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Ellie loves nights like these.
She’s sitting on the counter in the kitchen, legs swinging as Joel squints at the recipe in front of him, reading glasses positioned at the end of his nose, highlighting his old man-ness, music playing from the CD player Joel had salvaged on one of his most recent patrols. They decided to stay in tonight, try their hand at making homemade pasta, which was actually far more successful than she thought it would be, though the pasta is probably a lot thicker than it’s supposed to be.
It helps a lot that the dough came pre-made from one of their neighbors, so they got to skip a critical step that they were sure to have fucked up based on how well the rest of it has been going. And that’s after Joel said, “We’ll be fine. Pasta is easy.”
Ellie’s supposed to be helping, but instead she’s spent her time offering critiques and munching on popcorn while Joel has been in straight-up concentration mode, offering nothing more than grunts to her very helpful suggestions.
They’d ended up at home after having walked three steps into the community dining hall at dinner time, and Ellie froze. Without skipping a beat, Joel had steered her out of the building, walked her home, and wasted no time finding an alternative plan for dinner. He didn’t even bring attention to what had happened, didn’t even ask questions or make her feel bad for being the reason their plans changed and for why they are still making dinner an hour later when they could have already eaten and been walking home by now.
Ellie likes going to the dining hall just fine for most meals. Sometimes, though, when the people are a little too loud, and the food looks a little off, and the room is too bright, and it’s all just too much, it’s a relief to eat at home where it’s just her and Joel, and she can see the food that’s being made, and they can turn off the big lights in favor of the dimmer lamps, and she can breathe again.
She throws a piece of popcorn at him as he turns to look at her after closing the mostly-empty cabinet next to the stove. He gives her an unimpressed look but eats the popcorn that fell onto the counter next to him anyway, finally removing those stupid looking reading glasses before he speaks.
“We’re all out of tomato sauce for the pasta. Want to run to the cellar and grab us some more?” He asks, returning his attention to the nearly boiling pot of water on the stove. “Maybe you can even grab yourself a treat while you’re in there. I won’t tell anyone,” he says with a wink.
Ellie grins, knowing exactly what he means; there’s some freshly canned apples in the cellar that she’s been craving for several days now.
“I can do that,” she says, jumping down from the counter and slipping on her shoes before throwing open the front door.
“Be careful, it’s windy as hell out there,” she vaguely hears Joel call after her before the door is blown closed behind her. She jumps at the noise and ducks her head into her chest to shield herself as much as she can from the bitter wind.
She’s been to the community cellar plenty of times, though admittedly, it’s been when it was much brighter outside. The changing season means earlier nights, which Ellie doesn’t mind because it shortens the amount of daytime she’s expected to be working or otherwise with people in the community. It also means she has to rely on the sparse streetlights and setting sun on her way there.
She opens the door and ducks into the room, immediately tugging on the string to turn on the light. Of course, the fucking lightbulb is out, so she’s going to just have to do her best in this weak ass lighting.
“Green beans, corn, pickles, potatoes…” she mutters to herself, squinting to assess the contents of the various jars which are supposedly organized in some way, but she’s never really figured it out. “Fuck yeah, tomato sauce!” she cheers, grabbing one of the many jars from the shelf.
She starts to turn to leave before she remembers that Joel had suggested she get the apples she’s been bugging him about ever since she heard that some of the things that were canned were fried cinnamon apples. Ellie smiles brightly, and turns back to the shelves of canned fruit.
Just as she’s on her tip toes, reaching for the apples that someone cruelly placed on the shelf that’s just nearly out of reach, the door to the cellar slams with a loud bang.
Ellie gasps and drops the jar of sauce, hears the glass shatter, feels the sauce soak into her pants and shoes, smells the sweetness of the tomatoes as they are lost to the floor of the cellar.
It’s the type of stupid fuck up that would have had her thrown in The Hole back in Boston. She should be able to handle sudden loud noises without losing her shit, so that’s one strike. She made a huge mess that someone is going to have to clean up and wasted food, so at least two more. All major offenses, so she’s looking at a full night in The Hole.
The rational part of her brain tries to remember that this is Jackson, not Boston. There’s a conversation she can remember that’s playing in her mind like a movie while she tries to keep her breathing steady.
“No one will ever throw you in any damn ‘hole’ here, Ellie. I promise,” Joel told her, that pained look he got whenever she brought up some shit from growing up experiencing some of FEDRA’s most impressive child raising tactics.
Tommy and Maria both echoed Joel’s sentiments, assured her she had nothing to worry about.
“No one’s gonna do shit to you here as long as you got Joel around ya,” Tommy said for good measure when she brought it up to him too. “Most folks around here are still fuckin’ terrified of him.”
Ellie opens her eyes, tries to remember when she had shut them so tightly, and blinks a few times. It doesn’t make a difference; the room is completely pitch black. She’s in here alone. No one is coming to get her. She doesn’t want Joel to come and see the mess she’s made anyway.
It’s cold and dark. And something just crawled over her arm. She thinks. It could have been a stray hair or a loose string, the more logical part of her brain counters. But she can feel her skin crawling or maybe something crawling on her skin.
She needs to breathe, but the air around her suddenly feels too stiff, the room around her is too constricting, her chest is too fucking tight, and it’s so fucking cold and dark, and she can’t breathe.
She tries to feel around, needs to find the door and get the hell out of here, but her feet are frozen in place. She sinks to the ground instead, just barely aware enough to avoid the glass around her. Just think about something else. Anything else.
“Ellie?” There’s a voice, but it sounds distant, like it’s miles away. “Ellie? Jesus Christ, what happened? Ellie, can you hear me?”
She pries her eyes open, noting that it’s suddenly not pitch black anymore. Joel is crouched in front of her, which makes sense because…oh, yeah, she ended up on the ground at some point.
“Oh, shit,” she chuckles, standing up too quickly, brushing off her pants. “Hey, Joel. Thanks for, uh, opening the door,” she says, aiming for casual but cringing at the high pitch of her voice. Get it the fuck together, she thinks. Don’t make him worry again.
It’s not working because he’s still got that pained, concerned fucking look on his face.
“Why didn’t you open it?” Joel asks, wrinkle between his eyebrows prominent, even in the low light. “What happened? You were gone longer than I expected, so I came to check on you," he explains. How long has she been in here? She wants to ask but also wants to live in blissful ignorance and choose to believe that he's overreacting.
“Um,” she starts, feeling like she’s coming back into her body all of a sudden as she looks down at the tomato sauce that has painted the floor. It looks like a crime scene from one of those stupid old cop shows that she’s watched with Joel when they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for new things to watch together.
“Come on, let’s get you away from that glass at least,” Joel breaks through her thoughts just in time for her to realize her eyes feel like they’re open too wide, her breaths are louder than normal, and she still hasn’t fucking answered him. His hand is outstretched for her to take, so she shakily allows him to help her to the door.
“I have shoes on,” she mumbles uselessly.
“I know it. Still don’t need to risk anything,” he says, giving her a long look like he’s trying to piece this together because she’s not being very helpful.
He reaches out and tugs on the string to the light, muttering to himself when he also concludes that it’s out. He grabs a different jar of tomato sauce because of course somehow he knows exactly where they are. Then reaches a hand up to get that jar of apples Ellie had been trying to get down when the door slammed shut.
“I’ll get stuff to clean this up and come back to get it after dinner,” Joel tells her. “Maybe find a lightbulb somewhere too while I’m at it.”
“I can do it,” she says, probably too loudly based on the way Joel raises his eyebrows at her.
“Let’s just focus on gettin’ you home and out of those sauce-covered pants first,” he says.
Ellie keeps her mouth shut at that. So, that’s another offense - ruining a perfectly good pair of pants, making extra work for someone, wasting resources. Reminding herself that there is no Hole here does nothing to stop her heart from beating in her ears.
“Ellie,” Joel says. His tone indicates that it was at least the fourth or fifth time he’s said her name. Somehow her legs had carried her all the way home and to her bedroom to change and then back downstairs to the table where she’s currently sitting. And she doesn’t remember any of it.
There’s a plate of pasta in front of her and a fork in her hand and a worried Joel across from her.
“You’re freakin’ me out here, kid. You gotta talk to me. Did something happen?”
“No,” she says quickly, regaining her voice. “Just thinking. Sorry.”
“You don’t gotta apologize. Just worried about you,” he says.
“Well, stop worrying. I was just being stupid. What does Maria call it - dilly-dallying? Then the dumb fucking door closed, and I think the noise just startled me. You got there, like, right after it happened,” she lies easily and quickly. “Fucking miracle you did too ‘cause imagine if I would’a been trapped in there with Jackson’s food supply,” she adds, going for a joke and even mustering a tight smile to go with it.
“Mhm,” Joel grunts, shoveling more pasta into his mouth. Ellie continues to poke at her food until she’s eaten enough that she knows Joel won’t bug her about it. Not that he really does, but he’ll get that weird stress wrinkle back, and it makes her feel kind of uneasy when she can tell he wants to say something but doesn’t.
“I’m gonna go to bed,” she announces. “Unless you want me to go clean up in the cellar because I totally -”
“I said I’d get it, kiddo,” Joel cuts her off with a pointed look. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks, and it’s a reasonable question given how odd she’s being, but she wishes he would just leave her alone.
“Yep,” she says, plastering a grin back on her face. “Just tired. Thanks for making dinner. And, uh, for cleaning up the mess. I’ll eat leftovers tomorrow, promise.”
She stands and puts her dishes in the sink, lets Joel give her arm a squeeze as she walks by the kitchen table before she continues toward the stairs.
“Goodnight, Ellie. Sleep tight,” he tells her.
“Night, Joel,” she responds, taking the stairs two at a time. As soon as she’s out of his sight, she shifts back into autopilot, thoughtlessly brushing her teeth, changing into pajamas, trying to keep her mind empty, empty, empty.
She pulls back her covers, flicks off her lamp, and silently thanks Joel for insisting on that stupid nightlight he found for her once on patrol. It means the room isn’t totally dark right now. Her blankets are warm, and the room smells like home, and her pajamas are clean because Joel did the laundry today, and he’s right down stairs, and he came for her when she thought she was trapped in the cellar.
And everything is fine.
//
“Williams,” Captain Kwong barked at her. “I thought I told you! Another mistake, and you’re back in The Hole.”
“It’s not even a big deal,” she tried to argue, but it was futile. He had a hand up to silence her. Arguing more after that would just get more time tacked on.
“You know the drill. Hand over your things, and follow me,” he said, leaving no room for any disagreement, turning on his heel with the silent expectation that she would hand her backpack with her only belongings over to one of his cronies. She realized there was no point in fighting, and she’d had enough run-ins to know that at least this crony wasn’t one that was likely to root through her shit.
For how much she hated The Hole, you would think it would deter her from getting into trouble. She just took the spiteful route instead, always hoping they would just give up on her, ignore her, or even just look the other way when she finally got to get revenge against all the assholes who pushed her around.
Of course she had no such fucking luck.
Instead, it was back to The Hole, and this time for at least 12 hours.
Solitary was bad enough. She’d been locked in her room alone plenty of times. In a dark and damp room in the basement of this old ass building though? Ellie liked to think she was tough. Not in there.
“Someone will let you out tomorrow,” Captain Kwong sighed deeply as he opened the metal door and gestured for Ellie to walk in. “Make yourself comfortable, Williams. And think about how next time,” a long pause. “Next time, you’ll try not to be such a fuck up.”
The heavy door slammed shut behind her, and suddenly, everything was completely and totally dark. There was a slight dripping noise. The room was cold, not like bone-chilling cold, but enough that it was uncomfortable. The walls were cool and cement. It smelled like mildew. And there was no noise except for that steady drip…drip…drip… that would eventually make her go insane.
Nothing to do but crouch down, close her eyes, hope that there were no fucking spiders in there and try to think about literally anything else.
There was no way of knowing how long she was able to hold it together before she started rocking back and forth, muttering to herself, swatting at her arms because something was fucking crawling all over her. No way of knowing how much longer she would be in that room, no way of knowing if there were actually spiders or if they were cockroaches or if there were even bugs at all.
“Make it stop,” she muttered, not wanting to acknowledge how her voice broke as she continued rocking back and forth, back and forth. “Make it fucking stop,” she said, a bit louder this time, smacking at her neck now. “Make it stop,” she was yelling then, no one coming to get her, no one giving a fuck about her.
“Make it fucking stop, please!”
“Ellie! Ellie, please, baby girl, please wake up. It’s me, it’s me.”
She opens her eyes, chest heaving, hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. There’s a soft light spilling in from the hallway. Joel is on his knees next to her bed, face full of concern, hands up like he’s approaching a frightened animal.
And…well, she guesses she’s the scared animal here.
“It’s okay, baby. You’re safe and at home and with me,” he says, hands twitching like he wants to reach out.
“Joel,” she whimpers pathetically, voice feeling hoarse. She was probably yelling in her sleep, which is humiliating, but at least it meant Joel heard her and is here with her now.
“I’m here,” he says softly, hands inching toward her slowly. She leans in, lets him cup her face between his big, calloused hands and wipe away her tears with his thumbs. She lets out a shuddery breath before dragging herself the rest of the way to the edge of the bed and throwing her arms around his shoulders.
He responds immediately, one hand coming up to hold the back of her head, the other arm wrapping tightly around her waist as he gets up from the ground to sit on the bed with her cradled close.
“I’m so sorry, Ellie,” he whispers into her hair.
“Not your fault,” she says pathetically. His hand tightens ever so slightly on the back of her head.
“I know it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference,” he starts, pausing to press a kiss into her hair. “But I swear to you…no one will ever fucking touch you here. You’re safe, I promise.”
“I know,” she says, just so grateful that he’s here and he’s close and he doesn’t mind her tears soaking into the front of his shirt and, mercifully, he’s not asking anymore questions.
She’s warm, and there’s a perfect amount of light filling the room, and it smells like home because it is.
She isn't sure how long they sit there together, but she slowly feels her breaths return to a normal volume, her heart to a normal pace. Her ear is pressed up against Joel's chest which helps because she can tell he's deliberately taking slow and steady breaths for her to mirror.
"How about some of those apples?" his voices rumbles in her ear. After her light dinner, she is kind of hungry. And those apples are so delicious and unlike anything she would have been able to have in Boston.
"Yeah," she says weakly, standing and stretching before following Joel downstairs.
She pulls herself back up to sit on the kitchen counter, legs swinging slightly as Joel pops open the jar and grabs two forks.
There in their kitchen, in their home in Jackson, at 1:35 in the morning, they eat cinnamon apples straight out of the jar.