Archive of Our Own ^beta

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. 

Chapter Text

There’s a live wire running under Tess’ skin; she’s coiled so tight that she could be picked up and plucked, but Joel’s lucky in the sense that she doesn’t take it out on Ellie. He doesn’t want to be that guy, but he also needs to make sure this kid stays close, and that’s gonna be hard enough to do without his partner biting her head off. 

The girl’s clearly got some sort of attention deficit. The type of buzzing hyperactivity they used to prescribe shit for back in 2013. Ellie tries to mask it, but she’s kicking cans and dragging her shoes over the gravel—When he tells her to stop that, she switches to humming, then hitting her legs, widening the hole in her jeans with her fingers— sucking her sleeves into her mouth like a zoned-out toddler. Just about anything she can do to avoid walking normally. 

He’s curious if the behavior comes from his gene pool or the mother’s, and while he’s careful not to think about all the past report cards he’s read containing phrases such as, “always well-behaved,” and “a pleasure to have in class,” the knowledge is in there all the same, and Joel concludes that this annoying little idiosyncrasy ain’t his fault. 

He keeps her in his shade. They don’t need a reason to use a scanner on you in a QZ, so it’s best nobody even notices she’s there. But she reaches out to touch everything as they pass. Brick walls, chain links fences, the siding off buildings. It’s like the girl’s asking to be spotted. 

Joel resists the urge to smack her hand away as she runs her fingers along the sharp edge of a rusty drain pipe. Tetanus; that’s what she needs. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he says instead, and she frowns and stuffs them in her pockets, but she’s fiddling with something in there too.

“You grow up in Boston, Ellie?” Tess asks, and the girl appears startled. She blinks once, then shakes herself out of it. “Yeah. Military school,” she says flatly. 

Now that makes sense. It explains the juxtaposition between her explosive temperament, and the head down, squirming silence she’s been displaying since they left Marlene. Like a bomb in a box. She’s good until you shake her a little. 

“You didn’t live with your mother?” his partner fishes, and he shoots her a cutting glare. Tess ignores him. Joel doesn’t expect any different. 

“No.” Ellie’s initial answer is short, but she rips a piece of skin off her lip with her teeth and seems to reconsider. “I never met her. She died giving birth to me.” 

There’s another stain on his conscious. Not only did he use this woman and leave her pregnant, but the pregnancy killed her and orphaned the kid. Somehow that felt worse than what they’d just done to Robert and his goons. 

“So, who looked after you then? Marlene? Was there a reason she waited till now to make mention of you to Joel? From what I understand, she was close with his brother for years—There were lots of opportunities for her to say something—”

“I don’t fucking know,” Ellie snaps. “I just met Marlene last year; she says she’s been watching over me since I was born but I never saw her.”

“Tess—” he warns, but the woman is relentless. “So, who put you in school?”

The girl shrugs. “Her I guess.” 

They turn down the street on the way to the military checkpoint near Joel’s apartment just as the “Attention citizens…” curfew announcement comes on over the PA system again. 

“Do they ever actually arrest anyone for being out after curfew?” Ellie asks suddenly. 

“They’ll arrest you for a hell of a lot less.” He hopes his words will scare the girl into picking up the pace, but she just snorts. “They never arrested me.”

Yeah well, they’ll blow your goddamn head off at the first sign of a twitch now… Joel keeps the lecture inside his head so as not to draw attention to their group. He has to show restraint if he’s gonna expect it back from her and the last thing he needs is the infected kid getting cocky around the fucking FEDRA. “You keep your mouth shut through here,” Joel tells her, nodding at the pair of soldiers by the fence. “Not a word; I mean it.”

There seems to be sufficient fear present in her mind, enough that it motivates her to listen. Whether that’s fear of the soldiers or of himself, Joel’s not sure. Doesn’t matter as long as it gets them through the gate with the scanners still tucked safely in their belts. He’s just pleased to note that the girl has some common sense, that she can behave when she has to. Joel’s not planning to bring her back out until he’s got a plan. 

He recognizes the two sentries, and they look him up and down as he approaches. They don’t look twice at Tess; she lives in the same building, but they don’t know Ellie. One of the guys squints and hones in on his little shadow. “Who’s this?” 

“My kid.” Joel says nonchalantly, and puts a hand on her shoulder. No better lie than the truth. He knows it’s a risk; he’s scared she’ll flinch, that it’ll come off suspicious and blow their cover, but she doesn’t. In fact, Ellie surprises him and takes a reflexive half step back, her weight pressing into his chest. He’s even more surprised by the mighty strong urge he feels to pull her closer. 

Biology’s a powerful thing. Joel dismisses it easy enough by reminding himself that he doesn’t even know this little girl. He shouldn’t be touching her in the first place, and he’s still got blood spatter on his shirt. 

“Didn’t know you had a kid,” the guard comments.

Yeah, me neither. He keeps that thought to himself. When they’re through the gate, they separate, and the tether flexes and stretches, but doesn’t snap. Tess stands in the entrance to the building with her hands on her hips. “You comin’ up?” he asks her, and she gives him a small, sharp shake of the head. “Why don’t you give me a call when she’s down for the night, daddy?”

Oh, for cryin’ out loud. It's like he's been handed two smart-mouth brats instead of just the one. He doesn’t have the energy to dignify the woman with a response. “Alright, Ellie. C’mon—” Joel cocks his head to the side and the girl shoots his partner one last anxious glance before following behind him up into the deserted stairwell. 

“She’s really mad at you,” the kid observes when he unlocks the door to his apartment, and he almost congratulates her on her stroke of intellectual genius, but stops himself just in time. Better to have at least one of them on his side than both teamed up against him. Joel snorts and sets his key down, leans on the counter, fixes the dining chair, then reevaluates his earlier statement; maybe she did get the fidgeting from him. What in the hell is he supposed to do with her now?

“Do you want me to take my shoes off?” she asks, rocking back and forth on her heels in the doorway. 

“Don’t matter.” He doesn’t usually bother. She takes them off anyways, kicks the fabric sneakers into a pile by the frame, her eyes wandering around the small, disorganized space. If Joel had known he’d be bringing a kid back to his place when he left earlier, he’d’ve cleared the table. She scans over the half-empty bottle of hooch and the tumbler, then her eyes settle on the merchandise stored in the corner of the room. “What’s all that?” 

This is gonna be a long night. “Nothin’ you need to worry about.” 

Ellie huffs and sits herself down on one of the dining chairs. Doesn’t take long before she’s blowing raspberries with her lips and swinging her feet under the table. The girl picks up Tess’ discarded glass and sniffs it. 

“Put that down,” Joel snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. “That ain’t for kids.”

“I know what it’s for,” she scowls and pushes the tumbler away from her person with enough force that it topples over, brown liquid seeping into the wood, then dripping onto the floor. 

“Oops. Sorry,” Ellie sucks on her teeth. She’s trying not to smirk, and as he mops up the spilled drink with a rag, Joel has himself a nice little fantasy of stumbling upon a time machine and traveling back to 2018 with a Ziploc baggie full of fucking condoms— Twenty odd years past the expiry date or not, it would be worth a try just to prevent this nightmare of a day from ever occurring.

“Are you from Texas?” she asks out of the blue. Another brilliant observation on her part.

“Yep.”

“Where in Texas?”

Joel rinses out the dish cloth and raises an eyebrow at her. “You ever been to Texas, girl?”

“No…” Ellie snorts, and he can hear the silent, “duh,” at the end of the response.

“Then what’s it to you?” Alright now. Tone it down, asshole. That was a bit harsh.

The curiosity dulls behind her eyes at his rejection and she swallows to mask the hurt brewing in those pretty greens. Ellie shrugs. “I like space stuff. I wanted to know if you ever saw a rocket launch.”

She’s talking about NASA, he realizes. He rubs his hands over the back of the chair opposite hers, then sighs and sits down. “That’d be Houston,” he explains, slipping back into the same soft drawl that calmed her before. He gestures in the air like he’s looking at a map. “I’m from Austin— Never watched a launch in person— no. But I’ve been to all the museums, the Space Centre.” 

“Oh.” She’s got that sleeve stuck in her mouth again like a physical barrier to prevent herself from asking anymore questions. 

Joel leans back. “When I was in the first grade, my whole school got together in the gym to watch a space shuttle launch on the TV— I was just happy to get out of doin’ that quiet reading shit. It was s’posed to be a real big deal— There was an American teacher on board who was gonna go up there and teach her lessons from space.” 

This is already the longest story he’s told in longer than he cares to remember, but the girl’s paying him more attention than he thought her capable of— so Joel keeps going. “They got through the countdown and the shuttle took off. But not much more than a minute into it, the thing exploded on live broadcast, with millions of people watchin’.”

“The Challenger,” Ellie breathes. “I can’t believe you actually saw that happen. That’s so fucking cool.” Of course this apocalypse baby finds the idea of a teacher exploding on national television in front of all her students, ‘cool.’ 

“You must be really old,” she says then, and suddenly he’s dreaming up that time machine again. The kid’s stomach rumbles and she lays her arms down on the table and rests her chin on top of the makeshift perch with a frown. 

“You hungry?” he asks and she looks up at him eagerly. “Always.” 

Ouch. The ancient stir of parental guilt leaves his insides thick. Joel’s got food. He’s got plenty. More than he needs. All the while this child that he made, that he brought into this world, has been living off scraps.

“Right.” He blows out his breath in a long sigh, cos he doesn’t know how to put fourteen years of apologies into just one, and he wouldn’t even know where to begin an apology of that magnitude in the first place. He’s still in shock. This is all so new. Joel reckons there’s gonna be a hell of a lot more reasons to feel guilty on the horizon. “Whaddya’ want? Soup? Spam? Pasta?”

“Anything,” she stresses, and his chest twinges again at the fervor in her tone. 

He chooses a can of tomato soup and some kidney beans; apocalypse chili, that’s what they call it. Good calories and good protein. Any kid in the early 2010s presented with a pot of this crap would turn their nose up. He can’t even make the soup with milk. Even the Salvation Army homeless shelters wouldn’t’ve served something this nasty, but Ellie looks at the food like it’s a goddamn cornbread and brisket dinner. 

She shovels the first bite into her mouth before he can warn her that it’s hot, and she winces, but doesn’t spit it out. He tries not to turn his nose up at the red gruel dripping down her chin. The girl devours the food in two minutes flat, and he suspects she isn’t even chewing the beans. “That was so fucking good,” she tells him when she’s done, the spoon clinking as she drops it into the bowl. “Thanks.”

Joel just grunts; he can’t even bring himself to say, ‘you’re welcome,’ over something so simple. He does the dishes in silence, and when he’s finished, he puts the pot and bowl away and clears his throat. “How did you hear about The Challenger anyways—?” he starts to ask. Best try to keep the conversation going a bit longer; it’s too early even for an early bedtime, but when he turns to look at the girl, she’s pale as a sheet. “Ellie—?”

“I don’t feel so good.” She clutches her belly. He knows that look; he’s seen it before. The dizzy panic of a kid about to hurl. 

“Alright. Get on up— In the bathroom—” Joel all but grabs her and ushers her into the small 5x8 room, and it’s lucky he’s quick cos she starts puking before she hits the toilet, a mess of beans and watery, brownish-orange gunk covering the front of her sweater. She hurls again, hitting the bowl this time, and he ain’t sure what to do, if he’s supposed to hold her hair back, or just let her do her thing. When she’s finished gagging, all those calories gone to waste, he figures he shoulda gone with option one, cos there’s chunks stuck to her bangs and she’s gonna need a bath to get the stench out. 

Ellie groans and leans back, pressing her cheek to the cool porcelain of the sink. “Fuck. Thas’ disgusting. M’sorry.”

“S’alright.” Joel rubs the bridge of his nose, then squats down to have a look at her. She’s white as a corpse, with shaky hands. Her teeth are still chattering from the aftershocks.

“Were you feelin’ sick before or—?”

“It’s just cos I didn’t eat for a few days,” she informs him. “Marlene was kinda all over the place, and we didn’t really get the chance.”

“How many days?” he frowns.

“I dunno…three or four.”

Fucking hell. He needs to feed her again. Joel sighs and goes in with a few more questions. “So, this ain’t something you do often? Pukin’ after you eat?” If she’s sick he needs to know. There are all sorts of reasons for food to make her nauseous. She could have worms, a stomach ulcer, some sort of flu or infection—besides the obvious of course. She could be pregnant. That would complicate things fast. It ain’t exactly an Olympic sport to find someone who can perform an abortion in the QZ…God knows the demand is there, but the girl would be laid up for a few days at least…

“No, I ate too fast. That’s all.”

She sounds confident, so Joel decides not to worry about it. He’ll try making her something else and see if she keeps that down, but first she needs to get cleaned up. He moves around her, filling the metal basin in the old bathtub with water from the tap, then he grabs her a couple cloths, some soap, sponges, a toothbrush with baking soda paste, and a travel shampoo. “Why don’ you wash up, change, and I’ll sort you out somethin’ easier on the stomach?”

“I don’t have anything to change into,” she says.

“Tcht. Ok— We’ll… sort that out tomorrow.” Joel grabs her one of the old, worn-out tees from his dresser to wear for the night and she studies it skeptically, but accepts the garment without protest. 

Girl looks real sweet and innocent coming out of the bathroom with the navy shirt hanging down to her knees, her thick auburn in wet tangles around her face. Hard to believe this is the same kid who came at him with a switchblade not two hours ago. Joel tries not to stare at the pair of mangled teeth marks on her skinny arm. He’s earned a flicker of trust now when she looks at him, and he’ll take what he can get. 

“Joel—” Ellie addresses him by his name.

He looks up to acknowledge her.

“Thanks for not…” She pauses, struggling over her words, “…Thanks for not leaving me alone.”

Joel doesn’t have a response to that either. In lieu of words, he pours a steaming hot bowl of chicken noodle soup broth straight from the pot, and places it on the table in the same spot she sat before. “Little bites, kid.” 

It’s gonna be a long road, but somehow that tether’s still tugging him forward.

Chapter Text

The cool chill of the night air seeps in through the window and Ellie opens her eyes to the sound of arguing in the kitchen. “So, that’s it? You’re just gonna up and leave Boston?” a woman’s voice demands. 

“What other choice do I have, Tess? —Tell me. Do I turn the kid out on the street? Or should I jus’ save the soldiers the trouble and shoot her myself?” 

That’s Joel.

She’s sleeping in his bed. He insisted, even when she pointed out that her taking over the room left nowhere for him to sleep. His small apartment doesn’t even have a couch. The man found an extra blanket in his closet for her and everything, a brown, scratchy woolen thing. Ellie cocoons that blanket around her body now and stands up, slinking over to listen by the door.

“You don’t know anything about this girl.” Tess talks like she’s trying to explain something complicated to a child. “There’s no way to prove she’s even yours and Marlene knows that. Obviously she needs someone to take responsibility for this kid—”

“You think I don’t recognize my own flesh and blood?” he bites back, and Ellie squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself not to read too much into his words. To keep her defenses up. She’s trying not to think about the fact that even though the woman’s logic is sound, something about the way Joel just seems to know her— to claim her, however resigned that claim may be— shakes her to her very core. 

“So, you’re telling me you had a shotgun wedding at nineteen, but couldn’t figure out how to pull out in your thirties?” 

What’s a shotgun wedding? Joel doesn’t respond to that and Tess lets out an indignant snort. “Look— I don’t know what you think this is… If you’re going through something here…But blowing your load into a warm hole fifteen years ago doesn’t make you that kid’s parent. You heard her. She doesn’t need anything from you, so why not bring her to the capitol building, hand her over to the Fireflies, and be on your way—?”

Ellie’s stomach clenches painfully, and this time it’s not from eating too fast. He could do that. Joel could pass her off to a safe third party and wash his hands of this whole thing. He wouldn’t even have to feel guilty.

But if he does that, she’ll never get to find out which he likes more: the sunset or the sunrise. If he ever looks up at the stars and thinks about how small the world is in comparison—If he’s seen a lunar eclipse. He doesn’t have to love her; he doesn’t even have to stay with her forever, but she wouldn’t mind knowing where she comes from.

When Marlene first appeared with the pair in tow, Ellie wasn’t sure if Tess was Joel’s girlfriend, his smuggling partner, or both. She’s still not one hundred percent sold on a label, but it’s clear there’s something more than business between them. In these fragile moments after the woman’s question and before his response, Ellie can’t help but wonder how strong it is. If the so-called responsibility he feels for her is stronger.  

Joel doesn’t leave her dangling in the uncertainty for long. His voice drops low and there’s a sharpness there that tells her Tess is treading on thin ice. “I’m a lot of things to a lot of people woman, and most of ‘em ain’t good— But one thing I’ve never been is a goddamn deadbeat. The sooner you get that through your head, the better.”

On the surface, nothing about Joel bespeaks fatherhood. His knuckles are raw and red. His patience is pencil-thin. Even his acceptance of Ellie isn’t gentle so much as automatic, like an animal driven by instinct. But there’s enough intensity in his statement to make it possible that those instincts are rooted in the past. That Ellie isn’t the first child he’s been duty bound to protect. 

“Psh. Well aren’t you just a big fuckin’ hero. Good old dad to the rescue—”

“Enough,” he snarls. It sounds like she’s trying to get him fired up now. Ellie pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders and rests her chin in the groove between her knees. There’s a moment of absolute silence, then Tess makes a strangled noise. “Get your hands off me.” Joel quiets his voice and Ellie can’t make out what he says next, but she does hear the woman’s short, stunted reply of, “Go fuck yourself, Joel.” 

A door slams shut— and since there’s only one other door in the apartment besides the bathroom, Ellie assumes that Tess is gone. She’s not sure what she expects to happen next. She doesn’t have much time to expect anything, but what she doesn’t anticipate is the slow turn of the bedroom door knob. 

A few worst case scenarios flash through her mind: maybe reality is starting to sink in and he’s come to tell her he’s done, that she needs to leave— Or worse: he’s angry, and he can’t put hands on Tess, so he’ll settle for her— Even more terrifying still: he’s wound up and needs to ‘blow his load into a warm hole,’ as the woman so eloquently put it. 

Ellie pushes that last mental image away with enough force to make herself blink. They aren’t much more than strangers at this point, but he is her father. She’s pretty sure that makes her off limits. Still, she knows it’s not normal for him to be sneaking into the room while she’s sleeping—or supposed to be sleeping anyways. 

Dude, relax. He probably just forgot something in here. It is HIS room after all. 

Joel creaks open the door, and when he spots her on the ground next to the frame, he laughs. Snorts air through his nostrils—But it’s not an amused sound. More like someone who’s stopped giving a fuck. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”

“No,” Ellie says. “Why are you in here?” Murky suspicion clouds her tone and his posture turns awkward. He hovers there, analyzing the look on her face. His lips are pursed, one arm propping himself up in the entrance. “Jus’ came to check in. We weren’t exactly bein’ quiet.” 

“Oh.” Riley always made fun of her for being a little naïve—too gullible for her own good—Like with Winston and the horse. But it seems like Joel’s telling the truth. That even though he’s angry, he’s not going to take it out on her tonight. 

“Get some sleep, girl,” he orders, and she doesn’t argue. There’s no point. He’s giving up his bed; she should at least use it. He moves to click the door shut again once she’s safely re-installed on the twin frame, but Ellie stops him.

“Wait—” She takes a deep breath. “You don’t have to leave Boston, you know— If you get me to the capitol building, I can go with the Fireflies. It’s ok. I won’t hate you, or resent you or anything.”

She knows the answer she wants, but she needs to give him the choice, just in case. Joel lingers for a second, then he clears his throat and says, “None of that—” He gestures out the door, “— is yours to worry about. You focus on you. My mind’s all made up.” 

Simple as that. In the span of a few minutes, she’s gone from anxiety— to distrust and fear— to feeling like her heart is about to swell and burst. This is so fucked. 

Ellie sleeps with Riley’s dog tag around her neck, the circular pendant clutched in her hand, her fist resting at the base of her throat. When she dreams, it’s to the tune of, ‘I got you babe,’ to water guns, and the click of the photo booth machine. What would her friend make of all this? Of Joel? Tess? Of Ellie being fucking immune to the virus that killed her… 

Her smooth lips press against Riley’s chapped. It’s too late to worry about the fact that neither one of them has brushed their teeth. Fear surges into adrenaline as she whispers, “Don’t go—”  

Then screeching and snarling, the metallic scent of gunfire. “My vote… Let’s just wait it out. You know? We can… be all poetic and lose our minds together.” 

Her arm sears hot and Ellie jolts up in bed, sucking in gasping breaths, sunlight streaming through the holes in the tattered blinds. When Ellie exits the room, ponytail around her wrist, toothbrush in hand, Joel is sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, leaning against the counter. Soft even breaths escape his parted lips. He’s sleeping. She tiptoes to the bathroom and shuts the door.

The man wakes up when she uses the bucket next to the sink to flush the toilet, and when she re-enters the kitchen with her hair tied, the crusties splashed out of her eyes, he’s yawning and rubbing his face. “You can sleep in there now if you want,” she offers. “I’m not tired anymore.”

“Sit down. I’ll make you somethin’ to eat first. You care what it is?” he asks.

Ellie takes the spot on the short metal bar stool by the counter and shakes her head. When she swivels around, she notices that her clothes from yesterday, the ones she puked all over, are hanging half out the window pinned to a clothesline. “Did you wash those?” she frowns, staring at the dripping jeans. A sudden, glowing warmth forms in her chest, the same as last night, because the answer is yes— he did. 

Joel just grunts and goes back to the task at hand. He’s opening a rectangular can labeled: Spam tocino, with a knife, placing little squares of something that resembles meat in an old, cast iron frying pan. It smells heavenly, and it takes every last inch of her self-control not to shovel the food down her throat all in one go when he lays it out, still sizzling, on a plate in front of her.

“Holyfuckwhere’dyougetthisstuff?” she asks with her mouth full, chunks of meat falling down her chin. He wrinkles his nose at her, but the disgust in his expression seems more like a smokescreen, a mask used to cover the flicker of a different emotion on his face, something that looks a lot like pity. Ellie ignores it and pushes the food back in with her fingers, chews, then swallows. “Sorry. Where did you get this stuff? I swear to God I could eat only this, every day for the rest of forever—”

“Now thas’ just sad,” he says. And yep—it’s definitely pity. But this time, she swears she sees the corners of his mouth twitch toward his eyes. “You still hungry?” he asks when she’s done. She shakes her head. “I feel like my stomach’s gonna burst open. That’d be fucking gross… all my organs just spilling out everywhere on your floor—”

Joel gives her a weird look. “Ok… But you ain’t about to puke everywhere again, are you?” he asks, eying the bathroom door with uncertainty. 

“No. I’m fine. You can go to sleep now.” He’s still hesitating, and Ellie huffs and rolls her eyes. “I won’t go anywhere or touch anything. I promise.”

“Alright,” he concedes slowly. “You come get me if you need somethin’.”

“Yessir.” She salutes, and this time she’s sure he’s fighting amusement.

It takes her all of twenty minutes to break her promise. She tries sitting at the counter, then she goes over and sits at the dining table again like yesterday. After that, she lays on the floor for a bit and tries to stretch, to do push ups, to close her eyes, but none of those things work to keep her distracted either.

The only possible activity she can think of to entertain herself is reading from her joke book, but she left it in Joel’s bedroom in her backpack. It’s inevitable that her eyes start to wander over to the stacks of random supplies and junk in the corner of his apartment. Ellie figures there has to be some way to make herself useful. She takes a quick stock of the weapons Joel has lying around.

The Colt Defender pistol he carried when she first met him, a shotgun labeled Remington 870, and a Winchester 70 rifle that looks finicky and hard to use. She takes a mental note of the supplies, then starts to search through all his shit for ammo. If she can sort out the bullets for him before they have to leave, that’ll give him more time to make whatever other preparations he needs to.

She’s got three piles: Federal Premium and Fusion 165 grains for the Winchester on the table, as much 185 grain ammo as she can find for the Colt, and a couple packs of long range bullets for the shotgun, but those are the hardest to find. It doesn’t look like he has very many. About halfway through her search, there’s a loud knock at the door; she tenses, and hardly a second passes before the person is knocking again. “Joel—”

Ellie recognizes Tess’ voice. She sets the box in her hand on the stool, then goes over to open the door. The woman is obviously not expecting her to be the one who answers, and her eyes narrow. She scans Ellie up and down, taking in the long t-shirt dress she’s wearing, stopping at her bare feet. “Where’s Joel?”

“He’s sleeping,” she tells her. The woman is carrying a backpack on one shoulder and a garbage bag on the other. She throws the stuff through the entryway onto the floor and is about to come in, when Joel stumbles into the front room, bleary-eyed and growling like a bear on his way out of hibernation. “Ellie, Jesus Christ— You have a death wish? You don’t open the door to nobody— Is that clear?” he scolds.

Indignation swells in her throat. Heat instead of warmth. “It’s Tess. I’m not stupid,” she shoots back.

“What did I say?” he growls again, and Ellie resists the urge to lash out with her foot, to kick him in the leg or the knee. “Don’t open the door to nobody,” she mimics in his accent. 

“Watch your tone, little girl.”

Ellie sticks up her middle finger at him, and he fixes her with a deadly stare. “Well, I can see this has been a productive night,” Tess comments, locking the door behind her as she lets herself in. “Here— Ellie, look through these and pick what fits you.” The woman kicks the garbage bag toward her and she undoes the loose knot at the top.

There are clothes inside. Jeans, sweatpants, shirts, and sweaters. “Holy shit, thanks—” Ellie stresses, shooting the woman a genuine smile. She digs to the bottom and finds underwear, socks, bras— and she decides that first impressions notwithstanding, and in spite of the fact that the woman would probably rather Ellie had died from infection three weeks ago, Joel’s girlfriend is her new favorite person.

“What are you doin’ here, Tess?” Joel asks, exhaustion leaking into his tone as he surveys the room. “And what in the hell is all this?” Tiredness mixes with irritation again when he turns back to Ellie. “Thought you said you weren’t gonna touch nothin’— Now you’re out here playin’ with bullets—” Joel picks up a box off the table and shakes it.

“They’re for your guns. I was sorting them for you.” She holds her ground. “You’re welcome—by the way.”

The man massages the lines out of his forehead with rough fingers, but doesn’t say anything back. It’s whatever. It’s not like she was expecting a big thank you anyways. At least he looks resigned not to yell at her again. Ellie clears the stool and sits down at the counter, letting out a long, dramatic sigh.

“Thought we could use some supplies.” Tess walks into the kitchen and takes the bottle of brown liquor out of the cabinet. She pours herself a glass.

Joel raises an eyebrow. “We?” 

“I’m coming with you,” she informs him.

He waves her off— grunts out a laugh. “You’re gonna leave Boston?”

“Fuck Boston," the woman says, taking a swig of her drink. "Let’s collapse the market. What the hell." 

Joel grinds his teeth, the muscles in his jaw jumping. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me. Ellie— Go into the bedroom and try on some of that stuff," he says, and she's pretty sure it's so that she doesn't have to watch them fight. 

Maybe it’s cos he doesn’t want her to see him lose. 

Chapter Text

Joel presses forward, one hand on the small of Tess’ back, the other gripping her hips, securing them as he bends her over the counter. A stifled groan escapes through his lips when he plunges into her snug heat, and yeah—He’s well aware that it’s fucked up for him to be doing this with the kid sleeping in the next room.

It’s the last position he wants her to catch him in, an almost irreversibly bad way to set the tone of their future relationship—but right now he’ll take his chances. Who knows how long it’ll be before they get the opportunity again, and after the two record breaking, stress-filled days he’s had, Joel needs the release. 

Tess grips the ceramic tile and lets out a pained protest as he shoves in harder. “Fuck Joel, take it easy—” He slows down, holds her ass instead of her hips, eases her into it. She prefers the other way around. But that isn’t an option tonight unless she wants to do it on the floor. Still, he doesn’t want to hurt her.

The woman isn’t gonna come just from this, so he reaches forward to help her along, and by the time she’s there— rutting back to meet his thrusts, her body clenching around him— Joel’s right there with her. Tess holds his arms, pulls his hands around to grope at her breasts, and he can see what she’s doing. What she wants him to do. But he’s not willing to indulge her. Not with Ellie fifteen feet away in his bedroom— The consequences of his recklessness forefront in his mind at all times. 

Tess doesn’t really want it anyways. She’s just mad; she’s letting impulse guide her. Joel’s no spring chicken, but she’s close to a decade younger than him, young enough for impulse to turn into harsh reality real quick. Two accidental pregnancies is enough for one lifetime. He drops his hands from her chest and pulls out, jerking his load into his shorts. 

Joel sighs with both release and relief in equal measures. He feels like a goddamn teenager sneaking around behind his parents’ back. Tess turns around and yanks her jeans up her thighs, a resigned sort of disquiet on her face. “Figured it out after all, huh Tex?” she snorts, raising an eyebrow at the mess he made in his boxers. “Good. You better keep that baby batter away from me.” 

“God, you’re a bitch.” He breathes, then draws in another shaky inhale. 

“Well, excuse me for not immediately falling in love with the idea of playing Auntie Tess to your hell spawn. I mean c’mon, Joel— What are you thinking? That girl is wild.” The woman is being sincere; she’s not just trying to get a rise out of him this time. He can’t decide if that makes it better or worse. 

“Tcht. She ain’t so bad,” he says as he does his fly up, snapping the metal button closed at the top of the zipper. “And no matter what she is or ain’t—”

“—She’s you’re responsibility. I know,” Tess finishes for him. “You’re a broken record. Guess I should be glad you’re not a total piece of shit after all.”

“That’s some high praise right there,” he drawls. “An’ you don’t need to be nobody’s Auntie Tess. Why don’ you cut that Rosewood guy a deal, or that crew over on the East side…or Bill…” He’s smirking now. 

“Fuck you. I do shit on my own terms, and you know how hard good partners are to train,” she says. Tess spreads her fingers over his chest. Post-coital intimacy; it’s about the only type they’ve got. Her face changes, playfulness slipping into something more like somber intrigue as she glides a hand over his bicep. “Does she look like your first?”

Her question is a dull knife to his heart, the muscle screaming in his chest as he fights the stretch of distant memory. A pair of pretty blues glaring up at him, wide-eyed and fearful— hair that's shorter and thinner than Ellie’s auburn, baby blonde locks stained red in the spots where he cradles her to him— Joel shoves the unsettling image away with a shudder. “No.” 

He’s not being entirely truthful. The more he looks at her, the more he sees a resemblance around the mouth— in the shape of her nose— Her mannerisms are what’s most familiar. But it’s easier to think of those things as pieces of himself. He knows what Tess is fishing for; if Ellie looks like his dead daughter, then that’s another solid reason for him to want to keep her around. A reason apart from the mere duty and obligation he’s been expressing thus far.

He can’t bring himself to admit to his partner that duty and obligation are already beginning to grow and morph into something else. A well of emotion in his chest whenever he looks at the girl: guilt mostly. It’s the way the kid is always trying to be useful, to make things easier on him, presumably so he’ll keep her around; the urgency with which she eats, like a little chipmunk hiding seeds in her cheeks— like she’s never seen a scrap of food in her life; the alarm in her features when he walked into the bedroom to check on her last night. 

All of that is his fault.

It’d be nice to see her change over time. To watch her start to slack off like the kids from the old world: sleep till noon and whine through the simplest of chores. Push her plate away and tell him she’s full after three bites so she can go back to the show she’s watching. Fill the walls of her bedroom with… whatever it is she likes. Space shit, maybe. 

Dreams like that are almost as dangerous as the situation they’re in right now. None of those things are going to happen anytime soon— And if he lets her get too comfortable, she’ll wind up with a bullet in her belly, or raped and brutalized by a pack of savages, torn apart by clickers. 

Best to forget about it all together. 

“Why do you wear a broken watch?” That’s Ellie’s first question when she’s awake next. They’re packing to leave. She’s picked out a new pair of jeans from the bag of clothes that Tess brought and a green long sleeve, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tee. He tells her to pack a sweatshirt in her backpack just in case it gets cold, but she hasn’t done it yet. 

He’s saved from answering by the well-timed interjection of his partner, who opens his own knapsack and makes a face. “What’s with all the Spam?” She holds up a can of the pretend meat: ham instead of bacon this time. Ellie looks up at him and there’s something unreadable in her brown-speckled greens; he can’t decide if it’s curiosity, gratitude or just discomfort. 

“Leave it,” he says, and Tess shrugs. “Alright. Whatever floats your boat.” She puts the can back.

The girl is all yes ma’am—yes sir— through the streets and Joel’s just grateful she’s listening. Deep down she must know how much danger she’s in—That one wrong move will get them all killed. She’s pretty quiet till they hit the tunnels, then, when it’s just the three of them, the girls get to talkin’ about smuggling. What kinds of things they move. Is it illegal? Have they ever been caught before? Do they ever traffic more than just weapons and ammo— “Like do you smuggle people?” Ellie asks. 

Wait—what?  “No,” Joel answers for his partner. “Nothin’ like that.” His tone is firm. He wishes Tess would shut the conversation down.

“What happens if you get caught? Do you have to kill the people who caught you? Or do you just knock them out?”

He’s getting the feeling this girl is more of an innocent than she’s lead him to believe: something he’s both glad of and daunted by— Joel knows deep down that it won’t be possible to keep her this way for long. Watching her lose that ain’t gonna be pretty. But as the person who’s supposed to protect her, it’d be real shitty on his end not to try. “Quit your gabbin’,” he says. “We’re almost through.”

Joel pries open the hatch at the end of the tunnel and opens it into the rain. Ellie scrabbles up behind him, then Tess comes last to help seal it back up. They take a small shortcut; he shelters Ellie in between him and his partner like a living, breathing bullet proof vest. That’s the only acceptable formation. 

He squeezes them through a smaller, makeshift tunnel and steps out the other side. 

Joel’s face down in the mud before his brain has a chance to register the blow. The barrel of the woman’s rifle hits him in the head, then between his shoulder blades as a low, threatening voice tells him to move, then to stay down. The thrum of the rain against metal obscures his hearing, or maybe it’s the blinding, dizzy ache spreading between his eyes. But he blinks it away and searches for sound. “You scan ‘em. I’ll call it in—”

Tess is on her knees to his right. First in line for the scanner, and Joel counts approximately fifteen seconds between that first bleep— and the cool metal pressing up against his own neck. He keeps his hands up, outstretched. Last thing they need is some asshole to get trigger happy; they’re already in a deep enough hole as it is. Ellie’s next. He can feel the increasingly familiar tug at his naval, the urge to shield her before it’s too late— 

The girl beats him to it. She lets out something akin to a war cry, then buries her little switchblade in the soldier’s knee. There’s a sickening crack that takes his breath away, like a bat to the stomach as the officer strikes Ellie across the face with his gun, the blow sending her flying backwards. Joel’s instincts take over then, and God help this sorry son of a bitch who just hit his fucking kid. 

His mind is on a loop of, Get in between—Get on top— Keep her safe— He rolls over the uniform, knees him in the gut to keep him on the ground. Gets in a couple sharp punches for good measure. It takes two shots from him, one from Tess, and they’re back on track. 

Joel’s sucking in heavy gasps of air, his fists clenched and bloody, eyes honing in on the child crouched in the shadow of an abandoned crate. “Fuck,” she curses, elbows on her knees. “I thought we were just gonna… hold them up or something—” The steady rain does nothing to wash away the guilt that stains his soul as she stares up at him in shock, her pretty greens searching for answers.

Does she realize how close she just came to dying? Goddammit. He doesn’t even know if she’s ever seen anyone die before. 

Emotion hits him like a tidal wave, too strong and too powerful to swim through, and the tether wrenches him forward with a force he’s not capable of resisting as he picks her up by her elbow, her arm contorting at an awkward angle. He’s hurting her, he can tell by the way she winces, but she doesn’t pull away and he doesn’t let go until she’s standing on two feet in front of him. Alive. Breathing. 

He tips her head to the side with rough fingers to look at the cut forming by her temple; it’s already starting to bruise. Painful, but it won’t need stitches— And as he loosens his death grip, his eyes catch sight of something silver glinting around her neck. Something he didn’t notice before because it was tucked under her shirt. A lightening rod of anger replaces the guilt in his blood.

“What the hell is wrong with you, girl?” He yanks the Firefly pendant off her person, breaking the clasp. “You wanna walk around the streets with a death sentence on your arm and a death sentence around your neck too?” he barks. Joel moves to toss the trinket into the ditch, but Ellie’s eyes go wide with fear—with betrayal, and the reaction stops him in his tracks. “Please don’t—” She looks like she’s about to cry. 

“Joel!” Tess admonishes. “Back off.” 

The harsh tone shakes him out of it. Communicates what he already knows to be true: that he’s gone too far. He opens his hand to peer at the tag, turns it over and there’s a name inscribed on the back: Riley Abel. Her earlier question echoes in his mind, the innocent curiosity in her tone when she asked him, “Why do you wear a broken watch?” and a sudden understanding washes over him.

This is her watch. Joel swallows— hard. Fuck. He’s a jackass.

Chapter Text

Ellie clenches her teeth and steels herself, because sperm donor or not, there’s no way in hell she’s going to let this touchy motherfucker make her cry. She fights the urge to take a step back, to put some distance between them before he decides to grab her again— But he’s still toying with Riley’s pendant and the cold fury in his eyes is gone. He locks her in his gaze and Ellie can’t move; she can’t breathe.

Joel sucks in his own deep breath and blows it out long and low, unclenching his fist. A hundred different emotions flicker across his face. He moves even closer; they’re only a few inches apart now and Ellie’s hair is stuck to her forehead; she’s half-drowned from the the rain and she doesn’t want him in her fucking space. But she squashes the prickle of discomfort, and fixes her brows into a defiant glare. 

His mouth softens and he looks resigned, maybe a little ashamed as he brings one tentative, bloody hand up to cradle the air, then says, “I am tryin’ to keep you alive, girl. I need you to be smart about this. Can you do that?” 

Ellie’s scowl deepens and she’s about to tell him exactly where he can stick it, but they’re interrupted by the spinning squeal of tires in the mud. “Joel—” Tess warns, “We’ve gotta move!” He grabs her hand before she has a chance to react and slips the silver chain into her palm, forcing her fingers closed around it. “You stay close.”

Tess takes the lead because Ellie has a hard time keeping pace, and Joel sticks to her like glue. She can’t distance herself more than a couple yards before he’s catching up or falling back. Ellie doesn’t have the brain power to process how fucking bizarre that is— He just killed someone for her; then he looked like he wanted to kill her, and now he won’t let her out of his sight. They crawl through an opening and crouch behind a long, concrete block as soldiers shoot orders at each other all around them. Her whole body fits under just one of his arms. She doesn’t fight the closeness, letting the smooth spread of fear extinguish some of the anger still burning like acid at the base of her throat. 

Joel and Tess are a well-oiled machine; they whisper back and forth, “All clear— Through this pipe— Soldiers up ahead— I see ‘em.” It’s all ducking, and sprinting, and heavy, water soaked jeans. Dodging flashlights and muddy shoes.

He keeps touching her. Not in the same forceful, angry way as before. Now, it’s calloused fingers between her shoulder blades, guiding her by the strap of her backpack. Steady hands hovering near enough to catch her if there’s a drop. A large arm that crosses over her body to bring them to a halt at the edge of an embankment. They’re all protective gestures, and she’s not sure how she feels about it. 

“Are we safe?” Ellie asks again when they’re through to a spot of relative quiet, and it’s not Joel, but Tess who answers. “No. They’re still around. But take a minute to catch your breath.” She could be delusional, but it seems like the stand-offish woman is starting to warm up to her. Her theory is further proved correct when Tess orders Joel to scout around for supplies and the woman shifts closer to her, reaching out for the Firefly pendant still clutched in her hand. “Here,” she beckons. “I’ll help you put it back on.”

“Isn’t it a death sentence?” Ellie grumbles, throwing Joel’s biting words back in her face, and the woman sighs. “Doesn’t really matter. If we’re caught by soldiers again, it’s those scanners you should be worried about. Anything else we run into out here doesn’t give a shit which side you fight for.” 

It’s a breakaway clasp, so all she has to do is push the metal ball back in place at the base of her neck. “Thanks.” Ellie tucks the necklace under the green collar of her Ninja Turtles shirt, and when she’s done, the woman eyes her partner’s back carefully, then lowers her voice. “He’s not mad at you, Ellie. He’s scared shitless,” Tess says in a barely audible whisper. 

“I don’t fucking care,” she snaps and looks away. That’s a total lie. Ellie cares more than she’s willing to admit. But if what Tess is saying is true, then what right does Joel have to be scared? She’s the fourteen-year-old girl with the brain infection forced to flee the only home she’s ever known with her biological father who, for one: isn’t some lowlife scumbag that wants nothing to do with her like she always thought and, two: has been living no more than a few quadrants away from her almost her entire life. 

How fucked up is that? 

The woman lets out a humorless snort and holds out an arm to direct her forward. “Whatever you say, kid.” Her eyes dart between Ellie and Joel again, then she shakes her head and mumbles, “Fucking hell spawn,” under her breath.

She’s sure Tess means it as a throwaway comment, but her words get the gears turning in Ellie’s brain. She is Joel’s spawn. She’s half his DNA. Maybe that’s not all they share. At the end of the day, he’s also leaving his whole life behind at a moment’s notice— for her no less. And isn’t there supposed to be some sort of unconditional love between parents and their kids? A bond forged at first sight? Though she’s pretty sure that refers more to moms than dads— She’s also pretty sure that she’s not supposed to already be fourteen when it happens— But maybe…

She wouldn’t go so far as to call her feelings toward Joel unconditional, but she knows enough to know that no matter how much of an asshole he is, she doesn’t want to lose him yet. Does he feel it too? Is he scared of losing her?

Nobody’s ever been scared to lose her before, except maybe Riley, and look how that turned out. Ellie frowns and touches the pendant again. They’re waist deep in water when they feel the low vibration of the jeep retreating overhead; the soldiers are pulling back, and when Joel opens the grate at the end of the pipe, they step out into a quiet clearing. “Alright. They’re gone.” 

Ellie sits down on a rock and looks at her knees, sucking in deep breaths, stealing a few seconds to smush the crumbling pieces of her life back together. To pretend like everything is fine. Totally cool. Not scary or traumatizing or anything. But these two don’t make it easy. “You need to get it together,” Tess whispers urgently, pulling Joel off to the side a few feet away. 

“This is too goddamn dangerous,” he hisses back. “Maybe we say screw it and take her through Bill’s town. See if he can get us a car. Last I heard, Tommy was out West, somewhere in Wyoming— Wherever he’s at has to be better than here—”

“Oh yeah, because the two of us driving across the country with a kid is gonna be so much safer than going with an armed militia group—”

“If we’re talking in terms of soldiers. Yeah, it’s a hell of a lot safer.”

“Look—” Tess lowers her voice even further and glances at Ellie. “Maybe I don’t get it, ok?” There’s something in the woman’s eyes that she can’t read. A key part of the story she’s missing. “But Marlene cares about that girl too. She’s got a plan and that’s more than I can say for the likes of us.”

The woman’s soft tone does nothing but short-circuit the crackling electricity that runs up and down his spine. “You’re right. You don’t get it,” he twitches and snarls. “You have no idea—”

“Stop!” Ellie stands up again. She doesn’t understand why Joel has to get so fucking mad at Tess all the time. And yes—She’s aware that she just snapped at the woman for no reason too, and that it makes her a hypocrite. But as far as composure goes, he’s losing it, whereas Tess is sticking to the plan. The well-thought out, well-reasoned plan.

“Stop getting so upset. You’re just making things worse,” she stresses. “Marlene knows what she’s doing. I trust her, and I want to go with the Fireflies. I want to help find a cure—”

Joel pivots on his heel and snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, we’ve heard that one before haven’t we, Tess? Heard it out of the mouth of my own brother ten years ago, and look where he is now—“ He throws his hand in the direction of the capitol building. “—Off in the middle of nowhere, as far away from these assholes and their half-cocked little terrorist plots as he can get.” 

“What if it’s true?” His partner challenges. “She’s immune to the virus, Joel. That's gotta mean something.” 

He glares daggers at Tess now as he says, “There. Is. No. Cure.” Each word is punctuated with venom. 

“Not yet. But there could be—” Ellie insists, still banished to the sidelines. “Every person I’ve talked to so far says that whatever happened to me is the key to making a vaccine.” 

“Ellie—” Tess holds up a cautionary hand.

“No! I'm not shutting up until you listen. I already told you—” She turns on Joel. "If you wanna back out and leave me with the Fireflies, that’s fine. But I’m going with them. I’ll get there myself if I have to.”

“And just how do you plan on doing that?” he bites back, gesturing into the distance. “You’ve got no weapons, no survival skills; you’ve never left the QZ. Do you have any idea what’s out there?” 

“I have a few pretty good guesses.” She rubs the spot where the teeth marks blister on her arm and his eyes follow her fingers down.

Joel’s anger seems to dwindle alongside hers. He tries to gentle his voice but it just comes out strained. “You ain’t walkin’ yourself to the capitol building, Ellie. And there's no way in hell I'm leaving you alone with the goddamn Fireflies. Not while you’re still drinkin’ the Kool-aid.” 

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

God he’s infuriating; he’s condescending, his temper is borderline violent and his mood swings are worse than hers, but Ellie’s needy little orphan brain laps at his words like a stray kitten with a can of milk all to herself. He still wants her; her heart purrs. She’s pathetic. 

“I don’t know which one of you is worse,” Tess says, sounding exhausted. Then she holds a hand out to Ellie. “C’mon little Firefly. Let’s go save the world.”

Yeah… Tess is warming up to her. Now if only Joel would do the same.

Chapter Text

“What happened here?” The soft wonder in Ellie’s voice echoes around them. Her eyes are wide as she cranes her neck to look at the crumbling ruins of what used to be tall buildings. Tess has been keeping her entertained, giving her a little history lesson, and for that, Joel is grateful. He doesn’t deserve her help with the girl, not after the way he’s been acting, but the woman does it anyways.

Joel’s never really seen her interact with kids before; he knows enough about her to know she’s never been a mother, but she did have sisters on her dad’s side years ago, and he’s starting to wonder if Auntie Tess might be an easier skin to slip into than she originally implied.

Whatever the case, it’s good someone’s got their head on straight because Joel is reeling. Less than two days and he’s already doing everything wrong. There are codes of conduct for taking care of kids, certain rules that are supposed to be followed to avoid givin’ ‘em any unnecessary trauma. Normal things like peaceful co-parenting, and not talkin' badly about her Mama in front of her, don’t apply if he can’t even remember the woman in the first place, but he shouldn’t be fighting with Tess in front of her either. 

He should be softer, more understanding; and he shouldn’t’ve grabbed her like he did… That was a big fuck up, borderline abusive. He never would’ve done that to— 

He never would’ve done that before: period.

Of course, everything is different now. There’re no laws, no big bad social workers ready to swoop in and take Ellie away from him. And despite the fact that he’s been through the same hell twice now, there isn’t any protocol for how to act the first time you kill someone in front of your kid. A guide to surviving in a state of near constant mortal peril with the teenage daughter you didn’t know you had. He’d even settle for, Positive Parenting: Apocalypse Edition. Fuck.

For now, he’s keen to let Tess do the talking. Somehow, she’s putting words to the horror unfolding in front of them, explaining it all in a way that Ellie understands. Freshly ripped apart bodies are just warning signs; clickers are like bats. She calls what they do echolocation. The whole building feels like it’s about to collapse around them, but Joel walks ahead of the girls and tries not to think about it while Ellie self-soothes in the background, a reassuring mantra of, “Everything’s totally cool. Totally cool.” 

Cute. 

She’s pretty tolerable when she ain’t yelling and swearing at him. Most of his mental energy is spent calling in favors with the Lord to protect her, to help him keep her safe, not that he’s got many favors left to call in— At this point, after everything he's done, the Holy Spirit might just decide to cut her down as punishment for his long list of sins. He’s disillusioned enough with the process to know that neither Ellie's age nor her innocence factor into the equation. 

It’s hard not to let those thoughts distract him, something that becomes abundantly clear when he’s jumped by a goddamn infected in the hall and Tess has to save his ass. Course, that little incident does nothing but raise his heart rate and distract him further; he can’t scout ahead and watch over Ellie at the same time. Joel has to fight to keep the other half of his brain present and engaged instead of looking over his shoulder every time she stubs her toe. It’s almost a relief when they run into more clickers so he has an excuse to keep her close by again.

Scaling down the building is by far the worst part, and Jesus Christ, he knows he shouldn’t be putting his hands all over this kid. She’s a teenager, not a toddler. But she wobbles on the ledge, and the sickening drop of his heart into his stomach hurtles him back to another night, another girl— People everywhere, Tommy instead of Tess at his heels, an explosion of glass around him. Right or wrong, he just can’t seem let her go, and to her credit, the girl’s smart enough not to push him away while they’re a hundred feet off the ground. 

Tess watches him with a newfound gentleness, one he’s not used to seeing in her face when she looks at him. Joel can’t tell if it’s pity or if she’s genuinely coming around to the idea of Ellie as a permanent fixture in their lives, but pity or not, as an alternative to the shocked, angry disbelief from before, he’ll take it.

“You stay close to dad; I’ll take the rear,” Tess instructs her as they come into another high traffic infected area, and shittttt; he suppresses a groan. He’s glad the woman is coming around, but does she have to call him that? It’s a little fucking soon… He hasn’t been in the kid’s life for fourteen years. No matter what she says, there’s gotta be some resentment there, and it ain’t like she’s been shy about her overall disdain for him. Ain’t like he don’t deserve it. Ellie’s brows pinch together; her mouth falls slack. “Uh— Ok. Rodger that.” 

She’s got that Firefly pendant around her neck again; he spots the chain at the base of her throat when she shuffles closer. Joel lets himself get distracted wondering who Riley is— The name is ambiguous; could be a friend from school, a boyfriend. Are those military schools unisex? He’s pretty sure they are. Here’s to hopin’ she wasn’t dating some lowlife motherfucker old enough to be a part of Marlene’s crew. Could be someone older but in a different role; maybe someone who took care of her in his absence… 

“Joel, look out!” Ellie hisses and this time it’s her who grabs him, small fingers coiling around the sternum strap of his backpack as she yanks him away from the snapping jaws of a runner. “Fucking watch where you’re going," she glares after he finishes shivving the thing. 

“Alright— Alright, take it easy.” He forces calm. Slips into a tone that’s almost soothing; it softens her nerves and she falls back into position.

Takes a little longer than he’d hoped, but all three of them make it out of the building alive. Then they make it through the next, then the next, and other than Tess getting a bit winded on the homestretch, they seem to be doing alright— Considering the fact that his partner’s been carrying the weight of this team all night, Joel’s not inclined to bug her about it. He glides a hand along the woman’s spine until it reaches the middle of her back, then rubs gently, leaning in close to whisper, “Alright, Tess?”

She takes a step back. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.” 

For all the grabbing, halting, and steadying he did on the way down, Ellie brushes him off real good when he tries to warn her to be careful crossing a plank. Maybe it’s the daylight spreading over the horizon. Maybe she thinks the worst is over. Either way, the snide, “Psh,” tells him she’s getting comfortable; she ain’t scared anymore, not like she was. He follows her across with the sinking feeling that this is what he’s been afraid of all along. 

“It’s so beautiful,” she marvels at the sunrise. Joel’s gut response is to agree with her, but they’re not held captive by the same view— She’s staring off into the distance and he’s staring at her, watching her watch the spot where the light meets the sun. And damn, that orange sky’s got nothing on those wide, sparkling greens. The smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. That quirky little smile, so goddamn familiar it hurts, as she glances back for his approval.

He’s so busy studying her, he doesn’t notice Tess come up behind them. “Hey—Pick it up,” she says sharply as she passes them. It startles him out of his trance, but Joel doesn’t follow her right away. His eyes linger on Ellie for a few more seconds, then slide down to the broken face of his watch. The woman clears her throat. “Joel— Stay focused.”

“Yes ma’am.” He snaps back to attention as he cocks his head toward the ladder. Nudges the girl in that direction. Back to the grind, to the nagging sense of failure as they reach the capitol square, cos who would’ve taught this kid to swim if not for a parent? If not for him. Another thing to feel guilty about before they even make it out of the city. 

Half an hour later and he’s kicking himself for losing his concentration. For not being more observant. For not noticing the change in Tess’ attitude sooner— sensing the silent current running under her skin. For the fact that a fourteen-year-old girl with zero experience on the Outside gets the memo before he does. “Holy shit. She’s infected,” Ellie says, and Joel’s blood runs cold.

There’s a code of conduct for this too. Rules they’ve discussed time and time again, but always in the abstract. They watch each others’ backs and pay attention to their surroundings so they don’t get fucking bitten in the first place; if it happens, they don’t let the other turn. He knows all this, but his brain refuses to process the information.

“Let me see it.” He shoves the words out. 

Tess backs away, jaw tense and head bowed like she’s scared of what he’ll do, or what he won’t. She’s got good reason to be afraid. Maybe he’s a selfish asshole; maybe he’s just used to making hard choices, but when it comes down to it, he’s not going to hold up his end of the bargain. Kids come first, and Joel’s not going to kill her, not in front of Ellie. “I didn’t mean for this—”

“Show it to me.”

She yanks her collar aside to reveal a set of oozing, blistering teeth marks at the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Joel recoils at the sight, a feral combination of anger and grief curling his lip. “Oh, Christ.” 

“Oops, right?” The woman is trying to find humor in it, but he doesn’t engage. He can’t. All he can do is gawk at her. When Tess moves to inspect Ellie’s bite arm up close, he steps between them. Blocks the contact. She’s infected, and he won’t let an infected person near his child. Like it or not, that’s what she is now, an infected person. Joel doesn’t have time to fathom it, to feel it. Best to treat her like she’s already gone.

Chapter Text

Ellie’s been on the verge of a panic attack since they left Tess to die. Since she saw the woman’s body from the top floor of the capitol building. He’s sharp with her at first; this is no time to get emotional, not while they’re dodging bullets and running from soldiers. Not while they’re headed face first through a field of spores.

Joel almost has a goddamn panic attack when he realizes the kid doesn’t have a gas mask about ten seconds too late. He’s about to take his off, when he notices she’s not coughing. She’s not wincing; she doesn’t seem phased in the slightest.

“How the hell are you breathin’ in this stuff?” he asks, and Ellie frowns at him. “I’m immune,” she says, as if it’s obvious. Maybe it should’ve been obvious, Joel doesn’t fuckin’ know. He’s fried. Splitting at his ends, all his edges unspooling. He can’t look back; he just fucking can’t. 

It feels like a betrayal to Tess, to disregard her, and to disregard the sacrifice she just made for them, when his distraction— his inattention to his partner is what caused this in the first place. Yet here he is shoving her out of his mind like she hasn’t been the only person he’s trusted, respected, and cared for since Tommy left nearly a decade ago. 

He’s almost thankful that Ellie’s losing her shit; it distracts him, triggers him to act. He’s hit with the comfort her, instinct in full force as they break out of the dark tunnels and into the sunlight. Ellie’s false composure shatters as soon as the light touches her skin.

“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.” She’s inhaling small, gasping breaths, squirming in place like she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Joel tries to get her to sit; there’s a large rock close by, but it’s like he’s not even there. She stares right through him. Sits down on the ground instead. Joel kneels next to her in the grass. “Easy girl— Easy—” he tries to soothe, but it doesn’t come naturally like it used to. His skills are rusty; his hand hovers over her back. He hesitates to touch her when there’s no imminent threat of danger. 

The kid’s choking on air, like she can’t get enough of it, but she’s got too much all at the same time. “Alright— Head down, Ellie—Between your knees,” he instructs, saying her name to try and get her attention. She’s so overwhelmed, so absorbed in her grief that he has to physically shove the back of her head to get her to comply. “I can’t b—believe we did that. We j—just left her there to d—die.”

“Breathe,” he commands. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.” His hand is still on the back of her head. “I loved her,” she sobs, and Joel has to resist the urge to scoff. To set her straight about what love is and what it ain’t, cos this ridiculous child didn’t love Tess. She didn’t know a thing about Tess. 

Joel loved her; maybe he’s just realizing it now. After she’s gone, when it’s too late to do anything about it. He loved her and he let her die without a second thought, and all for the sake of a girl he just met two days ago. 

His daughter. Admitting that, using that word, brings up a whole slew of complicated emotions, but there’s no skirting around it anymore. Best get used to the idea. 

He wouldn’t call what he feels for Ellie love. Not yet. He’s on that path. Joel’s not the kind of man who can be handed an auburn-haired little girl with his eyes, and his smile, and not love her. Denying it would be like fighting the tide. But you can’t love someone you don’t know. What he feels for her can only be described as complete and utter devotion, the likes of which he hasn’t experienced in twenty-odd years. A type of reverence that transcends everything else. It makes love for a partner meaningless. Erases everything before and after, brings his world to a stuttering halt and re-centers her as the sun in the middle of his universe. 

Like tectonic plates shifting, one continent breaking off into parts, being handed a little pink blanket in a white sterile room, and seeing that red, squirming, tiny body for the first time. When they’re so fresh they’re not even a person yet, but somehow you know that you’ll spend the rest of your life doing everything you can to keep them safe, fed, and happy. 

He has to stop himself, to close his eyes and take his own deep breath. Joel moves his hand off her head and trails it down to rub her back. He doesn’t want her to feel the defensiveness that flares inside him at her declaration. Anger flattens into a dull sting of guilt. Like an old friend, he’s becoming real well acquainted with that emotion. At the end of the day, there’s a reason this child thinks she loved a woman who was openly hostile toward her, then mildly nice for a period of twenty hours— half of which she was asleep for. 

She’s a goddamn orphan. Of course she latches onto anyone who’s nice to her. How is she supposed to know what love is if nobody’s ever taught her?

Joel wishes more than anything in that moment that he’d known about Ellie when she was still forming those attachments. It’s not like he would’ve won a prize for dad of the year. If anything, Joel probably would’ve been a shit father at that time. Hell, it’s not like he’s doing a bang-up job right now, but at the very least he would’ve been there for the kid.

He would’ve piggy-backed her around with whatever he was doing at the time; probably tried to do a little better in life so she didn’t have to grow up watching him kill and steal to survive. He would’ve done his best with what he had left— And if there were areas where he failed, Tommy would’ve picked up the slack. 

It leaves him feeling hollow to imagine what her reality might’ve been like. Was she left alone to cry in her crib for hours on end? Did she even have a crib in the first place? Or did they tie her legs to a wooden toilet and leave her there to rock back and forth all day? Like those kids from the orphanages in China. The ones that used to appear in Superbowl commercials next to phone numbers for donations. Did anyone ever hold her? Read her a bedtime story? Tuck her in at night?

Sure doesn’t seem like it. 

So no, Joel doesn’t tell her her feelings are wrong. He doesn’t tell her she’s being silly, or that she needs to shut up and tough it out. Instead, he sighs and says, “I know you did, girl. It’s gonna be alright.”

That seems to be the right thing to say, because Ellie hiccups, then sucks in a long inhale and blows it out again, nodding her head. “What do we do?” The trust is back, he realizes as she looks to him for answers. 

“You hungry?” he asks, and she shrugs. Looks away. “I can wait.” Joel’s gonna take that as a yes. “Jus’ cos you can don’t mean you should,” he says, already unzipping his backpack. She’s not at her finest mentally, best not deprive her physically too. 

“Ham, corned beef or hot n’spicy?” he asks, holding up three cans of Spam for her to look at. Her brows knit together and she rubs her legs. He’s miscalculated; it seems that being asked to make a choice, even one as simple as which flavour she wants, is too much for her right now. “I don’t care.”

“Right. Alright.” He chooses ham, cos he’s not near hungry enough to eat uncooked, corned beef flavoured meat substitute, and he’s not sure if she likes spicy; it’s better to save those for when they’re real desperate. Joel opens the can with his teeth. Ellie watches him like he’s some sort of God and not the volatile, moody asshole who scared the shit out of her less than five hours ago. 

He uses a knife to cut the squishy pink block down the middle, not bothering to divide it into rectangles, and offers her the bigger half. She holds it with her whole hand and immediately starts gnawing at the corner of the condensed pork. No complaints; she doesn’t comment on the difference in taste between yesterday and today. How the stuff is gnarly when it’s eaten raw. He’s not sure she even notices. “Don’t make yourself sick,” he warns. “Can’t be pukin’ up all our food supply.”

Ellie licks her fingers when she’s done, then wipes them on her jeans like an overgrown toddler. The Ninja Turtles shirt isn't really helping her case. Now she’s fed, he needs to lay down some ground rules with her. “You’ve gotta be lettin’ me know what you need, when you need it,” he tells her, trying to find a balance between gentle and strict. “If you’re hungry, thirsty, sick; if somethin’ don’t feel right; if it gets to be too much for you— I need to know so we can fix it before it gets out of hand.”

“Ok,” she says.

“You stay by my side,” Joel continues. “No matter what I say; no matter what I do. Don’t matter if your pissed off, or frustrated. Ignore me if you have to, but you stay close, are we clear?”

“Sure.” Ellie nods.

“Repeat what I said.” He needs to know she’s listening. The kid lets out a sigh, but humors him. “We stick together. I understand.”

“Alright. Good. Now, there’s a little town called Lincoln not far from here. There’s a fellow there that owes me some favors; I’m gonna see if he can get us a car.” He stands up first and brushes the dirt off his damp jeans, then offers a hand to Ellie, who takes it without hesitation. She settles her backpack on her shoulders and tightens her resolve. Pride swells in his chest at her resilience. He’d like to say she got it from him, but Joel knows that ain’t true. Girl’s resilient cos she had to be to survive. 

She touches his arm; tethers him back before they make it more than a few steps. “Joel—” 

“Mm.” He acknowledges her. 

“I’m really sorry about Tess.”

He can't bear to see the heartbreak in her eyes, so Joel closes his and sucks on the insides of his cheeks, choosing his words carefully. “Listen kid— I know it ain’t fair, but if we’re gonna do this, I need you not to bring up Tess, ever. I let myself get distracted; I can’t do that again, and I ain’t gonna be able to concentrate if you’re talkin’ about it all the time.” He shouldn’t be putting all that responsibility onto her. She’s the child and he’s the adult; she doesn't need him burdening her with his guilt. 

He regrets it even more when Ellie swallows and drops her gaze. “Did I distract you?”

“No,” he answers automatically, even though they both know it ain’t true. “You did nothin’ wrong, Ellie. What happened back there wasn’t your fault, and there wasn’t anything you coulda done to prevent it.” Joel needs to make that clear. He needs her focused, not stuck in her head worrying that he blames her for what happened. She’s just an innocent girl; there’s no one to blame but himself. 

“Promise?”

Oh Christ, he’s not gonna survive this. He’s not gonna fuckin’ survive this. “I promise,” he says. 

Chapter Text

“Man,” Ellie sighs. She’s using that voice again, the one that reminds him of a kid in a toy store— Or on Christmas morning, coming downstairs to find half eaten cookies and presents under the tree. “What?” he humors her, because there are no toy stores anymore, and she’s probably never had a Christmas. 

“Nothing. It’s just… I’ve never seen anything like this, that’s all.” 

“You mean the woods?” Joel clarifies.

“Yeah. I’ve never walked through the woods. It’s kinda cool.” He’s glad to see her taking things in stride. Above all else she’s grateful, and that shines through loud and clear in the way she’s listening to him. Respecting him as an authority figure. It’s good; he needs that. The part of his brain capable of arguing with a teenage girl is fully occupied trying not to comprehend the sickening loss he’s just endured. Those two things put together might just snap him in half.

“So… How did you know my mother?” Ellie asks him out of the blue and Joel realizes that he’s spoken too soon. He’s not off the hook yet. Not even close. “Were you a Firefly?”

“Was your mother a Firefly?” he dodges the question. When in the hell did he fuck a Firefly? Sounds more like Tommy’s thing.

Wouldn’t that be something? Getting himself all worked up thinkin’ she’s his daughter only to find out she’s his niece. Not that it makes much difference in this fucked up world anyways; blood is blood. He’d have the same obligation to protect her no matter what the percentage of shared DNA. 

Still, he knows the kid ain’t Tommy’s. His brother used to give him all kinds of shit for his reckless behaviour. “You wanna be a daddy again, Joel? Cos that’s where you’re headed…” and so on and so forth.

Boy wasn’t the type to go depositing himself just anywhere, and fifteen years ago the younger Miller had no more affiliation with the Fireflies than Joel did. But of course he can’t say any of that to Ellie, so he stays quiet and waits for her to answer.

“I think so… maybe. Actually I don’t really know. Marlene said she was a nurse. I guess I just assumed…”

A nurse. Yeah… Joel recalls there being a nurse or two. It’s easy enough to cut and paste the face from the photo into a memory; whether or not it’s accurate is a whole other thing. “In a triage camp? Or in a QZ?”

“I’m not sure.” Ellie pauses, then those speckled greens go wide with understanding, before darkening with accusation. She turns to glare at him. “You don’t remember her, do you?” she demands, hands on her hips.

In that moment, he thinks this has to be some kind of divine punishment, explaining this shit to his daughter. “It ain’t that I don’t remember…” he lies. “I’m just havin’ some trouble placing exactly which nurse she was.”

“Gross,” the little girl wrinkles her nose. “That’s kinda fucked up, having a kid with someone you don’t even know.” Tell me about it, sweetheart.

She gets distracted chasing a bunny, then when she comes back, there’s a nervous sort of apprehension on her face. She’s tearing off the skin around her fingernails as she speaks.

“If you don’t remember, then how do you know I’m even yours?” Ellie asks him like he hasn’t already thought of that. Like the mere suggestion that he might not be her father will trigger him to wash his hands of this mess and walk away.

Joel’s trying to keep a steady pace. He’d like to get to Bill’s before it gets too much later. Figure something out before nightfall, but he can tell this girl needs him to slow down a bit, and he is biologically hardwired to move at her command. Coming to a full stop next to a large beech tree, he beckons her closer and squares his shoulders.

“Because I just know,” he says real clearly. 

“But how?” she insists. “How do you know?” 

He’s not going to say it’s because he recognizes the way his heart looks walking around outside his body. Joel’s not going to tell her that her presence nestles into a spot inside him that’s been empty for longer than she’s been alive. She’d probably get a kick out of either one of those responses, but no matter how poetic all of this is in his head, he can’t put that on her.  

Just like she doesn’t need the burden of his guilt, she also doesn’t need the weight of his devotion. He’s not sure what telling her something like that would do to her affection starved brain. There’s a very real chance that he could die within the next few weeks, days, hours even, and after seeing the way she reacted to Tess, he shudders to imagine what the loss of a parent would do to her. Even one she hasn’t known for very long. 

He settles for a quick and dirty, “I’m just gonna need you to trust me on this one,” but when Ellie doesn’t appear satisfied, he adds, “Besides, we kinda look alike you’n’me. Don’tcha think?”

“Really?” she tilts her head to the side, shooting him a crooked smile— the one that tells him everything he needs to know. But he’s not getting into that today. He’ll stick to the easy stuff. “You’ve got my eyes,” he admits gently. “An’ oh— do you ever have that Miller scowl.”

“Miller… Is that your name?” she asks.

“Don’t wear it out,” he says, but Ellie just squints at him. She doesn’t understand the reference.

“What’s yours?” he prompts, and that one she can answer. “It’s Williams— And my mother’s name was Anna, just for future reference…” she trails off. 

Anna Williams; he stores that little tidbit away for later. If anyone’s going to remember a name, it’ll be Tommy, and right now, going through his brother is the only way they’re gonna find the Fireflies. If that’s where he decides to take her. He’ll see how things go.

“Tcht. Alright—” he drawls. “Well, c’mon then Miss. Williams, let’s get a move on. We’re burnin’ daylight.” 

In the absence of a regular dose of Concerta or Dexedrine, Joel’s gonna have to come up with some behavioural strategies to combat this attention- hyperactivity issue she’s battling. It’s clear the girl’s not trying to disobey him or make things difficult, but if this child stops to pick up a worm, catch fireflies, or try to stick her little hand inside a wasps’ nest one more time he’s gonna lose it. 

He tries to keep her mind occupied. “Carry this— Look for another way in— Help me lift that—” but she’s goddamn relentless.

Joel follows the smoke rising from a spot in the middle of the town, and Ellie calls him on the fact that he’s never actually been to Lincoln, and therefore doesn’t know where he’s going. “Did Tess ever come here?” she asks. 

He sighs. She was doing so good. “Ellie—”

“I wasn’t bringing it up,” she cuts him off, stubborn in her insistence. “I was just asking a fucking question.” He can’t get over the mouth on this itty bitty girl. Joel doesn’t answer her ‘fucking question,’ but instead of taking that as a hint to be quiet, it spurns her to ask another. “Are you sad?” 

“Ellie, I swear to God—” he growls, and oh boy— does this kid know how to mimic a mood. “Fine.” Her tone is sharp. “I guess I’ll just never talk again.” 

Is that a promise? Joel wants to ask, but he keeps that one to himself.

So much for the respectful, obedient daughter. Ain’t her fault. If he wanted one of those he should’ve stuck around and raised her himself. She doesn’t owe him gratitude for showing up at the last possible second; girl doesn’t owe him shit. 

Joel comes to understand real early on that he doesn’t like when the kid watches him kill, even when it’s infected he’s killing. He shivs a couple clickers and she surveys him, not with fear or distrust, but with concentration: a sponge soaking up knowledge. That’s the part he doesn’t like. A fourteen-year-old shouldn’t need to know the fastest or the stealthiest way to take down a snapping, screeching, naked body riddled with fungal plates.

A few minutes later and she’s behaving weird again, blowing long, trilling gusts of air through her lips, like she’s struggling to breathe. There’s a lot of pollen in the air, maybe she has asthma, or allergies. That’d be just his fucking luck. Kid can breathe spores no problem, but flower dust…

“Are you alright?” he stops to ask, and Ellie peers around the room unbothered, and says, “I’m trying to learn how to whistle.” 

Of course she is— Now’s an awesome time to do that. “You don’t know how to whistle?” Joel continues the conversation, because the longer he can keep her whispering and not whistling, the better chance they’ll have at keeping their heads attached to their bodies. 

“Does it sound like I know how to whistle?” she deadpans. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a smart aleck?” 

Joel learns a hell of a lot about Ellie wandering around the outskirts of this little town, starting off with the fact that she’s got sticky fingers. That works in his favor. It keeps her busy and it keeps her out of trouble. He doesn’t have to tell her what to look out for; she already knows. Just like she already knew which bullets were for which guns back in his apartment. Military school brat.

When she asks him for a boost, he does so under the condition that it’s only to open the gate; it’s an extension of trust, one that she passes. He tells her she’s doing a good job. Positive Parenting: Apocalypse Edition. Maybe he’ll write it. 

He’s getting used to her chatter; Joel finds that he actually wants to know random facts about her. Ellie likes gnomes, but not fairies; they creep her out. She had access to things like art books growing up. She likes arcade games, and a character called Angel Knives: an animated girl with knives for fingers. Seems about right. Fancies herself good with a bow. No fucking way he’s putting that one to the test. A switchblade is deadly enough for someone her size. 

A few trip wires later and the girl’s less cocky; she sticks closer to him, watches where she’s going more. The trust is growing, the tether thickening into something that resembles a bond.

Everything’s going nice and smooth until he lapses in judgment for one goddamn second and suddenly he’s hanging upside down by his ankle. He swings wildly for a moment, flooded with panic, his brain rearranging to make sense of the sudden change in perspective until Ellie grabs hold of his arms and steadies him like a pro. “I got you,” she says. 

He thanks the Lord for whoever it was that taught her about counterweighting and how to stay calm in a crisis, because joke’s on them— Guttural screams echo around the building, the rattling of a chain link fence as three or four runners close in.

“Ellie!” he calls, but she’s already scrambling to the top of the fridge with a straight-browed determination on her face. “I’m fine!” she shouts back.

Joel is live bait on a hook, like that wriggling brown worm Ellie tried to force him to hold for her under the covered safety of the woods. This has to be exactly what Bill intended. He yanks his Colt out of his belt, but he’s no marksman, and the pulsing pressure of all that blood rushing to his head throws off his aim. “Shit. Here they come…”

S’gonna take more ammo than he’s got to fell the horde. First runner takes two leg shots and one to the chest before it goes down, the next gets one to the head— but it was a lucky shot. Before he can line up his next shaky bullet, it’s too late.

Rotting fingers grab hold of his chest, stale, putrid breath warming his nose. There’s a cutting pain in his trapped ankle as he tries in vain to jerk his body in the opposite direction. Joel cracks the butt of his gun against the runner’s head once— twice— then three times before it’s far enough away to take down with a shot.

Anytime now, sweetheart. 

“Hold on!” Ellie calls, and something snaps and splits— He braces for the impact of his limbs crumpling into a pile on the floor, but it never comes.

Instead, Joel’s yanked higher into the air and the fridge crashes to the ground, landing on its side and taking his daughter with it. The girl is exposed now, in the middle of the action instead of seated safely above. He almost drops his gun at the sudden impact, but manages to steady himself in time to keep it.

Infected pour in from all directions. Runners mostly, but there’s a clicker circling Ellie as she saws away at the remaining rope.

“Joel!” She’s starting to panic now. Her cry for help comes at the same time that the rope propels him forward, like he’s a puppet on her string. Joel can’t fucking think straight, but if he doesn’t get it together they’re done for. No way in hell he’s about to watch that sweet little baby get ripped apart and eaten, so he takes the slowest, deepest breath he can and aims with the natural arc of the swing. 

He can’t afford to miss even once, and Joel somehow manages to take out the clicker with a single head shot, but he uses the last of his cylinder in the process and has to reload with shaky hands. A quarter of his ammo winds up on the floor. It’s no use. He’s helpless from up here and there’s no end to the bodies piling into the room.

“Ellie, get out of here!” he shouts. If he’s lucky he can keep them at bay while she escapes. 

Ellie dives at the rope and saws faster at his words, and Joel does his best to clear her a space; he blows the leg off a runner, and takes out two more after that. “Just run!” Joel tries again, but it’s like she’s lost her goddamn ears. 

“I’ve almost got it!”

“Ellie I swear—”

“Joel, watch out!” The ground comes rushing toward him and he barely has enough time to tuck and roll before he slams into the dirt, winded and reeling. He throws himself in the direction of the kid and narrowly avoids a set of snapping jaws. 

As soon as it registers in her mind that he’s free, Ellie rushes him. Skinny arms snake around his bicep, a baby monkey clinging onto its wire mother. “We gotta move,” he tells her.

“On your right!” she cries, and Joel isn’t fast enough to aim before they’re on the ground again, pinned back by claw-like fingers. Held captive by fetid breath— A machete flies in front of them, out of nowhere, and the runner’s head goes soaring.

“Off your asses and on your feet!” Bill snaps. Joel has no time to thank him as he yanks Ellie up by her waist and shoves her ahead of him. “Run!” he commands, and this time she fucking listens. 

Chapter Text

Joel isn’t sure if he should be mad at Ellie, or proud of her as she pulls a goddamn pipe out of the wall and takes a swing at Bill. Girl can hold her own; that’s for fuckin’ rights. It makes him feel better, safer. Like he doesn’t have to do all the work protecting her.

Still, the paranoid motherfucker’s gonna do something stupid if they’re not careful, and Joel really doesn’t want to have to bash the guy’s skull in for touching his kid.

“Stop!” he commands, wrenching the pipe out of her hand and tossing it on the ground far enough away that she can’t dive for it.

“Whatever you say, daddy,” she bites back, and Joel almost has an aneurysm until he realizes what she’s doing. The kid’s mimicking Tess. It’s both sickening and incredible to witness how quickly she was able to absorb his dead partner’s mannerisms and use them against him. He wonders if she even understands that’s what she’s doing. 

Bill pauses his rant when Ellie speaks and lets out a sharp laugh. “Joel’s got a daughter,” he chuckles again. “Who knew? Smuggling seems like risky business for a man with a little girl attached to his hip.”

Guy’s goddamn lucky that Joel knows his preferences lie outside the realm of teenage girls. Anyone else and he might just decide to consider those words a threat. 

Maybe Bill’s put off by the length of time it takes him to answer; maybe he senses their mutual discomfort at the statement, because the man’s face changes into one of skepticism, then mild disgust. He addresses the girl, “This is your dad, right? As in your father? You’re related?”

Now Bill’s using his own logic against him— But he can see how Ellie’s statement could be misinterpreted, and he should be grateful. Loathing as he is, the guy’s first instinct is to look out for the kid, to make sure he’s not some fucking pervert, as his daughter so eloquently put it. 

“Um, yeah,” Ellie says awkwardly. He can tell she doesn’t like the implication anymore than he does. “Yeah, he’s my dad.”

Bet she’s regretting that snot-mouthed little comment now. It’s crazy to him how fast she’s willing to give him that title. Joel can’t say he wasn’t expecting it, mostly because he hasn’t had time to come up with expectations. But it seems like they’re missing a step. Missing a conversation that should probably begin with “Fuck you, where have you been all my life?” 

Maybe that’s his guilt talking. After all, she knows he wasn’t aware… She trusts him, and he’s glad, because it’s true.

Still, he can’t help but ask himself the same question. It’s not like he was seventeen and clueless when Ellie was conceived. Joel was smart enough to know that his actions had consequences, but he didn’t care. He let her down before she was even born, and that sense of failure is hard to shake.

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it before Ellie’s getting into it with Bill again. Getting in his face, arguing about favors, calling him fat. For fuck’s sake. “I swear to God Joel if you don’t get your kid under control—” 

“He’s the one who handcuffed me!” she cries, indignant as ever.

Joel holds out an arm to distance the blustering man and yanks Ellie closer by her sleeve, “I need you to shut up,” he stresses.

“And you—” Joel turns back to Bill, pointing an accusing finger in his direction, “—You don’t lay a hand on her. Not one fucking hand.” Gotta make it clear where his priorities lie right from the start. 

“Oh ho— So that’s how it’s gonna be. Well, alright then Papa bear.” He tosses Joel the pen key so he can unhook the metal ring still dangling off Ellie’s wrist. “Tess know you decided to take the little girl and bolt? I thought the two of you were inseparable.” 

Ellie looks to him with a question in her eyes and he brushes her off with a small shake of the head, a silent plea for her to keep quiet. He doesn’t want to get into all this with Bill; doesn’t so much want to relive it with his daughter neither. Joel needs to focus; he needs Ellie to focus. “She knows.”

“Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” he says, effectively ending the conversation.

Takes less convincing than he thought for Bill to agree to help them put a car together, even with Ellie’s less than helpful commentary about the spare tire around his waist. Asshole must get lonely holed up here on his own. 

He doesn’t like the idea of crossing into the other side of town with Ellie, not from the way Bill describes it, but he can’t leave her behind. She might be better off if he does; that way, if he’s torn apart by infected, she won’t have to witness it, and she’ll have a home base full of food and supplies to keep her alive after he’s gone. 

Still, there’s at least three problems with that plan that he can spot right off the bat. One: he can’t imagine Bill being ok with the girl rummaging through his shit for the hour it’ll take them to complete their mission. Two: there’s no guarantee that Ellie will even listen to him; she could get hurt sneaking off after them, and three: he’s a selfish bastard; Joel can’t let her out of his sight for that long. He just can’t.

“Alright, look—” Bill gets him alone as Ellie wanders over to a booth to peer at the chess set on the table. “If we’re gonna do this, I need your word that Tess isn’t the mother of that kid. I’m not getting in the middle of whatever fucked up family drama—”

“She’s mine,” he cuts the man off with a sharp whisper. “Only mine.” 

“Fine,” Bill agrees, “— but I swear to God Joel if the broad comes through here in the next couple days, I’m tellin’ her everything I know.”

So much for keeping things quiet. Joel lowers his voice even more and makes sure the kid is out of earshot before he says, “Tess is dead; that’s why we’re leavin’. She ain’t the mother, but Ellie’s not handling it well. Girl needs to be around family; I’m takin’ her to find my brother out West.”

If he wasn’t in such a hurry, Joel might stop to wonder if Tess knew she had such a good friend in this strange, but oddly loyal motherfucker.

His late partner was too young to have mothered Ellie anyways. Not necessarily by everyone’s standards, but Joel had never been in the business of robbing cradles. He doesn’t remember that girl’s Mama, but he knows she wasn’t twenty-two when Ellie was born. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that in another lifetime, in a gentler set of circumstances, his first child would be thirty-two this year, but there were still some lines he didn’t cross, even back then.

“Soldiers?” the man grunts, and Joel shakes his head. “Infected.” 

“Shit,” he curses. “That’s a rough deal.” 

Bill’s less hostile toward Ellie after that, and as time passes, their arguments start to sound more like banter. The temporary truce between them is a blessing because Joel finds he has bigger fish to fry when Little Miss Angel Knives looks him dead in the eyes and tells him she needs a gun.

“Not gonna happen,” he says firmly, and the kid reacts pretty much how he expects her to. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Oh yes I am, is his automatic response, but he’d have to be an idiot to counter her with that one. Just in the same way Joel needs a refresher course on parenting, Ellie needs her own crash course on being parented. He’s gotta start slow and approach this with caution. “We can talk about that later,” he allows. “But it’s my job to look out for you, not the other way around.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and turns away. Lets out her breath in a loud huff. “I can take care of myself. I’ve only been doing it for fourteen years.”

There it is, the hostility he’s been expecting. 

“And you have no idea how sorry I am about that, Ellie,” Joel says, allowing himself a moment of brutal honesty. This is how he got her to listen to him the first time they met, and if there’s ever a moment he needs her to listen, it’s this one. “I should’ve been there for you, and I wasn’t. But I’d like you to give me a chance to make this right. Think you can do that?” 

Guilt slices through his chest, short and painful as Ellie swallows, then nods, her hard resolve crumbling under the weight of his heartfelt words.

The longing in those speckled greens is almost enough to make him change his mind, to put a gun in her hands and make damn sure she knows how to use it. Screw the tether; if he’s gonna start talking like this, he might as well take a blunt needle and sew their hearts together. 

Ellie loves him; he knows that. But Ellie loves the worm she found on the ground; she loves the bunny from the woods; she loves Tess. Hell, she probably loves Bill. If Joel gives in to his instincts, shows her the kind of affection she craves in return only for him to be ripped away again the next time they run into a horde or tangle with a group of hunters… It would destroy her, and he can’t let this last precious piece of himself be destroyed. 

He tries to backpedal a bit. Gives her a small, crooked smile and musses her hair with his hand instead of taking the girl into his arms and planting a kiss in that sweet auburn like he wants— But it doesn’t matter; it’s too late. He’s screwed. They’re both so fucking screwed. That’s all he can think as he rejoins Bill and readies himself for what’s to come.

Chapter Text

Joel doesn’t let Ellie have a gun, but he does let her drive the get away car, and that’s almost as cool. He keeps telling her things like, good girl, and good job. Just offhanded comments, but it’s stuff no one’s ever told her before, and she tries not to let him see the way the praise swells behind her ribs. He’s not stupid; he sees it anyways. That’s why he’s fucking doing it: asshole.

At least he’s not making fun of her weakness. Maybe he feels like it’s his fault. Maybe it kinda is— He did apologize, and Joel doesn’t seem to be the sort of man who apologizes for just anything. He left Tess to die at a moment’s notice without so much as a sorry for your troubles. Bill said they were inseparable. What does that say about him as a person?

It doesn’t matter. All that matters right now are the facts: he’s taking care of her, and he won’t let anyone hurt her. Not infected; not Bill. She can’t even get far enough away from him for anything bad to happen, not without him dragging her back by her backpack strap. For now, Joel is dad, and dad is safe. If he doesn’t want her thinking like that he can blame Tess; she said it first.

When all is said and done, Ellie scrunches up in the driver’s seat of the truck and eavesdrops on the men talking outside. “You gotta admit, she did hold her own back there,” Joel comments. Pride flushes in her cheeks; hell yeah she did. Next time it might take less for him to trust her. 

Bill just laughs. Says something about how he’s not gonna make it. Is that because of her?

They walk further away, and it’s hard to hear what they’re whispering about. Ellie regrets the dragon’s hoard tucked away in her bag, not because she feels guilty for stealing a backpack full of stuff. Dude wasn’t fucking using it anyways. No— she regrets it because she’s pretty sure Joel told Bill about Tess while she was off claiming her treasure and she wants to know what he said.

Their paranoid sidekick comes to the window before they leave, rests his arm on the door and says, “You take care’a that dad of yours, girl,” in a gruff, serious voice. 

Ellie smiles. “I will.”

In that moment, with the stick out of his ass, being so uncharacteristically sincere, she almost confesses her crimes. Gives him back his things. He did help them a lot, and he wasn’t so bad after a while— But in the end she decides not to if only for the fact that it would be awkward to hand him the stolen pornos, and she can’t open her bag without him seeing them.

“Scoot,” Joel says as he replaces Bill and opens the driver’s side door.

She doesn’t kick up a fuss. He’s already letting her help more than she thought he would after that whole gun incident. Letting her drive them would probably be too much for his big manly ego to handle. Ellie shuffles into the passenger seat and puts her feet up on the dash.

“Legs down,” he orders. She huffs and grumbles her protest, but does what he tells her, waving goodbye to Bill over his shoulder. 

“Who do you think this truck belonged to?” Ellie asks after a few quiet minutes, searching around for clues in the cup holders and under the seat. All she finds there are a few coins, an ashtray full of spat out, dried up chewing tobacco, and a McDonald’s receipt.

Joel doesn’t answer her first question, but she asks a follow up anyways. “What’s a McGriddle?”

He sighs and shoots her a look. “It’s like a breakfast sandwich, with eggs, bacon, sausage,” he explains, “—but instead of a bagel or a biscuit, it’s two pancakes holdin’ it together.”

Ellie’s never had a breakfast sandwich, or bacon— or eggs that didn’t come from a carton, so she can’t be sure, but if that’s what it is, it sounds delicious.

“It was probably a man,” she observes, and Joel raises an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?” She can’t tell if he’s really curious, or if he just wants her to finish talking so that she’ll be quiet. If that’s the case, he’s gonna be in for an annoying surprise later.

“Well, it’s a truck, and mostly men drove trucks, right?”

“I guess so,” he humors her. 

“And I don’t know any women who chew tobacco, or ones who would spit it in their car, then leave it.”

Joel leans his head back against the seat with a smirk. “Where I come from, there’re just as many women who chew as there are men.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “We’re in Boston, not some farm in Armington, Texas.”

He lets out what sounds like a cross between a laugh and a snort. “Arlington,” he corrects, “—And I thought I told you I was from Austin. Where’d you get Arlington?”

“I saw it on your ID,” she shrugs, daring him to challenge her on it as she digs into the compartment in front of her seat. Ellie stole the card out of his pocket after he said his last name was Miller; she wanted to see if he was telling the truth. Spoiler alert: he was.

She also learned that he was born in 1981, making him fifty-two, which checks out, but also seems older than she would’ve guessed.

He doesn’t comment, and they move on quickly when Ellie grins and pulls out something from the glove box. “Definitely a man,” she says, holding the crusty old Hustler magazine up to show him, a red-headed woman in black fishnet tights bent over on the front cover. “The pages are all stuck together.”

Joel cringes and tries to grab the magazine away from her. “Jesus Christ, don’t touch it,” he says. “That ain’t for kids—”

“This one is,” Ellie laughs, tossing the first one aside in favor of a more salacious second magazine. “Just 18,” she reads, “The only porn mag run by teens—”

“That’s disgusting,” he wrinkles his nose. “I’m serious, Ellie. Put that back where you found it.” 

“Don’t be such a pussy. Even Bill had one, see—”  she unzips her backpack to show him. “Except I don’t think we’re into the same shit, me and Bill— I mean, this can’t be real. How would he even walk around with that thing?” She opens to a page sporting a rather well-endowed male model. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Joel’s losing his patience now; she can see the irritation written all over his face. He leans over and snatches the naked dude out of her hands. “Give me the other ones,” he demands, and Ellie sinks down in her seat with another disappointed huff.

“You’re no fun,” she complains, handing him the first two. He chucks all three out the window and she lets her face fall into a scowl.

Joel matches her glare with one of his own. “Lose the attitude, little girl. You shouldn’t be lookin’ at shit like that.”

Says the guy who slept with so many nurses he doesn’t even remember which one of them he got pregnant. 

“Oh but you can I bet—” she starts, and he interrupts her before she has a chance to continue, “Did you see me lookin’? I didn’t think so,” he answers for her, then turns his gaze back to the road. “Shouldn’t be stealin’ in the first place.”

“Whatever,” she shoots back cos she can’t think of a better comeback, rifling through the compartment again to find the insurance papers. “Dale Koestler,” she says. “I told you it was a man.”

“Would you just… keep your hands to yourself for a few minutes? Please?” He rubs his head like it hurts and she tries to remember if he got hit while they were running all over the place with Bill.

Ellie decides to give him a break, pulling out a comic book, Savage Starlight, that she found in Bill’s basement; the issue is called Force Carrier. She tries to put her feet up on the dash again to read, but he stops her. “What did I say?” Joel snaps. “Get in the back if you can’t listen.”

“Holy fuck—” she drones, stretching her legs out again. “Yes Master Sergeant sir. Whatever you say sir.”

Joel ignores her, and it’s probably for the best. She leaves him alone for what feels like forever. Long enough for her to read Force Carrier all the way to the end. The cliffhanger end. “That’s not fair,” Ellie sets the comic book down on her lap with a sigh; she wants him to ask her about it, and this time, he obliges.

“What’s not fair?”

“To be continued…” she reveals, pointing to the last page. “Where am I supposed to find the next part?”

He purses his lips thoughtfully. “We’ll keep our eyes peeled, how bout that? What’s it called? Savage Moonlight?” 

“Savage Starlight,” she corrects with a small smile. Looks like he’s back to being nice to her again. Ellie rolls over on her side to face him, half laying down in the passenger seat as the engine hums beneath them. “How long does it take to get to Wyoming from Boston?” she asks.

“Few days, maybe a week if we can hang onto the truck. Longer if we can’t.”

“Oh.” Ellie frowns. “Is your brother nice?”

“He’ll be nice to you,” Joel says. “Don’tchu worry about that.” His reassurance sounds ominous, but then again, if things were perfect between Joel and his brother they probably wouldn’t live five states apart. 

“Do you have any other family?” By this point, she knows Joel well enough to know he doesn’t like answering questions, but Ellie feels like she has a right to ask, being his daughter and all, so she knows if she has anyone else she can go to for safety if something happens to him. Tommy is a good option, but he’s far away and the more people the better.

He shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

Ellie tries to stop herself from asking the next question that comes to mind; he already avoided it once, which means it’s a sensitive subject, but she just can’t help it. “Why do you wear a broken watch?”

It’s gotta have some kind of sentimental value, but he doesn’t seem like a very sentimental guy; that’s why she’s so curious.

“Ellie,” he reproaches, and she wilts at the rejection. They sit in uncomfortable silence for long moments until she builds her nerve back up enough to speak. “I’m sorry for being annoying. It’s just that I wanna know things about you. I’m scared you’re gonna die and I’ll never get a chance to ask you anything ever again.”

Joel winces, but doesn’t respond. Then, after another long minute, he lets out a slow, drawn out exhale, like he’s psyching himself up for something, and reaches over the cup holders to grab onto her hand. Startled by the sudden contact, Ellie freezes, but doesn’t pull away as he rubs his thumb gently over her skin, eyes still fixed on the road. “My daughter Sarah gave me the watch,” he says finally.

The quiet statement is like a baseball bat to the stomach. It’s somehow both expected and surprising at the same time. Ellie sort of wondered if he’d had other kids before, but the confirmation makes her feel all kinds of weird inside and she’s not prepared for it.

There’s sadness, because obviously something bad happened to her if he doesn’t like talking about it. Curiosity, because she wants to know more about her SISTER, holy fuck… that in itself is a whole separate bombshell— and there’s also jealousy because as much as Ellie loathes to admit it, she wants this new dad all to herself. She doesn’t want to share these tiny morsels of affection he gives her with the daughter he loved first, before her. 

Does he even love her? Is he capable of that? He definitely loved Sarah if he still wears the watch she gifted him.

“How long ago did she die?” Ellie asks, though she’s sort of afraid to hear the answer. 

“Twenty years,” he says, then squeezes her hand one more time before letting go.

She wants to grab the hand back, to hug him— or lay her head on his shoulder. Maybe he would let her, maybe he wouldn’t, but in the end she doesn’t do any of those things; she’s too scared of being told no. 

Joel clears his throat and shakes himself out of whatever mood her questions put him in, then turns back to her with some hard to read emotion in his eyes. “Why don’t you show me what else you got?” he prompts. “I know you didn’t just steal a porno and a comic book.”

Ellie has to remind herself what this is: reality, not some fairytale dream. Yes, Joel made her, and he’s where she comes from, but he’s not really hers. Like a good little orphan, she should be grateful for the scraps. She shouldn’t beg, or plead, or ask for more.

Let him give what he has left to give, she tells herself, and it sort of works because she finds herself able to smile at him again. “Does this make you all nostalgic?” she asks, pulling a cassette tape out of her bag, and just like that, things are back on track.

Good girl, Ellie. Be a good girl. 

Chapter Text

Joel tries not to make comparisons; he tries not to think about Sarah at all when he looks at Ellie, but she asks about his watch again, and he figures she has a right to know. Just like this time around, he didn’t get to choose his daughter’s name; Dee picked it. He remembers the conversation like it was yesterday: two dumb kids trying to figure out how to fill in a birth certificate. 

Deanna means divine, he recalls, and the word Joel quite literally means God is God; her daddy was a Sunday school preacher, so they needed a good, humble Christian name to make up for the fact that they got married at the justice of the peace down the road when she was already sixteen weeks pregnant. Sarah was the wife of Abraham: the only woman named by God in the bible.

Of course after Dee left, he’d packed Sarah up and moved her to Austin. Told her the name meant princess, which wasn’t a lie. In the end, he couldn’t raise his child under the same faith that allowed her mother to walk out on her before she even had the words to convince her to stay. There was nothing Godly about that. 

It feels out of place somehow to think of them as sisters. His first daughter had been a chronic only-child: independent, quiet, self-assured, solitary— Whereas his second daughter could not be more different.

This little girl is chaotic, and loud. She has moments of extreme maturity, like when she told him she wouldn’t resent him for sending her away, and moments where she swings all the way to the other end of the spectrum: look no further than the tiny hand-in-giant wasps’ nest incident for details. Sometimes he struggles to filter out the pieces of her personality from the needful, almost desperate way she craves affection; she’s starving for it. Only-children are rarely starving for anything.

Ellie is the kind of child that Sarah would’ve been put off by in school. The girl who didn’t know how to behave correctly. Who disrupted the class with jokes and got sent to the principal’s office so many times there’d be a chair with her name on it. Joel’s willing to bet that if he asks, she’ll regale him with dozens of similar stories from her academy days— But he doesn’t ask; instead, he completes what can only be described as a heroic feat of mental gymnastics to wrangle Sarah back into her box, writing Do not open, on the lid in bold, underlined letters. 

He watches Ellie sleep out of the corner of his eye, something aching in his chest. She’s still scrunched up on her side, head lolled back, lips parted; she does that thing that babies do with their hands, squeezing and releasing. He resists the primal urge to tuck his fingers into her palm and let her grab onto him. That’s not something you do to a teenage girl in her sleep. 

For all the fuss he’s making about Ellie’s stunted needs, Joel’s doing a shitty job at suppressing his own. She’s not a newborn, but he has the same impulse to touch her that he would if she were. To feel her skin. The softness of her hair. If this girl wasn’t his own flesh and blood, he would be having some serious doubts right now about his sanity. He figures it must be natural, four hours old or fourteen years: to want to revel in the beauty of the person you created. 

Joel wonders what her name means. If it’s short for anything: Eleanor or Ellen. He’s no expert in etymology, but he’s willing to bet its origin is something bright, something happy. He also wonders about Anna Williams, the woman who chose it, glad she had the wherewithal to identify him to someone, though he’s growing more and more resentful of Marlene with each hour that passes. She should’ve told him; he would’ve taken her, no questions asked.

The truck engine hums beneath them, and the appearance of a sudden fork in the road sucks him out of his musings, bringing the vehicle to a halt as he surveys the situation. To the left, a pile up, and to the right, a clear path on to Pittsburgh. If he were an untrained eye, the decision would be obvious, but Joel is smarter than that. He knows what those cars mean. Once upon a time he used to arrange cars to block highways, to herd unsuspecting travelers in the direction he wanted them to go.

He glances at Ellie. To him it’s all the same. As a man surviving in this world, there are two options: hunters or infected, death or worse death— But he’s no longer a man alone in the world, and the most dangerous cargo you can get yourself caught with nowadays is a teenage girl; they’ll take a child over a woman like Tess or Marlene any day, a little girl who hasn’t been around long enough to learn how to keep the wolves at bay. It’s sick, but it’s a fact of life and it’s something he has to consider.

They could get lucky. There are still some organized groups with standards. Joel had never killed indiscriminately. Never killed a kid. Never killed a parent traveling with their kid. Never raped or coerced a woman his own age let alone a girl young enough to be his daughter— Still, things are different now than they were in the first decade of the apocalypse. Food is running out. Men are growing desperate. Most of the people out here are no better than animals.

Ellie wakes up to the lull in the trip, stretching and yawning in her seat. “Why’d we stop?” she asks.

“Don’t worry about it,” he dismisses, and she rubs her eyes in response. “O—kay. Well, I kinda have to pee. Can I do that while I’m not worrying about it?”

Joel snorts. The other downside to traveling with a kid: pee breaks. This is the ideal time for her to go. Best get it over with now before they encounter anything unpleasant. The last thing he wants is to deal with a bathroom emergency in the middle of an ambush. “Don’t go nowhere I can’t see you.”

“Uh…” she trails off, shooting him a weird look, and he rubs his forehead impatiently. “I’m not gonna watch you, girl— I jus’ don’t want you to get lost in the trees. How ‘bout you duck behind one of those cars?” Joel points to a couple of the vehicles closest to them. 

Her shoulders relax, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Kay. Just checking,” she shrugs as she opens the passenger door and hops out.

He allows himself a brief moment to contemplate whether or not she’s old enough to be getting her monthlies. Considering he’d thought she might be pregnant the first night he met her, it’s likely. That’s something he’s never dealt with before and he doesn’t know how it’s supposed to work on the road. 

God he misses Tess. She would know; she’d also know which way they should go. He’s pretty sure the woman would tell him not to abandon the truck. The vehicle is by far their biggest asset. Without it, the trip lengthens from days or weeks into months. She’s stronger than she looks, daddy. Let her prove it to you. Joel chooses the clear path, and when Ellie’s back in her seat, he makes no mention of his indecision, shifting into drive as they move along.

“You said you went to the museums and the Space Centre in Texas, right?” she asks out of the blue, trying to put her feet up on the dash again.

This time, all he has to do is shoot her a stern glare. “Sorry,” she sighs, curling them in toward her body. “But you said that, right?”

He takes a long, deep breath to stop the repeated question from grating on his nerves, then grunts in acknowledgment.

“Did you take Sarah?”

“Ellie, not right now—” Joel snaps, clenching his hand into a fist.

He’s exhausted, running on almost zero sleep since Marlene turned his life upside down three days ago, and he’s already endured this subject and put it to bed once today. She huffs and looks away, scowling out her window. Guilt prickles behind his ribs, but it’s not strong enough to take back what he said. The kid needs to learn the difference between small talk and whatever it is she’s trying to do here.

“I just wanted to know if you think liking space is genetic,” Ellie says after a few minutes. “You don’t have to yell at me.”

If I think liking space is genetic? Fuck. He’s such a fucking asshole. Joel doesn’t look at her; he squints at the road ahead of them and cracks his knuckles against the steering wheel. 

“Maybe it is,” he tells her, because that’s the answer she wants to hear. He doesn’t have any particular affinity for space, and if he’s going back into the box, which he isn’t, he would acknowledge the fact that he only started taking his kid to museums, zoos and parks after her mother left, to fill a silence they rarely ever talked about.

They’re not far from Pittsburgh when Joel spots the first signs of danger. There’s a man hunched over in the road, hood up, a hand clutching his abdomen. He brings the truck to a screeching halt, sending Ellie lurching forward. She grabs onto the door handle to steady herself. This is why he didn’t want her to put her legs up on the dash. Hopefully she learns a lesson. 

“Easy,” the girl complains, but he ignores her. The hunter looks up, “Please… Help…”

“Holy shit—” His daughter looks at him for answers. There’s an innocence in her tone that makes him want to tuck her under his arm and shield her from all the bad in the world. A concern on her face that fills him with rage for whatever this sorry son-of-a-bitch is planning. “Are we gonna help him?”

“Put your seatbelt on, Ellie,” Joel warns, then watches to make sure she does it. 

“What about the guy?” she presses.

“Oh baby girl, he ain’t even hurt,” he says, and stomps hard on the gas.

Chapter Text

An oncoming bus slams into the side of the truck and they’re sent spinning, crashing into one car, then another, ping-ponging back and forth until finally, they go through the closed door of a garage and come to a jarring halt. The windshield is broken on Ellie’s side, and when Joel comes to his senses, he realizes that she’s clutching his arm, which is slung across her front like a secondary seatbelt in the blitz.

“I’m okay. I’m okay—” Ellie repeats, and he’s not sure why she’s reassuring him until he understands that his forearm is trapping her, boxing her in against the seat. Joel releases the pressure and offers his hand instead to pull her through onto his side. “Then get out quick,” he instructs.

The passenger door bursts open and a hunter lunges at Ellie, grabbing her wrists, then wrapping two beefy arms around her waist to yank her from the vehicle. Joel doesn’t think; his fingers curl around her ankle and he tugs as hard as he can until another one of the fuckers gets a fistful of his hair and jerks him back. He lets go; why does he always have to fucking let go?

“Joel!” she cries. Calls for him. Needs him, and it’s all he can do to drown out the onslaught of memory. Sarah’s panicked screams of, “Dad! Daddy—!” as Tommy’s truck flipped onto its head, her little leg twisted and in pain: him disoriented and useless from the impact.

The momentary loss of concentration leaves him vulnerable, and the guy almost puts a chunk of glass through his windpipe, but Joel snaps back to attention at the last second and delivers it to him tenfold, leaving the hunter gurgling on the ground. 

Ellie’s putting up one hell of a fight. Kicking. Screaming. Biting the man who’s trying to wrestle her away. Can she infect people like that? Jesus fucking Christ he hopes not.

She calls the guy a chickenshit, and it might be cute if the asshole doesn’t respond by backhanding her so hard Joel can hear her fuckin’ head rattle. 

He kicks the man away, then grabs him by the back of the neck, slamming him once, then twice into a table full of concrete bricks, the head exploding like a pineapple in the microwave. Joel grunts, sucking in air as he pulls back and admires his handiwork. Nobody fucking touches his girl and lives to tell the tale.

“Motherfucker,” Ellie coughs, grasping at her chest, and he helps her stand up. “Catch your breath.” Joel tosses the blue- green backpack out of the front seat and she catches it. “We’ve leavin’.”

“Joel, watch out!” she screams, and just like that they’re back in the thick of it.

He takes out one or two more hunters with the Colt, then ducks Ellie under the blown-out windowsill of an abandoned house.

“Look at me,” he commands, grabbing her chin between his fingers to ensure follow through, green on green as he does his damnedest to dig right into her soul. “This ain’t a free for all,” Joel tells her. “Right now, we’re one person. One person. You hear me?”

She swallows, then nods. Like she can feel the squeeze of his fingers coiled tightly around that tether, anchoring her to him. “One person,” she echoes. “Roger that.”

Ellie stays right on his heels as he picks off the hunters one by one. She’s intuitive enough to know when to duck before he even has a chance to give her the whispered instruction; she knows when to run, and she knows both when to move in front of him, and when to stay behind. They’re so in tune that he starts to wonder if there really is some sort of evolutionary cord between them, a channel that passes knowledge from his head into hers. 

The little girl knocks him back to reality in a split second when out of nowhere, she darts a few arm-lengths away from him to pick up a bottle off the ground, chucking it against a nearby wall, green glass shattering everywhere. Instinct tells him to put her up against that same wall and shake some goddamn sense into her, but he stifles it when she points to the distracted sniper above them, aiming a rifle at the spot where the bottle hit. Her quick thinking gives Joel just enough time to put a bullet through the guy’s temple. “Good girl,” he praises. 

Told you she’d prove it, Tess says in his head. 

She’s strong: solid, and she doesn’t crack until they’re face to face with something outside the realm of kill-to-survive. One of the more twisted sides of what humanity is capable of—

“Look,” Ellie says, the hazel flecks in her eyes bright with shock, visible against the yellow glow from his flashlight as she takes in a batch of mangled bodies laid out and dissected on slabs in front of them: the handiwork of some seriously deranged men with far too much time on their hands. 

Joel puts firm hands on her arms from behind and steers her toward the busted lockers. “You look in there, and stick to the perimeter; eyes to the wall,” he instructs.

She doesn’t need to see all this, and definitely not up close and personal. Not yet. They’ve got a lot of ground to cover before they reach Wyoming now that they’re out a vehicle.

“Sir yes sir,” Ellie salutes, trying her hand at humor— But the attempt is weak. Her voice quavers. He snorts anyways; Joel’s trying to be there for her. Fuck, he’s trying harder than he’s tried at anything in twenty years, but even so, he’s not sure it’s enough.

They’ve only been on the road a couple days and he can already see it chipping away at her innocence, little by little. Stealing the childhood right out from under her feet. 

Still, it’s better than the other option: another daughter dead in his arms; her little body discolored and turning stiff as he tries in vain to revive her every time they stop for a breather— Until all her ribs are cracked and Tommy’s in tears, pleading with him to just let them bury her, but he can’t stand the thought of his baby going cold under the ground. He left the house without a fucking jacket for either of them. What kind of father does that?

“Joel—” Ellie prods him on the stairs once they’ve left the little shop of horrors. “I asked how you knew?”

He blinks back to attention and sighs. “About what?” Joel’s delaying the inevitable now; he knows what she’s asking.

“About the ambush,” the kid clarifies, oblivious, as children often are, to the fact that she’s treading on some mighty thin ice here. That there are cracks forming dangerously beneath the surface of his cool exterior. 

The last thing he wants to do is tell her how all of this brutality used to be his kingdom. To explain what he became in the years following his daughter’s death, when his whole world fell apart— What he’s still capable of under the right circumstances. It’s bad enough to have to go over the stuff involving her mother. 

Joel keeps it simple. Leaves things up to her imagination. “I’ve been on both sides,” he says, then puts a hand on her elbow to prevent her from getting her foot caught in one of the rickety steps.

She doesn’t need him to. Ellie has eyes; she can see that the wood is unstable— That it’s rotted away in some spots, but he knows she likes to be touched, that it comforts her, and he hopes the gesture will communicate silently what he’s too much of a coward to say out loud: no matter where I’ve been. No matter who I was. I’m yours now, little girl; I belong to you.

It looks like she’s going to ask something else, but she seems to think twice about it, and the question dies on her lips. Instead, she explores the hunters’ lodgings, picking through photos and paraphernalia on the bed while Joel does some work on his guns.

“What’s Durex?” Ellie asks after a minute of rooting around in the piles.

He’s not paying enough attention to give her an answer, something he regrets bitterly when her voice goes soft with wonder. “Woah— Check this out, Joel. Do you think we can use these for anything?” she asks.

To his utter horror, when Joel does turn around, it’s just in time to see his daughter stretching a condom over her entire hand, all the way up past her wrist, the royal blue wrapper discarded by her knees. 

“Aw gross. It’s sticky!” she complains. “Like there’s something on it.”

Durex. For fuck’s sake. Condoms haven’t been available for years. Enough time for them to become unrecognizable to a child born in 2019. Ellie doesn’t know it, but she owes her life to that sordid little apocalypse fact. After two decades, it’s a miracle the one on her hand is still holding up. 

Joel curses, yanking her arm towards him so he can pull the offending thing off her. “When you don’t know what somethin’ is, don’t touch it,” he scolds, and she looks at him like he has two heads. 

“It’s not dangerous.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s like a weird glove. There’s a bunch here— You don’t think we can use them for anything?”

A weird glove indeed. Joel flicks the condom onto the ground and tries not to let her see him cringe; if she finds out what it is she’ll want to tease him about it, and he’s not in the mood. “No. We can’t use ‘em. C’mon girl, wipe that gunk off your hand. You’re better off learning how to increase a clip capacity—” he changes the subject, motioning her over to the work table.

Unperturbed, Ellie grins and says, “I thought you didn’t want me to know about guns.”

Better guns than sex, he thinks with a shudder, but doesn’t say it out loud. 

Joel’s proud of himself for remembering the name of Ellie’s comic: Savage Starlight. The one she was reading in the truck. He finds another issue for her on the floor of an abandoned bus, and the smile she gives him is almost enough to do away with the nagging sense of failure in his gut.

“I think this is the first edition,” she tells him excitedly. “This has to be the one where Dr. Daniela builds the jump drive.” 

“Oh. Good,” he says, because what else can she expect from him? It’s a book about spaceships. He never knew what to say when it was Dawn of the Wolf, or The Vampire Diaries neither. Joel’s just glad she’s happy. 

They run into more trouble trying to make their way to the bridge: their ticket out of this infected, hunter infested shithole of a QZ.

He hates that he can’t seem to make her safe no matter how many people he kills. He hates that she has to witness so much death. Enough that she’s becoming desensitized to it already— And most of all, Joel hates that he has to get to know her like this. That he wasn’t there when she needed him for more than just survival. He’s been absent from her life for longer than he was ever a dad to begin with. 

So yeah— he lets her walk too far ahead of him. Lets her do too much. Tempts fate because it makes her feel good to be able to help and that eases his guilt. She keeps trying to play with him, like a toddler on a chair directing her Barbie dolls. You be the concierge, I’ll be the guest. I’d like one of your finest suites please.

He indulges her. 

She tells him at least two dozen puns back to back from that book of hers. You can only laugh so many times before the words all jumble together into nonsense. 

Still, he doesn’t complain.

It won’t erase what she’s seen, but maybe it’ll give her some sense of peace— Of familiarity. Wouldn’t it be somethin’ if he could do that for her?

Course it only takes one wrong move. One toe out of line and you’re walking face first into the butt of a gun, stumbling headlong into a horde, or stuck at the bottom of a fucking elevator shaft with your kid screaming for you from a hundred feet above. 

Chapter Text

Joel tells her to wait for him. “Stand in one spot and don’t move. I’ll find you— No, I don’t need help. Stay right where you are.” He repeats that last one at least three times so it’s nice and clear because he knows standing still isn’t her forte. He knows that her patience is disordered. That she’s got a compulsive need to move around and explore unfamiliar places. Worse: she likes to feel useful.

Not for the first time, Joel wishes his partner was still here. She didn’t want to be Auntie Tess; that was just fine, but he reckons she would’ve been good at it all the same. At the very least, the girl might be more inclined to follow instructions set out by someone other than the guy who fucked off and left her alone for fourteen years.

He can’t see Ellie; he can’t even hear her anymore, and for fuck’s sake— he needs to do at least one of those things soon or he’s gonna lose it. 

Hell, at this point he’d be ok with Tommy riding to the rescue. His brother could pull that little girl up onto his high-horse to wait for him if it meant he had that kind of guarantee that she was safe. As he wades through dirty, parasite ridden water, his mind is filled with visions of Ellie backed into a corner, throwing bricks and bottles at groups of hunters advancing on her, weapons drawn.

In the unlikely event that they were regular people and not psychopaths who didn’t care that she was a kid, or perverts giddy with excitement to find a young girl alone in the world, all their mercy would disappear the moment they spotted that bite mark on her arm; she wouldn’t even be a person. 

He’ll get back up to where he left her and she won’t be there; he’ll find her somewhere close by with a belly full of bullets, jeans pulled down around her ankles, drowning in a pool of her own blood. She’ll have died alone and scared without anyone to hold her hand or help her through it. Her last thoughts will be, where’s my dad? Why didn’t he come?— And won’t that just be the perfect summarization of their entire relationship? 

The only saving grace is that it was him, not Ellie who fell into this shit hole. She wouldn’t make it, even if he jumped down here with her. You can’t teach someone who doesn’t know how to swim, how to dive under floors and doorways, or tunnel through collapsed hallways. 

When he’s through the water and back on dry land, there’s scuttling all around him. A thousand tiny screeches.

Joel slips on his gas mask and heads in the direction of the swarm. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she told him, but he can’t think of anything more stupid than walking straight into a field of spores. Fungal plates so thick you can’t pick out the color of the walls.

It’s quiet down here. Sometimes the Cordyceps grows so out-of-control that it fuses together and creates these placenta-like blobs of nothing. That doesn’t always mean danger, but the rats are running from something so he keeps his guard up, just in case. 

There’s an exit, and with a stroke of luck, he locates the keycard that’ll unlock it, but the electricity’s shot, so he maneuvers his way back down to the lower level to fire up the generator. The loud, vibrating noise draws something out of the bowels of the basement, and he hears a skittering sound behind him, then the sickening tear of limbs detaching from one of those spongy corners. 

Something screams.  

Stalkers.

He’s smart enough to start running before he sees them. They’re mutated and dangerous, but faster and more dexterous than clickers, closer to runners in the way that they move, but less clumsy. It’s the nearest to human agility these things can get. Feels like a waste to spend his bullets down here, but there’s no creeping past these quick sons-of-bitches. All he can do is draw them out and hope to high hell he spots them before they spot him.

Lord, please let Ellie be where he left her. 

After the infected are taken care off, Joel finds an unopened 24-pack of Poise maxi-pads in a duffel bag along with a sleeve of ponytails in what remains of a women’s bathroom. He takes the extra second to stuff them into the front pocket of his backpack. Least that’ll save her the trouble of trying to fashion something out of scraps of cloth, or wearing her hair in a knotted mess because her one remaining elastic snapped. 

He’s operating under the assumption that she’s still alive, he has to, because if that’s not the case, then he might as well feed himself to the rest of those faceless monsters. The hunters would give him a cleaner death. Don’t really matter how he goes— But one thing’s for certain: Joel Miller is not about to outlive another daughter. 

Early life experiences soured him to the idea of heaven or hell. The most likely scenario is that dying feels like falling into a void that turns into nothingness, but if it is true, then there’s not much chance of him and Ellie ending up in the same place. He takes comfort in the fact that at least she’ll have family up there waiting for her, even if it’s not him. He’ll endure the fire gladly if it means those two beautiful girls can be somewhere sweeter: somewhere together. 

She ain’t gonna die, Joel tells himself, ducking behind a row of counters in what appears to be the hotel’s kitchen and taking out a couple more assholes, nice and quiet. Ellie’s gonna stay still and do what he told her to; she’s gonna understand how important it is to listen when he’s not around. Girl’s already shown that she knows how to behave when it counts. 

Too bad they have very different definitions of when it counts. 

He’s fucking drowning. The guy’s got his head underwater and he can’t reach the gun; he’s starting to see spots, but that don’t mean it’s game over. Joel’s been in this position before and come out of it alive. He can do it again— But he doesn’t get the chance to gain control back before a small hand darts into the water right in front of his face. There’s a shot, and the pressure on his back lifts. 

A low hum of dread starts in his lower abdomen, rising through his ribs and into his throat as he sputters and coughs up water. Joel braces himself on his hands and knees and turns around just in time to see Ellie holding the smoking gun with shaky hands, greens wide with shock, staring right through him as understanding washes over her.

“Man… I shot the hell out of that guy, huh?” she says, and like so many times with this child, he doesn’t think, he just reacts.

“Give me that,” Joel snaps, snatching the weapon away from her. She blinks, the flare of anger in his tone barely seeming to register as she sits all the way down and drops her head between her knees, just like he taught her. “I feel sick.”

Dread turns to disgust and coils in the pit of his stomach, spitting and smouldering until his insides are charcoal black and his mouth is dry. There’s a pulse behind his eyes, and Joel’s vision tinges red. Ellie’s never killed anyone before. That much is obvious. Like he didn’t fucking know it already; she’s just a baby. She’s never been forced to defend herself like that… to defend anyone like that, not until he came along. 

Joel can’t protect her. Not by himself, not from himself, and a blinding wave of hopelessness and rage crashes over him all at once. 

He deserves to hurt for this, and he knows deep down that she doesn’t, but she’s a piece of his soul outside his body. A weaker piece that he can bend into submission before she gets herself fucking killed— “What in the hell are you doin’ down here? I thought I told you to stay put,” he seethes, his voice raised and offensive.  

Startled by the aggression in his face, Ellie flinches back and steels herself. “Well, you’re glad I didn’t, right?” she challenges.

He scoffs. “Glad you didn’t? I’m glad I didn’t get my head blown off by my own goddamn kid! That’s what I’m glad about—”

“You know what? No!” she lashes back. His temper triggers the fight instinct inside her as she stands up and straightens her posture. “You don’t get to do this. How about, ‘Hey Ellie, I know it wasn’t easy, but it was either him or me. Thanks for saving my ass.’ You got anything like that for me, Joel?”

He grabs her arm, hard, and yanks her close. Ellie tries to pull away, but he doesn’t let her.

“You listen to me little girl,” he hisses, squeezing her tighter. “You do what I say, when I say it. I tell you to wait, you wait. I tell you to run, you run. I tell you to stay in one fucking spot and don’t move, you do that—”

“Get your fucking hands off me!” She struggles against him, tries to push on his chest, but he has her in a vice. He needs her to listen. Needs her to hear him over the ringing in his ears. “What I say, when I say it—” he growls.  

She glares up at him, her body rigid; she doesn’t try to shove him again, but she’s not giving in— All she’s doing is choosing a different weapon.

“I should’ve just let you die,” Ellie spits, and the words wash over him like molten lava. They melt the flesh off his bones and tear the anger away with his skin leaving his heart open, raw and exposed to her. 

He lets her go and she stumbles back, rubbing her arm in the spot where he grabbed her. 

Fuck. There’s no saving him, is there?

“Yeah, maybe you should’ve,” Joel mutters, and his daughter retreats like a wounded animal, hackles raised and shoulders back.

He keeps them moving, doesn’t give her time to lick her wounds. Doesn’t give himself the chance to wallow in his own self-hatred. In the damage he’s caused to their already fragile relationship. 

Ellie gives him a few minutes before parking herself on a covered table in one of the long stretches of hallway. She rolls up the sleeve of her Ninja Turtles shirt to reveal a five finger bruise forming on her bicep.

Now it’s Joel who feels sick.

He wants to drop to his knees in front of her. To promise he’ll change. That he’ll never do it again. He wants to plead for her forgiveness, but he doesn’t. Joel doesn’t because she might just give it to him. She’s vulnerable enough, but it wouldn’t be for her, it would be for him— And he knows how this goes: the cycle of abuse. He can’t let himself fall into that with her. She’s too important.

Joel approaches her with caution. “Can I take a look at that?” he asks, and she shakes her head. “I don’t want you to touch me.” 

He backs off.

Ellie sucks in a deep, steadying breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, it’s with a newfound determination on her face. She allows the bright green fabric to fall back into place, then stands up and approaches him, knotting a hand in the front of his button-down. 

The girl draws him in close with more strength than he knew she possessed. The action makes him ache with guilt; it’s a gross parallel of what he did to her. Still, he allows it. 

“I’m not scared of you,” she tells his chest. “You can’t make me be scared of you.”

I don’t want you to be scared of me, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. How can he when there’s clearly some part of him that does?

Maybe he’s trying to show her how dangerous it is to get herself attached to someone like him. Maybe this is his own twisted way of punishing himself for not protecting her. Doesn’t matter. If he continues down this path he’s gonna end up hurting her worse than putting a bullet through someone’s skull ever could. 

He can’t fail her like that again. She’s just a little girl. 

She’s his little girl. 

“Ok, Ellie,” he says gently, and he hopes she believes him, but he’s more than aware that he doesn’t deserve her faith. 

Chapter Text

“He’s not mad at you, Ellie; he’s scared shitless.” Tess’ voice echoes in her head as she follows Joel through the abandoned hotel.

She didn’t understand why he was scared before: now she does, and even though she knows it’s fucked up, Ellie finds that the thought sleeves itself over her heart like a protective coating. Gives it a warm glow. 

She touches the bruise on her arm and thinks of Riley. How the girl would lash out with words, throw fits and break her shit, say the most hurtful things that left Ellie’s eyes stinging and her stomach sore, then come knocking at her door when the stars were out with I’m sorry written all over her face.

For six weeks her best friend disappeared without a word. Abandoned her at school, left her all alone, then returned in the middle of the night with chapped lips, water guns and promises.

Riley was scared. Her father got bit and ripped her mother to shreds right in front of her. She had to kill him. She didn’t want to lose someone close to her like that again. 

Joel’s daughter died twenty years ago. Now he has Ellie and it makes sense for him to be scared she’s going to die too. That’s why he ripped the Firefly pendant off her neck on the outskirts of the Boston QZ. It’s why he shouted at her downstairs. Why he grabbed her hard enough to stain her skin black and blue. It wasn’t out of anger; it was out of love. It had to be.

Tess knew him best. Her words had weight. 

“Think you can give me a hand with this piano?” Joel prompts; it’s the first time he speaks since her little speech at the table. 

She wants to ask him if he’s sure he can trust her to do that, but he’s being so gentle with her right now it seems like a bad idea to poke the bear, so Ellie nods, and uses all her strength— She wants to prove to him that she can be useful, and he rewards her with a soft, “Good job, girl,” muttered under his breath.

“I wasn’t trying to disobey you back there,” she says once they’re up to the next floor. “It’s just… You were taking such a long time, and I started to think, ‘Maybe he’s gotten himself into trouble.’” 

Joel huffs out a sigh and massages his forehead, eyes pointed carefully away from her. “I know, Ellie. S’just that I don’t want you worryin’ about me; you need to be lookin’ out for yourself— but I shouldn’t’ve… It wasn’t right for me to…” He doesn’t finish the thought. Instead, he purses his lips and motions for her to follow him into the next room. A bar, or a banquet hall maybe. “Let’s go.”

Ellie trails after him. I’m not scared of you, she reminds his back. 

There’s no reason to be. He’s her dad; he’s safe. If she thinks about it hard enough, what he did doesn’t even count as hurting her. Not really. In fact, she should be grateful that he cares enough to get mad. Bruises fade, and it’s not like he tried to kill her. He didn’t try to rape her. That’s what the rest of the world wants to do— The world he’s protecting her from. 

The sun is setting outside, the trees and buildings around them painted with vividness, a twilight luminescence that makes her look twice as Joel beckons her over, crouching to peer into the courtyard below.

“C’mere. Keep your head down,” he whispers, rifle in hand. He must’ve stolen it off the dead guy rotting in the corner of the balcony. 

He points to almost two dozen armed men, maybe more, milling along the pathways, in and out of the surrounding edifices. “Alright now… I’m gonna jump down there and clear us a path.”

“What about me?” Ellie asks, and he answers before she has a chance to tell him that he can trust her. That she can help. “You stay here.”

It doesn’t seem to matter how much she reasons it out, how logical she tries to be about his overreaction, she still can’t seem to control her own. “This is so stupid. We’d have more of a fucking chance if you’d let me help—” she hisses.

“I am,” he bites back. The first signs of irritation flash across his face, but he suppresses them by squeezing his eyes shut and breathing out one long exhale. He doesn’t want to snap at her again; she can tell. Joel cools his expression and says, “Now you seem to know your way around a gun. “You reckon you can handle that?” 

Ellie can feel her eyes widen as he leans the Winchester in her direction. “Well, uh, I sort of shot a rifle before, but it was at rats.”

Joel gives her the same look he gave her when she was searching the hunters’ lodgings and put that stretchy Durex thing on her arm: a quiet sort of distress.

“Rats?” he clarifies, his accent thickening. Oh yeah— he’s trying really hard not to be a dick right now. 

“With BB’s,” she tells him.

Her and Riley used to trade dead rats in the QZ for things like film for the camera Ellie broke; the good kind of tampons, the ones with the plastic applicators; tapes for her walkman— and those circle donut things that make doing your hair in the morning so much faster. Wearing a bun everyday has to be one of the worst parts of military school. 

“Well, it’s the same basic concept.” He seems resigned to go over it with her. “Lift it up. Can I—?” Joel asks before he puts a hand on her shoulder and gentles his tone when she gives him eye-contact permission.

“Alright now, you’re gonna want to lean right into that stock cos it is gonna kick a hell of a lot more than any BB rifle.”

“Okay.” Ellie settles into his touch, one: because if things go badly, this might be the closest he ever comes to holding her; she doesn’t want the last time her dad ever touches her to be what happened inside, and two: because she feels like if she tries hard enough, she can absorb his knowledge through her skin. 

“Go ahead and pull the bolt back. Grab it right there. Just tug it.” He mimes the action and she copies him. “There you go. Now as soon as you fire, you’re gonna want to get another round in there quick.”

She nods.

“Listen to me— If I get into trouble down there, you make every shot count. Yeah?” 

This is totally cool. Everything’s totally cool. Things aren’t going to go badly and she is not gonna fuck this up for them. Ellie takes a deep breath. “Do you think having good aim is genetic?” she asks. 

Joel cups the back of her neck with his hand and says, “I reckon it might be.”

Without anymore fuss, he gets up and crawls over to the opening in the balcony to hop down, but before he leaves her alone, he pauses. “—And just so we’re clear,” he says. “I’m real proud of how you handled yourself back there; that takes guts, and I ain’t just talkin’ about what you did with that hunter.”

The message is clear: don’t let anyone walk all over you, including me.

Ellie sends up a silent prayer to the heavens, even though she doesn’t really believe in any of that shit. I know he’s an asshole, but please— please— please don’t let him die. 

It helps to think of the little figures moving down below not as people, but as rats. Joel’s the only one wearing green; he’s the green rat, and green rats are rare or whatever, so she has to protect him. Everyone else is fair game. 

He starts off strong, shivving a few guys stealthily, but it’s not long before the others catch on and pretty soon they’re ganging up on him, trying to overpower him two or three against one. Ellie misses her first shot, but reloads quickly, just like Joel taught her, and she takes down two grey rats and a black rat in the next four shots.

Another miss, then a brown rat falls to the ground only seconds before he has a chance to pop out of the bush and attack the figure in green.

It’s then that Ellie notices her sleeves and realizes she’s a green rat too. Like father, like daughter. She kills a white sniper rat across the courtyard, two more greys, and Joel takes out three stragglers with a huge fucking wooden bat.

Then it’s over.

“Alright, come on down!” he calls, his voice shaky with residual force. Ellie sucks in her own uneven breath, then stands up on wobbly legs. She’s dizzy; she’s nauseous; she’s a lot of things, but most of all she’s relieved and it spreads like icy water through her veins as she moves to join Joel.

“How’d I do?” Ellie asks, coming to a stop a few feet away from him. 

Right now, she craves his approval like she craves food when she starving, or water during drills on a hot summer day— or even air. It’s been like that since the first day they met, but in the aftermath of their battle, she’s too far gone to be embarrassed about the fact that she’s practically begging for it. He’s leaning over one of the dead bodies and she tries not to pay attention because she’s pretty sure it’s one of hers. It’s harder to pretend they’re not people while she’s standing this close.

“How ‘bout something a little more your size?” He checks the clip on a small 9mm pistol, then extends it out to her. She reaches for it and Joel pulls back. “It’s for emergencies only.” 

“Okay.” She snatches the thing away from him before he changes his mind and stuffs it into the waistband of her jeans. 

He asks her if she knows how to switch the safety off, then starts to give her a lecture about respect, what constitutes as an emergency, and taking things seriously, but she stops him. “I’ll be careful. I was in military school for like ten years,” she stresses. “I know how to handle a gun.” 

Joel comes up behind her and touches her elbow, careful not to go any higher. “Look honey, it’s never been about me not trustin’ you. You understand that?” 

Honey, she repeats in her head. Ellie’s so distracted by the pet name that she forgets to answer right away. “Then what’s it about?”

Crouching down to her eye level, Joel frowns. “I was thirty-two the first time I killed someone,” he admits softly,”—and I know what it does to a person. How much easier it gets with time. You’re fourteen. I guess I jus’ worry how it’ll affect you in the long run. Scares me to think about you gettin’ desensitized to it while you’re still so young.”

“Oh,” she says, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “That makes sense.” 

It does and it doesn’t. The fact of the matter is that Ellie doesn’t live in the world Joel grew up in, or the one that Sarah must’ve grown up in— In her world, it’s better to learn how to defend yourself early, unless you want to die young. He seems to be coming to the same reluctant conclusion.

The fact that he admits his own fear eases some of the uncertainty still present in her lower belly, and a jolt of grief shocks her heart, sharp and painful as Ellie pictures Tess’ broken body on the floor of the capitol building, blood spreading out in a crimson circle around her. She wishes that the woman was still around so she could thank her. That, and it would be nice to have a more permanent, built in Joel translator instead of being forced to figure him out all on her own. 

He makes a motion like he wants to stroke the side of her face, or tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear or something, but seems to think better of it and drops his hand.

She’s aware that she told him not to touch her, but that was like two minutes after he fucking tried to snap her arm in half. Now that they’re on the other side of it, she’d like to put some distance between them and that terrible incident, but she doesn’t want to make him feel guilty about it while he’s in a better mood, so she doesn’t say anything. 

Instead, she lets him shift his backpack to the front. “I have somethin’ for you.” Joel squints at her. “Picked it up in one of the rooms back there in the hotel.” Unzipping his front pocket, he pulls out a comic book, and she scans the title. 

Savage Starlight: Accretion. 

Ellie doesn’t even try to stop the wide grin from spreading across her face. “Holy fuck! Another one? You’re like an expert at finding these—“ 

He smiles at her like she’s the most important person on earth, and in that moment, she forgets all about the hunters, and about Joel yelling at her— She’s not bothered by the bruise still darkening against her pale skin, or the dead bodies lying a few yards away. None of it matters.

So what if he gets angry sometimes? So what if they have to take out a few assholes along the way? She can handle it. The only thing she’s really scared of is being alone— But if she has a dad, and if her dad loves her, even if it’s in a way she doesn’t always understand, then everything’s fine. 

To the edge of the universe and back; endure and survive. 

It’s not a bad motto.

Chapter Text

Being a shitty person has never bothered Joel. Ok— maybe it bothered him a bit to have it pointed out by his baby brother, but that’s because by the time Tommy abandoned the QZ, he had a stick shoved so far up his ass it started affecting his brain: the memory centers to be specific. Boy wanted to be a hero so badly he forgot that to the core, they’re made of the same rotten stuff.

Course he knows that’s not entirely true. There was a period of time, thirty-two years to be exact, where Joel was perfectly decent. He went to work, went to daycare pickup, soccer games, parent teacher interviews— rinse and repeat. It took a lot out of him; he was on blood pressure meds and Alprazolam for anxiety by the time he was twenty-eight.

But he’d always prided himself on the fact that his daughter had everything she needed. She was fed and clothed; she did sports, they took vacations. She was emotionally well-adjusted despite the fact that her mom disappeared on them pretty early into her life— He can count the number of times he raised his voice at her on one hand. Never spanked her; never even left her on a time-out for longer than a couple minutes.

Joel wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He worked long hours; he stressed too much. Left her alone a lot. Let his daughter believe that money was more important than shit like eating dinner together every night, or picking her up from school on time, but for the love of God he was so much better than this.

It takes him less than five minutes after he gives Ellie that Savage Starlight comic to realize it was a mistake: one giant mistake. If he didn’t want to begin an abuse cycle with her, then he should’ve found the words to explain himself and stood firm on the no-guns policy.

Instead, he let her take down, what? Six other people? Nine? Out of guilt. Joel let his child kill for him out of guilt. Then he rewarded the behavior, gave her a pistol, then gave her a present.

Oh— she’s smilin’ at him now. Ellie’s back at his side giving him that look. Like he’s some sort of deity who hand-painted the stars in her image and not an asshole that handed her a dusty comic book he found on a table. 

He thinks about Tess’ words to him back at his apartment. “Blowing your load into a warm hole fifteen years ago doesn’t make you that kid’s parent.” Was it crude?— Yes. Does he wish more than anything that Ellie didn’t hear her say it?— Of course he does, but shit, he can’t help but wonder if the woman was right.

That sweet baby girl deserves so much better than to have the word dad attached to someone like him.

Joel has plenty of time to dwell in his thoughts as they make their way through the buildings surrounding the hotel. He finds a dark worktable and switches on his flashlight, stopping to make adjustments to the rifle. This time, Ellie sticks close by instead of roaming around hunting for her own treasures. 

“Hey, there you go. You got the scope working,” she says, sticking her head under his arm to take a closer look. 

She didn’t want to be touched before, but now she’s making any excuse to be near him. Joel’s not sure what to make of it, but it can’t be a bad thing for her to stay close, and if he was gonna do anymore damage to her head after the ‘arm-grabbing incident,’ he’s already done it. Course that could be his guilt talking again. His mind is on a constant loop of, Make her happy. Give her what she wants. You lead, I’ll follow little girl. 

“Sure did,” he replies, ruffling her ponytail from behind. “I’ll teach you how next time.”

Ellie looks up at him and her tentative, closed-mouth smile splits him apart. Fuck. He feels like such an asshole screwing with her emotions like this.

They move into what appears to be an abandoned garage, and that’s when Joel hears the trucks. “Oh shit. Get down. Get down—” he hisses, making sure they’re both hidden from view behind the broken door as two frantic people come sprinting into the yard.

He puts a hand out to prevent her from rising as the pair is gunned down in front of them, the force of the bullets sending them flying. These hunters are real lowlifes, and Joel can say that because he’s been in their shoes— Except he’d never need to use that many bullets to kill two people. It’s a waste of ammo.

Their truck screeches to a halt and the hunters close in on the still twitching couple. One of them, the woman, lets out a terrified cry.

“What do we do?” Ellie whispers. 

“Nothing.” Joel threads his fingers through hers and she settles, squeezing her eyes shut and nearly crushing his hand.

One loud crack and it’s over. The other guy died before they could get to him. He skims the hunters’ conversation for anything of importance and waits till he hears the roar of the engine and the squeal of tires before nudging Ellie to open her eyes.

“Oh man,” she lets out.

“There ain’t nothin’ we coulda done.”

“I know… It’s just… Oh man.” The girl looks a bit dazed. 

He fucking hates this; he hates that she has to witness shit like this. Maybe she would’ve been better off staying at that military school of hers. Maybe she’s been better off all these years without him. That’s when Joel realizes that he doesn’t know how she got bit in the first place living inside the walls of a QZ. He files that away in the things he needs to ask when they’re not in mortal peril, section of his brain.

Ellie keeps their hands intertwined when they stand up, and what’s he gonna do? Let go of her? Not a fucking chance. If that’s what she needs right now… He knows he shouldn’t allow her to get this attached to him… He knows it won’t make up for what he did… The self-pity is part of the cycle too. Joel’s aware of that, so he steels himself and gets a grip. 

Things happen and we move on. 

Yes— he grabbed her, and yes— she still has a bruise on her arm in the shape of his fingers, but at this point, even though it’s been less than two hours since it happened, that was two major traumas ago. Best thing he can do is control his temper so that he doesn’t lose it like that again. In time, if he doesn’t find some other way to get her killed, she’ll heal. 

Kids brains are elastic. She already has to get used to fighting for her life and witnessing death around every corner. They don’t have a choice in that, but Joel won’t allow dad to be a threat that forms within the walls of her new normal. He can’t have her thinking that’s how all dads act, or that this is how their relationship is supposed to be. It’s time to step it up.

“Let’s get to that bridge, kiddo.” 

It amazes him how quickly Ellie seems to recover from things. To bounce back. They encounter another offset of hunters and she treats it like a game. “Did you hear how they were talking? They’re scared of us.” Joel warns her not to let her guard down, but even he gets a little carried away when they’re in the clear again.

It’s a nice day; the weather is good and they’re close to sunset when they come across another one of those damn Dawn of the Wolf posters. Joel tries not to think about it, but he can’t help himself. The look on Sarah’s face when he surprised her with tickets to the movie’s opening night is hard to forget. 

“That guy looks fucking creepy,” she comments, and he snorts. Sarah didn’t think so.

“He’s hot, dad,” were her exact words. Joel remembers waiting outside the girls’ bathroom at the Galaxy Highland wondering when his daughter had started thinking people were hot, and if twelve was too young to have the ‘boyfriend talk’ with her, which in his mind, only consisted of the phrase, “Twelve is too young to have a boyfriend, baby girl.” 

“He’s a werewolf,” Joel tells her. “I saw this movie before the outbreak.” 

“Wait… He’s the wolf? Does he totally fucking gut her at the end?” Ellie sounds excited by the prospect. 

What? “No,” he scoffs. “Nobody gets gutted. It’s a dumb teen movie.” 

Course she doesn’t know that. How would she? He wonders idly if she’s ever seen a movie. Military school doesn’t seem like the ideal place to get a proper cinematic education. Joel thinks about asking her, but before he can, she tilts her head to the side and spins around to face him, gentleness settling over her features in a way that tells him what she’s about to ask before she even has a chance to open her mouth. “Did Sarah drag you to see it?”

“Somethin’ like that,” he offers. 

Ellie doesn’t stop there, even when he starts walking again. “How old was Sarah? Like when she…” She doesn’t finish the question. “Maybe I did the math wrong… I thought she would’ve been younger.”

His first instinct is to brush her off, but he ignores it. Just answer the damn question, asshole. You owe her some levity here. “She wasn’t quite a teenager yet; she was twelve, and you ain’t wrong. I had her when I was nineteen.”

She frowns at his answer, then seemingly out of nowhere asks, “What’s a shotgun wedding?” 

Joel’s confused for a second, not following her train of thought, until he remembers that Tess used that term when she was chewing him out. He also remembers what the woman said after. Man, he should’ve taken that conversation into the hall. Twelve is too young for boyfriends, and fourteen is too young to be hearing the gory details of your dad’s sex life. He should’ve known. His late partner had zero filter on a good day, let alone in the throws of anger. 

He rubs two hands over his face and sighs. Looks away from her. “It’s when you get married nice and fast, usually cos someone’s pregnant.” Neither him nor Dee ever really came around to the idea, but her daddy insisted. 

Ellie smirks. “So, it’s kinda your thing then…” she trails off, “— getting random people pregnant.” 

Jesus Christ. “Ellie—” he groans, but she just giggles and catches up to him. “Sorry— sorry. I’m just trying to learn things about you.” Her tone is playful, but for some reason, he still feels the need to give her an explanation. He doesn’t want her to think that about him, whether it’s true or not.

“Listen.” Joel stops her. “I know it ain’t a good excuse, but I was real young the first time around; we both were— And the second time, with you,” he clarifies, “— I wasn’t exactly in my right mind those first five years after the outbreak. Wasn’t thinkin’ of the consequences of my actions, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care… or that I can’t…” Shit, why does he have to be so bad at explaining himself? 

“Oh, so now I’m a consequence?” she banters back. 

He tenses, preparing to let out another exhausted groan— Before he can decide if she’s serious or not, Ellie lets out another laugh and smacks his arm. “Holy shit dude, you look so constipated right now. Re—lax. I’m just fucking with you.”

Are you though, sweetheart?

Another lesson in Ellie logic: like rock-paper-scissors, funny covers angry, and angry covers hurt. Joel massages his brow-line. He’s supposed to be stepping it up, not stepping them back. 

Clearing his throat, he drops his voice into a low, serious hum. “Ellie girl, if somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again. Bein’ your dad ain’t the consequence. The consequence is that I wasn’t around to take care of you when you needed me.”

“Oh,” she squeaks, caught off guard by the sudden admission. Her face flames red and Joel can’t tell if she’s embarrassed or trying not to cry. Ellie swallows and her eyes go to her feet. “It’s ok. You didn’t know.” 

It’s far from ok, but he’s not about to start arguing with her. He’s done enough of that for one day. She mumbles something else, but it’s so quiet he doesn’t catch it.

“What’s that?” Joel asks. 

Her voice is louder this time, but only by a few decibels, and she won’t raise her head to look at him.

“I still need you,” she whispers, the flush in her cheeks spreading down to her throat, clashing against the bright green Ninja Turtles shirt.

He wants to pull her close. To take her into his arms. Tie a knot in that tether and never let go, but he squashes the urge almost as soon as it arises. She likes physical affection, but she’s already overwhelmed, and if she’s overwhelmed, she’s vulnerable. They’re standing out in the open and he doesn’t want to risk either of them getting too caught up to notice a rogue hunter approach, or a sniper aiming from the rooftops.

Joel tucks her chin up. “You’n’me are gonna stick together from now on,” he tells her, and when she nods her agreement, he gestures upwards. “Why don’t you let me give you a boost?” There’s a ladder hanging above them that leads onto a fire escape. “I’d like to see how far we are from that bridge.” 

Chapter Text

The last thing Joel wants to do is add another kid, another liability to the already precarious situation they’re in— But Ellie is… so excited by the prospect of Henry and Sam. He can practically feel her energy, like static electricity crackling beside him. She pulls on his sleeve, and he catches the contented, happy gleam in those speckled-greens when he agrees with her plan for them to, ‘help each other out.’ It’s getting harder and harder to resist that look.

He’s not sure whether she’s pleased because he’s trusting her to make a decision, or because she wants the company: someone to talk to who doesn’t yell at her, or give her whiplash with his roller coaster moods. Maybe she thinks he’ll be less likely to snap and hurt her again if there are witnesses.

The idea that she might not feel safe enough to be alone with him sours in his gut and leaves his insides churning— But Joel can’t really blame her now, can he?

Two major traumas ago, he reminds himself. They’re moving past it, and Ellie’s alright. She’s not scared of him. He can’t make her be scared of him. 

Is she scared of anything?

Her willingness to trust a pair of virtual strangers, a fully grown man and a teenage boy she just met, bothers him. Joel tries not to let it. It’s his job as her father to look out for her. To keep her safe. She shouldn’t have to worry about what they could do to her— As long as he’s here, neither one of these boys is gonna do anything, but still, he can’t let them get the jump on him. He needs to keep his guard up while she’s vulnerable.

“I like your shirt,” Sam says to her, and that’s all it takes to get them talking. 

It’s been too long since their last meal. She hasn’t eaten anything since the half-tin of uncooked spam outside the tunnels back in Boston. Ellie doesn’t complain, but he can’t seem to quiet the voice in his head saying feed her, so he pries open a can of kidney beans when she isn’t looking and hands it to her as they walk.

“It’s ok, I’m not even that hungry yet,” she says, which roughly translates to, “My body is eating itself, but I’m too full of adrenaline to feel it.”

“You need to keep your strength up,” he tells her, ending the argument before it begins as she takes the offering and says, “Ok. Thanks,” her mouth turning up at the corners. 

She drinks the juice in the can first. The brown, goopy shit that most people, even in this world, throw away, or save for the end if they’re truly starving. Christ, she doesn’t even flinch, then she tries to pass the beans to Sam. 

Joel’s first instinct is to scold her for wasting resources on some random kid they don’t know, but he thinks better of it. Being a kind person ain’t something you can teach. You either are, or you aren’t, and Ellie… she’s got a good heart. She developed that all on her own, and he shouldn’t try to stomp that out of her more than this world already has. Not over a can of Bush’s Best. That might be what you do with your sons. He’s not sure; he’s never had a son, but it ain’t what you do with your daughters. 

Sam doesn’t want it anyways. “It’s ok. We have food back at our room,” he informs them. 

Ellie shrugs, unbothered, and sticks her whole hand into the can, picking out and chewing the red lumps like expired kidney beans are a normal snack for someone her age. Like she’s a normal kid walking around with a bag of Cheeto’s or Red Vines. She stays by his side to explore the house, and he’s grateful that he doesn’t have to give her crap for following the two boys into another room, or getting too far ahead of the group— But she’s got a grin on her face that won’t go away, and it’s hard not to let her happiness have an effect on him.

“Hey— C’mere for a sec,” he says and she listens, approaching him curiously. Joel gives in to his earlier desire to touch her, cupping her shoulder to hold her attention now that they’re safely ensconced between four walls. “You’re doin’ a good job,” he tells her. “You just be careful now. Stay close.”

Ellie shoots him a shy smile. “I will.” 

Positive Parenting: Apocalypse Edition, Chapter three: How to show affection in between life and death events. This is what he’s supposed to be doing. Praising her. Making her feel secure. He should be the home base she returns to, not someone she wants to run away from. Something she needs to escape. 

“Is it just you and your daughter?” Henry asks him on the stairs, and Ellie pipes up from behind him. “He probably won’t answer your questions. He still thinks you’re planning to kill us, but yeah. It’s just me and him… He’s my dad I mean.”

There she goes again, casually giving him the title that cinches around his heart. The one that Joel knows he doesn’t deserve. There’s another Savage Starlight comic on a desk in one of the rooms: Deep Phase, and when he shows Ellie, she pumps her fist and gives him a high five. “I told you, you’re like a magnet for these things! I haven’t even read the last one yet.” 

She saves just under half the can of kidney beans for him and he reckons she did that on purpose. The girl is already learning. If she’d’ve given him more than half, or equal, then he would’ve made her eat another few bites. He scarfs down the leftovers, because she’s right, it’s no use if she’s fed and he’s starving, and tosses the can into the hall. 

Turns out Joel’s not the only asshole out of the four of them. Henry yells at Sam for picking up a plastic robot off the ground in a goddamn toy store, and that solidifies it for him; Henry ain’t this kid’s dad. He’s gotta be in his early to mid thirties, same as Joel was when Sarah was this age, but it’s siblings who fight for stupid reasons like this: cousins maybe. Joel’s guessing brothers. There’s no reason other than stubbornness that the kid can’t carry around a couple knick knacks in his bag. His girl’s got at least four comic books in hers, and he’s just hoping she ain’t secretly toting around a stash of condoms or another one of those Hustler magazines. 

“What’s the rule about takin’ stuff?” Henry demands, then waits for Sam to respond.

“It weighs like nothing—“

“The rule. What is it?”

The boy huffs. “We only take what we have to.”

That does sound a lot like how Joel talks to Ellie and he knows it. When he didn’t want her answering the door back at his apartment. When she disobeyed his instructions at the hotel— But the difference is that parents yell at their kids when they’re scared. When they’re feeling out of control.

It’s not that Joel’s trying to excuse his behaviour. He’s not. To think about what he did to her, the fact that he marked her skin in anger, still makes him nauseous. It makes him close his eyes and long for that time machine again— But that’s why parents do what they do. Because there’s nothing worse than losing your child. Having a piece of your soul ripped from your body like that. It’s indescribable, and he’ll do almost anything to avoid reliving that experience. 

Ellie’s examining something over by one of the shelves, and for a second he wonders if she’s found her own toy or trinket. She seems too old for a lot of this stuff, but then again, who knows whether she’s ever had a baby doll or a teddy bear before? Joel doesn’t, so who is he to say anything? Sarah had all sorts of shit like this. She loved giraffes. The last thing Dee ever gave her was a stuffed giraffe and oh— she treasured that thing.

He wishes they’d’ve had time to pack a backpack before they left that night. He knows she would’ve brought it, and he could’ve buried that piece of her mother along with her so she wasn’t alone. Joel glances down at his watch, then takes a closer look at what Ellie has in her hand; it’s Sam’s plastic robot. She sticks it in her front zippered compartment, and Joel comes up behind her. Puts his hands on her shoulders again. “Let’s go kiddo.”

The kind of stuff you can’t teach, he thinks to himself as they follow Henry.

Ellie’s at least a year older than Sam, but the kid lies and says they’re both fourteen. Joel’s aware that he has no right to feel this way, but he is not prepared to start fending off grubby little teenage assholes from putting their hands all over his girl. He hasn’t had enough time with her himself to be ready to share. Not by a long shot. 

Joel can hear them whispering back and forth, talking about where they’re from. Exchanging anecdotes about their trips. The boys lead them to an abandoned school where they’ve been hiding. Henry calls him old timer, and Ellie gets a kick out of it. He won’t be surprised if he hears that one again from her lips in the future. Just like every other time, in every other place they’ve visited, Joel wishes his daughter would keep her sticky fingers to herself. Quite literally, when she inserts her pinky into a wall mounted pencil sharpener. She’s just about to spin the handle when he catches her and gives her shit for it. 

“Well, I didn’t know what it was—” Ellie defends.

Just like she didn’t recognize the wasps’ nest. And she doesn’t know the difference between a glove for your hand and a glove for your…“What did I say when we were searching those buildings outside the city?”

Now he’s doing it, getting her to repeat him— Again, for safety reasons, but this time there’s a playfulness in his tone.

“I don’t even know,” she whines, a growly edge to her voice that only a fourteen-year-old girl could muster. “You’ve made like a hundred rules between then and now.” 

“When you don’t know what something is…” he starts. 

“Don’t touch it.” She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” 

They enter a science lab, and Ellie looks through a microscope in the dark for approximately three seconds before Joel steers her into the next room.

“Hey—“ she protests, “— I know what it is. It’s for looking at germs and stuff.”

“Exactly, and you have no idea what kinds of germs might be on it,” he says lightly. “Last thing we need is pink eye makin’ its rounds.” 

Something he does help her do is measure herself on a growth chart in the corner of one of the classrooms. “I’ve never done one of these before,” she tells him, and what’s he supposed to say to that? So yeah— Joel grabs a wayward pencil off the nearest desk and draws a horizontal line above her head. She’s 5 ‘3’ right now, but he reckons she’s still got some growing to do. He turns to write her name next to the spot he marked, only to realize he doesn’t know how she spells it: Elly or Ellie.  

“E-L-L-I-E,” she says, catching onto his predicament, “and Williams is—”

“Yeah, I know how to spell Williams,” Joel cuts her off gently and clears his throat. “Ellie’s not short for anything?” he asks. He’s been wondering that for a while now.

“No. Just Ellie.”

He laughs. Snorts air through his nostrils. “Ain’t nothin’ just about you girl.”

Joel’s overcompensating. This ease of affection has to be part of that cycle he’s trying to break. Everything’s all well and good until the next time she scares the shit out of him, which is bound to happen sooner rather than later.

Should he tone it down? Is what he’s doing right now… the fact that he’s giving her a glimpse of how a father should treat his daughter, doing her more harm than good?— And if he dies today, or tomorrow, is it better for her to have these few tender moments to cling to in his absence? Or for her to resent the fact that he could never be what she needed?

Daughters are complicated, and no matter what he does, Joel’s bound to fuck it up. He didn’t want her to get attached to him like this, but it’s too late. They’re as good as tied together now. All he can do is keep moving forward from here. 

“Are you two coming?” Henry calls from the next hallway over, and he sighs and shakes his head. “We’d better get a move on.”  

Chapter Text

Henry doesn’t seem like the type of guy to take advantage of a young girl when she’s not expecting it. In spite of the earlier argument between the two boys, the kid loves his brother; that much is plain to see, and the way he looks at Ellie is the way a grown man is supposed to look at a child that ain’t his: with amusement and a bit of annoyance. He’s protective, but not interested or involved enough for it to be suspicious. 

Still, Joel doesn’t like the idea of leaving her alone with them in the principal’s office while he shuts his eyes in the offshoot waiting area. He might be too tired to get an accurate read on the pair. They could be skilled con-artists; maybe the hunters use the kid to lure out unsuspecting tourists. Getting past the gate after sundown could be part of their M.O—

The bridge is the only way out of this shithole and like Joel said before, these guys are desperate, and desperate people are creative— Even if the brothers are safe, it only takes one slip up. One mistake. If her sleeve rides up half an inch too far and they catch a glimpse of that bite mark on her forearm, they’ll have a gun on her so fast her head will spin. They’re not gonna start by asking questions. No sane person would.

Ellie and Sam are fast friends. Five minutes in and they start a blueberry catching competition. Where Henry found a stash blueberries, he’s not sure. It’s now about half an hour later and she’s teaching him a hand clapping game: Stella Ella Ola. Joel remembers that one not even just from Sarah’s childhood, but from his own. He wonders who in the hell taught it to her, and why some things survive so long, and others, like cell phone communication and the Internet needed to die with the apocalypse. 

Wouldn’t it be something if he could simply send a text to his brother? Attach a photo of Ellie and give him the heads up they’re coming. Send back an A-ok if it’s safe. If you’ve still got all your limbs. He’s fucking beat. Joel hasn’t closed his eyes for longer than five or ten minutes since the day he met Ellie. Since before Tess made that drop without him and set this whole thing in motion. 

Joel doesn’t want to rush the girl or make her feel guilty. He owes her some time to be a kid before he corrals her into the other room and passes out, but she notices his heavy eyelids, the sway in his step. The fact that he’s trying to stay busy by completing unnecessary tasks. Cleaning the already spotless guns. Taking stock of their food even though he’s well aware of what they have. Ellie always seems to have one eye trained on him no matter what and he’s not sure if it’s a defense mechanism, or if it’s because she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she looks away for too long.

Maybe a bit of both.

The girl makes a big show of stretching her arms and yawning loudly. “I’m so tired,” she announces, leaning back to look at him. “Can we sleep for a bit before we have to go?”

His lips twitch up. Sweet girl. “I reckon so.” Joel looks to Henry for confirmation and he nods. “We’ve got a couple hours.”

Ellie doesn’t even try to keep the facade going once they’re safely tucked away next door. She pulls the first of her two new Savage Starlight’s out of her backpack, the one he found on the table in the hotel, and takes the spot beside him. “Kiddo—”

“I won’t go anywhere. I promise,” she says. “You can sleep.” 

It’s not that he doesn’t believe her per se. She’s not lying, but this isn’t the first time she’s tried to pacify him like this. It’s not her fault that she can’t sit still to save her life. He’ll close his eyes for fifteen minutes, then open them again to find her missing or dead, Henry and Sam gone, all their shit stolen. She can tell he’s not buying it, so, as if to prove her physical presence, Ellie stretches her legs out and leans her back against his arm, cracking open the comic. 

It helps.

If he falls asleep like this, guaranteed he’ll wake up to the shift if she decides to disappear or wander off. “Read one, then try and close your eyes for a bit,” Joel bargains. She’s not tired now, but she will be if she doesn’t give herself at least an hour or so to rest. Ninety-minutes is a full sleep cycle; that would be preferable. 

“I already slept in the truck,” she complains.

“Ellie—” 

“Alright— alright. Whatever you say,” she agrees then, but Ellie’s just humoring him. Like she’s the parent and he’s the kid, she’s trying to put him to bed; he can practically feel her eyes roll into the back of her skull. Now shut up and let me read my comic, old timer.

Joel closes his eyes. 

Henry knocks on the door and it startles him awake. He has no idea how long he’s been out for. Joel scrubs his hands over his face and his first instinct is to search for Ellie. He drops one of his arms and it comes in contact with her ear. Her nose is buried in his hipbone; she’s asleep with her head in his lap, lips parted, neck frozen at at odd angle. Accretion is bent at the spine and tucked under her elbow. 

The younger man pauses in the frame and gives them a gentle, almost fond sort of look. “Now that’s cute,” he says. “She’s lucky she still has her daddy around.”

Lucky isn’t a word he’d use to describe Ellie, but all he does is grunt in response. Joel’s not about to go pouring his heart out to this kid, and he’s definitely not going to admit to Henry how new this whole relationship is for them. Sharing knowledge like that leaves them vulnerable. 

He throws another sympathetic glance their way. “Sorry, but it’s time to go.”

Ellie’s stubborn: this much he knows. Stubborn to wake up is another facet of her personality that he’s just now learning. “Go away,” she mumbles, and if they weren’t in such a hurry, he might laugh. Go where, sweetheart? You’re sleepin’ on my legs.

It’s nothing exceptional. There are no fireworks or explosions in his mind, but it’s in this moment that Joel realizes how much he loves this little girl.

Took about this long with his first daughter too. The love masquerades as blind devotion until you start to know them. To really know them. How they move; how they eat; how they smile. How they nestle into your chest, or in this case your hipbone, and build a home there. Joel couldn’t love her more, and yet he knows the feeling will only intensify. As time goes on, the love will swell and pulse until his heart starts to beat for her and her alone. 

He wishes she was still small enough that she could sleep through what’s to come. Even if she were six or seven, he could carry her in his arms, shield her so that she doesn’t have to be afraid. So he doesn’t have to ask her to be brave— But he can’t, and the best thing he can do for her right now is get them the hell out of Pittsburgh. 

“Up Ellie,” he commands softly, shifting his legs so she’s forced to sit. He’s glad she got some sleep at least. It makes him feel better about throwing them back into the snake pit.

When they join the boys in the other room, Henry’s giving Sam a pep talk. “Now we’re gonna be moving fast, so no matter what, you stick to me like glue.”

“Like glue,” the kid repeats, and Ellie rubs her eyes and looks up at him. He doesn’t need to tell her the same rules apply. In here, there’s some flex room in the tether, but out there, they’re one mind: one body.  

Maybe he’s too hard on Henry, but he still doesn’t quite trust the guy not to get them killed. There’s a trash can fire crackling in front of them, and they take out two hunters nice and quiet. Joel goes left, and Henry goes right while the kids trail behind. Things get a bit louder once they’re outside. It’s not long before the skeleton crew realizes they’re under attack. Joel turns off their generator to cut power to the gate, and men shout back and forth in a panic.  

Tourists: 1 Hunters: 0 

Their plan is working.

They’re herded into the nearby yard and Joel boosts Henry, then Sam up on top of a truck. There’s a loud bang against the locked gate and it threatens to yield. He hoists Ellie on his shoulders, but her foot catches on the step and she almost falls. Henry grabs her hand and yanks her onto the truck with them as the hunters continue to ram the door, the bar across the front dangerously close to snapping. The ladder comes crashing to the ground and with it, Joel’s chances of climbing after them. 

“We’ve gotta get him up!” Ellie’s panicking. Her voice is high pitched and shaky. It reminds him of her frantic attempts to sever the rope back at Bill’s, Joel swinging upside down in that warehouse and his daughter left alone to do the dirty work. 

He hears Henry apologize, then shout, “We’re leaving!”

“This is bullshit!” she hurls back. “What the fuck Henry!?” Joel doesn’t know if he’s more pissed off at the man for ditching them, or for breaking Ellie’s fragile heart in the process. She gets so goddamn attached to people. 

Life lessons, kiddo. 

For the first time since Lincoln, his girl has to make a choice. He considers yelling at her. Demanding that she follow the boys, but he knows before he even opens his mouth that she won’t. She didn’t listen to him then when they barely knew each other, she ain’t going to now. Ellie jumps down and clambers into his space. “We stick together,” she announces. 

Joel gets them through to the other side of a garage and they manage to shelter there, then stealth their way around most of the subsequent building, but the pathway to the bridge is bare: open and exposed. There’s nowhere to take cover. He grabs Ellie’s arm, hard. Probably just as hard as he did in that hotel, only this time, it’s not out of anger; he’s acting on pure desperation. “Run!” 

He shoves her ahead of him and just like in Bill’s town, when it really counts, she listens. Ellie propels herself forward, sprinting full tilt through the maze of cars, busses and falling signs as he brings up the rear. She reacts to the bullets, sees him lose his footing, and tries to stop, but he shouts for her to keep going and by the grace of God, or maybe just because she can hear he’s still alive, she obeys him. 

Doesn’t take long for Joel to realize that God has nothing to do with this. The bridge is a dead end. They’re trapped, and the only path he sees is one where Ellie makes it and he doesn’t. 

“Fuck!” Ellie curses.

“How many bullets do you have left?” he barks. 

“They’re gonna kill us! We have to jump!” 

For fuck’s sake. “No!” he growls back. The height is dizzying and the current rushes beneath their feet, strong and deadly. “It’s too high and you can’t swim. I’ll boost you up, you run past ‘em!”

She can make it; he can buy her time. She is not going to take a bullet for him. Not this little girl. Not tonight. He’s gonna get her the hell out of Pittsburgh if it’s the last thing he does.

Joel takes a couple steps forward as the chaos advances, mens’ voices bouncing off the surrounding vehicles. His throat is raw, but he has to yell to combat the shouting, the sound of rubber against gravel. He braces both hands on her shoulders and looks her in the eyes. “Tommy Miller,” he says. “You go to Jackson, Wyoming and you find Tommy Miller. You’ll recognize him. He looks just like me, ‘cept he’s blond. You tell him you’re Joel’s daughter, and that you need help—”

”No! Joel—“ Ellie digs her feet into the ground; she’s close to tears, looking in all directions, like a kid lost at the grocery store. Like she has no idea where to go or what to do. 

“Listen baby girl,” he says firmly. “I will be with you, every step of the way, for the rest of your life.”

Joel has no idea if that’s true or not, but he’ll say just about anything right now if it’ll convince her to run. He’s never been more sure than he is in this moment, in this hollow expanse of time, that this is how things are supposed to be. He couldn’t save Sarah, but he can save Ellie. 

“I’m not leaving you here to die!” 

“You’ll do what I damn well ask you to do—” A jeep with a gun mounted on the roof slams into the barricade and sends a car soaring over the edge. The bridge shifts, groaning under their weight. Wind from the swift-moving river below whips Ellie’s hair in her face. 

“You’ll keep me afloat,” she tells him, and blood rushes in his ears. No fucking way. She’ll drown.

“Jackson, Wyoming, Ellie. You’re gonna head West.” Joel positions himself to receive her. “Gimme your foot.” 

He wishes their last moments together didn’t have to be ones where she’s scared. Where he hurts her; forces her to abandon him, but he was always going to die, and one day when she’s older, maybe when she has kids of her own, she’ll understand. 

She shakes her head, that Miller stubbornness glinting dangerously behind her eyes. “No time to argue.” The hunters surround them, guns blazing, and before Joel can stop her, Ellie pivots around on her heels, splays her arms out at her sides to form a T, and throws herself off the bridge.

Chapter Text

Ellie’s nose and throat fill with water, her lungs screaming as the current drags her under once, twice, three times— She shouts for Joel when she has air, and tries to raise her hands above the surface so he can see her. Two strong arms encircle her torso, “I’ve gotcha!” he yells, and she coils her legs around his waist.

They’re moving fast. Too fast, and Joel barely has a chance to start paddling before they slam into a standing rock. Ellie’s head ricochets off the flat surface and the world goes dark around her. It’s ok. She was supposed to die weeks ago, with Riley. At least now she knows what it’s like to have a dad. What it’s like to be held by him.

The light is so all consuming when she wakes up that she starts to wonder if maybe heaven is real after all. It’s supposed to be bright there— But her lungs are on fire, and fire usually means hell. That seems like an overreaction. Is this about that guy in the hotel? The hunters from the courtyard? Ellie didn’t really do anything else in her life that warranted eternal damnation, unless she got points off for getting expelled from school, or for that time she stabbed a soldier in the knee with a compass… 

Wait… Is it because of the whole lesbian thing? Cos if that’s the case, then God can suck her massive, veiny dick— 

“Ellie, wake up.” Someone nudges her, gripping her bicep urgently. “Are you ok?”

She blinks her eyes open on the shore of the river, grainy rocks digging into her back, her jeans sopping wet, heavy and pasted onto her legs as she sits up and spews water out her nose. The pressure stings her sinuses. Sam’s eyes flicker to the banks of the moving water, then back to her. Henry’s dragging another lifeless figure clad in a green button down out of the river, throwing his heavy body onto the shore and letting out great, huffing breaths from the exertion. 

“Joel—” Ellie cries, pushing Sam aside, dropping to her knees next to him. She wraps her fingers around his wrist to feel for a pulse and the weak flutter kickstarts her own heartbeat. 

“He’s alive,” Henry exhales deeply, bracing his hands on his knees. “He took in a lot of water, but he’s ok. He’s breathing, see—” The man points to his chest, rising and falling at a slow but steady pace. He’s alive, she repeats in her head. Relief washes over her first, her limbs shaking and icy as the cold seeps in through her skin. Then, as her adrenaline reloads, in rushes anger. Blinding, spitting rage bubbling upwards into her throat.

“You piece of shit!” Ellie growls, lunging at Henry, shoving him back a few steps. He stumbles, then raises his hands to his head in surrender. He doesn’t have a gun; he’s not a threat, but she’s pretty sure she could kill him with her bare hands regardless. “You fucking abandoned us back there!”

Joel was going to abandon her; he was going to make her go off on her own, all because Henry left them stranded in that yard. 

“I know. I’m sorry,” the man stresses, looking her in the eyes. He’s not afraid, and why would he be? She’s just a little girl. He doesn’t know what she’s capable of— Indignation leaks into her tone. Ellie wants him to fight with her. She needs somewhere to put all this hurt. All this betrayal.

“He’s the only person I have, and you almost made him leave!” She hurls the words at him.

Henry’s looking at her like he feels really bad for her, and tears burn behind her eyes. He probably thinks she means leave as in die. That too, but there’s a deeper sense of loss in her gut. “I had to,” he says slowly, like he’s talking more to himself than to her. “It was the only way to protect Sam, and you had a good chance of making it. You did make it.”

She swallows to prevent humiliation from staining her face red. Ellie sucks the snot back into her nose and takes a deep breath. Grits her teeth. “Well, if all you care about is Sam, then you shouldn’t’ve said we could fucking help each other.”

Ellie wouldn’t have fucking left; she would never leave anyone she cared about like that: never again.

She’d held Riley’s hand for as long as she could, until the girl started twitching too much to keep it still. Then, she waited even longer, till there were no signs of life left in those cloudy brown eyes: no fear, no love. Till her face was almost unrecognizable, the veins raised and purple against her skin. Until her best friend tried to rip her throat out and she had no choice but to flee. To find Marlene.

“Did you kill her?” the woman asked, and all Ellie could do in that moment was shake her head. She couldn’t stomach it; she ran away, and now Riley didn’t even get to be dead. Not really. You don’t abandon the people you love. Joel groans behind her, and she turns her attention to him, glad for the distraction. Henry’s stare is growing more pitying by the second and if he keeps it up she’s gonna start crying. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m really glad we spotted you,” he says, but she ignores him.

“Hey you, we’re alive.” Ellie forces a smile, helping Joel to stand, but as soon as he’s on his feet, he’s in her face, wiping that smile clean off her lips with what he says next.

“What did I tell you?” he demands, rage lines decorating his forehead as he towers over her. His arms flail out to the sides, fists clenching and releasing like he wants to grab her, but he takes slow, deep breaths and puts his hands behind his back. “Are you tryin’ to kill yourself? Is that what this is?— You wanna die, Ellie? Cos jumping off bridges… That’s how it’s done!” 

“You didn’t even try to escape together!” she accuses. “You were just gonna let them shoot you!”

“Of course I was gonna let them shoot me!” he shouts, “Jesus Christ, girl—” He raises his hand again to make a point and she flinches at the sudden movement. It’s just an instinct, from the last time he got mad. Joel’s not going to hit her. He’s calming down, not revving up, but Henry doesn’t know that.

“Woah— woah— woah! Easy man,” he intervenes. 

Her dad loses it then, the razor thin wire of his control snapping. He lunges at Henry, all his anger exploding outward in one rippling, electromagnetic surge. “You stay the hell out of it!” he barks, then wrenches the man’s gun right out of his hands and knocks him to the ground. Joel aims the pistol at Sam, who attempts to move between them, “Get back, son!” he growls at the boy. 

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Henry antagonizes, and Joel takes the gun off the younger brother. Turns it back to the elder.

“Joel,” Ellie puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Get outta here,” he snaps, shaking her off. He tries to use his arm to shove her behind him, but she digs her toes into the rocks beneath her feet and refuses to budge.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Joel rages again, “Can you never just do what I ask you to?”

“You don’t need to talk to your daughter like that,” Henry sticks up for her, his voice calmer than she anticipates. 

“How I talk to my daughter is none of your goddamn business!” He twitches the gun threateningly. There’s something about his anger this time around that’s comforting instead of frightening. The almost feral possessiveness in his voice soothes her. Smothers some of the fire crackling behind her ribs. Makes her feel loved. He’s not mad; he’s scared shitless. 

Sam inches closer. “Don’t move,” Henry commands his brother. “He’s pissed, but he’s not gonna do anything.”

“You sure about that?” Joel reacts, but the man doesn’t falter, holding his hands out in warning as he speaks. “That little girl was terrified for you just now,” he says. “You really wanna make her terrified of you too?”

“I’m not scared of him,” Ellie tells Henry. He’s her dad, not some fucking hunter, but her words seem to trigger something inside of Joel. She touches his shoulder again and he closes his eyes at the contact. He blows out a low exhale, bows his head and throws the gun to the ground. Sam crouches down next to his brother and glares daggers at her dad as he backs off. “Let’s go, Ellie,” he grunts.

“Are we still gonna help them?” she asks when he starts walking. 

“I said, let’s go,” Joel repeats, then adds, “— before I change my mind.” Alright. Thank you, she wants to tell him, but she saves the sarcasm for later as she trails after him. 

Sam catches up to her a minute later, eyebrows pressed together in a resentful scowl. “Your dad’s a dick,” he says. Ellie crosses her arms over her chest. “Whatever,” she grumbles back. Joel barely even touched Henry; Sam doesn’t have to be such a pussy about it. 

Henry tells them to keep their eyes peeled. That the radio tower where they’re supposed to congregate with the other members of his group isn’t far. Her and Joel split off to explore a nearby boat and she comes up behind him just in time to hear him let out a vexed sigh. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he curses under his breath. 

“What?” she asks. He turns around and she realizes that he’s got something in his hands: a comic book. Savage Starlight: Antiparticles. “Boo-yeah!” Ellie tries to give him a high five, but he rejects her, keeping the comic close to his chest. 

She lowers her hand. 

Joel massages the bridge of his nose, then sits back on the control panel inside the cabin. “Ellie…” he trails off; it sounds like he’s in pain. He gives her a troubled look and gestures to the new edition: #11. It’s perfect; it’s the one right after Deep Phase, which she has in her backpack. “I’m gonna hold onto this one for a little while.” 

“Um… ok,” she says, chewing on the inside of her cheek awkwardly. Is he still fucking mad at her or something? Ellie’s probably going to regret asking, but she can’t help herself. “Why?” she prods, her eyes falling to her feet as she waits for him to respond.

“Because I shouldn’t be gettin’ mad at you, then giving you presents to make up for it,” Joel tells her.

“Oh.” She goes quiet. What is she even supposed to say to that? He seems frustrated by her lack of response, but Ellie doesn’t know what he wants from her. Is this some weird Joel-way of apologizing? 

“If Henry and Sam hadn’t been there…” he starts, then pauses, like he’s thinking carefully about what he’s going to say. “I know you think throwin’ yourself off that bridge was the right choice to make, but if those boys hadn’t been there to rescue us, we would both be dead right now,” Joel explains; his tone isn’t hot like it was before, but it’s definitely inflamed. “—because you didn’t listen to me when I told you to run. To save yourself.”

“But you would’ve died,” Ellie stresses; she’s trying not to let herself get too worked up, but it’s hard when he’s looking at her like he’s disappointed in her. Like she’s a stupid kid who doesn’t know how to follow rules. “They would’ve shot you.”

He rubs a hand through his beard, “Yep,” he nods. “— And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.” She opens her mouth to argue, but he cuts her off. “Ellie, that’s what parents do for their children. It’s what dads do for their daughters. If it comes down to my life or yours, it’s always gonna be you, and I can’t have you questioning that.” Joel curls a finger in her damp shirt sleeve and reels her in. “Honey, goin’ against it, goes against nature.” 

She squirms under the intensity of his conviction.

“I just don’t want to be alone again,” Ellie’s voice hitches and she sucks in a big gulp of air to cool the warm embarrassment itching like spores in her throat. His face softens and he lets go of her. “I know,” he says gently, “— and I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure we don’t end up in another situation like that, but if we do, I need you to promise that you’ll let me keep you safe. Can you do that?”

She’s known him long enough now to know there’s only one acceptable answer. Ellie purses her lips, then reluctantly, she nods her head. “Ok. I promise.” 

God can put ‘lying to her dad’ down on her list of sins, right next to kissing Riley and killing those hunters; he can send her to hell if he wants. She’s also known Joel long enough to understand that if there is a good place and a bad place, he’ll probably be in the bad one. At least this way they’ll be together. 

“Can I really not have the comic now?” she asks, trying to lighten the mood, but Joel winces. “Not yet,” he says. “You’ve still got one more to read; you can have it when you’re all caught up.”

“Fine,” she huffs. No presents after he yells at her is a weird rule. You’d think he’d want to apologize for being a total dick and trying to shoot Henry. Since he’s never actually said sorry for anything besides not knowing she existed: something that wasn’t even his fault— But it’s a rule he doesn’t seem to want to break, so when he gets up to leave, she changes the subject, peering around at the rust and algae coating the walls of the abandoned ship. “Did everyone have boats back then?” 

“Yeah, I had a sixty-foot yacht,” he responds neutrally. 

Sixty feet? That’s the length of like… four cars. “Really?”

“No.” He chuckles. 

The corners of Ellie’s mouth twitch toward her eyes as she follows in his sandy footsteps to catch up with the boys. “Ok, now we can do sarcasm.” 

Chapter Text

Henry and Joel come to a silent agreement to keep the peace in front of the kids, but the man is warier of him now. Studies him closer. When his hand bumps against Ellie’s elbow to guide her… if he moves her by the strap of her backpack, Henry’s eyes follow, watching for the little girl’s reaction. Joel doesn’t like it, but he can’t exactly blame the guy. He knows what it must look like, what it is, and now that the haze of anger has passed, all that’s left in its place is regret. 

He didn’t leave a mark on her this time; he didn’t touch her at all. That’s progress at least. Joel snorts to himself. Oh yeah, great job. You didn’t hit your daughter in front of two strangers, you just wanted to. Tess was right; you’re a real fuckin’ hero. 

Ellie, bless her, is as tough as they come. She doesn’t give Henry anything to wonder about; she doesn’t act how he pictures a battered, or abused child would. She defends him. After everything he’s done, his touch still draws her in— It settles her, and it’s hard not to let himself be fooled by her resilience. Just because she’s not cowering and crying doesn’t mean she’s ok. It doesn’t make her immune to his anger, and it doesn’t mean that he’s not traumatizing her. If anything, she’s learning from him, a little sponge soaking up his behavior, just like she does when she watches him kill. 

Monkey see, monkey do. She’s either gonna end up imitating him, or letting others imitate him; he’s not sure which option is worse. 

Joel knows that Ellie wants to hang out with Sam. Like any other kid, she wants to spend time with and get to know people her own age, but there are two paths to be explored in the sewer system: right and left, and she follows him to the right without argument, sticking close by— They come across a closed off wall of chain-link fence and she offers to crawl through a vent to get to the other side. 

When he opens the grate, she startles, jumping back a bit. “Oh yeesh. That is a big rat.” Joel can’t help but chuckle. This is the first time he’s seen her have a fear reaction to something normal. Something that can’t kill, maim or fuck her up mentally. 

“You sure you wanna go in there?” he asks, and she steels herself, then nods. “Yeppers. Me and the rats go way back, don’t worry.” Ellie feigns bravery.

Smart girl, she gets them through just like she said she would, and they continue along into dark room after dark room connected by tunnels, the squelch of their footsteps the only sound between them. She asks him questions like everything’s normal. Like nothing happened back there on the banks of the river. “Do you think they’ll come with us all the way to Tommy’s?” Her eyes drift back in the direction where they left Henry and Sam.

“I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how things go,” Joel pacifies, but Ellie doesn’t stop there. He’s collecting supplies from a nearby worktable when she asks, “Tommy doesn’t have any kids, right?”

“Nope.”

“Did he ever?” She frowns. Did his brother lose a child too? Is that what she’s asking him? “No,” he tells her. 

“Well, do you think he will now?” she pushes, and he sighs. Nudges her toward the spot where the left and right paths converge. “If he did, they’d be a lot younger than you,” he says, but he doubts it. Tommy didn’t lose a child, but he took Sarah’s death almost as hard as Joel did; he loved his niece, and unless he had himself a slip up somewheres along the line, which seems unlikely, he can’t see his brother making the choice to become a father. Not in this fucked up world.

When they re-join Henry and Sam, the boy approaches Ellie and she drifts ahead of him, but not far enough that he can’t hear snippets of their conversation. “Henry says you guys are heading to Wyoming. He says Joel’s brother is there— That he can help us find the Fireflies.”

His daughter makes a noise of agreement. “Yeah, my Uncle Tommy used to be a Firefly,” she informs him. 

Uncle Tommy. It’s been a long time since he’s heard those two words put together, and she says it with such surety, despite the fact that she knows next to nothing about him. Again, it’s equal parts amazing and concerning how quickly she’s willing to give these important titles to virtual strangers. His brother’s gonna love it. 

Joel finds himself eager to reunite with Tommy. Like a kid on show-and-tell day, he has a base, primal urge to show off something that he made. Something that he’s proud of— If he never does anything else in his life, having created this beautiful, strong, loving little girl will be enough. Her existence proves that he’s capable of more than just brutality. 

She’s his redemption. He wants his brother to know her. 

“You guys ok?” Henry asks, his voice low as he catches up to him from the rear. Joel would rather this kid mind his own damn business, but if they’re going to be traveling together for a while, he’s got to learn to tolerate the guy. Just like he shouldn’t’ve been fighting with Tess in front of Ellie, he shouldn’t be sparring with Henry neither. “We’re fine,” he reassures smoothly. “Found a couple comic books in that ship back there and she’s right as rain now.”

The man purses his lips and gives a serious nod, then opens his mouth again. “I’m sorry…about back there,” he clarifies. “She’s your daughter, and it was a tense moment, I get it. How ‘bout from now on, I’ll worry about my brother, and you can worry about your girl?”

Joel grunts, and Henry takes it as an agreement. It’s good they patch things up when they do, because the next bit involves a certain level of trust. Trust that he’s feigning for Ellie’s sake; they have no other choice. He can’t get her across the water without something to float on, and they’ve had enough near-drowning experiences for one day. The kids can’t stay by themselves either, so he’s forced to go off on his own to hunt for something that’ll help them cross.

A couple clickers and a conveniently placed pallet later, and they’re on the other side. Ellie gets the generator running so the boys can follow, and they’re golden. His daughter is wide-eyed and fascinated by the makeshift play zone they encounter behind a sound trap. The man who maintained it was called Ish, if the letters laying around the place are to be believed. She wants to touch everything. Flopping down in a lawn chair by the entrance, she picks up one of the scribbled kids’ drawings, then stands up again and leaves his side to scribble something herself on a chalk board in the corner. 

He approaches from behind and sees two stick people, a girl with a ponytail, and a tall man standing beside her. Over top of the picture, she’s written Ellie & Joel. The stick man has his arm around the little girl; she even drew a watch on his left wrist.

Therapists in the old days used to get kids to draw their families to determine their mental state. To get a sense of their home dynamics and who they had strong relationships with— Joel knows this because Sarah saw a school guidance counsellor once or twice in the first grade; she was falling asleep in class. He could’ve told them, in fact he did tell them, that it was because she’d been left for two straight weeks of nights with his brother, who never put her to bed on time, while Joel was finishing up a job—But no, they had to run their little tests. Had to make sure he wasn’t beating or starving her. 

He’ll never forget the picture she drew, done in blue crayon. He hung it on his bedroom wall and it stayed there for months afterwards. His daughter had drawn herself in Joel’s arms; she was still small enough back then that he routinely carried her, and she drew daddy and Uncle Tommy holding hands. The frumpy, middle-aged therapist had asked him when he picked her up that day if Sarah had two daddies. Tommy got a kick out of that one.

The woman, he can’t remember her name now, said it was a good thing. That it meant she had a ‘secure attachment,” which is a nice thought, but he’s pretty sure was a load of bullshit. How the fuck could Ellie be securely attached to him at this point in their relationship? 

She isn’t. The girl’s got emotional problems that make her think she is— His fault of course; abandoned children tend to have those. He’s not even sure the same logic applies to teenagers. Still, the carefully placed stick people comfort him more than he expects. At the very least it must mean she feels safe with him. Connected to him in some unexplainable way. It means that Joel hasn’t ruined things for them completely. That they’ve still got time to get this right.

Ellie turns her head to look at him, awaiting his approval, and he ruffles her ponytail. “Cute,” he says, and she brightens, encouraged by the praise. “Do you think we should take a few of these toys?” the girl asks, pointing to a corner of the shadowed room containing a pile of dolls and race cars.

“Why?” He frowns, and she shrugs. “Like in case Tommy has kids,” Ellie tells him shyly, and Joel works to control the automatic grimace that appears on his face. He passes it off as an awkward smile.  

She’s so young. So innocent still. He forgets that sometimes, but he ought not to. “I don’t think he’s gonna have kids.” He tries to let her down easy, not bothering to remind her that he’s not even sure if his brother’s alive. That he hasn’t spoken to the younger Miller in almost a decade. She’s getting herself good and attached to the idea of him. Hasn’t even met the man yet and she’s already inventing a bond, creating imaginary cousins. Joel reckons she might even love him; she’ll definitely grieve for him if it turns out their efforts to locate Tommy are for naught.

Sam pulls her into a makeshift game of soccer with a ripped up net and a volleyball. Henry starts to scold him for playing, but Joel waves the man off before he takes it too far. “Just give ‘em a minute,” he tells the younger guy. In some ways, they both have lessons to learn with these kids. He’s not sure how long Henry’s been taking care of his brother, but he needs to figure out how to let the boy have fun every now and then.

Joel on the other hand… Well, Joel knows what he needs to learn. Not physically abusing and emotionally manipulating his orphaned, vulnerable 14-year-old daughter would be a good start. At this point, he’d just be glad never to see her flinch like that again when he moves his hand during a fight. That shouldn’t be her knee jerk reaction to him getting mad at her. 

“Didju’ win?” he asks when Ellie approaches him after the match. She shows him her teeth and nods. “Ten to two,” she tells him the score. Joel’s in a mood to indulge her, so he gives her a fond look and says, “Must be genetic.”

For better or worse, this girl knows how to match a mood. Those pretty greens sparkle and her chin jerks up to meet his gaze so fast he worries she’ll give herself whiplash. She sure likes that word. “Wait, do you like playing soccer?” she questions, and he shakes his head. Disappointment clouds her eyes for a brief second before he slings his watch arm around her shoulders, mimicking the action from her chalk drawing, humors her, and says, “Not me, but Sarah played; she was on a team.” 

“Really?” There’s that voice again, like the very thought that she might share one or two of her sister’s qualities is enough to leave her awestruck.

Does he actually think that Ellie possesses the same level of soccer ability as his first daughter?— Who knows; she might, but kicking a leather ball at a thirteen-year-old boy who’s probably never heard of soccer isn’t the way to determine that. Thing is, Joel will say just about anything to see her smile. “Like I said, must be genetic,” he repeats, and the crooked grin she aims his way is worth a million trophies.

Chapter Text

Ellie can tell that Henry is worried about Joel not being able to keep Sam safe navigating the underground, but she’s worried about Sam for a whole different reason. Joel looks murderous when his own mistake causes Ellie to end up on the other side of a closed off section of sewer with Henry. She’s starting to see a pattern here. Joel gets mad when she’s in danger. He’s scared for her. His fear proves that he loves her. 

Anger turns to panic when they’re forced to run away. When a swarm of clickers begins to close in on them. All she can think as they disappear from sight is poor Sam. Joel might not be able to keep their new friend safe from himself, let alone whatever other horrors are down here.  

Henry yanks her into a tight, closet-like room behind a solid doorway, and motions for her to get down on the ground. “Let’s be quiet. Wait it out,” he whispers. Ellie nods in reply— But waiting isn’t her strong suit, and it looks like the older of the two brothers is starting to notice that, because he sighs and leans back against the wall.

“Has it always been just you and your dad?” he asks, making small talk. 

Ellie looks up at him and decides in that moment to be truthful. Maybe it’ll help the man understand a little better if she does. “No, we just met,” she tells him.

Henry’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “You just met? I thought he was your dad.” He appears to be a combination of startled and concerned, maybe a little protective. That part catches her by surprise, and a warmth settles in her chest. Maybe he’s not a piece of shit after all. 

“He is my dad—” she clarifies, “— My mom’s friend introduced us like… a week ago. He didn’t know I existed till then.” 

“Damn,” Henry curses. “DAMN!” he yells again when a clicker bursts through the door. The man raises his gun, fires twice, and tugs Ellie along behind him. “Let’s go!” he shouts. The pair of them take off sprinting through dirty water, their hands blackened and covered in grime as he climbs down a ladder, then catches her when she jumps after him.

A deformed, fungal arm latches onto her pant leg, and Ellie lashes out at it with her foot, “Fucking thing!” she yells. Henry fires another shot— then a fourth into it’s spongy, blooming face; the clicker explodes, and they’re already on the move again before the body hits the floor. 

“Ellie!” she hears Joel call. They run toward the sound, locating the other two boys with a horde of infected still hot on their tail. She crashes into Joel’s chest and he steadies her. “Oh thank God! We have to keep running! Doorway- Over there!” Ellie directs him, and she expects him to follow her, but he hesitates, looking back at the incoming swarm like he’s considering a fight. 

“Run! There’s too many of them!” she calls back and he snaps out of it, bringing up the rear at a faster pace this time.

If military drills prepared her for one thing, it’s running for her life. They have to crawl, climb, and leap over grates, and whole floors as they make their way up into the sewer maintenance building on the topmost level. By the time they reach a potential exit, Ellie is breathing heavy and there’s a stitch throbbing in her right side every time she takes a step.

Henry tries the door. “Damn thing’s stuck!”

“Here! Gimme a boost! I can get through that window,” she tells him. He doesn’t question it, springing her and then Sam one-by-one through an opening above the frame. Her belly scrapes across the shattered glass and she winces. They land on a small deck with a vending machine and Ellie pries open the door. Joel and Henry are too busy fending off infected to notice. She hears the whoosh of flames, and the ping of bullets bouncing off the floor.

“Should we help them?” Sam shouts over the noise, giving her a frantic look.

Ellie puts an arm out to steady him. “No. It’s ok. Joel’s got this,” she reassures, and no sooner does she speak than the two men come barreling through the open door behind them. Joel heaves the Coca Cola machine across their path to block it, and Sam gestures to a swatch of graffiti on the wall, “Look at this.”

Warning, infected inside. Do not open. 

“Oh, are you fucking kidding me?” she exclaims. “Thanks for the warning on the other side guys.”

They walk through a field of grass, pollen and dandelion spores glinting in the waning sunlight all around them. If she squints hard enough, they kind of look like the fireflies she saw outside Lincoln. Ellie wonders how Bill is doing; she misses him, in a weird sort of way. They’re surrounded by houses, the large, pretty kind that look like they might’ve belonged to rich people: families.

She wants to ask Joel if he ever lived in a neighborhood like this with Sarah. She wants to ask him what his wife’s name was, and if she lived with them too. If she was strong like Tess. There are so many things she wants to know. Like if she’s dead now too, or still alive somewhere— maybe in Texas. She’s curious whether he’s ever gone back to Austin, or if he would were he to learn that Sarah’s mom was alive and living there. Ellie wouldn’t mind going to Texas to see what it’s like, even though she’s pretty sure that despite her genetics, she doesn’t count as a Southerner. 

Joel pulls her out of her thoughts, cocking his head in the direction of one of the nearby houses. “Give us a minute,” he orders Henry. “You guys take a look around, see if there’s anything we can use.” 

Holy motherfucking shit. Is she in trouble for something again? It wouldn’t be fair if she was. Everything that happened back in the sewer was his fault, not hers. “C’mere.” He motions for her to follow him into a bedroom on the main floor of the abandoned home.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, frowning at him as he stands with his feet shoulder width apart, arms crossed over his chest. 

“You’re bleedin’, sweetheart,” Joel tells her gently, pointing to a dark, red spot spreading across the front of her shirt. 

Sweetheart. That’s three now. She adds that one to her new list of favorite words, right next to honey, baby girl, and aerospace. Ellie’s eyebrows crease as she looks down at the stain. “Yeah, there was broken glass in the window frame.” She shrugs. “It’s just a few cuts.”

“Why don’t you let me take a look?” His tone is casual, confident, but there’s hesitancy behind his eyes, like he’s unsure if she’ll allow it. It is a little weird; she’s never been to a doctor before. Never had a physical exam. The idea of someone touching her bare stomach creeps her out a bit, and if any other man his age cornered her in a room and told her to pull up her shirt, she’d be reaching for her knife before he even got the words out— But Joel is dad, and dads are safe. He’s never given her any reason to feel differently. 

She sits down slowly on the dusty bed, the sheets molding with age, water spots stiff and crusting in some places. Joel crouches next to her and Ellie lays on her back, swallowing as she takes a deep breath, then rolls the hem of her Ninja Turtles shirt up past her bellybutton without giving herself time to change her mind. 

“Just a few good scrapes,” he mutters, callused fingers probing taut skin in spots where no one’s ever touched her. Joel takes his hands off her stomach to unzip his backpack and fishes out a rag and a half empty bottle of alcohol. “Best we clean ‘em, then wrap your belly with gauze,” he informs her. “Your shirt is covered in all sorts.” Ellie appreciates that he avoids words like shit, or sewage. “There’s one a little deeper than the others, and I don’t want to see it get infected.”

“Ok,” Ellie agrees, relaxing back a bit, then moving her hands to rest higher against her ribcage to give him better access. The alcohol stings, but something about the pressure comforts her through the burn. She thinks back to when she was younger; her first memories, first cuts and bruises, the time she face planted into a wood burning fireplace and chipped her baby tooth.

Ellie tries to insert Joel into those moments. In spite of his temper, there’s an element of care in his touch that’s she’s never experienced before. Like maybe in a different life, if he’d known about her when she was little, he would’ve been the kind of dad that picked her up and held her when she got hurt. She’s too big for him to lift now, but she figures this is kind of the same thing: what it feels like to be looked after. To be worried about, not tossed aside. 

When he finishes with the gauze, he pats her belly, rucks the hem of her shirt down and clears his throat. “There we go,” Joel drawls awkwardly, offering out a hand to help her stand. She takes it, then looks up at him with a tentative smile on her face. He likes when she smiles at him; Ellie can tell. “Thanks,” she says.

He doesn’t respond. Sometimes it seems like the words get lost in his throat. “Let’s search the rest of this house,” he suggests instead, and they split off to do just that. Ellie finds a couple bullets for her 9mm, and two rags. Joel is stuffing something into his backpack when she rejoins him in the bathroom. “What’d you get?” she asks, but he doesn’t answer her. This time she’s sure it’s because he doesn’t want to. 

“Think it’s about time we join those boys outside. Whaddya’ say?” He nudges her. 

“O—kay,” Ellie agrees. He’s being nice; she’d better not push it.

Henry talks to them about his life before the outbreak. About barbecues, and whole neighborhoods coming together to have these big, sprawling parties. Joel doesn’t contribute anything, and she wonders if that’s because he didn’t do those things when he had the chance, or because he did, and the mention of happier times makes him sad. 

Her stomach churns with jealousy whenever she thinks of Sarah in these moments. There are things that normal dads and daughters get to do together that Ellie and Joel will never get to. Every time it crosses her mind, the wide, empty pit of guilt deepens in her chest. Sarah’s her sister. There’s gotta be something fucked up inside her, some mental disorder that makes her worry about stuff like this. She shouldn’t be jealous or resentful of someone who’s long dead— But it scares her to think that she might never be good enough to replace the daughter he lost. That she might not get enough time with him to leave the same impression in his heart. 

Still, being the second best daughter to a dad who loves her isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s better than being an orphan. Better than being alone. Maybe it would help if she could see a picture of Sarah. Put a face to the name instead of building the girl up in her head as this looming, abstract concept: someone who was sweeter than her, better behaved than her, prettier than her. Who wouldn’t argue and fight, or glare at him and wish him dead when he got mad. A girl that he never needed to get mad at, or yell at, or grab, because she never made him want to.

She’s willing to bet that Sarah got to buy ice cream from a fucking singing truck. Joel probably gave her the money to do it. 

Sam forces Ellie away from her brooding by challenging her to a game of darts set up in the living room of the next house. It looks like Henry wants to tell him to keep moving, but the man glances at Joel before he speaks, then closes his mouth. Did Joel say something to him? Ellie gets the impression that Henry isn’t her dad’s biggest fan, so if he did, it’s weird that the younger man listened. 

“You just throw it?” Ellie asks, and Sam nods. “Boosh! I’m a natural,” she says when the dart goes soaring and lands in the centre of the board.

“Beginner’s luck,” he counters.

“Oh, and you’re a professional? How many times have you even played this?”

It’s fun to go back and forth with Sam, even if he is a bit of a sore loser. Boys usually are.  Maybe he got one better shot than her, once, but Ellie didn’t get “totally destroyed,” like he claimed. Not even fucking close. 

Joel jumps down into another section of houses and there’s a shot from one of the surrounding windows. “Oh shit! Get down!” he curses, then motions for them to duck behind a stationary car. 

“Fuckin’ sniper,” Henry says.

“You see where it came from?” 

Sam’s brother nods. “Somewhere down the street.” 

Her dad looks at her, then looks back at Henry with some critical, hard to read emotion in his eyes. “Alright now… I need you two to keep this guy busy,” Joel instructs. “Ellie, are you ok to run?” He gestures at the blood on her shirt, the injury beneath it. 

She nods. 

“Are you sure?” he demands. 

“I can, I promise.” Ellie gives him her best impression of earnest. She’s not lying; the cuts aren’t deep. She’s had much worse, and if he hadn’t pointed them out, she wouldn’t have even noticed— Still, she let him make a big deal about it because it felt nice to be cared about for once. Outside of Marlene, who seems to have a generic concern for her safety, he’s the only grown up who ever has. 

“Good, then you’re comin’ with me. Stay close. We’re gonna go around, see if we can get the angle on him.”

“Roger dodger.” He gives her a look, as if to say, “I’m serious, girl.” She can’t tell if he’s letting her come with him because he trusts her, or because he doesn’t. If she isn’t sure, she can’t argue. Maybe that’s his intention. One person, she thinks to herself. We’re one person. 

“Be careful,” Sam whispers as she moves to follow, and she shoots him a quick smile. “You too.”

She should’ve listened better when Joel was telling her about what does and doesn’t count as an emergency. Now that she has a gun, it’s hard to know when to step in— Ellie doesn’t want to waste bullets, and she knows it stresses Joel out; it distracts him whenever she fires, but there are men coming at them from all sides.

It’s better if she tries to work with him, not against him; it’s easy for her presence to become a liability, a sort of leverage that the hunters can use to their advantage, so she tries to let him do most of the work, intervening only to throw shit as a distraction. He told her it was good when she did that the last time they were outnumbered. He praises her again for it this time. A hushed, breathy, “Thatta girl,” as she trips one of the skinnier guys with a well-timed brick.

They’re in the middle of a standoff in the upstairs hallway of one of the houses when Joel ushers her with his hand into a nearby bedroom. Ellie wants to stay next to him, but she promised to do what he says, so she listens, tripping through the open doorway and into the empty space. There’s no furniture: no moldy bed, no rotting nightstand. She has just enough time to find that suspicious and to see the long range, scoped weapon leaning up against the open window before someone lunges at her from the side, knife in hand.

Ellie lets out a scream of protest as he rolls on top of her, holding the knife inches from her face. She tries to shoot, but misses; he knocks her gun to the floor, and she brings her knee up and gets him between the legs. The man cries out, and she uses the opportunity to reach for his blade, yanking it out of his hand, then stabbing it into the top of his arm. He howls in agony. She jerks it back, then aims again, this time for the neck. The knife hits its target, slicing through the delicate skin like butter. When she pulls it out, the force of the blade makes a sucking noise as it retracts. 

Blood spurts from his neck, and the hunter falls to the floor gurgling, his legs and arms spasming like he’s having a seizure; then he goes quiet, a dark crimson puddle coagulating around him. Ellie takes a step back to avoid getting blood on her shoes. That’s how Joel finds her: standing over the man’s dead body, staring at it in shock.

She’s killed people before, but not like that. Not with a knife.

“Jesus Christ,” he swears, and Ellie swallows the urge to flinch. He can’t be mad at her; he’s the one who made her come in here in the first place. “I had to,” she says. He sees the apprehension on her face, but this time, he doesn’t react with anger. “I know,” he soothes, bypassing the body to take her by the shoulder. “You did good,” he mutters, extracting the silver-edged blade from her hand with gentle fingers. 

When he kneels by the windowsill to grab the rifle, she picks up her gun and ducks next to him, then glances back at her handiwork. He stops her, nudging her head around to face him. “Don’t look, Ellie,” he commands. “You keep your eyes on me, nowhere else.”

Joel sighs when she ignores him, sitting up on her knees to watch him take aim at the moving figures below: the rats, but there’s no time for him to scold her.

Henry is a white rat, and Sam is beige and white; they blend in with the others, but somehow Joel is able to tell them apart. He doesn’t miss nearly as many times as Ellie did when she was the one with the rifle. “Holy shit, Joel—” she curses as a large, military truck with a fucking bazooka on the roof turns the corner and starts firing.

“I see it.” He goes for the tires, but when that doesn’t work, he aims for the driver, making surprisingly quick work of the mighty thing before it can do any damage to the two brother rats down below. Ellie’s about to start cheering when they hear familiar, echoed screams from off in the distance, a small horde of infected closing in on Henry and Sam.

“We have to go help them!” she stresses, but Joel puts an arm out to stop her. He shakes his head. “We help from up here.” Sam struggles against one of the runners, kicking at it with his feet like he’s peddling a bicycle in the air, and Henry takes it down. Joel fires two shots to subdue another pair that are closing in on the boys. One more from Henry, and they’re gone. The older brother sends them a thumbs up from the ground. 

“Think one of ‘em clipped my shirt. Wanna take a look for me?” Joel asks her as they stand up to exit the room, stretching the green fabric out to the side for her to grab onto. Ellie frowns, inspecting his button-up as best she can through all the dirt and grime. “I don’t see anything.”

“You sure? How ‘bout back here?” He turns to show her.

“Nope. You’re good,” she reassures him. 

Joel makes a noise of approval. “Guess I was wrong then.” It’s only once they’re on the stairs that she realizes he was never worried about his shirt. He was distracting her so that she didn’t stare at the body on their way out. 

Chapter Text

Sam acts weird on the way to the radio tower; he’s quiet. He doesn’t try to talk to her as much as he was before. Ellie starts to wonder if he’s upset about something. Upset with her for following Joel, or for the fact that him and Henry got the worst of the ambush. Maybe he’s never seen anything like that before. They did travel here in a big group; it’s different when it’s two people alone. As soon as they climb the stairs and clear the place out, he goes into the other room and leaves Ellie in the main space with the two men.

“It’s a lot for him.” Henry shrugs, excusing his younger brother’s behavior as he starts to sort through some of their supplies. Joel begins to search the place. He finds a couple thin blankets and pillows, one for Ellie, and one for Sam; that’s what he says. “What’s for dinner, kiddo?” her dad asks, gesturing to his bag, like he’s telling her to pick something out. 

She looks up at him. “Can we have more of that meat? It’s so fucking good—”

“Meat?” Henry’s brows push together, confused. “You guys do some hunting?”

Joel clears his throat. “Spam,” he clarifies, but Ellie’s not sure why there’s a distinction in the first place; meat is meat. “S’fine,” he agrees, “— but you’ve at least gotta let me cook it.” The radio tower has it’s own portable burner that Henry is already lighting up as they speak. “Why don’t you pick a vegetable too?” Sam’s brother suggests. “We’ve got peas and green beans. Might be one can of spinach in there.”

Ellie pulls out a large, yellow tin of the Hamper brand corned beef: family size. They’re sort of like a family: two adults and two kids. It’s not the traditional mom and dad style set up, but that has no bearing on whether or not they can polish off the entire can in one sitting. “If we eat this one, then we won’t have to waste a vegetable.” She offers it to Henry. Joel glances at her from his spot under the window; he quirks an eyebrow. “What are you on about?” 

“Because it has corn in it,” she tells him. “Corned beef. Duh.”

He snorts at her, somehow amused at her expense. The sound pulls her face into a scowl. “What?” she demands, turning her glare onto Henry, who’s also fighting a smile. “Corned beef doesn’t have corn in it,” the older brother informs her gently. “It’s beef cured in brine.” 

“I don’t know how I was supposed to know that.” Ellie pouts, depositing the can next to Sam’s brother, who gets to work slicing the round, jelly-like cylinder of meat into more palatable chunks. Joel smirks at her and she sticks her middle finger up at him. “Fuck you, man.”

Henry’s eyes dart to her dad, like he’s worried Ellie’s language is going to make the older man angry, but he doesn’t understand Joel like she does. The only reason he gets mad at her is because she puts herself in danger. It is what it is; she’s not going to stop doing it, and he’s not going to stop getting pissed when she does. That’s what he said anyways, in a round about sort of way. Trying to fight it would be like trying to go against nature. 

All Joel does is shoot her a disapproving look. “Corn ain’t a vegetable anyhow. Your body can’t digest it; the stuff just slides right through you.” He chuckles again when she makes a face. She’s not really mad, maybe a little annoyed, but the negative emotion is largely overshadowed by the fact that he’s happy. Joel is playing with her; he’s teasing her, and there’s a certain normalcy in it that Ellie didn’t realize she was missing.

“This must be weird for you two,” Henry comments as he works, “— becoming a family overnight. My parents had Sam pretty late in life, but at least I was around when he was little. Made it easier to know how to take care of him when I had to.”

Joel freezes in place, and Ellie watches as he closes his eyes, his shoulders rising then falling with a slow, deep breath. Fuck. She wasn’t supposed to tell Henry their story— Well, just like with the corned beef, how is she supposed to know anything if he doesn’t tell her? Henry’s lips form a thin line; he can see that he’s hit a nerve. It doesn’t even seem like Joel’s going to respond, so once again, it’s up to Ellie to smooth things over. “It’s not so bad.” She shrugs. “Mostly I just boss him around. Isn’t that right, Joel?”

He recovers from the momentary blow in time to give an affirmative grunt, but the playfulness is gone, and Ellie can’t help but put the blame on Henry. Why did he have to open his stupid mouth? It’s none of his business anyways. “I’m gonna go hang out with Sam,” she tells them. The man starts to apologize to her dad as Ellie leaves the room.

‘Hanging out with Sam,’ turns into reading Deep Phase by herself in the other room when he rejects all her attempts to make conversation. Oh yeah— Her friend is definitely pissed about something. He barely eats dinner, and Ellie has to stop herself from asking for his portion of the corned beef and spinach mixture like the greedy little orphan she is when he shuts himself away again, his food untouched. Henry sees her staring at it, and tells her to go ahead once they’re sure the boy isn’t going to finish. She’s never heard of Spam before, not until she met Joel, and holy SHIT is it delicious. Better than anything she’s ever tried, including the tomato soup chili he made for her.

“Easy,” Joel warns, her fingers already stuffed halfway into her mouth, like he too is remembering the orangey-red mess that came back up all over her sweater their first night together. “S—ry,” Ellie says with her mouth full, showing him the mushy pink as she grins a meaty grin in his direction. “Issogood.”

Her dad doesn’t even try to hide the disgust on his face this time as he looks away. She gets the distinct impression that he’s not a fan of canned meat. That he only packed it because she was so enthusiastic. It’s a nice thought: a tingle in her belly as she digests the coveted meal. Henry keeps eying the door to the offshoot, like he wants to go in there and talk to Sam, but he thinks better of it. Maybe he figures the boy needs time on his own, space to process everything they saw today.

Instead, he gets Joel talking about his life before the outbreak. Ellie’s not sure how he does it because he’s usually reluctant to go there, even with her, especially with her— But that could be because most of her questions don’t center around simple, happy memories. She asks the hard hitting ones: stuff about Sarah and what they used to do together— She can’t help it; those are the things she wants to know about. 

“It was Tommy’s birthday. That’s all he wanted to do is just- rent two Harleys and drive cross country,” Joel explains. Harleys she guesses from the context cues they’re both giving off, is code for motorbikes, which is something Ellie files away in the Tommy section of her brain. A collection that’s growing bigger and bigger the further they get in their journey. 

These are the things she knows about her uncle in no particular order… He used to be a Firefly, but he’s not anymore; he used to live in Boston, but he moved to Jackson, Wyoming; he looks like Joel, but he’s blond; he’s younger than Joel, but not by much; he didn’t have kids before, and probably doesn’t have any now; he and Joel don’t always get along, but he’ll be nice to her— And now, she knows that he likes motorbikes. 

Maybe the four of them, Ellie, Joel, Sam and Henry, are closer to being a regular family unit than Ellie thought. Henry’s looking at her dad like he wants to do unspeakable things to him, and even though she’s pretty sure it has more to do with the story than Joel, and despite the fact that her dad clearly has an attraction to women: more women than he can remember, she figures it could work. “Ah, man. I could die happy if I could just ride one around the block— What was it like?”

“It was good. It was real good.” 

“Good? Can you believe this guy?” he complains, giving Ellie an incredulous look. “C’mon man, give me details. Describe it.”

“You know what? You two deserve a little privacy.” She’s restless; she wants Joel to answer her questions, but he’s too busy flirting with Henry, and she’s too scared he’ll reject her to risk changing the subject— So, she resigns herself to giving things with Sam one more try. Henry attempts to convince her to stay. He’s playing around; he wants her to be as excited about motorcycles as he is, but it’s not his attention she craves, and in the end, the choice is easy.

When she enters the quiet room and closes the door behind her, Sam is sitting alone at the desk in the middle of the floor. He’s counting and re-counting cans that she knows for a fact Joel’s already factored into their supplies. “Well, it’s safe to say those two have officially bonded. What’re you doing?” she asks. 

“Taking stock of all the food we found today.” For over an hour? Yeah right. But she doesn’t call him out on it. There’s something wrong, and Ellie’s not going to get answers by acting like an asshole. “I see… And how are we doing on canned peaches?”

“Did Henry send you?” he demands. 

“No. Why would Henry send me?”

“To make sure I’m not fucking up somehow.” Ah-ha, so Ellie’s not the only one who lives in constant fear of disappointing her only parental figure.

“Psh. I’d say we all did pretty good back there- especially you.” She shrugs, trying to keep things casual. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine.”

An indignant heat rises in her chest. Fine. If he doesn’t want to talk to her… What’s she supposed to do now? Ellie can’t fucking sit out there anymore, listening to things she doesn’t care about. She’s bored; she needs to get up and move around. Maybe Joel will let her go up and down the stairs for a bit. Maybe she doesn’t need his permission. “Okay… Well… Have a good night.”

“How is it that you’re never scared?” Sam asks out of the blue, just as she’s about to leave. 

Ellie pauses both her step and her defiance, then pivots on her heels to face him, her mouth set in a frown. “Who says that I’m not?” It comes out like a challenge. Just because she’s not ignoring her friends, or cowering in another room doesn’t mean she’s not terrified out of her fucking mind all the time, and it doesn’t mean she’s not traumatized from all the shit she’s had to do to keep them alive. Like that sniper guy today; that was fucked up. 

“What are you scared of?” 

She clears her throat. “Let’s see… Scorpions are pretty creepy, and there was this rat, back in the sewers—” Ellie gestures with her hands to indicate the size. 

He turns away from her.

“Um… losing my dad,” she admits quietly, and that gets Sam’s attention, “— him dying. I’m scared of ending up alone.” He doesn’t say anything, but it feels like he might be coming around, so she returns the question. “What about you?”

“Those things out there.” Sam points out the window. “What if the people are still inside? What if they’re trapped in there without any control of their body? I’m scared of that happening to me.” 

“Okay, first of all. We’re a team now.” A family. “We’re gonna help eachother out. And second, they might still look like people, but that person is not in there anymore.”

Ellie knows what it’s like to watch someone turn; she knows better than anyone the moment when that person stops being a person. She can pinpoint it down to the exact millisecond, but that still doesn’t make it any easier to comprehend. 

“Henry says that they’ve, ‘moved on,’” Sam says with air quotations. “That they’re with their families. Like in heaven. Do you think that’s true?”

“I go back and forth. I mean, I’d like to believe it.” More than anything she’d like to believe it. 

“But you don’t,” he says. It almost sounds like an accusation. 

“I guess not.” When you get infected, you don’t die, you just change, so even if there is a heaven, how is your soul supposed to get there when your body is still moving around? Ellie squeezes her eyes shut in an effort to stop the influx of disturbing images from assaulting her brain. The sound of metal against ceramic. Two girls with their backs to the concrete. “My vote, let’s just wait it out. You know, we can… be all poetic and just lose our minds together.” 

“Yeah. Me neither.” Sam sounds tired; he sounds dejected. He sounds a bit like Riley sounded when Ellie asked for option three. Neither of them could’ve predicted that the third option would involve Ellie walking out of that mall scot free, leaving her best friend to lose her mind alone. So much for poetry. Riley was stronger than Ellie. She killed her own father when he got bit— Even now, after everything she’s experienced… all her regrets… Ellie doesn’t think she’d have the strength to do that.

“Alright. I’m pooped,” she says, but it’s just an excuse. Talking about infection, and thinking about Riley has made her homesick for Joel. For the one person Ellie has left in this world. She wants… No, she needs to make sure they’re alright. That they’re getting along, even if he doesn’t want to pay attention to her, or answer her questions. Even if he can never love her the way he loved Sarah. She can live with it. Any and all of it, just as long as he stays. 

Ellie settles into the makeshift bed on the floor, as far away from the window as possible in case there’s a draft. Joel has good instincts; he doesn’t miss a thing, and she knows he can feel her watching him. He picks up his open backpack off the ground, and comes over to her. Joel sits down slowly, groaning in the way that old people do when they’re in pain, placing the bag between his knees.

“How’re you holdin’ up, kiddo?” he asks.

“I’m good,” she says. He eyes her shirt in the spot where she’s bandaged. “Why don’t you let me re-wrap it?” Ellie glances warily at Henry, who’s on his way back in from delivering a pillow and blanket to Sam. Her dad follows her gaze, then squints and shakes his head. “He ain’t looking at you.” Joel reassures, making a cross-my-heart motion over his chest with his hand.

She slides green fabric up to expose the dirty gauze underneath, and he’s just as careful this time as he was earlier. He dabs the healing wounds with alcohol again, and she arches her back so he can use another swatch of clean bandage to cover her stomach, pinning it at her side “Looks like it’s coming along just fine.” 

“Now,” Joel starts, reaching into his backpack to retrieve something from its depths. “I need you to promise me you’ll try and get some sleep…” he trails off, pulling not one, but two Savage Starlight comics out of the big pocket. 

“Messenger Particle—” she reads aloud, taking the unfamiliar one first. This must be what he found in the bathroom back at that big house, just before the sniper attack. The thing he didn’t want her to see him take. “How the fuck do you keep finding these?” Ellie smiles so wide her cheeks hurt. She likes knowing that he’s thinking about her, even if he doesn’t say it. That he remembers the things she likes. Keeps an eye out for them even. Joel clears his throat. “Must’ve been popular before the outbreak.”

She crosses her legs and sets the comics down on her lap. “Thanks,” she says, and he puts a hand on her knee. “Read one tonight; save the other for later,” he tells her. “I need you sharp in the morning.”

“Yessir.” Ellie salutes, and the corners of his mouth twitch toward his eyes. He ruffles her ponytail. “G’night, kiddo.”

“Night,” she says, already cracking Antiparticles open to page one as he heads back over to his own corner of the tower. 

Ellie is aware that in Joel world, not listening to instructions is punishable by death, but it takes her about an hour to read the comic, and the story ends on a stupid cliffhanger again. Why do they always do that? Messenger Particle appears to be the second installment in the series; it has nothing to do with the one she just finished, but she needs something to take her mind off that insane motherfucking climax, and Joel’s asleep. Henry’s asleep too. Even if she’s tired in the morning, she vows not to act like it. She’ll stifle her yawns and splash cold water on her face or something. 

No one needs to know. 

She reads the back of the newest issue. Ellie’s just about to bend the spine when she hears a crash from the other room. It startles her, and it’s in that moment that she realizes… She was so caught up in her own thoughts. In Riley, and then in Joel, that she forgot to give Sam the plastic robot she stole from the toy store yesterday. It doesn’t hurt to check on him either. If he’s crashing around in there, that means he’s awake. 

Ellie’s careful with the door, tiptoeing over and turning the knob quietly just in case she’s wrong. It’s possible that he could’ve kicked something over in his sleep— But when she enters the room, Sam isn’t sleeping. He’s on the ground with his back to the wall. 

The pillow and blanket are still piled by the door. 

“Sam?” she whispers. He looks up when she calls his name, but there’s something weird going on— Her friend stares right through her, like he doesn’t notice she’s standing in front of him. His arm jerks. Ellie gets closer, and it’s only as she does so that she sees the way the veins protrude from his face, purple and swollen against dark skin. She freezes, the toy robot falling to the floor as Ellie takes a step back. 

“Sam?” she squeaks. A dawning horror settles over her: a burning in her lungs. He reacts to his name again, and this time, when their eyes lock, there’s a flash of fear beneath cloudy brown irises. The last shreds of humanity left as the infection takes hold. He opens his mouth, but he can’t speak. Sam reaches out for her, but his fingers stretch and contract. He loses control of his muscles, his neck tilting to the side.

Ellie shuts the door behind her with shaky hands, still in shock. There’s a loud, rhythmic pulsing in her head. Her brain is working in overdrive trying to catch up, but there’s no mistaking what this is— She’s seen it before. He was fine not two hours ago, now he’s… the opposite of fine. Like Tess, he was hiding a bite this whole time. That’s why he was acting so distant— so scared. Why he was asking her about heaven. 

It won’t be long now.

When it was Riley, she didn’t know what to do. Ellie didn’t know if she was going to turn too, how long it would take, what it would look like. They were alone; there was no one who could help them. No one who would want to, but this time is different. She forces herself to swallow the lump of terror rising in her throat. The grief. Forces herself to fight through the paralysis in her limbs. 

This time, she knows what she has to do.

“Joel—” she hisses, kneeling beside him, shaking him awake. “Joel,” Ellie pleads, desperation heightening the pitch in her voice. She has to be quiet; she can’t wake up Henry. Her dad bolts upright, on guard, his eyes wide as he gets his bearings. “What’s going on?” he demands, and she lowers her tone again. “Something’s wrong with Sam,” she tells him.

He blinks, then blinks again and asks, “What do you mean by that? Is he hurt?”

Heat wells behind her eyes, and Ellie sniffles to prevent a stream of snot from expelling out of her nose. She wipes the moisture from her cheeks onto her sleeve and chokes out, “I think he’s infected.”

Joel stiffens, his hand darting out to rest on his revolver. With his other hand, he grabs her wrist. Pulls her closer. “You think, or you know?” he probes, the question barely audible. Ellie lets out another noise of distress. “I know!” she cries, pressing her fist against her mouth to muffle the sound.

“Oh Christ,” he curses, still adjusting to the new information. “Ok—” Joel tells her, “— Here’s what we’re gonna do… You’re gonna grab your bag, I’m gonna grab mine, and we are gonna get the hell outta here,” he says.

“We can’t! Joel—” She tries to pull away from him, but he stops her. “Ellie,” he elongates her name, like he does when he’s about to say something important. He brings his lips close to her ear so he can speak freely. “There is no other option here. If that boy turns, he’s gonna infect me, he’s gonna infect Henry, and then he’s gonna try and kill you, and even you ain’t immune to that.”

“No.” She yanks her arm back, curling it into her chest. “No, I’m not going.” Ellie’s not going to abandon her friends. Not this time. She’s not going to leave Henry while he’s sleeping, unaware of the transformation taking place in the next room. She won’t. Joel can’t make her. “Henry—” she shouts, now trying to get his attention. “Henry, get up!” 

A heavy hand cups her mouth, strong arms winding around her from behind as she fights to get to her feet, then to stay standing. Ellie’s mind is on a loop, of Henry— Wake up Henry— Save Sam— Save Riley. She thrashes against Joel, striking him in the chest with her elbow. He grunts and his grip loosens. “Let me go!” she screams. “Let me go— Let me go!” Ellie kicks him in the shin. 

Henry startles awake. The man sees Joel struggling to subdue her. He sees Ellie fighting back: punching him, kicking him, crying out in indignation, and he reacts, reaching for his gun and aiming it at her dad. “What the hell are you doin’ man?” he demands, on his feet faster than she’s ever seen him move.

“Henry—” Joel growls out a warning, but the man isn’t deterred. “Get your hands off her,” Henry orders. “You let her go, or I will shoot you,” he threatens.

No—no—no! “Don’t shoot!” She cries, her body going limp in Joel’s arms. “Don’t shoot him,” Ellie repeats, breathless now as an anxious silence descends over them.

“Fuck sakes, we don’t have time for this, Ellie—” Her dad tries to maneuver her closer to the door, but Henry’s gun hand twitches. 

“Stay where you are,” he says. “Let your daughter go, so we can talk about this.” He doesn’t stop there, addressing Ellie this time. “What’d he do to you?” the man asks. “He attack you in your sleep? Touch you?”

“No,” Ellie plants her feet firmly into the floor. She has to tell him; it’s the only way. Henry can’t shoot Joel, and Ellie can’t leave Henry. “Sam’s infected,” she says unsteadily. 

Henry’s gun hand twitches again. “What?”

“Sam’s infected,” she repeats. “He must’ve gotten bit somehow, I don’t know. I heard a noise, and I went into his room, but he’s not ok. He’s turning. I woke up Joel. He’s trying to make me leave you guys—“

What she’s saying doesn’t seem to register with the man until Joel speaks up from behind her. “It’s true,” he says with conviction. “Your brother’s infected, and I am worrying about my girl, just like we talked about.” Like they talked about?

“No. You can’t—” Henry stumbles over his words, his arm lowering. “No.” He lunges toward the closed door and throws it open, the knob hitting the wall with a loud bang as he catapults himself inside. Ellie and Joel wait with bated breath; they don’t speak, her dad’s thumb tracing back and forth across her bicep in a mechanical, almost mindless motion. “No! Sam— No!” The man roars. “Sam! Please Sam—”

The sound of his pleading rips her heart clean down the middle. She can’t breathe. “Ellie,” Joel prompts. “Honey, we have to go,” he tries again, but she resists. His voice is static, like her brain is switched to the wrong station. “Ellie!” He shakes her. She tries to follow Henry into the room. “Ellie!” 

She learns two things in that moment. One: Ellie is not too big for Joel to lift her, and two: when push comes to shove, she will leave the people she cares about to die— Every. Single. Time. There’s a limit to her love, and she’s not strong enough to surpass it. She lets him wrestle her away; she stops fighting, and they manage to get almost halfway down the stairs by the time they hear the first shot.

Ellie crumbles, her legs turning to jelly as she sinks to the ground on the steps. 

“Easy girl, easy—” Joel steadies her; he rubs her back.

“We have to go back for Henry,” she croaks, and that’s when the second shot echoes from the radio tower, bouncing off the walls in the cramped stairwell, reverberating through her like a shock wave. An agonized sob escapes her lips, then another, and another— Ellie doesn’t think she’ll ever stop crying.

Chapter Text

Ellie walks a little ways behind him. He can see that she’s chewing on her sleeves again; it’s a nasty habit that’s gotten worse since Pittsburgh. Not long after the radio tower, she traded in her dirty, blood-stained Ninja Turtles shirt for a faded, black Harley Davidson sweater that’s probably two sizes too big for her. The cuffs are wrinkled and full of holes from her teeth, and in spite of the fact that it doesn’t have a hood, it keeps her warm enough throughout the changing season.

Joel thought at the time that she ought to pick out something more sensible. It was between that and a thicker, zippered pink and white jacket; that’s the one he predicted she’d go for once she realized that she didn’t have room to carry both. When he’d asked her why she’d chosen the one with the beige Harley graphic on the front instead, she’d just shrugged. Didn’t really answer him— But a few miles later, she’d let it slip, and her response made him wish she went for the other one. 

“Harley Davidson’s are motorcycles, right?” she’d asked, glancing down at the front of her sweatshirt. Ellie pulled at the bottom to show him. Joel had given her a neutral, affirmative grunt in response. “Do you think Tommy will like it?” she questioned then; her innocence, and the hopeful optimism in her tone combining to form one hell of a gut-punch.

Jesus fucking Christ, Tommy better be alive. Joel loves his brother, he’s always loved his brother; if he could go back in time, he wouldn’t take back a single thing he did in the name of protecting him, but he can live without the younger Miller if he has to. This past almost- decade has proved that— But his daughter… She needs her uncle to be alive. That little girl cannot suffer another loss so soon after the last one, so Tommy better fucking be where he said he’d be or so help him God, Joel’s gonna dig that boy’s bones up just to kill him again.

They’re getting close. Signs for Jackson County point them in the right direction, and every time they come across another one, Ellie’s excitement grows. There’s a spring in her step that’s been absent since Pittsburgh, a sense of purpose that’s been missing since she was cruelly reminded how fragile life can be. 

“Are you ready to see dear old brother?” Ellie asks, and Joel shrugs. “I’m just ready to get there.”

“You nervous?” 

“I don’t know what I’m feeling.” It’s true. He hasn’t thought much past how all this is gonna affect Ellie. Joel’s already trying to come up with ways to explain it to her if the result isn’t what she’s hoping. There’s a big gap in his parenting abilities where explaining shit is concerned. All he knows right now is that she’s projecting; she’s nervous, so she figures he must be too. It’s a thing she does when she doesn’t want to admit her vulnerability.

If Joel has to choose an emotion for himself as they approach the last known location of Tommy Miller, he’ll go with proud. He’s proud of Ellie… of how strong she is— His sweet, perfect little creation. He wants the chance to show her off. To show his brother that he has something worth protecting again. 

She asks him why they stopped talking: him and Tommy, as they follow the river, their shoes wet and squashing into the ground as they walk. Ellie’s asked him that before, but he’s never given her an answer. “We just had a bit of a disagreement, that’s all,” he tells her. Brushes her off, really, but that small morsel of new information he gifts her is enough to light a fire behind those blazing greens. 

“Oh, here we go… So, what was it about?”

She jumps down off a ledge to meet him, and rolls her eyes when she sees him poised to catch her if she falls. It wasn’t that steep, dad, he hears in his head. She doesn’t call him that of course, not unless she’s pissed, or trying to be funny, but he likes to imagine she might one day. Even if it’s not till after he’s gone. 

“Tommy saw the world one way, I saw it the other.” His brother didn’t want to fuck, fight, and kill his way through life anymore. Joel didn’t see another option. He does now; but it’s taken him twenty years. Two decades, a woman who taught him to care again, and one mighty rude awakening: the fact that he missed out on fourteen years of his child’s life. That his absence messed with her head in ways that she doesn’t even fully understand. 

“And that’s why he joined the Fireflies?”

“Yeah, your friend Marlene promised him hope. That kept him busy for a while, but just like Tommy, he eventually quit that too.” 

“I’m kinda mad at her,” Ellie admits, her mouth turning down, brows furrowing. She conveniently ignores Joel’s subtle dig at his brother; maybe she doesn’t notice. It’s probably for the best. 

He looks at her.

“I don’t get why she didn’t tell you about me before… if she knew this whole time.” Joel doesn’t have the heart to tell her his theory. His best guess is that Marlene heard enough stories over the years from Tommy to be wary about leaving a kid with him. That the only reason she sought him out in the summer was desperation— But Ellie ain’t wrong to feel the way she does… He’s a little bit more than ‘kinda mad’ about it himself. He’d like to have a word with the Firefly leader if they ever do cross paths again.

“I don’t know, kiddo.” 

“How was it?— The last time you saw him.” She changes the subject back to Tommy. 

Joel snorts. “I believe his last words to me were, ‘I don’t ever want to see your goddamn face again.’”

Ellie appears startled by his answer, but she sticks her ripped-up sleeve back in her mouth like a pacifier and tries to hide it. “Oh. Well, do you think he’ll still help us?” He’s good enough at reading her now to hear the real question she’s asking beneath the dummy one: Do you think he’ll still like me? 

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Family is family,” he says, hoping that’s enough to reassure her. Unless his brother’s been severely brain damaged, or otherwise maimed sometime over the past seven years, he’s not going to look at this wide-eyed, baby-faced little girl— his niece, and tell her to get lost. Not a chance. “He’ll help us.”

He finds another Savage Starlight comic inside an abandoned car near the entrance to the dam: Foreign Element. “Did you fucking plant these or something?” she jokes, stuffing the thing into her backpack as they approach the power plant. 

At this point, and Lord knows it sounds corny as hell when he says it in his head, but Joel wonders if these comics books don’t just mean something. Despite the fact that he had an almost-teenager before the outbreak, he’s never heard of them, and now he finds them goddamn everywhere. Joel likes to think that maybe their presence is a sign that he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. That he’s on the right path. Ellie would probably get a kick out of that explanation if he told it to her, but he ain’t gonna. She’s already got enough reason to tease him. 

She gets distracted asking him all sorts of shit he doesn’t know how to answer about hydro-electric dams, and they get lucky this time. Joel gets wet— But they’re able to work together to get across the body of water faster than they did in the sewers. Ellie high fives him on the other side. He should’ve known it was too good to be true. 

There’s a child’s grave not far from the spot where they crossed. A small plot, with a wooden cross and a tiger teddy on top; it looks semi-fresh. “That’s too small of a grave,” he mutters to himself, but Ellie’s got ears like a clicker, and she’s dialed into him 24/7, so she hears what he says. “I forgot to leave that stupid robot on his grave,” she mumbles, and just like that, her whole demeanor changes. “What should I do with it?”

“Ellie…” he sighs. He shouldn’t’ve let her go back inside that radio tower. Shouldn’t’ve let her talk him into burying the bodies. 

“What? I’m not allowed to talk about it anymore?” the girl snaps, and he can’t find the right words to explain himself.

He’s not trying to stifle her feelings, but they’ve been talking about it. Joel’s let her talk about it for weeks, and the conversation always ends the same. With Ellie in tears, blaming herself for all manner of things: for following Joel during the sniper attack, which is when they’ve narrowed down that Sam must’ve gotten bit, for not reading the boy’s mind when she’d seen him in the immediate aftermath, for not being able to save Henry from himself. 

Ellie feels that in all her wisdom, at just barely fourteen-years-old, she should’ve been able to convince Henry, a grown man, not to take his own life after his world came crashing down around him in the span of five minutes. Having been on the other side of that type of injustice, Joel knows that there was nothing she could’ve done. Nothing either of them could’ve done. Once that boy made up his mind, that was that— But Ellie’s too young to comprehend the magnitude of a loss like that; she cares about people too much, and too deeply. She sees herself in everyone.

He needs to do something to fix her. She’s in pain; she needs him, and his instincts are screaming, but he’s at a loss. They talked it through, he let her cry, she shared her feelings, grieved, and now they’ve got to keep going. That’s all he can offer her. Joel doesn’t know how to do this any other way, but what he does know is that they can’t keep going in circles. It’s not good for her, and it won’t help. 

Joel rubs his hand over his forehead and exhales again. “I know it ain’t easy— But things happen, and we move on. We can’t stay stuck in the past.”

She goes quiet: broody. “Is that what you would do?” Ellie asks after another silent moment. “If it was me, and not Sam. Would you move on?”

He stops walking. “Of course not,” Joel says slowly— clearly, trying to convey sincerity through his tone.

“Well, why not?” she demands in response. “If things happen and we move on, then why wouldn’t you?”

“That’s different,” he tells her. He’s not sure how to say what he wants to say without offending her, or somehow invalidating her grief. Joel needs her to learn the difference between love and this… blind devotion she has to anyone who’s nice to her, something he failed to do when Tess died. He presses his hands together and leans forward with conviction. “We only knew Sam and Henry for two days, and you’re my daughter.”

“You just met me,” Ellie argues back.

“That don’t matter,” Joel says, working hard to remain calm. To stay soft when all he wants to do is pound his words into her skull with a goddamn hammer until she understands. He cups the side of her face with his hand and runs his thumb along her cheekbone. “You’re my blood— You came from me. Don’t matter if we’ve known eachother six days or six weeks, but you and I… Ellie, we were never strangers. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Um…” she trails off. Her expression is an odd mix of confusion and longing. Ellie’s smart enough to know that he’s being affectionate. She likes that, but she isn’t grasping what he’s trying to tell her with that affection. She’s not making the connection between his words now, and what happened to their friends in Pittsburgh. 

“S’alright, honey.” He takes a step back, waves her off. “Let’s just try to keep on going, ok?”

“Ok,” she says, but she sticks a little closer to him than before. Ellie hovers by his side, whines that she’s hungry as they approach the large gate that’ll lead them straight into the power plant fortress on the other side. Joel’s hoping they’ll be able to scrounge up some canned goods at least between here and Jackson City; he hasn’t been able to feed her for almost two days and it’s weighing heavy on his mind.

Joel tries the gate, and when it won’t budge, he grabs it with two hands and reefs on it, just to see how much force it’s gonna take to open. They’re surrounded before he has a chance to take a step back. “Don’t even think about reaching for your weapon,” a woman’s voice echoes from above. “Tell the girl to drop hers, now.” 

There are people aiming at them from atop the wall. “Ellie—” he cautions, completing a quick assessment of the situation. “Do as the lady says.” As bad as it sounds, the presence of a woman eases Joel’s mind a bit. The real bad groups don’t tend to keep women around long, and if they do, it ain’t in this capacity— with a position of authority, or with access to guns. 

“Okay.” Ellie holds her hands up by her head in surrender, then stuffs the little Beretta into her waistband. 

“Please tell me you’re lost,” the blonde woman calls down to them.

He reaches back, tries to shuffle Ellie further behind him with strength of mind alone. By the grace of God, she listens; she must be scared. “We didn’t know the place was occupied. We’re just trying to make our way through.” 

“Through to where?” she interrogates.

“They’re alright!” a familiar voice shouts from the other side of the gate, one he’d know anywhere. Relief settles over him with enough force that it leaves him weak in the knees. 

The woman takes her eyes off them for a brief second. “What? You know these people?” 

“I know him.” Tommy appears at the gate, tucking his rifle aside. “He’s my goddamn brother.” 

“Tommy.” Thank fucking Christ. 

“Holy shit.” The man steps forward to fold him into a one-armed hug; there’s much more vigor in the embrace than he’s expecting. “How you doin’ baby brother?”

“Goddamn.”

“Yeah,” Joel sighs. He’s surprised by how much peace the sight of the younger man brings him, like a dip in the lake on a hot summer day. He looks good: clean hair, clean clothes, trimmed beard. Things must not be so bad around here, and that fills him with a renewed sense of hope. Tommy pulls back. “Let me look at you.” He smiles, then says, “You got fuckin’ old.”

“Easy- It’s gonna happen to you too.” 

Turns out that the blonde woman aiming a gun at their heads is Joel’s sister-in-law, and he can’t say he’s surprised. That boy always was even-tempered, easy to tame; he’s a one woman type of guy, and he don’t do anything halfway. Figures he’d get himself situated with the leader of the entire fucking town.

“We all gotta get wrangled up at some point,” he says, and Joel figures that might be true.

He looks back at Ellie, motioning for her to come closer. This is the moment she’s been waiting for since she found out where they were going, but still, she’s hesitant— She’s playing shy. Girl can talk all she wants about Uncle Tommy, but family is easier to swallow as a concept than a real live person standing in front of you. Joel places a hand on her backpack for support. 

“This is Ellie,” he makes the introductions. 

Tommy watches them interact with some hard to read emotion in his eyes. Joel doesn’t need to say it for his brother to guess who this girl is to him. Anyone looking hard enough can see the resemblance; it’s even more obvious than it was with Sarah. Tommy leans forward and gentles his voice. “Hi Ellie,” he says, putting his own hand on her shoulder. “It’s real nice to meet you, sweetheart.” His voice is thick. 

“Hi,” Ellie says back, her lips twitching up at the corners. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

The younger Miller turns to his wife. “I reckon this little lady right here is my niece.” The couple exchange a look, and Maria’s quick to invite them inside after that. She offers to take Ellie to get something to eat, but Joel purses his lips. He’s still recovering from the knowledge that his young, impressionable teenage daughter learned to ride horses not from him, but from some grown ass man called Winston back in the QZ.

“It’s ok,” Ellie reassures, sensing his apprehension. “I’ll be fine.” 

“There’s somethin’ I need to talk to you about,” Tommy informs him seriously, just as he’s called away to watch them start up the turbines. Joel sighs, but gives in— Ellie doesn’t seem nervous to go with Maria. Maybe it’ll be good for her to have a woman to talk to about things; she hasn’t had any female guidance since Tess, and Joel shudders to think about what his late partner may have told her while his back was turned.

Tommy leads him through the plant, yammering on about electricity, catching him up to speed on what they’ve been doing up here, but even after all this time, Joel can sense something off in his brother’s demeanor. He’s shifty, almost nervous. Not the reaction he would’ve anticipated from Mr. Holier-than-thou, “I want a goddamn life, Joel.” 

“Uh… I got somethin’ for you,” he says, reaching into an old, brown duffel bag between a set of dormitory-style bunk beds. “Last year, I went back to Texas. Back home. Most of our stuff was long gone. Most of it,” Tommy accentuates. “Here.” He holds out a photograph. “It’s a little faded, but it still looks pretty good.”

The image strikes a hard blow to Joel’s chest, knocking the wind right out of him. It’s him and Sarah at one of her soccer games about six months before the outbreak. He hasn’t seen his daughter’s face in twenty years, and the sight leaves him momentarily speechless. When he regains the ability to think, his mind goes to Ellie. She’s gonna love to see this. Joel figures she’ll want to try and spot all the similarities and all the differences. “Thanks,” he grunts, tucking the photo into his breast pocket to quell the lump rising in his throat. “’Preciate that.” 

“How long have you had her?” Tommy asks, gesturing with his chin in the direction Maria and Ellie went.

Joel clears his throat. “‘Bout a month.” He can almost hear the, I told you so, that’s bound to be running on a loop through his brother’s head. Tommy reaches into the bag again. “I’ve got one more thing to show you, but before I do, I need you to stay calm, and let me explain.” 

He can feel his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline at the statement. “Scuse me?”

The younger man pulls out a second photo; it’s smaller, vertical and done in the same format as the ones they used to send home for school picture day. The subject is a little girl, maybe six or seven, with auburn hair, and hazel-flecked green eyes, taken against a generic blue backdrop. Joel doesn’t need to flip it over to know who the child in the picture is, but he does it anyways, because he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. There’s a name written in black pen on the back in unfamiliar handwriting, a date scribbled beside it.

Ellie, 2026. 

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Joel doesn’t react right away. It takes a few seconds for the full weight of what this tiny photograph means to catch up with him. If Tommy has a picture of Ellie from 2026, then following the most obvious vein of logic, that means he’s known about her since 2026. That’s seven years: the entire time he’s been gone from Boston— And that’s just not possible. Never, not since the day he met Ellie, has there been a single consideration in Joel’s mind to the possibility that Tommy might already know of her existence.

Joel softens the blow of information for his daughter sometimes, cushions it so she doesn’t get hurt or scared. It’s something parents tend to do naturally. He tells her that hunters are empty, heartless beings so she doesn’t feel guilty killing them, and lets her think that Tess, Bill, Henry and Sam loved her as much as she loved them, but he didn’t soften what he’d said about Tommy… He’d told her the God’s honest truth, or what he’d thought was the truth anyways: family helps family. 

There has to be some other explanation.

His brother wouldn’t do that to him. They’ve had their differences, some of them major— sure, but Tommy wouldn’t keep his daughter away from him on purpose. He wouldn’t deprive Ellie of her father, and he absolutely wouldn’t travel halfway across the country to link up with one cause or another knowing that he has an orphaned niece languishing away in some FEDRA school back in the QZ. 

Nuh uh. There’s some other way to explain this. Joel’s sure of it. Marlene’s been through here recently, within the past few weeks. She stopped in and left his brother the photo as a heads up that they were coming. To look out for them— And just like Ellie’s been waiting to meet him, Tommy’s been waiting to meet her. Calling in favors with the Lord that they make it here safely. 

They say there are five stages of grief. The first is denial, and Joel can only live in that stage for so long, because Tommy is quiet. Despite the fact that he’s asked Joel for the grace to explain himself, he’s not making the first move. His brother is standing with his arms crossed over his chest, tail between his legs like he knows he’s done wrong. When Tommy does open his mouth, it’s not to rise to his own defense. He doesn’t say, “It’s not what you think.” 

Instead, he sighs, cards a hand through his beard, and gives Joel a name. “Anna Williams. You remember her?”

“I don’t,” Joel says, an edge to his voice. This is escalating real fucking fast. He’s had a lot of time to think on this, to reflect, and he’s got her narrowed down to two nurses. One from a camp outside Boston, and one from the free clinic on the West side of the QZ, but his memories are too influenced by speculation and that photo Marlene showed him to be able to place her properly. 

“I believe you called her, ‘Bareback,’” his brother tells him, unable to hide the judgment on his face; it’s rolling off him in waves. This is more like the Tommy he remembers. “From what Marlene’s told me, she was a pretty impulsive woman. Stubborn. She cared about people more than she maybe should’ve— She didn’t always think things through before she did ‘em. Makes sense I suppose.”

Joel hears the nickname and winces. Then, he hears Tommy’s description of the woman and he thinks of Ellie. Suddenly, there’s bile rising in his throat. 

There’s no denying the facts; he was a piece of shit for a long time. He still ain’t winning no award for good behavior, but it was especially bad in those first five years post-outbreak. Sex, combined with a cocktail of booze and drugs were just about the only things that made him feel good. That small boost of oxytocin was the thing that kept him going. Kept him alive when there was nothing left to live for— There were a lot of people in the same position, the whole world collapsing around them. Willing partners weren’t hard to come by, and it wasn’t uncommon to take what you needed from eachother and run in those days, but Anna, the mother of his child… Yeah— Joel’s pretty sure he fucked her more than once. 

He was aware back then, even through the haze, and he knows now, that just because he didn’t go around sticking it where it wasn’t wanted, doesn’t mean that using all those women was right. His callous behavior was… unbecoming of a man who’d raised a daughter: downright shameful at this age, but in those days, Joel had been doing anything and everything to erase that little girl’s face from his mind. To forget she’d ever existed— But last time he checked, sleeping around wasn’t a crime, no matter how careless Tommy thought he was. It had no bearing on whether or not he’d’ve been able to parent. 

Joel needs the truth. 

He’s got to make sure he knows what level of betrayal they’re dealing with here before he loses it. He has Ellie to think about now. The image of her sweet, freckled face in his mind is the last bit of fraying wire holding him together. Dad can’t just go off the rails on Uncle Tommy without good cause.

“How long have you had this?” Joel asks, the cap thinning as he raises the photo between his fingers. 

His brother clears his throat, shifts his gaze to the wall. “Marlene gave it to me a few days before I quit Boston,” Tommy confirms, then purses his lips. “She figured I should know just in case it… the fact that I had a niece,” he corrects, “—was enough to hold me there.” 

Joel snorts. A fist of nausea clenches in his gut as he comes to the jarring realization that he’s waiting on an excuse that’s never going to arrive. All the excitement, all the anticipation of presenting his daughter to his brother, all the fretting over what he would tell Ellie if they couldn’t find him… It’s all gone, a rug swept out from beneath his feet, because there is no other explanation. Tommy fucking knew. He’s known this whole time, and he said nothing. Joel is so distracted by the confession, by the implications of what he’s hearing, he doesn’t even have the brain power to wonder why Ellie wasn’t enough to keep Tommy on the East coast. 

“Oh, she figured you should know, did she?” he repeats quietly, dangerously.

His brother swallows in response, adam’s apple bobbing. “Joel, if I thought at the time that you’d take an interest…” he trails off. Like he sold a gun or a pallet of ammo that Joel wanted to buy, or hired another contractor for a job. Like she’s a commodity and not a living, breathing human being who carries his DNA— who has his eyes. 

“Take an interest?” he spits, gripping the nearby bedpost with white knuckles. Anger: that’s the second stage, right? “She’s my daughter.” 

“Yeah, and at what point in the past twenty years would that have mattered?” Tommy accuses. “Map it out for me, Joel— How many times did I give you shit only for you to brush me off?” He’s building up steam now. “You weren’t stupid; you had a kid when you were nineteen; you knew the risks. How many nights while you were hungover, spent, and drugged outta your mind did you slam the door in my face? Tell me to go fuck myself. Swear to me that you’d never even think about becoming a father again—” 

“Jesus Christ,” Joel cuts him off. “You told Marlene I wouldn’t take her? Is that what this is?” Things are starting to make a lot more sense now. “It didn’t occur to you to gimme a goddamn chance to do right by her before you made that choice? Before you left and never fucking came back—”

“Take it easy,” Tommy holds up a hand, and Joel slams his down on the metal table with a resounding bang. “Don’t fucking tell me to take it easy!” If he had known about Ellie when she was seven instead of fourteen… 

How much has she suffered that she doesn’t talk about? That she doesn’t even realize is suffering, and for what?— When her dad, who had the means to take care of her, to give her at least one secure attachment… something that resembled a family so she wasn’t searching for it in every stranger she came across, was no more than a few streets away for her entire life?

“You really think I woulda looked at that girl, my own child, and told her no?” Joel’s voice is low. There’s pressure building in his sinuses. It’s itchy and uncomfortable: hot under the collar. The only reason he hasn’t broken his brother’s jaw yet is because of the niggling sensation of doubt in the back of his mind. Is his brother right? Would he have told her no? Drink— fuck— kill— repeat until her face was blurry and he could add her to the collection of little girls he’d failed to save. 

No. He wouldn’t’ve done that; he would’ve turned it around for her. He would’ve loved her, just like he loves her now. Done anything and everything in his power to keep her safe. To protect this one last, precious thing in his life. How dare Tommy take that decision away from him? He had no right. Joel’s fingers stretch and contract against his will; he squeezes them into fists to stop the spasm, sucking in air through his nose. 

“Okay— okay.” Tommy puts his hands out again; he backs down. “Listen— I know this ain’t what you wanna hear, but Marlene swore to me that she was safe. That she had enough to eat. She was lookin’ out for her…”

“For fuck’s sake, Tommy! Rations, a place to sleep, clean clothes— That ain’t enough!” 

“What was the alternative?” his brother bites back. “What were you gonna do for her? You were… existing, at best,” he stresses. “What kind of life is that for a kid? Watchin’ her daddy kill, steal, then come home and take a handful of Oxy so he can pass out for twenty hours at a time. How was she supposed to feed herself? What if she’d wandered off? What if you took your eyes off her and somethin’ happened? All it takes is one slip up: she gets her hands on some pills, a gun… You’d never forgive yourself—”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” The wire snaps: a shock of electricity surging through his body. Joel grabs Tommy by the collar of his jacket and shakes him, nose inches from his face. “You think I’d kill this one too? Is that what you’re sayin’? Cos in case it slipped your mind, you’re the one who left us that night.” Spittle flies out of his mouth. “You’re the one who didn’t show up to save the day until the last goddamn second—” He’s not talking about Ellie anymore. 

There’s adrenaline coursing through his blood as he tightens his hold. His brother doesn’t flinch; he doesn’t fight back, and that only enrages Joel more. “Don’t put that on me,” Tommy says coolly. He takes a step back, releasing himself from Joel’s grasp. “I loved Sarah, and I will never regret anything more than I regret not bein’ able to keep her safe that night, just like you.” 

“Oh, but Ellie… You’ll let the fucking Unabomber dump her in a military school and leave her there to rot. How could you let her be raised by the same motherfuckers who—” The words catch in his throat, and he has to begin again, “— the same motherfuckers who ripped my baby from my arms?”

He wants to know the answer to that question. How could he? Joel’s too hurt, the crushing sense of loss too overwhelming for him to sustain the anger. “She was doing military drills till she dropped, learnin’ to shoot before she could walk—” 

“I know,” Tommy acknowledges, “— I don’t need you to tell me I shouldn’t’ve left her; I regret that too, more than you know.”

He gestures out the door. “I look around at Jackson, how lucky we are to have what we do; I watch the kids play. Watch ‘em laugh, go to school, have their movie nights, and it’s her face that I see, every -damn- time. I should’ve been there for her— But I wasn’t thinkin’ about that. I was thinkin’ that I needed to get the hell out of that shithole and away from you. I was thinkin’ that I couldn’t watch my big brother, who was the best daddy, a fact that I clung to in my worst moments with you, reject his child. I couldn’t do it, and I couldn’t stay.”

“So, which one was it? You thought I’d endanger her? Or you thought I’d reject her? Cos it sounds like you can’t make up your mind—” 

“Joel—” He closes his eyes, but the man is interrupted by the wail of a siren: a warning sound that spreads long and loud throughout the entire building. “What the hell is that?” Joel demands, wrenching his mind back to attention. A series of gunshots echo from somewhere across the plant. A crash: metal against metal, and the eruption of loud voices from nearby. 

“We’re under attack,” Tommy growls, grabbing a gun from the duffel. “You still remember how to kill, right?” he asks, and if it weren’t for Ellie… The fact that wherever his daughter is right now, she needs him— Fuck, he might just leave his brother to fend for himself. Instead, Joel jumps to action; they’re pretty far from where they need to be, still holed up in the room with the dorm beds. They’ve got some ground to cover before they reach their target.

Seven years apart, and almost a decade spent not relying on each other, but when it comes down to it, Tommy and Joel still slip into the same pattern as always. Joel takes the lead even though he’s the one on unfamiliar territory, and Tommy backs him up. He plows his way through twice as many guys in the time it takes his brother to bring down four. Then, when Maria comes on the radio and he hears Ellie’s panicked voice in the background, he dials up the violence. He takes hostages, and starts breakin’ limbs.

“We’re trapped,” are the woman’s last words before their shouts meld into static; they’re pounding in his head. Ellie’s trapped. He may be a shitty person, a shitty dad, but Joel can fucking keep her alive. He can at least do that; he has to.

In the end, it’s too damn close. 

Ellie comes to him so easily. As soon as it’s safe to do so, she’s by his side, vibrating from the adrenaline, recounting for him everything she saw, completely unaware of the turmoil happening inside his mind. The grief still front and centre in his thoughts. “They were coming in from every direction. Then Maria was like, ‘We gotta run!’  And so we dove over these tables and this huge guy blasts in with a shotgun.” She mimes the action with her hands. 

“Slow down— slow down,” he tries, but her eyes are wide and wild. “And then—”

“Listen,” Joel cuts her off, cups her shoulders so she’ll stop talking for one goddamn second. “Hey, hey, are you hurt?” 

“No,” she gasps. “I’m fine.” Her face lights up with worry, like she’s just come to a sudden realization. “Are you hurt?” Ellie turns the question back around onto him.

“I’m alright,” he reassures, watching her expression smooth itself over. Ellie takes a deep breath, her small hands shaking. “Is everything ok with you and Tommy? Is he gonna help us?” she asks then. Joel hushes her. “We’re gonna keep your condition to ourselves for a little bit longer, ok?” he prompts. She frowns in response, but gives him a sturdy, resolute nod. “What’s wrong? Are you guys fighting?”

“Everything’s fine.” 

That’s when his brother approaches with Maria in tow. “Whaddya’ say we get these turbines up and running so we can head back into town?” Tommy suggests, glancing at Joel, then back to his wife. His eyes skim briefly over Ellie, but he doesn’t look at her; maybe he can’t. That’s gonna need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Joel shakes his head. “We ain’t finished, Tommy.”

The younger Miller rubs his forehead, then lets out a sigh. Closes his eyes in acceptance. “You alright with takin’ Ellie over to have a look at what the guys got done?” his brother asks Maria. Joel’s never met this woman before today, but he’s over a hundred percent certain she knows the intimate details of this whole complicated family dynamic. She knows what they’re arguing about, what Tommy’s been hiding from him, and she agrees without complaint. 

Ellie on the other hand… “Joel,” she whines. “Can’t we just go with them?” She ain’t trying to be difficult, but he senses a note of fear in her tone, the beginnings of separation anxiety in the aftermath of her panic— They’ve been at eachothers’ side for a month; it’s only natural. “What if more bandits come?” 

Kids: they’re so adaptable. She’s already changing her language. Hunters become bandits after one slightly different encounter than she’s used to. 

Maria clears her throat. “Let’s give our boys some space,” she says. “I’m sure they won’t be long.” The statement feels like a thinly veiled threat. Watch yourself. Brother-in-law or not, we’re on my turf now. 

“I don’t know what more I can say,” Tommy starts, once they’re alone again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, and I’m sorry you feel like you lost time with her because of that,” Feel like? He lost half of Ellie’s life. There ain’t no feelings involved. “— but you’re here now, and you have a real chance to make this right— If you come on back to Jackson with us, Ellie can have a good life… There’s still time to give her a childhood. You can be her daddy…”

Like he needs Tommy’s permission to parent his own goddamn child. This is too fucking much. Joel has no patience for the whole pissy little brother act. This back and forth, guilty- not guilty attitude Tommy’s got going on— Not in the midst of his world turning upside down. He’s not denying that he said what he said back in the day, before he knew about Ellie. It's true that he swore up and down he’d never do this again… but Tommy still doesn’t even seem to fully regret his decision, let alone believe that he’s capable of looking after Ellie now, and Jesus Christ, Joel thought his brother knew him better than that.

“Look,” Joel says slowly; his drawl is low and serious. He’s building his walls back up. Gathering his defenses. “I ain’t gonna talk about this with you anymore. I don’t wanna hear it— I just need to know if you’re plannin’ to be in this girl’s life,” Joel tells him, then swallows the emotion rising in his throat, stuffing it down. “Ellie gets… real attached, real fast, and she is so excited to meet you. She has this whole concept in her head of who you might be. So, if you ain’t gonna do your part in this, it’s better for us to move on now, before she gets hurt.”

Bargaining? Is that what this is?

Tommy understands him now. Like Joel with Henry, they’ve arrived at an impasse. An agreement to be civil for the girls. “I’m here,” his brother says. “I’ll be whatever she needs. Whatever you’ll let me be.”

In spite of everything, he’s sincere; Joel can tell. He takes an extended breath, sucking in as much of the anger and betrayal as he can with one mouthful of air, then lets it out with his next exhale. Now’s not the time. “You don’t tell her any of this,” he demands, circling the space between them with his finger to indicate their conversation. “She don’t need to know.” Just because it’s ruined for him, doesn’t mean it has to be ruined for her. 

“I won’t.” 

“What she does need, is for you to tell her you like her sweater. Can you do that?” he asks. His brother looks surprised, a little confused, but he doesn’t question it; he agrees right away. “Sure. I can do that.”

Chapter Text

“C’mon Buckley!” Ellie calls, pivoting around to encourage the ambling, white-spotted mutt from the dam to follow her. She claps, then lets out a peal of happy laughter when the dog trots up to her and nudges his head into her hand. His daughter loves animals. From worms, to wasps, to the matted, feral dogs she finds in the street; she’s enthralled by them. There aren’t many strays in the QZ. FEDRA tends to put them down quicker than they pop up. They’re considered a waste of resources. 

“He likes you,” Tommy grins, and despite the fact that Joel reads the man’s enthusiasm as genuine, it irritates him. Everything irritates him right now.

“Hands to yourself, Ellie,” he warns. “Last thing we need is for you to pick up fleas.” Joel works to keep his tone neutral; he wants to maintain control over the situation. It would be wrong to ruin her moment by getting angry, or becoming frustrated with her just because he’s miserable. 

“Oh, he doesn’t have fleas,” Maria dismisses, and it grates even harder against Joel’s nerves. Tommy’s wife can just stay the hell out of it. God only knows the things his brother has told the woman about him. What kind of monster the leader of Wyoming’s little peace commune must think he is. 

Ellie is spellbound by Jackson. Her eyes are wide, and just as she’s always done when she’s in a new environment, she wants to touch everything, all at once. She looks at the shops, alive and bustling with activity; she presses her face up against the transparent, outside walls of the greenhouses in the center of town, inspects a hanging basket of wildflowers on the porch of what appears to be someone’s house. She sticks her entire nose inside one of the mountain lilies to smell it. 

“It’s so awesome here,” his daughter says, her voice both soft and robust, full of that familiar wonder.

Joel would love nothing more than to take her in his arms right now. To yank her close and shield her face from the sight. On one hand, he wants her to have it all, every last ounce of care, family and acceptance that Jackson, her Uncle Tommy and Auntie Maria have to offer— But at the same time, he’s wary of it. Worse than an outright rejection would be to damage her already fragile sensibilities, he doesn’t want her to know what it’s like to be deceived by something so beautiful. 

He’s brooding, and it’s not fair to let that rub off on her, so he does his best to keep it at bay. Joel gives her forced, tight-lipped smiles, and hums in all the right places while Tommy fills the gaps. He took what Joel told him to heart. The first thing he did when they rejoined the girls in the turbine room was sling his arm across Ellie’s shoulders, pull her close, and tell her that Harley Davidson is his favourite. That a sweater like hers is a rare find in this world.

In response to his warmth, Ellie… his kindhearted, generous little girl, like a baby holding out the mushy end of her cracker, offered to give him the beloved sweatshirt, holes and all. Tommy’s reply was that it looked better on her, and oh boy— did those speckled-greens light up. 

Joel’s heart swells watching them interact. It reminds him so much of days gone by— But the weight of what he’s lost still looms too large, and the organ bursts, an ache spreading through his chest, into his limbs. His fingers and toes are stiff as he struggles to keep all that pain inside so she doesn’t see it. So it doesn’t scare her.

Reasonably, Joel knows that Tommy isn’t interested in being a dad; if he wanted a kid, he’d’ve had one of his own by now, and if he’d wanted to be Ellie’s dad… Well, then he’d’ve taken the girl with him when he left Boston and raised her as such— But as he plays with Ellie, includes Maria into the game to form a neat, perfect little triangle, an instinctual possessiveness rises in Joel’s throat. Like his brother is trying to steal his daughter away from him. At fifty-two years old, he should have a better concept of give and take by now, but there’s too much history, and Tommy’s already stolen so much. 

Joel was never going to get the first smiles, first laughs— first steps. All the things he experienced in Sarah’s infancy. That’s on him for not sticking around in Anna’s life. On Marlene for not seeking him out sooner. But he could’ve hit some of those smaller milestones. First haircuts, loose teeth, swimming lessons. In this world, he would’ve been teaching her to read, to do math. To defend herself; he could’ve eased her into it  so she didn’t have to learn the hard way.

“Are you sure everything’s ok?” Ellie falls back so she can walk beside him down the Jackson street. “You’re acting weird.” Tommy slows his stride too; he exchanges another covert frown with Maria. Oh yeah— The woman knows what’s up. 

“Don’tchu worry about me,” he tells her quietly, cupping the back of her head. “Everything’s just fine, I promise.” Joel nudges her to keep walking.

“Ok,” she says, but her eyes linger on him, even when she catches up to his brother. 

She doesn’t trust him, and shit, this must be the depression setting in, but Joel wonders if she ever will. Seven isn’t too old for him to be her parent. Fourteen on the other hand… Now, it’s embarrassing for her to need him. It’s awkward to admit; it makes her cry. He’s always going to be Joel first, and dad second— That’s not how it should be. Not how it was supposed to be. 

It’s a basic desire, almost primitive in its simplicity, but Joel wishes more than anything that he had that goddamn time machine right about now. He wishes he could go back in time and be a better man for her. 

If only he could’ve kept Tommy away from all his bullshit when he had the chance; if only that boy hadn’t always felt the need to come knocking whenever Joel was up to no good. A child isn’t an abstract concept, and he shouldn’t’ve treated it like it was. He didn’t want to be a dad again, and what he’d meant by that, was that he couldn’t endure another 10 on the Richter scale of loss, but Joel’s beginning to wonder if maybe he didn’t just suffer that anyways: an unexpected aftershock as a result of his actions. 

He wonders if his soul somehow knew that she was out there all alone. That he was once again separated from his child. That she needed him. If the constant ringing of that unconscious, biological alarm didn’t have a part to play in his inability to cope, to tone down the urgency so he could function. Build some semblance of a life for himself after Sarah. 

Maybe he’s reading too much into this. Tess would string him up and whip him bloody if she could hear how pathetic his thoughts have become, and he doesn’t expect that her initial reaction to Ellie would’ve been anymore favorable if she were younger. If there was a little girl hanging off his leg when they met; she might’ve even been reluctant to partner with him in the first place, but for better or worse, things could’ve been so much different if Tommy had just told him the truth. If Joel had given him the chance to, he re-frames the statement.

This isn’t all on his brother: it’s not. He needs to get past the shock and recognize that if he’s going to make it through this.

Tommy’s house is large and picturesque. It’s in the center of town, surrounded by a white picket fence, with trimmed, green grass, and an architectural mailbox in the front yard. “Woah…” Ellie trails off. “This is just like the houses we saw back in Pittsburgh. Like the one you took me in when I got hurt, and where you killed those hunters and I stabbed that sniper guy in the neck,” she rambles. Joel squints to mask a wince as his brother flashes him a concerned look over her shoulder. 

You try traveling cross-country with a fucking teenager, he wants to say. “Sure is,” he confirms, because she doesn’t know any better. She’s naive to the complicated dynamics at play here, and Joel is NOT going to snap at her in front of his brother. Nice priorities, asshole. It’s alright to abuse her when you’re alone, or with strangers, but God forbid you lose your temper in front of Tommy. 

He tries to tell himself that were his brother to witness how capable he is of losing it on Ellie, he might try to separate them, but deep down, Joel knows that ain’t gonna happen. At this point, the good Lord himself couldn’t separate Joel from his daughter; where she goes, he goes, even if that’s six feet under. What he doesn’t want, is to prove his brother right. He can’t stand the thought of being on the other end of another one of those smug looks, hearing the unspoken, “See, I was right to keep her from you. To ~protect~ her from you.” 

“Holy shit, Joel— Look how many books they have.” Ellie pulls him from his thoughts to point at a bookshelf on the far end of the living room. She moves closer to examine the titles, and her enthusiasm doubles when she locates a comic in the midst of his brother and Maria’s collection of what appears to be cheesy romance novels and How-to books. “I don’t have this one yet.” 

His daughter holds up another issue of Savage Starlight: Singularity, and Joel lets out a deep, calming breath, trying to ground himself in the knowledge that they were bound to hit a few snags along the road, but that he’s on the right path. He has to be; this is his sign. Ellie’s safe, she’s fed— she’s happy. Most importantly, she doesn’t know about that little photo burning a hole in his breast pocket. 

“You like those ones?” Tommy asks, coming into the living room to take a look at what she has in her hands. 

Ellie gives him an exaggerated nod. “Joel collects them for me,” she says. “He finds them fucking everywhere.” She slides her backpack off her shoulder and gets down on her knees next to the couch, unzipping the big pocket to show him. His brother squats beside her as she begins to pile her collection on the table, splaying the issues out in order for him to see. “I have issues, one, two, three, five, six, ten, eleven—” 

“Fourteen,” Tommy adds the one from his shelf to her line up, then reaches back and plucks something else out from between the rows of books, “—and twelve,” he finishes. Issue twelve is called Zero Point, and a wide, crooked smile splits Ellie’s face clean across the middle. 

She loves her uncle already; less than an hour and she’s completely smitten. Their bond was cemented before Ellie and Joel ever set foot in Wyoming. In this moment he understands that no matter how hurt, or how broken he is following the outcome of his brother’s choice seven years ago, he has to do everything in his power to preserve this relationship for Ellie. He doesn’t have to forgive Tommy to move forward. There’s a snap in the tether, like a lasso around his heart, and he knows that she’ll keep him going. It’s what she’s been doing all along.

“Oh wait, maybe there’s one more—” Ellie pulls something else out of her bag, then freezes with the comic— the magazine, Joel realizes with a sudden, blood-thinning horror, poised in her hands. It’s one of Bill’s, the front reads, Inside the Cockpit— Ultimate sex toys, things that go buzz in the night. The real disturbing shit is covered by a bright yellow banner that stretches across the male model’s lower half: Massive muscle Zack is back.

“Oops,” she says, her cheeks going scarlet. “I forgot I had that.” It’s enough to break some of the tension. Tommy lets out a startled laugh, and Maria doubles over, bracing her hands on her knees as she fights to stay upright. Even Joel manages a smooth, rumbling chuckle at his daughter’s expense.

“Fuck you guys.” Ellie tosses the porno on the coffee table and crosses her arms tightly over her chest, but her lips twitch up at the corners, and Joel can tell she thinks it’s hilarious. He’s heard the old saying… Families that play together, stay together; it’s gonna take time, but they might just figure this one out yet. 

Chapter Text

“—and I’m so excited to read issue 12, because issue 11 ended on this big fucking cliffhanger. Dr. Daniela makes a navigational error and the ship sails into the crown of a white dwarf star where it gets like totally fucking decimated.” Ellie makes explosion sound effects as she speaks, “— but since it was kind of Dr. Daniela’s fault in the first place, none of the crew trust her, which sucks because they’re running out of oxygen and she’s the only one who might be able to help—” 

“Ellie, why don’t you give Uncle Tommy a break for a few minutes?” Joel suggests, more for himself than for his brother. He’s heard her explain this exact same plot at least three times. So much so that he recognizes it as being from Antiparticles, which he knows as the comic he withheld from her, and the one she was reading the night Sam and Henry died. 

The thing about Ellie’s hyperactive little brain, is that it makes connections faster than a typical person’s brain would. She could very easily end up falling into the same thought trap— And Joel does not want to go through the story of the time he failed to prevent his daughter from witnessing a suicide, then allowed her to return to the gruesome scene to drag the bodies of their friends down several flights of stairs and bury them, with Tommy, who is bound to latch onto every greedy morsel of his daughter’s trauma and rub it in his face. Use it as a justification for keeping them apart. 

“It’s alright, Joel,” Tommy addresses him, but Ellie is already piling her comic books back into her bag. A selfish pride aches in his chest; she still listens to him over his brother. It’s painful, not because he doesn’t want her to listen to him, but because he knows how fucking wrong that is— Joel shouldn’t be quantifying his daughter’s feelings based on who she obeys faster. 

“You two are lucky,” Maria says as she comes in from the kitchen with plates of food balanced on her hip: eggs, toast, some sort of fried sausage. She and Ellie didn’t really get a chance to eat before the bandits stormed the plant, and Joel is ravenous. His stomach lining is digesting itself, but he doesn’t regret it. How do you eat when your child is starving? Every minuscule ounce of food they’d found this week had gone to Ellie, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s Saturday. We’re having a town wide shindig tonight in the church hall.”

Joel grunts. That doesn’t sound like luck at all. It doesn’t matter; Tommy can see the displeasure on his face. He ignores Joel and focuses on Ellie, whose brows join to form a confused line. “What’s a shindig?”

“Like a party,” his brother informs her. “The kids ‘round here are always beggin’ us to put on a dance, and we usually follow events like these with a campfire; there’ll be food and someone’s bound to break out the old gee-tar, if you’re up for it.”

“We can go, right Joel?” Ellie turns to him, those pretty greens sparkling.

What’s he gonna say? “Course we can,” he tells her, and she rewards him with a crooked grin before digging into her plate of food, fingers first. “Easy—” Joel stops her, knocking the sausage out of her hand, his arm a physical barrier in front of her plate. He picks up her fork, slicing the meat into more digestible rounds. “Little bites.”

“Yessir.” Ellie rolls her eyes, then pops four of them into her mouth at once when she thinks he’s not looking. His brother smiles warmly at him, and Joel ignores that. He can’t really blame the poor girl; the food is incredible. Even Joel has trouble stifling his impulses.

“So Ellie,” Maria addresses his daughter. “How did you and Joel find eachother?”

She asks the question that Tommy hasn’t had the balls to ask him yet. One he hasn’t had a chance to rehearse with Ellie. His daughter doesn’t even glance at him, just finishes chewing her enormous bite of egg, swallows loudly, and says, “I kept getting kicked out of school. Marlene didn’t know where else to put me. She was gonna move me out of the zone, but she found Joel and asked if he would take me instead.” 

She’s a good little liar, just like her daddy. Now there’s real pride, warmth instead of ache ballooning behind his ribs. “Course, she didn’t tell me how goddamn much you like to talk before she ditched you with me,” he jests, and Ellie growls her displeasure, taking a breath between bites to say, “You’re such an asshole— I wish she left me on the street.”

“Yeah, you woulda fit right in there.” He smirks, and she smacks him in retaliation. “See what I said—” Ellie looks to his brother. “He’s an asshole.”

The look on Tommy’s face is half amusement, half incredulity. He spears a piece of egg with his fork and asks, “What made you two leave Boston?”

“Joel’s girlfriend didn’t like me,” Ellie says without hesitation, and this time it’s him smackin’ her. “That ain’t true. She was a little slow to adjust, that’s all.” His daughter drops her voice lower, something mischievous in her eyes. “Look— I don’t know what you think this is… If you’re going through something here… But—”

“Ellie,” Joel snaps, silencing her with a scowl. “Do not finish that sentence.” He realizes his mistake too late. It’s the defiance, not the words themselves that she finds funny, he’s been around the block enough times with her to know that. 

“—Blowing your load into a warm hole fifteen years ago does not make you that kid’s parent,” she finishes, and he lets out a long, worn out sigh, massaging his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. Ellie continues eating like she didn’t just repeat the most heinous thing she could possibly come up with in front of his brother, who already thinks of him as an unfit parent.

Tommy and Maria exchange another one of their ‘concerned glances.’ Instinct tells Joel to act, but he disregards the call. If he talks to Ellie about it now, then he’s giving in to pressure. He’s not doing it to check in with her, or to be a good dad. It comes across like he’s trying to prove something, and as much as what he’d like to prove is that his brother’s an idiot. That he fucked up big time… That’s not fair to Ellie. It’s her who suffers most if this breaks down. 

His daughter cleans her plate faster than the rest of the table, but it doesn’t take more than a minute after she’s done eating for the speed to catch up with her. Ellie hiccups, then clutches her stomach, all the pink draining from her cheeks, a sickly, green hue developing in its place. “Joel—” she whines. “I don’t feel so good.” 

They’ve got about thirty seconds; that’s his prediction. Joel stands up. “Where’s your bathroom?” he barks, aiming the question at Tommy.

“Uh… Down the hall, to the left—” His brother points.

Thank the Lord there’s one on this floor. Ellie’s not gonna make it to the stairs. He all but picks her up, two hands under her armpits just like the last time, and drags her into the small powder room on the main level— But unlike the last time, Joel kneels to the ground with her, plasters her hair back while she wretches into the open toilet. It comes naturally this time. He doesn’t have to think about it. 

Snot and mucus spew from her nose while he holds her head steady. Her limbs are shaking; he doesn’t want her to topple over. “Thatta girl. Get it out—” he soothes as she vomits another round of brown, chunky, eggs, toast, and sausage back up into the bowl. “This is why we take little bites.” Joel combs her bangs back again with his fingers.

Ellie groans and clings to the cool porcelain of the sink when she’s done, white as a corpse, her body weak from the effort. She leans over to look in the toilet, then wrinkles her nose. “Motherfucker.” Joel steals the rag above the sink and wets it in silence, ducking down to press the cold cloth to her face. He wipes the corners of her mouth and she allows it without complaint. 

“Everything alright in here?” Maria asks, sticking her head into the open doorway. 

“We’re just fine; thank you ma’am,” he says.

Tommy’s wife may be overstepping, but at least she isn’t to blame for keeping Ellie away from him. She might not even agree with her husband’s choice. He doesn’t know; he hasn’t given her a chance yet. All he knows so far is that she’s just the sort of woman he would expect his brother to get wrangled up with— A woman Tommy couldn’t say no to.

“M’sorry for wasting your food,” Ellie grumbles, but Maria shakes her head. “It happens, honey. Don’t you worry about it.” The woman smiles. “I bet you’d like a shower right about now though.” 

His daughter nods. 

“Good. Then how ‘bout I take you upstairs so you can get cleaned up?— We’ll find you something to wear tonight.”

Joel doesn’t like the idea of being separated from her, even on different floors of the same house. Not while her condition is still under wraps, but he also doesn’t want his reluctance to come off as suspicious. When she gets up to follow Maria, he presses his thumb into her bite mark through the sleeve of her Harley sweater. Ellie looks up at him with understanding in her eyes. “I know,” she says neutrally. 

Tommy’s cleaning plates at the kitchen sink when Joel re-enters the shared space. His brother looks up with a frown. “Is she ok?”

He waves the younger man off. “She’s fine. Girl eats too fast sometimes and it just comes right back up.”

“We’ve got a functional clinic here, if you wanna take her tomorrow.” Tommy shrugs. “It couldn’t hurt.” 

That ain’t really an option without revealing her infection to the doctor. Joel hasn’t decided what he’s going to do yet. If they continue on to find the Fireflies, or cut their losses and stay where they’re at. It would be better for her to get proper scans done by real doctors with real equipment, not some small-town, pre-outbreak med-school student with a stethoscope— But on the other hand, she seems to be doing just fine the way she is. She hasn’t had any bite-related concerns since he’s met her, and it would be safer for them to stay in Jackson. For Ellie to be around family. 

Tommy sees his hesitation. “I’ll stop by there in the mornin’ and grab her an anti-parasitic. Clear out her system, just in case she picked somethin’ up on the road.”

“’Preciate it.” Joel tips his head in acknowledgment. There’s a wall of tension between them so thick he reckons it’ll take nothing short of a bulldozer to break it down. Best to keep it to small talk. Ellie doesn’t need to hear them arguing from upstairs. His daughter is the only thing holding him together right now; that little girl is his glue. “She’s gonna be hungry again when she comes down. You got something light? Easier on the stomach?”

His brother opens the pantry and fiddles around for a few seconds, then returns with a jar of canned soup, not canned as in processed, canned in a mason jar: homemade. “It’s vegetable: potatoes, peas, celery, carrots. She like that kind of thing?”

“Ellie likes anything,” he says. “Give it here. I’ll make it.” The boy doesn’t argue. Maybe he understands that Joel needs to keep his hands busy. That there are worse uses for his brother’s hands. In true Tommy fashion, he tries and fails to remain silent, to respect the momentary truce that he’s been granted. He’s lucky Joel’s used to the noise after a month on the road with Little Miss Chatterbox. Come to think of it, that could’ve been a trait handed down to his daughter from her uncle. 

“You’re good with her.” Tommy lets out his breath. “She seems real comfortable with you.”

Designed as a compliment, the words set his teeth on edge. Good with her? He’s her fucking father. Those instincts never disappear, they lay dormant until they’re needed again, and of course she’s comfortable with him; she has to be. Ellie relies on him. There’s no other option. This is gonna be a long fucking afternoon.

Ellie refuses to wear a dress, and Joel’s not the least bit surprised by that. He tells Maria as much when she tries. The best she gets out of his daughter is a pair of black leggings and one of Tommy’s large, oversized plaid button-ups in blue. The thing almost fits her like a dress, but she’s a tomboy through and through. Sarah wasn’t girly per se, but she wasn’t like this neither.

The shirt highlights how small she is, her little chicken thighs skinny enough that he could wrap one hand around them and his fingers would touch. She eats three bowls of soup when she comes down after her shower, and watching her spoon feed herself all those fresh vegetables fills Joel with a swelling satisfaction, a sense of rightness. It’s worth putting up with his brother’s bullshit to get a few good meals in her belly. Maria braids her hair into two even plaits down her back while she eats.

Joel corners Ellie in the hallway before they head out with Tommy and Maria for the town-wide gathering. He drops his voice low and softens his tone. “Listen, about Tess—” he starts. They’ve kept things pretty quiet when it comes to his late partner. Joel demanded that from her real early on, and she’s stuck to it for the most part.

“I was just joking,” Ellie tells him. “It was the first thing I thought of; that’s all.”

“I know you were, and I know she wasn’t all that welcoming… She didn’t get it. She never had kids… What I’m tryin’ to say is that she was learning to care about you. She would’ve.” Whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t matter. Tess is dead; she doesn’t get to have a say anymore, and he likes to think he’s not far off. His partner wasn’t a heartless woman, not by a long shot, and maybe he’s biased, but he thinks it’s gotta be impossible not to fall in love with Ellie. All it would’ve taken was time.

She smiles, and Joel wonders what he did to deserve this sweet baby girl falling in love with him. 

There’s a record player in the corner of the church hall under the lights. Joel gets to experience the unique joy of explaining how it works to Ellie. “This needle here reads the grooves on the track. Then, the vibration turns the movement into electrical signal.” 

“No shit,” Ellie comments. “That’s wicked.”

The thing is already spinning a record: Country Music’s Greatest Hits 1991. The familiar, Oklahoma twang of Reba McEntire ain’t something he’s heard in a long time, “Is There Life Out There?” filling the room around them. There are a handful of kids Ellie’s age dishing out punch next to a wall of Jesus-themed artwork, but she doesn’t introduce herself. She sticks close by his side just like she’s always done, only pulling away briefly so Uncle Tommy can show her off to some old, scruffy Firefly accomplice named Eugene. 

All four of them wind up sitting at a fold out table by the exit, Ellie next to him, Tommy and Maria directly opposite as people scoot their boots across the hardwood floor. “Whaddya’ think, Ellie?” Tommy prompts. “You gonna do a little two-step with me?” He tilts his head in the direction of the music. 

Ellie looks back at Joel shyly, either cos she’s still embarrassed from the losing-her-lunch debacle back at the house, or cos she doesn’t know what a two-step is and doesn’t want to ask. “Maybe later,” she says.

His brother’s lips turn down at the rejection. “I’m gonna hold you to that,” he tells her in a semi-playful, lenient voice that lets Joel know he’s not going to hold her to anything.

The next song comes on, and Joel knows he recognizes it, but he can’t quite place the lyrics. A father, one of the heftier guys in the room, and his young daughter, a raven-haired child who can’t be much older than seven, take to the floor and it pulls his attention away from the music, plucking his heartstrings to a whole ‘nother tune. He twirls her, and she giggles, her long-sleeved, velvet dress fanning out around her. Dad picks her up, holds her close, and Joel longs to be in his shoes; he longs for Sarah. For the angel he lost: bright blue eyes and wispy hair. Strawberry shampoo and freshly painted nails. He longs for Ellie, even though she’s sitting less than a foot away from him. There’s a yearning so strong it tightens behind his ribs, cinches around his lungs. 

Joel will never get to have that with her; he’ll never carry her; she’ll never fit into the crook of his elbow. Ellie will never possess that blind faith in him that daughters are supposed to have for their fathers, the one that fades with time— And for one suspended moment, it feels like he’s lost her all over again. Like somebody stole his baby right out of his arms. She’s gone and she’s never coming back. 

He could fucking strangle Tommy. 

There’s a gentle pressure on his shoulder and it sucks him out of the cycle of grief. Ellie leans her head against his bicep, knees pulled up to her chest. She’s not looking at the father and daughter dancing in the center of the room; she’s looking at him— It’s his attention she wants. The whispered admission of, “I still need you,” from that grassy field in Pittsburgh forefront in his mind. She doesn’t care that she’s no longer seven-years-old and naive to the world. His daughter doesn’t want to go back in time. No matter what happened in the past, or what will happen in the future… No matter how torn-apart he is by all his failures, in this moment, Ellie needs him to be her dad. There won’t be infinite chances.  

The song changes and Joel allows instinct to guide him again. He nudges her in the ribs with his elbow. Ellie gives him a curious frown. “We just gonna sit here?— Or are you gonna dance with your old man?” Somehow, even though she brushed off Tommy’s offer, Joel knows she won’t do the same to him. He can see it in the way those pretty greens brighten. 

“Really?” she hisses, trying and failing to hide the smile that blossoms on her face.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

It’s clear to him real early on that Ellie doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. She’s awkward, and no— she doesn’t know what a two-step is, but she wants this so badly it doesn’t matter. Joel tucks an arm between her shoulders, holds her hand with the other and starts to sway them back and forth to the fast-paced, lively music.

“What’s a Jukebox?” she asks to break the tension, and it’s only then that he pays attention to the song. Tommy always did like Alan Jackson; he wonders if his brother rigged the playlist. “It’s just another thing people used to play music on— You’d put coins into it so you could pick the song. Don’t rock the Jukebox means don’t play a shitty song.” He lifts her arm, tries to prompt her to twirl, but she resists.

“What are you doing?” Ellie glares; she’s uncomfortable, and he wishes there was something he could do to make her less nervous. “I’m tryin’ to spin you around, girl,” he tells her. “Watch them now.” Joel points with his eyes at a couple doing their own version of a boogie to their right. The man twirls the woman, and his daughter’s mouth forms an O of understanding.

He gives her another chance, and this time, Ellie lets him spin her in a circle. Her face splits into a wide grin. Kids like repetition, so Joel takes another few steps and does it again, faster this time, then twice in a row. On the second spin of her third twirl, she loses her footing, and he catches her, dips her down real low. When he pulls her back up, Ellie’s laughing. 

“You’re so fucking weird,” she says, and it may sound like an insult, but what it means is, mission accomplished. Her body is looser; his girl ain’t feelin’ so shy anymore. The song ends before he’s ready, and this time something slower comes on— Tommy gets Maria up to dance, his brother eying him over his wife’s shoulder. Ellie starts to pull away. 

“Not so fast, kiddo. I ain’t done with you just yet.” His hand guides her close again and he starts to rock them gently in time with the mellow guitar riffs: Dustin Lynch on the record player. When push comes to shove, she’s still Ellie… He gives her a couple easy twirls to keep her mind busy, so she doesn’t get bored. As he brings her in on the second one, she nestles into the spot under his arm, her cheek pressing against his chest. Joel doesn’t give her a moment to hesitate; he tugs her close and keeps her there.

This is his chance to do all the things he wants to, but never does. Now, while he has her in his arms. Her braided hair is soft under his chin, freshly washed. He plants a firm kiss at the crown of the auburn nest, and Ellie keens even closer. “I reckon this is something fathers and daughters are s'posed to do at least once in a lifetime,” he informs her.

She peers up at him. “What? Dancing?”

“Mhm— It’s just one of those old world customs,” Joel hums. Ellie looks conflicted, and it ain’t hard to find the source of her indecision. She doesn’t want to ruin the moment. “Did you dance with Sarah?”

“Sometimes,” he says evenly.

Ellie stops moving. Joel’s about to give her another nudge, to ask her if she’s ready to take a break, but he doesn’t get the chance. She cuts him off before he can open his mouth, lunges at him, her toothpick arms winding tightly around his waist. Ellie burrows into his torso, and her body trembles with the strength it takes to maintain the surprise embrace. It catches Joel off guard. She’s never hugged him before. He’s never tried to hug her.

Maybe he ought to do it more often. 

They’re in the middle of a sea of strangers, but it feels like they’re the only two people in the room. Joel folds one arm across her spine, the other coming up to cup the back of her head. He holds her tight; she sinks her weight into him, melts against his touch. He can tell that no one’s ever touched her like this before. In turn, she’s putting a patch over the deepest wound he has, and Oh Christ— he loves her. He would do anything, kill anyone, slaughter a whole fucking town just to keep her safe. “I’d die for her, and she lives for me,” Cowboys and Angels alright. In this small expanse of time, in this tiny breadth of space between them, and just for one, cosmic second, everything is as it should be.

Chapter Text

Ellie has never been a part of anything bigger than herself. She’s never belonged to anyone. Riley used to throw that in her face sometimes when she got angry. When Ellie pissed her off, the girl would use the fact that nobody’s ever wanted her as an excuse to tear her down. She did it because of her fucked up childhood, because she missed her parents. After all was said and done, she would apologize. Her best friend was always the nicest to her right after they’d had a fight. She’d take it back. Tell her it wasn’t true, but for a long time, Ellie believed her.

Actually, right up until this moment.

She belongs here. With someone who’ll hold her the way Joel is holding her, like a man drowning and she’s the air. He wants her. They all want her, and it’s so fucking overwhelming that she doesn’t pull away for way longer than she should because she can’t stop the tears from soaking into Joel’s shirt. She doesn’t want him to see how pathetic she is. That one hug from her dad is enough to cripple her.

Everybody’s probably looking at them. They’re stopped in the middle of the dance floor and it’s been a long time. She doesn’t have anything to do while they’re standing there, so Ellie counts 100, 200, then 300 heartbeats, her ear pressed against Joel’s chest, and those are just the ones she hears over the sound of the music, lyrics to some country song that she doesn’t know, but that seem almost too relevant to the situation. 

“Have you ever loved so much it hurt inside?

Well, that's the only way my love can be described

And have you ever known how cold this world can be?

Well, all I know is how cold it was until you came to me”

Joel plants one more lingering kiss in her hair, like he doesn’t want it to end either, and then reluctantly, he separates them, cupping her cheeks to swipe his callused thumbs across her under-eyes. To wipe away her tears. “Ok— ok sweetheart,” he drawls. “You gonna be alright?” His voice is gravelly.

Ellie sniffles and nods.

He looks around the church hall, getting their bearings again, then says, “Why don’t we step outside for a minute? Get some fresh air?” 

She tries not to look at anyone else as they exit through the front doors; she definitely doesn’t want Tommy or Maria to see her. Ellie wants them to like her. To think she’s grown up. That she can be useful and helpful to their town if they decide to return here after going on to make the cure. Not that she’s some crybaby who can’t even make it down the fucking steps before bursting into tears. Joel catches her by her elbow, sinking beside her as she lets out her first in a series of loud sobs.

“I’m sorry— I’m sorry— I’m sorry—” she repeats, and her dad keeps his arm around her, using his other hand to rub up and down her bicep.

“Don’t be sorry. You don’t ever need to be sorry with me.” Another agonized whimper escapes through her lips. This time Joel sounds a bit desperate when he speaks, like he’s on the verge of tears himself. “Tell me what’s wrong, honey. What can I do to fix it?” 

“You can’t! Everything’s perfect!” Ellie wails, her fingers winding around the buttons on his shirt, “— and when everything’s perfect, that means something bad is gonna happen.” 

All Joel has to do is ask what she means by that and Ellie spills her fucking guts. The thing she swore she’d never say out loud again after she told Marlene? Yeah— She tells him that. That the last time everything was perfect was the moment before she and Riley got attacked. Before they got bitten and infected. Before her best friend turned into a monster. “I loved her like you loved Tess,” Ellie admits, squeezing her eyes shut and praying that the confession doesn’t change things for him, “— but I left her. I was too much of a chickenshit to do what had to be done.” 

“Ellie—”

“I don’t want you to tell me it’s not true, because I know you’re lying,” she insists, and Joel shuts his mouth. He looks like he still disagrees, but that he’s feeling bad enough for her in this moment to respect her need for silence. “Nothing ever stays perfect,” Ellie says, “— and I just don’t want to lose you too.” 

He gentles his face, allows a momentary silence to gather his thoughts, then says, “We don’t have to do this, you know… We can stay in Jackson; we can make a life here.” Joel gestures into the night. Crisp fall air, and yellow leaves blowing in the breeze. He isn’t great at verbalizing his emotions; he has his moments, but this isn’t the same man who growled, “There. Is. No. Cure,” at Tess on the edge of the QZ. He’s not saying it because he doesn’t believe in her. He’s saying, “I don’t CARE about the cure. I care about you.”

The unspoken declaration makes her want to be selfish. To curl around his heart and never let go. To spend the rest of her life tucked away, nestled safely in Wyoming with her dad who loves her. There’s nothing Ellie wants more— But Riley didn’t get to be safe. Neither did Tess, or Sam. Refusing the call would make her the most horrible person on the planet. 

She looks at her knees. “I do have to. If my immunity can change things… help people…” she trails off. Joel purses his lips in response; he thumbs her wrist. It looks like he wants to hold her again, and she wishes he would. “No matter if they develop a vaccine or not, there’s no way to reverse what happened to your friend or anybody else who’s already infected. You understand that, right?”

Ellie’s brows tighten. “I’m not stupid.” 

“I know,” he reassures, “— but sometimes grief can make us desperate.” Joel rubs the band on his watch with his free hand, and her eyes follow his fingers. He gives her what can only be described as a sad smile. When Ellie doesn’t offer anything else, he leans over and presses his lips against her temple again. This is the third time he’s done that now in a very short span of time, and she wishes he would open his mouth wider, wide enough to swallow her whole so that she could live inside his comfort forever. 

“— Listen kiddo.” His voice deepens, his tone serious as he pulls back to look at her. “I still need to talk to Tommy. For all we know, the Fireflies have closed up shop, but if that’s not the case… If there’s a way to do this safe… To do this smart, then I promise we’ll try. Does that sound fair?”

“What if there’s not?” Ellie frowns.

“Then, we’ll stay in Jackson till we figure it out.” Joel sounds sure of himself, resolute in his decision. She swallows, gives him one, firm nod, then paws at her cheeks with the cuff of the blue plaid button up she’s wearing. “What did you and Tommy talk about at the dam? Why didn’t you tell him about my immunity?”

He clears his throat, and Ellie’s not sure if he’s going to answer her or brush the question off, but she doesn’t get the chance to find out, because Tommy is opening the door to the church to let Maria out, and they’re not the only ones. Most of the building’s occupants file out through one of the two sets of doors, heading down the street in the direction of the main square. “Everything alright out here, you two?” Her uncle squats in front of them, touching Ellie’s arm attentively. 

She grins and leans her head against her dad’s shoulder, made awkward by the affection. A cool sense of relief washes over her. Tommy’s not mad that she rejected his offer to dance with him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. What Ellie didn’t want was to embarrass herself. It’s different with Joel; he already likes her; she’s not so worried about making a fool of herself in front of him. 

“We’re fine,” Joel answers for her in a tone that’s clipped, overly formal.

Tommy’s wife offers an arm out. “Why don’t you and I walk over and help them set up for the bonfire, Ellie?” She thinks this is just another way for the woman to say, “Let’s give our boys some space.” Space for what? Is he gonna talk to his brother about her immunity without her? Joel gives her an encouraging nod. “Go with Maria; I’m right behind you.”

“Don’t worry about them,” the woman reassures, hooking their arms at the elbow as the two of them head down the street, loose gravel and rocks crunching under the soles of their shoes. “Those boys have a long history together that you and I aren’t a part of, and seven years worth of living is a lot to catch up on— It’s gonna take time to mend that relationship.”

Ellie understands that. Fourteen years is a long time too. 

“He’s acting so weird,” she admits. “On the way here it seemed like he was kind of excited to find Tommy. I think he was trying not to show it too much, so I wouldn’t be disappointed if he was dead, but I could tell— And now it’s like he doesn’t want him around at all. Like do you notice how stiff and constipated he gets every time they’re around eachother?”

Maria snorts. “Maybe Joel just isn’t quite as ready to share you as he thought he was,” she proposes. “I see the way he looks at you; he’s defensive, like a dragon guarding his treasure. He wants you all to himself, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. It makes him a good dad, but I think where the constipation comes in is from him trying to suppress it.” The woman squeezes Ellie’s arm. “He knows it’s good for you to have other family.”

Ellie bites the inside of her cheeks to stop her lips from giving her away. A fire swells inside her belly, burning warmth and longing. She likes that, and she wants Joel to catch up to them; she wants to belong to him again. “So, if Tommy’s my uncle, does that make you my aunt?” she asks to distract herself from the urge to turn around, to run straight into her dad’s arms and bury her face in his chest. To count his heartbeats.

“That’s usually how it works…” Maria says slowly. “Would you like me to be your aunt?”

Obviously the answer is yes. If Joel’s the dragon guarding his treasure, then Ellie’s the dragon hoarding as much of it as she can. She uses her fingers to tally one— two— three people in her family now, and that’s more than she’s ever had before. If only she had her very own cave to put them in— She would roar loud enough to cause a rock slide, walling off the mouth so they had to stay in there with her forever: safe, whole, and hers. 

As it turns out, ‘setting up the bonfire,’ consists of carrying make-shift wooden benches to form a large square around an even larger fire-pit in the middle of the town. They skip the kindling and go right to explosives, orange flames pluming out in a mushroom cloud of heat, licking high into the air as they toss logs into the center to keep the fire going. 

Maria sits down next to the guy named Eugene that Tommy introduced her to earlier, and Ellie could not be more relieved when Joel appears on the other side of the blaze; he’s tense and glaring ahead of him, but he’s there and that’s all that matters. Her dad takes the spot kitty-corner to his brother, Maria, and Eugene but on the opposite bench; he motions for Ellie to join him. She tries to sit on his left, but he wraps one heavy arm around her waist and pulls her directly onto his lap, tugging her close like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like this isn’t only the third time he’s had his arms around her— ever, and one of those times was because she was drowning. 

Tommy leans across the space between them and asks, “Whaddya’ think, kiddo? Are you having fun?” Ellie hugs Joel’s arms to her chest and squirms deeper into the embrace. “It’s awesome here,” she says. Any place that makes her dad this naturally affectionate towards her has to be good, right? 

Her uncle appears pleased by that. “Good. Now, are you ready to hear Jackson’s finest murder the simplest songs on guitar?” Tommy teases. Maria smacks him. “Don’t be rude,” she admonishes. 

“What?” He feigns defensiveness. “All I’m sayin’ is that it wouldn’t kill ‘em to learn a basic scale; ain’t like we don’t have the time.” Ellie can’t stop the giggle that erupts in her throat. She hides her face in Joel’s neck and inhales the fresh scent of Irish Spring, the man shampoo that was in Tommy and Maria’s shower. “Ellie, you should convince your daddy to play us a song. It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything halfway decent.”

That gets her attention. “You know how to play guitar?”

“He sings too,” Tommy offers, and Joel shoots his brother a nasty glare. “Haven’t sung in years.” 

“Joel,” she protests, squiggling around to face him. “Please? I’ll do anything. I’ll stop being annoying, and I’ll start helping you clean the guns more, and stop pretending to be asleep to get out of chores—”

“Don’t go makin’ promises you can’t keep, little girl.” 

“C’mon dude—” 

“Not tonight.” His rejection cools the excitement on her face, which has an effect on him; she can tell. He lets out his breath in a resigned sigh. “Next time,” Joel pacifies. “I promise I’ll sing for you next time.” Whether that’s true or not, Ellie doesn’t know, but someone starts strumming the chords across the fire and they quit arguing to listen.

It’s a couple: a dark-haired man and a woman with long cornrows, the man plays the guitar and his partner sings. Tommy’s not wrong. The first song is almost criminally bad. Ellie’s not sure what it’s supposed to sound like, but she’s almost a hundred percent positive that everyone around the fire is wishing this lady would, “say nothing at all,” instead of singing about it.

They clap politely when she finishes, and the next guy isn’t so bad.

Tommy pretends to be humble as the second man passes him the instrument, but concedes with an ease that tells her he was always planning to sing something. His fingers are practiced, and she’s mesmerized by the mischievous smirk that spreads across his face as he taps his foot along to the beat. He winks at Ellie, and starts to sing a song about Maria, “Your sunlight surely hurts my eyes..” the woman’s face sparkling with amusement. Ellie’s never seen two grown ups in love like this; it’s kind of sweet, especially since Tess and Joel spent most of the time she knew them yelling at eachother. 

“Is this a real song, or did he make it up?” she hisses in her dad’s ear, and his chest rumbles against her back. “It’s a real song,” he whispers. “B.W. Stevenson— But Brooks and Dunn did a real famous cover of it later on.”

Maria reaches over and squeezes Ellie’s hand when Tommy finishes singing. “You just wait. He’ll be singing ‘Ellie my love,’ next,” she jests.

“Is that a real song?” she asks Joel again.

“Sure is.” 

The fourth song of the campfire night is her favorite, not because she cares that much about the dude singing it, something about, “God Bless Broken Roads,” but she likes it because Joel likes it. He rocks her side to side at a slow, even pace, and when she snuggles her cheek into his scratchy beard, he brings his lips close to her ear and starts to sing; it’s low, quiet, and it’s just for her. “I think about the years I spent just passing through… I’d like to have the time I’ve lost, and give it back to you—”

It’s like the song was written just for them. Ellie nestles deeper into his embrace, one hand on his chest. He hikes her legs up to lay them across his lap and holds her thigh so he’s cradling her like a baby. Like she’s his baby, and he really is taking back all the time they lost. I love you— I love you— I love you, she tells him in her head. 

They stay at the bonfire for a long time. Until the flames turn to embers and smoke rises into the cool autumn sky. Joel talks to Eugene. The old man’s voice is grizzly, comforting. She can hear them go back and forth about something that sounds like construction. Tommy interjects with the occasional, “We have better access to the spruce and pine for building, but Dr. Chang, our physician, has been using aspen as a fever reducer…” 

Ellie’s not really listening. She fiddles with the buttons on Joel’s shirt, pushing them in and out of the holes until her eyes are heavy and her fingers go slack. Her dad’s hand strokes absentmindedly back and forth along her leggings. Every now and then he adjusts her. Tips her head forward, tucks a strand of hair out of her face, rubs her palm with the pad of his thumb. 

It feels like years have gone by since they woke up this morning with a few miles to go before they reached the dam— But somehow, despite its length, today has still managed to be the best day of her life. Ellie wouldn’t trade her newfound family for anything in the world, and even if perfect never lasts… She doesn’t regret dancing on the counters in the Liberty Garden mall with Riley, and she’ll never regret dancing with her dad in the church hall of Jackson County, Wyoming. 

Chapter Text

Tommy pokes his head into their guest bedroom early the next morning to find a cold, empty bed, sheets tossed to one side: no Ellie.

There’s a momentary panic, an electric fear that stabs between his ribs. He almost calls out for Maria… until he sees the blue-green backpack open, tipped over on the floor next to the window and thanks the fucking Lord. If her stuff is here, that means she is too. It means that Joel hasn’t packed her up and smuggled her out of town in the middle of the night.

He kicks himself for not worrying about that sooner. 

His heart rate slows, and he leans against the door frame. Reassures himself that Joel is angry, but he isn’t stupid. Ellie is safe here, and his brother knows it. He fights back against the thick fingers of guilt that squeeze around his heart when he remembers the way his brother held her last night in the church hall, like they were the only two people in the room, and again at the bonfire. The way she only had eyes for him. Melted into his embrace and stayed there, the trust between them loud and obvious. Joel holds Ellie the way he held Sarah on the night she died: desperately, like he’s going to lose her at any moment. 

Like he’s already lost her…

Tommy shakes himself out of it. What’s done is done. Seven years ago he made a choice. A choice he thought best at the time: the wrong choice, and now here they are. In his house; in his town. There’s still time to make this right, if not with his brother, then with his niece.

She must be an early riser, he tells himself. A product of her raising, up at dawn for military drills and all that. Anyone with a working set of eyes and ears can tell that Ellie has some sort of hyper-excitability thing going on— She’s all over the place. The girl wouldn’t’ve been able to lay awake, patiently waiting for someone to come get her. The most likely scenario is that she went downstairs to rouse Joel. Thing is: Joel isn’t awake neither. He’s fast asleep on the couch, and Tommy experiences another lightening bolt of panic. He’s so distracted that he almost misses the tuft of auburn nestled at the base of his brother’s throat, small fingers curled around his shirt collar. 

It was a strange transition for teenage Tommy, watching his older brother go from a relatively carefree kid, to someone’s dad, especially after Dee took off on them and Joel became Sarah’s full-time caregiver. Saturday night football turned into Joel shirtless on the old, pull-out couch, the baby in a diaper gurgling on his chest. “Skin-to-skin, and tummy time all rolled into one, Tommy,” he’d say. “It’s good for her.”

That’s what this reminds him of now. Ellie is just a lump in the blankets, but he can tell that her body is wedged between Joel and the back of the couch. She’s laying more on top of him than anywhere else; they’re clinging to eachother, and his brother is sleeping better than Tommy’s seen him sleep in twenty years. A sleep that’s natural, not forced— Not induced by enough pills and booze that every time he closes his eyes, he gambles with his life. It’s a beautiful sight, and a keen, painful sting.

It brings him back to his last day in Boston, standing outside Joel’s door, that school picture of Ellie burning a hole in his back pocket. This was after he’d blown up at him the last time. “I don’t ever want to see your goddamn face again!” 

He got no answer when he knocked, so Tommy let himself into the dingy studio where he found his brother passed out in his boxers, neck bent at an odd angle, propped up against the bed. Blood, gunpowder, sweat and sex in the air. A naked woman, another smuggler who he vaguely recognized as being Joel’s flavour of the week, was starfished on the mattress clutching a bottle of hooch, a white ring of powder under her nose. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that? There was no conversation. No goodbye. No opportunity to talk things through. He checked their pulses and left, never looked back.

And yeah— he kept the picture, but he should’ve done more. 

His first instinct was to take Ellie with him. Joel can question that all he wants, but it really fucking was. He could picture a life for them even back then. If he could find a place for them out West, beyond the dirty, crime-filled streets of Boston, he could bring her up. When the time was right, he would tell her about her dad… The man he used to be before his world came to a screeching halt. He’d watched Joel take responsibility for Sarah at nineteen-years-old. If his brother could do it in his twenties, then surely Tommy could do it in his thirties. Besides, Ellie wasn’t a newborn; she wasn’t helpless. 

The problem was getting her there. Getting around Marlene. Traveling alone with a seven-year-old to God knows where with no fucking plan. It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, and Marlene knew Anna. She had legitimate investment in the wellbeing of her dead best friend’s child. He was sure she wouldn’t approve of him taking the girl on a suicide mission to Wyoming, so that meant Ellie would need to be smuggled out of her boarding school, a school where the Firefly leader swore up and down that she was safe, fed, taken care of…

Tommy went back to Texas last year. He’s a restless heart. Never been good at staying in one place for too long. He’s toyed with the idea of going back to Boston many times, tracking her down, bringing his niece out West. Maria wouldn’t like the idea of him going on his own, but she’d understand. She would’ve welcomed Ellie as an aunt, as a mother, as anything he asked of her— But he’s always found a reason to weasel out of it. All these years he’s been too afraid to face the consequences of his actions. Of his hastiness to leave the city. He should’ve tried harder to bring Joel around. Should’ve woken him up that day and given him the choice, left him the goddamn picture with a note at the very least. But there ain’t nothin’ to be done about it now. Like he said to his brother at the dam: there’s still time for them to have a relationship, to give her a childhood. 

He lets them sleep. It’s a long road to Wyoming, so he’s sure they need it. Maria joins him in the kitchen not long after he starts on the French toast. It’s probably best to avoid any obvious signs of eggs for a couple meals, just in case the thought of them still makes Ellie sick. His wife wraps her arms around him from behind, pressing her nose between his shoulder blades. “He’s not who I pictured.”

He doesn’t need to ask to know the he she’s referring to. Tommy lays his hand over hers and drops his head. He gives a defeated nod. 

“I still don’t think you were wrong to do what you did,” she says firmly, taking the eggshells out of his hand to set them on the counter. Maria moves to stand in front of him. “He wasn’t ready back then. Maybe he is now.”

“I hope so.”

“What I’m trying to say is learn to keep your distance, at least for a while. Let him have her. He wants to be her daddy; he’s still trying to figure out how to do that again, and right now, he sees you as competition. Let him win, and things will settle down. I promise.” 

Take a step back, is what she’s telling him. Tommy gets it, rationally, he does. It’s just that Joel’s not the only one competing. He knows he has no right to feel this way, but he’s had this vision of his niece in his head for years. Of what their relationship might’ve looked like; it mirrors the one he had with Sarah, and just like it was with that sweet little blonde, he’s reluctant to let go. 

Ellie stirs on the couch, and Joel lets out what sounds like a pained grunt. “Easy girl, you’re kneein’ me where you don’t need to be kneein’ me.”

The little girl giggles and he hears her shift. “Ouch, Fuck,” his brother curses. “I said to move your goddamn leg—” 

“Sorry.” She starts to laugh again, but the sound cuts off and she thuds to the floor. “Did you just fucking push me?” Ellie demands, sitting up and flinging her hair out of her face just as Tommy pokes his head back into the living room. She’s still wearing his plaid button up and the pair of leggings Maria found for her.

His brother sighs. “I didn’t push you.” 

“Sure— sure. I wait all these years for my dad to want me, only to get abused by him when he does…” she trails off.

Joel snorts.

It’s clear that the girl is joking, but he senses a disquiet in his brother that wasn’t present before, like there’s an uncomfortable connotation, some kind of truth to her words that he doesn’t want to be reminded about. Tommy figures it has to do with all that wasted time hanging between them. It does seem unfair— He can see how it’s unfair.

“You two hungry?” he asks to break the tension.

“Starving,” Ellie announces, slipping the ponytail that’s around her wrist into her hair. 

Joel takes a shine to parenting; he always has. Tommy made the reoccurring mistake of suggesting he have another child on multiple occasions post Outbreak Day, an idea that his brother shut down violently, with enough force that he was almost convinced that despite the basic, biological processes that would make it possible, it would never happen… could never happen. 

He stands corrected. 

Ellie tries to dive headfirst into her breakfast with the same ferocity as she did yesterday, and just like yesterday, Joel stops her. “Let’s mind our manners,” he chides, cutting up two pieces of French toast with a fork and knife. He hands her the fork when he’s done and she rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna be so bored after breakfast,” she says when she finishes chewing her first bite, like she can already feel herself getting antsy. “Can we go look around more today?”

“I’ve got some time,” Tommy offers, but when Maria raises an eyebrow at him, he makes an addition. “We can all go. There’re a few houses that we’re fixin’ up nearby, a couple that might work for you two. We could check ‘em out together. How does that sound?”

Ellie looks to Joel right away, a frown on her face. There’s something they aren’t saying. “When are we gonna tell them?” she whispers, nudging him with her elbow. His brother drops his head into his hands; somebody forgot to tell this girl that whispering doesn’t  work if the person you’re keepin’ secrets from is sitting right across from you. 

“Why don’t you give Tommy and I a chance to talk in private?” he suggests, but his niece has a stubborn streak; she ain’t havin’ any of it. “You already talked in private, twice, and you still didn’t tell him,” Ellie argues. “Besides, I want to be there,” she insists, “— I want to show them.” Joel gives her a half irritated, half anxious glance, and for the life of him, he can’t figure out what they’re talking about. What does she want to show them? Is this some roundabout way of telling him they aren’t planning to stay?

“Fine,” his brother says, then turns to them. He sets his fork down, adopting a familiar, threatening posture. “I’m gonna let Ellie explain why we’re here, but while she’s talkin’, neither one of you is gonna move. You don’t touch her, you don’t so much as twitch, or so help me God…”

“Joel,” Ellie hisses. 

Maria raises a hand. “It’s alright, Ellie. Let him say what he wants to say.” 

Joel ignores his sister-in-law, giving his girl the go ahead. For what?— He isn’t sure… But she doesn’t jump directly into a story like he’s expecting her to— Instead, she begins to unbutton the cuff of her sleeve. His brother slings an arm over the back of Ellie’s chair and shoots them another menacing look while she’s distracted. A possessive, “Keep your hands off my girl,” kind of look. The kind a dad might give his daughter’s first boyfriend, or some creep who approaches her in the streets. Not the kind Tommy ever expected to receive; not in this context anyways.

His niece rolls her sleeve up to her elbow; she holds out her arm to show them and his breath catches. There’s a scar on her forearm, but it’s not just any scar. It resembles a burn, red, angry cysts centered around a focal point… A horrible lump grows in his throat when he realizes that the focal point is a set of human teeth marks.

Ellie has a bite.

Maria’s chair scrapes against the linoleum, and Tommy stretches an arm out instinctively to shield his wife. Shield her from what? he wonders. The little girl is calm, quiet… She squiggles closer to her dad, her safety, put off by their negative reactions…

“I’m not infected,” she tells them, an earnestness in her eyes that makes him question everything he knows to be true. 

Tommy wants to believe her. Of course he does; she’s his niece… his family, but he’s not sure what to think. All he knows is that he’d rather die from an infected bite, than at the hands of his fucking brother, whose nostrils are flared, and his shoulders tight. Best to take a step back, let him explain. “Don’t so much as twitch,” Joel warned him, and he gets it now. 

Chapter Text

“What does Ellie complain about most?” Tommy quizzes, holding up the blue striped Trivia card.

They’re playing a game called, “Do you really know your family?” which Maria claims they’ve had in the back of their games closet for years, but have never gotten the opportunity to play. Joel thinks it’s pointless, and the fact that he can’t answer the most basic questions about his own child is pathetic. He can only guess at her favorite subject in school, and they have to skip the ones that ask about favorite restaurants, or how much time the other person spends on their phone, but Ellie’s having fun, so he plays along.

At least he knows this one. “Boredom,” he says. “Only kid I’ve ever met who gets bored in the middle of a shoot out.”

“Fuck you,” she laughs, jabbing him in the leg with her foot. She’s sitting on the floor next to the coffee table. “That’s only cos you never let me fucking do anything.”

That’s not true, and Joel isn’t sure whether she really thinks that, or whether she’s putting on a show for Tommy and Maria. Is she perceptive enough to realize he doesn’t want his brother to know how many times she’s killed for him? How drastically he’s failed to protect her? 

“Ok, Ellie—” Maria draws another blue card. “How tall is Tommy?”

His daughter’s face screws up into an irritated frown. “How am I supposed to know that? I’m like… the only person here who wouldn’t know that. It’s not fair—” she complains loudly. Joel ruffles her ponytail. “Tommy is nine inches taller than you,” he gives her a hint, tries to smoulder the fire before it gets out of hand. 

“Oh,” she says, re-arranging her face mid-pout. “So, he’s six feet tall?”

“Sure am, sweetheart.” Tommy winks, and his daughter matches the smile on her uncle’s face with one of her own as she tucks the card into her pile. If Joel didn’t know any better, he’d say they’re playing dominoes: cause and effect. His brother smiling at her makes Ellie feel affectionate, but she’s too shy to ask for affection from her uncle, so she keens into Joel’s knee, monkeying her arms around his calf. When he smooths her hair down along the crown of her face, he feels her wiggle with delight.

Joel is torn between loving it— loving her so goddamn much it hurts to breathe, and feeling like an asshole.

He’s known from the start that Ellie’s desperate for attention, for physical touch. For someone to love her with the same capacity for love that she exudes, but it isn’t until he starts initiating those moments that she begins to show him just how much he’s been withholding. He thought he was doing it for her own good, prepping her for loss, but he can see now that she was always going to get attached, all he was doing was making her feel self-conscious.

Now that he’s shown her it’s ok to touch him, given her permission to hug him or sit in his lap, that’s all she wants to do— all the time. It works in his favor with Tommy and Maria. It makes their bond seem that much stronger, completely disguises any sort of uncertainty or fear in their relationship and makes his brother feel guilty as sin. Joel can tell because the boy’s gone from making excuses to giving them long, enduring, apologetic looks.

Good. He should feel fucking guilty. 

It doesn’t fix things. Nothing either of them do will ever bring back all that time that was stolen, but it does interrupt the grieving process a little; it brings him out of that depression and a bit closer to acceptance to have her so close all the time. Can you reverse an attachment disorder? — Probably not, but she’s listening to her brain. He should encourage her to do that, right? 

Course brains also crave Dopamine, Serotonin, fucking Oxy. We don’t always know what’s best for ourselves, and what scares Joel is how this is going to work when they’re back out on the road. It’s all well and good for them to be attached at the hip in Jackson, for her to let her guard down— But what happens when he takes a bullet to the chest? When he gets bit and she has to leave him? If she couldn’t kill that little girlfriend of hers back in Boston, he’s doubtful she’ll be able to kill her own father. 

As though she can read his mind, Ellie rubs her bite arm through her sleeve, and his brother shoots him a look. “You’ve got a challenge, Ellie,” Tommy distracts her, pointing to the stack of yellow striped cards. When she picks it up, she makes a face and hands it to Joel. “I don’t get it. What’s coins?” 

See which player can stack the most coins in 30 seconds using only one hand. The winner takes the card.

“Uh—” Joel scratches his head, then gives her a size approximation with his pointer finger and thumb. “Old money, little pieces of copper… nickel… S’what we used in place of ration cards.”

“I thought money was in banks,” she says factually, smoothing out his denim pant leg. Maria chuckles. “It was,” his sister-in-law explains. That’s where you’d keep the majority of it, the big sums, but coins were for buying small things, coffee, snacks…”

”Shit, yeah I know what those are. You can put them in arcade slots, right?” 

“You can,” he confirms, remembering Angel Knives. Ellie looks a little spacey and his mind goes to Riley again. He wonders if they played arcade games together before she died. 

“Joel used to save all his pennies, nickels and quarters,” Tommy offers. “You could get cardboard rollers for them at the bank, and by the time he was eighteen, he had boxes and boxes of ‘em— Said he was gonna use the money to buy himself a new guitar when the old one crapped out.” 

“Really?” Ellie asks him, those curious greens fixed to his face, her chin resting on his knee, “Did you get to?”

“Get to what?” Joel plays dumb. He knows what she’s asking, but he’s putting it off, irritated that his brother is using Ellie to manipulate him. Trying to figure out how much of his past he’s shared with her. How much has Joel really changed? — That’s what he wants to know. 

“Buy the guitar, asshole.” She shoves him. “Did you get to buy it?”

He shakes his head gently. “Naw, I had more important things to worry about by then.” Tommy can test him all he wants, but Joel’s not feeding into it. Ellie on the other hand… “Like Sarah?” she questions, oblivious, and for good reason, to the brotherly conflict taking place. Joel closes his eyes and gives a reluctant nod, sighing before he answers. “Yeah— like Sarah,” he admits, then nudges her and taps the deck with his finger. “Pick a new challenge, kiddo.” 

Ellie turns over another card. “Imitate the sound of an animal,” she reads. “Family members have 30 seconds to guess which animal you’re imitating. The first person to get it right gets to keep the card.”

Joel’s overconfident in his ability to guess this one. He’s expecting her to start RAWR-ing like a dinosaur, or screeching like a pterodactyl. When she contorts her hands in the spot beneath her chin, he’s even more sure, until she opens her mouth. Ellie rolls her eyes into the back of her head and flails her neck. “Click… Click… Click…”

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy curses, and that’s his cue. Joel pushes her arms down, condemning his daughter’s morbid sense of humor. “Ellie—” he scolds. “That ain’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” she argues, then gestures to her arm. “I’m infected… so technically, I am an infected… Get it?”

Oh, he gets it alright. Joel would love nothing more than to get her alone right now, remind her what is and what ain’t an appropriate joke for a family gathering. Remind her of the fact that they’ve only just barely convinced Tommy and Maria of her immunity. That now is not the time to go rubbing it in everyone’s faces— But his brother and sister-in-law are watching him closely. He feels scrutinized: nineteen again in the baby aisle at Walmart, or at Lamaze class, all those other, much older parents-to-be judging him for his carelessness.

So no— he doesn’t reprimand her. He stays calm, collects himself before he speaks. “A clicker ain’t an animal,” he tells her.

Ellie huffs out a loud, exasperated sigh. “Well, it’s close enough.” She turns to Tommy. “It’s close enough, right?— Maria?” his girl pleads. The couple share another one of their wordless looks, then Maria opens her mouth. “Alright. For the purposes of this game, a clicker is an animal,” the woman decides.

“Yes!” Ellie pumps her fist. “Here, take your stupid card.” She thrusts the challenge at him. 

They learn that Maria lost her daddy, Jackson’s co-founder, earlier this year to some kind of cancer they didn’t have the resources to treat when she draws a card that says, “What is the one thing I would change in the world if I could?” and he supposes that this is what this game is meant for: families getting to know eachother, but even still, Joel hates the way Ellie’s face falls, her brows creasing with worry as she adds cancer to the list of possible threats to his existence.

He’s not surprised when she crawls off the floor and into the crook of his elbow before the next card is drawn, and he doesn’t mind one bit. Holding his baby in his arms is something that he’ll never get tired of; it never gets old. Four or fourteen, especially when Ellie never got the chance to be a little girl to begin with, if there’s something he can do to help her regain that innocence, he’ll do it with pleasure.

Tommy has to do an impression of Ellie, which consists of him pretending to stub his toe, and repeating the phrase, “Stupid, bitch-ass motherfucker!” an Ellie-ism if he’s ever heard one. It makes his daughter laugh and gives Joel a headache. No matter how hard he’s tried to curb her foul-mouth in the time they’ve been here, she’s still left her mark. 

The next trivia card Ellie pulls, she hides from him, tucking it under the hem of her shirt so he can’t see. “It says, What was Joel’s wife’s name?” she lies, and he lets out a barking laugh. “That ain’t what it says.”

“It is so!” she insists as he digs his fingers into her belly. Ellie spasms and squeals, arching her body to get away. “Stop— stop—stop!” She rolls onto her side, giggling madly. “That’s what it says, I swear!”

“Let me see it.” Tommy holds out a hand, and Ellie slips the card across the coffee table, facing down. When his brother flips it over, he purses his lips and gives a serious nod. “I’m afraid she’s right,” he says clinically, putting on a show. “What was Joel’s wife’s name? It’s very clear.”

“See,” Ellie smacks him. “I told you.”

“Her name was Dee,” Tommy offers, and his daughter swivels onto her back, scooting along the cushions so that her head is resting in his lap. “D? Like the letter?”

Joel snorts, shooting his brother a displeased glance, then drops his hand to comb her bangs out of her face. In his head, he hears her shyly tell him, “It’s just that I wanna know things about you. I’m scared you’re gonna die and I’ll never get a chance to ask you anything ever again,” in the truck on the way to Pittsburgh. 

“Deanna,” he corrects. “Dee was a nickname.” 

“That’s pretty.” She smiles up at him, pleased that he humored her. It’s so easy to make her happy that for a second Joel wonders why he doesn’t just answer all her questions when she asks them. “So, why’d you guys get divorced?” she tries then, and suddenly the why comes flooding back to him. He’s pretty sure he’s never even told her about the divorce. That she’s just guessing. 

“Ellie,” he scolds again, and she mimics him, mouthing her own name in response. When he doesn’t look amused, she asks, “Too much?”

“Too much,” he confirms.

It’s Ellie who’s not amused later, after another hearty dinner of Elk and roasted vegetables, when Joel holds good on what she views as a threat to send her to the town’s movie night to meet some of the other kids. She’s getting pretty good at reading him by now, and correctly assumes that he wants some alone time to talk to his brother about the Fireflies, and to discuss their plans going forward. 

“It’s not fair that I have to leave. Maria doesn’t have to leave.” She crosses her arms over her chest, heels digging into the floor. Then, just in case he didn’t hear her, she continues. “It’s my body. I should get to decide what to do with it.”

“I’m not sayin’ you shouldn’t. All I’m asking is for a couple hours to talk it through with my brother. To decide if this is something we can do safe, and smart. You remember we talked about that?”

“Obviously I remember.” Her face slips into a glare, “— but you’re just gonna find some stupid reason for us not to go. I already know it. You’re gonna say that Tommy said the roads are too dangerous, or there was one fucking hunter spotted outside the walls once so we can’t risk it. You’ll say there’s some gigantic infected that blasts spores out of its head wandering around somewhere, or the sky isn’t blue enough this time of year—”

“Calm down, baby,” he says, using that particular endearment for a reason. She likes that one. Joel frames her body with his hands. “Have a little faith in your old man, alright? Can you do that?” When she hesitates, he keeps going, softening his voice to an almost impossible degree. “I was listening the other night when you told me why this is so important to you.” 

Indecision flashes across her face, but ultimately he gets her to agree. Maria disappears up the stairs before they leave to drop Ellie off, a silent but deadly sort of anger in her posture after spending a hushed moment out on the porch with Tommy. Joel wonders if that means what he thinks it means. He’s not sure how he feels about it.

It isn’t until they arrive at the church hall where the movie night is supposed to be taking place that Joel realizes the fear of missing out isn’t the the only reason his daughter didn’t want to come tonight. She clings to his sleeve, fingers knotting in the flannel, and when she spots a group of kids her own age heading toward them, she turns away, concealing herself in his shadow. “Don’t be shy.” He gives her a gentle push. “Nobody’s gonna bite you.”

“Well actually,” Tommy starts, bending down to point at someone across the way. “See that kid over there?” His brother gestures to a girl about Ellie’s age, Chinese maybe, with a boyish haircut, wearing the same type of baggie plaid as his daughter. “That’s Cat, and she’s been known to bite. You might want to steer clear of her.”

Ellie laughs and presses closer to him for a second, but the comment seems to have loosened her up and it feels like she’s coming around. If what Joel thinks Tommy is going to offer turns out to be the truth, then he should be glad his daughter responds so well to her uncle. He should foster that love. Do whatever he can to strengthen their connection. Positive Parenting: Apocalypse Edition, Chapter Four: How to share your child with family when all you want to do is hold her close and never fucking let go…

On second thought, it might be better if he leaves that chapter out.

“You won’t make any for sure decisions without me, right?” she checks, glancing back at the line of kids filing in through the heavy wooden doors.

“I promise,” he says. “I’ll be right here to get you when the movie’s over and we can talk it all through before bed.” She lets out a deep breath, gives him a resolute nod. “Fine.” Before she goes inside, Ellie leaps at him. Joel catches her with an umph, one arm tucking around her waist. “I love you,” she mumbles into his chest. 

His heart clenches at the sudden announcement. “I love you too,” he tells her back. It’s the first time he’s said those words to anyone in twenty years. Ellie reaches back to unclasp the Firefly pendant from around her neck, the one he ripped away from her on the outskirts of Boston, stuffing it into his open hand and forcing his fingers closed around the metal as she heads in the opposite direction. 

He understands the message loud and clear.

Joel rubs the pendant between his fingers and Tommy frowns at him. He shakes his head. “I can’t lose her,” he says quietly, more to himself than to his brother, but even now he’s not sure if he means lose her, or let her down. Both outcomes feel unbearable, and he doesn’t know how in the hell he’s going to find a balance. All he knows is that he owes it to her to try.

Chapter Text

The annoying thing about grown ups is that they always assume they can just put one kid in a room with other kids and they’ll make friends. It’s what the sergeants did to them at FEDRA school, and it’s what Joel’s doing to her right now. The problem is, Ellie doesn’t know how to make friends, not the normal way. She’s used to fighting and stealing to gain resources, sharing not just to be nice, but to make alliances. As much as she loved Riley and knew that Riley loved her back, even that started out as a business arrangement.

So, when the girl Tommy warned her about makes a beeline for her direction, Ellie climbs on top of the wooden table at the back of the church hall to get the higher ground, pulling her knees up to her chest like a shield. “You’re Ellie, right?” the girl asks, hopping up to sit on the table next to her. “I’m Cat.”

Ellie already knows that, but she doesn’t tell the girl why. She may be socially stunted, but she’s not dumb enough to throw Tommy’s accusation in her face. Cat is wearing a green plaid, black sweats, and she has a silver rose ring on her pinky finger, the band worn and faded from use.

“Um, yeah— I’m Ellie,” she says back, eyes fixed on the two adults bickering over the projector in the middle of the room. 

Some of the kids brought pillows and blankets, which they set up on the floor in definitive friend groupings. She can’t help but notice that Cat doesn’t seem to belong with any of the groups, and it reminds her a bit of herself. Brings her back down to reality. After all, Tommy doesn’t really know her, not like Joel does, and maybe if he did, Ellie would be one of the girls he would warn people about. She decides to take a chance. “Have you seen this movie before?” 

Juno, that’s what it’s called according to the opening credits. “No,” Cat says. “They always show something different. They find new ones out on patrol and stuff.”

A teenage girl, older than Ellie by a few years walks into a gas station store looking for a test to find out if she’s pregnant or not. “She kinda looks like you,” Cat comments, gesturing at the actress, who’s in the process of peeing on the white stick. She’s heard about tests like that, but FEDRA doesn’t have them. If you think you’re pregnant at military school, you’re supposed to go to the nurse and they’ll take your blood to confirm.

Most of the girls who do get pregnant decide to get rid of it, because the ones that try to keep it, or the ones who catch it too late to kill it usually get thrown into gen pop. Ellie’s heard about girls paying to get rid of it themselves so they can come back to school, which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. She’s heard horror stories of deadly infections, and girls having seizures with their legs tied open on someone’s dining room table. The lucky ones, the ones that figure it out early enough, get to see a military doctor to have it removed safely. 

Sometimes she wonders why her mother didn’t just do that. She’s not trying to be morbid, but what’s the other option when you get pregnant by a stranger? She used to think everyone would’ve been better off, but lately, she’s glad the woman chose to let her live. If her mother did decide to get rid of her before she was born, then Anna would still be alive, but Ellie would never’ve gotten the chance to meet Joel. To be loved by him. It seems wrong to be happy about that. 

“No she doesn’t,” Ellie argues. 

“Yes she does,” the girl laughs. “You’re even wearing the same stupid ponytail.” Cat swishes Ellie’s, and she slaps her new acquaintance’s hand away.

“Hey, fuck you!” she growls, and someone shushes her from the floor. Her acquaintance just lets out another loud cackle, and that’s when Ellie decides that ferocious or not, she likes this sharp-toothed girl.

Cat doesn’t think Juno should give up her baby. She says there’s no reason to. “It’s not like she can’t feed it,” her new friend explains. 

Ellie doesn’t care about the baby, she just likes the dad. He seems nice. As she watches, she pictures him getting off the couch and wrapping his arms around Juno, kissing her hair, telling her it’s all gonna be ok. That he’ll be whatever she needs him to be. Do whatever she needs him to do— And even though he doesn’t actually say any of those words, she imagines he wants to, but he doesn’t know how to start the conversation. 

About halfway through the movie, there’s a knock at the church doors, and one of the supervisors goes over to open it. A boy, probably sixteen or seventeen, stands in the frame. He’s Chinese like Cat, and Ellie doesn’t want to make the assumption that they know eachother, but she doesn’t have to, because the boy spots them right away and widens his eyes, making an irritated, “Come here,” motion with his hand. 

Cat groans loudly and slides off the table, eliciting another rounds of shushes from the audience below. “Come with me,” she whines.

Ellie listens if not just to avoid causing a disturbance, skirting around the blankets on the floor. She’s starting to get bored of sitting here anyways, and the movie is too girly and emotional. It doesn’t have any fighting or explosions. Not a single spaceship or dinosaur. The dad’s not even in it that much. She doesn’t really care if Paulie Bleeker agrees to date Juno or not. She’s already pregnant, so what does it matter? When they reach the front entrance of the church, the girl lets out a frustrated growl. “What is it, Jesse?” she snaps.

“Who’s this?” the boy motions to Ellie. They step out onto the porch. 

“This is Ellie; she’s new,” Cat says defensively, like she’s guarding her territory. “Ellie, meet my annoying cousin.”

Jesse snorts in response. “Tommy’s niece, right?” It’s funny how fast people find stuff out— But then again, Tommy and Maria pretty much run the town, so it makes sense to have people watching them closely. “Yep,” Ellie nods.

“Well, I’m sorry to ruin the fun…” he trails off, giving Cat a knowing look.

She scuffs her sneakers on the wood. “I didn’t even do anything,” she complains, and her cousin shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t care what you did, but my mom says I’m not allowed to go over to Dina’s until I find you and bring you back, so please don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I finally got her to agree to watch The Shining with me, and curfew’s at eleven.”

“Dina’s his girl—friend,” Cat teases.

“No she’s not,” Jesse argues back. Her new friend rolls her eyes, but lets out a resigned sigh. Whatever ‘The Shining’ is, it doesn’t sound like something Cat wants to mess with. She turns to face Ellie. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

“Uh— I don’t know.” Ellie cringes. “I don’t know how much longer me and my dad are gonna be here. We might be leaving.”

“Wait, actually?” Cat’s lips turn down, her shoulders slumping. “Why?” 

“We have to go out West to find some people my uncle knows, but we’ll probably be back.” She tries to leave it on a positive note. Ellie knows what it’s like when your friends disappear with no hope of return, and she knows how quickly people like her and like Cat make friends. The subtle reassurance seems to settle the girl a bit, and Jesse offers to walk her back to Tommy’s on the way. “Have you been on the Outside for a long time?” he asks curiously. 

She can tell that he’s looking at her now, really looking at her. The way the bones in her wrists and ankles protrude. The fact that Tommy’s plaid falls down to her knees. He’s only asking to be polite. He knows the answer. Still, the curiosity isn’t malicious; it’s gentle, full of polite concern. Ellie decides that she likes Jesse too. 

“A month or so— We’re from the Boston QZ.” 

“That far, hey? Is it still in tact?” the boy questions further, and Cat sighs again, louder this time. “Who cares?” she grumbles, then slips her own question into the mix. “When do you think you’ll be back?” she pushes as they walk.

Ellie can’t help but smile at Cat’s obvious gusto. She feels a kindred spirit here. No one outside of her new family has ever liked her this fast. Riley didn’t, that’s for sure. Hopefully, Joel and Tommy will be done having their private talk by now. Even if they aren’t, it’s good she’s going back early. She wants to know what they’re saying. 

“Boston was fine when we left. If you call fascist, military dictatorship fine,” she tells Jesse, then nudges Cat’s arm, trying to calculate how long she thinks it’ll take to make a cure. Tommy says the Fireflies are at a University in Colorado, which if she remembers correctly, isn’t that far from Wyoming, especially if they take a horse. “Maybe a few weeks?” she says, but it sounds more like a question. 

If it’s going to take longer than that, she doesn’t want to know.

Joel and Tommy are sitting out on the porch when they arrive at the house; Maria is still nowhere to be found. Ellie’s pretty sure her and Tommy were fighting before she left, but unlike Tess and Joel, their fights are quiet, distant. They don’t yell and scream at eachother. Tommy doesn’t get in Maria’s face. In the couple days they’ve been here, they’ve bickered, but he’s never laid a hand on her in anger. Never acted like he wanted to. Ellie’s torn between enjoying the soft affection between the two, and wondering if Tommy is even capable of loving someone like Joel does. In that out of control, explosive sort of way, like you’ll die if they die. She wants that for Maria. It feels like the better kind of love.

Cat grabs onto her sleeve, fingers coiling into the fabric to stop her from leaving. “Promise you’ll come back?”

She smiles. “I’ll come back.” The other girl slides the silver ring off her pinky finger and slips it onto Ellie’s. “You can keep it,” she says shyly, and heat floods Ellie’s cheeks. She ducks her head. “Thanks,” she mumbles, hoping that Joel and Tommy are too far away to witness the exchange.

Jesse is bad enough. He’s laughing so hard he can’t catch his breath. “You can’t be serious—” he lets out.

Cat slaps Jesse on the back of the head —hard. “Asshole,” she hisses, “If you don’t stop laughing right now I’m telling Aunt Robin about those things I found in your room.”

“Tampons?” he questions. “I think she knows about tampons; she’s a woman, and a doctor—” he begins, but she just smacks him again and he dodges her, still chuckling. The girl gives Ellie one last enduring, hopeful sort of look, then allows herself to be dragged away. “I’ll see you in a few weeks!” she calls, and Ellie’s head is spinning. She’s only been gone for an hour, but it feels like a lot has happened in that time, the most notable of things being that she’s pretty sure Cat wants to kiss her.

Joel is wearing a shit-eating grin when she joins him and his brother on the porch, but she’s too embarrassed to make eye contact, so she sidles into his lap and buries her nose in his shirt to hide the blush staining her cheeks. “What in the hell was that, kiddo?” His chest rumbles with amusement. “Did that little girl just give you a ring?” Her dad tries to get her to look at him, but she makes a noise of protest and burrows deeper. 

“I warned you, Cat’s been known to bite,” Tommy says. This time, she lets out her protest in the form of an indignant scream. She kicks the air, and Joel rubs her back. “Alright— alright. Nobody’s gonna tease you,” he soothes. “Don’t get all worked up about it now.” 

It sounds like her uncle is going to say something else, but her dad shoots him a look, so he stops himself mid-sentence. Joel coaxes her to lay against his chest, then pulls her legs over his lap, just like he did at the bonfire. Even when she’s righteous and angry, she still likes to be his baby, so she puts Cat out of her mind and squirms closer.

“You didn’t stay to finish the movie,” Joel observes. “You didn’t like it?”

Ellie shrugs. “Not really.” Then, she takes it a step further, deciding to ask him one of the questions she was wondering about earlier. “What would you do if I told you I was pregnant?”

Joel stiffens. “Uh…” 

Obviously she’s not going to get pregnant. Ellie just wants to know if he would be angry, or act like Juno’s dad and be supportive. She wants to know if he would tell her to get lost, or hold her like he’s holding her now and reassure her that everything’s gonna be alright. Sometimes what-ifs can be just as powerful as real, pressing problems. Maybe he understands that, because he softens against her after a moment of thought. “Do you think you might be pregnant?” he asks cautiously. 

Oh my God. Nevermind. He doesn’t understand anything. 

“No,” Ellie admonishes, hitting him in the chest. “I’ve never— I don’t— That’s what the movie was about dumbass. A teenager getting pregnant. I just want to know what you would do. If you’d be mad.” Joel gives Tommy another look, and her uncle holds up his hands in surrender. “Joel, I did not personally pick out tonight’s teen movie—”

The brothers go back and forth for a bit, disagreeing on what is and isn’t appropriate viewing material for a fourteen-year-old girl, like knowing about sex is the worst thing a girl her age can experience. Worse than killing people and burying her friends. All the while, Joel holds her, and rocks her. He combs her hair with his fingers. He never forgets her, even though his focus is on proving Tommy wrong. He makes her feel small, but not small in a vulnerable, scared sort of way. What she means is that Joel makes her feel safe, loved, and protected— Like she doesn’t even need an answer to her hypothetical question because she already knows it. 

“Uncle Tommy’s gonna come with us to find the Fireflies,” Joel tells her after their conversation lulls into silence.

Ellie lifts her head, surprised by the sudden announcement. She glances at her uncle, and his lips are pursed; he’s as serious as she’s ever seen him. “Is that why Maria’s mad at you?” she interrogates. All the pieces are falling together; things are starting to make sense now. Tommy frowns. “You let me worry about Maria,” he consoles. “She knows as well as I do that my mind’s all made up.” 

Joel said the same thing to her the first night she slept in his apartment. They’ve never sounded more like brothers than they do right now. She considers the possibility that the storm brewing between them was temporary. A product of separation. That the cracks are filled now and they’re getting ready to batten down the hatches. She lets herself trust. Lets herself feel the natural swell of affection for her uncle. Ellie’s so sure of herself that when Hurricane Truth slaps her in the face, she’s not expecting it. She doesn’t anticipate the blow. How it shatters the glass in the comfortable house she’s been building around herself. How it crumbles the foundation right out from under her feet. She doesn’t realize until it’s already gone. 

Chapter Text

Ellie doesn’t mean to go snooping. She’s not curious about what Joel has in his backpack. He’s not shy about the types of things he collects. Bullets, rags, homemade first aid kits. She already knows that if she turns his jacket upside down, a pile of miscellaneous sharps will fall out: supplies to make shivs. 

It isn’t curiosity that gets her in trouble this time, it’s coincidence. She’s looking for her mother’s knife in a pile of her and Joel’s dirty clothes. Tommy pulled the sofa out into a bed for them to share after the first night, and there’s a laundry basket beside it. Her mother’s knife is supposed to be in her backpack, but she was playing with it last night before bed, and she’s pretty sure she left it out. 

Ellie dumps the clothes onto the floor, and grabs each item one by one, fluffing them just enough to release anything hidden in the fabric. She doesn’t mean to find the picture, she really doesn’t, but when the small 2.5 by 3.5 inch piece of card-stock flutters to the floor, she picks it up, and once she’s holding it, it’s impossible to put down.

It’s a strange feeling, looking at a photo of herself from when she was little. Like she recognizes the child in the picture, but she doesn’t all at the same time. She hasn’t seen it before, but that’s not uncommon. They get their pictures taken every year for identification purposes, but it’s not like they have parents to frame them. If it didn’t say Ellie 2026 on the back, she might question that it’s her altogether because it doesn’t make sense. The photo fell out of Joel’s shirt pocket, and it takes her a long moment to understand why those two images: the sight of the school picture along with Joel’s belongings, bend her brain the way they do. 

Ellie, 2026. 

She’s a smart girl— But right now Ellie feels like an idiot. 

“You find it, kiddo?” Joel calls from the kitchen as he approaches her from behind, but Ellie is frozen in place, shoulders haunched, her own seven-year-old face staring back at her, lips pressed together in a serious smile. “What’s wrong?”

Joel ducks down. He tries to put a hand on her back but she flinches away. “Don’t,” she squeaks.  

All the color drains from his face when he sees what she’s holding, and no matter what she does, she can’t stop the tremor from overtaking her hands. “Now Ellie,” he warns, his tone low, almost threatening. “That ain’t what you think it is—“ 

She lets out a pained noise. “You said you didn’t know,” she accuses. “I didn’t even make you promise. I just believed you…” There’s a breathy quality to her voice that if she has to label, she’ll call disbelief. “I thought…” she chokes.

“Quit jumping to conclusions for a second and let me explain,” he tries again, but she shakes her head. 

“I thought you wanted me.” Tears spring behind her eyes, her bottom lip quivering. Heat floods her mouth. “You said you wanted me. The first time I ever met you, you said that—“ A stinging, sour bile rises in her throat at the memory. Her limbs are wobbly, like over-boiled noodles, and she can’t move. Ellie can’t fucking breathe.

“Easy baby girl, c’mere. Let me tell you about that photo.” Joel holds out his arms to her and Ellie resists, twisting her body away from him. “No—“ she whines. “No—no—no—no—“ 

He makes a grab for her and she folds herself in half trying to avoid him. “Leave me alone!” Ellie cries. She throws her weight forward and shoves him as hard as she can, putting all the betrayal, all the burning, spitting, fiery hate she can into the action. Joel stumbles a few paces back, caught off guard by her sudden violent outburst. “Just leave me alone!“

Footsteps thunder down the stairs. “Woah—“ Tommy eases, hands held out with caution. “What’s going on here?” Maria follows behind him at a quick pace. They’re talking again, but Ellie doesn’t have enough room in her brain to give a shit. She doesn’t need them to talk; she doesn’t need anything or anyone. She never has.

Joel says something to Tommy, but Ellie doesn’t hear it. Their voices come through as underwater noise.

”Ellie, why don’t you have a seat?” Tommy garbles. Her fists clench, the burn deepening inside her chest. She grinds her teeth and shakes her head, fighting hard to prevent the tears from spilling over. “Your dad is not the one you need to be angry at here…”  

That stupid word touches something volatile inside her. Ellie lashes her foot out and kicks the coffee table, flipping it onto its side. She hears the sound of porcelain cracking against hardwood as a mug goes flying. “He’s not my fucking dad!” she screams. She’s too wound up to feel the ache spread through her toes. “I don’t want him anymore!” Maybe if she says it first, it’ll hurt less when he says it later. 

Before she knows it Ellie is running. Charging out the front door and down the porch steps at breakneck speed. Her feet are bare. She runs—runs—runs—runs until her legs give out and she sinks to the ground. The street she’s on isn’t familiar to her. A few curious eyes follow her path; one old man asks if she’s ok. Is that the guy from the dance? Eugene? 

“Hey now,” he cautions, adopting a turtle’s pace as he moves closer, his face soft and approachable. “What’s a sweet little thing like you runnin’ from anyways?” 

She’s wearing one of Maria’s sweatshirts today, a big, black Canada Goose crew neck that falls to her thighs. Her knees knock together, shaking from the exertion. “I— My dad—“ she stutters. 

Eugene’s face clouds over with seriousness. “Is your dad ok?” he asks. “Is he hurt?”   

She shakes her head violently, then realizes that Eugene might interpret the action as, “He’s not ok,” so she swallows the saliva gathering in her throat and says, “Not hurt.” 

The old man is standing in front of her now, crouching down to her level, one large, meaty hand hovering near her shoulder. “Did your dad hurt you?” he questions then. “Did he scare you? Is that why you’re runnin’ away?” Eugene touches the gun on his hip. 

Ellie squeezes her eyes shut, slamming the heels of her palms roughly into the sockets to wipe away the onslaught of tears. “No. Fuck,” she curses. “I’m fine.” 

“What’s going on?” a softer, more feminine voice calls from the porch. A girl, probably about Ellie’s age appears in Eugene’s doorframe with black hair tied back in a ponytail, and smooth olive-toned skin. She’s pretty; she doesn’t look like Eugene. “Your feet are bleeding,” the girl observes out loud, as Ellie shifts them uncomfortably against the gravel. 

“Let’s bring Ellie inside,” Eugene instructs, wrapping one heavy arm around her shoulders to lead her onto the front stoop. “Open that door for me, would ya— Thanks doll.” Normally, she wouldn’t let a stranger touch her, let alone bring her into his house, but Tommy knows Eugene. They’re friends, and the presence of another girl who doesn’t look like she’s being held against her will does wonders for the trust factor. 

“Thatta girl. There we go,” Eugene mutters, helping her sit on one of the dining chairs in his kitchen. There are potatoes in a bowl on the table, and peels discarded off to the side like the pair was cooking together before she interrupted them. “Dina, why don’t you grab my first aid kit? We’ll get these cuts all patched up,” he says.

Dina. This must be Jesse’s girlfriend.

The stinging is louder and more prominent now that the adrenaline is wearing off. A sharp budding pain spreads through her toes. While Eugene cleans her cuts with more gentleness than someone his size should possess, Dina puts a speckled, black kettle on to boil. It whistles to let them know the water’s done, and she pours three mugs of tea. Sets them down on the table: one for each of them. 

“Do you want honey?” Dina asks, and Ellie blinks. She’s still getting used to the idea of having food preferences. “Um… Ok.”

Eugene picks up the potatoes and a knife again once he’s done wrapping her feet. The honey is so sweet she wants to slurp the whole mug of tea down in one go, but she resists. She already looks stupid enough running away from Tommy’s without shoes on— Ellie doesn’t need this girl thinking she’s an idiot and a slob. “I’m willing to bet there’s at least three people out lookin’ for you right now, kid. Better to tell me what kind of trouble yer in now, so we know what we’re dealin’ with,” her uncle’s friend starts.

Ellie pulls her knees up to her chest. “I’m not in trouble.” 

“Something’s troubling you then,” he adjusts the wording, tossing a freshly skinned potato into the bowl. She lets out a reluctant breath. Dina clears her throat and sits down. “Eugene’s a good listener,” she says. “He used to be a dad.”

Like Joel, she realizes. Ellie knows better than to ask, but she just can’t seem to help herself. She needs a distraction, and Dina’s statement doesn’t change his affect. He doesn’t growl out a reprimand, or “Dina” her, like she wasn’t supposed to say anything. “Used to be? What happened to your kid?” Ellie prods. It comes out harsher than she intends it to. 

“She died,” he says simply, then elaborates, “—but I wasn’t around much even when she was alive. I left when she was little.”

She tucks her chin into the groove between her knees. Onions are supposed to make you cry when you chop them, but she’s peeled potatoes a few times as a punishment, and they’ve never made her eyes sting like this before. “Oh.” 

What is she supposed say to that? My dad wasn’t around either? He knew about me all along and lied about it? He didn’t even care enough to try and find me until Marlene practically forced him to… 

Maybe Eugene can tell that he’s hit a nerve. Maybe he can hear the tremor in her voice, but the man cards his fingers through his thick beard and sighs. “Is there someone I can find for you, Ellie? Your dad? Maria?” 

Ellie shrugs. “Maybe Tommy.” 

“Maybe Tommy,” he repeats. “Ok. We can work with that.” 

Eugene tells Ellie to wait with Dina until he returns with her uncle, so that’s what she does, but it’s awkward as shit. For one, the girl is still trying to prepare food, and two, Ellie can’t really get up to help, because her feet are still sore, and Tommy’s friend said to let them breathe. 

“I met your boyfriend last night,” Ellie tells her, and regrets it immediately when Dina’s head snaps up in recognition. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she says quickly. “Jesse’s not my boyfriend; we’re just best friends.” 

“But you knew who I was talking about.” The corners of her lips upturn, and Dina’s brows press into an irritated line. 

They’re silent for another moment, then the other girl lets out a breath and changes the topic. “You came here with your dad, right? I saw you sitting with him at the bonfire the other night. You guys seem close.” 

Ellie nods. Maybe not at first, but she thought they were becoming that way at least. 

”Are you guys fighting? Is that why you ran away?”

She shrugs. “Why do you think people leave their kids?” Ellie questions out of the blue, Eugene’s admission still stuck in her head. It’s like he knew exactly what to say to get her to start talking— But how could he know?

“Uh— I’m not sure. I think there’s a lot of reasons.” Dina’s brows press together again, but this time she looks more confused than annoyed. She glances at the front door, then her eyes move back to Ellie. “I know Eugene left his family to join the Fireflies. That’s where he met Tommy, so I guess maybe he left because he thought he could make a better world for his daughter or something. Does that make sense?”

None of it makes sense to her, but she has to at least try to follow Dina’s train of thought. She works to erase Joel’s face from her mind when she asks, “Do you think he regretted it after?” 

“I know he did,” Dina nods. “He says so all the time. Eugene’s really big on mentoring. He hangs out with the kids who don’t have families left to look out for them, teaches us stuff. I think he mostly does it because he regrets not being there for his kid before she died.” The girl tilts her head to the side. “Why do you ask?”

That’s the polite way of saying, “What fucking business is it of yours?” 

So, she tells Dina about Joel, and it feels good to get it off her chest. Somehow it seems less complicated  to share the gory details with someone she just met. Ellie tells the girl about their first encounter in the smuggling tunnels with Marlene as the mediator. How awkward it all was in the beginning. How Joel was basically just a huge fucking man-whore and swore he had no idea she existed. She talks about Tess, and Sarah. How much they fought in those first few weeks after Boston, and how much things have changed since arriving in Jackson. Confesses that she hugged him for the first time at the dance, and since then, it’s like a dam has burst between them. He’s been so generous with affection, giving her things that nobody’s ever given her before. Finally, she tells Dina about the photo she found in his breast pocket this morning— And when she’s done, Ellie’s barely holding it together. She knows for sure now that it’s not the potatoes that are making her eyes water.

She has to give Dina credit. For the volume of information Ellie just laid on her, she seems to retain the majority of it, her expression both focused and sympathetic. “Wow. That’s a lot.” 

“I just don’t know what to think,” Ellie whispers, her voice suddenly too shaky to continue speaking at a normal volume. “It really didn’t seem like he knew… and he was so quick to like… take me home with him after he found out. He left Boston for me, even though Tess was super fucking pissed at him.” And of course, like the pathetic, starving little street mutt she is, she’d followed him, believing every stupid word that came out of his stupid mouth. 

What orphan doesn’t dream of their long- lost parent magically appearing out of nowhere to save them from their miserable life?

“And you’re absolutely sure the picture belonged to him?” Dina questions.

”It was in his stuff…” she trails off dejectedly.

The girl goes quiet as she rinses the bowl of skinless potatoes in the sink. When she’s finished, she turns back around and says, “I guess you just have to decide if you can forgive him. Like, if what you guys have now is worth forgetting about what he didn’t do in the past, because even if he didn’t want you then, he does now, right?” 

“I guess.” It’s sounds so simple when she says it like that, but when Ellie actually tries to apply that logic to Joel, to her ~dad~ who fucking left her to rot in FEDRA school for 14 years, and then showed her more love than she’s ever known in her entire life within the span of a month, it’s all she can do to keep down the nausea boiling in her gut. 

“I mean you should definitely make him tell you why he did it,” she backtracks. “But family is family, and people make mistakes. Maybe he thought you’d be better off where you were, and maybe he lied to protect you, so you wouldn’t feel like it was your fault that he wasn’t around. Maybe he was just scared you’d hate him.”

Before she has a chance to process everything Dina’s saying to her, the doorknob turns, and two pairs of heavy boots clomp into the entryway. It’s Eugene with Tommy trailing behind holding a pair of funny looking sandals with holes in them. “Hey, Ellie-belly,” her uncle greets her gently, and like a rubber band stretched too tight, that’s all it takes for her self-control to snap. 

Ellie bursts into tears, ignoring the sudden, sharp ache from her gravel wounds as she stands up and throws herself at him in the door frame. “Tommy—“ she cries, burrowing her nose into his shirt. This is the first time she’s hugged him too, and it startles her just how much his arms feel like Joel’s, strong and steady around her shoulders. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Oh honey,” her uncle looks stricken as he pulls back to give her a once over, concerned blue eyes honing in on her tear-stained cheeks and bloody feet. “Whaddya’ say we have a chat outside? There’s some things we oughta talk about you and me.” 

She glances back at Dina, and the girl steps forward, tugging her aside for a targeted goodbye. “Ask your dad why he did it, and then try to forgive him,” she advises. “I really think there’s more to the story here. You should give him a chance to explain himself.”

Ellie sniffles, then swallows down the lump in her throat and allows herself a reluctant nod. “I’ll try.” 

“I’ll see you when you come back?” she prompts, shooting her a soft smile. “Don’t die or anything.”

”See you when I come back,” she agrees, “—and thanks for talking to me. That was really cool of you.” 

Tommy eases her away before she can even thank Eugene for picking her up off the road and bandaging her feet, eager to get her onto the porch. He helps her slip on the shoes, and it’s not until they’re alone that Ellie realizes just how upset her uncle actually is. There are lines between his brows and around his mouth that weren’t there earlier, and he looks both nervous and sick at the same time, the normal, healthy flush of blood absent from his skin. She doesn’t get a chance to ask him what’s wrong; he’s already speaking by the time she opens her mouth.

“I haven’t been honest with you, Ellie, and there’s somethin’ I need to come clean about before you go blamin’ your daddy for all of this,” he admits, and it doesn’t take her long to understand that the sick feeling is mutual.  

Chapter Text

Tommy takes Ellie outside and sits her down on Eugene’s porch, and while she’s daydreamed about moments like these before, soft, quiet family interactions like the ones you see in movies, this doesn’t feel like one of those. Like sitting with Riley in the mall waiting for the fungus to take over, it feels somber, and there’s a sharp, spindly dread clawing it’s way out through her belly. She looks back to see if Dina is watching, but figures that the girl must’ve gone back to whatever she was doing before to give them some privacy. 

Tommy avoids her eyes, resting his elbows on his knees as he stares into the road, a somber, dutiful expression on his face. “You remember the day you first got here, Ells?” he prompts. “Remember how pissy your dad was with me?”

She gives a slow nod, not allowing herself to jump ahead of him, to predict exactly where he’s going with this, but Ellie does remember. She’s been questioning Joel’s change in attitude toward his brother from the start. The connection points are crossed like trip wires in her brain, ready to knock her back with their blast the moment she gets too close. 

“Yeah.” Tommy let’s out a reluctant sigh. “I ain’t surprised by that. You’re a perceptive little thing.” 

“Obviously not ‘perceptive’ enough,” Ellie says with air quotations, then pauses to gather her thoughts. “I didn’t even question him Tommy. I’m so fucking stupid. I really thought…” Her voice cracks, and she buries her face in her knees. “I thought he just saw me and knew. That’s what he said. But that’s not fucking real, is it? You don’t just know who your kids are…” 

Tommy purses his lips. “Kiddo, I’ve never been a dad, so I can’t say for sure what it’s like… But back in the day, they used to say a mother could pick her child’s cry out in a room full of babies. Don’t see why it’d be any different for a father.” 

“But it wasn’t him picking me out. He already knew,” she stresses. “He knew what I looked like. What my name was—” 

“No he didn’t, Ellie.” Her uncle interrupts her, his tone still gentle, but more authoritative now. Like he’s one hundred percent certain she’s got it wrong. “What I was tryin’ to say before is that your dad was pissy with me when you arrived because I gave him that little photo pretty well the second you stepped away with Maria. The picture was mine,” he repeats for clarity. “I was the one who knew you existed.”

Oh.

Everything makes sense now, and still nothing makes sense. If Tommy knew she existed, then why did he keep her a secret? Why didn’t he tell Joel?— Why didn’t he come get her himself? 

You know why he didn’t come get you, her mind whispers. If he had her school picture, he probably read her behaviour reports. How many nights she’d spent in The Hole. He probably talked to the sergeants and discovered what a fucked up, spineless, useless, piece of shit kid she actually was and decided it wasn’t worth the headache. Ellie could never be his niece like Sarah had been… and he knew that Joel wouldn’t want another daughter, especially not one who wasn’t as good as his first. 

But Joel did want you, a conflicting source reminds her. Besides Riley, Joel is the only person who’s ever given a shit whether she lives or dies. He didn’t even hesitate. That’s why this has all been so fucking confusing. He screwed up his whole weird smuggling-relationship whatever for her, left his home to keep her safe, watched Tess get shot to protect her… Ellie’s gotten to know him over the past month. The good parts and the bad ones, enough to know that he’s not perfect either. He loves hard, and he lashes out even harder, just like her. More than that— she got those things from him. 

He wants you. He’s always wanted you. The sudden, shocking blast of relief under her skin is so intense that for a moment she forgets where she is. Who she’s with… because Tommy, her uncle, the one she was so fucking psyched to meet, who told her he loved the sweater she’d picked out just so he would like her more, who plays games, and touches her shoulder for no other reason than to get closer to her, just admitted that he’s known about her since she was seven and didn’t do anything about it. 

“I don’t understand,” Ellie says, feeling very small all of a sudden. Not in the good kind of way, not like when her whole body fits under just one of Joel’s arms on the road, or when she sleeps curled against him like he’s a daddy-dragon guarding his treasure. No— This is the kind of small that leaves her feeling empty, hollow— exposed. 

Tommy still can’t look at her. “Ellie I—“ He hesitates, then lets out a low exhale. “I ain’t gonna lie to you anymore, ok?” Her uncle gives her a quick glance, checking for permission, then resumes his speech. She can tell he’s struggling to word things in a way that’s appropriate… In a way she’ll understand. Of course, he doesn’t know how smart she is. How much of the world she’s already seen, not if all he remembers about her is her FEDRA file. 

“Now, I ain’t tryin’ to put your daddy down,” he starts, then cringes. “I love my brother, and he’s always been my family, but when Marlene told me about you, I was on my way outta Boston, and I truly thought, with all my heart, Ellie— I’m not just sayin’ this as an excuse— that Joel was too broken to be a dad again.”

Too broken for a broken kid, is what he means, even though he doesn’t say it. Maybe if she did better in school… if she listened better, then Tommy would’ve known she was good. That Joel could handle her.

“It wasn’t even that I thought you deserved more than what he could give you…” he continues. “It was that he had nothin’ to offer. He wasn’t even a person at that point, and the things he was doin’…” Tommy trails off, like it’s too bad to even say out loud. 

Killing people, doing drugs, drinking, and having a fuck ton of sex with random people? Fighting with Tess? Grabbing her arm like he grabbed Ellie’s in that hotel? Hitting her? She doesn’t know if Joel ever hit Tess, she’s just coming up with the worst case scenarios, but she suspects that if he did, Tess probably hit him right back. She remembers the feral, angry growl of, “Get your hands off me,” in Joel’s tiny apartment the night she eavesdropped on them. Ellie’s not a baby; she knows the kinds of things people do when they’re mentally fucked up.

Something about what she says next brings a warm flush of embarrassment to her cheeks, like she’s claiming too much credit, or making up stories in her head like a little kid. “He’s changing,” she tells Tommy. Her chin is still resting in the groove between her knees, and now it’s Ellie with her eyes fixed on the ground. “He loves me, and he’s trying to be a good dad. I know he is—“ Her stupid fucking eyes are stinging again, and she wants her uncle to believe her more than anything. If he believes her, that makes what she’s saying true.

”Oh Christ, honey, I know that—“ Tommy croons, reaching out to touch her. Then, seeming to think better of it, he pulls his hand back. “There ain’t a single doubt in my mind that he loves you,” he says with extra emphasis. “—anyone with eyes can see that. What I’m tryin’ to say is that I was wrong, and that I’m sorry. I should’ve given him the chance to prove himself. I know keepin’ you a secret hurt him, and I know it hurt you too.” 

The conflicting emotions are giving her whiplash. Relief still tingles at her fingertips; she has a dad who loves her, one who’s wanted her from the moment he saw her. That’s all she really needs; she’s said that before, but despite the overwhelming combination of love and devotion ballooning inside of her, she feels dejected. An uncomfortable sense of loss that she can’t seem to shake. A Tommy sized hole in her heart with a hastily crafted patch holding it together. Someone broke into her cave, took her treasure, and now Ellie wants to lock herself away and take stock of what she has left.

The problem is that there’s still one deep, gaping laceration that’s oozing blood everywhere. A cut too profound to close with ‘I’m sorry.’ Ellie has to ask him everything, if she doesn’t, she’ll spend the rest of her life wondering why. She takes a deep breath and doesn’t let it out. “So, you just didn’t like… want to have a kid or whatever?” She gets right to the point. “If you thought Joel was… I mean, you could’ve taken me with you… but you didn’t so… She wills herself to face him, and her lower lip wobbles from the effort as Ellie watches her uncle’s face crumble at her words.

He swallows thickly. “I thought about it. I swear to you, kiddo, I did. I never forgot about you… I had a hundred plans, a hundred different ways we could stay together, but in the end, I had to leave Boston, I couldn’t…” Tommy cards his fingers through his beard and squeezes his eyes shut. “I wanted you, Ellie-belly just…” 

“Not enough,” she finishes for him.

”No. Hey, no, that ain’t what I said—“

”Can we go home now?” Ellie snaps. She doesn’t want to hear him talk anymore; she’s heard everything she needs to. Everything that’s important. “I have to tell Joel sorry for running away, and for all the nasty things I said.” Her voice sounds distant, like someone else is talking for her. 

It’s not the same burning, spitting rage she’d unleashed on her dad this morning, but the blankness… the nothingness in the spot where her anger should be somehow makes it even worse. This is all so predictable; she should’ve seen it coming. Ellie’s not for everybody. She too loud, too annoying, she talks too much. Takes up too much space. Most people don’t like her, why should her family be any different? 

Tommy doesn’t force her to stay, and Ellie takes pride in the fact that she has enough Joel in her for him to know that any resistance would be futile. Her dad is waiting for them in front of his brother’s house when they arrive, and Ellie smacks into him, leaping into his arms hard enough that the loose fitting sandals fall onto the porch, and Joel has to pick her up, wrapping an arm around her waist to prevent her from stepping down onto the bare wood with her injured feet. She clings to his neck, the words tripping over eachother as she rushes straight into her apology. “I’m sorry— I’m sorry— I’m so sorry I thought… but I was wrong— I’m sorry, I still need you. Please don’t leave—“ 

“Easy girl, easy,” he soothes, pressing her close, inhaling his own relief. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” 

Ellie and Joel take the spare bedroom upstairs for the night to get some separation from her aunt and uncle; she hasn’t been able to look at Tommy without spacing out since they got back to the house, and Maria doesn’t help, all she does is say stupid, useless things like that she should take all the time she needs to process, but that Tommy loves her. That they’re always going to love her no matter what.

That’s not true. You don’t leave the people you love. You don’t. 

One of Ellie’s favourite things to do since learning that she’s allowed, is snuggling in Joel’s lap. She likes to fit her head into the groove between his neck and collarbone. Likes the way her body puzzles effortlessly against his, how he sometimes strokes his fingers up and down the length of her spine. It makes her feel like they’re in a time machine travelling back fourteen years to set everything right. Sometimes she wishes he would light a fire and melt her into his skin, absorb her in there so she could become one of his most vital organs. Something that if removed, would kill him, just so he has no choice but to keep her around forever. Ellie doesn’t tell him that part just in case it makes him give her a weird look.

Right now, he’s showing her another picture Tommy gave him, one of him and Sarah at a soccer match when she was twelve, the same year she died. “She has blonde hair,” Ellie observes dumbly. For some reason she didn’t expect her to be blonde, maybe because Joel’s hair is black. It makes her feel more connected to him somehow, like maybe she’s Sarah’s equal in at least one category, even if that category is something as trivial as looks. Neither of them look unmistakably like their father. 

“Dee was blonde,” he says, then he gives her a sly smile. “Don’t have to have an elephant’s memory to know what color hair your mama had.” Joel ruffles her ponytail and a startled giggle erupts in her belly. Gross. She doesn’t want Joel to try and picture her mother. Doesn’t want to acknowledge him and the Anna Williams from her imagination doing the thing they had to do to make her existence possible. 

”Do me and Sarah still count as sisters?—” Ellie changes the subject to something more meaningful, “—like even though we didn’t meet?”

Her dad closes his eyes and winces like her question causes him physical pain. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles into his shirt.

”You don’t gotta be sorry,” Joel says quickly. Then, he clears his throat. “Yeah, I reckon you still count as sisters.” His fingers trace the edges of the worn out photograph and his eyes are warm. There’s pain there, but also fondness and love in equal parts. It takes a while for him to speak again, but when he does, his voice is so raw, and so tender that she has to turn around to check if it’s still Joel behind her. He presents the old picture to her in offering and Ellie takes it. “When she—“ he croaks, then begins again. “When Sarah died, I didn’t see a point to this life anymore, Ellie. I couldn’t understand why God, the universe… Why anyone would take my little girl and leave me here on earth without her. For twenty years it felt like I was chasing death. Every deal gone wrong, a stray bullet here or there…” 

Ellie doesn’t want to think about those things, and she doesn’t realize her tears have spilled over until her breath hitches and Joel’s warm air hits her face. “Didn’t mean to make you cry,” he mutters, swiping his thumbs under her eyes. “Just wanted to say that I know why now.” He’s looking at her… and he couldn’t possibly mean… but he does.

“I hate Tommy,” she whispers like a secret into the space between them. “I hate him so much.”

”I think,” Joel says slowly, choosing his words with care, “that I can hold onto enough anger for the both of us.” 

“But it’s not fair—“ She tries to sit up, aborting the motion when Joel cradles her against him again, dipping her over the edge of the bed in that stupid, silly way he did during the dance. “Joel—“ she whines, trying to kick out of his grasp.

”Hey,” he stops her, his tone deepening back to serious. “I know it ain’t fair. Trust me baby, I’m feelin’ it too, but people like you and me, we’ve gotta take what we can get for however long we’ve got it. Do you understand?”

Ellie thinks of Riley. “Whether it’s two minutes or two days,” she says softly. “We don’t give that up.”

His mouth quirks. “I was hoping we were countin’ in years, not days, but you’ve got the gist of it, girl. We don’t give that up.” 

“Can I tell you about my plan for you to absorb me?” she questions, and instead of giving her a weird look, he feigns pensiveness, then says, “That sure does sound easier than puttin’ you on a leash, now doesn’t it?”  

“Joel!”

Chapter Text

Joel checks, double checks— then triple checks Ellie’s pack. “I know how to use a zipper,” she says as he zips her into the fall jacket Maria found for her, a black and navy windbreaker with a fleece inline— But she lets him do it anyways, and he gives himself another mental scolding for allowing her to see the paranoia, the cracks in his solid foundation. She’s got new jeans with a sturdy button, wool socks, gloves, ponytails, toothbrush and toothpaste, a whole drawstring bag full of new-to-her underwear— 

“Whaddya say, big brother?” Tommy puts a hand on his shoulder. “You two ready to head out?”

 Ellie’s brows slip into a glare, her shoulders steely as she presses into his other side, hiding her face from her uncle. “I don’t want him to come,” she tells him quietly, but still loud enough for Tommy to hear her. 

“Enough, Ellie,” he chides. “It ain’t up for discussion. Now, be a good girl and go make the bed for Auntie Maria. It ain’t nice to leave a place messier than you found it.” She sticks out her tongue at him and raspberries it. He has to wipe spit off his arm, and she’s dragging her feet the whole way, but in the end she obeys. Joel’s just thankful she’s keeping her mouth and her middle finger in check for the most part.

”Both your girls look like their mamas, but Ellie… Christ almighty, you didn’t have to question that one too hard, did you?” Tommy comments as she goes. Joel doesn’t dignify him with a response.

His brother is trying, and agreeing to come with them is a good first step. It lessens the ache a bit, if only slightly, to know that at the very least, Tommy is invested in keeping his niece alive. Maintaining the relationship they’ve built thus far— And while his confidence in Joel’s parenting abilities isn’t exactly awe inspiring, at least his brother now seems to be experiencing the appropriate amount of guilt for his actions. Ellie’s cold shoulder has him walking around like a kicked puppy.

Joel’s had to suppress a lot of his own feelings for her sake; he needs her to be willing to try again, and at this level of betrayal, she won’t do that if he positions Tommy as an enemy. She’s too attached: too loyal. But at the end of the day, her happiness is all that matters, and a bit of faking it is worth the balloon of satisfaction that swells within him when his little girl hugs him from behind on her way down the stairs. “You’re my favourite dad ever,” she mumbles into his back. 

He loves her so goddamn much it’s breaking him open inside.  

”I’m your only dad ever,” he replies, but Joel will be damned if he isn’t grinning from ear to ear. Ain’t no way she’s gonna trick him into calling her his ‘favourite daughter’ no matter how much delayed sibling rivalry she may be experiencing, so he settles for a safer answer. “You’re my favourite red-headed daughter ever.” He reaches around to hook his fingers between her ribs. 

“Stop!” Ellie protests, ducking around him, making a show of trying to trip him down the last step. He picks her up, arms around her waist, and carries her into the kitchen kicking and screaming. “I fucking— take— it— back! You’re the worst dad and I want a new one!” she struggles. 

Tommy has a hand on either side of Maria’s face in the kitchen and he’s whispering quiet reassurances in her ear. When Joel and Ellie come tumbling into their space, his sister-in-law looks up, her mouth forming a thin line. First impressions aside, he finds that he takes a shine to Maria. She’s not happy about this trip, but she understands; he knows she does. Family is family, and Maria obviously knew about Ellie, knew enough to know that Tommy was torn up about it. She’s not pushing back against her husband’s chance to make things right. In the same vein, Joel understands the woman’s apprehension. It sounds like since her daddy passed, Tommy’s been her number one, her sole support and confidant in a town full of survivors, families, little ones who all look to her for guidance. He’s her person; she needs him, and coming from someone who’s accustomed to orbiting around planet Sarah— Tess— Ellie, he respects that.

“We’ll do our best to make radio contact when we can,” Joel tells Maria, and she nods firmly in acceptance. There’s a radio tower just outside of Cody where she can check for updates, and they’ve got a good chance of running into a few towers of their own en route to Boulder.  

Maria smooths Ellie’s bangs back, and despite her lingering resentment, his daughter at least has the good sense not to pull away. “Bring my dumbass husband home in one piece, please,” she orders, and now it’s Joel who’s resisting the urge to separate them. She can put that responsibility on him, fine— But Tommy’s safety is too much for Ellie’s little shoulders… 

“Your dumbass husband doesn’t even have to come on this stupid trip,” she grumbles.

Maria sighs. “Even so.”

”Fine,” Ellie concedes, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t fucking die. Maybe just a minor head injury— enough that he forgets he has a niece… Oh wait, he already did that.” 

Tommy looks stricken, and for fuck’s sake, it must be an older brother protective factor, because it makes Joel cringe. “Ellie, I said enough,” he tells her, and he watches her hackles go up. “What?” she snaps. “I’m not doing anything.” 

He shoots her a look that communicates very firmly the, “You know what,” he wants to say. 

His brother tries to glean favor at the stables. Ellie loves horses and she has so many questions. Ones that this Winston character who taught her to ride — Joel really needs to ask her more questions about that— apparently never got a chance to answer. “Does the bit hurt the horse’s mouth?— Why don’t the Jackson horses wear metal shoes?—Why are some saddles flat while others have that weird horn thing on the front? — I bet I could jump higher than any of those old world fuckers—“ 

“This is Bandit,” Tommy pats the smooth, dark bay rump of his own horse, and that’s Rogue.” He points to the rose gray mare that the stablehands set aside for Joel. Ellie studies both horses carefully, then says, “I want to ride Bandit.”

”Then you’re gonna have to ride with Uncle Tommy,” Joel says, laying down the law; it’s best to curb this little defiant streak she’s on before they’re out on the road.

”I’m not riding with him.” 

“Well, then you ain’t riding Bandit,” he tells her, nice and simple.

”It’s alright, Joel,” the younger Miller concedes, palms facing them in surrender. “I don’t mind takin’ Miss. Rogue here for a spin.”

That’s the thing about Tommy; he’s not easily set off, something Joel has always both hated and envied about his brother. There are no random outbursts of violence, no losses of temper, no inexplainable anger bubbling just below the surface of his skin. What you see is what you get, and everything he does is intentional. That’s how Joel knows that leaving him in the dark about Ellie wasn’t a spur of the moment decision for Tommy. He regrets it now, but that’s for Ellie’s sake, and Joel can’t say for certain that if given a second chance, his brother wouldn’t just do it all over again. Take her with him to Wyoming and raise his niece himself… Leave Joel behind in Boston to go down the same self-destructive path he did this time around… 

Just the thought of how much different things could’ve been for them is enough to tighten his jaw, but Joel shakes himself out of it. It doesn’t do to dwell on the past, not when his mind needs to be sharp, focused. ”Alright then.” Better not to keep arguing about it. “Let’s get a move on.” Joel mounts Tommy’s gelding, adjusting himself in the saddle and squashing down whatever lingering irritation rises in his chest. Then, he offers a hand out to his daughter. 

Ellie clambers onto the horse’s back and scooches behind the saddle, skinny arms winding around him from behind, not unlike the hug she bestowed on him earlier. She nestles into his back, her cheek pressing into his spine, and he can almost feel the inward pull of her face as she glances over at his brother. “Bandit is a stupid name. We should call him something else.” 

“We’re not gonna change the animal’s goddamn name, Ellie—“ he starts, but Tommy just sighs in acceptance. “You go ahead an’ call him whatever you want,” he drawls, his voice dripping with a kind of bless your heart Southern hospitality Joel hasn’t heard in a long time. Ellie simpers behind him, annoyed that she can’t get her uncle to crack, and Jesus Christ, this is gonna be a long trip. Joel’s head is already beginning to ache.

His brother leads them down the 189 for approximately nine hours on their first day. Joel learns that Winston was an ex-soldier that Ellie’s little girlfriend Riley used to liquor up to get what she wanted. That Ellie didn’t know about the booze until after she’d had her first riding lesson on Princess, or that the lesson was a cover for Riley’s theft. From what it sounds, the Firefly girl was good at turning most anything, but especially Ellie, into a distraction when she needed to.  

They ride into the evening, until a cool autumn chill settles in the air, the sun threatening to sink below the horizon, and boy is Joel ever ready to quit for the night. Ellie and Tommy’s bickering has reached a new level; he’s inching forward at every opportunity, and she’s coiled like a snake, fangs bared, ready to lash out the moment he steps out of line. 

”Just strike the flint, and you should be good to go—“ 

”I know,” Ellie rudely interrupts her uncle’s teaching. “You’re not the king of building fucking fires, dude.” There’s no hint of playful resignation, the kind that she’d afforded Joel back at the house, present for Tommy in her tone. “It’d be easier to concentrate if you weren’t breathing on my neck,” she continues.

“I think you mean breathing down your neck.” Tommy winks good-naturedly, and his daughter lets out an irritated growl. “Whatever. Build the stupid fire yourself then!” She kicks over the carefully constructed triangle of sticks, burying the lint and scuffing a cloud of dirt in her uncle’s direction. “I’m going pee.” 

Joel grinds his teeth in annoyance. He gets it. He understands; he’s on Ellie’s side, always and forever— But he sure wishes she’d give up the attitude, even just for a few minutes. “Don’t go too far!” he calls after her, and receives the back of her middle finger in response. 

Oh well. It was a nice thought.

Tommy groans, wipes his jeans, then drops his head into his hands, savouring the brief reprieve as the little girl ducks behind the trees. There’s a visible crack forming in his brother’s composure, but he doesn’t give it a voice. Doesn’t ask for advice. Maybe he doesn’t feel like he has a right to— Maybe there’s none to give even if he did. Ellie’s clearly angry, but beneath that anger is hurt.

She’s mad on behalf of her dad, but that’s not the part of this whole fucked up family situation that makes what her uncle did so unforgivable. She might be able to let Tommy’s treachery pass if she wasn’t so goddamn embarrassed. Embarrassed to be caught with her proverbial pants down, caught loving someone who didn’t want her. That’s how she sees it. All her life, Ellie has had to force adults to take care of her, to care about her. She thought it was different this time, let her guard down, and in her mind, it backfired on her. The shame is too much for her fragile brain to handle, so it gets converted into a more tolerable emotion: anger. 

See. He’s still got it. 

What Joel doesn’t quite have, is the strength to comfort his little brother through Ellie’s rejection. The boy made his own goddamn bed, and now he has to lie in it— But that doesn’t stop him from taking pity on the younger Miller. He clears his throat, then reaches into Ellie’s bag and procures an olive branch: No Pun Intended, Volume Two. “Give that a try,” he advises, holding the book out to Tommy.

His brother takes it, shoots him a grateful look, and chuckles affectionately, running his thumb over the title. “So, this is where she gets ‘em all.”

There’s a pause, and then Joel decides to take things one step further, stretching his own branch out in offering, for his daughter’s sake. “Ellie burns hot,” he says, “—and I ain’t exactly sure how she handles grudges yet, but I’ll tell you this: there ain’t nothin’ that little girl wants more than a family. She’s been talkin’ about you since Pittsburgh, bragging about her Uncle Tommy to anyone who’ll listen.” He thinks of the way her pride echoed in those sewers when she’d told Sam that her uncle used to be a Firefly. “Just keep doing what you do and she’ll come around.” 

“She has a right to be mad,” Tommy hesitates, tucking the book into his bedroll to continue his work on the fire. “I should’ve found a way to take her with me. Fuckin’ stayed in Boston till I figured out a plan… At the very least, I should’ve come back for her. She’s my niece, and I should’ve taken responsibility…”

You should’ve given me that picture seven years ago: self righteous asshole— But this is for Ellie, not Joel, so all he does is let out a grunt of acknowledgement and wonder what in the hell is taking his girl so long. A string of frustrated cursing can be heard coming from the tree line as Joel approaches the spot where his daughter disappeared. “Ellie?” he calls, testing the waters.

”Go away, Joel!” 

“Honey, if there’s somethin’ wrong—“ He’s not exactly sure what he means by that, but it just seems weird, and if she’s sick, or if she’s having bathroom troubles that could slow them down, then he ought to know…

”I’m fine! Don’t come back here!” she shouts again, and now he can hear the upset in her voice, the desperation. Branches snap under Joel’s boots as he ignores her warning. “Just a second!” she snarls. “Let me pull up my pants you fucking psycho pervert—“

He wants to tell her not to be so silly, that had things worked out in their favor, she would’ve grown up with him changing her diapers, cleaning up night time accidents, singing potty songs until he was blue in the face. A piece of chocolate if she’ll please, for the love of God just shit in the toilet like a human being— He’s her father, and there’s a certain level of physical comfort that’s supposed to come along with that— But the bare bones of it is that things didn’t work out in their favor. Until Marlene introduced them, she didn’t know him from a hole in the ground; she had a whole life before him, and it’s not like a month into their relationship he’s privy to everything she’s been through, so he doesn’t push. Joel waits until she growls that she’s decent, then approaches softly.

Ellie is standing in the middle of a flat patch of dirt and roots; her hands are bloody, and there are wads of crimson toilet paper piled on the ground between her legs. When she spots him, her face sears red, those pretty greens shimmering, like she’s about to burst into tears. Christ. Is this her first one? Fourteen seems too old to be getting your first period… but then again, with the state of the rations in the QZ… Where is Tess when you need her?

“Don’t worry, baby. This is all normal.” He makes his first pathetic attempt. “It’s just—“ 

“I know what my fucking period is, Joel,” Ellie bites before he can finish, turning away as she tries to conceal her bloody hands under the hem of her shirt. “I grew up in military boarding school, not under a fucking rock.” 

“Right,” he exhales, now back to square one.

”I didn’t fucking bring anything,” she answers his next question before he has a chance to ask it, the flush of humiliation spreading further down her neck. “I forgot, ok? It doesn’t like… happen that often, so I didn’t— But I just got these jeans, and it’s not like I have a bunch of other ones. I don’t want to wreck them.” Her voice breaks.

”Easy, girl,” he cautions. “I’ve gotcha covered.” This is a problem Joel’s been preparing for for a while; he’s got everything she needs. “You just wait here.” 

Tommy raises a curious eyebrow when he comes back sans Ellie, but quickly resumes his puttering, the fire now medium-sized and crackling in front of him, when he spots the fresh pair of underwear and box of maxi-pads Joel pulls out of his backpack, his curiosity sated. He grabs his water bottle and a cloth, and leaves the bag open in the ditch where they’re setting up camp for the night. 

Ellie is reluctant to let him help. She makes a noise of protest when he pours a stream of the cool water over her hands and rubs them together with a cloth. “You don’t have to—“

”Ellie,” he says firmly. “How many men have you seen me kill?— You think I’m afraid of a little blood?” Joel is fifty-two goddamn years old. He’s lived with enough women, been around the block enough times, that something as simple as an ill-timed period isn’t about to turn his stomach. 

”But it’s—“ 

He thumbs her cheek to get her to focus on his words. “But nothin’,” he emphasizes. “You’re my child. You don’t need to be dealin’ with this shit on your own; this is what your old man’s here for.” Joel unwraps one of the pads and hands it to her. “You think you can take it from here?” he questions, and she nods, but there’s something akin to wonder in her face, a devotion so strong that it sends electric currents through the tether tying them together. “Thanks,” she says softly, peering up at him through her lashes. “I’m sorry for being a bitch to you earlier.” 

He kisses her head in the way that always makes her lean just a little bit closer. Then, he straightens his legs and winces when one of his knees pops. “Hustle butt, baby doll. Uncle Tommy’s got the fire going.”

”Uncle Tommy’s got the fire going,” she mimics in a shrewd voice, but snaps her mouth shut when he crosses his arms over his chest. “Fine,” she sighs. “Go away then. You’re so fucking weird for walking over here while I’m pissing on a tree—“