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The snow can be hard for Ellie sometimes.
When they’d gotten back from creating the cure, she’d been so sick and weak she wasn’t able to enjoy the fresh fallen snow that coated Jackson like a beloved scarf. By the time she had felt recovered enough to venture out of the house, the snow had melted and become little flecks of slush and wet grass.
That was a few months ago, and in the past week snow has fallen almost everyday and while more often than not Ellie’s fine with it - even pressing her nose against the windowpane of her bedroom for so long it leaves a smudge in the shape of her nose - sometimes the endless white reminds of her a time when her blood tainted it. A time when David tainted it.
Joel can always tell when she has these days; she rolls into his bed wordlessly in the morning, and her eyes hold the same vacancy she existed in after Silver Lake. He usually lies with her, stroking her hair and scratching at her scalp. He whispers sweet nothings into the space just to help lull Ellie with the familiar cadence of his accent. On these days, Ellie can usually only stomach her safe foods, and even the sight of dark meat can send her into a spiral (“Joel, it’s-that’s-” “Shh Baby, it’s just last night's game, I swear to you”).
Today, though, the snow is dense enough to be packed, and Joel has an idea on how to pull Ellie out of her brain fuzz.
“What do you think about makin’ a snowman?” Joel asks as she rolls into his bed that morning. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and it gives him his first hint that today is gonna hard. She sniffles, scooting up into his personal space - something she’s treated like her own from the start -and moving his calloused hands into her hair. She taps it a few times expectantly and, like the whipped man he is, Joel immediately starts to card through it.
“What the hell is a snowman?” She asks after a moment of his relaxing ministrations. Her voice is scratchy from crying, and Joel would move to grab her water if it wasn’t for how relaxed she looks.
“An’ here I thought you went to school,” He teases, poking her side with his spare hand in a way that makes Ellie laugh and squirm.
“You think FEDRA schools are teaching us about men made of snow?” She pulls a face at him and he rolls his eyes at her sass.
“Didn’t think they taught y’all puns either, but you got plenty of them.”
“Oh, please, FEDRA wishes they had my talent for puns.”
“You got talent? When was I gonna see this?”
Ellie smacks his shoulder at his audacity but her eyes already seem brighter than they did this morning. “You could only dream of being as funny as me,” She sticks her tongue out as if to prove her point.
“Hm, maybe funny lookin’,” Joel tugs affectionately at her hair. Ellie rolls over in mock-outrage. She sits up on the bed and pushes at his shoulder like she’s gonna knock him right off.
“I’ll show you funny looking!”
In the end, Ellie does look quite funny all rolled up in a blanket burrito and cussing up at Joel about what she’s gonna do to him when she gets out.
*
She manages to eat a bowl of apple cinnamon oatmeal and half a slice of toast. Not quite as much as she’d eat on a good morning, but not nearly as little as her worst. The food hall isn’t necessarily far from their house, but it’s not close enough to make the trek this early in this much snow. From the empty streets, most of town felt the same.
Joel rinses the dishes and Ellie dries them, but he catches her throwing a few wary glances at the window and ends up telling her to wipe down the table (And if the table faces the opposite direction of the window, then that’s purely coincidental).
“What? You worried I’m gonna judge your dishwashing skills?” She teases, grabbing a wet rag and scrubbing at the wooden table. Joel had made it when they first got to Jackson, and she takes special care in cleaning out the grooves with their initials carved into them.
Joel snorts at this, polishing off her favorite astronaut-helmet-shaped bowl he’d found on a patrol a few weeks back, “Oh, please, compared to you, I’m the Eddie Van Halen of dishwashing. You always leave bits of food on the corners.”
“I heard vision goes as you get older,” Ellie teases, dedicating her attention to a piece of oatmeal stuck between the troughs.
“Well, I hope so. Ain't sure how much more of watchin' you eat with your bare hands I can handle.”
“Excuse me for appreciating my meals.”
“Appreciating or decimating?”
He narrowly dodges the now dirty rag she throws at his head.
*
Between wrestling her into a scarf and finishing kitchen clean up, by the time they’re actually ready to go outside, Ellie’s lost her nerve. She’s in her army green fleece sweater, bulky navy coat, crocheted scarf, woolen mittens, and a dinosaur patterned hat with a green brim that Joel traded some detailing for. Between it all the layers, she looks more like a bundle of blankets than a tween.
She’s gnawing at her lip, something she only does when she can't get to her cuticles, and throwing skittish glances at the expanse of white snow. Each time her eyes linger they lose just a bit of brightness. He sighs where he’s knelt down, lacing up her clunky boots that she has trouble with- though she’d never admit it. (“I can do it!” “I know but indulge me will ya?”)
“What if we watch a movie instead? I’ll even let you watch one of those boring action movies. The ones with no plot but big men on steroids!” Ellie swallows nervously as Joel finishes tying off her boot in a little bow.
Joel smooths her bangs behind her hat, “Do you even know what the hell steroids are?”
Ellie holds his hand where it’s still against her head. She seems a little spacey, but then she jokes, “I know you sure as hell aren’t on them.”
Joel grumbles, but he’s happy she isn’t out of it too much to joke around. He remembers the husk of a girl Ellie had become in the immediate aftermath of Silver Lake. Barely in her own body, too battered, lost in the trauma. It hurts his chest a bit to think about even now, her little body being so afraid, so traumatized from her experience that it kept Ellie locked out to protect her from it. Kept her dissociated enough that she barely ate or slept afterwards.
Those days following Silver Lack haunt him like the ghost of his past, another little girl, another daughter he couldn’t protect.
“I’m nervous,” She says after a moment, “I’m nervous I won’t be able to be out in the snow without getting all fuzzy and then I’ll embarrass us in front of the neighbors and then everyone will see just how fucked up I am. How different I am from all the other kids in Jackson, and then they’ll judge you and-”
“Whoa now. Slow down, baby girl,” Joel says, sitting on the mudroom bench with her, gently pushing her head onto his shoulder, “You’re gettin’ all worked up. Ain’t nothing to be embarrassed about having bad days.”
“But-”
“Nope. It’s listening time now,” She grumbles a bit, but he soothes her with a gentle kiss to her temple. “You been through more than most adults would have survived. I’m never gonna judge you for needing a break or getting a little fuzzy. And I need you not to worry about what the neighbors say, let me deal with that, okay? Ain’t nothing you gotta worry about.”
“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Ellie whispers the confession, ashamedly into his neck, sniffling.
“Can I show you something, Baby?” He asks softly, nudging her up. Ellie eyes him wearily but follows him to the large window, overlooking their street. She sees Mr. Dunbar shoveling his porch, a few older kids from her school tossing what seems to be chunks of snow at each other (She makes a note to ask Joel about it when she’s less surly), and the rest of the houses with billowing smoke coming out from their chimneys.
“Uh, what am I looking at?”
“Even if you do decide you need a break or you just want to lie on the couch and watch one of your space documentaries, the only people outside to see it will be us,” Joel tugs her hat down to cover her ears affectionately.
Ellie mulls over this information for a bit, watching how focused the few people who are outside are on their own winter activities. She doubts they’ll even notice her and Joel are outside. Plus, despite how much she teased him, she really is curious about these snowmen Joel keeps telling her about.
“Alright, let’s go meet these snowmen.”
*
It’s only when they get outside does Ellie realizes she’s expected to make the snowman.
Joel can’t help his smile as she waddles down the porch in all her snow gear, glaring at him now with this new information. He shows her how to wad the snow into a small sphere, waiting for her to make her own before demonstrating how to roll it on the ground to make it bigger.
“You’re building from big to small, the snowman needs a heavy base to hold up the middle and head.”
“Yeah I know how gravity works dingus.” She says, though Joel’s not quite sure that’s the right word, and starts packing snow into the sides of her ball.
“You gotta be more gentle, can’t go shovin' it in the snow or it’s not gonna stick. You need a firm but tender grip while you're rollin’.”
“Jeez, Joel, are you getting it pregnant or making a ball?” Ellie quips, kicking the snow when her ball collapses and she has to start again. When she finishes, she tugs Joel’s sleeve to show him. It’s not quite as big as Joel’s, but she seems satisfied when it’s grown to be about the size of an overfilled beach ball. Either that or she doesn’t want to start again since her first two broke during her initial roll. He gives her a “Nice work, kiddo,” and she sparkles under the praise.
Joel rolls his snowball close enough to hers that they’re adjacent but not touching, and then helps her pack the snow tight enough for her to start rolling it.
They only start the middle section after Joel assures Ellie the base won’t immediately crumble upon placing the second ball when she tries to argue that her snowman could be one snowball tall.
“Oh, you’re basing it off your own height, huh?”
“I’m gonna smother you in the snow.”
Joel finishes the head by the time Ellie finishes the middle, and she tries really hard not to be bitter that it’s taking her so long to make a snowman. Joel - sensing her frustration - helps her finish up. She grins when she’s done, sweating despite the blistering cold. Her face is rosy and cool, and her mouth is sore from laughing. It makes Joel’s stomach pool with affection for his little girl.
“What do we do now?” Ellie asks after spending a good couple of minutes just admiring her work.
“I reckon they need some eyes, maybe a nose?” Joel suggests, hip-checking her towards their backyard, “Betcha got some stones somewhere in the yard.”
He doesn’t need to say anymore before she’s off, waddling with how bundled up he’d forced her to be. While she’s looking for her stones, Joel goes into his shed and grabs the surprise he’d traded Teresa Tonkins four weeks of Patrol-First-Picks for. Opening the top cupboard - the same one he knows Ellie can’t reach- he grabs the folded sweater and fluffs it out.
The sweater is made of dyed cobalt wool. It’s embroidered with the entire solar system, each planet surrounding the sun at the center of the sweater. Theres 3d stars stitched along the hem and collar. The part that he was most happy with, though, was Ellie’s name spelled on one of the sleeves in a little constellation design.
Joel grabs that along with four sticks and heads back to their snowmen. He beats Ellie by only a few minutes, him just managing to drape the sweater on her snowman and add the sticks to his own by the time she’s back.
“I got some stones, and out of the kindness of my heart, I brought you some. Didn’t grab enough pebbles to add wrinkles though, so sadly yours can’t be a self-portratit-” The stones tumble from her arms at the speed in which she dashes towards her snowman, “Oh my fucking god Joel!”
She gently pulls the sweater from the snowman, apologizing to it so quietly Joel doesn’t think he’s meant to hear it, and examines the details. He sees the exact moment she finds her own name and her lip wobbles a bit. Ellie hugs it to her chest.
Joel smiles at her excitement, grunting at the force of her hug when she launches at him. They both fall into the plush snow, and he wraps her up with both arms and flips them so they’re both on their backs next to each other.
“You ever hear about a snowangel?”