Work Text:
-0-0-0-
The girl was gone.
The thought simmered, a persistent thing. It had been weeks since he’d returned to the apartment, a bloodied Ellie in tow. When they’d got up the next morning, she was gone.
He hadn’t thought much of it. People come and go in the QZ. He assumed she would turn up, some cobbled-together tools in hand and ready to work the next job. She hadn’t.
He and Tess worked side by side at the dock, moving crates to load on a small freighter. The cards were good, but it was precarious work. The rain made everything slippery, and their hands were numb and run through with splinters. It was also cold; the Boston QZ was tasting the first fruits of an early and brutal winter.
The rain was unrelenting; he blinked it out of his eyes and rung it out of his shirt. He handed the next crate to Tess who was working in line behind him; the workers had formed a human chain from the loading area to the dock in hopes of getting the job done faster. He caught her cold fingers in his and gently squeezed. She looked up at him, hair dripping and blinking rainwater out of her eyes. Hers sparked with a familiar fire. Let’s get this done and get the fuck out of here, she seemed to say. He nodded.
The day slogged on. The rain was clearing just as they were finishing (his shit luck), and they collected their cards. Four each today, FEDRA was feeling generous. He and Tess were on their way back when that simmering thought unstuck, rattling to the forefront of his mind.
“Hey,” Joel called out, and the nearest FEDRA officer tilted his umbrella back so he could see Joel’s face. He had a distinctive shovel-shaped scar across his cheek that had gone purple in the cold.
“What do you want?”
Joel had not considered past getting someone’s attention, but the question burned in his mouth, unspoken. This guy wouldn’t know, though, or if he did, he wouldn’t say.
“Tell Lee I asked about him,” he finally settled on. If anyone knew where Ellie was, it would be the asshole he sold drugs to.
Joel turned before the guy could ask why. It was risky to even admit knowing Lee, but that same simmering thought had unstuck and was now bright-hot. There was no ignoring it.
The girl was gone. And as Joel and Tess started the long walk back to their apartment, soaked to the bone, he hoped wherever she was that she was safe, warm, and dry.
--
They had showered when they got back, though Tess joked that they were so wet already all they were missing was a bit of soap. They stood under the cold spray together, their skin already prickled with gooseflesh from a day’s work in the wet cold. The stall was small for the two of them, but it saved time and Joel didn’t mind the closeness.
He knew where Lee would be. The little code he’d dropped on the unsuspecting guard (Ellie’s guard, he thought with a smile) would make it to its intended target and Lee would be there waiting for a fix.
He dressed warmly; the evening had dried but the air still held a bite. He pocketed the oxies and headed to town center.
He found Lee behind one of the buildings, pacing with his gun pointed downward. He heard Joel coming and raised it, a haunted expression on his face. Christ, he was jumpy.
He finally lowered the gun as Joel stepped out of the shadows. “You got ‘em?” he asked. He had the slightly glazed and sweaty expression of someone on a comedown.
“Yeah,” Joel said, keeping his distance.
“Well how much?”
Joel fingered the baggie in his pocket as if he could count the pills blind. “Free, for some information.”
Lee nervously licked his lips. “What kind of information?”
Joel took a breath. “You know that girl that shows up at work detail? The kid?”
Lee looked confused, then Joel could see when recognition dawned. “The one that attacked Brian?”
Joel nodded tightly. “You know where she lives?”
Lee frowned. “What’s it to you?”
Joel took a step back, took his hand out of his pocket. “Do you want the pills or not?”
“Ok Ok,” the man said, eager to appease Joel. “The abandoned apartments on Hill Street. Past the ash pit.” His eyes darted to Joel’s hands. “Now are we good?”
Joel reached into his pocket and withdrew the baggie. “We’re good,” he said, handing them over. He watched as Lee emptied the bag and handed it back to Joel.
Lee counted each pill, then swallowed a few, unable to wait any longer. Joel pinned him with a hard stare. “If she’s not there, or if I don’t find evidence of her being there, then we’re done. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Lee said, hoisting his gun a little higher. “You stay off the streets now,” he said with a sardonic little laugh. “I wouldn’t want you to catch a stray bullet.”
Joel huffed. “And what would you do then,” he shot back.
Lee shrugged. “Get another tunnel rat to score my pills?” He turned to leave. “See you around Joel.”
Joel walked off in the direction of Hill Street, his jaw tight. Dealing with Lee had always made him feel dirty; he could almost feel the oily sheen of his smile on the back of his neck. He shrugged it off. The world was different now, and that wasn’t going to change.
He walked the streets until he finally found the condemned apartments Lee had indicated. The building was dark; broken windows pockmarked its exterior. Bullet holes had chipped the crumbling brick. His building was no prize, but it didn’t look like this. He half-hoped Lee had been wrong about Ellie living here.
The building was also big, and Joel had no idea where to begin looking for her. He carefully edged his way inside the shattered glass door, withdrawing his flashlight and gun. There were no infected here inside the QZ, but Joel knew there were dangers other than infected, dangers that were not as predictable or manageable. He mounted the stairs and tried to think like Ellie. If he were her, would he settle on the first floor for convenience or on higher floors for safety? His mouth grew tight. He had no idea.
A floor to floor search, then.
He landed on the first floor, sweeping his flashlight in a wide arc. He kicked in the door to his left, the brittle wood buckling easily under the weight of his foot. He eased inside, doing a cursory sweep of the area. It was littered with trash, empty drug vials and discarded needles. A dirty mattress lay beneath the window; people had been here, but not recently.
And so it went with the next few apartments he checked. Signs of humanity, but not of Ellie.
He got to the last door on the first floor and shouldered his way in.
She lay in the corner of what would’ve been the living room if this apartment hadn’t been uninhabited and condemned. But as it was, it was little more than an empty room with the shadows of where furniture had been in a nicer time before this had been the QZ. Water dripped from the ceiling, ringing in the still quietness with a pat-pat as each drop hit the bare floor. She was covered with her own jacket and lay on the tattered rags of what Joel guessed was once a blanket. The window above her was broken and a harsh breeze chilled the air.
She shivered bodily and he rushed to her side, keeping her in the sights of the steady beam of his flashlight.
“Ellie?” he called to her, but she did not stir save for the way her body was wracked with chills. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead and instantly recoiled. She was burning up.
“Jesus,” he said allowed. His heart had been beating out of his chest since he saw her; he could feel the thundering of blood in his ears.
Muscle memory kicked in. Somewhere buried in the dark tendrils of his past, he remembered. A sick child…a high fever. A cold compress to bring her temperature down. He withdrew his canteen and his bandana from his pocket and soaked it thoroughly. When he pressed it to her forehead, she groaned.
“That’s it Ellie,” he coaxed her. “Come on now.” He mopped her brow with the bandana, frowning at the pale skin around her mouth and eyes, the flush of her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed ahead, eyes unseeing.
“Hey…hey,” he said, gently jostling her face. “Look at me, kid. It’s me. It’s Joel.”
She swallowed, throat clicking dryly, and finally focused on his face. “Joel?” Her voice was weak and thready. Joel pressed two fingers to her neck, and her pulse was rabbit-fast.
“How’d you get here?” She asked meekly. This was not at all the girl who’d sassed him in the sewers. He sat back on his knees, a little dismayed.
“I walked,” he said hoarsely, and she rolled her eyes. There she is, he thought hopefully. There’s fight in her yet.
“N-no,” she stuttered, wracked by another fierce chill. “I meant why. W-why are you here?”
Joel swallowed, his eyes roving over her fevered face. “I didn’t know where you were,” he said as if that was reason enough. His voice was thick with emotion. No one should be sick and alone in such a destitute place, least of all a child.
She nodded as if she understood, and her eyes slipped closed. He nudged her shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep again, Ellie,” he said softly. “You need to drink.”
She licked her lips as if just remembering she was thirsty. He slipped his arm beneath her, raising her to a half-sitting position and pressed the canteen to her lips. “How long have you been like this?”
She sipped a bit of water, then pushed it away. “I dunno,” she said, “maybe—“ but she was cut off abruptly by a hard coughing fit. Her lungs sounded wet, and Joel frowned. It sounded like it hurt. She caught her breath, visibly weakened. She sagged against Joel, unable to support her own weight. “Maybe a couple of weeks,” she finally finished.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. His thoughts grew dark. He wet the bandana again and pressed it to her forehead. “And what about the cough. How long?”
She took a rattling breath; it was shallow and hard-earned. “Longer,” she rasped.
He gently lay her back down on the tattered blanket; it did nothing to cushion her from the floor, and he knew her skin must be sore from the fever. He stripped off his jacket and draped it over her.
Her teeth chattered. “Th-thanks,” she said quietly, and burrowed deeply under the jacket. It was warm from his body, the latent heat from him lingering as she settled. She could feel herself slipping, and she fought to stay awake.
They said nothing for a long time. Joel knew it was well past curfew; he would never make it back with her without being seen.
Ellie must’ve sensed this too. Her brow creased, and somewhere in the distance gunshots rang out. Thanks to him, Lee would sleep well tonight.
“Will you stay?” It was small and quiet, like she was afraid to ask. She shivered again, her skin sallow from the sulfur glow of the security lights through the window.
Joel reached and turned off the flashlight. “I’ll be right here,” he said. He stretched out on the floor a few feet from her, close enough to the door in case someone found them and close enough to her in case something happened.
What exactly, he wasn’t sure. He lay on the hard floor of the apartment staring up at the water-stained ceiling. Ellie could die, he thought, and it came unbidden and unwelcome, a dark thing from the ether.
But even as he dismissed it with the set of his jaw, he knew it was true.
--
Modern medicine had never much impressed him. Even before, when he would come down with the occasional malady or ailment, he resisted the doctor. Too expensive, he would say, or too troublesome. He always made it just fine.
What he wouldn’t give for some of that modern medicine now.
He looked at the girl where she lay on the couch, wheezing thinly and fighting a restless sleep. The morning had found them very much the same as night had left them. Joel hadn’t slept. Ellie, fitfully, battling bouts of coughing and the general nighttime misery that comes with illnesses. Some dormant part of him remembered the pain that comes from being in the company of a sick child. It stabbed somewhere under his ribs, the memory, and he squashed it back down.
“She still sleeping?” Tess came out of the bedroom and stopped in front of the couch. She knelt down in front of Ellie, pressed the back of her hand to her face, and then looked at Joel. “Christ, she’s burning up Joel.” Her eyes bore a familiar look of alarm.
Joel paced, his hands on his hips. “She needs medicine, goddamit.” He kicked the wobbly leg of the coffee table in his frustration, sending one corner sagging to the floor. Tess met him there, placing a hand between his shoulder blades. She could feel the quivering tension, the coiled worry. “What about your guy?” she asked softly. “The one who gets the oxies from Atlanta? If he can smuggle oxies he can smuggle some fucking antibiotics. Right?”
Joel turned to her, deflating as soon as he caught her gaze. She eased his head down on her shoulder as he curled his body into hers. “Maybe,” he mumbled against her neck. He was tired. God, he was tired.
She absently stroked up and down his back, light fingers over the muscles made strong from hard work. “It’s worth a shot,” she said encouragingly. “All he can say is no.”
Joel withdrew, buoyed by the new plan. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Ellie one last time. “It’s worth a shot.”
--
Joel was gone. Tess stood at the window, waiting for the kid to wake up. He’d brought her in early that morning; she’d been soaked in sweat and delirious with fever.
She crossed to the sink and wet a clean rag. They didn’t have ice, but the water was cold through the pipes and it would be better than doing nothing. She knelt by the couch, pressing the cloth to the girl’s clammy skin. The cool water roused her, and she opened her eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked, a little dazed. Her cheeks were splotched red with fever, her eyes glassy.
“You’re here with us now,” Tess told her.
Ellie looked around, more aware than she had been. “Where’s Joel?”
Tess folded the rag and lay it across her forehead. “On an errand,” she replied. It was mostly the truth. She went to the cabinet and withdrew a can of condensed soup. They’d bartered two blocks of cheese for it, for an expired can of Campbell’s Chicken and Stars. It would soothe her chest and provide hydration too, she knew. She poured it into a pot, watered it down and began heating it over their camp stove.
“Why am I so fucking cold,” Ellie said miserably. They’d only given her one blanket, careful of raising her body temperature any higher, and she was no doubt uncomfortable.
“It’s the fever,” Tess said matter-of-factly. “You’re really sick. Joel said you have been for a while.”
As if on cue, Ellie started coughing. She tried to smother the spasms with a closed fist, then the inside of her arm, but Tess could hear the rattle, the fierce, tight sound of her lungs laboring. She finally got her breath back and looked at Tess.
“Am I gonna die?”
Tess stopped stirring the soup for a moment, unsure of what to say to her. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around, to look her in the face.
“Don’t treat me like a kid,” Ellie rasped.
Tess moved the soup off the heating element and poured some into a bowl. She settled down cross-legged by the couch with a spoon in her hand.
“Listen,” Tess began. “You’re sick. And when you’re not FEDRA that could mean anything here in the QZ. Yeah, you could die. But you could also get well. They don’t care what happens to us. We have to look out for ourselves.” She met Ellie’s feverish gaze and gave her a small quirk of a smile. “And for each other.”
She spooned some of the soup, the little pasta stars swimming on the surface, and blew on it. “Sip this,” she said, eager to change the subject. To her surprise, Ellie did as she was told.
She took a few spoonfuls and settled back down onto the couch. Tess put the bowl away, figuring she better quit while she was ahead. She knew Ellie probably didn’t have any kind of appetite and it was best not to push it.
“Good,” Ellie said, barely above a whisper. “It was good. Thank you.”
Tess nodded, setting the bowl on the counter and leaning against it. She crossed her arms over her chest, watching the uneasy rise and fall of Ellie’s breathing. “You’re welcome, kid.”
--
Joel waited in the warehouse. It was an old smulgger’s stop, one he checked periodically to make sure FEDRA hadn’t found it. So far, it was safe.
“I got your message,” came a voice from the shadows. “I can get what you asked for,” he said evenly, “but it’s gonna cost you.”
Joel squared up with the man. He didn’t even know his name in as many years of doing business with him. It was better that way. “How much?”
“Ten,” the man said like it was no amount at all. “Fifteen if you’re in a rush.”
“Fuck,” Joel muttered, “That’ll take a week at best. You can’t do any better than that?”
The man sucked air through his teeth. “Afraid not. Supply lines are thin. Medicine is in high demand.”
Joel rubbed a tired hand over his face. Ellie had made it this far. Could she make it another week? He wasn’t so sure. He wished there was another way.
“Ok,” Joel said finally. “I’ll do the deal. Meet me back here in one week with everything I asked for, and I’ll have your cards.”
He could work doubles, Joel reasoned as he made his way along the back alleys and tunnels that made up his smuggling route. He could work doubles while Tess worked singles, and they’d get the cards. It’d take less time that way. He’d be dead on his feet, but they’d get the cards.
And Ellie would get better. Hope sparked within him, burned to a flame and somehow did not extinguish. She would be better and then things would change.
So that’s what they did. Joel worked with Tess at the docks and then worked nights in the sewers. He caught an hour or two of sleep and got up and did it all over again. Ellie declined, slipping in and out of fever dreams. Tess stayed up with her at night, coaxing her awake with the leftover soup and water.
With no cards left for food, Joel ate the thin broth offered at the mission and brought some home for Tess. The volunteers there, bible-thumping do-gooders from other QZs, high-ranking citizens that, before the world went to shit, had probably been doctors or lawyers or researchers, all looked at him with pity. He was a dust-covered, work-worn shell of a person who they didn’t know and could never truly understand.
But at the end of the week, they had the cards.
And Ellie was worse.
They had moved her to the bed. She had not stirred. Her face was no longer ruddy but pale, ashen. Her skin was cool and clammy to the touch. Her chest labored with every breath, the harsh, wet sound of her breathing loud in the bedroom.
Tess came to stand by Joel where he watched over Ellie and slipped a hand in his. “Do you have it?” Her hazel eyes shone, wide and searching.
“Yeah,” Joel said, withdrawing a small box from his pocket. “They’re good ones. Not expired.”
Tess held out her hand. “I’ll crush some…mix them with the soup. Just a little, though. We can’t waste it in case she won’t eat.”
Tess took the box of precious medicine to the kitchen for preparation. Joel sat down on the edge of the bed where Ellie lay, feeling helpless…feeling lost.
He was bone tired, had not slept more than a handful of hours in over a week. He looked at her, her hair fanned out over the pillow. Tess had taken excellent care of her when she wasn’t working…if it wasn’t for her breathing and the pallor of her skin, he would have never known she was sick.
“Get well,” he gritted out. “Get well Ellie. You’ve got a life ahead of you yet.” He hesitated, feeling the swell of emotion in his throat. Cautiously, he wrapped his hand around hers, feeling the sick pall of it, the waxy texture of her skin. “Dammit,” he said with a tight squeeze, “get well.”
And so she lingered for several days after. They did not work for fear of leaving her. They fed her spoonfuls of medicated mission broth in between fits of coughing and moments of wakefulness. She fought them at her best, was unresponsive at her worst. She cried in her sleep and Joel watched, frightfully, as this little girl who he was just getting to know started to slowly slip away from him.
It felt like losing Sarah all over again.
He paced. They waited. There was no change. Tess returned to work, and Joel returned to her bedside.
Today he was reading to her. Books were all but gone from the QZ now, but Joel had a few he’d found on smuggling runs and had kept them. Nostalgia, he guessed.
“As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees, the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence.”
Joel turned the page, looking at Ellie. “He’s really big, Ellie, so he has to be careful. Later he’ll be very small,” Joel explained to her.
He put the book down, trying to hide his frustration. He’d said so many words in this bedroom…to Tess and now to Ellie. Some heard, some flashing brightly only to fall away. So many more had gone unspoken.
He looked at the girl on the bed. Ellie lay still and quiet, her hands resting on her middle. She looked in repose, like he remembered seeing people in the world before, laid out and trussed up for their funerals. He frowned and gently moved her hands to her side, erasing the image.
He sat for a while, listening to her breathing. It sounded clearer if his one good ear could be believed, and steadier too. He closed his eyes against the murky light filtering through the window, and he hoped.
--
Ellie awoke on a Tuesday. The Boston QZ was in the throes of an early desperate winter, the bitter cold slicing through the apartment despite Joel doing what he could to insulate it. Ellie cracked her eyes open, squinting at the slant of dirty light through the window.
“Hey,” she said, voice hoarse. Joel was sitting by her bed, his head in his hands.
“Ellie?” He thought he’d imagined it, but she’d spoken. She was awake, lucid eyes looking at him.
“You look like shit,” she said flatly. She tried to sit upright, but she was too weak. Joel moved to help her, propping her against some pillows. She coughed then, sending a bolt of fear right through him, but it was dry and brief. “And I feel like shit.”
Joel smiled. He couldn’t help himself. And Ellie smiled back.
“Well look who’s feeling better,” Tess said in the door to the bedroom. She walked in with a glass of water and one of the pills. “Now I don’t have to crush these bastards and sneak them in your soup.”
Ellie looked at her, confused. “What?”
Tess looked at Joel, then back at Ellie. “Your medicine. You were very sick, Ellie. We saved up our cards, and Joel knew a guy.”
Ellie looked at Joel, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. She knew how hard it was to get medicine in the QZ. His haggard appearance, tired and drawn. His slumped shoulders, his haunted eyes. It all made sense.
“You did that?” Ellie asked, her voice small. “For me?”
Tess put a hand on Joel’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. Joel was staring at his feet, unable to meet the tears he heard in her voice.
“It was nothing,” he muttered. “Forget it. What matters now is that you’re getting better.” He looked up at her and his eyes were wet. “You’re gonna be just fine, babygirl.”
It stunned her into silence. No one had ever called her anything in her short life but something derogatory, something hateful. Tenderness was a foreign, distant thing.
She took the pill from Tess, swallowing it without complaint. It was chalky and bitter. It had come at a high price, she knew.
“Will you guys help me stand?” Her voice was watery, cutting through the quiet like a knife.
Joel jumped to his feet, bracing her on one side while Tess moved to the other. She put her feet on the floor, all pins and needles until she found her footing. Her legs were wobbly, as weak as a newborn colt’s. She made it to the couch where she slumped into the cushions.
“Thanks,” she said a little breathlessly. “I uh—“ she looked at her hands where they lay in her lap. “I don’t remember a lot,” she finally said.
Joel was on one knee beside her. He covered both her hands with one of his. They were large, rough, and warm. “Don’t have to,” he said gruffly. “None of it matters.”
She smiled shakily, eyes flitting from one to the other. She finally settled on the view beyond the wall where the sun shone brightly overhead. Despite the cold, she could feel it warming her bones.
Joel was wrong, though. It did matter. Tess and Joel had done more for her than anyone had ever done. There were no words for it, the gratitude she felt. It swelled inside her, screaming to get out. She felt the hot wetness on her cheeks before she could stop it, and she shakily wiped it away.
She nodded, words caught in her throat as the winter sun spilled into the living room, painting everything yellow-white and golden.
-0-0-0-