Archive of Our Own

Given exactly how many crises they’ve gone through since finding Ellie, something as pedestrian as her breaking her arm is almost a relief. He’s been here before. He’s done this. He knows exactly how to handle this. 

It doesn’t make it any easier to see his baby in pain, but at least this is something her sister prepared him for. 

(More than once, in fact, given how much she liked to scamper.) 

“Hey, baby,” he says, heart aching at how catching sight of him makes Ellie’s face crumple, like she’s been putting on a tough girl face this whole time and only now can let her guard down. 

“Daddy,” she whimpers, and he knows it’s only the way she’s holding an icepack on her arm that’s preventing her from reaching to get picked up. 

“What’d you go and do this for, huh?” He teases softly, kneeling next to her small waiting chair and pressing a kiss to her head before gently pulling at the ice pack. “Easy, baby, let me take a look,” he coaxes when she resists, clearly afraid of the pain. It takes a moment of struggle, but he finally gets it away from her, hissing through his teeth in sympathy when he sees how swollen her little arm is already. 

“It hurts,” Ellie says tremulously, like looking at it has reminded her. 

“I know, baby,” he says, carefully putting the icepack back in place. “We-” 

He jumps when the door slams open behind him, but the waft of air created by the movement carries the faint scent of familiar perfume to him, so he knows it’s Tess in an instant. He doesn’t bother turning around as he settles the icepack back in place, even as Ellie lets out a wavering, plaintive “mama.” 

“Hey, bug,” Tess says, sinking down on her other side and bracing Ellie’s little face between her hands. “What’d you do, huh?” It’s clearly just loving fussing, but Ellie takes it seriously. 

“I wanted-” She stops and sniffles. “I wanted to jump really high like the big kids, but they said I’m too-” Another sniffle. “Too little. So I went even higher on the playground and jumped off to show how good I am at jumps, but they didn’t let me play where they were playing and-” Two sniffles. “And I hit the ground, and it hurted really bad.” The last two words come out tremulously, and Tess leans forward, kissing her hair. 

“We’ll get you fixed up, bug, don’t worry.” 

Ms. Monica comes through the doors to the waiting area then, and they can see her steel herself, clearly prepared to deal with deeply unhappy parents. 

“Hi,” she says, “thank you both for coming so quickly. We would have taken her to the clinic ourselves, but they always do better with mom and dad along. I’m so sorry this happened. We had two kids knock down a beehive, so our minders were busy dealing with that when…” She rails off with a gesture towards Ellie. She looks frazzled, overwhelmed, and truly sorry that this has happened, which goes a long way towards making him less immediately willing to rake her across the coals about it. He still doesn’t know that he’s cool enough to speak yet, though. 

Luckily he has a partner for that. 

“Thank you, Monica,” Tess says, standing. He follows her lead and stands as well, picking Ellie up carefully so he won’t jostle her arm. She sniffles again and tucks her damp face against his neck, the cool of her icepack radiating through his shirt. 

He doesn’t bother staying for any other niceties. 

Tess can take care of those. 

*

Ellie–initially interested at the idea of getting her bones scanned at the clinic after an initial exam–balks at the idea of them leaving her to do it, no matter how much they reassure her that it’ll be quick. She turns big, teary eyes to him, and he’s ready to risk as much radiation as he needs to stay with her when Tess speaks up. 

“What if you had your dino?” She asks, tucking a strand of hair behind Ellie’s ear. “I bet your dino would be a good x-ray buddy.” 

Ellie looks to Dr. Garcia, big eyes watery. 

“Can my t-rex stay with me?” She asks to confirm, and the doctor gives her a kind smile and a nod. 

“Yes, I believe your t-rex will be just fine.” 

*

Joel is deployed for t-rex retrieval after a kiss to Ellie’s head, and she scoops her kid up to sit on her lap, leaning back with Ellie’s head on her bicep. She’s calmed since they first got her, which means she can actually investigate now. Ellie’s a little reckless, but she usually has at least a little bit of sense about her limits. 

“Why’d you jump from so high, bug?” She asks, stroking light fingers over her hair, tracing the strands of her braids. 

“I wanted to do it without Mr. Randall’s help,” Ellie says, sniffling, and she frowns. 

She knows this Randall man, a newer resident in Jackson, just recently allowed in. 

And she doesn’t trust him nearly as far as she could get Joel to throw him. 

She doesn’t even have words for it, just the instinct of ten years in an apocalypse and a lifetime of being a woman before that. He’s been perfectly friendly, perfectly polite, perfectly cheerful, but each time she has a talk with him, he makes her fucking skin crawl. 

She would think it was her own personal hangup if it weren’t for Maria saying she felt the same way when she brought it up later over wine night. Maria even voted no during the vote to allow him in, along with more than a few of the women who had been present at the meeting. It hadn’t been a full council–just an impromptu meeting called outside of the walls before bringing Randall anywhere close–but the “yes”es had snuck by by the slimmest margin. 

And she’s had her eye on the man ever since. 

“Why would Mr. Randall help you with jumping, bug?” She asks, stroking over her daughter’s hair to help keep herself calm. Her instinct is to leave here as soon as Joel gets back and put a bullet between Randall’s eyes for even talking to her kid. 

Unfortunately, though, she thinks that might not look good to the neighbors. 

“Mr. Randall saw me playing hopscotch with Jesse and Dina at school through the fence and said I’m a really good jumper,” she says this with no small amount of pride, and despite her rage, she smiles faintly for Ellie’s benefit, making her puff up a bit. “He said he was always a good jumper when he was my age, and he could teach me if I went to his house.” 

She feels her smile go stiff, a mask for Ellie’s benefit. 

“Why his house, bug?” She asks, hearing herself as if through a tunnel, almost out of her body with how insistently her heart is beating “kill him, kill him, kill him,” a mother’s instincts roused to fury in the blink of an eye. 

“‘Cause he said it could be a surprise for you and daddy,” Ellie says, her girl who always wants to make them proud, always wants to surprise them. 

Her girl who–thank God–has never had a reason to wonder exactly what a man like Randall could be after in such an offer. 

“He told me not to tell you and daddy,” Ellie says, and she sounds less sure about this, thank God. “But daddy likes watching my jumps.” 

It’s deeply confusing, emotionally, the rage and love swirling in her, the way her hands want to flex like a cat’s claws against the urge to break a skull apart and the way she wants to pinch her kid’s cheek because her entire issue with a predator’s trap was disappointing her daddy by not demonstrating her jumping, something he only watches in the first place after repeated calls of “Daddy, watch! Daddy, watch me!” She leans forward to kiss Ellie’s head again to buy herself time to get her act together, calming herself incrementally by inhaling the scent of shampoo and Ellie’s own smell. It doesn’t soothe her like a balm the way it usually does, though, not this time. 

Not when someone wanted to hurt her kid. 

“My arm still hurts,” Ellie confesses like it’s a weakness. 

“I know, bug,” and she marvels more than a bit about how her voice can come out so gentle when she herself is feeling so violent, so ready to rip and destroy. 

So ready to kill. 

*

When he enters the room again, dino in tow, Tess’s expression is so dark that his body reacts at once, muscles tensing, heart beating like a war drum, eyes glancing around for who the fuck is going to die today. 

But all he can see is Dr. Garcia and a nurse named Nancy, both innocently returning to the room with a heavy weighted apron for the x-ray machine. He gives Tess a look to ask what on earth has her making that face, but after a brief moment of what looks like indecision, her expression clears, and she shakes her head. He tilts his head, trying to press, but she glances briefly to Ellie in a clear signal that there are larger concerns to take care of right now. 

His daughter sniffling and reaching one plaintive hand for her dinosaur refocuses him pretty quickly. 

“Here, baby,” he says, handing over the toy, which is quickly tucked under her good arm. 

“Alright Miss Ellie,” Nancy says, holding up the apron. “We’re gonna wander on over to that room over there,” she jerks her head in indication, “and you’re gonna wear this snazzy outfit so we can get a picture of your bones. Sound like a plan?” 

Ellie looks to them, clearly unsure, wanting reassurance that this is the right course of action. He reaches to smooth her hair back at the same time as Tess, and their hands bump, making Ellie smile slightly. 

“It’ll be alright, bug,” Tess says. “And it’ll be cool after. You’ll get to see what your bones look like.” 

This seems to decide Ellie, and she consents to the plan, though she insists on him carrying her. He sets her down on the bed that looks far too big for such a little thing, and she looks to him and Tess to check that it’s all alright as the nurse directs her on how to lay. Ellie makes a soft sound of pain and alarm when her arm is pulled to the side, and he steps forward, cupping the top of her head in his palm. 

“It’s alright, baby. They just gotta get a picture, so they need it away from you a bit.” 

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Nancy says, “did that hurt?” 

“Yeah,” Ellie says, looking to them like she isn’t sure she should confess. He nods at her in support and Tess smiles, grabbing her uninjured arm and squeezing gently, which seems to settle her. 

“Tell you what,” Dr. Garcia says from the doorway. “Let’s get you something to help with the pain and then we can keep going, alright?” She turns to them. “Can she swallow pills yet?” 

He exchanges a look with Tess, but she doesn’t seem to have any clearer of an idea. They’ve never had a reason to give Ellie pills. He tries to remember when Sarah was old enough to know how, but it’s the sort of thing that’s gone fuzzy around the edges from time. 

“Oh,” Nancy says, reaching to grab Dr. Garcia’s arm, “I actually think we just got some injectables.” 

Ellie wrinkles her nose when she puts together that this will mean a shot, but he turns her little head in towards him, and she just makes a small noise of surprise when the needle goes in. To her credit, Nancy is quick and seems fairly gentle about it, capping the needle and pressing a cotton ball to the pinprick deftly, stepping away when Tess reaches to hold it in place. 

“You alright?” He asks Ellie, and she nods, face still pressed to him, and for the few minutes they wait for the medication to take effect, it seems like she is. 

And then her breath starts sounding wheezy. 

With Dr. Garcia and Nancy across the room scribbling in charts and his hearing damaged, Tess is the one who hears it first, and he doesn’t understand why she pulls Ellie back so sharply until he sees Ellie reaching for her throat and sees the strain in the movement of her chest as she clearly struggles to draw breath. At once, he’s on one knee beside the cot, bracing her face in one hand, heart hammering. 

“Talk to me, baby, what’s wrong?” He asks urgently, but all Ellie can manage is a few pained, struggled breaths, her little hand wrapping around his wrist and squeezing hard in her panic. 

In the next moment, the doctor and nurse are there, and he grits his teeth as he’s shouldered aside in their haste, Ellie letting out an airy squeak when he leaves. At once, he rounds the bed to be on her other side, her wide, panicked eyes moving to him at once as Dr. Garcia presses a stethoscope to her chest. Her lips are turning blue, and he can hear his pulse roaring in his ears, drowning out anything that’s being said around him. He only distantly registers when Tess is moved from behind Ellie, and this time she doesn’t even have the air to make a sound of protest. 

He doesn’t keep up with what the fuck is happening until Nancy has what he registers as an epi-pen in hand, one of the ones he knows gets locked up as the precious resource they are whenever they’re brought back by a patrol who comes across them. He doesn’t know if they’re meant to last 10 years. 

In the moment, though, he doesn’t think they have another choice. 

His instinct is to knock the doctor to the ground when she moves to hold Ellie down, and it’s only Tess at his side tugging him back that lets common sense take hold. Ellie doesn’t have the breath to cry out when the epi-pen is jammed against her thigh, but she jerks reflexively, making it very clear why the doctor held her down. 

Still, he’s glad when she finally lets the fuck go. 

*

Her plans for Randall get wildly sidetracked by the reaction, and anything beyond the sound of her daughter gasping for breath is pretty fucking unimportant. 

“It’s okay, bug,” she coaches, even as Ellie cries and chokes, her breathing easing, but only in slow increments. She can feel herself shaking, and she forces her voice to come out even. “You’re gonna be fine.” 

“-just breathe, baby, it’s gonna be okay. C’mon now, baby, breathe,” Joel says at her side, and she knows they have to be overwhelming Ellie with so much noise. 

In the moment, though, she doesn’t have enough sense left in her to stop. 

“What the hell just happened?” She snaps at Dr. Garcia, even knowing she shouldn’t. Logically, rationally, she knows the doctor didn’t do anything to hurt Ellie. 

But in the moment, her child is shaking and crying, her breath still coming in painful-sounding gasps. 

“It would appear she has some allergies we’ll need to note in her chart,” Dr. Garcia says tersely, slipping an oximeter on Ellie’s tiny finger, the smallest one she’s ever seen, which just makes her feel even more horribly protective. 

Ellie reaches out plaintive hands, and she heeds her at once, climbing onto the bed and scooping her up. Whatever needs to be done can be done around her. 

And with Joel at her side to enforce that, she knows it will be. 

*

He knows he’s not the only one who holds his breath when they have round 2 of pain management, and even Ellie seems nervous, cuddled up against Tess. He saw Nancy pocket a vial and syringe, clearly to be easily ready to use if needed, and he doesn’t comment, just strokes over Ellie’s sweaty hair. They use a pill this time, and he and Tess watch like hawks as they cut the tablet to a proper dose and then liquify it in some water, holding up the little cup to Ellie. She turns her face away at first, and it’s only Tess whispering quietly in her ear that gets her to accept it. 

“Is it gonna make my breath go away?” Ellie asks, wary, and Dr. Garcia smiles reassuringly. 

“No, sweetheart, this one will be okay,” she says, even though the other adults in the room know it might be a lie. 

This one blessedly ends up being safe, and Ellie droops in slow increments, her muscles going looser and her blinks getting longer. Dr. Garcia keeps an eye on her oxygen readings, but they remain steady. He bites back the urge to ask about putting her on oxygen, knowing damn well that they don’t have any right now. They can only count themselves lucky that they had epi-pens in stock, and he makes a mental note to focus more on finding them in the future. There has to be at least a few FEDRA caravans they can plan a raid on. 

When Ellie’s gone loose and easy, they get her set up for an x-ray, her dinosaur still tucked close. She doesn’t struggle, but he still scoops her up as soon as he can, rocking her in a bouncing sway as they wait for Dr. Garcia to give a diagnosis. 

“Greenstick fracture,” she finally says, and he can feel himself relax slightly. He knows those. He’d still prefer his child with all of her bones intact ideally, but at least it isn’t something complicated enough to require a surgery Jackson might not be able to perform. 

“Wan go home,” Ellie says quietly, eyes closed, and he leans his head enough to kiss her hair. 

“We’ll go home soon, baby,” he tells her, though he’s not quite sure that’s true. Sarah had never had any allergic reactions–though they’d done her peanut allergy testing in the parking lot of the hospital because he’d been so wound up at the possibility–but he thinks it would require some degree of observation. 

“Alright, Miss Ellie Bean,” Nancy says. “Let’s get that arm wrapped up.” 

“‘M not a bean,” Ellie mumbles against his collarbone, face still turned in against him. 

*

She considers telling Joel about Randall as they wait in the clinic for a few more hours of observation after Ellie’s little arm has been wrapped up in a plaster cast. It’s the easiest course of action, after all. She’d just need to say “The fucker tried to get Ellie to go to his house alone,” and the sick fuck would be dead within the next twenty minutes. Joel might choose to play with him, string it out and really make him pay for his choices, or he might decide to do it quickly and have it over with. Given how fragile Ellie still looks, it would likely be the latter. 

It’s stunning, watching Joel squished onto a tiny hospital cot to let their kid sprawl over his chest while knowing exactly the kind of atrocities he’s capable of. 

Ellie still being fragile-looking ends up being to her advantage here. As much as he teases her about having laser vision, he’s good at reading her, too. If he had the focus for it, there’s no way he’d miss that something’s up, no way he wouldn’t have it out of her already. 

In the moment, though, he’s far too busy tracking every last inhale and exhale Ellie makes. 

*

She aches to tell Joel once they’ve gotten the all-clear to take Ellie home. For one thing, it’s long habit to give him any information she has immediately. It’s how they’ve survived this long. Their pasts have been their own, but their present has always been a shared struggle, a joint project of survival that demands honesty. 

For another, she’s always found satisfaction and security in watching Joel destroy their enemies. 

But destruction, she knows, isn’t what they need here, not the way her partner does it, no matter how gratifying it’s always been to watch. Joel is brutal and efficient, and he knows how to make a kill count. When the need arises–as it has now–he knows how to make it last, how to draw out every last moment of pain before he strikes the final blow. She knows there are people–Maria, for one–who would see this ability and think it makes him evil, dangerous, untrustworthy, who would have watched him stretch the death of a man who tried to assault her in an ally for five hours and thought it was just excuse for an outlet for a darker nature. But she knows Joel Miller in a way they don’t. 

It’s hard to fear his violence when she knows it only happens because he loves so deeply. 

Even without the words for it, she knows the way he’s defended her with brutality has only one source. In another man, it might be about possession or control, keeping her in line with the implicit threat that she could be next if she doesn’t keep him happy. 

But she knows that she could have walked away–could walk away now– and Joel would let her go without even a slight threat of violence towards her. 

Even seeing him at his darkest, she’s never even thought to fear him, never seen him destroy an enemy and felt a fearful flicker of “What if he turns on me next?” The thought is too absurd to entertain. She knows there’s been plenty of jokes over the years about her and her guard dog, bitterness couched as humor as she gets reminders that all dogs bite when they’re pushed too far, even if it’s the hand that feeds them, and if he were another man, perhaps she would have heeded the warnings. 

But Joel Miller isn’t just another man. 

He’s her man. 

Still, even knowing that she and Ellie are never safer than when in Joel’s company, she knows she can’t tell him about this, not until it’s over with. Joel’s violence is only ever for them, but even if she can trust that it will never be turned on her and Ellie, she can’t trust that he can be subtle enough with it to not get caught by other people. It was never a problem in the QZ: it was better for other people to know exactly what Joel could do to them. In Jackson, though, there’s too many people who wouldn’t understand, who might suspect him of a general sort of brutality that would make him a threat to the community. Joel’s a machine when it comes to taking care of their enemies, but he’s never quite mustered the subtlety to do without making it clear exactly who handled the problem. He’s usually too eager to get rid of the threat. 

“Hey.” 

She looks up, jumping slightly, at Joel’s voice from the doorway. He frowns and comes closer, crowding her against the kitchen counter and resting a hand lightly at her waist. 

“What’s up with you?” He asks softly, frowning, reaching up to brush her hair back. 

“Nothing’s up,” she says, but she can tell he sees right through her. Her poker face has little use against someone who can peek right under the mask, who’s spent years at her side in a world in which almost all social niceties have been stripped away. 

“Don’t lie to me,” he chides gently, but there’s no heat to it. She can’t help but smile slightly at the contradiction of this man, who once beat a man half to death for spitting on her face during a deal but who has a seemingly boundless grace for her and for their child. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling him into a kiss to add to the apology. She adds a thread of heat to it in a half-hearted attempt at distracting him, but he rests his hands at her hips and squeezes, tugging back from her. 

“What’s going on?” He asks, still patient, but she can hear the worry beneath it. Not the worry that she’s secretly mad at him–they’ve been together long enough for him to know she airs her grievances rather directly when he pisses her off–but the worry that she’s handling things on her own instead of letting him take care of them. He’s a protector, Joel Miller, and he gets frustrated when he isn’t allowed to prove it. 

Still, this is one of the times she needs to be the one to get her hands dirty, to take out a threat before he does. 

“How is she?” She asks in a weak distraction, looking up to the ceiling to indicate Ellie in her room above. 

“Fine,” Joel says, and she can hear the first hint of frustration in his voice. “Which means you can tell me whatever it is you’re worrying about.” 

She smiles, unable to help it, and presses her lips to his in a more chaste kiss before she lifts her arms to rest them on his shoulders, one hand moving to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“I’m gonna take care of it-”

“Tess,” he tries to interrupt, but she continues. 

“-and when it’s over, I’ll tell you all about it. I just need you to let me handle it until then.” 

He won’t like this, she knows. He hates her keeping things from him, hates any danger he doesn’t see coming, hates her not letting him step in and fix things. 

But he also trusts her enough to let her do it anyway. 

“Are we in danger?” He still asks, and she knows he can’t help it, twitchy about knowing there’s something going on but not what. She shakes her head, and she feels his shoulders lose some of their tension. “Are you in danger?” 

She smiles. She can’t help it. He sounds so serious, so ready to go on the warpath for her, so willing and eager to get rid of a threat. 

“I’m safe. Ellie’s safe.” She says, knowing these are his central points of concern. They’re true, after all. Ellie told her before anything happened, never even suspected that she wasn’t safe. “There’s just something I have to take care of.” 

“Something?” He asks, clearly not pleased at the vagueness. “Or some one?” 

“I’ll tell you later,” she says, resting her fingers over his lips lightly when he inhales to argue further. “I promise. I’ll tell you everything. I just need you to let me handle it first.” 

He’s not happy with her. She knows this. 

But all he does is kiss her fingertips and nod in acceptance. 

*

Maria looks surprised for a moment when she opens the door, but she invites her in easily enough. 

“Heard Ellie got hurt today,” she says in greeting as Tess moves past her. “She doing alright?” 

“Tommy home?” She asks instead of answering, and Maria frowns slightly but shakes her head. 

“That one mare kicked down the fencing again. He had to go help corral the horses and fix the fence back up.” 

She nods, still looking around once, and then she takes a deep breath, turning to look Maria directly in the eye. 

“Randall needs to die.” 

To her credit, Maria takes the surprise well. 

“I don’t disagree, but is there something in particular that’s brought you over to tell me that?” 

“He tried to get Ellie to go to his house alone.” She can hear the rage in her own voice. “And I’m going to do something about that.” 

She feels something settle in her at the clear rage she can see in Maria’s eyes. 

“I see.” 

“You gonna be willing to kill someone in cold blood with me, Ms. Lawyer?” She asks Maria pointblank. If there’s going to be any pussyfooting about this, she wants to know now so she can ditch her before it becomes an issue. She can trust that Maria won’t tell on her, but that doesn’t mean that she’s going to be willing to kill with her. Maria’s not a shrinking violet when it comes to violence, but she’s big on Jackson’s laws and doing things by the book. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t something Tess is willing to leave up to a vote from people who aren’t living with the fact that a predator tried to lure their kid into a trap. 

“I never wanted him here in the first place,” Maria says, and there’s something reassuringly cold in her voice. She still gives Tess a look. “This is a one-time exception. This is not how we handle things around here.” 

She gives her a little salute and moves to the door, satisfied with the answer. 

She doesn’t need this to be the way they handle things, after all. 

She just needs it to be the way they handle it this time. 

*

Randall’s almost amusingly surprised and then alarmed when he sees that it’s her at his door. She gives him her best shark-toothed smile and doesn’t wait for an invitation before shoving her way inside, Maria close at her heels. 

“Hi,” she says, sharp as the blade she pulls out to press below his Adam’s apple, bobbing as he swallows his panic. “We just had a few questions for you.” 

*

They take a lovely little walk, the three of them, all the way to an abandoned house on the edge of town, well out of earshot of anyone who might come looking to see what’s going on. She certainly wouldn’t want any interruptions. She’s no Joel or Tommy when it comes to the art of wielding a knife to get the information she wants, but she’s certainly no lightweight in the torture department. 

You don’t become one of Boston’s most feared smugglers by being afraid to get some blood under your nails, after all. 

“Who else,” she asks, very softly, very calmly, “did you try to invite to your house?” 

Randall lets out a wet-sounding sob, the cry congested by his smashed nose, a gift from Maria. It’s messier than she’d prefer so early on, but she can respect the way it sends a message: We don’t give a fuck how you make it through this. 

“N-no one,” he pants, shaking still, though whether it’s from terror or from exposure to electricity is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s a little bit of both. “I just-” He breaks off with a cry of pain, and she looks down to find Maria doing some very interesting thing with pliers. She makes a mental note to remember that later. It could come in handy. 

“Names,” Maria says, voice firm and commanding in the way Tess imagines it must have been during her lawyer days. “You tell us now, and this stops.” 

“I-I didn’t-” He whimpers. 

Maria clamps the pliers a little harder, making him howl like the wounded thing he is. 

“You keep jerking us around,” Tess tells him, “and we’ll make all of this seem like a lovebite.” 

“W-wanted the Kelly girl in the-the green house,” he all but whimpers. “And the little one two-” He snorts back snot with a disgusting noise. “Two doors down. The one-the one who wears a red headband all the time.” 

Without a word, she flicks her knife back into her hand and slides it slowly up the expanse of his arm, making him howl before she stuffs an old rag into his mouth until he stops. 

“And did you ever do anything to them?” Maria asks, voice as sharp and deadly as the blade Tess is using on him. 

“N-no!” He cries once she’s taken the gag out. “I swear. I just-I just wanted-I was just looking. I swear to God-I swear to Christ. I was just looking. That’s all.” 

“Just looking,” she repeats with a snarl as she flicks her blade to peel back skin as easily as she peels apples for Ellie. “Except for inviting my daughter over to your house.” She digs her blade in deeper. “And telling her not to tell her parents.” 

“I wa-I wasn’t,” he sobs out. “I just wanted to-to look at her. That’s all.” 

It’s only Maria resting a hand on her arm briefly that keeps her from slashing his fucking throat open. There’s a message in her look that says calm down, and she heeds it. 

They have more information to gather, after all. 

*

In the end, when they’re sure they’ve gotten all they can of him and Randall is a quivering mess on the floor, broken and bloody and weak, she debates with herself about exactly how to kill him. They’ve done a good job in carving him up about as well as anyone could, but it’s not enough for her, not yet. She doesn’t believe in heaven or hell anymore, not really, not beyond vague notions of hoping Charlie and Sarah ended up somewhere good. 

Which means if there’s any punishment to be dealt, it’ll have to be on this plane of existence.

She deliberately steps on one of Randall’s badly broken legs when Maria gestures for her to follow, taking more than a little satisfaction in the muffled wail of pain. 

It’s an effort not to go back and try taking up river dancing with such compelling inspiration.  

“Anything else you wanna know?” Maria asks when they’re just out of earshot, and she looks back to Randall, considering. She knows why Maria is asking after all.

Randall’s lifespan stretches until the exact moment they’ve learned all they can from him. 

*

In the end, they flip a coin. She thinks she should get the killing blow here, but Maria reasons that she’s a councilwoman. Executing a threat to the community should technically fall to her. 

Randall, in a quivering, whimpering mess on the floor, doesn’t offer a comment, though he squeals like a stuck pig when she inhibits his desperate attempt at crawling away with a sledgehammer. He trembles, white as parchment on what shows of his skin beneath the blood. 

“Heads,” she claims when Maria pulls out a coin. “And where the hell’d you get that anyway?” 

Maria shrugs, looking ever so slightly embarrassed. 

“Lucky penny from my grandmother,” she says, tossing it in the air and catching it in her palm, slapping it down on the back of her other hand. “Promised I’d always keep it on me.” 

“So sweet,” Tess coos teasingly, and Maria kicks her ankle lightly before she pulls her hand back. 

Heads. 

She smiles at Randall. 

“Oh, God,” he manages to moan through his bloody teeth. 

*

Joel moves to rise at once when he hears the door open, but Ellie–sprawled on his chest–makes a fussy noise, and he settles back down, stroking his fingertips lightly across the fragile column of her spine until she settles again. She’d been hard to get down after she woke and found Tess gone, and it had only been promising to hold her while she slept that had finally gotten her to settle. He’s loathe to displace her now, but even by straining his ears to hear Tess’s familiar tread on the stairs, he’s not reassured, too wound up still by her mystery disappearance. 

He frowns when he hears her go into their room instead of checking on Ellie, and he frowns deeper when he hears the shower start. Shifting to rise again makes Ellie stir once more, and he has to pause to soothe her back down, wrapping her up in a blanket to swaddle her to hopefully help her stay asleep. When he’s sure she’s out, he rises carefully, still holding her. She’s little enough still to hold like a baby, and he readjusts her until it’ll be comfortable for both of them, rocking her slightly until she settles once more before he starts walking, nudging her door open with his toes. 

He makes his way to their room, reassured that it at least doesn’t look like Tess was in a rush. A glance down the stairs reveals her shoes neatly stacked by Ellie’s at the door and her keys hanging next to his on their hooks, so it doesn’t appear like she entered in a rush or heavily injured. The door to the bathroom is cracked open, and he doesn’t bother to knock before he enters. They’ve known each other too long to be embarrassed about nakedness after all, and a cracked door is generally an invitation anyway. He won’t be taking her up on it–wound up with worry and still holding their child besides–but he can at least trust it won’t get him a bar of soap to the face. 

She’s facing away from the door when he enters, rinsing out her hair. 

He doesn’t miss the faint tinge of pink from the water as it falls from the water-darkened strands. 

He scans her body, every familiar line of it, without a trace of his usual appreciation, focused sharply in the moment. He’s eased, a bit, by nothing worse than a bruise on her hip where she ran into a table at the dining hall the other day and the scars he’s traced with fingers and lips, including the ones he’s patched up himself. She turns when he’s scanning down the muscled curve of her legs for the third time, and he cringes in apology when she startles at him standing there in silence, arm flying back enough to elbow the wall of the shower. 

“Sorry,” he says in a low voice as she leans forward, bracing her elbow with her other hand. 

“Jesus fuck,” she hisses out, looking up at him through her wet hair where it’s fallen over her face with the movement. “I don’t mind you playing peeping tom, but a heads up is appreciated.” 

He lifts Ellie slightly in silent censure, and she rolls her eyes but goes back to rinsing out her hair, facing him now. 

This lets him trace the front of her, and he studies every inch of skin, feeling his shattered nerves settle with each unmarked stretch of flesh, pale beneath where her clothes usually lie and tanned and freckled on her arms. 

“What happened?” He asks when she’s moved on from her hair, scrubbing a washcloth over herself briskly. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she says easily, and he feels his temper flare slightly at the dismissal. 

“Tess-” 

She shuts the water off and reaches for a towel, rubbing it through her hair in a business-like manner before moving to wrap it around herself, stepping around him. He tries to grab her arm to stop her, but with his hands occupied with Ellie, she evades him easily. He trails her back to the bedroom and sits on the bed, watching her redress and knowing she’s deliberately ignoring him. 

It’s rare these days, these battles of silent will. Still, for all of her many skills, silence has always been something he’s better at than her, his silver-tongued partner who could talk the moon out of the sky. 

Sure enough, he feels a swell of satisfaction when she exhales an annoyed sigh and turns back after wrestling herself into a sports bra, yanking on a tanktop and then shrugging into an overshirt, buttoning it up with nimble fingers. 

“I’ll tell you-” She starts, but his patience with this secrecy is about at its end. 

“Soon,” he finishes for her, and he can hear the irritation in his voice. The volume makes Ellie stir, and she lifts her head, blinking blearily. It takes her several moments of looking around in hazy consternation before it all seems to register, and she yawns before she reaches out, wincing slightly. 

“Mama,” she calls plaintively, and he sees Tess look to the door, slightly stricken, before she moves forward to pick Ellie up, their kid pulling her still half-opened shirt open wider and then nuzzling against the exposed section of her shoulder before exhaling heavily, nearly drooping with the reassurance of warm skin against hers. Tess massages gently at the base of her neck until Ellie’s out again, and then she crosses to him, clearly to hand Ellie back. 

He crosses his arms and leans back. 

She tsks at him, and he returns her look evenly. 

“The story,” he says calmly. “Now.” 

“Joel-” She starts in a tone that says she won’t be giving him what he wants, and his attempt at rising to pace in frustration is ruined when she moves to straddle his lap, his hands coming up automatically to brace her hips. He gives her an unimpressed look at the entrapment–inescapable with Ellie in her arms–and he evades the kiss she tries to give him, irritated. She exhales a breath that makes Ellie’s baby hairs flutter where they’ve escaped her braids. “I swear to God, Joel. I have one last thing to do, and then I’ll tell you everything.” 

“And you can’t tell me now because…?” He trails off, unwilling to be placated. 

They rarely fight–something he knows pleases Ellie, so averse to conflict in their home–but he’s worried and frustrated and still riding the aftereffects of their kid almost dying on them. 

He’s not really in a “keeping secrets from each other” kind of mood. 

“I need you to trust me,” she says softly, and despite himself, her earnestness makes him look up. 

“I do,” he says, unable to help it when looking into her eyes, wanting to his bones to give her what she wants (as ever). “But you’re making it hard right now.” 

Tess smiles faintly at this, but it’s not a mocking sort of thing. 

It looks charmed, if anything. 

“I know,” she says softly, and she lowers Ellie’s legs enough to get a hand free, reaching out to smooth gently over the scar at his temple and then moving to sink her fingers through his hair. “But I need you to do it anyway, alright?” 

He wants to refuse, wants to argue, wants to demand that she tell him right now. They don’t keep secrets, not since the start. 

He doesn’t know why in the hell she wants to start now. 

“Hey,” Tess says, sliding her fingers down to cup the back of his neck, playing with the strands at his nape. “I swear,” she says, ducking her head a little to meet his eyes better. “There’s something I’m handling. It’s fine. The second it’s all over, I’ll tell you all about it.” 

He toys with holding out, with demanding she talk. It makes him twitchy, her not telling him her problems. He wants to fix them for her, wants her to give him a problem and let him go to work. He likes that, likes protecting her, likes helping her, likes knowing he can keep her safe (even when she teases him about being a caveman). 

But more than that, he likes giving her what she wants. 

“Okay,” he says softly. “But the second it’s over, you tell me everything.” 

She smiles faintly, scratching gently at his scalp in a way that makes pleasant goosebumps spread out across his skin. 

When she offers a kiss this time, he accepts it. 

*

It’s almost alarming, how easy it is to get rid of Randall’s body after they reconvene a couple hours later. She’d been a little nervous they’d need to chop it up and feed it to the pigs, but neither she nor Maria were all that keen on eating pigs that had once eaten people. Even with as many social niceties as the outbreak ended, that one still feels pretty strong. Dissolving the body is another option, but that would require a great deal of chemicals, all of which are closely tracked because they’re important to the community. They dismiss burying without even needing to discuss it. For one thing, he doesn’t deserve the dignity of it. 

For another, neither of them can tag their respective Miller in to do the manual labor required. 

In the end, they wrap him up in a tarp, and between the two of them, they manage to haul it onto the back of a horse. When it’s on, she studies it with an uneasy eye, but Maria seems unconcerned, pulling the horse into motion. The horse is the one Maria usually rides, an even-tempered gelding named Horatio, and he doesn’t seem bothered by the corpse on his back, even if he can smell it to judge from the way he sniffed at it suspiciously at first. 

“You sure this is going to work?” She asks Maria after she jogs a couple steps to walk abreast. “Because from where I’m standing, this is going to look a lot like we’re getting rid of a body.” 

“I’m sure,” Maria says, and at a look from Tess, she explains. “Kelly’s mom was one of the no votes. She already didn’t like the fucker, and I told her to check with Kelly after we found out the bastard was interested in her.” 

“Did he do something to her?” She asks sharply, angry all over again. It’s multi-tiered, this anger, she only really realizes now. The largest piece of it is mother-rage for the sake of her own child, the knowledge that someone tried to target her, the realization that if Ellie hadn’t broken her arm and had a reason to confess, this could have all ended very differently. 

The other part of it is a woman that’s lived in a world with predators in it for her entire life, who’s so goddamn sick of it, sick of a world in which it’s still not just monsters turned evil by fungus that her daughter will have to grow up to fear, that even in the safety of Jackson, there are men who prey on children, who take the chance of a community and use it as a hunting ground. 

“No,” Maria says, refocusing her. “She asked, and Kelly said she thought he was creepy and avoided him.” This makes sense, she supposes. Kelly–a few years older than Ellie–has grown up in Jackson, so she knows better than Ellie exactly how adults usually act towards children. It’s all she’s ever known, after all. 

Not like her little girl who’s had to be coaxed into trusting, into not expecting adults to hurt her, into accepting their reassurances that she’s safe here and can expect the grown-ups around her to be safe, too. 

Who almost had that fragile, fledgling trust smashed. 

“I’m glad she’s alright,” Tess says, only barely restraining her rage. She wishes she could kill the fucker all over again. 

She nearly wishes she’d had the pleasure of watching Joel go to work. 

“She is,” Maria says, like she’s reassuring her. “But she’s not too pleased about him progressing to trying to invite little girls into his house.” Neither is she. 

“Which has what to do with what we’re doing now?” She asks instead of going down that rabbit hole after they've already fixed it. 

“She and a friend are on the gate right now,” Maria says. 

Ah, now Tess gets it. 

“So they’re just gonna let us out?” She still asks, just to be clear. “No questions?” 

Maria gives her a sharp sort of satisfied look that says yes, and she thinks, nonsensically, of a nature documentary she watched with Ellie back in the compound, about the way lionesses in a pride close ranks to protect the cubs, how they work together to defend their babies as a group. 

*

Exchanging a knowing look with the two women on the gate who let them through without question, she can admire the wisdom of it. 

*

Joel’s still wide awake when Tess gets back, and he flicks the light on in the living room so he won’t startle her again. He listens to the sounds of her sitting down to take off her boots and hang her keys up, hears the same slightly groaning sigh she always makes when she stretches out her back, something he usually teases her for, partially to push her into proving just how limber she still is when she feels like it. 

Tonight, though, he doesn’t remotely have that sort of levity in him. 

She swings around the corner with a hand on the wall in a way Ellie’s started copying. He scans her quickly, a brief up and down, and he looks back up to her face to find her smiling. 

“Am I allowed to know what in the hell you’ve been up to now?” He asks evenly, fiddling with his tumbler of whiskey without picking it up. He’s only taken a couple of sips of it, and it’s gotten watered down. 

“Ellie doing alright?” She asks instead of answering, moving to him with her usual grace, squeezing herself onto the edge of the loveseat and propping her legs over his. She turns to steal his drink, and he lets her, waiting patiently as she takes a sip and wrinkles her nose slightly at how weak it’s gotten before she takes another, longer draught. She presses the glass to his lips in an offer, and he pulls his head back, turning away. She shrugs and downs the rest of it, turning again to set the glass down. 

“Well?” He prompts, squeezing her side. “I get to know your super secret mission now?” 

She inhales and then exhales through pursed lips, dropping her head back briefly before rolling it to the side to look at him. 

“No chance I get to put this off until morning?” 

“Given that I’ve been waiting up in this damn chair for you to get back, no,” he says, voice just a little heated at not knowing where she was all night. 

She leans forward and kisses his cheek in what feels like apology, threading her fingers through his hair and tugging gently. 

“First of all,” she says, “no yelling until I get done-” 

*

She gets displaced from Joel’s lap about five minutes into the retelling of the whole story, her partner rising to pace, agitated. She watches him, sitting criss-cross applesauce in the chair and letting him get some steam out. 

To his credit, he’s mindful of his volume even while pissed. 

“-not telling me there’s a-a goddamn predator after our kid,” he nearly snarls now, hands clenching for want of something to destroy and settling on a throw pillow, sending it across the house and into the kitchen, moving a chair with the force of it when it connects. 

She raises her eyebrows, slightly impressed. 

He turns to her, hands on his hips in a pose Ellie’s started copying. 

“He’s dead now,” she says calmly. A beat. “Very fucking dead.” 

She sees a muscle in his jaw tick. 

“Would you have been able to be calm enough not to shoot him in the street?” She asks, knowing the answer already. 

She sees the movement as he runs his tongue across his teeth, and she pushes herself to her feet. She half-expects him to move away from her, to refuse the touch, but he stands still as she steps into his personal space and loops her arms lightly around his neck. He doesn’t rest his hands at her hips the way he usually would, but she doesn’t hold it against him. She just presses a little closer. 

“All I want,” she says softly, “is for our family to be safe.” 

“And I can’t keep our family safe?” He asks at once, and she tilts her head slightly. 

“If I’d told you about that fucker, you would have ripped his spine out through his teeth in the street within the next five minutes,” she says knowingly. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, Joel Miller, and there’s no one I trust more than you, but not every problem can be solved with blunt force.” 

“And you can’t trust me to keep a cool enough head to deal with a problem?” He asks, and she can hear that she’s hurt him. She leans in and presses a kiss over his heart before straightening back up. 

“I can trust you to do whatever it takes to keep our family safe. Always. There is no one else I would want as a partner, no one else I would wanna raise a child with. You’re my one and only, and I’m absolutely gonna kick your ass later for making me sound all lovey-dovey and shit.” 

The very faintest flicker of amusement, just around his eyes. 

“But I can protect us, too,” she says, more seriously. 

“I know that,” he says, and now he touches her in return, one large hand pressing against the curve of her lower back, the other cupping her hip, the heat of his palms radiating through her shirt. “I know you’re not-not helpless, but I want you to talk to me. I wanna know what we need to worry about.”

“I took care of this one,” she says softly, earnestly, and then she smiles slightly. “You can get the next one.” 

“Tess.” The tone of his voice says he’s still not in a “joking about this” place. 

“I promise-” She starts, but a soft noise stops her, and she turns to the sound, blinking, trying to work out what in the hell it was. 

When she looks back to Joel, he gives her a slightly chagrined look and steps away, picking up what she recognizes as a baby monitor. Another soft noise, and she realizes he was listening out for Ellie. 

“Borrowed it from the Turners,” he says. “Just in case.” 

He’s clearly a little embarrassed about it, this usual level of overprotectiveness. 

For her own part, it just makes her love him even more. 

She crowds him back into the chair, shoving him lightly to make him sit before she straddles his lap, knees to either side of his legs. She cups his face lightly and then slides her hands down to either side of his neck, linking her fingers and stroking her thumbs lightly against his jaw. He closes his eyes as if to enjoy it, and she smiles slightly, leaning in to press a kiss between his brows, dragging her nose along his lightly before pulling back. She waits until he opens his eyes again to speak. 

“If I thought we couldn’t handle it-” 

“We?” He interrupts, and she can feel her progress at soothing him slipping away. 

“Maria and me,” she says, readjusting her weight to keep him down when he tries to move her enough to rise. “Hey,” she says, cupping his jaw in hand and pushing his face up. “Maria and I handled it, okay? We had it under control.” 

“Did Tommy get to know?” He asks, and she can see he’s a little bitter about it. 

This, at least, is an easy question to answer. 

“No,” she says, shaking her head and then moving to tuck some hair behind her ear when it falls loose. “Demonstrative protection is a Miller family trait. They’re probably having the same talk as us right now.” 

That appears to mollify him slightly. 

“You and Maria couldn’t just have wine nights like normal women?” 

“Nothing goes better with wine than shared culpability in homicide,” she says dryly. 

“Does that go with a red or a white?” He asks, just as dry. 

She snorts. 

“What, you a sommelier now?” She teases. 

“Tess,” he chides, a signal to get back on topic. 

She nods, accepting it. 

“If I thought we were in danger,” she says slowly, “then I would have told you immediately, alright? The only reason I handled this one is that I knew I could, and that I could protect you, too.” 

He makes a scoffing noise, and she reaches to pinch his bicep in reprimand. 

“Sexy as it is, I don’t think slaughtering our enemies in the street is something the town would approve of.” 

“I could have handled it,” he says. “If you had told me,” he adds pointedly. After a moment, though, he sighs and drops his head forward for a moment before lifting it. “I don’t want us keeping secrets from each other.” 

She smiles just slightly, stroking lightly across his cheek. 

“I would always have told you,” she reassures him. “You’re my person, you know.” She smiles just slightly, imitating his accent in the terrible way that always makes him laugh. “Ain’t no getting outta this one, partner.” 

He pinches her hip, just to make her squirm, but she can see she’s lightened the mood. 

“It’s you and me,” she says. “Just like always. And sometimes,” she says, tilting her head slightly, “that means one of us pulling a little more weight than the other. Just for a bit.” 

“So that’s just how it goes?” He asks. “You get to decide what to do and I only get to know after?” 

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Trust me. You’re still the first person I wanna take all my problems to. Disposing of a body is hard as shit. I much prefer you doing the heavy lifting.” 

“So you kill and I take care of the body?” He asks, but she can tell he isn’t quite as irritated about it as he wants to be. 

“I make the plans, and then I deploy you as my muscle,” she teases. She sobers slightly. “Is this gonna be a thing for us? Something you’re gonna resent me for?” 

He sighs, but he shakes his head. 

“No,” he says, looking tired but genuine. “Do I get to demand you tell me first next time?” 

“You know, muscle man,” she says, holding his shoulders and massaging slightly, “you’re not the only one who gets to protect this family.” 

“I know,” he says. “I get to reach all the cups on the top shelves, too.” 

She snorts, and he smiles, slightly. 

“So,” he asks, and there’s a new quality to his voice, “how’d you do it?” 

Smiling just slightly, she tells him all about it. 

*

By the end of their talk, any frustration with Tess has faded. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like that she felt like she had to handle it on her own. 

But he gets it, even if he doesn’t want to. 

He can also admit she did a more than adequate job of handling the problem. 

He moves behind her now as she brushes her teeth, nosing her hair aside to kiss behind her ear. She smiles around her toothbrush and leans into it, so he trails down her neck, finishing with a tissing nip where it joins her shoulder before pulling away. He hears a distressed noise on the baby monitor in his pocket and goes to Ellie’s room, finding her tangled up in her sheets, her dinosaur already on the floor. He picks it up and straightens her in bed, but even when she’s settled, he can’t step away. 

It’s only her babysoft cheek beneath his fingers that keeps him from making a fist when he thinks about the fucker who wanted to hurt her, the sick bastard who saw his beautiful little girl and wanted-wanted-

He breathes deeply, deliberately, in and out. 

Dead, he reminds himself, the fucker’s dead now. 

It only mitigates the rage partially. 

He sits down, stroking over the silky softness of her hair. She makes a soft noise like a puppy in her sleep, turning into it, and he smiles faintly. He slides his hand down to rest over her chest, reassuring himself with the steady rise and fall, no trace of the labored strain in the clinic. He hears the door open and soon feels Tess at his back, leaning against him, chin resting on his head. 

“She doing alright?” She asks softly. 

“Doing just fine,” he says. 

Tess hums and slips down slightly, reaching around him to do the same check he just did. He feels some of the tension leave her body when she does. 

“Sweet little bug,” she says softly, tracing Ellie’s chin with a thumb before pulling back. She leans down and kisses his shoulder. “You mind if she sleeps with us?” 

He shakes his head and moves to gather Ellie up. She makes a sleepy noise, but he shushes her, and she settles. He follows Tess back to their room, and she climbs in, pushing the covers down and helping him settle Ellie, propping her up a bit, just in case. The effort ends up being all for nothing when she curls into a little ball the way she usually does, but Tess just lets out a fond little huff before settling down, pulling Ellie close to her, back to her chest. 

He sits down and turns the lights out before settling as well, moving blindly until there’s a body beneath his hand. He tucks himself closer and feels Ellie’s little hands against his chest, curled loosely in her sleep. He rests an arm over her, elbow on her hip, and then spreads his fingers over Tess’s side, feeling the movement of muscle beneath his hand as she breathes. She reaches for him in return, resting her arm just above his on Ellie’s and curling her fingers loosely around his bicep. 

“I love you,” he says into the darkness between them, not knowing he was going to say it until he did. 

“I love you, too,” Tess responds after a surprised moment, and when he moves a hand to her face, he can feel the shape of her smile against his thumb.