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The Spirit Halloween is a chance find in the smalltown mall they’re staying at overnight. This far out, infected are few and far between, and even people have long picked over anything of true use.
He’ll deny to the day he dies that he jumps and nearly shoots a mask that swings towards him with the breeze when he opens a door, and luckily Ellie is still one floor up, the area already cleared and thus safe enough to leave her alone in. She hasn’t slept well since the university and everything that happened after, and leaving her to look through a few mainly empty stores had been an attempt at letting her get some rest if she wanted to.
He makes his way into the store, light filtering in through dusty windows. None of their inventory will be of any use to him, he knows, but it’s possible that someone somewhere along the line left something that could come in handy. Nothing turns up, but the more he looks through the cheap costumes and bright masks, the more an idea occurs to him.
It looks like just the sort of thing Ellie would have a field day with, he thinks with a small smile as he flicks a witch hat out of his way. It’s been too long since he’s seen her smile, really smile, and he can already imagine her delight in getting to pick through so many artifacts from the old world.
She’s going to love it.
*
He makes his way back up to the floor above and finds Ellie curled into a little ball next to the window, staring out at what seems like nothing. The sight is so fucking sad it makes him stop in his tracks for a moment.
He shuffles his feet to make some noise so he won’t startle her, but she still jumps a little.
“Jesus, man,” she says, with an echo of her usual megawatt grin. “What? Are you a fucking ninja now?”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her she shouldn't be unaware enough that he can surprise her like that, but the dark circles under her eyes and the thinness of her face stays him. She’s kept them both alive and gotten herself out of a situation she never should have had to be in in the first place. If she’s a little spacey now, well.
He can pick up the slack.
“I have a surprise for you,” he says, and it settles something in him, the way she perks up and looks at his hands immediately, a kid looking for a present. When she sees he’s not holding anything, she looks up at him, eyebrows raised.
“Is it invisible?”
“No,” he tells her. “It’s just not here. Get up.”
He stands next to her and nudges her with his boots when she doesn’t move fast enough just to make her swat at him and smile.
“Alright,” she says, arms spread wide. “I’m up. Where’s my super special secret surprise?”
“Don’t oversell it,” he warns her. He thinks she’ll like it, but he doesn’t want to give her something to be disappointed about.
“Am I supposed to be excited or not?” She complains, but she looks more amused than annoyed.
“You have to close your eyes,” he tells her, and he sees the immediate hesitance, cursing himself for not thinking of the obvious. Of fucking course she wouldn’t want to go into an unknown place with her eyes shut, not now. “Sorry, you-”
“Okay,” she says, with the faintest hint of a smile as she shuts them and extends her hand, flexing her fingers as an indication for him to grab it. “But if you let me trip, it’s game over.”
He snorts and then takes her tiny hand in his, reaching around her back to grab her other so he can lead her better. They’re cold, like they usually are, and he shifts to hold them more securely to share his warmth.
“I won’t let you fall,” he tells her, aiming for levity but coming out a little too serious for it to be entirely a joke. “You know that.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly, squeezing his hands. “I do.”
*
"Alright," he says, releasing her hands after positioning her to make sure she'll get the best first view, "open your eyes."
He expects an excited inhale, a little delighted noise, maybe even a "holy shit, Joel!" He feels almost stupidly giddy with anticipation, excited to give her one bright spot after such a string of darkness, and he steps back to enjoy the full picture of her delight.
He doesn’t get any of those reactions, however.
What he does get is Ellie, still as a statue, going pale as a damn ghost.
He knows immediately that something has gone very wrong, and he has absolutely no idea what it is.
Something small–a pigeon or a rat–makes a noise in a corner, and it's like watching a car crash in slow motion.
Ellie lets out a stifled little scream, the same way she sounded when she watched Henry shoot himself, but before he can do a single damn thing about it, it’s like a flip switches as sheer rage takes over her features. She grits her teeth and casts about wildly, grabbing a steel pole from a fallen display rack.
“El-” He starts, more a little stunned, but she’s yelling then, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Come out here, motherfucker!” She screams. Another rustle has her head snapping towards the sound, and she’s darting in the direction in the span of a breath, shouting at the top of her lungs in what sounds like a fucking battle cry.
He follows her, unsure and alarmed, but there are no infected here, so he doesn’t draw his weapon. He wouldn’t have brought her here if he’d thought there were. He sees a squirrel skitter away from the direction of the noise, but Ellie seems blind to it, bringing the pole down in a wide swing that takes out half of a shelving unit, sending vampire teeth and bottles of fake blood to the ground.
Before he can even make an attempt at talking her down, she’s off, her swings wide and wild, punctuated by screaming. Some of it is profanity and some of it is just wordless shrieks of rage and pain so soul-deep that it gives him goosebumps to hear it. His own heart pounding, wondering what in the fuck is happening, he watches Ellie set off on a one-girl wrecking campaign. What she lacks in aim or reach, she more than makes up for in force and thoroughness. Something about a glass case really sets her off, and she beats it so badly she bends the casing even after all of the glass is gone.
When she’s done with that, she moves on to a rack of costumes. She briefly holds her pole to the side to take hold of the unit and rip it down, but he can’t even take advantage of the brief lull before she’s in motion again, sending a fake wooden gravestone sailing across the store with a kick that makes him worry briefly if she’s just broken a couple of toes.
He wants to go to her, wants to wrap her up tight and fix whatever the fuck has happened here, but she’s swinging her weapon blind with rage, and he doesn’t have a good way to get close. As much as it hurts to watch her, he’ll achieve nothing if he becomes collateral damage in whatever has taken over her.
He waits, jaw clenched against his own helplessness, as she wears herself out. No amount of calling her name is getting through to her, and he recognizes the look of a rage that needs to burn itself out.
Her swings get slower as her arms get shakier, and her screaming devolves into hoarse gasps, her entire chest heaving with each one in a way that looks painful. The vengeful wrath fades, replaced with tears that stream freely, even as she spins clumsily on her heel to smash enough mirrors to curse nine lifetimes.
Her pole starts to clang on the ground between hits as her arms get tired, and after the fifth ringing strike against the concrete, he judges it safe enough to finally do something instead of standing by uselessly. He catches the pole in hand when she raises it to strike a mannequin down beside the second glass case she destroyed, and she only gives it two weak tugs before she drops it, crumpling the moment it leaves her hand.
He catches her before she hits the ground.
“Easy,” he tells her, voice as gentle as he can make it. She trembles in a combination of residual anger and the aftermath of an adrenaline rush. “Easy, baby girl. I’ve gotcha.”
“Joel,” she says plaintively, like she’s just realized he’s there, and he reaches out for her at once, cupping her cheek in his hand and guiding her head down to rest against his shoulder. He drops back out of his crouch to sit with his back to what remains of the display case, grateful that at least her demolition job also littered the floor with enough cheap polyester costumes to cover the broken glass.
She grabs at his shirt and holds on tightly, the material fisted in her hands, and sobs like her heart is breaking. She’s already started to lose her voice from her screaming, and something about the hoarse cries makes it all feel so much fucking worse. Her entire body jolts with each inhale, and she coughs when she can’t quite catch her breath.
“You’re okay,” he says, rocking her slowly and forcing his own breath to stay even, no matter how his heart is still pounding. “I’m right here, Ellie. You’re okay.”
“Joel,” she rasps.
He just holds her tighter.
*
When she’s managed to catch her breath, he picks her up. He still doesn’t know what set this off, but staying at the scene of the crime certainly isn’t going to help. She moves like she’s going to stand on her own feet, but he shushes her and hitches her up more securely. After only one more feeble little struggle, she wraps her arms around his shoulders and tucks her face in against his neck.
He takes her back to their little camp, thankful that their horse is well-trained enough that it didn’t startle and run at the chaos one floor down. He kicks at his sleeping bag until it unrolls so he won’t have to set her down, and then he folds himself down onto the relative softness of it, still keeping Ellie held close.
He doesn’t say anything for a long while, letting her catch her breath and come down from the high of her rage. He hums, little snatches of songs he doesn’t even really remember the lyrics to, and with time, Ellie’s tears dry, and she sniffles, still not lifting her head.
When she does speak, she doesn’t beat around the bush.
“I got bitten in one of those stores,” she tells him, and he shuts his eyes, resisting the urge to curse.
So his treat ended up being tossing her right back into the setting of one of the most horrible moments of her life, not long after she experienced another of the most horrible moments of her life.
Surprise.
“We were playing music…” She trails off, but his stomach sinks at the pronoun. He’s trying to weigh pushing against waiting, relieving her of a burden against prodding at sore wounds. “It was just me and my fr-Riley.”
He recognizes the name from the times she’s called out during a bad dream, but he doesn’t own up to it. He suspects she doesn’t remember many of those late nights when he’s gentled her back to sleep when she’s only half-aware from a bad dream, and if she hasn’t mentioned it on purpose, he’s not going to bring it up until she does.
“We didn’t hear it until it was too late.”
He can see it, so achingly clearly. Two teenagers being dumb kids, dancing to music and making enough noise to wake the dead.
Well, he thinks darkly, the undead at least.
She unspools the whole terrible story. He thinks at first that he’s about to hear how she had to watch her friend be torn apart in front of her, but it turns out that in its sick fucking way, the universe found a way to make it even worse. He hears the impotent rage in her voice, even now, when she talks about the fight, when she blames herself for being too slow like she isn’t a tiny 14 year old who should never even need to wield a knife. She breaks herself off to slam her fist against the ground, and he catches her wrist. She tugs away automatically, all pain and anger with nowhere to put it, but he wraps her hand around his and lets her squeeze instead before she ends up injuring herself punching cement.
If anyone’s walking away hurt from this, let it be him.
Let him carry just one fucking thing for her.
She doesn’t squeeze as hard as he knows she can, but it seems to settle her, at least, having someone to hold on to, and she doesn’t release his hand when her temper passes. She wilts against him when the rage leaves her, and he tucks her head beneath his chin.
“We made a promise,” she tells him. “We’d lose our minds, but we’d do it together.”
He shuts his eyes and holds her tighter. So young, to have been in a place to make a fucked-up promise like that.
So achingly young, to have it broken.
“She started changing before the sun came up,” she tells him, like a confession.
She doesn’t say more after that.
She doesn’t need to.
Riley changed when they were still locked in an enclosed space together.
Ellie didn’t.
And yet Ellie is still here.
“You did the right thing,” he tells her. He hopes she knows it already on some level, that she realizes she only did what she needed to do to survive, but he knows it’s still something she deserves to hear. “There was nothing you could do to save her. Whatever you did, you survived. She was your friend. She would have wanted that for you.”
As absolutions go, it’s paltry, but it’s all he’s got to offer.
“I loved her,” she nearly whimpers. “Fuck, Joel. I loved her so much.”
“I know,” he says as he rocks her again, running a gentle hand over her hair, and he does. She’s naturally loving, he already knows, eager to please when she’s warmed up to someone and so wildly, unbelievably loyal.
And the tone of her voice tells him it’s not just any sort of love she’s talking about.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he tells her, holding her while she falls apart after having to hold herself together for far longer than she should ever have had to.
*
“Halloween is fucking stupid,” she says when she’s finally calmed. Her crying has left her loose and boneless against him, and she’s cradled against one of his arms, head on his bicep.
He laughs, once.
“I always thought so, too.”
She looks pleased, beneath her exhaustion, that they’re in agreement, and he bends forward to kiss her forehead, urged on by a swell of fondness for this girl in his arms. It’s a new thing, this degree of physical affection, and he’d been wary of offering it after peeling her off of the butchered body of a man he only wishes he had killed instead of her, but she leans into it like a cat each time, reassuring him that he’s not crossing boundaries she doesn’t want him to.
“What was your favorite one?” She asks, with a yawn in her voice that tells him she’s likely just trying to get him to talk her to sleep.
Christmas is the real answer, purely because it had been Sarah’s favorite and he loved anything that brought her joy, but that carries a weight behind it he isn’t willing to bring into this soft little bubble right now, not when she’s finally calm and he’s not sure he can say it without giving anything away that might make her upset on his behalf. He thinks for a moment about what he can offer instead. He doesn’t want to lie to her, per se, but he wants to give her something good to dream about. After a moment, he thinks of it.
“Leif Erikson Day.”
Her eyes flutter open, and she frowns.
“What the fuck is a Leif Erikson?”
*
As it turns out, they learn around three months after they return with the first round of the vaccine, Christmas isn’t the only thing that Jackson celebrates.
They also celebrate Halloween.
Isn’t that just their damn luck.
He nearly runs Ellie over when the first window decorations go up in a house near theirs, tripping over his own feet when she suddenly stops dead in her tracks after making a run for it after stealing one of his gloves. He catches himself with his hands on her shoulders, and she doesn’t even react when the momentum shoves her forward a half-step.
“Ellie?” He asks, ducking around her. “What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t respond, but he follows her line of sight to a window with a line of pumpkin and ghost decals. She takes a deep, deliberately controlled breath, even when she doesn’t look away. He moves all the way around her, using his body to block her view. He tilts her chin up with a gentle hand when she doesn’t immediately focus on him, and she blinks twice before her eyes look less glassy.
“Hey,” he says softly, “you okay?”
“Y-yeah,” she says, voice a little breathy. “I’m okay.”
The way she’s gone pale suggests that that isn’t true, but he’ll follow her lead.
“Do you wanna go home?” He asks when she doesn’t continue.
“No,” she says, and finally she seems to reanimate fully, giving him a little smile, shaky as it is. “It’s cheesy potatoes day.”
He snorts and then releases her chin.
“God forbid you miss your cheesy potatoes,” he drawls, feeling lighter with the way it makes her laugh.
He keeps his arm around her all the way to the dining hall.
*
Jackson doesn’t go all out for the holiday, which is a relief, but neither is it so subtle that it could be missed. A few faded plastic pumpkins appear on doorsteps–fresh pumpkins being too precious to waste–and some spare fabric and mesh becomes a ghost in their next door neighbor’s yard.
Ellie holds up well, but he sees the strain on her that it creates. More than once she comes home and makes a beeline right for him in his chair, wedging herself in in the scant space left and burying her head against his neck, arms wrapping around like she’s afraid someone’s going to pull her away. He doesn’t say anything when she does this, just holding her tight and letting her take as long as she needs until she can find words again.
School ends up being an issue as the holiday grows closer. Ellie comes barreling into the workshop while he’s repairing a table one day looking ready to either smash something or burst into tears, and it’s an hour before he actually gets her to tell him what happened.
Paper masks for the younger groups, apparently.
The three teachers who run the school have a policy of no costumes until the week-of to limit the chaos, but little kids can only be distracted for so long, and he imagines the craft was meant to hone their hand-eye coordination with scissors or something.
Unfortunately, it also upsets Ellie so badly she doesn’t even go to her room that night, flopping down in his bed right after her shower, hair still dripping and soaking his t-shirt immediately when she tucks her head against his shoulder.
He doesn’t complain.
*
He takes her teacher aside at breakfast the next morning, leaving Ellie briefly distracted by Tommy and Maria telling her all about their plans for the next patrol schedule. Ellie’s teacher is a tall, well-muscled woman with kind eyes and a soft spot for one of her best students, which works in his favor.
He doesn’t get into the details of it. He doesn’t know how discreet the woman will be with them, after all, and he knows Ellie doesn’t want the whole ugly story getting out, not when he’s pretty sure he’s the only person alive who’s ever heard it.
“Halloween’s hard for her,” he says without elaborating further. “She might not show up, or she might need to leave. If she misses anything, I’ll make sure she catches up, I promise.” His algebra skills are a bit rusty, but he’ll work something out if he needs to. Maria probably has a secret doctorate in math or something. It wouldn’t surprise him.
Her teacher is very clearly curious about the specifics, but with a world like theirs, he knows Ellie isn’t her only student who stumbles in strange places.
Ellie’s a little embarrassed when he tells her her teacher won’t mind if she misses some class, but he can see her relief, too.
True to his predictions, she ends up out of school most of the time that week. On the second day, her teacher hands over a little stack of work so she can leave whenever she needs without missing anything, and he helps Ellie come up with a lie when her classmates ask, deciding to excuse it with a bigger construction project that he could use her help with. It gives her some points with her friends, and more importantly, it nips any teasing in the bud.
A good thing, for everyone’s sake, given that he’d prefer not to have to square up to teenagers if he doesn’t absolutely have to.
She does spend most of her time with him, so the lie sells well. He trades some shifts with other patrollers to ensure he won’t be out when she might need him, and he spends most of the week doing repairs to houses or working on some carving projects. Some trading with a settlement two days away has yielded some new tools, and the work goes faster now.
She’s quiet, most of the time, which isn’t like her. She does help, handing him tools, but sometimes she just watches him like he’ll disappear if she looks away.
When that happens, he makes sure he always stays right where she can see him.
*
“I feel fucking stupid,” she confesses one night after he’s sprinted to her room when she woke up screaming. She’s rolled up in her quilt like it’s a cocoon, and he’s wrapped around her little bundle. She shifts to tuck her head more securely against his shoulder. “Fucking masks and pumpkins. Stupid.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, bringing one hand up to the back of her neck, holding her close and kneading gently at the too-tense muscles there.
“I couldn’t eat eggs for years after Sarah,” he says, and he’s a little proud of the way his voice doesn’t crack on the name. He feels Ellie go still, always attuned to his emotions, whether he wants her to be or not. He shifts to hold her a little better, rubbing a hand down her back, helping her settle. “It was the last meal we had together.”
She doesn’t respond. She’s seen too much to think that there are words to fix every hurt, but she wiggles until she has a hand free to hold up to his. He links their fingers together, and she squeezes, three little pulses for the words they’re still both a little shy about saying out loud.
He squeezes back four.
*
Tommy’s the one who comes up with an idea for what to do on Halloween itself.
He comes by when Ellie’s in the shower after getting tackled by the neighbor’s puppy into a mud puddle to drop off some tools he’d borrowed for work in the nursery at his and Maria’s place.
“How’s she doing?” He asks, voice low, even though they can both hear the water still running.
He hasn’t told Tommy anything about Ellie’s past, at least not that part, but they’ve gotten close enough in their time here that it would be impossible for him to miss how off she is even if they had only been casual acquaintances.
He just shrugs.
She’s wound so tight he’s waiting for her to snap is the answer, but he won’t say that to his brother.
“You know,” Tommy says, leaning back with a fake casualness that says he’s about to say something he and Maria have planned. “There’s a few old cabins about an hour away from here. They’ve been cleared and they lock and everything. We don’t use ‘em because they’re too far to be connected to water or electricity, but they wouldn’t be bad for a night or two.”
“Gonna be alright if we just go AWOL a couple of days?” He asks, even as he’s already planning out what to pack.
“I’ll make something up if anyone asks,” Tommy says easily, pushing himself off of the counter and making his way to the door, solution delivered and mission accomplished. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Tommy,” he calls, when his brother is already at the door, making him pause and turn back. “Thanks.”
Tommy smiles and gives him a little half-salute before he leaves.
*
“What’s that one?” He asks, squinting at the star map Ellie has spread over her knees before looking up to the sky again. The map had been a gift from a friend at school, and Ellie’d been excited for a chance to use it beyond the lights of Jackson, meager as they are. Her joy had been a relief after the month they’d had, and he’d gladly let her spread out her map and compass while he finished cleaning up after supper. The cabins are as secure as Tommy had said, and their sleeping bags are already set up inside for when Ellie’s had her fill of the stars. Buzzed off of the caramels he’d gotten from one of the kitchen staff when they were handing them out for trick-or-treaters later, however, he has a feeling she might keep them out late on her sugar rush.
“Uuuuuuh,” Ellie says, handing him the flashlight and then holding the map up over her head, hitting him on the face in the process, which just makes her grin and say a deeply insincere “Oops.” He rolls his eyes and pushes her arm over so he can look at the diagram, too. “Eck-ecku-eckoo-”
“Equuleus,” he provides, looking between the diagram and the sky. “Looks like it, at least. Let’s see…that’s…” He consults the little box on the side with a guide to the English names. “Little horse.”
“Aw,” Ellie says immediately. “A little guy in the sky.”
“Apparently some people think it was associated with a foal from Pegasus named Celeris,” he reads out of the little booklet that came with the map. “So that right there,” he points, tilting her head for her to where he’s indicating, “is Pegasus.”
“They’re next to each other?” She asks, pressing her cheek tight to his arm to follow where he’s pointing better.
“Well they gotta be,” he tells her. “He can’t leave his baby out there all alone.”
Ellie goes very, very still, and he worries for a moment that he’s wrecked this fragile thing they’ve got going, that he’s pushed too hard, too fast. He’s not her dad, he knows that. He loves her like she’s his own, but he shouldn’t presume that it’s mutual, especially when she’s already had a month from hell. He readies himself to walk it back, but before he can, Ellie drops back against him, resting her head against his shoulder while she looks up.
“Good,” she says softly. “His baby’d get lonely without him.”
The stars get a little blurry when his eyes go misty, but that’s alright.
His kid pressed against him, safe and content, is better than anything the sky might have to offer.