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Sarah had always been a water baby, happy to splash and dive for as long as he would let her. Spooked by a headline about a two-year-old drowning in their area about a month before she was born, he had enrolled Sarah in baby swim classes at the Y the moment she was eligible, and she’d taken to it like a duck to water. Even when she grew older, she was always the first one in the pool, and he had to watch her like a hawk on their few beachtrips to make sure her enthusiasm didn’t overcome her sense in how far out she should swim.

Ellie, it turns out, is not remotely a water baby or a duck. 

Ellie is a goddamn cat. 

She stands at the very edge of the water, barely touching it with her toes, and giving it and him equally dubious looks. She briefly ventured in to her ankles, but him swimming out just a little farther seems to have spooked her into getting firmly back on dry land. 

He’d brought her out here the moment the weather was nice enough that it wouldn’t be dangerous after they returned to Jackson in spring. It’s past time that Ellie learns how to swim, he’d decided. Time for him to have one less thing to worry about when it comes to her. 

Now if only he could get her on board with the plan. 

“Come on,” he calls. “The water’s nice.” 

Her expression tells him she absolutely does not believe him. 

Alright. Time to bring out the big guns. 

“What?” He asks. “Are you chicken?” 

That has her shoulders straightening at once, as she pulls herself up as tall as she can manage, every inch radiating teenaged offense. 

He resists the urge to smile. Gotcha, he thinks. 

“It’s okay if you’re too scared,” he says, putting just enough emphasis on the last word to make it sink in without making it obvious that he’s baiting her. 

Well, hopefully. 

“I’m not scared!” She says at once, offended at the very suggestion. 

“If you say so,” he answers, making his tone deliberately dubious. He sits back in the water, spreading his arms and letting himself sink up to his neck. He waits, eyes closed, like he’s just enjoying a leisurely soak on a warm day.

And just as he’d suspected would happen, it’s the matter of a few moments before he hears the splashes of someone trying to angrily stomp through water. He peeks one eye open to watch her as she tries to make her point, her stomping hindered as she gets deeper. She falters when she’s up to her thighs, and he sees the quick glance she gives him, like she’s confirming that he’s still there. He sits up then and moves slightly closer. If he were standing, the water would be barely up to his chest, but for Ellie it would be up to or over her head. 

“C’mon,” he says, stopping where she’ll be up to her waist by his best judgment. “Little further.” 

Ellie gives the water a dubious look. The pond is relatively clear, so she can see the bottom, and he sees her judging the depth for herself between where she is and where he is. To give her a little confidence boost, he stands, showing that it won’t be too deep for her. 

“Why are we even doing this?” She asks even as she gets closer, bolstered by evidence that he isn’t leading her to a watery grave. “It’s not like Wyoming’s near the ocean or anything.” 

“Still has water,” he says, sitting back down as she approaches. “Swimming’s an important life skill.” 

“Not that important,” she says judgmentally. “I’ve made it this far without it.” 

“Well, you’ve made it this far without common sense, too, but-” 

He laughs when she splashes him and doesn’t retaliate. He remembers from Sarah’s first swim lessons that getting her face wet was one of the hardest things to learn to tolerate, and he’d rather not startle Ellie when they’ve made it this far. He doesn’t plan on teaching her much about swimming today, really, just wants to get her comfortable being in water. 

He can splash the hell out of her later. 

“Alright, come here,” he says, reaching for her, but she evades him. 

“For what?” She demands. 

“First lesson: people float.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen enough bodies in water to know that,” she says, with the chilling casualty of a FEDRA-raised kid that still throws him sometimes. “What does that have to do with me?” 

“Come here, and I’ll show you,” he says patiently. 

It takes her a moment, but finally she comes within grabbing distance, and he picks her up and slowly sinks down with her, ignoring the way she’s white knuckling her hold on him. He resists the reflexive urge to dunk her playfully, knowing that if he gives in he will never be getting her back in any body of water. There’ll be plenty of time later to torment her when she isn’t clinging to him like a life preserver. She’s already about as stiff as a board, but he doesn’t comment on it. She flails a bit when he starts moving his hands, eyes going wide and hands scrabbling to grab onto him, but he settles her soon enough when he tells her he’s just moving the hand behind her back. 

“See?” He says, moving until there’s just a hand under her neck to keep her face well out of the water. “You’re not gonna sink.” 

She still looks more like someone being held at gunpoint than someone enjoying a leisurely swim, tense and too-alert, but he’ll take what he can get. After a moment, he slowly starts pulling her through the water, and her hands immediately fly up to grab onto his forearm, ruining her balance and making her dip down enough that water hits her chin. 

That sets them back several steps until he convinces her that death was not coming for her just because water got near her face. 

He hadn’t expected this amount of fear from her, honestly, and he mentally revises his planned schedule for how fast they can go. For today they’ll work on just being in water without being actively terrified. 

The rest can follow. 

*

They don’t get another chance to get away for another swim lesson by the time her age group is scheduled for foraging practice about two weeks later. Kids over 14 start going out of the fence with their groups at school in what’s affectionately called the baby brigade by the adult patrollers (setting off plenty of eyerolls and offended huffing from the baby brigade members themselves), and he knows from watching that the teenagers all consider it a big deal, a stepping stone towards adulthood. They don’t start with hunting until 16 (even though some, like Ellie, already go out with parents or family members), but foraging is a skill that’s minimally dangerous to learn so long as they stay within the well-cleared areas around Jackson. 

Ellie’s already one of the best in her age group with a gun and often brings back the most impressive kills of the kids her age that do hunt–something he subtly brings up as often as possible because there are some parenting habits that never die–but foraging can be as important as knowing how to bring a deer down, and he’d prefer if she didn’t keel over from a misidentified mushroom one day. And given that he always volunteers to be one of the patrollers keeping an eye out for the baby brigade on their outings, he doesn’t generally worry too much about her out in the field. 

He knows Ellie likes feeling independent and grown during these outings, her experience out on the road already making her more comfortable outside of Jackson’s walls than her peers. She’s a velcro kid for the most part usually, sticking close to his side in most social settings, but on these days she likes striking out on her own and proving how capable she is. She reminds him of a retriever puppy sometimes, proudly trotting back to show off what she’s got for him. Accordingly, he gives her her space, forcing himself not to check in on her any more than he does the others when he and whoever else is on baby brigade watch with him do their rotations. 

(His restraint in this regard is generally aided by personally going out the day before to make sure the planned learning area is well-cleared of infected.) 

Today he’s out with Tommy and a couple of women whose daughter Penny is in Ellie’s class. Penny and Ellie set out in opposite directions, so it’s an easy decision to split up checks into him and Tommy taking north and east to cover Ellie’s section while the women take south and west to trail Penny. They exchange small, knowing smiles with each other, and it’s a relief, he finds, to be out with other parents. Much less discussion when the obvious course of action is clear. 

“Oh, c’mon,” Tommy wheedles about ten minutes after the group has split. “What about Veronica? I’ve seen her making eyes at you.” 

It’s a recent thing, this matchmaking of Tommy’s, and he’s more amused than offended that his brother is trying so damn hard to set him up. He doesn’t know if Tommy’s noticed yet or not exactly how much Ellie hates these efforts, and even if he was looking to get into the dating scene, it certainly wouldn’t be happening without a long conversation with Ellie first. 

“Have you seen her porch? I’m pretty sure she’s more interested in a handyman than anything else, the way her stairs look.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes. 

“Alright, well what about Patty? You’ve gone on patrols with her. She’s nice, she likes guns, and she’s faced off enough infected that your pissed teenager giving her the evil eye and launching a smear campaign against her probably won’t scare her off.” 

Ah, so Tommy has noticed. Then again, he knows Tommy and Ellie had their own little reckoning after they settled here, so perhaps he clocked it even earlier than he did. 

“I’ve already got a little miss bossing me around,” he says jokingly, half-hoping Tommy will just let it go. “I’m not looking to add a missus.” 

“Is it just because of Ellie?” Tommy asks, and he resists the urge to sigh. Apparently they won’t just be letting this go. “I know she’s got you wrapped around her little finger, but you know she’d come around eventually.” 

“I think you’re underestimating how long she can hold a grudge,” he says dryly. “She kept tossing my socks up in a tree for a week and a half after I kicked a rock at her that got in her boot when we were on the road.” 

Tommy snorts. 

“I just don’t want you getting lonely, big brother,” Tommy says, in a joking tone that still conveys sincerity. 

“I’m not,” he says sincerely, and it’s true. There are times he watches Tommy and Maria together and feels a slight pang, missing Tess and wishing he’d been in a place to give her the sort of partnership she’d wanted and deserved from him, but he wouldn’t say he’s lonely. He’s always been one to love deeply more than widely, and he’s content, with Tommy and Ellie and their little family. He wouldn’t say he loves Maria–theirs is more of a grudging ceasefire slowly progressing to pleasant acquaintances–but he’s glad for the way she balances Tommy, and he’s looking forward to meeting his new niece or nephew. 

Even Before, he hadn’t really dated often. He’d loved Sarah’s mother, and after she passed, he’d loved their daughter with enough ferocity for them both. He’d had a few almost-somethings–more than once set up by Tommy, who likes to play matchmaker because he’s nosey as hell–but when they hadn’t worked out, it hadn’t bothered him. Sarah hadn’t been keen on sharing him when she was younger, and by the time she was old enough to be open to a woman trying to enter their dynamic, he’d already been in the habit of singlehood. 

Now he has Ellie, who’s barely worked through being jealous about sharing him with his brother. He’s satisfied with their life, exactly how it is. He loves going home to his girl after a long day, loves how she tucks herself close to his side, loves how she’s settling into being comfortable enough to do things like demand being piggybacked home after supper. One day, maybe, when she’s more confident in her place with him and is old enough that she’s started branching out into her own romances, then it might be time to let Tommy try setting him up. 

For now though, his heart is full, and he’s content. 

Before he can even begin deciding if he should convey any of this to Tommy, a sharp scream rings out clearly. 

He knows whose scream it is down to his goddamn bones. 

He’s in motion in a moment, nudging his horse into a full gallop towards the sound, heart pounding. He knows Ellie and can recognize an excitement scream from a fear scream. 

And this? Was a goddamn terror scream. 

He leaves Tommy behind with how hard he pushes his horse, and he bursts into the clearing to find a small group of kids gathered at the top of a ledge that overlooks a curve in the river, where the water is slow but deep. He knows from patrols before that kids often use this spot to jump off into the water, and he’d bet a week’s patrol duty that at least some of them had gathered to do exactly that today. 

“-told you she can’t fucking swim!” Shouts one of the kids–Jesse, he thinks his name is–as he starts picking his way down. 

Joel’s blood turns to ice. 

“Where is Ellie?” He demands of the gathered little group, dismounting and barely in the frame of mind to loop his horse’s reins around a branch. He doesn’t even look back when Tommy arrives, despite the way his brother calls his name. 

“Peter and Hector tossed her in!” Calls Ellie’s friend Dina, picking her way down behind Jesse. 

He all but hip checks them both as he moves to get down first, eyes scanning the water. 

When he spots a bright yellow shirt on a body floating facedown, he nearly throws himself down the rest of the rock wall, diving into the water at once. He doesn’t even surface again before he’s swimming to her, looping an arm around her slack body and moving at once to shore. 

She’s limp and completely unmoving as he hauls her up the bank, Tommy arriving in time to help tug her the rest of the way out, and he almost knocks his brother over to get to her side, leaning over her with his heart racing. 

“Ellie, baby?” He asks, tapping her cheek. “C’mon, baby girl, open your eyes.” 

She isn’t breathing, and when he presses shaking fingers to her throat, he can’t find a pulse. He shrugs his backpack off roughly to free his movements and starts CPR, giving her two rescue breaths after the first round before returning to compressions. He can register Tommy speaking, but in the moment, there is nothing beyond his child in front of him, still and pale and not fucking breathing. 

“C’mon, baby girl,” he coaches during compressions, ignoring the sickening sensation when he feels cracks beneath his hands as he works. “C’mon, Ellie. Breathe for me, baby.” 

It’s on the third round of rescue breaths that he hears something like a catch in her throat, and he pulls back as she makes a gurgling, choking noise, body heaving. It’s good Tommy’s there to help roll her onto her side because it’s like all of the air leaves his body when it starts entering hers again, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from falling on top of her when it feels like he goes boneless with near-incapacitating relief. 

Ellie retches, jerking weakly, and he rubs a hand along her back, the other moving to push her soaked hair out of her face. In the moment, her labored gasps are one of the most beautiful things he’s ever heard. 

“Easy, baby,” he says, as soothingly as he can when he feels like he might be shaking apart, too. “You’re okay, baby girl, just breathe.” 

Tommy rounds up the other teenagers–a good thing because at present he couldn’t give less of a fuck about any teenager that isn’t his if he tried–and he focuses on Ellie, coaxing her through her first few labored breaths. Tommy touches his shoulder gently to get his attention and tells him he’s taking the other kids to go tell Penny’s moms and that one of the kids will bring his horse down to him. 

Hyperfocused on every inhale and exhale Ellie takes, he just nods, not looking away from his kid, as if she’ll stop breathing if he stops watching her. It’s possible he manages a thank you, but he honestly can’t be sure. 

Soon enough his horse is at his side thanks to Jesse and Dina, and he can get his kid back to Jackson, where medical professionals will be available to tell him that she’s going to be perfectly fine. 

Maybe then he’ll feel like he can breathe again properly, too. 

*

By the time they’re back in Jackson, Ellie is sensate enough again to be aware of her surroundings. 

Unfortunately this also means she’s aware enough to know what’s coming as he carries her to the clinic, and her rough-voiced pleas go straight to his heart. 

“I just wanna go home,” she says, sounding so achingly young. “Please, Joel.” 

“Just for a night,” he reassures her. “Just to make sure you’re okay.” 

She struggles weakly to get free, but she’s exhausted, and she doesn’t get far, devolving into shaky little breaths. He knows her trembling isn’t just from being cold and wet. Salt Lake left plenty of scars on her–both on her body and in her mind–and if he had absolutely any other choice, he wouldn’t put her through a medical setting when even a whiff of industrial cleaner still makes her go quiet and tense. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any other choice. 

“I will be right with you,” he tells her, even as she tucks her face against his neck, like she can hide from the building as they approach if she just doesn’t look at it. “I swear, baby. You’re gonna be fine.” 

Thankfully the clinic staff on duty when they get there is all women, so that’s at least one less trauma to scratch at when she’s just coming off of a fresh traumatic experience like she’s assembling some sort of collection. He settles on a cot with Ellie on his lap, and the doctor–Cara, a woman with a kind, comforting voice–only pauses for a moment before she proceeds, asking a few questions of him when Ellie refuses to respond. The position hinders Cara during the check-up, but the way Ellie turns sharply with her teeth bared when the doctor goes to lift up her shirt to listen with a stethoscope buys him the right to remain where he is, her fear painfully clear. 

“You’re alright, baby,” he says softly into her damp hair, tucking her head back down. “Just a stethoscope.” She still flinches with each touch of a hand to her bare skin, and not for the first time, he contemplates how much worse that fucker in Silver Lake deserved. 

After what seems like forever, the exam is over, made longer by how tightly Ellie curled up against him over the course of it, to the point that he had to gently negotiate her a little looser at a couple of points for Cara. As he’d feared when he felt the cracks, he broke two of her ribs while giving her CPR, and Cara steps away to grab something for the pain for her. Ellie, in what would be an amusing display of teenaged pique under absolutely any other circumstances, flings the oximeter off immediately when it’s first put on her finger by a nurse, not even looking when she tosses it away. 

“Ellie,” he says, gently chiding, as he reaches out to accept it from the nurse who thankfully moved fast enough to catch it. 

“Wanna go home,” she says plaintively, not bothering to move from her place against him, forehead pressed to his neck. She jerks her hand back and curls it tight against her chest when he tries to clip the device back into place, stubborn as ever, and he clicks his tongue at her. 

“And we will, I swear, as soon as we can, but we have to make sure you’re okay first. You put this on, and we can do that faster.” 

She huffs out a breath that makes her cough, and he rubs her back and tries not to panic until she can finally breathe again. Panting slightly, she finally extends her hand and lets him put the oximeter on her finger. 

“Thank you,” he tells her quietly, kissing her damp hair before he turns to look at the screen with her vitals on it. After so long in the hospital with her before, he’s pretty good at it by now, and he’s reassured by the 93% that appears on the screen after a moment. Not quite where she should be, but not hypoxemia, a term he got to learn in a moment of terror when she had an allergic reaction to MRI contrast in Salt Lake and had to get a shot of epinephrine and supplemental oxygen while she struggled to breathe. “Looking good,” he tells her, exhaling a soft laugh when she gives him a wink and weak finger guns in response. “Dork.” 

“You’re a dork,” she fires back, but with the worst of it over, she’s clearly starting to flag, leaning more and more of her weight against him. A nurse hands him a towel, and he starts scrunching her hair dry for her before he pulls another towel around her like a blanket. They’ll both need to change out of their still-damp clothes sooner rather than later, but for this moment, he thinks they’ve both earned a little break. 

*

Maria and Tommy come by after about an hour with clothes for them both, and he and Tommy step out into the hall to let Maria help her after Ellie gives him the go-ahead. A nurse had made a suggestion earlier about doing the same, but Ellie had shot her a glare that had made the offer stop short. Maria, apparently, is a safe enough person to be allowed, which is a relief as he steps into another room to change. 

“You doing alright?” Tommy asks carefully when he emerges. 

“I’ll be just fine when I put a padlock on the front door and never let her outside again,” he says dryly, and Tommy laughs. 

“Bold to assume she couldn’t still find trouble just fine indoors,” Tommy says. 

“God,” he groans, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I forgot how badly kids could fucking terrify you.” Speaking of. He looks to Tommy sharply. “Those two who threw her in-”

“Have been handed over to their parents, with punishment to be discussed later. They probably won’t be allowed on any foraging or hunting trips for at least a few months.” 

“Tommy,” and even he can hear the growl in his own voice, “those two idiots almost killed my kid. She almost died today, and if you think-” 

“I think,” Tommy cuts him off, moving to brace both hands on his shoulders and shaking him lightly, “that you need to worry about your own kid right now. What they did was beyond stupid, and they’ll be dealt with, I promise, but you going full wrathful dad mode on them might be going too far.” 

He’s less pacified by the assurance than he is stunned by being called a dad again, and he doesn’t have an argument ready about how a good skinning would be an excellent lesson in not tossing kids into bodies of water like assholes. Tommy looks a little worried at whatever he sees on his face. 

“You alright?” He asks, eyes searching. “Did you get hurt when you went in? I can grab a doc-” 

“No,” he says. “No, it’s just-haven’t been called that in-” twenty fucking years “-a while.” 

“Called?” Tommy asks, frowning and tilting his head. “What do-oh.” He looks slightly unsure. “You are hers, you know. I thought you already knew that.” 

He…well, he did, on some level. He’d felt it pulling at him from the start despite how he lied to himself about it, and after Silver Lake…but he hadn’t put words to it, not even in his own head. Ellie’s his kid, and he’s her…Joel? 

Dad, he thinks, with less tight pain in his chest than he might have felt even a year ago. Her dad. 

He’s saved from having to actually respond by Maria poking her head through the door to let them know it’s safe to come back in, and Ellie, in a shirt of his and her own sweatpants, sits up at once when she sees him, moving over to make space for him beside her. She’s on a different cot now, and he sees with chagrin that they’ve left the one they were on before absolutely soaked. He obliges the silent request and lets her curl up against him as Tommy and Maria promise to bring back supper for them. The way Ellie is already going limp at his side says she’ll likely be asleep by that point, but he still thanks them before they go, Tommy reaching out to squeeze Ellie’s ankle just to make her smile tiredly and kick at him weakly. 

“You okay?” He asks her quietly. 

“Mm,” she hums, yawning and turning her head to rest her cheek on his shoulder. 

“Nothing hurting?” He persists, even as he moves one hand up to card gently through her damp hair. The doctor gave her one of her safe painkillers, he knows, but broken ribs are a bitch on their own, let alone after a drowning. 

“Chest is sore,” she nearly mumbles, eyes closed, too tired to bluster, and he can’t help the little surge of guilt. It had been necessary to save her, but he knows CPR is rough on anyone, and he’s painfully aware of how little she is, how easily her ribs broke against his strength. He’d hurt her to save her, but that doesn’t remove the lingering weight of causing her pain. “Stop it,” she says, swatting at him clumsily. 

“Stop what?” He asks, resting his cheek on the top of her head. 

“Being all,” a pause for a yawn, “guilty and stuff.” 

“Don’t worry about me,” he tells her. “Just worry about you.” 

“Always worry about you,” she says, the last word stretching on a yawn as she goes increasingly more slack against him. “You’re my person.” 

Such simple words, to hit so directly at the very softest parts of him. He turns his head to press a lingering kiss to the crown of her head, overwhelmed the way he usually is at the simple miracle of her existence, of her place beside him.  

She’s asleep before he can even begin to work out how to respond, and he watches her vitals display, reassured with each number and beep that she’s alright. 

*

She gets her liberty by the next evening, and he carries her home, gentle in respect to her ribs no matter how she tries to urge him on faster. She could likely walk by now on her own, but he’s still feeling prickly with lingering aftershocks of terror, and he’d rather get her home in one piece, and he knows that she enjoys being carried around by how many times she makes excuses for it to happen. For her part, she curls up easily against him, mildly loopy from painkillers and pleased by her release from the clinic. 

He’d already brushed through the tangles of her hair this morning, but at her request, he lays her on the counter and washes the river water smell out of her hair in the kitchen sink. She closes her eyes and relaxes under the tending, so he draws it out a while. He knows (from frequent teasing from Tommy and recently from Maria) that he has a tendency towards spoiling her, but surely after a near-death experience, he can be forgiven for a little extra doting, especially when she’s still wincing through the after-effects of his saving her. 

“Five bites of chicken, half your mashed potatoes, all of the peas, and your applesauce, and then you can sleep,” he negotiates when she tries to turn her nose up at food. As he’d thought she would, she’d fallen asleep last night before Tommy and Maria brought supper, and too nervous from being in the clinic, she’d barely picked at breakfast and lunch. She whines through her nose and leans against him from their place on the couch–another indulgence, but being propped up against pillows is easier on her ribs–and he gently nudges her straight again. “Less complaining, more chewing.” 

It takes him teasing her by airplaning a bite of chicken to her for her to snatch her fork away with a grumble, but then she does as she’s been asked, even finishing off her potatoes completely. She drops her fork with a pointed clatter when she’s done, but he lets it pass without comment, eating the rest of her chicken for her and then gently nudging her away so he can stand and take their dishes to the kitchen. 

He gives her a nighttime dose of painkillers and then sits with her through approximately 20 minutes of a movie she insisted on before she’s out cold, and then he gathers her up. He rouses her briefly to brush her teeth and then steps into his own bathroom to get ready to sleep. By the time he’s done, she’s already settled onto his bed in her usual place, a damp splotch on her t-shirt suggesting her teeth brushing was a little more clumsily done than usual. 

“Night, baby,” he says quietly as he gently shifts her under the covers. 

Already deeply out, she doesn’t respond. 

*

She sleeps through the night, exhausted, drugged, and not rested from how poorly she slept the night before. He’d been worried she’d have nightmares, but she seems to be solidly out, dreams relatively peaceful. 

His dreams are anything but. 

He wakes four or five times with a gasp he only stifles at the last moment, trying not to disturb Ellie when she’s sleeping peacefully for once. In his dreams blood and water mix, Sarah’s death and Ellie’s near-drowning blurring together. He hauls Sarah out of a lake of blood. He holds Ellie while she bleeds water from a gunshot wound. He fails them both, over and over. He watches one of them die and then the other. He sees two pairs of brown eyes fade to the dullness of death. 

Each time he wakes, he reaches out a hand to rest on Ellie’s back, feeling the thrum of her heart beneath his palm, settling with each rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. 

Still here, each heartbeat seems to say. Still here, still here, still here. 

She’s a clinger when she sleeps, and he’s never been more glad of it than when it makes it easy to tuck her ever closer, like he can hide her away with his body, can keep her away from death’s greedy hands by simply getting in the way. 

“Joel?” She murmurs sleepily when he moves her too roughly once, hands shaking from the after-image of her choking up blood and not water that his sleeping mind conjured. 

“Just me,” he confirms, keeping his voice even through sheer force of will. 

“M’kay,” she says sleepily, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder a couple of times before she settles again, small and sleepy and safe. 

And his, to protect and guard with his goddamn life. 

His, to love with a ferocity he’d forgotten he was capable of until a smartass little terror snuck her way right into his heart. 

*

Her near-drowning makes her even less keen on water time, which he understands. 

Unfortunately, the experience makes him even more motivated. 

It’s almost two months before her ribs have healed enough to make it possible for them to get back to lessons, and he knows she was hoping the reprieve meant they wouldn’t get back in the water at all. The look on her face when he brought it up last night clearly said there was nothing in the world she’d rather do less. 

Anticipating this, though, he’d come ready with the promise of a surprise to bribe her with. 

She hasn’t even gone up to her ankles today, toes barely touching the water, body language clearly conveying that she’s about one suspicious-looking ripple from bolting. She prides herself on looking tough, he knows, and it says something about the trust they’ve built between them that she doesn’t bother with him anymore, not really. She shifts her weight anxiously, picking at a loose thread on her swim shorts. 

“Hey,” he says softly, waiting until she looks at him. “Would I let anything happen to you?” 

“No,” she says at once, and he smiles slightly at both the immediacy and the confidence of the answer as he walks back to her, extending his hands for her to grab. 

“And I won’t let anything happen to you today, either, I promise.” 

“I know,” she says, shifting her weight and looking down. “It’s just…” 

He doesn’t push further, just gently starts stepping back, leading her by both hands. She resists, just slightly, and he doesn’t pull her, waiting for her to step with him. It takes a long moment and another searching look, but finally she goes, walking like she’s heading towards an execution and not some pleasantly cool water on a hot day. 

With the incline, they quickly get into water that’s over her head, and he keeps an arm around her waist while she holds onto him. He was going to save her surprise for the end, but he’s not sure about how long he can push her today, and he’d rather she not quit early from frustration and miss out on what he promised her as a reward for doing something she’s scared of. She holds onto him with bruising tightness as he pulls her around a wall of rock, but when they get to the section of stone where water’s worn it away to show a wall of fossils, her discomfort is quickly lost to her nerdiness as she moves to hold onto him with one arm so she can reach out and touch. 

“Holy shit,” she says, clearly awed, as she traces the lines and whorls with what looks like reverence. “Joel this is fucking amazing!” 

“Thought you’d like it,” he says, a little smug at being correct. He shifts her slightly to support her better, nearly propping her on his hip like she’s a little kid, but she’s too busy studying the fossils to complain. The change in hold lets her use both hands to reach out, and he smiles, watching her clear delight. She always looks younger, when she’s in the middle of talking about dinosaurs or space, and it settles something in him, seeing these moments of lightness when life has given her so much darkness. 

“How the fuck did you find these?” She asks, not even looking at him. He backs up, just slightly, just to test her a bit, and she leans further away without thought, distracted from the fact that she’s in deep water by her love of anything dinosaur. 

“I have my ways,” he says mysteriously. The truth is that a man on patrol named Evan told him because his kid also loves dinosaurs, but he’d rather not have to share the credit if he doesn’t have to. 

“That’s usually adult for ‘it was an accident’,” Ellie says, giving him a judgemental look before she turns back to the fossils. 

Heroically, he doesn’t dunk her for that. 

“You wanna try floating a bit?” He asks her after she’s had a while to look and touch, and that seems to remind her that she didn’t mean to enjoy what’s happening to her right now. Immediately she reaches out to pull herself closer, and he lets her. 

“I can’t touch the bottom here,” she says like he’s forgotten, extending one leg to demonstrate. 

“I know,” he says, “but that’s what you’ve got me for. I won’t let anything happen.” 

She bites the inside of her cheek, looking down again, and he doesn’t push her. He could convince her if he really tried, he knows. She likes pleasing him and would try even if she hated it if she thought he wanted it enough, but he’s willing to let her move at her own pace. 

“Okay,” she says at last, “let’s do it.” 

*

They still don’t get into actual swimming that day, but he hadn’t expected them to, not really. At the end of the day, if all she knows is how to float, he can be satisfied with that for now. She does progress to floating all on her own, and she beams at him when she does, clearly quite proud of herself, even when he has to reach out to cushion her head when she loses track of herself in relation to their surroundings and almost hits her head on a rock. 

He tows her out to a clearer area, and after checking that she won’t panic, he moves to float on his back beside her. They’ll need to get back to town soon, but for now, it’s a beautiful day, and his kid is one step closer to not being a hazard to herself in water. He’d like to take a few moments to appreciate it. She reaches out for him even as she stays perfectly horizontal, and they hold hands as they float together, keeping her tethered close to him. He thinks, amused, of a documentary on otters he’d watched once with Sarah, about how they hold paws so they won’t float away from each other. 

When the sun is undeniably getting low enough that they need to start heading back, she even ventures into a few kicks while on her back to propel herself a little distance. It makes her head sink a bit, up to her nose, but he’s there at once to pull her back up, and she smiles, too proud of her achievement to be overly afraid. She holds onto his shoulders as he swims them closer to shore, and she imitates him a bit when they’re in shallow enough water that she can stand up if she needs to. She’s not really good at it, not yet, but with his hand below her belly to keep her up, she manages a few practice strokes that show she’s been paying attention at least. 

“Hey Joel?” She calls when they’re about to mount up, and he turns to her. 

“Yeah?” 

She pauses, briefly, before she smiles, a little shyly. 

“Thanks. For…y’know.” 

He smiles back. 

“You’re welcome, kiddo.”