Chapter Text
The sirens went off. Joel was on his feet immediately.
“Code black,” a voice screeched over the alarms.
Fuck. A bomb.
A digital clock on the wall caught his eye. It felt like a ticking time bomb had just started counting down in his chest. He should have been helping direct the kids underground, but he couldn't. His body wouldn't let him. He had to find Ellie.
Personnel and the oldest cadets got to go underground first. FEDRA’s rationalization was that those people were the valuable investments. The older the kid, the more resources were expended on them. The little ones were secondary.
Joel booked it down the stairs toward the second floor. He clipped his shoulder hard against the concrete wall because he rounded the corner so quickly. He didn't feel the pain.
When he got to her dorm room, he pounded his fist harshly against the wood. “Ellie!” Joel called out, absolute desperation seeping into his tone.
No answer. He pushed the door open. The room was empty. Ellieless. The sight of her neatly made, tiny bed sent a sharp knife straight through his stomach.
He weaved his way through all the chaotic halls of the younger kids, shouting her name. The sirens continued to blare, mocking him.
Fuck, this is pointless. Three minutes had passed. The clock was ticking.
Joel ran to check the infirmary. Nothing. The heavy vice grip on his heart tightened until he could barely breathe.
Five minutes down. He ran toward solitary confinement.
Joel threw open the door to the officers' quarters. There was no one inside. The guards had already ducked underground. Joel frantically spread out the logbook paperwork across the desk. There was no entry for Ellie today. She wasn't in the hole. He rapidly pulled out the files from the previous days to find Sam's room number.
Joel booked it toward Sam's dorm. He got to the door and pounded heavily.
Then, Joel realized. Sam couldn’t hear his knock. He couldn’t hear the sirens or the terrifying commotion in the hallways.
Joel pulled back his boot, about to kick the door inward, when it suddenly swung open.
An older boy stood there. The boy had a strong build. He was older, but he wasn't an adult yet. Even with his bigger frame, pure terror was written all over his face.
Then, Sam came around the corner. He pushed past the older boy's legs and immediately threw his small arms around Joel's knees, hugging him tightly.
Joel looked down. The crushing vice grip on his heart, the suffocating worry for Ellie, didn’t let him properly respond to the kid. He couldn't breathe.
“Are you Joel?” the older boy asked. As he spoke, his hands moved in quick, fluid gestures. Joel nodded shortly.
“I’m Henry. Sam's brother,” the boy said, his hands still moving. Joel realized he was signing.
Joel looked around the hallway. The clock in his head ticked louder now. Eight minutes had passed. He wanted to get these two brothers to safety, but he couldn't stop. He had to keep looking for Ellie.
He yanked his FEDRA key card off his belt and shoved it into Henry’s hand. “You take him to the bottom level. You can use my key to get past the checkpoint.”
Joel also shrugged off his heavy guard jacket and pushed it into Henry's arms. “Just say I sent you. If you have the keys and the official jacket, they’ll believe you.”
Henry's eyes went wide. “Thank you,” he said, letting out a massive sigh of relief.
“How do you say 'you're welcome'?” Joel asked quickly, his eyes darting down the hall.
Henry put his flat hand to his chin and motioned outward.
Joel looked down at Sam, who had retreated back to his brother's side. Joel mirrored the hand motion perfectly. Sam’s terrified face suddenly broke into a wide grin.
Then, Joel turned on his heel and ran.
Ten minutes. He checked all of her classrooms. He had memorized her daily schedule weeks ago. He checked every single room, hoping, praying to God that she was safe and hiding under a desk.
Nothing. Just empty chairs and abandoned notebooks.
Twelve minutes. He ran toward the cafeteria. Maybe she had a clean-up duty that he didn't know about. Maybe she was hiding in the pantry.
He was halfway across the courtyard when the world tore open.
The bombs finally hit the west wing, and the deafening explosion threw Joel straight to the ground.
When Joel came to, he wasn’t disoriented at all. His head pounded with a vicious, blinding heat from the blast wave, but his thoughts were immediately with Ellie.
He groaned, forcing his battered body up onto his feet. The world tilted dangerously. He turned to the side and vomited onto the concrete, barely missing his boots. He wiped his mouth with the back of a shaking hand.
While most of the remaining people in the building ran away from the smoking rubble, Joel ran toward it.
The west wing was a nightmare of collapsed concrete blocks. When he got there, he didn't wait. He physically started lifting the jagged rocks with his bare hands.
He did this all through the agonizing night.
His thoughts were a chaotic, screaming loop.
Not again. Please, God, not again.
Every heavy stone he threw aside felt like a ticking second on a clock he couldn't stop. He remembered Sarah's small body in his arms, how warm she had been, and how quickly that warmth had faded.
If she was under there: dead- her body was cooling.
He couldn't let Ellie freeze under this dark. He pictured her small, eight-year-old face, terrified and trapped in the pitch-black. The thought of her dying alone, thinking he had abandoned her, made him dig until his fingernails cracked and bled.
Every once in a while, he’d call her name.
She wouldn’t answer.
His hands became raw, shredded meat, but he didn't feel the pain.
He was completely at war with himself, driven by a desperate, feral need to protect a little girl he told himself he didn't care about.
The grueling night slowly bled into a cold, gray morning.
When the other FEDRA guards finally started filing back into the area to assess the damage, they found Joel covered in white dust, sweat, and dried blood. He was still clawing at the debris like a madman.
A younger guard tried to pull him back, but Joel brushed him off sharply. He looked so dangerous that the boy instantly retreated. Recognizing that the veteran guard wasn't going to stop, an older supervisor quietly handed Joel a heavy metal shovel.
Joel didn't say thank you. He just gripped the wooden handle until his bloody knuckles turned white, shoved the spade deep into the rubble, and kept digging.
Every body Joel found filled him with relief. It was crazy. He knew it was sick. Nobody should be relieved at the sight of dead kids. But those bloodied, bruised bodies weren’t Ellie.
Then, little arms suddenly wrapped around his middle.
At first, a massive wave of relief crashed over him. His heart soared. He figured she must have crawled out of the rubble on her own and found him.
But then he turned around and took a good look at her.
She was completely unscathed. She didn't have a single scratch on her. She hadn't been trapped at all.
All that suffocating fear that had consumed him all night, the terror that had driven him crazy and ran him around like a madman, completely drained out of him. In a split second, it was replaced by pure, blinding fury.
That night, Joel thought about all the times he’d yelled at Sarah about her safety. He remembered the fury he felt when she wouldn’t text him that she got to school safely. When she wouldn’t lock the front door after she got home. When she went over to a friend's house whose parents he’d never met.
Having a kid was like growing a piece of your soul outside of your body.
For Joel, his entire soul wandered around outside his body for fourteen years.
Sarah was everything.
The mere thought of her being in even a smidge of danger would send a panic through him so deep it would linger for days. And that concern, that terrifying fear, would always manifest as him telling Sarah off. Yelling to mask the panic. Yelling, hoping, he could knock some of that fear into his kid so she would protect herself.
When she died, there was no more panic. There was no more anger. There was just a bone-deep sadness, smoothed over by a heavy numbness.
All those years of protectiveness had amounted to absolutely nothing. He had to dig a too-small grave for his girl, who would forever be fourteen. All his fear and panic went into that dirt with Sarah. The only things left with him were the bloody memories of being upset with her over dumb things, like a house with parents he didn’t know, and her blood dried on his hands.
That numbness lasted for ten years. That was until another little girl wormed her way into his chest. Ellie's small hand had reached right through his ribs and snatched a piece of his heart.
His soul had died with Sarah. In this lawless, brutal, Sarah-less world, a new instinct had taken its place: an urge to hurt anyone who even threatened this new little girl. It was a viciousness that hadn't been there in the law-abiding, Sarah-ful world. Ellie might not have his soul but she had a piece of his heart with her.
And then he thought she died under the concrete.
As he dug through that heavy rubble, he had already made a promise to himself. He would find her body. He would give her the same markerless grave he gave Sarah. And then he’d be done. He’d kill himself and whatever abyss would take him after death would maybe give him the comfort of seeing those two little girls one more time.
But then she was fine. She was completely unscathed.
You’d think all those haunting regrets surrounding Sarah, yelling at her in fear instead of just holding her tight, would have changed him. You’d think Joel would have taken the last two decades to move on from the panic that always sent him into a blind fury.
But it didn’t change him.
Joel yelled at the small eight-year-old in front of him just like he used to yell at Sarah when she was eight, ten, fourteen, and forgot to lock the door behind him.
He yelled at Ellie. He walked away from her. And the second he did, he regretted it.
He had just spent hours digging for her body, weeping internally, thinking about how she might have died completely alone without ever being properly held. And then, when she was right there in front of him, he didn't hold her. Even with the heartbreaking fear written all over her small face.
Despite what he told Ellie, you can’t un-ring a bell.
And Joel was an old dog.
Ellie was a persistent little thing. Except when she wasn't. It was hard for Joel to describe, but he’d noticed it about her.
She was persistent about telling a stupid joke. She would nag him until he finally listened to a punchline. But she wasn't persistent about making people stay. The second he pushed her away, she just stopped trying.
It was like how she was a fighter, but she really wasn't. She fought with her fists, yeah. But Joel could tell she didn't actually want to.
She wanted to fight to keep people in her life. But she didn’t.
All of this meant that she didn’t come look for him after his outburst after the bombing. She didn't try to track him down in the hallways. She didn't sneak up behind him.
That was fine. It was exactly what he wanted. It wasn’t like Joel wanted her around anyway.
Joel started eating in the officers' cafeteria again. Immediately, he was reminded why he had stopped in the first place.
The conversations buzzing around him were either disturbing or depressing. Those were two things Joel didn’t mess with. He didn't have the stomach for the petty gossip or the cold, hard cruelty of the other guards.
But there was a persistent ache deep in his chest. Today, he just sat there and let that ache completely consume him. His eyes zoned out, staring blankly at his tray. The loud, clattering noise of the cafeteria faded away, and his ears filled with a heavy, dull static.
The first time Joel saw Ellie after the bombing was in the crowded hallway. The sight of her brought him back to the very first time they had met.
Just like then, crowds of kids scurried past him. Then, he saw a quick flash of auburn hair. A second later, those big brown eyes found his across the sea of students.
They locked eyes for a split second. Then, her gaze immediately flicked back down to the floor.
And after this... we’re going our separate ways.
His own icy words echoed in his head. This was what Joel wanted. It was for the best.
If Joel’s body twitched forward, instinctively wanting to follow her into the crowd... well, that wasn't in his control. He forced his heavy boots to stay exactly where they were.
Joel was patrolling the east hallway when he heard it. A faint, strangled, “Please.”
He froze. He knew that voice anywhere. As much as his mind told him to stay put-to stay away from her-his head simply wasn’t communicating with his legs.
The small cry was immediately followed by a harsh, grated voice. “Stop cryin’, girl.”
Joel rounded the corner. He saw a massive FEDRA guard. The man was taller than Joel. He was gripping Ellie’s arm like a vise. Leaning over to do so.
“Hey,” Joel called out.
The guard stopped. They both turned around to face him. Joel locked eyes with Ellie. Wet, hot tears were streaming down her pale cheeks.
But beneath the fear, Joel saw a flicker of guarded relief behind her eyes. It made his heart ache fiercely. Under that tough, foul-mouthed shell she always tried to portray, there was still a tiny shred of faith in him. Even after he had failed her so spectacularly.
“I’ll take her off your hands,” Joel told the guard.
“I’m supposed to take her to the hole,” the man responded. His grip on Ellie didn't loosen a single inch.
“I’m on hallways today. Meanin’ transport,” Joel said, his eyes narrowing. “I’ll take her, and you can return to your assignment.”
He was talking straight out of his ass. Guards almost always took the kids they caught from point A to point B. Hallway patrol was mostly just to stop kids from skipping class. But despite the size difference, Joel had twenty years of seniority over this kid, and he let every bit of that hardened, dangerous authority bleed into his posture.
Slowly, the man let go of Ellie’s arm.
The moment she was free, Ellie sped toward Joel’s side. Joel turned on his heel, and they walked away, leaving the guard behind in the corridor. Once they rounded the far corner and were out of sight, Joel stopped. He turned to look down at her, trying to discern why she was crying.
Ellie beat him to it.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry,” she said quickly, her voice trembling as she rubbed her eyes aggressively with her fists. “He was just grabbing my stitches.”
His chest tightened. The ache in his heart flared up. She’s a child. Children cry when they’re hurt.
“Hey,” Joel said softly. He reached out, gently wrapping his large fingers around her wrists and pulling her small arms away from her face. “Stop that.”
She looked up at him. Her big brown eyes were completely bloodshot and swimming with fresh tears.
“S’okay to cry,” he murmured, the words feeling foreign but necessary in his throat. When she didn’t respond, Joel nodded toward her arm. “Let me see.”
Without a single word of protest, Ellie slowly rolled up her uniform sleeve.
Joel looked down. The black thread was strained, and the skin around the wound was angry, bright red, and wet with fresh blood where the guard had squeezed her.
Not good. Not good at all.
He steered her down the corridor and straight into the infirmary.
As she sat down, she looked up at him with those big, wet eyes, and Joel wished to God he had the courage to just pull up a chair.
But then his mind betrayed him. He head replayed the image of her broken, lifeless body trapped under a slab of heavy concrete.
A suffocating fear flooded his body, rushing from his toes to the very tips of his ears.
So he left. He turned his back and walked right out on her.
But he didn't go far. He cornered a male nurse in the hallway, grabbing the man by his medical scrubs and slamming him roughly against the wall. Joel leaned in close, his face dark, making sure the man knew exactly how serious he was. He told the nurse he wanted Ellie given proper antibiotics, and he wanted it done right now.
If Joel couldn’t stomach the terrifying weight of taking care of her himself, the least he could do was beat some people up to ensure they did it for him.
Violence was the only way he knew how to protect things anymore.
He let the trembling nurse go and turned around to finally walk away.
But Joel hesitated.
It was like concrete had just been poured into his boots. He couldn’t move.
Through the small window of the infirmary door, he saw her. Ellie was sitting all alone in a hard plastic chair, her knees pulled tight against her chest, literally hugging herself to keep from shaking. She looked so small.
Joel stood in the hallway, completely torn apart. The panic screamed at him to run. To save himself the heartbreak.
Instead, he pushed the door back open.
Ellie looked up at him. She didn’t smile but Joel saw the hope in her eyes. He wished it wasn’t there. It would be so much easier.
They didn’t speak. He just sat down in the hard plastic chair. And when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, she didn’t protest.
And when he felt her shaking stop against his side, he didn’t say anything.
And when she whispered, “Can you come when I get my stitches out,” he still didn’t say anything. The ache in his chest paralyzing.
Joel zipped back into reality, the static clearing from his ears. The numb haze he’d found himself in during lunch vanished the exact second he heard Marlene's name.
His muscles tensed. He got up from his empty tray and walked straight over to the table of guards discussing it.
“Who’s that?” he interrupted, his voice dropping low.
The two female officers stopped talking and looked up at him like he was completely stupid. In his defense, pre-Ellie, he actually spent the massive majority of his time completely checked out. He hadn't paid attention to a single rumor or name in this world for twenty years.
But things were different now.
They looked at each other, then back up at Joel's stern face. One of the women sighed, leaning back in her chair. “She’s the head of the Fireflies,” she told him bluntly.
What the fuck did the head of the Fireflies want with Ellie?
The question haunted him for the next couple of days. It ate away at him enough that he completely ditched his isolation plan. He had to see her. He walked straight down to the main student cafeteria to find her.
She was sitting at their usual table with Sam. Her small arm was wrapped tightly around the younger boy's shoulders. As Joel drew closer, he was able to see the messages written in the sketchbook: the exact sketchbook he had gotten for her.
I’m so sorry.
It’ll be okay.
We'll stick together.
A tiny smiley face punctuated the last line.
The sight completely unraveled him. This little girl was comforting an even littler boy. This brutal world had done nothing but be cruel to her, yet she could still find it in her heart to comfort someone else.
Once he rounded the table and stood directly in front of the kids, they both looked up at him.
Sam instantly tensed up, his eyes wide.
Ellie quickly took her attention away from Joel. She grabbed her pen and frantically wrote down a message on the paper, turning it toward Sam:
Its okay. I’m not mad at him anymore.
It was a total stab to the chest for Joel. Her forgiveness. He had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, yet she was giving it away just to keep Sam from being scared of him.
His original goal for coming down here was entirely forgotten.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Ellie, his voice dropping into a serious whisper.
She flipped to the previous page in her sketchbook and pushed it across the table toward him.
Joel took it. His blood ran completely cold at the messy handwriting.
Tere kiling Henry
He was steling mebicine for me. And he got caut.
The innocent spelling mistakes and childish handwriting, juxtaposed with such a horrific message, was entirely overwhelming to Joel. Sam still mixed up his b’s and d’s. He didn't even know how to use a th in his spelling words yet. He was just a little kid.
Joel looked up from the paper at Ellie. All he could find in her big brown eyes was a pleading, desperate look.
Without a word, Joel leaned over the table and snatched the pen from her hand. He pressed it to the paper and wrote out three words in his heavy, blocky script:
I’ll fix this.
Sam read the page, and his face lit up with an impossible amount of hope. The little boy wiggled away from Ellie, scrambled out of his chair, and threw his arms tightly around Joel's legs.
Joel wasn't frozen this time. The panic didn't stop him. He reached down and gently patted Sam's back.
He was having a much harder time fixing this than he thought.
Joel's first idea was the easiest: a bribe. He tracked down the commanding officer who made the decision about Henry and offered him a stash of high-grade opioids. But the man just shook his head. He said there were two hardcore death sentences for stealing in this QZ: the infirmary and the armory.
His next idea was to kill the man. But taking him out didn’t actually reverse the ruling.
That left contacting Tess.
It was a dumb, desperate idea. He walked down the residential hallway and knocked on their, her, door. The wood swung open instantly, and Tess was standing there with a gun pressed straight to his face.
“Hi, Tess,” he said softly. He raised a hand up, giving her a small smile.
When she recognized him, she slowly lowered the weapon. Joel immediately shoved his hands into his pockets. An awkward, suffocating silence fell over them. He avoided her eyes while she stood there, judging him.
“You have a lot of nerve showing up here, Texas,” Tess spat out.
Joel winced at her tone. He deserved it, but it still stung. “I’m sorry. I know there ain't no excuse for leavin’ and then show’n up like this.”
“Damn straight,” Tess said.
Joel sighed. He truly deserved her anger. But he wasn’t here to get bitched out.
“Can I come in?”
Tess rolled her eyes, but she stepped back into the apartment. Once the door was clicked shut behind them, he turned to face her fully. He wrung his hands together.
“There’s a kid gettin’ executed,” he said, staring down at his boots. Somehow, he found the courage to look back up into Tess’s eyes. Her gaze pierced right through him. “I need a place for him to stay. And a new identity.”
Tess sighed deeply. She rubbed her eyes roughly with her hand. “You want my soul too, Joel?”
Joel didn’t respond. She walked past him toward the kitchen, and he followed her slowly, like a shadow. She pulled down a whiskey bottle from the cupboard, motioning it toward him as she reached for two glasses.
“I’m good,” he said.
Tess turned around, analyzing him. Her eyes scanned his face and his steady hands. Joel fidgeted under her stare.
“So what?” she said, a mocking tone bleeding into her voice. “You’re sober now and takin’ in strays? That’s not like you.”
He scoffed softly, his fingers tracing the worn edge of the kitchen table. “Yeah. But he’s not the stray.”
Tess paused. “So you have a stray.”
“Something like that.”
“Joel, if I’m doing this massive, fucking favor for you, the least you could do is give me some details.”
Joel swallowed hard. He looked down at the table. “There’s this girl. Ellie. She’s eight, but a runt for her age. Can’t be more than fifty pounds soaking wet. I’ve just been helpin’ her out here and there.”
He paused, his voice cracking.
“But then I thought she died because I was too slow and too old to save her. And then she found me, she was right there, and all I could do was just stand there. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just... I was so afraid. Lately, there are these moments where the fear comes up outta nowhere, and... my heart... it feels like it’s stopped.”
He raised a rough hand, aggressively wiping away a stray tear that had trickled out of his eye. He cleared his throat, trying to force the vulnerability back down.
“Anyway. She has a friend. Sam. Who’s apparently sick, and his brother Henry stole medicine for him. Which is a death sentence. I’m tryin’ to help.”
Tess stared at him. There was a foreign look on her face. It was soft. The anger replaced by a understanding of the ghost standing in her kitchen.
She poured herself a single shot, knocked it back, and agreed to help.
Tess agreed to the plan. Henry would sleep on her couch until they could secure him a clean fake identity. Once the dust settled, he could start working for ration cards under his new name, and they’d help him find a place of his own.
She came down to the school during the night.
Joel rounded up Henry, Sam, and Ellie in the shadows of his room for a quick, quiet goodbye.
Henry stood near the door, holding Sam tightly. The little boy was completely koala-ed against his chest, his small arms wrapped around his older brother's neck.
It was hard for Joel to watch. Seeing a child holding another child like that.
It made him think about the years he spent raising Tommy. Their father had been an abusive asshole, and their mama did her best, but she couldn't stop it. By the time Joel was taller than her, he had started taking the brunt of it.
Joel would hold Tommy after the occasional beating Tommy had to face. But more often than not, Joel would just take the beating for Tommy. And then he’d hold the sobbing boy afterward, trying to ease the kid's guilt.
But Tommy shouldn’t have felt guilty for the consequences Joel faced. Just like Sam shouldn’t feel guilty for the life Henry was going to have to live now.
But blame isn’t linear. And guilt isn’t rational.
Being in that small room suddenly became entirely suffocating to Joel.
He was slowly-maybe-possibly coming to terms with the fact that Ellie reminded him of the daughter he lost. But viewing Sam and Henry like this? It completely took the wind out of his lungs. It reminded him of the very first kid he had ever raised. His dumb fucking joiner kid brother who he’d lost. Maybe not in the same way as Sarah. But he lost him anyway.
He was going to flee. But then, a small, warm sneaked its way into his.
Joel looked down. Ellie was standing right beside him, her big brown eyes searching his face with deep concern. He slowly squeezed her tiny hand, hoping to convey some kind of comfort that he simply couldn’t find the words to express.
The next day, Joel found it in him to sit with Ellie and Sam for breakfast.
The kids were much quieter than normal. The air at the table was still thick with exhaustion. But at least the suffocating cloud of impending doom was gone. Henry wasn't going to die. He was safe on Tess's couch.
Speaking of…
“Ellie,” he called out quietly.
The sound of his voice got her attention instantly. She was busy scarfing down the extra sandwich… his sandwich… that he had slid over to her. Above the wrapped bread, her brown eyes found his.
“Marlene,” Joel said, introducing the subject.
Ellie’s eyebrows pulled together tightly. She slowly lowered the sandwich from her mouth.
“How do you know her?” Joel asked.
Ellie looked down at the table for a split second, her fingers tracing the plastic wrapper.
“She was my mom’s friend.”
Ellie had never talked about her parents. Joel had just assumed she was an orphan because she lived in this military holding cell. He hadn't asked. He hadn't wanted to know.
“Your mom,” Joel said, his voice dropping low. “Is she a Firefly too?”
Ellie shook her head. “No. She died giving birth to me.”
Ellie reached deep into her uniform pocket. She pulled her hand out and set a wicked-looking switchblade on the table between them.
“She left this for me,” Ellie said, her fingers resting on the worn handle. “Marlene told me about it. Pretty sure my mom's dying wish was for Marlene to look out for me.”
“And she put you here?” Joel asked. He couldn't hide the shock in his voice.
He tried to imagine it. If Tommy had died and left a kid behind... could Joel ever just give them up to a FEDRA military school? Absolutely not.
“Yeah,” Ellie responded, her tone turning casual, almost detached. “Usually, when the Fireflies are going to attack the school, Marlene sneaks in and holds me hostage for a couple of days so I don't get caught in the crossfire. But I fought her really hard last time. So... she might not come back.”
Joel let out a heavy, tired sigh. Fuck.
It was probably a good thing that Ellie had someone looking out for her who held that kind of massive power in the QZ. But she had thrown that safety net away. And for what? For him.
Terrible. But what can he do?
Joel was stuck on courtyard duty. It ran long because two hard-headed teenagers decided that attempted murder on each other was a good idea right before shift change. By the time Joel and the other guards finally broke up the brawl and dragged them to the holding cells, hours had passed.
During those hours, Ellie got her stitches out.
Joel missed it.
He didn’t want to face the music. A grown man, completely terrified of the disappointment that might be thrown his way by an eight-year-old girl.
So he skipped lunch.
Joel spent the afternoon preparing exactly what he was going to say to her to make it up to her. But all his practicing was useless. As he was walking down the main corridor, a guard dragged Ellie right past him. Fresh red blood was running down her face.
Joel’s instincts took over. He moved instantly to catch up to them.
“I’ll take her from here,” he told the guard, his voice hard.
The woman released Ellie’s arm without a word and walked off, completely unbothered.
“What happened?” Joel asked. He dropped heavily onto one knee, pulling a clean handkerchief out of his back pocket.
“Fought,” Ellie responded, staring straight down at her boots. A heavy drop of blood dripped off her chin and stained her uniform shirt.
Joel let out a long sigh. “Ellie... we talked about this.”
She didn’t respond. She just aggressively wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, smearing the blood across her cheek.
“You keep down this path, you’re going to get yourself killed,” Joel continued, a stern, sharp edge bleeding into his voice.
“What's it to you?!” Ellie yelled suddenly. Her voice hit a high pitch, cracking with a childish desperation to be taken seriously. “You said we were going our separate ways, and now you want to act like you care!”
Joel rose from his knee, straightening up to his full height. He dragged a heavy, tired hand across his face. “I do care, Ellie.”
“If you cared, you would’ve been there!” she shouted. She punctuated the sentence with a hard stomp of her foot.
It was a motion only a child would do. And it made the words sit like lead on Joel’s chest.
“It was okay when I had nobody,” she cried, her lower lip trembling. “Then you made it seem like I had somebody. But you weren’t there!”
She wiped at the blood on her face again, only making it worse.
There shouldn’t be blood on her tiny face, Joel thought.
Then, Ellie delivered the final blow.
“I was okay being an orphan,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Then I saw other kids with their parents in the infirmary today. And it hurt more thinking I had that, than—”
Parent.
The word hung invisibly in the space between them. She finally looked up, her bloodshot eyes locking onto his.
“—than knowing I didn’t.”
The sentiment sat heavily in the suffocating air.
At the bomb site weeks ago, Joel had been the angry one and Ellie had been sad. It was a dance they practiced well. But now that it was the other way around, now that she was furious and he was drowning in guilt, Joel was entirely at a loss. He didn't know what to do with her tears.
After a long, agonizingly tense moment, Joel spoke. His face was entirely hollow, a deeply sad expression taking over his features.
“You’re right, Ellie,” he said, his voice flat, hoping to drive her away and protect her from this disappointment. “I ain’t your parent. And you’re sure as hell not my daughter.”
Ellie flinched like she’d been struck.
“I tried to help you as best as I could, Ellie,” Joel continued. “If that ain't enough for you... you should find someone else.”
He turned on his heel and walked away down the corridor.
He walked away knowing damn well there was no one else.
Joel sat at the far end of a long, scratched plastic table. He hadn’t noticed that Michael and a slimy friend had sat next to him until they started whispering to each other.
He was regarded by most guards as deaf as fuck. That's probably why they chose to sit next to him.
But he was only deaf on one side, and he could hear perfectly fine in the other. He just ignored everyone to keep people from talking to him, so that was the easy conclusion they made.
But Michael and his friend were sitting on his good side.
“She’s young and quiet,” Michael whispered.
“Nobody's been watching her since her brother got reassigned.”
“Are you sure?” the other one asked.
Joel needed to get a look at his face.
“Who’s got the experience here?” Michael replied with a low, disgusting chuckle.
That got Joel on his feet.
It was like a steel band was tightening violently around his chest, cutting off his airway. But he had the coherency to look down and clock whoever Michael was talking to. Joel didn’t know his name, but he noted the man's crooked nose and the faded military tattoo on his neck. At least he’d be able to tell Ellie what he looked like.
As he turned the sharp corners of the dim corridors to get to the children’s cafeteria, he thought about the paralyzing fear that had consumed him when he brought a baby girl into the world decades ago.
He’d always been aware of the terrible men in the world. But it became entirely personal the second he had a little girl in his charge.
Now, that same primal fear was all-consuming, making his ears ring and his pulse spike. He didn’t stop to think about the brutal argument they had the previous day. He didn't care about the words he'd used to push her away.
Truly, truly, none of that shit mattered.
Ellie wasn't in the cafeteria. That meant she'd probably already headed out to the courtyard for recess. Joel made his way there. She wasn't in her usual spot with Sam. His stomach sank slightly as he scanned the yard, searching through clusters of children.
Then he spotted the familiar auburn ponytail. Ellie sat alone on a bench near the edge of the courtyard.
Joel lowered himself onto the bench next to Ellie.
She looked up at him, then back to her hands quickly. Neither of them spoke. Ellie focused intently on peeling the label off a juice carton. The bruising around her eye had darkened since he'd seen her in the hallway, but at least there was no more blood on her face.
Joel sighed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you gettin’ your stitches out.”
He looked at her, catching her eyes as she glanced away from him.
“I couldn’t be there cause I was breakin’ up a fight,” Joel explained. “And then I had to stay with them through everythin’.”
Ellie looked at him then. “You yelled at me when I couldn’t be there because of Marlene.”
A brief thought crossed Joel’s mind that he was not excited for Ellie's teenage years if she was already this good at arguing.
But then the weight of that thought hit him. For him to worry about that, it would mean he’d actually be around for her teenage years. It meant he was planning on staying.
“I’m sorry about that too, kiddo.”
He hadn’t called her that since before their fight.
“I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you about somethin’ not in your control,” Joel continued.
Ellie nodded, her small shoulders dropping a bit. “Is this like accidents?”
Joel looked at her. He looked past the dark, swelling black eye, straight into her big brown eyes. “Yeah, Ellie. Out of your control is kinda like accidents.”
“Then I’m sorry, too,” Ellie responded.
Joel smiled slightly, the tension leaving his jaw for a brief second. But that smile faded fast when he remembered the real, heavy reason he had rushed over here. He slid his arm along the back of the bench behind Ellie and turned to face her fully.
Joel rubbed the back of his neck with his other hand.
"I need to tell you somethin'," Joel said. "And I need you to listen."
Ellie looked up at him. "Okay."
He paused, finding the words. Then he continued.
“There are different types of bad people in this prison. You know that.” His eyes scanned her face, checking for any sign that she was tuning him out.
“Like the warden,” Ellie said, trying to follow along.
Joel nodded. “Yeah. He's bad on the outside. He does things that are hurtful, but it's not behind closed doors.”
He looked away at the other kids in the yard. He tried to find the right words. “There are other types of bad men. They’d try and get a kid, mostly little girls, alone. They'd hurt you where people can’t see.”
When Joel looked back at her. There was fear in her eyes. That was not what he wanted.
Joel reached forward. He gently tucked a stray piece of loose hair behind her ear. He tried to ignore how she leaned her cheek into his palm, how perfect her small face fit right there against his hand.
“I’m not telling you this to scare you, Ellie.” He dropped his hand back to the bench, though he kept it close. “I’m telling you this because I’m going to try and protect you, but—”
He shook his head, a sudden tightness in his throat. He tried to shake away the thought of failing her again. “I might not always be there. So I need you to know how to look out for yourself.”
The fear didn’t completely go away. But a serious expression found its way over her face, her jaw setting just like his. “Okay.”
Joel nodded. “So, the guards that hurt girls in secret. I need you to trust me on this, Ellie. They’re worse than the warden.”
“I’m telling you this because... remember Michael?” Joel asked.
Ellie shook her head.
“He was the one who grabbed you when we first met.” Recognition flooded her features, and Joel continued. “I heard him talking. He was talking about hurting someone. In the worst way.”
Joel put a heavy, reassuring hand on her shoulder. “He’s not going to hurt you. Because I’m not going to let him. But if any guard tries to get you alone, or makes you feel uncomfortable... you come and get me. No matter what.”
Ellie nodded quickly.
“Can you repeat it to me?” Joel asked. His voice borderline pleading.
“I’ll come and find you,” she said fiercely.
Joel smiled slightly despite the weight in his chest. But he had to finish this. “If you can’t get away, I need you to scream as loud as you can. I’ll come.”
Ellie nodded once more, her gaze steady. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Joel said, letting out a breath he felt like he'd been holding since the mess hall.
He sat back against the bench, feeling a little better.
His hand stayed on the back of the wood behind her.
After a quiet beat, he felt Ellie shift over and press into his side.
And he didn’t do a damn thing to stop her.
Joel thought he was above smuggling kids.
Well, he did smuggle out Henry.
So he was maybe not entirely above it. But now he was smuggling two kids out of a FEDRA military school at the exact same time.
They were going to visit Henry. Joel definitely looked entirely ridiculous. He had a little boy stuffed completely inside his backpack, and a little girl walking right against his side, hidden entirely under his coat.
They walked through the pouring rain.
They made it to the apartment. Joel undid the deabold and closed it behind them quickly. He finally unzipped his heavy canvas backpack. Sam popped his head out, blinking rapidly against the low lamplight. He looked a little sweaty but entirely unharmed.
At the same time, Joel opened his oversized coat. Ellie stepped out from under his arm. She shook her hair out and stretched her legs immediately.
Henry came around the corner.
“Sam,” Henry breathed.
Sam didn't even wait for Joel to set the bag down. He scrambled right out of the backpack, tumbling onto the floor, and ran straight into his brother's arms. Henry dropped to his knees, catching him tightly. He buried his face in Sam's shoulder.
Ellie stood by the door, watching them. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. A small, genuine smile finally broke through her tough exterior.
Then, an arm stretched out of the hug. Henry's eyes peeked out over Sam's shoulder, inviting her in.
Ellie hesitated. She looked back at Joel, unsure.
Joel nodded once.
Ellie’s little wet feet padded softly across the floor toward the two brothers. Then, she dropped down and joined them, disappearing into the middle of the embrace.
Joel watched from his spot by the door.
The loud, constant static that had filled his life since the night he lost Sarah, the noise that usually drowned out everything else, finally faded into silence.
Joel patrolled hallways. Same old, same old. But as a breeze blew past him. Joel found himself deeply unsettled.
The day progressed. But the heavy feeling in his gut didn’t go away.
In the evening, the alarms started blaring. The lights pulsed against the concrete walls.
Another attack.
There was no code black this time. But the loud alarm was immediately followed up by the crack of gunshots down the hall.
Joel probably should have rationalized the situation. If this was another Firefly ambush, Marlene might have already picked up Ellie. But that thought didn’t make him feel any better.
Then, a static-filled announcement came over the emergency speakers.
“Multiple shooters. Guards, stand your ground.”
Well, fuck.
There were multiple live threats to Ellie and he knew he might be court-martialed or hanged for abandoning his designated post.
The panic and frantic searching felt practiced at this point. He adjusted his heavy grip on his gun and sprinted down the hallway. What shocked him the most was rounding a sharp, dimly lit corner and almost running straight into Henry.
He wanted to interrogate the boy right there. He wanted to shake him and scream at him for coming back into this hellhole when they had worked so damn hard to smuggle him out.
But Joel understood the look in Henry's desperate eyes.
If it were Tommy trapped here, Joel would be here too.
They moved through the chaotic school together. They cleared Ellie’s classroom floor first, but it was a total bust.
Joel and Henry sprinted down the stairwell to Sam’s floor. The air smelled like burnt gunpowder.
They saw the back of a hooded figure slipping through a doorway.
That sight sent Joel and Henry running after him in a dead sprint. But they turned the sharp corner, and the hallway was completely empty.
That was until they heard a single, deafening gunshot echo from the end of the hall.
They followed the terrible sound. It led straight to the communal bathroom.
They burst through the door. And there was the gunman.
And there were their kids.
Joel raised his gun automatically. He pulled the trigger, and the gunman folded instantly, dropping hard onto the wet tile floor.
Joel lowered his weapon and found Ellie's eyes. They were bright red. There were thick tears covering her too-small face. But more horrifying than that was the dark splatter of blood all over her clothes.
It was from the gunman. And it was from Sam.
Sam was completely covered in blood.
Henry moved before Joel could even process the scene. He threw himself forward and bodily extracted Sam from Ellie's tight embrace.
The broken whimper that escaped Ellie's throat as the little boy was pulled away from her sent Joel straight to his knees.
His arm went right around her trembling shoulders. He pulled her hard against him. Ellie shoved her wet cheek into his chest without a single second of hesitation.
But her wide eyes stayed locked on Sam and Henry. Joel watched them too. They both watched as every single, brutal stage of grief crossed Henry’s face in a matter of seconds.
Then, Joel saw the dark acceptance come over Henry. Joel knew that look. He saw Henry's eyes lock directly onto the dead shooter’s gun.
Joel had his arms completely full of a sobbing Ellie. He was entirely helpless to stop Henry as the boy suddenly lunged forward for the weapon.
And then there was a third deafening gunshot.
Henry slumped onto the floor.
And Ellie wailed. The sound was raw and completely broken.
Joel didn't look back at Henry. He just picked Ellie up under her armpits and plastered her tiny, shaking body against his chest.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he told her. His voice a desperate whisper.
Somehow, through the violent force of her sobs, she obeyed. Her small arms locked tightly behind his head.
“Great job, baby,” Joel murmured, his hand cradling the back of her head. “I’m going to get us out of here. You just keep your eyes closed, okay, sweetheart?”
A small nod against his neck sent him running.