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Ellie hanging out with the radio ladies isn’t a surprise after she’s settled into Jackson, really. Even with Tommy himself being the main target of her radio chats before they moved out here, she charmed all of the women who man the radios in the stretches between them answering the call and someone being sent to get him. A waste of resources and time? Maybe.
But in a world that’s already so brutal, a cute kid talking up a storm about Frenched toast and why t-rexes would beat “ale-ums” in a fight no problem is a welcome relief for anyone.
Still, it’s a surprise the day Tommy radios to let the dispatchers know his patrol group is on their way back only to end up speaking with his niece.
“This is Jackson,” comes Ellie’s voice, a little crackly from the radio static this far out but still clearly her. Smiling, he presses the button to talk again.
“What are you doing on the radio, syrup? That ain’t for kids.” There’s no heat to it, really–the patrol was easy and there’s no emergency–but it’s probably not a bad idea to let Ellie know that the radios aren’t for playing pretend.
Ellie, though, is apparently in no mood to entertain silly questions like what the fuck she’s doing on the official dispatch she shouldn’t be as much as touching.
“Patrol group name and location,” her voice comes back. A beat. “Please.”
“Ellie, put Amy on,” he says, patiently but firmly enough to let her know he’s not playing along with this particular game.
“Amy said answer the funking question,” Ellie says, smugly.
“Yeah, Tommy,” comes Amy’s voice before he has a chance to respond. “Answer the funking question.”
“Y’all running so thin you’re using child labor now?” He asks, more reassured that Ellie isn’t wreaking havoc if Amy is answering, too. “Could have let me or Maria know. We could have got you somebody who can look over the table on her own.”
“I’m the radio boss today!” Ellie says cheerfully before she seems to remember that she’s meant to be doing a job. “Patrol group name and location, Uncle Tommy,” she says firmly, with a tone that says she’ll be as take no shit as Tess when she’s old enough.
God help ‘em when that day finally comes.
“Patrol Group Echo checking in on Snow King Mountain route,” he says obligingly.
“Thank you,” Ellie says with all the professionalism of a customer service agent Before. “Patrol status, Echo?”
“Is that Ellie?” Joel asks, rejoining the group after helping to shift one of the solar panels they use for the watchtowers.
“Apparently she’s the radio boss now,” Tommy says dryly, and Joel grins.
“You seen the clothes she goes through? About time she started earning her keep.”
Tommy rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling as he pushes the button to speak once more.
“All clear, Echo made it to the watchtower. Returning now.”
“Tim-Four,” Ellie says cheerfully. “Clear for return, Echo.”
Tommy debates correcting her, but if the radio people have a four year old manning the station, who is he to correct their methodology?
“Roger that, Jackson. Over and out.”
“Bye bye!” Ellie chirps back, and Tommy shakes his head fondly, tucking the radio back on his belt.
*
Tess goes to collect her child when her migraine has finally abated enough that she can stand upright. It’s still foreign to her, revealing a weakness to anyone who isn’t Joel in the safety of their locked home, but her puking over a fence from pain while walking Ellie home from school was a bit hard to explain in a way that wouldn’t have had her hauled to the clinic for no reason if she didn’t fess up. It grates, someone else seeing any hint of soft underbelly after so many years of remaining a ball busting bitch at all times for her own survival, but Betty is the type of person that toughness bounces off until it’s worn down to meekness. Silver haired and bespectacled or not, she’s as unflappable as the mountains that surround Jackson, and in short order, Tess found herself ushered home, her child claimed for safekeeping among the radio ladies, and herself prone in her bed and passing the fuck out.
Waking up with a head that’s tender but not world endingly painful, she can admit that it was probably a good idea.
Feeling like a Jackie O wannabe to end all Jackie O wannabes, she grabs a pair of sunglasses on her way out the door, both pairs kept well out of reach of little girls with more curiosity than dexterity and a desire to copy mama in everything.
“Heading out on vacation?” Maria teases when she leaves her own door a few seconds after Tess, her adjusted speed to avoid bringing her migraine back full force making it easy for Maria to catch up even with Ollie in a sling on her chest.
“Hear Cabo’s nice this time of year,” Tess says, extending a finger to Ollie, who grips it firmly and squeals a greeting that makes her wince.
“Sorry,” Maria says with an apologetic grimace, tapping her hand gently over Ollie’s mouth to modulate the squeal into infant beatboxing that makes it turn into giggles. “We had a nice little sleep regression period to learn screaming and now we have to show off our new skill to everyone.”
“It’s fine,” Tess says easily, waving her concern away. “Headache’s almost gone anyway.” She eyes Maria’s outfit and the pistol strapped to her thigh. “You heading out? I thought you were still off patrol for a few more months.” She’s missed Maria’s company–now that they’ve put the whole “you hate my partner’s guts and think he and I are monsters here to blow your shit the fuck up” stage, they’ve gotten along famously–and will be glad when she’s back on patrol with her, but in a world with no formula and pumping on horseback a logistical pain, anyone who’s still nursing gets kept close to Jackson until they wean their baby.
“That new settlement over in Casper got the biology lab up and working again, but most of their sheep got wiped out from wolves. They sent a group out to negotiate trading wool for some penicillin. We’re meeting a couple hours out to make the trade.”
“And you’re going stir crazy on maternity leave stuck inside Jackson?” Tess asks on a guess at the end of the explanation.
Maria cuts her eyes to her slyly.
“I plead the fifth.”
Tess snorts.
“Pleading the fifth on why you’re sneaking out before your husband’s patrol gets back, too?” Tess asks dryly, not that she blames her. With a Miller man of her own, she can attest to the appeal of the model, but sometimes a lady does want to get up to a little something without tall, dark, and overprotective hovering nearby.
“If you’re in the market to be bribed in exchange for not telling my husband on me,” Maria says. “I could use a plus-one if you think you’re up to it.”
“Let me make sure my kid hasn’t started an organized crime syndicate using the radios, and then I’ll let you know.”
Maria laughs.
*
As she finds out when she splits off from Maria to let her drop the baby off at the nursery, Ellie has apparently been engaged all afternoon in perfectly above the bar employment.
Well, discarding the child labor element.
“This is Jackson,” she walks into the room in time to hear Ellie say from her perch on Amy’s lap. She presses a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing at the use of Ellie’s hair gathered into a bun with a large scrunchie around it to prop the headset up enough to keep it on her head. Amy catches her eye and grins, but Ellie seems entirely focused on her task, little face business-like.
“Ellie?” Tess hears Vernon say. “Everything okay? Why are-”
Ellie sighs heavily like she can’t believe her misfortune in other people being so surprised at her being on the radio, and she exchanges a look with Amy that Tess remembers from her days working at Bath and Body Works to put herself through school, a look that very clearly says, “Can you believe this idiot?”
Still, when she presses the button on the dispatch radio, her clear voice is all professionalism.
“Patrol group name and location, please,” Ellie prompts politely with the air of a kindergarten teacher dealing with an unruly child.
“You heard her,” Amy contributes after leaning forward enough to speak into the headset without taking it off of Ellie, Ellie obligingly tilting her head closer in what’s clearly a move perfected from repeated practice.
Tess raises her eyebrows as she leans back against the doorway, more than a little impressed. She catches Betty’s eye, and the older woman tilts her head in a question that Tess smiles and nods in response to, her sunglasses hooked on her shirt just in case but her head barely registering now. Betty smiles and then looks over at Ellie and winks before going back to scanning through some of the live feeds from the security cameras. Tess looks back to Ellie.
“Patrol Group Kilo checking in on Boyles Hill route. Couldn’t complete route because of storm damage to the path. Suggesting rerouting around Indian Springs Ranch until we can get a crew out here to clear the path.”
Ellie, having clearly not expected problems, turns to look at Amy sharply with alarm, but Amy just gives her a smile and leans forward to speak into the headset again, holding Ellie’s head in place.
“Copy that, Kilo,” Amy says smoothly. “We’ll make a note.” She lets go of the button and sits back, letting Ellie take over as she slides the keyboard a little closer.
“Mob-fication recorded,” Ellie says carefully when Amy reaches around her to tap it into the record they keep on the computer in the radio room.
“Thank you, Jackson,” Vernon says back, apparently at peace with making his report to a pre-schooler.
“Tim-four, Kilo!” Ellie says chipperly, clearly pleased at her deft handling of a problem. She sits back against Amy contently until she catches sight of Tess, perking up and only barely remembering to carefully take her headset off and hand it to Amy before she slides down and darts over.
“Hi, mama!” She says, clearly excited to have her hard work witnessed. She catches herself, though, and lowers her voice when she remembers why she’s been left to boss patrols around at all. “Is your head still bad?”
Tess smiles as she squats down. It’s the easiest way to explain migraines to Ellie without scaring her, telling her that mama’s head is bad sometimes.
“All good now, bug,” she says, touching Ellie’s cheek gently before bopping at her bun. “Nice hair.”
Ellie grins, angling her head to show it off.
“Miss Betty did it for me ‘cause the headset’s too big for my head.” She’s clearly still residually disgruntled about it.
“It’s like they didn’t even consider that four year olds would need to use them one day,” Betty puts in, clearly teasing. Ellie, though, doesn’t pick up on it and just puts her hands on her hips like Joel, shaking her head in disapproval the same way he does when he’s taken stock of construction that doesn’t meet his standards.
“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” she says sagely, a line she’s taken from Joel to match her mannerisms.
Tess bites her lip to keep from openly laughing at her, standing and putting a hand on her head affectionately.
“Sorry to ask you to keep her longer, but would you two mind her staying here until Joel gets back? Maria’s heading out for a trade, and I’d like to ride back-up with her if you two don’t mind keeping the munchkin.”
“I’m not a munchkin,” Ellie says with clear offense. “I’m the radio boss.”
Tess breathes through the urge to laugh.
“You heard her, Tess,” Amy says, clearly fighting not to smile. “She’s the radio boss. I doubt we could do it without her anyway.”
Ellie nods decisively and marches back over to Amy, waiting for her to wheel her chair back and then climbing back on. Amy helps her put the headset back on, and Ellie gives Tess an arch look as she sits up straighter, finger poised to answer the radio.
“Alright, radio boss,” Tess says with a teasing salute. She looks to both of the women. “Thank you. I owe you both one.”
*
She and Maria do in fact make it out of the gates without any partners complicating things.
“Patrol group Delta heading out on rendezvous with Casper delegation. Planned point of meeting at the Dubois conference building,” Maria says as they ride out.
“Tim-four, Delta!” Ellie says. “Good luck out there!” The last bit is straight from copying what Amy always says, and Maria and Tess exchange an amused look.
“Copy that, Jackson.”
“Tell my mama I said hi!” Ellie says, apparently deciding that it’s worth breaking from her script since she did the first part so well.
Tess shakes her head fondly, smiling.
*
Despite a few grumbles about radio dispatch not taking their jobs seriously, Ellie keeps up manning the radio from time to time, always with supervision.
And always with a strict adherence to protocol.
Tommy grins now as he watches Roger try and fail to argue with Ellie about not following the script he’s supposed to as he tries to report in that they found two new horses for the settlement, stragglers whose owners appear to have died a while ago based on how weathered their tack is.
“Tell Foxtrot-”
“Patrol group. And. Location.” Ellie’s voice comes through, stern as a sergeant.
He and Joel give the man easy smiles when he turns to them, exasperated.
“You know the funking rules, Rodge,” Eula teases. “Better give the radio boss the information before she strands us out here.”
Roger, as the current victim to Ellie’s powertrip, doesn’t seem nearly as amused as the rest of them, but finally he sighs.
“Patrol group Echo on the Taylor Creek bridge route.”
“Thank you, Echo,” Ellie says sweetly, placid now that she’s gotten her iron-willed way. “Proceed.”
Tommy bites his cheek to keep from laughing at the look on Roger’s face.
“We’ve got two stray horses out here. It looks like it’s been a while since anyone took care of ‘em, but let Foxtrot know to keep an eye out if they’re still going up towards Cottonwood Creek.”
“Tim-four, Echo. We’ll pass it on.”
“Ten four,” Roger says, clearly annoyed enough to try and pick on a four year old. Tommy shifts a bit, wondering if he’s going to have to get mean if this man tries to hurt his niece’s feelings, but Ellie doesn’t appear to have noticed, too busy being the radio boss to bother with her underlings taking issue with her pronunciation.
“Tim-four, Echo. Over and out.”
Very clearly dismissed, Roger scowls but clips the radio back to his hip.
*
“Got any radio bosses around here ready to go get supper?” Joel asks after knocking on the door to the radio office.
He rolls his eyes when Ellie holds up a finger for silence the way Betty does as she finishes checking in with the Sierra patrol group. He toys with the idea of telling her that’s rude, especially for her father, but he decides to cut his losses.
It’s not like he’s the boss of anything anyway, he thinks wryly, not with his two ladies running the show.
Amy smiles at him as they wait for Ellie to finish up taking a report of a bridge washout, and he lifts his eyebrows with surprise when Ellie turns with a great sense of self-importance to pick carefully at the keyboard, recording the note. Amy’s smile widens.
“Better watch this one,” she teases. “We’re gonna have her taking all our shifts soon.”
“Yeah!” Ellie agrees, pausing only briefly in her chicken peck typing.
“Thought you wanted to be a patroller like me and mama?” He asks, crossing the office and leaning against the desk.
“I am!” Ellie assures him before she returns to her typing. Given that she still hasn’t finished typing up “bridge,” he figures he’s got some time to kill, and he turns to Amy.
“That new ramp still doing alright?” He asks, one of his latest projects, tearing out an old ramp to the community supply building that previously sat at an angle that would send Amy flying if she wasn’t careful, and even if she was after winter covered everything in a layer of ice. She’d been willing to make do for the sake of letting other projects get tackled first, but in exchange for how often she’s watched his kid–and let her ride around with her because Ellie thinks that Amy’s wheelchair is “the coolest funking thing ever” –making her life easier when getting in and out of buildings is the very least of what he can do.
“Yep,” she says, and she hesitates for a second before he tilts his head in an indication for her to go on. “If you’re not too busy, do you think you’d be able to stop by and take a look at Caleb’s house sometime? Right now the only door my chair can get through is the sliding door in back, and there’s only stairs to get to it. If you’re busy, that’s totally fine-”
“It’ll be the next thing on my list,” he assures her, and she gives him a smile of thanks. He focuses back on Ellie, who seems to be getting less amused with fussing around with a computer the longer it takes. Amy notices, too, and leans around her.
“You want me to take over, radio boss?” She asks, and Ellie nods, flopping back like she’s exhausted.
Amy grins and does, finishing up in thirty seconds what would have likely taken Ellie a good ten more minutes to manage. Job done, Ellie slides off of her lap.
“I can’t be radio boss tomorrow because me and mama are helping move the chickens, okay?”
“Tim-four, radio boss,” Amy says with a little salute that Ellie returns.
Job done, Ellie turns back to him, lifting her arms in a clear indication to get picked up.
Joel obliges, settling her easily on one hip as she starts giving him a report on all the reports she’s taken for the day.
*
Tommy forces his hands not to shake when he scrambles for the radio, trying very, very hard not to notice how the blood on his fingers makes it slippery enough that he almost drops it, fumbling it for far too fucking long before he’s able to press the button.
“Jackson?” He says, voice as even as he can make it. “Jackson, come in.”
He closes his eyes as he waits, a directionless sort of prayer. Please don’t let it be Ellie on today. Please don’t let it be Ellie on today. Please don’t let it be Ell-
“Jackson,” Ellie’s voice says, eager and bright as ever. “Patrol and location, please?”
Tommy grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut tighter for a moment.
“Syrup,” he says, voice as gentle as he can make it. “Is Amy there?”
“Patrol and loc-” Ellie starts, tone censuring, but Amy must pick up on something in his voice, thank God, because her voice cuts across Ellie’s, clearer as she clearly ducks closer to the headset.
“Tommy? What’s going on?”
Before she releases the button, he can hear Ellie complaining about the break in protocol, but he doesn’t have time to entertain her love of procedure right now.
Not when her daddy is currently bleeding out and Tommy has to face the idea that there’s a very real possibility they’re both going to be grieving by the end of the day.
“Amy, I need you to send Ellie out right now and find Tess. We have wounded. Tell medical to have everything ready for surgery. It’s not looking good.”
“Copy that, To-” Amy starts, but there’s the sound of a struggle, and then Ellie’s voice is on the radio.
“Uncle Tommy, where’s my daddy?” Tommy squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hold onto his own frayed nerves, made worse when he hears a pained cry from his brother as he’s hauled up over a horse, barely conscious but aware enough to still be in pain because God fucking forbid anything ever go easy for their family. “Uncle Tommy,” Ellie’s voice comes again, frightened now. “Uncle Tommy, put my daddy on the radio. I wanna talk to my daddy.”
“Syrup, you need to go find your mama,” he says, as evenly as he can as he mounts up behind the prone form of his big brother. The sight of blood soaking through both the bandages and Joel’s shirt makes him want to vomit, but he swallows it back, resting a hand on Joel’s back before taking up the reins and urging his horse into motion.
“Daddy!” Ellie’s voice comes again. “Daddy, answer!” Tommy knows her well enough to know that that tone means she’s either crying or on the verge of it, and clearly even almost all the way out of it, Joel hears it, too, groaning and trying to stir.
“Easy, big brother,” Tommy soothes.
“E-Ellie,” Joel says, voice scarcely more than a breath, and Tommy turns the volume all the way off on the radio to cut off Ellie’s demands for Joel to answer her, feeling sick with guilt about it but unsure what else to do. The last thing they need right now is Joel hurting himself worse trying to get free of the ropes he’s tied on with for his own safety.
“Getting you back to your girl,” Tommy says as confidently as he can. “And then I’m sitting back and watching Tess beat your ass like a goddamn drum. Christ, taking on three raiders on your own? Jackass.” There’s more heat than he meant to put in what was meant to be a reassurance, but without the immediate fear of walking in and seeing his brother limp on the ground, being pissed is begging for a turn on the roster, and he’s finding it hard to resist.
A beep from the radio, and he risks turning it on. It’s Amy, thank God, and he waits for her to finish her scripted question.
“Patrol group Echo heading back now, one wounded, one dead.” He looks back to the still form over Clara’s saddle, a twenty-year-old named Heather, new to Jackson and newer yet to patrol, lured into an ambush by inexperience and adrenaline, chasing a raider right into a trap, followed by Joel, who went after her after spotting the trick from their own years of doing something similar.
He doesn’t have the space to consider how Joel’s going to take it, his efforts to save her meaning nothing in the end. He hopes, at least, that Heather knew someone was coming from her, that she had at least a moment of knowing someone tried to help her.
Even as he’s pissed at fuck for his brother doing it in the first place.
“Had to pick now to play the fucking hero?” He asks Joel, unable to help it, newly angry.
Joel doesn’t respond, and that just makes him feel worse.
*
Tommy carefully thinks nothing at fucking all when they make it to Jackson, and he helps ease Joel off of his horse only to find that the white patch of his paint has gone bright, crimson red.
“Don’t you fucking dare die on me,” he hisses to Joel, even as he keeps his hands gentle as he helps settle his brother on the stretcher brought to the stables after the call, shouldering Antonio out of the way and taking up an end himself.
And of course they couldn’t avoid another gut punch, he thinks with dread when he spots a little head in a yellow-scrunchied bun peeking up over the crowd from the vantage point of standing on a porch railing.
The second she spots them, Ellie’s eyes go massive, tears filling them at once. Tommy sees Tess turn just in time to see that Ellie has gotten herself to a perfect perch to see something no four year old should ever have to, but Ellie leaps off the railing and into a bush before Tess can snatch her back, rolling out of the branches with cuts on her cheeks but paying no attention to it as she darts right towards them. Tess leaps the railing after her, but the bush catches her in a way it didn’t her bird-boned child, and Ellie reaches them, hands immediately reaching for Joel plaintively.
Antonio, who kept up with them, picks her up before she can make contact.
He clearly regrets his gentle attempts to guide her head down to his shoulder to keep her from looking at Joel when Ellie lets out an angry shrill and closes her little teeth around his wrist, jerking like a caught fish to get free.
“Daddy!” She shouts, the word a command. “Daddy, wake up!”
Tommy doesn’t know if he’s ever felt worse than he does in this exact fucking moment.
Tess catches up then, and pulls Ellie from Antonio’s now significantly-looser hold. When she sees Joel, though, she stumbles, just for a moment, before the head bitch in charge in mask slips back in place.
Somehow seeing it feels even worse than seeing the tears streaming down Ellie’s cheeks.
*
Tommy claims two bites of his own courtesy of Ellie when it comes time to take Joel back to surgery, and Ellie takes it about as well as he would have expected her to, launching herself at the doctors like a wildcat.
She’s been treated like a cat accordingly, rolled into a towel that a nurse tossed to him as she rushed past with a tray of tools fresh from the clinic’s autoclave. He felt like the lowest sort of bastard, rolling her up in a horrible version of her babyritto as she screamed for her daddy and demanded to be let go, but her threats have faded to quiet crying. Tess went back to talk to the medical staff earlier and hasn’t come back, so Tommy, still covered in Joel’s blood, is the one left to try and tell a terrified four year old that everything’s going to be okay.
He’s never felt less equipped for a job in his goddamn life.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he says, bouncing Ellie the way he does a fussy Ollie. Ellie keeps sobbing, little gasping, shuddering breaths that hurt far worse than threats of being funking stabbed if she isn’t released to be with her daddy. “You’re alright, syrup. You’re gonna be okay.”
“Da-daddy,” Ellie wails on a shuddering exhale. “I want my daddy.”
Tommy gruffly brushes his own eyes dry on his shoulder. Without the immediacy of getting Joel back to Jackson and left without a target with the raiders already dead, he’s swung right around to sickening dread and pre-emptive grief.
It’s very much not the ideal state of mind to be in for comforting a young child feeling the same.
*
Tess looks shell-shocked when she comes back in the waiting room, but the lack of total devastation is reassuring, at least. He doesn’t speak up, just keeps gently bouncing Ellie still in her towel prison. He’d thought to unroll her when she seemed to calm down earlier, but she had been faking him out, and she had tried to make a break for it the second she got one little arm free.
So. Back to the restraint burrito it is.
With her face pressed against Tommy’s neck, now slick with tears along with sweat from the ride back, Ellie doesn’t see her mama at first.
From the way Tess presses one hand to her face and the other to her stomach, clearly pushing back her own emotions in the moment and trying to get a hold of herself, this is a good thing.
When she’s gotten control of herself to her satisfaction, Tess pulls herself straight again, shoulders setting and jaw going tight. She looks imposing, in charge and confident in herself, totally calm and collected.
It’s only because he’s known her for so long that Tommy picks up on the tremble in her hands.
“Hey bug,” she says, walking over, and Ellie’s head snaps over to her mama so fast she clips Tommy on the jaw with her head. He hisses reflexively in pain but doesn’t comment, handing Tess her bundle of daughter.
“She’s a flight risk,” he warns her, and Tess nods, holding Ellie close and taking a seat next to him. Ellie doesn’t even seem to think to demand her freedom from a new jailor, just tucks herself close to Tess and starts crying again.
If Tommy has had a more miserable wait in his life, he can’t recall.
*
Maria comes by with a change of clothes, and Tommy makes use of the clinic showers. When he comes out, hair still dripping onto the towel around his shoulders, Maria is by Tess’s side, running a hand along her arm, rubbing gently, soothingly. Tess is stony-faced, looking straight ahead at nothing at all. Ellie appears to be asleep, soothed despite herself by her captivity and the exhaustion of crying so hard, cheeks still glistening with moisture. Maria catches his eye, and his heart stops for a moment, but she shakes her head.
“Still here,” she says quietly, clearly in deference to Ellie. “But they…they lost him, once. They almost couldn’t get him back.”
The only sign that Tess hears it at all is that her next breath shudders a bit, but she remains a statue, the only softness about her the gentleness with which she holds her daughter.
*
A doctor comes out. Tommy gives blood. Maria nurses the baby when her friend Alex brings him. Ellie stirs but doesn’t wake.
And still they sit and wait.
*
He’s sure he’s not the only one who jumps when Tess starts laughing, Maria exchanging an alarmed look with him. It’s not unusual, stress making people act erratically, but the laughter is both unexpected and unnerving. When she’s gotten hold of herself, still looking straight ahead, Tess says with a disbelieving and fragile kind of smile,
“I wouldn’t even be a widow this time.”
She doesn’t speak more.
She doesn’t have to.
It packs about as much of a punch as anything possibly could.
He and Maria both put an arm around her. Tess doesn’t lean into either of them. She sits still as a statue of a queen, staring staring staring.
*
Maria has left to put the baby down for the night–after a sharp refusal of an offer to take Ellie home as well–with promises to return when an exhausted-looking doctor emerges from the back. In her first sign of weakness since she came into the waiting room, Tess grabs his hand so hard he can feel the bones inside grinding together.
He says nothing, just squeezes back.
“He’s stable,” the doctor says, and it feels like a punch to the chest with how it takes the air out of him with relief. Tess, though, remains just as still.
“Stable just means unchanging,” she says, voice flat, and the doctor tilts her head in acknowledgement.
“It was…rough. He’s-” She seems to register a still-sleeping Ellie, and it takes Tess prompting her to continue. “If he wakes by morning, it’ll be a good sign.” She doesn’t clarify what it’ll be if he doesn’t.
In one smooth motion, Tess releases him and stands, Ellie still in her hold, and glides smoothly past the doctor.
*
It’s Ellie’s slight weight in her arms that’s giving Tess her composure at the moment, as if her kid’s mass is a physical thing, a dam against the pain that wants to burst forth.
The pain and the fucking rage.
You fucker, she thinks at Joel’s terrifyingly still face. You motherfucker. You bastard. You complete and utter jackass shit motherfucker son of a bitch-
She cuts herself off when her inner diatribe threatens to crack her necessary restraint, her breathing going heavy until she gets herself together again. She’s never been one for domestic violence–there’s been plenty of other violence to choose from since she first met Joel, after all, no matter how much he’s pissed her off over the years–but right now she thinks she could happily wring his goddamn neck for doing this to her.
One, she thinks, counting the movement of Ellie’s breaths under the palm she has over her back. Two, three, four.
It’s not until she hits thirty-two that she feels confident enough in her self-control to look at Joel again.
Checking that Ellie’s still asleep, she leans forward in the chair by the bed, intending to blister his goddamn ears for putting her through this, for putting Ellie through this, their little girl who never had a single steady, reliable thing to count on until them, who now stands poised to have a foundation of her world ripped right out from under her light-up Sketchered feet. She doesn’t even know what the fuck happened–it hadn’t seemed important, before, when she could have asked Tommy–but it doesn’t matter. Knowing his stupid ass, it was something avoidable. She’s going to tell him off, she decides. Sleeping or not, he’s got an ass beating of epic proportions coming his way. She’ll blister his ears so good it’ll be miracle if he can hear out of either by the time she’s done with him.
“Don’t leave me,” is what comes out instead, plaintive in a way she hates herself for immediately.
She shifts enough to hold Ellie with one arm, reaching out to take Joel’s hand in her own. She almost recoils immediately at how cold it is. Joel is a fucking furnace, enough that it’s miserable at times to share a bed with him in summer unless they’ve got the A/C blasting. She and Ellie have used him for his body heat plenty of times, and despite his complaints, he’s the one who pulls his gloves off to take their hands in his or tucks them into his sleeves. Even when he was full Ice King, he was reliable for leeching body heat from, complaining about her cold feet but never moving away even when the only intimacy between them was fucking for the sake of just feeling a gentle touch and a little pleasure for a bit. He’s warm, always warm, like that heart he kept banked for so long kept burning like an ember no matter how deeply he buried it, detectable through his skin.
Now touching him feels like touching a corpse.
The full body flinch that thought provokes startles Ellie out of her exhaustion and into awareness, and it’s only a few confused blinks before she clearly recalls what’s going on and launches a new struggle for freedom.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Tess soothes, releasing Joel’s cold hand to brace Ellie’s little face, keeping her looking only at her. “Bug, listen to me, okay?”
Ellie stills her struggling, panting, but she listens. Tess gives her the best smile she can manage.
“Daddy looks a little scary right now, but you don’t have to be scared, okay?” This is a lie but a necessary one. She has a moment of gratitude for being able to parent on autopilot, her mouth taking over when her brain is still flipping tables over her dumbass of a partner getting his dumbass self in trouble and threatening to leave her raising Ellie alo-
“Is daddy gonna die?” Ellie asks, lip wobbling, and Tess barely catches her own instinct to snap at her not to say that, as if putting words to the fear in her chest will make it happen.
“No, bug,” she says, shaking her head and holding onto her smile by the tips of her fucking fingers. “Daddy just needs to rest. It’s like when he’s sick. A little rest and he’ll be all better.” She makes herself stop there. The panic is threatening to make her chirpy and cheerful in overcompensating, and her mama turning into Snow White certainly isn’t going to do anything to keep Ellie calm.
When Ellie struggles again, Tess helps free her, hands hovering until she can be sure Ellie won’t take a flying leap towards Joel the way she does in the mornings Tess deploys her to get her partner out of bed.
Still, the little whimper she lets out when she catches sight of Joel almost feels worse.
“He’s okay,” Tess says, voice low, bending her head to press her cheek to Ellie’s. “He just looks scary, that’s all.”
“Daddy?” Ellie asks plaintively, and Tess breathes through the way it threatens to break her fucking heart, the muted hope she can feel fizzling to nothing when the call goes unanswered.
She feels a shiver go through Ellie, and she wraps her arms around her, resting her chin on her head, right next to the scrunchied bun she’s still wearing.
*
Tommy rejoins the trio in the clinic after retrieving some supper. He doubts they’re going to be in the mood to eat, but he is his southern mama’s child, and at a loss for anything else to do, he can try to feed people.
The fact that he hasn’t been able to stomach anything himself doesn’t bode well for the success of his plan, but he ignores that as he fills up to-go containers and rests them in a tote to carry over to the clinic.
The scene he finds there lets him know he did in fact still have some heart left to break.
Ellie is curled up next to Joel on the hospital bed, arranged carefully so she won’t press on anything important but her back resting against his side, curled around one of his arms, eyes closed. She’s not sleeping, Tommy can tell from her breathing, but her eyes are clenched shut, like she’s praying despite not being raised in any religion that he’s aware of. Tess is on Joel’s other side, one of his hands in both of hers, and she’s staring at him with an edge to her expression that tells him she’s mentally giving him orders he’d better heed if he knows what’s good for him.
Joel remains still, face blank.
Ellie looks up when the bag of food taps against the door, and her face falls when she realizes that the noise was him and not Joel shifting. He gives her an apologetic grimace of a smile.
“Hey, syrup,” he says softly, and the death glare she gives him is all Tess as she curls up tighter around Joel’s arm, as if daring him to try and bundle her up against her will again. She pulls back from the hand he extends to rest on her shoulder as he passes, and he doesn’t try again, just moves around the bed to stand by Tess.
He very carefully doesn’t look at Joel again.
“Brought some food,” he says softly, resting a hand on Tess’s shoulder and squeezing gently.
“Not hungry,” Tess says, voice flat. She doesn’t look away from Joel.
He considers arguing, but he’s never been confident in his chances of winning a fight against Tess.
He’d rather not push his luck today.
*
Ellie gets evicted from her place at her daddy’s side when a doctor comes in to check on Joel, and she takes her banishment with a surprising lack of violence, letting the nurse set her on the ground and then wandering over to him. She tilts her head in a slightly shy question, clearly wondering if he's still holding a grudge from falling victim to those sharp little teeth of hers earlier, and he just smiles as best he can before pulling her up to sit on his lap.
“He’ll be alright, syrup,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to her head. “Your daddy’s tough.”
“Grandpa Bill says tough doesn’t mean funk if you get yourself killed anyway being stupid.”
Out of her view, Tommy grimaces. Of the wisdom she’s soaked up like a sponge, he would have preferred if she could have avoided that little tidbit.
“I want my daddy,” she says softly, like a confession, and he closes his eyes, snuggling her a little closer.
*
Tess makes a very, very distant mental note to find out the Jackson equivalent of a fruit basket so she can send it to Maria after the other woman comes back to collect Ellie and manages to negotiate taking her home to shower and change into pajamas with a promise to then be returned here to the clinic. Tess thinks she might have agreed to a change of clothes being brought to her, too. She can’t quite recall.
With the world-shattering loss she’s facing right now, Maria rifling through her panty drawer doesn’t remotely register as a concern.
“What happened to us first, huh, Tex?” She asks softly. She has one hand in Joel’s still and one running lightly through his hair. “Us above everyone. That’s the fucking deal, buster.”
Joel doesn’t respond. She breathes through the grief and anger and terror competing to squeeze her chest shut.
“You gonna leave me to do the single mother schtick? Who’s gonna clean up the puke when she gets sick, huh? We have a deal, motherfucker.”
If it would mean Joel opening his eyes and being fine right now, she would gladly clean up puke every single day for the rest of her goddamn life.
“And what about the spiders?” She asks, and stupidly, it’s this that makes her eyes sting because it prompts her thinking of their fourth job together, when a scream had brought him charging into the room she was in, and she’d had to try and pokerface her way through not telling him that she was screaming like a little girl over a fucking spider in a world full of zombies. “You know I can’t do spiders, Tex. That’s your job.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and she wipes at her face angrily when it makes a tear fall down either cheek. She doesn’t need to cry. People cry when they grieve. She’s not grieving. She won’t be, either. She won’t.
“I love you,” she says, voice tight. She stands and presses a kiss to Joel’s unmoving lips, her forehead resting against his. Another tear slips out, and she feels it hit her thumb resting against his cheek. She presses their heads together a bit tighter. “So you gotta come back, alright? I love you. That means you don’t get to clock out and leave me.”
Joel doesn’t respond.
By the time Tommy returns with a pajama-clad Ellie, her face is dry and composed once more.
*
“You can go back home, Tommy.”
He looks up at the sound of Tess’s voice, startled from passing the time by watching Ellie’s face and trying to figure out what she’s dreaming based on her expressions from her place back at Joel’s side. Tess doesn’t look at him before she keeps speaking.
“Pretty shitty, leaving your wife to take care of the baby alone.”
“He’s shaping up to be going through another sleep regression,” Tommy jokes weakly, his levity falling slack even as he says it. “This is really just all an excuse for a break.”
Tess doesn’t laugh.
He doesn’t continue the joke.
They continue their watch in silence.
*
Ellie wakes confused.
The sheets beneath her don’t smell like her sheets, and there’s a beep beep beep she hasn’t heard before. She frowns without opening her eyes, wiggling her cheek down more against her pillo-
She doesn’t have a pillow, and that’s what makes her remember the rest.
Remembering to be careful so she won’t hurt daddy, she pushes herself up slowly. She sees that Uncle Tommy and mama are asleep, Uncle Tommy with his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted back and mama with her arms folded on the bed and her head on top of them. It doesn’t look comfortable, and Ellie has a moment of being glad for once that she’s little because it means she could sleep next to daddy and-
“Hey, baby.”
Her head turns so sharply she makes herself a little dizzy, and she’s scared she made it up and told herself a story and that daddy-
“Daddy!” She says, without enough breath to be loud.
Daddy smiles, his face going blurry when her eyes fill with tears. She stops herself before she jumps onto him. It’s what she wants to do, but she doesn’t want to hurt daddy, not when he already looks so hurt. Daddy, though, just brings his arm up and pulls her close. It’s clumsier than daddy usually is, and she has to catch herself with her hands on his chest before she falls, but though daddy grunts a little in pain, he doesn’t stop, just pushes at her head gently until she’s laying down over his shoulder, her head next to his. Before he can pull it back, she grabs his hand in hers and keeps it wrapped over her like a blanket.
“You got hurt real bad,” she tells him, and her voice shakes a little even though she’s trying to be brave like a big girl.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he says, and his voice is rough enough that it sounds like it hurts. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay,” she says, deciding to forgive him because forgiving people is good. She picks her head up and gives him her best Mama Face, the one that means she means business. “Don’t do it again.”
Daddy smiles a little wider now and squeezes her with the arm he has around her.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, like he does with mama when she's the boss in the house.
She nods, satisfied, and then she lays back down, cuddling close.
*
It takes two weeks for Joel to finally be released from the clinic.
From the looks he got from Tess at first, he thinks it might be two weeks of witnesses that saved him from an ass beating.
He catches her by the wrist now after she came to deliver a dose of tincture for the pain. He sees her think about pulling away and giving him the silent treatment, but a squeeze makes her shoulders drop, and she allows it when he gently tugs her onto the mattress with him. She settles carefully on his good side, curling up against him with her knees resting on his thigh and her head on his shoulder.
“If you think you’re getting any tail for the next year, Tex, you’ve got a rough reality check coming,” she grumbles, and he huffs a laugh, nuzzling at her head in an attempt to make her laugh. It doesn’t work, and she shoves at his face gently, but she settles a bit, going a little less tense.
“I save the day, and I don’t get any reward sex?” He teases, and the look she cuts at him is sharp as any blade. “Sorry,” he says, cowed, and she gives him one last little narrowing of her eyes before she drops her head again. He presses a kiss to it. Tess presses a bit tighter.
“That was fucking terrifying, just FYI,” she tells him, and the flat nature of her tone tells him how much she’s burying beneath it.
He ignores the pain in his bad side to get both arms around her.
“I’d say you could get me back,” he says, “but I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
The weak attempt at a joke gets him a pinch to the flesh above his knee. He takes it with grace.
“You better watch it,” she says. “I’d be a hot commodity on the single mom market. I’d have Ellie a step-dad by the end of your funeral.”
“Damn,” he says lightly, “I’m flattered you’d wait so long.”
“Gotta keep up appearances,” Tess responds with feigned seriousness. “What would the neighbors say otherwise?”
The silence afterwards is heavy but not tense, and Joel soaks it in for a bit.
“Trying to die on me was funking rude,” Tess says after a bit, and he smiles, faintly, already halfway asleep even sitting up. God, but a body does like to take its sweet time to patch back together.
“Won’t happen again, ma’am,” he says politely, a promise he can’t keep but needs to make anyway.
Tess accepts it for what it is and sits with him in silence until he’s asleep again.
*
It’s months of smothering before he’s allowed back out on patrol, Ellie deployed liberally as warden and sometimes fully sitting on top of him to keep him in bed.
At this point, he’s glad even to be riding along on a training patrol to help corral teenagers.
“Jackson?” He says into the radio, given control of it today as a disciplinary measure after he was informed that almost getting his ass murked means he now gets the toddler leash of being in charge of the radio.
Really, if he hadn’t forced him to carry his limp body back to Jackson, he would kick Tommy’s ass as a lesson in thinking he has the authority to tell him what to do.
“Jackson,” he hears Ellie’s voice say, and he smiles faintly. He knows at this point that it’s become a lighthearted superstition among the patrollers of Jackson, having Ellie as dispatch when heading out considered a good luck charm. Ellie’s preened under the weight of her own importance and has taken her job seriously. “Patrol and location, please?”
“Patrol group Echo riding training today to Jackson Peak.”
“Tim-four, Echo!” Ellie says back, chipper as ever. “Reports of scragglers,” Joel considers correcting her but dismisses it, too endeared, “near Nowlin Peak. Patrol group Foxtrot cleared earlier but said proceed with caution.” He’s glad for the euphemism employed for his kid’s benefit to avoid scaring her and gladder still for the protocol of sending a full patrol to clear the way before trainees go through later. God knows what Tess would do to him if he got his ass knocked out of commission on his very first ride out after recovering.
There’s a non-zero chance she’d be making herself a single parent.
“Copy that, Jackson. Thanks.”
“Be safe, okay, daddy?” Ellie’s voice comes, a little hesitant and a little less excited. It’s been hard on her, he knows, him going outside the gates again.
“Will do,” he says.
“Okay,” Ellie says, clearly appeased. “Have fun, daddy!”
He grins and presses the button once more even as he urges his horse into motion.
“Tim-four, baby girl.”