Chapter Text

Four days in, and Sarah had learned the shape of the house well enough to move through it without waking anybody, which floorboards gave her away and which didn't, which door hinge needed a slow hand instead of a fast one. She'd learned patrol days too, the particular quality of Joel's movements when he got dressed in the dark, quieter and more purposeful than on the mornings he just had settlement chores, boots laced tighter, something heavier strapped across his back that she'd caught a glimpse of once and never quite stopped thinking about.

She'd learned something else too, listening at doors she probably shouldn't have been listening at. Patrol wasn't the same as settlement chores. Settlement chores meant staying inside the walls, planning routes, counting supplies. Patrol meant going out past the gate, out where the fences ended and the world went back to being whatever it actually was now, twenty years past anything Sarah understood as normal.

She wasn't supposed to know that. Joel had been careful, these last few days, about which words he used in front of her, softening patrol into checkin' on some things and out past the wall into vague gestures toward somewhere she didn't need to picture too clearly. She'd figured it out anyway. She always figured things out anyway, no matter how careful the grown-ups around her tried to be, and this particular morning, lying awake on the floor of his room listening to him get dressed in the dark, she made a decision that some louder, more sensible part of her brain would spend the rest of the day telling her was a colossally stupid idea.

She was going to follow him.

The thought arrived whole and certain, the way her worst ideas always seemed to, dressed up as the obvious solution to a problem that had been eating at her for days. If she could see him the whole time, nothing bad could happen without her knowing it. That was the whole logic of it, simple and stupid and utterly convincing at five in the morning with her heart still racing from another bad night's half-sleep.

It wasn't hard, not at first. He left before dawn, quiet, the way he always did on patrol mornings, careful not to wake her, and she waited until she heard the front door click shut before she got up, dressed fast, and slipped out after him, staying far enough back that the grey pre-dawn light wouldn't give her away, close enough that she never lost sight of him.

He met Tommy near the stables, the two of them talking low, checking gear, and Sarah crouched behind a stack of crates a good distance off, heart hammering, half convinced somebody was going to spot her any second and drag her home before she'd even gotten started.

"You good?" Tommy was saying, tightening something on his saddle. "You look like hell, Joel."

"Slept about two hours. Sarah had a rough night again."

"She doin' any better? With the whole—" Tommy made a vague gesture, and Joel shook his head, tired.

"Some days. Not others. Wasn't good last night." He swung up onto his horse. "This oughta be quick. In, check the east fence line, back before lunch."

"Long as nothin's decided to make a mess of it since last week."

"Don't jinx it, Tommy."

"I never jinx anything. That's your specialty."

Sarah filed the whole exchange away, guilt already starting to needle at her even as she stayed crouched behind the crates, watching. He hadn't slept because of her. That knowledge sat uncomfortable in her chest, but it didn't stop her, not yet, not with the decision already made and the two men already turning their horses toward the gate.

Nobody did. The two of them mounted up and rode out through the north gate, and Sarah, thinking faster than she probably should have been proud of, slipped through a gap in the perimeter fence she'd noticed days earlier during one of her restless nights staring out the window, a stretch where the wire had gone slack enough for a smaller body to squeeze past if it really wanted to.

She really wanted to.

Following two men on horseback while on foot was harder than she'd accounted for. She lost sight of them twice in the first twenty minutes, catching up only by following the fresh hoofprints in the frost-stiff grass, and by the time the sun had properly cleared the horizon her legs ached and her breath came ragged and some small, insistent voice in the back of her head had started asking, increasingly loud, whether this had been a good idea after all.

Her sneakers, borrowed from somewhere in the settlement's shared stores, weren't built for this kind of ground, and more than once she stumbled over a root or a half-buried piece of debris she hadn't seen in time, catching herself hard enough to scrape her palms raw. She kept going anyway, some things you didn't let yourself think too hard about once you'd already started them, and the ache in her legs became just one more thing to push through rather than a reason to stop.

She kept going anyway.

The land out past Jackson's walls looked nothing like the world she remembered and nothing like the burning city either, long stretches of dead grass and skeletal trees, the occasional rusted shape of something that used to be a car, half swallowed by growth that had spent twenty years reclaiming whatever the world used to be. It was quiet in a way that unsettled her more than noise would have, an enormous, watchful quiet that made her feel very small and very far from anything that could help her if something went wrong.

She caught sight of them again near a stretch of collapsed fencing, both men off their horses now, examining something on the ground, and she crept closer, staying low, staying quiet, close enough now to catch fragments of their conversation.

"—runner tracks, maybe a day old," Tommy was saying. "Could be nothin'. Could be a whole cluster movin' through."

"Let's check it out. Quick look, then we head back."

Sarah's stomach dropped. Runner tracks. She didn't know exactly what that meant, not the specifics, but she knew enough, knew the word infected had come up more than once in the careful, softened explanations she'd been given about this world, and some old, sharp instinct told her that whatever a runner was, it wasn't something a person wanted to go looking for on purpose.

She should have turned back right then. She knew that later, replaying it, knew it with total, humiliating clarity. Instead she followed them further, closer than was smart, curiosity and stubbornness both winning out over the fear that should have sent her running the other direction.

The building itself sat half-collapsed against a stand of dead trees, roof caved in on one side, windows long since shattered, the kind of ruin that had stopped looking like a place people once lived in and started looking like something the earth was slowly finishing off. Joel and Tommy moved toward it careful, weapons up, calling to each other in low, clipped words Sarah couldn't fully catch from her hiding spot behind a rusted-out car a good thirty feet back. She should have stayed exactly there. She told herself that later too, over and over, in the days it took the memory to stop replaying itself every time she closed her eyes.

Instead she crept closer, just a little, just enough to see better, and that was when it happened.

The infected came out of a collapsed building faster than any of them expected, faster than anything Sarah had ever seen move, faster than the soldiers from that night, faster than anything her twelve-year-old brain had a proper framework for.

She screamed before she could stop herself.

Both men spun toward the sound, and for one horrible, frozen second Joel's face did something Sarah had never seen it do before, not even the night she arrived, something past fear into a territory she didn't have a word for, and then he was moving, fast, putting himself bodily between her and the thing lurching toward them both.

"Sarah, run! Get back, now!"

She didn't run. Couldn't, her legs locked up entirely, watching in frozen horror as the infected closed the distance, all wrong angles and horrible speed, and Tommy was already moving too, rifle up, and the shot cracked out loud enough that Sarah's ears rang with it, and the thing went down hard, twitching, and then, mercifully, still.

Silence rushed back in after, enormous and ringing, and Sarah realized she was still screaming, or crying, or some combination of both that she couldn't quite separate, and Joel was there in front of her, hands on her shoulders, checking her over with a frantic, desperate thoroughness.

"Are you hurt? Sarah, look at me, are you hurt anywhere?"

"I'm okay." Her voice came out shredded, barely a whisper. "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm sorry—"

"What in the hell were you thinkin'?!" His voice cracked between fury and terror, both of them fighting for space in the same breath. "You followed us?! Out here?! Do you have any idea—" He stopped himself, visibly forcing his voice back under control, though his hands were still shaking where they gripped her shoulders. "Do you understand what could've happened just now?"

"I'm sorry! I just — I couldn't stay behind again, I couldn't, I keep thinkin' somethin's gonna happen to you and I won't be there and I won't even know until it's too late, and I thought if I just—"

"That's not a reason to run out past the goddamn walls alone, Sarah! That's exactly the kinda thinkin' that gets people killed out here!" He hauled her into a hug hard enough to nearly knock the breath out of her, and she felt him shaking, actually shaking, whatever fury had been in his voice a second ago giving way entirely to something rawer underneath it. "God, Sarah. I can't— I can't lose you again. Not like that, not any way. You scared ten years off my life just now."

"I'm sorry." She was crying properly now, the adrenaline finally catching up with her all at once. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't think—"

"No. You didn't." He pulled back enough to look at her, his own eyes wet, something in his face torn between wanting to hold her forever and wanting to shake some sense into her. "We're talkin' about this. Properly. Once we're back inside them walls and I can actually think straight again."

Tommy had gone quiet through most of it, giving them the space to have their moment, but he stepped in now, crouching down to Sarah's level, his own face pale, hands still not quite steady.

"You alright, kid?"

"I'm sorry, Uncle Tommy. I know it was stupid."

"It was real fuckin' stupid," he agreed, no cruelty in it, just plain fact, and then winced slightly at his own language, glancing toward Joel like he half expected to get called out for it in front of the kid. "Scariest thing I've done in months, watchin' that thing come outta nowhere with you standin' right there." He glanced at Joel, something silent passing between the two brothers. "We should get back. I'll take point, you two follow close."

The walk back to Jackson felt longer than the walk out had, Sarah's legs shaking with adrenaline and exhaustion both, Joel's hand clamped around hers the entire way, not gentle, not soft, just an iron grip that told her, more clearly than any words could have, exactly how frightened he'd actually been. Tommy walked a few paces ahead, scanning the treeline out of habit, though his own hands hadn't fully stopped shaking either, something Sarah noticed and immediately felt worse about, one more piece of proof stacking up against how badly she'd frightened everyone who mattered to her that morning.

Nobody spoke much. The silence wasn't angry, exactly, just heavy, three people each carrying their own private version of what had almost happened, and Sarah spent the whole walk replaying the moment the infected had come out of that building, the sound it made, the speed of it, wondering how close, exactly, close had actually been.

They didn't speak much until they were back inside the walls, and even that homecoming wasn't quiet, Maria spotting the state of them the second they came through the gate, Sarah's tear-streaked face, Joel and Tommy both pale and grim.

"What happened?" Maria was already moving toward them, alarm plain on her face. "Is anybody hurt?"

"Nobody's hurt," Joel said, though his voice shook enough that it didn't sound entirely reassuring. "Sarah followed us out. We ran into a runner. Tommy got it before it got anywhere near her, but—" He stopped, jaw working. "It was close, Maria. Too close."

Maria's eyes went wide, and she crouched down in front of Sarah without a word of judgment in her face, just checking her over the same careful way she had that first night, hands gentle, professional.

"You're not hurt anywhere? Truly?"

"I'm okay." Sarah's voice came out thin. "Scared. Not hurt."

"Small mercies." Maria straightened, giving Joel a look that said plenty without needing words, and Joel nodded once, understanding.

"We need to talk. Just us, for now." He put a hand on Sarah's shoulder, steering her gently toward the house. "Thank you, Maria. For everything."

"Go on. I'll check in later." Maria watched them go, something worried and tender both crossing her face, and Tommy lingered a moment longer, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

"That was too close, Maria."

"I heard." She studied him. "You alright?"

"Not really. Gonna need somethin' stronger than mendin' to shake this one off." He managed a tired, humorless laugh. "Go check on 'em in a bit. Joel's gonna need it, even if he won't ask for it himself."

Joel waited until they were home, door shut, before he finally let the full weight of it out.

"Sit down." His voice had gone rough, exhausted. "We need to talk about this."

Sarah sat, hands twisted in her lap, bracing for whatever was coming.

"I need you to understand somethin', and I need you to actually hear it, not just wait for me to stop talkin'." He crouched in front of her, meeting her eyes directly. "What you did today coulda gotten you killed. Not scared. Not hurt. Killed. Do you understand that?"

"I understand." Her voice came out small.

"I don't think you do, not all the way, or you wouldn't have done it." He scrubbed a hand down his face. "I get why you did it. I do. You're scared every time I leave, and followin' me probably felt like the only way to make that fear stop for a minute. But Sarah, that world out there doesn't care how scared you are. It doesn't care that you're twelve, or that you already lost everything once already. It'll take you just as easy as it'd take anybody else, and faster, probably, 'cause you don't know yet what to watch for."

"I just didn't want you to leave without me."

"I know that. And I hear you, I do. But followin' me in secret, past the walls, with no weapon, no trainin', nothin' — that's not the answer, baby. That's just a different, worse way of losin' each other." His voice cracked on the last part, and he had to stop, breathe, before he could keep going. "You scared the hell outta me today. I don't know how else to say it plainer than that."

"You leave anyway, though!" It came out sharper than she meant, some flash of twelve-year-old defiance breaking through the guilt for a second. "You leave every time, and I'm just supposed to sit there and be fine about it, and I'm not fine about it, and nobody ever asks me if there's somethin' better than just sittin' there bein' scared!"

"That's not the same as runnin' out past the walls with no idea what you're walkin' into." His voice stayed firm, but something in his face softened at the outburst, recognizing the fear underneath the anger for what it was. "You're right that sittin' and bein' scared isn't much of a plan either. So we're gonna find somethin' better. Together. But it ain't gonna be this. Not ever again. You understand?"

Sarah's chin trembled, the tears starting again despite her best effort to hold them back. "I know. I'm sorry."

"I know you're sorry. That's not really what I need from you right now, though." He took her hands in his, steadying them both. "What I need is for you to promise me. No more followin'. No more sneakin' out past that fence. If you're scared, if you need somethin' from me, you come and you say it, straight, even if it's hard. You don't go and put yourself in a place like that ever again. You hear me?"

"I promise." It came out small but sure, and something in Joel's shoulders eased, just slightly, at the sound of it. "I really am sorry, Dad. I wasn't thinkin' straight. I just kept thinkin' about that night, and I couldn't make my head stop, and I thought if I could just see you the whole time, nothin' bad could happen without me—"

"I get it. I do." He rubbed a hand over his face, thinking. "Tell you what. From now on, before I head out, I'll come find you first. Tell you exactly where I'm goin' and how long I figure to be gone. Somethin' solid to hold onto instead of just guessin'. That help any?"

"Maybe." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Can Uncle Tommy do it too? When you're not around?"

"I'll talk to him about it. I expect he'll say yes." A ghost of a tired smile crossed his face. "See, that's the kind of thing you gotta ask for out loud, instead of just followin' me halfway across the county to get it."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You said that already. I believe you." He pulled her into a hug, gentler this time, some of the fear finally starting to drain out of both of them. "We're gonna figure this out. Together. Some way that doesn't involve you nearly gettin' yourself killed to feel a little less scared. Alright?"

"Alright."

That night, lying on the floor of Joel's room the way she had every night since she'd arrived, Sarah replayed the whole day over in her head, unable to stop herself, the way you couldn't stop picking at a scab even when you knew better.

She'd been so certain, that morning, that following him was the only way to make the fear stop. Lying there now, blanket pulled up to her chin, she understood, with the particular clarity that came after a thing was already over and done, that it hadn't actually worked. She hadn't felt less scared out there. She'd felt more scared than she had the entire time she'd been in this world, cold and small and certain, for one horrible stretch of seconds, that she was about to lose him twice in the same lifetime.

"You awake?" Joel's voice came quiet from the bed above her.

"Yeah."

"You doin' okay?"

"Just thinkin'." She stared up at the ceiling, barely visible in the dark. "I keep seein' it. That thing comin' outta the building."

"Yeah. Me too." A pause. "Takes a while, that kind of picture, before it stops showin' up every time you close your eyes. Don't rush yourself tryin' to make it go away faster than it wants to."

"Does it ever fully go away?"

"Some of it does. Some of it just gets quieter, over time." He was quiet a moment. "I'm real proud of you, for what it's worth. Not for what you did today. For sayin' sorry, and meanin' it, and not just tellin' me what you thought I wanted to hear."

"I do mean it."

"I know you do. That's why I'm proud." Another pause, softer. "Get some sleep, baby. Tomorrow's gonna look a little less scary than today did. I promise you that much."

She didn't fully believe him. But the promise helped anyway, small and imperfect as it was, and eventually, despite everything still churning in her head, sleep found her.

Ellie heard most of it from the kitchen, where she'd been sitting with a cup of the not-coffee gone cold in front of her, having come downstairs to the tail end of Joel and Tommy bursting through the door white-faced and shaking, Sarah crying between them. She'd frozen in the doorway for a second, uncertain whether to duck back upstairs or stay, and settled on staying, quiet, out of the way, close enough to hear without inserting herself into something that clearly wasn't hers to step into.

She hadn't caught every word. Didn't need to, really, the shape of it clear enough just from the tone, the fear underneath every sentence, the particular quality of a near-miss still hanging in the air like smoke after a fire. She heard "runner." Heard "coulda gotten you killed." Heard Joel's voice crack in a way she'd only heard it crack once before, that first devastating night at the gate, and something in her own chest tightened in sympathy despite everything else still unresolved between her and the girl on the other side of that door.

Dina found her a couple hours later, having heard some garbled version of it already spreading through the settlement, gossip moving fast the way it always did in Jackson.

"Everybody's sayin' Joel and Tommy ran into a whole horde out past the fence line," Dina said, dropping into the chair across from her. "That true?"

"One runner. Tommy dropped it before it got close." Ellie turned her mug slow between her hands. "Sarah followed them out there. That's the actual story. Not a horde. Just a kid who got scared and did somethin' stupid about it."

"Jesus." Dina's eyebrows went up. "She's alright, though?"

"Physically, yeah. Everything else, I don't know." Ellie let out a breath. "I keep hearin' bits of it through the walls. Joel's tryin' real hard not to be furious and terrified at the same time, and not doin' a great job keepin' the two separate."

"That tracks." Dina studied her. "How you doin' with it? Hearin' all that?"

Ellie considered the question longer than she expected to need. "Weird. I don't know. Part of me's still all tangled up about the whole thing, same as I've been the whole time. But hearin' how scared she was today, hearin' how scared he was—" She shook her head. "It's hard to stay mad at somebody for bein' exactly as messed up about losin' him as I'd probably be, if I'm honest with myself."

"That's a lot of self-awareness for a Tuesday."

"Don't make it weird, Dina."

"Wasn't makin' it weird. Just impressed." Dina bumped her shoulder against Ellie's, easy, familiar. "You gonna finally go meet her? After all this?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Feels like a weird day to pick, with everybody still shaken up."

"Might be exactly the right day, though. Nothin' cuts through awkward faster than everybody bein' scared about the same thing at once."

Ellie didn't have an answer for that right away, just sat with it, turning the cold mug slow between her hands.

She sat there a long while after Dina finally left, turning it over. A twelve-year-old, so scared of losing him that she'd risk actual death just to feel like she had some control over it. Ellie understood that particular kind of desperate math better than she wanted to admit, understood exactly how a fear could get big enough that it stopped listening to reason entirely.

She didn't know yet what to do with the understanding. She only knew, sitting there with her cold mug and her own tangled feelings, that whatever this rivalry was supposed to look like, it was going to have to make room for the fact that the two of them, however different their reasons, were both scared out of their minds about the exact same thing: losing somebody they'd only just found a way to hold onto.

She thought about Dina's question again before she finally went up to bed. You gonna finally go meet her? She still didn't have an answer, not a solid one, but for the first time since Sarah arrived, the hesitation felt less like fear and more like timing, waiting for the right, ordinary moment instead of forcing something neither of them was ready for. Today clearly hadn't been that moment, not with the whole house still shaking from how close it had come to going a different way entirely.

But soon, she told herself, climbing the stairs, the house gone quiet around her, one more night of two girls sleeping under the same roof without ever having spoken a single word to each other. Soon.

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