Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Where are they?” He asks the kid on day 4 of traveling together. 

To her credit, she can put on a pretty good “Who, me?” expression when she has her mind set on it. He thinks her round face and big eyes go a long way towards giving her the illusion of perfect innocence that she absolutely does not have. 

Unfortunately for her bluff, being a party of two means it isn’t hard to figure out the thief when things go missing. 

“My socks,” he says, patience nearly at an end. Tess had used to tease him about it, his insistence on three pairs for both of them when they were on an overnight, but he’s always been of the opinion that trenchfoot is something he can quite happily live without first hand experience of. 

He’d said as much to the kid when they poked through an old shoe store the other day, and he has a suspicion that she “yeah yeah yeah”d him and then didn’t do as instructed. 

Which would explain why she’s put her grimy mitts on his. 

She tries for her butter wouldn’t melt expression again, but the quick way her gaze flickers down to her feet gives her away. He scowls and reaches for her ankle, too quick for her to stop him. She squawks as he pulls her nearly upside down, shoving the leg of her jeans down. 

Sure enough, men’s socks, far too large for her skinny ankles. 

He hauls her just slightly higher, until she has her hands braced on the ground, her ponytail brushing against the dirt. 

“I found ‘em,” she says at once, far too quickly. He has to hope for the sake of their survival on the road that she’s usually a better liar than this. 

“Yeah, in my bag,” he says. “Where are your socks?” 

She glares up at him defiantly, but even if her size wasn’t enough to make her completely non-threatening, he thinks anyone would have trouble looking tough while upside down and suspended by one leg. 

He pulls her a little higher. 

“Mine got wet!” She says, trying to kick at him with her free leg until he grabs that as well, immobilizing her. 

“Where’s your spare socks?” He asks, knowing damn well now that she ignored him and didn’t grab any, too busy sorting through light up Skechers to try and see if any had juice in them, fascinated by the concept. 

“...they’re wet, too,” she says, and he almost has to admire the ballsiness of the lie. 

Almost. 

“Better hang ‘em out, then,” he says, dropping her. 

(And if he only did it because she had her hands braced enough to protect her head, there’s no one else here to call him on it.) 

“I’ll do it later,” she says, and he can tell she’s a little dizzy from being horizontal again, the blood no longer rushing to her head. 

“Do it now,” he says, as firmly as possible, and he sees her nostrils flare a little in irritation at the command. He’d pegged her early as a rule tester, and she’s certainly proven him right since. 

“You’re not the boss of me,” she spits like an angry cat, and he lifts an eyebrow before he walks away, striding to her backpack with purpose. He hears her curse as she realizes what he’s doing, and she scrambles to her feet and darts over just as he unzips the top with enough flourish to make a point. “That’s mine!” She snaps, shoving the backpack shut again. 

“And those are mine,” he says, nodding his head to her feet. “Didn’t stop you.” 

She presses her lips together for a moment, displeased. He can practically see her trying to think up another excuse, trying to figure out how to spin this in a way that doesn’t mean willful disobedience and ignoring him. 

He also sees the moment she gives up, lowering her head and mumbling. 

“What was that?” He prompts, though he has a guess. 

The glare she levels at him is pretty impressive. With a little time (and a few more inches of height), she might actually look intimidating one day. 

Right now, he can barely resist the urge to flick her nose like a naughty puppy. 

“I didn’t get any,” she grits out. “Okay? You fucking happy?” 

“If I tell you do something, you need to fucking do it,” he tells her. “You want gangrene? You want your fucking toes to fall off?”  

“No,” she says, petulant. 

“Then why in the hell would you not get socks when I told you to?” 

He knows the answer. She’s a teenager testing her limits. 

Tragically for her growing sense of independence, he’s not someone willing to be tested. 

“Hang yours out,” he tells her, rising. “Right now. And the next time I tell you to do something, you fucking do it.” 

He ignores the mutinous muttering at his back as he walks away. 

*

The kid’s standoffish the rest of the night, and he curses himself that it’s not as enjoyable as he’d anticipated. It’s gotten on his nerves, how much she invades his personal space, and it’s stupid that it already feels strange, her suddenly keeping her distance. 

It’s dangerous, getting used to her that quickly. There’s an expiration date on how long she’ll be with him, after all. There’s no goddamn sense getting attached to her in any respect, any more than there would be sense in getting attached to baby formula or pills or booze or any one of the things he’s smuggled over the years. 

She’s a kid, but more importantly than that, she’s cargo. 

He very resolutely ignores that he’s clearly hurt her feelings by making her fess up to being both stubborn and stupid. It’s a predictable show of teenaged rebellion, doing something as foolish as not grabbing extra socks, but it’s a snit they can’t have a repeat of. The world is far too dangerous, especially for a petite teenaged girl. She needs to learn that if he gives an order, she needs to follow it. That’s all there is to it. 

And yet looking at her curled into a ball with her back to a tree, small and embarrassed, gives him a feeling in his chest rather like indigestion. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t think he can blame Chef Boyardee on this one. 

She’s very clearly out of her element here. Tough as she is, she’s a city kid, born and bred, raised in a system she can never go back to. Add to that being bitten and living for however long until the Fireflies found her in a limbo of not knowing if she was going to turn or not, it’s not difficult to imagine that she wants a sense of control. Ignoring him giving her an order was probably an easy way to feel in charge of something, a small, petty show of defiance to let her flex the autonomy she hasn’t had recently. 

It’s annoying, being able to guess this. He’d rather be able to write it off as her being a brat. That would be easier, simplifying her to a spoiled kid showing her ass for no reason. But he’s dealt with a teenager before. It’s why Sarah had gotten to be in charge of meal planning and shopping. It had taken those things off his plate, and it had let her feel in control. He’d done the same thing right after her mama died, had let a tiny Sarah pick out her own outfits no matter how outlandish and had even let her pick out his. She’d needed that, needed to feel in charge of something. 

Obnoxiously, it makes him understand approximately where the head of the kid he’s been saddled with is. 

*

“Hey,” he calls the next morning, and she looks up at him warily, clearly expected to be chewed out. He plays with the idea for a moment. He does need to make sure she’s going to heed him in the future. 

But he also thinks he’d end up feeling more like a dick than he wants to if he kicked her when she’s already down. 

“Catch,” he says, and she barely has her hands up in time to catch the two projectiles he underhands at her. He doesn’t stop to watch her reaction, finishing packing up their camp so they can get back on the road. 

“Are these…yours?” She asks after a moment, and he turns back to see her looking at the socks in each hand a little dubiously. 

He snorts and turns away.  

“Those look like they’d fit me?” He asks dryly. He’d had to guess at her size back at the store, but he’d done enough time shopping for Sarah that he can make a guess, though Ellie’s feet seem significantly smaller than Sarah’s, which makes sense given how much shorter she is. 

“Did you…just find these?” She asks, and he looks over his shoulder. 

“Grabbed them at the shoe store,” he says, giving up on torturing her longer. She deserves to be fucked with to learn a lesson, but he’s hoping one night of feeling embarrassed will be enough. “Now c’mon, let’s go.” He turns away, and when she calls after him, he barely turns his head. Best not to make a big deal out of this, lest she gets ideas about the dynamic here. 

“Hey Joel?” 

He grunts a response. 

“Um, thanks.” The slight awkwardness of it says she clearly hasn’t had a lot of reasons to thank people before and that she’s still not totally sure this isn’t a trick. He ruthlessly shoves down the part of him that tries to think about what this means about her life. That’s not his problem. His job is to get her from point A to point B. That’s what Tess charged him with. That’s the job. That’s as far as any of this goes. 

“Listen to me next time,” he says. “‘Cause I won’t be babying you again.” 

The words make her pull a face at him. 

Good. Maybe she won’t forget where they stand with each other next time. 

*

Unfortunately, the pest appears to have interpreted the one-time loan of his jacket as open season to take it whenever she wants. It’s not that cold out–at least not for him–so it’s not as if he needs it to survive, but it’s a bad precedent, her feeling like she can do things like borrow it without asking. It’s what Sarah used to, back when he’d wake up on cold mornings to find his barn jacket missing, his little punk cozied up in-

She shouldn’t be fucking taking it, is the point. 

He wakes up this morning to find her bundled up and extends a hand without a word to reclaim it. 

“Where’d you even get it?” She asks as she hands it back over. “It’s pretty nice.” 

The answer is that Tess gave it to him years ago, back in their second year of partnership, back when he’d still been adamant that their lives remain untied. 

I know we’re not big on Christmas spirit, Tex, she’d teased that December. But you freezing to death would cramp my style. Just take the fucking jacket, alright? 

He’d tried to argue, but she’d had none of it, and eventually he’d given up and followed her lead. That had always been easier, playing orbit to Tess’s gravitational pull. After Sarah, his world had had no central point, and it had been a relief, someone taking charge for him. They’d never given words to whatever they were–and after the courthouse, Jesus Christ does he wish he’d just once at least told her something close to what she’d been for him–but it had been enough, a partner in deals, a co-conspirator for survival, a warm body at night, a person who was in it with him, someone to do shit like get him a good coat when it was cold and he was too stubborn to do it himself. 

Someone who’s gone now. 

“Pass,” he says flatly, and she makes a disgusted teenager noise as she pushes herself to her feet. 

“C’mon man,” she whines, hitting a pitch that he thinks distantly must be taught at teenage girl class or something. “What am I even gonna do with that? I’m just trying to make conversation.” 

“Don’t,” he says shortly, turning on his heel and walking with purpose. Her legs are far shorter than his, which he usually accounts for and slows his stride accordingly. 

Right now, though, he thinks she could use a little jog to tire some of that damn nosiness out. 

*

“We need a system,” she says out of absolutely nowhere an hour later, when he’d been enjoying the silence. He’d finally slowed his pace about thirty minutes ago, and he’d thought optimistically that he’d worn her out enough for some real quiet. 

Apparently his optimism was as misguided as it always is. 

“What,” he asks, though it comes out more a statement. 

“A system, y’know. For the shit that’s gonna make you all prickly if I keep asking about it.” 

“How about you just stop asking me shit to start with?” He suggests, and she snorts. 

“Not gonna happen,” she informs him cheerfully. “It’s gotta be easy, like a password or something. Hmmmm.” 

He leaves her to her contemplations. He has absolutely no interest in this idea or in helping her work out the fineprint. He can only hope thinking about it will buy him a few precious moments of silence. 

“Oh!” She says at last. “I know. ‘Rock stuff.’” 

Regrettably, the words are leftfield enough to spike his interest. 

“What?” He asks, turning slightly to look at her. 

“You know,” she says, waving a vague hand behind them. “Like that rock thing you made. If something’s off the table because it makes you mad or whatever, we can just say ‘Rock stuff.’” 

“I think ‘shut up’ works just as well,” he says dryly, clenching his hand against his thigh when he almost reflexively reaches down to give her a boost up the rocks in the middle of the path. 

She’s quiet until she scrambles over, her limited reach making it harder. The second she’s touched down on the ground, however, she’s back to chattering. 

“Yeah, but sometimes you don’t wanna talk about shit because you’re just grumpy,” she tells him easily. “We need a way to separate that from the ‘This hurts my feelings’ stuff.” 

His reflexive urge is to tell her that she’s not capable of hurting his feelings, as if he has any left to start with. 

Knowing her, though, she’d likely just take it as a challenge. 

“We have a deal?” She asks, skipping ahead of him and then walking backwards. 

For the sake of getting her to straighten up before she busts her ass, he decides to play willing. It’s little enough skin off his nose, after all. 

“Fine,” he says, reaching out just enough to clamp a hand on top of her head and try to turn her. “Now face forward before you bust your ass.” 

*

Two mornings later, he wakes up to find himself without a coat once more. He doesn’t comment at the inquisitive look she gives him, clearly waiting for a reaction. 

Instead, he just leads her to the little stripmall they’d camped near last night after pulling off of the road. 

It had been too dark to poke around then, but he’s been in this new world too long to leave without looking for supplies. She keeps up a constant refrain of talk, but it seems more directed to the world in general than to him specifically, and she doesn’t seem to require a response. 

Good. 

He’s so busy tuning her out that he doesn’t pay much attention to the store or section he’s looking through at first, most of it covered in spiderwebs and dust. 

Not until he finds a soccer cleat dangling from its strings on a shelf, the lace caught on a nail. 

He glances at the size by habit. 9 and a half. 

Sarah’s size. 

His chest goes tight as he reaches out without realizing he’s going to do it, picking it up and freeing it from the nail. The laces are black under the gray of dust, and he has the sense memory of rethreading a different pair decades ago with bright purple ones. She’d always done that, he only remembers now, switched out the laces on her shoes. 

White and black laces are for boring people, dad, she’d always said when he playfully protested getting pressed into service to help change them out by having one tossed at him. Do you want me to be a boring person? 

He’s so deep in his own head that he about jumps out of his fucking skin when Ellie appears right beside him, jolting him sharply back into the present. 

“What?” He snaps, knowing even as he does that it’s a dick move. She hadn’t even done anything this time. 

He pretends he doesn’t notice the little flicker of hurt and confusion. 

“You told me not to go far,” she says, clearly more than slightly resentful. 

He makes himself not snap again. They’re about to be stuck in a truck together for hours. No use picking a fight with her, especially not when she was actually listening to him for once. 

“Back to the truck,” he says. “There’s nothing here.” 

She gives an incredulous look around to the boxes and boxes of stuff scattered across the floor, but when he just keeps striding ahead with purpose, she makes a huffy noise and jogs to catch up. 

“What the fuck, man?” She asks. “What, you afraid of weird shoes now? Don’t worry, I don’t think that one would even fit you. It looks like it was for-” 

“Rock stuff,” he says without thinking. He doesn’t want to go down this line of thought, doesn’t want to dance around what he can actually tell her. 

He just wants her to stop talking and let him shove away his own memories in peace. 

Miraculously, it shuts her up at once. 

Huh. He’ll have to remember that. 

*

Her hands shake after Kansas City. 

He notices because he’s painfully aware of his doing the same thing. 

She stole his jacket again this morning, but every single time he closes his eyes, he sees her on her back screaming for him while he’s helpless to get to her, too slow and too late once again, about to watch another girl die right in front of him. 

As far as reparations go, the loan of his jacket is the very least of what he owes her. 

She sees him looking at her hands, and she balls them into fists and shoves them into the pockets of the jacket. Left with no such easy way to hide his own lingering fear, he holds onto the straps of the backpack he’s carrying. It’s a nice bag, sturdy, plenty of space, fits nicely on his shoulders with the weight distributed evenly. He’d half-expected to have to defend himself when he’d gone through it after Sam and Henry were buried. The kid’s insistence on digging graves for them at all was a sign that she’s not quite as jaded as she’d like to think she is, so he’d thought it possible that she’d take umbrage. Beyond a brief side eye to track the movement as he flipped the cover open, though, she hadn’t commented, just returned to staring at two fresh piles of earth. 

*

“It ain’t your fault,” he says that night, and she looks up to him. She’s barely visible in the scant light of a nearly new moon–one of the things that made him brave enough to speak in the first place–but he can make out the faint outline of her on the ground. “What happened back there,” he clarifies, not sure if he needs to. He doesn’t even know why he’s saying this. 

He just knows she was quiet all afternoon and it was annoying because it was so wrong. He’d rather not do a second day of it. 

“Shit-shit just happens sometimes,” he flounders. Jesus, he’d thought he used to be better at this, at least a little. Even if the stakes were lower, he’d remembered handling things like bad hair days and fights with friends relatively well. He hasn’t had to comfort anyone in a long while, though, and it would turn out that it’s not remotely like riding a bike. “You did the best you could. You thought on your feet in the moment, and you helped get them out of there. Anything else was just the same fucked-up stuff that happens all the time. There’s nothing you could have done to stop it.” 

Ellie’s quiet for so long that he thinks she’s either ignoring him or asleep, but just when he’s about to shut his own eyes, she speaks. 

“You promise?” 

He blinks in her direction, a little thrown. Of the potential responses, he hadn’t expected that one. Still, she’s a kid who’s almost been killed by another kid, and a kid who’s watched someone else succumb to what she never will before watching someone commit suicide right in front of her. He doesn’t need to be Dr. Phil to work out that that sort of thing can fuck with a person’s head. 

“I promise,” he says, offering whatever absolution is his to give. From studying the outline, she’s wrapped in his coat still, not surprising given the chill in the air and the fact that their sleeping bags are gone now. It’s something he’ll have to fix soon, yet another problem to solve. They’ll have to find more if they’re going to be sleeping outside safely, especially her, given how little she is. 

For now though, for tonight, she has a stolen jacket he won’t demand back. It’ll have to be enough. 

“Okay,” she says quietly, and he hears rustling as she turns over. She doesn’t say more. 

*

His first thought when he spots her in that godforsaken town in Colorado is an immediate “Where the hell is your jacket? It’s freezing out here.” The thought comes from something that’s been dormant for 20 years, something that’s started to slowly spark back to life despite his best efforts, something he already knows he’s going to have to give up trying to shove back down. 

When she turns around and screams at him the moment he touches her, though, all thoughts leave his head. 

It takes a long moment–made longer by his own panic, unable to work out if she’s screaming more out of pain or fear–but he finally gets her attention, bracing her face to make her focus. Beneath his hands, her skin is slick with blood and sweat, clammy to the touch. When she finally registers that it’s him, she goes wobbly like a puppet with loose strings, bunching one small fist around his jacket the same way Sarah did as a baby learning to walk, using a grip on his clothes to hold herself up. 

“He-but I-” She makes a wordless little noise after managing those few words and tucks her head down against him, like she wants to burrow right under his skin. 

Even from the brief glance of how she’s clearly taken a beating, he’d like to let her. 

There’s no time to tend her here next to the burning remains of a building. The screaming that led him to it–guttural, terrified, and absolutely hers–still has him giving her a quick once-over, but even if he’s still riding high on adrenaline, he’d rather not push their luck by lingering. 

Ellie certainly doesn’t look in any place to put up any more of a fight, her face going still and distant, her very consciousness seeming to retreat somewhere he can’t follow. 

“I’ve got you, baby girl,” he tells her, and he hopes that it’s enough. 

Her skin is nearly as pale as the snow, and he doesn’t think it all has to do with whatever happened to make her look as haunted as she does right now, as she stares at him like she’ll float off if she blinks even once. It’s unnerving, a stare that intense, and he’s hesitant to do anything that’ll upset her. Her veins are starkly blue beneath her pale skin, and he traces one lightly with a fingertip before he pushes her back gently. She makes a soft noise of protest, and he shushes her, shrugging out of his jacket. 

She sways towards him when he wraps it around her, and in doing so, she nearly sends them both to the ground. He grits his teeth and braces her, unable to resist the urge to chafe his hands along her arms, hoping to augment whatever bodyheat he managed to trap in the material to share with her. 

“Alright,” he tells her, as if she seems remotely capable of questioning him, “c’mon, baby, let’s go. Time to go.” 

She doesn’t protest. 

She doesn’t say anything. 

“Here,” he says, handing her her backpack with some vague sense that she’ll find it comforting, having her stuff back in her arms. 

She takes it without looking at it, but she clutches it the way a child does a stuffed toy. 

Tugging the collar of his jacket a little more securely around her neck, he puts an arm around her and leads her away. 

*

He’s barely gotten the fire lit in the grate of the cabin they’re holed up in for the night when Ellie lets out a growling sort of noise. Startled, he turns, afraid there’s a threat he hasn’t noticed, but no. She’s wrestling with her sweatshirt, tangled in the fabric, but that seems to be the greatest danger she’s facing. 

He makes the horrifically stupid mistake of touching her when she can’t see him–something he hasn’t had to think about before and something he’s terrified about now with what it suggests about what happened to her–and he only barely avoids a kick to the stitched wound on his side that would have had him out of commission for days again if it didn’t kill him completely. She makes another terrified noise and thrashes harder, and he backs up on his knees. 

“Ellie,” he calls. “It’s me, baby. You’re okay.” Her frantic motions slow, her muscles quivering. “Yeah, there you go,” he says, keeping his voice softer than it’s ever been with her before. It’s clearly what she needs from him right now, softness, gentle words, care in how she’s handled. 

They’re things he hasn’t practiced in years, things he hasn’t even let himself think about, but somehow, they seem to come back easily. 

“It’s just me, Ellie. Just us.” 

She desists, panting, and he tries not to notice the lines of her ribs from where she’s gotten her sweatshirt up. 

It’s impossible to ignore the dark bruising splattered across her pale skin like ink, though. 

He stares hard at the marks, like that’ll make them go away. There’s dark splotches along her rib cage that speak to damage, but what really gets him is a nearly-black mark in the center of her pale belly. Whatever hit her there, it would have been hard enough to knock the wind out of her, and he can picture it, her small frame going flying from a blow that would leave her breathless, struggling to get her bearings back. 

All while he laid in a goddamn basement, useless to her. 

“Can I help you?” He asks gently. “Looks like you got a little tangled up there.” 

A long pause and then what looks like a nod. 

“Alright,” he says, but when she flinches at the first touch, he pauses. “Gonna touch by your left elbow, alright?” It’s a guess about how he should handle this, letting her know exactly what he’s planning when she can’t see him, but he’s hoping he at least won’t startle her that way. 

A shuddering exhale and another nodding motion. 

“Alright,” he says again, “here ya go.” 

Gently, careful not to jar her when he has no idea how badly she’s hurt, he finally gets her untangled. She twitches a few times when he grazes her bare skin, but she holds her peace, waiting patiently until he’s freed her. When he’s tugged it off of her head, her hair is a mess, and he smooths it down, resisting the urge to cringe at dried blood and what can only be bits of tissue in the strands. Dark as it is, her hair’s hidden the worst of it, but he adds melting snow to wash her hair out to his list of tasks. 

It doesn’t fix what’s already happened, but it feels better than having no plan at all. 

“If you wait,” he says, handing the sweatshirt back over, “I’ll melt some snow to-” 

He doesn’t get to finish the sentence. Something comes over Ellie’s face, dark and angry and afraid, and before he can do anything, she bares her teeth in a near-snarl and tosses the sweatshirt into the fire with a noise that sounds like it came from her soul. She shudders with airy little breaths when it’s over, watching the fire with something akin to madness. She slumps over, leaning against him, and he freezes in place, afraid to mess it up, afraid to set her off again. 

Ellie, though, has eyes only for the sweatshirt slowly smoldering on the fire. 

The part of him that’s been a survivalist for 20 years wants to dig the sweatshirt out, wants to preserve a resource they’ll absolutely need this deep into winter. 

The part of him that was the father to a daughter, though, just wills it to burn even faster. 

*

The nightmares he saw coming. He would have been surprised if she hadn’t had them, frankly, even if she wasn’t party to witnessing the bodies strung up like sides of beef. Even without knowing exactly what happened to her, he can makes some guesses that she still saw more than enough. 

Everything around the nightmares, though, is a series of horrible new surprises. 

She wakes tonight with a stifled scream and an arm gesture like she’s shoving someone off of her, and then her breathing stops. She does this sometimes he knows now, holds her breath like she can’t help it, like her very lungs are trying to freeze from perceived danger. 

“Come on, baby,” he coaxes, trying to keep his tone gentle, trying not to reveal how goddamn terrifying this is for him every single time. “Breathe, baby girl, c’mon.” 

Sarah had had a stage of holding her breath to pitch a tantrum when she was little. He wishes Ellie’s bouts were about things as inconsequential as not getting a second pack of Welch’s fruit snacks. 

“Come on, Ellie,” he says, willing his voice to stay even despite how much this scares him every single time it’s happened. He props her up and rubs along her back briskly, something he’d done with a young Sarah. “Breathe, baby, c’mon.” 

Finally, fucking finally, she takes a gasp like she’s emerging from underwater, an inhale so sharp it sounds like it fucking hurts, and she shudders with it, as if the returning oxygen is shaking her body from the inside out. He releases a breath of his own and drops back with a slight wince for the way it pulls at his side. In the moment, though, he’s never cared less about his own pain in his life. He gathers Ellie up like a little kid, settling her on his lap and guiding her head down to rest against his shoulder. 

“Sh, baby girl, you’re okay. I gotcha,” he coaxes, nearly a croon, nearly a lullaby. He wonders, distantly, if she’s ever had someone hold her like this before, like she’s tiny and precious. He can picture her, a baby, a toddler, a little girl, and his own arms ache imagining how many never scooped her up the way she deserved. 

He only really notes as he’s rubbing a hand along her back that she’s bulky in her sleeping bag, and he frowns slightly. He opens the neck of it and peeks down to see that she’s taken his jacket and wrapped it around herself like a cloak before tucking herself into the sleeping bag. From the wave of heat that escapes, he gathers that her sweat-slick hair isn’t just from fear. 

“Can I get you out of this sleeping bag?” He asks her softly. She still hasn’t told him exactly what happened–hasn’t told him anything, in fact, her terrifying silence still stretching–but the process of cleaning her up gave him enough of a gut wrenching guess. 

“Get off of me!” being the only thing she’s said in days isn’t a hard clue to puzzle out, especially with the marks on her throat and wrists. 

She shakes her head in jerky little movements, and he resists the urge to sigh. He asked and she said no, and he won’t disrespect that for any fucking thing in the world, but he’s a little afraid she’s going to self-soothe herself into heatstroke. He pulls open the drawstring at the hood of the sleeping bag as far as he can get it in an attempt to help, and he manages to stretch enough to a little bucket of melted snow. It’s cool to the touch still, and she jolts a little when he drips it down her neck. 

“Sorry, kiddo,” he says. “You’re a little too warm right now. I’m just trying to cool you off.” 

He pulls his sleeve over his hand and soaks it, brushing it gently across her sweaty face as she closes her eyes and slowly goes lax against him. She doesn’t help or respond, but neither does she stop him. These days, it’s the most he can ask for. 

*

She still doesn’t speak, but she eventually wriggles her way out of the sleeping bag. He unzips it and nudges it closer to the fire to dry out any sweat before he settles back, wetting his sleeve once more and brushing it over every inch of exposed skin. He’ll stop after this–afraid of swinging in the opposite direction and making her too cold–but he’s loathe to give up a concrete way to feel like he’s helping. When Ellie reaches up and pushes at his wrist, though, he takes it as the silent request it is and stops, dropping his arm back down. He wraps both around her and links his fingers, keeping her securely against him even as he closes his eyes. He’s tired, still not fully recovered, but Ellie is far too reliant right now to focus on his own weakness. 

He can rest later. 

He has a kid who needs him right now. 

She shifts a little before settling, tugging the jacket around herself a little tighter. It’s big enough on her to fit like a cloak, and he’s glad for it now. Wrapping her up before they staggered away had been an instinctual thing, the effect of long-dormant parental instincts stirred back to life. It was the same thing he would have done for Sarah; hell, it was the same thing he had done for Sarah when his little hard head had refused to listen on one of Texas’s rare cold days. His kid was cold while he was comfortable, an absolutely unacceptable state of affairs, and one he had always fixed immediately. 

Now, seeing how Ellie’s curled up in the material like a cocoon, like a shield, he feels some small flare of satisfaction at being able to provide a different sort of resource beyond just satisfying physical needs. 

It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but at least it’s something. 

*

It’s three more nights before she finally speaks, wrapped up in his jacket once more. She’s also wearing a sweater he’d found in the house they’re staying in tonight, packed away with sachets of lavender in an old chest. It’s a dusky pink, not remotely her style, but the faded tag says it’s lambswool, so it’s soft, and the lavender, even faded, means it smells nice. He’s seen her more than once press her nose to it, and he’d like to think it means she likes it enough to approve. 

It’s not like she’s told him one way or another. 

“Talk.” 

The word is so quiet that he thinks he imagined it at first, but he doesn’t remember her voice as hoarse as he thinks he just heard it, so he tilts his head down, trying to catch her eye. She avoids him, still staring into some distant place he can’t follow, but she doesn’t turn away. 

“Hm?” He coaxes quietly, undemanding. He wants to hear her voice desperately, wants to hear her joke and laugh and remind him that she’s alive. 

But if being silent is what she needs right now, there’s no force in the world that will make him try to change it. 

“Talk,” she says, voice only a little stronger this time. A momentary pause. “Please.” 

Somehow the attempt at manners makes it hurt worse, as if he’ll refuse her anything right now, as if she couldn’t follow any demand with a “now, motherfucker” and still get her way immediately. If walking barefoot on glass for a mile could go any way towards fixing what’s happened to her, he’d be unlacing his boots now. He certainly doesn’t need a please. 

But this isn’t the time to scold her, not when it’s one of the few words she’s managing right now. 

“Alright,” he agrees easily, pressing his lips briefly to her hairline. “About anything in particular?” 

“Happy…happy stuff,” she manages, voice still croaky, like a being just learning it can talk, like she hasn’t figured out the exact trick of it. 

He curses every single snide comment he’s made about her being too talkative. He’d do any goddamn thing in the world to have his little chatterbox returned to him, to have her healed from this scooped-out shell the fuckers of that godforsaken town left her as. 

“Something happy,” he repeats, settling back a little. He’s exhausted still, not entirely recovered from the infection Ellie’d somehow found medicine to cure him of, but he readies himself to go without sleep for the night. If she needs him to talk her through to dawn when her nightmares can fade, then there’s no other option but doing that. Not for him. He tries to think of something both happy and not full of things she won’t understand. He doesn’t think she’s got it in her right now to ask questions, and the idea of her sitting in silence, confused but unable to ask, hurts deep in his chest. After a moment, he’s got it. “I ever tell you about a place in Texas called Dinosaur Valley?” 

He hasn’t, he knows. He had thought of it immediately the first time she’d mentioned dinosaurs around him, but back then, he had told himself sternly not to encourage her, not to let her think he had any interest in her beyond being something he was smuggling. 

Jesus, he was fucking delusional. 

She doesn’t respond one way or another, but that’s okay. 

He can provide the talking until she finds her voice again. 

*

They don’t find a new coat for her in the house, but he layers a dark rose cashmere scarf and another sweater over her–another pink one with little ribbon rosettes at the hem because apparently the previous owner had very specific taste–and when he asks if she’s warm enough, she manages to nod. He smiles back at her in response and tugs a beanie on her head, careful not to press on the bruises at her temple. She wrinkles her nose a bit at the pink mittens, and he exhales an amused noise. 

“Sorry, kiddo. I’ll keep an eye out for something else.” 

She doesn’t respond, and walking outside makes that now-familiar glassiness take over her expression again. 

But when they start walking, a pink-mittened hand slips into his. 

*

It’s day 6 out of Silver Lake when he finally finds a jacket that’ll fit Ellie. Her double sweaters have been keeping her warm enough, and he’s been putting his coat around her for short bursts of time to help before he needs to put it on again, but he doesn’t miss the speed with which she tugs off her outer sweater, tugging the one beneath along with her shirt to reveal a strip of pale belly and purple-black bruising. 

“Grabbing the bottom of your shirt,” he warns her, pausing a moment before he does it, letting her tug the rose sweater off without losing the other layers in the process. She pauses with the plain pink one, stroking her fingertips along the bottom in a way that suggests she likes the feel of it even if she’s not a fan of the color. “Probably a good idea to keep that one,” he says, nodding to the sweater when she looks to him. “More layers’ll keep you warm.” 

She nods and turns her back to him to let him help her shrug into the jacket. She’s hurting, still, her mobility limited from the damage she took from whatever the fuck happened to her in that town, so he’s glad she’s willing to ask for the assistance. 

“Good?” He asks when she’s turned around and zipped it up. He loops the scarf around her throat and lets her tuck it in, and then he steps back to look at her. The jacket is dark blue with lighter piping, and it’s clear she’s more comfortable in it, even with the pop of rose peeking out from the scarf. 

Before they leave, he folds the rose sweater up and leaves it where it’ll hopefully be of use to whoever needs it next. 

*

Even with her own jacket, she still likes to wrap up in his at night. She doesn’t even have to try and steal it; he hands it over almost as soon as he takes it off. When she’s asleep, he gently works her out of it so he can hang it up to dry overnight, but if using it as a security blanket helps her fall asleep, then he’ll work around it gladly. 

Tonight she’s wrapped herself up and sat down next to him, worming up under his arm and leaning against him. He runs a hand lightly along her back before moving up to toy with the ends of her hair. This relaxes her, he knows now, and he’s hoping he can soothe her to sleep soon. This house is solidly built, still in good shape, and he’s tied the doorknob to an antique armoire that isn’t going anywhere. If someone tries to get in, they’ll have a hell of a time doing it, and he’ll be awake far before they manage it. If he can get Ellie out soon, they’ll hopefully both be able to get some quality sleep in. 

Instead, she speaks. 

“He wanted to eat me.” 

As the first thing she’s said about the experience, it certainly rips the bandaid off in a big way. After seeing the hanging bodies–after wondering in mute horror if hers was among them–it’s not as if he couldn’t have made a guess about their plans for her. He’d found a dead man with a cleaver buried in his throat next to a butcher table with a scrap of Ellie’s sweatshirt snagged on a splinter of wood, so it’s not that wild a surprise. 

But still, a stupid part of him that never learns wanted to believe he could have kept that part of the story from her. 

“Not-” Her voice cracks. He imagines it’s partially from disuse and partially from the bruising on her throat. He reaches for a pot of water he’d boiled for safety, checking his wrist against the metal for a moment before he lifts it so she can take a sip. It’s warm, still, and he hopes it’ll soothe her throat some. She accepts a few swallows and then pushes it away before she continues. “He didn’t want to. At first. He…” A tremor runs through her. “He wanted-wanted other stuff first.” 

He grits his teeth until his jaw aches so he can keep his hands gentle, redirecting the rage simmering in his chest to something that won’t scare her. He’s hoping the past tense means the fucker is gone, but Jesus, for Ellie to have been the one forced to do it. 

“I didn’t-I didn’t want…” She trails off, and he catches the look she gives him. She’s worried, he realizes, worried that he’ll think she did something to cause it. 

He will not let that line of thinking stand. 

“He was a sick fucker,” he says decisively, no room for doubt or misinterpretation in his voice. “Whatever he did wasn’t on you, baby girl. Whatever happened to him, he deserved.” He pauses, debating, but he wants her to hear it, wants her to understand exactly where his loyalties lie. “I would have done way fucking worse,” he tells her. 

He doesn’t know what it means about the two of them that this seems to settle her, but it’s the truth and she deserves to hear it. 

“Can I tell you the rest?” She asks, voice tentative. 

He imagines this is a holdover from FEDRA days, asking for permission to talk about things that she thinks he might not want to hear. He doesn’t imagine there was much compassion to be found among government drones raising children. For him, though? 

He’ll gladly shoulder whatever she chooses to trust him with. 

He settles back a little more comfortably and takes her with him, tucking his jacket around her a little tighter. The movement sends a waft of lavender to him from her sweater, a scent that’s started to soak into his coat. He can’t say he minds it. 

“Go ahead,” he tells her, gently carding his fingers through her hair. He’s been putting it into a loose braid instead of a ponytail so it won’t pull at tender places on her head, but it’s undone now to let it dry after a day of snow melting into it. “Whatever you wanna say, baby. Go ahead.” 

With a deep breath that shudders only slightly, she does. 

*

He and the Fireflies are cursed from the beginning to be on opposing sides. There’s a variety of reasons why this could be. He’s a good deal older than most of them. They’re do-gooders while he’s only ever been interested in the good of his immediate circle of Tess and Tommy and now Ellie. They’re fucking obnoxious about their light metaphor. 

All very good reasons, but none of them the reason why he may end up slaughtering them all. 

No, the main reason on which they disagree is this: not a single goddamn Firefly seems to remember that Ellie is a kid, and he can’t see her as anything other than his kid. 

If a single bug survives getting the cure, it’ll be a goddamn miracle. 

*

The experimental drugs in her IVs combined with the blood draws make her shiver, made worse by the way they insist on her wearing hospital gowns during their frequent tests. They claim it’s in case there’s an emergency given how many reactions she’s had, but he has his suspicions that it’s a petty show of control given how very little of that he’s given up with her. Outside of their experiments, she wears hospital scrubs, her own clothes supposedly “accidentally” tossed out while decontaminating the room. 

Given that this “accident” happened after he’d taken her out for the day for a break hasn’t escaped him, especially when the clothes she’d had on that day disappeared in short order, too, leaving her only with things she would never wear outside of the hospital’s walls, flimsy and poorly suited for the road, especially with the lingering chill of early spring in Utah. 

If they’d thought this would mean keeping Ellie captive and forced to play labrat on their schedule, though, they’re grossly mistaken. She doesn’t like wearing scrubs outside, but he stole a pair of boots from the Firefucker supplies–too big for her, but he stuffs the toes with rags–and one of his flannels is big enough on her for her to wear it like a robe. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough. 

Today, he’s decided she’ll be getting a break for quite a while from having to wear the hospital gowns. This particular guinea pig is getting a stay in experimentation. 

“Five days,” he tells Marlene, just outside of Ellie’s room where she’s hooked up to machines to get readings for he doesn’t even fucking know what. He doesn’t usually leave her alone when she’s playing labrat, but she’d vomited until she didn’t even have bile left to bring up all last night and this morning, and she’ll be getting a break if it kills him. 

(Or, more likely, if it kills every single other person in this hospital.) 

“This is important work,” Marlene says, with an infuriatingly even keel to her tone. He almost wishes she would show some emotion, would shout, would really argue with him. Ellie hasn’t said anything, but he’s seen the way she looks at Marlene sometimes, this last tangible link to her mother. It would mean the world to her if Marlene could even pretend to give a shit about her, if she would act like she was charged by Ellie’s mother to look after her, if she would treat her like the child of her best friend she supposedly is. 

But no. Ellie gets a kinder version of the logical resistance leader than he does, but there’s no real attachment there. 

Not like his kid deserves. 

“And I’d argue that your ‘important work,’” he puts a slight sneer on the words to indicate what he thinks of this “work” they’ve yet to make progress on, “is pretty contingent on not killing your single test subject. That’s what you and your Fireflies are doing right now, Marlene. You’re killing her.” 

“Don’t be-” She starts, but his patience is abruptly gone. 

“This is what Anna would want?” He demands, a hail Mary effort against Ice Queen Marlene. He’s not convinced that she’s capable of caring about a person and not a cause, not really, but he has little enough to try and leverage beyond the threat of just taking Ellie and running, something he’s careful not to actually use for fear they’ll try to do something to prevent him from ever doing it, as if that’s even possible, as if there’s any force on the planet that could keep him away from his kid. 

“Anna would understand,” Marlene says, still infuriatingly serene. 

“No,” he says flatly. “She wouldn’t.” He didn’t know Anna, doesn’t know anything about her now beyond the stories he’s persuaded Marlene into telling Ellie because she deserves to know things about her mother, but he knows loving a child. 

He knows loving this child. 

“She would be sickened by what you’re doing to her daughter,” he tells Marlene plainly, desperately hoping for a wince, for a flinch, for a frown, for any sign at all that she cares. “She trusted you with her baby, trusted you to do what’s right for her. She would hate you for sending her to FEDRA, and she’d hate you more for what you’re doing to her right now.” 

He knows it, knows it down to his bones as if Anna is right at his shoulder feeding him lines. He knows being a parent. He knows loving a little girl so much it’s enough to drive a person crazy. 

He knows that Anna would be right beside him ready to slaughter this whole fucking hospital. 

“Ann would und-” Marlene tries to insist, but he doesn’t have the patience for this game. 

“No,” he says, unwilling to entertain whatever little story she’s told herself here, whatever justification she’s spun that lets her sleep at night. “That is her baby in there,” he says, gesturing back to the room. “And you are torturing her. If heaven is a real place, and Anna is looking down on you, I can guarantee she hates you for what you’re doing.” 

It’s juvenile, as taunts go, but he has little enough to work with. The most he’s got with logic is that they need their test subject alive, but he’s already heard murmurs of putting Ellie on a feeding tube and keeping her hooked up to an IV at all times, as if even keeping her alive is yet another problem to solve, as if reducing her even further to a science experiment isn’t wrong, isn’t one of the most heinous things he’s watched happen in real time. 

“Three days,” Marlene says, and he blinks, slightly surprised. Marlene catches the look and smiles, a hard-edged, bitter thing. “I know Tess was the brains of the operations, but word of advice: don’t look so fucking surprised when you get your way negotiating. It’s not a good look.” 

He gives her a good look of a middle finger as he leaves her to return to his kid, passing the nurse as he goes, the woman apparently done helping torture his kid for the day. 

Ellie is where he left her, curled up on her bed, tiny and miserable and pale. The only change is that she’s now curled up under a flannel. 

A very familiar flannel. 

“Thief,” he accuses her before he kisses her head, speaking softly enough that the doctor going over charts and notes in the corner won’t hear. 

“Finders keepers,” she says weakly, and he tries not to fret over how even her lips are pale, a slight blue tinge to them that makes alarm bells go off in his head. 

These days, just looking at her is enough to do that, though. 

The flannel swims on her, far too large for her petite frame normally and absolutely gargantuan with how much weight she’s lost 

She looks like a little kid playing dress-up, and it’s not a far cry from what she is, frankly. She’s a 14 year old taking on a responsibility no grown adult should be saddled with. 

And there’s not a single fucking thing he can do about it. 

He tucks the flannel around her a little more securely and tries not to feel as useless as he is. 

*

“These are for her,” is the only lead-up he gets when he answers the door the next day only to find cloth shoved into his arms. 

He frowns at Marlene, not breaking eye contact to look down. The pile smells of the industrial detergent they use on Ellie’s scrubs and sheets, but the texture of the fabric tells him it’s not either of those. The one in his right hand feels like…denim? 

He decides to take the risk of looking away from Marlene and finds that there is indeed a stack of clothing in his arms that looks Ellie-sizedL a pair of jeans, a couple of pairs of sweatpants, some t-shirts, and a soft hoodie. He looks back up to her, lifting his eyebrows in surprise. 

“You have a very punchable face,” she says dryly. “Anyone ever told you that?” 

He doesn’t rise to the bait. 

“They’ll still want her in hospital gowns during exams and tests,” Marlene says, “but I talked to them about her downtime, and she’ll be able to wear what she wants. Let me know if any of it doesn’t fit. I can see what else I can find.” 

She doesn’t even wait before she turns on her heel and walks away. 

*

Ellie’s eyes light up when she sees the stack of clothes, though she gives him a suspicious look after a moment. 

“We’re not leaving,” she says, her line in the ongoing argument they’ve had since about hour 4 of being in the hospital. “We have to-” 

“We’re not leaving,” he reassures her, even though he desperately wants them to. “Marlene just dropped these off for you. Sounds like they finally got their heads out of their asses about what you wear. She said you’ll still need to wear a gown during their tests, but otherwise you can wear what you want.” 

Ellie reaches out and strokes her fingers over one of the pair of sweatpants with something that looks almost like reverence. 

“I know they’re not your style,” he says with false seriousness. “I’m sure if we asked, they could find something pink for-” 

He arguably deserves the pillow to the face he gets for that. 

(It still doesn’t stop him from–carefully–returning fire.) 

*

They get their cure. He gets his dose. 

Ellie gets to toss her scrubs out of a window when they take the liberty of sneaking off with about 50 doses of the vaccine and a car that may or may not be lightly stolen. 

“Because technically they never owned it,” Ellie says from her place in the passenger seat, a pair of sunglasses over her eyes to try and help with her headache, a common complaint for her these days. “And I don’t think you can steal a stolen thing. I think it cancels it out like algebra.” 

He got a C in that class by the skin of his teeth, so he’ll trust her math on that one. 

She tucks her legs up under her, her sweatpants a little too big but comfortable. She’d tossed the Firefly boots out the window along with her remaining scrubs and hospital gowns before he could stop her, and she’d looked so gleeful about it that he hadn’t had it in his heart to scold her, so she’s currently only in some socks. 

It’s fine, though. He can find her some shoes later, a pair that actually fits her. 

They’ve got a whole future full of possibilities now. 

*

In Jackson, Ellie gets a top up of some blood courtesy of Tommy to try and help with her clear anemia.

She also gets a pair of nearly-new converse. 

He doesn’t comment on how she’s clearly more touched by the latter. If Tommy’s offended at all, he has his new immunity to make up for it. 

*

Lulled by nearly a year in the safety of Jackson, he misses the first signs of trouble on the morning he knocks on Ellie's door to find her on her window seat staring at the first snowflakes drifting down in lazy spirals. She barely glances over her shoulder at him before she looks back outside, and he smiles faintly, mistaking his second child's reactions for his first's. They'd only gotten snow one time in Sarah's life, and she'd been beyond thrilled. 

"First snow?" He asks, leaning over her to look out as well. 

Smiling at Aiden across the street already reaching for the flakes with chubby, clumsy fists as Tommy holds him, he nearly misses how Ellie stiffens just slightly before she relaxes and leans against him. Still, he's been attuned to her for too long to miss it completely. He frowns slightly and braces her shoulders, squeezing slightly and noting the tension there. 

"You alright, kiddo?" He asks, subtly moving a hand enough to touch her skin to check for fever. She fusses something awful about being babied when she's not in the mood for it, and he'd rather not pick a new battle in that ongoing war. 

"Fine," she says at once, but the immediacy of the response says it's a lie. 

He wants to ask if she's sure, wants to give her a second chance to fess up, but he doesn't want her to think he doubts her. 

"Alright," he says softly, leaning down enough to kiss the top of her head. "you about ready to head down to breakfast?" 

She nods and turns to slide off of her seat, and he bites his tongue against a comment about how tired she looks. She's been staying up past her 11 pm lights out agreement recently while working her way through a new book series, and she's such a good kid already that he's been giving her a pass on it. Given that he's never been a parent to get a late night knock from someone with a sauced teenager in tow, he figures she deserves to toe the line over something like staying up to read. Looking at her now, though, he makes a mental note to step on the squeaky floorboard outside of her door tonight to hopefully make her scramble into feigning sleep. Hopefully she'll pay it safe and actually sleep, reticent as she is to openly defy him. 

“Make sure to put on something warm,” he reminds her as he leaves. 

His only response is a vague noise as she looks towards the window again. 

*

His next sign comes on the way to breakfast. Hands in the pockets of his jacket, he extends an elbow for her to loop her arm in the way she usually does, and he frowns and looks over to her when she doesn't. 

He finds her staring at the sky with far more focus than it deserves. He takes a glance up to be sure he isn't missing out on UFOs doing aerial tricks, but sure enough, it's just puffy snowclouds and a smattering of flakes still raining down. She flinches at a squeal from the toddler a few houses down, gaze darting to the little girl, who's jumping up and down in her yard with excitement for the snow while her father looks on, smiling. 

Looking at his own girl, nearly as pale as the precipitation landing on her dark hair like confetti, he feels significantly less amused. 

"Hey," he calls softly, having to repeat it before she looks over. "What's up?" 

It takes a moment for her to even process the question, and when she does, she gives him a plastic sort of smile. 

"Nothing," she says, and he gives her an unimpressed look at the lie. "Seriously, I'm-" 

A baby shrill rings out. 

They both turn to find Aiden and a smiling Tommy approaching, the baby reaching out for his cousin. 

"There's my buddy," Ellie says, and her smile this time is a little less strained as she reaches out to take him, groaning playfully. "Jeeze, Tommy, what're you feeding this kid, rocks?" Aiden giggles and promptly nearly slaps her in the face with his excitement, squealing with giggles as she pretends to nibble on his tiny fingers. 

"Steady diet of concrete," Tommy says with a smile, resting an easy arm around her shoulders. 

Ellie flinches. 

It's subtle, there and gone again, but he caught it. From the brief surprised look on Tommy's face, he did, too, but he doesn't pull away at once. Ellie recovers quickly, and she bounces Aiden testingly. 

"is that true, buddy?" She asks the baby. "Your daddy's got you eating concrete?" 

"Dadadadadada," Aiden babbles in agreement. 

After he exchanges a quick glance with Tommy, they all move to the dining hall. Through silent agreement, they don't bring up Ellie's flinch. 

Doesn't mean he forgets it, though, tugging her beanie down a little more to cover her ears because he needs some sort of way to vent his worry. 

Even with her ears now warmer, though, the worry doesn’t fade. 

*

The strangeness continues at breakfast. 

Ellie’s appetite remained iffy when they first came back to Jackson, and there’s been plenty of times he’s had to eat meat first so she can convince her brain it’s safely not people, but one of his favorite parts of living in this town has been that his kid gets to eat her fill and regain her strength. She’s an active kid, always on the go, so she usually has the appetite to match, a growing teenager’s already usually bottomless pit tendencies increased by the way she never sits still. He’s never had any complaints about it, always careful never to tease or comment. If there’s anything good about this new world, it’s that beauty standards have changed from rail-thin, so he hasn’t had to worry about her internalizing any nonsense about diets and ideal bodies. 

Today, though, she eats as lightly as she did in their first week in town. 

She follows him through the line quietly, bookended between him and Tommy, who’s still carrying Aiden and having his plate dictated by his baby’s squealing when he gets excited about something. Ellie seems significantly less enthused about the selections on offer, and by the time they get through the line, she has about half a scoop of scrambled eggs, some plain toast, and a mouse’s serving of yogurt in a little bowl. 

“Want juice for the baby?” He asks his brother, and Tommy gives him a distracted nod and thanks before he hisses through his teeth, jerking his tray out of the way in the nick of time when Aiden makes a grab for a sausage link that nearly sends everything clattering to the floor, the baby having taken to starting solid food with great enthusiasm and little dexterity. 

When Ellie turns to follow them to the table, he grabs her lightly by her hood. She turns, eyebrow lifted in question. 

“Help me carry drinks back?” He asks, tilting his head back to the juice and milk area. 

“Sure?” She says, confused but always willing to help. 

He waits until they’re out of earshot for any eavesdroppers to ask what he’d wanted her alone for. 

“You feeling okay, kiddo?” He asks, and he sees her freeze for a moment before she grabs one of the plastic cups meant for little kids, filling it with half juice and half water for Aiden. 

“Fine,” she says with studied nonchalance, putting far more attention into getting the lid onto the cup than the task really requires. 

“You just seem a little quiet today,” he says carefully, filling a cup of milk for her and putting it on her tray. “Your breakfast seems a little light, too.” 

Ellie sighs and looks down at the juice cup, fiddling with it. 

“Just…rock stuff, okay?” 

He resists a sigh of his own. He can understand not wanting to get into something that’s clearly bothering her in public, but he wants to fix it, wants to have it all out in the open so he can give her a solution. 

For now, though, all she needs of him is to drop it. 

“Got it,” he says, and true to his word, he doesn’t bring it up again. 

*

The strange behavior continues, escalating with time. She starts skipping school with no heads-up to him per their usual agreement, her appetite remains finicky as hell, and she gets more nervous about people looking at her too long, fidgeting subtly enough that he doesn’t think anyone but him notices. 

She also starts dressing in the absolute baggiest things she can get her hands on, “borrowing” from him, Tommy, and even her friend Jesse. It’s not like she was ever one to wear form-fitting clothes, but what she wears now looks almost comically large with how much it hides her. Time in Jackson and time, period, has made her fill out some; she’s still a slender little thing, but she’s closer to a woman than a child than she was at 14, not that anyone would be able to tell that in her current stolen wardrobe. She looks like a kid playing dress up, androgynous in her giant layers. 

He finds her on the back porch at 1 in the morning one night, her breath making puffs of smoke in the air. He makes enough noise that he won’t startle her, but she barely glances back at him. He settles beside her, and she leans back. He puts an arm around her and frowns slightly at the chill he can feel on her– Jesse’s –hoodie. 

“How long ya been out here, kiddo?” He asks softly, chafing her arm gently. 

She shrugs, still staring out at the snow. 

“You wanna talk about it?” 

It’s a hail Mary, this question. They’re close now–close enough that Tommy teases them about sharing a brain–but she’s iffy about her pain. Night is usually a time she’ll talk a little more freely, but that was before whatever happened with the snow happened. 

“Do you think the fuckers are still there? In that town?” 

The question is surprising, and the lack of proper nouns means it takes him a moment to fill in the blanks. 

When it clicks, he feels stupid that it didn’t earlier. 

“Maybe,” he says. He wants to reassure her, but he won’t lie to her. That’s one of their deals. They can “rock stuff” out of the hard things, but they can’t deceive each other. 

Ellie nods, once, like that was the answer she was expecting, and it takes her two rounds of inhaling like she’s going to speak before she does. 

“They’re gonna be fucked since it’s winter.” She swallows, and when she speaks again, her voice is softer. “Jackson takes in refugees.” 

She doesn’t extrapolate from there. She doesn’t need to. 

“They will never set foot in this town,” he says, firm and sure. 

She flicks her eyes to him in silent question. He hesitates for a moment. He hasn’t lied about this, but he also hasn’t brought it up. It’s one of the first things he’d taken care of when they got here, but he’d hoped she wouldn’t even need to think about it in the future. 

Given how their luck usually goes, that was probably foolishly optimistic. 

“I told the council I looked into a town called Silver Lake after the last time we left. Said I thought I might have had a friend there.” He doesn’t want the cure linked to Ellie, doesn’t want the danger of other people getting ideas about developing their own using her, so the only people from Jackson that know are Maria and Tommy. For anyone who’s asked about why they left the first time, he’s spun some vague story about wanting to bring a friend back but not being able to find them. Enough people have lost family and friends that they rarely try to push further. 

“You told them…” Ellie trails off, voice hoarse. He still hears the end of the sentence: ‘what they did to me?’ 

“No,” he says, leaning to kiss her head. “Said I left you behind so I could scout it out.” 

She exhales the breath she was holding. 

“I told them it was run by some sick fucker who was preaching cannibalism and child brides.” He’d hoped the former would be enough to put taking any of them in in the “absolutely not” category, but he knows people make allowances for desperation. The second bit, though? No. Kids are precious in Jackson, protected like they should be. Tommy had told him they’d caught a man a few months before they got here with some pictures from Before involving kids, illegal things he’d apparently guarded like treasure even after the end of the goddamn world. 

They’d had to draw straws for who got to shoot him, so many people had wanted to do it. 

“They will never be allowed here,” he says. “Every patroller has orders to turn them away immediately. If they refuse to go, it’s a kill order. We ain’t ever gonna have their poison here, Ellie, I promise you.” 

She inhales a breath that shudders slightly, and he sees her eyes go a little shiny. She nods, and after a moment, she speaks, voice rough. 

“Thank you.” 

He doesn’t need or want gratitude for this. He cups her cool cheek in one palm to pull her head close, kissing her hair and lingering for a long moment, the chill of the air lingering in the strands. 

“I’ll be right back,” he tells her, kissing her head once more before he rises. 

He goes inside and grabs his new winter jacket, a thick, warm thing bolstered by down from the ducks they raise here and relined with wool. He drapes it over a vent to let the warm air heat it up a bit while he fills their electric kettle and sets it to boil. He doesn’t know how long Ellie’ll want to stay on the back porch, but he wants to be able to get her something warm to drink when she decides she’s had enough. When he returns to the living room, the jacket is warm, and he folds it to keep the heat inside. 

Ellie doesn’t bother to look this time when he rejoins her. He drapes the jacket around her shoulders, wrapping her up. Her posture–already looser than when he first came out–eases further, and she nearly melts against him when he sits next to her again. The cold isn’t necessarily comfortable in only flannel pajama pants and a hoodie, but he’s always run warm. If he needs to, he can grab a blanket, but he’ll be fine for a while yet. 

“You’re not getting this jacket back,” Ellie says after a while, and he can hear a faint teasing note in her voice that eases something in his chest. She’s resilient beyond what anyone has a right to expect of her, his girl, but he worries sometimes about there being a final straw. 

He’s glad she still hasn’t reached hers, impossible as it seems. 

“Thief,” he says, squeezing her a little tighter. “Gonna haul your klepto ass in front of the council one of these days.” 

“Doubt it,” she says, voice warm. She lifts her leg and points her toe, showing off the fact that she’s stolen his socks as well. 

“You’re the worst,” he says, but he hopes the affection in his voice lets her know he means three very different words. 

The way she extends both of her legs to better show off her theft says she does.