Archive of Our Own

There’s a thud from the other room and Joel is immediately awake and immediately on edge. Jackson is safe, he reminds himself, trying to breathe through the automatic anxiety. Ellie is safe here. She’s just a menace who falls out of bed at least once a week.

It’s useless, though. He’s already on his feet and heading towards her room.

“Ellie?” he says in a low voice, in case she’s not awake. Sometimes she doesn’t wake up when she hits the floor. There’s a soft noise from inside, and his internal alarms ring louder. “Are you alright?”

She’s quiet for a moment. Then, very quietly, and very unconvincingly, “Yeah.”

And he hits his limit on how long he can give her to prove she’s okay.

“I’m comin’ in,” he warns and opens her door.

Ellie squints at him as the hall light floods her room. She’s on the floor, with her sheets in a pile in front of her.

“What happened?” he asks, stepping closer. The smell hits him, and he understands. “Oh, baby.”

“I’m fine,” she protests, rubbing at her face. “I’m － I was fucking handling it.”

“I know you were,” he says gently, kneeling next to her. “But can I help you out?”

After a second’s hesitation, she nods.

It’s not the first time Ellie’s gotten sick on his watch. Eating twenty year old cans is always a risk and they’ve gotten bad ones －he still can’t look at cream of mushroom soup the same way － and she had an especially bad run with a can of corn. Once when they were on the road, she fell into a patch of poison ivy and kept scratching at it until he threatened to duct tape socks to her hands, sharply reminded of Sarah’s bout with chicken pox at five.

It’s not like he’s incapable of taking care of a sick kid.

But this particular sick kid isn’t used to being taken care of.

“C’mere,” he says, cupping his hand around the back of her head. Her hair is loose and damp with sweat. He tugs her closer gently and presses a kiss against her forehead. It’s burning hot. “Do you need to get cleaned up?”

“No,” she mutters.

Ellie’s little － she struggles to stay over a hundred pounds, and he’s pretty sure she’s done getting taller, though he won’t say it to her face － but she’s fifteen and he tries not to baby her too much. Personally he thinks she deserves a little babying after fourteen years in a FEDRA school, but she’s a teenager and far too used to having to be self-sufficient.

But she seems miserable, and she’s already slumping into him. It doesn’t take much to scoop her up off the floor.

He tamps down the surprise when his arm touches her bare back, skin burning hot. She was in a sleep shirt earlier, but she must have taken it off, either because she got sick on it or because she got hot from the fever, leaving her in just a sports bra.

Joel takes her into his room and sets her on the bed, tucking the covers over her feet. She’s so warm that he doesn’t want to put the blankets on her, but her feet are always cold.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, smoothing a hand over her damp hair. “You just rest a couple minutes.”

Before he leaves, he opens the top drawer of his dresser and takes out a t-shirt, setting it on the bed without saying a word. If she wants to stay in just her shorts and sports bra, Joel doesn’t particularly care, but she doesn’t usually like feeling exposed like that, even when it’s just the two of them, and she’s constantly stealing his shirts.

Back in her room, he sees that she had already stripped the mattress before he got there. Joel cracks the window and quickly puts clean sheets on her bed, then takes the dirty ones downstairs and puts them in the washing machine for the morning. He grabs a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge and the bottle of Tylenol －generic acetaminophen, really, military labelled － that the clinic gave them. He’s been trying the willowbark tincture they gave him, and it works some, but Ellie’s too young to take it.

“Alright, kiddo,” he says, turning on the lamp next to his bed. Ellie flinches at the light, looking betrayed. “I know, it’s just for a moment. Can you take one of these for me?”

The clinic sent dosing instructions with the medicine, which Joel is exceptionally glad for. Last winter, when she was hurt so badly, he’d given her a quarter of an oxy that he’d found on one of the men he’d killed. It was the same military shit he’d traded in Boston, or he wouldn’t have risked it, but she could barely move for how much she hurt and they had absolutely nothing else. He’d tried cutting it smaller and got nothing but dust and worried that would work too fast and make her sick, so a quarter was what he went with, hoping it was a low enough dose.

It still knocked her on her ass. He spent the next four hours checking every five minutes to make sure she was still breathing.

Worse, at least in her opinion, it made her groggy and out of sorts. She refused to take them after that, and he was too worried to try to convince her again.

Ellie takes the pill without complaining, but her hands shake around the glass and he has to brace the bottom so she doesn’t drop it.

“Thank you,” she says when she’s done, and he sets the glass on the table where she can reach it.

And his heart damn near breaks.

Sarah certainly never thanked him for forcing her to take medicine when she was sick. She complained, if anything, about the taste or about hating swallowing pills.

“Don’t mention it,” he says, and manages to sound almost normal.

Ellie curls up on her side as he goes around to the side he sleeps on. Between her and the door, always. Everywhere they’ve slept, he’s slept between her and the entrance. Between her and the door in buildings, at the entrance when they camped out in caves. Even when they had the truck, he put her between it and himself so no one could sneak up from that side. Jackson’s safe, but when they sleep in the same room, he can’t break the habit.

“Here, try this,” he says and slips an ice pack under her hair, resting it against the back of her neck.

She sighs, eyes slipping shut. “Oh.”

“That feel a bit better?”

She nods.

Joel pulls the sheet up over her, but leaves the blankets down around her feet. She’s got his shirt on now and she looks much more comfortable. She also looks way too damned young. He can picture her, suddenly, five or six years old, all big eyes and messy hair. He wants to picture her with round cheeks and pudgy little hands, but he’s seen too many FEDRA kids looking halfway to those starving children in old commercials.

Slowly, like she’s trying to be sneaky, like he’d say no to her, Ellie inches in closer. He lifts his arm over her and she curls under it, tucking her head under his chin so she can rest of her forehead against his collarbone. He repositions the ice pack into place, then begins carding his fingers through her damp hair.

“I puked in my fucking hair,” she confesses miserably.

She smells like shampoo. Poor thing. He can just picture her, feverish and upset, standing over the bathroom sink to wash it.

“It’s okay,” he says, continuing to stroke that hair. Even if she hadn’t washed it out, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s dealt with it, or worse. Sarah once sneezed directly in his mouth.

Kids are gross. He’s used to it.

Ellie makes a sad little groan. “When do I have to go back to my room?”

“How about you just get some sleep and we’ll worry about all that later?” Joel says.

She shakes her head the tiniest bit. “But I’m gonna get you sick.”

“Anythin’ you’ve got, I’ve already probably got,” he says. It’s not like he has personal space anymore. “Don’t fuss about that right now.”

“You don’t get it,” she complains.

And he doesn’t. He’s really not sure what’s got her twisting herself up in knots, but he does know that her forehead is so hot he can feel it soaking into his skin through his shirt. He knows she’s miserable and in pain and for some reason she tried to tough it out alone instead of coming to him for help.

“You can explain it to me like I’m stupid in the mornin’,” he says instead of arguing about it.

It’s a true sign of how crappy she’s feeling that she neither continues to push the issue, nor takes the easy open to insult him. She just sighs, again, and tries to press in even closer.

Considering she’s practically in his ribcage, he’s not sure how exactly she could get closer, but he settles his arm more firmly over her to keep her tucked in tight.

“Close your eyes,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Just rest if you can’t sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie whispers, barely audibly.

“Shh.” He cups his hand around the back of her head, pressing a kiss against her hot forehead. “None of that now, baby.”

Sometimes, especially in moments like this, he wonders at the way things have turned out. There are parts of him he thought died in a field in Texas, parts he thought he buried deep in the earth. Part of his heart will always be there, but there are other parts he’s discovered have just been frozen.

Like the part that remembers how to sooth a sick, upset little girl.

He remembers Sarah’s bout with chicken pox and the fever that had her fitful for days. He remembers carrying her for hours, pacing back and forth like she was a baby again, keeping up an endless litany of soft shushing noises.

Turns out five and fifteen are about the same when a fever hits.

* * *

He doesn’t sleep much. Ellie eventually dozes off, but she’s restless. She pushes away from him, then wakes up, confused and upset. He has to reassure her that he hasn’t gone anywhere. He has to reassure her they’re in Jackson. Has to remind her it’s spring, and when she shivers and curls up against him, he realizes her fever has given her chills.

He stares at the red display of his alarm after that until the numbers say he can give her more medicine.

When the sun finally rises, he works at carefully shifting her weight off him.

She stirs as he’s sitting up. “Joel?”

“It’s okay.” He leans over and cups his hand over her flushed cheek. “I’m just gonna run across the street for a couple minutes.”

“Not supposed to,” she mumbles.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” he repeats. “Okay?”

She stares at him for a moment before nodding. Her expression is a bit confused, but not that haunting empty blankness she got after Silver Lake, that she still gets in bad moments. He wouldn’t be able to leave her if it was.

“Try to go back to sleep,” he says.

It’s not exactly the best manners, showing up at the crack of dawn, but he knows Maria and Tommy will be up. Tommy does an early morning shift at the stables and Joel can’t even keep track all of what Maria does in town.

Honestly, he’s grateful she’s even still there to open the door when he knocks.

“Everything alright?” she asks, stepping back as she opens the door.

He doesn’t move forward. “I’m not comin’ in. Ellie’s sick and I don’t wanna give it to y’all.”

“Oh, poor thing,” Maria says sympathetically. “Does she need the doctor to come by?”

“Not yet, I don’t think. Seems like just a bug. I was wonderin’ if you’d happen to have a thermometer?”

“Of course. Give me five minutes.”

She closes the storm door, but leaves the inner door open. Joel turns and leans against the porch railing, looking back at their house. Not that he can see anything, but… he can’t help it. Tommy teases him mercilessly about the way he's constantly checking to make sure Ellie is okay when they're in the dining hall or at the movies and she isn't next to him.

“Joel?”

He turns as Maria opens the door again, holding out a fabric tote bag.

“I put a few things in there you might need along with the thermometer. Let us know if you two need anything else.”

“I will,” he says, and he means it.

He rushes back to the house and nearly has a heart attack when he sees Ellie sitting on the stairs. She looks like a stiff wind would knock her over.

“The hell are you doin’?”

She pulls the blanket － dragged off his bed － tighter around her shoulders. “You were gone a while.”

It’s been less than ten minutes.

“Are you alright?”

“I got a little dizzy,” she admits.

Getting her to admit she isn’t okay is like pulling teeth. ‘A little dizzy’ probably means she nearly passed out.

Jesus. This kid.

He goes over to her. “C’mon, let’s get you to the couch.”

She leans on him heavily all the way, burning hot wherever they touch.

“Are you gonna get in shit?” she asks when he’s got her situated.

“Hm?” he manages, distracted digging through the care package Maria sent. It’s thoughtful －a handful of tinctures from the herbalist in town, extras of Ellie’s favourite snacks, and, there, the thermometer.

“Not supposed to go out.”

“It’s fine, kiddo. Temperature. Open up.”

She takes it without seeming to notice it, only looking at it when she’s actually putting it in her mouth. She goes cross-eyed to look at it. “Issa frog?”

The thermometer is, in fact, shaped like a frog at the end.

“It’s for kids.”

“S’lookin’ at me.”

“It works the same. If you stop talkin’.”

She finally lets it work and he winces at the number on it. He had a feeling it’d be high, but he was hoping not quite that high. It’s not immediate risk of brain damage high, but she’s gotta be feeling just miserable.

“How are you feelin’?” he asks, cupping her face in both hands. Her lymph nodes are swollen, he discovers when his fingertips touch her neck.

“Kinda cold,” she admits, hugging her arms across her body. “My throat really fucking hurts.”

She’s hoarse, too, voice almost blown.

“Stay put,” he warns, going into the kitchen to grab a flashlight. He usually has a pocket sized one in his jeans, but he didn’t bother getting dressed before going over to Tommy and Maria’s, just shoved his boots on over his pajama pants. He digs into the junk drawer, shoving aside the papers in there and regretting not just tossing them in the fireplace the last time they had a fire.

Ellie’s sitting right where he left her. He goes over to her and taps her chin. “Say ahh.”

“What are you, a doctor now?” she snarks, but she listens.

He shines the flashlight towards the back of her throat, then turns it off. “Well, honey, I think you’re gonna have to see the doctor. Looks like you’ve got strep.”

“No, I’m fine.”

He leans on the arm of the couch. “Tess got it a few times back in Boston. We learned what it looked like so we knew if she had to go to the med center or not. You need antibiotics or it can make you real sick.”

For some reason, Ellie shrinks into herself. “How long did they quarantine you?”

“They usually gave her two days off.”

And half-rations, but he’s not telling Ellie that unless she asks. It’d just make her sad for them.

She looks frustrated. “But strep is contagious.”

“It is.”

“So didn’t FEDRA make you isolate?” she asks. She fidgets with the edge of the blanket. “Like when we got something at school, we had to stay our room until we weren’t sick anymore. They’d even move your roommate into another room if they weren’t sick too.”

Joel inhales slowly. “No. No, not like that.”

Frankly, for anything less than cordyceps, FEDRA didn’t particularly care if it ran through the QZ slums. If people died, that was just fewer mouths to feed. 

The idea of Ellie, small and sick and alone, almost physically hurts.

“That ain’t how it works here,” he says and he’s as gentle as he remembers how to be. “It’s － it’s nice to other people if you mostly stay home and try not to get anyone else sick, but you’re allowed to leave the house.”

He’s not entirely sure the protocols in Jackson for something more serious like measles or whatever, but he’s confident in saying that it wouldn’t be anything like what happened to her in the QZ.

Ellie picks at her cuticles, avoiding his eyes. “So… you get to stay?”

God.

“I’d like to see ’em try and make me leave,” he says, trying for a light tone and failing miserably. “And I don’t care if you get me sick. Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last.”

Ellie looks up at him. Her eyes are red and a little glassy, but she focuses enough to give him a long stare. A look like that used to always mean mean a question would follow － or more likely, a handful of rapid fire questions. It still does, sometimes, but sometimes now the question she’s asking seems to be internal.

Finally, she nods. “I’m gonna breathe my germs all over you then.”

“What else is new?” He slaps his palms against his legs and stands up. “Well, I need some pants, and then I’m gonna ask Maria to send the doctor over here today. How’s that sound?”

Ellie nods, slumping slowly against the arm of the couch.

“You want anythin’ while I’m upstairs?” he asks.

She shakes her head.

He’s not sure, though. She might have said no, but she’s also a kid who’s basically never been taken care of when she’s sick. Does she even know what she can ask for?

So after a quick change into actual clothing, Joel grabs the pillow she likes best out of her bedroom and the one off his bed that she likes to steal － the one he sleeps with unless she gets there first. When he gets back to the living room, Ellie is nearly horizontal, head at an awkward angle on the arm of the couch.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says quietly. “Try this. Lift up. There you go.”

She’s drowsy and floppy already, head heavy in his hand when he slips it under her, but he watches the tension go out of her body when she relaxes against the pillows.

He also pulls the blanket off the back of the couch down over her. He’s being careful not to let her pile too many on and overheat herself, but she was shivering again and the one she dragged down with her doesn’t seem to be cutting it. And she’s a nester. She likes having the blankets tucked around her feet and burrowing into the covers.

“Back in five minutes,” he promises.

He leaves a bucket next to the couch and a glass of cold water on the coffee table.

Maria doesn’t look surprised to see him back so fast, and very kindly doesn’t say “I told you so” about him wanting the doctor to check on Ellie. He knows she understands.

A couple months ago, Joel woke up at two in the morning to a semi-hysterical Tommy on his porch with a screaming newborn in his arms, fully convinced his baby hated him. Joel managed to avoid rolling his eyes, if barely, left a note for Ellie in case she woke up, and took Tommy back to his own damn house. An hour later, Maria walked into the nursery to find Joel pacing back and forth with a sleeping baby on his shoulder and her husband passed out cold on the floor.

To her credit, she only laughed a little.

Ellie was hesitant with her at first. Borderline rude at times, skating a fine line with a skill Joel realized was sharply honed by her FEDRA years. It was bizarre at first. She’d never been like that with him. Openly hostile, sure. But icily polite while the entire time giving off an air of absolutely detesting someone? That he wasn’t used to. It didn’t seem like her either － more like a mask she was putting on, like something she’d learned to do.

Despite that, Maria was incredibly patient. He can see very clearly how much she cares about Ellie. And he hopes she understands how much he loves his nephew.

Him and his sister-in-law? They’re not close. They might never be. But if they never agree on anything else, they’ll agree on loving those kids. So, yeah. Maria gets it.

Back at home, Ellie is thankfully still on the couch. He tries to talk her into eating some toast, but she only manages a few begrudging crackers, washed down with a couple sips of herbal tea. She isn’t a big fan of them, frankly, but she tolerates this blend Maria introduced her to and he’s hoping the warmth helps her throat.

If he sneaks a little extra honey into it, well, that’s good for sore throats too.

He leaves the cracker container on the coffee table － she seems to be comfortable on the couch and it makes as good of a sick bay as anything － and makes a round through the house. Temperature check, which is still too high for his liking, fresh ice pack for the back of her neck when she shoves the blankets off, suddenly hot. He gets the washing machine going with her sheets and gets her a fresh glass of water with a handful of ice because hers “tastes stale”.

He does not remind her that a year ago she was drinking literally any water that was safe to drink. Or that she once brought back a pot of water to boil with a minnow in it because she was too distracted telling him about a cool rock she found that she was pretty sure was a fossil.

On his third loop through the living room, Ellie kicks vaguely at him. “You’re making me dizzy.”

She doesn’t have her eyes open.

He is not stupid enough to point that out.

“Sorry, baby,” he soothes. “You want me to put a movie on for you?”

“Head hurts,” she complains.

“Okay.” He presses his hand against her forehead. Still too hot. “Hold on a moment.”

He goes upstairs hopefully for the last time for a while, then comes back down to the living room. Ellie’s curled up so tight that there’s a lot more room than usual on the couch, and he sits near her feet. Gently, he lifts them into his lap, slightly uncurling her before she cramps up.

“No laughin’ or I’ll stop,” he warns.

“What’m I laughing at?” Ellie asks blearily.

He clears his throat. “It was a dark and stormy night.”

“Huh?”

“Shush,” he scolds lightly, tapping her feet with the book. “It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossin’ in the frenzied lashin’ of the wind.”

He’s rusty, voice rough from years of disuse in this way. Voice rough from other things, maybe.

Ellie doesn’t seem to mind.

* * *

Ellie dozed off a couple chapters into the book. He’s been lazily rubbing her back and maybe snoozing a bit himself, lulled by the white noise of the dull drone from the washing machine.

The doorbell rings and they both nearly jump out of their skins.

It’s the doctor. She’s an older woman, trained before the outbreak, which Joel quietly appreciates.

She smiles, then holds something up. “Before I come in, I’m going to put on a mask. It’s just to keep me from passing any bugs around town. Is that alright with you?”

It’s oddly formal and it takes an embarrassingly long moment for him to realize why. Back right after things went to hell, FEDRA wore them sometimes, in the brief period when they thought it might help. He gets why some people might have bad associations with that, and why she’s chosen a cloth mask made of a bright, flowery material instead of the blue surgical ones or the black the military often chose. He has his own kneejerk reaction to the idea of people in scrubs and masks around Ellie, so. It doesn’t go unappreciated. He nods his agreement and shows her in.

Ellie is sitting up on the couch by the time they come into the living room.

The doctor sets her bag down on the floor next to the couch. “Mind if I wash my hands real quick?”

Joel directs her towards the downstairs bathroom, and she’s back a moment later.

“Can I sit?” she asks Ellie, and waits for her to nod before sitting next to her on the couch. “I hear you’ve maybe got a case of strep throat on your hands.”

Ellie shoots a glare at him. She’s never exactly… you know… nice when woken abruptly. Being sick doesn’t seem to be helping with that. “So he says.”

The doctor grins conspiratorially at him. “Well, dads know stuff sometimes.”

He expects Ellie to protest it. She always did when they first got here. Half the kids in Jackson are being raised by someone who isn’t a parent so it’s not exactly unusual, but people assume he’s her father more than they do with other kids. He’s seen the same person carefully talk around calling a kid’s adult their parent, then turn around and ask him about his daughter.

She’s quiet, though, gaze a little unfocused. Maybe she’s too out of it to have caught that.

“How about I take a quick look at that throat now?” the doctor asks, oblivious.

She narrates as she examines Ellie. It’s matter-of-fact, like she treats every patient this way, and maybe she does. Joel’s grateful for it either way. Ellie struggles with touch sometimes, especially from strangers.

When she takes Ellie’s temperature, Ellie looks from the completely regular thermometer, one of the ones that reads from a forehead touch, back to him. “Will you look at that? Not a frog.”

The nap seems to have helped her some. Sarcasm is a good sign of life.

“Oh, that’s looking raw,” the doctor says sympathetically when she examines Ellie’s throat. “You’re right. You saw the little red spots at the back of her throat?”

Joel nods.

“The white streaks on the tonsils are also a sign,” the doctor says. “Good eye. Definitely strep, I’m afraid.”

He files that one away for the future. Tess had her tonsils out when she was a teenager.

“Shit,” Ellie says miserably. “Do I really need antibiotics?”

“Mmhm.” The doctor leans over to get something out of her bag. “Strep throat can turn into scarlet fever or even rheumatic fever.”

“That can damage your heart,” Joel inserts.

Tess got a lecture about that once, about how long she’d waited to go into the QZ med center, from a brand new shiny FEDRA medic still wet behind the ears. The next year, she got a bout of bronchitis so bad she’d fractured a rib coughing and when he finally dragged her stubborn ass into the med center, she got a lecture about wasting resources.

Kicker was it was the same medic.

The doctor asks a few questions about allergies and how much Ellie weighs. Ellie’s not the biggest fan of talking about her weight, but she’s also still small enough that he was afraid he was gonna make her sick the first time he gave her an ibuprofen.

“Amoxicillin, twice a day,” the doctor says, writing on a notepad. It isn’t a prescription pad, but Joel supposes it doesn’t matter. “If it upsets your stomach, try to take it with some food. You can take this to the clinic and they’ll fill it immediately, or Steve does deliveries at the end of the day.”

“I’ll pick it up,” Joel says immediately. The clinic is only a couple streets away and it only takes a few minutes to walk there. The sooner Ellie can start on them, the better.

“Good. I also wrote a note for them to give you some extra meds for that fever. If it doesn’t start going down by tomorrow, please come into the clinic and see me.”

He walks the doctor out, then gets Ellie settled in. He’s expecting her protest at him leaving, and for her to be whiny about it. She’s settled into Jackson enough that she’s not usually quite so clingy, but she’s sick and miserable, and she hates being alone when she’s feeling shitty.

He is not expecting the whistle from the house across the street the second he steps off the porch.

Suddenly, he’s regretting ever teaching Tommy how to do that. Ellie’s enough of a menace with it now that she’s figured it out.

“What?” he demands when Tommy jogs over to them. He’s too worried to be nice.

“Maria told me Ellie was sick. Saw the doctor comin’ out of your place. She okay?”

“Strep,” Joel says bluntly.

Tommy winces. “Poor kid. Antibiotics?”

“Yeah.”

“Here, I’ll run and grab them for you. You stay home with her.” Before he can protest, Tommy’s pulling the paper out of his pocket － and how did he know right away which pocket to go for? － and tucking it into the inner pocket of his own jacket. “And I’ll get you put on the meal train for a couple days.”

“The what now?”

“Couple of people volunteer to bring meals to anyone who can’t make it to the dining hall or cook for themselves.” Tommy claps him on the shoulder. “Go on back to your girl.”

Joel hesitates. He knows he’s not great at asking for help. He’s trying not to be so shit at it, for Ellie’s sake, but it’s still hard. His old insecurities about not being good enough for her, about not doing enough for her, still flare up. He keeps trying anyways.

“Could you － could you ask if they’ve got any popsicles or somethin’ I could use to make some?” he asks. “Maybe some soup or somethin’? Her throat’s been hurtin’ so much that she hasn’t eaten much.”

“’Course,” Tommy agrees easily. He glances at the house, his face soft. “What do you think her favourite flavour of Gatorade would have been?”

It throws him for a second. Tommy mostly only talks about the world before the outbreak by way of telling embarrassing stories about Joel, for Ellie’s amusement, or answering her questions about it. He’s not in denial or anything, but he’s not exactly nostalgic for it － more focused on looking forward.

“The blue one,” Joel says immediately. “The one that wasn’t actually a fruit. She woulda liked arguing that blue was a flavour.”

Tommy grins. “Yeah, I bet.”

Ellie looks up blearily when he comes back into the living room. She twists, squinting in the direction of the clock on the end table next to the couch. “Did I fall asleep? That was fast.”

“Tommy offered to go instead.” Joel leans over and kisses her forehead. He doesn’t think she’d tolerate another round with the frog right now. She’s still hot, but the ibuprofen the doctor made her take seems to have taken some of the edge of her fever. “You need anythin’?”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Hair tie?” she says eventually, hesitantly.

“I could… if you wanted, I could braid it for you.”

Ellie sits up, looking curious at him. “For real? You know how to do that shit?”

He settles onto the couch and gestures for her to turn around. He doesn’t have a brush on hand obviously and doesn’t want to leave her to find hers, but her hair is soft and fine enough that it’s not too hard to work the knots out with his fingers.

“Did you learn how to do hair stuff for Sarah?” Ellie asks, her voice still a little hesitant. She’s always so careful with it, with her questions about Sarah.

It isn’t easy to talk about her, still. It hurts like hell, still.

But it’s important. It’s important for Ellie and it’s important because he wants her to know what Sarah was like.

“Yep,” he says. “Her hair was so curly. Didn’t have a clue what I was doing at first.”

It’d been easy when she was a baby. She’d been basically bald for nearly the first year of her life. When she finally started actually growing hair, Tommy’s was curly enough that he had an idea what to do and Joel had actually taken his advice on something for once. Not washing it too much, lots of conditioner, a bit of curl cream.

Then, when she was two, she’d gone to visit his ex’s mother for an afternoon and come home with her hair actually styled and he’d realized, shit, he needed to learn to do better before Sarah realized he wasn’t doing good enough.

So he’d gone looking for more. He’d read blogs, watched internet videos, and taken a very small, very excited Sarah to a “fancy grown-up lady” salon to learn.

“I don’t know how to do any of that,” Ellie says.

She sounds a little… floaty, maybe. She’s leaned back towards him as his fingers work through her hair. He’s noticed that she likes when he touches her hair, especially when it’s loose after she’s washed it or at night.

“The other girls did each other’s hair,” she says. “But mine was short until I was like ten.”

“You like it short when you were little?” he asks idly, focused on keeping the strands of the French braid even. She’s not much fussy about her hair. Maria periodically traps her for a trim, an experience that reminds Joel of a cat going to the groomer, but as far as he knows, she hasn’t been able to talk Ellie into doing much more than washing it.

“No,” Ellie says bluntly. “But I didn’t take care of it enough when I was little. Got too tangled so they kept shaving it off.”

Christ.

Joel exhales slowly.

“They let me keep it at like my chin after I was seven or eight, I think,” she says, like that makes it better.

Ellie’s hair isn’t curly, really. He’s slow with the braiding, partly because he’s so out of practice, but also because her hair is so different from Sarah’s. He was worried at first about pulling too much or braiding too tight and hurting her scalp.

But her hair is a little wavy, enough that she gets little ringlets around her face and on the back of her neck when her hair’s damp, and it’s thick. It tangles easily and he’s seen her get frustrated and cut knots out of it with her knife instead of bothering to brush them out.

Her hair is not the hardest hair in the world to deal with, but he can see that it would be hard for a little girl to take care of by herself.

“Could teach you, if you want,” he offers, then ties off the braid with one of the hair ties that’s been living on his wrist for a couple weeks. He found her a pack of real ones, still on the card and miraculously escaping dry rot, and she has them stashed all over the house. “There, all done.”

“Thanks,” Ellie says. She turns around and pokes his shoulder. “Could you sit like right there?”

He moves obligingly over to the spot she indicated, not quite at the corner the couch.

She nods, satisfied, and tosses both pillows into the gap between his leg and the arm of the couch. Then she sprawls across his lap and lets out long sigh.

“How long can you stay?” she asks softly.

Joel would really like a round in a dark alley with a few members of FEDRA.

He works the blanket out from under her. It’s her favourite, bright yellow and a kind of soft he didn’t think existed anymore. It used to be Tommy and Maria’s, but Tommy’s heart is the same kind of soft, and the third time Ellie fell asleep under it, he sent it home with her.

“You are stuck with me until you get better, I’m afraid,” he says, forcing himself to keep a light tone.

“Don’t you have to work?” She sounds genuinely confused. “If you don’t have to isolate, don’t you have patrol or some shit?”

“No,” he says, more seriously. “Takin’ care of you is my job right now. You remember when the baby was born and I took over a couple of Tommy’s shifts at the stables so he could stay home with him and Maria?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that.”

Joel will admit that’s one benefit of communism. He didn’t have sick leave when Sarah was young. If he didn’t work, he didn’t get paid. And when they were living paycheck to paycheck, he couldn’t do that, as much as it killed him. Tommy did a lot of sick kid baby-sitting, especially when he lived with them after leaving the army and before he was ready to go back to work.

Now, he knows they’ve already worked out someone to cover his patrol shift. He hasn’t even thought about it, really. There’s been times he’s covered someone else’s work so they can stay home with a sick kid or sick themselves and he’s never really minded. Grumbled mildly at most.

Ellie’s quiet for a moment. Then, very softly, she asks, “Could you read more of that book?”

“Sure, honey. Whatever you want.”

* * *

It’s not until the doorbell rings again and Ellie winces, tensing against him, that he realizes how much her head is hurting her. Her face has been turned into the pillow for a while, but she sleeps like that a lot.

“Hey,” Tommy says when he opens the door. He’s holding a milk crate that’s stuffed near to the brim. “So, I got Ellie’s prescription and I also stopped by the library and grabbed her a few books and a couple movies. Thought y’all might be gettin’ bored.”

Joel takes the box, a little stunned by the weight of it. “Thanks.”

“Now get that unpacked quick,” Tommy instructs. “There’s a half-dozen popsicles in there and I think they’re sittin' right next to Ellie’s soup.”

Joel nods.

Tommy glances over his shoulder. “She asleep?”

“No, not right now.”

“Feel better, squirt,” Tommy calls into the house, claps Joel on the shoulder, and strolls back towards his own house.

Joel makes a mental note to embarrass him in front of his wife as soon as Ellie isn’t contagious anymore. Cool uncle isn’t a default position anymore, and he’s getting a little too confident in himself.

His little snoop appears in the kitchen when he’s unpacking the food, because of course she does.

“Something smells good,” she says, her voice cracking a little.

“Think you might be up for eating somethin’?”

“Maybe.”

That’s something. She hasn’t eaten much today, and it’s already the early afternoon.

There are two large containers of soup, enough for at least three or four meals. He gets them out and finds the popsicles in a homemade paper bag.

“What’s that?” Ellie asks, leaning over his arm to peer into the bag.

He closes it before she can see. “Something you’ll like. You try some real food first, and then you can have one.”

She looks at him like he’s nuts. He’s never cared what order she eats in. When they were on the road, he was just glad to get enough calories into her to keep her alive. It wasn’t like she was skipping dinner to fill up entirely on dessert. Even here, where dessert is served most nights in one form or another, Ellie doesn’t have the biggest sweet tooth. She’s plenty capable of self-moderating.

No, this isn’t him trying to impose some new rule about dinner before dessert.

This is bribery.

He hides the popsicles in the freezer, which puzzles Ellie even more. She’s had ice cream a couple times, but not regularly enough for her to think of it right away.

She wanders over to the kitchen table while he pours a bowl’s worth of soup into a pot and puts it on the stove. It’s still warm, but he doesn’t mind heating it up a little for her so it’ll be hot.

She’s managed to acquire a sweater at some point. It’s long on her, and she has the sleeves bunched up around her elbows so they won’t hang over her fingers. It is also technically his, but when has that ever stopped her?

He makes himself a sandwich while her soup is warming up, realizing he hasn’t eaten anything today either.

“Food, then meds,” he says, setting both on the table in front of her. “What do you want to drink, baby?”

She looks up at him, and he didn’t know it was possible for her eyes to look that big. “Is there any juice left?”

He chuckles, goes back to the milk crate on the counter, and lifts out the bottle of apple juice.

“Tommy brought you some fun stuff, too,” he says, sitting next to her. “Maybe when your head hurts a little less you can check it out.”

She nods.

He tries not to fuss about the headache. It’s normal, with a fever like this.

But her head hurt for seventeen straight days after Silver Lake.

“This is really fucking good,” Ellie says a minute later.

He’s glad to hear it. Even with the water and tea he’s forced on her, she’s taken a lot of meds on an empty stomach, especially one that’s already been sensitive.

He’s also been pretending not to notice Ellie slowly inching her chair closer to his. When he sat down, she certainly wasn’t close enough that they were almost bumping elbows. Now, though, when she pulls her leg up onto the chair and relaxes it, it’s resting against his.

“Can I have a bite of that?” she asks, eyeing the other half of his sandwich.

Teenagers and toddlers, he thinks fondly. When Sarah was little, it was, “Mm-bite,” a phrase he honestly was never sure where they picked up. He remembers thinking when she was three or so that soon, soon he’d be able to eat a meal that hadn’t had little fingers in it. Eventually, he’d be able to eat a meal that included everything he’d put on his plate.

Sarah had never stopped stealing his fries.

The school here has lunch brought to them, but Ellie sometimes sneaks out and meets him for lunch. Sometimes she skips the afternoon, if she’s overwhelmed or having a bad day, but sometimes it’s just lunch. She runs in, all but falls into the chair next to him, and talks a mile a minute about her day while stealing his lunch.

“Go on,” he says, and pushes the plate over to her.

* * *

Ellie perks up a little with some food in her, enough to be curious about the things Tommy brought over. She even manages some dinner a couple hours later and feels better enough to ask to put a movie on.

Like he could say no. He can’t say no to her at the best of times, let alone when she’s sick and, frankly, no small amount of pathetic.

She makes it about halfway through before dozing off against his shoulder.

When he turns off the television, she stirs. “’M watching that.”

“We’ll finish it tomorrow,” he soothes, stroking a hand over her hair. “You campin’ on the couch tonight or goin’ upstairs?”

She presses her face further into his shoulder. “No.”

He snorts. “Gotta pick one, kiddo.”

She yawns. “Bed, I guess.”

“Alright. How about you go brush your teeth while I lock up?”

With how drowsy she is, Joel considers it a win that she grabs her pillows and blanket before heading for the stairs. He’d bring them up for her, but he has other things to bring upstairs, too, and his knees appreciate not having to make two more trips.

He checks the doors and windows, making sure they’re all locked. It’s silly － there’s not much need for locked doors in Jackson － but it’s the only way he can sleep. He’s even considered trying to find one of those old alarms that goes off when the door opens, but he has a feeling Ellie’s going to try sneaking out eventually and he’d rather she went out a door than a window.

After that, he cleans up a little, making sure all the dishes end up in the sink. There’s a circle of chaos around Ellie’s sick bay and he tries to get it at least somewhat reined in. Mostly he cares about Ellie being comfortable the next day, so he folds the extra blanket she left on the couch and tidies the coffee table.

Then he grabs her a fresh cup of cold water, in the green plastic dinosaur cup he gave her as a joke and she ended up loving, and hauls everything she might need upstairs.

He looks in her room, but he’s not surprised to find it empty.

She’s sitting on the edge of his bed, hugging her pillow.

“You changed my sheets,” she says.

“Sure did,” he says, distracted by the pile of crap nearly falling out of his arms. He rushes to set down the cup before he drops it, then hands her the little bowl he’s been carrying.

“You changed my sheets that I fucking puked on,” she says.

He tosses his sweater onto the chair near his bed. If she gets up for the bathroom or something, she can grab it so she won’t get cold.

“Yeah?” He taps her knee. “Meds, please.”

She pokes at the bowl. “That’s a lot.”

It’s basically apocalypse Nyquil. The doctor-ordered combination of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and antibiotic, plus one of the herbal mixtures Maria sent over and a dose of valerian, which will apparently make her sleepy. Joel’s not sure he believes it, but he’s willing to try anything right now.

“It’ll help you sleep. Make you feel better.”

“No, I know. I mean…” She sighs. “Never mind.”

He sits in front of her. “Go on. Tell me.”

She stares at her hands. “No one cares if you’re comfortable at school, is all. I think if I ralphed on my sheets, they wouldn’t have even given me new ones until laundry day.”

“That ain’t right, Ellie.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m trying to say… I’m glad I picked you.”

He cups a hand around the back of her head and leans forward to kiss her forehead. “So am I, kiddo. So am I.”

Then he actually gets her to take the meds before she realizes how choked up he is.

She’s already sleepy again by the time he gets situated in bed.

Sarah had mostly grown out of crawling into his bed at night by fourteen. In her last year, she’d only done it twice. Once when she woke up sick and once when she’d had an awful fight with her best friend. Joel can’t even remember the girl’s name anymore. He hopes, vaguely, she’s alright. Or as alright as anyone can be these days.

People would probably say Ellie’s too old for this at fifteen. Or worse, about him, that he let her in the first place since she isn’t biologically his. Not that he was in any position to stop her at first. He only vaguely remembers it, when he was hurt, but he remembers the weight of her against his side and how cold she was and how much he wanted to comfort her.

Things are different for her. She doesn’t talk much about school, especially not about when she was small, but he knows that there wasn’t anyone there to hold her when she had nightmares, or sit on her bed and read her stories, or to just make sure she was okay.

She’s got fourteen years of being taken care of to catch up on. He'll keep her company at night as long as she needs.

* * *

Joel wakes up when Ellie rolls over and slaps him in the face.

It’s not the first time it’s happened.

“Jesus,” he groans, pulling her hand off his face.

She mumbles, a little too grumpy for someone who just got slappy in her sleep, and curls into his side, tucking her head onto his shoulder.

Goddamn menace, he thinks, hopelessly fond. She shivers slightly in her sleep and he touches her forehead, already trying to do the math on when she took her last dose of meds.

Then he goes still. Her forehead is cool to the touch.

In fact, she’s a little cold where she’s pressed up against his side.

He lets out a low sigh. Her fever broke. Thank God.

When he reaches to pull the covers back over her, he has to lean up a little. He tries not to disturb her, but she stirs, grabbing his shirt.

“Joel?”

“Shh, it’s okay.” He tugs the quilt back up around her shoulders and she settles. “Just don’t want you gettin’ cold. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” she agrees. “Tomorrow I’m gonna… gonna kick your ass.”

“Oh?” he asks, amused. They’ve had enough of these little late-night conversations for him to know she’s not really awake. “Any particular reason?”

“No, at checkers,” she says. “Tommy taught me how to play so that I can kick Joel’s ass. Don’t tell Joel. It’s a surprise.”

“Okay,” Joel agrees. If this is the worst they get up to, he’ll take it. Tommy’s baby is starting to sleep through the night and Ellie’s really warmed up to Tommy now. He’s pretty sure they’re going to start causing no end of mischief before he knows it.

“Joel?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Tommy’s good at it, but you’re better.”

Normally he doesn’t encourage her chatting like this. It happens sometimes, when she’s really tired. Once right after they left Kansas City he had a whole conversation with her before breakfast and spent most of it thinking she was fucking with him, because everything she said was absolute nonsense. He turned away for two minutes to pack his bag and found her asleep sitting up when he turned back.

The second time it happened, she was actually in her sleeping bag, but he argued back about some stupid thing she said and she got so angry that she woke herself up, which was funny until he realized she was scared. She never remembers anything she says when she wakes up.

She’s not sleepwalking, at least. Tommy did that a few times as a kid. Joel had to go pull him out of the neighbour’s treehouse once when Tommy was sixteen, fully convinced he was drunk until he got close enough to smell him. He’ll take the talking over sleepwalking.

And she’s got him curious. “Better at what?”

“Being a dad,” Ellie says. She sighs and rubs her face into his shoulder. “And cooking.”

A moment later, she goes heavy and he knows she’s fully out again.

He cups his hand over her head, stroking softly through her hair.

They’ve been in Jackson for almost four months, and for almost four months, he’s been ignoring the council’s request to finish their paperwork. He’s been avoiding the council members who aren’t his sister-in-law and has “lost” the forms no less than three times.

Maria, unexpectedly, finds the whole thing hilarious, and has fully derailed multiple conversations that have turned to it.

“Ellie’s safe and happy,” she said once. “They’re just being nosy.”

It’s not like paperwork from Jackson would hold up anywhere else in the world these days, anyways. She’s already in school and they don’t exactly have insurance or anything. He wouldn’t hesitate if it actually mattered.

But there was something about the form that said, “Permanent foster,” that made his stomach twist. It didn’t seem right. Too cold, too impersonal for what she was for him.

The last time, though, Maria had held up the papers when he’d gotten to dinner early, rolling her eyes. Apparently they’d sent another set home with her, expecting her to be more responsible.

There were two sets in that one. He’d glanced at them before stuffing them into a drawer in the kitchen.

It’s not that it matters, really.

But maybe Ellie wouldn’t mind it if things were a little official. If they filled out the paper that said “Adoption” instead.

Maybe tomorrow they’ll talk about this. When she’s awake.

For now, he’s going to sleep. His kid is on the mend and sleeping comfortably, and he is not one to look that gift horse in the mouth.