Chapter Text
Joel had tried shutting his alarm off. But as his arm flailed, he ended up hitting the alarm clock off the table instead. The blaring noise only made the thumping in his head louder. He rolled onto his back; the smell of alcohol wafted up to his nose. He clamped a hand over his mouth and groaned. Today was Monday. Yesterday was September first. Yesterday, five years ago, was the day Tommy decided to cut and run.
Joel didn’t blame his brother at all, actually. Joel had been a different man from the man Tommy once knew. So instead of watching his brother spiral, Tommy had decided to follow some Firefly pipe dream out west.
Anyway, Joel had gotten absolutely hammered last night. Usually, he could drink just enough to knock himself into a dreamless sleep. But somehow, the bottle had been bottomless last night, and Joel hadn’t been strong enough to stop himself.
That meant he was going to have to show up to work hungover as fuck. He was an officer at FEDRA school. As much as seeing kids fucking sucked, it meant steady rations. In this climate, there were worse lengths people would go to for consistent food and shelter. So Joel bit the bullet and corralled kids so he wouldn’t have to do odd jobs, fighting to make ends meet.
It fucking sucked. But what didn’t suck during the apocalypse?
He dragged himself out of his apartment and down the stairs. All the officers lived above the school. He went to the officers’ lounge first to grab a clean uniform, a baton, and his gun. The Firefly attacks on the city had been happening more and more frequently, so all the officers carried guns - even if they were supposed to be supervising children.
Joel tried not to think too hard about military personnel with guns around kids…
Joel could eat his meals in the officers’ lounge. But the officers would try to rope him into conversations, and Joel hadn’t been chatty for twenty years. So he ate in the cafeteria. Some officers ate with the kids. Some officers were parents of cadets - they ate together. Joel ate in the cafeteria mostly because he got left alone there. The kids were scared of him, so he was usually left to his own devices.
His knees popped, and an unwelcome groan slipped from his teeth as he got to his feet. He disposed of his food tray and tried not to think about the tiny hands that took it from him.
His hands came up to his eyes and rubbed hard. If Joel could have rubbed away the hangover, he would have. He made his way over to the post he was supposed to check in to for hallway patrol.
Joel made his way around the bends of the school, his boots thudding heavily on the floor, echoing through the hallway. He turned the final bend and arrived at the sign-in desk.
He was just on hallway patrol today. Thank fuck. Joel’s head was pounding. There was no way he could’ve handled a more tedious task.
A groan slipped its way through his teeth when he saw who he was paired with. Michael Flag. Joel met a lot of bad people in the last 20 years. But Michael was terrible in a different way. Terrible times make people do terrible things to survive. Joel's not a saint in that department. But Michael's malign. He's charismatic to most, but Joel could see past Michael's wit and smile.
Michael was creepy. Joel fucking hated being paired with him because now it was his job to run interception. That meant no dissociating. No spacing out to dodge the way his heart ached everytime he say a head of curly hear on a little girl.
Suddenly the joy of having a mindless day of patrolling the hallways and keeping to himself turned into stress of keeping Michael away from all the girl students.
Joel truly didn't care about the well being of the kids in this school. But he also wasn't a evil. There was a medium between totally detached and caring that Joel Miller hovered in.
Everything was going smoothly until shit hit the fan around noon. The kids were released from class for lunch, and swarms of them walked past Joel and Michael. Then, Joel watched in slow motion as one of the younger girls got hit with a stray elbow and landed heavily on the ground.
Joel moved toward her, but Michael got there first.
Joel watched as Michael picked the girl up under her arms and set her on her feet. His arms retracted, but Joel noticed the prolonged… unnecessary… touch.
The girl couldn’t have been clearing four feet or sixty pounds. She had one arm awkwardly cupping her nose as blood started to pour down the lower part of her face, while the other hung limply by her side. Before Michael could say anything, Joel grabbed her free hand and tugged her to walk with him.
This girl, no older than seven or maybe eight, was a perceptive thing. Joel could tell. There were kids who didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, and it showed on their faces. This kid, who could have stayed with Michael or protested against Joel tugging her in his direction… didn’t. It made him think that he wasn’t the only person to see through Michael's charisma.
Once they turned the corner, Joel pulled a cloth out of his pocket. Even in the apocalypse, Texas had taught him to always have a handkerchief on hand, and old habits died hard. The girl took it from him with a mumbled thank-you. He just nodded. She wiped her hands and then pressed the cloth to her nose.
Her head tilted back.
“Lean forward.”
The girl's brows pulled together in confusion. “Then more blood will come out.”
Joel didn’t have it in him to explain to this little girl that the nose and throat are connected, and that leaning back would send the blood straight to her stomach. So, he just raised an eyebrow at her.
The stubborn little thing didn’t move.
Joel sighed. It occurred to him that if this girl was perceptive enough to turn tail and run away from Michael, she might be smart enough to understand a nosebleed.
“Better for the blood to come forward and clot so—”
She tilted her head.
Right… a kid wouldn’t know what a clot was.
“—so it bunches up on the handkerchief, instead of running backward into your throat.”
The girl nodded and leaned forward. They started walking again. About a minute later, the little girl piped up.
“What's a handkerchief?”
Joel looked down. Big brown eyes met his. He had forgotten how big kids' eyes could be.
“It’s like a napkin that people carry around.”
She nodded. Just as it looked like she was about to ask another question, they arrived at the infirmary.
The little girl hesitated, her eyes flashing between him and the door. But eventually, she stepped inside, and they went their separate ways without saying goodbye. As he walked away and down the hallway, heading back to where Michael was stationed, he thought about that curious little girl. He shook his head, physically willing himself to dissociate before he thought too much about the blood on the girl's cheek and the blood everywhere on his girl's body.
The very next morning, Joel was called in for an early breakfast. Officers who supervised a meal ate before. The bread was tough and the meat was gray. But everything was tough and gray now.
Joel put his tray up and walked toward the wall he'd lean against for the next two hours. Slowly, the youngest kids came through: toddlers to thirteen-year-olds. The older kids ate separately.
All the kids fought to get to the front of the line. Joel tried not to think about how the kids were fighting for food while the officers had a whole buffet to themselves. On top of that, the officers and kids ate in the same cafeteria. So the kids could see they rations compared to their adult counterparts.
After the kids got through the line, they sat down. Joel watched as one girl pushed another out of her seat. He straightened up when the littler one got up and pushed back. A fist flew, and he was there, pushing them apart. That was when he got a look at the littler one's face. She was the same one from yesterday.
“That bitch pushed me.” Her voice was high and out of breath. There was a bruise on her face from the elbow yesterday, right next to cheeks that were freshly red from the exertion of fighting someone twice her size.
Joel turned to look at the other girl involved in the altercation. She looked older. Not old enough to be completely responsible for her actions, still no older than thirteen, but old enough that there was no way she shouldn't know better than to pick on someone a third of her size.
“Miller,” the colonel in charge of meals barked, “take ’em both to the hole. They stay there till dinner.”
He was across the room. Joel moved in his direction. “Sir, the little one didn’t start this fire.”
“I don’t care. You fight in this room, those are the consequences,” he commanded.
“But—”
“But nothing.”
Joel sighed and motioned for both girls to follow him. He could feel the older man's eyes boring into the back of his head. He knew he'd get a lecture on protocol later. One, he had talked back, and two, he wasn’t restraining the two girls.
Once they were in the hallway, the older girl piped up. “Look what you did.”
“What I did?” the other squeaked. Without even looking at them, the sheer difference in the depth of their voices annoyed him. The little girl shouldn’t be in this position.
“Enough,” he said, his voice clipped. The girls quieted down after that as he led them toward solitary confinement.
Joel wanted to protest some more. No kid should be put in solitary confinement.
He put the older girl in the first room and took out the clipboard—their log of the kids and the hours they spent there.
“Name?”
“Bethany Wilson.”
“Age?”
“Thirteen.”
Joel shook his head. He knew she was one of the oldest in that group.
“ID number.” All the kids had a six-digit code.
Once he was done and had logged the time she was put in, he closed the cell door. He walked to the next cell with the other girl.
“Name?”
“I can do my own wars.”
What…
Joel looked up from his clipboard. The little girl had her arms crossed over her chest and her feet planted wide—a clear "tough girl" look on her face. In another life, it might’ve made him laugh.
“I don't know what you're trying to say, kid.”
The little girl groaned, tossing her head back. “Grown-ups say that all the time.”
“I don’t think they do, kid.”
“My name's not kid. It's Ellie,” she said, and Joel jotted that down. “And yes they do.”
He was about to respond when she exclaimed, “I can do my own battles!”
That clicked with Joel. A small wave of amusement crept up in him as he realized the girl had mixed up "do" and "fight," and "wars" and "battles." He shook his head.
“Last name,” he stated, straight-faced. Ellie clearly didn’t like her dramatic statement being ignored.
“Williams,” she said, followed by a sharp, “Why do you even care?”
“I don’t,” he stated, adding some heat to his voice. The sudden tension in his tone made her shrink back. It made him feel a little bad, but not enough to warrant a change in his demeanor.
Caring got people killed. He’d spent years building up walls thick enough to block out the rest of the world, and he wasn’t about to let an eight-year-old with a bloody nose and a bad attitude start digging at the mortar. It was safer for both of them if she thought he was just another heartless bastard in a uniform.
“Age?”
“Eight,” she said.
Eight years old. This girl was clearly either small for her age, undernourished, or bluffing. But Joel didn’t have the energy to ask any follow-up questions.
“ID number?”
Joel couldn’t explain why he returned to solitary confinement at lunch. He took out the clipboard and jotted down her exit time: 5:00 PM. The colonel could have his job for this.
He opened the door to the dark room.
The little kid, Ellie, got to her feet. For a split second, Joel saw gratitude flash across her expression before she quickly covered it up. Wordlessly, she followed him out into the hall.
After he got Bethany from solitary confinement for dinner and finished his assignments for the day, he headed to the laundry room. He had uniforms to wash. He threw his things into the machine, and as he did, the bloody handkerchief slipped out of his pants pocket.
He took it in his hands. The thought of a child's blood on his things brought him back nineteen years. Immediately, he dropped it into the washer, turned it on, and hustled back to his quarters.
Under his pillow, there was a bottle of whiskey. He popped the cap off and took a massive swig. His head pounded. All he could think about was how his brother had left five years ago, and how the end of the month would mark the twenty-year anniversary of the worst day of his life.
He black out once his clothes were dried and folded.
Joel slept through roll call.
“Fuck,” he groaned. Today was only Wednesday, and he had already gotten incredibly fucked up twice this week. Having this job had improved his clear substance abuse problems, but September was always a hard time of the year. Too many memories.
He hopped into the shower. The water washed away some of the hangover. He scrubbed his face and chest vigorously, trying to wash away the lingering dread that sat heavily on him.
It didn’t work.
He got ready quickly and walked toward the sign-in desk. The journey there was pointless; the assignment given to officers who showed up late was always dishes. But alas, he went, got his dishwashing duty, and headed toward the cafeteria.
The day actually went pretty smoothly, mostly because the work didn't take much thinking, allowing Joel to retreat into his own head.
But around dinner, there was a tug on his shirt.
It was the same girl from the last two days. Joel wanted to find it in him to scare her off, but he was just too tired and drained.
“You just can’t stay out of trouble, huh?” he said.
A smile crept onto Ellie’s face. It was obvious to him that his non-menacing, non-standoffish response to her presence, a far cry from how he had treated her the last time they spoke, made her lower her guard. It was also obvious that she didn't realize she was letting her defenses down, but the small smile on her face said otherwise.
That might’ve been a mistake, because it welcomed her chatting his ear off.
“Is your name Miller?” Ellie asked.
Joel scoffed. He knew why she thought that; it was what the colonel had called him.
“Joel,” he answered.
“Joel,” she tested the name out, seeing how it sounded. The corner of Joel’s mouth twitched. That was such a kid thing to do.
“Are you from Boston?”
“No.”
“Where are you from?”
“Texas.” Jesus, this girl had a lot of questions.
“How did you get here?”
“Pass,” he responded, his tone terse.
Ellie huffed, looking down at the plate she was supposed to be washing. She wasn’t dissuaded for long.
“What's your favorite animal?” Ellie asked. He looked at her to see if she was joking.
She wasn’t. There was a dead-serious expression on her face. She genuinely wanted to know the answer.
He rolled his eyes.
“Dog.” It was an easy answer.
Ellie’s jaw dropped like she couldn’t believe he’d ever say that. “But dogs are mean.”
Joel blinked. Dogs? Man’s best friend? Mean?
But then he realized she probably only knew the guard dogs—the vicious German Shepherds that patrolled the school grounds.
“Not FEDRA dogs. Normal dogs are nice,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he was defending his choice to a girl who barely cleared his waist.
She nodded but didn’t turn away. Eventually, he felt annoyed by the gaze boring holes into the side of his head.
“What?” he asked, turning away from the sink.
“Are you not going to ask what my favorite animal is?”
Joel huffed, turning back to the dishes. “What's your favorite animal?”
“Ankylosaurus, 'cause they-”
“That’s a dinosaur,” Joel interrupted. Then, he shook his head. He was supposed to be pretending that he didn’t care about this conversation, not actively participating in it.
“So? A dinosaur’s an animal,” Ellie argued.
“Whatever you say, kid.”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed. “Anyway, they have so much armor. And they can protect themselves. And they have a big ball on their tail to hit prih-dih-dors with.”
It made his heart ache. Her favorite animal was a dinosaur because it could defend itself.
He covered up the sudden wave of emotion by correcting her pronunciation. “Predators.”
“That's what I said,” she shot back, instinctively defending herself.
But he caught a whisper under her breath as she tried again: “Pri-ditor.”
Cute, Joel thought, immediately wincing at himself.
“Pred-a-tor.”
She side-eyed him.
“Predator,” Ellie stated.
Joel gave her a small smile in response, which cracked a massive grin right across her face.
Eventually, she was done talking his ear off, and they fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence. They even developed a system: Joel would scrape off the leftover food and soap up the dishes, then Ellie would rinse and dry them. They moved in sync, and soon, almost all the dishes were clean.
However, Joel didn’t realize that Ellie was struggling with her part of the job. There were drying racks for the clean dishes, and she had already filled the bottom and middle sections. On her tippy-toes, she could just barely reach the top rack, but as the stacks of plates got higher, she simply wasn't tall enough to place new plates on top of the old ones.
The first warning Joel got was an alarmed squeak, followed by the harsh sound of plates shattering on the floor.
He whipped around. The first thing he saw was a frantic little girl, desperately using her bare hands to try and gather the broken glass on the floor.
Joel gripped her arm, pulling her safely away from the jagged shards.
“I’ve got it,” he stated firmly, kneeling down to pick up the bigger pieces himself.
Not long after the crash, the very same supervisor from before stormed into the kitchen. He took one look at Ellie standing in front of the wreckage and, before Joel could even open his mouth to protest, the man brought his hand down and slapped her.
He saw her recoil. He saw the tears well up in her eyes. He saw why her favorite animal was a dinosaur with armor and a clubbed tail.
This one time…. he'd be her armor.
Before the supervisor could raise his hand again, Joel stepped completely into the man's line of sight. He forced a lethal edge into his voice, playing into the man's cruelty towards kids.
“I have a punishment in mind for her.”
The supervisor smirked.
“Be my guest,” the man said. “Just get this damn place cleaned up.”
Joel stood frozen, his body between the retreating supervisor and Ellie. Once he was gone, he dropped back down to pick up the bigger shards of glass. A couple of cuts to his hands later, the plates were completely cleaned up.
He looked at Ellie. She was watching him, but her face was troubled, and she was uncharacteristically silent. As he got up, he noticed the blood on Ellie's arms and hands. He walked over to the wall, grabbed the first aid kit, and then motioned to a nearby cafeteria table.
“Sit,” he ordered, his voice flat.
Ellie scrambled up onto the table, her little legs dangling off the edge. She looked terrified, her face pale as she wrung her bleeding hands together.
Joel knelt down in front of her. He pulled out the handkerchief from his pocket. His actions were incredibly soft as he took her small wrist, gently dabbing the cloth against her palms to wipe away the blood.
Ellie flinched, staring down at him. Her eyes drifted from the cloth to Joel’s own hands. She saw the fresh, red cuts across his knuckles where the glass had sliced him.
“You're bleeding too,” Ellie whispered, her voice shaking. “I can help clean them.”
She was speaking and breathing fast, clearly trying to please him and avoid her punishment.
Joel didn't look up. He ignored her completely, treating his own injuries like they didn't even exist. He opened the first aid kit, pulled out the bandages, and carefully wrapped her small hands. His touch was gentle, but his face remained cold.
“Don't worry about my hands,” he said, his voice dropping into a guard tone.
He finished the bandages and packed up the kit. Standing up, he looked down at the eight-year-old.
“Come on,” he said. He walked out of the kitchen, and she quickly scrambled off the table to follow him into the hallway.
“What's your room number?” Joel asked.
“240.”
Second floor. He started walking toward the stairs, but Ellie stopped. Joel turned around. She was looking at the floor, but he could see that her face was pale with fear and her newly bandaged hands were shaking.
Then he realized what this looked like. Shit.
“Kid,” he called. When she didn’t look up, he tried again. “Ellie.”
Her eyes tentatively met his.
“I’m just walking you up there so you can go to bed,” he said, trying to push some softness into his voice.
The fear instantly drained from her face. But it was replaced with confusion.
“But then what's my punishment?”
Joel ran his hand down his face, roughly. “Nothing. It was an accident.”
Ellie had some suspicion on her face, but she chose to believe him. They walked up the stairs. He opened the door for her, and she filed in. Before he could close it, she squeaked, “Thank you, Joel.”
There was so much emotion in her big, little kid eyes. All he could do was swallow the lump in his throat, nod, and close the door.
At breakfast, Joel got his shitty apocalypse food and sat down in his normal corner. About halfway through the mealtime, the kids filled in. Joel normally ate alone. But this morning, he watched as Ellie made her way over to him.
Some part of him wanted to let her sit down. But the part of him hardened by the apocalypse, the part that was scared of the emotion he had seen in her eyes last night, said she shouldn’t.
She put her tray down on the table, but before she could sit, Joel stopped her.
“Nope.” Ellie's head tilted.
“Go sit somewhere else,” Joel said. He saw a hurt expression flash across her face.
He looked back down at his own plate.
Joel only looked back up when he knew she'd walked away. Despite himself, he scanned the room to see where she had ended up. Not because he cared, but because he was curious. He couldn’t see her.
Probably because she was so small. Eight years old, and a small eight-year-old at that. But when he got up to put his tray away, he finally saw her by the wall. Her knobby knees were pulled up to her chest as she sat on the floor. No one was keeping her company, and her empty tray was discarded next to her.
Joel coughed through the lump in his throat.
Joel got to lunch late. There was a brawl between two of the older boys that he had to handle in the hallway.
He walked into the room and headed for the guard line. There wasn’t much food left, but he still got a full plate. He made his way to the table, which he occupied almost every day.
He glanced to the side to find Ellie still pressed up against the wall, playing with her hands. Joel sat down and picked up his fork, but he didn't eat. His eyes kept drifting back to the wall.
He told himself to drop it. He had a good thing going. He did his job, he kept his mouth shut, and he didn't get involved.
But then he looked at his full plate, and then looked back at her. She looked smaller today, pressed against the cold concrete, totally isolated from the rest of the room. She was a little girl. She shouldn't be eating lunch on the floor like a dog.
Joel let out a long, heavy sigh. He dropped his fork onto the tray with a loud clatter.
“Ellie,” he called. Her head snapped to him. He motioned to the seat across from him.
She scrambled to her feet so quickly that Joel wanted to chide her. He didn’t. He wasn’t doing this to be nice. He was doing this because there was an unused seat at this massive table, and she shouldn’t be eating on the floor.
“Your hands okay?” he mumbled.
“It's a little hard to draw, but they don’t hurt that bad,” she responded. She began running her palms up and down the edge of the table, her little legs swinging back and forth under the chair, completely unable to sit still. It was such a restless, kid thing to do.
Joel grunted in response.
“What about yours?” she piped up.
He scoffed. He was a grown man who had survived nineteen years in the apocalypse, yet this little girl was worried about the small cuts on his hands.
What a kid, Joel thought to himself. An establishment like this only taught children one thing: it was every man for himself. Yet Ellie was worried about him.
But maybe that was because he had worried about her first.
He got to the cafeteria late… again. This time, Ellie was already sitting at his… their… table. Joel sat down across from her. She acknowledged him with her eyes but didn’t say anything, probably because she was actively shoveling food down her throat.
“Slow down, kiddo,” Joel said, before he even thought to stop himself. Why did he care?
Ellie tried to take his feedback. Her next bite was slower, but Joel’s newest concern was the grip she had on her fork. All four of her fingers were coiled tightly around the handle, holding it like a toddler with minimal dexterity would.
“That's not how you hold a fork,” Joel scoffed.
Ellie's head tilted. He lifted up his own hand to show her the proper grip. She tried to recreate it, but she failed.
Joel, despite himself, reached across the table. He encircled her tiny wrist with one hand while his other hand repositioned her fingers around the fork. Once she was holding it properly, he leaned back.
“Try it out.”
There was a learning curve, of course, but after a couple of bites, she got the hang of it. She even put down the fork and picked it up again to see if she could do it on her own. When she successfully picked it up the right way by herself, she smiled and exclaimed, “Look, Joel!”
“I see,” he replied.
Nice job, kiddo, he thought. And if a warm feeling started to churn in the pit of his stomach, no one had to know.
At breakfast, he realized how small her rations were compared to his. He might be a grown man, but she was a growing girl.
And she was clearly hungry.
At lunch, he grabbed an extra roll for her. When he handed it to her, she grinned.
An eight-year-old shouldn’t be grinning at the prospect of eating well.
At dinner, Joel got two extra breadsticks. He dropped them onto her plate. She tried to give one of them back to him. This kid.
“I don’t need it,” Joel responded.
Ellie looked down at the food in her hands, confusion all over her young features. “Are you sure?”
Joel nodded.
“Why?” she asked.
Joel looked at her. A number of answers ran through his head.
Your plate of food is a third of the amount of mine.
You’re eight and the size of a six-year-old.
You need it.
“Not hungry,” he stated plainly.
That was enough of an explanation for Ellie.
“Thank you, Joel.”
She managed to stay out of trouble for a week, so Joel only saw her at mealtimes. Her newest thing was to fill their meals with jokes. Joel was less than amused.
But then, one joke caught him off guard.
“Did you know diarrhea is hereditary?”
Joel didn’t realize she was telling a joke. He just thought this was some weird new fact she had learned in class. He actually started thinking about the statement this little girl was telling him.
Then the punchline came.
“It runs in your jeans.”
He looked at her. A grin spread across her little face. He choked out a laugh.
She stood up, leaning across the table and pushing her face right into his personal space. “You’re fucking laughing!” she cried when she got a good look at his expression.
“Am not,” he defended, but another chuckle escaped from the bottom of his throat at her sudden swearing.
“Yes you areeee,” Ellie sang.
Joel smiled.
Joel had known Ellie for about two weeks now. But those two weeks were marching toward September 26th.
In past years, Joel would give himself the week before and the week after the anniversary to completely lose himself. That dark week before the date would be starting right around now.
Joel didn’t even pretend that he had a handle on his drinking. He knew that the only way to get the repeated ringing of the gunshot and the screaming of his child out of his head was to drink until everything was black.
But the year after Tommy left him, things had gone too far. With no brother around to drag him out of his own filth or force water down his throat, Joel had lost control.
He had locked his door, sat on the floor, and drunk himself into severe alcohol poisoning. He spent three days sweating, vomiting blood, and shaking violently on his mattress, hovering right on the edge of death.
Nobody came to check on him.
When he finally crawled out of his room, he realized he had almost let the liquor kill him. And if death greeted him that day, he knew that Sarah would never forgive him.
Ever since then, he’d been trying to lay off the bottle a little. But whether it was five years, ten years, fifteen years, or twenty, the pain never got any better. Time didn't heal a damn thing.
This morning, he woke up with that exact same ache he'd been carrying since the night he put his baby in the ground. It was a heavy, suffocating pressure right in the center of his chest. The urge to drown it all out was clawing at his throat.
But he forced himself to get up, put on his uniform, and walk to the cafeteria.
What he didn’t realize, what his brain hadn't quite processed yet, was that the all-consuming ache in his chest only started to loosen up when he sat down at that dirty cafeteria table.
Turns out Joel wasn't the only one Ellie swore around.
He was on hallway patrol when an angry teacher pulled a girl out into the corridor. Joel had spent enough time with Ellie by now to know the back of her head anywhere. He slowly made his way toward the older woman and Ellie.
When the woman noticed him, she sighed. “Good. Will you take this one to the hole?”
She nearly tossed Ellie at him. Ellie, stubborn as she was, couldn't fight against the push from a grown woman. She stumbled backward, falling right against Joel's legs. Her head hit his stomach, right above his hip.
He caught her, hand landing on her shoulder. After he straightened her out Joel guided her from the front of his chest to his side. He kept his arm around her back to keep her steady.
“Maybe some time alone will teach you some respect,” the teacher sneered at Ellie.
Before Ellie could fire back, Joel responded. “Yes, ma'am,” his southern drawl sneaking in.
Joel steered Ellie away, keeping a hand on her back. Once they were completely out of the sight of the teacher, he dropped his arm and kneeled down in front of her so he could be on her level.
“Ellie,” he sighed. He wanted to chide her on not getting into trouble. But he couldn’t find the words. Instead he just looked at her.
Ellie sputtered for a second, looking back into his eyes. “I didn't do anything wrong.”
Joel raised an eyebrow. Ellie's eyebrows knit together. She was getting worked up. It had been a long time but Joel knew the body language of a young kid getting frustrated and upset.
“She stepped on my foot with her pointy shoes, and I swore, but I—” She stopped, hoping Joel would understand.
Joel was stuck on the idea of heels being called "pointy shoes," but then he saw that she was genuinely upset. He figured it was because she didn't want to go to the hole. He could fix that.
“It's okay, Ellie. We won't go to the hole.”
“That's not—” Ellie huffed.
Maybe that wasn't what she was upset about. Now Joel was confused.
“I promise I'm not a bad kid,” Ellie whispered.
Oh, Joel thought. All he could think to say was, “I know.”
Ellie's expression perked up at that. She moved forward slightly. Joel thought she wanted a hug. In another life, he might've comforted her that way. Instead, his walls came up. He leaned back slightly and looked down at her feet.
“Your foot okay?”
Ellie looked disappointed, but she nodded. “It's okay,” she confirmed.
At that, he rose to his feet.
“Why am I not going to the hole?” she asked, looking up at him.
Joel sighed. “You shouldn't be punished for accidents,” he said simply.
She nodded, but he started walking, his little shadow not far behind, he heard her whisper, “I don’t think everyone agrees with you, Joel.”
Joel rolled over in his bed. He didn’t even have to glance at the calendar to know it was September 25th, 2023. Twenty years ago today, things were still normal. He had his entire world in his little house in Texas. Sarah probably woke him up that morning. She probably made him breakfast. They probably sang along to Billy Joel as he drove her to school.
All things he took for granted.
Joel turned to his dresser. He was almost out of whiskey. There wasn’t that much left. But the loudest thing in that room was the memory of his daughter. So Joel lifted the bottle above his head and poured the rest of it into his mouth.
The world started to fuzz a little. But he was a grown man with a massive tolerance that he had built over the last twenty years. So even though he chugged forty-five percent alcohol, he didn’t feel drunk. But Sarah's screams felt quieter in his soul.
When he stood, he swayed a little. But Joel's first concern wasn’t that this was a fireable offense:being drunk on the job. It was that he didn’t want to be intoxicated around Ellie.
He’d never drunk around Sarah.
He winced at the mental connection he just made.
Joel's right hand hit his head. He was trying to hit the connection away. All he was really hitting was the scar on his right temple.
Joel walked down the stairs to the first floor where the sign-in desk was. Right next to his name, it read: Joel Miller: Solitary Confinement Wing.
Joel normally hated this assignment. But most officers loved it because they basically didn’t have to do anything. The officers in charge of walking the children to their punishment checked the kids in. All the people actually in charge of the solitary confinement wing had to do was ensure no kids escaped and that all the paperwork was filed.
The best part was that there was a desk and a bedroom for the guard. Why? Probably for the night shift. But Joel wasn't asking questions. Today, he would half-watch the wing, half-bum around, and try to forget what day it was.
Joel skipped breakfast. One, he didn’t want to eat something and get rid of the fuzz that was clouding his senses. Two, he couldn’t see Ellie. Not like this.
His plan was foiled when he saw, through the propped-open door, a guard walking down the hallway harshly gripping two kids: one of whom was Ellie.
The guard looked like a kid himself. Joel rose from the seat he was parked at and stepped in front of him. “Alright son, I’ll take ‘em off your hands.”
Tommy would’ve picked up on the exaggerated southern drawl. He would’ve seen it as a clear signal that Joel had been drinking. Joel was hoping this young guard wouldn’t be as perceptive.
The guard let go of both kids. First, Ellie rubbed her arm. Joel could see from here the red finger prints on her pale skin. Then she ran towards him. She got almost to him, and it looked like she was going to embrace him. In his compromised state, he might have let her.
But she slowed and turned back around. Joel followed her eyes to the other kid still standing there. Ellie turned back and interlinked her fingers with him. He was somehow even smaller than her. They walked back towards Joel together.
“This is Sam. He's six and a half. They were making fun of him and I stopped them. But I fought, so the guard said I have to spend twenty-four hours in the hole. He only has to stay till dinner,” she said, unloading the series of events that led to this moment.
Joel was endeared by how she was running her mouth a mile a minute. But he was confused about why the boy didn’t introduce himself. Ellie, who knew him better than he wanted to admit, saw his confusion.
“He can’t hear,” Ellie explained.
Ah. Joel understood. “He’s deaf,” Joel said.
Ellie tilted her head. Joel explained, “A person who can’t hear’s’a deaf person.”
Joel winced internally at the slight slur of his words.
Ellie nodded. “Well, they were making fun of his deaf.”
Joel smiled, despite himself. Tomorrow, he would blame the fuzz still consuming his brain for his response. Joel’s hand came out, landing on her head, and ruffling her hair. “You’d say, 'They were makin’ fun o’ve him ‘cause he’s deaf.' Not ‘his deaf.’”
Ellie was taken aback by his touch on her head. But she was eager to please him. (That wasn't entirely true for everyone else… he had noticed her animosity toward everything and everyone else in this place… but she was eager to please him.) So she jumped to implement the correction.
“They were makin’ fun o've him ‘cause he’s deaf.”
Joel smiled at her repeating his accent.
“Of,” he corrected softly.
“That's not how you said it,” Ellie pointed out.
“Texas’ll do that to ya,” he responded, opening the heavy door to the guards' room.
“Y'all don't have to go in the hole,” he explained.
The confusion only slightly faded from Ellie’s features, while it lingered heavily on Sam’s. Joel motioned for them to sit on the cot while he dug through the drawers in the desk. No empty sheets. He huffed, grabbing a stack of what was hopefully unimportant paperwork. It was double-sided, crammed with text. Joel clicked his pen and scrawled in the thin margin at the top.
No hole.
He turned the page to show Sam. A small grin spread across the boy's face, and he flashed Joel a thumbs-up.
“Why?” Ellie asked, her brow furrowing. “I fought.”
Joel sighed, leaning against the desk. “You were defendin’ yourself, Ellie. That goes in the same book as accident to me.”
She nodded, accepting the answer. Then she looked down at Sam, then back up at Joel.
“Do you have any more paper?” she asked. She clearly wanted to keep talking to the boy.
Joel let out a low breath. “Not here. But I’ll get some for you.”
He left the two kids to themselves. His steps were a little choppy, the weight of the whiskey dragging on his boots, but he made his way down the concrete corridors to the library. In FEDRA school, because they give you basic rations, there isn’t any use for standard ration cards. Instead, extra duties earn you points. You can trade 'em for extra food, clean sheets… liquor.
Joel had been planning to use his points to buy another bottle. Lord knew he'd need it tomorrow.
Instead, he grabbed a stack of printer paper and a handful of old comic books, setting them down in front of the guard on library duty.
It was about the same price as a bottle.
But he had Ellie, and a friend of Ellie’s, sitting on a bed in a concrete room waiting for him to deliver. So, for the first time in almost twenty years, he put his survival second.
As he rounded the corner back toward the solitary confinement wing, he remembered he still had a job to fake. He set his newfound entertainment options on the floor just outside the door, then grabbed two official clipboards from the wall rack.
He picked up the entertainment and opened the door. When he entered the room, Ellie and Sam’s eyes snapped toward him. The instinctual fear in their expressions quickly melted into quiet excitement.
He handed the first clipboard to Sam. For a second, Joel wondered if a six and a half year old could read. But Sam grabbed the pen and quickly began filling in the blanks. All of them except Time In and Time Out.
It made sense, Joel realized. If your only way to communicate in a world where nobody knows sign language is to read and write, you probably pick it up fast.
He filled out Ellie's sheet and finished off Sams before getting up to return the clipboards. When he got back the two were hunched over one of the comics Joel brought. He sat back in the chair and let the fuzz and white nose take over his senses.
He came back to reality at Ellie’s proclamation of boredom two comic books later. Of course, her verbal complaints were accompanied by writing “I’m bored” in big chunky letters on a sheet of paper. Positive noises of agreement came from Sam.
Joel scoffed. He slowly rose from his seat, his knees popping.
“You're so old you're squeaking,” Ellie cackled. Joel faked a groan, which quickly made her laugh even harder.
She paused her laughing to write a note down for Sam: 'Joel makes a bunch of old man noises because he’s as old as the dinosaurs.'
She showed Sam. Sam looked at Joel and started laughing too. Joel leaned over the bed, snatched the piece of paper from her, and jotted down: “I’m 49. Little shit.”
Both kids started laughing again. Joel started to laugh too, but the humor fizzled out when he remembered his fiftieth birthday was tomorrow.
Ellie noticed his sudden silence. Her small hand gripped the edge of his sleeveL the one on his arm, which was holding the pen.
“What's wrong?”
He tensed at her contact and her question. But he let the alcohol's fuzz creep back into his awareness, letting his tipsiness be an excuse to show how he truly felt.
“Nothing, kiddo,” he responded, physically softening himself for her.
“Alright, there's this game called tic-tac-toe,” he started, drawing the grid onto the paper for both kids to see.
Eventually, his back started to hurt from the angle he was at—awkwardly kneeling by the bed and leaning over the desk to write on the paper. Needing a change of posture, he gently nudged the two kids over and climbed onto the mattress, sitting with his back leaning against the wooden headboard. His legs dangled off the edge of the bed, while Sam and Ellie sat crisscross-applesauce right in front of him.
Sometimes they’d rope him into their conversations and games, demanding he take a turn or settle a rule dispute. But most of the time they wouldn’t, lost in their own little world.
Eventually, the clock on the wall hit six. Dinner time.
“Sam's time is done,” Joel said to Ellie.
She looked down, her face instantly falling. Joel reached for a scrap of paper and jotted down a note for Sam, letting the boy know he was free to go. Joel stood up and walked toward the door, and Sam got up to follow him. Before they stepped out, Joel paused and placed a heavy hand on Ellie's shoulder.
“I’ll be back with some food for you, okay?”
He tried not to notice how instinctively Ellie leaned into his hand.
“Okay,” she responded.
The two left the room. Once they made it out to the main hallway leading to the cafeteria, Joel waved goodbye to Sam and watched the boy walk off safely. If it had been Ellie, he probably would’ve followed her all the way to her destination. But his mind was already preoccupied with finding a way to smuggle a meal out of the cafeteria for her. He ended up packing two pieces of garlic bread and a slice of very stale pizza into a clean handkerchief, hiding it under his jacket.
Once he made it back to the solitary confinement wing, he grabbed the official clipboard so he could finally start on his overdue paperwork.
He entered the room, finding Ellie sprawled out flat on her back on the bed, holding a comic book over her face. She looked up at him and exclaimed, “Thank God. I’m fucking starving.”
He chuckled, the sound low in his throat. He handed her the bundle of food. She inhaled the slice of pizza in seconds and started on the first piece of garlic bread, but then she suddenly froze.
“What's wrong?” he asked, a sudden spike of worry hitting him that she might be having an allergic reaction.
“Here,” Ellie responded, holding out the second piece of garlic bread toward him.
This kid, Joel thought to himself fondly. He couldn’t even blame the alcohol anymore; the whiskey fuzz had completely worn off hours ago, leaving him completely sober and painfully aware of how much he cared.
“No, Ellie, that's for you,” he chided gently.
The little girl shook her head fiercely. “You weren't at breakfast. Sam, you, and me didn’t eat lunch. You can’t just not eat dinner.”
It was clear she was working herself up, her small voice tightening with genuine distress over him going hungry. To avoid making it a bigger deal and upsetting her further, he relented and took the bread from her hand.
She watched him intently until he took a bite, then finally finished her own piece. But Joel knew the signs of a hungry kid, and looking at her small frame, he couldn’t find it in himself to enjoy the food, no matter how empty his own stomach was.
“I don’t really like it,” he lied plainly, motioning for her to take the rest of it back. He couldn’t tell if she knew he was bluffing, but she decided to accept it, eagerly tearing into the remainder of the bread.
After their miniature dinner was finished, Joel finished off the paperwork at the desk while Ellie read some more of her comic.
Promptly at 8:00 PM, a heavy knock echoed on the outer door.
Shit, Joel thought. The night shift.
He looked toward Ellie. Her eyes were suddenly wide and full of fear. “Are they going to punish me more? Because I—”
“Stop,” Joel cut her off softly. He motioned for her to come over to him. Ellie hustled off the bed, practically throwing herself into his space. “I’m not going to let that happen,” he continued, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Will you get under the desk really quick? I’ll be right back.”
She nodded quickly, following his instructions without a second thought and tucking her small body into the footwell of the desk. Joel exited the room, closing the door firmly behind him, and met the night shift guard who was waiting in the hallway.
Joel didn’t bother with the normal pleasantries; he just jumped straight into it. “How about I take this shift off your hands?”
“Nah, I need the points,” the guard responded, leaning against the wall. “They're giving double for working tonight and tomorrow.”
Right. The anniversary. FEDRA always struggled to find guards willing to work the holiday shifts.
Joel let out a slow sigh. “Keep the points. Put yourself down on the log.” He scrambled for a plausible explanation that wouldn't raise suspicion. “Too many memories in my quarters tonight. I'd rather just sleep down here at the desk.”
The guard’s eyes lit up, a grin spreading across his face. “Well, you don’t have to tell me twice,” he stated, already turning on his heel and walking back the way he came.
Joel reentered the room.
“You can come out now,” he said quietly.
Ellie scrambled out from the footwell, her hair a bit messy from the tight space. She climbed back onto the bed, returning to her comic.
Joel sat back down at the desk. The lone lamp cast a dim, yellow glow over his clipboard. He picked up his pen and went back to work, filling out the mindless FEDRA logs.
Around nine o’clock, Joel looked over. Ellie was yawning, her eyes heavy and unfocused as she stared at the same page.
“Put it away, kiddo,” Joel murmured. “Get under the covers.”
“I’m not tired,” she mumbled, though her eyelids were fluttering shut. She shifted under the blanket anyway, pulling it up to her chin, but she didn’t close the comic book. She held it out toward him. “Will you read with me? Just one page.”
Joel sighed, looking at his paperwork. “Ellie…”
“Please? You can be the robot guy, and I’ll be the space girl. You have to do the voice, too. Like a robot.”
Joel stared at her. It was such a childish, innocent request. The sheer youth of it made his heart ache. It was a sharp, painful reminder that despite her smart mouth and the harsh concrete walls around them, she was only eight years old. She was just a little girl.
Joel dropped his pen. He slowly rose from his seat, his joints popping again, and walked over to the edge of the bed. He sat down heavily beside her.
“Fine,” he grumbled, taking the edge of the comic book. “But just one page.”
He cleared his throat, forcing his deep, gravelly voice into a stiff, robotic monotone to read the lines of the character. Ellie let out a small, tired giggle, completely delighted. She read her part in a sleepy, dramatic whisper.
They didn't even make it to the bottom of the page. Ellie was fast asleep.
Joel quietly took the comic book from her fingers and set it on the nightstand. He looked down at her. She was sleeping at an awkward angle, her head propped awkwardly against the hard wooden headboard. Worried that her neck would be stiff and sore in the morning, Joel reached out. He gently slid his hands under her shoulders, shifting her small body down into a more comfortable position on the mattress.
As he pulled his hands away, Ellie stirred slightly. She rolled over, instinctively seeking the warmth, and rested her head heavily in lap. She sighed contently: clearly his thigh was a good enough pillow.
Joel froze. Every protective wall he had built over the last two decades told him to move.
But he didn’t move.
He looked down at her small face, completely peaceful in her sleep, and he found that he didn’t mind the weight of her head on his thigh.
The whiskey fuzz had been gone for hours.
He was completely, painfully sober.
Even without the alcohol to dull his senses, he was letting himself be soft. He rested one hand lightly on the mattress next to her head, guarding her while she slept.
As the clock on the desk quietly ticked past midnight, signaling the start of September 26th, a heavy realization settled over him. For the first time in twenty years, Joel wasn’t sitting alone in a dark room, getting filthy drunk. He was sober and keeping a little girl safe.