Chapter Text
At the end of the day, Joel doesn’t remember. He looks at the photo in Marlene’s hand and there’s a tug of recognition, a hook behind his naval that tells him, yes—he’s seen this woman before. But he doesn’t recall the feel of her weight beneath his, the curve of her hips, sinking himself into that warm body, so no—he can’t say for sure.
Fifteen years is a long time.
But then he sees the girl— Ellie, and he knows it’s true. He wouldn’t pick her out in a crowd, and at first—that gives rise to a nagging sense of disappointment within him. The sudden emotion takes him by surprise and leaves him uneasy. He’s forced to acknowledge the fact that there’d been a twisted, broken part of him that hoped, just for a second she’d be blonde-haired, blue-eyed… familiar. But no— It don’t work like that. You can’t just replace one with another.
Ellie’s hair is ponytailed, but he can tell it’s thick and auburn. Her nose and cheeks are freckled and flecked with dirt, and there’s a thin scar that strikes through her right brow—When he takes a closer look, he realizes that while her eyes aren’t blue, they are a specific combination of not quite green, not quite hazel that he knows well…They’re his eyes. She worries her lip, and the lines that form around her mouth are his too.
Marlene is still standing between them, one hand clutching the gaping wound at her side, the other held out in Ellie’s direction, a preventative measure, cos the girl’s clearly got the killer instinct; she maintains a white knuckled grip on her switch blade as she glares up at him. Yeah…The Miller genes are strong in this one. There’s no longer any doubt in his mind who the kid belongs to.
Tess looks at him expectantly, and he can tell she’s annoyed. Of course she is. They have a good thing going, and this— has the power to bring it all tumbling down around them. “Well?” she asks, arms crossing over her chest.
This isn’t a matter of choice, and Tess ain’t gonna like it, but as he slides his gaze back to the feral child in front of him, he sees only obligation. She’s not a person so much as an extra limb, but instinct tells him that cutting her off would somehow be worse than dragging her around. Like it or not, she’s his responsibility. He owes her that.
Joel gives a slow nod and Marlene settles at the gesture. “You’ll take her then?”
“Bullshit! I’m not going with him!” The girl takes a big step back, her eyes frantic as she flails the knife in his direction.
“Ellie—” Marlene raises her voice and the kid’s shoulders fall with defeat; her body is turned as far away from him as she can get and Joel moves to the other side of the room to give her some space. “How do you know them?”
Oh Christ. The woman didn’t tell her. He lets out a snort of disbelief, and the girl whips her head around to glower at him, her brown-speckled greens narrowed and suspicious. Joel’s not fucking explaining it. How can he when he doesn’t even know the mother’s name?
The Firefly leader rubs her forehead with her thumb and pointer finger, then ushers Ellie to one corner of the room and starts to whisper— Joel doesn’t catch it all, but he gets the gist. Tess tries to side eye him while they’re distracted, but he refuses to meet her gaze, one hand massaging the back of his neck. It’s taking all he’s got to maintain his composure. He can’t withstand one of her, “What are you gonna do about this?” looks, can’t face the reckoning he’s in for, not on the heels of the one he’s already been dealt.
Joel watches the kid’s shoulders tense as Marlene talks, feels the vibrating current of her pulse in the air. The girl was never a zero, her baseline a solid sixty, but she revs to one-twenty in less than a minute as she reacts to the news. “No fucking way! I don’t give a shit who you think he is—”
“Ellie!” Marlene raises her voice again. The girl jerks and shuts her mouth, but he sees the storm brewing beneath the surface. “I’m not gonna argue with you. Just give the guy a chance. We won’t get another shot at this.” There’s still compassion in the woman’s tone but the request comes out more like a command.
His first lesson in Ellie logic is this: the kid ain’t the type to follow commands. “Fuck no! I don’t need anything from this asshole—How do you even know he’s—? He might not even be my—” Her cheeks flood crimson with indignation. “—What if he’s some sort of fucking pervert?”
Girl’s got a mouth on her. In another lifetime, he’d’ve smacked her upside the head for even half the shit she’s pulling right now, but that life’s got nothing to do with this one. Joel doesn’t bother telling her he ain’t a pervert— that even if he were, he’d have to be one sick motherfucker to look at her like that. She won’t believe him anyways, and he can’t pass judgment; he doesn’t know what she’s been through.
Now would be a good time for some outsider endorsement, but Tess isn’t in the mood to defend him. She’s given up trying to make eye contact, her attention focused on Marlene and the kid. The woman’s in shock and he doesn’t blame her. The Joel she knows is always careful, always controlled; he never gets too caught up or carried away. But he wasn’t always like that.
There’s a good chunk of time after the outbreak that he doesn’t care to remember. A time where he just didn’t give a shit one way or another. Hell, he didn’t even give two. He’s smartened up since then, but you can’t run from your past— And right now that past is staring him in the face, its corporeal form taking the shape of a little girl teetering on the edge of panic and homicide.
“You’re practically forcing him to take me!” Ellie accuses the Firefly woman. “That’s why he’s not saying anything! He doesn’t want me! He’s just doing it because you’re not giving him any other choice—”
Alright. This little temper tantrum has gone on long enough. There’s a woman bleedin’ out as we speak. Joel stands up straight to get Ellie’s attention and gentles his voice. This is the first time he speaks to her, and he needs her to hear him good. “You’re gonna need to give me more than a half hour to process before you start puttin’ words in my mouth, girl— Now, I didn’t know nothin’ about this, same as you. But I do want you, and I’m not gonna leave you alone.”
She freezes at his words and pivots on her heels to stare at him, a shimmer of vulnerability visible through the cracks in her tough girl veneer— She’s gone from gunning her foot on the gas, to a deer in the headlights all in the span of a few seconds.
Her brief moment of weakness leaves him breathless, the sudden insecurity squeezing inside his chest, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. Joel ain’t exactly lying. He doesn’t know her; he doesn’t love her. But he does want her to come with him— needs her to, more like—And he’s prepared to enforce that. If she takes off right now, he’ll chase her down and bring her back.
To cast her aside, unprotected, in the hands of a dying woman no less, would be like walking away and leaving his lungs in a vat of ice behind him, cracking his chest to surgically remove his spleen— setting his watch down on the table and never looking back... “C’mon now. Let this woman get patched up,” he says to drive home his point. She flinches, looks at Marlene, then her eyes linger on Tess and he senses her apprehension. “Don’t you worry about her.”
His smuggling partner lets out a sharp, stunted laugh and turns away from him. Oh yeah— He’s in for a world of hurt later for that little comment. But Joel’s got her now; he can feel the tug of the tether forming between them. Ellie’s whole demeanor changes, and she turns back to the Firefly leader. “Did you tell him about…?” she trails off.
Marlene is losing steam by the minute, her light brown skin taking on a sickly pale tinge; she grunts and shakes her head. “You need to take Ellie out of Boston; she can’t stay in the QZ,” she informs him.
Tess snorts again. “This is just getting better and better.”
He shrugs off the comment and addresses Ellie. “You in some kind of trouble?”
Joel can deal with trouble. Him and Tess combined have enough connections to make most forms of trouble disappear, whereas Marlene is right in the middle of it. Biggest things to watch out for if you want to stay on the right side of the uniforms are Firefly affiliation, padding and skimming off the supply trucks, and pimps, ‘specially the type interested in a girl as young as Ellie. Military was tryin’ to crack down on that sort of shit by taking out everyone involved.
Considering the company she keeps, Joel’s gonna go with option number one. He could be wrong, but it sure as hell doesn’t seem like she’s stealing rations all ninety pounds of her, and she doesn’t have the drugged-out obedience of a trade girl. But that could just be wishful thinking on his part. Both because the idea of this child being involved in anything like that turns his stomach, and because he’s not entrenched enough in that world to know how to sort her out if she is.
The girl shifts her weight and fidgets with her sweater cuff. “Go on, honey—Show him,” Marlene instructs. Her tone is soft and encouraging again now that the kid’s agreeable. Ellie huffs and rolls up her sleeve, and he has to do a double take. But his eyes were working fine the first time, and Joel’s heart sinks. It can’t be. This has to be some sort of sick joke.
“Jesus Christ,” he exhales. Why had Marlene done this? Why did she go through the trouble of tracking him down and telling him about Ellie if she was fucking infected? He can’t even look at the bubbling set of teeth marks on her arm without the sour taste of bile rising in his throat, so he takes a few steps back and finally makes eye contact with Tess.
Joel must look pathetic because mad as the woman is, all she does is wince, her eyes darting back and forth between him and the girl like she’s expecting the kid to start twitching and moaning any second.
“I’m not infected,” Ellie says softly.
“Like hell you aren’t—” Tess starts, but Marlene holds up a hand to stop her from continuing. The world slows around him as Joel struggles to come to terms with what’s about to happen. This is what he knows: Ellie is a piece of him— he just met her—and now she’s going to die. He hears the memory imprint of gunfire in the back of his mind, the echo of those pained little squeals, small fingers loosening their grip on his shirt and falling slack against his chest— No. This isn’t that. She’s not—
“She’s telling the truth,” Marlene calls him back to reality, pausing to breathe for a second. “Ellie was bitten by a runner three weeks ago, but she never turned. She’s immune to the virus.”
“Bullshit,” his partner snaps, because the words are still caught in his throat. But Ellie’s not looking at Tess, she’s staring only at him, imploring him to believe her. The Firefly woman reaches out a bloody hand and grabs the girl’s bite arm, holding it out to them in offering. His partner takes a cautionary step back, but Joel stays where he’s at. “Look at the mark; it’s healed. This happened three weeks ago and she’s fine. But she can’t stay here. She tests positive on a scanner.”
The woman is right; the wound is closed. It’s not bleeding or oozing, and while there are blisters around the site, none of the other tell-tale signs of infection are present. The veins in her arm aren’t visible or protruding and the kid is steady. She doesn’t have a fever and she can string words together fine. Unless she was bitten within the past couple hours, she shouldn’t be able to do any of that.
It’s unbelievable, but the proof is right in front of him.
Marlene looks at him again, the question clear in her eyes. Does Joel want to uproot his entire life and go out on the run with a kid he didn’t raise? Of course not. Will Tess kill him and string him up by his entrails before he has the chance to step foot outside the QZ? One hundred percent. Is he gonna do it anyways? He has to.
“Say your goodbyes,” he tells Ellie. She yanks her sleeve back down and takes a deep breath. The girl looks dazed; Joel can relate. He makes a mental note that she responds best to softness, to gentle instruction. He can’t make any promises, but at the very least it’s good to know.
“I can have a crew meet you at the capitol building in two days. We need to get her to a lab, to run some tests. Can I count on you to be there?” the woman asks.
“We’ll be there,” he says, but what he means is, we’ll see. Joel needs some time to think. He needs more time than he has.