Archive of Our Own ^beta

Settling into Jackson is a mixed bag. 

No longer being a test subject for procedures and drugs that make her puke and/or want to die? Great. As much food as she wants to eat? Ideal. A house that’s just for her and Joel? A dream. 

Pushed into school on the grounds that algebra is important for reasons no one seems able to explain? 

Fucked up and deeply unappreciated. 

She tries to make the argument that putting her body at the service of humanity and being the reason that there’s a chance of ending cordyceps should let her be illiterate if she wants to be. Tragically, neither Joel nor Maria seem to agree, and it figures this is the one fucking thing they’d be united on. The point makes Tommy laugh, but tragically his power only goes so far, and even though he doesn’t tell on her when he catches her playing hooky, he can’t actually intercede to grant her a stay of education. 

She didn’t used to hate school. She didn’t love it, but she likes reading, and science is objectively cool. 

But now, each time she sits in class, all she can think about is David saying, “I was a teacher, taught kids about your age,” and then she can’t help but stare at the teachers and think, “Are you a monster, too?” Every smile, every encouragement, every smiley face on her quizzes, all of them just make her think of sitting across a fire from someone trying to make her laugh, knowing already that it was only an attempt to make her drop her guard enough to-

She doesn’t trust teachers, is the key point. 

It’s not quite so bad with the other teachers who are all women, but her math teacher is a smiley man named Mr. Nelson. He looks relatively harmless, shiny bald head and pastel shirts and always, always a bowtie. From all appearances, he seems like a nice guy who just happens to love torturing kids with math. 

And yet, she stares at him when he isn’t looking at her and tries to judge if he smiles at the girls for too long or if his compliments are too nice or if his “Great try!” comments on the quizzes she fails because she’s too fucking busy trying to figure out if he’s a creep or not are supposed to make her like him more. 

None of the other kids seem to think this way at all, which is little wonder. 

To them, monsters are just people controlled by a fungus, driven to evil by something out of their control. 

She knows better. 

She knows there’s evil that has nothing to do with cordyceps. 

*

Her one solace is Dina, who’s a cute girl who smiles at her sometimes. She’s usually too busy staring down Mr. Nelson to always meet her eyes, but when she does, Dina makes faces or smiles, and she can’t help but grin in response. She feels the crazy urge to tuck her hair behind her ears or sit up straighter when she knows Dina’s looking. She wants to look cool, wants to impress her, wants to get to know her better. 

The effort, though, is complicated by the need to make sure she knows where Mr. Nelson is in relation to her at all times. 

After a while, she’s so wound up by her vigil that even Dina’s presence isn’t enough to make it worth it. She starts leaving class with her jaw aching from how tight she’s clenched it, and she starts getting headaches. She never feels like she can breathe properly in the classroom, far too aware of how the only real exit is the door and how easy it would be to block. One panel of chain link, and they’re all stuck, easy pickings. The desk could be a chopping block with that sturdy wooden top, and she doesn’t know what’s in the drawers. For all she knows, tucked next to the chalk is a line of freshly-sharpened cleavers, ready for dismembering. 

On the days even stepping foot on the steps leading up to the school makes her chest tight and her stomach hurt and her ears ring, she always turns tail and runs. She has to be careful on these days. Joel gets along well with people here–something that just makes her feel more inadequate by the day with her own paltry social skills–and she knows they’re likely to mention it to him if they see her abroad when she should be locked up with all the other teenagers. 

Luckily, Dina showed her a tiny gap in the fence in one section. The teenagers keep it boarded up and secured with a bar across it when no one’s out because they’re not totally stupid, but it’s how they get in and out without anyone noticing for everything teenagers like to get up to when adults aren’t around to stop them. 

She has to be careful to avoid patrols when she’s out of the fence, but she’s free of observation, which is all she really needs. She always has her backpack with her and she does the assignments she has so she won’t be too far behind, and when her teachers take her aside, she makes up an excuse about something with routes and the cure. They don’t fully believe her, she can tell, but enough of the council and higher-up adults in the community know about her involvement in the vaccine slowly being rolled out from patrols being sent to retrieve it that they’re willing to give her a pass, especially because she always gets the homework from someone later and turns it in. 

In all, it’s a perfect system. 

*

Her perfect system lasts until the day some goddamn fucker bars the hole in the fence when she’s still outside. 

“Fucking shit,” she growls, straining to shove the wood. She kicks it a few times to see if she can wiggle the bar loose, but all that gets her are some sore toes. She stomps in place a few times with frustration and then squats down, staring at the hole like she can will it open through sheer brain power. 

Predictably, it stays right where it is. 

She waits around on the off chance that another teenager will be making use of it, but as the sun slowly creeps across the sky, she starts to get nervous. School’s out by now, and she can’t remember when Joel’s supposed to be back from patrol. It’s their own little routine at this point, her meeting him at the stables to walk home together, and if she doesn’t make it in time, he’s going to worry. 

Or he’s going to try and find her, which could lead to her little skipping secret getting out. 

No choice then. 

Time to try and smooth talk her way in through the front gate. She’s not supposed to be out alone, but depending on when shift change happened, she could lie and say she got ditched by accident when she was out with a group. She’s not totally sure if the timeline will support it, but if she can-

“Ellie?”

She shuts her eyes tight, cringing. 

When she turns, she finds that she’s managed to get just ahead of the returning patrol group. 

Joel’s patrol group. 

Fuck. 

*

Joel keeps it together until they’re in their house, one hand on the back of her hoodie like a scruff. 

Then it’s all systems go on what she is pretty sure is going to be the scolding of her life. 

“What’s going on with you?” He demands, hands on his hips in maximum Disappointed Parent Mode, which just makes her feel even fucking worse. “Skipping school and sneaking out of the gate? Do you know how fucking dangerous that is?” 

It’s on the tip of her tongue to fess up. She wants to tell him that she doesn’t know how to do this. She doesn’t know how to talk to the other kids without the structure of understanding that they’ll all be government agents one day. FEDRA school fucking sucked, but in some ways, it was easier. You scratched and bit and fought your way up the ladder, and you stayed there. You knew your place in the pecking order, and you acted accordingly. All of them were set on paths early. There was no guesswork. 

But here, the kids talk about the different things they want to study on their own. A few already have apprenticeships. A few will go into family businesses. Everyone has a job in Jackson, but by and large, no one’s assigning them, really. People volunteer or want to do them. There’s no central office of agents assigned case numbers to sort out who goes where. 

But when anyone asks Ellie what she wants to be, she freezes. The answer is “alive,” but the single time she said it completely on reflex because she wasn’t expecting to be asked, the kids had all given her weird looks, and she’d buried her face in a book for the rest of class and left as soon as possible at the end of the day. She doesn’t know if she imagined snickering for the endless hours until the day was over, and she hadn’t had the heart to check. She’d gone right to Joel’s workshop and curled up on a bench in the corner with her math homework until it was time to go to supper and then go home, and the next day, she just hadn’t talked to the other kids at all. 

She wants to tell him that sometimes she looks at Mr. Nelson and sees David. She wants to tell him that the one time he patted her on the shoulder because she answered an equation right on the first try, she sat at her desk and went back to the same empty buzzy place she lived in for the first week after Joel led her away from Silver Lake. She hasn’t told him everything about David, hasn’t told him that he was a teacher, so it’s not like he has the information to know why she might decide algebra isn’t for her. 

She wants to tell Joel all of this, wants to set all of her problems in front of him and ask him to help her solve them. She wants to tell him that school fucking sucks and that she feels like a freak and she’s worried she’s always going to feel that way. She wants him to hug her and tell her it’ll be alright, that they’ll figure it out. 

But the prospect of telling Joel that she can’t even figure out how to fit in on her own makes her feel a rush of shame. 

“Well?” He asks, snapping her attention back to him. 

“I don’t know,” she says, and she knows it sounds lame the second it leaves her mouth. 

“‘You don’t know?’” Joel repeats, and she feels so stupid all of a sudden that it makes her mad. This is supposed to be the one place she does fit, here in this house with Joel. 

And now he’s fucking ruining it. 

“I don’t know why I need to go to school,” she says, trying and failing to watch her tone. “I can patrol just as good as any adult, and you fucking know it.” She’s mad, now, that Joel won’t let it go, that she’s getting backed into a corner pushing her closer to having to admit that she’s a failure, a poor substitute for the daughter he could have had, one who could do something like go to school and not be a freak about it. 

“Ellie, we’ve had this talk before,” Joel says, and he’s right. They have. Repeatedly and at length. 

“It’s useless to me,” she still persists. “I don’t need to know how to find a dependent clause to shoot a gun-” 

“And shooting a gun isn’t all you’re going to be doing,” Joel cuts her off. “You’re not going to be fighting for the rest of your life, Ellie.” 

That’s the problem, though. 

All she knows is fighting. 

She doesn’t know who to be when she isn’t fighting for something. 

But it doesn’t look like that answer is going to fly. 

She’s so goddamn frustrated to be on opposing sides from Joel when she already feels so fucking miserable. It’s been months since they disagreed like this. Since their first time in Jackson, she’s felt like a team with him, like comrades fighting the same war. Silver Lake and the hospital were fucked, but at least she and Joel were on the same side. There had never been any doubt that she was his priority, that he’d pick her over anything. Hell, it drove them so close together that one of the nurses had teasingly called them Team Jellie when she checked in on them, like they were one single unit and could be referred to as such. 

“And how’s Team Jellie today?” she’d ask each morning. “What are we thinking, Team Jellie?” after new ideas for experiments. “Anything else for Team Jellie before I’m gone?” before she left after her shift. 

It had been stupid, so, so dumb, but she had also felt pleased by it, being treated like she and Joel were a package deal, like no matter what, they were in it together. 

She certainly doesn’t feel like a part of Team Jellie right now. 

She feels very much like Ellie, all alone like she’s been her entire goddamn life, and the frustration and fear of it makes her feel mean even though she doesn’t want to be. She hates fighting with Joel, hates feeling like the disappointment she is. He’s told her more about Sarah since the hospital, and every new detail just makes her feel more inadequate against the shoes she’s been given to fill. 

“Ellie, I don’t know what to do with you here,” Joel says, crossing his arms over his chest, and it’s like someone dumped ice water over her head. It’s not the first time an adults’s said they don’t know what to do with her. 

And she knows how things usually end when someone doesn’t know what to do with her: they stop bothering to try. 

“You’re being a fucking dick about this,” she says, mouth gaining free rein because she’s panicking a bit. There’s no Hole here, no electrostaff, and she doesn’t see food withholding going over well when they’re communal. She doesn’t know how Joel is going to decide to deal with her. 

And she’s fucking terrified by what she can imagine. 

“You’re treating me like a fucking baby,” she continues, ramping herself up. “I’ve killed people,” he winces at this, just slightly. “I’ve gone through every fucking experiment the Fireflies could think of. I was almost-” Nope, she can’t bring up David, not even to win an argument. “-killed a dozen times over,” she says after a fumble. “I’m not like the other kids. I shouldn’t be treated like them.” 

“Ellie,” Joel says, and something about how tired he sounds sets off alarm bells in her head. It doesn’t go well for her when adults get tired of her. “You’re right, kiddo, you’ve gone through stuff no one your age should ever have had to. But that’s over now.” 

It isn’t, she wants to scream. I still feel like I'm going through it every goddamn day. He knows about her nightmares–even on the nights she stifles her screams before she wakes him, it’s like he has some kind of parent sixth sense about it, knocking at her door gently and finding her wide awake and panting on her bed–but she hasn’t told him anything about the way her days are haunted, too. 

And she’s so fucking angry about it all, she’s blind to things like common sense or the way she knows to her bones that she’s Joel’s priority. 

In the moment there’s just shame and anger and frustration and yet another adult not fucking listening. 

“I’m not going to school,” she tosses into the space between them like a gauntlet. There. Firm line drawn. 

“You’re going to school,” Joel says, and his tone is final, like he’s not even willing to listen to her. “Ellie, I know you’re-”

“You don’t know anything!” She all but screams. It’s not true, she knows it’s not true, no one in the world understands her better than Joel, but she feels like she’s fighting all on her fucking own and Joel isn’t even trying to reach out to help her up. He just wants her to fit, the way he fits, and she’s so fucking terrified of what’s going to happen when he realizes that she’s never going to. “You’ve said it before,” she snaps, temper moving faster than her brain, “I’m not your daughter, and you’re not my dad! You’re just upset I can’t be fucking perfect like Sarah!”

Her heart drops into her stomach the moment the words are out. She wishes immediately that she could take them back, but she’s already thrown them into the tense space between them. She’d picked them because she wanted to get right to what would hurt the most. 

From the way Joel’s face looks before it goes completely, heart-rendingly blank, it worked. 

Before she can say anything, Joel turns and walks out without a word. 

He doesn’t slam the front door when he leaves, but the sound still hits her like a fucking blow. 

*

She drops to the floor like gravity yanked her by the hair, and she curls into a little ball, rocking back and forth. She can’t believe she just did that, can’t believe that she just hurt the one person in the world who has ever cared about her. 

She can’t believe there’s a way back from something like this. 

She can feel the shards of this life all around her, the beautiful thing she impossibly had and just threw away during a fucking temper tantrum like a toddler. Joel is indulgent with her, something she enjoys and Tommy teases him about. He’s terrible at telling her no, loves to see her happy, would do anything she asked of him if he thought it would make her life better. 

But she also knows exactly how much he still aches with the loss of Sarah, and she brought her up just to make him hurt. 

She had a teacher once who put her in The Hole because she made him spill his water when she tripped and bumped into him. 

She wonders what kind of punishment comes after throwing a guy’s very beloved and very dead daughter in his face. 

He won’t want me here, she realizes with a dread that makes her stomach turn like she’s going to be sick. He probably won’t even be able to look at me. He must’ve left to find someone else to take me. 

The very idea of packing up the bits of her life and getting shipped off to another house, having to walk past Joel and Tommy–because her and Tommy’s camaraderie aside, Joel’s his brother–and not talk to them, having to pretend like they’re all nothing more than neighbors…she can’t do it. It would kill her, even trying. 

No one else is going to be patient with her like Joel. She knows this for a fact because until him, no one ever tried. She doesn’t have a fucking chance of finding anyone else who’s going to take her, let alone someone who’s going to put up with her like Joel. If she gets kicked out, she’s just going to end up bouncing around when people get sick of her, the same way her advisors handed her off to each other when they had had enough. 

“I’m sorry,” she croaks to the empty house. 

*

She decides she can’t bear to hear Joel ask her to leave. That might actually make her drop dead on the spot. 

Better she leave on her own. 

*

Even amidst her hurried packing, she pauses over what to write in a note for longer than she should. She can’t just leave without telling him, she knows. She wants to think he’d at least still care enough to be concerned if he thought she was kidnapped. 

But she doesn’t have the ability to say everything she needs to, doesn’t know how to thank him for being the only person who ever really cared about her for her, for being the first person to let her know how it felt to be someone’s kid. 

She doesn’t know how to apologize for failing so badly at deserving it. 

In the end, she writes “I’m sorry. I won’t be back, I promise.” and leaves it on his bed. Joel’s a direct person. He’ll probably appreciate the brevity. 

She pauses at the door and looks around the house like she can absorb it into herself, can tuck away this beautiful little dream she got to live so she’ll have it on bad days. She doesn’t want to forget any of it, doesn’t want to ever not know what it felt like to curl up next to Joel on the couch and watch a movie or sit with him and Tommy at the kitchen table to argue about the rules of Uno or what it felt like to be important enough to have someone hold her after a nightmare. 

She closes her eyes, pressing it all into her memory. 

And then she turns around and leaves, shutting the door behind herself and tucking her key beneath the welcome mat. 

*

She decides to try getting out of the gate with an excuse about picking late-season blackberries. Teenagers aren’t supposed to go out on their own, strictly speaking, but it’s an open secret that she usually has a gun on her, and the berry patches still producing fruit at present are pretty close to the wall. 

“C’mon,” she cajoles, looking between the two on duty, Nina and Simone. They’re younger, which is why they’re still on late afternoon shift because it’s the quietest, and she sees she’s wearing them down. “Out and back. Thirty minutes tops.” She’s counting heavily on them getting distracted and not remembering the promise later. 

“I dunno, Ellie,” Simone says, looking to Nina. “I don’t think Joel would like it very much, you going out alone, especially this late.” 

The mention of Joel hurts, now that she’s wrecked things so completely she doubts he’d care at all after what she said. 

“Please,” she says, focusing on Nina, who seems to be the softer target. “I totally wrecked one of Joel’s shirts today doing laundry. I need the berries as an apology gift. Help a girl out before she gets grounded for a month.” It’s a lie, and for more reasons than one. Joel doesn’t like blackberries, doesn’t like how the seeds get in his teeth, and if she were trying to wheedle him with berry-based bribery, she’d be sweet-talking a greenhouse worker for some strawberries if anything. 

Luckily, Nina and Simone have absolutely no way of knowing any of this. 

“Well,” Nina says slowly, and then Simone rolls her eyes but nods. “Okay. But you gotta be fast, and stay close enough that you can shout, alright?” 

“You got it,” she says, even giving them some finger guns for good measure, which feels a little over the top, but she’s practically buzzing with the need to be gone already, so she’s not exactly putting out her best material. 

She’s through the gate too fast for them to change their minds, and then she’s off. At first she just power walks, but the moment she’s no longer in sight, she sets into a sprint. She feels itchy with energy, with the thrill of the knowledge that she’s breaking rules. There’s no one to enforce them with her now that she’s no longer Joel’s, but still, the squirmy “I shouldn’t be doing this” feeling remains, and she feels guilty with the knowledge that Joel would be upset with her. 

Well, he would have been. 

He probably couldn’t care less now. 

The thought pushes her on even faster. 

*

She runs until her legs are aching and she has a stitch in her side, and then she pushes herself on a bit more beyond that, trying to get as much distance as she can. She’s counting on Nina and Simone not raising an alarm, but just in case, she wants to be hard to find. 

Getting dragged back only for Joel to tell her to find a new place to live? 

Not a fucking option. 

She keeps going until well after night has fallen, and she knows if she keeps going, she’s going to end up getting hurt. The moon is a scant crescent in the sky, and even with the stars, she knows she’s going to trip over a hole or step on a snake if she isn’t careful. She hasn’t heard any calls in the distance, so it’s a good bet no one’s noticed she’s gone. 

Hell, Joel’s probably relieved he got to go home to an empty house. 

The thought makes her eyes sting, and she scrubs a sleeve across them angrily before she sets to work looking for a place to stay for the night. Easily defensible and with more than one exit was always the standard Joel went by, and when she sees a farmhouse in the distance, she thinks it might be a sign that she’s doing what she should be, one first little pitstop on whatever life is going to look like for her now. 

(Thinking about what the rest of this life is going to look like is too goddamn depressing, so she hurries to start casing the house out before she can think about it further.) 

Whatever fucker designed the farmhouse had Joel-level paranoia, and the doors are fucking solid, hardwood reinforced by goddamn concrete or something to judge from the way they don’t budge even slightly while she bounces off of them like a bird against a window. All of the windows within reach have bars over them that are similarly well-constructed, and no amount of pulling at them will make them even wiggle. 

Alright, higher windows it is. 

The house is on a slope, and the windows on the back sit high above the ground, high enough that the builder apparently didn’t feel the need to secure them like the rest of the goddamn fortress they designed. 

“Oh! Come! On!” She grunts between hops, straining desperately for the window within reach. Even on her tiptoes she has no fucking chance of touching it, and jumping is currently doing her no favors either. She looks around her for something she could climb, but even the downed logs in the treeline would be too short unless she stacked them up in a pile that would be more likely to make her fall and break her neck than to help her get inside. “Ugh,” she grunts in disgust before giving up, feeling a shiver run through her at a brisk breeze. 

Well, she thinks, looking to the edge of the property, barn it is. 

The structure itself isn’t promising, looking about one good gust from falling down, but beggars can’t be choosers and runaways can’t be picky. She’s slept in more suspicious-looking buildings before, but that was when she had Joel there to tell her they were safe. She jerks the door back and forth a few times with the vague idea that that’ll be an indication of something, and besides some ear-splitting screeches from the hinges, nothing falls down. She tries to remember what Joel’s told her about sound construction, but beyond him saying “good bones” about things sometimes, her lessons have been fairly limited to listening about how other people can’t follow blueprints for shit. 

After a quick survey, she decides the loft is going to be her best bet. She always tends to look up anyway, and it’ll give her an advantage if anyone comes in unexpectedly. She drags an old ladder over and starts climbing, carefully stepping onto the loft once she’s up. The wood creaks beneath her ominously, but if the barn is still standing, it can’t be too terrible. She inches her way forward away from the edge. If she’s going to be sleeping a good fifteen feet in the air, she damn well better not fall off because she rolled over too far in her sleep. 

Her only warning for the fuckening ahead is one dry-sounding crack. 

And then she’s dropping. 

She screams in fear and then screams in pain as her leg goes through the wood, the sharp edges of it digging up through her flesh, ripping through her jeans like they’re tissue paper. In her flail to catch herself, she drops her gun, and it skitters out of her reach. 

“Fuck fuck fuck,” she hisses between clenched teeth, letting out a strangled groan when trying to tug her way free just stabs the wood splinters deeper into the meat of her thigh. She can already feel hot blood trickling its way down her leg, and she can only fucking pray the wood didn’t hit anything vital. “Okay, okay, Ellie,” she tells herself, trying to think like Joel. He would tell her ‘Don’t panic, kiddo’ or something like that and then present a brilliant plan. 

Unfortunately, it’s much less effective to call herself kiddo, and she’s got fuck-all in the way of plans. 

“Goddamn it,” she grits out, slamming her palm down against the floor and then cringing when it makes an ominous noise creak out. She freezes, but the platform stays in once piece. She cries out when she strains for her gun, but it remains just out of her reach. She doesn’t know what good bullets would do her right now, but its weight in her hand is a comfort, and if she can just-

An all-too-horribly-familiar clicking sound rings out into the barn, and she can feel her eyes go massive. Slowly, she cranes to look over the edge of the platform. 

And looks straight at an infected peering in through the barn door. 

She claps a hand over her mouth to keep from making a sound, but the movement draws its attention, and she screams with pain as she stretches forward, barely grasping the ladder and hauling it up as fast she can, ignoring the fucking agony of her leg as the wood gouges deeper. She barely gets it out of reach as the infected leaps for the bottom rung, fungus-covered fingertips missing it by scant centimeters. She hauls the whole thing up as fast as she can and then pulls it well back. 

Below her, the infected circles, sniffing the air, clearly excited by the smell of blood and the sight of prey right above it, prey that doesn’t stand a chance of running. 

…and then she hears more clicking. 

*

She’s probably been more scared in her life, but with nearly a dozen infected circling beneath her like sharks, it’s a little fucking hard to remember when. Trying to reach for her gun has just wound them up more with her cries of pain, and more than a few have started trying to climb the walls. The thing that’s damned her ends up being the thing that’s saving her with the way boards snap and crumble beneath their weight, all of them a fair bit larger than her. 

Good to be tiny, she thinks, a bit giddily. Glad I didn’t take that fourth helping of cheesy potatoes at breakfast after all. 

It’s hard to hold onto humor when dangling helplessly above a pack of infected, though. 

She flinches with each leap they make towards her, abilities preternaturally enhanced with their bodies hijacked. More than a couple get terrifyingly close to reaching the loft by using a wall as a kick-off point, and she knows that the second one manages it, she’s fucked. With her leg trapped the way it is, she can’t even dig her knife out of her pocket, and its weight against her thigh, usually a comfort, seems to be mocking her now. 

Very abruptly, her whole running away plan seems like it could have used a little more thought. 

*

She doesn’t know how long she sits and waits for death. 

After a certain point, she realizes she’s shivering hard enough to chatter her teeth, but whether that’s from blood loss, the chill in the air, watching infected leap at her, or a fucking combination of all of the above is anyone’s guess. 

She wants Joel with a breathless ferocity, wants him beside her telling her what to do. She likes feeling smart and capable, likes when he gives her a chance to come up with her own plan of action, but in this exact moment she desperately wants him there to get her free and make the plan for her. 

He’s probably not even looking for me, she thinks. He knows I left on purpose. 

The thought makes her feel so small and alone that she clenches her eyes shut tightly, trying to force it away. A thin whine makes its way from her chest without her permission, and the sound just winds the infected up further. She clenches her fists tightly and bends forward as much as she can, trying to get herself together. 

However, there’s only so much “together” possible when trapped by one leg, easy pickings for infected to rip apart at their leisure. 

He’s never going to even know, she thinks, unsure how she feels about it. Part of her wants someone to know when she’s dead, wants someone to do something with her body to honor that she was a person once, too. It’s part of the reason she’d insisted on burying Sam and Henry, remembering all too well how Riley’s body was left to rot in that mall when the Fireflies snatched her and how Tess’s remains were blown into bits. 

Shaking and cold and approaching a point of fear that almost feels like numbness, she wonders if she’ll get a spot on Tommy and Maria’s mantle, too, or if that honor is reserved for kids who didn’t fuck up their right to belong to someone. 

*

When she first hears what sounds like Joel yelling her name, she thinks she’s imagining it. Increasingly dizzy from blood loss and cold, she doesn’t really trust her senses. 

Then the infected all turn their heads towards the sound. 

“INFECTED,” she screams as loud as she can, heart pounding faster. Please God, don’t let him get hurt. Please God, don’t let her sit here, useless, while Joel is killed. 

Please God, let him leave her here to die before he gets himself killed. 

“ELLIE,” she hears again, and this time she picks out Tommy’s voice as well, joining the call.

“INFECTED,” she screams again, throat stinging a bit from the volume. “A DOZEN IN-” About half of the infected take that moment to start bolting for the door, eager for prey than can reach. “A DOZEN COMING FROM THE BARN!”

There are still two getting ever closer, and one’s fingertips brush the platform, but she couldn’t care less about herself when she listens to gunfire start up outside. She counts them, knowing Joel and Tommy are each a hell of a shot and praying to a God she doesn’t believe in that their aim will be true tonight, too. 

2, 3, she thinks. 4, 5. Two more of the infected inside break off to join the group outside. 

So busy listening desperately for what’s going on outside, she forgets to keep tracking the remaining infected in the barn with her-

-and then a head peeks over the loft, eyes huge and sightless, whorls of fungus streaking across a ruined face that might have been beautiful once. 

She screams as it hauls itself up and screams again when a reflexive jerk while attempting to flee drives the wood deeper into her leg. She desperately tries to pull herself up, to get to her knife, to give her some fucking chance at putting up a fight. God, it was bad enough when she was going to die alone. Even if Joel’s angry with her, the idea of him finding her body, mauled to death? She can’t do that to him, she has to figure-

She jumps as a shot goes clean through the infected’s head, and it falls on top of her mid-leap, deadweight. 

“Ellie!”

She might be crying, actually, with the sudden wave of relief of hearing Joel’s voice so close, knowing in her gut that it was his shot that took the infected down. She groans as she pushes the corpse off of her and shoves it as far as she can get it, which isn’t far at all. 

“Ellie!” The call comes again, sharper, a command for her to respond. 

“I’m here!” She calls back, managing to get free enough to lean over, nearly crumpling with relief when she sees Joel beneath the platform and Tommy at the door, looking out into the night to check for more infected. 

“Are you hurt?” Joel calls up urgently, and she can tell from his face he’s already seen her leg dangling through the floor enough to make his own judgment call on that one. 

“Uh,” she fumbles. Yes is the real answer, and No is going to be a clear lie, but it still rankles at her, having to admit to getting hurt doing something so fucking stupid, even while a little giddy with a combination of blood loss and relief. 

“How the hell’d you get up there?” Tommy asks, coming over after making sure the coast is clear. “Goddamn, but you know how to find trouble.” 

She laughs, once, without any amusement, the whole situation feeling a little surreal. 

“There’s a ladder,” she says, whimpering when she stretches for it but finally managing to get a grip on it. “Look out,” she calls down before she lowers it as best she can while still trapped. 

Before she can call out any other warning, Joel is climbing, Tommy rolling his eyes when his warning’s ignored but following, albeit more carefully. 

Two fully grown men–especially ones as solid as Tommy and Joel–on the same floor that splintered beneath her is concerning, but they go slow, Tommy holding Joel back by his jacket just in case in a way that would make her laugh if she was capable of it. The moment he’s in range, though, it seems like nothing in the world could stop Joel as he drops to his knees and wraps his arms around her, face pressed against her hair. 

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck,” he says again, and she wishes she could be something like amused. 

Instead, she shuts her eyes tight and burrows against his chest, partially for warmth. 

And partially for the absolute safety that is being in Joel’s arms, wanting to soak it up before he remembers he doesn’t actually want her anymore. 

She yelps and turns to Tommy, betrayed, when he uses the distraction to poke at her trapped leg, and he gives her an apologetic smile. 

“Sorry,” he says. “You okay?” 

She gives a significant look to the blood-soaked wood keeping her leg pinned in place. 

“Fair enough,” he says, examining the mess more gently. With him occupied by that, Joel shucks his jacket off and wraps it around her, and she shudders a bit at the sheer relief of so much warmth around her. 

“You okay?” Joel asks, tipping her face up to look at her, eyes intense. 

“I mean, my leg aside?” She asks in a weak joke. 

From the look on his face, it doesn’t land. 

“Nothing else,” she says. 

“You’re sure?” He asks. “Nothing else hurts?” 

“My pride?” 

He shakes his head at her, but he also gently pulls her face forward to kiss her forehead, lingering for a moment. 

“Think the only way out is back up,” Tommy says, and Ellie grimaces. That sounds like the shittiest possible option. She can tell from Joel’s face that he isn’t thrilled with the idea either, but he still braces her on one side, an arm around her waist, while Tommy mirrors him on the other side. She’s absolutely squished by Miller, and she’s never felt safer. 

“On three,” Joel says. 

“One, two-” Tommy starts, and like the bastards they are, they start pulling her then, arms strong and steady. She screams, unable to help it, as white hot pain sears up her leg, but despite the way she feels Joel flinch at the sound, they keep going until she’s free, slumped against Joel’s chest, panting. 

“Fuckers,” she spits reflexively, the moment she has the air for it. 

“Love you, too,” Tommy says with a little smile. 

“Sorry, baby,” Joel says, the words more a rumble in his chest than real sound. 

She presses her face against him while Tommy has a look at her leg, and the sympathetic hiss through his teeth when he gets a full look at the damage goes a far way towards making her less actively hit-happy. 

“Can you move your foot?” Tommy asks softly, and she turns her face away from Joel just to watch for herself while she does. “Good,” he says, smile reassuring. He pulls her boot off, and she wrinkles her nose at the squelch of her blood-soaked sock. He presses two fingers to her ankle beneath the material and then nods in a way that seems satisfied. “Still a steady pulse,” he informs her, putting her boot back on and lacing it loosely. He taps her shoe lightly on the side when he’s done. “Looks like you’ll remain a two-legged terror.” 

Given that she hadn’t considered not being that in the future, the reassurance is unexpected but appreciated. 

Getting down the ladder is a production straight from some stupid comedy movie, Joel going first and then pausing to let Tommy help her over, leaving her tucked between Joel and the ladder. She’s dizzy as hell after losing so much blood and can’t put any weight on her injured leg, but she and Joel take it one rung at a time, him descending first and then steadying her with a strong arm around her waist while she hops down after him. Each jump sends pain shooting through her injured leg, and the blood makes it slippery. Twice she slips with a little shrill of panic, but Joel’s arm around her is secure, holding her up until she gets her good foot beneath her again. 

“I’ve gotcha. You’re fine. I’m right here,” he tells her in a low, reassuring stream of words until she can finally make the last hop back to the ground, on her feet for all of ten seconds before she’s up in Joel’s arms. 

Once they’re down, Tommy follows with insultingly easy speed, even though he grimaces when he sees how much of her blood has ended up on him both from getting her out and from following down the ladder. 

“Sorry,” she says, voice small. It’s the very least of what she has to apologize for, but she needs a starting point somewhere. 

“Nah,” he says easily, reaching out enough to tug her ponytail gently. “Don’t worry. Joel used to shove me in mud puddles all the time when we were kids. I’ve had worse.” 

“Only when you deserved it,” Joel says, turning and leading them back to the entrance of the barn. Tommy exits first, making sure it’s clear of more infected before they follow. When he’s out of earshot, she turns to Joel. 

“I’m so s-” 

“Not now,” he says, but not in a snap. “We can talk later.” 

Still hurting and cold, she’s willing to take the grace for the moment. 

*

She’s set down briefly on a fence to let Tommy and Joel bandage her leg as best they can, Joel kneeling to brace her foot on his knee to let Tommy wind the linen around and around. It goes red almost as soon as it touches her, and she’s a little nervous about how much she’s still bleeding. Joel seems to notice, because he squeezes her ankle gently, and when she looks up at him, he gives her a reassuring nod of his head that she returns. 

Once she’s as good as they can get here in pitch black night in bumfuck nowhere, Joel carries her over to the horses and helps her up, with Tommy on the other side to make sure she doesn’t topple off. It hurts like a motherfucker getting up, but she does her best to stifle any noises of pain. Still, Joel’s face is tense and unhappy before he squeezes her knee gently and then mounts, careful not to nudge her as he does so. 

She hesitates just slightly once he’s in front of her, unsure about exactly what privileges she’s allowed now, but he reaches back for her easily, pulling her arms around his waist to hold on. She goes gladly and rests her cheek against his broad back. Surrounded by him and his jacket, she feels invincible, and after hours of thinking she was going to die, it’s a relief. 

Still, she hasn’t forgotten that she left after one of the worst fights they’ve had and that she dragged him and Tommy out after her, risking their lives in the process. 

“Joel, I’m s-” 

“Not now,” he says, letting go of the reins with one hand to squeeze her wrist gently. “We can talk when we get you fixed up.” 

“I’m still sorry,” she says softly, needing to throw it out there. He doesn’t respond, but he also doesn’t let go of her wrist, thumb going beneath the material of his jacket to stroke softly over her skin. 

“Pretty impressive, getting this far,” Tommy says, and she turns to look at him. “Little shrimp like you.” 

She sticks her tongue out at him. 

“Not the takeaway from this evening,” Joel tells his brother, but Tommy just grins. 

“What? Credit where credit’s due, you got pretty far,” he says to her. “The rest of the search parties are all ranged closer. No one else thought you’d manage to get this kind of distance.” 

That has her attention. 

“Rest of the search parties?” She asks, craning around as much as she can to look at Joel. 

“Girls on the gate raised the alarm when you didn’t come back,” he says, and then he gives her a look, indicating her backpack with his eyes. “Something about you picking berries?” 

She flushes, and she can only hope he can’t see it in the dark. 

“Pretty far for some blackberries,” Tommy offers, and God, she doesn’t know if she’s ever been more grateful for him in her life. 

“Well I don’t want just any bitch ass berries,” she says haughtily. “Only the best for Ellie Williams: berry hunter extraordinaire.” 

Tommy laughs, and though he shakes his head, she can tell Joel’s amused, too, even if he doesn’t want to be. 

“How’d you find me?” She asks, genuinely curious. She thought she’d been zigzag enough in her path and quick enough to make it difficult. 

“Ask Mr. Kidhound there,” Tommy says. “Wouldn’t tell me shit. Just said he had a ‘feeling’ you’d be out this way.” 

“Just felt like we should go this way,” Joel says with a shrug. “Wasn’t a reason for it. Just felt like my kid was out here.” 

The casual use of “my kid” fills her with such warm gratitude that she squeezes tighter against him, ignoring how the shift makes her leg throb with pain. 

“Good Elliefinding,” she says quietly, voice tentative. 

“Always gonna find you,” he answers just as quietly, squeezing her wrist gently. “You oughta know that by now.” 

She presses her cheek tight to his back and settles in for the ride, grateful. 

*

When they’re nearly back at Jackson, Tommy flickers his flashlight in a pattern that means “search over” out into the distance, and after a moment, there are responding flashes as the signal is received and passed along. She tucks her face deeper into Joel’s jacket, embarrassed beyond belief at how many people are out because of her and her own stupid decisions. 

(She also isn’t ready to face it, but there’s something nice about it, too, the evidence that people would notice if she was gone, even if they were only out because they like Joel.) 

(And the evidence that Joel would bother raising the alarm for her makes hope spring in her chest that perhaps she hasn’t in fact fucked it all up beyond repair.)

Exhaustion and chills have set in while they rode, and she gratefully slips down into Tommy’s arms, him holding her while Joel dismounts. He’s similar in build to Joel, so the sensation doesn’t feel horribly foreign, but it’s still a relief to be handed back over. She fits better in Joel’s arms, somehow, like he knows just how to hold her comfortably. They pass the horses off to a stablehand, and she gives Tommy a curious look. He normally always likes looking after his own horse, just like she does. He sees her expression and nods his head to her leg. 

“Probably gonna need some blood after losing that much,” he says. “And I’m a universal donor.” 

Overwhelmed by the easy offer of it, his own fucking blood after she dragged him out on an Ellie-hunt late at night , she tucks her head tight against Joel’s neck. 

She goes tense when they enter the clinic, the smell of antiseptic sending her right back to the goddamn Firefly hospital. She can’t help the way it makes her afraid, poking at memories of long, sleepless nights, of crying because she felt so miserable, of going under for procedures while wondering if she would ever-

“You’re okay,” Joel says, soft enough that it’s only for her. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you.” 

It’s the same thing he told her in the hospital when he was holding her after the really bad procedures or when she came out of anesthesia, and it comforts her the same way it did then. She nods against his neck and then looks up when he sits on a bed, her on his lap. 

The doctor on duty is a maternal woman who insists on being called Dr. Sam, and with the only other person also a woman named Mari who serves as a nurse, she feels less afraid when Joel steps out with Tommy to let her get changed into some shorts to expose her leg. She winces at each tug and is shaking by the time her jeans are off, and her leg looks like a fucking mess, covered in blood and scratches, prickled with splinters like a porcupine. Dr. Sam presses a wad of gauze tight to an especially deep gouge that starts weeping blood the moment her leg is free. 

Joel’s back at her side the moment he gets the all-clear, and she curls up against him as best she can without pulling her leg completely free of Dr. Sam and Mari. Safe against him, she largely tunes out everything else. Joel strokes one hand gently over her hair, and with the few words she catches, she gathers that Joel is talking with Dr. Sam about what medications she can’t take. When she peeks up at the sight of motion, she finds Tommy settling in a chair with a sleeve rolled up, Mari setting up a needle and empty IV bag. When he sees her looking, he gives her a wink, and she gives him the best smile she can manage. 

“Little pinch,” Dr. Sam warns, and then she jumps at the cold feeling of alcohol swabbing her arm, Joel’s jacket pushed down and her sleeve pushed up for access. 

“Easy,” Joel says, pressing her head back against his chest when she starts to lift it. “Just a pain reliever.” 

She feels like she could almost cry at the way he immediately understands what answer she needs, and it’s a relief to press her face against him and let him take charge of the situation, even when she winces a bit at the prick of the needle and the burn of the injection. There’s the same familiar swell of anxiety when she feels herself losing control as the medication takes hold, but Joel speaks to her softly and slowly rubs her back, and that lets her calm a bit.

“Ready?” He asks her quietly after a while when she hears Dr. Sam speak, and after she has a moment to register the question, she nods. 

Her leg twitches automatically when she feels a tugging sensation, and when Mari holds her ankle down to keep her still, she panics, returned to being pinned to a butcher’s block, a knife swinging down to-

“Hey,” Joel says, gently pulling her to face him with a hand on her cheek. “You’re okay. You’re fine, baby girl. I’m right here. You’re safe.” 

She lets him guide her back down to rest against him, and she fists her hands in the material of his shirt, feeling drowsy and spinny but too keyed up by the way her leg is still restrained to be anywhere close to falling asleep. Joel talks to her softly, and she focuses on the sound of his voice instead of the deeply weird sensations happening to her leg. At some point, Tommy must be done with the blood, because she senses movement and looks up to see him closer, sitting on the edge of the bed and talking to Joel. 

“You’re like a juicebox,” she says, drawing both of their attention. She waves a hand in the direction of the bandage on his arm, not quite managing the coordination needed to touch it. “Slurp.” 

Tommy snorts and reaches out to touch the top of her head gently. 

“Damn, they must have put you on the good stuff,” he says. 

“Silly stuff,” she responds, the term Joel used for it in the hospital to make her feel better about it, when being out of control of her body was prone to sending her into panic attacks. “Makes me silly.” 

“Very silly,” Joel adds, kissing her forehead. It feels nice, and she accidentally clips him on the chin trying to immediately present her head for more. Joel curses and cups his chin, and Tommy laughs. 

“Silly and dangerous,” he says, grinning, even though Joel scowls at him. 

“m always dangerous,” she says, frowning. She’s offended. She doesn’t need silly stuff to be dangerous. “m a fucking…fucking threat!” She says emphatically, nodding her head to make her point despite the way it wobbles without her permission.

Tommy doesn’t look convinced, so she sets out her best case for him. The more she says, though, the less afraid he looks, which is annoying. She’s making really great points. 

“Joel,” she whines, tilting her head back and flopping a bit because her head feels too heavy, “tell him I’m a fucking menc-menan-mec-”

Before she can manage the word she’s looking for, Dr. Sam claps her hands together, which makes her startle and look to her. She’d forgotten she and Mari were in the room with them. 

“All done,” Dr. Sam says brightly. 

It takes her a moment to remember exactly what’s done, but then she sees her leg, thickly bandaged around the thigh and with scratches on her calf. She wiggles her toes just because she’s looking at them and winces a bit. Her ankle is bruised and swollen, which she hadn’t noticed before. 

“My ankle,” she says, concerned. 

“Just a sprain,” Dr. Sam says, but she wasn’t talking to her. She flops her head back to look at Joel. 

“Joel, my ankle,” she says, expecting him to fix it. 

“Yeah, I noticed,” he says, pushing her head back up when it leans too far. 

“It’s broken,” she states. “Forever.” 

Joel snorts. 

“Just a sprain, baby,” he says. “I promise.” 

“Super promise?” She persists. Ankles are fucking important. She needs to be clear. 

“Super promise,” Joel says, kissing her head, which seems like a good way to seal a promise. 

“Okay,” she says, soothed, resting her head against him again. When she moves, something tugs at her, and she frowns up at a bag of blood that’s nearly empty, tracing it down to an IV in her arm. “Joel!” She says, alarmed, but when she reaches for it, a large hand wraps around hers gently. 

“You’re okay,” he says, and she frowns up at him. She waggles her arm in demonstration of what’s happened to her, which is not okay, and he releases her hand to brush her hair back from her face. “You just needed some blood, that’s all.” 

“What? My blood not good enough for you?” Tommy speaking makes her look to him, frowning. He smiles teasingly. “Made it myself and everything.” 

“Hm,” she says, pressing her lips together. If Joel says it’s just blood, then it must be, and it’s someone else’s blood for once and not hers, which is new. They took lots of blood from her in the hospital, but now that she looks at it, it’s too high to be coming from her. Blood goes down, she’s pretty sure. It always does during her period, at least. “It’s your blood?” She asks Tommy, and he nods. 

“Cross my heart.” 

“Are we related now?” She asks, a little pleased by the idea. “We’ve got the same blood.”

“Well,” Tommy says, “given that I’ve already had the vaccine from your stem cells, I’d say we already were, but now we’re double-blood.”

“That’s better than single-blood,” she informs him solemnly. She doesn’t actually know how blood math works, but double sounds better than single. Before Tommy can respond, though, Joel speaks. 

“Why don’t you get some sleep, baby?” He asks her, and when she opens her mouth to inform him that she’s never been more awake, actually, he starts playing with her hair, which is cheating because it always makes her sleepy. 

Before she can let him know he’s not playing fair, though, she’s asleep. 

*

When she wakes, she’s in motion, but the smell of the shirt beneath her cheek and the feel of the arms holding her lets her know who’s got her. She rubs her cheek sleepily against Joel’s shoulder, feeling muzzy and tired. She yawns so wide her jaw almost cracks, and she makes a sleepy noise as she turns her face against him more to hide from the light peeking up over the tops of the houses. 

“You awake?” He asks softly, and she nods, face still against his neck. “Don’t worry. Just taking you home.” 

Reassured, she falls asleep once more, confident that Joel will get her where she needs to go. 

*

As it turns out, crutches fucking suck, making her so unwieldy that Joel doesn’t let her go up and down the stairs on her own for the first few days, staying right behind her or in front of her in case she falls. They’re just a little too big for her–which is the story of her fucking life–and it makes her clumsy, prone to tripping or misstepping on her one good foot. With her leg still so tender even with the painkillers Joel has her take on a strict schedule, she’s stuck with loose pajama pants or shorts, though the latter leaves her cold, which means she can’t really leave the house even if she weren’t so helpless on her crutches. 

With all of the practical realities of her injury to deal with, they don’t have much time to actually talk about the why behind her getting hurt, at least not at first. 

Finally, though, she can’t live with the uncertainty a moment longer, and she hobbles her way to Joel’s door, finding him sitting on his bed with a book. Loud as she is right now, he heard her coming, and he shuts his book and tosses it lightly to the nightstand, moving to make room for her beside him. She settles, tentatively at first and then relaxing against him when he doesn’t shove her off. 

“You ready to talk about that little note?” He asks, and if it weren’t for the warm arm he has around her shoulders, the question and the tone it’s asked in would make her flee. 

“I didn’t want you to worry,” she says. 

“I came home and my kid left me a goodbye note and bolted,” he says dryly. “I was always going to worry.” 

She fidgets with the quilt underneath them, picking at a loose thread. 

“Do you hate me?” She finally asks, and there’s a moment of stillness before Joel’s moving, pushing gently at her chin until she’s looking up at him. 

“Ellie Williams,” he says severely, “I could never hate you. You hear me? I don’t care how bad we might fight. That’s never going to happen.” 

“But you left,” she says, and he closes his eyes and takes a breath before he opens them again. 

“I did,” he says. “I was upset, and I didn’t want to snap at you. I was coming back, Ellie.” 

She tugs free of his hold and ducks her head, feeling her face heat. 

“You can’t just bolt like that. I will always find you, kiddo, so you might as well give it up now. You stay and we talk it through.” 

“I thought…” She bites the inside of her cheek, wondering if she should finish what she thought when the rest of her logic was so clearly dead fucking wrong. “I thought you were going to ask me to leave. That’s why-that’s why I ran. I didn’t…want you to do that.” 

“Ellie,” he says, but he doesn’t sound angry. He sounds tired, if anything. Still, he’s strong when he gently shifts her to sit across his lap, moving her leg carefully so he won’t jolt it. When she’s settled, she rests her head against his chest and closes her eyes when he strokes a hand over her hair. “You’re my kid,” he tells her, resting his cheek on top of her head. “Mine. Until the end, you got that?” 

After a moment, she nods. She doesn’t know if she believes it yet, not really, not after a lifetime of being kicked to the curb the moment she was no longer what someone wanted her to be. 

But fuck, does she want to believe it. 

“Ask you to leave, fuck’s sake,” he says, the thinnest thread of amusement in his voice. “Sometimes I wonder what’s going on in that head of yours.” 

“Lots of space thoughts,” she tries in a tentative joke, bolstered when he snorts. “Dinosaurs, too. Lots of science stuff.” 

“Not a lot of common sense stuff.” 

“It’s not…common sense for me,” she says. “I know you’ve had a kid before, but I…” She doesn’t actually know how to finish that sentence. “I don’t know how to have a…you, I guess.” She pauses, for a moment, wondering if she should push it further before she decides fuck it. He just said no take-backs. Time to test it. “I know you’re not my dad,” she confesses quietly. “But you’re…you’re like a dad, like my dad. I’ve never had one, and I-I don’t know the rules and stuff.”

He doesn’t respond at once, tugging her tighter to him and kissing her temple. 

“First rule,” he says, voice warm. “You don’t ever leave a note and bolt again.”

“Fair enough.” 

“Second rule, you don’t wander into decrepit barns and almost get killed by infected.” 

“That seems like a very specific rule.” 

“You’re a very specific kid.” 

Well, fair. 

“You ready to tell me why we were having that fight in the first place?” He asks, and his tone says that he clearly wants her to, but that he’ll also accept it if she doesn’t want to just yet. 

It’s that that lets her say it.

“David was a teacher,” she blurts out in one rush of words, staring at the wall. She can tell by the way Joel goes still that he understands everything else she can’t say about that. 

“Your teacher here-did he-” 

“No!” She hurries to say, because Joel’s voice is suddenly fucking dangerous, and while she might not trust Mr. Nelson, she’d rather not have his blood on her hands because Joel doesn’t tolerate any threat to her. 

He pushes her up to sit back and looks at her carefully, like he’s trying to work out if she’s lying or not, and she drops her head against his shoulder to get out of the scrutiny. 

“I promise,” she says. “I just…” She trails off with a frustrated huff. Joel brings one hand up to rub circles between her shoulder blades, and she leans into the contact. “I just…wonder. You know? Anyone can fake it. I-I don’t know how to forget about what could happen. And sometimes I’m so busy worrying about that-” She cuts herself off, so ashamed at being so weak. Mr. Nelson hasn’t even fucking done anything. She’s the one working herself up into a tizzy about something that hasn’t even happened. 

“So busy worrying about it?” Joel prompts, leaning back enough to let her relax against him some. 

“It’s like…it’s like I can’t breathe sometimes. Like I’m just waiting for-for a gun to come out, or the door to shut, or him to-” She cuts herself off, taking a deep breath when Joel presses firmly against her back. It’s their own signal for her to try matching his breathing, their own little way of trying to pull her out of spirals in public without making a scene, and she knows he’s doing it now so he won’t interrupt her. She matches him for three breaths and then speaks again, feeling a little more centered. “None of the other kids think about this stuff. But I…I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel like such…such a freak around them.” 

He doesn’t respond immediately, and she can practically feel him weighing his words. Pressed against him, warm and safe, she’s willing to wait. 

“You’re not a freak, Ellie,” he says, in the same soft voice he uses after her nightmares. “You’re a kid who’s gone through more shit than any one person should ever have to. It’s not your fault that you think like this. It doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. It means you’ve gone through some truly fucked up things, and those things still affect you.” 

“I don’t fit here,” she says quietly. “I don’t…I don’t know if I’ll ever fit. What if I don’t?” 

“What do you mean?”

“You fit,” she says. “Everyone likes you. Everyone respects you. You’re good at talking to people. But I’m…I’m not like that. And it matters, here, if I get along with people or not. This is supposed to be a forever kind of place, but what if I fuck it up? What if I make everyone hate me?” 

“People don’t hate you,” he says, moving one hand up to cup her head. “And you fit in better than you think.” 

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she accuses. It’s a nice thought, but she knows what being a misfit feels like. She doesn’t have a glowing history of making friends. 

At least not friends that live very long. 

“Ms. Benally,” he names the woman in charge of the younger kids at school, “just told me yesterday how much she appreciated you helping out at recess when her assistant was sick last week. Said she didn’t even have to ask you, you just jumped in and started letting the little ones use you like a jungle gym. And Yvonne,” the woman in charge of teaching archery at school, “said you’re a natural. She asked if she could take you out hunting some time to let you get some field practice in. And Mr. Nelson told me you were best in the class with polynomials. I don’t know what those are,” she snorts at this, “but apparently you’re a whiz with ‘em. He said the other kids asked you to explain them after class because you had them down so fast.” 

“That’s not…fitting in, though. That’s just being good at stuff.” She’s good at being good at stuff. Even in FEDRA school where she was a certified troublemaker, she made good grades. It was probably one of her only saving graces. 

“That’s people appreciating that you’re a real special kid, Ellie. And it’s not just your teachers. I don’t know what you talk about when you’re with ‘em, but you’re always one of the first kids the others pull in for games, even basketball.” She’s objectively fucking awful at basketball, which he knows personally after several failed afternoons of him trying to help her get better at it, so it’s certainly not skill helping her out with that one, at least. 

“They just feel bad for me,” she persists, mulishly. “I’m just the weird new kid. Their parents probably make them invite me or something. More communism.” She’s still not totally clear on what all communism is, but Joel teases Tommy about it all the time, so it seems like a safe thing to blame. 

“Or you’re the cool, mysterious kid,” he offers. “And trust me, telling teenagers what to do isn’t that easy.” This he says dryly, and he nods to her leg. “If they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t listen.” 

“It doesn’t feel like that, though,” she says, a little frustrated. She wants to believe him, so, so badly, but she just…can’t. “It feels like everyone just knows there’s something wrong with me, all the time.” 

“What color were Tommy’s socks today?” 

She sits up and leans back at that, staring at him. Fuck, he might actually be getting senile. 

“What color were Tommy’s socks today?” He asks again. 

“Are you having a fucking stroke or something?” She asks, a little alarmed. It’s not that she was necessarily enjoying their talk, but the redirection is bad even by Joel standards. 

“Humor me,” he says with a little smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “What color?” 

She genuinely gives it her best shot to play along, but she draws a blank. 

“I don’t fucking know,” she finally says. “Black, maybe?” 

“I’d bet Tommy would know if you asked him. But that doesn’t mean anyone else would notice.” 

Ah. He’s arrived at a point. Not a stroke then. 

She settles down again with her head on his shoulder. 

“I’m pretty sure staring at my math teacher to make sure he isn’t a monster is a little different than socks,” she points out, and he makes a noise of agreement. 

“Yeah,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean anyone else notices, or that they can guess why. For all they know, you’re just a very focused student. Besides, teenagers are all weird, trust me. Sarah and her friends had a ketchup and cottage cheese phase. I know you feel like you stick out for all the wrong reasons, but I need you to believe me when I tell you that no one else notices as much as you do, kiddo. You’re living it, that’s why it feels so obvious to you. That doesn’t mean it’s obvious to other people.” 

“It was easier at FEDRA school. We all had our assignments there. It didn’t matter if we got along or not. It wasn’t important like it is here.” 

“Were you good at shooting a rifle when you first tried it?” He asks, knowing the answer already. “New things are hard. It doesn’t mean they’ll be hard forever.” 

“But what if they are?” She persists. 

“Then you talk to me about it,” he says, squeezing the back of her neck gently. “And we work it out together. You don’t have to figure it all out on your own, Ellie. That’s what I’m here for. I know you’re a smart kid, and I know you can take care of yourself, but you’re not all on your own. That’s what family’s for. But you have to tell me things so I can help you. I’d like to think I know you pretty well by now, but I’m not a mind reader, kiddo. I want you to know you can lean on me when you need to. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t.” 

“It wasn’t that,” she says, wrapping her arms around his chest in a hug. “I was just…embarrassed, to have to tell you.” 

“You forgetting how many times I held your hair back in that hospital while you puked your guts up?” He asks teasingly. “Thought we’d gotten past being embarrassed around each other.” 

She pinches his side, and he flinches before he laughs, wrapping his arms around her in return, pressing a kiss to her temple. 

“In case I haven’t made it clear enough before: you’re my kid, Ellie. I’m always gonna be on your side, always. That’s how the whole thing works. There’s nothing you can’t tell me, nothing that’s gonna change that. The only thing I care about is making sure you’re okay, and whatever I need to do to make that happen, I will.” 

Joel overwhelms her sometimes with his devotion, and this is one of those moments. For a long moment all she can do is press her face against his shoulder and breathe. 

“I don’t think I can do math class,” she says. “Maybe one day, but not now. It makes me feel sick sometimes, being there. That’s why I started skipping.” 

“Okay,” he says with an ease that makes her eyes sting. “I’ll talk to Mr. Nelson, see what we can work out.” 

“You don’t have to-” She starts, but she can feel Joel shaking his head. 

“You don’t have to do everything on your own,” he tells her softly, resting his chin on her head. “I’ll talk to him, see if we can get another kid to grab your assignments for you. We can find someone else to tutor you if we need to. I think Mrs. Singh down the road taught math at a college. We’ll work it out. Sound like a plan?” 

She nods, unable to speak just yet. How overwhelming, to have someone hear her and immediately come up with a way to fix it, to not belittle her for being stupid or acting like a baby. 

“Your other classes okay?” He asks, and she nods. “You sure?” 

“Yeah,” she says, trying not to sniffle the way she wants to, so relieved by having a plan that she could cry. “I don’t like sitting away from the door, but it’s not as bad with them. I know it’s dumb-” 

“It’s not,” he says, squeezing her gently. “That fucker at Silver Lake hurt you, Ellie. You feel how you feel about it. It’s not dumb.” 

God, she loves him. 

“You want me to talk to them about making sure you can sit by the door?” He asks, and she smiles, a bit, at how seriously he asks it. He would, she knows. He’d probably put a name tag on it just for her to make sure no one else ever took her seat. 

“Nah,” she says, “if someone tries to take it, I’ll just fight ‘em.” 

“Please don’t,” he says, though he sounds amused. “We just solved a problem. Let’s not start new ones so soon.” 

“I’ll think about it,” she says, making her voice teasing. 

“Well, while you’re thinking about that, think about how stupid it was to sneak out of the walls.” 

“Am I in trouble?” She asks, her voice small. She hasn’t actually been in real trouble with Joel before, their fight aside, and the prospect of it makes her more than a little afraid, killing a bit of her relief with their new plan for school. 

“Well,” he says dryly, “I think getting your leg ripped open and thinking you were going to die for several hours is worse than anything I could come up with.” 

“Thank God for that,” she says, and he snorts. He reaches out and traces his fingers lightly over her hair, and she closes her eyes and leans against him more, wrapping her arms around his chest again. Something about how big he is is comforting, always has been. She usually hates how small she is, but times like this, she doesn’t mind it so much when it makes Joel feel large enough to protect her from anything. 

Even her own decision-making, apparently. 

“But if you ever pull a runner like that again, you’ll be grounded until you’re 40.” 

She laughs before she yawns, exhausted in the wake of such a heavy talk, and she wiggles down a little further to rest her cheek above his heart. 

“Deal,” she says through another yawn, relaxing already with the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear. 

They don’t talk after that, content just to sit together, and she can feel herself slipping quickly into sleep. Joel chuckles softly when her head lolls almost all the way off of him, and he readjusts to support her better, willing to play pillow for now. 

“Night, kiddo,” he says softly. “Sweet dreams.” 

She’s asleep before she even remembers to respond.