What happens then?” 

It’s not surprising, really, that she’d want to know. Children are precious in Jackson and get taken in automatically if they’re without an adult, but there’s no way she’d know that. As far as she’s concerned, her only in is through his brother. It’s not wild, especially from a FEDRA kid, for her to worry that no Joel means she’ll be evicted to go fend for herself. 

It does make him sad about the kind of adults she’s known before, though. 

“Then you stay here,” he says. “And we figure out what that means.” 

“What does it mean?” She asks, sounding a little frustrated. He remembers this from Sarah. Kids like direct answers, like a clear, detailed idea of what’s going on and what’s going to happen. 

“Well,” he says. “You’d stay with me and Maria unless you found somebody you like more.” 

Her eyes narrow slightly. 

“Why would you do that?” 

“Why would I do what?” He asks, though he thinks he already knows. 

“Why would you keep me?” She asks. “If your brother already decided he doesn’t want me, that’s not exactly a great recommendation.” 

He imagines there’s two levels for this question. One is from a teenager who’s never been someone’s kid before and doesn’t understand the way it works. 

The other is from a young woman who’s learned that interest from men can be a dangerous thing. 

“Jackson always keeps kids,” he tells her, trying to emphasize that that’s all he considers her as. 14–even 14 close to 15–is a kid, and he’d put a bullet in his head if he ever thought about one in the way he knows disgusting fuckers do. Hell, Maria would do it for him. It’s one of the things he loves about her. “You’re too young to live on your own.” In trying to overcompensate, he’s offended her, and he sees it in how she puffs up. 

“I can take care of myself,” she says proudly. 

“I don’t doubt that,” he says. “You got back here all on your own. That’s pretty fucking impressive, you know.” 

The same suspicious, appraising glance he usually gets while she works out how he could be making fun of her. He’s really looking forward to the day when she’ll be comfortable enough to know that he’d only ever tease her in an inclusive way. 

(He kind of wonders if that day will ever come.)

“But you are still a kid,” he says. “A very mature, responsible, badass kid,” the last bit softens the edge of her suspicions, pleased by the compliment despite herself as he’d thought she would be, “but still a kid. One day you’ll be all old and boring and realize it, too, but you’re still young enough to need somebody to look after you.” 

She looks away, and he realizes only too late that she has someone like that already. 

Someone she really, really misses. 

And someone she fears has left her. 

“I wouldn’t worry. Joel will-” 

“And what if he doesn’t?” She interrupts, all business again. “You said I can’t live alone here in Jackson. Okay. Then where do I go? You haven’t pointed out an orphanage here.” 

How sad, that her first thought is being put back in an orphanage, like the idea of adults directly taking care of her hasn’t even occurred to her. 

As if he hasn’t been doing his best to achieve just that since she got here. 

“A lot of people want kids,” he says. “You’ll have your pick.” It’s true. She’s a cute kid, and funny when she isn’t being hostile, and there’s a certain quality to her that suggests she might end up being sweet when she isn’t being prickly. There are plenty of families who would want her. 

Unfortunately for them, the Millers have dibs, and he has a claim to defend. 

“Me and Maria have already taken you on,” he says. “And you’re more than welcome to stay, but if we’re cramping your style, we’ll help you look for somewhere else. We can do a whole interview process if you want. Usually kids stay with one of the people who find them, but sometimes kids come back and need to meet a few families before they find somewhere they’re comfortable.” This usually leads to hurt feelings to some degree, but it’s pretty well understood that the kids have to come first. He’ll try not to take it personally if Ellie decides to move on to greener pastures. 

Especially because this is all a moot point when she already has an adult coming for her, even if he’s taking his sweet ass time about it. 

Ellie looks back out to the sheet of rain pouring down over the edge of the porch, dejection clear in her posture. His instinct is to sit right next to her and offer her an arm around her shoulders. 

He’s pretty sure that course of action ends in getting shoved into the rain at the very least, though. 

He compromises with sitting next to her closer than he has before, still leaving a good half a foot of space between them. He catches her watching him from the corner of her eye, judging the distance. She seems to find it adequate because she looks away and doesn’t move. 

“He’s coming for you, kiddo,” he says softly. He used to say something similar to Sarah in the early days of babysitting her, back when she’d get fussy and needy, wanting daddy back home already. He’s coming back real soon, darlin’, used to be a constant refrain, back when bed without Joel to tuck her in was a power struggle he had no chance of winning. “It’s just taking him a while because he’s old as dirt.” 

That wins him the slightest flicker of a smile. 

“Think he might be older than dirt,” she offers quietly, though he hears the mischief in it. 

“You might be right about that,” he says with a smile, fighting the urge to lean in and knock their shoulders together. He’d rather not fuck up what little ground he’s apparently gained. “He’ll still get here, though. Old as Methuselah or not.” 

“What the fuck is Methuselah?” She asks, turning to him fully. He’s noticed this by now, how one of the best ways to engage her is curiosity. 

“One of Joel’s peers,” he says with a wink. “And make sure you tell him that when he gets here.” 

“Oh, I will,” Ellie says with the faintest hint of a smile that fades almost at once. “You…you really think he’s coming?” There’s more to the question, he knows. Is he coming for me? It’s not wild that the question feels too vulnerable to actually ask out loud, especially to someone who just managed to get into the “allowed to sit within a foot” category. 

“I think there’s nothing in this world that would keep him away,” he answers honestly. “I don’t pretend to know what you two talk about or what happened after y’all left here, but I know what I saw.” He hesitates for a moment. He doesn’t think Joel would want Ellie to know the full extent of their little heart to heart, but it seems important that she gets at least the gist. “He didn’t want to leave you the first time, you know.” 

Ellie’s mouth twitches before she looks out into the rain again. The humidity has caused her baby hairs to curl into ringlets, escaping her loose ponytail. 

“He changed his mind,” she says, picking at a loose piece of wood with her fingernail. “He still wanted to. At least for a little bit.” 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “He didn’t.” He holds up a hand to forestall the argument he can see her about to start. “He asked me to take you because he was scared of you getting hurt.” A bit of an embellishment but not totally a lie. Even to convince her, he won’t betray Joel’s trust, and besides, there are burdens too heavy for a kid to carry. “That’s the only reason he asked me, kiddo. I know the area, and he thought I had a better chance of keeping you safe.” 

“Then why didn’t he wanna go with us?” She says, turning to look at him. He can see she’s thought about this often. “That would have been safer than just you and me.” 

Because the idea of losing you cuts him to his fucking core, is the answer he won’t give. 

Because something happening to you would destroy him in a way that’s impossible to fix, is another. 

“What do you know about Sarah?” He asks, keeping his voice even. 

Ellie eyes him speculatively for a moment, like she’s weighing what he could possibly know. After a moment, she takes a deep breath and looks away. 

“She was Joel’s daughter. They named her after her mom’s grandma. She liked purple and butterflies and mozzarella sticks, which Joel says are sticks of fried cheese, which sounds fucking awesome.” 

He huffs a laugh that sounds a little choked. He’d forgotten that, forgotten his niece being a mozzarella stick fiend, notorious for hogging the plate at restaurants. They’d run a con for a while of him getting her a to-go order if he went to a bar and dropping it off at her window via rope. Joel had been equally pissed and incredulous when he found the stack of about twenty to-go containers in her closet. It aches an unexpected amount, thinking about it now. 

“She really liked Harry Potter, and she was a Hufflepuff, whatever the fuck that means. She thought all the movies Joel thinks are cool were lame, and just from listening to him talk about them, she was right.” 

His eyes sting slightly. What he wouldn’t give for one more evening of watching Joel and Sarah bicker over movies. He hadn’t expected Joel to have told her so much, and it’s hit harder than he expected it to. Before she can continue dragging him down memory lane, he speaks. This isn’t about his own battered heart, not right now. 

“Did he tell you what happened to her?” 

“Yeah,” Ellie says, voice soft. “He said she died on outbreak night.” 

“He tell you anything else about that night?” He asks, and Ellie shakes her head. He hesitates for just a moment, but he needs Ellie to understand. “She died in front of him.” 

Ellie winces sympathetically. 

“Yeah,” he says in agreement, not mentioning that she died in front of him, too. He has his own reasons for needing Ellie to be okay, but the important ones right now are Joel’s. “That-it’s not the sort of thing you forget. Not ever. It broke something in him that night, something that stayed broken for a long, long time.” 

“Is that why you left?” Ellie asks, and there’s a hint of condemnation in her voice. “Because he was broken?” 

That…is a complicated question. 

“I left for a few reasons,” he hedges. “Joel after Sarah’s death…he wasn’t the Joel I’d always known, and yeah, that was a part of it.” It had hurt too much, looking at the angry husk of his brother. It wasn’t his only reason for leaving, but he can’t deny that it was a part of it, selfish and foolish as it was. “That night took something from him. Something I thought he’d never get back.” He meets her eye then. “Not until I saw him with you.” 

Ellie blinks in surprise for a moment before she appears a little embarrassed by the statement, looking away and scuffing her heel on the step in front of her. 

“He cares about you, kiddo. I could see that even then. He didn’t ask me to take you because he wanted to leave you. He wanted me to take you because he was so afraid of having to watch you die the same way he did Sarah.” 

“He almost did,” Ellie says, and it sounds like a confession. 

He stares at her, and she sees him do it, huffing out a breath and kicking at the stair. 

“The hospital fucking sucked,” she says, face going a little dark. “Apparently I’m allergic to a fuckton of medication and the only goddamn thing to do was just guessing. Joel-” She hesitates only a moment and then looks to him. “He wanted to leave,” she says like she’s defending him. “From the start, Joel wanted to leave.” 

She thinks he’ll judge Joel for keeping her there, he realizes. 

“I’m sure he did,” he says, and he is. Just from what he’s seen of the aftermath, he imagines Ellie’s will was the only thing keeping them in the hospital. 

For the first time, he wonders if Joel’s parting from Ellie might have been deliberate after all, but not in the way Ellie is afraid of. He got Ellie back close enough to get back safely, after all, and the separation would be the perfect opportunity to circle back and put a bullet in any and every person who hurt his kid. It’s not out of character for his brother, after all. Both of them have done far worse for far less. The only thing that makes him doubt the guess is that Ellie still looks so sick. Eager for some vengeance or not, he just can’t see his brother sending Ellie off on her own like this, even to kill some enemies. 

You better not have, you fucker, he thinks to wherever Joel is right now. If you ditched me with your kid to go Rambo on your own, I’m gonna kick your ass. 

“I had a couple of allergic reactions,” Ellie says, focusing him again. “They were…bad. I don’t remember all of them, but Joel was there for them. I also flatlined during a bone marrow harvest once,” it’s an effort not to pull a face at the idea of someone drilling into the bones of the frail-looking girl in front of him, “and he always watched all the procedures. Did he-” She stops, clearly second-guessing herself. 

“Did he?” He prompts. 

“Do you…do you think he got scared of seeing it again? Me almost dying like that?” 

“I’m sure it scared the shit out of him,” he answers honestly, which he imagines is an understatement for what his brother went through watching it. “But no,” he continues, guessing the question underneath what she actually asked, “I don’t think that would have scared him off. Especially not when y’all already made it out. If he was gonna ditch you so he wouldn’t have to watch you die in the hospital, he would have done it then. Don’t make any sense to wuss out after the fact.” 

Ellie nods, still looking out to the rain, and he can see she’s a little soothed by the logic of it. 

“He’s coming,” Ellie says, but the declaration ends up sounding more like a question, a kid looking for reassurance. 

“He’s coming,” he agrees. 

You’d better not make a liar out of me, he warns Joel in his head. Or I’ll kick your fucking ass, dead or alive. 

*

The first thing Tommy hears from his brother after months of no contact and worrying isn’t “How are you?” or “Nice to see you.” or “How are things here?” 

No. 

When Tommy sprints towards him, hardly believing it, the very first words out of Joel’s mouth even as he yields to the hug he’s pulled into are, “Is Ellie here?” 

He laughs–he can’t help it, really–and he hurries to explain when he pulls back to find Joel looking at him with consternation. 

“She’s here,” he says reassuringly. “About as happy to be here as a feral cat without you, but we’ve kept her in the walls and relatively fed. Think she might have brushed her teeth once or twice. Otherwise we just sprayed her off with the hose when she got too gross.” 

“Take me to her,” Joel says at once, not responding to any of his excellent childcare jokes. “Please, Tommy, I need-” 

He sees the wild light in his brother’s eyes and feels his levity drop. Right. This isn’t time for joking, not with his brother who puts his entire heart in little hands. 

“C’mon,” he says, putting an arm around his brother and trying not to notice that he feels too thin. “Let’s go find your girl.” 

*

The arm he still has around his brother ends up being a good thing when they find Ellie. 

This is because she launches at them like a goddamn heat seeking missile, and even he almost goes down in a pile with them when she takes a running leap into a hug. 

Watching their reunion, however, he can’t find it in himself to mind. 

“You’re here, you’re here, you’re here,” Ellie repeats like the refrain to a desperate song, while Joel takes the path of “Are you hurt? What happened? Did you have any trouble getting back?” like any of those questions are important now. He isn’t even letting go to check for himself, too busy clutching Ellie to him tightly, like he’ll never let her go again. He holds her like someone’s going to try and take her away, and Ellie clutches him just as fiercely, arms and legs around him like a koala. Tommy rubs at his smarting hip where he got a kick in the process of her adhering to his brother like a barnacle but doesn’t mention it. Once he’s sure Joel’s steady on his feet, he lets go and steps away, painfully aware that he’s third wheeling something that has nothing to do with him. 

Joel and Ellie finally each decide they can let go, and then they get in each other’s way checking each other over, Ellie at ease with touching and being touched in a way she hasn’t been a single moment with him. 

He’s not even sure they hear him when he says he’ll be right back. 

*

When he enters Joel and Ellie’s house after telling Maria what’s going on, he catches sight of Ellie upstairs sitting on the floor right outside the room Joel must be in, back to the wall and eyes fixed to the door with almost comical intensity. So focused, she doesn’t even realize he’s come in, and he doesn’t call out. 

She’s waited long enough for this. She gets to do what she wants now. If his guess is worth anything, Joel certainly won’t mind. 

*

He brought food for Joel, but his ability to eat it is limited by the way Ellie sits right against his side on the couch, like she’d crawl inside his ribcage if she could. Joined at the hip would be an understatement. 

From the easy way Joel puts an arm around her, he doesn’t seem to mind. 

He snorts and takes the plate from his brother when he tries to cut a porkchop with one hand, the sight too absurd to facilitate a conversation around it. Joel grumbles under his breath, but Ellie takes the opportunity of no plate to disrupt to fold her legs up under her and lean against him even more, and he leans enough to kiss the top of her head. It’s an effort not to choke on air at the casualness of the gesture. He’d figured they’d gotten significantly closer, but “head kisses” was several steps ahead of his best guess. Jesus, twenty years of being a rock, and his brother turns to mush in under a year for one smartass 14 year old, albeit a smartass 14 year old nearly glowing with contentment about having him back with what’s clearly reciprocal affection. 

Glancing up, he thinks Ellie looking at anyone the way she’s looking at Joel would be enough to have them wrapped around one little finger. Maybe his brother never stood a chance. 

“You wanna tell me the fuck happened to let your 14 year old leave your ass in the dust?” He asks lightly, handing the plate back over. He mockingly tries to airplane a piece to Joel’s mouth, and the flash of his brother’s eyes says he’s about ten seconds from finding himself in a headlock. Grinning, he steals a bite from his plate before handing the fork over. 

“Asshole,” Joel says, resting the plate on one thigh and pushing it slightly closer to Ellie, who shakes her head and leans her head back against his shoulder. 

“It’s ‘cause he’s so fucking old,” Ellie says mournfully, squeaking slightly when Joel uses the arm he has around her to dig his fingers into her side where she must be ticklish to judge from the way she crumples to that side defensively. She grins, unrepentant, and Joel rolls his eyes. 

“Shoulda dumped your ass in that river,” he grumbles. “Mighta baptized the devil outta you.” 

That makes Ellie’s smile falter slightly for reasons he can’t even begin to guess, and Joel immediately looks regretful, pressing a kiss to her temple. He leans in and whispers something in her ear too low for him to hear, and he tries not to feel like the outsider he is as Ellie shakes her head and then rests it against Joel again. Joel moves the arm he has around her enough to stroke over her hair, and she relaxes incrementally, apology offered and forgiveness given for a slight he doesn’t even understand. 

He wonders, distantly, if they know exactly how exclusionary they are in their little unit. 

“So,” Joel says, “Tommy take good care of you in the meantime?” The tone is light, but it’s an effort not to roll his eyes at the way Joel sounds like a parent checking in on a babysitter’s first trial evening. 

(And he should know. Joel went through a good dozen with Sarah.) 

“Yeah,” Ellie says, which is mildly a surprise. They came to a sort of peace, but he’d expected at least some level of complaint about being held captive. 

The quick little flicker of mischief in her expression when she looks to him briefly is his only warning for what she says next. 

“He taught me some really cool games,” Ellie says, all wide-eyed innocence as she looks up to Joel, nearly cherubic. “Have you heard about something called beer pong?” 

*

Once Joel has been assured that Ellie was only joking–and he makes a mental note to get her little gremlin ass back for it at his earliest convenience–he finally gets the actual story of Joel’s delay. Enough nudging the plate at her gets Ellie to take a few bites of his food, and he uses those moments to talk. 

“Swear to God every damn bridge along that river got swept out,” he says, shaking his head. “Took me six days of walking to find one that wasn’t gone, and even that looked sketchy as hell. I ended up using a full day just getting a rope across in case it went out from under me.” Ellie’s stopped chewing, attentive, and Joel taps her chin lightly in a hint he gets a swat in return for, even though she does finish her bite. “Then I got across and started off, only to get stuck around another curve of the damn thing.” 

“That’s why I had to be in charge of the map. He never knows where he’s going,” Ellie informs him solemnly, grinning when Joel tugs her ponytail for it. 

“Alright now, Miss Chee-in, that house of yours is looking mighty glass-like for you to be throwing stones around.” 

“I’ve got no fucking idea what that means,” she tells him cheerfully, unbothered. 

“Means he’s sensitive about being the type to get lost in a paper bag,” he interjects before Joel can respond. 

“Oh, I know you ain’t about to comment on someone not being able to find their way around,” Joel scoffs. “Unless you’d like Ellie here to hear all about how many bathrooms you got lost in growing up.” He smirks. “Or the time you got lost in the church’s basement, and I found you with your last will and testament written out in crayon because you decided you were gonna die down there.” 

He hates the way he can feel his face heat, but that was truly not his finest moment. Joel had kept the crayon-scribbled document on the fridge for fucking years, thinking he was so damn funny about it. 

“I’m sure it was a very tricky basement,” Ellie says with faux-sympathy, barely able to resist snickering.

“Oh yeah? Keep it up, little miss, and I’ll lock your ass in a basement and see how well you do.” 

“Like Joel would let you,” she says smugly, chin at an arrogant angle. 

“Don’t go getting me involved,” Joel says sternly, though it’s not hard to hear the affection in it. “You go picking fights, Imma leave you to fight ‘em on your own.” 

Ellie’s derisive snort clearly says what she thinks of that promise. 

*

Ellie nearly steps on Joel’s feet, she follows him so closely when Tommy takes his leave. They both seem to be forgetting that all of Ellie’s things are still at his place, but he doesn’t point it out. Worse comes to worst, he’ll pack it up for her and let her check over it later. She’s part of a pair that just got reunited. She can worry about everything else later. 

Joel, though, seems to remember, and he nudges her gently when they’re on the porch. 

“Go on and grab your stuff,” he says when she gives him a bewildered look at the enforced space, leaning back against it. “Go on now. I’m sure Tommy and Maria have done enough tripping over your shit. Go clear it out so I can pretend you’ve actually got any kind of home training.” 

“Like you can talk,” she scoffs, but another nudge has her in motion, though she pauses at the bottom of the stairs, seemingly a little anxious. 

“It’s fine, baby girl,” Joel says, more gently than he’s heard his brother speak in 20 years. The “baby girl” is its own kind of gut-punch, but he makes himself not think about it. “I’ll be right here. I swear.” 

Another brief moment, and then she nods, once, and darts off, like she’s racing a timer. The moment she’s up the stairs and in the house across the street, Joel turns to him and embraces him. He blinks, a little startled, and it takes him a moment to respond. 

“Thank you,” Joel says, voice rough. “For looking after her. I know she probably gave you a hard time about it.” 

A wild understatement of his stint playing zookeeper, but he doesn’t mention it. He can get Ellie grounded for being feral later. 

“Any time, big brother,” he says, clapping Joel on the back gently. “That’s what family’s for.” 

*

He blinks in surprise when he goes out on the porch that evening to find Ellie sitting there. He’d thought she’d be quite busy trying to crawl under Joel’s skin for at least a week. She must see his surprise because she snorts. 

“He’s napping,” she says. “People do that when they’re old as fuck.” She smirks. “Just waking up from yours?” 

He dares to kick her knee lightly before he sits next to her. 

“Better watch that mouth,” he grumbles. “I know where you live.” 

She hums, unconcerned, and for a moment, they sit in the quiet of early evening. It’s more relaxed, this quiet porch time, now that Joel is back, and he thinks a little wistfully that he might end up missing it. 

“Hey, Tommy?” She asks, looking at her knees and not him. 

“Hm?” He prompts, turning slightly and leaning against the post to look at her. 

“Um…” She fidgets a bit, gripping the edge of the porch and kicking her feet over the edge slowly. “Thanks. For-y’know.” She shrugs. “Taking care of me, I guess. I know I was kind of a dick about it.” 

“I’d say more pest than dick,” he says magnanimously, and he gets the quickest flicker of a smile for it. 

“Still,” she says, kicking her feet out and stretching her legs. “You were just trying to keep me safe, and I wasn’t making it easy. So thanks. For-for still doing it.” 

“That’s what family’s for,” he says, repeating the same thing he said the last time he got thanks he didn’t need today. 

She looks to him, mouth open a little in surprise. She blinks, once, twice, and then she smiles. 

They sit together in companionable silence after that as the last rays of the sun fade, the sky lighting up with little pinpricks of stars. In slow increments, Ellie leans towards him until their shoulders are pressed together, the first time she’s ever voluntarily touched him. Finally, they see a light flick on in the house across the street, and Ellie pushes herself off the porch at once, stretching and turning to him. 

“I left a note saying I came over here,” she says, “but I should probably get back.” 

“Probably a good idea,” he says with a nod. “He might fall and break a hip if he’s home alone too long.” 

She laughs, and it makes her look so young and happy in the moment that he wishes he had a camera. It’s how she should look, how she deserves to look. 

“I’ll call if I need backup,” she says with a grin. 

“I’ll be here,” he says, and it comes out a little more seriously than he meant it to. Ellie, though, just softens slightly.

“Thanks,” she says again, and then she’s off, darting back across the road. He catches the faintest call of “Ellie?” from Joel before the door shuts. 

Part of him wants to go over as well, wants to catch up with his brother, wants to fill in all of the gaps in his own understanding of what happened with the two of them. He doesn’t, though, eventually just standing up and heading inside his own house. 

There’ll be time enough for everything else later.