It’s f*cking cold.
It’s f*cking cold and his goddamn boot’s falling apart and Ellie’s f*cking running ahead even though he’s told her, time and again, to stay where he can see her. Stay with arm’s reach, especially out here. Just because they haven’t run into trouble doesn’t mean they won’t, especially if that couple’s warnings were right.
Death.
The old woman’s voice echoes again through his ears, the chill down his spine now having nothing whatsoever to do with the frigid air. Stupid, really, to let himself be made anxious by some frightened old people living alone out in the woods.
Except she hadn’t seemed frightened when she’d said it - she’d seemed…sure. Certain and uncaring about it, almost.
Joel had done his best not to let her words f*ck with him too much, at least not where Ellie might be able to tell, but they’d reverberated around in his head last night as he’d sat by the fire and watched her sleep.
Was that what he was leading her towards out here? Death?
Sure as sh*t seemed like it some days - they were barely scraping by at times, their clothes doing just enough to keep them from freezing to death, his hunts doing just enough to keep them from starving. All it would take would be one f*ck up, one miscalculation, and they could be screwed. Joel could be the reason Ellie dies out in the wilderness instead of making it safely to the Fireflies.
But that’s not something he can contemplate, if he wants to keep his f*cking sanity while out here looking for his brother in this frozen wasteland of Wyoming. He can’t let himself think about Ellie dead, about his mistakes costing her life, about looking to his side and not seeing her there.
Whether Joel likes it or not - whether he’s willing to admit it or not - Ellie’s become…integral. In a way he doesn’t know what to do with or how to handle, and so he does nothing with it except stuff it back down inside of him where it can’t see the light of day.
A breeze drifts by, disturbing the branches of the trees around him, and Joel peers ahead to see that Ellie’s now gotten to be completely out of sight ahead of him. The anger at her disobeying one of his most important rules spikes through him, easier to deal with than anything else, and Joel latches onto it as he co*cks his head, trying to listen with his good ear.
No sound of her footsteps, no call of her voice back to him.
No birds cawing in the trees, no noise from nature around them.
Unease slithers between his shoulder blades, and Joel slips the rifle off his back to hoist it against his shoulder. “Ellie?”
No response, and Joel steps forward as quietly as possible, snow and frost crunching underfoot.
“Ellie?” She better not be trying to f*ck with him right now, trying not to prank him or sneak up on him or something. She oughta know better than that by now. “Ellie, I swear to f*ckin’ –”
A shriek pierces the air around him, sending birds scattering into the skies, and the cold air in Joel’s lungs freezes into something solid and immovable.
“JOEL!”
His feet start moving without him even thinking, running ahead at a speed that has his knees screaming, his body protesting, throat frozen as he tries to suck in cold air –
His f*cked up boot, that stupid f*cking boot, catches on something and sends him sprawling into the snow, the rifle slipping from his grasp. He gets up again as quick as he can, scrambling to pick up the gun, and pushes himself to keep running. His right foot feels frozen, snow and ice forcing their way in through the holes of his shoe.
Another yell rends the air, another high-pitched wail for help. It tears through Joel like a gunshot, pushing him to run just a little faster. He’s gotta get to Ellie, he’s –
The tackle comes from his right, sending him flying back into the snow. His left shoulder makes jarring contact with the ground and the rifle goes sailing away, far out of his reach. The air’s knocked clean from him when he lands, and it takes him a second to figure out which way’s up, where the threat is.
And then there’s a weight over his midsection, a fist glancing off his cheek. Hands close around his throat, squeezing, and it’s only a lucky f*cking flail of his arm that has his hand closing around the rock. He swings it up, catching the man on the side of his head and knocking him off, and Joel sucks air desperately back into his chest as he rolls over and tries to push to his feet.
A scuffling sound pulls his attention just as his hands find purchase on the rifle again, and he braces it against his shoulder, turning to –
“Oh, I wouldn’t f*cking do that.”
Joel stops, all the muscles in his body locked up, the rifle half-raised and the barrel pointed at the knees of a mangy man with a thick neck and stringy hair. He’s got one hand locked around the back of Ellie’s neck, fingertips gripping hard enough that even from here Joel can tell she’ll have bruises.
His other hand is pressing a thin blade against the front of her throat.
He nods at the gun in Joel’s hands. “Drop it.”
Joel complies, letting the rifle fall from his grasp and raising both hands up to his shoulders. “Let her go.” It doesn’t come out as demanding as it should, as firm and strong as he usually spews orders with. It wavers in time with the stutter in his heartbeat and his vision narrows to a pinprick with Ellie’s wide, frightened eyes at the end of it.
The man grins, a sharp, leering thing that shows off missing and broken teeth and has a gaping pit opening Joel’s stomach. “Nah.” He shakes Ellie ever so slightly, a whimper escaping her as his knife nicks her with the movement and a small bead of blood rolls down her neck. “Don’t think we will.” He looms over her, face ducking down to press to the side of her head, and Ellie flinches away, more droplets of blood following the first. “She looks…fun.”
A chorus of chuckles meets Joel’s ears, and for the first time registers the presence of others, arrayed in the trees around them. The man who tackled him has staggered to his feet, blood smeared on the side of his face, and he joins the four others standing there. Three men and a woman, all in various stages of disarray. Some of them are eyeing Joel with a murderous hunger in their eyes, one that doesn’t scare him nearly as much as the ones looking at Ellie with an entirely different type of hunger on their faces.
The woman is looking at none of them, eyes averted to the ground. Her hair is limp, dirty, hangs in her face but not nearly enough to hide the bruise decorating her cheekbone.
“I’ll give you anything,” Joel offers, his voice edging towards pleading. “All our supplies, guns, whatever you want. Just…just let her go.”
The man smirks, tilting his head ever so slightly. Someone moves around Joel, but he doesn’t turn to watch, doesn’t do anything other than keep all his focus on Ellie. She stares back at him, fear written on every line of her face and he can see it written in her eyes, how she’s begging for him to get them out of this.
It’s alright, he wants to tell her. You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, we’re gonna get out of this. It’s alright.
But then a boot connects with the back of his left knee, sending him sprawling into the snow with barely enough time to catch himself. Pain ricochets up both of his legs, one of his hands landing on a protruding rock and forcing a grunt out from between his lips.
He shoves up, trying to get back to his feet, but then a hand tangles in his hair and yanks his head back sharply, forcing him to hold it at an awkward angle. Joel waits to hear the click of a safety retracting, waits to get executed here in the snow while Ellie watches and he can’t do a goddamn thing about it because he’s too old and too slow. Just like he was in the museum, just like he was in Kansas City - he should always have known he would fail Ellie and that it would end like this.
Except there’s no barrel pressed against the back of his head - instead there’s a knife to his own throat as well, pressing hard enough to draw blood immediately.
“No!” Ellie shrieks, leaning forward until the blade bites into her neck and another small spill of blood coats her skin. The man holding her drops his hand and instead grips her neck tighter and pulls, tossing Ellie back like a ragdoll. She lands hard, pinned by a boot on her wrist when she tries to stand, and for the first time Joel sees the woman move. It’s a flinch, barely anything, just a twitch of her hand like she wants to reach for Ellie too, like she wants to shield her.
But she stays where she is, eyes darting around until they meet Joel’s and flick away again.
Help us, he wants to beg. Please. Don’t let them hurt her.
It does no good, and Ellie lets out a mewl of pain when the boot on her wrist presses down harder.
“Stop!” Joel snaps, leaning forward even as it makes more blood roll down his neck, hot and tacky. “Leave her alone!”
The leader - Joel can only assume that’s what he is, since nobody else has moved a muscle without his say-so - steps away from Ellie and crouches in front of him, smiling that same maniacal, broken grin. “She ain’t your concern anymore, man.” Behind him, Joel can see the woman gingerly helping Ellie to her feet, a hand fisted in the back of her jacket. “But don’t worry - your daughter’s in real good hands now.”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to correct him, instinctive like it had been with Henry even if the words now felt misformed in his mouth; he swallows it.
“I’ll go with you,” Ellie calls out, her voice firm, and acid eats its way up to Joel’s throat. “I’ll go, just…just don’t f*cking kill him, okay?” She’s leaning forward, straining against the woman’s hold on her jacket. At some point her beanie fell into the snow, and she looks so goddamn young , all wide eyes and pale skin and underfed frame. “I’ll go,” she says again.
Her name butts up against the back of his teeth, Joel holding it back just barely - but he refuses to give these f*ckers the satisfaction of knowing it. “No,” he grits out instead, “absolutely not.”
Ellie doesn’t look at him, sticking her shoulders back defiantly even as she trembles when the long-haired man stands up and turns back to her. He strides over, snagging her chin with a hand caked in dirt and tilting it up.
“So desperate to save Dad’s life, hmm?” He chuckles mirthlessly, and Joel doesn’t have time to dissect how relieved he is that Ellie doesn’t correct him. “Don’t matter if we kill him now or not, sweetheart. We leave him here and he starves, or he does the dumb f*cking thing –” he shoots a warning look over his shoulder at Joel “– of trying to come after us and save you.” The last two words are mocking, almost a challenge, and the blade against Joel’s throat presses when he leans forward a millimeter more. It’s stupid, he knows, there probably ain’t much skin left between the knife and his carotid, but there’s no goddamn way he’s just gonna sit here and watch them take Ellie off to –
He can’t even f*cking think it. He knows what they’ll do to her.
“He won’t follow,” Ellie tells them, flicking a glance in Joel’s direction. It’s so reminiscent of Kansas City, of her trying to get him to tell Sam and Henry that everything was fine so they’d put their guns down, that Joel wishes for a time machine to take them all the way back there. Sam and Henry hadn’t been real threats, Joel had always known that.
These men are the worst kinds of threats.
The man pretends to consider her words for a moment, hand still squeezing her chin. “And what do I get out of it if I do, hmm?”
Ellie goes even paler if possible, throat constricting as she swallows, but she keeps her eyes on him. “Like he said - all our stuff. Guns, what food we have, everything. And I’ll go with you. Just leave him alive.”
He snorts, shooting another look over at Joel. The hand in his hair tightens, pulling his head back even further. “Thing is,” he says, turning back to look at her, “we already got you. And your stuff. But we got no use for your old man here. Don’t wanna have to worry about him on our trail, trying to track you down.” His hand jerks back and forth, taking Ellie’s face with it in a rapid shake, before he lets go and she stumbles backwards. The woman catches her, steadying hands on her shoulders.
Even with the distance between them, Joel can see the flaring red marks on her cheeks from his fingers, smudges of dirt marring her skin. God, he wishes he were just five or ten years younger again, quicker like he used to be, able to get the upper hand on these men. He’d start by breaking every single one of that man’s fingers, peeling off his fingernails, slicing off skin in square inches. Every f*cking thing he’s ever thought about doing to someone who double-crossed him, he’d happily do to this f*cking piece of sh*t manhandling his –
“But you know,” he scratches lazily at his chin, gesturing for one of his men to pick up Joel’s backpack and gun, “I’m feeling pretty generous right now. It’s pretty close to Christmas, so why not a little Christmas spirit, hmm?” He jerks his chin at the man holding Joel, who lets go so fast that Joel goes sprawling sideways in surprise. He notices then, for the first time, what the men have not.
Ellie’s backpack, half-buried in the snow just behind one of the men. Her gun oughta still be in there, and if he can just get her to get it…or if he can get to it in time. Once they’re walking away, maybe.
The leader crouches in front of Joel again, blocking his view of the backpack. “We’re gonna go now, and you’re gonna stay right f*cking here.” His finger tip jabs sharply at the ground. “I’m being nice this one time since your little girl asked so polite, but I won’t do it again - we’ll shoot you on sight. Don’t worry though,” his hand reaches up and smacks Joel on the cheek, the sting of it sharp in the cold air. “We’re gonna take real good care of her for you.”
Joel snarls – launches himself forward, backpack and gun forgotten, already planning the ways he’s gonna take this man apart even if the rest of them descend on him –
And gets yanked back by his jacket collar, by the hand there that he hadn’t even felt. He’d forgotten, in his anger, that there was still a man behind him. The front of his jacket and shirts are pulled snug against his neck, choking the air from him and burning as it chafes the sliced skin there. He lands on his back, gasping, already scrambling up again.
The other man tsks above him. “This is what I get for being such a nice guy,” he says mockingly.
Joel’s halfway to his feet when he registers his own rifle in the man’s hands, hears Ellie’s shriek of don’t! before the butt of the gun cracks into the side of his head, and everything snaps into darkness.
–-
Something rocks gently under him, rolling side to side. Pain burns on the side of his head and his neck, his fingers tingling and stinging inside his gloves. There’s pressure under his abdomen, white noise filling his ears. Joel thinks he throws up - bile trickling from between his lips, down, down, down, to whatever’s beneath him, if anything is - but he can’t manage to get his eyes open, and then it all fades out again.
–-
Light sears into his eyes when Joel manages to crack them open infinitesimally, blinding overhead lights beaming down and sending waves of pain rippling through his head. He slams them shut, for all the good it does; nausea bubbles up again until he coughs - chokes - and hands turn him to his side for more sick to fall from his mouth and echo hollowly into what seems to be a basin.
His eyes slam shut again, a moan of pain escaping him, and then someone murmurs something nearby. He can’t make out the words, the tone, if it’s a man or a woman, how many there are, anything. No idea where he’s at or how he got there - everything feels like smoke, faint and impossible to grasp, thoughts slipping away before they can fully form.
“The lights are off now,” a voice says softly from next to him, just barely louder than a whisper. Joel still flinches. “I’m sorry about that, I should’ve turned them off when we finished examining you.” Fingertips prod along his wrist, his side, both flaring with pain for reasons he can’t remember. There’s a pressure in his left arm, something constant and slightly stinging, not unfamiliar but just beyond his grasp at the moment. Something lifts from his neck and then presses back down, and when a hand lands gently on the side of his head, Joel still jerks away on instinct. It f*cking – hurts.
Why does it hurt?
“You have a concussion,” the voice says again, and the hands lift from him, “but we can’t tell if the damage is more severe than that at this time. Can you tell me your name?”
He tries - he really does - but all he can manage is a pained grunt, his throat raw and his thoughts muddled.
“Can you tell me what you were doing out in the woods?”
No, Joel realizes with a frisson of panic, he can’t. Everything’s too blurry, too out of reach. He’s got no idea what she’s talking about – concussion, head wound, none of it.
“That’s fine,” the voice says soothingly. “I’m going to give you a mild sedative for now. It’ll wear off in an hour or so, and I’ll be back to check on you then.”
Joel wants to say no, wants to tell her not to sedate him, wants to tell her there’s something wrong, something he’s forgetting that he knows is really goddamn important –
But the words won’t come to him, and he slips under once more.
–-
The lights are still off when Joel wakes up again, and this time he pries his eyes open, one at a time, and keeps them open. It hurts - even the faint light of the machines next to him –
Joel blinks, traces his gaze more carefully around his surroundings. It looks like…a hospital room?
There’s wires attached to his chest and connected to a glowing monitor, his heart rate beeping steadily along on it. A bag of fluids hangs above him, connected to an IV in his arm that Joel stares at for a long moment, not fully comprehending what he’s seeing. He has to be hallucinating, right? This is - whatever caused his headache also scrambled his brains and now he’s hallucinating.
f*ck, it’s not just a headache either, though that’s definitely the worst of it. His right wrist is throbbing, there’s a burning pain on his neck, and his whole body just aches.
What the hell happened?
The door in front of him opens, a short woman with a long braid stepping carefully through. She’s in scrubs, furthering his belief that he’s in some sort of hallucination or fever dream, until her eyes brighten when she sees him, and she says “You’re awake!” Before Joel can respond, she’s ducked back out into the hallway.
It’s only a minute or two before she returns - though it feels like an eternity, and Joel can already feel his eyelids slipping shut - and this time two others trail her: a tall, heavyset white man with dark hair, and a Black woman in jeans and a zipped-up jacket. Of the three of them, she’s the only one with a gun on her hip, and Joel immediately wishes for one of his own. He doesn’t know these people or where he’s at, and he’s already disadvantaged with the way his head screams in anger at any movement.
Now he’s outnumbered and outgunned too.
The first woman approaches him slowly, her round face set in an easy smile that Joel can’t return. Her hands are efficient and sure as she makes note of his heart rate and checks the IV bag attached to him before looping a blood pressure cuff around his arm. “How are you feeling?”
“Been better,” he manages, even as she reaches forward and carefully angles his head to the side to examine him. The movement makes everything swim, and Joel squeezes his eyes shut.
“My name’s Joss,” she says. Her touch is light as she guides his head back again, and then his bed is moving ever so slightly, rising until he’s inclined instead of laying flat. He doesn’t open his eyes again until the motion stops, and Joss inclines her head to the two that came with her. “This is Tristan, and Maria. Can you tell me your name?” She nudges gently on his chin until he tilts his head back and she peels up what seems to be a bandage across the front of his neck.
It comes to him this time, and he forces out “Joel” around the slight pressure on his throat as she changes the bandage. Behind her, Maria shifts, hands tucking into her pockets.
“Joel,” Joss repeats. “And do you know where you are?”
“No.”
Her hands lift and she steps away from him, giving him a final onceover. “What’s the last thing you remember?” There’s a clipboard hooked to the end of his bed, and she jots a few things on it before replacing it. It’s all so eerily similar to Before, like when he’d had his appendix out, that it throws him. Joss repeats the question, and Joel blinks, tries to think back a little bit. Nothing comes to him, just a rising feeling of panic and that same unease in his gut, like he’s forgetting something crucial. “I don’t –”
“That’s fine,” she assures him. “It looks like you got hit pretty hard, so you’ll likely be experiencing some disorientation for a couple of days at a minimum.”
Days? An alarm rings faintly in the back of his mind, pressing at him that he doesn’t have days, there’s something missing, something he needs to find right now.
Joss gestures to the others in the room. “I’ll be back in another hour to check on you again. In the meantime, Maria will fill you in on where you are and what to expect.”
That doesn’t sound promising at all, and again Joel wishes for a weapon of some sort.
Maria lowers herself into a chair next to him as Joss exits, and Joel notes that Tristan remains behind as well. It’s clear, in the way that the other man crosses his arms and leans against the door, that they want him to know that Maria has back up. Never mind that she’s got a gun and looks more than ready to use it on him should it be necessary - Joel’s an unknown entity to them, and they want to demonstrate strength.
Well, Joel thinks wryly, inhaling through his nose, message received.
Maria leans forward, elbows braced on her knees, and studies him carefully for a long, quiet moment. She seems to be searching for something in his features, eyes flickering this way and that as she takes him in.
“Joel, right?” She asks, and he nods. “Where are you from, Joel?”
It feels like too easy a question. “Texas,” he says slowly, the concept of his home state feeling foreign by now. States and hometowns are a thing of the past, and he’d probably have been better off answering with what QZ he was in last.
Thinking about Boston tugs that fraying thread in his mind, the one ringing the bell that says he’s forgotten something highly significant.
Maria just makes a humming noise, rubbing a hand over her lips. Her nails are trimmed short, clean of dirt or blood or anything he’s used to seeing on people he runs into outside of QZs. Not only that - there’s a wedding ring on her finger, burnished gold and unevenly forged by the looks of it.
Either his hallucination theory is correct, or he’s wound up in some sort of settlement, the kind he and Tess had heard about and dismissed as impractical fairy tales doomed to fail.
His head gives a particularly nasty throb and he winces, eyes squeezing shut as everything blurs at the edges again.
“There’s just a few things I want to discuss with you and then I’ll let you get some rest.” Her voice is soft but firm, not loud but not doing any favors for his blinding headache.
“Alright,” Joel mumbles, not opening his eyes. Hopefully she doesn’t think he’s being intentionally rude, but everything around him - every flicker of the monitor, every beep of his heart rate, every word he forces out - is setting off a cacophony of pain in his skull.
“You’re in a place called Jackson,” she begins. “We’re a settlement, and I am a member of the council that runs it. We do regular patrols in the area surrounding our walls, and a few hours ago myself and others found you unconscious in the woods just a few miles from here. Our best guess is that you took a blow to the head that knocked you out, and you have wounds on your wrist and neck as well. Do you know how you got them?”
Joel tries to think, he really does, even if it f*cking hurts, but there’s nothing coming to him. Nothing filling the increasingly terrifying empty gaps in his mind.
“No,” he replies faintly.
“Do you know why you were out here?”
He inhales slowly through his nose, tries not to let the increasingly suspicious and hostile note to her voice agitate him. “Was…travelin’, I think. Lookin’ for someone.” A piece clicks into place as he says the words, one small bit of the puzzle returned. His brother - Tommy. He’d been looking for him.
The chair squeaks - a grating sound that reverberates through him - and he forces his eyes open again to find Maria staring at him intently. “Who were you looking for?”
As quick as he’d had it, the answer slips away again, the words evaporating on his tongue before he can utter them. “I don’t know,” he tells her, faintly panicked at how uneven his memory seems to be, at all the things he knows he’s missing. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “I can’t f*ckin’ remember, I just…I know we were out here lookin’ for someone.”
“We?” Maria’s brows slam down, hands clasping tightly together. “Were you traveling with someone?”
The agitation in his chest sharpens and twists because this is what he had been forgetting - he hadn’t been alone out there. There’d been someone with him, someone he was supposed to protect, and he lost them.
Joel’s chest heaves, breath stuttering and gasping because he failed, he doesn’t know who or how or what the f*ck happened but he failed. Again.
Maria rises to her feet, words aimed at Tristan that Joel doesn’t quite catch before the other man is opening the door. Joel continues to gasp, tears trickling down his cheeks and the vise around his lungs tightening as the panic snaps and flares inside him, dragging him down as he fights to remember who it was he left behind, who he needs to go save –
And then Joss is there again, carefully placing a mask over his face, his vision blurring - she adjusts something with his IV, the murmur of Maria’s voice and hers blending together, all indistinct rumblings and faint sound. Everything grows more and more distant, fuzziness seeping in again, and Joel realizes they must have given him another sedative.
Don’t, he tries to say, his right hand flailing across his body, digging for the needle in his arm. Don’t, there’s no time, you have to get to her. I can’t let this happen again, I have to get to her, she needs me.
The mask lifts from his face, his head lolling as he looks up at Maria again. She’s frowning down at him, nudging his hand away from the IV in his arm as his increasingly unwieldy fingers attempt to grasp it. Her mouth moves, the sound not reaching Joel’s ears as he fights a losing battle against his eyelids.
It comes to him, in the split second before he fades again, and he tries to push it out past his lips before it’s too late, tries to tell someone what’s wrong. He doesn’t know if he succeeds, his heartbeat a roar in his ears as his whole focus zeroes in on her name before darkness pulls him under again.
Ellie.
–-
Spencer calling him down from the repairs they’re doing on the side of the dining hall isn’t alarming on its own, but panic spirals through Tommy’s gut when he says “You’re needed at the clinic.” There’s only one reason - well, two - that he could be needed at the clinic, and he knows Maria was out on patrol earlier.
He takes off running, bolting down the street with cold air burning his throat, dodging between people and not even bothering to apologize to the ones he bumps into. He doesn’t slow or stop until he’s bursting through the clinic doors and beelining for the main desk.
“Maria –?” is all he manages to get out before there’s a firm hand on his shoulder, and he whirls around to find the woman in question standing in front of him. There’s a groove in her forehead, lower lip caught between her teeth, and even though she’s outwardly fine Tommy can’t help but pat his hands over her cheeks and shoulders before cupping her belly gently.
“Are you –?”
Maria’s hands land over his, squeezing gently, and she gives him a careful smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes, and Tommy’s anxiety ratchets up. “We’re fine,” she assures him. “Both of us. But I needed to talk to you about something.”
She guides him away from the desk and starts slowly down the main hall. The clinic is a repurposed shelter, one long hallway extending from the front room and branching into a T with rooms of various sizes on either side. It had taken a fair amount of repairs and retrofitting - and a lot of scavenged parts from other buildings in Jackson and whatever could be found on patrols - but it was now a relatively smooth-running medical facility. They wouldn’t be doing surgery on anyone any time soon, but they could handle most issues that came through.
Maria nudges him to the left at the T and all the way down to the end of the hall, stopping outside of a closed door. When she turns back to look at him, she’s got what he affectionately refers to as her Council Face on. He really ain’t used to seeing it aimed at him, though.
“Out on patrol today,” she begins, her voice all brisk business, “we found a man unconscious in the snow. He seems to have been hit pretty hard in the head, and he had wounds to his wrist and throat as well. He stayed unconscious for the duration of the return trip, and when he woke up earlier he was disoriented and confused. He did give me his name but didn’t know what he was doing out here - he mentioned traveling with someone but couldn’t remember who or why.” She hesitates, the look on her face slipping to something a little more…worried? Nervous, even. “We found that backpack near him –” Maria gestures to a chair opposite them, and Tommy turns to see a blue and green backpack resting on it, a fluffy keychain dangling from the zipper “– and before he passed out again, he said Ellie.”
Tommy tilts his head, gaze flicking between her and the closed door next to them. “What’d you need me here for? He a problem, aggressive or somethin’?”
“No, he –” Maria sighs, the Council Face fading as she rubs a hand over her eyes. The dull hallway light glints off her wedding band, and a little flicker of pride sparks to life in Tommy’s chest, as it always does when he sees it. “I’m hoping you can confirm his identity for me. I have my suspicions but…” She turns away, hand coming up to rest on the doorknob. “God, I hope I’m wrong.”
Foreboding thrums through him, and Tommy feels like he’s watching in slow motion as his wife turns the handle and pushes the door open to reveal a bed, a monitor, a bag of fluids hooked up to –
“Joel,” Tommy breathes in astonishment. He slips carefully past Maria, crossing the room in rapid strides and drinking in the sight of his big brother. Joel’s eyes are shut, his breathing steady, but the left side of his face is mottled shades of purple and yellow, darkest just above his eye. There’s a white bandage taped across his neck, small scratches littering his hands and more sizable bruising on his right wrist. He’s smaller than Tommy remembers, like he ain’t been eating right and lost weight, and he’s got far more gray hairs and wrinkles than he used to.
“So it is him,” Maria murmurs from behind him. “He said his name, said he was from Texas and was out here looking for someone but couldn’t remember who. I thought he looked like that picture you have of him and Sarah, give or take twenty years.” There’s something like disbelief in her voice.
“Yeah.” Tommy’s eyes rove over Joel again, nearly afraid to blink in case he disappears. “Yeah it’s him alright. Jesus f*ck, Joel, what the hell are you doin’ out here?”
“I’d like the answer to that too,” Maria says, a sharp edge to her words, and Tommy lifts his eyes to meet hers. “How did he know where to find you?”
“I didn’t tell him where we were,” he answers, and Maria snorts, the line of her jaw going taut. “I didn’t,” he repeats, and it’s the truth. “But he knew I came out this way with the Fireflies when I left Boston, and the last messages I sent to him came outta the Cody tower.”
Maria just hums, eyes piercing him even in the near-darkness of the room. “And when were those messages sent?”
Tempting though it is to look away, Tommy keeps his eyes locked on hers. His wife’s a terrifying woman when she wants to be, and he’s always felt sorry for whoever had had to go up against her in court Before. “At least six months ago,” he tells her honestly. “Give or take a little.”
Maria makes a humming sound - he gets the feeling they’ll be having a longer discussion about this later at home - but changes the subject. “And does the name Ellie mean anything to you?”
Tommy frowns, trying to think back. Their messages back and forth had consisted of just check-ins for quite some time, a shorthand I’m alive and well and an answering we’re alive and well back. He’d always assumed the we meant Joel and Tess, but maybe it hadn’t? Maybe at some point Tess had gotten fed up with his emotionally stunted brother and walked - Tommy wouldn’t blame her in the slightest. So maybe at some point the we changed to mean Joel and Ellie, and Joel had just never clued him in?
Still didn’t tell him jacksh*t about who she was though.
“It doesn’t,” he admits, more than a little frustrated. “Tess, sure. Never heard him mention an Ellie before.”
Maria stands and paces over so she’s on the opposite side of the bed from him. Her gaze seems to be picking Joel apart like a puzzle, running over everything from his bruised face to the ragged hem of his t-shirt.
It strikes him as odd for the first time, that Joel’s in only a shirt and jeans. “Is this what he was wearin’ when you found him?” Tommy asks, and Maria shakes her head.
“He had on a coat, some long-sleeve layers underneath. They’re being washed right now to see how salvageable they might be, but Joss and Tristan took them off of him to better evaluate him.” She sighs, right hand lifting briefly. “Check him for bites, other injuries, and to get the IV line in his arm. Joss said he seemed pretty dehydrated.”
“Right.”
It feels a little odd, both of them standing there staring down at him while he sleeps, and it would probably give him a heart attack if he woke up to it. But Tommy can’t quite make himself move away just yet - he still can’t wrap his head around the fact that Joel’s here.
His fingertips brush over Joel’s wrist, skin coming into contact with fabric, and Tommy’s eyes drop to land where they hadn’t previously.
The watch is still on his wrist, band frayed and faded and the glass face cracked. It hasn’t moved, hasn’t changed, somehow still hanging on after twenty years. He swallows, some choked noise escaping his lips, and Maria reaches across the bed to press her fingertips to his arm. “Tommy?”
He clears his throat, takes a step back. “That, uh…Sarah gave him that watch. For his birthday, that day... He already had it, really, but it had been broken and he hadn’t gotten it fixed so she did it for him. And he’s never taken it off since.” Maria doesn’t say anything, her eyes glassy when Tommy meets them. It’s a terrible thing that they have in common, these two people he loves the most. Losing a child…Sarah had been his niece, but he’d loved her as much as if she’d been his own too.
He takes a step back, then another, and another until his knees meet a chair and he sinks into it, palm pressed over his eyes. Joel’s here, in f*cking Wyoming. He’s not supposed to be - Tommy honestly thought he’d never see his older brother ever again when he left Boston - but he is. He’s here and he’s hurt, and clearly he wasn’t alone, and now Tommy just really needs him to wake up and explain what the hell is going on.
Footsteps echo towards him, and then soft hands are wrapping around his wrists and gently tugging them away from his face. For the first time since he walked into the clinic, Tommy sees sympathy in Maria’s expression.
“Hey,” she says softly, letting go of his wrists to cup his face instead. Her thumbs swipe at tears he hadn’t even realized had fallen. “We’ll figure it out together, alright?”
“Yeah.” Tommy exhales, bending forward to press a kiss to her forehead. “Yeah, we will.”
–-
Joel stays unconscious for another hour, and Tommy doesn’t move from the chair by his bed. Maria leaves to get them food from the dining hall as the sun starts to dip below the horizon, kissing him on the cheek and promising to be back shortly. Joss comes in to check Joel’s vitals, says everything looks steady so far, and then leaves; Tommy watches it all happen as if from a distance, a fog encompassing his brain any time he tries to settle on an explanation for Joel’s appearance.
After a bit though, he can’t restrain his curiosity any longer, and he gets up to collect the backpack from the hallway. It doesn’t feel great, digging through an unknown person’s stuff - he can only assume the small bag with the fluffy keychain is not Joel’s - but he doesn’t really have a lot of options at the moment.
The bag is tightly packed, almost admirably so, and it feels a bit like unloading Mary Poppins’ purse as he unearths item after item after item. Socks, carefully balled and wrapped; a couple of shirts in varying levels of cleanliness; a pair of jeans; a couple cans of food; a book of puns; a handful of rocks and various little oddities that look like someone was accumulating them from travel stops; and lastly, a pistol. The safety is on and it’s only got four bullets in the clip, but Tommy unloads it and sets it aside anyways.
He looks at the items strewn before him on the other chair, pieces that Tommy doesn’t want to put together clicking into place. There’s little variety in the sizes of the clothes, but even the biggest shirt is far too small for Joel. That, combined with the book and trinkets, the stray elastic hair band at the bottom –
Was Joel traveling with a teenage girl?
It makes no goddamn sense, not when Tommy remembers how assiduously Joel avoided any and all children back in Boston. But then, nothing about his sudden appearance makes any kind of sense, so why should this?
He repacks everything except the gun - less neatly and less tightly, only able to zip it partway, and sets the backpack aside. His eyes lift back to his still-unconscious brother, and Tommy wishes not for the first time that he could just shake him awake, make him tell him what the hell is going on.
Maria returns not long after, a covered plate in each hand. It’s chicken and potatoes and it smells heavenly, but it turns Tommy’s stomach after three bites and he sets it aside. Neither of them speak, even though there’s an unspoken weight in between them in the slumbering form of Joel Miller. Quietly, they seem to have agreed that until they get to the bottom of his appearance - his injuries, the backpack, Ellie - the point of contention he represents can wait.
The sun is fully set before Joel finally begins to stir, booted feet shifting on the bed, and Tommy has the absurd thought that nobody bothered to take his shoes off in the time he’s been here. Flecks of dirt now decorate the otherwise pristine white sheets underneath him.
He stands immediately with the movement, crossing to the bedside and leaning slightly over. “Joel?”
There’s no response other than a pained grunt, his eyelids flickering before peeling open and staring up at Tommy’s face, gaze unfocused. Out of the corner of his eye, Tommy sees Maria stand as well, already walking to the door.
He tries again. “Joel? Can you hear me? Do you remember where you are?”
Joel blinks once, twice, and then his lips part –
“Ellie.” It comes out cracked and pained, a statement more than a question. His hands clench into fists, eyes squeezing shut again, and Maria slips quietly from the room.
“Tommy.”
He startles in surprise at the sound of his own name, the syllables rough and hoarse, and he shifts his attention back to his brother, to the wide brown eyes now peering up at him with recognition flickering in them. “Hey, hermano.”
“Tommy,” Joel repeats, and then his gaze skates past him around the room, taking in every corner. The beeping of his heart rate, a steady and reassuring sound for the last hour, ticks up. “Where’s Ellie?” When Tommy doesn’t offer up an answer immediately, Joel’s eyes lock back onto him, his entire face lined with panic. One of his hands latches around Tommy’s arm, squeezing with far more strength than expected. “Where’s Ellie?”
“I don’t know –”
Joel groans, pushing himself unsteadily upright on the bed, swinging his legs off and onto the ground. He wavers, hands white-knuckling the edge of the bed as his face goes pale, but before Tommy can say anything to talk him down or reassure him, Joel’s reaching across and yanking out his IV cord. Blood wells up in the crook of his elbow as he flings the needle aside, trickling steadily down his forearm before Joel swipes at it with the bedsheet. The heart rate monitor goes next, patches and wires ripped out from under his shirt, and the machine starts to whine.
“Joel, wait –” Tommy reaches, trying futilely to keep his brother on the bed. It’s no use - Joel shoves him aside and wobbles to his feet, staggering heavily towards the door. “Joel, stop. You can’t go anywhere, you’re –”
“Ellie,” Joel grunts in response, one word that explains everything and nothing. He leans against the door, blinking rapidly, and Tommy can tell he’s already struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Whatever the hell concussed him did a thorough job, but Joel still seems to be as bull-headedly stubborn as he’s always been, determined to go find Ellie no matter his own level of pain.
It’s a level of determination - edged with what Tommy would guess are protectiveness and even devotion - that alarms the sh*t out of him.
Joel’s fingertips have barely brushed the doorknob when it turns, the door swinging inwards, and Tommy barely makes it across the room in time to catch the f*cking idiot from falling to the floor. Last thing he needs is another damn head wound.
“Joel –”
Joss crouches down next to them, fingertips automatically pressing to his throat momentarily before reaching for his face and peering into his eyes. Joel bats her hands away, already reaching for the nearest chair to leverage himself to standing. Maria’s standing in the hall just outside the door, eyebrows nearly to her hairline as she watches Tommy duck around his brother in an attempt to block his exit.
“Get out of my way,” Joel snaps. He barely seems to register that it’s Tommy he’s speaking to, too intent on getting out of the clinic. “Gotta…Ellie’s out there. She –” He takes a step and his knee, the one Tommy knows to be his bad one, buckles. Again, he catches him from falling to the floor; again, he curses the universe that gave him such a goddamn stubborn sibling. Together, he and Joss manage to loop their arms under his shoulders and all but drag him back to the bed.
“Mr Miller,” Joss begins sternly, and it takes Tommy a moment to realize she’s not speaking to him - he’s no longer the only Mr Miller in Jackson, “you’re in no condition to go anywhere at this time.”
“But Ellie –” Joel tries. His body wavers, hands gripping the edge of the bed tightly to keep himself upright even as his eyes slip to half-mast.
“Who is Ellie?” Tommy demands, his temper thinning just a bit at Joel’s repeated, dogged determination to find her, whoever the f*ck she is. It’s ridiculous, getting angry at a concussed and confused man, Tommy knows that.
But he can’t help it at this point.
Joel slumps sideways with a pained noise. “Ellie’s…she’s my…” His words are muffled into his pillow, the end of the sentence trailing into nothing even as ice spirals up Tommy’s spine when they register.
She’s your what? He wants to ask, his throat constricting around the words and keeping them from spilling out. Surely - surely - Joel wouldn’t have had another kid without telling him. Even with their limited communications since Tommy’d left Boston, Joel wouldn’t have had a whole f*cking child without telling him, right? Especially since Joel had never wanted more kids, even when Sarah was alive and the world wasn’t hell, and then Tess –
Well, he didn’t know her story the same way Joel did, but he knew she hadn’t wanted them either. So if Ellie was Joel’s, she probably wasn’t Tess’s. Was that why Tess wasn’t with him now?
Tommy makes an effort to soften his voice when he speaks next, no matter how badly he wants to shake the words from his brother. “Joel, you need to tell me what’s goin’ on. What are you doin’ here?”
He should have expected the response he gets - an exhale wrapped around Ellie - but it still just frustrates him. Leave it to Joel to just show up out of the f*cking blue, unable or unwilling to give an explanation other than a repetition of some strange girl’s name, and anger licks, hot and burning, at Tommy’s insides.
A soft hand lands on his shoulder, tugging him backwards and sliding down to clasp with his own. “Let me try,” Maria murmurs, shifting past him until she’s looking directly down at Joel. “Where is Ellie?”
Joel inhales, a stuttering, uneven thing, and to Tommy’s surprise, his brother’s eyes fill with tears before they slip shut. “I don’t know,” he croaks, the words slurring together until they’re nearly unintelligible. “We were walkin’ and then there were men and they took her, ‘n I couldn’t stop ‘em.”
The air in the room goes thin, and Tommy doesn’t have to look at the others to know their minds have all leapt to the same awful, sickening conclusion. Maria’s shoulders have gone rigid under her jacket, her hand tightening into a death grip around his own even as her voice remains relatively calm. “What does she look like?”
Joel’s chin wobbles. “She’s s-small. Brown hair, brown eyes, got a scar in her eyebrow.” His voice softens, fades. “Never told me how she got it.” He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even flinch when Joss approaches and carefully reattaches the leads for his heart monitor. It takes her a moment to change out the needle on the IV, carefully tossing the old one into the designated bin, and then it’s been reinserted into Joel’s arm.
“Tommy,” Joss says quietly, holding up a vial of sedative when he looks her way. He assumes it’s what she’s been using already, and it crawls under his skin like ants to do it - but he nods. Watches as she injects a small dose into the IV line. Sedating him - again - doesn’t feel like the right thing to do, and he’ll probably catch hell for it later, but what other f*cking choice does he have right now? They can’t get anything done if they’re having to wrestle Joel back into his bed every ten minutes.
Joel’s voice breaks the quiet. “How long’ve I been here?”
Maria glances at the clock on the wall, lips moving soundlessly as she counts back. “About six or seven hours, give or take.”
“f*ck.” He immediately starts to press himself upright again, stopped only by Joss’s hands landing on his shoulders. “I gotta –”
“I’ll go look for her,” Tommy cuts in, the words slipping free before he can really think them through. Maria stills, her hand slipping away from his, and Tommy knows it’ll be added to the growing list of things for them to argue about later. “I’ll go look for her,” he repeats when Joel’s attention lands on him again. “I’ll get a couple of the people who were out on patrol with Maria when they found you, we’ll start with where you were and go from there.”
“‘M comin’ with you,” Joel insists, the determination in his voice undercut by the increasing slur in his words.
“No, you ain’t.”
“Tommy –”
“No, you’re keepin’ your ass in that bed until I come back with her. You’re no good to anyone in your current state.” Joel’s eyes slip shut, but not before Tommy can see the shame that flashes through them, and he sighs. “Can y’all give us the room?” He spares a quick glance at Maria and Joss.
The doctor leaves immediately, but Maria doesn’t go until Tommy shoots her a pleading look, and even then she looks distinctly unhappy about it. He’ll fill her in later of course, but right now he feels like he might be able to get through to Joel better if it’s just the two of them.
Especially if he needs to dig it out of Joel that he’s got another daughter.
Once the door has shut behind them, Tommy turns back to his brother. “Joel –”
“It’s been six hours,” he says dully, the words sluggish. “Six hours with those men.”
Tommy doesn’t respond, unsure of what to say - what he even could say when he still has no idea who Ellie really is.
“They could be anywhere by now,” Joel continues, the words barely a whisper. “That much of a head start, there’s no tellin’ where they’ve taken her, what they’ve –” His back teeth snap together, but Tommy knows what the end of that sentence was.
What they’ve done to her.
It doesn’t bear thinking about, even if it’s an inescapable, horrible part of the world they live in. What men like that do to girls and to women when given the opportunity, especially without any system to punish them, no court of law, for all the good it had done Before. Nothing to potentially hold them accountable but another person with a weapon.
“I’ll find her,” Tommy vows, even though he knows better than to make promises he can’t keep. “I’ll bring her back to you. And if they hurt her, I’ll make them pay for it.”
Joel nods jerkily, the movement unsteady as the sedative takes a stronger hold. He’ll be out soon, and hopefully by the time it wears off, Tommy’ll have Ellie back for him.
He reaches over and squeezes Joel’s forearm briefly before heading for the door. His fingertips have just brushed the doorknob when Joel’s voice calls after him.
“Ask her,” he slurs, and Tommy turns back. He’s propped himself on one elbow, his other hand gripping the edge of the bed. His gaze is unfocused, bouncing around Tommy without really landing on him, but his voice is forceful when he speaks again. “Ask her.”
Tommy takes a step back, brows furrowing. “Ask her what?”
Joel blinks at him like he’s just realized Tommy’s there. “Ask her,” he repeats, eyelids slipping shut as he slumps back on the bed. His next string of words are an unintelligible mumble.
“Ask her what?” Tommy says again loudly, relieved when it startles Joel enough to pry his eyes open.
“Ask her why…scarecrow won award.” His eyes latch onto Tommy with the same intensity as when he felt the need to remind him about Sarah’s pineapple allergy. “Ask her.”
“I’ll ask her,” Tommy assures him. “I will, don’t worry.” Some sort of prearranged code or something, he can only assume, or a reference that only the two of them would get. And now, a way for Ellie to know that Tommy could be trusted.
Smart, really.
Joel starts to lay back down, eyes slipping shut again until they catch sight of the backpack, still sitting half-unzipped on one of the chairs. “Bring me that,” he murmurs, the words barely intelligible. “‘S Ellie’s. Needs it.”
“She’ll get it back,” Tommy says quietly, crossing the room to pick up the bag and set it on the bed next to Joel. “I’ll bring her back, alright?”
Joel doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head and tucks the bag against his side, fingers wrapped around the strap. A deep, even breath echoes through the room, the sedative having won out at last, and Tommy lets himself out into the hallway.
Maria’s waiting there for him, arms crossed and her face unreadable. “You’re gonna go out there.” Her tone is edged in something that Tommy doesn’t bother trying to decipher, not yet. The points of contention between them are stacking up at this point, a precarious Jenga tower one wrong move from toppling, but right now he can’t expend the energy to shore it up. There’s a girl out there in need of help, and that’s what he’s gotta focus on.
“Ain’t got a choice.”
“Yes you do,” she snaps, stepping in front of him when he attempts to walk forward. “Yes, you f*cking do. I’m not saying that we don’t need to go find this girl, but why does it need to be you?”
Inhale, count to ten, exhale. “Because this girl matters to Joel. And he gave me a specific question to ask her, so I’m guessin' she ain’t all that trustin’. If she trusts Joel, it oughta be me to go find her.”
Maria’s face softens, fingertips pressing to her lips for a moment before she speaks again. “Something about it doesn’t feel right,” she says quietly. “It seems off, your brother showing up here with no explanation, ranting about a girl that you’ve now gotta go find. How do we…” she hesitates, clearly weighing her words before she utters them. “How do we know that she wasn’t trying to get away from Joel?”
The anger sparks red in his vision, the urge to snarl at his wife crawling up his throat. She’s got no reason to trust Joel, not after everything he’s told her about his brother, and he’s never given her any reason to think Joel was the type to harm girls.
But her first job is to protect Jackson, Tommy knows that, just like he knows that all her knowledge of his brother centers around his uglier parts. She’s right to be suspicious at his sudden appearance, right to be concerned about what his arrival might signify. And it’s Tommy’s own fault, a fact that sits in his chest like an anvil. That’s his thorny problem to solve, and he’ll have to do it without blowing up his marriage in the process. No matter what’s behind Joel’s arrival, he ain’t about to let his big brother come in here and upend his life.
“I’m gonna choose to ignore the implication you’re tryin’ to make here,” he says carefully, “because I know we’re both workin’ with limited information at the moment. So you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that while he’s done a lot of f*cked up things, Joel ain’t that type of man.”
He can still feel the argument simmering between them, the way Maria wants to keep pulling on this thread, but her lips press together and she gives him a curt nod.
“Just…just be safe,” she says after a long moment.
“I will.” Tommy bends forward to press a kiss against her lips, reassured - as he always is - by the feel and smell of his wife. The world may have gone to utter sh*t, he may have seen and done some pretty terrible goddamn things, but at the end of the day he couldn’t be sorry for it when it had brought him all the way to Maria. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Yeah you better,” she replies, and they both huff out a small laugh. Tommy presses another kiss to her temple, squeezing her in a quick hug before stepping back. “Take Ivan and Thea with you, they were on patrol with me earlier. They’re both on the wall right now, but I’ll send along replacements.”
“Thank you,” he says softly, winding a hand under her hair to cup her neck. “I ever tell you how much I love you?”
One corner of her mouth pulls up in a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Not today you haven’t.”
“Well,” Tommy ducks to kiss her one more time, “I love you more than anything or anyone else in the world, alright?”
Her eyelids flicker when he emphasizes anyone, the only way he can currently think to reassure her about his priorities, and her face softens when she looks back up at him. “Goes both ways, Miller.”
One final kiss, and then he whispers see you in a bit and strides off down the hall.
–-
Ivan and Thea had been more than willing to join him when he’d explained the situation to them, and within thirty minutes the three of them are bundled up and riding out into the dark. Tommy falls in line between them, letting Thea guide the way out to approximately where they found Joel.
It’s the kind of cold, crisp night that keeps even the birds silent; the only thing audible is the crunch of the horses’ hooves on snow. Tommy’s got a bandana over the bottom of his face in a pitiful attempt at protecting it from the elements, but it did jacksh*t when a breeze swept by and curled the end of it up. His ears are stinging and eyes watering by the time they find the area, slipping off their horses in silent unison.
It’s a small clearing, encircled by trees, and Tommy turns in a small circle, peering into the darkness. There’s too many shadows, too many crevices and potential paths.
“Found your brother there.” Ivan gestures towards a dark spot in the snow at the base of a tree. “We honestly thought he was dead, y’know? Real still, bleeding from the head. But he was breathing and we didn’t find any bites on him so we loaded him up and brought him back.”
“Good damn thing y’all did.” Tommy tears his eyes from the darkened snow and instead peers through the shadows. “See if y’all can’t find some tracks, some indication of which way they might’ve gone. It ain’t been snowin’ so hopefully we find somethin’.”
They fan out. There’s multiple sets of footprints that Tommy can see, nearly on top of each other in places, and he crouches down to examine them a little closer. It’s hard to tell in the mess of it all, but he thinks he can pick out a set that’s slightly smaller than the rest. They’re all pointing in different directions, and it takes Tommy two careful circuits of the clearing to pick out where they trail away.
“Guys,” Tommy calls softly, waiting for Thea and Ivan to turn his way. “This way, looks like.”
They each click off their flashlights, blinking in the darkness until their eyes adjust to the moonlight, and then they set off quietly through the snow. It’d be quicker to take the horses - and they may have to double back for them anyways - but they need as much silence as possible for the time being, and so the horses stay behind, reins knotted over a low-hanging branch.
The trail winds through the trees, up and over uneven spots, around boulders and roots. Tommy can pick out other signs even when the footsteps grow indistinct - broken branches, bushes with snow brushed off in spots. He loses track of how long they’ve been following the trail, trying desperately not to remember that it’s been somewhere around eight hours at this point since Ellie was taken. Possibly longer, depending on how long Joel had been unconscious in the snow before patrol found him. Eight hours at a good pace could get them miles and miles away, further than could be traversed in the dark without supplies.
After what he guesses is about thirty minutes of walking, Tommy sends Ivan back to get the horses. Thea’s better with them, but Tommy’s holding on to the increasingly fragile hope that they’re gonna come across Ellie and her abductors at some point, and she’s better in a fight. That, and he thinks Ellie might feel better about having a woman around instead of two strange men, even if one of them is possibly her uncle.
f*ck, he still can’t wrap his head around that part - that Joel might possibly have another kid and he never told Tommy. And that’s what it has to be right? He can’t conceive of another reason that Joel would be traveling all the way from Boston, with a teenage girl and without Tess.
And if he doesn’t manage to bring Ellie back to him…well, that image of Joel sprawled across Sarah’s grave, gun in hand, blood streaming down the side of his face, is still crystallized in his mind.
“Tommy,” Thea calls in a whisper, pulling him from his increasingly morbid thoughts. “C’mere.”
He turns and backtracks to where she’s standing, a gloved hand outstretched as she points down at something on the ground Tommy had missed when walking by.
Blood, droplets of it scattered in the snow.
“It goes that way,” Thea points through a small gap in the trees, into some brush. “Can’t tell how far though.”
Tommy looks back the way they were headed, the way the path seems to lead, and then back at the blood again. It feels like it might be wasting time to follow it - it could be a wounded animal, staggering off to die - and they don’t really have time to spare right now.
But it could be Ellie.
“Wait here,” Tommy says quietly. He slings his rifle over his shoulder in favor of unholstering his revolver. “I’m gonna follow it for a few minutes, see how far it goes. If I’m not back in ten, go meet up with Ivan. If I find somethin’ I’ll whistle.” He waits for her to nod and turn around, positioning herself so her back is against the widest tree and her rifle braced against her shoulder, and then he slips into the brush.
It’s not a lot of blood to follow - little drips and spots here and there - and it makes him more certain that it’s from a person and not an animal. It reminds him of when Sarah got a nose bleed once when he was staying overnight to watch her. It had dripped all down her face and nightshirt, left sprinkles of blood in Joel’s carpet like a small, macabre trail back to her room.
The blood stops at the base of a tree, thicker drops of it coalescing in one spot before it vanishes. The snow is thin here, clinging to the branches above instead of falling to the ground, and Tommy can’t make out any footprints leading anywhere.
“f*ck,” he murmurs.
Above him, a branch creaks.
Automatically, he lifts his gun towards the sound, neck craned back as he peers through the inky darkness.
Nothing moves again, but Tommy doesn’t lower his gun. Now that he’s not fixated on the blood in the snow, he can see where a couple smaller branches are cracked and broken. As if someone had climbed the tree. Still, he doesn’t lower his weapon.
“Ellie?”
The call is so soft, so questioning, that Tommy doesn’t expect it to reach very far. But then the branch creaks again, and a pair of eyes are peering down at him from above. The relief that floods through him nearly has him dropping to his knees. Instead he lowers his gun to his side. “Ellie?”
“Who the f*ck are you?” She hisses.
Tommy glances around, makes sure they’re still alone. He’s got a couple minutes before he’s gotta signal to Thea at least, and he looks back up at Ellie. “I’m Tommy.”
He can barely make her out, all the way up there in the dark, but he still catches the way her eyes widen slightly. “Tommy?” she repeats suspiciously. “What’s your last name?”
“Miller,” he volunteers. “Tommy Miller.”
The mistrustful note doesn’t leave her voice. “Where are you from, Tommy Miller?”
He’s gotta admire the balls on her - repeating his name mockingly as if she’s got the upper hand and isn’t more or less stuck like a cat in a tree.
“Well right now I live in a settlement called Jackson,” he says, shifting his weight. The cold is really starting to bite at him, even through his layers, and he wonders how long she’s been up there in it. “Before that I was with the Fireflies, came out this way from the Boston QZ. And then before the Outbreak…Texas.” He aims a grin up at her. “But I’m guessin' you already knew all that, Ellie.”
She doesn’t reply, just stares down at him warily.
“I’m gonna signal for my partner, alright? Her name’s Thea, she’ll come join us. In the meantime, why don’t you start workin’ your way down from that tree?”
“Do you think I’m f*cking stupid?” is the response that echoes down. Tommy sighs, but whistles nonetheless, a sharp, clear note with a lift at the end. He didn’t go so far from Thea that she shouldn’t be able to hear it, but he waits a minute and then repeats the sound just in case.
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he answers after. “I think you’re right to be suspicious. But I also think you’re probably freezin’ your ass off up there, and you know everythin’ I’ve said lines up with what you already knew. You know it’s safe to come down.”
Still Ellie doesn’t move. “No I don’t.”
“Joel’s in Jackson,” he says, and he sees the first loosening in her posture. “He’s in the clinic, got a pretty bad concussion. That’s the only reason he didn’t come out here for you himself.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, but she sounds less certain this time. “Prove it.”
A cracking branch behind him has Tommy whirling around, gun lifting until he sees Thea approaching. “You find her?” she asks, and Tommy points upwards.
“Ellie, Thea. Thea, Ellie.”
Thea peers up at the girl, offering a quick wave. “You stuck up there or something?”
“No,” Ellie fires back. “I’m just not as much of a f*cking idiot as the two of you seem to think I am, coming down as soon as some f*cking strangers say it’s safe.”
Thea looks over at Tommy. “You tell her about your brother?”
“Didn’t do no good.” Simultaneously, they both crane their necks back up to her, and Tommy sighs.
“Well,” he says more loudly, “guess if you ain’t comin’ down, I’m comin’ up.”
“What?” There’s a definite note of panic in Ellie’s voice now, and Tommy steps to the base of the tree, eyeing the nearest branch. It looks sturdy enough, but there’s a damn good chance he ends up flat on his back on the ground soon as he puts his weight on it.
Doesn’t really matter - he needs to get her to come down from there before Joel’s sedation wears off and he goes tearing out of the clinic, concussed brain and all.
The branch creaks unnervingly but holds, and Tommy stays still on it for a moment while he evaluates his next steps. “I said,” he repeats, “I’m comin’ up.”
There’s another thicker branch just above him and he stretches up, wrapping both hands around it as best as he can and heaving himself up. He’s a bit too goddamn old to be climbing trees like this, but it feels a little like his only option at the moment.
By the time he makes it anywhere remotely close to Ellie’s level, he’s more winded than a day of riding and walking have ever done to him. The branches are too thin any further up, so he’s forced to stop about halfway up the tree. Below him, Thea’s been keeping an eye on his ascent and watching the woods around them to make sure nobody else is approaching.
Ellie’s more visible to him now - he can see her head and shoulders, and he lets out a low swear at the state of her. She flinches back a little at it, but Tommy can’t help it - she looks like hell.
Split lip, bruises under her eyes. He thinks there might be more around her jaw and neck, but in this light it’s hard to tell what’s a shadow and what’s a mark left there by someone else. She’s got no jacket either, and she’s shivering so violently that Tommy’s surprised he hasn’t heard her teeth chattering when she speaks.
She also doesn’t look a damn thing like Joel or Tess.
“Here.” He sheds his coat, leaving him in his thinner one and the layers underneath. The cold immediately snaps through to his chest, making him suck in a breath, but he carefully tosses it up to her. “Put that on.” He can’t believe she hasn’t succumbed to hypothermia out here yet.
None of the wariness fades from her face, but Ellie wraps his jacket around herself, burying her face in it for a brief moment. Tommy waits her out, signaling back down to Thea that she seems to be okay.
“You don’t look like Joel,” Ellie says, startling him enough that he has to grab the tree to restabilize himself.
“I know,” Tommy replies. “He took after Dad, I took after Ma. We got that a lot growing up.”
Ellie makes a humming noise, eyes still roving over him. “How do I know you’re really his brother? And you’re not with those other men?”
Silently, Tommy thanks Joel for having the foresight to give him a way, even when his mind had been all over the place. Otherwise, he’s got no idea what would have sufficed to prove himself to Ellie, no idea what all she and Joel know about each other at this point that he could have guessed at.
He looks her dead in the eye and says, “He told me to ask you why the scarecrow won an award.”
Something flickers to life behind her eyes - relief? joy? - before she blinks and buries her face in the jacket again. After a moment, she sniffs, and then Tommy hears a soft, “He’s really okay?”
“Like I said,” he replies, just as softly, “he’s got what seems to be a pretty nasty concussion, he was a bit disoriented the first time he woke up. But no other injuries or anything that we could see.” When Ellie just nods, Tommy continues, “He’s at the clinic, and I know he’s been goin’ out of his mind with worry. So how about we climb on down from here and get you to him?”
Ellie lifts her eyes to him, nodding curtly, and then she shifts as if to pass him his jacket back. Tommy shakes his head. “You keep that on, darlin’. You need it more than I do right now.”
Climbing back down is only slightly faster than climbing up had been, his knees twinging in discomfort when he jumps down from the last branch. They’re probably gonna ache something awful later.
Ellie scampers down behind him like an ungrateful cat. She’s a little hampered by his oversized jacket on her, but she still makes it look considerably easier than he had. Once she’s down, she turns to look at both Tommy and Thea with a tangle of fear and suspicion in her eyes, like she expects them to attack suddenly.
“Scarecrow,” Tommy reminds her, and Ellie’s face softens a bit. “We’re gonna go back out this way - we’ve got another person with us and he’s bringin’ the horses to meet us. You can ride with Thea if you like.”
“No, I –” Ellie swallows. “I’ll ride with you if that’s okay.”
“‘S perfectly fine with me,” he assures her. “Want you to walk between me and Thea on the way out, alright? And then we’ll ride between her and Ivan.”
“Alright.”
They three of them retrace their steps back through the brush and to where they diverged from the path. Thank God, Tommy thinks, that Thea had noticed the blood and he’d decided to follow it. Otherwise they could’ve gone right past Ellie’s hiding spot and she’d’ve been stranded there, freezing near to death, while they went on a fruitless pursuit.
“Can I ask you somethin’, Ellie?” Tommy keeps his voice low, pitching it just enough to be heard over the crunch of their shoes on the snow. “What happened to the men that took you?”
Even under the bulk of his jacket, Tommy can see the way tension lodges in Ellie’s shoulders, pulling them taut. “I got away from them,” is the only answer she gives. He hates to press, but he kind of has no choice at the moment - he needs to know how on guard they oughta be.
“Do you know how long ago that was? How far away they might be?”
Ellie shrugs, stepping carefully over a gnarled root. “It was awhile ago, but I don’t know how long. And I heard them go by earlier - they were looking for me - but they never got near the tree I was in and I don’t know what direction they went.” She seems to be aware of how unhelpful this information is, because she shoots an almost apologetic look over her shoulder at him. “I think it’s been at least an hour or so since I heard them though. Maybe longer.”
It ain’t ideal but it’ll have to do. It gives them something of a headstart if nothing else, long as those men were going the opposite direction. The path they’d been following seems to indicate it, but there’s just no way to be sure.
Ivan’s waiting when they emerge, the leads for Tommy and Thea’s horses tied to his own, rifle held against his lap.
“Any sign?” Tommy asks softly, untying his reins and gesturing for Ellie to follow him.
“None,” Ivan confirms. “This is the girl that’s got your brother all in a tizzy, I take it?”
“Yep.”
Ellie follows Tommy to his horse, still drowning in his coat, and Tommy mounts before reaching down to pull her up behind him. There’s hesitance in her face as she looks at his hand and at the horse; Justified doesn’t help matters by huffing out a breath and dancing sideways a little.
“‘S alright,” Tommy assures her. “He’s gentle, just fidgety. I’ll help you up.”
He can see the moment she makes the decision, clenching her jaw and nodding before clasping a hand around his forearm and wedging her foot into the stirrup. He pulls - she lifts - and she manages to get her leg over and plop down on the horse behind him.
“f*ck, it’s high,” she breathes, shifting carefully closer behind him.
Tommy snorts, waving Ivan in front and then nudging Justified into motion behind. “You were just twice as high up in a tree.”
“The tree wasn’t moving,” Ellie shoots back, and Tommy picks up on a thread of hostility that wasn’t there before. “So excuse the f*ck outta me.”
Tommy rotates his head slowly as they ride, keeping an eye and ear out around them. He doesn’t want them caught unawares, doesn’t want to risk something else happening to Ellie before he can get her back to Joel. But there’s nothing as they wend their way back through the woods, past the clearing where Ellie’d been taken and Joel had been found.
“So you’re Joel’s brother,” Ellie says finally, the words spoken up and into his left ear. Tommy catches sight of her on his next perusal of their surroundings; her brows are drawn together like she’s trying to work out a particularly compelling puzzle. He realizes too, exactly how she’d referred to him, both now and earlier. Joel - not Dad.
“I am,” he confirms.
“Hmm.”
Tommy cranes his neck back to look at her more fully. “What do you mean, hmm?”
She shrugs. “Just that. Hmm.”
Tommy gets the feeling that the hmm isn’t exactly in his favor, but the less noise they make now the better, and he doesn’t push it.
The gates come into sight, and Tommy feels Ellie shift behind him as she peers over his shoulder to take a better look. He’s so used to the sight of them now that he sometimes forgets how imposing they can seem at first glance, how large and even - dare he say - impressive when you’re not used to something like this outside of FEDRA.
“This is Jackson,” he tells her, watching as Ivan waves a signal flag overhead.
“And Joel’s in here?” Ellie asks again, something like mistrust creeping into her voice once more.
“Joel’s in here,” Tommy confirms.
The gates open slowly, just wide enough to admit the three of them single file, and they all dismount immediately inside. Ty comes up to take Justified after Tommy helps Ellie down from his back, and he gives him a nod of thanks.
“Y’all go get some rest,” he says to Thea and Ivan, both of them handing their own horses off to waiting people. “Can’t thank y’all enough for coming back out with me to find her.”
Ivan dips his chin. “No problem at all man, no problem at all. Plus,” he cracks a small smile, barely visible under the thick mustache he sports, “I know if I need my patrol covered in a couple days because I’m exhausted from this, I can count on you for it.”
Tommy chuckles dryly. He probably oughta have expected that, but he doesn’t mind it too much. It’s one of the things that works best about Jackson - helping each other out, taking care of each other, stepping up when someone’s in need. Hell, a lot of the time it works better than anything had Before.
Ellie’s craning her neck around when he turns back to her, eyes wide as she takes in the lit street, the buildings, the people milling about despite the late hour. There’s shift change happening on the wall, and Ellie startles at the sound of laughter as Marco and Laila clap each other on the back and switch places.
“‘S a lot, ain’t it?” Tommy asks her, and she barely spares him a glance.
“It’s f*cking insane.” She stares around for another moment and then seems to remember why she’s here, and her gaze lands on him again, something steely in her eyes. “Where’s Joel?”
Tommy gestures down the road. “Clinic. He’s probably still out, we had to sedate him earlier because he kept tryin’ to get up and leave to track you down.” Ellie’s face does something odd at that, but she doesn’t respond and just falls into step next to him as he starts down the sidewalk.
“You sedated him,” she says flatly after a moment, glaring back at Phil as he eyes her curiously on their way past the woodshop. “How did you do that?”
It’s probably not information that he should be giving out to anyone - especially a teenage girl he doesn’t hardly know - but Tommy recognizes enough of her skittishness to realize that not answering her is likely to raise her suspicions. Possibly send her bolting for the hills.
And Tommy’s not about to go tell Joel he’d had Ellie and then lost her.
“We, uh…” he glances around carefully, making sure there’s nobody in eavesdropping range. It’s late - past midnight he’d guess - but there’s still a few people around even as they move away from the wall. “We have a way to source sedatives and some other medical necessities, enough to keep the clinic stocked in case of emergencies. Can’t tell you more than that, I’m afraid. But since we brought Joel in unconscious, we were able to put an IV line in his arm to get him some fluids. He was pretty damn dehydrated, and I’d be willing to bet you are too. We can get you checked out —”
“No,” Ellie bites out, stopping in her tracks. In the limited lighting, her face looks paler, the bruises against her skin darker and more stark. There’s several around her chin that look like fingerprints. “Joel first.”
He’s got no choice if he wants to keep her moving - he nods. “Joel first.”
Ellie steps forward again, still watching the town slumbering around them with the odd flicker of life. “This is…a lot.”
“It is,” Tommy acknowledges, trying to see Jackson through her eyes. He’s been here a couple years now, and sometimes he has to remind himself how lucky he is to have wound up here. How out of the ordinary a place like this is in a world like theirs, how easily he could have wound up in another QZ under FEDRA’s thumb or in a much worse, much less equalized type of settlement.
The clinic comes into view as they round the school and Tommy points. “Here we are.”
Nobody’s at the desk when they enter, and Ellie takes in the sight the same way she has everything else - curiously, with a healthy hint of suspicion.
“Where’s Joel?” she all but demands, peering into the nearest open door.
“Down the hall,” he starts, hustling to keep up when she picks up the pace and practically bolts away from him. “Hey, Ellie, are you sure you don’t wanna get checked out now? He’s still gonna be unconscious, you oughta —”
“f*ck you,” she spits over her shoulder, before turning and calling loud enough to wake the dead, “Joel?”
Tommy’s mouth opens to remind her - again - that he’s sedated, that he won’t hear her, that if Ellie would just wait a goddamn minute, Tommy would take her right to his room. But –
But he was wrong, it turns out - Joel’s not asleep. As soon as his name leaves Ellie’s mouth, there’s an answer.
“Ellie?” It’s panicked, uneven, ever so slightly slurred. But it’s Joel, and Ellie takes off down the hall to where it splits, calling his name again.
She makes it to his doorway just as he does, still leaning on it heavily, and the relief on his brother’s face threatens to take Tommy’s knees out from under him. He doesn’t think he’s seen an expression like that on Joel’s face since…
Well, since 2003.
It warms him, even as it yanks his heart into his throat, the way Joel and Ellie immediately reach for each other. How they’re not in each other’s way - her hands turning his arm to see where he’s pulled out the IV again , his running over the top of her head and gripping her shoulders. Tommy can see the moment that Joel registers the bruising on her face, because his eyes darken with a look that he usually sees as a precursor to murder, and he angles her head carefully to see them better. Something slips from his mouth - a curse, if Tommy had to guess - but they’re too far away for him to hear properly. He doesn’t dare approach.
Ellie turns Joel’s face to examine the wound on his temple, bruising that has only spread and darkened in the handful of hours since Tommy left him. And Joel lets her, which Tommy can’t quite believe, going easily with the maneuvering of her small hands even as he sags harder against the doorframe.
And then she points back into the room and Joel rolls his eyes but steps back inside it, and finally Tommy deems it safe to follow.
“– thought they f*cking scrambled your brains or something, they hit you so hard,” he catches Ellie saying as he steps into the room. “Not that it would make a difference.” She’s trying to make light of it, Tommy can tell but her voice wavers and her shoulders tremble just the slightest bit.
“His thick head saved him,” Tommy remarks, shooting a tired smile at his brother. Ellie’s gotten him to sit back down while she stands to the side, brow still furrowed as she looks at the mottled color of his skin. Her backpack is on the ground, the contents of it half-spilled out as though Joel had tossed it aside at the sound of her voice.
Joel gives him a half-hearted smile back. “Guess it did.” His chin ducks infinitesimally, regret and something else Tommy can name swimming in his eyes. “Thanks, Tommy.” He tilts his head towards Ellie, not saying anything else - it comes across loud and clear anyways. Thanks for bringing her back to me.
Tommy may not yet know exactly who Ellie is to Joel - he no longer thinks she’s his daughter, not biologically anyways - but he can tell she matters. A lot.
And he’s grateful he doesn’t have to find out just how much by not bringing her back.
“I’ll see about trackin’ down a doctor for the two of you,” he says, taking a step back. Joel needs his IV put back in his arm - again - and Ellie needs a thorough looking over. He might as well see about getting her some food too, even if it’s well after midnight at this point and the dining hall is technically closed.
Neither of them even seem to hear his words though, or notice as he steps back out of the room and pulls the door closed.
–-
As soon as the door clicks shut behind Tommy, Joel cups his hands over Ellie’s cheeks again, turning her head this way and that. She’s drowning in a jacket - Tommy’s, he assumes - but as soon as he angles her head up the slightest bit he can see the ring of bruises on her neck, the thin slice where the knife had been held. He’s got a matching one - a deeper one - and the sight of the mark on her skin makes him want to slam his fist into a wall.
Ellie’s tough - has been in all the months he’s known her - shaped into a formidable girl in a small package with no option to be anything else in this world. He doesn’t know anything about what FEDRA was like for her other than small things she’s let slip, things he’s pieced together himself, but he knows it wasn’t kind. And then she got stuck with him, this decrepit, near-useless old man who has all but dragged her from one danger to the next.
And yet she’s still standing here, looking up at him with wide-eyed trust despite him being wholly undeserving of it. Easy, uncomplicated faith in him despite the crusted blood on her skin, the split in her lip, the imprints of someone else’s fingers dotted along her jaw and neck.
Ellie’s chin wobbles, so slight that if he hadn’t been touching her face he might not even have noticed it. Then she blinks, pulling back and lifting her hand to scrub at her face with the overlong sleeve of her jacket. It pulls Joel straight back to Kansas City, to watching her and failing at comforting her after she shot a kid to save him. He hadn’t known what to do then, how to handle it.
He knows exactly what to do this time around.
“C’mere.” Joel pushes himself to his feet, hands reaching for her shoulders and tugging ever so slightly. Ellie goes easily, folding forward and pressing her face into his chest while her hands latch onto the sides of his shirt. There’s a moment where she stiffens, tension vibrating through her, and then it melts away as quick as it had come and her frame trembles with sobs. All Joel can do is wrap an arm around her shoulders and cup a hand at the back of her head, and hold on.
“You’re alright,” he tells her quietly, the words murmured into her hair. “You’re alright, I’ve got you. ‘S okay, baby girl, you’re okay.”
The endearment slips out without thought, without premeditation, and he doesn’t even know if Ellie registers it. But the echo of it bounces in his own ears, slithering down until it coils around his throat. Words he hasn’t said in over twenty years, words he never could have imagined leaving his mouth again. He doesn’t know what it means that they came so naturally.
It keeps him from being able to speak again for a long minute while he still holds Ellie against him.
“I was really f*cking scared,” Ellie admits with a sniffle, her forehead resting against his sternum. “Like, more scared than I think I’ve ever been, except maybe when I got f*cking bit.”
Joel shushes her immediately, too paranoid about being in an unfamiliar place where someone could overhear and misunderstand. Tommy’d said he was gonna come back with a doctor - and thank God because Ellie needed one, and his head was pounding - but the last thing he needed was them coming back in at the wrong part of the conversation.
“‘M sorry,” he manages in response, the words a pitiful offering. His throat’s still tight, a tangled knot of guilt and relief and anger growing heavier and heavier by the moment in his gut.
Ellie pulls back, peering up at him with red eyes. “What are you sorry for? There’s nothing you could have done.” When Joel starts to shake his head, she shifts back even further, scrubbing furiously at her cheeks even as the drag of fabric on her skin makes her wince. “They were gonna slit your f*cking throat Joel, what the f*ck could you have done?”
Nothing, he wants to tell her. And that’s the goddamn problem.
He opens his mouth to argue - because what better way for things to feel normal again than to argue with Ellie about something - but the door opens once more, admitting Joss and Tommy and Maria. Ellie immediately scoots closer to Joel, regarding the others with a suspicion that only seems to wane when she looks at Tommy. He gives her a wink before his attention returns to his brother.
“Let’s get you back into bed, Mr Miller.” Joss steps forward, urging him with a quick flick of her hand to sit more fully on the bed and swing his legs back up. “Time to get that IV hooked back up to you, and this time I’d appreciate it if you left it in your arm, where it belongs.”
Ellie all but darts around the bed when Joss approaches, standing on the other side with Joel and the bed between her and anyone else. He doesn’t blame her, not after what she’s just been through, but he also doesn’t like the way it makes Maria’s eyes narrow in response.
She doesn’t seem to like him much, and he doesn’t know why.
He lays there while Joss reinserts his IV line yet again and fiddles with it so that the fluids start flowing once more. When he gets a chance, he’ll need to ask Tommy how in the hell they’ve got all this set up.
“Now,” Joss says briskly, stepping back and giving him a once over. “This bag should take about another hour, and after that we’ll disconnect you for good. You’ll still need to stay here one more night for observation because of your concussion, but then you’ll be free to go.” Her eyes flick up to where Ellie stands, hands wrapped tightly around the railing of the bed. “And I’m glad to see we’ve located your daughter. Why don’t we get you into an exam room, Ellie?”
It’s there on the tip of his tongue - she’s not my daughter - and a quick look at Ellie shows her swallowing the same compulsion to correct. But this is a new place with strange people, and Joel doesn’t know what their policy is on teenage girls accompanied by unrelated men. Something similar seems to be going through Ellie’s mind, because she meets Joel’s gaze and shakes her head minutely.
Neither of them are taking a chance on being separated again, it would seem.
“No thanks,” Ellie says, trying - failing - to sound polite. “I’m staying right here.”
“You really should get looked at,” Joss tries again. “You seem to have some nasty looking bruises, you might have a concussion as well. And considering how dehydrated your dad was –” Joel flinches, and he sees Tommy watching him speculatively “– you’re probably in the same boat.”
“Then bring another bed in here or something,” Ellie retorts. “Or I’ll sit in that chair over there and you can rehydrate me or whatever. But I’m not leaving this f*cking room till he does.”
“Ellie –” Joel says gently, and her eyes snap to his.
“No.”
He sighs, his heading still throbbing at the temples. “Can you…” he looks back up at Joss almost apologetically. “Can you get her situated in here with me?”
Joss starts to nod - though she doesn’t look all that happy about it - but Maria steps forward. “I think it would suit Ellie better to have a private examination with a doctor.”
Ellie glares up at Maria for all she’s worth. “I just f*cking said what would suit me. The doctor can look me over in here, it’s fine.”
“Why don’t y’all give us a minute?” Joel asks softly, pinching the bridge of his nose. There’s too many damn people in here right now, he still doesn’t know what exactly happened to Ellie after he got knocked out, and he can practically feel her hackles raising the longer everyone else stares at her.
Tommy shifts, hand coming up to rest on the small of Maria’s back in a gesture that sets an alarm to blaring in the back of Joel’s mind. “We’ll go see about gettin’ some clean clothes for y’all, alright? We’ll be back in a bit, and then we can get Ellie looked at and go from there.”
Joss leads the way out, followed by Maria and then Tommy, who shoots his brother a parting look. Joel knows what it means even without Tommy saying a word to him.
I don’t know what’s going on, but you owe me a hell of an explanation.
Ellie’s shoulders drop back down from around her ears with the click of the door, and she turns back to face him again. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she tells him, her voice ringing with a vulnerability he doesn’t think he’s ever heard from her. “It was - I thought they f*cking killed you.”
“Nope. ‘M just fine.” His head hasn’t stopped aching since he first woke up here, but Joel doesn’t mention that.
Ellie nods, her eyes dropping from his to trace around their surroundings instead. “This is a nice setup they have here,” she notes. “Definitely better than anything we had back in the QZ I’d bet.”
She ain’t wrong there, but the niceness of their current shelter isn’t his most pressing concern at the moment. “Ellie,” Joel says quietly, looking her over again even as she determinedly looks away. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, the purple imprints along her jawbone are even more stark. “I need you to tell me everything that happened after they took you.” When Ellie starts to shake her head, Joel presses, even as the word feels foreign on his tongue. “Please.”
“Fine.” She glances back up at him briefly. “But can you like…take your shoes off so I can sit on the bed. My legs hurt.”
Automatically, Joel toes off his boots, letting them fall with a thump down to the floor. It hadn’t even occurred to him that they’d still been on, he’d just become so accustomed to the feeling of sleeping in his shoes.
He shifts his legs to the side, gesturing ever so slightly to the empty space he’s created. He doesn’t point out that there’s a couple of perfectly good chairs on either side of the bed that she could sit in if her legs were hurting that bad. He gets the feeling it ain’t about that anyways.
Ellie hoists herself up, wincing slightly, and kicks her own dirty shoes off to the ground before crossing her legs. Her knee digs into the outside of his thigh but Joel doesn’t readjust or ask her to either.
She stays quiet for a long, weighted moment, until Joel feels like he might choke on the words she hasn’t even uttered yet. He’s got a pretty goddamn guess about what happened while they were separated, he just needs to hear her confirm it.
Even if he’s not sure he can handle it.
“Ellie?” Joel prompts, and she tenses.
“I stabbed a guy.” Her eyes stay locked on the hands currently knotted in her lap, knuckles bleached white. “I might have killed him.”
Joel reaches forward, laying one of his large hands over the top of her two small ones. “You were protectin’ yourself,” he assures her, and Ellie rotates one of her hands so it’s wrapped around his wrist and he’s holding hers. A misaligned handshake, like they’re agreeing and solidifying that it was okay, what she did. Anything to survive. Joel’s well acquainted with that.
Ellie’s other arm reaches awkwardly across her body to dig in her pocket, but she refuses to let go of his wrist. Her hand emerges with her knife, the same one she’s carried the entire time he’s known her. The one held high in her hand when she came hollering out of a door and he then flung her into a wall.
Probably shouldn’t laugh at that, Joel thinks, even as a small smile threatens to appear on his lips at the memory of her small, fierce, hateful face glaring up at him.
She proffers the knife to him, and he reaches up to take it with his free hand. There’s blood caked on the knife when he flicks it open, the hinging movement of it hindered by more blood in the middle. Some has even dried on the handle, and Joel looks up to see Ellie staring at it forlornly.
“We’ll fix it,” he tells her softly, carefully using the side of his leg to push it closed. “We’ll get it cleaned up.” Ellie just nods jerkily, gaze dropping to their interlocked wrists. “Ellie,” Joel prods. “What happened?”
She sniffs, chin sticking out as she lifts it and looks somewhere over his head. He needs to get some good food in her, Joel thinks absently - her cheeks have lost that soft roundness she had when he met her, and he needs to fix that for himself just as much as he needs to fix the knife for her.
“They knocked you out,” Ellie begins, fingers gripping him tightly. The sleeve of Tommy’s coat slides back down to cover the tips of his fingers where they encircle the sharp bones of her wrist. “And then we started walking. They kept me in the middle, I guess so I couldn’t try to run. Shoved me around a little. One of them pushed me and I tripped over a root in the snow and l f*cking smacked into a tree.” She meets his eyes for the briefest second. “It’s how I got this.” She taps her lower lip with the hand not holding his wrist. It’s probably also how she got the bruises around her eyes too, if she hit her face that hard.
“We might wanna see about some ice for it,” Joel observes. “You got some swellin’.”
Ellie shrugs like she couldn’t care one way or the other, eyes dropping from his again. “And one of them grabbed me and pulled me back to my feet. Probably have a bruise on my arm too.”
It takes a conscious effort to only clench the hand not holding her wrist.
“We kept walking, and I heard one of them say…” her lower lip wobbles ever so slightly. Immediately Joel wants to make her stop, wants to tell her it doesn’t matter if he knows what happened to her because she’s here and they’ll fix it no matter what.
He just doesn’t want her to cry anymore.
“He said they should’ve left me on the ground, that I looked good on my back like that.” Ellie rushes the words out, each one tripping over the one that came before. “And the woman that was with them kept me close to her as we kept going until we got to their camp. I never did get her name,” she adds, more to herself than to him.
Joel wants to interrupt, wants to tell her to stop, go back, tell her that those were disgusting men, the worst kinds of humans, that as soon as he’s able he’ll get off this bed and find and kill every single one of them.
But he also knows that if he stops her, she might not be able to get going again. And it’s like draining a wound - all the venom needs to come out immediately so she can start to heal. So Joel keeps his mouth shut and lets her keep on.
“Their camp was maybe only a couple miles away, I think. One of them said something about packing up in the morning and keeping on west.” Ellie reaches up with her free hand and swipes under her eyes, flinching when she puts too much pressure on a bruise. “The woman took me to a tent in the back - I think she was trying to hide me from them for a bit, but it didn’t work. The guy that was in charge of them found us really fast and he –” Ellie stops, gulps in air.
Joel presses the button on the side of the bed to make it sit more upright, and as soon as he’s up enough, he reaches for her and tugs her forward until her forehead meets his collarbone, their hands still holding each other’s wrists in the middle. It’s awkward, straining his back and probably hers, but Joel cups a hand at the back of her head and keeps her there anyways.
Just as much for him as for her.
The grip Ellie has on his wrist has become almost uncomfortably tight, but Joel doesn’t say anything, waiting for her to continue. “He knocked the woman aside when she tried to put herself between me and him and then he –” She shudders, forehead pressing hard into his collarbone as she all but climbs into his lap.
Joel finally disentangles their hands, wrapping both arms around her and pulling her close. He wonders, briefly, when either of them became so tactile, when they decided that this was their manner of comfort when the most contact they’d had before was a steadying hand or an accidental step on the back of his boot.
But then Ellie burrows harder against him, hands fisted in the sides of his shirt, and Joel decides it doesn’t matter.
“He was on top of me.” The words are nearly lost in the fabric of his shirt, and the IV line in his left arm pulls taut as he wraps it tighter around her. “And I knew, I f*cking knew what he was gonna do and I was screaming and fighting and I just wanted him off –” Words seem to fail her, and Joel squeezes his eyes shut. He regrets it immediately when it brings to the front of his mind an all too clear vision of everything Ellie’s describing – her small body pinned under the man with the stringy beard, his cracked leer looming over her.
He doesn’t know what to say to reassure her, if such reassurance is even capable. Does he tell her that she did everything she could? That it’s not her fault? That it’s his fault, for failing to protect her?
In the end it doesn’t matter - Ellie speaks again before he can pull the words free from the bramble in his throat. “She hit him with something.”
She? It takes Joel a second to remember - the woman in the group, the one Ellie said had tried to keep her close. The one Joel had stared at pleadingly before they knocked him out, begging her with his eyes to protect his girl. And in the end, it turned out, she had.
“She hit him with something,” Ellie repeats, her voice stronger. “And knocked him off me. And then when he got up and came at me again I was able to get my knife out and I stabbed him. Got him right in the f*cking chest.” One of her fingertips comes up and presses firmly against Joel’s own chest, marking a spot on the right side next to the ball of his shoulder. Somehow she’d nailed one of the few softer spots on the human body, an area not protected by bone and tough muscle.
“He bled a lot,” Ellie adds unnecessarily. “And fell down, and the woman hit him in the head again and then she took off. I tried to follow her, and I did, for a bit, but she was going the wrong way. So I turned around and went back the way we came. I was trying to find back where they left you, but then it got cold and dark and I could hear them coming out after us. So I ducked between some bushes and then climbed a tree and just…waited there. Heard them go by, and I started getting really f*cking cold, and then your brother showed up.”
Her tale ended, Ellie shifts back away from him again, resituating herself on the bed next to him. Her knee digs again into his thigh, and for the first time Joel notices the blood on her jeans as well.
Neither of them says anything, the only sound the brushing of a tree branch against the window. Ellie’s hand snakes around his wrist once more, fingertips pressing over his pulse. Tommy and Maria still aren’t back with their promised clean clothes, and now that it’s been offered, Joel can’t get the idea from his head. Clothes that don’t look and smell like the road, that aren’t stiffened from dirt and sweat. A f*cking miracle, honestly.
“Now what?” Ellie asks. Her head is angled towards him, but she still isn’t quite looking at him.
Joel sighs. “Dunno, really. I probably ain’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon, not till I can walk upright again. Might wanna wait out the worst of winter here if they’ll let us.”
Ellie nods, chewing her lower lip until Joel nudges her and tells her to quit. “And then we go find the Fireflies, right?”
“Right,” Joel agrees, even as the idea doesn’t quite sit right with him. “We go find ‘em, let them take your blood or whatever for their cure, and then maybe we come back here if they’ll have us. Or we find somewhere else.”
Ellie looks him full in the face for the first time since Tommy brought her back, brows tugged together. “Oh, it’s we?” She parrots his words back at him, his joke-that-hadn’t-really-been-a-joke from…f*ck, had it really only been the night before? It felt like an eternity ago, damn near a whole lifetime. All of it he’d spent petrified to the point of not breathing, consumed by the fear that she wasn’t gonna be found, that he was never gonna see her again, that the last image he’d have in his mind of her would be her terrified face and blood on her neck.
Joel offers her a gentle, almost apologetic smile, reaching over to squeeze her knee gently.
“Yeah, it’s we.”
