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The gun still aimed at him is something he’s only peripherally aware of, significant only because his movement towards Ellie means it’s aimed at her, too. He can hear Henry's plaintive note of disbelief even as the words are lost in the dull roar of his own pulse. A glance back from the corner of his eye shows that the weapon is no longer pointed at him, which means he has no further interest in tracking it at all.
It’s instinct, something beyond rational and conscious thought, to drop beside the girl, brought to his knees by residual terror and giddy relief both. He sees her begin to turn her head back to the gore of what was once another child, and it’s without thought that he pulls her against his chest, one hand moving to press her head to his shoulder. Of all of the fucked-up horrors of this fucked-up world, this is one thing he can spare her from, if only this much.
She resists for a moment because of course she does, but he feels a shudder shake its way through her, and then small hands are clenching the fabric of his shirt, thin arms clinging to him.
“You okay?” He asks, probably not for the first time but reality has acquired a wobbly sort of quality, and he needs to ask again even if he’s already gotten an answer. She jerks her head in a nod, and he feels her gathering herself with a few shaky breaths.
“Fuck,” he hears behind him, the word coming out like Henry’s taken a punch to the gut, and he knows already what’s going to come next, recognizing what pain like that can lead someone to do.
Before he has a chance to do a single fucking thing about it, Henry does exactly what Joel knew he would.
He hears Ellie’s stifled little scream at the sound of the shot, but he keeps her head where it is while he looks. He presses his lips thin at the splatter of blood and brain, at the fucking waste of this day. He understands, of course he does, but the senselessness of another death weighs at him.
He doesn’t linger on it for too long, however.
He has bigger concerns.
“C’mon,” he says, gruff. “We need to leave.”
“Their bodies-” She starts, trying to pull back and making a fretful noise that sounds so painfully young when he doesn’t turn her loose at once. “We can’t-”
“We don’t have time-”
“Joel,” she says, finally managing to get her head back enough to look at him head-on, eyes shiny but so fierce he wants to find a place to tuck her away, to say fuck it to the cordyceps and FEDRA and the Fireflies and the world and anything else that threatens them on a daily basis. No one so young should have to look so fierce. “We have to bury them.”
It’s a waste of time, of energy. It won’t make a difference whether they’re buried or not. It will delay their progress and use up precious calories that they can ill-afford to waste. He should pick her up by the scruff of her neck and frog march her down the road as a lesson in the choices someone has to make to survive.
He should tell her no and be done with it.
“Alright,” he says, voice gentle in a way he’d forgotten he knew how to make it. “Let’s find a shovel.”
*
He tries to make her sit back and watch. It’s hard work, and he doesn’t need her tired out before they even start walking for the day, but she’s herself even while still slightly shellshocked, and the cutting look she gives him when she marches over with her own shovel from another storage closet keeps him silent.
They dig together, him managing two shovelfuls for every one of hers.
Still, they get the job done.
It’s not as if the grave she’s digging needs to be that big anyway.
*
She’s quiet for most of the day, which should have been an obvious clue that something was wrong. It’s one of the things that slips from your mind about kids after enough time, how silence often means something’s up that needs investigation. As it is, he doesn’t see the cut on her hand until nightfall, and the immediacy with which she tucks her hand back into her sleeve when she sees him notice tells him all he needs to know about the how of it.
He points silently to a log dragged over as a bench, and although she deliberately sits a foot over from where he pointed in a clear act of rebellion, her obedience is close enough that he doesn’t feel the need to comment. He digs out their rudimentary first aid kit, grabbing a salve he’ll need to figure out how to replenish sooner rather than later and some clean bandages rolled up tightly. He makes a low, displeased noise more to himself than to her as he examines her palm, tipping a little flask of alcohol over the wound and tightening his hold on her wrist when she tries to jerk away reflexively.
“That hurts,” she says resentfully, and he just gives her a look that makes her gaze skitter away. Still, he blows on the cut to ease the sting, and he does his best not to think about the last time he did so for another hard-headed teenager: a skinned knee twenty years ago from a failed foray into skating that he’d never imagined would one day make him clench his jaw against the ache of the memory.
“How’d this happen?” He asks as he dabs salve onto it.
“I…” She starts but trails off.
He looks at her briefly before he starts wrapping, trusting in silence to work better than demands ever could. Predictably, it works, and she speaks again when he’s tucking in the end of the bandage firmly, testing the wrap to make sure it won’t slip.
“I thought my blood could fix him.”
His head comes up sharply.
“You knew he was infected?” He can’t help the anger in his voice, but the way she brings her shoulders in slightly before trying to puff up and make herself look bigger gives him enough handle on himself not to forge on in the heat of the moment.
She nods, and there’s a challenge in it.
It’s a subject bound to end in a fight, but this is something he can’t ignore, not with stakes as high as her life.
“You should have told me,” he says, trying to pretend he’s talking about a report card or a broken window or a shoplifted candy bar or something equally inane to keep his voice even, to not shout like the fear still tight in his chest wants him to. He could fucking shake her, he’s so angry, but her friend’s brains splattered across a motel room is enough of a punishment by any metric. He fidgets needlessly with the bandage while he gets a hold on his own temper.
“You would have killed him,” she says quietly, and a brief glance upwards shows that she’s carefully not looking at him now, jaw set in the manner of a child trying very hard to act like a grownup.
He would have, he knows. There wouldn’t have been another choice.
But then it would have been his burden to carry and not hers, something she could resent him for and not something for her to torture herself with.
“Hey,” he says, waiting with as much patience as he can muster until she finally looks up at him. She tips her chin up defiantly, and for a moment there’s another face superimposed over hers, another girl challenging his boundaries, testing her limits. For a moment, it’s like he can’t breathe, grief coming back so suddenly and unexpectedly, so fresh it’s like he can still feel blood on his hands. He’d forgotten what it feels like, trying to parent a child old enough to try out their own judgment, flawed or otherwise.
“What?” She says when he takes too long, all bravado hiding insecurity.
“Don’t ever keep something like that from me again,” he tells her, voice admirably not choked-sounding. He sees her opening her mouth to argue, and his patience frays a bit. “You could have died,” he says baldly. Coddling isn’t working. Tough love it is. “You could have died, and then what would happen to the cure?”
He sees the first little flicker of doubt in her own decisions. Good. It’s a weight she shouldn’t have to shoulder, but if it’s what keeps her honest enough to let him keep her alive, then so be it.
“The world can’t afford to lose you.” The world is a distant concern for him in the moment, in all honesty, but it’s a stake she’ll understand, the survival of the human race, big enough to be real. “So the next time something like this happens…?” He trails off, prompting her. He thinks he remembers something about the importance of letting children come to their own conclusions in some parenting book he read decades ago, something about buy-in or some other new agey parenting idea he’s still not sure isn’t total bullshit.
She mumbles something, looking down, and he reaches out to cup her jaw, pushing her head back up. This isn’t something he can play about. He needs to know she understands. She tugs back automatically, but he keeps hold.
“What was that?” He prompts, making his voice firm, unyielding. He sees the resentment in her eyes, but she can resent him all she wants if it keeps her alive.
“I’ll tell you,” she tosses out like a challenge.
“Good,” he tells her, releasing her.
He rises to check on their dinner heating over the fire, tugging her ponytail when he passes to relieve some of the heavy tension between them.
“Hey!”
*
She’s restless that night, fidgety and anxious. She doesn’t say anything, because of course she doesn’t, but he sees her sit up halfway repeatedly, startling awake with little half-muffled cries and looking around wildly before she sees him and settles, centered once again.
He ignores the way it feels, this evidence that being near him calms her. He can’t afford to pursue that thought.
After the sixth such abrupt awakening, he sighs for the sake of appearances more than anything else and then gets up.
“What-” she starts to say, looking up at him with a frown before he takes hold of her sleeping bag and starts dragging it. “The fuck!” She demands, voice muffled by the material flopped over her face. She wriggles like an angry cat in a bag, and free from her observation, he doesn’t resist the slight smile that creeps its way onto his face at the sight.
“Go to sleep,” he says shortly when he releases her, dropping back down and facing away and leaving her to wriggle her way out angrily.
He senses the way she looms over him when she finally struggles her way free, and he half-expects a slap or a punch, but he remains the way he is. She’s scrappy, but he’s taken worse harm than what a pissed 14 year old can dish out.
“Dick,” she grits out at him, with all of the venom of a hissing kitten, and he feels the brush of a sleeve when she slaps at him. She’s borrowed a shirt of his against the cool night air that's far too big on her, and he takes two more thwaps of fabric to the shoulder before she appears to be satisfied with making her point.
Still, when he keeps his breathing steady and even and doesn’t respond, he senses her slowly creep towards him. When he allows one fake snore to escape, he hears a quiet snort and knows already that he’ll catch shit for it tomorrow, but he also feels her curl close to his back, head tucked to press between his shoulder blades. She sighs once, sounding as close to content as she ever does, mouthy kid.
She sleeps tucked between him and their fire that night, as safe as he can make her.
It’s not much, in the grand scheme of things.
But for now, it seems to be enough.