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Ellie is set to go on a foraging trip for the first time without him.
He’s tried very hard not to think about it all week, made harder by the way Ellie has brought it up in every conversation she’s had in his hearing, practically vibrating out of her skin with excitement. He knows she likes how grown-up it makes her feel, going out on a job without him right there at her heels, and he’s trying not to ruin it for her by being an overprotective worrier.
Trying being the operative word.
Ellie’s up before even the sun on the day the trip finally arrives, and he listens to her trying (and failing) to move around quietly in her room. She’s already packed and unpacked her bag about five times now, but he can tell from the noises that she’s doing it again. He listens to her moving around and humming to herself and shuts his eyes, trying to soak in the feeling of his teenager safe in his home.
He’ll need it.
To her credit, she does wait until the sun is up before she knocks on his door to wake him up as well, but after that, it’s full speed ahead. The group is leaving before the dining hall starts serving breakfast, so they’d all collected bundles of food the night before as part of practicing the routine of early patrols. She’s a food gobbler at the best of times–just one of many consequences of growing up in a FEDRA facility–and this morning she eats with so much speed he’s more than a little worried she’s going to choke.
She’s not supposed to be armed, but no one else needs to know that she carries a little pistol in her pack. If he’s supposed to let her go out into the world without him right there, she’s damn well going to do it with a gun.
“Every lady needs a secret,” she says while she tucks it into the little pocket she’s added to her pack just for holding her gun, with a horrible attempt at something like a garbled trans-Atlantic accent like in one of the old movies they show sometimes.
He snorts.
“I’m pretty sure ladies don’t swear as much as you,” he points out. She sits back on her heels, grinning.
“Well, fuck.”
*
“No moose,” he tells her seriously before he turns her loose on the porch. She gives him a look, and he squeezes her shoulder tighter. “I mean it.” One of the hunters had come back with one last week, and he’d seen the jealous awe in her eyes at such an achievement. The teenagers have a scoreboard among themselves–which he knows from being regularly updated about it by his own teenager–and he can only imagine the sort of social pull bagging a moose could net a person among adolescents. “It could stomp you to death in a minute.”
“What if it has a limp?” She asks impishly. “Can I try and shoot it then?”
“I will carry you right back inside,” he tells her, unimpressed, and finally she holds her hand out like they’re making a business deal. He rolls his eyes, but he holds his out in return.
“No moose,” she says, in a fake deep voice that he imagines is supposed to sound like him.
“Get out of here,” he tells her with a gentle shove, “maybe I’ll have some peace and quiet for once.”
She laughs and jumps to clear the entire set of stairs in one go, looking over her shoulder with a grin when she lands, knowing exactly how that makes him nervous about her breaking her damn neck.
“Love you!” She calls over her shoulder as she sets off at a jog to the gate.
He shakes his head, watching her go.
What a brat.
(God help him, but he loves her.)
*
His day ends up being busy, which is frankly a blessing. If nothing else has remained the same, misguided homeowners still try to do their own home repairs and construction.
And it still doesn’t go well for them.
He’s so busy trying to help shore up a wall with its supporting beam trimmed down after an attempt at making the room “airy” that he doesn’t notice at first how late it’s getting. He’s so consumed in problem solving that everything fades out, all lost to his focus on his job.
And then the supper bell rings.
He straightens at once, frowning and checking the position of the sun, sure that it must be kids fucking around with the bell again.
But no, the position of the sun indicates that it is indeed about 5:30 pm.
And Ellie isn’t at his side, talking his ear off.
She should have been home three hours ago. She should have found him a maximum of two and a half hours ago, eager to tell him all about her adventure. She always finds him first.
Always.
*
He doesn’t eat supper, his insides swirling with too much slowly ratcheting anxiety to stomach a single bite, but he still ducks his head into the dining hall, just to check. Foraging is hungry work, after all. She might have gotten back later than expected and gone straight to getting food. He’ll look in and find her with her cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk’s, because of all the lessons he’s ever taught her, table manners have never quite stuck.
He looks over the faces in the hall five, six times.
No hamster cheeked teenager.
His dread ticks ever higher.
*
After night falls, he feels his heart drop right into his stomach at the sound of a knock at the door, far beyond normal visiting hours for anyone else, even if they regularly got visitors. This must be something every parent dreads through time eternal, he thinks a little dizzily, a knock at the door when your teenager’s late.
Ellie doesn’t knock. She throws herself through the door in a rush of motion and words, catching him up on everything he’s missed no matter how long they’ve been apart. She hops on one foot while yanking her boots off because God forbid she sit down like a normal person. Even when he accidentally (and not-so-accidentally) locks her out, her first move is attempting to break in or making a circuit of the windows to yell at him through the glass.
But she never, ever knocks.
When he finds his brother on the other side of the door, hat in hands, his heart drops right to the floor.
*
“Joel-” Tommy starts, trailing him in the house while he gathers what he needs. “It’s going to be full dark so-”
“Sure is,” he answers gruffly. Ellie doesn’t like the dark, he knows. She’s not so scared that she’ll panic about it, and she’s never so much as said anything to hint at it, stubborn thing, but she always presses closer at night, has since she was a strange 14-year-old slowly scooching her sleeping bag closer like he wouldn’t notice until she was pressed right against his hip.
It makes something in his chest ache, the idea of his girl out there in the dark without him.
“Are you comin’ or not?” He asks, as he fastens the holster for his pistol to his hip.
Tommy gives him a look.
“You have to ask?”
*
It gets cold quickly this late in the season, and he finds himself, in the back of his mind, trying to catalog exactly what Ellie had on in an attempt to determine if she’ll be warm enough. She’s such a little thing, she gets chilled easily, and he’s wracking his brains trying to remember if she took gloves or not. She’s horrible about remembering them, and he feels like fucking Sisyphus tucking them into her jacket’s pocket each day so she’ll have them. He thinks he put her beanie in there, too, but suddenly he can’t remember, and it’s such a stupid thing, to worry about cold ears, but-
He’s the first one to spot blood on the ground.
He holds himself upright and unmovable entirely without thought, as his breath starts to come only with effort.
Not my girl, he thinks, not even sure if he’s praying or if he’s just begging some faceless idea of a god. Please, not again. I can’t do it again.
He refuses to let his hands shake as he dismounts, and he can already tell that his jaw is going to be sore from how tight he’s clenching it.
None of it matters, though.
Not when Ellie is missing and night is coming and there’s a fucking puddle of blood in a place she would have been.
Please God, not my girl. Not my Ellie.
He kneels to get a better look, even as the idea of it in relation to his kid makes him want to vomit. It’s a damnably large puddle, and he sees Tommy keeping his face carefully blank when he kneels across from him.
“Might not be her,” his brother says.
Joel nods once, tightly.
Please God, don’t let it be her.
*
Whatever caused the blood also made the bleeder slow and stumble, and Joel searches the prints like a hawk, heart in his throat while he looks for a bootprint. Ellie’s feet are little like the rest of her, and he’s terrified he’s going to see an imprint that could only be hers. The instructor and the other missing teenagers are all taller than her, and it’s not like he goes around staring at boots, but he imagines they probably have bigger feet as well.
Give me some size 11s, he thinks. Some 12s. Some feet so big they can’t be hers. He feels guilty, knowing that there are other parents also wondering if their kid will come home tonight. They’d split into groups for the search, and he’d barely listened to the plans of where everyone else would search before he was marching off in the direction he just felt she was in. He’s not the only parent out here tonight, worried and searching.
But still, he can’t help but hope that his kid will come out of this, even if she does it alone.
His girl’s a fighter, a survivor. She’d coded during one of the procedures with the Fireflies, and she hadn’t quit then. He’d watched, ears ringing and mind blank with terror, as her fragile little body had jerked under the pulse of electricity until her heart picked up a beat once more. He’d lost a good five years off his life, watching it, but she’d done it. She’d fought her way back, because his girl doesn’t give up, not until her job's done.
Don’t you give up on me now, baby girl, he thinks to her fiercely. You keep fighting ‘til I find you.
His heart thuds in his chest when he sees a small footprint, but he takes hope in the way it’s firm, clearly from a step and not from a limp. Ellie’s a helper, and she’s loyal til it burns her. Her footprints on a path spattered with blood doesn’t mean it’s from her. It just means she’s keeping someone else safe. He can practically see her, tiny but strong, hauling around one of the other teenagers, maybe even her instructor, the adult assigned to keep an eye on the kids.
She’s fine, he tells himself firmly. There was some trouble, and she stayed with them to protect them because she doesn’t know how not to be a hero.
She’s going to be just fine.
*
They find more blood about ten minutes further down the trail and signs of a struggle. The moonlight glints off of the blade of a knife, and he kneels to pick it up. The handle is familiar, rosewood he carved to fit a small hand, uncomfortable for him to hold because it was made for a specific person: Ellie.
The handle is sticky with blood.
*
He doesn’t talk after they find the knife. Tommy can read him well enough to not even try, and there’s not enough left in him to bother. Tommy will follow him or he won’t. It doesn’t matter.
Ellie’s out there.
That is his only concern.
*
The temperature drops quickly, and even he’s chilled when they’re an hour into the search. In the distance, he sees other pinpricks of light, flashlights of other parents on the same hunt as him. Tommy calls to them as loud as he can, telling them that they’ve found a trail they’re following, and with time, the little pinpricks of light get closer. Tommy flashes his light towards them every now and then to guide them on, but he seems to realize that if he stops to wait for them, he’s going to be left behind.
Joel doesn’t bother calling out or using his flashlight for anything other than illuminating the path ahead of him.
It’s dark and it’s cold and his kid is out here without him.
He doesn’t have the space in himself to consider anyone else.
*
“Stop right where you are.”
The voice, lowered in a young girl’s best impression of intimidating, nearly sends him to his knees with relief.
“Both of you,” Ellie barks in the same harsh tone. He thinks, a little giddy from his own relief, that they’re going to have to have a talk on how not to sound like a child giving commands to strangers. “I am not fucking kidding. I will blow your brains out, I swear to Christ.”
The tension in her voice says she’s genuinely getting unsettled and that he needs to get his act together enough to respond before she makes good on her threat.
“It’s me, Ellie. It’s Joel.”
“And Tommy,” his brother puts in, also keen not to be casualty of mistaken identity.
“Oh, thank fuck.” Her voice is her own once more, and he hears rustling and squints enough to see her climbing down from a tree. Her feet have barely touched the ground before she’s darting to him, gun tucked in the side pocket of her backpack to get her arms around him.
“Are you okay?” He asks, voice a little rough, pushing her back after a moment to get a look at her. “You hurt? Anything.”
She shakes her head before he even finishes asking and leans to the side to hug Tommy as well, who ruffles her hair, loose instead of bound in a ponytail. She scowls as it makes it fall in her eyes, and he digs a hair elastic from his pocket and hands it over, one of the ones he always carries for her so he won’t have to listen to the woes of long hair from someone who refuses to cut it short. She takes it with clear gratitude.
“Thank God,” she says, though it comes out more as “thank gah” with the elastic held between her teeth while she pulls her hair back. “Mine snapped when Butterball threw me.”
The sentence, said so casually, sends a little panic through him, and he braces her by her shoulders before reaching up to tilt her face up to his, trying to search for any obvious bruises.
“You got thrown? Did you hit your head? Is your-”
“Joel,” she says, bracing her hands on his upper arms and squeezing. “I’m okay. Super pinky promise.” She grins at that because she thinks she’s funny, even when she’s busy giving him a heart attack.
“You sure-” He starts, unable to stop himself.
“We found blood,” Tommy says, like he’s explaining why Joel is being so intense about it, as if he needs a reason when it comes to his kid. “A lot of it.”
“Fucking Toto,” Ellie says, with an eyeroll. Toto, a gelding with more sweetness than brains, is a long-standing fond exasperation of Ellie’s. “Scratched himself on something, and then tried to buck at a change in the fucking wind, so he ripped the cut wider and started bleeding everywhere. The smell panicked the other horses, thus Butterball dumping me.”
He courageously resists the urge to make the obvious joke that sentence invites.
“Hello?” Ellie asks, waving her hand in front of his eyes until he catches her wrist and pulls it away. “Earth to Joel? I just T’d you up for a great dad joke, and nothing? Did you hit your head?”
“My kid went missing,” he tells her, shoving her forehead lightly to make her wobble. “Give me a break.”
“I’m sure it’s not you. It’s her,” Tommy puts in consolingly, and Ellie gestures to him grandly.
“See?” She tells Joel. “That’s how you do it, and you’ve got more dad experience than him. You should be ashamed. You’re a discredit to the field.”
“Yeah, you can tell me all about it when we’re home,” he says, moving to lift her up into the saddle.
Before he can, though, she wiggles free and backs up a step.
“We can’t!” She says, like she’s offended by the idea. “Nate,” she names her instructor, the adult sent out with the kids on this trip, “got hurt when Toto bucked him. Think he broke his leg or something, and none of the others wanted to go back to town when they’re not armed.”
“Nate wouldn’t give any of you the rifle?” Tommy asks. Even with the kids unarmed when they’re out, they still receive basic drills in using a gun because that’s a simple reality of this life.
“Said he didn’t trust any of us not to shoot each other in the dark,” Ellie says with a roll of her eyes, like she’s offended at the very idea that she would be so jumpy. “There’s an old farmhouse down this road everyone’s camped out at. His plan was to go back in the morning, and I said I’d keep watch out here because our trail was so obvious.”
“He wouldn’t give you a rifle, but he’ll leave you alone out here in the dark?” Joel asks, more than a little angry. If Nate didn’t know Ellie was armed, then he just left the smallest one of the group to sit in a tree by herself as lookout. Ellie’s more than a capable fighter, and he knows without a doubt that she’s the best one for the job out of the group, but to leave her out in the cold, alone-
“Easy, Mr. Overprotective,” Ellie says with a punch to his shoulder, though her tone is fond. “I took him aside to let him know I had a pistol and knew how to use it.” She smirks. “I think you’re in for a talking-to about arming me, by the way. Enjoy that argument.”
“We can cover it when we go over how my kid isn’t goddamn cannon fodder,” he grumbles, even though he falls into step with Ellie when she tucks herself under his arm and tugs him into motion.
“Again,” Ellie points out. “Armed and dangerous. Which you,” she says, bumping him with her hip, “know damn fucking well.”
He wants to pick at this more, to emphasize that she doesn’t always have to take the most dangerous jobs just because she can, but he’d prefer not to hash it out with an audience, no matter how much Tommy’s sitting back to let them talk it out. From the look Ellie gives him, she’s read his mind, and she changes the subject.
“We’ll probably need to brace Nate’s leg again,” she says. “I sent the others out to get sticks for a splint, and let me tell you, it’s like pulling goddamn teeth to get them to listen-”
He and Tommy exchange an amused glance while Ellie tells them at length all of the challenges of wrangling teenagers older than her, but he also gets the sense that she was the one who took charge when someone needed to. Despite himself, he’s a little proud.
“-didn’t even think to clear the other rooms until Nate and I told them to-”
“Amateurs,” Tommy says teasingly, and Ellie leans around Joel to make a face at him.
“I don’t know what you’re making light of,” she points out. “This is your town, and your kids ran around like chickens with their heads cut off the second things got a little rough.”
“Well,” Tommy says, “lucky you were there then.”
Still tucked under his arm, he can feel Ellie puff up a little with pride.
*
Ellie was right in her guess about needing to re-splint Nate’s leg, the instructor pale and sweating from pain, and Tommy takes two of the teenagers to find the right sized sticks because clearly Ellie has had her fill of instructing her peers for the evening from the way she makes a face when one of them asks, “thick as whose thumb?”
He’s amused to see the brusque way she orders the rest of them around, though, and more amused to see how they listen. For all that she’s barely over 5’, she carries herself with an authority that the rest of them lack, and they seem to respond to it. He had been prepared to take charge and get them ready to go, but in no time, Ellie has them whipped into shape, bags packed and the group ready to go.
“Good job, general,” he says quietly when she returns to his side.
She blushes, but the smile she gives him is proud.
*
He’s relieved when he can finally pull her up behind him on his horse, her own pressed into service for someone else to ride as part of the cause of getting an injured Toto safely back to town, against the gelding’s best efforts it would seem from the way he almost immediately rears and gets his reins caught in the lower branch of a tree.
“That goddamn horse,” Ellie grumbles from her place against his back. She’d gone to jump down to help, but he’d put a hand over hers around his waist to stop her. Having gotten far enough to have his kid on a horse with him, he’s not looking to lose his progress.
Finally, Toto has been reclaimed and tied to another horse–a strong-willed mare named Tara who has him in line in no time–and they can finally start heading home. Ellie settles against him as they ride, and soon enough, he smiles when he feels her cheek settle against him, the usual way she rides when they’re like this.
“You tired?” He asks, when he feels her slumping a bit.
“Mm-mm,” she says, but the fact that she doesn’t even speak tells him all he needs to know.
“You did a good job tonight,” he tells her, trying to talk to keep her awake. He feels her inhale a yawn through her nose. “Don’t fall asleep,” he tells her. “If you fall off, I’m leaving you here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, but she squeezes just a little bit closer.
*
When they get back to town, he leaves her propped on a hay bale while he untacks the horse. By the time he returns, she’s slumped out across it, totally out cold.
He snorts and then moves to pick her up, coaxing her arms around his neck and then scooping her up easily.
“Sh,” he says when she stirs slightly. “Don’t worry, I’ve gotcha. Go back to sleep.”
Reassured, she nods off again against his shoulder.
*
He carries her up to her bed still fully out cold. He pulls off her gloves and hat–leaving her hair a staticy mess until he smooths it down–and works her out of her jacket. She stirs just enough to make grumpy noises at being manhandled while providing almost no assistance, and he smiles slightly at the way her face is scrunched. After pulling off her boots, he shifts her until she’s beneath her covers, and he kisses her forehead when she immediately rolls over to curl around her pillow, because she always sleeps holding onto something.
When he moves to leave, however, she reaches out for him, grabbing his hand.
“Stay?” She asks, eyes still shut. “For a little?”
“Sure,” he says easily, toeing his shoes off and sitting at the edge of her bed, back against her headboard. “I’m proud of you,” he tells her, stroking her hair back softly. She leans into the touch like a cat, and it makes him smile. “Didn’t need me at all.”
“Nah,” she says, shifting closer until she has an arm across his knees. “Always need ya,” she says, clearly almost asleep.
He’s a soft enough old man that it makes his heart feel warm, this little admission of his kid still needing him after a night she’s handled herself–and others–perfectly fine.
“‘sides,” she murmurs. “You’re gonna help me find a moose.”
He snorts.
“That so?”
“Yeah,” she says, right on the edge of sleep. “‘cause ya love me.”
And well, what else is there to say to that?
Still smiling, he leans his head back to rest against the wall. He’ll need to go to his own bed eventually, but for now, he’s content to sit with his kid, safely back home.
“Maybe two moose.”
He opens his eyes to look skyward, shaking his head.
This kid.