Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Twenty-two hours and some change, that’s all this god forsaken trip should take. 

Leave it to his goddamn brother to decide to throw some shot-gun wedding at almost 40 years old. Like he couldn’t give some proper notice like an adult. Too damn old to still be pulling these kinds of stunts, if you asked Joel. 

He was giving himself several extra days, not because he wanted the extra time, but because his truck was pushing twenty and his heart was pushing fifty, and who knows what he’ll find once he got to Wyoming. Tommy had a tendency to leave a mess or two wherever he went. He’d been out in Wyoming long enough now for more than just a couple messes.

Joel isn’t even sure he’ll be able to stomach it—the wedding and the festivities and seeing his brother, getting older and, god can only hope, smarter. Joel doesn’t know if he can handle watching his brother move on. But they’re all the family either of them has got left. He can’t not go. So he starts the drive out of Texas and prays he can make it through the week ahead without getting another 5150 on his medical history.

Lofty goals.

//

It’s after midnight, the third time he stops for gas. Making a thousand mile plus journey in a truck with this sort of gas mileage felt like the literal definition of highway robbery. 

Already facing the disappointing prospect of yet another shitty cup of gas station coffee and stale pastry as sustenance, Joel doesn’t spare his filling truck much of a thought when he goes inside the convenience store. There’s some half-asleep or fully-high employee behind the counter who rings Joel’s order up with all the urgency of a DMV worker. Dear god, they were really trying to make this more of a twenty-three hour journey, weren’t they?

“Have a good one,” Joel nods politely on his way out. He was still in Texas, after all. 

Outside, Joel squints beneath the bright overhead lights of the gas pumps. Nothing really registers as out of the ordinary; he hadn’t really been expecting anything to. His gaze stays fixed on the back of his truck, one more minute. Something shifts. 

Oh, for crying out loud…

He pulls back the tarp that had been tucked around his belongings to offer some sort of protection and discovers a teenage girl staring back at him with wide eyes and bared teeth. Like a goddamn stray dog, is the first thought he has. 

“The hell do you think you’re doin’?” He raises his voice just enough to scare her off. She doesn’t budge. “How long have you been in here?”

The girl looks around. “A while.”

“Where are you from?” Joel asks, relieved he hasn’t crossed state lines yet with a kid in the bed of his truck. She could cry kidnapping and what could he do about it? 

“Somewhere.”

“Well, where do you think you’re going?”

“Somewhere else.”

Jesus Christ. “Okay, that’s it. Get the fuck out.”

He has no plan to physically remove her. She doesn’t budge a muscle. 

Narrowing his eyes, Joel puts on his scariest voice. “I ain’t dealing with no kidnapped minor bullshit. Now get the hell out.”

“I’m not a minor!” she yells, arms crossing over her chest. “I’m eighteen.”

“Bullshit.” Joel narrows his eyes at her. “You’re twelve at best.”

“Fuck you, man. I’m fourteen.”

He rolls his eyes. She wasn’t very smart, was she? “Uh-huh, well, go skedaddle on home now before you go givin’ your momma a heart attack.”

She mumbles something under her breath.

“What?” Joel demands, fully out of patience. He had a wedding he was dreading to get to already. 

“Don’t have a momma. Or a dad, for that matter.”

“Well I ain’t volunteering.”

She scoffs. “As if I’d ask you for anything.”

Joel really can’t help it. He rolls his eyes again. “You mean besides a ride?”

Boy, does she look like she has some choice words for that. The tarp begins to slide back over her.

“Uh-uh, forget it.” Joel rips it all the way down. She doesn’t even got a coat on. “Come on, up and out.”

Some common sense must finally click into place. The kid begins to scramble over his belongings, not exactly careful about not stepping on or crushing anything. Good thing he ain’t a breakables sorta guy. She hops over his tailgate and stands tall at all of her five-foot-nothin’. “Whatever, man.” She’s got a half-full backpack that she swings over her shoulder, and Joel watches her eyes scanning the abandoned, dark parking lot. 

Well shit, he can’t just leave her here.

“Alright, get in. I’ll take ya home.” It’s a total waste of time. Who knows when the brat hopped in, but hey, he left extra time for something, right? 

She doesn’t move. Her scuffed Converse scrapes at the ground. Her shoes have holes in them. “I…don’t think you’ll wanna do that.”

“Out with it. Where you from?”

She swallows hard but refuses to back down from her big and brave stance against the strange, grown man. For a second, Joel’s heart almost constricts out of instinct alone at the idea of a little girl getting herself into trouble this way. “Boston.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Boston?”

“Yes.”

“Boston, Massachusetts?”

“Fuck, yeah, are you slow or something?” 

“How the hell did you get in my truck in Texas?” 

She shrugs. “I got in other trucks.”

The pure stupidity makes him lightheaded. “Where the hell you tryin’ to get to?”

She licks her lips and scans the area again. It’s pretty cold out here in the dead of night in October. How was she not freezing in the back of a truck going 70 down the highway with nothing but a blue tarp as a blanket? 

“Utah.”

“Taking the long route?” She’s lucky she hasn’t ended up in Mexico. She’s lucky she didn’t get her ass hauled out of one of the back of these trucks by border patrol and put into lock up. She’s lucky that…well, she’s pretty damn lucky for a whole slew of reasons.

“Funny,” she spits at him. “Not like I can control where I’m going, dumbass.”

Okay, that’s enough of that. “Alright, let’s go. Police station for you, ya little runaway.”

That’s what does it. Her eyes go wide, and her shoulders fall as her breath comes quick and her feet begin to back away, each step trembling. She’s petrified. She’s just a little kid. Jesus. “No, no. I’m sorry, okay?” She holds her hands up in defense. “I’ll go. I swear. Just don’t…don’t tell anyone where I am. I can’t- please , just don’t.”

She’s several paces away from him now, hole-filled shoes still making their retreat as her whole body shakes. 

Joel puts his hands up in response. “Okay. Okay, kid.” He sighs. What the fuck is he supposed to do here? Send her off into the night to find someone who might do something vile to her? Call the cops and send her into a full blown panic attack? God, he hates being backed into a corner. “Just get in the truck. I’ll take you a little further.”

Who’s it gonna hurt if she sleeps in his passenger seat while he drives through the night? He’ll drop her at a bus station with enough money to get her where she’s going and cross this off his list. 

She hesitates, backpack now wrapped tight in her arms like a shield over her torso. “No police?” She sounds small, scared. 

Hanging his head in defeat, Joel answers, “No police,” and tries not to regret every minute of the last ten. “Get in before I change my mind.”

One more scan. One last assessment for some better deal.

She scrambles her skinny little ass into his passenger seat. 

The truck comes back to life. The rumble of it seems to almost soothe her. He pulls back out onto the dark street. There’s no one but eighteen wheelers around at this time anyway. Easing back onto the highway, he spares a glance at his new carmate. “Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll wake you next time I stop.”

Swallowing, she fidgets with her backpack. “I’m Ellie.”

“Congratulations.”

“Dude, come on. Don’t be rude.”

Joel tries hard not to snap at some pipsqueak calling him “Dude,” but he’s got bigger issues right about now. “Joel.” It’s a bad idea, exchanging information. This is where it starts and stops. “Now go to sleep.”

Ellie wiggles around in her seat, unzips and rezips her bag. She reaches a hand out towards the radio. 

“No.”

Her mouth opens before she decides better. Finally, her head slouches against the window frame. In the reflection on the glass, Joel can see her wide open, not-tired-at-all-eyes staring out at the empty landscape around them. “Where are you going?”

“Nope.”

She shoots back up. “So you won’t talk to me at all?”

Joel almost laughs. “Was I talking to ya when you were stowing away in my truck bed?”

A quiet grumbled, “No,” is his only response.

“Pretend you’re still back there.”

She glares at him but eventually curls her undersized body up in the seat and shuts the hell up. Took long enough.

//

The sun is just over the horizon when he next stops. A rest stop with a McDonald’s, the golden standard of road trip food whether he liked it or not. 

“Come on,” he says when he pulls up outside the gas pump. Of course, the little shit doesn’t even stir. But considering she may have been actually asleep in the back of his truck before, maybe he shouldn’t be shocked if she’s a heavy sleeper. “Ellie.”

Alas, a groan.

“Up and at ‘em, Ellie.”

Limbs stretching and little grunts of unhappiness. She finally peels her eyes open and squints at him in the early morning sunlight. “Where are we?”

“Texas.” 

Her head pokes up and peers around like a prairie dog. “Still?” Her hair is a wreck. “This state never fucking ends.”

This time, Joel does snort. “Yeah, welcome to Texas.” All night driving and he hadn’t completely figured out his gameplan with this little gremlin he’d picked up. While they were stopped, he’d have to look into bus stations in Colorado he could drop her off at. No way was there anywhere convenient where they were right now. He’d figure it out soon enough.

Ellie fixes her ponytail with impressive efficiency and hops out, swinging the door hard behind her. She makes her way for the building as Joel gets out to pump gas.

“Hey,” he calls after her. Why’d she have to be so damn tiny? 

Turning, she waits for whatever it is he’s going to say. It could be, ‘don’t come back.’ It could be, ‘good luck from here.’ 

Joel sighs. “I’ll meet you at the McDonald’s. Wait in line if it’s long, alright?”

She attempts to swallow it, but there’s a brief flash of a smile. Relieved, that’s the only word Joel can find for it. “Roger Dodger!”

Denver. He’d just take her to Denver and then call it good, call it done.

Damn Tommy. Joel isn’t sure yet, but he’s pretty positive he can spin this all on his brother if he tries hard enough.

Inside the most American of all establishments, the road trip rest stop, there are crowds of hungry families, bedraggled kids, frowning teens with earbuds dangling around their necks, and shouting, over-tired parents. Fun family memories. Ellie has helpfully waded her way halfway through the line by the time he goes to join. Joel offers a nod of appreciation. 

Once he appears, she moves to leave. “Where ya going?” he asks, grasping the top of her backpack and hauling her back towards him. 

“You think I’ve got any fucking money?” 

This kid and her fucks. Wherever she was from, no one was correcting her for running her mouth, that’s for sure. Wasn’t Joel’s problem. That was for damn sure. “What have you been eatin’?”

She shrugs. “This and that.”

He was already this far in. “Just get what you want.” Better than walking out and having to dig her out mid-dumpster dive.

She perks up at that. “Really?” 

There’s so much cautious hope in her eyes. God, how hungry was she? “Yeah, no complainin’ if it’s cold, though.” He can already tell from the excitement on her face that there will be no complaining. Of course she can’t just be some kid who helped herself to his transportation. She’s got to be a starving, undersized one who stowed away in his truck with every bit of intention to do it with another one until she got where she was going. She couldn’t just be usual teenage stupid. This one had decided to really double down. 

Taking the grease-stained bag back out to the truck, Joel passes her McGriddle and hashbrowns over. “Thanks,” she says, the first indication that she’s got the slightest bit of manners. They start and end there, it would seem. She eats like a wild animal.

Joel gets back onto the highway.

Ellie watches the signs. “Colorado. So we’re going north.”

“No shit, Sherlock. We ain’t in Mexico, are we?”

“There’s east and west, too, Joel,” she practically spits out at him. Leave it to this little shit to make his name sound more disrespectful than ‘dude.’ Impressive, honestly. 

He was pretty sure she was waiting for him to be distracted to start licking the paper her sausage, egg, and cheese had been held in. Seems like a her problem. 

“I’ll take you to Denver. You can get a bus from there.”

Ellie looks up at him incredulously. “You think I’m starving ‘cause I’ve been saving up for bus fare?” 

So she actually was starving. Something cinches in his chest even as he tells himself it doesn’t matter. Maybe he was just having a heart attack. “If it gets rid of you, I’ll buy you a damn bus ticket.” Whatever it took. That would be more than beyond his act of service for the year. Teenagers take the bus all the time. She’d be a million times safer than she was hopping into random men’s trucks and hoping for the best. 

Her eyes widen. “Shit, dude. Are you like, loaded or something?”

Joel sighs, long and heavy. “Yeah, stay on my good side, and I’ll make sure to write you into my will.”

“Cool.” She licks her fingers clean. “I know how to get on your good side.” The unzipping of her bag briefly overrides the rumble of the engine. She whips out a book and clears her throat. “What did the grape say when it got crushed?”

Joel shook his head. “No.” He wasn’t doing this. He wasn’t doing this for so many reasons.

“Nothing. It just let out a little wine!” The smile that spreads across her face is impossible to ignore even as he resolutely stares at the large expanse of highway ahead of them. “Get it? Wine. ‘Cause it’s made of grapes.”

The Welcome to Colorado sign can’t come soon enough.

//

Construction spells trouble three hours into the drive. Joel’s coffee has gone cold, and he’s getting to the point of delirious exhaustion that he’s considering just plowing through this line of motherfuckers that were holding him up for nearly an hour. 

Ellie’s moved on from the joke book, thank god, but now she was scrambling through his glove compartment. “Cassette tapes? Dude, these are so retro!” 

“What’d I say about music?”

She shoves the tape into the stereo. At least it’s music he likes. 

“So where are you going anyhow?”

“Still no.”

“Ughhhh, you’re no fun.” She unclicks her seat belt and flips around in her seat to scavenge through the backseat next. “Whatcha got back here?”

“Buckle up,” Joel insists. Now is when the cars start inching forward.

“We’re going like, half a mile an hour, Joel. I think I’ll make it.” But she flops back around and plants her butt in her seat. He can feel her stare the whole time she re-buckles her seatbelt. “Happy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to Colorado?”

“No.”

Ellie thinks for several seconds, and he’s hoping her lack of understanding of a US map will put this conversation to bed. “Utah?”

“Nope.”

“Wyoming?”

He hesitates.

“Gotcha!” The grin she shoots him is shit-eating; it’s the only way to describe it. “You’re a bad liar.”

“I didn’t lie.”

Ellie hums. “You thought about it, though.” 

He was thinking about doing a lot of things, actually. The cars come to another dead stop. Joel throws the truck in park and rubs his hands down his face.

“You gotta be tired.” He waves her away. “Want me to take over for a bit so you can catch some shut eye?”

“You’re shitting me, right?”

She laughs. “Yeah. I’m just shittin’ ya.” She turns the tape up a little. The sun is streaming into her eyes. Joel reaches up and pulls down the visor. “So, what are you doing in Wyoming?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you going to a dude ranch?”

“What.”

“Those are big in Wyoming, Joel.” She talks like he’s a damn idiot and should be relieved she’s here to educate him. “Ooh, are you going to Yellowstone? Gotta go see good ol’ Ol’ Faithful once in your life, right?”

Joel just blinks at her. Why does this kid know so much about Wyoming? “No to both.”

“Oh!” She snaps her fingers, shoves her face right into his field of vision and smiles her easy, open smile. She was a little too comfortable with an utter stranger. How had this kid not gotten herself murdered yet? How had it become his problem to keep her that way? “You’re going to a Butch Cassidy museum, aren’t you? Feels right for you.”

He doesn’t know why he does it, but Joel shrugs his shoulders. “Caught me.”

Her mouth falls open. “No fucking way.”

“Of course not. Now shut the fuck up.”

She glares and slams her body back against the seat with a huff.

Maybe he should just keep buying her food, give her mouth something else to do besides jabber. God help him.

//

They cut through a corner of New Mexico, and Ellie informs him of every alien sighting in the last century. She rattles on about the Roswell Museum like she’s actually been there. She practically makes Joel feel like he’s been there. 

“New Mexico’s known for star-seeing,” she says, always acting like she’s informing him of something. As if she was some wealth of information that he had wanted to tag along with him as opposed to a literal stowaway he hadn’t mustered up the malice to ditch yet.

“Texas is better,” he answers because, apparently, he’s in competition with a fourteen-year-old these days. 

Ellie nods enthusiastically. “Best part about riding in the back of trucks,” she says without any signs of the sadness her words should be carrying. “Got to just watch them for hours.”

It goes against his better judgment, but it’s been a day and a half with no sleep, and Joel’s borderline delusional at this point, so he bites. “What’s so goddamn important you need to get to Utah for anyway?”

Unsurprisingly, she clams up almost immediately. 

“You in trouble or something?” he finally asks. If he’s got a baby fugitive in his car, it’s probably for the best that he knows sooner rather than later. 

“No.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Joel calls her out. “You can needle me with questions for hours on end but the second I want to know if I should be expecting a SWAT team on my ass, you shut right on up.” Her arms are crossed over her chest. They’re almost out of New Mexico. 

“It was an answer to your question, asshole!” Good god, the mouth on this kid. “Besides, it’s not like you’ve answered a single one of my questions.”

“It’s my truck,” he argues. Why was his voice raising? He was not actually arguing with this infant. “I’ve more than done my part.”

She bites down on her bottom lip, probably stopping whatever is about to come out of her mouth. “Don’t worry. No one’s looking for me.”

No fucking way. “You’re a missing minor. Yes, they are.”

Ellie shoots him a look, partially irritated with him and partially assessing him, feeling out the odds that he's worth any degree of trust. He can feel her sizing him up. “I’m a missing foster kid. They’ve put my picture up in a Walmart and crossed me off the list of kids to re-home, don’t worry.” She’s all edges and knives in her voice now. “They’ll rule me out as another sex-trafficked girl or figure I’ve OD'd on heroin in an abandoned office building somewhere. Rotting corpses don’t need governmental interference.”

Shit, does she know she can hold a punch or two once in a while? “Jesus, kid. You sure are some sunshine and rainbows.”

Her arms cross over her chest. Ellie stares out the window and doesn’t speak again until Colorado.

//

There’s no way Joel’s making it straight through. He already knew that, deep down. He wasn’t in his thirties anymore; driving for twenty-two hours wasn’t gonna work. He’d left extra time for a reason. He’d been pretty determined to make it to Denver without sleep, though. 

That was until the damn truck started shaking and the check engine light came on.

“What’s going on?” Ellie asks, a tinge of fear to her voice as she sits up straighter and looks at him for the first time since their spat in New Mexico. “Is the truck breaking?”

Joel eases it over to the shoulder, steadily applying pressure to the brakes and hoping for the best. “It’s fine.” The engine starts smoking.

“That does not seem fine, Joel.” She went from an angsty teen to a bundle of nerves awful quick. “Should we get out of the car?”

“No,” he tells her in a way that leaves no room for debate. “It’s not gonna explode, Ellie. Safest place is in the truck.” He pulls out his phone and starts looking up tow trucks with a headache already growing behind his eyes. Damn truck couldn’t have just made it to Denver. 

“What if it catches fire?” 

“Then we get out,” his voice is gruff. “Is it on fire?”

She doesn’t answer him. 

A tow truck shows up thirty minutes and seven more reassurances later, and they wait in the cabin of it while Joel’s now dead truck gets hooked up. 

Ellie’s the quietest she’s been the whole time. Even when she was giving him the silent treatment from New Mexico, she still huffed and sighed and flopped all around in her seat. Now she sits stock still, body pressed up against the door as Joel sat in the middle. It seemed like the decent thing to do, not put the girl next to an even greater stranger. “I’m sorry,” she whispers finally.

Joel’s head wheels around towards her. “What? Did you sabotage my truck when I wasn’t lookin’?”

And she appears genuinely remorseful. Like she thinks he’s actually going to assume this is her fault. But she just shrugs, all pitiful looking. It tugs at something that’s been long dead and locked up in Joel’s chest. What had he gotten himself into?

“It’s not your fault, Ellie.” He sighs the heaviest sigh. He really was exhausted. Between the traffic and the yammering kid and now the truck breaking down, he was beyond behind schedule and saddled with some problem he still had to figure out. “That thing had a cassette player. That makes it practically vintage.”

She gives him the smallest smile. “I’m bad luck,” she says in such seriousness Joel has to gather his bearings before he can answer. 

“No such thing.” It’s the best he’s got, okay? Thirty-six hours awake and counting. 

Lip biting, heavy swallowing, fingers twisting. “You have no idea.”

Joel just stares at this mildly devastated teen and tries his best not to let himself feel bad for her. Starving foster kid hitchhiking her way across the country was already enough without slapping on “convinced she was cursed.” Damn, kid, save something for somebody else. “Now, I don’t know about you, but that was the best McDonald’s breakfast this morning I ever did have.” She looks up at him through her lashes. “Seems like a fucking good stroke of luck to me.”

Her smile warms something inside of him.

Goddammit.

Chapter Text

About a quarter mile from the mechanics is a motel. The place won’t be getting any five star reviews on Yelp, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. 

“Got your stuff?” Joel asks, even though he spots Ellie’s ratty backpack hanging from her hand as she waits in the lobby of the mechanic’s. He could also see her eyes scanning, assessing. Like she was looking for other options—in case he ditched her and her bad luck for good.

Instead, she nods and follows him out the door. He points down the direction they’ll be heading in, and she hustles after him. If nothing else, Joel has to appreciate that she doesn’t tend to keep him waiting. 

“Might take a couple days ‘til the truck is done.” It shouldn’t be a surprise. Joel could manage some basic upkeep on the truck himself but, considering the thing was damn near legal drinking age, probably fair if it protests making the haul all the way to Wyoming. “I’ll get us a room until then.”

It’s weird. She doesn’t even know him. The concept of a hotel room should be sending her running for the hills if she had a lick of common damn sense. She stays right on his heels. 

“What’s wrong with it?” 

Joel grunts, sighs. “To be determined.” And then, “Something expensive, probably.” It always was. Especially when they take one look at your out of state plates and obvious hunt for the nearest place to stay. Tack on a kid and there’s an extra few hundred rolled into the “Diagnostics” process. Thieving bastards.

The motel is a little run down. It’s the sort of place that still advertises having air conditioning and colored television, but it’s also advertising vacancies. There’s a pool outside. The color is a bizarre shade of radioactive green. 

“There ya go,” Joel teases Ellie as she hesitates when they approach the front door. He wasn’t inviting her. He just wasn’t going to turn her out to the streets to figure it out for herself. “Something to keep you busy.”

She freezes, a flash of horror in her eyes.

Joel holds his hands up in quick surrender. “Or not.”

She shoots him a look. “I can’t swim.”

“Great. You’ll kill even more time that way.” 

The front desk is completely abandoned. Unsurprisingly, there’s no bell to ring. Joel leans against the counter and assesses his little travel companion. She looks rough; he ain’t gonna lie. Hair coming loose, probably several day old rumpled clothing hanging off of her. Dirt stained backpack. A faded bruise on her cheek that Joel can just barely make out in the fluorescents. 

Ellie scoffs, gripping the straps of her backpack. There’s not much to get into in this lobby, but she wanders off anyway, staring at the truly subpar art hanging on the walls. “That water is clearly poisonous. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to kill me.”

The way she says that sorta shit is so flippant it makes Joel want to shake her by the shoulders. She doesn’t even know him! He could literally be trying to kill her. Dumbass kid. “I’m just sayin’, if your mouth’s full of algae water then you can’t pester me with no more damn questions.”

“You’re such a fucking dick.” She laughs while saying it.

The woman at the front desk clears her throat. Joel’s head swings around to find her there. She looks a little too straight-laced to be working in a place like this, but who is he to judge? “Howdy, ma’am,” Joel flashes her a smile and doesn’t bother apologizing for the miscreant he’s brought along with him. “We were wonderin’ if you might have a double room still available.” If he was a truly good guy, he’d probably get Ellie her own room. But he’s already got a truck repair to pay for and a wedding gift to pick up at some point and a bus ticket of an unknown price to cover. Besides, the idea of leaving a fourteen year old completely unattended in a motel room doesn’t fill him with confidence. They’d do just fine keeping to themselves in a shared room.

With the set of her lips like she’s tasted a lemon, the woman types away on the computer and nods. “How many nights?”

“Start with one. We’ll go from there.”

Ellie’s come back to stand beside him, her little head not even clearing his shoulder. She hovers close, like he might forget about her as the room key is passed over. 

With a jerk of his head, he signals her towards the door once his card is scanned and paperwork signed. 

The room is exactly what he had been envisioning. A little musty, a bit run down. Two beds with green, floral bedspreads and a tan, heavily stained carpet. The curtains are closed over the window and do little to block out the midafternoon light. A TV from 2001 is set on a chest of drawers. A Bible rests between the two beds. It’ll do. 

“I’m showering first,” Joel says with no offer otherwise. She could figure it out for herself. She’d gotten this far, hadn’t she? “I’ll order a pizza, okay?”

She nods, silent and assessing. She’s not taking in the room, though, just watching him. Maybe someone’s self-preservational skills are catching up to them. About damn time. She should be scared, but Joel doesn’t want her to be. He ain’t gonna hurt her. 

Pulling out his wallet, he hands over some cash after hanging up with the pizza parlor down the street. “Here,” he holds it out to her. “If they get here before I’m done, you hand them this, open the door just enough to take the pizza and then make sure to lock it right after. Got it?”

Wide eyes, another nod. “I won’t let anyone steal your shit.”

Joel rolls his eyes. That’s not exactly what he’d been worrying about. This place would do, but he wouldn’t be thrilled about her getting into any trouble around here. It feels like the sort of place that’s just asking for trouble. “Don’t wander off, got it?”

Ellie blinks at him. “Why?”

Clearing his throat, Joel busies himself with pulling out some clothes from his duffel. “This probably isn’t the nicest part of town. Okay? It’s not like I could go and open another missing person’s case up on ya.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waves him off. Damn teenagers; thinking they’re invincible from the world and all its evils. It aches, remembering another girl who gave that same eye roll whenever he was a little overbearing. What the fuck is he doing? “Go shower before this room smells any worse.”

Little shit.

//

She’s cross-legged on the bed closest to the door, halfway through a second piece of pizza when he comes out. Neither of them has bothered to turn on extra lights or the television. She’s just sitting there, staring at the stained off-white walls and smacking her lips around greasy, hot cheese. Good thing he’s not assuming actual responsibility for this kid. McDonald’s and pizza sure aren’t the meals of champions. 

“Well don’t you look pretty,” she chirps at him. Her moods were rapid-cycling. 

“Shut up.” Joel joins her at the pizza box and takes a slice. It wasn’t very good, but it was hot. Gotta take what you can get. 

“Pineapple on pizza. Pro or con?” He glares at her. “Come on! No way that question can be off limits.”

Joel swallows, doesn’t bother to clear his throat before answering, “All questions are off limits.”

Eye roll, unbothered. “Lame.” She keeps chewing and lip smacking and talking. That was supposed to be the one advantage of feeding her. No talking. “Personally, I think I’d be pro. Salty cheese and sweet pineapple? Sounds exquisite.”

Joel settles himself on the other bed and considers her. He’s not going to take the bait, but it’s either answering her innocuous question or putting up with her more or less talking to herself again. “Fruit shouldn’t be hot.”

Swallowing before talking for once, Ellie bugs her eyes out. “Um, what about pie? You can’t say you don’t like pie.” 

He levels her with a stare. What a fucking day. “I don’t like pie.”

Ellie shakes her head, stares at him for several seconds and waits for his minute nod before going for a third slice. “Doesn’t like pie. You’re more fucked up than I thought.”

//

“That was going to be my bed.”

“You ate half a pizza in that bed,” Joel disputes. Besides, he’d already laid back with a hand over his eyes to block the late afternoon light as best possible. It’s almost dark now. God, he’s exhausted. He should call Tommy, probably. Not that he was giving his brother a play by play. Jesus, he hoped his brother wasn’t expecting a bachelor party or some shit. No way was Joel arriving with energy for a bachelor party.

Ellie’s staring down at him. Her hair is wet from the shower, but she’s back in the same clothes as before. Did she not have a change of clothes? Who runs halfway across the damn country without a change of clothes? “Yeah, because it was your bed.”

Opening his eyes just enough to glare at her, Joel says, “Get outta my face.”

She scurries away, climbing on top of the other bed and sitting there. Backpack rustling, zipper going. “Hey, Joel.”

“I’m sleepin’.”

“Joel.” 

“What.”

“Did you hear about the man who sued the airline for losing his luggage?”

He pans over to her, not even glaring at this point. Hopefully she can sense his irritation through his plain old stare sent in her direction.

“Sadly, he lost his case.”

Maybe he should’ve paid for the second room for his sake. “Ellie.”

She perks up at her name. “Go to sleep.” She deflates.

At last he hears her settling next to him, covers pulled down, and her body wriggling beneath. God, of all the trucks she could have hopped in the back of. Of all the people who could have found her. Does she even understand how much danger she’d put herself into? And now here she was with him, sharing a hotel room like they’d known each other for years instead of twenty-four hours. Stupid kid. 

“Hey, Joel?”

Jesus fucking Christ. 

“What?” He spits the word at her, exhausted and constantly close to sleep before being drawn back out by her irritating little voice. 

Now is when she shuts up, of course. 

Hauling himself up on his elbows, Joel looks over at her. She’s all huddled beneath the probably filthy motel comforter; it’s pulled right up to her chin like some sort of armor guarding her. “What is it, Ellie?”

Her eyes are wide as her teeth dig deep into her bottom lip. She looks like she could draw blood. Joel resists telling her to cut it out before she hurts herself. “If the door’s locked, no one can get in, right?”

Ah shit, that’s why she wanted the other bed. Well, now he feels like an asshole. A tired asshole, but still. He knows a scared little girl when he sees one. He remembers those big, imploring eyes. He remembers how he could always make it all better for her. 

“Locked and chained,” he reassures. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to scare her earlier with the pizza delivery. Shit, maybe she was already horrified and was just hoping against all hopes that he wasn’t going to murder her in her sleep tonight. What other choice did she have right about now? “No one’s going to get in.”

That seems to quiet her down. Joel closes his eyes again, but sleep is just out of reach. He heaves a sigh before pushing himself up. “I think the AC works better over there. Swap with me.”

Her little eyes fly open, and she hops up in an instant, scurrying over to the other bed and pulling back his covers to climb beneath. “Yeah, it was drafty as hell over there.”

“Uh-huh.” Good try. “Go to sleep.”

It worked. He can tell by the heaviness of her answering, “Roger Dodger.”

//

When he wakes up, the room is empty. His heart was already in his throat from the dream he’d been having, but this was doing nothing to help. 

Scanning the room, he checks the bathroom and even the coat closet like she might’ve just been hanging out in there. His big toe throbs with how he shoves his feet into his boots, and he’s making a mess of his wallet, trying to hunt through for the room key he’d shoved in there earlier. 

The sun is streaming through the windows. Dawn has already broken. Who knows how long she’s been gone or what she took off to do. 

The key is nowhere to be found, so Joel gives up and just throws the door open, coming face to face with a little pipsqueak attempting to balance two paper plates and make use of a room key. 

“What the hell are you doing?”

She looks a bit shell-shocked, maybe even a little scared. Ellie stands before him, and he’s pretty sure she starts to shake. “Breakfast,” she spits out. “You almost missed it.”

With a sigh, he holds the door open. “You can’t just take off like that.”

“It’s literally three doors down.”

God, he’s had this fight before. Joel runs a hand down his face, exhausted and now coming down from a morning rush of adrenaline after what must’ve been close to fourteen hours of sleep. He’s a little out of it. “Just get inside.”

She obeys, stepping over the threshold and setting the plates down on the dresser. She holds out a to-go cup. “Got you coffee.”

His anger dwindles. “Thanks.” Not by much.

Just like yesterday, she assembles herself cross-legged on the bed and tucks into her food with enthusiasm. It looks less than appetizing. Joel takes one bit of chewy, undercooked bacon before dropping it back on his plate. He has half a mind to tell her not to eat this swill, lest he’s stuck with a food-poisoned teenager as his travel companion (the only way this could get any worse) but just keeps his mouth shut. 

“So what’s the game plan?” Ellie asks around a mouthful of rubbery looking eggs.

How long is he expected to endure this, exactly? “Didn’t anyone tell you to chew with your goddamn mouth closed?” She very exaggeratedly chomps with her mouth wide fucking open. “Gotta get some odds and ends at that Walmart down the street, then we’ll go check in at the shop and see if I can put some pressure on them to get the truck ready quicker.”

“Are you gonna go all…” Ellie puffs up her chest and holds her arms out at her sides like an ape. It’d be slightly more intimidating if there weren’t chocolate muffin crumbs on her chin.

Joel shakes his head. “Something like that.” He takes a swig of coffee and tries not to openly wince at just how bad it is. Gotta give the kid credit for trying. “Pack up all your stuff in case we don’t gotta come back here later.”

She salutes him as he enters the bathroom. 

Hands running down his face, Joel tries to remember what it feels like to be a person. He hated mornings; already a tragedy that’s befallen him considering most work sites started at six in the morning, and he’s the guy in charge. But a morning with some random ass kid almost giving him a heart attack that she’s taken off and found herself some far worse trouble? Well, that was so far outside his wheelhouse these days.

There wasn’t a damn thing he needed at the store, but he couldn’t just let her keep walking around in old, dirty clothes. Walmart it is. 

In their room, Ellie has very responsibly packed all of her belongings, few as they are, neatly away and cleaned her breakfast plate completely. It sits in the trash with oil stains on display. “Go brush your teeth. Maybe run a comb through that hair of yours.”

She makes a face but does as she’s told. 

They make the trek to Walmart, Joel reaching out at a redlight and grasping the hood of Ellie’s sweatshirt to keep her from wandering into oncoming traffic. How had she managed to get from Boston to Texas again? Inside the store, she grabs a cart without him asking and promptly starts surfing through the aisles. 

“Cut it out,” he tells her at once.

“Cut it out,” she imitates back to him in some poor approximation of his voice. “What are we getting anyway?”

“Not a we,” he shoots back immediately. He couldn’t go having her get the wrong idea. His role was to get her from point A to point B, and that was already going above and beyond. No point letting her get any fanciful ideas in that underdeveloped brain of hers. “Need a few essentials. So do you, I’m assumin’.”

Ellie turns a bit red and cart-surfs away from him. She hovers at the end of the produce section where they needed nothing. 

The store is mostly abandoned at nine on a Wednesday, but there’s still a handful of shoppers and employees milling about with hits from the ‘80s playing overhead. “Go get yourself something else to wear, pajamas too, if ya need ‘em.” She does. Last night, she slept in her dirt-stained jeans. “I’ll grab my stuff and meet you at the register.”

He leaves her and her dangerous cart activities and sets off for toiletries. Considering he hadn’t been planning on his journey to take this long, or include a second person, there are a few additional items he could stand to grab. 

In the midst of juggling toothpaste, 3-in-1 shampoo, and some instant coffee packs, he hears shouting a few aisles down.

When he turns the corner, he sees some asshole employee with his finger in Ellie’s face, laying into her about stealing and threatening to call the cops. She’s got her “I’m gonna bolt” face on and, quite frankly, Joel isn’t sure if he’s more annoyed at the concept of her taking off or at the fact that he now knows what that face looks like. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what seems to be the problem here?”

He walks over and tosses his items in the cart, clearly staking his claim as the parental figure. He knew how these people worked. All bark, only bite when there was someone younger and smaller and weaker. 

“Your daughter here was trying to steal those.” He points to the box of Tampax Pearls under Ellie’s arm. “I watched her shove them right in her jacket!” 

Maybe he should teach her how to steal better before they part ways. 

“She’s a teenage girl out shopping with her old man. You know how kids are. She wasn’t stealing, honest. Just trying to save herself the ungodly embarrassment of me seeing her buying some tampons.” Joel shoots the guy a look as if to say, kids, right? and dares to be argued with. For his final act, Joel throws the box in the cart and fixes the guy with a hard stare. “Alright?”

Narrowing his eyes—did this guy really not have anything better to do than berate a kid who was maybe trying to steal some tampons? He nods. “Don’t let me catch anything else.”

Joel can’t help the mental “Roger dodger” that he thinks despite his better judgment. He takes over pushing the cart and moves halfway across the store before speaking. “You don’t gotta steal anything. Just get what you need.” Not his problem, some logical part of his brain says. Of course, doesn’t mean he can’t go and make it his problem. 

Ellie doesn’t say anything, either humbled or mortified from the tampon experience. A stick of deodorant slips from her jacket sleeve and a disposable razor from the waistband of her pants.

And then, before Joel can think better of it, “You need new shoes?”

Her head snaps up to him. “Why are you being so nice to me?” she asks, and okay, fair. That wasn’t exactly the angle he’d been going for. 

Joel sighs, redirecting them to the shoes and parking the cart outside of women’s. He leans onto it with the casual patience of someone ready to wait. “Think of it as my charity work,” he says dryly. Ellie narrows her eyes, clearly hating that, but she ventures for a new pair of Converse sneakers regardless. 

Good God, Joel had forgotten how expensive girl’s clothes could be. Lord knows he used to be well-practiced in the “certain shoes for certain occasions” mindset and the idea of a “perfect pair of jeans.” Thankfully Ellie seems more of a practical, get what works for hiding in the back of random trucks sort of shopper.  Hm. Maybe not the best way of thinking. 

“You don’t have to do all this, you know,” she mostly mumbles as they make their way to the register. 

Loading up the conveyor belt, Joel isn’t really sure how he’s gotten here, but it’s too late to turn back now. “Listen, if we’re talking about anyone smelling…well, phew is all I can say.”

Hard glare, but it’s obvious she knows he’s messing with her and tucks a smile away before it can cut loose. 

//

Night two is chicken fingers and french fries from the local bar. Joel thinks about grabbing a beer but decides against it.

She’s chomping away on deep-fried everything when Joel has the thought that someone should really feed this kid a vegetable.

//

That second night, he’s woken up by a scream. 

It’s bloody, desperate, pleading. It seems like it won’t end, and, when it does, another one follows soon after. 

He’s out of his bed, standing over top of Ellie’s as soon as he can tell his body to move. She’s on her back, eyes closed, fast asleep. 

“Ellie!” He shouts her name. It does nothing. “Ellie!” No matter what, he ain’t touching her. That’s no way to wake a girl up from a nightmare when you’re practically a stranger. He calls her name several more times and finally kicks her mattress.

She jerks awake with a sharp gasp and eyes flying open. In seconds, she sees him standing over her. There are tears in her eyes. Joel’s hand twitches, and he tucks it against his chest like he’s recovering from a hard punch. 

Heavy minutes pass. Him watching her; her silently staring up at him. 

“Are you…okay?” he finally asks. His voice is raw, like he’d been the one screaming that whole time.

In response, Ellie curls onto her side, tucks her knees to her chest, and closes her eyes.

Joel goes back to bed.

//

In the morning, she’s the same as always. Theoretically, the shop’s supposed to be done with the truck today, and Joel is ready to get the fuck out of the middle of nowhere Colorado and back on the road. 

“I’ll be back,” he tells her even as she’s swinging herself off of her bed and looking away from the TV to shove her feet into her shoes. 

“I can come,” she’s saying before his hand has even touched the doorknob. 

Joel sighs. Fifteen minutes, that’s really all he’s after here. “Look, kid, I can walk half a mile by myself. You just sit down and watch some more TV, ‘kay?”

Door to bed, she looks like she’s trying to solve a math problem. “Yeah, okay.” Shoes kicked off, flopping back onto that bed and its filthy comforter. He should really tell her not to do that. Whatever.

//

Two hours later, on a particularly sunny Monday afternoon, Joel’s about back to the motel, and he’s hot, irritated, and still without a functioning truck. One more night then. One more goddamn night. 

Hopefully one without a three AM wake-up. He couldn’t be doing this. She was needing too much from him, more than he had to give. Way more than he bargained for when he decided to let her hitch a ride. They had to get out of here. Land in Denver where he could ship her off and wipe his hands of whatever messy little problem it was that he’d stumbled upon. 

He starts with the front office, pays for the room, which he swears is getting more expensive by the day, and then lets himself back into lucky number 8. It’s not feeling so lucky right now. 

“Well, that was a bust,” he says to Ellie, who is…nowhere to be found. “Ellie?”

The bathroom door is wide open. There’s no way she’d fit beneath the beds. The door had been locked when he opened it, and he’d had the only roomkey on him. 

“Ellie?” He strains his good ear to try and hear her response.

A quiet, muffled “In here,” responds.

The closet. Joel opens the folding door and stairs down at Ellie. Knees to chest, chin to knees. Backpack beside her. Teeth digging into her lip.

“What’re you doing?”

She looks up at him with wide eyes. There’s an attempt of a mask, a hint of hiding. Nothing slots into place. Shrug. It’s the first time she’s really been silent.

“Did something happen? Ellie?”

“I-” She starts and stops in the same breath. 

Knees protesting the whole way down, Joel kneels in front of her. “What happened?”

Head shaking. Breath stuttering. Hands shaking.

“Okay,” Joel whispers the word, pushing himself back up and going to the swung open wide door. It closes with a firm click. Deadbolt. Chain. “Better?” 

Ellie looks up. Nods. 

“Okay.”

//

Lunch on Tuesday is the diner down the street. He gets a burger. She copies him. Should’ve ordered the garden salad after all, maybe. Truck will hopefully be ready by end of day. Which means another night drive. They’d be in Denver by nine tonight if they’re lucky.

He could drop her at the bus station, probably even see her onto a Greyhound if he’s really that worried about it, and then single-handedly take out the final eight hours to Jackson. Feeling better with a plan, some real non-bacteria-contaminated food, and a runaway who at least has sneakers without holes in them, Joel’s a little more indulgent of her questions over lunch. 

“Okay, this one’s important.” Ellie makes sure he’s looking right at her before she asks, “Would you rather eat hot fruit or talk to me?” There’s that shit eating grin again. 

Well, if that ain’t some goddamn bait. Joel plucks a fry off of her plate, just to get that funny little frown outta her. “Hot fruit. Definitely picking the fruit.”

“You’re such an asshole,” she says for the fiftieth time. This time, though, she gets all quiet afterward. The prongs of her fork swirl around in her ketchup pile left behind on red and white checkered paper. “Do you think your truck will make it the rest of the way?”

“My truck is just fine.”

“I know how to check oil levels.”

Oh geez. “Congratulations.”

She clears her throat and resituates in the booth across from him. The vinyl groans beneath her. “I should check it for you in Denver. Before I leave. It’s probably a long drive. You know, all the way to Butch Cassidy’s birthplace.”

Slurping back the dregs of his coffee, Joel buys himself a minute before he strictly needs to respond. “I can check my own oil,” is what he ultimately lands on. “So, riddle me this,” he switches gears before she can do any more of her fishing. “Whatcha got against Boston?”

Ellie fidgets in her seat. “I mean,” Joel continues, “just seems like an awful lotta trouble getting all the way out to Utah for some unknown reason.” 

“What’s so important about Wyoming?” she shoots back, all angry little pint-sized spitfire. It was almost cute, how indignant she’d try and get. “Or so terrible about Texas?”

Fine, what’s it matter anyway? “My brother’s getting married,” Joel finally answers.

Ellie blinks over at him, dropping her fork and turning all her attention onto him and off her restless movements. “Your brother is getting married.”

“Yes.”

“That was your grand old secret you couldn’t stand to share with me?” She’s practically shouting. A few people turn and look in their direction. “That’s so lame, man!”

Joel narrows his eyes at her. He could do with some more coffee right about now. “Wasn’t a secret,” he defends. “Just none of your damn business.”

The child glowers across from him even as he pays the bill that filled her ungrateful little stomach. When they go to leave, she shoves her arms into the new hoodie he’d purchased for. It was a forest green. The eggplant one was nowhere to be seen. 

“Hey, Joel?”

He never knows what he’s gonna get once those words leave her mouth. She was sometimes joking and other times serious, and, he was starting to figure out, always a little bit scared of what was coming next. 

“Yeah?”

“What kind of cheese is not yours?”

She trots behind him towards the mechanics. He notices the careful way she lifts her feet, cautious not to scuff her new shoes. 

Turning to her, Joel hears another girl’s voice in his head. Her little six year old self declared the punchline with utter pride. It grabs something deep in his chest and seizes it, but Ellie’s smiling wide enough that he can see her crooked little eye teeth, and he’s sucker-punched with something else.

“Nacho cheese,” he answers with the driest tone he can manage.

Ellie laughs more than the joke deserves. Joel smiles despite himself.

The smile fades as quick as it came. Just a few more hours. Then he’d be through with this, with her. 

She walks directly by his side.

Chapter Text

In a miracle of all miracles, Joel’s several hundred dollars poorer, but a man once again in possession of a truck come seven PM. That’ll land them in Denver around ten. He’ll give her the cash, even put her up in a room by the bus station if needed, and be on his way. What she chooses to do from there is her prerogative. 

“How old is your brother?”

“Forty one.”

“Old.” 

“Watch it, you little shit.” She giggles. Ellie takes all her nicknames like they were meant as something affectionate. He doesn’t correct her; that would just be cruel. 

“How old are you?”

“Older.”

She nods solemnly. “No surprise.”

There’s no traffic. The sun has fully dropped beneath the horizon. Joel’s a little upset they hadn’t made it further north sooner. He was hoping he could watch Ellie catch sight of the Rockies in the distance. She’d probably like ‘em. “You’re on thin fucking ice.”

“Are you from Texas?”

“Yes.”

“What part of Texas?”

She could do this all day, couldn’t she? 

“Austin.”

Nodding, eyes cast in his direction. “That’s the cool part,” she says with earnestness. 

Joel rolls his eyes. “Yeah, stop spreading that around, would ya? My property taxes are through the roof these days.”

More laughter. “Definitely old.”

They’d gotten pretty good at finding a balance. Ellie is observant. Joel will give her that. Though he supposed she’d have to be somewhat to have made it this far. She knows when she needs to shut up because Joel’s at his wit’s end and when it’s more of an act, and she’s just a general irritation. Like a hangnail. Or a mosquito. Maybe he’d start calling her that. Mosquito. She’d probably love it, little weirdo.

“Are you from Boston?” He finally asks, despite his better judgment. He wasn’t here to get to know her. He was here to be a personal taxi service and food bank, not a therapist. 

Ellie doesn’t like questions about herself. Not if they’re beyond favorite dinosaur (Dilophosaurus) or favorite ice cream (peach) or favorite astronaut (Sally Ride). She was kind of a weird kid. Anything about her past, or her future, was immediately unleashing that shifty little girl who looked like she wanted to sprint away from him at full speed. But they’re cruising down a highway at 65 an hour, so odds are she’s not going too far right about now. Not until they hit the bus station, at least. 

“Here and there,” she answers vaguely. “I’ve moved around a bit.” 

“Makes sense,” Joel comments to try and keep her from drifting the conversation back towards the validity of shaveless hair removal. Weird, weird kid. “Being in the system and all.”

“Yep,” she pops her ‘p’ and adds nothing else. Something on the sign for the upcoming exit catches Joel’s eye, and he throws on his blinker. What’re an extra twenty minutes at this point? “What are you doing? Are we low on gas already? Do you have to pee again?” Little. Shit.

Saying little, Joel follows the next sign to make a left. “Pit stop.”

Ellie all but plasters her face to the window as she stares out at the town around her. “You know, I kinda thought stuff would start to look different eventually. But it’s all just…the same everywhere.” There’s a life lesson tucked away in that observation, but Joel isn’t about to touch it. “Kind of depressing.”

Pulling the truck into a parking lot, Joel shuts off the engine and can’t help but watch as realization dawns on her face. “Ice cream?” The sign boasts over a hundred flavors. “Dude, yes.” She’s swinging her way out of the truck cabin in record breaking time. “Are you gonna get pistachio like the disgusting motherfucker that you are?” she calls behind her shoulder. A mother shoots him a nasty look as she hustles her three children along. 

Not his problem, Joel reminds himself. “I apologize for having taste, missy.”

Who the hell knows where they are, still a little over an hour outside of Denver, but this must be the place to go on a Tuesday night. Even with the temperatures dropping, people don their sweatshirts and gather in a line outside the door. Might be slightly longer than a pit stop. 

“What’s in Utah?” Joel asks, planting himself at her side with a step between them. 

She looks at him with distrust. “Is this supposed to be frozen, peach-flavored bribery?” 

Well, can’t say it wasn’t transparent. “It’s only fair. You know why I’m heading to Jackson, after all.” And he couldn’t deny: the curiosity was starting to get to him. For all of Ellie’s bullheadedness and bolstered bravery, he could also tell she was just a scared kid. He could tell that she was determined to get where she was going but wasn’t excited about the prospect of what might be entailed with getting there. Not for the first time, Joel blocks out the possibility of what else could have happened to her if he hadn't caught her in his truck. “And you are costing me a pretty penny.” It’s a low blow.

Staring at her shoes, Ellie moves up with the line. “I’m looking for someone.”

“You ain’t tryin’ to follow your boyfriend or something, are you?” God, he hopes that’s not what this is. That sounds like trouble waiting to find her. 

“Gross, no.” 

It almost makes him laugh. “Okay, well, who then?”

Ellie licks her lips. She watches a little girl getting carried out by her mom, chocolate ice cream smeared all over her face. “My aunt, okay?”

“You’ve got an aunt?” Seems like the sort of thing that should keep you out of the system. 

Picking at her nails, shifting the weight between her feet. A car revs its engine in the parking lot, and her shoulders go up towards her ears in response. “Sort of.” Joel fixes her with a stare. She steps through the threshold of the shop. It smells of freshly made waffles. “She was my mom’s best friend,” Ellie explains. “I sent her a letter a couple months back.”

This might not be much better than following a boyfriend. “And she invited you to get yourself all the way to Utah on your own?”

Pretending to be busy scanning the list of flavors, Ellie ignores him. There’s some pop music playing and the milkshake blender going at full speed. Kids are screaming and laughing and adults are chatting loudly. Some teenagers are shoving each other off of stools. This is definitely the place to go. Guess that’s how they got on the highway sign. 

“More or less.”

What a load of bull.

“What part of the state? It’s big, you know.”

“So’s the country, and I’ve made it this far.” Arms over her chest and shoulders squared. She was big and brave and the big bad wolf now, not the little girl who asked him if the lock would hold and followed on his heels in careful proximity. 

Joel looks at the flavors instead of the kid. “Fair enough.”

“Salt Lake City,” she relents almost immediately. “I have her address. I know where to go.”

Half-baked plan at best. 

They get to the front of the line. “Peach, please.” For all her crassness, every once in a while the kid could bust out a manner or two.

“Put it in one of those waffle cones for her, would ya?” Joel dishes out some more money without ordering anything for himself. What were a couple more dollars at this point? “And did this aunt invite you to come and stay with her?”

While waiting at the end of the counter, someone drops a glass; it shatters along the black and white tiled floor. Ellie jumps, dropping to her knees at once. Her hands come up over her ears as her eyes clenched tight. 

Joel crouches down to where she is. He almost reaches out and grasps her shoulder before thinking better of it. His hand drops. “Ellie.”

When her eyes peer open to him, there’s nothing but fear to be found.

//

They sit on his tailgate, feet swinging. Joel grabs his coat from the back and drapes it over her legs so she doesn’t get cold. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she spits out before he can even attempt to.

Hands up in surrender. “Okay.” He’s not about to argue with her. “We can go back to the aunt, then.”

She pouts but doesn’t stop taking a bite out of her ice cream cone. She would be one of those psychos who bite ice cream. “She said I was welcome anytime.” Shrug. “This seems like any time to me.”

Clearly, she was getting out of Boston for a reason. Joel wasn’t an idiot. Kid from the system who dives down for cover at loud noises and looks ready to attack at any waking moment? She’d probably been through some shit. That much was written in her eyes, inscribed in the curve of her posture, tailored in the outline of a switchblade in her jean’s pocket. That much was enough to twist a sharpness deep inside him.

“And what put a fire in your pants about it, exactly?”

“That’s a weird phrase.”

“You gonna answer the question or not?”

The crunch of her waffle cone is his answer. Good god, she ate fast. “Not.” The word comes out muffled around her dessert. “What do you care anyway?”

It reminds him of her question in Walmart earlier that week. “You’ve inconvenienced me pretty good at this point,” he shoots back, watching carefully to make sure he fully redirects her away from any notion of him giving a shit but doesn’t actually crush her little baby-sized heart. There’s no need to be cruel. “Only seems fair I have some indication you’re not gonna go off and get yourself killed after all my efforts.”

“Maybe I’m rich.” She licks runoff ice cream from her hand. “I could write you into my will.”

“Then by all means,” he gestures with his hands for her to carry on. 

For a second, she laughs. 

“Just seems kind of desperate,” Joel pushes on while he senses the slightest bit of opening, “jumping into random trucks and hoping you get where you want to go, all riding on the tail-end of an open invitation.”

She clams back up. The paper from the cone twists in her hands. She was such a nervous fidgeter. “It’s not that different from normal life, ya know? I just get moved around from place to place anyway. Not like I know those people any better.”

Well, she’s got a point there. Maybe stranger danger is more of a foreign concept when your life is spent meeting and living with complete strangers and simply hoping for the best. Joel would at least consider those people to be safer, but…well, maybe he shouldn’t be so naive. “There’s a professional involved. They arrange specific, qualified people to look after kids like you.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, and who exactly do you think is signing up to take ‘kids like me’?” She poses his phrasing in air quotes. “Trust me, it’s not that different.” 

Ice cream gone. They should get back on the road. Joel could hit Jackson by dawn if he didn’t let himself get delayed too much longer. 

“Are you in trouble? Back home?” 

The ends of her sweatshirt are grasped in her fists, tucked around her hands. He half expects her to pull the hood up and tie the strings over her face and completely tuck herself away. It makes him think of  her with that nasty motel bedspread pulled right up beneath her chin, asking about locks on the door. It makes him think of a scared kid. 

“What difference does it make?” she mumbles while avoiding his gaze. “I’m out of there now.” She turns a steely gaze toward him. “And I’m not going back.”

“Wasn’t planning on makin’ ya,” he whispers in the late night air. The stars are coming out. If it’s a clear enough night, maybe he can point out Mars to her. 

Ellie swallows. She stops twisting the paper in her fingers. “So what’s it matter?”

She’s asking him for something, something he’s not going to dare give her. “Just figured we ought to fill the time somehow. That’s all.”

The tension leaves her shoulders. Joel can’t help but think it looks a little bit like she’s being deflated.

//

One more tank of gas, and they’d be back on the road for the last stretch of their mutual journey. 

The station is much like where he first saw her. Bright lights shining overhead of the pumps and complete darkness everywhere else. There’s a rundown convenience store attached and a handful of other cars around. Ellie gets out when he throws the truck into park.

“No wandering,” he says out of habit, tucking one credit card between his teeth to dig out another.

The air is only getting colder. Ellie digs her hands deep into her pockets. “I’m about to be on a bus for like, a hundred years,” she proclaims with all the teenage angst he’d expect out of her. “The least you can let me do is stretch my legs.”

He waves her off. “No wandering, though. I mean it.”

Before she even says it, he’s already mentally heard her, “Roger Dodger,” and then she’s off pacing along the parking lot. He watches as she heads to the front of the door and begins walking on parking barriers like a balance beam, arms held out at her side. She jumps from one to the next, and he hears her quiet, “And she sticks the landing!” and pretend crowd cheering from over here. 

The buses only leave for Salt Lake City twice a day. Joel’s already looked into it on his phone with Ellie’s assistance. He’d found a hotel two blocks from the bus station that she could stay in for the night, and then he’d leave her with enough cash for a ticket and a meal or two until she found this mysterious aunt who may or may not know she’s coming. Recipe for success right there.

The pump clicks off when it’s done. Joel sets it back, making his way for his ten thousandth cup of subpar coffee and some snack that won’t set his stomach rolling. Not all of them were filled with ice cream and waffle cones, after all.

“Stay close,” he says with a finger pointed in her direction as he disappears inside. He steals one last glance at her before heading into the bathroom and does another cursory sweep when he comes out. Still on her balance beam. 

It’s a fine-tuned system at this point. Coffee in the biggest size they sell, taste test to see if palatable while black, add cream if they’ve burnt the shit out of it. Salty aisle first, sweet as a back up. Hot dog roller option as dead last. He goes for some jerky and grabs a thing of mini donuts for Ellie. Maybe he was keeping the kid from being murdered, but apparently, he was going to single handedly make certain she was a diabetic by age sixteen. 

“Look what I got ya,” Joel says, the bell above the door echoing behind him as he walks out. Talking to the kid he’s gotten pretty damn used to always being right there to talk to. Except Ellie’s nowhere to be found. 

Where the fuck did she go? The truck was locked, and he took the keys in with him. What’d he do that for? He should’ve made sure that she had somewhere safe to go to if necessary. There are three other cars, two eighteen wheelers, one more pickup truck. Three kids outside, two of them smoking, one drinking coffee, one half asleep. A middle-aged woman waiting on somebody. Where’s Ellie?

Going back towards the pumps, Joel’s about to lift the tarp and make sure she hadn’t returned to her original hiding place when he hears her.

“I said I don’t fucking want to!” 

He’s pretty sure his shoes end up covered in coffee when the cup hits the ground. 

Some man has her between the pump and his truck. His hands aren’t on her, but he’s way too damn close if you ask Joel. 

Joel steps around, easily slotting himself between Ellie and this grown man who was backing her into a corner. She had a switchblade clutched in her fist. “I do believe she said to leave her the hell alone,” Joel growls. “You got a problem with your hearin’?”

The man doesn’t back down as quickly as Joel would like. “Listen, man, we was jus’ talking. She didn’t have to talk to me if she didn’ wanna. She’s a big girl.”

“Joel.”

“Actually, she’s a minor, so back the fuck off of her.” He takes another step to the side, more solidly in front of her. He can sense the fear rolling off in trembles through her body. They’d be talking about that pretty little knife of hers later. 

“She didn’ haffa talk to me,” he slurs his words, looking over Joel’s shoulder to catch another glance of Ellie.

For some reason, that’s what does it. Swinging back, Joel slams his fist hard into the other guy’s face. It feels good, but not good enough. He pulls back, drives it forward again. One more time after, just for good measure. 

“Joel!”

Right. Probably shouldn’t actually murder this man in front of her. 

“Get in the car,” he warns her. Sick bastard deserves worse than a few blows to his pretty little face. Joel has half a mind to borrow that knife from Ellie and slice the man’s dick clean off to really teach him a lesson. He tucks that away, heads back towards the truck. 

It’s silent for a minute. Joel picks up the phone. “Got a drunk driver down at the Kum and Go.” His eye close at the memory of a few hours ago when they’d first passed one, and Ellie had mocked the name mercilessly. “He looks like someone messed him up pretty good, too.” They send him through and ensure authorities will be on the way. 

Joel hangs up the phone and starts driving before Ellie can get all antsy about the police again. “This is why you don’t go wandering,” he warns darkly. 

“I get it, okay?” She’s all hard edges and indignant tone. “He snuck up on me when I was waiting to get back in the truck. I didn’t mean to-”

“Not your fault,” Joel corrects quickly, turnabout. He runs a hand down his face. His watch is heavy on his arm. “I didn’t mean…it wasn’t your fault, Ellie.” 

There are several minutes where it’s just him and her and the rumbling of tires on the road. Reaching out, Joel turns the radio on as a peace offering. It’s playing a commercial. 

“Did he put his hands on you?” The question comes out sounding angry. He’s got to get himself under control before Ellie thinks he’s angry with her. 

It’s just a whisper—her little, “No.”

“Are you…okay?” With effort, he forces his voice to calm. Hands clenching on the steering wheel, breath tight in his chest. Not her fault, don’t ever let her think that sort of thing is her responsibility. 

Ellie’s head falls against the doorframe. She closes her eyes. “Yes.” Shuddering exhale.

What a little liar.

//

Eventually, she does seem to fall asleep. Joel’s left listening to top hits from today while she dozes. He thinks about shoving cotton balls in his ears just to muffle it out. He doesn’t think about turning it off, but he won’t delve into why that might be.

Just get to the bus stop. He’s just got to get her to the bus stop and then this all will be over. His portion done and over with. Another hotel room and another $90 for a bus ticket, and then she’s on her own. And she’d be fine. She’s got that little switchblade to protect her. Joel practically scoffs. That thing could’ve been whacked right out of her hand earlier.

But still, teenagers take buses. Even teenage girls. She’d be fine. And if she wasn’t, that’s not his problem. One furtive glance in her direction and Joel’s reassessing what is and isn’t his problem. Some random kid stowing away in his truck has already gotten enough out of him. Let her aunt take over. 

And she would, just as soon as the kid showed up in Salt Lake City and found this woman who supposedly offered her a place to stay. And hopefully this woman was where Ellie thought that she was and wouldn’t mind taking in some punk runaway with a mouth like a sailor on leave. Ellie would make it work, though. She’d talk about dinosaurs and constellations and ranking favorite astronauts and lick melted ice cream off of her palm like a dog and it’d all work out.

His grip tightens on the steering wheel. As long as no one got in her way before she got there. Because she was clearly a kid with a slightly desperate look in her eye and an occasional people pleasing streak. That man, drunk as he was, sniffed her out in no time flat. 

Before he left her behind, he’d have to give her a little crash course of what to do and who not to trust. It’s funny, Joel thinks, that he’s the exact type of man he would tell this girl to never get near. And he wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head, not now and not before. She was safe with him. Always.

The lights of the city and the deceleration on the offramp is enough to rouse her. Ellie pushes herself up and stretches her arms overhead. “Are we there?” 

“Just about,” he answers gruffly. “Got all of your stuff?” It had taken some reorganizing, but she’d managed to cram her new belongings into that backpack of hers. She wore most of them anyway. 

In a show of obedience, Ellie searches the truck, flipping her head between her knees to even go as far as to hunt under the seats. She pulls out an old candy wrapper. “Think so.” She sniffs. “You smell like coffee.”

That would be because he was wearing some approximation of 24 ounces of it when he dumped the whole cup in a rush to get to Ellie earlier. “Spilled some,” is the response he gives instead.

“Oh.”

She flicks the end straps of her backpack together. The streetlights are plentiful in the city, the evening traffic almost fully died down at this hour of the night. The buildings loom overhead as Joel follows GPS directions to the local Holiday Inn. 

“Now, I’m going to go in and reserve a room with you. They won’t let a minor stay there on their own.” He was gonna lay out the plan, make sure she knew what he was willing to do for her and where he was drawing the line. “Tomorrow morning, you can just leave the keycard in the room when you leave. They’ll count that as checkout.”

“Leave the key in the room. Got it.” She nods once, eyes still downcast. 

“Get to the bus station early and make sure you pick up some lunch or snacks to have on board. Who knows when you’ll be making stops, and it’s a long ride to Salt Lake.” It reminds him too much, aches too bad. A kid getting ready for her first field trip without daddy tagging along as chaperone. The borderline panic he’d had the night before. He trusted his kid plenty. He didn’t trust other people with her, was the problem. “Take a seat near the back if you can. In the aisle. Put your bag in the window seat, and maybe no one will sit next to you.”

Ellie nods. “I have been on a bus before,” she says a little wryly. “But thanks, that’s a good idea.”

Part smartass and part people pleaser, a strange fucking combo. 

He pulls into the Holiday Inn and throws the truck into park. Together, they sit and look up at the several story building. The front of it is illuminated with blue lights shining up on the flat, gray walls. The ‘L’ in Holiday is burnt out. 

“Well, come on then.” Joel grabs his duffel, keeping up appearances and all. Ellie follows behind him without commentary. It’s almost midnight. They’d taken far too many stops to get here. Ice cream alone had taken almost an hour somehow. But then he remembers her happy munching and her feet swinging off the tailgate and the stars that were just beginning to poke out around them. Looking up now, Joel realizes they don’t stand a chance of seeing Mars from within the city limits. Oh well.

Much like the motel before, Joel goes right up to the front desk and requests a double room. One credit card swipe later and the two of them are headed towards the elevator. They pass by the indoor swimming pool, and Joel nudges her shoulder.

“Wanna swim?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she shoots back without any heat. It almost makes him laugh.

Sixth floor up. The key card works on the first try. Two beds with crisp, white comforters and green and blue flooring. There’s one bathroom and a flatscreen hanging on the wall. 

This is where he leaves her. The door shuts behind with him inside. 

“We should look for bedbugs,” he says inexplicably.

The look Ellie shoots him makes him immediately aware of how ridiculous he’s being. “You mean that shithole before was fine, but this one we gotta check? You must be losing it, man.”

“More likely in the cities,” Joel mumbles, stepping past her and making a real show of lifting up the edges of the mattress and shining the flashlight from his phone down onto it. “Come on, least you could do is give me a hand.”

Ever the obedient little shit, she does just that.

In a shocking turn of events, there are no signs of anything awry. 

It’s not some grand hotel room, but the idea of leaving her all alone in here makes it feel cavernous. Joel watches as she flops her backpack on the mattress and begins pulling out the pajamas he had bought her. The tags are still attached, even though he knows she’s worn them the last few nights. 

“Here.” Pulling out his pocketknife, Joel moves to cut the tags off for her and sets them on the dresser fixed to the wall. 

Ellie licks her lips. “Thanks.”

“Remember where the station is?” He’d driven past it on their way here. Not even a half mile away. She could manage.

Nod. “You going straight through to Jackson?”

A return nod. Time to rip off the bandaid. “Yeah, I should get back on the road.” He’d need more coffee. 

Before, he had resolutely decided against doing this; next thing he knows, she’ll be using her one call at the police station on him, but he can’t leave her with nothing, with no one. So he takes the pen sitting on the desk and scribbles his number onto the cardboard keyholder. “In case of emergencies.”

A suppressed smile. “In case of emergencies,” she parrots. “I’ll see you around, maybe.”

Odds are, they will never cross paths again.

Joel sighs, hating the nervousness in his fingertips and the creature trying to yawn to life in his chest. Muscle memory at its finest. His damn heart reaching out to her. He crosses back to the door.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ellie.” 

She nods. She looks like she could cry. Joel doesn’t think about why that could be.

“Lock this behind me.” He points to the deadbolt and the chain as he swings the door open. 

It’s mostly closed behind him when he hears one final, “Roger Dodger,” in her voice.

Chapter Text

Solid wood is meeting his fist before Joel can think it through. He hadn’t even made it to the elevators.

She swings the door back open, eyes wide and confused. “Joel?”

Well shit, what’s he supposed to say now? “You shouldn’t open the door without lookin’ to see who it is,” he corrects her like this was all a lesson to be learned. 

A huff and a roll of her eyes. Full-on, ‘I’m not an idiot’ act engaged. “I figured it was you, dumbass. Just like…why are you still here?”

That’s a great fucking question. “I’m…I’m too tired to drive the whole way to Wyoming tonight.” Blink. Blink. “I already paid for this room, didn’t I?” 

Hope, that’s what he’s done to this poor girl. He can see the second it registers, how it bolsters her up and fills her sails. She doesn’t smile, but it’s almost better with her squared, proud stance as she steps back from the door. She looks like she’s won something. “I believe it was gifted to me,” Ellie declares, eyes cut to the side. “But I guess I’m willing to share.”

For several seconds, Joel is worried she’s going to hug him. “Well, just bless your heart,” he says in the most condescending tone he can manage. 

Now she does smile. “I call first dibs on the shower, though!” 

And she’s off, faucet running before Joel’s even shut the door behind him.

He chucks his duffel on the bed closest to the door.

//

A minimum of twenty minutes, that’s how long she’s in the shower for. Joel turns the TV on and falls asleep before she reappears. 

Wet hair around her shoulders, pajamas slightly falling off of her too small frame. Half-asleep, Joel can feel her eyes staring at him. He peels one open, and at once, she scurries off to her bed. The air conditioning clicks to life and begins to whir. 

These mattresses are about a thousand times better, and Joel smiles to himself when he hears Ellie’s quite little sigh of contentment as she settles in. Glad the accommodations were up to snuff for her tonight. 

“Joel.”

“What?”

A beat. Two. “Are you gonna shower?”

He’s most of the way asleep. “Tomorrow,” he grunts out. He’s already kicked his boots off and rolled onto his side. He keeps his left ear up so he might hear her if she keeps jabbering, as she’s known to do. 

“Joel?”

“What?” He’s a little sharper this time, making sure she knows that she’s waking him up, and he does not appreciate it. 

“Nevermind.”

In all of her chatter, he’s never once gotten a ‘nevermind.’ No matter how short he got with her. He flips onto his back and sighs to gather some semblance of patience. “What were you gonna say, Ellie?”

She’s curved onto her side, facing him. Blankets pulled to her chin, a big white pillow fluffed up around her head. “Will you take me to the bus station tomorrow?”

His heart squeezes; there’s no pretending it’s anything else. It aches something fierce at her little voice and the anxious tilt of her words. It pierces something long wrapped up and tucked away. His hand comes up, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose. There are only two answers here. One that Joel knows he should give. Another that he knows he’s going to. 

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, I will.”

Silence. The air conditioning kicks off. Someone above them rolls their suitcases into their room. Joel stares at the green light of the fire detector. He still smells like coffee. 

“Thank you.” Her voice is so tiny. If he’d been laying on his good ear, he definitely would’ve missed it.

//

This morning, Joel wakes up first. 

He wakes up with a start—an echo of a voice in his mind and a phantom of little arms wrapped around his neck. He can almost still catch a remnant of laughter, a trickling of delight. She smelled of cinnamon sugar and Garnier Fructis leave in conditioner. She was hanging from his back and no matter how much he turned and shifted and craned, he could not catch sight of her. He woke when her hands slipped free. He woke when her screams stole the place of giggles. 

Joel drags his weary ass off to the shower, and with Ellie still bundled up and passed out, he slips from the room to return the favor of breakfast acquisition. 

His phone starts to ring. 

Tommy. Of course.

“What?”

“Good to hear from you too, big brother,” he chirps in Joel’s ear. Too good-natured, that’s Joel’s opinion about his brother. Never worried enough about anything. Except for the things he worried too much about. The ones that were mostly baseless. “When you gettin’ here?” 

The ceremony was set for Friday evening, somewhere in the valley of mountains. There were probably going to be horses. It was all very yee-haw. Joel hadn’t brought a tux in hopes that casual attire would pan out. “Sometime tonight. Depends on traffic.” And if there are any delays at the Greyhound station. 

Tucking the phone between his shoulder and ear, Joel begins loading plates for himself and Ellie. He gets her extra bacon, pleased that this stuff at least appeared less likely to be contaminated with salmonella. 

“Don’t forget my present,” Tommy teases. Joel definitely didn’t have a present.

“Consider it a return on investment of all those nights bailing you out of prison.” 

Good-natured laughing. “Fair enough.” 

That was pretty much the summary of their conversations these days. A few pleasantries, cautious references to the past that carefully evaded the topic of one certain brown-eyed girl, and maybe an inquiry or two about work.

“The boys at the site gonna make it a whole week and a half without you?” 

There it is. 

“Between job sites. Gave ‘em the time off.” Unpaid, but still. They could go join another crew if they needed the supplement in the meantime. One cup of coffee. He stirs together some instant hot cocoa for Ellie on intuition alone. This was gonna be a bitch to get back up to their room. “Listen, I gotta get a move on.”

It still hurts—hearing Tommy’s voice coming through the phone. All this time, it’s pretty messed up. The kind of messed up Joel can’t very well explain to him. 

“Alright, alright. I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’ve got it.”

Ellie would probably be waking up soon. He should get back up there so she doesn’t wake up alone. Who knows why that’s on his list of priorities, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Offer’s still out there,” Tommy tacks on.

“Huh?” Joel’s trying to play walking jenga with two extremely full plates and cups topped off with hot liquid. He didn’t need to bathe in coffee two days in a row here. 

The kid appears at his side, about scaring the shit out of him. She’s still in her pajamas, feet shoved into her Converses with the laces untied. Wordlessly, she takes a plate and cup from him and turns back towards the elevator.

“To stay with me and Maria. I know how hotels add up.” Feels like a jab considering Joel has put Tommy up in a hotel as opposed to letting him stay with him every time for the last fifteen years. 

“I’ll think about it.” Ellie manages to hold another cup as he digs the key out of his pocket. Good thing he hadn't slipped out and ditched her. The kid would’ve been locked out of her room before she even brushed her teeth. “I really got to go.”

“Yeah, okay. Love ya too, Joel.” 

The line disconnects.

Ellie’s already cross-legged on his bed, munching into her bacon when he hangs up. “Who was that?” she asks, mouth full and eyes wide at the waffle drenched in syrup he had prepared for her plate. “What’s this?”

“Hot chocolate.” He answers the second question.

Ellie narrows her eyes. “Was it your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?” she guesses with a curious tilt of her head.

“Still no.” 

She scrambles for the television remote. It’s a Wednesday morning; somehow, she still finds some cartoons to turn to and leans back against his headboard with the plate on her lap. She’s going to make a complete mess. Scrambled eggs drop onto his pillow. There it is.

Completely absorbed in her TV show, Joel starts packing together their belongings off of the bathroom counter. “Bus leaves at 11.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waves him off and turns the volume up a little higher. 

Joel pokes his head around the corner, taking a minute to eat some of his subpar biscuits and gravy. “Aren’t you a little old for cartoons?”

Face swinging around to him, jaw slipping open. She’s got bacon smashed in her molars. “This isn’t just a cartoon, Joel.” She makes sure her tone indicates he is a damn fool. “It’s Savage Starlight the series.”

“As opposed to…”

“Savage Starlight the comics,” she responds with lightning speed. “Or Savage Starlight the cinematic universe. Coming to theaters this summer.”

She sounds like a goddamn advertisement. “You gonna give it two thumbs up?”

The pillow that had been sitting next to her narrowly misses his head. “It’s a cultural phenomenon, Joel! How do you not know about Savage Starlight?”

“Everyone at school is talking about it, Daddy! Come on. We have to go.” 

“Not my cuppa tea.” He watches the screen of animated characters talking in a spaceship. Someone’s got a little green dragon-like companion. “And I’m not twelve.”

“Fourteen!” she shouts loud enough to wake the whole damn hotel. 

Almost, he laughs. Almost, he reaches out and ruffles her bedhead. Almost, he forgets. 

“Be ready by ten. We don’t want to be late.”

//

How many times can he possibly do this? Joel’s out of ways to say goodbye and then not say goodbye. 

He asks if she still has his number. She says, “Yes.” Both of them sit there in silence for tense, heavy seconds before Joel gives in and says, “Call me when you get there.” Because he’s a goddamn sucker.

They’re almost an hour early. Joel was too restless to relax in the hotel room and had ushered her out with nonsense comments about traffic. It wasn’t even a half mile away. Ellie, for once, has the decency not to call him out.

Backpack slung over her shoulder, hair pulled back, set line of her lips. She was ready. 

It makes Joel think of the first day of kindergarten. It makes him think of brushing baby hairs back from her forehead and promising he’d be there at the end of the day to get her. It reminded him how she’d walked resolutely into the classroom and hadn’t looked back.

God, he was really done with remembering. 

They get out of the truck and stand back twenty feet from the ticket window. There are four cops hovering off to the side, talking and laughing and drinking coffee. He feels Ellie tense. There are twenty-something punks with duffles on their shoulders and a middle-aged woman hugging her grandchildren goodbye. There’s a man who’s easily twice her size standing alone. 

Where were the other teenage girls? Where were the other five foot nothin’s that were barely a hundred pounds soaking wet with little cherub cheeks, bad senses of humor, and effortless laughs? 

The air seizes in his lungs. The pain, deep in his chest. Out of instinct, his hand goes to rest over his heart, like it’s trying to rub away some hurt that was beyond skin deep. 

Ellie swallows and shoulders her backpack up. “Well, I guess I better-”

“Looks like they’re sold out,” Joel says before he can stop himself. There’s no way to tell from all the way back here. He’s talking shit. She’ll know. She can choose to go along with it or not. Her choice. “For the next few days.”

“Huh?” Ellie follows his gaze. There’s nothing more to see than groups of people; probably most of them aren’t even getting on her bus. They were so early. And then she’s looking up at him. He doesn’t know what she sees. He hopes the fear isn’t laid bare on display. “Y-yeah. That fucking blows, right?”

Joel swallows, fights against the terror that’s rising in him and the desperation which is pushing its way out, forcing its way free. She’s just a kid. No one even knows she’s coming. No one’s even waiting for her. 

“If you don’t mind waitin’...I can take you. After the wedding.”

Her inhale stalls on the way to her lungs. “Why would you do that?” The question is genuine. It’s not her trying to get something out of him; no signs of manipulation tucked away. She doesn’t understand. No one has ever made sure she understands. 

“It’d be cheaper anyway.” No, it wouldn’t. “If I took you myself.” Lies. Feeding her alone would cost him more than the bus ticket. But if he doesn’t, who will? All sorts of thoughts, worries, break free once he opens the door of what ifs. This woman she’s looking for might not be anywhere in the city. Someone else might find Ellie first. The trouble she could get pulled into. The trouble she could cause. The sacrifices she might have to make just to ensure ends could meet. She’s just a baby. “If you don’t mind making the rest of the drive to Jackson, that is.”

“I don’t mind.” The words practically trip over themselves with the urgency she spits them out. So much damn hope. It isn’t fair, what it’ll do to her in the long run. It isn’t fair, that Joel can’t cut ties while she stands a chance. “We can even listen to your country shit.”

Now that she had a foothold, she was going to dig in. Shit. “You can check my oil,” he says, almost smiling.

“Yes.” She’s already backing away from the bus station. She’s already easing back towards his car. 

It’s too late now. His hand, running down his face. It’s rough and calloused and not meant for soothing the nightmares of little girls and braiding back their hair and building them a home, not anymore. “Get in the truck.”

She’s already halfway there.

//

It’s the longest Ellie’s been silent for. She sits with her backpack on her lap and her feet hovering just over the floor of the car, and her seatbelt clicked into place. She is still and steady and silent. It’s unnerving. 

He gets off an exit just over the border into Wyoming before they’re rolling through nothing but bumblefuck for hours to come, for gas and food. The kid still doesn’t move. “Here.” He passes her money. He doesn’t think much about how much cash he’s handed over to this twerp and the fact that she could definitely just snag his wallet and take off if she so chose. (Nor does he think about the fact that she hasn’t and what that means.) “Go get us somethin’ decent.”

“What do you want?” she asks as she shifts in her seat for the first time in what feels like hours. 

It’s an Arby’s. What he wants is a home-cooked meal that isn’t deep fried in peanut oil. But hey, take what you can get. “Don’t matter so long as it’s hot.”

Ellie shoots him a look, just dripping with how unimpressed she is by that answer. She starts shuffling out.

“Hey!” Joel calls after her, getting the truck hooked up to start pumping.

She waves him off, “Yeah, yeah, no wandering.” 

If nothing else, Joel was starting to feel confident she’d learned that lesson already. “I was gonna tell you that your shoe’s untied, you little shit. Don’t want ya to bash your face in.”

“So considerate!” She gives him the middle finger and goes inside. Joel laughs for only a second, still unsure how he somehow had made this worse. 

//

“What’s your brother like?” After food, they had quickly fallen back into Ellie’s Lightning Round of Inquiries. 

Joel is still eating his curly fries because he didn’t shovel food into his mouth like a damn dog. “Stupid,” he answers around a spiced, fried potato. “He’s a good time sort of guy. Got into a lot of trouble when we were kids.”

Ellie seems to digest this, plucking one of his fries out of the bag sitting on the bench seat between them and chewing thoughtfully. “Does he have any kids?”

“No.” Something smarts right between his ribs. He almost winces. “You got any brothers or sisters?” He’s quick to ask the question, anything to redirect the conversation while he still could.

“Nah, just me that I know of.” She reaches forward, changes the radio station as it transition to fuzz again. It’s been rough going out here. Country, Christian, and political debate were about all they were receiving signal of for the last few hours. “Have you been to Wyoming before?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?” She’s still fiddling with the buttons, legs tucked up underneath her. Her backpack had been thrown into the backseat to allow for more leg space. She still seemed to prefer keeping herself all squashed up and small, though. 

That was enough questions. “Pass.”

“Lame.” It had become almost an instantaneous response at this point. “Do you like his fiance?”

“Never met her,” he admits with his eyes fixed on the road ahead. It was him and one other Nissan that seemed to enjoy going a solid ten under the speed limit. They were getting close, and with a few hours of daylight left, Joel was hoping they’d get the chance to see the Tetons from a distance. It was one of the things Tommy was always talking about, how those mountains just about surrounded the town. “She can’t be all that bright if she’s marrying my bonehead of a brother, though.”

Out of desperation, Joel reaches out and smacks Ellie’s hand away from the radio. He couldn’t take any more static. “Ugh, I’m bored.” Unzipped bag, book in hand. Oh God. “Do you not like him?”

“Will Livingston?” Joel asks, wishing he could take the passing lane around the toaster of a car in front of him but decides against pushing his poor old truck any more than he already was. “Not in the slightest.”

Ellie whacks his arm with her book. “No, idiot. Your brother.”

Joel sits up a little straighter, holds the steering wheel a little bit tighter. “He’s my brother. He’s family. That’s what matters.”

With her narrowed eyes and momentary silence, Joel feels her deciphering something, trying to read between words and interpret body language. She opens the book and holds it over her face. “You’re mad at him about something.”

“No. I’m not.” It would be more convincing if he wasn’t muttering the words through ground down teeth.

“You seem mad.” 

“I’m annoyed.”

Page flip. “At your brother?”

“At you.” His words don’t hold the bite towards her that they used to. 

Ellie just waves him away. “Hey, Joel. What did the mermaid wear to her math class?”

//

Rest stops, fast food joints, and gas station parking lots were the background of their lives. 

This sort of travel will wear heavy on anyone, but Joel’s gotta give the kid credit. She takes it in stride. Even when he can see the exhaustion in her eyes, the utter disgust at the concept of getting back into the truck for several more hours of driving, she quickly masks it and pushes on. 

So when they stop somewhere off the highway at three in the afternoon, not much further now from where they were headed, he can’t even begrudge her when she climbs out of the truck and starts off. She’s headed towards a playground outside the brick, modular building housing a variety of greasy fast food offerings, overpriced car phone chargers, and ATMs with exorbitant fees. “Where do ya think you’re headed?”

“Come on, man,” she groans, arms stretching overhead. The clothes she wears are wrinkled and there’s a spot of ketchup on her jeans. Hopefully that would come out in the wash. “Just for a literal minute.”

“Aren’t you a little old for playgrounds?”

The look she shoots him is imploring. He waves her off and goes back to pumping gas.

Gas, bathroom, more coffee, the running list of essentials to make each stop efficient checked off, Joel makes his way over to the fenced in playground that was surrounded by other exhausted looking parents and panting dogs looking for the best spot to take a shit. Joel watches his step.

The kid is running around with a little boy who’s probably half her age. 

“Ellie!”

Her head whips towards him and she holds up a pleading finger that he knows is signal for, Just one more minute. I’m begging you. 

His own singular finger meaning one minute means one minute. 

She darts back off, arms held up like that of a monster as she chases the kid. Peels of laughter filter over their way.

“Your daughter’s good with him,” a Black man muses beside Joel. His elbows are resting on the fence, and he watches the little boy with a near eagle eye. “It’s hard for Sam to find kids willing to play with him since he can’t hear too good.”

Oh great, Ellie’s playing with some deaf kid. Now how is Joel supposed to force her to leave? 

Not looking for much of a conversation, Joel grunts. In another situation, he’d probably correct the fact that she ain’t his kid at all, but in this world, that wouldn’t go over too well. 

“Where are you headed?” the man asks, probably starving for some adult-oriented conversation. Joel could almost sympathize. Though he was more so after some goddamn silence.

Somehow the two kids have found a soccer ball. Ellie plays goalie. She’s fucking awful.

“North.” Joel was not looking to extend this interaction more than necessary. She could have five more minutes to play with the little deaf boy. He doesn’t know if he’s ever seen her smile so bright, so consistent. Jesus.

The man nods. He’s eating a Slim Jim, still watching the boy real close. “We’re headed down to Denver.” A little ironic that it’s where they’ve just come from. “Gotta make the trek out to the pediatric hospital down that way a couple times a year.”

Joel knows he’s supposed to bite. He doesn’t.

“You start figuring out the best places to stop after a few trips up and down 191.” 

“Mhm.” She actually blocks a kick and jumps ‘bout five feet in the air to celebrate. The kid laughs, imitating her wild hopping about. 

The man laughs with the kids from all the way over here. Joel remains silent. “I can tell you aren’t one for talking. But I’m only saying, it will mean a lot to my brother, your daughter playing with him like this.”

Not his daughter. He chokes the words back, feels how they scorch in the back of his throat, singeing his vocal cords and frying his resolve. Not his daughter because his daughter is buried six feet under. Not his daughter because she’s not anybody’s. He’s not trying to claim her. He’s not trying to fill what was always meant to remain fractured and barren. 

“Seems like a good kid,” is what Joel manages to offer back. 

Nod, hand extended. “Henry, by the way.” Joel shakes for a half-second before turning his eyes back to Ellie. The two of them have moved to the monkey bars. She’s showing off, hanging upside down and swinging back and forth. Damn kid was gonna have dirt in the end of her hair. 

She flips herself around with such little fanfare, Joel’s convinced she’s going to crack her head on the dusty ground, and her name gets caught in his throat before he can call it out. She lands solidly on her feet, like a goddamn cat.

“Joel.”

Sam laughs, and it’s kind of stunted and sudden and surprised. Ellie doesn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest, just joins right in and keeps on running, childlike energy not even close to used up. 

“Sam really hates these trips,” Henry continues. Joel’s pretty certain he’s desperate if he’s willing to talk to what is essentially a brick wall. “Had leukemia when he was just two years old. Now he has to go for testing every six months to make sure it’s not back.”

“No one likes needles jammed into their damn veins,” Joel comments. Deaf little boy who also had cancer? Should’ve brought a chair for how long he’s gonna be stuck here now.

“It’s not just that.” Henry sighs. The two of them watch their respective charges and not each other. “I think he can tell how nervous it makes me, waiting for all those results to come back. Never know when you’re gonna get the worst news of your life, ya know?”

“Mr. Miller?” Middle of the night, pulled aside into an empty family waiting room. Tommy’s beside him with an icepack to his head and a few stitches in his right eyebrow. There’s blood all over his brother. It doesn’t belong to him. 

Clearing his throat, clearing his mind. You don’t know how it’s gonna hit you, the worst news of your existence. You don’t know how grief will drape itself across your shoulders. You have no idea how loss will bleed the life from your very soul. 

“Ellie.” Sorry, kid. “We gotta go.”

//

Ravaged, fractured and bleeding, Joel leads them back I-191 and tries to remember that his heart must still be beating because he’s keeping the car in the lines on the road. 

Ellie’s jabbering about Sam. He also likes Savage Starlight. He would make a great soccer player. He couldn’t hear her, but he laughed at all of her silent jokes. 

“Don’t you have any friends back in Boston?” Joel asks after a thirty minute recap of a twenty minute playdate. “Aren’t you sad to be leaving any of ‘em behind?”

Immediate silence. 

Joel looks over at her, grateful for the distraction that was flaring flames deep in his pleural cavity. He didn’t think that would be an off-topic bit of conversation. Considering how quickly she warmed to some random little kid in middle of nowhere southern Wyoming, seemed  like she should make friends pretty damn easy.

“No.” The word comes quick, sharp and abrupt. Like it could cut glass. Like it could slice through flesh. “Not anymore.”

The sorrow chokes the truck cabin into silence.

//

Finally, Wednesday night all of two nights before the wedding, they roll into Jackson, Wyoming. Despite having seven hours plus stops to figure out how Joel was going to handle his newly acquired…situation, he hadn’t come up with much. 

He did make it before the sunset, though. Ellie stares out the windows at the mountains, wistfully saying at one point, “Do you think on top of them you feel closer to the stars?” Not that they were going to find out. He wasn’t climbing a mountain with the damn kid. Salt Lake City was already more than enough.

It’s their first brush with cell service once they enter the town limits. 

The sunset is dipping behind the western mountains and the streets are decently empty with the town resting peacefully in its shoulder season. Some of the trees are beginning to turn with deep reds and golden yellows lining the walk. 

“This place is…” Ellie’s got her face pressed directly against the glass, and Joel wants to tell her to quit smudging it but waits for her to finish her sentence instead. “Like a fake town? It doesn’t look like people actually live here, ya know?”

Joel sighs. Yes, he does. “Well, for the next three days, you live here. So get used to it.”

She smiles, falling back in her seat and staring out the windshield with him. “Longer than some other places I’ve lived,” she says with a shrug.

Alright then.

She goes back to scanning outside the window, resolutely looking away from him. He could really do with if she’d stop with dropping that sort of shit.

“You hungry?” he asks, more than okay with putting off seeing Tommy and explaining his little partner in crime here. It’s not like he was just going to stick her in a hotel room for the next three days. That just seemed…cruel. 

She’s silent next to him, and Joel glances over, expecting to find her enamored with some tacky Western shop. Instead, she’s bone white, staring dead ahead with a blank expression.

“Ellie?” He gives it to the count of five. “Ellie?” Grabbing her shoulder does the trick.

She screams, leaping away from him and whacking her head against the door frame in the process. “Shit, man. What’s your deal?” But he can see her shaking form even as she draws in a breath.

“Are you okay?” Joel asks. Outside, he sees nothing alarming beyond a few too many people unironically in cowboy hats. “Ellie? You with me, kid?”

“Fine.” The word comes out quick, sudden. “I’m fine.” She grabs her backpack from behind her seat and holds it on her lap, arms wrapped around. Either it was guarding her, or she was guarding it. Joel hadn’t quite deciphered which one yet. “Don’t like when people touch me.”

Nodding, Joel turns down the street his GPS indicates. His phone is still routing to Tommy’s, but he can figure that out in a minute. “That’s fair.” Still staring out the window, not seeing anything he’d bet. Just not looking at him. “I’m…sorry.” He could say he was just trying to get her attention or she was ignoring him or something, but none of that would help whatever the hell just happened. And it wasn’t his problem, whatever her deal was, but he at least could not be such an asshole that he made it worse.

Ponytail whipping with the force of her head turn, Ellie opens her mouth. Nothing comes out before it falls closed. She wraps her arms tighter.

Mindlessly, Joel follows the directions until he’s all but driving past Tommy’s house. “Shit,” he realizes, hitting the brakes.

“Are you okay?” Ellie asks now, more relaxed as she falls back into needling him. 

“I just didn’t mean to-”

And there he is. That dumb motherfucker with his too long hair and his jean jacket and his arms waving back and forth over his head as if Joel is landing a plane and not very clearly stopping in the middle of the street with the intention to cease wherever the hell he was about to go. Well, too late now.

“Is that him?”

“Yep.” Tommy keeps waving them forward, showing them into the driveway like goddamn Vana White. 

“What’s his name?”

This whole time, Joel’s just been calling him “my brother” apparently. “Tommy.”

Ellie snickers. “A grown man who still goes by Tommy?”

And there he is. At Joel’s window. 

“What the fuck is that?” he asks through the closed window with a finger pointed at Ellie.

Well, alright then, Joel did bring every last bit of this upon himself. He opens the door, dropping down to be enveloped by his brother’s open arms. It’s been a long time. Too long, really. That’s Joel’s fault. No one else to blame here. 

“Really, man, you got some love child I didn’t know about?” It’s dangerous territory, referring to Joel and having a child. It almost makes him get back in the truck and drive right away. No memories of Sarah. He needed to get through this without her making an appearance, without it feeling like her ghost was still trailing right behind him, out of reach but never out of his mind. He just needed to make it through. 

Joel sighs. “Long story.”

Ellie stays safely in the truck cabin, not moving a muscle to get out. It was odd, seeing the same kid who was so precocious she all but kicked him in the balls and stole his truck, now sit, waiting for her cue from Joel. 

“This is Ellie,” Joel rips off the bandaid. “Ellie, Tommy.” With his feet on solid ground and the promise of not getting back in a moving vehicle for the next three days on the horizon, Joel is well and truly exhausted. He needed a hot shower, a cold beer, and a silent bedroom. 

“Nice to meet ya, little lady,” Tommy smiles kindly in her direction before shooting Joel another ‘you gonna tell me what the fuck is going on here’ sort of look. Taking it in stride, though. Joel has to give him credit for taking it in stride. 

Ellie stares at the two of them through the open truck door. With a jerk of his head, Joel signals for her to come join them. Backpack cradled in her arms. “Yeah,” she says by way of response. Joel fights nudging her to get some manners out of her.

There’s nothing but tense silence and heated looks before Tommy claps his hands. Ellie jumps. “Dinner’s almost ready. I’m sure you two are starving.”

The look Joel gets from Ellie can only be described as pleading. It was too late now. “Sounds great,” he says, following behind Tommy to the front door. His brother turns around to shoot him another ‘what the fuck’ look. Joel waves him on. 

“Tommy is that you?” a woman’s voice calls out from behind the wall separating the kitchen and living room the three of them were standing in. “I could use a hand!”

“Coming! Take your coats off. Make yourselves at home.”

It almost makes Joel laugh, his brother playing homemaker. He unties his boots and kicks them off. House rules. “Hey.”

Ellie turns at once to his voice. She’s still clutching that backpack like it’s personally responsible for keeping her alive. And maybe, a little bit, it is. When he considers all of her earthly possessions are probably tucked away in there…yeah, maybe it makes sense she holds so tight to it. 

There’s fear written in her eyes. 

Joel doesn’t know what to do. It was apparent how excited Tommy was to have him around. They’d barely seen each other in a decade, and it was his brother’s wedding in two days. Least he could do was sit down to a meal and meet the fiance Joel didn’t even know existed until three weeks ago. But there’s also this kid, the one he has zero responsibility for, who looks scared out of her mind and like she’d rather be stuck back in that truck for another twenty-two hours than standing in some strange couple’s entryway. 

“I can take ya somewhere if you want. Get you a room if that would be…better.” The prices around here would be astronomical, goddamn tourist town, but he could put her up somewhere good. Free breakfasts with waffles and complimentary bottles of shampoo and conditioner and solid, locked doors. All the usual amenities. 

The offer just seems to scare her more. “N-no, I’m good. Just don’t want to fucking intrude or whatever.”

That pale face, her shaking hands, trembling on the floor of a closet. Yeah, okay, maybe being alone wouldn’t be preferable after all. How she made it all the way to Texas completely on her own was a question Joel hadn’t yet truly considered. “You’re good, kid. Just take your shoes off and maybe give some damn manners a go.”

Mouth open to shoot back a response, she gets cut off by a woman walking into the room.

Maria isn’t quite what Joel expects. She’s got dark skin and neatly tied back dreads, and a buttoned-up top tucked into her jeans. She looks pretty straight-laced, decently put together, and rather unexcited to be meeting Tommy’s brother.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Joel says, standing up straight without even realizing he’d bent down to be on Ellie’s level. “I’m Joel.” She takes his hand. Shakes it once.

“Maria.”

Weight shifting between her feet, Joel gestures behind him. “This is Ellie.”

The woman raises a single eyebrow and looks between the two of them. “And Ellie is…”

“None of your fucking business.”

Joel’s palm greets his face as he groans. So much for that whole manners concept. “Gonna get her mouth washed out with some damn soap,” he threatens. “Apologies. It’s…been a long journey.”

Shoulders squared, stance tall. She might be taller than Tommy. “Didn’t answer my question.” She wasn’t backing down on this one. 

The sun is setting, and the only light coming in is from the kitchen, where Joel can hear sizzling on the stove and smell freshly roasted meat and melted butter. This could be a damn good meal if they managed to get past the door. 

“A travel arrangement,” Joel supplies. “She needed a ride to her aunt’s.”

Maria looks far from impressed. “And you’ve started a taxi service? I thought Tommy mentioned you work in construction.” 

Ah, okay, that’s how this was going to be. Someone was throwing her weight around a little bit. It wasn’t necessary. Joel wasn’t here to corrupt his brother or pull him away from this woman. She could keep him. “Listen, ma’am. I mean no disrespect, but I’ve been driving for ‘bout a week now. We’re tired and hungry. So either we can sit down to a meal together, or I can go find the nearest drive-thru and call it a night.”

Maria steps aside. 

Ellie follows close on Joel’s heels. More than usual. 

In the kitchen, Tommy’s serving up plates. He grabs a fourth from the cabinet and begins to divide the meat a little more evenly. It was the southern way, after all. Couple more people joining for a meal? Time to squeeze in another chair or two and make food go further like Jesus with some fish and loaves. 

“Why don’t you go wash up?” Joel hopes Ellie takes the hint. He needs a minute, here. 

“Bathroom’s down the hall on the right.” Tommy shoots her another smile. It doesn’t seem to do much to relax her. 

At least she left the backpack by the door. That has to mean something. 

The second she’s gone, Maria is in the kitchen and looking between the two brothers. “Tommy didn’t say you had another daughter.”

Pain, sharp and stuttering and immediate. Joel closes his eyes for a second, gains his bearings. “Not my kid,” he manages to get out. “Just givin’ her a ride, honest.”

“Why?” Tommy butts in before Maria can go on with whatever accusation she’s about to throw out next. “And why didn’t you mention something sooner?”

The food smells so damn good. Otherwise, Joel would’ve been outta here so fast. He would’ve been gone from the moment he saw that picture resting on the mantel in the living room. The one he resolutely didn’t look at. 

“Fifty year old men don’t just give teenage girls a ride halfway up the country,” Maria challenges with her arms over her chest.

Southern hospitality out the window, Joel crosses his arms over his chest and pulls himself to his full height. “What exactly are you implying?” he glowers. “Better not be what I think it is.” He got how it looked, but he wasn’t about to tolerate that sort of attack on his character. 

Movement in the corner of his eye, Ellie’s tucked herself just out of view of the archway leading to the kitchen. 

“If you two have a problem with her being here, just let me know, and we’ll be gone.” It’s intentional, with her standing there listening. She had to know he wasn’t just going to send her off on her own. Not at this point, not after everything else. 

The look Tommy shoots his fiance is borderline desperate. It almost makes Joel feel bad. Almost.

“Very well,” she relents, licking her lips and turning back to dish up some more food. “Don’t expect us not to have questions later, though.”

As if he’d expect anything else. “I’ll take an apology, too.”

//

In an unsurprising turn of events, Ellie eats like she’s never seen a plate of food in her life. 

“It’s been a bit since food that didn’t come out of a bag,” Joel tries to explain as this feral child chews with her mouth open and talks with green beans mashed in her teeth and curses more than once. Joel’s starting to think this might just be a little bit his problem after all. At least for a few days. 

“Guest room’s all made up for you,” Tommy offers as he goes back for seconds. “We can get the couch made up for the little lady.”

Joel can almost feel her stop breathing. He nudges her knee under the table so she looks in his direction and tries to silently communicate that they will figure it out later. He wants to promise her he won’t leave her exposed like that. 

“That’s real nice. Thank you both.” He’s really going for some relationship recovery here. 

An elbow to Ellie’s bicep gets her to swallow her food before muttering her own, “Yeah, thanks.”  Take what he can get.

//

Tense, that’s the only way to describe it. The meal is mostly filled with the clinking of silverware and the closest to small talk the three of them can manage. Ellie offers little more than a snarky comment here and there that’s got Joel’s southern heart stuttering. 

After dinner, there’s a pot of decaf coffee and day-old cinnamon buns. Ellie turns her nose up at the coffee but licks her fingers clean of the dessert. 

No one holds off letting them get to bed after that. Pleasantries have more than been exchanged, though Joel’s still waiting on that apology, and Maria offers to demonstrate the shower controls to Ellie upstairs. 

The couch gives beneath Joel as he collapses back against it. His hands run down his face with a heavy sigh.

“I know the invite said you could bring a plus one, but I had someone more like Tess in mind.”

Joel glares towards his brother. “Tess is married.” He hadn’t gone to the wedding, but he did send a salad spinner and a congratulations card. Only fair, after all the years she put up with him and how little he could offer her. He hoped whoever she settled down with could give her more. Joel knows better than to assume she’d settle for anything less. As was proven by their tumultuous breakup and ongoing not-relationship that followed. 

“I know.” Tommy and Tess got along well. It was the easiest whenever Tommy came around to visit, just put him and Tess in a room while Joel sat back and let them chat. “That’s why I said like Tess. Mostly meant, you know, an adult.”

“It’s a long story.” He’s only going to get out of telling it for so long.

Tommy’s still sipping on decaf. Joel could do with something a little stronger. “She in trouble?”

Ain’t that a question for the ages. Glancing towards the stairs, Joel says, “Must be. Not sure what, but she…” She needed him. Really, she needed someone and had found him in the process. She needed better than whatever Joel was doing right now, but that’s what the aunt was for. He would get her to the aunt and let that woman give all the TLC needed. “She jumped in my truck, was trying to stowaway in the back of it. What was I supposed to do?”

“Call the cops, maybe?” Tommy says like it’s the obvious answer.

Joel shakes his head, refusing to believe something like this could be so simple. That bat out of hell look in her eyes and her scuffed, hole-filled sneakers backing away at the mention. “Didn’t seem right to do to her.”

“What? They looking for her or something?” Tommy sits forward, eyebrows drawing in.

“Remember Tina?” Joel asks, an implication heavy enough to sit between them and allow some sort of understanding. Tina was the sister of one of Tommy’s girlfriends. A co-worker had been consistently a little too…friendly towards her. Joel insisted she go to the police the night after she told him the fucker had followed her home. They did nothing. Shit all for help. A week later, she went missing. Two days after that, found with a bullet in her skull. “Or Sarah’s classmate?” It’s a real testament of how much Joel wants Tommy to understand why he made the choices he had, the fact that he’s breathing his daughter’s name to life in a room where her picture is smiling down at him; the pain is flaring something fierce inside of him. 

It hurts Tommy, too. Either the mention of Sarah or that awful incident. How the three of them had dressed in their Sunday best and darkest, sat in the back of a packed church as a community mourned a mother and two daughters, all brutally slaughtered by their father less than a week before. The girl had gone to a school guidance counselor a few weeks prior. The investigation had gone to the police and then nowhere. Two weeks later, the morning news was covering a local tragedy. Joel hadn’t had the words to describe the horrors that hadn’t taken place to his baby girl who cried in his bed the night before the service. Sweet and innocent and still believing in checks and balances to eliminate evil in the world. Still believing there were whole groups of people that would protect her.

The thoughts are sobering, the mood quickly dimming. Maria re-enters and sits on the arm of the couch beside Tommy. “Do you expect that’s the sort of trouble she’s in?” Tommy asks.

“Not sure if you men know this or not,” Maria chimes in, “but that’s not exactly how the law works one way or the other.”

Clearing his throat, Tommy’s hand grasps onto Maria’s knee. “She’s a lawyer.”

Well ain’t that just swell. “There’s clearly something going on with her. I couldn’t just…she would’ve bolted otherwise, okay?”

He can feel Maria’s eyes narrow over him and sense the way in which she assesses him. All of the unspoken words sit between the three of them. He wonders how much of an earful Tommy would be getting from his woman tonight ‘bout the fact Joel’s rolling in for their wedding with an unclaimed child who’s illegally hopped her way several states away from home. 

“I’m just tryin’ to get her where she’s going. Safely.”

Maria looks no more impressed than she did upon greeting them. Tommy looks a little too damn soft for Joel’s liking.

“Well, if there’s nothing else you need,” Maria says, standing and taking a step towards the stairs, “we’ll be leaving you to it.” They’d spread out a sheet on the couch with a small pile of blankets and a pillow on one end. Joel already knew it would be his bed for the night.

“‘Spect we’re good. Thank you.”

Tommy claps him on the shoulder. Joel knows this conversation is far from over. 

When Ellie reappears, it’s with wet hair and her pajamas. Her feet are bare. Must be freezing on these floors. 

“Come on,” Joel says without ceremony. “Let’s get you up to bed.”

“Thought I got the couch.” She speaks with such defiance. This, I’m-not-scared attitude, that she seemed convinced could stand a chance to protect her. Joel already knows it’s an act, though. Somehow, he’d gotten pretty good at reading Ellie language. 

The stairs creak beneath his weight. He hears footsteps following behind him. 

“I don’t need to be fucking tucked in,” she says when they reach the guest room. 

“Wasn’t going to,” Joel grumbles back at her. There’s an extra blanket on the end of the bed, one window with the curtains still open. He crosses the room and closes them. The doorknob has a lock on it. “Use this if you want.”

She nods and moves to sit cross-legged on the bed. 

The memory can’t be beaten back, and though he makes no move to do so, Joel can’t help the almost instinctual muscle memory of going over and kissing the top of her head, watching her pull the covers up over her shoulders, and shutting off the light. He would leave the door open just a crack. He’d done it so many times before.

“You know where I am if ya need anything.” 

He’s halfway out the door when he catches the quiet, “Joel.”

Arms tucked around herself, she’s good at making herself small. Almost as good as she was at becoming bigger, louder, seen and heard and noticed. One extreme to the other. One version of protection to another. 

He raises an eyebrow in waiting.

Ellie licks her lips, shuddering; she pulls the blanket over her lap. “Maria asked me, ya know, if you were doing horrible things to me.” ‘Course she did. It would probably unsettle him if she hadn’t, to be honest. “I told her being subjected to your singing along with the radio was plenty of punishment. Just…just so you know.”

I told her I trust you, is what Ellie’s saying. Don’t fuck it up. 

“Night, kiddo,” he says without rising to the jab.

Bonedead tired, Joel lays himself out on the couch, stares at the ceiling, and tries hard to understand what exactly the hell he’d gotten himself into.

He tries to understand how it could possibly end without hurting him, one way or the other.

Before he can sleep for the night, he gets up and flips one picture on the mantel upside down. He makes sure his eyes won’t fall there first thing in the morning. He knows that they will anyway. He knows he’ll be looking at nothing but blank space, searching for something he’s already lost.

He drifts off and dreams of laughter. It hurts, even in his sleep.

Chapter Text

Morning comes to Joel in the form of too bright sunlight streaming through the east-facing windows and a twinge in his back.

With a hand running down his face to mop up lingering exhaustion, Joel helps himself to setting up the coffee pot in the kitchen. An extra scoop of grounds might help do the trick. What an optimistic mindset this morning. 

There are some instant hot cocoa packets in the cabinet. It’s a cold morning. Joel lays one out and grabs an extra mug to rest beside it. 

Maria is up first. Of fucking course, as Ellie would say.

She nods in Joel’s general direction and fills a mug with freshly brewed coffee. Cream, sugar, a seat at the table. 

Joel drinks his black and leans against the counter. The sun continues its slow, steady ascent. There’s hardly a cloud in the sky. Fog rises off the earth in tufts.

“I am sorry,” Maria cracks first. She’s in matching sweats, looking decently put together for it being first thing in the morning. “I didn’t mean…” she stops, clears her throat, and levels Joel with a stare. “It wasn’t my intention to accuse you of something so…well, I’m sorry.”

Hiding his smile behind his mug, Joel asks, “Tommy make you do that?”

“He asked,” Maria relents with a smile of her own. “I wanted to, though. I may not understand, or even completely trust you, but it wasn’t my place to come after you like that.”

Nodding, Joel feels a little bit better. “It’s the decent thing to do. For her. Checking in like that.”

A simple hum of acknowledgment is all he gets. 

Once the sun has risen further and the morning has progressed to a more acceptable hour, they get to work on breakfast. Joel takes on the bacon and eggs as Maria cuts up fruit. 

“You got any of those frozen waffles?” he asks and, wordlessly, she pops two in the toaster. 

Tommy appears looking far worse for the wear than his fiance, but he kisses her good morning before moving for a cup of coffee and slapping a hand on Joel’s shoulder as he walks by. The three of them work decently well together. Joel boils water for Ellie’s hot chocolate and stirs it in with gusto. Tommy drops a dollop of whip cream on top without being asked. 

“Ellie!” Joel calls, moving towards the foot of the staircase with a spatula still in hand. “Time to- Jesus, kid, warn a person.”

Sitting on a stair, she silently watches him. Pajama pants on, bare feet, and her new red hoodie zipped all the way up to her chin. Her hair is a wreck, like it always is in the mornings. She says nothing in greeting. 

“Come on,” Joel waves her towards him. That was the best way he’d figured out how to deal with her more…unusual moments, just gloss over them like they were nothing. “Time to eat.”

Dutifully, silently, she follows him into the kitchen. Mornings went one of two ways with her. Hopefully, she hadn’t had any nightmares up in that room all alone last night. Joel passes her the hot chocolate and juts his chin toward the table so she knows where to go. 

Waffles, drizzled in syrup. Bacon, not quite burnt. Eggs, no cheese. When did he learn her breakfast order? 

Another family meal, the four of them around the table. Small talk comes a little bit easier today.

Ellie looks solemnly at them, food tucked to one side of her mouth as she says, “You know, if Shakespeare made breakfast,” she pauses, not quite able to hide her smile. “He’d make a Hamlet.”

Joel groans. “Awful. Absolutely awful.” If anyone were to call him on the hint of a grin spreading on his face, he’d bite their heads off.

//

Showing up only one day before the wedding equated to being tasked with a list of last minute errands. He takes the truck and the kid and sets back out into the town, holding a list of specifics he better not return without. 

Ellie’s quieter around Tommy and Maria. She practically unfreezes when it’s just her and Joel again. “Do you think we’ll see a bison? There are a lot of bison in Yellowstone, you know.”

“You don’t say.” They will not be seeing a bison, Joel is pretty sure. 

“And elk,” she continues, looking at him instead of out the window today. “It’s the time of year they start coming down from the mountains, I bet.”

Throwing the truck into a public parking spot, Joel looks over at her. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

Ellie shrugs. “I like animals. And space. And-”

“Dinosaurs. Yeah, yeah, I’ve gathered.” Somehow he’d ended up with a mental catalog of Ellie likes and dislikes. It’s funny, the things a mind will start holding onto. “Let’s go find some goddamn off-white napkins.” Whatever the hell that was supposed to be.

“Hey, Joel,” she asks, following beside him on the right. He strains a little harder to hear her. “What am I gonna do? You know, tomorrow.”

Huh, he had mostly just assumed. “Well, you can come if you want. It’s in a field, so doubt we’ll be breaking any fire codes if we smuggle you in.”

“In my Walmart jeans?” 

“What about the dress I got you for your middle school graduation?”

“You want me to go to Homecoming in a graduation dress? Come on, Dad. Seriously.”

Clearing his throat, Joel leads her into a party goods store. “I’m sure we could pick you up something else. A dress or somethin’.”

Her nose wrinkles. “Does it have to be a dress?”

Come to think of it, Joel can’t imagine this kid in a dress. “Three piece suit, then,” he jokes, but she looks pleased. 

The napkins come in stark white and cream. Joel throws cream in the basket and hopes for the best. Onto those little glass stone things. 

“How about a blazer?” Ellie suggests while Joel is debating the validity of buying green when the instructions dictate turquoise.

“Huh?”

“You know, something simple. Blazer, jeans, Converse. Classic, right?”

Is the kid asking him for a fashion opinion? “Um, sounds cheaper than a three-piece suit. So, yeah. Sounds great, kid.”

She beams.

//

They go out to dinner that night. Joel reminds Ellie, begs her practically, to at least pretend she’s got some manners to mind, and when she rolls her eyes, he kind of just counts his losses for what they are and sends her back up to get her sweatshirt. The temperatures dropped quick in the evenings around here. 

Teton Village is one windy road away from Jackson, give or take. It’s frustrating how goddamn slow the tourist cars drive, but it’s worth it when they pass an elk munching away on tree leaves, and Ellie squeals with excitement. A literal squeal. Joel’s ears are still ringing. 

A couple miles later, they drive past a squirrel. “Want me to stop for him, too?”

He takes her “Shut the fuck up” as a no and keeps driving. 

Thursday night in October means the restaurant has a few fellow diners but is otherwise decently empty. Some of Tommy and Maria’s friends are there. They’ve tied balloons around the chairs. How cute. 

“This is my brother Joel,” Tommy proudly introduces him to each person, and Joel tries to recall if he knows of a single one of these poor bastards. “And his…”

“Foster kid,” Joel supplies with the first introduction. It’s not like they had a lot of options here. Might as well opt for the one that’s closest to the truth. “Ellie.”

A woman crouches down to Ellie’s height and, more than a little condescendingly, says, “It’s so nice to meet you, honey.”

Joel’s already wincing for whatever biting response is about to come out of her mouth, but instead, Ellie just adopts the strongest, worst southern accent Joel’s ever had the misfortune of hearing and says, “And I am just so tickled pink to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

Joel smacks her arm without even thinking about it. Ellie laughs without having the decency to try and hide it. 

The two of them sit near the head of the table with Tommy and Maria. Joel’s pleased they’ve already called and adjusted the reservation to accommodate his tag-along miscreant. She’s got cautious eyes for the group around her but seems content enough to mutter her comical observations to Joel in an attempt to get him to crack a smile. 

Thai food isn’t really Joel’s thing, as in he’s never eaten it, but he’ll just have to make do. Ellie leans over his shoulder, pointing out what he should get. “You some sort of Thai connoisseur?” 

“Finally being recognized for my skills,” she responds with a proud upward tilt of her chin. 

Tommy orders a whiskey. Joel follows suit. Maria sticks with water.

“Can’t believe someone’s finally tied down our wild man,” one of Tommy’s friends cheers a few drinks in. “To Tommy!”

The table courses a, “Hear, hear!” 

Then another round for Maria.

“Didn’t think anyone would ever tame this guy,” the same friend comes up behind Tommy and slings an arm around both him and Maria. “Still don’t know how you did it.”

Joel can’t help himself, two and a half whiskeys in. “I still don’t know what the rush is.” 

The table falls silent. Maria and Tommy exchange a look, and then Maria’s looking down almost like she’s looking at... 

“Oh, shit,” Ellie says, eyebrows raising with her glass of Coke halfway to her lips. “You’re pregnant.” And then, with all the manners Joel’s been driving into her, “Congratulations.”

Most of the table is looking at Joel right about now.

“Joel,” Ellie nudges him with her elbow. “Say congrats.”

There’s bile rising in his throat, not enough whiskey to wash this one down. And he should be happy for his brother, just like all the ways he should have been happy for him throughout all these years. The occasions Joel had missed and the phone calls he’s ignored and the last bit of family he couldn’t dare to accept because his heart was still reaching out desperately for what he had lost, for what he could never hold again.

“Congrats,” he manages before pushing up from the table and walking away without further comment. 

//

It should probably be Tommy who follows him out. Honestly, it should be Joel who puts his big boy pants on and goes back in, but instead there’s a kid coming to stand beside him outside the restaurant. She left her sweatshirt inside. She’s gonna be cold in a second. 

“Your food will be out soon,” he tells her. 

She rolls her eyes. “Everyone’s giving me ‘oh no, grumpy man is extra grumpy’ looks like you’re gonna beat me up to deal with it.” She takes a step closer to him. I trust you. “Stupid people.”

“Yeah,” Joel agrees with a clearing of his throat. “Stupid fucking people.” 

“Why’s it bother you anyway?” she asks after several minutes of standing and staring. They watch people hugging goodbye at their cars, kids popping wheelies on their bikes through the parking lot, the streetlights filtering on as the sun goes down. The stars will begin making an appearance soon. “Like, you don’t seem all that close to him. So what difference does it make?”

Maybe it’s his most irrational thought yet, but Joel almost feels like this kid who’s a quarter his age might get where he’s coming from better than most of his peers. There’s a weight to her shoulders, a heaviness to her eyes. It makes him sad, thinking about a kid who’s known suffering so intimately. It hurts, thinking that it’s this kid. “Don’t know.”

Ellie turns her head and stares up at him. “Liar,” she calls. “Told you that you were no good at it.”

The wind picks up, whips those little baby hairs around her face. She seems to fight it, but a shiver runs through her. “Come on,” Joel gestures with his arm, not putting it around her so much as leading her back in the direction of the restaurant. “Let’s go eat something.” Whatever it was she’d ordered him.

The whole atmosphere is a little more subdued when they come back in, but no one comments, thankfully. Joel sits down to a plate of noodles, vegetables, and chicken. It smells good; he’ll give it that. Ellie plucks a potsticker off a serving dish at the center of the table and deposits it on his plate. “Trust me,” she asserts like she’s already eaten one.

In a show of solidarity, Joel doesn’t look away when he takes a bite.

Oh shit, that is good. 

“I told you!” She’s practically bouncing in her seat now, half a noodle hanging from her mouth as she gathers another bite on her fork. “Here, try this.”

“I’ve got my own food,” he reminds her, but she insistently shoves the fork in his face. 

“Joel, come on.” 

Yeah, okay, that’s also good. “Don’t gloat,” he says as she sits there with a broad smile. “It’s unbecoming.”

“I, for one,” Tommy chimes in, “think it’s very becoming.” The two of them exchange a nod. Great, just what Joel needs. His brother waits for Ellie to turn back to her food before attempting to catch Joel’s eye. He looks a little worried, slightly afraid. Maybe he doesn’t think Joel will approve. Or maybe he just thinks Joel’s gonna bolt again. It’s been a lot of years of bolting. 

But if Tommy and Maria can welcome this little heathen with barely an explanation from Joel and let her fold into their wedding festivities, then the least Joel can do is try and get the hell over the idea of his baby brother having a baby. The least he can do is not begrudge his brother a chance to move forward.

//

The whiskey comes straight out at the house later, too. Joel doesn’t protest when Tommy sets a glass directly in front of him. The kid should probably go to bed, but she’s sitting beside Joel like it’s her duty to protect him, and it’s so stupidly sweet he doesn’t have the heart to send her away.

“Coulda told me, is all I’m sayin’.” The edge has been taken off by hard liquor and a bit of time. It was the blindsiding of it all; that’s what really had put him over the edge.

The photo of Sarah is still flipped out of sight. 

“Told you,” Maria comments lightly. Her eyes are closed, half-asleep.

They’ve got a wedding tomorrow. Joel should let them get to bed. 

“Didn’t know how to,” Tommy admits, swirling the ice around in his mostly empty glass. “Not sure if you know this, but you don’t exactly make those sorts of conversations easy, Joel.”

Yes. Yes, he does know. 

Ellie’s fighting to keep her eyes open. It’s nearing midnight. She’s on her own cushion of the couch, body curled up against Joel’s pile of blankets and pillows from the night before. Just the sight of her makes something in him soften. Little body in his arms, footsteps quiet on the stairs, one last kiss to her hairline, and comforter tucked up around her shoulders. Joel fights reaching out to brush the hair from her face. 

A couple more days. Just a couple more days, and she’d be off to Salt Lake City. Dropped on someone else’s front porch while he waved farewell from the cabin of his truck. He wouldn’t go up to the door with her. It would be for the best. 

“I am happy for you, the both of you. For what it’s worth.”

Maria’s hand grasps Tommy’s a little more solidly. “It means a lot,” Tommy answers with the rhythmic clinking of ice on glass. 

It doesn’t truly feel like a resolution, but it’s as close to one they’ve had in fifteen years. There’s a mutual understanding of, we’ll just have to take it, between them.

Shortly after, Tommy and Maria make their way up to bed. Ellie has solidly passed out on the couch. If Joel wasn’t worried about her waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, he’d probably just leave her here.

“Time for bed, kiddo,” he says with a voice much softer than he intended. She doesn’t wake up anyway. “Ellie.” He kicks her foot. 

She jolts upright. 

“Sorry.” Immediate guilt. “Time for bed, is all.” Mr. Gentle is back again, dammit. 

Rubbing at her eyes with closed fists, Ellie looks even younger than usual. It’s not fair, the compulsion he hasn’t managed to beat back to wrap her up and keep her safe in every way he possibly can. It’s not fair that it’s been fifteen years, and it’s like riding a damn bike. “‘M not even tired.”

He chuckles despite himself. “Yeah, okay. Well, I am, so scoot.”

Dramatically she rolls herself to the floor. “Happy?”

He glares down at her. “One of us will be sleeping in a bed tonight, so either get on up there or be ready to get to know that floor real good.”

“Uuuuggghhh.” She drags herself up and waits at the foot of the stairs for him. Whatever happened to Ms. I-don’t-need-you-to-tuck-me-in? 

Joel pushes to his feet and follows her upstairs. 

“Have what you need?” he asks as she flops into her unmade bed. Hm, maybe he should tell her to pick up after herself a little more. “Were you warm enough last night?”

The curtains are open again. He walks over, checks the lock, and slides them closed.

“Mhm,” her voice is mumbled, already half-asleep. 

“Goodnight, Ellie.” His words are barely above a whisper. It takes a little more tonight, not to rest a hand on her back. Not to pull the covers up snug around her and ensure she’s safe and warm and protected. Not to make sure she knows he’ll do what is needed to make her feel all of those things.

Two more days. That’s all this was. Two more days. 

“Night, Joel.”

He switches the light off and closes the door tight behind him. 

//

Something about night two in locations must really draw the nightmares out of her.

Joel’s awake quicker than the last time, the muffled screams from overhead jolting him into awareness and action at once. He takes the steps two at a time and stops right outside her room, knocking a little rougher than he means on the door. When he tries the knob, it’s locked.

Tommy and Maria appear beside him, matching horrified looks on their faces. 

“Nightmare,” Joel breathes as explanation before he resumes his banging. “Ellie!”

Tommy walks off to his bedside table and returns with a key for the room. Joel doesn’t take it. 

The screaming stops only to start again. Joel sits just outside her door. “Can’t do that to her,” Joel whispers in regard to the key. The locks were her first form of defense, the one piece of security she clung to. Bursting through to try and come to her rescue wouldn’t solve a damn thing, not in the long term. Joel can wait it out, right outside her door. “You two go on back to bed. I’ve got it.” Joel hasn’t got a clue what “it” is. He sits. He waits. 

The door cracks open.

“You okay?” he asks as gently as he can manage. It’s softer than he’s heard his own voice in recent memory. 

She stands there, looking down at him with blown pupils and half-opened mouth and something like a sob gathering at the end of her tongue. 

Without a word, she turns and gets back into her bed. The door stays cracked. 

Not even an hour later, it starts again. Joel’s body ain’t meant to move like this anymore. He’s up at once, through the threshold of her room with its cracked open door in moments. 

“Ellie.” When he calls her name now, he can’t bring himself to shout. A hand reaches out and wraps around her shoulder. 

Wrong move, definitely the wrong move. She whirls on him, unaware of her attack as it rains down upon him. Still screaming, shouting, “Get off! Get the fuck off me!” so frantic it makes his heart race in fear and then harder, faster in anger for whatever, whoever is haunting her in her dreams. 

“Ellie!” There’s more power to his voice now. “Open your eyes, Ellie. Open your eyes for me.”

His hands are carefully away from her as soon as he doesn’t need to defend against her swinging fists. The sleeves of her pajama top have ridden up. An ugly, raised scar stands out on her forearm, even in the darkness of the room. “Come on, Ellie. Look at me, kiddo.”

She stills. Her breath comes in desperate, gasping gulps. Shaking, so hard he wonders how the whole mattress doesn’t shudder beneath her. 

“It’s okay,” Joel reassures. “You’re okay.” He might very well have a black eye for the wedding tomorrow, but she’s okay. “Everything’s okay.”

Those same wide, wild eyes. “Joel.” The whine cuts through him. 

His hand reaches out. “Is it okay if I rub your back?” he asks, waiting for her hesitant little nod before he lays a hand on her, gentle and cautious and ready to pull away if she asks. “You’re okay,” he promises again. 

The sobs break free, and she plants her face against her pillow to muffle them. Sloppy, urgent, desperate cries. 

“Okay, Ellie.” Joel kneels at her bedside and rubs her back until she quiets. “Easy does it.” It’s three in the morning. There’s a wedding twelve hours from now. There’s a little girl in a picture frame downstairs waiting to peer through his very soul. Joel doesn’t dare move until Ellie falls back to sleep. 

Once she does, he lays himself out on her floor and sleeps there for the rest of the night. Just in case there are any more nightmares, he tells himself. Just in case she needs him. His old bones couldn’t tackle those stairs again tonight, anyway.

//

Joel wakes up to a distinctly empty room. The curtains are closed. More notably, he wakes up to a back that aches more than yesterday and pain that shoots up and down his whole spine when he pushes himself up to sit. 

If he thought he was tired before, well, it’s got nothing on now. There’s chatter and laughter on the level below. The smell of bacon is creeping up the stairs. It’s enough to get him off the floor. 

Coming around the kitchen corner, he catches a rather bossy little voice saying, “Joel doesn’t even like eggs.”

“What? Yes, he does,” Tommy argues. 

The kid is right. He won’t touch ‘em. Not anymore.

“Well, he doesn’t ever eat them, but if you insist.”

Making his presence known, Joel enters and says, “Haven’t you learned she’s usually right at this point?” he jokes. Maria kindly deposits a mug full of black coffee in his hand. 

“I tried to tell him,” Ellie says with a shrug. When she meets his eyes, she flushes red and looks away. He couldn’t blame her for being embarrassed after last night. It’s not like those were their roles, normally. It’s not like he’d ever signed up to scare away her nightmares and soothe down the fear. It’s not as if she’d ever decided to wear her vulnerabilities on bare forearms for him to discern.

“He never has been much for listenin’.” 

Tommy shakes his head at them both. “You two could stand to be nice to me on my wedding day, don’t ya think?”

Joel and Ellie make a point of exchanging a look before both saying, “Nah,” and returning to their morning. 

Maria’s wearing something like a smile. 

Ellie comes to stand by his side, and Joel could swing an arm around her shoulders. He could press a kiss to the top of her head. He could wrap her up and make sure the demons were still at bay. He could try and hold them off for a little longer, fight a little harder. For her. 

A nudge of his elbow. A silent, “You good?” asked between looks alone.

A nod, a confirmation. 

Alright then, onward to a wedding day.

//

They hike out to a lake nestled between mountains. It’s a short hike, but a hike nonetheless. There are no horses, to Joel’s disappointment and even more to Ellie’s. 

Maria wears a loose white dress, and Tommy’s got jeans on. Ellie stands proudly in her new button up and blazer. At the last minute, she’d been designated to hold Maria’s bouquet. The field still holds onto some of the lavender lupines from summer and goldenrods brighten the land around them in a rich yellow. A small collection of aspens is off in the distance, rich in their changing golden and blue spruces remain, fat and full. A willow’s branches dip low near the lake, and Ellie is sure to inform him how elk and moose love willow tree leaves. Off on the tops of distant mountains, there’s a dusting of snow which only enhances their grandeur.

All in all, not a bad place to get married. Bummer ‘bout the horses, though.

A mutual friend of Tommy and Maria  is officiating. Joel stands up there beside Tommy and wonders how they got here. His brother, getting married and becoming a father and Joel’s only just met the woman two days prior. With Sarah, Tommy had always been so involved. Especially in those early months once her momma left and it was just the two of them. Tommy made sure Sarah always knew she had him, too. Even if Tommy was just a punk kid himself when she came into this world. 

The guilt chokes Joel for a moment. How his brother had so carefully ensured to love Joel’s child and how, in return, Joel had caused Tommy to feel he couldn’t even tell his own brother that he would now have a chance to return the favor. It makes him feel sad. It makes him feel like he’s lost fifteen years that he’s not ever getting back. 

The right side of his head aches.

During the ring exchange, Ellie shoots him some goofy looking expression. He reciprocates. 

Her smile is something fierce. Her smile is something like a balm.

//

The reception is only slightly more traditional than the wedding. Trays of slow-roasted barbeque meat and bowls of chips are laid out on long tables. A live band, mostly composed of friends, plays happy, upbeat songs for hours. Tommy and Maria skip doing a couple’s announcement. No one toasts. The cake is passed out without fanfare. 

It’s almost Joel’s kinda wedding. Almost. The couple’s first dance is plain and short enough. Then it’s time for the father/daughter dance.

Ellie picks at her cuticles. Joel stares down at his shoes. 

Tidal waves of grief roll through him. It’s hard to hold on, to hold steady. Tommy’s trying to catch his eye, and Joel looks resolutely away. When he glances up, Maria’s dad is whispering something in her ear that causes her to throw back her head and laugh. A fist tightens in Joel’s chest, almost like he can’t breathe. Almost like he shouldn’t bother trying. 

For whatever reason, the kid scoots her chair a little bit closer and plops both of her elbows solidly on the table. She watches the dancing silently for a minute more. “I’ve never been to a wedding before,” she whispers finally.

Joel hums, not sure if he can talk. “Thoughts?” he manages to get out.

“Mostly that I see why I normally get left at home.” The comment strikes something in Joel, like most of what she says does. It’s not right, how she’s been treated. “Not really a place for orphans,” she says with a shrug. “It’s not so great if you’re…missing something.”

He should probably give some sort of response. Instead, he pushes himself up from the table and walks away, leaving Ellie there alone.

//

Another hour later. Another whiskey in. Back at the table together. It wasn’t like Joel had wandered far. It wasn’t as if he could really convince himself to get her out of his eyesight. Like some sort of child who needed constant supervision, not a teenager who had already traveled over a thousand miles completely alone. Not like a kid who wasn’t his to claim responsibility over at all.

Ellie wiggles her fingers towards his glass as they sit, more or less observing in silence. With a roll of his eyes, he passes it over. “You aren’t gonna like it.”

The sharp wrinkling of her nose assures him that he’s right. “That’s foul,” she says, tongue sticking out. “That might be worse than coffee.”

Laughing, he takes it back. “Go get your apple juice, preschooler.” 

Without either of them feeling a need to mingle, alternative methods of entertainment are devised. Ellie starts a game of trying to duck her way into the background of as many photos as possible. It causes Joel to smile until he remembers that by the time Tommy gets these pictures back, Ellie will be long gone. Well, that’s got him headed back toward the bar. 

Tommy’s there, tie undone and two glasses in hand. “I’m glad you were here, Joel.” His voice is not doing a very good job at masking emotion.

In request to the bartender, Joel holds up his empty cup. “I wouldn’t have missed it.” And then, “I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I might have.” A lot of things are hurting today, his back, his knees, his head, his heart. That little place he had tucked Ellie away inside of him. The part of himself that wished so much awfulness hadn’t come between him and his brother. The part that has hurt every single minute of every single day of the last fifteen years.

They hug. It’s all very touching. Joel’s scanning the room for a familiar face.

“So, the kid.”

It’s not certain where this is going, but Joel has a feeling where it might be. “Is being driven out to Salt Lake City tomorrow morning.”

“You really don’t know anything about her?”

He knows too much. How many stars in the sky it’ll take to impress her, the sounds of her footsteps racing behind him, the way she mutters along to the radio. He knows how her bones shake beneath the weight of his hand as he attempts to calm her. He knows the set of her shoulders when she’s determined and how to read her eyes when she has nothing to say aloud. 

“Not even her last name.”

Dilophosaurus. Peach ice cream. Sally Ride. 

Grazing elk. Locks on doors. Curtains pulled closed. 

Bad jokes. Bad mouth. Bad music. 

“Just like that then, huh?”

Joel spots her across the room. Ellie perks up when she finds him staring at her, waves. Smiles. 

“Yeah,” Joel says, carving out a piece of himself that, somehow, has already become tethered, fully attached. “Just like that.”

//

Tommy and Maria are spending a few days camping and hiking in the Tetons as a form of a honeymoon. Starting with an overnight stay in the National Park’s lodge.

That left Joel and Ellie the house to themselves and the responsibility of getting the place in good enough shape to leave empty for almost a week.

That leaves Joel wishing he could say, “Hey, what’s a few more days? There are board games in that closet over there. Go pick one out.”

Instead, he makes her one last cup of hot chocolate before bed and ignores the way she follows him to and from each room in the house. In the living room, she curls up in the same spot from the night before. Joel sits at the other end of the couch, allowing them space. The oversized mug is clutched tightly in her hands, steam billowing from the top. She holds it like it’s the only source of warmth in the world. 

Joel pulls a blanket off the back of the couch and holds it out to her. 

It’s quiet; nothing to be heard but the mountain breeze blowing outside and the creaks of an old house settling around two new, unfamiliar people. 

“We should get on the road early tomorrow,” Joel says. “Beat traffic.” It’s a Saturday. There won’t be much traffic. Except near the Parks, maybe. He thinks about taking a detour, showing Ellie bison and Ol’ Faithful and how her face would light up with equal excitement for both.

She wiggles around on her cushion. “Who’s in that picture?”

The question comes out nearly silent, only gets quieter as the blood rushes in and out of Joel’s ears. No, he couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. He’d made it this far, this long. No. Not now.

“Goodnight, Ellie,” he dismisses her at once.

She doesn’t budge. 

“Was she your daughter?”

Was. Was. “I’m not doin’ this.” Who does this kid think she is anyway? New clothes on her back, sweet drinks in her hand, nightmares soothed with an open, easy palm. How dare she ask for any more. “I will see you in the morning. Not a minute before.”

It occurs to him that he could get up and go to Tommy and Maria’s room. He ain’t dependent on her to end this conversation.

“That’s why you don’t want to talk about anything.” That blanket he’d passed her is wrapped around her shoulders. The cocoa is mostly gone. She’s not budging.

Joel stands from the couch. “I’ve stayed outta your business, haven’t I?” he asks the question from a distance, doesn’t dare approach her when the anger’s rising, when he might lash out and then he’ll see that little wince of fear, and it does something to him, chokes him, turns him into a man that he no longer is, one that he no longer can be. “Butt the hell out of mine and go to bed.” 

Ellie stands. Mug down. Blanket off. There’s no backpack to hold against her chest anymore. She stares daggers. “That’s why you freaked out about Tommy having a baby and why you-” She stops. Whatever was about to come out of her mouth, she stops. 

“I don’t know who you think you are,” Joel starts darkly. He takes one step towards, finger pointed in her face, “But this does not concern you, and it never will. Tomorrow I’m drivin’ you to Utah, and we are going our separate ways.”

She flinches. It’s slight, but it’s there. Not when he raises his voice. Not when he jams a finger in her direction. It’s when he says they’re done, this is it. 

Ellie flinches like something’s hurt her.

Joel wants to take her by the shoulders and demand just what it is she could possibly still want from him. Hasn’t he done enough? Hasn’t he given her the most that he had left? 

Fixing her with a hard stare, he ensures she’s not confused under any terms. It’s his own fault, letting everything between them get as jumbled and confused as it’s become. It’s his responsibility to set it right. “You aren’t my daughter. You ain’t even my foster kid.” No ties. No connections. No obligations. “And I sure as hell ain’t your dad. Now, I don’t know about your past because I don’t want to. Got it? So keep your goddamn nose out of mine and hope that aunt of yours takes you in. ‘Cause I’m done.”

The look on her face suggests he’s just shot her. Joel walks out the front door and refuses to look back.

//

There hadn’t been another peep out of her all night long. No nightmares. No screams. No insistence he come up and close her curtains so she could go to bed. 

He’d walked back inside not even ten minutes later and found the living room deserted.

It almost impresses Joel, the fact that she’s actually listening to him for once and staying quiet. 

When it’s getting too late to ignore her lack of appearance anymore, Joel swallows his pride and knocks. “Ellie? We should get going.”

No response.

“Listen, I know you’re mad at me, but last I checked, you still need a ride.” He waits a full thirty seconds. “Ellie? I’m coming in, okay?”

The door’s not locked. 

Open curtains. Open window. Empty room. 

She’s gone.

Chapter Text

It’s a sign of how twisted things had gotten between them that Joel stands, scanning the room and all out panics. He looks in the closet, under the bed, down the hall to the bathroom. Tommy and Maria’s room. Kitchen. Back to the living room.

No kid. No Ellie.

His heart is in his throat. And it’s squeezing, contracting and tightening and blocking off airflow. 

Shit. 

Who knows how long ago she left. Who knows whose truck she blindly jumped into now. She could be halfway outta the state. She could be gone. That could be it. One week later and poof, like she had never existed. Except for a few dozen wedding photos and the burning of Joel’s palm late at night, remembering its path along her back. Except for everytime he caught a glance of the night sky and whenever Jurassic Park came on TV. Except for peaches season. He should’ve taught her how to properly use that knife.

Fuck. Ellie. 

Only a week, and this is where he’s at mentally. Only a week, and he’s screwed everything up this tremendously. And she’s gone. He doesn’t even know her last name. You can’t find someone based on their favorite fucking astronaut or the look in their eye when they’re trying to be brave, even as terror seizes them. You can’t locate another human being with nothing to go off of but how their screams sound in the dead of night.

Hand blindly twisting the knob, the front door flies open. Joel’s feet are barely shoved into his untied boots as he stumbles out, pauses on the second porch step down. 

A kid sitting crossed-legged on the front of the truck, arms wrapped around her backpack.

Ellie.

His heart starts to beat again, and every contraction of the muscle aches. Every beat reminds him of what he nearly lost. 

There’s frost on the ground. Her sweatshirt isn’t even zipped up. 

Both of them stuck there—staring, evaluating. 

She looks like a mess—hair disheveled, dirt on her face, eyes red and cheeks ruddy from the cold. 

Joel can’t look a whole better. Bedhead, untied shoes, heart beating out of his chest, not even his to hold onto anymore. 

More than anything, he wants to hug her. More than anything, he wants to take her inside, fix her up, and make that stupid, easy smile cross her face. 

“The hell are you doin’?”

Ellie swallows. “You said we needed to leave early.” She hops off the top of the truck. Her voice is hoarse. How long has she been out here for? “I’m ready…what are you doing?”

“Loading up the truck.” He lies with empty hands.

Running a palm down his face, collecting his common sense and his good judgment and some goddamn self-preservation, he says, “How ‘bout breakfast first.”

They size each other up. Ellie wasn’t just waiting for him. Joel wasn’t just loading the truck up to leave. 

She makes a point to shoulder-check him on her way inside. 

Count to three; get it together. The window was open. Joel’s chest seizes one more time before he climbs the steps to the threshold and shuts the door with them both inside.

//

They eat more or less in silence. Joel sends her upstairs to take a shower. 

While she’s in the bathroom, he goes into her room and pulls the window closed. He slides the lock back into place. 

//

Well, so much for getting an early start. 

Tommy was kind enough to loan out his truck for this leg of the journey, saving Joel’s piece of scrap metal some precious miles. Besides, Tommy says, he’ll be trading it in for a five seater SUV soon anyway. Joel can’t imagine his brother with a car seat in the back of his car. He was more of a: stick-a-baby in the sidecar sorta guy.

Ellie’s been without her usual chatter all morning. Now is no different. She stares out the window, even while they’re still parked in the driveway, and makes no attempt at conversation.

“Should be about five hours,” Joel says as the GPS loads. He’s routing to the general area of Salt Lake City, figuring he can get more solid details out of her once they get closer. He can also just drop her downtown—let her figure it out for herself. Hand to his chest, breathe through it. Maybe not that one. “Get some sleep, if you wanna.”

There’s no cassette player in this truck. In an attempt to stave off some of the horrible, angry silence, Joel switches on the radio. He leaves it on some country music that’s so horrid even he’s a little bit in pain.

Ellie lasts all of ten seconds before reaching out and changing it. “Fucking awful,” she mutters under her breath. 

There are a lot of ways Joel could fill the silence right about now. He could ask where the hell she’d gone last night. He could demand what she was thinking, jumping out of a two-story window, insist on knowing if she’s hurt herself. He could apologize for what he’d said and how he had said it. 

“As if you’ve got any taste” is what he goes with. 

“Oh, fuck you,” she shoots back with an extra edge to her normal degree of bite. “My music taste is fucking superb.”

Joel smirks. He’d been saving this ammunition. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you singin’ along to that Taylor Swift song at the wedding.”

Turning on him with a glare, Ellie looks downright vicious. “I don’t-it’s not like-just some of them are good.” Arms crossed over her chest, she flops back in her seat. She stares out the windshield with him. She keeps casting not subtle glances in his direction. “Don’t be a dick.”

Again, sits unspoken between them.

“About last night-”

“Save it.” Ellie sits up straight and pulls her knees up towards her chest, arms wrapped around them. “I don’t need some dumb apology.” 

“I shouldn’t of-”

“Seriously. I get it, man.” The trees and the mountains and the miles, flying past them too quick, too easy. “I just need to get to Marlene, okay? That’s all I want from you. A damn ride.”

Swallowing something back, Joel reaches forward and shuts off the radio. He stops trying to make her feel better. He stops acting like he can fix a single thing in the five hours to come. Four and a half—time was going quick. “What you say goes, kid.”

//

“This is still Snake River?”

For once, something she doesn’t already know.

“Goes all the way from Wyoming to Oregon…Washington, maybe. Right into the ocean. People go rafting down it a lot.”

Her eyes are fixed on vibrant blue water. “Cool.” She’s sure to be envisioning rapids and white-capped waves. As afraid of water as she sometimes seems, the adventure still captures her attention.

Another bad habit, Joel barely catches himself before he says, “Someday I’ll take you.” Tomorrow, next week, next year, that’s what he’d always done with Sarah. Not enough time right now. Not enough money for that. Dad’s gotta work overtime this week. Some other time. 

They’d run out of time.

Three hours to go.

//

“Does this truck have Bluetooth?” Ellie perks up. She’s still been largely silent, not engaging him in conversation or needling him with endless, pointless questions. But he can feel the silence getting to her even as she refuses to sleep. A need for some sort of noise, some way to pass the time. “Dude, why aren’t we using it?”

“Not my name,” Joel grumbles out. “Besides, it look like I know how to use Bluetooth?” 

Ellie snags his phone right out of the cupholder and opens it with ease. When did the little shit learn his passcode? “Good thing you have a youth with you, grandpa.”

Should’ve let her stick to ‘dude’ after all. “There ain’t no music on there.”

The heaviest of eye rolls. “Joel. Don’t tell me you don’t even have Spotify.”

“I barely want the phone!” The Nokia phone that had a perfectly good holder which clipped to his work belt had unfortunately met a disastrous end. It survived tumbles from fourth floor apartment buildings and a bike tire to the screen before admitting defeat after a run through the washing machine. Tragic.

She’s pawing through an instruction manual and messing with more buttons than Joel thinks there should even be in a car, and moments later, crisp, clear music comes pouring through the speakers. “My name is Ellie, and I’ll be your entertainment for the rest of the ride,” she says in some goofy voice. “Please make your formal requests by tweeting us or, for the technologically incompetent, shouting out will also be accepted.”

There’s a smile on her face, sun cast on the right side of her body. The drive home is gonna be so damn quiet.

//

One hour left. They’ve weaved between Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah a few times now. He’s lost track of which state they're even in. Ellie landed on some White Stripes and passed out ten minutes after rather enthusiastically singing along.

They’ve still got half a tank of gas; there’s no reason to stop. The exit he’s about to pass has a line of fast-food joints. He takes the off-ramp.

It’d be rude to drop her off hungry.

//

They sit in the restaurant. Ellie eats slightly less like a wild boar these days, not much, though. “Can I get a milkshake?”

“Eat your damn apple slices.”

She’d rolled her eyes so hard they almost got stuck when he had ordered them. Someone’s gotta make sure she’s not pumped full of grease and sugar. Or, at the very least, make sure it’s balanced out with some actual nutrition.

“You know who has the best milkshakes?” she asks around three apple slices at once. 

“Old mom and pop shot down the street from where I live,” Joel answers instantly. “Nothing beats ‘em on a hot summer day.”

Ellie chews, swallows. “Well, shit, I was gonna say Arby’s, but that sounds way better.” 

It hurts him not to say that he’d take her someday. More cash passed in her direction. “Go get what you want.” 

//

They aren’t even a full thirty minutes away. 

“Hey, Joel?” 

Attention turned towards her. He hates this. God, why does he hate this?

“Did you know England doesn’t have a kidney bank?”

“W-what?”

“Yeah,” she almost sounds sad before she adds on, “at least they have a Liverpool.”

She’s beaming wide enough Joel can see her crooked little eye teeth and something catches on his inhale. God, he forgot how kids could make you fucking crazy—crazy enough to love things like their goddamn teeth.

He snorts. That was awful. 

Ellie cheers in victory.

//

The woman lives on the outskirts of the city, more or less a suburb south of the airport. There’s a high school and a playground and a sign pointing in the direction of Lake Utah. Hospital, Cabela’s, a church for the Latter Day Saints. It could almost make him laugh, the idea of Ellie attempting to fit in with a  bunch of Mormon schoolchildren. 

The mouth on her would horrify those kids.

Joel parks on the street. Ellie holds her backpack. 

Earlier, she’d dug the letter out to punch in the return address onto Joel’s GPS. She hadn’t put it down since. 

Together, they stare at the red front door. Neither of them moves. 

It’s a cute little house. No signs of life besides a white sedan parked out front and a light on in the upper left corner. There aren’t any turned over bikes in the front yard or a swing hanging from the sweeping Juniper tree. 

Joel releases the click of his seatbelt. Least he can do is walk her to the door.

“Joel.” The word comes out with urgency. 

He settles back into his seat and waits. Nothing, she’s giving him nothing. The music stopped playing when he turned the engine off. “Ellie,” he prompts and waits.

“I ran away.” She shakes her head and almost seems to force herself to stare at him. “I mean, obviously from Boston, but last night, too. I…I climbed out the window and was gonna get here on my own.”

Nodding, fighting the urge to point out to her how stupid that was, how he’d already put this much effort into getting her here in one piece, the least she could do was not bail on the last leg of their journey. (Bail because he’d shouted angry, messed up words at her.) “Figured as much,” he responds with a practiced casualness to his voice. 

“But I came back.”

He holds her stare. “You came back.” Her lips are pressed so tight together that they’re turning white. “Why?”

“I was scared.” Honest, painful. 

Jesus.

“Her name was Sarah.” It’s the best sort of apology he can conjure. Ellie draws in a breath, holds it. She waits. “Been gone fifteen years now.” It hurts almost just as much as the first day after. It hurts worse than a recovering bullet wound to the head, more than group therapy, or looking his brother in the eye. “She and Tommy were going to go see some movie. I had to work late; I bailed.” 

There are tears in her eyes, and Joel isn’t sure why. There are tears in his eyes, and he can’t forget why.

“Tommy was driving. Wasn’t his fault, they said. But…he was driving. The car hit on her side.” The doctors had told him her death would have been almost instant, even as they attempted to resuscitate her in the hospital. Tommy confessed he had heard her last desperate breaths, pleading for her daddy to come and help her. Begging him to come and save her. Desperate for him to be there. “I wasn’ even there.” He’s not doing such a good job of holding back the tears at this point.

Ellie sits with that for a minute, something painful and broken flashing across her face before it clears, and she volunteers, “There was that gas station right down the street from Tommy’s. I did the same thing I’d been doing,” Ellie shrugs and looks down to her twisting fingers. He hadn’t noticed; her cuticles have been picked almost raw. “About a half mile later, I just…panicked. I didn’t know who was driving or where they were going or what was going to happen to me, and I…I didn’t mind that so much before, you know? Um, but then I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and he was going towards the highway, and I…I jumped out.”

That instantly has him scanning her, looking for signs of injuries missed. “You jumped out of a moving truck?” 

“It was going slow,” she retorts. 

“Are you okay?” His hands move towards her. Her whole body is covered by some article of clothing or another just about, and Joel tries to remember any instances of limping or holding her arm close or stilted breaths that might suggest broken ribs. “Did you get hurt?”

One second, she’s watching him with these guarded, cautious eyes, and the next, she’s crying into her hands. Full on sobs, like when she woke from a nightmare. Like when he’d sat at her bedside and eased them all away. 

“Ellie. Talk to me, kid. Are you hurt?” There’s no talking while she’s breathing like that. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” He demonstrates—deep, solid inhale. Long, easy exhale. “Come on, just like that.” Tear-stained cheeks, grief filled eyes. It would be crazy, to turn this truck around and take her home. It would be stupid, to figure out a way that he could keep her. It would be unhinged, to drive her back to Austin and buy her the best damn milkshake of her life. 

Head shaking, lip trembling. “What if-” Ellie cuts herself off with a shake of her head before she can complete the thought. “Do you ever feel crazy?” 

The question is asked without a hint of her usual bravado, still all stuttering breaths and welled-up eyes, and she’s looking at him to give her something. She’s looking at him like he’s the only person alive that can do it. “Like…someone’s here that can’t be. It’s impossible! But you…you can’t shake that feeling that they’re right there, no matter what you do? Do you ever just feel fucking insane?”

God, it hurts. It hurts in the way Joel had forced himself not to feel ever again. The way that he had locked away fifteen years ago because it just wasn’t possible to feel that sort of pain and live. And that’s what everyone was forcing him to do. His brother, his employees, the Texas state government. For some goddamn reason, they were all insistent that he would live when his baby girl didn’t get to. 

You can’t live with pain like this, not day in and day out. It’ll kill you. One way or another.

Joel sits across from Ellie in a quickly darkening truck cabin, and he hurts. He hurts so bad it almost makes him cry. 

“Yeah,” he whispers the word, offers it out to her for what little it might be worth. “I reckon I just might.” 

It might hurt less if he could cradle her face between his hands. It might feel better if he could gather her up and erase that miserable, desperate expression across her face. It might ease something long dead and necrotic and eating away at him to press her to his chest and protect her from the world and whatever evils it has managed to harm her with. 

A sniffle, the cuff of her sweatshirt wiping away tears and snot and that unmasked vulnerability she had just faced him with. “Joel.” The way she says his name is small, sweet, trusting. All in a way he no longer deserves. Not after what he’d said to her last night. Not after how cruel he’d been.

“What is it?” If she asked him to turn this truck around and take her home with him right now, he’d do it. God, he would fucking do it.

“I’m scared,” she confesses in the setting sun.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promises to the last bit of light he sees, dipping beneath the horizon.

It eases out the smallest of smiles from her. “I know.”

“Real quick,” Joel holds up a finger. “How ‘bout I show you how to hold that knife, though?” 

They get out of the truck, and Ellie still has the hint of a laugh remaining on her face.

//

Joel knocks politely on the front door and steps back to wait. He keeps a hand from falling onto Ellie’s shoulder but stays resolutely at her side. 

No one answers.

Ellie knocks like she’s trying to break down the damn door. “Hello!” she shouts.

“Don’t be rude.”

“Dude, how is it rude to make sure someone hears you knocking on their door? If anything-”

The front porch light flips on. Ellie shuts up.

Hinges squeaking. A dark-skinned woman stands in the doorway with narrowed eyes that widen at once. “Anna?” The name is a breath.

Ellie flinches. Joel ends up with his hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t duck away from it.

A shake of the woman’s head. “Sorry,” she’s quick to say. “You must be Ellie. You look…well, you can probably guess by my greeting.” 

No one says anything for agonizing, silent seconds. The woman does not invite them in. Joel does not move his hand. 

“And who are you?” she asks, turning her attention to Joel, who was kinda stuck there staring. 

It’s not really his call to make, but something about this woman doesn’t feel right to him. Not right enough to leave Ellie with, at the very least. “Foster dad,” he falls back into their previous lie. “We were…doin’ some traveling. Ellie mentioned you lived out this way. Wanted to meet ya.”

Through each of the lies, he feels Ellie’s eyes on him, probably in an attempt to silently tell him Dude, stop lying. You suck at it. He doesn’t look down at her, just fights his hand from gripping her shoulder any tighter. 

“Well,” she says, stepping back and allowing them entry through the door. “If you came all this way, the least I can do is invite you in for some coffee.”

Silently, Ellie steps over the threshold. She doesn’t go any further until she ascertains that Joel is right behind her. 

“I’m Marlene.”

“Joel.”

Kicking her shoes off by the door like the well-mannered child she was getting to be, Ellie adds, “You already know who the fuck I am.” Well, partially well-mannered child. He wasn’t a miracle worker here.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Marlene points down the hall towards the direction of the living room. “I’ll go get some coffee brewing.”

“None for her,” Joel says before he can think better of it. He was here to see her off, make sure she’d be in good hands, and be on his way. Not an active participant. 

Standing in the entryway of the living room, Joel assesses a mantel of photos of a younger-looking Marlene with parents, siblings, and a woman who looks a good bit like the kid in front of him. There’s a couch and a loveseat, some weird looking circle chair with a blanket spread over top of it. Bookshelf in the corner, mostly filled with textbooks. Weights stacked over by the television. 

“Why’d you do that?” Ellie whispers, bordering on angry with him.

Joel refuses to look down at her. “Don’t wanna go showing all your cards at once, kiddo,” he answers and walks over to the mantel, knowing she’ll be hot on his heels.

A hitched breath, fingers reaching out to someone who could never reach back. She really did look like her. 

“I’ve got more. If you want to see them.”

Ellie turns at once, hand falling away. “Yes. That would be…yes.”

Marlene sits on the couch. Ellie the loveseat. Joel’s not about to opt for the circle chair. He plants himself next to the kid, staying close. 

“I have to say,” Marlene pauses, looks down at her hands and twists a ring on one of her fingers. “When I said it would be nice to meet you, I didn’t expect it to be so soon.”

For once, Ellie’s incessant yammering has been set to mute. Joel jumps in. “Sorry if we’re intruding in any way. I know it’s getting kind of late for us to just show up and all.”

Another look shot his way. He tries to respond that if she doesn’t like what he’s saying, then she ought to speak up on her own. Their silent communication must’ve really grown because she appears to receive his message, loud and clear. At least, if the eye roll is any indication. 

“No, it’s alright,” Marlene says with a shake of her head. The coffeepot beeps from the kitchen. No one moves to go pour any. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Ellie.”

Ellie licks her lips, sucks in a heavy inhale and holds it for a few seconds too long. “I…I, um…it’s nice to meet you, too.” It takes something from him, not wrapping an arm around Ellie and trying to settle the rolling anxiety within her. “My mom…she was your best friend?”

A slow, gentle smile and a glance cast towards the picture-covered mantel. “Anna and I were friends since middle school.” The next look she shoots Ellie is one that’s dripping with sadness, loss, regret. History, that’s what’s written in that look. “I still remember the day she told me she was pregnant with you.”

Ellie looks down at her hands. They twist in her lap. “I had some…questions about her. If that’s okay?”

A sadness clouds Marlene’s face, but she clears it quickly. “Of course that’s okay, Ellie.” The way she says her name is tender enough but the warmth of the conversation is still out of reach, stilted by the awkwardness of first meetings and unexpected visitors and a kid who's clearly never heard a story about her own mom in her entire damn life. “I have some albums in the office in the back,” Marlene points down a hallway, the entrance of it lit with the slants of late sunlight and the end covered in nothing but darkness. “Why don’t you go grab a couple?”

Ellie shoots Joel a look, trusting him to guide her on this one. “I’ll be right here when you get back,” he finds himself reassuring without knowing why. 

It does the trick. She vanishes within the shadows. Joel keeps himself from getting up and flicking on a light switch for her.

“What are you getting at here?” Marlene asks with eyes narrowing the second Ellie is out of earshot.

The accusation sends Joel’s heart rate upwards. “Not sure I know what it is you’re sayin’, ma’am,” he drawls with the animosity intentionally dripping from his words.

“You trying to dump her on me or something?”

“She’s a great kid,” Joel shoots back without thought. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that.” He can’t even process the words “dump her” in relation to Ellie. It makes him ache too badly for the things he already cannot have. It makes him want to hold her closer, make her forget there was ever anyone in this world who didn’t choose her. 

Joel would choose her. If she were his to choose. It’s something he knows without ever comprehending when he had gotten there. But Ellie’s picked Marlene. She’d fled thousands of miles to get to her. Joel would do what it took to make sure she got what she was looking for. 

“Listen, I’m sure she’s a swell kid, but-”

“Don’t do this, “ Joel pleads against his better judgment. He can’t stand the concept of the crumbling of Ellie’s face if this woman turns her away. He can’t tolerate that sort of pain crossing her features. “This is important to her.” And this kid could will herself into your atmosphere, twine herself like string around fingers, wrap herself like tendon to bone. She was clutching to his grasp with a white-knuckled grip. Joel was fighting to keep from holding her back just as tight. “Just give her a chance to get to know you.”

Marlene flinches. “I ain’t nobody’s hero.”

Ellie looked at Joel like he’d hung the stars in the sky. He forgot what that was like, the hero complex of a child placed upon the reliable shoulders of a caregiver. He forgot how addictive it was to fulfill those expectations, again and again, to see a smile cross their features or watch the fear filter away. “No one’s asking you for much here. Just give her the night.”

A cocked eyebrow, glance down the hallway and then to the clock on the DVR. “What are you after here?”

Joel’s heart is wandering back down the hallway, socked feet silent on hardwood floors. He rushes to say, “This has got nothing to do with me.” He hurries to speak the truth.

If this was about him at all, she’d be halfway back to Austin right about now.

//

In the end, Marlene agreed for Ellie to stay the night. In the end, Joel hadn’t been offered the same invitation. It’s agreed; they’ll meet for breakfast tomorrow morning. Joel isn’t sure how the kid is going to worm her way into this hardened woman’s shell in a single night, but if anyone can manage, it’s sure to be Ellie. 

There’s a Motel 8 not far down the street. Joel gets a room and takes the bed closest to the door out of habit. Just for one night. He’d wait here with her, make sure things went smoothly, and then he would be off on his journey home. Another job done. 

No TV on. No music playing. Joel lies on his back on a shitty mattress and stares up at a popcorn ceiling and rubs an open palm against his chest, feeling for a heart that doesn’t feel like it’s still there.

Maybe he should have helped himself to Marlene’s couch, stayed nearby in case Ellie needed him. What if she had a nightmare? What if she got hungry late at night? Who would close her curtains? And then he’s remembering an open bedroom window and her confession in the truck. Who would make sure she stayed put? Safe and protected and not putting herself into stupid, senseless danger because it’s easier than facing what might come with the morning? (Stupid, senseless danger to escape the stupid, senseless man who spat angry words at her for no damn good reason.)

It was going to be a long goddamn night.

Sarah’s first sleepover with anyone besides Tommy, Joel had talked himself out of going to pick her up seven different times when he got a call at almost midnight. The friend’s mom had been trying to talk Sarah out of making the call. Joel was in the car to come get her before the sentence was even fully out of her mouth. He told her on the drive home to never let anyone talk her out of calling him if she needed him. No matter how small it may seem. 

Joel should’ve taken Ellie by the shoulders, dropped into her line of sight, and explained the same principle to her. He should have made sure she knew.

Really, he should be breaking himself out of this cycle of thinking. After tomorrow, he may well never hear from her again. 

The thought almost steals his breath away.

Sleep is something just out of reach. Joel falls halfway into a memory, halfway toward a dream. There are two girls in his vision, two girls to be wrapped in his arms. Two girls entirely out of reach.

His phone rings, and he’s pulled from the dream at once.

“Ellie?” Her name comes out with a frantic edge. He’s already up, trying to shove his feet into his boots and remember where he’d left his keys. “Ellie? Are you there?” There’s a staggered inhale. God, it terrifies him. He needs her here in front of him, cheeks pressed between his palms as he scans for signs of damage, flashes of hurt. “Ellie, you’re kinda scarin’ me here, kiddo.”

“‘M fine,” she mumbles. She sounds like she’s been sleeping. Sleeping or crying, Joel can’t be sure which, but her voice is heavy with something. “I just…” She blows out a long exhale. “I think I left my book…in the truck.”

The pun book? She was calling him at…one in the morning, over the pun book? 

“Will you…will you bring it tomorrow?”

It clicks. She ain’t calling ‘bout no book. “The truck? Yeah, I usually take that with me when I drive places,” he aims for levity, a little bit of letting her save face. She didn’t care about the book. She wanted to make sure he was going to show up for her in the morning. She was ascertaining if he was going to bail on her or not. 

If only Joel could explain how much the thought alone was paining him. “Want me to look for it? I can bring it over now, if you want.” I can be there in five minutes. I can be there if you need me. 

“No,” she’s quick to say. “That’s okay. Just…wanted to make sure.”

“Course,” he says like it’s the most natural thing in the world to get a phone call about in the middle of the night. “If there’s anything else, though, you just call. Okay, Ellie? I’m just down the street. I can bring it in a minute.”

It’s hard to be sure, but he thinks she might be crying. 

“Goodnight, Joel.”

It takes more than he thinks he’s got left to answer, “Night, Ellie.” He doesn’t know how his heart can still ache when it’s five miles away, tucked beside a fourteen year old kid with a smart mouth and crooked little eye teeth. 

He barely sleeps the rest of the night.

//

The breakfast place is packed. It’s some family-owned diner with red vinyl tables and checkered floors. There’s a Sunday rush of old men with their papers sipping coffee at the counter and families gathering around three tables all pushed together. Gurgling babies and hungover teens and the sizzling of the grill as freshly cracked eyes cook upon it. 

The place is packed, and Joel’s eyes are scanning for Ellie. He was early, not by much. By six in the morning, he’d well and truly lost his battle for sleep. He’d been itching to check out of that motel ever since. This seemed like the place to go while he waited.

He grabs a table for four that opens just by the door so he won’t miss her and orders a mug of black coffee. A request for hot cocoa almost comes slipping out as well, but it’s time to stop that. It’s time to let Marlene take over and for him to stop overstepping. 

It’s almost comical, how much he can't keep himself from looking for her to appear while also dreading the moment she does. This might be the last time he watches her walk through the door. It might be the last chance he gets to see the recognition, that moment when she spots him and shifts to happiness, to relief, to security. 

The bell rings above the door. It’s almost funny, how what he remembers doesn't hold a candle to watching it live in front of him. Her feet are hurried, and she slides into the seat beside him instead of across, leaning further off her seat in his direction than towards the crowded aisle where servers are bustling past.

Ellie doesn’t even say a word; she just settles beside him. His heart beats a little easier. He doesn’t think of why that might be.

“Morning, kiddo.” And he tries to hide the fondness in his tone, but she’s so undeniably pleased to see him it doesn’t feel right, hiding his own relief from her. God, it was going to be a long drive home. “Sleep okay?”

Marlene slides in the seat across from Ellie. The look crossing her face answers the question for Joel. Nightmares. Probably what prompted the phone call. He wants to wrap Ellie up, even though now it’s long after, and she’s long since recovered. Even though she had someone else to ease her through them now. 

“Just a coffee for me.” Marlene looks a little worse for the wear this morning. She cradles her head in one hand like she’s attempting to soothe an ache, or perhaps a pounding. 

For some reason, watching Marlene makes Joel want to wrap Ellie up even more. Ridiculous. “You thinking chocolate chip waffles?” Joel directs his line of sight to Ellie, nudging her arm toward the menu. “I’ll order you a hot cocoa.” Someone had to do it while Marlene nursed her headache, after all. 

A shrill ring, and Marlene goes for her purse at once. “I’ll be right back,” she shoots in Joel’s direction more than Ellie’s before getting up and walking out the door back outside.

“Hey.” Joel fights for Ellie’s attention at once. An edge of the menu is slid over the pad of her thumb—back and forth, back and forth. Her eyes are almost glazed over. She looks exhausted. “How did it go?”

A shrug. A half inch closer to him. A heavy swallow.

Joel flags down the waitress. “Extra whip cream, if you don’t mind.” Anything to ease this welling sadness in the kid beside him. 

Another nudge. “It was fine, I guess.” 

Which means it wasn’t. “Did you sleep?” The dark circles under her eyes would suggest she didn’t. 

She looks half-asleep in the seat beside him. Joel fights the urge to pack it in, take her somewhere to get some sleep. Do something to make her smile. 

A minute later, the door opens. Marlene sits back across from him. “Sorry,” she answers and turns directly to her coffee. “Work call.”

The whole meal is awkward, not even hitting the stilted quality of amicable small talk they’d managed that first night with Tommy and Maria. Ellie picks around at her food in a way Joel’s never seen before. Marlene gets three refills on her coffee. 

“I guess we should get you back so you can pick up your stuff.” Marlene checks the time on her phone and shoots Ellie a tight-lipped smile. 

Hm, clearly someone hadn’t dared to enter the conversation of the long-term plan here. It leaves Joel more worried than he should be. 

Outside, Ellie goes for Joel’s truck. He imagines her rooting around for her book and then rambling them off to Marlene. Instead, she silently climbs in and waits. 

“See you at my place,” Marlene remarks with a nod of her head. “You know where I live, after all,” she mumbles under her breath on the way to her car. 

Joel turns the key in the ignition but doesn’t put the car into gear. “What’s the deal?”

“There’s no deal, okay?” Ellie crosses her arms over her chest, glowering. 

It was going to be one of those conversations, then. “What? Did you hate her guts or something?” It wouldn’t surprise him. Ellie, with her strong opinions and often loud, uncensored mouth. She didn’t seem like the giving-a-second-chance sort.

Mumbling beside him, Ellie just keeps glaring out the windshield. She refuses to look towards him. 

“What?”

“It wasn’t me hating her guts.”

Ah, shit. “Ellie…” What was he supposed to say here? It’s not like she’s having trouble making friends on the first day of school. This woman had been holding Ellie’s every last hope, her haphazard plans for the future. This unknown, built up almost-aunt was supposed to be her savior. “I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.”

“Whatever, man.” She turns her gaze out the window. It’s a cloudy sort of morning, heavy clouds hanging towards the top of the mountains off in the distance. The vibrant red of the soil not dulled even without the sunlight. “I’ll figure it out.”

In an effort to make himself think before speaking, Joel starts to drive. “Did you…talk to her?”

“Not yet.”

That’s okay. They still had time. Joel could push back the start date on his next site if needed. What were a few more days on an almost three-month project? “I can talk to her, too,” he offers without knowing what he’ll have to offer. 

“Well whoop-de-fuckin-do,” Ellie mutters with all of her teenage vitriol. 

The drive doesn’t take long. Joel isn’t sure how to fix anything in an eight minute commute. At the red lights, he turns and looks at her, words caught in his throat as she stares out the window. It’s beginning to rain. Today would make for a great day at the Planetarium he saw downtown. 

Outside of Marlene’s, Joel can’t shake off the deja vu of the moment. “You know I’m on your side here, right?” How many people have put in the effort to make sure she knows that? How often have they betrayed her, working off of some preconceived notion that they were helping only to harm. He thinks of feeling like you’re going crazy, of someone following you around even when there was no way for them to be there at all. He thinks of a sobbing, lonely kid and can’t help but break himself apart so she might fit within him, held close where the world couldn’t hurt her any further. 

But Ellie’s hardened angles; she’s got disappointments stacked upon one another to create sharp chips on her shoulder and dubious remarks. “Whatever,” she says again. The door to the truck slams as she marches up the walk to Marlene’s front door without him.

Chapter Text

The truck cabin warms quickly with the afternoon sunlight beating in. Joel stays where he is, a hand running down his face as Ellie traipses through the front door of Marlene’s. He knows he needs to go after her. He knows he needs to fix this. 

Except he doesn’t know how. 

Maybe she would just never reappear. Maybe she’d close the front door behind her and stay there for good. A new home. A new family. A new hope. She wouldn’t need him anymore. Which was for the best. It didn’t end so well, people needing him. 

He would just let her down. It would be inevitable. Joel was no longer meant for raising kids. He ain’t built for it. He’d disappoint her one way or the other, fail her. And she didn’t deserve that. Ellie deserved so much more than that. 

The tightness in his chest only begins to alleviate when he sees the front door cracked again, a little face peering out, half-obscured by the bright red door. 

Joel gets out of the truck, climbs the stairs, and walks through the cracked, vacant doorway. 

The inside of Marlene’s house already smells like a fresh pot of coffee. She might be more of a caffeine addict than he is. He can practically hear Ellie’s complaints of the constant smell. She would wrinkle her nose every time he got back in the truck with a fresh cup, regularly dramatic about her distaste until he took a pointed slurp to shut her up. 

Currently, Ellie is silent. 

Tucked into the corner of the couch, her shoes were lined up carefully by the door. There’s a space just big enough next to them for his boots to fit. 

She’s got the same socks on as yesterday—little dancing strawberries wearing sunglasses. Joel only remembers because he’d told her those were the most goddamn stupid socks he’d ever seen as he balled them up, fresh from the dryer, and tossed them at her head. She’d dodged but had failed to catch them.

Ellie had made sure he was aware that they were less stupid than his face, at least. 

“It’s funny,” Marlene muses as she comes from the kitchen and hovers in the entryway to the living room.  Joel’s got a sinking feeling that whatever she says next isn’t about to be all that humorous. “I thought foster kids weren’t allowed to be taken out of state. And the letters I responded to were from…Massachusetts, right?”

If she’d give him a single goddamn second, Joel could easily explain it away, but now Ellie forges forward, just goes all in. “Joel isn’t really my foster dad,” she says in a rush. “I ran away.”

His hand covers his face. Swear to god, if this kid gets him sent to prison…

“You don’t say,” Marlene's voice is dry, entirely unsurprised by this news. “And why exactly did you do that?”

He’s thoroughly out of this now. Joel walks to the couch and sits back beside Ellie. He says nothing and allows Ellie the chance to fight to find her words. For a single second, she looks to him as if he’s supposed to have the answer. She looks to him as if he’s got a shot in hell of fixing this.

“I just…you knew my mom. Like, better than anyone. And you said I was welcome here, and I needed to get the fuck out of Boston, so I figured, what’s the point in staying when I’ve got some other place to go now. You know?” The end of her statement peters off. The confidence wears away in moments. “Wait. Letters? You only wrote me one.”

A measured moment, Marlene seems to debate between answering Ellie’s question and commenting on her runaway scheme. “I wrote back to your last one a week ago. Probably arrived while you were…” She waves a hand in Ellie and Joel’s general direction. 

“Shit.” 

So much for no one knowing where she was headed, if Joel had to guess. Add that to the list of complications here. One more thing they’d figure out how to deal with. 

Marlene barely looks fazed, leaning there against the entryway. “And who are you exactly, in this case?” Her eyes narrow in Joel’s direction. As they well should. He’s done nothing but walk into this woman’s home, lie to her, and potentially kidnap a child across several state lines. 

“Don’t be mean to Joel.” Ellie cuts him off before he gets a chance to explain. “He’s, like, my only friend. He was trying to make sure nobody murdered me.”

Eyebrow raised, Marlene stands up straight and levels Ellie with a stare. “And is that something you regularly expect to have happen to you?”

“It is when she’s a bonehead hopping into the bed of trucks to try and get where she’s goin’.” Joel interrupts. “Honest, ma’am. I just wanted to get her to ya in one piece.” Which he had. So now would be the time to pat his knees, thank her for the coffee he hadn’t yet been served, and see himself out. “She makes that a little harder than it should be at times.”

Ellie elbows him in the ribs. 

Marlene almost smirks. Finally, some headway. “Ellie,” Marlene genuinely smiles in her direction now. Unguarded and all. “Why don’t you go get your stuff from the back room?”

Never the fool, Ellie looks to Joel for confirmation. She’s well aware of when she’s being sent away so the grown ups can talk. 

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Joel promises, quiet enough that maybe Marlene won’t hear. He knows it’s what Ellie needs to hear or, at least, deserves to. Some degree of surety, some mild assurance of steadfastness. He’d wait here a little longer. He’d wait until she was ready for him to leave. 

Her footsteps are almost noiseless down the hall. 

Marlene faces him full-on. “I don’t know what you think this is-“

“A kid holding on to your claims,” Joel answers easily. The moment Ellie described her grand plans, he knew this was a possibility. He feared it would be exactly what happened. That was why he came all this way, he tells himself. He had to make sure she had a place to go. He had to make sure there was someone looking out for her. “You said anytime. She took it as any damn time.”

A tsk and a hand to her forehead are the only responses Joel gets for several seconds. He keeps looking down the hallway, expecting to see a shadowed form standing there, listening in. 

“Anytime after she was eighteen ,” Marlene whispers furtively. “I’m not a mother. I’m not trying to be one.”

Joel scoffs. “Too late now,” he says a little too loudly. “Congrats, it’s a girl.”

Standing, pacing. “No. I’m not doing this.”

A part of him had certainly not expected this to go well. He just didn’t think it would go this badly. “She came most way across the country. Illegally, might I add.” 

The amount of effort to get here…stowing away in unknown trucks, trusting a man she had no reason to, going to a damn wedding for no good reason. The same old clothes on her back, the lack of food in her stomach. And now this woman was gonna just…turn her out like an unwanted dog?

God, he hopes Ellie can’t hear this conversation; he wants to shield her from this hurt that should never reach her. Not when it seemed like the rest of the damn world was already out to do that to her. 

“Yes, illegally, thanks to your assistance, it would seem.” Hard, unbroken stare. “What exactly have you been doing with this girl?”

It’s nothing new, nothing unexpected. But he’s so damn sick of every single person just assuming he’s got some evil ulterior motive for this sweet, innocent kid when no one else in this whole fucking world can bother to look out for her. “Driving her ass here. And clothing her. And feeding her. And keeping her goddamn alive!” Didn’t mean to yell. That was the one thing he was trying not to do here. 

Joel’s standing now too. The both of them are all of five feet apart in a too dim living room with the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafting from the kitchen and a strawberry-socked footed kid down the hall, and it’s all Joel can do to keep his cool, to not lose his fucking mind that no one else seems to see what he does. 

It opens something deep and festering and old that no one else cares about this kid. No one else in this god forsaken world can be bothered to see why she’s worth so much more than what she’s getting. 

“I drove her here because YOU gave her some sort of hope of a home, and whatever shit she was in back in Boston made it worth it.” He’s shaking his head. He’s looking down the hall for his kid. He’s trying not to blow a goddamn fuse. “You really gonna stand here and look me in the eye and say you can’t even talk to her?”

“She was my best friend’s daughter. What was I supposed to say to that letter?” Marlene’s back to whispering. There’s no way Ellie isn’t hinging on every word. “‘I can smell the desperation on your pen ink but don’t look me up til you’ve got the right to buy cigarettes and join the motherfucking army?”

“Jesus. She’s just a kid.”

“You’re getting it now.”

There’s a look in Marlene’s eyes—something else. Something more. It’s like she’s afraid. It’s like there’s something to hide. 

“Listen,” she seems to break just slightly. To breathe. “I don’t know what sorta deal you’ve cut exactly, but you’re not wrong. You got her here in one piece. I can take care of getting her sent back the same.”

Another look down the hall. Joel’s already envisioning the “I’m gonna bolt” face. He hates that face. He would have to make sure to catch her before she actually did. He’s still recovering from the panic yesterday morning, no repeats goddammit. “By all means,” he answers darkly with a hand reaching up to rest against his forehead, “don’t strain yourself.”

“I don’t expect you to understand-”

“Good.”

Marlene stops, pauses. She sits back down on the couch and holds her head in her hands, elbows braced on her knees. “She seems like a great kid. If she’s…if she’s even anything half like Anna.” A sadness radiates from her, and if Joel wasn’t so blindingly angry, he might almost sympathize with this woman’s obvious grief. “I can tell you right now, though. I’m not the one who can give her what she needs. A couple stories about her mom? A handful of photographs? Sure, but that’s all I have for her right now.”

It’s not like Joel’s got much, either. He has a business he keeps running and a Tuesday night poker group he sometimes goes to and an empty second bedroom in a house he refuses to ever make a home. He has a brother who’s afraid to tell him he’s going to become a father. He’s got a headstone with his last name carved into it and blooming flowers beside it every spring. He has a heart that’s never healed and a scar that’s not stopped aching and a void that will never be filled inside of him. 

And he’s got a kid looking to him for something honest, something safe. He’s making it work. The teasing and the nightmares and the puns and the fear that comes up out of her as if it will swallow her whole. The fear that wants to choke him down the exact same.

“You think I got much else?” Joel whispers darkly, stuck on her peels of laughter and the way she takes an extra half-step towards him whenever she’s uncertain. Hot chocolate in the morning, curtains pulled shut at night. Keep the door locked. Chained. Nobody in. Nobody except, maybe, him. “You think I’m looking to have my life uprooted by some fourteen year old in need of a goddamn parent? That ain’t me. It sure as hell ain’t supposed to be me.”

Drop her at the door, let her walk through to her future. Somewhere safe, warm, happy. A home that would keep her full. Keep the holes out of her shoes. 

It’s not supposed to be him. It can’t be him. He can’t…he can’t lose something like her again. 

Marlene holds her hands up. “I told you. I’ll get her back to Boston.” She shakes her head and moves towards the front door as if to show him out.

“I’m not a lot of work.” 

Her voice at the edge of the hall, her body still cloaked in shadows. Ellie takes another step forward, footsteps soundless on the hardwood. A maroon photo album is clutched against her chest. The fear is naked on her face. 

“Ellie-” Marlene starts, shooting Joel a look of D o something already.

“No. No, listen, I don’t need much, okay? I’ll get a job to pay for whatever stuff I need. And I’m pretty much an adult. It’s not like I’m looking for a mom or something.” The words are all stacking on top of one another, rushing out of her with little breath between. She’s afraid of getting cut off. She’s terrified of being sent away. “And I’m useful. I can do the dishes and ask Joel. I know how to check the oil in your car. I never get food out of the cabinets after dinner, even when they’re unlocked and…and,” a single, stuttering breath. 

Marlene opens her mouth, ready to respond.

“I was supposed to go to you.” Ellie cuts her off before the woman gets the chance. 

The photo album flops to the vacated couch cushions as Ellie darts back to the front door. “Look.” Her backpack zipper flies open. She doesn’t even bother to close it up as she comes dashing back into the living room, a single sheet of lined notebook paper held out. “I don’t know if no one told you. And I mean, I guess it’s not like some legally binding sort of thing, but look. She wrote it here. It’s right here.”

“Her name is Ellie.” Her voice is wavering as she begins rushing through the words, knuckles going white in her grasp on the paper. “I know you can give her what I won’t be able to. She’s yours, Marlene. You can give her a home and raise her up right. Raise her with all of the-”

“Stop.” Marlene shoots the word with deadly accuracy.

Ellie’s mouth closes. The letter falls a few inches from her face. Shoulders tensed, breath caught, eyes imploring. The kid is caught somewhere distinctly between blind, desperate hope and aching, incapacitating fear of what will come next. 

Joel’s afraid he’s going to have no choice but to stand here and watch this girl have her heart shattered in a million pieces. He fights the urge to go to her, wrap her in his arms, and lead her away from someplace that can cause so much hurt, so much loss. It takes everything in him not to reach out and guard her from a tragedy.

“I’ve seen the letter, Ellie.”

A heavy swallow, tears springing to her eyes. She knows what Marlene is saying, even as she fights to reason through some other answer. Something that hurts less than this loathsome dismissal.

“They…they wouldn’t let you take me, right? Because it’s not like, a will or something.” Ellie’s teeth dig deep into her bottom lip. “Right?”

A hand drawn to Marlene’s face. She mutters something beneath her breath as her posture slouches and her fight fades. “Listen, Ellie, I ain’t nobody’s hero. I’m not a mom. Never was.”

There’s a battle between the devastating impact Ellie’s just taken and the need to continue her fight forward. “No, no, you aren’t listening.” There’s frank desperation in her tone, pleading in her eyes. “I don’t need a mom. I don’t need…” Something she catches in Marlene’s eyes brushes the fight right off of her. Ellie’s eyes fall to the floor. “Do you know what I did to get here?” 

“I’m sure you’re a great kid,” Marlene starts, not caring that she’s just devastated this little girl. Not even slightly bothered by the way Ellie’s fingers have begun to shake, and she’s closing up around herself. “It’s not personal, Ellie. I just…Anna didn’t know what she was doing when she wrote that. Right?”

That gets the kid’s attention again, her gaze flying up to meet Marlene’s. “She knew enough to want me to have somewhere else to go.” Her lower lip trembles. “I don’t need much.” A whisper, a final treaty offering. 

Marlene has the audacity to shoot Ellie a small, sad smile. “I am sorry. But I…I can’t do this.”

Joel’s seen enough, heard enough. He was letting her have this conversation, to get it off of her chest, but now he’s reaching for Ellie. He’s ready to get her out of this house and away from this moment. Back to the truck, to their space. Tonight they would go get the greasiest, worst for you food they could find. He’d keep the curtains pulled over the windows and watch her favorite cartoons beside her in the morning. Salt Lake City had a zoo on the outskirts of the city. Maybe he could get them tickets for tomorrow afternoon.

It would be okay. He could fix this. Joel could take that fractured, ruined expression off her face and heal it into something bright, beautiful, Ellie. “Come on,” he eases quietly, gently. 

The letter is crumpled in Ellie’s fists. “Sh-she picked you.” Reality is still descending upon her. Pieces clicking into place. “And you didn’t want...” The me lingers, heavy and unspoken.

“It’s really not about you, Ellie.” The words are said with their own edge of gentleness, as if they could stand a chance of pacifying an attack such as the one that’s just rained upon an already worn and weary fourteen year old soldier. “I am sorry.”

There’s no saving face, not in this sort of situation, but Ellie has to try anyway. She has to attempt to place a brave face back on, allow the anger to swallow her up and dictate her next move. It’s no more than a flash of devastation, a rush of disappointment. Standing tall, her mouth opens for some sort of retort, some last parting words to leave rolling around in Marlene’s head. All that slips out is the edges of a sob. 

“Okay, come on,” Joel steps towards her to lead her from this room and this woman and this grief. He wanted to guide her away to someplace safe. He wanted to give her what the rest of the world so vehemently denied. 

Wordlessly, Ellie turns back towards the entryway, scoops her stuff from the floor, and stands at the bottom of the porch stairs. The sun has begun to set, long shadows cast along the yellowed grass. 

The still unzippered backpack hangs slack in one hand, her sneakers dangling in the other. It’s just her dancing strawberry socks pressed against the sidewalk as she stares down the street, eyes fixed toward nothingness. 

Maybe he should go to her, put an arm around her shoulders, offer up a piece of himself to be held in her hands. 

But Joel’s a little out of his element here, a bit out of his depths. So instead, he settles for an “Ellie.” He takes a glance sent his direction. He makes do with a nod of his head towards their truck cabin, their home out on this endless road. 

She climbs into the passenger seat, and it will be enough. They’ll make it enough.

Sitting there outside of Marlene’s, neither of them say a word. 

A part of Joel keeps expecting a joke, some attempt to lighten the heaviness that was about to devour them. But Ellie looks truly shell-shocked. She looks like someone’s slapped her across the face.

She looks like she had Friday night when he’d said those angry, ugly words to her.

“Hey,” he says as softly as he can. This small space was made just for them, him and her, and a road that was never permanent, ever changing but always the same. It held their bags of fast food and endless music and bad jokes that just kept coming. Just the two of them, safe and contained away from the rest of humanity in the space that was theirs, covering over a thousand miles, tackling histories neither of them quite knew how to face. “It’s okay.”

When Ellie turns to face him, there’s a flash of pain across her face. The sting of sharp dismissal has sunk deep within her bones, and it weighs her down, heavy and burdensome. And then there’s almost nothing. Blank, void, empty. 

That scares Joel more. This bright, vibrant kid, having that sort of vacant look in her eye. 

“We’ll go-”

“Just shut the fuck up, Joel!”

Harsh, angry, desperate.

Joel presses his lips together. He’ll give this kid whatever she needs. 

When she was ready, he’d get them some other place to stay. Maybe they would go back to Tommy and Maria’s, hide out there for a few days so Ellie could lick her wounds and Joel could figure out what the hell he was going to do next. It wasn’t leave her in Salt Lake City. It sure as fuck wasn’t send her back to Boston. Guess it would have to be Austin. There must be some way to make it all legal. They’d figure it out.

The truck churns to life with a little more volume than Joel was anticipating. He flinches. Ellie doesn’t. 

“I’m gonna get us somewhere to stay,” he says like he’s talking to a wounded animal, trying to keep it from reaching out and snapping at him, praying it wouldn’t dart off to some place he could not follow.

Her eyes are fixed out her window at the unmoving house she’d been ejected from, at the home she had been anticipating on making up until this moment. “Why?” The word is spat at him, callous and savage. “What the fuck do you care?”

Carefully schooling his features, Joel tries to answer with caution. “I’m not just gonna leave you here.”

She spins on him, open and withered and vulnerable. She faces him with naked suffering, blatant anguish. It hurts him, keeping her at a distance when the only thing that feels remotely right is to gather her in his arms and mollify the harsh sting of rejection that’s left her lacerated and oozing. The pain rolls off of her and hits Joel square in his chest. 

“Why not?” She’s all but shouting, teeth bared. “What the fuck do you want with me, man? I’m not anything. I’ve got nothing to offer!”

“Ellie.” The way her name falls past his lips is slow and easing, pitching towards a southern drawl and leaning its way in the direction of how he once whispered “Sarah” in the dark.

“Do you know what I did to get here?” She asks, acid biting into her words, choking in her throat, grabbing ahold of her tongue and silencing her. “No one-no one knows. W-what I did. And she didn’t…she was supposed to-fuck!” 

In a horrifying second, Ellie goes from screaming at him and muttering to herself to slamming her head violently against the dashboard. Her forehead bashes with full force three times over as a scream rips from her throat before Joels manages to grab ahold of her shoulders and hold her back against the seat, securing her steadily in place. He keeps her where she can’t hurt herself anymore. 

“GET OFF OF ME!” she screams over and over, thrashing against his ironclad hold with a wretched determination and frantic urgency. “Get the fuck off of me! Fuck you! Fuck you, motherfucker!”

“Hey!” He gives her shoulders a little shake, tries to force her to look at him, to hear him. She’s still fighting against his hold. “Look at me, Ellie. Look the fuck at me.” When she does, her furious, frenzied rampage slips to a shattering, bursting grief. 

Sobs replace the screams; there’s no choice left now. Joel gathers her against his chest, sliding across the bench seat to hold her close beside him. “It’s okay,” he whispers, much like after her nightmare. One hand cradling the back of her head against him and the other easing along her back. 

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Whatever she tries to say next is obscured by the hiccups of her sobs. He shushes her again, waits for her breathing to settle before asking. “What was that?”

“You shouldn’t.” 

He should pull away now, maintain a distance between them. This wasn't good, not healthy. He could feel how easily his arms held her, how quickly his heart cradled the saddest, loneliest pieces of this kid who was meant to rest beside him. Joel held her like a father holds a daughter. He worries he’s going to love her just like one. He fears there will be no going back. One week in, and he’s already a goner. All that he has is hers, just like that. 

“I do anyway, Ellie,” he whispers the words into her hair. Most of it has slipped from her ponytail in the attack she’d launched against herself. 

She wails; it’s the only way to describe it. Her grief swallows her whole, and she releases it while being held there in his arms. 

The sun has gone down, the streetlights switched on—this day has come to a close. Joel has not begun the drive back to Austin. Joel has not released this girl from his arms. Instead, he holds her tighter. He holds her like he might not ever let her go. 

A sniffle, a hiccup. Ellie pulls back. There’s a soaked-through patch of snot and tears on Joel’s shirt. “Sorry,” she mumbles and turns to look away. Joel grabs hold of her chin and flips on the interior light to try and assess the damage done to her forehead. It’s red and beginning to swell. It would probably be a deep shade of purple by morning. His thumb brushes against the edge of it. 

He fights the urge to kiss it better.

“Let’s go to bed, kiddo.”

Joel refuses to put the car into drive until her seatbelt has clicked into place.

//

There are half a dozen hotels not even five miles out. 

Distance feels important, though, so Joel drives further, no specific direction one way or the other—not south to Austin or north to Jackson or east to Boston. Just away. Just somewhere else that could be only theirs. Maybe somewhere that could even be a little bit like home.

“Are you hungry?”

A scoff. “No.”

Eyes closed, hands coming up to cover her face. Joel isn’t sure if she’s ashamed or if her head’s hurting from the beating she gave it.

A Hampton Inn someplace not too far outside the city limits will do the trick. Joel parks the truck but doesn’t turn it off just yet. “We’ll stay here tonight. Go from there.”

Ellie looks over at him. “It’s fine. I can figure it out from here.”

The idea alone has his heart dropping a beat. “No.” The word comes out darker than he intends. “You will not be doing that. Do you hear me?” Joel seeks for her stare to meet his. “Look at me, Ellie.”

She sighs, frustrated and annoyed, but does as he asks. There’s a steely reluctance hanging there, attempting to mask away all of that bare vulnerability she had just unleashed. She’s safe with him; he wants to promise her. All those broken, battered pieces of her would only be treated with care, only ever mended back together with the utmost of caution. 

“You will not be goin’ off on your own. Do you understand me?”

Her teeth dig into her lip. Her eyes don’t look away. “Yes.”

“Swear it,” he insists back, the simple reply not enough to ease the flash of fears her suggestion had just unleashed on him. “Swear to me you won’t be taking off on your own or doing any other crazy shit.”

It looks like she might cry as Ellie vows, “I swear.” 

He breathes in the assurance. “Okay.” They would make it past this. He’d get her through it, one way or another. “Let’s go inside.”

Chapter Text

It’s the same process, looks practically the same damn room they’ve stayed in before. At this point, they’ve damn near gotten this down to a science.

Ellie follows behind him with her backpack hanging off one shoulder, shoes untied, head hanging. It’s like someone has beaten all of the fight out of her. All those awful circumstances her nightmares alluded to, and it’s only this that has truly worn her down. A means to an end, that’s what this trip was supposed to be. 

Joel’s finally realizing that this frantic journey had been to finally land herself somewhere safe, find herself somewhere she was always meant to belong. He’s understanding that this excursion was a last ditch effort. 

Without a word, Ellie shuts herself in the bathroom. The spray of water is all Joel hears while he stands in the middle of their hotel room, thumb and forefinger coming up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. There was a migraine settling behind his eyes. He’s got no plan for what should come next. Of course now is when Tommy is off in the goddamn wilderness with no cell service. 

Joel’s got a fourteen year old kid in his possession that has nowhere safe in the world to go. Jesus. 

They would figure this out. He would, really, with her input. Maybe once they were back in Wyoming, Joel could get Maria’s aid with all the legal bullshit that would need to be sorted through. He could take Ellie in, if she wanted that. The idea is crazy—out of his mind, what are you possibly thinking, crazy—but he could make it work for a few years. If that’s what it took. 

There was a spare room. He had money enough to clothe and feed a kid. She could go to school, then he’d ship her off to college. Maybe then this woman who was supposed to take her in would consider offering her some small ounce of affection. Maybe then he’d be able to let her go. 

Ellie’s broken, fractured expression had torn something apart in him. It made him want to break apart so that maybe he could hold her together, or at the very least, so he could rest beside her as something familiar. Make it work. That’s what he would do. He’d make this work. Somehow. 

She comes out in her pajamas. Joel’s still just standing there in their hundred square foot hotel room. 

Holding gazes, waiting for the first one to break. The mark on her head looks as though it hurts like hell. 

“Wait here.”

He slips out the door with the bucket and hunts the floor for an ice machine. The bag is double-knotted by the time he gets back. He wraps it in a clean washcloth from the steamed-filled bathroom so it won’t burn her skin with the cold. 

“Here.”

She looks at what he offers, doesn’t move to grab it. “You don’t have to take care of me,” she mutters, and all he hears is her pleading with Marlene that she wouldn’t be a lot of work and that she would get her own job and wouldn’t eat any goddamn food even if the cabinets weren’t goddamn locked. For fuck’s sake.

“That’s gonna hurt if you don’t get the swellin’ under control,” he says instead of “It’d be one of the greatest privileges of my sorry life to take care of you.” 

She takes the makeshift ice pack and doesn’t break eye contact with Joel as she presses it against her forehead.

“There ya go. Good.”

There must be some way to cheer her up, but Joel’s no good at this sort of thing. He’s not the guy you look to for cheering somebody up. That ain’t who he is, not anymore. No point in pretending otherwise. 

Joel skips the shower, changes in the humid bathroom with its broken fan and comes back out to chain the door, pull the blinds down, and draw the curtains shut. Ellie watches him the whole time from where she stands next to her bed, tracking his movements like she’s trying to memorize them.

“You gettin’ in bed or what?”

Without haste, she scrambles beneath the covers, crawling up on top of the mattress and flopping herself around to pull the blankets up to her chin. She watches him from where she lay, eyes wide and uncertain. 

“Goodnight,” he says in his gruffest voice. Trying to keep himself sane here; that’s all he’s trying to do. It might make him an asshole. Wouldn’t be the first time the kid has told him so. 

With a flick of the bedside lamp, the room is swallowed in some approximation of darkness. He can hear Ellie rustling beneath the covers, settling for lying on her back. She never sleeps on her back. The clock on the bedside table illuminates the space like a nightlight. Not a chance Ellie is sleeping. He’s just glad it doesn’t sound like she’s crying again. His heart couldn’t take it. His heart couldn’t handle one more ounce of this girl’s suffering. It was too much, too heavy, too endless. And she was too good for any of it. 

“Ellie.”

“What?” She doesn’t peek her face up to look over at him, just answers him with her eyes still fixed on the ceiling overhead.

Clearing his throat, Joel fights the restless, uneasy energy that’s coursing through him, dictating to gather answers and find solutions. “What did you mean? About…what you did to get here?” It costs him something, asking that question. It pulls away carefully constructed walls and tears down pretenses and opens up a well of fear he’d long since laid brick and mortar over to keep the demons from crawling back out of. 

The nothingness of her response sits between them for long, empty minutes. Joel’s given up on any sort of answer until she finally says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He thinks about sacrifices—about loss and fear and what it means to fight for your life. There’s a scar on the side of his head that’s aching, a deafness in his ear, a trembling in his ribcage. And there’s a tear-stained kid on the floor of a closet and feet swinging off of a twenty year old truck tailgate and angry, half-healed scar tissue on a forearm in the dark of night. 

“Okay then.” 

There’s not a single way he knows to make any of this better.

//

The next morning, she sleeps through the shitty hotel breakfast. Joel considers waking her up, but instead, he showers and repacks his duffel and watches her sleep. She’s soundless this morning, still and silent as a star in the night sky. 

Joel’s dreams had chased him from sleep early before the sun had fully risen. Ones with a little girl who grasped his hand in hers, pulling him along and laughing and singing. She was dragging him towards something. He was too weak and desperate to follow to even consider telling her no. 

“I would be a good big sister.” 

His mind is playing tricks on him; that’s what’s happening. It’s dragging him down lightless tunnels. It’s pulling him towards a future that had been locked away from him for fifteen years now. Chains on the doors, bars on the windows, shut and locked and sealed. 

A mumble in her sleep. Joel busies his hands with finding somewhere to feed her once she wakes. She’ll be starving. He’ll take her someplace with sweet, sugar-filled pancakes and enough whipped cream to top her cocoa that it sticks on the end of her nose with each sip. He’s aching to fix something. He’s needing to love her like no one else has. 

Finally, when they’re nearing checkout time, Ellie stirs. Fists rubbing at her eyes and little moans escape as her arms stretch overhead. She opens her eyes, and Joel makes a show of looking anywhere but at her. The stare coming from her burns something into his back. 

“Mornin’.”

That bump on her head is worse than just purple today. Swollen and sore. Joel should’ve had more ice ready for her. 

“It’s late.” She glances from him to the clock.

He shrugs, folding a shirt he’s folded three times over now. It was a good thing he’d done laundry at Tommy and Maria’s. He hadn’t packed nearly enough for this trip. “You seemed tired.”

The blankets rustle as Ellie pushes herself up, the waves of her hair all tangled together like a bird’s nest, even with how still and restful it seemed her sleep had been. She looks around the room, almost appearing lost. Her eyes land on him, almost like she’s found an answer. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” If he were someone else, he’d brush the hair from her face. “If you get ready, I think there’s a place you might like for breakfast nearby.”

Ellie doesn’t move.

No idea how to navigate this, Joel stands. He keeps shoving things into his bag. He pretends not to feel her fixed gaze burrowing into his back. 

“You don’t have to do this anymore,” she reiterates. “I’ve already cost you enough.”

Hand coming up to his face, words fleeing from his mind. He doesn’t know how to do this. “It’s fine, Ellie. I’m hungry too.” And he remembers her words about locked cabinets. Something sparks in his lungs at the idea of her going to bed hungry, with food just out of reach, locked away from her grasp. Cruel, that’s the only word he can think of for it. “You must be starvin’.”

When he wills himself to look at her again, she shrugs. Blankets were still pulled up to her waist as she sat there, teeth worrying at her lower lip. A mutter under her breath, and Joel can’t take it anymore. He falls to his knees in front of her bed, giving her the high ground. “What’s that?”

Ellie blinks at him. That bruise looks painful. He wonders if his restraining, protective hands had left marks anywhere else on her body. God, he hoped not. “I said I’m so stupid.”

“No,” he responds in a breath. “Not stupid.” 

A dry, almost sarcastic look cast in his direction. It’s soothing, seeing her usual sass rise back to the surface. It’s a breath of fresh air after a long, dark winter. “You said only a goddamn fool would go hopping in the back of trucks like I was.”

“Stand by that,” he answers, easing an inch further into her space. “That ain’t what you’re referrin’ to though, is it?”

Heavy swallow, a rapid rush of blinks. Tough kid. Tough heart. Tough skull. Nothing getting through. No weakness getting out. “Guess not.” Her eyes cast to the discarded backpack on the floor. To that letter that had been clutched like a lifeline in her fraught, quivering hands. 

Hope, that was what had carried her this whole way through. Promise, that’s what Marlene had snatched and burned in front of Ellie’s very eyes. “I just thought…” The words fade, her eyes fall. “I don’t have to be your problem anymore.”

“Not a problem,” Joel answers, a little more real and honest than he’s necessarily ready to offer. “You aren’t just some problem to be solved, kid.” Another mouth to feed and body to rehome. Never knowing where she’s gonna land next. Never knowing if the people assigned to take care of her were really going to keep her safe or merely present a new danger in her life. 

When she looks at him next, it’s with shining eyes and a trembling lip. “Then what am I?”

Jesus. He’s not made of stone. 

“You’re a goddamn miracle,” Joel whispers, hand reaching up to brush the hair back from her face with tenderness (with love). 

Tears gather, heavy until they fall. “I don’t know what that means,” she confesses with his palm still wrapped against her cheek. 

Well, he hadn’t meant to show his hand quite yet, but she needs to hear this, needs to know it. Joel holds her between his hands, cradles something warm and precious and fragile, and he promises, “It means we’re sticking together, okay? You and me, we’ll figure it out.” It’s all he’s got, the most he can offer and the least he can hold back.

Her lips press into a thin line. One solid nod of her head. “Okay then.”

//

Joel’s right; Ellie’s more than ecstatic at their breakfast options. She gets salty bacon and pancakes the size of her head filled with chocolate chips and covered in fresh strawberries and maple syrup. It takes a minute, but once she starts eating, she comes back to life a little bit. He knew she had to be hungry.

“Alright, kiddo. You gotta give me something.” He waits until she’s more than three-quarters of the way through her food. As expected, she stops at once and switches to pushing the remnants around on her plate. “If we’re finding a solution, I gotta know some details.”

Ellie shifts in her seat. “I can’t go back to Boston.”

“Why.”

She cuts a segment of pancake into a dozen miniscule bites and rolls them around in globs of syrup as she gives him a little shrug. “There’s just too much shit there, okay?”

“Like what.”

The glare she shoots him could probably cause some physical damage if he dared to look directly into it. “None of your business.”

“Ellie.” Joel sighs, reaches out, and taps the wrist attached to the hand painting with pancake scraps across from him. “You trust me?”

An unfettered look, lips parted. The wheels are turning in her brain, drawing conclusions and answering questions. She nods once. 

“Then talk to me.”

Another shrug, back to her artwork. “People fucking suck. What more do you need to know?”

“Did someone hurt you?”

Ellie pauses, breath caught halfway on an inhale. “Yes.”

Joel thinks of her scar he’d caught a glimpse of in the darkness, how it’s otherwise always covered. He thinks of her nightmares and how she tenses under touch and how he’s not an idiot. It hurts anyway, hearing her say it. Anger flares, fades at the terrified look buried in her expression. “Okay. Was someone hurting you when you ran away?”

“It’s not that easy, man. It isn’t…it doesn’t…you won’t get it.” But she doesn’t look away.

“Try me.”

The waitress chooses that moment to return with a bright, cheery smile and the check. Joel grumbles at her to leave it, barely sparing her a glance before looking back to his kid. The moment’s gone; she’s zipping herself back up tight, just like that damn backpack. Closed. Protected. Clutched tight.

Joel looks directly at her and refuses to surrender, no matter how long she fights his stare. Unsurprisingly, she breaks with a roll of her eyes and a haughty look shot his way. It fades less than a minute later, replaced with lips twisted to the side and her fingernail scratching at an old crayon mark on the white table top. 

“I’m just saying…maybe I hurt somebody too.” Ellie looks back up at him as soon as the words are out. She’s reading his response. She’s bracing herself for impact. “Maybe I did something bad.”

“Okay.” Joel says the word as plainly as he can manage. He doesn’t want to think about what drove her to do something like that. He doesn’t want such a thing to ever have been necessary for her. “It’s okay, Ellie.”

“I don’t need much.”  He can't stop hearing that desperate plea in his head. He can't stop imagining a kid trying to make herself as small and insignificant as possible so someone wouldn't deem her as more effort than she's worth. He can't imagine anyone deciding Ellie isn't worth the whole damn universe.

Hand reaching across the table, resting over her fidgeting one. He makes sure she looks, sees, understands. He’s not gonna leave her. Not for anything. “We’ll figure that out, too.”

“But-”

“Nope,” he cuts her off and squeezes her hand once before pulling away. “One thing at a time. That’s how we’re gonna do this. No spiraling.” That twisted, treacherous path of what ifs and now whats. How it could grab and tangle and hold without relent. They’d keep out of that, keep each other from tumbling down the trail. “One thing at a time, got it?”

Nod. Smile. “Got it.”

//

Five hours back to Tommy’s. That’s stage one. Then Joel would call his crew, put them off another week. “ Una emergencia familiar, Manny.” And the man would have enough decency not to answer with, “ Joel, tu no tienes familia?” 

He does now.

Forty minutes into the drive, Ellie passes out. She must be exhausted after hardly any sleep Saturday night and the emotionally charged war she’d just fought through. So she sleeps with her mouth open and her head lolled to the side. She only mumbles discontentedly on occasion, easily silenced by Joel’s open palm against her knee. 

God, what was he doing?

What he needed to. It was that simple. 

The miles pass with the hum of tires on asphalt. The miles pass, and the states transition, and they recarve paths they’ve already crossed, and nothing changes. Except everything. Now, everything is just five degrees closer to a reality that could well and truly kill him. It’s the same one that might just save him.

Ellie starts to fidget. Joel shushes her; she needs her sleep.

The truck cabin falls silent.

Everything is how it should be.

//

“Joel?”

Construction traffic strikes again. He turns to face her, waits.

“I have to pee.”

Easy enough. He takes the next exit even though he’s a little more eager to get where they’re going this time around. There’s a decent enough looking gas station that Joel pulls up outside and throws the truck up to a pump. “Get me a coffee while you’re in there.”

Ellie nods once. She leaves her backpack in the truck these days. It helps him breathe easier; he wonders if she’s noticed. 

A few dollar bills tucked into her jeans pocket, Joel watches until she’s safely inside the building. He’s tired, weary. The stress is resting heavy on his shoulders, threatening to bury him beneath the weight as his thoughts keep piling on top of one another. Like how he might have to fight multiple state’s court systems to be able to legally obtain this kid, all of the ways he could fail her, all of the secrets she still wasn’t telling him. 

Desperate, that’s what she was. It had made him the same. 

The numbers tick up on the gas tank as Joel stands, waiting and watching. It finishes before Ellie reappears, unusual for a kid who seemed to make it her life’s mission to move with efficiency. 

Maybe there was a line for the bathroom.

Joel drives the truck right up to the front door and lets his fingers drum out anxiously on the steering wheel; no one is here to call him on the nervous tick anyway. Tommy would, though. If he was here right now. He’d call Joel the hell out.

Good thing he wasn’t because Joel loses his patience and starts to get out. If there was a line, it only made sense for him to go buy his own coffee, after all. It only made sense to walk inside and see it for himself, maybe see her in the process.

Just as he’s about to step up the curb, Ellie comes bursting out the door. Her eyes are wide, breathing all wrong. 

The truck isn’t where she left it, and her mind isn’t processing as she looks right past the fact that he’s practically in front of her. A glance, darting over her shoulder, Ellie’s feet begin to move away.

“Ellie,” Joel calls her name, watches as the recognition dawns. Relief casts itself across her face, and she hustles for the truck.

“Let’s go.” The words come out panting. The demand is layered with urgency.

Sure, he could insist on answers. Instead, he gets back in and drives away. No questions asked. 

Her breathing doesn’t settle until they’ve hit the highway again. 

“Ellie?”

Face buried in her hands, fingers digging into her scalp. “Told you I was crazy,” she mumbles out. 

“You’re not crazy,” Joel reassures without any proof to provide to the contrary. He just hates the way she spits out the word in reference to herself. 

Head shaking, knees tucked to her chest. She’s staring out the windshield. She’s craning back to watch behind them. “I have to be,” she whispers, and it makes no damn sense. “If I’m not crazy, then it means…No, I’m fucking crazy. Just like her. That shit’s genetic, you know.”

Joel’s direction is partially pointed towards the road. Mostly, though, it’s focused on the kid. He worries she’s going to hurt herself in some way again. That tremble in her voice and the frantic casting of her gaze. The sharp mark on her forehead is still cutting something through him. He can’t let her do anything like that again. 

“Besides, I’m the one who really made her crazy.” Ellie’s still not looking at him. She barely seems like she’s talking to him at all. “It’s my fault she killed herself.”

Jesus, when would the words out of her mouth stop cutting through him like that? “Not your fault.”

Ellie scoffs. “Well, she didn’t off herself until three weeks after I was born so it seems pretty fucking conclusive to me.” Angry but vulnerable. Closed off while also peeling herself wide open. A contradiction of herself. “Add that on top of whatever was wrong with her to begin with…” Picking at her cuticles, eyes seeking out an escape route. There’s nowhere for her to go. It forces Joel to think about her jumping out of a moving truck and hiking her way back to him. It makes Joel wish he knew how to engage some goddamn child locks. “Only a matter of time ‘til it gets me, too. Probably already is.”

Joel has no idea what to do with the words coming out of her mouth. All he knows is that they’re scaring him, horrifying him. It makes him want to tell her about the scar on the right side of his head, about how he lost everything and was still here, still trying to find some damn purpose or another to get up each morning. How it had taken fifteen years, but he’s starting to consider that reason is sitting beside him with red-rimmed eyes and bleeding fingertips. 

Ellie glances all around them again. It seems to relax her when Joel hits the gas a little heavier. “As if I’m not enough of a pain in the ass, huh?” The words attempt to hold her same teasing tone. They fall just shy of levity. “Now you can add on that I’m fucking crazy.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Joel reiterates because he doesn’t know what to do with anything else that she’s saying. He has a hard time following her even when she’s making sense, and this conversation was veering directly towards babbling at this point.

“Shit!” Joel looks at her at once, at the ready with his right hand to restrain her from harming herself if necessary. “I forgot your fucking coffee.”

Small fucking potatoes. “Well then,” Joel reaches over and musses her hair. Joel reaches out, desperate to find some piece of the Ellie sitting next to him that he could access. “That one can be your fault.”

It’s a risk, but one he’s willing to take. Ellie smiles, then she laughs.

The truck cabin settles with the lightness wrapped within that sound.

“You’re such a dick.”

He laughs, too. The sound of hers surges relief through him so he has no choice but to find an outlet for it somewhere, somehow.

The seatbelt unclicks. Joel’s ready to lose his shit on her, but then Ellie slides across the bench seat and resecures the lap belt into place. Her head drops to his shoulder. With a one-handed grip on the steering wheel, Joel tucks her against his side.

//

One final stop. Joel’s never been so ready to get where he’s going. 

If possible, he wouldn’t stop until they got there, but he can barely keep his eyes open at this point. The night is black, low clouds hanging in the sky and air thick with moisture. Rain was held above with promise.

Ellie’s restless. She’s fidgeting and picking even when she stays pressed against his side. Joel tries to reassure her with a tightening of his arm or a gentle graze of his thumb along her arm. 

So much to talk about. So many things to tackle. 

First, he would take it slow. Ease her into whatever this was going to be. But he needed her to understand fault and responsibility and where it lies. He needed to comprehend what ghosts were haunting her in her nightmares so that they may be laid to rest. He needed to destroy whatever motherfuckers had dared to hurt her. 

A part of him believes that would make all of this easier, if that could be his only responsibility and his top priority. But instead, it’s the kid cradled against his side. Instead, he has to resituate the way he fits in this world and how he makes his way through it. He was going to need to protect her in more ways than one. Protect her from those who harmed her and, at times, herself. 

That mark on her forehead was hurting him more than it seemed to her. 

But before all of that, he had to get them someplace to sleep without driving into a ravine. 

“Just gotta pee one last time,” Joel lies so she won’t blame herself for forgetting the coffee, despite his joke earlier. 

Ellie stretches as she lifts her body off of his fully-numbed arm. The tips of her fingers just barely graze the felt material of the ceiling overhead. “I’ll wait here,” she says, her voice drowsy. 

Joel thinks about how he could tuck her in tonight, about dropping a kiss to the top of her head and the promise of a goodnight and how maybe now it could always be followed with a good morning. 

“Be right back,” he whispers. He leaves the keys in the cabin with her so she could keep listening to whatever she’d been playing from his phone the last few hours. Even with Ellie being completely silent, she didn’t stop her incessant search for music. She’d been downloading things, even before they’d hit Salt Lake City. Joel had been counting on listening to whatever soundtrack Ellie was creating on what was supposed to be his sole journey back to Jackson. 

Inside is more innocuous gas station fair. Officially, Joel is well and truly over being on the road. He’s done with fast food joints, late-night convenience store stops, and the best way to entertain his roadside partner being balance beam parking barriers and outdated playground equipment. For the longest time, he has been dreading the end of this trip. It’s only now that the end has transitioned to something different that he’s truly ready to be home. 

Twenty-four ounces of watered down, slightly burnt coffee was going to have to be enough to cover the next hour or so. Maybe he could get Ellie talking; she was pretty good at pestering him to the point of wakefulness. Hell, if he really got desperate, he could convince her to dig out that book of hers no problem. She’d read off another terrible joke, he would groan, and she would insist that it was actually good, thank you very much. That smile would fall across her face again. It would fill him up better than any sad caffeine vessel could.

Thanking the overly-eager cashier, Joel steps outside to find his truck cabin completely barren.

“Ellie?” They’ve done this enough now. Joel’s learned to check a few places before jumping to panic. Closet floors, the hood of cars, just behind hotel doors; he always found her. She wasn’t ever really gone from him. “Ellie?” 

Just to make it easier, Joel raises his voice. The truck’s unlocked, keys resting in the cup holder. Right where he’d left them. 

Okay, so they’d need to have a talk about not doing that once she got back in the car. He digs the collection of stuff out of the cupholder so his coffee can rest there instead. Skittles wrappers and chapstick and her folded up travel toothbrush. The contents of this truck were already 90% Ellie. Joel was finding that he didn’t really mind.

“C’mon, kid. You’re starting to worry me here.”

There’s no response to be heard. Which is impossible. Because she had sworn to him. And he’d told her, despite how much it scared him, the little bit it killed him, that they were in this together. He wasn’t about to send her off to fend on her own devices. She’d wrapped herself against the side of his body. She’d sworn.

“ELLIE!” 

Her things clutched in his hand are thrown back onto the seat. Joel rushes inside, convinced she’d sneaked by him to pee. He pounds on bathroom doors to no response. Marches up and down aisles. Asks that too-nice employee if she’d seen a girl with brown hair who’s just so high and in a red, zip-up sweatshirt.

He asks if there are security cameras.

He gets told no. 

No. 

No.

Horrors upon horrors dawning on him. All that fear, all that running. Whatever she’d been escaping from had caught up to her, snagged her around the waist and hauled her off into the dark. Because the only other option was that she’d left and…no, he refused to consider it as a possibility. Not Ellie. Not after everything.

Joel’s back in his truck. The engine’s revving to life. The high beams are switched on. 

He could find her. He would get her back.

There’s no other choice, not for him. 

Wherever she was out there, he would go to her. He’d find her.

Failure was not an option, not this time. 

If it was the last thing he did, Joel would find her. He had to. 

Ellie would be counting on him. There’s not a chance that he’ll let her down. 

Not after everything. Not when he was just starting to accept what she could mean to him, the miracle that she is in the world. In his world. 

There was still so much he needed to tell her, to show her. He wasn’t going to fail her. There wasn’t a single motherfucker that would stand in his way.

Chapter Text

Music off. Eyes ahead. Cell phone clutched in hand. Joel prays he doesn’t lose service driving around in the middle of nowhere. Ellie was a resourceful kid. She had his number. She’d used it. He could only hope that she had put in the effort to memorize it, that horror wasn’t overruling her every thought and blocking her ability to think through the sequence. She could call him and tell him exactly where she is. Joel could break eighty five traffic laws getting to her. Everything would be right in the world again. 

All he had to do was find her.  

No idea where to go, which routes to follow, or where she might be taken to. 

He’s driving blind, speeding forward with adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream. It sparks his heart into action, electrical impulses sharp and strong and demanding even as the most he can do is fucking sit here with a gas pedal nearly pushed to the floor, hoping he was going the right way. 

It almost is something like a cruel joke that now is when she had disappeared. Not before, when he’d tried to leave her behind in a Holiday Inn or nearly abandoned her at a bus station. Not even when she’d climbed out of a two-story window and hidden away in another random truck to another random place for the mere sake of getting away from him. Not then, no. It’s now. Now, when he had left her safe and secure in his truck cabin. Now, when he had already accepted that he was going to take her home and make her safe. That he was going to take her home and make her his kid. 

It’s as simple and as complicated as that statement. She was a kid, determined and stubborn and annoying and funny and kind and desperate and hoping and his. But he’d let her down. For a damned cup of coffee. He doesn’t need it now. Not with his stomach in his throat. Not with his heart somewhere out there in the world, threatened and alone.

Maybe she’d left of her own accord, the thought does enter his mind, but it leaves as fast. Because he pictures a girl with her sleeves pulled over her hands and a winning smile casting away shadows on her face and feels the phantom weight of her pressed against his side and senses the hope drifting over him, dragging him down until he was nothing but complacent to her whims, nothing but hopeful that she wouldn’t turn him away after all the myriad ways he had already failed her. 

There’s a flash in his mind of her horrified expression the first time they had driven through Jackson, her questioning of her own sanity outside of Marlene’s house in Salt Lake City. The urgent, horrified eyes as she came bursting out of a gas station in the middle of the day. Someone is here. Someone is following her. It isn’t possible; she’d been convinced it wasn’t possible—that instead she’s just crazy. And he hadn’t pushed. He hadn’t demanded sense and understanding and protection. He hadn’t taken the opportunity to place himself between her and the rest of the greedy, ugly, evil world and those who lived in it, those who wanted to take something from her and claim it as their own.

The nightmares, the screams, her demands for him to GET OFF. Why hadn’t he pushed for more? Why had he not fought to shield her in every difficult, complicated way possible? What was he thinking, keeping his distance and hiding behind the walls of his past? She needed him, and here Joel was, selfishly withholding every last ounce of what little he had to offer her. Instead, he’d chosen to fail her so thoroughly that now he had no choice but drive and hope he stood a chance of finding her. 

Should’ve kept her at his side. He never should have let her detach, once she settled in. He never should have allowed her to leave his side. What was he thinking? Goddamn fucking idiot.

Ellie had barely asked for a single thing. She’d taken what he had offered with eager, vacant hands. Ready to clasp onto the bits of hope he could present her with. How few and far between those were. How little he had in means of hope, of promise.

Until that not-quite-aunt of hers had dashed every prayer Ellie had prayed while crossing over a dozen state lines. She’d been waiting to arrive at a future that she expected to hold certainty—someone she’d already been offered to. Someone who was supposed to have loved her this whole time, her whole life. It makes Joel’s heart ache at the mere prospect. Left behind by a mother. Deserted by the woman who was designated to take her place. Locks on cabinets but never on doors. Scar on her arm. Scars on her heart. Screaming herself awake in the middle of the night and given nothing by the man who met her there in the dark. 

The only option is to find her. The only choice is to make this up to her, but there’s no sign of where she might be.

No text. No call. No goddamn trail of breadcrumbs.

Joel looks to his phone again. Nothing. 

Still driving forward, looking with desperation, with hope. Joel is looking towards nothing but a black, endless road. 

There has to be something, some sort of sign, some sort of beacon. There had to be some way of guiding him forward. It’s been fifteen years since he had loved someone like this. It’s been fifteen years since he’d really loved anyone.

No chance in hell was he letting go now. 

No chance in hell was he letting go at all.

//

Not a single damn message. 

It’s been close to three hours. 

He had failed her. He was failing her right now.

The scene of a car accident. The truck he should have been driving that night, still at the worksite. It should have been right behind his brother with a kid riding passenger. Tommy would still have been hit. He still would have been fine. Just as he is now.

So would Sarah. She would have been fine. 

All his fault.

All his failure.

One kid. 

Two kids. 

When will they stop adding together? When will they stop tearing him apart?

Daughters, torn from his grasp. Loss—laid bare in his arms, laid heavy on his heart. Sarah, six feet under. Ellie pulled away from him to a place he had no chance, no hope, of reaching.

Except he can’t afford to think that way. There has to be hope. There’s someone he is driving to, and he is going to find her. Because if there’s no hope of that…well, there’s no hope of anything, is there?

There’s hope because Joel will refuse to give up. There’s hope because he was still reaching toward her and because he still believed that there was someone to reach toward.

Ellie was his now. His responsibility, his future. He’d fight for her. He would fight the United States government just as well as he would fight men who might dare to try and take her away. As well as he might fight his own straining, lingering sense of self-preservation.

Take her home, wrap her up, hold her tight. She was precious. She was a child. She was his child. Ellie was the first breath of peace he’d caught a whisper on the wind of. She was alone, but not anymore. Not on her own if he had anything to say about it.

Joel would keep her safe in the same vein that the rest of the world had so quickly sacrificed her as a perfect, unblemished lamb to an altar for slaughter.

In a futile attempt to gather himself, Joel runs a hand down his face as he pulls over to the side of the road. He thinks about this kid and their time together. He thinks about how he might trace where she’s gotten to now. The cops enter his mind but leave even faster. Something about Ellie’s distrust towards them had convinced him of the same. No, this was for him to figure out.  

Boston, Massachusetts. Peach ice cream. Dinosaurs. Obscure animal facts. The universe which rested barely out of her reach. Blazers and jeans. Thai food. Horrible puns. All of the many ways that Joel knew her, loved her. One of them must lead to Ellie. The only hope he has is that one of them does. One of them will lead her right to his open, waiting, pleading hold. Lingering and warm and completely, perfectly alive. His to hold. His to love.

Why would you care? She’d asked.

How could I not? Joel has not yet dared to answer.

And it was so simple, so damn simple. An easy solution. A bit of paperwork. Open arms and open heart and wrecked, broken man allowing himself the good in the world he’d been so convinced no longer deserved to be held by him. Ellie deserves better, sure, but in the meantime, she’s got Joel. Completely, unquestioningly. 

Covers tucked beneath her chin and a kiss pressed against her hairline. A little girl waiting to be loved and a displaced father waiting for someone to come along and allow him to deliver it. An empty room waiting to be filled. Empty embrace, waiting to secure.

Sarah, on the cold stretcher. There had been blood staining the crisp, white sheet that covered her to her very shoulders. There had been blood, still staining the floor despite their futile attempts at mopping it up and hiding away the gruesome scene left behind in the wake of his child exiting this world. 

A thoracotomy in the trauma bay, they’d said. Sliced her whole chest wide open to try and stop the bleeding. Gloved fingers plugging the holes of arteries and tubes shoved within pleural cavities to re-expand lungs. A fentanyl drip, strong pain medicine, set up and ready to go without ever being connected to the IV ports emerging from her thin, pale forearm. Breathing tube shoved down her throat, and half a dozen needles stabbed within her veins. Give her my blood, Joel wanted to bargain with any force willing to listen. Give her my love. Give her my life.

Joel had kneeled beside his baby girl’s bed and begged anyone listening to bring her back. Joel had sobbed on nothing more than deaf ears as he cried over a dead, lifeless body.

Just that morning, she had been making eggs for his birthday. He was supposed to join her for a movie, the sequel to their own favorite franchise. It was the same one he had introduced her to. Senseless, ugly violence that they both laughed at. Neither of them was bothered by the impossible, the exaggerated. And then he lost her. And then nothing felt too over the top again.

Grief holds him, chokes him. Agony strangles within his chest. It has not let go in fifteen years. Muscles in tetany not releasing once in all this time. 

It’s only now, with fear pushing through and shoving forward, that Joel has even been able to begin to shove all of that sorrow and loss and suffering aside for the sake of someone else. For the sake of saving someone who was meant to be held by his hands, cradled in his arms. 

Ellie.

It’s the only thing he knows or sees. He has to find Ellie. He has to save her.

Home—it could be a bedroom in Austin. A bed covered by a comforter of her choosing and a desk made by his own two hands in the corner with walls painted whatever color she wanted. A wedding photo framed on his bedside table. A goofy-smiled kid ducking behind a bride and groom with her tongue sticking out of her mouth and a joy carved into the lines of her face.

Lazy Sunday mornings and busy Tuesday nights. Dinners he hadn’t worried about making nutritionally sound in fifteen years and fresh-spun milkshakes from down the street in the hottest weeks of summer. She’d pick which restaurants around them were the best and leave little reviews in all of his takeout menus until he knew her favorites better than his own. A trip to the zoo. A membership at the community pool. Boardgames and books and that cartoon show she was obsessed with. He could show her how to play guitar. He would teach her to swim. 

There was a whole life waiting for them. 

He just had to find her first. He just had to fight for her and take her home.

//

The shrill ring of his cell phone is the sweetest noise Joel’s heard in nearly four hours. He answers it with an urgent, “Ellie?” and holds his breath so that he will be sure not to miss her reply. “Ellie!” he yells a little louder. Can’t miss this opportunity, can’t fail when she was giving him a signal like this. 

There are distant sounds that allude to a struggle. The thought of someone hurting her releases hot fury to tremble through his body as powerfully as the panic. 

“-can’t swim!” he distantly hears her call. She’s not holding the phone, must have dialed his number and then either dropped it or had it wrenched from her grasp. “I can’t swim!” The words are begging, screamed. 

“Ellie.” Now her name is nothing more than a breath. It’s a tip; that’s what Joel has to believe. She’s done exactly as he’d hoped she would and called him with some plea to understand the hint she’s attempting to deliver. So he won’t scream her name or dare alert whoever’s holding her hostage to the fact that now he’s got something to go off of. Now he could regroup and figure out a way to find her. 

Water. It’s the most Joel has to go on. This kid is horrified of water. He still remembered his recommendation for her to take a swim in that nasty, radioactive motel pool and that trepidation in her eyes at the mere, joking suggestion. 

His cell is still in range. He opens up the GPS and finds the nearest body of water. Snake River.

It feels something like a sign, a senseless hope he’s willing to ride, believing it could lead him toward her. That somehow, Ellie had managed to find a way to lead him right where he needed to be. 

And then he thinks of the rains the past couple of days and the rising tides and white-capped waves and Ellie’s fraught, anguished, “I can’t swim,” and his hope sours to something more like hysteria. 

Wyoming to Oregon, there’s some ground to cover if Joel stands a chance of finding Ellie where he’s currently headed. He likes to think maybe she would lead whoever’s after her towards a place of mutual knowledge and, well, in the middle of nowhere, this briefly discussed river was as good as anything. Slightly more memorable than the Love’s they had bought disappointing nachos from on the way here.

It’s not really much to go on.

It’s all he’s got.

//

Empty parking lots, empty roads, empty shores.

It begins to snow. High altitude and the late hour lend themselves to the freezing temperatures. The flakes land with soft certainty upon the earth. Joel leaves tire tracks behind him as he travels. Why couldn’t this have started hours ago? Give him some way to follow instead of forging forward on a wild goose chase with no resources but blind hope, a prayer, and a desperate intuition. 

Another shore. He throws himself out with the truck barely placed into park first. The water rushes by. No signs of life. No signs of death, either.

Joel gets back in the truck and keeps driving.

//

There had been some time after Sarah died, he wasn’t sure how much of it, just that it came in spurts and lapses and uneven, uncertain rushes, but there was time after her death where Joel forgot what the point of living was anymore. 

He’d tried not to be, living that is. Hadn’t succeeded. And then he’d gotten himself nothing more than a mandatory lock-up and required inpatient therapy. 

He still remembers staring across a room at a woman in her late fifties and demanding how he was supposed to see a point in continuing on without his own child. How could there possibly be a purpose to life without her? Joel remembers asking the question. He never has been sure if he’d ever heard an answer.

There had been an answer, a few of them, probably. None of them were good enough to satisfy him. None of them were worth listening to. 

Tommy called every night while Joel was there. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it means something during 72 hours of being locked in a mental health unit without your own damn shoelaces in your possession. 

Every night, a nurse would change the bandage on his head, palpating the edges and asking about pain or heat or any numb, tingly feelings. They would ask if his hearing was getting any better. They would ask if he still felt like doing it again, doing it better, doing it right.

And then, after all those questions, Tommy would call. 

There wasn’t much to talk about. Joel said the food was terrible. He wasn’t really eating. He wasn’t really saying anything. Tommy said Joel’s house was okay and that he went by every day to make sure nothing was awry.

Joel’s pretty sure Tommy went by to gather up the flowers and the teddy bears and the sympathy cards. Tommy tamped down his own loss and suffering, and he boxed up Sarah’s belongings. He put all of her photos and mementos into an album and took down her report card from the fridge and the third-grade rendition of Clifford the Big Red Dog that had hung from an old mechanic’s magnet for the last six years. 

Joel always meant to tell Tommy he shouldn’t feel responsible. It wasn’t his fault. Not Sarah’s death. Not Joel’s almost one. Instead, he lets his brother single-handedly box up the life of his little girl and pretends like he could go home to a mostly-empty house and find another reason to move on, to move forward. He acted like that could be good enough for either of them.

It’s not the sort of thing he wants to be thinking about now, racing and searching and coming up empty. It’s too close to a near future, too close to a recent memory. Loss. Anguish. Desolation. 

Joel had asked, what’s the point of moving on?

The universe told him, that kid who’s gonna climb into the back of your truck and then just keep on climbing through until she’s wrapped in your arms.

And then, she’d be gone too.

And then, then there would be no reasons left at all.

//

He drives past a sedan, pulled to the bank of the river a few miles north. The wind is violent, freezing. Snow churns with rain as it pelts from above. 

The car is abandoned. The sandy beach is devoid of humans. Joel scans his flashlight, searching with his breath held ransom in his throat.

She has to be here. She has to be somewhere he can reach her. Not on a cold, bloody stretcher in a ruined trauma bay. Not beneath a placard reading what a loving daughter and niece she was. Not an obituary in the paper, poignantly penned by his brother, who had never so much as crafted a cohesive essay. 

Joel couldn’t imagine doing it. Mourning a girl with no one else in the world to join him. He can’t imagine saying goodbye to her at all. The mere concept tightens in his chest.

He calls her name, fraught and frenzied and frantic. 

“Ellie.”

“Ellie!”

“ELLIE!” 

Frozen hands, pounding chest, spinning head. Dizzying, taunting hope. 

Ellie. 

Ellie. 

Ellie.

Up and down the shore, boots slipping in muddied sand and wind cutting through his unzipped jacket. She’s got her backpack in the car. She would need her extra layer on a night like tonight. They hadn’t even had dinner yet. He needed to get her home. He needed to tuck her into bed. He needed to make her safe.

Abandoning the truck, stupid, maybe. Joel goes on foot along the riverbank.

Holding his breath, straining his one good ear, scanning his flashlight.

A guttural scream off in the distance is the best and worst sound Joel’s ever heard. A rush of relief replaced immediately by a horrid apprehension propelling him forward. 

There’s barely even a chance of breath contained within it. Joel knows it’s Ellie. Joel isn’t sure if it’s a scream of fear or one of anger.

He runs. Snow and rain falls.

A pale figure hovers in the pitch dark. The moon and stars are obscured by clouds. A body lay unmoving on the ground and the shore of the river laps at the cuff of a pair of jeans.

It’s not her. That’s all Joel can categorize about the lifeless flesh on the ground before his eyes pan up to a shaking form, a knife still clutched in her fist. 

“Ellie.” Saying her name to her as opposed to yelling for her almost brings Joel to his knees, weak with relief even as the distress of the moment is still mounting. 

Knife held aloft, she spins to find him half a dozen feet away. Joel holds his hands up and shows that he’s not a threat. Ellie’s breathing comes uneasy and panicked, harsh bursts and manic gaze. Something isn’t right in her eyes. She’s a caged animal seeking escape. She’s a scared kid left to her own devices.

“It’s me,” Joel assures as he takes a single step forward. The flashlight pans over the body lying prone in the sand. There’s dark liquid oozing its way toward the rushing torrent of the river. “It’s me.”

Another step forward. Ellie does not look at the body behind her. She does not glance towards the knife clutched in her fist like a toddler might grasp a crayon. She stares at him like he must be a ghost. She stares like if she looks away, he’ll vanish again. 

“It’s okay,” he continues to soothe. “Can you put the knife down?” Palm open, dull thud quieted by the damp sand beneath them. Joel directs the flashlight to cast the edges of light onto Ellie’s face, enough to evaluate without blinding her. There’s blood draining from her nose, clotted clumps resting just above her upper lip. Blood, sprayed across the rest of her face. Not hers, he doesn’t think. That looks like blood bursting from an artery, enough force behind it to travel up before settling on the unsuspecting target of a little girl’s face.

“It’s me, Ellie.” Her appearance is a worrisome thing, a patchwork of damage where an open-faced wondering is spread across her expression. 

“How did-” She stops, words rough and whispered. Joel needs to see where else she might be hurt. Joel needs to see what there is for him to begin fixing. “I didn’t mean-”

This time she steps towards him. This time, she hesitates to await the smallest of nods before she throws herself into his embrace. The flashlight clatters to the earth, resting beside her switchblade as Joel pulls her close and holds her to him.

“It’s okay, baby girl,” he whispers, the words rising out of him in a fervent need to be said. “I’m here now. It’s gonna be okay.”

The snow has almost entirely turned to rain, a drizzle that slowly builds upon itself. Fat, heavy drops landing on Joel’s shoulders, trickling down Ellie’s face. The blood will begin to wash away.

Joel doesn’t release a single bit of her until she moves to pull away.

Stepping back, Joel grasps her face between his hands in the darkness, holds her there as if he could hope to see a thing. 

“I-I didn’t…” Ellie fades off again. For the first time since she’d seen him, she looked away, down towards the unmoving body. Joel’s starting to think of it as more of a corpse the longer it remains motionless. 

So much blood soaking into the earth. The rain falls heavy and relentless. “It’s okay,” he assures again. “You did good, Ellie.” Who knows what happened here, but she was alive. So she’d done good, as far as Joel was concerned. “Go stand over there.” He bends to pick up the knife and the flashlight, juts his head in a direction back towards the grass bank. 

“But-”

“Away from the body, baby.” The words come out softer than those sort ever should. Joel sheds his jacket and wraps it around her shoulders. Something to keep the rain from soaking through the simple cotton of her clothes any further. “I don’t want you near it.” No trace left behind, that would be the real goal, but first, he would take care of whatever mess still remained. 

Over by the body, Joel uses the toe of his boot and flips the man onto his back. He stares down at the wide-eyed, open-mouthed corpse. Fingers pressed to a pulse point, nothing to be felt. Proof enough. 

He was going to have to trust the river and time to take care of the evidence of what had happened tonight. But if that failed him, there would be some small trace of him left behind. A hint of evidence so that when he went to the stand and confessed, no one would question it. Ellie’s name would never go near this, not if he had a say. 

Still, in an effort to leave as little as possible behind, Joel steps out of his boots and lets the moisture from the ground sink unforgivingly through his socks. He stoops down to grab the ankles of the body when he hears a sudden, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Unsurprisingly, Ellie isn’t listening to him and comes to a stop right between him and the dead body. It’s okay. The rain would wash away the tracks of her shoes. He’d buy her something new. Something with a different brand name printed on the bottom in the meantime. “Go stand over there, Ellie.” His voice is harsher. She’s cold and wet—shivering from those two combined or maybe the adrenaline that had surged through her hard enough to kill a man twice her size. She’s hunched and bloody and bruised, and it takes everything in Joel not to abandon this son of a bitch and redirect his attention to the kid who so drastically needed it. “I got this.”

“You can’t!” The words come out raw and scratching. 

“I won’t let you get any closer to this,” he answers harshly. As it was, he’d already failed her so completely, left her here to do this miserable, violent work when it should have been in his hands. Just a kid, trying to defend herself. Just a kid, trying to make it home. “Go.”

“No!” It’s her best attempt at a shout, and she rushes for him, fighting his hands away from the body. Shrieking child wrapped under his arm, Joel hefts her from the ground and carries her away. “LET ME GO!” She shouts and thrashes, and it reminds him of her forehead slamming into his dash and how determined she’d been to hurt herself. But he’s not gonna let her do that. He is going to stand between her and the evil that wants so desperately to grasp her in its claws and hold her tight enough that the air is choked from her lungs, hold so tight she believes there’s not a single person on this earth who would choose her. 

Maybe they should call the police and report this for what it is. Self-defense at its finest. But that would only put her at further risk. He can’t risk any bit of her. She was to be protected, at all costs, even that of his own life. 

“Hey!” The shout bursts out of him. Ellie freezes at once. Sorrowful, urgent hands grasp her shoulders as Joel turns her to face him. “I won’t let you do that. Do you understand me? You stay away from that,” he defers from referencing the corpse directly. “I’ll take care of it.”

“But-”

“I know.” He holds her gaze, declines to break it. He looks straight into her and refuses to be deterred. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take, okay? You stay here. You stay where it’s safe.”

The rushing river would hopefully be enough to get the job done, but Joel finds himself wishing for fire, for destruction. It seemed the closest to a just ending for anyone who put that sort of fear in Ellie’s eyes. It didn’t seem close to enough punishment for the blood on her face, the fear in her eyes, and the ragged, dreadful scream that had sent him running down the shore. He wants to burn this body to a crisp for so much as even thinking about hurting Ellie. He wants this man to die in a world of fire and brimstone until nothing but scorch marks remain of this wretched piece of shit’s life.

With methodical precision, Joel takes his knife from his pocket and matches the entrance wounds left behind by Ellie’s dainty little switchblade. He digs the point of his blade deep, nicking bone in all the same spots he hoped she had, altering how her weapon would fit against it if anyone ever bothered to investigate something like this. 

This knife had been cutting off tags from a kid’s pajamas only a few days ago.

Now, same blade in hand, Joel drags a long line across the man’s throat, wipes the prints off the handle of the blade with the damp sleeve of his shirt, and pushes a loose, too-forgiving fist around the handle.

Odds are, it would never stay in the grasp of a corpse. But Joel could hope.

It doesn’t take much for the water to catch on the body once Joel gets it close enough to catch. The current is moving quick and sudden and strong. Even the best of swimmers would be dragged out in a rush like this. 

All that remains is a hope that it would be enough to drag the body far away from this site, drag him underwater not to be resurfaced for years to come until he was nothing but decayed flesh leaving behind a broken apart skeleton. The only signs of death might be the nick of a blade. The only sign of wrongdoing being the deadly stench of ruination that would still cling to this worthless man.

With that mess cleaned up, Joel turns back to Ellie where she now stands frozen, several paces back from the beach. Her hair has fallen loose from her ponytail, hanging in soaking waves down her face as the rain begins to pelt harder. A few flakes of snow are still mixed in, washed away before they even touch the ground. 

Approaching slowly, Joel approaches the kid with his coat hanging from her shoulders and the rain causing blood to run from her face in streams—like bloody tears; he can’t help but think. “Truck’s this way,” he says. Neither of them moves.

“How did you find me?” she questions, the words sound like they’re coming from a million miles away.

“The water” is his unhelpful explanation. And god, he doesn’t care about anything right now besides wrapping her up, protecting her. Who knows how they got here. Who knows when he let himself. But it’s where they’re at. Body dumped in the river, a guilty plea on the tip of Joel’s tongue to keep her safe. His mind’s a million paces ahead of where they are right now, jumping to long-term plans and necessary solutions. 

And then he looks at her. Well and truly takes a second to stare at this girl in the dark. 

All that matters is right now. All that matters is her.

“You led him here, didn’t you?” Joel takes a step towards her. She doesn’t retreat.

Nod. 

“That was good,” he murmurs with another step forward. “You did good, Ellie.”

Blinking at him, body shaking. It’s hard to know if it’s from the biting cold or she’s going into shock after everything that’s happened. She has injuries that need to be attended to. She has so much she needs, so much for him to give her. “I killed him.”

“That’s okay,” he assures when maybe he shouldn’t. Don’t forget your please and thank yous but good job on the murder, kiddo. God, what was he doing? “You did what you needed to.” The right thing. He’s doing the right damn thing.

Ellie sinks down, hitting the wet, muddied ground. Her forehead falls to her knees folded upon herself. “He was going to kill me like they killed her!” Her voice is a force, even with how rough and jagged it comes out. Her voice is determined to be heard. 

“Who, baby?” Joel kneels beside her. Out of the rain. He’s got to get her out of the rain. 

It had been raining the night of the accident. Sarah’s hair was still damp as he stroked it. She smelled like blood, like gasoline, like petrichor. 

But there’s this kid now—there’s Ellie, and she smells like Dove conditioner and sweat and terror, rising off of her like heat from the earth. 

Face turning up towards him, the river rushing a few feet beside them. There’s a body sinking down into it now. Maybe it would wash out into the ocean. Maybe it would wash away like blood from a little girl’s face. “Riley.” 

Mud squelches beneath him as he reaches out to bring her towards him. 

“She could swim , Joel.” The sobs rise out of her, frustrated and struggling as they fight their way out around her words. “She could fucking swim!”

Face buried against his soaked chest, shoulders shaking beneath his soothing hands. Nightmares seen. Nightmares lived. “Okay, baby.” He doesn’t have a clue where her mind is, what she’s lost; all he knows is the sight of mourning, the welling of grief. All he knows is that he has to try and make it better.

Gathering her in his arms, Joel’s relieved she comes without a fight, surrendering against him as if she trusts him to hold her up, trusts him to hold her close and never hurt her despite how many others have. “It’s okay. I got you.” 

There in the rain, she cries against him. 

There on the ground, he presses his face to the crown of her head and breathes in the relief that she’s alive.

//

Eventually, he gets her in the passenger seat of the truck. 

It almost seems that Ellie’s shut down completely. She lets him lead her around and help her in. When he runs around to climb in beside her and turn the heat to full blast, she makes no move to grab her seatbelt or play with the radio or hold her backpack to her stomach like she was trying to staunch the bleeding of some open, gushing wound.

Sitting there beside him, she stares dead-straight ahead. He shuts the door behind him, and she doesn’t even flinch. 

Interior bulb flickers on and the truck cabin glows with a dull, orange light. An inhale hisses through Joel’s teeth when he catches a proper look at Ellie. Her nose was already swelling, and the beginning of darkness around both eyes indicated a pretty nasty head injury. The blood hasn’t been washed clean by the rain but instead has caused her face to dry streaked and pink, the previous clots caught right above her upper lip now running loose. 

There’s something unnatural in her posture, like she’s hurt in her back or ribs, maybe. And that’s not to speak of the terror that must have followed her down to wherever she’d been taken—the sheer dread of what was to come. Once again, he wants her to know how proud he is that she’d maintained the mind to try and direct that motherfucker somewhere that Joel stood a chance of finding her. So brave, braver than any kid should ever have to be. 

This was his torch to carry now, though. She could lay it down, let it rest. He’d cover her. 

There’s a cold cup of coffee in the cupholder and a cluttering of her belongings on the floor. Rain beats against the windshield outside. A rogue snowflake or two still floats down from above.

“Let’s go get you fixed up, okay?” he asks her more for the sake of saying something than starting a conversation. He eases back out onto the dark road, plugging in the nearest hospital to his GPS and following the blue line towards it. 

//

It’s a two hours drive from wherever the fuck they were out in the middle of nowhere by a reservoir running into a river to an actual hospital.

They end up in Idaho Falls. He directs the truck into the community hospital’s emergency room parking lot, and the still-illuminated signs for Texas Roadhouse and Regal Cinemas blink at him from across the street. 

Joel had kept the heat running, but Ellie’s shaking hadn’t yet ceased. She didn’t say a word, even to his direct questions, but also never slept. Her eyes remained peeled wide open, like she was waiting to see something staring back at her. It looked like she was expecting to find herself back in that nightmare all over again.

“Okay, come on,” Joel’s voice is barely above a whisper. The whole world seems to go quiet when he shuts the truck off, the rumble of the engine and white noise of the air vents silenced all at once. The rain has lessened, now more of a sight-obscuring sprinkle along his windshield than anything else. “Let’s get you checked out.”

For the first time, Ellie appears to take in her surroundings. She stares up at the sign for the emergency room and half-full parking lot. “No.” Her head begins to shake back and forth. The tremble in her hands still hasn’t left. “No, Joel. No.”

He didn’t expect her to be excited about this prospect but also wasn’t prepared for this much of a fight.

“Ellie, you’re hurt,” he says, keeping his voice level and safe and not at all impacted by the anger that rises in him from such a statement. Someone had looked at this kid and chosen to hurt her. Hurt her to the point that she needed to kill him. Still hadn’t fully processed that one. “They’re just gonna take a look. Make sure you don’t need anything.” Worst-case scenarios have been running through his head the whole way here. Brain bleeds and collapsed lungs and ruptured spleens. All those horror stories you hear as a parent that send a current of fear through you every time your kid takes a tumble from their bike or gets kicked down in a soccer game. 

Or, apparently, is kidnapped and beaten in the dead of night.

Her hands scramble out, attempting to pin his in place. Joel relents, allowing her to keep him where she needs him to be. “You don’t get it.”

“Nothing else matters besides making sure you’re okay.”

Tears, welling in her eyes. It’s the first sign of emotion she’s had since crumbling apart in his arms hours earlier. “ Joel,” she whines his name, and it reminds him of how she’d said it after a nightmare, how she had asked for something from him without ever putting it to words. “They’ll take you away.”

“Ellie, it’s okay. We can come up with some sort of story and-”

“You don’t get it,” she mutters. She does not release her grip. “I have a Medicaid card from fucking Massachusetts, and you have ID from fucking Texas, and we’re in fucking Wyoming,” he doesn’t correct her, “and they’ll take X-rays or CT scans or whatever, and they’ll see the new shit and the old shit and then they’ll call CPS, and they’ll take me away from you.” 

Breaths coming frantic and uneven. If there is anything fractured in that chest of hers, she must be causing herself all sorts of pain right about now.

“Ellie, calm down.” He breaks his wrists free but not to force her out of the car, to hold her face between his palms and make sure she’s looking closely at him. “Breathe, baby. Just breathe.”

“But-but-”

“Breathe.”

She does, wincing on the inhale.

“We have to get you checked out, Ellie,” he says this as gently and assuredly as he can manage. “You could be really hurt.”

Tears, stinging her eyes. Tears, clogging his throat. “It’ll just be worse if I’m alone,” she whispers, her fragile little grasp reaching up to lock around his forearms, securing his hands in place to where they hold her. “Please, Joel.”

Armed with a first aid course and some baby-focused CPR classes Joel had attended roughly thirty years ago, he studies the calamitous, fractured look of the kid in front of him before grabbing the GPS and plugging in Tommy’s address. 

Less than an hour. If anything happened in the night, they would be less than an hour away. 

“I don’t like this,” he warns as he turns the keys in the ignition.

Some of the fear releases its hold on Ellie, and she slumps in the seat like a puppet with her strings cut. She sniffles, shakes. “More or less than hot fruit?” comes her broken, desperate little mumble.

The last thing Joel feels like doing is laughing. “Less. Definitely less.” He gives it to her in the form of a singular snort anyway. 

Joel will give her whatever she possibly needs. Whatever it took to get through this. Because they would. Together, they would. As long as she was asking him to remain at her side, there wasn’t a chance in hell someone would be pulling him away. Not if he had a say in it. 

As he’d been waiting to do all night, Joel takes Ellie home. 

Chapter Text

Ten minutes out from Tommy and Maria’s, Ellie slips into a restless, broken slumber. 

Twice when Joel was flying down the highway she’d broken out of her stupor to insist he “Pull the fuck over now!” Which he had. She threw herself out of the truck, the door left wide open. The first time Joel’s heart had stopped in his chest. He stumbled out after her with barely the presence of mind to put the truck into park. And then he held her hair back as she leaned over a guardrail and puked her guts out. 

The second time there’s less panic, just pain.

Now she’s tossing and turning in the seat next to him and no amount of his hand on her knee is enough to come close to soothing her. Joel doesn’t even try, afraid of what him touching her in any capacity could do. The off-ramp sets her fidgeting, and stopping at a red light wakes her up entirely. 

“It’s okay,” he assures the second her eyes fly open. His hand tightens on the steering wheel to keep from reaching for her. “Almost there.”

The sun would be rising shortly behind them. Exhaustion has been worn away by the overwhelming anxiety of the night. 

Joel pulls into the driveway of his brother’s house. The truck engine dies, as do the headlights. The sky has the faintest purple on the horizon. The clouds have cleared. The stars aren’t yet chased from the sky. Ellie’s still got blood on her face, on her sleeves too. Not that it mattered. He should probably burn everything they were wearing right now, just in case.

“Come on,” he speaks at average volume but winces at how loud his voice sounds. Climbing out, Joel walks around to Ellie’s side of the truck and opens her door. “Seatbelt.” He prompts her to undo it. She listens. 

They go inside.

Joel unlocks the front door, lets it swing wide as he removes his boots outside of the door. There was evidence on them. Not to mention enough mud and sand that his momma would roll in her grave if he walked inside someone’s home with them still on his feet. 

Ellie’s just in her socks. She takes them off anyway, laying them over the top of Joel’s boots. 

The door closes behind them; the locks are turned into place. Though, Joel supposes maybe now the danger has finally been eliminated. Maybe Ellie had gone and done it all on her own. It wasn’t right, how drastically he had failed her. It wasn’t right, how entirely she’d been left to her own devices.

Hand fumbling in the dark, Joel switches on every light within reach. The overhead one in the entryway, a series of lamps in the living room, under the cabinets in the kitchen. Every bit of light he could manage, he allowed to illuminate the space around them.

Which might not have been the best idea when he’s got a kid who looks like goddamn Carrie trailing behind him.

“Jesus,” he says on instinct when he turns around and sees her. They should be in an ER right now. He’d taken Sarah for much less. “C’mere. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

The hall bath has a few wash rags in the disorganized cabinet beneath the sink. Joel grabs them, along with hydrogen peroxide and a box of bandages. Like this sort of mess could be fixed with half a dozen bandaids. 

Wetting the washcloth, Joel holds it out to Ellie. She takes it without looking, numb hands moving it up towards her face in slow motion. She doesn’t glance in the mirror to see what she’s doing. 

“Okay, that’s good.” It really wasn’t. “I’m gonna go find you somethin’ else to wear.”

Ellie swallows, hand stalled. 

“That okay?” 

He’s out of his element here. She needs a shower. Some sleep. A goddamn doctor. 

All she’s got is him.

A small, diminutive nod is what he gets.

Her pajamas are in her backpack, still dry near the bottom of her bag. There are little ice skating penguins on the pants. They’re wearing hats with poofs and scarves with tassels. It’s one more piece of her that chokes something inside of him, reminds just how desperately young she still is. 

He takes the rest of the clothes and dumps them in the washing machine. Ellie would need something clean to wear tomorrow. She would need new clothes, another new sweatshirt. But in the meantime he can get what she has left clean for her. 

Sarah used to love that Snuggle fabric softener. Even when she was only a baby. She’d bury her face into Joel’s shirt as he held her and fall asleep with her airway practically obscured, just trying to breathe him in. Tommy doesn’t have any Snuggle, so Joel will just have to settle for some generic “Mountain Rain” scented laundry detergent. Whatever the hell that was supposed to smell like. 

Downstairs in the bathroom, Ellie’s managed to clean half of her face. 

Joel stands in the doorway. She holds eye contact with him through her reflection in the mirror and plainly says, “I killed him.”

“Sure as shit did, baby girl,” Joel sighs. He takes the rag from her hands and starts on the caked-up blood beneath her nose. “He was gonna hurt you, though. Wasn’ he?”

Mutely, she nods.

“He was gonna kill you.” His voice comes out darker than he means.

Ellie swallows. “He was going to do worse first.”

Pink water rings from the cloth and down his forearm with how tightly he grips it. Droplets splatter against the bathroom tile.

“You did the right thing,” he tells her resolutely. No room for questions or second guesses. She protected herself, even though she shouldn’t have had to. Joel would take over from here. He would protect her. He would take that weight from her shoulders and let it fall to him. He would let her be a kid. “Do you understand me, Ellie?”

His gaze is fixed on the blood he’s mopping from her face, but he can feel her eyes panning up to meet his face. Small—she’s just so damn small. “I thought I already had.”

A chunk of dried blood wipes away. Joel rinses black and red down the drain and begins again. “What do you mean?”

“That’s why I ran,” she whispers. “In Boston, he tried to…and I smashed his head in. I hit him so hard, Joel. And I thought he was dead because he went down, and he wasn’t moving, and I was so scared that I just…ran.”

Both of her eyes are beginning to be encircled by purple rings. Her nose is swollen to the point Joel can’t tell if it’s broken or not. She’s still shaking, or maybe shaking again. 

No extra clothes, no money, no real plan. She’d taken off in an instant because some man had tried to do something so vile that her self-preservation took over, trying to protect her. And the psycho bastard followed her all the way out here. What sort of fucker does that?

With a sigh, Joel puts the rag on the edge of the counter. The blood is mostly gone. The injuries remain. The distress subsided—the horror carved into the lines of her face. “That’s what you meant, about thinking you were going crazy.” 

Ellie nods. “I thought it was impossible. That even if he was still alive, there was no way that fucking pedophile could have stalked me all the way here.” A full body shiver. No tears in her eyes, no weakness in her expression. “I thought he was going to kill me. That-that he was going to…”

Urgent fingers gripping her shoulders, old, aching knees bending into her line of vision. Joel holds her gaze and repeats, “You did the right thing.” She swallows. “But you shouldn’t have had to do that at all.” The tears return. “I won’t let anyone else near you, baby. You’re safe now.” She should have been safe before. She buries herself against his chest. He says it again, as much for his sake as hers. “You’re safe, Ellie. I got you.”

He pulls her against him and rocks her in the too bright light of a half bath. He fights back offering a burning, urgent promise to love her, no longer sure why he refrains. It’s too late anyway. He already does. 

//

She doesn’t want to shower. There’s blood in her hair, probably some puke, too. 

It almost causes him to double over in pain, remembering her at that rest stop playground, the ends of her hair sweeping through the dirt as she laughed and smiled and cheered with some kid she’d met fifteen minutes prior.

Joel leads her to the bathroom upstairs and sets the water running, testing the temperature with his fingertips until it feels just right. “It will warm you up,” he says to a still-shaking girl tucked under his arm. “I’ll go make you something to eat.”

“Not hungry,” she mutters with eyes fixed on the empty bathroom in front of her. “Just want…” She fades out. Her head falls to his chest. “Hurts.” The word is a whisper.

Who knows what she’s even referencing, there are a few too many options for Joel’s liking. “I’ll get you something for the pain, okay?” And then, he would take a look at her injuries and decide if she needs to be driven back to an emergency room despite her protests. He can’t let her just walk around broken and battered. He wouldn’t allow bones to set themselves wrong or permit something deep and invisible inside of her to ooze slowly until she’s got nothing left. “Just…wash the blood out of your hair.”

Her fingers reach up and touch the ends of her hair like she’s discovered it’s still attached to her head. “He was already supposed to be dead,” she whispers.

Those words mean something else. They mean, I had to kill him twice. They mean, I didn’t want to have to do it at all. They mean, I’m still scared. 

Joel hovers in the doorway, almost caves and tucks her into bed with her rain-soaked clothes and bloody strands of hair and stuttering, flailing breaths. “He is now.”

Ellie nods once. She steps into the bathroom and closes the door.

//

Joel texts Tommy, even if he won’t be in range of service for a couple more days. He and Ellie might still be here when the happy couple got back. What a welcome home.

Congrats on the wedding! Hope you enjoyed your honeymoon! Any chance you could help us get away with murder?

Silently, Ellie appears behind him. Joel jumps when he turns to find her at his shoulder. “Fuck’s sake, kid. Quit doing that.” She doesn’t smile or taunt him. He softens at once. “Okay, that’s alright. Go sit on the couch. Okay?” 

Sleep would be next on the agenda; just a few more steps to conquer first. 

There had been next to nothing to eat in this house. Joel carries in a bowl of steaming hot Chef Boyardee Ravioli, a tall glass of water, bottle of Tylenol, and a comb held between his teeth. 

When he enters the living room, Ellie’s not on the couch. 

She’s over by the mantel, a flipped-over picture clasped in her hands. 

“Sorry,” she says at once when a floorboard creaks beneath his step. She sets it back face down, exactly where he’d put it all those days ago. 

Joel dumps everything on the coffee table and comes up beside her. He stood close, close enough she could lean back against him while still far enough that she could slip away, if she wanted. 

Picture side turned up, agony snagging on his inhale on its way down to his lungs. Memories fighting to the forefront, neurons firing and synapses leaping together, and there’s no forgetting, no chance of it, but it’s incredible how quickly an unused memory can rush to the surface, like no time has passed at all. 

That little smile, how it stretched and grew and drew one out of Joel in response. Her eager eyes and her trusting gaze and how she’d leap herself into his arms, always knowing he would catch her even if it meant dropping whatever had been in his hands a second before. He’d always, always catch her. Until he let her down. Until he hadn’t been there.

“You look…happy,” Ellie whispers, and when Joel follows her line of sight, he sees it’s on the younger version of him more than it is the gangly, grass-stained kid in his arms. 

He wants to say, I was. He wants to say, I think maybe I could be again. He wants to turn the photo back out of sight. He wants to turn the clock back fifteen years. He wants to keep going toward whatever future this kid would drag him into. 

“Sarah could make anyone happy.” Is what eventually comes out. It’s wrong, though. So much of what he says is so damn wrong. “You can, too,” he nudges her shoulder with his own. It’s easy to do, with how close they stand.

Ellie snorts, a hint of herself returning for a flash of a moment. “As if. I’m depressing as fuck.”

Ensuring that she catches the movement before it happens, Joel settles an arm gently around her shoulders and holds her lightly against him. He stares down at the little girl he’d lost and tries to figure out how he can possibly help the one pressed beside him. Finally, the right words come to him. The ones that make him want to shift away and walk upstairs and insist that it’s time for sleep, get some rest, good luck with the nightmares, kiddo. But instead, he holds her a little closer and says, “You make me happy.” Plain and simple and easy and the truth. 

“You must be losing it, man.”

She’s so wrong; it almost makes him laugh. No, he definitely wasn’t. Tonight, she’d saved the only thing he had left to lose. Tonight, for the first time in fifteen years, he feels like he’s gained something.

//

“This stuff is actually kind of good,” Ellie mutters. She’s barely eating, but Joel’s been tracking her progress closely enough. Three raviolis and counting. 

“Eat up then,” he answers, comb slipping through the soft waves of her hair. He’d had to reheat the food twice. Ellie was in and out with him here. But eventually, she sat on the floor in front of him, crossed her legs beneath herself, and munched on a bite of dinner while he gently parted and combed out her damp hair. 

The sun was well and truly risen in the sky. It was going to be a beautiful day. The leaves were changing all around them. If they hadn’t both just survived a night of horrors, it would be a great morning for a hike. 

Ellie sets the mostly full bowl beside her. “Full,” she says. Her forehead drops to rest against his knee. “Hurt.”

He’d made her categorize her injuries for him. And then, with reassured permission and careful, gentle hands, Joel had assessed for himself. He bet she does hurt. 

But she’d been a good trooper, taking deep breaths with his palms pressed against her back to try and determine if her lungs were filling evenly. He shone a flashlight in her eyes and made her hold her arms out with her eyes closed and say the alphabet backward (she struggled so much she actually laughed for a whole, complete second). 

Really, she was a good trooper because Joel didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. She was probably concussed, if the look on her face was anything to go off of, and he wouldn’t be surprised if her ribs were cracked and the swelling on her nose was getting to be so bad, he was worried about her ability to breathe through it. She let him hold frozen peas to her face while she nursed frozen corn against her chest and even cracked a joke about no vegetables for dinner tonight. 

There wasn’t much he had seen; she was still too guarded and skittish right now for him to be pulling up her shirt and running his fingers all along the side of her body, but at least she had walked him through what hurt where. At least he felt like he had some amount of a handle on the situation.

“I’ll get you some more medicine,” he offers, moving to stand. She hooks an arm around his calf. “Ellie.”

“M’ fine,” she murmurs against his shin. “All better now.”

With a sigh, Joel relents on getting up for a second. “You need to get some sleep.” He already knew this one was going to be a fight.

“You need to get some sleep,” she counters at once. 

No chance in hell that was happening. “Just, come sit on the couch then.”

Movements awkward and stilted from pain—he really should get her something—Ellie scrambles from her spot on the floor to sit beside him. He keeps still and lets her settle before lifting an arm, an invitation for her to accept or decline as she sees fit. 

At once, Ellie falls against his side. Her face buries against his shirt. He had changed, too. All his stuff was clean from waiting in the truck cabin. He already smelled like goddamn “Mountain Rain” from when he did laundry here a few days ago.

And as much as Joel can feel the exhaustion seeping through her, he can also catch drifts of the anxiety, the uncertainty, that keeps jerking her awake. He doesn’t know what it is that he should say, which fear he could even attempt to soothe. “I won’t let anything hurt you,” he tries, leaning himself back a bit further so that she falls with him, closer to lying down.

It was such a goddamn lie. Ellie was already hurt. 

A fist, tightening around his shirt. A tear, tugging on his heart. 

“I’ll make it better,” he goes for instead. 

She sniffs, and Joel sees her whole body tense with the pain. 

This kid, over the last two weeks. Ellie, her cautious eyes scanning him from the passenger side of the truck. Her tucked-up body, small and unburdensome. Her hands scrabbling for purchase, for whatever small bits of himself he could offer to her. 

“I’ll be right here when you wake up,” he tries, one more time. 

She turns her face into his chest and still doesn’t quite cry, more of a whimper escaping from her now. He soothes her until she quiets. He rubs her back until she falls asleep. 

//

The light streams through all day long. Joel dozes off briefly, rousing with every shift and murmur and groan coming from the kid pressed against his chest. 

His neck’s starting to ache, and his arm fell asleep, and he really needed to pee right about now, but he doesn’t move. His eyes keep catching on the photos spread across the mantel. Tommy and Joel and their momma, nearly half a century ago. Maria and friends in graduation gowns. Some kids Joel doesn’t recognize at all. And Sarah, radiant and joyful and happy. Sarah, full of life. Sarah, who’s been carried close beside him even with her long gone. 

Her laughter, echoing in his side. Her pleading voice, forcing him out of bed in the early mornings. Her “I love you more, Daddy,” following him into his dreams. 

Once upon a time, she’d slept just like this in his arms. He soothed her to sleep with fairytales and hummed lullabies and his hand running through her hair. She’d settle herself right against him, however was most comfortable, situate his arms to hold her exactly as she wanted, and fall asleep with Dad as her human pillow. 

It was one of those weird little accomplishments that came with being a parent. Having your kid trust you implicitly, completely. 

Joel cranes his neck to stare down at a kid who was seeming to do the same, despite how much the world had told her she shouldn’t. Despite how much she’d been shown time and time again that no one out there was worth her trust at all. 

Joel thinks of his daughter. And then, he thinks about what it would mean to have another.

Ellie sleeps. Joel holds her.

//

The sun was starting to set by the time she woke. Arms move to stretch overhead before a sharp “Ow, shit” slips out. Her arms fall back against her side, and Ellie buries her face further against Joel’s shirt. 

“You okay, kiddo?” he asks. She needed some pain medicine. He needed to check her injuries. Should probably be waking her up every couple hours with that concussion of hers. He won’t, though. Joel already knows he won’t be doing that to her.

“Hurts.” Her voice is even more of a rasp now. 

With as much gentleness as he can manage, Joel assists her in sitting up and does his best to hide the grunt of pain in his own throat. As he knew it would be, her bruising is worse and the swelling more pronounced. To think, just yesterday, his heart was throbbing at one little bump on her forehead. 

Purple marks around her throat, deep, almost black rings around her eyes, swollen nose. And those are just the parts he can see. 

“What do ya say to some more ice and medicine?”

“Fuck that.”

“Alright, well, I gotta piss. Let me up.”

At once, she pulls herself away. The cold shoots through her with a shiver. 

Joel pulls one of the blankets he’d unceremoniously dumped on the floor up to her, wraps it around her shoulders. “I’ll be right back.” 

Ellie’s fingers clutch the blanket tight. Her face is pale, eyes wide. From blood loss, maybe? If she were in a hospital, she could get a goddamn transfusion. “Listen, maybe we should go-”

“I was kidding,” she cuts him off quickly, sitting up more, tall and strong now. It looks like it hurts her. It looks like she could almost pass out just sitting there. “I’ll use the ice and take the medicine and do whatever else you want me to do, okay?”

“Ellie…”

“I don’t need a hospital. Really. I’m feeling better.” What a little fucking liar. “Go on before you pee your pants,” she insists with an unceremonious wave of her hands. 

And so, against his better judgment, Joel gives up on the fight again. He just can’t do that to her. There’s no way he can haul her off kicking and screaming to that hospital when her one fear is them taking him away from her. Which they probably should. He might be on trial for murder soon.

What a fucking week. 

Tommy’s name flashes on Joel’s phone when he’s halfway at the top of the staircase.

“You know,” Tommy says by way of greeting, “if you’re going to send me messages when I’m out in the middle of nowhere, you could at least stand to make them less fucking cryptic.”

“Tommy-”

“Hey, Tommy, know you guys don’t have service but ran into some issues out in Utah. Ellie and I might be crashing at your place for a few days. Do you have any other first aid kits besides the one in the hall bath?”

“It was just a damn question.”

“A fucking concerning one, you idiot!” Tommy all but yells. “Got your text halfway up a mountain with no way to respond or ask what the hell you were on about.”

Joel takes the rest of the stairs and shuts the door to Tommy and Maria’s room, hoping to muffle this conversation from the nosy kid still sitting huddled in the living room. “We ran into some trouble,” Joel sighs, not really interested in elaborating on this conversation right now. He needed to get back downstairs to Ellie. His whole body ached something fierce to have her within his range of vision again.

“We.”

Joel’s heart constricts in his chest, tight and aching and in need of putting his eyes back on her, make sure she’s okay. “Listen, I gotta go. We’ll probably still be here when you guys get home.” What else is he supposed to do? What is he supposed to do now? He needed…he needed a way to fix anything, to go back in time and make sure none of this happened at all. 

“You can’t do that to me, Joel.” Tommy’s voice is agitated, frustrated. “You can’t just shut me out here.” And it’s not like Joel can tell his brother that he’s wrong, necessarily, but right now, this has far less to do with anything about Tommy or Joel and everything to do with Ellie.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, deep breath in. “That’s not what I’m tryin’ to do,” he grumbles out. “I gotta get back downstairs to her. That’s all.”

A few seconds of heavy silence before, “Are you guys okay?”

Rain-streaked blood streaming down her face. Harsh, rough inhales of pain. Distant, haunted look in her eyes. 

Her grasp on his sleeve. Her face turned against his chest. Her bones trembling in his grip. 

“I don’t know, Tommy.” The tears come to the surface without Joel allowing them. He’s so tired of failing. He’s so tired of letting them down. It’s all he does. It’s all he’s done. 

“Joel-”

“Prepare that wife of yours for me to ask some legal questions,” he cuts Tommy off, desperately hoping he might be able to dry his voice back out. “See ya when you get back.”

At once, he hangs up his phone and ignores the low battery alert. A hand runs down his face. A fist rests over his heart. It’d be so easy, slipping into panic, into loss, into sorrow. But he’s got a kid downstairs counting on him to come back. He’s got a child who needs a parent. 

When he opens the door, Ellie’s on the other side. 

The blanket has slipped off of one shoulder. Joel reaches out on instinct and tucks it back into place. “Just Tommy.” He doesn’t mean his words to come out as a whisper. He doesn’t know what it means that the tears he’d just fended off come rushing back. 

Ellie’s eyes are assessing him. He can feel her evaluation, turning something over in her mind, even delayed and stunted as it currently seems. 

Her mouth opens, closes. She’s got words stacking inside of her throat. She’s got something she’s not saying. 

“You okay?” he asks, hand still curled by her shoulder. 

Nothing comes out of her mouth, but there’s a look in her eyes that says something else entirely. It’s got Joel promising, “I’m coming,” and wanting to offer her more. I’m right behind you. I’m staying. I’m never leaving. 

A hand reaches out, forefinger and thumb grasping the edge of his shirtsleeve. Even that small action looks like it hurts her. 

She takes a step forward, and her forehead falls against his collarbone, tentative at first, and then full body, once his arms come up to wrap around her. It almost seems like it hurts her, his grip as loose as it may be, but when he goes to release his arms, a strangled cry escapes from the back of her throat. 

Head turned toward his right ear, Joel completely misses the words she mumbles out against him. “What was that, baby?” he answers her with. His fingertips are featherlight along her back. They stop the second a hiss of pain rises from her. 

Pulling back, her face framed between his hands. 

Her lips hover halfway open, no words coming forward. Joel waits, lets her get to where she needs in order to speak again. He would give this girl all the time in the world. He would give this girl everything he had. He would do whatever he possibly could to mend a single hurt, to right a single wrong. To correct every single failure. 

“Don’t leave.”

It’s a kick to the gut, the wind knocked out of him and the pain so sharp he wants to fold down against it. Her request is so small and simple and the easiest thing in the world. She didn’t understand yet, that he couldn’t leave her now, even if she wanted him to. He would be here with her until she was well and safe and happy, and even then, even then, he’d keep his arm around her shoulders, keep his eyes on the world ahead and the one behind, keep a watch on the shadows of her life. 

A kiss to her hairline. A promise pressed to her skin. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Sarah’s clammy hands clinging to him when sickness caught up to her. “Please don’t go to work,” she’d beg. He was never any good against the begging.

“Do you hear me? I’m here with you, Ellie.” A kid who’s always been alone. A kid who’s never had anyone to trust. A kid who looked to him like maybe he would change that, maybe he could finally right a single wrong. Maybe he could rectify the evil, unjustness of this world that would ever let this child live a day of her life without someone being entirely devoted to her. 

Mutely, her head nods. 

“I’ll be right back downstairs.” He’s going to check her wounds in earnest now. It couldn’t be put off any longer. He just had to be slightly stronger than a little girl’s big, pleading eyes. “I’m here.”

“He said he would kill you.”

The words cause her to flinch against them. 

“I’m okay,” Joel reassures, even though he’s not what matters right now. The concern is Ellie, what had happened. What could have. “Look at me.” She does. “I’m okay.”

Her eyes travel over him, assessing his presence for truth to that statement. Pupils wide, mouth parted, face crumbling. “I was scared.” She was scared, and he wasn’t there to protect her. “I thought he would kill me and then kill you, too. That’s why I…I had to…”

Jesus. “Ellie.” This was going to be a process, wasn’t it? They would have to take each little bit of this, one section at a time, flesh it out. Work through it. “I’m here. I’m not going nowhere.” She blinks at him. “I will be right back downstairs.”

It’s not much, but she nods once and takes a step back. It’s not much, but she hears him. She believes in him. 

Joel’s not gonna let her down.

//

Ellie’s sitting halfway down the stairs, slumped over against the wall like she simply didn’t have the strength to make it the whole way. 

When Joel’s footsteps creak heavy, she doesn’t turn. He walks by her until he can stand in her line of sight. No moving, not reaching, not reacting. He waits. 

One piece at a time. 

Eventually, Ellie’s eyes cast up toward him. For a long time, she only watches him. Joel considers reaching down and bringing her close. He thinks about scooping her into his arms and carrying her the rest of the way. But instead, he waits.

Licking her lips, Ellie starts to speak. Her mouth falls shut with no words escaping. Her head slumps back against the wall. Her gaze does not move away from him. 

“He didn’t kill you,” is what she finally says. It stabs right through to his chest, piercing the air from his lungs and holding his response hostage. “You’re still here.”

“Same for you.” 

Maybe they’re going in circles. Joel would ride this reassurance carousel until he barfed if that's what she needed. 

“Can I take a look at ya, Ellie?”

And the expression that shows on her face is bald-faced trust. It almost scares him, seeing the stark resolution tucked within her nod. It almost scares him to have someone who could blindly believe in him again. 

His palm reaches out towards her—rough, torn skin and collections of calluses and traces of scar tissue that’s long since gone numb. It grasps her small hand tight, holds it assuredly, and promises presence, gentleness, surety. It holds a future within its feeble, weakened grasp—a home. 

Easing her from where she rests, Joel wraps an arm around her shoulder and leads her down the narrow staircase, back to the sun-brightened kitchen. 

One of the chairs they’d sat in at breakfast just a few mornings ago gets dragged to the center of the kitchen. He gestures for her to sit. His heart aches, remembering her dumb pun and sly little smile and that warming in his chest that had felt something like a fever, a sickness, a force he couldn’t contain. Now she sits before him without a trace of the sassy kid he’d come to know. 

“We’ll work top down, okay?” His voice is quiet. She nods. “Where’s it hurt most on your head?” 

Joel expects her to point to her nose, but instead, she reaches around to the back of her skull. “Hit it. Hard.”

“Did you pass out?” Nod. “Headache?” Bigger nod. “Probably a concussion.” He’d figured as much already. Fingers gently reach around the back of her head and palpate the spot she’d gestured to. Not knowing what to feel for, he pulls his hand back and cradles her cheek for a minute, more to soothe himself than her. “You let me know if your vision gets funny or you feel sick to your stomach, okay?”

Except she won’t. Joel already knows that she won’t. 

Next, his fingers go back to feeling along her nose. The bruising and swelling are both so severe he’s almost convinced there’s a break somewhere in there. She winces as he feels around but doesn’t pull away. For all the wounds on her face, it’s at least an assurance to take stock of them without another man’s blood drying on her this time, mingling with her own. 

Fully expecting to move on to her torso, Joel gives pause at the faint purple he notes around her throat. “Does this hurt, baby?” The anger keeps coming in waves, rushing forward before he rolls it back out to the sea, forcing himself to remain calm for her. He wants to go back to that beach. Bring that bastard back to life so Joel can kill him all over again. Kill him and make it good. Make it hurt. 

Ellie hums something noncommittal in the back of her throat. 

“How about your shoulders?”

A shrug.

“Come on, Ellie. Work with me here.” He couldn’t do this without her cooperation, after all. He needs to know what there is to be fixed. 

“A little sore,” she mumbles. “Not bad.”

Through the fabric of her shirt, Joel feels along her shoulder blades, around the back of her ribs. The pads of his fingers slip easily into the notches between bones. Too damn skinny. “Is it okay if I lift your shirt a little?” he asks, hands back at his side so she knows he won’t make a move to do anything until she gives the okay.

In answer, Ellie lifts the hem herself, exposing the lower half of her back, right to the edge of the sports bra she wore. 

Sand, ground into abrasions. Like she’d been pressed into the earth and had fought like hell against it. “Gotta get this clean.” Joel keeps his voice quiet, less likely for the fury to be detected that way. Back to the hall bath, gathering another washrag, more hydrogen peroxide, and a pair of tweezers. 

He sits on the edge of another kitchen chair dragged behind Ellie’s. She sits sideways to allow access to the markings on her back. Tenderly, he rubs a wet cloth against the wounds, easing as much grit from them as he can. The tweezers pick out the bits that don’t wash away as easily. It reminds him a little of the glass that had shattered on Sarah’s body, how it had collected in her hair, embedded in her skin. Flecks of it had slipped into Joel’s hands and forearms as he held her. 

He hadn’t noticed until the nurses in the ER pointed it out, almost two full days later.

They’d put him in a trauma bay as the blood poured from his head. The room was a mirror image of where he’d last held his dead daughter. It felt cruel. It felt like a punishment. It felt like exactly what he deserved. 

Careful not to hurt her, Joel washes the sand from Ellie’s wounds. Blood stains the cloth in his hand. 

She hisses from raw nerve endings, exposed and pressed against. 

“I know, baby,” Joel whispers with some past practice that makes the words fall without thought from his lips. “I know it hurts.” Barbie bandaids on skinned knees. Bee stingers pulled from the flesh of her arm. Twisted wrist clung close to her chest from an unfortunate tumble off the monkey bars. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Ellie shoots back at once, her own form of practiced words and responses. 

It’s not, Joel thinks but doesn’t say. 

There’s a map of bruising on her chest and abdomen. He’d already caught glimpses of the purple staining her skin. Now he can see the tendrils of it creeping around her back, like fingers grasping her ribcage. Burst blood vessels and formed hematomas. Blunt force trauma. That’s the only word for it all. Trauma.

Hydrogen peroxide on a wound. Gauze taped carefully over top. It wouldn’t hold for very long but would do to keep it clean, for the time being. 

“Gonna check your ribs now.”

What she needs is an X-ray. Some pain meds. Probably an IV infusion of fluids, antibiotics. A doctor. 

What she has is an overly concerned man with hands that are afraid to hurt and desperate to heal. 

Pressing along bones, searching for cracks or breaks. He doesn’t feel anything, but what the hell does he know? “You still breathin’ okay?” he asks though he has barely stopped monitoring the rise and fall of her chest since they’d walked through the front door. That’s the last thing he could stand to watch; the idea of her struggling to breathe almost has him back in the car, driving 50 minutes to an Idaho hospital with a Texas Roadhouse across the street. 

“Yeah.” And then, “Hurts to cough or if I breathe really deep.” It would probably hurt to laugh, too. Not that she’d have a frame of reference for that one right about now. 

“Those are important to do, though,” Joel says, remembering when one of his crew members had taken a nosedive from the second story and about near collapsed a lung. Joel had gone to see him at the hospital like any decent boss would do and, with nothing else to discuss, talked about how he was being forced to use some funny little breathing device that encouraged him to take deep breaths so he wouldn’t end up with pneumonia. “Don’t wanna get sick with something else.”

A hum of agreement is all the response he gets. 

Ellie’s stomach’s not much better. It’s nearly black with how dark the bruising gets, centralized into an almost perfect impression of the toe of a boot print. A grown man had kicked her while she lay on the ground. It blinds him briefly, the fury, but he’s back to the present only a moment later. She needed him to stay in the moment with her right now. 

She should probably be scanned for internal bleeding. Her stomach is still soft beneath his touch. “We’ll want to keep an eye on this, too.”

“Is there anything we aren’t keeping a fucking eye on?” She tries for a joke but falls a little short. 

“Think we can give that smart mouth of yours a clean bill of health.” Joel gives it to her anyway.

Two Tylenol folded into her palm, fresh glass of water set in front of her. Check up done, for now. Diagnosis: Who the fuck knows?

“Thanks,” she swallows both pills back dry, only takes the water when he presses it into her hands. Hydration was always the answer, right? Fluids and rest. 

“Want to try and lay down a little bit longer?”

An immediate shake of her head. “No.” The look in her eyes is almost frantic. The glass is clutched tightly in her hands. 

“Okay,” he reassures immediately, taking the half-emptied cup from her and setting it aside. “Don’t think you’re s’posed to look at screens with a concussion.” Maybe he could read to her. It reminds him so much of tending to Sarah when she was sick. Puke bucket beside her bed, a small, sweaty body pressed close to Joel’s chest as he read Anne of Green Gables for the seventy-fifth time. 

What they should be doing is talking. There are a million and one things to sort out right now, to work through. But Joel doesn’t know how to broach a single damn topic resting on the table before them, and Ellie wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance. 

Satisfied with her hydration status, Joel puts an empty glass in the sink and guides her back toward the living room. Ellie was a pliant, malleable thing right about now. She followed his lead, didn’t question his calls. It was so opposite of the kid he’d come to know that it’s just one more way he’s scared for her. At least for now, some of it could be blamed on the hit her head took. 

She sits on the couch. Joel goes to grab a book from somewhere in this house, but she snatches onto the sleeve of his shirt again. As opposed to explaining his mission, Joel acquiesces at once and settles beside her. 

Knees tucked up, deep inhale that causes a wince of pain. Ellie’s forehead falls back against his side. She needed that physical touch right now. More than a book or a conversation or maybe even a doctor. Safety, that’s all she was seeking. Certainty, that’s the best Joel could offer. 

The palm of his hand runs gently up and down her arm, hoping to give a small semblance of peace to these ongoingly hagrid moments. 

“Who’s Riley?” Joel dares to ask.

Ellie stiffens in his arms, something like a strangled sob caught in the back of her throat. “Dead.” The word is hard—calloused and worn and wrested from her lips. “Just like everyone else who gives a shit about me. Gave…I guess, actually.”

“Ellie…”

“You should probably get out while you still can,” she marches on. “Ditch me before I end up getting you killed, too.” A shake of her head. “I told you I’m fucking cursed.”

“You’re not-”

Her whole body is tense, held taut in his grip. “I am. ” She pulls back. Pain flashes across her face. She seems to barely register it. Joel can’t stop the flare of guilt every time he witnesses the little grimaces. “He was right, Joel. He was right, and I-I’m just-”

“Whoa, whoa,” he cuts her off. It kills him not to bring his hands up and wrap them ‘round her shoulders, but she’s put some distance between them. He’s going to respect that. Instead, he ducks into her view and tries to make her look at him as he speaks. “If you’re talking about that waterlogged motherfucker of a corpse, then there ain’t a damn thing he’s right about. Do you hear me?”

The inside of her right cheek must be bitten raw at this point. “You don’t fucking get it,” is her final assessment. 

“Help me to,” he retaliates. 

Fingers twisting, a little bit more distance put between the two of them. Ellie stares down at the couch cushions.  

“He said…I-I have a violent heart. Maybe that’s why anyone who gives a shit about me fucking croaks.”

“Come on, kid. You aren’t-”

“I killed him, Joel.” The expression that flits across her face is remorse, even as it hardens into something more resolute, more angry. “You can’t sit there and tell me I’m not a violent person when I just fucking murdered someone.”

None of the parenting books Joel’s ever read touched on this one. “You defended yourself,” he jumps in to supply. “I would have done the same. Got nothin’ to do with your heart.”

Eye roll. “I know. I know. I did the right thing or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was right.”

It’s killing him a little bit, trying to convince this kid that the pedophile who tracked her across the country for the sake of murdering her was exorbitantly wrong. How was this a conversation they even had to have?

“He said God told him.” And now she does look at him, like Joel’s going to believe this claim on God’s supposed authority. “He said…that I was being punished for it. That I deserved it.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Joel spits out with no chance of moderating his anger before it slips. “That bastard knows nothing about you, do you hear me? He’s got no authority to say a damn thing one way or another.” And now he never would again. Thanks to Ellie. The world should be offering her a medal of honor for her service, if you ask Joel.

The sun feels too bright, overwhelming in its shining through the living room windows. Dust motes float in the shafts of light. The brightness of it all almost has Joel off of the couch to go pull the curtains shut, to block it out. 

“He was going to teach me.” The words cause a shiver to tremble its way through her body. “He said that I needed a…a father to show me how to be better. So my ‘heavenly father’ wouldn’t take one look at me and throw me back down to Hell where I came from.” The longer she speaks, the more sneer is added to her words. 

If it was possible, Joel would drive back out to that riverbank, reach within the depths of the water, haul that piece of shit back out, bring him back to life, and torture him to death all over again. No quick release by a well placed blade. Slow, agonizing, miserable death. Talk ‘bout sending someone to Hell where they came from. Joel would make sure that son of a bitch was begging for Hell by the time he was done with him. 

The anger must be plain as day on his face. Ellie doesn’t look afraid, but she does almost appear…impressed. Yeah, kid, stick with him. He’d show you a violent heart. And then he would show her love, warmth, promise. Forget the violence; put it aside as long as his girl is safe. As long as she can rest easy knowing that she is wanted, aware that no one is left who would dare hurt her.

“Listen, your foster father was-”

“He wasn’t my foster dad,” Ellie corrects quickly. “He was my fucking math teacher.”

For whatever reason, that’s what dumbfounds him into silence.

“And youth pastor,” she winces. “My foster father is a goddamn cop. And David’s best fucking friend. Him and Cindy thought going to the youth group would be good for my and Riley’s ‘maladjustment’ and ‘misbehaving.’” A huge eye roll. It’s something at least, something that reminds him of that kid who sat beside him all this way. “Real helpful. Now Riley’s dead, and I’m a fucking murderer. Should’ve just gotten the fuck over us and our cussing or whatever.”

So that’s why she wanted nothing to do with cops. Too close to home, or whatever she called the situation she’d run from. 

“He was a fucking perv. James probably knew the whole time. He seemed pretty pervy, too.”

Now there’s someone else Joal could torture to death. 

“It’s not that I think the world’s got some great loss now that I killed him,” Ellie speaks with confidence, chin tilting upward. Big and brave, and the kid who stared strange men right in the eye and demanded something from them. “I just…” she deflates. “I hate that he was right. That’s all.”

So much to touch on. So many things to convince her. So many different reasons to hold her. There was no fixing this. Not with a singular conversation. Not with no one but Joel to help her work through this. An uphill battle, that’s what it would be. He needed to be ready to meet her, head to head. 

“What you did was a mercy kill compared to what I woulda done to him, baby.” She ought to know. Ain’t no one seen a violent heart until you hurt one of Joel Miller’s girls. “You defended yourself. That’s not got a thing to do with violence.”

Ellie’s watching out the window. A bike flies past on the street, an older couple is out for a walk. The work day has ended. People are out grabbing the last remaining sunlit evenings before the time changes and darkness chokes the world. “He was dead, and I just kept stabbing him. I wanted to do worse. I wanted to chop his whole fucking face off.”

“You’re not a curse,” Joel reiterates from earlier. He opens his arm, offers an invitation. She assesses the option for half a second before curling up beside him. “You’re not some violent monster.” The evening light hasn’t quite come through yet, but Joel knows it’s going to be a golden, pink-skied sort of night. Sarah used to call them “Cotton Candy Nights,” her chubby, little toddler fingers reaching up towards the sky like the fluffy clouds could be brought down to her, just for her. “You are a blessing, Ellie.” Goddamn miracle, baby girl, his purpose. So many other ways she should be seeing herself. “Least you’re mine, got it?”

Face tucked against his chest, a stuttering, pained breath. Ellie exhales, letting something go in that rush of air as she falls heavier against him. 

She never does answer him. Joel holds her close and spends the time in silence thinking of all the ways he could tell her, over and over again, just how much of a life-altering force of good she truly is. For now, he’ll settle with holding her in his arms and reaffirming it with a kiss to the top of her head.

//

It’s dark, even with the sun shining down—that’s the first thing he notices. 

Then it’s Ellie who’s ‘bout a football field of distance away from him. He can see the blood on her, doesn’t know where it’s coming from. She’s crying his name, screaming it. And Joel’s running towards her but never getting any closer. 

Someone else is tugging on his hand. When he turns, Ellie’s there, too. It scares him enough to curse and jump back. The grip she has on his hand is turning hers bone white, no blood remaining in her fervent, grasping fingers. 

“What are you-”

“Go.”

Her voice is lifeless, dull. There’s no inflection, no emotion. The face she’s wearing is deadly serious. 

“Joel, you have to go.”

But there’s her voice, 300 feet away, begging for him to help her. And she’s hurt. That Ellie is bleeding. He can’t turn his back on her.

“She’s going to kill you,” the one next to his ear insists. “You have to GO!” 

And then her hands are shaking his shoulders, and she’s shouting his name, and her face is morphing into the girl one short sprint away from him, bloody and bruised and battered and begging. “Joel! Joel!”

“-el! Wake up, Joel!”

He wrenches his eyes open, and there’s Ellie hovering right above him. She’s not bleeding, but she sure as hell is bruised. Her body is shaking, her fingers clamped tight around his shoulders where she must have been shaking him. 

Out of instinct and necessity, one of his hands comes up to rest against her face. No blood. No screaming for him to come and save her. No demanding he turn his back and save himself. 

What a fucking dream.

“Are you okay?” she’s asking him, lips parted and eyebrows furrowed. They’re still in the living room. The day has finally come to a close. 

“”M fine,” he insists, running the hand that had been pressed against her down his face and trying to mop up the lingering exhaustion and fear. Fist pressed to his chest, trying to remember how to breathe. Trying to remember how not to panic and send the kid in front of him spiraling. Hold it together for her, he just had to keep it together while she was watching him. “Sorry if I woke ya.”

Moving to push himself up, Ellie scrambles back to give him space. She’s crammed herself into the corner, looking sheepish. “I was awake.” 

The clock reads well past midnight. Joel can’t decide if he thinks she’s lying or not.

“At first, you were just mumbling,” she tells him, eyes downcast to pick at the hem of her shirt. “It was kinda funny.” There’s an attempt at a smile. He feels like he’s seen a lot of those recently. Attempts that don’t quite succeed. “And then you were really upset about something. You kept…calling my name.”

Yeah, bet he did. His hands are still shaking. He hadn’t actually stopped looking at her for more than a second since he’d forced his eyes open. “Bad dream,” he sighs. It turns into a groan as he pushes himself up. Sleeping on a couch off and on for the last day and a half was going to catch up to him sooner rather than later.

“About me?” It’s a whisper; hard to decipher the emotions tucked away in there. 

Reliving it isn’t exactly high on Joel’s preferred ways to spend time at two in the morning. He settles for a “Yeah,” and reaches back to massage along a knot at the base of his neck. Few more days of this and he’d be the one in the hospital. 

The lack of movement beside him has Joel looking back at Ellie, trying to interpret the outline of her silhouette that he can barely decipher in the darkness of the living room. 

Since finding her on the riverbank, Joel’s mostly had her pressed against his side one way or another. The distance feels amiss, like something’s absent. “What’s wrong?” he ventures. “Is the pain worse?”

“Was I hurting you?”

“Wh-what?” Joel sits up fully now, reaching over to the lamp on the table beside him and switching it on. They both flinch in the sudden light. 

“In your dream,” she clarifies unnecessarily. “You sounded like you were in pain.”

Elbows on his knees, face in his hands, exhale blown out. “No, baby,” he answers her. Now that the nickname was out there, he felt little need to bury it back down. He saw the way it untethered something within her, how she leaned further in every time he uttered it. Almost as if she was daring to believe it was a term of affection just for her. Almost as if she thought she could trust him to catch her if she leaned too far and fell forward. He would. Obviously, he would. “You were hurt. Just scared me, seeing you like that.” He doesn’t add again.

An inch closer. “You sounded angry.” He was, a little bit. He hadn’t stopped being angry, not since walking out of a gas station and finding his truck cabin void of the only thing that mattered in his life. He hadn’t stopped since his little brother called him from the back of an ambulance. He hadn’t set down one ounce of anger in fifteen years. 

Ellie doesn’t need anger. She’s seen enough of that in her short life. She knows how it wraps you in its grasp, holds so tight until you can no longer breathe. She’s seen how it drains life, drains purpose, drains love. She felt it trample on her heart, experienced it shattering her very chest. 

No, anger isn’t what this kid needs in the slightest.

“Just scared,” he tells her with the sort of honesty he would normally shy away from. It was what she required from him, exposed and vulnerable and too tired to maintain defenses. She needed to see that she wasn’t alone, feel that she wasn’t weak. 

And he was scared, too. He was tired of fighting, too. Least he could do was stop fighting her. “Just want you safe.”

Leaning back, Joel considers sending them both to bed. He entertains the thought of putting her in a dark room all alone for half a second before throwing the concept out. Maybe Tommy and Maria had some extra sleeping bags out in the garage. Tomorrow night, they could camp out in the living room. He’d get a fire going in the fireplace for them to make s’mores over. The ghost stories he’d tell her would only be the sort so absurd that she’d crack up—her warm, full-bodied laugh cast throughout the whole room. The stars would be on display outside. He’d make sure she got a chance to catch them in their full glory. 

It’s his shirt covering her arms in the cold night air, Joel realizes now with the light on. Who knows when or where she’d gotten it from, but he doesn’t begrudge her the warmth it must offer. “Why do you give a shit about me?” she asks, confident now in the fact that he does. Joel determines that to be its own form of accomplishment when he’s too much of a coward to ever use his words and express the sentiment as true. 

Joel sighs again. Weariness was a cloak on his back. Fatigue in the very beating of his heart. How does he explain it to her? How does he tell her when he can’t quite make sense of it himself? Fifteen years of shut down, closed off, one day at a time to just stay alive, and now he’s here. Now he’s got affection dripping through his bloodstream and tenderness easing from his lymph and love riding on the tailwinds of every exhale. 

A hundred different ways to answer her. A million explanations he could offer. But she’s already got the piece that matters most. That he does. Plain and simple.

“How could I not?” he asks in response.

Ellie opens her mouth to answer.

“Rhetorical question, kiddo. That’s how I see it.” His hand seeks her out, that fervent fear settles within him when the brush of her knuckles greets him. Okay. She’s okay. He wouldn’t let anything hold him back from making sure that was how it stayed. Not even Ellie herself.

//

“It really is my fault.” The sad, fractured words come tumbling out of her around four in the morning. At some point, they’d figure out how to sleep through the night again. In the interim, Joel will sit up with her and stroke her hair and hold her hand and remind the both of them that they are going to be okay. “Riley, I mean.”

Guilt was a tricky thing. Joel’s been heaving it around with him long enough to know it does not rest easy when you attempt to set it down. He knows how it topples, destroys, until you’ve got no choice but to pick it back up again and let the weight crush you down further. How could he sit here and demand this kid drop hers and turn her back when he’s not so much as set down a single ounce in all these years?

“She was going to run away.” She sniffs. One of his arms is wrapped up in hers, cuddled like a stuffed animal, and she tugs him slightly closer. He’s pretty sure she’s wiping her nose on the shoulder of his T-shirt. “I told her not to do it. I begged her to stay, Joel.” A warble in her words, a tightening of her grip. “And then he…he killed her because I didn’t let her get away.”

What the fuck was happening in the Boston foster care system that little girls were getting murdered left and right? “Who did?” Joel asks, voice tight.

Ellie sniffles again. “David.” A pause. A breath. “Riley was never any good at not fighting back. Sometimes that’s what you have to do, though. So they stop before they…he killed her and dumped her body in the lake, and when they found her three weeks later, they just said it was an accidental drowning. No investigation. Nothing.”

Jesus Christ. Joel was so far out of his depth here. 

“If I hadn’t begged her to stay, she’d still be alive.” Equal parts sadness and anger roll off of her in tall, tumultuous waves. “I thought she’d get hurt, running away like she was planning to. I thought…I thought it would hurt me. But she got killed because she stayed there with me.”

Clearing his throat, Joel lets his thumb trace patterns on the forearm his hand is closest to. It’s the one with the scar, the one he hasn’t been brave enough to ask about. “Did you kill her?” he asks, voice strained.

“Of course not, but-”

“Then it’s not your fault, Ellie.” A mom who killed herself a few weeks after she was born. A friend who got murdered after Ellie had dared to beg her not to leave. A woman she’d been left to, turning her back and moving halfway across the country away from Ellie. And who knows who else, how many others, had left her behind along the way. 

And then him, Joel. Poor kid is stuck with him as a sorry sucker now. She dries her tears on his shirt. God, he can’t imagine her being stuck with anyone else. Goddamn Gorilla Glue, that’s what it feels like is holding him to her. Ain’t no ripping him off now. “You aren’t responsible for other people’s choices,” he whispers into her hair. The words had been said to him a few dozen times by half a dozen people since Sarah had left him behind on this Earth. It wasn’t his fault someone else ran a red light. It wasn’t his fault Sarah had been sitting in the passenger side where she was hit. It wasn’t his fault Tommy had left his house five minutes later than he’d been planning. 

(It is his fault that they left late because Joel had delayed them by making that phone call. Sarah had spent more than a few minutes trying to convince him to blow off the project he was halfway through to come with them. It had seemed so important then. Projects, deadlines, work. And then she was gone, and he realized he’d had his priorities totally cattywampus.)

There are more defenses. Joel can feel them rising up in her. “Hey now,” he says, drawing his fingers up to her head, the tips dragging through her tangled bedhead. “One thing at a time here.” It’s the best he can do just now. There’s so much to tackle. He’s still reeling from that dream. He’s still one raging thought away from what could have happened two days ago from throwing up. “Try and get some sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” she argues. He keeps waiting for her to insist she could go to bed and sleep all by herself, thank you very much, but much like Sarah had clung to him when her classmate had tragically died, Ellie’s traumatized enough to give up on that big, tough act that teenagers tend to wear like armor against the world. She’s okay with being small, being a little bit clingy. He eats the closeness up and indulges every last request she might make, vocal or otherwise.

They’d get to a place where she felt safe again. They’d reach a point where she would know she was the safest she’s ever been. It was going to be a long time coming; Joel knew that part already. But he would do whatever it took, whatever she needed to feel safe. 

“Just try,” Joel whispers. Eventually, the heaviness of her body grows, settling against him as her breathing becomes slower, heavier. She gives a few twitches as unconsciousness attempts to drag her under. She falls asleep just before the sun begins to rise.

Chapter Text

A key in the door jolts Joel back to consciousness. He hadn’t fully dropped off yet, too worried that he would slip back into a nightmare and rouse Ellie from her dreamless slumber again. He’s barely managed to drag a hand down his tired face before the door’s thrown open. Tommy manages to catch it before the doorknob slams into the wall. 

Ellie doesn’t even stir. 

“Shh,” Joel warns, adjusting his arms around her, slow and careful. He didn’t want to wake her. Sleep was too hard to come by these last couple of days. She needed as much of it as she could get. “I just got her to sleep.”

An emotion crosses over Tommy’s face. Maybe it’s something more like the ghost of one. Bringing them both back to those early days with Sarah, Joel rocked her to sleep in his arms and passed out right there in the rocking chair with her held to his chest more nights than not. Tommy had practically lived in that tiny apartment with them after Sarah’s momma left. A freshman in high school, half-helping his brother with a newborn, half taking advantage of the freedom to go out and get into whatever trouble he wanted. 

He’d hover in the doorway, nudging Joel awake in the early hours of the morning. Joel would tell him to hush up; he’d just gotten the baby down. Really, he and his daughter had been asleep for hours, her solid little weight like a soothing blanket on his chest. 

The words come back to him so easily, even if Ellie is fourteen years old and a little beyond her rocking-to-sleep years. 

Easing his arms out from beneath her, Joel swaps himself for a pillow beneath her head. She groans but turns her face against the couch cushions and quiets back down. Joel covers her with a blanket, allowing himself one extra second to stare down at her, safe and asleep and secure, before turning back to his brother, who remains frozen in the doorway of his own home. 

The birds chirp, a greeting from the exposed outdoors. Joel leaves a crack to see Ellie through as he leads his brother out to the front porch.

Maria’s waiting just beside the truck, leaning against the driver’s side door with her arms crossed over her chest as she squints in the morning light. 

“Thought you guys weren’t gonna be back for a few more days?” Joel opens with, forcing himself not to turn back around and put eyes on Ellie. She was just inside. On the couch. Safe.

With an assessing gaze, Maria tells him, “The outdoors start losing their appeal after the third round of puking without any running water around.”

Tommy shakes his head. “Not to mention you kinda worried us, dipshit.” And now Tommy is the one looking over his shoulder, peering through the crack in the door to the sleeping child inside. Joel indulges himself for a moment, too. There she is, unmoved. Deep, even breaths. Her bruised face is tucked out of view. “What the fuck happened?”

With a supposed few more days to sort this out, Joel hadn’t really decided his angle yet, especially not with Maria, who looked like she was one second away from arresting him herself. And that’s without knowing about that whole little murder business they still had to sort out. Would she get it yet? Could he trust her to? Before that baby of hers is in this world? Will she understand that once they are, there’s no point pretending the choices you make have a damn thing to do with your own well-being? 

They’ve got a porch swing strung up with thick chains.  Joel lowers himself onto it and keeps his feet firmly planted against the porch’s hollow, light brown hardwood. The morning light is streaming through the trees, just beginning to warm the night chill from the air. “Nothing good” is what Joel manages to supply. Not that they couldn’t sort that out for themselves the moment they saw Ellie. 

A look is exchanged between the newlyweds. Maria comes up the porch steps, her hand running between Tommy’s shoulder blades. “I’m going to go in and take a long, hot shower.” It’s an offering of trust. More likely to Tommy than Joel, but still, take what he can get here.

“Don’t-”

“I won’t wake her up, Joel,” she supplies before he can ask. 

True to her word, she catches the screen door when she walks inside so it won’t slam shut. Joel cranes his neck to watch his kid, passed out soundly, before turning to his brother who’s standing over him with something like fear deepset in his eyes.

“She okay?”

And, well, Joel hadn’t figured out what he was going to say, what he was going to do, but he sure as hell wasn’t planning on sitting here and bawling his eyes out. Sure enough, though, that’s exactly what he does. 

Joel rests his face in his hands as he attempts to rein the emotions back someplace where they could be controlled, managed, suppressed. The anxiety of the last few days, the grief that kept resurfacing, the desperate relief that seized in his chest every time he caught a glance of Ellie, followed by the deep resonation of failure, it was all too damn much. 

“I failed her, Tommy,” is the most he can get out. It feels just like fifteen years ago. It feels an awful lot like his brother finding him on the bathroom floor with a handgun still clutched in a weakened, waning grip. 

Tommy sits beside Joel. He doesn’t say a word. They’re both caught in echoes of the past—those horrible, ugly memories. That’s one of the many parts of losing her that hurts so exorbitantly, the way it taints everything good and happy and beautiful from before. How it all just feels the same; all just rings through his bones like endless, infinite pain. 

And Joel knows Maria’s left them to talk, giving them the space to hash out whatever needs to be said. She probably anticipates that Joel’s going to be willing to share the elements of truth with Tommy that he would hide from the rest of the world. But even though Tommy was the last bit of family Joel had left in this world, and even though he trusts his brother with his damn life, he can’t get the words out. He can't explain how he’s talking about Ellie, but he’s talking about Sarah and how broken, battered girls can’t be held by his arms anymore, and how he’s never just managing to do something right and is instead always disappointing, letting down—always absent when it counts.

“She’s okay,” Tommy finally says, taking the risk to reference solely Ellie in response to a statement offered by Joel so weighted it spanned fifteen fucking years. “She’s in there sleeping off whatever happened, right? She’s okay.”

Except she’s a canvas of bruising and a backdrop of trauma. Except there’s a new fear living inside of her. A new secret she would have to carry with her until the day she died. A new reality she was forced to live out, all on her own. Because he had failed her. 

“It was bad, Tommy,” Joel finally gets out. Another glance over his shoulder. Still there. “It was…god, I don’t know how…she’s not in good shape in there.” Should be in the hospital. Should be in a real bed. Should be with a proper parent. But she’s got him, as long as she wanted him. As long as her fingers reached out and grasped onto his sleeves and her eyes begged him to stay where she could see him, where she knew he would be nearby to keep her safe. 

Shaking his head, Tommy looks out at the street in front of them. It’s still quiet with the early morning. Joel probably hadn’t gotten more than an hour or two of broken sleep. “What the fuck happened?”

“If anything happens to me,” Joel doesn’t specify if he gets thirty to life in prison, opting to keep it vague, “you gotta swear to me you’ll take her in.”

“Joel, what-”

“Just swear it, Tommy.” A little premature, maybe, considering Joel hasn’t even figured out how he’s gaining custody of this kid, but he needs this much at least. This small assurance that if anything happens to him from here, she’ll have somewhere safe to go, still. In these moments where it’s too quiet for too long, Joel remembers her wet and shaking with her fingertips digging deep into his wrists, begging him not to let anyone take him away from her. 

A singular nod. “Nothin’s gonna happen to you, though.” Joel doesn’t bother telling Tommy that he might very well be wrong. “Now, what the fuck happened.”

It’s still a haze in Joel’s own head, uncertain and dizzying and tainted through with the panic and misery of everything that happened. He hadn’t yet understood what Ellie’s been willing to give him so far. A friend who died, a man who killed her without consequences. The same one who came after Ellie. Math teacher, youth preacher. Someone shoulda given that son of a bitch more access to children. 

“He tried to kill her, Tommy.” Just saying the words tears apart his heart, rips it into shreds of what could have been, what someone wanted it to be. It makes no sense; anyone wanting to do that to his girl. “He tried to…he was one sick fuck.”

They both understand the words Joel doesn’t have the strength to say. 

“Was?”

Clearing his throat, Joel weighs the options for only a second before saying, “I killed him.”

The confession sits between them. It’s been fifteen years since Joel has been close with his brother.—fifteen years since he’s dared to have an open, honest conversation with him. Even still, Tommy knows him too damn well. “You killed him, huh?” The incredulousness drips from his voice, thick like honey and rich like nectar.

“Yep.”

“That feral little girl ain’t got nothing to do with what happened to him; I take it?”

Joel looks him in the eye and asks him to just go with the lie for what it is. “Didn’t even see it happen.”

It’s as clear as the mountain lake water his brother had gotten married beside. As apparent as the rigid peaks and rugged rock faces of stony summits—Joel does not bother even attempting to hide the dedication that dictates his every action now. 

“‘Course not.” 

Tommy rests at his brother’s side and, for right now, lets him lie. 

It almost feels a little bit like healing. It almost feels like forgiveness.

//

The nice moment is more or less ruined when Maria returns. She’s fully dressed, no makeup. 

Joel’s since moved to lean against the porch railing so he could more easily keep an eye out for when Ellie stirred. He didn’t want her to wake up alone. He couldn’t stand for her to wake up afraid. 

The porch swing sways, chains creaking as Maria settles beside Tommy. In a moment of softness, she rests her head against his shoulder. Joel feels like an intruder and keeps his eyes fixed on a deep-breathing, completely still body that rests across the threshold. 

“What exactly is your plan here?” Maria asks the question Joel could practically feel radiating from his brother this whole time. He had the tact, the pity maybe, not to ask. Maria possesses no such quality.  

And damn if he hadn’t been asking himself to figure out that answer for days. It was time to solve for x already. “Haven’t really gotten that far,” he admits. He’s too tired to think at this point. He’s too exhausted to spare his focus beyond anything concerning Ellie’s immediate and certain safety. “Fix her up and take her home, more or less.”

His well-devised idea receives him stares and not much else.

Maria shifts. It almost seems intentional, the bit of space she puts between herself and Tommy as she demands an answer to the question, “And what do you plan to do with her exactly?”

“What do you mean what am I gonna do with her?” Joel shoots back, keeping his voice from rising. “I’m gonna buy her a bike and teach her how to cook a proper brisket and take her to Yellowstone to see the fucking bison and adopt her a goddamn dog!” 

He’s breathing a little hard despite himself, the panic starting to claw its way up that no one else was seeing it, no one else could understand. He was going to take her home, and in time, through all of this shit, he was going to be her parent. In all the ways that mattered, he was going to raise her to the best of his abilities, and there wasn’t going to be another day that she doubted whether someone out in the world gave a shit about her. He would make sure of it. There’d be no more uncertainty in her life on who she could turn to, who would believe her, who would protect her. He would always be right there, ready for anything.

Maria’s blinking at him. “Not a cat?” she asks, and it’s such a goddamn stupid question that Joel has to shake his head.

“She seems like a dog kid, but sure. She can get a cat. She can get a fucking Komodo dragon, far as I’m concerned.” 

When Maria next speaks, Tommy looks like he’s in pain. “Sarah always wanted a cat, didn’t she?”

“Wh-yeah. She wanted a cat. Never let her get one.” There was always an excuse for everything he didn’t do. Some reason or another that it made sense. One more chunk of regret to toss onto the ever-growing pile, burying his child that much further beneath the earth. “Ellie was always pettin’ dogs at rest stops, though. She ain’t Sarah.” And then it clicks, what they must be thinking. His fists clench with the insinuation before the fight flees from him, head hanging in defeat and exhaustion. “I’m not trying to replace Sarah.”

“No one’s saying otherwise,” Tommy cuts in before that wife of his can contribute any more commentary. “But…she’s the same age Sarah was, and you’ve known her, what? Two weeks? It all just seems like a lot. That’s it.”

Before, he’d become a parent in the span of a heartbeat. The time it took for a baby to be nestled in his arms. His life had changed completely even quicker the last time. Two weeks was practically an eternity in comparison. “I know she’s not Sarah. Not lookin’ for her to be.” Ellie, that’s all he’s looking for her to be. Just Ellie. In all of her chaotic, pandemonious ways. 

Licking her lips, Maria adds, “It’s going to be complicated, her being from Massachusetts.”

“Then I’ll go to Massachusetts,” he shoots back like there was nothing to think about. Because there wasn’t. It was really that easy. If he needed to go to Boston to be with her, then that’s where they would go. At least for a little while. “I just wanna take Ellie home,” he simplifies it down to the most basic answer, leaves out the complications of state lines and promised guardians who didn’t want her and grown men who did for all of the wrong reasons. He drops off tales of shattering glass and hands over ears and desperate screams in her nightmares that had followed them both to waking hours on the shore of a raging river. Instead, he looks at the denominator of the true goal here and simplifies it right on down. “I want to give her one.”

It’s not much, maybe. Not much of an answer or a promise or of what this kid deserves. But somehow, it’s enough for Maria. Satisfied, she nods. “Okay. I can help you do that.”

//

It’s not even noon when Ellie does wake up. Neither of them are really doing great on this whole sleep thing. 

She stirs awake. Joel notices her eyes opening, as does he catch the panic that settles once she spots him at the other end of the couch, down by her feet. He’d squeezed her ankle to let her know he was still there. 

“Hey, baby,” he says softly, knowing already that she’s going to be less than enthused to have the house owners crashing the little bubble that had been just for the two of them for days now. “We got some visitors.”

Ellie pales, pausing in the process of pushing herself up to sit.

“TommyandMaria,” he clarifies the words rolling off his tongue as one in his haste to appease her. “Just Tommy and Maria.” 

Nodding, her eyes scan the room before she returns to the process of sitting up. Joel keeps waiting for when he looks at her and doesn’t feel a punch in the gut of guilt for the injuries laid bare across her body. She’s still wearing his shirt over top of her own. She pulls it around her body as her legs swing down, feet just barely grazing the hardwood floor. 

“Did you tell them?” Her voice is hoarse. She clears her throat, reaching for the glass that had been sitting on the coffee table in the same spot for the last three days, refilled before it could ever dare to be all the way emptied. 

Joel waves away any growing concern. “They know what they need.” He doesn’t tell her he lied, that Tommy didn’t believe him, or that Maria’s gonna have a million goddamn questions when she actually puts eyes on Ellie’s purpling face. 

“Hey, Joel?” His name comes out small and scared. It’s how he knows whatever comes next is going to be important. He turns so she knows that she’s got his attention but doesn’t speak to interrupt her. “What happens now?”

A fair question, one he’s been tossing around in his head for days now. 

One step at a time, that’s what he kept on insisting. But really, he doesn’t know how they’re getting where they’re going either. He doesn’t know where each footstep will need to land to get them from where they are to where they need to be. It looks like a long journey. It sounds like it’s going to hurt. It feels like it’s all going to be worth it. 

“Well, a few different things,” he hedges with his hand running up behind the back of his neck. “I mean, we have to make sure you heal up alright and then gotta get back to Austin at some point and, um-”

“You’re up.” It’s Maria’s voice interrupting them before Joel can muddle through his response any further. “Good.”

She and Tommy had made themselves scarce as Ellie slept. But they both come down the stairs now. The kid beside him tenses up. He can almost feel her muscles switching gears to rear up for another fight or flight sorta scenario. Joel resists reaching out a hand to settle her back down beside him. 

Who knows what Tommy told Maria, if anything. Maybe everything. That’s marriage, after all. Can’t exactly ask his brother to lie to his wife of barely a week, even if he’d like to. Besides, that whole lawyer business was sure to come in handy in one way or another. 

“Don’t see what it matters to you,” Ellie shoots back, the first true bite he’s seen from her since finding her on that embankment. She clutches his shirt around her middle like she once did a ratty old, falling apart backpack. 

Both of them pause, though they try to hide it. Tommy sucks in a breath, foot halfway to the floor off the last step for several seconds as he takes in the kid on the couch. His wife takes it slightly more in stride, though Joel doesn’t miss the wince that crosses her face as she steps further into the room.

Maria shakes her head and settles on the armchair adjacent to them. “Both of you settle down,” she instructs with a clear, even voice. “Stop acting like everything is the end of the world, would ya?”

Ellie slinks back into the couch, cushions flopping up around her as she huffs out a sigh. It’s sure to hurt—the rough, sudden movement—but she’s too committed to her act to justify the discomfort with so much as a flash of pain across her face.

Evaluating eyes scan across Ellie. Tommy and Maria take in the injuries that are painted across her too-small body. “Who wants to explain?” Maria asks, but there’s a fraction of softness added to her tone, a slight give in the stern, sharp exterior Joel’s come to expect of the woman. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Joel jumps in. “You let me worry about that.”

“Absolutely n-”

“I need help with plenty of other shit first.”

Unshaken, unbothered. “Do not interrupt me again, Joel.” 

Tommy stands at the foot of the stairs, quite literally not picking one side of the living room or the other. “Don’t you think maybe we could start with some coffee, babe?” 

“Go and make it then,” she shoots back. Her posture is impeccable. Joel finds himself slumped back into the couch, much like Ellie. He’s so tired. “Someone better tell me why this child has bruises all over her body.”

“With all due respect, Maria. I don’t think-”

“Someone tried to fucking kill me.”

Okay, so much for that. How many times does Joel need to explain to this kid about not showing all your damn cards at once? Someone get him a deck. Clearly they were overdue for a quick Texas Hold ‘Em tutorial. 

“Ellie.”

“What?” Now she’s turning on him; it’s barely perceivable, but it’s there with her movements—an ache, a throb. The faint finger-shaped lines of bruising still linger on her throat. Her eyes are bloodshot. She’s just a baby. “You got any better ideas? She at least won’t make me leave, right?” Ellie’s imploring eyes land back on Maria, in need of reassurance now that the concept has crossed her mind. 

Some piece of Ellie, the pain or the panic, seems to have broken off a part of Maria’s resolve. She sighs, softens. “No, Ellie. I’m not going to drag you back to whatever situation you fought so hard to escape.”

“And you aren’t going to take Joel away from me,” she urges for further reassurance. 

They both know they’re in tricky, uncertain territory. Ellie might know better than Joel even does. 

“I won’t take you away from Joel as long as you're safe.” The qualifier doesn’t fall on deaf ears. 

“What do you give a shit if I’m safe or not?” It’s a question she falls back on a lot. Why do you care? Why do I matter? Why would you decide that I do? It breaks his heart how she doesn’t hold the assurance of unconditional love, the certainty of parents and family, and basic, responsible adults who want to do right by kids. “You don’t even know me.”

This question Maria is more than ready to rise to. “Because you’re a minor in my home. Clearly, you’ve gone through some horrific events. I’m not about to turn you back out to the world to go through more. That would be cold, even for me.”

Kind of lacking, in Joel’s opinion, but Ellie seems to like what the woman’s saying because the next words out of her goddamn, idiotic mouth are, “I killed someone, and Joel’s gonna try and take the fall for it.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” It’s the first thing Tommy’s said since being rejected on coffee. 

“Ellie. Shut your goddamn mouth.”

“No!” She yells at him, jumping to her feet with the first burst of life he’s seen from her in days. “I’m not going to let you do that, Joel. It’s not right for you to take the fall for every fucked up thing I do.” And then, to Maria. “It was me. I did it. You should arrest me or whatever. Not Joel.”

“Sit down.”

“I won’t let him go to prison or whatever for me! He shouldn’t have messed up the scene. I can’t…he can’t…all because I…”

“Sit. Down.”

Ellie does.

“First of all, I’m a lawyer, not a cop. I won't be arresting anybody.” She looks between the two of them. “Second of all, someone better give me some answers here. Fast. ‘Cause I also don’t help people get away with murder.”

Both of them sit—silent. They’re almost mirror images of one another as they cross their arms over their chests. Joel clears his throat. Ellie bites her lip. They don’t want to give this up. 

He hears her crying about her violent heart, and her cursed life, and her dead friend. He remembers her early hesitation, her lingering fears and the expression across her face when she was searching over her shoulder. 

“I’ll tell you,” Ellie finally agrees, shooting a glance in Joel’s direction before locking her gaze directly to Maria and not dropping it. “But you have to swear to back me up. No one lets Joel get in trouble.”

Before Joel can even resume arguing, Maria jumps in with, “Joel’s in plenty of trouble all on his own. And I don’t lie in court. So how ‘bout you tell me what’s happening, and then we figure out a game plan.”

Silently, Ellie stands. “Come on then,” she spits out. When Joel goes to stand, she points a finger in his direction. “You just stay the fuck there.”

He wants to argue, to follow behind her, but whatever confessions she’s got on the tip of her tongue might not be for him. And he’s gotten good at reading her face and knowing what she’s saying between all those curse words she hides behind. So instead of fighting, he says, “I won’t move a muscle,” in a vow instead. 

Tommy does end up making coffee. The two of them sip it in silence. 

There’s too much to say. Joel doesn’t know how to start on any of it.

Despite two cups of caffeine, Joel does end up passing out from pure exhaustion, his head lolled back on the couch. He wakes up in more pain every time he dares to fall asleep. 

Maria’s reentering footsteps wake him up, his eyes scanning for Ellie as his fingertips rub into the sharp, aching muscles of his neck. Some time has passed, the afternoon sun is warming the whole house to an almost uncomfortable degree. 

The fight’s gone out of this strong, stubborn woman’s body, not something Joel ever expected to see in Maria. She falls into the armchair beside Tommy, closes her eyes, and lounges there for long, silent seconds. Her body is pressed almost entirely against her husband’s.

Finally, she draws in a long, worn breath and looks at Joel, saying, “Yeah, okay.” She laughs; it’s the sort that sounds a little unhinged. “I guess I’m going to help you two get away with murder if it comes to it.”

Really he wanted some help figuring out adoption papers but hey, he’ll take having her on his side for this, too. “What’d she tell you?” 

Maria shakes her head. Tommy rubs his thumb into the spot between her shoulder blades. “Not mine to tell,” she whispers. She lays her head against her husband. Joel stumbles up the stairs to find his kid.

//

Ellie’s curled atop the covers of Tommy and Maria’s bed. 

She’s not sleeping. She’s not crying. She’s not registering Joel there in front of her. She’s staring at a wall with her knees pressed up to her chest and the sleeves of his shirt tucked tight in her fists. 

“How ‘bout some rest?” he asks, keeping his hands to himself for the moment. He didn’t want to reach out and offer her a reassuring pat on her head, only to startle her from wherever her mind might be. “You mind if I sit here next to ya?”

She looks up at him, looks up through him. But she nods, at least she nods. Joel settles beside her. 

Ellie edges closer, forehead dipping until it's pressed to the outer edge of his thigh. The exhale coming from her is heavy. 

“I know that must have been really hard,” Joel whispers, afraid to break this fragile peace that seems to be settling around them. It makes him angry, what Maria asked of Ellie when this child is still so worn down and weary from the last few days, weeks, months, but he understands a little bit, when he tries to. He like to think maybe it had helped Ellie too, getting it off her chest. Finally telling someone a story from start to finish. And that’s what this is, what it can be. An end to one thing and the beginning of another. Something better, something whole. Something theirs. 

A hand digs into his skin, nails clawing through denim flesh as she holds him here. 

“Okay,” he reassures, knowing what she’s after. “I’m here. I’ll stay right here.”

“Until I fall asleep?” she asks, voice small. 

Feeling more sure of himself, Joel reaches his hand out and brushes the hair back from her face. He tucks it behind her ear and keeps repeating the motion, again and again. Her frantic grasp eases. Her eyes flutter shut. 

“Until you fall asleep,” he promises. “And after,” he adds when he thinks she’s close to drifting off, give her something sweet to carry with her into those dreams for once. “And forever after that,” he whispers. Joel’s ready to show his hand. He’s ready for her to see how much everything he has done, was going to do, how it has all been for her. How, wherever they might end up next, whatever it might be that happens from here, his first priority and his greatest honor would be getting to choose her; how nothing would ever compare to having her choose him back. 

So Joel would stay here until she fell asleep. He’d stay wherever it might be that she dragged him along to after that. He’d stay as close as she let him get. That’s what fathers do, after all. 

Resting there atop the covers, Joel soothes his daughter to sleep. Natural, easy, right. They were gonna make it. He’d make sure of it.

//

At some point or another, Joel does doze off beside his snoozing kid. He wakes up before her. It’s dark outside. One day they would be well-rested again. One day the bruises would fade, the cuts would stitch themselves back together, and the bones would mend. One day, it would be the two of them in their own home. He would sit beside her bed just like this on the nights she needed him to, curl up beside her on the couch to watch a movie, bat her off of kitchen counters with dish towels as she plopped her ass onto them to talk his ear off while he cooked her dinner. 

But right now, they will stay right here. He’d take the opportunity for them to find their footing. Maybe Joel could even utilize the chance to heal a fracture or two between himself and his brother. 

Easing off the bed, Joel makes his way downstairs, unsure if he should expect the rest of the house to have gone to sleep or to find dinner hadn’t even been made yet. 

They’re in the kitchen, Tommy and Maria. There are take-out containers spread out on the counter, dirty dishes in the sink, and a tea kettle still steaming on the stove. 

Standing in the entryway, Joel allows a minute to watch his brother, the same kid who called Joel from jail cells and came home with bloody knuckles and the stench of liquor seeping from his pores. The same man who donned a marine’s uniform and went overseas fought in a war he thought would save the world and came home a little bit more broken when it hadn’t. The same solid, steady force who loved Joel’s daughter just as thoroughly during those broken, impossible moments at two in the morning as he did on the sun-drenched summer weekends filled with giggles and joy and ease. 

Once upon a time, Tommy had walked across a high school auditorium stage and waved not to his girlfriend or his mom or his buddies but to a tiny girl with braids in her hair and a poofy pink dress, who was standing on her daddy’s thighs to cheer and wave so enthusiastically her whole body shimmied back and forth. 

The same brother who drove Joel to an ER with an old T-shirt pressed against the side of his head to staunch the flow of blood. 

Same brother who was about to become a father, was now a husband, remained an uncle. Tommy had worn a lot of hats in his life. He’d been born a brother, though. Joel should never have tried to reclaim that title like it wasn’t what had once defined them when all else failed. Might not always be sons to a father, might not have remained children to a mother, but they were always, always brothers.

Until Joel stopped picking up the phone. Until Tommy moved over a thousand miles north, and suddenly, he was doing better, doing well. In a way he’d never managed under Joel’s watchful eye, a means he never established when he shifted into Joel’s place and had taken over being the cautious, observing one. But then Tommy was gone, left because he couldn’t stand the way his own older brother rarely looked him in the eye, maybe, and he was better, good even. He started living again when all Joel could do was force himself not to die. It was a poor contrast, an ugly comparison.

Joel wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find when he came downstairs. He doesn’t know what he’d been planning to do. But his brother spots him, stands. There are words that have gone unspoken between them for too long. Joel knows this. He doesn't know how to unearth them now. He always had been better at burying things down than resurrecting them from heavy, weighted graves.

“She still sleeping?” Tommy asks. Joel remembers finding his brother at a kitchen sink scrubbing formula out of three-day-old baby bottles and asking that same question. It’s all Joel can do to nod in response. “Food’s in the fridge whenever you guys want it.” It’s from that same Thai restaurant. Joel hopes it’s enough to incite that innocent, honest enthusiasm from Ellie again. 

With a clap on Joel’s shoulder, Tommy exits the kitchen with a mention of taking a shower. Joel still doesn’t know how to say all those words, finds that they end up dissipating on his tongue before he gets the chance to.

In an unexpected act of gentleness, Maria pulls a chair out for Joel. She heats up a portion of food, those same chicken and veggie noodles he’d been served a week ago, and places a full glass of water in front of him. She even goes as far as to put a fork in his empty, useless hand. He feels a little lost, a lot tired, entirely confused. These small pities are ones he can’t help but be grateful for. 

Leaning against the kitchen counter, she watches him eat in silence—hat part Joel could do without.

“What do you want with her?” Maria finally asks when his food is mostly gone. Arms crossed against her chest, tone firm. All the previous signs of softness now replaced with unbreakable, steely strength.

Joel pushes the plate away from him and narrows his eyes. Maria seems like she wants to be on his side here, doesn’t know if Joel’s worth cheering for yet. And Joel wants to trust Maria. He feels he has no choice after everything that’s been revealed today. But Ellie’s fragile situation is one he wants handled with kid gloves, with the confidence that anyone involved is looking out for her and her alone. Fuck anyone else, the laws or the government or any motherfucker who might stand in the way of her getting to where she needs to be.

“It’s not about that,” he answers—reassures, maybe. “You should know by now.” His words come slow and measured. This was his brother’s new wife. It was the woman whose house had held Joel and his child these last few days and offered the supplies that had helped them. He doesn’t want to be an ass here. He doesn’t want to take something that feels like healing, like recovery, and twist it into something worse than before he came. But still, it’s not his fault if she drags it out of him.

Maria clears her throat and shifts her weight. “Then what is it about, Joel?”

And why should he have to explain himself to her, exactly? He’s tired, more than a little defensive. He’s got a little girl upstairs who he’s ready to abandon his entire life for. He’s got not even half a dozen hours of sleep in almost as many days. It’s putting him on edge. “You don’t like me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She gives nothing. It’s an attribute that Joel could almost come to admire if it wasn’t so much of a goddamn thorn in his side. “It’s not about that either, though. Is it?”

Covers tucked up around her shoulders, that little hand reaching out and snatching at his wrist, the rush of regret and embarrassment that had followed. “No. It’s not.” Fatigue hangs heavy. Joel’s head falls, giving up their undeclared staring contest to release the undying exhaustion it was causing him to keep his head up by now. His elbows meet the table, his forehead resting in his palms. “It’s about her, Maria. Ellie. What she needs. What she wants. What keeps her safe. That’s it. That’s all any of this has ever been about.”

Even that first conversation, hole-shoed foul-mouthed kid who backed slowly away from his truck, Joel looked into her eyes and saw trouble spelled out, plain as day. He just didn’t realize what sort. He never could have guessed how it would have dragged him along, pulled him under. 

“And why, exactly, do you think the answer to all those things is you?”

It stings; there’s no denying it. Joel knows he’s in no shape to be a caregiver to somebody. Let alone a father. 

“Now I’m not saying it’s not,” Maria rushes to correct, actually taking a step towards him. It might mean something, her pulling out a chair and sitting across from him there. Joel isn’t sure if he cares, even if it does. “I’m just asking you to tell me. To explain it.”

Hell if he knows. “Why do you hate me?” Joel finds himself asking instead. It doesn’t bother him. At least, it shouldn’t. Same as it’s not a surprise that she does. But he finds he’s in need of an answer regardless. “What did I do to you?”

Maria sits back, arms falling. She looks pretty tired, too. Joel probably shouldn’t stress out a pregnant woman this much. “It wasn’t ever about me.”

Ah, well, fair enough. “Tommy.”

“Of course. Tommy.”

And here’s a conversation he hadn’t been signing up for. Here’s a truth he had never planned to exhume from the grave he’d buried it under. “He’s better off without me,” Joel says, the same thing he’s been telling himself for years now. “No point denyin’ it.”

With a shake of her head, Joel catches a hint of emotion from the woman. Sadness, welling and sure. Sadness for someone she loves. “Did you ever think about having that conversation with him?”

Joel shakes his head, rebuttals on the tip of his tongue.

“He thinks you blame him. You know that, right?”

The words die on his lips.

“He thinks that little girl died because of something totally out of his control, and his brother blames him for it.” Maria’s damn near got tears in her eyes. “He blames himself, Joel.” Hurried fingers reach up and sweep at her eyes. “Do you know what it’s like trying to convince a man that the death of someone they love, a child no less, wasn’t their own damn fault?”

“Never thought that,” Joel manages to spit out. It wasn’t Tommy’s fault. It was Joel’s. That much should be obvious; it was to him. If he’d just stuck to the plan. If he only hadn’t bailed. If he could have just showed the fuck up. 

Now Maria rolls her eyes. “Did you ever once say that to him?”

They don’t talk about it. The accident—fault, blame, guilt. Sarah. They don’t talk about it. 

“Don’t worry. That question was rhetorical.” Maria sighs. A hand rests above her still-flat stomach. “But it does come back around to my original point. You have to decide some things here, Joel. And then you gotta stick by them.”

The resolution’s already been made. There wasn’t a single doubt in his mind. Ellie was the priority, plain and simple. “I can assure you. I’ve already decided.”

A singular nod. “Go on and tell me then. What are these decisions you’re so set in?”

It’s never been said he’s got a way with words. He lived by actions far more often, only more so ever since Sarah passed. “I…I want what’s best for her,” he says again.

“And why is that you?” Maria insists from him. “Don’t figure it out to tell me, Joel. Don’t figure it out to tell a judge, even. You need to tell her. Do you understand that?”

Her precious smile, and her urging hands, and her pooling tears. Joel doesn’t know how to put any of it into words. He doesn’t have a single damn answer to offer. Because the answer is easy enough, it’s probably not him. But he can’t imagine living without her anymore. 

“When I met that girl, I knew she was one emotional trauma from a breakdown. And well, here the fuck we are.” Maria is usually so straight-laced with her language. It almost makes him smile how much it sounds like something Ellie would say. “She needs stability. Ellie needs someone who can give her that in the form of presence and emotions. And I’m not sitting here to tell you that that person can’t be you. I’m just saying you sure as hell better be ready to demonstrate it.”

“I am.”

“Don’t tell me.” Maria corrects with a pointed finger. “That girl is going to need so much. Taking in a child is never simple, but a kid like Ellie needs a lot, Joel. Emotional labor, relearned attachment styles, therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. She needs you to be available to her. Emotionally. Are you ready to do that?”

He’s been shut off for so long now, sealed closed and clamped down, held together by the last vestiges of survival that remained within him. Since the beginning, Joel had put more effort into keeping his walls up and his heart hard than he had ensuring Ellie was getting what she needed from him, from anyone. As much as it kills him to admit it, Maria is right. 

“I want to be” is what he manages to offer. He looks over his shoulder, almost expecting to find Ellie there. He’s gotten used to her being just behind him, rarely more than two steps and an arm’s reach away. 

Leaning back, defenses dropping, Joel runs an exhausted hand down his weary face and tries to figure out where he went wrong and how it somehow led him to the right place he needed to be. 

Sarah is dead. His daughter is dead. It’s a fact that never gets any easier to face. It’s an actuality that never quite has sunk in. He still expected her to be there when he first woke up in the morning, still holding onto the phantom grasp of her precious little body in his arms. She jumped on his bed to wake him up on Saturday mornings, hopped on his back at the end of soccer practice, giggled in his ear when they stayed up too late eating ice cream and watching stupid movies. There was some parallel version of himself still living out a life with his daughter, one who never had to move on a single day. 

And then there was this sorry bastard, getting through each minute. Alone. 

It was all he knew how to be anymore. The only way he could conceive to keep living.

There was still the memory of his baby being gently passed into his arms for the first time. He’d barely been more than a kid himself as he cradled that seven-pound, six-ounce bundle of pissed off infant. She’d quieted moments after being pressed against his chest. He stared down at her and knew this was it. His whole life fit right into the crook of his arm, just like that.

It almost didn’t seem real then how drastically his life managed to change in the span of a minute.

Now there’s a teenage girl a single floor away from him with crooked eyeteeth and the worst sense of humor, and a love for anything sweet, and his flannel shirt covering her arms, and it’s the same damn thing all over again. 

His whole life, just like that. 

“I’m going to be,” he answers more resolutely. “It’s what she needs. So that's what I’ll do.” 

He isn’t some kid anymore. He’s a hardened, broken old man. The resolution feels so much harder to conceptualize than when he’d been a damn teenager. 

Maria seems to be evaluating him, more like she’s a goddamn investigator than a lawyer. She’s reaching for confessions, waiting out any lies. Joel’s not sure when he agreed to be put on a goddamn trial. 

He’ll never know if he passed the evaluation or not. A half-asleep, bruised and battered kid comes ambling into the kitchen. Joel’s out of his chair at once, kneeling down to her height and brushing the hair back from her face, all thoughts of the previous conversation out of his head at once. 

“You okay?” he asks quietly, knowing Ellie wouldn’t like having an audience for their conversation if she wasn’t. 

A shrug, eyes assessing him for something. She falls against him, head pressed right to the crook between his neck and shoulder, her hot breath blowing on his skin. “Okay, baby,” he whispers in her ear. “Let’s get you back to bed.” He’d tuck her in, sit beside her until she dozed back off. They’d make it through this. 

Scooping her up, Ellie curls against him. She doesn’t quite fit in the crook of his arm. Her fist grasps his shirt and holds fast. 

“Joel.” Maria catches him just before he passes through the threshold from the kitchen. “For what it’s worth, I do think it’s you.”

Shouldn’t be worth much. 

For some reason, it means the world. 

He takes his kid back to bed, pulls the covers just beneath her chin, and sits beside her. She falls asleep with his fingers running through her hair, just like that.

//

They’re going to their asses off lie; that’s the majority of the plan they’ve concocted thus far. 

Before anything else, Ellie will get the time she needs to heal. With the passing days, she seems to get better instead of worse, at least physically, so it’s agreed she can continue healing from the comfort of Tommy and Maria’s home. 

Pursuing anything prior to the clearing of her more visible injuries would get them nowhere fast, a judgment which Joel trusts Maria on. In the interim, they prepare paperwork, practice stories, and research all the finer details still to be sorted out. 

Joel calls his crew, designates Manny as el jefe for a few weeks and explains that his absence might be a while longer still. He doesn’t say the words, mi hija, during his weak attempt at a story, but he sure as hell thinks them. 

The bruises begin to fade after a few days. They go from deep purple to myriad greens and yellows smeared across Ellie’s pale skin. More than once, Joel catches her watching the reflection in the mirror, her fingertips palpating at the unfamiliar marks and how they were slowly, gradually fading away. 

The swelling on her nose goes down. The pain in her ribs stays pretty consistent, but she learns how to move around, so they aggravate her less. 

A week in, she becomes unbearably restless. Joel doesn’t think he can convince her to play another round of poker even if he broke out real money to bet with. He grabs one of his baseball hats and a pair of Tommy’s sunglasses for her to wear, and the two of them head out for a walk. A tree-lined trail, leads right out of the town and towards the mountains. Ellie sets off down it. Joel follows without question. 

The nights aren’t getting much better. There’s an air mattress on the floor of Ellie’s temporary room now. Joel sleeps there most nights or at least ends up there before morning breaks. The bad dreams are nightly between the two of them. Most mornings, he wakes to her hand dangling from the bed above and resting on his head or his shoulder or his chest. Some mornings, he wakes up to his reaching out and holding her the same. 

No one is permitted to look up a thing about any David from Boston, Massachusetts, per Maria’s orders. His disappearance hasn’t made the national news yet. There have been no updates about bodies found in the water. No missing person posters plastered with that bastard’s face on it. The waiting leaves Joel on edge, maybe Ellie more so. She holds tight to him sometimes, this unyielding grip like she’s still waiting for someone to come and take him away.

Every once in a while, he talks about Sarah. Sometimes, she mentions Riley. It’s a delicate balance they’re working out here.

Today, she walks just a few paces ahead of him. Ellie’s moving a little easier, a little lighter. Those fractures must finally be on the mend, the inflammation reduced to something more manageable. Strides thoughtless and even, breeze blowing the baby hairs around her face, gently falling leaves erupting a smile on her face. 

It’s the first time in a week that Joel actually catches a glimpse of what their future might just look like. It’s the first time he’s looked at this kid and thought that maybe whatever happened hadn’t completely torn something away from her for good.

“Joel?” she asks when they’ve been walking in silence for some time. The two of them had gotten pretty good at silence. He tried to let her have what she needed, to decipher when that was him yammering her ear off for distraction and when it was for him to shut the hell up—today seemed like an okay shut the hell up sorta day. He’s rewarded with her talking first. 

He takes two long strides until he’s at her side. She takes a half step closer to him. Her arms swing freely, no backpack straps to clutch to. She’d left it back at Tommy’s. 

His arm reaches out, wraps around her shoulders. She fit beside him like she was meant to rest there. 

“What if…” she pauses, looking down to her twisting fingers. He still needed to get her some more clothes. She’s got the same two shirts she was rotating between. Today she has one of his flannels over top; the sleeves rolled up to her elbows so they’re big and bulky. That scar of hers is red and angry in the sunlight. “What if they say no?”

The nameless “they” refers to the powers that be about her custody status, no doubt. 

They hadn’t so much as had a conversation yet as a few heavy, weighted statements tossed between them. Joel mentioned Austin as home. He mentioned painting her bedroom once. In turn, Ellie hedges around the concept of enjoying a Texan winter and talks about how he would have to take her to the Savage Starlight midnight release. No one says words like adopt or daughter or family. They work off of implications, and Joel can’t help but cringe at the memory Maria’s impassioned words lobbed at him several nights ago.

Losing whatever custody battle he was about to enter into wasn’t an idea Joel tended to let roll around in his head for long. The way he saw it, this was going to go rather seamlessly. Ellie was never anywhere near Wyoming, Idaho, or Utah, as far as the eyes of the law were concerned. When they returned to Texas, he would lie through his teeth and say he had only just found her. No hiding away in his truck, no crossing a half-dozen state lines. No motel stays and ice cream for dinner and kidnappings with a side of murder. Nope, she turned up in the middle of the night, just like that. He took her in, gave her a place to sleep that was safe until they could get everything sorted out on a Monday morning. The right way. The proper, legal way.

And then he would petition for emergency guardianship. If needed, Ellie would testify against the current living conditions of where she was staying in Boston. Maria would help them to petition with the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children to work out Ellie’s move from Massachusetts to Texas while Joel worked through the process of legal adoption. An extensive and expensive process where they would have to fight long and hard to keep Ellie in the same household as Joel while awaiting final authorizations. 

So pretty much a dozen different points someone could simply decide, nope, you can’t stay here, minor, and take her away from him. A million varieties of nightmares for him to keep having. 

Unintentionally, his arm tightens around her. Almost as if he could hold her there forever, regardless of what anyone else dared to say. “I’ll go wherever you are, Ellie,” he confesses. “I gotta move to Boston while they sort it out? Well, give me some tea to throw in the harbor, I guess.”

She rolls her eyes, thoroughly unamused by his joke. “That was dumb.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She laughs anyway.

Joel was trying to be better, to get better, at being open and honest. He was trying his best not to hold back the truths Ellie so desperately needed. 

“You know I’m gonna fight for you, right?”

She turns to face him, not watching where they’re going in the slightest as her lips pressed together and her eyes assessed him. No one’s ever fought for her before. He already knows that much. 

“What if you lose?” she asks now instead of a demanding, why? 

“Then I get up and fight again,” he says like it’s easy. Like losing her in any capacity, for any time, didn’t scare him half to death. He drops his head to rest against the crown of hers, his right temple smushed against her soft, frizzy hair. It still aches sometimes, but most days it’s more like the memory of one. 

Her fingers go to the scar on her forearm. He hasn’t asked her about it yet. She hasn’t asked about his. 

“Hey, Joel?” she questions sometime later. “Yesterday, I accidentally swallowed some food coloring.”

“Wh-”

“The doctor says I’ll be fine, but I feel like I’ve dyed a little inside.”

“Never mind,” he says, keeping his arm securely in place around her. “That joke was so bad I’ve decided I don’t want you anymore.”

Ellie laughs, the first real one he’s heard in far too many days. Her laugh was such an easy, constant thing for so long. It’s a balm hearing it again. “Fuck you, that one was good!”

She elbows him hard enough for it to hurt. He ends up laughing, too, unable to stop himself.

They walk for a long time—not always talking, not always touching. But always, always beside one another.

//

Some days are better than others. The better days they make the best of. Joel does what he can to keep her on this side of things with him. He wishes he was more skilled at all of it. 

And he owes Tommy and Maria a lot for letting them take over their home as they have. Newly married, and this is what they end up coming home to for a handful of weeks. So he’s grateful, really, but Joel also can’t wait for when he can take Ellie home. 

Help her settle into her own space, give her the room to grow and settle in and put down roots. It’s something that sounds nice: Roots, growth. It sounds like something enduring. 

There were a lot of finer details they hadn’t bothered broaching just yet. But there was time for that later, Joel kept reminding himself. That was what they had now. Time. Not some deadline dwindled away by each state line they crossed. Not a future that would end before it ever got the chance to begin. Now they had the opportunity to settle in, figure each other out, be a family. 

That doesn’t mean he always avoids tripping down the trail of worry. About enrolling her in school, about vaccination schedules, about new clothes and new books and new routines. Figuring out how to live with a kid again. Remembering how to be, more or less, a dad again.

That’s not to mention the bad days—the ones where she isn’t really there beside him. Those are what scare Joel the most. Her concussion symptoms have otherwise mostly resolved which only worries him further. Ellie will get up in the mornings and sit silently at the breakfast table, not filling her plate or chattering nonstop or even responding to direct questions half the time. 

Joel piles food onto her plate and nudges her to eat and answers the questions Tommy and Maria direct toward her as a way to fill the awful, horrifying silence. 

There had been moments like this on the road, but they were quick. She was eased out of them by him motioning her out of the car first thing in the morning for breakfast or ducking into her line of sight to snap her from wherever that mind of hers had run off to. This felt different, though. Some days, Joel worries it feels permanent.

But then he gets a day like they’d had earlier, Ellie’s face illuminated by the dappled sunlight between leaves and that tinge to her tone she gets whenever she’s about to tell a particularly bad pun. Her leaning against him, almost like she’s not even thought about it before it happens. Like she assumes Joel’s gonna be there, just like he always is. 

Therapy is on the list of things to get sorted out once they’re home. He needed to get her someone to talk to, someone who knew what the hell they were doing. Lord knows Joel didn’t. Out of his depths, out of practice. He was trying, that was the best he could do, but Ellie needed more. She deserved better. She probably wouldn’t like it. After Sarah, Joel hadn’t been particularly keen on the court-mandated therapy either. And he still doesn’t know if it helped. He would’ve told anyone who asked up until three weeks ago that it was a waste of time. A broken man is a broken man; no amount of talking on a couch was going to change that.

Of course, now, he sees it differently. He didn’t try and kill himself again. That had to count for something. 

Maybe he would tell her one day. Explain the dark places he’d once been in and what he had done to escape. How grateful he was that it didn’t work. How if it had, he never would have met Ellie. She made the pain worth it. She made life worth living. 

Yeah, he thinks, with her curled against his side as the TV plays in the background late in the evening. That was the sort of thing she could stand to hear. He kisses the top of her head and presses the meaning of those words with it. He would tell her soon. Joel would make sure she knew.

//

The night after their little trail walk, she has a nightmare so awful she crawls onto the twin-sized air mattress with him. He holds her against him, not daring to breathe too hard until she settles. Once she does, he ventures to ask, “Did you hear about the guy who created knock-knock jokes?” Ellie sniffles. “He won a no-bell prize.”

She lets out a wet, stuttering laugh against his neck. 

//

One late afternoon a couple of weeks in, Joel comes downstairs after a shower and hears the precious ringing of Ellie’s laughter. Her voice is loud. She’s clearly joking around and getting it back as good as she gets it.

Poking his head into the kitchen, Joel finds Ellie with Tommy, the two of them preparing dinner side by side. There’s music playing, and Tommy’s acting like a full-on goddamn idiot. Ellie is loving it. She’s splinting her side as she laughs, undoubtedly in some degree of pain but not daring to tell him to stop. 

Tommy always was good at getting a laugh out of Sarah, no matter the situation. The days after school when those mean girls were bordering on bullying her. The empty Mother’s Days and missing out on the Girl Scouts mothers/daughters breakfast. The two-week-long recovery from having her tonsils out. There was Uncle Tommy, all but doing backflips to get a chuckle out of Joel’s little girl. Doing whatever he could to offer some joy into the day, a little light into the room. 

Watching the two of them, Joel sees this for what it is. Uncle Tommy, bringing a smile to his kid’s face.

It warms something inside of Joel, right there in the place his hand usually goes to rest in the throes of panic. 

Then is when he feels it, when he knows it. They’re going to make it, one way or another. They were going to be okay. And no matter what came next, Joel accepted while the imitating voice Ellie slipped into forced a smile to bloom across his face; they wouldn’t be alone. He had his brother. His dumbass little brother, who got into trouble for no good reasons and caused chaos wherever he went. His brother, who kept on calling, kept on visiting, kept on checking in. His brother, who boxed up 14 years worth of belongings with a fractured wrist and stood watch over Joel like he could single-handedly keep him from the grave. His brother, who had maybe done just that.

Maria’s words from a few days ago spark something sharp and rough inside of Joel. 

He’s known it for a while now. Joel owes his brother one hell of an apology, one he’s suddenly desperate to give.

//

Most nights, Joel goes to bed when Ellie does. Those days of bone-dead exhaustion have finally worn away, but he still follows her to bed just in case she needs him. Every night now, he sleeps on the air mattress in her room. It was easier this way for both of them. It seemed silly to refuse either of them anything that might make their current lives some degree of easier.

Tonight, he tucks her in, makes sure the curtains are pulled and then slips back downstairs. He tells her before he goes, even though she’s more asleep than not. Ellie answers with a signature, “Roger Dodger,” and Joel feels the pang of his heart stretching in his chest to try and accommodate the space needed for her to fit there. 

Tommy’s still up, watching TV. Maria’s reading a book. She flips it closed at once and bids them goodnight. 

Not once since their talk had she questioned Joel again. He hoped it was a sign that he was doing something right, that she saw him with Ellie and acknowledged the work he was putting in, the effort he was willing to offer up. He would lay himself bare for that little girl. He just had to force himself to do it, piece by piece. At dinner tonight, he’d even mentioned Sarah. Tommy hadn’t breathed. Ellie hadn’t missed a step, responding before the words were even completely out of his mouth.

A late-night show is playing on the television, still in the midst of an opening monologue. Neither of them laugh. Joel barely even listens.

There are a lot of ways he could enter this conversation, ease them both through it. Instead, Joel watches Jimmy whatever-is-his-last-name laugh at his own bad joke and says to the flat screen, “You know I never blamed you, right?”

Tommy’s inhale catches. He says nothing.

“It was never…I didn’t ever…” Joel stops, thinks. It’s Maria in his head, which is actually really fucking annoying, but it’s her reminding him to use his goddamn words. “Sarah dying wasn’t your fault, Tommy.” 

They didn’t talk about it. Joel doesn’t even know if he’s ever said it, not since those days in the psych hold. He can’t remember ever using the words Sarah and any approximation of death in the same damn sentence. It hurt too much, that sort of proximity. Even if it was only the truth that ever allowed such closeness to occur between those two words. 

“I never thought that it was. Not once.”

The TV goes quiet, the screen flashing with advertisements for an Applebee’s steak meal as Tommy presses the mute button. “Joel-”

“No, I know.” It’s a little too late, a lot too far gone. 15 years and 1,400 miles and a sister-in-law he hadn’t met until two days before the wedding, a niece or nephew he didn’t even know was going to exist. Not enough whiskey to drown it out, not enough dirt of the earth available to bury this relationship once and for all. Still here, still facing one another. Still brothers. “I don’t blame you. Sarah wouldn’t either.” 

Almost like she’s calling to them, their eyes fall on that picture resting against the mantle. Her smile, Joel had almost forgotten just how beautiful it was. He’d forgotten the gleam in her eye, the way joy bubbled off of her lips and settled in his chest. He’d almost forgotten that it was never just him and her against the world. There was her second-grade teacher who stayed late on Tuesdays when Joel wasn’t yet home to get her off the bus and the deli clerk who always gave her an extra slice of cheese to “sample” as they did their weekly shopping. There was her swim instructor and the parents of her best friend and Joel’s co-workers, dropping their hard hats on her little baby-sized head, knocking against it until she giggled. And Tommy. Always, always Tommy. From the day she was born until her final breaths. 

High school student, marine out on deployment, dumbass kid, struggling soldier with haunted eyes—no matter what else he had going on, Tommy was there. He showed up for Joel’s kid, day in and day out. 

“She loved you, Tommy.” The words come out strangled and choked. “She knew just how much you loved her.” It makes him weak, as thoughts of her always did to him. “Only fault I could ever assign ya is lovin’ that little girl with everything you had.”

It’s hard to decide if Tommy crying too makes Joel feel better or worse. “I’m sorry, if I let you carry that around for this long.” And now Joel thinks of Ellie, the weight of guilt on her shoulders and how it’s destroying her. How she can’t understand that these horrible things keep happening, and there’s one common denominator to attribute all the misfortune to. “I guess I thought you knew.” Joel doesn’t wipe the tears away; he lets them well and fall and streak. Just like he’s allowed his grief to do for all of these years. “Only person I ever blamed was myself.”

“That’s dumb as hell, Joel,” Tommy says almost on reflex. “We should both be blaming that motherfucker who ran a red.”

Oh, Joel does that too. But Joel was Sarah’s father. It was his job to protect her. It was his whole purpose in life to bring her up, keep her safe. And that night, he failed. “I know.”

Jimmy comes back on the TV. No one unmutes it. 

“I don’t blame you for not moving on,” Tommy adds finally. “I just…I couldn’t…”

Couldn’t live beside that sort of mourning any longer. Tommy had looked death in the eye before. He’d suffered tragedies, committed atrocities, and moved on. He had to do it again. 

“I am happy for you.”

There’s almost something like a smile on Tommy’s face. Even with something such as this, the bittersweetness permeates, a tainting of loss amidst this newfound gain. Sarah would’ve loved a niece or a nephew. She would have teased her uncle mercilessly each step of the way. She’d drag Joel up to Wyoming every other month, desperate not to miss a thing. Not that she’d be a child anymore. She would be almost thirty years old by the time this baby came into the world. She could have been a mother of her own. 

The paths his thoughts take are desperate to pull him down further. Joel tries to shake them off. 

His gaze goes to the stairs on habit alone, checking for a kid who managed to move silently, even on the creakiest of floors. 

“I am for you…too,” Tommy clears his throat as his hand runs down his face and mops up the overflowing emotion there. “She’s a great kid, Joel.”

That doesn’t even begin to cover it. “She hasn’t had an easy go of things.” As was evidenced by the flinching and the bruising and that whole pesky murder thing they were still trying to figure out.

“Well,” Tommy sighs, leaning forward and picking up the remote again, “it’s a damn good thing she’s got you.”

Doesn’t always feel that way. Doesn’t feel like it when the marks of failure still cover her body and the nightmares leave her trembling in the dead of night. She would’ve been lucky to have someone who could have stopped any of that horror from ever happening in the first place. She’d be lucky to have someone who knew what the hell they were doing. She’d be lucky if she had someone better than him. 

“I mean it, Joel.” The use of his name causes Joel’s eyes to pan over to his brother on instinct. He holds his gaze, reads something there. “Sarah had the best dad in the world, always thought that,” and there are those feelings again, rising to the surface. God, they needed to get some goddamn sleep. “Ellie’s lucky she will now, too.”

It’s already enough to make Joel sob all over again before Tommy has the audacity to add on, “When I found out Maria was pregnant, I was scared shitless. But I knew I’d seen the best at work already. I knew if I just followed your example…figured I’d do okay.”

And just because he went a decade and a half without ever getting it out, Joel makes a point to add one more time, “I never, ever blamed you, Tommy.”

His brother’s face falls into his hands. 

They sit like that for a long time, two grown men with the darkest parts of their past laid out before them and the tinges of light-covered futures hanging in the periphery. The throes of grief and the remnants of panic and the rush of promise. Brothers, uncles, fathers. 

So much has been lost between them. It might just mean there’s that much more to claim back. 

For the first time in fifteen years, Joel sees a way forward. He sees it. He takes it. He believes in it. They were family. Always had been. They’d get through this. There was no too little too late. The door stood open, as it always had. 

For once, they both choose to walk through.

//

A Wednesday night. Ellie had a particularly rough day. Hardly herself, barely able to be drawn out no matter how much Joel tried.

They sit down to dinner, and Tommy and Maria keep exchanging looks. Worried, it’s the only way to describe the expressions crossing their faces. 

Scrabble gets spread out on the table afterward. Ellie still hasn’t moved. She’s barely moved all day without Joel suggesting it first. 

“What the fuck is this?” she asks, fingers reaching in to twist around a wooden ‘J’ tile. 

“Don’t tell me the orphanages don’t have Scrabble lying around?” Tommy asks as he deposits a little wooden tray in front of each of them.

Ellie’s eyes narrow in a glare of defiance, and it loosens a breath from deep within Joel’s chest. “Fuck you, man. I wasn’t in an orphanage like goddamn Annie.”

Tommy winks at her as he says, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow, darlin’.”

“Shut the fuck up.” The laughter slips out of her as she cusses Joel’s brother out. He doesn’t even bother correcting that mouth of hers most of the time. It’s not a problem he’s worried about. She could be his foul-mouthed kid as far as he was concerned. Adds to her charm. “Obviously, I know how to play Scrabble.”

“Obviously,” Joel echoes.

“Just, why are we playing it?”

Maria deposits hot chocolate in front of Ellie. The night was cold. A fire was going in the living room, and the licks of heat were drafting easily through to the kitchen. The blanket Ellie had spent half the day wrapped in now hung over the back of her chair. “Family game night.”

So fast he’s worried she’s gonna throw her neck out, Ellie’s head whips around to face him. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. She’s staring at him like she’s worried that he’s heard Maria utter the word family in reference to something including Ellie and what he’s going to do about it. And it’s one of those times, one of those moments that Maria had told him he needed to step up, use his goddamn words like a grown fucking adult. So he reaches a hand out to rustle her hair. It was a relief to watch her inhabit her own body again. “A rite of passage for all teenagers to endure.”

Lips pressing together, Ellie draws a handful of tiles from the bag and arranges them on her tray. “I’m gonna kick your ass, old man.”

Joel snorts. “Beating me at Scrabble ain’t no true victory, kiddo.” God, he hated word games. Now Battleship? He’d wipe the floor with her at Battleship. 

Solemnly, Ellie nods and lays out the first word. Frog. “Right, right. We got to get a Joel approved game. Hit up the local Contractors ‘R’ Us.”

“Monopoly: Home Depot Edition,” Tommy chimes in, earning a wide, toothy grin from Ellie. 

Joel plays a pitiful three-letter ‘for’ as his contribution. “No one else could ever get the ridiculous Mouse Trap game to work; need I remind you.” Biggest thorn in his side, that so-called game. He came home more than once to Tommy and Sarah, both close to frustrated tears as they attempted to get the damn thing to actually trap a pretend fucking mouse. 

“Oh boy, Sarah loved that thing for some godforsaken reason,” Tommy laughs.

“The power of advertisements,” Joel sighs. It was also how they ended up with chirping Tamagotchis and gibberish Furbies calling out in the dead of night. 

On the seat beside him, perched on her knees, Ellie reaches out her hand and grabs onto Joel’s atop the table, like she’s trying to soothe him. “We’ll have a picture hanging contest next,” she comments as she lays out a six-letter word. “Give ya a chance.”

//

Three and a half weeks in, and the bruising is almost entirely gone. Only a faint yellowing remains around Ellie’s nose and a few patches across her ribs that she shows Joel one morning. 

The pain is better, too. She hardly ever grabs her side and her gait returns to normal. More than once, she laughs with her full usual Ellie gusto and doesn’t so much as wince.

In celebration and mild trepidation about what all this recovery will mean shortly, Joel loads up the truck for a day trip, and they haul ass to Yellowstone. It was supposed to be for a future visit to Wyoming, but hell, why wait for what can be done now, or whatever that saying is. 

Ellie finally has some new clothes that Maria was kind enough to go out and get her. Now she’s got her own baseball hat that she wears today, her ponytail tucked through the back. Whenever she’s jabbering or telling a bad joke or intentionally being a nuisance, he shoves the bill of her cap down, obscuring her face. She laughs. The sound soothes. 

The miles pass, easy and familiar. Ellie plays music and talks his ear off and the haunting of ghosts seem a little further behind her today. She’d read a yard sign talking about electing some lady named Linda to be Prothonotary and had been pronouncing the word with more ridiculous accents. 

“It sounds like a dinosaur name,” she comments a few minutes into her diatribe. “A Prothonotarisaurus!” 

Joel snorts. “You gonna run for office?”

“Hell yeah, motherfucker!” And then she’s rambling about the role of the Prothonotarisaurus, and her campaign plan and screeching like a dinosaur, and his kid is so weird; Joel loves her so much. “Maybe I’ll even let you be my campaign manager.”

“Maybe?” he pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Well then, I might just have to run against you if I’m not even a shoe in here.”

Her smile is brilliant, brighter than the sun and more dazzling than the stars, and Joel just knows that old geyser is going to spew hot water and steam from the earth as it does every hour and all he’s gonna be able to watch is the wonder on Ellie’s face. “I could run the best smear campaign against you. Just try and take me, old man.”

“Oh, could you now?” he asks. They’re zipping past Jackson Lake, blue and gorgeous and sparkling. The water raises a hint of anxiety in Joel, remembering that night, but he pushes it down and hones back in on the apparent future politician beside him. 

Ellie’s neck stretches, catching sight of the beautiful water, and it eases the panic, seeing how she still appears entranced by beauty and remains far from that dreadful disquietude. “Do you want a man who can’t spell a word longer than four letters?” Ellie declares in a deep, mock announcer voice. “Do you trust the world’s worst Scrabble player to represent your community as Prothnotarisaurus?” It kind of falls apart when she starts to laugh.

Reaching over, Joel grabs ahold of her hand and squeezes. It’s been weeks of reassuring himself. But this is the first time he feels it, believes it more than he doubts. They were going to be okay. They were going to make it. Take her home, love her more every day. Love her more than he thought was possible. Maybe he could finally pull those boxes down, show her pieces of Sarah. Share parts of the sister she never got to know but who would’ve loved her all the same. 

“You’ve got that face again,” Ellie’s nose wrinkles. “Ew, stop. It’s getting worse.”

Joel’s pretty sure he knows what face she’s referencing. One filled with fondness, tenderness, love. Not quite believing he was lucky enough to one day soon claim this kid as his own, to practically feel like he could do it now. 

“Ellie,” he starts, hating how everytime he thought about not saying something there was always goddamn Maria’s voice in his head. 

“Joel,” she imitates, throwing on a serious face before she cracks. So full of smiles today. There was no guarantee how she would wake up each morning. They would figure out ways to help her on her bad days, though. In time. 

Until then, he was grateful he was the lucky bastard who got to claim her just as much on these happy, joy-filled ones. 

“I’m glad you climbed in the back of my truck,” he says, which is a bastardization of what he means. But hey, it’s something. 

“Even though it was a goddamn fool’s move?” she questions, but she’s all soft sitting there lookin’ at him. Not a hard edge set into place for the sake of protection on her. She knows she’s safe here with him. 

Clearing his throat, Joel keeps his eyes cast resolutely on the road ahead. “And you best never dare to do it again.” The words don’t come out as stern as he intends.

“Roger Dodger,” she shoots back, taking his hand which she often did these days. Ellie wasn’t afraid to reach out to claim some form of physical contact or another. Joel never refused to offer it. “I’m glad it was your truck.”

Kind of a strange way to make a family, maybe. But it just so happened to be theirs. 

It’s been a long few weeks. Nightmares and void, blank days mixed together with jokes and laughter and glimpses of the kid Ellie had been and the one Joel hoped she could be. Shivering in the cold and clammy from fear and grasping at her side in pain. Some nights Joel swear his palm is going to wear a hole right down into his chest where he keeps trying to rub away that clawing, unabating panic. Some nights this kid must hear his hitched breathing and feel his suffocating panic because she drags him out of it with the tips of her fingers and edges herself, alive and mostly healthy and right in front of him. She cuts right through the swirling anxiety. 

Some nights, Joel swears Ellie’s running her fingers through his hair, like he does to get her to sleep. It’s cute, if a little misguided. And then it breaks his heart, that the only affections she seems to know how to imitate are the ones he’s shown her in these recent weeks. 

“How many bison do you think we’ll see?” Joel asks, an attempt to change the conversation before he’s choking back tears again. 

Ellie’s still considering the answer to his question, probably reasoning through the time of year and the path through the park that they’re taking and all sorts of variables Joel would never even think of as opposed to just offering him some sort of number. She’s so lost in thought that her gasp comes a delayed second too late, not until Joel’s already turning the wheel, his hand wrenched from her grasp as he swerves, hard and fast, foot on the brake and wretched desperation in his grasping, white-knuckled hands.

The truck comes barreling towards them and the first instinct Joel feels is to direct Ellie out of harm’s way at once. 

The last thing Joel feels is a pounding impact. He sees a flurry of dust and debris before his eyes close and the world goes completely dark. The last thing he hears is Ellie, screaming his name.

Chapter Text

The world comes in fragments and fractures. Joel’s grasp on consciousness is fissured, blurry and bleary and distant. All he knows is panic. All he can conceptualize is a feral, febrile necessity to cry out for Ellie. 

There are the lights, brighter than the sun. And there’s the pain, sharp and hot, and if not for Ellie—if not for his desperate need for assurance of her wellness—it would be all-consuming. The shouting of voices, so many voices. Men and women yell out words and numbers that all stack on top of one another and distort into some macerated version of speech. There are hands on his neck, pressing into his back, something cold spread out along his stomach. 

And he can’t get any words out. He can’t get his eyes to open. He’s so entirely devoured by pain that his body does not feel like his own at all. This is a body meant to house pain, let it live and breathe and scream and push Joel Miller away from it entirely. But he can’t let the pain win, not when he doesn’t know where his kid is. Not when he doesn’t even know if she’s…

So he’s fighting it. He’s fighting everything, everyone. Distantly, he recognizes that they might be screaming at him now, not just each other. Hands everywhere. They grab him, pull him down. Something hard and unrelenting is keeping his neck in place. There’s a tight squeeze on his bicep and a sharp stabbing in his chest. But none of it matters because none of it has anything to do with Ellie, and he needs to see her, needs to hold her. They hadn’t had enough time yet. They were supposed to have so much time. 

And if she’s not okay, if she’s another little girl with blood in her hair and a stark, white sheet pulled atop her body and no life left inside of her for him to clutch within his greedy, desperate palms, they might as well all stop. They should save their time, their efforts, their resources. 

But he can’t get out any of that. There might be some strangled, angry growls erupting from his throat and an errant, erratic strength attempting to raise him from this stretcher and go to his child, but none of it is productive. None of it is good enough to get him anywhere. 

There are words flying around him. Words like paralytic, sedation, intubation, restraints, blood products. His eyes force themselves open for a half-second, enough to pan across the myriad faces hovering over him, enough to note that not one of them is Ellie. None of them are even saying Ellie. Enough to offer a final, pleading glance to the doctor standing over him as she attempts to murmur soothing, reassuring words before a warmth overtakes him, and he feels nothing else at all.

//

Moments appear in hazy, uncertain cascades. Voices shouting at him to open his eyes and to squeeze hands and wiggle his toes and to…wait, no, calm down. Joel. Calm down. Sir, you have to CALM DOWN.

And then there’s more nothingness.

The second that he has enough wherewithal to string together a singular thought, the only thing he cares about is Ellie. He tries to say her name, to shout it, but there’s no way to talk. Something shoved deep within his throat, fighting his own damn breaths and choking back all of the words he was trying so hard to get out. 

Why doesn’t anyone understand? That was his kid. She was his whole life, what was left of it on this side of the veil, at least. And she’s not here. She’s not beside him. Where is she? He wants to grab someone and demand answers.

His hands don’t move more than an inch off of the bed. They’re so heavy, so weak.

For a few seconds at a time, Joel has brief flashes of life, a single glimpse of clarity, and then the panic mounts, and just as fast, the world goes dark yet again.

//

At times he thinks there’s someone holding his hand. It’s hard to tell. Sensations are fuzzy. His brain is fogged over.

There’s no opening his eyes; they simply will not comply.

At times, he catches a hint of sobs. Others, he swears there is a rapid fluttering of laughter. 

Both have Joel wanting to reach out and seize it within his fist, bring it somewhere that maybe he can hold it, make it his. 

His body is no longer for him to claim as his own. It belongs to the pain. It has been captivated by failure. 

Trembling fingertips ghost along his right temple. 

Joel wants to call for Ellie. He almost whispers for Sarah.

The words cannot escape.

Neither of them answers his wordless plea.

//

At one point, Joel’s hands can move a little easier, a little further. It’s like a small degree of strength has been returned to him. He wakes up, but not really. His eyes still don’t want to open, and his brain doesn’t know how to figure anything beyond a need to find Ellie. It’s enough, though. 

That extra slack on the soft, damp fabric around his wrist allows him to reach up and violently, painfully, miserably yank that godforsaken barrier lodged deep in his throat that prevented him so thoroughly from calling out for his babygirl. 

Beeping overtakes the room the second it’s free, and he’s shouting, rasping, begging. “Ellie!” But his vocal cords won’t cooperate. The ringing of alarms overpowers his weakened voice tenfold. 

And now his breaths are his own to control, his own to determine. And they hurt. Each inhale sparks and ignites a fire deep within his pleural cavity. Every exhale rushed and shallow. There’s not enough oxygen. His lungs are burning. His brain is pounding. His heart is stuttering, trying to deliver a source it cannot find.

Navy blue scrubs descend upon the room; a mask is pressed over his face, and they keep telling him to be quiet, to just breathe, to calm down. And with tears streaming down his face and misery clawing in his chest, and a need more potent than the physical limitations of his own, useless body, Joel calls “Ellie. Ellie. Ellie.” And he prays he’ll hear her answer him.

Why won’t they just tell him? He’s on his back. The bright lights blind him as the beeping deafens all other sounds. Just like that, two of his senses—completely gone.  

A needle jammed into his thigh, and the world goes tilty and strange yet again. At least this time, he’s able to get out the only word that matters  in this wretched, aching world. “Ellie.”

They shush him. Everything hurts. Everything is dark. 

“Sarah.”

Little baby fingers encircling a grasp around his finger, toddler belly laughs echoing in his ears, a mouthful of poofy, bedraggled tangles. Elbows and knees digging into the soft, fleshy parts of Joel’s body in the middle of movie nights. Late summer evenings tinged with the faded scents of sunscreen and blue raspberry water ice. 

Right there, Joel’s pretty sure. She’s waiting for him right there. 

If his body was his own, he would reach a hand toward her and be pulled to where she is. 

But his body isn’t his anymore; it’s owned by the pain. And his life, that’s not his anymore, not really. His life was dedicated to a kid who needed him. A kid who cried about being cursed, about losing everyone she dares to love. He can’t leave her, too. He can’t dare leave her if she still waits for him. 

When his body relaxes, Sarah is no longer there waiting for him.

//

There might be someone holding onto the hand attached to the body pain has set up full-time residence within. 

There might be quiet whimpers making their way to his not-ruined left ear. 

There might be a need to wake up, to fight, to do something. But all he knows is darkness and pain and this tenuous grasp on consciousness that he’s not quite sure he wants just yet.

The cries tear something apart inside of him. His fingers contract like the flutter of a heartbeat. I’m here, he says when his voice does not work. I’m right here.

//

For once, Joel wakes up, and it actually feels something like reality. Well, it feels like misery and a thousand bee stings radiating out of the left side of his chest and a stabbing, sharp pain escaping from his abdomen, but his eyes open. He can breathe. He can speak. 

“Ellie.” 

Finally, after all this time. They would have no choice but to answer him. Someone would have to tell him. He would fight them until he could see her, hold her. She was okay. She had to be okay. 

“Are you actually fucking awake this time?”

The room is dark, small frames of light cast from a screen above his bed and another beside it. Joel knows Tommy’s voice well enough to recognize it without being able to see him at all.

Trying to push himself further up and being met with nothing but an incapacitating pain strong enough to steal his breath away, Joel answers with a grunt of a “Yes.”

“‘Bout time.” Tommy sighs. His feet must have been resting on the end of Joel’s bed. They hit the floor with a solid whack. In the darkness, Joel watches the silhouette of Tommy run a hand down his face and stretch out his neck. It’s impossible not to sense the tension coming from the left side of his bed, which just raises Joel’s hackles further. Why should Tommy be stressed if everything’s okay? “She’s fine,” he says like it’s not the first time. “Ellie’s fine, remember?”

“No.”

With a hum, Tommy turns to face his brother. “The nurses said that was probably the case. Those sedatives don’t like to let ya make memories or somethin.’” His accent’s a little thicker than it’s been in years. Probably drawn and heavy with exhaustion. Can’t catch a fucking break, not a one of ‘em. “What are you doing? Lay the fuck back.”

Joel’s ground his teeth down hard enough to crack a molar as he tries yet again to get himself up and moving. He had to get out of here, get to Ellie. She’d be a mess right now. The blankets shift, as does the gown wrapped around him. Jesus Christ, he’s not wearing any underwear. “Where’re my clothes?”

“You don’t need your goddamn clothes, Joel.” The tone comes out harsh and impatient. A hand presses into Joel’s right shoulder and shoves him back into the stiff, plastic mattress poorly covered by a flat sheet that kept slipping all over the damn place. “Stop being a nuisance every time you’re awake for thirty seconds.”

He’s got to get to his kid. None of the rest of this shit mattered. Well, his kid and a pair of pants would be good. “I need to see her.”

“No.” And this time, Tommy’s voice has an edge to it that gives Joel pause. What if she isn’t actually okay? What if Tommy’s lying to him to keep him calm? What if- “Breathe, Joel.” The monitor behind him begins to beep. It only allows the rising anxiety to strangle that much faster. “It’s the middle of the night. She’s sleeping.”

Sleeping. That had been a struggle for weeks. He hopes she’s been able to get a restful night or two. “She’s okay?” It’s enough to make Joel pause, to stop trying to fight his way out of this bed that held him fast and refused to release. 

“A little shaken up, not gonna lie,” Tommy seems to sense the change in Joel’s demeanor and takes a couple steps back, falling into the armchair again. “Worried ‘bout you more than anythin’ else. Stubborn kid.”

Sounds like Ellie, alright. “Let me talk to her at least.” Looking at the clock on the wall, it’s not actually all that late. A little after ten. 

“Not tonight, Joel.” And there’s something pained in Tommy’s expression. 

Everything already hurts in Joel’s body. He’s not about to shy away from a little pain. “Well why the fuck not?”

The air hangs tense and unbroken between them as Tommy stays completely silent. A blood pressure cuff begins inflating on Joel’s arm. He wants to rip it off, push himself out of this bed and rip the cords wrapped around him and all the tubes shoved into him, and go home to his girl who’d be there waiting for him, needing him. “Why not, Tommy?”

“I’m gonna go get a nurse.” The legs of a chair scrape across the linoleum floor. “Tell them you’re awake. Get you some medicine.”

Footsteps are halfway to the door before Joel manages to get out, “I don’t want any goddamn pain medicine.” His heart’s kicking it into overtime. Not understanding how Ellie can be both fine and not around for him to talk to. He’s probably been out for a day or two. They’d barely been apart for more than a couple of hours since that awful night over a month ago. He needed to talk to her, to hold her, to reassure her and himself. “Let me talk to my kid, Tommy.”

“Joel…”

It spikes something inside of him, panic riding on the coattails of fear and uncertainty and that unexpressed, exclaimed desperation that had followed him through those endless hours when he couldn’t speak or move or breathe. “What aren’t you telling me?” He asks the question as a demand—dark and sharp. His whole body throbs with endless, surging pain. His heart aches more than all the rest. When he brings a hand to rest over his chest, it’s impeded by a sticker on his index finger and the IV coming out of his wrist and this hard, curved board bending his palm back just so. “Where is she?”

Tommy’s standing between the bed and the doorway, which is cracked closed. With the curtain pulled back slightly, a faint backlight illuminates Tommy. “She’s safe, Joel.”

It’s not an answer. That’s not a proper response to a desperate question. It’s a reassurance that hangs between them with a heavy, unspoken “But” just waiting to make an appearance.

“Do you know how long you’ve been out for?”

Joel doesn’t know what day it is. He doesn’t remember what hospital he’s in. He’s just barely had the piece of mind to recall there had been a car accident. He doesn’t know where his kid is. Anything else is just fluff, information impeding him from getting what he truly needs. “What difference does it make?”

“Almost two weeks, Joel.” 

Two weeks. “Jesus,” the word slips out in shock and pain, both at the sharp inhale he attempts to take.

“You almost died. Do you understand that?” 

And when he’d swerved that wheel, when he had taken the half-second warning he’d been so graciously granted, living or dying hadn’t mattered one bit. All that was important was keeping Ellie safe. For once, just once, keeping her alive and well and healthy. Not failing someone else that he loved. 

“She saved your life.”

‘Course she did. Fourteen years old. So much blood on her hands. So much trauma to be carried in her heart. Such devastation foisted upon her slender, slackened shoulders.

“Got someone to call 911 as she held pressure over where you were bleeding from most.” Tommy’s voice warbles, and faintly, Joel recognizes it as the sound of someone who’s trying not to cry and failing. “She broke her wrist, Joel. And she kneeled there for over a half hour, holding pressure with every bit of strength that she had. Pulled you from that goddamn truck somehow.”

Ellie. His stubborn, precious kid. “Please,” Joel’s begging now. He’ll grovel to anyone willing to listen to him. “Just let me talk to her.”

“Joel.” Something about Tommy’s intonation scares Joel more than the winding thoughts he’d been fighting succumbing to. “I can’t do that.”

“Why.” It doesn’t come out as a question, far too much of a demand. The world is beginning to blacken on the edges, darkness creeping back in as he so hopelessly attempted to look for some damn light.

Mopping at his face, Tommy takes two steps forward, his hands wrapping in fists around the footboard of Joel’s bed. “It’s after midnight where she is.”

Joel looks at the clock again; it’s a little after ten. “No.” He denies whatever is going to come out of Tommy’s mouth, refusing to hear it or believe it. Sometimes, the truth just cannot be true. 

Sometimes, it will fight to prove itself to you the fact that it is. 

Sometimes there’s no choice associated with the truth, no control or influence to draw upon. There are some things that happen because of you—what you do or what you say or what you want. And then there are the ones that happen to you. The ones that put little girls in early graves and deadbeat dads in driver’s seats with a suitcase in the backseat. 

“She’s back in Boston, Joel.”

God, he’s tired of truths just happening to him.

All those promises, the pledge. He was supposed to be fighting for her. He was supposed to be holding her against him, keeping her safe. The world didn’t get a say anymore. Joel Miller will be taking over from here; thank you very much. That was his kid now. He wouldn’t let harmful hands so much as reach out to brush a finger against those sweet cherub cheeks. “Take me to her,” he insists, not caring about medications and medical intervention. No one could hold him here against his will, not this time. He hadn’t put a bullet to his head. He hadn’t wanted any of this. 

The hurt on Tommy’s face mirrors the same sensation growing in Joel’s chest, the one that only intensifies with every breath he attempts to take. “She said she doesn’t want to talk right now.” 

Maybe not to Tommy, but Joel was different. He was who she turned to. He would be there for her now, even as this horrible reality was descending upon him. He’d woken up unsure if Ellie was even alive. This was not a worst-case scenario. It was a blip. They could work through a blip. 

“Come on, Tommy. Don’t fight me on this.” Joel’s looking for his cell phone, as if that thing would have survived the accident. Not that he would even have access to her number. She didn’t have a phone. Why hadn’t he gotten her a phone? “Just let me talk to her.”

A pinched expression crosses his brother’s face. “Maria’s out there with her right now, Joel.” Okay, good. That was good. A familiar face, someone safe. Someone resolutely on her side. Joel remembers conversations in the early mornings on the porch and late at night in the kitchen. Maria would look out for Ellie. “She doesn’t…fucking hell.” Tommy falls back into the chair at Joel’s bedside. His hand’s running over his face. The set of his muscles, the collapse of his spine, it all reads as defeat. “It’s all just been…a lot for her, Joel. I think…I think she needs a little space.”

Yeah, not a chance in hell on that one. “I’m not fightin’ with you about this. Just let me-”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you right now, okay?” Tommy spits the words out like he can’t stand to chew on them any longer. “Ellie just…she needs some time.”

And oh, well, there’s that then. The fairness of it all, the rightness. Maybe she had finally figured it out. She was better off without him, without some guy who couldn’t keep her from being pulled out of a truck cabin in the middle of the darkness or stave off the demons coming to haunt her in the dead of night. The man who couldn’t keep her safe from a truck barreling down a two-lane, backcountry mountain road. The father who didn’t yet claim her. The one who let her down, just like everyone else. 

It’s not clear what happens next. The lights come on, blue people enter the room. Machines are beeping and hands are holding and voices are soothing and then something’s shot into his IV and the darkness takes him again. This time, he doesn’t fight it. This time, he welcomes the darkness overtaking him. There’s no light left to look towards anyway.

//

When the world comes back to him, the sun is streaming in. 

At once, he’s looking for Ellie. 

The last conversation Joel had with his brother comes back in segments. He stops looking.

The watch is missing from his left wrist. He notes its absence now that there’s nothing wrapped around his arm to hold him down in its place.

No one’s in the room with him. His window overlooks the parking lot. He stares out, watching tree branches sway in the wind as the clouds darken and thicken and gather. 

He doesn’t call for anyone.

With nothing better to do, Joel thinks about Ellie off in Boston. He wonders if the sky has clouded over for her there. He wishes for a sunny, brilliant day where she is. He prays she knows how much he misses her, how much he’s thinking of her. 

It begins to rain. Joel hopes he can take the rain for her. He hopes she can be left with nothing but sunlight stretched across all of her days to come.

His body hurts. His heart pumps the pain out with each beat to perfuse the very capillaries of his fingers with an ache so profound, so empty. 

Calling for no one, Joel waits until somebody comes for him. 

//

A lot happened in the two weeks of the medically induced coma Joel was more or less in. It hadn’t been a very good coma, considering he’d yanked out his own breathing tube in the middle of it. There’s a faint memory of a room full of people shouting at him from that one. 

Tommy explains that Ellie had called him from an ER room. She’d been crying, her words coming out rushed and frantic. Without having a damn clue what he was going to find when he got there, Tommy sped his way straight to an Idaho hospital.

That broken wrist had been set and casted while Ellie sat alone on an emergency room stretcher.

She tried to lie, Tommy tells him. He says Ellie insisted that Joel was her dad and Tommy was her uncle, and the hospital personnel had it wrong. They had it all wrong. But in a hospital full of mandated reporters, her scans left them no choice. CPS had been contacted before Joel was even out of surgery. 

A surgery no one knew if he was going to survive. Ellie didn’t take that so great, apparently. When he did pull through, the staff tried to say she wasn’t allowed in the ICU. Stubborn kid that she is, she fought her way right on in.

Tommy tells Joel Ellie sat beside his bed and held his hand until a police officer came in to collect a statement. It was all downhill from there.

“They wanted to arrest you,” Tommy tells him with a shake of his head. In the light of day, he looks like shit. Joel hadn’t been allowed out of bed yet to catch a glance of himself in the mirror. His hopes aren’t high that he looks much better. “She flipped the fuck out. Just started saying anything she could to convince them not to. I really…” With a glance out to the hallway, Tommy pauses before whispering, “I thought she was gonna confess about the whole…river incident just to get the attention off of you.”

Unsurprisingly, they believed he was the cause of her recent injuries. 

Not a single damn individual bought they’d just met less than twenty-four hours ago, and now this girl refused to do so much as leave Joel’s side while he more or less fought for his life. 

“I did everything I could.” Tommy sounds like he’s halfway to crying, like he maybe hasn’t stopped. “Tried my best to keep her here.”

Right now, Ellie’s in a group home back in the suburbs of Boston. She’d refused to return to her previous placement, thank God. Maria had followed Ellie out there, even when Ellie had tried to tell her not to. Both Maria and Tommy were worried about the group home arrangement. According to her social worker, it was the only option. Runaways were notorious for being difficult to “rehome.” 

And then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, a body washed up in Oregon. Middle-aged white man with multiple stab wounds, a fatal one to his throat. Dental records were being run to try and gain a positive ID. 

All of their careful planning had been for nothing. That empty room Joel had mentally started filling would remain an empty tomb, a space designated to life that never had the chance to fill it. The grocery lists he’d been compiling would waste away to ash. The DVD titles he was going to get faded from memory. 

Ellie was back in Boston. Ellie wanted nothing to do with him. It might just be for the best; that’s what he can’t help but admit. She’d be better off without him. 

But it wasn’t right, her back out there on her own. There was too much shit in the past. She needed more than a shitty group home. Hell, she needed more than a great one. 

It’s hard to reconcile, a deep-seated belief that she could only be better off without him while also struggling to think of her as well-off when she was all on her own. Someone needed to close her curtains before bed, brush the baby hairs from her sticky forehead after nightmares, find the perfect balance between rolling their eyes and indulging her terrible jokes.

Joel’s recovery is slow, painful. He’s got a tube in his chest and a central line in his neck and a two-inch long incision on his abdomen. Broken ribs, broken leg, broken heart. His lungs are bruised. The right one had collapsed. Ellie holding pressure over his wound is the only thing that kept him alive long enough for the ambulance to get there, they tell him. 

It’s almost ironic. She’d brought him back to life all those weeks ago. She’d kept him alive that day. And now he’d keep going, keep fighting, to make sure she was in some place that would help her, protect her. In her own indirect way, she would force him to stay alive that much longer.

Maria stays in Boston for almost two weeks. When she flies back, she comes with Tommy to the hospital the next day. 

She insists Ellie is someplace halfway decent. Ellie’s arm was still casted, but follow-up physical therapy had already been scheduled. There was some nerve damage from how she’d put so much weight on her arm for so long. It was expected to make a complete recovery; it would just take time.

The staff where she was staying were nice enough. She didn’t seem to be eating much, but enough not to get herself committed to an eating disorder unit. There was a low threshold for kids getting sent there, according to Ellie.

For all her brisk, concise forms of conversing, Maria is kind enough to sit at Joel’s bedside and answer the most mundane questions. She’s not upset to respond to a few more than once, either.

No, Ellie doesn’t want to talk to him. Yes, she asked about him every day, usually a few times. No, Maria didn’t know for sure that it was drilled into Ellie’s mind that what happened wasn’t her fault. Yes, she was in mandatory counseling after her disappearing act.