Chapter Text
“So where are y’all headed after you get out of here?” Sandra asks as they navigate a series of tunnels he’s been assured are clear of infected.
He doesn’t buy it for a second, but their luck has held thus far.
“We’re going to Wy-”
He clamps a hand over Ellie’s mouth, ignoring her indignant cry and the way she immediately licks his palm.
Henry grins until he sees the expression on his face, and then he looks away quickly, hopping up on an old pipe and giving his mother a hand up. He extends his arms tentatively in a clear offer to take Ellie, and he resists the urge to pull her back when Tess picks her up and hands her over.
He’s over the pipe after her so quickly that he almost condemns himself to a lifetime of sleeping on the couch by forgetting Tess.
The look she gives him as she takes his hand says she’s still contemplating it.
*
The journey across the city goes about as well as it could have. They cross paths with two pairs of FEDRA guards that he and Tess make quick work of, and he ends up leaving Ellie in Henry’s hold for the sake of having someone with longer legs capable of running with her. He still doesn’t like it, but he and Tess both still have better odds in a fight than a stringbean teenager, and Ellie seems happy enough to get carried.
“-and then I’ll be really old and I’ll stay up really late and I won’t have to eat any stinky green beans,” Ellie tells Henry conversationally, wrinkling her nose a bit at the last part.
“You like green beans,” he reminds her. “You stole half of mine the last time we had ‘em.”
“Those are Bill Beans, daddy,” she says, rolling her eyes and giving Henry a look like she’s apologizing for her daddy’s ignorance. “I like Bill Beans. Green beans are funking icky. Bill Beans are yummy.”
“Yeah Joel,” Tess chimes in.
“Yeah daddy,” Ellie parrots at once.
He decides defending himself by winding her up about green beans isn’t worth potentially giving away their position with shouting.
*
“You’re 15?” Ellie demands, incredulous, as Henry smiles, putting a hand over her head to keep from bumping it as he works his way through a bent screen, still holding her.
“Uh huh. I’ll be sixteen in a few months.”
“You’re old,” Ellie says with a little wrinkle of her nose.
Henry snorts.
“And what does that make me?” Sandra says, teasing. For the most part, she’s been content to listen and smile occasionally, and he’s a little surprised that she’s speaking now. “Henry’s my oldest baby.”
“How old are you?” Ellie asks at once.
“Manners,” Tess says. “That’s a rude question to ask grownups.”
Ellie considers this for a moment.
“...so you’re really old, huh?” She says, turning to Sandra.
“Ellie.”
*
The first sign that they’ve found the rest of Sandra and Henry’s family is a child’s wordless cry of joy and a kid who looks just a bit younger than Ellie streaking towards them out of the house Sandra’s told them her husband and son have been waiting in until they got back. He reaches for his gun automatically at the movement, but as soon as he registers that it’s a child, he doesn’t draw, instead looking around them to make sure this isn’t a trap.
Henry crouches down, setting Ellie onto her own feet and immediately signing. He’s a little surprised by it, but when the little boy doesn’t respond to the sound of a large man accidentally kicking a pipe over as he leaves the building, he gathers that he’s deaf. He watches the man warily as he approaches at a light jog, but before he’s even halfway there, Sandra is meeting him, pulling him into a hug that he returns eagerly.
Henry stands again, heeding two sets of grasping hands and lifting a child to each hip. Reedy as he is, the two are small, and he appears to be managing easily.
Still, he’s had enough of a stranger toting his kid around.
“I’ll take her,” he says, approaching with his arms already out.
Ellie, already trying to mirror the signs Sam is doing, whines through her nose and tries to resist.
“Not now,” he tells her, low, and she makes another displeased noise but goes, reaching out to him and letting herself be transferred.
When he tries to turn to keep an eye on the other adults as Tess approaches them, though, she about yanks his shirt down to his chest to make him turn enough to keep her eyes on Sam to continue imitating his signs. For the sake of avoiding a tantrum, he obeys.
*
“-wondering when y’all would be back,” he hears the man say before he extends a hand to Tess, one still on his wife’s back. “I’m Hank.”
“Tess,” she says, shaking his hand. “That’s Joel, and our daughter, Ellie.”
Ellie perks up at the sound of her name and looks away from Sam enough to wave hi. He lets her be friendly enough for both of them.
“We should get inside,” Hank says, tugging at his wife. “New patrol is coming around in about ten more minutes, and they’re looking for papers.” The look he gives them says clearly that he knows they have no such thing.
Once inside, he sets Ellie down with stern instructions to stay in the main room, and she says yes distractedly before she immediately tackles Sam to the ground. He’s about to interfere when he hears the smaller kid laugh and buck, and Ellie gives him enough room to flip them.
From the way she immediately growls around a grin and rolls them, it was just to give herself the extra challenge.
*
Ellie and Sam collapse into a sleep pile like puppies soon after the sun sets, curling around each other and dropping into the sort of unconsciousness only small children can achieve after a hard day of play. Henry settles near them and is out almost as fast, head pillowed on his arms. He twitches instinctually when Hank pulls a blanket up over the little ones, immediately displeased at a stranger in close proximity to Ellie, but the man just tucks the covers around the kids and then backs away with a brief, affectionate touch to his son’s head. Ellie makes a soft noise in her sleep and then curls around Sam a little tighter, using him like a teddy bear despite the fact that the kid is almost as big as her, if thinner. It’s a point of pride, the way Ellie’s gotten some weight on her bones after dedicated efforts at fattening her up, and it’s slightly unsettling, seeing her next to a kid who’s as skinny as she was when they first took her home. A look at his parents says as much food as possible goes to their children, but it fills him with a deeply unwanted little pang of guilt, his family taken care of when compared to a family that’s clearly struggling.
It’s not his business, he tells himself sternly. He and Tess figured it out. These two should be just as capable, especially with an older child to babysit.
But still, he can’t quite keep from looking at the two kids curled up together.
*
They got some rations into the kids before they conked out, and among themselves, they plan to split whatever they can find in the rubble of a nearby house, him and Hank going out to look around while Tess and Sandra stay behind. It would possibly feel more sexist if they’d chosen the labor distribution, but instead, the women had been the ones to send them off.
He feels more than a bit like a labrador sent out to retrieve.
“You two together before the outbreak?” Hank asks, offering him a hand up over a tricky section that he pretends not to see. A ceasefire is one thing, but he’s not looking to play that nice.
“After,” he responds shortly. After a moment, a voice in his head that sounds rather like Tess’s prompts him to add, “You?”
The existence of a child named after him would indicate yes, but his conversational skills are more than a little rusty after so many years of limited use.
“Each other’s first everything,” Hank says fondly. “Met in sixth grade and just grew up together.”
His impulse is to respond that his wife had been his high school sweetheart, but that’s more personal than he’s really willing to offer. In a sense, he and Tess had grown up in a different way together, shedding off what they were Before to learn how to be ruthless enough to survive in this new world, but it would feel like a dick move to be such a downer with something like that. He might not have enjoyed this little group project, but they’ve been helpful and haven’t been a threat to his kid. These days, that’s about the highest commendation he can give.
“Y’all here Before or moved here after?”
“Born and raised,” Hank says with a little less levity. “Moved out to California for a bit right after we were married, but her folks were older and needed us back. After they passed, it just didn’t make sense to move on, you know?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I was the same way with my mom. Grew up in Austin and stayed around even after she was gone.”
“Didn’t know Austin had a QZ,” Hank says without suspicion. He’s not making an accusation. He’s just making conversation.
Joel’s not sure he remembers how to do casual conversation, not anymore.
“Left after the outbreak,” he says shortly.
“Needed a fresh start?”
The truth is that he needed to move somewhere he wouldn’t see the ghost of his daughter in all of the places she’d been before, but that’s not something he’s even told Tess.
“Figured it was worth looking elsewhere,” he says. “Here, help me with this.”
Together they lift a massive section of wall loose, pulling it out of the way. Hank doesn’t argue as he trails him, hand on his gun but not drawn. Grudgingly, he has to admire the man’s calm. If he and Tess were still in the business of making smuggling connections, he might try to ally with him. As it is, he expresses his trust by handing over the first couple of cans he sees to put in the man’s backpack.
“Y’all got family waiting for you?” Hank asks when they’re making their way out. They could poke around, but without needing to talk about it, they both understand the other’s reticence to leave their partners and children alone much longer.
“No offense,” he says, and for once, he actually means it, “but I’d rather we kept our pasts to ourselves. I appreciate that y’all have been willing to work with us, but we don’t need to trade more information than that.”
“Fair enough,” Hank says, lifting his hands in surrender. “You’ve got a little one to keep safe. I get it.”
“Appreciate that.”
A long moment of awkward silence.
“So, uh,” Hank says, scratching the back of his head. “How’s your fantasy league looking?”
He laughs, genuinely startled, and he sees Hank grin.
“Well,” he says, still smiling slightly, “last time football was still a thing, I had my eye on Tony Banks as my quarterback and-”
*
They get back to the rest of the group mid-way through an argument about Frank Wycheck's lateral to Kevin Dyson in 2000, and his heart stops for a moment when he doesn’t see Ellie next to Sam as soon as he opens the door. He all but shoves Hank on his ass as he pushes his way through, eyes searching frantically for-
“She’s okay.”
His attention snaps to Tess, sitting next to Sandra on a battered couch, as she rocks Ellie in her babyrrito blanket, their kid fast asleep. He feels almost shaky after the release of so much adrenaline, and he fights to keep himself steady as he makes his way over to them, sitting heavily next to Tess and reaching out to touch Ellie’s baby-soft cheek.
“She had a bad dream,” Sandra says quietly, giving him an understanding nod when he looks to her.
“Just needed to be a babyrrito for a bit, that’s all,” Tess says, still rocking Ellie softly.
“We’ll have to remember that,” Sandra says, exchanging a small smile with Tess. She touches Tess’s arm in a friendly way before she rises, moving to her husband.
“Y’all alright?” He asks quietly when she’s out of earshot. “Anything happen?”
The look Tess gives him, something soft and affectionate, makes him feel both flustered and pleased.
“We’re fine,” she says, “except that my arm is getting tired. She’s gotten funking heavy.”
He’s almost certain that this is all a ploy to let him save face with the way he needs to hold Ellie for a little bit to settle his own residual fear, but he doesn’t argue. He just moves to pick her up carefully, shushing her when she stirs with a grumpy noise at being disturbed.
“Bill’s an ass, but his food is good ship,” he says with a teasing look to her.
She snorts, standing.
“Nothing but the best for our goddamn baby.”
As she steps away to kneel next to Sandra and Hank while they unload the canned goods, he hides his smile by pressing his lips to Ellie’s temple.
*
Eventually, he makes himself put Ellie back down, returning her to the baby pile on the floor. The moment she’s down, she turns onto her side and resumes using Sam like a teddy bear, and he moves her arm a bit so she at least won’t choke him out in his sleep. They’re plenty warm under the blanket they’d been sharing, so he folds her babyrrito blanket up and stores it back in her backpack, touching her back once softly before he rises.
He takes a can from Tess as he settles next to her near the spirit stove, finding it full of an apocalypse stew of creamed corn, carrots, and what seems to be chopped Vienna sausages. As food made from 20 year old canned food goes, it’s not half bad.
“My compliments to the chef,” Tess says, lifting her own can in a salute.
Hank grins and takes a bow, still seated.
“Married this one just for his chef skills,” Sandra says fondly.
“I knew you were using me all along,” Hank says with mock severity. “Now the truth comes out, you mooch.”
Sandra smiles and leans in for a chaste kiss that Hank meets her halfway for, and he feels a small pang of discomfort about his own reticence towards physical affection in front of witnesses, wondering for the first time if Tess would want such a thing. They barely do so much as kiss in front of Ellie, but Sandra and Hank still look like high schoolers in love.
There’s a part of him, he’s surprised and discomfited to learn, that wants the same thing.
Talk turns to comparing QZs, a common enough smalltalk topic in this new world. From the glimpses of multiple execution sites he’d gotten on their way–and Henry had risen in his esteem significantly by how quickly he distracted Ellie each time to keep her from looking–he gathers that the Kansas City FEDRA group is even worse than Boston’s, something that he hadn’t thought was possible.
“It wasn’t so bad at the start,” Sandra says grimly, “but they’ve gotten worse in the past few years. We’re not one of more desirable installations, so we get the young recruits high on power and the old fuckers too corrupt to be trusted elsewhere.”
“Something’s gonna have to give eventually,” Hank says. “People can’t live like this, not for long. There’s already three different resistance groups operating, and word on the street is that they’re starting to work together. FEDRA doesn’t get its shit together, and they’re liable to get overthrown.”
“You could come with us,” Tess offers, and he can feel her actively ignoring the look he gives her as he about stares a hole through her head. They got through Kansas City, they shared food, end of collaboration. “Might be nice, two other adults on the way,” she says, in a statement he knows is meant more for him than for them. “You could both get a fresh start, find a new place to raise your boys. We’re heading to a settlement, non-FEDRA. I’m sure you’d be welcome with us.”
Hank and Sandra exchange a loaded look he can’t read before Sandra looks back to them.
“We appreciate that,” she says regretfully, “really. And we would, we’d get out of this place in a second…” She trails off, swallowing.
“But Sam’s sick,” Hank continues, and he barely resists the urge to go grab Ellie at once. “Leukemia,” he says, gaze flickering to his child. “We have a contact within FEDRA’s medical ranks who gets us the medicine he needs.”
“That why you were across town?” He asks Sandra. “Getting his medicine?”
Knowing that she was separated from her baby while getting his cancer treatment makes him feel like more than a bit of a dick for his own response. Sandra nods.
“He’s gotten better,” she says, with a determined tone, like she’s willing it to be true. “The doctor said another couple months, and he could be cured.” She looks to them, face faintly regretful but set. “So thank you for the offer, but we can’t leave. Not yet.”
And against that, what else is there to say?
*
They wake before dawn the next morning, and he and Hank end up carrying the little ones while Sandra guides a bleary-eyed Henry. Ellie snuffles in her sleep and turns her head in more towards him, and he thinks with amusement that he’s pretty sure he can feel drool on his collarbone. They follow Sandra and Hank to their home, a little one-story towards the edge of town. This early in the day, the other houses are all dark as part of electricity rationing, so they hurry to get inside before they’re seen. They’ll be leaving soon, but Hank and Sandra had said they wanted to send them off with a few things. The part of him that’s survived for 20 years immediately thinks it’s a trap, but they had time enough to turn on them by this point.
Still, he leaves Ellie with Tess as he follows Sandra to a storage shed in the backyard, looking down to the pistol on her hip with a significant look that makes her give him a fondly exasperated smile.
Sandra hands over a children’s rain jacket, a sunhat, and an old map, and then she reaches up and pulls down a hiking backpack, one of the ones that can carry a child as well.
“Haven’t even touched this in years,” Sandra says with a wistfulness that clearly says she’s remembering the days when they had the leisure of doing things like going for family hikes that necessitated things like baby carriers. She shakes herself out of it and gives him a flicker of a smile, holding it out. “Weight limit’s 50 pounds total if I’m remembering correctly, and yours is so little bitty, I don’t see her coming anywhere close to it.”
The familiarity of it, the use of “yours,” sends him back in time for a moment to days of playdates and nursery parent mixers. Without context, this could be any conversation between parents trading off hand-me-downs back before the outbreak days, a simple exchange of what’s no longer needed.
“I-” He fumbles over his words, belatedly realizing that he hasn’t reached out to take it and almost dropping it when he does, feeling clumsy, weighted by his own memories. “Thank you,” he says, sincerely. This isn’t a world in which things like this just clutter storage sheds. This is handing off something that could come in handy for survival, especially with a little one of their own.
The small smile Sandra gives him says she understands exactly what it means.
And still, she lets go and steps back.
“You’re welcome.”
*
Ellie enjoys being carried around like a little princess immensely after a short adjustment period. She’d white-knuckled the backpack the first time she’d been set in and swung up to his shoulders and then clutched onto him like he was going to drop her. By the third morning, though, she gets into her carrier on her own, wiggling with excitement and tapping her hands lightly on top of the backpack in anticipation, taking great pride in doing up the buckles herself as they add gear and food to the bag itself. He trades smiles with Tess each time Ellie goes “Whee!” as she’s slung up into place, and she giggles when she’s bounced to settle the weight as he does up the buckles.
He also graciously ignores the “yee haws!” and “giddy-ups!” he gets due to the existence of stirrups on either side, Ellie trying to kick him into going faster no matter how many times he grips a tiny foot in warning to knock it off.
He carries Ellie most of the time, but Tess insists on taking turns as well no matter his protests. She looks absurd carrying a bag around that seems almost as big as her entire torso, but Ellie thinks it’s funny to get hauled up as a mutual effort, and she tilts her head all the way back to look at him each time he helps Tess lift her into place. He makes a game of making faces at her to make her laugh, and she does her best to mirror them, though she hasn’t yet mastered crossing her eyes.
“You’re silly,” she tells him their fifth morning when he’s holding the weight up to let Tess adjust the shoulder straps.
“You’re silly,” he corrects, leaning forward enough to kiss her nose, something guaranteed to make her giggle.
“You’re silly!” She enthuses, always game for a playfight.
Their exchange continues another few rounds until Tess cuts them off with a dry, “I think you’re both funking silly.”
*
For the sake of not giving away the location of the town over the radio–even with their precautions, they couldn’t be absolutely sure there were no eavesdroppers–they’d arranged to use a smoke signal. The exact location of the wood was decided on using a code only he, Tess, and Tommy know, and they find it on the seventeenth day out of Kansas City, Ellie out cold in her carrier on his back. They’d had an exciting morning of Ellie seeing a bobcat and Tess blessedly being fast enough to grab their kid in the ten seconds they had between her yelling “kitty!” and her taking off towards a wild animal that could have torn her face off.
He thinks wistfully of her lost child leash.
“Tommy better not have been lying about hot water,” Tess says quietly as she helps him lower Ellie, her head lolling, sunhat blocking most of her face. “It’s gonna take weeks to soak these knots out. Who knew her bony little butt could feel so heavy?”
“At this point, I’d take a lukewarm shower,” he says, rolling his shoulders. The first few days hadn’t been so bad, but they’ve both started to get bruises and welts from carrying Ellie so many days in a row. They’d let her walk a few hours each day, but a stretch of time after she jumped in a puddle last week meant bloody blisters on her feet, so she’s been riding around in just socks since then to let them heal. He can admire that she’s a little trooper, but they definitely need to work on her speaking up when she’s in pain.
“Hell, so long as there’s a bed.” She carefully props Ellie up against a rock, freezing for a moment when she stirs and then exhaling when she settles again, adjusting her hat a bit to better block the sun.
They find the wood right where Tommy had said it would be, and Ellie sleeps right through them building up an entire little bonfire, stacking green wood on top to make it extra smokey. She startles awake when a pinecone pops, tipping herself over in her carrier and going down hard with a surprised squeak of alarm.
“Ow,” she complains, grumpy, as he responds to her raised arms and picks her up. She grumbles to herself while she settles with her head against his shoulder, drifting off as he bounces her gently, her arms wrapping around his neck.
“Daddy’s girl,” Tess teases as he goes back to work with his one free hand.
*
It’s only a couple of hours before they hear the sound of hoofbeats, and he doesn’t even have time to hand off a still-sleeping Ellie to Tess before they’re surrounded by mounted riders with bandanas across the lower halves of their faces. He and Tess close ranks at once, him tilting Ellie away and moving his free hand to his gun. Tess exchanges a thin-lipped look with him, and he can read the unease in her expression. This feels a hell of a lot like an ambush.
“We’re not looking for trouble-” Tess starts, but before she can finish, there’s a man vaulting off of his horse and making his way to them.
Even with his face half-covered, he knows exactly who it is in an instant.
“Well look who finally made it,” Tommy says, tugging his bandana down and revealing a wide smile in the scant moment before he wraps his arms around him in a hug that he returns with his one free arm.
Ellie startles awake at once, making an alarmed noise at finding herself squished between him and a stranger, and Tommy laughs at one little hand pushing his face away with all of her might, whining through her nose in complaint. The moment Tommy’s let go and backed away, she wraps her arms around his neck and tucks herself against him tightly, eyeing Tommy and the other riders warily.
“What?” Tommy asks, unbothered. “You’re shy all of a sudden, after you’ve been talking my ear off for weeks?”
Ellie lifts her head slightly, eyes narrowed.
“Radio man?” She asks, mistrustful.
“The one and only,” Tommy says with a smile, tipping his hat.
“Well damn, you little punk, marriage looks good on you,” Tess says, moving forward to hug Tommy as well. She laughs when Tommy lifts her off of her feet, and he turns to smile at Ellie, only to find her watching the proceedings with a slight wrinkle of her nose. Before he can ask what’s wrong, a woman dismounts and comes closer, and Tommy sets Tess down and puts an arm around the woman’s shoulders.
“This is Maria,” he says, nearly bursting with pride. For a moment in Joel’s mind, he’s a kid presenting a new school project, excited to show off his achievement, and it’s disorienting, to see in person that his baby brother is now a husband and soon-to-be-father.
Introductions are done with a 4 year old still clinging to him like a limpet, but from the tight quality of Maria’s smile, he doesn’t think that’s much of a loss. Negotiating Ellie loose goes much easier when she finds out that she’ll be riding on a horse, though she mounts a protest at having to wear a helmet when no one else is.
“I don’t want a stinky helmnet,” she complains, leaning her head back as far as she can while he’s still holding her. The muffled laughter he can hear from a few members of the patrol at his kid showing out is slightly embarrassing, but he supposes it’s better than wary suspicion. “Hey!” Ellie complains when Tess outmaneuvers her by taking the helmet from him and buckling it on her in one quick move while she’s still bending all the way back. She whips her head around, nearly headbutting him with the motion. He gathers that she’s glaring at Tess from the way his partner’s eyebrows lift in a challenging look, but finally Ellie gives up with a huff, setting her head back down on his shoulder in a pout with enough force that he winces at the force of the helmet knocking against his collarbone.
He gives Tommy a middle finger from where his brother is grinning with amusement at the power struggle.
“This is Apple,” Tommy says when they walk over to one of the horses that’s been brought forward, and Ellie lifts her head, clipping him across the temple this time. He goes to hand her off to his brother to distribute the damage he’s getting, but she clings to him, popping the top button of his shirt open when she refuses to let go.
“Like a fruit?” Ellie asks when he’s given up, catching him on the cheekbone when she leans her head back to get a better look at the horse.
He doesn’t think he’s imagining Tess’s stifled laughter from his side and gives her a look, getting a badly-forced look of innocence in response.
“Just like the fruit,” Tommy says. “You can pet her if you want.”
Ellie perks up at that, and he barely jerks out of the way to save his nose when she turns her head back around.
“Can I pet it?”
From little miss bobcat enthusiast who’s also brought more than one snake inside, it’s an encouraging display of sense about animals.
“Sure can,” he says, cupping her little hand in his and showing her how to stroke along the horse’s neck. “You just gotta be gentle, okay?”
He’s tempted to tell her she needs to be gentle with him, too, when she jerks back in surprise at the horse turning its head to snuffle at her. Rubbing his smarting forehead, he gladly hands her off to Tess to hold while he mounts.
Ellie’s last bit of wariness fades under the novelty of being on a horse, and it’s all he can do to keep her from bouncing as they ride. The mare they’re on is remarkably patient with a wiggly passenger on her back, but he’d rather not test her good nature. Tommy rides close by and tries to engage Ellie in conversation, but without a radio between them, she seems a little shy, pressing back against him each time she’s directly addressed and responding only in monosyllables, gladly going back to stroking the horse’s mane the moment she’s no longer required for the conversation.
“Thought y’all would be here over a week ago,” Tommy says lightly, but he hears the slight strain behind it. “Radio’d back to the compound just in case, but they didn’t know anything.”
“Had some trouble in Kansas City,” he says, with a look that says they can go into detail about that further when there aren’t little ears around. Tommy nods with understanding, but in the next moment, he has a small grin that has him on alert at once.
“So he got lost and wouldn’t ask for directions, huh?” Tommy calls over his shoulder to Tess.
“I didn’t-” He starts.
“Worse than that run three years ago,” Tess contributes, and he plucks a pinecone from an overhanging branch to toss at her, which backfires when she catches it and sends it back, clipping him on the head.
His one consolation is that the pinecone he sends at his laughing brother afterwards almost knocks him off his horse.
The cheer he gets from Ellie feels like more than enough of a victory to him.
*
They pause at the top of an overlook, and for a moment, his breath is taken away by the sight of an entire town below, a wall around it. This far away, it’s hard to pick out details, but he can see a stretch of green that looks like a park and bright colors on buildings and small figures moving around, an entire town just going about its business. He’d known academically that it existed from Tommy telling him about it, but seeing it himself, with the first lights flickering on in preparation for the coming dusk…
It looks…
It looks like a piece of the world he’d thought was lost.
“Daddy?”
He looks down to Ellie, finding her with her head craned all the way back. The sight makes him smile, and he can’t resist stroking a thumb over her little chin.
“Yeah, baby?” He says.
“Are we gonna live there?”
“Yeah, baby girl,” he says, throat feeling a little tight at the idea of an entire new life for her, a safe life. “We are.”
“Welcome home,” Tommy says softly, and when their eyes meet, his brother nods, like he understands exactly what he’s thinking.
He grants himself one more long moment of looking at their future, and then he nudges his horse into motion.
They’ve got a home to settle into, after all.